Sacred Secular

I am a self proclaimed agnostic...maybe there is a God, or many Gods, a spirit that guides us, or a greater truth that beckons us. I have decided that if this whole damn life business is just a Maya, an illusion, then let me be illuded, deluded, play the part - as if its real - participate in earnestness in this great time-pass. I seek no liberation, no salvation, no enlightenment, no heaven beyond now, no hell to guide my moral force. And yet, can I really discount the religion and culture that fashioned me - that unerringly still guides my path, untangles my rights from wrongs? I dance to a background orchestra, chorus of all my ancestors that I call my conscience. My conscience is my only true mentor, a guide to what I will and I will not do, boundaries that I can never cross, at least in my imagination. My imagination itself the sheet on which I lay down my paints, my lines and its vastness is bequeathed to me by my past. This past that put me in direct play with the entire vast universe, animate, vibrant, where all roles between all its substances, are continually interchanging, a rock could one day be me, and I - a scuttering cockroach - all apparently in a blink of an eye, in seamless movement of time, backwards, forwards, across dimensions and multi-dimensional.

Yet, I get ahead of myself. The background first, since all of this has a purpose - an agenda, as do many of my blogs. A dialogue in quietness with myself to resolve inner questions, or at least phrase the questions better.

I grew up in a conservative Jain joint family. We belonged to a sect that called itself sthanakvasi and swetambar - which means that the family did not participate in idol worship and our monks wore clothes. All our living, actions, inter relationships within the family, with the outside, to the animate and the inanimate world and to the world of Gods, demi-Gods, devils and demons was played out within this backdrop, this stage of being a conservative Jain. It was a colorful world of effortlessly intermingled real and imaginary, present and mythical, spiritual and magical. It effected the way we thought, spoke and acted. There was a singy song for many things we did, like,

One sin to spill water
five to spill milk
countless sins to waste food
if intentionally willed!

and this would have its opposing counter of

One punya for gifting water
five to gift milk
countless punya for gifting food
if intentionally willed!
---
punya = a good deed credit that counts towards one's postion in next birth.

When we spilt milk, we bowed and smeared some of it on our foreheads - that we place you with respect on the top of our being, and intended no offense by our carelessness.

As Jains, we were very strictly vegetarian and staunch followers of non violence. Thus grandmother would rinse her plate after every meal and drink this water; allow ants, mosqitoes to bite her without waving them away ( because they needed to live); the louse we got in our hair as kids was gently wrapped in strips of soft cotton and taken far away to let free; no pesticides were ever used inside our home; we did not eat many vegetables during most year, and for the four monsoon months, we ate no vegetables at all. This was the time when jains of all sects performed great number of fasts, with and without water; it was a time for prayer and purification; time to work off some of the accumulated karma by self denial, and disciplined non-action, because all action involved violence,visible or otherwise.

Through out the year, grand father filled dairies with religious mantra, and these pages were torn, mixed with flour, and fed to the giant red carps in the pools - we stared at the greedy carps in wonder while grandma told us that they were greedy to improve their next rebirth by eating all the powerful mantra stuff. So the fish would become humans, and humans could become fish, ant, bird, or God (enlightened souls). We were told that we were in this endless game of enjoying rewards, or living out punishments for our actions in previous births - only when this accounting was zero (not just equating one's sins and punya) , could we become truly enlightened.

And then there were stories, stories for every evening of my childhood, sitting with a brood of another ten, twelve cousins at grandfather's feet to listen to stories of princes, monks, magic, and the glory of the highest enlightenment - liberation from the cyclical birth and deaths. I only remember asking one question often " If there is no birth after enlightenment, where do you live?" The answer was always " there is no you - so you do not need a place to live" and this completely boggled my young imagination. Could not imagine a no-me! Now I can imagine a no-me even without dying - is this a realisation or a delusion?

This background that fashioned me, I completely rejected, as an adult, in my evolution to be a superior rational being. My living world is guided by mostly rational actions, or at least logically justifiable. In fact, I place a greatest value on both rational thought and consequential actions - in that order. However, I have been denying this sneaky suspicion that often times, my actions are already identified, and then I use reason and rationale to justify them - that is, I am living my life backwards. I remember, this was often a way I approached science. I often instinctively knew the answer - that only left a minor problem of working out the math. Now, it appears that despite my great show as a modern, urban, educated, westernised woman, I am mostly faking this layer over my true self that I had little to do with crafting. My truths, boundaries, texture of my compassion, the depth of my non-violence did not come from the lengthy hours with physics texts. And by rejecting this core, I have somehow broken that thread of continuity that would have served my children well. This is after all the crux of my problem. In rejecting religion, I have somehow failed to rig signposts, shine beacons, illuminate a way with an inclusive awareness of all nature, respect for all props in their maya dance. The importance of self that imbues a modern western model does not acknowledge our minor role in the universal web, or the greater consequences of collective individual drive. It fails to speak to children in a tongue of wise ancestors, separate sacred from the profane, of magical possibility of irrationality, of compassionate responsibility that is larger than a person's singular drive to success. At their tender age, between youth and adult, world beckons them to high exam scores, shiny career options, point them towards job options that will buy them real estate, car, wine - but will they, like me, even know that they are nursing an emptiness of these accumulations, will they have a vocabulary to reach deep and listen - to a voice beyond rationale, reason, to quest for themselves when they have acquired everything and it means nothing? Is this how we have all failed? we, the next generation of parents that have substituted glitzy TV for stories, presents for personal time, logic for conscience?? Have we failed, so terribly?? How do we atone? What should I do?