{"id":1263,"date":"2026-10-09T13:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/?p=1263"},"modified":"2025-10-15T17:00:02","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T03:00:02","slug":"lesson-181-living-with-siva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-181-living-with-siva\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson 181 \u2013 Living with \u015aiva"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/LwS-Lesson-181.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Recording: Gurudeva&#8217;s cloned voice<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Responsible Chaperoning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I described the importance of chaperoning in Nandin\u0101tha S\u016btra 149: \u201c\u015aiva\u2019s followers accept the serious responsibility of guiding the private and social life of their children. They chaperone and monitor friendships to help ensure that young ones grow up safe and celibate.\u201d An Indian lady once told me what she considered to be her most important duty in life: that she would never, ever let her daughter out of her sight until she was married and well settled. Someone asked, \u201cDon\u2019t you trust her?\u201d The lady\u2019s answer was, \u201cNo.\u201d <br><br>Why do sw\u0101m\u012bs of traditional orders like ours go out only in pairs? Is it because we don\u2019t trust them? We trust the soul and we trust them individually, but we don\u2019t trust worldly people they might encounter who would love nothing more than to deter them from their dharma. We follow the ancient traditions so that problems don\u2019t arise. <br><br>Many parents are faced with the dilemma of sending children off to college for a higher education at the risk of their exposure to undesirable influences. I tell my devotees, if you want your son and daughter to attend the university, you should, if at all possible, move into a home near that campus so you can be close to them and keep them from getting into trouble, share meals with them, monitor their friendships. You will be investing a lot of money to put them through school, and if you are not there, you will be investing a lot of worry. <br><br>If sending them to a far-off school is unavoidable, and you cannot move to a home nearby, remind them to at least perform simple p\u016bj\u0101 every day and tune into a picture of you, and of the family guru and the Gods of our beautiful religion. The object of going to college, you can explain, is to learn what they need to learn and come out the other side as a professional, able to make their way in the world. So, explain to them that they are not going to college to make friends, to join sororities or fraternities, or to get side-tracked in any way by the temptations of the world as it is today. Encourage them to treat everyone the same, with a happy smile, to not take sides, to not like one person more than another. <br><br>There is a wonderful lady from the Tamilian community who sent her two sons off to the University of California, and every day, to stay close, she cooked a meal for them, packaged that meal and sent it by courier to their apartment 400 miles away. Another pattern that has worked in our congregation is for young people to marry and then, as a married couple, move near a university for the husband to attend school. Then he is naturally chaperoned by his wife as they grow up together. <br><br>Many children don\u2019t follow their parents\u2019 religion, don\u2019t want to be sheltered or restricted and want to leave home in their teens and go off on their own. I say that if you have really made the religious teachings a part of your life, you will naturally be able to convince your family and friends of those wonderful truths. Your youth will see the wisdom of not going out without a chaperone, be it an adult or a trusted peer. If you can\u2019t convince your family of the teachings, that shows that they are just intellectual thoughts that in practice don\u2019t mean anything to you. <br><br>I watch for those in my international congregation who can do this, who are deeply involved, active and committed members who can bring others along the path that they themselves have trod. And I watch for those, indifferent and apathetic, who can\u2019t and are just hanging on because of the social benefits or the mystique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">NANDINATHA S\u016aTRA 181: KEEPING SCIENCE ETHICAL<br>\u015aiva\u2019s devotees who are scientists are protectors of humanity and stewards of the Earth. They must never compromise their ethics for financial rewards or release inventions before proven safe and beneficial. Aum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Responsible Chaperoning I described the importance of chaperoning in Nandin\u0101tha S\u016btra 149: \u201c\u015aiva\u2019s followers accept the serious responsibility of guiding the private and social life of their children. They chaperone and monitor friendships to help ensure that young ones grow up safe and celibate.\u201d An Indian lady once told me what she considered to be <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-181-living-with-siva\/\">READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-with-siva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4424,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions\/4424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}