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| Do you believe in faith? |
There are lots of things that differentiate us. Color, shape, size, hair etc. From physical dimensions that we generally know to culture, language, country, clothes, religion etc. are more from the cognitive dimension. Although worldwide we try not be racist, but at the same time we are very natural in observing differences. In the cognitive space, one common attribute across all of those is belief. It is only because of the belief that countries, religions etc. exist. If suddenly we lose the ability to believe, a lot of these differences will disappear. However, we would still be left with physical differences. It is belief that makes us do interesting things. Sometimes amazing while on other times they can be tagged as horrible. But that is not the problem of belief. It just happens to everybody without any self interest.
People believe in their religions. Muslims believe in jehad or heavenly virgins. Hindus believe in trinity and cycle of life and avatars. Christians believe in one single almighty saviour while on the other hand Greeks believed in their individual specialized God’s collection. For their believes, they also believe that their believe is better than others. However, it always happens that a time comes when those believes are challenged. New world, new people need something different. Believes and rituals change with time, trying to adapt for the new, while keeping the old still attached. However, there is only a limited number of times that you can boil milk to get a good cream. Overtime, the cream either becomes so thin that it cannot stand any pressure, or it just disappears. This is the time we need a new container of milk. Same is the story of clothes, we spent a lot of time to find ways to cover of bodies. Now the times have changed and one can see discussions, debates and even protests that people should be free to be naked.
We have believes and their related conflicts. Believes in nations vs one earth , good vs bad, religion vs spirituality, olds vs new, science vs art etc. And of course some combinations of those a well. I had some recent experiences about such things, where people pick different believes, while discarding some they think are “not valid” any more or they rejected after some logical discussions. But, mostly they do not seem to notice that they have only moved from one believe to another. At times people are so much into a single believe that they forget to see another conflicting believe right next to the first one. I might write on these topics separately in separate blogs. But, I just thought to write it down for my own food for thought.
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| Few things does not even seems strange for long |
Shaman: Got a chance to be in a place where a new American shaman is preaching about the old Lakota ways to connect with “Great Spirit”. He helps other people, in this case Europeans, to solve their problems. Shaman himself said for many things that he is not aware of why certain rituals are done. At the same time the “followers” are performing rituals and singing “words” that they do not even know. For me it is hard to understand that why it is not possible to pray in some old language with old rituals to their “God”, in which they were raised to believe in.
Tantra: This is another very popular “hash tag”, I came across in Europe. May be it is in other continents also, but I do not have my personal experience of that. I came across many different ways Tantra was made “available” to people. But the common theme remains as how to use sexual energy to reach/find the ultimate truth or GOD or whatever. Most of them, followers and teachers alike, never read any original scripture or tried to find what is available in those writings. It is another thing that one do not know if the oldest books available also are the original methods or not. But, from those books, just as an abstract, one can find that it is just not about exploring sexual energy. It has many other things. But those are the things for which probably it is hard to find customers.
Female and male energy: This is also an interesting thing I came across in my connections. Ying and Yang, Shiva and Shakti are known for this duality in singularity concepts. I do not know what was in the mind of those people who created these definitions. But I came to know that today people believe there is a man and a woman living inside you. One is responsible to talk to each one of them and keep a balance. I am not sure who is this “one” in such case. Are eunuchs in perfect balance in this case? One of my friend really believes in it and she can even see these characters. I know I cannot argue against a strong believe or faith , but interestingly at that point she was sure that her male side is completely dominant, while at the same time most of her simple activities are around what we tag as “female” activities. E.g. she loves shopping, she could cry easily, she need a special color in laptop and she is ok with not having physical strength because she is a female. All this when man inside is ruling!
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| talk or walk |
Smoking temple : When governments started to ban smoking, office and buildings had to create special places for smokers. Usually they are called smoking corners. I came across smoking place, which are tagged as “smoking temple”. Mostly, these are the places, who have left the traditional churches, temples, monasteries to follow “new” paths (whatever that means). But, in some sense, even if it is to mock or to show rebellion, they could not let go of the idea of temple. Imagine over years, if they become really special and big and start to get special buildings. Then after centuries when new age will come, they might be praying in these smoking temples to smoking Gods!
Veganism : This is another “hot topic” nowadays for which people would like to sync together. It is not just about killing animals. It is also about not eating milk products and eggs or what is believed not to be “food for humans”. I happened to meet people also who will keep on going about it endlessly with a proud of their choice. And they also do not like any comment/sarcasm/joke on “soya consumption”. Mostly vegans are also aware of other “conspiracies” in the world. But they do not like to question, as to why leave a big variety of food and eat “soya cheese, soya milk, soya ice cream, soya sweets and soya many things”. Interestingly I have also seen people with strong belief in veganism playing leather made drums due to the their believe in musical spirituality!
Long hair spirits: Different communities of course build their own cultures are rituals with time. My assumption is that in the beginning humans had long hair and they kept it. When they improved their way of building tools, they also somewhere on the timeline build tools to cut hair. There might have been different reasons to cut hair; to look different, to look special or just simply to make daily life a little easier. With time the basic need to have hair to protect ourselves against cold and injuries was gone. Humans then probably saw it much useful to cut hair, especially when you go out in jungles or have some old style man-to-man battle. And now, one can find promotion of deep reasoning of why native americans had long hair. For some reason people are suddenly ready to let go of millennia of cutting hair to new marketed “story” of “long hair are key to holistic living”.
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| Is tantra possible without belief? |
There are many other such things where put in our belief. Belief in itself is probably fine. Problem is that some times belief becomes too strong and it is hard to recognize, if we are keeping a belief or belief is keeping us. When we have multiple believes, the boundaries gets overlapped over time. Layers are formed and we start to see differently or stop seeing certain things totally. Only way to change it is, as I mentioned before is, to get a new container of milk.
I am not defending any one belief against other. I do not know if original humans, millions of years ago (as per evolution theory) , was vegetarian or meat eater. On the other hand, I am equally unaware of the eating habits of mankind that was created by some supreme power. It is a simple observation that we as human stick to some of our believes while at the same time challenging and changing others. We most probably will keep on doing it till the end. May be somewhere we will also include the belief to smile on these differences and carry on rather than having and invisible war of believes.
Love
Arundeep
A man was chatting to Mulla Nasrudin who was a rabid fisherman. “I notice,” he said, “that when you tell about the fish you caught you vary the size of it for different listeners.” “YES,” replied Nasrudin, “I NEVER TELL A MAN MORE THAN I THINK HE WILL BELIEVE.”