Religion is a birthright and my birthright is better than yours!!

Religion. Probably the most frequent word you’ll find dropped in a discussion these days after Covid. After all when we can’t wrap our heads around a calamity, we can only do to things-

• Blame people. As blaming god is blasphemy (How dare someone suggest my God can bring death to us, the blessed ones!!) The only people left to target are the inter religions communities because apparently they are the harbingers of evil.
• Place or trust in God and as that gives us the license to do whatever the fuck we like, it soon becomes a license to kill too ( a la James Bond).

Baba di kher hai, kuch ni hona (We have our God’s blessings, god won’t let anything happen to us)

is how workers justify the non following of protocol and flouting safety norms at the Golden temple [https://theprint.in/in-pictures/god-wont-let-anything-happen-to-us-no-masks-social-distancing-at-golden-temple-amid-covid/506888/]

Why is this wrong and what’s the problem with this mindset. To understand this I’d like to think about what gives rise to a religion.

From time immemorial, we have been surrounded with people who advocate spirituality. Now, a lot of them may confuse spirituality with religion. For me, being spiritual is trying to find who you are, connecting with our thoughts which are buried within six feet of concrete and then trying to identify and find the answers to innumerable questions about our purpose & the purpose of all that’s there. (sounds like a perpetual existentialist crisis). When these revelations and guidelines/opinions by people who have managed these feats are codified, its heralds the start of a religion or a cult. When these guidelines are woven into the tapestry of stories, it leads to mythology. And when these people who were someday like me & you are elevated on a pedestal with the values they advocate being personified it leads to the creation of Gods.

A very good example I could think of is Buddhism. Gautama Buddha was a rich rich prince, who adopted the simple lifestyle, meditated & tried to find the answers to the questions plaguing him. Once he found those answers by connecting with his spiritual self, he gained enlightenment (which is not equivalent to being a God). He wasn’t omnipotent or an omniscient. In fact to compare him to a psychologist would be more appropriate as he had a really good insight into what makes human tick. But all the stories about him helping people, gave rise to the lore compiled as Jataka tales. Once the lore became widespread and enough time passed, people started worshiping him him as a God.

Now, I do not think this is inherently bad but the problem with this sort of elevation is again twofold (may be more)

• You have unreasonable expectations of your ‘God’. He is incapable of any wrong & so are, by extension his followers. This leads to blind faith.
• The whole point of following a religion/doctrine is to think about what they teach, internalize it, meditate on the reasons for the teachings & follow our own hand book, which maybe sourced from different teachings.

But more often than not, this following becomes more of a point of pride and less of associating with the spiritual aspect of a religion. We fall into the trap of looking down upon others, whose ideas don’t match our own and forget the very ideals and guidelines we were meant to follow.

What we see nowadays is a superiority war among people. It’s like a competition where somehow it’s wrong to follow something else, which person X may not follow. Looking back at the various portrayals of mythology on the TV screen and print media, something I have noticed is they are all localised. Ramayana, Mahabharata can be called the cornerstones of Hinduism. All characters and scenes talk only about the confines of India. Islamic myths have Middle East as the setting and Christianity is similar. In fact they both have tons of overlap with the mythology & teachings. Egyptian, Greek, Aztect cultures all have their own Gods. Now this can only mean 2 things -

• Either all the Gods are coexisting.
• Neither of the Gods exist and they’re all a figment of imagination.

Either ways, there is absolutely no basis to any of the ‘superiority’ debates over ‘your’ God or ‘my’ God. But then humanity has been waging wars in the name of blind faith. I don’t expect them to think about these mundane things logically.

To me, religion is a set of beliefs which is innately unique to every individual. We follow what we believe in but the moment we stop questioning the why, that’s the point when it becomes just a bone of contention and not the ideal way of life. A lot of our cultures are entombed with too many do’s and dont’s which is one reason, people do not find the cognitive energy to think through every one of them. It’s so much easier to just follow. Personally I like the message of Buddhism a lot — “Detach from materialistic attachments”. It’s the whole crux of what the man preached and it’s upto every individual on how they interpret it. That said, we should be more questioning in what we believe in and not give in to the baser and irrational hatred of others. Like we like to say in software engineering — “Keep It Simple Silly”.