Madhyastha Darshan as the foundation of professional ethics

Here it is important to delve a little into Madhyastha Darshan which is acknowledged to be the foundation of professional ethics/Jeevan Vidya. The philosophy of Madhyastha Darshan is developed by Shri Nagraj Sharma and is popularly taught as the basis of value education. It is claimed that he developed this philosophy out of his spontaneous, internal desire to answer: how can this earth be heaven? How can man be God? How can religion be successful? How is everlasting welfare attained? Searching for answer to these questions in various philosophies and practices for a long time he developed a new philosophical framework of knowledge and action. The new framework is a new, internally consistent, and a secular framework which does not depend on any particular religious or philosophical system. To Nagraj Sharma, Madhyastha Darshan, which meets the requirements of harmonious living, is a truly humanistic philosophy which is expressed from the human spirit, by the human spirit and for the further progress of human spirit. Common sense too suggests that human values and ethics to be useful to mankind should not depend on any particular religious, legal, moral or ethical system. They must have a universal appeal.

For those interested in his background, Nagraj Sharma was born in a traditional Brahmin family of south India. He was initiated into religious journey by the Shankaracharya of the famous Shringeri Math, Shri Chandrasekhar Bharati, and for decades he followed the Hindu method of penance and research living in a dense forest and extreme weather conditions. He is believed to have attained Samadhi, the highest spiritual state described in Indian texts. Yet he was not happy. He was looking for answer to practical problems of humanity. He found that a right philosophy for man has to have roots in his human condition. Thus Jeevan Vidya deals with the fundamental questions of existence of man, social institutions like family, society, nation and world affairs (Nagraj, 2004,a, 30). Shri Nagraj Sharma says that from his own experiences he learnt that, as per its nature, each unit in the existence wants to live in harmony and humanism is the real self and essence of humanity. The whole human race is thirsty to be human. If not today, sometime in the future, man will have to return to humanism only (Nagraj, 2001,b). Jeevan Vidya is a complete logical framework of existence at different levels – individual, family, social, human, and natural. It has no religious substratum and appeals to all – illiterate and literate, Hindus and Muslims, men and women, rich and poor, children and adults. It is taught and discussed in heterogeneous groups of people, often in the form of seven-days camps.