Man Is Born in Tao

Fishes are born in water

Man is born in Tao.

If fishes, born in water,

Seek the deep shadow

Of pond and pool,

All their needs

Are satisfied.

If man, born in Tao,

Sinks into the deep shadow

Of non-action

To forget aggression and concern,

He lacks nothing

His life is secure.

Moral:  “All the fish needs

Is to get lost in water.

All man needs is to get lost

In the Tao.”

.

~ Lao Tzu

translated by Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

This Repentance

What people turn to is more important than what they turn from, even if that to which they turn is only a higher moral truth; but to turn to Christ is far more important than to turn to higher moral truth: it is to turn the face towards Him in whom is all moral truth; it is to turn to Him in whom is not only the virtue which corresponds to the known vice from which the penitent desires to flee, but all virtue; it is to turn the face to all holiness, all purity, all grace. It was this repentance which the apostles preached after Pentecost. - Roland Allen (1869-1947), Pentecost and the World, London: Oxford University Press, 1917

All are related...

Mitakuye Oyasin (All Are Related) is a traditional Lakota Sioux prayer, with its opening phrase used as a refrain in many Lakota prayers and songs.  It reflects the inherent belief of most Native American traditions and belief systems that "Everything is Connected". The Lakotas, Dakotas and Nakotas all the Native American tribes revere the prayer. It is used in all Yankton spiritual ceremonies and activities, like Peyotism, and employed as a prayer to end other prayers, after which the sacred food or sacred pipe is passed.   Mitakuye Oyasin,  translates as "all my relatives," "we are all related," or "all my relations." It is a prayer of oneness and harmony with all forms of life: other people, animals, birds, insects, trees and plants, and even rocks, rivers, mountains and valleys.

The Prayer

Aho Mitakuye Oyasin.... All my relations, I honor you in this circle of life with me today. I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge you in this prayer....

To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you.

To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundations of life experience,

I thank you.

To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness,

I thank you.

To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionship in this walk of life, I thank you.

To the human nation that shares my path as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you.

To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages, I thank you.

To the Four Winds of Change and Growth, I thank you.

You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live.

We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny.

One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below.

All of us a part of the Great Mystery.

Thank you for this Life.

(thanks to my friend Lee Schultz for the original text).

Allowing Space....

If we can allow some space within our awareness and rest there, we can respect our troubling thoughts and emotions, allow them to come, and let them go. Our lives may be complicated on the outside, but we remain simple, easy, and open on the inside.  - Tsoknyi Rinpoche, "Allow for Space"

Racing around through life seems to be getting us somewhere, but exactly where might be the question. Our modern lives seem to be increasingly complicated by instant communication, a myriad of family and social responsibilities, and even the “demands” of our spiritual praxis and journey. “Waking up” and remaining open to Spirit’s leading is not easy work.  Jeshua repeatedly called us to “wake up”, “listen” and “see” from the “inside-out” not the “outside-in”.  The Buddha taught much the same.  Once we learn to quiet our inner selves by embracing the things that trouble us, the outer world becomes calmer and more serene.   The dualism which we thought was reality dissipates and our awareness can now embrace a different way of becoming and being.

Everything that comes from thee is Good

So let thyself be found also in this hour; thou who art the father of all, let thyself be found with a good gift to everyone who needs it, that the happy may find courage to accept thy good gifts, that the sorrowful may find courage to accept thy perfect gifts. For to men there is a difference of joy and of sorrow, but for thee, O Lord, there is no difference in these things; everything that comes from thee is a good and perfect gift. - Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Journals

The Lover

I am your lover, come to my side, I will open the gate to your love.
Come settle with me, let us be neighbors to the stars.
You have been hiding so long,
endlessly drifting in the sea of my love.
Even so, you have always been connected to ...me.
Concealed, revealed, in the unknown, in the un-manifest.
I am life itself. You have been a prisoner of a little pond,
I am the ocean and its turbulent flood. Come merge with me,
leave this world of ignorance.
Be with me, I will open the gate to your love.
Rumi

Awake and Alive

The loveless heart may have all the religion and all the knowledge, yet it is dead. As the Bible says, "God is love." God is in the heart of each person, and the heart of each person is the highest heaven. When that heart is closed by the absence of love, then God is closed. When this heart is open, God is open, and one is alive from that time. ~~~ "Gathekas #22, Aims and Ideals", by Hazrat Inayat Khan (unpublished)

This teaching comes from the Sufi tradition, yet the Apostle Paul suggests the same wisdom. In I Corinthians 13 he reminds us that among all the spiritual virtues, the greatest is love. We can have hope, faith; we can give all we have to the poor but unless we are open to God’s leading, Spirit’s Voice, we are in fact “dead”. In that state, unawakened and asleep, motivated by personal desires and false self, God’s love which is infinite, unjudging and compassionate is not something we can live into or fully embrace. The path of living as deeply as we can with an open heart is not easy, but only by learning to keep our heart open can we truly become alive. By repeatedly waking up, recognizing what binds us to our false self, and gradually through practice, practice and more practice, letting go and allowing the space to be filled with Spirit, can God-with-Us manifest in this time-space reality. (Thanks to Monk Gail O for the original quote).

Awakening Day by Day

Enlightenment is not a peak experience. It’s a permanent shift in paradigm that deepens day by day. - Shinzen Young, "The Point of Contact"

Waking up to our True Self, God-With-Us, is not (for most of us) a one time, peak experience. Sure, tradition suggests the Buddha might have “been-there, done-that” and St Paul likely had a “peak experience”. But even so, they – and we – have to continuously pay attention to the small quiet voice of Spirit otherwise we quickly slip back “asleep”. This is not an easy task and Jeshua was well aware of it. All those trips to the desert to pray, all those times in the garden in silence. For us to ”wake up” and then stay awake, we must follow the same path.

Every time is a good time..

The priest Wumen once wrote, 'A hundred flowers blossom in spring, the moon shines in autumn, there is a fresh breeze in summer, and there is snow in winter. If your mind isn’t occupied with trivial matters, every time is a good time.' Harada Sekkei Roshi, "Zen Basics"

How we see the world around us inevitably influences how we respond. If we see the Creator in everything and recognize our connection with the Divine, then we can only look at the world around us with wonder and in love. Even when this worldly reality deals us difficulty, pain and sorrow, we can develop the capacity to create something beautiful even in the chaos and difficulty. It is our way of seeing that informs our perception of reality.

Open and Glorious

The victory over death is a victory over biological
death, which is henceforward transformed into a
"passing over," part of a great momentum of resurrection
which must culminate in the manifestation of the Kingdom.
The cosmos will be transfirgured, in a manner no longer
secret and sacramental, but open and glorious. In the
universal metamorphosis of persons, souls, will assume
a bodily splendour, like Christ's at his trans-
firguration on the mountain, or after his resurrection.
- Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism

Heretical?

"I feel so inspired by my Pagan encounters. I no longer subscribe to or feel moved by an 'Almighty God' up there, only knowable through the blood of his son. I am no longer convinced by the story - the all powerful and all male monotheistic God who sits alone, separated from His creation, with the flawed followers below all struggling and striving to gain his approval.... ...This God sends his son to bridge the gap IN BLOOD?

I just don’t buy it anymore. I’ve not rejected the whole thing for there’s much beauty in it, but the classic fall / redemption model is defunct in my opinion. To me Jesus is still a powerful symbol of the good-ness and god-ness of all people. He was a bringer of light indeed and his gift was to give people back to themselves, rather than set up a human / divine exchange system. He LOVED people into the kingdom by demonstrating the deep love of the divine, which is unconditional and ever flowing. The angry God who demands a price (a blood bargain) for our sins just does not make sense.

To me, Spirit (he, she, it) exists in and through and with and around all people, all creation. Over the millennia various cultures have tapped into this divine current and sought to express it in a multitude of ways, usually reflecting the landscape and culture of its origin. Faith grows out from the land that births it and nurtures it. If not a pantheist I am most certainly now a panentheist for I see deity in all things.

So, can I still also hold onto my Christian identity? I believe I can, for the beauty of the modern Pagan approach is to see all systems as valid. Reading Joseph Campbell has also moved me greatly. He helps us see that religious faith is not only natural but that it is also basically mythological. Myth does not mean falsehood, in fact it means the reverse, truth. Myth is truth told in story form. Myth expresses truth by metaphor, ritual and symbol. The deep power and resonance of the Christian myth is what keeps me from abandoning the world of Christianity altogether."

~Diary of a Heretic

Ultimate Truth

When one realizes the ultimate truth, one comes to understand that one single underlying current to which all the different religions, philosophies and faiths are attached. These are all only different expressions of the same truth, and it is the absence of that knowledge which causes all to be divided into so many different sects and religions.

In India there is a well-known story exemplifying this fact: that some blind men were very anxious to see an elephant. So a kind man one day took them to see one. There, standing by its side, he said, "Now, here is the elephant, see what you can make of it." Each one tried to make out by touch what the elephant looked like, and afterwards when they met together they began to discuss its appearance. One said, "It looks like the big pillar of a palace," another said, "It looks like a fan." And so they differed and discussed amongst one another, then they quarreled so much as to come to a hand-to-hand fight. Each one said, "I have seen it, I know what it is; I have touched it." Then the man who took them to the elephant came and said, "You are every one of you right, but you have each seen only a part of the elephant."

So it is with the religions. A person says, "This religion is the one, this doctrine is the only one, this truth is the only truth possible." That shows a lack of knowledge of the ultimate truth. As soon as one comes to the realization of the depth of truth, one begins to discern that it is the same truth which the great ones have tried to express in words. They could not put it fully into words. They have done their best to help humanity to evolve and reach to a point at which it is able to understand what can never be explained in words.

~ "Supplementary Papers, Philosophy V", by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Courtesy Gail Ostenson