Why religion is so ubiquitous?

In my childhood and adolescent years, I was a religious person.  Then, one day, almost all of a sudden, I realized that religion is a bogus propaganda and its prey is the weakness of the mind, and that there is absolutely no evidence of a god.  For a few years, I searched for some evidence or finding concession that I could give to a religion but could not find anything to offer.  Ultimately, it became a question of truth or lie.  I decided to live hopelessly but in truth than to live in comfort surrounded by lies.  I do not claim to be a torchbearer of any society, country, or religion that I should be ashamed of any failings coming out of knowing a truth.  People burden themselves by unnecessary associations and I am not one of them.


However, for a long time, I did wonder about why people from every walks of life and every region of the world are religious. I think I finally found the answer.


A mind tends to think on the same path that it was set in the very beginning of its development process.  Therefore, a Muslim believes that his/her religion is the greatest and only true religion; a Hindu thinks the same about Hinduism and so on.  The funny part is that they are neighbors and they see each other every day but never question as to how was it possible that two completely different religions could be the only true ones. He never thinks why he is so vehemently supporting a particular religion.  He does not possess the bandwidth to understand that it was mere a chance that someone is born to a particular religion. There is almost 99.999% chance he is advocating the religion he was born into.  The reason behind this diehard support is a well-formed (not well-informed) mindset from which he cannot get out.  The stronger the impact of something on a mind, more solid the encasing of that mindset, harder it is to get out of it.  You guessed it right that religion has the strongest effect because of its very design as it deals with death and afterlife.  There is nothing scarier than death and nothing more promising than afterlife.  If you got both, you would be stupid not to cling to them even though, deep inside, you have a doubt.  A religion has gotten that "formula" perfected.  You would see that, no matter what religion you pick, death and after-death are central themes.  As one grows older in the frame of mind, his belief system gets even stronger day-by-day.


Is the teachings of a religion is the only cause that people stick to it?  I do not think so.  You need both a doctor and a patient to have this perfect union.  Guess what there is no better patient than a human being.  You cannot teach religion to an animal but to a human being, that learning is natural.

When you dig deeper into thinking patterns of human beings, you would find that we are all "religious".  Even the atheists are "religious" people.  The difference between an atheist and a theist is merely semantic.  If you consider "formation of a mindset" and then "following of that mindset", which are the hallmarks of a religious person, then all of us are religious.  Whether we follow Christ or whether we follow a particular trade (such as being an engineer, historian, lawyer, ...), the difference is superficial.  I understand that, in a classical religion, we have God, Heaven, Hell, etc. and the day-to-day mindset could be void of those notions, but just as a classical religious person, most of us never question why we are doing something and whether this is what we are meant to do.  For example, a politician remains a politician until his death, an engineer remains an engineer until he retires, a priest remains a priest, etc. So, 99.999% of us are not questioning our profession or what we do or what we do not do.  We are creatures so susceptible to follow a rut.  That rut is, in fact, a religion in a broader sense.   Even when we change the trade, it is mostly to make more money or help some more people or to become more famous. The rut never leaves us and we never leave that rut.  We never question the very existence of why we are continuing to do something.  We possess a tendency to run with whatever we have and make fame and money from that trait.  Never questioning whether that trait is putting me in a rut.  We have to understand that we are patterned into doing a particular thing and we find comfort in it (just as we find comfort in a religion and do not want to leave it).  When Steve Jobs keeps bringing newer and sleeker designs of phones and computers, he is following a "religion" of design and engineering.  He is in that rut.  And, that is where he dedicates his life every day just as a priest in a church would dedicate his life in a church rut.  Both of them are identical in the sense that both of them are following something (whatever that may be) so "religiously".  Neither of them is looking left or right.  The difference in these two followers?  Semantics.  Who is to say who is more disillusioned?  The lifetime that Steve Jobs dedicated to bringing that iPhone, I can simply go to a store and buy it.  The difference is that one is selling and then other is buying but both activities are focused on the same iPhone.  Steve Jobs is in the rut of designing better iPhone, and the person who is buying the iPhone, he could be in a different rut.  Nonetheless, both of them are in some kind of rut.  We all are rutters (if that is a word).



So, if we do not want to be religious about anything, we have to question everything about us, every thought that comes to our mind.  Even then, probably there is no escape from it.  How can you escape from a mind well?  We have to accept that fact, as humans, we are very limited in our capacity to escape.  We are more or less like a robot and, that is why we can continue to do only what we have learned all along.  If we continue to do something and find a sense of comfort in it, then we are the same as a religious person who continues to pray and find comfort in it.  We are all the same.  Not much difference. We all are in some kind of rut -  some call it religion, some call it philosophy, some call it engineering, some call it science, some call it lust of power...does not matter what you call it -  fundamentally we all are doing the same thing -  we all are religious people.  This is what humans are -  religious morons.  And, that is why religion is so ubiquitous.

What is in tennis?

Purpose of Pupose

Nature's Net

Survival and Relinquishment

No one

Bodhidharma is said to have visited the court of a king who prided himself on all the many public projects he had undertaken for the benefit of his people, including the building of a large number of magnificent places of worship. The king invited Bodhidharma to look at all his works and asked: “What merit do you think I have gained from all this?”

The gruff answer of the so-called ‘Barbarian from the West’ was: “Absolutely nothing.” The outraged ruler then demanded: “Who is it that dares to speak to a king like that?”

The sage replied: “A no-one who speaks to another no-one.” With this answer the king is said to have gained enlightenment.

I took the above story from another blog.  The reason I wanted to put this story here was to point out that we often, by reading such story feel that, somehow, we have become more knowledgeable and spiritual.  These stories, self-help books, reading scriptures, listening to "spiritual" discourse, etc. are not going to make us anything other than more arrogant. Unless we leave all these teachings and go back to the root that we are nothing, we will not be able to take a breath of relief.  Otherwise, we are continuously living in the state of anxiety, sense of incompleteness, sense of big and small, etc.  The above story will teach us only however much we are ready for it.  Therefore, if we make the mistake of giving an interpretation of the story, what we have actually done is to put forward our own thesis. So, let's not give our own discourse on these stories to somehow proclaim that we know the meaning of it.  Had we known the meaning of this story, we would have gotten "enlightenment" by the end of reading of that short paragraph, the way the king did just by listening such a simple answer.  But we did not get it.  Why?  Because we do not get the story.  There has been always an urge among the "spiritual gurus", and those budding to be ones, to make their proclamation authentic by citing these stories to impress the audience.  These stories do not need an interpretation without the sever risk of giving our own mild and weak versions, showing the very weakness that it tries to put to shame, and, in that course, weakens our own true reaction to it.   In a way, these discourses are making us more hardened and subdues the emotional reactions that these stories are supposed to create.   It makes us immune to the true effects because, slowly and slowly, we take these stories for granted and do not see any brutality in the message.  It no longer directly confronts our preconceived thought process.  This is true even for simple poems.  For example, we may completely misunderstand the meaning of "rah pakar tu ek chala chal, paa jayega madhushala".  Let's not do it. Let's not try to derive a "morale" of the story.  Who are we to know what the Bodhidharma meant and what the king understood?

Stop role playing.

Your Message, Moon, and Me

When I get your message, it heralds the night of full moon by forcing the sun to give up its insistence. It feels that, at that moment, the nature has broken the silence, whispered in my ears, and teased me with the glimpse of her finest creation. It shatters in me the awe of nature's enormity when I feel that the intensity of the ripples, which her mere thought creates, exceed the enormity of tsunami that the vastest ocean bestows. And, I console myself by just touching the cold water of ocean because warmth of her finest creation remains at far.

However, it does make me think that life cannot be guided by philosophies, literature, arts, wealth, knowledge, sunset, sunrise, mountains, oceans, moons, or stars. It teaches me that she is more than all of the above combined. The list of things that I mentioned feels like a cloud, which, at its best, deprives me from the rays of life. It reminds me why I need to break these clouds to get to those rays so that life can begin in me and so that a birth can happen in this body and so that I can be separated from the dead corpses in behemoth of this cremation hall.

I do not know how to break that shadow. It is like being a fish stranded on a seashore by some cruel forces of nature, onlooking the enormous ocean but having no ability to walk up to it, gasping for air but trying its best to not cause any discomfort to the water, silencing its own pain but listening to the sounds of the water waves, bleeding in sharp pebbles of the shore but pretending to entertain like a joker.

What is a dust?

Dust is small but its importance is enormous.  In fact, a dust produces the simplest of all living beings from which all the complicated ones come from. In a dust, we find the signatures of everything dead or alive.  The largest of all structures, which we are so proud of, are in fact made of dust. On the other hand, the smallest of all living being finds their shelter in the same dust. Dust has been here since the beginning of time and will continue to exist even after the definition of time will cease to exist. Dust has co-existed with the Super Power for all times and has defied the parameters of life and death. Dust is ubiquitous and eternal.

What makes the dust so beautiful ultimately is not its eternity but its humility. A mere wind can blow it as it pleases. A child can make a castle out of it with his tiny inarticulate hand. One can walk over it without being fearful of reprisal. It is the dust, in which anyone takes the ultimate shelter of death and no question is asked to him/her, not judgment is passed onto him/her. The dust never asks you for your identity and never treats you any differently.  It does not know how to differentiate between rich and poor, small and big.  It just remains a witness and everything that we create and destroys.  It never changes who it is because it does not assume an identity, never signs a paining, never put a logo, and never gets nominated for a prize.

It also inspires us to never let ourselves feel significant again.  In fact, in all of our pride, we are not be even of the size of a dust particle. We are less than a dust particle when we compare our largest creation with the earth. If you go one step further, and look at stars, even the earth becomes smaller than a dust particle. The dust, in a way, warns us from comparing because nothing is smaller than it and nothing is bigger than this.

We are so lucky that we have come from such a thing.  Nothing but the dust itself is our mother.  And, one day, we will go back to it.  Let's look forward to it. Let's look forward to coming home.