Leaving war for later discussions in detail I want to take up one topic which parents and kids may find useful and I like to provide this as first practical suggestion through this blog. This will be the first gem in our virtue tool box in an effort to identify good culture to save the earth.
Hindu mythology calls the current era as "Kali Yug" meaning an era where desires prevail over virtues and demonic instincts of men will overpower the "sat"vic or peaceful instincts. The able saints have prescribed "devotion" to be the only means of salvation in this era. However devotion, they also warn, is not a short cut and it is a long path testing your patience and requiring a lot of penance. In the modern world there are two things which have become precious and scarce., Viz., money and time. Any amount of money is not good enough when I own it. (and it is a lot when my neighbour owns it) Since most of our time is spent in chasing the elusive money, we do not have time for anything ... definitely not for the devotion or bhakthi stuff - not in the list of priority items.
In essence we do not have time to pray or do penance. So how do we improve the virtue content of life if there is no devotion? Is there a good substitute to sweeten the life? At this point let me seek the help of Thiruvalluvar - the greatest saint poet of Tamil literature. I adore Thirukural - the epic work of Saint Valluvar. In my opinion I would recommend the contents of Kural as a template for documenting one's culture. The chapter headings provide a natural flow of sections and sub-sections for documenting good culture. It addresses all the aspects of life in three sections viz. Virtue, Material and pleasures of life. He prescribes virtues not only for the family men but for ascetics also. So giving up the worldly pleasures and renouncing the world does not absolve you of responsibilities to practise a culture.
Since there is no time to follow all the virtues can we follow just one simple virtue which would give the maximum benefits in life? I tried to find this key treasure in Kural again by searching Kural intensely. During my search, I was surprised to find the virtue of "Restrain your anger" sub-sectioned in the virtues for ascetics. Does that mean that in good old days, only so called saints and sages fall a prey to anger and rage? There are countless stories of these saints and sages cursing the mortals. Was the family man always quiet and patient? At this point of time, I was convinced that if you are easy to get provoked by anger, Valluvar is not considering you fit to live in a family. Thus I feel that "restraining or controlling your anger" is the only virtue that can absolve all our problems in life. If you want kids to have a happy and contented life, keep on insisting them that they control anger and become calm and composed when the rage brews in them. We should constantly practise this virtue so that the Kaliyug becomes a yug without anger.
If you study chapter 37 of kural, you will find the reason why anger is not of any use to any one. I find in the first two verses Valluvar repeating the same idea. (this is strange in poetic rendering unless the author feels strongly for the point to be emphasised)
To quote Suddanand Bharathiyar's translation those two verses are
Anger against the weak is wrong
It is futile against the strong.
Vain is wrath against men of force
Against the meek it is still worse.
How true these statements are? Your anger bears no fruit. Valluvar speaks about anger against the weak and the strong? How about anger shown towards your own equal? Will that bear any fruit? Kural again answers:
Off with wrath with any one.
It is the source of sin and pain.
Anger is equivalent of Sin and Pain. Jealousy at least can propel you and make you work hard. but anger has no use at all and will cause harm to everyone... to the giver and those who face it.
Kural is again very emphatic in a later verse. If you want to save yourself, kill your anger otherwise the anger will kill you.
Thyself to save, from wrath away!
If not thyself the wrath will slay
The last gem supporting this advice is the last kural in this chapter. You should restrain your anger to become a Saint.
Dead are they who are anger-fed
Saints are they from whom wrath has fled.
Five things are evil in life. Jealousy, Desire, Violence, harsh words and wrath or anger. In modern world you can not avoid desire completely. With some amount of desire allowed, you can not keep away from Jealousy and Violence. They breed where desires yield. If you can restrain anger, you may not use harsh words at all. Thus it is possible in this world to restrain anger even if you do not follow any other virtue. But when you restrain your anger, all virtues will slowly walk in and glorify our lives.
Controlling anger is the essence of non-violence. Let us examine what Bible preached. When some one slaps you on one cheek, show him the other. What a great documentation of highest form of tolerance and highest level of display of non-violence!!. How could Christ preach this or even think so nobly? The answer is clear he had no anger. He had completely controlled anger - the first signs of sin that devil will tempt you to succumb to. When Christ had no anger or completely controlled it, forgiving was easy and natural for him.
But this virtue is very very tough to practise. What are my experiences? Can world really adopt this easily? How can we make our kids free of wrath and anger? More on this in later posts.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
What is culture why it is important and can man control culture?
I planned to define 'culture' first and then expand the topic on changing cultures. However that turned out to be a daunting task. I did not like the option of cutting and pasting the definition from a renowned dictionary. I now think of an idea of dwelling on some anecdotes of culture and look at it closely through examples and try to provide a definition agreeable to the majority of readers.
Culture is definitely a pattern of behaviour of a group. If men were to live in isolation then we will not be worrying about erosion of values in culture. In fact even if families were to live separately and not as a community, we would have very little to talk about culture. Culture is the price man has paid for living as a community. Or look at positively culture is the shield which protects the man against the conflicts of life in a group. Culture lives and will live as long as mankind. The irony is this living thing is never documented but it is ever changing.
Every one agrees that "change management" is the essential ingredient of success for modern life or modern enterprise. Culture is the way mankind manages the changes in life. What becomes a strategy to handle situations gathers together to form unwritten laws to be followed and handed over to next generations. It is not enforced but still following it provides an esteem to individuals and families that it can be hardly ignored.
If it is a protective sheath then why do we worry when the culture changes? Let us take a few anecdotes here. Ramanyana and Mahabharatha are two Indian epics standing tall in the midst of thousands of tales and folklores. In my opinion these two may be the earliest documentary on the earth to describe wars, its ill effects and the devastating damage on the mankind. Still wars are waged between countries, communities, groups, families and individuals incessantly.
Wars do create cultures and unwritten customs. Amazingly Rama had the culture to extend one more day's life to Ravana who was defeated in the war with shame on mind and none of his valor or support infrastructure coming to rescue. How can you pardon a person who has abducted your wife and refused to send her back with honor? Rama's act was modern day equivalent of declaring ceasefire when the enemy has lost. Rama by today's standards or by today's cultural views is not a SMART DUDE. The war of Rama's era had one dictum followed ad verbium "thou shall not hurt a bare opponent". Compare this against today's culture. Wars are not fought today on any specifically earmarked war zone. It is fought on the entire land, sea and air boundaries of countries. Nobody is spared, civilians, young, old, children and women. How and when did things change to make every war of men against men more evil?
The War Chronicle of Mahabharatha clearly indicates how the pristine culture of fair war changed with in the 18 days of the total war. When Bhishma was in charge for more than half the duration of war, war was all fair. The fighting started after dawn and ended precisely at dusk. After the day's war came to an end, the enemies crossed their lines and mingled freely. They even dined together in the same dining tents and the food for both the factions prepared in a common kitchen. The next day they dispersed to take their line to fight till they fell. Every one-on-one or group fighting was fair and on expected lines. The only point of pain was Blood relatives supported either of the warring sides and people of the same families fought and killed each other. When Bhishma fell the fair war culture vanished. Even his death was on deception. A great warrior fell to arrows of gay concealed through the arrows of greatest archer of the epic Arjuna. After this, the war of Mahabharata turned evil without the guarded rules. War extended beyond dusk. Warriors left the war zone and fought. They killed each other uttering lies or catching the warriors unaware. That was the day the rules of war were recast to demonstrate how man can degrade to any level just to survive and succeed. Thus man has started changing his culture to gain easy victories and make life easier for himself. Instead Culture should have remained as a strong bulwark of man's discipline and man should have given up anything to guard it on the other hand it turned out that man should tweak and tune culture to reach his opportunistic ends.
In essence man changes culture to make life easier and successful for him. However one question remains did he ever get the intended benefits by making culture flexible?
Culture is definitely a pattern of behaviour of a group. If men were to live in isolation then we will not be worrying about erosion of values in culture. In fact even if families were to live separately and not as a community, we would have very little to talk about culture. Culture is the price man has paid for living as a community. Or look at positively culture is the shield which protects the man against the conflicts of life in a group. Culture lives and will live as long as mankind. The irony is this living thing is never documented but it is ever changing.
Every one agrees that "change management" is the essential ingredient of success for modern life or modern enterprise. Culture is the way mankind manages the changes in life. What becomes a strategy to handle situations gathers together to form unwritten laws to be followed and handed over to next generations. It is not enforced but still following it provides an esteem to individuals and families that it can be hardly ignored.
If it is a protective sheath then why do we worry when the culture changes? Let us take a few anecdotes here. Ramanyana and Mahabharatha are two Indian epics standing tall in the midst of thousands of tales and folklores. In my opinion these two may be the earliest documentary on the earth to describe wars, its ill effects and the devastating damage on the mankind. Still wars are waged between countries, communities, groups, families and individuals incessantly.
Wars do create cultures and unwritten customs. Amazingly Rama had the culture to extend one more day's life to Ravana who was defeated in the war with shame on mind and none of his valor or support infrastructure coming to rescue. How can you pardon a person who has abducted your wife and refused to send her back with honor? Rama's act was modern day equivalent of declaring ceasefire when the enemy has lost. Rama by today's standards or by today's cultural views is not a SMART DUDE. The war of Rama's era had one dictum followed ad verbium "thou shall not hurt a bare opponent". Compare this against today's culture. Wars are not fought today on any specifically earmarked war zone. It is fought on the entire land, sea and air boundaries of countries. Nobody is spared, civilians, young, old, children and women. How and when did things change to make every war of men against men more evil?
The War Chronicle of Mahabharatha clearly indicates how the pristine culture of fair war changed with in the 18 days of the total war. When Bhishma was in charge for more than half the duration of war, war was all fair. The fighting started after dawn and ended precisely at dusk. After the day's war came to an end, the enemies crossed their lines and mingled freely. They even dined together in the same dining tents and the food for both the factions prepared in a common kitchen. The next day they dispersed to take their line to fight till they fell. Every one-on-one or group fighting was fair and on expected lines. The only point of pain was Blood relatives supported either of the warring sides and people of the same families fought and killed each other. When Bhishma fell the fair war culture vanished. Even his death was on deception. A great warrior fell to arrows of gay concealed through the arrows of greatest archer of the epic Arjuna. After this, the war of Mahabharata turned evil without the guarded rules. War extended beyond dusk. Warriors left the war zone and fought. They killed each other uttering lies or catching the warriors unaware. That was the day the rules of war were recast to demonstrate how man can degrade to any level just to survive and succeed. Thus man has started changing his culture to gain easy victories and make life easier for himself. Instead Culture should have remained as a strong bulwark of man's discipline and man should have given up anything to guard it on the other hand it turned out that man should tweak and tune culture to reach his opportunistic ends.
In essence man changes culture to make life easier and successful for him. However one question remains did he ever get the intended benefits by making culture flexible?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)