USE NOT THE INTELLECT FOR INCREASING LAZINESS

[Ms Tercy Lonan]

USE NOT THE INTELLECT FOR INCREASING LAZINESS
A humorous but meaningfully significant incident is called back to my mind that can to
some extent depict the baneful and curious motive behind all the so-called advancements in modern
science and technology. One gentleman once asked his enthusiastic son who happened at that
moment to be a student in some institute of technology, “Dear boy, what will you do if you become
a good and renowned engineer?” The boy replied, “Dear Daddy! I will invent a machine which will
be capable of giving me all that I desire by merely switching a button.” The father then asked the
same question to his second son who was implicitly following the ideal of his elder brother.
“What do you intend to do when you too become an adept in modern technology as your
ambition is keen after this?” And the juvenile younger boy instantly replied, “Father, I must invent
another machine which will be used for the purpose of pushing the button of my elder brother’s
marvellous machine and thus save us from the trouble of pushing the button quite often for our
variegated needs.”
This illustrates the modern trend of scientific minds. So much of Tamas or inertia enters into
man’s nature as a curse of luxuries and comforts that a time comes when he hesitates, even to switch
on a button!
Instead of applying the intellect for inventing more and more physical comforts and
machinery even to do your daily work, let this precious faculty be utilised in discriminating the real
from the unreal. Let the intellect be directed in the quest of the permanent, eternal, imperishable and
all-blissful Atman. Thus make life transformed to enjoy real and undecaying happiness born of
divine communion. Finally rest in the abode of supreme blessedness devoid of all fears and
sufferings