WHY MAKE THE BHAGAVAD GITA A PART OF YOUR CHILDREN'S BOOKSHELF?
When a small infant enters the world, her brain is absolutely empty and waiting to be filled with useful information. What is fed to a child as information and knowledge during her early years has a lasting impact on her future. Those formative years have a significant impact on the beliefs she holds throughout her life.
Parents, teachers, the environment, society, and neighbors are all common sources of information for children. In addition, we now have various modern means that have a significant impact on children's beliefs. Television, Netflix, video games, and Facebook are all available to us. The most significant knowledge for a child, in my opinion, is what she learns at home from her parents and at school from her teachers. These two can change the way everything else affects a child's psyche. And these are the very elements of a child's growth that our current culture fails miserably to address.
A child is exposed to television and cell phones before she can even walk properly. These have almost completely replaced parents as a child's first teachers. And once she begins formal education, all she is taught is how to compete and build a career. All of a child's schooling these days is focused on preparing for a career rather than preparing for a life.
Spirituality is seen as something reserved for the elderly in our society. Some parents do encourage their children to pray first thing in the morning, but that is about it. The prayers most of us make and teach our children are just requests to God to provide us with what we require. These could be intangibles like happiness, peace, safety, fame, and power, or tangibles such as money, a bigger car, a grander house, an attractive spouse, and so on. We have inadvertently transformed God into a provider of our necessities. When the supply runs out, so does our faith in Him.
All of this is due to the erroneous upbringing we have been provided and we unwittingly provide our children. We know that something amazing happens within a womb to transform sperm into a living human. But we never try to understand the source of that magic. We may pretend to think that ‘God' sent us to this planet, yet we are uninterested in asking, “Why did He do that?” And, if God has sent us to this planet, where do we actually belong? Few of us are interested in asking such questions. All this has turned us into a disoriented race today, hankering after trivial pleasures and uninterested in making an effort to learn about the important truths of life.
That is where the world's oldest wisdom, encapsulated in the 701 verses of Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, comes in handy. It is a single comprehensive source of real knowledge needed by human beings more than anything else today.
Enquiring about ourselves, our creator, and our purpose, in my opinion, is the single most effective way to use our intellectual powers. That is the primary purpose for which we have been provided with a questioning mind. We can shape our lives in the way we wish after acquiring this fundamental knowledge about our existence. But inquiring about spiritual truths has to be the first step. Otherwise, we would just be running aimlessly all our lives and that would be a complete waste of the rare opportunity this human life is. And that is the reason it is important that a child gets exposed to such knowledge at an early stage of her life.
The Bhagavad Gita is not a religious book; rather, it teaches a very practical and logical way of living. Its philosophy and teachings can be followed by adherents of any ideology. The Bhagavad Gita (meaning “the Song of God”) contains the teachings given by Lord Krishna to Prince Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra when the latter had lost his composure and forgotten his responsibilities after seeing his loved ones standing on the opposite side ready to fight him. It is believed to contain the nectar of the Sanatana Dharma (meaning “the Eternal Religion”), as documented in the Vedas, the oldest religious texts ever, penned by the author form of God Himself, Veda Vyasa. This is why I often say, “If you have not read the Bhagavad Gita, you are missing out on one of life’s greatest gifts.”
Childhood is the time when we lay the groundwork for a successful life. But what if the definition of "success" that we teach our children is incorrect? The Bhagavad Gita guarantees that a child who reads it will never be deceived in her life and will always stay on track to achieve its true aim. A Bhagavad Gita reader sees the world, herself, as also the other beings, in a radically different light than other people. She develops the ability to perceive the world as it is. The Bhagavad Gita's secret teachings are so potent that they make one considerably more conscious. To achieve enlightenment, one does not need to travel to a forest and meditate for years. The sacred dialogue between Lord Krishna and Arjuna readily provides the gift of enlightenment to all who are eager to receive it.
The Bhagavad Gita is the comprehensive instruction manual provided by God to us for living a perfect life in this material world. It reveals to the reader her own true identity. It explains who truly God is, what His traits are, what our connection with Him is like, and how we might reach Him. It goes into great length about the goal of human life and how we might achieve it. Furthermore, the Bhagavad Gita teaches us how to overcome all negative emotions, such as anger, fear, worry, envy, and others, and how to fill our lives with genuine and everlasting happiness and joy. The magic of the teachings contained in the Bhagavad Gita can be sensed in what Arjuna says to Krishna after hearing His heavenly words, “O Achyuta (the Changeless One), my delusion is destroyed, and my memory has been regained by me through Your grace. I am firmly situated; my doubts are gone. I will now act according to Your word.”
Therefore, we must all plunge into this divine pool of spiritual wisdom contained in the Bhagavad Gita, and we must also encourage our children to do so.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hari Chetan is an author and spiritual coach having more than two decades of experience in all major religions and philosophies in the world including Christianity, Hindhuism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Judaism, Stoicism, Zen, Taoism, and Baha'i. Vedic literature is his primary area of interest.
He is the author of 30 days to Understanding the Bhagavad Gita.
You can learn more about him and his upcoming books and programs on https://harichetan.com/
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