We are used to a society, a morality, which is based on violence. We all understand its pros and cons. However it infects us, pollutes our children. We are brought up with it. The human nature always conspires to imitate, to conform. It corrupts, consciously or unconsciously, our psyche. We find ourselves violent.
During terrorist attack on World Trade Centre we have seen the trauma. The hellish scene on TV screen, made us nearly mad. We jumped out and excoriated terrorism. And we became almost equally heinous to tackle the battle. Our ego mesmerised our emotion. We, unfortunately, terrorised the people of the world with our ballistic missiles. Roar of worldwide intellectual failed to stop us. We were strong and determined to carry our strike on. Those who supported us became our men, and others were enemy. There was clear polarisation in media world too. Our media hailed our stand all along. They did never even raise eyebrow when our valiant warriors were killing innocent men and children or were amused in gang rape. They published our propaganda, day after day; telecast it round the clock, 24X7. The other media used to annoy us, however, could not deter us from the mission of destruction.
Are not we ashamed of our deeds? To punish wrong if battle is necessary, should we not fight it for innocents? If yes, then why are we not doing?
Utter confusion reigns over us. We do not know what actually we should do, how can we get rid of this dilemma. Ears are fatigued with high moral discourses. Our need is to find a short-cut-way to happiness. New man of new millennium does have no faith in any ism, any Logos, they are panicky and struggling with the ‘risk-society’.
Pace is the God, now, and the money is the Goddess. High way to that heaven must be good investment plan, few mathematical tricks and customized morality. Will it, soothe, really, people of modern world?
The answer I know is, ‘No’.
It must, now, be confessed that the religion I mean is not based on rites. Rather it is about human being. It relates individual’s sorrow and joy, triumph and failure. It gives a person his own identity and rational approach to others.
Hinduism defines nature as Dharma. And Dharma is the universal truth. It has enormous facets to glitter. The inner truth is the immortality of the supreme Ego of man (Atman), which is almost equally strong and able as the Omnipotent Brahma. It is the Complete; in individual it is present as Atman. Like a fire covered with ash. There is the hidden possibility.
So the ‘kingdom of God is within you’. But you have to have the key to enter into the realm. You need to decode the enigma and understand what you are and where you live in with intellectual reasoning. And then the quest for God may start. There is neither heaven nor hell out of this mundane life.
Scientific discoveries helped conceptualise the knowledge immensely. Science always proved the rule of nature. New scientific discoveries have provided spiritual masters new path to walk on. In many occasions they have accepted the scientific truth and moulded their teachings accordingly.
Kantian metaphysics is an instance to bridge religion and science. Theosophists in India had also tried to minimise the gap between two. Social reformers lit up many dark zone of religion with the light of scientific knowledge. And thus the modern religion took shape.
Newton’s axioms are now religious truth as Darwin’s ‘struggle for existence’ theory is. As science progressed, religion progressed too. As well as the evil forces of this universe also find its own way to advance.
The hindsight of international political scene gives you bitter info. Destroyed Iraq is still not rebuilt. Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar politically lost their compass. Bombing is still on in Afghanistan. Children are growing up in refugee camps, playing with lethal weapons, and breathing toxic air. The meek world is being threatened nuclear holocaust by warmonger leaders.
Countries like Iran aspire for nuclear power. The only use of it, kids of those countries know, is on the battlegrounds to annihilate enemy. They don’t perhaps realise that the enemy is the mankind itself. A rumour is also blowing in the wind; intelligence agencies are working on it to find out; that terrorists have nuclear power too. They are equally equipped to bring doomsday.
William Golding rightly commented, in his ‘Lord of the flies’, “Man produces evil as bee produces honey.” “The mankind,” is in “grief… sheer grief, grief, grief.” Shakespeare said, though, that ‘joy’ is also woven fine with the ‘woe’.
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So, when I started my voyage to joy. I remember, I was just crossed my adolescence, and not in journalism then. The joy, I thought, my God is. Where did I not go to grab? After few days, though, I realised it was the toughest thing to put in pocket. Moreover, I noticed my anger about the disorder around. I tried many religious schools and different meditation courses like Buddhist Vipassana to Hindu yoga to dig up real reason of anger, and hatred. Finally I found the hidden enemy out. It is violence living within to spoil the eternal bliss. The Lucifer, I assume, is the brewer of superbia, avarice and anger.
J Krishnamurti writes in his ‘Beyond Violence’, “It (violence) is like a stone dropped in a lake, the waves spread and spread, at the centre is the ‘me’. As long as the ‘me’ survives in any form, very subtly or grossly, there must be violence.”
This ‘me’ is not Hindu’s Atman. It is the ego and self-centrism of a man.
The pivot man, who wrinkled my mind and tried to bring me out, is so-called naked fakir of India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (The Mahatma).
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Non-violence and truth (Satya) were inseparable. There was no God, to Gandhi, higher than the truth.
The ‘truth is God’ proposition was of crucial importance to Gandhi and the evolution of his thought. It slipped in me as well. So, I have chosen journalism as career, I believed and still do that in this profession I would have opportunity to unmask hypocrisies.
Truth is ever a cardinal characteristic of philosophical speculation in India. Hinduism always recognized ‘truth’ as one of the basic attributes of the Divine life. The Srimadbhagwat says ‘Sattyam param Dhi mahi’ truth should be regarded as Prime.
Religion according to Mahatma Gandhi was not totally esoteric. He wanted to craft a secular, ideal God for poor India, addressing all religious creeds. Like King Akbar he never named it though. Effort was only to canopy different isms of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and others. In his melting pot he wanted to see them happy, spiritually close to each other.
The Love that Gandhi believed in led him to staunchly reject the use of evil means no matter how good the goal. For him a good end would be corrupted and not reached if wrong means are used. Ahimsa is the use of non-violent means to achieve ends believed to be good. Gandhi said paraphrasing Christ that “we reap exactly as we sow”.
The concept of Ahimsa is a complex ethical virtue. It has figured prominently and is given enormous significance in the religion of Jainism. It has acquired special importance as a philosophy of life and a technique of action has grown around it in the hands of Mahatma Gandhi during a period over of three decades. It has great significance for people like us, as well, who are insistently contemplating a new social order to outlaw terrorism and violence from our midst.
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“Who listens to me today?” Mahatma Gandhi asked once helplessly. In those days India was just divided into two and was burning in communal fire. The prophet of non-violence had to suffer the bloody agony. All hopes were uprooted. Before he was killed he saw dreams to die. It was not Godse, but religious fanaticism, killed the man.
Gandhi recognized ‘fear’ to be ‘the cause of violence’. According to his analysis fear is the most degrading human emotion. It destroys our mind and corrupts our morals. This is the reason why on many occasions Gandhi said that he ‘preferred violence to cowardice’.
In this freak and risky society, frenzied people, fanatic nationalists, blind cadres are fighting each other to prove them right, raise their flag of ego up above. You must know the field and have patience. I deny sword and pick up pen, as it is mightier, I believe. To face truth need reasoning, need the power of scientific knowledge, as well as a religiously responsible mind. That state descends to a person through love. Because, life is beautiful and love is the God, the moment we realize that we are all parts of a single spirit, there will be no violence for the simple reason that it hurts one’s own self.
