Parv Paryushan is here again. And the classic divide between the fanatics and unbelievers is back too. Fanatics adopt a few extremities of their religion with excessive zeal and start laying it thick on people in their immediate influence. These people do not desire to understand their own religion beyond the extremities that they have come to espouse. You are a fanatic if all you knew five years ago about your religion is all you know today. On an off chance, you could be a know-it-all but most I know aren't so I tread on.
We, humans, have an innate mechanism to believe things on little to no evidence. It was built in by years of evolution. Hear a rustle in the bushes behind you, and you instinctively spin round, looking for some kind of a predator. Most times, there's no one there-just the wind in the leaves. Our prehistoric ancestors found it far better to avoid several imaginary predators than being eaten by a real one. The ones that always imagined a predator were the ones who survived and we are their progeny. Today as Jains we do something similar. We do a lot of things that include visiting the temple every morning, offering prayers, performing pooja, samayik, and pratikraman. It also entails fasting especially during Paryushan. The idea behind this is congruent to the prehistoric rustle in the bushes. Most of us have no idea why we do what we do but at the same time, we are not sure of the price we might have to pay by being indifferent to these practices as Jains. This thought process is similar to the famous Pascal's wager. (Pascal argues that a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (an eternity in Hell)). Only if were to fight through the veneer of ignorance and wished to dig deep into the philosophy of Jainism would we realize that it actually is an Atheistic religion and an eastern variant of Stoicism. But these are pipe dreams and nothing of my dreams will ever materialize I am sure.
So, here I am. Living a conflicted life. My own family treats me like an outcast and I am labeled a heretic. My conclusions or ideas on anything related to religion are brushed away. The debates that I have to put up with are emotionally draining. Come Parv Paryushan and the very sense of living in a commune seems like a mirage. What does it take for otherwise good people to treat their loved ones with such ferocious animosity? What does it take for wise reasonable people to enforce their morals on those who don't agree with them? It takes religion (or their idea of it)!!
