The Life of Pi and The Faith of Pi - Essay Example

The Life of Pi and The Faith of Pi: A Study on the chemistry between Reason and Faith Semester, of Teacher In the novel, Life of Pi, the protagonist, Pi, though born a Hindu, started following Christianity and Islam at the early age of fourteen (Martel). Thus Pi became a believer in three religions (Martel). Why this character was following such an odd practice and how to find answers for the contradictions involved in this peculiar behavior is a simple yet complex puzzle for the reader to solve. In the beginning of the novel itself, Pi has reflected that, along with academic study, “steady, mindful practice of religion slowly brought...[him]...back to life” (Martel, 3). This sentence itself has shown that Pi had a crisis in his life, which had almost drained out life from him but he had won it back with the help of religion. But why he chose to follow three religions instead of one is the crucial question. And the answer lies in intricate threads of the the novel itself. Pi has called reason, the “fools gold for the bright” which indicates that he has a mindset which accepts faith rather than reason (Martel, 5). Zoological studies that he carried out also invoked in him great awe for the creations of God which he calls, “beautiful example(s) of the miracle of life” (Martel, 5). Though Pi had met Christianity with “with disbelief and annoyance”, he cannot leave behind the legend and the magic of Christ behind him (Martel, 55). He has confessed to the reader that the nature of Christianity which relies on “quick resolution” (the world created in seven days) was what attracted him first (Martel, 55). When Pis father tells him that he cannot accept two religions at a time, he draws his fathers attention to the similarities between Christian and Muslim religions like, “the both claim Abraham as theirs. Muslims say the God of the Hebrews and Christians is the same as the God of the Muslims. They recognize David, Moses, and Jesus as prophets” (Martel, 69). Here, it can be seen that Pi has a very clear mind and he is trying to see the logic which most of us, blinded by our religious faith, forget to see. Pi is capable of doing this because, Indian religious philosophy gives a wider space for mingling of religions (Vaswani, 20). Vaswani has pointed out that “India has profoundly believed through the ages, that God is one, though the ways to reach him are many. The Hindus not only tolerate, but accept every religion” (20). Pi, by birth being a Hindu, this religions ideological atmosphere might surely have influenced him as a child and must have shaped his religious faith. Even as early as in the time of the Moghul Emperor Akbar (Who ruled centuries back in India), inspired by Hindu religion, the emperor had formed a new religion called, Din-i-ilahi, “the religion of one God” (Reddy, 42). Such examples show how deep the concept of one religion is rooted in Indian culture. Hence, it is very easy for a Hindu to accept other religions. Secondly, as pointed out by Pi, it can be understood by anybody who looks at religions in an impartial way, that all religions arise from a reverence for the unknown. Primitive religions had natural elements as their Gods (like fire, water, lightning etc.) but after humans developed scientifically, these Gods were replaced by more abstract concepts. This is only because humans could decipher the science behind the natural elements, and thereby they got demystified. When Isaac Newton discovered the science behind planetary motion, again the throne of God was shaken because, it became scientifically known that the planets had their own laws of motion and they were not being directly controlled by any God (Bundy, 244). Theory of evolution, formulated by Charles Darwin, also unsettled the beliefs in the existence of God because it was proven that all the organisms on earth were not created at a time and higher forms of life had evolved from lower forms like amoeba and other single-celled organisms (Finney, 101). All these examples show that the concept of God had to get adapted to the forthcoming scientific information at times. But yet, God as the creator of life, remain uncontested because science has no explanation for how life exists. For Pi, “religion is about our dignity, not our depravity” (Martel, 68). With this vision, it is logical that Pi do not want to be deprived of the benefits of any religion. It is a dream that the whole of humanity has also dreamed now and then. Volumes and volumes have been written about what is common in all religions. And it has to be kept in mind that faith is some thing different from religion. Faith is personal while religion related to the collective. Religion is an organisation just like a government or judiciary is. It has its own rules and regulations. But faith is not limited by any rule. Every individual has an inherent right to follow what his faith says. In the case of Pi also, he has the freedom to follow his faith because humans are a civilization that believe in democratic freedom as far as the faith of Pi does not hurt anyone. If one go exploring into the concepts that form a faith, many similarities can be found between different faith systems. Many historians have studied such commonalities and a group of them have suggested that “we have these commonalities because of the activity of the divine” (Curtis, 92). Another group, which depends on rationality rather than beliefs to find truth, has also opined that “these common factors have to do with our biology” (Curtis, 92). Whatever the reason be, it is a proven fact that there are lots and lots of similarities between different religions. Just like any other human being on earth, Pi also takes refuge in religion to be in tolerance with the uncertainties and unresolved questions of life. But it is quite clear that he is not fully satisfied with the set of answers that each religion provide. For example, in Hindu religion he finds a powerful God who can never be defeated like Ram, but in Christianity he experiences a God who gets killed by non-believers, but who still remains a God for his followers with the sheer power of love (Martel). Pis inner urge is to synthesize these two qualities (of Ram and Jesus) to have a perfect God of his own. Similarly, Pi finds Islam as a “religion of brotherhood and devotion” (Martel). Pi also had found out that believers in each religion hated believers in other religions. He is surprised how that is possible because at such instances, all of them were forgetting what values their religion stood for-values like love and tolerance. So it can be easily understood that the contradictions between faith and religion, the contradictions between what a religion says and what its members actually practices, all these provoked a series of new thoughts in the mind of Pi and he realized that he could be helped by himself alone. He knew that he had to depend on his faith and his logic to decide which kind of faith he had to follow. And in this way, he evolved his own faith by taking good values and beliefs from all religions. With such a broad mindset, Pi even has accepted atheists as his kins (Martel, 28). This is because he feels that, “they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them- and then they leap” (Martel, 28). So he calls atheists as his brothers and sisters “of a different faith” (Martel, 28). In this thought process, Pi is not even bothered to defend God because he says, “There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless” (Martel, 68). All these utterings of Pi has the same logic inherent in them. He believes in God because he knows there are things that cannot be explained by reason. He also sees various religions as paths to reach God. He does not differentiate among them or see one particular religion as the only truthful one, because he does not find any difference between them. Pi is lead by faith rather than religion and so he is not bothered about the restrictions imposed by one religion on its members in practicing another religion. He did not want anything man-made to come between God and him (Martel, 68). And he attains this by merging pure reason with pure faith. Works Cited Bundy, Wayne.M. “Out of Chaos: Evolution from the Big Bang to Human Intellect”, St.Leonards NSW: Universal Publishers, 2007.print. Curtis, Richard “What is Religion?”, North Carolina: Lulu.com Publishers, 2007. Finney, Jerald “God Betrayed”, Long wood FL: Xulon Press, 2008.print. Martel, Yann “Life of Pi”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, n.d. Print. Reddy, Nandini.K.V. ed. Social Science (History) 7 (Rev). New Delhi: Ratna Sagar, n.d. print. Vaswani, J.P. “Hinduism: What You Would Like to Know About”, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 2002.print. Read More