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Spirit News Blog - April 2007
Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.
From: The Dhammapada
Photo by Trishatur, Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries.
- Buddha from Po Lin Monastery, Lantau Island, Hong Kong. Considered the Largest Outdoor Buddha Statue in the World. Hand Gesture of Turning the Wheel of Dharma and Meditation.
Traditionally science and spirituality have been at loggerheads. Science is concerned with man's material success, spirituality, on the other hand, is interested in man's inner realities. Is this conflict inevitable, or can the different arts of science and spirituality be complementary?
"Science has the capacity to show mankind the full development of the mental life. Spirituality has the capacity to show mankind the possibility and inevitability of the life beyond the mind, the supramental life."
- Sri Chinmoy [1]
Religious and artistic similarities between the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths are to be shown in a ground breaking exhibition of some of the world's earliest surviving sacred texts.
Sacred: Discover What We Share, opening tomorrow at the British Library in London, will feature rare and exquisite examples of early Bibles, Korans and Torahs.
Graham Shaw, the head curator of the exhibition, said the show was conceived in order to explore and examine the interactive nature of these sacred texts.
"What can been seen is that the Old Testament Christian Bible is essentially the same as the Hebrew Bible of Judaism, and in turn, Islam takes many of its stories from Christianity and Judaism. There is a textual link that can be studied in the exhibition," he said.
Sacred Discovery what we Share at British Library
news info from Independent
Lord Rama
Book Review - The Song of Rama by Vanamali
By: Kate Carvalho
As a dedicated fan of Vanamali's spectacular The Play of God My heart skipped a beat when I saw her latest book The song of Rama on a book stall. I knew it would be hard to match the genius that is The Play of God, but I was more than ready to delve into the dense forests that play host to the epic that is The Song of Rama
Being fairly ignorant of Rama I was curious to acquaint myself with this first of Avatars or human descendent s of Vishnu himself, who descends to earth from time to time in order to redeem mankind from the treacherous grasp of ignorance, usually personified in a terrible and almighty Rakshasa or demon.
Ananda are a group of British musicians, dedicated to playing the spiritual music of Sri Chinmoy. There music is ideal for meditation.
- Listen Now - - (Apple Quick Time m4a)
- Listen Now - - (iTunes m3u)
- Listen Now - Real Player format
Ananda Music website
More selections of Meditation Music
Many people who are on a journey of self-discovery were introduced to the possibility through reading a book which opened their eyes and made them realise there was something deeper to life than what we see on the surface.
For many people, reading these books marked the starting of their inner quest in earnest, and set off a chain of events which might even have led to them pursuing an altogether different path than the one suggested in the book; nevertheless reading the book was a crucial stepping-stone that helped them to become aware that there was more to life than what just lay on the surface.
The term 'life-changing book' is all to often little more than publisher's blurb nowadays, but there are a few books for whom this claim has held true over the years:
- The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- The Alchemist - Paolo Coelho
These two books have a very childlike feel to them, but this childlike form lends itself for use as an allegory for bigger and deeper questions. Most memorable quote from the Little Prince: "It is only with the hear that one can see properly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
- Autobiography of A Yogi: Paramhansa Yogananda
This book is one of the most widely-read accounts of Eastern philosophy available. In this book, the author describes his childhood spiritual experiences and remerkable spiritual figures that he has met. In particular, the chapters where he describes the guidance he recieved from his teacher, Sri Yukteshwar, is one of the best accounts of the meditation teacher-student relationship available.
- Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
A reworking of the tale of how the young prince Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, or the enlightened one. After embracing the extremes of austerity and luxury, the prince attains enlightenment throuth the middle path. Multiple Guinness record holder and long-time meditator Ashrita Furman first became interested in Eastern philosophy after reading this book, beginning a journey which was soon to lead him to his teacher, Sri Chinmoy .
Each good thought
Is the birth of
A new hope.
From 77,000 Thousand Service Trees vol 42
Photo by: Richard
Ganesh is one of the primary Hindu deities. Ganesh or Ganapati is known as the remover of obstacles. It is said a seeker should invoke Ganesh before praying to any other God, or spiritual Master.
How Ganesh was born
Lord Shiva lived on Mount Kailash with his consort Parvati (sometimes known as Durga). Both performed tremendous austerities and spent many hours deep in meditation trance. There came a time when Lord Shiva left his heavenly abode to visit the other Cosmic Gods Brahma and Vishnu.
Parvati was left alone on Mount Kailash and she took the opportunity to have a long bath; this was an opportunity to clean herself of the many layers of sandalwood paste that Shiva devotees and placed upon her over the previous years.
By: Vidagdha Bennett
Complain— groan, grumble, mutter, fret and fume, air a grievance, gripe, grizzle, kvetch, beef, bellyache, whine, find fault.
Decidedly, it is difficult to imagine anyone who does not fall into this category on a fairly regular basis. The possibility that there might exist a Pollyanna, somewhere, who does not get up each morning and immediately launch into a rant against the weather, the surroundings, the morning news, the day ahead and so forth, bedazzles any normal individual.
Complaining is part of our everyday diet. It is not an activity we choose; it is ingrained. And yet, now a pastor in Missouri has stepped forth to rid us of this scourge. With all the best intentions in the world, Pastor Will Bowen, a 47-year-old clergyman based at Christ Church Unity in Kansas City, has come up with the bright idea of purple plastic bracelets. Those among his flock who have been "complaint-free" for 21 straight days are eligible to wear the bracelets on their right wrist. Those who sadly lapse must switch to the left wrist and start their three week countdown all over again.
Luke:
"I can’t believe it. "
Yoda:
"That is why you fail.”
Anne Frank:
"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death."
Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence, wrote some tremendously inspiring speeches which shaped the course of history. Jefferson was not a good public speaker and he preferred communicating through writing instead, but in this field he was probably one of the most eloquent correspondents ever.
The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is possibly the most famous of Jefferson's writings, and to this day it evokes the original spirit of the American nation:
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness....'
The Declaration of Independence then goes on to cite a list of grievances against the British crown. among them, Jefferson wanted to include the following denunciation of slavery:
'He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither...'
Our human mind says,
"Silence is emptiness; it is sheer emptiness and nothingness."
But our aspiring heart knows that silence
is the fulness and plenitude
of our Eternity's Height and Infinity's Light. (1)
By: Sri Chinmoy