I’m a hopeless romantic. I’ll admit to it. I believe that right at the core, all religions are saying the same thing. Actually, I don’t think it’s just me - I do believe that many other people see it too, if not all.
I’m going to try to deconstruct the similarities I see in different religions, because this idea, that we’re fighting over nearly nothing, is just so beautiful to me.
So I’m going to start my journey with the Rosh Hashanah, which just got celebrated a couple of weeks before I wrote this.
The Rosh Hashanah is a Jewish festival that marks the beginning of their calendar. The Jewish calendar is a luni-solar calendar, just like Hindus, and Buddhists and most of South-East Asia.
So the date of the Rosh Hashanah fluctuates every year, but it falls sometimes in late September/ early October.
Jews eat apples dipped in honey and a type of holy bread on that day. Ten days after this, they celebrate Yom Kippur, which is a day of atonement. Jews typically fast for 25 hours and pray for forgiveness of their sins.
That’s how the Jewish year begins. A connection to this ritual can be found in the Jain Paryushan, which is also a period of fasting - either 8 days or 10 days depending on which sect you belong to, ending on the day of Kshamavani, with a plea of forgiveness or, “Michami Dukkadam”.
Hindus have the festival of Navratri, which starts with the Chaitra Navratri, which is the beginning of their year, and ends with Vijayadashami, or Dusshera, marking the victory of Lord Ram over Ravana, and Ma Durga’s victory over Mahishasura - generally regarded as the victory of good over evil.
As it turns out, Shia muslims have a similar setup. Their new year starts with the first of Muharram, which some people celebrate by eating fruits, and this starts the ten-day mourning period of Muharram, ending with Ashura on the 10th day, on which day they fast and pray for forgiveness for their sins. And although this day is a day of mourning, it is regarded as a moral victory spurred by sacrifice leading to a revolution - a victory of good over evil.
So many religions, so many similarities. But that’s not all. All of these festivals fall roughly at the same time - the luni-solar calendars of the Jews and the Hindus put their respective festivals at around September-October, and in fact, there is an overlap between the Jain Paryushan and the Jewish Yom Kippur. And although Muslims don’t follow the solar calendar, the day of Ashura, the battle of Karbala, as noted in history, happened on the 10th of October, 680 C.E. And in fact, in a strange but so very interesting twist, on h
The question is, if all these calendars weren’t differently mapped, would these festivals all fall on the same days?
Each of these festivals marks a very significant day for each of these religions. So it does lead me to wonder, are we aware of the same thing in our universal consciousness, but in different ways? Are these events meant to divide us or educate us about the same values, but with different stories?
Of course, I don’t pretend to know any answers, but the similarities are… so beautiful.
