does religion make us more divine or deranged?

(photo credit: bhakticollective)


Kaustubha Das asks a very good question. no society is immune from religious fundamentalism, just look at our home-grown fundamentalist Christians. all fundamentalists have the same thing in common: devotion to their god and a belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

in Sanskrit that would be bhakti combined with avidya with a good dash of asmita thrown in. devotion combined with ignorance and ego.


FINDING SELFLESSNESS AMIDST MUMBAI'S SORROW

"When we see innocent people running our city streets, scrambling for shelter from acts of violence committed in God’s name, whether in Manhattan or Mumbai, it’s a good time to ask ourselves whether our religion is making us more divine or deranged. On the verge of 2009, it’s become all the more apparent that the first decade of the new millennium will, in many ways, be defined by the impact of religious terrorism on our nations, communities, families and minds. Times like these call for us to examine how our faith affects our reasoning....

The most relevant questions about religion will address how we approach it. Religion, as a method of self-transformation (or yoga), can purify the heart, free us of unworthy instinct and compulsion, and nurture the best in us. A pure heart is fit to receive God’s grace in the form of wisdom, contentment and compassion. Conversely, a superficial approach sees religion as merely a ticket to salvation via membership to a group endowed with the favor of God. It can result in just the opposite, fostering pride, sectarianism and hate. It can become an instrument for the expression of exactly that which we need to be purified of. Which brings us to the real enemy: not Islam, not even extreme fundamentalist Islam...."

To understand human nature I don't have to read modern western psychology books...all I need to do is look to yoga philosophy and Buddhism. Buddha was the first neuroscientist and psychologist and after his enlightenment he taught how to relieve our suffering, nothing more, nothing less. in fact his teachings were so simple that he almost decided not to teach what he discovered under the bodhi tree because he thought people would not believe him. after his enlightenment he was asked what he was and he merely said "awake." that is all the word "buddha" means.

As Das explains and also asks: "Yogic literature speaks of six enemies (Ari-shad-vargas) which bind the soul: kama, (lust); krodha, (anger); lobha, (greed); mada, (madness); moha, (illusion); and matsarya, (hate and envy). True religion aims at uprooting these terrorists. The sincerity of ones purpose in their approach to religious practice weighs heavily in determining ones success. Will the soul be purified or putrefied?"

Are you your own terrorist or will you choose to awaken?

the heroes of Mumbai

(photo credit: New York Times)

For Heroes of Mumbai, Terror Was Call to Action

"On any ordinary day, Vishnu Datta Ram Zende used the public-address system at Mumbai’s largest railway station to direct busy hordes of travelers to their trains.

But last Wednesday just before 10 p.m., when he heard a loud explosion and saw people running across the platform, he gripped his microphone and calmly directed a panicked crowd toward the safest exit. The station, Victoria Terminus, it turned out, was suddenly under attack, the beginning of a three-day siege by a handful of young, heavily armed gunmen.

“Walk to the back and leave the station through Gate No. 1,” he chanted alternately in Hindi and Marathi, barely stopping to take a breath until the platform was cleared. No sooner, gunmen located his announcement booth and fired, puncturing one of the windows. Mr. Zende was not hurt.

Overnight, Mr. Zende became one of Mumbai’s new heroes, their humanity all the more striking in the face of the inhumanity of the gunmen....

Not far from the train station, as the same network of gunmen stormed the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, a sous chef named Nitin Minocha and his co-workers shepherded more than 200 restaurant diners into a warren of private club rooms called The Chambers.

For the rest of the night they prepared snacks, served soda, fetched cigarettes and then, when told it was safe, tried to escort the diners out through the back. They wanted to make sure their guests, many of them Mumbai’s super-elite, were as comfortable as possible.

“The only thing was to protect the guests,” said the executive chef, Hemant Oberoi. “I think my team did a wonderful job in doing that. We lost some lives in doing that.”

During the attacks, six employees from the kitchen staff were slain.

Even after an aborted evacuation bid, hotel workers helped get water for their guests and held up bedsheets to create makeshift urinals....

Mr. Zende joined the railways at the age of 19, when his father, a railway guard, died. With a 10th-grade education, Mr. Zende began at the bottom of the ladder, working himself up to the announcement booth. Now, he commutes an hour and a half each way from a working-class corner on the city’s northern edges, naturally on the railways. He makes little more than $300 a month."

India has lived with terrorism for years, yet it only becomes front page news when the white faces are killed.

I fell in love with India on my first trip. I was 51, alone, and I had never been overseas in my life, but as soon as my foot hit Indian soil I knew I had come home. when I returned to my American home a month later, I was changed. I experienced reverse culture shock that lasted for many months. I did not want to be here at all, it made me depressed. tired of my constant talk about India, my husband asked me, annoyed, "why do you love India so much?" I said without hesitation, "the people", and I started to cry.

I've spent my time with slum children who use garbage for toys and with Brahmins, the highest caste. I've spent time at a shelter with women who were rescued from the streets. There I talked with a former Bollywood star who told me, when I started crying because these women reminded me of the battered women to whom I teach yoga, "don't cry, madam, we like it here." I was hugged by a woman who could speak no English but she touched my hair and then touched hers and started talking to me in Tamil...the translator told me that she said we were the same because we both had the same thick, curly, dark hair. I've sat on the concrete floor of my auto rickshaw driver's two room apartment that doesn't have a bathroom, eating lunch with my hands in the south Indian way, sharing a communal meal with him and his wife and three daughters. they sleep on straw mats on the concrete floor.

I was the guest of honor at a school in the slums of Madurai where I told the children that they were all Gandhis. a teacher told the kids how it was their privilege for the American yoga teacher to visit their school today. I said, no, it was MY privilege to be treated with such graciousness, a total stranger. the principal took my hand and said I was a gift from God for them...and that's when I started to cry.

I've met people who have nothing according to white bread suburban standards and yet they have everything. there has not been one day since 2005 that I do not think about Ma India. she cracks open my heart and makes me count the days until I can run back into her arms and lose myself all over again.

India's 9/11

(BBC photo)

The tragedy in Mumbai is India's 9/11. Unlike America before 9/11, India has always known terrorism, but never of the scale that has been experienced in Mumbai.

Those of you who know me know that India is my second home, however, I have never been north, I've always stayed south in my beloved Tamil Nadu. a Tamil friend in India emailed me this morning to tell me how sad she is that westerners were singled out by the terrorists. my friends here have emailed me telling me that they will worry about me even more now during my future trips to India (I have two planned.) I appreciate their concern, but I think it is misplaced because I can die within the hour or next week or 30 years from now. I am not afraid to die, not anymore. I do not live my life in fear, although I know I will die in India. don't ask me how I know, I just know.

I've heard from various news sources that the authorities think the terrorists have ties to Pakistan but also to Kashimiri separatist groups. For those of you who don't know India's history, Pakistan was created out of the Partition. There are some who think that it was one of the greatest tragedies in human history. this was a brutal time in India's history with atrocities committed on both sides. many westerners look up to Mahatma Gandhi, but I can tell you that some Indians hate him for his role in the Partition. I had a long conversation on a long Indian train trip with a man who told me that many Indians hate Gandhi just like Americans hate George Bush. it was an eye-opening conversation.

Terror and suffering in this world are created when we believe we are separate from one another, when we do not see ourself in the other person.

My heart cries for Mother India, my India.

daughters of India

My sidebar contains photos from 50 Million Missing: the International Campaign for India's Women and Girls. I first wrote about the campaign in January, 2007.

Barbara Raisbeck recently interviewed Rita Banerji, the founder of this online campaign, for her blog The Daughters of India.

India is in my heart and I consider it my second home. but things happen to women and girls in India that sicken me. in a country where the female Divine and the male Divine are equal in Hinduism, women are still killed over the amount of a dowry (technically illegal but still asked for) and fetuses are aborted for the sole reason that they are female. a British ex-pat I know in India told me that he's heard people say that "bringing up a girl is like watering someone else's plant." I've read stories in the newspaper about people finding girl fetuses behind hospitals.

"...it is estimated about 50 million women have been systematically purged from India’s population, targeted only because they were female. This is perhaps what makes it one of the worst genocides in human history. And it is silent. And ongoing. The causes of this elimination are primarily female feticide, female infanticide and dowry murders.

Female infanticide has long, historical roots in India. It continues to be a rampant practice in many rural regions of India, largely because it is more affordable for the rural poor than the method more prevalent in towns and cities — that is sex-selected abortions. A mid-wife is paid only about Rs 100/- (U.S. $2.50) to kill a newborn girl. Babies are strangled, buried alive, drowned in buckets of milk, or fed poison. In some parts of India that job is relegated to the father or paternal grandmother who does it for free.

Female feticide has now become an unbridled phenomenon in India. Even though it is illegal for doctors to reveal the gender of the fetus during an ultrasound, still about a million female fetuses are selectively aborted in India each year. This rate is expected to rise to an alarming 2-5 million/year over the new few years."

Here are some excerpts from Barbara's interview with Rita:

"Barbara: What is the 50 Million Missing campaign?

Rita: The primary aim of the 50 Million Missing campaign...is to raise awareness both in India and internationally, about the millions of women that have been systematically eliminated from India’s population due to customs like female foeticide, infanticide and dowry murders.

...Most people (not just outside India but also within) are either not aware of the situation or are in denial that it exists. The first and most important challenge of this campaign is to break down the doubt and denial.

Barbara: Has the campaign gained interest from others? Are you working with other organizations on this issue?

Rita:...The reaction from people is mixed. Those that are aware of the issue are indignant, and very supportive. Many people, I think, are still in disbelief or in denial – they know it’s true but that’s not the public image they want for India. This is the land of Buddha and Gandhi and the whole non-violence philosophy. How could we have exterminated 50 Million of our own people – our own family members – daughters, wives, and daughters-in-law? The very thought is ghastly...

Barbara: What do you wish to accomplish with the campaign?

Rita: The first thing we wish to do is STOP the killings – the infanticides and dowry murders, and STOP female foeticide as well. The problem is so massive that the only way to do it is to have the government enforce existing laws. That is why we have an online petition that we’ve started circulating. We want the Indian government to be held accountable.

The second thing we’ll do is launch ground projects that will address the mindset, since it’s quite clear to us that this is what the cause is. It’s not poverty, or illiteracy. It is a cultural mindset that is fundamentally misogynist. So we want to start effecting long term change to people’s thinking through seminars, workshops, school curriculum, etc. The means and methods have yet to be worked out. But this is a long term project that will have to be carried out in a very systematic and measured manner.

Barbara: What can the general public do to become involved?

Rita: ...speak out! Talk about the issues involved. Don't be a mute spectator to the abuse of young women for dowry whether it's in your family or that of your neighbors. Speak up. Intervene. Talk about the compulsion you witness of parents willing to take loans to pay dowry. Of parents refusing to allow their daughters to return home even when they know she is being abused. Of families forcing their wives and daughter-in-laws to undergo multiple abortions.

Silence - when people see it and don’t talk about it - has been one of the biggest perpetrators of genocide the world over. And don’t use the excuses: "These things cannot be changed. Dowry is an old tradition. People want sons to support them in their old age and carry on the family’s name," for that is resignation. That is a mindset that allows this genocide to exist. Allow it no room to exist."

Please sign the petition that reads:

"TO: The Government of India, The OHCHR, The UNICEF, The UNIFEM, The UNFPA, CEDAW, The EU and The G8.

We the undersigned, strongly condemn the practices that have led to the elimination of millions of girls and women from India’s population, and hold the government of India accountable for failing to protect the lives of its female citizens.

We further contend, on grounds of human rights, that immediate and effective action be taken by the government, through the implementation of rapid action task forces, to halt this femicide. We also insist the government officially commit to a time-line within which the associated practices of female feticide, female infanticide and dowry murders will be effectively arrested through the rigorous enforcement of existing laws and a stringent accountability on the part of India’s hospitals, government offices, and law enforcement agencies.

We further urge international human rights bodies and other governments to join in this effort to persuade the government of India to acknowledge and honor the call of this petition."