My Spirited Talk with a Simple Man

Spirited Talk Yesterday I had a discussion with a family friend. A retired banker who quit his govt bank job 10 years before retirement age to pursue farming on his ancestral land located in far away outskirts on the hills. He also had a caretaker to look after 10-15 cows in the cowshed while he himself toiled hands on the farm. It was his dream to do this from an early age before he even began his career. Now he was fulfilling the dream. He explained how different the mindset of the villagers and tribals there was. They had no strict adherence to any appointments and sense of time was very different from our very own. They would many a time change their decisons of making themselves available for labour work on the spur of the moment to suit their convenience and would brush away any inconvenience or grudge that you may harbour towards them like we do in cities when someone doesnt meet us at the appointed time. He said maybe they were right in their own way of life and we had no right to criticise them. He also described how they lived like beasts by hunting wild boar and eating the dead animals roasted or sometimes even raw and would mouth the filthiest of words in their normal conversations. He had trouble getting labour in those areas beacause of this attitude most of the time. We then discussed the role religions and all our scriptures had to play in our lifes. He seemed to be of the belief that all forms of God are inventions of man to facilitate the realisation of the formless ie God is only Formless. We argued that everything is form and there is nothing wrong to conceptualise God as also having a form apart from a formless aspect. He also seemed to suggest that all our scriptures are just moral injunctions about dos and donts or ethical codes. I pointed that this is not the case. The Dos and Donts were enshrined in books like the manu smritis and they are amenable and amendable. And we as Hindus dont hold it as valid in this age and time. We swear by the Constitution which is our Manu Smriti of the day and which too can and get amended from time to time to evolve with the times. We also tried to make him see the truth that in no Hindu Scriptures is it given Do this or Do that in terms of Dont Kill thy neighbour or Dont Rob as these are common sense based values which every individual recognises innately without having to be told. Even a person like Dawood knows that while he goes on killing people he would never want to be killed. So we only need to follow our common sense that ie Do unto others as others would have done unto you. This is also there in the bible. So Religion or God etc was is not a man made concept to bring fear into peoples hearts and make them do the right thing. God for Hindus is not a matter of belief unlike any other religious system. For Hindus God is meant to be heard about, seen and most importantly understood using reason and experience. All religions declares that there is one God and that One God is Jesus by the christians, the Muslims declare There is only One God and that God is Allah and no other God. All other Gods are satan. It is only Hinduism which says rightly "All that is there is God" It doesnt say "There is only One God and that God is Krishna, Shiva etc". See the big difference between the statements and fundamental tenets of other religions and Hinduism. Which is more secular. It is only Hinduism which proclaims the Truth that "All that is there is God he has many forms you may call him and worship him by any Name be it Krishna, Jesus or Allah or Buddha" Please see the big difference. Everybody including very intelligent people gloss over this statement made by Hinduism and other religions. Only Hinduims is truly Secular since it never attempts to convert anybody to its faith it allows everybody his right to hold on to his form of worship and his belief.