If You Had No Religion |
What if you were born into this world with no religion? There are many religions to choose from........which would you choose? Or would you choose to have no religion at all?
Why should you have a religion anyway? Isn't it possible to live happily without one?
To answer these questions, we would need to make some fundamental observations.
Let us begin with your entry into this world. Your birth. What is the first thing you can observe? Don't you realize that you were born into this world but that you had absolutely no choice in that matter. Absolutely no choice? You didn't choose to be born at all. And the next thing you know is that you are here. You've arrived. In this world full of people. People of different races, languages. Different colours. Different cultures and different nationalities! And another thing you observe is this. People consisting of men and women. You don't find just men. Nor do you find just women. You observe that men and women both have to exist in order to exist as human beings. Meaning.... a man is not complete without the woman. And the woman is incomplete without the man. A woman cannot bear children without the help of a man. To reproduce, man and woman must both come together.
What does all this mean?
Human kind is not one. It is two.
Human beings cannot survive individually. Just men or just women. They are in pairs. They exist in pairs. So you are born into this world as a male or a female. You had no choice about it.
Now, do you not also notice that no two men are alike? Each man is unique. One is tall, the other is short. One is dark, the other is fair. Each person has his or her own unique identity.
There is so much diversity!
But now I want you to consider something. This diversity....race, colour, gender, nationality.....did you have any choice in deciding any of it!?
You did not choose to be born......you did not choose your race, your colour, your looks, your height nor your nationality. You did not even choose your parents! You did not choose your brothers or sisters.
People with good looks really have nothing to be proud about. Those who are ugly didn't choose to be ugly, did they?
Also, people who are born in a rich family have no reason to think it makes them better than anyone else. The people who were born in poor families certainly didn't choose to be born poor.
I also do not see why people who are very talented and gifted with special abilities deserve any praise.
Those who are not talented, or those who were born deaf, dumb or blind did not choose to be born that way!
Having special abililities simply does not make anyone a better person. It is not in our power to give ourselves special ablilities.
And that goes for colour too. There are some white people out there who feel as if they are superior because of their colour.
Did they choose their colour? Did any person on this earth choose their colour? Did the black people choose to be black? Did the Indian people choose to be brown?
So you can see. We had no choice at all about the time of our birth......our sex, our colour, race or special abilities.
And now let us make some more observations. Does this world consist of just human beings? Gosh, no! What are those things.......you got trees, you got plants. There's a great big shining ball of fire in the sky called the sun. There's the moon. You have oceans, rivers, mountains. Animals of all kinds. Birds in the sky. Fish in the rivers and the seas. Insects, reptiles, mammals. Even organisms that you can't even see such as bacteria.
Creatures of all kinds, shapes and sizes. And again what a great diversity! For example, you've seen a rose. You don't just have red roses. You have yellow, white, orange and purple roses! Some variety are big, some are small. But nevertheless, they are all roses.
You could say "the world of roses".......or "the world of bees"......or the "world of snakes" or the "world of cats". Each creature has its own world. A world of great variety.
So you are born into this world.......a world that consists of many other worlds. This world is not just inhabited by human beings.
Now, do you also notice, that just as you had no choice with regard to your birth or your looks.....every single creature too had NO choice? What that means is this. You could have been born into this world as a cow. Or a hen. There is not a thing you could have done about it. The cows or hens you see did not choose to be cows or hens either. They arrived here on earth just like you did. They had no choice in the matter.
Now....you had no choice with regard to your birth. The cow didn't either. You get a life. The cow too gets a life. In fact everything has a life. Even the sun has a life. They say a diamond is forever. No. A diamond is not forever. It has a life. Maybe for a million or a billion years, who knows. But it too will vanish. Disappear. Perish. Nothing is permanent.
So you get a life. And so does the cow.
But you are different from the cow, or the hen. Or the tree or the mountain. The cow, the hen, the tree and the mountain do not have to face the dilemma of having to choose between right and wrong.
I'm sure you have noticed that only human beings have to choose between right and wrong. You couldn't choose the time of your birth. But you do have a choice with regard to how you want to live your life. You can choose what you want to do. In other words, you can control your actions. You have freedom of choice over your actions. You can choose to obey your parents.......or you can choose to disobey them. You can choose to make many friends or you can choose to make none. You can choose your profession or job.......what do you want to be.......a carpenter, a farmer, a blacksmith, a scientist, a teacher? You can choose whatever you want to do. Each and every human being on this planet can choose to do whatever he or she likes. Each and every human being on this planet has freedom of choice. Free will.
This is something most extraordinary. Think about it! The sun does not have this free will. The moon does not have it. The elephant does not have it! The cow does not have it. The cow does not have to make choices. It pretty much lives its life the way it is programmed. It seems to have a set of instructions which it obeys without fail. It eats grass. It doesn't go chasing tigers or lions.
You can predict the behaviour of the sun, the moon, the planets, the galaxies, the elephant, the tiger, the fish, the bird, the stone, the oak tree........! But you cannot predict how an individual human being will behave or act.
Now let's continue with our observations. The next most evident observation is this. The phenomenon of Death. Death comes to everything. Every thing that lives. Each creature dies. The cow, the elephant, the alligator, the bird, the ant, the fish......all creatures die. There is not a single creature that lives forever. And that includes us human beings. Yes. This is the most obvious reality. Death. It is 100 per cent guaranteed. You were born into this world. You had no choice in that. And you are going to leave this world. Again you have no choice in that.
You just know that one day you are going to die.
What does all this tell you? All this tells you that you are here in this world for a brief period of time. We are all here for a certain duration of time. You do not know how long you are going to live. For death can come at any time, without warning.....when you least expect it. There is no guarantee that you are going to live to the age of 60 or 70. There are perfectly healthy people who die before they reach the age of 60 or 70. You could die 10 years from now, or 40 years from now. You could even die in the next hour. Who knows?
The point is this. We are here. We are going to be here for a short time. We are not going to be here forever. None of us know when we shall die. You do not know how much time you have left to live. The truth is........the clock is ticking away........and you are going closer and closer to your grave. One day you are going to be lying buried under the ground....in your grave. There is absolutely no doubt about it.
This is the hard, cold reality.
Time is all you have. You don't have forever. You have a short period of time......GRANTED to you. It is time that has been given to you. That means........the most precious thing you have is your time. There is nothing more precious in this world than the time that has been given to you.
So if that is the case, shouldn't you be very careful about HOW you spend your time? I repeat........shouldn't you be very careful about HOW you spend your time? A second lost is a second lost forever.
What would be the best way to spend this time that has been granted to you? Are you going to spend it in having fun.........enjoying life........drinking wine, going to the movies and parties? (This is what people say is "making the most of life").
Or are you going to find out answers to questions such as..........who you are.......how did you come here..........where are you going? What is the purpose of your life? Why were you created?
What would be the wise thing to do?
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