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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


Comments

  1. Murthy K v v sAugust 25, 2018 at 11:03 PM

    Religious bodies are losing the sheen of yore.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathAugust 26, 2018 at 10:26 AM

    "Such evils are mounting because religion has lost its relevance in the traditional form."- So true! They will have to reinvent and reform to be relevant.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 26, 2018 at 11:58 AM

      Will religions dare to reinvent and reform? I doubt. The history of religions shows that they were mostly used by the priestly classes and political rulers for power games. Look at how Hindutva is being used in India today, for instance. That's just what many world religions did in the Dark Ages. They all do that even today in less dark ways though.

      Delete
  3. Jyotirmoy SarkarAugust 28, 2018 at 9:29 AM

    The statistics is shocking, totally agree with you that..."such evils are mounting ....traditional form".
    A change will take place for sure but it needs time, it has become a practice,a way of show off and the easiest way to earn money, realization has vanished totally.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 28, 2018 at 10:05 AM

      Religion was always misused by many people. Today's situation is alarming though because a lot more new evils have entered into it.

      Delete

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