Spiritual Essence: March 2015

SPIRITUAL ESSENCE:

Focusing on the essence of spirituality from all times, places, cultures…and beyond. Serving and cultivating the innate, inherent spiritual nature contained within all: the religious, the non-religious, the spiritual but not religious, the atheist, the agnostic, the mystic; whatever one does or does not consider oneself. We are beings at many different levels with many different aspects: physical, energy/life force, mind, intellect, emotion; but at our deepest common core, we are all spiritual beings. We all yearn to love and be loved, to nurture and be nurtured, to express and serve and realize each of our unique destinies. We can all help each other along our individual journeys, united by our common needs and yearnings.

Quote of the Week #156 - Listening/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance

Quote of the Week #156 - Listening/Hearing for Non-material Sustenance

Every one who is thirsty, come and drink. He who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good. Let your soul delight in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, that your soul will live…

--Isaiah 55:1-3, The Living Torah translation by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Quote of the Week #56 - Interconnecting Fibers

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.

--Herman Melville

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Quote of the Week #55 - Different Kinds of Silence

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?...Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause in a roomful of people when someone is just about to speak, or most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re all alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful, if you listen carefully.

-- from The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Quote of the Week #54 - There's Nothing to Get

I think a lot of people come to Zen practice because they want to be free of their suffering. They’ve read about Zen enlightenment and want to attain that. So it’s really sad when I have to tell these people, “You know, actually, you have everything you need. You don’t have to get anything. You just have to get clear in yourself, and then you’ll recognize that it’s already there, that there’s nothing to get.”

--Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, interviewed by Sam Mowe, in Spirituality & Health magazine, January/February 2015 issue

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Quote of the Week #53 - Looking Within the Human Heart

I look out into the world, and I see a deep night of unthinkable cruelty and blindness. But when I look within the human heart, I find something of love there, something that cares and shines out into the darkness of our times like a bright beacon. And in the shining of that inner light, I feel the dreams and prayers of all beings. In the shining of that beacon, I feel all of our hopes for a better future. In the shining of our heart lights, we find the strength to do what must be done.

-- John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America, Voices of the Food Revolution, No Happy Cows, quoted in Spirituality & Health magazine, Sept/Oct 2014 issue

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