Chicklet - Add to Google Homepage

Add to Google Reader or Homepage

Monday, December 8, 2008

Musings: Spiritual but not ritualistic!

That’s the fashion statement of the current generation and probably would remain so for the new generations to come! The geek in us is essentially trying to convey that they believe in the divinity of the soul but does not believe that you can realize it by being ritualistic. This is more or less an emotion that ranges between antipathy and apathy for rituals, which are mostly referred to religious rituals.

Let’s split the word “ritualistic” a little and see what it actually means.

Most of the religions have prescribed rituals which appear mostly irrelevant, utterly superstitious and above all an absolute waste of time. If some one is ritualistic today or even if they appear to be so in public life, they are an exception, certainly an object of ridicule and we display an attitude that is “last among equals” towards them.

What do these rituals consist of? In the management jargon any “practice” (say consulting practice, application development practices etc) has a defined objective, contains processes, procedures, metrics, tools and templates. So, professionally speaking, rituals are practices where in they define an objective, prescribe a process, stipulate few procedures, which are time of the day / day of the week / week of the month / month of the year specific, they insist on few tools and in some cases there are some metrics too. Let’s take few examples to explain this:

- Attending a Sunday morning assembly in the church and praying has all the above mentioned components.
- Doing Namas five times a day has all the above mentioned components.
- Performing a Pooja as per Hindu customs has all the above mentioned components.

You can add Buddhist, Jain, Taoist, Zoroastrian, Sufi, Persian, Jewish examples. So irrespective of the religion every one of them has prescribed “Practices”, which we all either ignore or hate. This antipathy is basically due to many factors some of the most popular being, we are not interested in achieving this objective or either don’t understand the meaning of the practice, or we understand it but don’t believe in it, or even if we believe we “don’t have time” for this.

I just want to analyze this a little more. There are few religions / philosophies which state that there is only one way to god and it’s based on the religions tenets and nothing else. At the same time there are certainly few religions like “Sanatana Dharma” (popularly known as Hinduism) which believes that there are many ways to realize ourselves. But a deeper look would reveal that all philosophies and schools of thought emphasis on some rituals or the other and essentially some are more ritualistic and some are less.

So, if we are talking about spirituality (which is either believing in god or divinity of soul or realizing ourselves as god) and if we believe that if religion is one of the ways to do it then I think the prescription is all about being ritualistic at least in the initial stages till we reach a stage. For the wise smiles at the wisdom of a man who says our mind can be controlled with techniques. I believe our mind is far too powerful for it to be controlled instantly. The energies of our mind should be diverted, distracted into a specific task over a prolonged period of time before we can get into a focused and meditative stage. The mind has to be led into such a situation over a prolonged period of time into which ever task it is. How else you can do it without practice as we agree that “practice makes perfect”. What ever we practice regularly calls for discipline and order bound by time and practiced over time and this is essentially packaged as rituals in our religious schools.

In the context of religion, if a symbolic worship / ritual is wrong then so is childhood, when we are learning initially with over simplifies pictures and try to grasp the alphabets before we read and write sentences. You can see the truth of this statement in the subsequent points also.

Now let’s looks at other aspects that are worldlier…

· If our religion is corporate life then I have not seen anything more ritualistic in conference calls and meetings. For we seems to know that we are in the call without an objective even if we know I don’t think we believe it will produce any result and we are just there. The reality here, work is not god, but making money and reaching higher levels are.

· If our religion is something like Yoga, Taoism which is not philosophical and not religious in nature then the asanas, pranayama, meditation procedures are more / equally ritualistic than anything else. The reality is here union is not god, but having a physically fit body and talking eloquently in gatherings about such topics are.

· If our religion is any form of arts (martial arts, marital arts, music, art, drama) then the process of being disciplined and even being creative is as ritualistic as anything else.

· If our religion is time, then being punctual is realizing god and harassing others to be punctual is a ritual.

· If love is our religion then non-violence, mercy & giving is a ritual. This is actually more ritualistic since most of the defined rituals prescribe to a specific time period but this has to be exhibited all the times.

· If cricket is our religion then look at the amount of procedures that are told about grounding the bat, running between the wickets, practice methodologies, fielding a ball, taking a catch.

· If money and honesty are our religion then working hard is our ritual.

· If cleanliness is next to godliness then cleaning and purifying are rituals…24/7.

· If just money is our religion then making it by any means can include following all the rituals that helps us realize this.

All people who have achieved something in life have been disciplined in one way or the other. They are disciplined enough to believe in something, work towards it without any hang ups, pouring undivided attention over a long period of time. There is no one who can challenge this.

I think we all have to realize that ultimate truth is not jumping across a ditch from the bank of falsehood to the back of truth but it’s a laborious climb on the ladder bearing rungs of relative truth. Nothing is absolutely final and false. As I said in one of my earlier blog the fact that sun rises in the east is as truthful as the fact that sun neither rises nor sets, it is just the earth which is rotating.

Hence to move on the path of realization irrespective of what the goal is requires rigorous discipline and that discipline is reflected only in we pouring our heart and mind in it overcoming any inertia that may crop up. At one level I see this adherence to a discipline is “ritual” and nothing else.

The problem I see is that we are all believers and practitioners of a religion that is “Epicureanism with a strong bias to hedonistic approach” and we practice a ritual called “physical comfort” aka “laziness” and hence live a shallow life. It suits us to say that I understand the concept of divinity but not interested in realizing it as it requires a great deal of discipline and subjects us to physical discomfort.

As long we have a deep driving passion to achieve something and live what we believe in! we can’t escape being ritualistic! Else we can always have this as a fashion statement without realizing what it actually means! and continue to lead a shallow life.

Yours spiritually and non-ritually!

Happy reading!

No comments:

Post a Comment