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An Eye for an Eye...

11/5/2016

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Picture
A friend sent me the following piece by Tarek Fateh with a suggestion that we 'Hindus' ought to do some thing about it.
I have mulled over it for a couple of days. I think I would rather let this guy rant than get caught with his provocation. I don't know what your response might be. So read it and then read on.
Pakistan born Canadian writer Tarek Fateh on ABP News:
  • Kashmiri Pundits who are Hindus, were killed in Hindustan in their home land, you Hindus don't have the spine to re establish them in Kashmir again, and you talk about secularism!
          Shame on you.
  • Pakistan is responsible for terrorism. 5 Pakistani guys come and blast the shit out of you, and you talk about tolerance!
  • Inside most of the mosques, they chant "Kill Kafirs" in group, and you talk about minority rights!Shame on you.
  • In West Bengal, Hyderabad, Kashmir, Kerala, they raise Pakistani flags, and you name them Indian Muslims! 
          Shame on you.
  • Every one knows when ever Indo - Pak war happened and even in a cricket match, Indian Muslims are on which side, but still you call them patriots.
          Shame on you.
  • Taslima Nasreen and many more writers were beaten in Hyderabad, Owaisi asked to kill 100 crore Hindus, why you did not return your awards then against rising intolerance!
          Shame on you.
  • Pakistan is beheading your soldiers and your politicians are visiting Pakistan to resume trade and relations! When will you Hindus have the guts and control your obsession with Urdu and biryani!
  • Thousands of your temples are demolished, you could not do any thing! You're still struggling to build a temple in your own country, at your own cultural center Ayodhya.
          Shame on you.
  • Be it 2002, 1991, these all are the reactions of violence of Muslims, their obsession about Jihad and right now for ISIS. You think Indians don't join ISIS? Check the data from Britain and many countries where NRI's are joining there in huge numbers.
  • At last, I would say that you have not thought about the above mentioned points until some random Pakistani Muslim guy from Canada comes here to wake you up!
         "Shame shame on you."
         "When will you have the guts?"

A small digression into how I felt about the film Avatar then we will get back to this discussion:
"On the lush alien world of Pandora live the Na'vi, beings who appear primitive but are highly evolved. Because the planet's environment is poisonous, human/Na'vi hybrids, called Avatars, must link to human minds to allow for free movement on Pandora. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paralyzed former Marine, becomes mobile again through one such Avatar and falls in love with a Na'vi woman (Zoe Saldana). As a bond with her grows, he is drawn into a battle for the survival of her world." (the synopsis on the net).
I enjoyed the film Avatar until at the end, the Na’vi are shown as capable of savagery in response to the provocation of the humans. I hated this ending. What would I have liked to see?
The Na’vi understand why Jake Sully is being sent among them. Like they have done to many civilizations earlier, the humans will extract the knowledge/ resources they want and then destroy their world. So they decide to concentrate their energies and draw all the “life loving” forces of the world into their world. The human world starts to dry up, and the Na’vi world becomes luminescent, and impenetrable, only beings with an intense commitment to life and compassion can enter. As the process become more powerful, the few humans who love life are drawn to the Na’vi world. The others who are committed to technology and power find that the world from which they extract their raw materials, water and food is disintegrating. There are no new flowers in spring, no birds to kill and no animals to hunt down. As summer turns to Autumn, their environment has become completely dry and in winter the elements have returned to their separate state, no life forms can survive.
Now that my stance is clear, let me share to my hypothesis about the rant: Non Dharmic minds cannot understand ahimsa, they cannot comprehend the beauty of freedom from dogma and external authority. The depth of commitment to life that ahimsa requires is foreign to them, the sense of responsibility that the psychological freedom offers scares them. That is why they “other” the Indic religions and both hate and envy them. There is a visceral need to destroy them, to blow the Bhamian Buddha to smitherings, destroy temples and so on. There are two ways of destroying the Dharmic mind- one by making them forget their grounding in ahimsa and freedom through provocation and through shaming them for these very virtues they value. Second, to physically kill and murder. They have succeeded to some extent, but a thousand years of this process has not made a very deep dent. I hope this resilience lives on.
I some times loose hope though. Most of the Westernized Indians I have met, like this friend who sent me this mail, have lost touch with the well spring of Dharma, they often hold our tradition in ambivalence and secretly feel ashamed for being who we are. I wonder what they really feel about Gandhiji and Satyagraha, or about the Buddha. I hope sincerely that they do not get provoked either by the acts of terror or the shaming of these people who are held in the grip of authoritarian dogma and life hating ideology.
I do hope that there are enough of us left to do what in my story the Na’vi did: go inward and find the Shakti that Shri Aurobindo and the Yoga Sutras talk about, and through this Integration of one self first and then of similarly committed others, create a compelling alternative. IMHO, Gandhiji and Mandela have shown the power of this path. I will not walk the way of violence. I may not succeed in discovering the depth of energy needed for Satyagraha, but I will die trying.
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    My work revolves around helping individuals, groups and organizations discover their Dhamma, and become “the best they can be”. This aligns with my own personal saadhana. I have restated this question for my self as follows: “how can I be in touch with the well spring of my love for the world and my love for my self simultaneously”

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