Eve of Enlightenment

Last Monday I was blogging from Penang. Today, on Christmas Eve, I'm back home early after having a nice vegetarian dinner with an old friend. No loitering at the cafe today and certain no Christmas countdowns with friends at the pub like in the old days. I'm typing these lines in the comfort of my bedroom, among my clutter of books.

Christmas is a happy time. Everyone is in a good mood because it is year-end; people are clearing their leave; school holidays are on and the weather is rarely hot. The only thing that spoils the mood a bit are stupid statements made by religious bigots.

I have friends who think that religion is the cause of a lot of our problems. I am not unsympathetic to that view but I am also aware that we are all, by nature, spiritual creatures. We will always create religion, like how we create music and other works of art. It is an expression of being human. If we ask ourselves: of what purpose is religion? It is no different from asking, of what good is art?

I've already posted many blog articles about religion. What occupies my mind most now, on Christmas eve today is a sense of gratitude. I am grateful that I do not have a religion and because of that, all religions are accessible to me. That thought makes me infinitely happy. There are no barriers to me: nothing is taboo when it comes to learning about our place in the universe. All religions provide certain insights.

Just within the stuffy confines of my bedroom I have the Quran, different versions of the Bible, The Manual of Insight by Mahasi Sayadaw and even a book about the disappearing religions of the Middle East. Being surrounded by such diversity of thoughts and ideas gives me a great sense of pleasure.

Every morning, I look forward to new insights, to new moments of epiphany, inspired by the company of wise men who left their wisdom in their writings. Every piece of insight opens up new areas for exploration, new intellectual frontiers to be conquered.

It is an edge-of-the-seat excitement that makes daily living such an adventure. Everyday is like a Christmas Eve to me: I feel like I'm always on the verge of experiencing an ever-unfolding series of epiphanies. By having no religion, every day is a holy day; every evening, an eve to deeper enlightenment.

A Child of Christmas

Festive holidays are a great time for philosophical reflection. It is time for another one of my rambling posts on...whatever that pops into my head at the moment.

It is raining outside, and rain usually brings a certain feeling of nostalgia--I remember the fresh smell of the wet grass in the garden of my childhood home, the cacophonous croaks of frogs somewhere in the distant, the dark looming foliage of rubber trees, all wet and damp under the incessant patter of raindrops, and especially on nights like these--Christmas Eve--a certain feeling of peace and contentment envelops the night.

On nights like this I feel forever a child, and even at my age, I feel as if I've never outgrown that childhood sense of wonder and beauty, of carelessness and curiosity. It is a childhood innocence that is at once naive and noble.

This Wordsworthian conception of childhood has always been a part of my soul. Even when life plunges me into depths of despair, I would stare into the abyss, and see the child staring back at me. It is what gives me strength. It is what reaffirms life. It is what keeps me out of the abyss.

Newton famously said that he felt as if he was a child playing on a shore, engrossed in the beauty of pebbles and shells while the great ocean of truth still lay undiscovered before him. The great man knew how little we know about our universe, how much there is to learn, how humbly small that we as humans stand before the great immensity that is space and time.

It is the knowledge of our smallness before a greatness, a greatness which some reverentially refers to as 'God', that makes all children. And it is this enchanted child within all of us that saves us from the dreariness of everyday life. The saviour has always been within us. No one sees more awe and beauty than the child. And as long as we do not crucify the child within, we are the Messiah of our own fate.