Of faith and miracles

I came to office and logged in to my Yahoo! Mail and saw an email from my ex-school friend with the following title: Miracle at Ramar Temple, Lumut with the following message:-

Dear All,

Miracle in Sri Ramar Temple Lumut Naval Base Lumut. Sri Ramar Deity
Turned 45 Degrees To Left.

Please Spread The Good News To All Your Family Members and Friends.

(It had 2 pictures as an attachment but I don’t wish to display it here for some reasons)

I have no objections towards religion. In fact, I’m a practicing Hindu myself, I’ll be excited to go see the ‘miracle’ but seriously, how does the fact that the deity turned 45 degrees to the left supposed to be good news to me and my family? To renew my faith? I need God to turn 45 degrees to start believing in him?

Sometimes we Hindus follow things blindly. We look for miracles from God without appreciating the best miracle of all times, our life, our every single breath.

Because of this blindness, we sometimes do very stupid things. Have you ever watched the VCD of Ayah Pin and Sky Kingdom? Well, I did and here are some of the stupid things I saw.

• He was dressed like a deity in the temple and was worshipped, complete with the fire and bell (exactly like how priest does pooja when we normally go to any temple).
  
  
• He was seated in an abode-like seat, normally can be seen in Hindu God pictures (golden altar).
  
  
• The priest kneeled and touched his feet for blessings.
  
  
• Other temple goers shower him with flowers.
  
  
• He was taken into the main section of the temple (the place where the main deity is placed and usually only the priest is allowed to enter and curtains were drawn, no idea what happened there)
  
  
• His feet were washed and some stupid ladies took the water and rubbed it on their head.
  
  
• Feet wash water was drunk by one lady as a ‘tirtham’. (Holy water, holy crap!)
  

Hinduism is a very beautiful religion. Take time to understand it. Not follow things blindly and tarnish our image. If we ourselves don’t respect our own religion, why expect others to respect it?

It feels like as if we worship almost everything nowadays. Dog, snake, Malay man… I seriously wonder what’s next.