For some time now, I have been trying to paint a picture of my relationship with spirituality and religion. My Facebook information on religion reads - "Hindu/Haven't Figured It Out" and that has been the status quo for sometime now.
I was raised with the mythology and ritual of my traditional Hindu grandparents. In fact, my first language was Telugu - as spoken by the Pandavas and Kauravas of the ancient Indian epic, The Mahabharata, which at the time, had been televised as a hugely popular sitcom. At the age of 3, much to the amusement of my family, I would narrate in great detail the entire Mahabharata including all those long, complicated names that I can no longer make head or tail of. I sat down to all the requisite poojas, loved prasadam, enjoyed wearing the colorful pattu langas that accompanied any religious festivity and of course, the sense of peace and beauty of the small household altars decorated with incense, fresh flowers, tiny sugar cubes and rows of ants marching to and fro, perhaps also making their worship.
I went to a Montessori school in a church for the first three years of my formal schooling. There were 18 of us from K-5 grade with 3 teachers of rather liberal sentiment concerning spirituality(Tarsilla, Cheryl and Stephen's mom, lol) and who imparted to all their students an overwhelming sense of joy and wonder about the world that surrounded them. We sang the head teacher's favorite Christmas Carol every year, learnt science by hiking through local nature trails and observing tadpoles, birds, skunk cabbage and getting stuck in the mud. We celebrated Valentine's day by playing 'Hug, Hug, Kiss' (instead of Duck, Duck, Goose - which we played through the winter in the Church graveyard), celebrated Japanese New Year by eating rice and fish with our hands, put on a yearly Thanksgiving play, dyed Easter eggs at Easter, made home-made Pumpkin ice-cream in the Church kitchen at Hallowen, learnt about Bees and honey by tasting about 10 different types of honey from different flowers in the Springtime and ran a minor "coal mining" operation in the church backyard. There were never any overt religious dialogue or preaching, but looking back, this period feels like the most deeply religious of my life.
Religion was a part of my life in beautiful ways as a child. Since I was fortunate enough to have a magical childhood where I never really needed to pray to God for anything because I had everything - there was never even any room for disillusionment. Religion has always been a deep part of me, not for spiritual or mystical reasons, but for the simple idea that it has such positive and comforting associations.
That being said, the past few years of this so called 'adulthood' have made me realize that I absolutely do no believe in the existence of a particular entity called God. I believe in the Divine and the beautiful and the kind, whatever that is and wherever or however it is centered. I do believe that there is something greater than me and every other individual on this planet. I catch bits of that feeling when I listen to great music, read about a particular interesting aspect of physiology, stand outside in the sunshine or look at a little baby smiling. But to attribute the beauty of all of those things to the greatness of 'God' seems a little simplistic and frankly, a little insulting. Not insulting - I can't find the word - but somehow it seems to detract from the beauty of those objects.
When people ask me what religion I follow I have been apt to say Hindu, because Hinduism in it's purest form allows for freedom of interpretation with respect to the exact definition of God. I have not really pushed to define myself religiously. Because I consider some of Atheistic argument just as reactionary and pointless as hardline religious people. I have always felt, but never ever really expressed, that a synthesis of the two and personal freedom somehow allied to a sense of community would be the strongest scaffolding on which to build my life. However, I've never really found such a philosophy articulated well. As the above video describes, I've always felt rather squeamish about the doctrine that surrounds the ritualism that I sometimes find comforting and the seeming harshness in using absolute rationality as a guide to my life.
Atheism 2.0 as explained in the video above is the best expression of many of the things I feel personally. It is almost an anthropological approach to the construction of a scaffolding from which to reach new heights of personal growth and development.
Perhaps it's a result of growing up in plenty, but I like when I'm told that I don't have to compromise, that I can have the best of both worlds - because there are so many, and they're never 'hermetically sealed'.
Maybe, I've found my religion.
