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Swami Suddhananda |
Everybody teaches children
to be independent and self-sufficient. They also tell them, “If you
give a fish, you create a beggar or a lazy man. But when you teach
fishing you create an active person.” Yet, most of the time, in the
inheritance of wealth, we forget that principle. If you leave money
behind, you may create a lazy, indulgent person but if you teach him
the art of earning, you would have left an active man. Of course,
that does not mean that every child must be denied any inheritance.
Then that will be like not feeding the person you are teaching
fishing. Teach the child to learn to earn, to be productive.
Simultaneously, the child must be taught to share.
The pathetic part is that children do not wish to share anything
with their parents except their money. They do not share their love,
kindness, or good values, but demand to share the material wealth to
further their brand of lifestyle where the individual is the first
and the last icon. Such children not only destroy themselves but
also a lot many around them, as they become the most conspicuous
consumers without being least productive and responsible.
Passing on the mantle is a great responsibility.
This is something that stares at every leader at one time or the
other, be it political, social, familial, industrial or even
religious leadership. The moment of reckoning comes when the baton
has to be passed on. In many families, as even the children, however
unworthy, get to inherit the family wealth, so also the followers,
most of the time sycophants, get to inherit positions.
The leaders seem to lose sight of subtle
discrimination. May be they never had it in the first place. Of
course, all the sycophants are not inheritors. Neither all the
inheritors are sycophants. Neither all the leaders have a choice in
selecting the next line of leadership. At least in political, social
or religious organisations, there is a possibility of exercising
choice, but in the family circumstances, the average man is a
prisoner of an unwritten tradition. Often, the parents do not wish
to exercise a choice or are ignorant enough to make a conscious
choice.
If the children are mature and have social
conscience, the parents can safely leave everything behind to the
children. But often the parents themselves are extremely
self-centered and have no insight into their own emotions.
Sometimes, children are more conscious and conscientious than the
parents.
But taking into account the natural flow of
events, the elders must learn to pass on their learning, their
vision to the children. Therefore, the elders must expose themselves
to all learning and the most important Self-Awareness.
Wherever I have gone, I have heard one inevitable
question from the elders: how to guide the youngsters. The concern
of the elders is very sincere and they seem to be a worried lot. But
the worries are of different kinds as even the elders are. Some want
their children to be studious and successful. Some, whose children
are intelligent, wish them to be humble, less arrogant and human.
Some wish their children to be rich. Some wish their children to be
more caring for their parents. In all these concerns, the individual
children and parents are more concerned about their family than
society at large. Since parents have struggled to take care of
themselves and have also taken care of their parents, they expect
the children to be more grateful to them than to society.
Thus, they are unconsciously passing on to the
children the same selfishness that they lived, all in the name of
duty. And this ‘duty’ is such a convincing concept. Here they
conveniently forget that they have a duty towards society, as they
do not wish to share anything with others. When the whole society
participates in their growth, they want the harvest exclusively for
themselves. They also conveniently forget that they have a ‘duty’
towards themselves – to find their fulfillment beyond the individual
emptiness. They go on pleasing ‘others’ all for their own sake and
go on complaining that others are ungrateful though they always
lived for others.
The whole life is seemingly spent on ‘pleasing’
others when, in fact, they are always struggling to please
themselves. Nothing wrong in pleasing one’s own Self, only if one is
aware how fundamentally essential it is to ‘please’ one’s own Self
in order to live for others in the real sense of the term.
Many in the older generation have mouthed the
ideal of living for others while all along struggling to please and
live for themselves. The obsession of the younger generation to
please themselves comes as a rude shock to elders who, in their
heart of hearts, wish that they too had done so, but could not. But
here too is a flaw in the lives of the youngsters as they too are
deceiving themselves. While living for themselves, they are living a
life constantly struggling to please the senses and to give shape to
the subtle conditionings, images imposed upon them. In fact, they
are always struggling to fulfil a dream, somebody else’s dream
transplanted in their mind.
If the older generation was striving to please
other relatives and family members to please themselves, the younger
generation is obsessed with images of luxury, prosperity in their
mind and they struggle to fulfil that image to bring fulfilment in
their lives. Thus, the struggle brings more material prosperity but
greater emptiness as the fulfilment of many personal dreams leaves
nothing more exotic to dream! At least the elders could delude
themselves that had they lived for themselves they would have been
happy as though they were all along living for others! The false
hope seems to provide a little more comfort than the hopelessness!
That is why if the preceding generation is really
interested in passing some wisdom to the next generation, first they
must analyse their own lives. They must accept the reality of the
selfishness they lived in the name of selfless concern for others
and then they must understand that the real selflessness is to
understand their own nature and to find that Natural Fulfilment in
their own nature. Then the youngsters do not have to fulfil the
dream of owning a fast car to make himself happy, as even the elders
do not have to please others to make themselves happy.
That should not lead somebody to conclude that
the happy man is a selfish monster who neither cares for making
others happy nor in owning the wealth or the symbols of wealth. What
it means is that the person finds his fulfilment in himself and then
his whole life – the material prosperity, physical strength,
emotional maturity and intellectual convictions – is dedicated to
help others achieving the same fulfilment at all levels.
First the elders must know to pass on the message
to the young. But this is not an absolute law. Often, the younger
body has a more matured head on it and can teach a few things to the
still-obsessive elders. Hence, the educated and mature with total
Self-Awareness must live the message and thereby pass on the image
to the next generation.
There shall be many apparent contradictions,
pitfalls, but the mature must hold on to the central vision, the
total Self-Awareness and in time the emphasis, the Reality, the
Happiness that is Self, will catch on. The creation is always lovely
and will appear lovely to more and more people as they learn to love
themselves for who they and others are and therefore to love all
that they have and the others have!
A beginning has to be made! Here and now.
Swami Suddhananda
Samvit Sagar Trust
Tiruvannamalai
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