Giving Programs during Anniversary Celebrations
The Houston Namadwaar stands for Universal Love and Harmony, and the first year anniversary of the Namadwaar was celebrated on March 19, 2011 in a grand manner, with giving food and clothing to people in need in partnership with Love to Share Foundation USA.
The team reached out to the nearby communities in / around Pearland and Manvel areas many days in advance, requesting for their contributions. Numerous boxes of gently used clothes as well as vegetarian non-perishable food had been collected by the generous contributions of families living in those communities.
The morning event primarily revolved around giving back to the community with food, clothes and educational supplies drives. The supplies were to be be given away to the Pearland Neighborhood Center (PNC), a local agency that serves the needy in the Pearland/Manvel and nearby areas through a variety of social service programs. Ms. Sondra Huddleston of PNC was present at Namadwaar on 19th morning to take part in the proceedings and receive the donations.
Also present were several youngsters from the Bhutanese community in Houston for whose benefit an educational supplies drive (comprising backpacks, notebooks and calculators) had been held.
After the guests were welcomed and honored with flowers and mementos, Mr. Sriram Ramanujam gave a brief overview about the vision, worldwide activities and service programs across the world. He emphasized that universal love and harmony was the strong thread that united all the efforts, whether it was praying and chanting the Divine Name; conducting food, clothes or city-cleaning drives; supporting children’s education; counseling seniors, prisoners or young orphaned children; or any of the several such social service programs that are being organized in different parts of the world.
Ms. Sondra Huddleston then spoke a few words about the wonderful service PNC does for the community that include running a pantry, medical assistance, emergency assistance, disaster relief, basic living skills course and more. Mr Narad, a high-school student who was one of the representatives of the Bhutanese community at Namadwaar that day, also spoke for a few minutes. His words showed the courage that the Bhutanese youngsters have, despite the challenges they have had to face because of displacement from their own land and having to adjust to living in a new country and new culture.
Mr.Jeevan Nair then spoke about the specific drives that had been conducted as part of Namadwaar’s anniversary celebrations. Before the actual boxes were given to the recipients, he read out a beautiful prayer (which was repeated by everyone present) that was as follows:
“May this charity put me in a state where I can give more!
May this charity bring peace and happiness to the receiver!
May this charity make me a more humble person!
Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare,
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare!”
The boxes of clothes, food and school supplies were then handed over to Ms. Sondra Huddleston and Mr. Narad by Mr. Narayanan Sathiamoorthy. Mr. Ramaswamy gave the vote of thanks to end the morning’s proceedings.
Tree Planting Drive in Houston, USA
“If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity.
If there’s no relationship with nature then you become a killer;
then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man
either for gain, for “sport,” for food, or for knowledge.
Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty.
You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places
but you are a killer and so lose their friendship.
You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband “
– the great philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti writes. Living close to nature is indeed living close to the divine, and we have always had this as ourbaseline.
In line with that, the First Anniversary of Houston Namadwaar in the US was celebrated on March 13, 2011 with giving programs in the morning and a grand tree-planting drive in the afternoon along with cultural events in partnership with Love to Share Foundation .
On the afternoon of March 19th, the Honorable Mayor Delores Martin of Manvel city arrived at 2 pm. She was taken to see the Namadwaar and spent considerable time there listening to the chanting and looking at the sayings of Mahans that adorn the Namadwaar’s walls and also the photo collage of various activities in the US and across the world.
She was then invited outside where everyone had assembled. Smt. Zenitha Ram was the “MC” for the program. She invited the Mayor onto the stage along with Sri Jeevan Nair and Sri Narayanan Sathiamoorthy. After a spirited rendition of the US national anthem by accomplished 14-year-old singer, Shilpa Sadagopan, Sri Srini Balakrishnan gave the welcome address and read out Sri Swamiji’s message for the anniversary. In His message, Sri Swamiji spoke of the sweetness of the path of love and the joy of singing the glories of the Almighty together as a group, and blessed all the members of the family who had come all the way from across the country to celebrate the first anniversary of Namadwaar and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu jayanti.
Sri Jeevan Nair then gave an overview of the activities at Houston Namadwaar. Following this, Mayor Delores Martin, who has been a great support to the Namadwaar in the last year, was invited to speak. She spoke a few short but sweet words that expressed her enthusiasm and gratitude to be able to attend the Namadwaar anniversary just like she had the inauguration last year.Sri Narayanan Sathiamoorthy then spoke about Universal Love and the underlying principle, which is Universal Harmony through Inner Transformation, Inner Transformation through Spiritual Awakening, Spiritual Awakening by Chanting the Divine Name. He spoke of how we only “fall” in worldly love but always “rise” in Divine Love and that that Divine Love is the one that can take each one of us to the ideal of Universal Harmony.
Ms. Ranjana Narasiman and Mr. Tupil Narasiman represented the Meenakshi Temple Society of Pearland and gave their best wishes for the function. Honorable Maaji and Shri Chandraji representing Shirdi Sai Jalram Mandir of Houston and Mrs. Tara Narasiman representing Hindus of Greater Houston were special attendees of the evening program.
Following this, the Mayor was invited to commence the tree sapling planting. About 17 saplings of beautiful flowering trees were planted behind Namadwaar, by each of several guests and friends in a temporary area. They will later be transplanted to different locations within the Namadwaar grounds.
The team has also requested the Mayor to see if we can help the wider community – spanning the Manvel city and the neighboring cities – by planting more trees.
Sampradaya Winter Camp 2010
After the immense success of the first Sampradaya Heritage Camp conducted in spring 2010, Seattle Love to Share Foundation Chapter conducted a second Sampradaya Camp in December 2010 that was an even greater hit among parents and children alike. Children who attended the camp were exposed to various aspects of Sanatana Dharma in a fun, innovative and hands-on manner.
Seminar at Shasta Regional Med.Ctr. Redding
On February 4th, 2010, Mr. M.K. Ramanujam. conducted a corporate program for the medical professionals at Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding. The topic was “Happiness at work”.
“Empty your cups” – he first said to the audience, expecting them to keep their minds open to listening to what he had to say. The next hour and a half were about filling the mind with a fresh lease of ideas – on happiness. Happiness and inner peace is a choice, he said and it is up to us to determine whether we wish to be happy or not.
The session was followed by an interesting discussion and people went out with a sense of satisfaction and hope towards transforming themselves to make their workplaces better places to work!
The session was coordinated by Dr. Sriram Sambasivam.
Seminar on ‘Happiness at Work’ at IBM, Lowell
On Friday Jan 29th, More than 50 people turned up at noon for the interesting talk on “Happiness at Work” at the IBM campus in Lowell, MA. The seminar session was arranged by MAIN (Massachusetts Asian IBMers Network) which is an internal group in IBM. The concept of happiness and mind was dealt with by Mr. Ramanujam in the 90 minutes that was scheduled for the talk.
Towards the end, the floor was open for discussions whence many a participant expressed desire to attend a day-long session on Happiness by Mr. Ramanujam.
The program was coordinated by Mrs. Krithika Prakash and arranged by Mr. Ashish Cowligi of IBM.
Corporate Programs in WA
On Dec 9 2009, General Electric (GE) Healthcare IT, Seattle, WA hosted a workshop on Inner Peace and Stress Management conducted by Mr. Ramanujam.
Some of the testimonials that we received at the end of the session spoke about how wonderful this session was conducted by Mr. Ram.nbsp; His humbleness, passion, dedication and powerful presenting skills complemented his message that happiness and inner peace can truly be effected by inner transformation. Ram’s empty the cup’ paradigm specifically drew many people and they thought it was such a novel twist to many things they have heard before during these workshops.
Earlier in the week on December 7 2009, the City of Sammamish, WA hosted a Meditation and Stress Management Workshop which was Ram’s first corportate program during this trip. This was attended by a diverse population from various walks of life. The key message that ‘Happiness’ lies within and can be effected from from within was very well received by many and there were many ‘aha’s and keeper’s that stemmed from this interactive session. Some of them, especially, the principal of a very reputed school expressed his desire to host Ram at their school during his next visit to WA.
Stress Management and Happiness in Life
Date : Nov 9, 2009. Monday
Time : 6:30pm – 8pm
Venue : Buchar Family Chiropractic, New York St, Aurora, IL
Event : Talk by Mr. Ramanujam
Topic : Stress Management and Happiness in Life
Mr.Ramanujam said that a person’s happiness is definitely within his reach, and that happiness does not exist outside, but inside of each one of us. As a child, we tend to think that happiness is present in food, parents, toys etc, but as we grow, our thoughts change. We begin to believe that happiness lies in other things like success, wealth etc. We are so much deceived that we always tend to think happiness lies in something else. When Mahans opine that happiness really is within us, we find it so hard to accept that we tend to dismiss this idea.
Mind is like a child and when it goes out of control, all we have to do is, just watch it, and it will start to settle down, an easy way for all. Another tactic is to accept each one as he/she is. He mentioned that any work that leads to the strengthening of ego is definitely not holy and any work that leads to the destruction of ego IS holy. All this will help us find happiness in ourselves which eventually will keep stress away.
The event concluded with a question and answer session in which Ram patiently addressed each of the questions asked by 15 people who were present for the lecture.
Seminar at Motorola, Arlington Heights, IL
Date: October 18 2007
Time: 4:00pm – 5:30 pm
Topic: Being Confident to face Corporate Challenges.
Venue: Motorola, Arlington Heights, Illinois
Speakers: Mr. Ramanujam and Ms. Poornima Kumarasami
Mr. Ram and Ms. Poornima performed an inspiring talk on “Being Confident to face Corporate Challenges”. This speech was arranged by Asian Business Council Professional Development team for employees of Motorola. The session was very interactive with excellent feedback from the listeners.