Characteristics of Student

    One day, when I asked to my roommates, "what are the characteristics of good student?" One of them suddenly replied, ‘One who is topper of the class’. After some time another roommate replied, ‘One who is famous among all teachers’ and after thinking a lot my third roommate replied, ‘One who complete assignments before date of submission’.

    

    What do you think my roommates are right or wrong? What are the real characteristics of student? I know that you got confused, because we never read such question in our college syllabus. This is something out of course. What do you say; really this question is out of course. Then why we called our self as student if we don't no it's characteristics. Let it be, from today onwards we know that what the characteristics of student are. Because somebody already written these characteristics for us. And this somebody is nothing but the sage (ऋषी). They live their life for us, they set examples for us. Therefore they should define as, "ऋषति-गच्छति संसारात पारं दर्शयति इति ऋषि:।" 

(पारं = limit, ऋषति = activeness)

    The characteristics of student were written in our ancient scriptures are as follows, let’s try to understand it.

काक चेष्टा बको ध्यानं, श्वान निद्रा तथैव च ।

अल्पहारी गृह त्यागी, विद्यार्थी पंच लक्षणं ॥

    Oh No! Again Sanskrit, Yes dear brother/sister, because "Sanskrit is not merely alive, it is also a medicine to make the dead alive."

    Let's come to our topic, there are total five essential characteristics of student told in this verse. Now we will see one by one,

1. काक चेष्टा: The efforts (repetitive) of the student should be similar like a crow. Remember story of crow trying to drink water from a pot, to raise the water level, repetitively placing pieces of stone into the pot.
2. बको ध्यानं: The attention of the student should be like a crane (बगळा), which stands for long period of time on one leg, waiting for that fish, and till the end, he keeps his whole focus focused on his goal.
3. श्वान निद्रा: The alertness of the student should be like a dog, who wake up immediately with slight stir, and he is completely alert. Similar the student should be completely alert to grab the opportunities.
4. अल्पहारी: The student should always say as per their requirement, should never say more than necessary. Do not excess anything, because excessive feeding leads to obesity, disease, nuisance and insanity.
5. गृह त्यागी: The student should always go away from comfort zone. If he goes away from pleasant and comfortable place, then his chances of success are greater (तपोवन शिक्षण पद्धती, today's so called hostel life).

    So, these are five characteristics of student given in our ancient scripture from a long time ago. And we know that very well, still we don't follow these characteristics in our life. Why? Had you think about it ever? Answer must be No. Because we are so busy in experiencing pleasure. But when we understand it, we found that we already wasted lots of time and at this moment without sorrow we had nothing left.

    Adi Shankaracharya wrote about human behavior in Charapatpanjarika Stotram. This proves that the psychology of man (student) in 8th century is similar to the man in 21st century. Let's see what he wrote in 8th century, 

बालस्तावत्क्रीडासक्तरुणस्तावत्तरुणीरक्त:।

वृद्धस्तावच्चिंतामग्न: परे ब्रह्मणि कोSपि न लग्न:।।

चर्पटपजरिकास्तोत्रम् ।।७।।

Translation: Childhood is involved in play, youth is addicted to women, old age is spent in worrying but no one thinks of good deeds.

    If we compare this with today's situation then in most of the cases we shall find same. Why we are repeating same mistakes. If we believe in quote "Experience is the best teacher". Then why we are not learning from their experiences. Because every time it is not necessary to learn from self experience. Let's take an example of our academics, while solving problems we write 'by Newton's law, by Bernoulli's theorem, etc" and write their already derived formulas, we never derive the same formula to solve the problems because we know that someone already derived it for us to save our time. Similarly, these ancient scriptures, Upanishad, Vedas and Geeta are already derived formulas to simplify our life.

    It's ok, let's see what Adi Shankaracharya told in next verse of Charpatpanjarika Stotram,

नारीस्तनभरनाभिनिवेशं मिथ्यामायामोहावेशम्।

एतन्मांसवसादिविकारं मनसि विचारय वारम्वारम्।।

चर्पटपजरिकास्तोत्रम् ।।११।।

Translation: Do not be seduced by observing a woman's body. Because that body is not different than disorders like blood, flesh, bones, fat, etc. Think about it often and practice good things.

    Oh, these words are so harsh but true. The above two verses from Charpatpanjarika Stotram show our reality. As a student we should understand what good for us. We don't want to become famous and not want to become celebrity, but we just want that our parents should feel proud when they say, 'he is my son' or 'she is my daughter'. And this all happen when we follow good characteristics in our life.