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SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00033 May 2004

 
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              (continuing from Part 3)
-------------------------------------------------------

Dear friends,

In ancient Vedic times, teachers too like all ordinary
men desired to amass wealth. They prayed earnestly to
the Almighty to grant them their wishes. The wealth
prayed for was however not in material terms. The
personal wealth of a teacher in those days was not
measured by the number of cattle in his stable, the
grain in his larder or the real estate he owned. The
real index of a teacher's 'networth' was rather in the
number of good and able students --"brahmachArin-s" --
who came to live and learn under his tutelage -- as
his beloved wards ("sishya").

In the Taittiriya Upanishad, in the famous section
called "sIkshavalli", we come across a beautiful
passage of mantras (1.4.2) which constitutes what one
might say is the universal 'Psalm of the Vedic
Teacher'. It is full of extremely stirring words and
sentiments. It is a masterpiece of Vedic composition
and in fact easily deserves to be enshrined eternally
as the credo and personal anthem of all teachers
everywhere in the world. It begins with the words:
   
       "aavahanti vitanmAnA....
  and,
       "aa mA yantu brahmachAriNi svAhA...
        yashOjanE'sAni svAhA...
  
  and closes with,
    
       "Evam mAm brahmachAriNah:...
        
To a teacher of Vedic times, one could say, the above
passage served as daily prayer from which to draw
inspiration from the Almighty Himself. Through it the
teacher was enabled to re-dedicate himself wholly and
sincerely, day after day, to the sacred vocation or
calling chosen by him in life. 

Sometimes the above mantras were also used by the
teacher in prescribed ritual sacrifice called "hOmam"
which, when performed with firm faith ("shraddha"),
was believed to surely secure for the teacher the
great wealth he desired i.e. the wealth that lay in 
great many numbers of students flocking to him. Such a
rite was called "aavahanti hOmam". Even today in
India, Vedic schools that had languished earlier for
lack of student enrolment, are known to have quickly
recovered as admissions increased, thanks to this
particular rite of "aavahanti hOmam" being conducted. 
   

An English translation of the mantras can never do
real justice to the majesty and grandeur of the
original Upanishadic passage. Still, it is worth
reading one just to get some idea of the loftiness of
sentiment behind the "aavahanti homa" -- the great
'Vedic Psalm of the Teacher':

    "Lord, may I grow in spiritual wisdom,
    And may I have food and clothes and cattle        

    
    May students come to me from far and near,
    Like a flowing river all the year;
    May I be enabled to guide them all
    To train their senses and still their minds;

    May this be my wealth, O Lord,
    May this be my fame."   
                      (Taittiriya Upanishad:(1.4.2)

>From the above passage of the Taittiriya Upanishad we
can easily gather that teachers of those Vedic times
were very willing to undergo any pain, any struggle of
sacrifice in order to simply attract and bring
students "from far and near" and from "all quarters"
into their fold. It was their only wealth, their only
claim to fame.

It is not known how many teachers anywhere in the
world today might measure up to the high standards of
the Upanishadic ideal described in the mantras of the
"aavahanti hOmam". It is doubtful if even in India
such a "hOmam" is performed by teachers, Vedic or
otherwise, anywhere these days.

But on my recent tour of the United States, and while
visiting briefly U-Conn, Connecticut, I happened to
come across an event which I believe was truly
suggestive if not reflective of the great Taittiriya
ideal. The event is what I propose to describe to you
in the next posting.

               ***************

               (to be continued)

Rgds,

dAsan,
Sudarshan




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