Flashes from Swami Vivekananda - 4

Philosophy of Education - 3

Service as worship

Liberty is the first condition of growth. It is wrong,
a thousand times wrong, if any of you dares to say, 'I will
work out the salvation of this woman or child.' Hands off! They will solve their own problems. Who are you to assume that you
know everything? How dare you think that you have the right over God? For, don't you know that every soul is the Soul of God?

Look upon every one as God. You can only serve. Serve the children of the Lord if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help anyone of His children, blessed you are. Blessed you are that that privilege was given to you when others had it not. Do it only as worship!

Assimilation of ideas

Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library. If education were identical with information, the libraries would be the greatest sages in the world and encyclopedias the rishis!

Getting by heart the thoughts of others in a foreign language and stuffing your brain with them and taking some university degrees, you consider yourself educated. In this education? What is the goal of your education?

Wrong education

Either a clerkship, or being a lawyer, or at the most a Deputy Magistrate, which is another form of clerkship, isn't that all? What good will it do you or to the country at large? Open your eyes and see what a piteous cry for food is rising in the land of Bharata, proverbial for its food. Will your education fulfil this want? The education that does not help the common mass of people to equip themselves for the struggle for life, which does not bring out strength of character, a spirit of philanthropy and the courage of a lion - is it worth the name?

The needed education

We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded and by which one can stand on one's own feet. What we need is to study, independent of foreign control, different branches of the knowledge that is our own, and with it the English language and western science, we need technical education and all else that will develop industries, so that men, instead of seeking for service, may earn enough to provide for themselves and save against a rainy day.

The goal of man-making

The end of all education, all training, should be man-making. The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. The training by which the current and expression of will are brought under control and become fruitful, is called education. What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel, gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and secrets of the universe and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion, even if it meant going down to the bottom of the ocean, meeting death face to face. It is the man-making religion that we want. Man-making theories are that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want.

Thirukkural verses 5: Married Life

English Translation of Kaviyogi Maharishi Shuddhananda Bharatiar

The ideal householder is he,
Who aids the natural orders there.

His help the monk and retired share,
And celibate students are his care.

By dutiful householder's aid,
God, manes, kin, self and guests are served.

Sin he shuns and food he shares
His home is bright and brighter fares.

In grace and gain the home excels,
Where love with virtue sweetly dwells.

Who turns from righteous family,
To be a monk, what profits he?

Of all who strive for bliss, the great,
Is he who leads the married state.

Straight in virtue, right in living,
Make men brighter than monks praying.

Home-life and virtue, are the same;
Which spotless monkhood too can claim.

He is a man of divine worth
Who lives in ideal home on earth.

Flashes from Swami Vivekananda - 4

Philosophy of Education - 2

The Cask of Glass

The Light Divine within is obscured in most people. It is like a lamp in a cask of iron: no gleam of light can shine through. Gradually, by purity and unselfishness, we can make the obscuring medium less and less dense, until at last it becomes as transparent as glass. Sri Ramakrishna was like the iron cask transformed into a glass cask, through which can be seen the inner light as it is.

You cannot teach a child any more than you can grow a plant. The plant develops its own nature. The child also teaches itself. But, you can help it to go forward in its own way. What you can do is not of a negative nature but positive.

You can take away obstacles, and knowledge comes out of its own nature. Loosen the soil a little, so that is may come out easily. Put a hedge round it, see that it is not killed by anything. You can supply the growing seed with the material for the making of his body, bringing to it the earth, the water, the air that it wants. And there your work stops. It will take all that it wants by its own nature.

It so is with the education of the child. A child educates itself. The teacher spoils everything by thinking that he is teaching. Within man is all the knowledge, and it requires only an awakening, and that much is the work of the teacher. We have to do so much for the boys that they may learn to apply their own intellect to the proper use of thier hands, legs, ears and eyes.

Free Growth

The system which aims at educating our boys in the same manner as that of a man who battered his donkey, being advised that it could thereby be turned into horse, should be abolished. Owing to undue domination exercised by parents, our boys do not get free scope for growth. In every one there are infinite tendencies which require proper scope for satisfaction. Violent attempts at reform always end by retarding reform. If you do not allow one to become a lion, one will become a fox.

Positive Ideas

We should give positive ideas. Negative thoughts only weaken men. Do you not find that where parents are constantly taxing their sons to reread and write, telling them that they will never learn anything, and call them fools and so forth, the latter do actually turn out to be so in many cases?

If you speak kind words to them and encourage them, they are bound to improve in time. If you can give them positive ideas, they will grow up to be the best men and women. In language and literature, in poetry and arts, in everything we must not point out the mistakes, but how can they do it better. The teaching must be modified according to the needs of the taught.

Past lives have molded our tendencies. Take every one where he stands and push him forward. We have seen how Sri Ramakrishna would encourage even those whom we considered worthless and change the very course of their lives thereby! He never destroyed a single man's special inclinations. He gave words of hope and encouragement even to the most degraded of the persons and lifted them up.

Metta Bhavna: Loving with an Open and Sweet Mind

The article in today's TOI is today's need for life to be. If each human being lives by the Metta principle, we could see the world change in front of our eyes.

Thanks to TOI and Marguerite. May all beings be Happy!

Metta Bhavna: Loving with an Open and Sweet Mind

By Marguerite Theophil

Loving kindness is a meditation practice that was taught by the Buddha to help us develop the habit of selfless or altruistic love. It is a truly universal practice which need not be associated with any particular religious concept.

What makes this so effective is that by arousing within ourselves feelings of goodwill towards ourselves, those near to us, and all beings, we make it more likely that it is these feelings that will arise rather than other less desirable, unwholesome feelings. Anger cannot coexist with loving kindness. We end up supplanting thoughts rooted in anger with thoughts rooted in love, which, as my teacher so beautifully put it, “...can help keep the mind open and sweet”.

A pattern you can follow is: start with yourself; then do the meditation for a respected, beloved person such as a spiritual teacher; a personal loved one like a close family member or friend; a ‘neutral’ person, somebody you know but have no special or strong feelings for; someone you are currently having difficulty with, and towards who you may have negative feelings.

Eventually we can include all people, animals and birds, and nature around us, as well as the entire universe. We must, however, start with ourselves. If we cannot love and accept ourselves exactly as we are, how can we expect to love others?

For some people, it is easier to send Metta to others and harder to feel it for themselves; while some others experience resistance when asked to send Metta to others. You can simply be aware of what is true for you, but without judging, and just being aware that are all connected. So when you experience loving kindness for yourself, all beings are included; when you experience it for others, you are included.

There are many forms of Metta practice, but here is a very simple one that’s easy to remember. You need to be aware of this — it’s less significant to get the words or the order of recitation right; more important is your awareness and connection to the loving and compassionate feelings that arise as you do this mindfully: May i be safe from harm. May i be happy and peaceful. May i be strong and healthy. May i take care of myself with joy. May all be safe from harm... May all be safe from harm...

Sometimes, commuters can send waves of loving kindness to people on the bus, a train compartment, to the entire train, to all other trains or buses criss-crossing the city, to people on all trains or buses all over India. Whenever you do this, the trip is not so bad! Try this on a flight: sending loving kindness to all co-passengers, all airplanes at the airport and those taking off and landing and all planes all over the world. See what it does for your journey. The endless waiting in hospitals is better used by sending Metta to all the patients, their families and all who work there; everyone needs it.

Having taught this to many people from different faiths, different ages and walks of life, i am awed at how doing this seems to free up a side of people that was hidden under layers of habit of thought; a side that facilitates self-healing, as it is so much part of the Higher Self within each and every one of us.

The writer is a Mumbai-based organisational consultant, personal growth coach and workshop leader. E-mail: weave@vsnl.net

Thirukkural verses 4: The Power of Virtue

English Translation of Kaviyogi Maharishi Shuddhananda Bharatiar

From virtue weal and wealth outflow;
What greater good can mankind know?

Virtue enhances joy and gain;
Forsaking it is fall and pain.

Perform good deeds as much you can
Always and everywhere, o man!

In spotless mind virtue is found
And not in show and swelling sound.

Four ills eschew and virtue reach,
Lust, anger, envy, evil-speech.

Do good enow; defer it not
A deathless aid in death if sought.

Litter-bearer and rider say
Without a word, the fortune's way.

Like stones that block rebirth and pain
Are doing good and good again.

Weal flows only from virtue done
The rest is rue and renown gone.

Worthy act is virtue done
Vice is what we ought to shun.

He just left 'this' world

He left this world at 102. Dr. Albert Hoffman's spirit still stays alive in the manipulated minds of so many. His problem child transformed the way the world thought, taking people beyond thier mundane perceptional comprehension.

Alex Grey called him Saint Albert.

Hofmann believed it could still serve a valid purpose in medicine, as it did for Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World who used the drug to ease his final suffering. Hofmann -- who believed LSD was useful in analysis of how the mind works, hoping it could be used to recognise and treat illnesses like schizophrenia -- defended his "wonder drug" for decades after it was banned in the 1960s.