{"id":1388,"date":"2026-10-29T13:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/?p=1388"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:00:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T03:00:02","slug":"lesson-201-living-with-siva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-201-living-with-siva\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson 201 \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\/09\/LwS-Lesson-201.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\">Advice for Abused Youth<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We want to talk to the next generation that\u2019s coming up. Fourteen-year-olds, eighteen-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, stand on your own two feet! Make your decisions according to dharma. What is the book of dharma? Weaver\u2019s Wisdom, the famous Tirukural. It gives you all the tools you need to live a very good life. If your parents are verbally abusing you, don\u2019t let their words affect you. Try to have compassion by appreciating what led them to the point where they could say these cruel things to you; but realize that they can offer you nothing but more abuse, because they are in the process of cursing themselves. The message is to \u201cstand on your own two feet, take your life in your own hands, claim your independence,\u201d once you realize that life at home is not going to get any better. <br><br>In certain shops in Asian cities, parents can buy bamboo switches, belts and other instruments of torture made just for punishing kids. Few realize that their mean words can cause just as much hurt, if not more. Parents have developed long lists of words used to demean and belittle. It has become an unspoken rulebook of how to bring their child down to feeling like he\u2019s a big nothing, willing to do anything you say, because he inwardly begs: \u201cDon\u2019t hurt me anymore. Don\u2019t hit me with your words. Don\u2019t hurt me with your long silences and by turning your head away from me. Don\u2019t hurt me that way anymore. I\u2019ll do anything. I\u2019ll get a dumb job and work at it fourteen hours a day to give you some money, to pay you for not hurting me anymore.\u201d That\u2019s what we have in the Hindu community around the world. And that\u2019s what we don\u2019t want to have in the Hindu community around the world. <br><br>What can a child of eight, ten or twelve do who is being verbally and physically beaten at home and in school? Nothing. It\u2019s a sad situation. I\u2019ve received lists of abuses from children of that age, just exactly what their mothers have said and what their fathers have said. It\u2019s a tremendous pain in their mind. We\u2019ve given young people the pr\u0101ya\u015bchitta, the remedy, of putting a flower in front of their parents\u2019 picture for thirty-one days. Most can\u2019t do it. They just can\u2019t do it. We ask them to say each day, \u201cI forgive you for playing my karma back to me,\u201d but they just can\u2019t do it. The hate, the mistrust, the disappointment, the hurt, is so great, they\u2019ve been put down so low, that they just cannot do it. <br><br>My counsel to Hindu families is: Stop the physical abuse. Stop the verbal abuse. Stop the war in the home. Use positive discipline. Praise your children. Discover the good things that they do and tell them how well they have done. Celebrate their Divinity. Enjoy them and enjoy good times with them. This is the family tradition and the ideal of San\u0101tana Dharma, the Hindu Dharma of the past, before the Church of England reigned over India for 150 years and changed education to their way of thinking, making beating a must in schools and homes in accordance with the many biblical verses that highly recommend \u201cnot to spare the rod,\u201d and the theological rationale to \u201cbeat the devil out of them.\u201d Hindus of today\u2019s world have begun working together to stop the abuse, passing and enforcing laws to bring us back to the true meaning of discipline, which is to teach, train and patiently guide. We must remember that ahi\u1e41s\u0101, nonhurting, physically, mentally or emotionally, is the bedrock of San\u0101tana Dharma. <br><br>My advice to verbally abusive parents: stop tearing them down by telling them they\u2019re stupid, that they\u2019re too small, too fat, too lazy, too ugly or too naughty. If you constantly tell a child he is naughty, he will become naughtier. If you constantly tell a child he\u2019s nice, he will be nicer. It just works like that. All the psychiatrists agree with this approach, to be sure, as do mothers and fathers who really love their children and take an interest in their children. <\/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 201: MODERATION WITH ALCOHOL<br>All strong and intoxicating distilled alcohols are forbidden to \u015aiva\u2019s devotees. They may moderately partake of the family of wines and beers, including honey mead, for these are wholesome when properly enjoyed. Aum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Advice for Abused Youth We want to talk to the next generation that\u2019s coming up. Fourteen-year-olds, eighteen-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, stand on your own two feet! Make your decisions according to dharma. What is the book of dharma? Weaver\u2019s Wisdom, the famous Tirukural. It gives you all the tools you need to live a very good life. <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-201-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-1388","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\/1388","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=1388"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4566,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388\/revisions\/4566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}