Gerald D'Cunha

I haven’t been to the hallowed shrine of Sai Baba at Shirdi. But, I feel very close and connected to the great mystic. The more I reflect on the kind of life he practiced and preached, the more relevant spirituality and religion seem to me. The same is my feeling about Kabir. The God we hear about in the teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi and Kabir is formless… And, He doesn’t reside within the confines of temples and mosques… Their God lives in every pore of our being… in every breath we take… and, to experience Him, we need to pull down the walls we have created between us – the Hindus and Muslims, between you and me… “Sab ka Malik Ek Hai"… How loosely we use Sai’s famous words! Is that really so? That, the God that you and I worship is the same? Really? Will I teach it to my children? Will I teach it to my students? “There is a wall of separation between oneself and others and between you and me,” says the great mys...

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully As they do it from religious conviction.” -      Blaise Pascal I have witnessed the communal riots right since I was a little boy in our home town, Mangalore (now Mangaluru). Our small house was surrounded by families of all major faiths… On the very left lived a staunch Brahmin family, on the very right lived a staunch Christian, a Hindu (GSB) and   a Muslim family. Right behind our house lived many families that belonged to various faiths… Ditto was in the front, across the road… So beautiful this co-existence was, so enriching… This sight still continues to behold us, inspire us! Here in Mumbai, at my age of 62… In my floor, wing and our buildings live people of different faiths… Ditto is in the Society where I hold my classes and house my office… I am the only Christian in this building. But, during these thirty-two years of our co-existence here, none of...

I f the blot called ‘discrimination’ should go from our society, it should first go from our own hearts. If we still do not like to shake hands with those who come to pick thrash from our doorsteps, if we have a ‘separate’ cup, glass and plate for those who come to clean our floors or cook our food, if we still assume that we are from an ‘upper caste’ or ‘upper class’… then, there must be a separate God for those who we think are ‘lower’ than us and for us – yes, the ‘upper’ ones… Even though we are, so often, so brutally discriminated in the hands of people who think ‘upper’ and ‘higher’ than us, the blot still persists in us… We still discriminate.  Yes, on the basis of such silly things… The race. The caste. The colour. The class. The gender. The abilities. The education. The locality. The language. The age. And a dozen other silly things. L ast evening, my wife and I watched the latest Hindi movie – ‘Article 15’. And, yes, we came back home shaken ...

“Find the sweetness in your own heart, then you may find the sweetness in every heart.”  - Rumi O ur enemy is the creation of our own insecure mind. We perceive someone as our ‘enemy’… because, we are not confident of ourselves… We are insecure. Moreover, an enemy takes birth in our mind, when we fail to see our own goodness and the goodness of another soul – including our so-called ‘enemy’. Deep hatred towards another person, therefore, is nothing but a deep hatred towards our own selves. Yes, ironical – and unbelievable – it may sound! Learning to love ourselves - by recognizing and accepting all our human flaws – is the most crucial step towards learning to love others. We all are ‘flawed’ people on this planet… The flaws that we see in others are the flaws that we have to see in ourselves. Kabir described it beautifully: “The river that flows in you flows in me, too.” How true! Humanity is this river… The only reli...

“The kind of lies that someone tells us gives us an idea of how stupid, knowledgeable, intelligent, or ignorant they are … or they think we are.” ―  Mokokoma Mokhonoana I was talking to a friend of mine, this morning. The friend is no highly qualified; but, I consider him as one of the most cultured and ‘highly educated’ individuals in life… Well, that’s my assessment… As we were talking, I showed him some of the messages I was receive on social media. It was early morning… and, some of so-called ‘highly qualified’ individuals I was acquainted with had started sharing/forwarding posts which were extremely toxic, divisive and cheap. Most of these posts related to their affiliation with one particular religion or political ideology. They had a rigid stand and, viewed from that mirror, everything else and everyone else who opposed that stand was their enemy… It could be you and me. If we did not agree with what they thought was ‘right’,...