by Jyoti Pandey

Created on: April 29, 2008

On a normal regular day, I would debate strongly against the idea that there is absolutely no connection between humanity and religion. Religion is a creation of humans based on their own thoughts and different belief patterns. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, have all evolved as people started to differentiate and started to create boundaries based on their own unique identity and patterns of belief. How come these two need to be dependent upon each other? The existence of humanity has nothing to do with religion at all, I always thought!

But just as I was writing this particular piece, the horrific story from Austria about that "house of horror" and the starting news from Texas about polygamists started to unfold. It was so disturbing and excruciatingly painful to read about it and see the clips on TV. What often crossed my mind was how come this man never feared god? Why do people believe and think that there is nothing beyond this corporeal universe? Why don't they think that there was a purpose behind the creation of this universe and we all came here for a much higher reason and there is always much more to life than just the gratification of our senses? I never consider myself a very religious person as I probably do not have a lot of patience to sit in front of any idol and chant the mantras or do the incantations. Religion for me is about respecting our environment and not hurting any living being on this earth. But there's one thing I do believe in;there however, has never been any proof of the existence of god on this earth, different schools of thoughts have different theories to prove or disapprove that and it'll remain an ongoing debate forever, but regardless of whatever it is, there is some supernatural power over there, which is beyond any understanding, which is beyond any reason but which is all pervasive and omnipresent. The meaning of religion is to find God, whichever way one may want to go about it, but the ultimate destination remains the same. And by and large whichever belief system one might come from the basic tenet is the same, they all teach the love for humanity.
If humans understood this particular fact, these kinds of chilling horrific crimes would never be committed. All religion teaches sacrifice, selflessness, patience, tolerance and love for the mankind. The Hindu scripture Gita teaches that "one cannot escape their deeds; they do have to pay for them". It is not about visiting temple or going to the church or paying tributes at Mecca, it's about understanding the basic tenet of it. It should be taken as a guiding factor to teach and show us the light along our pathway. Believing in God and understanding that we are mere corporeal beings on this earth would make us more humane!

My hands are folded in prayers for those kids out there!

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