Cancer is like that bad friend your parents asked you to keep a distance from. Even if just one of your 32.7 trillion cells becomes cancerous, it does not take much time to ruin all the other cells and make them act against your own system. It multiplies and destroys, it kills and decays. Once cancer touches a part of any of your cells, nothing is ever the same again.
“This reminds me of the story of the grieving person who comes to the Buddha to ask for relief. Buddha tells them to go to all the houses in the village and ask for a seed from every household that has never experienced death. The person does so and finds that every single home has experienced what they are experiencing, even if the details are different.”
Hitherto, my understanding of the Abrahamic religions was that they were monotheistic from the very inception of the religion. But through The Red Tent, I saw a different story, one in which a pantheon of Gods and Goddesses existed alongside a monotheistic belief.
Just because you are giving away, your wealth doesn’t decrease. It never does. You may feel sometimes that you are losing a huge amount of your money. But this doesn’t work that way. Think of it as an investment — like in one of God’s businesses. There is always a return. Always.
Why do I bring my hands together to pray? My childhood self used to wonder. Why clasp them in front of my chest? Honestly, the true reason(s) continue to evade me. Maybe to be humble. Maybe something else. I am satisfied with one possibility, though – that we bring our hands to our center. That that action helps us re-orient, re-align, and can remind us of what we are.
Through a very recent discovery, I was able to understand the very basis of fasting that we Muslims have been religiously following since the past 1400 years or so. That’s when I realized that most of the religious practices that we may inadvertently follow may have some scientific principles underlying it.
“Fasting during Ramadan is not only about keeping away from food. Ramadan is about sharing, giving, helping and forgiving. It’s about building a better version of you and practising those small acts continuously for thirty days so that it becomes a habit.”
