Education is a major issue in religious communities around the world today, including our own Hindu communities. Those who value their traditions everywhere are worried. They see all too clearly that children are learning another culture, or a nonculture, instead of absorbing the precious things in the various heritages. Elders, mothers and fathers, teachers and spiritual leaders are all wondering the same thing about traditional values: “How are we going to pass them along, assure that they will survive?” ¶The Swaminarayan Fellowship has one good answer: involvement of youth at all levels. They know the importance of inculturalization. Individual families have another answer: keep kids out of public schools, use home-schooling systems, of which there are many these days. India is seeking answers, too, and is striving for a balance that incorporates Western knowledge and Eastern wisdom—not an easy goal to accomplish, and as yet unaccomplished for India’s 250 million school children. It’s even hard to offer them wholesome Hindu literature, since so many books for children and other educational tools are heavily slanted toward violence. Many will excuse it when a God slays a demon or when an indignant sage destroys some evil person, but to my thinking that is also violence, making such stories unacceptable for the minds of our young ones. Presenting violence as a good thing, even a somehow holy thing, definitely causes problems in today’s society, where hurtfulness is seen as a simple and legitimate solution to many problems. Many parents are at a loss as to how to solve the problems that surround the education of their youth. One solution they turn to is sending them off to boarding school. This is not a great answer. This is not even a good answer. ¶Śaivites of the world are now uniting in one common cause: to pass on the knowledge of Śaivism to the next generation. They are protecting the minds of their children, saturating the minds of their children, educating the minds of their children, penetrating the minds of their children with the knowledge of our great God Śiva, with the knowledge of Lord Gaṇeśa, Lord Murugan, the devonic worlds, the powerful temples of our religion in which God Śiva in His etheric body comes personally and blesses the devotees. ¶Where is religion preserved? It is preserved in the minds of children, recorded in the brain cells of our youth, stored there for the future. We must teach the Śaiva Dharma to our children. For this we need more Śaivite courses, more Śaivite schools and more Śaivite parents willing to teach the young ones. We owe it to the next generation, the next, the next and the next. Share your knowledge with them. Have them memorize a consistent and logical approach to Śaivite Hinduism. Then their life experiences are imprinted intelligently as they draw upon those memories to control their karma and dharma. ¶In the ancient days, the Śaivite kings, the mahārājas, were responsible for the religion. They saw to it that the priests performed their duties, that the pandits added to the store of knowledge, that the temples were built and maintained and that religion flourished throughout the land and remained alive in the minds and hearts of the people. This was the dharma of the kshatriya caste, headed by the kings, their ministers and heads of state. When the Śaivite kings fell from power, the entire caste system was, for all practical purposes, left there on the battlefields. Decades have passed, and now we are in a technological age where computers and machinery replace more burdensome work, where caste is a matter of choice, not birth, where the common man and woman have replaced the royal powers as the protectors of Śaivism.§
There are no more mahārājas to defend the Śaiva Dharma for the people, and therefore the people themselves have taken up the scepter. Together they have to work to preserve and publish scriptures. Together they have to found Śaivite schools and universities in which the knowledge of their forefathers will be safeguarded and disseminated. It is not enough to be born into a Śaivite home. Education and training are now more essential than ever before if Śaiva souls being born today are to grow up into the fullness of the Śaiva Samayam. ¶In our efforts to preserve Śaivism, we have but one paramount duty to perform, and that is to pass Śaivism on to the next generation. How do we do this? By capturing and holding the minds of our youth for their first twenty-four years, holding them close, as was done in the traditional gurukula, exposing them to a broad yet specific knowledge and immersing them in the most wonderful impressions of our great religion. Children during the brahmacharya āśrama, we could say, are on the kuṭumba mārga, the stage of being trained by their parents, of being educated, of developing into useful members of society. After age twenty-four, they can be freely released with the confidence that they will contend well in a demanding world, that they will always have their faith to guide and strengthen them when karmas become intense or alien influences encroach. ¶We of the older generation are already set in our ways. Our patterns were established years ago when early impressions impregnated and influenced our minds. We can still learn, we can study, but our formative years are largely past. It is now the children who must be thought of, for they will be here when we pass away. We can devise ways to let them benefit from our experience, good and bad. To do this, we must hold them firmly for twenty-four years as they go through two natural twelve-year cycles of life, impressing on them the intricacies of the Śaiva Samayam before they are exposed to any alien faith or belief. Having done that, our duty is complete, and we can rest assured that Śaivism will be perpetuated by our children, by our children’s children and on into the future of the world, on into the new age of space. ¶However, it must be said, and said boldly, that not all Śaivites are performing this important duty. Rather than becoming the first gurus, as mother and father, as is traditional, they send the youth off to school, away from home, without chaperoning, and make the world his guru. From there he falls naturally into āṇava mārga, the path of being his own person, looking out for “number one.” ¶If we fail and let a single generation slip by, the entire religion will be threatened. It only takes one generation to let our religion begin a fall into disuse. I gave this message on Śaivite education to over 300,000 devotees during a 1981 tour of Sri Lanka and India. It was an important message at the time, well received, and today is no less relevant. I pointed out in no uncertain terms that for many decades Hindus have been sending their children to Catholic schools. They do this because the Catholics run very fine educational institutions and programs throughout India and Sri Lanka and elsewhere, and each family naturally wants its children to have the best education. The children do get a good discipline and education, but it is a Catholic education, an education ultimately designed to bring young boys and girls into the Catholic religion, designed to persuade them of the Christian view of life, of the Christian view of God and salvation, and of all the Christian beliefs. ¶Hindu parents should not send their children to Christian missionary schools, nor to schools founded in the name of any other religion who seek to influence them, even in subtle ways, such as through symbols and peer missionaries who chide and taunt Hindu children about their culture, their beliefs, their dress or their symbols. These schools have a detrimental effect on the subconscious minds of the children, steadily turning them away from Hindu beliefs. When they slowly absorb the attitudes of another faith, slowly their belief structure is altered, and gradually their actions at home reflect this change. §
We know from modern psychology how important early impressions are. The first impressions that go into the minds of young people mold and influence their entire life. While a child is learning history in a Catholic school, learning geometry, learning mathematics, he is also being taught the teachings of the Catholic Church. The teachings of the Catholic Church are not the Śaiva Dharma. They are drastically different, in some ways even opposite, from the Śaiva Dharma. What has happened? In order to gain an education for their children so they can grow up and earn money, so they can compete with their peers in the West, the parents have sacrificed the soul of the child and prepared him for a poor birth in his next life. ¶It happens in this way. The child goes to school each day and listens to the teachings of the Catholics about God and Jesus and Mary. He learns from the Catholic Catechism that the soul goes to heaven or to hell after one birth on this Earth, that those who do not accept Jesus as their savior suffer eternally in hell, where the physical body burns forever without being consumed, that one must not worship idols, that other religions are not God’s true path. ¶Then the child returns home, and his parents try to undo these impressions by telling him that there is no eternal hell and no original sin, that non-Christians do not suffer in hell, that Śiva is a God of love, that karma does exist and souls do incarnate many, many times upon the Earth. This young mind, not having matured into reason as yet, simply becomes confused. At school he hears that his parents just don’t understand, and he should therefore not listen to them about religious matters. At home his parents tell him that in certain matters he should not listen to the nuns, should not believe the good fathers, that Śaivism is his religion, and is a wonderful religion, that it is all right to wear holy ash. Imagine a child who goes to school and is taught all day, six or eight hours a day, that he should believe the Catholic beliefs. He is taught that there is no reincarnation, that there is no karma, that Hinduism is a pagan religion, that the Catholic religion is the only true religion in the world, that his parents are wrong, that his forefathers were wrong, that the ṛishis and satgurus are also wrong. And then, for an hour or so at night, if he is lucky, the parents teach that the Catholic Church is wrong, that he should go there only for the secular education, that he should disregard all the other instruction, not listen to the holy fathers and nuns but ignore them when they talk about their religion. ¶A true story was related to me by Pundit K.N. Navaratnam, Jyotisha Shastri, a close devotee of my satguru. “As a young boy growing up in Jaffna, I received my primary school education in a Christian school. The teacher impressed upon me in religious classes that the Hindu Gods were all evil devils. We were told when passing the Hindu temples to spit and swear at these evil images. Many times I followed my teacher’s instructions and indeed did these inappropriate deeds—until one day I spat at an image of Lord Gaṇeśa and immediately fell to the ground and suffered a serious head wound. My cousin was studying in a Catholic convent with many other students who were born as Hindus. Every morning they were taken to the church for prayers. On the way the students passed a Hindu temple where they were told to spit and swear in the direction of the temple. This was a cruel and dishonest attempt at conversion to a different faith.” §
What happens to a child who receives such contradictory training? He doesn’t know whom or what to believe. He pulls away from the Christian religion he learned at school. He pulls away from the Śaivite religion he learned at home. He grows up without a religion. He does not have the good Catholic fathers to turn to; nor can he turn to his parents’ religion when in need of spiritual advice, for Śaivism has been discredited in his mind. He is thus denied a religion in this life. As one Catholic Father confided, “The Hindu children in our school may never become Catholics, but they also will never be good Hindus.” The child who once attended home pūjā with joy and respected the visiting swāmī no longer shows him praṇāmas, resists pūjā time, challenges parental decisions and slowly takes over the home, relegating the parents to second-class citizenship within it. All in the home are consigned to dance around the contrary feelings of such children in order to avoid their threats of unchaperoned dating, leaving home, even suicide. As a result, these spiritual orphans are growing up without a religion and turning to drugs, turning to crime, turning to existentialism and Western rationalism, even terrorism, for some semblance of security, turning to divorce and even suicide in increasing numbers when life becomes difficult to face. Their lack of religious life is creating a very serious karma, taking them into the consciousness of the seven lower worlds. This karma is the responsibility of our Śaivite community, of each and every one of us. We will all reap the bad karma generated by our neglect. ¶Those who have been educated in Christian schools have little respect for the swāmīs, pandits and gurus of Śaivism. They don’t respect the sanctity of our temples. They may go into a temple to fulfill the social customs, but in their hearts they don’t believe that the Gods live in the temple, because they have been told in school that the stone Deities are just stones, that pūjās are just primitive rituals. You love your children and you should not sacrifice their minds for an education, for a little money. That money will be ill-gotten, for you played the Christians for fools in order to get it. Do the Christians believe our beliefs? No. Do the Jews? No. Do the Muslims? No. They do not believe a single one of our central beliefs, which are karma, reincarnation, the existence of God everywhere, the absence of an eternal hell and the assurance that every soul, without exception, will attain liberation. ¶All religions are not the same. They are not equal. They have different spiritual goals and, therefore, different attainments reached by their followers. We must not forget this, especially these days when it is fashionable to ignore the differences and to claim that all religions are one. We must not be taken in by those who make such claims. The religions of the world are all great, but they are not all the same. Their beliefs are different, and since beliefs create attitudes, they hold different attitudes toward life and death, and toward the soul and God, too. Our collective beliefs create our collective attitudes and thus perpetuate the culture. ¶Yes, we have but one duty to perform: to pass our religion on to the next generation, the next, the next and the next. How is this done? Through Śaivite education, building more schools. We must educate our youth well. The alternative is to allow Śaivism to be conquered by atheism, to be conquered by Christianity, to be conquered by Islam, to be conquered by existentialism and Western rationalism, materialism and secular humanism, and to be conquered by the liberal neo-Indian postulations which seek to cut the roots of tradition. Our only hope lies in educating the children, the young minds which are open and eager to learn, but which are being enticed away from their heritage. Hold them close, protect them, love them dearly and give them the treasures of Śaivism. That is the greatest gift you can offer them. Everything else will perish. Everything else will decay. ¶You can remember this next time a Christian missionary comes to your door. Welcome him with “Namaste.” Tell him or her, “We are Hindus. We have a catechism of our own. We have a creed and an affirmation of faith in our religion, too. We have our scriptures, our Holy Bible of the Śaivite Hindu Religion. We have religious leaders and institutions, and a tradition that is vastly more ancient than any other. We have our holy temples and our great Gods. We are proud to be Śaivites. We are proud to worship God Śiva and the Gods. We have all this and more. Thank you very much.” And then close the door! §
Behind many past wars and before us today we find unconscionable conversion efforts that infringe on the rights of not only the individual, but of groups and nations. When religions set out with a consciousness of conquest and make inroads on each other, this naturally becomes a major concern to families, communities and nations. Is it not the right of each of the world religions to declare dedication to their incontestable lawbooks of shoulds and should nots, holy texts telling us how to pray, meditate and behave? Freedom to choose one’s religion as well as freedom to leave it if one wishes is a fundamental human right, and it is a human wrong to deny or even limit it. This may seem obvious, but it is not a freedom many people of the world fully enjoy. ¶Because they love their children, devout Śaivites do not put them into Christian schools but provide Śaivite schooling which fills young minds with Śaivite lore, Śaivite history, Śaivite art, knowledge of the Vedas and the Śaiva Āgamas. Such children, nurtured from birth in their religion and taught the sacred scriptures and songs from an early age, grow into the great ambassadors of Śaivite Hinduism and joyfully carry it out into the rest of the world. This is the plan and the thrust of the devotees of God Śiva in 1981, 1982, 1990 and on beyond the year 2000. They know that there is no place where we can go but that God Śiva is there ahead of us—there already. They know that nothing has existence except that God Śiva created it. These Sivathondars are vowed to protect, preserve and promote the Śaiva Dharma on this planet. ¶In Dancing with Śiva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Catechism all of this that I have been speaking about is neatly explained through short questions and answers which are easy to understand, to commit to memory and to teach to children and adults alike so that they can talk intelligently in foreign countries about their religion and benefit themselves as well as others. ¶A child’s mind is like a computer disc or a recording cassette. It is a blank tape, capable of recording confusing sounds or beautiful melodies. It is up to us to make those first and lasting impressions. That tape is very difficult to edit later. What should we teach to our young boys and girls? What do we record in their mental computer? Dancing with Śiva—beautifully illustrated because children also learn through their eyes—contains a foundation of religious study to be memorized by boys and girls from six to sixteen years of age, to be discussed by the family, to be expounded upon by the father and explained by the mother. ¶This book answers the question, “What should I teach my children about Śaivism?” We must teach the children about our purpose on this Earth, our relationship with God, our ultimate destiny—all according to the Tirumantiram, Tirukural, the Vedic and Āgamic scriptures of monistic Śaiva Siddhānta. We must teach our children, as did mahāsiddha Tirumular 2,200 years ago, that the soul is immortal, created by God Śiva and destined to merge back in Him. We must teach our children about this world we live in and about the other belief structures they will encounter throughout life. We must teach our children how to make their religion strong and vibrant in a technological age. These instructions are important for all Śaivite families. ¶Those of you here in Asia have a rich and stable religious culture. Therefore the future of your children is less uncertain. In other parts of the world, Śaivite children are not benefiting from a temple in the village, from a grandmother who can explain things or a grandfather to expound. Yet, though children here have all these advantages, still the temptations are there to adopt wayward Western ways and Christian attitudes. We must work to overcome such magnetic forces by educating our children, both those who are living here in Sri Lanka and India and those who are citizens of other nations in the world. They will then grow up to teach their children and thus perpetuate the Śaivite Hindu religion into the next generation, the next and the next. ¶Yes, united Śaivites of the world, we need to pass on to the next generation the importance of dharma and of good conduct, especially ahiṁsā, fundamental principles of the Hindu faith. Ahiṁsā means noninjury physically, mentally and emotionally. We need to explain to them the secret of the mysteries of the holy Śiva temple. We need to take them often to the kovils, mandirs, shrines, āśramas, aadheenams, maṭhas, sacred places and rivers so they become well grounded in their devotion. We need to carefully explain to them the purpose of, and the results that can be obtained through, home pūjā, having archanas, abhishekas and homas performed in their behalf in Śiva temples. We need to teach them how to pray to God and the Gods. We need to foster in them a deep reverence for our scriptures and our saints and sages. §
Very importantly, we must inculcate in youth a respect for family life, for marriage as a sacred union undertaken for the mutual spiritual advancement of husband and wife. They have to be counseled and counseled well in how married life is to be faced, what attitudes they should hold toward sex, how to keep a marriage strong and joyful, how to combat the pressures they will face in this modern world, especially if they come to live beyond the borders of our holy land. We must also inculcate in them a knowledge of monastic life, so they may understand and revere the satgurus and swāmīs of Śaivism. Śaivite monasticism was a powerful spiritual force in the world when the mahārājās supported the monastics, and it will continue to be so through the support of the families, their children and their children’s children. All this is accomplished through religious education. We call upon the youth of India, the youth of Sri Lanka, the youth of Malaysia and all other countries where Śaivites are living to consider the two paths. We call upon those rare few to accept the dharma of the Śaivite monastic and serve their God and religion through a selfless life, preaching and teaching throughout the world. There is a great need here. Too many Asian families relinquish their children to become Catholic priests and Protestant ministers and not enough encourage them to become Hindu sādhakas, yogīs and swāmīs. ¶The youth must be taught that Śaivism is not only the oldest religion in the world, but a vibrant and dynamic religion in this technological age. They must come to know its wisdom is for the farmer as well as for the computer programmer, for our ancestors and for our descendants. Śaivism is the Eternal Path, the Sanātana Dharma. The youth working in science, working in space exploration, working in electronics, working in business, working closely with members of different religions, will encounter many challenges. They must be carefully taught how to remain within the bounds of their religion and their beliefs without being dissuaded, without accepting ridicule from those who have yet to comprehend Śaivism. We must teach the Śaivite youth who are now growing up around the world about the Hindu festivals and holy days, making these auspicious days vibrant and alive in their memories. We must explain to them the meanings behind every observance so they are not just following blindly. ¶Symbols are an important part of bringing Śaivism into the hearts of the youth. Symbols carry great significance, and young people love and understand symbols. We should have Śaivite symbols abundantly around us, in the shrine room and throughout the home. The Prāṇava Aum, swastika, Śivaliṅga, tripuṇḍra and pottu, aṅkuśa, tiruvadi, nāga, vel, kalaśa, vaṭa, rudrāksha, seval, triśūla, kamaṇḍalu, trikoṇa, bilva, shaṭkoṇa, konrai, homa, kuttuvilaku and mankolam. ¶We should have a kuttuvilaku, or oil lamp, in our shrine room. We should have pictures of the Deities and their vahanas, Nandi, peacock and mouse, in our home, sacred flowers and trees in our garden. We should, of course, wear the holy ash and pottu, our sacred jewelry and prayer beads, and see that our young people do also. All Śaivites should become initiated into the Pañchākshara Mantra and chant it daily upon a mālā of rudrāksha beads. Sights, scents, sounds, tastes and religious symbols—it is through these ways our religion is understood by the next generation.§
I spoke on global education in January of 1990 at the Global Forum for Human Survival, Development and Environment in Moscow. My message to the 700 religious and political leaders there was that we need, in the century ahead, to teach all children tolerance, openness to different ways of life, different beliefs, different customs of dress and language. We need to stop teaching them to fear those who are different from themselves, stop teaching them hatred for peoples of other colors and other religions, stop teaching them to see the world as a field of conflict and instead instill in them an informed appreciation and a joyous reverence for the grand diversity we find around us. Modern education can do that, provided the approach is changed. ¶Basic human Vedic values should be taught to every child and every student. These eternal values have nothing to do with race, creed, caste, politics or ethnic culture. Learning how to read and write is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal of education is also knowing what to read and what to write, as well as how to live in tune with nature, in harmony with the universe and at peace with oneself and one’s fellow man. A great Hindu saint once wrote, “Those who cannot live in harmony with the world, though they have learned many things, are still ignorant” (Tirukural 140). ¶The big question today that spiritual and political leaders are facing is how the peoples of the world are to live on this planet in harmony, and how to correct the errors of the past and the resentments that still linger, to ensure survival of humankind in the future. Education, they know, will play a key role, but only if educators focus first on human values which make us all better people, and secondly on technical know-how. ¶The human values we are speaking of here are known by all the tribal peoples, as they are inwardly a part of the knowledge within each of us. These principles must be cultivated, however, to manifest in any society, community, village or family. Global education must reach all the peoples, including the tribals, in our worldwide global village. It cannot be one-sided on the part of those who have the resources teaching others what they think they need to know. Rather, all voices must be heard, of the tribal and the industrialist. But will they be heard? Perhaps yes! The intelligentsia of industrialized societies are realizing that they don’t really have all the answers and that traditional tribal communities have something to teach after all. We have simple problems on this planet—food for survival, water, air, shelter and health care. The tribals are well aware of each of these and had them under control before they were conquered. In the same spirit that the modern pharmacologist journeys into the Amazon forests to discover medicines used for centuries that he can apply to world health care, so we in our various spheres of knowledge need to more and more rediscover the old ways and bring them forward. ¶In Russia, some bright young students asked me, “What can Hinduism offer in contributing to world peace and global education?” I explained that Hinduism offers a unified vision of man and nature in which there is reverence, not dominion or carelessness. Mother Earth, sustainer of life, is a key Vedic idea. Respect for Earth, for life in its many forms, is found in the American Indian nations, in the Hawaiian religion, the African tribes and the many other indigenous peoples. It was lost by many in recent centuries, but now its depth is being discovered again. ¶While the family is suffering a lot in many parts of the world, I explained, it is still very strong in Hindu society. We have to keep it that way, and teach the world by our example that it is the family that nurtures the individual and stabilizes the religion and hence the nation. Only by keeping a strong sense of family can humankind hope for a secure future.§