Life Is a River That Flows into A Sea and Merges into An Ocean
By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
7 August 2023
“Celibacy, fasting, penance,
mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of
monkish virtues...Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the
fancy and sour the temper...A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death,
may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when
alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and
dismal as himself.”
― David Hume
While teaching the monks of Jainism, Buddhism, a few
denominations and sects of Christianity and Hinduism, I always quote the
aforementioned statement of the great Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and
rationalist David Hume. All these monks never look serene. They're forever
agitated. Their faces reveal the internal conflicts that are often the results
of suppressing life's most natural and normal gifts to mankind.
Life is a river that flows into a sea and merges into an
ocean. All these monkish virtues and traits are attempts to build dams on it.
These attempts fail. Monks as well as religious people indulge in all sorts of
life-denying and anti-happiness acts in order to abnegate their ego. But
ironically, it's because of their pronounced ego, they get involved in these
silly acts, rituals and customs. The great mystic Fariduddin Attar hardly
fasted even during the holy month of Ramzan. Once an extremely religious
disciple, who steadfastly observed fasts, repeatedly asked him why he (Attar)
didn't fast during Ramzan. Attar told him, '" I don't want to fast to feel
religious for a month and caress my ego by doing something that's in a fixed
framework of strict religiosity. I fast when I feel like fasting. I offer namaz
when I feel that I should offer it. Since morning, you (the disciple) asked me
a number of times why I refrain from fasting. This shows your (religious) ego
because you want to show that you've been fasting it so religiously but your
master is not observing this. Somewhere, it gives you a sadistic pleasure and a
sort of a kink (Qinan in Persian/ English got the word 'kink' from old Persian)
"
We judge people's religiosity and spirituality from our
fixed notion of religiosity and a warped understanding of piety. We do all
sorts of silly things like not eating onion, garlic, meat and abstaining from
sensual pleasures in certain months, time-periods and days. These preposterous
acts are triggered by our religious snobbery. Believe if you want to. But don't
make a display of your beliefs. Don't go naked in public just because your
religious founder roamed around naked 2,600 years ago! Those were different
times and circumstances. Be a normal human and worship your god. Buddha realized
this when he came out of the pit of self-mortification. Shareer Maadyam
Khalu Dharmsaadhanam (Body is the carrier of Dharma/spirituality).
Don't put yourself through the rigors of religiosity. Behave like a human, full
of joie de vivre. Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr had extra-marital affairs
and he drank as well. Yet, he remained one of the finest and most spiritual
humans in modern history and got the Nobel for Peace at the age of thirty-five
in 1964.
----
A regular
columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative
religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the
world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/life-river-flows-sea-ocean/d/130398
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