My Religion

I asked a new colleague, Peter what he did during weekends over lunch yesterday. He said that he spent a lot of his time attending activities at the church. He asked me what religion I practised. I said that God did not have a religion. He looked at me point blank for a few moments and said that I must be a free thinker. I said no because I do believe in the existence of God but that God can be anywhere and in any religion which practices love and kindness. Whereever I see these attributes and virtues practised and taught, I believed that God is there. Be it in Hinduism, Christianity or Buddhism. It was clear that Paul wasn't buying my assertation because his next response was 'You must be risk averse'. He was implying that I was practising all religions, prayed to all Gods so that I could get to heaven when the time came. Quite a loaded response huh? I told him that in practising a religion, to get to heaven wasn't exactly my motive. What I have been seeking for was how to lead a peaceful, purposeful and meaningful present life. Not in the after-life. I have learned that it was important to first seek for the answer to the question 'who am I'. Try answering that. I am sure you are going to say your name first. What else? You are a father/mother, husband/wife, worker/student. Are you satisfied with the answer? Remove the object from the relationship and you are no longer what you say you are. All I know is that there is a consciousness within us. A consciousness which existence is not dependent on the world. The true Self. True because it does not change, at least not in our live time. And that the Self takes on the body and begins a relationship with the world. A relationship which enables the Self to experience multitudinal emotions. The essence of this consciousness is the same in each of us. Once we are able to identify with it, it becomes clear as to how we should conduct our relationship with others. What we want for ourselves is what others would want too. Love, happiness and respect. So any religion which promotes this approach to life is fine by me. With lunch time almost over, I said we will talk about the relationship of God and the Self, the meaning of life on another day.

Good Night Prayer

This is the daily prayer my children Nai and Kay will recite before they go to sleep each night:

'Thank you God for a beautiful and wonderful day
Thank you God for the love I received today
Thank you Mother Earth for the rain and sunshine
Thank you Mother Earth for the delicious food
Thank you God for all the blessings in my life
May good be for all
May all be happy
May all be healthy
Ooommm Shanti(Peace to all)'

For me, when I pieced the good night prayer together for my children, it was meant to be a prayer of thanks with thots of loving kindness. That we do not take for granted all that we have received during the day and to share the goodness with all.

But the children's sunday school day teacher thot otherwise. Kay told me last nite after the prayer the teacher said that she cant be praying to other gods. I explained to Kay with an illustration. I told her to imagine that God was our hand with my five fingers. The little finger takes care of nature and we call it Mother Earth. "Mother" because that is what mothers do; they feed and care for us. So Mother Earth is also God. And who is to say that God is male and not a female. Anyway that is not the issue. We are only concerned about the attributes of God and that we teach our children to love Mother Earth and to care for the environment through not littering, recycling, planting trees...