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Untitled Document
Part 1: Moral Values According to Yoga and Spiritual Lore.
Part 2: Effect of Integrated Yoga on Moral Values in School Going Children – A Control Study
By
Loganathan P
Abstract
Part 1: Moral Values According to Yoga and Spiritual Lore.
The subject of moral issues is as comprehensive as our life. It has always been important, and because of the technological progress it is even more important today. Morality attempts to answer fundamental questions, like, ‘what is good, what is bad’ ‘How should I lead my life’, ‘is telling of truth imperative’ ‘are pleasures the aim of life’. Morality encompasses all activates of life. The fact that there are problems galore with the world today, demonstrates that morality is complex, and also that people do not behave as morally as they should.
Most of the world is condemning terrorism; there are many who believe that terrorism is a moral weapon. Then there are learned and devoted activists who fell that, ‘every gun that is forged, every battleship that is launched, every missile fired, is, an inhuman theft from those who are hungry and starving, from those who are cold and are shivering and so on, these differences in moral views also create conflicts. In this short essay I plan to discuss briefly some’world moral issues from the point of view of Hindu or more precisely, Vedantic system of morality. A wide range of perspectives occur among mysticisms which embrace direct experiential knowledge of God, Divinity or Ultimate Reality. Hindu mysticism is different from those mystical views where commandments etc are received from God either in a tablet or through revelations. Mystical experience in Western tradition is most often understood as individual communion with a god or goddess. These experiences are very subjective and they may be experienced as visions, dreams, relations, prophecies and so forth.
Summary and conclusion
- The contemporary Indian life, though influenced by the west, still has lost its identity. The texts are still viewed with reverences and ancient moral virtues are still having their influence on moral life of the people. Religious tolerance and liberal ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity are finding stronger roots.
- As the largest democracy of the world India has its cultural and ethical roots so strong that Indian morality life has peculiar characteristics of its own. The popular morality and ethical beliefs have their sources in ancient humanistic ethos.
- Today, the ancient virtues are still cherished as a part of cultural heritage. Throughout the long history, India sustained its ethical and traditional identity despite occasional relapses.
- There are certain fundamental notions, which run throughout the history as “the foundations of Indian moral values”. These foundations give Indian ethics an identity of its own they are common to all the systems of Indian thought and serve as the launching pads for further creative development of theories in the field of morality.
- These foundations are not merely part of intellectual or morality speculations but form the nucleus of a living tradition. Despite variations in geographical and climate settings, depite hangs in material ways of living, the foundational ethical concepts are still meaningful in the lives of Indian people
- Gandhi strengthened humanism as a religion with truth and non violence as its foundations. The ancient values and true spirit of religion are resurrected into Indian society. Religious harmony, cooperative development of all, secular education and opportunities, equality.
- Socio economic freedom, popular welfare etc, are the modern values, which have their roots in the ethical tradition. Safeguarding these democratic values is a fundamental ethical responsibility for every one today. Every thing that goes against these grand ethical and traditional virtues has to be opposed.
- The study of Indian moral thought offers us a proper understanding of our present and to formulate our future goals. The values and virtues cherished in our tradition give us an identity and the cultural heritage should not be lost at any cost.
- The ethical categories and concepts, when understood in their origin and evolution provide us with better abilities to understand our present moral predicament. To understand and analyze our present form of life, these ethical categories should be creatively employed.
- The ‘Svaraja’ in ideas can achieved if we try to understand our life in terms of our own concepts and than borrowing intellectual frameworks from outside.
- We can always critically evaluate our notions and concepts with a view to develop them to suit our times and purposes. One does not become conservative by using native concepts and categories nor does one become modern by borrowing foreign ideas. What matters most are how rational and critical we in understand our reality and how can we foster the quality of our thought and life without courting contradictions and paradoxes.
- It is sincerely hoped that this humble effort through my dissertation on ‘Moral values according to Yoga and Spiritual lore” to explicate the fundamental notions in Indian thought help, to whatever extent, further studies in the field and open up new debates for critical development Indian moral traditon.
Part 2: Effect of Integrated Yoga on Moral Values in School Going Children – A Control Study
The present study is to investigate the effect of two different procedures, physical exercise and yoga on 36 personality questioners which had four dimensions & each dimension contains twelve items i.e.Lying, Dishonesty, Stealing & Cheating had been assessed by using Children personality questionnaire (Sen, G.A. & Singh, A K., 1998). In a group of normal volunteers, randomized to yoga (n=141, 10.71±1.08yrs) and physical exercise 10 days yoga program which includes asanas, pranayama, bhajans, yogic games and the physical exercise group also underwent 10 days program which includes physical exercises, games, songs and breathing exercises. Yoga Group shows a highly significant difference between pre-postive scores (p 0.001) and post negative and pre- negative scores (P=0.016) and post-Negative (P=0.016). From this study we can say that there is significant difference within the yoga group that mean yoga has a significant role in the moral value development of the children (age group 9-12)
Summary and conclusion
1.There are various studies, which have shown to be effective in improving different aspects of personality both physical and mental. Studies on moral values with yoga was not done by any study so I gave the intervention of yoga module for the students to know the effect of yoga on the morality of the students in day to day life style and behavior at various stages of present day of life.
2. Dropped out due to various reasons and remaining 279 students were taken or included in the data for assessing. They were divided into two groups (yoga and control) with random allocation. The assessment has been done through student’s moral value scale developed by “National Psychological Corporation” Agra-282004. This is a questionnaire form of 36 questions based on 4 criteria like, cheating, dishonesty, lying and stealing.
3.The data analysis was done by using SPSS package. The baseline data were not matched for both yoga and control group. The pre-post analysis showed significant improvement in yoga groups and significant deterioration in control group. Between groups comparison was done by Mann Whitney test, which showed that no group is significantly different from each other.
Keywords: Personality Questionnaire, yoga, physical exercise.
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