Fear of deadly coronavirus covers the land. Sporting events, concerts, and most public showings have been cancelled in an effort to reduce the spread of the new virus. Terrible as this infectious disease is, perhaps its only virtue is that it forces people to become reacquainted with their own mortality and to think about God. When things are going well we rarely, if ever, have time to remember Him. Nor do we show gratitude and affection for the good things in our lives. So why is it so difficult to understand that our ungrateful attitude, our forgetfulness, forces the hand of our true Father to bring us back to the proper path.

“It’s ok to be afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when people are afraid of the light.” Plato

Many scary things are happening all around us. War, Crime, terrorism, corruption, immorality, ecological decay, and environmental pollution to mention a few. Perhaps if we learn to temper our indifference to pachamama or mother earth as the Incas called it, to the suffering of other living creatures, that we share the world with, less of these things would happen to us. Chikungunya, Zika, Ebola, Influenza, Sars, and now Coronavirus. Remember that all living entities have a soul, and God does not play favorites. As long as we continue to disrespect God’s creation, to consider ourselves the masters instead of the responsible beneficiaries of His incredible design, we shall surely continue to be plagued by different types of suffering.

Chaitanya Charinamrita Adi Lila 5.20
“Foolish persons engrossed in their material assets are unnecessarily proud of being leaders of the people, but they ignore the spiritual value of man. Such illusioned leaders make plans covering any number of years, but they can hardly make humanity happy in a state conditioned by the threefold miseries inflicted by material nature. One cannot control the laws of nature by any amount of struggling. One must at last be subject to death, nature’s ultimate law. Death, birth, old age and illness are symptoms of the diseased condition of the living being. The highest aim of human life should therefore be to get free from these miseries and go back home, back to Godhead.”