Archive for October, 2008
Krishna, The Child: An Epiphany on Hinduism
Posted by Nehal in Observations on October 23, 2008
Growing up Hindu, I was surrounded by the folklore of Krishna. For those of you who are not familiar with Krishna, he was an incarnation of God, an Indian prince, that blue-skinned dude in old Indian paintings. You could say is the equivalent of Jesus although that does neither him nor Jesus any justice.
I won’t get into details about Krishna since it goes beyond a mere blog post, so I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to get your started. Growing up learning about the life of Krishna, one thing had always struck me as peculiar. You see, unlike Jesus, there are many stories of Krishna’s childhood. Through old stories in the Mahabharata, we see Krishna grow up. And unlike Jesus, we see this child, this god-incarnate, as a mischievous little bastard.
Yes, folks, little Krishna gots himself into a mess o’ trouble. He’d steal butter. He’d tie people up. He’d steal the clothes of young women. And with godlike acuity and magic, he just as easily got himself out of trouble. Which of course always struck me as odd. Because this flies in the face of everything we know about God. God, the creator, the all-powerful, the all-knowing, etc., etc. So why would God manifest Himself as a mischievous child? What does that say about Hinduism?
I simply ignored these tales as rubbish for many years until I had an epiphany, and the epiphany was this: It does say something about Hinduism. In many pagan religions, gods are looked up to as one would look up to a mother or a father. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the father. Even Freud said that our feelings about our parents are transferred to that being we call God. And we want to be like children again with an ever-loving God to protect us.
And yet in Hinduism, we have this God-child, this Krishna, who with all of his wiles, all of his mischief, Hindus accept and worship. Because while in other religions, people are taught to love God as one would love a mother or a father, Hindus — through Krishna — are taught to love God as one would love a child. Unconditionally. Without fear or remorse. With acceptance and care. Like a mother or a father would. Like a grownup.
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On Purity
Posted by Nehal in Observations on October 22, 2008
It is well known that oxygen inhaled in pure form is an intoxicant. In fact, pure oxygen in excess can cause brain damage. And that is the irony, for although we need oxygen to live, it is oxygen itself that can kill us. Oxygen — clean and pure — is a poison.
In the name of God, country, religion, ethnicity, community, what-have-you, people have always echoed the cry for purity. Individuals of different ethnic origins have been hunted down. Marriages between different races have been denounced. Even ideas borne of a different perspective are eradicated. All on a mission for purity.
But purity is neither the way of nature nor the way of God. Indeed the inherent yearning of all life is towards impurity. Children bred of small gene pools have a smaller survival rate. We all come from dust and return to dust. Our very bodies, in fact, are inhabited by millions of bacteria that we rely on to live. No, mixing is the way or nature, mixing is the admonition of God. We are meant to mix.
So when people cry for purity, I think of oxygen. A little bit of pure oxygen creates euphoria, blurs your vision of reality, makes you think and behave in irrational ways. And so it is with purity itself. It intoxicates. And those intoxicated by it see the world not as it is, but as their delusions demand it to be. And this is how prejudice breeds, crimes are perpetrated, and wars are begun — out of the insanity of purity.
But purity is a poison. It is unnatural. It snubs its nose at the world. And it is misunderstood. Pure white light is not pure at all. White light — pure and natural — is actually a mixture of all the colors of the spectrum.
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Religulous, Or Why Bill Maher Shouldn’t Make Documentaries
So I saw Bill Maher’s documentary on religion aptly named Religulous, and my initial reactions were…well, let’s use the word confused for now. Just to give you a little background, Bill Maher is a doubter, a skeptic. He wants to know what drives faith, what allows rational people to believe in irrational things like voices in the sky, talking snakes, etc. He then enbarks on a journey to get to know people who espouse religion. As a fellow skeptic, I could get behind this.
Let me first say that I like Bill Maher. I used to watch his show Politically Incorrect on Comedy Central and ABC, and now watch his show on HBO called Real Time. I don’t always agree with him, but I laud him for bringing myriad questions for open and honest debate. You don’t see that very often anymore. Anyway, back to Religulous: I was all set to watch this movie. I expected mixed in with a few nutjobs from the Holy Land Experience and evangelicals, there would be some serious moments with religious thinkers like Vatican scholars, Hindu gurus, Jewish priests. Perhaps the Dalai Lama would make an appearance. But there weren’t and that’s what I thought the downfall of this film was. It purported to be a quasi-serious film, an open and honest attempt to understand faith. Instead it was all nutjobs. It was an open and honest mockery of faith.
And in the end, he takes the whole movie off the deep end by linking religion to the end of the world. Were I too look at this film with a critical eye, I would tear it apart. But it behooves me and everyone else to keep in mind that this is Bill Maher. Do I expect him to make a movie about religion and not mock it? No. If you toss aside the “serious documentary” veneer that this movie purports, you get what basically amounts to a Borat. But that’s okay. Because the film entertains. And ultimately that’s the point.
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The Coming Race War
Surely, we’ve all read stories like this New York Times article about the Weimar-like rage in this country about the election. Suffice it to say, there are people out there that are very passionate about the outcome of this election and with good reason. Not in my lifetime have the differences been so stark, have the stakes been so high. And not in my lifetime have I seen a candidate with so much potential.
His being African-American notwithstanding, Barack Obama came out from being a nonentity at the 2000 DNC to being the keynote speaker in 2004. He went on to defeat the Hillary machine, to whome EVERYONE pretty much handed the nomination in 2007. He’s run a very impressive campaign against John McCain that has attempted to lift politics in this country rather than drag it through the gutter.
But of course we can’t ignore the fact that he’s African-American. I used to debate with friends on the question of what will we have first? An African-American president or a woman president. Hands down, I said we would have a woman president. For one, there are many great woman leaders in this country already. Secondly, women are hella organized. Third, race is still an issue in this country. I hate to say it, but America has a long way to go from being a city on a hill when it comes to race. And the recent McCain-Palin rallies have shown it.
People are shouting “terrorist” and “kill him” in reference to Obama. People are saying they would never vote for a n—. Others are calling him an Arab. And all these people are intent on believing that he’s a Muslim, will make the national religion Muslim, and turn us all gay. I never thought that any election in the United States would get this ugly. If Obama were to win this election, after January 20th, some of what these people are saying would be considered a federal offense.
Believe me when I say that there is passion on both sides of this election. It looks like there are plenty of people ready to riot if McCain loses. If Obama were to lose the election, I’m sure there would be Obama supporters that would riot. The question is: Who has more guns?
UPDATE: And just after posting this, I read this article about how those other Gods will starting thinking their bigger than us. Run! It’s metaphysical invasion!
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A Triumphal Return and a Non-Promise
I finally overcame my usual laziness and set up the rant on a subdomain (something I had been meaning to do for a long time). I actually started this process months ago but got lazy again and let it fester broken as it were. You may have noticed that when you went to http://www.nehalsha.com, you got redirected to http://www.nehalshah.com/intermittentrant. Not something I was really proud of, but I let it go. Now if you go to http://www.nehalshah.com, you get redirected to http://rant.nehalshah.com. The benefits are generallly personal: It allows me to organize my web files better plus I now have a clear separation between different applications. (And yes, I know it totally screws up my SEO, but since I don’t care about SEO, then…shut up). Of course, none of this is stuff you would care about.
I didn’t realize how painful it was to migrate an instance of WordPress. First of all, I had to update the wordpress files for some reason. Secondly, I had to do quite a bit of database work to change all references including changing inline links in the post body and the permalinks. Third, I had to change some references around in my Monkey theme. Fourth, I had to rebuild my .htaccess file for mod rewrites. Add to this the All in One SEO pack getting wonky on me because it was incompatible with the new version of WordPress (not altogether obvious) and you can see why it took me so long. (It actually took me all of an evening, but it took me several months to get work up the patience to trudge through all this crap).
So now that I’m back up, now that I’ve made my triumphal return to web publishing, I have to admit you probably won’t be seeing a lot of posts from me. I pretty much spent all the patience I mustered to get to this point. I don’t think I have enough left to be regular about it. But here’s the non-promise: I may or may not weigh the possibility of my giving thoughtful consideration to maybe putting up a post every now and then. Maybe. Who knows…stranger things have happened.
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