Home Deity Worship Seminars: Knowledge and skills required to undertake deity worship at home
PREAMBLE
PRABHUPADA VISION.COM: This paper asserts that the present ISKCON educational system is not in line with the educational system that Srila Prabhupada wanted. That further – under whose instruction are we acting when we deviate from Srila Prabhupadas instructions on education?
The premise for making this statement is that the present system firstly has an “operating system” or “mode of reference” in understanding Srila Prabhupada’s instructions on education that is from a western educationalist point of view rather than a Daivi-varnasrama (Vedic) point of view.
One simply has to check what we are doing in our schools and see where it corresponds with Srila Prabhupada’s instructions. We seem to want to throw out Vedic or traditional education saying “Oh, we tried that and it did not work”! When what in actual fact we are doing is throwing out Srila Prabhupada.
Further the current thought within education is to so called “Krishnaize” western educational systems or at the best to use Vedic systems to compliment western systems. Or we use western thought to analyze Vedic educational systems. Whichever way it manifests, we have a western mind set developing both our educational ethos as well as our schools.
This manifests down on a practical level in developing Curriculums as well as syllabuses (what to speak of staff selection) that are primarily western in orientation; as well developing schools that emphasize the western educational ethos of “get qualified so you can get a job”. This has many ramifications. Primarily it undermines a child’s faith in devotional practices and Srila Prabhupada’s mission.
To look more closely at this we could also paint the scenario where in say ten years time the Japanese Yatra gets together and decides to take on education and they decide to “Krishnaize Zen Buddhism”. What would the present educators say to that! It would be a clash between two ‘mleccha’ cultures vying for supremacy! The fact remains that anything in the way of education that they could both offer would be re-inventions of the ‘wheel’ of Vedic culture and tradition.
It may not only be the fact that we are using western techniques but even when we describe Vedic systems we do it from a western perspective. We describe Vedic teaching methods by using terms such as ‘experiential learning’ and so on, not realizing that we are still embracing the ‘western’ or ‘mleccha’ consciousness in doing so.
It seems that the present schools within our movement not only are developing along the stated above lines, they are also using teaching methodology to deliver the subject matter that is primarily ” memory recall” in order to teach as well as to gauge the students achievement level.
This alone undermines the very principal of Vedic schooling which considers that the process of learning operates under a “love” or in other words “service” mood to engage students in the learning process. This is all achieved under the principal of gurukula where the student takes shelter of a guru.
The present mood created under memory recall models is “anxiety/stress” that is needed in order to create a specific “atmos-fear” which is supposed to facilitate the student in remembering the subject matter. Full Article
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