Prayers and Reflections

Buddhist Wisdom/ The Middle path
Let me tell you about the middle path. Dressing in rough and dirty garments,
letting your hair grow matted, abstaining from eating any meat or fish, does not
cleanse the one who is deluded. Mortifying the flesh through excessive hardship
does not lead to a triumph over the senses. All self-inflicted suffering is
useless as long as the feeling of self is dominant.

You should lose your involvement with yourself and then eat and drink naturally,
according to the needs of your body. Attachment to your appetites–whether you
deprive or indulge them–can lead to slavery, but satisfying the needs of daily
life is not wrong. Indeed, to keep a body in good health is a duty, for
otherwise the mind will not stay strong and clear.

This is the middle path.
From “The Pocket Buddha Reader,”

This we believe:

Humans have become so numerous

and our tools so powerful that we have driven fellow creatures to extinction,

dammed the great rivers,

torn down ancient forests, poisoned the earth, rain and wind,

and ripped holes in the sky.

Our science has brought pain as well as joy;

our comfort is paid for by the suffering of millions.

We are learning from our mistakes, we are mourning our vanished kin,

and we now build a new politics of hope.

We respect and uphold the absolute need for clean air, water, and soil.

We see that economic activities that benefit the few

while shrinking the inheritance of many are wrong.

And since environmental degradation erodes biological capital forever,

full ecological and social cost must enter all equations of development.

We are one brief generation in the long march of time; the future is not ours to erase.

So where knowledge is limited,

we will remember all those-who will walk after us,

and err on the side of caution.

–David Suzuki

Mother, in this season of the flowers

I bow to you in humble awe.

The brilliant colors of my blossoms

Are  growing now,

Soon to be fruit

I feel need to give to you

For all that you have given to me,

And though the moment is not yet right,

One day my fruit will yield its seed

To your sweet earth

–Danaan Parry

The Savior said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.

For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Peter said to him, Since you have explained everything to us, tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?

The Savior said There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin.

That is why the Good came into your midst, to the essence of every nature in order to restore it to its root.

Then He continued and said, That is why you become sick and die, for you are deprived of the one who can heal you.

He who has a mind to understand, let him understand.

Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body.

That is why I said to you, Be of good courage, and if you are discouraged be encouraged in the presence of the different forms of nature.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

–The Gospel of Mary

You are above me O God

You are beneath

You are in air

You are in earth

You are beside me

You are within.

O God of heaven,

You have made your home on earth

In the broken body of creation

Kindle within me

A love for you in all things.

   –JP Newell (Celtic Prayers from Iona)

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(12)

The disciples said to Jesus,
“We know that you will depart from us.

Who is to be our leader?”
Jesus said to them,
“Wherever you are,

you are to go to James the righteous,
for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.”

John 6:68,70

Simon Peter answered him,

“Lord, to whom shall we go?
Your words are words of eternal life.”

Jesus answered,

“Have I not chosen the twelve of you?

(3) Jesus said,
“If those who lead you say to you,

‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’
then the birds of the sky will precede you.

If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’
then the fish will precede you.

Rather, the kingdom is inside of you,
and it is outside of you.

When you come to know yourselves,
then you will become known,

and you will realize that it is you who are
the sons of the living father.

But if you will not know yourselves,
you dwell in poverty and

it is you who are that poverty.”

It has been suggested that Jesus is using sarcasm in his reference to James, “for whose sake heaven and earth came into being”. Jesus warns his disciples about “leaders” in Saying (3).

I believe James, Jesus’ brother, represented a rival movement in Jerusalem, still obsessed with keeping the Law, and that “James the Just” may even have been considered “the Teacher of Righteousness” or a “Messiah” in his own right.

When heaven and earth remain separate,

leaders may be needed to uphold the Law,

however,

when the two are made One,

“on earth as it is in heaven”,

the Law is no longer needed.

Matthew 5:18

“Truly I tell you: so long as heaven and earth endure,

not a letter, not a dot, will disappear from the law

until all that must happen has happened.“

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(11)

Jesus said,
"This heaven will pass away,
and the one above it will pass away.
The dead are not alive,
and the living will not die.
In the days when you consumed what is dead,
you made it what is alive.
When you come to dwell in the light,
what will you do?
On the day when you were one
you became two.
But when you become two,
what will you do?"

"when all are One and one is All"
Stairway to Heaven

Led Zeppelin

Heaven is not in this sky,
nor in the realm of the archons.
Those who die without Knowledge

were dead even when alive,

but those who have found Life will not die,
their Spirits are eternal.
By reinterpreting the dusty works of the prophets,
you breathe new Life into their words,

but where you once saw only dimly,

now you will have a clear Vision.

When you were born,
already age one*,
you entered the world of matter,
made of two dueling opposites,
but when you "make the two into One",
and Live on purpose,

you will Light up the whole world.

* Jewish tradition holds that a

newborn infant is one year old at birth.

Didache: Means literaly “The Teaching.” The Didache, which originated about 110 CE, documents the emerging authority of the one great Gospel. the Didache gives instruction on how a Christian community should treat itinerant Christian prophets. (See; Early Christian Writings, Stanforth translation, Penquin, 1987.)

Dositheos: Believed to be the founder of Samaritan Gnosticism in the first century, and associate of Simon Magus. Dositheans were a Gnostic sect which called “God” only ‘Elohim’ not ‘Yehouah or Lord.’ He is stated as the author of the “Three Steles of Seth.” See; (NHL p. 396.)
http://essenes.net/Dosithean.html

For the Father is sweet, and in his will is what is good. He has taken cognizance of the things that are yours, that you might find rest in them. For by the fruits does one take cognizance of the things that are yours, because the children of the Father are his fragrance, for they are from the grace of his countenance. For this reason, the Father loves his fragrance, and manifests it in every place. And if it mixes with matter, he gives his fragrance to the light, and in his repose, he causes it to surpass every form (and) every sound. For it is not the ears that smell the fragrance, but (it is) the breath that has the sense of smell and attracts the fragrance to itself, and is submerged in the fragrance of the Father, so that he thus shelters it, and takes it to the place where it came from, from the first fragrance, which is grown cold. It is something in a psychic form, being like cold water which has frozen (?), which is on earth that is not solid, of which those who see it think it is earth; afterwards, it dissolves again. If a breath draws it, it gets hot. The fragrances, therefore, that are cold are from the division. For this reason, faith came; it dissolved the division, and it brought the warm pleroma of love, in order that the cold should not come again, but (that) there should be the unity of perfect thought.

–Gospel of truth

Deeper than this is the problem of a wrong attitude toward God and

toward prayer which is purely rationalistic. Somebody has said that
the God of the prayer-manuals can love no one but himself. It is this
God who is nothing but a mathematical first cause, running a big
machine of which He presses the button to get glory for Himself out
of it. This is terrible theology, but it is really not too wild a
caricature of the manuals. If you try to fit prayer into that kind of
structure you get something inhuman, and it is part of our problem
because it is too hard to get away from a structure that you studied
devotedly. What did we all do when we were taking our theology? It
went in one ear and out the other and we used it for examinations,
but it was still there and some priests remain dominated by this
purely mechanical formula. God  is a great big machine, an
impersonal, loveless kind of thing. This view of God makes, for
instance, the problem of evil insoluble because you can’t get away
from the fact that if He operates in this way He is causing evil, or
if He is not actually causing it He is permitting it, and you get
into this vicious circle—”How does God allow people to sin?” These
are not real problems; they becomes problems only when you have a
rationalistic concept of God. Our prayer tends to fall into this
pattern and it becomes falsified.

Any theology in which we pretend to justify God by reason is bound
to be bad theology. You cannot do it. It is the theology of Job’s
friends. The Book of Job tells us a great deal about prayer. It says
that here is a man who undergoes great evil and here are four people
who come along and explain the evil logically and they tell Job why
he is wrong and why he has to suffer. We talk about the patience of
Job, but Job is not patient at all. In fact, he is mad at God and he
is arguing with God and he is protesting against God and saying you
are not right, you are wrong, you shouldn’t be doing this to me. And
what happens at the end of it is that God comes along and says Job is
right.

This is real theology, because it is not logical. And the real
theological message of this is not that God hits people over the head
to show that He is there but that our relations with God are person-
to-person relationships, and that we don’t deal with God according to
some system. You don’t look up in a book, asking yourself, “How do I
talk to God about this?” Something evil has happened in your life. So
you look in the book, and the book says, “God permits evil for your
good,” and you say, “Oh well, all right.” There is nothing wrong with
this, but the Bible says that if you really talk with God and say
what is in your heart you are doing right. You speak to God as a
child to a father and you go to Him and tell Him what you want Him to
know and then He tells you what He wants you to know, and this puts
it on a completely person-to-person basis. You don’t get to God
through a system. You speak from your heart. That is the basic idea,
and that is what the Book of Job is saying. That is what prayer is
and that is what we have to do. God is jealous of us precisely and
not for his glory but for our freedom. He wants us to have this
freedom and spontaneity and the reality of this personal love for Him.

Thomas Merton
THOMAS MERTON IN ALASKA
New Directions, 1989

“Kabbalah teaches us you never know the narrative you are in while you are in it. But you must have confidence in the goodness of the universe while you actively pursue the path that is right for you.”

- David Ariel (author of “The Mystic Quest”)

“Non-violence is perhaps the most exacting of all forms of struggle, not
only because it demands first of all that one be ready to suffer evil
and even face the threat of death without violent retaliation, but
because it excludes mere transient self-interest, even political, from
its considerations.” 

                        –Thomas Merton 

The time for healing of wounds has come.The time to build is upon us…We pledge ourselves to liberate all peoplefrom the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation,suffering, gender and other discrimination…There is no easy road to freedom…None of us acting alone can achieve success.We must therefore act together as a united people,for reconciliation, for nation building,for the birth of a new world. 

                           –Nelson Mandela 

There are domestic animals, like the bull and the ass and others of this kind. Others are wild and live apart in the deserts. Man ploughs the field by means of the domestic animals, and from this he is nourished, he and the animals, whether tame or wild. Compare the perfect man. It is through powers which are submissive that he ploughs, preparing for everything to come into being. For it is because of this that the whole place stands, whether the good or the evil, the right and the left. The Holy Spirit shepherds everyone and rules all the powers, the “tame” ones and the “wild” ones, as well as those which are unique. For indeed he [...] shuts them in, in order that [...] wish, they will not be able to escape.                                    –The Gospel of Philip

To be a Buddhist, you must not be a Buddhist…

There lies before us, if we choose, continued
progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom.
Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot
forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings,
to human beings: Remember your humanity
and forget the rest.

—Albert Einstein

You, the one
From whom on different paths
All of us have come.

To whom on different paths
All of us are going,
Make strong in our hearts what unites us;

Build bridges across all that divides us;
United make us rejoice in our diversity,

At one in our witness to your peace,
A rainbow of your glory.
Amen.
–Br. David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B.

We all drink from one water
We all breathe from one air
We rise from one ocean
And we live under one sky

Remember
We are one

The newborn  baby cries the same
The laughter of children is universal
Everyone’s blood is red
And our hearts beat the same song

Remember
We are one

We are all brothers and sisters
Only one family, only one earth
Together we live
And together we die

Remember
We are one

Peace be on you
Brothers and sisters
Peace be on you
–Anwar Fazal (Malaysia)

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(10)

Jesus said,
"I have cast fire upon the world,

and see,

I am guarding it until it blazes."

The following quotes are from:
Your Word Is Fire,

The Hasidic Masters

On Contemplative Prayer
Edited and translated by Arthur Green

and Barry W. Holtz, 1977, Schocken Books

"When God is seated upon His throne,
a fire of silence falls upon
the heavenly beings."

When a person says the words of prayer
so that they become a throne for God
an awesome silent fire takes hold of him.
Then he knows not where he is;
he cannot see, he cannot hear.
All this happens in the flash of an instant-
as he ascends beyond the world of time.

Or Ha-Emet 2b.
(Merkavah mysticism)

A person at prayer is like a bed of coals,
As long as a single spark remains,
a great fire can again be kindled.
But without that spark there can be no fire.

Always remain attached to God,
even in those times
when you feel unable to ascend to Him.
You must preserve that single spark-
lest the fire of your soul be extinguished.

Liqqutim Yeqarim 15b; Keter Shem Tov 37b-38a.