A Cultured, Educated Life-Part III

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The Purpose of Education

The correct way of life can be taught only when there is correct knowledge of what education is meant for. Most parents and students know only of one purpose of education: to learn a skill so money can be earned. However education and profession are two different things. The purpose of education is to make a person civilized and cultured, while the purpose of a profession is to provide a means for earning one's livelihood.

Uneducated and illiterate people can earn money. The delinking of education from its money earning worth is urgently required, since the linking of two clouds all other better sentiments in the educational field today. The unhealthy rush in some professional colleges today is driven more by the desire to accumulate money-earning power than by the aptitude or natural skills of the students. A correct idea about life and the nature of experience that comes to us in life has to be taught as part of our education.

All people seek joy. They make sincere efforts to get it, and yet only a few lucky ones appear to find joy. What are the forces that govern the law of experience? Some of us have a vague idea of the law of action: "You reap as you sow;" that is to say, we deserve what we desire. This is reasonable and logical. Most of us have no difficulty in appreciating this idea. But we are often puzzled to see that the law appears to fail.

We find that in life many hard-working people, many good people suffer for no apparent cause. It is also common knowledge that many bad and evil people appear to be very successful and enjoy the fruit of their evil actions. What happens to the doctrine of action? Unable to understand the mysterious working of action, many people let go of their principles and take to shortcut methods to gain joy in life.

This is where the educational system has to step in to give true and correct knowledge of the workings of the law of action. Life is not a single phenomenon, beginning with the birth of the body and ending with its death. The birth and death of a body constitute one wave that rises and falls in the total existence of an individual and each such wave is a link between past and future lives.

The cumulative effect of all that has been done up to the past life produces the present life, whose momentum and direction have already been determined before it commenced. Whatever we do now can only add its effects for the future and not for the present. Hence, the present life is a chance to formulate our future life. We have to accept the present and plan for the future. If this is properly understood, most of us will save many a sigh over split milk. A spirit of resignation in the present and a grim determination for the future will automatically follow.

About the article

This article is written by Swamini Saradapriyananda for the magazine, 'Vedanta Vani' of Chinmaya Mission.