Thursday 12 July 2012

Dilemma ... 1

Dilemma of a Traditional Pundit
(Implications to the society)

Reproduced the first part of conversation between a revered seer and a great traditional scholar.
    This is a dialogue between a learned Pundit and His Holiness Sri
    Chandrashekhara Bharati Swami, the late Shankaracharya of Sringeri Sharada
    Peetha, on the topic of Education. Only the first part of the conversation,
    titled ‘The Wrong Attitude’, has been reproduced here. I thought it might
    be of interest in the context of what we have been discussing lately: the
    preservation of Vedic Culture.
     

     THE WRONG ATTITUDE

      One evening a learned Pandit came to pay his respects to His Holiness.
    After some formal enquiries about his welfare, His Holiness asked him:
     
     S: What is your elder son studying now?
      
    P: He will be appearing for School Final Examinations at the end of the
    year.
     
    S: And after that?
     
     P: I have not yet decided. The authorities within recent years have
    increased the cost of education enormously and I find it very difficult to
    meet it out of my scanty earnings. I do not know how I can manage if he has
    to get higher education. The boy however is very intelligent and promising
    and his teachers assure me that he is bound to shine in life.
     
    S: I suppose by ‘shining in life’ you mean becoming rich.
     
     P: Not only that, I include also a status commanding respect and influence.
     
    S: Anyhow you mean only worldly prosperity?
     
    P: Of course. The education that is being imparted in the English schools
    is purely secular and I cannot expect any spiritual benefit from it.
     
    S: I suppose, then, you have made other arrangements for training him in
    your own system of Dharma?
     
     P: Where is the time for it? The morning and the early night are spent by
    him in preparing his class lessons and in the evening he must have some
    recreation, the rest of the day he has to attend his school.
     
    S: That means, he has no time in which he can learn and practise some of
    our Dharmas.
     
    P: Practically none. But, I am glad that unlike other boys, he is
    continuing to perform his daily sandhya worship, though somewhat
    perfunctorily.
      
    S: I am equally glad about it. But, don’t you think that you are seriously
    neglecting his spiritual education?
     
    P: I fear I am, but how can I help it in the present conditions of the
    country?
     
    S: I take it that from your infancy you have been trained in the orthodox
    method and have been taught the Vedas and other sacred literature.
     
    P: Yes.
      
    S: Do you really believe that such training and teaching have been
    beneficial to you?
     
    P: Certainly.
     
     S: Are you then justified in denying to your son the kind of training and
    teaching which you really believe to be beneficial?
     
    P: I know I am not. But what can I do? It is impossible to get on in this
    world now without the modern education.
     
    S: I hope you are getting on well enough without that education?
     
    P: Only so so.
     
    S: How is that? You are certainly above want. You are held in high respect
    by everybody who comes into contact with you. What is there to complain in
    your case?
     
    P: Not much, but we are characterized as ‘old’ Pandits and wherever we go
    we are looked down upon by the laukika gentlemen (officers, pleaders and
    the like) for want of modern education which they have received.
     
    S: Why don’t you reciprocate by calling them ‘modern’ and looking down upon
    them for want of the orthodox education which you have got?
     
    P: How can we do that?
     
    S: If you really believe that the training that you have undergone is
    superior to theirs, that alone must be your proper attitude. There is no
    reason at all, in any case, why you allow them to look down upon you.
     
    P: It is not a case of allowing them or not. It is a fact that they do look
    down upon us.
      
    S: If so, it must equally follow that you must look down upon them, whether
    they allow it or not. Do you really ever maintain that attitude?
     
    P: I can’t say we do.
     
    S: So far as I have been able to understand the trend of modern society,
    the Pandits not only passively allow themselves to be looked down upon by
    the modern gentlemen, but positively even look up to them.
     
    P: I fear that is a correct reading of the attitude of most of us.
     
    S: Further when you see a modern gentleman pass by you in a luxurious car
    while you are trudging along the road with a bundle of books or clothes
    under your arm, have you not felt very often envious of him?
     
    P: I must confess I have sometimes felt so.
     
    S: Though you may not have framed it in so many words, you must have
    regretted that you were not given the benefit of modern education in your
    boyhood.
     
    P: Sometimes I have that regret.
     
    S: That regret must have unconsciously coupled with another regret that
    your boyhood has been wasted in the pursuit of the worthless Vedic lore?
     
    P: I do not think my regret took that form, but I have felt that my
    education could have been on more modern lines.
      
    S: By ‘more modern lines’, you mean more useful lines.
     
    P: Yes.
     
    S: That is, you felt that the Vedic training was useless or at least less
    useful than English education?
     
    P: I can’t say that I felt so, positively.
     
    S: I quite see that; that is why I stated that you unconsciously felt it.
    In doing so, you must have impliedly thought ill of your parents for giving
    you this worthless education.
     
    P: Impliedly, as Your Holiness puts it.
     
    S: Thus whenever you see a modern gentleman, you are sorry that you have
    not had his education, you are sorry that you had your education and you
    mentally think ill of your parents for denying you the former and giving
    you the latter and incidentally perhaps think ill of your teachers also?
     
    P: It is not always so, but at some moments my mind does admit of such an
    analysis.
     
    S: If, in spite of the invaluable training you have got, you are sometimes
    led to look up to the loukikas, is it any fault of theirs that they accept
    your attitude at your own valuation and look down upon you? If you, who
    know what Vedic culture is, can lower yourself so much as to think ill of
    your parents, is it any wonder that those who do not know what that culture
    is do not appreciate it in you? Don’t you think also, believing as you do
    in our Shastras, that the unmerited abuse of the Vedas and your parents and
    teachers is a sin bound to land you in more sorrow? Why can’t you pity the
    laukika for the waste of his boyhood in the pursuit of purely secular
    education? Why can’t you abuse his parents for spoiling his spiritual
    interests by giving him a training divorced from Vedic culture? Why don’t
    you make him feel that you really pity him? And, why don’t you, by your
    conduct, make him look up to you?
    ... continued
      If society does not think of this aspect, we will have very few scholars to cater to the needs of a billion plus population. In that dreaded scenario, MNCs or some foreign will jump into the arena to corporatise our Dharmik needs. West is already seeing the trends.
      Time for serious thought.
      Patronage to Traditional Education is not doling money to practitioners, but to put children to learn it.

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