Be careful While Choosing Your Ideal In life!
H H Maa Purnananda
“Yadyadaacharati Shreshthastattadevetaro Janah; Sa Yatpramaanam Kurutey Lokastadanuvartatey.”
– (Sreemad Bhagawad Geeta – 3/21)
The five-year old little boy in the house is possessive and goes violent when his three-year old little sister wants that which he has! This, and such other petty matters are followed by unpleasant arguments and unnecessary fights within the small family of only four human beings! If this is repeated day in and day out, then one should not be surprised if it leads to breaking the family. Lack of maturity and culture!
It is not sufficient to have good knowledge of the subject matter that one teaches. It is necessary that the knowledge is imparted to the students in a clean, conducive and disciplined environment, with mutual love and respect between the teacher and the taught! Else, there would be educated and well-established people, but spreading unrest and hatred in the human society!
Fraud, forgery, deception, discrimination, greed, grabbing, loot, lies and so on and so forth! The human society, infested with such lowly characteristics, cannot even dream of excellence that was otherwise possible to achieve by the same people, if only they would have chosen the right leadership and would have followed the right ideals in their life!
The purity and culture of the parents set the basic standard of life of the children, the discipline and good conduct of the teachers leave favourable impact on the students, the honesty and integrity of the governing bodies are essential for training the officials and associates for excellence.
At the same time, the ill-behaved and disturbed parents, dirty, lazy and lousy teachers and egoistic and frowning bosses, all leave negative impact, yet would surely be aped and imitated by countless people, young and old.
When certain characteristics and traits are obviously negative, then some would like to avoid being influenced by them, though it is difficult. Some, having weak minds, get unknowingly influenced and do not even realise so, because, their character gets moulded in the same way and they keep following those whom they would have chosen as their ideals! Man chooses his leader or ideal in accordance with his own inherent nature. Hence, it is a psychological phenomenon that people follow their chosen leaders irrespective of the ideals, be them positive or negative, that are set by their leaders.
Therefore, when the Lord in the given Shlok tells about the one who is Shreshthah, an Ideal, who would be imitated by flocks of common people, the Lord indicates that one should live up to one’s status by righteous means for the right cause, as each one is being looked up as an ideal by so many others.
Each and every human being should be sufficiently cautious of his inherent tendencies, his conduct in the family and his behaviour in the society. Thus, the humans could prevent extreme disturbances, violence, misbehaviour and unrest in the world. True progress should be measured not only on the basis of the mankind scaling heights in scientific and technological achievements, but, along with those achievements, the touch of humanity, culture and spirituality should never be neglected or forgotten.
The importance of learning from such ideal Men-of-achievements who live the exemplary life of sacrifice and service, who bring peace and progress in the society, who have flawless behaviour and have disciplined conduct, has been subtly mentioned in most of our Sacred Texts through anecdotes and historical references. Also, the Lord even personally directs Arjun’s attention towards such great Men whom he should respect as ideal leaders of their times and should follow them while performing his duty as a Kshatriya prince.
It would be truly beneficial to read about such great leaders, follow the norms and standards set by them and try to live up to even a bit of whatever is learnt from their exemplary lives.
SISS library here at Noida has a wonderful collection of learning material, study material and reading material in print and play-media, a must for all those who wish the well-being of the dear ones and the welfare of the society!