Every Child Is Born Without Conditioning

2:11·1080p·Part 4 of 5·Hindi audio, English subtitles

“Their hearts ask: from where did this ill conditioning come into our children?”

Krishna, in this teaching

About this teaching

Drawn from the teaching's own words — auto-transcribed and translated. The full transcript is further down.

Chapter 2 — Parents

Chapter 2 of 35 — 5 parts, 10 min in total.

Parents, and the long shadow their wishes cast over their children.

Almost every catastrophe in the Mahabharata can be traced to a parent. Dhritarashtra cannot refuse his son. Gandhari blindfolds herself rather than see. Kunti abandons a child and keeps the secret for a lifetime. Shantanu's desire costs Bhishma everything.

The epic is unusually clear-eyed here: it does not present parents as villains, but as people whose love, unexamined, becomes the instrument of harm. What a parent wants for a child and what the child owes the world are not the same thing, and the gap between them drives much of the plot.

Terms you'll hear

Pitr-rina: The debt owed to one's forebears — a real obligation in dharmic thought, and one the epic keeps testing.

Background on the theme of this chapter, not a summary of this particular clip. Watch it for what Krishna actually says.

Transcript

English translation

Every child who comes into this world is entirely without conditioning (samskara). Upon its inner being, neither the mark of any good impression nor of any bad one is inscribed. That is, from birth a child holds neither any virtue (guna) nor any fault (dosha). So how, then, are these faults or virtues acquired? Have we ever considered this? What is heard again and again from the mouths of the mother and father becomes the conditioning of their children's hearts — just as, in a village, a footpath forms down to the riverbank only because it is walked over and over. In other words, the desires in the hearts of the parents take birth as the fault or the virtue in the hearts of their children. Is this not true? And yet, when some fault appears in their children, the parents are filled with astonishment and grief. Their hearts ask: from where did this ill conditioning come into our children? The truth is that parents, all unknowing, give their children the seed of ill conditioning, which then rises upon the soil of the children's hearts as a tree of that same conditioning. And so, every parent who hopes to raise children who are well-cultured and rooted in righteousness (Dharma) — is it not imperative that they first keep a restraint upon the desires of their own heart? Let every parent reflect on this.

हिन्दी — as spoken

इस संसार में आने वाला प्रतेक बालक संपून तह संसकार रहित होता है। उसके अंतर पर ना किसी अच्छे संसकार के चिन अंकित होते हैं ना ही बुरे संसकार के। अर्थात जन्द से बालक में ना कोई गुण होता है और ना ही कोई दोश। तो ये दोश अथवा गुण किस प्रकार प्राप्थ होते हैं? क्या हमने कभी विचार किया है? जो बात माता पिता के मुख से निरंतर सुनी जाती है वही बात उनकी संतानों के रदे का संसकार बनती है जैसे किसी गाउ में नदी तट तक एक पगडंडी बन जाती है केवल उस मार्ग पर बार-बार चलने के कारण अर्थात माता पिता के रदे की इक्छाएं उनकी संतानों के रदे का दोश अथवा गुण बनकर जन लेती है क्या ये सत्य नहीं? पर फिर भी जब उनकी संतानों में कोई दोश दिखाई देता है तो माता पिता आश्चर्रे और दुख से भर जाते है माता पिता का रदे ये प्रश्न करता है कि उनकी संतानों में ये कू संसकार आए कहा से सत्य तो यही है कि माता पिता अपनी संतानों को अंजाने में ही कू संसकार के बीच दे देते हैं जो उनके संतानों की हृदय भूमी पर कू संसकार का व्रिक्ष बन कर उठता है अर्थात अपनी संतानों को सुसंसकारी और धर्म मैं बनाने की आशा रखने वाले प्रतेक माता पिता को प्रथम अपने हृदे की इक्छाओं पर अंकुष रखना क्या अनिवारे नहीं प्रतेक माता पिता इस पर विचार अवश्य कीजेगा

Auto-transcribed from the audio; lightly imperfect on Sanskrit names and terms.