Adapted vesion of talk by Swami Ranganathanada which was contributed to Swami Vivekananda Birth Centenary special number of the Indian Police Journal, New Delhi, January 1963.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Attitudes to Work
In the light of the spiritual, no work is high or low in itself; it is the attitude of the worker that makes a work high or low. The discipline and control of this attitude is the contribution of spiritual philosophy to human life and work. The small man, in the light of this philosophy, is not the man who does what is, in the secular estimate of society, small work, but who does any work in a small way. Even small work becomes big when done by a great man; and conversely, big work becomes small when done by a small man. Kabir weaving cloth on a loom or Gandhi spinning thread on a charka helped to raise the status of the humble loom and charka. On the other hand, a greedy priest or a corrupt politician lowers the status of the high calling of priesthood or politics. How much the inner man counts in all fields of outer work is evident from these and other instances. Life without quality is life lived in vain; and quality is a value concept; and values are not mechanical, but spiritual. In the protesting words of Bertrand Russell (The Impact of Science on Society, p. 77):
‘The Machine as an object of adoration is the modern form of Satan, and its worship is the modern diabolism. …‘Whatever else may be mechanical, values are not, and this is something which no political philosopher must forget’.
EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 17 – Indian Philosophy of Social Work (Pg: 287; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay on June 3, 1967.
Transforming Action into Spiritual Education
All actions, says the Gita, can be converted into spiritual education of the whole man under the guidance of a rational ethics and philosophy. Work done in a spirit of non-attachment helps man to develop his unlimited spiritual personality. By being unattached to his limits, sensate, lower self, man receives ‘intimations of immortality’, as Wordsworth puts it; man begins to experience the infinite dimensions of his personality. His vision and sympathies broaden. He comes across a vast reservoir of spiritual energy within himself, with makes him achieve a double efficiency in his life, namely, outer social efficiency and inner spiritual efficiency. The Gita calls this by the name of yoga, the science and art of the spiritual life, and gives two important definitions of this science: yogah karmasu kausalam – ‘yoga is efficiency in action’ (II.50) and samatvam yoga ucyate – ‘Yoga is called even-mindedness’ (II.48).
Work with attachment, work proceeding from the level of the ego, is characterized by much fuss and noise; that is the sign of its inefficiency proceeding from lack of inner discipline; it tends steadily to the inner impoverishment of the worker. The more efficient the machine, the more silent and smooth its functioning, and the greater its output of work. An inefficient machine, such as a worn-out car, is all fuss and noise with very little output in speed. Calm, silent, steady, and efficient work, sustained by deep social feeling, is the mark of true spirituality. Therefore, says the Gita (II, 49):
Durena hyavaram karma buddhiyogat dhananjaya;
Buddhau saranam anviccha krpanah phalahetavah —
‘Work (done with attachment) is verity far inferior to that performed from the stand-point of buddhiyoga (the yoga of equable reason); seek refuge, O Arjuna, in this buddhi. Small-minded are they who act motivated by selfish results.’
EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 17 – Indian Philosophy of Social Work (Pg:285-286; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Bombay on June 3, 1967.
Man-making integrates education and religion
Mere intellectual growth, unaccompanied by this ethical growth, makes only for the fattening of man’s ego, of his raw ‘I’. Such an education tends to make him clever but not wise, a prey to tensions and sorrows, and may lead him as much to rascality, on the one side, as to frustration and unfulfilment, on the other. By sharpening his intellect without at the same time expanding his heart in love and compassion, that intellect tends increasingly to scorn all values except self-interest, and ends up in the stagnation of cynicism, which registers the spiritual death of man. This is more serious than physical death for one so high in the scale of evolution as man. This is the prevailing mood of modern civilization, especially of its intellectuals. It is a disease more deadly than cholera or smallpox, malaria or leprosy. This is the main weakness of education in the modern world, arising out of its lack of insight into the spiritual dimension of the human personality and consequent emphasis only on organic satisfactions and organic survival, which goals even physical science, in its twentieth-century biology, as we have seen, apart from the higher world-religions, treats as unworthy of man and relegates to the pre-human stage of evolution.
It is here that education and religion blend into a single man making process, the earlier and the later phases of the single discipline of human growth, development, and fulfilment. The Indian spiritual tradition does not identify religion as with mere profession of creeds and dogmas or performance of rituals and ceremonies; neither does it equate it with scholarship. Religious scholarship is only knowledge about religion; but religion itself is experience, it is spiritual growth, development and realization. Atma va are drastavyah – ‘The Atman has to be realized’, says Yajnavalkya to his wife, Maitreyi, in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (iv.v.6). The central theme of religion and its key words are, therefore, the same as in education, namely nourishment and growth, the spiritual growth of the human personality through spiritual nourishment. No formalism or creed or dogma can do this for man.
EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 15 – The Philosophy of Man-Making Education (Pg:239-240; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Kanpur University on December 13, 1970.
Man-making Education promotes a double efficiency
The only means to this achievement (not just democracy in form but democracy in content) is education, conceived, as I said earlier, as man-making education. And for the first time in our long history, we can not only hope for, but are also in a position to realize, this all round development of our people, thanks to modern world conditions and the efficient technology of the modern age. To realize this, what we need is to capture the intellectual and moral energy to take full advantage of these favourable conditions, and to effect a double efficiency in our people through our educational process, namely, thought and personality – efficiency, within, and work and productive-efficiency, without. This double efficiency is the essence of a man-making education. As Vivekananda pointed out, it is only when we have restored our sunken millions to human dignity and worth that we can claim to be men; till then we shall have to treat ourselves as candidates to that high estate; and Vivekananda conceived education, and also religion, as the training to equip us to claim and to realize that high estate. So he always placed stress on a man-making education and a man-making religion. Every claim needs to stand the test of life and experience. Our claim to be a mature civilized people has today to face the challenge of the widespread human backwardness of our society. Human intelligence develops the power to identify and solve human problems through the training of that intelligence in purposive thinking and social feeling and social action. The product of such training is personality-energy and character-efficiency. It is this energy that is capable of mobilizing all types of physical and social energy resources and investing them in the social field and to make society grow in health and vigour. This is the energy that we have to develop in our people today, so that we cease to be passive spectators of human suffering, so that we cease to throw our hands up in despair and resignation, but become not only adequate, but more than adequate, to our mounting problems, so that these problems yield to the sure touch of our trained mind and hand.
EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 15 – The Philosophy of Man-Making Education (Pg:230-231; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Kanpur University on December 13, 1970.
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