Category: Religion

  • An eternal twist

    Read something that i thought was definitely worth sharing.
    If you had to choose between a woman you had met the day before and God, who would you choose? And the weaver said, The woman. Is there any doubt about that?
    And the mullah asked him, If you had to choose between a song and God, what would you pick? And the weaver said,The song, of course.
    And the priest from the temple asked him, Weaver, if perforce you had to choose one or the other, a beautiful sunset or God, what would your choice be? And he said, Isn’t it obvious? The sunset.
    And they asked him how he could blaspheme so. And the weaver said, Why sirs, God has eternity on his side, he can always wait. Will the woman, the song or the sunset wait for me?
    God’s Little Soldier, Kiran Nagarkar
    until next time, maybe there is no right answer…

  • FAQs

    A couple of weeks back, Sunday Times had a poll, conducted among 1000+ people across India on their beliefs about God, religion, after-life, ghosts and various other things that we think about, on starlit nights…
    I’ve just about finished Book Five of the Ramayana Series, and coincidentally also came across this article, which also raised a few questions on mythology and God…Imagine all the characters that we are so familiar with – Rama, Ravana, Krishna.. were they just characters of imagination or did they actually exist, a long, long time ago, and over a period of time the story of their lives got embellished to such an extent that they became gods and demigods… the amazing similarity between the different myths from civilisations around theworld also point to their actual existence… the remains of Dwaraka, the remains at Mohenjodaro resembling a nuclear holocaust, the drawings of Pushpak – the celestial flying machine, now believed to have been powered by a mercury based fuel, all add to this…
    And thus adds on another set of questions to our FAQs – are our myths based on actual facts, or were they made by the creators of God? the almost eternal question of whether god created man or man created god? but i also believe that it might be just a matter of time before we find the answers.. after all, its only been a few thousand years since we have been around and we had lives before and after the discovery of fire, metals, and even civilisations, and we have managed to find the answer to some questions, and hopefully will learn to tap the resources beyond our five senses sometime in the future…of course, for us, these still remain faqs with several possible answers..

    until next time, if only He had user support…

  • Memories

    …of the relatively ignorant bliss of childhood… of the roller coaster ride of adolescence, the exhilrating times of youth… so far.. and perhaps as we grow older, the realisation of middle age, and the inevitability of old age… by the time we reach the twilight of ourlives, perhaps these memories become one of the pillars of our lives…
    something that we never work towards, and assume that our minds would automatically record and catalog it – by person, by time, by taste, smell and hordes of other things that cant be described..
    I saw a malayalam movie recently, a movie i was looking forward to seeing, featuring my fave actor and directed by a one movie old director, who had set an extremely high benchmark with his debut movie.. and thankfully, it delivered, and how!! it reinstored my faith in actor whose performance screamed out that all he needed were good scripts and he would do the rest.
    that was a necessary digression, because even the trigger for a post has to be acknowledged, specially one as deserving as this movie…the story of a man who, while having never accomplished his dream, retains his faith in his intellectual abilities, and hopes that he can live his dream through his son. a man who has to balance his duty towards his father with that towards his son.. and while he focuses all his energies on all these happenings in his life, gets struck with alzheimers…. i cant remember a malayalam movie in years which can come remotely close to this one .. and no, thats not because of any ailment, its because there hasnt been a movie like this in years…:)
    its a movie that made me think.. day after day after day, we go around focusing ourselves on the short term and long term things we aspire to do.. some get a joy out of a night with friends, some get it with the knowledge that their investments are safe and sound, some get a joy out of having achieved something..but all of us get a joy out of remembering the good times we have had in our lives… what if we cant remember those.. in His infinite wisdom, perhaps he has answered this too, for if we dont know that we cant remember, theres no pain… we will live small lives, with joys and sorrows we would never remember later…
    until next time, remember to drop in again 🙂

  • Evolution and the Theory of God

    have finished reading a book called ‘Tomorrow’s God’, which got me to relook at my spirituality, thereby adding some twists to my earlier posts on the issue…
    though i wtote of a system, i had God in it. this book eliminated God as we know him (to be fair, the book warns of this at the outset)… it spoke of a system, of which everything is a part and evolution happened because random objects/organisms moved to a higher state of frequency randomly.(this might help)..the book vehemently opposes the present version of God, because it believes that things become far too easy when we can blame it on a God over whom we have no control, our actions,our behaviour etc can be easily attributed to the way God made us… actually, we are all messiahs of ourselves with our own selfish agenda.
    the book advocates a system, with every part of the system being responsible for whatever happens in the system…that is, all that occurs in the system is our responsibility, collectively and directly proportionate to our actions…it means that whenever we do something, anything, we should also think of the effects that action/inaction will have, not just on ourselves, but everything else in the system…good thought, huh??
    but, meanwhile, i also get reminded of mel gibson’s words from ‘signs’…something that meant “there are two kinds of people in this world… group 1 – who believe that nothing happens by chance.. in times of crisis, deep inside them, they believe that someone is watching over them, that gives them hope… and group 2- who believe that everything is a random occurence.. in times of crisis, deep inside, they know, they are all they’ve got, that fills them with fear…
    until next time, have faith in your god…

  • I, Robot?

    saw the movie last weekend and immediately decided to revisit a certain mr.asimov…. once upon a time i was an asimov freak, more into the foundation series than the times and therefore works before the foundation..so “i, Robot” was just one of the books i read because it so happened that it was written by asimov and i couldnt find any good ‘foundation’ book in the library… ah, those were good times, times i spent in cochin, rainy days spent reading books and listening to music.. but thats another post..:)
    without revealing the plot and suspense, asimov discusses a future with robots able to do a whole lot of stuff humans did and even further, when “random bits of code got together” and developed emotions in robots, to the level where they decide to protect us from ourselves by making us, their creators, virtual prisoners…
    so i ask myself, am i my creator’s robot, who has developed feelings and emotions over time….
    because i am but a mass of flesh and bones much like the metal that constitutes a robot’s body..when my creator says deactivate, i die, much like the robot which responds to the human ‘deactivate’ command…
    have i evolved to this state because of random bits of code, in my case, genetic matter, which got together, over centuries to become what i am now…millions of centuries from cell to plant to animal to a thinking, feeling human who can record his history and develop a feeling that there is someone who made him, and then debate that belief.. one who can stare at the night sky and wonder about his existence….
    will my future generations discover god , physically, and further on decide to protect him from himself and also decide to write their own future, make their own set of robots who will ultimately do to them what they did to their creator? will i see it happen, from somewhere?
    maybe, but what you can definitely see now is
    manuscrypts trivia
    a good forward
    Marriage
    after the wedding, the groom lays down the following rules:
    “I’ll be home when I want, if I want and at what time I want-and I don’t expect any hassle from you. I expect a great dinner to be on the table unless I tell you that I won’t be home for dinner. I’ll go hunting, fishing, boozing and card-playing when I want with my old buddies and don’t you give me a hard time about it. Those are my rules. Any comments?”
    His new bride said, “No, that’s fine with me. Just understand that there will be sex here at seven o’clock every night…whether you’re here or not.”
    Marriage (Part II)
    Husband and wife had a bitter quarrel on the day of their 40th wedding anniversary!
    The husband yells, “When you die, I’m getting you a headstone that reads,’Here Lies My Wife – Cold As Ever.’
    “Yeah?” she replies. “When you die, I’m getting you a headstone that reads,”Here Lies My Husband Stiff At Last.’”