r e f l e c t i o n : BE-DO-HAVE or HAVE-DO-BE
Having the opportunity to do seva with the Tribal School Project in Jharkhand has caused me to think hard about the purpose of schooling.
Is schooling an early training period to equip our young with the abilities to be a part of this world? Some think so and schooling becomes literacy/proficiency in languages for the ability to communicate, maths for the ability to count, science for the ability to understand the nature, and history for the ability to appreciate and learn from our past. These are the core 'technical know-how' to do the living in this world.
Some see schooling as primarily a training for a profession, a means to an end. How the adults think, the children get programmed likewise. Urban kids are always asked by adults what they desire to HAVE or DO when they grow up. Typical answers are "Have lots of money", "Have a big house", "I wanna be a doctor because doctors make lots of money", "I wanna be a lawyer because mum says it's a cool profession", etc.
Seldom are kids asked how they wish to BE as they grow up. If asked, they may not even know how to answer. But consider the significance of training ourselves to ask and answer this line of question. Is not the BEING of a person what truly matters? Imagine a child's answer to be "I wish to be loving, giving and joyful." If such a BEINGNESS stays with him/her, it would overlay whatever the child grows up into DOING (doctor, teacher, artist, etc). How would success not be attracted to a loving, giving and joyful doctor/teacher/artist/___? Success in the form of wealth, fame and many good friends and relations would flow into his/her life, and those are the HAVINGs.
So going in the right direction is important. BE - DO - HAVE: BE the kind of person and you'll DO the kind of things that are natural to that beingness, and you'll HAVE the results of the action.
BE is the subtle expression from our inner self, emanating from our mind and soul. You can try to pretend to be another and take action not in natural alignment with yourself, but you can only succeed in fooling yourself because everyone around will sense straightaway that "you are not yourself".
DO is the physical action taken by our body to bring about the cause-and-effect sequence. However, when your DOING is incongruent with your BEING, no matter how much hard work you put in, the result will be little. We all know of friends who were coerced into studying and later working in some professions that matter only to their parents, and they amount to little sense of accomplishment and joy.
HAVE is the harvest from a harmonizing flow from the inside-BE to the outside-DO. The more aligned from BE to DO, the sweeter the harvest. I guess this must be the reason why all the Masters/Gurus advise us to know our true self first and foremost, for our inner light will guide us in the outwardly manifestation of doing, and we'll then be able to have whatever we need and deserve.
My humble view is that our schools today are far more concerned with the DO than the BE. Teaching, exam and grading tend to be a one-size-fit-all conveyor-belt DO approach. Teachers have no time nor energy to facilitate individual pupils to discover their inner lights. Contrast that with how a Master would patiently educate his pupils in the ancient time with a focus on BE, attending to individual growth and artfully stimulating each pupil to flower at his own time.
Beingness is about self-realization and this is a spiritual discipline that conventional schools feel is out of their syllabii. But I believe it is what really counts to start with in our young today in order to nurture future generations of 'inside-outside' congruent human beings. It's an important step towards making our world more peaceful, joyful and loving in the future.
This is no mere layman theory of mine. Having incorporated meditation and yoga in the Tribal Schools in Jharkhand and the slum schools in Bangalore, I observed the underprivileged and often troubled students there achieved a heightened sense of calmness, joy and concentration. The merits are significant.
Education Ministers, school principals and teachers, are you game to evolve our schools forward? |