My faith is held together by wonder—by every defiant commitment to presence and paying attention.
—Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh
Writer and liturgist Cole Arthur Riley describes awe as a spiritual practice:
I think awe is an exercise, both a doing and a being. It is a spiritual muscle of our humanity that we can only keep from atrophying if we exercise it habitually. I sit in the clearing behind [my home] listening to the song of the barn swallows mix with the sound of cars speeding by. I watch the milk current through my tea and the little leaves dance free from their pouch. I linger in the mirror and I don’t look away. I trace the shadows hugging my lips and I don’t look away. Awe is not a lens through which to see the world but our sole path to seeing. Any other lens is not a lens but a veil. And I’ve come to believe that our beholding—seeing the veils of this world peeled back again and again, if only for a moment—is no small form of salvation.
When I speak of wonder, I mean the practice of beholding the beautiful. Beholding the majestic—the snow-capped Himalayas, the sun setting on the sea—but also the perfectly mundane—that soap bubble reflecting your kitchen, the oxidized underbelly of that stainless steel pan. More than the grand beauties of our lives, wonder is about having the presence to pay attention to the commonplace. It could be said that to find beauty in the ordinary is a deeper exercise than climbing to the mountaintop….
To encounter the holy in the ordinary is to find God in the liminal—in spaces where we might subconsciously exclude it, including the sensory moments that are often illegibly spiritual. [1]
Arthur Riley describes how wonder increases our capacity to love ourselves, our neighbor, and the stranger:
Wonder includes the capacity to be in awe of humanity, even your own. It allows us to jettison the dangerous belief that things worthy of wonder can only be located on nature hikes and scenic overlooks. This can distract us from the beauty flowing through us daily. For every second that our organs and bones sustain us is a miracle. When those bones heal, when our wounds scab over, this is our call to marvel at our bodies—their regeneration, their stability or frailty. This grows our sense of dignity. To be able to marvel at the face of our neighbor with the same awe we have for the mountaintop, the sunlight refracting—this manner of vision is what will keep us from destroying each other….
Wonder requires a person not to forget themselves but to feel themselves so acutely that their connectedness to every created thing comes into focus. In sacred awe, we are a part of the story.
A
IN SACRED AWE, WE ARE PART OF A STORY
A
RM
From ~~~ Gems from Bhagavan, Ch. X
All the activities that the body is to go through are determined when it first comes into existence. It does not rest with you to accept or reject them. The only freedom you have is to turn your mind inward and renounce activities there. Nobody can say why that freedom alone and no other freedom is left to man. That is the Divine scheme.
Giving up activities means giving up attachment to activities or the fruits thereof, giving up the notion ‘I am the doer’. The activities which this body is destined to perform will have to be gone through. There is no question of giving up such activities, whether one likes it or not.
If one remains fixed in the Self, the activities will still go on and their success will not be affected. One should not have the idea that one is the doer. The activities will still go on. That force, by whatever name you call it, which brought the body into existence will see to it that the activities which this body is meant to go through are brought about.
If the passions are something external to us, we can take arms and ammunition and conquer them. They all come from within us. If by looking into the source whence they come, we prevent their coming up and we shall conquer them. It is the world and the objects in it that arouse our passions. But the world and these objects are only created by our mind. They do not exist during our deep sleep.
A
Touching the feet of devotees
(Referring to Narada in his previous life serving the great devotees)
Simply being served by somebody as..., like a boy servant, they become delivered. There was no question of preaching. Simply giving the opportunity to serve, the fallen souls become delivered. But you must be competent; not to take service for nothing. Then you'll go to hell. If you are actually in spiritual position, then by giving others little opportunity to serve you, he'll be delivered. No question of understanding the philosophy. A devotee must be so perfect. The system is, therefore, as soon as one sees a devotee, he falls down and takes the..., touches the feet. This is the system. Because by touching the feet... Mahat-pada-rajo-'bhisekam [SB 5.12.12]. If one is actually elevated to the spiritual life and people take the opportunity of touching his lotus feet, then he becomes devotee. This is the process.
-----------------------------------------
From Srila Prabhupada's lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.5.23, August 4, 1974, Vrndavana
A
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all. ~Richard Feynman
(Book: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
A
A
A
ADVTA COUNTERPOINT
John O’Donohue : |
“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation. When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.” JOSEPH CAMPBELL FOLLOW YOUR BLISS Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.” “Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.” The experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. Heaven is not the place to have the experience; here is the place to have the experience.” a
A Depth Psychology“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
|
No comments:
Post a Comment