Interreligious dialogue : The Man

T he fool thinks, "I am the body"; the intelligent man thinks, "I am an individual soul united with the body." But the wise man, in the greatness of his knowledge and spiritual discrimination, sees the Self as the only reality and thinks, "I am Brahman."

temple_hindu

quote 3702 | (Adi Shankaracharya) Shankara
Vivekachudamani; Prahhavananda, 1947, p. 69

M an is like a bow held in the hand of God's Power. God employs him in various tasks. In reality, the agent is God, not the bow. The bow is an instrument and a means. But for the sake of the maintenance of the world it is unaware and heedless of God. Tremendous indeed is the bow that becomes aware of the Bowman's hand!

mosque

quote 3317 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, pp. 58-59, Trans. William C. Chittick. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1983

M an is called a rational animal; therefore, he is two things. What feeds his animality in this world is passion and desire; but the food for his essential part is knowledge, wisdom and the vision of God. Man's animal nature avoids the Real, and his human nature flies from this world. One of you is an unbeliever, and another of you is a believer. (Koran 64:2).

mosque

quote 3302 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
Signs of the Unseen: The Discourses of Jalaluddin Rumi, p. 59, Trans. W.M. Thackston, Jr. Putney, Vermont: Threshold Books, 1994

W e and our existences are nonexistences. Thou art Absolute Existence showing Thyself as perishable things.

mosque

quote 3293 | Jalâl ud Dîn Rumi
The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi, p. 24, Trans. William C. Chittick. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1983

T he buddha is your real body, your original mind.

temple_buddhist

quote 3245 | Bodhidharma
The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. Trans. Red Pine. New York: North Point Press, 1987. The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma. Trans. Red Pine. New York: North Point Press, 1987, p. 43

Y ou are the supreme Brahman, infinite, yet hidden in the hearts of all creatures. You pervade everything.

temple_hindu

quote 3209 | The Upanishads
Shvetashvatara Up. 3:7, p.223 in The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales, CA.: Nilgiri Press, 1987

K now in the first place that the God you seek is within yourself. He is the life and soul of the universe and to attain Him is the supreme purpose of life. Evil and sorrow are due to your belief that you are separate from this universal Truth. The ego has set up this wall of separation. Have a strong and intense longing to realize Him, that is, to know that your life is one with the life of the universe. Then surrender up the ego by constant identification with Him through prayer, meditation and performance of all action without desiring their fruit. As you progress on this path, which is the path of devotion, knowledge and self-surrender, your attachment to the unrealities of life will slacken, and the illusions of the mind will be dispelled. Now your heart will be filled with divine love, and your vision purified and equalized, and your actions will become the spontaneous outflow of your immortal being, yielding you the experience of true joy and peace. This is the culmination of human endeavor and fulfillment of the purpose of life

temple_hindu

quote 3160 | Ramdas
In the Vision of God, Volume 1, by Swami Ramdas, pp 118-119

I n this world of many he who sees the One, in this ever-changing world, he who sees Him who never changes, as the Soul of his own soul, as his own Self - he is free, he is blessed, he has reached the goal.

Therefore know that thou art He; thou art the God of this universe - tat tvam asi - (thou art That).

All these various ideas that I am a man or a woman, or sick or healthy, or strong or weak, or that I hate or I love, or have a little power, are but hallucinations. Away with them! What makes you weak? What makes you fear? You are the One Being in the universe. What frightens you?

Stand up then and be free. Know that every thought and word that weakens you in this world is the only evil that exists. Whatever makes men weak and fear is the only evil that should be shunned. What can frighten you?

If the suns come down, and the moons crumble into dust, and systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you? Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self, the God of the universe. Say: "I am Existence Absolute, Bliss Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, I am He." And like a lion breaking its cage, break your chain and be free for ever. What frightens you, what holds you down? Only ignorance and delusion; nothing else can bind you.

temple_hindu

quote 3156 | Vivekananda
excerpt from Jnana-Yoga, Immortality, Swami Vivekananda, pg 164

C ome now, noble souls, and take a look at the splendor you are carrying within yourselves! But if you do not let go of yourself completely, if you do not drown yourself in this bottomless sea of the Godhead, you cannot get to know this divine light.

church

quote 3082 | Meister Eckhart
Pfeiffer, Frantz, and Evans, C de B., trans. Meister Eckhart. London: John M. Watkins, 1924, 193 1, Vol. 1: 118, 157, 221-222, 287, 338, 348, 363, 429, and Vol. 2: 41, 114.

S urely you know that you are God's temple, where the Spirit of God dwells. Anyone who destroys God's temple will himself be destroyed by God, because the temple of God is holy; and you are that temple.

church

quote 3075 | Saint Paul
I Corinthians 12:4-11 and I Corinthians 3:16-17, The New English Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

O ur original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any trace of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy-and that is all. Enter deeply in it by awakening to it yourself. That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught besides. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva's progress toward Buddhahood, one by one, when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature that has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all. You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream. That is why the Tathagata [the Buddha] said: I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment.

temple_buddhist

quote 3023 | Huang Po
Blofeld John, trans. The Zen Teachings of Huang Po, New York: Grove Press, 1958, p131.

T he Supreme Lord dwells in the heart of all beings, and by
His magic power of illusion
He causes them to move about like wooden dolls on a spinning wheel.

Give your whole heart to that Supreme Lord, seek refuge in Him alone;
By His Grace you will find perfect peace and the abode of immortal life.

Go deeper and deeper within yourself until nothing is left-then fight!
No one on earth is more dear to me than you.
That is why I tell you all this …

Abandon all hope of gain from this world and take refuge in me alone;
I will wash away your sins and free you from every evil.
You will never grieve again,

Fix your mind on me, think of yourself as me, worship me, sacrifice to me, honor me as your own Self, and you will surely come to me. This I promise you, for you are dear to me …

Arjuna! Have you heard me? Have my words hit their mark?

temple_hindu

quote 3013 | The Bhagavat Gita
Chapter 18, translated by Jonathan Star and Julle Lal, the Inner Treasure, Tarcher Putnam.

W hen the mysterious unity between the soul and the Divine becomes clear, you will realize that you are none other than God. You will see all your actions as His actions; all your features as His features; all your breaths as His breath.

mosque

quote 3006 | Ibn 'Arabi
Manheim, Ralph, trans. Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 174-175.

K now, 0 beloved, that man was not created in jest
or at random, but marvelously made
and for some great end.

mosque

quote 2853 | Ghazzali
Essential Sufism, by James Fadiman & Robert Frager, Harper SanFrancisco, p.5

T hen a man sees that the Kingdom of Heaven is truly within us; and seeing it now in himself, he strives with pure prayer to keep it and strengthen it there.

church

quote 2811 | Nicephorus the Solitary
Nicephorus the Solitary, adapted from Writings from the Philokalia on the Prayer of the Heart, translated by E. Kadloubosky and G. E. H. Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1990).

T he Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and join theirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

church

quote 2789 | Saint Paul
St. Paul, Romans 8:16-23 (AV), taken from the 1611 King James Version of the Bible

M an himself is the source of all his troubles, for the light of God pours over him eternally. But through his all-too-bodily existence man comes to cast a shadow, so that the light cannot reach him.

synagogue

quote 2743 | Martin Buber
Martin Buber’s ten rungs, collected Hassidic saying, p.20

I AM NOW seventy-four years old. And yet I feel that I am an infant. I feel clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child. My Guru told me; that child, which is you even now, is your real self. Go back to that state of pure being, where the I am" is still in its purity before it got contaminated with "this I am" or "that I am." Your burden is of false self-identifications-abandon them all. My Guru told me-"Trust me. I tell you; you are divine. Take it as the absolute truth. Your joy is divine, your suffering is divine too. All comes from God. Remember it always. You are God, your will alone is done." I did believe him and soon realized how wonderfully true and accurate were his words. I did not condition my mind by thinking: I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond." I simply followed his instruction, which was to focus the mind on pure being I am," and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the I am" in my mind and soon peace and joy and a deep all embracing love became my normal state. In it all disappeared-myself, my Guru, the life lived, the world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable silence.

temple_hindu

quote 2704 | Ramana Maharshi
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated from the Marathi recordings by Maurice Frydman; edited by Sudhakar S. Dikshit. Durham, North Carolina, The Acorn Press, 1982 (11th printing 2000), P. 239.

T o sinners and vile men there is vileness outside, but not to good men. So the wicked see this universe as a hell, and the partially good see it as heaven, while the perfect beings realize it as God Himself. Only when a man sees this universe as God does the veil fall from his eyes; then that man, purified and cleansed, finds his whole vision changed. The bad dreams that have been torturing him for millions of years all vanish, and he who was thinking of himself as either a man or a god or a demon, he who was thinking of himself as living in low places, in high places, on earth, in heaven, and so on, finds that he is really omnipresent; that all time is in him, and that he is not in time; that all the heavens are in him, that he is not in any heaven; and that all the gods that man ever worshipped are in him, and that he is not in any one of those gods. He was the manufacturer of gods and demons, of men and plants and animals and stones. And the real nature of man now stands unfolded to him as being higher than heaven, more perfect than this universe of ours, more infinite than infinite time, more omnipresent than the omnipresent ether.

temple_hindu

quote 2692 | Vivekananda
"Vedanta: Voice of Freedom", Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 205 S. Skinker Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63105.

I t may frighten many of you, but you will understand it by degrees. The living God is within you, and yet you are building churches and temples and believing all sorts of imaginary nonsense. The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body. Of course all animals are temples too, but man is the highest, the Taj Mahal of temples. If I cannot worship in that, no other temple will be of any advantage. The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him, that moment I am free from bondage. Everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

temple_hindu

quote 2691 | Vivekananda
"Vedanta: Voice of Freedom", Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 205 S. Skinker Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63105.

Y ou are God and so am I.
Who obeys whom? Who worships whom? You are the highest temple of God. I would rather worship you than any temple, image or bible.

temple_hindu

quote 2690 | Vivekananda
"Vedanta: Voice of Freedom", Vedanta Society of St. Louis, 205 S. Skinker Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63105.

I mpart to us those vitalizing forces
that come, 0 Earth, from deep within your body,
your central point, your navel; purify us wholly.
The Earth is mother; I am son of Earth.
The Rain-giver is my father; may he shower on us
blessings! …

temple_hindu

quote 2627 | The Rig Veda
Rig Veda 5.84, from The Vedic Experience: Mantramanjari by Raimundo Pannikar (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1977).

W hen the twofold passions are destroyed, and the twofold hindrances are cleared away, and the twofold egolessness is fully understood, and the inconceivable transformation death of the Bodhisattva is attained - that which remains is the self-nature of the Tathagatas. When the teachings of the Dharma are fully understood and are perfectly realized by the disciples and masters, that which is realized in their deepest consciousness is their own Buddha-nature revealed as Tathagata.

temple_buddhist

quote 2610 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch XII, p.346, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

W e are taught that this Buddha-nature immanent in every one is eternal, unchanging, auspicious. Is not this which is born of the Womb of Tathagatahood the same as the soul-substance that is taught by the philosophers? The Divine Atman as taught by them is also claimed to be eternal, inscrutable, unchanging, imperishable. Is there, or is there not a difference?
The Blessed One replied: No, Mahamati, my Womb of Tathagatahood is not the same as the Divine Atman as taught by the philosophers. What I teach is Tathagatahood in the sense of Dharmakaya, Ultimate Oneness, Nirvana, emptiness, unbornness, unqualifiedness, devoid of will-effort. The reason why I teach the doctrine of Tathagatahood is to cause the ignorant and simple-minded to lay aside their fears as they listen to the teaching of egolessness and come to understand the state of non-discrimination and imagelessness.

temple_buddhist

quote 2583 | The Lankavatara Sutra
Ch.IV, p.314, in Dwight Goddard, A Buddhist bible

T here is no human nature that is not good. Therefore there is no innate knowledge that is not good. Innate knowledge is the equilibrium before the feelings are aroused. It is the state of broadness and extreme impartiality. It is the original substance that is absolutely quiet and inactive. And it is possessed by all men. However, people cannot help being darkened and obscured by material desires. Hence they must study in order to get rid of the darkness and obscuration. But they cannot add or subtract even an iota from the original substance of innate knowledge. Innate knowledge is good. The reason why equilibrium, absolute quiet, broadness, and impartiality are not complete in it is that darkness and obscuration have not been entirely eliminated and its state of preservation is not yet complete. The substance and function [you refer to] are the substance and function of innate knowledge. How can it transcend them?

candle

quote 2444 | Wang Yangming
Wang Wen-ch'eng Kung ch'uan-shu, or Complete Works of Wang Yang-ming, Instruction for a Practical Living, 2:38a-39a, in Wing-Tsit Chan, Chinese Philosophy, Chapter 35

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The Man > Man's True Nature