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THE BASIS AND BASICS OF THEOLOGY

A year ago I wrote on Facebook: Ignorance is bliss: if someone says they know the truth of what is true and what is false do not believe them for your own sanity> On this reminder today: I wrote: ‘It remains true today as it did a year ago. Do not seek truth in a deliberate quest as a satyagrahi, for that path is laden with pitfalls. It causes trouble for it is buccaneering and that upsets the status quo. And that is wrong. Be nonchalant, spontaneous and unpremeditated in your actions. Do nothing to seek the truth. Accept your fate and remain contented. Truth changes incessantly as mind learns new things There are no hard and fast truths as laws: we construct morals as we go on with our lives. These need to be accommodated. The mind changes with the changing environment and obviously this takes place across the board of humanity. This is the fundamental reason that democracy is the best form of government in which all truths are taken into account in a flexible manner with new laws, rules and regulations of governance as these get required from day to day.

So, truth is not elusive but it changes with time and each fleeting thought, whilst true in itself at that specific instant to an individual, becomes unreliable in the passage of time to be forgotten and discareded to move onto the next moment in time with the next thought to come in one’s mind for addressing. This impermanence of truth individually and across humanity is why we say that ignorance is bliss. Stay still, hence’.

First a person must have a theology for himself or herself. If all Hindus agree that we are aspiring to being Sanatan Dharmis, it gives Hindus the basis foundation upon which the people’s theology is to be constructed. This can be a religious or a philosophical theology. For Sanatan Dharma, both of these conceptions rely on the existence of God as the Creator of Nature. The question then is one considering that from one’s dharma God is Preserving one to be able to carry on with whatever karma one is practicing or is it an imagined Preservation that one is experiencing? In Vishista Advaita Vedanta the gunas of sattvic, rajasic and tamasic attributes have been incorporated into the philosophical theology for if one you does not use gunas as the basis for examining human and other biodiversity, how else does one in the current state of knowledge of the genetic basis of plant and animal kingdom explain the differences that we can easily see around us in humanity and in wildlife. Castes similarly are a term that describes the character of a person, his or her heart/dil/conscience. Pending scientific explorations of the future into the anatomy, physiology, neuroscience of the mental attriutes in the brain and the rest of what constitutes the somatic matter, we have no choice but to resort to philosophical basis in our present generation.

I also do not entertain scriptures being brought into this discussion, but deal with questions with answers in simple plain English that we are using to great effect for the global environment now in this day and age. Let the scholars study the scriptures to their heart's content, but for me they only confuse our generation, except for some very selected literature like the Bhagavad Gita, Mundaka Upanishad that I find useful material to test in my own life, and is a total waste of one’s precious time in this life. The correct way being to use ones life experiences to formulate the philosophy in the absence of an adequate religion as exemplified by the hundreds of established and less established spiritual holy books around the world, and as mentioned above due to science being in its infancy too.