Kumar Shrestha, 37, gave up his engineer profession to devote his time to promoting love in Nepal.
KATHMANDU: After Osho aka Bhagwan Rajneesh and his art of loving and Indian guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his art of living, Nepal has now got a new guru of love, who says you can be taught to love just as you can be taught a new language.
Kumar Shrestha, 37, gave up his engineer profession to devote his time to promoting love in Nepal. He launches his art of loving course - a four to five day programme - to be held every Saturday. The course costs a modest NRS.500 (about $7) and should be supplemented by contemplation in between the classes, the innovative guru says.
Shrestha who comes from the conservative Newar community - the skilled craftsmen who were the original residents of Kathmandu valley - makes it clear that his focus is love and not love-making.
"My course has nothing sensual about it," he says, preparing for the introductory lecture in Tripureshwor, close to the capital's best-known stadium, the Dasarath Stadium. "It is about the mind and the spirit."
The world's problems, according to Shrestha, stem from the lack of love in an individual's life. "It is the individual who makes up society and societies that create the world. By treating the individual, you can take the first small step towards resolving the world's problems."
Shrestha, who lived abroad for a long time, says he became interested in different cultures and their perspectives on the links between the mind, body and spirit. During his stay in China, Thailand and Hong Kong, he began studying psychosomatic disorders and treatments.
Before plunging full-time into beginning a novel course in Nepal, he had been organising innovative treatments, bringing in Western practitioners.
About two years ago, he was associated with Dutch hypnotist Pieter Langedijk, who came to Kathmandu with his reincarnation therapy that professed to cure both mental and physical ailments by taking the patient back to his past life where the root of the disorder was sown.
Recovering from a decade-old Maoist insurgency and political instability, Nepal needs to learn more than ever how to love.
"It stems from unhappy individuals who created a disorder in society," Shrestha says. "You have to investigate the individual's problems, find their cause and treat it. You can learn to love, just as you learn a new language or how to play the guitar."
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