| |
The great Philosopher Krishna Murthy asked, “The men who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima said that God was with them!’ those who flew from England to destroy Germany said God was their co-pilot.
The directors, the Prime ministers the generals the presidents, all talk of God, they have immense faith in God. Are they doing service, making a better life for man? The people who say they believe in God have destroyed half the world and the world is in complete misery. Through religious intolerance there are divisions of people as believers and non-believers, leading to religious wars. It indicates how extraordinary politically-minded you are.
“If you really believe in God, if it were a real experience to you then your face will have only smile! You would not be destroying human beings”
When people went to Albert Einstein and asked, ‘What do you think about the Third World War?’ he reportedly answered, ‘I don’t know about the Third World War, but I’ll tell you about the Fourth.’ They asked him, ‘What is it? What is it? What is it?’ Einstein said, ‘When you go to wage the Fourth World War, it will be with sticks and bows and arrows. We’ll be back to primitive man.’ Einstein explained what the Third World War is going to do — complete devastation.
Millions of people have been killed in the name of religion throughout history, and I thought, "What use is religion if it causes harm?" Over the years, I have come to understand that the problem is not religion per se, but the disturbing attitudes in the minds of human beings that make them misunderstand the meaning of whatever religion they follow. The holy beings—Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Moses and others—would be distressed by what beings with limited understanding have done and still do in their name.
The Bangalore initiative for religious dialogue; ’we believe that the religious attitude is a thing of permanent value to mankind, individually and collectively: and consider it, wherever it is found, deserving of reverent recognition.
We also believe in sharing our deepest convictions with one another, but sharing them on the basis of equality, of genuine respect for and acceptance of the validity of each other’s faith. Such sharing demands earnestness, both in holding one’s own faith and in seeking to understand another’s. For we get nowhere if we meet on a basis of indifference to all faiths’
We realize that any attempt to weaken the hold of truth of any religion upon mankind is to weaken religion itself. There fore we strive not to weaken but to strengthen each other by mutual respect, trust and cooperation. We seek to help one another more fully to understand and live to the best in all religions.
This “sum total” of all religious does not mean that all people on earth have to come under the banner of one prophet or worship one aspect of god. Let there be many teachers, many scriptures; let there be churches, temples and synagogues .Every religion is path to reach the same goal. When the goal is reached the Christian, the Jew the Sufi, the Hindu realize that each has worshiped the same reality .One who has attained this knowledge is no longer a follower of particular path or a religion .He has become a man of God and a blessing to mankind.
Being religious is more than attaching a certain label to ourselves; it is transforming our minds and hearts so that we become better people. Being truly religious occurs in our hearts—no one else can see this with their eyes. All religions are for the purpose of human happiness. They all teach ethics and compassion and stress harmony among people His Holiness the Dalai Lama once said that he believes the real religion is compassion developing our compassion enables us to live harmoniously with others and eventually to experience a peaceful death. People from all faiths agree with this. We experience compassion naturally simply by being a human being. However, our knowledge of doctrines such as creation or karma is learned later on.
Sometimes people ask, "Wouldn’t it be better if there were only one religion in the world and everyone believed in it? Then there would be no fighting among the various faiths." While we may be initially attracted to this idea, from a Buddhist viewpoint the multiplicity of religions is necessary and desirable. First, it would be impossible to make each and every human being believe in the same philosophical or religious tenets. People clearly have different ways of thinking and different tendencies, and there is no way to make all of them holds the same beliefs. Second, it would not be beneficial for only one religious system to exist in our world. Because people have different tendencies and attitudes, a variety of religions is necessary to ensure that each person can find one that serves him or her best. Different systems of thought and practice inspire different people. As long as a person endeavors to live ethically and harmoniously, which religion he or she follows–if any–is irrelevant.
For communication to occur there has to be a sincere wish not simply to speak but especially to listen.
Genuine inter religious dialogue occurs in an atmosphere of mutual respect and genuine interest. It is a sharing of spirituality that inspires all parties. Someone once observed, "When philosophers and theologians meet, they argue. When spiritual practitioners and mystics meet, they smile." Inter religious sharing helps us to become more open-minded. It also sharpens our abilities to investigate and to examine ourselves and our beliefs. Spiritual people want their limited views to be expanded. They seek to have their ignorance removed; they want their capacity for understanding and acceptance to be stretched. Inter religious contact presents this possibility.
Why do we need other people to believe the same thing we do in order to feel secure in our beliefs? We may have forgotten that people have different aptitudes and temperaments and will therefore see things differently. As we mature in our own spiritual development, inter religious sharing becomes a way to deepen and enrich the practice of our own spiritual tradition.
The fundamental truth as taught by all religions is that man has to transform his base human nature into the Divine that is within him. In other words, he must reach the deeper strata of his being, wherein lies unity with all mankind. And spirituality can help us to contact and live that truth which unfolds our real nature----- the divinity lying hidden in man.
Spirituality is not a particular religion but a philosophy which includes the basic truths of all religions. It teaches that man’s real nature is Divine; that it is the aim of man’s life on the earth to unfold and manifest the hidden Godhead within him; and that truth is universal.
World peace is only going to be achieved, first of all, through internal conversion of people’s hearts. We’re not going to achieve world peace simply through political means to achieve peace since mankind has been here, and political peace is only as good as the people.
MAULANA WAHIDUDDIN KHAN
Spirituality is the essence of all religions including Islam. The root word of Islam is peace and tolerance. A person once asked the prophet, “Give me a master advice that I might be able to mange all the occurrences in of my life.” The Prophet’s answer was that “Don’t be angry”. It is not a simple answer. Anger comes in when provoked. Then it means that anger is a negative thought. To learn to be positive even in a negative situation is the essence of Islam. Positive thinking is the essence because, according to Islam, the present world is a testing ground where everybody is free. Unpleasant situations are bound to occur. There can be unpleasant and provocative situations everywhere.
Islamic teachings are based on the virtue of patience. There is a verse in the Koran which says ‘those who keep the patience will be given the greatest reward. Patience means living positively. There are lots of reports in the media these days about Jihad. But there is no scope for war in Islam. War is an exception and peace is the rule. There cannot be war without aggression. War is the prerogative of the State but today wars are by different organisations. There is a verse which says that ‘there is no secret war in Islam’. War in any case should be a declared one i.e., it should be an open declaration according to Islam. Islamic teachings are based on positivism. Without a positive mind you cannot love God and humanity. To live this psychology means that there can be no war.
The Prophet was born in Mecca in 578AD. After some years he migrated to Medina and settled there. One day he saw a funeral procession in the streets of Medina. On seeing the funeral he stood up in respect. But one of his followers remarked that the funeral was that of a Jew. The prophet understood that all human beings were creations of God so being a Jew doesn’t make a difference for him. There is a verse in the Koran which says that, “Muslim is the one by whose actions people are saved’. Basically, a follower of Islam ought to be a peaceful and harmless member of the society. The prayer of the Prophet every morning was that “O God, I have been a witness that all men and women are sisters and brothers”. That is the spirit of Islam.
The whole creation is a family. There is no word in the Koran which talks about spirituality - but ‘Al-Rabbaniya” can be an equivalent. Spirituality is the essence of God-oriented life. It is good behavior living with peace, love and tolerance. It is time to revive spiritual values. Love, tolerance and peace are to prevail for the betterment of the society.
FATHER GEORGE GISPERT-SAUCH
My first concern is to make clear what I understand by the rather quaint English word ‘spirituality’. I think the best Indian equivalent is either sadhana, or yoga, or maarg, giving a broad meaning to these terms. To speak of spirituality is to speak of a path we take, the practice we adopt in order to reach the goal of a fuller, or higher, human life, a life of total liberation, enabling us to offer ourselves in selfless love. The practice of spirituality presupposes that we need to take control of our outer and inner life in order to achieve the authentic of goals our existence. Unlike the fruits of a mango tree that come out automatically when it is the season for it, the fulfillment of human life is not automatic. We are free and our fulfillment can only take place through free options. This is the reason why ‘spirituality’, or the striving to fullness of human life, is a deep concern for everyone.
In the West this word has often been misunderstood as if in opposition to materiality. It seems to imply that if we want to achieve our highest goals we must somehow get rid of, or at least give less importance to, the ‘material’ component of our existence, concretely the body, and live as pure spirits, an ‘inner’ life that is contrasted with the ‘outer’ life. This is not the root meaning of the word ‘spirituality’. It does derives from the word “spirit,” but not in contrast with matter, but with reference to the Divine, or the ‘Holy Spirit’, which indwells and presides over our existence as men and women, indeed over all creation. Spirituality means to live according to God’s Spirit as fully human and social beings.
There have been and are, of course, dozens of forms of living the life of the Spirit practised in the course of Christian history for the last two thousand years and across the globe. Many families of ‘spiritual practice’ or sadhana have sprung up: some remain still influential and alive, others have died, and new ones are born. This happens in every great religion. Instead of attempting to map out an overall picture of the various forms, as any one can find in a good encyclopedia, I think it will be more fruitful today if I explain the spiritual path that I have been following in the last sixty years and which I have seen to produce great fruits in others. I refer to the path designed by St Ignatius Loyola, who died in Rome precisely 450 years ago, and has marked profoundly the spirituality of the Catholic and other churches.
A soldier in Spain’s royal army, badly wounded in a battle against the French, he had a series of experiences in the course of his life reflecting on which he discovered how God’s Spirit was leading him. He recorded his reflections in an odd small booklet called The Spiritual Exercises, a book by reading which nobody is the wiser! For, on this point quite like the Yoga sutras (yet so very different in style and outlook!), it is a manual of practice, and one needs to practise it, with the guidance of a master, to make sense of it and experience its power. This practice of this sadhana demands intense and concentrated personal activity, leaving aside any other preoccupation and activity. It also demands a regular practice to keep up the experience of the sadhana.
St Ignatius gives us a descriptive title of his booklet only in its 21st para. He calls it: “Spiritual exercises to overcome oneself and to order one’s life, without reaching a decision through any inordinate affection.” This needs some commentary:
The central point, the purpose of this sadhana is “to order one’s life.” This is its concrete and practical goal. It implies that our lives are not totally focused. They are dispersed, many undersea currents and surface storms tossing us to and fro and making us lose sight of the goal of our lives and scattering our human energies. To order one’s life is to rediscover the goal, and to control all our drives so as to advance towards it: orientation and integration. In the Indian tradition we speak of ekagrata or ananyata. The mediaeval Narada Bhakti Sutra speaks of the need of ananyata and it connects it with udasinata (sutras 9ff). Ignatius picks up the same theme: we must be oriented to God alone alone who wished us into existence and gave us the world around for our use in our journey of life. The goal is God. For Ignatius this means that we must make ourselves indifferent (‘not attached’) to any things. Only by this process of inner purification or liberation of desires can we come to “save our souls,” to use his expression meaning the perfection of human life, through right decisions. Decision, samkalpa, is an important element of Ignatius’ spirituality. The union with the divine involves not only a new inner consciousness, but also a human decision to remain attuned to the mind and will of the Divine Source. When we are udasin or ‘indifferent’ we have the freedom to order our lives without being taken off course by invisible currents. Ordering our lives means living after the pattern of God’s design for us.
How to achieve such a state of ‘indifference’? From within his religious tradition St Ignatius offers a one-month sadhana: the ‘retreatant’, as we call the sadhaka in this context, is recommended to take a month off, to get away from his or her usual occupations, to free himself or herself from all concerns, and with the help of a guide or director to do “spiritual exercises,” which Ignatius defines thus: “Just as taking a walk, travelling on foot, and running are physical exercises, so is the name of spiritual exercises given to any means of preparing and disposing our soul to rid itself of all its disordered affections and then, after their removal, of seeking and finding God’s will in the ordering of our life for the salvation of our soul” [1].
The concrete form of exercises varies from day to day, but covers the whole day and even the night of the retreatant. They may be summed up with the classical words of sravana, manana and nididhyasana and embrace a variety of activities like meditation, contemplation, examining one’s life and motives, reading of the Bible, talking (‘colloquy’) to God, acts of repentance, of desires, or planning, of vision, even some kind of yoga. They include verbal prayers and normal public liturgy too. But these are not random exercises: they are structured in the course of the day and part of the night and in the course of the month so that they guide us to the experience of the Divine.
Much as this may look like an ex-soldier’s well-planned. Actually the aim is more passivity than activity. Ignatius says: “What fills and satisfies the soul consists not in knowing much, but in our feeling things profoundly and savouring them interiorly.” It is in this that we find “relish and spiritual fruit” [2]. The exercitants are asked to stop their thinking activity when they perceive personal meaning, depth of feeling, desire to express oneself. Although themes for meditation will often be proposed, but they are only, so to say, background material. What matters is the personal experience, the ‘relish’, the rasa, felt inside, to use the concept derived from the aesthetic experience but appropriated also by the Upanishads. In a note addressed to the guru or director, St Ignatius cautions him (or her, in our days!) to listen attentively but not to give advice to the retreatant during the 30 days of retreat. He or she may do so at other times, but not now: “During these Spiritual Exercises, when a person is seeking God’s will, it is more appropriate and far better that the Creator and Lord himself should communicate himself to the devout soul, embracing it in his love and praise, and disposing it for the way which will enable the soul to serve God better in the future… He [she] must therefore allow the Creator to deal immediately with the creature and the creature with the Creator” [15]. No go-betweens now: the role of the guru is to prepare the way for an immediate tryst between Lover and beloved. That is what the exercises are about.
The structure of the sadhana month is fairly simple. Each day and night the retreatant is asked to spend at least five complete full hours in prayer/meditation, and about two hours in personal reflection on what he has experienced. During the first week one is put through a gruelling time in which one has to face oneself in total nakedness before the Almighty, just as one is, with all the explicit and implicit drives that control so much of our lives and make true freedom almost impossible. One’s total past, one’s present situation, one’s plan for the future come under review. But this is not a psychiatric session. The exercitant is in contact with a God Who is above all a God of love, a God that accepts unconditionally, even while calling us to total integrity and dedication. The highs and lows of our life are examined in the presence of this God of Love. The outcome is neither despair not anxiety, but experience of acceptance, strength and forgiveness, and a readiness to orient our lives according to the Divine Reality.
The second, third and fourth week seem at first sight to be an easy devotional trip recalling and drawing inspiration from the birth, life, passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, reading and contemplating the accounts of the Gospels. For Ignatius, a Christian, Jesus is the expression of the Divine in human form, our brother who enables us to glimpse the Ineffable Mystery. Jesus’ mother, Mary, human though she is, is an inspiration and a means of access to Jesus. The ultimate goal we seek is that the Divine Spirit so to transform us that we turn out to be authentic followers of the path of Jesus.
However there is a mystical goal inserted into this series of meditations that makes of them the heart of the sadhana. The goal is two-fold: to experience the mystery of Jesus as it relates to our lives here and now, and to frame a concrete programme of life that may include a decision about our whole future. In no way does Ignatius want the guru to tell the retreatant the orientation she or he should take. It has to be a personal decision emerging from a personal vision and taken in a moment of inner freedom and clear orientation toward the Divine. The retreatant will have to discover what the Divine call is here and now, in her or his circumstances.
In this search there must be an experience of discernment (viveka): how do we know the will of God? Guided by the Gospel, the sadhaka meets the two ways of preyas and sreyas: the way of pleasure, really the way of wealth and power, and the way of goodness, of authentic love, which often requires self-sacrifice for the sake of others. The life of Christ becomes then the great inspiration. The sadhaka discovers in it the guidelines of discernment. Jesus did not follow the way of wealth, power and pride. His was a way of humility, acceptance of the trials of life, loving service especially to the sick and poor. His was a path of poverty and solidarity with the victims of natural diseases or oppressive social structures. Poverty turned out to be a value, not so much the way it is for the sannyasin who above all seeks detachment, but more importantly as offering the way to solidarity with the victims of history.
“Intellectually” one may see this option as the right one. But intellectual knowledge does not transform and guide our lives. We need the power of personal love, the power to embrace the way of Jesus Christ because we love him. The high point of the sadhana is when the sadhaka is able to embrace joyfully the way of the cross because it was the way of Jesus Christ. The strong love for Jesus Christ that develops in him or her through contemplations and meditations on the Gospels contains the strength for all choices. The sadhaka’s personal choices will be marked by the pattern of Jesus’ life: the fullness of life is not sought in money, success or in world applause, but in the humility of serving love, even if nailed to a cross.
In the final contemplation the retreatant is sent back to his everyday world with a transformed vision. The world is suffused with the presence of a loving God. The world is a sign, a sacrament and the way to meeting God. God can be found in every human situation. We do not renounce the world, we serve the world that now mirrors the Divine Reality.
Two words about “finding God in all things” which we meet in the Gita and in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. The words might suggest that we see the world as the body of God, so to speak (Ramanuja), as the visible aspect of the Invisible Ultimate Reality. And this is certainly valid. Ignatius himself was not be able to stop floods of tears gushing from his eyes just by looking at the stars of the Roman sky (industrialization had not yet polluted the atmosphere!). But for him “finding God in all things” meant more. Being of a practical mind, “finding God” meant for him and for the retreatant to discover at every moment of life what option one should take to best serve the Lord, in other words, how to fall in line with the divine vision for our history. It meant to take decisions in the right direction, always and everywhere. Finding God meant to be able to decide with inner freedom, thanks to that ‘indifference’ acquired already in the first week of the Exercises. Finding God meant to be able to act in a spirit of love and selflessness, never controlled by personal ambitions or selfish desires.
In short, Ignatius sees the world in which we are placed as a field of action, a “kuru-kshetra”: the right action is discovered by each one reflecting on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Ignatius’s spirituality, in communion with other forms of spirituality, consists in making us free for authentic decisions inspired by the love of God and of neighbour, specially the poor and suffering ones. Such attitude will not be sustained except by divine grace and only if we are constantly motivated by a personal love of God, revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, a Christ that is always carrying a heavy cross within our history.
As a means of keeping up the spirit of the exercises during the rest of our lives Ignatius recommends that we practise the pattern of religious activity common in our tradition, including forms of prayer inspired by yoga and liturgical or communitarian prayer in the sacraments of the Church, specially the Eucharist. But especially he recommends not just meditation but what he called “examination of conscience” every day and even twice a day, and indeed as a permanent practice. This means reflecting on the decisions we take day by day and hour by hour and finding out where we have been truly surrendering to God’s call of love and where and how we have blocked the flow of love through personal selfishness. Have we sought God in all things, or sought ourselves? Ignatius does not recommend a long prayer over this: fifteen minutes will do, preferably twice a day, and optimally accompanied by an attitude of constant attention to our choices. The “examination of conscience” enables us to turn to God in repentance where we fail, in gratitude where we succeed, in hope for the coming day. For with most saints he knows that all growth in the Spirit is divine grace.
DR JAGDISH GANDHI
All religions concede that God is one and that all scriptures have originated from Him. Theses religions or scriptures may exist in different forms and shapes, depending on the social conditions of the concerned people, but the core message is the same. In Ram Charit Manans, Tulsidas has said that whenever there is a decline in moral standards and spirituality, God appears in different manifestations in different times In Geeta, it has been mentioned that whenever spirituality witnesses a decline and people begin to lose faith in God he appears in different manifestations to save mankind.
As to the differences among religions Abdu’l-Baha the son and appointed successor of Bahau’llah, the founder of the Bahai Faith , ascribed them to to the prevalent conviction that the law of God demanded blind imitation of ancestral forms of belief and worship. The basic foundation of the religion of God was love, unity and the fellowship of humanity. But due to divergence of thoughts it has been impossible for the followers of religions to meet together in complete fellowship and agreement, observed Abdul-I-Baha.
And yet, apart from tradition, there are meaningful differences even among the teachings set forth by the Prophets-Founders of the various religions, differences that may represent an obstacle in the interreligious dialogue. ‘Abdul’I- Baha justifies those differences explaining that the teachings of religion can be distinguished into two kinds: spiritual and material teachings.
Spiritual teachings concern the ethical development and spiritual progress of mankind. They teach and recommend such fundamental concepts related to the spiritual life of humankind as knowledge of God, faith in God, spiritual perception, love for humanity. In other words, all those human virtues which religions describe as reflections of the attributes of the divine kingdom. In this respect, religions urge men and women to acquire the virtues of characterizing perfect humanity and moral excellence and maintain that the only person who manifests such virtues in the form of thoughts, feelings, words and deeds has fulfilled the purpose of his/her life, that is, ‘to acquire virtues’. Such a person has attained the eternal life, that is, paradise. The Gospels and The Koran describe this condition through the metaphor of the ‘second birth’.
Mystic religions mention second birth (dvija), enlightenment (bodhi), liberation (moksha) and nirvana. All of them recommend that each human being acquires the virtues characterizing moral excellence and maintain that only the person whom manifests such virtues in the form of thoughts, feelings, words and deeds has fulfilled the purpose of his life. IN this respect, all religions teach the same spiritual truth, ‘the same spiritual law… the one code pf morality. Many recognize the essence of the moral codes of all religions in the so-called ‘golden rule’ that recurs, worded in slightly different terms, in all religions of the world. : ‘Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.’ Thus the Hindu Mahabharata says: ‘; Do not do to others what ye do not wish done to yourself; and wish for others too what ye desire and long for, for for yourself-this is the whole dharna, heed it well. ‘The Babylonian Talmud prescribes: ‘what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour: that is the entire Torah; the rest is commentary. ‘The Zorastrian Dadeststan-i-denid explains: that ‘nature only is good when it shall not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self.’ The Buddhist Sigalovada-sutta advises: ‘in five ways should a clansman minister to his friends as familiars as the northern quarter- by generosity, courtesy, and benevolence… by treating them as he treats himself and by being good as his words.’ Jesus warns: ‘Therefoer all things whatsoever ye would that men shall do unto you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets’. A Muslim tradition relates that Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) advised: ‘Whatever you abhor for yourself, abhor it also for others’. Baha’u’ llah writes in the Kitab-E-Aqdas, the Mother –bool of his Dispensation: ‘Wish not for others what ye wish not for yourselves’. Theses sprityual teachings are not contrary to reason, they are logical.
Material or practical teachings concern laws governing human relationships and social behaviors, for example, marriage, foods, and modes of punishment for offenses, as well as exterior forms and ceremonies, for example, the various expressions of worship. They comprise laws that should meet human needs and situation conditioned upon requirements of time, space and circumstances. Therefore they are inevitably different in the various religions because they should meet ‘the exigencies and requirements of time and place, which are different in the various religions, born in different ages and places. ‘Abdul-I-Baha says: ‘Truth has many aspects, but it remains always forever one. Likewise, the ‘divine religions of the Holy Manifestations of God are in reality one though in name and nomenclature they differ.’
A meeting point of all people of faith could be a joint acknowledgement of the fact that inasmuch as spiritual teaching concern the ethical sphere that is universal, they are ‘essential and fundamental,’ whereas, inasmuch as material teaching concern practical aspects of life that can be solved in different way depending on the circumstances, they are ‘accidental’ and of secondary importance.
SAMANI MALLI PRAGYA
Jainism is spiritual and of soul oriented philosophy. Spirituality means to know the truth or oneself. Generally people are busy to see outer things. They ignore to perceive themselves. He, who knows himself automatically, knows everything totally.
To know the knower is the basic of spirituality. Here, the question arises how one can realize one’s soul and what is the result of being spiritual.
For perceiving soul the tool is sadhana (spiritual practices and meditation). According to Jaina Yoga self-awareness in every walk of life and continuous awareness is meditation. Self-awareness minimizes involvement of like and dislike. Nonattachment (Veetaragta) is the result of self awareness. This is the essence of spirituality. It is called Anekant or third in word of Acharya Mahapragya.
Anekanta is the fruit of spirituality. It reduces conflicts creates communal philosophical harmony. This type of broad thinking gives better solution to the inner as well as outer problems of the world. Anekanta is not merely a theory of philosophy but it is a balanced, healthy away of life. Anekanta enhances intellectual non-violence, peaceful co-existence, relativity, reconciliation and harmonious environment in the society. Anekanta oriented life is good for all.
How one can develop spirituality in one’s within? Spirituality always can be practiced on very gross level. Control of the body, speech, breathing, mind, senses and food is also helpful in the progress of spirituality. According to Acharya Mahapragya, everybody can practice spirituality and solve his /her problems and increase his latent powers. Exercises, Pranayama, meditation, chanting mantras, contemplation are also very important tools for spirituality. A spiritual being always practice self-restraint, equanimity and peace. By these spiritual values he will be an enlightened citizen for nation.
Discussion:
Question: If the yardstick today is materialism, the overuse of consumerism, facilities, luxuries, has made us less self-restraint. How do we overcome this?
Jagdish Gandhi: Minds are more agitated and there is mental imbalance which causes anger and deceit. Emotional problems are the result of a materialistic outlook.
Question: I feel that we are becoming polarized as a nation. The Gujarat riots of 2002 are a clear indicator of this. How do we preach spirituality to the people under such circumstances? How is it possible to bring back the ideals of spirituality back to the people?
Maulana: There is no room for violence in Islam. To shun violence is the essence of Islam. According to the Prophet, reconciliation is the best principle that has to be applied and followed to live peacefully.
Question: Hundred years of history tells us that we cannot live in peace. How is it possible to transfer the experience and capacities to the next generation so that they don’t harp on the bad things in history and make sure a new generation is brought to serve the people?
Jagdish Gandhi. Education is the best way to impart spirituality to the people. The fundamental knowledge that God is one should be taught in all the schools. Social teachings might change but all religions should come together to teach emphasize that God is one. Meaningful education is the need of the hour.
Father Gispert: Respect differences. There are different ways of seeing things. I think we have to respect people who think differently not merely accepting the same but also accepting that the other has the right to think and act differently. Religion should be concerned with the essence and no the matter.
|
