Speech of Swamini Vimalananda are such words Gurur Devo Maheswara, Tvameva mata cha pita tvameva, that is what we say. Now, it is strange
that even though this is the position that you and I in
this culture have given to a Guru, rarely does a teacher
(except for the ones who are sitting over here) feel like
that, feel proud of being a teacher. That is a fact. A
doctor says I am a doctor, and an engineer says I am an
engineer and normally a teacher says I am a teacher! Why?
If you and I don’t have dignity in our own
profession how do we expect others to respect us? Not
possible. The reason why this happens is that most of
them are teachers by compulsion and not by choice. Here
we have teachers who are teachers by choice and not by
compulsion. A teacher by choice waits for Monday and the
teacher by compulsion waits for Sunday! Now a teacher
becomes great because of the great ideas that he has.
When he hooks on to something higher, something great
teacher by his nishtha. Let me explain this to
you, when I was a doing the Brahmachari course in Bombay,
the Vedanta course, we undergo about 3 years of course in
the Ashram, we had a public speaking teacher who was
teaching the youngsters who are there in out
institution – the Chinmay Yuv Kendra, and because
we are going to become future speakers Gurudev said
“you also sit down and learn a few things.” And
this public speaking teacher, he came, and he explained
to everyone how you should talk in public. Many of the
speakers don’t know-they hold on to the mike as
though their life depends on that, and all those things
he told-you must be calm, you must smile, you must do
that, you must not do that, etc, etc, and he had 40 tips
on how to be a good speaker. Everyone was busy noting
down these 40 tips and at the end of it I realised that
all these 40, plus a lot more were there in my Guru. So I
went up him and I asked, “Gurudev”, I said,
“Gurudev did you do a course on public speaking?
Because you have all these 40 tips? He said, “If you
have matter you don’t have matter then you need
it.” Similarly a teacher if he has stuff, if he has
matte, if he has nishtha, then what he is talking
he conveys it, he touches the heart of the people. He can
invoke the best out of everyone. I remember I went to this award winning
ceremony, not for teachers, but for that Bombay Municipal
Corporation person, Khairnar – he was the one who
were people, the plainclothes men with an open rifle
right next to him because he could be shot at any time
and he came up on the dais and made a statement which
really touched my heart. He said, “I feel funny, I
have done nothing, nothing out of my duty, call of duty,
meaning what was expected as a person of that position in
that particular place, I have just done just that and for
following your duty you get awards”! is it not
strange? Jo expected hai wohi kiya, kuch aur nahi kiya
maine, aur itna karnemain award milta hai, iska arta kya
hai?” Majority don’t even do what
they should be doing ! is it not true? A teacher is supposed to teach and that itself is now becoming a rare thing. An American, when he came and travelled the length and breadth of his country was asked, “What do you say about the education system of India?” and this is what he said: “ The Education system of India is a strange method by which the knowledge from the textbook of the teacher is transferred to the? |