The Truth

Buddhism:

Be lamps unto yourselves.

Be refuges unto yourselves.

Take yourself no external refuge.

Hold fast to the truth as a lamp.

Hold fast to the truth as a refuge.

the Buddha

Christianity:

And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

John 8:32

Hinduism:

I am boundless space,

The world is a clay pot,

This is the truth,

There is nothing to accept,

Nothing to reject,

Nothing to dissolve.

Ashtavakra Gita; 6:1

Sikhism:

We know the Truth when the heart is True,

We know the Truth, when we love the Truth.

We know the Truth, when our Soul knows the Way.

Guru Nanak

Taoism:

As you return to Oneness, do not think of it or be in awe of it. This is just another way of separating from it. Simply merge into truth, and allow it to surround you.

Lao Tzu

The Hidden Words (an excerpt) by Baha’u’llah (from Shoghi Effendi’s translation)

HE IS THE GLORY OF GLORIES

This is that which hath descended from the realm of glory, uttered by the tongue of power and might, and revealed unto the Prophets of old. We have taken the inner essence thereof and clothed it in the garment of brevity, as a token of grace unto the righteous, that they may stand faithful unto the Covenant of God, may fulfill in their lives His trust, and in the realm of spirit obtain the gem of Divine virtue.

1. O SON OF SPIRIT!

My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.

2. O SON OF SPIRIT!

The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.

3. O SON OF MAN!

Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.

4. O SON OF MAN!

I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul with the spirit of life.

5. O SON OF BEING!

Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.

6. O SON OF BEING!

Thy Paradise is My love; thy heavenly home, reunion with Me. Enter therein and tarry not. This is that which hath been destined for thee in Our kingdom above and Our exalted dominion.

7. O SON OF MAN!

If thou lovest Me, turn away from thyself; and if thou seekest My pleasure, regard not thine own; that thou mayest die in Me and I may eternally live in thee.

8. O SON OF SPIRIT!

There is no peace for thee save by renouncing thyself and turning unto Me; for it behooveth thee to glory in My name, not in thine own; to put thy trust in Me and not in thyself, since I desire to be loved alone and above all that is.

9. O SON OF BEING!

My love is My stronghold; he that entereth therein is safe and secure, and he that turneth away shall surely stray and perish.

10. O SON OF UTTERANCE!

Thou art My stronghold; enter therein that thou mayest abide in safety. My love is in thee, know it, that thou mayest find Me near unto thee.

11. O SON OF BEING!

Thou art My lamp and My light is in thee. Get thou from it thy radiance and seek none other than Me. For I have created thee rich and have bountifully shed My favor upon thee.

12. O SON OF BEING!

With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be thou content with it and seek naught else, for My work is perfect and My command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof.

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”


- Albert Einstein

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

- Niels Bohr

These two giants of Modern Science discovered the conundrum that inspires spiritual seekers to discover a greater Reality than can be discerned through our intellectual equipment.

The author of ‘The Tao of Physics’, Fritjof Capra, himself a physicist, had an epiphany on a beach where he was able to experience his entire environment as a dance of vibrating molecules and atoms. This led him to explore the parallels between the different philosophies of Eastern Mysticism and Physics - “the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things”.

The author avers that the underlying unity of all things, though it is chiefly considered an Eastern belief, has also manifested itself in Western Philosophy, only to be discarded in favor of a dualistic approach that attempts to distinguish between Matter and Spirit, Individual and Universe.

This book reveals the harmony between the intuitive wisdom of the East, and the empirical findings of Science. The wisdom expounded in Eastern Philosophies is one that is beyond both sensory perception and intellectual cognition. However, Science in its relentless pursuit of Knowledge has reached an approximation of the great truths in its own way. Its boundaries are being pushed ever farther to accommodate ‘new’ findings.

Fritjof Capra compromises neither his spiritual inclinations nor his scientific training. The latest findings of particle physics affirm that all measurements of space and time are relative; that ‘solid matter’ is in fact, a continuous dance of energy – a process of endless creation and destruction; that matter is inherently inseparable from force, both being “different aspects of the same phenomena”; and, that there is an interconnection between all matter, that the properties of one part are determined by those of all the others.

This is in harmony with the Spiritual understanding of Brahman/Dharmakaya/Tao – different names for the same underlying Universal principle that is indivisible, all pervasive, and beyond Time, Space, Matter, Energy, and Consciousness.

“…space is nothing but a mode of particularization and it has no real existence of its own…Space exists only in relation to our particularizing consciousness.”

“…space and time co-ordinates are only the elements of a language that is used by an observer to describe his environment.”

Can you guess which of the two statements above was made by a mystic, and which by a physicist?

Ties of the Heart

One afternoon, on a late summer day in 1989, two teenagers, Christopher Astle and Emily Yanich, discovered an abandoned newborn. They took the baby to Emily’s home where her stepfather called the police. The authorities briskly stepped in, and assumed custody of the baby girl who was later adopted.


Taken in by others, but not forgotten by the two young people who had played such an unexpected and crucial role in the baby’s life. Emily would cry when recounting the story to others, and the two of them remained friends. Over the years, Chris and Emily moved, married other people, and had their own families, but they nevertheless stayed in touch, bound by their rescue of the baby. They would call each other every year on Sept. 6th - the day they had found the abandoned child.

They were not the only ones who remembered. Twenty years later, on Dec. 2nd, both of them received a Facebook message from a college student named Mia Fleming – Were they the same Chris and Emily who had found a baby left outside a stranger’s door? If so, she just wanted to say thanks.

Mia, ever since she had learned the story of her birth had never forgotten them, and had been trying to track them down for several years before she was finally successful. She says, “I didn’t know how they would feel.”

Chris and Emily know exactly how they feel. Emily says, “It's like a miracle… My heart is filled now. There was always a little spot missing.” Chris says, “It's the best Christmas present I have ever gotten.”

Not all relationships can be easily named, and ultimately, kinship is a matter of the heart not merely the ties of blood.


Source: The Washington Post, Thursday, December 17, 2009

Humor

When humor goes, there goes civilization.
- Erma Bombeck

“There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God.”
- Bill Cosby

“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.”
- Henry Ward Beecher

“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.”
- E.B. White

“Humor is reason gone mad.”
- Groucho Marx

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”
- William James

“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
- Mohandas K. Gandhi

The Truth Shall Set You Free

The first step in spirituality is: Practicing silence. Then, you can more easily recognize the galloping of the mind behind worldly happiness. Restrain its movements; turn it inside, into the calm lake of bliss that lies deep in the heart! Get over fear; by establishing your mind in the One, for fear can arise only when there is another. An inquirer from the United States asked me recently, 'How can faith become firm?' I answered, 'When the Truth is known, faith is rendered firm.' When the truth is known that it is a rope, faith in its harmlessness is made firm, and fear that it is a snake disappears. Let people know the Truth; they will then grow in faith and the faith will endow them with great energy and enthusiasm. The rest will follow, and Dharma (righteousness) can flourish in this world.

Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

A Touch of Nature

“One Touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
- William Shakespeare

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.”
- Mahatma Gandhi

“Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.”
- Thomas Edison

“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
- Rachel Carson

“When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.”
-Benjamin Franklin

“There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things we could use.”
- Mother Teresa

“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.”
- Barbara Ward

A Dream of Service

In 1984, at the age of five, a young girl named, Nasreen, started attending one of the first schools to open up in the north of Pakistan, a region where women were traditionally denied the opportunity to learn reading and writing. Excelling at her classes, she distinguished herself as one of the smartest students in the school, until 1992, when her mother’s death and father’s remarriage brought her studies to an abrupt halt.

Despite her heavy workload and harassment at home, Nasreen studied relentlessly. Her hard work earned her the equivalent of a high school degree at the age of fifteen, and an annual scholarship from the Central Asia Institute, that would enable her to fulfill her dream of obtaining her rural medical assistant degree.

By this point, Nasreen was engaged, and her mother-in-law strenuously resisted the idea of being deprived of Nasreen’s labor at home. The council of elders who decided all matters of local importance, upheld the mother-in-law’s objections, and forbade Nasreen from accepting the scholarship.

For the next ten years, Nasreen toiled at home and in her family’s fields, gave birth to three babies, suffered two miscarriages, all without any medical attendance. During her brief moments of respite, she kept her heath-care dream alive by seeking out and caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying within her community.

In the summer of 2007, the leadership of the council changed, and they decided to set aside their opposition to Nasreen’s pursuing her vocation. Today, Nasreen Baig is continuing her schooling in order to obtain her OB-GYN nursing degree, and hopes to begin providing medical care that the Wakhan region, one of the most isolated and forbidding places on earth so desperately needs.

Nasreen harbors no bitterness. “Allah taught me the lesson of patience while also giving me the tools to truly understand what it means to live in poverty,” she says. “I do not regret the wait.”

A Cinderella Story? Yes, but a different kind of dream, and a different kind of heroine.

From Greg Mortenson’s “Stones into Schools”

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

T'was Grace that taught my heart to fear.
And Grace, my fears relieved.
How precious did that Grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me.
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

When we've been here ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun.
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we've first begun.

Joy

Buddhism

Live in Joy, In love,
Even among those who hate.

Live in joy, In health,
Even among the afflicted.

Live in joy, In peace,
Even among the troubled.

Look within. Be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
Know the sweet joy of living in the way.

from the Dhammapada

Christianity

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy and peace.

from Galatians 5:22

Hinduism

The one who loves all intensely begins perceiving in all living beings a part of himself…
He becomes a lover of all, a part and parcel of the Universal Joy.
He flows with the stream of happiness, and is enriched by each soul.

from the Yajur Veda

Sufism

Patience is the key to joy.

Rumi

Waves of the Ocean

Through service you realize that all beings are waves of the Ocean of Divinity. No other spiritual practice can bring you into the incessant contemplation of the Oneness of all living beings. You feel another's pain as your own; you share another's success as your own. To see everyone else as yourself and yourself in every one is the core of spiritual practice. This spirit makes you humble before the suffering of others. When you rush to render help, you do not calculate how high or low one's social or economic status is. Thus, the hardest heart is slowly softened into sweetness by the opportunities of service.

Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

This book is a collection of a series of discourses given by Shunryu Suzuki, who started the first Soto Zen Monastery in the West, the Zen Center at Tassajara, and the Zen Center in San Francisco. For the purpose of this book, the talks were compiled and edited by Trudy Dixon.

Suzuki-roshi beautifully captures the essence of Zen in the very title. To have a Zen Mind is to have a Beginner’s Mind –

“…an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

The book has been divided into three Sections – Right Practice, Right Attitude and Right Understanding, “roughly corresponding to body, feeling, and mind.” To sum up, if these three are correct, we are in a state of Zen, regardless of whether or not we assume the actual physical pose.

In some ways, I found reading this book akin to a meditative session – letting go of preconceptions, dropping the argumentative intellect, and accepting that which seems oblique at first glance. There is a gentleness to the philosophy expounded in this book, a complete lack of effort to persuade, convince, or convert.

Suzuki-roshi does try to make a nice distinction between Zen Buddhism as opposed to earlier Hindu systems of thought. However, within its vast embrace, Hinduism comfortably includes many diverse and apparently contradictory modes of belief. A student of Hinduism may find that Zen is merely Advaitic Vedanta spoken with a Japanese accent.