“A value is valuable, only when the value of the value is valuable to me,” concluded Swami Dayananda Sarawati in his closing address at the 2003 Global Dharma Conference.  It had been a weekend of many amazing moments and stirring experiences.  Momentous thoughts had been shared and discussed, as over two thousand people from twenty countries gathered to ponder the meaning of dharma.  As the conference began to wrap up, I sat in the audience watching the interfaith panel, and thought about what I was going to take back with me from this conference.  So many thoughts shared, so many experiences, but what was I going to remember six months later?  I had heard about so many things about dharma, ranging from the individual level to the social, but what part of it was going to become part of my life?  After all, the conference was about to be over, and now it was time to go back to the same daily grind as always.  I wondered, would all these grand thoughts and activities really shape how I lived my life?  There is a saying, “war is won in the trenches.”  Well, the trenches of life are those days where nothing special is happening, and we’re just going about our business.  How was the message of this conference going to change that?  What I really wanted to know was, how was the understanding of dharma important to the life of a college student?

It was at this point that Swami Dayanandaji’s message hit home.  Our day to day lives are shaped by our values.  What we value is nowhere more apparent than in how we live our lives.  It is here, in the trenches of life, where we see what we really think, as opposed to what we espouse our beliefs to be.  We all have certain ideals about how to live our lives, about truth, non-violence, and various other values.  These values and ideals, Swamiji explained, are universal to all people, and are ideas that do not need to be taught.  Everyone has a certain value for the truth, because they want others to tell them the truth.  Everyone has a certain value for non-violence, because they do not want others to harm them.  However, there is a breakdown in the reciprocity of this argument.  I don’t want to be lied to, I don’t want to be cheated, and I don’t want to be hurt, but it is not clear to me why I should never lie, cheat, or hurt others.

We all may have some kind of inborn, natural, universal value, such as ahimsa, and we can see one half of this clearly in all of our lives.  However, the other side of the coin, the doing to others as you would have them do to you part, is not clear to us.  It is here where our problems begin.  We have these ideals that are a part of us, yet in our day to day lives we often don’t even think about lying to or hurting others.  You might not want to accept such a statement immediately given the implications, but with some thought its truth is revealed.  For example, when I am in a bad mood, maybe because I found out my girlfriend dumped me, I don’t think twice about hurting those around me.  I snap out at anyone who comes near, even those who try to comfort me.  Even though I have a value for ahimsa, and I even care deeply for my other friends, at that moment, I don’t think about hurting them.

Why don’t we analyze this compromising of values further?  For example, let us take the scenario of a late project for a class.  Let us say that I have a project due in a class, and for various reasons, ranging from staying up too late with friends, to having too many other assignments, I am unable to complete the project on time.  When I ask the professor for an extension, he rightly asks me for the reason I need more time.  I know that hanging out with my friends, or work for other classes won’t be accepted as valid excuses by him, so I tell him that my computer crashed, and I lost all of my work.  Luckily, my professor believes me, and I get the extension to finish the project.  Here is where we see values in action, applied or not.  We know that I have a value for truth in this scenario, because that is a universal value.  However, we also see that I lied here, so that value was compromised.  Let us try and analyze why this value was compromised.  I know I have a value for truth, and furthermore I know that even in this scenario, I would like to tell the truth, but I know that my professor will not accept it.  Hence, I lie because I want my professor to accept my reasoning.  However, our analysis can’t stop here.  Why do I want him to accept my reasoning?  I do so, because I have a value for the grade which he will give me.  So here we see that I lied, not because I did not have any value for telling the truth, but because of a conflict with another, personal value.  This value for grades is clearly not a universal value.  It is a value held by me only at a particular point in time, that is, only while I am in school.  Furthermore, there are clearly many people who dropped out from high school or who didn’t go to college, who do not have the same personal value structure that I do.

In our lives, we are often placed in scenarios similar to those previously mentioned.  As college students, we are, even more so than others, confused when it comes to figuring out our lives.  Many of us are just becoming aware of our freedom to act outside of the value structures imposed by our parents, so when it comes to understanding what our value structures should be, and how we can actually adhere to them, we are lost.

When we look at our nation today, we hear a lot of talk about values.  Everyone from religious figures to politicians preach a return to family values.  We hear about all kinds of social problems being related to a breakdown in values.  But everywhere we turn, all we hear is preaching about the virtues of values.  Few, if any, explain how it is possible to implement these values in life.  We don’t even know if it is practical to implement all these values all the time.

It is here that we may come to a basic point: all this confusion about values and their applications is owed to a lack of understanding of these values.  Swamiji, in his session on the second day of the conference asserted that one of the fundamental problems with understanding spirituality was that we expected to hear something and believe it, or not.  All of our confusion arises from a lack of understanding, not a lack of belief.  We certainly believe that telling the truth is good, but do we understand why we should tell it?  If our confusions arise from lack of understanding, and not belief, then, as Swamiji says, “We don’t need any preachers, what we need is teachers.”  This is an important fundamental point.  All the preaching in the world about telling the truth may not affect you, because you already believe it at some basic, albeit one-sided level.  It is teaching the value, the full understanding of the value, and all its implications that really changes a person’s life.

Revisiting the previous example, I have the belief that telling the truth is good, but this value is overruled by my value for grades.  Why is this?  Well, when I get a grade, I see some immediate benefit.  I can clearly see how my grade will help me get a job, help me placate my parents, and generally attain a comfortable station in life.  I understand why it is good to get a good grade.  However, in the case of telling the truth, I only have some half-reasoned abstract rationalization for the value.  I don’t really know why I should or shouldn’t tell the truth.  Although I assimilated the value for grades because of my understanding, the value for truth is still unassimilated.  The value for grades is clear in my actions; the value for truth is obfuscated by my actions.

We now come full circle, to Swamiji’s statement at the beginning of this article.  “A value is valuable, only when the value of the value is valuable to me.”  Although this statement may sound circular, it is really the fundamental basis for assimilating values in my life.  A value is valuable, that is, a value is put into practice by me, in my life, only when the value of the value is understood by me.  A value is made valuable by the understanding of it.  When I clearly understand the value of a thing, I do not have any confusion about what I should do.  For example, the value of money is 100% clear to me.  I never have to think about whether I should give ten dollars and get back five.  I know that ten dollars is worth more than five, so I am getting the wrong end of the bargain.  Similarly, I need to understand the value of truth, the value of non-injury, the value of selfless service, to put these values into practice in my life.  I have to understand them to assimilate them.  For me, this fundamental message alone was worth going to the conference.

What all this really comes down to is a fundamental question.  Why?  This is the question that I have to ask.  Really, it’s not much of a stretch when you think about it.  If someone asks me to do something, and the reason is not clear to me, I will obviously ask them why I should do it.  For example, someone asks me to write an article.  Unless I know that someone else will eventually read it, I should reasonably ask why I should write the article.  We are willing to ask why about every little action anybody asks us to perform.  We will question every aspect of their motivation.  Yet when it comes to our own values, our own beliefs, our own thoughts, we never ask this fundamental question.  Until you know why, you will be endlessly confused by situations that come up in life.  Really it’s not a great leap; you just have to extend your questioning from only looking at others to also looking at yourself.  You extend your questioning from only the scientific, to the ethical, moral, and religious.  Always ask why, and never settle for anything less than the truth.

For those interested in exploring the subject deeper, I would recommend beginning with the booklet, The Value of Values, by Swami Dayananda Saraswati.  Really this discussion only scratches the surface of the analysis presented by Swamiji in that book.  However, if you are really serious, my best recommendation is to not stop there, but do your best to inquire directly to qualified teachers.  A qualified teacher can unfold the value of values in ways that cannot be gotten from mere reading.