Text by Aqr, Beginner/ Aqr
I grew up in the countryside, and there were families in the village who believed in Buddhism, and there was a leader in their group, who was famous in our local area, and it was said that she had received the teachings of the Buddha.
Anyone in the village whose house is not peaceful, who wants to pray for something, will invite this disciple of the Buddha to come to our village, and whenever this happens, it will attract the attention of many people, including those of us who love to join in the fun.
At first, I was particularly curious to see for myself what such a divine figure was capable of, and to have the charlatanism of being determined to expose her deception, because I had been a staunch atheist since dawn, and I did not believe in the existence of ghosts, although as a child I heard that adults could see ghosts, and some adults said that they saw ghosts when they went to the toilet at night, but children could not.
I was very bold, and no matter what they said, I wouldn't believe in the existence of ghosts and gods.
For a while, my family life was very poor, my mother was also a person who did not believe in Buddhism, but she hindered her life, she followed the advice of her neighbor who believed in Buddhism next door, and spent some money to ask the disciple of the little famous Buddha to help drive away evil qi.
The disciple of the Buddha came to my house, after a series of procedures such as asking for incense, prostrating, and lighting firecrackers, she sat down, and within a few minutes she was like a changed person, the whole person seemed to be particularly energetic, her legs were shaking constantly, and her mouth was also humming like a song, they called this "coming to the horse", she talked about some unsatisfactory things that happened in my house, talking about her asking my mother to give some incense money, she seemed to be right, and finally she would give a plan to drive away evil spirits. Things like nailing a nail in a wall, or not being able to go out one day.
This seemed to me to be superstitious at the time, and I really couldn't understand how adults could believe those things. I said this to my mother, and she replied to me, "If there is any truth or falsehood, believe it, it is true."
As a young man, I couldn't understand my mother's words, and I was always an atheist.
My grandmother was my grandfather's sister-in-law, although she was the same age as my grandfather by generation, but she was nearly 20 years older than my grandfather, and my grandfather was born shortly after she married in our village. Since I became sensible, my grandmother is more than 80 years old, because of her disagreement with her daughter-in-law, and her health is still very strong, she did not go to the city with her son and daughter-in-law to live, living alone in the countryside.
My family is particularly close to the grandmother, the grandmother is kind to my family, people are particularly kind, the reputation in the village is also very high, every New Year's Day grandma will stagger to the ancestral hall in the village, burn incense, worship buddha, burn firecrackers, but step by step to go home.
For this reason, I didn't understand it very much, so I tried to dissuade my grandmother from doing these formal kung fu, and I said to my grandmother, "Grandma, you are very old, and it is not very convenient to walk, so why should you worship the Buddha statues that have no response?" "Grandma just told me that she had gotten used to it for so many years and would continue like this as long as she was alive.
I have only slowly come to understand since I went to college that as a young man, I cannot understand the behavior of adults, and even if I am an atheist, my speculation about the unknown world and my adherence to the bottom line of personal morality should be regarded as a belief to a greater or lesser extent, and my incomprehension and even criticism of my mother and grandmother and countless people with their own beliefs is undoubtedly an extremely unreasonable harshness.
Whether it is believing in God or cherishing oneself and loving oneself, one always has to have some faith in the world to achieve it. ——Wang Xiaobo
We have no right to try to deprive people of their faith, and it is unacceptable to them how many people who live in distress and despair survive on their faith, and how much we try to deprive or replace their faith.
Where there are people, there will be the existence of faith, people without faith will often not get people's trust, so it seems that having faith is always much better than not having faith, but excessive faith, even to the point of fanaticism, may give rise to paranoia and irrationality, because of fanaticism, people do not want to be reasonable, which reminds me of the book "Paranoia", paranoia is always holding the big stick of conspiracy theory, simple and rude, but can be sought after by the public, and democracy and peaceful regeneration need the promise, Sacrifice and rationality cannot quickly get a response from the masses.
Faith is an act of individual consciousness, and we cannot impose a belief on others, even if it is extremely correct, because it seems to me that since man is alive, he has the right to choose his own faith.
As the article "The Pleasure of Thinking" says: Great men always think that the world can be saved if all the people in the world are as kind as he expects them to be—rather, as he expects them to be, "innocent," or "fighting hard for a single thought." The people who make these claims are themselves innocent or selfless, and of course they do not know what evil and selfishness are, so these demands are: What I do not have, you do not have. The intelligence of countless people has been snuffed out.
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