[rvn1045]

I understood religion better after practicing and studying meditation.

The backbone of all religions is based on the personal mystical experiences of individuals like Jesus, Mohammad, Budha and many others.

They experienced some kind of personal transformation and feeling of being connected with everything around them.

A lot of religious and spiritual practices are based on developing that feeling within yourself through various trainings.

Monks for example are deep in this territory and may practice meditation for hours and hours a day. When you do that you become very sensitive to changes within yourself and start to see how various stimuli might effect you. They might experience that being charitable and loving etc unlocks deep levels of joy and blissfusness but if they do the opposite they might face a decrease in such feelings etc

So it’s not so much you have to be charitable for some moral reason but more you have to be charitable if you want to experience certain feelings within yourself that are much more pleasant than what you may experience if you do the opposite.

[yumraj]

> The backbone of all religions is based on the personal mystical experiences of individuals like Jesus, Mohammad, Budha and many others.

Many, not all. Basically newer religions that were founded by an individual such at the ones you mentioned. Ancient, but still practiced, religions, such as Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Native American religions and so on have a different, more nuanced, origin.

[Mediterraneo10]

Zoroastrianism was founded by an individual: Zoroaster. Traditionally it has been viewed as the product of an individual (drawing on some elements of the prevailing religion) just like Christianity, Manichaeism or Buddhism, though details of the founder's biography are now lost to time.