How Gurukulam Learning Differs from Regular Education, Part 11
Do your duty, you get fulfilment, you get the fruits of your karma, there is no compulsion to chant Vedās. Take a carpenter for example, his is hard work, doing physical labour on a daily basis, where is the mental space and time for performing sandhyā, where is the inner leisure for bhāṣya, for scriptural study or commentary? Is it not enough that he slogs day in and out to create something exquisite and functional, and is proud of what he does? It is enough. He has his own norms and his own practices and are they enough, they are more than enough. They will take him to the next level as and when he is ready to go there. Meanwhile many weavers and other jātis also wear their janeu with honour, they have bhakti and take pride in their vṛtti. A stint at the gurukulam will disabuse us of the need for everyone to perform the same functions and duties. There is no pyramid or an apex to strive towards, making us unhappy in our own lives and professions. Instead there arises a healthy acceptance and appreciation of the diverse practices that tie together as Hindu culture.
Another debate that goes on and on especially when initiates first come to the gurukulam is that of free will versus fate. If our fate is already decided what is the point of doing anything, and if it is not decided then where does karma fit in? As always Hindu vision is not a simplistic black and white story. It is nuanced, and hence has many detractors too, because who wants to think so much nowadays! Is it not easier to do what I please, to assume that I live only once and that this body is for enjoyment? We have not mainstreamed what our śāstras say - from our social media to our entertainment, we have let the western modern ideologies creep in and settle down. Generations have been lost to such propaganda wherein Hindu ideas are seen as regressive or superstitious, whereas what they offer for a healthy wholesome living and the hereafter too is nothing short of a treasure chest, long forgotten in deep seas. We accept free will as much as appreciating that any action WILL have a result both visible and invisible. And results accrue as per the intention of our actions done in the past many janmas, not just from this birth. Yet when faced with such a fatalistic idea we are told in the Brahma Sutra bhāṣya that we have a choice in the way we respond and react - we may do something, not do something, and / or do it another way, so there is no blind acceptance of our fate and no we are not puppets in the hands of god, we have a free will which we can and should utilize especially for knowing our true selves:
कर्तुमकर्तुमन्यथा वा कर्तुं शक्यं लौकिकं वैदिकं च कर्म
kartum akartum anyathā vā kartum śakyam
laukikam vaidikam ca karma
This freedom of choice to respond in a myriad ways is something that must be clarified to youngsters who sometimes commit suicide out of lack of clear understanding of what their options are and assume that they have no choice at all regarding the matter at hand. If we adopt a sincere Hindu vaidika lifestyle we can easily say goodbye to unnecessary medications, psychiatrists, unhealthy drug dependencies and addictions. So anyway what is the deal with free will and fate? Is karma not fate? NO. karma means an action. Your intention makes what you do i.e. karma; good or bad, and each action i.e. karma has good or bad results depending on one’s intentions. These results are pratyakṣa. You can see them right up but there is also an unseen aspect of the results called adṛṣṭa; results which we cannot see - these are good or bad results of our past actions. So not only do we have direct results of what we do, we also create a sort of a fixed deposit bank balance of what we do - good or bad. These fructify at unknown times or eras and we have no clue what will fructify when! Even Kṛṣṇa says, gahanā karmaṇo gatiḥ, the way of karma is too complex.
Now fate is what we are faced with at a given time - the results of what we did in this life and past lives - and free will which all humans possess is what we do with what we are faced with. We have a choice to react to every situation, if not physically then mentally and psychologically, we can choose not to be hurt, or upset, or angry, or shamed, or dishonoured, irrespective of what happens to us. We have the free will to take action in every circumstance, from freedom to say yes, to freedom to say NO too! But we don’t talk of this power much and it is under utilized - the power of saying no to that which is adharma, to that which takes us on a path of adharma.
Now, when we say we are free, are we really so? Freedom is not the same as independence. We may be independent but most of us are not free. To be free we must not react, we must not choose based on our vāsanās our past impressions. Our instinctual likes and dislikes are our rāga dveṣas, we have to work these out with careful study of śāstra which helps us rid ourselves of such un-free practices. We are so bound by our past impressions that we make decisions spontaneously and assume this is freedom. Freedom is the ability to make a decision after discernment, if a particular choice is in alignment with my ultimate goal, if it aligns with dharma, if it is for loka sangraha. When measured thus very few of us are actually free. For example being afraid is a bandha a bondage, so also a need or compulsion to ‘become’ something somebody, this need is not actually a sign of freedom, to be completely free we must revolt against our unspoken compulsions to become something or somebody all the time which forces us to resort to negative tendencies, we need to carry on this inner bloodless revolution to be truly free.
The West is an individualized society, we all know that, we also know the pitfalls therein but we are heading straight towards the cliff drop. ahaṃkāra and mamakāra are celebrated in the West. My, Me, Mine. Ego is central to such thinking. In India too, definitely in the cities and increasingly in aspirational towns, people want to live by their fancies, their likes and dislikes - per their rāga dveṣas not as per śāstra or vṛddha vyavahāra or local saṃskṛti, this is the basic tussle - what suits me as an individual I do, even if it means going against an age old system. Why? Because śāstra requires me to be disciplined, needs me to let go of my cravings and prejudices and puts a weight and anchor on my sexuality, now this being detrimental to my idea of individual freedom and independence I rebel - against family, society, myself, and end up messing up my life for no reason. I don’t end up happy and content either. Very few do. Who will teach our children the perils of the It’s My Life syndrome? That there need not be any Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) because we never die, we are forever, we do not believe in YOLO (you only live once), that our scriptures tell us that death is nothing but a change of clothes to another life. Why are we not teaching the young ones lessons that will make them mentally and psychologically strong?
An area much neglected and which really requires our attention these days is the latent sexuality of teenagers which has come undone with nuclear families, social media messaging and western norms becoming more and more acceptable in our society. The pitfalls of broken abusive relationships at an early age or teenage pregnancies are not taught to young girls while the rest of the glamour vis a vis modern lifestyle is broadcast daily from all media. A life of commitment, of responsibility for one’s actions, of an alternative lifestyle which need not be promiscuous or licentious and yet be cool and aspirational has yet to make inroads in our society. We are not preparing our next generation to think differently, either we expect them to go their way and rue at the downfall of values or we expect them to stick to age old traditions without giving them any breathing room to adapt and fit into a changing world.
Why does a vaidikā lifestyle insist on a disciplined life bordering on a military regimen at the early stages of a person’s life? Brahmacārya is a wonderful concept and practice wherein the mind is not allowed to indulge in untimely sexual needs and perverse ideas but channels those urges into diverse constructive practices. This builds the moral fibre of the child and allows him or her to grow holistically without being hijacked by sexuality, gender politics, and other base needs which can ruin the child, preventing his growing up normally or blooming into a well adjusted adult.
Accepting teenage romance as legitimate is one such practice which modern day city bred families have started condoning without understanding why this was frowned upon even a generation ago. It is not that sex is sinful in vaidika paraṃparā, on the contrary- kāmosmi bharatriṣabhaha. All desires are legitimate says Kṛṣṇa in the Śrīmadbhagavadgītā, but those have to be upheld by dharma, they cannot be fantasies of a teenager whose mind fixates on someone and is not ready to take responsibility for one’s actions nor face the consequences. While child marriage remains illegal, dating - which is sex without the commitment - has become acceptable. Unbridled sexuality which is expressed in various ways these days (from insistence of open untied hair, to not sporting a bindi, to insistence on short or revealing clothes, to having a boyfriend or girlfriend, to worrying about one’s gender), all this is detrimental to raising our consciousness to higher levels, hence emphasis on looks or on externalities such as clothes, appearance, or even gender was frowned upon, as it takes us away from our puruṣārtha of mokṣa. Growing up I remember there was no mirror in our bedroom, my mother would knock my head with her knuckles (which was quite painful) if she ever caught me staring at any mirror. It was considered pāpa. I now comb my hair and put on boṭṭu etc., without the aid of a mirror. Did it help with something? Yes, it took me away from physical vanity towards appreciating more subtler aspects of myself and life. What she insisted upon is what was expected of me at the gurukulam too. It was as though she was preparing me for this all my life! Our parenting needs thought and care as much as our education syllabus. We cannot be gearing for a market solely. That would mean our total downfall.
Perhaps it is my greying hair or perhaps it is because I have lived my life recklessly already until wisdom dawned that I have started to find teenage romance nay any romance as something of an anti-vaidika concept. Romance to me now is nothing but an irrational attachment to the subject of my physical attraction which insists on sexual culmination at the cost of every maryāda laid down by society and our civilization. On applying close Vedānta scrutiny I did not find anything called ‘love’ there; the romantic version that is peddled by novels and films today. There is dharma, there is kartavya and there is prema which includes both dharma and kartavyam. There is no love outside of the dhārmika framework, no love that rests solely on individual likes and dislikes at the cost of family, community, and society - the individual choice ‘my life my man’ kind of mindless passion which does not see practical realities and hurts everyone around one is simply an insistence, a resistance to sane objections, a remnant of sad saṃskāras due to rāga dvaeṣas from previous janmas. This was a big reveal for me.
Our mature civilization avoided all these pitfalls and landed us at early marriages so that we were satiated as well as turned into responsible adults. But the current situation is at odds with our way of life, at least those who want to adhere to this should be able to teach their children a sane way of dealing with their bodily needs. There is no better place than a gurukulam which sublimates such urges via appropriate study, food, lifestyle and daily practices such as yoga and meditation. We were taught that a yata cittātmā is one whose mind and body are mastered. One whose body keeps moving such a person’s mind is not steady, so mind and body both need to be mastered. Hence yogāsanas are practised daily to make it easy for one to sit in dhyāna, to allow oneself to be in deep contemplation and to abide in the Self.
It is the gurukulam that I learnt the importance of family as a unit, the stability it accords allowing for the carrying forth of culture and bringing prosperity to oneself and one’s land. Here is where I took part in the wonder that is guru-śiṣya paramparā, and heard the term ‘vṛddha vyavahāra’ for the first time, of the importance of grandparents in storytelling, of a lineage shouldering Indian Knowledge Systems and passing them onto the next generation. Most of the Indian school syllabus and curriculum encourages individualism, it is a given for today’s generation to assume that that is the only way to be. Yet two generations ago, I myself was a part of a joint family. It is not without its failings but to do away with every other way of being and living and pushing forward only one model because it is accepted by the West as a standard, is doing injustice to our centuries old wisdom. When grandparents and grandchildren live together, the learning that happens is no less than what takes place in a gurukulam. Morals, aesthetics, history, poetry all in the form of stories gets passed down in one’s mother tongue keeping both the culture and the cultured intact. How can we expect this level of involvement from teachers, many of whom do their jobs only for the extra income?
Another area where the schools fall short in India is in lack of imaginative and out of the box thinking. In films and serials sannyāsīs are made fun of, they are caricatured and shown as deceitful and cunning and worse, this dehumanizes them, desacralizes them and we lose all our common goodness in keeping this beautiful āśrama alive. Whether it is done by design or by naivete, much harm has been done to make the ochre robes seem dangerous to the Hindu person. What benefits they bring to our society with their vairāgya and their presence is not factored in at all. Hence none of the schools will invite a saṃnyāsī to grace their functions, or speak at their podiums, although a saṃnyāsī has much to offer to the students and even the teachers in terms of how to lead a stress free life and more.
We are very diligent of course to keep our schools secular and not let religion creep in but then we use the English language without realizing how much of Christinanity and its theology is embedded in it. As such it is of no consequence, but language carries a culture, its thoughts and ideologies, language holds the philosophical ideas and ideals. For us to evoke a vaidikā vision via English we might need to rearrange the structure a bit. For a Vedantin, the ātmā has a body, it leaves a body and takes on another. Not that the body houses an ātmā inside as we are normally made to think, this is a total switch, a 108 degree flip of normal parlance. Hence we say ‘sadgati prāpta ho’ or om śānti when someone ‘leaves the body’ and carries forth on their journey. Another example; ‘a golden chain’ is a wrong sentence vedāntically speaking. As the substantive, i.e. the essence of a chain is of gold and not the chain, the weight and form of chain is all gold. While the adjective, the form, is of a chain’s, we should actually be saying chainy gold! Thus we at the gurukulam recognized the value of saṃskṛtam, how efficient it is in conveying our vaidika vision and how essential it is to know it for us to be able to delight in its vast literature both secular and religious. Most of our education encourages reading in English, whereby we lose our poets, our writers, our thinkers, and finally our indigenous ways of thinking and living, ending up as wannabe gorās in brown skin.
Many a time when Svāmījī would explain adhyāropa apavāda and how the visible universe is nāmā rūpā mātram superimposing on the vastu:
रूपं रूपं प्रतिरूपो बभूव
तदस्य रूपं प्रतिचक्षणाय
rūpam rūpam pratirūpo babhūva
tadasya rūpam praticakśaṇāya
brahman in the process of manifesting name and form transformed Itself in accordance with name and form
It was so much more accessible in saṃskṛtam than when he explained the same in English, although for Truth to be comprehended and internalized, language is not a barrier, yet, this vision was viewed in saṃskṛtam hence it sounds the true-est and its most authentic in it.
How many youngsters are exposed to the acme of our philosophy? That we visualise īśvara as both manifested and transcendent, that we do not believe in a male god sitting in heaven? That our concept of heaven and hell is a temporary place from which we return to earth to work out our karma? That ultimately, we can relax, sit back and enjoy, as we are sat cit ānanda. Well, a short stint at a gurukulam will rid us of all nonsensical and sentimental ideas regarding ourselves, gods, deities and demons. Many such revelations and connections made my stay at the gurukulam very enjoyable. Unlike my time in closed concrete classrooms in my childhood growing up, with bored uninspiring teachers simply reading out in droll voices what they themselves did not enjoy.
Think of sending your child to a gurukulam or a veda pāṭhaśāla next if you are looking for transforming your child from within and without.
Authored by Kavita Krishna Meegama. Published by Brhat.