A Cultured, Educated Life

Monday, July 26, 2010, 17:10

Nature and culture are two distinct and separate things. We are all born with a nature of our own, a part of it common to all and a part personal to each. Culture is what we acquire by education, observation and hard practice.

A person who brings about a transformation in his or her personality that results in the creation of joy and harmony all around and peace within can be said to be truly educated. When outer harmony alone is attained at the expense of inner joy, the individual suffers. Hence, it is partial education only. When outer harmony is sacrificed for the sake of inner satisfaction, it is a false education and is not worthy of its name. Such a person will not even have true inner joy. Thus, education must provide a person with a way to reconcile his or her inner and outer demands.

Respect for Mother Nature

Human beings have several physical needs, such as food, clothing and shelter besides the natural needs for air and water. All these needs can and have to be satisfied through Mother Nature, who is ever ready to supply all the wants of all beings in the world. While animals make use of nature as she is, human beings change and improve her to suit their superior tastes, acquired through their more evolved thinking power. Even then, plentiful and abounding nature yields all her riches without shirking the probing intellect of the human. As a result, we see the glorious manner in which modern science has changed the face of the earth.

Such progress is no doubt the result of education. However, human beings have yet to learn something more. They should realise that nature is a pliable material in their hands and has to be properly used, since for all time to come, she is there to serve us. If we do not know how to keep nature pure and clean, future generations will be doomed.

Nature has a way of keeping herself pure from the ordinary uses of living beings, but when human beings with their scientific knowledge invent machinery that pollutes the air, the water. and the earth, she requires a long time to get purged of all impurities that are poured into her. In the meantime, generations of living beings get hurt by humanity's dangerous inventions. So pleasent-day education must develop in a person a healthy respect towards bountiful nature and a precaution not to take undue advantage of her wealth.

About the article

This article is written by Swamini Saradapriyananda for the magazine, 'Vedanta Vani' of Chinmaya Mission.