{"id":80,"date":"2007-09-18T15:21:23","date_gmt":"2007-09-18T09:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/80\/universal-pledge\/"},"modified":"2007-09-18T15:21:23","modified_gmt":"2007-09-18T09:51:23","slug":"universal-pledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/2007\/80\/","title":{"rendered":"Universal Pledge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>18 September 2007, Amritapuri<br \/>\nThis morning, I was over at the Engineering College taking photos of students placing ribbons around trees and plants which they had adopted as a part of the <em>Vriksha Raksha Bandhan<\/em> program.\u00a0 One of the students had planted a mango tree sapling which was behind the College so we agreed to head there.\u00a0 After a few shots, I had to make my way back to the Ashram in order to sit at the seva desk during breakfast.\u00a0\u00a0 But something caught my ear as I gingerly walked around pools of water that had formed from the persistant heavy rains.\u00a0\u00a0 The entire campus was reverberating with &#8220;<em>Lokah Samastah Sukinau Bhavantu<\/em>&#8220;.\u00a0 It was coming from every class room.\u00a0 From the hallways, corridors, mess hall, classroom.<\/p>\n<p>I asked Sreedhu (one of the organizers of the tree adopting program) if this was how they started their day.\u00a0 &#8220;Yes,&#8221; he replied.\u00a0 My mind went back to my school days in the US, when we began every morning with the Pledge of Allegiance and &#8216;My Country &#8216;Tis of Thee&#8221; .\u00a0 And here were students, college students at that, chanting this universal prayer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Wouldn&#8217;t it be wonderful, I thought, if students everywhere started their day with the words &#8211; &#8216;May all beings in all worlds everywhere be happy.&#8217; ?<\/p>\n<p>Sri pati<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>18 September 2007, Amritapuri This morning, I was over at the Engineering College taking photos of students placing ribbons around trees and plants which they had adopted as a part of the Vriksha Raksha Bandhan program.\u00a0 One of the students had planted a mango tree sapling which was behind the College so we agreed to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ashram-diary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}