If death and suffering cease to exist tomorrow half of the world will stop caring about religion and god tomorrow and the rest will soon follow. We usually think religion and spiritually come from a higher need of human species one that is above all other lower needs but it actually comes from the basic condition of our being. A “happy” actually mostly busy person goes to the temple once in a while but a miserable being is often quite spiritual. God is the easiest escape for a mind in a dire need of relief.
Nobody wants to think that if God wanted to save them from pain than why he even created the phenomenon of pain? Is it just to save someone from it? Religion doesn’t like many questions and it hates the really good ones which is understandable because belief doesn’t go hand in hand with questions. The biggest sins for a believer are not the bad deeds but asking questions, and funny thing is questions are the product of suffering.
No one cares why if “happy”
A fulfilled life doesn’t ask many questions. If happiness is, then it doesn’t matter where it came from, but if there is a scarcity of happiness then there are questions, how, why, where and so on. Most of the people who are trying to find the real cause behind everything are not curious, but frustrated; they are the people who see life as a question itself. You may find it wrong, but happiness and intellectuality are not best of the friends, they are not even compatible with each other. A happy human can be intelligent, but that intelligence rarely gets a chance to be in use in an already fulfilled life.
This is true that better conditions lead to better progress in life but for progress to even exist you need a sense of lacking and a want for betterment of your current situation whatever it may be. If one is completely comfortable wherever they are than the need to be at a better place never comes to them. Generally, this need arises not from the situation and things you have, but when something or a situation you consider better to what you have comes into your view. Now you will start feeling miserable for what you have or what you are and now you will try to find a way to change that.
If there is heaven.
In a way evolution, natural or progressive, in its core is the result of nothing but misery. If there is heaven and everyone stays in a constant state of bliss in it, one thing I can tell you about it is that people there wouldn’t be progressive in any way, they would be just static and inactive, and also they wouldn’t be religious either.
All the great ideas and achievements are all the consequences of suffering in our world. Even if you have something special at your disposal by birth, still, for the implementation of that in the real world you need a taste of misery. Misery is not the ingredient; misery is the catalyst for all of our actions.
At the junction.
But the contradiction happens when you reach at the intersection that misery leads to. From here you can lead a life of spirituality and religion or you can take things in your own hands and try to change whatever you see as misery, although most people try to take the middle path they put their efforts and they also put their beliefs in god simultaneously as a backup, however, the larger part of their attention remains with the world.
We all have been to this intersection and honestly, we all keep coming back to it from time to time. Actually, if I am being really honest, we are always at this intersection and we are constantly choosing one of these ways. At a given point of time you are always at one of the two given roads, either you are doing something for getting rid of suffering or you are in god’s shelter asking him to do it for you.
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A bench.
But do you know there is also a bench on the intersection where you can sit. It is neither visible nor available to everyone, only few people can sit on it. Don’t be sad though, I don’t think most people even want to sit on it. Most people will not even consider sitting on it, why? Well, that’s because this bench is the courtesy of hopelessness, hopelessness in God and hopelessness in the world.
It is rare to sit on this bench because it’s rare to be that hopeless in life. There is always hope in life even at the deepest of dread and sorrow there is always a little hint of hope, a little freckle of light. One is never completely hopeless. If there is sorrow in life there’s a belief too that life could be joyful, if you are not happy there’s still a belief that there is happiness, I just don’t have it yet or now. The difference between I am not happy and there is no real happiness is the difference here.
People are suicidal not because they feel like there is no happiness; they are suicidal because they feel they have no hope of having it or getting rid of their despair, so they reject life. This is why I said that it is rare that someone sits on that bench, it is quite a rare event. Now, you may assume that I want you to be that person who sits on it or that I am saying it’s best to sit on that bench. I am saying something, but I am not suggesting anything. I am not your advisor or even a friend I am just laying things down.
To choose
It doesn’t require much courage to be hopeless, it requires courage to not to be. In this regard most people are courageous, most people don’t give up and they don’t give in. Most people fight till their last breath.
In this world there is no scope for freewill anywhere. Sometimes you are simply forced to choose whatever you are choosing and sometimes the world appears so clear, so apparent that you don’t take choices they take you instead. No one chooses to walk on a path, and no one chooses to sit, some people simply find themselves sitting.
