Month: May 2012

Great Minds Discuss Ideas, Average Minds Discuss Events, Small Minds Discuss People….

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I love this quote and every time I read it I am reminded that I have a long journey ahead from small, to average, to great. A journey I try hard to make progress on each day. I don’t know if I will ever be like one of those great minds, but I feel that  most of us have a part that is great, a part that is average and sometimes a part that can be small. With smallness being the lowest common denominator we share with most people, or safely fall back to.

Through life’s experiences, our circumstances and most of all our choices we consciously or sub consciously decide which part we want ourselves to be governed by, in which proportion we want each aspect to define us and coexist inside us.

But I find more and more people wanting their  lives to be above average, when it comes to their homes, their cars, their lifestyles, their life partner, their children, but are perfectly comfortable letting their minds be small. Some of us have not even started the journey of upgrading our minds, we are still too busy upgrading our cars, furniture, homes, handbags and friends. In the process of achieving greatness in material things, be it fame, popularity, vanity, we have become very small as people. May be that is our choice, may be its our destiny or maybe it is our karma.

I do feel one thing for sure that growing up I used to see more people with small things, average lives but Great minds, now I meet more and more people with big things, great lives but small minds.

From Religion to Spirtuality…..the road less travelled.

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 “The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism.”(Albert Einstein)

I recently came across this quote from Albert Einstein. I thought it was interesting as my Husband and I have often had this discussion.

I don’t think organized religions; be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism,  have a role left to play in our lives today. They seem inept at addressing social and personal issues arising from a modern way of life. The focus of organized religions was around organizing society and bringing a civil order.

Now as societies have become civilized, individuals are no longer looking towards religion to answer questions pertaining to moral conduct, inheritance, nutrition, Science, etc. They need religion for personal growth, for spiritual development and organized religions seem to be lagging in the realm of individual spiritual growth. They have nothing more to offer other than religious theology and dogma.

Religion seemed to have outlived its original purpose. It is now struggling to  find a role for itself  in modern life: through fear, through terror, through religious clergy, through traditions, but is still unable to find  a well defined purpose for its existence. Extremism and fundamentalism are its last attempt to survive, to slow down the natural evolution and progression of civilization.

As the world and our lives become more global,  our problems just like our needs are no longer limited to geography, race or culture. We need an ideology that brings  people, cultures, races and humanity together.  Ideologies that build on commonalities rather than differences. How can ideologies that are too small to even share ‘their’ God, hold within them big solutions.

Religion was the product of a need: a need of a time, a need of a people and a need of a civilization. In the same way its demise is also the need of the people, a need of modern civilization and a need of humanity.

God and spirituality will continue to exist even without religion.