Understanding “Living with confidence”

HH Sri Vishvesha Tirtha Swamiji of Pejavara Matha graced the 100th workshop of the Madhwacharya4Youth, an initiative of the Vyasa Madhwa Samshodhana Pratishthan, to make the current generation aware of Madhwa Siddhanta and the ancient way of life. The theme of the workshop was Living with Confidence. Below is an excerpt of his Anugraha Sandesha. 

Everyone always desires to live confidently. The importance of developing conscious confidence, in order to live life to the fullest is emphasized time and again. Developing conscious confidence becomes a way of life when one attaches equal importance to 2 D’s in life:

• Duty
• Devotion

Unfortunately, in today’s times, devotion always takes a backseat, leading to morally astray youth.

Hence the need of the hour is to involve the youth and make them embrace the path of devotion, which is not separate from regular life. There are two ways to achieve this – either by instilling a fear of God or by instilling the love of God in the child. The path to take is context specific.

However, in today’s times, unlike the olden days, there are no guides for our youth.

Once upon a time, a young boy became addicted to caffeine. The boy’s father got worried and took him to a learned person. He requested the learned person to advise his son against having too much caffeine. Now, the learned person remarked, “Please come back after a month”. After a month, the man took his son to the learned person again. Now the learned person simply advised the boy not to consume too much caffeine as it is not good for health. The boy’s father became upset and asked, “You could have told this a month ago. Why did you make us wait so long?” The learned person replied, “This is because, I was a caffeine addict myself. I first weaned myself off the habit before advising your son. Had I advised him in the past month, it would be morally incorrect!!”.

This incident aptly sums up today’s world. While we, the elders, have no moral rights to advise the younger lot since we ourselves are morally going bankrupt, the younger generation has no one to look up to in the absence of guiding teachers, learned elders in the family and a crumbling social value system.

Swamiji compares the modern education system devoid of value-based education, to the school of demons run by Shanda and Marka, who taught young Prahalada all but devotional education. Of course, it is another story that the young Prahalada was so competent himself that he ended up transforming the other demon kids who did not even have a divine environment at their homes. The lack of a moral backbone leads to social evils like corruption being very prevalent in society today.

Often parents tend to get carried away by the external glamour associated with a school and admit their children without thinking if it will just teach concepts to the child or make the child a better human being. This can be compared to Yashodha handing over baby Krishna to Pootana, besotted by her good looks, only to later realize with shock that she tried to feed poisoned milk to the baby Krishna.

The need of the hour is value-based education.

Parents need to provide an environment of inculcating value-based education with equal importance to the knowledge of the yore, including learning of Shastras and rituals, to the younger generation in order to bring about a paradigm shift in the mentality of the youth.

• Tree on the mountain image courtesy : wikimedia

Vaishnavi Kulkarni Bankalgi

Software Engineer by profession and a learner of Madhwa Siddhanta by passion.

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