Hare KrishNa and Hari Bol to all
Mt pranams to all Vaishnava Gurus and spiritual master. i offer my humble obeisances.
all glories to Krishna, by whom the whole creation came into existence.
for the most of you all out there, i know you may pondering about the title. Krishna the science teacher. yes you have heard that before. but Algebra teacher? not so common. although all knowledge stems from Him, eyebrows are raised when i relate algebra and Krishna. why? i think it is very important for us to forget of what age we are right now. we age, yes but our intelligence remains stagnant. for all great Vaishnavas out there, my apologies. this article is meant for the ignorant majority. i am not going to preach here but just expose what many people have forgotten.
Remember the day your science teacher showed you a dead leaf and asked you to how the soul from the leaf gets a higher body by chanting the mahamantra? No? don't remember? obviously! it did not even occur. she would have simply showed you the dead leaf and said that the leaf is dead and it is brown in colour. we remembered it and soon that fact remained in our memory even to our college days when we are asked how the leaf died by describing the apoptosis that occurse in the leaf leading to the halting of chemical reactions and hence, death. so you see, the knowledge evolves from learning the colour of the dead leaf until such intricacies leading to death. we only know how and what but we don't know the WHY! no one told you that the leaf is dead because the soul has left the leaf. that is the WHY. death is the WHAT and ending of chemical reactions is the HOW. the why is ridiculed as not necessary but that is what really matters. the leaf is the body + the soul just as Viknesh Dev = the body + the soul. when my body dies, Viknesh Dev ceases to exist but the soul leaves on. the soul acts as the battery of the body. add it in, and it generates consciousness and the body systems. take it out and you get a carcass. the Bhagavad Gita says, Consciousness is the symptom of the soul. we see dead leaves everyday and we ignore it as nature's occuring. that is the root of all human confusion and bewilderment. had we taken our first lesson on science seriously, we would have known that like the leaf, we too will die and cease to exist. the body is dead not due to the loss of chemicals but the consciousness@soul. we were too young to ask our teacher if we can inject the lost chemicals into the leaf and bring it back to life. NO SCIENTIST HAS EVER DONE THAT YET!!
but we were too uninformed to ask.. we never asked that question. since then, we have presumed that the leaf is dead because of the loss of chemicals. had we learnt that it is dead due to the exit of the soul, things would have been different altogether. we wouldn't have said that the leaf died as the soul left. so what happens to the soul? we would ask. then we would come to know of the knowledge of the Bhagavad Gita. BUT WE NEVER TOOK THE FIRST SCIENCE LESSON OF OUR LIFE SERIOUSLY. that is why Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita teaches the science of the soul for those who talked and not thought when they were forced with materialistic knowledge. he tells us the nature of the soul and its qualities. He attributes one whole chapter on it.
source : www.123rf.com
we forgot the first lesson of our life and now we suffer trying to know it.
and now we talk of Krishna, the algebra teacher.
I was in Class 8. A new teacher came to teach us algebra. He posed a question:
“Ram and Rahim are two brothers. Ram is 8 years elder to Rahim. Also age of Ram is double the age of Rahim. What are the exact ages of Ram and Rahim?”
This is how I solved:
Let age of Ram be a.
Let age of Rahim be b.
As per the question,
a = b +8
a = 2b
Substituting second equation in first and solving, b = 8,
Hence, a = 16, b = 8 (Ans)
Another friend of mine, assumed age of Ram to be x and age of Rahim to be y. And hence came to following answer:
x = 16, y = 8 (Ans)
The teacher, gave my friend full marks and gave me zero. I was shocked.
He explained, “As per the solution in textbook prescribed by school – Mathematics for Schools Part 3, you are supposed to assume ages to be x & y only and not a & b.”
When I protested that how does that matter, I still got the same answer, he showed his generosity. He said, “Had you written one final statement that “Age of Ram is 16 years and age of Rahim is 8 years, I would have still given you some marks. But you just wrote a = 16, b = 8 and hence it is completely wrong as per the prescribed book. So as a sincere teacher, loyal to the prescribed book, I must give you zero. I hate to do so, but I am really sorry.”
I still protested politely, “But Sir, isn’t that very obvious? In a class of mathematics, you are supposed to assess my ability to solve and that I have demonstrated well. In fact I have displayed that I understood the concept and have not mugged up the book. Should you not reward that?”
He got angry, “If you argue, I will throw you out of class.”
I was dumbfound. For years I would recollect and narrate this incident, initially with bitterness, and then as a joke.
It is in the recent years, that I realized this joke to be indeed a very “serious” joke. A joke that has killed millions, nurtured seeds of hatred, stunted growth prospects of almost every citizen, spread miseries, crime, frustration, negativity and made hell out of this heavenly world.
We did not take our algebra lessons seriously. And we started teaching others. We started punishing others for understanding what we did not understand. Forget about algebra, we did not even take the first basic lesson of life sincerely when our mother would take us on her lap and teach us, “This is fire, this is sky, this is papa, I am mummy.”
In India, she would teach, “Yah Agni hai, Yah Akash hai, Ye Pitaji hain, Main Maa hun.”. In Pakistan perhaps, “Yah Aatish hai, Yah Asman hai, Ye Walid Hain, Main Ammi hun.”
Call it Agni, Aatish or Fire; Akash, Asman or Sky; Father, Pitaji or Walid; Mother, Maa or Ammi – they all refer to same thing.
Whether age of Ram and Rahim be a&b, x&y, a1&a2, u&v, p&q or whatever, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. What is important is the relationship between the two.
And if we look at the world today, and even the brutal history, this dreaded joke could never be understood by us. Only a few understood, and they are ones whom we call saints. They alone understood that whatever name we call anything, it hardly matters. The essence is all that matters.
How easy is it to be a saint! All you need to do is to recall the first education by mother, if you could not study algebra.
But still we find it so tough!
( I adapted this example of Ram and Rahim from www.agniveer.com. the author was genius enough to narrate this incident and i learnt a lot from it)
so what can we infer and relate to our life. the bodies we occupy are merely vessels or dresses which we change. we can call the body lets sat, Dev or lion or a or b.. but that is not our identity at all. its a name used for recognition rather than to use it or he all the time.
The irony is that the same word means something different to different sects. Just like you can use the same a & b as notations for a new problem as well. Or in same problem, you can swap a & b to mean age of Rahim & Ram respectively instead of Ram & Rahim.
Whatever name you call, howsomuch efforts you put to define them and explain them, they just remain petty symbols. Depending on time, situation, problem, question, a minimally smart person should gladly be willing to change these symbols with something else. Emotional attachment to symbols is an indication that you did not take your first lesson of life sincerely. You did not understand what algebra is all about. For you, it is more important whether a & b were chosen to solve the problem or x & y. Like the dogmatic teacher, we are paranoid about these symbols rather than appreciating the concepts. And hence, we punish the really deserving and reward the memorizing parrots.
here, i stress that attachment to the body is simply horrendous as it leads to longing and desire. desire in material life can never be satisfied at all. it keeps increasing. there is a plant which secretes a juice, causing itchiness. when you scratch a part of the body which itches when the juice comes in contact with the skin, the fluid spreads and causes further itch. This shows that lust, desire and sense gratification cannot be satisfies at all. they continue creating havoc in your mind till you eventually remove it. Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, he who sees the same in the King, the pauper, the dog, the dog-eater, the elephant, him I consider the wise sage. Krishna stresses on being indifferent to the bodily changes and strive to eliminate any causes of differences. we must realize the bodies of all beings contain the soul proper and it is this soul that eliminates the differences among Ram and Rahim.
In this world, we create differences among humans by designing different religions and sects. this leads to competition as to which package is the best. the religion is so diluted that the real true philosophies are barely understood or seen. that is why Krishna says " So, abandon all varieties of religion and surrrender to me". we must surrender the actions, thoughts, words and deeds to Him and act only because we are to do so. the soul has no gender, age, sex, colour or any other distinction. it is there, eternal and supreme. This is the message behind the learning of algebra in our school.
We have a great number of doctors, engineers, lawyers and educationists but we have only a handful of self-realized souls.
it is amazing that those who possess great materialistic knowledge and pose to be intelligent and smart have poor knowledge.
WHY?
it is because we never took the first lessons of our life seriously.
SOLUTION :
remember Krishna and fight
Hare Krishna and Hari bol. thank you
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