I watched a most beautiful touching movie today. Stolen Summer, it released in 2002.
I take a deep interest in spirituality. I love to read on the history/evolution of religion. Why do I say "evolution" of religion? Well, God has always been there, He will always be there, but human beings keep trying to come up with different schools of thought to be able to 'rightly fit' God into our imagination. I think all living beings have the concept of 'God', some higher being, some higher power... Our puranas talk of animals & birds that prayed. We do know that some animals have death rituals (elephants). As humans, we have elaborate rituals to mark death, a funeral, cremation/burial/rituals depending on our culture. It is because we feel attached to our family/friends. I think it was only when man began questioning "death" & the purpose of life, that the quest for God started. When man wondered, "What happens to me/my loved ones when we die, where do we go, why are we born?", it is to answer these questions that religion first started. It is the search for God, and from all our different languages and cultures, different schools of philosophy/thought, different paths to God have emerged. But they all had the same source (all religion was born from mankind's thought process), and yearn for the same goal (God). I think one finally finds God when one overcomes the obstacles of material religion, and embraces spirituality (love for all mankind, love for all of God's creation, seeing good everywhere, wishing good for everyone). Religion is a path to God, but one mustn't become too obsessed with the path to the extent that they no longer want/remember to reach the goal! It's like going on a long drive from New York City to Washington DC, what if I love the road so much that I no longer want to reach my destination??? What if I become so engrossed in staring at other people's cars, commenting on each other's cars, and all of us totally forget that the point of being on road was to reach the goal!!!
That is how religious paths have become for lot of people in modern life. They don't really concentrate on finding God, they are more obsessed with commenting on each other's paths. Therein starts the problem of thinking that one religion is the best, others are sinners, others don't reach heaven, it's a kind of self-righteous ego that we cultivate, we judge others as inferior and think ourselves as the best.
I have faced this kind of problem in recent times, I was really hurt. An old time friend of mine (at least I thought she was a friend) told me on my face that Jews, Christians, Hindus (please club all Dharmic religions under this umbrella term, be it Sanatana, Shaiva, Vaishnav, Sikh, Buddhists, Jains, etc, I am sure she didn't know the difference), Shias have all deviated from the path of God, that you shouldn't read/believe any history or events narrated by them, the only pure people in the world are Sunnis, and that I still have time to reform if I read the Quran. Well, I wasn't angry with her, I was just deeply hurt, that somebody whom I considered a friend, an equal, thinks of me (and most of the world) as inferior, infidel, impure, brainless, not deserving of heaven, less intelligent, not loved by Allah, whatever...
I didn't want to argue with her, so I politely ended the communication. But I actually wanted to ask her, why does she think Allah made all these different kinds of people, why do we exist if we are not good enough, why does she believe that God gave her the mandate to judge peoples of the world? What does she know about the world? Who is she to say that all Jews, all Christians, all Hindus, all Shias are lost/liars/manipulators/deviants?
I wanted to blog about this issue for long, for all those of you out there who hate people who don't belong to your religion, or those who think that people who don't follow your religion are lesser humans, please take a moment to reflect, "Are there no errant people in my community? Why did God make peoples so different, surely He loves them too & has His own plans? Surely there are good & bad people in all societies, surely no religious movement is totally full of good people or bad people, surely life is grey and not just black-white, Surely the purpose of religion is to inculcate goodness/humanity, which any human from across the world would be capable of. Surely you should respect God's creations, be they other tribes, other nationalities, other religions, other animals, birds, any living being."
To believe that your religion has the mandate of God, I can smell a strong ego, that is what leads to partiality/racism/cronyism/nepotism/bigotry etc.
But I somehow never got around to blogging on this issue, because I didn't want to put up a public display of my freshly boiling emotions, I didn't want to put my friend's (I still wish her well, I still pray for her good, even if she thought of me in such depreciating terms) feelings into a blog.
But today, I am blogging on this issue, because I watched a wonderful movie, which summed up my feelings about life, my feelings about the relation between mankind & God, my feelings about spirituality. It is the understanding/interpretation of religion through the eyes of an 8 year old boy. He is Roman Catholic and his parents/nuns at church tell him that non-Catholics can't go to heaven. He befriends a little Jewish boy, and earnestly tries to convert him to Catholicism so that the cancer stricken boy can attain heaven. It was a very touching movie, and the boy taught a lot about spirituality to his narrow-minded father.
The adults forgot "Compassion" in the pursuit of God, whereas the little boy knew nothing other than "Love for his friend".
God is there for everyone, he is there for the rich, the poor, the lame, the sick, the healthy, the prosperous, the wretched, for the sinners, for the winners, for all of his creation, for everyone & everything, because He created it ALL. It is good to be proud of being religious, but it's really wrong to be arrogant about one's religion, arrogance is when we start inflating our own value & depreciating another's worth. That ego is what manifests itself in different ways: whether it is racism or bigotry, the root cause is all "EGO".
As for my friend who labeled most of the world as infidel sinners, well, my friend, thanks for that label, for Jesus said in the New Testament, that the Lord the shepherd cares more for the lost lame lamb rather than the healthy sheep. Jesus told his companions, that the lepers needed him even more than anyone else. So if you labeled most of the world as sinners, I hope you pray for us sinners, so that the world becomes a more peaceful place.
And no honey, I am not angry with you, I was just hurt for a day or two, but I healed. And I will continue to heal others who face such uncomfortable situations. For what is life, if there is no "Compassion"? What is the purpose of searching for invisible things like "God", if you can't feel your fellow human being's emotions?
In this globalized world, all of us may not have read the Torah, the Bible, the Quran, the Hindu scriptures, the Buddhist scriptures, there may be materialistic/ritualistic/cultural earthly differences in rituals/scriptures, but the underlying thread is "compassion", without which religion has no point. I wonder what the Egyptians thought of God and afterlife, I wonder what the Shintos in Japan think of spirituality. What did the Celts imagine, what did the Macedonians think? We may not know those cultures & languages, but please tell me, didn't the authors intend to spread compassion & peace, and weren't all those ancient civilizations/writers created by that same omnipresent God? Now instead of scoffing at the whole world, can we please offload that elephant-sized ego masking our ant-sized character, can we stop feeling like we're Know-It-Alls, and try to learn about our ancestors, our neighbours, other languages, cultures, civilizations. If we concentrate on things like self-respect and compassion, tone down ego, build our character, examine our own conscience instead of evaluating our neighbour, we'll find God.
Or should we wait until a Martian invasion for us Earthlings to unite?
I take a deep interest in spirituality. I love to read on the history/evolution of religion. Why do I say "evolution" of religion? Well, God has always been there, He will always be there, but human beings keep trying to come up with different schools of thought to be able to 'rightly fit' God into our imagination. I think all living beings have the concept of 'God', some higher being, some higher power... Our puranas talk of animals & birds that prayed. We do know that some animals have death rituals (elephants). As humans, we have elaborate rituals to mark death, a funeral, cremation/burial/rituals depending on our culture. It is because we feel attached to our family/friends. I think it was only when man began questioning "death" & the purpose of life, that the quest for God started. When man wondered, "What happens to me/my loved ones when we die, where do we go, why are we born?", it is to answer these questions that religion first started. It is the search for God, and from all our different languages and cultures, different schools of philosophy/thought, different paths to God have emerged. But they all had the same source (all religion was born from mankind's thought process), and yearn for the same goal (God). I think one finally finds God when one overcomes the obstacles of material religion, and embraces spirituality (love for all mankind, love for all of God's creation, seeing good everywhere, wishing good for everyone). Religion is a path to God, but one mustn't become too obsessed with the path to the extent that they no longer want/remember to reach the goal! It's like going on a long drive from New York City to Washington DC, what if I love the road so much that I no longer want to reach my destination??? What if I become so engrossed in staring at other people's cars, commenting on each other's cars, and all of us totally forget that the point of being on road was to reach the goal!!!
That is how religious paths have become for lot of people in modern life. They don't really concentrate on finding God, they are more obsessed with commenting on each other's paths. Therein starts the problem of thinking that one religion is the best, others are sinners, others don't reach heaven, it's a kind of self-righteous ego that we cultivate, we judge others as inferior and think ourselves as the best.
I have faced this kind of problem in recent times, I was really hurt. An old time friend of mine (at least I thought she was a friend) told me on my face that Jews, Christians, Hindus (please club all Dharmic religions under this umbrella term, be it Sanatana, Shaiva, Vaishnav, Sikh, Buddhists, Jains, etc, I am sure she didn't know the difference), Shias have all deviated from the path of God, that you shouldn't read/believe any history or events narrated by them, the only pure people in the world are Sunnis, and that I still have time to reform if I read the Quran. Well, I wasn't angry with her, I was just deeply hurt, that somebody whom I considered a friend, an equal, thinks of me (and most of the world) as inferior, infidel, impure, brainless, not deserving of heaven, less intelligent, not loved by Allah, whatever...
I didn't want to argue with her, so I politely ended the communication. But I actually wanted to ask her, why does she think Allah made all these different kinds of people, why do we exist if we are not good enough, why does she believe that God gave her the mandate to judge peoples of the world? What does she know about the world? Who is she to say that all Jews, all Christians, all Hindus, all Shias are lost/liars/manipulators/deviants?
I wanted to blog about this issue for long, for all those of you out there who hate people who don't belong to your religion, or those who think that people who don't follow your religion are lesser humans, please take a moment to reflect, "Are there no errant people in my community? Why did God make peoples so different, surely He loves them too & has His own plans? Surely there are good & bad people in all societies, surely no religious movement is totally full of good people or bad people, surely life is grey and not just black-white, Surely the purpose of religion is to inculcate goodness/humanity, which any human from across the world would be capable of. Surely you should respect God's creations, be they other tribes, other nationalities, other religions, other animals, birds, any living being."
To believe that your religion has the mandate of God, I can smell a strong ego, that is what leads to partiality/racism/cronyism/nepotism/bigotry etc.
But I somehow never got around to blogging on this issue, because I didn't want to put up a public display of my freshly boiling emotions, I didn't want to put my friend's (I still wish her well, I still pray for her good, even if she thought of me in such depreciating terms) feelings into a blog.
But today, I am blogging on this issue, because I watched a wonderful movie, which summed up my feelings about life, my feelings about the relation between mankind & God, my feelings about spirituality. It is the understanding/interpretation of religion through the eyes of an 8 year old boy. He is Roman Catholic and his parents/nuns at church tell him that non-Catholics can't go to heaven. He befriends a little Jewish boy, and earnestly tries to convert him to Catholicism so that the cancer stricken boy can attain heaven. It was a very touching movie, and the boy taught a lot about spirituality to his narrow-minded father.
The adults forgot "Compassion" in the pursuit of God, whereas the little boy knew nothing other than "Love for his friend".
God is there for everyone, he is there for the rich, the poor, the lame, the sick, the healthy, the prosperous, the wretched, for the sinners, for the winners, for all of his creation, for everyone & everything, because He created it ALL. It is good to be proud of being religious, but it's really wrong to be arrogant about one's religion, arrogance is when we start inflating our own value & depreciating another's worth. That ego is what manifests itself in different ways: whether it is racism or bigotry, the root cause is all "EGO".
As for my friend who labeled most of the world as infidel sinners, well, my friend, thanks for that label, for Jesus said in the New Testament, that the Lord the shepherd cares more for the lost lame lamb rather than the healthy sheep. Jesus told his companions, that the lepers needed him even more than anyone else. So if you labeled most of the world as sinners, I hope you pray for us sinners, so that the world becomes a more peaceful place.
And no honey, I am not angry with you, I was just hurt for a day or two, but I healed. And I will continue to heal others who face such uncomfortable situations. For what is life, if there is no "Compassion"? What is the purpose of searching for invisible things like "God", if you can't feel your fellow human being's emotions?
In this globalized world, all of us may not have read the Torah, the Bible, the Quran, the Hindu scriptures, the Buddhist scriptures, there may be materialistic/ritualistic/cultural earthly differences in rituals/scriptures, but the underlying thread is "compassion", without which religion has no point. I wonder what the Egyptians thought of God and afterlife, I wonder what the Shintos in Japan think of spirituality. What did the Celts imagine, what did the Macedonians think? We may not know those cultures & languages, but please tell me, didn't the authors intend to spread compassion & peace, and weren't all those ancient civilizations/writers created by that same omnipresent God? Now instead of scoffing at the whole world, can we please offload that elephant-sized ego masking our ant-sized character, can we stop feeling like we're Know-It-Alls, and try to learn about our ancestors, our neighbours, other languages, cultures, civilizations. If we concentrate on things like self-respect and compassion, tone down ego, build our character, examine our own conscience instead of evaluating our neighbour, we'll find God.
Or should we wait until a Martian invasion for us Earthlings to unite?
who made this?
ReplyDelete...would love to see it!
sounds like a wonderful story.