Religion - Boon to Bane

Religion is supposed to be a positive force in the human society. It is supposed to be a moral guide, helping people do the right things in their life. It is supposed to be the “bedrock of moral order” in Regan’s words. It is supposed bring peace to the world.

Every religion says that one should help and serve people in need. Every religion says that one should promote peace. Yet wherever I see, I find people fighting in the name of religion. We kill and rape and pillage in the name of God; our God; a God that we inherited through nothing more than a random event of being born to a specific religion.

Three crusades were launched by the Holy Christian Church over a span of two centuries, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Many of these deaths were those of innocents who were dragged out of their homes, tortured and slaughtered.

I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t know about the atrocities committed against the Jews. Hitler’s Holocaust is only one among the many painful incidents this society has been made to face.

Hindus and Muslims in India have been killing each other by the score. Starting from the time of India Pakistan partition, our history has been blackened with Hindu - Muslim hatred, and the ensuing carnages. The Bombay riots and the Godhra carnage are just the highlights of an otherwise ongoing “war of religions” as I would call it.

The Muslim “jihad” against the Christian world has resulted in thousands of deaths, the highlights of which have been the violence perpetrated by the Al-Qaeda and similar militant organizations, and the WTC attack.

Even within the same religion, people of different sects have warred. The different sects of Muslims – Shiite, Sunni, Sufis, etc have slaughtered each other. Different sects of Hindus – Vaishnavites and Shaivites have killed each other.

There have been countless acts of violence arising out of religious superstitions. Even if some people do not perpetrate violence, they harbor intense hatred and anger towards what they believe is against their religion.

Religion is supposed to be the purest of things on the world. It is meant to be our savior. But our perversity has tortured it into one of the worst demons possible. Even the simplest of people, with normal day to day lives transform into hideous beasts participating in the vilest of acts, because of an imaginary affront to their religion.

Religion is a very powerful force. And in the typical human nature, rather than use power for progress, we are using it for our own detriment.

Rue

Where are you life,
I'm searching for you.
Blindness and emptiness,
I'm having to face,
With all that I have,
and much more to do.

Give me your hand,
to help me our way.
Winded and broken,
I came here for you.
With all that I have,
and much more to do.

Here, take my smile,
to allay your woe.
The phantoms will fade,
for I laugh in our throe,
With all that I have,
and much more to do.

You are my hope,
you are my faith.
With you I dream,
and make things complete.
That's all I have,
and nothing else to do.

Love....

I was browsing through some of my old diaries, and came across this poem that I wrote. I had lost faith in the concept of love one day; felt disillusioned and wrote the first half of the poem. Then came dawn, penetrating my gloom with rays of hope. And I wrote the closing sentences:

Love is a Snow capped Mountain.
It amazes and captivates from afar,
but is dreadfully tiresome to par.
Trodden with difficulty is the path,
purpose and faith you'll need a lot.
But in the end is the bliss of those lofty heights,
even vying for which is worth a life.

My Mind...

Here we start off with my first ever blog... I named it "Mon Phren" - Greek for "My Mind". And the blog is in fact as vacant as my mind feels right now.

Don't ask me why I named the blog in Greek. The idea just fascinated me. It sometimes amazes me how I can get hooked onto apparently meaning less ideas. I can almost imagine my mind as a continuously flowing river, and the ideas as just random flotsam. For one thing, its one chaotic river with a lot of flotsam. And these ideas that I get hooked onto are like the some of the flotsam getting stuck on a sandbar. Another meaningless idea that I thought I should express... See what I mean???

Maybe what my friend said is valid - naming the blog in Greek would be an advantage for the readers - it would be much easier understand, compared to the content. You should all be thanking her. That way, when she happens to see this post, she won't sue me for plagiarizing her joke!!

There's a reason why I chose this auspicious day to start torturing all you innocent people with my thoughts. I always wanted to start a blog. But I never really had the motivation to do it. Nor did I think I had the energy. It was just one of my many idle thoughts...

Then my friend started one(Voice of Silence: Silence of Voice). Quite a while back in fact. And its pretty good, though I criticized his blogs a little today.. It eventually led to him saying that he was a step ahead of me, because he at least had a blog! Well.. lets just say I found the required motivation at that moment. And here's my blog.. So in a way, this article is kind of dedicated to him.. ;) and if you have to curse anyone, please visit his blog and post comments there. :D

As for me.. I started off saying my mind was feeling quite vacant. Unfortunately, its no longer in that blissful state and there is a chaos of thoughts raging through them (like that river cluttered with flotsam). It might be a progress, compared to absolute nothingness, but its not any helpful either. So rather than express that chaos (out of pity for my readers, and the fact that I'm feeling hungry), I'm choosing to end this post. Hopefully "Mon Phren" would be in a more helpful state for my next post.