Life of Pi and I
I went to see “Life of Pi” yesterday with my children. They
were happy to see the animals and strange and beautiful scenes of sea life.
However they were quite surprised by the reference to God in the movie. When
the film’s main character claimed he wants to be baptised, my children laughed
loudly. Some people sitting in front of us did not like it. My children are not baptised even though their
mother is from Lutheran church. (Christian). I told them they can follow Buddhism
and learn Buddhist ways which they do. I also told them when they are grown up
they can select any religion and follow that up or stay as Buddhists and I am
not going to enforce them to follow strictly one religion. They also study
Christianity at their church school and go to church and the temple. I took
them several times to a Hindu kovils too. So they have a good understanding of Piscine Molitor’s behaviour in the film. However
I still don’t know why they laughed yesterday. It’s perhaps the way the
boy Pi said it. They were not baptised
and my wife refused to baptise them because most of the parents do that to get
a better secondary School in England. So she refused to follow the trend. I am
glad she did that.
Anyway thinking about “Life of Pi” I was somewhat behaved
the same way even though I was not floating/fighting for life in big Pacific
Ocean. When I left for higher studies I
was a devout Buddhist and also an avid reader of Marxist literature. First few
years in Soviet Union I ditched Buddhism completely and became atheist/Marxist.
However after these first few years I was introduced to Russian Orthodox Church
by a beautiful fellow Russian student. She went there and I followed. Religion
was somewhat taboo in that era and she was quite brave to do that. Then I start
studying Christianity and read the bible as well. I was still an atheist but like the somewhat mysterious
nature of Russian Orthodox Church. After my studies in Soviet Union I ended up
in England. I met few Muslim friends and start reading Quran. They told me I
have to read it in Arabic but I was not interested
to learn another language as I already could speak in Russian and learning
English more thoroughly as my higher education mainly were in Russian. As I understood
Quran was somewhat similar to Bible’s Old Testament for a while I read some Kabbalah
teaching as well.
Last few years I went to spiritualist church and talked to
mediums. Mediums are the people who talked to the otherside or ones passed
relatives. I read lot of books on medium-ships and similar paranormal
literature. I stop believing reincarnation and karmic theory soon afterwards and
stopped believing that one can talk to dead relatives of others or your own. By this time I was engaging heavily in Amateur
astronomy and registered myself to study MSc in Astrophysics. Meantime I had (Sometimes
heated) discussions with lot of Christian friends who follow different sects
like Jehovah’s witness and some other denominations while also reading Buddhist
literature.
After all those years later I realised I still like Buddhism
because of just one sentence. Buddha
said in Kalama sutra “Do not believe
religious teachings, just because they
are claimed to be
true, or even through the application of various methods or techniques” – (ref:
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalama_Sutta) . However, I
don’t like to be called a Buddhist as that will label you to something.
Attached you to something that is against the very much what Buddha said about attachment.
Going back to “Life
of Pi” we were all in a big Life Ocean seeking truth. And we always find what’s
close to our own hearts and minds as ultimate truth, a prejudiced decision
where our parents, teachers and respective societies we used to live in taught
us or forced us to follow on.
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