Religious mafia

Its been a long time.....

My life has been quite hectic for the last several years since I moved back to Sri Lanka to deal with major family matters. It was a huge dark night of the ego with so many mini dark nights, which took me on scary roller-coaster ride. So, finding the time to write something was a stretch.      

Also, as I have been speaking in Sinhala for the last while, my English is bit rusty. So, please ignore my language errors and just get the gist of what I write.  

Religious mafia. 

We are already aware of pharmaceutical Mafia in the world, but we don't pay much attention to a bigger threat that has been tricking us and has been taking our mental and spiritual power away from us for long time. 

Recently, in Sri Lanka, we witnessed the taking down of a huge political Mafia group that has taken control of people's lives and country for the last decade or so. They were giving blind loyalty and alliance to party politics, since our parents and their parents' time. After several failed attempts to break free from those patterns, finally they broke free from those manipulative parties and chose a completely different minority party, that has promising ideals. 

If we look at it from Buddhist spiritual perspective this is an illusion ( මිත්යා දෘෂ්ටියක් , a huge pattern programmed to them from childhood in that county that they broke free from. Congratulations to Sri Lanka.!! 

Most of us don’t want to talk about and blame and shun who ever bring out this topic in fear of retribution or fear of getting bad karma, etc., etc.  But I think as people and countries, awakening and evolving out of many group bindings that they have been on for a long time; it is time for us to just pay attention to a challenge we all face.  

Because, without an evolved mind, a person or a country can’t be prosperous, healthy and happy.  

We have to be really careful of the religious bullshit that we keep hearing from the so-called religious teachers, priests, monks and other representatives of those religions. Ether, they wear a yellow clad clothing or some other clothing; we have to be careful of trickster's, liars and manipulators who wants us to fund them; be their loyal followers who obey them and believe whatever bullshit they spew out as the truth and do what they want. 

Most of these people have miss-interpreted true teaching of the masters and believe what they misinterpreted as the truth. 

I’m not promoting any religion, teachers, priests or monks, nor I am against anyone.  I am on the on the side of the universal truth, whatever the tit bits I have figured out so far; I’m on that side. 

We need to break this barrier to reach true dhamma, true universal teachings of Buddha or other spiritual masters who brought down original ONE TRUTH or universal truth to us. Again, this is my perspective, I am not against any religion that believe otherwise. 

I didn't write this, for us to accuse each other or to show off and tell others, I know better than you. This is simply an invitation to think and discuss among ourselves to see, if there is some truth to what I say and if you want to use it. 

These days while living in Sri Lanka, I can see, so many monks preach different versions, different perceptions of Buddha teaching.  I was talking to a person who has started listening to teachings from a certain monk who has a large number of followers.  If we carefully listen to most of his teachings, they are mis-interpreted Buddha teachings that mostly are not the truth but these people believe them as ‘the truth’.  Never questioning him otherwise.  This is blind following and blind devotion. 

Question everything!

So, my thoughts and perspective is.... question everything and don't be a blind follower and blind believer of religious teachings or a teacher. Continue to question and be free from the religious control we were programmed since childhood. Most of the world is freeing from this, so be open minded, question and change with the new truth and be free. 

With the way life bring us challenge after challenge and talking away many lives around us and in the world. If we pay attention, most of us even with a youth with us, we don't know when we leave this world. We don't have much time to sit around or ignore figuring out the truth in our own religions and other teachings to raise our mind out of this distortive perception and thinking to free ourselves....at least a little bit before we leave.  

With time, our minds start to decay in a way where, we can't understand these concepts anymore to self-realise. With age, mind become so rigid and unwilling to see these truths.  

In Asian countries, especially in Sri Lanka, we have this belief where, after I retired from this work or after kids are married, etc., etc. ...  then only I will look in to spirituality, embrace religion or go to the temple. But at that time, we are already too old and are too later. Our mind has already decayed, so we can't question the monk, priest or the misinterpreted and distorted teaching that we hear or read. We can't even figure out what hack they are saying. We believe everything they say as the truth or we simply follow bunch of rituals believing that will get us somewhere.  

I think when we are at our thirties or forties is the proper age to look in to this subject as a side project to save ourselves. After receiving some experiences in life and leaned what is important and what is not, we can now pay attention to life in a more open-minded state. While our minds are still clear enough to be open minded, to think, question and analyze the situations and observe how our mind reacts to life. 

Differentiate truth from lies. And still have the courage to say Fuck this and look somewhere else for the truth.  

So, friends while facing work, life, families, kids and politics... you have another barrier to break. That is religious mafia. Are you up for it?  

Pavithra LH