Spirituality is something to be shared for all mankind

ANTHONY O’Leary says that for religion to create happiness, it has to be voluntary (‘Religion can bring happiness – if it is practised voluntarily’, Letters, February 13).

But, voluntary religion, even if it does make people happy, is still a lonely thing for most people because it is a private thing. Even at Mass no one ever talks seriously about the messages of holy scripture.

But while religion is deemed private, the spiritual aspect of religion should not be private at all because the aim of spirituality is the total benefit of all mankind and the world in which mankind exists.

So, I think it is high time now for someone to invent a new type of electronic book with the best and most spiritual quotes in all mankind’s literature for anyone to read in public. Such quotations might be the most enlightening that Shakespeare, Buddha, Ovid, Oscar Wilde, WB Yeats, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, etc, have to offer.

Spiritual quotes from such a new book could be picked totally at random from an internal hard drive of specially selected quotes. A potential reader might have the help of a spiritual adviser to pick their quotes. Spiritual quotes might also be chosen just because they mean something very profound to the person whose turn has come to read.

Sean O’Brien

Kilrush, Co Clare