Wednesday 31 May 2017

Facebooking a third eye opening and awakening source of learning: Zoroastrianism and Hinduism

We must learn and grow. Without learning, we will remain stunted, much like malnourished children who cannot grow healthily and happily due to poor nutrition caused by the poverty of the mind (lack of knowledge and ignorance) and the economic conditions of their parents, who are responsible for raising and caring for them. As sensible intellectual beings, we humans need to educate ourselves as best as we can, sharing factual, truthful, and evidence-based knowledge and information to become aware and awaken from our state of ignorance.

Recognizing this, I opened my Facebook account in 2005 while studying for my Master of Public Health degree in Australia. However, once I returned to Nepal in early 2006 after completing my studies, I stopped using Facebook. It was not until 2011, when I went back to Australia for my doctoral program, that I decided to use Facebook again to connect and learn from people and professionals in my home country, Nepal, as well as others around the world. Since then, I have used Facebook as a platform for learning and sharing, aiming to free myself from the darkness of my mind clouded by mythological facts, irrational assertions, claims, and blame that serve to humiliate, dominate, discriminate, and marginalize certain groups of people based on class, caste, and gender.

On Facebook, I used to engage in heated discussions and arguments on the issues I posted, supported by available evidence. As part of my doctoral research, I delved into the topic of discrimination based on biological sex, questioning why such discrimination exists in human society but not in animal society. I sought to understand the root causes of this discrimination and gradually came to realize that irrational mythological knowledge and information, characterized by claims, assertions, blame, shame, manipulation, alteration, cheating, stealing, and fear, have been ruling human society when critically analyzing historical facts and figures. Since then, I have preferred using Facebook over other social media platforms because it allows me to share links to different news portals and articles and express my thoughts and ideas freely, helping to remove the blind spots in our minds.

This morning, a person named Harry Bhatt from the USA shared a link titled "http://www.hindupedia.org/en/Zoroastrianism_and_Hinduism" on a status I posted on December 4, 2014, entitled "Brahmins' Contribution to the Promotion of Buddhism" (see at https://www.facebook.com/notes/laxmi-tamang/brahmins-contribution-for-the-promotion-of-buddhism/10204532546167646/comment_id=10211597880636592¬if_t=note_comment¬if_id=1496167938795768). In response, I wrote, "Zarathustra was a Kashmiri Brahman born near the Urni Jabbar mountain in Uri, a town and tehsil in the Baramulla district, in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, India." This morning, I shared this information again in my Facebook status, stating, "However, this may not be easily accepted by many blind followers of dogmatic faith. I find Facebook to be a great source of learning and sharing knowledge and information from across the globe."
When I opened the link, I discovered that Harry Bhatt himself had written an article titled "Zoroastrianism and Hinduism." I copied and pasted the article details into my blog for the convenience of my blog visitors.

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