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SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00014 Aug 2003

 
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(contd. from earlier post)
-------------------------------------------------------

One by one, Prajapati's students troop up to him and
ask their Master for a final word of 'instruction' in
a touching gesture of farewell. The entire story, in
fact, if we read it carefully, reminds us of what in
any modern university campus might be the scene of a
solemn Convocation (or 'Graduation') ceremony. 

Today's Convocation ceremony (at Indian universities
that I know or read about) is however anything but
solemn. It is not anymore the teacher, the real hero
of the piece, whose honour it is to address students
on such a momentous occasion in their lives. It is the
local political big-wig, a mayor or senator, or a
high-ranking government official, or else a corporate
or stock-market tycoon who is invited to make an
appearance, don the academic robe and "grace" (!) the
occasion. Nowhere can anyone anymore see university
convocations reflecting the true spirit of the real
ceremony... which is to invoke and celebrate that
ancient Upanishadic ideal of the Master-Pupil
relationship. 

In the story, Prajapati's convocation address to his
students consists of nothing more pithy than 3
syllables -- "Da, Da, Da". This strikes us as a bit of
over-dramatization but there is far more wisdom in 3
little syllables of the Upanishad than there is
perhaps in all the gaseous verbosity of a present-day
VIP's Convocation speech. Prajapati's final
instruction to his students is in fact a clear, even
if slightly histrionic, enunciation of the true value
and purpose of all education: Evolve, Evolve, Evolve. 


In the Upanishadic university, education does not
culminate at a Graduation ceremony where a diploma or
doctrate is handed out or conferred. Education only
inaugurates Evolution; Education ends when it is clear
that Evolution has truly begun. The students of
Prajapati are in effect told by their teacher, "My
children, your creation and education may have been my
responsibility all these years but your evolution is
now in your own hands. You are now masters of your own
destiny. Your education cannot perfect you. It is what
you do with it that will decide what you might become
and what you will be". 

**************

The extent of a man's education can be easily measured
by the Degree, Diploma or Doctrate he has earned. How
to similarly ascertain the extent of his evolution? 

The Upanishad teaches us to measure it using three
"Da-s": 'dama', 'datta' and 'dayA' -- self-control,
charity and compassion. "Prajapati's children" are
three in number -- 'dEva', 'manushya' and 'asura' and
each, in effect, represents a measure of Man's
evolution. 

The "dEva" (sometimes also called 'dEvata' in the
Vedic pantheon) is a benign celestial with superhuman
powers and qualities (e.g. "varuNa", 'agni', 'vAk'
etc.). The "asura" is also an equal superhuman but of
a demonaic mould. The Vedic 'purANAs' are full of
illustrations of the 'asuric' character (e.g.
Hiranyakasipu, SakatAsura etc.). The "manushya" is
that specie all the world knows as 'the ordinary man'
-- the being who is a curious, sometimes tragic
amalgam of both celestial and the satanic, of Beauty
and the Beast, of both the sublime and the slime... 

The Upanishad story explodes here the myth which the
so-called 'Man of Science', for a very long time
indeed, had held about himself: the myth that he,
great 'homo-sapien', represented the crowning
achievement of Evolution, biological and otherwise;
that with the arrival of Man on earth, Nature's work
stood, once and for all, fulfilled. In PrajApati's
estimation however, we see the evolution of "manushya"
in a far less flattering light. Man's advancement is
clearly rated 'second-grade', stranded as he seems at
a forlorn cross-road somewhere in no-man's land
between inhuman 'asurA' and demigodly 'dEva'.

************
(to be continued)

dAsan,
Sudarshan



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