Day #12: What are religions doing these days?

31st March 2020: Today marks the 12th day of this journal and exactly 2 weeks since I stepped out of home for work.  Every day as the virus spreads and people are taking precautions to the best of their abilities and knowledge, there is enough for everyone to share, learn together and discuss. I am awestruck by the width of human knowledge exchange that is currently happening. I DON'T KNOW IF THERE WAS ANY OTHER TIME IN HISTORY WHEN SO MANY PEOPLE SHARED SO MUCH KNOWLEDGE WITH EACH OTHER AT THE SAME TIME - NOT FOR BUSINESS, NOT FOR PROFIT, NOT TO IMPRESS, JUST TO SHARE because they have time to do so.
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Today the ugly head of divisive politics rose again when it was found that people who attended an Islamic programme in Delhi have tested positive for the virus in various parts of the country. Religion must be the third most familiar reason for war in history, after land and woman. Historically, weapons decided the victor. In our times the information war is waged through technology and regardless of  total subscribers for any religion, the loser is Truth. If Truth is what all religions preach, people spending time debating religion rather than practicing it destroy all religions.

That brings me to the question, what are religions doing today? 

Perhaps for the first time in known history, the organized religions world over have been told to shut up by the Nation State in the name of the people, and they have. Truth loving religious people can't go back to 'business as usual' at the end of this Pandemic. Faithful followers need to search in their hearts whether the practices of faith were relevant after all if they could be shut down or if it is all about silent prayers and charity work. 

Religions institutions and their practices have come to be mistaken for religion itself by most practitioners. (Worse than this is to mistake religious politics for religion) All religious institutions have evolved from the religion and not the other way around and at some point they have compromised religion for their own survival. Today religious institutions command vast resources and the safeguard of the assets has become the primary purpose of the institution. For this they need to work with the agency of Power - the State and the Market. Market and State don't have their primary allegiance to Truth and by association, religious institutions move away from Truth. I am not stating this as a fact now as much as an inescapable reality.

Religion is beautiful truth. Today it  is being expressed by thousands of people who defy the State orders to cater to the needy, it is manifested in the motivation of younger people who volunteer for the government, it is expressed in the thousands of people who are offering their savings as contributions to the several efforts in their neighbourhood, it is the care that neighbours are expressing to each other's well being and other animals, in the millions of herbal and vegetable gardens people are planting and nurturing and love that is expressed through words and telephonic calls over long distances.  This is the beautiful truth of our times and in this is the religion of care, love, honesty and creativity. Every time religion loses its beauty and wonderment, it fails in Truth. Today around us we are seeing the religious revival through the beauty of human intent and action, care and sacrifice, courage and compassion. 

It is not as though people didn't have all of these in the pre-Pandemic days, ordinary people have always had the capacity to perform wonderment and miracles, everyone is born with it. Institutions of religions have made people believe that this capacity has been acquired only because of the association with them. Now for the first time, people are standing without the noise and visual of the religious institution and they can feel it; lots of people are going to believe in themselves and fellow human beings at the end of this Pandemic.  In other words, there will be lots of people closer to Truth and thereby more religious at the end of the Pandemic. 

This is the eventuality to which some religious people already seemed to reconcile themselves and are working with. Even at the beginning of the Pandemic stress about 15 days ago, a religious academic friend had commented that Truth, Honesty, Love, Imagination and Beauty are what religious people need to be concentrating on. 

Future Institutions will be the ones which create beauty out of daily existence, in reconnecting people to the daily wonders of nature and making them sensitive to earth and the elements including all living being, it requires institutions to align themselves to Truth.it requires institutions to align themselves to the Truth of all life being connected and that connection being the only sacred.  Economies, Politics, Education, Healthcare, and all institutions need to go this path. Religions have a critical role to play in this new order, as Institutions supposed to be aligned to Truth already, they need to lead the way.  Or else, they may forever be subservient to Powers. 

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**Commenting on faith is a subjective matter and I need to declare that in my life, I have adopted a spiritual path which today prescribes accepting the inevitable, take necessary precautions, sharing and practice intense contemplation.