Category Archives: religion

In Remembrance of 26/11 and Thanksgiving to the Heroes

Warn­ing: A post with­out struc­ture, theme or com­po­si­tion. Sense­less unedited out­pour­ing. Read at your own risk.
Blood, bul­lets, and deaths. Bru­tal vio­lence. Screams. Help­less­ness. Despair. Pain. Courage.
A nation of a bil­lion aspir­ing to be on the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil brought to its knees by just ten armed ter­ror­ists.
Hun­dreds died. Thou­sands wept. Mil­lions pan­icked. A bil­lion were ter­ror­ized.
The

What The Hell Is Divinity?

A few blog posts and con­ver­sa­tions with friends have made me unquiet about the con­cept of Divin­ity: What is Divin­ity and what does it mean?
Back­ground
My friend Asuph wrote about Divin­ity in 2004, when I had not even started blog­ging. He uses Pirsig’s Meta­physics of Qual­ity from Zen and The Art of Motor­cy­cle Main­te­nance to describe what

How To Become A Spiritual Guru

Becom­ing a spir­i­tual guru is not as dif­fi­cult as it may seem.
There are one or two guides already writ­ten on the web, but after my pop­u­lar Rule­book for Indian TV News Pro­duc­ers, I thought I would write my own guide to becom­ing a Spiritual Guru.

Appear knowl­edge­able about at least one ancient phi­los­o­phy and way of life.

Religion in Environmentalism

In the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing my pop­u­lar post Reli­gion vs. Gen­der Equal­ity & Fem­i­nism, there was a ref­er­ence to reli­gion and envi­ron­men­tal­ism. As if on cue, the Pope has now said:
“Is it not true that incon­sid­er­ate use of cre­ation begins where God is mar­gin­al­ized or also where his exis­tence is denied? If the human creature’s rela­tion­ship

Encouraging Superstition on TV

A few days back, I was watch­ing a children’s real­ity show on TV, Zee Saregamapa Lit­tle Champs. Young chil­dren sing and com­pete in this show, and there are two judges, one of whom is Ms. Alka Yagnik.

After one of the kids sung a song com­posed by Bappi Lahiri, Ms. Yag­nik said she had brought a

Religion vs. Gender Equality & Feminism

How do reli­gions treat women? How do eman­ci­pated women treat reli­gion? A sequence of events recently has made my mind unquiet over this sub­ject. Nita asked if Hin­duism was com­ing of age, with peo­ple per­form­ing the sacred ‘thread cer­e­mony’ on their daugh­ters. The BJP found itself trapped in the maze of con­fu­sion sur­round­ing Hin­dutva. And

Religion vs. Atheism in Parenting

A few weeks back, I read Richard Dawkins in The God Delu­sion say:
I want us to flinch when we hear of a ‘Chris­t­ian child’ or a ‘Mus­lim child’. Small chil­dren are too young to know their views on life, ethics and the cos­mos. We should no more speak of a Chris­t­ian child than of a

Poverty is not the root cause of terrorism

Arch­bishop Desmond Tutu has gone on record in an inter­view with CNN to say:
““You can never win a war against ter­ror as long as there are con­di­tions in the world that make peo­ple des­per­ate — poverty, dis­ease, igno­rance, et cetera.
He said the dis­par­ity between the rich and poor in parts of the world causes insta­bil­ity and

A 9/11 Tribute from Voyager & Carl Sagan

                                                 

This image was taken, at Sagan’s sug­ges­tion, by Voy­ager 1 on Feb­ru­ary 14, 1990. As the space­craft left our plan­e­tary neigh­bor­hood to the edges of our solar sys­tem, engi­neers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voy­ager 1 was about 6.4 bil­lion kilo­me­ters (4 bil­lion miles) away, when it cap­tured

Human Rights and Amnesty

Amnesty Inter­na­tional (AI) is a world­wide move­ment of peo­ple who cam­paign for inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized human rights. It is one of the fore­most insti­tu­tions, rec­og­nized world­wide, towards the fight for indi­vid­ual human rights.
Why is it called “Amnesty”? The def­i­n­i­tion of “Amnesty” is: “A gen­eral par­don granted by a gov­ern­ment, espe­cially for polit­i­cal offenses”, or as a verb,