From Religious Books:
(Adapted from the book 'Ramblings of An Ascetic', published by Books Today, New Delhi, India 1979)
by Acharya Shri Mahaprajna
A caged parrot repeats the sounds it has been taught. It does possess memory but not intellect. Man possesses both. Man does not merely repeat things he has memorized. He thinks them over and exercises discernment. The life of a beast of burden has not changed in ages for lack of ability to think freely.(1)
Human beings have achieved considerable progress. Leaving the stone age far behind, they entered the nuclear age and now the space age. Leaving behind the huts they used to live in, they have constructed skyscrapers. They have advanced in every walk of life. They remember their traditions (past achievements), indulge in free thinking and develop new choices. The history of mankind is the history of traditions. The experiences of the past have enabled man to develop his thinking and to exercise innumerable choices in present-day life.
Tradition is nothing but a memory of the past. Thus memory and tradition are inseparably connected to each other. Some people try to detach themselves from traditions in vain. Memory is an important feature of man. Further, man likes to benefit from the past. That is why man cannot be separated from tradition.
We can improve upon them.
Education and training make even animals clever and competent. But in the absence of free thinking, their competence is limited. Here is an interesting illustration. A certain king had trained a monkey to guard him. One day, the king was sleeping and the monkey stood guard with a naked sword. A fly sat on the neck of the king. The monkey tried to scare the fly away but to no avail. So the monkey struck the fly with the sword and hurt the king in the process. The accident resulted from the inability of the monkey to think rationally.
Education, tradition and rational thinking play an important role in man's life. Further, religion is truly essential to maintain balance in personal life as well as in social life. In fact, there can not be order in society without religion because social life rests on truthfulness, selfless cooperation and mutual trust. The entire give and take depends on these virtues. If our minds are full of wantonness, there will be no security and no healthy social life.
By renouncing religion, we will destroy the basis of collective life. If we do not have confidence in our fellow beings and indulge in cutting each other's throats, we sink to the level of animals and worse. So we must have faith in truth. We need to have religion - faith in truth - along with education, tradition and rational thinking. Religion has to play a central role in our social life.
A Sanskrit poet has written: A man whose life is devoid of religion breathes like the bellows of an ironsmith but does not live. His life is meaningless. If one's life is defiled with vices such as violence, falsehood and theft, how can one claim to have a meaningful life?
One may mistakenly conceive that power and wealth are the ultimate goals of the domain of religion. The fact is that once power and wealth enter the domain of religion, they make it narrow and produce an aberration in our thinking. Once rituals become more important than proper conduct, religion recedes to the background, although it does not cease to exist.(2) On the other hand, if individuals adopt proper conduct, religion finds genuine expression and its practice becomes widespread among others.(3)
With the development of materialism people are gradually neglecting religion. Marx said that religion is an opiate. It produces illusions. The followers of Marx considered religion to be an excessive impediment in the path of human progress. Communist countries tried to uproot religion. But all this refers to the organizational side of religion and not to religion itself. The form of religion can be uprooted but not its soul. An object to which we get attached becomes a source of pride. The nation, language, caste and color that are accessories to man's spirit become objects of his fanatic faith. Religion too is like them. But let us remember in this context that it is this form of religion that makes man irrational, not religion itself.
Spirituality is the soul of religion. Sects are its outward forms, which are easy to adopt. But the essence of religion can be achieved only through self-endeavor (SAADHANA - practice of virtues such as nonviolence, truth, meditation and penance). Only a few achieve this essence of religion. Most stick to religious formalities only, and in doing so they practice a lifeless religion. They do not develop a broad perspective or self-discipline. For them, religion assumes the form of a collection of rules governed by a narrow outlook on life. Such a religion becomes a hindrance to social progress.
Those who aim at social revolution find such a religion to be a refuge for antiquated social customs and try to weed it out. However, many seers and thinkers have tried to sow the seeds of reform in religion.
The fact that the followers of religion, in spite of their lifelong ritualistic practice, fail to develop in themselves an outlook of tolerance and a feeling of amity and goodwill towards others proves that a religion devoid of spirituality in the true sense of the word can not bring about any improvement in individuals or society. Science and technology are sufficiently powerful forces for bringing about changes in the material lives of men. We do not need religion for this purpose. Pursuit of material means of comfort is not the purpose of religion. If a man habituated to a ritual like telling beads per chance does not perform it some day, he feels that he has lost a day. However, a man, who is accustomed to malpractice in trade and commerce, feels considerable disappointment if he has no earning some day. Our religious consciousness is not directed toward improving our lives, but toward preserving the evils of life. We do not practice religion to purify our conduct, but simply to put on a respectable face. The so-called religious individuals today are like the patients who request their doctors to prescribe some medicine that would enable them to maintain their health in order that they may be able to eat as much as they can, for they are not prepared to cease to be gluttons.
Often both parties involved in a litigation perform some religious worship to win their own case in the court of law. In such case, no one makes a distinction between truth and falsehood. Religious practices in such instances are taken to be a means of achieving personal material goals, however unjustified they may be.
A religion employed to achieve material gains becomes corrupt. A corrupt religion is dangerous. Bhagwaan Mahaveer had cautioned people against such religious practices. He said: A corrupt religion is as dangerous as a horrible poison, a weapon held the wrong way or a ghost tamed without knowing how to defend oneself from it. Marx called such a religion opiate. A religion based on spirituality can not be an opiate.
What is spirituality? It is a feeling of freedom from external material bonds arising from the instinct of acquisitiveness. It is a feeling of perfection that fills in the vacuum we feel in our lives. It is an experience of joy that arises from destroying the legacies of mundane tendencies.
The sense organs, the mind and the intellect do not shine by their own light. It is the spirit of man that enlightens them. It is the spirit that demands freedom, perfection and bliss. The source of spiritual power is not the body but the soul, just as the source of electric light is not the lamp but the electric generator. In the same way, the sense organs, the mind and the intellect do not generate spiritual strength. They obtain strength from the spirit.
Footnotes:
1. This idea points to the fundamental approach in Jainism. We do not merely carry the burden of scriptures in our memory but we are expected to think freely and accept the concepts with discernment. - D. C. J.
2. This is religion without spiritualism. - D. C. J.
3. This is PRABHAAVANA, in the true sense of the word. - D. C. J.