Grahasthasramam : ( 24/05/2013. )

  ------------------------------------- Tuesday, November 17, 2020. 07:51.AM. (Keynote address given at a conference on e Location in Delhi on October 21, 1983) Post-11. ======================== But there is a security already within us which defies this sense of insecurity posed by this problem of not being sure of anything in this world. The very hopes of mankind for a better future, notwithstanding the fact of the transiency of all things, is the proof of the immortality of the soul of man and the deathlessness of human values. The deathlessness of human values would mean the deathlessness of eternal values. --------------------- Here I have only set up certain questions, problems to shakeup our own personality from the complacency that we may be entertaining in a state of ignorance, not knowing that our highest knowledge is the worst of ignorance, finally speaking. We know nothing of the facts of nature or the truths of life, and perhaps the time has come to respect these deepe...

  ----------------------------------------------- Sunday, October 25, 2020. 08:51.AM. (Keynote address given at a conference on education in Delhi on October 21, 1983) Post-10. ------------------------------------------- The Mahabharata is the problem and the battle of existence. It is the day-to-day conflict we are facing which is embodied in this masterly epic we call the Mahabharata. The human individual – yourself, myself, and everybody – is the Arjuna, and Sri Krishna, who gives the answer, is something we are not seeing with our eyes. We have not found our Krishna, though we are here as Arjunas. Perhaps if these Arjunas who are here in this world were to find their Krishna, there would be no need for these seminars and these discussions; perhaps there would be no necessity for any kind of argument and deliberation, because there would be no problems. There would be no problems because each one would understand the other in the light of what each one is basically. ------------...

  ----------------------------------- Thursday, October 01, 2020. 5:00.AM. (Keynote address given at a conference on education in Delhi on October 21, 1983) Post-9. ------------------------------------------- 1. If you agree at least partially that human society is impossible without the human individual, and if you are also inclined to agree that a conflict-ridden heap of individuals produces only a conflict-ridden human society, we come to the point that our education, which is a process of enlightenment, is not merely concerned with an empirical concept of human sociology, of society in its relationship of individuals, but is concerned with the individual himself or herself. The light has to be shed on the inner structure of the human individuality itself. 2. Now, I mentioned another conflict. Apart from the social one, there is an individual conflict personally. There is social conflict on one side, and a psychological conflict on the other side. One cannot be differentiated fr...

----------------------------------- Monday, August 17, 2020. 8:48.PM. (Keynote address given at a conference on education in Delhi on October 21, 1983) Post-8. ------------------------------------------- 1. There is the conflict of one person with another person in human society. It is not true that a human individual, any given person, can love another unconditionally, under any circumstance, for all times. Basically, an unconditional affection and love for another is found to be not possible, for reasons which each one knows. I cannot love you unconditionally. Under given conditions I am your friend, and when these conditions break, I am no more your friend. So there is a basic foundational and essential difficulty in human society of it being possible for a human individual to be truly in love with another. Our apparent collaboration with one another politically, socially, economically or otherwise seems to be an outward adjustment or adaptation based on a secret i...

Wednesday, July 08, 2020. 9:41.AM. (Keynote address given at a conference on education in Delhi on October 21, 1983) Post-7. 1. Satyameva jayate is something known to us: Truth alone triumphs. But what is truth? Can anyone give a clear, satisfactory and logical answer to this question? What is meant by chanting this slogan? Mere slogans, shibboleths and chants may not be of much value. They may be capable of introducing a sense of self-destruction among ourselves that we are well informed and knowledgeable about all things, but basically when we are threatened with the forces of nature and the facts of life, we may be poor weaklings with no strength of our own. Why is it that we have no strength? Knowledge is said to be power, apart from the fact that knowledge is considered as a virtue. It was Socrates perhaps who proclaimed that knowledge is virtue. Why should there be this conflict between education and moral behaviour if knowledge is virtue? Knowledge is virtue, knowledge is power,...

===================================== --------------------------------------------------------------- 18/04/2020. (Keynote address given at a conference on education in Delhi on October 21, 1983) Post-6. ------------------------------------------------------------- 1. #Perhaps a human being is not a physical body. It is not one unit in a zoo, but it is an outlook of life. An outlook of life perhaps differentiates the human way of thinking from the animal’s intense selfishness and the mere biological impulse of the plant and the vegetable.  ##But here is a moot point before us. What is the consideration that is necessary for converting an animal into a human being? Let each one of us dispassionately probe into his own or her own heart and decide if there is something inside which is akin to the animal, akin to the snake or the tiger, the scorpion, the vindictive beasts of the jungle.  ###Are we also hungry and thirsty, and eager to live somehow ...

======================================================================= ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21/02/2020. (Keynote address given at a conference on education in Delhi on October 21, 1983) Post-5. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. *Hence, my point is that if you consider education as something connected with moral behaviour and ethical discipline in human society, naturally education has to be the spring behind the mechanism of human behaviour.  **We behave and conduct ourselves in relation to one another in light of the mechanism that is behind us. That mechanism that operates within us is that which has been imparted to us by the educational process.  ***We are born as biological units, as we were little babies coming out of our mother’s womb. Perhaps we are littl...