वशिष्ठ विश्व विद्यापीठ,अयोध्या धाम

भारतीय परंपरा के अनुसार मंदिर अध्यात्म और उपासना के स्थल होने के साथ शिक्षा और कला साधना के केंद्र हुआ करते थे। मुझे ज्ञात नहीं है लेकिन ऐसा ध्येय अयोध्या धाम पुनर्निर्माण योजना का भाग अवश्य होगा। यह अभीष्ट है कि मर्यादा पुरुषोत्तम श्रीराम के गुरु वशिष्ठ के नाम से अयोध्या में एक शोध और शिक्षा केंद्र स्थित हो । अयोध्या धाम की मर्यादा और माहात्म्य के अनुरूप 'वशिष्ठ विश्व विद्यापीठ' विश्व में प्रत्येक दृष्टि से अद्वितीय हो लेकिन विशिष्टता हेतु इसका संकेन्द्रण वेद, आयुर्वेद, योग तथा अन्य अपेक्षित ज्ञान की विधाओं पर हो सकता है। इसके अंतर्गत विभिन्न पीठों के नामकरण भारत के महान आचार्यों और मनिषियों के नाम पर हो, जैसे कि आर्यभट्ट खगोल विज्ञान शोध एवं अध्ययन केंद्र। साथ ही श्रेष्ठता के लिए यह भी अपरिहार्य है कि यह पीठ पूर्णरूपेण स्वायत्त, स्वशासी और स्वपोषी हो। यह संस्थान सम्पूर्ण मानवता के लिए रामराज्य के मानक और माध्यम निर्धारित करेगा जिससे उपलब्धि संभव होगी : ''दैहिक, दैविक, भौतिक तापा, रामराज काहु नहीं व्यापा।" वास्तव में अभी भी विश्व में एक भी शिक्षा केंद्र ऐसा नहीं है जो वैश्विक स्तर पर अखंडित मानवीयता और नैतिकता के प्रति लोगों को आस्थावान बनाएँ। यह ध्येय मर्यादा के अनन्य प्रतिमान रामचरित की प्रेरणा से संभव होगा। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

What to Value

What we value has value. See diamond: it is only aged compressed coal. We may value things without them having any intrinsic worth. There are several factors which play on our minds. For instance, people, who manage a lofty niche for themselves with their larger-than-life images getting flashed too often, attract the adoring attention of people despite their having no meaningful role in our lives. One may value, for instance, a film actress more than their mother. Unusuality is another factor; we don't value normal walking which sustains our lives but value dancing movements of legs like nothing.

What we value becomes valuable by taking something out of us. Sometimes, we are amply compensated for valuing something like if we value education. In many cases, the diminishing of self is irreparable when we value worthless persons, occasions, and things, particularly stage-managed ones with a purpose. One needs to be discerning what they value.

One of the paramount phenomena which deserves high value on the part of an individual is their person and persona. One must keep this in their mind. Anything that deprecates your value must be discarded if having a choice. One must value only things which enhance their value in return. There may be some exceptions to the rule; among others are our nation, parents, and teachers. We owe to them greatly for what we are. We must also value our fellow travellers. The mutuality makes us human.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Being a Developed Nation

Being a developed nation depends on the ease and cost-effectiveness of doing things within the borders. In this world, the fact of the matter is that nations compete ruthlessly with each other for the resources the planet offers, which also include other human beings. A country with its residents at their best alone is best enabled for the competition.

The cruel reality of the world is that rich nations and people use other human beings as resources. This is the unavoidable reality. The wise thing to do for one is to use others and get used by others judiciously in a balance favouring self. The good thing is that in the modern capitalist age, one can demand and get user charges. The fairness of charges is best ensured by the capitalist system itself. A nation or person needs more of a capitalist order for fairness in everything one may legitimately desire. Other systems extract forced labour and even sacrifices of lives without any compensation.

Being a most developed nation, the nation would facilitate its every member with the easiest way to do things worth doing and bearing the least cost for doing those worthy things. Such a nation would also be capable of getting a fair share of global resources and defending itself from rogue forces.

Entrepreneurship is the prime of all engagements human beings undertake. Entrepreneurs serve the people and communities by offering them goods and services they need and in the process they generate surpluses which feed the agencies of order, art, sciences, and literature. Moreover, it ensures an ambience in which one can attain spiritual bliss. It is unrestricted entrepreneurship which translates into high culture. The decay and the resultant wretchedness are directly proportionate to the restrictions put on people and their enterprises.

A poor nation is poor because of its habit of making things complicated for its constituents and imposing costs, fair and unfair, disproportionately to the value of services public agencies provide to the people. A poor nation also sees its government as an agency sui generis and fails to scrutinise and mend the mechanism based on cost-benefit analysis.

The issue I have raised above is the most obvious thing to say but the irony is that the nation's operative epistemology and system work mostly in contradistinction. We need to decolonise our minds from pathogenic leftist ideologies.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Western Lenses and the Desi Visuals

The Western lenses often get distorted visions of the desi visuals. Sporting such spectacles, one sees things from the bifocal of religious and earthly. Desis have things which cannot be captured with this binary. India always had a secularised faith. Worshipping the incarnation of the omnipresent in human forms and roles is itself the secularisation of faith as Indians have always been aware of the infiniteness and incomprehensibility of the Supreme Being. Dharma implies myriad things in their desirable forms and among them one induces the public functionaries to be moralistic and just. One can be Dharmik even without being a believer.

In the Indic traditions, we have an integrated perspective of life where reason and beliefs do not exist in separation or opposition. If we see them separated, we find them only indistinguishably blended in Dharma. If there is anything incongruent or unpleasant in prevalent ideas and practices, Dharma does not stop one from doing away with the unsavoury. The Dharma Dhwaja diffusion over the whole land and beyond augers well not only for all human beings but for all beings and things.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Good Education

If the education imparted is not good enough, it is not worthy of being disseminated. The bad education is counterproductive. It only produces hardened idiots and rogues. People are better left without any formal education if it is not good enough.

Here, it should be made clear that the goodness of education is barely tied to either metropolitan locality or the grandeur of architecture.

Let me illustrate it with the big picture of a piece of human history.

The modernizing West, while having the best educational institutions of the times, could only perpetrate manslaughters, banditry, human trafficking, drug peddling and devastation of flora and fauna around the globe. And, finally, it fell to the all-devastating two world wars, bringing untellable miseries to itself.

After the great war, nay, the most devilish enterprise of modern education, the two superpowers sporting the so-called most glorious institutions of learning, stunted generations of people worldwide in their Cold War campaigns.

The core value of education is Dharma as how Goswami Tulsidas defines it:
'परहित सरिस धर्म नहीं भाई, परपीड़ा सम नहीं अधमाई'
(Doing good to others is only worth doing, nothing is unbecoming like causing pain to others)

Kabir also brings much clarity to the objective of education :
पोथी पढ़ि-पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय, ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय।
(Despite exhausting themselves by reading books, none could become learned; those who study four letters of love become learned.)

The fact is that true education leads one to overcome hatred and fear and equips one to engage with the realities for the betterment of one and all. There should not be confusion while it is about promoting the good, it is also about fighting the evil.

But, knowing what is good and evil is again very tricky. And that is the challenge of education.

Niraj Kumar Jha

साधुवाद आपको

नमन
श्रद्धासुमन अर्पित
साधुवाद
धर्मप्राण
संत
महाकवि
आपको

 
अपनी वाणी से
अपने सुकृत्यों से
वराहवातार की तरह
डूबते धर्म को उबारा
रामधुन ऐसी जगायी
हम हम ही रहे और
और आज यह
शुभ दिन आया।

 
पौष शुक्ल पक्ष १२, २०८०

 
नीरज कुमार झा

प्रार्थना

अयोध्या काया
मन मंदिर है
विराजे प्रभु राम
माता सीता हैं
हृदय बसे हनुमान
श्रद्धा से भीगी आँखें हैं
सुबुद्धि की प्रार्थना
हाथ हमारे जुड़े हैं

 
नीरज कुमार झा

पुनरागमन

पौष शुक्ल पक्ष १२, २०८०

अयोध्या में आज कालातीत एवं कालिक के संगम का सत्यम, शिवम, सुंदरम के मूर्त रूप में जीवंत होना पौष शुक्ल पक्ष - १२, २०८० को विलक्षण दिवस बनाता है। यह सम्पूर्ण मानवता के अपूर्व मंगल का युगारंभ है। प्रभु और भारत के चिरंतन सम्राट श्रीराम के प्रति समर्पण और निष्ठा की अनुभूति आज हर भक्त की पूर्णता है।

यह दिवस भक्ति और धर्म, अलौकिक प्रज्ञा और लौकिक विवेक, आस्था और सौहार्द, सौन्दर्य और सुगमता, एवं ऐश्वर्य और कल्याण की एकरूपता के उत्सव तथा तदनुरूप नवजीवन के उद्गम का कालखंड है।

यह दिवस भारतीयों को भ्रम और भटकाव से दूर होने की प्रेरणा देता है। भारतीय अपने विवेक, उद्यम और शौर्य से संस्कारयुक्त संपन्नता के नए-नए कीर्तिमान रचेंगे, यही आज से भविष्य है।

सियावर रामचन्द्र जी की जय। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

Soulfulness

 It is rare to see a person who is totally free of egoism. Those who are so are mostly indifferent. But we know and sometimes come to see people who do not impose themselves on others, create an ambience of bonhomie and walk with their companions with the spirit of collective well-being. What makes them the finest of human beings and makes them shine and light up others without being either egoist or indifferent.  This is soulfulness, which survives among some despite our education and social milieu. Our education basically instils egoism in us and divides us between those who are arrogant and those who are frustrated.  

Niraj Kumar Jha

Who is theorising?

And for that matter, who is defining? Apparently, a theory is a statement and tool of comprehension. What remains unseen, by design, is that theories are mechanisms for appropriation.

 
Among nations and within people, the crafty theory providers fashion the realities of their targetted area to suit the interests of their patrons.

 
A person, people, and nation, therefore, must enable themselves to theorise themselves and retain the capacity to do so. Every person may not be capable of theorising, but they must have enough education to read beyond what is writ large.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Millennial Statement

This is the civilization's millennial statement. The civilization discards the lingering millennium and inaugurates a new one. The imposed epistemologies are finally evaporating out of the collective consciousness. The nation makes a declaration of becoming authentically itself. Over time, but steadily, it has been scraping away the vestiges of defeats and subjugation. It renews the unity and resolve of all the people and consolidates their collective determination to see their nation as the leading light for humanity.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Scholar-Knowledge Relationship

 Based on the relationship between scholars and knowledge, one may classify scholars into two categories. The first category of scholars views the discipline of their engagement as sacrosanct and seeks to propagate whatever they decipher from their learning for the observance by whom they address. They see themselves as subjects of the discipline and work with a sense of devotion to the fashionable precepts of their respective disciplines. These are devout scholars. 

The other or second category of scholars are those who master their respective disciplines. Their approach to the discipline is secular and utilitarian. Instead of being driven by knowledge, they use knowledge for the common good, including their own good. 

The first categories of scholars are necessarily products of societies which have disturbed or ruptured histories yet to be overcome. Their collective vision is split, and they do not have a coherent perspective of what they view or review. They also lack in their efforts for the reason of the absence of sufficient motivation to know the ins and outs of the body of knowledge they engage with as they face mostly a demeaning milieu. For them, there always remains something mysterious in the body of knowledge they encounter mostly as a result of their incompetence. This incites a devotion in their minds instead of challenging their reason. Underdevelopment is a matter of the lack of seriousness in scholarly vocations. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

अनुभव और सिद्धांत के बीच का इंद्रजाल

अपने अनुभवों को सिद्धांतों के रूप में रखकर समझना और परखना हमारे लिए गंभीर चुनौती है। इसके लिए हमें विदेशी अवधारणाओं, उपागमों और सिद्धांतों का उपयोग करना पड़ता है। पहले तो इन उपकरणों को समझना ही टेढ़ी खीर है और कइयों की विशेज्ञता की क्षमता यही आकर समाप्त हो जाती है (इस क्षेत्र में अनूदित ज्ञान का परिणाम और भी भयावह है)। इसके बाद शुरू होता है ऐसे विद्वानों द्वारा उन आयातित शब्दावली और प्रणाली के अनुरूप अपनी परिस्थितियों को फिट करने का दुराग्रह। यह समाज में व्याप्त अनेक विसंगतियों का कारण है। इससे आगे की समस्या है विदेशी विद्वानों द्वारा भारत की परिस्थितियों का सिद्धांतीकरण। उनके सिद्धांत स्वाभाविक रूप से उनकी सांस्कृतिक चेतना पर आधारित होते हैं जो स्थूलता को अधिक दृष्टिगत करती है। दूसरा, समझने की मशीनी दृष्टि कई अप्रकट सांस्कृतिक ताने-बाने को उपेक्षित कर देती है। विदेशियों के ये सिद्धांत हमारे लिए मार्गदर्शक हो जाते हैं और हमारी समझ और सच्चाई में दूराव पैदा कर हमारे जीवन को कठिन बना देते हैं। शिक्षण संस्थानों में किए जाने वाले कार्यों को लेकर गंभीरता की गंभीर आवश्यकता है।

नीरज कुमार झा

 भक्ति

प्रभु की अराधना करे

नहीं करे प्रभुता की कामना

द्रव्य जीवे नहीं

द्रव हो सींचे जीवन

भक्ति उसी की सच्ची

हम माने या ना माने

नीरज कुमार झा

प्रभु

निश्छल मन
हृदय में उमंग
आँखों में आँसू
कंपित हाथों से
जब करता मानव स्पर्श
प्राणमय हो जाता जड़
जो कण-कण में सम्पूर्ण
क्षण-क्षण में शाश्वत
जीव-अजीव में अभेद
सृष्टि-शून्य में विद्यमान
अनादि-अनंत में स्थित
हो जाता स्पंदित उसमें
हो वह धातु या पाषाण

 
नीरज कुमार झा

For Being in Mutual Service

Serving each other, not cheating, robbing, and fleecing others, is the prime inclination of civil people. Barbarism relies on violence and craft, and barbaric people seek to enslave and despoil each other and anyone. The market is the mechanism through which one serves the rest. Democracy flows from this natural tendency of civilized people. Liberalism is the coin of which capitalism and democracy are two sides. Liberalism is the highest stage of civilizational evolution so far. 

I have used the term civilization here not in the sense of the racial-religious geographic regions of the world but in terms of the distance any individual has travelled away from their barbaric primality both historically and psychologically. 

What drags the civilizational march of humanity backwards is their primal instincts DNAed in them by their far longer existence in the wild. The herd mentality, natural to the primal human folks for surviving in the jungle,  undyingly informs human thoughts and leads to the production of collectivist ideologies, ironically, even through scientific methods. 

Liberalism in the last quarter of the twentieth century reemerged to be the default protocol for humankind as being the logical way to human good. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall was the most momentous occasion of the civilizational advance when ordinary people ripped the mighty menacing wall to rubble with their bare hands. 

We should avoid being the generation that would lose the legacy of the sagacity and sacrifices of the people who suffered and fought against the most barbaric regimes and orders ravaging humanity in the last century. 

Niraj Kumar Jha