Suppose we come to know that a pulmonologist died due to chain smoking. Such not atypical news makes us ask: “When they were better educated than most people about the dangers of smoking, why couldn’t they handle their desire to smoke ? What exactly is our education doing for us?” 

To understand, consider two broad kinds of education.

Education about our desires: Herein, we learn to see desires as powers. They are things that can move us, but they don’t themselves know which directions are worth moving toward — we need to evaluate and regulate them. 

For evaluating desires, we can consider their consequences, drawing from our own experiences as well as from others’ experiences. For regulating desires, we need to learn how to discipline ourselves and, more importantly, how to purify our unhealthy desires.  While many wisdom-texts may aid in evaluating desires and disciplining ourselves, spiritual wisdom-texts like the Bhagavad-gita also equip us for purifying our desires. Thus, the Gita doesn’t just inform our will, but also transforms it. 

Education for our desires: Herein, we learn to see some of our desires as givens; they arise from our inborn psychophysical nature, which we can’t repress (Bhagavad-gita 03.33). A person with an intellectual nature longs to study and teach — by learning skills to better use their intellect, they can find more personal satisfaction and make greater social contribution. Being educated for our desires, after being educated about them, helps us put our natural interests to the best use. 

Most of today’s glamorized education is about skills, which equip us for fulfilling our desires, not for regulating or rectifying them — hence tragic phenomena like a chain smoking pulmonologist. That’s why we need to complement our mainstream education with education about our desires. For providing us such education, the Bhagavad-gita stands ever-ready. 

One-sentence summary:

Education for our desires improves our skill; education about our desires informs and transforms our will. 

Think it over:

  • What does education about our desires do?
  • What does education for our desires do?
  • In today’s world, why do we need to study Gita wisdom?

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03.33: Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for everyone follows the nature he has acquired from the three modes. What can repression accomplish?

 

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