Harmony

Part II

For a moment, let us to revert back to our old examples of pot, clay, gold, and ornament. Suppose you have a weighing machine and you wish to weigh things. You are not at all interested as to which one is the cause and which one is the effect. You do not care to know if a piece of gold gives rise to a clay-pot, or a lump of clay turns out to be a golden chain. You are keen only on measuring weights. You want to weigh each item for the joy of it. Considering that nothing is added or subtracted from the karana when it becomes the karya, you can weigh a number of items for the joy of it. You will find that the weights of the lump of clay and the pot it becomes are the same. You may find that the piece of gold and its product, the chain, weigh the same. You may find that threads and the piece of cloth they become weigh the same. But you are happy that you could weigh clay and gold, cloth and ornament, threads and pot. Whatever the material, your purpose was weighing and you were fabulously successful in it.

A postscript to weighing. Is there anything on earth which gives a negative weight? Is there anything weighing – 10 grams, for example? No, that cannot be. All weights—cloth, threads, mud, stone, gold, mountain—are essentially positive.

We Know for the Joy of It

We had concluded above that there are differences amongst various religions, since their proponents are different. Now suppose you are a student. You want to know what each religion contains. You do not care which religion is good or which one is bad; you do not care for their differences either. Incidentally, this type of knowing religions is called the phenomenological view: Without bias, without prejudice, you just want to know. You are just interested to know religions and prophets. You will be supremely contented when you know the Vedas and Hinduism, Christ and Christianity, Prophet Muhammad and Islam, the Buddha and Buddhism. When it comes to knowing (like weighing above), whatever the religion or its proponent, all are one and the same: They are sources of your knowledge. You have no religion which is not a source of knowledge. You merely wanted to know them objectively, for the joy of knowing them, and you were mightily successful.

© "Prabuddha Bharata" (February 2000) published by Advaita Ashrama, 5 Dehi Entally Road, Kolkata 700 014. Website: www.advaitaonline.com. Reprinted with permission. Part I of this article appeared in Splendour August 2004 issue.

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