Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji in Rishikesh, India: I heard a story of a college professor in New York who gave his business economy students the assignment of going into a slum and finding ten children each to interview.
Then, the university students had to prepare reports on each of the ten children they had interviewed.
The final item of the assignment was for the students to rate each child’s chance of success in the world.
So, the students all completed their assignments.
With twenty students in the class, the professor ended up with 200 papers on 200 different children living in a slum area.
Every single report ended with the last question, ‘What are this child’s chances of success in the world?’
Each had the same answer: ‘This child has no chance.’
Twenty or thirty years later, another professor at the same college came upon these 200 old reports in the economy department’s filing cabinets.
He thought it would be interesting to see whether all 200 children had really turned out to be victims of their impoverished, crime-ridden upbringings.
Amazingly, over 90% of the children who had “no chance” had turned out to be successful doctors, lawyers or professionals.
The professor was astonished and went to each one to ask what had helped him or her become a success.
Every single respondent (now they were middle aged) said,
‘Well, there was this one teacher I had who changed my life and gave me the ability to succeed.’
The professor finally found this one teacher who had changed the lives of all the children.
When he found her, she was past ninety and very frail.
He asked her how she had possibly taken these impoverished children who had no chance of success in the world and turned more than 90% of them into successful professionals.
The old woman looked at the professor smiled and said,
‘I just Loved those children.’
The power of Love is enough to give hope to the hopeless, enough to turn failures into successes, enough to make lives worth living.
The teacher had not done any special program, nor had she taught the children any special skills.
None of them recalled a particular lesson, activity or project.
Rather, the simple fact that she Loved them and believed in them was enough to change their lives.
We all have this power to transform not only ourselves, but others as well.
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Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji says the message from Bhagwan Shri Krishna is, ‘Love, Love and Love all’ that from the moment he was six days old, he had enemies.
So many demons and asuras came to kill him.
But did he fight them with anger? Did he hate them? Did he send them forever to Hell? No. He granted them all liberation.
Wherever Bhagwan Krishna went, the palaces, the simple huts, the gardens, he brought His Divine Love.
His Divine Love changed not only the lives of all those who met him during his physical presence on Earth, but the ever present Love he continues to shower upon us changes all who open their hearts to it.
His message was:
‘Love All, Hate None. Heal All, Hurt None.’
We have ability to touch others with our smiles, to change a life with a simple warm embrace, to bring meaning to the lives of others with our Love.
Flowers blossom under the warm rays of the sun, and the flowers of our lives, our children, our families, and all those around us blossom under the warm rays of our Love.