What we are born into and what we are grown into may engage in inner battles. Many find meaning in what they are grown into: perhaps, art, music, literature, caring for others, caring for the earth, educating ourselves and others, speaking out the truth.
SAJI P MATHEW OFM
Taking steps forward in hope and anticipation is human. The great human journey, with its trials, challenges and emotions makes all of us equal. Some, like in the proverbial story of Akbar and Birbal, journey on seeing a light miles away, others move by the lantern held up to see one step at a time. Both see. Both move. But do all arrive?
Our Seeing Limits Us
Rene Magritte, the best Belgian surrealist artist of the 20th century has art works that question the accepted perceptions. He paints a tobacco pipe and writes at the bottom, ‘this is not a pipe’. He paints another work, The Son of Man, with a large apple covering the man’s face. Yet another painting called, The Blank Signature, has a lady riding on horseback through thick woods. But interestingly at certain places we can see through the woods and at other places we can see through the horse and the person. And Magritte has many works where concealment is placed on the subject. Perhaps it was his lingering emotional expression of his mother who got drowned when he was 14 and whose body was brought ashore with her face covered. But Magritte’s later words threw clearer light on what they all meant.
Rene Magritte famously said, “Everything that we see hides another thing”. In physical sphere, everything that we see hides much more behind. It is true of spiritual and moral realms too. What we see hides things behind it. Our eyes stop at what we see. Our mind stops at what we see, and we seldom explore further. Or again our mind sees what we look for, and no further.
Go Deeper
We begin life at a spot: a spot not of our choice. On the one hand we have our genetic positions; and on the other hand we are born in to a social, political, religious context. And further we grow up into specific professional and vocational charismas.
What we are born into and what we are grown into may engage in inner battles. Many find meaning in what they are grown into: perhaps, art, music, literature, caring for others, caring for the earth, educating ourselves and others, speaking out the truth. What do we do when these ground on which we stand come in conflict with the religion, social practices that we are born into?
I would say go deeper, or go higher, in what you genuinely find meaning. Every genuine, honest going down and deeper reaches you to the same inner reality. Digging a well is a ceremonious event. The water diviner, after possible calculations and sheer intuition, declares, ‘dig 30 feet deep and you will find water’. One cannot expect, though easy and faster, to find water by digging 3 pits of 10 feet each. One has to go deeper and deeper in the same place. Going deeper is the key.
If we refuse to go deeper, even the most religious things, be it even prayers and worship rituals, will become paths to perdition. And it would be only matter of time, such persons and societies fall apart.
Humanity Needs Regrouping
Dominant cultures are deep in caste and class equations and discriminations. The suffering of the subjugated on bases of gender, class and caste goes with out saying. The dominant class also is victim to the illusion of false promises of its ideology, false promises of its rituals and practices. It took the hippy culture to question the illusion of the ideal and the perfection of dominant, structured and institutionalized social, religion and political groups.
I am convinced that with the given structures of religion and society, we may not get over the violence and cruelty of the discrimination. We must give rise to new groupings. It is interesting to see when students are made into groups with a new purpose, they find it much easier to go beyond their religious and social groupings to collaborate and be inclusive. New groupings of people like generation y, generation Z, etc. give people a different identity than the identity of the class and caste struggle. We could have meaningful groups of artists, people caring for the earth, people speaking out the truth, and the list could go on. And these groups can constantly be open, so that members can move out and in, like the circles formed by dances of varied tribals in Chottanagpur terrain.
Courage to Re-center
While travelling, we are so much dependent
on GPS navigation maps. Google maps give
us a sense of safety. Even with the upgrade on Internet bandwidth and detailing of the maps, it is not rare that we loose signal or maps go unclear; and the map app comes to a dragging halt. We stop for a while. We re-centre ourselves and then the landmarks around become clearer and the indication to the destination
is once again shown with clarity and precision. Re-centering process in a GPS navigation system reconsiders and re-reads factors around us. At times we have to take a new path, take a U-turn. Leaving the possibility of spontaneity as we journey on helps lighten the burden and stress of the journey. Therefore, Life must be open to the permanent possibility of radical change, expansion and novelty. If something is open to the permanent possibility of radical change, expansion and novelty, then it cannot be defined and prefixed. Steve Jobs would say
it differently, “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice.” Life is layered. Being too certain about a thought, an opinion, a religion, perhaps is anti-life.
Salvation is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. We as humanity, often belonging to varied institutionalized religions, perhaps need deliverance and salvation from their ideas and processes of salvation.
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