Gita Group Discussions #6: Karma Yoga and Dharma

Special Topic: Educating Teens on Karma Yoga Concepts & Understanding Dharma in the context of Accepting people Today's group discussion topics are: a) How to get teens to understand Karma yoga b) Dharma in the context of accepting people A) Karma yoga for kids: Key points It is tough to preach. Kids learn by watching parents. Talking without reference to scriptures helps. Getting them to understand simple concepts like gratitude, association with elderly like grandparents will help. Relating to their day /context is important. This discussion is by 'seekers to seekers' where we discuss the difficulties & challenges parents face & can do to bring about karma yoga attitude in children. While it is not easy, we discuss our personal experiences as parents of teens. Some of the ideas we discuss: 1. Contextualizing the talk will help. 2. We have to be consistent in our messaging as parents. 3. Emphasize importance of right efforts with kids 4. Encourage questioning by kids themselves? Example instead of asking, What did you learn, ask, What could you have done differently? 5. Be equipoised in responding. 6. Plant a seed - not expect results immediately. 7. Encourage kids to talk about their experiences without regret or guilt? If they feel remorse or guilty then let them know that they have not done the right thing. 8. Talk about our personal failures openly and what we learnt. 9. Schools are providing academic inputs but not emotional inputs to manage stressful situations - kids should have self esteem, feel happy within themselves. 10. Have a dialogue and share expectations; accept the results together. 11. Bigger struggle we face as parents is to moderate our own expectations as parents towards kids. Own acceptance took more time as this gets reflected.  12. It will never be ideal (ie what we want/expect) and it is just better to accept - connecting back to karma yoga; 13. Teach the kids by example, ie, your own behavior; and  14. Look for cues in their behavior to spot signs of anxiety, depression and other such mental challenges B) Dharma in the context of understanding people Acceptance of people's behaviour is a must. If we cannot change (or don't have the ability or authority to change) someone, then we must willingly accept, even if the other person's behaviour is not 'dharmic'/right. We must accept right behaviour as right. We must accept wrong behaviour as well, knowing that it is wrong, and NOT resigning or convincing ourselves that it must be right because it can't be changed.