[I feel the need to add a little disclaimer – the thought originated somewhere and led to a place that believers might connect to disbelievers might as well find funny. So this is quite subjective.]
I went to town through a thunder-rain on a mild medical emergency. Where I live is a temple town in South India that usually sees thousands of devotees from around the state at any given day. However, you’d expect a thunderstorm to slow the crowd down, but time and again I’m reminded that devotion might as well be the greatest force of human nature.
I’ve written about this is the past too – I’m mesmerized by what mankind has achieved because of devotion. No force has ever driven the collective conscious like devotion has. Yuval Harrari explains in Sapiens how the story of God and religion has been the biggest driving factor of human civilization. You have to live in a temple town to really understand what this means.
What I couldn’t help wondering about, amidst the awe that filled me today on my journey to the town through the rain as I watched women, children and young & old alike walk around finding accommodation or means of travel in connection to their pilgrimage; is what God makes of this all. Each person here who contributed to the traffic jam in a town as small as this one simply because he/she believed that an idol in the temple sanctum could solve his/her problems – came with firm belief that despite the troubles of the travel, something good will come out of it. Thousands and thousands of prayers are offered in this town every day. Tears are shed, hair is donated, lump-sum amounts find the openings of the offerings box and hundreds of holy coconuts are taken home. But how does Lord Manjunatha decide which prayers to answer and which not?
Even as a firm believer in the power of prayer, I have an underlying faith that we are bound by the karmic repercussions of our actions in the past and present lives. Jainism tells us that whatever good or bad happens to us is solely a result of our past actions. While that is a good enough cosmic law, where does the power of prayer stand in the midst of this?
I’ve struggled tremendously with the question of whether prayers are heard at all, and if there is a selective preference given to them. It sure feels like there is some selective preference at play in the cosmic world in terms of granting prayers. What are the parameters for it? Jainism says that there are eight forms of karma – categorized into destructible karma(4 ghaati karmas) and indestructible karma(4 aghaati karmas). Perhaps the prayers pertaining to the 4 ghaati karmas are heard and the rest filtered away?
It isn’t completely fair that our present life’s circumstances are determined by our actions that we don’t even recollect, is it? The karmic repercussions, though the most suiting explanation to everything that happens to us, does not justify the trouble that these devotees go through just for a two-seconds long glimpse of Lord Manjunatha in hopes that he hears their prayers and answers them. Shouldn’t the law of the universe ensure that all prayers are heard, in one form or another, and all levels of devotion is rewarded? It makes me wonder how some people harbour effortless faith in God when their circumstances are in all ways facilitative for disbelief. Devotion is an all-consuming concept for me. Living in a temple town, it manages to pull my strings quite often; yet I’m nowhere close to figuring out the conundrum that it is.
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