Some reflections; Enlarging one's horizons by reading and travel is good for the mind and should produce a more balanced individual. However, in terms of coming to a position about some belief system, for most people it is familial and not chosen later and for those who come to a position contrary to the family's view of the cosmos, the outcome can be disastrous and even lethal.  I saw a patient recently who grew up in one religious system (A) only for her parents to change to another (B). They were outcasts by their families of A. She went with them but later left that sect (B) to adopt view C of the cosmos (essentially the null hypothesis). She was then rejected by B but is not alone as many are in C.  Such states (A,B) are rigid boxes. All outside are regarded as infidels, heathens, etc. Those with narrow conceptual frameworks of how the cosmos (eg A)  ticks tend (at least history suggests this) to hate or want to kill, maim, destroy, minimise, dematerialize those in Boxes B-Z.  So go read the holy books and enlarge your view of the cosmos and read the elegant Arabic of the Koran, the beauty of the King James Bible, and the Acts of the Apostles in koine Greek and the Psalms in the original and Genesis in the Vulgate (Latin). This should enlarge us an make us less narrow for a man who is well travelled may also be wise, more tolerant and a brother to Everyman. I have read some teachings of Zen and Buddhism to but know little of Indian literature.  This literature embodies man's quest for his place in the cosmos and the meaning of life itself and thus should bring about a recognition that this great river has many tributaries leading to the one same sea.  ODYSSEY BOOK I  (Cotteril's line for line metric translation of 1911....my favourite) SING, O Muse, of the man so wary and wise, who in far lands Wandered whenas he had wasted the sacred town of the Trojans. Many a people he saw and beheld their cities and customs, Many a woe he endured in his heart as he tossed on the ocean, Striving to win him his life and to bring home safely his comrades. Ah but he rescued them not, those comrades, much as he wished it. Ruined by their own act of infatuate madness they perished, Fools that they were—who the cows of the sun-god, lord Hyperion, Slaughtered and ate; and he took from the men their day of returning. Sing—whence-ever the lay—sing, Zeus-born goddess, for us too! Many on their Odyssey kill the cows of the sun-god; the words of wisdom and transcendent beauty.  We are side-tracked by legalistic hatred of all outside our box and by killing with words or swords outsiders we kill in ourselves the seeds of this transcendent beauty and we die too. We choke on the bones of the words and fail to digest the meat in the message. 
Posted by Odysseus