Why I'm Not Into Religion?

 

​I have always found myself leaning toward the spiritual rather than the religious. Perhaps it is because I believe Humanity is the most supreme religion—simply because it is the only one free of its own controversies.

​When I look at our rituals, I see beautiful contradictions that I cannot reconcile:

  • ​The Plucking of Life: We offer flowers to God, yet those very flowers were created by Him to bloom in the sun, not to wither at an altar. What is the rationale behind plucking a living creation to "worship" its Creator?
  • ​The Sacred Cycle: We forbid menstruating women from entering temples, yet we grandly celebrate the miracle of menstruation in the temples of Kamakhya. Why is the source of life considered "unholy" in one breath and "divine" in the next?
  • ​The Silence of Stone: We shy away from open talk of intimacy, yet the walls of Konark boast of allurement and the truth of human desire.
  • ​The Dust of the Earth: We are told to leave our slippers at the door, yet if God resides in every particle, then isn't the very dust we walk on a part of Him? Surely, a focused mind and a pure intent matter more than our worldly state or what we wear on our feet.

​Humanity does not ask us to discriminate. It is the fundamental basis of everything—a force that binds us rather than divides us. In the end, I find more "God" in a hand held during a difficult diagnosis than in a ritual performed out of habit.

​"Why search for the Divine in the silence of stone and the severed stem of a flower,

When He breathes in the heartbeat of the person standing right next to you?

The purest prayer is not a mantra whispered in a dark room;

It is the kindness we offer to the living, while they are still here to feel it."

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