The coronavirus pandemic slams us in the face with spiritual shortcomings:
Remember HIV? What was blamed? A monkey in Africa, despite the impossibility of one monkey bite causing an explosion of HIV in Haiti, New York, Miami and San Francisco. Now it’s bats.
Suppose the virus was lab-created and it escaped from the lab. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is in Wuhan where the outbreak began. It was first to identify the Novel coronavirus in 2019. Even its head virologist, Shi Zhengli, does not rule out a lab accident (Wikipedia). Like all labs they inject animals with viruses for experimentation. That’s pretty bad but I suppose it’s for the common good? OK – but for God’s sake, do we have to blame animals after they have given their lives for us? The spiritual lesson is let’s quit lying and deceiving. Let’s own up and take responsibility.
Tibetans speak of “All sentient beings” in their prayers. Time to follow suit and recognize the intrinsic value of all sentient beings.
Descent into the lowest forms of thinking – such as impulse, instead of a recognition of refinement and higher consciousness. Hatred and scorn for our intellectuals and scientists has seized our country. They are to be ignored. The less educated and less intelligent the observer, the more scorn dished out. In 2018 our leader was warned by leading scientists at the CDC of a pandemic coming in 2020. Ignoring that, he fired the entire pandemic team to save money. The spiritual flaws that that comes from are two-fold:
- Arrogance. “I know what I’m doing and I don’t need any advice from anybody” which happened at the top level of our government. Arrogance can penetrate into all levels of a culture. Recently in Newsweek an Italian doctor said that the youth of Italy ignored the dangers of coronavirus, and proudly, defying the government, continued life as usual – parties, social events, large gatherings. Now her fellow doctors are having to decide which 40 year old among 5 to save with 5 more dying people waiting in the hallway. Our peerless leader defiantly refuses to isolate himself even though he has been exposed – showing our young people what to do.
- Greed. Greed collapsed the economy in 2008. Greed caused Chernobyl to fail – all for a less expensive part. Engineers at NASA are ignored when they tell the MBAs in charge of the money that something won’t work. And we all know the “money men” are the only ones in the room who are important. Well, at least for the US, saving money trumped preparedness for this pandemic. And there was no shortage of money. Just one man hell-bent on boosting an already robust economy so he could get re-elected.
Sadly, the “money” motive stopped our collaboration with China over pandemics, which was one of the functions of our CDC pandemic task force.
All of the shortcomings listed above can fall under the category of selfishness. The fool at the top says, “To hell with the rest of the world. It’s all about us.” Great – now people are dying over it.
All humans, all sentient beings are connected. There is a web of consciousness that spans all life on this planet. India and Nepal are two countries that have taught richer countries this spiritual concept. But, more important, they live it. For centuries and now every day their monks and lamas chant and meditate for the consciousness of the entire world. Householders do the same.
They have little medical care to help their people. We may be “taking responsibility” for our lack of spiritual understanding as we lose loved ones, but they will take the brunt of it. Is this fair?
Our planet will lose the immense contribution they make to us.
What will happen to the consciousness of the world after they are gone?