23 October 2001, 12:37am IST
SWAMI SUNIRMALANANDA.
A student told me recently, ‘‘swamiji, it’s all so very confusing. you say, to serve others, to pray, to meditate and to think of god is religion. osama bin laden says to kill is religion. what his group did on 11 september in new york is called religion by his group. dawood ibrahim claims he is practising religion when he engaged in killing innocent people. militants say they are only practising religion when they kill innocent people. we are tired of this religion business.’’ indeed. it’s really confusing. all that’s going on in this world since ages has been attributed to religion. anything and everything that happens is religion. so the confusion. even krishna said in the gita, kavayo’pi atra mohitah or even the wise are confused’’, when it comes to what’s to be done and what’s not to be done. that which brings supreme good to the soul is called dharma . the simplest definition of dharma is dharati lokam iti or that which protects the world is dharma. coming to the individual, i may be born with a thousand bad thoughts and evil tendencies. but by following dharma, my mind will become purer by the day, and there will come a time when no evil thought can rise. this is the state of a perfectly religious person. none of us is born perfect. all are trying to become perfect in the course of evolution. but the religious strives consciously to become pure and perfect. and in a perfect individual, there’s no chance of any evil tendency to rise at all; his or her life is only a blessing and a source of inspiration to one and all. he or she cannot even think of ever harming others. this is the effect of dharma. dharma is like an ocean — it has a thousand faces. in the bhagavad gita there are a thousand ideas as with the bible and the qur’an. can one practise all the ideas? it’s simply impossible. all of us are born with some inherent tendencies and we go according to them only; we choose and select ideas and ideals which suit our temperament and follow them. if i love to meditate, i take up ideas on meditation. if i love work, i take up the path of karma yoga. all religions have views on killing but these are contextualised. the durga saptashati is only about war and killing. the mahabharata and the ramayana speak of violence and war. in fact, in the mahabharata, krishna tells arjuna specifically that he must fight and kill enemies. why do we not give importance only to such teachings and go on killing our kith and kin as arjuna did? because these teachings were only meant to be followed under certain circumstances as guided by dharma. if we consider osama bin laden to be a great religious leader, then our hindu scriptures contain details about so many such leaders. in the bhagavata there are details of how hiranyakashipu performed austerities. brahma himself became pleased with his austerities. the remark made there is that nobody in the world had done tapas as powerfully as hiranyakashipu. ravana was a great devotee of lord shiva. vritra was the greatest devotee of vishnu. bali was a great devotee as well. then there was indrajit, narakasura, bhasmasura and a host of other religious and mythical personages. they all thought they were religious. only their direction was negative. they were all selfish, and in order to attain their own good, they did tapas to gain power to be able to annihilate everyone. our scriptures praise their tapas, their prowess, but say that god did punish them. our bhakti scriptures go so far as to say that of the nine types of devotion, hatred is one type. kamsa got liberation through his hatred for lord krishna, because he always thought of him. however, they are careful to point out that god loves those who follow him with love. we are all such people rakshasas or demons and despise them. their ideals are different. although they say they practise religion, they are using religion for selfish ends. please be reminded of that famous saying that a knife can be used both for killing others as well as serving the patient by cutting nutritious fruits for him. religion contains so many ideals. some are meant to warn us, while some others to guide us. there are ideas about how to destroy enemies as there are ideas about how to elevate one’s own self by serving all. the simple test is to check our own conscience to see if we have chosen the right path.
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