Human Life and Problems Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS

Human Life and Problems
Venerable K. Sri Dhammananda

SUPERSTITIOUS BELIEFS

Whenever we have problems, we approach others, and seek their advice. They may advise us to go and pray to certain gods in a temple or other places of worship or to recite certain mantras and to perform some rites and rituals.

But the Buddha's advice is entirely different. He never advises anyone to do anything without investigating the problems and analysing them to discover where the main cause of the problem is. The trouble with us is, whenever we face any problem, we suffer from fear due to ignorance and we create for ourselves unfounded fear, imagination and suspicion. After that we seek advice from others in order to get rid of them.

For example, when people face failure in their business they try to use magical power to gain good luck and success in their business. But they do not try to find out where the mistake or the weak point is and do not realise that many such practices are also based on superstitious beliefs. Some of these so-called 'seers' or astrologers exploit the ignorance of innocent people and make them believe that 'evil forces' are behind their bad luck.

The Buddha advised us to develop patience and understanding, without depending on superstitious beliefs, and to develop the rational way of life without wasting time and money on meaningless practices and also to use our own effort to overcome them in a reasonable way. Usually we cannot understand the causes of many of our problems because our way of thinking is clouded by suspicion and illusion. It is due to a lack of proper understanding that we give the wrong reasons for our problems and seek the wrong means to overcome them. We pray, we make offerings and vows by thinking that our misery is due to the working of an external force. Actually, most of our problems and worries are created by ourselves.

We do not strive to develop a correct way of life through moral and spiritual development. We think that religion is only for us to pray or perform certain rituals to get rid of our problems. If we maintain such beliefs, how can we concentrate on enriching our knowledge and understand things in their proper perspective?

The tree of civilization has its roots in moral values which most of us do not realize. Without these roots the leaves would have fallen and leave the tree a lifeless stump.

Today, we have developed our worldly life in such a way that we have no time to devote for self-discipline or to cultivate inner peace. Although we may have more than enough to satisfy our material needs like food, shelter and clothing, all the while we go on thinking of how to make more money and how to enjoy life in a worldly way even at the cost of others' rights. When we come across certain problems, we start to grumble, show our temper and create more disturbances not knowing that it is impossible to overcome our problems by adopting such an attitude.