Religious Tolerance

Only as a half-hearted pursuit of the rather elusive vagaries of the mind, I was trying to find something funny about religious tolerance. To be more precise, a funny image that diffuses the rather grey clouds that often hang around such chronically heavy topics. Well, for one, I couldn't find anything even remotely funny. I surely wanted to feel disappointed once again, now that it is almost becoming a habit. But, as my boss would want me to believe, no result is sometimes more insightful than a positive result in research. For once, may be, I found the perfect guinea pig topic to use this vaguely supportive assurance from my supervisor.

So, may be it is quite difficult to find a funny image about religious tolerance since everyone is so damn serious about it. But then what is religious tolerance? That's a question that is surely bound to come up. And, what is religion? That one is bound to come up too. I know of people who want me to define and refine my notion of religion along with specific examples of how I apply it when running through this cockroach race track called life. This is like the question, "would a cockroach survive a nuclear bomb?" and voila! to get an answer we test the nuclear bomb... and hopefully there are instruments that will survive the blast, cuz we won't. So, why subject such an atrociously difficult and potentially harmful question to an answer that can't be tailored to everybody? Well, what the heck! I can snap up one adapted memory strung through a series of random sounds/images from a distant past that may provide a better answer than I can hope to put in words.

The morning sounds in a city like Hyderabad are myriad; the swish-swashing of brooms in the street, the namaaz in the morning blaring in the background, the bell ring of the milkwala, barking dogs, mooing buffaloes (if mooing is the word I want), the vegetable seller invigorated with a new pavarotti-ish voice for a new day, M.S. Subbulaxmi waking lord Venkateswara up, dad's flipping through the newspaper which always resulted in grunts and sighs (curses?), and simultaneous coffee sipping which can only be described as the most perceptibly thorough audible satisfaction of having settled in life, the maid servant's tinkering with the vessels, mom's cooking sizzling in a chorus of rice cookers going off while the fresh drinking water falling into the pots and pans adds a timpani drumline -metal spoons clanging together incessantly like cymbals... in short kumbhakarna couldn't have asked for a better alarm in the world that can compare to this confluent dissonance.

Then, when I get out of my house either while going to the bus stop or driving to college, there are inevitably perceptible temple bells, a cow-cart bellowing devotion through loudspeakers of Sai Baba's songs, political rallies with agendas being propounded on bullhorns, sometimes congregations of telugu christians singing hymns of the Lord, Son of God, waste-paper wala shouting at the top of his voice, children running to schools with pitter-pattering feet, bus horns, auto rickshaws' unique horn that reminds us of an orgasmic elephant, traffic buzz... even today when I call my friends while they are commuting to work in their company cabs, I hear all these sounds --when they ask me what I am doing...I reply, confounded by a rather silent background noise on my end, that I am commuting back from work.

Around lunch time, along with all the above noises, a new call for prayer from a nearby mosque, people cheering for India in a cricket match, sounds of crackling dosas, sizzling vadas, steaming biryani, lunch boxes clamoring for those morsels of aural space, and this continues in the evening only shattered by a devstatingly loud ayyappa bhajan somewhere in the apartment complex. If it is a festival of some kind, ganesha's songs do duets with either a nasal male voice or a chorus of Lord's songs -- in short, this is the religion/country/city/life/experiences I was exposed to. The tolerance came from accepting all the noises from various sectors or showing equal disdain to the city's borborygmic sounds. To come back to the questions, religion and tolerance of other religions to us was in that we didn't ask that delightful combo of Osmania biscoot and Irani chai what its ethnic origins are? Or that fantastic veg roll what its geographical roots are and if it has place in our diet as compared to our historical and spiritual truth? Or that hot jalebi and mirchi bajji? In fact we discuss this stuff eating one of these tasty comestibles. And, I don't ask the people who got all this stuff for me to enjoy if they deserve to live in this country based on religious roots .. If it is a matter of picking my faith absolutely clearly that conforms to some accepted labeling scheme, I would fall somewhere between a veg roll and Andaa biryani who votes for reheated frozen pulihora and ranch dressing as a terrific combo.

This time from the memory was also a time when I was beginning to read everything under the sun on what I thought was spirituality (since, obviously, I wasn't much of a "religious" person) - Vivekananda, J Krishnamurthi, UG Krishnamurti, Richard Bach, Ramakrishna, a little later The king James Bible, Yogananda, Upanishads... I thought it would be funny to write what I think some of these sources would say about religious tolerance if we were ever to catch them at moment when the enjoy the lighter vein (since I couldn't find a funny picture that says a thousand words, I wrote a thousand words which I hope will be funny).

Vivekananda " I already spoke at the parliament of world religions, when I said Brothers and Sisters and everybody clapped I realized how long this whole religious tolerance thing will take -- I didn't live to see it"

J krishnamurti "What is religious tolerance? Let us inquire into the meaning of it. Is it beyond thought or is it a thought that we want to investigate? Is it a concept in our mind or is it an existing reality...a fact? If it is a thought then does it have any reality outside our mind? Wait... I am confused..."

UG Krishnamurti "What nonsense is this hullabaloo about religious tolerance? There is no religion, there is no tolerance...There has been no qualitative change in man's thinking; we feel about our neighbours just as the frightened caveman felt towards his. The only thing that has changed is our ability to destroy our neighbor and his property.It is terror, not love, not brotherhood that will help us to live together. Until this message percolates to the level of human consciousness, I don't think there is any hope.and this whole religion business is bullshit."

Richard Bach "I hate organized religion. I think religious tolerance itself is a religion... what I said here could be wrong"

Sri Ramakrishna "All roads lead to Calcutta. You should ask Narendra or Yogananda for directions. Or I can give you a "kick" start - I don't need to know where you come from"

Eckhart Tolle - "Is there something called as religious intolerance or tolerance in THIS MOMENT? Out of the stillness of our presence will arise what can be termed as tolerance".

King James Bible First line: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." Last line " Amen". The rest are details.


p.s. Deep respects for all the channels of infinite knowledge. All of them love a little fun.