Page 361 - https://ia800806.us.archive.org/12/items/mwk-eng-book/Leading-a-Spiritual-Life.pdf
P. 361

The Price of Being a Taker








             The status of first class-citizen cannot be achieved through
             legislation. It can be achieved only by assuming the role of
                                 giver in society.


           n the course of my several visits to the USA over a period
          Iof years, I have happened to meet Indians of both the
          Muslim and Hindu communities. I realized that senior
          members of both communities have a common concern:
          they fear  that the future  generation  is rapidly losing
          the  identity of its  traditional culture. Indeed,  I have
          seen that although families of both the communities
          have  achieved  substantial  material progress,  they are
          nevertheless unhappy. They feel  strongly  that their
          children will suffer a fate commonly known as cultural
          assimilation.  I told  the senior members of  both  the
          communities that their fear might be genuine but that
          their present efforts were not going to yield any positive
          results.
             What is the real problem with these generations? It
          is that both the communities are living in the USA as
          takers and not as givers. Both the communities strive
          to earn American dollars but they don’t try to figure
          as giver members of American society. In the course of
          a conversation,  one  senior Indian  remarked  that  the



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