Religion and GOD - Part 1

My mind is really confused on this "concept" of "GOD". It(mind) has been baffled by religion, its meaning and its impact on itself. Do people blindly believe because everyone else does or is there something more beyond what we see. Let me take you on a journey to unravel or atleast get an understanding on this phenomenon of GOD.
Let us begin with the origin of religion. Then maybe we can get a clearer picture as to where it might have emerged from. Its a pretty big task mind you and me being a beginner would have plenty of problems going ahead. But anyway nothing can be got without trying.

Let us start with the more "recent" religions. Guess we should do so because the sources could be more trustworthy.
Buddhism:
Buddha was born in the 6th century B.C as Gautama Buddha, who was actually of a warrior class but had renounced all his material pleasures in the search for truth. And it his through his quest that he developed the basic principles of living.
I think it best to forget the particular forms of buddhisms as the council had been divided because of conflicting views of the traditionals and the liberalists.So we shall stick to the Buddhist wisdom.
1. Life is suffering;
2. Suffering is due to attachment;
3. Attachment can be overcome;
4. There is a path for accomplishing this.

We live in a world that is impermanent and imperfect. Moreover, nothing can exist separately.i.e. just by itself. This leads to traits like greed and an effort to trying and hold things ignoring the fact that everything is impermanent.The idea of overcoming attachment will defintely remove suffering according to me as we would not really worry of anything. But not worrying at all of anything is something I have not really experienced or seen anywhere till date. But buddhism also tells us that there are ways to overcome attachments.Let us have a look into what Buddhism suggests:

The Eightfold Path
1. Right view is the true understanding of the four noble truths.
2. Right aspiration is the true desire to free oneself from attachment, ignorance, and hatefulness.
These two are referred to as prajña, or wisdom.

3. Right speech involves abstaining from lying, gossiping, or hurtful talk.
4. Right action involves abstaining from hurtful behaviors, such as killing, stealing, and careless sex.
5. Right livelihood means making your living in such a way as to avoid dishonesty and hurting others, including animals.
These three are refered to as shila, or morality.

6. Right effort is a matter of exerting oneself in regards to the content of one's mind: Bad qualities should be abandoned and prevented from arising again; Good qualities should be enacted and nurtured.
7. Right mindfulness is the focusing of one's attention on one's body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness in such a way as to overcome craving, hatred, and ignorance.
8. Right concentration is meditating in such a way as to progressively realize a true understanding of imperfection, impermanence, and non-separateness.
The last three are known as samadhi, or meditation.

It includes aspects of morality,meditation and wisdom. This is a something defintely worth pondering about. Your sincere views and comments would be highly appreciated in this regard.

2nd april 2006

well, today being a sunday...it was a holiday. holidays are fun especially when you get a chance to go somewhere and help.some of us were lucky today, in fact we had been for the last few weeks. got to go to maninagar and teach the kids. you know its always great to teach them. they show so much enthusiasm and are never tired. that is the best part of them and not to mention about their 'naughtiness'.
well today i got up at 7.45, little earlier than i expected, blame that on my 10 min fast cellphone...robbed me of some precious sleep. anyway, today was a day after the unusually "not so hectic" exams.i just had 3 exams and 2 of them were easy!well got ready with a quick bath, reached college at 8.30 but left a little later than expected. todays teachers were Das,Ritika,Rohan,Aabhaas,Ravi,Avinash and a first timer in my roomie Sonu(of course i also was there). We reached there at about 10.30, Das immediately got all the material and Sahiba did a fantastic job cleaning the place in quick time.There was a shortage of chalks, again Das did the buying part. Ofcourse Das is always expected to do something out of the ordinary.He got the same chalk boxes for 8 and 12Rs from the same shop! quite amazing. anyway we got started after that with each of us sitting with a few kids.i was really happy to see that they remembered what we had taught them before, infact some of them had even progressed from there.i found a exceptional learner in Sunny.he really can remember... Sonu had a tough time teaching his student. After almost an hour, when i asked him to write ABCD, he could not.But never the less,Sonu had tried hard.Actually some grasp better than others. Das was busy teaching the people who already knew a bit.started writing on the floor from one end of the "class" and finished at the other. there was a shortage of slates, so guess that was not a pretty bad option. Ritika was teaching her girl students and another "small person". dont know his name though,will find out. his pronunciations were like perfect,though his voice could not be heard until our ears go near his mouth.rohan and aabhaas played cricket with them.they never give them batting though. Ravi and AVinash also did their share of teaching.
I was teaching about 5-6 children myself.i too improved in my teaching(i guess so!). got more ideas as to how to help them remember these alphabets. we all taught for about 1 1/2 hours. got to say i had energy to teach more, but the kids would not stay for more than that(not all of course,some really enjoy learning).After this i had to again do this spinning thing. dont know what you call this game.catch the person and rotate him! well not exactly rotate, but its like the tora-tora ride. luckily only 2 of the kids asked for the ride, otherwise my head would have been spinning for more time. During this time Ritika had started reading out a story after which Sonu took over that work.Rohan and Aabhaas were busy batting and Ravi and Avinash were still teaching.Well one of the children made a kite and one of them was drawing. it was more like some fare than a classroom. well after all classes should be like this. thats what we wanted, getting children to develop interest themselves.
At about 1pm,we left from there. there was no afternoon session with the women or the other elders this time as there was some marriage or some other function. We then left by auto to S.T...Sonu went to his LGs place from maninagar itself, then caught a bus and were back. well got to say the last part of the journey was the most tiring, walking to college from G-0.So that is about it for now.