This is my own book of musings and meditations on the texts of Sacred Words of Wisdom, written after many years of living with them. It was originally meant to model some of the possible ways in which the texts could be personally understood. My hope is that it will "jump-start" your own personal insights. This book includes a small selection of the texts from Sacred Words, along with the meditations. Here are the Introduction and links to two chapters: Click here for Chapter 1, Judaism. and click here for chapter 5, Buddhism. INTRODUCTION
The etymology of the word religion comes from the Latin re -ligare: "re," meaning back again, return to original state; & "ligare," meaning to bind, to connect, to gather, and to collect. Ligare is also the root of the word align. Therefore religion helps us re-align put back in alignment
re-collect remember
re-connect connect something once whole, now disconnected
re-alize the lost connection
re-bind bind back together
The words of holy teachers, written down in sacred books and kept through the ages can help us to reconnect with our sense of divine wisdom. Adrift in the clamor of the new millennium, we have an intense desire to re-connect, to re-collect ourselves and gather our spiritual resources. Building on the wisdom of these ancestors, standing on the shoulders of giants, we can gain a broader perspective than if we try to see from our own limited vantagepoint.
However, finding access to the pages upon which the wisdom of the sages is recorded is not easy. Living as we do in the "information age," it is as if a windstorm has been set in motion, causing thousands of papers to fly about. During a lull they have fallen all around us. The task of making sense of the mountains of paper is daunting. Let's say we're standing in a location where the information fallout has dropped all the pages of all the sacred books of the world from the past five thousand years. How do we begin to re-collect them and sort them out?
I happen to be a bookbinder. If I want to bind a book, first I gather the leaves into bundles, then put them in order, stitch them together, and bind them securely into a cover before anyone can proceed to read the book.
Now, I have found that different people have different reading styles. One person will begin by reading the table of contents of a book; another will read the reviews on the back cover; and yet another will read the ending first. If it's an ancient holy book, one person might be drawn to the pages that are worn and dog-eared from long use by its former owner; another might open it at random to find a text on which to meditate or one that might shed light on a current problem; and another may search out familiar passages. Holy books have many uses.
Looking at the windfall of holy-pages, one wonders how to organize them. Many have done this, and I am among them. I will tell you how I did it.
Luckily, I have on my bookshelves many intact copies of many translations of all the holy books that have been scattered in the winds. I have been reading them for at least thirty years and have always been fascinated by their timeless wisdom. There were even quite a few years when I studied them in a university, got a Ph.D. for my efforts and taught college classes, so I have a nodding acquaintance with the scattered pages - at least enough to begin to begin separating them into piles. I found myself com-piling pages into many piles - too many to concentrate on in a coherent way. I decided to concentrate my attention on seven of these piles because it is generally agreed upon, at least by our academies, that there are seven major world religions. I compiled the pages of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. And I made some piles of ancient and indigenous religions. This work of re-compiling resulted in the present book and the longer volume, Sacred Words of Wisdom.
Against the background of years of reading, studying, teaching, meditating, and praying with these texts, I found myself discerning a pattern in each of the piles. Each pile naturally divided into ten themes that all the World Religions addressed: the Great Mystery, the World, Humanity, the Teachers, the Way, Prayer and Meditation, Evil and Suffering, Struggle, Death, and the Ultimate.
grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition learning to address my inner yearning to an infinite and deeply mysterious Being whose Name was God. Somehow I knew that God had other Names, and the outpouring of yearning and love I felt must be in the hearts of other people too. I called the pages pertaining to these many divine names "the Great Mystery."
As a child of the Judeo-Christian tradition, I learned to understand the world as a certain kind of place, the creation of God. I found that there were more ways of understanding the world - for instance, as "maya," or illusion, or as being subject to the "mandate of heaven." Hence the second pile, "the World."
I learned that human beings were made in the "image and likeness of God," and that our ancestors had fallen from God's grace, putting the rest of us in need of redemption. For others, human beings, rather than having sinned, were ignorant of their intimate relationship with the Divine, and needed to rely on their own resources to climb higher or lower on the ladder of ignorance and enlightenment. Hence, the pile called "Humanity."
There were prophets, and even an incarnation of God in my own tradition. They were sent by God to teach human beings the way to grace. Without periodic warnings, we have often found ourselves subject to His wrath. When we take their teachings to heart, we experience unbelievable mercies. Others have teachers as well, so there is a pile for "the Teachers."
God's messengers came not only to warn, but also to show the way to salvation. Teachers and sages of all genuine spiritual traditions have pointed out the right path. This pile is called "the Way."
The pile for the Way grew so big in all seven religions that it spun off two other piles.
The sixth concerns the practices of "Prayer and Mediation" which we use to connect with the Divine.
The seventh concerns "the Struggle" by which we develop the virtues of strength and courage.
The ways in which we understand the appropriate use of strength is tremendously important in our times. Inner struggle should provide us with ways to act out of our higher rather than baser instincts, and outer struggle should result in making the world a better place. Both require courage and sacrifice.
Growing up in the twentieth century, I witnessed the unspeakable evil and suffering during the bloodiest killing sprees in the world's history. Some were enacted by people of my own Christian European heritage. Others were perpetrated by peoples of the East, and yet others in Africa and Latin America. There were the massive exterminations of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Armenia. There were bloody massacres by the Japanese, Maoist Chinese, and tyrants of Southeast Asia and Latin America. And there were untold millions killed in Africa. It was a dark century in which the reply to violence was the unleashing of forces of destruction such as the world had never seen. The dark personal force is called the devil or Satan in the Christian tradition. Evildoers are sinners who follow the whispers of the Evil One, and will ultimately be separated from good people and punished forever in hell. In other traditions evil is seen as the natural result of one's own base or ignorant actions. Coming to a universal understanding of evil is of the utmost importance for our times. We human beings are the cause of much suffering to each other. So there is a pile titled "Evil and Suffering."
Growing up in the Christian tradition, I learned that death is the final ending to life on earth. It is also the occasion for our personal judgment and assignment to heaven or hell, depending on our faith and works. I learned that other people believe in innumerable lives on earth, and that future higher of lower lives are dictated by the natural consequences of their present lives. There is a pile concerning the mystery of "Death."
Finally, I learned that the ultimate purpose of life is - and this is a direct quote from my Baltimore Catechism - "to know Him (God), to love Him in this work, and to be happy with Him in heaven." Children of the Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions believe in the ultimate justice and mercy of God, and that there is an ultimate meaning and end to life. Hindus and Buddhists, on the other hand, believing in reincarnation, seek an ultimate escape from endless rounds of life on earth generated from karma (natural consequences accumulated in our lives, and seek release in perfect bliss. Followers of all religions have a sense of "the Ultimate," and this comprises our final pile.
Now that the piles are organized - "com-piled" - I have stitched the collection together in one of many possible combinations.
Any book of wisdom is full of magical threads. You can pull at whichever ones tug at your heartstrings - take as many as you need to weave into your own binding. These threads, like the "super-strings" that modern astrophysicists refer to as the basic "stuff" of the universe, are a kind of vibrating energy that can take an infinite number of forms. Like the strings of a violin or guitar, they can be strung loosely or tightly. They can be bowed, plucked individually or strummed as chords. You can practice on them until you find your own style. You can compose new music, develop new interpretations of old music, or just improvise as you go along. You can play for others or just for yourself. You can tell when your music resonates with music of other souls, and you know when there is dissonance.
The ancient ideas of Pythagorean mystical ratios and music of the spheres, the new age idea of vibrational energy, and the new physics' vibrating strings, curved space, relative time, cosmic furnaces and quantum quarks all point to our yearnings to understand the mysterious relationships between Unity and diversity. Einstein thought there was one unifying principle that described all the laws and workings of the universe. Though he never proved it, he went to his death convinced of a Unified Field Theory. Modern physicists, following Einstein, now call it the Theory Of Everything ("TOE").
Seekers of spiritual wisdom too, are looking for our relationship with the ONE. We have many strings, and a lot of music, and our task is to use them to compose a world symphony that resonates with the World Soul we are groping to embody.
Ready or not, the human race is now coming of age, and everything depends on our success.
What follows are my own musings and meditations on each of the ten "piles" for each of the seven world religions. It is my own "pulling at the threads," and stitching together new bundles of material as a kind of spiritual practice. Years from now, if I return to the texts, I'll probably be moved to pull different threads, and to stitch them into a new pattern. Every pattern is a unique tapestry and adds to the many facets of the soul.
I have included some of the texts from Sacred Words of Wisdom, and left blank pages before and after my own musings. Use the pages to write your own musings and meditations, either before or after you read mine, and you will find yourself creating a thing of beauty. Transfer your favorite "seed" insights into a little book of your own, and decorate it. As you do this, you will be listening to the music of your inner soul.
