Quoted from "Living Buddha, Living Christ" by Thich Nhat Hanh
To me, religious life is life. I do not seee any reason to spend one's whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be nourished by the best values of many traditions. (p.2)
It is good that an orange is an orange and a mango is a mango. The colors, the smells, and the tastes are different, but looking deeply, we see that they are both authentic fruits. Looking more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the rain, the minerals, and the earth in both of them...If religions are authentic, they contain the same elements of stability, joy, peace, understanding, and love. The similarities as well as the differences are there. They differ only in terms of emphasis. Glucoise and acid are in all fruits, but their degrees differ. We cannot say that one is a real fruit and the other is not. (p194-195).
(Yes, Mondo, am going through THAT article - many thks. )
No Coming, No Going
No coming, no going,
No after, no before,
I hold you close to me,
I release you to be so free,
Because I am in you
and you are in me
Tea meditation, Mindful Walking and Deep Listening
March 9 2010, 7:02 AM
Tea meditation
You need the practice of mindfulness to bring your mind back to the body and establish yourself in the moment. If you are fully present, you need only make a step or take a breath in order to enter the kingdom of God.
Suppose you are drinking a cup of tea. When you hold your cup, you may like to breathe in, to bring your mind back to your body, and you become fully present. And when you are truly there, something else is also therelife, represented by the cup of tea. In that moment you are real, and the cup of tea is real. You are not lost in the past, in the future, in your projects, in your worries. You are free from all of these afflictions. And in that state of being free, you enjoy your tea. That is the moment of happiness, and of peace. When you brush your teeth, you may have just two minutes, but according to this practice, it is possible to produce freedom and joy during that time, because you are established in the here and now. If you are capable of brushing your teeth in mindfulness, then you will be able to enjoy the time when you take a shower, cook your breakfast, sip your tea.
Oprah: So from this point of view, there are endless conditions of happiness.
Mindful Walking
There is a time for everything. There is a time when I sit down, I concentrate myself on the problem of my bills, but I would not worry before that. One thing at a time. We practice mindful walking in order to heal ourselves, because walking like that really relieves our worries, the pressure, the tension in our body and in our mind.
Deep Listening
Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don't interrupt. You don't argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing.
Deep listening helps us to recognize the existence of wrong perceptions in the other person and wrong perceptions in us.
Wll, personally Q, I don't think we need 'go' anywhere
March 9 2010, 9:56 AM
We never left, so we can never arrive.
Yet, we just need Remember and it will take a little longer for some than others.
That's the Way I see It, anyway.
Glad you enjoyed the posts.
Thich Nhat Hanh is an amazing read. He really does make me feel warm and safe and happy and wanted.
If you get a spare 50 minutes to spare, you might want to take a listen:
Thich Nhat Hanh - Peace is every Step
"You are like a candle. Imagine you are sending light out all around you. All your words, thoughts and actions are going in many directions. If you say something kind, your kind words go in many directions, and you yourself go with them. We are ...transforming and continuing in a different form at every moment."
Know Thyself
This message has been edited by BlueJudah on Mar 9, 2010 9:59 AM
I would expect in a forum titled "Many Paths" that some people would move along at least one of these paths, and you quoted "Thich Nhat Hanh - Peace is every Step" but on which path, if any? People usually don't keep stepping without getting somewhere else! Semantics?
It is these 'words' that can cause a few slip ups or contradictions.
What I would mean by the phrase we are right where we need to be is that a lot of people see a goal as such in 'the distance'. Because I believe we are the Source experiencing ALL and ALL 'return' (as such) after a Total Remembering), each of us is in the 'right' place for our chosen experience, NOT with each moment set in stone, but with the choice to use the tools that surround us.
It is learning to cope / survive in the Now moment, whatever our circumstance and chosen life style.
I really don't see it as a question of moving up or along any path. We may have been 'there' previously.
Does that make any sense to you, Q?
But nevertheless, I do feel we 'move' toward the Light, the Womb of the Source, or away, with each action, though maybe not 'individually', but as a mass energy? Not too sure, as we also do seem to have some who can experience a consciousness of such highly controlled energy that they are able to Ascend!
Yes, you wrote:
"... each of us is in the 'right' place for our chosen experience..."
..... Many people find that they experience something that they definitely have NOT chosen.
"... It is learning to cope / survive in the Now moment, whatever our circumstance and chosen life style. ..."
..... Yes, but that can be very painful, and many apparently think they are finished with learning, for good! But there are many "paths" that the various belief systems and advertisers want us to take for some supposed "improvement(s) of some kind, to switch to their path (into the "promised land"? And pay the leaders plenty of money?). And maybe, they claim, you can even SAVE, more and more! Oh Yeah?
" ... I do feel we 'move' toward the Light, the Womb of the Source ... "
..... Some do, and many don't. Many have difficulties even staying right where they are! But they hang on! On a slippery slope?
One of the problems I find with posting stuff and sharing ideas is that I have to post some stuff that has a lot more to its background than many might realise and the fault of that is entirely mine.
Let me use your first point, if I may.
Yes, you wrote:
"... each of us is in the 'right' place for our chosen experience..."
..... Many people find that they experience something that they definitely have NOT chosen.
Why would I disagree with what seems so obvious? And I mean disagree, but nothing is set in stone. Where I AM at the moment, I am a believer in the soul living in many experiences, human and non-human. Before we enter an experience 'we' do have a choice of roughly what we feel we need for the purpose of the soul's growth. So this one life is really just one experience that get's recorded in the soul. Hence in one soul we can have been Hitler and also Francis of Assisi, diverse experiences required.
Now, I would have to go into WHY are these sort of experiences needed and what sort of Deity / God, in my case, The Source, would require this?
So what I am saying is that for each statement there can be a whole background to it.
I am the first to say I do NOT have a total understanding. All I do is gather pieces of the puzzle and indeed I may well be forcing bits into wrong places. I try not to.
In that first point which I am using here, my reply ideally would also include choice of free will. Actually I am revising my ideas right now of free will and choice, looking at both from another perception. ALL just seems to be a constant work in progress. BUT what I think is that just because Now in this present life, even if we are near such a concept as Christ Consciousness, I am not sure if logically the next life would fit in the last piece, bringing a soul freedom from 'the Wheel'. We may well feel that last experience we have missed is how to cope in an extreme condition, such as a mother having to find food for her starving babies.
All the time we need to be objective, a very hard thing to be in many cases, as a mother, almost impossible. The soul is a recorder and records experiences for The Source who craved Knowing Itself and what It can achieve. So from The Source came ALL there is. Hatred and Love, evil and good, and the soul is NOT just a one human life experience, it is, imo of course, many many life experiences.
So in that way, we do choose our experiences, imo.
"Yes, but that can be very painful, and many apparently think they are finished with learning, for good.............."
That is another 'concept' I am currently pondering, learning or remembering? Some think we already have within all the knowledge there is, the Cosmic Consciousness. We need to deep think, to bring back to the forefront that which is hidden but nonetheless there.
I DO see what you are saying here. I wish I had the talent to get my thoughts across clearly as some are able to. Hmmm, personally we should never be stagnant in our beliefs. I guess we do 'move forward' in a way on that basis. Many more, let's say Christians, as they are for me the more obvious examples, ARE revising how they look at the Bible and Jesus Christ. I am a great fan of a couple of what tend to get called revisionists, such as Matthew Fox. I like very much his idea of the Cosmic Christ. So we get Fox and we get the fundy Christian. Yep, I would say Fox has NOT finished his learnings (rememberings ) and is aware how the Church has failed it's people.
I do believe we ALL will be re-emerged to The One in our own time. Some sooner than others but it is no race, Just other experiences to move on to.
No Proof!! Total empathy. I 'go' with that which I feel at home with and that does not mean it is easy street.
As I said, Q, it is Work in Progress and I know even in my own ideas there is contradiction. I also don't really mind because I don't feel we need to know everything, even about former lives, because what is important is the NOW experience and I feel the Right Path is the one that is as near to Love and Peace and Compassion, and this is not a new path, it is pre-Christian, it goes way back, back to The Source.
Now, what is this Source who loves the most evil as much as the most loving? It is US. Imo.
Quittner, thank you for your questions and points and especially the manner in how you put them. It is a joy to ponder and reply when a question is sincere........
Thanks, Jackie! We know from NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) that memory is retained of what "the soul" sees/hears up on the ceiling, that apparently the brain in the "dead" body is not needed to remember this. Is that related to what is called "Karma", the (huge?) memory bank containing everybody's good and bad deeds over a complete lifetime? Or is that only unsupported speculation? Yet, if reincarnation is a fact with us getting to be living again and again in different bodies, we usually do NOT remember (correctly? not at all?) what happened in a previous life. But I am also reminded of the Bridey Murphy case. See, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridey_Murphy
..... And how does Spiritualism fit into this? Are the spirits, including God, just bits and pieces of floating(?) memory of the past activities (of everybody? of only some?)? And does all this apply to any and all (invented?) religions/belief systems or only to only a special one? TIA
I am currently looking at some 'stuff' and collating some ideas.
When I thought about your questions here, I realised I do seem to have come a long way from my earlier spiritualist ideas in a few things.
When I first learned about Astral Planes in Spiritualism, I saw it very simply. 'We' are on a lower, denser plane, move on temporarily to the next similar but much 'quicker' energy place, where we get pretty much what we desire, just as we think it, then and there, rather than the lower plane, fist cause and much later effects.
Onwards and upwards so to speak until the 'higher' levels, were for those energies so much more 'brighter' and fierier than he lower ones. 'God' is at the Highest Peak, and only advanced energies could be 'received' near without burning up.
Yes indeed. Quite primitive actually BUT I feel Now justb a real lower level of understanding. I have kind of stagnated somewhat.
I don't believe anything just 'floats about'. But you know, what with Dark Energy, this mysterious mover, who knows what it may be 'made of'.
For me, life is a vital energy endowed with intelligence and will, so I cannot believe anything is just left to 'float about',
Gosh, what questions, Q?
Science may not agree but I do feel that reality is beyond human comprehension. But that doesn't stop me giving It a go!
All sorts of speculations and fiction are propagated by many people; Science wants PROOF, that something actually happened/exists, and, if possible can be replicated/repeated by suitable experiments. Nevertheless,for example, "The Big Bang" and other astronomical pronouncements are accepted tentatively, subject to change by future additional, reliable information.
..... As for spiritual matters, many different people have described in the literature what happened to them, and that is PROOF for them (but often not at all for others), never mind what clergy of the many belief systems said/says or wrote/writes or interpret(s) or speculate(s) about those experiences.
You give some golden posts, some of the best, but you are just as much a fundy as many others. You just can't see that though, can you? Oh thats just BS, Jackie! Indeed.
Thats Ok of course. We can choose to be all we want to, there is no right or wrong way to be. Course that can be BS to some and not for others.
But if you can read BS in thw words I quoted here, then indeed a Different Path. We all choose our various experiences. Oh! BS again! Dandy.
If we identify the main theme of, and shared by, most, if not all, organized and institutionalized religions, then we will find it the same fruit: rather mundane policy; humbuggery.
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... the essence of truth: axiomatic
Many indiviiduals cannot be classed only by their religion
March 16 2010, 9:55 AM
They may take the label but they act in Love outside and above any religion.
These folks have been and are everywhere. and they make a Loving difference by Living their Love instead of only chatting it, or just chatting other stuff.
Positions without substantiation don't count for much and escapism - mistaking wishful thinking, wittingly or unwittingly, for demonstrable, over-all, everyday reality - is a repression response; a quite natural, psychological, protection mode; a coping strategy.
Gnothi Seauton and all that.
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... the essence of truth: axiomatic
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