hey bhagwan

Its been a long time. We took a family vacation in the middle. Went to palitana, gir and bharatpur. Palitana is a Jain super temple. It sure is a nice place. You stay at the bottom of the hill and then climb up three odd thousand steps in the morning. Its quite cool in the winter and definitely climbable. The base is taleti and used to be quite a sweet place 20 years ago when I first went. Now it’s a painfully polluted place thanks to the rickshaw’s adulterating fuel with kerosene. It’s unwalkable and unbreathable. And you have every ass building a huge temple. Any one who’s been to palitana will tell you that the last thing it needs is another temple. But they sure are being built as ugly phalluses all over the pace. They are built to themselves and not to god. God happen to be an unwilling accomplice. Do I hear of schools / hospitals etc being built there? Not me. We keep building temples. The Dharamshala is built – very good, but what about the old ones that need maintenance?

We leave it all behind on top. Feel a vibe that very nice. Jispa went into the temple and saw Jasmine entering the temple without the customary three salutes. Jispa then tells me that mummy will get paap , no? hmmm. No kid. There isn’t anything like paap and puniya. Isn’t god your friend? Will he be mean to you just because you did not do something as inane like bowing down? Say hi. Be a nice person to all around, show care. That’s all there is to life. Screw these rituals.
Net result – a few days later she tells me that she doesn’t believe in God. One more conversation – why not? Who made all these trees, birds, lives etc. there is someone there doing something, making something. Some force, right? Hehehe. She was a bit confused. But atleast she got over the paap shit that was banging her head.
She is free to have her own beliefs, her own view, her own mind. As long as she has something in her head I am ok. The most important thing is to have a view that is open, informed and pluralistic. Baki sab bakwas.