Bhagwadgita - thinam oru shlokam

[anbu_kathir]

Dear Harish,

I do not deny the fact that I am indeed a slave to self-superiority at times. Self-righteousness has always been a issue that I have had to grapple with. By the grace of the Guru who dwells within all, I hope to be able to get rid off it someday in some lifetime.

I never claimed that "all paths are one and the same". I merely meant that they are all based on "beliefs" and not logic, and therefore no one is more truer than the other in a purely logical sense. This does not mean that I meant a comparison in terms of "better" and "worse". I am only interested in what is "functional" (as in what might to lead to Chitta-shuddhi) and what is not. How "functional" a particular belief of a belief system is, this is a complex question - however, a general rule I use is to see how they reduce the sense of an individual self (where the individual may be the person or his group). The weaker the boundaries, the more functional is the belief in bringing Chitta-Shuddhi.

Self-righteousness (the persistence that one particular system of belief is fact and all other beliefs are lies) always leads to "tension", although not in the physical sense. This has nothing to do with the particular system of belief under consideration. It may very well be a small belief as that of a cat crossing the road being a bad omen, or a religion itself. This is very well known, even scientifically proven. I observe that a tense mind is not conducive to Chitta-Shuddhi, therefore I hold it imperative on myself to get rid of Self-righteousness.

The social-political-geographical-historical considerations of why particular religions in particular regions are more inclined to produce fundamentalism are out of my bounds here, as it requires immense amount of knowledge accumulation and aggregation. On the other hand, by the own observation of my own mind, I can well say that holding on to a belief, without a rational back-up always leads to mental tension and therefore mars the process of chitta-shuddhi in the long run, except in the rarest of cases.

Wrt to Shankara, Ramanuja or Madhva and their philosophies, I am not knowledgeable enough to mention anything. Wrt Vivekananda, he is well known to be a revolutionary who challenged many of the social-rules put up by several different religions, let alone Islam.

In any case, I refuse to claim that "ONLY" my belief system is "true" and all others must be "false." This is my nature, I really do not care if it is my virtue or my vice. If it is indeed my vice, so be it. I would rather go to the Hell that I created out for myself out of my volitional action and personal choice of belief, rather than the Heaven that I bring upon me my forcible belief in someone else's ideas, even if it be the greatest spiritual master in the world.

As for science being similar to a religion and scientists being "fundamentalists", I don't understand what that means. Science by its very nature demands an open (yes "logical") mind, unlike a belief system which is built (although in some cases, logically) upon the axiom of faith. A scientific "fundamentalist" is an oxymoron really, although the states of mind of a "religious fundamentalist" and that of the "militant atheist" (who is interested in nothing but that which is demonstrated by science) could be paralleled. In any case, science demands no belief from its "true believer" i.e. the scientist. The only things that are "fundamental" to a person with a true scientific spirit (not necessarily a scientist by profession) is an open mind and a thought process founded on logic.

Love and Light.