Indo American News

Cues at JVB Preksha Center for the Pursuit of Happiness

A lecture by Bajrang Jain in the JVB Preksha Center’s Meditation Hall (file picture)

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: The quest for happiness seems like a never ending journey for many who have labored through the trials and tribulations, the challenges of Life. Many seek out clairvoyants, oracles, horoscopes, palmistry and psychics to overcome their problems, often spending thousands of dollars to find the answers to their problems.

So, it may seem odd that the JVB Preksha Mediation Center is offering cues to the pursuit of happiness at no cost.

“We want to start off with a program on Tuesdays geared to those who may already been retired or have free time,” said Swatantra Jain, a Board Member of the  Center. “And it will be totally religion-free, anyone of any religion can come to participate.”

“The program is structured to help people realize the truth about themselves,” added Alok Jain, a retired professor and now actively involved in the Center himself.

The program will be held from 10:30 am to 2:30 pm and starts with an initiation period of 20-30 minutes followed by guided meditation for an hour and a half-hour of guided relaxation. A pravachan or discourse in Hindi on a relevant topic runs for an hour followed by a half-hour of discussion among the participants.

To hear both men speak about the path to happiness is almost scientific in its approach. It consists of being conscious of what is around us, maintaining a state of alertness and reducing the chances for accidents.

“We should keep our mind in the present,” explained Swatantra who has taken many courses over the years to help control his own actions and reactions. “We should not live in the past or the future.”

This translates into a knowledge base that allows us to make choices based on the consequences and make an alignment between the mind and the body.

What this knowledge evokes in us are emotions and sensations  that form the basis for our likes and dislikes of our experiences. Some of these may even be programmed into our genes.

And these emotions dictate our actions or karma, whether they bring pain and suffering or joy and pleasure eventually become our accumulated destiny.

If this way to finding happiness sounds very rational and scientific, it also shows how the approach is not steeped in religion but borders on more contemporary self-help techniques or self-realizations also sometimes referred to as Actualizations.

It comes as somewhat a surprise to the uninitiated that this very contemporary and scientific approach actually is core to the philosophy of Vipassana Meditation, whose chief exponent in our times has been Satya Narayan Goenka.

The courses that are being offered will show how to achieve the state of mind to understand the process and control the emotional responses and consequently the actions that we take.

Both men realize that the appeal for these new programs can transcend cultures and religions and hope that they can offer it to the Greater Houston community when they have developed a sufficiently large base of trained instructors.

They have other plans for future programs and outreach, but for right now, they hope the message that the Tuesday programs will offer can make a difference in someone’s quest for greater harmony and overall happiness.