I have asked myself this question, does humanity need religion and the following question would be do we need god? Considering the fact that except for human beings there are no other species which have concept of god. Is it because of our over evolved brain or sheer ignorance ? I was watching croods and I couldn't help but notice that when survival is the biggest concern we would not even think of anything else.
If one considers the recent history of few hundreds of years, religion has done more harm to humanity than good, more than half the world's wars have been fought over it, considering the Nazi's anti antisemitism, evangelism by certain sects, terrorism in the name of religion, etc etc Isn't the whole purpose of religion and god defeated by this ? As it was meant to raise the individuals to a higher plane ? Or is it the problem of people exploiting it for self-interest ?
If you think of it and rewind back to history of India to 2-3 thousand years back, or any other older civilization for that matter, there was no sense of religion but only a strong foot hold of culture, hence it was known as sanatana dharma which means age old, inherent way of nature , A culture that is based on righteousness, culture based on the curiosity, that inquisitiveness to know "the why", hence most of our books on history are based on the question and answer sessions, there are many many instances to name a few, one's between krishna and Arjuna as the famous Gita, Ashtavakra and Janaka, yama and Nachiketa, Yajna valkya and Maitreyi, yama and Savithri. If you notice there is no differentiation that it is only men, women or children. It always stood on one fact
"ekam sat tad ekam vipraha bahudha vadanti"( There is only one truth, knowledgeable call it in different names/forms) . One can argue that there was caste system and only higher ranks had access to knowledge, but again itihasa is full of stories of vishwamitra( A kshatriya turned bramhin), satyakama jaabala( A sudra turned Bramhin), satyvati ( A fisher woman turned kshatriya queen) et al, so it was purely based on merit and determination, That never give up attitude.
It is the same curiosity that has led to develop spiritually(With veda, gita ..) Artisitically(Natyashaastra), Lingustically( panini's vyakarana), Mathematically( Vedic Mathematics, astro physcics) Name it you have it. But the biggest mistake they did is, thinking us as kids who would like a gift wrapped in a beautiful package, they wrapped all the knowledge in stories and hymns, but we as foolish kids hasve only embraced the wrapper and thrown away the content calling it cock and bull story. We today either chide the process as either stupid or blindly follow without giving second glance to the content.
Does it mean we should give up all our customs? No follow it but just try to understand why it was introduced in the first place, it would give a lot more satisfaction i bet!!
I could not help but re-quote Tagore here :-).
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
© Rabindranath Tagore. All rights reserved
Happy Deepavali folks!!
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