I Believe In God, But Do Not Want To Follow Any Religion

[kds1980]

Re: I Believe in God, but Do not Want to Follow Any Religion.

There is a good book named 'ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਵਾਲੇ ਸੇਖ ਫਰੀਦ ਦੀ ਭਾਲ' (In search of the Sheikh Farid of Guru Granth Sahib) by Prof.Pritam Singh. The writer believes that the Baba Farid is the same Farid Shakarganj and he was not a hardcore staunch muslim faqir who spent his life luring people into Islam as erroneously mentioned by the historians but was a Sufi, a mystic who was at oneness with God.

Well our own sikh history site say that he was a muslim missionary

http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/farid.html

Baba Farid ji visited a city called Mokhalpur, it is now called Faridkot in honor of the Baba Farid ji, it is the Indian part of Punjab. Then he turned towards the Punjabi mountains where he converted a tribe.

 

[BhagatSingh]

Re: I Believe in God, but Do not Want to Follow Any Religion.

In the beginning, every serious believer thinks the same. But when the mind's horizon expands and prejudices start appearing, it demands a theory in the form of a religious philosophy. So much so, the most basic questions like 'What/Who is God?','What is the purpose of one's life?','What is the status of virtues and vices/sins/' appear difficult to answer in the absence of a set philosophy. Sooner, the person may either be biased towards one religion or the other or may divert towards agnosticism and then atheism.
All religious philosophies are not the same and all the Gods of different religions aren't. Every religion is unique in some respect or the other. In my view, continuing indefinitely as a theist without any religious affiliation is very difficult, if not impossible.

Ah so prejudice is the culprit! If it were not for prejudice we would know the actuality of what is. But since there is prejudice, there is then conceptualization, in form of questions or answers. Then there come to be judgements of which religion is better and so forth, the bias.

It is at the heart of religion to lead man to a non-prejudiced state.

Here is something to think about. You say that every religion is unique, every philosophy is unique. I would add that everything that exists is unique. No two things ever look alike.

If everything is unique. What is actually unique? How is it unique to be unique like everything else?

"Uniqueness" is then just a label we attached on to the actuality of what is. Or one could say that in the nature of "uniqueness" there lies the "same".

We have come to a contradiction, a paradox, through inquiring into any particular label. The label contradicts with itself!

We are back to the culprit that is prejudice. The prejudice is that which appears as a concept, a thought, an opinion or idea, and through the concept, thought, opinion or idea, the non-conceptual, that which cannot be translated into concept, thought, opinion or idea, is realized. That which we also give various labels, one of them being God, and others being Aristotle, Ambarsaria, Spnadmin, Bhagat Singh to name a few.

This realization of the non-conceptual through the concepts laid out in religious canons, is at the heart of every unique religion.

So we have basically named things, and we see that each name fails to name. So that which the name is trying to name is Nameless. And through the name, the nameless can be found.

No wonder Bhagat Namdev ji says:
Some say he is far. Some say he is near. (When you inquire into what each wise man says, it is realized that-)
We might as well just say that the fish climbs out the water and up the tree. (In others words anything we say is inherently nonsense, even though it makes a lot of sense to us)
Why speak such nonsense?
Those you know God stay quiet about it.

This never gets old.

Cheers

Awesome post you wrote.

 

[aristotle]

Re: I Believe in God, but Do not Want to Follow Any Religion.

Ah so prejudice is the culprit! If it were not for prejudice we would know the actuality of what is. But since there is prejudice, there is then conceptualization, in form of questions or answers. Then there come to be judgements of which religion is better and so forth, the bias.

It is at the heart of religion to lead man to a non-prejudiced state.

Here is something to think about. You say that every religion is unique, every philosophy is unique. I would add that everything that exists is unique. No two things ever look alike.

If everything is unique. What is actually unique? How is it unique to be unique like everything else?

"Uniqueness" is then just a label we attached on to the actuality of what is. Or one could say that in the nature of "uniqueness" there lies the "same".

We have come to a contradiction, a paradox, through inquiring into any particular label. The label contradicts with itself!

We are back to the culprit that is prejudice. The prejudice is that which appears as a concept, a thought, an opinion or idea, and through the concept, thought, opinion or idea, the non-conceptual, that which cannot be translated into concept, thought, opinion or idea, is realized. That which we also give various labels, one of them being God, Aristotle, Ambarsaria, Spnadmin, Bhagat Singh to name a few.

This realization of the non-conceptual through the concepts laid out in religious canons, is at the heart of every unique religion.

So we have basically named things, and we see that each name fails to name. So that which the name is trying to name is Nameless. And through the name, the nameless can be found.

No wonder Bhagat Namdev ji says:
Some say he is far. Some say he is near. (When you inquire into what each wise man says, it is realized that-)
We might as well just say that the fish climbs out the water and up the tree. (In others words anything we say is inherently nonsense, even thought it makes a lot of sense to us)
Why speak such nonsense?
Those you know God stay quiet about it.

This never gets old.

BhagatSingh Ji,
The question is whether a person can indefinitely exist without any religious affiliation and still believing in God. There may be many such people who claim to believe in God but, they may not all be serious believers. Just believing in a 'God' without understanding the attributes attached to him(?) for long seems non-viable to me. It may work well for a transition state but not forever.
Even Bhagat Namdev Ji had a set concept of God as an omnipotent, all pervading Lord who doesen't come in incarnations and cannot be worshiped as stone idols. By saying that every religion is unique, I meant to say that every religion has different explanations of Godliness and even the word 'God'. Even when we say that the 'God is one', we are imagining the 'God' as explained by our own belief system. For example, 'God' in Sikhism is omnipotent, formless and all pervading; in Islam and Christianity he(?) is human-like; in Buddhism there is no God at all and in Jainism and Hinduism it is a very vague concept.
If a person can live without prejudices and with all the virtues by himself there is probably no need of religion at all, but it is as I believe, all theory and may not work for long when put to the tests of real life circumstances and may succumb to frustration and utter confusion.

 

[aristotle]

Re: I Believe in God, but Do not Want to Follow Any Religion.

Well our own sikh history site say that he was a muslim missionary

http://www.sikh-history.com/sikhhist/events/farid.html

Baba Farid ji visited a city called Mokhalpur, it is now called Faridkot in honor of the Baba Farid ji, it is the Indian part of Punjab. Then he turned towards the Punjabi mountains where he converted a tribe.

Brother,
Being a missionary doesen't always mean wrong. When we say Baba Farid was a muslim missionary we start imagining a person with a dark-green turban who swears at the very sight of 'qaafirs' and spends his whole time devising new methods to convert them to Islam. The present missionaries may be like the stereotypes but not Baba Farid, at least this is what I believe. There wasn't any Sikhism (as an organised religion, bcoz Baba Farid had died even before Guru Nanak Sahib was born), so there were only two dominant religions Hinduism and Islam at that time, and Baba Farid believed in Islam (Even as other Bhagats who were either Muslim or Hindu, by birth or by choice, that doesen't mean the Sikhs who believe in their teachings are Hindus or Muslims).
The big question is, WHY did the Gurus include Baba Farid's bani in the Guru Granth Sahib. They wouldn't, for sure had done so, had Baba Farid been a qaafir-hating savage muslim mullah. They did so because he was a true Sufi, a mystic. The words like namaaz, Allah etc. which appear in his Bani are a direct consequence of his Muslim upbringing (For example, for a child living in a Celtic household in Scotland, the only religious place is a 'Church', he may even call a 'Gurudwara' as a 'Sikh Church') and has nothing to do with the alleged qaafir-hating nature. The first thing we should do is to read the underlined message of Sikhism from Baba Farid's Bani, that way, friend we may better be able to judge his true personality. History books are man-made, Bani is Eternal.