Value Education and Spirituality 06 – The Spiritual Foundation of Values 4 – Let secularism protect us from narrow-mindedness, not restrict us in empty-mindedness

Transcript

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next session. Thank you. Hare Krishna.
Hare Krishna. Welcome back to the value education and spirituality series. We are discussing the fourth session in the spiritual foundations of values.
And we will discuss today on the topic of secularism. Secularism is meant to save us from narrow-mindedness, not trap us in empty-mindedness. Now, narrow-mindedness refers to the idea that through narrowness of beliefs, my way is the only way, all other ways are wrong.
So, this sort of narrow-mindedness leads to intolerance and may even lead to violence. And the idea that one’s faith, one’s belief should not be imposed on others, that is a valuable, an essential foundation of the contemporary thought and way of living. So, that is definitely to be respected.
So, secularism is meant to save us from narrow-mindedness. But it is not meant to make us empty-minded. So, empty-minded means that the mind does not contain anything valuable.
The mind does not contain this too. So, what does it mean by this when we say secularism should do this and not do that? So, secularism, what is the basic understanding? If you look at the Indian constitution, when it was written, the definition of secularism was not finalised at that time. And thereafter also, things went on and basically, because the writers of the constitution felt that it was a sensitive and volatile issue, they postponed it for later and eventually, it was never finalised.
What exactly do we mean by secularism? And because of that redefinition or because of that indecision at that time, things were postponed and it has never been clearly defined. What do we actually mean by secularism? Certainly, India is a multicultural country with different, not just religions, but different cultures with people who have quite a significantly different beliefs. And for India to live harmoniously, secularism is important.
And so, practically, many of the leading countries in the world, be it America or other countries, they all also have adopted the value of secularism. Now, secularism, why are we discussing this topic today? Because now we are moving forward in this course and henceforth, we will be discussing about values from the Indian wisdom tradition. We will be discussing from Mahabharata, from the Ramayana and from the Bhagavatam, the Bhagavata Purana.
So, now these books may be thought of as religious books, are generally thought of as religious books. And the question may come up, why should we study religious books in an educational institution, which being a part of a secular country is meant to be secular. So, secular is at best meant to be non-religious, it is not meant to be anti-religious.
So, non-religious means at best, that means, secularism is that it should not favour any particular religion. In that sense, it is non-religious. Anti-religious means that secularism does not, anti-religion means that secularism is meant to oppose religion and to throttle out religion.
That was the notion of the communist countries, both Russia, USSR, Soviet Russia and China also. And that regime, which is officially, institutionally, governmentally atheistic, that was the most violent rule in world history, as far as recorded history goes. And certainly, definitely the most in recent history.
In fact, in Russia and USSR and China itself, the number of people who were killed within the country, that means by their own compatriots, by their own citizens, by the government largely, there were actually seven times more number of people killed in World War I and World War II combined. It was massive. So, the idea that we can have a godless world, which will be happy, that secularism is the, secularism equating it with atheism, that is the pathway to progress and happiness, which was the defining belief, one of the defining beliefs of the Marxist credo, aggressive Marxist credo that ruled Soviet Union and Russia, China, that has largely proved to be historically, empirically falsified.
So, secularism, neither in terms of its doctrine, doctrinal content, nor in terms of social application, how it has been lived, it is desirable to equate it with anti-religiousness or atheism. So, often people say that religion causes war, but statistics demonstrate that the amount of violence that has been caused by atheism is far, far greater. In atheistic governments, the amount of violence that has existed is far, far greater.
So, we are not talking so much about religious violence and things like that over here. Our focus is that secularism is not meant to deprive us of the wisdom that is available in the wisdom traditions of the world. So, when people are cut off from spiritual wisdom in the name of secularism, terrible social and social disasters, like what we discussed in the Soviet, in the coming, in the atheistic countries, have happened in the world.
Now, where does that leave us in terms of our present educational scenario and how we are meant to best live in the world in which we face ourselves, especially today? So, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Bhagwat, these can be studied even from a literary point of view for our own intellectual, cultural, emotional and spiritual enrichment. We do not have to see them necessarily as religious scriptures to benefit from them. And when we study them within an educational context, if we say that we cannot study them just because they are seen as religious books, then actually we are denying ourselves a major part of our national legacy.
So, these are the books that have not just influenced millions of people for millennia, actually billions of people for millennia, but also profoundly shaped the thoughts and lives of so many people. But these books have, they have come from India as their homeland. So, it’s natural that the books which are studied, which have shaped the lives of so many people, which are a part of our national legacy, how can we neglect them? Then we are actually cutting ourselves off from a very critical part, from a very fundamental part of our national legacy.
And I said, then the wisdom that we could get by studying these books will be depriving ourselves of that. And this is not, this sort of deprivation is not what secularism is meant to be. And just as, say, in Europe, which is the parent of most of the Western world, America also traces back its lineage to Europe.
If we move backwards, then what we will see is that they have their tradition. And then they have the Germanic sagas, Iliad, Odyssey, Shakespeare’s books. And then if you go backward, there are further other stories.
These are a part of the national heritage. And say every country, the country which is there, say Spain has its own national heritage. Russia has its own national heritage.
And this is cherished in the study. And by the studying that the wisdom of the ancestors have accumulated over generations, that is available for the subsequent generations, for the current generations of that country. So even from the point of view of studying our national, retaining our national legacy, studying these books can be valuable, especially if they can help us to gain valuable lessons of wisdom.
Now, significantly these books, which form a part of the Vedic literature, and many of these Vedic literatures have been profoundly appreciated and relished, not just by people who are born and brought up in India, but by people in different parts of the world. And these people study it not just because of some religious dogma, they study it because they find the wisdom within it so attractive, so appealing. So essentially, we study these books based on their literary merit as a part of a national legacy for enriching ourselves with the wisdom that they contain.
And this is not religious instruction or indoctrination, because we will be, when we study these, we will be sympathetic. Okay, that means, if we study the character of Yudhishthira, or we study the character of Duryodhana, what he thinks is right and wrong, what Yudhishthira thinks is right and wrong, that this describes a different cultural context, and they thought differently, and they had different beliefs at that time. So, when we want to understand the decisions that made, the choices that they faced, we will, if you want to truly understand it, we’ll have to enter into their worldview.
You have to be sympathetic towards them in approaching what they are doing. And as a sympathetic approach, it does not mean that we uncritically accept everything that we see, but we just provisionally accept the way we think and then see how it is relevant to us in our lives. So, this approach towards study of the wisdom traditions and of the books within the Indian tradition like Mahabharata and others, it will help us to enrich ourselves.
And if you look at the world’s wisdom traditions, that most of the world’s wisdom traditions are associated with certain religions, there’s the Hindu wisdom tradition, there is the Christian wisdom tradition, there’s the Buddhist tradition, like that there are many different wisdom traditions, they generally have a common goal. And that common goal is to make people better. If you look at the various religions, they have certain, they praise certain virtues.
For example, religions may say that we should not steal from others, that we should be honest, we should be truthful, we should be kind to others. So, various principles that are talked about in the religions, if people live according to that, they would become better and they would contribute to making the world better. And in this way, if we see the various religious books, they can be seen as guidebooks for self-improvement.
And when we see them from this perspective, then denying ourselves of access to them in the name of self-secularism is a misunderstanding of self-secularism and that will not save us from narrow-mindedness, actually that will end up making us empty-minded. So, if we consider this point that we are all meant to, we all want to improve ourselves. And when we want to improve ourselves, whatever can help us improve ourselves, we use that.
So, for example, if there is some book which helps us to become better speakers, better public speakers, better conversationalists, better at say writing letters, now whether that book has been that wisdom or whether it has come from this country or that country or this person of this religious denomination, that religious denomination, that will not make much difference. Knowledge wherever is available, we take that knowledge and we benefit ourselves from it. So, if some scientist makes a discovery somewhere, say it is a discovery which can cure a deadly disease which is wrecking people in various parts of the world, then often and after new processes follow, that knowledge is made available to everyone so that people can be cured and people can be saved.
So, knowledge is meant to benefit everyone. And say a student is studying computer engineering in some good engineering college in India, and then the person gets an opportunity to study computer engineering, maybe go as an apprentice in the vacations for 2-3 months, say to the world’s premier computer research institute, say MIT in America. Now, would that person say that, hey, I am from this college, therefore, I will stay only in this college, I learn only from this college, I have not learned from anywhere else.
No. If somebody starts saying like that, we will ask the person, are you interested in college or are you interested in knowledge? The purpose of the college is to help us gain knowledge. So, if somebody becomes too attached to college and forgets the knowledge, then that person is missing the purpose of college.
The same way, all of us want to become better and if anything can help us to become better, then why not? And if that happens to be part of a national heritage, then that is wonderful. Even if it is a part of certain religious tradition, that does not mean that we have to reject that just because of secularism. So, what we are talking about here is a plan for self-improvement based on the wisdom that has been accumulated or acquired and passed on generation after generation within the Indian wisdom tradition.
And actually, the Indian wisdom tradition is being appreciated increasingly all over the world. There is an American historian, Philip Goldberg, he has written a book called American Veda. And this book, he talks about, right from the times of Ralph Waldo Emerson when he read the Bhagavad Gita, down to today’s age where almost one of every, almost every other American practises yoga and a significant number of them practise it not just for better body shape, but they also practise it for better consciousness, for peace of mind and for depth of living.
So, throughout the several centuries, how Indian spirituality, the spiritual wisdom from India has attracted and influenced American culture and has penetrated even the American heartland, the intellectual centre of America, that has been talked about in this book. In fact, kirtan as a musical genre is becoming so popular that there are proposals and serious proposals going on that this is, there are different musical genres which get awards, there can be Grammy Awards for kirtan itself as a genre of music. So, kirtan has originated from India.
So, the point is Indian spirituality just for its wisdom, just for its uplifting effects is being appreciated by the country that is considered to be the world leader by many. Why is that? It’s because of the value of what it contains, what it has to offer to the world. So, if the world is benefiting from the Indian wisdom tradition, then why should India not benefit? And why should Indians be cut off? So, when we study this, we are not necessarily studying this as the absolute truth, where it is a religious dogma from which secularism is meant to protect us, that my way is the only way and all other ways are wrong.
And that is why, if that sort of indoctrination is happening, that is undesirable. But if you look at the Mahabharata itself, and at the broad wisdom tradition from which it has come, this tradition is marked by tolerance. Even in the Mahabharata itself, we will see that there are different people of different spiritual orientations, different beliefs.
At that time, the religions that are mainstream today, they were not existing. The Abrahamic religions are of a relatively recent origin and their time period does not intersect with the time period that is described in the Mahabharata. So, Abrahamic religions refer to those religions except Abraham as their one of their founding prophets, that is Judaism, then Christianity and Islam.
So, now, the point which we are making is that within the Mahabharata itself, we see people with different orientations, different beliefs, and this variety is encouraged. And often there is serious philosophical discussion between people of different understandings. And that is how mutual enrichment happens and people get elevated.
So, when we are talking about studying the scriptures, it is for self-enrichment, it is for self-development. Another metaphor to understand this could be the medicine metaphor. There are different ways in which people who are sick can become cured.
There can be allopathy, there can be Ayurveda, there can be naturopathy, there can be homoeopathy. Now, within their own things, there may be some difference, how the body is understood, how the disease is cured, but they have a common purpose, that is to heal the person, to make the person’s health better. And now, if we say that in the name of secularism, one should not take any medicine, one should not become partial to any medical system, then the end result of that would be the person who is sick would stay sick.
So, yes, we could say in the name of secularism, if we say that one should not benefit oneself from the wisdom traditions that are there, then that is basically similar. And it would be unfortunate, we will be depriving ourselves. So, the idea is that nobody’s belief should be imposed on anybody else.
But if a certain book, even if it is religious, has had a profound influence in shaping a nation, then studying it is a part of a national legacy. And by studying it, we will have to benefit ourselves. And again, there is freedom of choice in terms of whether one accepts it or not.
In fact, this ethos of individual choice and acceptance is there in the Bhagavad Gita itself. The Bhagavad Gita discusses very serious philosophy. And at the end of it, in 18.63, Krishna tells, vimrishaita dasheshena yathecchittha kuru Deliberate deeply on what has been spoken, what we have discussed, and then yathecchittha kuru, then do as you desire.
So here, Krishna, within the context of the Mahabharata and the Gita, is considered to be God. And God is speaking to a human being, Arjuna, and God is respecting the individuality and the freedom of the human being and is appealing to the individual. Think and then decide what you should do.
So that same open-mindedness, that respect for our freedom, is there within the broad Indian tradition. So there is no dogma or there is no dogmatic imposition that one has to believe this, one has to accept this. No.
This is an opportunity for us to familiarise ourselves, not just in a cultural, entertainment-centred way, as happens often in most television serials or most movies or even in many comics renditions and things like that. Often in these renditions, the primary focus is entertainment. And because the focus is entertainment, the deeper issues which may require greater philosophical or intellectual engagement, and because of which they do not have much entertainment value or entertainment appeal, these are often skirted over.
They are neglected or they are very, very simplistically. So that is not the way we study. We study it from the point of view of understanding the issues and basically seeing what values people live according to and what consequences they face because of those values and how that can help us to choose the values that we live according, that we can hold our lives according to.
So we can study these books from that perspective for our own self-improvement. And that way, another example to illustrate this, there can be different ways to cure ourselves. The purpose is to cure ourselves in all various medical treatments.
Similarly, in studying the wisdom tradition, the purpose is to cure, to make ourselves better by learning the right values and learning the values that bring out the best within us. Another way to understand is if you want to climb a mountain. So when you want to climb up a mountain, at that time, there may be different ways.
There may be a path from this side, there may be a path from this side, there may be a path from this side. But there is one common goal that is to achieve in the different paths. So various religions are basically meant to elevate people from a lower level consciousness to higher level consciousness, from a consciousness that is mostly materialistic, obsessed with temporary worldly things, and then a consciousness that develops to deeper, broader concerns, the more fundamental questions of life.
So this elevation, there can be different paths to rise up towards the mountain peak. So similarly, there are different religions which enable people to rise upwards. So again, in this metaphor, secularism means people should be given the choice how they should go up, which path they should choose to go up.
But to rigidly disconnect someone, disconnect a person from a particular path, just because of the name of religion, that is undesirable. So the Indian wisdom tradition has helped people to elevate themselves, to rise to greater and deeper levels of consciousness in the past, and that path has been paved by the wisdom literature, such as the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Bhagavad Gita, and others. And we study these books, we discuss the themes therein, to help ourselves, to help decide which path we want to choose, whether we want to choose any path, and how we can choose the path by which we can rise to higher levels of consciousness, higher levels of consciousness means that we become better human beings.
How do the two relate with each other? When the consciousness is lower, one finds pleasure often in lower things. When the consciousness is higher, one finds pleasure in higher things. Some people may find pleasure in hurting others, they call us sadists.
Other people may find pleasure in helping others. Somebody is eating food, eating lunch, and some bully comes along and just knocks over the box, lunch box, and then laughs. Wow, that is such a low-level pleasure.
Somebody is hungry, needs food, and knock away that food, waste the food that itself is bad, cause misery and fear in another person, that is bad. If somebody gets pleasure in that, that’s a very low-level consciousness and a very low-level seeking of pleasure. But somebody else is having a higher level of consciousness and says, oh, you have this food? Do you want some more? You are hungry? I can provide you my food today.
And one gets joy in sharing. One gains joy in offering. That person does that not because there is some imposition, but because that person is getting joy in doing their activity.
So, when we become enriched with spiritual wisdom, then what we find happiness in is changes. It becomes more refined. And that higher level of consciousness can actually help us to become better, help us to make, to contribute to making the world better.
And we can study the Vedic wisdom tradition, the literature within it. From that perspective, to see how we can become better and what path these people, these books offer, have offered in the past to help people become better. And what have people found in this path, in these books, because of which they are so popular and because of which so many people venerate these books.
And what do they have to offer for us in today’s times? So, we do respect the value of secularism. And in fact, if we look at it in a broad sense, the value of secularism is respected even in the Vedic wisdom tradition itself. And we recognise that secularism should not make us impose any belief system on others, but at the same time, it should not impose the notion that we cannot have any connection with wisdom literature, just because they happen to, just because they are belonging to a particular religion or they are followed by people of a particular religion.
So, we study them and we can study them as a part of our national legacy. We can study them as guidebooks for self-improvement. And we can study them for raising our consciousness and becoming better