Hindu philosophy alone can provide guidance and direction to the world Gist of Pujanaeeya Sudarshanji during the IT professionals meet at Bhagyanagar on 4th Nov 06 _______________________________________________ When Doctorji started RSS some 80 years back, people flouted at his efforts of uniting Hindus and bringing them together. But in a span of just 15 years, Doctorji proved that Hindus could be organized before he handed over the baton to Shri Guruji. Later, Shri Guruji toured the length and breadth of the country continuously for 33 years, urging the people to consider Bhrath mata as the embodiment of Jaganmata and to render their lives in the service of society. In order to empower the society, Swayamsevaks are expected to work as catalysts bringing together the people and making them realize their social responsibility of serving others. We believe that Government alone can never bring about a social change and it is the responsibility of people. Even after the British had left us, we still follow the same pattern of western development that is centralized, energy consumptive, capital intensive, labor dissuasive and echo destructive. As a result, today we find ourselves in such a miserable state where we are not able to provide every individual two square meals a day. For us, a society is not a mere conglomeration of different individuals each serving his selfish interest. A society is a gathering of a group of people who share some common interests, carry some sorts of affinity among themselves and are concerned for each other that ultimately leads to a common worldview. Philosophers all over the world have been trying to arrive at such a worldview, which is based on the answers to three basic questions, and those questions are, Who am I? What is this universe? What is my relationship with this universe? And answers to the above questions led to various ideologies and philosophies. Philosophies so formed can broadly be classified into two categories. 1. those who consider matter and spirit can not be separated and inter-related, and 2. those who consider matter and spirit are different and not at all connected. Bharath, china and other eastern philosophies come under first category whereas western philosophy comes under second category. The western science has its roots in Greek philosophy and early Greek philosophers had drawn a clear line between matter and spirit. In subsequent centuries, this dualism between matter and spirit, mind and body had become the basis for western science. Aristotle’s postulation in 3rd century BC that earth is stationary and all other planets including Sun revolve around the Earth was even accepted by the Bible and any contradiction to this was considered as blasphemy and was severely punishable. As a result, the progress of science was halted for almost 1500 years till 14th century AD. It was only in 15th century, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton challenged these propositions despite the threats form Church. It was also the time during which, Catholic Church had brutally tortured and murdered more than 99 million women from 1484 AD to 1784 AD in the name of witchcraft. But, with the advent of Newton and his mechanist model, the modern science gained momentum and developed by leaps and bounds. His main propositions were that the whole world is like a machine and three dimensional with length, breadth and height. Time is linear, space is homogenous and a force called ‘gravitational force’ governs the entire universe. He further said, mind is devoid of spirit. This completely eliminated the role of God in science. This continued till 20th century until Albert Einstein had come out with his “theory of relativity”. He said, everything is only a partial truth and relative in this universe and apart from the three dimensions, there is a fourth dimension to this universe and that is TIME. The early part of the 20th century witnessed significant progress in science with the research of the scientists like Neils Bore and others on atom. These scientists were wonderstruck with what they saw and finally concluded that the world is indeterministic and the whole universe is inseparable quantum interconnectedness where every particle contains every other particle. Thus, western science started from duality and gradually reached Advaita. Relevance of Our Philosophy. It is a matter of pride when we realize that our sages could say a long back what the western science had said incompletely after thousands of years of research. The above conclusion of the west had been said by our Upanishads some thousands of years back when they said “ A tree in a seed and a seed in a tree”. The west, in spite of its progress in material science could not answer the first question convincingly even today. With its limitations to stretch beyond body, mind and intellect, the West had created a competitive mindset, which does not remain fair for long. On the other hand, our philosophy had the answer for all the three questions thus guiding the entire mankind towards eternal glory. As far as the first question is concerned, an individual is made up of four elements, viz body, mind, intellect and Atman. This Atman is the unification force between an individual and society. Our seers had experienced this highest state even in awakened state. And it is the realization of this Atman that makes an individual transcend the levels of My family, My region, My society, My nation and finally My universe. We find such examples in the lives of Swami Ramatheerth, Swami Vivekanada, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa and many others. Based on these, we can classify human beings into five categories, viz Nara Rakshas, Nara Pashu, Nara, Narotham and Narayan. Our, Hindu Dharma elevates man from the stage of Nara Rakshas to the highest level of Narayan. The British and the west could not understand the concept of Dharma and tried to equate it with a much narrower term called Religion. Our intellectuals and academicians could not sense the trap of the British and blindly started accepting both the terms as synonymous and one and the same. But Dharma is not religion. Dharma is our duty. We don’t believe in rights but we believe in duties. We also believe that in performing my duty, others rights are protected. Thus by performing my duty as son, my parent’s rights are protected. By performing my duty as a student, the rights of my Guru are protected. Similarly, our body should work in consonance with nature and only then our rights are protected. We have to realize that nature has limited resources and it can only meet our needs but not our greed. We should milk the nature, not exploit nor torture it as was suggested by the West. The western concepts of competition and dominance have already resulted in two world wars and the third is in offing. The entire world needs guidance and direction and lets all realize the fact that it is only Hindu philosophy alone can provide that much needed direction. The indications of a Hindu renaissance are quite visible and lets concentrate all our energies in the direction of restoring the eternal glory of our Bharath Mata. Today we are heading in that direction by making our presence felt in every sphere of life in global arena and especially in the field of IT. Still there are people who are starving for the lack of food, who die of lack of proper medication even today. It is our bounden duty to serve all those destitute, down trodden and the poor. And before we leave, lets resolve that of our all earnings, material and spiritual, lets keep with us only so much that are needed for our survival and offer the rest to the society facilitating our Bharath Mata reach the pinnacle of glory at the earliest. |
Friday, December 15, 2006
Hindu philosophy alone can provide guidance and direction to the world.
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