Vannakkam: I had this 'funny' thought the other day. A long time ago, twice I went to places where it seemed the entire religion was condensed into one activity: scriptural reading. One event was a 'Gita Reading Group', an informal group of people who had rented a small room, which they kindly allowed us to share in use, which eventually lead to the building of the temple I was associated with. Out of respect and curiousity, I sat in on it one day, even though the reading was in Hindi. It seemed to me that all the group did was take turns reading pages from the book. Not even any discussion. So that was the religious event, not unlike a group of school children taking turns reading a novel, one paragraph at a time.
Another time something similar happened when I attended a function at a local Fijian temple. The men sat in a circle and took turns reading a chapeter of the Ramayana. Again, no discussion.
So the funny thought was on how fixated the people were on this activity. Imagine Krishna himself, or Rama himself came along, and asked to join the group. Would the people just say, "Sure, you're welcome to join us," not even recognising who it was, so concentrated they are on the reading?
So I guess more generally, its how sometimes we get so involved with a particular aspect of the religion, we exclude the rest. I also know people whose entire religion is temple worship. That's it. Not unlike 'Sunday Christians' if I can borrow the term, the entire religion is 2 hours one day of the week. All the other 'dos' in that other list are largely forgotten about.
I think most of us seek out a more balanced approach. Some of this, some of that, a few spices here, etc.
Aum Namasivaya
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