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| Daily News, 24th Nov. Mukesh Vassen’s day job is as legal adviser to the Speaker of the House in Parliament. Any spare time is spent doing service, teaching Art of Living courses and the accompanying practice of Sudarshan Kriya (“kriya”, a breathing technique that cleanses and harmonises the physical, mental and emotional levels). The Art of Living is a humanitarian NGO, founded in the early ’80s by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar with the vision of creating a violence- and stress-free society. This is Mukesh’s story… I grew up in Cape Town and was a young kid activist during the apartheid days. My dad was an attorney and used to represent most of the political prisoners, so the police used to watch us a lot. We got many death threats. I left home when I was 13, which was when they came to arrest me. I saw so many people die as a teenage boy; I remember how they killed a two-year-old child and said they thought it was a dog. And the Trojan horse thing, where they hid in boxes and killed a couple of kids. All of this left me with a lot of trauma and anger. I went back to school when I was 19. After that I went to UCT. I have an arts, law and honours degree – plus a post-grad in peace research from Oslo. Having three degrees doesn’t mean you can cope with your life. After varsity I had a personal crisis which left me in quite a state. I had carried these feelings of anger with me over the years, to remind me of what I needed to do. I hadn’t yet realised that you don’t need to be in suffering to change the world. Read more................. |
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