Swami Chinmayananda
Individual Perfection is the means for Total Perfection
Swami Chinmayananda
Mankind stands between two worlds - one dying and the other struggling to be born. What form will the new world take ? We alone can choose. We are the makers of our own world and if today the world is an ugly place, it is because we ourselves are ugly. If we cleanse our hearts, we will find that the brilliance in the world is but a reflection of the brilliance within.
This self-cleansing becomes difficult for the average person because it is a subjective process, wherein each has to cleanse himself. Moral living, ethical standards, religious virtues and cultural values are often discussed but of the many people who talk about them, very few come to live them. Unless we decide to bring these known virtues into our own life, the world cannot be improved. Only by readjusting the inner personality can each one of us bring out a greater dynamism, cheer, and fuller love in all our contacts in society.
Without this unfoldment of our inner beauty, the quality of life cannot be improved. Secular and material organizations are necessary; the politicians, the economists, the scientists have a great responsibility to improve the social welfare, organization of production, distribution and administration of justice and thus to improve the conditions of life in society. But the happiness of the community can be assured only when we have a healthy community. A community is healthy only when the members are healthy. If man has the positive virtues of the heart and the creative values of the intellect, his responses to the environment will be healthy and he will gain balance and joy in life.
Individual perfection is the means for the total perfection. For this, man must regenerate himself. He must have an ideology in life by which he can individually and collectively grow to be a healthy individual. All religions are built upon such rejuvenating ideologies. They supply the higher eternal values of life to their followers and nourish them with their various techniques until each individual absorbs them into himself.
The values that religions provide are based on eternal truths of life, and therefore are the permanent values of the changing world. The world may change, but the eternal values will always remain the same. They were good for our ancestors, they were equally good for the people in the Middle Ages and they were again found good for the communities of the last century. Surely they are good for the present century also. They are ever one and the same at all times.
The fundamental values when practised, are capable of making man healthier to face the world outside, even if riddled with endless tragedies. If the world around him were already happy, then these values would help him enjoy the happiness intelligently. These are certain fundamental rules that govern the inner health of man, and these are called by all scriptures as "fundamental values".
The values seem to be different. at least in emphasis in different religions and a student who studies various religions may find that one religion emphasizes one set of ideals and another religion.a different set of ideals. Buddhism asserts one maxim, Hinduism another, Islam and Christianity yet another. But if one closely examines the maxims, one discovers that the fundamental principle is one and the same though the language and the emphasis are different. Just as two doctors would prescribe to the same patient on separate occasions two seemingly different prescriptions for the same disease, those who understand the science of medicine would know that the prescriptions are the same, only in name are they apparently different.
Similarly the ethical and moral values that religions prescribe are all rules of conduct by which we can develop our personality, integrity, and inward health, with which we may enjoy the world more and develop the strength and courage to meet our problems in life. It is true, no doubt, that those who live all these great values of life, will be a mere few, in inner personality who have been guiding the generations and initiating new civilizations in the world.
The great religious masters, using their own ingenious efforts, have time and again revived the philosophical and religious values and thereby arrested the deterioration of culture. When culture deteriorates, there is an increase in barbarity and immorality in the country and its philosophy is misinterpreted leading to confusion and chaos among its people. This is more or less the sad condition of the present world. The need of the hour is to arrest forthwith the deterioration by reviving the great philosophical and religious values of life.
Om Namah Shivaya
Last edited by atanu; 21 December 2009 at 06:11 AM.
Reason: To change the header
That which is without letters (parts) is the Fourth, beyond apprehension through ordinary means, the cessation of the phenomenal world, the auspicious and the non-dual. Thus Om is certainly the Self. He who knows thus enters the Self by the Self.
Bookmarks