Diagnosis of Mortality

When we accept


our mortality...


we become fearless !

together

"religion" divides us...

spirituality brings us together...

god is not "religion"

...Oberon...

And I Love You

Peace On Earth

An eye for an eye

will make us all blind

Mahatma Gandhi

Dimensions

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience

We are spiritual beings having a human experience

Teilhard de Chardin

Religion Disappoints God

Morihei Ueshiba

Economy is the basis of society.

When the economy is stable, society develops.

The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material,

and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love.

...Morihei Ueshiba...

Let's be Peace-Makers

In these past ten years or so we in Ireland, North and South, have been enjoying a stable and hopefully lasting peace. The thirty years of conflict, bloodshed and loss of life are more or less over. (It ended in the early to mid-nineties of the last century) Yet, as peace-makers we can never become too complacent, because there is much hatred and bitterness North of our border. Now, I am not saying for a minute that our brothers and sisters in the North of Ireland have a monopoly of these two vices - far from it. I readily admit that there is not a little hatred and bitterness in the hearts of some South of the border. However, statistics show that the North of Ireland is an extremely racist country. A report recently declared that some 20 or so Romanian people of the Roma ethnic minority had to flee back to their homeland because they had literally been burnt out of their homes. I am old enough to remember such happening in the Catholic areas of the North of Ireland in the early to mid 1960s. So, all people of good will, North and South of the border, and, indeed, all people of good will everywhere must be peace-makers with a deep compassion for all our fellow human beings! There is too much conflict in the world today - and there probably always was - but in these more enlightened days let's be conflict breakers or conflict busters.

Sadly religions of all hues have been more often than not repositories, and indeed often promoters, of hate and bitterness. Anywhere in the world where there is inter-national and indeed intra-national war oftentimes religion or interpretations of that phenomenon lie at its heart. We have to go beyond religion and find a spiritual ground or baseline - the only solid foundation for intra and inter-national peace. With these thoughts in mind I offer here some words from the wonderful Dalai Lama on the matter of the difference between Religion and Spirituality:

I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
From "The Pocket Dalai Lama," edited by Mary Craig, 2002. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com.

War of the Gods

Religion must die.......so that reason may live.....Bill Maher-Religulous.

.....god is not religion.

.....i will not humanize god......i will not sexualize god......god is change.....god is a process......god is......not a giant old white guy with a long white beard sitting in the clouds.......god!

.....all religion is.....man made.

.....ignorance is the original sin.

.....our ignorance is the reason for.....faith.

.....all the major religions teach the golden rule......that works.

.....god made man in his image.....but then.....man made god in his image.

.....fear has perverted religion, turning the golden rule.....into the
war of the gods.

.....ignorance creates fear....fear creates intolerance....intolerance creates extremism....extremism creates hate....hate creates destruction.

.....intolerance is another word for.......extremism.

.....ignorance+fear+intolerance+extremism+hate=destruction.

.....faith is innocent....ignorance is not.

.....religion divides us, spirituality brings us together.

.....we cannot fault man for faith....we can however, hold man and religion, responsible for ignorance.

.....you must first define, "faith".

from the dictionary......faith 1: allegeance to duty or a person: LOYALTY 2: belief and trust in God 3: complete trust 4: a system of religious beliefs.

.....so the definition of "faith"...is what your trust is "in".....duty, a person, God, or a religion.

.....the word "trust" more deeply describes "the reliance on the truth of something"....or truth.

.....so you might say that faith boils down to what you "believe" is true......or "your belief."

.....and as i've said before.....

.....the "truth" has nothing to do......with what you "believe".

.....in other words......faith is not always founded on truth.

.....i have faith the sun will come up in the morning......i have no faith in war.

.....i'm not afraid of god....what reason could there be?

.....i don't believe in a god that needs to be worshiped.

.....i don't believe in a god that would doom me to burn in eternal pain.

......though god may be love, god is above all truth.......god is even the atheism of the atheists........mahatma gandhi.

The Eternal Now!

Practically all the great religions, spiritualities and philosophies of the world advise us to live in the present - to live in the NOW! NOW, I am no follower of a particular church though I was born and reared a Roman Catholic and lived the first forty years of my life as such. Since then I am more a sort of agnostic Buddhist who is open to all the possibilities that lie anywhere - in any area of human knowledge from science to literature to religion even - for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of human kind. I read the Bible as a wonderfully inspiring piece of literature - with the exception of those blood-thirsty sections of a very racist Old Testament. However, the teasing out of the latter is a matter for another post.

True Religion?:
True religion, if such exists, is one which seeks to find its spiritual base and disavows the abuse of power. However, history and common sense tells us that the abuse of power is endemic in all organised religions. But, in my experience there are oases of spirituality in the great Religions, in certain religious orders of monks and nuns and denominational charity workers who follow a vision of asceticism and sharing and caring and peace etc.

The Pain of Yesterday:
By this I mean that many of us can be slaves of our past, namely enslaved to hurts and regrets and maybe even remorse, which one of our national poets, Patrick Kavanagh describes as "the devil's contrition." A powerful metaphor! Maybe even we cannot forgive ourselves for some past wrong against another. It is my experience that often self-forgiveness can be more difficult than forgiving others. In this sense, regrets can eat our soul away. We cannot live in the NOW if we are slaves to the past, not having let go or allowed our past brokenness to be healed.

The Fear of Tomorrow:
We can be slaves of the future, too. How many of us are slaves to the empty dreams of how much we will earn and how much we will achieve? How many of us are never happy with where we are NOW in our lives. As Shakespeare says in Sonnet 29:

And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least.

We can be slaves also to fear, which is probably as endemic as wishful thinking and base greed and desire. We may fear what tomorrow will bring: whether by way of breakdown in relationships or loss of jobs or whatever.

The Answer is NOW!
Buddhism teaches us through meditation practices to cease to be slaves to our past and our future, and by being mindful to live in the endless possibilities of the present moment. Be aware of the rhythm of your breath. Awake to the wonder of being alive. Find hope within the beauty of your own soul, even if the body is getting old and breaking down. Observe the cycles of the seasons, how they come and go. Such is life and such is death. Neither is the opposite of the other really. Actually both are part of the greater cycle. Both belong to the eternity of NOW!



Above I have uploaded a picture I took from the bank of the Tiber, Rome, Easter, 2007. A brief peek at the beauty of NOW!