Youth Day Meet

As reported by four NSS, IIT Kharagpur volunteers : Akash Gupta from Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Monica Arya from Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, Abhisek Datta and Imbesat Ahmed, both from Dept. of Physics.

 

On the eve of Swami Vivekananda's birthday, celebrated all over India as the National Youth Day, NSS IIT KHARAGPUR team had an opportunity to listen to and interact with Swami Atmapriyananda, Vice Chancellor, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, Belur in a 2 hour session (5:40 – 7:40 PM) at Netaji Auditorium. He told us about the life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda, and how we should approach our own lives to bring out the best in us in the form of character qualities. This is for the development of ourselves as well as for the society. To emphasize on these aspects, we were told about different instances from Swamiji’s and Ramakhrishana Maharaj’s life which reflected the importance of these qualities. Brahmachari Asheshchaitanya from Ramakrishna Mission Hollywood Vedanta Centre, Los Angeles, USA spoke a while in the beginning on the inspiration called Vivekananda.

Swami Vivekananda’s concept of education was based on thought process, nervous association of ideas. The clash of thoughts produce different thoughts and to absorb those thoughts and grow in our own way is nothing but education. In short, education is the manifestation of perfection from man’s inner side. Educated person is one who has picked up some idea and made it a part of his personality, his life. The choice of the idea depends on the man himself, as every man is unique in its own way. UNIQUENESS, to throw light on it, Maharaj made an analogy between uniqueness in nature and Pauli’s exclusion principle which means as every particle in an atom is unique with respect to all the quantum numbers, similarly, a person is unique in his own way with respect to different aspects of life and that uniqueness is admirable.

The concept of uniqueness extends to the concept of independence and becoming responsible for self.  Human beings have their own mind to think, so we should take our decision on our own . We should not follow herd mentality and be confident of self. We must believe that we can solve our problems. And before pointing out others we should look at our own self.

Swami Vivekananda never believed that the various rituals and doctrines generally followed in the name of religion are the true paths of reaching God. He believed that God is present inside every human being. We all are born with some unique characteristic or strength which may be hidden within ourselves. We need to identify those characteristics and strength inside us believing in ourselves. We need to develop full control over our body and mind, and not let our body and mind control ourselves. Then only we are actually reaching God, as God is not anything supernatural, God is only the manifestation of positive energy, characteristics and strength inside ourselves which we need to identify.

Swamiji thought that the real purpose of education was to create the ideal environment for the student so that he/she can acquire self-belief, self-reliance, determination, will power and the presence of hidden strength of God inside himself/herself and means of identifying that hidden strength. He also strongly believed in education of women, as he said that the problems of women can be best understood by women only.

Swamiji’s concept of life was like-life is like a orange to be squeezed,but what matters is how you squeeze it. Squeeze it in a way that you get enjoyment of each and every possible drop of juice and that is life to its fullest. To live life to the fullest, make your mind and body your slave and don’t be their slave and then you can achieve anything whatever it may be. Your mind and body is the most powerful couple with enormous powers. Take care of them to take care of yourself to make life wonderful. This quality was the most powerful aspect of Swamiji and Ramakrishana Maharaj’s life. They had enormous control over them. Swamiji once lived without water for 21 days as the doctor had advised him to do so. In the process, he was once gargling, when some of drops of water rushed down his throat, but muscles of his throat twisted in such a way that the water was spilled out, such was Swamiji’s control over his mind and body. Well said by Maharaj-“Our body is like a computer which runs by program by us. So, it has to follow what we ask it to execute, unless there is a virus!”

To show our true devotion towards someone, Swamiji believed in following him rather than worshipping him, because following is more difficult than worshipping and it is by means of following that we can inculcate their life qualities in us. Worshipping great people, keeping them in high pedestal, so high that we have the excuse of not being like him, absolve us of responsibilities. We prefer to keep faith in some supernatural power, worship that power and keep ourselves happy with that belief. By doing that, we are never doing anything productive, neither for ourselves nor for the society. We give excuses about circumstances, while not bothering to think about who created these circumstances and how we can change the circumstances. We call ourselves weak and helpless and try to arise sympathy in others for ourselves. Our existence is our strength and we need to believe in that strength by believing in ourselves.

We all talk about devotion, Shraddha but what actually is Shraddha?......According to Swamiji, the belief in the object we are aspiring for as, the very glimpse of the object is sufficient, is Shraddha. He gave an example. In a dark cloudy night, a person is lost in his way, doesn’t know the direction he is heading to, is right or not. Suddenly, there is a flash of lightning. He can see the goal. Darkness surrounds him again. But he got his direction right and moves his foot forward.

Swami Atmapriyananda also talked about the nature and behaviour of human beings. He said that one should always be humble no matter of his status and achievements. He said that the greatness of a person is only truly realized when he shares his greatness with other people. A truly great person is never arrogant and selfish, because he has nothing to hide. He truly believes in himself. It is only when one does not believe in himself, then arrogance arises to hide the truth.

He also talked about Swami Vivekananda's guru, Sri Ramakrishna. He said that Sri Ramakrishna was so deeply attached with the truth that he could even sense it with his subconscious mind. He stated various examples where his disciples including Narendranath Dutta or Swami Vivekananda had tested him but Sri Ramakrishna always emerged successful. And Sri Ramakrishna never felt offended. In fact, he told his disciples that the Guru / teacher should be tested day as well as night and then only be trusted.

At the end Swami Atmapriyananda addressed us, the students, as the future of this country and asked to develop ourselves by believing in ourselves, by growing control over our mind and body, by increasing our determination and will power and the desire to do something beyond our personal interests, something for the society, something for the country, and most importantly something for humankind. He further reminded what Vivekananda said in answering a question on law and corruption, “But the basis of all systems, social or political, rests upon the goodness of men. No nation is great or good because Parliament enacts this or that, but because its men are great and good.”
(Compiled by Goutam Saha, Program Coordinator, NSS, IIT Kharagpur)

"Education is not the amount of information that is put in your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life-building, Man-making, character-making, assimilation of ideas. If education is identical with information, libraries are the greatest sages of the world and encyclopaedias are rishis." 

"We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one’s own feet." 

"The end of all education, all training, should be man-making. The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. The training by which the current and expression of will are brought under control and become fruitful is called education." 

"One atom in the universe cannot move without dragging the whole world along with it. There cannot be any progress without the whole world following in the wake, and it is becoming every day clearer that the solution of any problem can never be attained on racial, or national, or narrow grounds. Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed the whole of humanity, nay the whole of life, within its scope".- Swami Vivekanada