VBT – Meditation 65.5
Correcting Is Concerned
If a student is doing something which is not right, it is the teacher’s very duty to put the student on the right path. It is about the teacher’s love, not condemnation; it is his compassion, not judgment. But most often, what happens is just the opposite: people start judging the person rather than the action. Actions have to be corrected.
Judge actions, and correct them, and don’t correct them according to tradition, convention, according to so-called morality, according to your prejudices. Whenever you are correcting somebody, be very meditative, be very silent; look at the whole thing from all perspectives. Perhaps they are doing the right thing, and your prevention will not be right at all.
So, when I say, ‘Don’t judge,’ I simply mean that no action gives you the right to condemn the person. If the action is not right, help the person – find out why the action is not right, but there is no question of judgment. Don’t take the person’s dignity, don’t humiliate him, don’t make him feel guilty – that’s what I mean when I say, ‘Don’t judge.’
But as far as correcting is concerned: unprejudiced, silently, in your awareness, if you see that something is wrong and will destroy that person’s intelligence, will take him on the wrong paths in his life, help him.
Role of the Teacher
In the cycle of life, a teacher plays a huge role in the growth process of a child. The job of the teacher is not just to teach subjects. His basic function is to bring the students to a better consciousness, to a higher consciousness. This should be the teacher’s love and compassion, and this should be the only value on which we should judge any action as right or wrong. But never for a single moment, let the person feel that he has been condemned. On the contrary, let him feel that he has been loved; it is out of love that the teacher tried to correct him.
If a teacher finds that an intelligent student has to unnecessarily wait six more months for an examination, he should recommend that the student be moved right now to a higher class, because he has enough intelligence. Teachers should be the decisive factors. In that situation, nobody fails, nobody passes; people simply move. A few move faster, a few move a little slower; everybody according to his pace. Nobody is condemned as a failure, nobody is praised as first-class, nobody is praised as a gold-medallist. All these things teach people unnecessary ambition, and ambition is poison.
Accepting Ourselves
The first thing is to stop judging ourselves and accept ourselves and our own shortcomings. Once we accept our own weaknesses and frailties, we will be able to accept others because we will have a clear insight that they are suffering from the same disease. Our accepting them will help them to accept themselves.
Accepting our own selves makes us capable of accepting others and because somebody accepts them, they learn the beauty of acceptance for the first time; how peaceful it feels and they start accepting others. If the entire humanity comes to a point where everybody is accepted as he is, almost ninety percent of our misery will simply disappear.
Tags: Correcting Is Concerned
