I’m slowly working through The World’s Religions, so most of the posts this summer will contain some element of it…

Hinduism outlines different paths to God, a singular one, mind me and all the other people whom Hinduism was misrepresented to, of which may be better suited for some and other paths for others. The way through knowledge appealed to me greatly, jnana yoga. Today, I read of the way though love, bhakti yoga. There being different paths emphasized further the obvious, yet somehow hard to internalize, idea that people really are different. I learned of this further in a more grounded way through biology: people vary in the DRD4 gene , they vary in number of receptors for certain brain chemicals, and many other genetically determined things that amount to deeply affecting complex behavior and emotion. Somewhere inside of me, I felt everyone was more or less the same and variation in emotional responses to things are just exaggerated reactions resulting from a facade. But as I grow older and people’s actions become more and more unfathomable, this notion gets torn apart. I guess I believed in it since kids all seemed equally whimsical and erratic, from a kid’s perspective at least. With a bird’s eye view now, it becomes apparent that that was never the case.

Anyhow, apparently jnana yoga is much more selective in who it works for. Huston Smith says something along the lines of a person needing the right amount of rationality and spirituality. Whereas bhakti yoga works for the largest group of people. This, once again, drove in the point of people being fundamentally different, each of our hearts beating to a different tune. I couldn’t imagine myself doing as the Christians do (Smith says their practice is similar to bhakti yoga) and as the Hindus who practice bhakti yoga do, and yet these groups are by far the most prevalent and have been so throughout history. That is, loving something so intensely, worshipping it, etc. to find liberation… Brahman. The polytheism in Hinduism is only to individually appreciate the millions of things that God can do, so it is really monotheistic. And Christians are able to love the invisible dude by just praying and singing his name.

Reading Kokou no Hito helped me realize that not only are the beats of our hearts different, but we also cannot alter its natural frequency. Mori must climb, it’s where his heart lies. No matter how dear his wife and daughter are, his heart longs for the mountains, moutains that won’t hesitate to crush his bones and smother his beat.

This sort of topic feels like it should end with a call to action, but my brain is sleepy. (vs I’m sleepy… In a incredibly paraphrased blurb: Smith points out that “my” indicates a distinction between oneself and an object. “My shoes” but also, “My mind, my body, my soul, etc.”… what is “I”, then? He suggests it’s something more ethereal)