Know, if of Amitabha, the "Boundless Age", thou would'st become co-worker, then must thou shed the light acquired, like to the Bodhisattvas twain, upon the span of all three worlds.
Know that the stream of superhuman knowledge and the Deva-Wisdom thou hast won must from thyself, the channel of Alaya, be poured forth into another bed.
Know, O Narjol, thou of the Secret Path, its pure fresh waters must be used to sweeter make the Ocean's bitter waves - that mighty sea of sorrow formed of the tears of men.
Alas! when once then hast become like the fixed star in highest heaven, that bright celestial orb must shine from out the spatial depths for all - save for itself; give light to all, but take from none.
This issue is a collection of relatively short quotes and
other bits
on
various
interesting
subjects. Enjoy.
It's been over a year since I started this e-zine
and I do wonder
whether I've kept it as controversial as I promised you all. So in
honour of trying for controversial subjects I'll just report on a
thought that came up in a conversation I had with a friend recently:
I found myself saying that I did not do meditation
because I did not
feel like sitting still 'just waiting for something to happen'. I'm
sure experienced meditators would disagree with me on that evaluation
of what mediation is all about... Still, from e-discussions I've been
on, this seems to be what people do when they are meditating. Any
comments?
Open your columns to free and fearless discussion, and do as
the
theosophical periodicals have ever done, and as LUCIFER is now
preparing to do. The 'bright Son of the morning' fears no light. He
courts it, and is prepared to publish any inimical contributions
(couched, of course, in decent language), however much at variance with
his theosophical views. He is determined to give a fair hearing in any
and every case, to both contending parties and allow things and
thoughts to be judged on their respective merits. For why, or what
should one dread when fact and truth are one's only aim?
It is an Autumn afternoon and the streets are brown with leaves. Children are coming home from school, calling to each other in the cool, windless air. I think of other Autumns that have come and gone: each like a strange, wonderful symphony: The Autumns of childhood, boyhood, manhood. I wonder what this Autumn will mean to me, what I shall think of when the memory of it returns to me in the years to come?
There was a time when the Autumn days seemed to me the most beautiful of all the year: something unseen and ancient whispered to me from the falling leaves, called to me from the wildgeese overhead. I had only to go out and walk and dream and wonder, and the strange, precious glory dwelling in the mystery of Autumn would steal into my heart and make me one with all.
What will this Autumn mean to me? I think that I know: the cycles of the old years have turned, a new path is being traced by the wheel of time, my life of reveries is fading into the quiet past. I feel that my place is not to be in loneness and dreams, but out among men, searching in their hearts for something precious, something to answer the mystery in my own.
Yes, I think that I know: there is divinity in the Inmost of men; there is something in me which knows that it is there. And so I have a new work, a new duty, of trying to see, to recognize, to encourage the divinity in men to come forth, to flame out and illumine the dreary dream that too many of us mistake for life. This Autumn can be the most wonderful of all; it can be the luminous veil of an inner, spiritual Autumn. Behind its beauty can shine the beauty of a divine universe.
Enemies give us the opportunity to accumulate virtuous qualities through our practice of patience, but by harming us they fall into unfavorable states of existence and remain there for a long time. Our own past negative deeds cause us to be harmed by the enemy. But as a result of harming us, the enemy accumulates negative deeds and we who send the enemy into unfavorable rebirths.
This is how we indirectly destroy other sentient beings. The enemy provides us an opportunity to practice patience and there by achieve Buddhahood, and in response we send him to hell. By providing us with the opportunity to cultivate patience, enemies actually benefit us.
Question A: H.P. Blavatsky and other authorities teach that it is MOTIVE, and motive alone, that makes any action beneficent or maleficent, yet you say it is true that "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions". Is there no contradiction here involved?
Answer: There is no contradiction. Motive and Intention are not synonyms. Motive is the actual root-power behind any outward manifestation of Self - it is, in fact, but another name for the Energy aspect of a particular self whose nature is seldom known. Intention is merely the illusionary appearance which that hidden self reflects into consciousness. H.P. Blavatsky roundly condemned the actions of certain medical researchers who experimented whit hypnotism, and declared that they were unconscious Black Magicians, yet it is impossible to doubt that those men were well-intentioned in the highest degree. Other advanced teachers, notably Anna Kingsford, condemned, even positively hated, men who practised vivisection. Yet no one capable of truly detached observation and thinking could imagine for a moment that those "vivisectionists and hypnotizers" were animated by any intentions other than to discover cures for human ills. If therefore their actions were evil, savouring of Black Magic, productive of terrible Karma, it meant that the real motive was hidden behind the "Veil of Self", and that the possessor was entirely unaware of its nature.
Shall not each of us lend his aid to the deliverance of his kind! Slight is the exertion - a mere control of self - in comparison with the reward, the emancipation of a race. And the occult laws of advance and power set no out of the way task before us; they require only that each one shall do his best in that sphere into which it is his Karma to have been born or to have come. "Each man who conquers a single passion or fault raises the Karma of the whole world to that extent." Following the example set us by the Great Ones of the past and the blessed Mahatmas of today - the example of self-sacrifice - we may be certain of success; drawing our inspiration from the knowledge that every drop of blood wrung from the heart through sacrifice out of genuine compassion for our brothers pays the ransom of ten thousand souls.
There is an old, old tradition that for the sin of one soul the whole world is dipped in suffering; and until that soul repents and atones, so will the world remain.
That soul incarnates among men in every age. Who is so acquainted with the mystic signs as to point out the forehead that bears the mark; It may be a brother, but, reader, - it may be YOU!
My driving instructor, who is a Hindu from Suriname by
descent, told
me that amongst his people it is believed that if you win something
from gambling, that you won't be able to keep it. The money will just
fly out of your hands. The underlying message is clear: that which is
gained through gambling is felt to be non-deserved. As karma is a well
known doctrine amongst Hindu's, apparently it is felt that when
something is undeserved, life will just take it from you again.
Miss Mabel Benson writes, a propos to the recent talk on "Ritual" by Mr. F.A. Belcher: "Some people feel they are helped by ritualism while there are people who go to the other extreme and sing hymns to the ugliest tunes and pray in a mournful, hopeless voice. Both are solemn. I don't know why. Does Mr. Belcher know?
As a child I went to a High Church day school and spent two hours one Sunday morning at a Quaker meeting house in Scotland and it occurred to me - As I look on this world I see one cruel joke - There's nothing so silly as grown up folk. Is solemnity necessary to life? We don't believe it is. How can a happy, rejoicing heart, willing to serve the Master, find time for, or want to be solemn, and what good would it do? I think if this matter were carefully considered it would change the world for the better instead of continuing greed and sorrow, or tightening and controlling instead of giving freedom and happiness.
If people had been taught to see happiness would ritual comfort them? The cake on the host's table doesn't really feed us. It does flatter us because of our misunderstanding fussiness for love, and we can complain that it costs money to entertain.
Many old customs must go into the discard. No. Gray in his Elegy talks of waste and yet tells us there is no waste.
Say not the opening bud is lovelier than the dropping rose.
Whose petals as they softly fall are gathered up by loving hands.
What is happiness? Not many people in this pleasure seeking age of cheap shows, candy shops and money to get rid of, seem to know. Happy people are often looked upon as without ambition and strength, and they have a large share of both.
Watch the Farmer's boy marching to a merry tune at five
o'clock in
the morning - the little girl who remarked - When we get a few more
days' sunshine daddy's going to sell the apples in the city and buy me
some boots for winter.
Teach me to pray O Lord,
Teach me to pray
To greet the busy day with joy and gladness.
Why should I want sadness with Thee to worship and obey. And work that serves Thee best serves me gladly. How can the sorrowing heart truly love Thee. Thoughtfully have I gazed at the skies and found that in my eyes reflect the lines of a bright and happy eventide.
Snobbery. The labour man would have improved his lot by talking less of the sufferings and more of the right of the poor to happiness.
I watched a clog dance by a Lancashire lad in a pair of real clogs. He doesn't look upon them as shackles and compulsion. Happiness dances even in clogs. Would the Master ask to see greater happiness than these two things - a little girl with a clothes pin for a doll - a whistling boy with brown bare feet.
Mr. Belcher talked on remodeling and reform and didn't mention rebirth. Every new happiness creates something new within us. And I will tell you right now that I never met a Theosophist who could talk on reincarnation without sickening me of it. The vocabulary of meaningless words is maddening, and if I may say it - the ritual of speech.
I never heard anyone say that the gifts of gold, frankincense
and
myrrh had any meaning. I believe they meant, purity, piety and
protection. Only in the shoes of humility can we peacefully tread the
path of progress that draws us nearer the kindly light. I have not
written this for the crowd."
The emotions belonging to love are the constructive
energies which,
drawing people together, build up the family, the tribe, the nation.
Love is a manifestation of attraction, and hence holds objects
together. This process of integration begins with the family, and the
relations established between its members in the common life of the
family entail, if there is to be happiness, the acting towards each
other in a helpfull and kindly way. The obligations necessary to
establish happiness in these relations are called duties, that which is
due from one to the other. If these duties are not discharged the
family relations become a source of misery, since the close contacts of
the family make the happiness of each dependent on the treatment of him
by the others. No relation can be entered into between human beings
which does not establish an obligation between them, a duty of each
towards the other. The husband loves the wife, the wife the husband,
and nothing more is needed to lead each to seek the other's happiness
than the intense spontaneous wish to make the beloved happy. This leads
the one who can give to supply what the other needs. In the fullest
sense, 'love is the fulfilling of the law'; (1) there is no need for
the feeling of an obligation, for love seeks ever to help and to bless,
and there is no need for 'thou shalt', or 'thou shalt not'.
But when a person, moved by love to discharge all
the duties of his
relation with another, comes into relation with those he does not love,
how is a harmonious relation with them to be established? By
recognizing the obligations of the relation into which he has entered,
and discharging them. The doings which grew out of love in the one case
present themselves as obligations; as duties, in the other, where love
is not present. Right reason works the spontaneous actions of love into
permanent obligations, or duties, and the love-emotion, made a
permanent element of conduct, is called a virtue.
(1) Rom., xiii, 10
Lucifer is a Latin word derived from two words, lux (light; genitive lucis) and ferre (to bear, to bring), meaning light-bearer. Lucifer does not appear in Greek or Roman mythology; it is used by poets to represent the Morning Star at moments when "Venus" would intrude distracting imagery of the goddess. "Lucifer" is Jerome's direct translation in his Vulgate (4th century) of the Septuagint's Greek translation, as heosphoros, "morning star", literally "bringer of the Dawn", of a phrase in Isaiah that originally intended no reference to Satan (see below). In Christianity, Lucifer has become synonymous with Satan, nevertheless.
Jerome, with the Septuagint close at hand and a general familiarity with the pagan poetic traditions, translated Helel as "Lucifer". Much of Christian tradition also draws on interpretations of Revelation 12:5 ("He was thrown down, that ancient serpent"; see also 12:7 and 12:100) in equating the ancient serpent-god with the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the fallen star, Lucifer, with Satan. Accordingly Tertullian (Contra Marrionem, v. 11, 17), Origen (Ezekiel Opera, iii. 356), and others, identify Lucifer with Satan.
A description of the supernatural fall
relates the fall of Hephaestus from Olympus in Homer's Iliad I:591ff, but it was drawn upon by Christian authors embellishing the fall of Lucifer.
In the fully-developed Christian interpretation, Jerome's Vulgate translation of Isaiah 14:12 has made Lucifer the name of the principal fallen angel, who must lament the loss of his original glory as the morning star. This image at last defines the character of Lucifer; where the Church Fathers had maintained that lucifer was not the proper name of the Devil, and that it referred rather to the state from which he had fallen; St. Jerome transformed it into Satan's proper name.
It is noteworthy that the Old Testament itself does not at any point actually mention the rebellion and fall of Satan directly. This non-Scriptural belief assembled from interpretations of different passages, would fall under the heading Christian mythology, except that the very idea of a Christian mythology is widely attacked as offensive. For detailed discussion of the "War in Heaven" theme, see Fallen angel.
If all on earth acknowledge the beautiful as beautiful
then thereby the ugly is already posited.
If all on earth acknowledge the good as good
then thereby is the non-good already posited.
For existence and non-existence generate each other.
Heavy and light complete each other.
Long and Short shape each other.
High and deep convert each other.
Before and after follow each other.