Being Enlightened

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.