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Only the transcendent, the completely other, can be immanent without being modified by the becoming of that in which it dwells.
Hence, the attempt to impose more unity upon societies than their individual members are ready for makes it psychologically almost impossible for those individuals to realize their unity with the divine Ground and with one another.
In those respects in which the soul is unlike God, it is also unlike itself.
God and I, we are one in knowledge.
O my God, how does it happen in this poor old world that Thou art so great and yet nobody finds Thee, that Thou callest so loudly and nobody hears Thee, that Thou art so near and nobody feels Thee, that Thou givest Thyself to everybody and nobody knows Thy name? Men flee from Thee and say they cannot find Thee; they turn their backs and say they cannot see Thee; they stop their ears and say they cannot hear Thee. Hans
When the Ten Thousand things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the Origin and remain where we have always been. Sen T’sen
Consequently it seems justifiable to infer that human minds in the remote past were capable of as many and as various kinds and degrees of activity as are minds at the present time.
Certain thoughts are practically unthinkable except in terms of an appropriate language and within the framework of an appropriate system of classification.
Our perceptions and our understanding are directed, in large measure, by our will.
We are aware of, and we think about, the things which, for one reason or another, we want to see and understand.
The lack of a suitable vocabulary and an adequate frame of reference, and the absence of any strong and sustained desire to invent these
here are two sufficient reasons why so many of the almost endless potentialities of the human mind remained for so long unactualized.
Because this is so, and because the value of pure thought, whether analytical or integral, has everywhere been more or less clearly recognized, provision was and still is made by every civilized society for giving thinkers a measure of protection from the ordinary strains and stresses of social life.
Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husband’s chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you.
Yet further, you never enjoyed
the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And
The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it.
Buck’s
Cosmic Consciousness.
The Gospels are perfectly clear about the process by which, and by which alone, a man may gain the right to live in the world as though he were at home in it: he must make a total denial of selfhood, submit to a complete and absolute mortification.
The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white.
In the end, the
herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox. Because he now loves, loves to the extent of being identified with the divine object of his love, he can do what he likes; for what he likes is what the Nature of Things likes.
But for nice ordinary unregenerate people the only reconciliation to the evanescent is that of indulged passions, of distractions submitted to and enjoyed.
As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On one side is the danger of mere rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things which should only be used as instruments or symbols.
Even beyond the ultimate limits there extends a passageway, By which he comes back to the six realms of existence. Every worldly affair is now a Buddhist work, And wherever he goes he finds his home air. Like a gem he stands out even in
the mud, Like pure gold he shines even in the furnace. Along the endless road (of birth and death) he walks sufficient unto himself. In all circumstances he moves tranquil and unattached.
disciplining of the will must have as its accompaniment a no less thorough disciplining of the consciousness.
To achieve it, one must walk delicately and, to maintain it, must learn to combine the most intense
denying passivity, the most indomitable determination with a perfect submission to the leadings of the spirit.
if a Bodhisattva, in his attempt to realize Suchness, “retains the thought of an ego, a person, a separate being, or a soul, he is no longer a Bodhisattva.”
He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.
The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold.
Which now I unlearn, and become as it were a little child again, that I may enter into the Kingdom of God.
Sub-human lives and even things are to be treated with respect and understanding, not brutally oppressed to serve our human ends.
men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, and what interests them in regard to the social environment is not its progressiveness or non-progressiveness (whatever those terms may mean), but the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in their advance towards man’s final end.
We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love.
Here on earth the love of God is better than the knowledge of God, while it is better to know inferior things than to love them. By knowing them we raise them, in a way, to our intelligence, whereas by loving them, we stoop towards them and may become subservient to them, as the miser to his gold. St. Thomas Aquinas
Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love; I love in order that I may love…. Of all the motions and affections of the soul, love is the only one by means of which the creature, though not on equal terms, is able to treat with the Creator and to give back something resembling what has been given to it…. When God loves, he only desires to be loved, knowing that love will render all
those who love Him happy.
There grows within me the power of love and humility, which is born of the Unborn.
A beggar, Lord, I ask of Thee More than a thousand kings could ask. Each one wants something, which he asks of Thee. I come to ask Thee to give me Thyself.
Ansari of Herat
The second distinguishing mark of charity is that, unlike the lower forms of love, it is not an emotion. It begins as an act of the will and is consummated as a purely spiritual awareness, a unitive love-knowledge of the essence of its object. Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which usually we long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul and humility. St.
Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which usually we long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul and humility. St. Teresa
In other words, the highest form of the love of God is an immediate spiritual intuition, by which “knower, known and knowledge are made one.”
“knower, known and knowledge are made one.”
the soul to its divine Ground in spiritual essence is that, like all other emotions of the heart, sensible love intensifies that selfness, which is the final obstacle in the way of such union.
Only God has repose without movement.”
Then you carefully strain off the pure water…. When the mind becomes tranquillized and concentrated into perfect unity, then all things will be seen, not in their separateness, but in their unity, wherein there is no place for the passions to enter, and which is in full conformity with the mysterious and indescribable purity of Nirvana.
