Gurudevshri Rakeshji.
From roses with thorns to the habit of reacting before we have listened, the founder of Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur has simple, practical advice for keeping families close
Bhai Dooj is supposed to be about a brother and a sister. In most Indian homes it ends up being about the whole family: cousins dropping by, an aunt who has opinions on everything, a dining table that gets a little crowded and, sometimes, a little tense.
Pujya Gurudevshri Rakeshji, founder of Shrimad Rajchandra Mission Dharampur (SRMD), speaks often about relationships in his discourses. He tends to put his advice in short lines that people remember and quote to each other later.
Here are six of them.
1. Choose what you want to see
"Healthy relationships are built on attitude, not perfection," Gurudevshri says. "Even roses have thorns. Choose what you want to see in others."
Nobody in a family is easy all the time. The brother who forgets your birthday may be the first to turn up at the hospital. The sister who argues about everything may also be the one who never lets you down. Which of those you dwell on, he suggests, is largely up to you.
2. Adjust, accept, appreciate
His three-word formula for a healthy bond is "adjust, accept and appreciate". Adjusting means bending a little. Accepting means letting people be who they are rather than who you would like them to be. Appreciating means noticing what they bring to your life, and saying so.
Most of us skip the last one. We thank the delivery boy more often than we thank our own siblings.
3. Listen before you react
We listen half, understand one-fourth, think zero, react double.
Most family fights start that way. A short reply on the phone gets read as anger. A missed call gets read as neglect. His advice is plain: "For harmony in relationships, just observe others or have clear communication. Avoid making assumptions." If something hurts, ask about it. You may find it was never meant the way you heard it.
4. Watch for expectation and neglect
"The two greatest threats to any relationship are expectation and neglect," he says.
One is wanting too much from someone and keeping a quiet count of everything you have done for them. The other is giving too little and assuming the relationship will be fine anyway. Either one can wear a bond down slowly. Gurudevshri's suggestion is to think more about your duties to the people around you and less about your rights.
5. Love without holding on
"Detachment is not freedom from relationships, but freedom in relationships," Gurudevshri explains.
People often take spiritual detachment to mean caring less. As he explains it, it means caring without trying to own the other person. A parent can guide a grown child without running their life. A sibling can worry without taking charge.
6. Live for each other
Family is not people living together, it is people living for each other.
It is the small things that make the difference: making time for a sibling, sitting with a parent who wants to talk, showing up when someone is going through a bad patch. "Richness in relationships brings richness to life," Gurudevshri says, and, perhaps most simply of all, "The secret of happiness is in making others happy."
Why it resonates
Gurudevshri, a philosophy scholar from Mumbai, founded the Mission in 1994. It draws on the teachings of Shrimad Rajchandraji, the 19th-century Jain philosopher whom Mahatma Gandhi regarded as his spiritual guide, and today has centres across six continents. One reason his talks on family strike a chord is that he never advises devotees to treat home life as a distraction from spiritual life. Patience at home and care for ageing parents is also important, as much as meditation.
He also likes to remind people that a new city or a new job won't fix an unsettled mind: "Restless in Mumbai, and you'll be equally restless in London." Relationships work the same way. Changing the people around you rarely helps if nothing changes inside.
So this Bhai Dooj, once the tilak is done and the sweets are out, pick any one of these and try it for a week.
