I am just a seeker in life. I have stopped running. Instead, I have started looking within and around me.
I am not a propagator of religion. I believe that religion and the interpretations of religion are root causes to conflict all around the world.
Religion preaches peace but propagators of religion act in a manner that leaves the world in pieces.
At the base point of any religion is a God and a Human. But often in religious tensions, God and Human both are forgotten.
I was born into the Christian religious faith but my ancestral roots are Indic.
I am aware that a duress or an allurement or simple faith would have led to their conversion centuries ago when Goa witnessed a brutal inquisition.
Sometimes, I get advised on social media and outside by some proponents of the Hindu religion that I should convert from Christianity to the Sanatan Dharma faith.
Their advice, I believe come from their limited understanding of Sanatan Dharma and Christianity.
Christianity is a religious faith centred around the belief of salvation if you believe or damnation if you do not believe in the path professed under the Christian faith. I have grown up believing in some of its tenets and also questioning some of its tenets.
I believe in the teachings of Jesus for its simplicity and its application in real life with people around you.
The Bible teaches us that Jesus gave his disciples two commandments: Love God with all your heart and mind. And to love your neighbour as you, love yourself.
I have read the Bible several times and there are many wonderful passages in it that help you learn and deal with life’s challenges. There are lessons to learn from it but it is not life.
I am not blind to the truth that the Catholic Church as an institution has sinned in its numerous discretions over the centuries when it shaped itself into an organised religion. However, errs of an institution, may or may not be the fault lines of a faith.
For most of my growing up years as a Christian, I have always quested to understand the truth of life. In fact, my knowledge on the tenets of the Christian faith comes from my mother’s simple understanding of the teachings imparted by the Catholic Church on Christianity.
The Christian faith does not teach you to hate. However, some representatives of Christian institutions in their zealous drive to proselytize, while intending to propagate hope and peace, resort to propagating hate and fear. The intent is to convey that the Christian God is the real God and every other God is a false God. Sadly, it is here that the fallacy emerges.
Growing up, I too was sceptical and questionable about the religious practices of other faiths, but I was never taught to mock or disrespect them, I just did not understand them.
Knowledge has been my pursuit and wisdom has been my guide. The religious journey that started in Christianity led me to quintessential question that bothers most seekers of the truth ‘If God created humans, humans will bear an imprint of its creator and therefore humans should have some God-like qualities. Therefore, ‘Who am I’?”
The search got me to look into my cultural roots and I found my Vedic roots in India. Most of life’s simple questions found its answers when I looked at the question from the eyes of Vedic knowledge and science.
The most important realisation that dawned on me is Sanatan Dharma is not a dogmatic practice or dependence of religious texts to commune with God. The energy, we call God, lies within you and around you. To know God is to know yourself.
Good and evil are not separate manifestations. Humans are both good and evil. Good when they act in the interest of others, bad when they act in the interests of themselves. Just like nature, when nature unleashes its fury, it destroys all in its path, when it chooses to caress it is ethereal and nurtures all in its path.
Sanatan Dharma teaches me that I am in this life because of the karmas that I may or may not carry from another life time. Yet, the most important moot point is that my actions in my current life will decide the outcomes in my current life and my future lives too.
Religion is too small in front of the tenets and philosophies of Sanatan Dharma, because it goes beyond religion and strides in the realm of spirituality.
Our dharma is to live out our lives in a Sanatan way, meaning in an eternal way, because our souls carry on for eternity because it is a form of energy, it moves forward or backward but it never stops moving.
Our dharma is to walk our path of destiny, whether we believe it is preordained or not preordained; with honesty, purity, goodwill, mercy, patience, forbearance, self-restraint and generosity.
In today’s world, sadly, most of us humans are lost. We believe that a religious tag defines our existence. Are you a Christian? Are you a Muslim? Or are you a Hindu?
Sanatan Dharma is not a religious tag. Simply put, it is your soulful and human existence. We fail to look within and we end up seeing it through a religious prism.
I am a father to two daughters; I love both of them. I will not let any one of my daugthers to be harmed. I will not choose between both of them, because I love both of them equally.
That to me is seeing life through the eyes of Sanatan Dharma, God does not choose one because that person belongs to a particular religion. I believe, God sees you for who you are at that point of time and if God wants to touch your life, God will.
Jesus and Lucifer, Ram and Raavan come from one universal energy source; one exhibits positive energy and the other negative energy because of their decisions.
Humanity is the reality of life and not religious bias. If we fail to see God in another human or in a creation of nature, because our religion teaches us otherwise, then our religion is wrong.
My dharma is to seek knowledge and pursue wisdom with passion; in this I find a oneness with an energy that is constructive and creative; an energy that wants to touch every heart by tapping into the universal consciousness, because in the end, we are connected by an energy of goodness and oneness. That to me is living your life following the principles of Sanatan Dharma and me being born in Christian family does not change this simple truth.
