Bhagavatam-daily 43 – 11.07.33 – Learning is not for earning or controlling, but for harmonizing

Talking about his various teachers and what he learned from them, thank you.
So this is the first of a series of three verses that list the 24 gurus of the Avadhut Brahmana, so in this verse Prithvi, the earth, Vayur, the air, Aakasham, the sky, Aapo is water, Agnish is fire, Chandrama is moon, Ravi is sun, Kapoto, pigeon, Ajgaraha, python, Sindhu is the sea, Patango, Madhukrud, Gajaha, Patanga as you know is the moth, Madhukrud is the honey bee, Gajaha is the effect, so the specific lessons that the Avadhut Brahmana learned will be delineated in the future chapters, right now let us focus primarily on some principles of how this learning is taking place, generally speaking we don’t talk normally about learning in education setup, there is a teacher, there is a syllabus, there is teaching and there is a student who again learns that means that the teacher and the student are individuals, the syllabus is the subject that is to be taught and the teaching is the means of conveying, of transmitting the syllabus to the student and then the student learns the lessons, so this is the way structured education works, but often structured education of this sort doesn’t always necessarily impart the most important lessons, so the re are some famous thinkers who have said that learning is what we remember after we forget what we were taught in school, that means it’s talking about something which is other than memorization and regurgitation of those paths, it goes beyond to what is internally assimilated in terms of values that become a part of our being, information that is memorized then just stays somewhere in the brain, it doesn’t really shape our character, it doesn’t become a fabric of our being, but what is actually learned is that which becomes the fabric of our being, so now this brings us to the question, what is the purpose of education, what is the purpose of learning? Nowadays, the primary purpose of learning is earning, that’s why the jobs, the educational careers or educational choices which promise secure jobs or financially rewarding jobs, those are the careers that most people seek, so in India there may be engineering and medicine, in other countries there may be others according to that particular situation, so this is actually that learning for earning is actually a very low level of motivation for learning and this is not just from the Vedic point of view, even in the other parts, other wisdom traditions also that learning had a higher purpose was understood, there is an anecdote from Euclid’s life, Euclid was as we know a pioneer of geometry and he was studying and teaching geometry to his students and one student asked, but what is the use of this, what am I going, how is this going to help me to earn my living, what am I going to get out of studying all these shapes and things like that, so Euclid called his servant and told him, give this boy a coin, he said unless he gets a coin, he doesn’t see the point of studying anything, so Euclid of course spoke this is the measure of regret and he said take the coin and then he told the boy to go away, he said if what you want is just a coin, there is no need for you to study geometry, just take the coin and go away, the point was that he disapproved of reducing learning to a quest for earning alone and that disapproval is there even in the Vedic traditions, then what is the purpose of learning, the purpose of learning at another level could be for example, when say now the science is advancing and we have so much scientific and technological knowledge, now this is definitely more evolved kind of thinking and living at one level, then just the pursuit of gross sense gratification, so even those scientists who do this kind of research and this come up with discoveries and inventions, they are living, they are to some extent giving up obsession with gross sensory pleasures and they are trying to become absorbed in discovering something higher, so to a large extent this can be in the mode of goodness, but although they may be interested in research, often the rest of the society is interested primarily in using the knowledge and abusing the knowledge quite often, so that knowledge may be is often used for controlling, so if you see most of the purpose of science is to develop technology and essentially technology is what, it is applied science but applied for what? Applied for controlling nature in a way that is not possible normally, so the water is flowing in one particular direction, we use this technology to check its flow in that direction by building a dam or whatever and we try to get it to flow in another direction or we keep it at one place, now naturally we as human beings for our survival and progress need to tap the resources of nature, but overall we need to live with nature not live on nature, live on nature means to exploit nature for our purposes and to deplete nature because of our exploitation of natural resources, to live with nature means to recognize that we have responsibility to nature, also not just that nature is meant for us to exploit, but we also have to take care of its delicate ecological balances and we also have to make some contribution. So, nature is meant to be harmonized with, but often scientific technology is used for controlling and dominating nature and that sort of knowledge is also not very pure, it is contaminated by the, by its being dominated by the lust for control, there may be a few scientists who are pure scientists, they are purely in search of knowledge itself, but most scientists are not, now this is not to criticize scientists in science, but it is to recognize the limitation of any particular method. So, now how do we come to know about the ultimate answers, if our speculation is not taking us any ahead anyway, that is why we need, we need to not only learn, but we need to learn the purpose of learning, real learning begins with learning the purpose of learning, that purpose is neither earning nor controlling, it is harmonizing, harmonizing with our innermost nature, our spiritual nature as parts of God and thereby harmonizing with God.
So, as long as we are disharmoniously situated, then there will be struggle and suffering because the mind and senses will always fill us with separatist agendas, but when we understand based on a holistic awareness of the purpose of knowledge, then we will use our learning to harmonize with our nature and with God and that will bring happiness internally and that will radiate happiness externally. So, how this lesson of harmonization the Avadhut Brahmana learned from the various elements will be discussed in the future verses. Thank you.