There was a time when I saw temples as an inefficient use of resources.
Why build a temple when the same money could build a hospital? Why spend time in prayer when people need healthcare, education, and basic necessities? It seemed like a straightforward choice. Service appeared more meaningful than worship.
Over time, however, my perspective began to change.
It did not happen because I rejected science. Nor because I lost faith in medicine. If anything, my respect for both grew deeper. What changed was my understanding of what it means to be human.
A hospital addresses suffering that has already manifested in the body. It treats disease, repairs injury, and extends life. Its role is essential.
But increasingly I began to notice another kind of suffering—one that cannot always be measured through scans, tests, and prescriptions.
Anxiety.
Restlessness.
Disconnection.
The inability to sit quietly with oneself.
The loss of wonder.
The absence of meaning.
Modern life has become extraordinarily efficient at keeping us occupied, yet remarkably poor at helping us be still. We have spaces for work, entertainment, shopping, exercising, and consuming information. But spaces for contemplation seem to be disappearing.
In that context, I began to see temples differently.
Not merely as religious structures, but as public spaces for pausing.
A place where people gather with humility rather than ambition.
A place where gratitude matters more than achievement.
A place where one is reminded that life may be larger than personal desires and fears.
Just as a home benefits from a small corner for silence, prayer, or reflection, perhaps society benefits from having such spaces as well.
This does not require grandeur.
A temple does not need to be extravagant, gold-plated, or architecturally magnificent. It can be simple, clean, and welcoming. Its value lies less in the structure and more in the atmosphere it creates.
At the same time, my experiences around healthcare have also shaped my thinking.
Hospitals are indispensable, yet they are not immune to the weaknesses of the society they serve.
Some healthcare professionals embody extraordinary compassion and dedicate their lives to healing. Their presence reassures patients that medicine can be an expression of service.
Others, however, seem burdened by exhaustion, bureaucracy, commercial pressures, and an increasingly transactional system. In some places, healthcare feels less patient-centred and more administration-centred. Less healing-oriented and more financially driven.
Of course, doctors are human too. They face immense stress, difficult decisions, and emotional fatigue. But observing these realities led me to an uncomfortable question:
Who heals the healer?
Who cares for the inner world of those responsible for caring for others?
A society can have state-of-the-art hospitals and still be deeply unwell.
And a society can have places of worship and still lack compassion.
Neither institution automatically fulfils its highest purpose.
The challenge is not choosing one over the other.
The challenge is bringing consciousness into both.
A temple without compassion becomes ritual.
A hospital without compassion becomes machinery.
What seems necessary today is not scienceor spirituality, but science and spirituality.
The wisdom to heal the body.
The wisdom to heal the mind.
The humility to recognise that despite all our advances, there remains much that we do not fully understand about life, consciousness, and human wellbeing.
Perhaps the future is not a world filled only with hospitals or only with temples.
Perhaps it is a world where the spirit of a temple informs the culture of a hospital.
Where healing includes kindness.
Where treatment includes presence.
Where efficiency does not replace humanity.
Where contemplation is valued alongside innovation.
In some ways, the ideal space may contain both—a hospital that remembers the sacredness of life, and a temple that inspires service to life.
My younger self saw temples and hospitals as competing alternatives.
Today, I see them as addressing different dimensions of the same human experience.
One helps us live.
The other helps us understand how to live.
And perhaps we need both more than ever.