Thursday, June 9, 2016

Exposition Of Thoughts (思想的说明)


It was my aim to get 1 million visits to my blog and this is already achieved. So I would sort of take a more passive approach to blog writing, after all; there are still many things to do in life than writing blogs.

I have many friends both in the East and the West. The westerners are more open in expressing their thoughts about spiritual matters in general while people in the East take a more emotional approach…

In my final years of my undergraduate study, there was an optional lecture known as ‘engineers in society’ that encouraged the students to explore how we think and how engineering can help to change our society. Being an optional lecture, as expected; the attendance was always pretty low. I myself wasn’t very hardworking one but I did drop into the lecture occasionally to get myself exposed.

Amongst many topics, there was a topic about spiritual matters and social development. The spiritual matters in this context refers to ‘religion and occult matters’.

Before the lecture started, the professor asked one of the participants: “What do you think about religion?”

The person shrugged and the professor replied: “Is it a fact that you do not know; or you have no idea at all?”

Then the most undesirable matter happened to me. The professor noticed I was the only ‘outstanding’ (Chinese) in the lecture theatre, he then pointed to me and asked:

“And what do you think?”

I struggled to squeeze a reasonable answer from my otherwise brain and somehow the words blurred out:

“Religion is a tool that almost destroyed human civilization throughout the history. It behaves as if yeast which causes bread to ferment but in the process, it is killed by its own action at the end.”

The professor smiled and asked me to elaborate more. And below is what I have said:

“If we look into the history of our civilizations, east and west; rulers made use of religious excuses to invade other countries. Many Chinese empires fell due to the emperors were too engrossed into religious matters. Too often than not, large amount of money and labours were deployed to build temples instead of strengthening the internal military powers and economic developments. When money was not enough, the emperors would impose taxes onto their subjects until lives were so difficult that people revolted against the emperor and brought down the empires. Also, by hiding under the blanket of religions; Chinese emperors were more eager to achieve Buddhahood than defending foreign invasive forces.

The old Tibet was ruled by politics and religions. Within Tibetan Buddhism, religious persecutions amongst various sects were a norm. Most notably was the persecution of Gelupa onto Jonangpa although both sects practise Kalachakra Tantra. Tantric rituals were touted to be very powerful and the torma (ritual cakes) once thrown out were much more powerful than an atomic bomb. In actual fact, the so-called most powerful fire ritual failed to halt the Chinese army from entering Tibet…

In Old China and Tibet, the religions they follow became toxins that caused their downfall.

Today, religious activities became a big business. In Asian countries: Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia etc. People burns down billion dollars of incense and joss papers. Expensive temples were built and added to that were the attached maintenance costs. Religious schools cost another few billions of dollars together with religious publishing, food supply chains, financial services etc. All in all, there are a lot of money involved. Of course, with those major cash activities around; a lot of effort and money are also spent to govern and supervise such economic activities…

At the end of the day, people of various religions get more segregated due to individual doctrines and I would not be surprised that unrest may occur sometime in future when the resources are getting less. At this moment, even people of the same religious group would fight for those limited power and resources…”

Personally speaking, people are afraid of unknown and hence give forth to religious and spiritual matters. It is good to invest in after death matters; but the current wellbeing is still our main priority.

This is the reason I started MagicSEA blog. And this post serves as the prelude of my blogs.

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