Showing posts with label good deeds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label good deeds. Show all posts

The audacity of reincarnation

Being born in a privileged condition, to me, means having necessary food, water, sanitation, shelter, clothing, education, safety, security and health care.

This is a point to ponder for the privileged:
Were you born in privileged conditions? Or perhaps in much better conditions than the fulfillment of basic needs? Have you ever wondered why? Why were you not born in abject poverty, in a land of famine and disease or no access to education or health care? Have you found an explanation and are you satisfied with why you were not under privileged?

One explanation that annoys me most is that of reincarnation - of the audacity to presume that you were a good person in your past life and hence are privileged or over-privileged in your current life. All this when you have no proof of the concept nor any idea of your past good deeds. What a self-righteous and selfish idea, no wonder it appeals to so many. As smooth as butter on the conscience, so easy, so convenient.

As a 'privileged' person, inequality by birth without explanation disturbs the conscience, no doubt. Instead of putting on it the salve of borrowed self-righteousness from an alleged past life, one can actually do something about it in their present and only known life.

In my view, the only reason you are blessed is so that you can be a blessing to someone else who needs it. The only real privilege of the 'haves' is to better, in some way, the lives of the 'have-nots' within their sphere of influence at least.
If it has been given to you undeserved, it is so that you may give in turn, undeserved.


To whom more is given, of them more is asked.

Religion: a barrier between human and God

Genuine religion should be one that provokes you to see yourself as you really are. Then enables you to understand your need for God and causes you to seek after God. Religion should create in you an intense hunger and thirst for righteousness, not self-righteousness.

Throughout various cultures and religions, many instruments have been devised by humans to aid this upward reach of the soul: rituals, meditation, ascetic discipline, festivals, holy days, memorized prayers, visits to religious buildings, pilgrimages and so on. Yet there remains a vast gulf between who one is, the religious activities one does and a disconnect between individual and God. You maybe an ardent follower and doer of the methods prescribed by your religion and in your heart truly desire to please God, but the religious activities themselves do little to actually connect you to the true and living God. This happens because religion elevates the activities themselves to the status of God. For most folks, doing the religious activity becomes all - leaving them with no real desire to seek after God and no real intimacy with God.

The distinction then is between the heart that focuses on doing religious things and the heart that truly seeks God.

How many ritualistic folk actually take the time and effort to find the meaning of each and every part of the ritual they perform? How many dig deeper into the meaning of all the symbolism? If they did they would find knowledge that would cause them to seek after the truth. They would realize that most rituals are a shadow and a copy of what is truly intended - man being able to meet God by bridging the chasm caused by sin.

Or the person who prays five times a day in a language he does not understand? If only the person decided to communicate to God with his heart and mind in a language he knows, he might draw closer to God. But religion gives us ready-made prayers, sometimes in a language we do not understand. How is that true communication with God?

My point is that the religion in the world engages the human in rote and ritual and dulls true spiritual desire. Ritual and rote maybe good for discipline to some extent but they have little effect in uprooting the deep roots of sin. Does the soul get over addictions, perversions or lose its sinful inclination by performing rituals or repeating chants? The only place where the impurities of the human soul are burnt are at God's feet. If time and energies are spent on man-made religiosity then there is no time or desire left to seek God - which is the intent of all religious motivation. One Sanskrit scripture translates as "Cleansing of sins is not possible by baths, pilgrimages, giving dana (charity) or by following dharma (religion)". Rather these actions were meant to help man realize that he is sinful and that he needs God. Yet religion makes these actions the focus and leaves out what is most needed - fellowship with God. The religious activity makes one feel somehow "approved" or "purified" when in reality it has done nothing to change one's sinful nature.

Religion is supposed to cause one to pursue a relation with God and instead it obscures God behind the veil of religious activity.

To quote an Indian ascetic : Religiosity might help, on occasion, with cleaning the cobwebs of sin but relationship with God alone will reveal the key that eliminates the spider that weaves these cobwebs.

Religion then is the biggest barrier between human and God. It keeps man occupied and pseudo satisfied in the horizontal plane of religiosity and prevents man from looking up vertically and directly to God.


Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

Lend me your ear

Do you want to pilgrimage to a holy destination
Or make your life a holy journey?
Utter a daily, repetitive monologue to God
Or have a heartfelt conversation?
Confine God to latitude and longitude
Or seek God beyond worldly jurisdiction?
Pick a God from your nation
Perhaps within a convenient radius from home ?
Or seek the true and living God
not confined to steeple or dome?

Do you want to carry God everywhere
Or let him hold you in His Hand?
Keep holy images clean
Or let God wash your heart?

Do you want to adorn yourself and home
with holy representation?
Or invite God to dwell in your heart
And be cognizant of His presence in every situation?

Are you satisfied with your religious activity
And think that you are basically good?
Could you stand it if God inspected you really
And looked under the hood?
What if ALL your thoughts were projected in a cinema hall
Would you still say you are basically good?
You're smart - make the call.

Do you want to settle for holy imagination
Or seek after the true revelation?
Do you prefer God packaged in a religion
Or would you like to be with God in a true relation?

Hey, I'm not trying to mock you
I am certainly not wiser or "holier than thou"!
These questions lead me to an honest introspection
To seek GOD without external decoration.
To be free of the shackles that bind,
To be free of the lies that destroy.
I hope you will pause to think and make a wise decision.