"Our sensual desires promise us a promenade, but deliver us only a dragon"
“Our sensual desires promise us a promenade, but deliver us only a dragonnade. A sprightly step in the forenoon turns into a draggled tail in the afternoon. All-nighters of roister-doistery lead only to mornings of huggermuggery; that is to say, of sickness and sadness. Need I speak of it? Every carnal joy begins with a caress, but in the end curls up into a ball and dies. I ask the question again. What can you see outside the monastery walls that you...
"Spirituality is an explosive state of creation"
"The religious mind does not function from a center of authority, whether it is accumulated knowledge as tradition, or it is experience which is really the continuation of tradition, the continuation of conditioning. The religious spirit does not think in terms of time, the immediate results, the immediate reformation within the pattern of society. We said the religious mind is not a ritualistic mind; it does not belong to any church, to any group, to any...
"Spirituality is the transcendent in our own existence"
“Nothing exists for its own sake, nothing is valid by its own right. What seems to be a purpose is but a station on the road. All is set in the dimension of the holy. All is endowed with bearing on God…This is what we mean by the term ‘spiritual’: It is the reference to the transcendent in our own existence, the direction of the Here toward the Beyond…It is impossible to grasp spirit in itself. Spirit is a direction, the turning of all beings to...
"All elementary school children are educated about many spiritual views."
They should be aware that differences should be respected.
"There are many truths but we each must choose one"
“My way to resolve the seeming contradiction between each religion’s claim to ‘one truth and one religion’ and the reality of the multiplicity of faiths is thus to understand that in the case of a single individual, there can indeed be only one truth, one religion. However, from the perspective of human society at large, we must accept the concept of ‘many truths, many religions.’” Dalai Lama
"Unfree people can’t accept discipline"
Associating inner control with external tyranny, they would rather suffer than be subject to spiritual authority. Only free men… do not equate self-restraint with self-surrender, knowing that no man is free who is not a master of himself, that the more liberties we enjoy, the more discipline we need.” Abraham Heschel
"Spiritual awareness comes to those who year passionately for ultimate me"
"Only those who have not tasted the terror of life, only those who claim that it is a pleasure to live and that more and only pleasure is in store for the generations to come, can deny the essential necessity of asking: Wherefore? For whose sake?” Abraham Heschel
"Spiritual enlightenment is inevitable"
Everything we do is part of the web of life. We are wakening through hard-wiring in the brain, into a totally inevitable fulfillment of our consciousness, of what we are inevitable to become.
"Bring spirituality into your practical life"
“Half an hour after they have insulted God by praying to Him in this deadest of all dead languages, not understanded of the people, they leave the church, themselves pacified in their perennial determination to put no check on their natural covetousness; to act on their own opinions, be they right or wrong; to do whatever they can make money by, be it just or unjust; and to thrust themselves, with the utmost of their soul and strength, to the highest,...
"Much on earth is concealed from us"
“Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that...
"Spirituality is the active soul"
Spirit is that which is self-evident“The physicians say, they are not materialists; but they are: – Spirit is matter reduced to an extreme thinness: O so thin! – But the definition of spiritual should be, that which is its own evidence. What notions do they attach to love! what to religion! One would not willingly pronounce these words in their hearing, and give them the occasion to profane them.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience, 250Spirituality...
"The fulfillment of existence…is the place on which one stands."
“There is something that can only be found in one place. It is a great treasure, which may be called the fulfillment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place on which one stands…The environment which I feel to be the natural one, the situation which has been assigned to me as my fate, the things that happen to me day after day, the things that claim me day after day – these contain my essential task and such fulfillment...
"Religion should take account, first, of the needs of human beings"
“Men can agree and live together in peace, without coercion, without enforced rules of irrational tradition, and with their common hopes as guide.” ManasReligious inspiration “would recognize as ‘spiritual’ only those free human expressions which are entirely unconnected with any motive but the highest of which man is capable, and it would preserve and promulgate this idea of religion as sacred above all."
Can we construct a practical spirituality for the disaffected modern life?
Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day champion a limited form of love. Don't cut yourself short. There is an even better kind of relationship.
Are you fed up with politics, but still want to be involved in the issues of the day? Is government that recognizes heart and soul possible?
