Spiritual and Religious Historical Traditions
***
“Once I asked my Master, “What is the difference between you and me?”
And he replied, “Hafiz, only this. If a herd of wild buffalo broke into our
house and knocked over our empty begging bowls not a drop would spill
from yours. But there is Something Invisible that the Divine has placed in
mine. If that spilled from my bowl, it could drown this whole world.”
Heart, Self & Soul – Robert Frager
***
‘Salutations to that Reality which inheres as the Self in all, from which all the creations are projected, in which they have their being and into which they are finally dissolved! Salutations to that Intelligence which inheres as the Self in all, from which the knower, knowledge and the known, the seer, sight and the seen, the doer, cause and deed, are manifested! Salutations to that Supreme Bliss which inheres as the Self in all, which constitutes the life of all and from whose unfathomable depths happiness is sprayed as fine particles in Heaven or on Earth (where on the sum-total of happiness is not equal to a particle of that unalloyed, natural Bliss). The Siddhas (invisible and immortal beings of the noblest order) proclaimed.’
***
“And what have I elucidated? Misery have I elucidated; the origin of misery have I elucidated; the cessation of misery have I elucidated; and the path leading to the cessation of misery have I elucidated. Why have I elucidated this? Because this does profit, has to do with the fundamentals of religion, and tends to absence of passion, to knowledge, supreme wisdom, and nirvana”.
Siddharta Gautama (d. 483 B.C.E.) in the Pali Majjhima Nikaya (first century C.E.)
***
“I have indicated that there is actually one tradition. There are many historical traditions, but there is really one tradition, one great tradition. It is the tradition of mankind and it’s older than the history that mankind has recorded. There is a prehistorical background to all the historical traditions, what I call a kind of walkabout tradition, before there were concentrated bodies of civilization, of civil society where human beings became highly organized in large numbers, people were still being religious, you see. They were being everything that human beings, generally speaking, are now. They are part of the Great Tradition also and it is a universal tradition because it is based on one Reality, not only the Great Indivisible Unconditional Reality, but the unity of the whole of conditional existence and the commonality and the unity of the whole of what is the human being.”
