Mmm, seems pretty easy, right? But what does “right study of the scriptures” (Svadhyaya)
really mean, to attain the “hidden fruits”? I have a wealth of information, some
of it first-rate and hard-to-come by, but what is this injunction to study the
lives of the saints, the Vedas, etc? It is not that easy. So let’s just take
this famous painting of St Jerome as inspiration, sitting in his studio
and contemplating the skull and what may be inside it… Today, “sham
studiousness” can drive you crazy: there is so much to be distracted by. I
tried to imagine what “book learning” would be like in ancient India, with the early
Indus script ca. 3200 BC, when the world population might have been only
40-some million. Or the beginnings of the Greek alphabet, borrowed from the
Phoenicians, resulting in Plato’s incredible Republic. Today, 47,000 new
book titles are published a year, and that’s been going on since Gutenberg.
So books are infinite in number, and time is short; therefore the secret of
knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.
Make a Life Plan and stick to it. Make sure it does the following: 1. It must DO GOOD to Self. 2. It must DO
GOOD to Others (Society). 3. It must contribute to VIRTUES, being
understood as Higher Nature, Civilisation, Peace, Goodwill, Health, Sanity,
Constructiveness, Uplifting, Equality, etc. 4. It must at least AVOID
HARM, with harm being understood as Lower Nature, Inhumanity, Degeneration,
War, Hatred, Insalubrity, Insanity, Destructiveness, Degradation, Inequality,
etc. 5. It must fix a Daily Plan for time spent on: 1) Bodily health, 2)
Mental health, 3) Duties (Body, Society, Professional), 4) Livelihood
(Professional), 5) Choice Duties, 6) Charity. 6. It must be fully reviewable,
amendable, improvable. It must use intelligence and discrimination: observe,
experiment, predict and verify. In fact, very little is needed after the initial
life-period spent searching for some good sources of basic knowledge. It’s all
there, you just have to understand it and attain the fruits…
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