The Essence of a Religion

Every religion is like a river and its followers are like the water molecules. The moment the molecules leave the source, the river gives them their purpose and to always progress towards the destination, the vast infinite ocean of wisdom. The molecules stumble, crumble and fumble, but the river always show them the leading light by treating every molecule the same. Sometimes they pass through the beautiful mountains and cities, sometimes through rocky terrain, but the river tells them that happiness and sadness are part of the journey, and they should not stop until they reach there. Same time the other factors throw in garbage and dirt, the wind brings in dust, the water becomes dirty, but the molecules maintain their true identity and the river tells them that this identity, the inner self, is all that matters while external is temporary and insignificant. The molecules may sometime deviate, evaporate, get stuck at the shores, drunk away, but the natural cycle always bring them back to this river, and the river readily leads them to the ocean, again and again, until they become one with it.

This is the essence of every religion - it gives a path, a guiding light, to an individual so that he can merge with the infinite One. That may be god the almighty or the ultimate goal of everyone's life is all about. Sometimes the goal is know or unknown. Our religion defines true identity to inner self, which is untouched by the external world. And it tells that success, failure, sadness and happiness are an integral part of one's journey and one should not get influenced, discouraged or hindered by these forces. All the philosophies like Karma, Dharma, scriptures like Gita, bible and Quran, preachings by the same, practices like Yoga and so on explain this simple essence through different means.

Now because there is no one definite way to reach the infinite ocean of self realization, Religion is always open-ended and dynamic. Like an open-source software, Hinduism has received invaluable contributions from great ancient saints and rishis, but at the same time, has also got corrupted from fake godmen and selfish saints who misinterpreted and misguided others primarily for the benefit of their own or some other section of population, like the Kings, etc. We will further discuss each one in a very detailed manner. Some of the many ways that it has got corrupted are:

1. The entire notion of castes, which was originally division of work for maintaining stability in the society.
2. The social evils of dowry, sati, etc
3. All the superstitions.
4. Taboos like love marriages.
5. Adding steroids and other chemicals and destroying Ayurveda
6. Fear created in the minds of people by fake Godmen and priests.
7. So-called Vedic rituals by so-called Brahmins. We will also contribute a much under this topic to unravel the mysteries behind all. 

I can go on and on, but I believe you got the point. Due to ego, power or misunderstanding, a lot of people have corrupted Hinduism - so much so that nowadays its even hard to realize its true essence.

Here comes my part to largely explore and find out the true essence of every religion and unravel the mysteries behind every practice and with you judge each one of them and lets join hands to pure our thoughts about religion once again.