When we look at the world scenario, we notice that many countries, including some highly advanced ones or as they call themselves developed nations, are under heavy external debts. While, others have borrowed unscrupulously from financial institutions and common people of their own land and are surviving on deficit budgets and on printing huge amounts of paper currency that is no longer tied to any national gold reserves.
Still few other nations, who have high standards of living, have their own burden of problems that arise from workaholic habits, exorbitant costs of living and deep mental discontent of the people. Perhaps, the worst of these all are some third world countries, which are hard-hit by abject poverty that causes acute suffering and humiliation to millions of people who live in pathetic sub-human conditions that defy description.
Impartial surveys into these grave realities and their causes reveal that, in some countries, the developmental efforts are nullified by high population increase due to lack of self-control in the people over their animalistic instinct of reproduction. In others, there is a lot of corruption in high places, or the ‘insensitive’ government there incurs unaffordable high expenditure, or the greedy rich deposit illegally, huge sums of money in banks abroad.
Others cannot make any worthwhile progress because of political instability, disturbed law and order situation or because they have to spend enormous amounts on military and para-military build-up in order to counteract violence with violence. In one short sentence, one can say that all the prevailing economic misery is due to loss of values, such as sympathy, self-control, non-violence, spirit of service, feeling of concern for the well-being of others, etc.
In other words, there has been rapid erosion of social, moral and family values. It is not that people do not know that moral values are necessary to build a happy and peaceful society. People wish to have moral qualities in their life but they do not have that spiritual knowledge that should enable them to follow successfully these values in their life nor do they know that kind of Meditation which should make the values stay in them and should give them a deep experience of peace and happiness. Thus, need of the hour is that we create a mass awareness among people for values like tolerance, humility, mutual respect in order to realise our dream of a world where there is peace, happiness and harmony.
(The writer is a spiritual educator and popular columnist for publications across India, Nepal and UK. You can write to him at nikunjji@gmail.com)
