Devil’s Advocate is Karan
Thapar’s memoirs which I’m currently reading. One of the first chapters is
dedicated to his wife Nisha who was a Goan Catholic whom he met in London and
fell in love with. He agreed to marry her in the church and the priest who
blessed their wedding was Father Terry Gilfedder who was an enlightened priest,
according to Thapar.
“He was the first
Catholic priest I got to know,” says Thapar about Father Terry. “And he’s the
only genuine man of God I have ever met. So when I encounter others of the
cloth, I judge them by his standards. They always fall short.”
Giving due respect to
Thapar’s faith, Father Terry asked him to choose a passage from the Bhagavad
Gita instead of the biblical passage usually read during the wedding mass. But
Thapar was not familiar with the Gita. Hence the priest chose a passage from
Kahlil Gibran instead. Thapar questioned the priest whether such “cross-cultural
ecumenism” was permitted by the church. Father Terry’s answer was, “It’s not
where it comes from that matters. It’s what it says that counts.”
Only an enlightened
person can hold such a view. One of the primary criteria of enlightenment is
openness to reality and the multi-facetedness of its truths. No enlightened person will dare to measure
truths with the tiny spoons of one’s own religious faith and its scriptures.
Profound truths of life
are not confined to any particular religion or particular scriptures. Any good
work of literature can teach us those truths. Why only literature, even a work
of art, a piece of music, a river, almost anything can be source of spiritual
enlightenment. What matters ultimately is not the source but the effect.
Enlightenment is the desired outcome.
One of the basic tests of
enlightenment is compassion. The enlightened person is a deeply compassionate
creature. He feels empathy for his fellow creatures. Hatred and other negative
emotions have no place in his heart. The enlightened person brings light where
there is darkness, joy where there is sorrow, hope where there is despair…
We live in a time when
there is too much religiousness and little spiritual enlightenment. Too much passion
and too little compassion. No, what we have are not genuine religions but just
sentiments without any soul.
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