words and pictures....
February 9, 2012
Words of wisdom…
“We must strengthen, defend, preserve and comfort each other. We must love one another. We must bear one another’s burdens. We must not look only on our things, but also on the things of our brethren. We must rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together.” ~~ John Winthrop
February 8, 2012
Food for thought from M. Scott Peck…
The religious who, of course, ascribe the origins of grace to God, believing it to be literally God’s love, have through the ages had the same difficulty locating God. There are within theology two lengthy and opposing traditions in the regard: one, the doctrine of Emanance, which holds that grace emanates down from an external God to men; the other the doctrine of Immanence, which holds that grace emanates out from the God within the center of man’s being.
February 6, 2012
Compassion is vital in our day to day existence…
The human capacity to care for others isn’t something trivial or something to be taken for granted. Rather, it is something we should cherish. Compassion is a marvel of human nature, a precious inner resource, and the foundation of our well-being and the harmony of our societies. If we seek happiness for ourselves, we should practice compassion: and if we seek happiness for others, we should also practice compassion. ~~ His Holiness The Dalai Lama
When we ourselves our struggling we must remember that we are still capable of having compassion for others. It is in that compassion that we lift ourselves up and we lift up those to whom we give our compassion.
February 5, 2012
I was first introduced to the teaching of J. Krishnamurti while studying A Course In Miracles, with Tara Singh while living in Los Angeles. Since then I have found great comfort and wisdom from the teaching of J. Krishnamurti…
The center of suffering
When you see a most lovely thing, a beautiful mountain, a beautiful sunset, a ravishing smile, a ravishing face, that fact stuns you, and you are silent; hasn’t it ever happened to you? Then you hug the world in your arms. But that is something from outside which comes to your mind, but I am talking of the mind which is not stunned but which wants to look, to observe. Now, can you observe without all this upsurging of conditioning? To a person in sorrow, I explain in words; sorrow is inevitable, sorrow is the result of fulfillment. When all explanations have completely stopped, then only can you look -which means you are not looking from the center. When you look from a center, your faculties of observation are limited. If I hold to a post and want to be there, there is a strain, there is pain. When I look from the center into suffering, there is suffering. It is the incapacity to observe that creates pain. I cannot observe if I think, function, see from a center- as when I say, ‘I must have no pain, I must find out why I suffer, I must escape.’ When I observe from a center, whether the center is a conclusion, an idea, hope, despair, or anything else, that observation is very restricted, very narrow, very small, and that engenders sorrow. ~~ J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
Let go of the suffering, I believe Krishnamurti is saying here. Release it. Sorrow is inevitable, we all go through it. We can’t get past it if we hold it at our center. It’s a hard lesson, but in time we must release the sorrow and suffering and move through it.
February 2, 2012
When we have problems, issues in our lives, we must choose to solve those problems by facing them head on and making the effort to understand the problem…
“The mere desire to resolve a problem is an escape from the problem, is it not? I haven’t gone into the problem, I haven’t studied it, explored it, understood it. I don’t know the beauty or the ugliness or the depth of the problem; my only concern is to resolve it, put it away. This urge to resolve a problem without having understood it is an escape from the problem – and therefore it becomes another problem. Every escape breeds further problems.” ~~ Talks by Krishnamurti in Saanen, 1964
We can not escape our problems, as J. Krishnamurti points out above, because in attempting to escape our problems we simply create more problems. And then our problems compound on top of each other and we create a proverbial mountain from a mole hill.
When there is conflict in our lives, J. Krishnamurti asserts that “conflict becomes more and more complex and insoluble because we do not face what is.” As Krishnamurti goes on to say, “There is no complexity in what is, but only in the many escapes that we seek.”
It’s one thing to take time to reflect on our problems and go deep inside our hearts and minds to question and find solution, but we cannot and we must not use escapism as route to “solve” our problems.
Communication with one’s self and others involved in problems that arise in our lives, is the key to solving our problems. We must shut out the ego that gives us false fear driven solutions and listen deeply to the open heart.
February 1, 2012
Via His Holiness The Dalai Lama on Facebook…
“There is a saying in Tibetan that “at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar.” The point of this saying is not that poverty is a virtue, but that happiness does not come from wealth, but from setting limits to one’s desires, and living within those limits with satisfaction.”
So true…
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