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Evolution of worship
Spirituality came first. Organised religion came much later and took over many aspects of the spiritual journey. We spoke about that and about whether it helped or hampered one’s quest in an earlier post here. In this post, the idea is to explore how worship evolved and whether this evolution has helped in the quality of our contemplation. While worship must have begun from when we were all pagans, since there’s not much reference material from that period, for the purpose of this post, we will begin from the pre-vedic period, but we have no written texts from that period…
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The Three Paths
Most questions I had about religion and its practice stemmed from the paths which we have been handed down. I’ve been reading about these for a couple of weeks now, and the material that I came across made for a mighty interesting explanation. These were constructs based on circumstance and have shaped every aspect of our religion (and thereby spirituality). This post is mostly to do with Hinduism as I do not have the grounding to dig into how paths evolved in other religions. But I would assume those would have come up in a similar way too; and if…
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Is God real?
One of the most persistent questions since humans started thinking about religion and spirituality is this – whether God is real.Often, the question itself is considered as heretic. But if the path to our spirituality lies via religion, there is no progress till this question is resolved. Atleast ‘resolved’ to one’s satisfaction and an internal coming-to-terms. Asking this question is extremely important and critical to spiritual evolution. While reading about how religion came about, there are two approaches that I found. Commonly called the ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ schools of thought. The bottom-up approach views God as the interface and is…
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Kathopanishad – Three Boons and many Secrets!
I’ve heard Nachiketa’s story before, but this is the first time I read more of the Kathopanishad, and it is incredible! This has everything! There are so many examples and quotes from this that we use in our regular lives, without fully knowing the context.Kathopanishad was composed around 800 BCE. So it predates many of our texts, and should be taken seriously. Many have retold this story with subtle differences, but here is the basic story briefly – Rishi Vajasravasa performs a yagna, and gives away old, useless cows hoping for merit for his sacrifice. His son Nachiketa sees this…
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Closer than your Jugular Vein
Wanting to know who / where God is is a simple enough question, that most people have quite early in their lives. Our childhood stories show God as a person who will come and solve our problems, provided we are devout enough or do a lot of hard penance for a specific purpose. And then, as the years went by, I heard Baba’s bhajans like ‘Atma Rama Ananda Rama’ which said that Rama (or God) was within our Atma. Later, I started learning Vedic chanting, and this theme became even more pronounced. In the Svetasvatara Upanishad 5.8, it is said…
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First Post – A Journey
There is a journey we all undertake. A journey to find out more. For some, that journey happens automatically or with very little effort, and they are the fortunate ones. For most, it is a conscious effort to first identify the need, and then try and see which path suits us best. Thoughts of who we are, why are we here, what is our purpose, where are we going, how do we become better, and so on keep pushing us forward on this quest. Our ancestors, who first discovered the power of such contemplation, must have thought that a structured…