What is all this stuff about Religious Differences ?

I remember the following prayer we used to recite everyday in school:   

यम शैवा समुपासते, शिव इति, ब्रह्मेति वेदांती न

बौध बुध इति, प्रमाण पटवः, कर्तेति नैयायिकः

अर्हंनित्यथा जैन शासनार्थ, कर्मेति मीमांसका

क्राइस्ट क्रिस्तुरिति क्रियापरारतः, अल्लेती मोहम्मदः

सोयम नो विदधातु वज्चिता फ़लाम, त्रैलोक्य नाथो हरी
(Please ignore the errors in the text)

I knew at that time that these words roughly mean the following:

May the Lord of the universe, the remover of evil, whom  

the devotees of Shiva worship as Shiva,

the Vedantins as Brahman,

the Buddhists as Buddha,

the Naiyaayikas who specialize in knowledge as the chief agent,

those devoted to the Jain religion as Arhant,

the ritualists of the Mimamsa school as Karma,

the Christians as Christ,

the Mohammedans as Allah,

may He grant us all our heart’s desires.

However, I did not know the powerful implication of these words at that time. This prayer holds the key to bridging the religious differences and the resultant problems. How? Read on.

These days, we see a lot of hatred between different faiths, particularly between Hindu and Muslims. For example, you must have come across the following propaganda:

• Fight for protecting your Hindu brothers, else we will be extinct.
• Islam is in danger, come together to protect it.
• These people are out to convert all Hindus. Let us stop their nefarious designs.
• Let us all fight this Jehad against the enemies of Islam.
• Wake up and save Hindutva before it is too late.

This creates an impression that Hindus and Muslims have been fighting and they must fight each other. To support this view are numerous communal riots that have taken place throughout the country over the years. If you are a Hindu, such propaganda makes you view every Muslim with suspicion and hatred. If you are a Muslim, this makes you hate Hindus. Not only that, you feel encouraged to stop being passive and to take active part in this perpetual conflict between communities.

At times, one tends to get carried away with this flood of religious hatred, but then it feels counter intuitive and the heart shouts a loud, "STOP and THINK AGAIN". A question pops up, "As a Hindu, why do I have to hate Muslims and vice-versa?" Imagine the following situations for a moment:

• You are a Hindu and your Muslim neighbor is attacked in a riot, should you not help him just because he is from different religion? 
• You are a Hindu and you come across Muslims in your day-to-day life. Are they all hostile towards you?
• You have a very close friend, and he chooses to embrace Islam one day and becomes a Muslim. Will it change your behavior toward him? Will you consider him as your enemy from that day onwards?
• You have a long term enemy who is a Muslim. If he has a change of heart and becomes a Hindu, will it end your hatred towards him?

The above thought exercises must have convinced you that merely being Hindu or Muslim does not make a person an object of your love or hatred.Then why do WE have to fight THEM? One argument that we hear very often is that you have to do it to save your religion, else it will be extinct. Well, this is a very interesting myth. God is all powerful, and certainly He does not need our help to survive. As an example, Parsis are a very small community, but that does not mean that they have got eliminated by the bigger communities.

You may say that Hindus and Muslims are fundamentally poles apart, so they are destined to fight each other, but let us take a closer look at these differences that can not be reconciled. I list commonly cited differences below:

• Worship different Gods. 
• Different religious beliefs about life, death, soul, rebirth, and God.
• Different customs 
• Different position on idol worship

Worship different Gods

It is a myth that we worship different Gods, instead like the prayer says, we worship the same God  in different form, and give Him a different name. Every religion says that God is all powerful being, present everywhere. How is it possible to have more than one instances of such an all powerful being? It HAS to be the same God for everyone. 

Different religious beliefs about life, death, soul, rebirth, and God

Who can claim that he knows the real truth about the matters of life, death, soul and God? Every religion like Jainism, Buddhism, Parsis, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity has a different view on these issues. But this difference is not sufficient ground to breed hatred between the communities. If Jains and Hindus can co-exist peacefully, why not Muslims and Hindus?

Different customs 

Within Hindus there are wide range of customs practiced by different people. As you go to different states, you see very different customs. So, why should customs cause trouble? We live in a free society; I am free to follow my customs and you are free to follow yours.

Different Position on Idol Worship

Islam prohibits Idol Worship, and this is often seen as a key cause of conflict. However, when I discussed it with some Muslim friends, it became clear that the real objection is to worship an Idol like God. But if we look closely, Hindus treat the Idol not as God Himself, but more as a symbol through which they worship the supreme God. If that was not the case, they would not be doing visarjan of the Idol (Why would you immerse your God in water after you are done with your puja?). This is a vital point, which can really help bridge this gap between the two.

To conclude, religious difference should not cause hatred between communities. As a minimum we should learn to live together peacefully with our differences. At another level, we can also get the benefit of a richer spirituality from our differences. Religion is meant for seeking the purpose of life. Every religion has looked differently and discovered a part of the answer to this question. Let us not just hold on to our partial truth and discard what others have found. Let us use all the knowledge available to form a more complete answer. When we adopt this mindset, we will stop seeing the religious differences as a cause for conflict.  

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Sanjay Srivastava came up with this beautiful quote on this topic: 

If your God asks you to kill me, then he certainly did not create me. If he did not create me, he is a fake God.   

How to Be Positive in Practical Life ?

Consider the following quote from Saakshi:

You try to be the bigger person... read a hundred books on positive thinking, join spirituality courses, meditate regularly and try to be at peace and try your best to let nothing pull you down.. and then this one person.. just so naturally brings out the worst in you.. so much that it makes you want to pull all your hair out and burn those books and course certificates! Wonder what classes they are taking.. Is there a course on "how to stoop to new lows"? Must be one hell of a class!

Sounds familiar? Positive attitude and thoughts sound very nice on paper and in theory, but in real-life, when you encounter stress in day-to-day situations, there is no place for these lofty ideas and then you have to think practically. All of us have experienced these situations ourselves. So, can we say that Positive Thinking is just an idealistic stuff that does not work in practical situations? Certainly not! On the contrary, Positive Thinking is of immense practical use in everyday life. How? Let me try to justify my disputable claim in this post.

Let us take an example - when you perform on stage, you do a lot of practice before the actual performance to get it near perfect. However, you may get nervous on stage and some parts  may go haywire, but that does not mean that practice was useless and you would not practice before your next performance. In fact the extensive practice most probably helped you give a decent enough performance in-spite of your nervousness.

You may ask, "We are talking about bad situations or people that you encounter. What has this got to do with my performance?" The fact is that Positive Thinking is a skill that implies that you will keep a positive outlook irrespective of your circumstances. The other person may be showing his worst behavior, but you can still choose to be positive. As a minimum, it helps you maintain your calm.

But does that mean being positive is just a way to divert our mind and it does not really help us find a solution? (The word "Antarik Samadhaan" is used by some people to describe it.) Sometimes people cite the following joke to assert that Positive Thinking can not change the outcome and It is better to have a realistic thinking.

Doctor: "Did you take the medicine I prescribed, and did you see any improvements in the condition that you used to feel nervous and fall down while walking?"
Patient: "Yes doctor, it is much better now"
Doctor: "Do you no longer fall down?"
Patient: "I do fall down at times, but I no longer feel nervous"

Positive Attitude can not only keep you calm in adversity, but it can contribute towards a solution as well. Imagine your thinking is a stream of river in which you are sailing a boat. When you think positive, the current of your thoughts is aligned with your direction of movement and you can sail forward quickly. On the other hands, negative thoughts work like you are sailing against the current of river, so you will need to sail harder to achieve the same results. The irony is that it is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you believe that life is tough, your own attitude will act as a opposite current, that will make you sail harder and strengthen your belief about the toughness of life. You may dismiss others who believe that life is beautiful as starry-eyed idealist, but the fact is that these positive people use their thoughts to make their life beautiful. So, Positive Thinking has the potential of changing the course of your life.

Positive Thinking is a habit that takes some effort to master. When you learn to balance a bike, you practice doing it before you get used to it. Even after that you may lose balance and fall down once-in-a-while. Like learning the bike, you need patience when learning to be positive. With regular practice and time you can master it like any other habit. Let us take a closer look on habits for a moment. Stephen Covey says that to master any habit, you need to work at its three components, each of which is essential. Very often, we neglect one or two of these, and it does not work out.

1. Desire

This is the motivation part of the habit, or "Want to do" part. Since you are reading this post, I assume that you have the required motivation.

2. Knowledge

There is a theoretical part of every habit. This contains information about what to do and why to do it. You get the required knowledge by reading or discussing.

3. Skill

This is the practical part of the habit, or "How to do it " part. You can start learning it from books, but eventually have to practice to master it.  The more you practice, the better you'll get at it. So, practice being positive every day till you get good at it. Here are some ideas that I have found helpful, help me grow this list by contributing your favorite idea here:

• Go slow. It takes time to master any skill. Do not expect to get it right in a hurry.
• Go Easy. Let it go. If it does not work out in a situation, do not over stress yourself. There will be a next time.
• Stay in touch with yourself when you are in real-life situations. Observe closely your thoughts, feelings, and actions. This is the first step towards changing any behavior.
• Don't just focus on your failures. Pay attention to your successes as well. Collect one or more instances everyday of situations where you could apply Positive Thinking successfully.

Live Life as a Marathon, not as a Sprint

Imagine you are parent of a school going kid, and like all parents, want your kid to do well in life. You wish she can get a head start in life by becoming a doctor, engineer, or MBA, or CA etc. Your heart sinks when you look around and hear the following news:

• This year 5 lakh students who aspire to join the much sought after Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)  appeared in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE), out of which around 10000 candidates qualified for admission. One in 50 students got selected.
• There was even more crowding for Indian Institutes of Management (IIM), where 2 lakh hopeful students took the Common Aptitude Test (CAT) to grab one of the 2800 seats in the prestigious IIMs. One in 70 students got through in this case.
• Things were not any better for students aspiring to become doctor. 70000 students took the entrance for AIIMS that has just 300 seats. One in 300 students tasted success.
• For those trying for Commerce or Economics degree, Shriram College of Commerce (SRCC) in Delhi University required you to have above 97% marks in XII class.

Typical thoughts that would come to your mind are - the competition is getting tougher and tougher every day. My kid has to really get serious about her career right now. She has to put her everything into studies so that she gets good marks. So, you visualize your kid slogging it out and cracking the coveted test, but in reality, you see this young kid behaving in a happy-go-lucky manner. She enjoys her studies and is a bright student, but also takes interest in a lot of other things, ignoring your advice to focus single-mindedly on her studies. As the time passes, you get even more and more worried about your kid's future. You are desparately looking for a way to get this child to work much harder, else she will land up with a result that would be no good, and you refuse to accept such a future for your child. What's wrong here? How do we steer this kid towards the right path?

Well, the answer may surprise you. Before you work on the kid to set her right, work on yourself and your paradigm. I recently came across a book that tried to compare our life with a marathon and a sprint. Before I reveal the conclusion from the book, let us take a look at sprint and marathon.  Sprint is a short race (few hundred meters) that is highly competitive. There is so much focus on speed that Athletes put their everything into it to gain just a fraction of a second advantage on their opponents. Getting a head start in a sprint is vital to winning it, since once you fall behind, you cannot hope to bridge the gap in the short time. It is also run under extreme pressure, you have to be on your toes throughout the race. Needless to say, winning is very important in a sprint - it is no use if you stood 5th, 6th or 10th in a sprint.
(I may go on and on, but are you already getting the feeling, "Yes, yes.. this is how I want my kid to go about her studies and preparation for competition. focus, head start, speed, on her toes, pressure, aim to win.. yes")

Now let us contrast it with marathon. The marathon is usually run as a long road race (42 Km). For the participants in this race, completing the race itself is a great achievement no matter what position you finish at. The focus here is on stamina, not on speed. People who are likely to last the complete run are those who run at an average pace. There is no significance of a head start here, since the early gains get evened out over a longer run. In place of feelings of competition, we see a bonhomie among the participants.

You would agree that it is not possible to try and run a marathon like a sprint. While running the marathon if we give too much emphasis to speed, competition, running under pressure, we may get exhausted very soon and may not be able to complete the race.

Our life is closer to a marathon than a sprint. Head start in life is not as crucial as we imagine. There are numerous example of successful people who did not get a head start. Also, it is not necessary to stay ahead of everyone to be happy in life. And no one can deny that its a long race in which endurance is more important.

But when we try to live life as a sequence of tests that we need to "ace" one after another, we try to reduce it to a chain of sprints. Clearly, this is not going to result in anything but a stressful life. This is the real cause of the problem. Another side effect of the focus on cracking exams is that very often the real learning takes a back seat in the process. Also, we often tend to underrate the achievement of our child just because it is not at the top. Take an example, your child works hard in her class XII exam and secures 96% marks. She wants to take admission in SRCC, but with her result, she is not eligible. Would you see it as a failure of your child? Come on. She should be hailed for her outstanding result and it is not her fault that the cutoff at SRCC is going sky high. Given the chances of getting into these institutes, it is not any better than placing your bet in a horse race or a lottery.

So, the suggestion that I got from this book was - don't run your life as a sprint, if you run really hard, it may help you get ahead in the short run, but you will find it hard to sustain. Instead, try to enjoy it as a run of marathon.

Eager to know the title of the book? It is "Don't Sprint the Marathon"  by V. Raghunathan. I strongly recommend you read this book.

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Clarification: I support strong focus on studies to acquire a good education and trying your best to make it to the good institutes. This post is more about reducing the over emphasis on competition in our mindset, not to avoid competion.