Youth

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The Vedanta Kesari, p.565-569, December 2007

What do the Upanishads have to say to the youth of today? Today's youth, like the youth of yesteryears, want success and power. They want to be confident and successful in life. They are in search of right meaning of life. They are looking for the right solution. They want strength and they want concentration of mind.

Seen in this context, if one looks at the Upanishads, one finds a profound truth for the youth: the truth of the immortality and eternity of the Self. Every youth wants personal effectiveness. He wants to leave a mark behind. Swami Vivekananda believed that this is the one message of the Upanishads that can revolutionize a youth's life. Let us try to understand it.

Behind personal effectiveness or success lies a right self-image. A successful man or woman must have, somewhere in his mind an 'I can-succeed' image. The Upanishads exhort that one should try to base one's self-image on one's deepest core of the personality, the Divine Self. The Upanishads go into raptures while describing the glory of this inner truth of man. Echoing this message of the Upanishads, Swami Vivekananda said, 'Teach yourselves, teach every one, his real nature. Call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come and everything that is excellent will come, when this sleeping-soul is roused to self-conscious activity.'

This is the powerful message of the Upanishads: have faith in yourself, in the Divine present in every human being. Let us not think of ourselves as low and useless beings. We are not sinners. We are not bad, essentially. We make mistakes, no doubt, but we should not hold our mistakes as the ultimate fact about us. The ultimate fact about us is this divinity within us. The Upanishads say that this divinity is an eternal truth, unchanging reality about us. If a youth has faith in himself, he can face any situation and can overcome any difficulty in life.

Fearlessness is the other great value the Upanishads teach. They always advocate fearlessness and a spirit of inquiry. This is the basis of positive thinking. We often develop fear because we have not properly inquired into a matter. We imagine many things about us, about others and about life. Upanishads advice us to stop doing that, and develop a spirit of inquiry instead. Let us expose our mind to healthy ideas. If we make proper inquiry, without any bias, we will find that our fear is imaginary and baseless. To think positive is what the Upanishads advocate.

Swami Vivekananda said that fearlessness is the one message of the Upanishads. 'Abhihi ! Be fearless,' is a constant refrain of the Upanishads. The Isha Upanishad says, 'All this is filled by divinity.' If one keeps this in mind, how can fear remain in the mind? Fear comes from matter, not from the divine. And that divine is our deepest core. When one thinks thus, one's mind expands. He begins to expand his concept of himself or herself. He begins to see that the same God is present everywhere. And this is what refreshes and strengthens the mind.

About the author

Swami Shri Bodhamayananda

The author is a monk of the Ramakrishna Order, at Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, T. Nagar, Chennai. He has been actively engaged in conducting workshops, lectures and seminars on Personality Development for the youth