For 29-year-old banker Kusum Mainali, weekends usually meant shopping and get-togethers with her friends. She had been following this trend as long as she remembers but not until recently when there was a drastic change in her lifestyle. After she decided to take the ten-day retreat called Vipassana at Budanilkantha, she has limited her partying and now spends more time in meditation and spiritual yoga classes.[break]
Bijay Gajmer
“At one point of time, I got tired of partying. I realized that it was high time that I actually took some responsibility and reflected on my purpose in life. And meditation has helped me achieve that. I feel rejuvenated and have changed for better,” says Kusum.
Growing up to become an independent individual is not easy. You are expected to take on responsibilities that include finding better education, career and relationships. This is why many find themselves lost on their path and seek for guidance and solace that can help them cope better. There are youngsters like Kusum who believe that spiritual connection provides them with the precision to understand themselves and their world, and help them tackle the conflicts around them in pragmatic and mature ways.
Professional actor and model Jharana Bajracharya has also been providing meditation classes for the last four months after she found her Vipassana experience in Budanilkantha to be very enriching. She thinks that spiritual yoga and meditation have also helped her to retain calmness.
“In today’s world, there’s so much information, especially with youngsters. There’s competition everywhere and you need to process what you learn. So you need an outlet to de-stress, and in meditation, attaining calmness itself is the first stage,” she says.
Many youngsters even have anger and frustration issues which they try to deal with as they grow up. Thus, they find spirituality quite appealing as it guides them to resolve issues in more realistic ways.
“After I took courses at the Art of Living, everyone around me has said that I’ve changed drastically. From an impatient and irresponsible person, I’ve become calmer and more tolerant because spirituality teaches those lessons. I’ve realized that there’s a right time for everything,” says 22-year-old Ritesh Gurung, a student. He adds that he also feels more confident, focused and less lethargic.
The Art of Living, a volunteer-based, humanitarian and educational NGO, provides a variety of meditation classes and it has a course called Yes + which is designed especially for youngsters aged 18 to 28 years.
“The participation of youngsters in meditation sessions has definitely increased over the past few years. In each course, we have 100 plus eager volunteers,” says Achut Raj Gautam, national teachers’ coordinator and fulltime volunteer at Art of Living.
Gautam, who also provides meditation instructions and classes, says that it is equally important for youngsters to be involved in thought-processing sessions in order to improve their concentration and achieve tranquility.
“The uses of gadgets among youngsters are growing tremendously. Similarly, as gadgets are useful to them, meditation is also useful and we define it simply on their term as “ipod” and its acronym stands for ‘inner peace, outer dynamism,’ ” says Gautam.
He explains that youngsters often become victims of mental disturbance due to growing competition and their growing demands.
“So meditation is a functional option to attain peace of mind as it helps them to reflect on themselves and their goals which is why youngsters are getting attracted to it,” he adds.
The older generation mostly maintained their spiritual and religious connections by worshipping various deities and singing hymns and doing prayers. But today’s generation has a slightly different notion about that.
Shruti Shah, 50, has always been religious as she grew up in a family which believed that it was important to appease God and maintain their religious standards and culture.
“I always used to pressurize my daughter to participate in all the religious activities that regularly take place in our home but she was headstrong about finding ways to skip it and showed the least interest. I was worried that she was turning into an atheist,” says Shruti.
But a few months back, she was surprised to know that her daughter had joined meditation classes and that she even prayed every night before going to bed.
“Today’s youth have been raised to become independent. With that, they want to decide on what values they want to follow and how they want to live their lives. So we can’t exert pressure on them. Even in my case, I realized that my daughter has her own ways to maintain her beliefs and it’s just that she didn’t want to be part of vivacious religious activities,” she says.
At the end of the day, youngsters believe that spirituality provides the kind of peace that the material world never can. So these youngsters are after their spiritual pursuits as it provides them the insights in understanding life’s situations.
Shreshna Basnet, who is in her early 30s and is the editor of Barpeepal Tree, a newspaper magazine for youth, had been introduced to meditation classes in 2011 and until now, she has taken numerous meditation classes and practices on her own as well.
“I initially got into it to maintain a healthy life, and as soon as I began, I felt very light as if I could fly on my own,” she shares.
She was really drawn into the discipline of meditation and started reading and listening to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the spiritual leader and founder of the Art of Living Foundation.
“His ways of expressing and defining even the most profound things in simple ways were really inspiring. He also explained that to be spiritual, you don’t have to isolate yourself and go to the top of a mountain to meditate. You can simply lead a normal life but gain inner peace,” she says.
Shreshna explains that the beginner’s course is really simple with a lot of activities where one has to practice breathing exercises. The latter courses are a bit advanced which include meditation, discussions and yoga practice as well.
“Spiritualism and mediation are an easier way to grasp and understand things in life. It also makes you feel purified and free,” she concludes.
Like Shreshna, there are a growing number of youth who are drawn by the ideas and practices of meditation and spirituality. Every individual has her own reasons in it; nevertheless, choosing a spiritual path has helped them to redefine their faith. Besides that, it has also worked as a means to know your inner self better when you are so much engaged and chasing after your pursuits with your discovered convictions.
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