When people ask me if I am religious or if I pray or I am a believer, I am stumped. All this new wave of people not believing in God, wants to make me also a non-believer. Actually that's the wrong thing to say - it's a mixture of wanting to fit in but also wanting to understand their perspective about religion - both of those aspects make me want to say "im figuring things out" in response to that question. The recent rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India makes me want to run even further away from that religion, if anything I am not one of those saffron wearing people, thank God for that. I was born Hindu and practiced the religion growing up because as a child you don't have much of a choice - when you parents say "let's go to the temple" you go with them. But now we get to ask these questions to ourselves and have nothing or no-one but ourselves answer it truthfully.
Now to the question of "do I pray", the answer is yes. I pray. There's this very vivid memory i have where my mother is trying to get my brother and me to sleep. We are in Bangalore and Dad is out on an international UN assignment. On his last trip back home, he had got us these glow in the dark stick-on things shaped like animals - we had them for the longest time. And mom had stuck them onto the ceiling and the walls of our room. So, the three of us, are lying there in the dark, mom, Aiyappa and me, and she is trying to get us to say our prayers as we stare in awe at these glowing animals all around. And her prayer stuck with me, it is still the prayer I say when i go to sleep - naming a lot of Indian Gods, naming our ancestors (since we worship our ancestors in Coorg), naming our father's father who passed away very early, and then thanking all of these above for everything they have given us from a working body to food to eat to people to love and people who love us and then forgiveness for hurting anyone in the day, if we had. For some reason, all of this comes flooding into my head when someone says pray or prayer to me - including the sounds from the road since our house was right next to the parapet wall dividing the road and the colony. Crazy how random memories stick to you!
Now to the question of believing in God - I don't know. i want to say no, because logically it doesn't make sense, but since i have grown up with it and grown up believing in all these stories and the immense powers of the million hindu gods, the beauty surrounding them all, I can't say I don't believe in God. Maybe the God I believe in has changed from faces and names and specific powers each of them holds over us to a more spiritual entity that in a way oversees all of us and the happenings - the one or ones that turns the wheels of time. I recently read two books that have made me question a lot of things, including religion itself - Homo Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari (highly recommended). I know religion was constructed for specific purposes and will continue to be powerful until those aims need to be met. So I don't particularly believe in religion, but I believe that there is a higher power for sure. I'm also awed by the powers of nature - for me these powers or aspects of nature are Gods and Goddesses in their own sense. Maybe one of the reason I deeply connect with the culture of Bali is because it is so rooted in nature and natural elements. I believe in animistic powers - that is maybe one "religion" I identify with, but the minute it's put in a mould and surrounded by things we need to do I might begin to question that as well. So I am spiritual for sure and I believe in a higher power.
That said, will i refuse to enter a religious place or fold my hands in front of a idol of a hindu goddess - not at all. I feel immense peace and calm at any place of worship. And I believe that this is because of the energy that people bring to any temple/mosque/ gurudwara/ church/synagogue etc - they bring their true whole selves, they bring their deepest secrets and their innermost desires, they bring all their sins and yet with all these aspects accompanying them, they are naked. Or because these accompany them, they are naked. But frankly, there are a bunch of temples in India which are run like a commercial enterprise and one doesn't feel anything in there, other than the urge to finish whatever they've come for and get out. But if you were to enter a church that is relatively quiet and sit for a bit, there is no reason why you won't feel serene and a sense of ease. This said, I am very very aware of exactly how these places of worship are meant to function and how they manipulate and why they exist in the first place. But that doesn't take away from that I feel.
I feel small in these places of worship - all my worries and thoughts rise up to the fore and manifest in tears and I feel very very tiny - in between many other worshippers and standing in front of an "altar" makes me feel small - that either comes from deep respect for the idol in front of me, or the realisation that i am but a speck in the Universe. My yoga teacher training kind of helped soften my feelings towards Hinduism I think. I had stopped actively praying to Gods, but because we were chanting to Ganesha or Krishna or Durga every other day at the training, I felt myself connecting to the Gods and Goddesses of my childhood again - and I'm thankful for that. I like rituals like lighting the lamp in the evening, my grandparents have done it all their lives and so have my parents. I like lighting a lamp, because it signals the coming of the night, i like the aesthetic of it, I am creature of habits so I like that you do it at a certain time of the day every day and I love lighting incense sticks post that lamp lighting. I guess the fascination is with the element of fire, because it is such a powerful natural element and raw & pure in that sense - somewhere I believe that lamp lighting for signals auspiciousness and positivity. Auspiciousness again is a concept that needs a whole different post. But I connect auspiciousness to anything that i feel positive around, that makes me want to sing. And anything inauspicious to anything negative that makes me want to shut down and run away - and this could be in an "auspicious"place like a temple as well. In Coorg, we don't have priests for our weddings. There is a hanging lamp in front of a picture of the river Kaveri who is sacred to the Kodavas - the couple bows down and prays to Kaveri and the lamp lit before her, and are then declared married. That's it. So yea, that lamp has a special place in my heart.
Another important spiritual place that i would like to mention before I end this post, is the Sufi shrine. I get drawn to anything that has that mysticism around it. For a Sufi, God is in everything and Everything is God - which is a concept I identify with. I would love to believe in the divinity of everyone and everything. I feel like it is a celebration of life - with it's dance and poetry and music. The sphere into which all of that brings you into is to me very similar to yoga and meditation. In fact the reason I am writing this post today about spirituality is because in my practice this morning, Kun Faya Kun from Rockstar played on my playlist and I realised how a combination of yoga and this sufi music enhanced my blissful state. It opens up your mind and body to dimensions you've never known - it's where creativity and love resides for me - the purest form of my being and the purest form of love rests there.
This particular songs talks about how God or this energy or the universe has supported the protagonist (or any of us for that matter) and how in it's search we go everywhere and often find it within ourselves. It also talks about how how in our deepest loneliness, this energy is always with us. The song is a request for this energy to be with us, and hold us as we go about existing in this world. Kun in arabic means "to be" and Fayakun means "it is" and together the phrase means "Be and it is". Every single stanza of this song is the essence of the world of the sufis - the recognition in all being this divine energy, in all being guided by it, in surrendering to this divinity and trusting that you are where you are meant to be. Every single stanza is pure gold especially the one where the devotee asks to be freed from himself so he can see himself clearly, to be freed from all that surrounds him, so he can gaze into the depths of his soul and see the true him. This is also similar to the stanza where he is asking to his mind and body to be coloured by the Painter and then for the coloured mind and body to be taken away. I can go on and on about this song.
Here is a beautiful explanation of the concept of Kun FayaKun "be and it is". The author says that we humans are often too stuck in the events of the past that hurt us and are too afraid of the events of the future that might come to hurt us. This sufi concept of kun fayakun teaches us that we need to let go and connect to the present, which flows like a river, where you exist (kun) and you continue existing (fayakun). Everything can fill a certain moment and everything can be destroyed from it, but we go on or life goes on. Very similar to the rhythm and consistency of inhales and exhales (of which i have spoken so much in my other blog) and also similar (at least to me) to another concept of shloka from the Upanishads that I connect to :
oḿ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaḿ
pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya
pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate
This also needs a whole other blog post to explain but since we are on the topic of spirituality, I'll introduce it anyway. This one also speaks of a God or divine energy (depending on how you like to see it) and how this energy is complete and whole and all aspects (including this world we live in) of it are complete and whole. If you were to add anything to this completeness, it would still remain whole and if you were to take anything away from it, it will still remain whole. There are many many commentaries on this phrase, which is why it needs a deeper description and maybe debate.
Every time i sit to think about religion and god and spirituality, I want to start with reading the sacred texts of Hinduism and Christianity and Islam. I wonder where that will take me - but something in me wants to read it anyway. And then i want to start exploring sections that intrigue me the most. Of course I haven't been able to do it yet. One day, soon. Until then, i will end this post with a stanza from kun fayakun where he is asking to be freed from himself :
ओह मुझ पर करम हो सरकार तेरा
अर्ज़ तुझे करदे मुझे मुझसे ही रीहा
अब मुझको भी हो दीदार मेरा करदे मुझे मुझसे ही रीहा
~ Irshaad Kamil, Rockstar
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