Ananda Marga Universal Forum: Bullying: children need our attention + 3 more

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Bullying: children need our attention + 3 more

Baba

Bullying: children need our attention

Namaskar,

As parents, the easiest thing to do is to get caught up in our own lives and lose sight of what our children are really going through. This is especially true in this age of extreme materialism and busyness. Being a parent, counselor, and spouse, this has become a big issue in our household and neighborhood.

Daily meditation affords us the time and space to reflect and feel that inner link with Parama Purusa. That softens the heart and brings life into focus.

At the same time, in my week I come across many cases where families are caught up in the tidal wave of materialism. In that storm, the children's needs get pushed aside, or even lost entirely.
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One key point that comes up again and again is kids getting bullied at school. Bullying comes in the form of children getting beaten up, threatened, scared, abused, teased, ridiculed, humiliated etc. To brush these incidents off as just meagre occurrences is an injustice to our children. Bullying has devastating short-term and long-term effects on our kids. It must not be tolerated.

Here is a look at the causes, effects, and solutions to this problem of bullying. Please be mindful of this issue in your area with your kids and do share your thoughts on this important topic.

Bullying: why an important issue

At first, as a reader you might think that when there are so many gigantic problems in the world, why spend time talking about this issue of bullying. After all, covid, the economy, women's rights, wars, environmental devastation, and numerous other burning issues - why then talk about bullying.

The answer is simple. Most of the problems in the world are due to human neglect. We need proper people to turn things around. Yet those who get bullied as kids suffer both short-term and long-term issues - severely impacting their human growth and development. Bullying is completely traumatic and affects one's relations, life choices, sleep, dreams, self-esteem, psychic constitution and other factors.

As a child, one's entire life revolves around school and friends. And if that world is shattered due to bullying - either in-person or online - it is tantamount to an adult losing their career, getting a divorce, being exiled from their church or community, and losing all one's personal property - all at the same time. A child's existence at school is central to who they are. If their prestige and stature is squashed in school, then that shakes their whole existence to the very bone. Those experiences can scar them for life.
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Plus bullying is a two-way street; both parties are hampered. Those who get bullied feel inferior, unconfident, shaky, and worried. That can last for decades - or even their whole life. Those who do the bullying often grow up as quarrelsome, mal-adjusted people who spoil society wherever they go.

Hence, the issue is a big one with far-ranging effects. None should naively think that what happens in the schoolyard gets left in the schoolyard. Rather those feelings and events get dragged through one's entire life. As adults, it is our duty to know what is going on with our kids - lest they fall by the wayside and get submerged into so many problems like bullying. We should be critically aware if bullying is going on with our kids and take it as a major event if it is happening.

Materialism: how it leads to bullying

Unfortunately, now in this materialistic era, the real needs of children are often ignored both at home and in school. Today, children are a mere by-product of sexual lust. Often the parents are not married and are "upset" that they got pregnant. And in the case of married people, they are quick to get the baby out of their own bedroom and into a separate room so they - the married couple - can resume their sensual nights and not be disturbed by a baby.

Here the main critical aspect is that children come into this world and are not wanted, loved, and embraced in the way that is needed for them to grow properly. This is perhaps the most dangerous outcome of materialism and affects the whole society. And the root cause is extreme selfishness.
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Because parents are too busy with their own jobs, because adults are too sunk in their own sensual pleasures and selfish engagements, because those parents were often themselves ignored as kids, and for so many other reasons, children often grow up in a whirlpool of isolation, desperately thinking that they are not loved.

Plus in our schools, because teachers are underpaid and undervalued, the applicant pool is not very strong and we often do not have our highest quality people going into the teaching profession. Oversized classrooms, growing violence, and a huge array of behavioral issues, contribute to the problems. Schools in the west often resemble counseling centers or even jails, not centers of learning. The children then are not introduced to a proper code of conduct nor given a proper cosmic outlook. Rather they are submerged in all kinds of social ills.

With this dramatic deficit both at home and in schools, our children are frustrated, angry, isolated, and littered with so many psychic and emotional troubles.

Conclusion

The outcome of all this is that our children are prone to either bullying others or to being bullied themselves. This is a problem especially in the west, but really anywhere materialism becomes a stronghold. In that sense, we all are at risk - kids everywhere are susceptible.

In Him,
Hariish
Henry Jensen

A veritable solution to bullying

Baba has graciously given various social functions like ja'takarma (baby naming ceremony) to create a familial and benevolent connection between human beings. In this ceremony, Ananda Margiis take an oath to be responsible for the upbringing of the child. It is their duty to watch over and protect that young one. When this feeling resonates all around and pervades the society, whereby all are helping and watching over one another, then there is a strong social bond.
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Bullying and other social ills like alienation can only crop up in a selfish, materialistic society where people only care about themselves.

When from the outset of life one feels in their heart that they have a relationship with all, based on the bonds of social responsibility and spirituality, then the inclination to hurt or senselessly beat others disappears, and side by side one will ensure no one else suffers in this way. Then bullying will meet its end.

Ananda Marga Caryacarya states:

“O gracious Brahma, may we unitedly be able to arrange for the upkeep, medical care and physical growth of this infant who has entered our society today.

O gracious Brahma, may we be able to provide adequate education for the mental development of this infant who has entered our society today.

O gracious Brahma, may we succeed, through proper education, in effecting the spiritual elevation of this infant who has entered our society today.

O gracious Brahma, may we be able to see Your pervasive manifestation in this infant, in the form of which You have appeared to us today.

We collectively give this baby the name..." (1)

Ananda Marga philosophy states, "The mantra of Játakarma is the first step of human approach in rousing the sense of responsibility and affection in man." (2)

References
1. Caryacarya - 1, Infant's Játakarma: The Naming of and First Feeding of Solid Food to an Infant
2. Táttvika Diipiká (Caturtha Parva)

* * *

The below sections are entirely different topics, unrelated to the above material.
They stand on their own as points of interest.

* * *

== Section 2: Prabhat Samgiita ==

You removed all negativity

"A'ma'r pran'a'm na'o tumi prabhu, toma'y a'mi bha'laba'si..." (Prabhat Samgiita #2692)

Purport:

Prabhu, please accept my sastaunga pranam. I am surrendering everything at Your lotus feet. I love You so much. Your eternal flute calls me continuously through the omkara sound. That exquisite vibration resounds in my sleep, dreams, and awakened state.

Baba, I search for You in my each and every action. Keeping Your name in my heart, I go on fighting against all difficulties and dangers in my life, whenever and wherever they arise. In this entire universe only You are most adorable for me. I perceive You in each and every thought, word, and deed. My body, mind, and heart have become one with You. My whole existence is saturated in Your ideation. It is Your krpa’.

Baba, Parama Purusa with a smiling face, You always float in my vision. Please shower Your karuna on me incessantly. Whatever my needs are, You always fulfill them. You have removed all the cimmerian darkness, dogma, negativity from my mind. By Your causeless grace, You are doing everything for me. Baba, I am pulled by the longing for You in the depths of my heart. Please accept my sa’s’t’aunga prana’m...

== Section: Important Teaching ==

Water & cure

Sadguru Baba says, "To maintain the internal functions of the body without hindrance and to maintain the internal liquid balance, everyone should drink a sufficient quantity of water every day. A healthy person can consume three or four seers of water a day, a sick person four or five seers, and a person suffering from skin disease, five or six seers. These amounts of water help cure disease to a great extent." (1)

Note: One seer is very close to one liter.

Reference
1. Yogic Treatments, Appendix, A. Water Drinking

== Section: Important Teaching ==

Foolishness of casteism / racism

Ananda Marga philosophy states, “Another excellent example of vested interest is the caste system! Once a section of people established its supremacy over others through the power of superior knowledge and intellect. Even today the descendants of that section of people want their social supremacy and opportunities for exploitation to continue unchallenged.” (1)

Note: Around the globe by one way or another people exploit their fellow human beings. Racists think that those with a different skin colour are inferior. So-called higher caste Hindus think that the lower caste is inferior. By this way they inject an inferiority complex and exploit others. Remember: when all humans have come from apes then were there Aryan apes or brahmin apes? The conclusion is that these distinctions of casteism and racism are man-made to exploit others. Verily, racism and casteism are preposterous. Those who believe and propagate these rotten dogmas and unjust notions are human-shaped animals. They are a burden to the peace and tranquility of society.

Reference
1. Problems of the Day, Point #6

== Section: Important Teaching ==

Sadhana & Prout

Ananda Marga ideology guides us, "You have to bring about your own spiritual salvation. If one does not try for one's own salvation, if one does not do spiritual practice, one can never serve society. It will be totally impossible." (1)

Note: There are a few who think that any type of mundane social activist, who is not even God-oriented, can be an ideal Prout leader. Some get enamoured with the popularity and tall talks of some so-called orators. In their naïveté they think that the person at the podium can bring and lead society forward and establish Prout etc
However, in Baba's above teaching, He clearly guides us that only those deeply involved in sadhana and equipped with the force of spirituality can provide the soothing balm to the exploited humanity. Without spirituality one can never render true service to society. Hence being on the path of sadhana is an essential requisite for serving the world.

Reference
1. Subhasita Samgraha - 24, Incantation and Human Progress

== Section 3: Links ==

Postings to Read