Questioning My Beliefs | React

While passing Mahankal temple, my right hand unconsciously moved towards my heart. About to mumble a prayer, my mouth froze and my hand stopped abruptly in mid-air. I reminded myself, "I am a reformed atheist." Not in the strictest sense, as I had no objections towards my friends who believed in God. And, yes I did go to temples with my buddies, -which I now realize was to hang around and kill time.

"Oh my God!" was one of my frequently used phrases when something unexpected happened. One day, I spilled coffee on my report papers and cried out the very phrase. Reminding myself of being an atheist, I henceforth modified the phrase to, " Oh my gosh!" This obviously took quite a while to get used to, some old habits being definitely hard let go of.

Some friends didn't care, some were concerned, and one took it badly. I was visiting this particular friend and he offered me a laddu, claiming it was goddess Saraswati's prasad, but I humbly denied. I explained to him my reasons for doing so, but that didn't help. He suddenly burst with outrage, as if the devil had possessed him. I tried to reason with him (in vain) and surprisingly the one explanation that momentarily doused the devil's raging fire was, "I'm counting my calories." Well, being body-beautiful-conscious himself, he seemed to understand. Obviously the mantra didn't last long and realizing the real topic on hand, he continued with his blah-blahs that were flung like sharp knives at me. After what seemed like an hour, he gave up in utter disbelief. Well, I had to stick to my belief even if it was a belief in non-belief.

I hadn't become an atheist in the real sense. I was still searching for the 'physical existence' of God (or gods and goddesses for that matter). Is God was just a symbolic representation of something divine and unknown? More than that, I didn't believe in cutting sleep and waking up in the early hours to go to various temples, only to feel giddy the whole day. While pondering, I realized that my ideology towards the ways of worshipping God had been shaken a long time back when I was in high school. We had to read the poem 'Yatri' by the great poet of Nepali literature, Laxmi Prasad Devkota; he says that one does not have to go to temples to find God. As God resides in each human being, one can find God by serving humanity. I also recalled an event. Some friends and I were hanging around in a park and three foreigners came to talk to us about God. When the topic of God and religion came up, one of my outspoken friends(deeply influenced by 'Yatri') explained the poem forthrightly and his uttermost support conviction in the message it conveys. The dumbfounded foreigners, who we later came to understand were preachers, could only nod their heads in amazement.

Being a highly skeptical individual, I looked for reasons or physical forms on any given issue. Maybe that was why part of me still couldn't believe in God even though I already had a profound insight about God and humanity from reading 'Yatri'. I was trying to become an atheist due to religion in general.

Religion has always confounded me. I believed in one God, and I used to wonder why he would send different prophets to create different religions that would create war amongst people in the name of faith. At one point I stopped believing in any religion and stopped following my own. I noticed my insular perspective. Being a believer in the good in everyone, I realized that it isn't religion that creates turmoil; it is the exploitive preachers and the blind followers who are at the root of the problem. The real teachings of any religion are to do good and guide us in the course of the path that leads us to God.

During the brief period as an atheist, I had another conflict with my tradition. I was having a hard time trying to sacrifice them. As the answers fell into place, I realized I had always wanted to follow and respect generational traditions that have helped to preserve the identity of my ancestors and have thus helped me in understanding my roots and myself. Tradition has always been a part of religion, so by observing it, I was ultimately following religion.

Reflecting upon this brief, chaotic and yet self-gratifying phase, I have come to understand that deep inside my soul, I was not really an atheist; I was just questioning my beliefs.