Is religion different from spirituality, only because of the institutionalization? I’d like to add something in addition to what Pure Spirit Dharma responded with. What makes religion not spirituality:

1. Tribal mentality

Apart from the institutionalization of spirituality, there’s also the notion of “whole and partial”. It’s like you’re not a practitioner of a religion if you don’t do all the basic tenets. Can I ask people to call me a Buddhist because I meditate? Can I ask people to call me a Catholic because I chant/sing prayers in the church? From the institutions themselves, this practice is frowned upon as if you’re not eating healthy, a.k.a. trying to eat from a buffet of food. This tribal mentality doesn’t do justice to the variety of religious practices. Just like food affects people differently, spiritual practices depend on whether that practice creates the connection to God. Reza Aslan considers religion like a language. Which language do you find most comfortable to speak? One is what you were raised with, and then you learn more as you grow up and try to communicate with others.

2. Explicit instead of tacit knowledge

Spirituality is tacit knowledge, yet people have treated religion like explicit knowledge. Your example with mangoes is treating religion like history. This explicit knowledge is still somehow appropriate, because in history we know that an event can be accounted differently depending on the historians. What’s worse is treating religion like natural sciences, e.g. gravity law, so there’s no way you change it. I see that this scientific mindset came from our modern education system. Schools are teaching children to analyze analyze analyze instead of explore explore explore. Our brain became more fond of thinking instead of experiencing.

3. Abandoning older cultures

You gave examples of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism as practiced in the East. Yet even the religion practiced with dogmas in the West has its mystical practice in the ancient East. For example, we can find the mystical forms of Islam in old Iran (Persia) and old Indonesia (Java). Modern education (let alone the use of computers) has made people leave mystical practices although we still find some traces of it from certain beliefs, e.g. Zarathustra reincarnated as Muhammad (Persia), Muhammad’s ancestor married a Javanese woman (Java).

Great discussion, Jack. I like the way you always connect different perspectives.