Travelogues and Almost Everything Else!

My Thoughts, experiences and .....

Friday, September 22, 2006

Spirituality and Religion

This, in a nutshell was what I spoke in the Literature Club meet a couple of weeks back. The topic was a very thought provoking one, "Can a person be Spiritual without being Religious". "Ive got to tell you that I was initially confused about the topic.. I thought it was to do with spiritualism, which I later found out was a subject dealing with ghosts and Haka Mari's and some such! Anyway, I realized in time that the topic is about Spirituality.. thankfully.
I think it has always been easier to cultivate among people a 'way of life' as compared to actually instilling a principle. I think it was my grandfather who told me once about the ingenuity of the Hindu priests. They said that it was a great religious custom to go to the temple. And the temples were generally built on a hilltop. It was also made customary for people to go many times round the temple, and then prostrate before the lord.. atleast 3 times. This was a great way to get the people to engage in some physical activity. I am fairly certain that if a village elder had tried to tell people about the advantages of exercise, the idea would have gone nowhere.
I think it was in this way that religion tried to create in common people a certain quantum of spirituality. Religion was more of a dictation of how exactly a person can be spiritual. However, religion does not restrict itself to spirituality. Religion has a much wider scope, as it governs the entire way in which people live their lives. Apart from many other things, it tries to encourage arts, culture, and very importantly, it tries to unify a group of people. Although it may be extraneous to the topic for today, I feel that we are today living in the best possible times. There were wars ravaging the entire world in the earlier centuries, and justice was an impossibility for the under-privilaged. It was a case of survival of the fittest and the most powerful. In those days of turmoil, unity was of paramount importance. And this was one of the important effects that religion had on society.
While we talk about all the good things that religion did, lets not forget that each religion came across a period when it underwent corruption. For Hinduism, it was between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, when things became overtly ritualistic, and people, for the lust of power began to manipulate society. Even today, we have extremists who use religion to serve their lust for power.
It is true therefore, that I feel that religion is a pathway to spiritualism. What then, is spiritualism? Spiritualism is a very wide term, encompassing a whole host of issues. Among those, it tries to keep us sane, moral .. I think a moral person can very likely call himself spiritual, and happy. To digress, I think happiness is something that is felt when a person does a particular task with single mindedness. If various other thoughts do not enter his mind, he is sure to feel happiness while doing what he is at.
Spirituality is something that can be achieved by different people and different religions in their own way, and all the major religions that I am aware of try to instill spirituality among its people.
I think I have overshot my time. Thank You."

White Water Rafting at Kundalika!

Was a crazy day out visiting the Kundalika river. It was a really busy day.. we hardly got a break from the "JAI KUNDALIKA!" slogan. Its a beautiful fast flowing river flowing into the Arabian Sea, and the white water rafting happens at a point between Tamhini and the Bombay Goa Highway, about a hundred kilometres from Mumbai and Pune. First of all, the greenery is just breath taking. There are beautiful lush green hills on every side and you can sense that there has never been a shortage of water in this part of the world!We left Pune at 4AM and reached at about 7AM, just in time for the sudden gush of water that flows through the river after Tata opens its dam gates. After a great deal of sloganeering, our group of 11 got into the inflated boats.

The instructor told us what he meant by "Right Forward", "All Down" and so on, and we set forth. Seven of us were in one boat and four in the other. The first rapids were superb, but the next one was just breathtaking. This one had a wall of water, about 7 feet in height right in front of us, and we enterd it head on. Our instructor yelled "All Down", and we put out heads inside the boat.. oh boy it was awesome. You are supposed to hit such rapids head on, and at a good pace. If you dont, there is a good chance that the boat could overturn. Anyway, there was then some more "Jai Kundalika" and some racing between our boats. Another rapid followed, and then there was a flat section of river moving at slow to medium speed. It was then that we heard this new code word that our instructor had not told us about.. " All Overboard" he yelled. I was stumped.. I said "What"? "Overboard man.. get off the boat"! "There is water outside here man... its deep too!" I yelled. He said "Oh Yeah, not more than 25 feet.. dont worry.. u got your life jacket on anyway". What the hell, we thought, and jumped off the boat, and boy, it was fun. The life jacket just would not let us drown, and the river took us down about 3-4 kilometres in the hour and a half that we spent floating in it. The dive into the water, and the confusion that set in as soon as I hit the water.. that was probably the biggest thrill of the whole trip! Well, we got off the river, had some wada pavs and then sang some songs on our way back home.. a trip to remember!