Sri Ramakrishna Math : The Vedanta Kesari, February 2003

[Swami Budhananda (1917-1983), was a monk of the Ramakrishna Order. He wielded a powerful pen and spent several years in spreading Vedanta in the U.S.A. The Saving Challenges of Religion, Mind and Its Control and other books authored by him have been acclaimed as valuable guides for spiritual seekers.]

Before, after, and in the midst of everything, man needs to know one formula, the formula for achieving true manhood. What is that formula? This saving formula according to the teachings of Confucius is working to integrate one's own personality and helping others to do the same simultaneously.

There are varying needs of different individuals, societies, and nations. But there is one universal need of all individuals, societies and countries--the need of Integrated Personality (hereafter in short IP). It makes man a true man. A true man alone can solve his own problems and help solve those of others. Confucius said: 'One who is not a true man cannot long stand poverty, nor can he stand prosperity for long.' How true! Poverty brutalises and affluence barbarises man if he does not have an IP.

Above all what we need is enough IP to go round. When we do not have this, our weaknesses will be more than our strength, our misfortunes greater than our fortunes, our weal less available than our woes, our past more glorious than our future. Without an IP our enemies will become more powerful than our friends, there will be more wars than peace, more killing than healing. When we do not have enough IP, young men and women will be without self-control, old men and women would behave as though they were vigorous and young, requiring governments to open more and more mental homes.

When we do not have enough IP, in society there will be more quarrel and fight, agitation and unrest, corruption and nepotism than peace and harmony, control and happiness, honesty and uprightness. We will corrupt the taste of people, nay, our own children in order to make money by selling goods which would pamper their low and vulgar tastes.

When we do not have enough IP, as students we will not devote our time to hard study, we will be more interested in extra-curricular activity than in curricular activity, and we will busy ourselves with thoughts and occupations which distort our budding lives and we will wither away before blossoming. When we have to face the struggle for existence we shall find that we are nowhere in the grade.

When we do not have enough IP, right thinking will be impossible for us. And from wrong thinking how can desirable results ensue? We will either live in the past or in the future and not in the living present. Our energies will be spent in endless negativism complaining about the rottenness of the world and not in heroic struggle for self-betterment or for social well being.

Granted enough IP, our friends will be more powerful than our enemies, peace more enduring than war, healing more than killing. Granted enough character, our trains will run on time, factories will produce more goods than expected; industries will flourish in peace and plenty; fields will yield more crop than expected. Granted enough IP, as students we will have the intelligence to see that the real issue on hand for us as students is to conserve our energy, study well, build up our physical, mental, and spiritual strength and fully equip ourselves for the struggle for existence. We will then easily see through the game of people trying to use us for their purpose at the cost of our life's interest.

Granted enough IP, young men and women will be full of grace, dignity and self-control, staying youthful to advanced age, and old people will become entities of beauty to behold.

Swami Vivekananda says that the IP of any man is but the aggregate of his tendencies, the sum total of the bent of his mind. We are what our thoughts have made us. Thoughts live; they travel far. And so take care of what you think. Every work that we do, every movement of the body, every thought that we think, bears an impression on the mind-stuff. What we are every moment is determined by the sum total of these impressions on the mind. If good impressions prevail, the IP becomes good, if bad, it becomes bad. These ideas suit to our building an IP.

An integrated man develops upwards, the man without integration slips downwards. The man of integrated personality makes history, the man without it is marred by history. The man of character is the hope, solace, well-being, peace and inspiration of mankind; the man without character causes trouble, strife, and misery in society.

Becoming an integrated personality is so important for life that to have to live without it will be worse than not living at all. There is no wound IP cannot heal, no want it cannot fill, and no loss it cannot make good. Hence, the most important thing among all creative endeavours of life is to know how to build one's own IP and help build the IP of others with whom one associates.

Influence of Parents: As Hindu psychology would bear it out, the personality of the child begins to get formed even in its prenatal state. Thoughts of the parents some way impress the yet unformed personality-stuff of the child. The parents knowingly or unknowingly, mould the personality of the child by their thoughts and actions. The child catches passively, to begin with, all behavioural contagion, good or bad, without being able to discriminate or resist. What kind of IP the child will manifest when it is grown up almost entirely depends on the family.

When the child is able to watch consciously, it begins to build its own IP by seeing, watching, and imitating its parents. So, if it has good, noble, and worthy things to sense, watch, and imitate, we can be more or less sure that in fullness of time the child will manifest a worthy character. IP-building depends much on what kind of food for its mind the parents supply to the growing child. In the family again, mother's influence in moulding the character of the child is enormous.

Saints are normally born of men and women of great character. For building IP the earlier, it is better we catch our children early. And this catching can even start before the birth of the child by the parents cultivating a good mind and helpful thoughts. Only those parents who throughout their life continue to gradually build up their own character, can truly build the character of their children.

Influence of Teachers: Next to parents, come teachers' influence in moulding the IP of children. If parents and teachers are persons of confirmed noble character then their wards will most unmistakably bear the same stamp. This was why education in ancient India was entrusted in the hands of ideal men, the sages; to be instructed by them was a benediction.

If parents and teachers are persons of disorganized personality so will be their wards in all probability. But children who will be nurtured by parents of good character, but teachers of dubious personality or vice versa, will have in their personalities the conflict between these two influences.

Influence of Environment: Besides influences unknowingly but surely exercised for good or bad on children by parents and teachers, there is the powerful influence of social environment. This influence can be creatively handled for building character only through homes.

There are several disciplines for building IP which can be knowingly cultivated.