Discourses in Telugunadu!!

In the early eighties of last century there was one person named Sri Bhashyam Appalacharya, who was giving discourses and lectures on puranasl. Similarly there was one local man in Pithapuram near Kakinada Sri. Varanasi Chintamani, who was looking like Alluri Sitaramaraju, doing similar work at Kakinada. In those days both were good but unfortunately there were no TVs to make them universally popular.

Of late especially during the last 5 years there are four divinely gifted people (Bhagavatvara Prasadulu) who are making these discourses:

01.Sri  Paripurnanada garu.

02.Sri. Samavedam Shanmukha Sarma garu.

03.Sri. Garikapati Narasimha Rao garu.

04.Sri. Chaganti Koteswara Rao garu.

They are doing yeomen service with their discourses and speeches at various places and on various subjects: puranas, good living, interpretation of Geeta and what not.

These speeches make people spellbound. Continuity and connectivity with the day to day living in their speeches make them fascinating. TV Channels especially Bhakti and SVBC are making commendable efforts to reach these speeches to every corner of Telugunadu and every Telugu speaking individual across the world. Day by day audience and popularity for those is increasing.

My intention to write these lines is not to tell about their god gifted skill or the service they or TV channels are doing. But are the audiences getting the benefit that is intended?

This doubt I am getting every time I hear them because most of the time people are discussing the manner in which these people have made speech rather than the content of their speech. Some of them even feel proud that they are physically able to see and listen to them. They even feel fancy to tell that they are regular listeners of these people. Some of  them try to compare one another among these four and try to rank them. But if you ask them to describe what they told they cannot even recollect two, three sentences or sometimes even correctly topic.

I only wish the following things:

01.Attentively listen to these people. Don’t waste time talking to each other while attending their lectures or making running commentary of their speeches like cricket match. For Gods sake don’t attend them to increase your prestige in society.

02.Make note of them if possible or at least try to recollect the content of the speech rather than the style and discuss with likeminded people.

03.Try to teach them in simple terms to the young children.

04.Last but not the least try to practice them rather than thinking about whether these people who are giving discourse are following or not. We need not follow the preacher, we have to follow what good he preaches.

Then only the so called intended revival of religion or revival of humanity in mankind takes place. Till then Telugunadu remains a state who brow beat about their scholars but does nothing to improve.

Kautilya says in his Arthasastra more than 2000 years back “Instruction and training can promote discipline only in a person capable of benefiting from them. People incapable of self discipline do not benefit. Learning imparts discipline only to those who have the following mental faculties-obedience to a teacher, desire and ability to learn, capacity to retain what is learnt, reflecting on it, and finally ability to make inferences by deliberating on the knowledge acquired. Those who are devoid of such mental faculties are not benefited by any amount of training.”