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On June 30, 2022, Dr. Frank Kaufmann, President of the Twelve Gates Foundation, offered a brief message and prayer at the closing ceremony of the World Yoga Festival.
The World Yoga Festival and 8th International Day of Yoga Celebration was organized by the World Yoga Community and hosted by Guru Dileepji, the Global Chairman of the World Yoga Community, and NGO Affiliated with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.
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Guruji: Hallelujah. So we will continue our angel voice again. Thank you, Michelle. So now I would like to invite Dr. Frank Kaufman who is the founder and president at Twelve Gates Foundation, that he’ll share about the value of community and of the value of community to the United Nations. Frank Kaufmann is a longtime friend and his numerous interreligious programs around the globe, and more than four decades for 40 years without delay and he will do a short prayer and message.
Frank Kaufmann: Thank you very much, Guruji. Am I audible to everyone? Good. Thanks.
Thank you for inviting me and giving me a few moments to offer my gratitude and congratulations to you, Guruji and to everyone who’s committed ourselves over the course of this month, to this pioneering and important initiative of Yoga Month. Today is the last day and so with a couple of moments you’ve given me I’d like to use a moment or two for my congratulations. Here’s a moment or two to offer some thoughts about yoga, and then offer a very brief prayer.
The congratulations have been uttered by me. This is an enormous accomplishment on your part Guruji and you have not only spearheaded this, but you’ve built a team around you. You’ve accomplished a community now of people with the same spirit as you, the same willingness and same dedication as you, this is the mark of a true achievement as moves the hearts of people and create something that will endure on this closing day. Once again, congratulations for another monumental accomplishment in light of yoga, and your own path, your own way of life that expands into the hearts of the people who now share this same dream with you.
My thoughts on yoga that came to me recently are that yoga puts us in touch with our most accessible range of dynamics for those whenever we want to improve something. So as Dr. Joni Carley mentioned earlier that we should be in touch with the Divine, but she mentioned the distinction between mere exercise for health and connectedness to the Divine origin of yoga, yogic pursuits. In both of these arenas, we are trying to improve ourselves. We’re trying to improve our health, our physical purity, our physical strength, and being limber and being in balance physically, and we’re trying to improve spiritually. This effort in yoga puts us intimately and directly in relationship with ever more subtle and nuanced dynamics. What works, what doesn’t work, what works, what doesn’t work in the smallest and most far reaching tips of our physical self, when we’re trying to move a little more, trying to have a position a little more perfectly or endure in a position a little longer. It puts us in intimate and direct personal knowledge with what works and what doesn’t work. So in the in the pursuit of improvement in the pursuit of goodness in the pursuit of betterment. Yoga provides each and every practitioner with intimate knowledge of the dynamics of improvement.
The value of this is not only our capacity to improve ourselves, but when we go out to become people in the world, people in our relationships, people in our commitments on the world scale, maybe in the United Nations, maybe in the state of New York. We are committed to and we’re trying to improve our relationships. We’re trying to improve our state. We’re trying to improve our country or world. It’s drawn upon this intimate, direct knowledge of what works and doesn’t work through reliable daily yoga practice, that we can extend into a natural command of that same those same dynamics in our daily affairs in each and every thing we do, as we tried to be kinder, sweeter, nicer, more patient, more effective, and command more. So I just wanted to extend perhaps, from Joni’s original thing from the Divine to the self. I want to say that yoga stays with us from the self, to the world that we seek to and the goodness the good that we want to be and want to do. That’s just my thoughts on the beauty and blessedness of what you are bringing us all into in this month, especially but year round and year by year,
I’ll say a short prayer and be done, Guruji.
Heavenly God, we are in a community here this morning, that has presented itself to you and to the world and to one another, as people who want to be better and want to make everything around us better. Please accept an offering of commitment for many, many, many hours, many hours and much sincerity. We put it on the altar of your desire to bless the world and pray that the sincere community that has been built here can contribute to much beyond even just a small group, and even just beyond our own extended work and relationships. But even in the heavens above that it can reverberate to heal our world and make life better for all. We thank you and we pray in thanks. Amen.
Guruji: Thank you, Dr. Frank Kaufmann for your beautiful remarks, prayer, and encouragement and for always supporting our group.
