Value Education Essentials

Understanding the Need for Value Education

• Human beings aspire for a fulfilling and successful life.
• Education needs to provide the means to achieve this aspiration.
• Value education is crucial to understand what is truly valuable for human beings.
• It helps us recognize our needs, visualize our goals, and understand how to fulfill them.
• The value of anything is its role in the larger order of which it is a part.

Basic Guidelines for Value Education

• Value education should be universal, applicable to all human beings.
• It should be rational, not based on blind belief.
• It should be natural and verifiable.
• Value education should be all-encompassing, transforming our consciousness and way of life.
• It should cover all dimensions of our living - thought, behavior, work, and understanding, and all levels - individual, family, society, and nature.
• It should lead to harmony.

The Process of Value Education

• Value education is about self exploration, not sermons or rules.
• It is a dialogue between who we are and who we wish to be.
• It involves knowing ourselves and through that knowing, understanding the entire existence.
• It is recognizing our relationship with every unit in existence and fulfilling our role within that relationship.

Understanding the Human Being

• Human beings are a combination of the sentient 'Self' (I) and the material 'Body'
• The 'Self' is characterized by needs like respect, trust, and happiness.
• The ‘Body’ has needs like food, physical facilities, and shelter.
• The ‘Self’ exists continuously, while the ‘Body’ is temporary.
• The ‘Self’ is fulfilled through right understanding and feeling.
• The ‘Body’ is fulfilled by physical things like food and shelter.

Distinguishing Needs of the 'Self' and the 'Body'

• 'Self' needs include trust, happiness, and knowledge.
• Body needs include nice looking cars, tasty food, and good health.

The Body as an Instrument of the 'Self'

• The ‘Body’ serves as an instrument of the ‘Self’.
• We use our body to live, experience happiness, and interact with the world.
• The ‘Body’ needs physical facilities for nurture, protection, and right utilization.
• These facilities are essential for the ‘Self’ to live in harmony.

Understanding Myself

• The ‘Self’ is comprised of power and activity.
• The ‘Self’ has desires, thoughts, and expectations.
• The ‘Body’ is responsible for information exchange.

How Activities in the ‘Self’ are Related

• Activities in the ‘Self’ are related to desire, thought, and expectations.
• These activities are interconnected and influence each other.
• They can be influenced by sensation, preconditioning, or natural acceptance.
• They are dictated by others if they are based on sensation and preconditioning.
• They are self-organized if they are based on natural acceptance.

Understanding the Harmony of the ‘Self’ with the Body: Sanyam and Swasthya

• Sanyam is the ‘Self’s’ responsibility for nurturing, protecting, and utilizing the body properly.

• Swasthya is the condition of the ‘Body’ acting according to the ‘Self’, with harmony among its parts.

• Sanyam encompasses nurturing the body through ingestion, digestion, and excretion; protecting the body through proper upkeep, labor, physical exercise, and treatment; and using the body correctly.

• Swasthya is achieved when the body is fit to act according to the ‘Self’ and there is harmony among its various parts.

Understanding Harmony in the Family & Society

• The family provides the foundation for society and the continuity of human traditions.

Harmony in the Family

• Interactions in the family involve relationships between different ‘Selves’.
• Relationships are built on feelings of trust, respect, affection, care, guidance, reverence, glory, gratitude, and love.
• Understanding and acting upon these feelings leads to mutual happiness.

Values in Human-Human Relationships

• Justice: Recognition of values in relationships, their fulfillment, right evaluation, and ensuring mutual happiness.
• Trust: Assurance that the other person intends to make us happy and prosperous.
• Respect: Right evaluation of others.
• Affection (Sneha): Acceptance of the other as one’s relative.
• Care (Mamta): Responsibility for nurturing and protecting the body of a relative.
• Guidance (Vatsalya): Ensuring the right understanding and feelings in the 'I' of a relative.
• Reverence (Shradha): Acceptance of excellence - understanding harmony and living in harmony.
• Glory (Gaurava): Feeling for someone who has made efforts for excellence.
• Gratitude (Kritagyata): Acceptance for those who have made effort for our excellence.
• Love (Prem): Feeling of being related to the entire existence, to all units in existence.

Harmony in Society

• Harmony in society means feeling related to each other.
• Harmony in the family is the basis for harmony in society.

Understanding Vishwas: Differentiating between Intention and Competence

• Trust is assuring that the other person intends to make us happy and prosperous.
• Intention is the natural acceptance of making oneself and others happy.
• Competence is the ability to make oneself and others happy.
• Trust is based on the knowledge of the other person’s intention.
• We often judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their competence.

Respect

• Respect is right evaluation.
• Disrespect is over-evaluation, under-evaluation, or otherwise evaluation.
• The other person is similar to me and the difference could only be at the level of understanding.

Summary

This text provides a comprehensive framework for understanding human values and professional ethics. It emphasizes the importance of self-exploration and the interconnectedness of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Body’ in achieving harmony within ourselves and with the world around us. It explores the role of values in sustaining healthy relationships within the family and society, while also emphasizing the need for justice, trust, and respect. It provides a foundation for ethical decision-making and a greater understanding of our role as responsible individuals in the pursuit of a fulfilling and successful life.

Explore the importance and guidelines of value education through this insightful quiz. Understand how value education can lead to a fulfilling life and harmony across different levels of existence. Test your knowledge on universal principles that apply to every human being.