The practice of Humanity is above all

To quote His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “Religion may have become synonymous with deep philosophical issues, but it is love and compassion that lie at the heart of all religion”.
Even after so many years of advancement and even though we are living in the 21st Century, we have failed to accept the idea of secularism and around us, communalism has crossed dangerous levels. So much so that there now exists superiority of religion from place to place [Depending on the number of people residing in that area]. It is still not rare to find some of us who are so communal that we make an extra effort to make people belonging to other religions feel inferior compared to us. Being proud of our faith is natural, and there is nothing wrong in it, but we also need to see to it that we don’t hurt the sentiments of people belonging to other religions. We can of course be glad and talk about our religion but while doing that we should not criticize the religion of others. Even if we are inherently communal to some extent then, we cannot escape the fact that were are all the same people. Why do we then distinguish people on the basis of the religion they profess? Besides, the moral values that we imbibe from every religion are more or less the same with every religion teaching us to be kind, gracious and truthful… that we should respect everybody.
What differs is only and only the way we worship and praise our respective Gods. We also know that because of the absence of the feeling of oneness, many unfortunate incidents have happened, many riots, which have led to loss of in numerous lives. Why don’t we understand that God did not intend for us to behave this way? But it is what and how we, human beings, have decided it to be like. It is we ourselves who have decided to divide ourselves into different groups and communities. If God really wanted this difference among communities, he would have made the differences more obvious.
If we are really proud of our religion, we should celebrate its teachings; practice humanity. By treating everybody equally and with respect, we will be true to our respective religions and can then prove that we understand the concept of humanity more clearly. We need to understand that “There Is No Greater Religion, Than the Religion of Humanity.” (the writer is a class XII student in a Gangtok School)