Speech of HH Sri Ganapathy Sachchidananda Swamiji – Sachchidananda Satya Sandesha – weekly message in Prajavani, Kannada daily – April 24, 2021
Compiled by: Shruthi Jagadish
Knowledge requires Discretion
There is a lot of difference between knowledge and discretion. Knowledge refers to the path of learning. Discretion is understanding the value of what is learnt. Knowledge may enhance your intellect, but it will not give you discretion. This requires the power of Sattvic qualities or nobility. Gaining knowledge is the art of learning while acquiring discretion is the art of living. Discretion teaches you to not commit mistakes, whereas, thinking that only oneself should flourish is indiscretion. People who are selfish and deceiving do not possess discretion. Such educated indiscrete people ruin the society.
The fort called civilized society was built on the foundation of knowledge with the assumption that knowledge gives wisdom; wisdom leads to discretion; discretion results in prosperity of mankind. But this fort of human cordiality is collapsing today because of such educated men. This is caused by the flaws in learning. We spend huge amounts and send children to school wishing for them to become engineers, doctors, and scientists. But we don’t send them to school wishing that they learn the quality of discretion and lead a cultured life. Hence, though the society has many educated people today, very few have discretion. The morality of the society collapses due to lack of noble qualities in people.
Our education system does not teach how to imbibe good qualities the way it educates one to create wealth. As a result, children are making money with the degrees they have, and see everything only through the lens of money. They judge even their siblings based on their wealth alone. They escape from the responsibility of caring for their parents too using money. They do not realize the value of relationships and try to weigh everything only in terms of money. These are the ill-effects of not having taught children moral values.
If this is the distress faced by the parents of such uncultured children, the impact on the society is indescribable. How can children who do not recognize divinity in parents, find divinity in their duty? With the desire to make easy money, they engage in illegal-illicit activities. The money-power play and immorality has surpassed all limits in the society. The society and country that should have prospered due to its young citizens, is suffering today. There is no instance in the world where a human society devoid of ideology has every flourished. If we do not understand this bitter truth now, even if another century passes, our Bharata will not walk in the path of prosperity. It will struggle due to the ignorance of the past generations.
In this society, people are not learning from their mistakes. They are not imbibing any goodness in their behavior. They are not leaning on the moral values needed for their future. Without their own knowledge, they are treading in the wrong path due to the company of the selfish. Immorality is being valued in the society today. They are ruining their own cultured life and suffering the outcome. The misery is guaranteed to continue if we still do not learn from our mistakes. To acquire noble qualities does not require any extraordinary learning. If we have the discretion that “All are family, everyone is like me”, a life of Sachchidananda will shine in the society.