Where mind is without fear!! God Religion and everything else...

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!!

Nandini - part 2

I had Initially written about Nandini a long time back, I just got an idea of recreating it. Nandini is a fictional character I have created, I like to discuss some observation and my naive philosophy via her.
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Nandini thought that things would finally fall in place, least did she assume that the whole world she had created would come tumbling down. When it did, she didn't know what to do.
After all she was not prepared.
But then life doesn't wait for someone to be prepared to place a blow? Or does it?

It was raining very heavily outside but only she knew that her tears were pouring faster than the rains. When there were no more tears to shed, she did what she knew best... devouring all the books to find meaning to life(was she kidding?).
Why does life always have to be a mystery ? or is it that we don't see it  and make a mystery out of it?
Like how our vision is restricted to electromagnetic spectrum, are our perception and thoughts also limited, which needs some other dimension to be comprehended ?

As she was looking out of the window and when her thoughts wavered like the ruffle of leaves in rain, she remembered that It is said that you don't go in search of a Guru, but a Guru finds you.
Like ways her mind was as ready as a hot iron which is ready to be molded.

she had heard right since her childhood one of  vivekananda's quote that  "Faith can move mountains" It did not make much sense for her though, How can you move a physical object with something virtual ? Funny isnt it ? But Einstien with his relativity comes to resue, sometimes she wondered if  theory of relativity is more philosophical than physics, But then isnt philosophy and physics
the distinction created by the same restricted mind and duality does not exist in nature :-) ?

Well she then picked up yogavashishta a book with teaching of vasistha to rama,  One of the most profound statement made in the book was that there is nothing called existence, world is as you see it/create it. Come on that should be idiotic, if i am creating it then why is the whole world around me also  seeing the same as I do? But a thought came to her mind, isn't it true that
in dream we create a whole new world and only when we wake up we realize it was a dream not otherwise, in a dream you would always think it is reality.

It was only later when she listened to bhagavat geetha she started seeing a pattern,to her surprise even the geetha said that for a yogi it is night when it is day for others, what are you kidding me ?? was her first thought, how can it be and what it means was elusive to her, but thanks to zen habits she had subscribed, there came a copyleft  book by leo babuta, Titled "Little book of contentment", which was a momemt of realization for her. The book said if someone has a problem with you, they are dealing with their own problems than with yours. It also said something very convincing you can only give what you have,not otherwise, so it occured to her that the world is what you create it, It is just set of boundaries one creates is what defines the world, when the person or his vision itself does not exist world ceases to exist for that person, which exactly means what was stated in geetha too. Its not for neigh is it said that the world is what you see in mirror, So she looked at herself and smiled, all set to start a new world for herself where there was contentment.