Thirukkural, written by the sage poet,Thiruvalluvar consists
of 1330 poems which has been divided into 133 chapters. It would be no
exaggeration to mention that there is no aspect of
human life which has not
been dealt with in
great detail by Thiruvalluvar. It is truly beyond one’s
comprehension as to how an ordinary human being could have had the amazing
capacity to
observe,think,analyse,understand,judge and assimilate the essence of
human wisdom on as many topics as has been crisply,but most precisely dealt
with by the saint poet Thiruvalluvar, in the short span of life time that is
available to any human being,unless it is by the
divine grace itself. I
consider it a great privilege to have been offered an opportunity to write in these
columns which is a modest attempt at relating the messages as conveyed by
Thiruvalluvar to the contemporary realities with respect to men and matters.
The first chapter is
of verses which are in the nature of
paeans to God in which Thiruvalluvar laments about the futility of the
formal education of man if it fails to
persuade him to pay his obeisance to God
recognising the superior power of the divine which should convince him
to surrender himself to such divine. Thiruvalluvar by this, implies that the
first and foremost objective of formal education should be to make man wise
enough to realise his own’s limitations. Formal education should make him
realise that it is beyond the comprehension of human brain to unravel
the
ultimate truth, which would provide answers to questions such as the
limits of infinity,origin of the universe,limits of space and time ,the soul’s
ultimate destination etc. Thiruvalluvar says that the one who realises this
truth will be free from all worries as he would reconcile himself to the fact
of his inabilities in the face of adverse situations not in his control to
reverse or rectify.
Going through the first chapter of Thirukkural ,one is
inevitably reminded of the statement made by the great Indian
Philosopher Statesman C.Rajagopalachari,also popularly known as Rajaji,
regarding the nature of
believers and agnostics. This was by way of answering those sceptics
and
nonbelievers who kept questioning about the existence of super natural
power
and kept claiming that every entity that is found in this universe
originated
with matter. One cannot possibly improve upon Rajaji’s
explanation by
way of
answer to the ultimate question as mentioned above. Rajaji said that
for one
who believes in God ,no explanation is necessary and for one who does
not
believe in God ,no explanation is possible. This essentially means that
the
existence of omnipresent and omnipotent divine could be felt and
realised only
by the believer and the one who does not believe can do no more than to
eternally keep asking questions about something for which no answer with
conviction and honesty is likely to be emerge now or ever.
More summaries about the Thirukkural: The Tamil Bhagavad Gita