A matter of faith

 A story goes like this:-

In a village there was a man who used to sell milk to make a living. She had a young daughter who used to distribute the milk to the different houses of the village in the morning. There was a river by the village and a temple on the other side. She had to take the boat to give milk to the priest of the temple.

One day the girl was late reaching the temple. The priest scolded the girl for being late as it delayed the offering of milk to the God. The girl said that the ferryman was late today. The priest shouted at the girl saying that the milk has to be offered to the God by a certain time in the morning, don’t you believe in God or he will send you to hell. If you believe in him then you can even walk on the river, haven’t you heard of the ancient saints doing it. The girl listened silently and returned home.

From the next day the girl was never late in delivering the milk. The priest got curious that even in rain and storm she comes at the right time. So one day he followed the girl to the banks of the river and saw the girl waking on the river water to cross it. The priest asked the girl how she was doing it. The girl said that you only told me how to do it, you said to believe in God and walk across the river. The priest decided to try it and started walking behind the girl. After a few steps the priest started drowning and the girl rescued him.

The girl said if you believe in God then why you were holding your cloth above your knees to save it from getting wet. Just believe in him and walk.

The end of the story.

We all believe that faith can do wonders and move mountains. Faith is common to all religions as it is one of the corner stone of religious belief. When we are in the initial stage of belief in God without experiencing anything, it is faith that is supporting and sustaining that belief. The ignorance in us makes us have faith in God. For most of us life ends at this stage only.

Faith is not limited to God only; faith plays its role in our day to day life also. As a child when father tells to jump and he will catch me, we have faith in him and jump, because we have belief that he will catch me. This is the stage of blind faith reinforced by the closeness of relationship. When mother coerces her child to take a bitter bill to cure the fever, we take it, again because of the faith that it will cure. This is the blind faith.

The next stage of faith is the informed conviction. In this stage we have a backing of something which has been done by someone previously following a certain path. From the religious point of view it can be what is written in the scriptures and narrations of earlier masters on how to attain God by following a particular path. In this case we have the belief supported by previous experience of others. If we follow that path religiously then we might also reach that destination. The stage of blind faith does not need any backing of any religion; it is just faith in God. The second stage is where religion comes into play. Now a Christian will try to follow the path of Jesus, a Muslim will try to follow the Quran and a Hindu may try to follow the teachings of Krishna.

This is the stage were God is getting sub divided according the ways and means to reach him. Even after following the second step most of us are still in the stage of blind faith, because our faith is still diluted by doubt. In our real life also we try to imitate the path of success of others. A path trodden by others to achieve success becomes a marked path to success. But that is not always the case because when we copy someone we generally miss the fine prints. That’s why many may try to imitate Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Ma, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates but all don’t reach that level of success.

The next level is the level of personal experience. When we have followed the path of what is mentioned in the scriptures diligently and with full faith and conviction, a few of us experience this stage. This is the stage in religion when a person becomes someone who can show the path to others. These cases are very few these days, the one who can give the stamp of authenticity of a particular path with authority. The destination has been reached, the realization comes that all paths written in scriptures of all religions lead to the same place. Here faith transcends all reasoning and explanation. In real life also those who had faith in themselves, worked hard for it, suffered failure in the way but still trotted on, whatever the field it might be have reached the pinnacle of success.

But why only few reach this place at all. It is because we lack the faith to sustain the whole length of the journey. It is easy to deviate at the cross roads of disbelief, proof, reasoning, time, motivation and direction.