I have been seeking answers to a lot of questions; the questions which I have been queuing up in my mind ever since I was a child, the questions which everyone is afraid of asking because asking them is sheer disobedience to our belief-system. Nobody gave me anything except ill-fabricated and illogical answers to these questions which I could discard through minutes of reasoning. I mean, how come so many things are unexplained in our belief-systems/religions and we are still following them like unthinking mass. It seems that we are fearful of truth and nobody wants to talk about them.
Our prophets in the past who were on a noble mission to put some order in this world have written code of conduct for almost everything. But why should we obey them? Why should we even worship God? Isn’t the story of heaven and hell meant to induce fear in our minds so that we can do the so called right things instead of actually adopting them out of some inner awareness? Am I not socially programmed (hard-coded) to be something in this world? Isn’t God a generic answer to all the questions which are unanswered to us? Why does Hindu mythology reference Himalaya, but not Andes, Atlas or Alps or any other mountain range on some other planet? Similarly, why do other mythological stories relate only to their respective geographical origins? If God showers his blessings to only those who worship him, isn’t he having a desire to be respected for his might which in no way is a Godly trait? Why doesn’t someone write the mythology about next generation of Gods? Don’t they reproduce now? How come son of Greek Gods did not have a son again and there is no son of “Ganesh” and no father of “Shiva”? If God created this world, it should be perfect, then why is it evolving? Why aren’t sex (method to create life) and death (the end of life) talked about as divine? Why does society make rules and demand obedience? What is the aim of Life/existence? Why do we chant mantras the meaning of which we do not know? What consequence will an action have on my future? What is future? Is it pre-determined or I have to design it? If it is pre-determined, who determined it? Is it God? If there is no God, what explains creation? Is evolution a contradictory theory to God or complimentary?
Try to reason them all and you have started a quest, quest for truth, quest for enlightenment. Soon, you will fall into a closed loop of contradictions. You will contradict a set of beliefs and deduce some logical answers to your questions. Now, you develop a new set of beliefs with these newly founded answers. You contradict these beliefs again by reasoning out through another set of observations. To get out of this loop is the biggest challenge in the path to enlightenment. After sometime, you figure out that the answers to some of these deeper questions cannot be figured out through logical reasoning of the mind. The more you try to be logical, the more you get confused and devoid of happiness. Finding out logic in every single occurrence in this universe makes life miserable. Why is a child so happy? He does not need a reason. He does not want occurrences to be explained by logic. And try to look at the scenario vice-versa. There is no logical mind which is telling him that kicking a stone by the side of road is happiness or running after butterflies is joy. Joy is so intrinsic to him that actions follow. There is no attempt to put an order. Why can’t we be the child and why we can’t we be happy? Look at the things around you which can make you happy. Music does not come out of reasoning. It is discovered from some unknown source in the universe. No form of art comes out of reasoning. But they all make you happy.
I have been logical enough to compromise with happiness for so long. But I somehow understand the path to unlimited happiness now. Happiness and enlightenment are all intrinsic to us. Enlightenment is a serendipity which is attained in sheer emptiness of mind. All we have to do is achieve emptiness, a state of no-mind. But why then there have been only few enlightened people in this world? Because to achieve this state of no-mind is not easy in this world. We do not realize that nothing in this world should be taken seriously. We should try to laugh at every single occurrence in this universe. At the least, we should try to shut off the logical mind for some time and experience the joy of being an observer in this world. Let’s do it for no reason.
