Contradictory Teachings
We know from modern psychology how important early impressions are. The first impressions that go into the minds of young people mold and influence their entire life. While a child is learning history in a Catholic school, learning geometry, learning mathematics, he is also being taught the teachings of the Catholic Church. The teachings of the Catholic Church are not the Śaiva Dharma. They are drastically different, in some ways even opposite, from the Śaiva Dharma. What has happened? In order to gain an education for their children so they can grow up and earn money, so they can compete with their peers in the West, the parents have sacrificed the soul of the child and prepared him for a poor birth in his next life.
It happens in this way. The child goes to school each day and listens to the teachings of the Catholics about God and Jesus and Mary. He learns from the Catholic Catechism that the soul goes to heaven or to hell after one birth on this Earth, that those who do not accept Jesus as their savior suffer eternally in hell, where the physical body burns forever without being consumed, that one must not worship idols, that other religions are not God’s true path.
Then the child returns home, and his parents try to undo these impressions by telling him that there is no eternal hell and no original sin, that non-Christians do not suffer in hell, that Śiva is a God of love, that karma does exist and souls do incarnate many, many times upon the Earth. This young mind, not having matured into reason as yet, simply becomes confused. At school he hears that his parents just don’t understand, and he should therefore not listen to them about religious matters. At home his parents tell him that in certain matters he should not listen to the nuns, should not believe the good fathers, that Śaivism is his religion, and is a wonderful religion, that it is all right to wear holy ash. Imagine a child who goes to school and is taught all day, six or eight hours a day, that he should believe the Catholic beliefs. He is taught that there is no reincarnation, that there is no karma, that Hinduism is a pagan religion, that the Catholic religion is the only true religion in the world, that his parents are wrong, that his forefathers were wrong, that the ṛishis and satgurus are also wrong. And then, for an hour or so at night, if he is lucky, the parents teach that the Catholic Church is wrong, that he should go there only for the secular education, that he should disregard all the other instruction, not listen to the holy fathers and nuns but ignore them when they talk about their religion.
A true story was related to me by Pundit K.N. Navaratnam, Jyotisha Shastri, a close devotee of my satguru. “As a young boy growing up in Jaffna, I received my primary school education in a Christian school. The teacher impressed upon me in religious classes that the Hindu Gods were all evil devils. We were told when passing the Hindu temples to spit and swear at these evil images. Many times I followed my teacher’s instructions and indeed did these inappropriate deeds—until one day I spat at an image of Lord Gaṇeśa and immediately fell to the ground and suffered a serious head wound. My cousin was studying in a Catholic convent with many other students who were born as Hindus. Every morning they were taken to the church for prayers. On the way the students passed a Hindu temple where they were told to spit and swear in the direction of the temple. This was a cruel and dishonest attempt at conversion to a different faith.”
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 339: THE PROBLEMS OF TODAY END TODAY
All Śiva’s monastics treasure harmony as their way of life. They stop work, attend to and resolve before sleep any inharmonious conditions that may arise, knowing that creativity lies dormant while conflict prevails. Aum.