TRUE EDUCATION : 7. SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

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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, and knowledge is happiness. If education is the medium of the acquisition of knowledge, any person who is educated should also be a powerful individual and a happy person, and also a virtuous person.


2.
Now, why should we have this doubt in our minds that education has perhaps not fulfilled this task of producing the requisite results? Is the educated man a powerful person? Is the educated man a virtuous person? Is the educated person a happy person? You will say “No” to all these questions. Today an educated person is not necessarily a powerful person, not a happy person in his private life, for umpteen reasons, and not an ethical or righteous person. Why is this, if knowledge is virtue, knowledge is power, and knowledge is happiness? I have only placed questions before you, and have no time to give you answers. So this deliberation on bringing about conditions for a reorientation in the direction of true education and moral conduct in human society would raise questions of relationships which are not merely social but are also psychic and psychological, cosmological, and something even more than that.


3.
I mentioned that we live a life of conflict. The Bhagavadgita, one of the great scriptures of India, purports to be a panacea for the solution of the conflicts of human life. Though there can be an indefinite number of conflicts in our life in this world, principally, at least to think in light of the Bhagavadgita, we may say our conflicts are only four; we have a fourfold conflict.

To be continued ....


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