The Great Classics

The Great Classics

The importance of learning from the great classics and the need for role models

In every university, the library occupies a prominent position. Many of the greatest writers of our time, people who moulded the thought of our country, were students all their lives, pursuing their studies in libraries. Nothing opens out your mind, broadens your horizon, as reading the great classics. Spend some time every day in the study of the classics, to take your thoughts away from the hurly-burly of politics, from the rough and tumble where we are lost in excitement and passion. We must be in a position to decide all issues with calmness, with composure and with good judgement. For that, there can be no greater preparation than an hour of study of the great classics.

Appeals To All

A classic is strictly a contemporary work. It is meant for all generations. It is not meant merely for the time in which it was written. When you open a classic, you will find there a sense of discrimination, a sense of judgement. You yourself grow; you are endowed with new eyes with which to look at the world. That is the true purpose of a classic.

In this poison tree of samsara, there are two fruits of inestimable value which have nectar quality: the tasting of the flavour of the classics and communion with great men. A university must bring the two together, must house the classics; it must also collect men of greatness of spirit so that the students by their study of the classics and communion with great professors and great celebrities who are bought together, get truly educated and civilised so far as their behaviour is concerned. Anger, greed, and jealousy are the baser side of our nature. These are things which we have to control. We can control them effectively and efficiently by the study of these things.

It is not necessary for us to think that science gives us this, art gives us that and literature gives us a third. The house of knowledge cannot be divided against itself. It is one indivisible whole. It is a particular spiritual direction — prayojanam tattva darshanam — of the shastras. All the sciences enable us to probe a little into the mystery of reality. Science is imaginative adventure; it is an adventure of the human mind to understand a little more of the mysteries that surround us. So also in literature: it gives us moral insight; it enables us to know the feeling and passions of men; it tells us what we should avoid, what we should not.

Nation-builder

A great writer, Thucydides, writing about the Peloponnesian War, warns us against the seductive nature of love of power and he tells us that if we succumb to its temptations, great men and great nations, both succumb, both fall down, both become prostrate. What builds up a nation are good qualities of humanity, fellowship and compassion; what destroys a nation are hatred, greed, suspicion and jealousy. Fellowship makes for life; lack of fellowship makes for death. In every individual you have chords of fortitude, heroism, passion and the capacity to lay down life for an abstract idea or a great cause. We must also give youth the right kind of leadership. If we have both great leadership and service, our country will become a great one.

Om Namah Shivay