Daily Lesson from Life 09 November 2008

"Monks brawl at holy site
A number of the faithful hit out with religious artifacts as priests tried to tear each others' robes off in the brawl. -Sun, Nov 09, 2008 AFP

JERUSALEM - GREEK and Armenian Orthodox faithful kicked, punched and hit each other with candles on Sunday in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre, the church built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was buried and resurrected.

Israeli police were called as the free-for-all left several people with black eyes, bruises and bloody cuts.
A number of the faithful hit out with religious artifacts as priests tried to tear each others' robes off in the brawl.

Police were called in to restore order in the Holy Sepulchre, where rivalries between the various denominations is such that the keys to the church have been entrusted for centuries to two Palestinian Muslim families.


Custody of the church itself is shared by the Greeks, Armenians and Roman Catholics, all of whom jealously guard their responsibilities under a fragile network of agreements hammered out over the centuries."

It is a headline hard to ignore and at the same time easy to appreciate why religious folks fought each others and forgot about what most religions will try to teach us, mortals, to love each human beings!

Emotion! Religion is not based on rationality. Religion is about emotion. About feeling. It's about belief without need to see evidence of science or physic or medicine!

It would have been fun to see the video clips (I am sure someone will release it if someone did witnessed the brawls) of how the monks (at first I thought it was the Buddhist monks or monks from the famed Shaolin Temple at it!) teared into or teared the robes off each others.

Lessons for me:

1. religions teach human being to be good, to be kind, to be nice to each others. Perhaps the practitioners need to study the true meaning of their beliefs harder?;

2. when we get too emotional about something, we will not allowed rationality to dictate our behaviors! So, when emotion takes over the thinking, the behaviors become irrational. That's why I always believed that to solve issues/problems/challenges, we need to first calm the emotion before we try to use rationality to think and provide some solutions. When we react to emotion with violence, rationality will take a back seat! The discussion turned into 'arguments' and nothing constructive will emerge;

3. to control our emotion, we can try the following tactics:
- take a deep breath and count to 10. Repeat it if it is not successful in the 1st attempt. All MUST do it though the one with the most control and big heart can 'sacrifice' a bit by giving way at that moment as long as life is not endangered;

- take a deep breath in and walk away from the scene for 10 seconds before returning. The sudden act will startled the other parties and give each other that precious time to cool down;

- deep down in your heart and your daily living, you must believed that nobody will be difficult if they do not have difficulties or problems they cannot resolve. If we are able to listen and come to a compromise, maybe we can move forward together. Tearing at each others will only lead to an endless vicious downward spiral. Keep the positive outcome of living in harmony in your mind always. It can be done if we all realized that we are just put on this earth for a transient time. Why try to end each other's time prematurely!!

May the monks embrace each other and realized that they are human being 1st and then religious persons second! Anyone listening????