One one things

Today’s been odd. My sarong went all static all of a sudden and there were worrying sizzling noises when my leg came in contact with the material. I also watched Pride and Prejudice (the version with keira knightley), and took another step away from reading the book. It looks less and less like what would make a good thay koappe for me.

Enough about that. Shakespeare was wrong, the question is not To be or not to be, the question is do we need to have faith? George Michael certainly thinks so. I’ve always had doubts about faith, I guess that’s primarily bc many family members were critical of the notion of “blind faith”. They claimed that buddhism did not resort to blind faith and was thus superior in some way. I bought that at the time but don’t buy it any more. Every religion in some way adopts a degree of blind faith, I shall elaborate in due time. Anyway, faith was always associated with the word blind so I used to dismiss it. I’ve considered reason to be far superior and have tried to base my life around reason, resorting to faith as little as possible. I’ve begun to question this manner of thinking of late. The following is bound to be muddled since my thoughts on this are far from clear at this stage.

I just finished reading The Life of Pi, it was alrite. It started off a bit slow, was ok in the middle and got bizarre towards the end and finished with an interesting twist. The writing was quite good though. Anyway, the book deals with faith quite a bit. Not in a explicit philosophical manner, but through implication really. So what happens is this kid ends up on a lifeboat with a Bengal Tiger, alone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and survives for almost a year until he gets washed up in Mexico. Good for him. The point is, any rational person would have given up hope, I mean what are the chances of surviving that? The kid’s faith carried him through. I’m not saying that faith saved him, but I guess it played an important role. The mind plays an important role in survival of the human body, half the battle is the will to live. Or so i’ve heard. So in this case irrational faith was certainly very handy.

When I say irrational faith, I mean it. Faith in the context I am dealing with refers to what is beyond the realms of human knowledge. Stuff like what happens after death, what our purpose on earth is, how we came about etc. The belief in God, in heaven and hell, in rebirth, all rely on faith. Organized religion tries to deal with things that we cannot explain using existing knowledge, we need to step beyond what we can experience in order to make decisions on these matters. Therefore the answers to any of these questions are irrational.

My doubts about faith began with doubts about organized religion. Organized religion requires irrational faith, and that means accepting one set of beliefs. Now the problem with this is the set of beliefs you accept will be highly contingent on the family your born into. If I was born into a family in Saudi Arabia i would be more than likely have a firm belief in Allah. Similarly if I was born into a Jewish family I’d have a totally different set of beliefs. The fact that one’s set of beliefs is so contingent on things like birth, education, experiences etc. make it hard to believe that by some lucky chance you were born into the “right” religion, the one that really shows the way. Now, one might argue that we do come across other religions and we can decide which set of beliefs to embrace. But that only applies to a minority of cases, I mean, I for one know very little about other religions beyond a very superficial degree. You need a far deeper knowledge of a religion in order to change your beliefs. So you’re more than likely to end up accepting the set of beliefs you inherited from birth. My worry is that I could well have been believing in God, in rebirth, in heaven and hell simply depending on the family I was born into.

My answer to this was to take a step back and try to be objective. To be rational. Reason can provide no answers as to what happens after death, as to why this earth is so perfect (in terms of being a cradle of life) and other questions. The most rational suggestion is that we are here bc we drew the large stick. What are the chances of having such a perfect planet? One in a Billion? Well, there are well over a billion planets, so the maths works. What happens after we die? The rational answer, zilch. Time just stops, no consciousness, nothing; our attraction to an after life is simply an extension of our attachment to life. But this is just a guess, conjecture. As are alternatives like immortal souls, heaven, hell etc. The fact of the matter is we can never know. To use reason, or to use faith are pretty much one and the same, you’re stabbing in the dark, using guesswork. At this point in human history, knowledge of such matters is not possible, bc it is beyond what we could possibly experience.

So what’s better reason or faith? Well, in such matters neither. Reason is not always right. Back in the day it was perfectly reasonable to believe that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth was flat. Based on human experience at the time, it sounded fine. But now we know. (Or do we?). If someone at the time had an irrational faith that the earth was round, he would have been duely hooted at. As our set of experiences expand, the realm of knowledge expands. When humans set out to sea, the notion of a flat earth was dismissed. When Copperniccus et al used telescopes to go beyond what the eye can see, we realised that the earth revolves around the sun. Similarly, with the good blessings of technology we might be able to have knowledge of what happens after death in several years time. Then we can make a reasoned judgement. Until such time it’s best to keep an open mind. If we didn’t keep open minds about things like flat earths we’d all be in our little countries huddled like kalaveddhas.

I came across a brilliant little anecdote which i think has interesting implications for the way we tend to look at religion. It’s from an outstanding book of travel journalism called The Age of Kali by William Dalrymple which i picked up one lazy rainy sunday afternoon at Barefoot (they’ve got the best selection of books in Colombo as far as i’m concerned). I’ll put a proper review later on if time and eagerness permit.

So there’s this island somewhere between Sri Lanka and Madagasscar called Reunion (pronouced as the French would pronounce it with a little accent on the first e) and back in 1931 a box of relics arrived in the island from the Vatican. Unfortunately the label with the name of the Saint in question had been discarded somewhere along the way and all that remained was a stamp with the Italian word “Spedito”, meaning expedited. The natives, a melange (i really need to figure out how to put accents where they are due) of retired French planters, arab and chinese traders, malagasy slaves, south indian tamils and other odd odd characters, decided that label or no label they would not be deprived of their saint. And so began the cult of Saint Expedit. The Saint’s popularity grew exponentially and eventually became the unofficial patron saint of Reunion. Dalrymple reports that there are over 350 shrines on the island dedicated to St. Expedit where all of the island’s different ethnicities pay homage to the Saint. St. Expedit was personified and his image is now that of a Roman legionary with silver breastplate and red tunic. In his hand lies a spear and under his right foot he crushes a raven, supposedly symbolizing his triumph over the demons of temptation. Hindus of Reunion clothe the idol in Hindu sacred colours and treat St. Expedit as an incarnation of the God Vishnu. Hindu mothers wanting children tie saffron cloths to the grilles. For the sake of Reunion’s Hindu population one hopes they don’t sit back and wait for the baby to knock on the door in 9 months time. The descendents of the slaves take the spear and the raven to depict sacrifice and consider the Saint to be a sort of white witch doctor. In order to neutralise his power, natives often cut off the head of the Saint and use it for their own spells and what not.

The cult of St. Expedit provides a very interesting case study of the evolution of religion. We don’t often get to see a religion evolve from an objective point of view over a very short time. I think it’s quite likely that many of the world’s mainstream religions are very similar, except they evolved over a far longer time and are thus more engrained into our lives. Our understanding of religion is based on what has been passed down from generation to generation, and I imagine each new version is bastardized to some extent. What we are left with today could for all we know be miles and miles from the truth. But it seems that isn’t what is important. What is important is that religion gives ppl something to live for and to shape their lives about, it provides a degree of structure. That’s obviously what is important for the ppl in Reunion. This very day many mothers may be telling their kids that if they steal things St. Expedit will cut their hands off with his spear, just like how our parents told us that if we commit sins we’ll go to hell or be reborn as something not very nice.

Maybe a 500 years down the line ppl in Reunion will fight wars in the name of St. Expedit. Try telling them then that St. Expedit is just a clerical error. Jihaad!

This issue of unethical conversions came up in indi’s blog comments but I couldn’t find the argument clearly and completely articulated so i thought i’ll give it a go. (After reading this through I realised that it is neither articulate nor complete:) ) The issue has interested me and held me in a dilemma for sometime. So the question is, should unethical conversions be banned? We need to define what an unethical conversion is before starting off. A conversion is a voluntary change in religion, there’s nothing bad about it, a free choice is exercised. An unethical conversion is, I think, one where the freedom of the choice is compromised. Say for instance someone holds a gun to your head and says “oi, if you don’t let me baptise/circumsize/tie a pirith noola on you, I will shoot you.” Now that is clearly not a free choice, it is a constrained choice and is a form of coercion, this makes it unethical.

The argument for banning them would run along the following lines. The conversion is not voluntary and individual freedom to choose one’s religion is compromised. Now, if we consider the case where a person is holding a gun to a man’s head, the argument seems sound enough, the man is forced to abandon his religion since losing one’s life is hardly a choice at all (usually). But happily enough we don’t have such extreme cases. The usual ones we hear of are cases where ppl in extreme poverty are told that they will be given material benefits that will help them out of their current situation if they are willing to change their religion, their kids will be given an education if they are willing to change religion and cases in hospitals where grieving relatives are told that the dying patient will achieve salvation if the whole family converts. In each of these cases, the compromised situation of the convertees is taken advantage of, abused even. Now this is clearly not very nice of the converter.

But, is the freedom of the convertee being diminished? I would say no. We make constrained choices every single day. If your boss tells you to do something that you don’t enjoy, x, you can either do x or tell him to sod off. You’d do x bc you want to keep you job, but that doesn’t make your freedom any less, it’s not like you can’t find another job. But you choose to do x bc it’s a lot easier than going on a job hunt. In the constrained choice of education or religion, certain ppl will choose religion and others will choose education depending on their individual preferences. My grandmother was in such a situation and just told the Father to fly a kite and she quit school. She ended up being a housewife and had a life immersed in religion and ended up being very happy. Another person who doesn’t care much about religion and greatly values education will make the alternate choice. Creating a legal bar will actually diminish freedom of choice since it takes out one set of options from the picture. Similarly, if a man is in extreme poverty and would gladly trade religions for some quick bucks, what right does the government have to say that his choice is incorrect?

What can’t be denied is that the converter is being naughty. He is trying to take advantage of the compromised condition of the convertee. And that is arguably immoral. But then again, that happens all the time. Poor ppl with few skills are given jobs with low pay that can barely sustain their life. The employer is taking advantage of the fact that the man has few skills and is unlikely to find a better paying job and thus he can afford to pay him very little. Now arguably the employer is being immoral, but wouldn’t the poor man be happy to at least have a job, be it a low paying one? This is the argument put forward against minimum wages, it squeezes out so many jobs leaving ppl unemployed and unable to find subsistance wages. It won’t make sense to ban employers from giving low pay jobs to poor ppl just bc they are taking advantage of the poor man’s situation. If the govt. were to ban conversions they would have to ban a lot of other things on this same basis. Taking advantage of an individual’s circumstances maybe immoral but to bring it under the legal framework will create a lot of problems.

What we can conclude is that a conversion taking advantage of a person’s circumstances does not inhibit freedom of choice, but it is not very nice of the converter and it becomes very difficult to punish the converter in such cases. Furthermore, trying to bring such issues under the legal hammer are very difficult, it raises very subjective questions such as what exactly is a voluntary choice? Some may even argue that the man with a gun to his head could have chosen to die if he loved his religion enough. Do we really want the govt. deciding for us what is meant by a voluntary choice? The case for bringing religious conversions into the legal framework is quite weak, it would involve messing with individual choices and dealing with very subjective issues. Decisions about religion are best left to the discretion of the individual and the state has no role to play in this matter. What nags me is that men/women of religion are blatantly taking advantage of ppl’s circumstances and getting away with it. Men/women of religion are not mudalali’s and such behaviour is hypocritical, so I’d encourage anyone approached with such offers to produce your best kaney para and make it smart!

It’s a Wednesday night, and that means chillax time bc I finish my major weekly tutes on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. As is usual on days like today I have consumed too much food and as a result i’m feeling lazy and bloated. Menu was grilled trout, chicken curry, parippu with niwithi and braised broccoli with more niwithi. Quite rich for a bunch of students innit? (I say innit purely in jest, it is not a term I use with any other purpose). I can’t remember the last time I had two types of flesh for one meal, probably was at home sometime. There was however a time when I ate no flesh at all, I had a vegetarian phase for about 10 months.

I wanted to be a vegetarian around mid 2001. But then I started uni in England and I realised that there’s a limit to how much carrot, potatos and cabbage one can eat without jumping off a bridge. (I am aware that the brits know how to make potatos in a multitude of ways but i still think the best you can do with a potato is to use it as a weapon against shop lifters in supermarkets). So I quit no sooner I started but made a quiet pact with my conscience to become fully fledged vege boy once I pass away out. In 2004 I eventually passed out and after spending a few days gobbling lots of seafood back home I quite abruptly stopped eating all forms of meat. That is, no fish, no meat, no crustaceans and no birds. This was part of my attempt to be more spiritual and “one with nature” since it is fair to equate consuming flesh to killing. And killing is frowned upon. I think I remember the exact moment of inspiration. I was having dinner with my parents and as usual we had some meat and I swatted an annoying mosquito. Ammi at once reprimanded me saying that it’s a sin to kill. Wtp? it’s ok to kill a chicken but not a mosquito? Chickens don’t make annoying buzzing noises when you’re trying to sleep and they don’t suck your blood and they don’t give you God awful diseases (other than recent buggers, bloody poultry - and what’s with Asian Bird Flu inconspicuously becoming Avian Bird Flu? It’s like Sinhala Urumaya becoming Sihala Urumaya after realising that the original name is ever so slightly politically incorrect). So I thought to myself, if it’s bad to kill a mosquito (which it is, doesn’t mean I like them, zzzz zzzz swat!!), it’s equally bad to kill chickens.

I’m guessing most families would encourage a young aspiring vegetarian. But not mine. They said things like, “Don’t be a fool, that chicken would have been killed whether you eat it or not so might as well eat it.” and “Just bc you don’t eat some fish you think all the bloody fishermen will throw their rods in the sea and start knitting hankerchiefs?” Ok so they do have a point, my reduced consumption will not make a sufficient dent in total demand to reduce supply and thereby reduce killing. And if everybody thinks that way there would be no reduction in demand for flesh. But, as more and more ppl think otherwise, the dent in demand becomes greater and greater. Today there are far more vegetarians than there were 10 or 20 years ago, and that would never have happened if everybody had the mindset that one person can’t make a difference.

People forever try to reconcile Buddhism with eating meat, but I think that’s a very tough proposition. They say that the Buddha never said to not eat meat. It’s very difficult to argue that eating meat is not tantamount to taking a life. If we didn’t eat meat nobody would kill cows and chickens and try convince us to put it in our mouths. A good way to look at eating meat is as a sin of collective society, and we as individuals in society are all equally responsible. The way to avoid the sin is to take individual responsibility and remove ourselves from the cycle of killing and eating, that is the least we can do.

Now this is important. I don’t have a problem with ppl who eat meat. We all sin every single day and we know it. We lie, we cuss, we consume intoxicating substances, we lust and we do most things that pious ppl shake their heads at. And yes, we eat meat. I do have a problem with ppl who eat meat and try to make it seem like it isn’t a sin and that it isn’t tantamount to killing. Just bite the bullet. It’s a sin, it’s mean but we do it anyway bc it tastes damn good! I also don’t quite understand how some ppl eat one type of flesh but don’t eat other types of flesh. Now Hindus in particular say that it’s not very nice to eat beef bc we drink the cow’s milk and the bulls work for us and all. Fair enough too, they deserve a peaceful retirement. But screw the chicken, eggs or no eggs, the chicken is going down. And the goats and fish and everyone else. So why is it that some ppl find it a terrible sin to eat a goat or a pig or a cow but quite alrite to eat a chicken or a fish? Aren’t the latter creatures living, breathing beings too? One might say that by not eating certain animals you’re cutting down on the amount of lives you consume. But just bc you don’t eat beef or mutton, are you going to go without flesh that day? You’ll probably compensate with whatever type of flesh that you do eat. If you’re going to not eat meat you might as well go all the way, this is one area where I don’t think there is a gray area in between, it’s either all or nothing. In fact it’s probably better to eat a dish of beef than to eat a dish of prawns bc the latter would result in way more deaths. Another common excuse is that you need animal protein to survive. Cock. There are plenty of vegans who live perfectly healthy lives.

So what happened to my vegetarian phase? Around March this year I got a flu and I was sick for a week, quite basic stuff except that my natural immunity failed to recover, my white blood cell count dropped 40% below normal and I was told that I’m not consuming enough protein and was ordered to eat flesh. Thank God. I had already started cheating by that stage and sneaking in a chicken buriyani on the odd day as opposed to my usual vegetable rice and curry and it was a matter of time before my mental strength gave way to the power of the taste bud. I missed sea food tremendously. But I was very lucky in that I just adore Sri Lankan vegetables. Mallums, wattakka, nelum ala, karavila, watakolu, wambotu and so on, I could just live on the stuff. If not for that there was no way I could have survived even the 10 or so months I did as a vegetarian. Now I eat pretty much anything, as my father says “duwana paninina ona ekak kamu.” I understand that it’s not a very nice thing to do, but then I do a lot of not nice things. Hopefully someday I will have sufficient mental strength to quit meat for good.

Disclaimer: All you vegans out there, hats off to you (don’t take the title personally, it’s from a T shirt I saw and felt i had to fit it in here somewhere). Except the ones who go to social functions and make a fuss saying they don’t eat this and that and embarass their hosts as a result, stop being anal, it’s not going to kill you to eat a bit of meat, though it might kill something else.

I have been immersed in various education systems for all but 3 years of my life. From the age of 2 I was in nursery and since then I have spent one year working, the rest of the time I’ve been in schools or universities. One thing that has never been taught to me in all those years is the amount that we can learn from other religions. I’m a Buddhist and studied Buddhism in school whilst the Christian and Muslim kids went for their respective aagam classes. As a result there was always a sense of mystery when it came to other religions. I’d always instinctively feel that “my” religion was superior in some way or another and dismiss the different practices by other religions as being somehow off the mark. Thankfully I grew up and learnt to think and learn for myself. I have a reasonable understanding of Christianity and Islam to a lesser extent. I unfortunately have little or no understanding of Hinduism and Judaism and must do my bit to correct that. This being the month of Ramadan I felt inspired to share a few of my favourite bits of different religions. And also some of my earlier (common) misconceptions that have been corrected, to an extent. They are all my own interpretations of course.

Ramadan - The idea of fasting for a month used to baffle me when I was small. My old Karate class was mainly made up of Muslim kids and I loved Ramadan bc the classes were shorter but I never understood why they’d put themselves through that. We’d all be tired and dying for water but the Muslim kids never drank any. But the idea does seem to have some validity. During that month you understand what it’s like to be in a position of deprivation and would in theory make you more aware of what you have been blessed with and thus be thankful for it. Of course this doesn’t always work in practice but the idea is good.

Confession - My understanding of confession is that according to Catholicism if you confess your sins before God you will be forgiven. There are a few caveats but I can’t remember them off hand. This sounds almost laughably ridiculous but that again depends on how you’d interpret it. The idea behind confession is that you admit to yourself that you have sinned and try to come to terms with it. The hardest part about dealing with a problem is admitting to yourself that there is such a problem. Confession gives you that little push you need. Just bc you confess doesn’t mean you’d be absolved of any sin but it may well have a positive effect on your character in terms of avoiding future sin. Again, this works on paper but not necessarily in practice.

Impermanance - Buddhism is a complex and interesting religion, but if I had to choose one thing from it I would go for its take on the nature of the world we live in. I interpret the Buddha as having had an impressive philosophical insight into our world and understanding the fact that what we experience is not permanant and we can’t take it to the grave with us. This not only refers to “stuff” like cash, goodies, toys, handcuffs and whatever makes you tick really, but also to emotional attachment, achievement and non-material things. What I like to take from Buddhism is the simple message that we shouldn’t over rate these things that seem to play such a central role in our lives, and that we should just see them for what they really are.

Rastafari Herbs - Rastafaris believe that smoking ganja is a spiritual act which clears the mind, brings about peace of mind and that it helps drive the mind towards the path of truth. They also insist that the good plant enjoys the Biblical nod. To quote Wikipedia;
Genesis 1:11 “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.”
Genesis 3:18 “… thou shalt eat the herb of the field.”
Proverbs 15:17 “Better is a dinner of herb where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
Psalms 104:14 “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man.”

Now isn’t that just too cool for school? Also, Dreadlocks are the way to go.

In my book its a good idea to learn what you can from a variety of religions and accept what you think makes sense and leave alone what you’d rather not adhere to (like all that ganja nonsense, i hear it’s frowned upon in most parts). I heard that they’re introducing (or introduced) comparative religious studies in Govt. schools back at home in Sri Lanka, I hope this is true, it would certainly be a step in the right direction.