Dear Teachers,
You are the custodians of the most precious possessions of
the world---children. What you teach shapes the future and the destiny of the
world. But mere syllabus-oriented, information drilling, examination-centric
education is more often than not counter-productive as the state of the world
amply demonstrates. Time it is to re-orient education along the lines laid down
by the rishis (perfected sages/seers of Truth) of India who laid prime emphasis
on brahmacharya (continence) and manifestation of the essential divinity within
the student through tutelage by continent teachers established in renunciation.
Swami Vivekananda used to say that children should be brought up in the care of
flaming souls to build up their character. Therefore, it is of prime importance
that teachers should re-orient their lives along spiritual principles alongside
the rationalistic principles they follow so that they may be power-houses for
the transmission of not only information but of virtue, character and holiness
to children as well. The soft and pliable minds of youngsters will respond to
strong, vigorous and uplifting influences emanating from the minds and souls of
their teachers and this, in turn, will help build them up into integrated
personalities full of humanistic impulses, iron will, the aspiration for
greatness, goodness, godliness and all that is worthwhile in life and in death,
and above all, the students will be imbued with the spirit of sacrifice for the
common weal. Selfishness, which is the bane of modern materialistic life, will
be weeded out in childhood and in early youth if Vedantic education is imparted
to children from an early age by competent teachers in the proper way.
Self-confidence will build up in the students when they even intellectually
become aware of the fact that they are divine and that they are birthless,
deathless spiritual beings with infinite possibilities. Faith in oneself works
wonders and these children, armed in faith in their deathless souls and
self-potency will indeed grow up to be fearless warriors of the Spirit who will
lead humankind to a new age of light and love and harmony.
Dear teachers,
This is a tall order and seemingly impossible to achieve,
given the track record of humanity in the past, but the Vedic rishis and modern
ones like Swami Vivekananda have vouched that it is certainly attainable. What
was achieved in ancient India may certainly be achieved in modern India, nay,
the modern world, if the Vedantic principles are correctly implemented. And
with advanced knowledge in so many disciplines today, such a transformation of
the academic system may be speedily brought about provided, dear teachers, you
take the movement into your leading for you are in direct contact with the
students who have to be trained in the new gospel of truth and enlightenment.
You are occupying a pre-eminent position in society in that you are at the
fountain-head of tomorrow’s efflorescence. Upon your work rests the future of
humanity, its prospects, peace, prosperity.
Dear teachers,
You have to enliven the children with pure and holy thoughts
along with the ideas of science and the various other academic disciplines. But
staple to the information intake should be the pristine philosophy of the
divinity of man as enshrined in the Upanishads for in it are all life-giving ideas
that will advance civilization to its fulfilment in the realization of the
oneness of existence. While these are apparently high-flown ideas that may seem
to bear little significance in the life of students, they are actually of
inconceivable importance to the act of building up their character in their
formative years with the right input of a universal vision that will make them
aspire for higher ideals of peace and universal goodwill and will put paid to
the narrow nationalist and sectarian ideas that ever disrupt the free flow of
life and even threaten to wipe out human civilization from the face of our
beautiful planet. Thus, work must begin at the base for the edifice to be
secure and only then may we be assured of the continuance of civilization in
this nuclear age which may end in a holocaust at the hands of a megalomaniac
dictator or a band of deluded warriors of a so-called God who dispenses mercy
on his so-called believers while reserving hellish torment for the rest of
humanity that choose not in their wisdom to subscribe to such archaic
articulations of faith.
Dear teachers,
With great expectations do I pen these words to elicit a
favourable response from you as I am well convinced that many among you must be
thinking along like lines as I do about the efficacy of a Vedantic education
for children across the globe to combat the forces that so beset the progress
of civilization through separatist motivations and actions founded on unreason,
hatred and indoctrination in exclusive irrational faiths spiced up with a tinge
of welfare element for the faithful but spitting venom on the ones that do not
subscribe to such abject submission to religious enforcement. I have infinite
faith in your goodness and the unstinted love you bear towards your pupils for
I, myself, have been the recipient of such love in my school days. Do turn the
attention of your students towards the divine focus within and harp not on
their external shortcomings for, after all, the behaviour and performance of
these young ones are but the product of their past habits and will improve only
if these habits be altered through observed re-orientation.
This, then, is my appeal to you, dear teachers. Information revolution
may make students well-informed but will fail to develop character in them.
Scattered or even ordered gathering in of knowledge-bits cannot make men out of
students for such information in the absence of character will remain unassimilated
in their system and therefore rendered sterile. Students must be brought out of
the rut of syllabi and enlightened about the divinity sleeping within them.
They must be encouraged to be rational human beings with the spirit of enquiry
guiding them through life, rather than wild emotional excesses masquerading as
prophetic divine injunctions. A liberalism of spirit, a catholicity of
perspective and a deep respect for learning must form the basis of their
academic lives. Then will awaken within them ‘shraddha’ (an intense aspirational mood
seeking perfection) for higher pursuits in life culminating in spiritual
perfection. Let the learning process be a life-building one where teachers are
the research guides helping these young scholars advance into uncharted terrain
of the cosmos and of the Self. Then will civilization flourish. My prostrations
to all teachers!
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