Men are innately violent. Let us envision an environment of a typical Dashain festival. Temperate climate, clear blue sky embellished by the colorful kites, people walking around wearing the new clothes, grinning, concealing the distress at least for the moment. Then comes goat-the essence of the festival. It is of foremost value for the children. They play with it, take it for grazing. Soon they become a good friend of each other. But the next morning, the child is the first to wake up early in the house, with a strange kind of excitement. It is the day for the goat to be slaughtered and the child has to see it. It gives a kind of pleasure for a child to see the decapitation of the goat. It quenches his unconscious desire for violence.
Our country has just revived from a moment of gloom. Twelve Nepalese brothers were brutally killed in Iraq by the terrorists. Curfew had been imposed for few days to control the anger of the people towards terrorism, and some towards their own sect. During that time many people were tempted, with the grimace on their face, to watch the video clip of the murder seen. Homicide itself is a black spot on humanity and extremely non-human. We could imagine how terrible the killings would like, but still we had to have a glance at the video. This reveals the fact that there must be something inside us who get satisfied seeing the violence, though our facial expression may remain serene.
These examples, to some extent, retard us from denying the violent nature of man, which he is unaware of. Why cavemen were wild and violent and ready to fight whosoever they encountered with, even if it was of their own kind? It may be because they were left as they were born-extremely violent and virile. They were, naturally, deprived of moral education. But the present human beings are of good morality and ethics because they are reared up socially and religiously. The society, religion and education aggrandize a man to become a prudent man of virtue. Above three, religion is the one that helps people to distinguish a right path from the wrong ones, thwart them from doing immoral deeds. Religion is continuously compelling a man to become a saint.
If we selected and observed ten gentlemen on motorcycle in the city street, we hardly found one or two who didn’t turn around to give a look to a lady walking by, or few wanted to but couldn’t do due to the traffic reasons. Likewise, there might be few ladies who were not, to some degree, get excited by the look of the gentleman.
Why, for the first time, a man or a woman hesitate to talk to an opposite sex than to the same? The extent of hesitation depends upon the liveliness of the individuals. There is nothing to be feared or hesitated of, unless one has something to hide within. In above case, which is more often in immaturity, it is the sexual attraction and ultimately, the unconscious desire for sex.
Sex is the primary need of a living being just as food, water and avoidance of pain. Desire for sex is also a born character of a human being, and start showing itself since the childhood (infantile sexuality), in the form of Oedipus and Electra complexes. The amorous feeling, then, goes on increasing towards the opposite sex. Sex means not only an intercourse, but also pleasurable sensation from the skin. It is a quite natural, and an individual without a sexual desire is, biologically, considered as abnormal. According to Sigmund Freud, in fact, all positive, creative activities are “sublimation” and predominantly of the sex drive. Osho Rajnesh once said, the marriage is over, by the time the honeymoon is over. Then the couple goes on pretending. We can see, in most of the cases, private tensions go on increasing between the couple after a few months or a year of marriage. The situation might even degenerate, if there had been no children of them, which acts as a bridge between the husband and wife, and is a symbol of their past love. Thus, sex is playing a pivotal role in an individual’s life and has become an important part of it.
Sex is one of the taboos in our religion. Our religion tells us to desert sex- our born right and necessity. It is hard for a normal human being to comply. Even if we succeeded repressing our desire in daytime, by involving ourselves into some activities, it would haunt us at the night-time in the form of lascivious dreams.
Sex, anger, greed, lust. Hinduism (also known as Santana (everlasting) Dharma) teaches us to abandon these four inferior (“Tamas”) qualities. Being angry or greedy at some point is regarded as normal or natural just like azure of the sky is its nature, which it can’t get rid of. If Lord, through his holy scriptures, considers sex as a sin and insists on not committing it, thus, preferring celibacy (“Bramhachaarya”) then why he has provided human beings with such ability and made them the born sinners? He, then, might have conferred some alternative for reproduction. It seems like helping a hungry man by providing a delicious food but restricting him from eating. It is hard to suppress the above-mentioned qualities according as the religion. When we haven’t satisfied some basic need such as the need for food, it begins to demand more and more of our attention, until there comes a point where we can?t think of anything else. Mahatma Gandhi became surprised. After repressing the sex for so many years, he was having lubricious dreams on his final days.
These examples show the hardness of vanquishing one’s desire and, thus, that of becoming a saint. Saint is the one who has no desire at all. Through his vision, all phenomenons such as joy, grief, poverty, riches, and social classes are of same value. It requires gut to be a saint. A saint is not feared of whatsoever confronted to him. So, can we really become a saint? A fact exemplifying our confinement with fear towards religion is somewhat like this. Despite accepting the omnipresence of the God, we are feared to raise a question to our grandmother about the divine presence in human faeces, just like in food and every other thing. Human considers faeces as an inferior matter, but it is a source of nutrition and of life supporting value for plant, another creation of god.
Man is not a docile dog, which is easy to be kept on a leash by means of a truncheon. It is hard to keep a man’s desire under control by introducing fear. Even if, obeying our religion, we restrain our desire that would be merely due to fear-fear towards wrath of the God and fear for burning in hell after death. And, restraint that is not due to free will, obviously, won’t be effective and long lasting. Hence, religion based on fear, needs to be scrutinized, or some notions need transition.
Hinduism is the oldest religion of the world. It helps its followers to live the life of a sage with great morality. Goal of Hinduism is to emancipate human beings from physical and momentary relish and render them towards spiritualism and, thus, towards eternal ecstasy. But, some ideas of the religion appear to us as paradox and may create dilemma. Lord himself, through Holy Scriptures, tells that it is not practicable for human being to follow all the doctrines stated therein. But, at least men should keep those things in mind while making their moves. But still it can?t be denied that Hinduism is filled with ambiguities. Let us take an example.
Hinduism teaches us to renounce sexual activities and prohibit from consuming alcohol (considered as “Tamas ahar”) in order to become a saint. But few gods, among our 0.33 billion of gods, seem to be celebrating with nubile “apsaraas” on one hand and wine on the other. Our religion promises to put us at the same place, where gods are now enjoying with women and wine, if we lived saintly during our perishable life on the Earth. The matter looks perplexing. Gods are committing the same sin, which we are trying to forsake. We abandon sex and alcohol during our life and live sagely; after our death we (or our souls) are put on a utopia where we are free to, or even provoked to do the things that we perceived as sin during our whole life.
We may be confounded that, on one side our religion is encouraging us to become a saint, whereas on the other, it is pushing us towards sin. People of some other religions are readily attracted to Buddhism, the scientific religion, but only few towards Hinduism. Buddhism says “Do not go by revelation or tradition, do not go by rumors, or the sacred scriptures, do not go by hearsay or mere logic, do not go by bias towards a notion or by another person’s seeming ability and do not go by the idea ‘He is our teacher’. But when you yourself know that a thing is good, that it is not culpable, that it is praised by the wise and when practiced and observed that it leads to happiness, then follow that thing.” But Hinduism has different creed. It contains some dogmas and self-contradictory matters.
Let us take another example. Hinduism is gifted with many “shastras”, “vedas”, “upanishads”, “purans” and other religious scriptures, to which even foreigners are attracted due to their contents of high moral standards. In none of the above, one can find anything about the offering of animal sacrifice to God, one of the cults of Hinduism. How could God accept the death sacrifice of his own progeny? It might have been evolved from insanity of some individuals, or descended from “Tantra” at some point in history, started being practiced widely as a part of religion then after. Same is the case with our imageries of the God. The first one to depict the image of the God might be searching for some “form” to represent the Lord. Then he came up with an idea that, for a human it is plausible with some anthropoid figure with some advancement like increment in number of hand or head. Form of god in a figure like rectangle or triangle or similar other would be mundane. The Vedas tell us this about God – “OM Poornamadah Poornamidam Poornaad Poornamudachyate; Poornasya Poornamaadaaya Poornamevaavashisyate”.
The verse means “What is Whole – This is Whole – What has come out of the Whole is also Whole; When the Whole is taken out of the Whole, the Whole still remains Whole”. The essence of this verse is that the Infinite cannot be measured arithmetically – God is Infinite, formless, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. So, it doesn’t matter whether we go to the architectural shrine of lord and offer expensive ambrosia, cloth, etc. or we simply perceive a stone as an embodiment of god and prostrate with a pure heart. At both moments we are praising the same god-the whole.
Another cult in the Hinduism is the cast system. People who claim themselves to be of higher cast and contemptuous towards the so-called lower cast should think that, how could the Lord discriminate between his own offspring. People who design and build are referred as “engineer”. Similarly, according to “Geeta” (the song of lord), people are classified according to their profession. It was one of us, who wrongly interpreted the divine classification and contributed in aggravation of the religion. Such praxis in Hinduism should be abolished. If classification is utterly necessary then it should be like the following. The son of Brahmin may or may not be Brahmin. His class should be decided according to the kind of job he does. If he indulged himself into alcoholism and prostitution, could he still be called Brahmin, religiously? It would be in contrast with the religious definition. Similarly, son of “shudra” must be accepted as a Brahmin if he left his traditional job and started working as a Brahmin. If this could happen then we can say that we are in accordance to the Lord’s command. It should be understood that classification is based on profession. It is an acquired character and not an inherited one.
But it is hard to reform the conservative society-full of self-claimed saints. These personalities are unaware of the exertion required to become a saint. Contempt, pride, ego are some other qualities posses by the human beings. Years and years pass by, struggling to get rid of these characters. But by that time one will has already become used to these qualities and has become the part of it, thus hard to separate.
By the time we become old, the feeling of inferiority, guilt and depression will obsess us. Then, we will start going to temples; at our own will this time. And, we will pretend to be benign, ignoring the sins committed in the past. Hinduism tells that your sins will be forgiven if you devoted yourself to God. Mr. X kills Mr. Y for some personal reasons. Time goes by. One day Mr. X changes his mind and starts spending his time in devotion of God. Now, will his sin be forgiven on the price of tears of late Mr. Y’s wife and sorrows of his children? Matter like this seems obscured and create confusion in devotee?s mind who is on his way out to be a saint.
In a nutshell, we can say that humans are born as sinners. Out of them, some succeed in becoming a saint through their hard religious and moral practice and strong belief to the Supreme Being. Whereas, others obsessed with profanity, go on formulating their own laws and committing sins, directly or indirectly. To be a sinner or a saint is in individual’s own hand. Few, or many, people believe in fate and speculate that there is nothing one can do about his life. They allege whatever we do is already destined by the God. If it had been so, does the God want his creation to become a killer, thief or a rapist and so they are destined to? Human being is a complex bio-mechanical system, with his own intelligence programmed within. He has to decide on his own and choose the paths among the right and the wrong. The God and the religion are only path showers, not pathfinders.
– Samip Pant
