Thoughts on Religion

My name is Araash, and I’m a junior studying at Wharton. I grew up in New Jersey.

While my mom is Sikh and my dad is Hindu, I started out kindergarten in a Catholic school — my dad had gone to Catholic school from K–12 in India, and he wanted me to have a similar experience. Though I enjoyed it and was fascinated by regularly going to Mass on Fridays during school, the commute was long and I eventually moved to my public school, which was very diverse in race and religion.

As a kid, I generally associated “the right thing” with listening to my parents, as any kid would. My mom is a fairly religious person, so in this context it meant going to the Gurudwara on Sundays as a family, but also celebrating Hindu holidays and going to Hindu temples, etc. One of the reasons I enjoyed my childhood is because I got to experience different religions and cultures.

Once I got to high school, I was still religious. I would pray most mornings and nights (Sikh prayers). At some point, I was concerned that I didn’t truly understand what I was saying — Sikh prayers are a blend of Punjabi, Sant/Braj Bhasha, Persian, Arabic, and Hindi. Because of this, my mom and I ultimately read through the entire Guru Granth Sahib (the holy book) over the course of a year. I paid attention to the English translation as we did and got to learn more about the principles underlying Sikhism. I agreed with many of them: the concepts of service, empathy, etc. In this sense, I do not think any religion is truly misguided in the core values it aims to instill.

However, there were certain things I did not understand. Why did my mom have a rigid interpretation of what was right? Note that this was inspired by her belief in Sikhism. Outside of just Sikhism and more broadly, I struggled with semi-blindly following religion, which as a subject always included some sort of supernatural, unexplainable aspect. Why don’t we see this now?

I also felt like I may have been a follower for some wrong reasons — no matter what, I always found myself to be more religious when I wanted something or was worried about something. In retrospect, I do not think this is a terrible thing; however, I felt slightly misguided about the purpose of religion. I think that part of this confusion may have stemmed from a series of repeated micro-misinterpretations of religions, which have compounded over history into things I don’t quite follow.

Another uncertainty I have had with religion is the amount of staunch, immovable support from people. Irrespective of the religion, I have noticed every religion has people who are confident in their belief in their own (version of) God. This may be commendable, but I want to hear how people like these resolved their discomforts with religion.

After a very unclear last two years in college, I mindfully want to begin exploring and understanding the world for myself. So far, I’ve meditated with Buddhist monks, am reading articles and books about philosophy, and have enrolled in classes like this one and another on Indian philosophy. My goal now is to develop my personal philosophy on how to approach life, religion, and spirituality.

In this class, I hope to learn from everyone’s stories. Some areas I want to hear about include the following:

• Do modern times truly require new interpretations of religion?
• If born into a family of a different religion, what would you think about your current religion?
• What is your proof of God?
• Do you think the notion of God is an almost convenient way to rationalize the unexplainable?
• Should religion and government be separate in every country?
• What is your stance on non-believers?

I know I sound like a skeptic about religion, but I believe that this level of doubt is necessary for my own journey. It’s almost like starting from zero.

To summarize, I want to live by meaningful values — but do I need the principle of God to do it? I’ve really enjoyed the aspect of community and culture implicit to following religion, but I’m happy that I’m now trying to at least get to an answer about what religion means.