Resurgent Culture -Discourse : 5-2-2 : Swami Krishnananda.

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Chinmaya Mission :

Amidst the monsoon showers of grace, on the auspicious Ekadashi day, on 14th June 2023, over 150 campers embarked on a journey of studying the Bhagavad Gita for 18 days in Hindi, led by Swami Abhedananda from the Chinmaya Mission South Africa. The camp, which took place at the Chinmaya Vibhooti Vision Centre, included four classes per day. Additionally, campers had the opportunity to visit Pranav Ganesh Mandir, Chinmaya Maruti Mandir, Chinmaya Jeevan Darshan, Swanubhooti Vatika, Chinmaya Vani, and Chinmaya Upahar. Their spiritual growth and shared learnings would continue to inspire others on their own paths of self-realization.

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Wednesday,  21 May, 2023. 05:30.

Discourse - 5 : Appendix 2: The Educational Process in India -2

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By development of personality what is meant is the wholesome building up of the individual, not only with reference to the internal states of body, mind and intellect, but also in relation to the external world reaching upto the individual through the different levels of society. In this sense, true education is both a diving inward and a spreading outward. Knowledge of the world is not merely a collection of facts or gathering information regarding the contents of the physical world but forms a kind of insight into its inner workings as well, at least insofar as one's inner and outer life is inextricably wound up with them. With this knowledge it becomes easy for one to discover the art of adjusting oneself with society. This adjustment is not possible in any appreciable degree for one who has not acquired some amount of knowledge of the spiritual implications of the structure of human society. The aim of the education of the individual in society is the realisation of life's values—personal, social, civic and even universal—all mutually related and determined by a common goal to which these are directed.

Above all, we cannot start teaching students without our understanding the purpose of education. Many a Hindu, for example, has allowed himself or herself to be proselytised for different reasons. One such reason consists in the prospects of economic uplift and raising of social status which the converters promise to these poor souls who have been unfortunately relegated to the unwanted section of Hindu society, by somehow depriving them of the facilities to improve themselves economically. The second reason is the baneful practice of untouchability and pollution by touch, which certain orthodox groups cultivated for a long time and which has not completely died out even today. Now the question arises: Why should have these things happened? Why should there be suppression and untouchability etc. in human circles? The answer is: lack of proper education.

But what is proper education? Bearing in mind the essentials of the process enumerated above, it should be added that though education should be an immensely practicable affair, we should not think that the practicability of a thing consists in what is called 'succeeding' in life in any political sense of the term, because one may manoeuvre to succeed for some time, as one does in business, for instance, but be extremely unhappy within, in spite of the so-called 'practical' success. This happens because here we have only a soulless practicality of affairs, bereft of the sap of life which sustains it. Though, when we occupy a house, we are not always conscious of its foundation, nor is the foundation visible to the eyes, it goes without saying that the whole edifice stands on the foundation. Likewise human success in life may look beautiful like a decorated and furnished building, but it cannot stand if it is not firmly fixed on a strong base. Our purpose here would be to have some idea as to what could this foundation of life's education be.

Education is for living life and not to suffer it. It is a wrong concept of the basis of life that has led to the defective structure of the present educational system. It is not necessary that religion in the orthodox sense or Dharma as the conservatives understand it should be proclaimed in the schools. The right type of education should have a very broad outlook and exceed the limits of parochial religions or the cult of any class of society and should be free from the prejudices of caste, creed and colour. The present-day system of education is thoroughly unsatisfactory, for, while it rejects all religion in the name of secularism, it rejects also the essentials of human aspiration and makes education a dead mechanism which has to be operated by a living being from outside. Education is not a machine to be driven by an external impulse but constitutes a vital process which has life in it and grows of its own accord when the soul is poured into it. The bread-earning education has to become a life earning education, for the latter, in addition to supplying bread, shall also supply man with a soul to live by.

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To be continued

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