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We are about to open the colourful concert, the cultural segment. First to perform will be the mixed choir from Prague, whose name is Kakofon. As you surely know, or perhaps know, the word is related to cacophony, which means a harsh, discordant mixture of sounds. That was a translation challenge. Perhaps you wonder why they chose exactly that name. When they first began gathering fourteen years ago as an amateur student ensemble, they thought it might be safer to call themselves this way so that others wouldn’t have too high expectations if things didn’t work out. However, it soon became clear that the name resonated with them very well, and they kept it. With that, I would like to pass the microphone to the Kakofon choir group. We thank the mixed choir Kakofon, together with the instruments psalterium, shawm, and gemshorn. My colleague has already revealed everything for me, but it was a little riddle because those are the instruments that will be played by those now coming onto the stage. That is what Vlastislav Matoušek and his Skola Specialis Familiae indicate. In translation from Latin, it means a special school, a family. And it is truly a family ensemble. The title might lead you to think it is simply some kind of family group, but in fact it is a highly professional ensemble. I will dare to reveal something about Mr. Matoušek. He teaches ethnomusicology at Charles University and at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, that is, at two universities in Prague. Perhaps you also know Mr. Matoušek as an expert in other ethnic instruments, such as the Japanese bamboo flute, the shakuhachi. As you can see, it is not easy to organise the whole family to arrange themselves properly on the stage here, but at the same time it is clear that it truly gives them something, that they are in harmony. Since our time is slowly running short, we kindly ask all speakers to keep their presentations shorter than originally planned. I will not keep you any longer now and will hand the microphone over to Mr. Matoušek, if he wishes to have it. Isorhythmic motet, Hail Queen of the Heavens. I would like to clarify further: we will be playing several compositions that were born here in Central Europe approximately six hundred years ago. So, six hundred years—I would like to present that we are playing musical songs that are about 600 years old and all created here, in the heart of Europe. Friends, we will bid you farewell with a piece by Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz, who lived between 1400 and 1480, worked here in Bohemia among other places, and was a magister of the University of Kraków. This is a rotulum for four voices, Presulem ephebeatum. Ladies and gentlemen, our Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz lived between 1400 and 1480 and was a master of the University of Kraków. We thank Vlastislav Matoušek and the ensemble Skola Specialis Familiae. Another performance awaits us, by Oldřich Janota and the ensemble called Ora Pronobis. Here we have another Latin term, and I will allow myself to translate it: the title in Czech means Pray for Us. Oldřich Janota is a singer, guitarist, and poet. In one way, he has been called the tireless seeker of untrodden paths, the unmistakable singer, guitarist, and poet. With Mr. Janota, Romana Šilhavá will also perform, singing and playing violin, and Sebastian Janota will play clarinet and sing. And virtually in spirit, a member of the ensemble, Tereza Podobská, who normally sings with them truly, physically, will, due to the current flu season, unfortunately only sing with them virtually today. So with this, we would like to invite them to the stage. I thought it was because of the spotlight that I couldn’t see anything, but even without the spotlight I see nothing. So in that case, we can very simply resolve it by perhaps including it as an alternative; it will succeed, they are already on the path. At least we hope so. It is truly so. So, Oldřich Janota and Ora Pronobis. Thank you for watching. That is what happens when someone interferes in something they do not understand. So, the next musical performance—this will be the last, unfortunately the last musical performance of this evening. And the Bhajan Band Yogis in Daily Life. It is an international bhajan band because it includes representatives from three countries: the Czech Republic, Austria, and Great Britain. I will just very briefly mention, or repeat, what we have already discussed here: that bhajans are traditional spiritual songs of India. However, these are not just songs as we might be accustomed to; they are songs that hold deep spiritual significance, a meaning that can also be practically realised in life. And now we will once again hand over the microphone to the Bhajan Band Yogis in Daily Life. Oṁ Boli Śrī Dīp Nārāyaṇ Bhagavān Kī Jai. Viśvaguru Mahāmaṇḍaleśvara Paramahaṁsa Svāmī Maheśvarānandajī Sattā Guru Deva Kī Jai. Doctor Švejda from the university will talk about the basics of ethical education, which in short means helping youth to orient themselves towards positive role models. He sees this ethical education as helping young people to follow good examples amidst the flood of negative role models that surround us in the media. Next, Dr. Karel Nešpor, head of the addiction department at the psychiatric hospital Bohnice, the chief physician from Bohnice, will share his experiences on how to treat addictions and how to prevent them. I am personally looking forward to a remedy against our twenty-three-year-old son’s addiction to computer games. I myself am looking forward to him advising me on how to protect my son from addiction to computer games. From representatives of our youth, we will learn how they assess their ethical preparedness for life, and also their commentary on the experts’ contributions. The conclusion of the morning session of the conference will be a summary from the perspective of the ethical values of the millennia-old Vedic culture. We thank Mr. Němeček for the information about tomorrow’s program. And now I would like to invite engineer Lenka Hennebergová, who is the deputy director of the Houses of Foreign Services at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, and the head of the national agency for European educational programs, so that she can give us more information about tomorrow’s program, specifically about the workshops. Dear ladies and gentlemen, I am very pleased to greet you on behalf of the Houses of Foreign Services, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Our mission is the implementation of national and European educational programs. We are very pleased and grateful for the opportunity to co-host this conference. I would like to thank the initiator of this conference, Paramahansa Swami Maheshwarananda, and the organizing company Yogis in Daily Life for choosing the topic. I would like to express my gratitude to the initiators of this conference, Swāmī Maheshwarananda, and to the framework educational programs. Schools now have the opportunity to teach this subject. Precisely because it is something new, sometimes they ask the question how. For many schools it is a novelty, so many teachers ask how to teach it. I believe that this conference can provide answers to their questions. And I believe you can find the answer at this conference. As my colleague Václav Němeček has already said, this morning we will become acquainted with many expert presentations. The morning session will be dedicated to the experts’ perspective. In the afternoon, we will have the opportunity to divide into three groups and we will have the freedom to choose whether we want to learn more on the topic of parenthood. Here, for example, elementary school students from Prague 3 will present the topic of cyberbullying, and we will discover that even warm families can be threatened by it. In the second workshop, titled Thinking Towards Ecology, students from an elementary school in Ostrava will present their idea that energy comes from the heavens, but also a little from hell. And in the third workshop, we will have the opportunity to reflect together on the meaning of life. For example, a representative of the scouts will offer us his perspective, and students of a secondary vocational school who have chosen caregiving as their profession will offer a slightly different perspective. Ladies and gentlemen, I wish the conference success, and many interesting and inspiring moments to all of us. We thank Mrs. Henneberg for her contribution. And now it is my great honour to introduce the presentation of Mahamandaleshwara Paramahansa Swāmī Maheshwaranandī. Swāmījī, who is the initiator of this conference, was born in Indian Rajasthan and came to Europe in 1972. In our country he has been active for over 35 years. During the time of communism, his spiritual and humanitarian work was a great support for the people in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the former Yugoslavia. And because Swāmījī understands tolerance, respect for others, and education in ethics in one sense—especially in the field of working with youth—he has long supported and initiated interreligious dialogues and thematic conferences, such as today’s. I hand over the floor to Swāmījī. Thank you. Lead us from darkness to light. Lead us from mortality to immortality. Oṁ Śāntiḥ Śāntiḥ… Peace, peace… peace. In his honour, we have this organization, the World Peace Council of Sri Swami Madhavananda, a non-governmental organization registered with the United Nations. Honorable Professor, esteemed Director, honorable Ambassador of India, Your Excellency, honored members of the Indian Embassy, artists who sang beautiful songs today, dear members of the media, and all of you, dear brothers and sisters who have gathered here from many lands. I see that we also have guests from Australia here at this conference, from Spain, from England, from India. This event is for only one day. The name should properly be Day for Children. Ethical education. Education shapes the person. But what kind of upbringing is it? We will not receive such knowledge in school, at university, or in high school. There we find it in the lap of the parents. But we need the wedge of the parents. Unfortunately, the parental lap is now mostly occupied by laptops held by the parents themselves. And that means the children lost their place. Ethics, we call that netik. Neti, neti, etik, etik. And from ethics arises politics. The thoughts, the instructions, the guidance for human civilization were given by the rishis. The Ṛṣis were great and wise personalities. Our dear Professor Vacek spoke; he mentioned key words, very beautifully he referred to the Upanishads. Up means near, close; Shada means student—that student who sits near the master and learns important life lessons. And the first instrument that comes is the family. We know that every being has a family, and every being also raises and teaches its own offspring, constantly striving to nurture and guide them. Whether they are tigers, lions, monkeys, birds, fish, or any other creature. Unfortunately, people began to neglect their own children. The dangerous situation for children is not outside anywhere, beyond the home, but already within the very home itself, because the parents lost interest in raising their children. We think, we will pay for it, and the children will receive education at school. Many of you know that when your child first goes to kindergarten and then comes back home, you can already see negative changes in the child’s behaviour. He will begin to use harsh and negative words because there they do not receive the understanding and love they are meant to get at home. So, the cultivation of ethics for us is in the embrace of our parents. And therefore, the family is very important. What we call the great family, the multi-generational family. But such families are already destroyed. You will now find a family only very rarely. Yoga is the perfection of the human being. And the dear professor explained that even the root and translation of the word yoga, it is that yoke, that harnessing, the harnessing of an animal to a cart, or a horse, a camel, an ox, or a buffalo. It is very important, very interesting, when two oxen—with a piece of wood placed on their necks—should walk together in harmony. If one moves too quickly, the other will suffer. And when one of them wants to go in a different direction, the other suffers because of it. And also the one who sits on that chariot. So, balance. Yoga brings balance to the body, mind, emotions, and intellect. My Gurudev wrote a beautiful bhajana about this, which I will translate for you next time. And where is balance? Harmony. And that is why yoga also means harmony. And where there is harmony, where there is accord, there is also unity, oneness. And that means yoga, union. So the two systems in the body, Iḍā and Piṅgalā, those two nāḍīs that represent our mind and intellect, emotion and intellect. If emotion and intellect are in balance, life flows smoothly. And Suṣumnā is the one that unites it all into oneness. As the dear professor said, India has given much to the world, India has given a lot to the world. And she still has much to give. How? The professor was chanting a mantra; he is a professor of Sanskrit and Tamil, and in Hinduism. I hope to properly learn Sanskrit as well, but he tells me it is not too late yet: pūrṇamadha pūrṇamidham pūrṇamadacchati pūrṇasya pūrṇamadha pūrṇamevāvaśiṣcati — completeness. The Almighty One is complete, and what arises from completeness is complete. We say, at the tip of the peacock’s feather, you no longer need to add any colours; you don’t need to add any colours to the peacock egg, because the chick, the peacock, all those colours will come automatically. So the entire creation, every being, is a part of that wholeness. And when something is taken from completeness, it remains complete. He is perfect, and His wisdom is perfect. And this is what the Indians realised millions and millions of years ago. I was surprised when the professor mentioned those two millennia before Christ. I hope that next time the professor will change his opinion a bit after learning more, because the Vedas were written 8–10 thousand years ago. 8–10 thousand years ago. So India is known as the cradle of culture. And India has given much. But among all of that, there is one called dhyāna. And in that single word, ved. Ved means knowledge. And knowledge is the opposite of ignorance. So ethics is knowledge. And what is unethical is ignorance. We chase after the material world, which is not reality. God made the world perfect, but the world created by God is perfect, whereas the human world is imperfect. From the moment we begin to strive, begin to seek those machines, begin to desire machines and instruments, people suffer. People are more ill, there are more wars, more weapons are being created, and people have lost their strength to be heroes. In ancient times you had to come to the battlefield with a bare chest and stand face to face with the enemy. Today, everyone is hiding, sitting somewhere completely else, just pressing those buttons to start the killing. Or they hide behind excuses and just shoot off immediately and then hide again; that is no heroism. And that leads to more wars, more conflicts, more turmoil. And can we protect the family? If we can protect our children, then yes. So get that computer off your lap and free your lap for your children. One day for our children. And this should also be incorporated into the education system. According to the United Nations and the Earth Charter, they too are diligently working to reintroduce that ethical and moral education. And the World Peace Council of Sri Swami Madhavananda has been working on this for the past ten years. There are many experts here. Tomorrow will be very interesting. So I welcome you all, those of you who have come from far away—from Australia, perhaps seeing snow with your own eyes for the first time in your life, but don’t worry, there is air conditioning here as well. I wish you a pleasant stay and welcome you to this beautiful golden Prague, mystical Prague, where there is much wisdom and very good people. All esteemed speakers of tomorrow, I welcome you all here and wish you all the best. And the organizers as well. This evening was just the opening and a cultural program. You are already tired. So I wish you a good night. The Veda says… May all be happy, may no one suffer, may everyone have a happy life, may I be happy and have a happy life. The whole world is one family. If we accept everyone as our brothers and sisters, then what need is there for any conflicts? So we must teach our children, instruct them in the ancient wisdom, in love. Thank you and all the best.