New Delhi: A two-day V20 Summit or the Values 20 Summit that took place in New Delhi on Saturday wherein in dignitaries from around the world participated and thousands joined the summit online saw Rev. Daaji – Spiritual Guide of Heartfulness, President of Shri Ram Chandra Mission and Padma Bhushan Awardee render a very thought-provoking speech followed by an interactive Q&A session with the dignitaries. Earlier during the day, Rev. Daaji had also led a guided Heartfulness Meditation Session for all the participants. The V20 summit which is themed around driving values though a global community of values experts and practitioners that seeks to actively engage with the Group of Twenty (G20). This was the fourth edition of the summit held this year with India’s official theme for 2023 being ‘LEAD with Values’ in Education, Employment+Entrepreneurship, and Environment helping the participants cultivate ethical conscious leadership. The summit also saw participation from youth who exchanged views on ideals to hold in the current times.
Some of the dignitaries at the summit included Hon’ble Ambassador of Egypt to India His Excellency Mr. Mr. Wael Mohamed Awad Hamed who also delivered the keynote address apart from Mr. Amitabh Kant, IAS – G20 Sherpa of India, previously CEO of NITI Aayog and the Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion; Ms. Monika Kapil Mohta, IFS – V20 India Sherpa rendered the opening remark who ; Mr. Shiv Vikram Khemka – V20 Founding Member and V20 India Chair, Executive Chairman of the Global Education and Leadership Foundation (tGELF), Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of Junior Achievement Worldwide who delivered the Welcome Address.
Rev. Daaji – Spiritual Guide of Heartfulness, President of Shri Ram Chandra Mission and Padma Bhushan Awardee who joined the summit virtually said, “What is universally common value which we all commonly cherish. Kindness and compassion are always on the forefront. Values have always been compromised. It is the mind which is at the centre of doing good or doing bad. In Ashtanga yoga the very first step is Yama which is to kill the weak qualities or the defects that we carry. The second step is Niyama which is the exact opposite which is to embellish and nourish the good qualities. A sensitive and discriminatory mind can easily by developed only by internalizing the perception. The perception can be highlighted or super-refined only through meditation. Meditation gives us the chance ahead of time what not to do. Or helps you identify the blunder and also the courage to face situations because you are on a continuous evolution. A meditative mind is so sensitized that can understand and discriminate between right and wrong. Real meditative mind is how you behave with an open mind on how you think or how you act.
The number one pollutant is thought pollution. Once thought pollution can be cleared, then we cannot think of robbing someone or spoiling water by discharging poisonous or toxic gases or effluents in the outer atmosphere. The regulation happens from the heart and the mind. The logical and emotional heart can be balanced through meditation. Start early. Teach children early. Meditation warns us before we even think. The next step of thinking will have slowed down.
During his interactive session with the audience Rev. Daaji dished out his pearls of wisdom. “Technology can prevent this the greed of industrialists but who does not want to prevent this. It boils down to currencies. People don’t want to compromise due because of their want to make more money with lesser investment. The 18th SGD by UN is to stop polluting the minds first. Make a fundamental change. Training should start early with children. With the present generation – teach them meditation / If you catch any of these people with greed there should be punishment of such an order that no one would dare to pollute.”
Rev. Daaji also shared his views on AI, “AI will save us a lot of time. What will you do with the saved time. Most humans degrade or deteriorate themselves with excess time. Any effortless activity spoils at all levels – physical, mental, emotional. The probes might think what you are thinking or feeling and act accordingly. But the user of technology decides the benefits or not – do you want more freedom? But how are we using the freedom. AI will free us even further which we may not using it because of our nature.”
On education, Rev. Daaji said, “To me the field of education is all about the ability to observe and having the interest. Without intuition, interest and observation the child cannot grow. Parents’ mistake is high expectations beyond the child’s ability. At Heartfulness we have developed many programmes that help children by teaching about consciousness. Godliness can be experienced. Divinity can be experienced. Becoming that experience is even better. Explore spirituality through value-based system – the spirit of life itself.”
To Daaji the most important thing is love. “When you are approaching Godliness it is love also. Flowering of love in our heart is all about nourishing the values. Any value that can bring love in your heart is worth admiring and worth cherishing. Only in giving that you become wealthy at a spiritual level which is love.”
About Heartfulness: Heartfulness offers a simple set of meditative practices and lifestyle changes, first developed at the turn of the twentieth century and formalized into teaching through Shri Ram Chandra Mission in 1945 in India with a goal to bring peace, happiness and wisdom to one heart at a time. These practices are a modern form of Yoga designed to support contentment, inner calm, and stillness, compassion, courage, and clarity of thought, as the first step towards a purposeful life. They are simple and easily adopted and are appropriate for people from all walks of life, cultures, religious beliefs, and economic situations, who are over the age of fifteen. Ongoing training in Heartfulness practices is going on at thousands of schools and colleges, and over 100,000 professionals are meditating in corporations, non-governmental, and government bodies worldwide. More than 5,000 Heartfulness Centers are supported by many thousands of certified volunteer trainers and millions of practitioners in 160 countries.
About V20: V20 is a global community of values experts and practitioners that seeks to actively engage with the Group of Twenty (G20). Our global community produces high-impact policies and recommendations that will be presented to the G20 Heads of State every year for their consideration and activation. V20 India’s official theme for 2023 is: ‘LEAD with Values’ in Education, Employment+Entrepreneurship, and Environment. The theme is adopted from Ve3, V20’s global values-driven accelerator of initiatives, launched in Italy in 2021, that focuses on critical enablers of the SDGs essential for advancing the G20 policy goals. The Indian value system is deeply rooted in the age-old, universal wisdom that promotes harmony, justice, services, and inclusiveness. India’s G20 theme of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam: One Earth-One Family-One Future” strongly reflects these values and V20 aims at supporting G20’s value focused agenda.
