Monday, April 13, 2009

Green Dog or Yellow Dog....,

Yesterday, i was challenging someone about religion, obviously she didn't like it, even though she tried not to show it. I share the same sentiments about religion as i do with rules. Religion for the sake of religion is just not good enough for me. I feel religion has been created /interpreted by man to suit a particular time in history, some of the guidelines need to be updated and its almost like if people get caught in a 'time warp' and become 'born again vegetables' under the guise of religion.

I remember asking my dad about the differences between the various Gods that people pray to and he told me a a few stories. The one that i like is about these two men who were fighting about their religion and whose God is "real". So finally they agreed to see a wise sage to ask him . The old man points them to a tent and asks them to go in there , one at a time, to see whats in there and come back and report what they saw. So the two men did that, one came back reporting what he saw was green and the other said it was yellow and then they started arguing again..."green, no yellow, no green" . The wise sage pointed out that they were both right , they had indeed seen those colours. What they saw was a chameleon and my dad said that like the chameleon, God appears different to the different people who choose to see God. But the essence is still the same, there is still one God. He gave another example, if you take several glasses of water and drop different coloured inks in each glass of water , it will take the colour of the ink but water is water and it does not change, even though it takes on a different colour. He also used this analogy to describe people and how they come in different colours and shapes but are at core people.

I think my parents gave me the best upbringing for a planetary citizen because they took us to every place of worship and we didn't just go there to sight see, we learnt to pray within that context. What this gave me is the ability to embrace all cultures and religions and transcend the barriers that people usually have due to a lack of understanding about another culture or religion.

Its fear really,....fear of what we don't know but if we take a moment to understand the reasons behind what people do, it helps us to relate better to them.

I have fasted with Muslim friends on fasting months. I have prayed in churches, Chinese temples and shrines of various cultures. I always learn something new and it opens up a window for me to learn about someone else's belief system. What have we got to lose anyway from embracing other cultures and being open to learning..??

We have instant access to information about anything and everything at our finger tips , unlike the time my grandparents lived where TV was not even invented. Yet for someone who came from that age ,my grand dad has a natural curiosity about everything and he could talk to be about anything under the sun , even things he hadn't experienced in his lifetime. Teaching our children that natural curiousity is so important so tat they can open their minds.

I think my children had it right when they suggested that we should have one place of worship or temple that should have all the religions in it so that everybody had a chance to learn about the other religions. There are some places that have that for eg. with the Bahai faith , they embrace all religions and I took my children to such a venue where we just sat down within that environment to take it all in. I think the bigger question to ask is , not about who's God is " real" or what some holy book says but how we are a human beings , with one another. How do we embrace each other's differences and celebrate them? To me any religion that teaches that... is what we need more of. Instead of working out of 'differences' ...it might do us all some good to look at the 'sameness' ...what connects us together.

Sometimes when i get into an argument of some sort, I feel myself drifting away and the questions that run through my mind are " is it so important for you to win?" and " we are both right but more than that we are both human , both trying to do the best we can , given our circumstances". This makes me realise that there are much bigger things to worry about and it makes me shift my thinking to become a bigger person. In Neuro- Linguistic-Programming, they have a term called "reframing" ...if you put a new frame on an old picture, the picture looks different...in the same way , if we look at something from another perspective, we can sometimes shift our rigid point of view to see it from someone else's view point. This reminds me of a story a teacher once told me. She was invited to give a talk to meet a group of women and only when she got there, did she realise that these women belonged to an opposition group from her's. So when they met her, the women started talking about how the group that the teacher represented had hurt their people and how they had lost lives of their family and loved ones. To this the teacher , agreed, she said, " yes, you have lost many loved ones over this war but so have i ... I have also lost family and loved ones," She found that instead of going on the defensive by getting sucked into differences, she went for what's similar ...both parties had lost their loved ones. The minute she did that , the differences melted away and they were for the first time able to transcend the fact that they belonged to different groups and instead focus on what's similar between them and how they can work together for a better life for all parties.

When we bring it down to basics, I am a parent and so is the other person, I want to do a good job, so do others, we want the planet to be safe for our loved ones...we want our loved ones to be happy.... isn't that what it all boils down to?

Sometimes we get in our own way, differences are good because they add the richness of our planet and similarities bring us together as one people. Half the wars in the world are fought because of religion, what if we taught our children more tolerance, respect and appreciation of other cultures so that they know that their 'map of the world' is not the only way... this might be a good starting point for more harmony. A girlfriend once said to to me that because i was marrying into another culture that my children will be "nobody" from the outside looking in, not belonging to any particular culture on either side. I said to her " then my daughter can marry a Japanese and her daughter can marry a Maori , and eventually we will have a planetary citizen"... neat huh? ..

1 comment:

  1. Great post. If only everyone thinks the same, then we might have some world peace. :)

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