Our ancestors considered ‘education’ to mean good character building and acquiring good human qualities along with some knowledge of the world. Gurudev Rabindra Nath Tagore said “education without character is body without head”. Just mugging up information from books now from Google guru and getting a degree or other higher qualifications do not make a person respectable.
“Vidya dadaathi vinayam, vinayaat yaati paatrataam,
Paatratwaat dhanam aapnothi, dhanaat dharmam tatah sukham”
(Learnings should lead to humility, humility brings respect, respect helps in acquiring wealth and charity brings happiness). So say the Rishis, the super human scientists.
In our younger days the school language texts carried stories of inspirational incidents and personalities guiding us towards a spotless moralistic life. One such story I heard and read in my fourth class Malayalam text is narrated which may interest our growing youth.
There once lived a learned king called Dharmika, who had mastered the language of birds and beasts. He listened to their constant mocking of the ways of mankind, the wars of prejudice fought in the name of religion, race etc. The king, discontented with his world, sets out in search of peace taking his sword (the symbol of power) with him.
His first destination is the ashram that the animals had so often praised. Here he finds peaceful coexistence of all creation and is mesmerized by its tranquility. He realizes the futility of his search for peace while still carrying the sword, he leaves it behind with the sage and continues his journey.
He then comes across a lioness hunting a cow. The cow pleads for mercy for the sake of her newborn calf. The lioness releases the cow on her word that she will return after feeding her calf. King Dharmika is surprised to see the cow keep her word and return. Pleased by the cow’s honesty and selfless love, the lioness spares her life saying her calf is too young to be left motherless. She vows to return in a few years to claim her hunt as this was the law of the jungle.
Dharmika continues his journey. He attends the sermons of great saints on the banks of the Ganga, yet forgetting his newfound values; he demands that a chandala (untouchable) moves out of his way. The chandala replies, “O King, who did you ask to get out? The life that is the same within you and me or the mortal body that perishes and submerges with Prakrithi (Nature), where there is no difference between a King and untouchable?”
Dharmika repents and understands the ultimate truth of spiritual oneness and returns home. After realising that the truth is one and paths are many, King Dharmika returns to his kingdom. On the way back he sees that the once peaceful Ashram was a scene of devastation. The sword (symbol of power) left with the sage, was misused by him to cut grass, branches of trees and ultimately the innocent animals. In fear of being victims of power misuse, each started indulging in suspicion and self-protection by using their own power. The king overpowers the hermit and retrieves his sword, the symbol of power that had corrupted even a hermit.
Dharmika returns to find his subjects peaceful and happy in his absence, more importantly the absence of the power that he wielded over them. Realizing the corruption of power, he rids himself of his sword that is the symbol of power and adopts the ways of truth, love and beauty.
The king and his people live happily in the realization of Satyam (Truth), Sivam (God) and Sundaram (Beauty).
This was made into a theatrical production (dance drama -known as Naatya) for the tenth anniversary of our Gurukulam camp at Sachidananda Ashram, Virginia USA in 1999 with huge success presenting it a couple of times and a few times in Bharat.
It is time again for our educational system to revamp our education emphasising on three ‘Ds’ – Discipline -Devotion-Dedication.