The Student's Prayer

Don’t impose on me what you know
I want to explore the unknown
And be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
Your wisdom my negation.
Don’t instruct me; let’s walk together.
Let my riches begin where yours ends.
Show me so that I can stand on your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
Something different.
You believe that every human being
Can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
When I ask you to live according to your wisdom.
You will not know who I am
By listening to yourself.
Don’t instruct me; let me be.
Your failure is that I be identical to you.

This prayer written by Humberto Maturana’s son was the basis of an
article by Dr. Scaria Zacharia in Bilathi Malayalee (November 2009 issue), explaining the core sentiments at the heart of the poem. This poem, as I see it, has a 3-dimensional quality to it:

1. The dimension of “tension” within teaching and learning as elucidated by Dr. Zacharia.
2. The dimension of “spirituality” that is truer of a prayer than most prayers, and
3. The dimension of “life philosophy” embodying the quality of wisdom which is just as substantive as that of Krishna’s to Arjuna.

I will extrapolate the latter two dimensions as an adjuvant to the implicit contention around teaching and learning.

Dimension 2:

What is a typical “prayer?” It is one that asks for provisions that are believed to contribute to life’s security and safety; for assurances that make life’s challenges a tad easier to tackle, and for wishes and desires to be granted in the hope of improved beneficence. It parlays into gratitude that which is received. It is a memo to a superior boss who needs to be kept pleased. But look at the following lines:

Don’t impose on me what you know, I want to explore the unknown and be the source of my own discoveries. Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery. The world of your truth can be my limitation; your wisdom my negation. Don’t instruct me, let’s walk together.

There isn’t a prayer more authentic. There isn’t a prayer more powerful than what discovery yields from a “spiritual journey”. This is counterintuitive to what most of us do in the name of faith: we are spiritually passive, robotic and unenlightened and dispirited. Jesus, the historical figure, lived this “prayer”. He was not the Essene who left Palestine when he returned after this sojourn – the physical and spiritual journey he undertook – across Asia Minor and India. He learned from the Vedas and the Buddhist teachings. Even the “mythic” Christ was transformative as he traversed the spiritual domain of the Egyptians in Alexandria, the cross-currents of the Christos embedded in the Grecian Norse mythologies, and the Krishna-avatar in India. Transformation, therefore, is liberation, and stagnation, slavery. Judaic Laws and teachings bore limitations that the historic Jesus wanted improved
upon. The Judaic “wisdom” was His “negation” which he chose to tweak and improve upon. He debated the instructions. His explorative discourses sought liberation from the known and the limitations that came with what was foretold. True “prayer”, then, is your own discoveries arrived at through your active pursuit of wisdom beyond the confines of the binders in book form and that which is imposed upon you by others based on, perhaps, what they do not know.

Dimension 3:

When a teacher teaches, the lessons imparted are meant to bring the student a measure of understanding of the world as understood by the teacher so that his/her disciple carries forward his/her learning for the greater betterment of his/her life and the lives of those touched by him/her. It is the “Pay It Forward” principle: paying forward is cumulative in its effect. What is cumulative, therefore, has to be more than what it started off with. It gathers proportion and momentum with each passing; hence, Let my richness begin where yours end. Show me so that I can be something different. You believe that every human being can love and create. I understand, then, your fear when I ask you to live according to your wisdom. You will not know who I am by listening to yourself. Don’t instruct me; let me be. Your failure is that I be identical to you.

Kabir Das wrote:

If God and teacher were standing in front of me
Whom should I pay obeisance?
I bow to my teacher
Who guided me to God.

If the role of teacher is so elevated, how much more superior is that of parents! The question, then, is: is what you model for your child devoid of double-talk so that, when asked, you don’t have to fear to live according to your wisdom (in which) you believe that every human being can love and create.

I would direct the same question to the men of religion in this community (Kna) on whom the lay men and women rely for moral guidance and direction: If you believe that every birth on this earth is in the image and spirit of God, would you then discriminate against what God brought together in contravention of your social prescriptions, thereby challenging God’s own will? Are the actions you undertake righteous for your children who see the dichotomy between what you preach and you do? Why do you impose on them what you know? Why do you allow the world of your truth (to) be (your child’s) limitation, (and) your wisdom (to be his/her) negation? The most profound lines here are the anguish-laden plea when the student prays: Reveal yourself so that I can be something different. You will not know who I am by listening to yourself. Don’t instruct me; let me be. Your failure is that I be identical to you.

The Student’s Prayer is a prescient admonishment primarily of the pedagogy, and inevitably by extension, of adults who are teachers in parent-form, and of religious practitioners and community leaders. There is no greater disservice done to a growing mind than distorting it with ignorance and biases from a past that is unrecognizable to the present. There is no greater harm done to the spirituality embodied in the discovery processes of life than to suffocate it by pre-cast molds of conformance that are somebody else’s choice.

I had raised this plea on behalf of the youth of this community in the September ’09 issue of Sneha Sandesham, Freedom to be a Knananite. The
spiritual domain of the human condition speaks a language sans words, yet one that is understood by people all across the globe. The variety in the
physical, linguistic and cultural manifestations is the celebratory colours not unlike the buoyant balloons at a party event. However, without the common element of air giving them buoyancy, they cease to be balloons. So are the humans without that “air” of spirituality. Indoctrination of minds is antithetical to nurturing; deprivation of opportunities dampens the ambers of life that will not know its true potential as a fire. Let me be: this prayer answered will be your most precious gift of life to your children.

William Wordsworth wrote, “The child is father of the man.”
Yes, it means that what we are as adults take birth from what we are as children. If intelligence and survival of the fittest translate to successful evolution and adaptation to renewing conditions, then let us not mold our children to be what Pink Floyd wrote, “Another brick in the wall”

LET THEM BE!