The Blindness of Deep Connection
When someone is heavily attached to something be it a concept, an object, or a person, they cannot critically think or judge. In a way, attachment is akin to love. Since we love our children, we don't get to have a third-party view of them. We find justifications even for those limitations that are clearly visible. When it is of our parents, we go to the extent of fighting with spouses.
When it comes to religion, this gets even worse. There are will be a few who go to the extent of killing others who criticize their religion. So it is when it comes to language and culture. Any glaringly visible mistakes would rather be justified by most than try and correct them, nay at the least recognize and accept the shortcomings. Many would rather hand carry on the tradition as it is than improvise and hand over to our next generation.
Cultural Evolution and Food Practices
As for food, nearly every region considers its practices as the best. In this whole process many of us fail to appreciate that what we have an attachment to was an evolution by itself. A text, a ritual, or a food practice was evolved over a long period of time after allowing the good ones and rejecting not so good ones. We should be continuing on holding and open to improvising when it makes sense.
For something as simple as chili, that South Indians especially of Andhra cuisine love so much, is a vegetable adopted from South America after all, as we now know. If attachment is too deep, we fail to see things as they are.
The Mechanical Recitation Problem
It pains me when priests and others recite stotras of God as "……yanamaha" instead of reciting them as "…ya, namaha". The very intent of rituals are to pray God and thereby get some peace. But many perform these so mechanically, I wonder if they are able to reap the full benefit.
Attachment is something that comes to us involuntarily. But I guess every once in a while we need to detach, for a clear vision!
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