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Since a boy, I’m always curious about everything. Some stupid things I did was to cut my finger with a knife as a result of watching suicide movies, you know those cut wrist type? Also there was a time where I poked a 3-pin wall socket with a metal piece, and I can honestly tell you that I learned the word ”electric shock” from experience. I slept with my grandmother when I was young, most probably before kindergarten. I remembered always peeking out the room windows to watch what my relatives are watching. I found out much later that those were porn.

Besides all those useless experiences, but experience nontheless, I was also into discovering deeper truths. When I started schooling, I was very interested in star constellations, the bermuda triangle, time travel, among others. There was a time when I have a theory that time travel is not possible. The reason is that if it is possible, people in the future already did that. I’m so proud because I read the same theory somewhere (newspapers, magazine? I can’t remember), but not published by me of course! Another theory is that even if time travelling is possible, there might be existing policies in the future that prevented them from using it.

That was a very long time ago. Now, I see the concept of time as a different thing altogether. I no longer see it as a linear concept, like how our life and community based them upon. I now see time as a static concept, and everything that happens, happening and will happen is a branch from this static time concept. This concept is very complicated to explain, but most people call this “The Power Of Now”.

The Real Buddhism

As a kid, I am very curious into why different people have different kinds of belief, and hence, different Gods. To know them better, I need to know more about my own religion to start with, which is Buddhism. Buddhism was founded by Siddharta Gautama, who was born a prince, shielded away from sickness, aging people and suffering by his king father. Siddharta Gautama at the age of 29, having seen the first old man, was explained by his charioteer that all people grew old, he decided to embark on a journey far beyond the palace. Having experienced an ascetic life, a life of begging for alms (money and food) and also a period of food depravation that almost lead him to die of starvation, he finally achieved enlightenment at the age of 35. He was then known as Buddha, or the Enlightened One. Buddhism is a teaching and not of worship, it is one of the few religions that does not have a god. Buddha once said “Do not worship me, for the god is within you”.

This finding strucked me hard. This meant that what I’ve been doing, the worshipping of those idols at the altar at home is wrong and I’ve been doing that for 20 years! At that moment, I felt like I’m the biggest fool in the world! From that point onwards, I’m a true Buddhist, refusing to worship anything else but myself.

The Benefits Of Religion

It is true that I felt like an idiot when I found out that Buddhism is not a worshipping religion but of a teaching one, still it gave me a good structure to grow at a young age. Starting from the first day we are born, the environment or the community is shaping us towards a certain direction. With a religion, we have a guide on how we can live our lives and how we can lead a happier life. This is true until religion is not capable of improving us anymore, in other words, until we outgrows our religion. This is not a surprise because most religios materials are made out of writings from a thousand years ago, and to make things worse, those first written books or scripts are from words passed down orally after hundreds of years. This is like giving future Microsoft Windows 5000 user our Windows XP manual. It surely are not 100% relevant but still provides a good history background. Same goes to religion, one day, you will need to start finding your own truths, because religions can only offer that much.

The Effect Of Religions

After finding out the truth about Buddhism, I went further to understand more religions and the impact they have on the community and the world at large. The findings too, are not good. As a Malaysian, living in a country of multi-etnics, multicultural and multilingual society, I have a better view of what religions can do to a community. It’s really cool when people takes religion as guides, but things can turn really ugly when they are obsessed with it. They are the reason why communities of different race and religion doesn’t mix with each other, they create a transparent barrier between them.

Exorcism

Let me use exorcism as an example to explain why religion is man made. Recently I watched the movie The Rite, it’s an exorcism movie where those priests perform exorcism on patients suspected of being possessed. Imagine this, Father Lucas tried to coerce the name out of the of the demon as part of the exorcism process :

Father Lucas : Demon! Speak your name! Speak your name!
Demon : Argh… *$^)**@
Father Lucas : Speak you demon! Tell me your name!
Demon : Giong Siiiii….. (Vampire in Cantonese)

Father Lucas (calling Master Wong) : Hi Master Wong, this demon is a Chinese demon! Crap, not my department! Can you follow up?
Master Wong : Sure Father Lucas, let me know the details, I’ll be right there.

This was made up with some humour, but still the point remains. According to Wikipedia and Religious Tolerance there are around 40 religions in the world. So in the worst case scenario we need to forward that poor soul being possessed by demon 40 times around the world?!! Is that even logical?

You tell me…

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