Re: Religion - a joy unto itself (or not)?
Namaste Viraja ji,
- As a full-time goal to be pursued forever
- A casual activity like every other activity
In all fairness, that member was only advising a youngster (13 or 14 yrs of age) when saying to the effect that religion is ultimately meant to help us in all other things - even mundane included - rather than taking up the whole of our time and energy and not giving anything back.
He never meant that religion should be a casual activity.
And as you yourself have surmised, too much of religion (without connect with real world) breeds intolerance, even fundamentalism. When this happens, the subject loses all connect with reality, misunderstands everything others say - even those things not addressed to her directly - and the subject becomes paranoid (instead of enabled, as is the stated goal) and sees pretty much everything as attack on self.
Misunderstanding other people - what others are saying - if that has happened, something could be very wrong possibly within oneself, and some course correction should be in order.
People love bashing, love flogging the dead horse, you start it and they will be more than happy to participate in it; but does that solves the problem? Hain?
Things to remember:
1. Life = yajña
2. Depth of Āstika knowledge is directly proportional
to the richness of Sanskrit it is written in
3. Āstika = Bhārata ("east") / Ārya ("west")
4. Varṇa = tripartite division of Vedic polity
5. r = c. x²
where,
r = realisation
constant c = intelligence
variable x = bhakti
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