FOREWORD

I hope you find this little selection of texts from the world's religions to be useful on your spiritual path. There is an old Chinese curse that says, ""May you live in interesting times. As human beings that share a planet in the twenty-first century, we are witnessing unprecedented technological and medical advances at the same time there are terrible threats to our very survival. It is one of those watershed moments in human history. A fledgling planetary vision will either come clearly into focus, or be obliterated by the smoke and ash of upheaval. Interesting times indeed!

I love the Sufi story of the elephant and four blind men who were touching it from various angles and describing it to each other. One man said it must be like a rope, since he was holding its tail. Another said it must be like a fan, since he had hold of its ear. The third said it felt like a curved stick as he had a tusk in his hand, and the fourth said it was like a tree trunk since he had hold of a leg. The debate over the nature of the real elephant became heated.

Of course, the elephant is a metaphor for Truth. It can be perceived from many angles. All of them are true, yet none is complete.

When I was a young Religious Studies student, I asked a Hindu scholar, which religion is "True?" He said, "you Americans are obsessed with the Truth. If you want to climb to the top of a mountain, you can take any one of a number of paths and you will get there. Why not just take the one that's nearest to you? Christianity will get you there just as well as any. But then again, if you are drawn to try a different path, find one with interesting scenery. If you climb, you will get there either way."

The "True" Mystery is like the sun whose clear blinding light is filtered through the earth's atmosphere and diffused into different colors during different times of the day - sunrise, high noon, sunset, and twilight. After it rains, the light is refracted into the colors of the rainbow. The light is different in different weather and in different seasons. It is different at different latitudes. It appears as a magnificent riot of colors through a stained glass window. None of the light colors is any more True than the others. You can not look directly into the sun to see its light more clearly. If you tried you would go blind. Most of the world's great wisdom traditions abound with metaphors of light as an archetypal symbol of illumination. It is up to us to develop the vision with which to perceive it.

I take all of these insights to mean that there are many ways to glimpse the Great Mystery. The Qur'an says it is closer to you than your own neck vein. Gandhi says "it is one, though named variously named… we remember Him by the name which is most familiar to us." Paul says "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." It is our universal longing, to find our way to light.

When I started to study the religions of the world, I kept getting excited about new discoveries. A Chinese scholar friend said to me "You are like someone who is always finding jewels, and doesn't realize she is in a jewelry store. There are jewels everywhere!" She is now married to my Hindu friend, and between them they represent all the religions of the East, as well as one of the West. He is a Hindu. She was raised as a Christian and says that when you are Chinese, you are born with a Taoist ritual, live according to Confucian principles, and buried with a Buddhist ceremony.

If we are true seekers of Wisdom, we will recognize it wherever we find it. The world's great religions and ancient native traditions have survived for thousands of years. They wouldn't have lasted if they had not had the power to move and sustain hundreds of millions of people with their spiritual nourishment. Their words offer us promising veins to mine for nuggets of wisdom about the questions that concern our innermost hearts.

What is the GREAT MYSTERY we feel compelled to search out so that we might fathom the meaning of existence? It is tremendous and overwhelming, yet infinitely close and familiar. It is inscrutable and ineffable, awful in power, yet peaceful, silent and endlessly creative. It is found within our human hearts and in the grandeur of the boundless universe. It has many Names but defies the power of words to describe. It is called Yahweh, Father, Allah, God, Brahman, Atman, Nirvana and Tao. It is beyond all Names.

And what of a WORLD that is both cosmos and neighborhood? It is incomprehensibly ancient and vast. It is filled with people, animals, plants, and stones. And it reaches beyond the stars. It is solid and it is illusion. Was it created at a moment in time, or has it been here forever and ever? It is ours to share, to explore, and to exploit. It is a joyous garden and a vale of tears; a testing ground to which we endlessly return, and a place that we will never revisit. And "what is man that Thou art mindful of him?" We HUMANS are suffering creatures who long for bliss. We are infants and children, householders and elders, creatures alone yet born into community. We are good, we are bad, we are brilliant and foolish; we can be the loveliest and most devilish of creatures.

What is the meaning of DEATH? We live our lives in the blink of an eye, and then we are gone - but where? To be born and reborn? To be rewarded or punished? "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" And what can we think of the teachers who suggest meanings for suffering and joy, and point out rules by which we should live? They answer our craving for that something that is just beyond us, but that we have always known is there. There are saviors, teachers, prophets and messengers who appear inexplicably in history. They show us the pathways that we must walk for ourselves. They are Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna, the Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and the holy sages and shamans of the tribes of the world.

And what is THE WAY we must act in our lives? We are called to prayer and to introspection. We are called to mercy and love. We are called to struggle for strength and courage. There are laws to follow and sins to avoid. The golden rule, the Ten Commandments, the beauty way, and the eightfold path, all provide templates to bring out the best in us.

And what do we make of EVIL AND SUFFERING? There are destructive forces abroad in our world. We strain to comprehend them, and we strive to combat them. This is our present World Dharma and our "holy war." It is the striving of good against evil, the timeless struggle that now must be waged on a personal level and on the level of the cosmos.

And what of our hopes for our ULTIMATE end? When we escape the bonds of life, what will we achieve? Will we be elevated to Nirvana or Paradise, or return to the Nameless that is beyond all names? Will we be cast into hell from which there is no salvation? Or will there be - Nothing? Every fiber of our being recoils from the thought. We want to know. So we seek.

Scholars have filled thousands of books with commentaries on religion. This book contains a little selection of texts from the sacred books themselves. We will see what they say about the timeless themes of the Great Mystery, the world, and humanity, as well as about our teachers who call us to be virtuous, about the consequences of our good and evil actions, the meaning of death, and the ultimate goal of our lives.

As we look more closely at wisdom, we find ourselves to be aware that we are face to face with an elephant, and that we have been blind, or at least shortsighted. We can begin to understand that we share the elephant with other people. We can call to each other, and tell each other the stories of how our ancestors understood wisdom in their times. And, sensing that the whole elephant is more like a mountain than a rope, a fan or a tree trunk, we can begin to climb. Who knows what we will find on top? Elephants and more elephants and more elephants...? Mystery, Mystery and more Mystery…

These sacred words will speak to you for themselves. May you find in them what you need.

Sandy Kahn, Belmont, Mass. May 2002

From Chapter 1: THEMES OF THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS
Each chapter on an individual religion in this book contains texts representing ten themes: 1. THE GREAT MYSTERY2. THE WORLD 3. HUMANITY 4. THE TEACHERS 5. THE WAY 6. PRAYER AND MEDITATION 7. EVIL AND SUFFERING 8. STRUGGLE 9. DEATH 10. THE ULTIMATE. Before considering the themes in their individual traditions each with their own unique interpretations, let us consider them in general.

The GREAT MYSTERY
What is the Great Mystery? Tremendous and overwhelming, yet infinitely close and comforting, we sense it in moments of holiness or in sudden flashes of insight. We feel it in the depths of our hearts and yearn to get closer. The poetic language of the world’s sacred literature reveals flashes of its presence.

The ancient texts are alike in the fact that they all express deep yearning for the Great Mystery, but they often use very different ways to describe it. The monotheistic religions describe the Great Mystery as a personal God who has a relationship with human beings. This relationship is a loving and exacting one. The eastern traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism describe it as profoundly impersonal that is unfathomable yet permeates existence like salt permeates the water in the ocean.

THE WORLD
The world is the stage upon which the human drama is enacted. The world is both our neighborhood and our cosmos. It contains the earth that provides our nourishment, the air that we breathe, the beauty of our gardens and the frontiers we explore. It consists of space and time; galaxies and microbes; animal, vegetable, and mineral; all that is. Although we take it for granted as a fish takes the ocean for granted, human beings understand their world in many different ways.

In the monotheistic religions the world is the creation of God, and is under His control. God created the world as a sign of his grandeur and love for human beings. However, human beings are superior to and can dominate the world. In the eastern religions the world, including human beings, arise out of the dynamic creative energy of the impersonal mystery. Everything is interrelated and human beings are not set apart.

When considering space, we can look at the temples for an analogy for the different religions - the monotheistic religions tend to have enormous and majestic sacred temples in which humans are dwarfed by the Divine. Oriental temples, on the other hand, seem to almost grow naturally out of the lanscape, and are more akin to humanity. When considering time, we see that is linear for the monotheistic religions, and cyclic for the eastern religions. In the linear time frame, particular events and indicidual lives happen only once. In the cyclic worldview, events, including human lifetimes, are unfolded over and over again. Most of the world’s religions describe an early age of innocence the world. In the monotheistic traditions it is Eden, that magnificent garden created as a habitation for human beings. The golden age is always followed by ages of increasing decadence, and it is widely regarded with nostalgia. Teachers come from time to time to help human beings get back on the right path.

HUMANITY
The place of human beings in the scheme of the world is different in the monotheistic religions from the eastern religions. In the monotheistic religions human beings are special creatures God made in his own image. They often disobey God and must constantly be warned by prophets to return to the path of righteousness. In the eastern traditions, the world is an expression of and is pervaded by the divine. Human beings are only part of the fabric of nature, neither higher no lower than any other part. They should in no way dominate or try to possess the world.

These two profoundly different points of view have a great effect on the ways that we humans understand ourselves. If we are made in the image of God, who Himself manipulates the forces of nature for good or ill, (e.g., creating beautiful gardens, as well as earthquakes and plagues) we are enjoined to manipulate nature as both cultivators and dominators. The world is the testing ground for our quest to overcome our lower natures within which we are tempted by "the evil whisperer." It is the task of human beings to do productive work, to dominate and manipulate nature, to avoid the prohibitions and to obey the commandments of God in order to obtain the Kingdom. However, if we are only a part of nature, as if playing hide and seek with the divine, our goal is to overcome our ignorance until we finally catapult ourselves beyond the playground into ultimate reality. Overcoming ignorance implies discovering the Dharma or the Tao, and following the patterns for virtuous behavior inherent in them. To do this requires walking in the right path, whether it is the eightfold path or one of the many paths of the Bhagavad Gita.

THE TEACHERS
The function of teachers in different spiritual traditions depends on the way in which they experience the Great Mystery. For monotheists, since God is personal yet completely Other, His Will must be communicated to human beings through human messengers. In times of moral decay, God has always called prophets to act as His conduits to warn people of His impending wrath, and teach the way back to the right path. Since the Great Mystery is impersonal in the eastern traditions, teachers are, for the most part, mere human beings who have already trodden the path to enlightenment. The Buddha rejected the notion of personal gods or divine helpers of any kind, and regarded himself as a mere human being. In China the teacher is a sage who has intuited the way of the Tao and serves as a model for other human beings. It is only in Hinduism that we find incarnations of the god Vishnu who come as teachers of truth in times of moral decay. But even in the Hindu tradition where people choose their own local and personal deities (ishtas) the deities are really just manifestations of the impersonal Brahman.

THE WAY: VIRTUES AND VICES.
Every spiritual tradition prescribes certain rules for behavior that are designed to further its followers on their spiritual path. Some virtues and vices are found in all the world's religions. In the texts on evil and suffering, we will look more closely at the workings of evil in its relation to the understanding of the Great Mystery and our ultimate goals. In charting the course for a global civilization, we have to take all these things into account.

The rules are stated in both positive and negative ways. As virtues they are positive. As vices they are negative. Some are universal. Love and compassion are universal virtues expressed as the golden rule, "do unto others as you would like them to do unto you." It is the most important virtue in all traditions, and requires human beings to treat others with kindness, generosity, comfort, empathy and good will. In the monotheistic religions, this consists being compassionate to all people. In the eastern traditions, compassion extends to all beings including animals, insects, and even the trees, plants, and the entire cosmos.

Universal vices include stealing, lying, killing, lust, selfishness, cruelty, and greed. The golden rule stated negatively, do not do unto others what you do not want them to do unto you, is the foundation statement of vice. There are consequences to behaving virtuously or viciously in all of the traditions, but these consequences have different origins. How each understands these consequences, is directly related to how it understands the Great Mystery and what it sees as the ultimate goal. For the monotheistic religions, since God is a personal Being, virtue consists of obedient behavior that pleases and is rewarded by Him. Vice (or sin) consists of disobedient behavior that incur God's displeasure and punishment. In the eastern traditions, the GREAT MYSTERY is not conceived of in personal terms and human beings are not judged according to their obedience or disobedience to divine decrees. Our goal is to overcome ignorance and attain the realization of our true unity with the Great Mystery.

PRAYER AND MEDITATION
All over the world people reach out to the Great Mystery. Without exception, the great spiritual traditions call human beings to plumb the depths of our being, so we may come into contact with its deepest source. We imbue our temples and certain spaces in our homes with special meaning. We mark certain times for seasonal rites and celebrations. We ritualize important passages in our lives. We put on special clothing as we offer food and incense to the eternal. We express ourselves with physical gestures, bowing, kneeling, sitting, or dancing.

We pray. We meditate. We sanctify our interior lives with single pointed concentration on the ineffable. We gather to address the Great Mystery. Prayer is the active means of engaging in a personal relationship with the Holy. Meditation is the emptying of ourselves in a passive attitude that allows us to be filled.

Sometimes we are silent, looking inward to our own divine center and the peace that is always there. In silent prayer, we seek companionship and communion with our God. In silent meditation, we seek the spacious bliss "between the thoughts."

Sometimes we are noisy, reciting and singing heartfelt utterances. Prayer may be spoken or sung as we address ourselves to the Lord our God. Meditation can consist of chanting mantras as we seek to experience union with the divine. Arthur Waley says "To chant it is to act like the string of a violin in which this string elicits sound from the other strings by a sympathetic communication, putting oneself in tune with the universe."

There are ecstatic traditions in all religions. The experience of the mystics includes a sense of divine love and a joyous outpouring of love and praise. Prayers, poems and songs of the mystics are often couched in terms of erotic love, as in the Song of Solomon and the poems of Kabir. In the Hindu tradition, the words of praise themselves, in the form of mantras, have power to unite the devotee with the Source.

As we shall see, there are many forms of prayer and meditation.

EVIL AND SUFFERING
Why is there evil? Why is there suffering? Why are there flood, famine and sickness? Why are human beings cruel? Why is there war? Does anything justify cruelty and killing? These questions have haunted human beings from time immemorial.

In the monotheistic religions Satan, a person in his own right, causes evil and we suffer when we follow him instead of God. In the eastern religions there is no evil force or person. Suffering is purely a result of ignorance. All religions describe suffering as a central problem in human life and attempt to discern avoidable from unavoidable suffering. There is one universal response to suffering found in all of the texts: compassion.

We are now at a watershed in human history the likes of which the world has never seen. Our very survival depends on developing a universally shared, working understanding of evil, and formulating a correct response to it. This requires a major paradigm shift away from earlier discrete absolute value systems to a shared global value system whose hallmark is inclusion. Furthermore, we must find a way to do this without devaluing the unique spirit of each of the world's religions. The ability of the world to eradicate evil depends largely on how we choose to implement our compassion. As a global race, with a great technological treasury, we must find ways to alleviate whatever suffering we have the power to alleviate.

STRUGGLE
One of the consequences of the existence of suffering and evil is the human need to struggle to overcome them. Each tradition prescribes directions for facing these problems, both in the outer physical struggles of life, and in the internal struggle with our baser tendencies.

Since religion is the motivating factor for much of our contemporary war, it is worthwhile to try to understand the scriptural comments on what is a good war. Good wars have been described in the Bible, the Qur'an, the Bhagavad Gita, the Sayings of Confucius and the Art of War (a Taoist text that is one of the earliest documents on war strategy). Although Jesus Christ and the Buddha are primarily pacifist figures, both Christianity and Buddhism have bloody apocalyptic mythologies.

The problem with some of the texts on war is that they may be taken either figuratively or literally. If taken literally, the Bhagavad Gita could justify the use of nuclear weapons by Indians against Pakistan. Fanatical Muslims could just as easily justify the killing of infidels in the cause of Holy War, as could some Jews justify all means to remain in possession of their Promised Land. Some Christians are even preparing for the final battle of Armageddon described in the Book of Revelation, as a physical war in which there will be a bloody confrontation between good and evil forces on a plain in Israel.

Human beings also struggle internally so that their higher virtuous behavior will win out over their baser instincts. All religions speak of the need for internal struggle to become good rather than evil people. In the monotheistic religions human beings are sinful creatures with free will, and must choose to obey God. The eastern traditions demand that human beings work to put themselves in alignment with the natural moral law. For Hinduism the path to enlightenment requires a struggle to overcome ignorance and to act without being attached to the fruits of our actions. For Taoism and Zen Buddhism, the struggle requires cultivating the keen undifferentiated awareness, the "beginner's mind," that leads us to return to the primeval Source.

STRENGTH AND COURAGE
The virtues that must be cultivated in order for human beings to conduct their struggles are strength and courage. Courage involves the ability to act bravely in the face of both physical and spiritual danger.

Courage is modeled in the lives of the teachers in all the traditions and is something people must seek from the Divine. Sometimes it takes physical strength to vanquish a foe. This is illustrated in the stories of David and Goliath, Krishna and Arjuna on the battlefield, and Muhammad during the first Jihad. Strength and courage are also needed to fight our internal battles against evil.

The last half of the twentieth century has seen Buddhist monks immolate themselves in Vietnam to protest violence, Christian followers of Martin Luther King put themselves in mortal danger to overcome inhumanity, Muslim women of Afghanistan putting themselves in danger to overcome brutality, Jewish Zionists fight off British colonial rule in Palestine, and Hindu followers of Mahatma Gandhi taking their lives in their hands to secure justice. The scriptures are filled with calls for courage.

DEATH
Perhaps the most disturbing of all the big questions we face is the question of death. Everyone we love inevitably dies. And so do we. One moment we are warm, breathing, conscious beings with sparkling, intelligent eyes who communicate with words, gestures, laughter, and tears. The next moment what is left is a cold, rigid, lifeless thing. Where do we go? Why do we die? Does anything of our selves survive after death? What is it like? Is there anyone else there? Do we get rewarded or punished for the deeds of our lives? What happens to us after death, whether we are young or old, rich or poor, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist, is the consequence of what we have done in our lives.

In the monotheistic religions we have only one birth, one life and one death. Between birth and death, it is up to each of us to be obedient to God's wishes, to live a virtuous and compassionate life, to adhere to our belief in the oneness of God and to worship Him faithfully, so that at the moment of death, when our souls separate from our bodies, we will be judged worthy of His reward of life everlasting in heaven.

In the traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism human beings experience numerous births, lives and deaths. This is one of the immutable laws of nature, and applies to everything, even existence itself. Not much is said about death in the Confucian or Taoist texts, but there are many stories about the abodes of the Immortals and the ancestors.

THE ULTIMATE
And what is the point of it all? Where are we going and how are we to be fulfilled? In my first grade Roman Catholic Baltimore Catechism, after the first question, "Who made you?" (to which the answer was "God made me") was the question "Why did God make you?" The answer was "God made me to know Him, to love Him and to be happy with Him in heaven." In essence, the goal of life is the same for all three of the monotheistic religions, to gain immortality in paradise.

Since the eastern religions have no concept of a personal God, and no idea of sin as personal offense, they do not conceive of life after death as a reward or punishment resulting from a personal judgement. The ultimate goal for Hindus and Buddhists is not a heavenly residence. It is release from rebirth and can only be achieved by the person's own efforts. In China the ultimate goal isn't otherworldly. It is to achieve individually the life of a fully realized human being, what Confucius calls Great or Noble-minded Man, and Taoists as the unencumbered and joyous humble being. It is to achieve health, longevity and a peaceful society.

What we all have in common in our quest for the Ultimate is a yearning for union and intimacy, coupled with a profound sense of mystery in our hope for fulfillment.

Sandra Kahn