Pranks on the sands of time

In this Part 3 of a series, I think about God and suffering (in the context of killings) and the dichotomy of good and evil in the human mind. These aren't clear answers but just my 2 cents. I wrote these at this Orkut discussion thread. You can find the other parts linked from here.

Creation: Pattern or arbitrary ?

The ancient question is still being researched heavily and quite controversially.
But my take is, Yes, for the pattern part. The advocates of both sides, Intelligent Design and Natural Selection, both agree there is a pattern. One says there is a pattern by design and the other says there is a pattern in the process, in acquisition of traits. The difference, is only about, who put the pattern in ? Or was there one ?

Is God just a fabrication of the human mind in a world of random possibilities?

:) :) Well, some schools say, the world itself is a fabrication of God's Mind. Or Man's Mind, meaning Man is God.

Is God a temporary diversion from the madness of suffering ?

I don't think such a diversion would work anyway. God or not, when the madness (to mean suffering) hits you, it would no more let you bury your head in the sand nor would it spare you even if your head is in. Lot of people, choose God to cope up in times of suffering, because, well, it works for them and effectively so. If it didn't work, God wouldn't have been operating in that segment any more. There are things in life that truly help you in times of suffering. Like love and care, faith can do it to a great deal, if you have it, that is. Even if all other aspects of Faith are debatable, the therapeutic value of faith needs to be given atleast as much credit as that of love and care.

If not,then where are the answers to this dance of death, to this depletion of hope,to these hungry flaming fires of hell,to this downward spiral?

Reminds me of a quip that Ramana Maharishi used to give his disciples, when confronted with the question of how do I find out the cause of the world's suffering and alleviate it. He often said, first find out the cause of your suffering, we'll catch up with the world later.

What meaning to make of suffering...

The questions assume, to a large extent, the reality of suffering and the value of life. I sometimes think, what are catastrophies or achievements for us, are just childish pranks for God. Consider a kid, playing on the sands of the shore, building castles in the sand. He would build for a while, then he would demolish a section of it and build again. Or his friend would demolish it and they would fight about it. Or build one more together after a little while. And when it's time for lunch, they would move away to play another game, the fights fading away. Even if they fought and cried, their parents would know not to take them too seriously and would tell them so too, indicating the transience of both the castle and its demolition and the fun value behind it.

I myself find this ridiculous at times, because how can suffering be unreal ? Someone slaps you, you immediately know whether it's real or unreal. Your arthritis or asthma is quite sufficient to tell you whether it's real or unreal, you don't require news of massacres in the papers to tell. But there seems to be a school or a section of humanity, that want to question that experience and get to its deeper reality.

The whole problem is that, to understand this in actuality, we have to consider the possibility that suffering may be unreal. Or real only from a relative perspective of the kid. That's a colossal problem for us mortals, because, it requires a different plane of thinking and training. But if the Truth lies there (just in case) and if Truth is what we seek, is there an option but to look in ? Reminds me of Einstien’s quote : The problems that we face today cannot be resolved at the same level we created them.

Is that why the Goddess of the Three Worlds is also called "The Playful One" ?

Spiritual, but not religious

This is Part 2 of a series that handles : good effects of religion, religious distortions and the modern phrase "Spiritual but not religious". The contents are drawn from what I wrote at this discussion thread. You can find the other parts linked from here.

There is someone above...

Just to flip the coin around and bring a balance in perspective, how about violence, hatred and killings that have been avoided because of religion ? Perhaps no one conducts a survey to find this, because the good things that happen silently are not the ones that get the eyeball attention. Yet, these are indeed among the kind of people you meet day to day, commonplace. People who want to abstain from certain acts that harm others, because they believe in a higher order governed by God, never mind what name. If you don't want to hear the word God-fearing, call it a general respect for 'Dharma-Nyayam'. This is not to say they are perfect, always make the best choices, but they keep God at the back of their mind while choosing an action. This is not in the context of fear, guilt or hypocrisy (each a different thread) but a general abstention from a decidedly wrong action with a simple thought of 'Devudu Unnadu'. This is something you find in the grocer, the tailor and the street vendor. Isn't there a certain amount of religious thinking behind their goodness ? Between this huge collection formed by little drops of water, from the very people around you and from the selective portrayal of graphic images and numbers found in the newspapers, which one will you believe in ? And which one outnumbers the other ? Whether it outnumbers the other or not, why is the goodness due to religion, not attributed to it, as much as the evil so attributed ?
Religious Distortions and disillusionment...

One can understand that phenomena like casteism can be a major putoff in a quick glance of a certain religion. But using that to debunk the primary need for religion, is like the proverbial baby and the bathwater. How about other oppressive phenomena like slavery and racial discrimination which didn't have anything to do with religion ? Where did Man get those from ? The source of these don't lie in religion, but in men who use religion as a vehicle, to further the evil which they would anyway further. Distortions, but not, 'religious distortions' as in 'arising out of religion', but as in 'distortion of religion' by men. Which system that men found and evolved is not distorted by other men ? Distortion is found in every system: science, language, history, governance and the arts. And just like any other system of thought, religion finds its own rejuvenation from time to time: cleansing, re-understanding of the Code, accommodation of evolving ideas, reflection of learnings from the positive ideas that mankind has collectively benefited from and purging of the demerits.

Spiritual, Sir, but not religious ?

If one is an agnostic and doesn't feel a need for God, thats a different thread. But if one believes in spirituality, but not in religion, then, in my view, such a positioning arises because of the following (not that such a stance is 'bad') :

1. Needless over-differentiation between the two, whereas one is a means towards the end in the other. Still better, some believe the differentiation is unncecessary.

2. An inability to use the positive understandings in one's religion to further one's spiritual development and highlighting the misfits rather than the matches.

3. A general disillusionment (from the other perspective, call, unattractiveness) about all things religious, caused by a maze of factors, that lie partly in approach to study, life events, unanswered questions, environment etc.

What got you here will not get you there....

Assume, you were ‘spiritual, but not religious’. You would carry the spirituality 'in the head', and then, what ? Probably you would believe in a principle, like, for example, 'be a good person' or 'reflect on your own reality'. If you ask me, you are already being religious, because you believe in a set of principles, and by design, you don't believe (or believe less) in another set of principles that goes straight contrary to yours. Having believed in whatever principles, you would then step out to 'do' or 'not do' certain actions based on those. (By now, you are totally religious). Why would you do that ? Because, given your current state, you have a picture of what you want to be, and you want to follow your idea of the map that takes you there and abstain from those that don't. This is what religion is all about, a set of principles and a set of actions and abstentions, directed towards a set of outcomes. Just that, a lot of like-minded people have got together to believe in the same sets, instead of individually carrying it in their heads, and the subject, in this case happens to be 'Man and His Relationship with God'. You are free to update your principles, actions and expectations as you walk along, and those represent the various schools/levels in a religion. Some would like to argue that this is what spirituality is all about, yeah, those are the ones that would agree that religion and spirituality are closer or identical, if they have a positive inclination towards religion that is. Those that don't for some reason, would like to maintain that one is the problem and the other is the solution.

Is religion the root cause of all evil ?

Here is a series of posts on Religion and Spirituality. Most of it comes from what I wrote at an Orkut discussion forum. If you have an Orkut id, i urge you to read the complete thread here, offering many more perspectives, I just mention here a simplified version of the questions to indicate the context for the replies.

Part 1 : Is religion the root cause of all suffering ?
Part 2: Spiritual but not religious
Part 3: God and the nature of suffering

In Part 1, I handle the question:

Is religion the root cause of all violence/evil ?

Oh No, I don't think so. Why single out religion ? Language ? Land ? It's quite fashionable and simplistic to attribute all violence to organised religion and can be reflected in more youth marking 'spiritual but not religious' on the Orkut profile, but I think it's not the case. (I hope to cover this in my review of 'The God Delusion' some day, but here is a primer).

People fight among themselves for all kinds of things. Yes, religion is one of them, but if you assume to take religion out for a moment, people would still fight. People can fight because they feel 'something is being snatched away from them' or 'another somehow calls himself as superior and dominate them'. In history, people have fought solely on the basis of color or race. Solely for the occupation of wealth or land. For certain sections not allowing a certain freedom for certain other sections, it could be any freedom, freedom to grow and prosper, to speak or express or freedom to choose a taste. Whether one is on the south or north of an imaginary line. The snatchaway or the superiority can also arise from religion, but, that is, only as much as it can arise from anything else.

Just as we hold the color/race/wealth/land as dear to ourselves and we feel jittery about any threat to that preference, so also religion is one preference and a threat to it unsettles man. The tribals usually worship an agreed family of gods, (in a homogeneous tribe), but they still fight for things like the prey they shot or the herb they pluck. It's quite possible people primarily fight on one count, the root cause for the resentment is some other snatchaway or domination, but later bring in religion also as one more count ,where possible, to fight even more. Using religion to enlist more people for the fight. The tendency to fight or kill does not arise out of religion, it's inherent in the unevolved Man as a basic tendency and he would anyway fight, religion or not.

Whats about religion thats not about other systems ?

All is not well with any religion. The demerits in each religion arise from the collective demerits of the people who are attempting to codify it or practise it. Their own personal flaws plus the flaws in the institutionalising attempts. This is true about any system or doctrine that seeks to benefit a collective.

To show that religion is not alone as a flawed system, lets take another unrelated field: Economics. Have we been able to arrive a single economic theory that benefits all of mankind the most ? And if we have, have we succeeded in making most of Mankind agree that it's the one ? God wasn't involved, but still we couldn't decide on a school, we are still looking. I am sure, divergent schools exist in every pursuit of knowledge, in science and in poetry. If you ask each school in isolation, they would like to believe that theirs is the best and has the most merits and sure they will promise that their school would lead to the much-sought 'liberation', whatever that might mean in that branch of knowledge. What flaws are so differently found in religion that are not found in other systems of knowledge or human behaviour ?

Just as Economics pursues the question of money, Religion pursues the question of Man and God. It arises out of a need, in Man, to connect with a possible higher power. Why is that need planted or whether it's a delusion is debatable, but it can't be wished away as non-existent, it's as much real as the question of money and economics.

Why is philosophy insufficient ? Because it handles theory. When you reach the lab, however, you need to know, which action to perform, X or X-dash and which one to abstain from. Not that one action is inherently right or wrong, one chemical is superior or sinful than the other, but given the objective that you are trying to achieve, there is a most optimal action that offers to get that outcome. Religion codifies these objectives and preferred actions that lead to those outcomes, assuming you chose to study God, just like if you chose to study money.

Find your own religion, if you can:

Rub off all religion for a moment. Fine, have we found answers to all the questions we have ? Forget the world...have we found answers to the questions of our own disease and death, of separation and suffering, that seem so real to us, yet baffle us without knowing their cause ? If we can, fine, you won't need religion any more, or what you find will become a religion. There is a precedent, this guy did it, devoting his entire life in the study of this subject. You might happily brush away this need but that doesnt mean it wont get to you, right ?Might as well spend some time knowing its nature.

Oh, is religion providing me all the answers then, you might ask ? No, religion is the training academy for a spiritual objective. Everyone is entitled to join the IPS, but it requires enormous amount of focused training, dos and donts to achieve that. If you don't have the fire, then it isn't for you. If you wish to experience that which Philosophy tells you, in your own lab of Life, that takes a certain amount of training. Religion prescribes the set of actions to achieve the reality that philosophy outlines before us. The rest of the masala in religion, hoaxes, oppression and all, well, is the outcome of the inherent masala in Man, the demerits of the codifiers and practitioners.

The final objective is always spiritually pristine, it probably doesn't depend on which religion or which ritual, which route you took to reach the peak. But you have to choose one and take that uphill route consistently and do things prescribed on that route. And this is true about every route, it will take you there, provided you take it well. All routes have a few basic things in common and a few specifics different. Need to connect regularly with a higher power for inspiration, care for the community and cultivating a good character are some basics that take different forms. I think, probably, the consistency of application, matters more than which route you choose.