Let’s continue the story from where we had left off, if you have missed the first, second and third part, I would recommend you to first check those out and then come back here to read the part 4:
Teacher: Good morning students!
Students: Good morning teacher!
Teacher: Last time, Rajat had asked about rituals, let’s continue that discussion.
Rajat: Yes! I am fed up of my parents telling me to perform so many religious rituals.
Srushti: Yes, me too! I am tired of doing pooja everyday.
Jainam: My parents force me to wear dhoti while performing rituals. That is so difficult to wear! It is so uncomfortable as well.
Iqbal: I also would like to know the reason why my parents tell me to offer namaaz 5 times a day.
Teacher: Why do we all link rituals so closely to religion? It is essential to understand that rituals are not just religious rituals. We, in our minds, have associated rituals so closely to religion, that we have lost the ability to distinguish between the two.
Rajat: I don’t understand, can you elaborate? How are the two different. I think that rituals are a part of religion that we have to follow, no questions asked.
Teacher: That’s where most people falter. Let me give you an example, yesterday was Aagam’s birthday right?
Aagam: Yes!
Teacher: You had fun?
Aagam: Yes! A lot! 5 students from our class had come to surprise me with a cake! I cut the cake, we played some games, we danced, it was a lot of fun!
Teacher: Yes! You cut a cake! Exactly my point! Why do we cut a cake when it is someone’s birthday? Isn’t that a ritual?
Let’s say a boy loves a girl, why does a boy sit on his knee and give a rose to the girl? Isn’t that a ritual? Why is it an implication that a boy loves a girl if he gives her a rose sitting on one knee?
You see my point, don’t you Rajat? Rituals are everywhere around us, a lot of the things we do in our daily lives are rituals and we don’t even realize that while doing it. Rituals are not a religious phenomenon. A boy proposing with a rose is a way of letting the girl know that how much the boy loves her. It is just a way to express your feeling to someone or something. Even a birthday cake is a way of celebrating the life lived by the birthday boy or girl until that point in time. There are many more examples. Can someone else give any other such example?
Jimit: Yes! I have one! They give ‘Ikkis topo ki salaami’ (21 canon salute), when a brave soldier or a well respected person in the country dies.
Aagam: I have one more, after a person dies, in Hindu culture, their body is burnt, in Christain and Muslim culture, they are buried in the graveyard.
Teacher: Correct! Let’s treat rituals as rituals and not associate rituals so closely to religion. That’s the first point I wanted to clear. Now the 2nd point, what about religious rituals? Does anyone have anything to share about religious rituals specifically?
Kenan: I feel that not all religious rituals are bad. While performing many of the rituals, there is an aura of positivity around us. For example in Diwali, don’t you feel great with all the Rangolis and Diyas and firecrackers and sweets and people meeting each other? In Christmas, don’t you feel Christmas tree, Santa Claus, gifts, decorations are a great way to celebrate something?
Rajat: Even I enjoy these festivals and I celebrate those because I enjoy them, but there are so many rituals that I do not enjoy, and I am forced to perform, what about them?
Teacher: Remember our discussion from the last lecture? Ask the right questions to the right people, ask the meaning of these rituals to the people who actually know them. As already established, rituals are everywhere and every ritual has a special meaning, there have to be meanings of these poojas and namaaz and roza and fasting and which food to eat and which not to eat, ask questions, know the answers, if you like the answer, follow that ritual, if you don’t like it, don’t follow it, as simple as that.
I agree with the point that there are rituals that do not make sense, but there are many rituals for which we don’t know the reason and we have never tried to understand it.
Rajat: Got it! But what about those mantras, chants, shlokas, etc. that people just keep on speaking without even knowing the meaning of them?
Teacher: There are definite benefits to the mantras even if you don’t know the meaning of them. You might have noticed that all the people who recite them do so while meditating. And I don’t need to explain you the benefits of meditation. Those shlokas are a way of getting all the other things out of your mind and attain a perfect state of meditation. Attaining that is a very difficult task. So even if you don’t understand the meaning, they can help you in increasing your concentration, focus, etc. and thousand other things that meditation helps with.
Teacher: I believe that everyone has all the answers they wanted about religion. Am I right?
Students: Yes!
Teachers: Let’s conclude this discussion by summarizing everything we discussed in the last 4 lectures:
- Even if we don’t know whether God exists or not, there are definite benefits of believing in God because it helps you to stay level headed in the best as well as worst phases of your life.
- We don’t care whether paap, punya, heaven, hell exists or not as long as they lead us to do the good things in life and become a good person.
- We can’t believe everything in religion blindly because it could be tampered with, distorted or biased. Reasoning is the most important lesson we have learnt.
- Fake babas, terrorism, riots that are caused because of religion is not because of religion, it is because of how humans misuse it, religion is a tool, and we are the users of that tool.
- Both science and religion have their own set of advantages and disadvantages like every other thing in the world.
- Both atheists and theists are right and wrong simultaneously. Atheists are right to ask the questions but are wrong to ask them to the wrong people and theists are right to follow religion but are wrong to follow religion blindly.
I would like to conclude this discussion by saying that both science and religion need to coexist, both are absolutely essential for the existence of human kind.
(Bell rings)
Teacher: Thankyou everyone!
I hope you enjoyed this mini series on religion and have got a different perspective on how to think about religion as a whole. In this series I have tried to cover only the things that we witness in our daily lives and the things that matter to us. There are many bigger things like politics going on within the religious communities, etc. But for us common people, those things do not matter as much as the things mentioned in this series in my opinion. Will be back with a new topic in the next blog, until then, goodbye!