Thought for the Week – 17th November 2014
MEANING
“what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved.”
Think back to January 2011 and the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a ‘meet the people’ event outside a supermarket in Tuscan. The attack, in which six people died and Giffords was seriously injured, shocked America.
Some saw it as the inevitable outcome of a politics become intolerant and ‘uncivil.’ The Republican politician Sarah Palin, then widely seen as contemplating a Presidential bid herself, was vilified for having shown Giffords caught in the crosshairs of a rifle sight as a campaign ‘target.’ She attempted to address the damage with a speech mourning the dead, but vigorously defending free speech and forthright debate as key American virtues. It fell to Obama in his public role to address the memorial service for the dead. With the eyes of the world and of a shattered local community watching, how would he respond? Continue reading
Rules of Living by The Dalai Lama
Life reveals itself above us and below us
All spiritualities worthy of the name, stress the need to make a certain ascent, to grow beyond our immaturities, our laziness, our wounds, and the perennial hedonism and shallowness of our culture. The emphasis here is always to reach upward, beyond, towards the heavens, and towards all that is more noble, altruistic, compassionate, loving, admirable, and saintly. Much of classical Christian spirituality is a spirituality of the ascent, an invitation to something higher, an invitation to be true to what is deepest inside of us, namely, the Image and Likeness of God. Much of Jesus’ preaching invites us precisely to something higher. Confucius, one of the great moral teachers of all time, had a similar pedagogy, inviting people to look to beauty and goodness and to forever reach in that direction. In our own time, John Paul II used this very effectively in his appeal to young people, challenging them always to not settle for compromise or second-best, but to look always for something higher and more noble to give their lives to.
But the challenge to growth also needs a spirituality of descent, a vision and a set of disciplines that point us not just towards the rising sun, but also towards the setting sun. Continue reading
Service to the powerless , the power of truth and the cause of justice
English translation of Editorial of the Sinhala Daily, Aththa, Colombo, 11 February 1984
“He has told us that what gives him strength amid the encircling gloom of our society is the inner flame burning within him. The consciousness of a union with the absolute and of the presence of a bright spark of the divine within him and in all others motivates him, animates him and sustains him. His religiosity is both internal to him and expresses itself in service to others and the community.”
Mr.Nadesan who turned 80 on 11 February 1984 is one of the most remarkable and admirable sons of the 20th century in Sri Lanka. He was born at the dawn of the century and now lives to see it coming to its end. He has witnessed and has been a participant in all the major events that have transformed our country.
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I will try
I will try.
I will step from the house to see what I see
and hear and I will praise it.
I did not come into this world
to be comforted.
I come, like red bird, to sing.
But I’m not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles,
but a woman whose love has vanished
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again and–
but wait. Be still. Listen!
Is it red bird? Or something
inside myself, singing?
and hear and I will praise it.
I did not come into this world
to be comforted.
I come, like red bird, to sing.
But I’m not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles,
but a woman whose love has vanished
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again and–
but wait. Be still. Listen!
Is it red bird? Or something
inside myself, singing?
-Mary Oliver
we break open to the place inside which is unbreakable…..
There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable. Continue reading
Who are the people you say thank you to everyday?
It takes some discipline and practice to access one’s ignorance, to stay focused on the other person.
‘Eppavo Mudintha Karyam’ – Your task in life is to discern that pattern, listen for it, and give room for it to emerge….
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Eppavo Mudintha Karyam: The event was completed long ago. It was all over long ago. Everything has been pre-ordained. Man may like to think that he can determine the course of his life and in a general sense even shape the course of human affairs. It feeds the vanity of man to think that he can shape the future. But man is a mere instrument in the hands of God. It is God alone who controls the past, present and future. Ego-centred man prides in the belief that he has free will when in actuality he is a mere puppet in the hands of an unseen power. One had better accept this fact and surrender oneself to God.
– Yoga Swami
ONE TUSK 