Sunday 11 October 2015

GOING BEYOND THE TEXT




I read somewhere that a teacher is someone who teaches a language, mathematics, science or a vocational skill; and that her role has no spiritual angle at all.
This description of her duty made me wonder at how futile her job would be if she were to stop at the practicality of life curtailing it from the very purpose of existence.

When I read Wladzimin Paulau’s words, ‘People slowly learn about life, my son/ Through the years, as suns rise and sink.’ What injustice would I do, if I stopped at the textual level and didn’t take a plunge further into learning from the book of Eternity with timeless lessons printed on its fragile pages?

If in Walt Whitman’s question, ‘Why should not a man or woman do as much as the seasons, and effuse as much?’, if I were to only cling to the rhetoric, then how would I reach out to the most important need of my time, to stretch my limits as far as possible with essentials to my world’s poor and needy?

If while explaining the number zero, I limited my explanation to its invention as one of the most important breakthrough in the history of civilization, wouldn’t I have failed to understand the importance of humility where one makes oneself devoid of all great numbers of life’s dealings to achieve a one to one connection with the creator of all?

If in a science class, I were to dissect a cockroach to study its reproductive system and overlook the importance of life as a gift to be treasured, I would reduce myself to being a murderer with all my small might, killing a part of creation.

For all that matter, if Gora Kumbhar, a Hindu saint, a potter by trade, had only concentrated on his vocation, all his followers would have been left as empty pots.
May I then attempt to change my duties with my free-will and take a step further to play a role more dignified in life? Probably then I would not have to cringe with the knowledge that I didn’t teach it right.
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