How to make Religion meaningful

A 9 year-old boy was beaten to death by a 64 year-old Buddhist monk for being playful during a religious ceremony. The boy was a novice; i.e. a beginner in monkhood. It happened in Thailand yesterday.

Many monks in that Buddhist country are facing serious criminal charges such as cases of extortion, sex and drug abuse. A month back the infamous “jet-set monk” was sentenced to 114 years in prison for money-laundering and fraud. The abbot of the popular Golden Mount temple in Bangkok was caught in May with $4 million of unaccounted money.

 

From a monastery in Gangtok during a personal visit
How do they expect such little boys to be 'religiously' serious?
Notice the cane in the monk's hand.

Recently the Christian Churches in Kerala were rocked by many sex scandals involving priests and nuns. We are too familiar with the atrocities committed by godmen in various parts of India. I was personally associated by necessity with a cult run by a godman whose greed for land knows no limits.

Suuch evils are mounting because religion has lost its relevance in the traditional form. The world has changed so much that traditional religious practices fail to strike a chord with many if not most believers including priests and nuns. That is why there is so much aberration particularly among the clergy.

Rubrics and rituals make up religious practices usually. Do they mean anything to people anymore? Religion has to pass through the necessary aggiornamento to tune itself with the changing world and its requirements. For example, there’s no use preaching asceticism or austerity to people who have made wealth the ultimate goal of life. Wealth creation has become a virtue in today’s world. Even the priests and other religious leaders are not free from the diabolical clutches of wealth. Look at the ostentation of religious institutions. Look at the lifestyle of so-called ascetics.

Stop preaching virtues that don’t make sense anymore. Instead teach people how to be virtuous without repressing their own wishes and dreams. For example, teach people how wealth can be used to promote greater happiness of more people. The recent deluge in Kerala has revealed concretely that there is a lot of goodness within people and they are ready to share, care and be magnanimous. Why didn’t religions ever work on that goodness so far?

Religions should change their focus from ostentation and aggrandisement to discovering and enhancing the goodness that is innate in human beings. Then religion will be a source of inspiration as they should be. They will be the fountainheads of goodness, as they should be. The world can be a happy place for all of us if only religions undertake the process of aggiornamento.

 

From a monastery in Coorg, 2016
Notice the unhappy, hunched posture though he is carrying his lunch