Devotion to the Scriptures

[Guest guest]

A reverent spirit is quite fundamental for understanding the scripture

of any religion. Learning is impossible if we start with a suspicion

that the founders and teachers of a Religion or the authors of a

scripture in any land were skillful deceivers. Such suspicions would

lead to a thought process would take us to wrong path of stupidity and

misery. Those who fall into such pitfalls would not hesitate to

propagate that the sages and rishis have formulated some scheme of

self-advancement or the advantage of some particular class, and that

the rest of the people were duped to regard these deceivers with

unbounded reverence and affection.

 

The mass of the people of ancient days, from whom, indeed, we have

inherited all the intellect we possess were as practical as we are,

were as interested in knowing the truth about men and things as we

are, and were, if it may be so put, as suspicious as we are. They had

probably as much intellectual acumen as we have, and had indeed more

time to examine the world surrounding them. To believe that they were

duped and that among them there were not men intelligent and bold

enough to prevent the mischief is to proceed on a wholly wrong

assumption.

 

The religions that have commanded the devotion of successive

generations of normal human beings in any country have done so because

by direct personal contact at first, and by experience handed down as

tradition from one generation to another, the founders and teachers of

the religions were known to their contemporaries to be good, sincere

and deep-thinking men, worthy of being followed. It is not merely

wrong to display the detective-police mentality when studying a

religion; it incapacitates one even to understand it. Undoubtedly

personal and class interests have perverted religion as they have

perverted other institutions. But to confuse the later with the

earlier and to impute fraud to the source is an unscientific attitude

of mind in the investigation of truth. The Rishis of our land, who

have bequeathed to us great thoughts, were Rishis and no less. It is

in a spirit of reverent affection that we should approach the study of

an ancient scripture.

 

True seekers essentially need `devotion' and when it is seeded at our

hearts, we can cultivate discipline and dedication and in due course

of time, our hearts will be filled with kindness and compassion. With

Devotion, we can vacate all our evil thoughts to keep enough room for

the Divine to occupy. Gandhiji has pointed out a number of times that

`he is a devotee of Gita.' A true devotee such as Gandhiji was able

to free himself from all suspicions regarding the truth and value of

Gita. We are always likely to left with `doubts' until we become the

true devotee. This may explain why Hindu scriptures gave more

importance to `shraddha' than `shadana.'