Kabirji Talk
Venerable Kabirji facilitated a session/teaching on ‘Why are you being educated – from a perspective of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Buddha’.
It is indeed a significant event, when educators stop and deliberate on ‘Education’ and attempt to understand its etymology, its defintion, its purpose and the future direction that it needs to be nudged into.
‘Why are we being educated?’ was the topic on which Venerable Kabirji recently spoke to the students, teachers and staff of Shikshantar.
The session started with looking at the meaning of the word ‘Education’ in different languges. While its Sanskrit equivalent ‘Shiksha’ means ‘to train the mind based on the authentic parampara’, the Latin verb from which it is derived, ‘Educare’, means ‘to draw out or bring forth’.
Through sharing of words by thinkers like Sri Aurobindo, Jiddu Krihnamoorthy, Kabirji aquainted his audience with the meaning of education in its truest sense- that which relates to self-awareness, an understanding of one’s emotions, a liberation from the constraints of the mind, that which leads to Nirvana and Moksha. This education rests on the premise that every individual holds within himself/herself a pure seed which when provided with optimal opportunities grows and flowers into a balanced and happy human being. The purpose of education, according to Gandhiji, has to be a development of the head, heart and hands.
Once the tone of the talk was set, it didnt take long for all in the room to realise that contemporary education in the country had departed far away from the ideals, lending truth to Sri Aurobindo’s words of 1909 that ‘Education in India is immitative, self-forgetful and fake’.
The gravity of the situation was very well communicated through Kabirji’s choice of words and the seriousness on his face and in his voice. All educators present in the room went back with a sense of responsibility, of being change-makers, in helping realign education to be meaningful, contextual and authentic, focusing on the development of the psychic being.
‘Investigate what genuine love is’, were the parting words of Kabirji.
And the starting point of a new journey for all teachers.
