Conversations with God - 9
Devotee - Swami, I
am back at your Lotus Feet for learning more lessons. I can understand learning
from you, but learning from the world – well, how could the world be a school?
Why then all these schools and universities?
Swami - What do you learn at school?
D - Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Economics,
History, Languages etc.
S - And at the university?
D - Higher level of all these subjects.
S - What do you gain from all these years of
rigorous studies?
D - Knowledge, for sure, but more importantly, a
living.
S - So schools and colleges train you for a
living?
D - Yes Swami.
S - After you leave the university, and get a
job, you stop learning?
D - No Swami, if we
do not learn while in job, it would be difficult to keep it. Besides, there are
other things to learn too.
S - For instance?
D - Swami, like, how to behave with colleagues,
how to behave with the boss, how not to be cheated by others, control anger, and
scores of things.
S - At which school?
D – Err….Ah, now I
understand how the world is a bigger school!
S - Yes. At this
school, which never stops teaching, you learn the art of living. Your schools
and colleges should prepare you for this bigger school where the real teaching
takes place. In your schools and colleges you pick up some skills for earning a
living, but no lessons for living a life. Therefore after getting a gold medal
in the university you can fail in this school.
D - Who teaches in this school, Swami?
S -
God. But He does not come to the class with chalk and duster to work out
the lessons. He may send you the lesson
in a friend’s birthday card, in a disease or a cure, in some dear one’s
betrayal, in a failure, in a patch of cloud, in a song, in a tear or a smile,
from a bird or a beast, in fact the Upanishad talks of one Upamanyu who learnt
great lessons from a crane and a bull, and one Abadhuta learnt great lessons
from the 24 aspects of Nature – there are a million ways God may want to teach
you how to live a God-ward life for which the only condition is your readiness.
D - Readiness to learn, swami?
S - When something
happens to you, in fact things are happening to you all the time, you should be
able to see the hand of God in it. Experience is not what happens to you, they
are mere incidents, but whatever you do with them is experience. Life is an
opportunity to learn, and keeps upgrading the lessons. Most people live a
horizontal life, without awareness of domains they need to explore. It is not
living a life; it is flowing willy-nilly on the stream of time like a hapless leaf
being carried away in a strong current. Only when you live to learn, live
on a vertical line, you learn to live.
D - Please stop
Swami, this is a huge bouncer! What is live
to learn and learn to live?
S - My son, if you use living this life as
means to an end, not an end in itself, it is living to learn. When you realise that there is more to life than
is seen, and each day is an opportunity to encounter this unseen life, it is learning to live. They are complementary
to each other. The most important thing in life is this awareness. I was telling you about attention last time. Attention
and Awareness are twin brothers.
Therefore I always say Awareness is Life.
You are here on earth to complete your incomplete homework, the tasks which
remain unaccomplished from a previous lifetime, from a previous school, and
tasks of this life, the current school. If you do not carry out this dual
homework, you will have to return with the same workload, and waste another
lifetime.
D - Swami, how to
complete the homework, and how to learn lessons properly?
S - Besides awareness,
you must have shraddha (श्रद्धा), or creative interest. Willing eagerness to learn is shraddha. Nothing good or great can be
achieved without it. It is like fire, forever burning in your heart, forever
driving you to learn more and yet more. Shraddha drives you to give your best,
and make the best investment of your time. But it works best when aided by Vichara, or discrimination. Therefore
Krishna told Arjuna श्रद्धाबान् लभते ज्ञानम्, the one with creative interest
alone has access to wisdom.
D – Vichara? What is
this new thing Swami? What if we don’t use it, and what if we do?
S - It helps to decide
what you would learn. Suppose you want to be a physician. Then at a certain
stage in school you have to choose a certain combination of subjects for study.
It is same with any profession. You have to make an early choice. If you would
be a physician, then you don’t take mathematics at 11th class, and
if you would be a computer scientist, you don’t take biology at 11th
class. In life too you have to make some conscious choices. There are a million
ways you can live your life, but no one wants to learn all the million ways
even though they are all exciting. Once you have defined your goal by the help
of vichara, stick to the roadmap with
shraddha.
D - Swami, can you elaborate it?
S – Suppose you have
decided to spend a quiet evening in reading a book, or in writing an article,
or doing namasmarana. Suddenly a couple of friends arrive for chatting, or
someone invites you to go out for dinner. What will you do? You may tell
yourself, “Look, you can read the book another day, write the article tomorrow,
but should not disappoint your friends”, or “When I decided upon giving myself
a quiet hour, I did not know what my friends were planning. Therefore I need
not oblige them”. Here vichara is in operation. Vichara helps your choice, and
shraddha helps to carry out your choice. Remember, one step to accept the wrong
decision weakens the next decision to do the right, and one step to reject the
wrong decision strengthens the next decision to be on the right.
D - Swami, it is not
always possible to stick to the right decision. There are so many obligations
and attractions we live with that sometimes we cannot do what we would like to
do. How to face this challenge?
S - Yes I know. The
other day some of you were watching a cricket match in hostel, and came for
darshan late. In the meantime, I had called a few of your class to do some work
in my room, and you missed the learning chance.
D - Yes swami, that was the hardest hit, and I
learned the lesson of my life.
S - If you follow your
Guru with shraddha, he can convert a failure into a success. You were tempted
by cricket that day, and missed an opportunity; but since you had shraddha for
me, when next time a more interesting match was going on you were able to
resist the temptation and come for darshan in time. And to reward your strength
for right choice, I spoke with you.
D - Yes Swami,
I am so much grateful to you for that.
S - You must
however remember that every learning situation is also a test.
D – How Swami?
S - I will give you a
very simple example. Suppose you are driving to your office. You found a young
man lying on the road in a pool of blood. Another car had hit him and run away.
What are you going to do? Run away to your work, or take the wounded man to
hospital and save him? Compassion tells you, save him. Your mind tells you, you
must reach office in time, otherwise your boss will get mad at you. This is a
test for you and a learning situation too.
D - Yes Swami, that is a big test. What should
one do?
S – It depends on which
class you are in, and the strength of your vichara. Every minute you come
across a situation, it is both a test and a learning opportunity.
D - Swami, if every
minute I am on tiptoe, the tension will kill me! The three
hours test in college drives me to the
edge of my patience! Now you are
asking me to push it to 24 hours!
S –You feel like that
because you are forcing yourself to learn, you don’t have shraddha to learn.
You can play cricket for a whole day without getting bored?
D – Yes Swami.
S – And discuss the pros
and cons of the game for a week?
D – But that is cricket
Swami, much more interesting than an exam hall.
D – In other words, you
have shraddha for cricket, and no shraddha for the subjects you study. This is
where vichara takes a lead. You tell yourself, ‘Cricket is no doubt
interesting, but the many games I am going to play in my life are no less
important. So I must learn my lessons with equal zest, if not more’. I am very
much pleased even if you take a single step towards me with shraddha, for that
makes you stronger for the next step. All your learning lessons are connected,
and well planned by God. If you miss one lesson, you do not get the best of
subsequent lessons. You have grading system in your university?
D - Yes Swami.
S – Which means marks you get in each class test add
up to final grading point?
D - That is so
Swami.
S - Then if you
fail in one test your final grading suffers?
D - Very much
Swami.
S - That is
exactly what happens in life. Your missing a right lesson, or learning a wrong
lesson affects your stay in the school of life.
D - But Swami,
Our Guru can remedy that?
S - Yes, he can, provided you have shraddha. Therefore
strengthen your vichara, and increase your shraddha. This much today. More next
time.
D - Thank You
Swami.
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- To continue
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