Skip to main content

Quest


Genuine religion is an endless quest to renew oneself every day, every moment.  It is a quest to understand reality more and more, the reality out there as well as the reality within ourselves.  Understanding leads to compassion.

The problem with fundamentalism of any sort is that it eliminates quest altogether.  Fundamentalism imposes truths on people.  Look at any country which has sought to build up religion-based governments and you will see how it has used propaganda effectively.  Truths are fabricated and imposed on people using various tricks and means.

Generally people don’t like to think.  They don’t want to think. They would rather have truths handed over to them on a platter.  Fundamentalism succeeds easily because of this.  Combine it with hatred of other people and the recipe is perfect.  Lies and hatred. Perfect combination for the masses hungry for readymade answers.

Spiritual truths can never be readymade.  They have to be discovered by ourselves.  Because spirituality is the harmony between the self and the universe.  Only the self can discover it.  Religions can assist in the process.  Gurus and other enlightened people can assist.  However, ultimately it is the result of a personal quest. 

Fundamentalism is the negation of all personal quests.  Fundamentalism is a straitjacket given to the believer in order to prevent him from making any quest whatever.  A people confined within straitjackets are the most pliable devotees (bhakts).  They are the ideal warriors armed with readymade truths and readymade hatred.

Release them from the straitjackets if they are to find their own truths.  Let the quest begin.  Let there be more questions than answers.  The stars waiting to be discovered.  The quest leads us to the stars.


Comments

  1. Pranju chakrapaniApril 27, 2017 at 9:01 AM

    Many of them, in fact, use this logic. Why trouble yourself with the pain of finding out the right path when we have a tailor-made road mapped out for you by our expert team.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 27, 2017 at 10:09 AM

      "..history has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines.”
      ― Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith

      If only people were willing to doubt a little, the world would be a much better place.

      Delete
  2. Jyotirmoy SarkarApril 28, 2017 at 7:58 AM

    Totally agree with your points and logic.
    Some age old games will continue forever and some people who does not have minimum consciousness cant be made conscious.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 28, 2017 at 12:24 PM

      My own experience matches with what you say: some people can't be changed.

      Delete
  3. UnknownApril 28, 2017 at 8:35 AM

    Fundamentalism is a straitjacket given to the believer in order to prevent him from making any quest whatever.

    So very true.

    Damyanti

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 28, 2017 at 12:24 PM

      Truth seekers are the biggest enemies of religion when religion is interested in power of any kind.

      Delete
  4. Ravish ManiApril 28, 2017 at 3:50 PM

    I completely agree that religion is about quest not commandments.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 28, 2017 at 8:00 PM

      That's what it is and what nobody seems to understand.

      Delete
  5. UnknownMay 2, 2017 at 6:00 PM

    I like this piece sir. I have come to believe in two things which echo in this write up. "Navinam Navinam Kshane Kshane" - my prayer - Newness newness every moment. And never to believe in 'sampradaaye' but 'sampradaha' ! Burn down everything that comes in your way of truth.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...
9 comments
Read more