TERMS STARTING WITH
scripture ::: 1. Any writing or book, esp. when of a sacred or religious nature. 2. Written characters.
scripture ::: n. --> Anything written; a writing; a document; an inscription.
The books of the Old and the new Testament, or of either of them; the Bible; -- used by way of eminence or distinction, and chiefly in the plural.
A passage from the Bible;; a text.
scripture, nine/twelves divisions of. See NAVAnGA[PĀVACANA]; DVĀDAsĀnGA[PRAVACANA].
scripture, nine/twelves divisions of
Scripture. 1
Scripture and Talmud. Rahab was destroyed
Scripture, as a consequence, were conceived of as male. 31 However, it was not long before the
Scripture as the 1st temptress, as Adam’s demon
Scripture, canonical in Catholic). In The Book of
Scriptures ::: General designation for canonical or biblical writings.
Scriptures. Hartford, Conn.: The S. S. Scranton Co.
Scripture Wonderful
TERMS ANYWHERE
10. Miscellaneous sutras, DHĀRAnĪ scriptures and dhāranī anthologies (K 1087-1242)
1. Major Mahāyāna scriptures (K 1-548), beginning with the PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ, followed by the MAHĀRATNAKutASuTRA, and continuing through all the major Mahāyāna sutras and sutra collections, from the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, to the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, SAMDHINIRMOCANASuTRA, and LAnKĀVATĀRASuTRA
abhidhammika. [alt. Abhidhammika]. In PAli, "specialist in the ABHIDHAMMA"; scholarly monks who specialized in study of the abhidhamma (S. ABHIDHARMA) section of the Buddhist canon. In the PAli tradition, particular importance has long been attached to the study of abhidharma. The AttHASALINĪ says that the first ABHIDHAMMIKA was the Buddha himself, and the abhidhammikas were presumed to be the most competent exponents of the teachings of the religion. Among the Buddha's immediate disciples, the premier abhidhammika was SAriputta (S. sARIPUTRA), who was renowned for his systematic grasp of the dharma. Monastic "families" of abhidhamma specialists were known as abhidhammikagana, and they passed down through the generations their own scholastic interpretations of Buddhist doctrine, interpretations that sometimes differed from those offered by specialists in the scriptures (P. sutta; S. SuTRA) or disciplinary rules (VINAYA) . In medieval Sri Lanka, the highest awards within the Buddhist order were granted to monks who specialized in this branch of study, rather than to experts in the scriptures or disciplinary rules. Special festivals were held in honor of the abhidhamma, which involved the recital of important texts and the granting of awards to participants. In contemporary Myanmar (Burma), where the study of abhidhamma continues to be highly esteemed, the seventh book of the PAli ABHIDHARMAPItAKA, the PAttHANA ("Conditions"), is regularly recited in festivals that the Burmese call pathan pwe. Pathan pwe are marathon recitations that go on for days, conducted by invited abhidhammikas who are particularly well versed in the PatthAna, the text that is the focus of the festival. The pathan pwe serves a function similar to that of PARITTA recitations, in that it is believed to ward off baleful influences, but its main designated purpose is to forestall the decline and disappearance of the Buddha's dispensation (P. sAsana; S. sASANA). The TheravAda tradition considers the PatthAna to be the Buddha's most profound exposition of ultimate truth (P. paramatthasacca; S. PARAMARTHASATYA), and according to the PAli commentaries, the PatthAna is the first constituent of the Buddha's dispensation that will disappear from the world as the religion faces its inevitable decline. The abhidhammikas' marathon recitations of the PatthAna, therefore, help to ward off the eventual demise of the Buddhist religion. This practice speaks of a THERAVADA orientation in favor of scholarship that goes back well over a thousand years. Since at least the time of BUDDHAGHOSA (c. fifth century CE), the life of scholarship (P. PARIYATTI), rather than that of meditation or contemplation (P. PAtIPATTI), has been the preferred vocational path within PAli Buddhist monasticism. Monks who devoted themselves exclusively to meditation were often portrayed as persons who lacked the capacity to master the intricacies of PAli scholarship. Even so, meditation was always recommended as the principal means by which one could bring scriptural knowledge to maturity, either through awakening or the realization (P. pativedha; S. PRATIVEDHA) of Buddhist truths. See also ABHIDHARMIKA.
abhidhyA. (P. abhijjhA; T. brnab sems; C. tan; J. ton; K. t'am 貪). In Sanskrit, "covetousness"; a synonym for greed (LOBHA) and craving (TṚsnA), abhidhyA is listed as the eighth of ten unwholesome courses of action (AKUsALA-KARMAPATHA). AbhidhyA is a more intense form of lobha in which one's inherent greed or lust for objects has evolved into an active pursuit of them in order to make them one's own ("Ah, would that they were mine," the commentaries say). The ten courses of action are divided into three groups according to whether they are performed by the body, speech, or mind. Covetousness is classified as an unwholesome mental course of action and forms a triad along with malice (VYAPADA) and wrong views (MITHYADṚstI). Only extreme forms of defiled thinking are deemed an unwholesome course of mental action (akusalakarmapatha), such as the covetous wish to misappropriate someone else's property, the hateful wish to hurt someone, or adherence to pernicious doctrines. Lesser forms of defiled thinking are still unwholesome (AKUsALA), but do not constitute a course of action. The unwholesome course of bodily action is of three types: killing, stealing, and unlawful sexual intercourse. The unwholesome course of verbal action includes four: false speech, slander, abusive speech, and prattle. The list of ten wholesome and ten unwholesome courses of action occurs frequently in mainstream Buddhist scriptures.
Abhiniskramanasutra. (T. Mngon par 'byung ba'i mdo; C.Fo benxing ji jing; J. Butsuhongyojukkyo; K. Pul ponhaeng chip kyong 佛本行集經). In Sanskrit, "Sutra of the Great Renunciation"; this scripture relates the story of Prince SIDDHARTHA's "going forth" (abhiniskramana; P. abhinikkhamana) from his father's palace to pursue the life of a mendicant wanderer (sRAMAnA) in search of enlightenment. There are no extant Sanskrit versions of the SuTRA, but the work survives in Tibetan and in several distinct recensions available in Chinese translation, one dating to as early as the first century CE. The best-known Chinese translation is the Fo benxing ji jing, made by JNANAGUPTA around 587 CE, during the Sui dynasty. The text claims to be a DHARMAGUPTAKA recension of the JATAKA, or past lives of the Buddha. (Franklin Edgerton has suggested that this text may instead be a translation of the MAHAVASTU, "The Great Account," of the LOKOTTARAVADA offshoot of the MAHASAMGHIKA school.) JNAnagupta's recension has sixty chapters, in five major parts. The first part is an introduction to the work as a whole, which relates how rare it is for a buddha to appear in the world and why people should take advantage of this opportunity. Reference is made to the various meritorious roots (KUsALAMuLA) that sAKYAMUNI acquired throughout his many lifetimes of training, in order to prepare for this final life when he would finally attain enlightenment. The second part enumerates the entire lineage of the buddhas of antiquity, a lineage that sAkyamuni would soon join, and the third part follows with a genealogy of the sAKYA clan. The fourth part describes the decisive stages in sAkyamuni's life, from birth, through his awakening, to the first "turning of the wheel of the DHARMA" (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA). The last part gives extended biographies (going even into their past lives) of his prominent disciples, of which the stories involving his longtime attendant, ANANDA, are particularly extensive. In 1876, SAMUEL BEAL translated this Chinese recension of the sutra into English as The Romantic Legend of sAkya Buddha.
AbhisamayAlaMkAra. (T. Mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan). In Sanskrit, "Ornament of Realization"; a major scholastic treatise of the MAHAYANA, attributed to MAITREYANATHA (c. 350CE). Its full title is AbhisamayAlaMkAranAmaprajNApAramitopadesasAstra (T. Shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa'i man ngag gi bstan bcos mngon par rtogs pa'i rgyan) or "Treatise Setting Forth the Perfection of Wisdom called 'Ornament for Realization.'" In the Tibetan tradition, the AbhisamayAlaMkAra is counted among the five treatises of Maitreya (BYAMS CHOS SDE LNGA). The 273 verses of the AbhisamayAlaMkAra provide a schematic outline of the perfection of wisdom, or PRAJNAPARAMITA, approach to enlightenment, specifically as delineated in the PANCAVIMsATISAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA ("Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines"). This detailed delineation of the path is regarded as the "hidden teaching" of the prajNApAramitA sutras. Although hardly known in East Asian Buddhism (until the modern Chinese translation by FAZUN), the work was widely studied in Tibet, where it continues to hold a central place in the monastic curricula of all the major sects. It is especially important for the DGE LUGS sect, which takes it as the definitive description of the stages of realization achieved through the Buddhist path. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra treats the principal topics of the prajNApAramitA sutras by presenting them in terms of the stages of realizations achieved via the five paths (PANCAMARGA). The eight chapters of the text divide these realizations into eight types. The first three are types of knowledge that are essential to any type of practice and are generic to both the mainstream and MahAyAna schools. (1) The wisdom of knowing all modes (SARVAKARAJNATA), for the bodhisattva-adepts who are the putative target audience of the commentary, explains all the characteristics of the myriad dharmas, so that they will have comprehensive knowledge of what the attainment of enlightenment will bring. (2) The wisdom of knowing the paths (MARGAJNATA), viz., the paths perfected by the sRAVAKAs, is a prerequisite to achieving the wisdom of knowing all modes. (3) The wisdom of knowing all phenomena (SARVAJNATA) is, in turn, a prerequisite to achieving the wisdom of knowing the paths. With (4) the topic of the manifestly perfect realization of all aspects (sarvAkArAbhisambodha) starts the text's coverage of the path itself, here focused on gaining insight into all aspects, viz., characteristics of dharmas, paths, and types of beings. By reaching (5) the summit of realization (murdhAbhisamaya; see MuRDHAN), one arrives at the entrance to ultimate realization. All the realizations achieved up to this point are secured and commingled through (6) gradual realization (anupurvAbhisamaya). The perfection of this gradual realization and the consolidation of all previous realizations catalyze the (7) instantaneous realization (ekaksanAbhisamaya). The fruition of this instantaneous realization brings (8) realization of the dharma body, or DHARMAKAYA (dharmakAyAbhisambodha). The first three chapters thus describe the three wisdoms incumbent on the buddhas; the middle four chapters cover the four paths that take these wisdoms as their object; and the last chapter describes the resultant dharma body of the buddhas and their special attainments. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra provides a synopsis of the massive prajNApAramitA scriptures and a systematic outline of the comprehensive path of MahAyAna. The AbhisamayAlaMkAra spurred a long tradition of Indian commentaries and other exegetical works, twenty-one of which are preserved in the Tibetan canon. Notable among this literature are Arya VIMUKTISEnA's Vṛtti and the ABHISAMAYALAMKARALOKA and Vivṛti (called Don gsal in Tibetan) by HARIBHADRA. Later Tibetan commentaries include BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB's Lung gi snye ma and TSONG KHA PA's LEGS BSHAD GSER PHRENG.
A body of mystical Jewish teachings based on an interpretation of hidden meanings in the Hebrew Scriptures. Among its central doctrines are, all creation is an emanation from the Deity and the soul exists from eternity. 2. Any secret or occult doctrine or science. 3.”Esoteric system of interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures based on the assumption that every word, letter, number, and accent in them has an occult meaning. The system, oral at first, claimed great antiquity, but was really the product of the Middle Ages, arising in the 7th century and lasting into the 18th. It was popular chiefly among Jews, but spread to Christians as well. (Col. Enc). Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo’s Works
A scripture of the same name of the Mahayana school of Northern Buddhism, supposed by some to be of later date, is written in Sanskrit: the Maha-paranirvana-sutra (Paradise Sutra).
Adam ::: (Heb. Human or Man) Name given to the first male in the creation story contained in the Jewish scriptures (Genesis 1). Adam has been interpreted over the centuries both literally (as an actual historical person) and symbolically (as generic humankind); (See also "allegory").
adbhutadharma. (P. abbhutadhamma; T. rmad du byung ba'i chos; C. xifa; J. keho; K. hŭibop 希法). In Sanskrit, "marvelous events"; one of the nine (NAVAnGA[PAVACANA]) or twelve (DVADAsAnGA[PRAVACANA]) categories (AnGA) of scripture recognized in PAli and Sanskrit sources, respectively, as classified according to their structure or literary style. This particular genre of SuTRA is characterized by the presence of various miraculous or supernatural events that occur during the course of the narrative.
AdbhutadharmaparyAyasutra. (T. Rmad du byung ba'i chos kyi rnam grangs; C. Shen xiyou jing/Weicengyou jing; J. Jinkeukyo/Mizoukyo; K. Sim hŭiyu kyong/Mijŭngyu kyong 甚希有經/未曾有經). In Sanskrit, "Discourse on the Wondrous Teachings"; a MAHAYANA SuTRA best known for advocating that the merit deriving from worshipping the Buddha, such as sponsoring the production of a buddha image or a STuPA, surpasses that of all other activities. The sutra states, for example, that erecting even a tiny stupa containing the relics of a TATHAGATA is more meritorious than building a large monastery. This text is extant only in three Chinese translations: the "Scripture on the Miraculous" (Weicengyou jing); "Scripture on the Rarest of Things" (Shen xiyou jing), translated by XUANZANG (600/602-664); and the "Chapter on Relative Merits" (Xiaoliang gongde pin), the first chapter of the "Scripture on the Unexcelled Basis" (Fo shuo wushangyi jing, S. *AnuttarAsrayasutra), translated by PARAMARTHA (499-569).
agamas. ::: Saiva scriptures that describe the rules and procedures for image worship, which include temple construction, installation and consecration of the deities, methods of performing pujas in the temples, philosophy, recitation of mantras, worship involving figures or yantras and bhakti yoga
Agamas: The canon of scriptures of Jainism.
Agama. (T. lung; C. ahan jing; J. agongyo; K. aham kyong 阿含經). In Sanskrit and PAli, "text" or "scripture"; a general term for received scriptural tradition. The term Agama is commonly paired with two other contrasting terms: Agama and YUKTI (reasoning) are the means of arriving at the truth; Agama and ADHIGAMA (realization) are the two divisions of the BUDDHADHARMA-the verbal or scriptural tradition and that which is manifested through practice. In its Sanskrit usage, the term Agama is also used to refer more specifically to the four scriptural collections of the mainstream tradition (now lost in Sanskrit but preserved in Chinese translation), attributed to the Buddha and his close disciples, which correspond to the four PAli NIKAYAs: (1) DĪRGHAGAMA or "Long Discourses," belonging to the DHARMAGUPTAKA school and corresponding to the PAli DĪGHANIKAYA; (2) MADHYAMAGAMA or "Medium Discourses," associated with the SARVASTIVADA school and corresponding to the PAli MAJJHIMANIKAYA; (3) SAMYUKTAGAMA or "Connected Discourses," belonging to the SarvAstivAda school (with a partial translation perhaps belonging to the KAsYAPĪYA school) and corresponding to the PAli SAMYUTTANIKAYA; and (4) EKOTTARAGAMA or "Numerically Arranged Discourses," variously ascribed to the Dharmaguptakas, or less plausibly to the MAHASAMGHIKA school or its PRAJNAPTIVADA offshoot, and corresponding to the PAli AnGUTTARANIKAYA. Despite the similarities in the titles of these collections, there are many differences between the contents of the Sanskrit Agamas and the PAli nikAyas. The KHUDDAKANIKAYA ("Miscellaneous Collection"), the fifth nikAya in the PAli canon, has no equivalent in the extant Chinese translations of the Agamas; such miscellanies, or "mixed baskets" (S. ksudrakapitaka), were however known to have existed in several of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS, including the Dharmaguptaka, MahAsAMghika, and MAHĪsASAKA.
AggaNNasutta. (C. Xiaoyuan jing; J. Shoengyo; K. Soyon kyong 小經). In PAli, "Discourse on Origins" or "Sermon on Things Primeval"; the twenty-seventh sutta of the DĪGHANIKAYA (a separate DHARMAGUPTAKA recension appears as the fifth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHAGAMA); the sutra provides a Buddhist account of the origins of the world and of human society. The Buddha preached the sermon at SAvatthi (sRAVASTĪ) to two ordinands, VAsettha and BhAradvAja, to disabuse them of the belief that the priestly brAhmana caste was superior to the Buddha's khattiya (KsATRIYA), or warrior, caste. The Buddha describes the fourfold caste system of traditional Indian society as a by-product of the devolution of sentient beings. In the beginning of the eon (KALPA), beings possess spiritual bodies that are luminous, able to travel through the air, and feed on joy. But out of greed for sensual gratification, they degenerate into physical beings with ever grosser propensities: e.g., the coarser the food they eat (first a cream on the surface of water, then creepers, then eventually rice), the coarser their bodies become, until the beings develop sex organs, begin to have intercourse, and in turn build dwellings in order to conceal their debauchery. As their bodies become ever more physical, their life spans in turn also decrease. Immorality, strife, and violence ensue until people finally realize they need a leader to save them from anarchy. They elect the first human king, named MahAsammata, who was also the first ksatriya. It was out of the ksatriya lineage deriving from this first king that the other three classes-brAhmana, vaisya, and sudra-also evolved. This account challenges the mainstream Indian belief that the brAhmana caste is congenitally superior (descending, it claims, from the mouth of the god BrahmA himself) and posits that the effort of moral and spiritual perfection, not the accident of birth, is the true standard of human superiority. Although the Buddhist tradition presumes that this sermon offers a distinctively Buddhistic account of the origin and development of both the universe and society, many of the topoi adopted in the story derive from Brahmanical cosmogonies, perhaps employed here as a satire of Brahmanical pretensions in Indian society. The scripture has also been treated by modern interpreters as offering an incipient Buddhist "environmentalism," wherein human actions, motivated by greed and lust, cause deleterious effects on the physical world, turning, for example, naturally growing rice into a rice that must be cultivated.
Agonshu. (阿含宗). In Japanese, "AGAMA School"; a Japanese "new religion" structured from elements drawn from esoteric Buddhism (MIKKYo) and indigenous Japanese religions; founded in 1970 by Kiriyama Seiyu (born Tsutsumi Masao in 1921). Kiriyama's teachings are presented first in his Henshin no genri ("Principles of Transformation"; 1975). Kiriyama believed he had been saved by the compassion of Kannon (AVALOKITEsVARA) and was told by that BODHISATTVA to teach others using the HOMA (J. goma) fire rituals drawn from Buddhist esoteric (MIKKYo) traditions. Later, while Kiriyama was reading the Agama (J. agon) scriptures, he realized that Buddhism as it was currently constituted in Japan did not correspond to the original teachings of the Buddha. In 1978, Kiriyama changed the name of his religious movement to Agon, the Japanese pronunciation of the transcription of Agama, positing that his teachings derived from the earliest scriptures of Buddhism and thus legitimizing them. His practices are fundamentally concerned with removing practitioners' karmic hindrances (KARMAVARAnA). Since many of these hindrances, he claims, are the result of neglecting one's ancestors or are inherited from them, much attention is also paid in the school to transforming the spirits of the dead into buddhas themselves, which in turn will also free the current generation from their karmic obstructions. Spiritual power in the school derives from the shinsei busshari (true sARĪRA [relics] of the Buddha), a sacred reliquary holding a bone fragment of the Buddha himself, given to Kiriyama in 1986 by the president of Sri Lanka. Individual adherents keep a miniature replica of the sarīra in their own homes, and the relic is said to have the transformational power to turn ancestors into buddhas. A "Star Festival" (Hoshi Matsuri) is held in Kyoto on each National Foundation Day (February 11), at which time two massive homa fires are lit, one liberating the spirits of the ancestors (and thus freeing the current generation from inherited karmic obstructions), the other helping to make the deepest wishes of its adherents come true. Adherents write millions of prayers on wooden sticks, which are cast into the two fires.
’Aher (Hebrew) ’Aḥēr To be after, behind, secondary, another; the plural ’aherim, especially when used in conjunction with ’elohim, means “other or strange gods,” which were supposed to be merely idols. As the Hebrew scriptures themselves show, the ancient Hebrews never at any time denied the existence of the gods of other peoples, but being utterly and strongly tribalistic, their own god Jehovah was to them supreme. Their tribal god is the regent of the planet Saturn, who was their planetary hierarch, and consequently, to them, the supreme god — the god over all other gods. Had the Jews been born as a people under the regent of some other planet, the hierarchical regent of this other planet would then have been in their opinion the supreme god.
Ahl al Kitab, Ahle Kitab ::: People of the Book or Scripture
Ahura (Avestan) [from the verbal root ahu conscious life; cf Sanskrit asura] The lord of life, the one life from whom all proceed; as daevas who were originally gods of the Aryans changed to demons among the Iranian branch of the Aryans, asura also changed to demons among the Indians. In the earlier Vedas, asura is especially used for Varuna, the ruler of the heavenly sphere. “The Mazdean Scriptures of the Zend Avesta, the Vendidad and others correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of the gods in the Hindu Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the Asuras to their legitimate place in Theogony . . .” (SD 2:60-1).
Ajahn Chah BodhiNAna. (1918-1992). A prominent Thai monk who was one of the most influential Thai forest-meditation masters (PHRA PA) of the twentieth century. Born in the village of Baan Gor in the northeastern Thai province of Ubon Ratchathani, he was ordained as a novice at his local temple, where he received his basic education and studied the Buddhist teachings. After several years of training, he returned to lay life to attend to the needs of his parents, but motivated by his religious calling, at the age of twenty, he took higher ordination (UPASAMPADA) as a BHIKsU and continued his studies of PAli scripture. His father's death prompted him to travel to other monasteries in an effort to acquire a deeper understanding of Buddhist teaching and discipline under the guidance of different teachers. During his pilgrimage, he met AJAHN MUN BHuRIDATTA, the premier meditation master of the Thai forest-dwelling (ARANNAVASI) tradition. After that encounter, Ajahn Chah traveled extensively throughout the country, devoting his energies to meditation in forests and charnel grounds (sMAsANA). As his reputation grew, he was invited to establish a monastery near his native village, which became known as Wat Pa Pong after the name of the forest (reputed to be inhabited by ghosts) in which it was located. Ajahn Chah's austere lifestyle, simple method of mindfulness meditation, and straightforward style of teaching attracted a large following of monks and lay supporters, including many foreigners. In 1966, he established Wat Pa Nanachat, a branch monastery specifically for Western and other non-Thai nationals, next to Wat Pa Pong. In 1976, he was invited to England, which led to the establishment of the first branch monastery of Wat Pa Pong there, followed by others in Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and Italy. He also visited the United States, where he spoke at retreats at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. Ajahn Chah died in 1992, after several years in a coma.
AjAtasatru. (P. AjAtasattu; T. Ma skyes dgra; C. Asheshi wang; J. Ajase o; K. Asase wang 阿闍世王). In Sanskrit, "Enemy While Still Unborn," the son of King BIMBISARA of Magadha and his successor as king. According to the PAli account, when BimbisAra's queen VAIDEHĪ (P. Videhī) was pregnant, she developed an overwhelming urge to drink blood from the king's right knee, a craving that the king's astrologers interpreted to mean that the son would eventually commit patricide and seize the throne. Despite several attempts to abort the fetus, the child was born and was given the name AjAtasatru. While a prince, AjAtasatru became devoted to the monk DEVADATTA, the Buddha's cousin and rival, because of Devadatta's mastery of yogic powers (ṚDDHI). Devadatta plotted to take revenge on the Buddha through manipulating AjAtasatru, whom he convinced to murder his father BimbisAra, a close lay disciple and patron of the Buddha, and seize the throne. AjAtasatru subsequently assisted Devadatta in several attempts on the Buddha's life. AjAtasatru is said to have later grown remorseful over his evil deeds and, on the advice of the physician JĪVAKA, sought the Buddha's forgiveness. The Buddha preached to him on the benefits of renunciation from the SAMANNAPHALASUTTA, and AjAtasatru became a lay disciple. Because he had committed patricide, one of the five most heinous of evil deeds that are said to bring immediate retribution (ANANTARYAKARMAN), AjAtasatru was precluded from attaining any degree of enlightenment during this lifetime and was destined for rebirth in the lohakumbhiya hell. Nevertheless, Sakka (S. sAKRA), the king of the gods, described AjAtasatru as the chief in piety among the Buddha's unenlightened disciples. When the Buddha passed away, AjAtasatru was overcome with grief and, along with other kings, was given a portion of the Buddha's relics (sARĪRA) for veneration. According to the PAli commentaries, AjAtasatru provided the material support for convening the first Buddhist council (see COUNCIL, FIRST) following the Buddha's death. The same sources state that, despite his piety, he will remain in hell for sixty thousand years but later will attain liberation as a solitary buddha (P. paccekabuddha; S. PRATYEKABUDDHA) named Viditavisesa. ¶ MahAyAna scriptures, such as the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA and the GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING ("Contemplation Sutra on the Buddha of Infinite Life"), give a slightly different account of AjAtasatru's story. BimbisAra was concerned that his queen, Vaidehī, had yet to bear him an heir. He consulted a soothsayer, who told him that an aging forest ascetic would eventually be reborn as BimbisAra's son. The king then decided to speed the process along and had the ascetic killed so he would take rebirth in Vaidehī's womb. After the queen had already conceived, however, the soothsayer prophesized that the child she would bear would become the king's enemy. After his birth, the king dropped him from a tall tower, but the child survived the fall, suffering only a broken finger. (In other versions of the story, Vaidehī is so mortified to learn that her unborn son will murder her husband the king that she tried to abort the fetus, but to no avail.) Devadatta later told AjAtasatru the story of his conception and the son then imprisoned his father, intending to starve him to death. But Vaidehī kept the king alive by smuggling food to him, smearing her body with flour-paste and hiding grape juice inside her jewelry. When AjAtasatru learned of her treachery, he drew his sword to murder her, but his vassals dissuaded him. The prince's subsequent guilt about his intended matricide caused his skin break out in oozing abscesses that emitted such a foul odor that no one except his mother was able to approach him and care for him. Despite her loving care, AjAtasatru did not improve and Vaidehī sought the Buddha's counsel. The Buddha was able to cure the prince by teaching him the "NirvAna Sutra," and the prince ultimately became one of the preeminent Buddhist monarchs of India. This version of the story of AjAtasatru was used by Kosawa Heisaku (1897-1968), one of the founding figures of Japanese psychoanalysis, and his successors to posit an "Ajase (AjAtasatru) Complex" that distinguished Eastern cultures from the "Oedipal Complex" described by Sigmund Freud in Western psychoanalysis. As Kosawa interpreted this story, Vaidehī's ambivalence or active antagonism toward her son and AjAtasatru's rancor toward his mother were examples of the pathological relationship that pertains between mother and son in Eastern cultures, in distinction to the competition between father and son that Freud posited in his Oedipal Complex. This pathological relationship can be healed only through the mother's love and forgiveness, which redeem the child and thus reunite them.
Ajita. (T. Ma pham pa; C. Ayiduo; J. Aitta; K. Ailta 阿逸多). In Sanskrit and PAli, "Invincible"; proper name of several different figures in Buddhist literature. In the PAli tradition, Ajita is said to have been one of the sixteen mendicant disciples of the brAhmana ascetic BAvarĪ who visited the Buddha at the request of their teacher. Upon meeting the Buddha, Ajita saw that he was endowed with the thirty-two marks of a great man (MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA) and gained assurance that the Buddha's renown was well deserved. Starting with Ajita, all sixteen of the mendicants asked the Buddha questions. Ajita's question is preserved as the AjitamAnavapucchA in the ParAyanavagga of the SUTTANIPATA. At the end of the Buddha's explanations, Ajita and sixteen thousand followers are said to have become worthy ones (ARHAT) and entered the SAMGHA. Ajita returned to his old teacher BAvarī and recounted to him what happened. BAvarī himself converted and later became a nonreturner (ANAGAMIN). ¶ Another Ajita is Ajita-Kesakambala (Ajita of the Hair Blanket), a prominent leader of the LOKAYATA (Naturalist) school of Indian wandering religious (sRAMAnA) during the Buddha's time, who is mentioned occasionally in Buddhist scriptures. His doctrine is recounted in the PAli SAMANNAPHALASUTTA, where he is claimed to have denied the efficacy of moral cause and effect because of his materialist rejection of any prospect of transmigration or rebirth. ¶ An Ajita also traditionally appears as the fifteenth on the list of the sixteen ARHAT elders (sOdAsASTHAVIRA), who were charged by the Buddha with protecting his dispensation until the advent of the next buddha, MAITREYA. Ajita is said to reside on Mt. GṚDHRAKutA (Vulture Peak) with 1,500 disciples. He is known in Chinese as the "long-eyebrowed arhat" (changmei luohan) because he is said to have been born with long white eyebrows. In CHANYUE GUANXIU's standard Chinese depiction, Ajita is shown sitting on a rock, with both hands holding his right knee; his mouth is open, with his tongue and teeth exposed. East Asian images also sometimes show him leaning on a staff. In Tibetan iconography, he holds his two hands in his lap in DHYANAMUDRA. ¶ Ajita is finally a common epithet of the bodhisattva MAITREYA, used mostly when he is invoked in direct address.
Akasa (Sanskrit) Ākāśa [from ā + the verbal root kāś to be visible, appear, shine, be brilliant] The shining; ether, cosmic space, the fifth cosmic element. The subtle, supersensuous spiritual essence which pervades all space. It is not the ether of science, but the aether of the ancients, such as the Stoics, which is to ether what spirit is to matter. In the Brahmanical scriptures, akasa is used for what the Northern Buddhists call svabhavat, more mystically adi-buddhi (primeval buddhi); it is also mulaprakriti, cosmic spirit-substance, the reservoir of being and of beings. Genesis refers to it as the waters of the deep. It is universal substantial space, and mystically in its highest elements is alaya.
Akasa(Sanskrit) ::: The word means "brilliant," "shining," "luminous." The fifth kosmic element, the fifth essenceor "quintessence," called Aether by the ancient Stoics; but it is not the ether of science. The ether ofscience is merely one of its lower elements. In the Brahmanical scriptures akasa is used for what thenorthern Buddhists call svabhavat, more mystically Adi-buddhi -- "primeval buddhi''; it is alsomulaprakriti, the kosmical spirit-substance, the reservoir of Being and of beings. The Hebrew OldTestament refers to it as the kosmic "waters." It is universal substantial space; also mystically Alaya.(See also Mulaprakriti, Alaya)
AksobhyatathAgatasyavyuha. (T. De bzhin gshegs pa mi 'khrugs pa'i bkod pa; C. Achu foguo jing; J. Ashuku bukkokukyo; K. Ach'ok pulguk kyong 阿閦佛國經). In Sanskrit, "The Array of the TATHAGATAAKsOBHYA"; a SuTRA in which the Buddha, at sARIPUTRA's request, teaches his eminent disciple about the buddha AKsOBHYA; also known as the Aksobhyavyuha. It was first translated into Chinese in the mid-second century CE by LOKAKsEMA, an Indo-Scythian monk from KUSHAN, and later retranslated by the Tang-period monk BODHIRUCI in the early eighth century as part of his rendering of the RATNAKutASuTRA. The scripture also exists in a Tibetan translation by Jinamitra, Surendrabodhi, and Ye shes sde. The text explains that in the distant past, a monk made a vow to achieve buddhahood. He followed the arduous BODHISATTVA path, engaging in myriad virtues; the text especially emphasizes his practice of morality (sĪLA). He eventually achieves buddhahood as the buddha Aksobhya in a buddha-field (BUDDHAKsETRA) located in the east called ABHIRATI, which the sutra describes in some detail as an ideal domain for the practice of the dharma. As its name implies, Abhirati is a land of delight, the antithesis of the suffering that plagues our world, and its pleasures are the by-products of Aksobhya's immense merit and compassion. In his land, Aksobhya sits on a platform sheltered by a huge BODHI TREE, which is surrounded by rows of palm trees and jasmine bushes. Its soil is golden in color and as soft as cotton, and the ground is flat with no gullies or gravel. Although Abhirati, like our world, has a sun and moon, both pale next to the radiance of Aksobhya himself. In Abhirati, the three unfortunate realms (APAYA) of hell denizens, ghosts, and animals do not exist. Among humans, there are gender distinctions but no physical sexuality. A man who entertains sexual thoughts toward a woman would instantly see that desire transformed into a DHYANA that derives from the meditation on impurity (AsUBHABHAVANA), while a woman can become pregnant by a man's glance (even though women do not experience menstruation). Food and drink appear spontaneously whenever a person is hungry or thirsty. There is no illness, no ugliness, and no crime. Described as a kind of idealized monastic community, Abhirati is designed to provide the optimal environment to engage in Buddhist practice, both for those who seek to become ARHATs and for those practicing the bodhisattva path. Rebirth there is a direct result of having planted virtuous roots (KUsALAMuLA), engaging in wholesome actions, and then dedicating any merit deriving from those actions to one's future rebirth in that land. One is also reborn there by accepting, memorizing, and spreading this sutra. Aksobhya will eventually attain PARINIRVAnA in Abhirati through a final act of self-immolation (see SHESHEN). After his demise, his teachings will slowly disappear from the world.
alcoran ::: n. --> The Mohammedan Scriptures; the Koran (now the usual form).
alkoran ::: n. --> The Mohammedan Scriptures. Same as Alcoran and Koran.
Although said to have written one thousand books “his great work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the ‘Tao-te-King,’ or the sacred scriptures of the Taosse, has in it, as Stanislas Julien shows, only ‘about 5,000 words,’ hardly a dozen of pages, yet Professor Max Muller finds that ‘the text is unintelligible without commentaries, so that Mr. Julien had to consult more than sixty commentators for the purpose of his translation,’ the earliest going back as far as the year 163 BC, not earlier, as we see. During the four centuries and a half that preceded this earliest of the commentators there was ample time to veil the true Lao-Tse doctrine from all but his initiated priests. . . . Tradition affirms that the commentaries to which our Western Sinologues have access are not the real occult records, but intentional veils, and that the true commentaries, as well as almost all the texts, have long since disappeared from the eyes of the profane” (SD 1:xxv).
Am Ha'aretz ::: (Heb. Person of the Land). A term used in Jewish scriptures for citizens, or some particular class of citizens; in rabbinic literature, for persons or groups that dissented from or were uninstructed in rabbinic halakha and rigorous purity and tithing norms. It sometimes signifies the unlearned, sometimes is used condescendingly (boor). It was also used to describe the broad mass of Jewish people of the 1st century CE, who cannot be categorized into any of the sub-groups of the time. See also Pharisees.
AmitAbha. (T. 'Od dpag med/Snang ba mtha' yas; C. Amituo fo/Wuliangguang fo; J. Amida butsu/Muryoko butsu; K. Amit'a pul/Muryanggwang pul 阿彌陀佛/無量光佛). In Sanskrit, "Limitless Light," the buddha of the western PURE LAND of SUKHAVATĪ, one of the most widely worshipped buddhas in the MAHAYANA traditions. As recounted in the longer SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA, numerous eons ago, a monk named DHARMAKARA vowed before the buddha LOKEsVARARAJA to follow the BODHISATTVA path to buddhahood, asking him to set forth the qualities of buddha-fields (BUDDHAKsETRA). DharmAkara then spent five KALPAS in meditation, concentrating all of the qualities of all buddha-fields into a single buddha field that he would create upon his enlightenment. He then reappeared before LokesvararAja and made forty-eight specific vows (PRAnIDHANA). Among the most famous were his vow that those who, for as few as ten times over the course of their life, resolved to be reborn in his buddha-field would be reborn there; and his vow that he would appear at the deathbed of anyone who heard his name and remembered it with trust. DharmakAra then completed the bodhisattva path, thus fulfilling all the vows he had made, and became the buddha AmitAbha in the buddha-field called sukhAvatī. Based on the larger and shorter versions of the SukhAvatīvyuhasutra as well as the apocryphal GUAN WULIANGSHOU JING (*AmitAyurdhyAnasutra), rebirth in AmitAbha's buddha-field became the goal of widespread Buddhist practice in India, East Asia, and Tibet, with the phrase "Homage to AmitAbha Buddha" (C. namo Amituo fo; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU; K. namu Amit'a pul) being a central element of East Asian Buddhist practice. AmitAbha's Indian origins are obscure, and it has been suggested that his antecedents lie in Persian Zoroastrianism, where symbolism of light and darkness abounds. His worship dates back at least as far as the early centuries of the Common Era, as attested by the fact that the initial Chinese translation of the SukhAvatīvyuhasutra is made in the mid-second century CE, and he is listed in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") as the ninth son of the buddha MahAbhijNA JNAnAbhibhu. The Chinese pilgrims FAXIAN and XUANZANG make no mention of him by name in their accounts of their travels to India in the fifth and seventh centuries CE, respectively, though they do include descriptions of deities who seem certain to have been AmitAbha. Scriptures relating to AmitAbha reached Japan in the seventh century, but he did not become a popular religious figure until some three hundred years later, when his worship played a major role in finally transforming what had been previously seen as an elite and foreign tradition into a populist religion. In East Asia, the cult of AmitAbha eventually became so widespread that it transcended sectarian distinction, and AmitAbha became the most popular buddha in the region. In Tibet, AmitAbha worship dates to the early propagation of Buddhism in that country in the eighth century, although it never became as prevalent as in East Asia. In the sixteenth century, the fifth DALAI LAMA gave the title PAn CHEN LAMA to his teacher, BLO BZANG CHOS KYI RGYAL MTSHAN, and declared him to be an incarnation of AmitAbha (the Dalai Lama himself having been declared the incarnation of Avalokitesvara, AmitAbha's emanation). ¶ The names "AmitAbha" and "AmitAyus" are often interchangeable, both deriving from the Sanskrit word "amita," meaning "limitless," "boundless," or "infinite"; there are some intimations that Amita may actually have been the original name of this buddha, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that the Chinese transcription Amituo [alt. Emituo] transcribes the root word amita, not the two longer forms of the name. The distinction between the two names is preserved in the Chinese translations "Wuliangguang" ("Infinite Light") for AmitAbha and Wuliangshou ("Infinite Life") for AmitAyus, neither of which is used as often as the transcription Amituo. Both AmitAbha and AmitAyus serve as epithets of the same buddha in the longer SukhAvatīvyuhasutra and the Guan Wuliangshou jing, two of the earliest and most important of the sutras relating to his cult. In Tibet, his two alternate names were simply translated: 'Od dpag med ("Infinite Light") and Tshe dpag med ("Infinite Life"). Despite the fact that the two names originally refer to the same deity, they have developed distinctions in ritual function and iconography, and AmitAyus is now considered a separate form of AmitAbha rather than just a synonym for him. ¶ AmitAbha is almost universally shown in DHYANASANA, his hands at his lap in DHYANAMUDRA, though there are many variations, such as standing or displaying the VITARKAMUDRA or VARADAMUDRA. As one of the PANCATATHAGATA, AmitAbha is the buddha of the padma family and is situated in the west. In tantric depictions he is usually red in color and is shown in union with his consort PAndarA, and in East Asia he is commonly accompanied by his attendants AVALOKITEsVARA (Ch. GUANYIN) and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA. See also JINGTU SANSHENG; WANGSHENG.
Ammon-Ra (Greek) Ámmōn-Rā Amen-Ra (Egyptian) Ȧmen-Rā. When the princes of Thebes had conquered all rival claimants to the sovereignty of Egypt and established themselves as rulers of the dual Empires, they followed in religious, mystical, and occult matters the thought of the powerful priesthood of Thebes. Thus after the 12th dynasty a new manner of visioning the ancient god Ammon came into prominence, under the name Ammon-Ra, although the latter’s preeminence as chief god of Egypt did not occur until the 17th dynasty. The attributes of the hidden deity Ammon were combined with the solar god Ra, and this deity was acclaimed by the priests as the chief of the gods of Egypt. Ammon-Ra seems to be devoid of most, at least, of the mystical symbols that are present in representations of the older deities, although the hymns to the god that were carefully prepared by the priests incorporated all the attributes and phraseology prevalent in the other scriptures.
AmoghapAsa (Lokesvara). (T. Don yod zhags pa; C. Bukong Juansuo; J. Fuku Kenjaku; K. Pulgong Kyonsak 不空羂索). A popular tantric form of AVALOKITEsVARA, primarily distinguished by his holding of a snare (pAsa); his name is interpreted as "Lokesvara with the unfailing snare." Like Avalokitesvara, he is worshipped as a savior of beings, his snare understood to be the means by which he rescues devotees. His worship seems to have developed in India during the sixth century, as evidenced by the 587 Chinese translation of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra (the first chapter of the much longer AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra) by JNAnagupta. Numerous translations of scriptures relating to AmoghapAsa by BODHIRUCI, XUANZANG, and AMOGHAVAJRA and others up into the tenth century attest to the continuing popularity of the deity. The earliest extant image of AmoghapAsa seems to be in Japan, in the monastery of ToDAIJI in Nara, dating from the late seventh century. There are many extant images of the god in northwest India from the ninth and tenth centuries; some earlier images of Avalokitesvara from the eighth century, which depict him holding a snare, have been identified as AmoghapAsa, although the identification remains uncertain. Tibetan translations of the AmoghapAsahṛdayasutra and the AmoghapAsakalparAjasutra are listed in the eighth-century LDAN DKAR MA catalogue, though it is later translations that are included in the BKA' 'GYUR, where they are classified as kriyAtantras. (The Tibetan canon includes some eight tantras concerning AmoghapAsa.) Numerous images of AmoghapAsa from Java dating to the early second millennium attest to his popularity in that region; in the Javanese custom of deifying kings, King Visnuvardhana (d. 1268) was identified as an incarnation of AmoghapAsa. AmoghapAsa can appear in forms with any number of pairs of hands, although by far the most popular are the six-armed seated and eight-armed standing forms. Other than his defining snare, he often carries a three-pointed staff (tridanda) but, like other multiarmed deities, can be seen holding almost any of the tantric accoutrements. AmoghapAsa is depicted in bodhisattva guise and, like Avalokitesvara, has an image of AMITABHA in his crown and is occasionally accompanied by TARA, BHṚKUTĪ, SudhanakumAra, and HAYAGRĪVA.
Amoghavajra. (C. Bukong; J. Fuku; K. Pulgong 不空) (705-774). Buddhist émigré ACARYA who played a major role in the introduction and translation of seminal Buddhist texts belonging to the esoteric tradition or mijiao (see MIKKYo; TANTRA). His birthplace is uncertain, but many sources allude to his ties to Central Asia. Accompanying his teacher VAJRABODHI, Amoghavajra arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang'an in 720-1 and spent most of his career in that cosmopolitan city. In 741, following the death of his mentor, Amoghavajra made an excursion to India and Sri Lanka with the permission of the Tang-dynasty emperor and returned in 746 with new Buddhist texts, many of them esoteric scriptures. Amoghavajra's influence in the Tang court reached its peak when he was summoned by the emperor to construct an ABHIsEKA, or consecration, altar on his behalf. Amoghavajra's activities in Chang'an were interrupted by the An Lushan rebellion (655-763), but after the rebellion was quelled, he returned to his work at the capital and established an inner chapel for HOMA rituals and abhiseka in the imperial palace. He was later honored by the emperor with the purple robe, the highest honor for a Buddhist monk and the rank of third degree. Along with XUANZANG, Amoghavajra was one of the most prolific translators and writers in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Among the many texts that he translated into Chinese, especially important are the SARVATATHAGATATATTVASAMGRAHA and the BHADRACARĪPRAnIDHANA.
anagogics ::: n. pl. --> Mystical interpretations or studies, esp. of the Scriptures.
Anaksarakarandaka[Vairocanagarbha]sutra. (T. Yi ge med pa'i za ma tog rnam par snang mdzad kyi snying po'i mdo; C. Wuzi baoqie jing; J. Muji hokyogyo; K. Muja pohyop kyong 無字寶篋經). In Chinese translation from the Sanskrit, "The Letter-less Casket"; a MahAyAna scripture best known for its statement that, in the enlightenment of the TATHAGATAs, the nature of all factors (DHARMA) is discovered to be empty (suNYATA); it is neither produced nor extinguished; it neither increases nor decreases; it neither comes nor goes; it is neither obtained nor discarded; and it is free from all causes and conditions. There are three Chinese translations, the best known of which is the Wuzi baoqie jing, which was translated by BODHIRUCI (?-527) between 508 and 535. There are also two other Chinese recensions, both translated by DivAkara (613-687), the first made in 683 and the second between 676 and 688.
Analogic: (Gr. mystical) Usually employed as a noun in the plural, signifying an interpretation of Scripture pointing to a destiny to be hoped for and a goal to be attained; as an adjective it means, pertaining to the kind of interpretation described above. -- J.J.R.
anAtman. (P. anattA; T. bdag med; C. wuwo; J. muga; K. mua 無我). In Sanskrit, "no self" or "nonself" or more broadly "insubstantiality"; the third of the "three marks" (TRILAKsAnA) of existence, along with impermanence (ANITYA) and suffering (DUḤKHA). The concept is one of the key insights of the Buddha, and it is foundational to the Buddhist analysis of the compounded quality (SAMSKṚTA) of existence: since all compounded things are the fruition (PHALA) of a specific set of causes (HETU) and conditions (PRATYAYA), they are therefore absent of any perduring substratum of being. In the sutra analysis of existence, the "person" (PUDGALA) is said to be a product of five aggregates (SKANDHA)-materiality (RuPA), physical sensations (VEDANA), perception (SAMJNA), impulses (SAMSKARA), and consciousness (VIJNANA)-which together comprise the totality of the individual's physical, mental, and emotional existence. What in common parlance is called the person is a continuum (SAMTANA) imputed to the construction of these aggregates, but when these aggregates are separated at the time of death, the person also simultaneously vanishes. This relationship between the person and the skandhas is clarified in the MILINDAPANHA's famous simile of the chariot: a chariot is composed of various constituent parts, but if that chariot is broken down into its parts, there is no sense of "chariot" remaining. So it is with the person and his constituent parts, the skandhas. The Buddha is rigorously against any analysis of phenomena that imputes the reality of a person: when a questioner asks him, "Who senses?," for example, the Buddha rejects the question as wrongly conceived and reframes it in terms of conditionality, i.e., "With what as condition does sensation occur?" ("Sensory contact" [SPARsA] is the answer.) Buddhism thus rejects any notion of an eternal, perduring soul that survives death, or which transmigrates from lifetime to lifetime; rather, just as we can impute a conventional continuity to the person over one lifetime, so can this same continuity be imputed over several lifetimes. The continuum of karmic action and reaction ensures that the last moment of consciousness in the present life serves as the condition for the first moment of consciousness in the next. The next life is therefore neither the same as nor different from the preceding lifetime; instead, it is causally related to it. For this reason, any specific existence, or series of existences, is governed by the causes and conditions that create it, rendering life fundamentally beyond our attempts to control it (another connotation of "nonself") and thus unworthy as an object of attachment. Seeing this lack of selfhood in compounded things generates a sense of "danger" (ADĪNAVA) that catalyzes the aspiration to seek liberation (VIMOKsA). Thus, understanding this mark of anAtman is the crucial antidote (PRATIPAKsA) to ignorance (AVIDYA) and the key to liberation from suffering (duḥkha) and the continuing cycle of rebirth (SAMSARA). Although the notion of anAtman is applied to the notion of a person in mainstream Buddhism, in the PRAJNAPARAMITA scriptures and the broader MAHAYANA tradition the connotation of the term is extended to take in the "nonself of phenomena" (DHARMANAIRATMYA) as well. This extension may be a response to certain strands of the mainstream tradition, such as SARVASTIVADA (lit. the "Teaching That All [Dharmas] Exist"), which considered dharmas (i.e., the five skandhas and so on) to be factors that existed in reality throughout all three time periods (TRIKALA) of past, present, and future. In order to clarify that dharmas have only conventional validity, the MahAyAna posited that they also were anAtman, although the nature of this lack of self was differently understood by the YOGACARA and MADHYAMAKA schools.
Anawrahta. (S. Aniruddha; P. Anuruddha) (1015-1078). King of Pagan (r. c. 1044-1077 CE), who is celebrated in Burmese history and legend as the founder of the first Burmese empire and as having established THERAVADA Buddhism as the national religion of the Burmese people. Fifteenth-century Mon inscriptions record that Anawrahta conquered the Mon kingdom of Thaton in 1057 and carried off to his capital relics of the Buddha, PAli texts, and orthodox TheravAda monks. With these acquisitions, he laid the foundation for PAli Buddhism in his kingdom. Later Burmese chronicles recount that, prior to his invasion of the Mon kingdom, Anawrahta had been converted to TheravAda Buddhism by the Mon saint SHIN ARAHAN, who preached to the king the AppamAdasutta. After his conversion, Anawrahta is alleged to have suppressed an already established sect of heretical Buddhist monks dwelling at Pagan known as the Ari, which seem to have been a MAHAYANA strand that practiced some forms of tantra. Although supposedly reprehensible in their behavior, the Ari had enjoyed the patronage of Pagan's kings for generations. In revenge, the Ari monks attempted to harm Shin Arahan, whereupon Anawrahta defrocked them and conscripted them into his army. To firmly establish TheravAda Buddhism as the sole religion of Pagan, Shin Arahan advised Anawrahta to request Buddha relics and PAli scriptures from the king of Thaton, the Mon TheravAda kingdom whence Shin Arahan hailed. When Manuha, the Thaton king in RAmaNNa, refused Anawrahta's request, Anawrahta and his Burmese forces invaded and acquired these objects by force. Manuha was himself seized and transported to Pagan in golden chains where he and his family were dedicated to the Shwezigon Pagoda as temple slaves and allowed to worship the Buddha until the end of their days. Whatever the historical accuracy of the legend, epigraphic and archaeological evidence indicates that Anawrahta was more eclectic in his beliefs than traditional sources suggest. According to the CulAVAMSA, Anawrahta assisted the Sinhalese king VijayabAhu I (r. 1055-1110) in reinstating a valid TheravAda ordination line in Sri Lanka, but Anawrahta also circulated in his own kingdom votive tablets adorned with MahAyAna imagery, and seals bearing his name are inscribed in Sanskrit rather than in PAli. In addition, Anawrahta supported a royal cult of spirits (Burmese NAT) propitiation at the Shwezigon pagoda in the capital, which was dedicated to the same deities said to have been worshipped by the heterodox Ari monks. All of this evidence suggests a religious environment at Pagan during Anawrahta's time that was far more diverse than the exclusivist TheravAda practices described in the chronicles; indeed, it is clear that more than one Buddhist tradition, along with brahmanism and the nat cult, received the patronage of the king and his court.
Anban shouyi jing. (J. Anpanshuikyo; K. Anban suŭi kyong 安般守意經). In Chinese, "The AnApAna Guarding the Mind Scripture" composed by the Parthian teacher and translator AN SHIGAO sometime during the second century. Although the text purports to be a translation of a Middle Indic analogue of the PAli ANAPANASATISUTTA, the text is interspersed with commentarial notes on the practice of mindfulness of the process of breathing in and breathing out (ANAPANASMṚTI, P. AnApAnasati) and brief explanations of such numerical categories as the five SKANDHAs, twelve AYATANAs, and so on. The text is similar in content to certain sections of the ABHIDHARMAMAHAVIBHAsA. The Anban shouyi jing relies heavily upon indigenous Chinese terminology and consequently serves as an important source for studying the process through which Buddhist meditative techniques were introduced into China. The Sogdian monk KANG SENGHUI wrote a preface and commentary to this text, but his commentary is no longer extant.
angel ::: n. --> A messenger.
A spiritual, celestial being, superior to man in power and intelligence. In the Scriptures the angels appear as God&
Angels in Scripture,” wherein no less than 7 angels
Anham. (安含) (c. 579-640). Korean pilgrim-monk of the Silla dynasty. According to the HAEDONG KOSŬNG CHoN, in 600, Anham attempted with a fellow monk by the name of Hyesuk to travel to China in search of the teachings of the Buddha but had to turn back due to a heavy rainstorm. The following year, a royal decree permitted him to accompany a Silla envoy to China. At the behest of the Chinese emperor, he studied various scriptures at the monastery of Xingshengsi in the imperial capital of Chang'an for five years. Anham returned to Silla in 605 with foreign monks from Khotan, Serindia, India, and China. While residing at the monastery of HWANGNYONGSA, these monks are claimed to have translated together a scripture known as the Zhantanxianghuo xingguang miaonü jing, which emphasizes the efficacy of a DHARAnĪ called zhantanxiang shen. Anham might also be identical to another Korean monk by the name of Anhong who is said to have brought the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, sRĪMALADEVĪSIMHANADASuTRA, and relics of the Buddha to Korea in 576. Anham was renowned for his superknowledges (ABHIJNA) and was worshipped as one of the "ten worthies of Silla" (Silla sipsong) at Hwangnyongsa. A text known as the Tongdo songnip ki ("Record of the Establishment of the Eastern Capital") is attributed to Anham.
Aniyamsam Aniyasam (Sanskrit) Aṇīyāṃsam aṇīyasāṃ [from aṇu atom, minuteness; aṇīyāṃsam, accusative of aṇīyas, comparative of adjective aṇu + aṇīyasām genitive plural of aṇu] Philosophically, atomic of the atomic; otherwise the smallest of the small. A phrase lifted from one of the Hindu scriptures (cf VP 1:15n), without changing the first word to its nominative case. It is applied to the universal divinity whose vital intelligent essence is everywhere, to the absolutely spiritual atom which is the divine monad of every entity, great and small, in the cosmos. In Vedantic philosophy, often used as a name of Brahman, conceived as being smaller than the smallest atom and equivalently as greater than the greatest sphere or universe. The conception applies equally well to paramatman. This universality whether in infinitesimals or in cosmic reaches is expressed in the almost equivalent phrase anor aniyamsam (smaller than an atom) (BG 8:9); likewise, anor aniyan (smaller than the small) in combination with mahato mahiyan (greater than the great) in the Upanishads (Katha 1:2, 20; Svetasvatara 3:21).
An Shigao. (J. An Seiko; K. An Sego 安世高) (fl. c. 148-180 CE). An early Buddhist missionary in China and first major translator of Indian Buddhist materials into Chinese; he hailed from Arsakes (C. ANXI GUO), the Arsacid kingdom (c. 250 BCE-224 CE) of PARTHIA. (His ethnikon AN is the Chinese transcription of the first syllable of Arsakes.) Legend says that he was a crown prince of Parthia who abandoned his right to the throne in favor of a religious life, though it is not clear whether he was a monk or a layperson, or a follower of MAHAYANA or SARVASTIVADA, though all of the translations authentically ascribed to him are of mainstream Buddhist materials. An moved eastward and arrived in 148 at the Chinese capital of Luoyang, where he spent the next twenty years of his life. Many of the earliest translations of Buddhist texts into Chinese are attributed to An Shigao, but few can be determined with certainty to be his work. His most famous translations are the Ren benyu sheng jing (MAHANIDANASUTTANTA), ANBAN SHOUYI JING (ANAPANASATISUTTA), Yinchiru jing, and Daodi jing. Although his Anban shouyi jing is called a SuTRA, it is in fact made up of both short translations and his own exegesis on these translations, making it all but impossible to separate the original text from his exegesis. An Shigao seems to have been primarily concerned with meditative techniques such as ANAPANASMṚTI and the study of numerical categories such as the five SKANDHAs and twelve AYATANAs. Much of An's pioneering translation terminology was eventually superseded as the Chinese translation effort matured, but his use of transcription, rather than translation, in rendering seminal Buddhist concepts survived, as in the standard Chinese transcriptions he helped popularize for buddha (C. FO) and BODHISATTVA (C. pusa). Because of his renown as an early translator, later Buddhist scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) in China ascribed to An Shigao many works that did not carry translator attributions; hence, there are many indigenous Chinese Buddhist scriptures (see APOCRYPHA) that are falsely attributed to him.
antaradhAna. In PAli, "disappearance [of the Buddha's teachings]." According to the PAli commentaries, the true dharma (saddhamma) or teaching (sAsana) of the Buddha is destined to survive in the world for at most five thousand years, during which time it will suffer a steady decline in five stages, called the paNcantaradhAnAni. There are several alternate theories found in the commentaries as to the specifics of the decline. One version of the five disappearances, which appears in the MANORATHAPuRAnĪ, the commentary to the AnGUTTARANIKAYA, describes the sequential disappearance of (1) the four noble (Ariya) attainments, (2) observance of the precepts, (3) knowledge of the texts, (4) outward signs of monasticism, and (5) the Buddha's relics. In the PRAJNAPARAMITA (perfection of wisdom) literature, there are similarly a number of explanations of the disappearance or extinction of the teaching (saddharmaksaya). The satasAhasrikAprajNApAramitAbṛhattīkA, an early commentary extant only in Tibetan, subdivides the five thousand years that the teaching lasts into ten periods of five hundred years each. The first three (the period of understanding) are when people realize the doctrine and attain results of ARHAT, ANAGAMIN (nonreturner), and SROTAAPANNA (stream-enterer), respectively; the second three (the period of practice) are when people cultivate insight (VIPAsYANA), serenity (sAMATHA), and morality (sĪLA), respectively; the third three are when the majority have a scripture-centered religious life based on the ABHIDHARMA, SuTRA, and VINAYA sections of the TRIPItAKA; and the final five hundred years are when there is just the mere show of the dharma. See also MOFA; SADDHARMAVIPRALOPA.
anthem ::: n. --> Formerly, a hymn sung in alternate parts, in present usage, a selection from the Psalms, or other parts of the Scriptures or the liturgy, set to sacred music.
A song or hymn of praise. ::: v. t. --> To celebrate with anthems.
antiscriptural ::: a. --> Opposed to, or not in accordance with, the Holy Scriptures.
AnunatvApurnatvanirdesa. (C. Buzeng bujian jing; J. Fuzofugengyo; K. Pujŭng pulgam kyong 不增不減經). In Sanskrit, the "Neither Increase nor Decrease Sutra," one of the earliest TATHAGATAGARBHA (embryo of the tathAgatas) scriptures, along with the TATHAGATAGARBHASuTRA and the sRĪMALA-DEVĪSIMHANADASuTRA. The text, only a single roll in length, was far more influential in the development of tathAgatagarbha thought in East Asia than its length might suggest. The complete text survives only in a Chinese translation made in 525 by BODHIRUCI (d. 527). Neither Sanskrit nor Tibetan recensions of the text are extant, although the RATNAGOTRAVIBHAGA includes many quotations from the scripture. The AnunatvApurnatvanirdesa explains the absolute identity between sentient beings and the DHARMAKAYA of the buddhas through the concept of tathAgatagarbha. According to the scripture, although sentient beings endure endless rebirths among the six destinies (GATI) because of afflictions (KLEsA), they in fact neither arise nor perish because they are all actually manifestations of the unchanging dharmakAya. Since sentient beings are therefore nothing other than the dharmakAya-and since the dharmakAya is unchanging, ever-present, and subject neither to increase nor to decrease-the sentient beings who possess the dharmakAya as their nature also "neither increase nor decrease." The scripture also explains that such wrong views as the notion that sentient beings are subject to increase or decrease are caused by not realizing that the realms of sentient beings and tathAgatas are in fact one and the same. When the dharmakAya is obscured by afflictions and resides in the suffering of SAMSARA, it is called a sentient being; when it is cultivating the perfections (PARAMITA) and developing a repugnance for the suffering of saMsAra, it is called a BODHISATTVA; when it is pure and free from all afflictions, it is called a tathAgata. Sentient beings, tathAgatagarbha, and dharmakAya are therefore merely different names for the one realm of reality (DHARMADHATU). The AnunatvApurnatvanirdesa thus emphasizes the immanent aspect of tathAgatagarbha, whereas the srīmAlAsutra emphasizes its transcendent aspect.
anuyoga. (T. a nu yo ga). In Sanskrit, "subsequent yoga" or "further yoga," the eighth of the nine vehicles (THEG PA DGU) of Buddhism according to the RNYING MA sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Here, the system of practice described elsewhere as ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA is divided into three: MAHAYOGA, anuyoga, and ATIYOGA, with anuyoga corresponding to the practices of the "stage of completion" (NIsPANNAKRAMA), mahAyoga to the stage of generation (UTPATTIKRAMA) and atiyoga to the great completion (RDZOGS CHEN) and the spontaneous achievement of buddhahood. Thus, such stage of completion practices as causing the winds (PRAnA) to move through the channels (NAdĪ) to the CAKRAs are set forth in anuyoga. In Rnying ma, anuyoga is also a category of texts in the RNYING MA'I RGYUD 'BUM, divided under the following headings: the four root sutras (rtsa ba'i mdo bzhi), the six tantras clarifying the six limits (mtha' drug gsal bar byed pa'i rgyud drug), the twelve rare tantras (dkon rgyud bcu gnyis), and the seventy written scriptures (lung gi yi ge bdun bcu).
Anzhai shenzhou jing. (J. Antaku jinshukyo; K. Ant'aek sinju kyong 安宅神呪經). In Chinese, the "Spirit-Spell Scripture for Pacifying Homes"; together with the Anzhai tuolunizhou jing ("DHARAnĪ-Spell Scripture for Pacifying Homes"), both SuTRAs detail the ritual known as anzhai zhai ("feast for pacifying homes"). According to this scripture, a merchant's sons were anguished by the unending travails that befell their household and asked the Buddha for help. The Buddha went to the merchant's house, reprimanded the spirits who were supposed to be protecting the home (anzhai jingshen), and expounded the means of preparing the feast for pacifying homes. This ritual, which had to be supervised by a BHIKsU, entailed burning incense, lighting lamps, and chanting the Anzhai shenzhou jing. The scripture is claimed to have been translated during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 CE) by an unidentified translator, but no Indian or Tibetan recension is known, and it is suspected to be an indigenous Chinese composition (see APOCRYPHA).
Apamnapat (Sanskrit) Apāṃnapāt [from apām of waters from ap water + napāt child, son, offspring] Son of the waters; in the Vedas one name of Agni (cosmic and terrestrial fire), as having issued as lightning from the firmament or cosmic spaces, so frequently called waters in ancient scriptures. This connects Apamnapat with fohat: just as fohat is cosmic vitality manifest in one of its forms as fire (agni) or as electricity and magnetism in their manifold appearances, so is fohat or apamnapat the child or offspring of cosmic space or the cosmic waters. But these waters “are not the liquid we know, but Ether — the fiery waters of space” (SD 2:400n). Fohat likewise is called the son of ether in the latter’s highest aspect, akasa.
apocrypha. (C. yijing/weijing; J. gikyo/gikyo; K. ŭigyong/wigyong 疑經/僞經). Buddhist scholars have appropriated (though not without some controversy) the Judeo-Christian religious term "apocrypha" to refer to indigenous sutras composed outside the Indian cultural sphere, but on the model of translated Indian or Serindian scriptures. Such scriptures were sometimes composed in conjunction with a revelatory experience, but many were intentionally forged using their false ascription to the Buddha or other enlightened figures as a literary device to enhance both their authority and their prospects of being accepted as authentic scriptures. Many of the literary genres that characterize Judeo-Christian apocrypha are found also in Buddhist apocrypha, including the historical, didactic, devotional, and apocalyptic. Both were also often composed in milieus of social upheaval or messianic revivalism. As Buddhism moved outside of its Indian homeland, its scriptures had to be translated into various foreign languages, creating openings for indigenous scriptures to be composed in imitation of these translated texts. Ferreting out such inauthentic indigenous scripture from authentic imported scripture occupied Buddhist bibliographical cataloguers (see JINGLU), who were charged with confirming the authenticity of the Buddhist textual transmission. For the Chinese, the main criterion governing scriptural authenticity was clear evidence that the text had been brought from the "Outer Regions" (C. waiyu), meaning India or Central Asia; this concern with authenticating a text partially accounts for why Chinese translations of Buddhist scriptures typically included a colophon immediately following the title, giving the name of the translator (who was also sometimes the importer of the scripture), along with the place where, and often the imperial reign era during which the translation was made. Scriptures for which there was no such proof were in danger of being labeled as texts of "suspect" or "suspicious" authenticity (yijing) or condemned as blatantly "spurious" or "counterfeit" scriptures (weijing). The presence of indigenous cultural elements, such as yin-yang cosmology, local spirits, or rituals and liturgies associated with folk religion could also be enough to condemn a scripture as "spurious." In Tibet, "treasure texts" (GTER MA) were scriptures or esoteric teachings attributed to enlightened beings or lineage holders that purported to have been buried or hidden away until they could be rediscovered by qualified individuals. Because of their association with a revelatory experience, such "treasure texts" carried authority similar to that of translated scripture. Different classifications of apocryphal scriptures have been proposed, based on genre and style, social history, and doctrinal filiations. In one of the ironies of the Buddhist textual transmission, however, many of the scriptures most influential in East Asian Buddhism have been discovered to be indigenous "apocrypha," not translated scriptures. Such indigenous scriptures were able to appeal to a native audience in ways that translated Indian materials could not, and the sustained popularity of many such "suspect" texts eventually led cataloguers to include them in the canon, despite continuing qualms about their authenticity. Such "canonical apocrypha" include such seminal scriptures as the FANWANG JING ("BrahmA's Net Sutra"), RENWANG JING ("Humane Kings Sutra"), and the YUANJUE JING ("Perfect Enlightenment Sutra"), as well as treatises like the DASHENG QIXIN LUN ("Awakening of Faith"). Similar questions of authenticity can be raised regarding scriptures of Indian provenance, since it is virtually impossible to trace with certainty which of the teachings ascribed to the Buddha in mainstream canonical collections (TRIPItAKA) such as the PAli canon can be historically attributed to him. Similarly, the MAHAYANA sutras, which are also attributed to the Buddha even though they were composed centuries after his death, are considered apocryphal by many of the MAINSTREAM BUDDHIST SCHOOLS, including the modern THERAVADA tradition; however, modern scholars do not use the term "Buddhist apocrypha" to describe MahAyAna texts.
Apocrypha ::: (Gre. to Hide or to Uncover) It is used in a technical sense to refer to certain Jewish books written in the Hellenistic-Roman period that came to be included in the Old Greek Jewish scriptures (and thus in the Eastern Christian biblical canon) and in the Latin Vulgate Roman Catholic canon, but not in the Jewish or Protestant biblical canons. See also Bible, Septuagint.
apocrypha ::: n. pl. --> Something, as a writing, that is of doubtful authorship or authority; -- formerly used also adjectively.
Specif.: Certain writings which are received by some Christians as an authentic part of the Holy Scriptures, but are rejected by others.
apologetics ::: n. --> That branch of theology which defends the Holy Scriptures, and sets forth the evidence of their divine authority.
Aramaic ::: Semitic language known since the 9th B.C.E.; official language of the Persian empire; used extensively in southwest Asia and by the Jews after the Babylonian exile; the cursive script replaced the ancient paleo-Hebrew script for secular writing as well as for holy scriptures.
AstasAhasrikAprajNApAramitA. (T. Sher phyin brgyad stong pa; C. Xiaopin bore jing; J. Shobon hannyakyo; K. Sop'um panya kyong 小品般若經). In Sanskrit, "Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines." This scripture is now generally accepted to be the earliest of the many PRAJNAPARAMITA sutras and thus probably one of the very earliest of the MAHAYANA scriptures. The Asta, as it is often referred to in the literature, seems to have gradually developed over a period of about two hundred years, from the first century BCE to the first century CE. Some of its earliest recensions translated into Chinese during the Han dynasty do not yet display the full panoply of self-referentially MahAyAna terminology that characterize the more elaborate recensions translated later, suggesting that MahAyAna doctrine was still under development during the early centuries of the Common Era. The provenance of the text is obscure, but the consensus view is that it was probably written in central or southern India. The Asta, together with its verse summary, the RATNAGUnASAMCAYAGATHA, probably represents the earliest stratum of the prajNApAramitA literature; scholars believe that this core scripture was subsequently expanded between the second and fourth centuries CE into other massive PrajNApAramitA scriptures in as many as 100,000 lines (the sATASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA). By about 500 CE, the Asta's basic ideas had been abbreviated into shorter condensed statements, such as the widely read, 300-verse VAJRACCHEDIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA ("Diamond Sutra"). (Some scholars have suggested instead that the "Diamond Sutra" may in fact represent one of the earliest strata of the prajNApAramitA literature.) The MahAyAna tradition's view of its own history, however, is that the longest of the prajNApAramitA scriptures, the 100,000-line satasAhasrikAprajNApAramitA, is the core text from which all the other perfection of wisdom sutras were subsequently excerpted. The main interlocutor of the Asta, as in most of the prajNApAramitA scriptures, is SUBHuTI, an ARHAT foremost among the Buddha's disciples in dwelling at peace in remote places, rather than sARIPUTRA, who much more commonly appears in this role in the mainstream Buddhist scriptures (see AGAMA; NIKAYA). The prominent role accorded to Subhuti suggests that the prajNApAramitA literature may derive from forest-dwelling (Aranyaka) ascetic traditions distinct from the dominant, urban-based monastic elite. The main goal of the Asta and other prajNApAramitA scriptures is rigorously to apply the foundational Buddhist notion of nonself (ANATMAN) to the investigation of all phenomena-from the usual compounded things (SAMSKARA) and conditioned factors (SAMSKṚTADHARMA), but even to such quintessentially Buddhist summa bona as the fruits of sanctity (ARYAMARGAPHALA) and NIRVAnA. The constant refrain of the Asta is that there is nothing that can be grasped or to which one should cling, not PRAJNA, not PARAMITA, not BODHISATTVA, and not BODHI. Even the six perfections (sAdPARAMITA) of the bodhisattva are subjected to this same refutation: for example, only when the bodhisattva realizes that there is no giver, no recipient, and no gift will he have mastered the perfection of giving (DANAPARAMITA). Such radical nonattachment even to the central concepts of Buddhism itself helps to foster a thoroughgoing awareness of the emptiness (suNYATA) of all things and thus the perfection of wisdom (prajNApAramitA). Even if the Asta's area of origin was in the south of India, the prajNApAramitA scriptures seem initially to have found their best reception in the northwest of India during the KUSHAN dynasty (c. first century CE), whence they would have had relatively easy entrée into Central Asia and then East Asia. This geographic proximity perhaps accounts for the early acceptance the Asta and the rest of the prajNApAramitA literature received on the Chinese mainland, helping to make China the first predominantly MahAyAna tradition.
As the Persian scriptures says, it was not only the wearing of the priestly robes and bearing of the implements and the baresma which made one an athravan: “He who sleeps on throughout the night, who does not perform the Yasna nor chant the hymns, who does not worship by word or by deed, who does neither learn nor teach, with a longing for (everlasting) life, he lies when he says, ‘I am an Athravan.’ Him thou shalt call an Athravan who throughout the night sits up and demands of the holy wisdom, which makes man free from anxiety, with dilated heart, and which makes him reach that holy, excellent world, the world of paradise” (Vendidad 18:6, 7).
ASURA. ::: Titan; a being of ignorant egoism as opposed to the Deva or god, who is a being of Light; sons of Darkness and Division.
Asuras are really the dark side of the mental, or more strictly, of the vital mind plane. This mind is the very field of the Asuras. Their main characteristic is egoistic strength and struggle, which refuse the higher law. The Asura has self-control, tapas, and intelligence, but all that for the sake of his ego.
There are no Asuras on the higher planes where the Truth prevails, except in the Vedic sense -“ the Divine in its strength “. The mental and vital Asuras are only a deviation of that power.
There are two kinds of Asuras - one kind were divine in their origin but have fallen from their divinity by self-will and opposition to the intention of the Divine; they are spoken in the Hindu scriptures as the former or earlier gods; these can be converted and their conversion is indeed necessary for the ultimate purpose of the universe. But the ordinary Asura is not of this character, is not an evolutionary but a typal being and represents a fixed principle of the creation which does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so. These Asuras, as also the other hostile beings, Rakshasas, Pishachas and others resemble the devils of the Christian tradition and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose in the human being; they don’t change the purpose in them for which they exist which is evil, but have to be destroyed like the evil. The Asura has no soul, no psychic being which has to evolve to a higher state; he has only an ego and usually a very powerful ego; he has a mind, sometimes even a highly intellectual mind; but the basis of his thinking and feeling is vital and not mental, at the service of his desire and not truth. He is a formation assumed by the life-principle for a particular kind of work and not a divine formation or soul.
Some kinds of Asuras are very religious, very fanatical about their religion, very strict about rules of ethical conduct. There are others who use spiritual ideas without believing in them to give them a perverted twist and delude the sadhaka.
A. The first vowel and letter in the Sanskrit alphabet. The phoneme "a" is thought to be the source of all other phonemes and its corresponding letter the origin of all other letters. As the basis of both the Sanskrit phonemic system and the written alphabet, the letter "a" thus comes to be invested with mystical significance as the source of truth, nondifferentiation, and emptiness (suNYATA), or even of the universe as a whole. The PRAJNAPARAMITASARVATATHAGATAMATA-EKAKsARA, the shortest of the perfection of wisdom scriptures, also describes how the entirety of the perfection of wisdom is subsumed by this one letter. The letter in the Sanskrit SIDDHAM alphabet gained special significance within the esoteric Buddhist traditions in Japan (MIKKYo), such as Shingon (see SHINGONSHu), which considered it to be the "seed" (BĪJA) of MAHAVAIROCANA, the central divinity of esoteric Buddhism, and used it in a distinctive type of meditation called AJIKAN ("contemplation of the letter 'a'"). The letter "a," which is said to be originally uncreated (AJI HONPUSHo), is interpreted to be the essence of all phenomena in the universe and the DHARMAKAYA of the buddha MahAvairocana. In the East Asian CHAN traditions, the letter "a" is also sometimes understood to represent the buddha-nature (FOXING, S. BUDDHADHATU) of all sentient beings.
::: "A transcendent Bliss, unimaginable and inexpressible by the mind and speech, is the nature of the Ineffable. That broods immanent and secret in the whole universe and in everything in the universe. Its presence is described as a secret ether of the bliss of being, of which the Scripture says that, if this were not, none could for a moment breathe or live. And this spiritual bliss is here also in our hearts.” The Synthesis of Yoga
“A transcendent Bliss, unimaginable and inexpressible by the mind and speech, is the nature of the Ineffable. That broods immanent and secret in the whole universe and in everything in the universe. Its presence is described as a secret ether of the bliss of being, of which the Scripture says that, if this were not, none could for a moment breathe or live. And this spiritual bliss is here also in our hearts.” The Synthesis of Yoga
Avatamsaka Sutra (Sanskrit) Avataṃsaka Sutra The Flower Ornament Scripture or The Flower Adornment Scripture; a long and very profound Buddhist scripture, which Nagarjuna “brought back from the Realm of the Nagas” (adepts) (BCW 14:510). The basis for modern translations is the Chinese translation of Shikshananda (652-710). (BCW 14:285, 423; 6:100-1)
AvataMsakasutra. (T. Mdo phal po che; C. Huayan jing; J. Kegongyo; K. Hwaom kyong 華嚴經). In Sanskrit, "Garland Scripture"; also known as the BUDDHAVATAMSAKASuTRA ("Scripture of the Garland of Buddhas"), or *BuddhAvataMsakanAmamahAvaipulyasutra, the Sanskrit reconstruction of the title of the Chinese translation Dafangguang fo huayan jing, which is usually abbreviated in Chinese simply as the HUAYAN JING ("Flower Garland Scripture"). The sutra is one of the most influential Buddhist scriptures in East Asia and the foundational text of the indigenous East Asian HUAYAN ZONG. The first major edition of the AvataMsakasutra was said to have been brought from KHOTAN and was translated into Chinese by BUDDHABHADRA in 421; this recension consisted of sixty rolls and thirty-four chapters. A second, longer recension, in eighty rolls and thirty-nine chapters, was translated into Chinese by sIKsANANDA in 699; this is sometimes referred to within the Huayan tradition as the "New [translation of the] AvataMsakasutra" (Xin Huayan jing). A Tibetan translation similar to the eighty-roll recension also exists. The AvataMsakasutra is traditionally classified as a VAIPULYASuTRA; it is an encyclopedic work that brings together a number of heterogeneous texts, such as the GAndAVYuHA and DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, which circulated independently before being compiled together in this scripture. No Sanskrit recension of the AvataMsakasutra has been discovered; even the title is not known from Sanskrit sources, but is a reconstruction of the Chinese. (Recent research in fact suggests that the correct Sanskrit title might actually be BuddhAvataMsakasutra, or "Scripture of the Garland of Buddhas," rather than AvataMsakasutra.) There are, however, extant Sanskrit recensions of two of its major constituents, the Dasabhumikasutra and Gandavyuha. Given the dearth of evidence of a Sanskrit recension of the complete AvataMsakasutra, and since the scripture was first introduced to China from Khotan, some scholars have argued that the scripture may actually be of Central Asian provenance (or at very least was heavily revised in Central Asia). There also exists in Chinese translation a forty-roll recension of the AvataMsakasutra, translated by PRAJNA in 798, which roughly corresponds to the Gandavyuha, otherwise known in Chinese as the Ru fajie pin or "Chapter on the Entry into the DHARMADHATU." Little attempt is made to synthesize these disparate materials into an overarching narrative, but there is a tenuous organizational schema involving a series of different "assemblies" to which the different discourses are addressed. The Chinese tradition presumed that the AvataMsakasutra was the first sermon of the Buddha (see HUAYAN ZHAO), and the sutra's first assembly takes place at the BODHI TREE two weeks after he had attained enlightenment while he was still immersed in the samAdhi of oceanic reflection (SAGARAMUDRASAMADHI). The AvataMsaka is therefore believed to provide a comprehensive and definitive description of the Buddha's enlightenment experience from within this profound state of samAdhi. The older sixty-roll recension includes a total of eight assemblies held at seven different locations: three in the human realm and the rest in the heavens. The later eighty-roll recension, however, includes a total of nine assemblies at seven locations, a discrepancy that led to much ink in Huayan exegesis. In terms of its content, the sutra offers exuberant descriptions of myriads of world systems populated by buddhas and bodhisattvas, along with elaborate imagery focusing especially on radiant light and boundless space. The scripture is also the inspiration for the famous metaphor of INDRAJALA (Indra's Net), a canopy made of transparent jewels in which each jewel is reflected in all the others, suggesting the multivalent levels of interaction between all phenomena in the universe. The text focuses on the unitary and all-pervasive nature of enlightenment, which belongs to the realm of the Buddha of Pervasive Light, VAIROCANA, the central buddha in the AvataMsaka, who embodies the DHARMAKAYA. The sutra emphasizes the knowledge and enlightenment of the buddhas as being something that is present in all sentient beings (see TATHAGATAGARBHA and BUDDHADHATU), just as the entire universe, or trichiliocosm (S. TRISAHASRAMAHASAHASRALOKADHATU) is contained in a minute mote of dust. This notion of interpenetration or interfusion (YUANRONG) is stressed in the thirty-second chapter of Buddhabhadra's translation, whose title bears the influential term "nature origination" (XINGQI). The sutra, especially in FAZANG's authoritative exegesis, is presumed to set forth a distinctive presentation of dependent origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA) in terms of the dependence of the whole on its parts, stressing the unity of the universe and its emptiness (suNYATA) of inherent nature; dependent origination here emerges as a profound ecological vision in which the existence of any one thing is completely dependent on the existence of all other things and all things on any one thing. Various chapters of the sutra were also interpreted as providing the locus classicus for the exhaustive fifty-two stage MahAyAna path (MARGA) to buddhahood, which included the ten faiths (only implied in the scripture), the ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, and ten stages (DAsABHuMI), plus the two stages of awakening itself: virtual enlightenment (dengjue) and sublime enlightenment (miaojue). This soteriological process was then illustrated through the peregrinations of the lad SUDHANA to visit his religious mentors, each of whom is identified with one of these specific stages; Sudhana's lengthy pilgrimage is described in great detail in the massive final chapter (a third of the entire scripture), the Gandavyuha, titled in the AvataMsakasutra the "Entry into the DharmadhAtu" chapter (Ru fajie pin). The evocative and widely quoted statement in the "Brahmacarya" chapter that "at the time of the initial arousal of the aspiration for enlightenment (BODHICITTOTPADA), complete, perfect enlightenment (ANUTTARASAMYAKSAMBODHI) is already achieved" was also influential in the development of the East Asian notion of sudden enlightenment (DUNWU), since it implied that awakening could be achieved in an instant of sincere aspiration, without requiring three infinite eons (ASAMKHYEYAKALPA) of religious training. Chinese exegetes who promoted this sutra reserved the highest place for it in their scriptural taxonomies (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) and designated it the "perfect" or "consummate" teaching (YUANJIAO) of Buddhism. Many commentaries on and exegeses of the sutra are extant, among which the most influential are those written by FAZANG, ZHIYAN, CHENGGUAN, LI TONGXUAN, GUIFENG ZONGMI, WoNHYO, ŬISANG, and MYoE KoBEN.
Avesta (Avest, Pers) Apstak, Avestak (Pahlavi) Law or the basic foundation, the sacred scriptures of the Mazdeans. The language of the ancient Aryans was the language of the Vedic hymns and also of the Gathic chants of Zoroaster, these being so close that a mere phonetic change often suffices to translate a passage from one into the other. Because of this connection “the Mazdean Scriptures of the Zend-Avesta, the Vendidad and others correct and expose the later cunning shuffling of the gods in the Hindu Pantheon, and restore through Ahura the Asuras to their legitimate place in theogony” (SD 2:60-1). Zend, on the other hand, traditionally designates the Pahlavi commentary on the Avesta. The Yasnas are the principal writings of the Zoroastrians; and in their oldest portion, the Gathas, the original philosophy of Mazdeism is expressed in a spirited poetic language. The Vispered (Pahlavi) or Visperataro (Avestan) [from vispe all + ratavo warriors, spiritual teachers] is an appendix to the later Yasnas which deals with the ritualistic aspects of the Mazdean faith.
avesta ::: n. --> The Zoroastrian scriptures. See Zend-Avesta.
ba da zizai wo. (J. hachidai jizaiga; K. p'al tae chaje a 八大自在我). In Chinese, the "eight great types of autonomy of the self." In distinction to mainstream Buddhist teachings about the absence of a perduring self (ANATMAN), the Chinese recension of the MAHAYANA MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA teaches a doctrine of a "great self" (dawo, S. mahAtman) that is realized through enlightenment. According to the Chinese renderings, a buddha, having realized this great self, is capable of eight kinds of miraculous transformations (ba shenbian; ba zizai): (1) self-manifesting (he has the power to make his body appear as multiple emanations; nengshi yishen wei duoshen); (2) infinite enlargement (his physical body appears to fill the myriad world systems; shi yichenshen man daqian jie); (3) levitation and translocation (viz., to transport himself to remote places through space; dashen qingju yuandao); (4) incarnating into myriad species or categories of sentient beings (xian wulianglei changju); (5) intentional synesthesia (e.g., to see with his ears, to smell with his eyes, etc.; zhugen huyong); (6) attaining any ability imaginable, but without giving rise to the (conceited) thought of attainment (de yiqie fa wude xiang); (7) elaborating on the meaning of a single scriptural stanza for innumerable eons (before exhausting his knowledge and eloquence; shuo yiji yi jing wuliang jie); (8) pervading all of infinite space (shenbian zhuchu youru xukong). Other MahAyAna scriptures outline similarly fantastic and dramatic depictions of greatly apotheosized buddhas and advanced bodhisattvas.
Bagavadam (Tamil) According to Blavatsky, a scripture on astronomy and kindred subjects (TG 48). The time periods in it differ from present-day reckonings: 15 solar days make a paccham; two paccham (30 days) make a month — equivalent to only one day of the pitris. Two of such months make a roodoo; three roodoo, an ayanam; two ayanam, a year. However, this year of mortals is but a day of the gods.
Bailian jiao. (白蓮教). In Chinese, "White Lotus teachings." As with the BAILIAN SHE, this name was used frequently during the Ming dynasty to refer pejoratively to various religious teachings and magical techniques deemed heretical or traitorous by local officials and Buddhist leaders. No specific religious group, however, seems to coincide precisely with this appellation. The White Lotus teachings are nonetheless often associated with millenarian movements that began to appear during the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Religious groups associated with these movements compiled their own scriptures, known as "precious scrolls" (BAOJUAN), which spoke of the future buddha MAITREYA and the worship of Wusheng Laomu ("Eternal Venerable Mother").
Baimasi. (J. Hakubaji; K. Paengmasa 白馬寺). In Chinese, "White Horse Monastery"; according to tradition, the oldest Buddhist monastery in China; putatively founded in 75 CE in the Chinese capital of Luoyang by MINGDI (r. 58-75), emperor of the Latter Han dynasty. According to a well-known legend found in the preface to the SISHI'ER ZHANG JING ("Sutra in Forty-Two Sections"), in 67 CE, Emperor Ming had a dream of a radiant golden figure flying through the air, whom his vassals later told him was the Buddha. He subsequently sent envoys to the Western Regions (Xiyu, viz., Central Asia), where this divine being was presumed to reside. The envoys were said to have returned three years later with a copy of the Sishi'er zhang jing and two foreign missionaries, KAsYAPA MATAnGA and Zhu Falan (Dharmaratna). The emperor ordered that a monastery be built on their behalf in the capital of Luoyang; this monastery was named Baimasi because the two Indian monks were said to have arrived in China with scriptures carried on white horses. This legend probably originated in the third century as a means of legitimizing the apocryphal Sishi'er zhang jing. A second founding narrative, which occurs in the GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Biographies of Eminent Monks"), begins with a monastery in India of the same name. According to this legend, a king ordered the destruction of all Buddhist monasteries, but spared one monastery because in his dream he saw a white horse circumambulating the monastery and took this to be an auspicious omen. This king then renamed the monastery White Horse monastery, and, in a reversal of his previous order, began establishing new monasteries throughout India. Emperor Ming thus imitated him in building his own White Horse Monastery in Luoyang. Baimasi quickly became a center for Buddhist study and practice, housing both foreign and Chinese monks. During the Wei dynasty (220-265 CE), SAMGHAVARMAN stayed there; during the Six Dynasties period (420-589 CE), DHARMARAKsA, Dharmaruci, and BuddhasAnta (d.u.); and during the Tang dynasty, BUDDHATRATA. During the Five Dynasties period (the transition from the Tang to the Song dynasties), Baimasi flourished as a residence for CHAN masters, and during the later Jin dynasty (936-947 CE), it also served as a center for the HUAYAN ZONG. The monastery burned down during the early twelfth century but was rebuilt in 1175 CE by the Jin-dynasty prince Sengyan and was extensively renovated during both the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Baiyi Guanyin. (S. PAndaravAsinī; T. Gos dkar mo; J. Byakue kannon; K. Paegŭi Kwanŭm 白衣觀音). In Chinese, "White-Robed GUANYIN (Perceiver of Sounds)." An esoteric form of the BODHISATTVA AVALOKITEsVARA (known as Guanyin in Chinese), who became a popular focus of cultic worship in East Asia. The cult of Baiyi Guanyin began around the tenth century in China, whence it spread to Korea and Japan. Several indigenous Chinese scriptures praise the compassion and miraculous powers of White-Robed Guanyin. According to the various Baiyi Guanyin APOCRYPHA, she was also a grantor of children, as was Songzi Guanyin. Many testimonials from literati are appended to these scriptures, which attest to Baiyi Guanyin's ability to ensure the birth of sons, although it is also said that she granted children of both genders. Like many other Guanyin-related texts, the White-Robed Guanyin texts frequently invoke esoteric Buddhist terminology such as DHARAnĪ, MUDRA, and MANTRA. Beginning in the tenth century, Baiyi Guanyin's cult was associated with the founding of temples, as well as the production of countless images commissioned by both religious and laity. Many worshippers, especially monastics and royalty, had visions of White-Robed Guanyin. These dreams range from being promised children in return for a residence (such as the Upper Tianzhu monastery outside of Hangzhou, later also associated with Princess MIAOSHAN), to enlarging existing structures or even restoring them once a vision or dream of White-Robed Guanyin occurred. In such visions and dreams, White-Robed Guanyin appeared as a female, thus differentiating this form of the bodhisattva from SHUIYUE GUANYIN (Moon-in-the-Water Avalokitesvara), who was similarly dressed in a white robe, but appeared as a male. Some miracle tales highlighting the donors' names were also produced in honor of Baiyi Guanyin, lending further credence to the accounts of the bodhisattva's miraculous powers.
Bao'en fengben jing. (J. Hoonbubongyo; K. Poŭn pongbun kyong 報恩奉盆經). In Chinese, "Scripture for Offering Bowls to Requite Kindness." Along with the YULANBEN JING, the Bao'en fengben jing details the practice of the ghost festival (YULANBEN) and its mythology. These scriptures describe the pious efforts of Mulian (the Chinese transcription of the Sanskrit name MAUDGALYAYANA), one of the two main disciples of the Buddha, to save his mother from the tortures of her rebirth as a hungry ghost (PRETA). In this scripture, the Buddha explains to Mulian that if someone should make offerings to the SAMGHA in a bowl, the power of the order's meditative practices will be sufficient to save one's ancestors and loved ones from unfortunate rebirths (see APAYA, DURGATI).
Baojing sanmei. (J. Hokyo sanmai/zanmai; K. Pogyong sammae 寶鏡三昧). In Chinese, "Jeweled-Mirror SAMADHI"; a definitive poem on enlightenment and practice from the standpoint of the Chinese CAODONG ZONG; otherwise known as the Baojing sanmei ge, or "GATHA of the Jeweled-Mirror SamAdhi." This lengthy Chinese song is attributed to the Chan master DONGSHAN LIANGJIE and, along with the CANTONG QI, is revered in the Chinese Caodong and Japanese SoTo schools of CHAN and ZEN as the foundational scripture of their tradition. Although the song is traditionally attributed to Dongshan, a number of sources note that Dongshan secretly received this song from his teacher Yunyan Tansheng (780-841), and Dongshan in turn transmitted it to his head disciple CAOSHAN BENJI. The earliest version of this song appears in the entry on Caoshan in the CHANLIN SENGBAO ZHUAN, written in 1123. The Baojing sanmei emphasizes the "inherent enlightenment" (BENJUE; cf. HONGAKU) of sentient beings and the futility of seeking that enlightenment through conscious reflection. Instead, the song urges its audience to allow one's inherently pure enlightened nature to "silently illuminate" itself through meditation (MOZHAO CHAN), as the Buddha did under the BODHI TREE. Numerous commentaries on this song are extant.
baojuan. (寶巻). In Chinese, "precious scrolls" or "treasure scrolls"; a genre of scripture produced mainly by popular religious sects with Buddhist orientations during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The baojuan are believed to have been divinely revealed to select beings who often became the leaders of these new religious movements (see also T. GTER MA). The earliest extant baojuan, which focuses on the worship of MAITREYA, the future buddha, is dated 1430, shortly after the fall of the Yuan dynasty. Lo Qing (1442-1527), a lay Buddhist, founded the Wuwei jiao ("Teachings of Noninterference"), for instance, for which he produced "five books and six volumes" of baojuan. Precious scrolls seem to share certain mythological elements, such as a new cosmogony of both the creation and demise of the world. Many of them also expound a new soteriology based on CHAN meditation and Daoist alchemy. The baojuan genre seems to be an evolutionary development from the earlier Buddhist vernacular narrative known as "transformation texts" (BIANWEN). Like bianwen, the baojuan were also employed for both popular entertainment and religious propagation.
Baotang zong. (J. Hotoshu; K. Podang chong 保唐宗). An important school of the early Chinese CHAN tradition, known for its radically antinomian doctrines. The school takes its name from the monastery (Baotangsi) where the school's putative founder, BAOTANG WUZHU, resided. The monastery was located in Jiannan (in modern-day Sichuan province), in the vicinity of the city of Chengdu. Until the recent discovery of the LIDAI FABAO JI at DUNHUANG, information on this school was limited to the pejorative comments found in the writings of the ninth-century CHAN historian GUIFENG ZONGMI. Owing perhaps to the antinomian teachings espoused by its members, the school was short-lived. The school rejected all soteriological practices and devotional activities. No images of the Buddha were enshrined in their monasteries, and they questioned the value of chanting scriptures and performing repentance rituals. Instead, they insisted on "simply sitting in emptiness and quietude" (zhikong xianzuo) and transmitting "no thought" (WUNIAN) in lieu of formal precepts. The Baotang lineage is often traced back to Hui'an (582-709; also known as Lao'an, "Old An," because of his long life), a disciple of the fifth patriarch HONGREN, and to Hui'an's lay disciple Chen Chuzhang (d.u.), through whose influence Baotang Wuzhu is said to have attained awakening. Although the author of the Lidai fabao ji, a disciple of Wuzhu, attempts to associate the Baotang lineage with that of CHoNGJONG MUSANG, the founder of the JINGZHONG ZONG, these schools are now considered to have been two distinct traditions. Like the Jingzhong school, the Baotang zong also seems to have exerted considerable influence on the development of Tibetan Buddhism, especially on the early teachings of RDZOGS CHEN (dzogchen).
Bayinnaung. (r. 1551-1581). Burmese king and third monarch of the Taungoo dynasty. Bayinnaung was the brilliant general and brother-in-law of King Tabinshwehti (r. 1531-1550), who first expanded the territory of the city-state Taungoo to create the Taungoo empire (1531-1752). Tabinshwehti sought to reunify the various kingdoms and petty states that had once been vassals to the first Burmese empire of Pagan (1044-1287). To this end, he followed a policy of conciliation toward vanquished peoples, especially the Mon, whose brand of reformed Sinhalese THERAVADA Buddhism he favored. Bayinnaung continued this ecumenical religious policy even while he aggressively extended the borders of his empire eastward through military campaigns launched in the name of the Buddha. In a series of campaigns, he subdued the Shan tribes, the Lao kingdom of Vientiane, and the Thai kingdoms of AYUTHAYA and Chiangmai, creating briefly Southeast Asia's largest polity. Throughout these territories, he built pagodas and distributed copies of PALI scriptures. In the Shan hills, he compelled the local warlords to abandon human sacrifice and convert to Buddhism, requiring them to provide material support to missionary monks dispatched from his capital. While officially promoting the reformed Buddhism of the Mon, Bayinnaung remained tolerant of local Buddhist custom and allowed independent monastic lineages to continue. He maintained close diplomatic relations with the Buddhist kingdom of Sri Lanka and offered munificent gifts to its palladium, the TOOTH RELIC at Kandy. In 1560, when the Portuguese captured the relic, Bayinnaung sought to ransom it for 300,000 ducats, only to have his emissaries witness its destruction in a public ceremony ordered by the archbishop of Goa. Legend says that the tooth miraculously escaped and divided itself into two, one of which was returned to Kandy, while the other was gifted to Bayinnaung, who enshrined it in the Mahazedi pagoda at his capital Pegu. The religious policies of Bayinnaung and his successors greatly influenced the character of Burmese Buddhism and society. Royal patronage of Buddhist scholarship coupled with the proliferation of village monastery schools fostered a common Buddhist identity among the populace that crossed ethnic boundaries and facilitated a degree of peasant literacy that was unusual in premodern societies.
Beal, Samuel. (1825-1889). British translator of Chinese Buddhist works. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he worked as a chaplain in the British navy and rector of various Anglican parishes, including Wark and Northumberland. In 1877, Beal was appointed as lecturer, and later professor, of Chinese at University College, London, where he specialized in Chinese Buddhist materials. Beal is perhaps best known for his translations of the travelogues of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India, including FAXIAN (c. 399/337-422), Song Yun (c. 516-523), and XUANZANG (600/602-664). Especially influential was his translation of Xuanzang's travelogue DA TANG XIYU JI, which he rendered as Si-Yu-Ki: Buddhist Records of the Western World (two volumes, 1884). Beal's anthology of Chinese Buddhist texts, A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese (1872), includes translations of a wide range of important Buddhist texts. Beal also compiled one of the first Western-language catalogues of the Chinese Buddhist canon. Other books of his include The Romantic Legend of sAkya Buddha (1876) and Texts from the Buddhist Canon, commonly known as Dhammapada (1878).
beidou qixing. (J. hokuto shichisho; K. puktu ch'ilsong 北斗七星). In Chinese, "seven stars of the Northern Dipper" (viz., the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major); Daoist divinities that are also prominent in Korean Buddhism, where they are typically known as the ch'ilsong. The cult of the seven stars of the Big Dipper developed within Chinese Buddhist circles through influence from indigenous Daoist schools, who worshipped these seven deities to guard against plague and other misfortunes. The apocryphal Beidou qixing yanming jing ("Book of the Prolongation of Life through Worshipping the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper"), suggests a correlation between the healing buddha BHAIsAJYAGURU and the Big Dipper cult by addressing the seven-star TATHAGATAs (qixing rulai) with names that are very similar to Bhaisajyaguru's seven emanations. This indigenous Chinese scripture (see APOCRYPHA), which derives from an early Daoist text on Big Dipper worship, is certainly dated no later than the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries but may have been composed as early as the middle of the eighth century; it later was translated into Uighur, Mongolian, and Tibetan, as part of the Mongol Yuan dynasty's extension of power throughout the Central Asian region. Thanks to this scripture, the seven-star cult became associated in Buddhism with the prolongation of life. We know that seven-star worship had already been introduced into esoteric Buddhist ritual by at least the eighth century because of two contemporary manuals that discuss HOMA fire offerings to the seven stars: VAJRABODHI's (671-741) Beidou qixing niansong yigui ("Ritual Procedures for Invoking the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper") and his disciple AMOGHAVAJRA's (705-774) Beidou qixing humo miyao yigui ("Esoteric Ritual Procedure for the Homa Offering to the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper"). Renderings of DHARAnĪ sutras dedicated to the tathAgata TEJAPRABHA (Qixingguang Rulai), who is said to be master of the planets and the twenty-eight asterisms, are also attributed to Amoghavajra's translation bureau. Worship of the seven stars within esoteric Buddhist circles was therefore certainly well established in China by the eighth century during the Tang dynasty and probably soon afterward in Korean Buddhism. ¶ The worship of the Big Dipper in Korea may date as far back as the Megalithic period, as evidenced by the engraving of the Big Dipper and other asterisms on dolmens or menhirs. In the fourth-century Ji'an tombs of the Koguryo kingdom (37 BCE-668 CE), one of the traditional Three Kingdoms of early Korea, a mural of the Big Dipper is found on the north wall of tomb no. 1, along with an accompanying asterism of the six stars of Sagittarius (sometimes called the Southern Dipper) on the south wall; this juxtaposition is presumed to reflect the influence of the Shangqing school of contemporary Chinese Daoism. Court rituals to the seven stars and the tathAgata Tejaprabha date from the twelfth century during the Koryo dynasty. By at least the thirteen century, the full range of texts and ritual practices associated with the seven-star deities were circulating in Korea. At the popular level in Korea, the divinities of the Big Dipper were thought to control longevity, especially for children, and the ch'ilsong cult gained widespread popularity during the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). This popularization is in turn reflected in the ubiquity in Korean monasteries of "seven-stars shrines" (ch'ilsonggak), which were typically located in less-conspicuous locations along the outer perimeter of the monasteries and were worshipped primarily by the nonelite. Inside these shrines were hung seven-star paintings (T'AENGHWA), which typically depict the tathAgatas of the seven stars, with the tathAgata Tejaprabha presiding at the center. There are also several comprehensive ritual and liturgical manuals compiled during the Choson dynasty and Japanese colonial period in Korea that include rituals and invocations to the seven stars and Tejaprabha, most dedicated to the prolongation of life. Along with the mountain god (sansin), who also often has his own shrine in the monasteries of Korea, the role of the ch'ilsong in Korean Buddhism is often raised in the scholarship as an example of Buddhism's penchant to adapt beliefs and practices from rival religions. Although ch'ilsong worship has declined markedly in contemporary Korea, the ch'ilsokche, a worship ceremony dedicated to the tathAgata Tejaprabha, is occasionally held at some Buddhist monasteries on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, with lay believers praying for good fortune and the prevention of calamity.
believer ::: n. --> One who believes; one who is persuaded of the truth or reality of some doctrine, person, or thing.
One who gives credit to the truth of the Scriptures, as a revelation from God; a Christian; -- in a more restricted sense, one who receives Christ as his Savior, and accepts the way of salvation unfolded in the gospel.
One who was admitted to all the rights of divine worship and instructed in all the mysteries of the Christian religion, in
Benkenmitsu nikyoron. (辯顯密二教論). In Japanese, literally "Distinguishing the Two Teachings of the Exoteric and Esoteric"; a relatively short treatise composed by the Japanese SHINGON monk KuKAI in the early ninth century. The text is commonly known more simply as the Nikyoron. As the title suggests, the central theme of the Benkenmitsu nikyoron is the elaboration of the difference between the exoteric and esoteric teachings of Buddhism and the demonstration of the latter's superiority. The text begins with a brief introduction, followed by a series of questions and answers, and a short conclusion. The Benkenmitsu nikyoron describes the relation between the exoteric teachings preached by the NIRMAnAKAYA of the Buddha and the esoteric teachings preached by his DHARMAKAYA as that between provisional words spoken according to the different capacities of sentient beings and ultimate truth. By meticulously citing scriptural references, such as the LAnKAVATARASuTRA, the Benkenmitsu nikyoron shows that the dharmakAya, like the nirmAnakAya and SAMBHOGAKAYA, can indeed preach and that it does so in a special language best articulated in such esoteric scriptures as the MAHAVAIROCANABHISAMBODHISuTRA. Whereas the nirmAnakAya speaks the DHARMA with reference to the six perfections (PARAMITA), the dharmakAya employs the language of the three mysteries: the body, speech, and mind of MAHAVAIROCANA expressed in MUDRA, MANTRA, and MAndALA. Like many of kukai's other writings, the arguments presented in his Benkenmitsu nikyoron helped him legitimize the introduction and installment of the new teachings, now known as MIKKYo or esoteric Buddhism, which he had brought back from China. There are several commentaries on the text, including those composed by Seisen (1025-1115), Raiyu (1226-1304), Yukai (1345-1416), and Kaijo (1750-1805).
BhadracarīpranidhAna. (T. Bzang po spyod pa'i smon lam; C. Puxian pusa xingyuan zan; J. Fugen bosatsu gyogansan; K. Pohyon posal haengwon ch'an 普賢菩薩行願讚). In Sanskrit, "Vows of Good Conduct," the last section of the GAndAVYuHA in the AVATAMSAKASuTRA and one of the most beloved texts in all of MahAyAna Buddhism; also known as the SamantabhadracarīpranidhAnarAja. The BhadracarīpranidhAna focuses on the ten great vows (PRAnIDHANA) taken by SAMANTABHADRA to realize and gain access to the DHARMADHATU, which thereby enable him to benefit sentient beings. The ten vows are: (1) to pay homage to all the buddhas, (2) to praise the tathAgatas, (3) to make unlimited offerings, (4) to repent from one's transgressions in order to remove karmic hindrances (cf. KARMAVARAnA), (5) to take delight in others' merit, (6) to request the buddhas to turn the wheel of dharma (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA), (7) to request the buddhas to continue living in the world, (8) always to follow the teachings of the Buddha, (9) always to comply with the needs of sentient beings, and (10) to transfer all merit to sentient beings for their spiritual edification. The text ends with a stanza wishing that sentient beings still immersed in evil be reborn in the PURE LAND of AMITABHA. The text was translated into Chinese in 754 by AMOGHAVAJRA (705-774). Other Chinese recensions appear in the Wenshushili fayuan jing ("Scripture on the Vows made by MANJUsRĪ"), translated in 420 by BUDDHABHADRA (359-429), which corresponds to the verse section from Ru busiyi jietuo jingjie Puxian xingyuan pin, the last roll of the forty-roll recension of the Huayan jing translated by PRAJNA in 798. (There is no corresponding version in either the sixty- or the eighty-roll translations of the Huajan jing.) The verses are also called the "Précis of the Huayan jing" (Lüe Huayan jing), because they are believed to constitute the core teachings of the AvataMsakasutra. In the main Chinese recension by Amoghavajra, the text consists of sixty-two stanzas, each consisting of quatrains with lines seven Sinographs in length, thus giving a total number of 1,736 Sinographs. In addition to the sixty-two core stanzas, Amoghavajra's version adds ten more stanzas of the Bada pusa zan ("Eulogy to the Eight Great Bodhisattvas") from the Badapusa mantuluo jing ("Scripture of the MAndALAs of the Eight Great Bodhisattvas") (see AstAMAHABODHISATTVA; AstAMAHOPAPUTRA). Buddhabhadra's version consists of forty-four stanzas with 880 Sinographs, each stanza consisting of a quatrain with lines five Sinographs in length. PrajNa's version contains fifty-two stanzas with each quatrain consisting of lines seven sinographs in length. There are five commentaries on the text attributed to eminent Indian exegetes, including NAGARJUNA, DIGNAGA, and VASUBANDHU, which are extant only in Tibetan translation. In the Tibetan tradition, the prayer is called the "king of prayers" (smon lam gyi rgyal po). It is incorporated into many liturgies; the opening verses of the prayer are commonly incorporated into a Tibetan's daily recitation.
bhadrakalpa. (P. bhaddakappa; T. bskal pa bzang po; C. xianjie; J. kengo/gengo; K. hyon'gop 賢劫). In Sanskrit, "auspicious eon"; the current of the numerous "great eons" (MAHAKALPA), or cyclic periods in the existence of a universe, that are recognized in Buddhist cosmology. The "auspicious eon" along with the last and the next "great eons"-that is, the "glorious eon" (vyuhakalpa) and "the eon of the constellations" (naksatrakalpa)-are together termed the "three great eons." Each great eon is presumed to consist of four "intermediate eons" (antarakalpa), viz., an "eon of formation" (VIVARTAKALPA); "stability" or "abiding" (VIVARTASTHAYIKALPA); "decay" (SAMVARTAKALPA); and "dissolution" (SAMVARTASTHAYIKALPA). A bhadrakalpa refers specifically to an eon in which buddhas appear, the present eon being such an era. The bhadrakalpa occurs during an eon (KALPA) of stability, following a period when the lifespan of human beings has been gradually reduced from innumerable years to eighty thousand. The number of buddhas who take rebirth during a bhadrakalpa varies widely in the texts, some stating that five buddhas will appear during this era, others that upward of a thousand buddhas will appear. In many texts, sAKYAMUNI is presumed to have been preceded by six previous buddhas, bridging two different eons, who together are called the "seven buddhas of antiquity" (SAPTATATHAGATA). Elsewhere, it is presumed that a thousand buddhas appear during the "eon of stability" in each of the three preceding great eons. The full list of the thousand buddhas of the present bhadrakalpa is extolled in the BHADRAKALPIKASuTRA, a MAHAYANA scripture that lists the names of the buddhas, their entourages, and their places of residence and enjoins the practice of various concentrations (SAMADHI) and perfections (PARAMITA). In this sutra, the current buddha sAkyamuni is said to be the fourth buddha of the present kalpa, MAITREYA is to follow him, and another 995 buddhas will follow in succession, in order to continually renew Buddhism throughout the eon. A bhadrakalpa is presumed to last some 236 million years, of which over 151 million years have already elapsed in our current eon.
Bhadrakalpikasutra. (T. Bskal pa bzang po'i mdo/Mdo sde bskal bzang; C. Xianjie jing; J. Gengogyo; K. Hyon'gop kyong 賢劫經). In Sanskrit, "Auspicious Eon Scripture"; a MAHAYANA text in twenty-four chapters, written c. 200-250 CE and translated into Chinese by DHARMARAKsA in either 291 or 300 CE. In this scripture, the Buddha teaches a special concentration (SAMADHI) through the mastery of which bodhisattvas come to be equipped with 2,100 perfections (PARAMITA), 84,000 samAdhis and 84,000 codes (DHARAnĪ). He then lists the names of a thousand buddhas who will appear during the "auspicious eon" (BHADRAKALPA) due to the merit they obtained from practicing this samAdhi, as well as their residences, parents, disciples, spiritual powers, teachings, and so on. In the Tibetan BKA' 'GYUR the Bhadrakalpikasutra takes pride of place as the first in the sutra section (mdo sde); it is recited often, and it is not uncommon for the elaborate hagiographies (RNAM THAR) of important Tibetan religious figures or incarnations (SPRUL SKU) to identify their subject as an earlier rebirth of one of the thousand buddhas.
BhadrakArAtrī. (T. Mtshan mo bzang po; C. Shanye jing; J. Zen'yakyo; K. Sonya kyong 善夜經). In Sanskrit, "Scripture of One Fine Night," an apotropaic and soteriological text, in one roll, with close parallels to the PAli BHADDEKARATTASUTTA; translated into Chinese in 701 by YIJING (635-713), and into Tibetan by YE SHES SDE (fl. c. 800). The Sanskrit title, which is found in the colophon of the Tibetan translation of the sutra (three folios in length) is otherwise unattested in the literature. The title is interpreted in Chinese as meaning "a fine night" and is used as an analogy for the mind of a person who is freed from all kinds of suffering (DUḤKHA) and afflictions (KLEsA). The text seems to have its origins in an incantation that the Buddha had spoken previously. One day, a divinity (DEVA) visited a monk who was then staying with the Buddha in the Bamboo Grove (S. VEnUVANAVIHARA) in RAJAGṚHA, to ask about this verse. The monk, who did not know the verse, went to the Buddha, informed him of the divinity's request, and asked him to teach it. The Buddha then explained this scripture, which he said had the power to protect human beings from baleful spirits. One who follows the teachings of the scripture would also be relieved from all miseries and transgressions and could soon attain awakening. If one recites the scripture or one of its verses, or explains it to others, one would experience no misfortunes and would acquire knowledge of one's past and future lives. A recension of the text is also included in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA (no. 165), which partially corresponds to the PAli Bhaddekarattasutta spoken by MahAkaccAna (MAHAKATYAYANA), the 133rd sutta in the MAJJHIMANIKAYA.
Bhagavad Gita ::: [the Song of the Blessed Lord", a celebrated scripture in the form of a dialogue between Krsna (Bhagavan) and Arjuna spoken on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, which occurs as an episode in the Mahabhdrata].
Bhaisajyagurusutra. [alt. BhaisajyaguruvaiduryaprabhArAjasutra] (T. Sman gyi bla bai durya'i 'od kyi rgyal po'i sngon gyi smon lam gyi khyad par rgyas pa'i mdo; C. Yaoshi benyuan jing; J. Yakushi hongangyo; K. Yaksa ponwon kyong 藥師本願經). An eponymous MAHAYANA SuTRA that recounts the qualities, vows, and PURE LAND (BUDDHAKsETRA) of the buddha BHAIsAJYAGURU-the Master of Healing, also known as the Medicine Buddha, or the TathAgata of Lapis-Lazuli Light. The scripture was most likely written in northern India during the early centuries of the Common Era. In this sutra, at the request of MANJUsRĪ-kumAra, sAKYAMUNI describes this buddha and his pure land. Bhaisajyaguru's pure land lies in the east, separated from our world system by innumerable buddhaksetras. Like other pure lands, Bhaisajyaguru's realm is free from the miseries that invariably plague existence and is ideal for the acquisition of the dharma as taught by Bhaisajyaguru himself and his retinue of BODHISATTVAs. The ground in this realm is made of lapis lazuli. Its roads, also made of precious stones, are marked with ropes of gold. Its houses are made of jewels. sAkyamuni also describes the bodhisattva vows taken by Bhaisajyaguru in his quest for awakening. Bhaisajyaguru vowed that his name, if merely uttered, would cure diseases, free prisoners, secure food and clothing for the impoverished, and produce other similar benefits. He also vowed that his body would be as resplendent as lapis lazuli itself so that it might illuminate the world. This sutra describes methods by which one may gain Bhaisajyaguru's favor; these methods include making an image of Bhaisajyaguru, reciting the text of the Bhaisajyagurusutra, or merely thinking of his name. Chinese translations of this sutra were made by Dharmagupta in 616 and by XUANZANG in 650 at DACI'ENSI in the Tang capital of Chang'an.
Bhaisajyaguru. (T. Sman bla; C. Yaoshi rulai; J. Yakushi nyorai; K. Yaksa yorae 藥師如來). In Sanskrit, "Medicine Teacher"; the "Healing Buddha" or "Medicine Buddha," who was the focus of an important salvific cult in the early MAHAYANA tradition. According to his eponymous scripture, the BHAIsAJYAGURUSuTRA, he has a body more brilliant than the sun, which was the color of lapis lazuli (vaiduryamani) and possessed the power to heal illness and physical deformities; his pure land of VaiduryanirbhAsa is located in the east. The origin of Bhaisajyaguru and his healing cult is unclear, although his worship seems to have arisen contemporaneously with the rise of the MahAyAna. BHAIsAJYARAJA and Bhaisajyasamudgata, two bodhisattvas mentioned in the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"), are likely antecedents, and similarities with other "celestial" buddhas like AMITABHA and AKsOBHYA also suggest possible influence from those rival cults. The Bhaisajyagurusutra was translated into Chinese in the seventh century, during the Tang dynasty, when his worship finally achieved the wide recognition that it continues to enjoy within the Chinese tradition. The Bhaisajyagurusutra is also cited in the eighth-century tantric text, MANJUsRĪMuLAKALPA, indicating that his cult had by then achieved widespread acclaim throughout Asia. Bhaisajyaguru was one of the earliest buddhas to gain popularity in Japan, although initially he was familiar only within the imperial court, which constructed monasteries in his honor beginning in the sixth century. By the eighth century, his cult had spread throughout the country, with Bhaisajyaguru being invoked both to cure illness and to ward off dangers. The worship of Bhaisajyaguru seems to have entered Tibet during the eighth century, two versions of the Bhaisajyagurusutra having been translated into Tibetan by the prolific YE SHES SDE and others. Early in the development of his cult, Bhaisajyaguru was divided into a group of eight medicine buddhas (asta-bhaisajyaguru), made up of seven of his emanations plus the principal buddha. Their names vary according to source, and none save Bhaisajyaguru are worshipped individually. Two of these emanations-Suryaprabha and Candraprabha-are often depicted in a triad with Bhaisajyaguru. Further, Bhaisajyaguru is also said to command twelve warriors (YAKsA) related to various astrological categories and to wage war on illness in the name of their leader. Indic images of Bhaisajyaguru are rare, but his depictions are common across both the East Asian and Tibetan cultural spheres. East Asian images are almost uniform in depicting him seated, with his right hand in the gesture of fearlessness (ABHAYAMUDRA) or the gesture of generosity (VARADAMUDRA), his left in his lap, occasionally holding a medicine bowl. In Tibet, he is also shown holding the fruit of the medicinal myrobalan plant.
BhAvanAkrama. (T. Sgom rim). In Sanskrit, "Stages of Meditation," the title of three separate but related works by the late-eighth century Indian master KAMALAsĪLA. During the reign of the Tibetan king KHRI SRONG LDE BTSAN at the end of the eighth century, there were two Buddhist factions at court, a Chinese faction led by the Northern Chan (BEI ZONG) monk Heshang Moheyan (MahAyAna) and an Indian faction of the recently deceased sANTARAKsITA, who with the king and PADMASAMBHAVA had founded the first Tibetan monastery at BSAM YAS (Samye). According to traditional accounts, sAntaraksita foretold of dangers and left instructions in his will that his student Kamalasīla should be summoned from India. A conflict seems to have developed between the Indian and Chinese partisans (and their allies in the Tibetan court) over the question of the nature of enlightenment, with the Indians holding that enlightenment takes place as the culmination of a gradual process of purification, the result of perfecting morality (sĪLA), concentration (SAMADHI), and wisdom (PRAJNA). The Chinese spoke against this view, holding that enlightenment was the intrinsic nature of the mind rather than the goal of a protracted path, such that one need simply to recognize the presence of this innate nature of enlightenment by entering a state of awareness beyond distinctions; all other practices were superfluous. According to both Chinese and Tibetan records, a debate was held between Kamalasīla and Moheyan at Bsam yas, circa 797, with the king himself serving as judge (see BSAM YAS DEBATE). According to Tibetan reports (contradicted by the Chinese accounts), Kamalasīla was declared the winner and Moheyan and his party banished from Tibet, with the king proclaiming that thereafter the MADHYAMAKA school of Indian Buddhist philosophy (to which sAntaraksita and Kamalasīla belonged) would have pride of place in Tibet. ¶ According to Tibetan accounts, after the conclusion of the debate, the king requested that Kamalasīla compose works that presented his view, and in response, Kamalasīla composed the three BhAvanAkrama. There is considerable overlap among the three works. All three are germane to the issues raised in the debate, although whether all three were composed in Tibet is not established with certainty; only the third, and briefest of the three, directly considers, and refutes, the view of "no mental activity" (amanasikAra, cf. WUNIAN), which is associated with Moheyan. The three texts set forth the process for the potential BODHISATTVA to cultivate BODHICITTA and then develop sAMATHA and VIPAsYANA and progress through the bodhisattva stages (BHuMI) to buddhahood. The cultivation of vipasyanA requires the use of both scripture (AGAMA) and reasoning (YUKTI) to understand emptiness (suNYATA); in the first BhAvanAkrama, Kamalasīla sets forth the three forms of wisdom (prajNA): the wisdom derived from learning (sRUTAMAYĪPRAJNA), the wisdom derived from reflection (CINTAMAYĪPRAJNA), and the wisdom derived from cultivation (BHAVANAMAYĪPRAJNA), explaining that the last of these gradually destroys the afflictive obstructions (KLEsAVARAnA) and the obstructions to omniscience (JNEYAVARAnA). The second BhAvanAkrama considers many of these same topics, stressing that the achievement of the fruition of buddhahood requires the necessary causes, in the form of the collection of merit (PUnYASAMBHARA) and the collection of wisdom (JNANASAMBHARA). Both the first and second works espouse the doctrine of mind-only (CITTAMATRA); it is on the basis of these and other statements that Tibetan doxographers classified Kamalasīla as a YOGACARA-SVATANTRIKA-MADHYAMAKA. The third and briefest of the BhAvanAkrama is devoted especially to the topics of samatha and vipasyanA, how each is cultivated, and how they are ultimately unified. Kamalasīla argues that analysis (VICARA) into the lack of self (ATMAN) in both persons (PUDGALA) and phenomena (DHARMA) is required to arrive at a nonconceptual state of awareness. The three texts are widely cited in later Tibetan Buddhist literature, especially on the process for developing samatha and vipasyanA.
bhiksu. (P. bhikkhu; T. dge slong; C. biqiu; J. biku; K. pigu 比丘). In Sanskrit, lit. "beggar"; a male "religious mendicant" or, as commonly translated, "monk." The female counterparts of bhiksu are BHIKsUnĪ (nuns). The term is derived from the Sanskrit root √bhiks meaning, among other things, "to beg for alms." The Tibetan translation of the term literally means "virtuous beggar"; the Chinese instead uses a transcription. Buddhism was one of the principal early groups of wandering religious (sRAMAnA), which constituted a new religious movement in the fifth century BCE, and coined the term bhiksu to distinguish its wanderers from those of other sramana sects, such as the JAINA and AJĪVAKA. A bhiksu holds the higher ordination (UPASAMPADA) of his VINAYA lineage and is thus distinguished from a novice, or sRAMAnERA. Novitiate status is attained by undergoing the "going forth" (pravrajyA; see PRAVRAJITA) ceremony and accepting a set of ten (and, in some traditions, expanded to thirty-six) precepts (sĪLA). After a period of service in the order, one may undergo the upasaMpadA ceremony, by which one attains full ordination. At that point, the bhiksu is expected to adhere to all the rules found in the litany of monastic discipline, or PRATIMOKsA, e.g., 227 in the PAli vinaya used in Southeast Asia, 250 in the DHARMAGUPTAKA vinaya used in much of East Asia, 253 in the MuLASARVASTIVADA vinaya followed in Tibet, etc. By rule, although not necessarily in practice, a bhiksu is allowed to possess only a set of four or eight "requisites" (PARIsKARA, P. parikkhAra), which provide him with the minimal necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. The duties of a bhiksu vary widely across the Buddhist tradition. These duties include, but are not limited to, preserving the teaching by memorizing, copying and/or reciting the scriptures; instructing younger monks, novices, and lay adherents; conducting a variety of different kinds of ceremonies; maintaining the monastery grounds, etc. Bhiksus were customarily presumed to be dependent on lay followers for their material requirements and, in return, served as a field of merit (PUnYAKsETRA) for them by accepting their donations (DANA). Within any given monastery, bhiksus maintain hierarchical relationships. Depending on the monk's tradition, seniority may be determined by the number of years since full ordination (see VARsA; C. JIELA), one's performance in examinations, or other factors. Literary evidence suggests that the first Buddhist monks were itinerant ascetics who resided in communities only during the monsoon season. Later, as the tradition grew, these temporary residences evolved into permanent monasteries. In the Hindu tradition, the term bhiksu may sometimes also be used to signify the fourth stage (Asrama) of life, in which one renounces worldly attachments for the sake of study and reflection (although this stage is more commonly referred to as saMnyAsin); in this context, however, no formal renunciation through ordination is necessarily required. Throughout much of the history of Buddhism, there have been regions and historical periods in which Buddhist monks married but continued to maintain the appearance of a fully-ordained bhiksu, including wearing monastic robes and shaving their heads. In English, such religious might better be called "priests" rather than "monks." See also BHIKKHU.
Bible ::: (Gre. Book). Designation normally used for Jewish scriptures (TaNaK = Protestant Christian “Old Testament”; plus the Apocrypha in classical Christianity) or Christian scriptures (“Old Testament” plus the Christian “New Testament”). (See also Septuagint).
bible ::: n. --> A book.
The Book by way of eminence, -- that is, the book which is made up of the writings accepted by Christians as of divine origin and authority, whether such writings be in the original language, or translated; the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; -- sometimes in a restricted sense, the Old Testament; as, King James&
Bible The Judeo-Christian holy book. The Bible is neither the literal word of God translated into the various languages, nor a collection of superstitious folklore, but a Jewish and late Greek version of the archaic wisdom expressed in the ancient mystery-language. Blavatsky classes it among the largely esoteric works whose secret symbolism is found also in the Indian, Chaldean, and Egyptian scriptures. The real Hebrew Bible is to a certain extent known only in small part to its Talmudic and Qabbalistic interpreters. The primeval faith of Israel was not what it was made to be by those who would have converted the secret doctrine into a national exoteric religion — by David, Hezekiah, and later the Talmudists. To trace the steps by which the ancient gnosis was handed down, adapted, transformed, perverted, and yet mysteriously preserved, is work to satisfy the most diligent scholar. “The real Hebrew Bible was a secret volume, unknown to the masses, and even the Samaritan Pentateuch is far more ancient than the Septuagint. As for the former, the Fathers of the Church never even heard of it” (IU 2:471).
biblicist ::: n. --> One skilled in the knowledge of the Bible; a demonstrator of religious truth by the Scriptures.
bibliolatry ::: n. --> Book worship, esp. of the Bible; -- applied by Roman Catholic divines to the exaltation of the authority of the Bible over that of the pope or the church, and by Protestants to an excessive regard to the letter of the Scriptures.
bibliomancy ::: n. --> A kind of divination, performed by selecting passages of Scripture at hazard, and drawing from them indications concerning future events.
Binglingsi. (J. Heireiji; K. Pyongnyongsa 炳靈寺). In Chinese, "Bright and Numinous Monastery"; site of a Buddhist cave complex, located fifty miles outside Lanzhou, the capital of the present-day Chinese province of Gansu, and accessible only by boat. The complex contains 183 caves with 694 stone and eighty-two clay statues. Binglingsi, along with MAIJISHAN, developed under the patronage of the Qifu rulers of the Western Qin dynasty (385-43). The carving of Buddhist caves at Binglingsi may have started as early as the late fourth century; however, the earliest inscription was found in cave 169 and is dated 420. Two novel features can be found in cave 169. One is the stylistic link of some of its sculptures with the Buddhist art of KHOTAN on the southern SILK ROAD. For example, five seated buddhas in niche 23 inside the cave are attired in their monastic robes and perform the meditation gesture (DHYANAMUDRA), backed by a large aureole. Second, numerous inscriptions identify the sculptures and painted images in this cave, which include AMITABHA Buddha, accompanied by AVALOKITEsVARA (GUANYIN) and MAHASTHAMAPRAPTA (Dashizi). This triad in niche 6 closely resembles the style of Liangzhou, and thus KUCHA. Among the painted images are the buddhas of the ten directions (see DAsADIs), members of the Qin dynastic house, and the state preceptor (GUOSHI) Tanmobi (Dharmapriya), cotranslator with ZHU FONIAN of the AstASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA. The representations in cave 169 depict the content of then-newly translated scriptures such as the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and the shorter SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA (see also AMITABHASuTRA), which had been translated by KUMARAJĪVA in Chang'an around 400-410. The sculptures and paintings at Binglingsi serve as precedents for the subsequent Northern Wei sculpture found at YUNGANG and LONGMEN.
Biqiuni zhuan. (J. Bikuniden; K. Piguni chon 比丘尼傳). In Chinese, "Lives of the Nuns," the major Chinese collection of biographies of eminent BHIKsUnĪ, compiled c. 516 CE by Shi Baochang, a Buddhist monk whose own biography can be found in the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN ("Continued Lives of Eminent Monks"). The anthology consists of sixty-five nuns' biographies, arranged chronologically beginning in the Eastern Jin (317-420 CE) and continuing through the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties (420-588 CE). The introduction lists several characteristics that Shi Baochang deems worthy of emulation and special mention. These include steadfast asceticism, skill in meditation and study, chastity, and teaching abilities. The hagiographies themselves emphasize the following activities: over half of the nuns included in the anthology excelled in either scriptural study or meditation and religious practice. Almost half taught scripture and established convents. One-third of the nuns are said to have practiced strict vegetarianism. The same number is also said to have excelled in chanting scriptures: the most frequently named scriptures as the object of this devotion include the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, the MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA, and the MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA. The majority of nuns are also said to have inspired numerous monastic and secular followers. Many of the lay followers came from the highest reaches of society: governors and lords are regularly mentioned as patrons who often were instrumental in the founding of a new convent by donating land, funding construction, or both. In addition, almost half of the nuns were praised for their pure faith in the Buddha. In the instances where age was mentioned, almost half of the nuns were said to have adopted their vocation when they were still quite young (preadolescent); in contrast, only one-third were said to have left secular life once they were adults. The legitimacy of the Chinese nuns' order was specifically addressed in at least three hagiographies, where it is asserted that the subjects' ordinations were performed by foreign monks and nuns and was therefore valid.
bka' ma. (kama). In Tibetan "words"; in the Tibetan RNYING MA sect, referring particularly to the MAHAYOGA, ANUYOGA, and ATIYOGA TANTRAs. The term is contrasted with GTER MA ("treasure text"), which is also accepted as authentic scripture, but hidden and rediscovered at a later time, or directly transmitted through the medium of the mind. Two collections of the teachings of the Rnying ma sect in fifty-eight and 120 volumes are called Bka' ma; they include the entire range of texts, from VINAYA to modern commentaries on the tantras and gter ma.
Bodawpaya. (r. 1782-1819). Burmese king and sixth monarch of the Konbaung dynasty (1752-1885). Originally known as Badon Min, he was the fourth son of Alaungpaya (r. 1752-1760), founder of the dynasty, and ascended to the throne through usurpation. His official regnal title was Hsinpyumyashin, "Lord of Many White Elephants"; the name by which he is most commonly known, Bodawpaya, "Lord Grandfather," is a posthumous sobriquet. Immediately upon becoming king in 1782, he began construction of a new capital, AMARAPURA, and convened a conclave of abbots, known as the THUDHAMMA (P. Sudhamm) council, to oversee a reform of the Burmese SAMGHA. In 1784, he conquered the kingdom of Arakan and transported its colossal palladium, the MAHAMUNI image of the Buddha (see ARAKAN BUDDHA), to Amarapura and enshrined it in a temple to the north of the city. Later, in 1787 he dispatched a Buddhist mission to Arakan to bring the Arakanese THERAVADA saMgha into conformity with Thudhamma standards. In 1791 Buddhist missions were sent from the capital to forty-two cities around the realm, each equipped with Thudhamma handbooks and newly edited copies of the Buddhist canon (tipitaka; S. TRIPItAKA). The missions were charged with the threefold task of defrocking unworthy monks, disestablishing local monastic fraternities, and reordaining worthy monks from these local groups into a single empire-wide monastic order under Thudhamma control. In conjunction with this policy of saMgha unification, a standardized syllabus for monastic education was promulgated and monks and novices throughout the realm were thenceforth required to pass state-administered PAli examinations or to leave the order. That same year (1791), Bodawpaya retired from the palace, placing the daily affairs of the kingdom in the hands of his son, the crown prince. While retaining ultimate royal authority, he donned the robes of a mendicant and took up residence at Mingun, some fifteen miles north of Amarapura on the opposite bank of the Irrawaddy River. There, he oversaw for several years the construction of the great Mingun pagoda, which, if it had been completed, would have been the largest pagoda in the world. The labor force for this project, numbering some twenty thousand people, was conscripted from the vanquished kingdom of Arakan. Strict and austere in temperament, Bodawpaya was quick to suppress heresy and banned the use of intoxicants and the slaughter of cattle, on penalty of death. He was enamored of Hindu science and sent several missions to India to acquire Brahmanical treatises on medicine, alchemy, astrology, calendrics, and what he hoped would be original Indian recensions of Buddhist scriptures. His missions reached BODHGAYA and returned with models of the main shrine and maps of its environs, which were used to create a miniature replica of the site at Mingun. He appointed Indian brAhmanas to refine court punctilio and attempted to reform the Burmese calendar along Indian lines. The calendar reforms were rejected by monastic leaders and this rebuff appears to have caused the king to become increasingly critical of the monkhood. Toward the end of his reign, Bodawpaya defrocked the Thudhamma patriarch, declaring the dispensation (P. sAsana; S. sASANA) of Gotama (GAUTAMA) Buddha to be extinct and its saMgha therefore defunct. This attempt to disestablish the Burmese saMgha met with little success outside the capital and was later abandoned. Bodawpaya's military campaigns against Arakan and Assam extended the borders of the Burmese empire to the frontiers of the British East India Company. The cruelty of Bodawpaya's rule in Arakan created an influx of refugees into British territory, who were regularly pursued by Burmese troops. Although British diplomacy kept tensions with the Burmese kingdom under control throughout Bodawpaya's reign, the stage was set for eventual military conflict between the two powers and the subsequent British conquest of Burma in three wars during the nineteenth century.
Bodhiruci. (C. Putiliuzhi; J. Bodairushi; K. Poriryuji 菩提流支) (d. 727). A renowned Indian translator and monk (to be distinguished from an earlier Bodhiruci [s.v.], who was active two centuries earlier during the Northern Wei dynasty). Bodhiruci is said to have been a south Indian who was invited to China by Emperor Gaozong (r. 649-683) of the Tang dynasty in 663, but did not arrive until thirty years later, in 693, during the reign of Empress WU ZETIAN (r. 684-704). He is said to have changed his name from Dharmaruci to Bodhiruci at the request of Empress Wu. He resided in the monastery of Foshoujisi, where he dedicated himself to the translation of several scriptures, including the RATNAMEGHASuTRA (Baoyun jing), ADHYARDHAsATIKAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA (Shixiang bore bolomi jing), and GayAsīrsasutra. Bodhiruci also assisted sIKsANANDA in his translation of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA. In 706, he resided in the monastery Chongfusi and commenced the translation of the lengthy RATNAKutASuTRA, which the famed Chinese pilgrim and translator XUANZANG had failed to complete earlier. Bodhiruci's translation, edited into 120 rolls, was completed in 713.
bodhisattvabhumi. (T. byang chub sems dpa'i sa; C. pusa di; J. bosatsuji; K. posal chi 菩薩地). In Sanskrit, lit. "ground" or "stage" (BHuMI) of a BODHISATTVA, referring to the systematic stages along the path (MARGA) of a bodhisattva's maturation into a buddha. A normative list of ten bhumis, which becomes standard in many MAHAYANA accounts of the bodhisattva path, appears in the DAsABHuMIKASuTRA, a sutra that was later incorporated into the AVATAMSAKASuTRA compilation. These ten stages (DAsABHuMI) of the Dasabhumikasutra correspond to the forty-first to fiftieth stages among the fifty-two bodhisattva stages, the comprehensive outline of the entire bodhisattva path taught in such scriptures as the AvataMsakasutra, the PUSA YINGLUO BENYE JING, and the RENWANG JING. The first bhumi begins on the path of vision (DARsANAMARGA), and the other nine bhumis occur on the path of cultivation (BHAVANAMARGA). (For detailed explication of each stage, see DAsABHuMI s.v.) The PRAJNAPARAMITA SuTRAs, and the MAHAYANASuTRALAMKARA and ABHISAMAYALAMKARA in their exegesis of these stages, explain that bodhisattvas reach each higher level along the path after completing the preparations (parikarman) for it; they set forth the same ten levels as the Dasabhumikasutra with the same names. Arya VIMUKTISENA, in his exegesis of the AbhisamayAlaMkAra, says bodhisattvas on the tenth bhumi are like TATHAGATAs who have passed beyond all stages, and lists eight other stages corresponding roughly to the stages of the eight noble persons (ARYAPUDGALA), with the first through ninth bodhisattva bhumis described as a transcendent ninth level. In contrast to the normative ten bhumis described in the Dasabhumikasutra, MAITREYANATHA/ASAnGA in the BODHISATTVABHuMI instead outlines a system of seven stages (bhumi), which are then correlated with the thirteen abodes (VIHARA). (See the following entry on the treatise for further explication.) The seven-bhumi schema of the Bodhisattvabhumi and the ten-bhumi schema of the Dasabhumikasutra are independent systematizations.
Bodhisattvapitaka. (T. Byang chub sems dpa'i sde snod; C. Pusazang jing; J. Bosatsuzokyo; K. Posalchang kyong 菩薩藏經). In Sanskrit, "The Bodhisattva Basket," one of the earliest MAHAYANA scriptures, written by at least the first century CE and perhaps even as early as the first century BCE. The text is no longer extant, but its antiquity is attested by its quotation in some of the earliest MahAyAna sutras translated into Chinese, including *LOKAKsEMA's translation of the KAsYAPAPARIVARTA made in 179 CE and in DHARMARAKsA's 289 CE rendering of the VimaladattAparipṛcchA. The content of the anthology is unknown, but based on much later compilations bearing the same title (and which therefore might have been derived from the original Bodhisattvapitaka), the text must have been substantial in size (one later Chinese translation is twenty rolls in length) and have offered coverage of at least the six perfections (PARAMITA). Sections of the Bodhisattvapitaka may also have been subsumed in later collections of MahAyAna materials, such as the RATNAKutASuTRA.
Book of John the Baptist. A Mandaean scripture titled
Brother(s) of the Shadow ::: A term given in occultism and especially in modern esotericism to individuals, whether men or women,who follow the path of the shadows, the left-hand path. The term "shadow" is a technical expression andsignifies more than appears on the surface: i.e., the expression is not to be understood of individuals wholive in actual physical obscurity or actual physical shadows, which literalism would be simply absurd;but applies to those who follow the path of matter, which from time immemorial in the esoteric schoolsin both Orient and Occident has frequently been called shadow or shadows. The term originally arose,without doubt, in the philosophical conception of the word maya, for in early Oriental esotericism maya,and more especially maha-maya, was a term applied in one of its many philosophical meanings to thatwhich was contrary to and, indeed, in one sense a reflection of, light. Just as spirit may be considered tobe pure energy, and matter, although essentially crystallized spirit, may be looked upon as the shadowworld or vehicular world in which the energy or spirit or pure light works, just so is maya, as the garmentor expression or sakti of the divine energy, the vehicle or shadow of the divine side of nature, in otherwords its negative or nether pole, as light is the upper or positive pole.The Brothers of the Shadow are therefore those who, being essentially of the nature of matter,instinctively choose and follow the path along which they are most strongly drawn, that is, the path ofmatter or of the shadows. When it is recollected that matter is but a generalizing term, and that what thisterm comprises actually includes an almost infinite number of degrees of increasing ethereality from thegrossest physical substance, or absolute matter, up to the most ethereal or spiritualized substance, weimmediately see the subtle logic of this technical term -- shadows or, more fully, the Path of theShadows, hence the Brothers of the Shadow.They are the so-called black magicians of the Occident, and stand in sharp and notable contrast with thewhite magicians or the Sons of Light who follow the pathway of self-renunciation, self-sacrifice,self-conquest, perfect self-control, and an expansion of the heart and mind and consciousness in love andservice for all that lives. (See also Right-hand Path)The existence and aims of the Brothers of the Shadow are essentially selfish. It is commonly, buterroneously, supposed that the Brothers of the Shadow are men and women always of unpleasant ordispleasing personal appearance, and no greater error than this could possibly be made. Multitudes ofhuman beings are unconsciously treading the path of the shadows and, in comparison with thesemultitudes, it is relatively only a few who self-consciously lead and guide with subtle and nefastintelligence this army of unsuspecting victims of maya. The Brothers of the Shadow are often highlyintellectual men and women, frequently individuals with apparent great personal charm, and to theordinary observer, judging from their conversation and daily works, are fully as well able to "quotescripture" as are the Angels of Light!
scripture ::: 1. Any writing or book, esp. when of a sacred or religious nature. 2. Written characters.
scripture ::: n. --> Anything written; a writing; a document; an inscription.
The books of the Old and the new Testament, or of either of them; the Bible; -- used by way of eminence or distinction, and chiefly in the plural.
A passage from the Bible;; a text.
bshad grwa. (shedra). In Tibetan, lit. "commentarial institution" or simply "teaching institute"; a part of a monastic complex devoted to the study of scripture, sometimes contrasted with a meditation center (sgrub khang, literally "practice house"). The institution possibly originates with SA SKYA PAndITA who in his Mkhas pa la 'jug pa'i sgo proposed a model of intellectual inquiry based on exposition, composition, and debate. In a traditional bshad grwa, the teacher explains line by line an authoritative Indian text, often referring to a Tibetan commentary; this may be followed by a formal period of debate; the teacher then calls on the monks during the next class to give an explanation of the part of the Indian text they have learned. The bshad grwa is contrasted with the RTSOD GRWA (tsodra) "debating institution," the origins of which may go back to the model of study followed in BKA' GDAMS monasteries like GSANG PHU NE'U THOG. The best known rtsod grwa are the six great DGE LUGS monasteries of pre-1959 Tibet, which rarely emphasized the ability to give an explanation of the Indian text, but rather followed strict debating periods where particular points of doctrine were investigated in great detail. In the rtsod grwa, debate was raised to a high level, forming a central part of the curriculum, and the examination system that provided access to important and remunerative ecclesiastical postings in the Dge lugs establishment was based almost entirely on debating, as distinct from the ability to give a full commentary on an Indian text. The bshad grwa appears to have gained particular importance in areas of Khams, in Eastern Tibet, after the rise of the so-called RIS MED (rime) movement in the nineteenth century; of particular note there is the Khams bye bshad grwa in the RDZONG GSAR region of SDE DGE, and the considerable number of new bshad grwa opened by learned monks from the Khams region as annexes of older monasteries that earlier were devoted entirely to ritual. See RDZONG GSAR.
Buddhabhadra. (C. Fotuobatuoluo; J. Butsudabatsudara; K. Pult'abaltara 佛陀跋陀羅) (359-429). Important early translator of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese, also known by the Chinese translation of his name, Juexian, or "Enlightened Sage" (the Chinese above is the more common transcription of his Sanskrit name). According to the "Biographies of Eminent Monks" (GAOSENG ZHUAN), Buddhabhadra was born in north India and joined the SAMGHA after losing both his parents at an early age. Buddhabhadra studied various scriptures and was adept in both meditation and observing the precepts; he was also renowned for his thaumaturgic talents. At the behest of a Chinese monk named ZHIYAN, Buddhabhadra traveled to China along the southern maritime route. Upon learning of the eminent Kuchean monk KUMARAJĪVA's arrival in Chang'an, Buddhabhadra went to the capital in 406 to meet him. Due to a difference of opinion with KumArajīva, however, Buddhabhadra left for LUSHAN, where he was welcomed by LUSHAN HUIYUAN and installed as the meditation instructor in Huiyuan's community; Buddhabhadra came to be known as one of the eighteen worthies of Lushan. He devoted the rest of his career to translating such scriptures as the DAMODUOLUO CHAN JING, Guanfo sanmei hai jing, and AVATAMSAKASuTRA, to name just a few. Buddhabhadra also translated the MAHASAMGHIKA VINAYA with the assistance of FAXIAN and contributed significantly to the growth of Buddhist monasticism in China.
Buddhabhumisutra. (T. Sangs rgyas kyi sa'i mdo; C. Fodi jing; J. Butsujikyo; K. Pulchi kyong 佛地經). In Sanskrit, "Scripture on the Stage of Buddhahood," an important MAHAYANA scripture on the experience of enlightenment. The sutra begins with a description of the PURE LAND in which the scripture is taught and its audience of BODHISATTVAs, mahAsrAvakas, and MAHASATTVAs. The text goes on to describe the five factors that exemplify the stage of buddhahood (buddhabhumi). The first of these is (1) the wisdom of the DHARMADHATU, which is likened to space (AKAsA) itself, in that it is all-pervasive and uncontained. The next two factors are (2) mirror-like wisdom, or great perfect mirror wisdom (ADARsAJNANA), in which the perfect interfusion between all things is seen as if reflected in a great mirror, and (3) the wisdom of equality, or impartial wisdom (SAMATAJNANA), which transcends all dichotomies to see everything impartially without coloring by the ego. The scripture then describes (4) the wisdom of specific knowledge (PRATYAVEKsAnAJNANA) and (5) the wisdom of having accomplished what was to be done (KṚTYANUstHANAJNANA), both of which are attained as a result of the subsequently attained wisdom (TATPṚstHALABDHAJNANA); these two types of knowledge clarify that the dharmadhAtu is a realm characterized by both emptiness (suNYATA) and compassion (KARUnA). Finally, similes are offered to elucidate the nature of these wisdoms. The Chinese translation, in one roll, was made by XUANZANG and his translation team in 645 CE. In tantric Buddhism, these five wisdoms or knowledges (JNANA) are linked with the five "buddha families" (see PANCATATHAGATA).
BuddhadAsa. (1906-1993). Prominent Thai monk, Buddhist reformer, teacher of meditation, and ecumenical figure. Born the son of a merchant in the village of Pum Riang in southern Thailand, he was educated at Buddhist temple schools. It was customary for males in Thailand to be ordained as Buddhist monks for three months at the age of twenty and then return to lay life. BuddhadAsa decided, however, to remain a monk and quickly gained a reputation as a brilliant thinker, meditator, and teacher. He dwelled for several years in the Thai capital of Bangkok to further his studies but grew disillusioned with the prevailing practices of the SAMGHA in the city, which he perceived to be lax and corrupt. In 1932, he returned home to an abandoned monastery near his native village to live a simple life, practice meditation, and teach the dharma. He named his monastery Wat Suan MokkhabalArAma (Garden of the Power of Liberation), which is usually abbreviated to Suan Mokkh, the Garden of Liberation. The monastery became one of the first VIPASSANA (S. VIPAsYANA) (insight meditation) centers in southern Thailand. BuddhadAsa spent most of his life at this forest monastery overlooking the sea. Although his formal scholastic training was limited, BuddhadAsa studied PAli scriptures extensively, in particular the SUTTAPItAKA, to uncover their true meaning, which he felt had become obscured by centuries of commentarial overlays, ritual practices, and monastic politics. A gifted orator, his numerous sermons and talks were transcribed and fill an entire room of the National Library in Bangkok. In his writings, many of which are his transcribed sermons, he eschewed the formal style of traditional scholastic commentary in favor of a more informal, and in many ways controversial, approach in which he questioned many of the more popular practices of Thai Buddhism. For example, he spoke out strongly against the practice of merit-making in which lay people offer gifts to monks in the belief that they will receive material reward in their next life. BuddhadAsa argued that this traditionally dominant form of lay practice only keeps the participants in the cycle of rebirth because it is based on attachment, whereas the true form of giving is the giving up of the self. Instead, BuddhadAsa believed that, because of conditioned origination (PRATĪTYASAMUTPADA), people are naturally connected through a shared environment and are in fact capable of living harmoniously together. The hindrance to such a harmony comes from attachments to "I" and "mine," which must therefore be severed. Modern and ecumenical in perspective, BuddhadAsa sought to strip traditional Buddhism of what he regarded as obscurantism and superstition, and present the Buddha's teachings in a rational scientific idiom that acknowledged kindred teachings in other religions. BuddhadAsa's interpretations of the dharma have had a great impact on contemporary Buddhist thought in Thailand and are especially influential among the urban intelligentsia, social reformers, and environmentalists. His teachings are often cited as foundational by advocates of engaged Buddhism. The monastery he founded has become a venue for the training of foreign monks and nuns and for interfaith dialogue between Buddhists of different traditions, as well as between Buddhists and adherents of other religions.
buddhAnusmṛti. (P. buddhAnussati; T. sangs rgyas rjes su dran pa; C. nianfo; J. nenbutsu; K. yombul 念佛). In Sanskrit, "recollection of the Buddha"; one of the common practices designed to develop concentration, in which the meditator reflects on the meritorious qualities of the Buddha, often through contemplating a series of his epithets. The oldest list of epithets of the Buddha used in such recollection, which is found across all traditions, is worthy one (ARHAT), fully enlightened (SAMYAKSAMBUDDHA), perfect in both knowledge and conduct (vidyAcaranasampanna), well gone (SUGATA), knower of all worlds (lokavid), teacher of divinities (or kings) and human beings (sAstṛ devamanusyAnaM), buddha, and BHAGAVAT. BuddhAnusmṛti is listed among the forty meditative exercises (KAMMAttHANA) discussed in the VISUDDHIMAGGA and is said to be conducive to gaining access concentration (UPACARASAMADHI). In East Asia, this recollection practice evolved into the recitation of the name of the buddha AMITABHA (see NIANFO) in the form of the phrase namo Amituo fo ("homage to AmitAbha Buddha"; J. NAMU AMIDABUTSU). This recitation was often performed in a ritual setting accompanied by the performance of prostrations, the burning of incense, and the recitation of scriptures, all directed toward gaining a vision of AmitAbha's PURE LAND (SUKHAVATĪ), which was considered proof that one would be reborn there. Nianfo practice was widely practiced across schools and social strata in China. In Japan, repetition of the phrase in its Japanese pronunciation of namu Amidabutsu (homage to AmitAbha Buddha) became a central practice of the Japanese Pure Land schools of Buddhism (see JoDOSHu, JoDO SHINSHu).
buddhapAda. (T. sangs rgyas kyi zhabs; C. fozu; J. bussoku; K. pulchok 佛足). In Sanskrit and PAli, lit. "the feet of the Buddha"; typically referring to "the Buddha's footprints," which became objects of religious veneration in early Buddhism. There are typically three kinds of footprints of the Buddha, all of which are treated as a type of relic (sARĪRA, DHATU). At the incipiency of the tradition, the Buddha's footprints were a popular aniconic representation of the Buddha; the oldest of these, from the BHARHUT reliquary mound (STuPA), dates to the second century BCE. The second are natural indentations in rock that are said to have been made by the Buddha's feet; an example is the Sri Lankan mountain known as srī PAda, or "Holy Foot," which is named after an impression in the rock of the mountain's summit that the Sinhalese people believe to be a footprint of GAUTAMA Buddha. Both these first and second types are concave images and are presumed to be a sign of the Buddha's former presence in a specific place. Such footprints are also often important as traditional evidence of a visit by the Buddha to a distant land. The third form of footprint are convex images carved in stone, metal, or wood (or in some cases painted), which represent the soles of the Buddha's feet in elaborate detail and are often covered with all manner of auspicious symbols. They may bear the specific physical marks (LAKsAnA) said to be present on the feet of a fully awakened being, such as having toes that are all the same length, or having dharma-wheels (DHARMACAKRA) inscribed on the soles (see MAHAPURUsALAKsAnA). In the PAli tradition, there is a practice of making buddhapAda in which the central wheel is surrounded by a retinue (parivAra) of 108 auspicious signs, called MAnGALA. Symbolically, the footprints point to the reality of the Buddha's erstwhile physical presence in our world. At the same time, the footprints also indicate his current absence and thus may encourage the observer to reflect on nonattachment. Veneration of the Buddha's footprints occurs throughout the Buddhist world but is particularly popular in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand. Of his footprints, tradition reports that the Buddha said, "In the future, intelligent beings will see the scriptures and understand. Those of less intelligence will wonder whether the Buddha appeared in the world. In order to remove their doubts, I have set my footprints in stone."
BuddhatrAta. (C. Fotuoduoluo; J. Butsudatara; K. Pult'adara 佛陀多羅). Proper name of the putative translator of the YUANJUE JING (Dafangguang yuanjue xiuduoluo liaoyi jing; "Book of Perfect Enlightenment"). According to the KAIYUAN SHIJIAO LU, Zhisheng's catalogue of Chinese Buddhist scriptural translations, BuddhatrAta hailed from Kashmir (see KASHMIR-GANDHARA) and translated this text, in 693, at BAIMASI outside the Chinese capital of Luoyang. Although Zhisheng's attribution is followed by all subsequent cataloguers, this scripture is now generally recognized to be an indigenous Chinese Buddhist scripture (see APOCRYPHA) from the eighth century CE, so his ascription is dubious. There are a few other works attributed to a BuddhatrAta in the Chinese catalogues, including a vinaya text and a commentary to the YULANBEN JING, but it is unclear whether these are the same BuddhatrAta; nothing else is known about his life or activities in China.
BuddhAvataMsakasutra. In Sanskrit, "Scripture of the Garland of Buddhas." See AVATAMSAKASUTRA.
Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. A term coined by the Sanskritist FRANKLIN EDGERTON, who compiled the definitive grammar and dictionary of the language, to refer to the peculiar Buddhist argot of Sanskrit that is used both in many Indic MAHAYANA scriptures, as well as in the MAHAVASTU, a biography of the Buddha composed within the LOKOTTARAVADA subgroup of the MAHASAMGHIKA school. Edgerton portrays Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit texts as the products of a gradual Sanskritization of texts that had originally been composed in various Middle Indic dialects (PRAKRIT). Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) texts were not wholesale renderings of vernacular materials intended to better display Sanskrit vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, but rather were ongoing, and often incomplete, reworkings of Buddhist materials, which reflected the continued prestige of Sanskrit within the Indic scholarly community. This argot of Sanskrit is sometimes called the "GATHA dialect," because its peculiarities are especially noticeable in MahAyAna verse forms. Edgerton describes three layers of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit based on the extent of their hybridization (and only loosely chronological). The first, and certainly earliest, class consists solely of the MahAvastu, the earliest extant BHS text, in which both the prose and verse portions of the scripture contain many hybridized forms. In the second class, verses remain hybridized, but the prose sections are predominantly standard Sanskrit and are recognizable as BHS only in their vocabulary. This second class includes many of the most important MahAyAna scriptures, including the GAndAVYuHA, LALITAVISTARA, SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA, and SUKHAVATĪVYuHASuTRA. In the third class, both the verse and prose sections are predominantly standard Sanskrit, and only in their vocabulary would they be recognized as BHS. Texts in this category include the AstASAHASRIKAPRAJNAPARAMITA, BODHISATTVABHuMI, LAnKAVATARASuTRA, MuLASARVASTIVADA VINAYA, and VAJRACCHEDIKAPRAJNAPARAMITASuTRA.
Bu ston chos 'byung. (Buton Chojung). A history of Buddhism in India and Tibet composed in 1322 by the Tibetan polymath BU STON RIN CHEN GRUB. The full name of the work is Bde bar gshegs pa'i bstan pa'i gsal byed chos kyi 'byung gnas gsung rab rin po che'i mdzod; it is available in English in the 1931-1932 translation of major parts by EUGÈNE OBERMILLER, done in collaboration with Mongolian monks educated in Tibetan monasteries. The text is in two parts: a history and an important general catalogue of Tibetan Buddhist canonical literature, one of the first of its kind. The first chapter of the Chos 'byung draws on the VYAKHYAYUKTI and is a general discussion of the exposition and study of Buddhist doctrine. The second chapter is a traditional history dealing with the spread of the doctrine in the human world, the three turnings of the wheel of DHARMA (DHARMACAKRAPRAVARTANA), the councils (SAMGĪTI), the collection of the Buddhist doctrine into authoritative scriptures, the date of the Buddha, the followers who came after him, and the decline of the doctrine in India. The history of Buddhism in Tibet is divided into a section on the earlier (SNGA DAR) and later spread (PHYI DAR) of the doctrine. The third section is the general catalogue of Buddhist canonical literature in Tibetan translation. It is divided into SuTRAs and TANTRAs, then again into the words of the Buddha (bka') and authoritative treatises (bstan bcos). The words of the Buddha are subdivided based on the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma with a separate section on MAHAYANA sutras; treatises are divided into treatises explaining specific works of the Buddha (again subdivided based on the three turnings of the wheel of the dharma), general expositions, and miscellaneous treatises. Bu ston similarly divides the tantras into words of the Buddha and authoritative treatises and deals with both under the division into four "sets" (sde) of KRIYA, CARYA, and YOGA, and MAHAYOGA tantras. This latter division is again subdivided into method (UPAYA), wisdom (PRAJNA), and both (ubhaya) tantras. In MKHAS GRUB DGE LEGS DPAL BZANG's explanation (Rgyud sde spyi'i rnam bzhag), a work based on Bu ston's model, but incorporating the influential scheme of TSONG KHA PA, the divisions of mahAyoga are subsumed under the general category of ANUTTARAYOGATANTRA (highest yoga tantra). The tantric commentaries are organized following the same schema.
cabala ::: n. --> A kind of occult theosophy or traditional interpretation of the Scriptures among Jewish rabbis and certain mediaeval Christians, which treats of the nature of god and the mystery of human existence. It assumes that every letter, word, number, and accent of Scripture contains a hidden sense; and it teaches the methods of interpretation for ascertaining these occult meanings. The cabalists pretend even to foretell events by this means.
Secret science in general; mystic art; mystery.
cabbala ::: 1 A body of mystical Jewish teachings based on an interpretation of hidden meanings in the Hebrew Scriptures. Among its central doctrines are, all creation is an emanation from the Deity and the soul exists from eternity. 2. Any secret or occult doctrine or science. 3. "Esoteric system of interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures based on the assumption that every word, letter, number, and accent in them has an occult meaning. The system, oral at first, claimed great antiquity, but was really the product of the Middle Ages, arising in the 7th century and lasting into the 18th. It was popular chiefly among Jews, but spread to Christians as well. (Col. Enc.)” Glossary and Index of Proper Names in Sri Aurobindo"s Works
CakkavattisīhanAdasutta. (C. Zhuanlun shengwang xiuxing jing; J. Tenrinjoo shugyokyo; K. Chollyun songwang suhaeng kyong 轉輪聖王修行經). In PAli, "Discourse on the Lion's Roar of the Wheel-Turning Emperor"; the twenty-sixth sutta of the DĪGHANIKAYA (a separate DHARMAGUPTAKA recension appears as the sixth SuTRA in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHAGAMA and a separate SarvAstivAda recension as the seventieth sutra in the Chinese translation of the MADHYAMAGAMA); the scripture is known especially for being the only sutta in the PAli canon that mentions the name of the Buddha's successor, Metteya (MAITREYA). Before a gathering of monks at the town of MAtulA in MAGADHA, the Buddha tells the story of a universal or wheel-turning monarch (cakkavattin; S. CAKRAVARTIN) named Dalhanemi, wherein he explains that righteousness and order are maintained in the world so long as kings observe their royal duties. Dalhanemi's successors, unfortunately, gradually abandoned their responsibilities, leading to immorality, strife, and the shortening of life spans from eighty thousand years to a mere ten; the sutta thus attributes the origins of evil in the world to the neglect of royal duty. Upon reaching this nadir, people finally recognize the error of their ways and begin anew to practice morality. The observance of morality leads to improved conditions, until eventually a universal monarch named Sankha appears, who will prepare the way for the advent of the future-Buddha Metteya (Maitreya).
canon. A term used generically to designate Buddhist scriptural collections in a whole range of canonical Asian languages, including the Indic "three baskets" (TRIPItAKA), the East Asian "scriptures of the great repository" (DAZANGJING), and the Tibetan BKA' 'GYUR and BSTAN 'GYUR. Beyond these canons, Buddhists in these various traditions also typically used their own local collections of texts, collections that often were quite distinct from those of the officially sanctioned canons. See also KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG; TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo; SuTRA; sASTRA; BODHISATTVAPItAKA; APOCRYPHA.
canonical (Historically, "according to religious law") 1. "mathematics" A standard way of writing a formula. Two formulas such as 9 + x and x + 9 are said to be equivalent because they mean the same thing, but the second one is in "canonical form" because it is written in the usual way, with the highest power of x first. Usually there are fixed rules you can use to decide whether something is in canonical form. Things in canonical form are easier to compare. 2. "jargon" The usual or standard state or manner of something. The term acquired this meaning in computer-science culture largely through its prominence in {Alonzo Church}'s work in computation theory and {mathematical logic} (see {Knights of the Lambda-Calculus}). Compare {vanilla}. This word has an interesting history. Non-technical academics do not use the adjective "canonical" in any of the senses defined above with any regularity; they do however use the nouns "canon" and "canonicity" (not "canonicalness"* or "canonicality"*). The "canon" of a given author is the complete body of authentic works by that author (this usage is familiar to Sherlock Holmes fans as well as to literary scholars). "The canon" is the body of works in a given field (e.g. works of literature, or of art, or of music) deemed worthwhile for students to study and for scholars to investigate. The word "canon" derives ultimately from the Greek "kanon" (akin to the English "cane") referring to a reed. Reeds were used for measurement, and in Latin and later Greek the word "canon" meant a rule or a standard. The establishment of a canon of scriptures within Christianity was meant to define a standard or a rule for the religion. The above non-technical academic usages stem from this instance of a defined and accepted body of work. Alongside this usage was the promulgation of "canons" ("rules") for the government of the Catholic Church. The usages relating to religious law derive from this use of the Latin "canon". It may also be related to arabic "qanun" (law). Hackers invest this term with a playfulness that makes an ironic contrast with its historical meaning. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the {MIT AI Lab}, expressed some annoyance at the incessant use of jargon. Over his loud objections, {GLS} and {RMS} made a point of using as much of it as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "Bob just used "canonical" in the canonical way." Of course, canonicality depends on context, but it is implicitly defined as the way *hackers* normally expect things to be. Thus, a hacker may claim with a straight face that "according to religious law" is *not* the canonical meaning of "canonical". (2002-02-06)
canon ::: n. --> A law or rule.
A law, or rule of doctrine or discipline, enacted by a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by ecclesiastical authority.
The collection of books received as genuine Holy Scriptures, called the sacred canon, or general rule of moral and religious duty, given by inspiration; the Bible; also, any one of the canonical Scriptures. See Canonical books, under Canonical, a.
Cantong qi. (J. Sandokai; K. Ch'amdong kye 参同契). A famous verse attributed to the Chinese CHAN master SHITOU XIQIAN. Along with the BAOJING SANMEI, the Cantong qi is revered in the Chinese CAODONG ZONG and Japanese SoToSHu traditions as the foundational scripture of the tradition. The Cantong qi is relatively short (forty-four five-character stanzas, for a total of 220 Sinographs), but Shitou's verse is praised for its succinct and unequivocal expression of the teaching of nonduality. The Sinograph "can" in the title means to "consider," "compare," or "differentiate"; it thus carries the connotation of "difference" and is said to refer to the myriad phenomena. The Sinograph "tong" means "sameness" and is said to refer to the oneness of all phenomena. The Sinograph "qi" means "tally" and is said to refer to the tallying of oneself and all phenomena. The title might be alluding to an earlier verse bearing the same title, which is attributed to the renowned Daoist master Wei Boyang. The Cantong qi also seems to be the root source from which were derived core concepts in the "five ranks" (WUWEI) doctrine, an emblematic teaching of the mature Caodong school.
casuistry ::: a. --> The science or doctrine of dealing with cases of conscience, of resolving questions of right or wrong in conduct, or determining the lawfulness or unlawfulness of what a man may do by rules and principles drawn from the Scriptures, from the laws of society or the church, or from equity and natural reason; the application of general moral rules to particular cases.
Sophistical, equivocal, or false reasoning or teaching in regard to duties, obligations, and morals.
Changuan cejin. (J. Zenkan sakushin; K. Son'gwan ch'aekchin 禪關策進). In Chinese, "Spurring Advancement through the Chan Barrier"; composed by the CHAN master YUNQI ZHUHONG in 1600. The text has long been used in Chan monasteries as a primer in meditation. From various Chan lineage histories (CHUANDENG LU) and recorded sayings (YULU), Yunqi compiled over a hundred anecdotes and legends about Chan masters that cogently demonstrated the value of diligence and intense practice. The Changuan cejin consists of two general collections. The first collection itself is further divided into two sections, entitled "Zhuzu fayu jieyao" ("Essential Selections of Dharma Talks by Various Masters") and "Zhuzu kugong jielüe" ("Brief Selections of the Painful Effort of Various Masters"). The first section consists largely of public lectures delivered by famous Chan masters, with Yunqi's own evaluation and notes appended at the end of each lecture. Similarly, the second section consists largely of stories of courageous efforts in practice made by various monks of the past, again with Yunqi's evaluations appended at the end of each story. The second collection, entitled "Zhujing yinzheng jielüe" ("Brief Selections of Verified Passages from Various Scriptures"), also consists of short passages quoted from various scriptures, with Yunqi's evaluation appended at the end of each passage.
Chan miyaofa jing. (J. Zenpiyohokyo; K. Son piyobop kyong 禪秘要法經). In Chinese, "Scripture on the Essential Techniques of Meditation"; translated by KUMARAJĪVA. The scripture details the practice of meditation, visualization, and controlling the breath. Among the different meditative practices discussed in the text, the meditations on foulness (AsUBHABHAVANA) serves as the foundational practice.
Chanyuan zhuquanji duxu. (J. Zengen shosenshu tojo; K. Sonwon chejonjip toso 禪源諸詮集都序). In Chinese, lit., "Prolegomenon to the 'Collected Writings on the Source of Chan'"; composed by the CHAN and HUAYAN exegete GUIFENG ZONGMI sometime between 828 and 835; typically known by its abbreviated title of "Chan Prolegomenon" (C. Duxu; J. Tojo; K. Toso) and often referred to in English as the "Chan Preface." The text is a comprehensive overview of the Chan collection (Chanyuan zhuquanji), which is said to have been one hundred rolls (juan) in length, but is now entirely lost. Pei Xiu's (787?-860) own preface to Zongmi's "Prolegomenon" describes this collection as a massive anthology of essential prose and verse selections drawn from all the various Chan schools, which was so extensive that Pei says it deserves to be designated as a separate "Chan basket" (Chanzang; see PItAKA), complementing the other "three baskets" (TRIPItAKA) of the traditional Buddhist canon. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of this massive collection of Chan material, Zongmi seeks to assess in his "Prolegomenon" the teachings of eight representative schools of Tang-dynasty Chan: JINGZHONG ZONG, Northern school (BEI ZONG), BAOTANG ZONG, Nanshan Nianfo men Chan zong, the Shitou school of SHITOU XIQIAN (which would eventually evolve into the CAODONG and YUNMEN schools), NIUTOU ZONG, the Heze school of HEZEI SHENHUI, and the HONGZHOU ZONG (or "Jiangxi" as it is called in the text) of MAZU DAOYI. In an effort to bridge both the ever-growing gap between the contending Chan lineages and also their estranged relations with the doctrinal schools (C. jiao, see K. KYO) that derive from the written scriptures of Buddhism, Zongmi provides in his "Prolegomenon" an overarching hermeneutical framework (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) through which to evaluate the teachings of both the Chan and doctrinal schools. This framework is built around a series of polarities, such as the three core teachings of the scriptures and the three axiomatic perspectives of Chan, the words of the Chan masters and the mind of the Buddha, sudden awakening and gradual practice, and original enlightenment (BENJUE) and nonenlightenment. In order to demonstrate the continuities between Chan and jiao, Zongmi proceeds to demonstrate how various doctrinal traditions align with the three core teachings of the scriptures and how the eight representative Chan schools correlate with the three axiomatic perspectives of Chan. He then correlates the three doctrinal teachings with the three Chan perspectives, thus demonstrating the fundamental correspondence between the Chan and the scriptures. The last polarity he examines, that between original enlightenment and nonenlightenment, also enables Zongmi to outline an etiology of both delusion and awakening, which provides the justification for a soteriological schema that requires an initial sudden awakening followed by continued gradual cultivation (DUNWU JIANXIU). Zongmi's luster faded in China during the Song dynasty, but his vision of the Chan tradition as outlined in his "Prolegomenon" was extremely influential in YONGMING YANSHOU's ZONGJING LU; indeed, it is now believed that the Zongjing lu subsumes a substantial part of Zongmi's lost "Chan Canon" (viz., his Chanyuan zhuquanji). Zongmi and his "Prolegomenon" found a particularly enthusiastic proponent in Korean Son in the person of POJO CHINUL, who placed Zongmi's preferred soteriological schema of sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation at the core of Korean Son practice. Zongmi's works continued to be widely read in Korea after Chinul's time and, since the seventeenth century, Korean Buddhist seminaries (kangwon) included the "Prolegomenon" (K. Toso) in the SAJIP ("Fourfold Collection"), the four key texts of the Korean monastic curriculum.
Chatvaras or Chatvarah (Sanskrit) Catvāras, Catvāraḥ [nominative plural of catur four] The four; frequently used to represent the four kumaras usually mentioned in Hindu scriptures: Sanatkumara, Sananda, Sanaka, and Sanatana.
Chela(Cela) ::: An old Indian term. In archaic times more frequently spelled and pronounced cheta or cheda. Themeaning is "servant," a personal disciple attached to the service of a teacher from whom he receivesinstruction. The idea is closely similar to the Anglo-Saxon term leorning-cneht, meaning "learningservant," a name given in Anglo-Saxon translations of the Christian New Testament to the disciples ofJesus, his "chelas." It is, therefore, a word used in old mystical scriptures for a disciple, a pupil, a learneror hearer. The relationship of teacher and disciple is infinitely more sacred even than that of parent andchild; because, while the parents give the body to the incoming soul, the teacher brings forth that soulitself and teaches it to be and therefore to see, teaches it to know and to become what it is in its inmostbeing -- that is, a divine thing.The chela life or chela path is a beautiful one, full of joy to its very end, but also it calls forth and needseverything noble and high in the learner or disciple; for the powers or faculties of the higher self must bebrought into activity in order to attain and to hold those summits of intellectual and spiritual grandeurwhere the Masters themselves live. For that, masterhood, is the end of discipleship -- not, however, thatthis ideal should be set before us merely as an end to attain to as something of benefit for one's own self,because that very thought is a selfish one and therefore a stumbling in the path. It is for the individual'sbenefit, of course; yet the true idea is that everything and every faculty that is in the soul shall be broughtout in the service of all humanity, for this is the royal road, the great royal thoroughfare, of self-conquest.The more mystical meanings attached to this term chela can be given only to those who have irrevocablypledged themselves to the esoteric life.
Chengguan. (J. Chokan; K. Chinggwan 澄觀) (738-839). Putative fourth patriarch of the Chinese HUAYAN tradition; also known as Daxiu, Huayan pusa, Huayan shuzhu, and Qingliang GUOSHI. Chengguan is said to have entered the monastery in 746 under the guidance of a monk named Tizhen (d.u.). Although little is known of Chengguan's early training, he is supposed to have studied a broad range of scriptures and commentaries including the PRAJNAPARAMITA SuTRAs, MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA, DASHENG QIXIN LUN, YOGACARABHuMIsASTRA, and others. In 757, he received the full monastic precepts from a certain Tanyi (d.u.) of the NANSHAN LÜ ZONG and studied for several years under Tanyi's prominent disciple JINGXI ZHANRAN. Chengguan is also said to have studied CHAN during this period under various masters. After his training under Fashen (718-778), second-generation disciple of the Huayan master FAZANG, Chengguan left for WUTAISHAN, the earthly abode of the BODHISATTVA MANJUsRĪ, in 776. Chengguan was a prolific exegete, whose writings amount to over four hundred rolls in total. Chengguan is best known for his massive commentary on sIKsANANDA's new translation of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA, entitled the [Dafangguang fo] HUAYAN JING SHU, in sixty rolls. This work rivaled and may even have surpassed in influence the most popular commentary on the AvataMsakasutra of his day, viz., Fazang's HUAYAN JING TANXUAN JI. Chengguan also wrote a comprehensive autocommentary to his commentary, entitled the HUAYAN JING SUISHU YANYI CHAO, in a total of ninety rolls. In these works, Chengguan expands upon the Huayan master DUSHUN's work on the notion of the realm of reality (DHARMADHATU), the HUAYAN FAJIE GUANMEN. Chengguan approached the dharmadhAtu from four interrelated perspectives, viz., the dharmadhAtu of phenomena (SHI FAJIE), dharmadhAtu of principle (LI FAJIE), the dharmadhAtu of the mutual nonobstruction between principle and phenomena (LISHI WU'AI FAJIE), and the dharmadhAtu of the mutual nonobstruction between phenomenon and phenomena (SHISHI WU'AI FAJIE). As the premier Huayan exegete of his generation, Chengguan also was summoned to the Tang capital of Chang'an in 796 to collaborate with the northwest Indian monk PRAJNA in preparing a new translation of the GAndAVYuHA, the forty-roll final chapter of the AvataMsakasutra. Among Chengguan's many disciples, the CHAN and Huayan exegete GUIFENG ZONGMI is most famous.
Chikitsa-vidya-sastra (Sanskrit) Cikitsā-vidyā-śāstra [from cikitsa the practice or science of medicine, particularly therapeutics + vidyā knowledge, science + śāstra scripture] A manual on the science of medicine “which contains a number of ‘magic’ prescriptions. It is one of the Pancha Vidya Shastras or Scriptures” (TG 324).
Chinp'yo. (眞表) (fl. c. eighth century). Korean VINAYA master (yulsa) during the Silla dynasty. Chinp'yo was a native of Mangyong county in Wansan province (present-day Chonju). According to legend, Chinp'yo is said to have been a student of a certain dharma master named Sungje (d.u.) of the monastery of KŬMSANSA, and was himself responsible for a major expansion of the monastery that took place between 762 and 766. Sungje, who purportedly studied under the eminent Chinese monk SHANDAO, informed Chinp'yo of his vision of MANJUsRĪ on WUTAISHAN, after which Chinp'yo decided to devote himself to the practice of body-discarding repentance (mangsinch'am) at Pusaŭiam (Inconceivable Hermitage). In 740, after seven nights of ascetic repentance, Chinp'yo had a vision of the BODHISATTVA KsITIGARBHA. Chinp'yo continued his training at the monastery Yongsansa, where he had a vision of the bodhisattva MAITREYA. From Maitreya, Chinp'yo received the divination scripture, ZHANCHA SHANE YEBAO JING, and 189 divination sticks made of sandalwood, two of which were said to have been made of Maitreya's fingers. In 766, he began teaching at Kŭmsansa, where he installed six gilded images of Maitreya in the main shrine hall (TAEUNG CHoN). King Kyongdok (r. 742-764) later invited Chinp'yo to the palace and received the bodhisattva precepts (K. posal kye, C. PUSA JIE). Chinp'yo had many disciples, among whom Yongsim (d.u.) is most famous.
Ch'onch'aek. (天頙) (1206-?). The fourth patriarch of the Korean White Lotus Society (PAENGNYoN KYoLSA) during the middle of the Koryo dynasty; also known as State Preceptor Chinjong ("True Calmness" or "True Purity," using homophonous Sinographs). Ch'onch'aek was a descendent of a Koryo merit official, who devoted himself to Confucian studies from a young age and passed the civil-service examinations at the age of twenty. At twenty-three, he became a monk under the tutelage of State Preceptor WoNMYO YOSE (1163-1245), the founder of the White Lotus Society (cf. BAILIAN SHE) at Mount Mandok in T'amjin county (present-day Kangjin in South Cholla province), and subsequently assisted his teacher Yose in the Society's campaign. In 1244, Ch'onch'aek traveled to Mimyonsa on Mount Kongdok in Sangju county (present-day Mun'gyong in North Kyongsang province) to open and lead the society there at the request of the renowned magistrate of Sangju, Ch'oe Cha (1188-1260). The Kongdoksan branch of the society was called the East White Lotus; the Mandoksan branch was by contrast called the South White Lotus. In the late 1250s or early 1260s, Ch'onch'aek returned to Mandoksan to become the fourth patriarch of the White Lotus Society. He later retired to Yonghyoram (Dragon Cavity Hermitage) on Mount Tongnyong, south of Mandoksan, where he continued an active correspondence with literati. Indeed, Ch'onch'aek maintained close associations with several of the famous literati of his time and invited them to participate in the activities of the White Lotus Society. Ch'onch'aek's thought reflects the historical realities of Korea during the Mongol invasion. In his letters to civil and military officials, Ch'onch'aek opined that killing the invading Mongol army would be an appropriate act for a BODHISATTVA, because it would stop the invaders from performing evil actions that would lead them to endless suffering in the hells. His Haedongjon hongnok ("Extended Record of the Transmission [of Buddhism] in Korea"), a four-roll collection of miracle tales related to worship of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") , sought to popularize that scripture also in order to help bring peace to the Korean peninsula. Ch'onch'aek's literary talent was so renowned that the famous Choson literatus Chong Yagyong (1762-1836) counted him among the three greatest writers of the Silla and Koryo dynasties. Ch'onch'aek's works, none of which are extant in full, include the Haedongjon hongnok and his literary collection, the Hosan nok ("Record of Lakes and Mountains"). Authorship of the SoNMUN POJANGNOK is attributed to Ch'onch'aek, although this attribution is still in question.
Ch'ont'ae sagyo ŭi. (C. Tiantai sijiao yi; J. Tendai shikyogi 天台四教儀). In Korean, the "Principle of the Fourfold Teachings of the Tiantai [School]," composed by the Korean monk Ch'egwan (d. 970); an influential primer of TIANTAI ZONG (K. Chont'ae chong) doctrine. The loss of the texts of the Tiantai tradition in China after the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Tang dynasty prompted the king of the Wuyue kingdom to seek copies of them elsewhere in East Asia. King Kwangjong (r. 950-975) of the Koryo dynasty responded to the Wuyue king's search by sending the monk Ch'egwan to China in 961. In order to summarize the major teachings of the Tiantai school, Ch'egwan wrote this one-roll abstract of TIANTAI ZHIYI's Sijiao yi, which also draws on other of Zhiyi's writings, including his FAHUA XUANYI. Ch'egwan's text is especially known for its summary of Zhiyi's doctrinal classification schema (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI) on the different (chronological) stages of the Buddha's teaching career and the varying methods he used in preaching to his audiences; these are called the "five periods and eight teachings" (WUSHI BAJIAO). The five periods correspond to what the Tiantai school considered to be the five major chronological stages in the Buddha's teaching career, each of which is exemplified by a specific scripture or type of scripture: (1) HUAYAN (AVATAMSAKASuTRA), (2) AGAMA, (3) VAIPULYA, (4) PRAJNAPARAMITA, and (5) SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA and MAHAPARINIRVAnASuTRA. The different target audiences of the Buddha's message lead to four differing varieties of content in these teachings (huafa): (1) the PItAKA teachings, which were targeted at the two-vehicle adherents (ER SHENG) of disciples (sRAVAKA) and solitary buddhas (PRATYEKABUDDHA); (2) the common teachings, which were intended for both two-vehicle adherents and neophyte bodhisattvas of the MAHAYANA; (3) the distinct teachings, which targeted only bodhisattvas; (4) the perfect or consummate teachings (YUANJIAO), which offered advanced bodhisattvas an unvarnished assessment of Buddhist truths. In speaking to these audiences, which differed dramatically in their capacity to understand his message, the Buddha is said also to have employed four principal techniques of conversion (huayi), or means of conveying his message: sudden, gradual, secret, and indeterminate. Ch'egwan's text played a crucial role in the revitalization of the Tiantai tradition in China and has remained widely studied since. The Ch'ont'ae sagyo ŭi was also influential in Japan, where it was repeatedly republished. Numerous commentaries on this text have also been written in China, Korea, and Japan.
Chu sanzang jiji. (J. Shutsusanzoki shu; K. Ch'ul samjang kijip 出三藏集). In Chinese, "Compilation of Notices on the Translation of the TRIPItAKA"; edited by the monk SENGYOU (445-518) and published around 515. The Chu sanzang jiji is the first extant scriptural catalogue (JINGLU) and incorporates in its listings an even earlier catalogue by DAO'AN (312-385), the ZONGLI ZHONGJING MULU, which is now lost. The Chu sanzang jiji consists of five principal sections: (1) a discussion on the provenance of translated scriptures, (2) a record of (new) titles and their listings in earlier catalogues, (3) prefaces to scriptures, (4) miscellaneous treatises on specific doctrines, and (5) biographies of translators. Sengyou's catalogue established the principal categories into which all subsequent cataloguers would classify scriptures, including new or old translations, anonymous or variant translations, APOCRYPHA, anonymous translations, MAHAYANA and HĪNAYANA literature divided according to the three divisions of the TRIPItAKA, and so forth. The roster of texts includes translations of scriptures and commentaries from the Han to the Liang dynasties and compares the listings of these various translations in official scriptural catalogues in order to determine their authenticity. Short biographies of the various translators are also provided. Sengyou also discusses indigenous Buddhist literature, such as biographical and historiographical collections, scriptural prefaces, and the catalogues themselves, in order to provide subsequent generations with guidance on how properly to transmit Buddhist literature. Sengyou's text is as an important source for studying the early history of translation work and indigenous scriptural creation (see APOCRYPHA) in Chinese Buddhism.
codex ::: n. --> A book; a manuscript.
A collection or digest of laws; a code.
An ancient manuscript of the Sacred Scriptures, or any part of them, particularly the New Testament.
A collection of canons.
Codex Nazaraeus or the Book of Adam (i.e., of man or humanity); the chief sacred scripture of the Nazarites and of the Mandaeans or Nasoraeans; written in a Chaldeo-Syrian dialect mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics. It is an instance of esotericism in a sect whose origin was pre-Christian, but which survived for many centuries into the Christian era as an esoteric school running parallel with exoteric Christianity. Its symbolic teachings are shown to be identical with those in The Secret Doctrine.
commentary ::: v. i. --> A series of comments or annotations; esp., a book of explanations or expositions on the whole or a part of the Scriptures or of some other work.
A brief account of transactions or events written hastily, as if for a memorandum; -- usually in the plural; as, Caesar&
Congrong lu. (J. Shoyoroku; K. Chongyong nok 從容録). In Chinese, "Encouragement (Hermitage) Record"; edited by Chan master Wansong Xingxiu (1165-1246). Also known as the Congrong an lu and Wansong laoren pingzhang Tiantong Jue heshang songgu Congrong an lu ("Encouragement Hermitage Record of the Prose Commentaries by Old Man Wansong on the Case and Verse [Collection] by Master Jue of Tiantong"). In 1223, while residing at the hermitage Congrong'an at the monastery of Bao'ensi near Yanjing, Wansong was asked by the famous layman and statesman Yelü Chucai (1190-1244) to expound upon an earlier collection of one hundred cases (GONG'AN) and their verse commentaries (SONGGU) prepared by the Chan master HONGZHI ZHENGJUE. In the Congrong lu, Wansong added some introductory words (shizhong; see CHUISHI), prose commentaries (pingchang), and capping phrases (ZHUYU) to Hongzhi's collection. The Congrong lu is considered one the most important scriptures of the CAODONG ZONG lineage of Chan and demonstrates definitively that the Caodong school (J. SoToSHu) employed gong'ans (J. koan) as part of its training.
context ::: a. --> Knit or woven together; close; firm. ::: n. --> The part or parts of something written or printed, as of Scripture, which precede or follow a text or quoted sentence, or are so intimately associated with it as to throw light upon its meaning.
Covenant ::: A pact between two parties. The major covenants in Jewish scriptures are God's covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15), and the Sinai/Moses covenant (Exodus 19-24) between God and Israel. In Judaism, the covenant (Heb. "brit") is a major theological concept referring to the eternal bond between God and the people of Israel grounded in God's gracious and steadfast concern (hesed) that calls for the nation's obedience to the divine commandments (mitzvot) and instruction (torah). Christians believe that God made a “new covenant” (rendered as “new testament” in older English) with the followers of Jesus in the last times, superseding the “old covenant” (thus, “old testament”) with Moses at Sinai.
covenant ::: n. --> A mutual agreement of two or more persons or parties, or one of the stipulations in such an agreement.
An agreement made by the Scottish Parliament in 1638, and by the English Parliament in 1643, to preserve the reformed religion in Scotland, and to extirpate popery and prelacy; -- usually called the "Solemn League and Covenant."
The promises of God as revealed in the Scriptures, conditioned on certain terms on the part of man, as obedience,
Cundī. (T. Skul byed ma; C. Zhunti; J. Juntei; K. Chunje 准提). In Sanskrit, the name Cundī (with many orthographic variations) probably connotes a prostitute or other woman of low caste but specifically denotes a prominent local ogress (YAKsInĪ), whose divinized form becomes the subject of an important Buddhist cult starting in the eighth century. Her worship began in the Bengal and Orissa regions of the Indian subcontinent, where she became the patron goddess of the PAla dynasty, and soon spread throughout India, and into Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, and Tibet, eventually making its way to East Asia. Cundī was originally an independent focus of cultic worship, who only later (as in the Japanese SHINGONSHu) was incorporated into such broader cultic practices as those focused on the "womb MAndALA" (see TAIZoKAI). Several scriptures related to her cult were translated into Chinese starting in the early eighth century, and she lends her name to both a MUDRA as well as an influential DHARAnĪ: namaḥ saptAnAM samyaksaMbuddhakotīnAM tadyathA: oM cale cule cunde svAhA. The dhAranī attributed to Cundī is said to convey infinite power because it is in continuous recitation by myriads of buddhas; hence, an adept who participates in this ongoing recitation will accrue manifold benefits and purify himself from unwholesome actions. The efficacy of the dhAranī is said to be particularly pronounced when it is recited before an image of Cundī while the accompanying Cundī mudrA is also being performed. This dhAranī also gives Cundī her common epithet of "Goddess of the Seventy Million [Buddhas]," which is sometimes mistakenly interpreted (based on a misreading of the Chinese) as the "Mother of the Seventy Million Buddhas." The texts also provide elaborate directions on how to portray her and paint her image. In Cundī's most common depiction, she has eighteen arms (each holding specific implements) and is sitting atop a lotus flower (PADMA) while being worshipped by two ophidian deities.
daijue ermiao. (待絶二妙). In Chinese, "marvelous in comparison and marvelous in its own right." In the TIANTAI school's system of doctrinal classification (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI), Buddhist teachings and scriptures were classified into four modes of instruction (according to their different doctrinal themes; see TIANTAI BAJIAO) and five periods (according to the presumed chronological order by which the Buddha propounded them; see WUSHI). The most sophisticated pedagogical mode and the culminating chronological period are called, respectively, "the perfect teaching" (YUANJIAO) and the "Fahua-Niepan period." The teachings and scriptures associated with the highest mode and the culminating period-the paradigmatic example being the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") and the teachings it embodied for the Tiantai school-are called truly "marvelous" for two reasons. First, they are "marvelous in comparison to the teachings and scriptures of all other 'modes' and 'periods'" (xiangdai miao) because they are the definitive expressions of the Buddha's teachings; second, they are also "marvelous in their own right" (juedai miao), i.e., they are wonderful and profound in an absolute sense, and not just comparatively.
daimoku. (題目). In Japanese, lit. "title" of a scripture; the term comes to be used most commonly in the NICHIRENSHu and associated schools of Japanese Buddhism to refer specifically to the title of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra"). The title is presumed to summarize the gist of the entire scripture, and the recitation of its title in its Japanese pronunciation (see NAMU MYoHoRENGEKYo) is a principal religious practice of the Nichiren and SoKKA GAKKAI schools. Recitation of the title of the Saddharmapundarīkasutra is called specifically the "diamoku of the essential teaching" (honmon no daimoku) in the Nichiren school. The Japanese reformer NICHIREN (1222-1282) advocated recitation of this daimoku as one of the "three great esoteric laws" (SANDAI HIHo), and he claimed it exemplified mastery of wisdom (PRAJNA) in the three trainings (TRIsIKsA).
Dainichi(bo) Nonin. (大日[房]能忍) (d.u.). Japanese monk of the late Heian and early Kamakura eras; his surname was Taira. Nonin is the reputed founder of the short-lived ZEN sect known as the DARUMASHu, one of the earliest Zen traditions to develop in Japan. Nonin was something of an autodidact and is thought to have achieved awakening through his own study of scriptures and commentaries, rather than through any training with an established teacher. He taught at the temple of Sanboji in Suita (present-day osaka prefecture) and established himself as a Zen master. Well aware that he did not have formal authorization (YINKE) from a Chan master in a recognized lineage, Nonin sent two of his disciples to China in 1189. They returned with a portrait of BODHIDHARMA inscribed by the Chan master FOZHAO DEGUANG (1121-1203) and the robe of Fozhao's influential teacher DAHUI ZONGGAO. Fozhao also presented Nonin with a portrait of himself (see DINGXIANG), on which he wrote a verse at the request of Nonin's two disciples. Such bestowals suggested that Nonin was a recognized successor in the LINJI lineage. In 1194, the monks of HIEIZAN, threatened by Nonin's burgeoning popularity, urged the court to suppress Nonin and his teachings as an antinomian heresy. His school did not survive his death, and many of his leading disciples subsequently became students of other prominent teachers, such as DoGEN KIGEN; this influx of Nonin's adherents introduced a significant Darumashu component into the early SoToSHu tradition. Nonin was later given the posthumous title Zen Master Shinpo [alt. Jinho] (Profound Dharma).
Damoduoluo chan jing. (J. Darumatara zenkyo; K. Talmadara son kyong 達摩多羅禪經). In Chinese, the "DhyAna Sutra of DharmatrAta"; a scripture on meditation (DHYANA) attributed to the SARVASTIVADA teacher DHARMATRATA (c. fourth century CE) and translated into Chinese by BUDDHABHADRA in the early fifth century. Buddhabhadra arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang'an in 406 and briefly stayed at LUSHAN HUIYUAN's (334-416) monastery on LUSHAN, where he translated the text at the latter's request. The Damoduoluo chan jing describes the transmission of the oral teachings of the Buddha from master to disciple and details the various practices of meditation (GUAN) such as mindfulness of breathing (S. ANAPANASMṚTI; P. AnApAnasati) and meditation on the foul (AsUBHABHAVANA), as well as the categories of, SKANDHA, AYATANA, and DHATU. The text includes a listing of patriarchs of the tradition before and after DharmatrAta, which begins with MAHAKAsYAPA and ANANDA, continues through MADHYANTIKA, sAnAKAVASIN, UPAGUPTA, VASUMITRA, and SaMgharaksa, leading up to DharmatrAta, who is then followed in turn by Punyamitra. This lineage seems to derive from the SARVASTIVADA school in the KASHMIR-GANDHARA region and suggests that the notion of a teaching geneaology as a central part of Buddhist religious identity has its start in the Indian tradition. Prefaces to the Damoduoluo chan jing by Lushan Huiyuan and Huiguan subsequently connect versions of this lineage to BODHIDHARMA, the putative founder of the CHAN school in East Asia, suggesting this text exerted some influence in the rise of transmission lineages within the early Chan tradition.
Dao'an. (J. Doan; K. Toan 道安) (312-385). In Chinese, "Peace of the Way"; monk-exegete and pioneer of Buddhism during the Eastern Jin dynasty. A native of Fuliu in present-day Hebei province, at the age of eleven he became a student of the famous Kuchean monk and thaumaturge FOTUDENG. Fleeing from the invasions of the so-called northern barbarians, Dao'an and his teacher relocated frequently, with Dao'an finally settling down in the prosperous city of Xiangyang in Hubei province, where he taught for fifteen years. Learning of Dao'an's great reputation, the Former Qin ruler Fu Jian (338-385) amassed an army and captured Xiangyang. After the fall of Xiangyang, Fu Jian invited Dao'an to the capital of Chang'an and honored him as his personal teacher. Dao'an later urged Fu Jian to invite the eminent Central Asian monk KUMARAJĪVA to China. In order to determine the authenticity and provenance of the various scriptural translations then being made in China, Dao'an compiled an influential catalogue of scriptures known as the ZONGLI ZHONGJING MULU, which was partially preserved in the CHU SANZANG JIJI. He also composed various prefaces and commentaries, and his exegetical technique of dividing a scripture into three sections (SANFEN KEJING)-"preface" (xufen), "text proper" (zhengzongfen), and "dissemination section" (liutongfen)-is still widely used even today in East Asian scriptural exegesis. In Dao'an's day, the Indian VINAYA recensions had not yet been translated into Chinese, so Dao'an took it upon himself to codify an early set of indigenous monastic regulations known as the Sengni guifan fofa xianzhang (no longer extant) as a guide for Chinese monastic practice. Also traced to Dao'an is the custom of monks and nuns abandoning their secular surnames for the surname SHI (a transcription of the Buddha's clan name sAKYA; J. Shaku; K. Sok; V. Thích), as a mark of their religious ties to the Buddha's lineage. Among his many disciples, LUSHAN HUIYUAN is most famous.
Daoxuan. (J. Dosen; K. Toson 道宣) (596-667). Chinese VINAYA master and reputed patriarch of the Nanshan vinaya school (NANSHAN LÜ ZONG); also known as Fabian. Daoxuan was a native of Wuxing in present-day Zhejiang province (or, according to another report, Runzhou in Jiangsu province). Daoxuan became a monk at age fifteen and studied monastic discipline under the vinaya master Zhishou. He later moved to ZHONGNANSHAN and established the monastery of Nanquansi. Daoxuan was also a prolific writer. In 626, he composed the Sifen lü shanfan buque xingshi chao, one of the most influential commentaries on the SIFEN LÜ ("Four-Part Vinaya") of the DHARMAGUPTAKA school. The next year, he composed the Sifen lü shi pini yichao and the XU GAOSENG ZHUAN, Shijia fangzhi, JI GUJIN FODAO LUNHENG, and other texts in the following years. When the monastery XIMINGSI was established in 658 by Emperor Gaozong (r. 649-683) in the Tang capital of Chang'an, Daoxuan was invited to serve as its abbot. In 664, while at Ximingsi, Daoxuan compiled a comprehensive catalogue of scriptures known as the DA TANG NEIDIAN LU and, in continuation of his earlier Ji gujin fodao lunheng, wrote a collection of essays in defense of Buddhism entitled the GUANG HONGMING JI.
Darmesteter, J. (tr.). Vendidad (a Mazdean scripture).
Dasabhumikasutra. (T. Sa bcu pa'i mdo; C. Shidi jing/Shizhu jing; J. Jujikyo/Jujukyo; K. Sipchi kyong/Sipchu kyong 十地經/十住經). In Sanskrit, "Scripture of the Ten Stages"; the definitive scriptural account of the ten "grounds" or "stages" (DAsABHuMI) at the upper reaches of the BODHISATTVA path (MĀRGA). In the sutra, each of the ten stages is correlated with seminal doctrines of mainstream Buddhism, as well as with mastery of one of a list of ten perfections (PĀRAMITĀ) completed in the course of training as a bodhisattva. The sutra appears as one of the chapters of the AVATAMSAKASuTRA and also circulated as an independent text. For a full treatment, see DAsABHuMI; BHuMI.
Dasheng qixin lun. (S. *Mahāyānasraddhotpādasāstra; J. Daijo kishinron; K. Taesŭng kisin non 大乗起信論). In Chinese, "Treatise on the Awakening of Faith According to the MAHĀYĀNA"; attributed to the Indian author AsVAGHOsA, but now widely assumed to be an indigenous Chinese text (see APOCRYPHA) composed in the sixth century; typically known in English as simply the "Awakening of Faith." Since its composition, the text has remained one of the most influential treatises in all of East Asian Buddhism. The earliest and most widely used "translation" (c. 550) is attributed to the famous YOGĀCĀRA scholar PARAMĀRTHA, although some scholars have speculated that Paramārtha may in fact have composed the treatise after his arrival in China, perhaps even in Sanskrit, and then translated it into Chinese. The author of the Dasheng qixin lun sought to reconcile two of the dominant, if seemingly incompatible, strands in Mahāyāna Buddhism: TATHĀGATAGARBHA (embryo or womb of the buddhas) thought and the ĀLAYAVIJNĀNA (storehouse consciousness) theory of consciousness. Tathāgatagarbha thought taught that all sentient beings have the potential to achieve enlightenment because that enlightenment is in fact inherent in the minds of sentient beings. What that doctrine did not seem to explain well to the East Asians, however, was why sentient beings who were inherently enlightened would have become deluded in the first place. ĀlayavijNāna theory, by contrast, posited that the foundational recesses of the mind serve as a storehouse of the essentially infinite numbers of potentialities or seeds (BĪJA) of all past actions, including unsalutary deeds; this interpretation suggested to the East Asians that mental purity was not innate and that enlightenment therefore had to be catalyzed by some external source, such as "hearing the dharma," which would then prompt a "transformation of the basis" (ĀsRAYAPARĀVṚTTI) that could lead to purity of mind. The ālayavijNāna thus explained the intractability of ignorance and delusion, but did not seem to offer ready accessibility to enlightenment. In its search for common ground between these two doctrines, the Dasheng qixin lun instead describes the mind as being comprised of two distinct, but complementary, aspects: true thusness (ZHENRU; S. TATHATĀ) and production-and-cessation (shengmie), which correspond respectively to ultimate truth (PARAMĀRTHASATYA) and conventional truth (SAMVṚTISATYA) or the unconditioned (ASAMSKṚTA) and conditioned (SAMSKṚTA) realms. Since the mind that is subject to production and cessation (which the treatise identifies with ālayavijNāna) remains always grounded on the mind of true thusness (which the treatise identifies with tathāgatagarbha), the mind is therefore simultaneously deluded and enlightened. This distinction between this enlightened essence of the mind as "true thusness" and its various temporal manifestations as "production and cessation" is also described in terms of "essence" (TI) and "function" (YONG). From the standpoint of the buddhas and sages, the mind of the sentient being is therefore seen as being perpetually in a state of "original enlightenment" or "intrinsic enlightenment" (BENJUE; see also HONGAKU), while from the standpoint of sentient beings that same mind is seen as being deluded and thus in need of purification through a process of "actualizing enlightenment" (SHIJUE). Actualizing enlightenment involves the cultivation of calmness (ji; S. sAMATHA) and insight (guan; S. VIPAsYANĀ), as well as the development of no-thought (WUNIAN), aspects of training that receive extensive discussion in the treatise. Once the process of actualizing enlightenment is completed, however, the student realizes that the enlightenment achieved through cultivation is in fact identical to the enlightenment that is innate. Hence, the difference between these two types of enlightenment is ultimately a matter of perspective: the buddhas and sages see the innate purity of the tathāgatagarbha as something intrinsic; ordinary persons (PṚTHAGJANA) see it as something that must be actualized through practice. Some East Asian Buddhists, such as WoNHYO (617-686), seem to have presumed that the KŬMGANG SAMMAE KYoNG (S. *Vajrasamādhisutra) was the scriptural source of the Dasheng qixin lun's emblematic teaching of the one mind and its two aspects, even though we now know that that scripture was a Korean apocryphon that was not composed until over a century later. The most important commentaries to the Dasheng qixin lun are Wonhyo's TAESŬNG KISIN NON SO and TAESŬNG KISIN NON PYoLGI, FAZANG's DASHENG QIXIN LUN YI JIs, and JINGYING HUIYUAN's Dasheng qixin lun yishu.
Dasheng wusheng fangbian men. (J. Daijo musho hobenmon; K. Taesŭng musaeng pangp'yon mun 大乗無生方便門). In Chinese, "Expedient Means of [Attaining] Nonproduction according to the MAHĀYĀNA"; a summary of the teachings of the Northern School (BEI ZONG) of CHAN. Several different recensions of this treatise were discovered at DUNHUANG; the text is also known as the Dasheng wufangbian Beizong ("Five Expedient Means of the Mahāyāna: the Northern School"). These different editions speak of five expedient means (UPĀYA): (1) a comprehensive explanation of the essence of buddhahood (corresponding to the DASHENG QIXIN LUN), (2) opening the gates of wisdom and sagacity (viz., the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA), (3) manifesting the inconceivable dharma (the VIMALAKĪRTINIRDEsA), (4) elucidating the true nature of dharmas (Sutra of [the god] Siyi), and (5) the naturally unobstructed path to liberation (the AVATAMSAKASuTRA). Although this arrangement of scriptures bears a superficial resemblance to a taxonomy of texts (see JIAOXIANG PANSHI), a common feature of Chinese Buddhist polemics and exegesis, this listing was not intended to be hierarchical. The explanation of the five expedient means occurs largely in dialogic format. Unlike the Dasheng wufangbian Beizong, the Dasheng wusheng fangbian men also provides a description of the method of conferring the BODHISATTVA precepts (PUSA JIE). In its discussions of both the five expedient means and the bodhisattva precepts, great emphasis is placed on the need for purity of mind.
Dasheng yi zhang. (J. Daijo gisho; K. Taesŭng ŭi chang 大乗義章). In Chinese, "Compendium of the Purport of Mahāyāna"; compiled by JINGYING HUIYUAN; a comprehensive dictionary of Buddhist numerical lists that functions as a virtual encyclopedia of MAHĀYĀNA doctrine. Huiyuan organized 249 matters of doctrine into five sections: teachings, meanings, afflictions, purity, and miscellaneous matters (this last section is no longer extant). Each section is organized numerically, much as are some ABHIDHARMA treatises. The section on afflictions begins, for instance, with the meaning of the two hindrances and ends with the 84,000 hindrances. These various listings are then explained from a Mahāyāna perspective, with corroboration drawn from quotations from scriptures, treatises, and the sayings of other teachers. The Dasheng yi zhang serves as an important source for the study of Chinese Mahāyāna thought as it had developed during the Sui dynasty (589-618).
dashi. (J. daiji; K. taesa 大事). In Chinese, the "great enterprise" or "great matter"; often seen also as the "one great matter" (C. yidashi). The Chinese term dashi appears in KUMĀRAJĪVA's translation of the SADDHARMAPUndARĪKASuTRA ("Lotus Sutra") regarding the reason why the buddhas appear in the world, but has no precise relation there to a specific Sanskrit term; possible equivalencies might be mahākṛtya, "the great action," or mahānusaMsa, "the great blessing." According to the MAHĀYĀNA tradition, the Buddha taught most of his teachings as provisional, transitional, and adaptive instructions that catered to the special contingencies of the spiritually less advanced. However, the Buddha's ultimate concern is the revelation of an ultimate and overriding message, the "great enterprise." Different Mahāyāna scriptures and schools interpret this ultimate message differently and often purport uniquely to convey that message. For example, according to the Saddharmapundarīkasutra and the TIANTAI ZONG, the "great enterprise" is the revelation of the one vehicle (EKAYĀNA), through which all individuals without exception are able to enter the Mahāyāna path and realize the knowledge and vision of perfect buddhahood. According to the MAHĀPARINIRVĀnASuTRA, it is the eternal, absolute characteristics of the buddha-nature (FOXING; BUDDHADHĀTU). According to the SUKHĀVATĪVYuHASuTRA and the PURE LAND schools, it is the revelation of the paradisiacal pure land of SUKHĀVATĪ and the "original vows" of AMITĀBHA Buddha. And, finally, in the CHAN ZONG, the "great enterprise" refers to the general process of awakening to one's own original nature and becoming a buddha (JIANXING CHENGFO).
Dasuttarasutta. (S. Dasottarasutra; C. Shishang jing; J. Jujokyo; K. Sipsang kyong 十上經). In Pāli, "Discourse on Expanding Decades," or "Tenfold Series"; the thirty-fourth, and last, sutta of the DĪGHANIKĀYA. Several fragments of the Sanskrit recension of the text, the Dasottarasutra, were discovered in TURFAN and these appear to represent the same SARVĀSTIVĀDA recension that was translated in Chinese by AN SHIGAO (Chang ahan shibaofa jing) sometime between 148 and 170 CE; this was one of the earliest Chinese renderings of a Buddhist scripture. A DHARMAGUPTAKA recension also appears as the tenth sutra in the Chinese translation of the DĪRGHĀGAMA. According to this Pāli version, this scripture was preached by Sāriputta (sĀRIPUTRA) in Campā to a congregation of five hundred monks. For the edification of his listeners, and so that they might more easily be liberated and attain nibbāna (NIRVĀnA), Sāriputta presents a systematic outline of the dhamma (DHARMA), using a schema of numerical classification that organizes the doctrine into groups ranging from a single factor (e.g., "the one thing to be developed," viz., mindfulness of the body) up to groups of ten (e.g., the ten wholesome ways of action). This sutta thus provides one of the first canonical recensions of the "matrices" (P. mātikā; S. MĀTṚKĀ) that are thought to mark the incipiency of abhidhamma (S. ABHIDHARMA) exegesis, and its exegetical style is closely connected to that used in the SAnGĪTISUTTA (S. SaMgītisutra); several of its exegetical categories are also reproduced in the SAMGĪTIPARYĀYA of the Sarvāstivāda abhidharma.
Da Tang neidian lu. (J. Dai To naitenroku; K. Tae Tang naejon nok 大唐内典録). In Chinese, "The Great Tang Record of Inner [viz., Buddhist] Classics"; a catalogue of the Buddhist canon compiled by the Chinese monk DAOXUAN (596-667). While preparing an inventory of scriptures for the newly established library at the monastery of XIMINGSI, Daoxuan was unsatisfied with the quality of existing scriptural catalogues (JINGLU) and decided to compile his own. Daoxuan's catalogue draws heavily on earlier catalogues, such as the LIDAI SANBAO JI, CHU SANZANG JIJI, Fajing lu, and Renshou lu. The Da Tang neidian lu consists of ten major sections. The first section is the comprehensive catalogue of scriptures, which more or less corresponds to the list found in the Lidai sanbao ji. The second section, a taxonomy of scriptures, also largely corresponds to the Renshou lu. The third section lists the actual contents of Ximingsi's library and thus serves as an important source for studying the history of this monastery and its scriptural collection. The fourth section provides a list of texts appropriate for recitation. The fifth section deals with texts that contain mistakes and discusses their significance. The sixth section lists texts composed in China. The seventh and eighth sections cover miscellaneous texts and APOCRYPHA (162 in total). The ninth section lists previous scriptural catalogues of the past, and the tenth section discusses the virtues of reciting scriptures.
dazangjing. (J. daizokyo; K. taejanggyong 大藏經). In Chinese, "scriptures of the great repository"; the term the Chinese settled upon to describe their Buddhist canon, supplanting the Indian term TRIPItAKA ("three baskets"). The myriad texts of different Indian and Central Asian Buddhist schools were transmitted to China over a millennium, from about the second through the twelfth centuries CE, where they were translated with alacrity into Chinese. Chinese Buddhists texts therefore came to include not only the tripitakas of several independent schools of Indian Buddhism, but also different recensions of various MAHĀYĀNA scriptures and Buddhist TANTRAs, sometimes in multiple translations. As the East Asian tradition developed its own scholarly traditions, indigenous writings by native East Asian authors, composed in literary Chinese, also came to be included in the canon. These materials included scriptural commentaries, doctrinal treatises, biographical and hagiographical collections, edited transcriptions of oral lectures, Chinese-Sanskrit dictionaries, scriptural catalogues (JINGLU), and so on. Because the scope of the Buddhist canon in China was therefore substantially broader than the traditional tripartite structure of an Indian tripitaka, the Chinese coined alternative terms to refer to their collection of Buddhist materials, including "all the books" (yiqie jing), until eventually settling on the term dazangjing. The term dazangjing seems to derive from a Northern Song-dynasty term for an officially commissioned "great library" (dazang) that was intended to serve as a repository for "books" (jing) sanctioned by the court. Buddhist monasteries were the first places outside the imperial palaces that such officially sanctioned libraries were established. These collections of the official canonical books of Chinese Buddhism were arranged not by the VINAYA, SuTRA, ABHIDHARMA, and sĀSTRA categories of India, but in shelf lists that were more beholden to the categorizations used in court libraries. The earliest complete Buddhist canons in China date from the fifth century; by the eighth century, these manuscript collections included over one thousand individual texts in more than five thousand rolls. By the tenth century, woodblock printing techniques had become sophisticated enough that complete printed Buddhist canons began to be published, first during the Song dynasty, and thence throughout East Asia. The second xylographic canon of the Korean Koryo dynasty, the KORYo TAEJANGGYoNG, was especially renowned for its scholarly accuracy; it included some 1,514 texts, in 6,815 rolls, carved on 81,258 individual woodblocks, which are still housed today in the scriptural repository at the monastery of HAEINSA. The second Koryo canon is arranged with pride of place given to texts from the Mahāyāna tradition:
Dead Sea Scriptures, pp. 43—44.] “All men’s afflic¬
Decalogue ::: A Greek term referring to the ten commandments (aseret hadibrot) received by Moses on Mount Sinai according to Jewish scriptures (Exodus 20.1-17; Deuteronomy 5.1- 21).
Deity Intelligence and will superior to the human, forming the intelligent and vital governing essence of the universe, whether this universe be large or small. The principal views as to the nature of deity may be classed as 1) pantheistic, 2) polytheistic, 3) henotheistic, and 4) monotheistic. Pantheism, which views the divine as immanent in all nature and yet transcendent in its higher parts, is characteristic of certain Occidental philosophical systems and of all Oriental systems. Polytheism implies the recognition of an indefinite number of deific powers in the universe, the plural manifestations of the ever immanent, ever perduring, and manifest-unmanifest One. Polytheism is thus a logical development of pantheism. Henotheism is the belief in one god, but not the exclusion of others, such as is found in the Jewish scriptures, where the ancient Hebrews frankly worshiped a tribal deity and fully recognized the existence of other tribal deities. Monotheism is the belief in only one god, as is found in Christianity and Islam. These religions, in inheriting the Jewish tradition, have confounded this merely personal and local conception with the First Cause of the universe, which in theosophy would be called the formative cosmic Third Logos, thus producing an inconsistent idea of a God who is both infinite, delimited, and personal in character, with an intuition, however, of the necessarily impersonal cosmic intelligent root of all.
Deva (Sanskrit) Deva [from the verbal root div to shine] A divinity, a resplendent deity. “A Deva is a celestial being — whether good, bad, or indifferent. Devas inhabit ‘the three worlds,’ which are the three planes above us. There are 33 groups or 330 millions of them” enumerated in the exoteric sacred scriptures of Hindustan, although these numbers should not be taken literally (TG 98).
dharmasastra (Dharmashastra) ::: [a scripture dealing with dharma].
dittology ::: n. --> A double reading, or twofold interpretation, as of a Scripture text.
douay bible ::: --> A translation of the Scriptures into the English language for the use of English-speaking Roman Catholics; -- done from the Latin Vulgate by English scholars resident in France. The New Testament portion was published at Rheims, A. D. 1582, the Old Testament at Douai, A. D. 1609-10. Various revised editions have since been published.
Ekasloka-Sastra (Sanskrit) Ekaśloka-śāstra [from eka one + śloka stanza + śāstra scripture] A Buddhist mystical work written by Nagarjuna, called in Chinese the Yih-shu-lu-kia-lun.
elohim ::: n. --> One of the principal names by which God is designated in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Every incarnate buddha lives and works in the fourth or lowest buddhakshetra, as Gautama Buddha did; but at the same time, and more particularly when he has laid aside the physical body, he can live and work at will in the next higher buddhakshetra as a nirmanakaya; again as a dhyani-bodhisattva in his higher intermediate spiritual-psychological principle, he can at will function in the next higher buddhakshetra; while last, the dhyani-buddha within him lives and does its own sublime labor on the highest buddhakshetras as a dhyani-buddha. Here lies the true explanation of the many apparently conflicting statements made about the various kinds of buddhas and their various duties or functions, as found in the Buddhist scriptures, especially in the Mahayana writings of Central and Northern Asia.
exegesis ::: n. --> Exposition; explanation; especially, a critical explanation of a text or portion of Scripture.
The process of finding the roots of an equation.
explanation ::: n. --> The act of explaining, expounding, or interpreting; the act of clearing from obscurity and making intelligible; as, the explanation of a passage in Scripture, or of a contract or treaty.
That which explains or makes clear; as, a satisfactory explanation.
The meaning attributed to anything by one who explains it; definition; interpretation; sense.
A mutual exposition of terms, meaning, or motives,
expound ::: v. t. --> To lay open; to expose to view; to examine.
To lay open the meaning of; to explain; to clear of obscurity; to interpret; as, to expound a text of Scripture, a law, a word, a meaning, or a riddle.
exscriptural ::: a. --> Not in accordance with the doctrines of Scripture; unscriptural.
faith ::: n. --> Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony.
The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of another, on the ground of the manifest truth of what he utters; firm and earnest belief, on probable evidence of any kind, especially in regard to important moral truth.
The belief in the historic truthfulness of the Scripture
familiar ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a family; domestic.
Closely acquainted or intimate, as a friend or companion; well versed in, as any subject of study; as, familiar with the Scriptures.
Characterized by, or exhibiting, the manner of an intimate friend; not formal; unconstrained; easy; accessible.
Well known; well understood; common; frequent; as, a familiar illustration.
For the sadhaka of the integral yoga it is necessary to remem- ber that no written Sastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture.
Fundamentalism ::: A term originally applied to conservative, Bible-centered Protestant Christians (many of whom now prefer to call themselves "evangelicals"), but more recently extended to apply to the religiously authoritarian of all sorts who interpret their scriptures literally and in general favor a strict adherence to certain traditional doctrines and practices.
gantasi nirvedam srotavyasya strutasya ca ::: thou shalt become indifferent to Scripture heard or that which thou hast yet to hear. [Gita 2.52]
Gaster, Dead Sea Scriptures. Sariel is cited both as
Gaster, Theodor H. The Dead Sea Scriptures. Garden
gematria ::: Gematria Kabbalists believed that the written word of God was the result of His inspiration and that Scripture contained within itself an essence of His being. By the same token they believed that since God is hidden, so too, was there a hidden meaning beneath the divine words of Scripture. To uncover this hidden meaning they employed three separate methods of interpretation, Gematria, Notarikon and Temura. Gematria made use of the fact that every Hebrew letter has a numerical value assigned to it (see Sacred Alphabet), so any words with the same numerical value could be linked. For anyone interested in studying Gematria, Aleister Crowley's 'numerical dictionary' Liber 500 Sepher Sephiroth is essential reading.
Gematria [Hebrew/Aramaic gĕmaṭriyā’ from Greek geōmetría geometry] A Qabbalistic system of interpreting the Bible, consisting in finding the numerical value of a word or words — the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet each designating a number — and then substituting another word whose numerical value is equivalent to the one under consideration. Another method is that of using arithmetical values of words and phrases for interpretation of scriptures. This method forms one of the keys of interpreting sacred scriptures, although a very minor one, and in the hands of one who is inexpert an almost useless method.
George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, publishers of A Dictionary of the Sacred Language of All Scriptures and Myths by G. A. Gaskell.
gita dhyanam. :::nine verses that are recited before reading the Bhagavad Gita; these verses offer salutations to a variety of sacred scriptures, figures, and entities, characterise the relationship of the Bhagavad Gita to the
gita &
Guru(Sanskrit) ::: Sometimes gurudeva, "master divine." The word used in the old Sanskrit scriptures forteacher, preceptor. According to the beautiful teachings of the ancient wisdom, the guru acts as themidwife bringing to birth, helping to bring into the active life of the chela, the spiritual and intellectualparts of the disciple -- the soul of the man. Thus the relationship between teacher and disciple is anextremely sacred one, because it is a tie which binds closely heart to heart, mind to mind. The idea is,again, that the latent spiritual potencies in the mind and heart of the learner shall receive such assistancein their development as the teacher can karmically give; but it does not mean that the teacher shall do thework that the disciple himself or herself must do. The learner or disciple must tread his own path, and theteacher cannot tread it for him. The teacher points the way, guides and aids, and the disciple follows thepath.
Haoma (Avestan) Hūm (Pahlavi) Homa (Persian) The Tree of Life; there are two haomas: the yellow or golden earthly haoma, which when prepared and used as an offering for sacrifice is the king of healing plants, the most sacred and powerful of all the offerings prescribed in the Mazdean scriptures. This haoma is equivalent to the Hindu soma — the sacred drink used in the temples, and is said to endow he who drinks it with the property of mind.
he is king of Hades (as in Scripture). In occultism
Hereditary property: See Recursion, proof by. Hermeneutics: The art and science of interpreting especially authoritative writings, mainly in application to sacred scripture, and equivalent to exegesis. -- K.F.L.
Hermas The Pastor of Hermas or The Shepherd of Hermas is an early Christian book, attributed to Hermas because that name occurs several times in it, though the authorship is doubtful. It was widely known in the East and regarded as inspired, receiving a respect approximating that paid to the canonical New Testament. It had wide vogue as early as the 2nd century. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen quote it as scripture; and Origen identifies the author with the Hermas mentioned in Romans. Though it is impossible to assign to it a definite date of composition, conjecture points to the time of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (117-161 AD). Full of legends and allegories, it presents in suggestive forms the gospel of love, but the name of Jesus Christ does not occur. It was thought by some to be Jewish in origin and contains passages from the Zohar. It has come down to us in several Latin translations, but only fragments of the Greek manuscript have yet come to hand.
hermeneutical ::: a. --> Unfolding the signification; of or pertaining to interpretation; exegetical; explanatory; as, hermeneutic theology, or the art of expounding the Scriptures; a hermeneutic phrase.
hermeneutically ::: adv. --> According to the principles of interpretation; as, a verse of Scripture was examined hermeneutically.
hermeneutics ::: n. --> The science of interpretation and explanation; exegesis; esp., that branch of theology which defines the laws whereby the meaning of the Scriptures is to be ascertained.
heterodoxy ::: n. --> An opinion or doctrine, or a system of doctrines, contrary to some established standard of faith, as the Scriptures, the creed or standards of a church, etc.; heresy.
hexapla ::: sing. --> A collection of the Holy Scriptures in six languages or six versions in parallel columns; particularly, the edition of the Old Testament published by Origen, in the 3d century.
hutchunsonian ::: n. --> A follower of John Hutchinson of Yorkshire, England, who believed that the Hebrew Scriptures contained a complete system of natural science and of theology.
In addition to a historical account of the Quiche nation, the first portion of the scripture deals with cosmogony and the birth of humanity. The opening lines are similar in conception to the book of Genesis: “Here is the narrative of how all was in suspense, all was calm, all silent, all was motionless, all was peaceful, and empty was the immensity of the heavens. . . . The face of the Earth was not yet visible. Only the sea was, and all the space of the heavens.”
In Christianity, the dove is a symbol of the Holy Ghost, who appears in that form to Jesus at his baptism. It is also often one of the four sacred animals which denote four important human principles along with the bull, the eagle, and the lion. These four animals in Greek mystic mythology are symbols respectively of the planets Venus, the Moon, Mercury (or Jupiter), and the Sun; but it is more properly here a seraph or cherub, the fiery-winged serpent or Agathodaimon. As a symbol of gentleness and love it is frequent in the Hebrew scriptures.
infidel ::: a. --> Not holding the faith; -- applied esp. to one who does not believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the supernatural origin of Christianity. ::: n. --> One who does not believe in the prevailing religious faith; especially, one who does not believe in the divine origin and
infidelity ::: n. --> Want of faith or belief in some religious system; especially, a want of faith in, or disbelief of, the inspiration of the Scriptures, of the divine origin of Christianity.
Unfaithfulness to the marriage vow or contract; violation of the marriage covenant by adultery.
Breach of trust; unfaithfulness to a charge, or to moral obligation; treachery; deceit; as, the infidelity of a servant.
Innocents In ancient Judea this name, and that of infants or little ones, was given to neophytes and initiates just born, meaning that they were newly become such. We find the same usage in the New Testament story of the murder of the Innocents by Herod: in its original it meant the murder of chelas or initiates, but has been adapted in the Christian scriptures to mean the slaughter of actual babies with a view to include the body of Jesus.
In Persian legend, the serpent appeared in Airyanem Vaejo and by his venom transformed the beautiful, eternal spring into winter, generating disease and death. Interpreting this geologically and astronomically, “every occultist knows that the Serpent alluded to is the north pole, as also the pole of the heavens. The latter produces the seasons according to the angle at which it penetrates the centre of this earth. The two axes were no more parallel; hence the eternal spring of Airyana-Vaego by the good river Daitya had disappeared, and ‘the Aryan magi had to emigrate to Sagdiani’ — say exoteric accounts. But the esoteric teaching states that the pole had passed through the equator, and that the ‘land of bliss’ of the Fourth Race, its inheritance from the Third, had now become the region of desolation and woe. This alone ought to be an incontrovertible proof of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian Scriptures” (SD 2:356).
internal ::: a. --> Inward; interior; being within any limit or surface; inclosed; -- opposed to external; as, the internal parts of a body, or of the earth.
Derived from, or dependent on, the thing itself; inherent; as, the internal evidence of the divine origin of the Scriptures.
Pertaining to its own affairs or interests; especially, (said of a country) domestic, as opposed to foreign; as, internal
interpretation ::: n. --> The act of interpreting; explanation of what is obscure; translation; version; construction; as, the interpretation of a foreign language, of a dream, or of an enigma.
The sense given by an interpreter; exposition or explanation given; meaning; as, commentators give various interpretations of the same passage of Scripture.
The power or explaining.
An artist&
interpretation of Scripture” is also said to have
introit ::: n. --> A going in.
A psalm sung or chanted immediately before the collect, epistle, and gospel, and while the priest is entering within the rails of the altar.
A part of a psalm or other portion of Scripture read by the priest at Mass immediately after ascending to the altar.
An anthem or psalm sung before the Communion service.
Any composition of vocal music appropriate to the opening
isagogics ::: n. --> That part of theological science directly preliminary to actual exegesis, or interpretation of the Scriptures.
itala ::: n. --> An early Latin version of the Scriptures (the Old Testament was translated from the Septuagint, and was also called the Italic version).
Japa (Sanskrit) Japa [from the verbal root jap to murmur, whisper] The practice of certain yogis of repeating in a murmuring tone passages from the scriptures or mantras, or the names of a deity.
jehovah ::: n. --> A Scripture name of the Supreme Being, by which he was revealed to the Jews as their covenant God or Sovereign of the theocracy; the "ineffable name" of the Supreme Being, which was not pronounced by the Jews.
Karaism, Karaites ::: Derived from Heb., qara, “scripture.” A Middle Eastern heterodox Jewish group that arose in opposition to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century CE and emphasized the written scriptures while criticizing the rabbinic use of oral law.”
karaite ::: n. --> A sect of Jews who adhere closely to the letter of the Scriptures, rejecting the oral law, and allowing the Talmud no binding authority; -- opposed to the Rabbinists.
Karmakanda (Sanskrit) Karmakāṇḍa That part of the Sruti or Vedic writings which relates to ceremonial acts and sacrificial rites; Blavatsky holds them to be unimportant spiritually (BCW 4:366). Also one of the scriptures of the Jains.
Khanda (Sanskrit) Khaṇḍa [from the verbal root khaṇḍ to divide] A partition, portion or part divided off from the whole; hence a section or chapter of Hindu scripture. Used in philosophy for divisional parts.
Khuddaka-patha (Pali) Khuddaka-pāṭha [from khuddaka little one + pāṭha reading, text] A Buddhist scripture given to neophytes upon joining the Samgha (the Buddhist brotherhood); first book in the Khuddaka-Nikaya — a collection of short canonical Buddhist books. This brief text contains some of the most beautiful poems in Buddhist literature, and the reverential feelings evoked by reading it are unquestionably the principal reason for its use. It opens with a profession of faith in the Buddha, in the Doctrine, and in the Order.
Kitab ::: Book; Scripture; established and applied knowledge; laws and regulations
Koran al-Qur’ān (Arabic) [from qārā to read] Book, reading; the holy scripture of Islam, regarded by Moslems as the word of God (Allah) as delivered to his prophet Mohammed. The Koran explains that in heaven there is the mother of the book, well concealed. Piece by piece it was sent down to the prophet by means of an angel, spirit, or the angel Gabriel. Mohammed issued these revelations serially, each one being called a reading (qur’an) or a writing (kitab), and each particular one was also called a sura (a series) — a word now used for each section or chapter, of which there are 114.
koran ::: n. --> The Scriptures of the Mohammedans, containing the professed revelations to Mohammed; -- called also Alcoran.
Kurma Purana (Sanskrit) Kūrma Purāṇa [from kūrma tortoise] One of the 18 principal Hindu Puranas, so named because it deals with the avataric incarnation of Vishnu in the form of a tortoise. The scripture was recited by Janardana (Vishnu) in the regions under the earth to Indradyumna and the rishis in the proximity of Sakra. It tells about the Lakshmi Kalpa, and treats of the objects of life: duty, wealth, pleasure, and liberation.
law ::: n. --> In general, a rule of being or of conduct, established by an authority able to enforce its will; a controlling regulation; the mode or order according to which an agent or a power acts.
In morals: The will of God as the rule for the disposition and conduct of all responsible beings toward him and toward each other; a rule of living, conformable to righteousness; the rule of action as obligatory on the conscience or moral nature.
The Jewish or Mosaic code, and that part of Scripture where it
lection ::: n. --> A lesson or selection, esp. of Scripture, read in divine service.
A reading; a variation in the text.
lecture ::: n. --> The act of reading; as, the lecture of Holy Scripture.
A discourse on any subject; especially, a formal or methodical discourse, intended for instruction; sometimes, a familiar discourse, in contrast with a sermon.
A reprimand or formal reproof from one having authority.
A rehearsal of a lesson. ::: v. t.
lecturn ::: n. --> A choir desk, or reading desk, in some churches, from which the lections, or Scripture lessons, are chanted or read; hence, a reading desk. [Written also lectern and lettern.]
lesson ::: n. --> Anything read or recited to a teacher by a pupil or learner; something, as a portion of a book, assigned to a pupil to be studied or learned at one time.
That which is learned or taught by an express effort; instruction derived from precept, experience, observation, or deduction; a precept; a doctrine; as, to take or give a lesson in drawing.
A portion of Scripture read in divine service for
leviathan ::: n. --> An aquatic animal, described in the book of Job, ch. xli., and mentioned in other passages of Scripture.
The whale, or a great whale.
Lila (Sanskrit) Līlā Sport, diversion, pastime; in Hindu scriptures the acts of divinity, such as the creation or emanation of worlds, are called lila.
Literalist ::: A general term used in religion discussions to indicate a person or view that attempts to interpret the scriptures and other recognized classical religious authorities in a straightforward, literal manner. See also fundamentalism, allegory.
literalize ::: v. t. --> To make literal; to interpret or put in practice according to the strict meaning of the words; -- opposed to spiritualize; as, to literalize Scripture.
Lotus sutra: The most popular Buddhist scriptures in the Orient, which teaches salvation for all creatures and propounds the principle that “One is All and All is One.”
Madhav: “The Scripture Wonderful refers to the Supreme Knowledge. The Spirit-mate of Life hopes to divine the Supreme Knowledge in the transcript made by Life of God’s intention; but that script, however bright and attractive is a product of her fancy. The true Word lies covered under her fanciful rendering. The Supreme Knowledge that holds the key to the celestial beatitudes escapes him.” The Book of the Divine Mother
Mahabharata: The ancient epic poem of India, of about 215,000 lines. It includes the Bhagavad Gita, the scripture in which Krishna appears.
Main works of Husserl: Philosophie der Anthmetik, 1891; Logische Untersuchungen, 1900; Ideen z. e. reinen Phänomenologie u. Phenomologische Philos., 1913; Vorlesungen z. Phanom. d. inneren Bewusstseine, 1928; Formale u. transz. Logik, 1929; Meditations Cartesiennes Introd. a la Phenomenologie, 1931; Die Krisis der europäischen Wissensch u.d. transz. Phanomenologie, I, 1936; Erfahrung u. Urteil. Untersuch. u. Genealogie der Logik, 1939. Hussism: The Reformatory views of John Hus (1370-1415). A popular agitator and finally martyr, Hus stood between Wycliffe and Luther in the line of continental Protestant Reformers. He rested authority upon Scripture and defied ecclesiastical bans. The Hussite wars (1419-1432) following his death epitomized the growing nationalism and desire for religious reform. -- V.F.
Mano (Gnostic) In the Codex Nazaraeus, chief scripture of the Nazarene Gnostics, the chief of the aeons, the King of Splendor, from whom shoot forth five refulgent rays of divine light. The Codex describes Mano as the supreme King of Light, the great first one: he who first emanates from Ferho, the unknown formless life, generally equivalent to the Second Logos in theosophy.
masora ::: n. --> A Jewish critical work on the text of the Hebrew Scriptures, composed by several learned rabbis of the school of Tiberias, in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Mazdean (Persian) [from Mazda bestower of intellect or knowledge] Also Mazdeism. Applied to the ancient religion of the Iranians and to the scriptures of the Zoroastrians, who are represented today by the Parsis. The earliest followers of the Zoroastrianism, however, in their records called themselves Airyavo danghavo (Aryan races). Nowadays the Parsis call themselves Mazdiasnians, or Mazda-Yasna, which means worship of intellect, referring to all those who believe in the supremacy of light over darkness. From the time of the renovation of Zoroastrianism during the Sassanid period, this term has been used concurrently in the same sense as Zoroastrianism.
Michael and Gabriel (in Scripture) and Raphael (in The Book of Tohit). The last-named angel,
Midrash: Hebrew for interpretation (plural: Midrashim). Midrashim are books interpreting the Holy Scriptures.
Midrash (Hebrew) Midrāsh [from dārash to search out, inquire] Any exegetical exposition, interpretation, or commentary treating of the Jewish scriptures; often used in the plural, Midrashim.
Midrash ::: Legends, stories, and fantastic elaborations of Scripture. Jews have been creating midrash for thousands of years, and still do so today; it is often an imaginative, creative reconstruction or reconfiguration of sacred text. The interpretative approach known as midrash halakah explores the full meaning of biblical law. Midrash aggadah, on the other hand, sometimes aims to derive a moral principle, lesson or theological concept from the biblical text.
Midrash ::: (pl. midrashim). From darash, "to inquire," whence it comes to mean “exposition” (of scripture). Refers to the “commentary” literature developed in classical Judaism that attempts to interpret Jewish scriptures in a thorough manner. Literary Midrash may focus either on halaka, directing the Jew to specific patterns of religious practice, or on (h)aggada, dealing with theological ideas, ethical teachings, popular philosophy, imaginative exposition, legend, allegory, animal fables—that is, whatever is not halaka.
Miracle ::: A general term for special events that seem inexplicable by normal (rational) means. Miracle reports are frequent in Jewish and Christian scriptures and early traditions, while in Islam, the only “miracle” associated with Muhammad is said to be the reception and transmission of the Quran.
mishna ::: n. --> A collection or digest of Jewish traditions and explanations of Scripture, forming the text of the Talmud.
mitted them to be venerated. 36 Scripture, as we have seen, gives the names of no more than two
“Multitudes of human beings are unconsciously treading the Path of the Shadows, and in comparison with these multitudes it is relatively only a few who self-consciously lead and guide with subtle and wicked intelligence this army of unsuspecting victims of Maya. The Brothers of the Shadow are often highly intellectual men and women, frequently individuals with apparent great personal charm, and to the ordinary observer, judging from their conversation and daily works, are fully as well able to ‘quote scripture’ as are the Angels of Light!” (OG 22).
mystify ::: v. t. --> To involve in mystery; to make obscure or difficult to understand; as, to mystify a passage of Scripture.
To perplex the mind of; to puzzle; to impose upon the credulity of ; as, to mystify an opponent.
Naasenians, Naassenes [from Hebrew nāḥāsh serpent] A Gnostic school of the Ophites [from Greekophis serpent], which regarded the spiritual dragon or serpent as the redeeming power and as a symbol of the intelligence by whose means Adam and Eve received a knowledge of the existence of higher beings than their creator. The dragon or serpent is an extremely ancient, universal symbol of wisdom and knowledge. Only in Christian times has it become endowed with infernal attributes and used as an emblem of the Evil One. Yet even the Christian scriptures declare that divinity itself can properly be symbolized by the dragon.
Nabi or Navi ::: (pl. nebiim). A “prophet” in ancient Israel; also in Islam. Muhammad is the Muslim nabi par excellence (see also rasul). “Nevi'im” (or Nebiim) became a designation for a section of the Jewish scriptures; see TaNaK.
Name, Sacred Most names are labels, and according to ancient occult theory to disclose the real name of a being is to evoke the presence of that being, a knowledge which is made use of in magical evocations. To name the Deity would be an initiation, a revelation, fit only for ears prepared to receive it. Supreme deities are said to be ineffable — their names cannot or may not be spoken — as was the case with the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, IHVH, often written Jehovah, Jahveh, etc., but whose real pronunciation was secret and sacred. Qabbalists, in order to screen the real mystery-name of ’eyn soph (the boundless), substituted the name of one of the personal creative ’elohim, the hermaphrodite Jah-Eve; and the name was made sacred in order to conceal the deception (SD 2:126). As a substitute for Jehovah the name ’Adonai (my Lords), was afterwards used when reading the ancient Hebrew scriptures aloud for and instead of the characters, which appeared written on the manuscript, because YHVH was considered too holy for utterance.
-. New World Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Notaricon, Notarikon (Hebrew) Nōṭārīqōn [from Latin notarius stenographer] Writing down, used for that branch of study known as the literal Qabbalah. One method of notaricon consists in selecting a word and then taking each of its letters to stand for another whole word, thus making of the letters of the selected word a whole sentence. The first word of the Bible (bere’shith) is a favorite one so employed. A second method consists of using the first and last letters of a selected word to form another word; or the two medial letters of the selected word. Needless to say, this method is solely one of individual skill and is a most difficult method for interpreting the Hebrew sacred scriptures.
“nowhere shows Yama ‘as having anything to do with the punishment of the wicked.’ As king and judge of the dead, a Pluto in short, Yama is a far later creation. One has to study the true character of Yama-Yami throughout more than one hymn and epic poem, and collect the various accounts scattered in dozens of ancient works, and then he will obtain a consensus of allegorical statements which will be found to corroborate and justify the Esoteric teaching, that Yama-Yami is the symbol of the dual Manas, in one of its mystical meanings. For instance, Yama-Yami is always represented of a green colour and clothed with red, and as dwelling in a palace of copper and iron. Students of Occultism know to which of the human ‘principles’ the green and the red colours, and by correspondence the iron and copper, are to be applied. The ‘twofold-ruler’ — the epithet of Yama-Yami — is regarded in the exoteric teachings of the Chino-Buddhists as both judge and criminal, the restrainer of his own evil doings and the evil-doer himself. In the Hindu epic poems Yama-Yami is the twin-child of the Sun (the deity) by Sanjna (spiritual consciousness); but while Yama is the Aryan ‘lord of the day,’ appearing as the symbol of spirit in the East, Yami is the queen of the night (darkness, ignorance) ‘who opens to mortals the path to the West’ — the emblem of evil and matter. In the Puranas Yama has many wives (many Yamis) who force him to dwell in the lower world (Patala, Myalba, etc., etc.); and an allegory represents him with his foot lifted, to kick Chhaya, the handmaiden of his father (the astral body of his mother, Sanjna, a metaphysical aspect of Buddhi or Alaya). As stated in the Hindu Scriptures, a soul when it quits its mortal frame, repairs to its abode in the lower regions (Kamaloka or Hades). Once there, the Recorder, the Karmic messenger called Chitragupta (hidden or concealed brightness), reads out his account from the Great Register, wherein during the life of the human being, every deed and thought are indelibly impressed — and, according to the sentence pronounced, the ‘soul’ either ascends to the abode of the Pitris (Devachan), descends to a ‘hell’ (Kamaloka), or is reborn on earth in another human form” (TG 376).
offertory ::: n. --> The act of offering, or the thing offered.
An anthem chanted, or a voluntary played on the organ, during the offering and first part of the Mass.
That part of the Mass which the priest reads before uncovering the chalice to offer up the elements for consecration.
The oblation of the elements.
The Scripture sentences said or sung during the collection of the offerings.
Of the archaic history of medicine — as of the race — little is to be found. However, echoes of the primitive wisdom have survived, and every country having a literature of its ancient periods has some account of the healing art. The Hindu sacred scriptures — the oldest literature extant — have treatises upon medicine and surgery, showing a profound and intimate knowledge of the subject. This high standard was not maintained when the Vedic writings became misunderstood and mutilated by later commentators. The exclusive Brahmins’ assumption of the right to all knowledge also prevented original thought and research. What writings are available today are of little practical value without the lost key. Even our typically matter-of-fact interpretation of legendary and classical beliefs and customs, and of archaeological findings, overlooks that what is known of ancient medical practice is largely exoteric, symbolic of a deeper teaching than we possess.
Om ::: A word considered very holy in the Brahmanical literature. It is a syllable of invocation, as well as ofbenediction and of affirmation, and its general usage (as elucidated in the literature treating of it, which israther voluminous, for this word Om has attained almost divine reverence on the part of vast numbers ofHindus) is that it should never be uttered aloud, or in the presence of an outsider, a foreigner, or anon-initiate, and it should be uttered in the silence of one's mind, in peace of heart, and in the intimacy ofone's "inner closet." There is strong reason to believe, however, that this syllable of invocation wasuttered, and uttered aloud in a monotone, by the disciples in the presence of their teacher. This word isalways placed at the beginning of any scripture or prayer that is considered of unusual sanctity.It is said that by prolonging the uttering of this word, both of the o and the m, with the mouth closed, thesound re-echoes in and arouses vibration in the skull, and affects, if the aspirations be pure, the differentnervous centers of the body for good.The Brahmanas say that it is an unholy thing to utter this word in any place which is unholy. It issometimes written Aum.
Om (Sanskrit) Om In Brahmanical literature, a syllable of invocation, considered very holy: “Om is the bow, the Self is the arrow, Brahman is called its aim” (Mandukya Upanishad 2:2). It is placed at the beginning of scriptures considered of unusual sanctity. “Prolonging the uttering of this word, both of the O and the M, with the mouth closed, it reechoes in and arouses vibration in the skull, and affects, if the aspirations be pure, the different nervous centers of the body for great good” (Fund 28). The virtue or spiritual and magical properties attributed to this word, however, arise out of the purity and devotion of the one uttering it. See also AUM
One phase of hatha yoga is the pranayama (suppression of the breath), interference with the normal and healthy respiration of the body; a practice which can readily produce tuberculosis of the lungs. It is breathing deeply, healthfully, and as often as common sense suggests, that brings benefits to the body because bringing about a better oxygenation of the blood and therefore a better physical tone. In very rare circumstances only, where a chela has advanced relatively far mentally and spiritually, but has still an unfortunate and heavy physical karma as yet not worked out, it may possibly be proper, under the guidance of a genuine teacher, to use the hatha yoga methods in a limited degree, but only under the teacher’s own eye. For this reason hatha yoga books are occasionally mentioned in theosophical literature — the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, for example, is a hatha yoga scripture, but one of the highest type. But generally, hatha yoga practices are injurious and therefore unwise, for they distract the attention from things of the spirit and direct it to the lower parts of the constitution.
one time quoted as sacred Scripture by Origen,
oracle ::: n. --> The answer of a god, or some person reputed to be a god, to an inquiry respecting some affair or future event, as the success of an enterprise or battle.
Hence: The deity who was supposed to give the answer; also, the place where it was given.
The communications, revelations, or messages delivered by God to the prophets; also, the entire sacred Scriptures -- usually in the plural.
Oral Law ::: In traditional Jewish pharisaic/rabbinic thought, God reveals instructions for living through both the written scriptures and through a parallel process of orally transmitted traditions. Critics of this approach within Judaism include Sadducees and Karaites.The teachings of the Oral Law, which explain the gaps in the Written Law, were eventually written down to comprise the Mishnah by Rabbi yehudah HaNassi and the Gemara by Ravina and Rav Ashi.
oratorio ::: n. --> A more or less dramatic text or poem, founded on some Scripture nerrative, or great divine event, elaborately set to music, in recitative, arias, grand choruses, etc., to be sung with an orchestral accompaniment, but without action, scenery, or costume, although the oratorio grew out of the Mysteries and the Miracle and Passion plays, which were acted.
Performance or rendering of such a composition.
original ::: a. --> Pertaining to the origin or beginning; preceding all others; first in order; primitive; primary; pristine; as, the original state of man; the original laws of a country; the original inventor of a process.
Not copied, imitated, or translated; new; fresh; genuine; as, an original thought; an original process; the original text of Scripture.
Having the power to suggest new thoughts or combinations
orthodox ::: a. --> Sound in opinion or doctrine, especially in religious doctrine; hence, holding the Christian faith; believing the doctrines taught in the Scriptures; -- opposed to heretical and heterodox; as, an orthodox Christian.
According or congruous with the doctrines of Scripture, the creed of a church, the decree of a council, or the like; as, an orthodox opinion, book, etc.
Approved; conventional.
orthodoxy ::: n. --> Soundness of faith; a belief in the doctrines taught in the Scriptures, or in some established standard of faith; -- opposed to heterodoxy or to heresy.
Consonance to genuine Scriptural doctrines; -- said of moral doctrines and beliefs; as, the orthodoxy of a creed.
By extension, said of any correct doctrine or belief.
or three angels. That there may well be seven named angels in Scripture is the subject of a paper
Padma Purana (Sanskrit) Padma Purāṇa The Lotus-Purana; one of the Hindu Puranas which contains an account of the period when the world was “as a golden lotus (padma).” The scripture, considered to be the second in importance of the 18 principle Puranas, consists of 55,000 slokas, and is divided into five books (khandas) treating of the creation, the earth, heaven (svarga), and patala, while the fifth book is a supplementary section.
Passages in holy scriptures, such as 1 Samuel, have misled many Europeans into believing that such methods of attempting to peer into the future were proper and considered morally permissible by the wise of ancient days. Yet one has but to read this chapter to see that the woman knew her practice was done against the law then prevailing, which apparently made necromantic intercourse of this type punishable with death (cf 28:9). Traffic with the dead was not infrequently resorted to in ancient times, but was censured as unholy, if not evil. Such raisings of the dead have been common in all ages by necromancers, sorcerers, and traffickers in lower magic; although it is quite true that ancient legend and story provides a number of instances where people of prominence resorted in moments of desperation to such methods in an attempt to gain foreknowledge of events coming to pass: for example, the incident related by Homer of the raising of the shade of the seer Teiresias by Odysseus (Odyssey bk 11) and again the necromantic practices of Sextus, the son of Pompey, through the “witch” Erictho on the plains of Thessaly, as described by Lucan (Pharsalia Bk 6, vv. 570-820).
Pericope ::: A portion of Scripture read in public worship.
Philo of Alexandria: (30 B.C.- 50 A.D.) Jewish theologian and Neo-Platonic philosopher. He held that Greek thought borrowed largely from Mosaic teachings and therefore justified his use of Greek philosophy for the purpose of interpreting Scripture in a spiritual sense. For Philo, the renunciation of self and, through the divine Logos in all men, the achievement of immediate contact with the Supreme Being, is the highest blessedness for man. -- M.F Philosopheme: (Gr. philosophema) An apodictic syllogism (Aristotle). -- G.R.M.
Popol Vuh (Quiche) An ancient scripture of the Mayas. The manuscript which has come down to our day was discovered by Ximenez, a Dominican missionary in the 17th century, near Guatemala City, and translated by him into Spanish. Later, Brasseur de Bourbourg translated the manuscript from the original Quiche into French. But this manuscript was written or dictated by a native in the Quiche tongue and is not the original, for as the writer himself says in his preface: “This is the beginning of the ancient history of the country here called Quiche . . . We will publish it in the world of Christendom, because this National Book, the Popol Vuh, is seen no more, . . . This is the first book written in times of old, but it is hidden from the sight of him who sees and thinks.”
postillate ::: v. t. --> To explain by marginal notes; to postil. ::: v. i. --> To write postils; to comment.
To preach by expounding Scripture verse by verse, in regular order.
postillation ::: n. --> The act of postillating; exposition of Scripture in preaching.
postillator ::: n. --> One who postillates; one who expounds the Scriptures verse by verse.
postil ::: n. --> Originally, an explanatory note in the margin of the Bible, so called because written after the text; hence, a marginal note; a comment.
A short homily or commentary on a passage of Scripture; as, the first postils were composed by order of Charlemagne. ::: v. t.
preach ::: v. i. --> To proclaim or publish tidings; specifically, to proclaim the gospel; to discourse publicly on a religious subject, or from a text of Scripture; to deliver a sermon.
To give serious advice on morals or religion; to discourse in the manner of a preacher. ::: v. t.
preceptive ::: a. --> Containing or giving precepts; of the nature of precepts; didactic; as, the preceptive parts of the Scriptures.
Prince of the Torah: In Jewish mysticism, “the angel who represents the Torah [the Holy Scriptures] in Heaven. The elements, the forces of nature, and the nations, which according to Jewish tradition, are seventy in number, are represented by their respective princes, who are either angels or demons.” (M. Buber.)
professor ::: n. --> One who professed, or makes open declaration of, his sentiments or opinions; especially, one who makes a public avowal of his belief in the Scriptures and his faith in Christ, and thus unites himself to the visible church.
One who professed, or publicly teaches, any science or branch of learning; especially, an officer in a university, college, or other seminary, whose business it is to read lectures, or instruct students, in a particular branch of learning; as a professor of
prophecy ::: n. --> A declaration of something to come; a foretelling; a prediction; esp., an inspired foretelling.
A book of prophecies; a history; as, the prophecy of Ahijah.
Public interpretation of Scripture; preaching; exhortation or instruction.
Prophet ::: (from Greek, to “speak for” or “speak forth”). Name given to accepted spokespersons of God (or their opposites, “false prophets”). Became a designation for a section of the Jewish scriptures; see nabi, TaNaK.
protocanonical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to the first canon, or that which contains the authorized collection of the books of Scripture; -- opposed to deutero-canonical.
Purana (Sanskrit) Purāṇa Ancient, old, an ancient tale or legend. The 18 Hindu scriptures known today as the Puranas are ancient legends of olden times, written in verse, partly in symbolical and allegorical and partly in quasi-historical language. They are supposed originally to have been composed by Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata. A Purana is a work which has five distinguishing topics (pancha-lakshanas): 1) the creation of the universe; 2) its destruction and renovation; 3) the genealogy of gods and patriarchs; 4) the reigns of the manus, forming the periods called manvantaras; and 5) the history of the solar and lunar races of kings.
puranas. ::: a number of ancient scriptures attributed to the sage Vyasa that teach spiritual principles and practices through stories about sacred historical personages which often include their teachings given in conversations
Puranas(Sanskrit) ::: A word which literally means "ancient," "belonging to olden times." In India the word isespecially used as a term comprehending certain well-known sacred scriptures, which popular and evenscholarly authorities ascribe to the poet Vyasa. The Puranas contain the entire body of ancient Indianmythology. They are usually considered to be eighteen in number, and each Purana, to be complete, issupposed to consist of five topics or themes. These five topics or themes are commonly enumerated asfollows: (1) the beginnings or "creation" of the universe; (2) its renewals and destructions, ormanvantaras and pralayas; (3) the genealogies of the gods, other divine beings, heroes, and patriarchs; (4)the reigns of the various manus; and (5) a resume of the history of the solar and lunar races. Practicallynone of the Puranas as they stand in modern versions contains all these five topics, except perhaps theVishnu-Purana, probably the most complete in this sense of the word; and even the Vishnu-Puranacontains a great deal of matter not directly to be classed under these five topics. All the Puranas alsocontain a great deal of symbolical and allegorical writing.
Purgatory as “a fond thing vainly invented and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to
Qur’an (Koran) ::: Arabic Al Qur'an, “The Recitation.” The sacred scriptures of Islam, the religion of the Muslims dictated to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel.
Redactor ::: An editor, especially with reference to ancient books such as the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Reformation: The Protestant Reformation may be dated from 1517, the year Martin Luther (1483-1546), Augustinian monk and University professor in Wittenberg, publicly attacked the sale of indulgences by the itinerant Tetzel, Dominican ambassador of the Roman Church. The break came first in the personality of the monk who could not find in his own religious and moral endeavors to win divine favor the peace demanded by a sensitive conscience; and when it came he found to his surprise that he had already parted company with a whole tradition. The ideology which found a response in his inner experience was set forth by Augustine, a troubled soul who had surrendered himself completely to divine grace and mercy. The philosophers who legitimized man's endeavor to get on in the world, the church which demanded unquestioned loyalty to its codes and commands, he eschewed as thoroughly inconsonant with his own inner life. Man is wholly dependent upon the merits of Christ, the miracle of faith alone justifies before God. Man's conscience, his reason, and the Scriptures together became his only norm and authority. He could have added a fourth: patriotism, since Luther became the spokesman of a rising tide of German nationalism already suspect of the powers of distant Rome. The humanist Erasmus (see Renaissance) supported Luther by his silence, then broke with him upon the reformer's extreme utterances concerning man's predestination. This break with the humanists shows clearly the direction which the Protestant Reformation was taking: it was an enfranchised religion only to a degree. For while Erasmus pleaded for tolerance and enlightenment the new religious movement called for decision and faith binding men's consciences to a new loyalty. At first the Scriptures were taken as conscience permitted, then conscience became bound by the Scuptures. Luther lacked a systematic theology for the simple reason that he himself was full of inconsistencies. A reformer is often not a systematic thinker. Lutheran princes promoted the reconstruction of institutions and forms suggested by the reformer and his learned ally, Melanchthon, and by one stroke whole provinces became Protestant. The original reformers were reformed by new reformers. Two of such early reformers were Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) in Switzerland and John Calvin (1509-1564) who set up a rigid system and rule of God in Geneva. Calvinism crossed the channel under the leadership of John Knox in Scotland. The English (Anglican) Reformation rested on political rather than strictly religious considerations. The Reformation brought about a Counter-Reformation within the Roman Church in which abuses were set right and lines against the Protestants more tightly drawn (Council of Trent, 1545-1563). -- V.F.
Reider, Joseph. The Holy Scriptures, Deuteronomy.
Revelation ::: A general term for self-disclosure of the divine (God reveals to humans), which is often considered to be focused in the revealed scriptures. Also the name of a specific Christian biblical book, the “Apocalypse” (Greek, “uncovered”) or “Revelation” (Latin).
Romakapura (Sanskrit) Romakapura [from romaka hairy + pura city, fortified town] City of hairy ones; in the Surya-Siddhanta (1:6; 12:39), the birth place of Asuramaya, the putative author of the Surya-Siddhanta itself, who states that he received the knowledge which the scripture contains by dictation from the sun. It is stated to have been told to Asuramaya when but little of the krita yuga was left, making the work’s age at least 2,200,000 years. The “fact of ‘Romaka-pura in the West’ being named as the birth-place of this hero of the archaic ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the esoteric teaching about the ‘Sweat-born’ Races, the men born from the pores of their parents. ‘Romakupas’ means ‘hair-pores’ in Sanskrit” (SD 2:68). Romakapura therefore has a vague allusion to the land and cradle of the sweat-born of the third root-race, but more particularly in this case to the early days of Atlantis. The figure of 2,200,000 years ago brings Asuramaya and his work into the first part of the present fifth root-race.
Sadducees [from Greek saddoukaioi from Hebrew tsadoq supposed to be the founder of the sect, meaning just, righteous] Among Europeans, a skeptic or doubter; originally the party of the Jewish priestly aristocracy which arose in the 2nd century BC under the later Hasmoneans. The Sadducees have come to be regarded as primarily a political party opposed to the Pharisees, called by some the party of the Scribes, but later Jewish tradition following Josephus more accurately regarded them as a philosophico-religious school. The Sadducees, a sect of erudite philosophers, opposed a great deal of the commonly accepted beliefs of the majority of the Jews, who were actually nearly all Pharisees — as for instance, the immortality of the personal soul, and the actual resurrection of the physical body; yet they strongly upheld what they considered the genuine meaning, and therefore the true authority, of the Jewish scriptures. They likewise opposed no small number of doctrinal or religious innovations, some of them true, and some of them less true in nature, which had been accepted by the body of the Pharisees — virtually by the Jewish people. And the reason for their reluctance to accept these innovations, whether of doctrine or interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, seems to be that they preferred a highly philosophical and even perhaps mystical interpretation, which they said the Jewish scriptures contained, rather than the more popular versions accepted by the Hebrew people as a whole. One may say that what the Gnostics were to the body of the Christians in the early centuries of the Christian era, the Sadducees were to the body of the Jews or Pharisees. The Sadducees likewise claimed to be the scientists and genuine philosophers of the Hebrews; although it is apparently quite true that as time went on their attitude of opposition, and even of reluctance, often became, at least among individual Sadducees, an attitude of cynicism and even possibly of cynical disbelief.
sadhana sastra (Sadhana Shastra) ::: [a scripture (sastra) of spiritual practice (sadhana)].
Samaritans ::: Another of the numerous sub-groups in early Judaism (see also Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes) and residents of the district of Samaria north of Jerusalem and Judah in what is now Israel. They are said to have recognized only the Pentateuch as scripture and Mt. Gerizim as the sacred center rather than Jerusalem. There was ongoing hostility between Samaritans and Judahites. Samaritan communities exist to the present.
Sapta-Surya (Sanskrit) Sapta-Sūrya The seven suns; the seven fundamental solar logoi of our own sun; as well as the seven suns of our Universal Solar System. They are likewise connected to the hierarchies of intelligent beings or dhyani-chohans of various classes which enter into creative functions or action when the central sun emits creative light preceding the later periods of manvantaric activity. Those classes of the dhyani-chohans who are the cosmic architects open the manvantaric drama by entering upon their respective functions, and once the lines of structure are thus laid, the lower classes of dhyani-chohans — high though they may be in spirituality and intellectuality — begin thereupon their work as builders, which is ceaseless until the manvantaric end. References to these two general classes of ideative cosmic spirits, the architects and the cosmic masons or builders, are found in nearly all of the ancient religio-philosophic scriptures of the world.
Sastra (Sanskrit) Śāstra [from the verbal root śās to direct, bid, instruct] An order, precept, rule, advice; any instrument of teaching; any book or treatise, especially religious or scientific; any sacred scripture or composition of supposedly divine authority such as the Vedas.
scriptural ::: a. --> Contained in the Scriptures; according to the Scriptures, or sacred oracles; biblical; as, a scriptural doctrine.
scripturalism ::: n. --> The quality or state of being scriptural; literal adherence to the Scriptures.
scripturalist ::: n. --> One who adheres literally to the Scriptures.
Scripture. 1
Scripture and Talmud. Rahab was destroyed
Scripture, as a consequence, were conceived of as male. 31 However, it was not long before the
Scripture as the 1st temptress, as Adam’s demon
Scripture, canonical in Catholic). In The Book of
Scriptures ::: General designation for canonical or biblical writings.
Scriptures. Hartford, Conn.: The S. S. Scranton Co.
Scripture Wonderful
scripturist ::: n. --> One who is strongly attached to, or versed in, the Scriptures, or who endeavors to regulate his life by them.
Sepher (Hebrew) Sēfer Writing, something that is written, a book. In the plural (sĕfārīm), books or writings, the Jewish holy scriptures. In the Sepher Yetsirah, an early Qabbalistic treatise and one of the most important in the Qabbalah, the first verse states that the Lord and King of the universe formed “the universe in thirty-two secret paths of wisdom by means of three Sepharim: [1] Sephar, [2] and Sippur, [3] and Sepher, i.e. through [1] Numbering; [2] Numberer; and [3] Number.” The verbal root from which this word is taken originally meant to make marks — not only to write but also to number or count. Hence the play upon the three words, described as the three Sepharim, has reference to the activities of the Sephiroth in unfolding both intrinsic mathematical and numerical quantities and attributes by means of the spiritual beings forming the Sephiroth and eventuating in the “number” carpentry or structure of the cosmos.
Septuagint ::: Strictly speaking, refers to the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Pentateuch, probably made during the reign of Ptolemy II, Greek ruler of Egypt around 250 B.C.E. Subsequently, Greek translations of other portions of the Jewish scriptures came to be added to the corpus, and the term Septuagint was applied to the entire collection. Such collections served as the "scriptures" for Greek speaking Jews and Christians.
sermon ::: n. --> A discourse or address; a talk; a writing; as, the sermons of Chaucer.
Specifically, a discourse delivered in public, usually by a clergyman, for the purpose of religious instruction and grounded on some text or passage of Scripture.
Hence, a serious address; a lecture on one&
shastra &
shastri &
shatkasampatti &
shruti &
Simorgh (Persian) Meregho-saena (Avestan) Sen-murv, Sene-muruk (Pahlavi) The gigantic bird of fable likened by some to the hippogriff or griffin; half phoenix, half lion. In the ancient Zoroastrian scriptures of the Avesta, it is described as a gigantic bird whose resting place is the tree Jad-besh (opposed to harm of all seeds); when he rises aloft a thousand twigs shoot forth from that tree; when he alights, he will break off the thousand twigs and shed their seed. The bird Chanmrosh forever sits in that vicinity, and collects the seed which drops from the tree and conveys it where Tishtar seizes the water, so that it may rain on the world.
skeptical ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to a sceptic or skepticism; characterized by skepticism; hesitating to admit the certainly of doctrines or principles; doubting of everything.
Doubting or denying the truth of revelation, or the sacred Scriptures.
smriti &
Socinians: Followers of the 16th century Italian, humanistic Christians, Socinus (Sotzzini), Laelius and Faustus. They advocated freedom of thought over against the orthodox expressions of Christianity. The Racovian Catechism (1605) states their method and doctrines. In general, they were anti-Trinitarians (see Trinitarianism), anti-Augustinian (opposing the doctrines or original sin, depravity, predestination), anti-Catholic institutionalism; their interpretation of Christianity was that it is a religion of the attainment of eternal life, Jesus being the revealer of God, and the Scriptures giving a supernatural revelation which is necessary and rationally defensible. A strong ethical note pervaded their theology. They opposed the view of sacramental mysteries. Although condemned by the Protestant churches, the Socinians exerted a tremendous influence even after their formal dissolution as a party. -- V.F.
Speaking of the great antiquity of the Zoroastrian scriptures, Blavatsky remarks that the forefathers of “the Neo-Aryans of the post-diluvian age . . . had met before the Flood, and conversed with the pure ‘Yazathas’ (celestial Spirits of the Elements), whose life and food they had once shared” (SD 2:356).
sraddha. ::: earnestness; faith; faith in the scriptures and the Guru; confidence or assurance that arises from personal experience
srotavyasya srutasya ca ::: [of scripture to be heard or heard]; texts old and new. [Gita 2.52]
sruti (Shruti) ::: hearing, spiritual audience, inspiration; an inspired Scripture.
stich ::: n. --> A verse, of whatever measure or number of feet.
A line in the Scriptures; specifically (Hebrew Scriptures), one of the rhythmic lines in the poetical books and passages of the Old Treatment, as written in the oldest Hebrew manuscripts and in the Revised Version of the English Bible.
A row, line, or rank of trees.
“Surely there must have been some very good reasons why the Sadducees, who furnished almost all the high Priests of Judea, held to the Laws of Moses and spurned the alleged ‘Books of Moses,’ the Penateuch of the Synagogue and the Talmud” (SD 1:320-1n) — doubtless because they rejected the literal rendering of the Pentateuch, and in the beginning at least preferred their own interpretations of the Hebrew scriptures.
Suttee [from Sanskrit satī faithful wife, one who burns herself on a funeral pyre, either on the same pyre as her husbands corpse or at a distance] The practice of voluntary self-immolation by widows was prohibited by the British in India and finally abolished. When its cessation was first commanded, the Brahmins — who were principally responsible for the continuance of this dreadful custom — maintained that their sacred scriptures approved of the practice, but Orientalists have demonstrated that the texts so cited had been altered. “Professor Wilson was the first to point out the falsification of the text and the change of ‘yonim agre’ into ‘yonim agneh’ [womb of fire] . . . According to the hymns of the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and the Vaidic ceremonial contained in the ‘Grihya-Sutras,’ the wife accompanies the corpse of her husband to the funeral pile, but she is there addressed with a verse taken from the ‘Rig-Veda,’ and ordered to leave her husband, and to return to the world of the living” (Max Muller, Chips from a German Workshop 2:35).
Svabhavat(Sanskrit) ::: The neuter present participle of a compound word derived from the verb-root bhu, meaning "tobecome," from which is derived a secondary meaning "to be," in the sense of growth.Svabhavat is a state or condition of cosmic consciousnesssubstance, where spirit and matter, which arefundamentally one, no longer are dual as in manifestation, but one: that which is neither manifestedmatter nor manifested spirit alone, but both are the primeval unity -- spiritual akasa -- where mattermerges into spirit, and both now being really one, are called "Father-Mother," spirit-substance.Svabhavat never descends from its own state or condition, or from its own plane, but is the cosmicreservoir of being, as well as of beings, therefore of consciousness, of intellectual light, of life; and it isthe ultimate source of what science, in our day, so quaintly calls the energies of nature universal.The northern Buddhists call svabhavat by a more mystical term, Adi-buddhi, "primeval buddhi"; theBrahmanical scriptures call it akasa; and the Hebrew Old Testament refers to it as the cosmic "waters."The difference in meaning between svabhavat and svabhava is very great and is not generallyunderstood; the two words often have been confused. Svabhava is the characteristic nature, thetype-essence, the individuality, of svabhavat -- of any svabhavat, each such svabhavat having its ownsvabhava. Svabhavat, therefore, is really the world-substance or stuff, or still more accurately that whichis causal of the world-substance, and this causal principle or element is the spirit and essence of cosmicsubstance. It is the plastic essence of matter, both manifest and unmanifest. (See also Akasa)
Tantra: That body of Hindu religious literature which is stated to have been revealed by Shiva as the specific scripture of the Kali Yuga (the present age). The Tantras were the encyclopedias of esoteric knowledge of their time; the topics of a Tantra are: the creation of the universe, worship of the gods, spiritual exercise, rituals, the six magical powers, and meditation.
Targum (Hebrew) Targūm [from the verbal root rāgam to arrange, explain, interpret] Interpretation; paraphrases of books of the Old Testament in Chaldee, or especially Aramaic, made at a time when the Aramaic superseded the Hebrew as a spoken language among the Jews, it being then found that the general mass of people were unable to understand the Hebrew scriptures. The date is given as about the 2nd century BC. The introduction of Targums is ascribed to Ezra by the Jews.
Targum ::: (Heb. translation, interpretation) Generally used to designate Aramaic translations of the Jewish scriptures. See also Septuagint (in a sense, Greek Targums).
targum ::: n. --> A translation or paraphrase of some portion of the Old Testament Scriptures in the Chaldee or Aramaic language or dialect.
testament ::: n. --> A solemn, authentic instrument in writing, by which a person declares his will as to disposal of his estate and effects after his death.
One of the two distinct revelations of God&
Testament ::: Term for an agreement between two (or more) parties, such as a “last will and testament.” In Jewish tradition, the covenant concept played an important role, and was translated as “testament,” especially in Christian references to the scriptures of the “old covenant” (Old Testament) and the “new” (New Testament).
Tetragrammaton [from Greek tetra four + gramma letter] Used by Qabbalists to designate the four Hebrew characters Hebrew characters — variously rendered in Roman letters YHVH, IHVH, JHVH, etc. — forming the word Jehovah (Yehovah). Present-day scholars regard this rendition of the four letters as erroneous, and some suggest that the proper reading should be Yahveh or Yahweh — depending on another manner of applying the vowel-points to the consonants. The Jews themselves, however, never pronounced the name when reading their sacred scriptures, but utter ’Adonai (the Lord) in its place. Nevertheless, the Qabbalists (more particularly medieval and modern authors) have attached special importance and significance to this four-lettered word, particularly to the Hebrew equivalent for Tetragrammaton, Shem-ham-Mephorash, sometimes called the mirific name.
tetragrammaton ::: Tetragrammaton The four-letter Tetragrammaton is supposed to be the true name of the God in the Hebrew scriptures. Its pronunciation is considered to have great power, and is never spoken aloud, except for once a year in the inner sanctuary of the Temple during Yom Kippur. The Tetragrammaton is central to the doctrines of both the Jewish and Kabbalistic traditions, where it is equivalent to the four worlds of creation, the four elements, the four archangels, and the four cardinal directions.
text ::: n. --> A discourse or composition on which a note or commentary is written; the original words of an author, in distinction from a paraphrase, annotation, or commentary.
The four Gospels, by way of distinction or eminence.
A verse or passage of Scripture, especially one chosen as the subject of a sermon, or in proof of a doctrine.
Hence, anything chosen as the subject of an argument, literary composition, or the like; topic; theme.
textuary ::: a. --> Contained in the text; textual.
Serving as a text; authoritative. ::: n. --> One who is well versed in the Scriptures; a textman.
One who adheres strictly or rigidly to the text.
T. Gaster in The Dead Sea Scriptures, p. 341.]
The Amshaspands in ancient Persian theology bore the same general relation to the universe that the seven or ten prajapatis have in the Hindu scriptures, or that the seven or ten Sephiroth have in the Hebrew Qabbalah. See also Amesha-Spenta.
"The Gita in later chapters speaks highly of the Veda and the Upanishads. They are divine Scriptures, they are the Word. The Lord himself is the knower of Veda and the author of Vedanta, vedavid vedântakrt; the Lord is the one object of knowledge in all the Vedas, sarvair vedair aham eva vedyah, a language which implies that the word Veda means the book of knowledge and that these Scriptures deserve their appellation.” Essays on the Gita
“The Gita in later chapters speaks highly of the Veda and the Upanishads. They are divine Scriptures, they are the Word. The Lord himself is the knower of Veda and the author of Vedanta, vedavid vedântakrt; the Lord is the one object of knowledge in all the Vedas, sarvair vedair aham eva vedyah, a language which implies that the word Veda means the book of knowledge and that these Scriptures deserve their appellation.” Essays on the Gita
“The Gita in later chapters speaks highly of the Veda and the Upanishads. They are divine Scriptures, they are the Word. The Lord himself is the knower of Veda and the author of Vedanta, vedavidvedântakrt; the Lord is the one object of knowledge in all the Vedas, sarvairvedairahamevavedyah, a language which implies that the word Veda means the book of knowledge and that these Scriptures deserve their appellation.” Essays on the Gita
“The kabalist is a student of ‘secret science,’ one who interprets the hidden meaning of the Scriptures with the help of the symbolical Kabalah, and explains the real one by these means. The Tanaim were the first kabalists among the Jews; they appeared at Jerusalem about the beginning of the third century before the Christian era. The books of Ezekiel, Daniel, Henoch, and the Revelation of St. John, are purely kabalistical. This secret doctrine is identical with that of the Chaldeans, and includes at the same time much of the Persian wisdom, or ‘magic.’ History catches glimpses of famous kabalists ever since the eleventh century. The Mediaeval ages, and even our own times, have had an enormous number of the most learned and intellectual men who were students of the Kabala . . . The most famous among the former were Paracelsus, Henry Khunrath, Jacob Bohmen, Robert Fludd, the two Van Helmonts, the Abbot John Trithemius, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardinal Nicolao Cusani, Jerome Carden, Pope Sixtus IV., and such Christian scholars as Raymond Lully, Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola, Guillaume Postel, the great John Reuchlin, Dr. Henry More, Eugenius Philalethes (Thomas Vaughan), the erudite Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, Christian Knorr (Baron) von Rosenroth; then Sir Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Lord Bacon, Spinosa, etc., etc., the list being almost inexhaustible. As remarked by Mr. Isaac Myer, in his Qabbalah [p. 170], the ideas of the Kabalists have largely influenced European literature. ‘Upon the practical Qabbalah, the Abbe de Villars (nephew of de Montfaucon) in 1670, published his celebrated satirical novel, “The Count de Gabalis,” upon which Pope based his “Rape of the Lock.” Qabbalism ran through the Mediaeval poems, the “Romance of the Rose,” and permeates the writings of Dante.’ No two of them, however, agreed upon the origin of the Kabala, the Zohar, Sepher Yetzirah, etc. Some show it as coming from the Biblical Patriarchs, Abraham, and even Seth; others from Egypt, others again from Chaldea. The system is certainly very old; but like all the rest of systems, whether religious or philosophical, the Kabala is derived directly from the primeval Secret Doctrine of the East; through the Vedas, the Upanishads, Orpheus and Thales, Pythagoras and the Egyptians. Whatever its source, its substratum is at any rate identical with that of all the other systems from the Book of the Dead down to the later Gnostics” (TG 167-8).
The key to an understanding of the nature of the four Gospels lies in a consideration of the process which the functions and teachings of some of the Mystery schools of Asia Minor became gradually transformed into the formal religious system known as Christianity. The Gospels must have originated as extracts from the Mystery-dramas enacted in those schools. The mystical-human birth of Jesus, his trials or tests, his teachings, crucifixion, resurrection, etc., are clearly a form of the world-old and universal Mystery-drama of initiation of a human neophyte re-enacted in those ceremonies. The Gospels’ present form is the result of many copyings, recensions, omissions, additions, and alterations. They are, in fact, symbolic narratives made around the personality and individuality of a real character which thus has become a Mystery-figure; and contain also many teachings properly to be attributed to him, belonging to the general class of logia, or wise sayings of teachers, paralleled in the other world sacred scriptures. Jesus, as represented, is not historical; but there was an actual teacher, doubtless bearing the name Yeshua‘, Latinized as Jesus, who lived about a century earlier than the commonly accepted beginning of the Christian era.
The later Atlanteans were noted for their magic powers, wickedness, and defiance of the gods, and this tradition is preserved in many legends, such as the Biblical Tower of Babel, which derived from still older Chaldean scriptures. The legendary stories of wicked antediluvian giants warring against heaven are common in every mythology. The defeat of the giants, in some at least of these legends, results in the confusion of tongues — the break-up and dispersal of a great racial division of mankind.
-. “The Named Angels in Scripture.” In press.
The name especially given to the sacred scriptures of the Sikhs. These were originally compiled in 1604 by the fifth Sikh guru, Arjan, and consisted of hymns of the first five gurus and of saints of different religions and castes. In 1705-6 Govindsingh, the tenth and last guru, added the hymns of the ninth guru and enjoined that after him the Grantha would take the place of the guru. The theme of the hymns is the union of the human soul with the divine through transcending of egoism.
“The name [Jehovah] is a circumlocution, indeed, a too abundant figure of Jewish rhetoric, and has always been denounced by the Occultists. To the Jewish Kabalists, and even the Christian Alchemists and Rosicrucians, Jehovah was a convenient screen, unified by the folding of its many flaps, and adopted as a substitute: one name of an individual Sephiroth being as good as another name, for those who had the secret. The Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the sidereal ‘Sum Total,’ was invented for no other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and generation. The real secret and unpronounceable name — ‘the word that is no word’ — has to be sought in the seven names of the first seven emanations, or the ‘Sons of the Fire,’ in the secret Scriptures of all the great nations, and even in the Zohar . . . This word, composed of seven letters in each tongue, is found embodied in the architectural remains of every grand building in the world . . .” (SD 1:438-9).
the name of Gabriel in Koranic Scripture. As
Theodice, Theodicy [coined from Greek theos god + dike justice] A vindication of divine justice; a system or method of intellectual theorizing about the nature of so-called divine justice, having in view vindication of the justice and holiness of God, in connection with evil. Ancient philosophers all taught that the heart of things was divine harmony and that whatever evil, distortion, and obliquity might exist in the world is ultimately traceable back to the imperfect intelligence of evolving beings, who by their manifold conflicts of thought and will thus produce disharmony, relative confusion, and hence evil, in the scheme of things. This view was replaced during Christian ages by the attempt of many writers to rescue the reputation of the Christian God, who on the one hand is said to be the creator of everything and who yet is supposed to be the fountain of love, mercy, harmony, and goodness. In view of the evils and suffering in the world, such Christian attempts have been futile, for it is obvious that if God is the creator of all that is, He must have been either directly or indirectly the creator of all the disharmony, wickedness, and misery in the world, as was indeed alleged by many Jewish rabbis, following statements in the Hebrew scriptures. But this thought has been denied by Christians who refuse to accept their God of love and justice as the creator of evil, and thus they had recourse to the Devil, who himself must have been created by their omniscient God.
theology ::: n. --> The science of God or of religion; the science which treats of the existence, character, and attributes of God, his laws and government, the doctrines we are to believe, and the duties we are to practice; divinity; (as more commonly understood) "the knowledge derivable from the Scriptures, the systematic exhibition of revealed truth, the science of Christian faith and life."
"The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge," says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâd rtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyad astîti vâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita*
“The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge,’ says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâd rtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyad astîti vâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heart of man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita
“The real source of knowledge is the Lord in the heart; ‘I am seated in the heart of every man and from me is knowledge,’ says the Gita; the Scripture is only a verbal form of that inner Veda, of that self-luminous Reality, it is sabdabrahma: the mantra, says the Veda, has risen from the heart, from the secret place where is the seat of the truth, sadanâdrtasya, guhâyâm. That origin is its sanction; but still the infinite Truth is greater than its word. Nor shall you say of any Scripture that it alone is all-sufficient and no other truth can be admitted, as the Vedavadins said of the Veda, nânyadastîtivâdinah. This is a saving and liberating word which must be applied to all the Scriptures of the world. Take all the Scriptures that are or have been, Bible and Koran and the books of the Chinese, Veda and Upanishads and Purana and Tantra and Shastra and the Gita itself and the sayings of thinkers and sages, prophets and Avatars, still you shall not say that there is nothing else or that the truth your intellect cannot find there is not true because you cannot find it there. That is the limited thought of the sectarian or the composite thought of the eclectic religionist, not the untrammelled truth-seeking of the free and illumined mind and God-experienced soul. Heard or unheard before, that always is the truth which is seen by the heartof man in its illumined depths or heard within from the Master of all knowledge, the knower of the eternal Veda.” Essays on the Gita
there, becomes the 3rd-named angel in Scripture
The second Koryo canon was used as the basis of the modern Japanese TAISHo SHINSHu DAIZoKYo ("New Edition of the Buddhist Canon Compiled during the Taisho Reign Era"), edited by TAKAKUSU JUNJIRo and Watanabe Kaikyoku and published using movable-type printing between 1924 and 1935, which has become the standard reference source for East Asian Buddhist materials. The Taisho canon includes 2,920 texts in eighty-five volumes (each volume is about one thousand pages in length), along with twelve volumes devoted to iconography, and three volumes of bibliography and scriptural catalogues. The Taisho's arrangement is constructed following modern scholarly views regarding the historical development of the Buddhist scriptural tradition, with mainstream Buddhist scriptures opening the canon, followed by Indian Mahāyāna materials, indigenous Chinese writings, and Japanese writings:
Torah (Hebrew) Tōrāh Instruction, doctrine, precept; a revelation, oracle. Used by the Hebrews to describe the Mosaic writings, the Pentateuch. A distinction was drawn between the original written law — the Mosaic Torah and the rest of the scriptures (torah shabbichethab, “law which is in the writing”) — and what the later Jews called the oral law or torah by mouth (torah shebbe‘al peh,
Torah ::: (Heb. teaching, instruction) In general, torah refers to study of the whole gamut of Jewish tradition or to some aspect thereof. In its special sense, "the Torah" refers to the "five books of Moses" in the Hebrew scriptures (see Pentateuch). In the Quran, "Torah" is the main term by which Jewish scripture is identified.
traditional ::: a. --> Of or pertaining to tradition; derived from tradition; communicated from ancestors to descendants by word only; transmitted from age to age without writing; as, traditional opinions; traditional customs; traditional expositions of the Scriptures.
Observant of tradition; attached to old customs; old-fashioned.
traditionary ::: a. --> Traditional. ::: n. --> One, among the Jews, who acknowledges the authority of traditions, and explains the Scriptures by them.
traditor ::: n. --> A deliverer; -- a name of infamy given to Christians who delivered the Scriptures, or the goods of the church, to their persecutors to save their lives.
translation ::: n. --> The act of translating, removing, or transferring; removal; also, the state of being translated or removed; as, the translation of Enoch; the translation of a bishop.
The act of rendering into another language; interpretation; as, the translation of idioms is difficult.
That which is obtained by translating something a version; as, a translation of the Scriptures.
A transfer of meaning in a word or phrase, a metaphor;
Tree A variant of the cross or tau, to be considered in connection with the serpent which is wound round it. The two together symbolize the world tree with the spiritual, intellectual, psychic, and psychological aggregate of forces encircling the world tree and working in and through it — these forces often grouped in the Orient under the name of kundalini. In minor significance, the two together symbolize the life-waves, or any life-wave, passing through the planes, spirit circling through matter, fohat working in the kosmos. Thus the tree symbol stands for the universe, and correspondentially for man, in whom the monadic ray kindles activity on the several planes; while the physiological key of interpretation applies to the analogies in the human body with its various structures through which play the pranic currents. The tree, by its form, represents evolution, for it begins with a root and spreads out into branches and twigs; only as applied to the kosmos the root is conceived to be on high and the branches to extend downwards. Thus there is the Asvattha tree of India or bodhi tree, the Norse Yggdrasil, the tree Ababel in the Koran, the Sephirothal Tree which is ’Adam Qadmon. In the Garden of Eden it is stated that there were two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which signifies the two knowledges. It is said in Gnosticism that Ennoia (divine thought) and Ophis (serpent), as a unity, are the Logos; as separated they are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, the former spiritual, the latter manasic. Adam eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge which means in one important allegory of human evolution that mankind after the separation of the sexes became endowed with manas, or that when humanity began to be endowed with dual manas, the rays then separated into the opposite sexes; and lest he should partake of the Tree of Life and become immortal, in the then imperfect state of evolution, he is turned out of Eden. It is stated that buddhi becomes transformed into the tree whose fruit is emancipation and which finally destroys the roots of the Asvattha, which here is the symbol of the mayavi life. This latter tree is also the emblem of secret and sacred knowledge, guarded by serpents or dragons; it may also refer to a sacred scripture. Dragons guarded the tree with the golden apples of the Hesperides; the trees of Meru were guarded by a serpent; Juno, on her wedding with Jupiter, gave him a tree with golden fruit, as Eve gave the fruit to Adam. Blavatsky says of Eve: “She it was who first led man to the Tree of Knowledge and made known to him Good and Evil; and if she had been left in peace to do quietly that which she wished to do, she would have conducted him to the Tree of Life and would thus have rendered him immortal” (La Revue Theosophique 2:10). See also ASVATTHA, YGGDRASIL
Tripitaka (Sanskrit) Tripiṭaka [from tri three + piṭaka basket] The three baskets, pitaka being the name by which one of the collections of Buddhist sacred scriptures is known. This threefold collection consists of Sastra-pitaka often called the Sutra-pitaka, the rules or precepts; Vinaya-pitaka, the discipline and rules for the priesthood and ascetics; and Abhidharma-pitaka, the philosophical and metaphysical dissertations. “There is a fourth division — the Samyakta Pitaka. But as it is a later addition by the Chinese Buddhists, it is not accepted by the Southern Church of Siam and Ceylon” (TG 341).
tropist ::: n. --> One who deals in tropes; specifically, one who avoids the literal sense of the language of Scripture by explaining it as mere tropes and figures of speech.
trump ::: n. --> A wind instrument of music; a trumpet, or sound of a trumpet; -- used chiefly in Scripture and poetry.
A winning card; one of a particular suit (usually determined by chance for each deal) any card of which takes any card of the other suits.
An old game with cards, nearly the same as whist; -- called also ruff.
A good fellow; an excellent person.
unicorn ::: n. --> A fabulous animal with one horn; the monoceros; -- often represented in heraldry as a supporter.
A two-horned animal of some unknown kind, so called in the Authorized Version of the Scriptures.
Any large beetle having a hornlike prominence on the head or prothorax.
The larva of a unicorn moth.
The kamichi; -- called also unicorn bird.
veda. ::: knowledge; wisdom; understanding; revealed scripture
vedas. ::: the most ancient Hindu scriptures which state that all matter is derived from consciousness; the system of knowledge which perceives the universe as an intelligent, conscious whole; the four Vedas are the
Vidhi: Sanskrit for rule, formula, sacred precept or scripture.
vulgate ::: a. --> An ancient Latin version of the Scripture, and the only version which the Roman Church admits to be authentic; -- so called from its common use in the Latin Church.
Of or pertaining to the Vulgate, or the old Latin version of the Scriptures.
Yet it must not be understood that the Pharisees were but the hypocritical and exoteric worshipers of the letter that Christian scripture and legend has endeavored to make them; for among the Pharisees themselves, as for instance Josephus (the greatest of Jewish historians), there were found many learned men. The wisest among the Pharisees desired to bring to the Jewish people as a whole certain more secret teachings, whether innovations or not, which for their own purposes the Sadducees strongly opposed.
yhvh ::: YHVH Reading from right to left, YHVH is the four-letter Tetragrammaton, the 'true' name of the God in the Hebrew scriptures and the Kabbalah. Only the four consonants YHVH (Yod He Vau He) are ever written. See also Tetragrammaton.
YHWH (Yahweh) ::: The sacred name of God in Jewish scriptures and tradition; also known as the tetragrammaton. Since Hebrew was written without vowels in ancient times, the four consonants YHWH contain no clue to their original pronunciation. They are generally rendered “Yahweh” in contemporary scholarship. In traditional Judaism, the name is not pronounced, but Adonai (“Lord”) or something similar is substituted. In most English versions of the Bible the tetragrammaton is represented by "LORD" (or less frequently, “Jehovah”). Yiddish (from German “Juedisch” or Jewish). The vernacular of Ashkenazic Jews; it is a combination of several languages, especially Hebrew and German, written in Hebrew script.
Zamyad Yasht, Zamdat (Avestan) Zamik (Pahlavi) Zami (Persian) [from zam Avestan zam earth + yad that which earth has begot + yasht an act of worship, a Zoroastrian scripture] The 19th Yasht in the extant Zoroastrian scriptures, the Yashts generally being writings in which the Izeds are praised. This Yasht is inscribed to the genius of the earth, Spenta Armaiti. Its third section is devoted to the Amesha Spentas.
zation of the Hebrew Scriptures.” Philadelphia:
Zendavesta: (from Middle Persian Zend u Avista, "commentary and text") The Commentary, still used today as sacred scripture among the Parsis (see Zoroastrianism), on the basic text which was composed by the followers of Zarathustra (q.v.), but had become unintelligible due to its archaic nature. -- K.F.L.
KEYS (10k)
9 Sri Ramakrishna
2 Saint Ambrose
2 Buddhist Scripture
2 Sri Aurobindo
2 Saint Thomas Aquinas
2 Saint Augustine of Hippo
1 Zen saying.
1 Zen proverb
1 William Stafford
1 Sri Ramakrishna?
1 Samyutta nikaya
1 Saint Jerome
1 Saint Gregory Palamas
1 Saint Cyril of Jerusalem
1 Saint Basil
1 Our Lady to priest Raymond Arnette (in May of 1994)
1 Novalis
1 Maximus the Confessor
1 MATA AMRITANANDAMAYI
1 Manly P Hall
1 Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
1 John Scotus Eriugena
1 Jack Kerouac
1 id
1 Chinese Buddhist Scriptures
1 Chinese Buddhistic
1 Buddhist scriptures from the Chinese
1 Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese
1 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad iv
1 Baruch Spinoza
1 Athanasius
1 Anonymous
1 Swami Vivekananda
NEW FULL DB (2.4M)
99 Anonymous
50 Martin Luther
40 John Calvin
27 R C Sproul
17 Mahatma Gandhi
17 D A Carson
17 Charles Spurgeon
17 Charles Haddon Spurgeon
15 John Owen
13 Max Lucado
13 J I Packer
12 Francis Chan
11 Wayne Grudem
11 Timothy J Keller
11 C S Lewis
10 Rachel Held Evans
9 Sri Ramakrishna
9 Rajneesh
9 John Stott
9 Beth Moore
1:Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. ~ Saint Jerome, #KEYS
2:something with its continuous scripture of leaves. ~ William Stafford, #KEYS
3:When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough ~ Zen proverb, #KEYS
4:The supreme authority for the interpretation of Scripture is vested in each individual.
~ Baruch Spinoza,#KEYS
5:The author of Sacred Scripture is God ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.1.10), #KEYS
6:All divinely inspired Scripture was written because of the Virgin who brought forth God incarnate. ~ Saint Gregory Palamas, #KEYS
7:Although the whole of Scripture breathes God's grace upon us, this is especially true of that delightful book, the book of the psalms. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
8:When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can't understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom." ~ Jack Kerouac, #KEYS
9:This man who knew not scripture, had the highest learning, for he had a pure love for God and could realize him. ~ Sri Ramakrishna, #KEYS
10:When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much." ~ Zen saying., #KEYS
11:Even Abraham knew God not through the letters of Scripture, which had not yet been composed, but by the revolution of the stars. ~ John Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon III (724a), #KEYS
12:My brothers, when you accost each other, two things alone are fitting, instructive words or a grave silence. ~ Buddhist Scripture, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
13:This is how Scripture depicts to us the Supreme Artist, praising each one of His works. Thus earth, air, sky, water, day, night, all visible things, remind us of our Benefactor. ~ Saint Basil, #KEYS
14:Scripture records her giving birth, and says: She wrapped him in swaddling clothes. Her breasts, which fed him, were called blessed. Sacrifice was offered because the child was her firstborn. ~ Athanasius, #KEYS
15:The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Passages from The Synthesis of Yoga, #KEYS
16:A Veda-knower of the unwritten book
Perusing the mystic scripture of her forms,
He had caught her hierophant significances, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan,#KEYS
17:All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 2 Timothy, 3:16-17, #KEYS
18:Whoever wishes to walk the straight road to God, stands in need of both the inherent spiritual knowledge of Scripture, and the natural contemplation of beings according to the spirit. ~ Maximus the Confessor, Amb. 10.17 [1128c], #KEYS
19:St. John Chrysostom is held in such esteem by the Greeks in his explanations that they admit no other where he expounded anything in Holy Scripture ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Commentary on John 1)., #KEYS
20:The stopping of becoming is Nirvana." ~ Samyutta nikaya, Buddhist scripture, the third of the five collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the "three baskets" that compose the Pali Tipitaka of Theravada Buddhism, Wikipedia., #KEYS
21:The holy scripture needs no explanation. He who speaks truth, is full of eternal life, his written word seems wonderfully akin to the mysteries, for it is a chord taken from the symphony of the universe. ~ Novalis, The Novices of Sais, #KEYS
22:As the perfect man speaks so he acts; as he acts, so the perfect man speaks. It is because he speaks as he acts and acts as he speaks that he is called the perfect. ~ Buddhist Scripture, the Eternal Wisdom #KEYS
23:Run through all the words of the holy prayers [in Scripture], and I do not think that you will find anything in them that is not contained and included in the Lord's Prayer. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #KEYS
24:Open your lips, says Scripture, and let God's word be heard. It is for you to open, it is for him to be heard. So David said: I shall hear what the Lord says in me. The very Son of God says: Open your lips, and I will fill them. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
25:If we could speak of God only in the very terms themselves of Scripture, it would follow that no one could speak about God in any but the original language of the Old or New Testament ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (ST 1.29.3ad1)., #KEYS
26:It is customary, even in Sacred Scripture, to say that God hardens someone or blinds someone in the sense that God does not bestow the grace on him by which he may be softened and see ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (On Job ch. 7)., #KEYS
27:Learn the divine words [of Scripture] and understand them in your spirit: there you will recognize the Word . Perceive with the bodily sense the forms and beauties of sensible things: in them you will understand the Word of God. ~ Eriugena, Homilia in Johannem, #KEYS
28:The monk St. Jerome was rebuked by envious tongues for preferring the study of Holy Scripture to manual labour. His example may profitably be followed by religious ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (An Apology for Religious Orders ch. 4)., #KEYS
29:In two ways, therefore, the eternal light makes himself known to the world, by Scripture and by what is created. Not otherwise is divine knowledge renewed in us except by the writings of divine Scripture and the sight of the creature. ~ Eriugena, Homilia in Johannem 11, #KEYS
30:Sacred Scripture does not present divine things to us under sensible images so that our intellect may stop with them, but that it may rise from them to immaterial things ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, (On Boethius' De Trinitate, q. 6, a. 2 ad 1)., #KEYS
31:Scripture tells you: You shall speak of these commandments when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you get up. Let us then speak of the Lord Jesus, for he is wisdom, he is the word, the Word indeed of God. ~ Saint Ambrose, #KEYS
32:The human soul is not made for the sake of Scripture... but sacred Scripture is woven from a diversity of symbols and teaching so that through its introduction, our rational nature would be returned to the pristine height of pure contemplation. ~ Eriugena, In Ier. Coel II,1, #KEYS
33:For the human soul is not made for the sake of scripture, which it would not have needed, had it not sinned; but scripture is [given] so that through it our rational nature would be returned to the pristine height of pure contemplation. ~ Eriugena, Exp. in Ier. Coel., II.1. II, #KEYS
34:When the mind has put off the old self & put on the one born of grace, it will see its own state in the time of prayer resembling sapphire or the color of heaven; this state scripture calls the place of God that was seen by the elders on Mount Sinai. ~ Evagrius, On Thoughts 39, #KEYS
35:The man of wisdom does not wish for the dissolution of the universe nor is he interested in its continuance. The blessed one lives perfectly contented with whatever turns up in life." ~ "Ashtavakra Gita" [163], (just after 400 BC), classical Advaita Vedanta scripture, Wikipedia, #KEYS
36:If you study every word of the petitions of Scripture, you will find, I think, nothing that is not contained and included in the Lord's Prayer. When we pray, then, we may use different words to say the same things, but we may not say different things. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, Letter to Proba, #KEYS
37:The Fiend was visible but cloaked in light;
He seemed a helping angel from the skies:
He armed untruth with Scripture and the Law;
He deceived with wisdom, with virtue slew the soul
And led to perdition by the heavenward path. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#KEYS
38:The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Four Aids,#KEYS
39:If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps. ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno, [T6], #KEYS
40:10 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance,
11 persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.
12 In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
13 while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it,
15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ 2 Timothy 3#KEYS
41:Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge, represented by the early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads, had to give place to the age of rational knowledge; inspired Scripture made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science.
Intuitive thought which is a messenger from the superconscient and therefore our highest faculty, was supplanted by the pure reason which is only a sort of deputy and belongs to the middle heights of our being; pure reason in its turn was supplanted for a time by the mixed action of the reason which lives on our plains and lower elevations and does not in its view exceed the horizon of the experience that the physical mind and senses or such aids as we can invent for them can bring to us.
And this process which seems to be a descent, is really a circle of progress.
For in each case the lower faculty is compelled to take up as much as it can assimilate of what the higher had already given and to attempt to re-establish it by its own methods.
By the attempt it is itself enlarged in its scope and arrives eventually at a more supple and a more ample selfaccommodation to the higher faculties. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, 1.08-13,#KEYS
42:The Particular Necessity for Practice
The second part discusses "the particular necessity for practice."
Through the power of the yoga of speech, the stains that obscure the mind are removed. Once this happens, speech reaches its full potential. It is like discovering the true nature of your speech for the very first time.
To activate the yoga of speech, summon the primordial wisdom deities by calling their names. Just as calling someone's name naturally causes that person to draw closer to you, in the same way calling the wisdom deities by name brings them nearer to you.
They come to see what you want.
This does not mean the wisdom deities will not come if you do not call them. They could come even if you did not call their names.
You call their names-which is what you are doing when you recite mantras-because their names express their actual nature. A quote from the Dorje Kur (rDo rje gur) scripture reads: "To directly perceive the buddhas, bodhisattvas, dakinis and your own consort, get their attention by calling their names and invite them to come." Reciting the deity's name over and over purifies obscurations of speech and establishes the cause of vajra speech.
This cause produces the condition that averts adverse conditions.
The speech of the wisdom deities and your own speech will become the same-vajra speech. ~ Gyatrul Rinpoche, Generating the Deity,#KEYS
43:As Korzybski and the general semanticists have pointed out, our words, symbols, signs, thoughts and ideas are merely maps of reality, not reality itself, because "the map is not the territory." The word "water" won't satisfy your thirst.
But we live in the world of maps and words as if it were the real world. Following in the footsteps of Adam, we have become totally lost in a world of purely fantasy maps and boundaries. And these illusory boundaries, with the opposites they create, have become our impassioned battles.
Most of our "problems of living," then, are based on the illusion that the opposites can and should be separated and isolated from one another. But since all opposites are actually aspects of one underlying reality, this is like trying to totally separate the two ends of a single rubber band. All you can do is pull harder and harder-until something violently snaps. Thus we might be able to understand that, in all the mystical traditions the world over, one who sees through the illusion of the opposites is called "liberated." Because he is "freed from the pairs" of opposites, he is freed in this life from the fundamentally nonsensical problems and conflicts involved in the war of opposites. He no longer manipulates the opposites one against the other in his search for peace, but instead transcends them both. Not good vs. evil but beyond good and evil. Not life against death but a center of awareness that transcends both. The point is not to separate the opposites and make "positive progress," but rather to unify and harmonize the opposites, both positive and negative, by discovering a ground which transcends and encompasses them both. And that ground, as we will soon see, is unity consciousness itself. In the meantime, let us note, as does the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, that liberation is not freedom from the negative, but freedom from the pairs altogether:
Content with getting what arrives of itself
Passed beyond the pairs, free from envy,
Not attached to success nor failure,
Even acting, he is not bound.
He is to be recognized as eternally free
Who neither loathes nor craves;
For he that is freed from the pairs,
Is easily freed from conflict.
~ Ken Wilber, No Boundary,#KEYS
44:But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, - some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, - it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.
For the sadhaka of the integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest Scripture. Where the Scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one Scripture or by several successively, - if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many Scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the limitations of the word that he uses. The Gita itself thus declares that the Yogin in his progress must pass beyond the written Truth, - sabdabrahmativartate - beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, - srotavyasya srutasya ca. For he is not the sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a sadhaka of the Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Four Aids,#KEYS
45:O Death, thou lookst on an unfinished world
Assailed by thee and of its road unsure,
Peopled by imperfect minds and ignorant lives,
And sayest God is not and all is vain.
How shall the child already be the man?
Because he is infant, shall he never grow?
Because he is ignorant, shall he never learn?
In a small fragile seed a great tree lurks,
In a tiny gene a thinking being is shut;
A little element in a little sperm,
It grows and is a conqueror and a sage.
Then wilt thou spew out, Death, God's mystic truth,
Deny the occult spiritual miracle?
Still wilt thou say there is no spirit, no God?
A mute material Nature wakes and sees;
She has invented speech, unveiled a will.
Something there waits beyond towards which she strives,
Something surrounds her into which she grows:
To uncover the spirit, to change back into God,
To exceed herself is her transcendent task.
In God concealed the world began to be,
Tardily it travels towards manifest God:
Our imperfection towards perfection toils,
The body is the chrysalis of a soul:
The infinite holds the finite in its arms,
Time travels towards revealed eternity.
A miracle structure of the eternal Mage,
Matter its mystery hides from its own eyes,
A scripture written out in cryptic signs,
An occult document of the All-Wonderful's art.
All here bears witness to his secret might,
In all we feel his presence and his power.
A blaze of his sovereign glory is the sun,
A glory is the gold and glimmering moon,
A glory is his dream of purple sky.
A march of his greatness are the wheeling stars.
His laughter of beauty breaks out in green trees,
His moments of beauty triumph in a flower;
The blue sea's chant, the rivulet's wandering voice
Are murmurs falling from the Eternal's harp.
This world is God fulfilled in outwardness.
His ways challenge our reason and our sense;
By blind brute movements of an ignorant Force,
By means we slight as small, obscure or base,
A greatness founded upon little things,
He has built a world in the unknowing Void.
His forms he has massed from infinitesimal dust;
His marvels are built from insignificant things.
If mind is crippled, life untaught and crude,
If brutal masks are there and evil acts,
They are incidents of his vast and varied plot,
His great and dangerous drama's needed steps;
He makes with these and all his passion-play,
A play and yet no play but the deep scheme
Of a transcendent Wisdom finding ways
To meet her Lord in the shadow and the Night:
Above her is the vigil of the stars;
Watched by a solitary Infinitude
She embodies in dumb Matter the Divine,
In symbol minds and lives the Absolute.
~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Debate of Love and Death,#KEYS
46:One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.
The descriptions, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a lady-friend.
The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing.
It was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making it the nucleus of a longer story.
As the years went on, I jotted down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of dialogue, that occurred to me--who knows how?--with a transitory suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to their source these random flashes of thought--as being suggested by the book one was reading, or struck out from the 'flint' of one's own mind by the 'steel' of a friend's chance remark but they had also a way of their own, of occurring, a propos of nothing --specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, 'an effect without a cause.' Such, for example, was the last line of 'The Hunting of the Snark,' which came into my head (as I have already related in 'The Theatre' for April, 1887) quite suddenly, during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which occurred in dreams, and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are at least two instances of such dream-suggestions in this book--one, my Lady's remark, 'it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry does', the other, Eric Lindon's badinage about having been in domestic service.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a huge unwieldy mass of litterature--if the reader will kindly excuse the spelling --which only needed stringing together, upon the thread of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write. Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word 'chaos': and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story I am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details of the 'genesis' of a book, which looks so simple and straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a letter, beginning at the beginning; and ending at the end.
It is, no doubt, possible to write a story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that I could, myself,--if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given amount of fiction in a given time,--that I could 'fulfil my task,' and produce my 'tale of bricks,' as other slaves have done. One thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so produced--that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!
This species of literature has received the very appropriate name of 'padding' which might fitly be defined as 'that which all can write and none can read.' That the present volume contains no such writing I dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three extra lines : but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was absolutely compelled to do.
My readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in a given passage, the one piece of 'padding' it contains. While arranging the 'slips' into pages, I found that the passage was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3 consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess which they are?
A harder puzzle if a harder be desired would be to determine, as to the Gardener's Song, in which cases (if any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in which (if any) the text was adapted to the stanza.
Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune. I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen storybooks have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.
First, a Child's Bible. The only real essentials of this would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child's reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a revelation of love--no need to pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no great difficulty: no new ones would be needed : hundreds of excellent pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired, and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size with a pretty attractive looking cover--in a clear legible type--and, above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!
Secondly, a book of pieces selected from the Bible--not single texts, but passages of from 10 to 20 verses each--to be committed to memory. Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one's self and to ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night--on a railway-journey --when taking a solitary walk-in old age, when eyesight is failing or wholly lost--and, best of all, when illness, while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how keenly one may realise the truth of David's rapturous cry "O how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto my mouth!"
I have said 'passages,' rather than single texts, because we have no means of recalling single texts: memory needs links, and here are none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen--and those by mere chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a chapter that has been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs together.
Thirdly, a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called 'un-inspired' literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of being pondered over, a hundred times: still there are such passages--enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.
These two books of sacred, and secular, passages for memory--will serve other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts, uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting book, Robertson's Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Lecture XLIX. "If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps."
Fourthly, a "Shakespeare" for girls: that is, an edition in which everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to 17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any edition, 'expurgated' or not, that they may prefer: but it seems a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to them. Neither Bowdler's, Chambers's, Brandram's, nor Cundell's 'Boudoir' Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not sufficiently 'expurgated.' Bowdler's is the most extraordinary of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder, considering what he has left in, that he should have cut anything out! Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.
If it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have taken in this story--by introducing, along with what will, I hope, prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver thoughts of human life--it must be to one who has learned the Art of keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged and repulsive. And that such an Art exists I do not dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed gaiety--with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are liable to be confronted at any moment, even in the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the Bible: all such matters he can defer to that 'convenient season', which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may come before he has finished reading this page,' this night shalt thy soul be required of thee.'
The ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages, 1 an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an existence beyond the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation--an existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay verses of that genial 'bon vivant' Horace, there stands one dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one's heart. It is the word 'exilium' in the well-known passage
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae.
Yes, to him this present life--spite of all its weariness and all its sorrow--was the only life worth having: all else was 'exile'! Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed, should ever have smiled?
And many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet regard it as a sort of 'exile' from all the joys of life, and so adopt Horace's theory, and say 'let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
We go to entertainments, such as the theatre--I say 'we', for I also go to the play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one and keep at arm's length, if possible, the thought that we may not return alive. Yet how do you know--dear friend, whose patience has carried you through this garrulous preface that it may not be your lot, when mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis--to see, with vague wonder, anxious friends bending over you to hear their troubled whispers perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling lips, "Is it serious?", and to be told "Yes: the end is near" (and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are said!)--how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to you, this night?
And dare you, knowing this, say to yourself "Well, perhaps it is an immoral play: perhaps the situations are a little too 'risky', the dialogue a little too strong, the 'business' a little too suggestive.
I don't say that conscience is quite easy: but the piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I'll begin a stricter life to-morrow." To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow!
"Who sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
'Sorrow for sin God's judgement stays!'
Against God's Spirit he lies; quite stops Mercy with insult; dares, and drops,
Like a scorch'd fly, that spins in vain
Upon the axis of its pain,
Then takes its doom, to limp and crawl,
Blind and forgot, from fall to fall."
Let me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the possibility of death--if calmly realised, and steadily faced would be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death acquires, for you, a special horror when imagined as happening in a theatre, then be very sure the theatre is harmful for you, however harmless it may be for others; and that you are incurring a deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die.
But, once realise what the true object is in life--that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds'--but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man--and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!
One other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology--that I should have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion for 'Sport', which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for coolness in moments of danger.
But I am not entirely without sympathy for genuine 'Sport': I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some 'man-eating' tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those 'tender and delicate' beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love--'thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women'--whose mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or sorrow!
'Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.' ~ Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno,#KEYS
*** WISDOM TROVE ***
1:History - the devil's scripture ~ lord-byron, @wisdomtrove 2:When the Scripture speaks, God speaks ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 3:I believe the scripture says that being gay is a sin. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 4:The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ~ william-shakespeare, @wisdomtrove 5:If you cut him, (John Bunyan) he'd bleed Scripture! ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 6:Scripture is the manger in which we find the Christ child. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 7:A simple man with Scripture has more authority than the Pope or a council. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 8:What is Scripture? The Hebrew word is torah. Torah means teaching, learning. ~ elie-wiesel, @wisdomtrove 9:The worst forms of depression are cured when Holy Scripture is believed. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 10:We come to Scripture not to learn a subject but to steep ourselves in a person. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 11:Scripture often reminds us that it's not enough to have ears - we must use them. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 12:Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 13:Within the Scripture there is a balm for every wound, a salve for every sore. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 14:The great promise of Scripture is that every day is a day that's worth rejoicing in. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 15:A simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 16:It is unlawful to add anything to the words of Holy Scripture regarding the sense. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 17:It is unlawful to add anything to the words of Holy Scripture regarding the sense. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 18:You need not bring life to the scripture. You should draw life from the scripture. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 19:All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 20:I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 21:Sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 22:The authority of Scripture is greater than the comprehension of the whole of man's reason. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 23:The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 24:Those who would like the God of scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 25:Sacred scripture is like a mirror in which we see God, although each in a different way. ~ emanuel-swedenborg, @wisdomtrove 26:Dear friends, whenever you want to understand a text of Scripture, try to read the original ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 27:Both my study of Scripture and my career in entertaining children have taught me to cherish them. ~ walt-disney, @wisdomtrove 28:G od, His scripture, and His devotee are all to be regarded as one, i.e. in one and the same light. ~ sri-ramakrishna, @wisdomtrove 29:The man who, despite the teaching of Scripture, tries to pray without a Savior, insults the deity. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 30:Not only the words (vocabula) which the Holy Spirit and Scripture use are divine, but also the phrasing ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 31:If your creed and Scripture do not agree, cut your creed to pieces, but make it agree with this book. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 32:Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 33:The fact is, we sometimes read Scripture, thinking of what it ought to say, rather than what it does say. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 34:Lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture, ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove 35:If your salvation was dependent on your ability to read and understand scripture, Jesus would have been an author. ~ steve-maraboli, @wisdomtrove 36:Many a text [of Scripture] is written in a secret ink which must be held to the fire of adversity to make it visible. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 37:Truth is neither in the scripture nor in the words of prophets. It is in your heart, feel it, discover it and expand with it. ~ amit-ray, @wisdomtrove 38:We must never minimize the suffering of another. Scripture's mandate to us is, "Weep with them that weep." (Romans 12:15, KJV) ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 39:Scripture tells us that there will be signs pointing toward the return of the Lord. I believe all these signs are evident today. ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 40:Quoting Scripture leads you to the fountain, but only if you plunge in and come up wet will I know that you are a Christian. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 41:The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 42:The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 43:What I know of the divine sciences and Holy Scripture, I learnt in woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 44:To trifle with Scripture is to deprive yourself of its aid. Reverence it, and look up to God with devout gratitude for having given it to you. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 45:The fool will upset the whole science of astronomy, but as the Holy Scripture shows, it was the sun and not the earth which Joshua ordered to stand still. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 46:I have tried and I cannot find, either in scripture or in history, a strong-willed individual whom God used greatly until He allowed them to be hurt deeply. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 47:It is impossible that there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the Earth, since no such race is recorded by Scripture among the descendants of Adam. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 48:He who is well acquainted with the text of scripture, is a distinguished theologian. For a Bible passage or text is of more value than the comments of four authors. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 49:The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove 50:The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. ~ ursula-k-le-guin, @wisdomtrove 51:Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. ~ thich-nhat-hanh, @wisdomtrove 52:The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it. ~ criss-jami, @wisdomtrove 53:The best way to get rid of the Devil, if you cannot kill it with the words of Holy Scripture, is to rail at and mock him. Music, too, is very good; music is hateful to him, and drives him far away. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 54:In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 55:All the troubles of the Church, all the evils in the world, flow from this source: that men do not by clear and sound knowledge and serious consideration penetrate into the truths of Sacred Scripture. ~ teresa-of-avila, @wisdomtrove 56:Every promise of Scripture is a writing of God, which may be pleaded before Him with this reasonable request, & 57:In order to find Jesus, every one of us needs direction. God gives it. The story of the wise men shows us how. The star sign was enough to lead the magi to Jerusalem. But it took Scripture to lead them to Jesus. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 58:I've learned a simple principle: all I have to do is be the best & 59:I'm not. I don't I don't dislike anybody. Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world. But my faith is based on what I believe the scripture says, and that's the way I read the Scripture. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 60:One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we have seen what priestcraft and fanaticism can do, and credulity believe. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 61:Scripture itself is not systematic; the New Testament shows the greatest variety. God has shown us that he can use any instrument. Balaam's ass, you remember, preached a very effective sermon in the midst of his & 62:To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. ~ thomas-paine, @wisdomtrove 63:The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our living relationships. The novel can help us to live,as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture, anyhow. If the novelist keeps his thumb out of the pan. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove 64:God's redemptive revelation in Scripture is necessary to saving faith and peace with God. Faith in a risen Savior is necessary if the vague stirrings toward immortality are to bring us to restful and satisfying communion with God. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 65:Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 66:The assurance of every truth of Scripture is just the beauty of it. First because He has promised to do it; and God's promises are bonds that never yet were dishonored. Secondly, because Christ Jesus hath taken an oath that He will do it. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 67:When Scripture talks about the heart, it's not talking about that life-sustaining muscle. It's talking about our entire inner being. The heart is the seat of our emotions, the seat of decisive action, and the seat of belief (as well as doubt). ~ billy-graham, @wisdomtrove 68:Some people keep God in a Sunday morning box and say, & 69:The Scripture says that God blesses where men walk in unity, so we just thought it's good for us to come together as Democrats, Republicans; believers, nonbelievers, all different walks of life and say hey, we are here to celebrate the goodness of God. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 70:Many books in my library are now behind and beneath me. They were good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore when I was ten years old; but I have outgrown them. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 71:In truth you cannot read too much in Scripture; and what you read you cannot read too carefully, and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 72:I don't think you should spend your life praying for things, but I do believe you should thank God for what He's given you... but I think the scripture teaches us that we can pray for our dreams, pray for the big things... he's not a small God; this God is incredible. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove 73:. . . I feel we don’t really need scriptures. The entire life is an open book, a scripture. Read it. Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food. If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to understand the scriptures? ~ swami-satchidananda-saraswati, @wisdomtrove 74:There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than the doctrine of hell, if it lay in my power. But it has the support of Scripture and, especially, of our Lord's own words; it has always been held by the Christian Church, and it has the support of reason. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 75:The word & 76:[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove 77:People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon... .This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13]that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 78:Men talk of "the mistakes of Scripture." I thank God that I have never met with any. Mistakes of translation there may be, for translators are men. But mistakes of the original word there never can be, for the God who spoke it is infallible, and so is every word he speaks, and in that confidence we find delightful rest. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 79:Some people like to read so many [Bible] chapters every day. I would not dissuade them from the practice, but I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than rinse my hand in several chapters. Oh, to be bathed in a text of Scripture, and to let it be sucked up in your very soul, till it saturates your heart! ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 80:Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain - from cosmology to psychology to economics - has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 81:Your call will become clear as as your mind is transformed by the reading of Scripture and the internal work of God's Spirit. The Lord never hides His will from us. In time, as you obey the call first to follow, your destiny will unfold before you. The difficulty will lie in keeping other concerns from diverting your attention. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 82:God did everything necessary to get Herod's attention. He sent messengers from the East and a message from the Torah. He sent wonders from the sky and words from Scripture. He sent the testimony of the heavens and the teaching of the prophets. But Herod refused to listen. He chose his puny dynasty over Christ. He died a miserable old man. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 83:Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 84:For the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; and the swords might be turned into ploughshares, the spears into pruning-hooks, and as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more. ~ george-washington, @wisdomtrove 85:It is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in Scriptural language, and your very style is fashioned upon Scripture models, and, what is better still, your spirit is flavored with the words of the Lord. Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. ~ charles-spurgeon, @wisdomtrove 86:Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed- much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. ~ elizabeth-gilbert, @wisdomtrove 87:I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations... I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 88:Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove 89:So, you want to be like Christ? Me too. But that kind of godliness won't just happen by hanging around a church or thinking lofty thoughts three or four times a day or learning a few verses of Scripture. It will take more - much more. Disciplining ourselves will require the same kind of focused thinking and living that our Master modeled during His brief life on earth. ~ charles-r-swindoll, @wisdomtrove 90:The Scripture says, "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" [Psalm 118:24].Glory days are days that can happen right now. The key is understanding some basic principles that don't just apply to any one season of life but transcend all seasons of life - not allowing our circumstances to define our outlook on life, but allowing what God's Word says about life to define that outlook. ~ max-lucado, @wisdomtrove 91:Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural... . In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverized sacred Scripture. Witches are today being burned in South Africa... . The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee, they promise to make you invisible, to enable you to fly. ~ carl-sagan, @wisdomtrove 92:In a word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity, far otherwise than mere human reason can; and while evil oppresses us, it teaches how these virtues throw light upon the darkness, and how, after this poor, miserable existence of ours on earth, there is another and an eternal life. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 93:... it is not the obscure passages in Scripture that bind you but the ones you understand. With these you are to comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all. It will be this passage God asks you about. Do not first sit down and ponder the obscure passages. God's Word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it. ~ soren-kierkegaard, @wisdomtrove 94:Take for instance the study of Vedanta. Some seekers become completely drowned in it. Just as others may so lose themselves in kirtan as to fall into a trance, a student of Vedanta may become wholly absorbed in his texts, even more so than the one who gets carried away by kirtan. According to one’s specific line of approach, one will be able to achieve full concentration through the study of a particular Scripture, or by some other means. ~ anandamayi-ma, @wisdomtrove 95:On coming to the house, they (the Magi), saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. (Matthew 2:11) [This] adoration, too, was not the same as the worship of God. In my opinion they did not yet recognize him as God, but they acted in keeping with the custom mentioned in Scripture, according to which Kings and important people were worshiped; this did not mean more than falling down before them at their feet and honoring them. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 96:... believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him & 97:[Milton's] argument is (a) St. Augustine was wrong in thinking God's only purpose in giving Adam a female, instead of a male, companion, was copulation. For (b) there is a "peculiar comfort" in the society of man and woman "beside, (i.e. in addition to, apart from) the genial bed"; and (c) we know from Scripture that something analogous to "play" or "slackening the cords" occurs even in God. That is why the Song of Songs describes a thousand raptures... far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. ~ c-s-lewis, @wisdomtrove 98:Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain - from cosmology to psychology to economics - has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music. ~ sam-harris, @wisdomtrove 99:Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections - if he has any - against faith. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 100:Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections - if he has any - against faith. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 101:I must be frank in my feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circles - the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Saviour and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as Lord as long as we want to... The truth is that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred scripture... Apart from obedience, there can be no salvation, for salvation without obedience is a self-contradictory impossibility. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove 102:We cannot attain to the understanding of Scripture either by study or by the intellect. Your first duty is to begin by prayer. Entreat the Lord to grant you, of His great mercy, the true understanding of His Word. There is no other interpreter of the Word of God than the Author of this Word, as He Himself has said, "They shall be all taught of God" (John 6:45). Hope for nothing from your own labors, from your own understanding: trust solely in God, and in the influence of His Spirit. Believe this on the word of a man who has experience. ~ martin-luther, @wisdomtrove 103:In questions of this sort there are two things to be observed. First, that the truth of the Scriptures be inviolably maintained. Secondly, since Scripture doth admit of diverse interpretations, that no one cling to any particular exposition with such pertinacity that, if what he supposed to be the teaching of Scripture should afterward turn out to be clearly false, he should nevertheless still presume to put it forward, lest thereby the sacred Scriptures should be exposed to the derision of unbelievers and the way of salvation should be closed to them. ~ denis-diderot, @wisdomtrove 104:In questions of this sort there are two things to be observed. First, that the truth of the Scriptures be inviolably maintained. Secondly, since Scripture doth admit of diverse interpretations, that no one cling to any particular exposition with such pertinacity that, if what he supposed to be the teaching of Scripture should afterward turn out to be clearly false, he should nevertheless still presume to put it forward, lest thereby the sacred Scriptures should be exposed to the derision of unbelievers and the way of salvation should be closed to them. ~ thomas-aquinas, @wisdomtrove 105:As to those other things which we hold on the authority, not of Scripture, but of tradition, and which are observed throughout the whole world, it may be understood that they are held as approved and instituted either by the apostles themselves, or by plenary Councils, whose authority in the Church is most useful, e.g. the annual commemoration, by special solemnities, of the Lord's passion, resurrection, and ascension, and of the descent of the Holy Spirit from heaven, and whatever else is in like manner observed by the whole Church wherever it has been established. ~ saint-augustine, @wisdomtrove 106:There is no class of substance to which the Brahman belongs, no common genus. It cannot therefore be denoted by words which, like “being” in the ordinary sense, signify a category of things. Nor can it be denoted by quality, for it is without qualities; nor yet by activity because it is without activity—“at rest, without parts or activity,” according to the Scriptures. Neither can it be denoted by relationship, for it is “without a second” and is not the object of anything but its own self. Therefore it cannot be defined by word or idea; as the Scripture says, it is the One “before whom words recoil.” Shankara” ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove 107:Thus the divine Bartholomew says that Theology is both much and very little, and that the Gospel is great and ample, and yet short. His sublime meaning is, I think, that the beneficent cause of all things says much, and says little, and is altogether silent, as having neither (human) speech nor (human) understanding, since He is essentially above all created things, and manifests Himself unveiled, and as He truly is to those only who pass beyond all that is either pure or impure, who rise above the highest height of holy things, who abandon all divine light and sound and heavenly speech, and are absorbed into that darkness where, as the Scripture says, He truly is, who is beyond all things. ~ pseudo-dionysius-the-areopagite, @wisdomtrove *** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***
1:Scripture says Jesus is ~ Dee Henderson, #NFDB
2:History - the devil's scripture ~ Lord Byron, #NFDB
3:The devil can quote scripture ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
4:The devil can quote scripture. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
5:When the Scripture speaks, God speaks ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
6:To ignore Scripture is to ignore Christ. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
7:No one quotes scripture better than the devil ~ Celia Aaron, #NFDB
8:The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ~ Ray Bradbury, #NFDB
9:Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
10:he found poetry more comforting than Scripture ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
11:the authority of God exercised through scripture’. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
12:Christ is known rightly nowhere but in Scripture. If ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
13:the Devil can quote scripture for his own purpose’. ~ Felix Dennis, #NFDB
14:The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
15:verifying them from Scripture. Any doctrine claiming to ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
16:Live it like its gospel , quote it like its scripture. ~ Mike Cooley, #NFDB
17:If you cut him, (John Bunyan) he'd bleed Scripture! ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
18:No Scripture is exhausted by a single explanation. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
19:The Town and the City The Scripture of the Golden Eternity ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
20:Remember—the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ~ Karin Slaughter, #NFDB
21:Let the man who would hear God speak read Holy Scripture. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
22:No man can in any measure resemble the scripture saints. ~ Charles Simeon, #NFDB
23:Scripture is the ultimate grid by which we read every book. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
24:The cry for peace will increase according to scripture. ~ David Wilkerson, #NFDB
25:Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture. ~ H G Wells, #NFDB
26:Scripture is the manger in which we find the Christ child. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
27:All of Scripture is for us but not all of Scripture is to us. ~ Stuart Scott, #NFDB
28:If Scripture has more than one meaning, it has no meaning at all. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
29:If you cut him, (John Bunyan) he'd bleed Scripture! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
30:The idea of holding back certainly didn't come from Scripture. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
31:But the wasteland of Illinois had driven me to Scripture reading. ~ Sam Torode, #NFDB
32:Scripture is the royal scepter by which King Jesus rules his church ~ John Stott, #NFDB
33:A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. ~ Umberto Eco, #NFDB
34:Any doctrine that is not grounded in Scripture should not be trusted, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
35:I believe no angel ever appears in Scripture without exciting terror: ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
36:Where has the Scripture made merit the rule or measure of charity?. ~ William Law, #NFDB
37:I could never lead a Bible study; I don't know Scripture that well. ~ Gail Buckley, #NFDB
38:The lives of the saints are the hermeneutical key to Scripture. ~ Stanley Hauerwas, #NFDB
39:He rightly reads scripture who turns words into deeds. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, #NFDB
40:If you aren’t a living example of ‘the devil quoting scripture.’ ~ Judith McNaught, #NFDB
41:Scripture stands over all private experiences and interprets them. ~ Andrew M Davis, #NFDB
42:All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written. ~ Thomas Kempis, #NFDB
43:As someone wise once told me, ‘Messiahs are good, but scripture is better. ~ Gene Kim, #NFDB
44:As Shakespeare said, ‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.’4 ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
45:Refusing to teach a passage of Scripture is just as wrong as abusing it ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
46:This is throughout scripture the great central promise: I am with you. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
47:A pacifist has a lot of difficulty reconciling pacifism with scripture. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
48:Desert lore. Scripture in the wasteland. The resonance of lonely places. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
49:We should let Scripture interpret us more than we interpret Scripture. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
50:Arguments about Scripture achieve nothing but a stomachache and a headache. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
51:Every fool in error can find a passage of scripture to back him up ~ John Howard Griffin, #NFDB
52:All Christian life is to be measured by Scripture; by every word thereof. ~ John Wycliffe, #NFDB
53:find questions and scripture references ~ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, #NFDB
54:I remember something my mother used to say. "The Devil can quote scripture ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
55:The only trouble was that the scripture master, Mr. Ebenzar, was a fanatic. ~ R K Narayan, #NFDB
56:To encounter the words of the Scripture is to encounter God in action. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
57:A simple man with Scripture has more authority than the Pope or a council. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
58:Scripture is the most up-to-date and relevant reading that ever comes my way. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
59:What is Scripture? The Hebrew word is torah. Torah means teaching, learning. ~ Elie Wiesel, #NFDB
60:The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. ~ Joseph Smith Jr, #NFDB
61:The only logical response to inerrant Scripture is to preach it expositionally. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
62:The worst forms of depression are cured when Holy Scripture is believed. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
63:We come to Scripture not to learn a subject but to steep ourselves in a person. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
64:I see no room in holy Scripture for any sexual activity outside of matrimony. ~ George Carey, #NFDB
65:Scripture envisions the identity and faith of the people of God as a song. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
66:Will we submit ourselves to Scripture, or will we submit Scripture to ourselves? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
67:Luther’s point was that, according to Scripture, salvation is not a bake sale: ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
68:Scripture often reminds us that it's not enough to have ears - we must use them. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
69:Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up. ~ George Bernard Shaw, #NFDB
70:Many quote scripture, less study it, and even fewer live it. ~ T F HodgeT.F. Hodge ~ T F Hodge, #NFDB
71:Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
72:ROM10.11 For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
73:Scripture also teaches that human beings are morally responsible creatures ~ Robert A Peterson, #NFDB
74:that there is nothing put forth in Scripture which it is not profitable to know. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
75:Unbelief is like gravity, it's always pulling down on the authority of Scripture. ~ Mark Dever, #NFDB
76:The truth of Scripture is meant not only to be studied-it’s meant also to be sung. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
77:When you study in the Scripture, the Scripture clearly teaches we're not our own. ~ Bill Bright, #NFDB
78:It is no exaggeration to say that without Scripture a Christian life is impossible. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
79:The New Testament writers did not invent a doctrine of Scripture they inherited it. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
80:Within the Scripture there is a balm for every wound, a salve for every sore. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
81:In Scripture, the word of the gospel and the power of the Spirit always go together. ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
82:I really believe the purpose of Scripture is to give us this authoritative handbook. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
83:The great promise of Scripture is that every day is a day that's worth rejoicing in. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
84:The principle rule of interpreting Scripture is that Scripture interprets Scripture. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
85:Throughout Scripture thorns symbolize, not sin, but the consequence of sin. Remember ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
86:A simple layman armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
87:On the other hand, ignorance of Scripture almost always ensures a painful immaturity. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
88:there is a rabbinic principle: “Scripture does not depart from its plain meaning. ~ Jonathan Sacks, #NFDB
89:Scripture teaches that because of his sin, man cannot choose God, apart from grace. ~ Gregory Brown, #NFDB
90:God has two textbooks - Scripture and Creation - we would do well to listen to both. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
91:Scripture also functions as something like the constitution of the baptismal city. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
92:England, to instruct me in lessons about nature, and also about scripture. She would take ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
93:Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
94:The Jesus of the Scripture transcends all nations and calls all nations into judgment. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
95:You need not bring life to the scripture. You should draw life from the scripture. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
96:All that tends not to charity is figurative. The sole aim of the Scripture is charity. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
97:I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
98:No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes the scripture. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB
99:People want black-and-white answers, but Scripture is rainbow arch across a stormy sky. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
100:Scripture is a book about going to Heaven. It's not a book about how the heavens go. ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
101:I suppose what's unique about our presentation is the amount of Scripture that kids get. ~ Willie Aames, #NFDB
102:That the Christian now inherits the distinctive Jewish promises is not taught in Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
103:All the great doctrinal debates were at their cores debates about the meaning of Scripture. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
104: Book I. Containing a General View of the Subjects Treated in Holy Scripture. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
105:Digging into Scripture is our way of listening and tuning our ears to our Father’s voice. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
106:I have the deepest respect even for Pagan myths, still more for the myths in Holy Scripture. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
107:It is only when we “rejoice with trembling” that we fully grasp who the God of Scripture is. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
108:The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."
"And the foolish can cite Shakespeare. ~ Susan Dennard,#NFDB
109:The Holy Spirit wants to convert the words of Scripture into transformed personalities. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
110:For the Spirit is required to understand the whole of the Scripture and every part of it. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
111:In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
112:It is unlawful to add anything to the words of Holy Scripture regarding the sense. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas, #NFDB
113:"When you are deluded and full of doubt,even a thousand books of scripture are not enough." ~ Zen proverb, #NFDB
114:Any interpretation of scripture that bred hatred or disdain for others was illegitimate, ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
115:But Scripture praises everywhere his pure and unmixed mercy, which does away with all merit. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
116:It’s just as dangerous and just as heretical to under—do as to over—do what Scripture says. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
117:Sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
118:The authority of Scripture is greater than the comprehension of the whole of man's reason. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
119:the Buddhist scripture expresses it: Those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead ~ Colin Wilson, #NFDB
120:The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
121:A man who is well grounded in the testimonies of the Scripture is the bulwark of the Church. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
122:And if what they claim were true, why have Holy Scripture at all? Of what use is Scripture? ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
123:Christ ministers his life, love, and presence by means of his words (v. 7), the Scripture. ~ Andrew M Davis, #NFDB
124:For you know this first, that no prophecy of Scripture springs from any private interpretation. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
125:Holy Scripture could never lie or err...its decrees are of absolute and inviolable truth. ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
126:The supreme authority for the interpretation of Scripture is vested in each individual.
~ Baruch Spinoza,#NFDB
127:Those who would like the God of scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
128:non-Christian thinking, according to Scripture, is “folly” (Ps.14:1; 1 Cor.1:18–2:16; 3:18-23). ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
129:Scripture is so clear that love for God must translate into love for those closest to us.2 ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
130:Let’s look at a difficult and commonly misunderstood passage of Scripture. Jesus is speaking: ~ Robert Morris, #NFDB
131:Sacred scripture is like a mirror in which we see God, although each in a different way. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg, #NFDB
132:The more you read Scripture, the more you actually talk to God rather than think about fear. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
133:Dear friends, whenever you want to understand a text of Scripture, try to read the original ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
134:For me theory is only a hypothesis, not the Holy Scripture. It is a tool in our daily work, ~ Victor Sebestyen, #NFDB
135:In philosophy, the opposite of truth is error; in Scripture, the opposite of truth is a lie. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
136:ACT8.35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
137:Both my study of Scripture and my career in entertaining children have taught me to cherish them. ~ Walt Disney, #NFDB
138:Liberalizing tendencies today are not usually associated with those seeking a return to Scripture. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
139:Men treat God's sovereignty as a theme for controversy, but in Scripture it is matter for worship. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
140:Men treat God’s sovereignty as a theme for controversy, but in Scripture it is matter for worship. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
141:Scripture carries God’s authority, the highest authority, because Scripture is God’s very own Word. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
142:There is scarcely one figure in the entire Hebrew scripture we would want our children to emulate. ~ Harvey Cox, #NFDB
143:about praying but never really pray. Scripture says, “You do not have because you do not ask ~ Emerson Eggerichs, #NFDB
144:If private revelations agree with Scripture, they are needless, and if they disagree, they are false. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
145:Scripture is like a pair of spectacles which dispels the darkness and gives us a clear view of God. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
146:There's a scripture that says, 'A merry heart doeth good like medicine.' I think that's true, too. ~ Dolly Parton, #NFDB
147:As an ultimate fuck you to rule-keeping scripture zealots everywhere, Jesus hung out with whores. ~ Frank Schaeffer, #NFDB
148:Every morning as I read the scripture, every night, I quote the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. ~ Bill Bright, #NFDB
149:Scripture brought me to the Gate of Paradise, and the mind stood in wonder as it entered. ~ Saint Ephrem the Syrian, #NFDB
150:They who strive to build up a firm faith in Scripture through disputation are doing things backwards. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
151:Scripture doesn't speak of people who found God. Scripture speaks of people who walked with God. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
152:Scripture doesn’t speak of people who found God. Scripture speaks of people who walked with God. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
153:The step of obedience always precedes revelation. That pattern is evident all through the Scripture. ~ Chuck Missler, #NFDB
154:When we reach the outer limit of what Scripture says, it is time to stop arguing and start worshipping. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
155:Scripture and tradition habitually put the joys of heaven into the scale against the sufferings of earth, ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
156:The man who, despite the teaching of Scripture, tries to pray without a Savior, insults the deity. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
157:The scripture teaches that he who now restrains will continue to do so until he is taken out of the way. ~ Greg Laurie, #NFDB
158:we should emphasize that the narrative of Scripture is a primary fund for the Christian imagination. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
159:Not only the words (vocabula) which the Holy Spirit and Scripture use are divine, but also the phrasing ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
160:People tell me judge not lest ye be judged. I always tell them, twist not scripture lest ye be like satan ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
161:[T]here is no greater strengthener of sin, and destroyer of the soul, than Scripture misapplied (317). ~ Richard Baxter, #NFDB
162:We hyper-focus on the lines of Scripture containing the miracles, and we miss the details of the mess. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
163:[Christ] will come again. But we must look to Scripture, not human thought, for our guide to preparing. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
164:If your creed and Scripture do not agree, cut your creed to pieces, but make it agree with this book. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
165:It’s not comparing yourself with others who call themselves Christians. Compare yourself to the Scripture. ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
166:My Lord told me a joke. And seeing Him laugh has done more for me than any scripture I will ever read. ~ Daniel Ladinsky, #NFDB
167:My Lord told me a joke. And seeing Him laugh has done more for me than any scripture I will ever read. ~ Meister Eckhart, #NFDB
168:There are two ways to read Scripture - the way a lawyer reads a will and the way an heir reads a will. ~ Alexander Whyte, #NFDB
169:When you think on the powerful truths of Scripture, God uses His Word to change your way of thinking. ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
170:Any concept of God, however sincerely held, that is contrary to Scripture is false, and in the end idolatrous. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
171:In a time when women were almost silent or invisible in literature, Scripture affirms and celebrates women. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
172:Scripture also assures us that God speaks to those who will listen and that He is always acting on our behalf. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
173:We contend that ideas and/or practices may be scriptural as long as they are not condemned by scripture. ~ Charles H Kraft, #NFDB
174:What I know of the divine
science and holy scripture,
I learnt in the woods and fields. ~ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,#NFDB
175:Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
176:Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
177:Scripture is not inerrant; believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
178:The men who abandon themselves to the passions of this miserable life, are compared in Scripture to beasts. ~ Peter Abelard, #NFDB
179:What does the Scripture say? “ Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.” Romans 4:3 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
180:Our prayers should arise out of immersion in the Scripture. [We] speak only to the degree we are spoken to. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
181:Scripture calls us into the memory of an amazing story … not for ourselves but for the sake of the world. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
182:Scripture speaks of a holiness which we have in Christ before God and a holiness which we must strive after. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
183:The fact is, we sometimes read Scripture, thinking of what it ought to say, rather than what it does say. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
184:We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
185:came, Known to the world by Ráma's name: With soul subdued, a chief of might, In Scripture versed, in glory bright, ~ Valmiki, #NFDB
186:Men cannot make Scripture conform to their lifestyle; they must make their lifestyle conform to Scripture. ~ Edwin Louis Cole, #NFDB
187:Our culture is so fixated on dying and going to heaven when the whole Scripture is about heaven coming to earth. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
188:The scripture that God used to save me was Isaiah 7.14, which today is still my favourite verse in the Bible. ~ Gloria Gaynor, #NFDB
189:To have faith in the Word, Scripture must not grasp us in our critical thought, but in the life of the soul. ~ Abraham Kuyper, #NFDB
190:Worship songs can't just be rooted in culture - they won't be deep enough. They have to be rooted in scripture. ~ Matt Redman, #NFDB
191:If we venture beyond the pale of Scripture, we are...exposed to all the illusions of imagination and enthusiasm. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
192:Satan has no right to exercise authority over us, but he hopes we're too ignorant regarding scripture to know it. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
193:She would stay strong. She would remember the promises in Scripture. She would hope and pray and not give away. ~ Laura Frantz, #NFDB
194:We have lobbed verses of Scripture, like hand grenades, into the camps of others, convinced we only have truth. ~ George Carey, #NFDB
195:According to Scripture, the trouble with man by nature is not that he is incomplete but that he is dead. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
196:For Jesus, Scripture is powerful, decisive, and authoritative because it is nothing less than the voice of God. ~ Kevin DeYoung, #NFDB
197:People tell me judge not lest ye be judged. I always tell them, twist not scripture lest ye be like satan. ~ Paul David Washer, #NFDB
198:Scripture is also clear that it is not by works of righteousness we have done but by God’s mercy that He saves us. ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
199:There is nothing inappropriate about analyzing problematic passages in light of a belief in the truth of Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
200:Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
201:According to Scripture, everything is connected, and every action has at least some effect on the whole. ~ Erwin Raphael McManus, #NFDB
202:Holy Scripture is the highest authority for every believer, the standard of faith and the foundation for reform. ~ John Wycliffe, #NFDB
203:We don’t go to Scripture for permission to do what we think is best, but for direction to do what He says is best. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
204:My brothers, when you accost each other, two things alone are fitting, instructive words or a grave silence. ~ Buddhist Scripture, #NFDB
205:Scripture doesn't promise that God will remove temptation, only that you'll be given strength to withstand it. ~ Garrison Keillor, #NFDB
206:Though we claim to believe the whole of Scripture, in practice we frequently deny much of it by ignoring it. ~ Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
207:We have a cunning adversary, who watches to do mischief, and will promote errors, even by the words of scripture. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
208:God is so clear in spelling out His attributes in scripture in order that others would know what He is really like. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
209:Most assuredly Zen is a religion, but it is a religion without scripture, without doctrine or dogma and without sin. ~ Howard Fast, #NFDB
210:Scripture ... does not derive its authority from the fact that we use it, not even when we use Scripture in faith. ~ G C Berkouwer, #NFDB
211:Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
212:The blasphemy of the papists is damnable, when they pretend that the light of Scripture merely dazzles the eye. This ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
213:The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 3, line 99., #NFDB
214:The Devil can quote scripture, after all. And monsters can say "please" and "thank you" same as any mother's son. ~ Elizabeth Bear, #NFDB
215:The devil can quote scripture,” she said.
“No doubt he had his hand in writing it,” the captain shot back. ~ Miles Cameron,#NFDB
216:Be constantly committed to prayer or to reading [Scripture]; by praying, you speak to God, in reading, God speaks to you. ~ Cyprian, #NFDB
217:If your salvation was dependent on your ability to read and understand scripture, Jesus would have been an author. ~ Steve Maraboli, #NFDB
218:I really don't care too much what the different later Christian traditions say. My aim is to be faithful to Scripture. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
219:Second, we are to discover this purpose of God in Scripture. The will of God for the people is in the Word of God. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
220:So I offer my definition of theology: theology is the application of Scripture, by persons, to every area of life.11 ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
221:The picture of fallen man as given in Scripture is that he knows God but does not want to recognize Him as God. ~ Cornelius Van Til, #NFDB
222:To substitute Scripture for the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the living Word. ~ Sebastian Franck, #NFDB
223:for when any one understands this Epistle, he has a passage opened to him to the understanding of the whole Scripture. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
224:Scripture is necessary if Christians are to know the will of God regarding what we are to believe and what we are to do. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
225:the remaining debates among those who hold a high view of Scripture will be exegetical and hermeneutical, nothing else. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
226:The zealous person who promises us a life free from suffering has found his message from a source other than Scripture. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
227:'T is elder Scripture, writ by God's own hand,— Scripture authentic! uncorrupt by man. ~ Edward Young, Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), #NFDB
228:And the Scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did . . ~ Walter Isaacson, #NFDB
229:his own sake and the love of our neighbor for God's sake--is the fulfillment and the end of all Scripture. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
230:Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the Scripture, but they are really denying its inner truth. ~ The Bhagavad-Gita, #NFDB
231:While Christians tend to turn to Scripture to end a conversation, Jews turn to Scripture to start a conversation. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
232:Both psychological research and Scripture demonstrate that those who give generously and serve others are happy people. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
233:into the depths of Scripture or researched a single Greek word. They simply taught what they knew. I don’t know any other ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
234:Most families controlled their children with scripture and a whip. This philosophy extended into the classrooms, too. ~ Carolyn Jessop, #NFDB
235:Most songs come from being attentive. Attentive to life, attentive to scripture, attentive to your heart. Pay attention! ~ Matt Redman, #NFDB
236:Scripture would not only solve the individual and family divisions, but it would also solve the ecclesiastical confusion. ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
237:The crucial revelatory images that express 'the thought of Christ' are present in scripture and reinforced in worship. ~ Austin Farrer, #NFDB
238:The wonders of nature call to you. The promises and prophecies of Scripture speak to you. God himself reaches out to you. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
239:Everything in Scripture is either preparation for the Gospel, presentation of the Gospel, or participation in the Gospel. ~ Dave Harvey, #NFDB
240:Whose lore in words of wisdom flows. Whose constant care and chief delight Were Scripture and ascetic rite, The good Válmíki, ~ Valmiki, #NFDB
241:Every scripture is to be interpreted by the same spirit which gave it forth,"—is the fundamental law of criticism. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, #NFDB
242:If
you want to receive life and healing from God, take time to find the words of Scripture that promise these results. ~ F F Bosworth,#NFDB
243:It was a vow, a piece of a chant, their scripture, something they took so seriously that saying it aloud embarrassed them. ~ Holly Black, #NFDB
244:Many a text [of Scripture] is written in a secret ink which must be held to the fire of adversity to make it visible. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
245:Sabbath rest is more than mere abstention from physical work; and, therefore, must include worship and Scripture-reading. ~ Joseph Hertz, #NFDB
246:Truth is neither in the scripture nor in the words of prophets. It is in your heart, feel it, discover it and expand with it. ~ Amit Ray, #NFDB
247:we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
248:2 Timothy 3:16 ALL Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
249:All the distinctive features and superiority of our republican institutions are derived from the teachings of Scripture. ~ Edward Everett, #NFDB
250:Family worship is a time in which the entire household gathers for singing, prayer, the reading of Scripture, and catechesis. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
251:If you keep the law of God, you are not described in Scripture as a pinched legalist, but rather as happy (Prov. 29:18). ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
252:Rediscover the Rosary in the light of scripture, in harmony with the Liturgy, and in the context of your daily lives. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
253:Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger. We were strangers once, too. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
254:Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture - this is the bone and marrow of Biblical worship. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
255:When God changed someone’s name in Scripture, He changed their destiny: Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Simon to Peter. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
256:For they were thieves not only of wages but of honor. To their purpose they could quote not only Scripture but Jefferson. ~ Sinclair Lewis, #NFDB
257:Scripture does not say that God is 'love, love, love' or that He is 'wrath, wrath, wrath,' but that He is 'holy, holy, holy.' ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
258:There is no value in the reading of Scripture for its own sake, but only if it effectively introduces us to Jesus Christ. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
259:Those who treat God's Word (i.e., Scripture: Bible, Qur'an ..etc) as a living organism are theologically, non-believers. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
260:The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind one of the surest proofs of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
261:There is a big gap between what we read in Scripture about the Holy Spirit and how most believers and churches operate today. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
262:The universe is the primary revelation of the divine, the primary scripture, the primary locus of divine-human communication. ~ Thomas Berry, #NFDB
263:An evangelical is somebody who, first of all, has a very high view of Scripture, believes it's an infallible message from God. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
264:Jesus found His identity in Scripture and always directed these people to the Scriptures and the prophecies that spoke of Him. ~ K P Yohannan, #NFDB
265:Overall, knowledge of Scripture, doctrine, and church history is poor among most Christians, not just young adult believers. ~ David Kinnaman, #NFDB
266:Scripture suggests that meditating on the Word of God can have an always-on effect of peace and strength in difficult times. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
267:We must never minimize the suffering of another. Scripture's mandate to us is, "Weep with them that weep." (Romans 12:15, KJV) ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
268:My aim has been to expound Scripture and to expound Scripture in such a way that I do not set one Scripture over against another. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
269:The devil can quote Scripture," she said.
"No doubt he had his hand in writing it," the captain shot back. - The Red Knight ~ Miles Cameron,#NFDB
270:16All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
271:Scripture tells us that there will be signs pointing toward the return of the Lord. I believe all these signs are evident today. ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
272:We are told repeatedly in Scripture to prepare for hardships; so why do we believe our lives should be characterized by ease? ~ Patsy Clairmont, #NFDB
273:Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
274:The author of the document would one day come to believe that it was sacred scripture and that his writing desk was a holy object. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
275:The doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture. ~ Pope Paul V, #NFDB
276:When God sends signs, be faithful. Let them lead you to Scripture. As Scripture directs, be humble. Let it lead you to worship. And ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
277:16 d All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
278:A false interpretation of Scripture causes that the gospel of the Lord becomes the gospel of man, or, which is worse, of the devil. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
279:GAL3.22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
280:If Eve could be swayed in a flawless environment, what is our protection in the midst of corruption? It’s none other than Scripture. ~ John Bevere, #NFDB
281:It's good that kids know the Scripture. It's best that they know the Scripture and get the concept. All I can say is, it's working. ~ Willie Aames, #NFDB
282:Scripture said that "pride goes before fall". Just let pride go alone. Don't go in its company, else fall pursues both of you! ~ Israelmore Ayivor, #NFDB
283:The Christian God is slow to anger and rich in mercy (see Exodus 34: 6, echoed in Joel 2: 13 and many other places in Scripture). ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
284:to see in the past that very godly people were able to maintain bizarre interpretations of Scripture should be a caution for us all. ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
285:Before all else, Protestantism is, in its very essence, an appeal from all other authority to the divine authority of Holy Scripture ~ B B Warfield, #NFDB
286:It is not true that some doctors are only for the initiated. There is NOTHING in Scripture which is ashamed of the light. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
287:Some parts of the Bible are dreadful. In fact, my working title for The Sins of Scripture was "The Terrible Text of The Bible." ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
288:The devil can site scripture for his own purpose! An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek. ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
289:Every word of Holy Scripture was a love letter from God directed very personally to us and he asked us whether we loved Jesus. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
290:He who walks with the wise will be wise, Scripture saith, and he who walks with the witty will eventually start to pop off himself. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
291:hold one another close …” I eased through the throng of candlelit faces as the minister quoted scripture and talked about the ~ Amanda Kyle Williams, #NFDB
292:The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to bebelieved and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimonyof any man, or church; ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
293:The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
294:The Book of Psalms is one of the most extensive and useful in the holy Scripture, as it is every where suited to the case of the saints. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
295:The scripture in times of disputes is like an open town in times of war, which serves in differently the occasions of both parties. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
296:But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
297:I remembered something my mother used to say. “The devil can quote scripture.” “And in a pleasing voice,” Mrs. Shoplaw agreed moodily. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
298:Memorizing Scripture strengthens your faith because it repeatedly reinforces the truth, often just when you need to hear it again. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
299:The secret of Caleb’s life is found in a phrase that’s repeated six times in Scripture: “He wholly followed the LORD God of Israel ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
300:When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can't understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom. ~ Jack Kerouac, #NFDB
301:[H]e found poetry more comforting than Scripture—and his ability to forge from his life a cogent, powerful tale of living with death. ~ Paul Kalanithi, #NFDB
302:Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. ~ Mark Twain, #NFDB
303:The fear of God does not come naturally to human beings; it must be learned through Scripture, worship, and the hard knocks of experience. ~ Max Anders, #NFDB
304:The Sins of Scripture is an interesting title; most people don't put sins and scripture together in the same title. It jars people. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
305:The narratives of Scripture were not meant to describe our world ... but to change the world, including the one in which we now live. ~ Stanley Hauerwas, #NFDB
306:All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16 ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
307:All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight,* for disciplining in righteousness, ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
308:Make knowledge of the Scripture your love ... Live with them, meditate on them, make them the sole object of your knowledge and inquiries. ~ Saint Jerome, #NFDB
309:Scripture: From the Latin scriptura, meaning “writings”; refers to sacred texts, but more specifically, the Bible as the Word of God written. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
310:The essence of Dispensationalism is a consistent literal interpretation of Scripture, unless the text and context clearly indicates otherwise. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
311:The fact that so little of the findings of modern science is prefigured in Scripture to my mind casts further doubt on it divine inspiration. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
312:Alaska Airlines would have been cheaper, but Reacher hated Alaska Airlines. They put a scripture card on their meal trays. Ruined his appetite. ~ Lee Child, #NFDB
313:America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scripture. ~ Woodrow Wilson, #NFDB
314:For it is the explicit statement of Sacred Scripture that one who is outside of tribulation is outside the condition and hope of salvation. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
315:I have more wisdom than any books ever written in history of times, any scripture ever written which you rhyme but this is not my purpose. ~ Santosh Kalwar, #NFDB
316:Scripture is there to be a means of God’s action in and through us – which will include, but go far beyond, the mere conveying of information. ~ Tom Wright, #NFDB
317:The promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads. It is promised (1) that we shall be with Christ; (2) that we shall be like ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
318:The only way that we can avoid the sin of idolatry is by immersing ourselves in Spirit-enlightened study of God through the Scripture. ~ Elyse M Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
319:Every word about the God-breathed character of Scripture is meaningless if Holy Scripture is not understood as the witness concerning Christ. ~ G C Berkouwer, #NFDB
320:In Scripture we read of two kinds of men-the spiritual man controlled by the Holy Spirit, and the "carnal" man who is ruled by his passions. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
321:Amos Flesher struck her as many men of the cloth had done over the years: a bully who had learned to fight with scripture rather than his fists. ~ Nick Cutter, #NFDB
322:and proceeding to follow the example of the devil in quoting Scripture for his own ends I added: “She looketh to the ways of her household…. ~ Agatha Christie, #NFDB
323:If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the style adopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
324:It pleases God when you know you are dearly loved. That’s why the Scripture says, “Come boldly to the throne.” Don’t go to Him feeling unworthy. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
325:Origen, and many others along with him, have seized the occasion of torturing Scripture, in every possible manner, away from the true sense. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
326:There are people who have an almost perfect knowledge of the letter of the Scripture but have never known the message of the Scripture. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
327:An older, Puritan approach to Scripture tended to prevail in the American South, where the Bible was regarded as a set of definite, positive laws ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
328:Christ, who came meek and mild to save us from pain and suffering, was the One who talked more about hell than any other person in Scripture. ~ D James Kennedy, #NFDB
329:Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,’” I whispered, the words familiar from Scripture. “But not this time, God. You had your chance. ~ Faith Hunter, #NFDB
330:Creation itself bears witness to God, but with Scripture we have a better comprehension of exactly what the created order is saying about its Maker. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
331:Didn’t Shakespeare say something about ‘every fool in error can find a passage of Scripture to back him up’? He knew his religious bigots. ~ John Howard Griffin, #NFDB
332:do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
333:Speaker says psychology has commandeered "everything hard" and partitioned it from Scripture with the assumption that its causes are biological ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
334:The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy - so you must not tie yourself to any of these things. ~ SRI AUROBINDO, #NFDB
335:The Mormon mission to Africa, as to other dark-skinned parts of the world, was for a long time hobbled by the racism of the movement's scripture. ~ James Fenton, #NFDB
336:Through the reading of scripture, the people hear other stories about Jesus that enable them to move beyond the privateness of their own stories. ~ James H Cone, #NFDB
337:What is said of the law applies to the whole of Scripture: when it is not directed toward Christ as its one aim, it is tortured badly and twisted. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
338:Calvin would encourage magistrates to look to Scripture because the written law was given to "remove the obscurity of the law of nature" (II.viii.1). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
339:Protestant commentaries, I discovered, were also particularly interesting because Protestants have spent more time on Scripture than most of us. ~ Fulton J Sheen, #NFDB
340:Scripture tells us to "run with endurance the race that is set before us." As we do, may God hold close those who’ve been taken from us too soon. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
341:To trifle with Scripture is to deprive yourself of its aid. Reverence it, and look up to God with devout gratitude for having given it to you. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
342:we are forever getting confused into thinking that scripture is mainly about what we are supposed to do rather than a picture of who God is. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
343:We need to repent of the haughty way in which we sometimes stand in judgment upon Scripture and must learn to sit humbly under its judgment instead. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
344:The good news is the gospel of God, about Christ, according to Scripture, for the nations, unto the obedience of faith, and for the sake of the Name. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
345:When we understand the function of origin stories, both in our culture and in our lives, we can make better sense of those found in Scripture. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
346:No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become. ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
347:Priests are said in Scripture to devour the sins of the people; and they find sins so hard to digest that they must have the best wine to wash them down. ~ Erasmus, #NFDB
348:The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn. —Martin Luther* The ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
349:The first step in reading the Bible is to ask God to help you understand it … Don’t go to Scripture looking for your own idea; go searching for God’s … ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
350:A Veda-knower of the unwritten book
Perusing the mystic scripture of her forms,
He had caught her hierophant significances, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Satyavan,#NFDB
351:Heresy is dangerous because it camouflages itself as the truth, it resembles the truth, it emerges from within the church as a mistreatment of Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
352:I believe very confidently in the truth of Scripture, where it says that there is no authority, no power given to man except as given by God. ~ Steven Curtis Chapman, #NFDB
353:I would say 90 percent of Christians do not have a worldview, in other words a view of the world, based on the Scripture and a relationship with God. ~ Josh McDowell, #NFDB
354:Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
355:The most accomplished in the Scripture are fools, unless they acknowledge that they have need of God for their schoolmaster all the days of their life. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
356:We need theology in addition to Scripture because God has authorized teaching in the church, and because we need that teaching to mature in the faith. ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
357:Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
358:I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
359:I am still stunned by my capacity to spin Scripture, see what I wanted, ignore what I didn’t, and use the Word to defend my life rather than define it. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
360:To meditate on Scripture is to allow the truth of God's Word to move from head to heart. It is to so dwell upon a truth that it becomes part of our being. ~ Greg Oden, #NFDB
361:When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much. ~ Fen-Yang, #NFDB
362:Heresy is dangerous because it camouflages itself as the truth, it resembles the truth, it emerges from within the church as a mistreatment of Scripture. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
363:In days long ago when there were no spiritual directors or brilliant commentaries on Scripture, fidelity to God’s will was the whole of spirituality. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
364:For it appears, that all that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God's works, is included in that one phrase, the glory of God; which ~ John Piper, #NFDB
365:How understandable that Holy Scripture should refer to the Infernal monarch as the "father of lies"- a magnificent example of character inversion. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey, #NFDB
366:The key to learning the fear of the Lord is to stay in Scripture. When you are in the Scripture, pray that God would teach you that he is the Holy One. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
367:That we affix no sense unto any obscure or difficult passage of Scripture but what is materially true and consonant unto other express and plain testimonies. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
368:Vegans have a way of circling every conversation back to food, much like born-again Christians have a way of returning every conversation to the scripture. ~ Will Potter, #NFDB
369:We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God, because it has proceeded from him alone.” In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
370:The fool will upset the whole science of astronomy, but as the Holy Scripture shows, it was the sun and not the earth which Joshua ordered to stand still. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
371:There have been no sects in the Christian world, however absurd, which have not endeavoured to support their opinions by arguments drawn from Scripture. ~ Laurence Sterne, #NFDB
372:A believer should easily identify the Aryan tampering of Scripture. One example is the unceasing hostility and aggression against the innocent firstborns ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
373:Jesus Christ, as he is attested to us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death. ~ Karl Barth, #NFDB
374:We are supposed to feel the weight and the power of the truth revealed in Scripture. Theology should do more than inform us—it should warm and stir our hearts. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
375:Those who believe the Author of Nature to be also the Author of Scripture must expect to find in Scripture the same sorts of difficulties that they find in Nature. ~ Origen, #NFDB
376:Worship plays a major role in the Christian daily life. Throughout Scripture we see worship from David dancing before the Lord to Jesus rejoicing in the Spirit. ~ T D Jakes, #NFDB
377:11For the Scripture says, “WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM [whoever adheres to, trusts in, and relies on Him] WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED [in his expectations].” [Is 28:16] ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
378:Exposition presupposes an exegetical process to extract the God-intended meaning of Scripture and an explanation of that meaning in a contemporary way. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
379:Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth5 as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
380:Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself. ~ Osho, #NFDB
381:Even more than he regretted her opposition, he dreaded the drawing of battle lines between science and Scripture. Personally, he saw no conflict between the two. ~ Dava Sobel, #NFDB
382:Step number one to receiving answered prayer is decide what you want from God and find the scripture or scriptures that definitely promise you these things. ~ Kenneth E Hagin, #NFDB
383:There is no more direct statement or more clear affirmation
of the deity of Christ to be found anywhere in Scripture than in the first verse of John's Gospel. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
384:You have to find that place that is very quiet in your head, and anytime I read it, anytime I come across it, my Bible, the first Scripture in there is Psalms 91. ~ Ray Lewis, #NFDB
385:Lived religion is a very different thing from strict textual analysis. Very few people of any faith live their lives as literalist interpretations of scripture. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
386:Scripture is the ultimate source of truth and contains some of the most valuable wisdom on the planet because it was given to us by the author of life Himself. ~ Jed Jurchenko, #NFDB
387:Scripture suggests that the elements in space were created for the benefit of earth, while evolution suggests that earth is an insignificant speck in vast space. ~ Walter Lang, #NFDB
388:But every one of these—the canon of Scripture, the creed, and the institutional structure—emerged in its present form only toward the end of the second century. ~ Elaine Pagels, #NFDB
389:Most of us do not have a corpus of Scripture in our minds, a comprehensive understanding of the Bible and its truths that can counteract the voices of culture. ~ Sally Clarkson, #NFDB
390:Reading Scripture merely to look for doctrinal proof texts or sermon illustrations, rather than as the blazing Word which is alive and active, kills our spirit. ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
391:Scripture instructs God’s people to give our best to whatever task we turn our hands to, to conduct ourselves as if we work for the Lord himself, not for man. ~ Karen Witemeyer, #NFDB
392:The natural man "cannot see or discern that divine excellency in the Scripture, without an apprehension whereof no man can believe it aright to be the word of God." ~ John Owen, #NFDB
393:This is perfect. This is perfect. From the perfect springs the perfect. If the perfect is taken from the perfect, only the perfect remains. —ANCIENT HINDU SCRIPTURE ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
394:Though often lost sight of today, the self-authenticating quality of Scripture was perhaps surprisingly well recognized, especially among some early Greek writers. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
395:When God picks out a man and speaks to him, it is to engage him in a work, an action. Nowhere in Scripture do we find indeterminate or purely mystical vocation. ~ Jacques Ellul, #NFDB
396:convinced is the biblical doctrine on the great subject of the inspiration of Scripture. In making this confession and presenting this commentary, we hope to dispel ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
397:It is impossible that there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the Earth, since no such race is recorded by Scripture among the descendants of Adam. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
398:Let us use texts of Scripture as fuel for our heart’s fire, they are live coals; let us attend sermons, but above all, let us be much alone with Jesus. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
399:Listening to liberals invoke the sanctity of "science" to promote their crackpot ideas creates the same uneasy feeling as listening to Bill Clinton cite Scripture. ~ Ann Coulter, #NFDB
400:spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). Holy Scripture must be acknowledged as the Word of God by virtue of its divine origin. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
401:The world doesn’t judge us by our theology; it judges us by our behavior. The validity of Scripture in the world’s view is determined by how it affects us. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
402:To appeal…to some ill-defined and sentimental notion of love as the ground for contravening Scripture may be a lot of things, but it is not Christian love (p. 174). ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
403:Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
404:Truth is not to be found outside. No teacher, no scripture can give it to you. It is inside you and if you wish to attain it, seek your own company. Be with yourself. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
405:Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
406:Beginning in 1962... the courts began to systematically secularize the nation, reflecting its view that God and the Scripture had no place in the public arena. ~ Rick Scarborough, #NFDB
407:I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue. ~ William Tyndale, #NFDB
408:Scripture has always been a part of my life. My dad was a pastor. My mother was a speaker, writer, and teacher. I memorized Scripture from the time I was little. ~ Gloria Gaither, #NFDB
409:To obey the commands of Scripture can finally become a delight when we see that the reasons almost always center around God's love and provision for us in Christ. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
410:For you see this scripture fulfilled this day and therefore I desire you as you tender the Lord and the church and commonwealth to consider and look what you do. ~ Anne Hutchinson, #NFDB
411:The Divine Truth is greater than any religion or creed or scripture or idea or philosophy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Passages from The Synthesis of Yoga, #NFDB
412:Those to whom We have given the Scripture know him (i.e., the prophet) as they know their own sons. But indeed, a party of them conceal the truth while they know [it]. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
413:Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
414:God is consistent with his nature and declared purposes in Scripture, but he is not limited to our finite understanding of him or the ways we think he should work. ~ Craig S Keener, #NFDB
415:He who is well acquainted with the text of scripture, is a distinguished theologian. For a Bible passage or text is of more value than the comments of four authors. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
416:Neither Mantra nor scripture is of any avail; Bhakti, love, accomplishes everything. The Master is everything - both Guru and Ishta. He is all in all. ~ Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi, #NFDB
417:The I AM statements recorded in Scripture reveal the depths of the Christian life and how God’s children can go deeper by living with Jesus in the present tense. ~ Warren W Wiersbe, #NFDB
418:We do not first acquire the faith that we bring to Scripture. Scripture encourages faith. “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). ~ Reinhard Bonnke, #NFDB
419:We have misunderstood Scripture if we think our choices are the final determiner of the course of our lives, but we have also misunderstood it if we deny human freedom. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
420:But, when Scripture makes a clear distinction between the act of creation and the process of preservation, we cannot accept the idea of a progressive creation process. ~ Walter Lang, #NFDB
421:figurative language is one of the primary modes by which, past and present, the Church communicates truth to her people, in Scripture, Christian art, and the liturgy. ~ Holly Ordway, #NFDB
422:God's covenant of grace in Scripture is one of those things that are too big to be easily seen, particularly when one's mind is programmed to look at something smaller. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
423:Proverbs 19:21 is a foundational Scripture in regard to understanding God’s purpose: “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. ~ Myles Munroe, #NFDB
424:Scripture is something God had ‘let be,’ and so it is at once God’s creation and the creation of the dozens of people and communities and cultures who produced it. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
425:Ultimately, it's not about meditation or belief in some scripture or religion, it's about flowing with the river of life, it's about living with compassion and gratitude. ~ Om Swami, #NFDB
426:I believe the futurist approach is far superior to the other views. It is the only view that consistently follows the principles of interpreting Scripture literally. ~ Mark Hitchcock, #NFDB
427:It must be conceded by those who admit the authority of Scripture (such only he is addressing) that from the decision of the word of God there can be no appeal. ~ William Wilberforce, #NFDB
428:Once the highest view of Scripture is abandoned by any theologian, group, denomination, or church, the downhill slide in both its theology and practice is inevitable. ~ James R White, #NFDB
429:THE DOCTRINE OF SCRIPTURE IS FOUNDATIONAL to the Christain faith. But there is more to say about Scripture than simply, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
430:The illuminating work of the Holy Spirit comes through diligent study and prayer, as He will teach us and give us confidence in the doctrines that are found in Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
431:This teaches us that no outward instruction, even from Christ himself, or His words in Scripture, can bring us the full blessing—until the Holy Spirit works it in us. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
432:All Scripture is inspired by God. It is theopneustos, “breathed out by God.” When we hear Scripture, we hear the very voice of almighty God. There is no greater authority. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
433:the authority of Scripture does not depend on the decision or decree of any church or any man. Rather, Scripture is authoritative because it is the Word of the living God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
434:The Bhagavad-Gita is a true scripture of the human race a living creation rather than a book, with a new message for every age and a new meaning for every civilization. ~ Sri Aurobindo, #NFDB
435:As the perfect man speaks so he acts; as he acts, so the perfect man speaks. It is because he speaks as he acts and acts as he speaks that he is called the perfect. ~ Buddhist Scripture, #NFDB
436:The intention of Scripture is to exercise our faith, that we may know we are protected by God’s hand, and that we may not be subject to harm from Satan and wicked men. . . ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
437:Though you recite much scripture,
If you are unaware and do not act according
You are like a cowherd counting others' cattle,
Not a sharer in the wanderer's life. ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
438:All Sacred Scriptures is but one book, and that one book is Christ, because all divine Scripture speaks of Christ, and all divine Scripture is fulfilled in Christ. ~ Hugh of Saint Victor, #NFDB
439:Historically the church has understood the nature of Scripture much the same as it has understood the person of Christ—the Bible is at the same time both human and divine. ~ Gordon D Fee, #NFDB
440:I believe that to preach or to expound the scripture is to open up the inspired text with such faithfulness and sensitivity that God’s voice is heard and His people obey Him ~ John Stott, #NFDB
441:I defy the pope, and all his laws;" and added, "If God spared him life, ere many years he would cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than he did. ~ John Foxe, #NFDB
442:There's a verse in the Bible says, 'In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.' And what brings me peace is the scripture. ~ Tammy Faye Bakker, #NFDB
443:God the Father is the giver of Holy Scripture; God the Son is the theme of Holy Scripture; and God the Spirit is the author, authenticator, and interpreter of Holy Scripture. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
444:Regardless of how busy we become with all things Christian, we must remember that the most transforming practice available to us is the disciplined intake of Scripture. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
445:The larger part of the prophecies of scripture is taken up with directions how men should regulate their conduct, rather than with information how God intends to regulate His. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
446:A Latin phrase meaning “analogy of faith,” referring to the principle that any interpretation must be in accord with the teaching of the Scripture taken as a whole. Arising ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
447:the Source of Abundance…is God. God is the Source of every good thing. Every good and every perfect gift comes from God (see James 1:17). His methods are clear in Scripture. ~ Mike Murdock, #NFDB
448:Be aware of your own damage level. If you know you’ve been a student of bad doctrine, learning good doctrine will be essential to recovering a purer interpretation of Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
449:Even Christians taking in the teaching of the Bible can be deceived about our own sins. We somehow feel that consent to the teaching of scripture is equivalent to obedience. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
450:Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like. ~ Christopher Hitchens, #NFDB
451:(The monks) approach was far less narcissistic and our tends to be. Their goal when reading Scripture was to see Christ in every verse, and not a mirror image of themselves. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
452:The nonnegotiable ethos of a confession may actually force a slacker generation to return to Scripture and steer through some difficult issues. Such may actually help us mature. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
453:Thus you get everything from this book that C. S. Lewis would want. The story drives the truth into your heart, and the Scripture behind the story drives it into your mind. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
454:An abundance of pictorial fancy, after all, furnished the simple mind quite as much matter for deviating from pure doctrine as any personal interpretation of Holy Scripture. ~ Johan Huizinga, #NFDB
455:the reprehensible presumption of individuals who attempted to think for themselves in matters connected with religion, or to be guided by their own interpretations of Scripture, ~ Anne Bront, #NFDB
456:Be mindful 24 hours a day, not just during the one hour you may allot for formal meditation or reading scripture and reciting prayers. Each act must be carried out in mindfulness. ~ Nhat Hanh, #NFDB
457:I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita... "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. ~ J Robert Oppenheimer, #NFDB
458:The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
459:Worldly people do not like the candour which shatters their delusions. Saints are not only rare but disconcerting. Even in scripture, they are often found embarrassing! ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, #NFDB
460:By ignoring the apparent contradictions of scripture, fundamentalism ignores its questions, reducing its complexity to implicit equations. Hate equals love; obedience is freedom. ~ Jeff Sharlet, #NFDB
461:Scripture comforts me, and romance novels give me hope." "Oh yeah? Hope for what?" "Hope that I'll be doing more than quoting scripture with Ambrose Young in the very near future". ~ Amy Harmon, #NFDB
462:And no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in (a) human heart which exists in that heart alone—which is not, in some form or degree, in every heart. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
463:As quite distinct from Jewish interpretation, the history of modern evangelical interpretation exhibits a strong degree of discomfort with the tensions and ambiguities of Scripture. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
464:This scripture says the love of money is the very root of Satan’s operation. We can cut him off at the very root and destroy his base with the love of giving. Glory to God! Is ~ Kenneth Copeland, #NFDB
465:God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
466:Liturgy is the means that the church uses to keep baptized Christians in living touch with the entire living holy community as it participates formationally in Holy Scripture. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
467:My father was a no-nonsense, dedicated, and focused minister, and there was usually a sermon he needed to prepare for or a Scripture he needed to study, and that always came first. ~ Arsenio Hall, #NFDB
468:The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
469:As we fell in Adam, we are saved in Christ. To deny the principle in the one case, is to deny it in the other; for the two are inseparably united in the representations of Scripture ~ Charles Hodge, #NFDB
470:Our scripture was about Jacob wresting with the angel, right? So I'm thinking, but ain't we all wrestling with something? And for some of us, it sure as shit ain't angels. Am I right? ~ Anissa Gray, #NFDB
471:Therefore, let God inspired Scripture decide between us; and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the Word of God, in favor of that side will be cast the vote of truth ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
472:Those who wish to base their morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, in The Sins of Scripture, rightly observed. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
473:To us, many situations in Scripture involve a punishment that was too severe for the crime. But Why do we feel this way? We don't understand what it means for something to be "sacred. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
474:All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Randy Frazee, #NFDB
475:Artificial methodizing of spiritual truths may make men ready in notions, cunning and subtile in disputations; but it is the Scripture itself that is able to “make us wise unto salvation. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
476:As no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in a human heart which exists in that heart alone - which is not, in some form or degree, in every human heart. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
477:Cultivating the mind was absolutely essential, Luther held, because people needed to understand both the word of Scripture and the nature of the world in which the word would take root. ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
478:The end and design of all that is written in Scripture is to call us back from the spirit of Satan, the flesh, and the world, to full dependence on and obedience to the Spirit of God. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
479:We need not only read Sacred Scripture, but learn it as well and grow up in it. Realize that nothing is written in Scripture unnecessarily. Not to read Sacred Scripture is a great evil. ~ Saint Basil, #NFDB
480:36These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken,”[74] 37and, as another scripture says, “They will look on the one they have pierced. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
481:I revere the fullness of His Scripture, in which He manifests to me both the Creator and creation. In the gospel moreover, I discover a Minister and Witness of the Creator, even His Word. ~ Tertullian, #NFDB
482:It is Scripture alone, not “conservative evangelical tradition” or any other human authority, that must function as the normative authority for the definition of what we should believe. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
483:Tonight she needed more than a single Bible verse. She wanted to get lost in Scripture, to swim through the verses and chapters until she found the safe harbor she desperatly needed. ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
484:At the end of the day, in brief summary: inerrancy is interested in the truthfulness of Scripture and it is a powerful way forcing people to think about that reliability that is God-given. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
485:Even though there are few to no credible passages—properly interpreted—in Scripture that call things such as alcohol and tattoos utterly sinful, some fundamentalists insist they are. ~ Jefferson Bethke, #NFDB
486:So it’s clear that nothing good can come from our good works. God insists in Scripture that believing Him is what He credits to our account as righteousness. And He gets to make the rules. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
487:The Holy Scripture is like a diamond: in the dark it is like a piece of glass, but as soon as the light strikes it the water begins to sparkle, and the scintillation of life greets us. ~ Abraham Kuyper, #NFDB
488:The scripture notion of truth is not an abstract, static, and timeless formula, but is something that comes true in time as the fulfillment of a divine promise. Truth happens in history. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
489:Though troubles assail And dangers affright, Though friends should all fail And foes all unite; Yet one thing secures us, Whatever betide, The scripture assures us, The Lord will provide. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
490:As Scripture says: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him." God has revealed those things to us by his Spirit. + ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
491:In our own tradition, and on the basis of the words of Hebrew Scripture, there is not the faintest doubt that Moses is not only the source of Judaism under God, but its high reach as well. ~ Herman Wouk, #NFDB
492:Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17, emphasis added). This is an especially profound and life-changing Scripture, and ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
493:The Scriptures in their own sphere are like God in the universe – all-sufficient. All the light and power the mind of man can need in spiritual things is revealed in Scripture. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
494:The truth of the matter is that inerrancy is simply a way of saying that there are no errors that call into question the truthfulness of Scripture wherever Scripture is making truth claims. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
495:Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the whole creation process occurred in six twenty-four hour days. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
496:Christ wears "two shoes" in the world: scripture and nature. Both are necessary to understand the Lord, and at no stage can creation be seen as a separation of things from God. ~ Johannes Scotus Eriugena, #NFDB
497:I have sometimes called this 'double listening'. Listening to the voice of God in Scripture, and listening to the voices of the modern world, with all their cries of anger, pain and despair. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
498:Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
499:No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so. ~ Learned Hand, #NFDB
500:Scripture is, at its heart, the great story that we sing in order not just to learn it with our heads but to become part of it through and through, the story that in turn becomes part of us. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
501:Scripture is not a concept; scripture is a person (John 1:1,14). When you stand before the Word of God, you are not merely encountering a concept; you are standing face-to-face with God. ~ Henry Blackaby, #NFDB
502:Some have argued that the Christian notion of Scripture is not epistemologically sustainable. It's not philosophically possible with rigor to uphold the Christian understanding of Scripture. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
503:The pastor ought to have two voices: one, for gathering the sheep; and another, for warding off and driving away wolves and thieves. The Scripture supplies him with the means of doing both. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
504:The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, which means the "Way of the Eternal," is the ancient scripture of Eckankar, the science of Soul Travel and total consciousness.
Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad Book One ~ Paul Twitchell,#NFDB
505:Christians need to remember that the sufficiency of Scripture gives us a comprehensive worldview that equips us to wrestle with even the most challenging ethical dilemmas of our time. ~ R Albert Mohler Jr, #NFDB
506:If there be any difference among professed believers as to the sense of Scripture, it is their duty to tolerate such difference in each other, until God shall have revealed the truth to all. ~ John Milton, #NFDB
507:I want to help people understand how to study the Scriptures with other people, to give them an overview of Scripture and assume that by understanding the Scriptures better, the Holy Spirit ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
508:Mohammed and the pope have this principle of religion in common: they pretend that Scripture does not contain perfect doctrine, and that they receive a higher revelation from the Spirit. The ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
509:The Heart And no scripture is of private interpretation, so is there no feeling in (a) human heart which exists in that heart alone—which is not, in some form or degree, in every heart. ~ George MacDonald, #NFDB
510:I began to pay attention to Scripture and meet people who walked the walk, and little by little, I guess you could call me a born again Christian. 1978 is when I found my walk with the Lord. ~ Tony Orlando, #NFDB
511:The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church. p. 98 ~ Carl R Trueman, #NFDB
512:For nothing ought to be posited without a reason given, unless it is self-evident (literally, known through itself) or known by experience or proved by the authority of Sacred Scripture. ~ William of Ockham, #NFDB
513:I call myself a Sanatani Eternal Hindu, because I believe in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, and all that goes by the name of Hindu scripture, and therefore in avataras and rebirth. ~ Mahatma Gandhi, #NFDB
514:Most of the heroes of Scripture rose to their greatest victories after their worst mistakes. God is in the redemption business, and He testifies of this through the lives of everyone He calls. ~ Rick Joyner, #NFDB
515:Sometimes when Katy prayed, she could almost hear God’s answer—the quiet, still resonance of a Scripture deep in her heart or silent words of wisdom spoken by her parents or the Flanigans. ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
516:The Scripture can only be read intelligently by inspired men and women. The value we get from our reading is in direct proportion to the measure in which we are filled with God's Spirit. ~ G Campbell Morgan, #NFDB
517:When the honest, sincere Christian is faced with the decision regarding whether a thing is right or wrong, he should ask, does it agree with all that the Scripture has to say on the subject? ~ Curtis Hutson, #NFDB
518:Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them. Ladies, if the hair on the back of your neck stands up it is because you are fighting your role in the scripture. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
519:I don't know why Christians keep fighting over which is better-singleness or marriage-when it seems rather obvious, both from Scripture and from Church history, that both can glorify God. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
520:The Christian faith grew through story - not text. Only later did the stories become Scripture. While the Scripture must be held in the highest regard, we must not neglect the power of story. ~ Erwin McManus, #NFDB
521:The last thing Scripture should do is make you blind in the world. Instead, you hear everything, see everything, and feel everything because everything just so happens to point right back to it. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
522:One of the most important things we can learn from Scripture is how to see ourselves accurately in the story in which we find ourselves. What story is God telling, and how does it concern us? ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
523:There is simply so much reason to believe the good news of Jesus Christ in history, in Scripture, as well as in our own experience that it would take a leap of faith not to believe in the gospel. ~ Mark Dever, #NFDB
524:To understand the Scripture is not simply to get information about God. If attended to with trust and faith, the Bible is the way to actually hear God speaking and also to meet God himself. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
525:We forget, we have a short memory and we're human. This morning my Scripture was Isaiah 26:3, which said, Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee for he trusteth in Thee. ~ Naomi Judd, #NFDB
526:When the nature of the thing is incomprehensible, I can acquiesce in the Scripture: but when the signification of words is incomprehensible, I cannot acquiesce in the authority of a Schoolman. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
527:16All Scripture is binspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for ctraining in righteousness; 17so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
528:As for doctrine, Luther asserted the absolute authority of Holy Scripture and that each human must discover the meaning of scripture and establish his or her own, personal relationship with God. ~ Rodney Stark, #NFDB
529:Holy Scripture is the source and norm of sound doctrine (2 Tim. 3:16; see Mark 7:7–8). Doctrine is drawn from Holy Scripture as from a fountain. Doctrine is measured by Holy Scripture as by a rule. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
530:Luther suggests that after meditating on the Scripture, you should pray through each petition of the Lord’s Prayer, paraphrasing and personalizing each one using your own needs and concerns. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
531:Oh, the wondrous power in the scripture to create a soul of hope within the ribs of despair and bring eternal light into the darkness that has made a long midnight in the inmost soul! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
532:Once again, by incorrectly limiting the verses to a special situation, these people change the meaning of the words of Scripture. And in that way they undermine the authority of the Word of God. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
533:The Church’s liturgy is the consummation of the divine economy revealed by the Apostles’ own reading of Scripture. All of salvation history can be seen as leading to the liturgy, to the sacraments. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
534:Therefore we examine with considerable diligence the consensus of the true, learned, and purer antiquity, and we love and praise the testimonies of the fathers which agree with the Scripture. ~ Martin Chemnitz, #NFDB
535:There is not a situation in life where there isn't a hymn and a Scripture to meet the need. I'm thankful for the Word of God, and I praise Him for the privilege of still being able to memorize. ~ Cliff Barrows, #NFDB
536:I still love church. My favorite church service is T.D. Jakes at the Potter's House. I don't think there is a better preacher in the country. His ability to interpret scripture is like no other. ~ Oprah Winfrey, #NFDB
537:Perhaps the gut issue is not how much theology we have studied or how much Scripture we have memorized. All that really matters is this: Have you experienced the furious longing of God or not? ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
538:Scripture urges and warns us that whatever favors we may have obtained from the Lord, we have received them as a trust on condition that they should be applied to the common benefit of the church. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
539:Behold what the scripture says—man shall not asmite, neither shall he bjudge; for judgment is mine, saith the Lord, and vengeance is mine also, and I will repay. ~ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, #NFDB
540:Give a man with a death wish a bottle of whisky and a loaded gun, you get a dead body. Give a martyr a quote from scripture and a pocket full of
prayers and you get a room full of corpses. ~ Kevis Hendrickson,#NFDB
541:Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, the good thief said from his cross (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
542:Notice the Scripture says, “Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing.” If they “rail” on you, don’t rail on them, “but contrariwise blessing.” Blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing. ~ Kenneth E Hagin, #NFDB
543:Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’* For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
544:You will find, if you seriously study Scripture, that outside of the idea of hell, there is no more terrifying idea in the Bible than God setting you free to run in the imagination of your heart. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
545:Although devotion is to be given to many institutes and teachers, the essence is to be taken from them all, as the bee takes the essence from many flowers.- Samkhya, 4.13, an Eastern scripture ~ Swami Vivekananda, #NFDB
546:God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed—much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
547:On the contrary, Scripture invariably treats us as morally responsible agents. It lays upon us the necessity of choice between ‘life and good, death and evil’, between the living God and idols.11 ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
548:Seeing what happened in Scripture to people who proclaimed God’s Word will come close to talking you out of being a preacher. Those who proclaim the Word of God don’t often end up well in the world. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
549:The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us—they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels. ~ Erich Auerbach, #NFDB
550:We have broken up for ourselves the fallow ground of divinity so as not to sow upon thorns, and have levelled the surface of the ground, being formed and forming others by Holy Scripture... ~ Gregory of Nazianzus, #NFDB
551:I quote much scripture in this book. I do so intentionally, without references, because that is how I believe scripture should fit into the fabric of our lives. It is not tacked on; it is woven in. ~ Cindy Rollins, #NFDB
552:Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,' the good thief said from his cross. (Luke 23:42). There are perhaps no more human words in all of Scripture, no prayer we can pray so well. ~ Frederick Buechner, #NFDB
553:The best way to get rid of the Devil, if you cannot kill it with the words of Holy Scripture, is to rail at and mock him. Music, too, is very good; music is hateful to him, and drives him far away. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
554:Every promise of Scripture is a writing of God, which may be pleaded before Him with this reasonable request, 'Do as Thou hast said.' The Heavenly Father will not break His Word to His own child. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
555:First, an urban church’s work among the poor will be a significant mark of its validity. It is one of the “good deeds” that Scripture says will lead pagans to glorify God (Matt 5:16; 1 Pet 2:12). ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
556:That it is the Holy Spirit who teacheth us to understand aright the mind and will of God in the Scripture; without whose aid and assistance we can never do so usefully nor profitably unto our own souls. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
557:There are two very important things you need to realize from this verse of Scripture. The first one is: Whatever we must receive from God must come as an act of faith, because God is a Faith-God. ~ Chris Oyakhilome, #NFDB
558:If we could popularize the understanding that all conclusions from scripture are but interpretations, then all variant readings of a holy book would become a matter of differing human perspectives. That ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
559:When the Son of God chose to submit to this trial in his own person, he became an example to all believers, so that they may carefully avoid falling into Satan’s snares by a wrong use of Scripture. And ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
560:As we have seen with Jesus, if a law seemed unloving, not only did he feel free to break it, he felt an obligation to break it, because that is what true faithfulness to Scripture looked like in his eyes. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
561:Holy Scripture is so exalted that there is no one in the world ... wise enough to understand it so fully that his intellect is not overcome by it. Nevertheless, man can stammer something about it. ~ Angela of Foligno, #NFDB
562:Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
563:I do not know what the future holds. I do not wish to sound negative, but I wish to remind you of the warnings of scripture and the teachings of the prophets which we have had constantly before us. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
564:In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
565:I think the attribute of the church that is most seriously under attack in our day is its Apostolicity, because there has been a wholesale rejection within the church of the authority of sacred Scripture. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
566:It is a joy to Jesus when a person takes time to walk more intimately with Him. The bearing of fruit is always shown in scripture to be a visible result of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald Chambers, #NFDB
567:No Spiritual Discipline is more important than the intake of God’s Word. Nothing can substitute for it. There simply is no healthy Christian life apart from a diet of the milk and meat of Scripture. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
568:The salvation for which the Bible instructs us is available “through faith in Christ Jesus.” Therefore, since Scripture concerns salvation and salvation is through Christ, Scripture is full of Christ. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
569:John Frame's magnificent work on the Christian life fully endorses the authority of Scripture and practically addresses the need to consider the situations and people involved in ethical decisions. ~ Richard L Pratt Jr, #NFDB
570:So far as I ever observed God's dealings with my soul, the flights of preachers sometimes entertained me, but it was Scripture expressions which did penetrate my heart, and in a way peculiar to themselves. ~ John Brown, #NFDB
571:This prayer for the Holy Spirit to strengthen the inner man of believers is one of the most important prayers recorded in the Scripture, and it is vital that we understand it if we want to grow in prayer. ~ Mike Bickle, #NFDB
572:Barth's approach tears up any possibility of dialogue between faith and unfaith or between theology and other human sciences. Theology just says what it says on the basis of scripture, and that's that. ~ George Pattison, #NFDB
573:Each of our children during their high school years went to 'early morning seminary' - scripture study classes that met in the home of a church member every school day morning from 6:30 until 7:15. ~ Clayton Christensen, #NFDB
574:It is not surprising, of course, that those who attempt to discredit the evidence of Scripture are the people who themselves do not seriously read, know, or make a thorough study of the Scriptures. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
575:We've got at least two other streams of that are filled with good, helpful material on meditation - the Catholic stream and the Quaker stream that are not primarily based on meditating on the Scripture. ~ Timothy Keller, #NFDB
576:Next level thinking says you’re not a finished product. God is still working on you. The Scripture speaks of how God changes us from glory to glory. You have to learn to enjoy the glory you’re in right now. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
577:That by the decrees and volitions, and consequently the providence of God, Scripture (as I will prove by Scriptural examples) means nothing but Nature's order following necessarily from her eternal laws. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
578:The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! ~ William Shakespeare, #NFDB
579:Every promise of Scripture is a writing of God, which may be pleaded before Him with this reasonable request, 'Do as Thou hast said.' The Heavenly Father will not break His Word to His own child. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
580:The inspiration of the Bible refers then to the divine superintendence of Scripture, preserving it from the intrusion of human error. It refers to God’s preserving his Word through the words of human authors. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
581:The Scripture says that God wants to pour out “His far and beyond favor.”1 God wants this to be the best time of your life. But if you are going to receive this favor, you must enlarge your vision. You can’t ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
582:The writers of Scripture enter into the random everyday depths of popular life, taking seriously whatever is encountered there, clinging to the concrete and refusing to systematize experience in concepts. ~ Erich Auerbach, #NFDB
583:We must live according to what we know from Scripture, committed to a heavenly kingdom, so that our lives affect not only our home and community, and perhaps our state and country—but also the entire earth. ~ K P Yohannan, #NFDB
584:Scripture does what psychoanalysis can't do-it pierces the heart, penetrates deep into the soul and judges the motives. To see yourself in the light of Scripture, is to see yourself as you really are. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
585:We need medicine and food. But we get Bibles.” Matron smiled. “I always wondered if the good people who send us Bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
586:All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17that e the man of God [2] may be complete, f equipped g for every good work. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
587:All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Anonymous, The Bible, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, #NFDB
588:In scripture God brings the animals to the human for naming. In that simple act the human is brought to recognize the particular personality and worth of each living creature. Too bad we forget so often. ~ Joan D Chittister, #NFDB
589:The statistics reveal a failure of nerve on the part of many Christians. They seem to be simply unable to muster the strength necessary to develop a tenacious commitment to the truthfulness of Scripture. ~ Douglas Groothuis, #NFDB
590:All the troubles of the Church, all the evils in the world, flow from this source: that men do not by clear and sound knowledge and serious consideration penetrate into the truths of Sacred Scripture. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila, #NFDB
591:And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned. ~ P G Wodehouse, #NFDB
592:Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~ Paul the Apostle, #NFDB
593:In order to find Jesus, every one of us needs direction. God gives it. The story of the wise men shows us how. The star sign was enough to lead the magi to Jerusalem. But it took Scripture to lead them to Jesus. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
594:The Resistance is a moral certainty, not a poetic one. The true poet never uses words in order to punish someone. His judgment belongs to a creative order; it is not formulated as a prophetic scripture. ~ Salvatore Quasimodo, #NFDB
595:We're in a tough place in this world. There are a lot of kids giving up very early. Scripture says it takes a village to raise one child, and that's what these coaches are going to have to go back and understand. ~ Ray Lewis, #NFDB
596:A stronghold is any way the devil tries to presume authority in our lives. If we belong to Christ, Satan has no right to exercise authority over us, but he hopes we’re too ignorant regarding Scripture to know it. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
597:There's a scripture in the Book of James which says, 'Become a doer of the word and not a hearer only.' A hearer is someone who looks into a mirror, walks away, and quickly forgets what sort of person he is. ~ Terrence Howard, #NFDB
598:We do not wish to abolish teaching and to make every man his own master, but if the curates will not teach the gospel, the layman must have the Scripture, and read it for himself, taking God for his teacher. ~ William Tyndale, #NFDB
599:All the more vile is the stupidity of those persons who open heaven to all the impious and unbelieving without the grace of Him whom Scripture commonly teaches to be the only door whereby we enter into salvation. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
600:I think someone needs to say that it is doubtful that liberal theologians have given us any significant insights into the doctrinal teachings of Scripture that are not already to be found in evangelical writers. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
601:Lo! We have revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture for mankind with truth. Then whosoever goeth right it is for his soul, and whosoever strayeth, strayeth only to its hurt. And thou art not a warder over them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
602:The church as a whole has strayed quite far from biblical evangelism; that is, sharing the Gospel in the way that Jesus did, the way the Apostle Paul did, and the rest of the disciples and prophets in Scripture. ~ Kirk Cameron, #NFDB
603:Am I entitled to feed on the fragmented trivialities online? In other words, am I entitled to spend hours every month simply browsing odd curiosities? I get the distinct sense in Scripture that the answer is 'no'. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
604:And let them remember that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that God and man may talk together; for "we speak to Him when we pray; we hear Him when we read the divine saying." ~ Saint Ambrose of Milan, #NFDB
605:* Gen. 19:1–11; Lev. 18:22; 20:13; Rom. 1:26–28; 1 Cor. 6:9–10; 1 Tim. 1:9–10 are known as the “clobber verses” of Scripture, used by nonaffirming Christians to justify prohibitions against the LGBTQ community. ~ John Pavlovitz, #NFDB
606:It is granted that God hath given us his word, or the holy Scripture, as a declaration of his mind and will; and, therefore, he hath given it unto us for this very end and purpose, that we may know them and do them. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
607:Scripture is our norming norm and tradition is our normed norm and that in a doctrinal controversy Scripture alone has absolute veto power while The Great Tradition (orthodox doctrine) has a vote but not a veto. ~ Roger E Olson, #NFDB
608:The doctrine of inspiration declares that God enabled the human writers of Scripture to be agents of divine revelation, so that what they wrote was not only their writing but in a higher sense the very Word of God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
609:The Lord knows that I could not open scripture; he must by his prophetical office open it unto me. So after that being unsatisfied in the thing, the Lord was pleased to bring this scripture out of the Hebrews. ~ Anne Hutchinson, #NFDB
610:But a most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men! ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
611:In this regard, typology can be called contextual exegesis within the framework of the canon since it primarily involves the interpretation and elucidation of the meaning of earlier parts of Scripture by later parts. ~ G K Beale, #NFDB
612:Prayer, in the Scripture representation of it, is the soul’s access and approach unto God by Jesus Christ, through the aids of his Holy Spirit, to make known its requests unto him, with supplication and thanksgiving. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
613:Some people's theologies come across as blatantly wrong when weighed against what is revealed in Scripture. However God has mercy on those who may be wrong but genuinely seek understanding before seeking themselves. ~ Criss Jami, #NFDB
614:The doctrine of Scripture teaches us about the authority of God's Word. Scripture must be the final rule of faith and practice for our lives. Not our feelings or emotions. Not signs or prophetic words or hunches. ~ Joshua Harris, #NFDB
615:Then that scripture gave me hope, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Heb. xiii. 5. ‘O Lord,’ said I, but I have left Thee. Then it answered again, But I will not leave thee. For this I thanked God also. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
616:We can shed some light on the possibility of the fall, but the transition to the actuality of it remains shrouded in darkness. Scripture makes not so much a single effort to render this transition understandable ~ Herman Bavinck, #NFDB
617:We need to be very careful to go to the pages of the Scripture to learn about God’s will and the leading of the Spirit, and not simply to listen to the popular teachings of the Christian subculture in which we live. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
618:Let it be observed, that slovenliness is no part of religion; that neither this, nor any text of Scripture, condemns neatness of apparel. Certainly this is a duty, not a sin. Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
619:One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we have seen what priestcraft and fanaticism can do, and credulity believe. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
620:There's all the difference in the world between humbly saying "I want to find more light from Scripture than we have yet had" and saying "I'm going to prove the rest of the Church wrong and do something totally new!" ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
621:We have an enemy who works 24/7 to open up the wrong doors for us, and then give us “peace” about going through them! Every open door should be viewed through the lens of Scripture and in the counsel of godly wisdom. ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
622:I feel that if we do not engage Scripture with future believers in mind, we will unwittingly erect unnecessary and tragic obstacles to belief. Part of what drives this book is my concern to help prevent that scenario. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
623:There's something beautiful about that Scripture that says, "Your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams" (Acts 2:17). We need each other. There is power when the old and young dream together. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
624:As we live together in Scripture as “Our One True Story of God for the Whole World,” we come to know its authority in and through Jesus Christ.22 Anything less reduces Scripture to a collection of facts or feelings. ~ David E Fitch, #NFDB
625:I don’t read Scripture and cling to no life precepts, except perhaps to Walter Cronkite’s rules for old men, which he did not deliver over the air: Never trust a fart. Never pass up a drink. Never ignore an erection. ~ Roger Angell, #NFDB
626:What if’ is not much of an argument if there is no evidence. Second, you know the Quran tells Christians to ‘judge by the Injil.’39 That means they still had it in Muhammad’s day. The Injil is not a lost scripture. ~ Nabeel Qureshi, #NFDB
627:When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense, but take every word at its primary, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context clearly indicate otherwise. —David L. Cooper, PhD ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
628:Getting to heaven has nothing to do with our righteous works. Our entrance fee is paid for fully by Jesus and his perfect sacrifice. But Scripture is clear that our treasure in heaven is connected to our lives on earth. ~ Levi Lusko, #NFDB
629:The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
630:The problem with memorizing scripture was that it rose up to prod her conscience at the most inconvenient times. Nothing like having Jesus call her a hypocrite to slap down her indignation over Logan's infractions. ~ Karen Witemeyer, #NFDB
631:Young women and young men grow up, but old women and old men just grow older and surer they've got the right on their side. Especially if they know scripture.....The devil can quote scripture. And in a pleasing voice. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
632:God is a God who reveals. God Himself is true and cannot lie (Heb. 6:18). Therefore, all that He reveals, whether through general revelation in His creation or through special revelation in Scripture, is necessarily true. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
633:If you're anxious about the state of the world, that's understandable. But trade your anxiety for the blessing of hearing the words of Scripture, keeping them in faith and obedience, and remembering the time is near. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
634:We don’t always have the explanations for certain events and acts of God. He is sovereign. He owes us no explanation. He purposes to teach us to walk by faith and not by sight. When Scripture records an event or judgment ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
635:When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
636:I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture. MARTIN LUTHER, letter to Chancellor Gregory Brück, January 13, 1524 Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank. ~ Jean de la Bruyere, #NFDB
637:I thought that continence was a matter of our own strength, and I knew that I had not the strength: for in my utter foolishness I did not know the word of Your Scripture that none can be continent unless You give it. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
638:It is namely distinctly stated in Scripture and handed down by tradition that the first commandments communicated to us did not include any law at all about burnt offering and sacrifice. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
639:Memorizing Scripture gives us: 1. Clearer thoughts. 2. Steadier nerves. 3. Healthier emotions. 4. Purer habits. 5. Happier homes. 6. Greater respect. 7. Eternal optimism. Isn’t that worth at least five minutes a day? ~ Robert J Morgan, #NFDB
640:The denial in Article XIX is very important. The framers of the confession are saying unambiguously that confession of belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is not an element of the Christian faith essential for salvation. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
641:Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is "like trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished. ~ William Cameron Townsend, #NFDB
642:What we seek for ourselves, and what we teach to others, must be governed by the Scripture alone. Only when the Word of God dwells in us richly shall we be able to evaluate the experiences that we and others may have. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
643:But there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that the biblical modes of God’s communication with humans have been superseded or abolished by either the presence of the church or the close of the scriptural canon. This ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
644:God uses every possible means to communicate with you. The wonders of nature call to you. The promises and prophecies of Scripture speak to you. God himself reaches out to you. He wants to help you find your way home. Many ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
645:Scriptura sacra mentis oculis quasi quoddam speculum opponitur, ut interna nostra facies in ipsa videatur. Holy scripture is placed before the eyes of our mind like a mirror, so that we may view our inner face therein. ~ Pope Gregory I, #NFDB
646:Scripture is also called gospel, that is, new and joyful news, because in it is declared that Christ, the sole true and eternal Son of the living God, was made man, to make us children of God his Father, by adoption. Thus ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
647:Scripture itself is not systematic; the New Testament shows the greatest variety. God has shown us that he can use any instrument. Balaam's ass, you remember, preached a very effective sermon in the midst of his 'hee-haws.' ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
648:There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
649:All the decisions you makehow many of those decisions are based on you doing simply what's right in your own eyes, and how many times specifically have you gone to Scripture looking for the answer, with regard to anything? ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
650:eLet this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated;16 hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
651:If we want to enjoy the continued blessing of the Lord, we cannot act based on what we think God might want us to do; rather, we must be certain of His statutes. His moral law revealed in Scripture gives us these regulations. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
652:the disparity between Americans’ veneration of the Bible and their understanding of it, painting a picture of a nation that believes God has spoken in scripture but can’t be bothered to listen to what God has to say. ~ Stephen R Prothero, #NFDB
653:Worry anxiety, therefore, is rightly characterized in Scripture as a lack of trust in God and a failure to fully understand His plan and provision for us. It is clearly harmful to us and, therefore, displeasing to God. ~ Archibald D Hart, #NFDB
654:Young people, some of whom are not born into the faith, are being fired up by preachers using basic Islamic scripture and mobilized to wage jihad by radical imams who represent themselves as legitimate Muslim clergymen. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
655:Church of Jesus, let us please be men and women who understand the difference between moralism and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let’s be careful to preach the dos and don’ts of Scripture in the shadow of the cross’s ‘Done!’ ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
656:Moreover, the whole purpose of God's mighty acts is to bring man to know Him by faith; and Scripture knows no foundation for faith but the spoken word of God, inviting our trust in Him on the basis of what He has done for us. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
657:Doctrine is the teaching of our heavenly Father, revealed in Jesus Christ, and transmitted to us by the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture, and it is to be received, confessed, and followed in the church, to the glory of God’s name. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
658:God then does not profess to answer in Scripture all the questions that we, in our boundless curiosity, would like to ask about Scripture. He tells us merely as much as He sees we need to know as a basis for our life of faith. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
659:In short, and as always, a devoted reader can find support for nearly any position he or she wishes in Shakespeare. (Or, as Shakespeare himself put it in a much misquoted line: "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.") ~ Bill Bryson, #NFDB
660:In the midst of all the pain, oppression, and lack of meaning in life, the Church must proclaim the answer that is provided to us so clearly in Scripture. It is simple. We must be loving like Jesus in this fractured world. ~ John M Perkins, #NFDB
661:The greatest blessings of general conference come to us after the conference is over. Remember the pattern recorded frequently in scripture: we gather to hear the words of the Lord, and we return to our homes to live them. ~ Robert D Hales, #NFDB
662:If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, The author of this book is mistaken; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood. ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
663:I'm an elder in a Presbyterian church. I've taken Scripture seriously. I really do believe, like my more religious colleagues, that religion should be a source of values. If you believe that, for God's sake, act on those values. ~ Jim Himes, #NFDB
664:It is certain that Scripture nowhere contradicts Scripture; rather, one passage explains another. This sound principle of interpreting Scripture by Scripture is sometimes called the analogy of Scripture or the analogy of faith. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
665:God’s preferred state for humankind is that we live free from fear, experiencing shalom, or peace. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is packed with references that emphasize God’s desire for a fear-free, peace-filled world. ~ Bill Hybels, #NFDB
666:If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
667:Nowhere in Scripture do I see a “balanced life with a little bit of God added in” as an ideal for us to emulate. Yet when I look at our churches, this is exactly what I see: a lot of people who have added Jesus to their lives. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
668:Some men's wit is like a dark lantern, which serves their own turn and guides them their own way, but is never known (according to the Scripture phrase) either to shine forth before men, or to glorify their Father in heaven. ~ Alexander Pope, #NFDB
669:This knitting of song into our bodies is why memorization of Scripture through song is often so effective. Song soaks into the very core of our being, which is why music is an important constitutive element of our identity. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
670:Church history has repeatedly and clearly proven one thing: Once the highest view of Scripture is abandoned by any theologian, group, denomination, or church, the downhill slide in both its theology and practice is inevitable. ~ James R White, #NFDB
671:I'm very eclectic, musically as in other things! But also to frame the hearing and knowing of Scripture within a context of worship, which is what Anglican liturgy does, just seems to me such a very complete and compelling thing. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
672:The Holy Spirit is our comforter, our teacher. That's why, in prayer, we can ask the Lord to open up Scripture and make it come alive to us, to open our understanding. He left his Spirit with us until we join him in Heaven. ~ Michele Bachmann, #NFDB
673:And when our observations of the natural world seem to conflict with our understanding of Scripture, we should look again at both, seeking to find where our limited understanding and imperfect knowledge of either could be wrong. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
674:How fast we learn in the day of sorrow! Scripture shines out in a new effulgence; every verse seems to contain a sunbeam, every promise stands out in illuminated splendor; things hard to be understood become in a moment plain. ~ Horatius Bonar, #NFDB
675:Just as appearances of old happened for the direction of those for whom they happened, as also the Lord appeared to the two disciples going to Emmaus, so also Scripture speaks and appears in the manner in which we are disposed. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
676:Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake. ~ Richard Rorty, #NFDB
677:SITUATION False teachers have always blemished the church. The false teachers in the Ephesian church did not believe Jesus was really human. They contradicted Scripture while appearing to be self-disciplined and morally righteous. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
678:To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. ~ Thomas Paine, #NFDB
679:I grew up in the Methodist church and taught Sunday school, and one of my favorite passages of scripture is, 'in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'' Matthew 25:40. ~ Elizabeth Warren, #NFDB
680:judging by how the Bible actually behaves—God did not design scripture to be a hushed afternoon in an oak-paneled library. Instead, God has invited us to participate in a wrestling match, a forum for us to be stretched and to grow. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
681:Pharisees were the upstanding “conservative evangelical pastors” of their day, strongly convinced of the inerrancy of Scripture and its sufficiency for guidance in every area of life, if only it could be properly interpreted. ~ Craig L Blomberg, #NFDB
682:The novel is a perfect medium for revealing to us the changing rainbow of our living relationships. The novel can help us to live,as nothing else can: no didactic Scripture, anyhow. If the novelist keeps his thumb out of the pan. ~ D H Lawrence, #NFDB
683:am not an accredited interpreter of Scripture, but taking thought for the morrow is a waste of time, I believe, because all we can do to prepare rightly for tomorrow is to do the right thing today. Wendell Berry, Our Only World ~ Emily P Freeman, #NFDB
684:Luther argued that Erasmus misconstrued Scripture by defending unobstructed free will, claiming instead that without the liberating *grace of the Holy Spirit, the human will is enslaved to *sin and at enmity against God. Instead, ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
685:One of the greatest gifts we can give people is the hope that their death is nothing to fear - you know, not that it has no fear in it, but the promise of scripture is that God will lead us through the valley of the shadow of death. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
686:This scripture [Romans 13:1-6] is wrested from the scope of God's Spirit, and the nature of the place, and cannot truly be interpreted to mean that the power of the civil magistrate may be exercised in spiritual or soul matters. ~ Roger Williams, #NFDB
687:I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the meek shall inherit the earth. ~ Maya Angelou, #NFDB
688:Scripture sees hell as self-chosen. . . Hell appears as God's gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose. Either to be with God forever, worshipping Him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
689:Until Islam can do what Judaism and Christianity have done—question, critique, interpret, and ultimately modernize its holy scripture—it cannot free Muslims from a host of anachronistic and at times deadly beliefs and practices. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, #NFDB
690:Theologians sometimes have spoken of the “impassibility of God;” namely that God could not be capable of emotions, of either joy and pleasure or pain and grief.237 But this goes beyond the language and teaching of the Scripture. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
691:devotion to God, for modern believers, involves learning to inhabit—rather than simply trumping with dogma or literal scripture—those elements of our existence that seem inimical to his: limitedness, contingency, suffering, death. ~ Christian Wiman, #NFDB
692:Listening to all words--the silent words of nature, the words of friends and enemies, and the words of scripture--can become an exercise in human yearning and divine response, flowing in and out of one's life like a river current. ~ Kathleen Norris, #NFDB
693:Scripture comforts me, and romance novels give me hope."
"Oh, yeah? Hope for what?"
"Hope that I'll be doing more than quoting scripture with Ambrose Young in the very near future." Fern blushed furiously and looked at her hands. ~ Amy Harmon,#NFDB
694:Scripture points out this difference between believers and unbelievers; the latter, as old slaves of their incurable perversity, cannot endure the rod; but the former, like children of noble birth, profit by repentance and correction. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
695:The name of the Lord (says the Scripture) is a strong tower; thither the righteous flee and are safe (Proverbs 18:10). Let us secure His favor and He will lead us through the journey of this life and at length receive us to a better. ~ Samuel Adams, #NFDB
696:But then I sigh, with a piece of Scripture
Tell them that God bids us to do evil for good;
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stolen out of Holy Writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil. ~ William Shakespeare,#NFDB
697:In Scripture, faith involves placing trust in what you have reason to believe is true. Faith is not a blind, irrational leap into the dark. So faith and reason cooperate on a biblical view of faith. They are not intrinsically hostile. ~ J P Moreland, #NFDB
698:Now, in order that true religion may shine upon us, we ought to hold that it must take its beginning from heavenly doctrine and that no one can get even the slightest taste of right and sound doctrine unless he be a pupil of Scripture. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
699:This scripture also did now most sweetly visit my soul; And him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out. Oh! the comfort that I had from this word, in no wise! As who should say, By no means, for nothing whatever he hath done. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
700:Thus, to take the phrases in Acts and make them into a magical incantation upon which God s forgiveness rests is to grossly misunderstand the phrase and, consequently, grossly misportray the kind of God whom Scripture reveals. Beyond ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
701:What teachings of Scripture do you still mainly follow out of dutiful habit, not with an eye toward honoring God or being used as a blessing to others? What has your legalistic adherence gained for you, and what has it cost you? ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
702:You want God? Don't look at Scripture, look everywhere, at the planets, the constellations, the universe. Look at a bug, a flea. Look at the manifold wonders of creation, including the Nazis. That's the kind of God you're dealing with. ~ E L Doctorow, #NFDB
703:Ecology is the new theology. Big history is the new Genesis. Those who fail to understand that evidence is modern-day Scripture, and that the world we live in is an honorable world, betray God and humanity in the most egregious of ways. ~ Michael Dowd, #NFDB
704:Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
705:The best apologetic, therefore, is what it always was: the old, weird, incomprehensible, great, gray-green, greasy Gospel story—just laying out in front of people the Jesus of Scripture who alone can knock the world’s socks off”. ~ Robert Farrar Capon, #NFDB
706:The origin stories of Scripture remind us we belong to a very large and very old family that has been walking with God from the beginning. Even when we falter and fall, this God is in it for the long haul. We will not be abandoned. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
707:Well, of course it was a very trying time for me, and fortunately I had a lot of people who were supportive. A lot of people who were writing and calling and saying they were praying for me. Some people sent me Scripture, and that helped. ~ Anita Hill, #NFDB
708:Here, if any where, in considering the hidden mysteries of Scripture, we should speculate soberly and with great moderation, cautiously guarding against allowing either our mind or our tongue to go a step beyond the confines of God's word. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
709:I can definitely make an argument for atheism. I was very educated in scripture and dogma and the church, particularly the Catholic Church. I could not possibly know that I disagreed with religion unless I knew what I was disagreeing with. ~ Amber Heard, #NFDB
710:Sin is not only a defection—but a pollution. It is to the soul as rust is to gold, as a stain to beauty. It makes the soul red with guilt, and black with filth. Sin in Scripture is compared to a "menstruous cloth," and to a "plague-sore. ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
711:This truth of the gathering together of God's children is in Scripture seen realised in various localities, and in each central locality the Christians resident therein composed but one body: Scripture is perfectly clear on that head. ~ John Nelson Darby, #NFDB
712:All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 ~ Henry T Blackaby, #NFDB
713:I think that the authority of Scripture must be accepted by Catholics and Protestants, and that if our doctrinal judgments are not measured by Scripture, then we'll be found lacking, since Scripture communicates divine revelation to us. ~ Matthew Levering, #NFDB
714:Perspicuity: The clarity of the Bible; that is, that which is necessary to know and believe regarding life and salvation is “so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or the other,” that anyone may understand them (WCF 1:7). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
715:The Scripture was written to shew unto men the kingdom of God; and to prepare their minds to become his obedient subjects; leavingthe world, and the Philosophy thereof, to the disputation of men, for the exercising of their natural Reason. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
716:The temptation is for us to share our own opinions, our own thoughts and to speak from the whole realm of possibility. We can't do that as pastors. We need to have a strong voice of conviction, and the way we can do that is through Scripture. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
717:Questions upon points wherein Scripture is silent; upon mysteries which belong to God alone; upon prophecies of doubtful interpretation; and upon mere modes of observing human ceremonials, are all foolish, and wise men avoid them. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
718:The concept of freedom in Scripture differs from modern notions. Freedom is not a life lived free of restraints but a life that recognizes healthy limits, those that are concern to produce prosperity and order for the person who observes them. ~ Max Anders, #NFDB
719:An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity. ~ E O Wilson, #NFDB
720:Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture. ~ Sheri S Tepper, #NFDB
721:Scripture is the thing I like to share with people more than anything. My prayer reality is quite kooky. I have this very unique dialogue with the Lord. I utilize my own sort of street vocabulary - nothing slang that would be unacceptable. ~ Stephen Baldwin, #NFDB
722:The assurance of every truth of Scripture is just the beauty of it. First because He has promised to do it; and God's promises are bonds that never yet were dishonored. Secondly, because Christ Jesus hath taken an oath that He will do it. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
723:The heart also needs to breathe, and the breath of the heart is none other than the remembrance of God. Without it, the spiritual heart dies. The very purpose of revelation and of scripture is to remind us that our hearts need to be nourished. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB
724:If there be some who, though ignorant of all mathematics . . . dare to reprove this work, because of some passage of Scripture, which they have miserably warped to their purpose, I regard them not, and even despise their rash judgement. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus, #NFDB
725:Scripture, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2009), provides a layman’s guide to the fundamental principles of how to interpret the Bible in such a way as to avoid misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or distortion of the Word of God. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
726:When Scripture talks about the heart, it's not talking about that life-sustaining muscle. It's talking about our entire inner being. The heart is the seat of our emotions, the seat of decisive action, and the seat of belief (as well as doubt). ~ Billy Graham, #NFDB
727:Not all Scripture is propositional, some of it is asking questions, some of it's rhetorical, but where Scripture is stating something, asserting something, making a truth claim, uttering a proposition that is claiming to be true, it is the truth. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
728:People want black-and-white answers, but Scripture is rainbow arch across a stormy sky. Our sacred book is not an indexed answer book or life manual; it is also a grand story, mystery, invitation, truth and wisdom, and a passionate love letter. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
729:Science and Scripture both show that we are wired for love and optimism[5] and so when we react by thinking negatively and making negative choices, the quality of our thinking suffers, which means the quality of our brain architecture suffers. ~ Caroline Leaf, #NFDB
730:Scripture is a never-failing treasury filled with boundless stores of grace. It is the bank of heaven; you may draw from it as much as you please, without let or hindrance. Come in faith and you are welcome to all covenant blessings. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
731:That scripture did also tear and rend my soul in the midst of these distractions, The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. Isa. lvii. 20, 21. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
732:The reason I'm attracted to the light of Scripture is because there's another side of me that is dark. The reason I am interested in men of peace is because I'm not like them and would like to be. I'm not someone in real life who turns the other cheek. ~ Bono, #NFDB
733:The Word of truth teaches in the clearest and most positive terms that all of the dead will be raised. No doctrine of the faith rests upon a more literal and emphatic body of Scripture authority than this, nor is any more vital to Christianity. ~ C I Scofield, #NFDB
734:bBecause of the bondage of sin by which the will is held bound, it cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto; for a movement of this sort is the beginning of conversion to God, which in Scripture is ascribed entirely to God’s grace. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
735:I'm hoping to know and teach a Gospel that is true to Scripture - and the Gospel that I see in the Bible is COSMIC (big enough to redeem all of Creation) and RELATIONAL (getting at the root of the Fall - the loss of our relational capacities). ~ Peter Robinson, #NFDB
736:Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style which has most power to move men... It's object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and last hold of the imagination. (p.162/543) ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
737:The biblical scene with the serpent taking place in the Garden of Eden is another probable forgery in Scripture committed by the Jews to overwrite a significant historical event yet according to their own imaginary narrative of ancient Egypt. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
738:There is only one way to be revived and healed from our backslidings so that we may become fruitful even in old age. We must take a steady look at the glory of Christ in His special character, in His grace and work, as shown to us in the Scripture. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
739:We’ve invented a thousand shades of gray, devising a comfortable Christian existence we can all live with—super awesome, except the Bible doesn’t support it. According to Scripture, no real disciple serves God while addicted to the dollar. There ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
740:Holy Scripture is more than a watchword. It is also more than ‘light for today’. It is God’s revealed Word for all men, for all times. Holy Scripture does not consist of individual passages; it is a unit and is intended to be used as such. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
741:October 26
Endure Temptation
Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.
-James 1:12
Scripture reading: Psalm 139 ~ Smith Wigglesworth,#NFDB
742:The reason Scripture doesn’t give clear guidelines for assigning responsibility is that it is not essential for us to know precise causes. This is good news: you don’t have to know the exact cause of suffering in order to find hope and comfort. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
743:We must unceasingly ask for [perseverance] by making use of the means which God has taught us for obtaining it: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, frequenting the sacraments, association with good companions, and hearing and reading Holy Scripture. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
744:Word-centered people who enter counseling will be more likely follow the guidance set out in Scripture. Because they know more of the depth of their sin, they are more willing to allow other church members to help them stay on that right path. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
745:An interest in souls divorced from an interest in Scripture leaves us without a text that shapes these souls. In the same way, an interest in Scripture divorced from an interest in souls leaves us without any material for the text to work on. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
746:Original sin, therefore, appears to be a hereditary, depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all the parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the divine wrath and producing in us those works which the scripture calls 'works of. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
747:Sanctification is not to be understood here as a separation from ordinary use or consecration to some special use, although this meaning is often present in Scripture, sometimes referring to outward and sometimes to inward or effectual separation. ~ William Ames, #NFDB
748:Scripture is a guide for conduct as well as the source of doctrine. Seven times in the book of Revelation we read this phrase: “He who has an ear, let him hear” (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). What we read in this book should govern our conduct. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
749:Try all things by the written word, and let all bow down before it. You are in danger of [fanaticism] every hour, if you depart ever so little from Scripture; yea, or from the plain, literal meaning of an text, taken in connection with the context. ~ John Wesley, #NFDB
750:We learn what it means to be human from Scripture’s opening act of creation and what it means to be Christian from its closing act of redemption. If redemption restores creation, then the point of being a Christian is to restore our humanity. ~ Michael E Wittmer, #NFDB
751:We would never produce the full range of biblical prayer if we were initiating prayer according to our own inner needs and psychology. It can only be produced if we are responding in prayer according to who God is as revealed in the Scripture. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
752:Between the reference tool and Scripture, days later Beth was convinced of two things. First, the Bible was full of sound wisdom, and second, the message might amount to more than head smarts. It might hold the difference between life and death. ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
753:In fact, it's true throughout all of Scripture....Following Jesus isn't something you can do at night where no one notices. It's a twenty-four-hour-a-day commitment that will interfere with your life. That's not the small-print--that's a guarantee. ~ Kyle Idleman, #NFDB
754:Let us cleave... to those who cultivate peace with godliness, and not to those who hypocritically profess to desire it. For the Scripture says in a certain place (Mk. 7:6), 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their hearts is far from Me.' ~ Pope Clement I, #NFDB
755:How do human beings deal with the brutality of sudden, silent end? As individuals they repeatedly tell their story, listen to music, read poetry, walk in nature. [M]usic, poetry, scripture are the only languages that at that moment means anything. ~ Marion Woodman, #NFDB
756:I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek. ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
757:cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl’s kiss on your cheek. At ~ Yann Martel, #NFDB
758:Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. Men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance until they have. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
759:In Scripture the election of God ... does not come out of works but out of grace. God's electing plan prepares the way of salvation in which man learns that salvation is obtained only as a divine gift an never as an acquisiton because of good works. ~ G C Berkouwer, #NFDB
760:Most counseling cases today involve good desires that have become overgrown. In these cases most relevant passages of Scripture may not be those that rebut particular manifestations of sin, but those that remind us to love God with all our hearts. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
761:Perhaps the most important principle in Scripture regarding abilities is found in Paul's injunction that we ought to make a sober analysis of ourselves, not thinking too highly of ourselves (Rom. 12:3). Through sober analysis, we can
make a serious, ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
762:Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance. [...] By failing to live by the letter of the texts [scripture], while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
763:There is no hint here that preaching is thought of primarily as self-expression
of subjective experience or feeling-disclosure or autobiography or `telling one's story' so as to neglect Scripture."275 It is the Word that is to be preached. ~ Ben Witherington III,#NFDB
764:When someone uses Philosophy as an indispensable tool for tackling Theology and knows no other way for approaching that scripture-related Science, then you must have already figured out by now that he is a gentile who is standing right before you. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
765:Many books in my library are now behind and beneath me. They were good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore when I was ten years old; but I have outgrown them. Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
766:People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently—and generally better—than people who serve other masters.” “So it is like believing in God.” “Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty. ~ Neal Stephenson, #NFDB
767:The major teachings of the Bible about itself can be classified into four characteristics (sometimes termed attributes): (1) the authority of Scripture; (2) the clarity of Scripture; (3) the necessity of Scripture; and (4) the sufficiency of Scripture. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
768:We must unceasingly ask for [perseverance] by making use of the means which God has taught us for obtaining it: prayer, fasting, almsgiving, frequenting the sacraments, association with good companions, and hearing and reading Holy Scripture. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
769:When I eat alone I feel like a seminarian being punished. I tried it for one week and I was not comfortable. Then I searched through Sacred Scripture for something saying I had to eat alone. I found nothing, so I gave it up and it's much better now. ~ Pope John XXIII, #NFDB
770:A defining reality for me is what Scripture teaches in Hebrews 12, that God is our father, and that a sign that he loves us is that he disciplines us, he takes us through hardship to build character in us that could not be shaped apart from difficulty. ~ Joshua Harris, #NFDB
771:Faith will falter if the authority of holy scripture is shaken; and if faith falters, love itself decays. For if someone lapses in his faith, he inevitably lapses in his love as well, since he cannot love what he does not believe to be true. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
772:If true religion is to beam upon us, our principle must be, that it is necessary to begin with heavenly teaching, and that it is impossible for any man to obtain even the minutest portion of right and sound doctrine without being a disciple of Scripture. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
773:Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome - and even comforting - than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know. ~ Carolyn Porco, #NFDB
774:That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error. ~ Pope Gregory VII, #NFDB
775:The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, #NFDB
776:The Scripture speaks of a world system that is at odds with the kingdom, a world to which we are constantly tempted to pattern our own intellects and affections after, until we are interrupted by the ongoing transformation of the kingdom (Rom. 12:1). ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
777:Throughout Scripture we read about God's concern for people who are vulnerable or suffering - the poor, the widows and orphans, the foreigners in the land, and so on. All Christians should feel a sense of calling to where there is pain in our society. ~ John M Perkins, #NFDB
778:One of the most comforting verses of Scripture is Romans 8:28: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” Only a God of sovereign providence could make a promise like that. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
779:Saint Augustine … insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
780:I have always taken the view that sometimes war may be justified, as police action can be justified, to protect the weak and vulnerable (a major preoccupation in scripture). But this is an old and difficult question and very wise people take different views. ~ N T Wright, #NFDB
781:I think that ultimately we will attain much more depth of understanding of Scripture when we are able to study it in the company of a great number of scholars who all begin with the conviction that the Bible is completely true and absolutely authoritative. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
782:Where Scripture speaks of the world's creation, it is not plainly said whether or when the angels were created; but if mention is made, it is implicit under the name of "heaven," when it is said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
783:it means what it say," Ethel said. "It means that a Hebrew may not enslave a Hebrew. But the sons of Ham are not of that tribe. The were cursed, with black skin and tails. Where the Scripture condemns slavery, it is not speaking of negro slavery at all. ~ Colson Whitehead, #NFDB
784:Saint Augustine ... insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
785:To say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
786:Everything which does not lead to charity is figurative. The sole object of Scripture is charity. Everything that does not lead to this sole good is figurative. For, since there is only one goal, everything that does not lead to it explicitly is figurative. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
787:Many things there be in the scripture, which have a carnal fulfilling, even there where they be spoken or done; and yet have another spiritual signification, to be fulfilled long after in Christ and his kingdom, and yet never known till the thing be done. ~ William Tyndale, #NFDB
788:He thought himself a mighty prince, but before the Lord (that is, in God's account) he was but a mighty hunter. Note, Great conquerors are but great hunters. Alexander and Caesar would not make such a figure in scripture-history as they do in common history; ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
789:I ask for the Scripture, and Eck offers me the Fathers. I ask for the sun, and he shows me his lanterns. I ask, “where is your Scripture proof?” and he adduces Ambrose and Cyril. . . . With all due respect to the Fathers, I prefer the authority of Scripture. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
790:If your expectation of God’s Word in your life has been small, I ask you to consider giving it far more credit. Second Timothy 3:16 (NIV) says, “All Scripture is God-breathed,” so don’t just read it like any other inspirational or instructional text. Inhale it! ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
791:Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
792:As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”18 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”19 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
793:Briefly, the Regulative Principle states that everything we do in a corporate worship gathering must be clearly warranted by Scripture. Clear warrant can either take the form of an explicit biblical command, or a good and necessary implication of a biblical text. ~ Mark Dever, #NFDB
794:If the Pope were to deny that the death penalty could be an exercise of retributive justice, he would be overthrowing the tradition of two millenia of Catholic thought, denying the teaching of several previous popes, and contradicting the teaching of Scripture. ~ Avery Dulles, #NFDB
795:If there is any truth in Scripture at all, this is true—that those who stubbornly refuse to submit to the gospel, and to love and obey Jesus Christ, incur at the Last Advent an infinite and irreparable loss. They will pass into a night on which no morning dawns. ~ David Platt, #NFDB
796:If the universe turns out to be six thousand years old, that fact will not ultimately conflict with what Scripture actually teaches. If the universe turns out to be billions of years old, that fact will not ultimately conflict with what Scripture actually teaches. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
797:In every generation there are voices that question the authority of Scripture. So in one sense this is merely part of the continuing stream. But there's a sense in which the questions that are raised against Scripture vary a wee bit from generation to generation. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
798:Clearly, the Scripture tells us that we lack the capacity to grasp God's infinite mind or the way He intervenes in our lives. How arrogant of us to think otherwise! Trying to analyze His omnipotence is like an amoeba attempting to comprehend the behavior of man. ~ James Dobson, #NFDB
799:He’d been punished so frequently that he’d lived in a state of being perpetually grounded. Every little thing he’d said and done had been cause for a put down, a punishment or a scripture quote ripped out of context to impress upon him what a shitty person he was. ~ Ranae Rose, #NFDB
800:In all God's providences it is good to observe the fulfilling of scripture, and to compare God's word and his works together, which if we do we shall find an admirable harmony and agreement between them, and that they mutually explain and illustrate each other. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
801:Our hearts are broken today for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these children and the families of the adults we lost....May god bless the memory of the victims and in the words of scripture heal the broken hearted and bind up their wounds. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
802:Reading the Apocalypse, we must always fight the temptation to strain for the extravagant while denying the obvious. I’ll say it again: Often the deepest meaning in Scripture is very near to the heart of each of us, and the widest application is very close to home. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
803:Said Father Basil: “Saint Benedict takes the image that Scripture uses to speak about Christ himself. ‘A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench.’ Humanity is already fragile. We need to treat it with care, with concern, with delicacy. ~ Rod Dreher, #NFDB
804:37Now on the feast’s final day—its great day—Jesus stood up and called out loudly, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me, and let him drink. 38Whoever has faith in me, just as scripture has said, ‘Out of his inner parts streams of living water will flow. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
805:If Christians have learned anything from our rocky two-thousand-year theological history, it’s that we make the most beautiful things ugly when we try to systematize mystery. Even the writers of Scripture knew that some things were simply beyond their grasp. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
806:...if I try to make only enough money for my family' immediate needs, it may violate Scripture. ...Even though earning just enough to meet the needs of my family may seem nonmaterialistic, it's actually selfish when I could earn enough to care for others as well. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
807:If we continue to focus only on our “favorite” passages of Scripture, we may well miss something new that God wants to say to the church through a neglected portion of His Word. God does not speak any word in vain, and there are no wasted passages of Scripture. ~ Andrew M Davis, #NFDB
808:In truth you cannot read too much in Scripture; and what you read you cannot read too carefully, and what you read carefully you cannot understand too well, and what you understand well you cannot teach too well, and what you teach well you cannot live too well. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
809:The Puranas are authoritative scriptures of the Hindu dharma. Like the “Sruti” (the audible word), the “Smriti” (the divine word remembered) is an authoritative scripture though not of the same order. ~ Sri Aurobindo, in Sri Aurobindo Writings in Bengali Translated into English, #NFDB
810:Before the Civil War, many Mormons and Southern Protestants maintained that the Bible supported slavery for persons of African descent; when slavery ended, the same denominations read Scripture to require segregation of the races and to bar interracial relationships. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
811:First of all, Scripture draws our attention to this, that if we want ease and tranquility in our lives, we should resign ourselves and all that we have to the will of God, and at the same time we should surrender our affections to him as our Conqueror and Overlord. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
812:Inductive Bible study draws you into personal interaction with the Scripture and thus with the God of the Scriptures so that your beliefs are based on a prayerful understanding and legitimate interpretation of Scripture—truth that transforms you when you live by it. ~ Kay Arthur, #NFDB
813:Most Christians are not convinced of their own faith. I would say 90 percent of Christians do not have a worldview, in other words a view of the world, based on the Scripture and a relationship with God. And so they cannot discern between the truth and falsehood. ~ Josh McDowell, #NFDB
814:Service is the highest spiritual discipline. Prayer and meditation, or knowledge of scripture and Vedanta (holy scriptures of India), cannot help you reach the goal as quickly as service can. Service has a double effect, it extinguishes the ego and gives bliss. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
815:The Cabala may be defined to be a system of philosophy which embraces certain mystical interpretations of Scripture, and metaphysical and spiritual beings... Much use is made of it in the advanced degrees, and entire Rites have been constructed on its principles. ~ Albert Mackey, #NFDB
816:The Scripture says that God wants to pour out “His far and beyond favor.”1 God wants this to be the best time of your life. But if you are going to receive this favor, you must enlarge your vision. You can’t go around thinking negative, defeated, limiting thoughts. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
817:God takes center stage in every story of Scripture. He is the Creator of life, the Judge, and the Savior. So while the Bible does talk about marriage, let’s be careful not to use the Bible just to find helpful tips on marriage. There is a much, much bigger picture. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
818:Scripture does not explain things by their secondary causes, but only narrates them in the order and style which has most power to move men... It's object is not to convince the reason, but to attract and last hold of the imagination. (Chapter on Spinoza, p.162/543) ~ Will Durant, #NFDB
819:Scripture assumes that we will be afraid and anxious sometimes. What is important is where we turn, or to whom we turn when we are afraid. The God who calls you to trust in Him when you are afraid will spend a great deal of time showing you that you can trust Him. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
820:Abraham’s servant prayed for success: “O LORD, the God of my master Abraham, please grant me success today, and show lovingkindness to my master Abraham” (Gen. 24:12 NASB). This is the first time in Scripture that we read of someone asking God for specific guidance. ~ Gary L Thomas, #NFDB
821:How could this fatuous, emotional thing be without beginning and without end, the creator of all? I had taken the dead letter of Scripture at its very deadest, and it had killed me, according to the saying of St. Paul: "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life ~ Thomas Merton, #NFDB
822:In our day, deception becomes all the easier to arrange because so many Christians are no longer greatly shaped by Scripture. It is difficult to unmask subtle error when it aligns with the culture, deploys spiritual God-talk, piously cites a passage or two, and "works. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
823:That it is the work of the Holy Spirit to enable us to believe the Scripture to be the word of God, or the supernatural, immediate revelation of his mind unto us, and infallibly to evidence it unto our minds, so as that we may spiritually and savingly acquiesce therein. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
824:The sublimity of witnessing the ruler of a mighty nation turning to Holy Scripture for comfort and courage, and finding both in his darkest hour, brought tears to her eyes, and she was obliged to quickly compose herself before returning to Mrs. Lincoln’s side. ~ Jennifer Chiaverini, #NFDB
825:It is the most fundamental reason why each of us exists. Scripture calls it “abiding in Christ” (John 15:4; cf. 1 John 4:16). God’s desire is for us to participate in his own eternal love and life and therefore in his own eternal joy and peace by dwelling in the Son. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
826:Our claim is that God has revealed Himself by speaking; that this divine (or God-breathed) speech has been written down and preserved in Scripture; and that Scripture is, in fact, God's Word written, which therefore is true and reliable and has divine authority over men. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
827:Scripture is God speaking. Though the words they’d read had been penned more than a thousand years earlier, still God spoke in the reading of those words. Jesus held them accountable for the words of Scripture as if God Himself had spoken those words directly to them! ~ James R White, #NFDB
828:Are you letting culture, not scripture, determine your sexuality, how you date, how you present yourself, how you engage in certain relationships with members of the opposite sex? We need to be very clear that the way we do life is different than the rest of the world. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
829:God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him. He must disclose to us who he is before we can offer him what we are in acceptable worship. The worship of God is always a response to the Word of God. Scripture wonderfully directs and enriches our worship. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
830:Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone... Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness. ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
831:In most Christian circles you will rarely hear fasting mentioned, and few will have read anything about it. And yet it’s mentioned in Scripture more times even than something as important as baptism (about seventy-seven times for fasting to seventy-five for baptism). ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
832:The Bible is unfortunately unclear on a long list of moral and social questions and sex is one of them. On the one hand, there are expressions of admiration for the reportedly virgin mother of Jesus, but other portions of scripture speak quite accommodatingly of polygamy. ~ Steve Allen, #NFDB
833:For we can affirm with a good conscience that we have, after reading the Holy Scripture, applied ourselves and yet daily apply ourselves to the extent that the grace of the Lord permits to inquiry into and investigation of the consensus of the true and purer antiquity. ~ Martin Chemnitz, #NFDB
834:If we cite the Bible, and yet fail to live according to its codes, the Bible becomes just another book. But when we live it, it becomes powerful. If you believe it, the words of scripture say that we come living epistles in whose life others read the presence of God. ~ Michael Eric Dyson, #NFDB
835:Live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness. Tenderness awakens within the security of knowing we are thoroughly and sincerely liked by someone...
Scripture suggests that the essence of the divine nature is compassion and that the heart of God is defined by tenderness. ~ Brennan Manning,#NFDB
836:The Fiend was visible but cloaked in light;
He seemed a helping angel from the skies:
He armed untruth with Scripture and the Law;
He deceived with wisdom, with virtue slew the soul
And led to perdition by the heavenward path. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Descent into Night,#NFDB
837:To help your understanding: (i) Mark well the titles of the psalms; (ii) Note the propriety of the Hebrew phrase, in the margin; (iii) Use that translation [of scripture] which is nearest the Hebrew; (iv) Peruse this exposition first [Francis Roberts’ Key of the Bible, 1675]. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
838:asked. So far, in her brief time in Appalachia, she had become convinced that every five families had their own tiny church with a leaning white steeple. There were churches everywhere, all believing in the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture but evidently agreeing on little else. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
839:For many Charismatics, Scripture is not simply a book to be read and studied, but it is an invitation into a lifestyle of supernatural engagement. Truly, such followers of Jesus desire to be doers of the Word, not hearers only. This should be celebrated rather than rejected. ~ Randy Clark, #NFDB
840:The scripture they follow is flawed and filled with contradictions. You can’t preach tolerance and also have a clause in there that implies ‘join us or die—if you don’t believe what we believe, you’ll go to a mythical hell.’ That’s all crap people use to control other people, ~ Ken Lozito, #NFDB
841:The testimony of scripture is so plain that to add anything were superfluous, were it not that the world is almost now come to that blindness, that whatsoever pleases not the princes and the multitude, the same is rejected as doctrine newly forged, and is condemned for heresy. ~ John Knox, #NFDB
842:Evolutionism is a religious world view that is not supported by science, Scripture, popular opinion, or common sense. The exclusive teaching of this dangerous, mind-altering philosophy in tax supported schools, parks, museums, etc. is a clear violation of the First Amendment. ~ Kent Hovind, #NFDB
843:Read whatever chapter of scripture you will, and be ever so delighted with it - yet it will leave you as poor, as empty and unchanged as it found you unless it has turned you wholly and solely to the Spirit of God, and brought you into full union with and dependence upon him. ~ William Law, #NFDB
844:The Collect Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen. ~ Episcopal Church, #NFDB
845:The Evidence Bible is a handy tool for anyone interested in proving the reliability of Scripture, the deity of Jesus Christ, and the incredible offer of our eternal salvation. It makes the defense of Scripture easily understood and should be read by all serious Bible students. ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
846:three subsistences, with three distinct persons. They subsist within the being of God. THE SPIRIT’S PERSONAL NATURE The fact that the Holy Spirit is a person is seen in a multitude of ways in Scripture. One of the primary evidences is that the Bible repeatedly and consistently ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
847:I felt that I had been born anew and that the gates of heaven had been opened. The whole of Scripture gained a new meaning. And from that point on the phrase, 'the justice of God' no longer filled me with hatred, but rather became unspeakable sweet by virtue of a great love. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
848:I just find the evangelical church too, well, restrictive. But the School of Practical Philosophy is non-confrontational. We believe there are many forms of scripture. What is true is true and will never change, whether it's in the Bible or in Shakespeare. It's about oneness. ~ Hugh Jackman, #NFDB
849:We are not doomed to an ultimate conflict with no hope of resolution. The message of the Scripture is one of victory - full, final and ultimate victory. It is not our doom that is certain, but Satan's. His head has been crushed by the heel of Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
850:What value is there to reading one, three, or more chapters of Scripture only to find that after you’ve finished, you can’t recall a thing you’ve read? It’s better to read a small amount of Scripture and meditate on it than to read an extensive section without meditation. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
851:Prayer Against the Darkness
Shekhina
Pray for us now
bound with scripture
and shielded with shawl
Armed with passion
and loving care
Pray for us now
against suffering, turmoil, and injustice
Pray for us now
against the chaos of the dark. ~ Leonard Nimoy,#NFDB
852:You know the Scripture says "be not deceived for God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sow that shall he also reap." And one day, I don't know how they're going to get it, but they're going to get some of it back. They are scared to death and are more afraid now than we are. ~ Fannie Lou Hamer, #NFDB
853:And it cannot be denied but that the work and actings of the Spirit of grace in and towards believers with respect unto the duty of prayer are more frequently and expressly asserted in the Scripture than his operations with respect unto any other particular grace or duty whatever. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
854:But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose. ~ Lafcadio Hearn, #NFDB
855:During the first seven years, every society tries to condition the mind - and conditioning means nothing but hypnosis: forcing authority, law, tradition, religion, scripture, the priest, the church, into the innermost unconscious of the child so that from there you can control him. ~ Rajneesh, #NFDB
856:. . . I feel we don’t really need scriptures. The entire life is an open book, a scripture. Read it. Learn while digging a pit or chopping some wood or cooking some food. If you can’t learn from your daily activities, how are you going to understand the scriptures? (233) ~ Swami Satchidananda, #NFDB
857:If we neglect Scripture in order to read only other books, we not only cut ourselves from the divine umbilical cord that feeds our souls, we also cut ourselves from the truth that makes it possible for us to benefit from the truth, goodness, and beauty in the books that we read. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
858:In short, this or that behavior wasn't good because scripture said so. Scripture mandated this or that behavior because it was good, and if it was already good before scripture said so, then it was good for some reason inherent to itself, some reason that reason could discover. ~ Tamim Ansary, #NFDB
859:The Bible is not a book of magic. It's a book of mystery. You can't just quote verses that support your prejudices or guarantee your health, wealth, and happiness and demand that God 'follow through' as promised. God is not limited to the words of Scripture. God is still speaking. ~ Mel White, #NFDB
860:The only way for us to make sense of life today is to appreciate where the future is going. Scripture outlines that future, not with detailed dates, but with a general outline of what is to come. That outline is designed not to have us prepare charts, but to prepare our hearts. ~ Darrell Bock, #NFDB
861:4. The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God. ~ Westminster Assembly, #NFDB
862:Abraham was the first to teach the Unity of God, to establish the faith, to cause it to remain among coming generations, and to win his fellow-men to his doctrine; as Scripture says of him: "I know him, that he will command," &c. (Gen. xviii. 19) ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
863:For those of you out there today who have already been through hard times and are desperate for a word of encouragement, let me assure you that you can trust this Lord of heaven and earth. Remember that Scripture warns us to “lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
864:It is precisely because Biblical revelation is absolutely authoritative and perspicuous that the scientific facts, rightly interpreted, will give the same testimony as that of Scripture. There is not the slightest possibility that the facts of science can contradict the Bible. ~ Henry M Morris, #NFDB
865:Men have jobs, while women have Roles: Mother, Wife, Goddess, Temptress, etc. That's probably why it's so hard for women to rewrite the rules. You're not just changing a job description, but an ancient myth. You're revising the Bible, Poetry, Legend and Psychoanalytic Scripture. ~ Caryl Rivers, #NFDB
866:In other words, the prophets are weirdos. More than anyone else in Scripture, they remind us that those odd ducks shouting from the margins of society may see things more clearly than the political and religious leaders with the inside track. We ignore them at our own peril. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
867:The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, and religious scripture a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this. ~ Albert Einstein, #NFDB
868:To me it seemed that the teaching of God's Word was unmistakably clear: 'Owe no man anything.' To borrow money implied to my mind a contradiction of Scripture--a confession that God had withheld some good thing, and determination to get for ourselves what He had not given. ~ James Hudson Taylor, #NFDB
869:Be assured that thy God will be thy counsellor and friend; he shall guide thee; he will direct all thy ways. In his written Word thou hast this assurance in part fulfilled, for holy Scripture is his counsel to thee. Happy are we to have God's Word always to guide us! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
870:One fourth of the books in the Bible are of prophetic nature; the subject and statement of the books are eschatological, that is, they deal with prophecy. One fifth of the content of Scripture was predictive at the time of its writing; a large segment of that has been fulfilled. ~ J Vernon McGee, #NFDB
871:The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words of God He intended His people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that it now contains everything we need God to tell us for salvation, for trusting Him perfectly, and for obeying Him perfectly. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
872:But a flawed and erroneous Bible is no longer the authoritative Word of God. And that low view of Scripture has successively given license to liberal theologians, militant feminists, homosexuals, and many others intent on assaulting the authority and relevance of God’s Word. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
873:There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than the doctrine of hell, if it lay in my power. But it has the support of Scripture and, especially, of our Lord's own words; it has always been held by the Christian Church, and it has the support of reason. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
874:the translators of the NIV and the Living Bible and other evangelical apologists have dishonestly tampered with the meaning of scripture, using a phony argument (a phone argument!) in order to deceive the readers and disguise an embarrassing discrepancy in their so-called “holy book. ~ Dan Barker, #NFDB
875:You need the preached Word, the ministry of the sacraments, and the fellowship of other believers to feed your soul. Without them, you will shrivel up, even with private Scripture reading and prayer during the week. Neglecting the local church will also likely turn you in on yourself. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
876:If sign and image are central to the New Testament, then it has to be read as a kind of narrative poetry. In the Scripture, we encounter types and symbols and emblems of transfiguration, and that is how the early Church, which created the New Testament, understood its own creation. ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
877:In this sense, the methodological form that comes into play here is ultimately quite simple: Scripture is interpreted by Scripture. Scripture interprets itself. Attentive listening to Scripture’s own internal self-interpretation is very characteristic of Redemptoris Mater. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar, #NFDB
878:So the Scripture speaks of a knowledge of God’s dispensation, and covenant of mercy, and way of grace towards his people, as peculiar to the saints, and given only by God, Psal. xxv. 14: “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant.” And ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
879:The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person. This is surely what Jesus means when he talks about the one who has being given more and those who have not losing what little they have. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
880:According to Scripture, the invisible church includes everyone who has ever been genuinely born again for every age of church history. This church will not meet in a visible way until Christ returns. The visible church consists of believers who are alive and meeting together right now. ~ Wayne Mack, #NFDB
881:They're called in the Scripture the Beatitudes. You know why they're called the Beatitudes without being prestigious? Because they should be the attitudes of every believer. That's the normal Christian life, not the abnormal Christian life. The normal Christian life is holiness. ~ Leonard Ravenhill, #NFDB
882:To me it seemed that the teaching of God's Word was unmistakably clear: "Owe no man any thing." To borrow money implied, to my mind, a contradiction of Scripture—a confession that God had withheld some good thing, and a determination to get for ourselves what He had not given. ~ James Hudson Taylor, #NFDB
883:Unless you’re able to look at marriage through the lens of Scripture instead of through your own fears or romanticism, through your particular experience, or through your culture’s narrow perspectives, you won’t be able to make intelligent decisions about your own marital future. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
884:We accept what Scripture teaches as far as our doctrine is concerned; but when it comes to practice, we very often fail to take the Scriptures as our only guide. ... Dare I give an obvious illustration? The question of women preaching, and being ordained to the full ministry. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
885:The issue when it comes to meditation is what, not if. The mind observes the impulse to meditate the way the body observes the law of gravity. Scripture has a lot to say about meditating wisely. The psalmist talks about the fruitful person as one whose “delight is in the law of the ~ John Ortberg Jr, #NFDB
886:Christians should never have a political party. It is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believed in the revealing truth Scripture. ~ Charles Colson, #NFDB
887:Holiness is more than purity. In Scripture we see that cleansing precedes holiness. (2 Cor. 7:1; Eph. 5:26,27; 2 Tim. 2:21) Cleansing is the taking away of that which is wrong; liberation from sin. Holiness is the filling with that which is good, divine, with the disposition of Jesus. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
888:The essence of all critical thought, in the best sense of that abused expression, is the justification of opinions. A critical interpretation of Scripture is one that has adequate justification—lexical, grammatical, cultural, theological, historical, geographical, or other justification. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
889:Be a Bible man, go so far as the Bible, but not an inch beyond it. Though Calvin should beckon you, and you esteem him, or Wesley should beckon, and you esteem him, keep to the Scripture, only to the Scripture! from the Sermon: Infallibility—Where To Find It and How To Use It ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
890:It is all too easy to read the traditional interpretations we have received from others into the text of Scripture. Then we may unwittingly transfer the authority of Scripture to our traditional interpretations and invest them with a false, even an idolatrous, degree of certainty. Because ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
891:I would note that the scripture tells us, "you shall know them by their fruit." We see lots of "campaign conservatives." But if we're going to win in 2016, we need a consistent conservative, someone who has been a fiscal conservative, a social conservative, a national security conservative. ~ Ted Cruz, #NFDB
892:The Bible’s claim to truth is not only far more urgent than Homer’s, it is tyrannical—it excludes all other claims. The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy. ~ Erich Auerbach, #NFDB
893:The first and best response to someone whose faith is unraveling is a hug. Apologetics aren’t helpful. Neither are Scripture references. The first thing a hurting person needs is to know they’re not alone. My path back to God was paved with grace by those who received my doubt in love. ~ Mike McHargue, #NFDB
894:The Scripture also speaks plainly of such a knowledge of the word of God as has been described, as the immediate gift of God, Psal. cxix. 18: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” What could the Psalmist mean when he begged of God to open his eyes? ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
895:We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture. We deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
896:But trust in the God who loves consistently and faithfully nurtures confident, free disciples. A loving God fosters a loving people. “The fact that our view of God shapes our lives to a great extent may be one of the reasons Scripture ascribes such importance to seeking to know Him.”2 ~ Brennan Manning, #NFDB
897:Christians should never have a political party. It is a huge mistake to become married to an ideology, because the greatest enemy of the gospel is ideology. Ideology is a man-made format of how the world ought to work, and Christians instead believed in the revealing truth Scripture. ~ Charles W Colson, #NFDB
898:I am inclined to think that the authority of Holy Scripture is intended to convince men of those truths which are necessary for their salvation, which, being far above man's understanding, can not be made credible by any learning, or any other means than revelation by the Holy Spirit. ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
899:I walked away with a renewed passion for Scripture and I was powerfully reminded that God's Word really is a lamp to guide my feet along this journey of discovering who I am. I hope people will soak in the Scripture that I highlight throughout page after page of 'Hello, My Name Is' book. ~ Matthew West, #NFDB
900:[Unbelievers] think they have made great efforts to get at the truth when they have spent a few hours in reading some book out of Holy Scripture, and have questioned some cleric about the truths of the faith. After that, they boast that they have searched in books and among men in vain. ~ Blaise Pascal, #NFDB
901:We know that God is not mean to people who are afraid; the Scripture is full of examples of his compassion. But he will not enable passivity. The “wicked and lazy” servant was passive. He did not try. God’s grace covers failure, but it cannot make up for passivity. We have to do our part. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
902:Yoga is more a state than a methodology. A state where there is nothing missing. You don't feel like you have to grab this or grab that in order to be complete or full. From wringing out the body and the mind, from sitting in meditation, from studying scripture, from selfless service. ~ Colleen Saidman, #NFDB
903:• In spending this money, am I acting as if I owned it, or am I acting as the Lord’s trustee? • What Scripture requires me to spend this money in this way? • Can I offer up this purchase as a sacrifice to the Lord? • Will God reward me for this expenditure at the resurrection of the just? ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
904:Sometimes it is easy to know what God’s will is and, therefore, to pray in accordance with his will. For example, if we pray in line with a direct command or declaration of his will in Scripture, then we will be asking God to do what he desires to do and asking for things that please him. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
905:When you cry out against a God who punishes people in a place like hell, you cry out against the God who has revealed Himself in the pages of Scripture. You cry out against His goodness, holiness, and justice; and all the while you minimize your own sinfulness or the sinfulness of others. ~ Tim Challies, #NFDB
906:Here again Diatribe confidently brings in a gloss to suit herself, just as if Scripture were under her complete control. As for considering the prophet's meaning and intention, what need was there for a man of such authority to do that? All we need is: Erasmus says so, therefore it is so. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
907:I move for a creed for all our denominations made out of Scripture quotations, pure and simple. That would be impregnable against infidelity and Appolyonic assault. That would be beyond human criticism. Let us make it simpler and plainer for people to get into the Kingdom of God. ~ Thomas De Witt Talmage, #NFDB
908:[In Revelation 10, John] eats the book—not just reads it—he got it into his nerve endings, his reflexes, his imagination. The book he ate was the Holy Scripture. Assimilated into his worship and prayer, his imagining and writing, the book he ate was metabolized into the book he wrote. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
909: Quietly contemplate the Lamb as the light of heaven. Light in Scripture is the emblem of joy. The joy of the saints in heaven is comprised in this: Jesus chose us, loved us, bought us, cleansed us, robed us, kept us, glorified us: we are here entirely through the Lord Jesus. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
910:So, my brother and I, over the last two years, went back through Scripture and pulled every (passage) we could in relation to parenting children, guarding their hearts, teaching them, loving them, being patient. And then we worked through 40 principles and wrote The Love Dare for Parents. ~ Alex Kendrick, #NFDB
911:To say that everything in the bible is to be believed , simply because it is found in that volume, is equally absurd and pernicious... To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth. ~ William Lloyd Garrison, #NFDB
912:While it is shortsighted to discount Scripture’s laws as totally backward and amoral, it is just as misguided to pretend they reflect a more just society than they do. No one who values the inherent worth and dignity of their fellow human beings should want a return to ancient Israel. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
913:But to read all Scripture narratives as if they were eye-witness reports in a modern newspaper, and to ignore the poetic and imaginative form in which they are sometimes couched, would be no less a violation of the canons of evangelical literalism than the allegorizing of the Scholastics was. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
914:Every sacred scripture, holy picture or spoken word, produces the impression of its identity upon the mirror of the soul; but music stands before the soul without producing any impression of this objective world, in either name or form, thus preparing the soul to realize the Infinite. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan, #NFDB
915:Jesus was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them. [...] Since a principal thesis of this chapter is that we do not, and should not, derive our morals from scripture, Jesus has to be honoured as a model for that very thesis. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
916:The proper mode of discussing any single theological topic is exegetical and rational. The first step to be taken is to deduce the doctrine itself from Scripture by careful exegesis; and the second step is to justify and defend this exegetical result upon grounds of reason. ~ William Greenough Thayer Shedd, #NFDB
917:The second challenge is to make sure that, growing up in this culture, they have a healthy view of life and God and Scripture. So, that's my other challenge. So, finding that balance is certainly no easy task but it can be very fulfilling. So, that's part of what we talk about in this book. ~ Alex Kendrick, #NFDB
918:Attentive reading of God’s Word will set you up for frequent Holy Spirit warnings as He uses Scripture to set off alarms of danger in your life. As you grow spiritually, you may discover direct “prompts” God’s Spirit gives, but they will always be in harmony with what God says in His Word. ~ James MacDonald, #NFDB
919:Beloved, surrender wholeheartedly to Jesus Christ, who loves you. As you drink from the deep well of Scripture, the Lord will refresh you and cleanse you, mold you and re-create you through His Living Word. For the Bible is the very breath of God, giving life eternal to those who seek Him. ~ Francine Rivers, #NFDB
920:For a man solemnly to undertake the interpretation of any portion of Scripture without invocation of God, to be taught and instructed by His Spirit, is a high provocation of him; nor shall I expect the discovery of truth from any one who thus proudly engages in a work so much beyond his ability. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
921:I remembered a scripture they read us from the Bible about God not putting more on us than we could bear. I was beginning to wonder if that was just for those people who went to church every Sunday and prayed before they went to bed at night. Because he wasn’t holding back any punches with me. ~ Abbi Glines, #NFDB
922:My mom is very religious and she said, 'Whatever you think about all the time, that's what you worship.' If that's the case I'd like everyone to pop open their Diet Coke cans and turn to page 37 of their People Magazines. In this holy scripture, we read the parable of Ms. Valerie Bertinelli. ~ Maria Bamford, #NFDB
923:The Fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
924:The fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
925:When supernatural phenomena do not occur, what is the attitude of the writers of Scripture toward their absence? When there is an absence of the supernatural in the Old Testament, the Scripture writers do not take that as normative for the people of God; rather they take it as a sign of judgment. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
926:God never calls people to disobey his Word. Our decision on this matter must be based on the objective teaching of the Bible, not on some person’s subjective experience, no matter how godly or sincere that person is. This egalitarian claim is another form of the question, Will we take Scripture ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
927:I believe you know Jesus said "a doctor doesn't come to the healthy, but the sick, and it's not the righteous but the sinners that I've come for," so I think that that's the scandal of God's love and grace that no one is beyond redemption, and we can see that all through scripture, you know. ~ Shane Claiborne, #NFDB
928:If God permits virtue to be persecuted on earth, it is not for us to question his intentions. It may be that his rewards are held over for another life, for is it not true as written in Holy Scripture that the Lord chastenenth only the righteous! And after all, is not virtue it's own reward? ~ Marquis de Sade, #NFDB
929:those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.[219] ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
930:Toxic thoughts leave no room for truth to flourish. And in the absence of truth, lies reign. Spend some time soaking in your favorite verses from Scripture tonight. The more we read God's truths and let truth fill our minds, the less time we'll spend contemplating untruths and toxic thoughts. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
931:In short, when it comes to the nature of suffering and blessing, the Bible does not speak with a single voice. There is not a biblical view of theodicy. There are biblical views of theodicy. And the people who wrote and assembled Scripture seemed perfectly fine with that unresolved tension. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
932:I came to believe that God has reserved the office of elder for men, and I came to this conclusion not because of what my church taught or because of cultural trends but because of intense personal study of Scripture and the work of biblical scholars and linguists much wiser and more skilled than I. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
933:Just as at sea those who are carried away from the direction of the harbor bring themselves back on course by a clear sign, on seeing a tall beacon light or some mountain peak coming into view, so Scripture may guide those adrift on the sea of the life back into the harbor of the divine will. ~ Gregory of Nyssa, #NFDB
934:As the Quran suggests over and over again, and as the Constitution of Medina explicitly affirms, Muhammad may have understood the concept of the Umm al-Kitab to mean not only that the Jews, Christians, and Muslims shared a single divine scripture but also that they constituted a single divine Ummah. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
935:It must not be supposed that the heavens or the luminaries are endowed with life(3). For they are inanimate and insensible(4). So that when the divine Scripture saith, Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad(5), it is the angels in heaven and the men on earth that are invited to rejoice. ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
936:Typically, the cessationist view is reproached with something like trying to “put the Spirit in a box.” But according to Scripture, as I will try to show below, the Spirit has sovereignly chosen to “box” himself in; the ardor of the Spirit, we may say, is an “ordered ardor” (cf. 1 Cor. 14:33, 40). ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
937:We are not alone. Even now there are thousands of beings in heaven watching what is going on down here—a ‘great cloud of witnesses,’ the Scripture says. It reminds me that there is so much more to our existence than what we can see. What we do reverberates through the heavens and into eternity. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
938:When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicates clearly otherwise. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
939:You ungrateful fucks! You’d all have died two thousand years ago if it wasn’t for me. I created a paradise for you. Heaven on earth. I’m your God! And you have the audacity to kick God out of heaven!” “I think you got your scripture wrong,” Ethan said. “God didn’t get exiled. It was the other guy. ~ Blake Crouch, #NFDB
940:Biblical spirituality does not consist primarily of mystical, emotional experience, inward impressions and feelings, introspective meditation, or a monastic withdrawal from the world. The primary spiritual disciplines advocated by Scripture are prayer and the obedient study of God’s Word. ~ Andreas J K stenberger, #NFDB
941:Holy Spirit of God hath prepared and disposed of the Scripture so as it might be a most sufficient and absolutely perfect way and means of communicating unto our minds that saving knowledge of God and his will which is needful that we may live unto him, and come unto the enjoyment of him in his glory. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
942:I weep when I see these videos that are sent to me from all over the country. Whole groups of bodies jerking out of control, falling on the floor, laughing hysterically, staggering around like drunkards Anything that cannot be found in Scripture has to be rejected outright - totally rejected. ~ David Wilkerson, #NFDB
943:Nothing has a greater impact on spiritual growth than reflection on Scripture. If churches could do only one thing to help people at all levels of spiritual maturity grow in their relationship with Christ, their choice is clear. They would inspire, encourage, and equip their people to read the Bible.1 ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
944:The Enemy—one of whose names in Scripture is “the Deceiver”—loves to keep truly saved believers unsure of their salvation because he knows that if he does they’ll never experience the freedom, joy, and confidence that God wants them to have. But he also loves to keep those on their way to hell deluded ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
945:This is not a God with a form. No white clothes, no long beard. This God has no doctrine, no scripture, no precepts. No reward, no punishment. This God doesn't give, and doesn't take away. There is no heaven up in the sky, no hell down below. When it's hot, and when it's cold, God is simply there ~ Haruki Murakami, #NFDB
946:We can’t protect or expand the cause of Christ by human political and social activism, no matter how great or sincere the efforts. Ours is a spiritual battle against worldly ideologies and dogmas that are arrayed against God, and we achieve victory over them only with the weapon of Scripture. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
947:In Scripture, doctrine is practical and high doctrine is highly practical. Those who disparage doctrine for the sake of practice are impractical. Those who disparage practice for the sake of doctrine are unskilled in the word of righteousness. We are never to put apart what God has joined together. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
948:Just as Jesus learned obedience by the things He suffered, we learn obedience by the difficult circumstances we face. When we obey the Word of God that is spoken by the Holy Spirit, we will grow and mature in the times of conflict and suffering. Our knowledge of Scripture is not the key. Obedience is. ~ John Bevere, #NFDB
949:I myself have had a good deal to say on those subjects in previous books,1 basing my statements on holy Scripture; what I said there was either what I found stated in Scripture or what I could infer from scriptural statements, always keeping in conformity with the authority of the Bible. A ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
950:It is good to read the testimonies of Scripture; it is good to seek the Lord our God in them. As for me, however, I have already made so much of Scripture my own that I have more than enough to meditate on and turn over in my mind. I need no more . .. I know Christ, the poor crucified One. ~ Saint Francis of Assisi, #NFDB
951:He is always careful to take account of the unity and harmony of Scripture teaching. His expositions are not therefore afflicted with the vice of expounding particular passages without respect to the teaching of Scripture elsewhere and without respect to the system of truth set forth in the Word of God. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
952:It is scary to be who you’re meant to be. It doesn’t feel easy because it’s not. But we were made for this. Like today’s scripture says, we have holy work. Why be brave? Because when we’re brave enough to share the God stories in our lives, it changes the people around us. It changes us to share them. ~ Annie F Downs, #NFDB
953:Preaching that is boring is preaching that talks first about us and then only tangentially about God. Preaching that is faithful is preaching that talks first about God and then only secondarily and derivatively talks about us. The God of Scripture is so much more interestingly than we are. ~ William Henry Willimon, #NFDB
954:This avoidance of the difficult things of Scripture — of sinfulness and hell and God’s notable severity — is idolatrous and cowardly. If a man or a woman who teaches the Scriptures is afraid to explain to you the severity of God, they have betrayed you, and they love their ego more than they love you. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
955:Verbal, plenary inspiration: The extending of God’s superintendence of the writing of Scripture down to the very choice of words, not merely to overarching themes or concepts; that is, “the whole of Scripture and all of its parts, down to the very words of the original,” were inspired (Chicago Statement). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
956:we are often surprised that God allows such deep affliction to befall us. The surprise stems not so much from what God leads us to believe but from what we hear from misguided teachers. The zealous person who promises us a life free from suffering has found his message from a source other than Scripture. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
957:But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? 42Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” 43So there was a division among the people over him. 44Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
958:I keep a lot of my old baseball hats, and if you look in the hats I've had since I started pitching, you'll see 'Philippians 4:13′ written on the brim. That's the Scripture that gets me through the day because sometimes you can't do it all by yourself. You can't do it on your own, so you lean on Him. ~ Scotty McCreery, #NFDB
959:that scripture came into my mind, Having made peace through the blood of His cross. Col. i. 20. By which I was made to see, both again and again, that God and my soul were friends by His blood; yea, I saw that the justice of God, and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other, through His blood. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
960:Unlike sermon-centric congregations that profess “high views of Scripture” but leave the reading of the Bible to the preacher’s whim and circumscribe it within “sermon time,” in catholic Christian worship the Bible isn’t just the focus of preaching; it is the lexicon of the entire service of worship. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
961:An analysis of Scripture is all right as long as it is in a very subordinate position, and as long as we are careful it does not so grip us, that we become interested only in an objective, intellectual sense. It is a unique Word, and it must not be approached just as any other book is approached. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
962:Love is the central command in Scripture and judgment the central prohibition. Indeed, judgment is the “original sin” in Scripture. This is why the forbidden tree in the center of the garden—the prohibition around which life in the garden revolved—was called the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
963:that shall be the truth with them, and nothing else. Unto persons whose minds are wholly vitiated with the leaven of this corrupt affection, there is not a line in the Scripture whose sense can be truly and clearly represented; all appears in the colour and figure that their prejudices frame in their minds. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
964:The holy men and women, whose lives are told throughout this book, witness to the fact that the word of God is alive and has the power to transform us. By discovering these saints, readers will learn how to embody Scripture, letting it enlarge their hearts and mold their lives into the image of Christ. ~ Stephen J Binz, #NFDB
965:Very occasionally, a simplified form of communion and of adult baptism for new members of the church would be enacted but no Separatist was ever married in church, because there is no hint of a marriage ceremony in scripture and the primitive church had not considered marriage a sacrament before AD 537. ~ Adam Nicolson, #NFDB
966:We approach Scripture with minds already formed by the mass of accepted opinions and viewpoints with which we have come into contact, in both the Church and the world....It is easy to be unaware that it has happened; it is hard even to begin to realize how profoundly tradition in this sense has moulded us. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
967:Do not permit sinners to hear sermons as a matter of course, or allow them to play with the edged tools of Scripture as if they were mere toys; but again and again remind them that every true gospel sermon leaves them worse if it does not make them better. Their unbelief is a daily, hourly sin; ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
968:The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
969:Wise women know what to hold onto and what to release, and how to walk confidently in their choices—no regrets, no apologies, no guilt. I deeply believe God wants this freedom for us. Scripture instructs us to live presently and joyfully, resisting worry and believing Jesus set us free for freedom’s sake. ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
970:If there should chance to be any mathematicians who, ignorant in mathematics yet pretending to skill in that science, should dare, upon the authority of some passage of Scripture wrested to their purpose, to condemn and censure my hypothesis, I value them not, and scorn their inconsiderate judgement. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus, #NFDB
971:Perhaps there will be prattlers who, although completely ignorant of mathematics, nevertheless take it upon themselves to pass judgment on mathematical questions, and on account of some passage in Scripture, badly distorted to their purpose, will dare to censure and assail what I have presented here. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus, #NFDB
972:The supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.(1) ~ Westminster Assembly, #NFDB
973:because sin distorts people’s perception of reality, they do not recognize Scripture for what it really is. Therefore it requires the work of the Holy Spirit, overcoming the effects of sin, to enable us to be persuaded that the Bible is indeed the Word of God and that the claims it makes for itself are true. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
974:believe God is going before my child lining up the right people to come across his path, taking away the wrong people, breaking every force of darkness, opening his eyes to every deception, and giving him the wisdom to make good choices to fulfill his destiny.” The Scripture tells us that the people of Israel ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
975:Cells require oxygen, so we breathe. If we stop breathing, we die. The heart also needs to breathe, and the breath of the heart is none other than the remembrance of God. Without it, the spiritual heart dies. The very purpose of revelation and of scripture is to remind us that our hearts need to be nourished. ~ Hamza Yusuf, #NFDB
976:The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits... [The Scripture] teaches us that we must not think of man's real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
977:We are forcing a theological famine upon ourselves by ignoring the voices of women. There is a deficiency in American evangelical ministry because we fail to reflect the feminine voice that is evident in portions of Scripture like Lamentations. This deficiency is to our great loss as a Christian community. ~ Soong Chan Rah, #NFDB
978:It has driven men to extremes, to the impious arrogance of believing they alone can comprehend the vast mysteries of Scripture, let alone the mind of God. Such people are incapable of understanding even their own minds, for they confuse their own needs, for certainty or power, with God’s voice speaking to them. ~ C J Sansom, #NFDB
979:The Atonement is scouted, the inspiration of Scripture is derided, the Holy Spirit is degraded into an influence, the punishment of sin is turned into fiction, and the resurrection into a myth, and yet these enemies of our faith expect us to call them brethren, and maintain a confederacy with them! ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
980:He taught me that I could be a thinking person and still believe that God's word can stand the test of time and criticism of man, that science confirms Scripture, and that you don't have to duck hard questions. I learned that I didn't have to defensively protect God or His Word, but that I could truth both. ~ Craig Groeschel, #NFDB
981:Sometimes a trial comes along, and we run to the Bible, pull out a quote and say, “According to this Scripture right here, we got it.” We have certain confidence in ourselves. We think we know exactly what is going on. The problem is that we do not know what is happening, and so God will deal with our self-trust. ~ A W Tozer, #NFDB
982:Perseverance means the engagement of our persons in the most intense and concentrated devotion to those means which God has ordained for the achievement of his saving purpose. The scripture doctrine of perseverance has no affinity with the quietism and antinomianism which are so prevalent in evangelical circles. ~ John Murray, #NFDB
983:...Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God. That does not mean that all who answer to the name are really in love with genuine wisdom, for it is one thing to be and another to be called a philosopher. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
984:Study Bibles tend to circulate widely, so they play a disproportionate role in helping Christians and others understand holy Scripture. Further, many of our members have long used one or two other Study Bibles, and it is important that Christians not be tied too tightly to only one option, however good it may be. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
985:People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon....This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13]that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
986:Though the absolute sovereignty of God over our lives is consistently taught throughout Scripture, it is not the uncaring sovereignty of a despot but of a God who is just as loving and caring as He is sovereign. But we have to by faith believe that truth when His ways are different from that which we desire. My ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
987:What can you oppose to them except that their doctrine is hard for you to accept? Open your heart to faith and you will easily receive that which your unbelief shuts out from you. Because you do not will to believe what they teach, you condemn them; rather, condemn your presumption and receive the Scripture. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
988:The church becomes a community called atonement every time it reads the story of Jesus and every time it identifies itself with that story and every time it invites others to listen in to hear that story. Reading Scripture and listening to Scripture and letting Scripture incorporate us into its story is atoning. ~ Scot McKnight, #NFDB
989:The finality of Christs redemption for us is intimately tied to the finality of his revelation to us. . . . If we say revelation is not complete, we must admit that somehow the work of redemption also remains unfinished. . . . Scripture is enough because the work of Christ is enough. They stand or fall together. ~ Kevin DeYoung, #NFDB
990:The main reason for insisting on the universal Flood as a fact of history and as the primary vehicle for geological interpretation is that God's Word plainly teaches it! No geologic difficulties, real or imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and necessary inferences of Scripture. ~ Henry M Morris, #NFDB
991:President Franklin Roosevelt issues a special exhortation. He encourages citizens not just to give thanks but to read their own version of Scripture every day between now and Christmas to ensure “a renewed and strengthening contact with those eternal truths and majestic principles which have inspired such measure ~ Bill O Reilly, #NFDB
992:(Referring to an obsession with Tolkien's Middle Earth): I meet a beautiful American heiress, I like her, she likes me . . . and then she turns out to be a fundamentalist with a more literal interpretation of scripture than I feel comfortable with. Only our bible was written by an Oxford don about sixty years ago. ~ S M Stirling, #NFDB
993:The more I studied the Bible, however, I had to admit that the prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of Scripture. My heart was crushd to think that I led so many people astray. I was appalled that I could have been so wrong, and I was deeply grateful that God had not struck me dead as a false prophet. ~ Jim Bakker, #NFDB
994:Being requires no measurement; it is its own justification. Being is grounded in an inner life that grows in richness. “The kingdom of heaven is within,” says the Scripture. Toxic shame looks to the outside for happiness and validation, since the inside is flawed and defective. Toxic shame is spiritual bankruptcy. ~ John Bradshaw, #NFDB
995:I suppose, therefore, this may be fixed on as a common principle of Christianity, namely, that constant and fervent prayer for the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit is such an indispensable means for the attaining the knowledge of the mind of God in the Scripture as that without it all others will not be available. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
996:(She has read LOTR, and I don’t know if she read it identifying with all of the evil people and hoping the good ones wouldn’t resist their temptations, but I know she has read it because the first time I read it, it was her copy. This proves that just reading it isn’t enough. After all, the devil can quote scripture.) ~ Jo Walton, #NFDB
997:There is a growing threat to the environment, to the vegetation, animals, water and air. Sacred Scripture hands us the image of Cain who rejects his responsibility: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' The Bible shows the human person as his brother's keeper and the guardian of creation which has been entrusted to him. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
998:Archaeological evidence provides significant help in interpreting the Gospels. In a sense, archaeology is an exegetical tool. To ignore the evidence of archaeology would be almost as irresponsible as making no appeal to the original text. The archaeological evidence is a vital component in the context of Scripture. ~ Craig A Evans, #NFDB
999:Everything we do, our every objective, must be undertaken for the sake of... purity of heart... we must practice the reading of the Scripture, together with all the other virtuous activities... to hold our hearts free of the harm of every dangerous passion and in order to rise step by step to the high point of love. ~ John Cassian, #NFDB
1000:The New Testament writers I think conceive of their inspired Scripture writings as flushing out, bringing to articulation, expounding and so on the climactic revelation in the son, but this in self-conscious fulfillment of the promises and covenants that were already made to God's chosen people in Old Testament times. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1001:Hogwash!” he exclaimed. “Christianity is finished and done with. Don’t you know that, Reverend? And don’t you realize further that it was the message contained in Holy Scripture that was the cause, the prime mover, of this entire miserable catastrophe? Don’t you see the plain ordinary evil of your dad-burned Bible? ~ William Styron, #NFDB
1002:If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm. With Scripture, we've been entrusted with some of the most powerful stories ever told. How we harness that power, whether for good or evil, oppression or liberation, changes everything. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1003:Mark Gornik, a theologian, pastor, and community developer in the United States, says, “Here then from both James and Paul is a central witness drawn from all of Scripture: God has sovereignly chosen to work in the world by beginning with the weak who are on the ‘outside,’ not the powerful who are on the ‘inside.’”9 ~ Steve Corbett, #NFDB
1004:'How do you balance the creative with the biblical?' One could pick up the scripture and read it to oneself and you would be communing directly with that information. As soon as you go into film, as soon as there's a camera, and there's an angle, and there's lighting, and there's editing, you're into the adaptation. ~ Joseph Fiennes, #NFDB
1005:The tight link that Protestants perceive between Scripture and salvation explains the great energy they have poured into studying, distributing, and translating the Scriptures, as well as producing the never-ending deluge of printed material explaining, mediating, parsing, debating, exploring, and riffing on the Bible. ~ Mark A Noll, #NFDB
1006:What can you oppose to them except that their doctrine is hard for you to accept? Open your heart to faith and you will easily receive that which your unbelief shuts out from you. Because you do not will to believe what they teach, you condemn them; rather, condemn your presumption and receive the Scripture. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
1007:Winnie would never be free of religious thinking, and she couldn't imagine ever wanting to be. She just needed a new schedule for her faith, one whose appointments with the divine were arranged not only through sermons, songs, and scripture, but rather on a walk-in basis with rocks, water, air, blood, space, and time. ~ David Rhodes, #NFDB
1008:Faith, in the Scripture, is spoken of under the emblem of all the senses. It is sight: "Look unto me and be ye saved." It is hearing: "Hear, and your soul shall live." Faith is smelling: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia"; "thy name is as ointment poured forth." Faith is spiritual touch. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1009:With each temptation, Jesus, without hesitation, quoted Scripture that refuted Satan’s temptation. Truth is powerful. The more saturated we are with truth, the more powerful we’ll be in resisting our temptations. And the more we’ll naturally direct our cravings where they should be directed—to the Author of all truth. ~ Lysa TerKeurst, #NFDB
1010:All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, #NFDB
1011:John 16:33. Sure, in this world they would have trouble. But God didn’t leave them with that depressing fact. Rather, he finished the Scripture with the everlasting promise … words she could hear the Lord whispering to her soul this very instant. My precious daughter, be of good cheer … for I have overcome the world … ~ Karen Kingsbury, #NFDB
1012:The Scripture that morning was from Genesis 18, the story of the weary visitors who visited Abraham and Abraham, not knowing they were angels, treated them with kindness. Natasha preached about the treatment of weary strangers in America. She decried the contemporary American definition of weary stranger as illegal alien. ~ Imbolo Mbue, #NFDB
1013:Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person's seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
1014:If custom is to avail for proof of soundness, we too, surely, may advance our prevailing custom; and if they reject this, we are surely not bound to follow theirs. Let the inspired Scripture, then, be our umpire, and the vote of truth will surely be given to those whose dogmas are found to agree with the Divine words. ~ Gregory of Nyssa, #NFDB
1015:Respect and the observation of good manners when dealing with ulama (the Muslim clergy) are commanded by the nas (Scripture) of Islam, but this has never stopped a person presenting intelligent criticisms, nor prevented his questioning the opinions of ulama, even though he maintains the disciplines of religion. ~ Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, #NFDB
1016:scripture scholars point out that in the Christian scriptures, one out of every ten lines deals directly with the physically poor and the challenge to respond to them. In the Gospel of Luke, that becomes every sixth line, and in the Epistle of James that challenge is there, in one form or another, in every fifth line. ~ Ronald Rolheiser, #NFDB
1017:Leon Dufour, a world-renowned Jesuit theologian and Scripture scholar, a year before he died at ninety-nine, confided in a Jesuit who was caring for him, “I have written so many books on God, but after all that, what do I really know? I think, in the end, God is the person you’re talking to, the one right in front of you. ~ Gregory Boyle, #NFDB
1018:Feeling intimidated by the Scientific Revolution, fundamentalism takes a “scientific” approach to the Bible—which is perhaps the worst of all ways to approach Scripture. The Bible is not interested in giving (or even competing with) scientific explanations. The Bible is working on a different project than scientific inquiry. ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1019:Go and learn what this [Scripture] means: ‘I DESIRE COMPASSION [for those in distress], AND NOT [animal] SACRIFICE,’ for I did not come to call [to repentance] the [self-proclaimed] righteous [who see no need to change], but sinners [those who recognize their sin and actively seek forgiveness].” [Hos 6:6; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32] ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1020:Men talk of "the mistakes of Scripture." I thank God that I have never met with any. Mistakes of translation there may be, for translators are men. But mistakes of the original word there never can be, for the God who spoke it is infallible, and so is every word he speaks, and in that confidence we find delightful rest. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1021:The purpose of the Scripture is for instruction in righteousness. It was not written to teach you geology or biology. It was written to show man’s relationship to God and God’s requirements for man and what man must do to be saved. You can write this over the first part of the book of Genesis: “What must I do to be saved? ~ J Vernon McGee, #NFDB
1022:When you keep your vision in front of you, that’s your faith being released. That’s why the scripture uses such strong language that says people perish for lack of vision. That means dreams die when you don’t have vision. If you can’t see what God has put in your heart, then you’ll miss the incredible things God wants to do. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1023:Despite two millennia of Christian apologetics, the fact is that belief in a dying and rising messiah simply did not exist in Judaism. In the entirety of the Hebrew Bible there is not a single passage of scripture or prophecy about the promised messiah that even hints of his ignominious death, let alone his bodily resurrection. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1024:Fidelity to Christ in this generation demands that we open our mouths and our lives to the world and bear witness to Christ as those committed to the authority of Scripture, the sanctity of marriage, and to the gospel of the Lord Jesus. Christians may find themselves in exile but the gospel they preach is never in retreat. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
1025:I hope nobody is seriously suggesting that we get our morals from scripture because if we did we'd be stoning people for working on the Sabbath or switching on a light on the Sabbath. So the point is that you can find good bits of the Bible but you have to cherry-pick, you have reject the nasty bits and pick the nice bits. ~ Richard Dawkins, #NFDB
1026:Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables of Jesus deal with money. One out of ten verses in the New Testament deals with that subject. Scripture offers about five hundred verses on prayer, fewer than five hundred on faith, and over two thousand on money. The believer's attitude toward money and possessions is determinative. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1027:Some people, even in worship, seem to think that they must say their 'Amen' in a particular way, or must say it often. Thinking that this is a sign of spirituality, they make themselves a nuisance at times to others and so get into trouble about that. That is not commended in Scripture; it is a false notion of worship. ~ D Martyn Lloyd Jones, #NFDB
1028:..the self-serving, doubt-quenching, certainty-seeking faith that these folks are choosing to pursue is not faith as it's taught in Scripture....the faith that God's people are called to embrace is one that encourages people to wrestle with God, to not be afraid of questions, and to act faithfully in the face of uncertainty. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1029:Also besides these teachings of God in His word, the Lord made use of two things to confirm me in this truth; the one was the errors of the Quakers and the other was the guilt of sin; for as the Quakers did oppose this truth, so God did the more confirm me in it, by leading me into the scripture that did wonderfully maintain it. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1030:Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple - even simplistic - terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1031:apologetics is also application of Scripture to unbelief. Unbelief is no respecter of persons. Both Christians and non-Christians wrestle with doubt and suspicion. A biblical apologetic targets unbelief wherever it may be found, strengthening the faith of Christians and calling unbelievers to repentance and faith in Christ. The ~ John M Frame, #NFDB
1032:Scripture spends more time focused on the type of people we should be and less on the specifics of where and what we do. When you become the kind of person God wants you to be, you will do what he wants you to do. Nearly every time we find the phrase “the will of God” in the Bible, it refers to the shaping of our moral character. ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
1033:The whole message of the Christian scripture is based in the idea of metanoia, the change of heart that happens when we meet God face-to-face. Even a cursory knowledge of history reveals that Christianity is a religion about change. The Christian faith always changes--even when some of its adherents claim that it does not. ~ Diana Butler Bass, #NFDB
1034:To treat the founding documents as Scripture would be to become a slave to the past. “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched,” Jefferson conceded. But when they do, “They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.”33 ~ Jill Lepore, #NFDB
1035:52So We have revealed a spirit to you [Prophet] by Our command: you knew neither the Scripture nor the faith, but We made ita a light, guiding with it whoever We will of Our servants. You give guidance to the straight path, 53the path of God, to whom belongs all that is in the heavens and earth: truly everything will return to God. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1036:As a biblical Christian, I must not only affirm the inspiration of God’s Word; I must also consciously critique everything else in light of Scripture (otherwise all else will unconsciously conform my mind to the world, the flesh and the devil). I must make an effort to evaluate my beliefs and lifestyle preferences by God’s Word. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1037:Meditation is the primary way in which we guard against the fragmentation of our Scripture reading into isolated oracles. Meditation enters into the coherent universe of God's revelation. Meditation is the prayerful employ of imagination in order to become friends with the text. It must not be confused with fancy or fantasy. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1038:The day will come, brothers and sisters, when we will have other books of scripture which will emerge to accompany the Holy Bible and the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Presently you and I carry our scriptures around in a “quad”; the day will come when you’ll need a little red wagon. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1039:We practice biblical meditation by noting, quoting, and devoting ourselves to whatever passage of Scripture we’re reading or studying, based on the premise that God’s Word is flawless, faultless, and unfailing. Meditation helps and heals the mind while shoring up the soul. It lessens anxiety, reduces stress, and generates peace. ~ Robert Morgan, #NFDB
1040:God never calls people to disobey his Word. Our decision on this matter must be based on the objective teaching of the Bible, not on some person’s subjective experience, no matter how godly or sincere that person is. This egalitarian claim is another form of the question, Will we take Scripture or experience as our ultimate guide? ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1041:Obsessive use of meditative disciplines or perennial study of scripture and philosophy will never bring forth this wonderful realization, this truth which is natural to awareness, because the mind that desperately desires to reach another realm or level of experience inadvertently ignores the basic light that constitutes all experience. ~ Tilopa, #NFDB
1042:Scripture starts with the particular and then universalizes it. You are called to love your concrete individual neighbor and then to realize that every individual is your neighbor. The point is not to destroy concrete neighborhood in a fit of universalism but to expand the local neighborhood and embrace the universal neighborhood. ~ Peter Kreeft, #NFDB
1043:Charles Spurgeon underscored this point, saying, “For every text in Scripture, there is a road to the metropolis of the Scriptures, that is Christ. And my dear brother, your business is, when you get to a text, to say, ‘Now what is the road to Christ?’ . . . I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it.”51 ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
1044:First, evangelicals cannot appeal to church tradition to settle an issue. The affirmation of sola scriptura means that Scripture is the sole authority on matters of faith and practice. Christians should not easily set aside traditional perspectives, but they can and must do so if traditional views disagree with Scripture. Second, ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1045:Nothing is text but what is spoken of in the Bible and meant there for person and place; the rest is application; which a discreet man may do well; but it is his scripture, not the Holy Ghost's. First, in your sermons use your logic, and then your rhetoric; rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root. ~ John Selden, #NFDB
1046:We don’t have the luxury of having the Urim and the Thummim,” Wilson said, in a nod to the stones that the Israelite high priest used in Old Testament times to learn God’s will. “Nor do we have a living prophet with us. So we must rely upon the Holy Spirit’s leading in our own Bible study as we review the plain teachings of Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1047:Some people like to read so many [Bible] chapters every day. I would not dissuade them from the practice, but I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than rinse my hand in several chapters. Oh, to be bathed in a text of Scripture, and to let it be sucked up in your very soul, till it saturates your heart! ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1048:Wherefore, we do not nor ought only to believe the Scripture as highly probable, or with a moral persuasion and assurance, built upon arguments absolutely fallible and human; for if this be the formal reason of faith, namely, the veracity and authority of God, if we believe not with faith divine and supernatural, we believe not at all. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1049:In this simple but profound psychological way Scripture tells the history of the fall and of the origin of sin. In this way sin continues still to come into being. It begins with the darkening of the understanding, continues with the excitement of the imagination, stimulates desire in the heart, and culminates in an act of the will ~ Herman Bavinck, #NFDB
1050:Once in my childhood I had been eager to learn Irish; I thought to get leave to take lessons from an old Scripture-reader who spent a part of his time in the parish of Killinane, teaching such scholars as he could find to read their own language in the hope that they might turn to the only book then being printed in Irish, the Bible. ~ Lady Gregory, #NFDB
1051:Our problem, like Jonah's, does not lie in the parts of Scripture we find difficult to understand. Like him, we turn away from the word of the Lord that we do understand. We do not read it, we do not love it, we have become almost incapable of meditating upon it; we are careless, if not actually callous about submitting to it. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
1052:Your call will become clear as as your mind is transformed by the reading of Scripture and the internal work of God's Spirit. The Lord never hides His will from us. In time, as you obey the call first to follow, your destiny will unfold before you. The difficulty will lie in keeping other concerns from diverting your attention. ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1053:But children have resilience. Children scar and those scars remain across the years, but children grow too. Kettle grew around her hurts and learned to laugh again—learned wickedness as they taught her scripture—learned the swiftness of her body and the sharpness of her mind. She grew into a woman and learned to love and to be loved. ~ Mark Lawrence, #NFDB
1054:I began to discover that my healing theology of twenty years was not really based on Scripture, but on my erratic healing experiences and what others had taught from their erratic experiences. Because my experiences had matched theirs, I accepted what I heard as being the truth, without serious examination and comparison with Scripture. ~ Roger Sapp, #NFDB
1055:In addition to inviting us to hold personal and family scripture study, Heavenly Father wants us to regularly study and apply what we have learned in conference. I testify that those who put their trust in the Lord and heed this counsel in faith will gain great strength to bless themselves and their families for generations to come. ~ Robert D Hales, #NFDB
1056:Young men, discipline yourself to prayer. Discipline yourself to the systematic reading of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation over and over and over again. Discipline yourself in your speech. Discipline yourself in the company you keep. Discipline yourself in when you go to bed and when you rise up. This is a war. Discipline yourself ! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1057:A cunning politician often lurks under the clerical robe; things spiritual and things temporal are strangely jumbled together, like drugs on an apothecary's shelf; and instead of a peaceful sermon, the simple seeker after righteousness has often a political pamphlet thrust down his throat, labeled with a pious text from Scripture. ~ Washington Irving, #NFDB
1058:Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. ~ Edward Gibbon, #NFDB
1059:Christians don't simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus' name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1060:God did everything necessary to get Herod's attention. He sent messengers from the East and a message from the Torah. He sent wonders from the sky and words from Scripture. He sent the testimony of the heavens and the teaching of the prophets. But Herod refused to listen. He chose his puny dynasty over Christ. He died a miserable old man. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1061:I think the biggest problem we have in our time is a severe ignorance of the content of Scripture. Sadly, this is true even among evangelicals, who claim to revere the Word of God and elevate the authority of Scripture. We simply don't know what's in the Bible, so it's not surprising that we don't know what the Bible teaches about prayer. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1062:The spoken word has come to dominate many Protestant forms of worship: the words of prayers, responsive readings, Scripture, the sermon, and so forth. Yet the spoken word is perhaps the least effective way of reaching the heart; one must constantly pay attention with one’s mind. The spoken word tends to go to our heads, not our hearts. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
1063:But Republicans put God and family on their side and 'we like that. The Scripture says Jesus wants us to be about his Father's business.' Their faith had guided them through a painful loss of family, friends, neighbors, frogs, turtles, and trees [from the pollution left by petrochemical companies in Louisiana's Cancer Alley]. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild, #NFDB
1064:Only the most unapologetic biblical fundamentalists, for instance, take every biblical injunction literally. If we all took all scripture at the same level of authority, then we would be more open to slavery, to the subjugation of women, to wider use of stoning. Jesus himself spoke out frequently against divorce in the strongest of terms. ~ Jon Meacham, #NFDB
1065:Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason-I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other-my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1066:stopped drinking so much caffeine. I played with my kids. I did a lot of therapy. And then I did some more. I prayed. I looked up every scripture in the Bible that talks about rest. I had dinner with my girlfriends. I went on dates with my husband. I taught myself to take it one day at a time, to stop obsessing over the next victory, and ~ Rachel Hollis, #NFDB
1067:New ideas are rightly suspect because they are often heretical. However, when biblical truths have been long neglected or ignored, attempts to present them may sound far-fetched. They may appear to be adding to or misinterpreting Scripture, when in fact they are simply portraying what Scripture has said all along but we’ve failed to grasp. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1068:The fact is, Scripture is filled with divine actions that don't fit our human standards of logic or morality. But they don't need to, because we are the clay and He is the Potter. We need to stop trying to domesticate God or confine Him to tidy categories and compartments that reflect our human sentiments rather than His inexplicable ways. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
1069:The human heart: its expansions and contractions its electrics and hydraulics the warm tides that move and fill it. For years Art had studied it from a safe distance from many perspectives...he listened in fascination and revulsion, in envy and pity. He dispensed canned wisdom, a little scripture. He sent them on their way with a prayer. ~ Jennifer Haigh, #NFDB
1070:The larger buildings are now rented out and house schools and institutions more secular in mission where the Internet and fax machine replace Scripture and theological discourse as the working paradigm. Perhaps it's a good metaphor for modern society. We're too absorbed in communicating among ourselves to worry about an almighty architect. ~ Kathy Reichs, #NFDB
1071:The Scripture, which tells us not to be angry at all, and which says in the thirty-seventh Psalm, Cease from anger, and forsake wrath, and which commands us by the mouth of Paul to put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, would not involve God in the same passion from which it would have us to be altogether free. ~ Origen, #NFDB
1072:Although the Islamic State’s soldiers might not know Islamic scripture very well, some of its leaders do. The caliph has a Ph.D. in the study of the Qur’an, and his top scholars are conversant in the ahadith and the ways medieval scholars interpreted it. There are many stupid thugs in the Islamic State, but these guys are not among them. ~ William McCants, #NFDB
1073:As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God’s thoughts are indeed higher than ours, but when he reduces his thoughts into words and reveals them in Scripture, he expects us to study them, meditate on them, and understand them—again, not exhaustively, but accurately. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1074:Many local Bible teachers and preachers have never been forced to confront alternative interpretations at full strength; and because they would lose a certain psychological security if they permitted their own questions, aroused by their own reading of Scripture, to come into full play, they are unlikely to throw over received traditions. But ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1075:Sinners are not all dishonorable people, not by any means. But those who are dishonorable never really repent and never really reform. Now, I may be wrong here. No such distinction occurs in Scripture. And repentance and reformation are matters of the soul which only the Lord can judge. But, in my experience, dishonor is recalcitrant. ~ Marilynne Robinson, #NFDB
1076:The diligent reading of Sacred Scripture accompanied by prayer brings about that intimate dialogue in which the person reading hears God who is speaking, and in praying, responds to him with trusting openness of heart. If it is effectively promoted, this practice will bring to the Church-I am convinced of it-a new spiritual springtime. ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1077:There are certain elements that Scripture prescribes for corporate worship services of the church. Many theologians refer to these as the elements of corporate worship, and they include the following: 1) Preaching34 2) Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Table35 3) Prayer36 4) Reading Scripture37 5) Financial giving38 6) Singing and music ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
1078:According to Scripture, the number-one purpose of marriage—more than even the unique, time-honored partnership it creates between a man and woman, more than even the conceiving and raising of children, more than any Prince Charming fairy tale in any little girl’s head—is how it represents the mystery of the gospel in active, living form. ~ Priscilla Shirer, #NFDB
1079:Does it not whet your appetite for the critical opera omnia of such an author, where he will freely have at the lenth and breath of Scripture? Can you not see his promised land flowing with peanut butter and jelly; his apocalypse, in which the great whore of Babylon is given the cup of ginger ale of the fierceness of the wrath of God? ~ Robert Farrar Capon, #NFDB
1080:When someone in vulnerability tells you everything they’ve known has fallen apart, the correct response is not to quote scripture, the correct response is not biblical apologetics, the correct response is a hug. The correct response is to say, I love you. They have to encounter an impossible love. It’s the only way the gospel comes to life. ~ Mike McHargue, #NFDB
1081:If I don't like something I read in Scripture, perhaps I simply don't understand it. If so, studying it again may help. If, in fact, I do understand the passage and still don't like it, this is not an
indication there is something wrong with the Bible. It's an indication that something is wrong with me, something that needs to change. Often, ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1082:Jesus Christ said more about money than about any other single thing because, when it comes to a man’s real nature, money is of first importance. Money is an exact index to a man’s true character. All through Scripture there is an intimate correlation between the development of a man’s character and how he handles his money. RICHARD HALVERSON ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1083:Nevertheless, just as I believe that the Book of Scripture illumines the pathway to God, so I believe that the Book of Nature, with its astonishing details-the blade of grass, the Conus cedonulli, or the resonance levels of the carbon atom-also suggest a God of purpose and a God of design. And I think my belief makes me no less a scientist. ~ Owen Gingerich, #NFDB
1084:The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pure intellectuality. The readeris nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta.... It is unquestionably one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures which have come down to us. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1085:For the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; and the swords might be turned into ploughshares, the spears into pruning-hooks, and as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more. ~ George Washington, #NFDB
1086: If thou wouldest enjoy the eminent grace of the full assurance of faith, under the blessed Spirit's influence, and assistance, do what the Scripture tells thee, "Give diligence." Take care that thy faith is of the right kind--that it is not a mere belief of doctrine, but a simple faith, depending on Christ, and on Christ alone. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1087:this disputation would be needful against freethinkers (les Libertins). We are agreed on this point and those who are so mad as to contradict it can only rest their contradiction on the Scripture itself, contradicting themselves before contradicting the Scripture, using it in the very protestation which they make that they will not use it. ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
1088:It is never on account of its formal nature as a psychic act that faith is conceived in Scripture to be saving. It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or nature of faith, but in the object of faith. ~ B B Warfield, #NFDB
1089:Edwards was persuaded from Scripture that “gracious affections do not tend to make men bold, forward, noisy, and boisterous; but rather to speak trembling.”41 The eye of divine blessing is upon the meek and trembling: “This is the one to whom I will look [says the Lord]: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isa. 66:2). ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1090:In my book, The Sins of Scripture, I traced the development of tribal religion, which included ideas like God's killing the Egyptians because they hated the chosen people. Then a God of love finally appears in the Book of Hosea, about the 8th century. A God of justice appears in the Book of Amos in the late 8th century or early 7th century. ~ John Shelby Spong, #NFDB
1091:The risen Jesus opens up the meaning of scripture. The risen Jesus is known in the sharing of bread. The risen Jesus journeys with us, whether we know it or not. There are moments in which we do come to know him and recognize him. This story is the metaphoric condensation of several years of early Christian thought into one parabolic afternoon. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
1092:Pharisees were the upstanding “conservative evangelical pastors” of their day, strongly convinced of the inerrancy of Scripture and its sufficiency for guidance in every area of life, if only it could be properly interpreted.69 Yet it is precisely such an environment in which a healthy perspective on the Bible can easily give way to legalism. ~ Craig L Blomberg, #NFDB
1093:Some hopeless people who anticipate only death cite Scripture that says “I desire to depart and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). But Christ is not what hopeless people really want. The God-talk is misleading. The goal of hopelessness is to end the suffering, and if God happens to be there when it happens, fine. But God’s presence is not essential. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1094:The Scripture saith, The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God; it is not said, The fool hath thought in his heart; so as he rather saith it, by rote to himself, as that he would have, than that he can thoroughly believe it, or be persuaded of it....It appeareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in the lip, than in the heart of man. ~ Francis Bacon, #NFDB
1095:He’d stay at the nearest hotel and he planned to let Renee know to keep an eye on things and keep him informed of what was going on with Rin. The woman understood how trapped Rin was. And Rin, she thought she had everything figured out, that she was doing right. The woman had quoted her way into a neat little corner of hell, all with scripture. No, ~ Lucian Bane, #NFDB
1096:The Bible describes a God who is a thousand things to His children, even though some of these are beyond our ability to understand. So when people insist on humanly reasonable theologies to satisfy their need to believe, the lesser god they’re buying is not the God of Scripture. We must beware of recreating an image of God that makes us feel better. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1097:The geocentric picture in Scripture is a depiction through man’s ancient perspective of God’s purpose and humankind’s significance. For a modern heliocentrist to attack that picture as falsifying the theology would be cultural imperialism. Reducing significance to physical location is simply a prejudice of material priority over spiritual purpose. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1098:ohn Wesley, the founder of Methodism, testified that his conversion experience occurred after he was already an ordained clergyman. He was at a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London, listening to a sermon from the book of Romans, and as he heard the words of Scripture-words he had heard many times before-he suddenly felt his heart "strangely warmed. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1099:The enemies of our soul are real and not to be underestimated, they are to be engaged and not avoided, and they are to be countered using the five smooth stones of Scripture, prayer, fellowship, worship, and discipline. Like David, we must develop our skills in handling our own smooth stones in the power of the Lord. The results will be stunning. ~ Stuart Briscoe, #NFDB
1100:Truly edifying words are words that reveal the character and the promises and the activity of God. They're cross-centered words. They're words rooted in and derived from Scripture, words that identify the active presence of God, and words that communicate the evidences of grace that you observe in others. They're words that flow from a humble heart. ~ C J Mahaney, #NFDB
1101:One of the distinctive differences between historic, orthodox Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church has been that Protestants base doctrine on “Scripture alone” (once again, the Latin phrase commonly used for this is sola Scriptura), while Roman Catholics base doctrine on Scripture plus the authoritative teaching of the church through history.18 ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1102:Scripture is about suffering. It has given comfort to millions. It has spawned hundreds of wonderful books that highlight God’s gentle care and Scripture’s probing insights. You can be assured of this: God really does speak in our suffering, and we have good reason to believe that the words he says are good and powerful enough to lighten our pain. ~ Edward T Welch, #NFDB
1103:this disputation would be needful against freethinkers (les Libertins). We are agreed on this point and those who are so mad as to contradict it can only rest their contradiction on the Scripture itself, contradicting themselves before contradicting the Scripture, using it in the very protestation which they make that they will not use it. ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
1104:verse of Scripture I often use in the face of failure with my own sins is Proverbs 24:16: "For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity." The person who is disciplining himself toward holiness falls many times, but he doesn't quit. After each failure he gets up and continues the struggle. ~ Jerry Bridges, #NFDB
1105:Bible stories don’t have to mean just one thing. Despite what you may have heard from a pastor or Sunday school teacher along the way, faithful engagement with Scripture isn’t about uncovering a singular, moralistic point to every text and then sticking to it. Rather, the very nature of the biblical text invites us to consider the possibilities. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1106:God acts through his words, the Word is “alive and active” (Heb 4:12), and therefore the way to have God dynamically active in our lives is through the Bible. To understand the Scripture is not simply to get information about God. If attended to with trust and faith, the Bible is the way to actually hear God speaking and also to meet God himself. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1107:Next comes svadhyaya or study. This means study that concerns the true Self, not merely analyzing the emotions and mind as the psychologists and psychiatrists do. Anything that will elevate your mind and remind you of your true Self should be studied: the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, the Koran, these Yoga Sutras, or any uplifting scripture. Study ~ Swami Satchidananda, #NFDB
1108:Then, later, we are told we cannot gather to worship. We must to go somewhere else if we wish to meet together and learn from Scripture. So we go. And when we meet again, I never take lightly listening to the Word. I think less of the good chicken dinner and more of the food of the spirit. I listen close. I remember. I hide the words in my heart. ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer, #NFDB
1109:Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e., Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.* ~ Glenn Beck, #NFDB
1110:Scripture often draws a parallel between food and our spiritual need for God’s Word. For instance, in Isaiah 55, God asks, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live” (vv. 2–3). ~ Renee Swope, #NFDB
1111:The commands, principles, and case studies of Scripture will take you only so far in your quest to figure out your life. There will be moments when you simply don’t understand what is going on. In fact, you will face moments when what the God who has declared himself to be good brings into your life won’t seem good. It may even seem bad, very bad. ~ Paul David Tripp, #NFDB
1112:The infallibility and inerrancy of biblical teaching does not, however, guarantee the infallibility and inerrancy of any interpretation or interpreter of that teaching; nor does the recognition of its qualities as the Word of God in any way prejudge the issue as to what Scripture does, in fact, assert. This can be determined only by careful Bible study. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1113:The ingenerating of a principle of grace in the soul seems in Scripture to be compared to the conceiving of Christ in the womb... And the conception of Christ in the womb of the blessed virgin by the power of the Holy Ghost, seems to be a designed resemblance of the conception of Christ in the soul of a believer by the power of the same Holy Ghost. ~ Jonathan Edwards, #NFDB
1114:itself. An honest examination of Scripture leads to the conclusion that the Bible is thoroughly inspired but also thoroughly human. The human element in Scripture reflects the limitations and fallibility that are a part of all human perspectives and all human thinking. This human element can be clearly seen in at least three areas of Scripture. First, ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1115:So getting that balance between what is honoring scripture and the Word and also acknowledging the fact that by the virtue of putting it on film there's going to be a variation and adaptation, I mean, it's a fine dance and a balance. Our producers and directors have worked so hard to get that right and I'm really proud. I think it's a pretty good job. ~ Joseph Fiennes, #NFDB
1116:Faith is not wishful thinking; faith apprehends the promises of God found in Scripture. “The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee” (Ps. 102:28). Faith sees a son as established, and the work of faith goes on to establish him. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1117:Therefore, since we were too weak to find the truth by pure reason, and for that cause we needed the authority of Holy Writ, I now began to believe that in no wise would you have given such surpassing authority throughout the whole world to that Scripture, unless you wished that both through it you be believed in and through it you be sought. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1118:Yes, children are a bother, I can tell you!" sighed Moisei Moiseich. "I myself have six of them. One to be taught, another to be doctored, the third to be carried in your arms, and when they grow up, there's still more bother. Not only now, it was so even in Holy Scripture. When Jacob had little children, he wept, and when they grew up, he wept still worse! ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1119:The Meccan merchants had met Christian monks and hermits during their travels, and were familiar with the stories of Jesus and the concepts of Paradise and the Last Judgment. They called Jews and Christians the ahl al-kitab (“the People of the Book”). They admired the notion of a revealed text and wished they had sacred scripture in their own language. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1120:Infallible denotes the quality of never deceiving or misleading and so means wholly trustworthy and reliable; inerrant means wholly true. Scripture is termed infallible and inerrant to express the conviction that all its teaching is the utterance of God who cannot lie, whose word, once spoken, abides for ever, and that therefore it may be trusted implicitly. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1121:The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits. But scripture here helps us out with an excellent argument when it teaches us that we must not think of man's real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1122:If we want to understand how the ancient Jews understood the terms they used, we should look at how they themselves interpreted the texts. If one uses only Scripture to interpret Scripture without its cultural context, then one is not actually using Scripture to interpret Scripture, but conforming Scripture to one’s own cultural bias and preconceived ideas. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1123:In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying 'Fear not.' The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, 'There, there.' The literary symbols are more dangerous [than sculptures and pictures] because they are not so easily recognized as symbolical. Those of Dante are best. Before his angels we sink in awe. ~ Kathryn Lindskoog, #NFDB
1124:It is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until, at last, you come to talk in Scriptural language, and your very style is fashioned upon Scripture models, and, what is better still, your spirit is flavored with the words of the Lord. Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. ~ Charles Spurgeon, #NFDB
1125:The scripture tells us not expressly what day of the year Christ rose (as Moses told the Israelites what day of the year they were brought out of Egypt, that they might remember it yearly), but very particularly what day of the week it was, plainly intimating that, as the more valuable deliverance, and of greater importance, it should be remembered weekly. ~ Matthew Henry, #NFDB
1126:Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed- much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1127:For us to demand that the Biblical text be scientifically or historically “accurate” as we define those terms is not a high view of Scripture, it is a low view of Scripture. It is in fact imposing our own prejudices upon the text by refusing to understand it within its context. This is called cultural imperialism and it is the height of hubris, or human pride. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1128:God's objective and historically past revelation in Scripture cannot be understood accurately apart from the present, personal, and subjective work of the Holy Spirit. “Illumination,” which applies only to believers,3 is simply the continued work of the Spirit by which He causes enlightened understanding of doctrine and how it should be applied to life. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1129:growing in faith and love for Christ, revealed as He is in Scripture, will be the greatest of all preservatives against being led astray. The person who is saturated in the teaching and spirit of the Gospels will have his or her senses "trained ... to distinguish good from evil" (Heb. 5:14, NIV) and to know what is truly Christ-like and Christ-honoring. ~ Sinclair B Ferguson, #NFDB
1130:I did not learn my theology all at once, but had to search constantly deeper and deeper for it. My temptations did that for me, for no one can understand Holy Scripture without practice and temptations...I t is not by reading, writing, or speculation that one becomes a theologian. Nay, rather, it is living, dying, and being damned that makes one a theologian. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1131:Slaves, I admonish you to be content with your lot, for it is the will of God! Your obedience is mandated by scripture. It is commanded by God through Moses. It is approved by Christ through his apostles, and upheld by the church. Take heed, then, and may God in his mercy grant that you will be humbled this day and return to your masters as faithful servants. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, #NFDB
1132:When God speaks, he does not give new revelation about himself that contradicts what he has already revealed in Scripture. Rather, God speaks to give application of his Word to the specific circumstances in your life. When God speaks to you, he is not writing a new book of Scripture; rather, he is applying to your life what he has already said in his Word. ~ Henry T Blackaby, #NFDB
1133:We have no clear ideas of the agency of [demonic] spirits, nor is it necessary. The Scripture says little to satisfy our curiosity; but tells us plainly that he is always watching us, and desiring to sift us as wheat. I believe we give him no more than his due, when we charge him with having a hand in all our sins. I believe he cuts us all out abundance of work. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
1134:A lot of churches and church people give God a bad name. There's a scripture in the Bible that says the traditions of men make the word of God of none effect. That's so true. All our religious rituals dilute the reality of who God is and make a lot of people not want to have anything to do with Him. I had to learn to reject 'Churchianity' and not Christianity. ~ Sherri L Lewis, #NFDB
1135:God’s words are the ultimate standard of truth…Written Scripture is our final authority…The sufficiency of Scripture means that Scripture contained all the words of God he intended his people to have at each stage of redemptive history, and that now contains all the words of God we need for salvation, for trusting him perfectly, and for obeying him perfectly ~ Michael Matthews, #NFDB
1136:If your starting point for understanding humanity is a racialist viewpoint, with superiority and inferiority projected onto people because of the color of their skin, then it's so easy to take the next step of justifying that point theologically and reading it into the Christian scripture. And that makes it harder to understand what scripture is actually saying! ~ Allan Boesak, #NFDB
1137:The most significant women in scripture were influential not because of their careers, but because of their character. The message these women collectively give is not about "gender equality"; it's about true feminine excellence. And this is always exemplified in moral and spiritual qualities rather than by social standing, wealth, or physical appearance. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1138:We don't form our personal spiritual lives out of a random assemblage of favorite texts in combination with individual circumstances; we are formed by the Holy Spirit in accordance with the text of Holy Scripture. God does not put us in charge of forming our personal spiritualities. We grow in accordance with the revealed Word implanted in us by the Spirit. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1139:Your circumstances may be black, but Scripture says that God is light. Trust in him, and he will give you a comeback. He will give you a fresh start. He will give you a change of heart and provide a powerful spiritual turnaround. He is with you in the midst of the valley of the shadow of death, and I invite you to praise him and trust his purposes for your life. ~ Louie Giglio, #NFDB
1140:Few Christians would disagree with the idea that a right interpretation of Scripture (special revelation) can correct a misinterpretation of general revelation, but is the converse true as well? Can a right interpretation of general revelation correct a misinterpretation of special revelation? Does such an idea conflict with our belief in the inerrancy of Scripture? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1141:Genesis methodically tilled the soil for the balance of the Bible and humankind, sowing the seeds for the many doctrines and plots cultivated throughout Scripture. Once the plots and doctrines are fully developed, one finds oneself inexplicably returning to Genesis to fully comprehend the insights, revisiting the little known and misunderstood agrarians of Genesis. ~ Gary Wayne, #NFDB
1142:and adulteresses! Do you not know that †friendship with the world is enmity with God? †Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, †“The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? 6But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: †“God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1143:It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace. ~ Chris Adrian, #NFDB
1144:To preach the Bible as 'the handbook for life,' or as the answer to every question, rather than as the revelation of Christ, is to turn the Bible into an entirely different book. This is how the Pharisees approached Scripture, as we can see clearly from the questions they asked Jesus. For the Pharisees, the Scriptures were a source of trivia for life's dilemmas. ~ Michael Horton, #NFDB
1145:The Scripture says, “Beloved, now are you the sons of God.” You may have a lot coming against you, but you are not a slave, you are a son. Sons think differently than slaves. You may struggle with an addiction, but a son says, “I have a right to be free.” There may be obstacles in your path, but a son knows the forces for him are greater than the forces against him. ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1146:In my desire to distance myself from sadistic Christians who revel in the idea of wrath and punishment, I may have crossed a line. Refusing to teach a passage of Scripture is just as wrong as abusing it.I really believe it's time for some of us to stop apologizing for God and start apologizing to Him for being embarrassed by the ways He has chosen to reveal Himself. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
1147:The Holy Spirit can’t remind you of something you never read which is why it’s important to memorize scripture. When you have Bible verses inscribed in your mind, you’re carrying a concealed weapon to use against the enemy in battle. Find a passage today and begin laying up His words in your heart and in doing so you will be prepared for any trials that will come. ~ David Jeremiah, #NFDB
1148:The reading of the word of God should be performed in solitude, in order that the whole mind of the reader might be plunged into the truths of the Holy Scripture, and that from this he might receive warmth, which in solitude produces tears; from these a man is wholly warmed and is filled with spiritual gifts, which rejoice the mind and heart more than any word. ~ Seraphim of Sarov, #NFDB
1149:There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your heart, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside. ~ Anne Lamott, #NFDB
1150:Don't neglect your critical faculties. Remember that God is a rational God, who has made us in His own image. God invites and expects us to explore His double revelation, in nature and Scripture, with the minds He has given us, and to go on in the development of a Christian mind to apply His marvellous revealed truth to every aspect of the modern and post-modern world. ~ John Stott, #NFDB
1151:Romans 8:28 is one of the most comforting texts in all of Scripture. It assures the believer that all "tragedies" are ultimately blessings. It does not declare that all things that happen are good in themselves but that in all the thing that happen to us God is working in and through them for our good. This is also fimrly grounded in His eternal purpose for His people. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1152:The discipline of theology is about learning to read Scripture more faithfully. It is also about speaking the truth of Scripture in ways that fit new contexts, new times, and new places. It is true that human beings are very talented at using reason, tradition, and experience to support our own sins. It is also true that reading Scripture well is very hard work. ~ Beth Felker Jones, #NFDB
1153:When we become incorruptible and immortal, and attain to the blessed state of conformity with Christ, we will be ever with the Lord (as Scripture says), gaining fulfillment in the purest contemplations of His visible theophany which will illuminate us with its most brilliant rays, just as it illuminated the disciples at the time of the most divine Transfiguration. ~ Gregory Palamas, #NFDB
1154:Where establishment Islam was becoming less tolerant, seeing the Quran as the only valid scripture and Muhammad’s religion as the one true faith, Sufis went back to the spirit of the Quran in their appreciation of other religious traditions. Some, for example, were especially devoted to Jesus, whom they saw as the ideal Sufi since he had preached a gospel of love. ~ Karen Armstrong, #NFDB
1155:We have to understand the sovereignty of God. It might not seem fair to us, and it doesn’t always make sense to us, but God’s ways are not our ways, and the Scripture talks about how God has given to every person different gifts, different talents, according to our own ability. Everyone doesn’t get the same, but what He gave you is what you need to fulfill your destiny ~ Joel Osteen, #NFDB
1156:And as I was thus in a muse, that scripture also came with great power upon my spirit, Not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to His mercy He hath saved us, etc. 2 Tim. i. 9; Tit. iii. 5. Now was I got on high, I saw myself within the arms of grace and mercy; and though I was before afraid to think of a dying hour, yet, now I cried, Let me die: ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1157:One of the first things that strikes us about the men and women in Scripture is that they were disappointingly non- heroic. We do not find splendid moral examples. We do not find impeccably virtuous models. That always comes as a shock to newcomers to Scripture: Abraham lied; Jacob cheated; Moses murdered and complained; David committed adultery; Peter blasphemed. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1158:Perhaps it is our fear of getting our hopes up; it seems too good to be true. Perhaps it’s been the almost total focus on sin and the Cross. But the Scripture is abundant and clear: Christ came not only to pardon us, but also to heal us. He wants the glory restored. So, put the book down for just a moment, and let this sink in: Jesus can, and wants to, heal your heart. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
1159:Scripture is wrought with a clear message of Jesus’ utter disregard for appearance and social rank. In Judean society, it was a major taboo for a man to even speak to a woman who was not his own wife or daughter; yet Jesus interacted regularly with foreign women, He taught women, ignored ritual impurity laws, and readily accepted women into His inner circle of followers. ~ Matt Litton, #NFDB
1160:The presence of anger does not mean the absence of love—particularly in God. Love is God’s character, not simply an emotion. What a small god we would have if divine character was dependent on our behavior. The Christian God is not like this. The Christian God is slow to anger and rich in mercy (see Exodus 34:6, echoed in Joel 2:13 and many other places in Scripture). ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
1161:All who ask receive, those who seek find, and to those who knock it shall be opened. Therefore, let us knock at the beautiful garden of Scripture. It is fragrant, sweet, and blooming with various sounds of spiritual and divinely inspired birds. They sing all around our ears, capture our hearts, comfort the mourners, pacify the angry, and fill us with everlasting joy. ~ John of Damascus, #NFDB
1162:Wisdom and humility demand that we consider what our brothers and sisters through the ages have done by way of catechizing and discipling, and test the merit of these efforts by consideration of the biblical data. We are most unwise to try to continually reinvent the catechetical wheel or to assume that we are more likely than our forebears to be faithful to Scripture. Our ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1163:The reading of the word of God should be performed in solitude, in order that the whole mind of the reader might be plunged into the truths of the Holy Scripture, and that from this he might receive warmth, which in solitude produces tears; from these a man is wholly warmed and is filled with spiritual gifts, which rejoice the mind and heart more than any word. ~ Saint Seraphim of Sarov, #NFDB
1164:Unlike most readers in Antiquity who read their books aloud, we have developed the convention of reading silently. This lets us read more widely but often less well, especially when what we are reading—such as the plays of Shakespeare and Holy Scripture—is a body of oral material that has been, almost but not quite accidentally, captured in a book like a fly in amber. ~ Jaroslav Pelikan, #NFDB
1165:We miss the full force of the imago Dei concept if we simply identify it with various ways humans are distinct from animals (e.g., reason, morality, love). The biblical concept instructs us as to how we are like God, not just how we are different from animals. To discover the meaning of the imago Dei, we must pay close attention to the way Scripture speaks about it. The ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1166:After plagiarizing the Egyptian heritage, the Jew has parasitically continued his cultural appropriation into yet another culture (i.e. the Semitic) and introduced the Egyptian Cow Yahweh (i.e. Hathor) into Scripture (i.e. Exodus 17:15) while describing in detailed manner the masonic architecture of erecting the quadrature columns (נָצַב) and pillars (נֵס) for this god. ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim, #NFDB
1167:All believers in Christ, the Scripture teaches, will suffer-all of us. You will be glorified, Paul says, if you suffer with him. The problem with too many of us is not that we don't suffer, but that we assume that only Third World Christians or heroic missionaries are suffering. My boys didn't know that they were suffering in Russia; they would feel it as suffering now. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
1168:As far as sacred Scripture is concerned, however much froward men try to gnaw at it, nevertheless it clearly is crammed with thoughts that could not be humanly conceived. Let each of the prophets be looked into: none will be found who does not far exceed human measure. Consequently, those for whom prophetic doctrine is tasteless ought to be thought of as lacking taste buds. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1169:There are many paths to God,” some say, “so no particular belief is ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ as long as you sincerely seek Him.” And that, according to Scripture, is sincerely wrong! Sincerely place your trust in any means, or any person, other than Jesus Christ who shed His blood for our sins, and God will not receive you . . . sincerely (see John 14:6 and Acts 4:12). If ~ Charles R Swindoll, #NFDB
1170:...The words testament and covenant are virtually synonymous in their theological usage, the Latin definition of testamentum being "a covenant with God, holy scripture." Thus, the Old and New Testaments, as we commonly refer to them, are written testimonies or witnesses (the Latin testis meaning "witness") of the covenants between God and man in various dispensations. ~ Jeffrey R Holland, #NFDB
1171:In my desire to distance myself from sadistic Christians who revel in the idea of wrath and punishment, I may have crossed a line. Refusing to teach a passage of Scripture is just as wrong as abusing it.
I really believe it's time for some of us to stop apologizing for God and start apologizing to Him for being embarrassed by the ways He has chosen to reveal Himself. ~ Francis Chan,#NFDB
1172:In the decade of the 1980s, a massive and comprehensive study of religion in American life was undertaken by the Gallup organization. The results of the study were as terrifying as they were revealing. Americans, even evangelical Americans, are woefully ignorant of the content of Scripture and even more ignorant of the history of Christianity and classical Christian theology. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1173:Jesus doesn't hold back with Nicodemus.
Following Jesus would require a commitment that would cost Nicodemus a great deal....In fact, it's true throughout all of Scripture....Following Jesus isn't something you can do at night where no one notices. It's a twenty-four-hour-a-day commitment that will interfere with your life. That's not the small-print--that's a guarantee. ~ Kyle Idleman,#NFDB
1174:LAOCOON, n. A famous piece of antique scripture representing a priest of that name and his two sons in the folds of two enormous serpents. The skill and diligence with which the old man and lads support the serpents and keep them up to their work have been justly regarded as one of the noblest artistic illustrations of the mastery of human intelligence over brute inertia. ~ Ambrose Bierce, #NFDB
1175:There is no figure more common in scripture, and none more beautiful, than that by which Christ is likened unto light. Incomprehensible in its nature, itself the first visible, and that by which all things are seen, light represents to us Christ. Whose generation none can declare, but Who must shine upon us ere we can know aught aright, whether of things Divine or human. ~ Herman Melville, #NFDB
1176:For this purpose we will benefit most from the great passages of scripture that clearly show us our Father in relation to his creation and his earthly family. These are passages such as Genesis 1 or 15; Exodus 19; 1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 16 and 19; Nehemiah 9; many of the psalms (34, 37, 91, and 103, for example); Isaiah 30, 44, and 56–66; Luke 11; Romans 8; Philippians 4. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1177:If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the canonical Scripture. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1178:Defining systematic theology to include "what the whole Bible TEACHES US today" implies that application to life is a necessary part of the proper pursuit of systematic theology. Thus a doctrine under consideration is seen in terms of its practical value for living the Christian life. Nowhere in Scripture do we find doctrine studied for its own sake or in isolation from life. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1179:Sacred scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expressed itself in terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer. Any other teaching about the origin and makeup of the universe is so alien to the intentions of the Bible, which does not wish to teach how heaven was made but how one goes to heaven. ~ Pope John Paul II, #NFDB
1180:The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation. ~ Various, #NFDB
1181:But so fluid a thing was love.It wasn't firm,he was learning, it wasn't a scripture;it was a wobbliness that lent itself to betrayal,taking the mold of whatever he poured he poured it into.And in fact,it was difficult to keep from pouring it into numerous vessels.It could be used for all kinds of purposes....He wished it were a constraint.It was truly beginning to frighten him. ~ Kiran Desai, #NFDB
1182:I believe scripture is not just resilient but rebellious against its abuse by people. Scripture says it refuses to be used in that way for long. That is why the gospel that has been used by the oppressors is the same gospel that liberated the oppressed: They were reading the same book. Something in the DNA of Christian faith and in the Bible agitates against that kind of misuse. ~ Allan Boesak, #NFDB
1183:Because I am a Christian, therefore, every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God's Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me. I can only move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the Word of God. And, as a Christian, I learn to know the Holy Scriptures in no other way than by hearing the Word preached and by prayerful meditation. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1184:There reigned a king of name revered, To country and to town endeared, Great Daśaratha, good and sage, Well read in Scripture's holy page: [pg 013] Upon his kingdom's weal intent, Mighty and brave and provident; The pride of old Ikshváku's seed For lofty thought and righteous deed. Peer of the saints, for virtues famed, For foes subdued and passions tamed: A rival in his wealth untold ~ Valmiki, #NFDB
1185:Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton, #NFDB
1186:But I would urge that the expository method (understood as that which explains extended passages of Scripture in course) be restored to that equal place which it held in the primitive and Reformed Churches; for, first, this is obviously the only natural and efficient way to do that which is the sole legitimate end of preaching, convey the whole message of God to the people. ~ Robert Lewis Dabney, #NFDB
1187:In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
1188:o step into the pulpit is to enter onto holy ground. To stand behind an open Bible demands no trifling with sacred things. To be a spokesman for God requires utmost concern and care in handling and proclaiming the Word. Rightly does Scripture warn, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1). ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1189:The absolute worst place to begin constructing an identity is you, which is precisely where most counseling begins. The absolute best place to begin constructing an identity is Jesus Christ, which is precisely where Scripture begins. Knowing Jesus and being saved by him in faith is the key to your identity and the defeat of your idolatry. It’s not about you. It’s all about Jesus. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
1190:You can think too highly of your interpretations of Scripture, but you cannot think too highly of Scriptures interpretation of itself. You can exaggerate your authority in handling the Scriptures, but you cannot exaggerate the Scriptures authority to handle you. You can use the word of God to come to wrong conclusions, but you cannot find any wrong conclusions in the word of God. ~ Kevin DeYoung, #NFDB
1191:Another liberal tendency among evangelical egalitarians is the claim that a woman may teach Scripture to men if she does so “under the authority of the pastor or elders.” I say this is indicative of a liberal tendency because on no other area of conduct would we be willing to say that someone can do what the Bible says not to do as long as the pastor and elders give their approval. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1192:here where we are concerned not with the dogma of Scripture and the Corycian cavern only, but in very truth with the awful secrets of the Divine Majesty (namely, why he works in the way we have said), here you smash bolts and bars and rush in all but blaspheming, as indignant as possible with God because you are not allowed to see the meaning and purpose of such a judgment of his. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1193:Your faith in God invites and releases God’s power to work in your life. Don’t put faith in your ability to have faith; put your faith in God’s ability to heal. If your faith feels weak to you, ask God to increase it. Believe that there is nothing too hard for God (Mark 10:27). If you want to see a miracle, lay hold of this Scripture until it becomes part of your mind and heart. ~ Stormie Omartian, #NFDB
1194:Organic inspiration: The process by which God guided the human authors of Scripture, working in and through their particular styles and life experiences, so that what they produced was exactly what He wanted them to produce. The text is truly the work of the human authors—God did not typically dictate to them as to a stenographer—and yet the Lord stands behind it as the ultimate source. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1195:Sometimes a piece of literature is intended to be factual or historical, sometimes poetic or figurative, oftentimes both. So it is the literary context that determines how a scripture should be understood, not our expectations that we bring to the text. Since the Bible is literature with different genres and styles of writing, we should be literary in our interpretation, not literal. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1196:There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell…. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1197:There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains itsmaxims. It has no temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants. ~ Henry David Thoreau, #NFDB
1198:And what is it that preachers do, to this very day? Do they interpret and expound the Scriptures? Yet if the Scripture they expound is uncertain, who can assure us that heir exposition is certain? Another new exposition? And who will expound the exposition? At this rate we will go on forever. In short, if Scripture is obscure or ambiguous, what part is there in God's giving it to us? ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1199:Beginning with the Psalms and continuing with Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews, Luther dug into Scripture, and it was these years of study, exegesis, writing, teaching, and preaching that formed the foundation of his theology—a theology that not only informed the Ninety-five Theses and his belief in salvation through grace alone, but also saved Luther from his own spiritual despair. ~ Michelle DeRusha, #NFDB
1200:For this astonishing wealth, God deserves reverent praise. What mind but his, what compass of understanding but his, what providential oversight over the production of Scripture but his, could produce a work so unified yet so profoundly diverse? Here, too, is reason to join our "Amen" to the words of 108:5: "Be exalted, 0 God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1201:Whatever our way out of this mess, one thing is certain. This degree of inequality, this withdrawal of opportunity, this cold denial of basic needs, this endorsement of pointless suffering—by no American value is this situation justified. No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become. ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
1202:Ah yes, “The Calling.” This is certainly a favorite Christian concept over in these parts. Here is the trouble: Scripture barely confirms our elusive calling—the bull’s-eye, life purpose, individual mission every hardworking Protestant wants to discover. I found five scriptures, three of which referred to salvation rather than a job description (Rom. 11:29, 2 Peter 1:10, and Heb. 3:1). ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1203:Even when a person suffers pain in consequence of a thorn having entered into his hand, although it is at once drawn out, it is a punishment that has been inflicted on him, and the least pleasure he enjoys is a reward; all this is meted out by strict justice; as is said in the Scripture, "all His ways are judgement" (Deut. xxxii. 4); we are only ignorant of the working of that judgement. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
1204:Another tendency leading toward rejection of the supreme authority of Scripture is the claim of Cindy Jacobs and other charismatics and Pentecostals that many contemporary prophecies are saying that God wants women to teach and preach to both sexes, or to be in pastoral leadership roles. When this claim is made, the contemporary prophecies take precedence over the teaching of Scripture. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1205:He who is anxious to attain a true understanding of holy Scripture, will discover the spiritual truths which are spoken by it to those who are called "spiritual," by comparing the meaning of what is addressed to those of weaker mind with what is announced to such as are of acuter understanding, both meanings being frequently found in the same passage by him who is capable of comprehending it. ~ Origen, #NFDB
1206:Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1207:Make a mistake in the interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, falsely scan a piece of Spenserian verse, and there is unlikely to be an entailment of eternal consequence; but we cannot lightly accept a similar laxity in the interpretation of Scripture. We are dealing with God’s thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1208:The difficulty is to keep a tight reign on our emotions. They may remain, but it is not they who are to rule the action. They have no authority. A life lived in God is not lived on the plane of the feelings, but of the will. In Scripture the heart is the will - the man himself, the spring of all action, the ruling power bestowed on him by his Creator, capable of choosing and acting. ~ Elisabeth Elliot, #NFDB
1209:Whatever our way out of this mess, one thing is certain. This degree of inequality, this withdrawal of opportunity, this cold denial or basic needs, this endorsement of pointless suffering - by no American value is this situation justified. No moral code or ethical principle, no piece of scripture or holy teaching, can be summoned to defend what we have allowed our country to become. ~ Matthew Desmond, #NFDB
1210:You will realize that doctrines are inventions of the human mind, as it tried to penetrate the mystery of God. You will realize that Scripture itself is the work of human minds, recording the example and teaching of Jesus. Thus it is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and your actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him. ~ Pelagius, #NFDB
1211:But when we look at Psalm 40, we see absolutely nothing to indicate that the speaker is Jesus or some messianic figure. Why would the Hebrews author assume that Psalm 40 was about Jesus? He does so because he knows what Jesus told his disciples in Luke 24, that all the Scripture is really about him. The Bible is in the end a single, great story that comes to a climax in Jesus Christ. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1212:Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. [...] The first thing to observe about the moderate’s retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God’s utterances difficult to accept as written. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1213:The violent portraits of God in Scripture have become one of the biggest obstacles to believers coming to faith. When we can show how these portraits bear witness not to a violent God, but to the non-violent loving God revealed on Calvary, these obstacles to believing in the inspiration of Scripture become one of the most compelling reasons for believing in the inspiration of Scripture. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1214:Christianity in our country is a lot like what the Ducksters profess. No longer doctrinaire or demanding, the mishmash of pop-religion practiced in churches across America is an extension of the therapeutic culture: festooned with feelings, mostly misdirected. Untempered by intelligent interpretation of scripture... American pop-theology: light on doctrine, heavy on hellfire and damnation. ~ Ilana Mercer, #NFDB
1215:In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1216:THE WAY OF THE Buddha is not a religion in the ordinary sense of the term, because it has no belief system, no dogma, no scripture. It does not believe in God, it does not believe in the soul, it does not believe in any paradise. It is a tremendous unbelief—and yet it is a religion. It is unique. Nothing has ever happened like it before in the history of human consciousness, and nothing afterward. ~ Osho, #NFDB
1217:There were excesses in science and there were excesses in religion. A reasonable man wouldn’t be stampeded by either one. There were many interpretations of Scripture and many interpretations of the natural world. Both were created by God, so both must be mutually consistent. Wherever a discrepancy seems to exist, either a scientist or a theologian—maybe both—hasn’t been doing his job. Palmer ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1218:Annas responded quickly, “My colleague Joseph is taking Scripture out of context. David was speaking metaphorically, and Isaiah’s Suffering Servant is Israel, not Messiah.” A voice interrupted their debate. “I can see my tardiness has inspired you to discuss the matter of Messiah in my absence.” Pilate paused at the entrance of the chamber, with his personal guard. Everyone stood in respect. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1219:Again, in this passage from Acts, there is no mention of the state at all. These early believers contributed their goods freely, without coercion, voluntarily. Elsewhere in Scripture we see that Christians are even instructed to give in just this manner, freely, for "God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Corinthians 9:7). There is plenty of indication that private property rights were still in effect.5 ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1220:Main Scripture: We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5 ESV Linked Science Concept: When you objectively observe your own thinking with the view to capturing rogue thoughts, you in effect direct your attention to stop the negative impact and rewire healthy new circuits into your brain. ~ Caroline Leaf, #NFDB
1221:O man, that which My Scripture saith, I say: and yet doth that speak in time; but time has no relation to My Word; because My Word exists in equal eternity with Myself. So the things which ye see through My Spirit, I see; like as what ye speak by My Spirit, I speak. And so when ye see those things in time, I see them not in time; as when ye speak in time, I speak them not in time. ~ Saint Augustine of Hippo, #NFDB
1222:Take every word as spoken to yourselves. When the word thunders against sin, think thus: “God means my sins;” when it presseth any duty, “God intends me in this.” Many put off Scripture from themselves, as if it only concerned those who lived in the time when it was written; but if you intend to profit by the word, bring it home to yourselves: a medicine will do no good unless it be applied. ~ Thomas Watson, #NFDB
1223:The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master.
~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Yoga of Divine Works, The Four Aids,#NFDB
1224:From the beginning of his time until the end, Bonhoeffer maintained the daily discipline of scriptural meditation and prayer he had been practicing for more than a decade. Each morning he meditated for at least half an hour on a verse of Scripture. And he interceded for his friends and relatives, and for his brothers in the Confessing Church who were on the front lines or in concentration camps. ~ Eric Metaxas, #NFDB
1225:God was now speaking to me, telling me to keep the faith and promising me an escape. He spoke not through scripture nor through the retelling of parables by a priest, but through angsty, tormented Holden Caulfield, and all the other voices in the books I had read. At the turn of every page I breathed in, felt my heart tighten and release, and said, as the nuns next door repeatedly sang, “Amen. ~ Cinelle Barnes, #NFDB
1226:If you share my frustration with the disparity between the church as Scripture talks about her and what we see reflected in our religious institutions, you’re not alone. You’re standing in a long line that includes the likes of Francis of Assisi, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Wesley, and nameless others who dared to ask the difficult questions and struggled with the uncomfortable answers. ~ Wayne Jacobsen, #NFDB
1227:In scripture we are told of some trusting in God and others trusting in idols, and that God is our refuge, our strength, our defense. In this sense God is the rock of his people, and false Gods are called the rock of those that trust in them. In the same sense the Gods of the King who shall do according to his will are called Mahuzzims, munitions, fortresses, protectors, guardians, or defenders. ~ Isaac Newton, #NFDB
1228:Nowhere in Scripture do I see a “balanced life with a little bit of God added in” as an ideal for us to emulate. Yet when I look at our churches, this is exactly what I see: a lot of people who have added Jesus to their lives. People who have, in a sense, asked Him to join them on their life journey, to follow them wherever they feel they should go, rather than following Him as we are commanded. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
1229:Simply speaking truth out loud is healing in and of itself. When people courageously voice a true, hard thing, they’ve already stolen some of its dark power before we offer one word to fix it. Theology backs that up. Of our own Jesus, Scripture says, “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:4–5). ~ Jen Hatmaker, #NFDB
1230:There God tells us exactly what is going to happen and scripture tells us that there is going to come a world leader who will initially bring overtures of peace. He will help the Jewish people rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. He will have a new economic system where you don't buy or sell without his mark. Initially, for some, it will look like a good deal because there will be peace, as I said. ~ Greg Laurie, #NFDB
1231:If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves! ~ Francis de Sales, #NFDB
1232:Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did (Flood, Derek) - Your Highlight on page 52 | Location 673-674 | Added on Thursday, April 9, 2015 4:28:39 PM This book’s central proposal is that we as followers of Jesus need to learn to adopt the same priorities that Jesus did in his interpretation of Scripture. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1233:Take every word as spoken to yourselves. When the word thunders against sin, think thus: “God means my sins;” when it presseth any duty, “God intends me in this.” Many put off Scripture from themselves, as if it only concerned those who lived in the time when it was written; but if you intend to profit by the word, bring it home to yourselves: a medicine will do no good, unless it be applied.9 ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
1234:Well," said St. Clare, "suppose that something shoul bring down the price of cotton once and forever, and make the whole slave property a drug in the market, don't you think we should soon have another version of the Scripture doctrine? What flood of light would pour the church, all at once, and immediately it would be discovered that everything in the bible and reason went the other way. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe, #NFDB
1235:Why do I meditate? Because I am a Christian. Therefore, every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God’s Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me. I can only move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the Word of God. And, as a Christian, I learn to know the Holy Scripture in no other way than by hearing the Word preached and by prayerful meditation. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, #NFDB
1236:The Death of Jesus 28Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. 30When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1237:I think [forgiveness] may be the greatest virtue on earth, and certainly the most needed. There is so much of meanness and abuse, of intolerance and hatred. There is so great a need for repentance and forgiveness. It is the great principle emphasized in all of scripture, both ancient and modern. Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1238:Look how fears have presented themselves, so have supports and encouragements; yea, when I have started, even as it were at nothing else but my shadow, yet God, as being very tender of me, hath suffered me to be molested, but would with one Scripture or another, strengthen me against all; insomuch that I have often said, Were it awful, I could pray for greater trouble, for the greater comfort's sake. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1239:Often God will send us what we need in a package we don't want. Why? To let us know He's God and we cannot second-guess Him. We cannot search for answers merely with our heads; we must seek Him and His provision with our hearts. Scripture cannot be interpreted from our limited human mental understanding. There must be a breath of the Spirit of God. He alone gives wise counsel and correct application. ~ John Bevere, #NFDB
1240:Sunday morning in America is the greatest hour of idolatry in the whole week. Why? Because most people who are even worshiping God, are worshiping a God they don't know. They're worshiping a god that looks more like Santa Claus than the God of Scripture. They're worshiping a god that is a figment of their own imagination. They created a god in their own likeness and they worship the god they've made. ~ Paul Washer, #NFDB
1241:I encourage you to make a similar commitment to spending time alone with God each day for prayer and meditation. Biblical meditation is a traditional method of solitary prayer. By selecting a particular scripture verse from the gospel reading for the day, or a favourite psalm, or a sentence from a letter from Paul, you can create a safe wall around your heart that will allow you to pay attention. ~ Henri J M Nouwen, #NFDB
1242:The Assyrian. That is, the persecutors of the church: who are here called Assyrians by the prophet: because the Assyrians were at that time the chief enemies and persecutors of the people of God.— Ibid. Seven shepherds, &c. Viz., the pastors of God's church, and the defenders of the faith. The number seven in scripture is taken to signify many: and when eight is joined with it, we are to under stand ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1243:This is the problem. An unconverted person may have great reasoning power and intellect, but when it comes to spiritual reality and the life of God and eternity, he makes no contribution. Whether it’s Athens or Rome, whether it’s Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, or Princeton, or wherever else, all the collected wisdom that is outside the Scripture adds up to nothing but foolishness. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1244:Jesus, the Sinner's Friend, walks in the avenues of Scripture as once He traversed the plains and hills of Palestine: you can see Him still, if you have opened eyes, in the ancient prophecies; you can behold Him more clearly in the devout evangelists; He opens and lays bare His inmost soul to you in the epistles, and makes you hear the footsteps of His approaching advent in the symbols of the Apocalypse. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1245:The Enemy—one of whose names in Scripture is “the Deceiver”—loves to keep truly saved believers unsure of their salvation because he knows that if he does they’ll never experience the freedom, joy, and confidence that God wants them to have. But he also loves to keep those on their way to hell deluded into thinking they are on their way to heaven, their consciences immunized from Jesus’ pleas to repent. ~ J D Greear, #NFDB
1246:We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness. ~ Barack Obama, #NFDB
1247:If your church continues in this liberty of conscience, making no scruple to take away what she pleases, soon the Scripture will fail you, and you will have to be satisfied with the Institutes of Calvin, which must indeed have I know not what excellence, since they censure the Scriptures themselves! ~ Saint Francis de Sales, #NFDB
1248:The Scripture abounds in commands and cautions for our utmost diligence in our search and inquiry as to whether we are made partakers of Christ or not, or whether His Spirit dwells in us or not-which argue both the difficulty of attaining an assured confidence herein, as also the danger of our being mistaken, and yet the certainty of a good issue upon the diligent and regular use of means to that purpose. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1249:As 1 John 4:4 states, “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” Second Chronicles 20:15 reminds us, “The battle is not yours but God’s.” Our Commander in Chief has won the war. Christ defeated the enemy at the cross. We fight a defeated foe. Power comes from the Lord, not our own ingenuity or methods. Of course, we are not inactive. Scripture commands us to stand and resist the enemy. ~ Mark Hitchcock, #NFDB
1250:Oddly, I’ve never heard of a church or denomination that asked people to affirm a doctrinal statement like this: The purpose of Scripture is to equip God’s people for good works. Shouldn’t a simple statement like this be far more important than statements with words foreign to the Bible’s vocabulary about itself (inerrant, authoritative, literal, revelatory, objective, absolute, propositional, etc.)? ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1251:The word is the instrument whereby the Holy Spirit reveals unto us our wants, when we know not what to ask, and so enables us to make intercessions according to the mind of God, Rom. viii. 26, 27; yea, who is it who almost at any time reading the Scripture, with a due reverence of God, and subjection of conscience unto him, hath not some particular matter of prayer or praise effectually suggested unto him? ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1252:People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but the sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1253:We are told in Scripture that it is possible for people, by repeated sins, to lose the capacity for embarrassment and shame. The Bible frequently speaks of the hardened heart, which causes a person no longer to feel remorse for his or her transgression. It is dangerous for us to rely totally on our guilt feelings to reveal to us the reality of our guilt itself because we can quench the pangs of conscience. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1254:What we want to do is make sure they're not totally kept from what's going on in the world. We don't want to seclude them but, at the same time, we want them to have wisdom and discernment to make wise decisions - to protect them through the love of the family and the value that we have in one another and in the Lord and our time in Scripture. Finding that balance is not an easy task but it can be done. ~ Alex Kendrick, #NFDB
1255:While the Bible was the definitive reference point for settling questions of doctrine and practice, questions not clearly settled by Scripture that were of theological importance were numerous (and difficult), and churches could not always look to precedents in church history as a guide. The difficulty of resolving disputes is evident in an even more serious controversy from the late second century. ~ William J Bennett, #NFDB
1256:Andy Stanley argues that biblical expository preaching worked in a time when our society agreed on the importance and truth of the Scripture. That does not work now, he believes. Instead of starting with the Bible and ending with practical application—as in the traditional sermon—we should start with a current human need or contemporary question and then bring in the Bible for a response and solution. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1257:There are two ways of persuading men of the truths of our religion; one by the power of reason, the other by the authority of the speaker.
We do not use the latter but the former. We do not say: 'You must believe that because Scripture, which says it, is divine,' but we say that it must be believed for such and such a reason. But these are feeble arguments, because reason can be bent in any direction. ~ Blaise Pascal,#NFDB
1258:Well, there is no sin in being gay. The immorality comes from engaging in forbidden behavior. Therefore, the Christian homosexual is in the same situation as the unmarried heterosexual. He (or she) is expected to control his or her lusts and live a holy life. I know this is a tough position to take, and some will argue with it. But I stand on the authority of Scripture, and I have no license to edit it. ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
1259:[God] had respect to himself, as his last and highest end, in this work; because he is worthy in himself to be so, being infinitely the greatest and best of beings. All things else, with regard to worthiness, importance, and excellence, are perfectly as nothing in comparison of him. All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God's works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God. ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1260:Scripture is the ultimate grid by which we read every book. Scripture is perfect, sufficient, and eternal. All other books, to some degree, are imperfect, deficient, and temporary. That means that when we pick books from the bookstore shelves, we read those imperfect books in light of the perfect Book, the deficient books in light of the sufficient Book, and the temporary books in light of the eternal Book. ~ Tony Reinke, #NFDB
1261:The Yahuda collection gives us an intimate view of Newton's religious thinking, which was as intense and idiosyncratic as his thinking about alchemy and mathematical physics. He saw clearly that there is no firm basis in scripture for the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He was a Unitarian, deducing from the evidence of scripture that God the Father reigns alone. There is one God and not three. ~ Freeman Dyson, #NFDB
1262:But—for good reasons rooted deeply in the nature of the person and of personal relationships—his preferred way is to speak, to communicate: thus the absolute centrality of scripture to our discipleship. And this, among other things, is the reason why an extensive use of solitude and silence is so basic for growth of the human spirit, for they form an appropriate context for listening and speaking to God.1 ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1263:Do you know, the only people I can have a conversation with are the Jews? At least when they quote scripture at you they are not merely repeating something some priest has babbled in their ear. They have the great merit of disagreeing with nearly everything I say. In fact, they disagree with almost everything they say themselves. And most importantly, they don't think that shouting strengthens their argument. ~ Iain Pears, #NFDB
1264:Hearken to the voice of my supplications,” is rendered by the apostle Paul ἱκετηρίας, Heb. v. 7; in which place alone in the Scripture that word is used. Originally it signifies a bough or olive-branch wrapped about with wool or bays, or something of the like nature, which those carried in their hands and lifted up who were suppliants unto others for the obtaining of peace or the averting of their displeasure. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1265:In the same manner as the sea, those who are swept away from the course leading to the harbor correct their aim by a clear mark, looking for a lighthouse on high, or a certain mountain appearing. In the same manner Scripture by the example of Abraham and Sarah will direct us once more to the safe harbor of the divine will for those who have drifted out in the sea of life with a mind lacking a navigator. ~ Gregory of Nyssa, #NFDB
1266:The Greek word translated “peace” in the Scripture is eirene. This word is equivalent to the Hebrew word shalom. Essentially, eirene embodies completeness, wholeness, and an inner resting of the soul that does not fluctuate based on outside influences. A person who is at peace is someone who is stable, calm, orderly, and at rest within. The opposite of peace, of course, is inner chaos, anxiety, and worry. This ~ Tony Evans, #NFDB
1267:The Scripture says, "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" [Psalm 118:24].Glory days are days that can happen right now. The key is understanding some basic principles that don't just apply to any one season of life but transcend all seasons of life - not allowing our circumstances to define our outlook on life, but allowing what God's Word says about life to define that outlook. ~ Max Lucado, #NFDB
1268:We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. ~ J Robert Oppenheimer, #NFDB
1269:No man," he declares, "can have the least knowledge of true and sound, doctrine, without having been a disciple of the Scripture. Hence originates all true wisdom, when we embrace with reverence the testimony which God hath been pleased therein to deliver concerning himself. For obedience is the source, not only of an absolutely perfect and complete faith, but of all right knowledge of God" (Inst. 1, 6, 2). In ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1270:Since World War II, Japan has spawned enormous numbers of new religions featuring the supernatural.... In Thailand, diseases are treated with pills manufactured from pulverized sacred Scripture. Witches are today being burned in South Africa.... The worldwide TM [Transcendental Meditation] organization has an estimated valuation of $3 billion. For a fee, they promise to make you invisible, to enable you to fly. ~ Carl Sagan, #NFDB
1271:This principle is taught in Scripture: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). In other words, we learn to be loving because we are loved. Grace must come from the outside for us to be able to develop it inside. The opposite side of this truth is that we can't love when we aren't loved. And, taking the thinking further, we can't value or treasure our souls when they haven't been valued or treasured. ~ Henry Cloud, #NFDB
1272:A book about the Bible by a memoirist may seem like an odd undertaking, but anyone who has loved the Bible as much as I have, and who has lost it and found it again, knows how a relationship with the Bible can be as real and as complicated as a relationship with a family member or close friend. For better or worse, my story is inextricably tethered to the stories of Scripture, right down to my first name. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1273:Man becomes fit and functionally valid only when, along with scholarship and expert skills, he has imbibed these values. The person who is wedded to Truth and Love would need nothing more for peace and happiness. When Creation is witnessed through these values, it becomes holy scripture, an inspiring lesson and guide,. Therefore I exhort you: Let Truth and Love be the goals for all your efforts and studies. ~ Sathya Sai Baba, #NFDB
1274:Yes, we can name and claim those things God has clearly promised in Scripture. For instance, we can claim the certainty of forgiveness if we confess our sins before Him, because He promises that. But when it comes to getting a raise, purchasing a home, or finding healing from a disease, God hasn't made those kind of specific promises anywhere in Scripture, so we are not free to name and claim those things.
As ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1275:The notion of the enduring authority focuses on the fact that some people think that notions like authority of Scripture's is passé, while others say that the present configuration of the doctrine of inerrancy is a late addition. And to both we want to say, No we're talking about the enduring authority of Scripture, grounded first and foremost in its relevatory status, something given by God and utterly reliable. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1276:[T]he scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture. ~ Sheri S Tepper, #NFDB
1277:Scripture is the foundation for all we believe and the fountain from which we daily drink. It was the heart of the sixteenth-century Reformation, and it holds the message of eternal life for ourselves, our children, and our neighbors. It is the sacred Word of God given to us by human authors through the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, and it is our only inerrant and infallible authority for all of faith and life. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1278:The first priority will consist in restoring a sense of the acceptance of life as a gift from God. According to both Sacred Scripture and the wisest traditions of your continent, the arrival of a child is always a gift, a blessing from God. Today it is high time to place greater emphasis on this: every human being, every tiny human person, however weak, is created 'in the image and likeness of God' (Gen 1:27) ~ Pope Benedict XVI, #NFDB
1279:Scripture-pure veracity and scandal-rag content. That conjunction gives it its sizzle. You carry the seed of belief within you already. You recall the time this narrative captures and sense conspiracy. I am here to tell you that it is all true and not at all what you think. You will read with some reluctance and capitulate in the end. The following pages will force you to succumb. I am going to tell you everything. ~ James Ellroy, #NFDB
1280:Many who are convinced that God is non-violent simply dismiss the Old Testament accounts of God commanding or engaging in violence. I don't consider this to be a viable option, for Jesus treats the whole Old Testament as the inspired Word of God. My cross-centered interpretation of these violent portraits allows believers to affirm that God is non-violent while also affirming that all Scripture is "God-breathed.". ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1281:Sacred scripture is of course the basic authority for everything; yet I sometimes run across ancient sayings or pagan writings - even the poets - so purely and reverently and admirably expressed that I can't help believing the author's hearts were moved by some divine power. And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of the saints includes many not on our calendar. ~ Desiderius Erasmus, #NFDB
1282:Why do you need to be pleasant within? The answer is self-evident. When you are in a pleasant inner state, you are naturally pleasant to everyone and everything around you. No scripture or philosophy is needed to instruct you to be good to others. It is a natural outcome when you are feeling good within yourself. Inner pleasantness is a surefire insurance for the making of a peaceful society and a joyful world. Besides, ~ Sadhguru, #NFDB
1283:If you’re a Christian who wonders what to do with someone who’s in doubt, consider these words carefully: Love and grace speak loudly. The first and best response to someone whose faith is unraveling is a hug. Apologetics aren’t helpful. Neither are Scripture references. The first thing a hurting person needs is to know they’re not alone. My path back to God was paved with grace by those who received my doubt in love. ~ Mike McHargue, #NFDB
1284:My conservative brothers and sisters seem to argue that God revealed everything to us in scripture. Ever since, it has simply been our difficult but straightforward task to conform ourselves to God's will revealed there and to repent when we are unable or unwilling to do so. For me, there is something static and lifeless in such a view of God. Could it be that even the Bible is too small a box in which to enclose God? ~ Gene Robinson, #NFDB
1285:Even when a person suffers pain in consequence of a thorn having entered into his hand, although it is at once drawn out, it is a punishment that has been inflicted on him, and the least pleasure he enjoys is a reward; all this is meted out by strict justice; as is said in the Scripture, "all His ways are judgement" (Deut. xxxii. 4); we are only ignorant of the working of that judgement. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1286:For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any books however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1287:It therefore behoveth all those who may possibly be called to suffer for the truth in any season, or on any occasion, to assure their minds in this fundamental truth, that they may have in themselves a certain undeceiving understanding of the mind and will of God as revealed in the Scripture, independent on the authority of any church or persons whatsoever; the use of whose ministry herein we do yet freely and fully allow. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1288:The pineal gland is supposed to secrete an oil, which is called resin, the life of the pine tree. This word [resin] is supposed to be involved in the origin of the Rosicrucians, who were working with the secretions of the pineal gland and seeking to open the eye single; for it is said in scripture: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single thy whole body shall be filled with light.” . . . [The ~ David Wilcock, #NFDB
1289:Therefore I did still pray to God, that He would come in with this scripture more fully on my heart; to wit, that He would help me to apply the whole sentence, for as yet I could not: that He gave, that I gathered; but farther I could not go, for as yet it only helped me to hope there might be mercy for me; My grace is sufficient: And though it came no farther, it answered my former question, to wit, That there was hope; ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1290:For as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any book, however fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something written, are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1291:If I promised you a new car, would you say, “If it’s new, it probably won’t have an engine, a transmission, doors, wheels, or windows”? No, you’d never make such assumptions. Why? Because if a new car didn’t have these things, it wouldn’t be a car. Likewise, when Scripture speaks of a new Earth (2 Peter 3, and Revelation 21), we can expect that it will be a far better version of the old Earth, but it will truly be Earth. ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1292:He paused, twisting his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought. "Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from," he murmured at last, trying out a new proverb. "Although there may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this one matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement. ~ Joe Hill, #NFDB
1293:One’s presuppositions also can determine how typology is classified. For example, if we concede that God is also the author of OT Scripture, then we are concerned not only with discerning the intention of the human author but also with the ultimate and wider divine intent of what was written in the OT, which could well transcend and organically grow out of the immediate written speech act of the writer but not contradict it. ~ G K Beale, #NFDB
1294:The Christian who is not diligently involved in a serious study of Scripture is simply inadequate as a disciple of Christ. To be an adequate Christian and competent in the things of God we must do more than attend “sharing sessions” and “bless me parties.” We cannot learn competency by osmosis. Biblically illiterate Christians are not only inadequate but unequipped. In fact, they are inadequate because they are not equipped. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1295:believe that any time we tell stories like these that embrace complexity, we are participating in Scripture’s wisdom tradition. We are doing the thing to which all artists are called, which is not to dazzle or instruct or lecture, but to tell the truth—in all its beauty, frustration, and surprise. We might not make $62 million at it, but we are, in the words of Proverbs, “walk[ing] in the way of insight” (Proverbs 9:6). ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1296:Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, it’s how we’ve come to think of it. “I go to First Baptist.” “We are members of St. Luke’s.” “Is it time to go to church?” Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses the term. Not at all. Certainly, the body of Christ is a vast throng, millions of people around the globe. But when Scripture talks about church, it means community. ~ John Eldredge, #NFDB
1297:The personal costs of counseling also remind us why it is so necessary for a counselor to experience continuous renewal through Scripture, prayer, and the sacraments. Only when one’s own spiritual batteries are being continuously recharged can one hope to have something to give to others. And only in one’s own personal walk with the Lord can one find the strength to bear not only one’s own burdens but also those of others. ~ David G Benner, #NFDB
1298:It is simplistic and naive to explain jihadism merely as an inevitable growth from Islam’s ‘violent’ scripture, or as no more than a miscarried interpretation triggered solely by some tragic misreading. It cannot be separated from economic discontent, the enveloping context of US global power, America’s influence and military actions in the Muslim world and, most of all, the gaping sore of the Israel–Palestine conflict. ~ Jonathan A C Brown, #NFDB
1299:This is that whereon we believe the Scripture to be the word of God with faith divine and supernatural, if we believe it so at all: There is in itself that evidence of its divine original, from the characters of divine excellencies left upon it by its author, the Holy Ghost, as faith quietly rests in and is resolved into; and this evidence is manifest unto the meanest and most unlearned, no less than unto the wisest philosopher. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1300:We make a fatal mistake when we try to force Scripture to offer redemption to those who want to go to heaven but who don't want a relationship with the living God. By trying to offer some minimal standard of conduct that will allow them to qualify for salvation while continuing to to pursue their own agendas, we distort the gospel and destroy its power, and we concoct legalistic games to give them a false sense of security. ~ Wayne Jacobsen, #NFDB
1301:What Berry sees in his farm as a form, I see in Scripture as a form. Think of the farm as an organic whole, but with boundaries so that you are aware and stay in touch with all the interrelations: the house and barn, the horses and the chickens, the weather of sun and rain, the food prepared in the house and the work done in the fields, the machinery and the tools, the seasons. There are steady, relaxed rhythms in place. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1302:For believers, there is nothing that God can’t do. If He can’t do something, He can’t be God since God in their view is omnipotent—all powerful. There can be no limitation to the power of God in the eyes of the believer. There can be no natural or man-made law that can ever bind God. It is belief in the miracles that binds a devotee to Him. You remove all miracles from a scripture and it loses all its charm for the believers. ~ Awdhesh Singh, #NFDB
1303:On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. ... In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. ~ Dalai Lama, #NFDB
1304:When Christians speak of the authority of Scripture, because Christians believe that this word, even though it's mediated through many different human authors, nevertheless is God breathed and is revealed by God and is utterly reliable and all that it says, with all of its different literary genres, it's trustworthy and without mistake or distortion. It is trustworthy and therefore, because it is from God it has God's authority. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1305:Those who seek to glorify biblical womanhood have forgotten the dark stories. They have forgotten that the concubine of Bethlehem, the raped princess of David’s house, the daughter of Jephthah, and the countless unnamed women who lived and died between the lines of Scripture exploited, neglected, ravaged, and crushed at the hand of patriarchy are as much a part of our shared narrative as Deborah, Esther, Rebekah, and Ruth. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1306:For it is not the bare Words, but the Scope of the writer that giveth true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted; and they that insist upon single Texts, without considering the main Designe, can derive no thing from them clearly; but rather by casting atomes of Scripture, as dust before mens eyes, make everything more obscure than it is; an ordinary artifice of those who seek not the truth, but their own advantage. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1307:Thomas’s procedure, then, may be summarized in three steps: (1) Fulfilled prophecies and miracles make it credible that the Scriptures taken together as a whole are a revelation from God. (2) As a revelation from God, Scripture is absolutely authoritative. (3) Therefore, those doctrines taught by Scripture that are neither demonstrably provable nor empirically evident may be accepted by faith on the authority of Scripture. ~ William Lane Craig, #NFDB
1308:We want to fan the flames of Christians for whom inerrancy and the authority of Scripture are not mere shibboleths, but part of her life beat, part of the beating heart of what makes them tick. They revere Scripture, not because Scripture becomes an idol, but because it discloses God who is especially come after us in salvation and redemption through the person of his son, his cross, his resurrection, the full sweep of the gospel. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1309:the words of Scripture are “self-attesting.” They cannot be “proved” to be God’s words by appeal to any higher authority. For if an appeal to some higher authority (say, historical accuracy or logical consistency) were used to prove that the Bible is God’s Word, then the Bible itself would not be our highest or absolute authority: it would be subordinate in authority to the thing to which we appealed to prove it to be God’s Word. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1310:God communicates himself to the understanding of the creature, in giving him the knowledge of his glory; and to the will of the creature, in giving him holiness, consisting primarily in the love of God: and in giving the creature happiness, chiefly consisting in joy in God.108 These are the sum of that emanation of divine fullness called in Scripture, the glory of God. The first part of this glory is called truth, the latter, grace, ~ John Piper, #NFDB
1311:In his book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer paints a brilliant picture of the value of Scripture stating, “As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square and leave him, as one who knew nothing of English or England, to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it.”3 ~ Jed Jurchenko, #NFDB
1312:And if it be deemed a great wickedness to contaminate any thing that is dedicated to God, he surely cannot be endured, who, with impure, or even with unprepared hands, will handle that very thing, which of all things is the most sacred on earth. It is therefore an audacity, closely allied to a sacrilege, rashly to turn Scripture in any way we please, and to indulge our fancies as in sport; which has been done by many in former times ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1313:Clearly, the Scripture tells us that we lack the capacity to grasp God's infinite mind or the way He intervenes in our lives. How arrogant of us to think otherwise! Trying to analyze His omnipotence is like an amoeba attempting to comprehend the behavior of man. ~ James Dobson in: Bill Bradfield On Reading the Bible: Thoughts and Reflections of Over 500 Men and Women, from St. Augustine to Oprah Winfrey , Courier Dover Publications, Jul 12, 2012., #NFDB
1314:Derrida. Deconstruction’s claim that there is “nothing outside the text” [il n’y a pas de hors-texte] can be considered a radical translation of the Reformation principle sola scrip-tura. In particular, Derrida’s insight should push us to recover two key emphases of the church: (a) the centrality of Scripture for mediating our understanding of the world as a whole and (b) the role of community in the interpretation of Scripture. ~ James K A Smith, #NFDB
1315:I don’t understand,” said Fareed, “a world in which the most outspoken and high-profile blood drinkers are all romantics, poets, who bring into the Blood only those whom they love for emotional reasons. Oh, I do so appreciate your writing, you understand, every word of it. Your books are scripture for the Undead. Seth gave them to me at once, told me to learn them. But have you never thought to bring over those whom you actually need? ~ Anne Rice, #NFDB
1316:In his temptation of Jesus, Satan quoted Scripture, and he didn't remember, misquote anything. God wants his children to eat bread, not to starve before stones. God will protect his anointed one with the angels of heaven. God will give his Messiah all the kingdoms of the earth. All this is true. What is satanic about all of this, though, is that Satan wanted our Lord to grasp these things apart from the cross and the empty tomb. ~ Russell D Moore, #NFDB
1317:Jesus. Do not permit sinners to hear sermons as a matter of course, or allow them to play with the edged tools of Scripture as if they were mere toys; but again and again remind them that every true gospel sermon leaves them worse if it does not make them better. Their unbelief is a daily, hourly sin; never let them infer from your teaching that they are to be pitied for continuing to make God a liar by rejecting his Son. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1318:All teachers of Scripture conclude that the essence of prayer is simply the lifting up of the heart to God. But if this is so, it follows that everything else that doesn’t lift up the heart to God is not prayer. Therefore, singing, talking, and whistling without this lifting up of your heart to God are as much like prayer as scarecrows in the garden are like people. The name and appearance might be there, but the essence is missing. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1319:In a word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity, far otherwise than mere human reason can; and while evil oppresses us, it teaches how these virtues throw light upon the darkness, and how, after this poor, miserable existence of ours on earth, there is another and an eternal life. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1320:Second, the Islamic State’s desires: The Islamic State’s politics differ profoundly from that of most Wahhabis, who view the Saudi kingdom as a legitimate Islamic government. As the State sees things, no Muslim-majority state in the world deserves to call itself Islamic, which is why it set up its own state and declared a caliphate. To achieve that end, the Islamic State had to wage an insurgency, which it justified with scripture. ~ William McCants, #NFDB
1321:The fundamental beliefs that the Genevan Reformer held regarding God’s Word and the centrality of the Scriptures in church life defined his preaching long before he ever stood to exposit the Word. Calvin’s deeply embedded convictions about the supreme authority of the Bible demanded an elevated view of the pulpit. He believed the pulpit must be primary in the life of the church because Scripture is sovereign over the lives of the people. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1322:To expound Scripture is to bring out of the text what is there and expose it to view. The expositor pries open what appears to be closed, makes plain what is obscure, unravels what is knotted and unfolds what is tightly packed. . . . Whether long or short, our responsibility as expositors is to open it up in such a way that it speaks its message clearly, plainly, accurately, relevantly, without addition, subtraction or falsification. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
1323:Thus, the words of Scripture are “self-attesting.” They cannot be “proved” to be God’s words by appeal to any higher authority. For if an appeal to some higher authority (say, historical accuracy or logical consistency) were used to prove that the Bible is God’s Word, then the Bible itself would not be our highest or absolute authority: it would be subordinate in authority to the thing to which we appealed to prove it to be God’s Word. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1324:I notice that when I feel the most disconnected, once I'm done blaming the moon and everything else, I can see that I am so mired in identification with form and ego and story and identity, and that if I want to, I can read some scripture or read some spiritual book or pray or meditate or sit in the sun or hang around the birds and the dogs, and get a real objective sense of what's really going on here. That usually softens things. ~ Alanis Morissette, #NFDB
1325:There is however difference between the theology of liberation and traditional theology, the latter being based primarily On the Word of God made incarnate in the Holy Scripture Liberation theology is of course also inspired by the Word, but its representatives are convinced that God also speaks to us in everyday events and that, for example, information obtained through the mass media can be a special way in which God speaks to us. ~ Ernesto Cardenal, #NFDB
1326:The second thing I got backwards in my approach to the Bible was the belief that my heart should guide my study. The heart, as it is spoken of in Scripture, is the seat of the will and emotions. It is our “feeler” and our “decision-maker.” Letting my heart guide my study meant that I looked for the Bible to make me feel a certain way when I read it. I wanted it to give me peace, comfort, or hope. I wanted it to make me feel closer to God. ~ Jen Wilkin, #NFDB
1327:Many shooters ask the gamer to use violence against pure, unambiguous evil: monsters, Nazis, corporate goons, aliens of Ottoman territorial ambition. Yet these shooters typically have nothing to say about evil and violence, other than that evil is evil and violence is violent. This was never the most promising thematic carbon to trace, and yet shooters keep doing so with as little self-questioning as a medieval monk copying out scripture. ~ Tom Bissell, #NFDB
1328:There is a scripture in the Buddhist tradition called the Heart Sutra, which says that there is no birth, no old age, and no death, and no end to birth, old age, or death. This is a very important part of the sutra. There is no birth, no old age, and no death. This is true from the absolute point of view. But unless we’ve also realized, simultaneously, that there is no end to birth, old age, and death, then our realization is not complete. ~ Adyashanti, #NFDB
1329:To be a Christian means gradually, Sunday after Sunday, to be subsumed into another story, a different account of where we have come from and where we are going, a story that is called “gospel.” You are properly called a “Christian” when it’s obvious that the story told in Scripture is your story, above all other stories that the world tries to impose on you, and that the God who is rendered in Scripture is the God who has got you. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
1330:I know not a better rule of reading the Scripture, than to read it through from beginning to end and when we have finished it once, to begin it again. We shall meet with many passages which we can make little improvement of, but not so many in the second reading as in the first, and fewer in the third than in the second: provided we pray to him who has the keys to open our understandings, and to anoint our eyes with His spiritual ointment. ~ John Newton, #NFDB
1331:...it is not the obscure passages in Scripture that bind you but the ones you understand. With these you are to comply at once. If you understood only one passage in all of Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all. It will be this passage God asks you about. Do not first sit down and ponder the obscure passages. God's Word is given in order that you shall act according to it, not that you gain expertise in interpreting it. ~ Soren Kierkegaard, #NFDB
1332:Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, these human testimonies which exist to confirm it will not be vain if, as secondary aids to our feebleness, they follow that chief and highest testimony. But those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1333:Mr. Langdon, I did not ask if you believe what man says about God. I asked if you believed in God. There is a difference. Holy scripture is stories...legends and history of man's quest to understand his own need for meaning. I am not asking you to pass judgment on literature. I am asking if you believe in God. When you lie out under the stars, do you sense the divine? Do you feel in your gut that you are staring up at the work of God's hands? ~ Dan Brown, #NFDB
1334:In speaking of these wondrous things I shall use my own words, though you may think they are the words of scripture, words spoken by other Apostles and prophets.
True it is they were first proclaimed by others, but they are now mine, for the Holy Spirit of God has borne witness to me that they are true, and it is now as though the Lord had revealed them to me in the first instance. I have thereby heard his voice and know his word. ~ Bruce R McConkie,#NFDB
1335:Nowhere in scripture are believers told to esteem ourselves capable of anything aside from what the power of God does within us. Philippians 4:13 says that we can do all things through Christ’s strength. Christ never said “Have faith in yourself.” He said, “Have faith in God.” (Mark 11:22). Don’t even have faith in your faith—have faith in The One who cannot fail. He called you and He is faithful to keep you (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24). ~ Michelle Stimpson, #NFDB
1336:How do we take our anger and transform it into sacred rage? How do we create a language that opens the heart instead of closing it? To bear witness is not a passive act. It's an act of consequence that leads to consciousness. It matters. I am curious. I want to know why. I was raised with a scripture that says, "The glory of God is intelligence." And to me our greatest intelligence is following our instincts, trusting our intuition. ~ Terry Tempest Williams, #NFDB
1337:If the church as a whole is losing its ability to be “salt and light” in the culture, it is not because its members have no opinion of the films of Bernardo Bertolucci, no appreciation for the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and no regular slot on The Charlie Rose Show. More likely, it is because they do not have a solid grasp of the basic elements of the faith, as taught in Scripture and affirmed by the confessions and catechisms of the church. ~ Carl R Trueman, #NFDB
1338:If we believe Scripture, we can reverently seek to enjoy happiness and laughter with God himself. I often remind myself that God is always with me. He wants us to know we can be happy both in him and with him—not only after we die, but as we live today. When I’m alone, whether I’m meditating or reading or looking at photos or watching a movie, any happiness or laughter I experience is a laugh I share with God because, in fact, I am not alone! ~ Randy Alcorn, #NFDB
1339:Fr. Amphilochios, the geronta or elder on the island of Patmos when I first stayed there, would have been in full agreement. Do you know, he said, that God gave us one more commandment, which is not recorded in Scripture? It is the commandment love the trees. Whoever does not love trees, so he believed, does not love God. When you plant a tree, he insisted, you plant hope, you plant peace, you plant love, and you will receive God's blessing. ~ Kallistos Ware, #NFDB
1340:One of the great compliments paid the Savior was that he taught as one having authority. The missionary who knows scripture and can quote it speaks with the voice of authority...May I suggest that in our family night gatherings we make it a project to memorize one scripture a week pertinent to this work. At the conclusion of a year our children will have on their lips a fund of scripture which will remain with them throughout their lives. ~ Gordon B Hinckley, #NFDB
1341:To be called a child of God - there is no greater distinction. I love the final sentence of that Scripture with that emphatic exclamation mark. What a powerful assurance. Right here, right now, in this very moment, no matter how good or bad you feel about yourself, you're a beloved child of God. Throughout Scripture, God is conveying this message. He made you, he loves you, he pursues you, he's not done with you, and he's called you his child. ~ Matthew West, #NFDB
1342:The barbarians, who possessed no books, no secular knowledge, no education, except in the schools of the clergy, and who had scarcely acquired the rudiments of religious instruction, turned with childlike attachment to men whose minds were stored with the knowledge of Scripture, of Cicero, of St. Augustine; and in the scanty world of their ideas, the Church was felt to be something infinitely vaster, stronger, holier than their newly founded States. ~ Lord Acton, #NFDB
1343:This practice of discerning the theological testimony, unity and development of the biblical *canon was a concern of the Reformers, but it began to emerge as an approach distinct from *dogmatic theology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Having much in common with *covenant theology, Reformed approaches usually emphasize the unity of Scripture as a *redemptive-historical drama, all of which reveals the person and work of Christ. Notable ~ Kelly M Kapic, #NFDB
1344:I’ve become convinced that one of the reasons we have not seen more balanced cultural engagement “near the center” is that many of us are not choosing our Christ and culture model in the right way. Instead of looking at Scripture, the culture, and our own gifts and calling, we tend to form our views in visceral reactions to the behavior of other Christians. In other words, we stand here and not there because those people are there and not here. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1345:For we all often stumble and fall and offend in many things. And if anyone does not offend in speech [never says the wrong things], he is a fully developed character and a perfect man, able to control his whole body and to curb his entire nature. JAMES 3:2 According to this Scripture, the one thing proving our level of spiritual maturity isn’t how religious we are—whether we can quote Scripture, or the good works we do—it is the words from our mouths. ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1346:15For he says to Moses, x “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16So then it depends not on human will or exertion, [2] but on God, who has mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, y “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1347:If God does not know with certainty all that will come to pass, as Open Theism argues, believers cannot have the assurance that God has a purpose for every event of their life. Tragedies may occur that God did not specifically ordain or allow, for he did not even know for certain that they would come about. Against such a notion, Scripture encourages believers to look for the hand of God in the midst of their hardships (Exod. 4:11; Heb. 12:3–13). 2. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1348:I was new Christian. My conversation had been sudden and dramatic, a replica for me of the Damascus Road. My life had been turned upside down,, and I was filled with zeal for the sweetness of Christ. I was consumed with a new passion. To study the Scripture. To learn hoe to pray. To conquer the vices that assaulted my character. To grow in grace. I wanted desperately to make my life count for Christ. My soul was singing, "Lord, I want to be a Christian. ~ R C Sproul, #NFDB
1349:In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of scripture on oneself through the week, in church or out, will not reorder one’s mind and spirit—just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water at once and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1350:presently I found two things within me, at which I did sometimes marvel (especially considering what a blind, ignorant, sordid and ungodly wretch but just before I was). The one was a very great softness and tenderness of heart, which caused me to fall under the conviction of what by scripture they asserted, and the other was a great bending in my mind, to a continual meditating on it, and on all other good things, which at any time I heard or read of. ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1351:There’s no magical formula here, just simple truths that always apply. Here’s what you must do: repent of your sin, trust in Christ, join a church where the gospel is preached and the Bible is explained, read your Bible, and pray. Walk with God. Know your Bible. Read the world through the interpretive grid built for you by the Bible. Reject the interpretive grid pushed by the world. Be a student of Scripture, and reflect on life informed by the Scriptures. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1352:Opponents of this view often point out that it is not rooted in an exegesis of Genesis 1:26–28, the central biblical text that discusses the imago Dei. Indeed, it is frequently argued that the view that the imago Dei refers to the soul is more influenced by Greek philosophy than by Scripture. More specifically, it is argued that the traditional emphasis on reason as one of the hallmarks of the imago Dei is a distinctly Hellenistic, not Hebraic, notion. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1353:So where does Stan fit in this equation?... We are told to meditate on scripture, even the hald that details the consequences of evil, the consequent of Jericho and all. Not to pretend out God has somehow changed since the time of Christ. Obviously, Paul's idea of admirable and noble is quite different from ours. God forgives us, Bill. We have mocked His victory by whitewashing the enemy for the sake of our neighbirs approval." No Greater Love has any man. ~ Ted Dekker, #NFDB
1354:The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind one of the surest proofs of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust rebel? This is no teaching of human mythology, or dream of poetical imagination. This method of expiation is only known among men because it is a fact; fiction could not have devised it. God himself ordained it; it is not a matter which could have been imagined. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1355:The findings of the past 150 years have made extrabiblical evidence an unavoidable conversation partner. The result is that, as perhaps never before in the history of the church, we can see how truly provisional and incomplete certain dimensions of our understanding of Scripture can be. On the other hand, we are encouraged to encounter the depth and riches of God’s revelation and to rely more and more on God’s Spirit, who speaks to the church in Scripture. ~ Peter Enns, #NFDB
1356:The shape this book has taken reflects my belief that there is need to blow the whistle on the sidelining of personal holiness that has been a general trend among Bible-centered Western Christians during my years of ministry. It is not a trend that one would have expected, since Scripture insists so strongly that Christians are called to holiness, that God is pleased with holiness but outraged by unholiness, and that without holiness none will see the Lord. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1357:A confession, if a faithful echo of what God already says, can guide us and shelter us from the disabilities of an age or locale. Confessions that parrot and lightly amplify the soundings of Scripture endure, while also equipping God’s family with strength and perspective to avoid the ditches of every fad or heresy. Confessions that stand on the shoulders of previous saintly exegetes are the advanced courses that settle certain matters and yield a head start. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1358:The book of nature brought me to the book of Scripture, which led me, in turn, to submit my life to the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. I am not alone. I have met many others who came to Christ in a similar way. Some Christians are amazed to hear how frequently I get to share my faith with strangers. To a large degree, God uses the book of nature and the links he reveals between nature’s record and key components of his redemptive plan to open up these opportunities. ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
1359:He is our Redeemer, Deliverer, Reconciler, Mediator, Intercessor, Advocate, Attorney, Solicitor, our Hope, Comfort, Shield, Protection, Defender, Strength, Health, Satisfaction and Salvation. His blood, his death, all that he ever did, is ours. And Christ himself, with all that he is or can do, is ours. . . . And God (as great as he is) is mine, with all that he hath, through Christ and his purchasing. —William Tyndale, A Pathway into the Holy Scripture ~ S Michael Wilcox, #NFDB
1360:If we forget that the newspapers are footnotes to Scripture and not the other way around, we will finally be afraid to get out of bed in the morning. Too many of us spend far too much time with the editorial page and not nearly enough with the prophetic vision. We get our interpretation of politics and economics and morals from journalists when we should be getting only information; the meaning of the world is most accurately given to us by God’s Word. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1361:Minds fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1362:On coming to the house, they (the Magi), saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. (Matthew 2:11) [This] adoration, too, was not the same as the worship of God. In my opinion they did not yet recognize him as God, but they acted in keeping with the custom mentioned in Scripture, according to which Kings and important people were worshiped; this did not mean more than falling down before them at their feet and honoring them. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1363:But his Lordship [tells]us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Norcan I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it. ~ Thomas Hobbes, #NFDB
1364:It will be said that, although God’s law is inscribed in our hearts, Scripture is nevertheless the Word of God, and it is no more permissible to say of Scripture that it is mutilated and contaminated than to say this of God’s Word. In reply, I have to say that such objectors are carrying their piety too far, and are turning religion into superstition; indeed, instead of God’s Word they are beginning to worship likenesses and images, that is, paper and ink. ~ Baruch Spinoza, #NFDB
1365:... believing in a God whom we cannot but regard as evil, and then, in mere terrified flattery calling Him 'good' and worshipping him is a still greater danger... The ultimate question is whether the doctrine of the goodness of God or that of the inerrancy of scripture is to prevail when they conflict. I think the doctrine of the goodness of God is the more certain of the two. Indeed, only that doctrine renders this worship of Him obligatory or even permissable. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1366:Nothing outside of God and His truth should be sacred to us. And so it is with hell. If hell is some primitive myth left over from conservative tradition, then let's set it on that dusty shelf next to other traditional beliefs that have no basis in Scripture. But if it is true, if the Bible does teach that there is a literal hell awaiting those who don't believe in Jesus, then this reality must change us. It should certainly purge our souls of all complacency. ~ Francis Chan, #NFDB
1367:The Prophet himself sometimes openly suppressed or negated older verses, considering them to have been replaced by newer ones. That is because Muhammad did not consider the Quran to be a static Revelation, which may be why he never bothered to authorize its collection into a codified book. The Quran was for Muhammad a living scripture that consciously evolved alongside the Ummah, continually adapting itself to meet the specific needs of the developing community. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1368:For Scripture is the school of the Holy Spirit, in which, as nothing is omitted that is both necessary and useful to know, so nothing is taught but what is expedient to know. Therefore we must guard against depriving believers of anything disclosed about predestination in Scripture, lest we seem either wickedly to defraud them of the blessing of their God or to accuse and scoff at the Holy Spirit for having published what it is in any way profitable to suppress. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1369:Most people, he suggested, are not capable of exercising reason. God created scripture for the unreasoning masses. He intended the Qur’an to be read in one of two ways. The learned, the falsafah, read it allegorically. ‘Anyone who is not a man of learning’, however, ‘is obliged to take these passages in their apparent meaning.’ ‘Allegorical interpretation’ of the Qur’an is, for the masses, Ibn Rushd suggested, the same as ‘unbelief because it leads to unbelief’. ~ Kenan Malik, #NFDB
1370:Old friend, there are people—young and old—that I like, and people that I do not like. The former are always in short supply. I am turned off by humorless fanaticism, whether it's revolutionary mumbo-jumbo by a young one, or loud lessons from scripture by and old one. We are all comical, touching, slapstick animals, walking on our hind legs, trying to make it a noble journey from womb to tomb, and the people who can't see it all that way bore hell out of me. ~ John D MacDonald, #NFDB
1371:So where does Stan fit in this equation?...
We are told to meditate on scripture, even the hald that details the consequences of evil, the consequent of Jericho and all. Not to pretend out God has somehow changed since the time of Christ. Obviously, Paul's idea of admirable and noble is quite different from ours. God forgives us, Bill. We have mocked His victory by whitewashing the enemy for the sake of our neighbirs approval."
No Greater Love has any man... ~ Ted Dekker,#NFDB
1372:Surah 57 Ayah 25 from the Sahih International English Translation of Al-Quran.
We have already sent Our messengers with clear evidences and sent down with them the Scripture and the balance that the people may maintain [their affairs] in justice. And We sent down iron, wherein is great military might and benefits for the people, and so that Allah may make evident those who support Him and His messengers unseen. Indeed, Allah is Powerful and Exalted in Might. ~ Anonymous,#NFDB
1373:No more soul-destroying doctrine could well be devised than the doctrine that sinners can regenerate themselves, and repent and believe just when they please...As it is a truth both of Scripture and of experience that the unrenewed man can do nothing of himself to secure his salvation, it is essential that he should be brought to practical conviction of that truth. When thus convinced, and not before, he seeks help from the only source whence it can be obtained. ~ Charles Hodge, #NFDB
1374:And we are to meditate on “every word that comes from the mouth of God.” There is no more useful discipline to this careful process of verse by verse meditation than memorization. Memorization is not the same as meditation, but it is almost impossible for someone to memorize a passage of Scripture without somewhat deepening his/her understanding of those verses. Plus, once the passage is memorized, a lifetime of reflection is now available through ongoing review ~ Andrew M Davis, #NFDB
1375:Minds fettered by Evangelical doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood. ~ George Eliot, #NFDB
1376:Elsewhere in Scripture we learn that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins (Hebrews 9:2222), and the life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:1123). Because Adam sinned, a payment for sin was needed. Because sin’s penalty was death, then death and bloodshed were needed to atone for sin. So Genesis 3:21 would describe the first blood sacrifice as a penalty for sin — looking forward to the One who would die “once for all” (Hebrews 10:10–1424). ~ Ken Ham, #NFDB
1377:Second, if you disbelieve in the reality of good and evil spirit agents, you fundamentally change the narrative of Scripture. The motif of spiritual warfare is a through-line of both the Old and New Testaments (NT). And in the NT, the meaning of what Jesus was doing in his life, ministry, death and resurrection is fundamentally tied up with the belief in spiritual warfare. Take away Satan, and you take away one of the most fundamental reasons Jesus came to earth! ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1378:Scripture tells us to submit to governing authorities. That’s a valid command—most of the time. However, when we fear God, there comes a time when we must resist human government and yield to a higher authority. Government is given to protect the good and to punish the bad (see Romans 13:3). When government protects the bad and punishes the good, then our submission to legal authority may have to end. This becomes the source of persecution for righteousness’ sake. ~ Brother Andrew, #NFDB
1379:The end product of biblical Christianity is a person—not a book, not a building, not a set of principles or a system of ethics—but one person in two natures (divine/human) with four ministries (prophet/priest/king/sage) and four biographies (the Gospels). But those four biographies don’t tell the whole story. Every bit of Scripture is part of the same great story of that one person and that one story’s plotline of creation, revelation, redemption, and consummation. ~ Leonard Sweet, #NFDB
1380:Fasts and vigils, the study of Scripture, renouncing possessions and everything worldly are not in themselves perfection, as we have said; theyare its tools. For perfection is not to be found in them; it is acquired through them. It is useless, therefore, to boast of our fasting, vigils, poverty, and reading of Scripture when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow men. Whoever has achieved love has God within himself and his intellect is always with God. ~ John Cassian, #NFDB
1381:If we further consider this divine panoramic view within which all evil is supposedly a "secret good" is held by a God who, according to Scripture, has a passionate hatred toward all evil, the "solution" becomes more problematic still. For it is certainly not clear how God could hate what he himself wills and sees as a contributing ingredient in the good of the whole. If all things play themselves out according to a divine plan, how can God genuinely hate anything? ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1382:Finally, there are numerous choices and ways that seem good, but their final outcome is sorrow, misery, loss, and death (see Proverbs 14:12). Think of it: our enemy, his servants, and his ways—all of which ultimately seek our demise—are all disguised as good. Scripture doesn’t say they can be disguised, but rather that they are disguised. So do not miss this: usually, what is most dangerous to you will not appear as blatant evil. Rather, it will mask itself as good. In ~ John Bevere, #NFDB
1383:Scripture teaches us that there is not one truth on which Christ insisted more frequently, both with His disciples and with those who came seeking His help, than the absolute necessity of faith and its unlimited possibilities. Experience has taught us that there is nothing in which we come so short as the simple and absolute trust in God to fulfill literally in us all that He has promised. A life in the abiding presence must of necessity be a life of unceasing faith. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1384:Believers are often encouraged to spend some time each day alone praying and reading the Bible. This is a good thing, modeled by Jesus himself. But too often people view this time with God as sufficient, and as separate from the rest of their lives; they essentially leave Jesus on their bedside table and ignore him the rest of the day. This is a far cry from the ongoing walking in the Spirit, abiding in Christ, persevering, praying, and rejoicing presented in Scripture. ~ Kenneth Boa, #NFDB
1385:the whole Scripture of God is divided into two parts: precepts and promises. The precepts certainly teach us what is good, but what they teach is not forthwith done. For they show us what we ought to do, but do not give us the power to do it. They were ordained, however, for the purpose of showing man to himself, that through them he may learn his own impotence for good and may despair of his own strength. For this reason they are called the Old Testament, and are so. ~ Martin Luther, #NFDB
1386:Whenever we feel the absence of peace—whenever our unmet longing for joy expresses itself as anxiety, or depression, or fear, or anger, or enslavement to any number of defeating sin patterns or addictions—the emptiness we’re feeling and trying to fill is for what our relationship with God, by His loving choice, was always meant to be. Our angst comes from the underlying implications of Ecclesiastes 3:11, where the Scripture says God “has put eternity into man’s heart. ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
1387:When there is a racial tragedy, the inclination of white Americans is to grieve, to brush ourselves off, and to get back to being the “real America.” But white supremacy is the “real America.” As Christians, we need to see that these tragic, cruciform moments can be opportunities to hear God’s word in a fresh, new way. God doesn’t bring the tragedy upon us, but we know from scripture that God is relentlessly redemptive, eager to transform our evil into God’s good. ~ William H Willimon, #NFDB
1388:A calling, on the other hand, when rooted deep in the soil of one’s soul, transcends roles. And I believe that my calling, as a Christian, is the same as that of any other follower of Jesus. My calling is to love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. Jesus himself said that the rest of Scripture can be rendered down into these two commands. If love was Jesus’ definition of “biblical,” then perhaps it should be mine. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1389:The Book of Chuang Tzu is like a travelogue. As such, it meanders between continents, pauses to discuss diet, gives exchange rates, breaks off to speculate, offers a bus timetable, tells an amusing incident, quotes from poetry, relates a story, cites scripture. To try and make it read like a novel or a philosophical handbook is simply to ask it, this travelogue of life, to do something it was never designed to do. And always listen out for the mocking laughter of Chuang Tzu. ~ Zhuangzi, #NFDB
1390:Don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, “This contemplative is our teacher.” When you know for yourselves that, “These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering”—then you should abandon them. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1391:Jesus refers to the poor over and over again. There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that call upon us to respond to the needs of the poor. And yet, I find that when Christians talked about values in this last election that was not on the agenda, that was not a concern. If you were to get the voter guide of the Christian Coalition, that does not rate. They talk more about tax cuts for people who are wealthy than they do about helping poor people who are in desperate straits. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
1392:The archdeacon himself was a rich man, so powerful that he could afford to look down upon a bishop; and Mrs. Grantly, though there was left about her something of an old softness of nature, a touch of the former life which had been hers before the stream of her days had run gold, yet she, too, had taken kindly to wealth and high standing, and was by no means one of those who construe literally that passage of scripture which tells us of the camel and the needle’s eye. ~ Anthony Trollope, #NFDB
1393:Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should I praise her if she doesn’t deserve it? I say exactly what I have often admired Sterne for saying in one of his letters — that neither reason nor Scripture asks us to speak nothing but good of the dead. And now, madam,’ he continued, after a short interval of thought, ‘I may, perhaps, hope that you will assist me, or rather not thwart me, in endeavouring to win the love of a young lady living about you, one in whom I am much interested already. ~ Thomas Hardy, #NFDB
1394:If God in fact never changes his mind, saying he does change his mind doesn’t communicate anything truthful: it is simply inaccurate. This observation is especially important when we consider that some passages of Scripture were written for the expressed purpose of encouraging us to believe God is capable of changing his mind (Jer. 18:1–10; 26:2–3, 13) while others depict God’s willingness to change as one of his praiseworthy attributes (Joel 2:13–14; Jon. 4:2). Finally, ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1395:1 Cor. xvi. 15, 16. 270. By this text I was made to see that the Holy Ghost never intended that men who have gifts and abilities, should bury them in the earth, but rather did command and stir up such to the exercise of their gift, and also did commend those that were apt and ready so to do. They have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints. This scripture, in these days, did continually run in my mind, to encourage me, and strengthen me in this my work for God; ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1396:1. This view is not traditional. Opponents of the restoration view of creation often object that this view has few representatives in the church tradition. This is true, but two observations qualify its force as an objection. First, evangelicals, and Protestants in general, look to Scripture as their sole authority in matters of doctrine. Therefore, while the absence of precedent for a view should make us cautious, it cannot itself constitute a decisive objection. Second, ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1397:But the important test question here isn't whether Christianity teaches egalitarianism or an old earth, but what if it clearly didn't? Would we be embarrassed then? What if Scripture really taught all those horrible things mocked so loudly by moderns-would we be ashamed? This is a wonderful personal test. Think of the most horrible moral or scientific accusation raised against the Christian faith and then ask, what if it's true? Would we be embarrassed to stand by Christ? ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1398:I find it expressed in various passages of Scripture that the fact that God knows things while in a state of possibility, when their existence belongs to the future, does not change the nature of the possible in any way; that nature remains unchanged; and the knowledge of the realisation of one of several possibilities does not yet effect that realisation. This is likewise one of the fundamental principles of the Law of Moses concerning which there is no doubt nor any dispute. ~ Maimonides, #NFDB
1399:I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed - much closer than we imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, #NFDB
1400:Jesus accepted the plenary [i.e., complete, extending to all its parts] inspiration of the Bible; when first approached by the devil to turn stones into bread, our Lord replied that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4 quoting Deut. 8:3). He did not say, "some words" but "every word." If Scripture is breathed out from God (2 Tim. 3:16), then Scripture must be included in what sustains man, not only parts of Scripture but all of it. ~ Charles Caldwell Ryrie, #NFDB
1401:With respect to those points, on which the declaration of Scripture is positive and decisive, as, for instance, in asserting the low antiquity of the human race; the evidence of all facts that have yet been established in Geology coincides with the records of Sacred History and Profane Tradition to confirm the conclusion that the existence of mankind can on no account be supposed to have taken its beginning before that time which is assigned to it in the Mosaic writings. ~ William Buckland, #NFDB
1402:God has designed every component of his creation to display some aspect of his care, and each holds a unique fascination for the human observer. Thus, we can easily engage both young and older minds with some newly discovered feature or fact of nature. If we can make a connection between that discovery and one of God’s attributes or a component of God’s plan to redeem humanity, we will have provided a stronger motivation for people to seriously investigate the book of Scripture. ~ Hugh Ross, #NFDB
1403:Pagan
At home
in the countryside
I make the decision
to leave your book
--overdue at the library--
face up, 'promiscuous'
out in the sun.
Pagan.
I laugh to see
this was our religion
all along.
Hidden
even from ourselves
taught
early
not to touch
the earth.
Years of white gloves
straight seamed hose.
'Being good girls.'
Scripture like chains.
Dogma like flies.
Smiles like locks
and lies. ~ Alice Walker,#NFDB
1404:Perhaps, just perhaps, we can’t read singular verses or chapters in a vacuum; perhaps we can’t read letters written to specific people with specific situations in mind in a specific context and then apply them, broad-brush, to the whole of humanity or the church or even our own small selves. Perhaps we need wisdom, insight. We need the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we need Jesus as our best and clearest lens; we need all of Scripture, too. After all, Jesus is the Word of God incarnate. ~ Sarah Bessey, #NFDB
1405:According to the Evangelical Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, that the Bible alone is the final authority of doctrine, not tradition, believers are obligated to first find out what the Bible text says and then adjust their theology to be in line with Scripture, not the other way around. All too often we find individuals ignoring or redefining a Biblical text because it does not fit their preconceived notion of what the Bible should say, rather than what it actually says. ~ Brian Godawa, #NFDB
1406:Avoid participating in any religious community where the clear truth-claims of Scripture are ignored while contemplative and mystical practices are favored simply for their spiritual experience. Be careful of any church or ministry wherein acts of mercy and environmental stewardship are devoid of a theology of the cross and wind up being little more than the worship of created people and things. And be careful not to worship a good thing as a god thing for that is a bad thing. ~ Mark Driscoll, #NFDB
1407:It seems to me that it was well said by Madama Serenissima, and insisted on by your reverence, that the Holy Scripture cannot err, and that the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. But I should have in your place added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways; and one error in particular would be most grave and most frequent, if we always stopped short at the literal signification of the words. ~ Galileo Galilei, #NFDB
1408:Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture itself is self-authenticated. . . . Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by any one else's judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1409:What is withdrawal?"
"Let's see, since you know your scripture so well, was that Onan? Yes, that bugger. What he did."
"Spilling his seed on the floor?"
"Yes," continued her husband, "it would be lovely if I could take you and spill my seed somewhere else. Not on the floor, mind you. But perhaps on your very soft belly. Perhaps even on your splendid breasts. and perhaps, if I'm in a really terrible mood, I'll make you swallow it.
- Vere to Elissande ~ Sherry Thomas,#NFDB
1410:According to James 1:22-25, we can experience God’s truth so powerfully that what the Lord wants us to do becomes as plain to us as our face in the morning mirror. But if we do not apply the truth as we meet it, regardless of how wonderful the experience of discovering the truth has been, we deceive ourselves if we think we will be blessed for giving attention to the Bible on those occasions. The one who “will be blessed in his doing” is the one who does what Scripture says. ~ Donald S Whitney, #NFDB
1411:For too long, many in the Church have argued that unity in the body of Christ across ethnic and class lines is a separate issue from the gospel. There has been the suggestion that we can be reconciled to God without being reconciled to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Scripture doesn’t bear that out. We only need to examine what happened when the Church was birthed to see exactly how God intends for this issue of reconciliation within the body of Christ to fall out (p. 33). ~ John M Perkins, #NFDB
1412:we seek for the operation of the Spirit with the purpose of obtaining more power for work, more love in our life, more holiness in the heart, more light on Scripture or on our path. But all these gifts are subordinate to the great purpose of God. The Father bestowed the Spirit on the Son, and the Son gave Him to us for the purpose of revealing and glorifying Christ Jesus in us. The heavenly Christ must become for us a real and living personality who is always with us and in us. ~ Andrew Murray, #NFDB
1413:You will notice in Scripture that Jesus never tried to defend Himself, no matter what He was accused of. Why? Because He knew the truth about Himself, and that was the important thing to Him. He was not addicted to approval from people; therefore, He was free from the tyranny of what they might think of Him or say about Him. He was satisfied by the knowledge He possessed of Himself. He did not need anyone else’s approval except His heavenly Father’s, and He knew He had that. True ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1414:Our unwillingness, or our inability, to thin-slice the texts and then discern the tangents has created widespread fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which, ironically, usually miss the “fundamentals”! If you do not know the direction and the momentum, you will not recognize the backpedaling. You will end up making very accidental themes into “fundamentals” while missing the biggies! One dot is not wisdom: You can prove anything you want from a single Scripture quote. ~ Richard Rohr, #NFDB
1415:What makes a marriage is what you do tomorrow, and the next day, and the following weeks and months and years and decades to come … growing older and weaker in the flesh and wiser and stronger in love. There is a verse of scripture that claims, ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.’ Chances are that you will never be asked to give up your life for your spouse. But, you will have to give up yourself for your spouse every day from now on. ~ Hallee Bridgeman, #NFDB
1416:But Scripture says that before they even entered Egypt, Abraham discussed with Sarah the dangers this place posed for a man with a beautiful wife. "When the Egyptians see you...they will say, "this is his wife"; and they will kill me, but they will let you live," he told her (Gen.12:12) Abraham's motives were selfish and cowardly, and the scheme reflected a serious weakness in faith. But Sarah's devotion to her husband is nonetheless commendable, and God honored her for it. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1417:Two Extremes Scripture and experience warn us that here we have to steer our course between two opposite extremes of disaster. On the one hand, there is the legalistic hypocrisy of Pharisaism (God-serving outward actions proceeding from self-serving inward motives), and on the other hand there is the antinomian idiocy that rattles on about love and liberty, forgetting that the God-given law remains the standard of the God-honoring life. Both Pharisaism and antinomianism are ruinous. ~ J I Packer, #NFDB
1418:2:20 are from the New International Version. All other Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The selection from the poem “Tourist or Pilgrim” by Macrina Wiederkehr is used by permission of Sister Macrina. The Abba Macarius story and memento mori exercise came from Rebecca DeYoung. ~ Sharon Garlough Brown, #NFDB
1419:Dualism is on a collision course with Christianity. The Christian faith has no stock in dualism. Satan may be opposed to God, but he is by no means equal to God. Satan is a creature; God is the Creator. Satan is potent; God is omnipotent. Satan is knowledgeable and crafty; God is omniscient. Satan is localized in his presence; God is omnipresent. Satan is finite; God is infinite.
The list could go on. But it is clear from Scripture that Satan is not an ultimate force in any sense. ~ R C Sproul,#NFDB
1420:In the course of expounding a biblical text the Christian preacher should compare and contrast the Scripture’s message with the foundational beliefs of the culture, which are usually invisible to people inside it, in order to help people understand themselves more fully. If done rightly it can lead people to say to themselves, Oh, so that’s why I tend to think and feel that way. This can be one of the most liberating and catalytic steps in a person’s journey to faith in Christ. ~ Timothy J Keller, #NFDB
1421:Protestantism's evolution away from hierarchy and authority has enormous consequences for America and the world. On the one hand, the democratization of religion runs parallel to political democratization. The king of England, questioning the pope, inspires English subjects to question the king and his Anglican bishops. Such dissent is backed up by a Bible full of handy Scripture arguing for arguing with one's kIng. This is the root of self-government in the English-speaking world. ~ Sarah Vowell, #NFDB
1422:There is no record in Scripture that an angel visited John’s cell to explain the meaning of his persecution. This great, godly man who was the designated forerunner to Jesus went through the same confusing experiences as we. It is comforting to know that John responded in a very human way. He sent a secret message to Jesus from his prison cell, asking “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3). Have you ever felt like asking that question? ~ James C Dobson, #NFDB
1423:The second thing is closely related to it: spokespersons for Christ are those who have knowledge that no one else has. That’s why they are the most important people in society. That is because they bring knowledge of what time and eternity are about. They bring knowledge on which people can base their lives. They bring knowledge that can be communicated to others on the basis of experience and reason and Scripture and grace and work and everything else you want to put in the bag. ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1424:For the believer, the fact that God holds people accountable for what they read in Scripture is reason for rejoicing, for this means we have the privilege of hearing directly from God when we come humbly before His Word. While for the unbeliever this only brings judgment, since God has given us His Word and will hold us accountable to it, for the believer it is reason for celebration, a sure sign of His continued faithfulness to His promise to build His church and bless His people. ~ James R White, #NFDB
1425:The Bible is not considered an accurate, absolute, authoritative, or authoritarian source but a book to be experienced and one experience can be as valid as any other can. Experience, dialogue, feelings, and conversations are equated with Scripture while certitude, authority, and doctrine are to be eschewed! No doctrines are to be absolute and truth or doctrine must be considered only with personal experiences, traditions, historical leaders, etc. The Bible is not an answer book. ~ Brian D McLaren, #NFDB
1426:The church will really change society for the better only when individual believers make their chief concern their own spiritual maturity, which means living in a way that honors God’s commands and glorifies His name. Such a concern inherently includes a firm grasp on Scripture and an understanding that its primary mandate to us is to know Christ and proclaim His gospel. A godly attitude coupled with godly living makes the saving message of the gospel credible to the unsaved. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1427:The true notion of holy, evangelical truths will not live, at least not flourish, where they are divided from a holy conversation. As we learn all to practice, so we learn much by practice. There is no practical science which we can make any great improvement of without an assiduous practice of its theorems; much less is wisdom, such as is the understanding of the mysteries of the Scripture, to be increased, unless a man be practically conversant about the things which it directs unto. ~ John Owen, #NFDB
1428:And God grant that His fire be not quenched! God save us from any smoothing over of these questions in the interests of a hollow pleasantness; God grant that great questions of principle may never rest until they are stettled right! It is out of such times of questioning that great revivals come. God grant that it may be so today! Controversy of the right sort is good; for out of such controversy, as Church history and Scripture alike teach, there comes the salvation of souls. ~ John Gresham Machen, #NFDB
1429:In terms of applicability to today's world, many people are trying to domesticate Scripture so as to get the PC answer, the politically correct answer on a wide range of subjects, whether it's homosexual marriage, or a certain view of government, or a certain view of eschatology or whatever. At the end of the day we want also to encourage the kind of reverent handling of Scripture that wants to be corrected by Scripture, that is more eager to be mastered by Scripture then to master it. ~ D A Carson, #NFDB
1430:I remember preaching on Jesus’s call to the practice of radical forgiveness and being challenged by a church member who said, “Yeah, but the Bible says, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ ” I had to explain to him that a Christian can’t cite Moses to silence Jesus. When we try to embrace Biblicism by placing all authority in a flat reading of Scripture and giving the Old Testament equal authority with Christ, God thunders from heaven, “No! This is my beloved Son! Listen to him! ~ Brian Zahnd, #NFDB
1431:The amazing thing is that throughout Scripture and history it seems God has chosen the most seemingly unlikely and unqualified people to fulfill his plan and purpose on the earth. Most often, the response of those people has been to insist on their own unworthiness. And if they don’t-the people around them may do so, loudly and shrilly. And therein lies a danger: If we allow other people to tell us what we are and are not qualified to do, we will limit what God wants to do with us. ~ Christine Caine, #NFDB
1432:Colonel Matterson reading from wrinkled scripture of that long yellow hand:
The flag is America. America is the plum. The peach. The watermelon. America is the gumdrop. The pumpkin seed. America is television.
Now, the cross is Mexico. Mexico is the walnut. The hazelnut. The acorn. Mexico is the rainbow. The rainbow is wooden. Mexico is wooden.
Now, the green sheep is Canada Canada is the fir tree. The wheat field. The calendar.
The night is the Pacific Ocean. ~ Ken Kesey,#NFDB
1433:If there were even one spark of evidence from antiquity that Jesus even may have gotten married, then as a historian, I would have to weigh this evidence against the total absence of such information in either Scripture or the early church traditions. But there is no such spark-not a scintilla of evidence-anywhere in historical sources. Even where one might expect to find such claims in the bizarre, second-century, apocryphal gospels...there is no reference that Jesus ever got married. ~ Paul L Maier, #NFDB
1434:Religion is no dry morality; no slavish, punctilious conforming of actions to a hard law. Religion is not right thinking alone, nor right emotion alone, nor right action alone. Religion is still less the semblance of these in formal profession, or simulated feeling, or apparent rectitude. Religion is not nominal connection with the Christian community, nor participation in its ordinances and its worship. But to be godly is to be godlike. ~ Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture "Galatians", #NFDB
1435:We have more English Bibles than there are English-speaking people in the entire country.” Matron had turned from the window and followed his gaze. “Polish Bibles, Czech Bibles, Italian Bibles, French Bibles, Swedish Bibles. I think some are from your Sunday-school children. We need medicine and food. But we get Bibles.” Matron smiled. “I always wondered if the good people who send us Bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate. ~ Abraham Verghese, #NFDB
1436:And all of this then enables Webb to say that Paul’s appeal to the creation of Adam prior to Eve is not proof of a transcultural ethical standard. But if a theological argument has to deny significant portions of Scripture for its support, it should surely be rejected by evangelicals who are subject to the authority of the entire Bible as the Word of God. Webb’s three ways of denying the historicity of Adam’s creation before Eve in Genesis 2 are three steps on the path toward liberalism. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1437:And so I sit on the dunes in my carefully mismatched clothes, hour after hour, day after day, frozen in my looking back. 'Do not look behind you...lest you be swept away.' That is what scripture say. Only there is nowhere for me to look but back. No future. No redemption. Like Lot's wife, I am turned to salt, my tired eyes trained on the blue-gray horizon, where sea meets sky, where my yesterday's met my tomorrows, a ragtag eccentric, watching and waiting for something that never comes. ~ Barbara Davis, #NFDB
1438:Christians often equate holiness with activism and spiritual disciplines. And while it's true that activism is often the outgrowth of holiness and spiritual disciplines are necessary for the cultivation of holiness, the pattern of piety in the Scripture is more explicitly about our character. We put off sin and put on righteousness. We put to death the deeds of the flesh and put on Christ. To use the older language, we pursue mortification of the old man and the vivification of the new. ~ Kevin DeYoung, #NFDB
1439:I confess to your Charity that I have learned to yield this respect and honour only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. And if in these writings I am perplexed by anything which appears to me opposed to truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator has not caught the meaning of what was said, or I myself have failed to understand it (Ibid., 82.1.3). ~ Norman L Geisler, #NFDB
1440:Thus it is written that the messiah would suffer and rise again on the third day," Jesus instructs his disciples (Luke 24:44–46). Except that nowhere is any such thing written: not in the Law of Moses, not in the prophets, not in the Psalms. In the entire history of Jewish thought there is not a single line of scripture that says the messiah is to suffer, die, and rise again on the third day, which may explain why Jesus does not bother to cite any scripture to back up his incredible claim. ~ Reza Aslan, #NFDB
1441:CALLING” TRUMPS SCRIPTURE Some evangelical feminists put a subjective sense of “calling” above the Bible Another liberal tendency to reject the authority of Scripture is seen when egalitarians claim that, if a woman has a genuine call from God for pastoral ministry, we have no right to oppose that call, and that call takes priority over any opposing argument that people might raise from Scripture. This argument is often made by women who believe that God has called them to become pastors. ~ Wayne Grudem, #NFDB
1442:Jesus has already paid the penalty. The work has been done. Are we to live good lives? Are we to do the best we can? Are we to think of others and live in peace? Of course! But to earn our salvation? Scripture is clear that we are saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves; not of works, lest anyone should boast. We live our lives in as righteous a manner as we can in thankful response to that priceless gift of God, our salvation, freely paid for on the cross by Christ himself. ~ Tim LaHaye, #NFDB
1443:In short, when it comes to the nature of suffering and blessing, the Bible does not speak with a single voice. There is not a biblical view of theodicy. There are biblical views of theodicy. And the people who wrote and assembled Scripture seemed perfectly fine with that unresolved tension. Job’s friends make the mistake of assuming that what is true in one context must be true in every context—a common error among modern Bible readers who like to trawl the text for universal answers. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1444:These two visions of Christianity—one emphasizing the next world and what we must believe and do in order to get there, the other emphasizing God’s passion for the transformation of this world—are very different. Yet they use the same language and share the same sacred scripture, the same Bible. What separates them is how the shared language is understood—whether within the framework of heaven-and-hell Christianity or within the framework of God’s passion for transformation in this world. ~ Marcus J Borg, #NFDB
1445:To take up another issue, I don’t understand how Mohler can claim to be a confessional evangelical and yet criticize Fuller Seminary for a doctrinal statement on Scripture that looks remarkably like what the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) and London Baptist Confession (LBC) say about Scripture. If Fuller was so reprehensible for changing “free from all error” to “trustworthy record,” then what are we to say about the WCF and LBC, which do not ever say that Scripture is “without error”? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1446:As I believe I have said, everyone in prison is an innocent man. Oh, they read the scripture the way those holy rollers on TV read the Book of Revelations. They were the victims of judges with hearts of stone and balls to match, or incompetent lawyers, or police frame-ups, or bad luck. They read the scripture, but you can see a different scripture in their faces. Most cons are a low sort, no good to themselves or anyone else, and their worst luck was that their mothers carried them to term. ~ Stephen King, #NFDB
1447:Sir it did not belong to me to examine the matter, since I knew full well that I should not be a judge of the matter for it belongs only to a judge to study illam Sacre Scripture clausam where Holy Job says “Causam quam nesciebam diligentissime investigabam”.’ So men were inclined, and able, to break into Latin when addressing one another. Latin was also used for the ruder moments. Of two men in close alliance it was written that singuli caccant uno ano or ‘they shit out of the same arse’. ~ Peter Ackroyd, #NFDB
1448:Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music. ~ Sam Harris, #NFDB
1449:In short, when it comes to the nature of suffering and blessing, the Bible does not speak with a single voice. There is not a biblical view of theodicy. There are biblical views of theodicy. And the people who wrote and assembled Scripture seemed perfectly fine with that unresolved tension. Job’s friends make the mistake of assuming that what is true in one context must be true in every context���a common error among modern Bible readers who like to trawl the text for universal answers. ~ Rachel Held Evans, #NFDB
1450:Our problem in evangelism is not that we don’t have enough information—it is that we don’t know how to be ourselves. We forget we are called to be witnesses to what we have seen and know, not to what we don’t know. The key on our part is authenticity and obedience, not a doctorate in theology. We haven’t grasped that it really is OK for us to be who we are when we are with seekers, even if we don’t have all the answers to their questions or if our knowledge of Scripture is limited. ~ Rebecca Manley Pippert, #NFDB
1451:[Milton's] argument is (a) St. Augustine was wrong in thinking God's only purpose in giving Adam a female, instead of a male, companion, was copulation. For (b) there is a "peculiar comfort" in the society of man and woman "beside, (i.e. in addition to, apart from) the genial bed"; and (c) we know from Scripture that something analogous to "play" or "slackening the cords" occurs even in God. That is why the Song of Songs describes a thousand raptures...far on the hither side of carnal enjoyment. ~ C S Lewis, #NFDB
1452:Do you want to be safe from the influence, ways, and lusts of the world and the flesh (I John 2:16)? From the sins which so easily entangles us (Hebrews 12:1)? Then delight in yourself in the Lord, in His provision, in His Word. Faithfully feed on the things that possess true substance and real meaning. When you remember that "all Scripture is given by inspiration by God and is profitable" (2 Timothy 3:16) and partake of such divine substance, then you are fed, you are led and you are safe! ~ Elizabeth George, #NFDB
1453:Scripture says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." I call on every American family and the family of America to observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, honoring the memory of the thousands of victims of these brutal attacks and comforting those who lost loved ones. We will persevere through this national tragedy and personal loss. In time, we will find healing and recovery; and, in the face of all this evil, we remain strong and united, "one Nation under God." ~ George W Bush, #NFDB
1454:Yet before I answer, I should like my readers again to be warned that this cavil is not hurled against me but against the Holy Spirit, who surely put this confession in the mouth of the holy man Job, “As it pleased God, so was it done” [Job 1:21, cf. Vg.]. When he had been robbed by thieves, in their unjust acts and evil-doing toward him he recognized God’s just scourge. What does Scripture say elsewhere? Eli’s sons did not obey their father because God willed to slay them [I Sam. 2:25]. Another ~ John Calvin, #NFDB
1455:Lived religion is a very different thing from strict textual analysis. Very few people of any faith live their lives as literalist interpretations of scripture. Many people have little or no knowledge of scripture at all. Many others who have more knowledge choose to interpret what they know in ways that are convenient, or that fit their own moral sense of what is good. Still others view their religion as a kind of self-accepted ethnicity, but live lives utterly divorced from any sense of faith. ~ Mohsin Hamid, #NFDB
1456:For a time he read his Neil Diamond bible by the firelight. He paused, twisting nervously at his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought.
"Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from," he murmured at last, trying out a new proverb. "Although there may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement. ~ Joe Hill,#NFDB
1457:If we fully trust that God is as beautiful as he reveals himself to be on the cross, we must regard the ugly surface appearance of these portraits to reflect the sinful way his people imagined God, not the way God actually is. But when we by faith look through the ugly surface of these portraits, we can see God stooping out of love to meet his people where they are at and to bear their sin, which is why in Scripture he takes on an ugly surface appearance that reflects the ugliness of their sin. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1458:So in this case, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering' - then you should abandon them. ~ Gautama Buddha, #NFDB
1459:I certainly admire your attitude,” Talkative said. “For you speak with conviction; and I might add, what else is so pleasant and so profitable as to talk about the things of God? For instance, if a man delights in such wonderful things as that, what could be more pleasurable to talk about than the history or mystery of such things? Or if a man loves to talk about miracles, wonders, or signs, where else will he find such things so delightfully recorded and so sweetly penned as in the Holy Scripture? ~ John Bunyan, #NFDB
1460:Third, this revelation of the purpose of God in Scripture should be sought primarily in its didactic rather than its descriptive parts. More precisely, we should look for it in the teaching of Jesus, and in the sermons and writings of the apostles, rather than in the purely narrative portions of the Acts. What is described in Scripture as having happened to others is not necessarily intended for us, whereas what is promised to us we are to appropriate, and what is commanded to us we are to obey. ~ John R W Stott, #NFDB
1461:Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture.
Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music. ~ Sam Harris,#NFDB
1462:Scripture calls you a hiding place, a mighty tower, a shield to those who put their trust in you. Yet sometimes evil penetrates your defenses. Helen bit her lower lip. I never understood why. She lifted her chin and squinted at the sky. But deep in my soul, I believe you are good. I believe you are strong. And I believe that I don't have to understand everything. I just have to trust. So that's what I'm going to do. Trust you to take care of my friend. Please be her shield. And don't let evil win. ~ Karen Witemeyer, #NFDB
1463:Scripture is vast, and people can pick and choose what they emphasize, and so for hundreds of years verses that said that you are to welcome the stranger, that with Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, we've broken down the dividing wall with the original church, where Christians were first called Christian was the church of Antioch in which for the first time you had Jews, Gentiles of all different ethnicities come together as one people. That's when they were called Christians. ~ Michael Emerson, #NFDB
1464:The Christian life is the lifelong practice of attending to the details of congruence—congruence between ends and means, congruence between what we do and the way we do it, congruence between what is written in Scripture and our living out what is written, congruence between a ship and its prow, congruence between preaching and living, congruence between the sermon and what is lived in both preacher and congregation, the congruence of the Word made flesh in Jesus with what is lived in our flesh. ~ Eugene H Peterson, #NFDB
1465:Although their access to scholarly tools was primitive compared to what is available in our day, their method of biblical interpretation was in some ways more sophisticated and certainly more psychologically astute, in that they were better able to fathom the complex, integrative, and transformative qualities of revelation. Their approach was far less narcissistic than our own tends to be, in that their goal when reading scripture was to see Christ in every verse, and not a mirror image of themselves. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
1466:Adam was the representative head and archetype for the whole human race. But remember, although Eve was given a subordinate role, she remained Adam's spiritual and intellectual equal. She was his helper, neither his supervisor nor his slave. By calling her Adam's helper, Scripture stresses the mutuality and the complementary nature of the partnership. Eve was in no way inferior to her husband, but she was to her husband, but she was nonetheless given a role that was subordinate to his leadership. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1467:He is here with me in this chamber of mine: I must not trifle. He leans over me, he puts his finger along the lines, I can see his pierced hand: I will read it as in his presence. I will read it, knowing that he is the substance of it,—that he is the proof of this book as well as the writer of it; the sum of this Scripture as well as the author of it. That is the way for true students to become wise! You will get at the soul of Scripture when you can keep Jesus with you while you are reading. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, #NFDB
1468:Moreover, his view was precisely the one that many English Protestants feared would result from a careful analysis of the New Testament text, namely that the wide-ranging variations in the tradition showed that Christian faith could not be based solely on scripture (the Protestant Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura), since the text was unstable and unreliable. Instead, according to this view, the Catholics must be right that faith required the apostolic tradition preserved in the (Catholic) church. ~ Bart D Ehrman, #NFDB
1469:The work of the dervish community was to open the heart, to explore the mystery of union, to fiercely search for and try to say truth, and to celebrate the glory and difficulty of being in a human incarnation. To these ends, they used silence and song, poetry, meditation, stories, discourse, and jokes. They fasted and feasted. They walked together and watched the animals. Animal behavior was a kind of scripture they studied. They cooked, and they worked in the garden. They tended orchards and vineyards. ~ Coleman Barks, #NFDB
1470:Trinity!! Higher than any being, any divinity, any goodness! Guide of Christians in the wisdom of heaven! Lead us up beyond unknowing and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture, where the mysteries of God's Word lie simple, absolute and unchangeable in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence. Amid the deepest shadow they pour overwhelming light on what is most manifest. Amid the wholly unsensed and unseen they completely fill our sightless minds with treasures beyond all beauty. ~ Pope Dionysius, #NFDB
1471:Here is Martin Luther thinking and standing in the power of God before his examiners at Worms: “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.” The earliest printed version of his statement added the famous words: “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”4 ~ Dallas Willard, #NFDB
1472:I have serious problems with fundamentalist Christians and their creationist theories. Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the whole creation process occurred in six twenty-four hour days. My skepticism is due, in part, to the fact that the Bible says that the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:16-19). I have a hard time figuring how twenty-four hour days could have been measured before that. ~ Tony Campolo, #NFDB
1473:The mystery of Scripture is so abstruse and profound that no man or angel could have known it, had it not been divinely revealed. That eternity—should be born; that he who thunders in the heavens—should cry in the cradle; that he who rules the stars—should suck the breasts; that the Prince of Life—should die; that the Lord of Glory—should be put to shame; that sin should be punished to the full—yet pardoned to the full; who could ever have conceived of such a mystery, had not the Scripture revealed it to us? ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1474:all the misguided harmful messages of my religious upbringing, I still cherish that I was raised in a family where things mattered. Our lives bore a continual inflection of faith. I belonged to a community that connected the events in our lives to the divine. We searched ancient scripture for meaning and guidance. We sang our hearts out. We called each other “brother” and “sister.” We belonged to each other. I learned that from the church of my past, and I bring all of it into the church of my present. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1475:He has … exalted those of humble estate”: it’s another recurring truth of Scripture. Consider the following verses: Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matt. 23:12) Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. (Luke 18:14) Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. (James 4:10) Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. (1 Peter 5:6) ~ Matt Chandler, #NFDB
1476:I believe I have stumbled on at least one possibility: if you are compelled to tell others virtually everything you learn from God, you might be a teacher! My friends who have other spiritual gifts can learn something from God without feeling the overwhelming need to share it with everyone they know. Not me! The second I receive the least spiritual insight or learn anything at all about the practicality of Scripture slapped on the hot pavement of real life, I want to make the world’s biggest conference call. ~ Beth Moore, #NFDB
1477:The Bible is not a book like any other. It makes a claim that God spoke and speaks through its message. It argues that as his creatures, we are accountable to him for what he has revealed. The trustworthiness of Scripture points to its authority as well. Scripture is far more than a history book, as good and trustworthy as that history is. It is a book that calls us to examine our lives and relationship to God. Beyond the fascinating history, it contains vital and life-transforming truths about God and us. ~ Darrell Bock, #NFDB
1478:Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.’” Caleb nodded. “From the Book of John.” “Yes,” she said quietly. “It’s one of my favorite verses of Scripture. In times of stress, I repeat that verse, as many times as needed. It never fails to help keep me calm. I’ve always found that giving Christ complete authority over my life brings an unbelievable freedom. The kind of freedom that nothing, or no one else, can. ~ JoAnn Durgin, #NFDB
1479:Pain offers an arresting context that humbles and deepens our perspective. In a society that holds up doing an achieving as primary, we all need to take a cue from Emily [Dickinson] to withdraw in moments when we feel anguished. Her existence, characterized by quiet patience and self-possession, expresses the Scripture in Luke 21:19: "In you patience, you possess your soul." We are all the richer when we stop, like Emily, to find a quiet place to explore the layered life that lies beneath the surface. ~ Helen LaKelly Hunt, #NFDB
1480:The working of miracles is old and out-dated; to teach the people is too laborious; to interpret scripture is to invade the prerogative of the schoolmen; to pray is too idle; to shed tears is cowardly and unmanly; to fast is too mean and sordid; to be easy and familiar is beneath the grandeur of him, who, without being sued to and intreated, will scarce give princes the honour of kissing his toe; finally, to die for religion is too self-denying; and to be crucified as their Lord of Life, is base and ignominious. ~ Erasmus, #NFDB
1481:Calvin was able to assert “All truth is God’s truth” while also asserting the doctrine of sola Scriptura, because the doctrine of sola Scriptura does not say that all truths are found in the Bible.5 The doctrine of sola Scriptura, in a nutshell, asserts that Scripture is our sole source of normative, infallible apostolic revelation, and that “all things necessary for salvation and concerning faith and life are taught in the Bible with enough clarity that the ordinary believer can find them there and understand. ~ Anonymous, #NFDB
1482:As soon as your mind has experienced what the scripture says: "How gracious is the Lord," it will be so touched with that delight that it will no longer want to leave the place of the heart. It will echo the words of the apostle Peter: "How good it is to be here." [1735.jpg] -- from The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, Translated by John Anthony McGuckin
~ Symeon the New Theologian, As soon as your mind has experienced
,#NFDB
1483:I find it expressed in various passages of Scripture that the fact that God knows things while in a state of possibility, when their existence belongs to the future, does not change the nature of the possible in any way; that nature remains unchanged; and the knowledge of the realisation of one of several possibilities does not yet effect that realisation. This is likewise one of the fundamental principles of the Law of Moses concerning which there is no doubt nor any dispute. ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1484:Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. However, because this book is designed for an evangelical audience, which in principle holds that Scripture is the final arbiter of theological truth (sola scriptura), and because these essays are brief and introductory in nature, the emphasis in most essays is on defending each position biblically. We encourage teachers and students to integrate more thoroughly considerations of tradition, reason, and experience as they critically evaluate various positions. 5. ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1485:For all the misguided harmful messages of my religious upbringing, I still cherish that I was raised in a family where things mattered. Our lives bore a continual inflection of faith. I belonged to a community that connected the events in our lives to the divine. We searched ancient scripture for meaning and guidance. We sang our hearts out. We called each other “brother” and “sister.” We belonged to each other. I learned that from the church of my past, and I bring all of it into the church of my present. ~ Nadia Bolz Weber, #NFDB
1486:Men and women, though equal in essence, were designed for different roles. Women are in no sense intellectually or spiritually inferior to men, but they were quite clearly created for a distinctive purpose. In the economy of church and family, the Bible says women should be subordinate to the authority of men. Yet scripture also recognizes that in a completely different sense, women are exalted above men--because they are the living and breathing manifestation of the glory of a race made in God's image. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1487:Gelernter says, “If there is to be justice in the world, America must create it.”17 When I read things like that, I usually have my jumpin’ Jehoshaphat reaction. Did he really say that? Yes, he did, but the reason he is able to get away with it is because of the massive loss of confidence and faith that Christians have in Scripture. How can we be appalled when he says that if we are not willing to counter immediately with, “No, if there is to be justice in the world, and in this nation, Jesus must do it”? The ~ Douglas Wilson, #NFDB
1488:The unique contribution of Bible exposition is its substantial enhancement of the listeners' comprehension of Scripture's intent. Those who listen to expository preaching have opportunity to submit to the Holy Spirit who first inspired the text as He now illumines that text to them. This is the best avenue for building up the saints. The New Testament puts heavy emphasis on using the mind as the principal avenue to Christian growth (for example, Rom. 12:2; 1 Pet. 1:13), so the preacher should do the same. ~ John F MacArthur Jr, #NFDB
1489:They believe the canon of Scripture is closed and that it alone is the final authority for what Christians are to believe and how they are to live as kingdom people. New doctrines cannot be revealed through prophetic words, and no prophetic words of direction, guidance, or edification belong on the same level as Scripture. Paul taught that Christians are not to “despise prophecy,” but neither are they to uncritically accept it. Rather, they are to test it and hold fast to that which is good (1 Thess. 5:20–21). ~ Gregory A Boyd, #NFDB
1490:If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as safeguards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps. ~ Lewis Carroll, #NFDB
1491:Proud With The Spoils Of Royal Cully
Proud with the spoils of royal cully,
With false pretence to wit and parts,
She swaggers like a batter'd bully
To try the tempers of men's hearts.
Tho' she appears as gay and fine
As jet and gems and paint can make her,
She ne'er shall win a heart like mine -The devil or Sir Davy take her.
Her bed is like the Scripture feast,
Where none who were invited came,
So disappointed of her guest,
She took up with the blind and lame.
~ Charles Sackville,#NFDB
1492:Real progress in the Christian life is not gauged by our knowledge of scripture, our church attendance, time in prayer, or even our witnessing (although it isn't less than these things) Maturity in the Christian life is measured by only one test: how much closer to his character have we become? the result of the Spirit's work is more not more activity. No, the results of his work are in in our quality of life, they are "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. ~ Elyse M Fitzpatrick, #NFDB
1493:Scripture is profitable for training in righteousness. No one succeeds at the highest level in sports without working out. No one makes it in music without lots of practice. No one excels in scholarship without years of study. And no one makes it far in the school of holiness without hours and days and years in the word. You and I simply will not mature as quickly, minister as effectively, or live as gloriously without immersing ourselves in the Scriptures. We need the Bible if we are to be competent Christians. ~ Kevin DeYoung, #NFDB
1494:Divine Scripture is wont to frame, as it were, allurements for children from the things which are found in the creature; whereby, according to their measure, and as it were by steps, the affections of the weak may be moved to seek those things that are above, and to leave those things that are below. But the same Scripture rarely employs those things which are spoken properly of God, and are not found in any creature; as, for instance, that which was said to Moses, I am that I am; and, I Am has sent me to you." ~ Saint Augustine, #NFDB
1495:If you want converts, surely one normal person is worth all the half-wits in the world!” “May I tell you the truth Lieutenant Rahms? The truth, Sir, is that God's viewpoint is sometimes different from ours. So different that we could not even guess at it unless He had given us a Book which tells us such things. In the scripture I learn that God values us not for our strength or our brains, but simply because He has made us. Who knows, in His eyes, a half-wit may be worth more than a watchmaker. Or a Lieutenant. ~ Corrie ten Boom, #NFDB
1496:It is understandable how some people could give way to this kind of pervasive pessimism, but we speak of a gospel which brings good tidings of great joy and this must be reflected in our lives, if we are to be believable especially as we suggest to others that there is, in fact, not only a better way, but also the way. Scriptures that speak of man as a being who "might have joy" have more impact when falling from the lips or pens of men and women whose lives give fresh evidence of the validity of that scripture. ~ Neal A Maxwell, #NFDB
1497:This idea is confirmed in Scripture; it is distinctly stated that one sole thing, fear of God, is the object of the whole Law with its affirmative and negative precepts, its promises and its historical examples, for it is said, "If thou wilt not observe to do all the words of this Law that are written in this book, that thou mayest fear this glorious and fearful name, the Lord thy God" (Deut. xxviii. 58) This is one of the two purposes of the Akedah (sacrifice or binding of Isaac). ~ Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), #NFDB
1498:In past centuries, preachers, teachers, and apologists could at least count on a basic cultural context that supplied some degree of meaning for religious language. In church, worshippers had the opportunity for imaginative engagement in many different modes, as they would encounter Christian ideas not only in the Scripture readings and in the sermons, but also in stained glass windows, statues, icons, works of art, clerical vestments, gestures (such as genuflections and crossings), and the symbolism of the liturgy. ~ Holly Ordway, #NFDB
1499:For example, when the preacher in a service tells the audience to open to a certain passage of Scripture, we love to open our Bible and be proud of how we have it marked up in all different colors. We may have Scriptures underlined, with handwritten notes beside them. We secretly hope the people around us will notice and think well of us because we appear to have studied quite a lot. We want people to think we are spiritual, but we must realize that God is not impressed with how many Scriptures we have underlined. All ~ Joyce Meyer, #NFDB
1500:I do not believe a person can take two issues from Scripture, those being abortion and gay marriage, and adhere to them as sins, then neglect much of the rest and call himself a fundamentalist or even a conservative. The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest. ~ Donald Miller, #NFDB
74 Integral Yoga
72 Yoga
47 Christianity
27 Philosophy
13 Poetry
12 Occultism
5 Psychology
5 Baha i Faith
3 Kabbalah
3 Hinduism
2 Mysticism
2 Fiction
1 Science
1 Mythology
1 Alchemy
66 Sri Aurobindo
46 Sri Ramakrishna
30 Saint Augustine of Hippo
27 The Mother
23 Nolini Kanta Gupta
18 Aldous Huxley
17 Satprem
15 Swami Krishnananda
9 Swami Vivekananda
8 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Carl Jung
7 Anonymous
5 Jorge Luis Borges
5 Baha u llah
5 Aleister Crowley
4 Saint John of Climacus
4 Plato
3 William Wordsworth
3 Swami Sivananda Saraswati
3 Rabbi Moses Luzzatto
3 Lalla
3 George Van Vrekhem
2 Patanjali
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 James George Frazer
2 H P Lovecraft
2 Friedrich Nietzsche
2 Franz Bardon
45 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
21 City of God
18 The Perennial Philosophy
15 The Study and Practice of Yoga
15 The Bible
12 The Synthesis Of Yoga
10 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
9 Talks
9 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
9 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
6 The Secret Doctrine
5 The Life Divine
5 The Blue Cliff Records
5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
5 Savitri
5 Magick Without Tears
5 Letters On Yoga II
5 Kena and Other Upanishads
5 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
5 Bhakti-Yoga
4 Vedic and Philological Studies
4 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
4 Essays On The Gita
4 Essays Divine And Human
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
4 Aion
4 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
3 Wordsworth - Poems
3 The Book of Certitude
3 Preparing for the Miraculous
3 Labyrinths
3 Isha Upanishad
3 General Principles of Kabbalah
3 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
3 Agenda Vol 04
2 Twilight of the Idols
2 The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma
2 The Human Cycle
2 The Golden Bough
2 Raja-Yoga
2 Questions And Answers 1954
2 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
2 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
2 Mysterium Coniunctionis
2 Lovecraft - Poems
2 Letters On Poetry And Art
2 Initiation Into Hermetics
2 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
2 Amrita Gita
2 Agenda Vol 07
2 Agenda Vol 03
0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
The Christian missionaries gave the finishing touch to the process of transformation. They ridiculed as relics of a barbarous age the images and rituals of the Hindu religion. They tried to persuade India that the teachings of her saints and seers were the cause of her downfall, that her Vedas, Puranas, and other scriptures were filled with superstition. Christianity, they maintained, had given the white races position and power in this world and assurance of happiness in the next; therefore Christianity was the best of all religions. Many intelligent young Hindus became converted. The man in the street was confused. The majority of the educated grew materialistic in their mental outlook. Everyone living near Calcutta or the other strong-holds of Western culture, even those who attempted to cling to the orthodox traditions of Hindu society, became infected by the new uncertainties and the new beliefs.
But the soul of India was to be resuscitated through a spiritual awakening. We hear the first call of this renascence in the spirited retort of the young Gadadhar: "Brother, what shall I do with a mere bread-winning education?"
--
Hindu priests are thoroughly acquainted with the rites of worship, but few of them are aware of their underlying significance. They move their hands and limbs mechanically, in obedience to the letter of the scriptures, and repeat the holy mantras like parrots. But from the very beginning the inner meaning of these rites was revealed to Sri Ramakrishna. As he sat facing the image, a strange transformation came over his mind. While going through the prescribed ceremonies, he would actually find himself encircled by a wall of fire protecting him and the place of worship from unspiritual vibrations, or he would feel the rising of the mystic Kundalini through the different centres of the body. The glow on his face, his deep absorption, and the intense atmosphere of the temple impressed everyone who saw him worship the Deity.
Ramkumar wanted Sri Ramakrishna to learn the intricate rituals of the worship of Kali. To become a priest of Kali one must undergo a special form of initiation from a qualified guru, and for Sri Ramakrishna a suitable brahmin was found. But no sooner did the brahmin speak the holy word in his ear than Sri Ramakrishna, overwhelmed with emotion, uttered a loud cry and plunged into deep concentration.
Mathur begged Sri Ramakrishna to take charge of the worship in the Kali temple. The young priest pleaded his incompetence and his ignorance of the scriptures. Mathur insisted that devotion and sincerity would more than compensate for any lack of formal knowledge and make the Divine Mother manifest Herself through the image. In the end, Sri Ramakrishna had to yield to Mathur's request. He became the priest of Kali.
In 1856 Ramkumar breathed his last. Sri Ramakrishna had already witnessed more than one death in the family. He had come to realize how impermanent is life on earth. The more he was convinced of the transitory nature of worldly things, the more eager he became to realize God, the Fountain of Immortality.
--
Naturally the temple officials took him for an insane person. His worldly well-wishers brought him to skilled physicians; but no-medicine could cure his malady. Many a time he doubted his sanity himself. For he had been sailing across an uncharted sea, with no earthly guide to direct him. His only haven of security was the Divine Mother Herself. To Her he would pray: "I do not know what these things are. I am ignorant of mantras and the scriptures. Teach me, Mother, how to realize Thee. Who else can help me? Art Thou not my only refuge and guide?" And the sustaining presence of the Mother never failed him in his distress or doubt. Even those who criticized his conduct were greatly impressed with his purity, guilelessness, truthfulness, integrity, and holiness. They felt an uplifting influence in his presence.
It is said that samadhi, or trance, no more than opens the portal of the spiritual realm. Sri Ramakrishna felt an unquenchable desire to enjoy God in various ways. For his meditation he built a place in the northern wooded section of the temple garden. With Hriday's help he planted there five sacred trees. The spot, known as the Panchavati, became the scene of many of his visions.
--
In 1858 there came to Dakshineswar a cousin of Sri Ramakrishna, Haladhari by name, who was to remain there about eight years. On account of Sri Ramakrishna's indifferent health, Mathur appointed this man to the office of priest in the Kali temple. He was a complex character, versed in the letter of the scriptures, but hardly aware of their spirit. He loved to participate in hair-splitting theological discussions and, by the measure of his own erudition, he proceeded to gauge Sri Ramakrishna. An orthodox brahmin, he thoroughly disapproved of his cousin's unorthodox actions, but he was not unimpressed by Sri Ramakrishna's purity of life, ecstatic love of God, and yearning for realization.
One day Haladhari upset Sri Ramakrishna with the statement that God is incomprehensible to the human mind. Sri Ramakrishna has described the great moment of doubt when he wondered whether his visions had really misled him: "With sobs I prayed to the Mother, 'Canst Thou have the heart to deceive me like this because I am a fool?' A stream of tears flowed from my eyes. Shortly afterwards I saw a volume of mist rising from the floor and filling the space before me. In the midst of it there appeared a face with flowing beard, calm, highly expressive, and fair. Fixing its gaze steadily upon me, it said solemnly, 'Remain in bhavamukha, on the threshold of relative consciousness.' This it repeated three times and then it gently disappeared in the mist, which itself dissolved. This vision reassured me."
--
Sri Ramakrishna welcomed the visitor with great respect, described to her his experiences and visions, and told her of people's belief that these were symptoms of madness. She listened to him attentively and said: "My son, everyone in this world is mad. Some are mad for money, some for creature comforts, some for name and fame; and you are mad for God." She assured him that he was passing through the almost unknown spiritual experience described in the scriptures as mahabhava, the most exalted rapture of divine love. She told him that this extreme exaltation had been described as manifesting itself through nineteen physical symptoms, including the shedding of tears, a tremor of the body, horripilation, perspiration, and a burning sensation. The Bhakti scriptures, she declared, had recorded only two instances of the experience, namely, those of Sri Radha and Sri Chaitanya.
Very soon a tender relationship sprang up between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmani, she looking upon him as the Baby Krishna, and he upon her as mother. Day after day she watched his ecstasy during the kirtan and meditation, his samadhi, his mad yearning; and she recognized in him a power to transmit spirituality to others. She came to the conclusion that such things were not possible for an ordinary devotee, not even for a highly developed soul. Only an Incarnation of God was capable of such spiritual manifestations. She proclaimed openly that Sri Ramakrishna, like Sri Chaitanya, was an Incarnation of God.
--
Two famous pundits of the time were invited: Vaishnavcharan, the leader of the Vaishnava society, and Gauri. The first to arrive was Vaishnavcharan, with a distinguished company of scholars and devotees. The Brahmani, like a proud mother, proclaimed her view before him and supported it with quotations from the scriptures. As the pundits discussed the deep theological question, Sri Ramakrishna, perfectly indifferent to everything happening around him, sat in their midst like a child, immersed in his own thoughts, sometimes smiling, sometimes chewing a pinch of spices from a pouch, or again saying to Vaishnavcharan with a nudge: "Look here. Sometimes I feel like this, too." Presently Vaishnavcharan arose to declare himself in total agreement with the view of the Brahmani. He declared that Sri Ramakrishna had undoubtedly experienced mahabhava and that this was the certain sign of the rare manifestation of God in a man. The people assembled
there, especially the officers of the temple garden, were struck dumb. Sri Rama- krishna said to Mathur, like a boy: "Just fancy, he too says so! Well, I am glad to learn that after all it is not a disease."
--
Gauri said: "I feel it in my heart and I have the scriptures on my side. I am ready to prove it to anyone who challenges me."
"Well," Sri Ramakrishna said, "it is you who say so; but, believe me, I know nothing about it."
--
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
--- TANTRA
--
Sri Ramakrishna, as the monkey Hanuman, had already worshipped God as his Master. Through his devotion to Kali he had worshipped God as his Mother. He was now to take up the other relationships prescribed by the Vaishnava scriptures.
--- RAMLALA
--
The Vaishnava scriptures advise one to propitiate Radha and obtain her grace in order to realize Sri Krishna. So the tortured devotee now turned his prayer to her. Within a short time he enjoyed her blessed vision. He saw and felt the figure of Radha disappearing into his own body.
He said later on: "It is impossible to describe the heavenly beauty and sweetness of Radha. Her very appearance showed that she had completely forgotten herself in her passionate attachment to Krishna. Her complexion was a light yellow."
--
One day, listening to a recitation of the Bhagavata on the verandah of the Radhakanta temple, he fell into a divine mood and saw the enchanting form of Krishna. He perceived the luminous rays issuing from Krishna's Lotus Feet in the form of a stout rope, which touched first the Bhagavata and then his own chest, connecting all three — God, the scripture, and the devotee. "After this vision", he used to say, "I came to realize that Bhagavan, Bhakta, and Bhagavata — God, Devotee, and scripture — are in reality one and the same."
--- VEDANTA
--
Sri Ramakrishna used to say that when the flower blooms the bees come to it for honey of their own accord. Now many souls began to visit Dakshineswar to satisfy their spiritual hunger. He, the devotee and aspirant, became the Master. Gauri, the great scholar who had been one of the first to proclaim Sri Ramakrishna an Incarnation of God, paid the Master a visit in 1870 and with the Master's blessings renounced the world. Narayan Shastri, another great pundit, who had mastered the six systems of Hindu philosophy and had been offered a lucrative post by the Maharaja of Jaipur, met the Master and recognized in him one who had realized in life those ideals which he himself had encountered merely in books. Sri Ramakrishna initiated Narayan Shastri, at his earnest request, into the life of sannyas. Pundit Padmalochan, the court pundit of the Maharaja of Burdwan, well known for his scholarship in both the Vedanta and the Nyaya systems of philosophy, accepted the Master as an Incarnation of God. Krishnakishore, a Vedantist scholar, became devoted to the Master. And there arrived Viswanath Upadhyaya, who was to become a favourite devotee; Sri Ramakrishna always addressed him as "Captain". He was a high officer of the King of Nepal and had received the title of Colonel in recognition of his merit. A scholar of the Gita, the Bhagavata, and the Vedanta philosophy, he daily performed the worship of his Chosen Deity with great devotion. "I have read the Vedas and the other scriptures", he said. "I have also met a good many monks and devotees in different places. But it is in Sri Ramakrishna's presence that my spiritual yearnings have been fulfilled. To me he seems to be the embodiment of the truths of the scriptures."
The Knowledge of Brahman in nirvikalpa samadhi had convinced Sri Ramakrishna that the gods of the different religions are but so many readings of the Absolute, and that the Ultimate Reality could never be expressed by human tongue. He understood that all religions lead their devotees by differing paths to one and the same goal. Now he became eager to explore some of the alien religions; for with him understanding meant actual experience.
--
The party entered holy Benares by boat along the Ganges. When Sri Ramakrishna's eyes fell on this city of Siva, where had accumulated for ages the devotion and piety of countless worshippers, he saw it to be made of gold, as the scriptures declare. He was visibly moved. During his stay in the city he treated every particle of its earth with utmost respect. At the Manikarnika Ghat, the great cremation ground of the city, he actually saw Siva, with ash-covered body and tawny matted hair, serenely approaching each funeral pyre and breathing into the ears of the corpses the mantra of liberation; and then the Divine Mother removing from the dead their bonds. Thus he realized the significance of the scriptural statement that anyone dying in Benares attains salvation through the grace of Siva. He paid a visit to Trailanga Swami, the celebrated monk, whom he later declared to be a real paramahamsa, a veritable image of Siva.
Sri Ramakrishna visited Allahabad, at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jamuna, and then proceeded to Vrindavan and Mathura, hallowed by the legends, songs, and dramas about Krishna and the gopis. Here he had numerous visions and his heart overflowed with divine emotion. He wept and said: "O Krishna! Everything here is as it was in the olden days. You alone are absent." He visited the great woman saint, Gangamayi, regarded by Vaishnava devotees as the reincarnation of an intimate attendant of Radha. She was sixty years old and had frequent trances. She spoke of Sri Ramakrishna as an incarnation of Radha. With great difficulty he was persuaded to leave her.
--
Balaram Bose came of a wealthy Vaishnava family. From his youth he had shown a deep religious temperament and had devoted his time to meditation, prayer, and the study of the Vaishnava scriptures. He was very much impressed by Sri Ramakrishna even at their first meeting. He asked Sri Ramakrishna whether God really existed and, if so, whether a man could realize Him. The Master said: "God reveals Himself to the devotee who thinks of Him as his nearest and dearest. Because you do not draw response by praying to Him once, you must not conclude that He does not exist. Pray to God, thinking of Him as dearer than your very self. He is much attached to His devotees. He comes to a man even before He is sought. There is none more intimate and affectionate than God." Balaram had never before heard God spoken of in such forceful words; every one of the words seemed true to him. Under the Master's influence he outgrew the conventions of the Vaishnava worship and became one of the most beloved of the disciples. It was at his home that the Master slept whenever he spent a night in Calcutta.
--- MAHENDRA OR M.
--
Mahimacharan and Pratap Hazra were two devotees outstanding for their pretentiousness and idiosyncrasies. But the Master showed them his unfailing love and kindness, though he was aware of their shortcomings. Mahimacharan Chakravarty had met the Master long before the arrival of the other disciples. He had had the intention of leading a spiritual life, but a strong desire to acquire name and fame was his weakness. He claimed to have been initiated by Totapuri and used to say that he had been following the path of knowledge according to his guru's instructions. He possessed a large library of English and Sanskrit books. But though he pretended to have read them, most of the leaves were uncut. The Master knew all his limitations, yet enjoyed listening to him recite from the Vedas and other scriptures. He would always exhort Mahima to meditate on the meaning of the scriptural texts and to practise spiritual discipline.
Pratap Hazra, a middle-aged man, hailed from a village near Kamarpukur. He was not altogether unresponsive to religious feelings. On a moment's impulse he had left his home, aged mother, wife, and children, and had found shelter in the temple garden at Dakshineswar, where he intended to lead a spiritual life. He loved to argue, and the Master often pointed him out as an example of barren argumentation. He was hypercritical of others and cherished an exaggerated notion of his own spiritual advancement. He was mischievous and often tried to upset the minds of the Master's young disciples, criticizing them for their happy and joyous life and asking them to devote their time to meditation. The Master teasingly compared Hazra to Jatila and Kutila, the two women who always created obstructions in Krishna's sport with the gopis, and said that Hazra lived at Dakshineswar to "thicken the plot" by adding complications.
--
The Europeanized Kristodas Pal did not approve of the Master's emphasis on renunciation and said; "Sir, this cant of renunciation has almost ruined the country. It is for this reason that the Indians are a subject nation today. Doing good to others, bringing education to the door of the ignorant, and above all, improving the material conditions of the country — these should be our duty now. The cry of religion and renunciation would, on the contrary, only weaken us. You should advise the young men of Bengal to resort only to such acts as will uplift the country." Sri Ramakrishna gave him a searching look and found no divine light within, "You man of poor understanding!" Sri Ramakrishna said sharply. "You dare to slight in these terms renunciation and piety, which our scriptures describe as the greatest of all virtues! After reading two pages of English you think you have come to know the world! You appear to think you are omniscient. Well, have you seen those tiny crabs that are born in the Ganges just when the rains set in? In this big universe you are even less significant than one of those small creatures. How dare you talk of helping the world? The Lord will look to that. You haven't the power in you to do it." After a pause the Master continued: "Can you explain to me how you can work for others? I know what you mean by helping them. To feed a number of persons, to treat them when they are sick, to construct a road or dig a well — isn't that all? These, are good deeds, no doubt, but how trifling in comparison with the vastness of the universe! How far can a man advance in this line? How many people can you save from famine? Malaria has ruined a whole province; what could you do to stop its onslaught? God alone looks after the world. Let a man first realize Him. Let a man get the authority from God and be endowed with His power; then, and then alone, may he think of doing good to others. A man should first be purged of all egotism. Then alone will the Blissful Mother ask him to work for the world." Sri Ramakrishna mistrusted philanthropy that presumed to pose as charity. He warned people against it. He saw in most acts of philanthropy nothing but egotism, vanity, a desire for glory, a barren excitement to kill the boredom of life, or an attempt to soothe a guilty conscience. True charity, he taught, is the result of love of God — service to man in a spirit of worship.
--- MONASTIC DISCIPLES
--
Harinath had led the austere life of a brahmachari even from his early boyhood — bathing in the Ganges every day, cooking his own meals, waking before sunrise, and reciting the Gita from memory before leaving bed. He found in the Master the embodiment of the Vedanta scriptures. Aspiring to be a follower of the ascetic Sankara, he cherished a great hatred for women. One day he said to the Master that he could not allow even small girls to come near him. The Master scolded him and said: "You are talking like a fool. Why should you hate women? They are the manifestations of the Divine Mother. Regard them as your own mother and you will never feel their evil influence. The more you hate them, the more you will fall into their snares." Hari said later that these words completely changed his attitude toward women.
The Master knew Hari's passion for Vedanta. But he did not wish any of his disciples to become a dry ascetic or a mere bookworm. So he asked Hari to practise Vedanta in life by giving up the unreal and following the Real. "But it is not so easy", Sri Ramakrishna said, "to realize the illusoriness of the world. Study alone does not help one very much. The grace of God is required. Mere personal effort is futile. A man is a tiny creature after all, with very limited powers. But he can achieve the impossible if he prays to God for His grace." Whereupon the Master sang a song in praise of grace. Hari was profoundly moved and shed tears. Later in life Hari achieved a wonderful synthesis of the ideals of the Personal God and the Impersonal Truth.
--
Gangadhar, Harinath's friend, also led the life of a strict brahmachari, eating vegetarian food cooked by his own hands and devoting himself to the study of the scriptures. He met the Master in 1884 and soon became a member of his inner circle. The Master praised his ascetic habit and attributed it to the spiritual disciplines of his past life. Gangadhar became a close companion of Narendra.
--- HARIPRASANNA
--
Kaliprasad visited the Master toward the end of 1883. Given to the practice of meditation and the study of the scriptures. Kali was particularly interested in yoga. Feeling the need of a guru in spiritual life, he came to the Master and was accepted as a disciple. The young boy possessed a rational mind and often felt sceptical about the Personal God. The Master said to him: "Your doubts will soon disappear. Others, too, have passed through such a state of mind. Look at Naren. He now weeps at the names of Radha and Krishna." Kali began to see visions of gods and goddesses. Very soon these disappeared and in meditation he experienced vastness, infinity, and the other attributes of the Impersonal Brahman.
--- SUBODH
--
Pundit Shashadhar one day suggested to the Master that the latter could remove the illness by concentrating his mind on the throat, the scriptures having declared that yogis had power to cure themselves in that way. The Master rebuked the pundit. "For a scholar like you to make such a proposal!" he said. "How can I withdraw the mind from the Lotus Feet of God and turn it to this worthless cage of flesh and blood?" "For our sake at least", begged Narendra and the other disciples. "But", replied Sri Ramakrishna, do you think I enjoy this suffering? I wish to recover, but that depends on the Mother."
NARENDRA: "Then please pray to Her. She must listen to you."
0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
An appropriate allusion indeed! Bhagavata, the great scripture that has given the word of Sri Krishna to mankind, was composed by the Sage Vysa under similar circumstances. When caught up in a mood of depression like that of M, Vysa was advised by the sage Nrada that he would gain peace of mind only qn composing a work exclusively devoted to the depiction of the Lord's glorious attributes and His teachings on Knowledge and Devotion, and the result was that the world got from Vysa the invaluable gift of the Bhagavata Purana depicting the life and teachings of Sri Krishna.
From the mental depression of the modem Vysa, the world has obtained the Kathmrita (Bengali Edition) the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna in English.
--
Besides the prompting of his inherent instinct, the main inducement for M. to keep this diary of his experiences at Dakshineswar was his desire to provide himself with a means for living in holy company at all times. Being a school teacher, he could be with the Master only on Sundays and other holidays, and it was on his diary that he depended for 'holy company' on other days. The devotional scriptures like the Bhagavata say that holy company is the first and most important means for the generation and growth of devotion. For, in such company man could hear talks on spiritual matters and listen to the glorification of Divine attri butes, charged with the fervour and conviction emanating from the hearts of great lovers of God. Such company is therefore the one certain means through which Sraddha (Faith), Rati (attachment to God) and Bhakti (loving devotion) are generated. The diary of his visits to Dakshineswar provided M. with material for re-living, through reading and contemplation, the holy company he had had earlier, even on days when he was not able to visit Dakshineswar. The wealth of details and the vivid description of men and things in the midst of which the sublime conversations are set, provide excellent material to re-live those experiences for any one with imaginative powers. It was observed by M.'s disciples and admirers that in later life also whenever he was free or alone, he would be pouring over his diary, transporting himself on the wings of imagination to the glorious days he spent at the feet of the Master.
During the Master's lifetime M. does not seem to have revealed the contents of his diary to any one. There is an unconfirmed tradition that when the Master saw him taking notes, he expressed apprehension at the possibility of his utilising these to publicise him like Keshab Sen; for the Great Master was so full of the spirit of renunciation and humility that he disliked being lionised. It must be for this reason that no one knew about this precious diary of M. for a decade until he brought out selections from it as a pamphlet in English in 1897 with the Holy Mother's blessings and permission. The Holy Mother, being very much pleased to hear parts of the diary read to her in Bengali, wrote to M.: "When I heard the Kathmrita, (Bengali name of the book) I felt as if it was he, the Master, who was saying all that." ( Ibid Part I. P 37.)
--
Though a very well versed scholar in the Upanishads, Git and the philosophies of the East and the West, all his discussions and teachings found their culmination in the life and the message of Sri Ramakrishna, in which he found the real explanation and illustration of all the scriptures. Both consciously and unconsciously, he was the teacher of the Kathmrita the nectarine words of the Great Master.
Though a much-sought-after spiritual guide, an educationist of repute, and a contemporary and close associate of illustrious personages like Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Keshab Chander Sen and Iswar Chander Vidysgar, he was always moved by the noble humanity of a lover of God, which consists in respecting the personalities of all as receptacles of the Divine Spirit. So he taught without the consciousness of a teacher, and no bar of superiority stood in the way of his doing the humblest service to his students and devotees. "He was a commission of love," writes his close devotee, Swami Raghavananda, "and yet his soft and sweet words would pierce the stoniest heart, make the worldly-minded weep and repent and turn Godwards."
0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
"Experience in thy soul the truth of the scripture; afterwards, if thou wilt, reason
and state thy experience intellectually and even then distrust thy statement; but distrust
01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written scriptures:
"'Listen to this!' shouted Monkey. 'After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?' 'You needn't shout,' said the Buddha, smiling. 'As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ignorant to believe this, so there is nothing for it but to give them copies with some writing on.' "
A sage can smile and smile delightfully! The parable illustrates the well-known Biblical phrase, 'the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life'. The monkey is symbolical of the ignorant, arrogant, fussy human mind. There is another Buddhistic story about the monkey quoted in the book and it is as delightful; but being somewhat long, we cannot reproduce it here. It tells how the mind-monkey is terribly agile, quick, clever, competent, moving lightning-fast, imagining that it can easily go to the end of the world, to Paradise itself, to Brahmic status. But alas! when he thought he was speeding straight like a rocket or an arrow and arrive right at the target, he found that he was spinning like a top at the same spot, and what he very likely took to be the very fragrance of the topmost supreme heaven was nothing but the aroma of his own urine.
0 1958-11-27 - Intermediaries and Immediacy, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
For example, one thing had always appeared unimportant to me in actionintermediaries between the spiritualized individual being, the conscious soul, and the Supreme. According to my personal experience, it had always seemed to me that if one is exclusively turned towards the Supreme in all ones actions and expresses Him directly, whatever is to be done is done automatically. For example, if you are always open and if at each second you consciously want to express only what the Supreme Lord wants to be expressed, it is done automatically. But with all that I have learned about pujas, about certain scriptures and certain rituals as well, the necessity for a process has become very clear to me. Its the same as in physical life; in physical life, everything needs a process, as we know, and it is the knowledge of processes that constitutes physical science. Similarly, in a more occult working, the knowledge and especially the RESPECT for the process seem to be much more important than I had first thought.
And when I studied this, when I looked at this science of processes, of intermediaries, suddenly I clearly understood the working of karma, which I had not understood before. I had worked and intervened quite often to change someones karma, but sometimes I had to wait, without exactly knowing why the result was not immediate. I simply used to wait without worrying about the reasons for this slowness or delay. Thats how it was. And generally it ended, as I said, with the exact vision of the karmas source, its initial cause; and scarcely would I have this vision when the Power would come, and the thing would be dissolved. But I didnt bother about finding out why it was like that.
0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In my view, all these old scriptures and ancient traditions have a graduated content (gesture showing different levels of understanding), and according to the needs of the epoch and the people, one symbol or another was drawn upon. But a time comes when one goes beyond these things and sees them from what Sri Aurobindo calls the other hemisphere, where one realizes that they are only modes of expression to put one in contacta kind of bridge or link between the lower way of seeing and the higher way of knowing.
A time comes when all these disputesAh, no, this is like this, that is like thatseem so silly, so silly! And there is nothing more comical than this spontaneous reply so many people give: Oh, thats impossible! Because with even the most rudimentary intellectual development, you would know you couldnt even think of something if it werent possible!
0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I dont know if those experiences have been described in traditional scriptures. I havent read any I know nothing of Indian literature, nothing at all. I only know what Sri Aurobindo has said, plus a few odds and ends from here and there. And each time I found myself faced with their vocabulary oh, it really puts you off!
You speak of exteriorizationcouldnt you show me a simple way of learning to do it?
0 1962-02-13, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But long ago there was a knowledge like thatall the ancient scriptures mention it.
I believe so. I believe so.
0 1963-05-11, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The deeper significance of figures There are countless traditions, countless scriptures which I took great care not to follow. But the deeper significance of figures came to me in Tlemcen, when I was in the Overmind. I dont remember the names Thon used to give to those various worlds, but it was a world that corresponded to the highest and most luminous regions of Sri Aurobindos Overmind. It was above, just above the gods region. And it was something in accord with the Overmind creation the earth under the gods influence. That was where figures took on a living meaning for menot a mental speculation: a living meaning. That was where Madame Thon recognized me, because of the formation of twelve pearls she saw above my head; and she told me, You are that because you have this. Only that can have this! (Mother laughs) It hadnt even remotely occurred to me, thank God!
But figures are alive for me. They have a concrete reality.
0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I have no idea whether the false appearance wouldnt still exist for those not ready to see the true thing. At any rate, it would be an intermediary period: those whose eyes were open would be able to see (what is called open eyes in the scriptures), they would be able to see; and they would be able to see not through effort or seeking, but the thing would impose itself on them. While those whose eyes were not open for a time, at least, it would be that way, they wouldnt seethey would still see the old appearance. The two may be simultaneous.
I SAW myself the way I am, and quite obviously (Mother laughs) my body seems to have been shrunk to enable me to dominate it and exceed it on all sides without difficulty! Thats my impression, something thats shrunk! The English word is very expressive (Mother laughs).
0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know that for a long time he said, I and the Mother, the Mother and I, are one. Of course, in the scriptures too its like that! But it was reported to me (I dont attach much importance to it because people twist everything), it was reported to me that he said several times, Its the Mother speaking to you through me, and I talked nonsense! (Laughing) Thats the trouble. If at least I said some very wise things
Thats serious.
0 1964-02-05, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
96Experience in thy soul the truth of the scripture; afterwards, if thou wilt, reason and state thy experience intellectually and even then distrust thy statement; but distrust never thy experience.
It doesnt require any explanations.
That is to say, to children you should explain that WHATEVER the statement, WHATEVER the scripture, they are always a step-down from the experience, they are always inferior to the experience.
Some people need to know this!
--
98Revelation is the direct sight, the direct hearing or inspired memory of Truth, drishti, shruti, smriti; it is the highest experience and always accessible to renewed experience. Not because God spoke it, but because the soul saw it, is the word of the scriptures our supreme authority.
I presume this is in reply to the biblical belief in Gods Commandments received by Moses, which the Lord is supposed to have uttered Himself and Moses is supposed to have heardits a roundabout way (Mother laughs) to say its not possible!
--
Now, I dont know if Sri Aurobindo had in mind the Indian scriptures. The Upanishads, then? Or the Vedas but no, the Vedas were oral.
They BECAME scriptures.
With God knows what distortion.
Not too much, since they were repeated with all the intonations. Among all the scriptures, theyre probably the least distorted.
There were Chinese scriptures, too.
But more and more, my experience is that revelation (it comes, of course), revelation is a thing that can be applied universally, but which, in its form, is always personalalways personal.
0 1965-12-18, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the old scriptures they used to compare that with a dogs twisted tail. And it is truly like that, its a sort of TWIST that you try to straighten out and which goes back to its shape automatically, idioticallyyou untwist it, it twists up again; you reject it, it comes again. Its extremely interesting, but its miserable. Miserable. And all illnesses are like that, all, all of them, whatever their external form. The external form is only one way of being of the SAME THINGbecause things are arranged in every possible way (there arent two identical things and everything is arranged differently), so then, some follow similar twists, and thats what doctors call such and such an illness. But if they are sincere, they will tell you, There arent two like illnesses.
But what toil it is! I am fighting with that at the moment, its a fistfight.
0 1966-05-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same with the gods, mon petit, the same thing! The relationship with all those beings of the Overmind, with all those gods, the form those relationships take depends on the human consciousness. You can be The scriptures say, Man is cattle for the gods but thats if man ACCEPTS the role of cattle. There is in the essence of human nature a sovereignty over all those things which is spontaneous and natural, when its not warped by a certain number of ideas and a certain amount of so-called knowledge.
We could say that man is the all-powerful master of all the states of being of his nature, but that he has forgotten to be so.
0 1966-11-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the first time this year it has happened to me. Previously, it used to happen fairly often, but its the first time this year. It shows that, all the same, things are improving. Oh, but it was terrible, people cant imagine what it is! It takes hold of everyone and everybody, every circumstance and everything, and it gives shape to disintegrationquite like this Gentleman (I think hes the one!), quite like him. But it doesnt have the poetic form [of Savitri], of course, its not a poet: it has all the meanness of life. And it insists on that a great deal. These last few days it insisted on it a great deal. I said to myself, See, all that is written and said is always in a realm of beauty and harmony and greatness, and, anyway, the problem is put with dignity; but as soon as it becomes quite practical and material, its so petty, so mean, so narrow, so ugly! Thats the proof. When you get out of it, its all right, you can face all problems, but when you come down here, its so ugly, so petty, so miserable. We are such slaves to our needs, oh! For one hour, two hours, you hold on, and after And its true, physical life is uglynot everywhere, but anyway I always think of plants and flowers: thats really lovely, its free from that; but human life is so sordid, with such crude and imperious needsits so sordid. Its only when you begin to live in a slightly superior vision that you become free from that; in all the scriptures, very few people accept the sordidness of life. And of course, thats what this Gentleman insists on. I said, Very well. This bodys answer is very simple: We certainly arent anxious that life should continue as it is. It doesnt find it very pretty. But we conceive of a lifea life as objective as our material lifewhich wouldnt have all these sordid needs, which would be more harmonious and spontaneous. Thats what we want. But he says its impossiblewe have been told its not only possible but certain. So theres the battle.
Then comes the great argument: Yes, yes, one day it will be, but when? For the time being you are still swamped in all this and you plainly see it cant change. It will go on and on. In millennia, yes, it will be. Thats the ultimate argument. He no longer denies the possibility, he says, All right, because you have caught hold of something, youre hoping to realize it now, but thats childishness.
0 1968-11-02, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There are some vague scriptures that mention it. But theyre regarded as crank esotericism.
(silence)
02.01 - The World War, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Modern thinkers do not speak of the Asura the Demon or the Titanalthough the religiously minded sometimes refer to the Anti-Christ; but the real, the inner significance of the terms, is lost to a mind nurtured in science and empiricism; they are considered as more or less imaginative symbols for certain undesirable qualities of nature and character. Yet some have perceived and expressed the external manifestation and activities of the Asura in a way sufficient to open men's eyes to the realities involved. Thus they have declared that the present war is a conflict between two ideals, to be sure, but also that the two ideals are so different that they do not belong to the same plane or order; they belong to different planes and different orders. On one side the whole endeavour is to bring man down from the level to which he has arisen in the course of evolution to something like his previous level and to keep him imprisoned there. That this is really their aim, the protagonists and partisans themselves have declared frankly and freely and loudly enough, without any hesitation or reservation. Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' has become the scripture of the New Order; it has come with a more categorical imperative, a more supernal authority than the Veda, the Bible or the Koran.
When man was a dweller of the forest,a jungle man,akin to his forbear the ape, his character was wild and savage, his motives and impulsions crude, violent, egoistic, almost wholly imbedded in, what we call, the lower vital level; the light of the higher intellect and intelligence had not entered into them. Today there is an uprush of similar forces to possess and throw man back to a similar condition. This new order asks only one thing of man, namely, to be strong and powerful, that is to say, fierce, ruthless, cruel and regimented. Regimentation can be said to be the very characteristic of the order, the regimentation of a pack of wild dogs or wolves. A particular country, nation or raceit is Germany in Europe and, in her wake, Japan in Asiais to be the sovereign nation or master race (Herrenvolk); the rest of mankindo ther countries and peoplesshould be pushed back to the status of servants and slaves, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. What the helots were in ancient times, what the serfs were in the mediaeval ages, and what the subject peoples were under the worst forms of modern imperialism, even so will be the entire mankind under the new overlordship, or something still worse. For whatever might have been the external conditions in those ages and systems, the upward aspirations of man were never doubted or questioned they were fully respected and honoured. The New Order has pulled all that down and cast them to the winds. Furthermore in the new regime, it is not merely the slaves that suffer in a degraded condition, the masters also, as individuals, fare no better. The individual here has no respect, no freedom or personal value. This society or community of the masters even will be like a bee-hive or an ant-hill; the individuals are merely functional units, they are but screws and bolts and nuts and wheels in a huge relentless machinery. The higher and inner realities, the spontaneous inspirations and self-creations of a free soulart, poetry, literaturesweetness and light the good and the beautifulare to be banished for ever; they are to be regarded as things of luxury which enervate the heart, diminish the life-force, distort Nature's own virility. Man perhaps would be the worshipper of Science, but of that Science which brings a tyrannical mastery over material Nature, which serves to pile up tools and instruments, arms and armaments, in order to ensure a dire efficiency and a grim order in practical life.
02.02 - Rishi Dirghatama, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now in conclusion I will just speak of the fundamental vision of the rishi. His entire realisation, the whole Veda of his life, he has, it appears, pressed into one single k We have heard it said that the entire range of all scriptures is epitomised in the Gita and the Gita' itself is epitomised in one slokasarvadharmn parityajya... Even so we may say that Rishi Dirghatama has summarised his experience, at least the fundamental basic one, and put it into a sutra. It is the famous k with which he opens his long hymn to Surya:
Lo, this delightful ancient Priest and Summoner; he has a second brother who is the devourer. There is a third brother with a dazzling luminous facetthere I saw the Master of the worlds along with his seven sons.8
02.06 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Life, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He thinks to read the scripture Wonderful,
Hieratic key to unknown beatitudes.
02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
He armed untruth with scripture and the Law;
He deceived with wisdom, with virtue slew the soul
03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Science of the West has discovered evolution as the secret of life and its process in this material world; but it has laid more stress on the growth of form and species than on the growth of consciousness: even, consciousness has been regarded as an incident and not the whole secret of the meaning of the evolution. An evolution has been admitted by certain minds in the East, certain philosophies and scriptures, but there its sense has been the growth of the soul through developing or successive forms and many lives of the individual to its own highest reality.
For if there is a conscious being in the form, that being can hardly be a temporary phenomenon of consciousness; it must be a soul fulfilling itself and this fulfilment can only take place if there is a return of the soul to earth in many successive lives, in many successive bodies.
03.02 - Yogic Initiation and Aptitude, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Needless to say that these tests and ordeals are mere externals; at any rate, they have no place in our sadhana. Such or similar virtues many people possess or may possess, but that is no indication that they have an opening to the true spiritual life, to the life divine that we seek. Just as accomplishments on the mental plane,keen intellect, wide studies, profound scholarship even in the scriptures do not entitle a man to the possession of the spirit, even so capacities on the vital plane,mere self-control, patience and forbearance or endurance and perseverance do not create a claim to spiritual realisation, let alone physical austerities. In conformity with the Upanishadic standard, one may not be an unworthy son or an unworthy disciple, one may be strong, courageous, patient, calm, self-possessed, one may even be a consummate master of the senses and be endowed with other great virtues. Yet all this is no assurance of one's success in spiritual sadhana. Even one may be, after Shankara, a mumuksu, that is to say, have an ardent yearning for liberation. Still it is doubtful if that alone can give him liberation into the divine life.
What then is the indispensable and unfailing requisite? What is it that gives you the right of entrance into the divine life? What is the element, the factor in you that acts as the open sesame, as a magic solvent?
03.03 - Arjuna or the Ideal Disciple, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Nor by brain-power, nor by much learning of scripture.Katha Upanishad, 1. 2. 23.
This Self cannot be won by any who is without strength.Katha Upanishad, 1. 2. 23.
04.03 - The Call to the Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This breathing scripture of the Eternal's joy,
This net of sweetness woven of aureate fire.
05.02 - Satyavan, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Perusing the mystic scripture of her forms,
He had caught her hierophant significances,
07.01 - Realisation, Past and Future, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The whole material and physical world, the whole earth I mention earth, because we are concerned directly and much more with it than other regionshas been till now governed by forces of consciousness that come from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. Even the thing man has named God is a force, a power in the Overmind. The entire universe has been, so to say, under the domination of this status of consciousness. Even then, you have to pass through many intermediary grades, or levels to arrive at the Overmind and when you reach there the first impression is that of a dazzling light that almost blinds you. But one can and has to press on and go beyond. Sri Aurobindo says, the rule of the Overmind is precisely coming to its end and the rule of the Supermind will replace it. All the past spiritual experiences were concerned with the Overmind: so it is a thing known to all who have found the Divine and are identified with Him. What Sri Aurobindo says is this that there is something more than the Overmind, something that lies a step higher and that it is now the turn of this higher status to come down and reign. We need not talk much of Overmind, because all the saints and seers, all religions and spiritual disciplines, scriptures and philosophies have spoken about it at length. All the gods known and familiar to men are there in its Pantheon. What we want, what is needed at present is a new revelation, a manifestation in a new manner of which very few were conscious in the past. We are not here merely to repeat the past.
But it is so difficult. It is difficult for people to come out of experiences they have had, of what they have heard and read about always and everywhere. It is difficult for them not to think of the Supermind in terms of the Overmind, not to confuse the Supermind with the Overmind. They are unable to conceive of anything beyond or different. Sri Aurobindo used to say always that his Yoga Began where all the past Yogas ended: in order to realise his Yoga one must have already arrived at the extreme limit of what the ancients realised. In other words, one must have had already the perception of the Divine, the union and identification with the Divine. This divinity, Sri Aurobindo says, is the Divine of the Overmind which is itself something quite unthinkable for the human consciousness, and even to reach there one has to rise through many planes of consciousness and, as I said, one gets dazzled and dazed even at this level.
10.03 - Life in and Through Death, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The soul carries the body even like a corpse, says a scripture. It is a dead inert mass of inconscience weighing upon the conscious being that is behind. Such is the burden of life that the soul bears through its earthly existence. The image is beautifully delineated in the Indian legend of Shiva and Sati. Sati is dead, the bereaved Shiva goes about in anguish with the dead body of Sati flung upon his shoulder. Shiva is to be relieved of this burden, otherwise the creation will go to rack and ruin. The prayer went to Vishnu and Vishnu hurled his discus that cut to pieces the corpse of Sati the pieces were fifty-two in number and each spot where a piece, a limb of Sati, fell became a great place of pilgrimage. Even so, the world in its inconscience lies heavy on the secret Consciousness that is behind. It lies almost smothered under the dead weight of the inconscient and the unconsciousness. But the Divine Grace has entered into the inertial mass and split it up, entered into each particle as a spark of consciousness to turn gradually the dead matter into a rising and evolving tier of consciousness.
Creation started originally with an absolutely inconscient existence. It is the pressure of an indwelling spirit the Grace descending into matter that has forced matter to burst into, to flower into forms of light and consciousness. The pressure is ever-present and the flowering continues into higher and higher modes of the Divine Consciousness. The figure '52' of the mythological legend denotes perhaps the integral multiplicity of the manifested universe. We may suggest an interpretation just to satisfy a mental curiosity: 52=50+2; and 50 is 5 X 10. The number 5 is very well-known as representing the five planes of consciousness, and as there is a descending and an ascending movement in each level that gives the number 10. And 5 times 10 is 50. This makes up the manifested creation. The remaining two are the Supreme Divine and his Shakti, or two unities at each end the one above, the one below. This however may be considered as a playful calculation meaning to represent, as I said, a multiple integrality of existence.
10.03 - The Debate of Love and Death, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A scripture written out in cryptic signs,
An occult document of the All-Wonderful's art.
1.007 - Initial Steps in Yoga Practice, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Yoga scriptures tell us that we must also choose a particular place, as far as possible not that today we meditate in Haridwar, tomorrow in Delhi and the day after tomorrow in Benares. That is not all right if we want real success. We must be in one place. As a matter of fact, people who practise mantra purascharana, or disciplinary chanting of mantras for a chosen period, do this and what can be a greater purascharana than meditation? So when we take to exclusive spiritual practice as a very serious affair and not merely as a hobby, it would be necessary, I would say for beginners, that a period of at least five years is called for. If we are very serious and in dead earnest about it not taking it only as a kind of educational procedure for informative purposes and not being very earnest about achieving anything substantially we may have to stick to one place for five years continuously, and not less than that. If our point is to achieve something substantial, concrete and definite, then this amount of discipline is called for, which is a definite place, a definite time, and a chosen method of meditation a definite system, arranged in one's own mind, which should not be changed continuously.
Whenever there is repeated persistence in one given direction with reference to any chosen point of attention, we will see that some sort of success results. If a laboratory scientist is to analyse the structure of an atom, he will analyse a particular atom repeatedly by bombarding it with various kinds of light rays, but he will not go on changing the atoms today this atom, tomorrow that atom, today a hydrogen atom, tomorrow some other thing. That will not lead to success. A particular object will be taken up for consideration, observation and analysis, and a repeated attempt will be made to go deep into its structure until its mystery is revealed. So for this, great leisure is necessary, persistence is necessary, energy and willpower are necessary, and there is no need to mention that we must be free from all other outward distractions. When one takes to the practice of yoga, there should be no distraction of any pronounced nature. Minor distractions may be there, but serious distractions which will divert our attention markedly from the point of attention should not be there.
1.009 - Perception and Reality, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Here we go to a realm where the revelations of the ancient masters, which are embodied in the sacred scriptures, become our guide. Otherwise we shall be blind we will know nothing. The great masters who are the Gurus of mankind, who had plumbed the depths of being and had vision of the cosmic mystery, tell us something which the intellect cannot explain inductively, logically or scientifically. Our individual existence is caused by something which is prior to the manifestation of individuality and, therefore, let not the individual intellect interfere with this subject.
The masters, whose records we have in such scriptures as the Upanishads, for example, tell us that there is a cosmic mystery behind this operation of individuality namely, the diversification of the Comic Principle. We cannot ask as to why it happened, because the intellect is interfering here. We are asking the reason why the intellect is there at all, and why individuality is there at all. That question cannot be asked because this intellect is an effect of individuality, and now we are trying to find the cause thereof. "Unbridled intellect is an obstacle," says Sankara in his commentary on the Brahma Sutras, because the intellect will insist that there is diversity. It will oblige us to accept that individuality is real, objects are real, our relationships to them must be real, and so forth. So we should not take the advice of the intellect hereafter. The mystery of cosmic manifestation, which is the diversification of the cosmic principle, is regarded as the controlling principle behind the existence and the functioning of the individual.
Nowadays, our scientists also have conjectured the possibility of the universe having been once upon a time constituted as a sort of a cosmic atom. One scientist said, "The whole cosmos was like an atom." By "an atom", he means an indivisible something. The whole universe originally was like an atom, and that atom split into two parts. This is also mentioned in the Manu Smriti, prior to the declaration of this scientist. In the first chapter of the Manu Smriti we find the process of creation described, and instead of an atom, Manu says "anda" it was like an egg. Well, the scientist says "an atom". Does an atom not look something like an egg? It split into two parts. This original split of the atom into two parts is the cause of all our problems today. And it goes on, splitting and splitting two became four, four became eight, eight became sixteen, and umpteen, a millionfold and uncountable in number. These little split parts are the individuals you, me, and everybody included. We are struggling to become the original atom once again, as something unnatural has happened to us.
--
So, it would not be judicious on the part of any individual to vehemently assert that the physical perceptions of the world are all-in-all. The materialist's conception is, therefore, not correct, because this conception arises on account of a miscalculated attitude towards everything. This is the reason why, in the practice of yoga, expert guidance is called for, because we are dealing with matters that are super-intellectual, super-rational. Here our own understanding is not of much use, nor are books of any use, because we are treading on dangerous ground which the mind has not seen and cannot contemplate. We are all a wonder, says the scripture. This is a mystery, a wonder. It is a wonder because it is not capable of intellectually being analysed. The scripture proclaims that the subject is a great mystery, a great wonder and marvel; and one who teaches it is also a marvel, and the one who receives this knowledge, who understands it the disciple is also a wonder, indeed, because though the broadcasting station is powerful, the receiver-set also must be equally powerful to receive the message. The bamboo stick will not receive the message of the BBC. So the disciple is also a wonder to receive this mysterious knowledge, as the teacher himself is a wonder; and the subject is a marvel by itself.
Thus arises the need to be cautious in the adjustment of the mind and the judgement of values in life. The sutras of Patanjali that I referred to give only a hint, and do not enter into details the hint being that the vrittis or the modifications of the mind are of a twofold character, which I translated as determinate and indeterminate, and have to be gradually controlled. This control of the vrittis or the modifications of the mind is regarded as yoga: yoga citta vtti nirodha (I.2). Yoga is the control of the modifications of 'the stuff' of the mind, the very substance of psychological action. Not merely the external modifications, but the very 'stuff' of it, the very root of it, has to be controlled, and this is done in and by successive stages. We have always to move from the effect to the cause in the manner indicated in this analysis that we have made.
1.00b - INTRODUCTION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In India two classes of scripture are recognized: the Shruti, or inspired writings which
are their own authority, since they are the product of immediate insight into ultimate
1.00 - Main, #The Book of Certitude, #Baha u llah, #Baha i
Such are the words with which My Forerunner hath extolled My Being, could ye but understand. Whoso reflecteth upon these verses, and realizeth what hidden pearls have been enshrined within them, will, by the righteousness of God, perceive the fragrance of the All-Merciful wafting from the direction of this Prison and will, with his whole heart, hasten unto Him with such ardent longing that the hosts of earth and heaven would be powerless to deter him. Say: This is a Revelation around which every proof and testimony doth circle. Thus hath it been sent down by your Lord, the God of Mercy, if ye be of them that judge aright. Say: This is the very soul of all scriptures which hath been breathed into the Pen of the Most High, causing all created beings to be dumbfounded, save only those who have been enraptured by the gentle breezes of My loving-kindness and the sweet savours of My bounties which have pervaded the whole of creation.
137
--
Let none, in this Day, hold fast to aught save that which hath been manifested in this Revelation. Such is the decree of God, aforetime and hereafter-a decree wherewith the scriptures of the Messengers of old have been adorned. Such is the admonition of the Lord, aforetime and hereafter-an admonition wherewith the preamble to the Book of Life hath been embellished, did ye but perceive it. Such is the commandment of the Lord, aforetime and hereafter; beware lest ye choose instead the part of ignominy and abasement. Naught shall avail you in this Day but God, nor is there any refuge to flee to save Him, the Omniscient, the All-Wise. Whoso hath known Me hath known the Goal of all desire, and whoso hath turned unto Me hath turned unto the Object of all adoration. Thus hath it been set forth in the Book, and thus hath it been decreed by God, the Lord of all worlds. To read but one of the verses of My Revelation is better than to peruse the scriptures of both the former and latter generations. This is the Utterance of the All-Merciful, would that ye had ears to hear! Say: This is the essence of knowledge, did ye but understand.
139
--
We, verily, see amongst you him who taketh hold of the Book of God and citeth from it proofs and arguments wherewith to repudiate his Lord, even as the followers of every other Faith sought reasons in their Holy Books for refuting Him Who is the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Say: God, the True One, is My witness that neither the scriptures of the world, nor all the books and writings in existence, shall, in this Day, avail you aught without this, the Living Book, Who proclaimeth in the midmost heart of creation: "Verily, there is none other God but Me, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise."
169
1.01 - About the Elements, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
In the oldest oriental scriptures, the elements are designated as tattwas. In our European literature, they are only considered on the ground of their good effects and in so far as we are warned against their unfavourable influence, which means that certain actions can be undertaken under the influence of the tattwas, or else must be omitted. The accuracy of this fact is not to be doubted, but all that has been published up to date points to a slight aspect of the effects of the elements only. How to find out about the effects of elements respecting the tattwas for any personal use, may be sufficiently learned from astrological books.
I am penetrating far deeper into the secret of the elements and therefore I have chosen a different key, which, although being analogous to the astrological key, has, as a matter of fact, nothing to do with it. The reader, to whom this key is completely unknown, shall be taught to use it in various ways. As for the single tasks, analogies and effects of the elements, I shall deal with tem by turns and in detail in the following chapters, which will not only unveil the theoretical part of it, but point directly to the practical use, because it is here that the greatest Arcanum is to be found.
1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
regarded as Sruti, revealed scripture, and were included in the
sacred Canon.
--
then all changes. We are in the presence of a great scripture of
Foreword
--
such a scripture. At the same time the exoteric sense need not
be merely a mask; the Riks may have been regarded by their
--
for external things. A purely spiritual scripture would concern
itself with only spiritual significances, but the ancient mystics
--
esoteric sense of this ancient scripture.
This is a literary and not a strictly literal translation. But a
1.01 - Historical Survey, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
To come down to more historic ground, the Qabalah is the Jewish mystical teaching concerning the initiated inter- pretation of the Hebrew scriptures. It is a system of spiritual philosophy or theosophy, using this word in its original implications of 0eo? 2 o$ia, which has not only exercised for centuries an influence on the intellectual development of so shrewd and clear-thinking a people as the Jews, but has attracted the attention of many renowned
17
1.01 - MASTER AND DISCIPLE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
One day he taught them to see God in all beings and, knowing this, to bow low before them all. A disciple went to the forest to gather wood for the sacrificial fire. Suddenly he heard an outcry: 'Get out of the way! A mad elephant is coming!' All but the disciple of the holy man took to their heels. He reasoned that the elephant was also God in another form. Then why should he run away from it? He stood still, bowed before the animal, and began to sing its praises. The mahut of the elephant was shouting: 'Run away! Run away!' But the disciple didn't move. The animal seized him with its trunk, cast him to one side, and went on its way. Hurt and bruised, the disciple lay unconscious on the ground. Hearing what had happened, his teacher and his brother disciples came to him and carried him to the hermitage. With the help of some medicine he soon regained consciousness. Someone asked him, 'You knew the elephant was coming - why didn't you leave the place?' 'But', he said, 'our teacher has told us that God Himself has taken all these forms, of animals as well as men. Therefore, thinking it was only the elephant God that was coming, I didn't run away.' At this the teacher said: 'Yes, my child, it is true that the elephant God was coming; but the mahut God forbade you to stay there. Since all are manifestations of God, why didn't you trust the mahut's words? You should have heeded the words of the mahut God.' (Laughter) "It is said in the scriptures that water is a form of God. But some water is fit to be used for worship, some water for washing the face, and some only for washing plates or dirty linen. This last sort cannot be used for drinking or for a holy purpose. In like manner, God undoubtedly dwells in the hearts of all - holy and unholy, righteous and unrighteous; but a man should not have dealings with the unholy, the wicked, the impure. He must not be intimate with them. With some of them he may exchange words, but with others he shouldn't go even that far. He should keep aloof from such people."
How to deal with the wicked
1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
HE WORLD abounds with scriptures sacred and profane, with revelations and half-revelations, with religions and philosophies, sects and schools and systems. To these the many minds of a half-ripe knowledge or no knowledge at all attach themselves with exclusiveness and passion and will have it that this or the other book is alone the eternal Word of
God and all others are either impostures or at best imperfectly inspired, that this or that philosophy is the last word of the reasoning intellect and other systems are either errors or saved only by such partial truth in them as links them to the one true philosophical cult. Even the discoveries of physical Science have been elevated into a creed and in its name religion and spirituality banned as ignorance and superstition, philosophy as frippery and moonshine. And to these bigoted exclusions and vain wranglings even the wise have often lent themselves, misled by some spirit of darkness that has mingled with their light and overshadowed it with some cloud of intellectual egoism or spiritual pride. Mankind seems now indeed inclined to grow a little modester and wiser; we no longer slay our fellows in the name of God's truth or because they have minds differently trained or differently constituted from ours; we are less ready to curse and revile our neighbour because he is wicked or presumptuous enough to differ from us in opinion; we are ready even to admit that Truth is everywhere and cannot be our sole monopoly; we are beginning to look at other religions and philosophies for the truth and help they contain and no longer merely in order to damn them as false or criticise what we conceive to be their errors. But we are still apt to declare that our truth gives us the supreme knowledge which other religions or philosophies
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It may therefore be useful in approaching an ancient scripture, such as the Veda, Upanishads or Gita, to indicate precisely the spirit in which we approach it and what exactly we think we may derive from it that is of value to humanity and its future. First of all, there is undoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which we are seeking, from which all other truth derives, by the light of which all other truth finds its right place, explanation and relation to the scheme of knowledge. But precisely for that reason it cannot be shut up in a single trenchant formula, it is not likely to be found in its entirety or in all its bearings in any single philosophy or scripture or uttered altogether and for ever by any one teacher, thinker, prophet or Avatar. Nor has it been wholly found by us if our view of it necessitates the intolerant exclusion of the truth underlying other systems; for when we reject passionately, we mean simply that we cannot appreciate and explain. Secondly, this Truth, though it is one and eternal, expresses itself in Time and through the mind of man; therefore every scripture must necessarily contain two elements, one temporary, perishable, belonging to the ideas of the period and country in which it was produced, the other eternal and imperishable and applicable in all ages and countries. Moreover, in the statement of the Truth the actual form given to it, the system and arrangement, the metaphysical and intellectual mould, the precise expression used must be largely subject to the mutations of Time and cease to have the same force; for the human intellect modifies itself always; continually dividing and putting together it is obliged to shift its divisions continually and to rearrange its syntheses; it is always leaving old expression and symbol for new or, if it uses the old, it so changes its connotation or at least
Our Demand and Need from the Gita
--
No doubt in this attempt we may mix a good deal of error born of our own individuality and of the ideas in which we live, as did greater men before us, but if we steep ourselves in the spirit of this great scripture and, above all, if we have tried to live in that spirit, we may be sure of finding in it as much real truth as we are capable of receiving as well as the spiritual influence and actual help that, personally, we were intended to derive from it. And that is after all what scriptures were written to give; the rest is academical disputation or theological dogma.
Only those scriptures, religions, philosophies which can be thus constantly renewed, relived, their stuff of permanent truth constantly reshaped and developed in the inner thought and spiritual experience of a developing humanity, continue to be of living importance to mankind. The rest remain as monuments of the past, but have no actual force or vital impulse for the future.
Essays on the Gita
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comprehensiveness. Its aim is precisely the opposite to that of the polemist commentators who found this scripture established as one of the three highest Vedantic authorities and attempted to turn it into a weapon of offence and defence against other schools and systems. The Gita is not a weapon for dialectical warfare; it is a gate opening on the whole world of spiritual truth and experience and the view it gives us embraces all the provinces of that supreme region. It maps out, but it does not cut up or build walls or hedges to confine our vision.
There have been other syntheses in the long history of Indian thought. We start with the Vedic synthesis of the psychological being of man in its highest flights and widest rangings of divine knowledge, power, joy, life and glory with the cosmic existence of the gods, pursued behind the symbols of the material universe into those superior planes which are hidden from the physical sense and the material mentality. The crown of this synthesis was in the experience of the Vedic Rishis something divine, transcendent and blissful in whose unity the increasing soul of man and the eternal divine fullness of the cosmic godheads meet perfectly and fulfil themselves. The Upanishads take up this crowning experience of the earlier seers and make it their starting-point for a high and profound synthesis of spiritual knowledge; they draw together into a great harmony all that had been seen and experienced by the inspired and liberated knowers of the Eternal throughout a great and fruitful period of spiritual seeking. The
1.01 - Prayer, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
"Meditation again is a constant remembrance (of the thing meditated upon) flowing like an unbroken stream of oil poured out from one vessel to another. When this kind of remembering has been attained (in relation to God) all bandages break. Thus it is spoken of in the scriptures regarding constant remembering as a means to liberation. This remembering again is of the same form as seeing, because it is of the same meaning as in the passage, 'When He who is far and near is seen, the bonds of the heart are broken, all doubts vanish, and all effects of work disappear' He who is near can be seen, but he who is far can only be remembered. Nevertheless the scripture says that he have to see Him who is near as well as Him who, is far, thereby indicating to us that the above kind of remembering is as good as seeing. This remembrance when exalted assumes the same form as seeing. . . . Worship is constant remembering as may be seen from the essential texts of scriptures. Knowing, which is the same as repeated worship, has been described as constant remembering. . . . Thus the memory, which has attained to the height of what is as good as direct perception, is spoken of in the Shruti as a means of liberation. 'This Atman is not to be reached through various sciences, nor by intellect, nor by much study of the Vedas. Whomsoever this Atman desires, by him is the Atman attained, unto him this Atman discovers Himself.' Here, after saying that mere hearing, thinking and meditating are not the means of attaining this Atman, it is said, 'Whom this Atman desires, by him the Atman is attained.' The extremely beloved is desired; by whomsoever this Atman is extremely beloved, he becomes the most beloved of the Atman. So that this beloved may attain the Atman, the Lord Himself helps. For it has been said by the Lord: 'Those who are constantly attached to Me and worship Me with love I give that direction to their will by which they come to Me.' Therefore it is said that, to whomsoever this remembering, which is of the same form as direct perception, is very dear, because it is dear to the Object of such memory perception, he is desired by the Supreme Atman, by him the Supreme Atman is attained. This constant remembrance is denoted by the word Bhakti." So says Bhagavn Rmnuja in his commentary on the Sutra Athto Brahma-jijns (Hence follows a dissertation on Brahman.).
In commenting on the Sutra of Patanjali, Ishvara pranidhndv, i.e. "Or by the worship of the Supreme Lord" Bhoja says, "Pranidhna is that sort of Bhakti in which, without seeking results, such as sense-enjoyments etc., all works are dedicated to that Teacher of teachers." Bhagavan Vysa also, when commenting on the same, defines Pranidhana as "the form of Bhakti by which the mercy of the Supreme Lord comes to the Yogi, and blesses him by granting him his desires". According to Shndilya, "Bhakti is intense love to God." The best definition is, however, that given by the king of Bhaktas, Prahlda:
1.01 - SAMADHI PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
scriptures; therefore the scriptures are proof, and, if any such
persons are living now, their words will be proof. Other
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Seers of the thoughts recorded in the scriptures the Vedas.
According to them, the only proof of the scriptures is that
they were the testimony of competent persons, yet they say
the scriptures cannot take us to realisation. We can read all
the Vedas, and yet will not realise anything, but when we
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realises what the scriptures say, which penetrates where
49
1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
When a man follows the way of the world, or the way of the flesh, or the way of tradition (i.e. when he believes in religious rites and the letter of the scriptures, as though they were intrinsically sacred), knowledge of Reality cannot arise in him.
The wise say that this threefold way is like an iron chain, binding the feet of him who aspires to escape from the prison-house of this world. He who frees himself from the chain achieves Deliverance.
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From Taoism we pass to that Mahayana Buddhism which, in the Far East, came to be so closely associated with Taoism, borrowing and bestowing until the two came at last to be fused in what is known as Zen. The Lankavatara Sutra, from which the following extract is taken, was the scripture which the founder of Zen Buddhism expressly recommended to his first disciples.
Those who vainly reason without understanding the truth are lost in the jungle of the Vijnanas (the various forms of relative knowledge), running about here and there and trying to justify their view of ego-substance.
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I am not competent, nor is this the place to discuss the doctrinal differences between Buddhism and Hinduism. Let it suffice to point out that, when he insisted that human beings are by nature non-Atman, the Buddha was evidently speaking about the personal self and not the universal Self. The Brahman controversialists, who appear in certain of the Pali scriptures, never so much as mention the Vedanta doctrine of the identity of Atman and Godhead and the non-identity of ego and Atman. What they maintain and Gautama denies is the substantial nature and eternal persistence of the individual psyche. As an unintelligent man seeks for the abode of music in the body of the lute, so does he look for a soul within the skandhas (the material and psychic aggregates, of which the individual mind-body is composed). About the existence of the Atman that is Brahman, as about most other metaphysical matters, the Buddha declines to speak, on the ground that such discussions do not tend to edification or spiritual progress among the members of a monastic order, such as he had founded. But though it has its dangers, though it may become the most absorbing, because the most serious and noblest, of distractions, metaphysical thinking is unavoidable and finally necessary. Even the Hinayanists found this, and the later Mahayanists were to develop, in connection with the practice of their religion, a splendid and imposing system of cosmological, ethical and psychological thought. This system was based upon the postulates of a strict idealism and professed to dispense with the idea of God. But moral and spiritual experience was too strong for philosophical theory, and under the inspiration of direct experience, the writers of the Mahayana sutras found themselves using all their ingenuity to explain why the Tathagata and the Bodhisattvas display an infinite charity towards beings that do not really exist. At the same time they stretched the framework of subjective idealism so as to make room for Universal Mind; qualified the idea of soullessness with the doctrine that, if purified, the individual mind can identify itself with the Universal Mind or Buddha-womb; and, while maintaining godlessness, asserted that this realizable Universal Mind is the inner consciousness of the eternal Buddha and that the Buddha-mind is associated with a great compassionate heart which desires the liberation of every sentient being and bestows divine grace on all who make a serious effort to achieve mans final end. In a word, despite their inauspicious vocabulary, the best of the Mahayana sutras contain an au thentic formulation of the Perennial Philosophya formulation which in some respects (as we shall see when we come to the section, God in the World) is more complete than any other.
In India, as in Persia, Mohammedan thought came to be enriched by the doctrine that God is immanent as well as transcendent, while to Mohammedan practice were added the moral disciplines and spiritual exercises, by means of which the soul is prepared for contemplation or the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. It is a significant historical fact that the poet-saint Kabir is claimed as a co-religionist both by Moslems and Hindus. The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific; it is the idolaters of past and future, of reactionary memory and Utopian dream, who do the persecuting and make the wars.
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that Every Man was enlightened by the Divine Light of Christ, and I saw it shine through all; And that they that believed in it came out of Condemnation and came to the Light of Life, and became the Children of it; And that they that hated it and did not believe in it, were condemned by it, though they made a profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure Openings of Light, without the help of any Man, neither did I then know where to find it in the scriptures, though afterwards, searching the scriptures, I found it.
From Foxs Journal
The doctrine of the Inner Light achieved a clearer formulation in the writings of the second generation of Quakers. There is, wrote William Penn, something nearer to us than scriptures, to wit, the Word in the heart from which all scriptures come. And a little later Robert Barclay sought to explain the direct experience of tat tvam asi in terms of an Augustinian theology that had, of course, to be considerably stretched and trimmed before it could fit the facts. Man, he declared in his famous theses, is a fallen being, incapable of good, unless united to the Divine Light. This Divine Light is Christ within the human soul, and is as universal as the seed of sin. All men, hea then as well as Christian, are endowed with the Inward Light, even though they may know nothing of the outward history of Christs life. Justification is for those who do not resist the Inner Light and so permit of a new birth of holiness within them.
Goodness needeth not to enter into the soul, for it is there already, only it is unperceived.
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All this sheds some lightdim, it is true, and merely inferentialon the problem of the perennialness of the Perennial Philosophy. In India the scriptures were regarded, not as revelations made at some given moment of history, but as eternal gospels, existent from everlasting to everlasting, inasmuch as coeval with man, or for that matter with any other kind of corporeal or incorporeal being possessed of reason. A similar point of view is expressed by Aristotle, who regards the fundamental truths of religion as everlasting and indestructible. There have been ascents and falls, periods (literally roads around or cycles) of progress and regress; but the great fact of God as the First Mover of a universe which partakes of His divinity has always been recognized. In the light of what we know about prehistoric man (and what we know amounts to nothing more than a few chipped stones, some paintings, drawings and sculptures) and of what we may legitimately infer from other, better documented fields of knowledge, what are we to think of these traditional doctrines? My own view is that they may be true. We know that born contemplatives in the realm both of analytic and of integral thought have turned up in fair numbers and at frequent intervals during recorded history. There is therefore every reason to suppose that they turned up before history was recorded. That many of these people died young or were unable to exercise their talents is certain. But a few of them must have survived. In this context it is highly significant that, among many contemporary primitives, two thought-patterns are foundan exoteric pattern for the unphilosophic many and an esoteric pattern (often monotheistic, with a belief in a God not merely of power, but of goodness and wisdom) for the initiated few. There is no reason to suppose that circumstances were any harder for prehistoric men than they are for many contemporary savages. But if an esoteric monotheism of the kind that seems to come natural to the born thinker is possible in modern savage societies, the majority of whose members accept the sort of polytheistic philosophy that seems to come natural to men of action, a similar esoteric doctrine might have been current in prehistoric societies. True, the modern esoteric doctrines may have been derived from higher cultures. But the significant fact remains that, if so derived, they yet had a meaning for certain members of the primitive society and were considered valuable enough to be carefully preserved. We have seen that many thoughts are unthinkable apart from an appropriate vocabulary and frame of reference. But the fundamental ideas of the Perennial Philosophy can be formulated in a very simple vocabulary, and the experiences to which the ideas refer can and indeed must be had immediately and apart from any vocabulary whatsoever. Strange openings and theophanies are granted to quite small children, who are often profoundly and permanently affected by these experiences. We have no reason to suppose that what happens now to persons with small vocabularies did not happen in remote antiquity. In the modern world (as Vaughan and Traherne and Wordsworth, among others, have told us) the child tends to grow out of his direct awareness of the one Ground of things; for the habit of analytical thought is fatal to the intuitions of integral thinking, whether on the psychic or the spiritual level. Psychic preoccupations may be and often are a major obstacle in the way of genuine spirituality. In primitive societies now (and, presumably, in the remote past) there is much preoccupation with, and a widespread talent for, psychic thinking. But a few people may have worked their way through psychic into genuinely spiritual experiencejust as, even in modern industrialized societies, a few people work their way out of the prevailing preoccupation with matter and through the prevailing habits of analytical thought into the direct experience of the spiritual Ground of things.
Such, then, very briefly are the reasons for supposing that the historical traditions of oriental and our own classical antiquity may be true. It is interesting to find that at least one distinguished contemporary ethnologist is in agreement with Aristotle and the Vedantists. Orthodox ethnology, writes Dr. Paul Radin in his Primitive Man as Philosopher, has been nothing but an enthusiastic and quite uncritical attempt to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the facts of social experience. And he adds that no progress in ethnology will be achieved until scholars rid themselves once and for all of the curious notion that everything possesses a history; until they realize that certain ideas and certain concepts are as ultimate for man, as a social being, as specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him, as a biological being. Among these ultimate concepts, in Dr. Radins view, is that of monotheism. Such monotheism is often no more than the recognition of a single dark and numinous Power ruling the world. But it may sometimes be genuinely ethical and spiritual.
1.01 - The Four Aids, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Shastra - knowledge and scripture
Utsaha - ideals of effort
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6:But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the Sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, -- some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, -- it may be practised either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.
7:For the Sadhaka of the Integral Yoga it is necessary to remember that no written Shastra, however great its authority or however large its spirit, can be more than a partial expression of the eternal Knowledge. He will use, but never bind himself even by the greatest scripture. Where the scripture is profound, wide, catholic, it may exercise upon him an influence for the highest good and of incalculable importance. It may be associated in his experience with his awakening to crowning verities and his realisation of the highest experiences. His Yoga may be governed for a long time by one scripture or by several successively, -- if it is in the line of the great Hindu tradition, by the Gita, for example, the Upanishads, the Veda. Or it may be a good part of his development to include in its material a richly varied experience of the truths of many scriptures and make the future opulent with all that is best in the past. But in the end he must take his station, or better still, if he can, always and from the beginning he must live in his own soul beyond the written Truth, -- sabdabrahmativartate -- beyond all that he has heard and all that he has yet to hear, -- srotaryasya srutasya ca. For he is not the Sadhaka of a book or of many books; he is a Sadhaka of the Infinite.
8:Another kind of Shastra is not scripture, but a statement of the science and methods, the effective principles and way of working of the path of Yoga which the Sadhaka elects to follow. Each path has its Shastra, either written or traditional, passing from mouth to mouth through a long line of Teachers. In India a great authority, a high reverence even is ordinarily attached to the written or traditional teaching. All the lines of the Yoga are supposed to be fixed and the Teacher who has received the Shastra by tradition and realised it in practice guides the disciple along the immemorial tracks. One often even hears the objection urged against a new practice, a new Yogic teaching, the adoption of a new formula, "It is not according to the Shastra." But neither in fact nor in the actual practice of the Yogins is there really any such entire rigidity of an iron door shut against new truth, fresh revelation, widened experience. The written or traditional teaching expresses the knowledge and experiences of many centuries systematised, organised, made attainable to the beginner. Its importance and utility are therefore immense. But a great freedom of variation and development is always practicable. Even so highly scientific a system as Rajayoga can be practised on other lines than the organised method of Patanjali. Each of the three paths, trimarga 51, breaks into many bypaths which meet again at the goal. The general knowledge on which the Yoga depends is fixed, but the order, the succession, the devices, the forms must be allowed to vary, for the needs and particular impulsions of the individual nature have to be satisfied even while the general truths remain firm and constant.
9:An integral and synthetic Yoga needs especially not to be bound by any written or traditional Shastra; for while it embraces the knowledge received from the past, it seeks to organise it anew for the present and the future. An absolute liberty of experience and of the restatement of knowledge in new terms and new combinations is the condition of its self-formation. Seeking to embrace all life in itself, it is in the position not of a pilgrim following the highroad to his destination, but, to that extent at least, of a path-finder hewing his way through a virgin forest. For Yoga has long diverged from life and the ancient systems which sought to embrace it, such as those of our Vedic forefa thers, are far away from us, expressed in terms which are no longer accessible, thrown into forms which are no longer applicable. Since then mankind has moved forward on the current of eternal Time and the same problem has to be approached from a new starting-point.
1.01 - The Highest Meaning of the Holy Truths, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
pounded the Light-Emitting Wisdom scripture; he experienced
heavenly flowers falling in profusion and the earth turning to
1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Hinduism we find the basis of the future world-religion. This sanatana dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita,
Upanishad, Darshana, Purana, Tantra, nor could it reject the
Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.
Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity - this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, "The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind
1.02.2.2 - Self-Realisation, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
of these scriptures and to the relations of the thought which is developed in the Isha.
but reflected in the mind. If the mind is pure, bright and still,
1.024 - Affiliation With Larger Wholes, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is the conclusion arrived at by certain faculties of prehension which are operating in the subtle layers of the mind, invisible even to the mind itself in its conscious level. In our own six-foot bodily individuality, we have possibilities of the whole cosmic experience in a minute, microscopic form. The seeds of universal powers and achievements are hiddenly present in the cells of our own individual body. The vast tree of cosmic experience, the blossoming of universal realisation, is latent as a seed in the very fibre of our present individual existence. It is this that occasionally makes us brood over the possibilities of higher achievements in life and never allows us to rest contented with what we are at present. So, by these methods of self-analysis and study of scriptures, etc., we should be able to bring the mind back from its concentration on diverse realities of the sense-world and fix it upon a higher reality so that its distractions get lessened as much as possible.
A distraction is the attention of the mind on diversity. Concentration is the withdrawal of the mind from diversity, and its attention bestowed upon a more unifying system of values. As we go higher and higher, the diversities become less and less. They all get included in a more comprehensive system, which includes all of the diversities which the mind originally perceived as independent existences. This is how the mind can be brought from its usual meanderings in the world of sense and made to concentrate itself on higher realities. By educative methods it has to be told, again and again, that a higher plane does exist and is implicit in one's own experience. It is not outside; it is hidden, latent potential, and it can be manifest by proper methods.
1.028 - Bringing About Whole-Souled Dedication, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Whole-souled dedication to the practice is possible only when there is perfect understanding. Why is it that our mind is not entirely dedicated to this practice, and part of it is thinking of something else? The reason is that our understanding of the efficacy and the value and the worthwhileness of the practice is inadequate. Our faith in God, our trust in God, and our feeling that God is everything is half-baked it is not perfect. We do not have, even today, full faith that God is everything. "There is something else which is also good." Such thinking is lurking in the mind. "Though God is all alright, the scriptures say that but my subtle conscience says that there is something else also, something else that is also sweet. God is sweet, but there is something else also, equally sweet. Why should I not go there?.
So the subconscious mind goes there, and that outlet which the mind allows for at the bottom lets all the energy leak out in the wrong direction. The so-called concentration of mind in the practice of yoga that is undertaken every day becomes a kind of futile effort on account of not knowing that some underground activity is going on in the mind which is completely upsetting all of our conscious activities called daily meditation. We have certain underground activities which we are not aware of always, and these activities completely disturb and turn upside-down all of the so-called practice of yoga that is done only at the conscious level.
10.29 - Gods Debt, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
First let us understand the mystery of God's debt to man. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty to the smaller. The child owes a debt to his parents; no less is the debt that the parents owe to the child. The parents not only bring forth the child, but they have to bring him up, nourish, foster, educate and settle him in life. We know also, as the scriptures tell us, that there is a debt man owes to the gods. The paying of the debt is described in the institution of the sacrifice (yajna). It is through his sacrifice that man achieves what he has to achieve upon earth. It is the givingof what one is and what one hasto the gods the sacrifice mounts carrying the offering to the gods. But the sacrifice is not a mere one-sided movement, the sacrifice brings from the gods gifts for the manmaterial prosperity and spiritual fulfilment. Man increases himself in this way, but thereby increases the gods also. The offering that man brings in his sacrificeall his possessionshis earthly possessions, but chiefly his possessions of the inner world, the wealth of his spirit, the virtues of his consciousness all go to the gods and increase them, that is to say, they become more manifest and more powerful upon earth and in earthly existence and in the service of man.
The sacrifice going up to the gods as offered by man means the sadhana, the inner discipline that he follows by which he lifts up his being with its mental and vital and physical formulations to their higher and higher potencies upon earth. The dedication of the normal powers and faculties to the gods means purification and release from the bondages of ignorance and egoism. This serves to make the gods living to us, bring them near to our terrestrial life, to our normal consciousness. This is what is meant by increasing the godsman's duty or debt to the gods. In answer there is a corresponding gesture from the gods, with their immortalising reality they dwell in us and fill our being with their godlike qualities, their light, their energy, their delight, their very immortality. Man increases the gods and the gods increase man and by their mutual increasing they attain the supreme increment, the Divine status, so says the Gita.
1.02 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Pundit Samadhyayi was present. The Brahmo devotees introduced him to Sri Ramakrishna as a scholar well versed in the Vedas and the other scriptures. The Master said, "Yes, I can see inside him through his eyes, as one can see the objects in a room through the glass door."
Trailokya sang. Suddenly the Master stood up and went into samdhi, repeating the Mother's name. Coming down a little to the plane of sense consciousness, he danced and sang:
1.02 - Karmayoga, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Moreover the word Vedanta is usually identified with the strict Monism and the peculiar theory of Maya established by the lofty and ascetic intellect of Shankara. But it is the Upanishads themselves and not Shankara's writings, the text and not the commentary, that are the authoritative scripture of the
Vedantin. Shankara's, great and temporarily satisfying as it was, is still only one synthesis and interpretation of the Upanishads.
1.02 - Outline of Practice, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with
reason. Without moving, without effort, they enter, we say, by
1.02 - Self-Consecration, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
19:But on that which as yet we know not how shall we concentrate? And yet we cannot know the Divine unless we have achieved this concentration of our being upon him. A concentration which culminates in a living realisation and the constant sense of the presence of the One in ourselves and in all of which we are aware, is what we mean in Yoga by knowledge and the effort after knowledge. It is not enough to devote ourselves by the reading of scriptures or by the stress of philosophical reasoning to an intellectual understanding of the Divine; for at the end of our long mental labour we might know all that has been said of the Eternal, possess all that can be thought about the Infinite and yet we might not know him at all. This intellectual preparation can indeed be the first stage in a powerful Yoga, but it is not indispensable : it is not a step which all need or can be called upon to take. Yoga would be impossible, except for a very few, if the intellectual figure of knowledge arrived at by the speculative or meditative Reason were its indispensable condition or a binding preliminary. All that the Light from above asks of us that it may begin its work is a call from the soul and a sufficient point of support in the mind. This support can be reached through an insistent idea of the Divine in the thought, a corresponding will in the dynamic parts, an aspiration, a faith, a need in the heart. Any one of these may lead or predominate, if all cannot move in unison or in an equal rhythm. The idea may be and must in the beginning be inadequate; the aspiration may be narrow and imperfect, the faith poorly illumined or even, as not surely founded on the rock of knowledge, fluctuating, uncertain, easily diminished; often even it may be extinguished and need to be lit again with difficulty like a torch in a windy pass. But if once there is a resolute self-consecration from deep within, if there is an awakening to the soul's call, these inadequate things can be a sufficient instrument for the divine purpose. Therefore the wise have always been unwilling to limit man's avenues towards God; they would not shut against his entry even the narrowest portal, the lowest and darkest postern, the humblest wicket-gate. Any name, any form, any symbol, any offering has been held to be sufficient if there is the consecration along with it; for the Divine knows himself in the heart of the seeker and accepts the sacrifice.
20:But still the greater and wider the moving idea-force behind the consecration, the better for the seeker; his attainment is likely to be fuller and more ample. If we are to attempt an integral Yoga, it will be as well to start with an idea of the Divine that is itself integral. There should be an aspiration in the heart wide enough for a realisation without any narrow limits. Not only should we avoid a sectarian religious outlook, but also all onesided philosophical conceptions which try to shut up the Ineffable in a restricting mental formula. The dynamic conception or impelling sense with which our Yoga can best set out would be naturally the idea, the sense of a conscious all-embracing but all-exceeding Infinite. Our uplook must be to a free, all-powerful, perfect and blissful One and Oneness in which all beings move and live and through which all can meet and become one. This Eternal will be at once personal and impersonal in his self-revelation and touch upon the soul. He is personal because he is the conscious Divine, the infinite Person who casts some broken reflection of himself in the myriad divine and undivine personalities of the universe. He is impersonal because he appears to us as an infinite Existence, Consciousness and Ananda and because he is the fount, base and constituent of all existences and all energies, -the very material of our being and mind and life and body, our spirit and our matter. The thought, concentrating on him, must not merely understand in an intellectual form that he exists, or conceive of him as an abstraction, a logical necessity; it must become a seeing thought able to meet him here as the Inhabitant in all, realise him in ourselves, watch and take hold on the movement of his forces. He is the one Existence: he is the original and universal Delight that constitutes all things and exceeds them: he is the one infinite Consciousness that composes all consciousnesses and informs all their movements; he is the one illimitable Being who sustains all action and experience; his will guides the evolution of things towards their yet unrealised but inevitable aim and plenitude. To him the heart can consecrate itself, approach him as the supreme Beloved, beat and move in him as in a universal sweetness of Love and a living sea of Delight. For his is the secret Joy that supports the soul in all its experiences and maintains even the errant ego in its ordeals and struggles till all sorrow and suffering shall cease. His is the Love and the Bliss of the infinite divine Lover who is drawing all things by their own path towards his happy oneness. On him the Will can unalterably fix as the invisible Power that guides and fulfils it and as the source of its strength. In the impersonality this actuating Power is a self-illumined Force that contains all results and calmly works until it accomplishes, in the personality an all wise and omnipotent Master of the Yoga whom nothing can prevent from leading it to its goal. This is the faith with which the seeker has to begin his seeking and endeavour; for in all his effort here, but most of all in his effort towards the Unseen, mental man must perforce proceed by faith. When the realisation comes, the faith divinely fulfilled and completed will be transformed into an eternal flame of knowledge.
1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But by what individual faculty or standard shall the innovator find out his new foundation or establish his new measures? Evidently, it will depend upon the available enlightenment of the time and the possible forms of knowledge to which he has access. At first it was in religion a personal illumination supported in the West by a theological, in the East by a philosophical reasoning. In society and politics it started with a crude primitive perception of natural right and justice which took its origin from the exasperation of suffering or from an awakened sense of general oppression, wrong, injustice and the indefensibility of the existing order when brought to any other test than that of privilege and established convention. The religious motive led at first; the social and political, moderating itself after the swift suppression of its first crude and vehement movements, took advantage of the upheaval of religious reformation, followed behind it as a useful ally and waited its time to assume the lead when the spiritual momentum had been spent and, perhaps by the very force of the secular influences it called to its aid, had missed its way. The movement of religious freedom in Europe took its stand first on a limited, then on an absolute right of the individual experience and illumined reason to determine the true sense of inspired scripture and the true Christian ritual and order of the Church. The vehemence of its claim was measured by the vehemence of its revolt from the usurpations, pretensions and brutalities of the ecclesiastical power which claimed to withhold the scripture from general knowledge and impose by moral authority and physical violence its own arbitrary interpretation of Sacred Writ, if not indeed another and substituted doctrine, on the recalcitrant individual conscience. In its more tepid and moderate forms the revolt engendered such compromises as the Episcopalian Churches, at a higher degree of fervour Calvinistic Puritanism, at white heat a riot of individual religious judgment and imagination in such sects as the Anabaptist, Independent, Socinian and countless others. In the East such a movement divorced from all political or any strongly iconoclastic social significance would have produced simply a series of religious reformers, illumined saints, new bodies of belief with their appropriate cultural and social practice; in the West atheism and secularism were its inevitable and predestined goal. At first questioning the conventional forms of religion, the mediation of the priesthood between God and the soul and the substitution of Papal authority for the authority of the scripture, it could not fail to go forward and question the scripture itself and then all supernaturalism, religious belief or suprarational truth no less than outward creed and institute.
For, eventually, the evolution of Europe was determined less by the Reformation than by the Renascence; it flowered by the vigorous return of the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality of the one rather than by the Hebraic and religio-ethical temperament of the other. The Renascence gave back to Europe on one hand the free curiosity of the Greek mind, its eager search for first principles and rational laws, its delighted intellectual scrutiny of the facts of life by the force of direct observation and individual reasoning, on the other the Romans large practicality and his sense for the ordering of life in harmony with a robust utility and the just principles of things. But both these tendencies were pursued with a passion, a seriousness, a moral and almost religious ardour which, lacking in the ancient Graeco-Roman mentality, Europe owed to her long centuries of Judaeo-Christian discipline. It was from these sources that the individualistic age of Western society sought ultimately for that principle of order and control which all human society needs and which more ancient times attempted to realise first by the materialisation of fixed symbols of truth, then by ethical type and discipline, finally by infallible authority or stereotyped convention.
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They found and held it with enthusiasm in the discoveries of physical Science. The triumphant domination, the all-shattering and irresistible victory of Science in nineteenth-century Europe is explained by the absolute perfection with which it at least seemed for a time to satisfy these great psychological wants of the Western mind. Science seemed to it to fulfil impeccably its search for the two supreme desiderata of an individualistic age. Here at last was a truth of things which depended on no doubtful scripture or fallible human authority but which Mother Nature herself had written in her eternal book for all to read who had patience to observe and intellectual honesty to judge. Here were laws, principles, fundamental facts of the world and of our being which all could verify at once for themselves and which must therefore satisfy and guide the free individual judgment, delivering it equally from alien compulsion and from erratic self-will. Here were laws and truths which justified and yet controlled the claims and desires of the individual human being; here a science which provided a standard, a norm of knowledge, a rational basis for life, a clear outline and sovereign means for the progress and perfection of the individual and the race. The attempt to govern and organise human life by verifiable Science, by a law, a truth of things, an order and principles which all can observe and verify in their ground and fact and to which therefore all may freely and must rationally subscribe, is the culminating movement of European civilisation. It has been the fulfilment and triumph of the individualistic age of human society; it has seemed likely also to be its end, the cause of the death of individualism and its putting away and burial among the monuments of the past.
For this discovery by individual free-thought of universal laws of which the individual is almost a by-product and by which he must necessarily be governed, this attempt actually to govern the social life of humanity in conscious accordance with the mechanism of these laws seems to lead logically to the suppression of that very individual freedom which made the discovery and the attempt at all possible. In seeking the truth and law of his own being the individual seems to have discovered a truth and law which is not of his own individual being at all, but of the collectivity, the pack, the hive, the mass. The result to which this points and to which it still seems irresistibly to be driving us is a new ordering of society by a rigid economic or governmental Socialism in which the individual, deprived again of his freedom in his own interest and that of humanity, must have his whole life and action determined for him at every step and in every point from birth to old age by the well-ordered mechanism of the State.1 We might then have a curious new version, with very important differences, of the old Asiatic or even of the old Indian order of society. In place of the religio-ethical sanction there will be a scientific and rational or naturalistic motive and rule; instead of the Brahmin Shastrakara the scientific, administrative and economic expert. In the place of the King himself observing the law and compelling with the aid and consent of the society all to tread without deviation the line marked out for them, the line of the Dharma, there will stand the collectivist State similarly guided and empowered. Instead of a hierarchical arrangement of classes each with its powers, privileges and duties there will be established an initial equality of education and opportunity, ultimately perhaps with a subsequent determination of function by experts who shall know us better than ourselves and choose for us our work and quality. Marriage, generation and the education of the child may be fixed by the scientific State as of old by the Shastra. For each man there will be a long stage of work for the State superintended by collectivist authorities and perhaps in the end a period of liberation, not for action but for enjoyment of leisure and personal self-improvement, answering to the Vanaprastha and Sannyasa Asramas of the old Aryan society. The rigidity of such a social state would greatly surpass that of its Asiatic forerunner; for there at least there were for the rebel, the innovator two important concessions. There was for the individual the freedom of an early Sannyasa, a renunciation of the social for the free spiritual life, and there was for the group the liberty to form a sub-society governed by new conceptions like the Sikh or the Vaishnava. But neither of these violent departures from the norm could be tolerated by a strictly economic and rigorously scientific and unitarian society. Obviously, too, there would grow up a fixed system of social morality and custom and a body of socialistic doctrine which one could not be allowed to question practically, and perhaps not even intellectually, since that would soon shatter or else undermine the system. Thus we should have a new typal order based upon purely economic capacity and function, guakarma, and rapidly petrifying by the inhibition of individual liberty into a system of rationalistic conventions. And quite certainly this static order would at long last be broken by a new individualist age of revolt, led probably by the principles of an extreme philosophical Anarchism.
1.02 - The Divine Teacher, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And the action in which this divine figure moves is the whole wide action of man in life, not merely the inner life, but all this obscure course of the world which we can judge only by the twilight of the human reason as it opens up dimly before our uncertain advance the little span in front. This is the distinguishing feature of the Gita that it is the culmination of such an action which gives rise to its teaching and assigns that prominence and bold relief to the gospel of works which it enunciates with an emphasis and force we do not find in other Indian scriptures.
Not only in the Gita, but in other passages of the Mahabharata we meet with Krishna declaring emphatically the necessity of action, but it is here that he reveals its secret and the divinity behind our works.
1.02 - The Eternal Law, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
If we leave aside the scriptures for the human mind is so skillful that it can easily dream up sheep grazing on the Empire State building and if we look at the practical disciplines of India, the contradiction becomes even more striking. Indian psychology is based on the very intelligent observation that all things in the universe, from mineral to man, are made up of three elements or qualities (gunas), which may be called by different names depending on the order of reality one considers: tamas, inertia, obscurity, unconsciousness; rajas,
movement, struggle, effort, passion, action; sattva, light, harmony,
1.02 - THE NATURE OF THE GROUND, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The purpose of all words is to illustrate the meaning of an object. When they are heard, they should enable the hearer to understand this meaning, and this according to the four categories of substance, of activity, of quality and of relationship. For example cow and horse belong to the category of substance. He cooks or he prays belongs to the category of activity. White and black belong to the category of quality. Having money or possessing cows belongs to the category of relationship. Now there is no class of substance to which the Brahman belongs, no common genus. It cannot therefore be denoted by words which, like being in the ordinary sense, signify a category of things. Nor can it be denoted by quality, for it is without qualities; nor yet by activity because it is without activityat rest, without parts or activity, according to the scriptures. Neither can it be denoted by relationship, for it is without a second and is not the object of anything but its own self. Therefore it cannot be defined by word or idea; as the scripture says, it is the One before whom words recoil.
Shankara
1.02 - The Philosophy of Ishvara, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
In explaining this aphorism the commentator Rmnuja says, "This doubt being raised, whether among the powers of the liberated souls is included that unique power of the Supreme One, that is, of creation etc. of the universe and even the Lordship of all, or whether, without that, the glory of the liberated consists only in the direct perception of the Supreme One, we get as an argument the following: It is reasonable that the liberated get the Lordship of the universe, because the scriptures say,
'He attains to extreme sameness with the Supreme One and all his desires are realised.' Now extreme sameness and realisation of all desires cannot be attained without the unique power of the Supreme Lord, namely, that of governing the universe. Therefore, to attain the realisation of all desires and the extreme sameness with the Supreme, we must all admit that the liberated get the power of ruling the whole universe. To this we reply, that the liberated get all the powers except that of ruling the universe.
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Why? Because He is the subject of all the scriptural texts as regards creation etc., and the liberated souls are not mentioned therein in any connection whatsoever. The Supreme Lord indeed is alone engaged in ruling the universe. The texts as to creation etc. all point to Him. Besides, there is given the adjective 'ever-perfect'. Also the scriptures say that the powers Anima etc. of the others are from the search after and the worship of God. Therefore they have no place in the ruling of the universe. Again, on account of their possessing their own minds, it is possible that their wills may differ, and that, whilst one desires creation, another may desire destruction. The only way of avoiding this conflict is to make all wills subordinate to some one will. Therefore the conclusion is that the wills of the liberated are dependent on the will of the Supreme Ruler."
next chapter: 1.03 - Spiritual Realisation, The aim of Bhakti-Yoga
1.02 - The Principle of Fire, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
As it has been said before, akasa or the etheric principle is the cause of the origin of the elements. According to the oriental scriptures, the first element born from akasa is believed to be Tejas, the principle of fire. This element as well as all the others manifest their influence not only in our roughly material plane but also in everything created. The basic qualities of the fiery principle are heat and expansion. In the beginning of all things created therefore must have been fire and light, and in the
Bible we read: Fiat Lux There shall be light. The origin of the light, of course, is to be sought in the fire. Each element and therefore that of fire, too, has two polarities, i.e., the active and the passive one, which means positive (+) and negative (-). Plus will always signify the constructive, the creative, the productive sources whereas minus stands for all that is destructive or dissecting. There are always two basic qualities, which must be clearly distinguished in each element. Religions have always imputed the good to the active and the evil to the passive side. But fundamentally spoken, there are no such things as good or bad; they are nothing but human conceptions. In the Universe there is neither good nor evil, because everything has been created according to immutable rules, wherein the Divine Principle is reflected and only by knowing these rules, shall we be able to come near to the Divinity.
1.02 - The Ultimate Path is Without Difficulty, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
Diamond Cutter scripture in western Shu (Szechuan). Accord
ing to what it says in that teaching, in the process of the
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said, "Commentaries on the Diamond Cutter scripture." The
old woman said, "I have a question for you: if you can answer it
1.031 - Intense Aspiration, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
What we should do is, together with our effort at change of physical atmosphere, also try to bring about a gradual change in our internal atmosphere by resorting to certain spiritual disciplines, such as the utilisation of the time on hand for certain definite chosen purposes. When we live in a particular place we have left our homes and have come to Uttarkashi, for instance how do we use our time? Do we go about from place to place, chatting? Then we should go back to our home and stay there. Why do we come to Uttarkashi? We have to utilise the time for a purpose which is more intimate to the object on hand than the way in which we lived earlier. Generally, people take to mantra purascharana a disciplined type of chanting of the mantra that has been given to them by their Guru and sacred study of scriptures, such as the Srimad Bhagavata or the Ramayana, or any other holy text which is conducive to pinpointing the mind on the liberation of the soul, which is the ultimate objective.
Another great helpful factor is observing mouna or not talking, or at least talking only when it is necessary. Talking only when it is necessary means we will talk only when it is absolutely impossible to avoid talking; otherwise, we will not talk. Why do we go on talking with everyone? There is no necessity. We should regard ourselves as real seekers and not merely as jokers with truth, and try to open our mouths only when it is necessary, and otherwise not open our mouths. It is necessary to open the mouth only when it has some connection with the purpose for which we have come here. When it has no connection, why do we talk? We should keep our mouths closed. This is not only a spiritual discipline but also a very helpful method of conserving energy, because much of the energy is lost in talking. If we do not speak for three days continuously, we will see what difference it makes. We will feel that there is so much of strength in us that we can walk even long distances without any feeling of fatigue. All our energy goes in speaking unnecessarily to anyone and anything that is in front of us, on any subject whatsoever.
1.037 - Preventing the Fall in Yoga, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Then doubts will start rising up in the mind and tell us all sorts of stories about our Guru and our sadhana, our scripture and religion, and everything. We will start doubting everything; and only a single doubt has to arise in order for ten doubts to rise up as the result of that one doubt. Then we will change the Guru. Many people change their Gurus, change the method of meditation, change the mantra and move from place to place, because they have found that there is something wrong. "Otherwise, why is it that I am not achieving anything after so many years of effort?" So, after vyadhi and styana comes samsaya or doubt. This is an obstacle, says Patanjali.
We may doubt the existence of God Himself this is something that is not unexpected. "After all, is there such a thing called God? Buddha does not believe in God. Perhaps Buddha may be right. He never uttered a word about God. So why am I crying for Brahma, Vishnu, Siva and all that? They may not be there at all." These doubts also will arise. "If they are not there, why am I praying to them? And if they are there, why didn't Buddha mention them? Buddha was not a fool. And there are other religious teachers who do not mention these things. They have other methods, such as upasana meditation, vipasana meditation, and are all sorts of things.
1.03 - A Parable, #The Lotus Sutra, #Anonymous, #Various
And will never think about heretical scriptures.
O riputra! I say to you:
1.03 - Bloodstream Sermon, #The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, #Bodhidharma, #Buddhism
language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his
own nature finds the Way, even if he can't read a word. Someone
1.03 - Master Ma is Unwell, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
According to the Buddha Name scripture, a Sun Face Buddha
lives in the world for eighteen hundred years, whereas a Moon
1.03 - PERSONALITY, SANCTITY, DIVINE INCARNATION, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The scriptures say of human beings that there is an outward man and along with him an inner man.
To the outward man belong those things that depend on the soul, but are connected with the flesh and are blended with it, and the co-operative functions of the several members, such as the eye, the ear, the tongue, the hand and so on.
The scripture speaks of all this as the old man, the earthy man, the outward person, the enemy, the servant.
Within us all is the other person, the inner man, whom the scripture calls the new man, the heavenly man, the young person, the friend, the aristocrat.
Eckhart
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The biographies of the saints testify unequivocally to the fact that spiritual training leads to a transcendence of personality, not merely in the special circumstances of battle, but in all circumstances and in relation to all creatures, so that the saint loves his enemies or, if he is a Buddhist, does not even recognize the existence of enemies, but treats all sentient beings, sub-human as well as human, with the same compassion and disinterested good will. Those who win through to the unitive knowledge of God set out upon their course from the most diverse starting points. One is a man, another a woman; one a born active, another a born contemplative. No two of them inherit the same temperament and physical constitution, and their lives are passed in material, moral and intellectual environments that are profoundly dissimilar. Nevertheless, insofar as they are saints, insofar as they possess the unitive knowledge that makes them perfect as their Father which is in heaven is perfect, they are all astonishingly alike. Their actions are uniformly selfless and they are constantly recollected, so that at every moment they know who they are and what is their true relation to the universe and its spiritual Ground. Of even plain average people it may be said that their name is Legionmuch more so of exceptionally complex personalities, who identify themselves with a wide diversity of moods, cravings and opinions. Saints, on the contrary, are neither double-minded nor half-hearted, but single and, however great their intellectual gifts, profoundly simple. The multiplicity of Legion has given place to one-pointedness not to any of those evil one-pointednesses of ambition or covetousness, or lust for power and fame, not even to any of the nobler, but still all too human one-pointednesses of art, scholarship and science, regarded as ends in themselves, but to the supreme, more than human one-pointedness that is the very being of those souls who consciously and consistently pursue mans final end, the knowledge of eternal Reality. In one of the Pali scriptures there is a significant anecdote about the Brahman Drona who, seeing the Blessed One sitting at the foot of a tree, asked him, Are you a deva? And the Exalted One answered, I am not. Are you a gandharva? I am not, Are you a yaksha? I am not. Are you a man? I am not a man. On the Brahman asking what he might be, the Blessed One replied, Those evil influences, those cravings, whose non-destruction would have individualized me as a deva, a gandharva, a yaksha (three types of supernatural being), or a man, I have completely annihilated. Know therefore that I am Buddha.
Here we may remark in passing that it is only the one-pointed, who are truly capable of worshipping one God. Monotheism as a theory can be entertained even by a person whose name is Legion. But when it comes to passing from theory to practice, from discursive knowledge about to immediate acquaintance with the one God, there cannot be monotheism except where there is singleness of heart. Knowledge is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Where the knower is poly-psychic the universe he knows by immediate experience is polytheistic. The Buddha declined to make any statement in regard to the ultimate divine Reality. All he would talk about was Nirvana, which is the name of the experience that comes to the totally selfless and one-pointed. To this same experience others have given the name of union with Brahman, with Al Haqq, with the immanent and transcendent Godhead. Maintaining, in this matter, the attitude of a strict operationalist, the Buddha would speak only of the spiritual experience, not of the metaphysical entity presumed by the theologians of other religions, as also of later Buddhism, to be the object and (since in contemplation the knower, the known and the knowledge are all one) at the same time the subject and substance of that experience.
When a man lacks discrimination, his will wanders in all directions, after innumerable aims. Those who lack discrimination may quote the letter of the scripture; but they are really denying its inner truth. They are full of worldly desires and hungry for the rewards of heaven. They use beautiful figures of speech; they teach elaborate rituals, which are supposed to obtain pleasure and power for those who practice them. But, actually, they understand nothing except the law of Karma that chains men to rebirth.
Those whose discrimination is stolen away by such talk grow deeply attached to pleasure and power. And so they are unable to develop that one-pointed concentration of the will, which leads a man to absorption in God.
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The Logos passes out of eternity into time for no other purpose than to assist the beings, whose bodily form he takes, to pass out of time into eternity. If the Avatars appearance upon the stage of history is enormously important, this is due to the fact that by his teaching he points out, and by his being a channel of grace and divine power he actually is, the means by which human beings may transcend the limitations of history. The author of the Fourth Gospel affirms that the Word became flesh; but in another passage he adds that the flesh profiteth nothingnothing, that is to say, in itself, but a great deal, of course, as a means to the union with immanent and transcendent Spirit. In this context it is very interesting to consider the development of Buddhism. Under the forms of religious or mystical imagery, writes R. E. Johnston in his Buddhist China, the Mahayana expresses the universal, whereas Hinayana cannot set itself free from the domination of historical fact. In the words of an eminent orientalist, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Mahayanist believer is warnedprecisely as the worshipper of Krishna is warned in the Vaishnavite scriptures that the Krishna Lila is not a history, but a process for ever unfolded in the heart of man that matters of historical fact are without religious significance (except, we should add, insofar as they point to or themselves constitute the meanswhe ther remote or proximate, whether political, ethical or spiritualby which men may come to deliverance from selfness and the temporal order.)
In the West, the mystics went some way towards liberating Christianity from its unfortunate servitude to historic fact. (or, to be more accurate, to those various mixtures of contemporary record with subsequent inference and phantasy, which have, at different epochs, been accepted as historic fact). From the writings of Eckhart, Tauler and Ruysbroeck, of Boehme, William Law and the Quakers, it would be possible to extract a spiritualized and universalized Christianity, whose narratives should refer, not to history as it was, or as someone afterwards thought it ought to be, but to processes forever unfolded in the heart of man. But unfortunately the influence of the mystics was never powerful enough to bring about a radical Mahayanist revolution in the West. In spite of them, Christianity has remained a religion in which the pure Perennial Philosophy has been overlaid, now more, now less, by an idolatrous preoccupation with events and things in timeevents and things regarded not merely as useful means, but as ends, intrinsically sacred and indeed divine. Moreover such improvements on history as were made in the course of centuries were, most imprudently, treated as though they themselves were a part of historya procedure which put a powerful weapon into the hands of Protestant and, later, of Rationalist controversialists. How much wiser it would have been to admit the perfectly avowable fact that, when the sternness of Christ the Judge had been unduly emphasized, men and women felt the need of personifying the divine compassion in a new form, with the result that the figure of the Virgin, mediatrix to the mediator, came into increased prominence. And when, in course of time, the Queen of Heaven was felt to be too awe-inspiring, compassion was re-personified in the homely figure of St. Joseph, who thus became me thator to the me thatrix to the me thator. In exactly the same way Buddhist worshippers felt that the historic Sakyamuni, with his insistence on recollectedness, discrimination and a total dying to self as the principal means of liberation, was too stern and too intellectual. The result was that the love and compassion which Sakyamuni had also inculcated came to be personified in Buddhas such as Amida and Maitreyadivine characters completely removed from history, inasmuch as their temporal career was situated somewhere in the distant past or distant future. Here it may be remarked that the vast numbers of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, of whom the Mahayanist theologians speak, are commensurate with the vastness of their cosmology. Time, for them, is beginningless, and the innumerable universes, every one of them supporting sentient beings of every possible variety, are born, evolve, decay and the, only to repeat the same cycleagain and again, until the final inconceivably remote consummation, when every sentient being in all the worlds shall have won to deliverance out of time into eternal Suchness or Buddhahood This cosmological background to Buddhism has affinities with the world picture of modern astronomyespecially with that version of it offered in the recently published theory of Dr. Weiszcker regarding the formation of planets. If the Weiszcker hypothesis is correct, the production of a planetary system would be a normal episode in the life of every star. There are forty thousand million stars in our own galactic system alone, and beyond our galaxy other galaxies, indefinitely. If, as we have no choice but to believe, spiritual laws governing consciousness are uniform throughout the whole planet-bearing and presumably life-supporting universe, then certainly there is plenty of room, and at the same time, no doubt, the most agonizing and desperate need, for those innumerable redemptive incarnations of Suchness, upon whose shining multitudes the Mahayanists love to dwell.
1.03 - Reading, #Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience, #Henry David Thoreau, #Philosophy
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor schylus, nor Virgil evenworks as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and
Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
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English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the Little Reading, and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him,my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet
1.03 - The Syzygy - Anima and Animus, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
6 "For the scripture says, God made man male and female; the male is Christ,
the female is the Church." - Second Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, xiv, 2
1.03 - To Layman Ishii, #Beating the Cloth Drum Letters of Zen Master Hakuin, #unset, #Zen
Today's students lack this extensive knowledge of the scriptures or precepts. Because of that, they confound their own feelings, perceptions, and understanding for absolute truth, go around shooting off their mouths and retailing their half-baked ideas to others, and end up making a total waste of their lives.
"Observe the manner in which a clear-eyed teacher like Chen Tsun-su was able unequivocally to affirm Lin-chi: 'Your practice is pure and genuine!' That purity and that genuineness of practice are extremely difficult to attain, even if a student devotes an entire lifetime to Zen training. However, once you attain it, you are, without any doubt, a tiger that has sprouted wings.l You should never doubt that you yourself have such a capacity.
1.03 - VISIT TO VIDYASAGAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "A man had two sons. The father sent them to a preceptor to learn the Knowledge of Brahman. After a few years they returned from their preceptor's house and bowed low before their father. Wanting to measure the depth of their knowledge of Brahman, he first questioned the older of the two boys. 'My child,' he said, 'You have studied all the scriptures. Now tell me, what is the nature of Brahman?' The boy began to explain Brahman by reciting various texts from the Vedas. The father did not say anything. Then he asked the younger son the same question. But the boy remained silent and stood with eyes cast down. No word escaped his lips. The father was pleased and said to him: 'My child, you have understood a little of Brahman. What It is cannot be expressed in words.'
Parable of ant and sugar hill
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It is She, the scriptures say, that is the Inner Self Of the yogi, who in Self discovers all his joy; She that, of Her own sweet will, inhabits every living thing.
The macrocosm and microcosm rest in the Mother's womb; Now do you see how vast it is? In the Muladhara The yogi meditates on Her, and in the Sahasrara: Who but iva has beheld Her as She really is?
1.040 - Re-Educating the Mind, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This is the purpose of satsanga, listening to discourses of a spiritual and philosophical nature, study of sacred scriptures, svadhyaya, etc. Direct meditation is impossible, for reasons well known; therefore, we go to satsangas and listen to discourses touching upon various subjects, though within a limited circle. The subjects are variegated and yet limited to certain features. Similar is the case with study. If we study the Srimad Bhagavata, or the Ramayana, or the Bhagavadgita, the mind is given a large scope to think of many ideas and to bring into it notions of various features of reality. Though there is a variety presented in the study of a scripture of this kind, this variety is ultimately limited to a particular pattern of thinking.
The whole of the Srimad Bhagavata, to give only one concrete example, is filled with thousands of ideas expressed in various ways. Though these ideas are many, they are kindred, essentially. Therefore, the chaotic movement of the mind is brought to an end, and the first step is taken in bringing the mind under control by allowing it to think of sympathetic thoughts, though they may be variegated in their structure. There are several members in a family. Each person is different from the other one is tall, one is short, one is very active, another is idle, one is working outside, one is working inside, one is a man, and another is a woman. There are all sorts of persons in a family, but yet they are kindred spirits there is a sympathy of character among them. This is the reason why we call them a family, though they are individuals of different natures altogether. Likewise is any type of organisation it may be an institution; it may be a parliament; it may be a government or it may even be an army it may be anything. In the army we have thousands of people of different natures, yet they are brought together by a single ideal.
1.04 - ADVICE TO HOUSEHOLDERS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
If you but have pure love and follow the scriptures' rule.
Within those ocean depths, as well,
1.04 - GOD IN THE WORLD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
St. Bernard speaks in what seems a similar strain. What I know of the divine sciences and Holy scripture, I learnt in woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. And in another of his letters he says: Listen to a man of experience: thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach thee more than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a magister. The phrases are similar; but their inner significance is very different. In Augustines language, God alone is to be enjoyed; creatures are not to be enjoyed but usedused with love and compassion and a wondering, detached appreciation, as means to the knowledge of that which may be enjoyed. Wordsworth, like almost all other literary Nature-worshippers, preaches the enjoyment of creatures rather than their use for the attainment of spiritual endsa use which, as we shall see, entails much self-discipline for the user. For Bernard it goes without saying that his correspondents are actively practising this self-discipline and that Nature, though loved and heeded as a teacher, is only being used as a means to God, not enjoyed as though she were God. The beauty of flowers and landscape is not merely to be relished as one wanders lonely as a cloud about the countryside, is not merely to be pleasurably remembered when one is lying in vacant or in pensive mood on the sofa in the library, after tea. The reaction must be a little more strenuous and purposeful. Here, my brothers, says an ancient Buddhist author, are the roots of trees, here are empty places; meditate. The truth is, of course, that the world is only for those who have deserved it; for, in Philos words, even though a man may be incapable of making himself worthy of the creator of the cosmos, yet he ought to try to make himself worthy of the cosmos. He ought to transform himself from being a man into the nature of the cosmos and become, if one may say so, a little cosmos. For those who have not deserved the world, either by making themselves worthy of its creator (that is to say, by non-attachment and a total self-naughting), or, less arduously, by making themselves worthy of the cosmos (by bringing order and a measure of unity to the manifold confusion of undisciplined human personality), the world is, spiritually speaking, a very dangerous place.
That Nirvana and Samsara are one is a fact about the nature of the universe; but it is a fact which cannot be fully realized or directly experienced, except by souls far advanced in spirituality. For ordinary, nice, unregenerate people to accept this truth by hearsay, and to act upon it in practice, is merely to court disaster. All the dismal story of antinomianism is there to warn us of what happens when men and women make practical applications of a merely intellectual and unrealized theory that all is God and God is all. And hardly less depressing than the spectacle of antinomianism is that of the earnestly respectable well-rounded life of good citizens who do their best to live sacramentally, but dont in fact have any direct acquaintance with that for which the sacramental activity really stands. Dr. Oman, in his The Natural and the Supernatural, writes at length on the theme that reconciliation to the evanescent is revelation of the eternal; and in a recent volume, Science, Religion and the Future, Canon Raven applauds Dr. Oman for having stated the principles of a theology, in which there could be no ultimate antithesis between nature and grace, science and religion, in which, indeed, the worlds of the scientist and the theologian are seen to be one and the same. All this is in full accord with Taoism and Zen Buddhism and with such Christian teachings as St. Augustines Ama et fac quod vis and Father Lallemants advice to theocentric contemplatives to go out and act in the world, since their actions are the only ones capable of doing any real good to the world. But what neither Dr. Oman nor Canon Raven makes sufficiently clear is that nature and grace, Samsara and Nirvana, perpetual perishing and eternity, are really and experientially one only to persons who have fulfilled certain conditions. Fac quod vis in the temporal world but only when you have learnt the infinitely difficult art of loving God with all your mind and heart and your neighbor as yourself. If you havent learnt this lesson, you will either be an antinomian eccentric or criminal or else a respectable well-rounded-lifer, who has left himself no time to understand either nature or grace. The Gospels are perfectly clear about the process by which, and by which alone, a man may gain the right to live in the world as though he were at home in it: he must make a total denial of selfhood, submit to a complete and absolute mortification. At one period of his career, Jesus himself seems to have undertaken austerities, not merely of the mind, but of the body. There is the record of his forty days fast and his statement, evidently drawn from personal experience, that some demons cannot be cast out except by those who have fasted much as well as prayed. (The Cur dArs, whose knowledge of miracles and corporal penance was based on personal experience, insists on the close correlation between severe bodily austerities and the power to get petitionary prayer answered in ways that are sometimes supernormal.) The Pharisees reproached Jesus because he came eating and drinking, and associated with publicans and sinners; they ignored, or were unaware of, the fact that this apparently worldly prophet had at one time rivalled the physical austerities of John the Baptist and was practising the spiritual mortifications which he consistently preached. The pattern of Jesus life is essentially similar to that of the ideal sage, whose career is traced in the Oxherding Pictures, so popular among Zen Buddhists. The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white. Regeneration goes so far that for a time the ox is completely lost, so that nothing remains to be pictured but the full-orbed moon, symbolizing Mind, Suchness, the Ground. But this is not the final stage. In the end, the herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox. Because he now loves, loves to the extent of being identified with the divine object of his love, he can do what he likes; for what he likes is what the Nature of Things likes. He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas. For him, there is complete reconciliation to the evanescent and, through that reconciliation, revelation of the eternal. But for nice ordinary unregenerate people the only reconciliation to the evanescent is that of indulged passions, of distractions submitted to and enjoyed. To tell such persons that evanescence and eternity are the same, and not immediately to qualify the statement, is positively fatalfor, in practice, they are not the same except to the saint; and there is no record that anybody ever came to sanctity, who did not, at the outset of his or her career, behave as if evanescence and eternity, nature and grace, were profoundly different and in many respects incompatible. As always, the path of spirituality is a knife-edge between abysses. On one side is the danger of mere rejection and escape, on the other the danger of mere acceptance and the enjoyment of things which should only be used as instruments or symbols. The versified caption which accompanies the last of the Oxherding Pictures runs as follows.
1.04 - KAI VALYA PADA, #Patanjali Yoga Sutras, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
glory of man. All the scriptures sing the glory of man, of the
soul, and then, with the same breath, they preach this Karma.
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Buddhistic scriptures sums up what is meant by the Buddha
(which is the name of a state). It defines it as infinite
1.04 - On blessed and ever-memorable obedience, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
It is dangerous for an inexperienced soldier to leave his regiment and engage in single combat. And it is not without peril for a monk to attempt the solitary life before he has had much experience and practice in the struggle with the animal passions. The one subjects his body to danger, the other risks his soul. Two are better than one, says scripture.3 That is to say, It is better for a son to be with his father, and to struggle with his attachments with the help of the divine power of the Holy Spirit. He who deprives a blind man of his leader, a flock of its shepherd, a lost man of his guide, a child of its father, a patient of his doctor, a ship of its pilot, imperils all. And he who attempts unaided to struggle with the spirits gets killed by them.
1 Or, hesychast.
1.04 - Reality Omnipresent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
6:But, still, there is the absolute withdrawal, there is the NonBeing. Out of the Non-Being, says the ancient scripture, Being appeared.2 Then into the Non-Being it must surely sink again. If the infinite indiscriminate Existence permits all possibilities of discrimination and multiple realisation, does not the NonBeing at least, as primal state and sole constant reality, negate and reject all possibility of a real universe? The Nihil of certain Buddhist schools would then be the true ascetic solution; the Self, like the ego, would be only an ideative formation by an illusory phenomenal consciousness.
7:But again we find that we are being misled by words, deceived by the trenchant oppositions of our limited mentality with its fond reliance on verbal distinctions as if they perfectly represented ultimate truths and its rendering of our supramental experiences in the sense of those intolerant distinctions. NonBeing is only a word. When we examine the fact it represents, we can no longer be sure that absolute non-existence has any better chance than the infinite Self of being more than an ideative formation of the mind. We really mean by this Nothing something beyond the last term to which we can reduce our purest conception and our most abstract or subtle experience of actual being as we know or conceive it while in this universe. This Nothing then is merely a something beyond positive conception. We erect a fiction of nothingness in order to overpass, by the method of total exclusion, all that we can know and consciously are. Actually when we examine closely the Nihil of certain philosophies, we begin to perceive that it is a zero which is All or an indefinable Infinite which appears to the mind a blank, because mind grasps only finite constructions, but is in fact the only true Existence.3
1.04 - Te Shan Carrying His Bundle, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
Diamond Cutter scripture in western Shu (Szechuan). Accord
ing to what it says in that teaching, in the process of the
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said, "Commentaries on the Diamond Cutter scripture." The
old woman said, "I have a question for you: if you can answer it
1.04 - The Core of the Teaching, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
E KNOW the divine Teacher, we see the human disciple; it remains to form a clear conception of the doctrine. A clear conception fastening upon the essential idea, the central heart of the teaching is especially necessary here because the Gita with its rich and many-sided thought, its synthetical grasp of different aspects of the spiritual life and the fluent winding motion of its argument lends itself, even more than other scriptures, to one-sided misrepresentations born of a partisan intellectuality. The unconscious or half-conscious wresting of fact and word and idea to suit a preconceived notion or the doctrine or principle of one's preference is recognised by
Indian logicians as one of the most fruitful sources of fallacy; and it is perhaps the one which it is most difficult for even the most conscientious thinker to avoid. For the human reason is incapable of always playing the detective upon itself in this respect; it is its very nature to seize upon some partial conclusion, idea, principle, become its partisan and make it the key to all truth, and it has an infinite faculty of doubling upon itself so as to avoid detecting in its operations this necessary and cherished weakness. The Gita lends itself easily to this kind of error, because it is easy, by throwing particular emphasis on one of its aspects or even on some salient and emphatic text and putting all the rest of the eighteen chapters into the background or making them a subordinate and auxiliary teaching, to turn it into a partisan of our own doctrine or dogma.
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But at the present day, since in fact the modern mind began to recognise and deal at all with the Gita, the tendency is to subordinate its elements of knowledge and devotion, to take advantage of its continual insistence on action and to find in it a scripture of the Karmayoga, a Light leading us on the path of action, a Gospel of Works. Undoubtedly, the Gita is a Gospel of Works, but of works which culminate in knowledge, that is, in spiritual realisation and quietude, and of works motived by devotion, that is, a conscious surrender of one's whole self first into the hands and then into the being of the Supreme, and not at all of works as they are understood by the modern mind, not at all an action dictated by egoistic and altruistic, by personal,
The Core of the Teaching
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Arjuna must do is one from which his moral sense recoils. It is his duty to fight, you say? But that duty has now become to his mind a terrible sin. How does it help him or solve his difficulty, to tell him that he must do his duty disinterestedly, dispassionately? He will want to know which is his duty or how it can be his duty to destroy in a sanguinary massacre his kin, his race and his country. He is told that he has right on his side, but that does not and cannot satisfy him, because his very point is that the justice of his legal claim does not justify him in supporting it by a pitiless massacre destructive to the future of his nation. Is he then to act dispassionately in the sense of not caring whether it is a sin or what its consequences may be so long as he does his duty as a soldier? That may be the teaching of a State, of politicians, of lawyers, of ethical casuists; it can never be the teaching of a great religious and philosophical scripture which sets out to solve the problem of life and action from the
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very roots. And if that is what the Gita has to say on a most poignant moral and spiritual problem, we must put it out of the list of the world's scriptures and thrust it, if anywhere, then into our library of political science and ethical casuistry.
Undoubtedly, the Gita does, like the Upanishads, teach the equality which rises above sin and virtue, beyond good and evil, but only as a part of the Brahmic consciousness and for the man who is on the path and advanced enough to fulfil the supreme rule. It does not preach indifference to good and evil for the ordinary life of man, where such a doctrine would have the most pernicious consequences. On the contrary it affirms that the doers of evil shall not attain to God. Therefore if Arjuna simply seeks to fulfil in the best way the ordinary law of man's life, disinterested performance of what he feels to be a sin, a thing of Hell, will not help him, even though that sin be his duty as a soldier. He must refrain from what his conscience abhors though a thousand duties were shattered to pieces.
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metaphysical subtleties and far-off spiritual seekings, eager to get to work and, like Arjuna himself, mainly concerned for a workable law of works, a dharma. But it is the wrong way to handle this scripture.
The equality which the Gita preaches is not disinterestedness, - the great comm and to Arjuna given after the foundation and main structure of the teaching have been laid and built,
1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The immediate or at any rate the earliest known successors of the Rishis, the compilers of the Brahmanas, the writers of theUpanishads give a clear & definite answer to this question.The Upanishads everywhere rest their highly spiritual & deeply mystic doctrines on the Veda.We read in the Isha Upanishad of Surya as the Sun God, but it is the Sun of spiritual illumination, of Agni as the Fire, but it is the inner fire that burns up all sin & crookedness. In the Kena Indra, Agni & Vayu seek to know the supreme Brahman and their greatness is estimated by the nearness with which they touched him,nedistham pasparsha. Uma the daughter of Himavan, the Woman, who reveals the truth to them is clearly enough no natural phenomenon. In the Brihadaranyaka, the most profound, subtle & mystical of human scriptures, the gods & Titans are the masters, respectively, of good and of evil. In the Upanishads generally the word devah is used as almost synonymous with the forces & functions of sense, mind & intellect. The element of symbolism is equally clear. To the terms of the Vedic ritual, to their very syllables a profound significance is everywhere attached; several incidents related in the Upanishads show the deep sense then & before entertained that the sacrifices had a spiritual meaning which must be known if they were to be conducted with full profit or even with perfect safety. The Brahmanas everywhere are at pains to bring out a minute symbolism in the least circumstances of the ritual, in the clarified butter, the sacred grass, the dish, the ladle. Moreover, we see even in the earliest Upanishads already developed the firm outlines and minute details of an extraordinary psychology, physics, cosmology which demand an ancient development and centuries of Yogic practice and mystic speculation to account for their perfect form & clearness. This psychology, this physics, this cosmology persist almost unchanged through the whole history of Hinduism. We meet them in the Puranas; they are the foundation of the Tantra; they are still obscurely practised in various systems of Yoga. And throughout, they have rested on a declared Vedic foundation. The Pranava, the Gayatri, the three Vyahritis, the five sheaths, the five (or seven) psychological strata, (bhumi, kshiti of the Vedas), the worlds that await us, the gods who help & the demons who hinder go back to Vedic origins.All this may be a later mystic misconception of the hymns & their ritual, but the other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga.
When we go back to the Veda itself, we find in the hymns which are to us most easily intelligible by the modernity of their language, similar & decisive indications. The moralistic conception of Varuna, for example, is admitted even by the Europeans. We even find the sense of sin, usually supposed to be an advanced religious conception, much more profoundly developed in prehistoric India than it was in any other old Aryan nation even in historic times. Surely, this is in itself a significant indication. Surely, this conception cannot have become so clear & strong without a previous history in the earlier hymns. Nor is it psychologically possible that a cult capable of so advanced an idea, should have been ignorant of all other moral & intellectual conceptions reverencing only natural forces & seeking only material ends. Neither can there have been a sudden leap filled up only by a very doubtful henotheism, a huge hiatus between the naturalism of early Veda and the transcendentalism of the Vedic Brahmavada admittedly present in the later hymns. The European interpretation in the face of such conflicting facts threatens to become a brilliant but shapeless monstrosity. And is there no symbolism in the details of the Vedic sacrifice? It seems to me that the peculiar language of the Veda has never been properly studied or appreciated in this connection. What are we to say of the Vedic anxiety to increase Indra by the Soma wine? Of the description of Soma as the amritam, the wine of immortality, & of its forces as the indavah or moon powers? Of the constant sense of the attacks delivered by the powers of evil on the sacrifice? Of the extraordinary powers already attri buted to the mantra & the sacrifice? Have the neshtram potram, hotram of the Veda no symbolic significance? Is there no reason for the multiplication of functions at the sacrifice or for the subtle distinctions between Gayatrins, Arkins, Brahmas? These are questions that demand a careful consideration which has never yet been given for the problems they raise.
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We have therefore as a result of a long and careful examination the clear conviction that certainly in this poem of Madhuchchhanda, probably in others of his hymns, perhaps in all we have an invocation to subjective Nature powers, a symbolic sacrifice, a spiritual, moral & subjective effort & purpose. And if many other suktas in this & other Mandalas confirm the evidence of this third hymn of the Rigveda, shall we not say that here we have the true Veda as the Rishis understood it and that this was the reason why all the ancient thinkers looked on the hymns with so deep-seated a reverence that even after they came to be used merely as ceremonial liturgies at a material sacrifice, even after the Buddha impatiently flung them aside, the writer of the Gita had to look beyond them & Shankara respectfully put them on the shelf of neglect as useless for spiritual purposes, even after they have ceased to be used and almost to be read, the most spiritual nation on the face of the earth still tenaciously, by a sort of divine instinct, clings to them as its supreme scriptures & refers back all its spirituality and higher knowledge to the Vedas? Let us proceed and see whether this is not the truest as well as the noblest reading of the riddle the real root of Gods purpose in maintaining this our ancient faith and millennial tradition.
***
1.04 - The Paths, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
Hence we find numbers and figures used as an expression and a record of thought in every archaic scripture." Ginsburg, referring to the Hebrew Alphabet, states : " Since the letters have no absolute value - nor can they be used as mere forms, but serve as the medium between essence and forms, and like words, assume the relation of form to the real essence, and of essence to the embryo and unexpressed
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1.052 - Yoga Practice - A Series of Positive Steps, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
In the Vedanta Shastras and yoga scriptures we are told that there are at least three types of self: the external, the personal and the Absolute. We are not concerned here with the Absolute Self. This is not the Self that we are going to restrain. It is, on the other hand, the Self that we are going to realise. That is the goal the Absolute Self which is unrelated to any other factor or condition, which stands on its own right and which is called the Infinite, the Eternal, and so on. But the self that is to be restrained is that peculiar feature in consciousness which will not fulfil the conditions of absoluteness at any time. It is always relative. It is the relative self that is to be subjected to restraint for the sake of the realisation of the Absolute Self. The aim of life is the Absolute, and not the relative. The experience of the relative, the attachment of the mind in respect of the relative, and the exclusive emphasis on the importance of relativity in things is the obstructing factor in ones enterprise towards the realisation of the Absolute Self.
The external self is that atmosphere that we create around us which we regard as part of our life and to which we get attached in some manner or the other. This is also a self. A family is a self, for example, to mention a small instance. The head of the family regards the family as his own self, though it is not true that the family is his self. He has got an attachment to the members of the family. The attachment is a movement of his own consciousness in respect of those objects around him known as the members of the family. This permeating of his consciousness around that atmosphere known as the family creates a false, externalised self in his experience. This social self, we may call it, is the external self, inasmuch as this externalised, social self is not the real Self. Because it is conditioned by certain factors which are subject to change, it has to be restrained. That is one of the necessities of self-restraint.
1.053 - A Very Important Sadhana, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
There are various other methods of svadhyaya. It depends upon the state of ones mind how far it is concentrated, how far it is distracted, what these desires are that have remained frustrated inside, what the desires are that have been overcome, and so on. The quality of the mind will determine the type of svadhyaya that one has to practise. If nothing else is possible, do parayana of holy scriptures the Sundara Kanda, the Valmiki Ramayana or any other Ramayana, the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana, the Srimad Bhagavadgita, the Moksha Dharma Parva of the Mahabharata, the Vishnu Purana, or any other suitable spiritual text. It has to be recited again and again, every day at a specific time, in a prescribed manner, so that this sadhana itself becomes a sort of meditation because what is meditation but hammering the mind, again and again, into a single idea? Inasmuch as abstract meditations are difficult for beginners, these more concrete forms of it are suggested. There are people who recite the Ramayana or the Srimad Bhagavata 108 times. They conduct Bhagvat Saptaha. The purpose is to bring the mind around to a circumscribed form of function and not allow it to roam about on the objects of sense.
The mind needs variety, no doubt, and it cannot exist without variety. It always wants change. Monotonous food will not be appreciated by the mind, and so the scriptures, especially the larger ones like the Epics, the Puranas, the Agamas, the Tantras, etc., provide a large area of movement for the mind wherein it leisurely roams about to its deep satisfaction, finds variety in plenty, reads stories of great saints and sages, and feels very much thrilled by the anecdotes of Incarnations, etc. But at the same time, with all its variety, we will find that it is a variety with a unity behind it. There is a unity of pattern, structure and aim in the presentation of variety in such scriptures as the Srimad Bhagavata, for instance. There are 18,000 verses giving all kinds of detail everything about the cosmic creation and the processes of the manifestation of different things in their gross form, subtle form, causal form, etc. Every type of story is found there. It is very interesting to read it. The mind rejoices with delight when going through such a large variety of detail with beautiful comparisons, etc. But all this variety is like a medical treatment by which we may give varieties of medicine with a single aim. We may give one tablet, one capsule, one injection, and all sorts of things at different times in a day to treat a single disease. The purpose is the continued assertion that God is All, and the whole of creation is a play of the glory of God.
The goal of life in every stage of its manifestation is the vision of God, the experience of God, the realisation of God that God is the Supreme Doer and the Supreme Existence. This is the principle that is driven into the mind again and again by the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana or such similar texts. If a continued or sustained study of such scriptures is practised, it is purifying. It is a tapas by itself, and it is a study of the nature of ones own Self, ultimately. The word sva is used here to designate this process of study svadhyaya. Also, we are told in one sutra of Patanjali, tad drau svarpe avasthnam (I.3), that the seer finds himself in his own nature when the vrittis or the various psychoses of the mind are inhibited. The purpose of every sadhana is only this much: to bring the mind back to its original source.
The variety of detail that is provided to the mind in the scriptures has an intention not to pamper or cajole the mind, but to treat the mind of its illness of distraction and attachment to external objects. The aim is highly spiritual. Sometimes it is held that japa of a mantra also is a part of svadhyaya. That is a more concentrated form of it, requiring greater willpower. It is not easy to do japa. We may study a book like the Srimad Bhagavata with an amount of concentration, but japa is a more difficult process because there we do not have variety. It is a single point at which the mind is made to move, with a single thought almost, with a single epithet or attribute to contemplate upon. It is almost like meditation, and is a higher step than the study of scriptures. Adepts in yoga often tell us that the chanting of a mantra like pranava is tantamount to svadhyaya.
The point is that if you cannot do anything else, at least do this much. Take to regular study so that your day is filled with divine thoughts, philosophical ideas and moods which are spiritual in some way or the other. You may closet yourself in your study for hours together and browse through these profound texts, whatever be the nature of their presentation, because all these philosophical and spiritual presentations through the scriptures and the writings of other masters have one aim namely, the analysis of the structure of things, and enabling the mind to know the inner reality behind this structure. There is a threefold prong provided by Patanjali in this connection wherein he points out that self-control the control of the senses, austerity, or tapas together with svadhyaya, or study of sacred scriptures, will consummate in the adoration of God as the All-reality.
The idea that God is extra-cosmic and outside us, incapable of approach, and that we are likely not to receive any response from Him in spite of our efforts at prayer, etc. all these ideas are due to certain encrustations in the mind, the tamasic qualities which cover the mind and make it again subtly tend towards objects of sense. The desire for objects of sense, subtly present in a very latent form in the subconscious level, becomes responsible for the doubt in the mind that perhaps there is no response from God. This is because our love is not for God it is for objects of sense, and for status in society and enjoyments of various types in the world. And when, through austerity, or tapas, we have put the senses down with the force of our thumb, there is a temporary cessation of their activity.
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We are always in a mood of unhappiness. We cannot know what has happened to us. We are not satisfied neither with people, nor with our sadhana, nor with anything in this world. This disquiet, peacelessness and displeasure which can manifest as a sustained mood in spiritual seekers is due to the presence of the impressions left by frustrated desires. We have not withdrawn our senses from objects wantonly or deliberately, but we have withdrawn them due a pressure from scriptures, Guru, atmosphere, monastery, or other conditions.
Sometimes factors which are extraneous become responsible for the practice that we have undergone or are undergoing; and because the heart is absent there, naturally the feeling of happiness is also not there. When the heart is not there, there cannot be joy. That is why it is suggested that the sadhana of self-control, or control of the senses, should be coupled with a deep philosophical knowledge and spiritual aspiration, which is what is indicated by the term svadhyaya, and the other term Ishvara pranidhana, which is adoration of God as the ultimate goal of life.
The purpose of sense control, study of scripture and adoration of God is all single namely, the affirmation of the supremacy and the ultimate value of Godhead. This requires persistent effort, no doubt, and as has been pointed out earlier, it is a strenuous effort on the part of the mind to prevent the incoming of impressions of desire from objects outside on the one hand, and to create impressions of a positive character in the form of love of God on the other hand. Vijatiya vritti nirodha and sajatiya vritti pravah these two processes constitute sadhana. Vijatiya vritti nirodha means putting an end to all incoming impressions from external objects and allowing only those impressions which are conducive to contemplation on the Reality of God. Vijati means that which does not belong to our category, genus, or species.
What is our species? It is not mankind, human nature, etc. Our species is a spiritual spark, a divine location in our centre. The soul that we are is the species that we are. So all impressions, thoughts, feelings and ideas which are in agreement with the character of the soul, which is our jati, or species, should be allowed, and anything that is contrary or different from this should not be allowed. The vijatiya vritti nirodha is the inhibition or putting an end to all those vrittis or modifications of the mind in respect of things outside, because the soul is not anything that is outside. Sajatiya vritti pravah is the movement like the flow of a river, or the pouring of oil continuously, without break, in a thread of such ideas which are of the character of the soul which is universality.
This threefold effort namely, a positive effort at the control and restraint of the senses from direct action in respect of objects outside, deep study of scriptures which are wholly devoted to the liberation of the spirit from the beginning to the end, and a constant remembrance in ones mind that God is All with a surrender of oneself to His supremacy constitute a very important sadhana by itself, which is the meaning of this single sutra: tapa svdhyya varapraidhnni kriyyoga (II.1).
1.05 - Qualifications of the Aspirant and the Teacher, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
In regard to the teacher, we must see that he knows the spirit of the scriptures. The whole world reads Bibles, Vedas, and Korans; but they are all only words, syntax, etymology, philology, the dry bones of religion. The teacher who deals too much in words and allows the mind to be carried away by the force of words loses the spirit. It is the knowledge of the spirit of the scriptures alone that constitutes the true religious teacher. The network of the words of the scriptures is like a huge forest in which the human mind often loses itself and finds no way out.
"The network of words is a big forest; it is the cause of a curious wandering of the mind." "The various methods of joining words, the various methods of speaking in beautiful language, the various methods of explaining the diction of the scriptures are only for the disputations and enjoyment of the learned, they do not conduce to the development of spiritual perception"
Those who employ such methods to impart religion to others are only desirous to show off their learning, so that the world may praise them as great scholars. You will find that no one of the great teachers of the world ever went into these various explanations of the text; there is with them no attempt at "text-torturing", no eternal playing upon the meaning of words and their roots. Yet they nobly taught, while others who have nothing to teach have taken up a word sometimes and written a three-volume book on its origin, on the man who used it first, and on what that man was accustomed to eat, and how long he slept, and so on.
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"He who is learned in the scriptures, sinless, unpolluted by lust, and is the greatest knower of the Brahman" is the real teacher.
From what has been said, it naturally follows that we cannot be taught to love, appreciate, and assimilate religion everywhere and by everybody. The "books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything" is all very true as a poetical figure: but nothing can impart to a man a single grain of truth unless he has the undeveloped germs of it in himself. To whom do the stones and brooks preach sermons? To the human soul, the lotus of whose inner holy shrine is already quick with life.
1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Every kind of solution has been offered from the entire abandonment of works and life, so far as that is physically possible, to the acceptance of life as it is but with a new spirit animating and uplifting its movements, in appearance the same as they were but changed in the spirit behind them and therefore in their inner significance. The extreme solution insisted on by the world-shunning ascetic or the inward-turned ecstatical and self-oblivious mystic is evidently foreign to the purpose of an integral Yoga; for if we are to realise the Divine in the world, it cannot be done by leaving aside the world-action and action itself altogether. At a less high pitch it was laid down by the religious mind in ancient times that one should keep only such actions as are in their nature part of the seeking, service or cult of the Divine and such others as are attached to these or, in addition, those that are indispensable to the ordinary setting of life but done in a religious spirit and according to the injunctions of traditional religion and scripture. But this is too formalist a rule for the fulfilment of the free spirit in works, and it is besides professedly no more than a provisional solution for tiding over the transition from life in the world to a life in the Beyond which still remains the sole ultimate purpose. An integral Yoga must lean rather to the catholic injunction of the Gita that even the liberated soul, living in the Truth, should still do all the works of life so that the plan of the universal evolution under a secret divine leading may not languish or suffer. But if all works are to be done with the same forms and on the same lines as they are now done in the Ignorance, our gain is only inward and our life in danger of becoming the dubious and ambiguous formula of an inner Light doing the works of an outer Twilight, the perfect Spirit expressing itself in a mould of imperfection foreign to its own divine nature. If no better can be done for a time, -and during a long period of transition something like this does inevitably happen, -- then so it must remain till things are ready and the spirit within is powerful enough to impose its own forms on the life of the body and the world outside; but this can be accepted only as a transitional stage and not as our soul's ideal or the ultimate goal of the passage.
For the same reason the ethical solution is insufficient; for an ethical rule merely puts a bit in the mouth of the wild horses of Nature and exercises over them a difficult and partial control, but it has no power to transform Nature so that she may move in a secure freedom fulfilling the intuitions that proceed from a divine self-knowledge. At best its method is to lay down limits, to coerce the devil, to put the wall of a relative and very doubtful safety around us. This or some similar device of self-protection may be necessary for a time whether in ordinary life or in Yoga; but in Yoga it can only be the mark of a transition. A fundamental transformation and a pure wideness of spiritual life are the aim before us and, if we are to reach it, we must find a deeper solution, a surer supra-ethical dynamic principle. To be spiritual within, ethical in the outside life, this is the ordinary religious solution, but it is a compromise; the spiritualisation of both the inward being and the outward life and not a compromise between life and the spirit is the goal of which we are the seekers. Nor can the human confusion of values which obliterates the distinction between spiritual and moral and even claims that the moral is the only true spiritual element in our nature be of any use to us; for ethics is a mental control and the limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and everluminous Spirit. It is equally impossible to accept the gospel that makes life the one aim, takes its elements fundamentally as they are and only calls in a half-spiritual or pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious and never successful compromise and it is as far from the divine Truth and its integrality as the puritanic opposite. These are all stumbling solutions of the fallible human mind groping for a transaction between the high spiritual summits and the lower pitch of the ordinary mind-motives and life-motives. Whatever partial truth may be hidden behind them, that truth can only be accepted when it has been raised to the spiritual level, tested in the supreme Truth-Consciousness and extricated from the soil and error of the Ignorance.
1.05 - The Destiny of the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
4:So strongly was this truth perceived in the ancient times that the Vedantic Seers, even after they had arrived at the crowning idea, the convincing experience of Sachchidananda as the highest positive expression of the Reality to our consciousness, erected in their speculations or went on in their perceptions to an Asat, a Non-Being beyond, which is not the ultimate existence, the pure consciousness, the infinite bliss of which all our experiences are the expression or the deformation. If at all an existence, a consciousness, a bliss, it is beyond the highest and purest positive form of these things that here we can possess and other therefore than what here we know by these names. Buddhism, somewhat arbitrarily declared by the theologians to be an un-Vedic doctrine because it rejected the authority of the scriptures, yet goes back to this essentially Vedantic conception. Only, the positive and synthetic teaching of the Upanishads beheld Sat and Asat not as opposites destructive of each other, but as the last antinomy through which we look up to the Unknowable. And in the transactions of our positive consciousness, even Unity has to make its account with Multiplicity; for the Many also are Brahman. It is by Vidya, the Knowledge of the Oneness, that we know God; without it Avidya, the relative and multiple consciousness, is a night of darkness and a disorder of Ignorance. Yet if we exclude the field of that Ignorance, if we get rid of Avidya as if it were a thing non-existent and unreal, then Knowledge itself becomes a sort of obscurity and a source of imperfection. We become as men blinded by a light so that we can no longer see the field which that light illumines.
5:Such is the teaching, calm, wise and clear, of our most ancient sages. They had the patience and the strength to find and to know; they had also the clarity and humility to admit the limitation of our knowledge. They perceived the borders where it has to pass into something beyond itself. It was a later impatience of heart and mind, vehement attraction to an ultimate bliss or high masterfulness of pure experience and trenchant intelligence which sought the One to deny the Many and because it had received the breath of the heights scorned or recoiled from the secret of the depths. But the steady eye of the ancient wisdom perceived that to know God really, it must know Him everywhere equally and without distinction, considering and valuing but not mastered by the oppositions through which He shines.
1.05 - THE HOSTILE BROTHERS - ARCHETYPES OF RESPONSE TO THE UNKNOWN, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
And he said unto them, This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears.
And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, And
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(whom, as scripture tells us, the builders of the Church have also rejected); and from the same, in and
from the Great World Book of Nature, [there issues] a continuous and everlasting doctrine for the wise
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me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:37-38)].
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1.05 - THE MASTER AND KESHAB, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Karmayoga is very hard indeed. In the Kaliyuga it is extremely difficult to perform the rites enjoined in the scriptures. Nowadays man's life is centred on food alone. He cannot perform many scriptural rites. Suppose a man is laid up with fever. If you attempt a slow cure with the old-fashioned indigenous remedies, before long his life may be snuffed out. He can't stand much delay. Nowadays the drastic 'D Gupta' mixture is appropriate. In the Kaliyuga the best way is bhaktiyoga, the path of devotion-singing the praises of the Lord, and prayer. The path of devotion alone is the religion for this age. (To the Brahmo devotees) Yours also is the path of devotion. Blessed you are indeed that you chant the name of Hari and sing the Divine Mother's glories. I like your attitude. You don't call the world a dream like the non-dualists. You are not Brahmajnanis like them; you are bhaktas, lovers of God. That you speak of Him as a Person is also good. You are devotees. You will certainly realize Him if you call on Him with sincerity and earnestness."
The boat cast anchor at Kayalaghat and the passengers prepared to disembark. On coming outside they noticed that the full moon was up. The trees, the buildings, and the boats on the Ganges were bathed in its mellow light. A carriage was hailed for the Master, and M. and a few devotees got in with him. The Master asked for Keshab.
1.06 - MORTIFICATION, NON-ATTACHMENT, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
To be absorbed in the world around and never turn a thought within, as is the blind condition of some who are carried away by what is pleasant and tangible, is one extreme as opposed to simplicity. And to be self-absorbed in all matters, whether it be duty to God or man, is the other extreme, which makes a person wise in his own conceitreserved, self-conscious, uneasy at the least thing which disturbs his inward self-complacency. Such false wisdom, in spite of its solemnity, is hardly less vain and foolish than the folly of those who plunge headlong into worldly pleasures. The one is intoxicated by his outward surroundings, the other by what he believes himself to be doing inwardly; but both are in a state of intoxication, and the last is a worse state than the first, because it seems to be wise, though it is not really, and so people do not try to be cured. Real simplicity lies in a juste milieu equally free from thoughtlessness and affectation, in which the soul is not overwhelmed by externals, so as to be unable to reflect, nor yet given up to the endless refinements, which self-consciousness induces. That soul which looks where it is going without losing time arguing over every step, or looking back perpetually, possesses true simplicity. Such simplicity is indeed a great treasure. How shall we attain to it? I would give all I possess for it; it is the costly pearl of Holy scripture.
The first step, then, is for the soul to put away outward things and look within so as to know its own real interest; so far all is right and natural; thus much is only a wise self-love, which seeks to avoid the intoxication of the world.
1.06 - The Literal Qabalah, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
A few methods of applying Qabalistic ideas will now be demonstrated, the reader bearing firmly in mind that each letter has a number, symbol, and Tarot card attributed to it. The Rabbis who originally worked on the Qabalah discovered so much of interest and importance behind the merely superficial value of numbers and of words embody- ing and representing these numbers, that they gradually developed an elaborate science of numerical conceptions altogether apart from mathematics as such. They devised various methods of number interpretation to discover, primarily, the hidden meaning of their scriptures.
Gematria
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The correspondence of all this with the idea of Messiah is certainly most clear. Numerous other examples, dealing mainly with the scriptures, have been worked out with laborious painstaking and ingenuity by the Qabalists. I doubt, however, that they are sufficiently important to warrant mention here.
A few remarks are necessary at this point, since the name
1.06 - The Three Schools of Magick 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
The orthodox need not be shocked, and the enlightened need not be contemptuous, to learn that the passage which we are about to quote, is a parable based on the least decorous of the Biblical legends which refer to Noah.[7] It simply captures for its own purposes the convenience of scripture.
(Here follows the excerpt from the Vision.)
1.070 - The Seven Stages of Perfection, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
This viveka khyati,or understanding, arises by stages; it does not suddenly burst like a bomb. In the beginning it very gradually reveals itself by effort, and later on it becomes a spontaneous feature. In one of the sutras we are told that there are at least seven stages of the manifestation of this understanding. The number seven is very holy, and it has been held holy in all religions and in all mystical fields, whether of the East or the West. Something very strange it is. In all the scriptures we see this number seven mentioned as a holy number. These are supposed to be the stages of the ascent of the soul to its perfection.
The earlier stages are those of personal effort, exertion and deliberate attempt, whereas the later ones are automatic. We are merely carried away by the momentum of past effort where, on account of the diminution of the intensity of individuality-consciousness, the question of personal effort does not arise. The gravitational pull of a totally different realm takes us by the hand and we are led along the direction of that pull, which is a different thing altogether from the pull of this earth, against which we have to put forth effort in the earlier stages.
1.075 - Self-Control, Study and Devotion to God, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Svdhyyt iadevat saprayoga (II.44): By daily holy study, we set ourselves in tune with the masters who have been responsible for the writing of the scriptures and whose great ideals and ideas are sung in the scriptures. The study of great scriptures like the Bhagavadgita, the Mahabharata or the Ramayana puts us in tune with the great thoughts, brains and minds of Vyasa, Valmiki and such other great men. Then, there is a stimulation of a corresponding idea and ideal in our own selves so that we become fit to receive their grace. Not merely receive their grace, we can even contact them, says the sutra. The idea, or the content of the scripture which is the object of our daily study, or svadhyaya, is the medium of contact between ourselves and the ideal of the scripture the deity. It may be the rishi, or it may be a divinity that is the ishta devata. The desired object is the ishta devata, and we will come in contact with it because of the daily contemplation on it through svadhyaya.
These three methods tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana are really the training of the will, the intellect and the emotion. It requires tremendous will to practise tapas, great understanding or intellectual capacity to probe into the meaning of the scriptures, and emotional purity to love God. These three are emphasised in the canons of tapas, svadhyaya and Ishvara pranidhana. By svadhyaya there is ishtadevata samprayogah,says the sutra; there is union of oneself with the deity of ones worship and adoration by a daily brooding over its characters.
Whatever we think in our mind, that we will become, and that we will get. But, this thinking should not be a shallow thinking; it should be a very deep absorption of oneself in what one expects. The whole of us should be saturated with our longing for the ideal which is in our mind. There should be no other thought except of the qualities, characters and nature of the ideal which is in our mind. Anything and everything can be obtained in this world if only there is a will behind it. If the force of thought is intense enough, there is nothing which is impossible. This is the point made out in this sutra.
The svadhyaya that is referred to here is not reading in a library. It is not going to the library and reading any book that is there on the shelf. It is a holy resort to a concentrated form of study of a chosen scripture. It may be even two or three texts it does not matter which will become the object of ones daily concentration and meditation, because what is known as svadhyaya,or Self-study, or holy study, or sacred study is a form of meditation itself in a little diffused form.
The scriptures are supposed to contain all the knowledge that is necessary for the realisation of the Self. It is a spiritual text that we are supposed to study, which is meant by the word svadhyaya. It is not any kind of book. A holy scripture is supposed to be a moksha shastra. A scripture which expounds the nature of, as well as the means to, the liberation of the soul is called a moksha shastra. This is to be studied. All the ways and means to the liberation of the Self should be expounded in the scripture; and the glorious nature of the ideal of perfection, God-realisation that also is to be expounded in it. The means and the end should be delineated in great detail. Such is the text to be resorted to in svadhyaya. By a gradual and daily habituation of oneself to such a study, there is a purification brought about automatically. Inasmuch as it is nothing but meditation that we are practising in a different way, it is supposed to bring us in contact with the ideal.
Samdhisiddhi varapraidhnt (II.45): The mind gets inclined to samadhi by the love of God. There is an inclination of our entire being to self-absorption, due to the daily adoration of God. Inasmuch as God is universal omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent a surrender of oneself to God, a daily adoration of God, a worship of God, and a daily thought and feeling and will directed to God will naturally compel the mind to adopt characters which are of the nature of this ideal. There will be, therefore, a mood generated in the mind to sink into itself, rather than move out of itself. Distractions will cease. The contemplation on the nature of the All-pervading Being is supposed to be the best form of meditation, inclusive of every other means. All objects of meditation are comprehended here, included here. This is the ocean of all things.
1.07 - A Song of Longing for Tara, the Infallible, #How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator, #Thubten Chodron, #unset
teacher instructs us according to the scriptures and gives us good advice, even
if they say something that impinges on our egos pleasure, we should be open
1.07 - Bridge across the Afterlife, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
understood, agree with those of the Vedantic scriptures:
It is I who am the offspring of what gave birth to me
1.07 - Hui Ch'ao Asks about Buddha, #The Blue Cliff Records, #Yuanwu Keqin, #Zen
This saying is taken from the Vimalakirtinirdesa scripture, in
which context it should be read, "Since they have no wounds,
1.07 - The Ideal Law of Social Development, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Mankind upon earth is one foremost self-expression of the universal Being in His cosmic self-unfolding; he expresses, under the conditions of the terrestrial world he inhabits, the mental power of the universal existence. All mankind is one in its nature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and ever has been in spite of all differences of intellectual development ranging from the poverty of the Bushman and negroid to the rich cultures of Asia and Europe, and the whole race has, as the human totality, one destiny which it seeks and increasingly approaches in the cycles of progression and retrogression it describes through the countless millenniums of its history. Nothing which any individual race or nation can triumphantly realise, no victory of their self-aggrandisement, illumination, intellectual achievement or mastery over the environment, has any permanent meaning or value except in so far as it adds something or recovers something or preserves something for this human march. The purpose which the ancient Indian scripture offers to us as the true object of all human action, lokasa
graha, the holding together of the race in its cyclic evolution, is the constant sense, whether we know it or know it not, of the sum of our activities.
1.07 - THE .IMPROVERS. OF MANKIND, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
of garlic and onions, as the holy scriptures forbid their being given
corn or grain-bearing fruit, water and fire. The same edict declares
1.07 - THE MASTER AND VIJAY GOSWAMI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Such actions as japa and austerity drop away when one spontaneously feels love and attachment for God. Who, indeed, will perform the ceremonies enjoined in the scriptures, when mad with love of God?
"Devotion to God may be said to be 'green' so long as it doesn't grow into love of God; but it becomes 'ripe' when it has grown into such love.
1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Someone who experiences the revelation of his psychic being while listening to Beethoven might say: "Music, nothing but music is true and divine on this earth"; another, who feels his soul in the middle of the ocean's immensity, may make a religion of the open seas; still another will swear by his own prophet, his church, or his gospel. Each one builds his own structure around his own particular nugget of experience. But the psychic being is free, marvelously free of everything! It needs nothing to exist; it is Freedom incarnate, and it uses each of our greater or lesser pieces of music, our sublime or less sublime scriptures, simply to bore a hole in our armor in order to emerge into the open. It lends its power and its love, its joy, its light,
and its irresistible open Truth to all our ideas, all our feelings and doctrines, because this is its only chance to manifest openly, its only means of expression. In return, these emotions, ideas and doctrines derive from it their self-assurance; they appropriate and enshroud it,
1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Listen to this! shouted Monkey. After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?
You neednt shout, said the Buddha smiling. As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ignorant to believe this, so there is nothing for it but to give them copies with some writing on.
Wu Chng-n
1.080 - Pratyahara - The Return of Energy, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Likewise, the first days effort need not necessarily bring illumination because of the great efforts that are necessary to break through the fort of the veil of ignorance and karma, which is itself sufficient and weighty. Even if we spend three-fourths of our life in this work only, it should not be regarded as a kind of defeat. Often it so happens that the major part of our life is spent only in cleansing and in breaking through this veil. Once this negative work of cleansing and breaking is effected, then the positive achievement will take place in a trice. How much time do we require to see the brilliance of the sun? We have only to remove the cataract veil that is covering our eyes and immediately we see the sun shining. The effort is to remove this veil. Hence, this vashyata, or the mastery over the senses which the sutra speaks of, is gained with very hard effort, and no sadhaka can afford to lose heart in the attempt. It is declared in the scriptures on yoga that the only thing that works, and succeeds, in this noble endeavour is persistence. If we go on persistently doing a thing again and again, whether we succeed or not we will succeed eventually.
1.08 - Adhyatma Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
31. Have faith in your own Self, in the existence of Brahman, in the teachings of your Preceptor, in the sacred scriptures. Then alone can you attain Self-realisation.
32. Behold the Lord in the effulgence of the sun, in the fragrance of flowers, in the brilliance of fire, in the sapidity of water, in the birds, beasts, in the air, ether, in the mind, intellect, in the heart, in the sound, in music.
1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
The first of these methods is meditation. The Jews have long been acquainted with various technical methods of meditation. Their scriptures scintillate with many sublime examples of men whose experiences, undoubtedly the result of meditation, were convictions of indubitable contact with
Reality ; experiences beyond the slightest cavil. For one thing, the vision of Jehovah by Moses, the long line of
1.08 - Sri Aurobindos Descent into Death, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
The scriptures of Necessity and Chance. ...
In Savitri we find Sri Aurobindo again confronting the
1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Vedas are the roots of Indian civilisation and the supreme authority in Indian religion. For three thousand years, by the calculation of European scholars, for a great deal more, in all probability, the faith of this nation, certainly one of the most profound, acute and intellectual in the world, has not left its hold on this cardinal point of belief. Its greatest and most rationalistic minds have never swerved from the national faith. Kapila held to it no less than Shankara. The two great revolted intellects, Buddha and Brihaspati, could not dethrone the Veda or destroy Indias spiritual allegiance. India by an inevitable law of her being casts out, sooner or later, everything that is not Vedic. The Dhammapada has become a scripture for foreign peoples. Brihaspatis strictures are only remembered as a curiosity of our intellectual history. Religious movements & revolutions have come & gone or left their mark but after all and through all the Veda remains to us our Rock of the Ages, our eternal foundation.
Yet the most fundamental and important part of this imperishable scripture, the actual hymns and mantras of the Sanhitas, has long been a sealed book to the Indian mind, learned or unlearned. The other Vedic books are of minor authority or a secondary formation. The Brahmanas are ritual, grammatical & historical treatises on the traditions & ceremonies of Vedic times whose only valueapart from interesting glimpses of ancient life & Vedantic philosophylies in their attempt to fix and to interpret symbolically the ritual of Vedic sacrifice. The Upanishads, mighty as they are, only aspire to bring out, arrange philosophically in the language of later thinking and crown with the supreme name of Brahman the eternal knowledge enshrined in the Vedas. Yet for some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas. Or if they have been understood, if Sayana holds for us their secret, the reverence of the Indian mind for them becomes a baseless superstition and the idea that the modern Indian religions are Vedic in their substance is convicted of egregious error. For the Vedas Sayana gives us are the mythology of the Adityas, Rudras,Maruts, Vasus,but these gods of the Veda have long ceased to be worshipped,or they are a collection of ritual & sacrificial hymns, but the ritual is dead & the sacrifices are no longer offered.
Are we then to conclude that the reverence for the Vedas & the belief in the continued authority of the Vedas is really no more than an ancient superstition or a tradition which has survived its truth? Those who know the working of the human mind, will be loth to hasten to that conclusion. Great masses of men, great nations, great civilisations have an instinct in these matters which seldom misleads them. In spite of forgetfulness, through every misstatement, surviving all cessation of precise understanding, something in them still remembers their origin and holds fast to the vital truth of their being. According to the Europeans, there is a historical truth at the basis of the old persistent tradition, but a historical truth only, a truth of origin, not of present actuality. The Vedas are the early roots of Indian religion, of Indian civilisation; but they have for a long time past ceased to be their present foundation or their intellectual substance. It is rather the Upanishads & the Puranas that are the living scriptures of mediaeval and modern Hinduism. But if, as we contend, the Upanishads & the Puranas only give us in other language, later symbols, altered forms of thought the same religious truths that we find differently stated in the Rigveda, this shifting of the immediate point of derivation will make no real difference. The waters we drink are the same whether drawn at their clear mountain sources or on their banks in the anchorites forest or from ghats among the faery temples and fantastic domes of some sacred city.The Hindus belief remains to him unshaken.
But in the last century a new scholarship has invaded the country, the scholarship of aggressive & victorious Europe, which for the first time denies the intimate connection and the substantial identity of the Vedas & the later scriptures. We ourselves have made distinctions of Jnanakanda & Karmakanda, Sruti & Smriti, but we have never doubted that all these are branches of a single stock. But our new Western Pandits & authorities tell us that we are in error. All of us from ancient Yajnavalkya to the modern Vaidika have been making a huge millennial mistake. European scholarship applying for the first time the test of a correct philology to these obscure writings has corrected the mistake. It has discovered that the Vedas are of an entirely different character from the rest of our Hindu development. For our development has been Pantheistic or transcendental, philosophical, mystic, devotional, sombre, secretive, centred in the giant names of the Indian Trinity, disengaging itself from sacrifice, moving towards asceticism. The Vedas are naturalistic, realistic, ritualistic, semi-barbarous, a sacrificial worship of material Nature-powers, henotheistic at their highest, Pagan, joyous and self-indulgent. Brahma & Shiva do not exist for the Veda; Vishnu & Rudra are minor, younger & unimportant deities. Many more discoveries of a startling nature, but now familiar to the most ignorant, have been successfully imposed on our intellects. The Vedas, it seems, were not revealed to great & ancient Rishis, but composed by the priests of a small invading Aryan race of agriculturists & warriors, akin to the Greeks & Persians, who encamped, some fifteen hundred years before Christ, in the Panjab.
With the acceptance of these modern opinions Hinduism ought by this time to have been as dead among educated men as the religion of the Greeks & Romans. It should at best have become a religio Pagana, a superstition of ignorant villagers. Itis, on the contrary, stronger & more alive, fecund & creative than it had been for the previous three centuries. To a certain extent this unexpected result may be traced to the high opinion in which even European opinion has been compelled to hold the Vedanta philosophy, the Bhagavat Gita and some of the speculationsas the Europeans think themor, as we hold, the revealed truths of the Upanishads. But although intellectually we are accustomed in obedience to Western criticism to base ourselves on the Upanishads & Gita and put aside Purana and Veda as mere mythology & mere ritual, yet in practice we live by the religion of the Puranas & Tantras even more profoundly & intimately than we live by & realise the truths of the Upanishads. In heart & soul we still worship Krishna and Kali and believe in the truth of their existence. Nevertheless this divorce between the heart & the intellect, this illicit compromise between faith & reason cannot be enduring. If Purana & Veda cannot be rehabilitated, it is yet possible that our religion driven out of the soul into the intellect may wither away into the dry intellectuality of European philosophy or the dead formality & lifeless clarity of European Theism. It behoves us therefore to test our faith by a careful examination into the meaning of Purana & Veda and into the foundation of that truth which our intellect seeks to deny [but] our living spiritual experience continues to find in their conceptions. We must discover why it is that while our intellects accept only the truth of Vedanta, our spiritual experiences confirm equally or even more powerfully the truth of Purana. A revival of Hindu intellectual faith in the totality of the spiritual aspects of our religion, whether Vedic, Vedantic, Tantric or Puranic, I believe to be an inevitable movement of the near future.
There has already been, indeed, a local movement towards the rehabilitation of the Veda. Swami Dayananda, the founder of the Arya Samaj, preached a monotheistic religion founded on a new interpretation of the sacred hymns. But this important attempt, successful & vigorous in the Panjab, is not likely to comm and acceptance among the more subtle races of the south & east. It was based like the European rendering on a system of philology,the Nirukta of Yaska used by the scholastic ingenuity & robust faith of Dayananda to justify conclusions far-reaching & even extravagant, to which it is difficult to assent unless we are offered stronger foundations.Moreover, by rejecting the authority of all later scriptures and scouting even the Upanishads because they transcend the severity of his monotheistic teaching, Dayananda cut asunder the unity of Hindu religion even more fatally than the Europeans & by the slenderness of vision & the poverty of spiritual contents, the excessive simplicity of doctrine farther weakened the authority of this version for the Indian intellect. He created a sect & a rendering, but failed to rehabilitate to the educated mind in India the authority of the Vedas. Nevertheless, he put his finger on the real clue, the true principle by which Veda can yet be made to render up its long-guarded secret. A Nirukta, based on a wider knowledge of the Aryan tongues than Dayananda possessed, more scientific than the conjectural philology of the Europeans, is the first condition of this great recovery. The second is a sympathy & flexibility of intelligence capable of accepting passively & moulding itself to the mentality of the men of this remote epoch.
If indeed the philology of the Europeans were an exact science or its conclusions inevitable results from indisputable premises, there would be no room for any reopening of the subject. But the failure of comparative philology to develop a sound scientific basis & to create a true science of language has been one of the conspicuous intellectual disappointments of the nineteenth century. There can be no denial of that failure. This so-called science is scouted by scientific minds and even the possibility of an etymological science has been disputed. The extravagances of the philological sun myth weavers have been checked by a later method which prefers the evidence of facts to the evidence of nouns & adjectives. The later ethnological theories ignore the conclusions & arguments of the philologists. The old theory of Aryan, Semite, Dravidian & Turanian races has everywhere been challenged and is everywhere breached or rejected. The philologists have indeed established some useful identities and established a few rules of phonetical modification and detrition. But the rest is hypothesis and plausible conjecture. The capacity of brilliant conjecture, volatile inference and an ingenious imagination have been more useful to the modern Sanscrit scholar than rigorous research, scientific deduction or patient and careful generalisation. We are therefore at liberty even on the ground of European science & knowledge to hesitate before the conclusions of philological scholarship.
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The decision of these questions will determine our whole view of Vedic religions and decide the claim of the Veda to be a living scripture of Hinduism. It is of primary importance to know what in their nature and functions were the gods of the Veda. I have therefore made this fundamental question form the sole subject matter of the present volume. I make no attempt here to present a complete or even a sufficient justification of the conclusions which I have been led to. Nor do I present my readers with a complete enquiry into the nature & functions of the Vedic pantheon. Such a justification, such an enquiry can only be effected by a careful philological analysis & rendering of the Vedic hymns and an exhaustive study of the origins of the Sanscrit language. That is a labour of very serious proportions & burdened with numerous difficulties which I have begun and hope one day to complete myself or to leave to others ready for completion. But in the present volume I can only attempt to establish a prima facie [case] for a reconsideration of the whole question. I offer the suggestion that the Vedic creed & thought were not a simple, but a complex, not a barbarous but a subtle & advanced, not a naturalistic but a mystic & Vedantic system.
It is necessary, in order that the reader may follow my arguments with a better understanding, to sketch briefly the important lines of that system as it reveals itself in the ten mandalas of the Rigveda. Its fundamental conception was the unity in complexity of the apparent universe. The Vedic mind, looking out on the great movement of material forces around it, aware of their regularity, law, universality, saw in them symbols and expressions of a diviner life behind. Everywhere they felt the presence of intelligence, of life, of a soul. But they did not make the common distinction between soul and matter. Matter was to them itself a term and expression of the life and soul they had discovered. It was this peculiarity of thought which constituted the essential characteristic of the Vedic outlook and has stood at the root and basis of all Indian thought and religion then & subsequently.
1.08 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
GOSWAMI: "Sir, the chanting of God's name is enough. The scriptures emphasize the sanctity of God's name for the Kaliyuga."
MASTER: "Yes, there is no doubt about the sanctity of God's name. But can a mere name achieve anything, without the yearning love of the devotee behind it? One should feel great restlessness of soul for the vision of God. Suppose a man repeats the name of God mechanically, while his mind is absorbed in 'woman and gold'. Can he achieve anything? Mere muttering of magic words doesn't cure one of the pain of a spider or scorpion sting. One must also apply the smoke of burning cow-dung."
1.08 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
13:But Intuition by the very nature of its action in man, working as it does from behind the veil, active principally in his more unenlightened, less articulate parts, served in front of the veil, in the narrow light which is our waking conscience, only by instruments that are unable fully to assimilate its messages, - Intuition is unable to give us the truth in that ordered and articulated form which our nature demands. Before it could effect any such completeness of direct knowledge in us, it would have to organise itself in our surface being and take possession there of the leading part. But in our surface being it is not the Intuition, it is the Reason which is organised and helps us to order our perceptions, thoughts and actions. Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge, represented by the early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads, had to give place to the age of rational knowledge; inspired scripture made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science. Intuitive thought which is a messenger from the superconscient and therefore our highest faculty, was supplanted by the pure reason which is only a sort of deputy and belongs to the middle heights of our being; pure reason in its turn was supplanted for a time by the mixed action of the reason which lives on our plains and lower elevations and does not in its view exceed the horizon of the experience that the physical mind and senses or such aids as we can invent for them can bring to us. And this process which seems to be a descent, is really a circle of progress. For in each case the lower faculty is compelled to take up as much as it can assimilate of what the higher had already given and to attempt to re-establish it by its own methods. By the attempt it is itself enlarged in its scope and arrives eventually at a more supple and a more ample selfaccommodation to the higher faculties. Without this succession and attempt at separate assimilation we should be obliged to remain under the exclusive domination of a part of our nature while the rest remained either depressed and unduly subjected or separate in its field and therefore poor in its development. With this succession and separate attempt the balance is righted; a more complete harmony of our parts of knowledge is prepared.
14:We see this succession in the Upanishads and the subsequent Indian philosophies. The sages of the Veda and Vedanta relied entirely upon intuition and spiritual experience. It is by an error that scholars sometimes speak of great debates or discussions in the Upanishad. Wherever there is the appearance of a controversy, it is not by discussion, by dialectics or the use of logical reasoning that it proceeds, but by a comparison of intuitions and experiences in which the less luminous gives place to the more luminous, the narrower, faultier or less essential to the more comprehensive, more perfect, more essential. The question asked by one sage of another is "What dost thou know?", not "What dost thou think?" nor "To what conclusion has thy reasoning arrived?" Nowhere in the Upanishads do we find any trace of logical reasoning urged in support of the truths of Vedanta. Intuition, the sages seem to have held, must be corrected by a more perfect intuition; logical reasoning cannot be its judge.
15:And yet the human reason demands its own method of satisfaction. Therefore when the age of rationalistic speculation began, Indian philosophers, respectful of the heritage of the past, adopted a double attitude towards the Truth they sought. They recognised in the Sruti, the earlier results of Intuition or, as they preferred to call it, of inspired Revelation, an authority superior to Reason. But at the same time they started from Reason and tested the results it gave them, holding only those conclusions to be valid which were supported by the supreme authority. In this way they avoided to a certain extent the besetting sin of metaphysics, the tendency to battle in the clouds because it deals with words as if they were imperative facts instead of symbols which have always to be carefully scrutinised and brought back constantly to the sense of that which they represent. Their speculations tended at first to keep near at the centre to the highest and profoundest experience and proceeded with the united consent of the two great authorities, Reason and Intuition. Nevertheless, the natural trend of Reason to assert its own supremacy triumphed in effect over the theory of its subordination. Hence the rise of conflicting schools each of which founded itself in theory on the Veda and used its texts as a weapon against the others. For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge. Reason, on the contrary, proceeds by analysis and division and assembles its facts to form a whole; but in the assemblage so formed there are opposites, anomalies, logical incompatibilities, and the natural tendency of Reason is to affirm some and to negate others which conflict with its chosen conclusions so that it may form a flawlessly logical system. The unity of the first intuitional knowledge was thus broken up and the ingenuity of the logicians was always able to discover devices, methods of interpretation, standards of varying value by which inconvenient texts of the scripture could be practically annulled and an entire freedom acquired for their metaphysical speculation.
16:Nevertheless, the main conceptions of the earlier Vedanta remained in parts in the various philosophical systems and efforts were made from time to time to recombine them into some image of the old catholicity and unity of intuitional thought. And behind the thought of all, variously presented, survived as the fundamental conception, Purusha, Atman or Sad Brahman, the pure Existent of the Upanishads, often rationalised into an idea or psychological state, but still carrying something of its old burden of inexpressible reality. What may be the relation of the movement of becoming which is what we call the world to this absolute Unity and how the ego, whether generated by the movement or cause of the movement, can return to that true Self, Divinity or Reality declared by the Vedanta, these were the questions speculative and practical which have always occupied the thought of India.
1.08 - The Three Schools of Magick 3, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
It is forbidden here to discuss the nature of The Book of the Law, the Sacred scripture of Thelema. Even after forty years of close expert examination, it remains to a great extent mysterious; but the little we know of it is enough to show that it is a sublime synthesis of all Science and all ethics. It is by virtue of this Book that man may attain a degree of freedom hitherto never suspected to be possible, a spiritual development altogether beyond anything hitherto known; and, what is really more to the point, a control of external nature which will make the boasted achievements of the last century appear no more than childish preliminaries to an incomparably mighty manhood.
It has been said by some that the Law of Thelema appeals only to the lite of humanity. No doubt here is this much in that assertion, that only the highest can take full advantage of the extraordinary opportuni- ties which it offers. At the same time, "the Law is for all." Each in his degree, every man may learn to realise the nature of his own being, and to develop it in freedom. It is by this means that the White School of Magick can justify its past, redeem its present, and assure its future, by guaranteeing to every human being a life of Liberty and of Love.
1.08 - Wherein is expounded the first line of the first stanza, and a beginning is made of the explanation of this dark night, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
5. With regard to this way of purgation of the senses, since it is so common, we might here adduce a great number of quotations from Divine scripture, where many passages relating to it are continually found, particularly in the Psalms and the Prophets. However, I do not wish to spend time upon these, for he who knows not how to look for them there will find the common experience of this purgation to be sufficient.
58[Lit., 'say.']
1.094 - Understanding the Structure of Things, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
We are, for instance, not conscious of the existence of worlds other than this earth, or the physical plane. But scriptures tell us, and even science corroborates, that there can be many kinds of beings perhaps infinite in number all differing, one from the other. Also, the contents of the realms will not be similar, because they belong to different space-times. This is also a great revelation of the modern theory of relativity. There are infinite space-times, and each space-time has a peculiar conditioning feature which manifests itself as a particular world of perception or experience. This particular space-time is only one possibility among the many possibilities in the form of many other space-times infinite in number. This is also mentioned to us in the stories of the Yoga Vasishtha. Infinite space-times, infinite worlds are there, and one can be penetrating through the other, one not being aware of the existence of the other. Worlds interpenetrate one another at a given cross-section of time and space, and yet one will not be aware of the other on account of the difference of the frequency of consciousness which is connected to that particular order of space-time.
This present condition of experience, which is called udita in this particular sutra, is only one time-form taken by prakriti, and it has potentialities which were in the past that can manifest themselves once again in the future. There will be an occasion for us to study this in future, when Patanjali will tell us that there is no identical substance called individual at all. There is no self-identical being. They are only different phases of the manifestation of prakriti, which is mistaken for a self-identical individuality, so that what is intended here is that the so-called asmita, which plays such havoc, is a phantasmagoria. It is not there at all!
1.099 - The Entry of the Eternal into the Individual, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
The celestials in the heavens are supposed to have perfections by birth itself, and every other being in the higher realms has a power peculiar to that particular birth. We have statements in the scriptures that above the level of the earth plane there are planes of the Gandharvas, the Pitris, the celestials, and so on. These are all beings who are superior to this human level, and they have certain capacities which humankind does not have. This has come to them by birth janma. It does not mean that a person gets powers at the time of birth by freak or by chance; it is a result of hard practice in earlier lives. It is only a manner of speaking when it is said that perfection comes to some by birth. It does not mean that God is favourably disposed to any person. These capacities are only an indication of hard and strenuous effort in a previous existence.
Even here, in this world, we find people of various calibres. Some children are born with special endowments, with precocious capacities genius seen at a very early age. It does not mean that all this happens by a fantastic freak of nature. They are the result of a very systematic development of causes and effects. The causes are unseen; only the effects are seen. But it does not follow thereby that the causes do not exist. In a similar manner, Patanjali tells us that in some cases it will appear as if the perfections manifest from the very time of birth itself. Also, there are cases where certain powers are acquired by the use of medicinal herbs which are spoken about in the yoga scriptures. We have, in India especially, some Himalayan herbs known as Sanjivini, etc., which are supposed to enliven even a corpse. Other herbs create certain vibrations in the system and stimulate the nerves, and allow the concentration of the mind. This is a very peculiar way of stimulating energy in ones system, and is the most artificial of all methods, because these vibrations are artificial results that follow from artificial causes. They are outside oneself and, therefore, they have a beginning and an end. Therefore, they are useless. Anyhow, Patanjali tells us that these herbs are also one of the ways of stirring up certain energies in the system. The effects will be there as long as the causes are there. When the causes subside, the effects also subside.
But, greater means than this is the power of mantras. The continuous recitation of certain mantras, or spiritual formulae, may create internal vibrations which enable a person to exercise supernormal powers. And the effects that follow from this practice are more lasting than the use of medicinal herbs. If a mantra is recited continuously, for a very long period, with deep concentration of mind, it sets up certain vibrations which release energy from the body and the entire system. Then, what works in ones system is the mantra itself. The deity of the mantra begins to operate. Thus, the aphorism tells us that this also is one of the ways of acquiring powers by yoga.
1.09 - ADVICE TO THE BRAHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Study of scriptures for the beginner
A BRAHMO: "Sir, have you read the Panchadasi?"
--
"One should hear the scriptures during the early stages of spiritual discipline. After attaining God there is no lack of knowledge. Then the Divine Mother supplies it without fail.
"A child spells out every word as he writes, but later on he writes fluently.
--
"Mere reading of the scriptures is not enough. A person cannot understand the true significance of the scriptures if he is attached to the world. Though with intense delight I learnt many poems and dramas, I have forgotten them all, entrapped in Krishna's love.
"Keshab enjoys the world and practises yoga as well. Living in the world, he directs his mind to God."
--
Thou art my scriptures, my commandments; Thou art my ever gracious Guru;
Thou the Spring of my boundless bliss.
1.09 - A System of Vedic Psychology, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the paralysis that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second & third hand & reassert its right to judge and inquire with a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own scriptures. When that day comes, we shall, I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more sound or lasting than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many established philological myths,the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial & unreal distinction of Aryan & Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogeneous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a henotheistic Vedic naturalism; the ingenious & brilliant extravagances of the modern sun & star myth weavers, and many another hasty & attractive generalisation which, after a brief period of unquestioning acceptance by the easily-persuaded intellect of mankind, is bound to depart into the limbo of forgotten theories. We attach an undue importance & value to the ephemeral conclusions of European philology, because it is systematic in its errors and claims to be a science.We forget or do not know that the claims of philology to a scientific value & authority are scouted by European scientists; the very word, Philologe, is a byword of scorn to serious scientific writers in Germany, the temple of philology. One of the greatest of modern philologists & modern thinkers, Ernest Renan, was finally obliged after a lifetime of hope & earnest labour to class the chief preoccupation of his life as one of the petty conjectural sciencesin other words no science at all, but a system of probabilities & guesses. Beyond one or two generalisations of the mutations followed by words in their progress through the various Aryan languages and a certain number of grammatical rectifications & rearrangements, resulting in a less arbitrary view of linguistic relations, modern philology has discovered no really binding law or rule for its own guidance. It has fixed one or two sure signposts; the rest is speculation and conjecture.We are not therefore bound to worship at the shrines of Comparative Science & Comparative Mythology & offer up on these dubious altars the Veda & Vedanta. The question of Vedic truth & the meaning of Veda still lies open. If Sayanas interpretation of Vedic texts is largely conjectural and likely often to be mistaken & unsound, the European interpretation can lay claim to no better certainty. The more lively ingenuity and imposing orderliness of the European method of conjecture may be admitted; but ingenuity & orderliness, though good helps to an enquiry, are in themselves no guarantee of truth and a conjecture does not cease to be a conjecture, because its probability or possibility is laboriously justified or brilliantly supported. It is on the basis of a purely conjectural translation of the Vedas that Europe presents us with these brilliant pictures of Vedic religion, Vedic society, Vedic civilisation which we so eagerly accept and unquestioningly reproduce. For we take them as the form of an unquestionable truth; in reality, they are no more than brilliantly coloured hypotheses,works of imagination, not drawings from the life.
***
1.09 - Concentration - Its Spiritual Uses, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
When two of our perceptions do not contradict each other, we call it proof. I hear something, and if it contradicts something already perceived, I begin to fight it out, and do not believe it. There are also three kinds of proof. Pratyaksha, direct perception; whatever we see and feel, is proof, if there has been nothing to delude the senses. I see the world; that is sufficient proof that it exists. Secondly, Anumna, inference; you see a sign, and from the sign you come to the thing signified. Thirdly, ptavkya, the direct evidence of the Yogis, of those who have seen the truth. We are all of us struggling towards knowledge. But you and I have to struggle hard, and come to knowledge through a long tedious process of reasoning, but the Yogi, the pure one, has gone beyond all this. Before his mind, the past, the present, and the future are alike, one book for him to read; he does not require to go through the tedious processes for knowledge we have to; his words are proof, because he sees knowledge in himself. These, for instance, are the authors of the sacred scriptures; therefore the scriptures are proof. If any such persons are living now their words will be proof. Other philosophers go into long discussions about Aptavakya and they say, "What is the proof of their words?" The proof is their direct perception. Because whatever I see is proof, and whatever you see is proof, if it does not contradict any past knowledge. There is knowledge beyond the senses, and whenever it does not contradict reason and past human experience, that knowledge is proof. Any madman may come into this room and say he sees angels around him; that would not be proof. In the first place, it must be true knowledge, and secondly, it must not contradict past knowledge, and thirdly, it must depend upon the character of the man who gives it out. I hear it said that the character of the man is not of so much importance as what he may say; we must first hear what he says. This may be true in other things. A man may be wicked, and yet make an astronomical discovery, but in religion it is different, because no impure man will ever have the power to reach the truths of religion. Therefore we have first of all to see that the man who declares himself to be an pta is a perfectly unselfish and holy person; secondly, that he has reached beyond the senses; and thirdly, that what he says does not contradict the past knowledge of humanity. Any new discovery of truth does not contradict the past truth, but fits into it. And fourthly, that truth must have a possibility of verification. If a man says, "I have seen a vision," and tells me that I have no right to see it, I believe him not. Everyone must have the power to see it for himself. No one who sells his knowledge is an Apta. All these conditions must be fulfilled; you must first see that the man is pure, and that he has no selfish motive; that he has no thirst for gain or fame. Secondly, he must show that he is superconscious. He must give us something that we cannot get from our senses, and which is for the benefit of the world. Thirdly, we must see that it does not contradict other truths; if it contradicts other scientific truths reject it at once. Fourthly, the man should never be singular; he should only represent what all men can attain. The three sorts of proof are, then, direct sense-perception, inference, and the words of an Apta. I cannot translate this word into English. It is not the word "inspired", because inspiration is believed to come from outside, while this knowledge comes from the man himself. The literal meaning is "attained".
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The idea is that we have to get our knowledge of ordinary objects by direct perception, and by inference therefrom, and from testimony of people who are competent. By "people who are competent," the Yogis always mean the Rishis, or the Seers of the thoughts recorded in the scriptures the Vedas. According to them, the only proof of the scriptures is that they were the testimony of competent persons, yet they say the scriptures cannot take us to realisation. We can read all the Vedas, and yet will not realise anything, but when we practise their teachings, then we attain to that state which realises what the scriptures say, which penetrates where neither reason nor perception nor inference can go, and where the testimony of others cannot avail. This is what is meant by the aphorism.
Realisation is real religion, all the rest is only preparation hearing lectures, or reading books, or reasoning is merely preparing the ground; it is not religion. Intellectual assent and intellectual dissent are not religion. The central idea of the Yogis is that just as we come in direct contact with objects of the senses, so religion even can be directly perceived in a far more intense sense. The truths of religion, as God and Soul, cannot be perceived by the external senses. I cannot see God with my eyes, nor can I touch Him with my hands, and we also know that neither can we reason beyond the senses. Reason leaves us at a point quite indecisive; we may reason all our lives, as the world has been doing for thousands of years, and the result is that we find we are incompetent to prove or disprove the facts of religion. What we perceive directly we take as the basis, and upon that basis we reason. So it is obvious that reasoning has to run within these bounds of perception. It can never go beyond. The whole scope of realisation, therefore, is beyond sense-perception. The Yogis say that man can go beyond his direct sense-perception, and beyond his reason also. Man has in him the faculty, the power, of transcending his intellect even, a power which is in every being, every creature. By the practice of Yoga that power is aroused, and then man transcends the ordinary limits of reason, and directly perceives things which are beyond all reason.
1.09 - Kundalini Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
17. He who has firm faith in the scriptures, who has Sadachara (right conduct), who constantly engages himself in the service of his Guru, who is free from lust, anger, delusion, greed, vanity, hatred and egoism can awaken Kundalini, attain perfection and enter into Samadhi quickly.
18. The first step in Kundalini Yoga is the purification of Nadis.
1.09 - On remembrance of wrongs., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
10. Remembrance of wrongs is an interpreter of scripture of the kind that adjusts the words of the Spirit to its own views. Let it be put to shame by the Prayer of Jesus2 which cannot be said with it.
11. When, after much struggling, you are still unable to extract this thorn, you should apologize to your enemy, even if only in word. Then perhaps you may be ashamed of your long-standing insincerity towards him, and, as your conscience stings you like fire, you may feel perfect love towards him.
1.09 - SELF-KNOWLEDGE, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The importance, the indispensable necessity, of self-knowledge has been stressed by the saints and doctors of every one of the great religious traditions. To us in the West, the most familiar voice is that of Socrates. More systematically than Socrates the Indian exponents of the Perennial Philosophy harped on the same theme. There is, for example, the Buddha, whose discourse on The Setting-Up of Mindfulness expounds (with that positively inexorable exhaustiveness characteristic of the Pali scriptures) the whole art of self-knowledge in all its branchesknowledge of ones body, ones senses, ones feelings, ones thoughts. This art of self-knowledge is practised with two aims in view. The proximate aim is that a brother, as to the body, continues so to look upon the body, that he remains ardent, self-possessed and mindful, having overcome both the hankering and dejection common in the world. And in the same way as to feelings, thoughts and ideas, he so looks upon each that he remains ardent, self-possessed and mindful, without hankering or dejection. Beyond and through this desirable psychological condition lies the final end of man, knowledge of that which underlies the individualized self. In their own vocabulary, Christian writers express the same ideas.
A man has many skins in himself, covering the depths of his heart. Man knows so many things; he does not know himself. Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, just like an oxs or a bears, so thick and hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
Nobody can say what happens. No one can go there and see what happens. Dharma-megha samadhi is only a term which is defined in various ways, but it is said to be a divine gift which is bestowed upon the seeker by the powers that be the divine forces that guard the cosmos. Rapturous descriptions of this condition can be found in such scriptures as the Yoga Vasishtha where we are told that even the divine beings, the guardians of the cosmos, become our servants. The guardians of the cosmos become the servants of this man. Such things are told in the Yoga Vasishtha and other scriptures of that kind.
We will become the master. There is the shadowy persistence of the ego which has taken a cosmic form, a kind of vritti which sometimes is called, in the language of the Vedanta, as brahmakara-vritti. It is only a theoretical description of the forms that the mind has taken, and is really not a vritti at all. Merely because it has to subside afterwards, we also call it a vritti. It is a vritti which the mind puts on with a single object in front of it that is called brahmakara-vritti. The other vrittis, which are called vishayakara-vrittis,are those which have many objects in front of them the usual vrittis of the mind which are in respect of various objects of sense, as is the case with people like us at present.
1.10 - The Methods and the Means, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
And this discrimination of food is, after all, of secondary importance. The very same passage quoted above is explained by Shankara in his Bhshya on the Upanishads in a different way by giving an entirely different meaning to the word hra, translated generally as food. According to him, "That which is gathered in is Ahara. The knowledge of the sensations, such as sound etc., is gathered in for the enjoyment of the enjoyer (self); the purification of the knowledge which gathers in the perception of the senses is the purifying of the food (Ahara). The word 'purification-of-food' means the acquiring of the knowledge of sensations untouched by the defects of attachment, aversion, and delusion; such is the meaning. Therefore such knowledge or Ahara being purified, the Sattva material of the possessor it the internal organ will become purified, and the Sattva being purified, an unbroken memory of the Infinite One, who has been known in His real nature from scriptures, will result."
These two explanations are apparently conflicting, yet both are true and necessary. The manipulating and controlling of what may be called the finer body, viz the mood, are no doubt higher functions than the controlling of the grosser body of flesh. But the control of the grosser is absolutely necessary to enable one to arrive at the control of the finer. The beginner, therefore, must pay particular attention to all such dietetic rules as have come down from the line of his accredited teachers; but the extravagant, meaningless fanaticism, which has driven religion entirely to the kitchen, as may be noticed in the case of many of our sects, without any hope of the noble truth of that religion ever coming out to the sunlight of spirituality, is a peculiar sort of pure and simple materialism. It is neither Jnna, nor Bhakti, nor Karma; it is a special kind of lunacy, and those who pin their souls to it are more likely to go to lunatic asylums than to Brahmaloka. So it stands to reason that discrimination in the choice of food is necessary for the attainment of this higher state of mental composition which cannot be easily obtained otherwise.
1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The history of the Veda is one of the most remarkable & paradoxical phenomena of human experience. In the belief of the ancient Indians the three Vedas, books believed to be inspired directly from the source of all Truth, books at any rate of an incalculable antiquity and of a time-honoured sanctity, were believed to be the repositories of a divine knowledge. The man who was a Veda knower, Vedavid, had access to the deepest knowledge about God and existence. He knew the one thing that was eternally true, the one thing thoroughly worth knowing. The right possession of the ancient hymns was not supposed to be possible by a superficial reading, not supposed to result directly even from a mastery of the scholastic aids to a right understanding,grammar, language, prosody, astronomy, ritual, pronunciation,but depended finally and essentially on explanation by a fit spiritual teacher who understood the inner sense that was couched in the linguistic forms & figures of the scriptures. The Veda so understood was held to be the fountain, the bedrock, the master-volume of all true Hinduism; that which accepted not the Veda, was and must be instantly departure from the right path, the true truth. Even when the material & ritualistic sense of the Veda had so much dominated & hidden in mens ideas of it its higher parts that to go beyond it seemed imperative, the reverence for this ancient scripture remained intact. At the time when the Gita in its modern form was composed, we find this double attitude dominant. There is a strong censure of the formalists, the ritualists, who constantly dispute about the Veda and hold it as a creed that there is no other truth and who apply it only for the acquisition of worldly mastery and enjoyments, but at the same time the great store of spiritual truth in the old sacred writings and their high value are never doubted or depreciated. There is in all the Vedas as much utility to the Brahma-knower as to one who would drink there is utility in a well flooded with water on all its sides. Krishna speaking as God Himself declares I alone am He who is to be known by all the Vedas; I am He who made Vedanta and who know the Veda. The sanctity and spiritual value of the Vedas could not receive a more solemn seal of confirmation. It is evident also from this last passage that the more modern distinction which grew upon the Hindu mind with the fading of Vedic knowledge, the distinction by which the old Rigveda and Sama and Yajur are put aside as ritualistic writings, possessing a value only for ceremonial of sacrifice, and all search for spiritual knowledge is confined to the Vedanta, was unrecognised & even unknown to the writer of the Gita. To him the Vedas are writings full of spiritual truth; the language of the line Vedaish cha sarvair aham eva vedyo, the significance of the double emphasis in the etymological sense of knowledge in Vedavid, the knower of the book of knowledge as well as in vedair vedyo are unmistakable. Other means of knowledge even more powerful than study of the Vedas the Gita recognises; but in its epoch the Veda even as apart from the Upanishads still held its place of honour as the repository of the high and divine knowledge; it still bore upon it the triple seal of the Brahmavidya.
When was this traditional honour first lost or at least tarnished and the ancient scripture relegated to the inferior position it occupies in the thought of Shankaracharya? I presume there can be little doubt that the chief agent in this work of destruction was the power of Buddhism. The preachings of Gautama and his followers worked against Vedic knowledge by a double process. First, by entirely denying the authority of the Veda, laying a violent stress on its ritualistic character and destroying the general practice of formal sacrifice, it brought the study of the Veda into disrepute as a means of attaining the highest good while at the same time it destroyed the necessity of that study for ritualistic purposes which had hitherto kept alive the old Vedic studies; secondly, in a less direct fashion, by substituting for a time at least the vernacular tongues for the old simple Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, Sanscrit as the more common & popular means of religious propaganda and by giving them a literary position and repute, it made a general return to the old generality of the Vedic studies practically impossible. For the Vedas were written in an ancient form of the literary tongue the real secret of which had already been to a great extent lost even to the learned; such knowledge of it as remained, subsisted with difficulty by means of a laborious memorising and a traditional scholarship, conservative indeed but still slowly diminishing and replacing more & more real knowledge by uncertainty, disputed significance and the continuously increasing ingenuities of the ritualist, the grammarian and the sectarian polemical disputant. When after the fall of the Buddhistic Mauryas, feeble successors of the great Asoka, first under Pushyamitra and his son and afterwards under the Guptas, Hinduism revived, a return to the old forms of the creed and the old Vedic scholarship was no longer possible. The old pre-Buddhistic Sanscrit was, to all appearance, a simple, vigorous, living language understood though not spoken by the more intelligent of the common people just as the literary language of Bengal, the language of Bankim Chandra, is understood by every intelligent Bengali, although in speech more contracted forms and a very different vocabulary are in use. But the new Sanscrit of the revival tended to be more & more a learned, scholarly, polished and rhetorical tongue, certainly one of the most smooth, stately & grandiose ever used by human lips, but needing a special & difficult education to understand its grammar, its rhetoric, its rolling compounds and its long flowing sentences. The archaic language of the Vedas ceased to be the common study even of the learned and was only mastered, one is constrained to believe with less & less efficiency, by a small number of scholars. An education in which it took seven years to master the grammar of the language, became inevitably the grave of all true Vedic knowledge. Veda ceased to be the pivot of the Hindu religion, and its place was taken by the only religious compositions which were modern enough in language and simple enough in style to be popular, the Puranas. Moreover, the conception of Veda popularised by Buddhism, a scripture of ritual and of animal sacrifice, persisted in the popular mind even after the decline of Buddhism and the revival of great philosophies ostensibly based on Vedic authority. It was under the dominance of this ritualistic conception that Sayana wrote his great commentary which has ever since been to the Indian Pundit the one decisive authority on the sense of Veda. The four Vedas have definitely taken a subordinate place as karmakanda, books of ritual; and to the Upanishads alone, in spite of occasional appeals to the text of the earlier scriptures, is reserved that aspect of spiritual knowledge & teaching which alone justifies the application to any human composition of the great name of Veda.
But in spite of this great downfall the ancient tradition, the ancient sanctity survived. The people knew not what Veda might be; but the old idea remained fixed that Veda is always the fountain of Hinduism, the standard of orthodoxy, the repository of a sacred knowledge; not even the loftiest philosopher or the most ritualistic scholar could divest himself entirely of this deeply ingrained & instinctive conception. To complete the degradation of Veda, to consummate the paradox of its history, a new element had to appear, a new form of intelligence undominated by the ancient tradition & the mediaeval method to take possession of Vedic interpretation. European scholarship which regards human civilisation as a recent progression starting yesterday with the Fiji islander and ending today with Haeckel and Rockefeller, conceiving ancient culture as necessarily primitive culture and primitive culture as necessarily half-savage culture, has turned the light of its Comparative Philology & Comparative Mythology on the Veda. The result we all know. Not only all vestige of sanctity, but all pretension to any kind of spiritual knowledge or experience disappears from the Veda. The old Rishis are revealed to us as a race of ignorant and lusty barbarians who drank & enjoyed and fought, gathered riches & procreated children, sacrificed and praised the Powers of Nature as if they were powerful men & women, and had no higher hope or idea. The only idea they had of religion beyond an occasional sense of sin and a perpetual preoccupation with a ritual barbarously encumbered with a mass of meaningless ceremonial details, was a mythology composed of the phenomena of dawn, night, rain, sunshine and harvest and the facts of astronomy converted into a wildly confused & incoherent mass of allegorical images and personifications. Nor, with the European interpretation, can we be proud of our early forefa thers as poets and singers. The versification of the Vedic hymns is indeed noble and melodious,though the incorrect method of writing them established by the old Indian scholars, often conceals their harmonious construction,but no other praise can be given. The Nibelungenlied, the Icelandic Sagas, the Kalewala, the Homeric poems, were written in the dawn of civilisation by semi-barbarous races, by poets not superior in culture to the Vedic Rishis; yet though their poetical value varies, the nations that possess them, need not be ashamed of their ancient heritage. The same cannot be said of the Vedic poems presented to us by European scholarship. Never surely was there even among savages such a mass of tawdry, glittering, confused & purposeless imagery; never such an inane & useless burden of epithets; never such slipshod & incompetent writing; never such a strange & almost insane incoherence of thought & style; never such a bald poverty of substance. The attempt of patriotic Indian scholars to make something respectable out of the Veda, is futile. If the modern interpretation stands, the Vedas are no doubt of high interest & value to the philologist, the anthropologist & the historian; but poetically and spiritually they are null and worthless. Its reputation for spiritual knowledge & deep religious wealth, is the most imposing & baseless hoax that has ever been worked upon the imagination of a whole people throughout many millenniums.
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But the ritualistic interpretation of the Rigveda does not stand on the authority of Sayana alone. It is justified by Shankaracharyas rigid division of karmakanda and jnanakanda and by a long tradition dating back to the propaganda of Buddha which found in the Vedic hymns a great system of ceremonial or effective sacrifice and little or nothing more. Even the Brahmanas in their great mass & minuteness seem to bear unwavering testimony to the pure ritualism of the Veda. But the Brahmanas are in their nature rubrics of directions to the priests for the right performance of the outward Vedic sacrifice,that system of symbolic & effective offerings to the gods of Soma-wine, clarified butter or consecrated animals in which the complex religion of the Veda embodied itself for material worship,rubrics accompanied by speculative explanations of old ill-understood details & the popular myths & traditions that had sprung up from obscure allusions in the hymns. Whatever we may think of the Brahmanas, they merely affirm the side of outward ritualism which had grown in a huge & cumbrous mass round the first simple rites of the Vedic Rishis; they do not exclude the existence of deeper meanings & higher purposes in the ancient scripture. Not only so, but they practically affirm them by including in the Aranyakas compositions of a wholly different spirit & purpose, the Upanishads, compositions professedly intended to bring out the spiritual gist and drift of the earlier Veda. It is clear therefore that to the knowledge or belief of the men of those times the Vedas had a double aspect, an aspect of outward and effective ritual, believed also to be symbolical,for the Brahmanas are continually striving to find a mystic symbolism in the most obvious details of the sacrifice, and an aspect of highest & divine truth hidden behind these symbols. The Upanishads themselves have always been known as Vedanta. This word is nowadays often used & spoken of as if it meant the end of Veda, in the sense that here historically the religious development commenced in the Rigveda culminated; but obviously it means the culmination of Veda in a very different sense, the ultimate and highest knowledge & fulfilment towards which the practices & strivings of the Vedic Rishis mounted, extricated from the voluminous mass of the Vedic poems and presented according to the inner realisation of great Rishis like Yajnavalkya & Janaka in a more modern style and language. It is used much in the sense in which Madhuchchhandas, son of Viswamitra, says of Indra, Ath te antamnm vidyma sumatnm, Then may we know something of thy ultimate right thinkings, meaning obviously not the latest, but the supreme truths, the ultimate realisations. Undoubtedly, this was what the authors of the Upanishads themselves saw in their work, statements of supreme truth of Veda, truth therefore contained in the ancient mantras. In this belief they appeal always to Vedic authority and quote the language of Veda either to justify their own statements of thought or to express that thought itself in the old solemn and sacred language. And with regard to this there are spoken these Riks.
In what light did these ancient thinkers understand the Vedic gods? As material Nature Powers called only to give worldly wealth to their worshippers? Certainly, the Vedic gods are in the Vedanta also accredited with material functions. In the Kena Upanishad Agnis power & glory is to burn, Vayus to seize & bear away. But these are not their only functions. In the same Upanishad, in the same apologue, told as a Vedantic parable, Indra, Agni & Vayu, especially Indra, are declared to be the greatest of the gods because they came nearest into contact with the Brahman. Indra, although unable to recognise the Brahman directly, learned of his identity from Uma daughter of the snowy mountains. Certainly, the sense of the parable is not that Dawn told the Sky who Brahman was or that material Sky, Fire & Wind are best able to come into contact with the Supreme Existence. It is clear & it is recognised by all the commentators, that in the Upanishads the gods are masters not only of material functions in the outer physical world but also of mental, vital and physical functions in the intelligent living creature. This will be directly evident from the passage describing the creation of the gods by the One & Supreme Being in the Aitareya Upanishad & the subsequent movement by which they enter in the body of man and take up the control of his activities. In the same Upanishad it is even hinted that Indra is in his secret being the Eternal Lord himself, for Idandra is his secret name; nor should we forget that this piece of mysticism is founded on the hymns of the Veda itself which speak of the secret names of the gods. Shankaracharya recognised this truth so perfectly that he uses the gods and the senses as equivalent terms in his great commentary. Finally in the Isha Upanishad,itself a part of the White Yajur Veda and a work, as I have shown elsewhere, full of the most lofty & deep Vedantic truth, in which the eternal problems of human existence are briefly proposed and masterfully solved,we find Surya and Agni prayed to & invoked with as much solemnity & reverence as in the Rigveda and indeed in language borrowed from the Rigveda, not as the material Sun and material Fire, but as the master of divine God-revealing knowledge & the master of divine purifying force of knowledge, and not to drive away the terrors of night from a trembling savage nor to burn the offered cake & the dripping ghee in a barbarian ritual, but to reveal the ultimate truth to the eyes of the Seer and to raise the immortal part in us that lives before & after the body is ashes to the supreme felicity of the perfected & sinless soul. Even subsequently we have seen that the Gita speaks of the Vedas as having the supreme for their subject of knowledge, and if later thinkers put it aside as karmakanda, yet they too, though drawing chiefly on the Upanishads, appealed occasionally to the texts of the hymns as authorities for the Brahmavidya. This could not have been if they were merely a ritual hymnology. We see therefore that the real Hindu tradition contains nothing excluding the interpretation which I put upon the Rigveda. On one side the current notion, caused by the immense overgrowth of ritualism in the millennium previous to the Christian era and the violence of the subsequent revolt against it, has been fixed in our minds by Buddhistic ideas as a result of the most formidable & damaging attack which the ancient Vedic religion had ever to endure. On the other side, the Vedantic sense of Veda is supported by the highest authorities we have, the Gita & the Upanishads, & evidenced even by the tradition that seems to deny or at least belittle it. True orthodoxy therefore demands not that we should regard the Veda as a ritualist hymn book, but that we should seek in it for the substance or at least the foundation of that sublime Brahmavidya which is formally placed before us in the Upanishads, regarding it as the revelation of the deepest truth of the world & man revealed to illuminated Seers by the Eternal Ruler of the Universe.
1.11 - The Kalki Avatar, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
the Vedic scriptures:
It is I who am the offspring of what gave birth to me
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Hindu scriptures, as did Sri Aurobindo, the general thinking
and imagining did not take evolution into account, and one
1.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINEWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Hence the Bhakti scriptures describe this very world as a 'mansion of mirth'.
Ramprasad sang in one of his songs, 'This world is a framework of illusion.' Another devotee gave the reply, 'This very world is a mansion of mirth.' As the saying goes, 'The devotee of Kali, free while living, is full of Eternal Bliss.' The bhakta sees that He who is God has also become maya. Again, He Himself has become the universe and all its living beings. The bhakta sees God, maya, the universe, and the living beings as one. Some devotees see everything as Rma: it is Rma alone who has become everything. Some see everything as Radha and Krishna. To them it is Krishna alone who has become the twenty-four cosmic principles. It is like seeing everything green through green glasses.
"But the Bhakti scriptures admit that the manifestations of Power are different in different beings. It is Rma who has become everything, no doubt; but He manifests Himself more in some than in others. There is one kind of manifestation of Rma in the Incarnation of God, and another in men. Even the Incarnations are conscious of the body. Embodiment is due to maya. Rma wept for Sita. But the Incarnation of God puts a bondage over His eyes by His own will, like children playing blindman's buff. The children stop playing when their mother calls them. It is quite different, however, with the ordinary man. The cloth his eyes are bandaged with is fastened to his back with screws, as it were. There are eight fetters. Shame, hatred, fear, caste, lineage, good conduct, grief, and secretiveness-these are the eight fetters. And they cannot be unfastened without the help of a guru.
Earnestness in spiritual life extolled
1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
in these great scriptures, channels of supreme knowledge and
indicators of a supreme discipline. Truth is its home; and this
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Upanishads, then, - for great as are these scriptures, luminous,
96
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been ignored. The Upanishad alone of extant scriptures gives us
without veil or stinting, with plenitude and a noble catholicity
1.12 - Independence, #Raja-Yoga, #Swami Vivkenanda, #unset
The theory of Karma is that we suffer for our good or bad deeds, and the whole scope of philosophy is to reach the glory of man. All the scriptures sing the glory of man, of the soul, and then, in the same breath, they preach Karma. A good deed brings such a result, and a bad deed such another, but if the soul can be acted upon by a good or a bad deed, the soul amounts to nothing. Bad deeds put a bar to the manifestation of the nature of the Purusha; good deeds take the obstacles off, and the glory of the Purusha becomes manifest. The Purusha itself is never changed. Whatever you do never destroys your own glory, your own nature, because the soul cannot be acted upon by anything, only a veil is spread before it, hiding its perfection.
With a view to exhausting their Karma quickly, Yogis create Kya-vyuha, or groups of bodies, in which to work it out. For all these bodies they create minds from egoism. These are called "created minds", in contradistinction to their original minds.
--
Knowledge itself is there; its covering is gone. One of the Buddhistic scriptures defines what is meant by the Buddha (which is the name of a state) as infinite knowledge, infinite as the sky. Jesus attained to that and became the Christ. All of you will attain to that state. Knowledge becoming infinite, the knowable becomes small. The whole universe, with all its objects of knowledge, becomes as nothing before the Purusha. The ordinary man thinks himself very small, because to him the knowable seems to be infinite.
1.12 - THE FESTIVAL AT PNIHTI, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Navadvip introduced his son to the Master. The young man was a student of the scriptures. He saluted Sri Ramakrishna.
NAVADVIP: "He studies the scriptures at home. Previously one hardly saw a copy of the Vedas in this country. Max Muller has translated them; so people can now read these books."
Essence of the scriptures
MASTER: "Too much study of the scriptures does more harm than good. The important thing is to know the essence of the scriptures. After that, what is the need of books?
One should learn the essence and then dive deep in order to realize God.
--
MASTER: "Now and then I think, 'What is it I know that makes so many people come to me?' Vaishnavcharan was a great pundit. He used to say to me: 'I can find in the scriptures all the things you talk about. But do you know why I come to you? I come to hear them from your mouth.' "
M: "All your words tally with the scriptures. Navadvip Goswami also said that the other day at the festival at Pnihti. You told us that day that by repeating the word 'Git' a number of times one reverses it and it becomes 'tagi', which refers to renunciation.
Renunciation is the essence of the Git. Navadvip Goswami supported your statement from the grammatical standpoint."
1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
The planes of consciousness are characterized not only by different intensities of luminous vibrations, but by different sound-vibrations or rhythms one can hear when one has that "ear of ears" the Veda speaks of. Sounds or images, lights or forces or beings are various aspects of the same Existence manifesting differently and in varying intensities according to the plane. The farther one descends the ladder of consciousness, the more fragmented become the sound-vibrations, as well as the light, the beings, and the forces. On the vital plane, for example, one can hear the discordant and jarring vibrations of life, like certain types of music issuing from this plane or certain types of vital painting or poetry, which all express that broken and highly colored rhythm. The higher one rises, the more harmonious, unified and streamlined the vibrations become, such as certain great notes of Beethoven's string quartets, which seem to draw us upward, breathlessly, to radiant heights of pure light. The force of the music is no longer a matter of volume or multi-hued outbursts, but of a higher inner tension. The higher frequency of vibration turns the multi-hued rainbow to pure white, to a note so high that it seems motionless, as if captured in eternity, one single sound-light-force which is perhaps akin to the sacred Indian syllable OM [the] Word concealed in the upper fire.35 "In the beginning was the Word," the Christian scriptures also say.
There exists in India a secret knowledge based upon sounds and the differences of vibratory modes found on different planes of consciousness. If we pronounce the sound OM, for example, we clearly feel its vibrations enveloping the head centers, while the sound RAM affects the navel center. And since each of our centers of consciousness is in direct contact with a plane, we can, by the repetition of certain sounds (japa), come into contact with the corresponding plane of consciousness.200 This is the basis of an entire spiritual discipline, called "tantric" because it originates from sacred texts known as Tantra. The basic or essential sounds that have the power to establish the contact are called mantras. The mantras, usually secret and given to the disciple by his Guru,201 are of all kinds (there are many levels within each plane of consciousness), and may serve the most contradictory purposes. By combining certain sounds, one can at the lower levels of consciousness generally at the vital level come in contact with the corresponding forces and acquire many strange powers: some mantras can cause death (in five minutes, with violent vomiting), some mantras can strike with precision a particular part or organ of the body, some mantras can cure, some mantras can start a fire, protect, or cast spells. This type of magic, or chemistry of vibrations, derives simply from a conscious handling of the lower vibrations. But there is a higher magic, which also derives from handling vibrations, on higher planes of consciousness. This is poetry, music, the spiritual mantras of the Upanishads and the Veda, the mantras given by a Guru to his disciple to help him come consciously into direct contact with a special plane of consciousness, a force or a divine being. In this case, the sound holds in itself the power of experience and realization it is a sound that makes one see.
1.12 - TIME AND ETERNITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the modern world the gods to whom human sacrifice is offered are personifications, not of Nature, but of mans own, home-made political ideals. These, of course, all refer to events in timeactual events in the past or the present, fancied events in the future. And here it should be noted that the philosophy which affirms the existence and the immediate realizableness of eternity is related to one kind of political theory and practice; the philosophy which affirms that what goes on in time is the only reality, results in a different kind of theory and justifies quite another kind of political practice. This has been clearly recognized by Marxist writers,* who point out that when Christianity is mainly preoccupied with events in time, it is a revolutionary religion, and that when, under mystical influences, it stresses the Eternal Gospel, of which the historical or pseudo-historical facts recorded in scripture are but symbols, it becomes politically static and reactionary.
This Marxian account of the matter is somewhat oversimplified. It is not quite true to say that all theologies and philosophies whose primary concern is with time, rather than eternity, are necessarily revolutionary. The aim of all revolutions is to make the future radically different from and better than the past. But some time-obsessed philosophies are primarily concerned with the past, not the future, and their politics are entirely a matter of preserving or restoring the status quo and getting back to the good old days. But the retrospective time-worshippers have one thing in common with the revolutionary devotees of the bigger and better future; they are prepared to use unlimited violence to achieve their ends. It is here that we discover the essential difference between the politics of eternity-philosophers and the politics of time-philosophers. For the latter, the ultimate good is to be found in the temporal worldin a future, where everyone will be happy because all are doing and thinking something either entirely new and unprecedented or, alternatively, something old, traditional and hallowed. And because the ultimate good lies in time, they feel justified in making use of any temporal means for achieving it. The Inquisition burns and tortures in order to perpetuate a creed, a ritual and an ecclesiastico-politico-financial organization regarded as necessary to mens eternal salvation. Bible-worshipping Protestants fight long and savage wars, in order to make the world safe for what they fondly imagine to be the genuinely antique Christianity of apostolic times. Jacobins and Bolsheviks are ready to sacrifice millions of human lives for the sake of a political and economic future gorgeously unlike the present. And now all Europe and most of Asia has had to be sacrificed to a crystal-gazers vision of perpetual Co-Prosperity and the Thousand-Year Reich. From the records of history it seems to be abundantly clear that most of the religions and philosophies which take time too seriously are correlated with political theories that inculcate and justify the use of large-scale violence. The only exceptions are those simple Epicurean faiths, in which the reaction to an all too real time is Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. This is not a very noble, nor even a very realistic kind of morality. But it seems to make a good deal more sense than the revolutionary ethic: Die (and kill), for tomorrow someone else will eat, drink and be merry. In practice, of course, the prospect even of somebody elses future merriment is extremely precarious. For the process of wholesale dying and killing creates material, social and psychological conditions that practically guarantee the revolution against the achievement of its beneficent ends.
--
Like the bee gathering honey from different flowers, the wise man accepts the essence of different scriptures and sees only the good in all religions.
From the Srimad Bhagavatam
1.13 - Gnostic Symbols of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
25 Rig-Veda, X, 129. (Cf. MacNicol trans., Hindu scriptures, p. 37.)
192
--
plicit, in the Holy scriptures no less than in the Naassene teach-
ings.
--
passage in John - "He who believes in me, as the scripture has
said, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" - refers to
1.13 - SALVATION, DELIVERANCE, ENLIGHTENMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
In the theologies of the various religions, salvation is also regarded as a deliverance out of folly, evil and misery into happiness, goodness and wisdom. But political and economic means are held to be subsidiary to the cultivation of personal holiness, to the acquiring of personal merit and to the maintenance of personal faith in some divine principle or person having power, in one way or another, to forgive and sanctify the individual soul. Moreover the end to be achieved is not regarded as existing in some Utopian future period, beginning, say, in the twenty-second century or perhaps even a little earlier, if our favourite politicians remain in power and make the right laws; the end exists in heaven. This last phrase has two very different meanings. For what is probably the majority of those who profess the great historical religions, it signifies and has always signified a happy posthumous condition of indefinite personal survival, conceived of as a reward for good behaviour and correct belief and a compensation for the miseries inseparable from life in a body. But for those who, within the various religious traditions, have accepted the Perennial Philosophy as a theory and have done their best to live it out in practice, heaven is something else. They aspire to be delivered out of separate selfhood in time and into eternity as realized in the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Since the Ground can and ought to be unitively known in the present life (whose ultimate end and purpose is nothing but this knowledge), heaven is not an exclusively posthumous condition. He only is completely saved who is delivered here and now. As to the means to salvation, these are simultaneously ethical, intellectual and spiritual and have been summed up with admirable clarity and economy in the Buddhas Eightfold Path. Complete deliverance is conditional on the following: first, Right Belief in the all too obvious truth that the cause of pain and evil is craving for separative, ego-centred existence, with its corollary that there can be no deliverance from evil, whether personal or collective, except by getting rid of such craving and the obsession of I, me, mine"; second, Right Will, the will to deliver oneself and others; third, Right Speech, directed by compassion and charity towards all sentient beings; fourth, Right Action, with the aim of creating and maintaining peace and good will; fifth, Right Means of Livelihood, or the choice only of such professions as are not harmful, in their exercise, to any human being or, if possible, any living creature; sixth, Right Effort towards Self-control; seventh, Right Attention or Recollectedness, to be practised in all the circumstances of life, so that we may never do evil by mere thoughtlessness, because we know not what we do"; and, eighth, Right Contemplation, the unitive knowledge of the Ground, to which recollectedness and the ethical self-naughting prescribed in the first six branches of the Path give access. Such then are the means which it is within the power of the human being to employ in order to achieve mans final end and be saved. Of the means which are employed by the divine Ground for helping human beings to reach their goal, the Buddha of the Pali scriptures (a teacher whose dislike of footless questions is no less intense than that of the severest experimental physicist of the twentieth century) declines to speak. All he is prepared to talk about is sorrow and the ending of sorrow the huge brute fact of pain and evil and the other, no less empirical fact that there is a method, by which the individual can free himself from evil and do something to diminish the sum of evil in the world around him. It is only in Mahayana Buddhism that the mysteries of grace are discussed with anything like the fulness of treatment accorded to the subject in the speculations of Hindu and especially Christian theology. The primitive, Hinayana teaching on deliverance is simply an elaboration of the Buddhas last recorded words: Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your own salvation with diligence. As in the well-known passage quoted below, all the stress is upon personal effort.
Therefore, Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone beside yourselves. And those, Ananda, who either now or after I am dead shall be a lamp unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast to the Truth as their refuge, shall not look for refuge to anyone beside themselves it is they who shall reach the very topmost Height. But they must be anxious to learn.
--
This seems sufficiently self-evident. But most of us take pleasure in being lazy, cannot be bothered to be constantly recollected and yet passionately desire to be saved from the results of sloth and unawareness. Consequently there has been a widespread wish for and belief in Saviours who will step into our lives, above all at the hour of their termination, and, like Alexander, cut the Gordian knots which we have been too lazy to untie. But God is not mocked. The nature of things is such that the unitive knowledge of the Ground which is contingent upon the achievement of a total selflessness cannot possibly be realized, even with outside help, by those who are not yet selfless. The salvation obtained by belief in the saving power of Amida, say, or Jesus is not the total deliverance described in the Upanishads, the Buddhist scriptures and the writings of the Christian mystics. It is something different, not merely in degree, but in kind.
Talk as much philosophy as you please, worship as many gods as you like, observe all ceremonies, sing devoted praises to any number of divine beingsliberation never comes, even at the end of a hundred aeons, without the realization of the Oneness of Self.
1.13 - The Divine Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
5:It is so that the ancient and eternal truth of Vedanta receives into itself and illumines, justifies and shows us all the meaning of the modern and phenomenal truth of evolution in the universe. And it is so only that this modern truth of evolution which is the old truth of the Universal developing itself successively in Time, seen opaquely through the study of Force and Matter, can find its own full sense and justification, - by illuminating itself with the Light of the ancient and eternal truth still preserved for us in the Vedantic scriptures. To this mutual self-discovery and self-illumination by the fusion of the old Eastern and the new Western knowledge the thought of the world is already turning.
6:Still, when we have found that all things are Sachchidananda, all has not yet been explained. We know the Reality of the universe, we do not yet know the process by which that Reality has turned itself into this phenomenon. We have the key of the riddle, we have still to find the lock in which it will turn. For this Existence, Conscious-Force, Delight does not work directly or with a sovereign irresponsibility like a magician building up worlds and universes by the mere fiat of its word. We perceive a process, we are aware of a Law.
1.13 - THE MASTER AND M., #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"One doesn't really need to study the different scriptures. If one has no discrimination, one doesn't achieve anything through mere scholarship, even though one studies all the six systems of philosophy. Call on God, crying to Him secretly in solitude. He will give all that you need."
Sri Ramakrishna had heard that Ishan was building a house on the bank of the Ganges for the practice of spiritual discipline. He asked Ishan eagerly: "Has the house been built? Let me tell you that the less people know of your spiritual life, the better it will be for you. Devotees endowed with sattva meditate in a secluded corner or in a forest, or withdraw into the mind. Sometimes they meditate inside the mosquito net."
1.14 - Bibliography, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
Rig-Veda. See: Nicol MacNicol (ed.). Hindu scriptures. (Every-
man's Library.) London and New York, 1938.
1.14 - IMMORTALITY AND SURVIVAL, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
More precisely, good men spiritualize their mind-bodies; bad men incarnate and mentalize their spirits. The completely spiritualized mind-body is a Tathagata, who doesnt go anywhere when he dies, for the good reason that he is already, actually and consciously, where everyone has always potentially been without knowing. The person who has not, in this life, gone into Thusness, into the eternal principle of all states of being, goes at death into some particular state, either purgatorial or paradisal. In the Hindu scriptures and their commentaries several different kinds of posthumous salvation are distinguished. The thus-gone soul is completely delivered into complete union with the divine Ground; but it is also possible to achieve other kinds of mukti, or liberation, even while retaining a form of purified I-consciousness. The nature of any individuals deliverance after death depends upon three factors: the degree of holiness achieved by him while in the body, the particular aspect of the divine Reality to which he gave his primary allegiance, and the particular path he chose to follow. Similarly, in the Divine Comedy, Paradise has its various circles; but whereas in the oriental eschatologies the saved soul can go out of even sublimated individuality, out of survival even in some kind of celestial time, to a complete deliverance into the eternal, Dantes souls remain for ever where (after passing through the unmeritorious sufferings of purgatory) they find themselves as the result of their single incarnation in a body. Orthodox Christian doctrine does not admit the possibility, either in the posthumous state or in some other embodiment, of any further growth towards the ultimate perfection of a total union with the Godhead. But in the Hindu and Buddhist versions of the Perennial Philosophy the divine mercy is matched by the divine patience: both are infinite. For oriental theologians there is no eternal damnation; there are only purgatories and then an indefinite series of second chances to go forward towards not only mans, but the whole creations final endtotal reunion with the Ground of all being.
Preoccupation with posthumous deliverance is not one of the means to such deliverance, and may easily, indeed, become an obstacle in the way of advance towards it. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that ardent spiritualists are more likely to be saved than those who have never attended a sance or familiarized themselves with the literature, speculative or evidential. My intention here is not to add to that literature, but rather to give the baldest summary of what has been written about the subject of survival within the various religious traditions.
1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "The hide that the scriptures forbid one to touch can be taken inside the temple after it has been tanned.
Chanting God's holy name
1.14 - The Secret, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
Such is the key to the Transformation, the key to overcoming the laws of Matter by using the Consciousness within Matter Consciousness above is Consciousness below. It is the door to the future world and the new earth announced by the scriptures two thousand years ago: "A new earth wherein the Truth shall dwell." (2 Peter 3. 13) For, actually, the earth is our salvation, the ultimate place of Victory and of perfect accomplishment. There is no need to escape to heaven. All is here, totally, in the body Joy, Consciousness, supreme Powers if we have the courage to unseal our eyes and to descend, to dream a living dream instead of a sleeping one:
They must enter into the last finite if they want to reach the last infinite.251
1.14 - The Structure and Dynamics of the Self, #Aion, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
edge of] the scriptures." Maria the Prophetess says: "This is the
vessel of Hermes, which the Stoics hid, and it is no nigromantic
1.16 - WITH THE DEVOTEES AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "That is very good. But the characteristic of a man of Perfect Knowledge is that he doesn't keep a single book with him. He carries all his Knowledge on the tip of his tongue. There's the instance of Sukadeva. Books-I mean the scriptures-contain a mixture of sand and sugar. The sdhu takes the sugar, leaving aside the sand. He takes only the essence."
Vaishnavcharan, the musician, arrived and sang a few devotional songs.
--
At four o'clock in the afternoon Mr. Mukherji, a relative of Prankrishna, arrived in the company of a brahmin well versed in the scriptures.
MUKHERJI: "I am very happy to meet you, sir."
1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
revelations, or illuminations. This is what the scriptures expressed in their own way when they linked the appearance of a "new earth" to that of a "new heaven" ("a new heaven and a new earth wherein
dwelleth the Truth"), because without the new heaven or, rather, the new supramental level of consciousness, the emergence of a new earth would not be possible. The new earth will result from the "new heaven" of the supramental consciousness, just as the present earth resulted from the old mental or overmental "heaven" of the gods and religions. So it is for all the evolutionary stages: high and low go together. But the emergence of the new "high" or new level of consciousness, at any stage of evolution, is not a magical phenomenon, which abruptly alters all the preceding levels. Between the appearance of the first amoeba in the world of Life and that of the mammal, we know that it took many millions of years to overcome Matter's inertia and to "vitalize" it. Similarly, from the Neanderthal man to Plato, thousands of years were needed to overcome the resistance of the two previous levels and to "mentalize" Life, to become the complete mental man. Even today, how many human lives are truly governed by the mind rather than by vital passions? The whole task of the pioneers of evolution, at any level, is precisely to join the new height with the former depth; when high meets low, an evolutionary cycle is completed. Likewise, when the pioneer of mental evolution suddenly emerges in the Supramental, his discovery is not a feat of magic that upsets all the former laws. He does not leap to the complete supramental being any more than the Neanderthal man leapt to Plato; he must first "supramentalize" all the previous levels.
1.18 - FAITH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The immortality attained through the acquisition of any objective condition (e.g., the conditionmerited through good works, which have been inspired by love of, and faith in, something less than the supreme Godheadof being united in act to what is worshipped) is liable to end; for it is distinctly stated in the scriptures that karma is never the cause of emancipation.
Shankara
1.18 - M. AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Therefore, like Valmiki, one should at first renounce everything and cry to God in solitude with a longing heart. The first thing necessary is the vision of God; then comes reasoning-about the scriptures and the world.
(To M.) "That is why I have been telling you not to reason any more. I came from the pine-grove to say that to you. Through too much reasoning your spiritual life will be injured; you will at last become like Hazra. I used to roam at night in the streets, all alone, and cry to the Divine Mother, 'O Mother, blight with Thy thunderbolt my desire to reason!' Tell me that you won't reason any more."
1.18 - The Importance of our Conventional Greetings, etc., #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
"Yes, that's all very well, Alibi Ike; you are exceedingly well know as a scripture-quoting Satan, as a Past-Master in self-justification. Trained from infancy by the Plymouth Brethern, who for casuistry leave the Jesuits at the post!" "Yes, yes, but ."
"You needn't but me no buts, you old he-goat! Wasn't there once a Jonas Hanway, the first man to sport an umbrella? Wouldn't your practice be natural, and right, and the cream of the cream of good manners as soon as a few hundred people of position took to doing it? And wouldn't Thomas, Richard, and Henry, three months later, make a point of doing the same as their betters?" (That was Conscience speaking.)
1.19 - THE MASTER AND HIS INJURED ARM, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
It was about eight o'clock in the evening. Sri Ramakrishna asked Mahimacharan to recite a few hymns from the scriptures. Mahima read the first verse of the Uttara Git, describing the nature of the Supreme Brahman:
He, Brahman, is one, partless, stainless, and beyond the ether; Without beginning or end, unknowable by mind or intelligence.
--
MASTER (smiling): "What will a man gain by knowing many scriptures? The one thing needful is to know how to cross the river of the world. God alone is real, and all else illusory.
"While Arjuna was aiming his arrow at the eye of the bird, Drona asked him: 'What do you see? Do you see these kings?' 'No, sir', replied Arjuna. 'Do you 'See me'?' 'No.' 'The tree?' 'No.' 'The bird on the tree?' 'No.' 'What do you see then?' 'Only the eye of the bird.'
--
MASTER: "It is said in the scriptures that only those who have been charitable in their former births get money in this life. But to tell you the truth, this world is God's maya.
And there are many confusing things in this realm of maya. One cannot comprehend them.
1.2.03 - The Interpretation of Scripture, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:1.2.03 - The Interpretation of scripture
author class:Sri Aurobindo
--
The Interpretation of scripture
The spirit who lies concealed behind the material world, has given us, through the inspiration of great seers, the scriptures as helpers and guides to unapparent truth, lamps of great power that send their rays into the darkness of the unknown beyond which He dwells, tamasah parastat. They are guides to knowledge, brief indications to enlighten us on our path, not substitutes for thought and experience. They are shabdam Brahma, the Word, the oral expression of God, not the thing to be known itself nor the knowledge of Him. Shabdam has three elements, the word, the meaning and the spirit. The word is a symbol, vak or nama; we have to find the artha, the meaning or form of thought which the symbol indicates. But the meaning itself is only the indication of something deeper which the thought seeks to convey to the intellectual conception. For not only words, but ideas also are eventually no more than symbols of a knowledge which is beyond ideas and words. Therefore it comes that no idea by itself is wholly true. There is indeed a rupa, some concrete or abstract form of knowledge, answering to every name, and it is that which the meaning must present to the intellect. We say a form of knowledge, because according to our philosophy, all things are forms of an essentially unknowable existence which reveals them as forms of knowledge to the essential awareness in its Self, its Atman or Spirit, the Chit in the Sat. But beyond nama and rupa is swarupa, the essential figure of Truth, which we cannot know with the intellect, but only with a higher faculty.
And every swarupa is itself only a symbol of the one essential existence which can only be known by its symbols because in its ultimate reality it defies logic and exceeds perception, - God.
Since the knowledge the scripture conveys is so deep, difficult and subtle, - if it were easy what would be the need of the scripture? - the interpreter cannot be too careful or too
34
--
They forget that Shankara and Sayana are themselves moderns, separated from ourselves by some hundreds of years only, but the Vedas are many thousands of years old. The commentator ought to be studied, but instead we put him in place of the text. Good commentaries are always helpful even when they are wrong, but the best cannot be allowed to fetter inquiry. Sayana's commentary on the Veda helps me by showing what a man of great erudition some hundreds of years ago thought to be the sense of the scripture. But I cannot forget that even at the time of the Brahmanas the meaning of the Veda had become dark to the men of that prehistoric age. Shankara's commentary on the Upanishads helps me by showing what a man of immense metaphysical genius and rare logical force after arriving at some fundamental realisations thought to be the sense of the Vedanta.
But it is evident that he is often at a loss and always prepossessed by the necessity of justifying his philosophy. I find that Shankara had grasped much of Vedantic truth, but that much was dark to him. I am bound to admit what he realised; I am not bound to exclude what he failed to realise. Aptavakyam, authority, is one kind of proof; it is not the only kind: pratyaksha is more important.
The Interpretation of scripture
35
--
What then are the standards of truth in the interpretation of the scripture? The standards are three, the knower, knowledge and the known.
The known is the text itself that we seek to interpret. We must be sure we have the right word, not an emendation to suit the exigency of some individual or sectarian opinion; the right etymology and shade of meaning, not one that is traditional or forced to serve the ends of a commentator; the right spirit in the sense, not an imported or too narrow or too elastic spirit.
The knower is the original drashta or seer of the mantra, with whom we ought to be in spiritual contact. If knowledge is indeed a perishable thing in a perishable instrument, such contact is impossible; but in that case the scripture itself must be false and not worth considering. If there is any truth in what the scripture says, knowledge is eternal and inherent in all of us and what another saw I can see, what another realised I can realise. The drashta was a soul in relation with the infinite Spirit,
I am also a soul in relation with the infinite Spirit. We have a meeting-place, a possibility of communion.
Knowledge is the eternal truth, part of which the drashta expresses to us. Through the part he shows us, we must travel to the whole, otherwise we shall be subject to the errors incidental to an imperfect knowledge. If even the part is to be rightly understood, it must be viewed in the terms of the whole, not the whole in the terms of the part. I am not limited by the scriptures; on the contrary I must exceed them in order to be master of their knowledge. It is true that we are usually the slaves of our individual and limited outlook, but our capacity is unlimited, and, if we can get rid of ahankara, if we can put ourselves at the service of the Infinite without any reservation of predilection
The Interpretation of scripture
37
or opinion, there is no reason why our realisation should be limited. Tasmin vijnate sarvam vijnatam. He being known, all can be known. To understand scripture, it is not enough to be a scholar, one must be a soul. To know what the drashta saw one must oneself have drishti, sight, and be a student if not a master of the knowledge. Atha para yaya tad aksharam adhigamyate.
Grammar, etymology, prosody, astronomy, metaphysics, logic, all that is good; but afterwards there is still needed the higher knowledge by which the Immutable is known.
1.20 - RULES FOR HOUSEHOLDERS AND MONKS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Now and then I reflect on these ideas and find that I do not like them. In the beginning of spiritual life a man should think about sin and how to get rid of it. But when, through the grace of God, devotion and ecstatic love are awakened in his heart, then he altogether forgets virtue and sin. Then he leaves the scriptures and their injunctions far behind. Thoughts of repentance and penance do not bother him at all.
"It is like going to your destination along a winding river. This requires great effort and a long time. But when there is a flood all around, then you can go straight to your destination in a short time. Then you find the land lying under water deep as a bamboo pole.
--
These are rules for meditation given in the scriptures. But you may meditate wherever you like. Every place is filled with Brahman-Consciousness. Is there any place where It does not exist? Narayana, in Vali's presence, covered with two steps the heavens, the earth, and the interspaces. Is there then any place left uncovered by God? A dirty place is as holy as the bank of the Ganges. It is said that the whole creation is the Virat, the Universal Form of God.
Two forms of meditation
--
It was not yet dusk. The Master, seated on the couch, was talking to M. Mahimacharan was on the semicircular porch engaged in a loud discussion of the scriptures with the physician friend of Mani Sen. Sri Ramakrishna heard it and with a smile said to M.: "There! He is delivering himself. That is the characteristic of rajas. It stimulates the desire to 'lecture' and to show off one's scholarship. But sattva makes one introspective. It makes one hide one's virtues. But I must say that Mahima is a grand person. He takes such delight in spiritual talk."
Adhar entered the room, saluted the Master, and sat by M.'s side. He had not come for the past few days.
1.20 - TANTUM RELIGIO POTUIT SUADERE MALORUM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Zen is the name given to this branch of Buddhism, which keeps itself away from the Buddha. It is also called the mystical branch, because it does not adhere to the literal meaning of the sutras. It is for this reason that those who blindly follow the steps of Buddha are sure to deride Zen, while those who have no liking for the letter are naturally inclined towards the mystical approach. The followers of the two schools know how to shake the head at each other, but fail to realize that they are after all complementary. Is not Zen one of the six virtues of perfection? If so, how can it conflict with the teachings of the Buddha? In my view, Zen is the outcome of the Buddhas teaching, and the mystical issues from the letters. There is no reason why a man should shun Zen because of the Buddhas teaching; nor need we disregard the letters on account of the mystical teachings of Zen. Students of scriptural Buddhism run the risk of becoming sticklers for the scriptures, the real meaning of which they fail to understand. By such men ultimate reality is never grasped, and for them Zen would mean salvation. Whereas those who study Zen are too apt to run into the habit of making empty talks and practising sophistry. They fail to understand the significance of letters. To save them, the study of Buddhist scriptures is recommended. It is only when these one-sided views are mutually corrected that there is a perfect appreciation of the Buddhas teaching.
Chiang Chih-chi
--
The extract that follows is a moving protest against the crimes and follies perpetrated in the name of religion by those sixteenth-century Reformers who had turned to God without turning away from themselves and who were therefore far more keenly interested in the temporal aspects of historic Christianity the ecclesiastical organization, the logic-chopping, the letter of scripturethan in the Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit, the eternal Reality in the selfless knowledge of whom stands mans eternal life. Its author was Sebastian Castellio, who was at one time Calvins favourite disciple, but who parted company with his master when the latter burned Servetus for heresy against his own heresy. Fortunately Castellio was living in Basel when he made his plea for charity and common decency; penned in Geneva, it would have earned him torture and death.
If you, illustrious Prince (the words were addressed to the Duke of Wurtemberg) had informed your subjects that you were coming to visit them at an unnamed time, and had requested them to be prepared in white garments to meet you at your coming, what would you do if on arrival you should find that, instead of robing themselves in white, they had spent their time in violent debate about your personsome insisting that you were in France, others that you were in Spain; some declaring that you would come on horseback, others that you would come by chariot; some holding that you would come with great pomp and others that you would come without any train or following? And what especially would you say if they debated not only with words, but with blows of fist and sword strokes, and if some succeeded in killing and destroying others who differed from them? He will come on horseback. No, he will not; it will be by chariot. You lie. I do not; you are the liar. Take thata blow with the fist. Take that a sword-thrust through the body. Prince, what would you think of such citizens? Christ asked us to put on the white robes of a pure and holy life; but what occupies our thoughts? We dispute not only of the way to Christ, but of his relation to God the Father, of the Trinity, of predestination, of free will, of the nature of God, of the angels, of the condition of the soul after deathof a multitude of matters that are not essential to salvation; matters, moreover, which can never be known until our hearts are pure; for they are things which must be spiritually perceived.
1.21 - A DAY AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
(To M.) "This is for you. All scriptures-the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras-seek Him alone and no one else, only that one Satchidananda. That which is called Satchidananda Brahman in the Vedas is called Satchidananda Shiva in the Tantra. Again it is He alone who is called Satchidananda Krishna in the Puranas."
The Master was told that now and then Ram cooked his own food at home.
--
"All the women you see are only She, the Divine Mother. That is why I cannot rebuke even Brinde, the maidservant. There are people who spout verses from the scriptures and talk big, but in their conduct they are quite different. Ramprasanna is constantly busy procuring opium and milk for the hathayogi. He says that Manu enjoins it upon man to serve the Sdhu. But his old mother hasn't enough to eat. She walks to the market to buy her own groceries. It makes me very angry.
Through divine love man transcends his worldly duties "But here you have to consider another thing. When a man is intoxicated with ecstatic love of God, then who is his father or mother or wife? His love of God is so intense that he becomes mad with it. Then he has no duty to perform. He is free from all debts.
1.21 - Tabooed Things, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
who, having ascertained from scripture that the hairs of their heads
were all numbered by the Almighty, expected to have to account for
1.22 - ADVICE TO AN ACTOR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "You must practise tapasya. Only then can you attain the goal. It will avail you nothing even if you learn the texts of the scriptures by heart. You cannot become intoxicated by merely saying 'siddhi' over and over. You must swallow some.
"One cannot explain the vision of God to others. One cannot explain conjugal happiness to a child five years old."
--
Hari lived with his brothers at their Baghbazar house. He had studied up to the matriculation class in the General Assembly Institution. Then he had given up his studies and devoted his time at home to the contemplation of God, the reading of the scriptures, and the practice of yoga. He also visited the Master now and then.
Sri Ramakrishna often sent for Hari when he went to Balarm's house in Baghbazar.
--
God, the scripture, and the devotee are identical "Keshab conducted the prayer that evening at the bathing-ghat on the river. After the worship I said to him: 'It is God who manifests Himself, in one aspect, as the scriptures; therefore one should worship the sacred books, such as the Vedas, the Puranas, and the Tantras. In another aspect He has become the devotee. The heart of the devotee is God's drawing-room. One can easily find one's master in the drawing-room. Therefore, by worshipping His devotee, one worships God Himself.'
"Keshab and his followers listened to my words with great attention. It was a full-moon night. The sky was flooded with light. We were seated in the open court at the top of the stairs leading to the river. I said, 'Now let us all chant, "Bhagavata-Bhakta-Bhagavan." '
1.22 - Dominion over different provinces of creation assigned to different beings, #Vishnu Purana, #Vyasa, #Hinduism
kāra) in its twofold division, into elements and organs of sense, in the emblems of his conch-shell and his bow. In his hand Viṣṇu holds, in the form of his discus, the mind, whose thoughts (like the weapon) fly swifter than the winds. The necklace of the deity Vaijayantī, composed of five precious gems[8], is the aggregate of the five elemental rudiments. Janārddana bears, in his numerous shafts, the faculties both of action and of perception. The bright sword of Achyuta is holy wisdom, concealed at some seasons in the scabbard of ignorance. In this manner soul, nature, intellect, egotism, the elements, the senses, mind, ignorance, and wisdom, are all assembled in the person of Hṛṣikeśa. Hari, in a delusive form, embodies the shapeless elements of the world, as his weapons and his ornaments, for the salvation of mankind[9]. Puṇḍarikākṣa, the lord of all, assumes nature, with all its products, soul and all the world. All that is wisdom, all that is ignorance, all that is, all that is not, all that is everlasting, is centred in the destroyer of Madhu, the lord of all creatures. The supreme, eternal Hari is time, with its divisions of seconds, minutes, days, months, seasons, and years: he is the seven worlds, the earth, the sky, heaven, the world of patriarchs, of sages, of saints, of truth: whose form is all worlds; first-born before all the first-born; the supporter of all beings, himself self-sustained: who exists in manifold forms, as gods, men, and animals; and is thence the sovereign lord of all, eternal: whose shape is all visible things; who is without shape or form: who is celebrated in the Vedanta as the Rich, Yajush, Sāma, and Atharva Vedas, inspired history, and sacred science. The Vedas, and their divisions; the institutes of Manu and other lawgivers; traditional scriptures, and religious manuals[10]; poems, and all that is said or sung; are the body of the mighty Viṣṇu, assuming the form of sound. All kinds of substances, with or without shape, here or elsewhere, are the body of Viṣṇu. I am Hari. All that I behold is Janārddana; cause and effect are from none other than him. The man who knows these truths shall never again experience the afflictions of worldly existence.
Thus, Brahman, has the first portion of this Purāṇa been duly revealed to you: listening to which, expiates all offences. The man who hears this Purāṇa obtains the fruit of bathing in the Puṣkara lake[11] for twelve years, in the month of Kārtik. The gods bestow upon him who hears this work the dignity of a divine sage, of a patriarch, or of a spirit of heaven.
1.22 - EMOTIONALISM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The phrase, religion of experience, has two distinct and mutually incompatible meanings. There is the experience of which the Perennial Philosophy treats the direct apprehension of the divine Ground in an act of intuition possible, in its fulness, only to the selflessly pure in heart. And there is the experience induced by revivalist sermons, impressive ceremonials, or the deliberate efforts of ones own imagination. This experience is a state of emotional excitementan excitement which may be mild and enduring or brief and epileptically violent, which is sometimes exultant in tone and sometimes despairing, which expresses itself here in song and dance, there in uncontrollable weeping. But emotional excitement, whatever its cause and whatever its nature, is always excitement of that individualized self, which must be thed to by anyone who aspires to live to divine Reality. Experience as emotion about God (the highest form of this kind of excitement) is incompatible with experience as imme thate awareness of God by a pure heart which has mortified even its most exalted emotions. That is why Fnelon, in the foregoing extract, insists upon the need for calm and simplicity, why St. Franois de Sales is never tired of preaching the serenity which he himself so consistently practised, why all the Buddhist scriptures harp on tranquillity of mind as a necessary condition of deliverance. The peace that passes all understanding is one of the fruits of the spirit. But there is also the peace that does not pass understanding, the humbler peace of emotional self-control and self-denial; this is not a fruit of the spirit, but rather one of its indispensable roots.
The imperfect destroy true devotion, because they seek sensible sweetness in prayer.
1.22 - THE END OF THE SPECIES, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
This pressure will be unanimous. scripture, however, tells us that
at the same time the world will be infected by a profound schism
1.23 - FESTIVAL AT SURENDRAS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Just then Mahimacharan arrived. He lived at Cossipore near Calcutta. Mahimacharan held the Master in great respect and was a frequent visitor at the temple garden. He was a man of independent means, having inherited some ancestral property. He devoted his time to religious thought and to the study of the scriptures. He was a man of some scholarship, having studied many books, both Sanskrit and English.
MASTER (to Mahima): "What is this? I see a steamship here. (All laugh.) We expect here a small boat at the most, but a real steamship has arrived. But then I know. It's the rainy season!" (Laughter.)
--
"But it is not possible for you to give up work altogether. Your very nature will lead you to it whether you like it or not. Therefore the scriptures ask you to work in a detached spirit, that is to say, not to crave the work's results. For example, you may perform devotions and worship, and practise austerities, but your aim is not to earn people's recognition or to increase your merit.
"To work in such a spirit of detachment is known as karmayoga. But it is very difficult.
1.23 - THE MIRACULOUS, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The Sufis regard miracles as veils intervening between the soul and God. The masters of Hindu spirituality urge their disciples to pay no attention to the siddhis, or psychic powers, which may come to them unsought, as a by-product of one-pointed contemplation. The cultivation of these powers, they warn, distracts the soul from Reality and sets up insurmountable obstacles in the way of enlightenment and deliverance. A similar attitude is taken by the best Buddhist teachers, and in one of the Pali scriptures there is an ancedote recording the Buddhas own characteristically dry comment on a prodigious feat of levitation performed by one of his disciples. This, he said, will not conduce to the conversion of the unconverted, nor to the advantage of the converted. Then he went back to talking about deliverance.
Because they know nothing of spirituality and regard the material world and their hypotheses about it as supremely significant, rationalists are anxious to convince themselves and others that miracles do not and cannot happen. Because they have had experience of the spiritual life and its by-products, the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy are convinced that miracles do happen, but regard them as things of little importance, and that mainly negative and anti-spiritual.
1.240 - 1.300 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: This sloka occurs in different scriptures, holy books, e.g.,
Bhagavata, Maha Bharata, etc. It also forms the motto of Chapter
1.240 - Talks 2, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: This sloka occurs in different scriptures, holy books, e.g.,
Bhagavata, Maha Bharata, etc. It also forms the motto of Chapter
--
M.: Why do you want to know of Brahman apart from yourself? The scripture says You are That. The Self is intimate to you and you cannot indeed be without the Self. Realise it. That is the Realisation of Brahman also.
D.: But I am unable to do it. I am too weak to realise my Self.
--
M.: Just for this reason the scriptures speak of in-turned look, onepointed look and so on.
The Self being always the Self, why should only a dhira be illumined? Does it mean a man of courage? No; dhih = intellect; rah = watch; protection. So dhira is the one who always keeps the mind inward bent without letting it loose.
--
The scriptures say that jnana is the fire which burns away all karma
(sarvakarmani). Sarva (all) is interpreted in two ways: (1) to include prarabdha and (2) to exclude it. In the first way: if a man with three wives dies, it is asked. can two of them be called widows and the third not? All are widows. So it is with prarabdha, agami and sanchita.
--
M.: There are different methods of approach to prove the unreality of the universe. The example of the dream is one among them. Jagrat, svapna and sushupti are all treated elaborately in the scripture in order that the Reality underlying them might be revealed. It is not meant to accentuate differences among the three states. The purpose must be kept clearly in view.
Now they say that the world is unreal. Of what degree of unreality is it? Is it like that of a son of a barren mother or a flower in the sky, mere words without any reference to facts? Whereas the world is a fact and not a mere word. The answer is that it is a superimposition on the one Reality, like the appearance of a snake on a coiled rope seen in dim light.
--
Doubts arise only when you identify it with something tangible and physical. The scriptures no doubt describe it as the source of
101 nadis, etc. In Yoga Vasishta Chudala says that kundalini is composed of 101 nadis, thus identifying one with the other.
1.24 - PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
BRHMIN SCHOLAR: "Why should you say that, sir? The scriptures extol the life of a householder."
MASTER: "Yes, that is true. But it is very difficult to lead the true life of a householder.
--
Pundit Shashadhar, a man of fair complexion and no longer young, had a string of rudraksha beads around his neck. He was one of the renowned Sanskrit scholars of his time-a pillar of orthodox Hinduism, which had reasserted itself after the first wave of Christianity and Western culture had passed over Hindu society. His clear exposition of the Hindu scriptures, his ringing sincerity, and, his stirring eloquence had brought back a large number of the educated young Hindus of Bengal to the religion of their forefa thers.
The pundit saluted the Master with reverence. Narendra, Rkhl , Ram, Hazra, and M., who had come with the Master, seated themselves in the room as near the Master as they could, anxious not to miss one of his words.
--
PUNDIT: "Sir, I try to explain the teachings of the Hindu scriptures."
Efficacy of bhakti for modern times
--
Nowadays the decoctions of roots and herbs of the orthodox Hindu physicians cannot be given to a fever patient. By the time that kind of medicine begins its slow process of curing, the patient is done for. Therefore only a drastic medicine like the allopathic 'fever mixture' is effective now. You may ask people to practise scriptural rites and rituals; but, when prescribing the rituals, remove the 'head and tail'. I tell people not to bother about the elaborate rituals of the sandhya as enjoined in the scriptures. I say that it will be enough for them to repeat the Gayatri alone. If you must give instruction about scriptural ceremonies, do so only to a very few, like Ishan.
Futility of lecturing
--
"The path of karma is very difficult. First of all, as I have just said, where will one find the time for it nowadays? Where is the time for a man to perform his duties as enjoined in the scriptures? Man's life is short in this age. Further, it is extremely difficult to perform one's duties in a spirit of detachment, without craving the result. One cannot work in such a spirit without first having realized God. Attachment to the result somehow enters the mind, though you may not be aware of it.
"To follow jnanayoga in this age is also very difficult. First, a man's life depends entirely on food. Second, he has a short span of life. Third, he can by no means get rid of body-consciousness; and the Knowledge of Brahman is impossible without the destruction of body-consciousness. The Jnni says: 'I am Brahman; I am not the body. I am beyond hunger and thirst, disease and grief, birth and death, pleasure and pain.' How can you be a Jnni if you are conscious of disease, grief, pain, pleasure, and the like? A thorn enters your flesh, blood flow from the wound, and you suffer very badly from the pain; but nevertheless, if you are a Jnni you must be able to say: 'Why, there is no thorn in my flesh at all. Nothing is the matter with me'
--
There are many people who talk big and who say that they have performed most of the duties enjoined in the scriptures. But with all that their minds are engrossed in worldliness and deeply preoccupied with money, riches, name, fame, creature comforts, and such things."
PUNDIT: "It is true, sir. Going on a pilgrimage is like seeking diamonds and gems, while discarding the precious stone that is worn by Narayana Himself on His breast."
--
PUNDIT: "You are right, sir. The scripture says the same thing. There is in the Mahabharata the story of the 'pious hunter' and the 'chaste woman'. Once a hermit was disturbed in his meditation by a crow. When he cast an angry glance at the bird, it was reduced to ashes. The hermit said to himself: 'I have destroyed the crow by a mere glance. I must have made great progress in spiritual life.' One day he went to a woman's house to beg his food. She was devoted to her husb and and served him day and night; she provided him with water to wash his feet and even dried them with her hair. When the hermit knocked at her door for alms, she was serving her husb and and could not open the door at once. The hermit, in a fit of anger, began to curse her. The chaste woman answered from the inner apartments: 'I am not your crow. Wait a few minutes, sir. After finishing my service to my husb and I shall give you my attention.' The hermit was very much surprised to find that this simple woman was aware of his having burnt the crow to ashes. He wanted her to give him spiritual instruction. At her bidding he went to the 'pious hunter' at Benares. This hunter sold meat, but he also served his parents day and night as embodiments of God. The hermit said to himself in utter amazement: 'Why, he is a butcher and a worldly man! How can he give me the Knowledge of Brahman?' But the hunter was a knower of Brahman and had acquired divine knowledge through the performance of his worldly duties. The hermit was illumined by the instruction of the 'pious hunter'."
The Master was about to take his leave. He was standing at the door of the next house, where Ishan's father-in-law lived. Ishan and the other devotees stood by the Master.
1.24 - RITUAL, SYMBOL, SACRAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
That very large numbers of men and women have an ineradicable desire for rites and ceremonies is clearly demonstrated by the history of religion. Almost all the Hebrew prophets were opposed to ritualism. Rend your hearts and not your garments. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I hate, I despise your feasts; I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. And yet, in spite of the fact that what the prophets wrote was regarded as divinely inspired, the Temple at Jerusalem continued to be, for hundreds of years after their time, the centre of a religion of rites, ceremonials and blood sacrifice. (It may be remarked in passing that the shedding of blood, ones own or that of animals or other human beings, seems to be a peculiarly efficacious way of constraining the occult or psychic world to answer petitions and confer supernormal powers. If this is a fact, as from the anthropological and antiquarian evidence it appears to be, it would supply yet another cogent reason for avoiding animal sacrifices, savage bodily austerities and even, since thought is a form of action, that imaginative gloating over spilled blood, which is so common in certain Christian circles.) What the Jews did in spite of their prophets, Christians have done in spite of Christ. The Christ of the Gospels is a preacher and not a dispenser of sacraments or performer of rites; he speaks against vain repetitions; he insists on the supreme importance of private worship; he has no use for sacrifices and not much use for the Temple. But this did not prevent historic Christianity from going its own, all too human, way. A precisely similar development took place in Buddhism. For the Buddha of the Pali scriptures, ritual was one of the fetters holding back the soul from enlightenment and liberation. Nevertheless, the religion he founded has made full use of ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites.
There would seem to be two main reasons for the observed developments of the historical religions. First, most people do not want spirituality or deliverance, but rather a religion that gives them emotional satisfactions, answers to prayer, supernormal powers and partial salvation in some sort of posthumous heaven. Second, some of those few who do desire spirituality and deliverance find that, for them, the most effective means to those ends are ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites. It is by participating in these acts and uttering these formulas that they are most powerfully reminded of the eternal Ground of all being; it is by immersing themselves in the symbols that they can most easily come through to that which is symbolized. Every thing, event or thought is a point of intersection between creature and Creator, between a more or less distant manifestation of God and a ray, so to speak, of the unmanifest Godhead; every thing, event or thought can therefore be made the doorway through which a soul may pass out of time into eternity. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can lead to deliverance. But at the same time every human being loves power and self-enhancement, and every hallowed ceremony, form of words or sacramental rite is a channel through which power can flow out of the fascinating psychic universe into the universe of embodied selves. That is why ritualistic and sacramental religion can also lead away from deliverance.
--
It is hardly necessary to add that this process of conscious sacramentalization can be applied only to such actions as are not intrinsically evil. Somewhat unfortunately, the Gita was not originally published as an independent work, but as a theological digression within an epic poem; and since, like most epics, the Mahabharata is largely concerned with the exploits of warriors, it is primarily in relation to warfare that the Gitas advice to act with non-attachment and for Gods sake only is given. Now, war is accompanied and followed, among other things, by a widespread dissemination of anger and hatred, pride, cruelty and fear. But, it may be asked, is it possible (the Nature of Things being what it is) to sacramentalize actions, whose psychological by-products are so completely God-eclipsing as are these passions? The Buddha of the Pali scriptures would certainly have answered this question in the negative. So would the Lao Tzu of the Tao Teh King. So would the Christ of the Synoptic Gospels. The Krishna of the Gita (who is also, by a kind of literary accident, the Krishna of the Mahabharata) gives an affirmative answer. But this affirmative answer, it should be remembered, is hedged around with limiting conditions. Non-attached slaughter is recommended only to those, who are warriors by caste, and to whom warfare is a duty and vocation. But what is duty or dharma for the Kshatriya is adharma and forbidden to the Brahman; nor is it any part of the normal vocation or caste duty of the mercantile and labouring classes. Any confusion of castes, any assumption by one man of another mans vocation and duties of state, is always, say the Hindus, a moral evil and a menace to social stability. Thus, it is the business of the Brahmans to fit themselves to be seers, so that they may be able to explain to their fellow men the nature of the universe, of mans last end and of the way to liberation. When solthers or administrators, or usurers, or manufacturers or workers usurp the functions of the Brahmans and formulate a philosophy of life in accordance with their variously distorted notions of the universe, then society is thrown into confusion. Similarly, confusion reigns when the Brahman, the man of non-coercive spiritual authority, assumes the coercive power of the Kshatriya, or when the Kshatriyas job of ruling is usurped by bankers and stock jobbers, or finally when the warrior castes dharma of fighting is imposed, by conscription, on Brahman, Vaisya and Sudra alike. The history of Europe during the later Middle Ages and Renaissance is largely a history of the social confusions that arises when large numbers of those who should be seers abandon spiritual authority in favour of money and political power. And contemporary history is the hideous record of what happens when political bosses, businessmen or class-conscious proletarians assume the Brahmans function of formulating a philosophy of life; when usurers dictate policy and debate the issues of war and peace; and when the warriors caste duty is imposed on all and sundry, regardless of psycho-physical make-up and vocation.
next chapter: 1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
1.25 - ADVICE TO PUNDIT SHASHADHAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Mere study of scriptures is futile
The pundit had studied the Vedas and the other scriptures. He loved to discuss philosophy. The Master, seated on the couch, cast his benign look on the pundit and gave him counsel through parables.
MASTER (to the pundit): "There are many scriptures like the Vedas. But one cannot realize God without austerity and spiritual discipline. 'God cannot be found in the six systems, the Vedas, or the Tantra.'
"But one should learn the contents of the scriptures and then act according to their injunctions. A man lost a letter. He couldn't remember where he had left it. He began to search for it with a lamp. After two or three people had searched, the letter was at last found. The message in the letter was: 'Please send us five seers of sandesh and a piece of wearing-cloth.' The man read it and then threw the letter away. There was no further need of it; now all he had to do was to buy the five seers of sandesh and the piece of cloth.
Reading, hearing, and seeing
"Better than reading is hearing, and better than hearing is seeing. One understands the scriptures better by hearing them from the lips of the guru or of a holy man. Then one doesn't have to think about their non-essential part.
Hanuman said: 'Brother, I don't know much about the phase of the moon or the position of the stars. I just contemplate Rma.'
"But seeing is far better than hearing. Then all doubts disappear. It is true that many things are recorded in the scriptures; but all these are useless without the direct realization of God, without devotion to His Lotus Feet, without purity of heart. The almanac forecasts the rainfall of the year. But not a drop of water will you get by squeezing the almanac. No, not even one drop.
"How long should one reason about the texts of the scriptures? So long as one does not have direct realization of God. How long does the bee buzz about? As long as it is not sitting on a flower. No sooner does it light on a flower and begin to sip honey than it keeps quiet.
"But you must remember another thing. One may talk even after the realization of God.
--
MASTER (smiling): "Come, come! Tell me what is in your mind. But don't the scriptures mention Nrada, Sanaka, Sanatana, Sananda, and Sanatkumara?"
PUNDIT: "Yes, sir. They do."
--
"Brahman cannot be described in words. It is said in the Rma Git that Brahman has only been indirectly hinted at by the scriptures. When one speaks about the 'cowherd village on the Ganges', one indirectly states that the village is situated on the bank of the Ganges.
"Why shouldn't a man be able to realize the formless Brahman? But it is extremely difficult. He cannot if he has even the slightest trace of worldliness. He can be directly aware of Brahman in his inmost consciousness only when he renounces all sense-objectsform, taste, smell, touch, and sound and only when his mind completely stops functioning. And then too, he knows only this much of Brahman that It exists."
--
PUNDIT: "But one can hurt a crocodile by throwing a spear into its belly." (All laugh.) MASTER (smiling): "What good is there in reading a whole lot of scriptures? What good is there in the study of philosophy? What is the use of talking big? In order to learn archery one should first aim at a banana tree, then at a reed, then at a wick, and last at a flying bird. At the beginning one should concentrate on God with form.
"Then there are devotees who are beyond the three gunas. They are eternally devoted to God, like Nrada. These devotees behold Krishna as Chinmaya, all Spirit, His Abode as Chinmaya, His devotee as Chinmaya. To them God is eternal, His Abode is eternal, His devotee is eternal.
--
MASTER (smiling): "That is why Narayan Shastri used to say, The harmful effect of the study of the scriptures is that it encourages reasoning and arguing.'"
PUNDIT: "Is there no way for us then?"
--
MASTER: "You see, there is no need to read too much of the scriptures. If you read too much you will be inclined to reason and argue. Nangta used to teach me thus: What you get by repeating the word 'Git' tell times is the essence of the book. In other words, if you repeat 'Git' ten times it is reversed into 'tagi', which indicates renunciation.
"Yes, the way to realize God is through discrimination, renunciation, and yearning for Him. What kind of yearning? One should yearn for God as the cow, with yearning heart, runs after its calf."
--
"He who is described in the Vedas is also described in the Tantras and the Puranas. All of them speak about the one Satchidananda. The Nitya and the Lila are the two aspects of the one Reality. It is described in the Vedas as 'Om Satchidananda Brahman', in the Tantras as 'Om Satchidananda iva', the ever-pure iva, and in the Puranas as 'Om Satchidananda Krishna'. All the scriptures, the Vedas, the Puranas, and the Tantras, speak only of one Satchidananda. It is stated in the Vaishnava scripture that it is Krishna Himself who has become Kli."
Sri Ramakrishna went to the porch for a few minutes and then returned. As he was going out, Vishvamvhar's daughter, six or seven years old, saluted him. On returning to the room, the Master began talking to the little girl and her companions, who were of the same age.
--
RAMDAYAL (to Shashadhar): "The scriptures speak of Brahman's form as a projection of mind. Who is it that projects?"
SHASHADHAR: "It is Brahman Itself that does so. It is no projection of a man's mind."
1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
The following passage from one of the great Mahayana scriptures contains a searching criticism of the kind of spiritual exercises prescribed by Hinayanist teachersconcentration on symbolic objects, meditations on transience and decay (to wean the soul away from attachment to earthly things), on the different virtues which must be cultivated, on the fundamental doctrines of Buddhism. (Many of these exercises are described at length in The Path of Purity, a book which has been translated in full and published by the Pali Text Society. Mahayanist exercises are described in the Surangama Sutra, translated by Dwight Goddard and in the volume on Tibetan Yoga, edited by Dr. Evans-Wentz.)
In his exercise the Yogin sees (imaginatively) the form of the sun or moon, or something looking like a lotus, or the underworld, or various forms, such as sky, fire and the like. All these appearances lead him in the way of the philosophers; they throw him down into the state of Sravakahood, into the realm of the Pratyekabuddhas. When all these are put aside and there is a state of imagelessness, then a condition in conformity with Suchness presents itself, and the Buddhas will come together from all their countries and with their shining hands will touch the head of this benefactor.
1.26 - FESTIVAL AT ADHARS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M: "That is why you attract people so much. Sir, I have a question to ask. There are two opinions in the scriptures. According to one, Purana, Krishna is Chidatma, the Absolute, and Radha is Chitakti, Its Divine Power; but according to another, Krishna Himself is Kli; the Primordial Energy."
MASTER: "This second view is held in the Devi Purana. According to it, Kli Herself has become Krishna; But what difference does it make? God is infinite, and infinite are the ways to reach Him."
1.26 - On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues, #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
At the beginning of the monastic life some of the unclean demons instruct us in the interpretation of the Divine scriptures. And they are particularly fond of behaving in this way in the case of vainglorious people and of those who have been educated in secular studies so that by gradually deceiving them they may lead them into heresy and blasphemy. We can recognize this diabolical divinity, or rather, devilry, by the disturbances and the confused and unholy joy which are felt in the soul during the instruction.
All creatures have received from the Creator their order of being and their beginning, and some their end too. But the end of virtue is infinite. For the Psalmist says: I have seen the end of all perfection, but Thy commandment is exceedingly broad and boundless.1 If some good ascetics pass from the strength of action to the strength2 of contemplation, and if love never ceases,3 and if the Lord will guard the coming in of your fear and the going out4 of your love, then from this it follows that there is actually no limit to love. We shall never cease to advance in it, either in the present or in the future life, continually adding light to light. And however strange what I have said may seem to many, nevertheless it shall be said. According to the testimonies we have given, I would say, blessed Father, even the spiritual beings (i.e. the angels) do not lack progress; on the contrary, they ever add glory to glory, and knowledge to knowledge.
1.27 - AT DAKSHINESWAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Om! Om! Om Kli!" Again he said, "Let me have a smoke." Many of the devotees stood around. Mahimacharan was fanning him. The Master asked him to sit down and recite from the scriptures. Mahimacharan recited from the Mahanirvana Tantra: Om; I bow to Thee, the Everlasting Cause of the world; I bow to Thee, Pure Consciousness, the Soul that sustains the whole universe.
I bow to Thee, who art One without duality, who dost bestow liberation; I bow to Thee, Brahman, the all-pervading Attri buteless Reality.
--
SADHAKA: "But the scriptures say, 'From Him words and mind return baffled.' He is unknowable by mind and words."
MASTER: "Oh, stop! One cannot understand the meaning of the scriptures without practising spiritual discipline. What will you gain by merely uttering the word 'siddhi'?
The pundits glibly quote the scriptures; but what will that accomplish? A man does not become intoxicated even by rubbing siddhi on his body; he must swallow it. What is the use of merely repeating, 'There is butter in the milk'?
Turn the milk into curd and churn it. Only then will you get butter."
SADHAKA: "You talk about churning butter. But you too are quoting the scriptures."
MASTER: "What will one gain by merely quoting or hearing the scriptures? One must assimilate them. The almanac makes a forecast of the rainfall for the year, but you won't get a drop by squeezing its pages."
SADHAKA: "You talk about churning butter. Have you done it yourself?"
--
Futility of mere study of scriptures
After a long time the Master regained partial consciousness of the world and sat down on the mat. Narendra finished his singing, and the Tnpura was put back in its place. The Master was still in a spiritual mood and said: "Mother, tell me what this is. They want someone to extract the butter for them and hold it to their mouths. They won't throw the spiced bait into the lake. They won't even hold the fishing-rod. Someone must catch the fish and put it into their hands! How troublesome! Mother, I won't listen to any more argument.
The rogues force it on me. What a bother! I shall shake it off. God is beyond the Vedas and their injunctions. Can one realize Him by studying the scriptures, the Vedas, and the Vednta? (To Narendra) Do you understand this? The Vedas give only a hint"
Narendra wanted the Tnpura again. The Master said, "I want to sing." He was still in an ecstatic mood and sang:
--
Sri Ramakrishna said with a smile: "O Mother, make me mad! God cannot be realized through knowledge and reasoning, through the arguments in the scriptures." He had been pleased with the singing of the musician from Konnagar and said to him humbly: "Please sing about the Divine Mother. Please - one song."
MUSICIAN: "You must excuse me, sir."
1.27 - On holy solitude of body and soul., #The Ladder of Divine Ascent, #Saint John of Climacus, #unset
10 I.e. Holy scripture.
11 James i, 22.
1.2 - Katha Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This is the whole teaching of the scriptures.
ft\ c
1.300 - 1.400 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: Why do you want to know of Brahman apart from yourself? The scripture says "You are That". The Self is intimate to you and you cannot indeed be without the Self. Realise it. That is the Realisation of Brahman also.
D.: But I am unable to do it. I am too weak to realise my Self.
--
M.: Just for this reason the scriptures speak of "in-turned look", "onepointed look" and so on.
The Self being always the Self, why should only a dhira be illumined? Does it mean a man of courage? No; dhih = intellect; rah = watch; protection. So dhira is the one who always keeps the mind inward bent without letting it loose.
--
The scriptures say that jnana is the fire which burns away all karma
(sarvakarmani). Sarva (all) is interpreted in two ways: (1) to include prarabdha and (2) to exclude it. In the first way: if a man with three wives dies, it is asked. "can two of them be called widows and the third not?" All are widows. So it is with prarabdha, agami and sanchita.
--
M.: There are different methods of approach to prove the unreality of the universe. The example of the dream is one among them. Jagrat, svapna and sushupti are all treated elaborately in the scripture in order that the Reality underlying them might be revealed. It is not meant to accentuate differences among the three states. The purpose must be kept clearly in view.
Now they say that the world is unreal. Of what degree of unreality is it? Is it like that of a son of a barren mother or a flower in the sky, mere words without any reference to facts? Whereas the world is a fact and not a mere word. The answer is that it is a superimposition on the one Reality, like the appearance of a snake on a coiled rope seen in dim light.
1.3 - Mundaka Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
much learning of scripture. Only by him whom It chooses
can It be won; to him this Self unveils its own body.
1.400 - 1.450 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Doubts arise only when you identify it with something tangible and physical. The scriptures no doubt describe it as the source of
101 nadis, etc. In Yoga Vasishta Chudala says that kundalini is composed of 101 nadis, thus identifying one with the other.
--
D.: The scriptures hold him up as the ideal.
M.: Certainly. He is the ideal. You should realise the Self. Even if his state be now described, your understanding of it will be only according to your capacity. You admit that your capacity is limited.
The scriptures say that the realised state admits of no limits. So then, the only way to understand his state is to realise the Self and experience the state. If the question arises afterwards the answer will be found.
Another visitor asked: There is differentiation made between the sentient and the insentient (chit and jada) in the opening verse of
1.439, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
D.: The scriptures hold him up as the ideal.
M.: Certainly. He is the ideal. You should realise the Self. Even if his state be now described, your understanding of it will be only according to your capacity. You admit that your capacity is limited.
The scriptures say that the realised state admits of no limits. So then, the only way to understand his state is to realise the Self and experience the state. If the question arises afterwards the answer will be found.
Another visitor asked: There is differentiation made between the sentient and the insentient (chit and jada) in the opening verse of
--
Kovilur and studied some Tamil scriptures. He returned to Skandasramam.
He died in January, 1922 in his 29th year. In the meantime he had composed 36 stanzas in Tamil full of significance and fervour.
--
M.: You are yourself the tattva. Is there a different one to know the tattva of another? How can you exist apart from the tattva? The very fact of your existence makes you ask this question. Your very existence is the tattva. Give up the habiliments of the tattva and remain in your essential nature. All the scriptures tell you only not to waste your efforts in non-truth - non-tattva. Give up the nontattva. Then tattva remains always shining pure and single.
D.: I want to know my tattva and my duties.
--
rest? The scriptures say That Thou art. In this statement Thou is
directly experienced; but leaving it out they go on seeking That!
--
The scriptures however say that the prana protects the body in
sleep. For when the body lies on the floor, a wolf or a tiger may
--
of the Self. The scriptures or religions are well-known to be for
that purpose. What do they all mean? Leave alone what they say of
--
(nitya) the scriptures tell you that it is not so in order to wean
you from wrong ideas. This should be done by knowing yourself
1.450 - 1.500 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
Kovilur and studied some Tamil scriptures. He returned to Skandasramam.
He died in January, 1922 in his 29th year. In the meantime he had composed 36 stanzas in Tamil full of significance and fervour.
1.49 - Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals, #The Golden Bough, #James George Frazer, #Occultism
after reading the sacred scriptures. Before coming forth from the
tabernacle after the sin-offering, the high priest had to wash
1.52 - Family - Public Enemy No. 1, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
A sound scheme: that is, provided that one has full confidence in the General Theory. But we Caucasians happen not to believe in the Vedas, at least not in the dyed-in-the-wool sense which comes natural to the budding Brahmin; as to "our own" why our own? scriptures, no intelligent person takes them seriously any more. Some folk whittle away merrily, and fashion a Saviour in their own images; others strain the text and concoct a symbolic interpretation which is more or less satisfying as can be done with any bunch of legends. But such devices leave us without Accepted Authority, and without that nobody is going to gamble away his life. Thus the Path for men of spiritual integrity begins with absolute scepticism. Our methods must be exclusively inductive.
"Gamble away his life," did I say? Indeed I did. If there is any truth at all in anything, or even any meaning in life, in Nature herself; then there is one thing, one thing only paramount: to find out who one is, what is one's necessary Way.
1.550 - 1.600 Talks, #Talks, #Sri Ramana Maharshi, #Hinduism
M.: You are yourself the tattva. Is there a different one to know the tattva of another? How can you exist apart from the tattva? The very fact of your existence makes you ask this question. Your very existence is the tattva. Give up the habiliments of the tattva and remain in your essential nature. All the scriptures tell you only not to waste your efforts in non-truth - non-tattva. Give up the nontattva. Then tattva remains always shining pure and single.
D.: I want to know my tattva and my duties.
17.09 - Victory to the World Master, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Holy scriptures, your heart melting at the sight of animalsbeing slaughtered.
Lo, the Lord has assumed the form of the Enlightened One
17.11 - A Prayer, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Thereupon questioned by his Divine Consort who is All-awareness, who is one and identical with him, he uttered five sacred scriptures with his five mouths, the scriptures which are the essence of the true spiritual knowledge. He introduced, established and spread them through the great preceptors, divine or human, through those who are perfect or realised Beings, for the supreme good of the world. This is what is called Tantric Process.
Thus in the path of Tantra, widely extended as it is through the long tradition of its preceptors; the meditative concentration on the image, the repetition of the sacred formulas, Mantra-Japa, and other various methods mentioned in different scriptures are meant to provide easy ways suited to the sadhaks of the different natures. They make no difference to the fundamental Truth and principle which remains always the same. And this is called Sri Vidya which is the essential substance of all the sacred scriptures, the essence of the four great steps of Tantra (Charya, Kriya, Jnana and Yoga) expounded in all its precepts.
This High Knowledge (Vidya) has been very secretly taught by the different branches of Yajurveda in their hymns and their Upanishadic versions. It has been mysteriously revealed by the various branches of Rigveda in their hymns or their Upanishadic versions. It is mystically awakened through a certain subtle duct in the body, evoked by manifold metrical hymns of the Sarna Veda. This Vidya is commonly found in all the Vedas. It is the essence of all Vedic mantras, Brahmanas and Upanishads. It is the Queen of the Shaktichakra, a wave of supremely great light, a form or embodiment of supreme consciousness. This is a mystic truth inherited from a tradition of Gurus.
--
"May the embodied form of Parvati grant us the abode and status of Shiva which is the crown of bliss and is constantly sought for by the highest scriptures, Shruti; that the crescent moon illuminates, that presides over all the worlds, that eliminates the sufferings of the devotees. May She constanly bestow on us all the blessed things.
"Let me take refuge in the Consort of Shiva (his left half), her anklets tinkle sweetly, and She is the origin of the Universe as also of all speech.
"We take shelter with the Consort of Shiva (his left half) who is not divided from him. She is resplendent like a huge sapphire. Bended with the weight of her orbed breasts, she looks harmoniously elegant with all the splendour of her brilliant ornaments on her body, she is the sole origin of the Universe, constantly sought by the highest scriptures.
"The Yogi must dissolve all the five causes into the supreme Shiva, who is beyond Time and Space etc., into the Void that is nothing else but Consciousness, and is not dependent on anything. He must fix and finally settle himself into that Void Shiva with a calm and steady mind and merge all his senses into it. Thus he attains easily the fruit of the Yoga, viz., the ever-existing Immutable."
1.78 - Sore Spots, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
Corresponding to, and the poison bacillus of, that centre of infection, is a Trinity of pure Evil, the total abnegation of Thelema. Well known to the psycho-analyst: the name thereof Shame Guilt Fear. The Anglo-Saxon or bourgeois mentality is soaked therein; and his remedy so far from our exploratory-disinfection method, is to hide the gan- grened mass with dirty poultices. He has always a text of scripture or some other authority to paint his foulest acts in glowing colours; and if he wants a glass of beer, he hates the stuff, but doctor's orders, my boy, doctor's orders.
There is really nothing new to be said about hypocrisy; it has been analysed, exposed, lashed by every great Artist; quite without effect. It gets worse as the socialistic idea thrives, as the individual leans ever harder on the moral support of the herd.*[AC54]
18.02 - Ramprasad, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
nor in all the scriptures and revelations.
The Enjoyer of the enjoyment in Devotion,
1951-04-07 - Origin of Evil - Misery- its cause, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You mean it should choose the force which is necessary? Yes, but this is not the transformation of the world, this is for us. It is we who must have discernment to know which force we want to manifest, thats understood. But to come back to our subject, you all agree that in the world we are going to build, there should not be any suffering? You agree?You are not quite sure of it? Then you are satisfied with suffering? I dont know, perhaps it has its purpose. But, you see, as long as one is satisfied with a thing, there are many chances that it stays. We have been told in the more or less sacred scriptures that suffering comes from ignorance; hence if you do not think of getting rid of suffering, it means that you want to keep the ignorance also? That becomes very difficult. It is like the artist to whom someone spoke of the future world which would be made all of light, and he said, Then I wont be able to paint any longer and he was miserable! Perhaps, indeed, there are many people who cling to their ignorance?
It is suffering which makes us conscious of a higher force.
1954-06-16 - Influences, Divine and other - Adverse forces - The four great Asuras - Aspiration arranges circumstances - Wanting only the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That, why, that is Pralaya! It is not transformations; it is the dissolution of the earth. It is said that there were six creations, that is, six exteriorisations of the universe, and that six times the universe went backit is recounted in the scriptures, you knowwent back into the Divine. But it is said that this is the end. It is evidently one ending, but it is not the completion. It is because the creation lacked something and it was necessary to withdraw it and remake it. And it is said that our present creation is the seventh, and being the seventh it is the real one, that is, it is the final one, and it will not be withdrawn again, that it will continue to be transformed and become more and more perfect, so as not to have to be withdrawn.
How far is what is said true?
1954-08-11 - Division and creation - The gods and human formations - People carry their desires around them, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, Lord! (Laughter) When a very small child tries to make someones portrait, does it resemble that person? It is very much like this, sometimes worse! Because the child is frank and sincere, whereas the one who makes the images of the gods is full of fixed notion and preconceived ideas, or else of all that others have said about the subject and of what has been written in the scriptures and what has been seen by people. And so he is bound by all that. At times, from time to time, there are artists who have an inner vision, a great aspiration, a great purity of soul and of vision, who have made things which are reasonably good. But this is extremely rare. And generally, I believe it is almost the opposite.
I have seen some of these forms in the vital and mental worlds, which were truly human creation. There is a force from beyond which manifests. But in these triple worlds of falsehood, truly man has created God in his own imagemore or lessand there are beings which manifest in forms which are the result of the formative thought of man. And here, you see, it is truly frightful! I have seen some of these formations (silence) and all this is so obscure, so incomprehensible, inexpressive
1961 03 11 - 58, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
According to me, all these old scriptures and these old traditions have different levels of meaning (Mother makes a gesture to show the different levels); and according to the period, the people, the needs, one symbol or another has been selected and used. But there comes a timewhen you transcend all these things and see them from what Sri Aurobindo calls the other hemispherewhen you become aware that these are merely ways of speaking to establish a contacta kind of bridge or link between the lower way of seeing and the higher way of knowing.
And people who argue and say, Oh, no! it is like this; it is like thatthere comes a time when it seems so funny, so funny! And just that, the spontaneous retort of so many people, Oh, that is impossible the word itself is so funny! For the slightest, I might even say, the most elementary intellectual development enables you to realise that you could not even think of it if it were not possible.
1963 11 05? - 96, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
96Experience in thy soul the truth of the scripture; afterwards, if thou wilt, reason and state thy experience intellectually and even then distrust thy statement; but distrust never thy experience.
This doesnt require any explanation.
That is to say, it should be explained to children that the statement, whatever it may be, the scriptures, whatever they may be, are always a diminution of the experience, they are always less than the experience.
There may be people who need to know this.
1964 02 05 - 98, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
98Revelation is the direct sight, the direct hearing or the inspired memory of Truth, di, ruti, smti; it is the highest experience and always accessible to renewed experience. Not because God spoke it, but because the soul saw it, is the word of the scriptures our supreme authority.
I assume that this is an answer to the Biblical belief in the Commandments of God received by Moses, supposedly uttered by the Lord Himself and heard by Mosesit is an indirect way of saying (Mother laughs) that this is not possible.
--
Now, I do not know whether Sri Aurobindo was thinking of the Indian scriptures. There were also Chinese scriptures.
(Silence)
1964 02 06? - 99, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
99The word of scripture is infallible; it is in the interpretation the heart and reason put upon the scripture that error has her portion.
I am not quite sure that this is not ironical. To people who say The scripture is infallible, he answers: Yes, yes, of course the scriptures are infallible, but beware of your own understanding!
But here is the word of truth:
1969 10 01? - 166, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Shastra: scriptures; Veda: Knowledge.
***
1969 10 23, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
180There are lesser and larger eternities; for eternity is a term of the soul and can exist in Time as well as exceeding it. When the scriptures say vat sam, they mean for a long space and permanence of time or a hardly measurable aeon; only God Absolute has the absolute eternity. Yet when one goes within, one sees that all things are secretly eternal; there is no end, neither was there ever a beginning.
How can one experience eternity?
1970 03 03, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
scriptures; prescribed law.
***
1970 04 22 - 482, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
482The seeker after divine knowledge finds in the description of Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis one of the deepest parables of Gods ways with the soul, the devotee a perfect rendering in divine act of his hearts mystic experiences, the prurient and the Puritan (two faces of one temperament) only a lustful story. Men bring what they have in themselves and see it reflected in the scripture.
483My lover took away my robe of sin and I let it fall, rejoicing; then he plucked at my robe of virtue, but I was ashamed and alarmed and prevented him. It was not till he wrested it from me by force that I saw how my soul had been hidden from me.
1970 05 12, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Sri Aurobindo gives us the true way to understand the scriptures, which thus become universal symbols.
12 May 1970
1.bs - this love -- O Bulleh -- tormenting, unique, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Fuad Usman Khan Original Language Punjabi this love -- O Bulleh -- tormenting, unique the face of the idol akin to the divine in heaven can there be divinity without my beloved even if I have to contest the scriptures this love is fearless, marches to death in defiance dances and whirls like a street prostitute, to win a single smile from the beloved <
1.dd - As many as are the waves of the sea, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by K. N. Upadhyaya As many as are the waves of the sea, so many are the desires of the mind. Stilling them all, one sits with contentment holding the thought of the One in his self. As in the presence of a magnet the iron is drawn, So do thou attach thy senses, mind and dispositions to the One alone. When one discovers the true seat of the mind, then all regions come to his sight. When he brings back all five senses to that one point, then the secrets of the holy scriptures are revealed to him. The fickle mind wanders in the four directions. Bind it with the instructions of the Master, And bring it into the company of the Saint, then will it be united with the Supreme Lord, O Dadu. Making millions of efforts, many were consumed by death, but the mind continued to run in all ten directions. Only with God's Name as the barrier will it stop; no other way is there. Let the mind be the horse, the vigilant aspirant the rider, and one-pointed attention the bridle; Using the Word as a whip, some wise, holy aspirant will reach the goal. Vanquish the mind by means of the Name; discipline it through the teachings of the Saints. Remove whatever duality is there, then will there be bliss within, O Dadu. Once the mind is attached to God, how can it go anywhere else? Like salt dissolves in water, it enters into the Lord, O Dadu. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Dadu: The Compassionate Mystic, Translated by K. N. Upadhyaya
1f.lovecraft - Pickmans Model, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
while the father read from the scriptures. Every face but one shewed
nobility and reverence, but that one reflected the mockery of the pit.
1f.lovecraft - The Horror in the Burying-Ground, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
against Nature and scripture. Who could forget the state that collie
dog was found in, or what happened to old Mrs. Akeleys cat? Then there
1.lla - Its so much easier to study than act, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ranjit Hoskote Original Language Kashmiri It's so much easier to study than act, to philosophise than go looking for the Self. Losing the scriptures in the thick fog of my practice, I stumbled on second sight. [2579.jpg] -- from I Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded, Translated by Ranjit Hoskote <
1.lla - Learning the scriptures is easy, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:1.lla - Learning the scriptures is easy
author class:Lalla
--
English version by Ivan M. Granger Original Language Kashmiri Learning the scriptures is easy; but living them, that's hard. Far easier to read words on a page than to seek the living heart of things. Fumbling through the fog of study, stumbling, I lost my last words. -- And my vision cleared. Oh the sight that met me then! [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.lla - To learn the scriptures is easy, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
object:1.lla - To learn the scriptures is easy
author class:Lalla
--
English version by Coleman Barks Original Language Kashmiri To learn the scriptures is easy, to live them, hard. The search for the Real is no simple matter. Deep in my looking, the last words vanished. Joyous and silent, the waking that met me there. [bk1sm.gif] -- from Naked Song, by Lalla / Translated by Coleman Barks <
1.rt - Religious Obsession -- translation from Dharmamoha, #Tagore - Poems, #Rabindranath Tagore, #Poetry
Defies the authority of scriptures
And seeks only the good of men.
1.snk - Nirvana Shatakam, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ivan M. Granger I am not mind, not intellect, not ego, not thought. I am not the ears, the tongue, the nose or the eyes, or what they witness, I am neither earth nor sky, not air nor light. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I am not the breath of prana, nor its five currents. I am not the seven elements, nor the five organs, Nor am I the voice or hands or anything that acts. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I have no hatred or preference, neither greed nor desire nor delusion. Pride, conflict, jealousy -- these have no part of me. Nothing do I own, nothing do I seek, not even liberation itself. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I know neither virtue nor vice, neither pleasure nor pain. I know no sacred chants, no holy places, no scriptures, no rituals. I know neither the taste nor the taster. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! I fear not death. I doubt neither my being nor my place. I have no father or mother; I am unborn. I have no relatives, no friends. I have no guru and no devotees. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! Free from doubt, I am formless. With knowledge, in knowledge, I am everywhere, beyond perception. I am always the same. Not free, not trapped -- I am. I am knowledge and bliss. I am Shiva! I am Shiva! Truly, I am Shiva, pure awareness. Shivo Ham! Shivo Ham! [2652.jpg] -- from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger <
1.snt - As soon as your mind has experienced, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by John Anthony McGuckin Original Language Greek As soon as your mind has experienced what the scripture says: "How gracious is the Lord," it will be so touched with that delight that it will no longer want to leave the place of the heart. It will echo the words of the apostle Peter: "How good it is to be here." [1735.jpg] -- from The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, Translated by John Anthony McGuckin
1.srm - The Marital Garland of Letters, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
English version by Ramanasramam Original Language Tamil Gracious Ganapati! with Thy hand bless me, that I may make this marital garland of letters worthy of Sri Arunachala, the Bridegroom! REFRAIN Arunachala Shiva! Arunachala Shiva! Arunachala Shiva! Arunachala! Arunachala Shiva! Arunachala Shiva! Arunachala Shiva! Arunachala! 1. Arunachala! Thou dost root out the ego of those who meditate on Thee in the heart, Oh Arunachala! Arunachala! Thou dost root out the ego of those who dwell on their identity with Thee, Oh Arunachala! 2. May Thou and I be one and inseparable like Alagu and Sundara, Oh Arunachala! 3. Entering my home and luring me to Thine, why didst Thou keep me prisoner in Thy heart's cavern, Oh Arunachala? 4. Was it for Thy pleasure or for my sake Thou didst win me? If now Thou turn me away, the world will blame Thee, Oh Arunachala! 5. Escape this blame! Why didst Thou then recall Thyself to me? How can I leave Thee now, Oh Arunachala? 6. Kinder far art Thou than one's own mother. Is this then Thy all-kindness, Oh Arunachala? Kinder indeed art Thou than one's own mother, such is Thy Love, Oh Arunachala! 7. Sit firmly in my mind lest it elude Thee, Oh Arunachala! Change not Thy nature and flee, but hold fast in my mind, Oh Arunachala! Be watchful in my mind, lest it change even Thee into me and rush away, Oh Arunachala! 8. Display Thy beauty, for the fickle mind to see Thee for ever and to rest, Oh Arunachala! The strumpet mind will cease to walk the streets if only she find Thee. Disclose Thy Beauty then and hold her bound, Oh Arunachala! The mind by her unsteadiness prevents my seeking Thee and finding peace; grant me the vision of Thy Beauty, Oh Arunachala! 9. After abducting me if now Thou dost not embrace me, where is Thy chivalry, Oh Arunachala? 10. Does it become Thee thus to sleep when I am outraged by others, Oh Arunachala? 11. Even when the thieves of the five senses break in upon me, art Thou not still in my heart, Oh Arunachala! 12. One art Thou without a second; who then could dare elude Thee and come in? This is only Thy jugglery, Oh Arunachala! 13. Significance of OM unrivalled -- unsurpassed! Who can comprehend Thee, Oh Arunachala? 14. As Universal Mother, it is Thy duty to dispense Thy Grace and save me, Oh Arunachala! 15. Who can ever find Thee? The Eye of the eye art Thou, and without eyes Thou seest, Oh Arunachala! Being the sight of the eye, even without eyes find me out Thyself. Who but Thyself can find out Thee, Oh Arunachala? 16. As a lode-stone attracts iron, magnetizing it and holding it fast, so do Thou to me, Oh Arunachala! 17. Unmoving Hill, melting into a Sea of Grace, have mercy I pray, Oh Arunachala! 18. Fiery Gem, shining in all directions, do Thou burn up my dross, Oh Arunachala! 19. Shine as my Guru, making me free from faults and worthy of Thy Grace, Oh Arunachala! 20. Save me from the cruel snares of fascinating women and honour me with union with Thyself, Oh Arunachala! 21. Though I beg, Thou art callous and dost not condescend. I pray Thee! say to me 'Fear not!' Oh Arunachala! 22. Unasked Thou givest; this is Thy imperishable fame. Do not belie Thy name, Oh Arunachala! 23. Sweet fruit within my hands, let me be mad with ecstasy, drunk with the Bliss of Thy Essence, Oh Arunachala! 24. Blazoned as the Devourer of Thy votaries, how can I survive who have embraced Thee, Oh Arunachala? 25. Thou, unruffled by anger! What crime has marked me off for Thy wrath, Oh Arunachala? Thou, unruffled by anger! What austerities left incomplete have won me Thy special favour, Oh Arunachala? 26. Glorious Mountain of Love, celebrated by Gautama, rule me with Thy gracious glance, Oh Arunachala! 27. Dazzling Sun that swallowest up all the universe in Thy rays, in Thy Light open the lotus of my heart I pray, Oh Arunachala! 28. Let me, Thy prey, surrender unto Thee and be consumed, and so have Peace, Oh Arunachala! I came to feed on Thee, but Thou has fed on me; now there is Peace, Oh Arunachala! 29. O Moon of Grace, with Thy cool rays as hands, open within me the ambrosial orifice and let my heart rejoice, Arunachala! 30. Tear off these robes, expose me naked, then robe me with Thy Love, Oh Arunachala! 31. There in the heart rest quiet! Let the sea of joy surge, speech and feeling cease, Oh Arunachala! 32. Do not continue to deceive and prove me; disclose instead Thy Transcendental Self, Oh Arunachala! 33. Vouchsafe the knowledge of Eternal Life that I may learn the glorious Primal Wisdom, and shun the delusion of this world, Oh Arunachala! 34. Unless Thou embrace me, I shall melt away in tears of anguish, Oh Arunachala! 35. If spurned by Thee, alas! what rests for me but the torment of my prarabdha? What hope is left for me, Arunachala? 36. In silence Thou saidst, 'Stay silent!' and Thyself stood silent, Oh Arunachala! 37. Happiness lies in peaceful repose enjoyed when resting in the Self. Beyond speech indeed is This my State, Oh Arunachala! 38. Thou didst display Thy prowess once, and, the perils ended, return to Thy repose, Oh Arunachala! Sun! Thou didst sally forth and illusion was ended. Then didst Thou shine motionless, Oh Arunachala! 39. A dog can scent out its master; am I then worse than a dog? Steadfastly will I seek Thee and regain Thee, Oh Arunachala! Worse than a dog for want of a scent, how can I track Thee, Oh Arunachala? 40. Grant me wisdom, I beseech Thee, so that I may not pine for love of Thee in ignorance, Oh Arunachala! 41. Not finding the flower open, Thou didst stay, no better than a bee trapped in the bud of my mind, Oh Arunachala! In sunlight the lotus blossoms, how then couldst Thou, the Sun of suns, hover before me like a flower bee, saying 'Thou art not yet in blossom,' Oh Arunachala? 42. 'Thou hast realized the Self even without knowing that it was the Truth. It is the Truth Itself!' Speak thus if it be so, Oh Arunachala! Thou art the subject of most diverse views yet art Thou not this only, Oh Arunachala? Not known to the tattvas, though Thou art their being! What does this mean, Oh Arunachala? 43. That each one is Reality Itself, Thou wilt of Thy Nature show, Oh Arunachala! Reveal Thyself! Thou only art Reality, Oh Arunachala! 'Reality is nothing but the Self;' is this not all Thy message, Oh Arunachala? 44. 'Look within, ever seeking the Self with the inner eye, then will It be found.' Thus didst Thou direct me, beloved Arunachala! 45. Seeking Thee within but weakly, I came back unrewarded. Aid me, Oh Arunachala! Weak though my effort was, by Thy Grace I gained the Self, Oh Arunachala! Seeking Thee in the Infinite Self, I regained my own Self, Oh Arunachala! 46. What value has the birth without Knowledge born of realization? It is not even worth speaking about, Oh Arunachala! 47. Let me dive into the true Self, wherein merge only the pure in mind and speech, Oh Arunachala! I, by Thy Grace, am sunk in Thy Self, wherein merge only those divested of their minds and thus made pure, Oh Arunachala! 48. When I took shelter under Thee as my One God, Thou didst destroy me altogether, Oh Arunachala! 49. Treasure of benign and holy Grace, found without seeking, steady my wandering mind, Oh Arunachala! 50. On seeking Thy Real Self with courage, my raft capsized and the waters came over me. Have mercy on me Arunachala! 51. Unless Thou extend Thy hand of Grace in mercy and embrace me, I am lost, Oh Arunachala! Enfold me body to body, limb to limb, or I am lost, Oh Arunachala! 52. O Undefiled, abide Thou in my heart so that there may be everlasting joy, Arunachala! 53. Mock me not, who seek Thy protection! Adorn me with Thy Grace and then regard me, Oh Arunachala! Smile with Grace and not with scorn on me, who come Thee, Oh Arunachala! 54. When I approached, Thou didst not bend; Thou stoodst unmoved, at one with me, Oh Arunachala! Does it not shame Thee to stand there like a post, leaving me to find Thee by myself, Oh Arunachala? 55. Rain Thy Mercy on me ere Thy Knowledge burn me to ashes, Oh Arunachala! 56. Unite with me to destroy Thou and me, and bless me with the state of ever-vibrant joy, Oh Arunachala! 57. When shall I become like the ether and reach Thee, subtle of being, that the tempest of thoughts may end, Oh Arunachala? When will waves of thought cease to rise? When shall I reach Thee, subtler than the subtlest ether, Oh Arunachala! 58. I am a simpleton devoid of learning. Do Thou dispel illusion, Oh Arunachala! Destroy Thou my wrong knowledge, I beseech Thee, for I lack the knowledge which the scriptures lead to, Oh Arunachala! 59. When I melted away and entered Thee, my Refuge, I found Thee standing naked, Oh Arunachala! 60. In my unloving self Thou didst create a passion for Thee, therefore forsake me not, Oh Arunachala! 61. Fruit shriveled and spoilt is worthless; take and enjoy it ripe, Oh Arunachala! I am not a fruit which is overripe and spoilt; draw me, then, into the inmost recess and fix me in Eternity, Oh Arunachala! 62. Hast Thou not bartered cunningly Thyself for me? Oh, Thou art death to me, Arunachala! Hast Thou not bartered happily Thyself for me, giving all and taking nothing? Art Thou not blind, Oh Arunachala? 63. Regard me! Take thought of me! Touch me! Mature me! Make me one with Thee, Oh Arunachala! 64. Grant me Thy Grace ere the poison of delusion grips me and, rising to my head, kills me, Oh Arunachala! 65. Thyself regard me and dispel illusion! Unless Thou do so who can intercede with Grace Itself made manifest, Oh Arunachala? 66. With madness for Thee hast Thou freed me of madness; grant me now the cure of all madness, Oh Arunachala! 67. Fearless I seek Thee, Fearlessness Itself! How canst Thou fear to take me, Oh Arunachala? 68. Where is ignorance or Wisdom, if I am blessed with union to Thee, Oh Arunachala? 69. My mind has blossomed, scent it with Thy fragrance and perfect it. Oh Arunachala! Espouse me, I beseech Thee, and let this mind, now wedded to the world, be wedded to Perfection, Oh Arunachala! 70. Mere thought of Thee has drawn me to Thee, and who can gauge Thy Glory, Oh Arunachala? 71. Thou hast possessed me, unexorcizable Spirit! and made me mad for Thee, that I may cease to be a ghost wandering the world, Oh Arunachala! 72. Be Thou my stay and my support lest I droop helpless like a tender creeper, Oh Arunachala! 73. Thou didst benumb my faculties with stupefying powder, then rob me of my understanding and reveal the Knowledge of Thy Self, Oh Arunachala! 74. Show me the warfare of Thy Grace, in the Open Field where there is no coming and going. Oh Arunachala! 75. Unattached to the physical frame composed of the elements, let me for ever repose happy in the sight of Thy Splendour, Oh Arunachala! 76. Thou hast administered the medicine of confusion to me, so must I be confounded! Shine Thou as Grace, the cure of all confusion, Oh Arunachala! 77. Shine Thou selfless, sapping the pride of those who boast of their free will, Oh Arunachala! 78. I am a fool who prays only when overwhelmed, yet disappoint me not, Oh Arunachala! 79. Guard me lest I flounder storm-tossed like a ship without a helmsman, Oh Arunachala! 80. Thou hast cut the knot which hid the vision of Thy Head and Foot. Motherlike, shouldst Thou not complete Thy task, Oh Arunachala? 81. Be not like a mirror held up to a noseless man, but raise me and embrace me, Oh Arunachala! 82. Let us embrace upon the bed of tender flowers, which is the mind, within the room of the body, Oh Arunachala! 83. How is it that Thou hast become famous from Thy constant union with the poor and humble, Oh Arunachala? 84. Thou hast removed the blindness of ignorance with the unguent of Thy Grace, and made me truly Thine, Oh Arunachala! 85. Thou didst shave clean my head; then Thou didst show Thyself dancing in Transcendent Space, Oh Arunachala! 86. Though Thou hast loosed me from the mists of error and made me mad for Thee, why hast Thou not yet freed me from illusion, Oh Arunachala? Though Thou hast detached me from the world and made me cleave to Thee, Thy passion for me has not cooled, Oh Arunachala! 87. Is it true Silence to rest like a stone, inert and unexpansive, Oh Arunachala? 88. Who was it that threw mud to me for food and robbed me of my livelihood, Oh Arunachala? 89. Unknown to all, stupefying me, Who was it that ravished my soul, Oh Arunachala? 90. I spoke thus to Thee, because Thou art my Lord; be not offended but come and give me happiness, Oh Arunachala! 91. Let us enjoy one another in the House of Open Space, where there is neither night nor day, Oh Arunachala! 92. Thou didst take aim at me with darts of Love and then devoured me alive, Oh Arunachala! 93. Thou art the Primal Being, whereas I count not in this nor in the other world. What didst Thou gain then by my worthless self, Oh Arunachala? 94. Didst Thou not call me in? I have come in. Now measure out for me, my maintenance is now Thy burden. Hard is Thy lot, Oh Arunachala! 95. The moment Thou didst welcome me, didst enter into me and grant me Thy divine life, I lost my individuality, Oh Arunachala! 96. Bless me that I may die without losing hold of Thee, or miserable is my fate, Oh Arunachala! 97. From my home Thou didst entice me, then stealing into my heart didst draw me gently into Thine, such is Thy Grace, Oh Arunachala! 98. I have betrayed Thy secret workings. Be not offended! Show me Thy Grace now openly and save me, Oh Arunachala! 99. Grant me the essence of the Vedas, which shine in the Vedanta, One without a second, Oh Arunachala! 100. Even my slanders, treat as praise and guard me for ever as Thine own, I pray, Oh Arunachala! Let even slander be as praise to me, and guard me for ever as Thine own, I pray, Oh Arunachala! Place Thy hand upon my head! make me partaker of Thy Grace! do not abandon me, I pray, Oh Arunachala! 101. As snow in water, let me melt as Love in Thee, who art Love itself, Oh Arunachala! 102. I had but thought of Thee as Aruna, and lo! I was caught in the trap of Thy Grace! Can the net of Thy Grace ever fail, Oh Arunachala? 103. Watching like a spider to trap me in the web of Thy Grace, Thou didst entwine me and when imprisoned feed upon me, Oh Arunachala! 104. Let me be the votary of the votaries of those who hear Thy name with love, Oh Arunachala! 105. Shine Thou for ever as the loving Saviour of helpless suppliants like myself, Oh Arunachala! 106. Familiar to Thine ears are the sweet songs of votaries who melt to the very bones with love for Thee, yet let my poor strains also be acceptable, Oh Arunachala! 107. Hill of Patience, bear with my foolish words, as hymns of joy or as Thou please, Oh Arunachala! 108. Oh Arunachala! my Loving Lord! Throw Thy garland about my shoulders, wearing Thyself this one strung by me, Arunachala! Blessed be Arunachala! blessed be His devotees! Blessed be this Marital Garland of Letters! [1468.jpg] -- from The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi, Edited by Arthur Osborne
1.wby - Vacillation, #Yeats - Poems, #William Butler Yeats, #Poetry
The lion and the honeycomb, what has scripture said?
So get you gone, Von Hugel, though with blessings on
1.ww - The Excursion- IV- Book Third- Despondency, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
--With promises the Hebrew scriptures teem:
I felt their invitation; and resumed
1.ww - The Recluse - Book First, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
In scripture sanctified--the patient brute
On which the cripple, in the quarry maimed,
1.ww - The Vaudois, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
Have long borne witness as the scriptures teach?--
Ages ere Valdo raised his voice to preach
20.01 - Charyapada - Old Bengali Mystic Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
How can one explain it through scriptures and holy books?
To whom and in what way should I speak of the riddle?
--
scriptures and books, beads and rosaries,
Tell me, how can the simple truth be uttered?
2.00 - BIBLIOGRAPHY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
Bhagavad Gita. Among many translations of this Hindu scripture the best, from a literary point of view, is that of Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood (Los Angeles, 1944). Valuable notes, based upon the commentaries of Shankara, are to be found in Swami Nikhilanandas edition (New York, 1944), and Professor Franklin Edgertons literal translation (Cambridge, Mass., 1944) is preceded by a long and scholarly introduction.
BINYON, L. The Flight of the Dragon (London, 1911).
2.01 - AT THE STAR THEATRE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"In his earlier years he practised hathayoga. That is why he strokes my head gently when I am in samdhi. His wife worships the Deity in another form-that of Gopala. This time I didn't find her so miserly. She too knows the Git and other scriptures. What devotion they have!
"They cooked a goat curry. Captain said they could eat it for fifteen days, but she said, 'No, no! Only seven days.' But I liked the taste of it. They serve a very small quantity of each dish, but nowadays they give me good portions since I eat more than they do. After the meal either Captain or his wife fans me.
"They are very pious souls and show great respect to holy men. The people of upper India are greatly devoted to sdhus. The sons and nephews of the Jung Bahadur of Nepal once visited the temple garden; before me they showed great respect and humility. Once a young girl of Nepal came to see me with Captain. She was a great devotee, and unmarried; she knew the whole of the Gitagovinda by heart. Dwarika Babu and the others wanted to hear her music. When she sang the Gitagovinda, Dwarika Babu was profoundly moved and wiped the tears from his eyes with his handkerchief. She was asked why she was not married. She said: 'I am the handmaid of God. Whom else shall I serve?' Her people respect her as a goddess, as the scriptures enjoin.
(To Mahendra Mukherji and the others) "I shall feel very happy to know that you are being benefited by your visits here. (To M.) Why do people come here? I don't know much of reading and writing."
--
Advice to Hazra - scriptures and sadhana
(To Hazra) "If there is knowledge of one, there is also knowledge of many. What will you achieve by mere study of the scriptures? The scriptures contain a mixture of sand and sugar, as it were. It is extremely difficult to separate the sugar from the sand. Therefore one should learn the essence of the scriptures from the teacher or from a sdhu.
Afterwards what does one care for books?
--
"One should learn the essence of the scriptures from the guru and then practise sadhana. If one rightly follows spiritual discipline, then one directly sees God. The discipline is said to be rightly followed only when one plunges in. What will a man gain by merely reasoning about the words of the scriptures? Ah, the fools! They reason themselves to death over information about the path. They never take the plunge. What a pity!
"You may say, even though you dive deep you are still in danger of sharks and crocodiles, of lust and anger. But dive after rubbing your body with turmeric powder; then sharks and crocodiles will not come near you. The turmeric is discrimination and renunciation.
--
"I vowed to the Divine Mother that I would kill myself if I did not see God. I said to Her: 'O Mother, I am a fool. Please teach me what is contained in the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, and the other scriptures.' The Mother said to me, 'The essence of the Vednta is that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory.'The Satchidananda Brahman described in the Vedas is the Satchidananda iva of the Tantra and the Satchidananda Krishna of the Purana. The essence of the Git is what you get by repeating the word ten times. It is reversed into 'tagi', which indicates renunciation.
"After the realization of God, how far below lie the Vedas, the Vednta, the Purana, the Tantra! (To Hazra) I cannot utter the word 'Om' in samdhi. Why is that? I cannot say 'Om' unless I come down very far from the state of samdhi.
"I had all the experiences that one should have, according to the scriptures, after one's direct perception of God. I behaved like a child, like a madman, like a ghoul, and like an inert thing.
"I saw the visions described in the scriptures. Sometimes I saw the universe filled with sparks of fire. Sometimes I saw all the quarters glittering with light, as if the world were a lake of mercury. Sometimes I saw the world as if made of liquid silver. Sometimes, again, I saw all the quarters illumined as if with the light of Raman candles. So you see my experiences tally with those described in the scriptures.
"It was revealed to me further that God Himself has become the universe and all its living beings and the twenty-four cosmic principles. It is like the process of evolution and involution.
--
Gangadas continues his argument with Nimai. He says: "Nimai, undoubtedly you are versed in the scriptures. Reason with me. Explain to me if any other duty is superior to worldly duties. You are a householder. Why disregard the duties of a householder and follow others' duties?"
MASTER (to M.): "Did you notice? He's trying to persuade Nimai to make a compromise."
2.02 - Habit 2 Begin with the End in Mind, #The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, #Stephen Covey, #unset
King Farouk. He learned to withdraw from his own mind and look at it to see if the scripts were appropriate and wise. He learned how to vacate his own mind and, through a deep personal process of meditation, to work with his own scriptures, his own form of prayer, and rescript himself.
He records that he was almost loath to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.
--
They are extremely powerful in rescripting and reprogramming, into writing deeply committed-to purposes and principles into one's heart and mind. I believe that central to all enduring religions in society are the same principles and practices clothed in different language -- meditation, prayer, covenants, ordinances, scripture study, empathy, compassion, and many different forms of the use of both conscience and imagination.
But if these techniques become part of the personality ethic and are severed from a base of character and principles, they can be misused and abused in serving other centers, primarily the self center.
2.02 - Meeting With the Goddess, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
niques and rituals for the worship of deities, and for the attainment of supranormal power. Among the Tantras are a group of particularly important scriptures
(called Agamas) which are supposed to have been revealed directly by the
2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
lamp to shed light on all the obscurest sayings of the scriptures,
you soon come to realise that the Upanishads are a grand harmonious and perfectly luminous whole, expressing in its various
--
Sauras, as well as the whole of Buddhism and its scriptures
are merely so many explanations, comments and interpretations
--
however would contradict scripture and the uniform teaching
of Sruti and Smriti, and cannot therefore be upheld by any
--
the waters. Now we know the conception which the scripture gives us of this Universe. Everything that we call creation,
putting forth & Science calls evolution is in reality a limitation,
2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
Let us now look closely into the language of the scripture, for in
the Upanishad every word is of infinite importance and is chosen
--
Madhwa differing so widely from each other in their interpretation of the Upanishad. It was necessary that the scripture should
be interpreted by Shankara wholly in the light of Adwaita, the
2.03 - THE MASTER IN VARIOUS MOODS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
DEVOTEE: "We read the scriptures. Why is it that we can't assimilate them?"
MASTER: "What will one accomplish by mere reading? One needs spiritual practice-austerity. Call on God. What is the use of merely repeating the word 'siddhi'? One must eat a little of it.
--
"But the teachings of the Vedas are different. According to the Vedas none but a brahmin can be liberated. Further, the worship is not accepted by the gods unless the mantras are recited correctly. One must perform sacrifice, worship, and so on, according to scriptural injunction. But where is the time in the Kaliyuga to perform the Vedic rituals? Therefore in the Kaliyuga the path of devotion prescribed by Nrada is best. The path of karma is very difficult. Karma becomes a cause of bondage unless it is performed in a spirit of detachment. Further, the life of man nowadays depends on food. He has no time to observe the rituals enjoined by the scriptures. The patient dies if he tries to cure his fever by taking the decoction of herbs prescribed by the orthodox native physicians.
Therefore he should take a modern 'fever mixture'.
--
"It is one thing to learn about God from the scriptures, and quite another to see Him.
The scriptures only give hints. Therefore to read a great many scriptures is not necessary. It is much better to pray to God in solitude.
"It isn't necessary to read all of the Git. One can get the essence of the Git by repeating the word ten times. It becomes reversed and is then 'tagi'. The essence of the book is: 'O man, renounce everything and worship God.'"
--
Two monks had arrived at the temple garden in the morning. They were devoted to the study of the Bhagavad Git, the Vednta, and other scriptures. They entered the Master's room, saluted him, and sat on the mat on the floor. Sri Ramakrishna was seated on the small couch. The Master spoke to the sdhus in Hindusthani.
MASTER: "Have you had your meal?"
--
MASTER: "But he had no vanity of scholarship. Further, what he said about the last days of his life came to pass. He spent them in Benares, following the injunctions of the scriptures. I saw his children. They were wearing high boots and had been educated in English schools."
By means of questions and answers Sri Ramakrishna now explained to M. his own exalted state.
2.03 - The Naturalness of Bhakti-Yoga and its Central Secret, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
Those who with constant attention always worship You, and those who worship the Undifferentiated, the Absoluteof these who are the greater Yogis?Arjuna asked of Shri Krishna. The answer was: Those who concentrating their minds on Me worship Me with eternal constancy, and are endowed with the highest faiththey are My best worshippers, they are the greatest Yogis. Those that worship the Absolute, the Indescribable, the Undifferentiated, the Omnipresent, the Unthinkable, the All-comprehending, the Immovable, and the Eternal, by controlling the play of their organs and having the conviction of sameness in regard to all things, they also, being engaged in doing good to all beings, come to Me alone. But to those whose minds have been devoted to the unmanifested Absolute, the difficulty of the struggle along the way is much greater, for it is indeed with great difficulty that the path of the unmanifested Absolute is trodden by any embodied being. Those who, having offered up all their work unto Me, with entire reliance on Me, meditate on Me and worship Me without any attachment to anything else them, I soon lift up from the ocean of ever-recurring births and deaths, as their mind is wholly attached to Me. JnanaYoga and Bhakti-Yoga are both referred to here. Both may be said to have been defined in the above passage. JnanaYoga is grand; it is high philosophy; and almost every human being thinks, curiously enough, that he can surely do every thing required of him by philosophy; but it is really very difficult to live truly the life of philosophy. We are often apt to run into great dangers in trying to guide our life by philosophy. This world may be said to be divided between persons of demoniacal nature who think the care-taking of the body to be the be-all and the end-all of existence, and persons of godly nature who realise that the body is simply a means to an end, an instrument intended for the culture of the soul. The devil can and indeed does quote the scriptures for his own purpose ; and thus the way of knowle.dge appears to offer justification to. what the bad man does. as much as it offers inducements to what the good man does.
This is the great danger in Jnana-Yoga. But Bhakti-Yoga is natural, sweet, and gentle; the Bhakta does not take such high flights as the Jnana-Yogi, and, iherefore, he is. not apt to have such big falls. Until the bondages of the soul pass away, it cannot of course be free, whatever may be the nature of the path that the religious man takes. Here is a passage showing how, in the case of one of the blessed Gopis, the soul-binding chains of both merit and demerit were broken. The intense pleasure in meditating on God took away the binding effects of her good deeds. Then her intense misery of soul in not attaining unto Him washed off all her sinful propensities; and then she became free. (Vishnu-Purna).
2.04 - ADVICE TO ISHAN, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Continuing, the Master said: "You may speak of the scriptures, of philosophy, of Vednta; but you will not find God in any of these. You will never succeed in realizing God unless your soul becomes restless for Him.
Only through affirmation, never negation, can you know Him, Neither through Veda nor through Tantra nor the six darsanas.
--
The Vaishnava scriptures speak of 'Kam-Radha', 'Prem-Radha', and 'Nitya-Radha'.
Chandravali is Kam-Radha, and Srimati is Prem-Radha; Nanda saw Nitya-Radha holding Gopala in Her arms.
--
An hour passed. Ishan and Kishori entered and sat down on the floor after saluting Sri Ramakrishna. Ishan was a great ritualist. He was devoted to the performance of the, various rites and ceremonies prescribed by the scriptures. The Master opened the conversation.
Characteristics of Knowledge
--
The Master continued: "Do you know the meaning of dharma and adharma? Here dharma means religious acts enjoined by the scriptures, suchas charity, sraddha, feeding the poor, and the like.
"The performance of this dharma is called the path of karma. It is an extremely difficult path: it is very hard to act without motive. Therefore one is asked to pursue the path of devotion.
2.05 - VISIT TO THE SINTHI BRAMO SAMAJ, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"Can one find God in the sacred books? By reading the scriptures one may feel at the most that God exists. But God does not reveal Himself to a man unless he himself dives deep. Only after such a plunge, after the revelation of God through His grace, is one's doubt destroyed. You. may read scriptures by the thousands and recite thousands of texts; but unless you plunge into God with yearning of heart, you will not comprehend Him. By mere scholarship you may fool man, but not God.
" scriptures and books-what can one achieve with these alone? Nothing can be realized without His grace. Strive with a longing heart for His grace. Through His grace you will see Him and He will talk to you."
2.06 - WITH VARIOUS DEVOTEES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Only then does one succeed. There is so much to read! The scriptures are endless."
MASTER (to Mahimacharan): "How much of the scriptures can you read? What will you gain by mere reasoning? Try to realize God before anything else. Have faith in the guru's words, and work. If you have no guru, then pray to God with a longing heart. He will let you know what He is like.
"What will you learn of God from books? As long as you are at a distance from the marketplace you hear only an indistinct roar. But it is quite different when you are actually there. Then you hear and see everything distinctly. You hear people saying: 'Here are your potatoes. Take them and give me the money.' "From a distance you hear only the rumbling noise of the ocean. Go near it and you will see many boats sailing about, birds flying, and waves rolling.
"One cannot get true feeling about God from the study of books. This feeling is something very different from book-learning. Books, scriptures, and science appear as mere dirt and straw after the realization of God.
"The one thing needful is to be introduced to the master of the house. Why are you so anxious to know beforeh and how many houses and gardens, and how many government securities, the master possesses? The servants of the house would not allow you even to approach these, and they would certainly not tell you about their master's investments.
--
"There is another big man: Captain. Though a man of the world, he is a great lover of God. (To Mahima) Talk to him some time. He knows the Vedas, the Vednta, the Bhagavata, the Git, the Adhytma Rmyana, and other scriptures by heart. You will find that out when you talk to him.
"He has great piety. Once I was going along a street in Baranagore and he held an umbrella over my head. He invites me to his house and shows me great attention. He fans me, massages my feet, and feeds me with various dishes. Once at his house I went into samdhi in the toilet; and he took care of me there though he is so particular about his orthodox habits. He didn't show any abhorrence for the place.
--
MAHlMA: "Those to whom such things were revealed did not write the scriptures. They were rapt in their own experiences; when would they write? One needs a somewhat calculating mind to write. Others learnt these things from the seers and wrote the books."
MASTER: "Worldly people ask why one does not get rid of attachment to 'woman and gold'. That attachment disappears after the realization of God. If a man once tastes the Bliss of Brahman, then his mind no longer runs after the enjoyment of sense pleasures or wealth or name and fame. If the moth once sees the light, it no longer goes into the darkness.
--
MASTER: "You practise religious rites-japa, fasting, and the like. That is very good. If a man feels sincerely drawn to God, then God makes him practise all these disciplines. The devotee will certainly realize God if he practises them without desiring their results. A devotee observes many rites because of the injunctions of the scriptures. Such devotion is called vaidhibhakti. But there is a higher form of devotion known as raga-bhakti, which springs from yearning and love for God. Prahlada had such devotion. When the devotee develops that love, he no longer needs to perform prescribed rites.
November 9, 1884
--
"If you meditate on an ideal you will acquire its nature. If you think of God day and night, you will acquire the nature of God. A salt doll went into the ocean to measure its depth. It became one with the ocean. What is the goal of books or scriptures? The attainment of God. A man opened a book belonging to a sdhu. He saw the word 'Rma'
written on every page. There was nothing else.
--
It is She, the scriptures say, that is the Inner Self Of the yogi, who in Self discovers all his joy; She that, of Her own sweet will, inhabits every living thing. .
Then he sang:
2.07 - BANKIM CHANDRA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Sri Ramakrishna arrived at Adhar's house with his attendants. Everyone was in a joyous mood. Adhar had arranged a rich feast. Many strangers were present. At Adhar's invitation, several other deputy magistrates had come; they wanted to watch the Master and judge his holiness. Among them was Bankim Chandra Chatterji, perhaps the greatest literary figure of Bengal during the later part of the nineteenth century. He was one of the creators of modern Bengali literature and wrote on social and religious subjects. Bankim was a product of the contact of India with England. He gave modern interpretations of the Hindu scriptures and advocated drastic social reforms.
Sri Ramakrishna had been talking happily with the devotees when Adhar introduced several of his personal friends to him.
--
The pundit has no doubt studied many books and scriptures; he may rattle off their texts, or he may have written books. But if he is attached to women, if he thinks of money and honour as the essential things, will you call him a pundit? How can a man be a pundit if his mind does not dwell on God?
Devotees and the worldly-minded
--
(To Bankim) "Some people think that God cannot be realized without the study of books and scriptures. They think that first of all one should learn of this world and its creatures; that first of all one should study 'science'. (All laugh.) They think that one cannot realize God without first understanding His creation. Which comes first, 'science'
or God? What do you say?"
2.08 - ALICE IN WONDERLAND, #God Exists, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
God is an idea that has been introduced in our minds by our ancestors, by our books, by our scriptures, by our professors and our teachers and parents, and somehow, we have been forced by the logic of this teaching to believe there should be such a thing as an other-worldly existence and we have somehow reconciled ourselves to itGod must be there. But we are accepting the existence of God against our own will. We are hungry and thirsty and this hunger and thirst of the body is more real than the idea of God. No one can say that it is not so, whatever be our devotion to God. This is so even in the case of advanced seekers and sincere Sadhaks (aspirants). This subject is the principal theme of Platos doctrine.
Ideas precede reality: this one sentence is the entire philosophy of Plato. The reality of the objective universe is subsequent to the idea of the universe. Here we have an echo of the great philosophy of Vedanta that the Hiranyagarbha (cosmic intelligence) is prior to the cosmos of physical appearance. The Panchadasi, The Upanishads and the other systems of Vedantic thinking tell us that in Hiranyagarbha the world does not exist in a concrete form as it appears, that is only an idea cosmically manifested by Isvara (God) who is even subtler than the idea. Isvara is only a possibility of the very idea that there should be a thing called the universe. So, Isvara is subtler than the idea which is Hiranyagarbha, and Virat is supposed to be the animating consciousness behind the so-called physicality of creation. So, even in the Vedantic Philosophy, there is the same doctrine of idea preceding concrete existence. But we can never believe this.
--
This problem is an indication of the state in which we are placed. How far are we advanced spiritually? Where is our spirituality, where is our God, love and God-consciousness? Incidentally, it is not a joking matter or a humor. It is a very, very serious thing for us. Whatever be the study of the scriptures, we cannot get out of the idea that we are living in a very, very hard, flint-like, iron-like, steel-like world; and we can never accept that the idea of the world is in any way more real than the world. But Plato affirms that the ideas are more real than the world. The universals are precedent to the particulars. Horse-ness is prior to the horse. Table-ness is prior to the table, buildingness is prior to the building. How could there be horse-ness before there is a horse? We cannot answer these questions easily. We know very well that there cannot be horse-ness unless the horse was already there. But mans mind is very poor. It is not wholly philosophical and we cannot understand how there could be an idea of a thing unless the thing was already there. How could Gods consciousness be there if God is only Consciousness?
We have been indoctrinated in this belief not merely in this birth, but throughout the births we have lived through in earlier incarnations. The difficulty arises on account of the impressions created in our minds by hanging on to objects of sense through the many births we have passed through.
2.08 - AT THE STAR THEATRE (II), #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. then read that Prafulla began the study of the scriptures; that she finished grammar and read Raghuvamsa, Kumara Sambhava, Sakuntala, and Naishadha; and that she studied a little of the Samkhya, Vednta, and Nyaya philosophies.
Master and book-learning
2.09 - THE MASTERS BIRTHDAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (to Narendra and the others): "Let me tell you this: really and truly I don't feel sorry in the least that I haven't read the Vednta or the other scriptures. I know that the essence of the Vednta is that Brahman alone is real and the world illusory. And what is the essence of the Git? It is what you get by repeating the word ten times. Then it is reversed into, 'Tagi', which refers to renunciation. The pupil should hear the essence of the scriptures from the guru; then he should practise austerity and devotions. A man needs the letter he has received from home as long as he has not learnt its contents.
After reading it, however, he sets out to get the thing he has been asked to send.
Likewise, what need is there of the scriptures if you know their essence? The next thing is the practice of spiritual discipline."
Girish entered the room.
2.09 - The Release from the Ego, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Amidst these various and conflicting opinions the seeker of the Truth has to decide for himself which shall be for him the Knowledge. But if our aim is a spiritual release or a spiritual fulfilment, then the exceeding of this little mould of ego is imperative. In the human egoism and its satisfaction there can be no divine culmination and deliverance. A certain purification from egoism is the condition even of ethical progress and elevation, for social good and perfection; much more is it indispensable for inner peace, purity and joy. But a much more radical deliverance, not only from egoism but from ego-idea and ego-sense, is needed if our aim is to raise human into divine nature. Experience shows that, in proportion as we deliver ourselves from the limiting mental and vital ego, we comm and a wider life, a larger existence, a higher consciousness, a happier soul-state, even a greater knowledge, power and scope. Even the aim which the most mundane philosophy pursues, the fulfilment, perfection, satisfaction of the individual is best assured not by satisfying the same ego but by finding freedom in a higher and larger self. There is no happiness in smallness of the being, says the scripture, it is with the large being that happiness comes. The ego is by its nature a smallness of being; it brings contraction of the consciousness and with the contraction limitation of knowledge, disabling ignorances-confinement and a diminution of power and by that diminution incapacity and weakness, -- scission of oneness and by that scission disharmony and failure of sympathy and love and understanding, -- inhibition or fragmentation of delight of being and by that fragmentation pain and sorrow. To recover what is lost we must break out of the worlds of ego. The ego must either disappear in impersonality or fuse into a larger I: it must fuse in the wider cosmic 'I' which comprehends all these smaller selves or the transcendent of which even the cosmic self is a diminished image.
But this cosmic self is spiritual in essence and in experience; it must not be confused with the collective existence, with any group soul or the life and body of a human society or even of all mankind. The subordination of the ego to the progress and happiness of the human race is now a governing idea in the world's thought and ethics; but this is a mental and moral and not a spiritual ideal. For that progress is a series of constant mental, vital and physical vicissitudes, it has no firm spiritual content, and offers no sure standing-ground to the soul of man. The consciousness of collective humanity is only a larger comprehensive edition or a sum of individual egos. Made of the same substance, in the same mould of nature, it has not in it any greater light, any more eternal sense of itself, any purer source of peace, joy and deliverance. It is rather even more tortured, troubled and obscured, certainly more vague, confused and unprogressive. The individual is in this respect greater than the mass and cannot be called on to subordinate his more luminous possibilities to this darker entity. If light, peace, deliverance, a better state of existence are to come, they must descend into the soul from something wider than the individual but also from something higher than the collective ego. Altruism, philanthropy, the service of mankind are in themselves mental or moral ideals, not laws of the spiritual life. If in the spiritual aim there enters the impulse to deny the personal self or to serve humanity or the world at large, it comes not from the ego nor from the collective sense of the race, but from something more occult and profound transcendent of both these things; for it is founded on a sense of the Divine in all and it works not for the sake of ego or the race but for the sake of the Divine and its purpose in the person or group or Man collective. It is this transcendent Source which we must seek and serve, this vaster being and consciousness to which the race and the individual are minor terms of its existence. There is indeed a truth behind the pragmatic impulse which an exclusive one-sided spirituality is apt to ignore or deny or belittle. It is this that since the individual and the universal are terms of that higher and vaster Being, their fulfilment must have some real place in the supreme Existence. There must be behind them some high purpose in the supreme Wisdom and Knowledge, some eternal strain in the supreme Delight: they cannot have been, they were not, created in vain. But the perfection and satisfaction of humanity like the perfection and satisfaction of the individual, can only be securely compassed and founded upon a more eternal yet unseized truth and right of things. Minor terms of some greater Existence, they can fulfil themselves only when that of which they are the terms is known and possessed. The greatest service to humanity, the surest foundation for its true progress, happiness and perfection is to prepare or find the way by which the individual and the collective man can transcend the ego and live in its true self, no longer bound to ignorance, incapacity, disharmony and sorrow. It is by the pursuit of the eternal arid not by living bound in the slow collective evolution of Nature that we can best assure even that evolutionary, collective, altruistic aim our modern thought and idealism have set before us. But it is in itself a secondary aim; to find, know and possess the Divine existence, consciousness and nature and to live in it for the Divine is our true aim and the one perfection to which we must aspire.
2.0 - THE ANTICHRIST, #Twilight of the Idols, #Friedrich Nietzsche, #Philosophy
stupendous literary fraud becomes necessary, "holy scriptures" are
discovered,--and they are published abroad with all hieratic pomp,
--
lies in the fact that the "Holy scriptures" have been discarded....
Moses was already the "Will of God" revealed.... What had happened?
--
yet "through the scriptures": it is in itself at every moment its own
miracle, its own reward, its own proof, its own "Kingdom of God." This
2.1.02 - Combining Work, Meditation and Bhakti, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I may point out that Karmayoga is not a new but a very old Yoga: the Gita was not written yesterday and Karmayoga existed before the Gita. Your idea that the only justification in the Gita for works is that it is an unavoidable nuisance, so better make the best of it, is rather summary and crude. If that were all, the Gita would be the production of an imbecile and I would hardly have been justified in writing two volumes on it or the world in admiring it as one of the greatest scriptures, especially for its treatment of the problem of the place of works in spiritual endeavour. There is surely more in it than that. Anyhow your doubt whether works can lead to realisation or rather your flat and sweeping denial of the possibility contradicts the experience of those who have achieved this supposed impossibility. You say that work lowers the consciousness, brings you out of the inner into the outeryes, if you consent to externalise yourself in it instead of doing works from within; but that is just what one has to learn not to do. Thought and feeling can also externalise one in the same way; but it is a question of linking thought, feeling and act firmly to the inner consciousness by living there and making the rest an instrument. Difficult? Even bhakti is not easy and Nirvana is for most men more difficult than all.
You again try to floor me with Ramakrishna. But one thing puzzles me, as Shankaras stupendous activity of karma puzzles me in the apostle of inactionyou see you are not the only puzzled person in the world. Ramakrishna also gave the image of the jar which ceased gurgling when it was full. Well, but Ramakrishna spent the last years of his life in talking about the Divine and receiving disciples that was not action, not work? Did Ramakrishna become a half-full jar after being a full one or was he never full? Did he get far away from God and so begin a work? Or had he reached a condition in which he was bound neither to rajasic work and mental prattling nor to inactivity and silence, but could do from the divine realisation the divine work and speak from the inner consciousness the divine word? If the last, perhaps in spite of his dictum, his example at least is rather in my favour.
2.11 - WITH THE DEVOTEES IN CALCUTTA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "Mahimacharan has studied many scriptures. A big man. (To M.) Isn't that so?"
M: "Yes, sir."
--
The purpose of the scriptures
MASTER (with a smile): "Do you know my attitude? Books, scriptures, and things like that only point out the way to reach God. After finding the way, what more need is there of books and scriptures? Then comes the time for action.
"A man received a letter from home informing him that certain presents were to be sent to his relatives. The names of the articles were given in the letter. As he was about to go shopping for them, he found that the letter was missing. He began anxiously to search for it, several others joining in the search. For a long time they continued to search.
When at last the letter was discovered, his joy knew no bounds. With great eagerness he opened the letter and read it. It said that he was to buy five seers of sweets, a piece of cloth, and a few other things. Then he did not need the letter any more, for it had served its purpose. Putting it aside, he went out to buy the things. How long is such a letter necessary? As long as its contents are not known. When the contents are known one proceeds to carry out the directions. "In the scriptures you will find the way to realize God. But after getting all the information about the path, you must begin to work, Only then can you attain your goal.
Mere scholarship condemned
"What will it avail a man to have mere scholarship? A pundit may have studied many scriptures, he may recite many sacred texts, but if he is still attached to the world and if inwardly he loves 'woman and gold', then he has not assimilated the contents of the scriptures. For such a man the study of scriptures is futile.
"The almanac forecasts the rainfall for the year. You may squeeze the book, but you won't get a drop of water-not even a single drop." (Laughter.) GIRISH (sniiling): "What did you say, sir, about squeezing the almanac? Won't a single drop of water come out of it?" (All laugh.)
--
MASTER: "What a subtle mind he has! Nangta also could understand things that way, in a flash-the meaning of the Git, the Bhagavata, and other scriptures.
Master praises renunciation
2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
He is largely influenced by Tolstoy and the Bible and by Jainism in his preachings; at any rate, more than by the Indian scriptures the Upanishads or the Gita which he interprets in the light of his own ideas.
Disciple: Many educated Indians consider him a spiritual man.
2.13 - Psychic Presence and Psychic Being - Real Origin of Race Superiority, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Below the human level there is, ordinarily, hardly any individual formation there is only this presence, more or less. But when, by the growth of the body round the spark of Divine Consciousness, humanity began upon the earth, certain human organisms became in the course of this progressive growth sufficiently perfected, and by their opening and receptivity allowed a junction with certain beings descending from above. This gave rise to a kind of divine humanity, what may be called a race of the lite. If only they had remained by themselves, these people would have continued as a race unique and superhuman. Indeed many races have made claims to be that: the Aryan, the Semitic and the Japanese have all in turn considered themselves the chosen race. But in fact there has been a general levelling of humanity, a lot of intermixture. For there arose the necessity of prolongation of the superior race, which drove it to intermix with the rest of humanitywith animal humanity, that is to say. Thus its value was degraded and led to that great Fall which is spoken of in the worlds scriptures, the coming out of Paradise, the end of the Golden Age. Indeed it was a loss from the point of view of consciousness, but not from that of material strength, since it was a tremendous gain to ordinary humanity. There were, certainly, some beings who had a very strong will not to mix, who resented losing their superiority; and it is just this that is the real origin of race-pride, race-exclusiveness, and a special caste distinction like that cherished by the Brahmins in India. But at present it cannot be said that there is any portion of mankind which is purely animal: all the races have been touched by the descent from above, and owing to the extensive intermixture the result of the Involution was more widely spread.
Of course one cannot say that every man has got a psychic being, just as one cannot refuse to grant it to every animal. Many animals that have lived near man have some beginnings of it, while so often one comes across people who do not seem to be anything else than brutes. Here, too, there has been a good deal of levelling. But on the whole, the psychic in the true sense starts at the human stage: that is also why the Catholic religion declares that only man has a soul. In man alone there is the possibility of the psychic being growing to its full stature even so far as to be able in the end to join and unite with a descending being, a godhead from above.
2.13 - THE MASTER AT THE HOUSES OF BALARM AND GIRISH, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"One realizes God through sattva. Rajas and tamas take one away from Him. The scriptures describe sattva as white, rajas as red, and tamas as black. Once I asked Hazra: Tell me what you think of the people that come here. How much sattva does each one possess?' He said, 'Narendra has one hundred per cent and I have one hundred and ten per cent.' 'What about me?' I asked. And he said: 'You still have a trace of pink. You have only seventy five per cent, I should say.' (All laugh.) "Hazra used to practise japa at Dakshineswar. While telling his beads, he would also try to do a little brokerage business. He has a debt of a few thousand rupees which he must clear up. About the brahmin cooks of the temple he remarked, 'Do you think I talk with people of that sort?'
"The truth is that you cannot attain God if you have even a trace of desire. Subtle is the way of dharma. If you are trying to thread a needle, you will not succeed if the thread has even a slight fibre sticking out.
--
Narendra (to Girish, M., and others): "How am I to believe in the Words of scripture?
The Mahanirvana Tantra says, in one place, that unless a man attains the Knowledge of Brahman he goes to hell; and the same book says, in another place, that there is no salvation without the worship of Parvathi, the Divine Mother. Manu writes about himself in the Manusamhita; Moses describes his own death in Pentateuch.
--
"But I don't say that these are not true. I simply don't understand them. Please explain them to me. People have explained the scriptures according to their fancy. Which explanation shall we accept? White light coming through a red medium appears red, through a green medium, green."
A DEVOTEE:' "The Git contains the words of God."
MASTER: "Yes, the Git is the essence of all scriptures. A sannysi may or may not keep with him another book, but he always carries a pocket Git."
A DEVOTEE: "The Git contains the words of Krishna."
--
MASTER: "This is a fine discussion. There are two interpretations of the scriptures: the literal and the real. 'One should accept the real meaning alone-what agrees with the words of God. There is a vast difference between the words written in a letter and the direct words of its writer. The scriptures are like the words of the letter; the words of God are direct words. I do not accept anything unless it agrees with the direct words of the Divine Mother."
The conversation again turned to Divine Incarnation.
2.14 - AT RAMS HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"One needs sdhan. Mere study of the scriptures will not do. I noticed that though Vidysgar had no doubt read a great deal, he had not realized what was inside him; he was satisfied with helping boys get their education, but had not tasted the Bliss of God.
What will mere study accomplish? How little one assimilates! The almanac may forecast twenty measures of rain; but you don't get a drop by squeezing its pages."
--
"I said: 'According to the scriptures, water is God. We see water everywhere. But some water we drink, some we ba the in, and some we use for washing dirty things. Here sit your wife and daughter. I see them as embodiments of the Blessed Mother.'
"Thereupon Captain said, 'Yes, yes! That's true.' He wanted to apologize by touching my feet."
--
MASTER: "Captain has many virtues. Every day he attends to his devotions. He himself performs the worship of the Family Deity. How many mantras he recites while bathing the image! He is a great ritualist. He performs his daily devotions, such as worship, japa, rati, recital of the scriptures, and chanting of hymns.
"I scolded Captain and said: 'Too much reading has spoiled you. Don't read any more.'
--
Thou art my scriptures, my commandments;
Thou art my ever gracious Guru;
2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The absolutist view of reality, consciousness and knowledge is founded on one side of the earliest Vedantic thought, but it is not the whole of that thinking. In the Upanishads, in the inspired scripture of the most ancient Vedanta, we find the affirmation of the Absolute, the experience-concept of the utter and ineffable Transcendence; but we find also, not in contradiction to it but as its corollary, an affirmation of the cosmic Divinity, an experience-concept of the cosmic Self and the becoming of Brahman in the universe. Equally, we find the affirmation of the Divine Reality in the individual: this too is an experienceconcept; it is seized upon not as an appearance, but as an actual becoming. In place of a sole supreme exclusive affirmation negating all else than the transcendent Absolute we find a comprehensive affirmation carried to its farthest conclusion: this concept of Reality and of Knowledge enveloping in one view the cosmic and the Absolute coincides fundamentally with our own; for it implies that the Ignorance too is a half-veiled part of the Knowledge and world-knowledge a part of self-knowledge.
The Isha Upanishad insists on the unity and reality of all the manifestations of the Absolute; it refuses to confine truth to any one aspect. Brahman is the stable and the mobile, the internal and the external, all that is near and all that is far whether spiritually or in the extension of Time and Space; it is the Being and all becomings, the Pure and Silent who is without feature or action and the Seer and Thinker who organises the world and its objects; it is the One who becomes all that we are sensible of in the universe, the Immanent and that in which he takes up his dwelling. The Upanishad affirms the perfect and the liberating knowledge to be that which excludes neither the Self nor its creations: the liberated spirit sees all these as becomings of the Self-existent in an internal vision and by a consciousness which perceives the universe within itself instead of looking out on it, like the limited and egoistic mind, as a thing other than itself. To live in the cosmic Ignorance is a blindness, but to confine oneself in an exclusive absolutism of Knowledge is also a blindness: to know Brahman as at once and together the Knowledge and the Ignorance, to attain to the supreme status at once by the Becoming and the Non-Becoming, to relate together realisation of the transcendent and the cosmic self, to achieve foundation in the supramundane and a self-aware manifestation in the mundane, is the integral knowledge; that is the possession of Immortality. It is this whole consciousness with its complete knowledge that builds the foundation of the Life Divine and makes its attainment possible. It follows that the absolute reality of the Absolute must be, not a rigid indeterminable oneness, not an infinity vacant of all that is not a pure self-existence attainable only by the exclusion of the many and the finite, but something which is beyond these definitions, beyond indeed any description either positive or negative. All affirmations and negations are expressive of its aspects, and it is through both a supreme affirmation and a supreme negation that we can arrive at the Absolute.
2.16 - VISIT TO NANDA BOSES HOUSE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER (smiling): "It is just a notion of mine. What you say is also right. That too is supported by the scriptures."
Sri Ramakrishna was warning Nanda of flatterers.
2.1.7.08 - Comments on Specific Lines and Passages of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The clich you object to he quoted scripture and Law was put in there with fell purpose and was necessary for the effect I wanted to produce, the more direct its commonplace the better. However, I defer to your objection and have altered it to
He armed untruth with scripture and the Law. [p. 207]
I dont remember seeing the sentence about
2.17 - THE MASTER ON HIMSELF AND HIS EXPERIENCES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Mahimacharan recited some texts from the scriptures. He also described various mystic rites of the Tantra.
MASTER: "Well, some say that my soul, going into samdhi, lies about like a bird in the Mahakasa, the Infinite Space.
--
"For three days I wept continuously. And He revealed to me what is in the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, and the other scriptures.
Master's vision of my
--
"What will you gain by the mere study of scriptures? The pundits merely indulge in reasoning."
PUNDIT: "I hate the idea of being called a pundit."
2.18 - SRI RAMAKRISHNA AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "It contains the essence of all the scriptures."
M: 'The Git describes various ways of realizing God. You too say that God can be reached by various paths: knowledge, devotion, work, and meditation."
--
MASTER: "Discuss the doctrine of Divine Incarnation with Dr. Sarkar. He who liberates others is an Incarnation of God. The scriptures speak of ten, of twenty-four, and also of innumerable Incarnations."
M: "Dr.Sarkar is keenly interested in Girish Ghosh. He always asks me whether Girish has given up drinking. He keeps a sharp eye on him."
2.19 - THE MASTER AND DR. SARKAR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
MASTER: "There reason withers away. God cannot be realized through scholarship. He is beyond the scriptures-the Vedas, Puranas, and Tantras. If I see a man with even one book in his hand, I call him a rajarshi though he is a Jnni. But the brahmarshi has no outer sign whatsoever.
Use of scriptures
"Do you know the use of the scriptures? A man once wrote a letter to a relative, asking him to send five seers of sweetmeats and a piece of cloth.
The relative received the letter, read it, and remembered about the sweetmeats and the cloth. Then, he threw the letter away. Of what further use was it?"
2.2.01 - Work and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There is of course also the ascetic ideal which is necessary for many and has its place in the spiritual order. I would myself say that no man can be spiritually complete if he cannot live ascetically or follow a life as bare as the barest anchorites. Obviously, greed for wealth and money-making has to be absent from his nature as much as greed for food or any other greed and all attachment to these things must be renounced from his consciousness. But I do not regard the ascetic way of living as indispensable to spiritual perfection or as identical with it. There is the way of spiritual self-mastery and the way of spiritual self-giving and surrender to the Divine, abandoning ego and desire even in the midst of action or of any kind of work or all kinds of work demanded from us by the Divine. If it were not so, there would not have been great spiritual men like Janaka or Vidura in India and even there would have been no Krishna or else Krishna would have been not the Lord of Brindavan and Mathura and Dwarka or a prince and warrior or the charioteer of Kurukshetra, but only one more great anchorite. The Indian scriptures and Indian tradition, in the Mahabharata and elsewhere, make room both for the spirituality of the renunciation of life and for the spiritual life of action. One cannot say that one only is the Indian tradition and that the acceptance of life and works of all kinds, sarvakarmi, is un-Indian, European or Western and unspiritual.
***
2.2.02 - Consciousness and the Inconscient, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And again in this reading of the universe, more baffling than any unbelievable belief - credo quia incredibile, - with which ever dogmatic theology or mystic philosophy has challenged us, man loses all his cosmic value. An infinitesimal little creature on a tiny speck of matter lost amidst a whirling multitude of stupendous universes most or all of them perhaps vacant of life and thought and made for no other end but simply to whirl, he is (justifying scripture) even as the worm is - only an edition de luxe, with copious developments and commentaries, of the same laborious but useless text, the same minute, careful, well-arranged, painstaking but insignificant script that we see already in the ant and the termite. Individual man lasts for a few years which are in the aimless vastness of the universe of no more matter than the few days or weeks or months of the insect. The race indeed has endured for millions of years and may endure for some centuries, some thousands, myriads or millions of years longer; but what are these millions in the incalculable aeons of the cosmos? The termite perhaps was before man and may be there when he has
Consciousness and the Inconscient
--
- both have an equal non-value, for to it neither can matter, since they will disappear and the world go on interminably as it did without them. Vanity of vanities, Science teaches us even as did the world's scriptures; out of nothingness we came and into nothingness we shall sink hereafter. All that we are and think and create [and] do, however wonderful to our own eyes, or even if really wonderful in the mind's values, is but a bubble, a vibration, a plasmic pullulation on the surface of Matter.
This is one side of the picture; but there is another.
2.20 - The Infancy and Maturity of ZO, Father and Mother, Israel The Ancient and Understanding, #General Principles of Kabbalah, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
ing.) On the contrary, of this time the scriptures say:
"And I will surely hide my face in that day . . . and
--
connection it is said in the scriptures: "And it shall
come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that
--
sunk in matter. Of this period it is said in the scriptures:
* TR. N. This designates a secondary degree of Light,
--
period it is said in the scriptures: "And he that remaineth
in Jerusalem shall be called holy. (Isaiah IV., 3.) For
2.20 - THE MASTERS TRAINING OF HIS DISCIPLES, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
"What Brahman is cannot be described in words. Somebody once said that everything in the world has been made impure, like food that has touched the tongue, and that Brahman alone remains undefiled. The meaning is this: All scriptures and holy books-the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, and so forth-may be said to have been defiled because their contents have been uttered by the tongues of men; but what Brahman is no tongue has yet been able to describe. Therefore Brahman is still undefiled. One cannot describe in words the joy of play and communion with Satchidananda. He alone knows, who has realized it."
Egotism condemned
2.21 - IN THE COMPANY OF DEVOTEES AT SYAMPUKUR, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
DR. BHADURI (to Dr. Sarkar): "What I have just said you will find in the Vednta. You must study the scriptures. Then you will understand."
DR. SARKAR: "Why so? Has he [meaning the Master] acquired all this wisdom by studying the scriptures? He too supports my view. Can't one be wise without reading the scriptures?"
MASTER: "But how many scriptures I have heard!"
DR. SARKAR: "A man may mistake the meaning if he only hears. In your case it is not mere hearing."
--
It is She, the scriptures say, that is the Inner Self Of the yogi, who in Self discovers all his joy; She that, of Her own sweet will, inhabits every living thing.
The macrocosm and microcosm rest in the Mother's womb; Now do you see how vast it is? In the Muladhara The yogi meditates on Her, and in the Sahasrara: Who but iva has beheld Her as She really is?
2.2.1 - The Prusna Upanishads, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
this is the scripture.
aT
--
All and becometh the All. Whereof this is the scripture.
dv
--
members and immortal. Whereof this is the scripture.
t\ v
2.21 - The Three Heads, The Beard and The Mazela, #General Principles of Kabbalah, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
love itself, as the scriptures tell us: "But He that loves
him chastens him betimes. (Prov. XIII, 24.) For when
2.23 - The Core of the Gita.s Meaning, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Outside India too it is universally acknowledged as one of the world's great scriptures, although in Europe its thought is better understood than its secret of spiritual practice. What is it then that gives this vitality to the thought and the truth of the Gita?
The central interest of the Gita's philosophy and Yoga is its attempt, the idea with which it sets out, continues and closes, to reconcile and even effect a kind of unity between the inner spiritual truth in its most absolute and integral realisation and the outer actualities of man's life and action. A compromise between the two is common enough, but that can never be a final and satisfactory solution. An ethical rendering of spirituality is also common and has its value as a law of conduct; but that is a mental solution which does not amount to a complete practical reconciliation of the whole truth of spirit with the whole truth of life and it raises as many problems as it solves. One of these is indeed the starting-point of the Gita; it sets out with an ethical problem raised by a conflict in which we have on one side the dharma of the man of action, a prince and warrior and leader of men, the protagonist of a great crisis, of a struggle on the physical plane, the plane of actual life, between the powers of right and justice and the powers of wrong and injustice, the demand of the destiny of the race upon him that he shall resist and give battle and establish even though through a terrible physical struggle and a giant slaughter a new era and reign of truth and right and justice, and on the other side the ethical sense which condemns the means and the action as a sin, recoils from the price of individual suffering and social strife, unsettling and disturbance and regards abstention from violence and battle as the only way and the one right moral attitude. A spiritualised ethics insists on Ahinsa, on non-injuring and non-killing as the highest law of spiritual conduct. The battle, if it is to be fought out at all, must be fought on the spiritual plane and by some kind of non-resistance or refusal of participation or only by soul resistance, and if this does not succeed on the external plane,
2.23 - THE MASTER AND BUDDHA, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
DR. SREENATH (to his friends): "But, sir, the scriptures say that nobody can escape the fruit of karma."
Dr. Sreenath was ready to argue with the Master.
2.2.4 - Taittiriya Upanishad, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
whereon he resteth abidingly. Whereof this is the scripture.
Chapter II
--
resteth abidingly. Whereof this is the scripture.
The Gods live and brea the under the dominion of Prana and
--
abidingly. Whereof this is the scripture.
Chapter IV
--
say of Him that He is Truth. Whereof this is the scripture.
Chapter VII
--
who thinketh not. Whereof this is the scripture.
Chapter VIII
--
Whereof this is the scripture.
224
2.25 - AFTER THE PASSING AWAY, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
He and his brother disciples, filled with an ascetic spirit, devoted themselves day and night to the practice of spiritual discipline. Their one goal in life was the realization of God. They followed to their hearts' content the injunctions prescribed in the Vedas, Puranas, and Tantras for an ascetic life. They spent their time in japa and meditation and study of the scriptures. Whenever they would fail to experience the Divine Presence, they would feel as if they were on the rack. They would practise austerity, sometimes alone under trees, sometimes in a cremation ground, sometimes on the bank of the Ganges. Again, sometimes they would spend the entire day in the meditation room of the monastery in japa and contemplation; sometimes they would gather to sing and dance in a rapture of delight. All of them, and Narendra particularly, were consumed with the desire to see God. Now and then they would say to each other, "Shall we not starve ourselves to death to see God?"
Monday, February 21, 1887
--
The meaning of hearing the scriptures from the guru and reasoning on his instruction;
How then can I speak of reflecting on Truth without interruption? Therefore, O Siva! O Mahadeva! O Sambhu! forgive me, I pray, for my transgressions.
2.3.02 - Mantra and Japa, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The Word has powereven the ordinary written word has a power. If it is an inspired word it has still more power. What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration and the theme and the part of the being it touches. If it is the Word itself,as in certain utterances of the great scripturesVeda, Upanishads, Gita,it may well have a power to awaken a spiritual impulse, an uplifting, even certain kinds of realisation. To say that it cannot contradicts spiritual experience.
The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras, they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisation for others. Naturally, these mostly would be illuminations, not the settled and permanent realisation that is the goal of Yoga but they could be steps on the way or at least lights on the way. Many have such illuminations, even initial realisations while meditating on verses of the Upanishads or the Gita. Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written, can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in poetry or inspired language and it has helped themselves and others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness to poetry of a psychic or spiritual character.
2.30 - The Uniting of the Names 45 and 52, #General Principles of Kabbalah, #Rabbi Moses Luzzatto, #Kabbalah
labored for it. As it is expressed in the scriptures:
". . . For I will pardon them whom I reserve. (Jeremiah
30.03 - Spirituality in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Is there any natural opposition between art and the spiritual life? The Puritans had cast aside poetry and music like poison. In the Talmud (the scripture of the Jews) there is the total prohibition to draw the picture of anybody, be he a man or a God. Plato in his Republicrefused to award a locus to the poet. Even in the world of to-day, behind the externals we are after Idealism that awakens the higher emotions, the spiritual perception, and inspires the spiritual life in poetry, music, painting and sculpture. We want to do away with mundane art and have the art that helps to acquaint us with God. We want to turn our eyes from the art that depicts the lower propensities of our nature and like to gaze at the one that gives us a higher, nobler and purer inspiration.
The spiritual knowledge is the supreme knowledge, and the rest is the ordinary knowledge. The spiritual life is alone the best and the only thing worth aspiring for. If this is the only truth then men will aspire for nothing except that which is helpful to the spiritual life. Men will keep aloof from whatever is an obstacle to it. Every branch of the ordinary knowledge should be made into a step towards the supreme knowledge. If there is any glory or beauty in the world then it belongs to God. So the usefulness of the ordinary knowledge lies in being subservient to the supreme Knowledge. To-day we want to found this thesis. But how far is it correct, what is its precise meaning? At the very outset we would like to say that the object of art is to create joy. There is one joy in God-realisation, and another in the company of a woman: an artist can make a joyful creation out of either of the two. The depiction of the company of a woman may be harmful to the spiritual life, but, from the standpoint of the creation of pure and simple joy, is there any hard and fast rule that its value should be low? The critic may say: "God alone is the repository of the complete joy. In the ordinary worldly life there is no lack of joy or beauty, but that joy or beauty is a portion or a shadow of God himself, a major part of it being a deformation. The story of the enjoyment of a woman may be very fascinating, but if we do not find in it anything that may lead our vision to and draw out the sweetness of God then from the side of the creation of taste too it falls short of the perfect perfection. If art were to exist in the creation of taste anyhow then the artist might deal with any subject to fulfil his object by any means. But if he wants to create the highest taste, the fulness of taste, let him manifest God in speech, painting and sculpture."
--
It is not that art has no value from the standpoint of the spiritual discipline also. But the artist and the sadhu do not tread the same path. The way of the sadhu is "Not this, not this" and that of the artist "Here it is, here it is." The sadhu wants to control and get rid of the senses in order to reach the Transcendent or to confine himself within the boundary of a particular way of the use of the senses. The artist wants to feel the Transcendent in the plenitude of wealth of the senses. The sadhu wants to form a religious life through canon and conduct. The artist does not subscribe to any hard and fast rule. He considers himself free from the very beginning. If he can hold on to this principle for all time then he can attain to liberation and fulfilment in the entirety of his life. The sadhu and the pious measure the value of their achievements by the attraction and repulsion they have for the objects of the senses and sit down to analyse their real nature. But the artist pays no attention to discriminating the object he deals with. He knows that essentially there is no flaw in the object. His concern is with his inner attitude. He reveals the true and the beautiful form from whatever he undertakes in his spontaneous urge of the truth within him. The sadhu wants to have access to spirituality through conduct, example, discipline and interpretations of the scriptures. But the artist wants to attain his goal through the feeling of his art. You may depict the picture of a Madonna or that of a harlot; there is nothing inherent in the subject of your delineation to make you choose the one or the other. The question is whether you have been able to get at the truth of the thing.
Subtle is the penetrating influence of art. We, who live in the physical nature, are unable to feel it readily. We require a massive influence. If it is not clearly pointed out to us we fail to grasp it; we need a baton-charge to be aroused from our slumber. That is why religious scriptures and moral codes have come into existence. We want to introduce moral doctrines in the realm of art as well. Moral doctrines may serve a useful purpose in changing the physical part of our nature. But the subtle inner nature and the spiritual being of man will never be awakened by the canons of morality. Art is but revelation. This revelation enables us to hold a direct communion with the innermost truth of our heart. Many a time we become identified with the spirit of things through art. This union is nothing but a union of delight. In religious terminology we may call it divine Grace. One who is endowed with this Grace has no need to observe the rules of conduct or spiritual practice. By the help of this divine Grace the artist can continue his enjoyment of sense-appreciation, yet become flooded with spirituality and get purified without undergoing any hardship or austerity.
In fact, there is no gulf between art and spirituality, provided that by the word spirituality we mean genuine spirituality and not merely moral conduct or religious ceremonies. If the aim of spirituality is to know the Self, then the aim of art too is the same. If the seer of the spiritual truth can see the Spirit everywhere without excluding the body or any part of it, then why should the artist not be able to manifest the glory of the Spirit through colour, sound, word and stone and thus play the role of a truly spiritual man?
30.09 - Lines of Tantra (Charyapada), #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Kahnupada gives here a vivid sketch, attractive and neat and clear, of the rural life of his age, the conditions of village society. And with this as the background, he lets us have an insight at once deep and clear into some details of his sadhana or spiritual endeavour. This sadhana, as I have already mentioned, was unacceptable to the upper reaches of society; derided by the learned elite, it was the esoteric sadhana of the "depressed" classes. That is why the Dom Woman has been taken as the Force behind the sadhana, the symbol of the Cherished Deity. The dark lady, this untouchable beauty may draw perhaps the greedy attentions of the learned elite and "high-class" Brahmins. But their enormously decorous attire, their learning and knowledge of scripture, their rites and observances have served to keep them away from that secret Power of Mother-Nature without an ornamental garb. That is why we find Kahnupada saying that he has divested himself of all kinds of decorative wear, has renounced all positions and titles, and has become a naked Kapalika, a nude ascetic in his body, mind and life. It is in this way that he has qualified himself' to meet his Supreme Beloved. What is to be their trysting-place? In the sanctuary of the inner heart where has blossomed forth a superb lotus with its sixty-four petals spread out to the sky. The sixty-four here must have been meant to symbolise the integrality of consciousness: four are the main levels or planes of consciousness - body, life, mind and all that is above mind - and the number sixty is their multiple and various divisions or lines of expression.
The ordinary ignorant man passes through life, plying the boat of his ignorant ordinary consciousness with its cargo of worldly cares. But the free inner consciousness moves along other paths. Kahnu would sail on the boat of that inner consciousness and take to those paths.
--
How shall I explain it with reference to scripture?
Whom shall I ask, and what?
--
It cannot be said that It exists, it cannot be said that It does not exist. Can such a thing be grasped by any hidden faculties? It is a Light made up of three elements, and yet It has no colour or form or distinguishing marks. The reason is that the outer sense-organs cannot reach It, nor can the mind grasp It no matter how well-versed in scripture it be. The reflection of the moon in water looks fine and cool and sweet - it exists and is yet unreal. Likewise, in the inner skies of our consciousness It appears as Beauty and Delight, but It transcends all thought or image; who then can unravel Its mystery?
The three elements here may well represent the body, life and mind, and the Light is the inner Consciousness that rules over them. The Vedantin may say that this Light is no other than his Brahman whose attributes are Existence, Conscious Power and Bliss,saccidananda. It is remarkable that the Rishis of the Upanishads too speak somewhat in analogous style and. language of an Ineffable Something, which is "difficult to be seen, a secret immanent lying as in a cave or deep cavity", durdarsyam gudham-anupravistam guhahitam gahvarestham. Long before the Upanishads, the Rishis of the Rigveda also have spoken of a similar experience: Non-Being was not there nor was Being. Who was, or what it was, who can tell? Only He can tell who is the overlord of all this. Or perhaps, He too cannot tell - ye asya adhyaksa parame vyoman, so anga veda yadi va na veda.
30.17 - Rabindranath, Traveller of the Infinite, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This spiritual aspiration was called quest in the scriptures of the West. The quest .of the Knights for the Holy Grail inflamed the heart of Europe to a great extent for a time. Its art and literature bear abundant indication of this. I bring in the West here, for the poetic consciousness of Rabindranath is no less shaped by the West than by the Upanishads. In many cases we see that as the Vedanta is in his inner Being, in the marrow of his bones, so there is Europe in his poetic consciousness, in flesh and blood. Rabindranath is a unique blending of these two.
However, due to the unique quality of the aspiration, curiosity and seeking which we have mentioned as being in his heart, two qualities are perceptible in his poetical style. First, the Style, the speed, the swing of rhyme and rhythm and the cadence of tune. Starting from 'Nirjharer Swapna Bhanga', the awakening of the fountain, 'My heart dances to-day', and 'Lo, he comes, he comes with rapture', to 'the restless, irresistible flutterings of the wings', of 'Balaka', the same style shows itself in a fast and almost merry stepping. A restlessness for an uninterrupted forward march of the soul and the inner consciousness to proceed ever still more, still further, still higher is the nature of the divine flame residing in the heart. So the delight of journeying incessantly, without a halt anywhere in any shelter, journeying for the sake of journeying - this becomes the aim and ideal of man's life. The Vedic Mantra - 'caraiueti','move, move on' - was therefore so dear to Tagore. Is there such a thing as a definite and fixed ideal? We surpass the aim of today and another appears on the horizon. Today's high precipice is left behind as a foothill. A higher precipice looms ahead, and behind it rears one still higher, thus an unending range. There is no stopping, never say there is 'no further'.
3.06 - The Sage, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In all scriptures meant to help mankind to progress, it is always said that you must be very grateful to those who show you your faults and so you must seek their company; but the form used here is particularly felicitous: if a fault is shown to you it is as if a treasure were shown to you; that is to say, each time that you discover in yourself a fault, incapacity, lack of understanding, weakness, insincerity, all that prevents you from making a progress, it is as if you discovered a wonderful treasure.
Instead of growing sad and telling yourself, Oh, there is still another defect, you should, on the contrary, rejoice as if you had made a wonderful acquisition, because you have just caught hold of one of those things that prevented you from progressing. And once you have caught hold of it, pull it out! For those who practise a yogic discipline consider that the moment you know that a thing should not be, you have the power to remove it, discard it, destroy it.
3.07.5 - Who Am I?, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
They are from the unreal part of you. They are coming from words, they are coming from scriptures, they are coming from conditioning, they are coming from society, they are coming from others. Go on asking. Let this arrow of Who am I? penetrate deeper and deeper A moment will come when no answer will come.
That is the right moment. Now you are nearing the answer. When no answer comes, you are near the answer because mind is becoming silent - you have gone far away from the mind. When there will be no answer and a vacuum will be created all around you, your questioning will look absurd. Whom are you questioning? There is no one to answer you. Suddenly, even your questioning will stop. With the questioning, the last part of the mind has dissolved because this question was also of the mind. Those answers were of the mind and this question was also of the mind. Both have dissolved, so now you are.
3.07 - The Ananda Brahman, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A transcendent Bliss, unimaginable and inexpressible by the mind and speech, is the nature of the Ineffable. That broods immanent and secret in the whole universe and in everything in the universe. Its presence is described as a secret ether of the bliss of being, of which the scripture says that, if this were not, none could for a moment brea the or live. And this spiritual bliss is here also in our hearts. It is hidden in from the toil of the surface mind which catches only at weak and flawed translations of it into various mental, vital and physical forms of the joy of existence. But if the mind has once grown sufficiently subtle and pure in its receptions and not limited by the grosser nature of our outward responses to existence, we can take a reflection of it which will wear perhaps wholly or predominantly the hue of whatever is strongest in our nature. It may present itself first as a yearning for some universal Beauty which we feel in Nature and man and in all that is around us; or we may have the intuition of some transcendent Beauty of which all apparent beauty here is only a symbol. That is how it may come to those in whom the aesthetic being is developed and insistent and the instincts which, when they find form of expression, make the poet and artist, are predominant. Or it may be the sense of a divine spirit of love or else a helpful and compassionate infinite Presence in the universe or behind or beyond it which responds to us when we turn the need of our spirit towards it. So it may first show itself when the emotional being is intensely developed. It may come near to us in other ways, but always as a Power or Presence of delight, beauty, love or peace which touches the mind, but is beyond the forms these things take ordinarily in the mind.
For all joy, beauty, love, peace, delight are outflowings from the Ananda Brahman, - all delight of the spirit, the intellect, the imagination, aesthetic sense, ethical aspiration and satisfaction, action, life, the body. And through all ways of our being the Divine can touch us and make use of them to awaken and liberate the spirit. But to reach the Ananda Brahman in itself the mental reception of it must be subtilised, spiritualised, universalised, discharged of everything that is turbid and limiting. For when we draw quite near or enter into it, it is by an awakened
3.1.04 - Transformation in the Integral Yoga, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
I have not denied that the ideal of a change on earth is of old standing. It is there vaguely in the human mind perhaps since the beginning, though more often perfection is put in some golden age of the past and deterioration and a cataclysm is the law of the future. Christianity foresees a descent of Christ and his rule on earth, but this is figured as an outward event, not as a change produced by an inward power and process or by Yoga. A reign of the saints is also foreshadowed in some Hindu scriptures, but that equally is something different from my conception. As for sainthood itself or the siddhis of Yoga including a siddha body, that too is not what I mean by transformationit is a radical change of consciousness and nature itself that I envisage. I do not know also that these things were sought by the process of descent the Tamil Shaiva saints for instance sought for the siddha body by tremendous austerities; the siddhis they sought were all there in the sukshma mental and vital worlds and by a stupendous effort and mastery of the body they brought them down into the physical instrument. I have always said that these things and these methods are out of my scope and eschewed by me in my Yoga. I tried some of these but after achieving some initial results I saw it was a bypath and I left it.
To get rid of or mastery over kma-krodha is not the transformation, it is at best a preliminary step towards it provided it is done not in the moral way by mental self-control but in the spiritual way. Sainthood is not my object. I do not know how far Ramakrishna had gone towards the transformation as I conceive it; the metaphors you quote contain nothing precise with which I can compare my own experience or my own intuitions about the change. According to certain accounts there was a descent of Kali into his body which made it luminous, but he repressed it as something contrary to what he was seeking after. If there is something anywhere in the past which coincides with the aim and conceived process of my Yoga I shall be glad to know of it; for that would certainly be an aid to me. I put no value on the newness of what I am doing or trying to do. If the path was already there open and complete, it is a great pity that I should have wasted all my life clearing it out anew with much difficulty and peril when I could just have walked on a clear and safe avenue towards the goal of my endeavour. But the nearest I could get to it were some things in the Veda and Upanishads (secret words, veiled hints) which seemed to coincide with or point towards certain things in my own knowledge and experience. But after incorporating certain parts of the Vedic method as far as I could interpret or recover it, I found it was insufficient and I had to seek farther.
31.05 - Vivekananda, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Vivekananda's was the creation that was instinct with the impulsion of life and it flowed in currents of power. It was not his mission to give an actual form to the creation of a well-built and lovely external image. Vivekananda diffused his inspiration and illumination over the firmament and set the country's heart-strings vibrating. That is why we do not find anything static in his creation. He has sketched many forms and has pointed out many a line of multiple beauty. But these were merely constructive hints and suggestions. If we adhere to anyone of them intotowe shall be cramping and limiting the real Vivekananda. Even the philosophical truths and the conclusions he arrived at and the spiritual secrets he revealed should not be regarded as something final and irrefutable, for Vivekananda's advent was not meant for formulating a new scripture. He did not take upon himself the burden of constructing the body, the outer shape. The first vibrant throb of the descent of the soul into life which is the source of all external creation, the awakening of the individual soul to its real nature which is divine - this constitutes the real Vivekananda. The first requisite is to be awakened in one's own self, to be able to feel an altogether new flow-tide in life-power. The thing next to be done, the power that will organise and regulate this awakened life and its activities, is a matter for the future. All problems will have their infallible solutions as the inevitable result of the powerful awakening of the soul when achieved. These problems can be solved in various ways and Vivekananda has given countless instances of them. He did not consider it at all necessary for his work to evaluate, harmonise and organise his solutions. In the midst of various contradictory and disorganised conclusions Vivekananda had only one word to say: "This self is not to be attained by the weakling."
Vivekananda was not a householder, yet he was not a sannyasin. He was a seeker after spirituality; nevertheless his patriotism had no parallel. Vivekananda told the youths of India to set aside the Gita and play football. Again it is he who gave them the call to wear the loin-cloth and lift high the ochre-coloured banner. He has accepted all these as the symbol of a profounder truth. Whether you become a sannyasin or a philanthropist or a patriot, first you must become a man. Vivekananda welcomed the manifestation of the Brahman in any form, be it in the strength of the sannyasin or in the power of the leader of men, in self-abnegation or in self-reliance.
3.2.02 - The Veda and the Upanishads, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
This picture of Vedic society [a completely pastoral life, without priests or warriors] could easily be challenged. The householder may have lit daily the fire on the household altar, but when he wanted to offer a sacrifice he did it with the aid of sacrificial priests who knew the ritual. Sometimes the Rishi himself performed the sacrifice for the householder. He was not a priest by profession, however, for he might have any occupation in the society. Besides, in a large sacrifice there were many versed in the Vedic rites who performed different functions. In the very first verse of the Rig Veda Agni is described as being himself the Purohit, the priest representative of the householder sacrificer, Yajamana, as the Ritwik, the one who saw to the arrangement of the rites, the Hota who invoked the Gods and gave the offering, and in other hymns he is spoken of as the priest of the purification, the priest of the lustration etc. All this has obviously an esoteric sense but it testifies to the habitual presence of a number of priests at any large sacrifice. So we cannot say that there were no priests in the Vedic age. There does not seem to have been any priestly caste until later times when the four castes came definitely into being. But the Brahmins were not predominantly priests but rather scholars and intellectuals with a religious authority derived from birth and from knowledge of the scriptures and the books of the social law, Shastra. The function of priesthood has never been highly honoured in India and it would therefore be incorrect to speak of priestcraft or any rule by priests or ecclesiastics at any time in Indian history.
As for the warriors, there are in the Rig Veda two or three hymns describing a great battle which the scholars declare to have been the fight of one king against ten allied kings, and besides that, the hymns are full of images of war and battle. These too have an esoteric meaning, but they indicate a state of things in which war and battle must have been frequent; so we cannot say that there were no warriors.
3.2.02 - Yoga and Skill in Works, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
OGA, says the Gita, is skill in works, and by this phrase the ancient scripture meant that the transformation of mind and being to which it gave the name of Yoga brought with it a perfect inner state and faculty out of which the right principle of action and the right spiritual and divine result of works emerged naturally like a tree out of its seed. Certainly, it did not mean that the clever general or politician or lawyer or shoemaker deserves the name of a Yogin; it did not mean that any kind of skill in works was Yoga, but by Yoga it signified a spiritual condition of universal equality and God-union and by the skill of the Yogic worker it intended a perfect adaptation of the soul and its instruments to the rhythm of the divine and universal Spirit in a nature liberated from the shackles of egoism and the limitations of the sense-mind.
Essentially, Yoga is a generic name for the processes and the result of processes by which we transcend or shred off our present modes of being and rise to a new, a higher, a wider mode of consciousness which is not that of the ordinary animal and intellectual man. Yoga is the exchange of an egoistic for a universal or cosmic consciousness lifted towards or informed by the supra-cosmic, transcendent Unnameable who is the source and support of all things. Yoga is the passage of the human thinking animal towards the God-consciousness from which he has descended. In that ascent we find many levels and stages, plateau after plateau of the hill whose summit touches the Truth of things; but at every stage the saying of the Gita applies in an ever higher degree. Even a little of this new law and inner order delivers the soul out of the great peril by which it had been
32.03 - In This Crisis, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
THAT the world has now pushed itself into the grip of a tremendous crisis admits of no doubt. And difficult it is to fathom the depth of deformation and depravity in which human nature and human society have sunk. The scriptures speak of the darkest days of Kaliwhen even the last traces of religion would be wiped out; man would become irreligious to the last degree; even in his stature he would shrink to a pigmy. Today's man seems certainly to have diminished to such an extent; his life and consciousness have greatly narrowed down; a drop of water is now his ocean. From what is happening all around one can justifiably say that the realities of Kalihave overpassed its original conception.
Man seeks worldly advancement and prosperity. That means extreme selfishness; there is nothing that this lure of self-aggrandisement cannot make man do without the least twinge of conscience; it means falsehood, pretence, cleverness, deceit, harshness, cruelty, rudeness, crookedness - all these seem to have become a universally approved state of things and accepted as the human way, as human temperament and human nature. If anyhow there occurs an exception anywhere to the general rule, it gives rise to surprise and suspicion.
33.10 - Pondicherry I, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Soon after Sri Aurobindo came, he realised that a firm seat must be established here, an unshakable foundation for his sadhana and siddhi,for the path and the goal. He was to build up on the ever-shifting sands of the shore a firm and strong edifice, a Temple of God. Have we not read in the Puranas and other scriptures that whenever and wherever a sage or a Rishi sat down to his meditation and sadhana, there rushed' upon him at once a host of evil spirits to break up his work? They seemed to have a special liking for Rishi's flesh.
Those who tried most to stop Sri Aurobindo from settling down and were ever on the alert to move him from his seat were the British authorities. The British Government in India could- never accept that Sri Aurobindo had come away to French territory for carrying on his yoga. Religion and spirituality, these to them were a mere subterfuge. They thought they knew what Sri Aurobindo was - the one most dangerous man in all India, the source of all the trouble. Pondicherry was the place from where were supplied the necessary instructions and advice and perhaps even the pistols and other weapons. Here was the brain-centre of the Indian independence movement. That Sri Aurobindo had been the mainspring of Indian independence they had been told by their life-instinct, although the superficial sense in which they understood it was not obviously the whole truth.
33.13 - My Professors, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
While speaking of my professors, I must not omit to mention our Pundit. This was a title given by the students to the teacher of Sanskrit in college as in school, no matter how big a professor he might be - as if to show that the feeling of distance created by English was not there in the case of Sanskrit. Our Pundit was Satischandra Vidyabhushan, who later became a Mahamahopadhyaya, an extremely courteous man, entirely modest, one who behaved as if he were an absolute "nobody". In his class the students had no fear or worry, no constraint, sometimes even no sense of propriety either. One day they said in class, "There is not going to be any reading today, sir; you had better tell us a story. You are familiar with the languages and histories and cultures of so many strange lands, please tell us something." Vidyabhushan was particularly learned in Pali and the Buddhist scriptures. Without a murmur he accepted the order of the boys. While talking of Pali and the Buddhists, he told us something about the Tibetans too. "What you call Darjeeling," he said, "is not a distorted version of Durjayalinga. Actually it is a transcription of a Tibetan word." He spelt out the word on the black-board, in the Tibetan script - it looked somewhat like Bengali - something like Dang-Sang-Ling, I cannot now exatly recall. On another occasion we had the chance to hear a conversation in Sanskrit in his class. The class was on, when one of the officials of the college entered the room with a Ceylonese monk. The monk wanted to meet the Pundit. They talked in Sanskrit. I only remember a single sentence of our professor, "ghatika-catustayam eva agacchatu bhavan,"Be pleased to come at four o'clock." The kindness and affection of our Pundit are still fresh in my mind. He was never afflicted by the weight of his learning, nor did it ever afflict us.
Now to conclude: let me give you the scene of my final. parting with college, the professors and college life.
33.14 - I Played Football, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I have dabbled in football almost since my birth or, to be more exact, from the time I barely completed five. My hand was introduced to the pen or chalk and my feet touched the ball practically at one and the same time. Would you believe it, I had my formal initiation into studies, not once but twice, and on both occasions it was performed with due ceremony on a Saraswati Puja day, as has been the custom with us. The first time it took place, I was only four years old and I cannot now tell you why it had to be at that early age. It may be that I had gone into tantrums on seeing somebody else's initiation and a mock ceremony had to be gone through just in order to keep me quiet. But I had to go through the ceremony once again at the age of five, for according to the scriptures one cannot be properly initiated at the age of four, so the earlier one had to be treated as cancelled and a fresh initiation given to make it truly valid. Perhaps this double process has had something to do with the solid base and the maturity of my learning!
But if I was to play football, I must at least get hold of a ball. Here you have your footballs by the dozen, as if they were tennis balls. But we had to move heaven and earth in those days in order to procure a single ball. Even the older boys could seldom boast of more than one, or at the most one and a half - one already half-worn and the other a mere half, an old tattered ball with a thousand patches like the shoes of Abu Salim in the story. But young people never lack devices. We discovered a substitute, the Indian grape-fruit or shaddock that looks like a ball. No doubt the touch was hard, but it could be reduced to a convenient softness with our kicks and blows and poundings with the fist. The only trouble was that the thing gave way soon afterwards on receiving such treatment. But this particular fruit was no rarity in our part of the country. There were any number of trees and it grew in profusion; there were several trees in our compound itself.
33.17 - Two Great Wars, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ideal now was to create a race of men endowed with the highest gifts of education and training - what in the view of the sages and mystics would be a race of god - men the transformation of man from the animal-state to that of the gods. But that was precisely what stirred the opposing Forces to action. They were to keep man distracted, lure him from the good path into evil ways, change him, not into a god but into a demon, a titan, a ghoul. (Goe the once had presented this picture.) That is how man got his notion of the super-race, and the notion took concrete shape among a particular people and some particular individuals. That is what lay behind the rise of Hitler and his Nazis in Germany. Stalin and his Bolsheviks appeared as their counterparts in Russia. Mussolini was their henchman, a "satellite" in modern parlance; Our Puranic scriptures tell of the ancient Shumbha and Nishumbha, Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu, Shishupala and Raktadanta, dual power of Evil defying the Divine Power. Something similar seemed to be happening again.
Here was precisely what lay behind the origins of the second Great War: the descent of Evil incarnate to bar the descent of the Divine Power.
3.4.1.01 - Poetry and Sadhana, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
My statement is perfectly clear and there is nothing in it against reason or common sense. The Word has powereven the ordinary written word has a power. If it is an inspired word it has still more power. What kind of power or power for what depends on the nature of the inspiration and the theme and the part of the being it touches. If it is the Word itself,as in certain utterances of the great scripturesVeda, Upanishads, Gita,it may well have a power to awaken a spiritual impulse, an uplifting, even certain kinds of realisation. To say that it cannot contradicts spiritual experience.
The Vedic poets regarded their poetry as mantras, they were the vehicles of their own realisations and could become vehicles of realisation for others. Naturally, these mostly would be illuminations, not the settled and permanent realisation that is the goal of Yoga but they could be steps on the way or at least lights on the way. Many have such illuminations, even initial realisations while meditating on verses of the Upanishads or the Gita. Anything that carries the Word, the Light in it, spoken or written, can light this fire within, open a sky, as it were, bring the effective vision of which the Word is the body. In all ages spiritual seekers have expressed their aspirations or their experiences in poetry or inspired language and it has helped themselves and others. Therefore there is nothing absurd in my assigning to such poetry a spiritual or psychic value and effectiveness to poetry of a psychic or spiritual character.
36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08, #unset, #Zen
WHAT is it that we call Veda? It is already known to us that the Vedas are the perennial fount of Indian culture and education, the foundation of Hinduism and the basis of the Aryan civilisation. He who defies Veda is an atheist, a non-Hindu, an untouchable and a non-Aryan. All the various religious systems and scriptures of the Hindus look upon the Veda as the sole authority. What is inconsistent with the Vedas is false and unacceptable. It is no hyperbole to say that all our scriptures are but elaborate commentaries on the Veda. Even men of revolutionary ideas who want to preach some new doctrines have not the courage to stand against the Vedas face to face. They try to find out passages in support of their views or interpret the Vedas in their own light or at least declare that the Vedas neither refute nor confirm their views.
Hinduism is the most catholic of all the religions. It is the most complex and diverse. It has housed peacefully a good many different creeds. And for all these esoteric mysteries the Vedas are solely to be credited. The message of the Vedic Rishi Dirghatamas has inspired the Hindus and the heart of India through aeons. That message is still as familiar and living as ever. Ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti (The one Truth has been expressed differently by different seers.) The Gayatri Mantra which has become as natural as the air we brea the in and brea the out was first sung by the immortal sage Viswamitra of the Veda. Even in the 20th century we follow the injunctions of the Vedic seers in conducting the ten principal functions of our social life right from our birth to death.
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Can we look upon the Vedas as the Christians look upon the Bible and the Mohammedans the Koran? All the epithets that we apply to the Vedas are equally applied by the Christians and the Mohammedans to their respective holy scriptures. And it is no wonder that every nation should extol its -own scripture to the skies. But it behoves us to ascertain the value of the Vedas impartially. We must discover whether it is true that they deserve to be called an infallible and supernatural creation.
It is a need of the hour to investigate the contents of the Vedas. The Europeans are to be credited with having started this bold enquiry. Such enquiry has been termed 'Higher Criticism' in Europe. It applies not only to the Vedas, but to their own scriptures as well. It is the inherent characteristic of the Europeans not to accept anything without putting it to a severe test at every step. They are not prepared to accept anything on the ground that it has been handed down from generation to generation. Needless to say that the value of such a habit is incalculable. And to our misfortune we lost this habit long ago. In the present age we take pride in the mere mention of the Vedas without caring to know about their contents. We should remain beholden to the Europeans that a new wave from the West has awakened us to a true spirit of enquiry.
It is quite surprising that very few people in India have any acquaintance with the Vedas. Most have not been fortunate enough even to have a glimpse of this mighty work. But the fate of the Bible has been otherwise in Europe. The common run of people in India were satisfied with the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas. And the learned few concerned themselves with the Upanishads and the six systems of philosophy. Even Rammohan Roy who infused the Hindus with a new spirit and light could not go beyond the domain of the Upanishads. Besides, the few who engaged themselves in a discussion of the Vedas confined themselves more to the commentaries on the Vedas than the Vedas proper. The grammar of Panini, Nirukta, the science of derivation of meanings from the roots, Mimamsa, the commentaries on the Vedas and, above all, the commentaries made by Sayana Acharya made it so difficult to understand the text of the Vedas that it looked like the peak of a mountain that could hardly be reached through deep and intricate forests. Whenever we heard the name of the Veda, we used to give wide berth to it with reverential awe. Our object here is not to discuss who or what is responsible for such a pass but simply to make a plain statement of the bare fact.
Europe made bold to launch an assault on this inaccessible fortress. There is no reason why the Europeans should have the same feeling of reverence as is aroused in our hearts at the mere mention of the Vedas. To them the Veda is but an ancient human product. They did not approach it to derive any cultural benefit from it. All that they wanted was to make themselves acquainted with the Aryan Hindus. The nebulous veil that existed round the Vedas was rent and set aside by them and they replaced it with the daylight of modern thought. We shall later on deal with what followed their rash attempt, but it must be admitted at the very outset that, inspired by their example, the Hindus mustered courage to delve into the Vedas. And what did the European scholars, freed from bias, discover? They found that the unusual reverence of the Hindus for these scriptures was simply due to the traditional superstition devoid of any rational cause. According to them, the Vedas are the first attempt of man at literature. They are a mere collection of pastoral songs comparable to the lispings of a baby. Man in his uncultured and innocent state used to feel every object infused with life and imagined spirits behind the forces Nature. Therefore he prayed to Indra and Varuna for rain, to the Sun for its rays of light. Frightened by the hurricane and storm he would implore the Maruts for safety, and harmed by the soothing beauty of Dawn he would sing her eulogy.
The gods and demons imagined by the naive and simple mind possessed miraculous powers prompted by such notions men used to convey their salutations to those mighty Beings, ask them for their daily necessities, material prosperity, and welfare in the other world after death. Cow and horses were the chief means of their livelihood. So they prayed for cows yielding abundant milk and horses possessing dynamic strength and energy. They used to fight among themselves one clan against another and specially against the robbers who were the Dravidians of ancient; India, while they were the Aryans who had come from abroad. Hence they needed arms and weapons and they naturally wanted to defeat the enemy. And that is why they sought the help of the gods for victory.
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So far we have dealt with the Western approach to the Veda. Now let us turn our attention to the Indian view of the Veda. Acharya Sayana is the foremost scholar to whom the current Indian view owes its origin. He made a commentary on the whole of the Rigveda. But for his commentary it is doubtful if the European scholars would have succeeded in deriving any meaning from the abstruse, old and unfamiliar language of this scripture. As a matter of fact, the commentaries made by the Western scholars are principally based on his commentary. However, he did not consider the Vedic seers to be mere children or men at their primitive stage. Nor did he lay any stress on the explanation based on the sights and scenes of physical Nature. He observed and understood the Veda from the standpoint of sacrificial rites. He endeavoured to discover from the Veda the nature of sacrifice and a full account of the ceremonies to be performed in a sacrifice. The performance of sacrifice is a part of the spiritual life and its aim is to bring about soul progress and welfare here and hereafter. The gods dwell in a world known as Heaven. The forces of Nature are backed by their powers. A particular god presides over a particular force of Nature. All the gods are combined in the Universal God, and all the gods are only the different manifestations of the same Universal God. It is the power of the gods which endows men with power, and men too on their part propitiate the gods through their sacrifices offered to them. The gods are satisfied with and nourished by men's humble obeisance and their offering of Soma Rasa, while men in their turn attain to prosperity in this world and secure a better status in the other world.
Indians, who have received modern education, have been trying to synthesise the commentaries of the Western and Eastern scholars on the Veda. Their object is to portray the picture of a society not quite primitive but somewhat primary, by uniting the interpretations based on natural phenomena and sacrificial rites.
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Not to speak of the Upanishads, even in the Puranas, the Mahabharata and such other scriptures we come across many peculiarities worth noticing. If we just carefully study these religious books of ours, we do learn that there are many names, places, stories and legends which are but outer garments or transfigurations of some truth-principles. One or two instances will serve our purpose. According to the Puranas the name of Surya's wife samja - "consciousness". If we accept the Vedic meaning of Surra as the source of truth, then it does not become difficult for us to understand the significance of this word. Again, let us take the word "Goloka". Goloka is the dwelling-place of Vishnu. If we take the word "go" for light, the light of supernal knowledge, then devanamuparistacca gavah prativasanti vai ("The Ray-Cows dwell even above the gods") of the Mahabharata can no longer remain abstruse or ambiguous to us.
Now the legend of Savitri-Satyavan arrests our attention. The very names Savitri and Satyavan are immediately inspiring truths. In the Vedas the Truth-Sun is synonymous with Savitr. As Purusha he is Satyavan, and Savitri is his Shakti. Every aspirant is aware of the fact that it is the Truth's own faith and power that can free the Truth from the grip of Matter, Ignorance and Death. However, one may not believe that whatsoever the Puranas say must be based on some truth or other. Nevertheless, we do not hesitate to assert that at the core of the teaching of the Puranas there lies a truth-secret - a Vedic or Upanishadic realisation. The Puranas too have an esoteric meaning based on the truth of the Vedic and Upanishadic realizations which have been colourfully related in the form of stories and legends for the easy comprehension of the masses.
3.7.1.07 - Involution and Evolution, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
institution of the physical method which he has detected in its minute workings, but is blind to the miracle each step involves or content to lose the sense of it in the satisfied observation of a vast ordered phenomenon. But always the marvel of the thing remains, one with the inexplicable wonder of all existence, - even as it is said in the ancient scripture, ascaryavat pasyati kascid enam, ascaryavad vadati tathaiva canyah.; ascaryavac cainam anyah. sr.n.oti, srutvapyenam veda na caiva kascit.
"One looks on it and sees a miracle, another speaks of it as a miracle, as a miracle another hears of it, but what it is, for all the hearing, none knoweth." We know that an evolution there is, but not what evolution is; that remains still one of the initial mysteries of Nature.
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The spiritual process of evolution is then in some sense a creation, but a self-creation, not a making of what never was, but a bringing out of what was implicit in the Being. The Sanskrit word for creation signifies a loosing forth, a letting out into the workings of Nature. The Upanishad in a telling figure applies the image of the spider which brings its web out of itself and creates the structure in which it takes its station. That is applied in the ancient scripture not to the evolution of things out of Matter, but to an original bringing of temporal becoming out of the eternal infinity; Matter itself and this material universe are only such a web or indeed no more than a part of it brought out from the spiritual being of the Infinite. But the same truth, the same law holds good of all that we see of the emergence of things from
Involution and Evolution
3.8.1.05 - Occult Knowledge and the Hindu Scriptures, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
object:3.8.1.05 - Occult Knowledge and the Hindu scriptures
author class:Sri Aurobindo
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Occult Knowledge and the Hindu scriptures
Are any of the following queries touched in Sanatan Dharma books of philosophy?
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The first three questions are of a curious interest, the last two cover a very wide field. All except the fourth belong more or less to a kind of knowledge pursued with eager interest by a growing number of inquirers, but still looked on askance by the human mind in general, - the occult sciences. The Hindu scriptures and books of philosophy do not as a rule handle such questions very directly or in any systematic fashion. They are concerned either with the great and central questions which have always occupied the human mind, the origin and nature of the universe, the why, whence and whither of life, the highest good and the means of attaining it, the nature of man and the destiny of the human soul and its relation with the Supreme, or else they deal with the regulation of ethics, society and the conduct of daily life. Occult knowledge has been left to be acquired by occult teaching. Nevertheless it was possessed by the ancient sages and our correspondent will find a great deal of more or less scattered information on these and cognate questions in the Veda, Upanishads and Puranas. But it is doubtful whether he would obtain a satisfactory answer to his queries in the form in which he has put them. He will find for instance a long description of invisible
452
3 - Commentaries and Annotated Translations, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
the scriptures ever since the later half of the Dwapara Yuga; but
originally and in the age of Madhuchchhanda it had no shade
--
ideas of a later mentality into this exceedingly ancient scripture.
We must start from and rely on the Veda to interpret the Veda.
--
Nature-worship or a scripture of the seers and mystics.
Mandala Four
4.02 - The Integral Perfection, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The mundane perfection is sometimes conceived of as something outward, social, a thing of action, a more rational dealing with our fellow-men and our environment, a better and more efficient citizenship and discharge of duties, a better, richer, kindlier and happier way of living, with a more just and more harmonious associated enjoyment of the opportunities of existence. By others again a more inner and subjective ideal is cherished, a clarifying and raising of the intelligence, will and reason, a heightening and ordering of power and capacity in the nature, a nobler ethical, a richer aesthetic, a finer emotional, a much healthier and better-governed vital and physical being. Sometimes one element is stressed, almost to the exclusion of the rest; sometimes, in wider and more well-balanced minds, the whole harmony is envisaged as a total perfection. A change of education and social institutions is the outward means adopted or an inner self-training and development is preferred as the true instrumentation. Or the two aims may be clearly united, the perfection of the inner individual, the perfection of the outer living. But the mundane aim takes for its field the present life and its opportunities; the religious aim, on the contrary, fixes before it the self-preparation for another existence after death, its commonest ideal is some kind of pure sainthood, its means a conversion of the imperfect or sinful human being by divine grace or through obedience to a law laid down by a scripture or else given by a religious founder. The aim of religion may include a social change, but it is then a change brought about by the acceptance of a common religious ideal and way of consecrated living, a brotherhood of the saints, a theocracy or kingdom of God reflecting on earth the kingdom of heaven.
The object of our synthetic Yoga must, in this respect too as in its other parts, be more integral and comprehensive, embrace all these elements or these tendencies of a larger impulse of self-perfection and harmonise them or rather unify, and in order to do that successfully it must seize on a truth which is wider than the ordinary religious and higher than the mundane principle. All life is a secret Yoga, an obscure growth of Nature towards the discovery and fulfilment of the divine principle hidden in her which becomes progressively less obscure, more self-conscient and luminous, more self-possessed in the human being by the opening of all his instruments of knowledge, will, action, life to the Spirit within him and in the world. Mind, life, body, all the forms of our nature are the means of this growth, but they find their last perfection only by opening out to something beyond them, first, because they are not the whole of what man is, secondly, because that other something which he is, is the key of his completeness and brings a light which discovers to him the whole high and large reality of his being.
4.04 - THE REGENERATION OF THE KING, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
The Son of the great World [Macrocosm] who is Theocosmos, i.e., a divine power and world (but whom even today, unfortunately, many who teach nature in a pagan spirit and many builders of medical science reject in the high university schools), is the exemplar of the stone which is Theanthropos, i.e., God and man (whom, as scripture tells us, the builders of the Church have also rejected); and from the same, in and from the Great World Book of Nature, [there issues] a continuous and everlasting doctrine for the wise and their children: indeed, it is a splendid living likeness of our Saviour Jesus Christ, in and from the Great World which by nature is very similar to him (as to miraculous conception, birth, inexpressible powers, virtues, and effects); so God our Lord, besides his Sons Biblical histories, has also created a specific image and natural representation for us in the Book of Nature.270
[461] These few examples, together with those already quoted in Psychology and Alchemy, may give the reader some idea of the way in which the alchemists conceived the triumphant king.
4.18 - Faith and shakti, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The faith demanded of us both in its general principle and its constant particular application amounts to a large and ever increasing and a constantly purer, fuller and stronger assent of the whole being and all its parts to the presence and guidance of God and the shakti. The faith in the shakti, as long as we are not aware of and filled with her presence, must necessarily be preceded or at least accompanied by a firm and virile faith in our own spiritual will and energy and our power to move successfully towards unity and freedom and perfection. Man is given faith in himself, his ideas and his powers that he may work and create and rise to greater things and in the end bring his strength as a worthy offering to the altar of the Spirit. This spirit, says the scripture, is not to be won by the weak, nayam atma balahinena labhyah. All paralysing self-distrust has to be discouraged, all doubt of our strength to accomplish, for that is a false assent to impotence, an imagination of weakness and a denial of the omnipotence of the spirit. A present incapacity, however heavy may seem its pressure, is only a trial of faith and a temporary difficulty and to yield to the sense of inability is for the seeker of the integral Yoga a non-sense, for his object is a development of a perfection that is there already, latent in the being, because man carries the seed of the divine life in himself, in his own spirit, the possibility of success is involved and implied in the effort and victory is assured because behind is the call and guidance of an omnipotent power. At the same time this faith in oneself must be purified from all touch of rajasic egoism and spiritual pride. The Sadhaka should keep as much as possible in his mind the idea that his strength is not his own in the egoistic sense but that of the divine universal shakti and whatever is egoistic in his use of it must be a cause of limitation and in the end an obstacle. The power of the divine universal shakti which is behind our aspiration is illimitable, and when it is rightly called upon it cannot fail to pour itself into us and to remove whatever incapacity and obstacle, now or later; for the times and durations of our struggle while they depend at first, instrumentally and in part, on the strength of our faith and our endeavour, are yet eventually in the hands of the wisely determining secret Spirit, alone the Master of the Yoga, the Ishwara.
The faith in the divine shakti must be always at the back of our strength and when she becomes manifest, it must be or grow implicit and complete. There is nothing that is impossible to her who is the conscious Power and universal Goddess all-creative from eternity and armed with the Spirit's omnipotence. All knowledge, all strengths, all triumph and victory, all skill and works are in her hands and they are full of the treasures of the Spirit and of all perfections and siddhis. She is Maheshwari, goddess of the supreme knowledge, and brings to us her vision for all kinds and widenesses of truth, her rectitude of the spiritual will, the calm and passion of her supramental largeness, her felicity of illumination; she is Mahakali, goddess of the supreme strength, and with her are all mights and spiritual force and severest austerity of Tapas and swiftness to the battle and the victory and the laughter, the atthasya, that makes light of defeat and death and the powers of the ignorance: she is Mahalakshmi, the goddess of the supreme love and delight, and her gifts are the spirit's grace and the charm and beauty of the Ananda and protection and every divine and human blessing: she is Mahasaraswati, the goddess of divine skill and of the works of the Spirit, and hers is the Yoga that is skill in works, yogah karmasu kausalam, and the utilities of divine knowledge and the self-application of the spirit to life and the happiness of its harmonies. And in all her powers and forms she carries with her the supreme sense of the masteries of the eternal Ishwari, a rapid and divine capacity for all kinds of action that may be demanded from the instrument, oneness, a participating sympathy, a free identity, with all energies in all beings and therefore a spontaneous and fruitful harmony with all the divine will in the universe. The intimate feeling of her presence and her powers and the satisfied assent of all our being to her workings in and around it is the last perfection of faith in the shakti.
4.1 - Jnana, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
96. Experience in thy soul the truth of the scripture; afterwards, if thou wilt, reason & state thy experience intellectually
& even then distrust thy statement; but distrust never thy experience.
--
98. Revelation is the direct sight, the direct hearing or the inspired memory of Truth, drishti, sruti, smriti; it is the highest experience and always accessible to renewed experience. Not because God spoke it, but because the soul saw it, is the word of the scriptures our supreme authority.
99. The word of scripture is infallible; it is in the interpretation the heart and reason put upon the scripture that error has her portion.
100. Shun all lowness, narrowness & shallowness in religious thought & experience. Be wider than the widest horizons, be loftier than the highest Kanchenjunga, be profounder than the deepest oceans.
--
180. There are lesser & larger eternities, for eternity is a term of the soul & can exist in Time as well as exceeding it. When the scriptures say "saswatih samah", they mean for a long space
& permanence of time or a hardly measurable aeon; only God
4.3 - Bhakti, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
481. The seeker after divine knowledge finds in the description of Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis one of the deepest parables of God's ways with the soul, the devotee a perfect rendering in divine act of his heart's mystic experiences, the prurient & the Puritan (two faces of one temperament) only a lustful story. Men bring what they have in themselves and see it reflected in the scripture.
482. My lover took away my robe of sin and I let it fall, rejoicing; then he plucked at my robe of virtue, but I was ashamed and alarmed and prevented him. It was not till he wrested it from me by force that I saw how my soul had been hidden from me.
5.1.03 - The Hostile Forces and Hostile Beings, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
There are two kinds of Asuras - one kind were divine in their origin but have fallen from their divinity by self-will and opposition to the intention of the Divine: they are spoken of in the Hindu scriptures as the former or earlier gods; these can be converted and their conversion is indeed necessary for the ultimate purposes of the universe. But the ordinary Asura is not of this character, is not an evolutionary but a typal being and represents a fixed principle of the creation which does not evolve or change and is not intended to do so. These Asuras, as also the other hostile beings, Rakshasas, Pisachas and others resemble the devils of the Christian tradition and oppose the divine intention and the evolutionary purpose in the human being; they don't change the purpose in them for which they exist which is evil, but have to be destroyed like the evil. The
Asura has no soul, no psychic being which has to evolve to a higher state; he has only an ego and usually a very powerful ego; he has a mind, sometimes even a highly intellectualised mind; but the basis of his thinking and feeling is vital and not mental, at the service of his desire and not of truth. He is a formation assumed by the life-principle for a particular kind of work and not a divine formation or a soul.
--
Devil quoting scripture for his own purpose.
At present what they are most doing is to try to raise up the obscurity and weakness of the most physical mind, vital, material parts to prevent the progress or fulfilment of the sadhana.
6.01 - THE ALCHEMICAL VIEW OF THE UNION OF OPPOSITES, #Mysterium Coniunctionis, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
[668] I have just said that symbols are tendencies whose goal is as yet unknown.54 We may assume that the same fundamental rules obtain in the history of the human mind as in the psychology of the individual. In psycho therapy it often happens that, long before they reach consciousness, certain unconscious tendencies betray their presence by symbols, occurring mostly in dreams but also in waking fantasies and symbolic actions. Often we have the impression that the unconscious is trying to enter consciousness by means of all sorts of allusions and analogies, or that it is making more or less playful attempts to attract attention to itself. One can observe these phenomena very easily in a dream-series. The series I discussed in Psychology and Alchemy offers a good example.55 Ideas develop from seeds, and we do not know what ideas will develop from what seeds in the course of history. The Assumption of the Virgin, for instance, is vouched for neither in scripture nor in the tradition of the first five centuries of the Christian Church. For a long time it was officially denied even, but, with the connivance of the whole medieval and modern Church, it gradually developed as a pious opinion and gained so much power and influence that it finally succeeded in thrusting aside the necessity for scriptural proof and for a tradition going back to primitive times, and in attaining definition in spite of the fact that the content of the dogma is not even definable.56 The papal declaration made a reality of what had long been condoned. This irrevocable step beyond the confines of historical Christianity is the strongest proof of the autonomy of archetypal images.
6.0 - Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
has moods, as also the scripture says: A fool is changed as the
moon. . . . 180 God, therefore, is unchangeable, and is called
--
Rig-Veda. See: Hindu scriptures. Edited by Nicol MacNicol. (Every-
man's Library.) London and New York, 1938. See also Deussen.
7 - Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
and seers, all religions and spiritual disciplines, scriptures
and philosophies have spoken about it at length. All
9.99 - Glossary, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Bhagavad Gita: The well-known Hindu scripture.
Bhagavan: (Lit., One endowed with the six attributes, viz. infinite treasures, strength, glory, splendour knowledge, and renunciation) An epithet of the Godhead; also the Personal God of the devotee.
--
karmayoga: (Lit., union with God through action) The path by which the aspirant seeks to realize God through work without attachment; also the ritualistic worship prescribed in the scriptures for realizing God.
Kama: A hero of the Mahabharata.
--
Narada Pancharatra: A scripture of the Bhakti cult.
Naralila: God manifesting Himself as man.
--
sastra: scripture; sacred book; code of laws.
Sat: Reality, Being.
--
Tantra: A system of religious philosophy in which the Divine Mother, or Power, is the Ultimate Reality; also the scriptures dealing with this philosophy.
Tantrik: A follower of Tantra; also, pertaining to Tantra.
--
Upanishad(s): The well-known scriptures of the Hindus.
upasana: Worship.
--
vaidhi-bhakti: Devotion to God associated with rites and ceremonies prescribed in the scriptures.
Vaidyanath: A holy place in Behar.
--
Veda(s): The most sacred scriptures of the Hindus.
vichara: Reasoning.
BOOK I. - Augustine censures the pagans, who attributed the calamities of the world, and especially the sack of Rome by the Goths, to the Christian religion and its prohibition of the worship of the gods, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
The glorious city of God is my theme in this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus,[25] suggested, and which is due to you by my promise. I have undertaken its defence against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city,a city surpassingly glorious, whether we view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell in the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now with patience waits for, expecting until "righteousness shall return unto judgment,"[26] and it obtain, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace. A great work this, and an arduous; but God is my helper. For I am aware what ability is requisite to persuade the proud how great is the virtue of humility, which raises us, not by a quite human arrogance, but by a divine grace, above all earthly dignities that totter on this shifting scene. For the King and Founder[Pg 2] of this city of which we speak, has in scripture uttered to His people a dictum of the divine law in these words: "God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble."[27] But this, which is God's prerogative, the inflated ambition of a proud spirit also affects, and dearly loves that this be numbered among its attri butes, to
"Show pity to the humbled soul, And crush the sons of pride."[28]
--
But, say they, many Christians were even led away captive. This indeed were a most pitiable fate, if they could be led away to any place where they could not find their God. But for this calamity also sacred scripture affords great consolation. The three youths[68] were captives; Daniel was a captive; so were other prophets: and God, the comforter, did not fail them. And in like manner He has not failed His own people in the power of a nation which, though barbarous, is yet human,He who did not abandon the prophet[69] in the belly of a monster. These things, indeed, are turned to ridicule rather than credited by those with whom we are debating; though they believe what they read in their own books, that Arion of Methymna, the famous lyrist,[70] when he was thrown overboard, was received on a dolphin's back and carried to land. But that story of ours about the prophet Jonah is far more incredible,more incredible because more marvellous, and more marvellous because a greater exhibition of power.
15. Of Regulus, in whom we have an example of the voluntary endurance of captivity for the sake of religion; which yet did not profit him, though he was a worshipper of the gods.
BOOK II. - A review of the calamities suffered by the Romans before the time of Christ, showing that their gods had plunged them into corruption and vice, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
This is the confession of Cicero, long indeed after the death of Africanus, whom he introduced as an interlocutor in his work De Republica, but still before the coming of Christ. Yet, if the disasters he bewails had been lamented after the Christian religion had been diffused, and had begun to prevail, is there a man of our adversaries who would not have thought that they were to be imputed to the Christians? Why, then, did their gods not take steps then to prevent the decay and extinction of that republic, over the loss of which Cicero, long before Christ had come in the flesh, sings so lugubrious a dirge? Its admirers have need to inquire whether, even in the days of primitive men and morals, true justice flourished in it; or was it not perhaps even then, to use the casual expression of Cicero, rather a coloured painting than the living reality? But, if God will, we shall consider this elsewhere. For I mean in its own place to show thataccording to the definitions in which Cicero himself, using Scipio as his mouthpiece, briefly propounded what a republic is, and what a people is, and according to many testimonies, both of his own lips and of those who took part in that same debateRome never was a republic, because true justice had never a place in it. But accepting the more feasible definitions of a republic, I grant there was a republic of a certain kind, and certainly much better administered by the more ancient Romans than by their modern representatives. But the fact is, true justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ, if at least any choose to call this a republic; and indeed we cannot deny that it is the people's weal. But if perchance this name, which has become familiar in other connections, be considered alien to our common parlance, we may at all events say that in this city is true justice; the city of which Holy scripture says, "Glorious things are said of thee, O city of God."
22. That the Roman gods never took any steps to prevent the republic from being ruined by immorality.
--
It is certain that Syllawhose rule was so cruel, that, in comparison with it, the preceding state of things which he came to avenge was regrettedwhen first he advanced towards Rome to give battle to Marius, found the auspices so favourable when he sacrificed, that, according to Livy's account, the augur Postumius expressed his willingness to lose his head if Sylla did not, with the help of the gods, accomplish what he designed. The gods, you see, had not departed from "every fane and sacred shrine," since they were still predicting the issue of these affairs, and yet were taking no steps to correct Sylla himself. Their presages promised him great prosperity, but[Pg 82] no threatenings of theirs subdued his evil passions. And then, when he was in Asia conducting the war against Mithridates, a message from Jupiter was delivered to him by Lucius Titius, to the effect that he would conquer Mithridates; and so it came to pass. And afterwards, when he was meditating a return to Rome for the purpose of avenging in the blood of the citizens injuries done to himself and his friends, a second message from Jupiter was delivered to him by a soldier of the sixth legion, to the effect that it was he who had predicted the victory over Mithridates, and that now he promised to give him power to recover the republic from his enemies, though with great bloodshed. Sylla at once inquired of the soldier what form had appeared to him; and, on his reply, recognised that it was the same as Jupiter had formerly employed to convey to him the assurance regarding the victory over Mithridates. How, then, can the gods be justified in this matter for the care they took to predict these shadowy successes, and for their negligence in correcting Sylla, and restraining him from stirring up a civil war so lamentable and atrocious, that it not merely disfigured, but extinguished, the republic? The truth is, as I have often said, and as scripture informs us, and as the facts themselves sufficiently indicate, the demons are found to look after their own ends only, that they may be regarded and worshipped as gods, and that men may be induced to offer to them a worship which associates them with their crimes, and involves them in one common wickedness and judgment of God.
Afterwards, when Sylla had come to Tarentum, and had sacrificed there, he saw on the head of the victim's liver the likeness of a golden crown. Thereupon the same soothsayer Postumius interpreted this to signify a signal victory, and ordered that he only should eat of the entrails. A little afterwards, the slave of a certain Lucius Pontius cried out, "I am Bellona's messenger; the victory is yours, Sylla!" Then he added that the Capitol should be burned. As soon as he had uttered this prediction he left the camp, but returned the following day more excited than ever, and shouted, "The Capitol is fired!" And fired indeed it was. This it was easy for a demon both to foresee and quickly to announce. But observe,[Pg 83] as relevant to our subject, what kind of gods they are under whom these men desire to live, who blaspheme the Saviour that delivers the wills of the faithful from the dominion of devils. The man cried out in prophetic rapture, "The victory is yours, Sylla!" And to certify that he spoke by a divine spirit, he predicted also an event which was shortly to happen, and which indeed did fall out, in a place from which he in whom this spirit was speaking was far distant. But he never cried, Forbear thy villanies, Sylla!the villanies which were committed at Rome by that victor to whom a golden crown on the calf's liver had been shown as the divine evidence of his victory. If such signs as this were customarily sent by just gods, and not by wicked demons, then certainly the entrails he consulted should rather have given Sylla intimation of the cruel disasters that were to befall the city and himself. For that victory was not so conducive to his exaltation to power, as it was fatal to his ambition; for by it he became so insatiable in his desires, and was rendered so arrogant and reckless by prosperity, that he may be said rather to have inflicted a moral destruction on himself than corporal destruction on his enemies. But these truly woful and deplorable calamities the gods gave him no previous hint of, neither by entrails, augury, dream, nor prediction. For they feared his amendment more than his defeat. Yea, they took good care that this glorious conqueror of his own fellow-citizens should be conquered and led captive by his own infamous vices, and should thus be the more submissive slave of the demons themselves.
--
Seeing that this is so,seeing that the filthy and cruel deeds, the disgraceful and criminal actions of the gods, whether real or feigned, were at their own request published, and were consecrated, and dedicated in their honour as sacred and stated solemnities; seeing they vowed vengeance on those who refused to exhibit them to the eyes of all, that they might be proposed as deeds worthy of imitation, why is it that these same demons, who, by taking pleasure in such obscenities, acknowledge themselves to be unclean spirits, and by delighting in their own villanies and iniquities, real or imaginary, and by requesting from the immodest, and extorting from the modest, the celebration of these licentious acts, proclaim themselves instigators to a criminal and lewd life;why, I ask, are they represented as giving some good moral precepts to a few of their own elect, initiated in the secrecy of their shrines? If[Pg 86] it be so, this very thing only serves further to demonstrate the malicious craft of these pestilent spirits. For so great is the influence of probity and chastity, that all men, or almost all men, are moved by the praise of these virtues; nor is any man so depraved by vice, but he hath some feeling of honour left in him. So that, unless the devil sometimes transformed himself, as scripture says, into an angel of light,[110] he could not compass his deceitful purpose. Accordingly, in public, a bold impurity fills the ear of the people with noisy clamour; in private, a feigned chastity speaks in scarce audible whispers to a few: an open stage is provided for shameful things, but on the praiseworthy the curtain falls: grace hides, disgrace flaunts: a wicked deed draws an overflowing house, a virtuous speech finds scarce a hearer, as though purity were to be blushed at, impurity boasted of. Where else can such confusion reign, but in devils' temples? Where, but in the haunts of deceit? For the secret precepts are given as a sop to the virtuous, who are few in number; the wicked examples are exhibited to encourage the vicious, who are countless.
Where and when those initiated in the mysteries of Clestis received any good instructions, we know not. What we do know is, that before her shrine, in which her image is set, and amidst a vast crowd gathering from all quarters, and standing closely packed together, we were intensely interested spectators of the games which were going on, and saw, as we pleased to turn the eye, on this side a grand display of harlots, on the other the virgin goddess: we saw this virgin worshipped with prayer and with obscene rites. There we saw no shamefaced mimes, no actress overburdened with modesty: all that the obscene rites demanded was fully complied with. We were plainly shown what was pleasing to the virgin deity, and the matron who witnessed the spectacle returned home from the temple a wiser woman. Some, indeed, of the more prudent women turned their faces from the immodest movements of the players, and learned the art of wickedness by a furtive regard. For they were restrained, by the modest demeanour due to men, from looking boldly at the immodest gestures; but much more were they restrained from condemning with chaste[Pg 87] heart the sacred rites of her whom they adored. And yet this licentiousnesswhich, if practised in one's home, could only be done there in secretwas practised as a public lesson in the temple; and if any modesty remained in men, it was occupied in marvelling that wickedness which men could not unrestrainedly commit should be part of the religious teaching of the gods, and that to omit its exhibition should incur the anger of the gods. What spirit can that be, which by a hidden inspiration stirs men's corruption, and goads them to adultery, and feeds on the full-fledged iniquity, unless it be the same that finds pleasure in such religious ceremonies, sets in the temples images of devils, and loves to see in play the images of vices; that whispers in secret some righteous sayings to deceive the few who are good, and scatters in public invitations to profligacy, to gain possession of the millions who are wicked?
--
They, then, are but abandoned and ungrateful wretches, in deep and fast bondage to that malign spirit, who complain and murmur that men are rescued by the name of Christ from the hellish thraldom of these unclean spirits, and from a participation in their punishment, and are brought out of the night of pestilential ungodliness into the light of most healthful piety. Only such men could murmur that the masses flock to the churches and their chaste acts of worship, where a seemly separation of the sexes is observed; where they learn how they may so spend this earthly life, as to merit a blessed eternity hereafter; where Holy scripture and instruction in righteousness are proclaimed from a raised platform in presence of all, that both they who do the word may hear to their salvation, and they who do it not may hear to judgment. And though some enter who scoff at such precepts, all their petulance is either quenched by a sudden change, or is restrained through fear or shame. For no filthy and wicked action is there set forth to be gazed at or to be imitated; but either the precepts of the true God are recommended, His miracles narrated, His gifts praised, or His benefits implored.
[Pg 89]
BOOK III. - The external calamities of Rome, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But whether Venus could bear neas to a human father Anchises, or Mars beget Romulus of the daughter of Numitor,[Pg 95] we leave as unsettled questions. For our own scriptures suggest the very similar question, whether the fallen angels had sexual intercourse with the daughters of men, by which the earth was at that time filled with giants, that is, with enormously large and strong men. At present, then, I will limit my discussion to this dilemma: If that which their books relate about the mother of neas and the father of Romulus be true, how can the gods be displeased with men for adulteries which, when committed by themselves, excite no displeasure? If it is false, not even in this case can the gods be angry that men should really commit adulteries, which, even when falsely attributed to the gods, they delight in. Moreover, if the adultery of Mars be discredited, that Venus also may be freed from the imputation, then the mother of Romulus is left unshielded by the pretext of a divine seduction. For Sylvia was a vestal priestess, and the gods ought to avenge this sacrilege on the Romans with greater severity than Paris' adultery on the Trojans. For even the Romans themselves in primitive times used to go so far as to bury alive any vestal who was detected in adultery, while women unconsecrated, though they were punished, were never punished with death for that crime; and thus they more earnestly vindicated the purity of shrines they esteemed divine, than of the human bed.
6. That the gods exacted no penalty for the fratricidal act of Romulus.
--
This vice of restless ambition was the sole motive to that social and parricidal war,a vice which Sallust brands in passing; for when he has spoken with brief but hearty commendation of those primitive times in which life was spent without covetousness, and every one was sufficiently satisfied with what he had, he goes on: "But after Cyrus in Asia, and the Lacedemonians and Athenians in Greece, began to subdue cities and nations, and to account the lust of sovereignty a sufficient ground for war, and to reckon that the greatest glory[Pg 107] consisted in the greatest empire;"[139] and so on, as I need not now quote. This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race with frightful ills. By this lust Rome was overcome when she triumphed over Alba, and praising her own crime, called it glory. For, as our scriptures say, "the wicked boasteth of his heart's desire, and blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth."[140] Away, then, with these deceitful masks, these deluding whitewashes, that things may be truthfully seen and scrutinized. Let no man tell me that this and the other was a "great" man, because he fought and conquered so and so. Gladiators fight and conquer, and this barbarism has its meed of praise; but I think it were better to take the consequences of any sloth, than to seek the glory won by such arms. And if two gladiators entered the arena to fight, one being father, the other his son, who would endure such a spectacle? who would not be revolted by it? How, then, could that be a glorious war which a daughter-state waged against its mother? Or did it constitute a difference, that the battlefield was not an arena, and that the wide plains were filled with the carcases not of two gladiators, but of many of the flower of two nations; and that those contests were viewed not by the amphitheatre, but by the whole world, and furnished a profane spectacle both to those alive at the time, and to their posterity, so long as the fame of it is handed down?
Yet those gods, guardians of the Roman empire, and, as it were, theatric spectators of such contests as these, were not satisfied until the sister of the Horatii was added by her brother's sword as a third victim from the Roman side, so that Rome herself, though she won the day, should have as many deaths to mourn. Afterwards, as a fruit of the victory, Alba was destroyed, though it was there the Trojan gods had formed a third asylum after Ilium had been sacked by the Greeks, and after they had left Lavinium, where neas had founded a kingdom in a land of banishment. But probably Alba was destroyed because from it too the gods had migrated, in their usual fashion, as Virgil says:
BOOK II. -- PART I. ANTHROPOGENESIS., #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
antiquity of the Zoroastrian scriptures. The Neo-Aryans of the post-diluvian age could, of course,
hardly recognise the mountains, on the summits of which their forefa thers had met before the Flood,
--
instructed mankind in its early youth, appear in every scripture, in that of the Zoroastrians as much as
in the Hindu Gospels. Ormazd, or Ahura-Mazda, the "Lord of Wisdom," is the synthesis of the
--
have demonstrated that the Brahmanas and Puranas, the Yathas and other Mazdean scriptures,
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 410 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
BOOK II. -- PART III. ADDENDA. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
terrible anthropomorphic and phallic element in the old scriptures -- especially in the orthodox
Christian Bible -- nevertheless, there may be two extenuating circumstances in the case. Firstly, all
--
old scripture having in its origin borrowed its facts from the East, it has been subjected to constant
alterations by friend and foe, until of the original version there remained but the name, a dead shell
--
profit, and ask ourselves what were the "Worlds" spoken of in all the ancient scriptures of Humanity,
with some hope of at least asking an intelligible question. But how do we know (a) what kind of
--
that pre-historic palaeontology and archaeology may, without any harm to the scriptures, discover in
the tertiary beds . . . . . the traces of pre-adamite man as much as they like. "Since it disregards all
--
hardly comprehend now that which they read in their scriptures. See what Seneca says in Epistle 9,
and Quaest. Nat. III., c., ult.: "The world being melted and having re-entered the bosom of Jupiter, this
--
who have lost the key to the meaning of their scriptures. In the Avesta the earth is considered
septempartite and tripartite at one and the same time. This is regarded by Dr. Geiger, as an incongruity,
--
"septempartite earth." (Bumi haptaiti, Yasna, xxxii., 3.) For, "according to the Parsee scriptures, the
seven Karshvars are to be considered as completely disconnected parts of the earth," which they
--
abounding in the Mazdean scriptures. One of such "incongruities" and "coincidences" concerns the
similarity of the Zoroastrian with the Indian tenet with regard to the seven Dwipas (islands, or
--
when giving details on those giants which are not to be found in the Jewish scriptures. He says that the
Hyperboreans were of the race of the Titans, which race descended from the earliest giants, and that it
BOOK II. -- PART II. THE ARCHAIC SYMBOLISM OF THE WORLD-RELIGIONS, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
------- ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY scripture ... 449
-----XVI. ADAM-ADAMI ... 452
--
about its internal or esoteric meaning, beyond the correct inference of Barth, that this scripture has
been compiled by INITIATES?
--
If, therefore, Renan persists in regarding the Chaldean scriptures -- or what remains of them -- as
apocryphal, it is quite immaterial to truth and fact. There are other Orientalists who may be of a
--
that killed out all spirituality from the body of their symbols; leaving only their scriptures -- a dead
shell, from which the Soul has departed.
--
Zoharic system by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol never quoted from the scriptures to enforce the teachings
(vide I. Myer's Qabbalah, p. 7). Moses de Leon has made of the Zohar that which it has remained to
--
PRETENDING TO INSPIRATION, from the scriptures of the Brahmins, and even from the Koran, in
their strong and frequent recommendation of TRUTH (! !). . . ."
--
Enoch and the authors of N.T. scripture, . . . clearly indicates that the work of the Semitic Milton was
the inexhaustible source from which Evangelists and Apostles, or the men who wrote in their names,
--
but, in its turn, a copy of some scripture of a prehistoric religion. . . . . "In the Krita age, Vishnu, in the
form of Kapila and other (inspired sages) . . . imparts to the world true wisdom as Enoch did. In the
--
of the Ramayana, as of every other scripture, this is only one -- the metaphysical.
The symbol of the "Tree" standing for various Initiates was almost universal. Jesus is called "the tree
--
impudent were the modern translators of Bibles and scriptures and so damaging are these verses, that,
following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each translator rendered these
--
the explanation from the Hindu scriptures just given. . . . "And no name is more excellent than all
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd2-2-10.htm (6 von 10) [06.05.2003 03:36:59]
--
perpetual recurrence of this truly mystic number in every scripture known to the Orientalists. As every
religion, from the oldest to the latest, claims its presence, and explains it on its own grounds agreeably
--
We may now examine other ancient scriptures and see whether they contain the septenary
classification, and, if so, to what degree.
--
Furthermore, it is not only in the Hindu scriptures and philosophy that one finds references to the
Seven Earths, but in the Persian, Phoenician, Chaldean, and Egyptian Cosmogonies, and even in
--
There is most assuredly an occult "chronological system in Hebrew scripture" -- the Kabala being its
warrant; there is in it "a system of
--
be found in the archaic doctrine. And if this common source of the chronology in every scripture,
however veiled, is denied in the case of the Bible, then the six days, and a Sabbath, the seventh, can
BOOK I. -- PART I. COSMIC EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
in this work is to be found scattered throughout thousands of volumes embodying the scriptures of the
great Asiatic and early European religions, hidden under glyph and symbol, and hitherto left
--
ESOTERIC TENETS CORROBORATED IN EVERY scripture ... 449
------ XVI. ADAM-ADAMI ... 452
--
all. His great work, however, the heart of his doctrine, the "Tao-te-King," or the sacred scriptures of
the Taosse, has in it, as Stanislas Julien shows, only "about 5,000 words" (Tao-te-King, p. xxvii.),
--
If one turns to the ancient literature of the Semitic religions, to the Chaldean scriptures, the elder sister
and instructress, if not the fountain-head of the Mosaic Bible, the basis and starting-point of
--
of resemblance -- almost of identity -- between the Jewish and the Chaldean scriptures,* made the
latter most dangerous to Eusebius, in his role of defender and champion of the new faith which had
adopted the Jewish scriptures, and with them an absurd chronology. It is pretty certain that Eusebius
did not spare the Egyptian Synchronistic tables of Manetho -- so much so that Bunsen** charges him
--
phenomenal plane, but in the realm of noumena have no abstract validity. As said in the scriptures:
"The Past time is the Present time, as also the Future, which, though it has not come into existence,
--
The use of geometrical figures and the frequent allusions to figures in all ancient scriptures (see
Puranas, Egyptian papyri, the "Book of the Dead" and even the Bible) must be explained. In the "Book
--
so are the Vedas and other scriptures.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sd/sd1-1-05.htm (7 von 17) [06.05.2003 03:30:50]
--
Sanskrit scriptures. In the Rig Veda, Aditi, "The Boundless" or infinite Space, translated by Mr. Max
Muller, "the visible infinite, visible by the naked eye (!!); the endless expanse beyond the Earth,
--
exoteric Hindu scriptures. But how strangely all these numbers are connected with like numbers in
other Cosmogonies and with their symbols, can be seen from comparisons and parallelisms made by
--
Hebrews have done. This is found in the exoteric Hindu scriptures. That these accounts are blinds is
shown by their contradicting each other, a different construction being found in almost every Purana
--
exoteric scriptures, about the 1008 worlds of the Devaloka worlds and firmaments. There are worlds,
of course, in the esoteric as well as in the profane scientific teachings, at such incalculable distances
--
The Kabalistic version of the same story is given in the Codex Nazareus, the scripture of the
Nazarenes, the real mystic Christians of John the Baptist and the Initiates of Christos. Bahak-Zivo, the
--
save only with reference to that which was laid down in national scriptures for exoteric uses; the sum
of which, however cleverly veiled, was only the smallest portion of the real primitive history of each
people, often relating, moreover, -- as in the Hebrew scriptures -- merely to the terrestrial human, not
divine life of that nation. That psychic and spiritual element belonged to MYSTERY and
--
every Archaic scripture.
"Who forms Manu (the Man) and who forms his body? The LIFE and the LIVES. Sin** and the
--
Separate the first from the second chapter; read the former as a scripture of the Elohists, and the latter
as that of the far younger Jehovists; still one finds, if one reads between the lines, the same order in
--
ubiquity, which was discussed a few pages back. "My Father, that is in Heaven, and I -- are one," -says the Christian scripture; in this, at any rate, it is the faithful echo of the esoteric tenet.
------STANZA VII. -- Continued.
--
(in the modern sense of the word) on their very face, than any other ancient scriptures left to be
regarded and judged on their exoteric aspect. Since, however, as confessed before, this work withholds
--
undeniably ancient. Let us now compare the above with a like invocation in the Hindu scriptures -undoubtedly as old, if not far older. Here it is Parasara, the Aryan "Hermes" who instructs Maitreya,
the Indian Asclepios, and calls upon Vishnu in his triple hypostasis.
BOOK I. -- PART III. SCIENCE AND THE SECRET DOCTRINE CONTRASTED, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
All this will be examined in the light of science and comparisons drawn from the scriptures of all the
ancient nations, the Bible included, as we proceed. Meanwhile, before we turn to the Anthropogenesis
--
mentioned them in its annals and scriptures. That which in the Vendidad, for instance, is referred to as
Airyanem Vaego (see Bund. 79, 12) wherein was born the original Zoroaster,* is called in the Puranic
BOOK I. -- PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM IN ITS APPROXIMATE ORDER, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy
as far as regards pious Churchmen, the same worship may be shown in the scriptures, however
disfigured by translation. Solar and Lunar worship, as well as that of the Stars and Elements, are
--
old cosmogony and scripture.
It is the anthropomorphised Demiurge, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, when separated from the
--
living surrounded by Brahmins and Pundits in India for so many years, ought to have known better -even that scholar lost no opportunity to criticize the Hindu scriptures on this account. Thus, he
exclaims: --*
--
every exoteric scripture. The secret doctrine gives a long genealogy of Rishis, but separates them into
many classes. Like the Gods of the Egyptians, who were divided into seven, and even twelve, classes,
--
in the secret scriptures of all the great nations, and even in the Zohar, the Kabalistic lore of that
smallest of all, the Jewish. This word, composed of seven letters in each tongue, is found embodied in
--
learn the mystery of His (God's) name, for it has similar associates in scriptures. I will tell thee by
allusion one portion of the mystery; [[Footnote continued on next page]]
--
number of nature. We shall examine it from the standpoints of the Vedas and the Chaldean scriptures,
as it existed in Egypt thousands of years B.C., and as treated in the Gnostic records; we shall show
BOOK IV. - That empire was given to Rome not by the gods, but by the One True God, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Now, therefore, let us see how it is that they dare to ascribe the very great extent and duration of the Roman empire to those gods whom they contend that they worship honourably, even by the obsequies of vile games and the ministry of vile men: although I should like first to inquire for a little what reason, what prudence, there is in wishing to glory in the greatness and extent of the empire, when you cannot point out the happiness of men who are always rolling, with dark fear and cruel lust, in warlike slaughters and in blood, which, whether shed in civil or foreign war, is still human blood; so that their joy may be compared to glass in its fragile splendour, of which one is horribly afraid lest it should be suddenly broken in pieces. That this may be more easily discerned, let us not come to nought by being carried away with empty boasting, or blunt the edge of our attention by loud-sounding names of things, when we hear of peoples, kingdoms, provinces. But let us suppose a case of two men; for each individual man, like one letter in a language, is as it were the element of a city or kingdom, however far-spreading in its occupation of the earth. Of these two men let us suppose that one is poor, or rather of middling circumstances; the other very rich. But the rich man is anxious with fears, pining with discontent, burning with covetousness, never secure, always uneasy, panting from the perpetual strife of his enemies, adding to his patrimony indeed by these miseries to an immense degree, and by these additions also heaping up most bitter cares. But that other man of moderate wealth is contented with a small and compact estate, most dear to[Pg 139] his own family, enjoying the sweetest peace with his kindred neighbours and friends, in piety religious, benignant in mind, healthy in body, in life frugal, in manners chaste, in conscience secure. I know not whether any one can be such a fool, that he dare hesitate which to prefer. As, therefore, in the case of these two men, so in two families, in two nations, in two kingdoms, this test of tranquillity holds good; and if we apply it vigilantly and without prejudice, we shall quite easily see where the mere show of happiness dwells, and where real felicity. Wherefore if the true God is worshipped, and if He is served with genuine rites and true virtue, it is advantageous that good men should long reign both far and wide. Nor is this advantageous so much to themselves, as to those over whom they reign. For, so far as concerns themselves, their piety and probity, which are great gifts of God, suffice to give them true felicity, enabling them to live well the life that now is, and afterwards to receive that which is eternal. In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater licence in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine scripture treats, it says, "For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave."[158]
4. How like kingdoms without justice are to robberies.
BOOK IX. - Of those who allege a distinction among demons, some being good and others evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
We need not at present give a careful and copious exposition of the doctrine of scripture, the sum of Christian knowledge, regarding these passions. It subjects the mind itself to God, that He may rule and aid it, and the passions, again, to the mind, to moderate and bridle them, and turn them to righteous uses. In our ethics, we do not so much inquire whether a pious soul is angry, as why he is angry; not whether he is sad, but what is the cause of his sadness; not whether he fears, but what he fears. For I am not aware that any right thinking person would find fault with anger at a wrongdoer which seeks his amendment, or with sadness which intends relief to the suffering, or with fear lest one in danger be destroyed. The Stoics, indeed, are accustomed to condemn compassion.[336] But how much more honourable had it been in that Stoic we have been telling of, had he been disturbed by compassion prompting him to relieve a fellow-creature, than to be disturbed by the fear of shipwreck! Far better, and more humane, and more consonant with pious sentiments, are the words of Cicero in praise of Csar, when he says, "Among your virtues none is more admirable and agreeable than your compassion."[337] And what is compassion but a fellow-feeling for another's misery, which prompts us to help him if we can? And this emotion is obedient to reason, when compassion is shown without violating right, as when the poor are relieved, or the penitent forgiven. Cicero, who knew how to use language, did not hesitate to call this a virtue, which the Stoics are not ashamed to reckon among the vices, although, as the book of that eminent Stoic, Epictetus, quoting the opinions of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the school, has taught us, they admit that passions of this kind invade the soul of the wise man, whom they would have to be free from all vice.[Pg 360] Whence it follows that these very passions are not judged by them to be vices, since they assail the wise man without forcing him to act against reason and virtue; and that, therefore, the opinion of the Peripatetics or Platonists and of the Stoics is one and the same. But, as Cicero says,[338] mere logomachy is the bane of these pitiful Greeks, who thirst for contention rather than for truth. However, it may justly be asked, whether our subjection to these affections, even while we follow virtue, is a part of the infirmity of this life? For the holy angels feel no anger while they punish those whom the eternal law of God consigns to punishment, no fellow-feeling with misery while they relieve the miserable, no fear while they aid those who are in danger; and yet ordinary language ascribes to them also these mental emotions, because, though they have none of our weakness, their acts resemble the actions to which these emotions move us; and thus even God Himself is said in scripture to be angry, and yet without any perturbation. For this word is used of the effect of His vengeance, not of the disturbing mental affection.
6. Of the passions which, according to Apuleius, agitate the demons who are supposed by him to mediate between gods and men.
--
I am considerably surprised that such learned men, men who pronounce all material and sensible things to be altogether inferior to those that are spiritual and intelligible, should mention bodily contact in connection with the blessed life. Is that sentiment of Plotinus forgotten?"We must fly to our beloved fatherland. There is the Father, there our all. What fleet or flight shall convey us thither? Our way is, to become like God."[349] If, then, one is nearer to God the liker he is to Him, there is no other distance from God than unlikeness to Him. And the soul of man is unlike that incorporeal and unchangeable and eternal essence, in proportion as it craves things temporal and mutable. And as the things beneath, which are mortal and impure, cannot hold intercourse with the immortal purity which is above, a mediator is indeed needed to remove this difficulty; but not a mediator who resembles the highest order of being by possessing an immortal body, and the lowest by having a diseased soul, which makes him rather grudge that we be healed than help our cure. We need a Mediator who, being united to us here below by the mortality of His body, should at the same time be able to afford us truly divine help in cleansing and liberating us by means of the immortal righteousness of His spirit, whereby He remained heavenly even while here upon earth. Far be it from the incontaminable God to fear pollution from the man[350] He assumed, or from the men among whom He lived in the form of a man. For, though His incarnation showed us nothing else, these two wholesome facts were enough, that true divinity cannot be polluted by flesh, and that demons are not to be considered better than ourselves because they have not flesh.[351] This, then, as scripture says, is the "Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,"[352] of whose divinity,[Pg 375] whereby He is equal to the Father, and humanity, whereby He has become like us, this is not the place to speak as fully as I could.
18. That the deceitful demons, while promising to conduct men to God by their intercession, mean to turn them from the path of truth.
--
But as some of these demonolators, as I may call them, and among them Labeo, allege that those whom they call demons are by others called angels, I must, if I would not seem to dispute merely about words, say something about the good angels. The Platonists do not deny their existence, but prefer to call them good demons. But we, following scripture, according to which we are Christians, have learned that some of the angels are good, some bad, but never have we read in[Pg 376] scripture of good demons; but wherever this or any cognate term occurs, it is applied only to wicked spirits. And this usage has become so universal, that, even among those who are called pagans, and who maintain that demons as well as gods should be worshipped, there is scarcely a man, no matter how well read and learned, who would dare to say by way of praise to his slave, You have a demon, or who could doubt that the man to whom he said this would consider it a curse? Why, then, are we to subject ourselves to the necessity of explaining away what we have said when we have given offence by using the word demon, with which every one, or almost every one, connects a bad meaning, while we can so easily evade this necessity by using the word angel?
20. Of the kind of knowledge which puffs up the demons.
--
The devils themselves knew this manifestation of God so well, that they said to the Lord, though clothed with the[Pg 377] infirmity of flesh, "What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Art Thou come to destroy us before the time?"[355] From these words, it is clear that they had great knowledge, and no charity. They feared His power to punish, and did not love His righteousness. He made known to them so much as He pleased, and He was pleased to make known so much as was needful. But He made Himself known, not as to the holy angels, who know Him as the Word of God, and rejoice in His eternity, which they partake, but as was requisite to strike with terror the beings from whose tyranny He was going to free those who were predestined to His kingdom and the glory of it, eternally true and truly eternal. He made Himself known, therefore, to the demons, not by that which is life eternal, and the unchangeable light which illumines the pious, whose souls are cleansed by the faith that is in Him, but by some temporal effects of His power, and evidences of His mysterious presence, which were more easily discerned by the angelic senses even of wicked spirits than by human infirmity. But when He judged it advisable gradually to suppress these signs, and to retire into deeper obscurity, the prince of the demons doubted whether He were the Christ, and endeavoured to ascertain this by tempting Him, in so far as He permitted Himself to be tempted, that He might adapt the manhood He wore to be an example for our imitation. But after that temptation, when, as scripture says, He was ministered to[356] by the angels who are good and holy, and therefore objects of terror to the impure spirits, He revealed more and more distinctly to the demons how great He was, so that, even though the infirmity of His flesh might seem contemptible, none dared to resist His authority.
22. The difference between the knowledge of the holy angels and that of the demons.
--
23. That the name of gods is falsely given to the gods of the Gentiles, though scripture applies it both to the holy angels and just men.
If the Platonists prefer to call these angels gods rather than demons, and to reckon them with those whom Plato, their founder and master, maintains were created by the supreme God,[357] they are welcome to do so, for I will not spend strength in fighting about words. For if they say that these beings are immortal, and yet created by the supreme God, blessed but by cleaving to their Creator and not by their own power, they say what we say, whatever name they call these beings by. And that this is the opinion either of all or the best of[Pg 379] the Platonists can be ascertained by their writings. And regarding the name itself, if they see fit to call such blessed and immortal creatures gods, this need not give rise to any serious discussion between us, since in our own scriptures we read, "The God of gods, the Lord hath spoken;"[358] and again, "Confess to the God of gods;"[359] and again, "He is a great King above all gods."[360] And where it is said, "He is to be feared above all gods," the reason is forthwith added, for it follows, "for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens."[361] He said, "above all gods," but added, "of the nations;" that is to say, above all those whom the nations count gods, in other words, demons. By them He is to be feared with that terror in which they cried to the Lord, "Hast Thou come to destroy us?" But where it is said, "the God of gods," it cannot be understood as the god of the demons; and far be it from us to say that "great King above all gods" means "great King above all demons." But the same scripture also calls men who belong to God's people "gods:" "I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you children of the Most High."[362] Accordingly, when God is styled God of gods, this may be understood of these gods; and so, too, when He is styled a great King above all gods.
Nevertheless, some one may say, if men are called gods because they belong to God's people, whom He addresses by means of men and angels, are not the immortals, who already enjoy that felicity which men seek to attain by worshipping God, much more worthy of the title? And what shall we reply to this, if not that it is not without reason that in holy scripture men are more expressly styled gods than those immortal and blessed spirits to whom we hope to be equal in the resurrection, because there was a fear that the weakness of unbelief, being overcome with the excellence of these beings, might presume to constitute some of them a god? In the case of men this was a result that need not be guarded against. Besides, it was right that the men belonging to God's people should be more expressly called gods, to assure and certify them that He who is called God of gods is their God; because,[Pg 380] although those immortal and blessed spirits who dwell in the heavens are called gods, yet they are not called gods of gods, that is to say, gods of the men who constitute God's people, and to whom it is said, "I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you the children of the Most High." Hence the saying of the apostle, "Though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, as there be gods many and lords many, but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him."[363]
We need not, therefore, laboriously contend about the name, since the reality is so obvious as to admit of no shadow of doubt. That which we say, that the angels who are sent to announce the will of God to men belong to the order of blessed immortals, does not satisfy the Platonists, because they believe that this ministry is discharged, not by those whom they call gods, in other words, not by blessed immortals, but by demons, whom they dare not affirm to be blessed, but only immortal, or if they do rank them among the blessed immortals, yet only as good demons, and not as gods who dwell in the heaven of heavens remote from all human contact. But, though it may seem mere wrangling about a name, yet the name of demon is so detestable that we cannot bear in any sense to apply it to the holy angels. Now, therefore, let us close this book in the assurance that, whatever we call these immortal and blessed spirits, who yet are only creatures, they do not act as mediators to introduce to everlasting felicity miserable mortals, from whom they are severed by a twofold distinction. And those others who are mediators, in so far as they have immortality in common with their superiors, and misery in common with their inferiors (for they are justly miserable in punishment of their wickedness), cannot bestow upon us, but rather grudge that we should possess, the blessedness from which they themselves are excluded. And so the friends of the demons have nothing considerable to allege why we should rather worship them as our helpers than avoid them as traitors to our interests. As for those spirits who are good, and who are therefore not only immortal but also blessed, and to whom[Pg 381] they suppose we should give the title of gods, and offer worship and sacrifices for the sake of inheriting a future life, we shall, by God's help, endeavour in the following book to show that these spirits, call them by what name, and ascribe to them what nature you will, desire that religious worship be paid to God alone, by whom they were created, and by whose communications of Himself to them they are blessed.
Book of Exodus, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The book received the name of Exodus - - from the Greek word for "departure." Hebrew scripture actually named its books from the first key word of each book, and thus the book is named Shemot, or "the names."
The Book of Exodus, along with Genesis, is one of the best known books of Hebrew scripture, our Old Testament of the Bible. The Book describes how God through Moses lead the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and led them across the Red Sea to freedom, towards the Promised Land. Beginning in Exodus 5:1, God repeatedly sends Moses to Pharaoh to advise him, "Let my people go."
God appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush (3:1-6), and commissioned Moses to free his people. God instructed Moses in his dealings with the obstinate Pharaoh. The solemn Jewish Feast of Passover or Pesach - , called or Pascha in the Greek Septuagint, was instituted by God as a Memorial to commemorate the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, where they had been slaves before God rescued them. On the night of First Passover (Exodus 12:1-28), Moses and the Israelites were instructed to sacrifice a healthy year-old male lamb, and take hyssop and sprinkle the blood of the Paschal Lamb on the overhead and two doorposts, so that the destroying angel would pass over their houses and strike only the Egyptians. They were to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread - HaMatzot for seven days following Passover, during which they were to eat matsah, the unleavened bread (Exodus 12:15-17). After He led them across the Red Sea, God guided them by sending a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. To feed the Israelites, God told Moses he would rain down bread from heaven to feed the Israelites. God fed them manna - from heaven, and on the sixth day, God gave them a double portion of manna (Exodus 16:4-5), so that they could rest and observe the Sabbath of the Lord. God also had Moses strike a rock to give them water (Exodus 17:6).
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The following scripture is from the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible, now in the public domain. King James I commissioned a group of Biblical scholars in 1604 to establish an authoritative translation of the Bible from the ancient languages and other translations at the time, and the work was completed in 1611. The original King James Bible included the Apocrypha but in a separate section. A literary masterpiece of the English language, the original King James Bible is still in use today.
--- THE BOOK OF EXODUS
Book of Genesis, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
Genesis, the first book of Hebrew scripture, also serves as the first book of the Torah or Law of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch. The Torah was called the Law by Jesus, the concrete expression of God's will. The Law of Moses includes the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
Hebrew scripture or Tanakh is composed of the Law or Torah, the Prophets or Neviim, and the Writings, the Kethuvim or Hagiographa. The Torah is followed by the Prophets beginning with Joshua of the Former Prophets and Isaiah of the Latter Prophets, and then the Writings which begin with Psalms and the Wisdom Literature in Hebrew scripture, our Old Testament of the Bible.
The book was first called "Genesis" - - in the Greek Septuagint translation, as it presents both the origin of the world and mankind, and in particular, the Hebrew people. The book in Hebrew was known by its opening expression, "In the beginning" (as above). Genesis 1-11 traces the primeval history of creation, from Adam and Eve through Noah and his sons to Terah; and Genesis 12-50 recounts the patriarchal history of Israel, beginning with Abraham through Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
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Seven key themes of Hebrew scripture are initiated in the Book of Genesis and are developed throughout the Torah: God is one; the goodness of creation and the world; God's undying love for his creation mankind in spite of man's sin and disobedience; God presides with justice and mercy; God is active in history by making covenants with Israel, his chosen people; the proper response of obedience to God's Word through observance of traditions and institutions will bring blessings; the gift of Hope through prophecy of the coming Messiah.
The first three chapters of Genesis are the best known of Hebrew scripture: Chapter One presents God's creation of the world. In Genesis 1:14, God designated appointed times - - moadim - for His creation. Genesis 1:26-27 relates that God decided to make man in our image and likeness. The idea of human dignity, that we are created in the image of God (1:27), supports the theological basis for human equality and the core principle of liberty in Western Christian civilization, as found in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. Chapter Two provides further detail on the creation of man and woman. Chapter Three records the temptation and fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. The first line of Genesis is truly one of the most famous lines of Hebrew scripture:
Genesis 1:1.
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The fall of Adam and Eve led to a geometric progression of sin. Noah is introduced (Chapters 6-9) as the one righteous man. The history of Noah is marked by the Hebrew lunar calendar, for the word for new moon, month - - odesh - is recorded in Genesis 7:11. God finally brought judgement through the Flood, but saved Noah and made a Covenant (9:8) with Noah, his family, and all living creatures. Eber - - (an eponym for Hebrew) was a descendant of Shem (10:21, 11:16). In spite of man's disobedience, God remains faithful to his creation, the human race. The consistent pattern of covenant, fall, judgement, and redemption that is evident in Genesis persists throughout Hebrew scripture.
The Patriarchal History of Israel began with Abraham in Chapter 12:1-2, when God urged Abram to "Go forth from this land of your kinsfolk (Haran) and from your father's house to a land (Canaan) I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you." Abram is identified as "the Hebrew" - - in 14:13. In Chapter 14:18-20, we read of Melchizedek, the King and Priest of Salem, who brought out bread and wine, and who typified Christ (Hebrews 7). The institution of slavery is recorded in Genesis, for the vanquished became slaves to the victors. God warns Abram - "Know for certain that your descendants shall be strangers in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years" (Genesis 15:13). The Lord God made his Covenant with Abraham first in 15:18 and changed his name to Abraham in 17:5. Abraham was called a "friend of God" throughout scripture (2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23). Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for the sin of sodomy (19). Abraham had two sons, Ishmael by Hagar and Isaac by his wife Sarah. Chapter 21 describes the birth of Isaac and the plight of Hagar and Ishmael. Abraham is tested through Isaac (22). Abraham bought land in Hebron (23) as a burial plot for Sarah. Isaac and Rebecca had Esau and Jacob (25). God first refers to his Commandments in Genesis 26:5. Jacob returned to Haran and had twelve sons by his wives Leah and Rachel and their maidservants. God renamed Jacob "Israel" (35:10), the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Chapters 37 to 50 primarily cover the saga of the virtuous Joseph, who is sold into slavery by his own brothers (Genesis 37:28)!
The Book of Genesis is the subject of many artistic endeavors; the painting of Joseph's dream of the sun, moon, and eleven stars in Genesis 37:9 by Vincent Van Gogh entitled "Starry Night" in 1889 is one of the most famous.
The following scripture is the Authorized King James Version of the Holy Bible, now in the public domain, and the New International Version. King James I commissioned a group of Biblical scholars in 1604 to establish an authoritative translation of the Bible from the ancient languages and other translations at the time, and the work was completed in 1611. The original King James Bible included the Apocrypha but in a separate section. A literary masterpiece of the English language, the original King James Bible is still in use today. scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica - The International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of Biblica - The International Bible Society. Chapters 5 and 12-50 are from the King James Bible, and Chapters 1-4 and 6-11 are the NIV version.
--- ACTUAL
Book of Imaginary Beings (text), #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
In his English rendering of the cosmogonies and theogonies of old Japan (The Sacred scriptures of the
Japanese), Post Wheeler also records analogous legends of
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and permutating the letters of the scriptures, fired by a
desire to penetrate the secrets of God. Dante stated that
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said that the meanings of the scriptures are infinite, like the
hues in a peacocks tail. The Kabbalists would have approved this view; one of the secrets they sought in the Bible
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seismological system. In the Sacred scriptures it is written:
Now beneath the Fertile-Land-of-Reed-Plains lay a Kami
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this monster is also strange. In the scriptures (Job IV: II) we
read: The old lion perisheth for lack of prey. The Hebrew
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Sacred scriptures of the JapanQuiroga, General Facundo,
ese, The,
Book of Proverbs, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The Book of Proverbs is one of the Wisdom Books of Hebrew scripture, along with Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon). The Greek Septuagint also includes the Books of Wisdom and Sirach. The Wisdom Literature is followed by the Prophets beginning with the Prophet Isaiah in the Greek Septuagint, Latin Vulgate, and the Christian Old Testament of the Bible.
The primary purpose of the book is to teach wisdom, not only to the young and inexperienced but also to the learned. Proverbs personifies wisdom as an idealistic woman.
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This selection highlights Chapter 1, the introduction; Chapter 3, Honor and Trust in God; Chapter 8, the personification of Wisdom; Chapter 10, the beginning of the first collection of the Proverbs of Solomon; and Chapter 25, the beginning of the second collection of the Proverbs of Solomon. scriptures from Chapters 1, 3, 8, 10, and 25 are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984
--- THE BOOK OF PROVERBS
Book of Psalms, #The Bible, #Anonymous, #Various
The Psalms are beautiful poetic songs of prayer. The Psalms convey three important themes of Hebrew scripture - that God is active in history, the necessity of human response to God through praise and prayer, and the beginning of wisdom is to Trust in God and fear of the Lord. The Psalms of Hebrew scripture are composed of songs of praise sung to God in divine worship, accompanied by a musical instrument. The word Psalm in Hebrew - - tehillah - actually means praise or song of praise. King David sang a song of praise to the Lord when he was delivered from the grasp of his enemies and from the hands of Saul (Second Samuel 22:1). Their time of composition wasprimarily pre-exilic (before 586 BC, the time of the Babylonian exile) and post-exilic (after 516 BC), but the time probably ranges over five centuries. The authorship of 73 of the Psalms is attributed to David, although it is likely that he composed one or more of the 48 anonymous Psalms. Psalm 90 is attri buted to Moses and Psalms 72 and 127 to Solomon.
The Psalms begin the Writings or Hagiographa in the three-fold division of the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and Writings of Hebrew scripture. In the four-fold division of the Greek Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, and the Christian Old Testament of the Bible, the Psalms are part of the Wisdom Literature, which includes in the following order: the Books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. The Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate also included the Books of Wisdom and Sirach.
The Hebrew Psalms number 150, while the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the Greek Septuagint Old Testament both contain Psalm 151 of David. The numbering of Psalms often differ by one, the Hebrew Psalter being one more than the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate. The numbering here follows the original Hebrew. The Psalms are generally of three types: laments, both individual and communal; hymns; and songs of thanksgiving. Others are classified as royal psalms, some wisdom psalms, and others defy classification.
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Placing our trust in God is found throughout the scriptures, especially the Psalms. The Hebrew verb to trust - - baa - or its conjugates are recorded over 40 times in the Psalms alone, and to Trust in God is the primary theme of such Psalms as 4, 27, 56, and 62. Trusting in God means both to believe in God and to place our hope in Him. Thus in Greek one sees the word trust translated both with the verbs for faith - - I believe, have faith in, trust; and hope - - I hope, trust. Another Greek verb that conveys the meaning of trust is - I depend on, trust.
The Psalms have had a profound influence on both Eastern and Western culture. The most famous Psalm is King David's Psalm 23. Christ repeats verse five of Psalm 31 on the Cross, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit." Psalm 91 offers evidence of Guardian Angels. Psalm 95 (verse 1) contains the words Laus Deo, the Latin for Praise be to God, which is inscribed on top of the Washington Monument. Psalm 103 supports that Angels carry out the will of God. Psalm 104 (verse 19) confirms the Hebrew lunar calendar, for the moon - - yare - marks the appointed times and sacred seasons. Psalm 118 (verse 24) was the inspiration for the World War I liberation song of Jerusalem, the world-famous Hava Nagila. Psalm 119 is an alphabetical psalm that expresses love for the Word of God, each eight-verse stanza beginning with one of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 139 speaks of life in the womb!
The Psalms are notable for Prophecies of the Messiah, such as Psalm 2, fulfilled in Matthew 3:17, Psalm 22, fulfilled in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and Psalm 110. In fact, the greatest number of Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament are from the Book of Psalms, Psalm 110 being the most quoted by New Testament writers. For example, God declared his son Jesus Christ high priest according to the order of Melchizedek in Hebrews 5:10, which fulfilled Psalm 110, a Psalm of David, in which David announced to his royal successor - "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Psalm 110:4). Melchizedek, whose name is found only twice in Hebrew scripture, was the king of Salem and a priest of God Most High, who brought out bread and wine and blessed Abram (Genesis 14:18). Psalm 76:2 locates Salem of Genesis 14:18 to Jerusalem.
Following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 587 BC, when animal sacrifice could no longer be continued, a sacrifice of praise was instituted among the Jewish people during the Babylonian Exile, which included readings of the Torah, Psalms, and Hymns throughout the day. The risen Christ applied the Psalms to himself when he said to his disciples: "Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44). This sacrifice of praise continued within Christianity as the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office, of which the Psalms remain an essential part. The Divine Office has evolved throughout the centuries, and today is said five times throughout the day: Matins or Office of Readings; the Lauds or Morning Prayer; Daytime Prayer; Vespers or Evening Prayer; and Compline or Night Prayer.
BOOK VIII. - Some account of the Socratic and Platonic philosophy, and a refutation of the doctrine of Apuleius that the demons should be worshipped as mediators between gods and men, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Certain partakers with us in the grace of Christ, wonder when they hear and read that Plato had conceptions concerning God, in which they recognise considerable agreement with the truth of our religion. Some have concluded from this, that when he went to Egypt he had heard the prophet Jeremiah, or, whilst travelling in the same country, had read the prophetic scriptures, which opinion I myself have expressed in certain of my writings.[301] But a careful calculation of dates, contained in chronological history, shows that Plato was born about a hundred years after the time in which Jeremiah prophesied, and, as he lived eighty-one years, there are found to have been about seventy years from his death to that time when Ptolemy, king of Egypt, requested the prophetic scriptures of the Hebrew people to be sent to him from Judea, and committed them to seventy Hebrews, who also knew the Greek tongue, to be translated and kept. Therefore, on that voyage of his, Plato could neither have seen Jeremiah, who was dead so long before, nor have read those same scriptures[Pg 322] which had not yet been translated into the Greek language, of which he was a master, unless, indeed, we say that, as he was most earnest in the pursuit of knowledge, he also studied those writings through an interpreter, as he did those of the Egyptians,not, indeed, writing a translation of them (the facilities for doing which were only gained even by Ptolemy in return for munificent acts of kindness,[302] though fear of his kingly authority might have seemed a sufficient motive), but learning as much as he possibly could concerning their contents by means of conversation. What warrants this supposition is the opening verses of Genesis: "In the beginning God made the heaven and earth. And the earth was invisible, and without order; and darkness was over the abyss: and the Spirit of God moved over the waters."[303] For in the Timus, when writing on the formation of the world, he says that God first united earth and fire; from which it is evident that he assigns to fire a place in heaven. This opinion bears a certain resemblance to the statement, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth." Plato next speaks of those two intermediary elements, water and air, by which the other two extremes, namely, earth and fire, were mutually united; from which circumstance he is thought to have so understood the words, "The Spirit of God moved over the waters." For, not paying sufficient attention to the designations given by those scriptures to the Spirit of God, he may have thought that the four elements are spoken of in that place, because the air also is called spirit.[304] Then, as to Plato's saying that the philosopher is a lover of God, nothing shines forth more conspicuously in those sacred writings. But the most striking thing in this connection, and that which most of all inclines me almost to assent to the opinion that Plato was not ignorant of those writings, is the answer which was given to the question elicited from the holy Moses when the words of God were conveyed to him by the angel; for, when he asked what was the name of that God who was commanding him to go and deliver the Hebrew people out of Egypt, this answer was[Pg 323] given: "I am who am; and thou shalt say to the children of Israel, He who is sent me unto you;"[305] as though compared with Him that truly is, because He is unchangeable, those things which have been created mutable are not,a truth which Plato vehemently held, and most diligently commended. And I know not whether this sentiment is anywhere to be found in the books of those who were before Plato, unless in that book where it is said, "I am who am; and thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Who is sent me unto you."
12. That even the Platonists, though they say these things concerning the one true God, nevertheless thought that sacred rites were to be performed in honour of many gods.
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For if he had only said, without mentioning the cause, that his forefa thers had discovered the art of making gods, it would have been our duty, if we paid any regard to what is right and pious, to consider and to see that they could never have attained to this art if they had not erred from the truth, if they had believed those things which are worthy of God, if they had attended to divine worship and service. However,[Pg 344] if we alone should say that the causes of this art were to be found in the great error and incredulity of men, and aversion of the mind erring from and unfaithful to divine religion, the impudence of those who resist the truth were in some way to be borne with; but when he who admires in man, above all other things, this power which it has been granted him to practise, and sorrows because a time is coming when all those figments of gods invented by men shall even be commanded by the laws to be taken away,when even this man confesses nevertheless, and explains the causes which led to the discovery of this art, saying that their ancestors, through great error and incredulity, and through not attending to the worship and service of the gods, invented this art of making gods,what ought we to say, or rather to do, but to give to the Lord our God all the thanks we are able, because He has taken away those things by causes the contrary of those which led to their institution? For that which the prevalence of error instituted, the way of truth took away; that which incredulity instituted, faith took away; that which aversion from divine worship and service instituted, conversion to the one true and holy God took away. Nor was this the case only in Egypt, for which country alone the spirit of the demons lamented in Hermes, but in all the earth, which sings to the Lord a new song,[322] as the truly holy and truly prophetic scriptures have predicted, in which it is written, "Sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth." For the title of this psalm is, "When the house was built after the captivity." For a house is being built to the Lord in all the earth, even the city of God, which is the holy Church, after that captivity in which demons held captive those men who, through faith in God, became living stones in the house. For although man made gods, it did not follow that he who made them was not held captive by them, when, by worshipping them, he was drawn into fellowship with them,into the fellowship not of stolid idols, but of cunning demons; for what are idols but what they are represented to be in the same scriptures, "They have eyes, but they do not see,"[323] and, though artistically fashioned, are[Pg 345] still without life and sensation? But unclean spirits, associated through that wicked art with these same idols, have miserably taken captive the souls of their worshippers, by bringing them down into fellowship with themselves. Whence the apostle says, "We know that an idol is nothing, but those things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I would not ye should have fellowship with demons."[324] After this captivity, therefore, in which men were held by malign demons, the house of God is being built in all the earth; whence the title of that psalm in which it is said, "Sing unto the Lord a new song; sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless His name; declare well His salvation from day to day. Declare His glory among the nations, among all people His wonderful things. For great is the Lord, and much to be praised: He is terrible above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are demons: but the Lord made the heavens."[325]
Wherefore he who sorrowed because a time was coming when the worship of idols should be abolished, and the domination of the demons over those who worshipped them, wished, under the influence of a demon, that that captivity should always continue, at the cessation of which that psalm celebrates the building of the house of the Lord in all the earth. Hermes foretold these things with grief, the prophet with joyfulness; and because the Spirit is victorious who sang these things through the ancient prophets, even Hermes himself was compelled in a wonderful manner to confess, that those very things which he wished not to be removed, and at the prospect of whose removal he was sorrowful, had been instituted, not by prudent, faithful, and religious, but by erring and unbelieving men, averse to the worship and service of the gods. And although he calls them gods, nevertheless, when he says that they were made by such men as we certainly ought not to be, he shows, whether he will or not, that they are not to be worshipped by those who do not resemble these image-makers, that is, by prudent, faithful, and religious men, at the same time also making it manifest that the very men who made them involved themselves in the worship of those as gods who were not gods.[Pg 346] For true is the saying of the prophet, "If a man make gods, lo, they are no gods."[326] Such gods, therefore, acknowledged by such worshippers and made by such men, did Hermes call "gods made by men," that is to say, demons, through some art of I know not what description, bound by the chains of their own lusts to images. But, nevertheless, he did not agree with that opinion of the Platonic Apuleius, of which we have already shown the incongruity and absurdity, namely, that they were interpreters and intercessors between the gods whom God made, and men whom the same God made, bringing to God the prayers of men, and from God the gifts given in answer to these prayers. For it is exceedingly stupid to believe that gods whom men have made have more influence with gods whom God has made than men themselves have, whom the very same God has made. And consider, too, that it is a demon which, bound by a man to an image by means of an impious art, has been made a god, but a god to such a man only, not to every man. What kind of god, therefore, is that which no man would make but one erring, incredulous, and averse to the true God? Moreover, if the demons which are worshipped in the temples, being introduced by some kind of strange art into images, that is, into visible representations of themselves, by those men who by this art made gods when they were straying away from, and were averse to the worship and service of the gods,if, I say, those demons are neither mediators nor interpreters between men and the gods, both on account of their own most wicked and base manners, and because men, though erring, incredulous, and averse from the worship and service of the gods, are nevertheless beyond doubt better than the demons whom they themselves have evoked, then it remains to be affirmed that what power they possess they possess as demons, doing harm by bestowing pretended benefits,harm all the greater for the deception,or else openly and undisguisedly doing evil to men. They cannot, however, do anything of this kind unless where they are permitted by the deep and secret providence of God, and then only so far as they are permitted. When, however, they are permitted, it is not because they, being midway between[Pg 347] men and the gods, have through the friendship of the gods great power over men; for these demons cannot possibly be friends to the good gods who dwell in the holy and heavenly habitation, by whom we mean holy angels and rational creatures, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers, from whom they are as far separated in disposition and character as vice is distant from virtue, wickedness from goodness.
BOOK VII. - Of the select gods of the civil theology, and that eternal life is not obtained by worshipping them, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
This mystery of eternal life, even from the beginning of the human race, was, by certain signs and sacraments suitable to the times, announced through angels to those to whom it was meet. Then the Hebrew people was congregated into one republic, as it were, to perform this mystery; and in that republic was foretold, sometimes through men who understood what they spake, and sometimes through men who understood not, all that had transpired since the advent of Christ until now, and all that will transpire. This same nation, too, was afterwards dispersed through the nations, in order to testify to the scriptures in which eternal salvation in Christ had been declared. For not only the prophecies which are contained in words, nor only the precepts for the right conduct of life, which teach[Pg 300] morals and piety, and are contained in the sacred writings,not only these, but also the rites, priesthood, tabernacle or temple, altars, sacrifices, ceremonies, and whatever else belongs to that service which is due to God, and which in Greek is properly called ,all these signified and fore-announced those things which we who believe in Jesus Christ unto eternal life believe to have been fulfilled, or behold in process of fulfilment, or confidently believe shall yet be fulfilled.
33. That only through the Christian religion could the deceit of malign spirits, who rejoice in the errors of men, have been manifested.
BOOK V. - Of fate, freewill, and God's prescience, and of the source of the virtues of the ancient Romans, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
But, in refuting these conjectures of the mathematicians, his argument is triumphant, because truly these are such as destroy and refute themselves. Nevertheless, they are far more tolerable who assert the fatal influence of the stars than they who deny the foreknowledge of future events. For, to confess that God exists, and at the same time to deny that He has foreknowledge of future things, is the most manifest folly. This Cicero himself saw, and therefore attempted to assert the doctrine embodied in the words of scripture, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."[190] That, however, he did not do in his own person, for he saw how odious and offensive such an opinion would be; and, therefore in his book on the nature of the gods,[191] he makes Cotta dispute concerning this against the Stoics, and preferred to give his own opinion in favour of Lucilius Balbus, to whom he assigned the defence of the Stoical position, rather than in favour of Cotta, who maintained that no divinity exists. However, in his book on divination, he in his own person most openly opposes the doctrine of the prescience of future things. But all this he seems to do in order that he may not grant the doctrine of fate, and by so doing destroy free will. For he thinks that, the knowledge of future things being once conceded, fate follows as so necessary a consequence that it cannot be denied.
But, let these perplexing debatings and disputations of the[Pg 191] philosophers go on as they may, we, in order that we may confess the most high and true God Himself, do confess His will, supreme power, and prescience. Neither let us be afraid lest, after all, we do not do by will that which we do by will, because He, whose foreknowledge is infallible, foreknew that we would do it. It was this which Cicero was afraid of, and therefore opposed foreknowledge. The Stoics also maintained that all things do not come to pass by necessity, although they contended that all things happen according to destiny. What is it, then, that Cicero feared in the prescience of future things? Doubtless it was this,that if all future things have been foreknown, they will happen in the order in which they have been foreknown; and if they come to pass in this order, there is a certain order of things foreknown by God; and if a certain order of things, then a certain order of causes, for nothing can happen which is not preceded by some efficient cause. But if there is a certain order of causes according to which everything happens which does happen, then by fate, says he, all things happen which do happen. But if this be so, then is there nothing in our own power, and there is no such thing as freedom of will; and if we grant that, says he, the whole economy of human life is subverted. In vain are laws enacted. In vain are reproaches, praises, chidings, exhortations had recourse to; and there is no justice whatever in the appointment of rewards for the good, and punishments for the wicked. And that consequences so disgraceful, and absurd, and pernicious to humanity may not follow, Cicero chooses to reject the foreknowledge of future things, and shuts up the religious mind to this alternative, to make choice between two things, either that something is in our own power, or that there is foreknowledge,both of which cannot be true; but if the one is affirmed, the other is thereby denied. He therefore, like a truly great and wise man, and one who consulted very much and very skilfully for the good of humanity, of those two chose the freedom of the will, to confirm which he denied the foreknowledge of future things; and thus, wishing to make men free, he makes them sacrilegious. But the religious mind chooses both, confesses both, and maintains both by the faith of piety. But how so? says Cicero; for the[Pg 192] knowledge of future things being granted, there follows a chain of consequences which ends in this, that there can be nothing depending on our own free wills. And further, if there is anything depending on our wills, we must go backwards by the same steps of reasoning till we arrive at the conclusion that there is no foreknowledge of future things. For we go backwards through all the steps in the following order:If there is free will, all things do not happen according to fate; if all things do not happen according to fate, there is not a certain order of causes; and if there is not a certain order of causes, neither is there a certain order of things foreknown by God,for things cannot come to pass except they are preceded by efficient causes,but, if there is no fixed and certain order of causes foreknown by God, all things cannot be said to happen according as He foreknew that they would happen. And further, if it is not true that all things happen just as they have been foreknown by Him, there is not, says he, in God any foreknowledge of future events.
Now, against the sacrilegious and impious darings of reason, we assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it. But that all things come to pass by fate, we do not say; nay we affirm that nothing comes to pass by fate; for we demonstrate that the name of fate, as it is wont to be used by those who speak of fate, meaning thereby the position of the stars at the time of each one's conception or birth, is an unmeaning word, for astrology itself is a delusion. But an order of causes in which the highest efficiency is attri buted to the will of God, we neither deny nor do we designate it by the name of fate, unless, perhaps, we may understand fate to mean that which is spoken, deriving it from fari, to speak; for we cannot deny that it is written in the sacred scriptures, "God hath spoken once; these two things have I heard, that power belongeth unto God. Also unto Thee, O God, belongeth mercy: for Thou wilt render unto every man according to his works."[192] Now the expression, "Once hath He spoken," is to be understood as meaning "immovably,[Pg 193]" that is, unchangeably hath He spoken, inasmuch as He knows unchangeably all things which shall be, and all things which He will do. We might, then, use the word fate in the sense it bears when derived from fari, to speak, had it not already come to be understood in another sense, into which I am unwilling that the hearts of men should unconsciously slide. But it does not follow that, though there is for God a certain order of all causes, there must therefore be nothing depending on the free exercise of our own wills, for our wills themselves are included in that order of causes which is certain to God, and is embraced by His foreknowledge, for human wills are also causes of human actions; and He who foreknew all the causes of things would certainly among those causes not have been ignorant of our wills. For even that very concession which Cicero himself makes is enough to refute him in this argument. For what does it help him to say that nothing takes place without a cause, but that every cause is not fatal, there being a fortuitous cause, a natural cause, and a voluntary cause? It is sufficient that he confesses that whatever happens must be preceded by a cause. For we say that those causes which are called fortuitous are not a mere name for the absence of causes, but are only latent, and we attri bute them either to the will of the true God, or to that of spirits of some kind or other. And as to natural causes, we by no means separate them from the will of Him who is the author and framer of all nature. But now as to voluntary causes. They are referable either to God, or to angels, or to men, or to animals of whatever description, if indeed those instinctive movements of animals devoid of reason, by which, in accordance with their own nature, they seek or shun various things, are to be called wills. And when I speak of the wills of angels, I mean either the wills of good angels, whom we call the angels of God, or of the wicked angels, whom we call the angels of the devil, or demons. Also by the wills of men I mean the wills either of the good or of the wicked. And from this we conclude that there are no efficient causes of all things which come to pass unless voluntary causes, that is, such as belong to that nature which is the spirit of life. For the air or wind is called spirit, but, inasmuch as it is a body, it is not[Pg 194] the spirit of life. The spirit of life, therefore, which quickens all things, and is the creator of every body, and of every created spirit, is God Himself, the uncreated spirit. In His supreme will resides the power which acts on the wills of all created spirits, helping the good, judging the evil, controlling all, granting power to some, not granting it to others. For, as He is the creator of all natures, so also is He the bestower of all powers, not of all wills; for wicked wills are not from Him, being contrary to nature, which is from Him. As to bodies, they are more subject to wills: some to our wills, by which I mean the wills of all living mortal creatures, but more to the wills of men than of beasts. But all of them are most of all subject to the will of God, to whom all wills also are subject, since they have no power except what He has bestowed upon them. The cause of things, therefore, which makes but is not made, is God; but all other causes both make and are made. Such are all created spirits, and especially the rational. Material causes, therefore, which may rather be said to be made than to make, are not to be reckoned among efficient causes, because they can only do what the wills of spirits do by them. How, then, does an order of causes which is certain to the foreknowledge of God necessitate that there should be nothing which is dependent on our wills, when our wills themselves have a very important place in the order of causes? Cicero, then, contends with those who call this order of causes fatal, or rather designate this order itself by the name of fate; to which we have an abhorrence, especially on account of the word, which men have become accustomed to understand as meaning what is not true. But, whereas he denies that the order of all causes is most certain, and perfectly clear to the prescience of God, we detest his opinion more than the Stoics do. For he either denies that God exists,which, indeed, in an assumed personage, he has laboured to do, in his book De Natura Deorum,or if he confesses that He exists, but denies that He is prescient of future things, what is that but just "the fool saying in his heart there is no God?" For one who is not prescient of all future things is not God. Wherefore our wills also have just so much power as God willed and foreknew that they should[Pg 195] have; and therefore whatever power they have, they have it within most certain limits; and whatever they are to do, they are most assuredly to do, for He whose foreknowledge is infallible foreknew that they would have the power to do it, and would do it. Wherefore, if I should choose to apply the name of fate to anything at all, I should rather say that fate belongs to the weaker of two parties, will to the stronger, who has the other in his power, than that the freedom of our will is excluded by that order of causes, which, by an unusual application of the word peculiar to themselves, the Stoics call Fate.
10. Whether our wills are ruled by necessity.
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in another place it is most unambiguously said of God, that He "maketh the man who is an hypocrite to reign on account of the perversity of the people."[220] Wherefore, though I have, according to my ability, shown for what reason God, who alone is true and just, helped forward the Romans, who were good according to a certain standard of an earthly state, to the acquirement of the glory of so great an empire, there may be, nevertheless, a more hidden cause, known better to God than to us, depending on the diversity of the merits of the human race. Among all who are truly pious, it is at all events agreed that no one without true piety that is, true worship of the true Godcan have true virtue; and that it is not true virtue which is the slave of human praise. Though, nevertheless, they who are not citizens of the eternal city, which is called the city of God in the sacred scriptures, are more useful to the earthly city when they possess even that virtue than if they had not even that. But there could be nothing more fortunate for human affairs than that, by the mercy of God, they who are endowed with true piety of life, if they have the skill for ruling people, should also have the[Pg 217] power. But such men, however great virtues they may possess in this life, attri bute it solely to the grace of God that He has bestowed it on themwilling, believing, seeking. And, at the same time, they understand how far they are short of that perfection of righteousness which exists in the society of those holy angels for which they are striving to fit themselves. But however much that virtue may be praised and cried up, which without true piety is the slave of human glory, it is not at all to be compared even to the feeble beginnings of the virtue of the saints, whose hope is placed in the grace and mercy of the true God.
20. That it is as shameful for the virtues to serve human glory as bodily pleasure.
BOOK XI. - Augustine passes to the second part of the work, in which the origin, progress, and destinies of the earthly and heavenly cities are discussed.Speculations regarding the creation of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
HERE BEGINS THE SECOND PART[440] OF THIS WORK, WHICH TREATS OF THE ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND DESTINIES OF THE TWO CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY. IN THE FIRST PLACE, AUGUSTINE SHOWS IN THIS BOOK HOW THE TWO CITIES WERE FORMED ORIGINALLY, BY THE SEPARATION OF THE GOOD AND BAD ANGELS; AND TAKES OCCASION TO TREAT OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD, AS IT IS DESCRIBED IN HOLY scripture IN THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
1. Of this part of the work, wherein we begin to explain the origin and end of the two cities.
The city of God we speak of is the same to which testimony is borne by that scripture, which excels all the writings of all nations by its divine authority, and has brought under its influence all kinds of minds, and this not by a casual intellectual movement, but obviously by an express providential arrangement. For there it is written, "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God."[441] And in another psalm we read, "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness, increasing the joy of the whole earth."[442] And, a little after, in the same psalm, "As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God has established it for ever." And in another, "There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved."[443] From these and similar testimonies, all of which it were tedious to cite, we have learned that there is a city of God, and its Founder has inspired us with a love which makes us covet its citizenship. To this Founder of the holy city the citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods, not knowing that He is the God[Pg 437] of gods, not of false, i.e. of impious and proud gods, who, being deprived of His unchangeable and freely communicated light, and so reduced to a kind of poverty-stricken power, eagerly grasp at their own private privileges, and seek divine honours from their deluded subjects; but of the pious and holy gods, who are better pleased to submit themselves to one, than to subject many to themselves, and who would rather worship God than be worshipped as God. But to the enemies of this city we have replied in the ten preceding books, according to our ability and the help afforded by our Lord and King. Now, recognising what is expected of me, and not unmindful of my promise, and relying, too, on the same succour, I will endeavour to treat of the origin, and progress, and deserved destinies of the two cities (the earthly and the heavenly, to wit), which, as we said, are in this present world commingled, and as it were entangled together. And, first, I will explain how the foundations of these two cities were originally laid, in the difference that arose among the angels.
2. Of the knowledge of God, to which no man can attain save through the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
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3. Of the authority of the canonical scriptures composed by the Divine Spirit.
This Mediator, having spoken what He judged sufficient, first by the prophets, then by His own lips, and afterwards by the apostles, has besides produced the scripture which is called canonical, which has paramount authority, and to which we yield assent in all matters of which we ought not to be ignorant, and yet cannot know of ourselves. For if we attain the knowledge of present objects by the testimony of our own senses,[446] whether internal or external, then, regarding objects remote from our own senses, we need others to bring their[Pg 439] testimony, since we cannot know them by our own, and we credit the persons to whom the objects have been or are sensibly present. Accordingly, as in the case of visible objects which we have not seen, we trust those who have, (and likewise with all sensible objects,) so in the case of things which are perceived[447] by the mind and spirit, i.e. which are remote from our own interior sense, it behoves us to trust those who have seen them set in that incorporeal light, or abidingly contemplate them.
4. That the world is neither without beginning, nor yet created by a new decree of God, by which He afterwards willed what He had not before willed.
Of all visible things, the world is the greatest; of all invisible, the greatest is God. But, that the world is, we see; that God is, we believe. That God made the world, we can believe from no one more safely than from God Himself. But where have we heard Him? Nowhere more distinctly than in the Holy scriptures, where His prophet said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."[448] Was the prophet present when God made the heavens and the earth? No; but the wisdom of God, by whom all things were made, was there,[449] and wisdom insinuates itself into holy souls, and makes them the friends of God and His prophets, and noiselessly informs them of His works. They are taught also by the angels of God, who always behold the face of the Father,[450] and announce His will to whom it befits. Of these prophets was he who said and wrote, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." And so fit a witness was he of God, that the same Spirit of God, who revealed these things to him, enabled him also so long before to predict that our faith also would be forthcoming.
But why did God choose then to create the heavens and earth which up to that time He had not made?[451] If they who put this question wish to make out that the world is eternal and without beginning, and that consequently it has[Pg 440] not been made by God, they are strangely deceived, and rave in the incurable madness of impiety. For, though the voices of the prophets were silent, the world itself, by its well-ordered changes and movements, and by the fair appearance of all visible things, bears a testimony of its own, both that it has been created, and also that it could not have been created save by God, whose greatness and beauty are unutterable and invisible. As for those[452] who own, indeed, that it was made by God, and yet ascribe to it not a temporal but only a creational beginning, so that in some scarcely intelligible way the world should always have existed a created world, they make an assertion which seems to them to defend God from the charge of arbitrary hastiness, or of suddenly conceiving the idea of creating the world as a quite new idea, or of casually changing His will, though He be unchangeable. But I do not see how this supposition of theirs can stand in other respects, and chiefly in respect of the soul; for if they contend that it is co-eternal with God, they will be quite at a loss to explain whence there has accrued to it new misery, which through a previous eternity had not existed. For if they said that its happiness and misery ceaselessly alternate, they must say, further, that this alternation will continue for ever; whence will result this absurdity, that, though the soul is called blessed, it is not so in this, that it foresees its own misery and disgrace. And yet, if it does not foresee it, and supposes that it will be neither disgraced nor wretched, but always blessed, then it is blessed because it is deceived; and a more foolish statement one cannot make. But if their idea is that the soul's misery has alternated with its bliss during the ages of the past eternity, but that now, when once the soul has been set free, it will return henceforth no more to misery, they are nevertheless of opinion that it has never been truly blessed before, but begins at last to enjoy a new and uncertain happiness; that is to say, they must acknowledge that some new thing, and that an important and signal thing, happens to the soul which never in a whole past eternity happened it before. And if they deny that God's eternal purpose included this new experience of the soul, they deny that He is the Author[Pg 441] of its blessedness, which is unspeakable impiety. If, on the other hand, they say that the future blessedness of the soul is the result of a new decree of God, how will they show that God is not chargeable with that mutability which displeases them? Further, if they acknowledge that it was created in time, but will never perish in time,that it has, like number,[453] a beginning but no end, and that, therefore, having once made trial of misery, and been delivered from it, it will never again return thereto, they will certainly admit that this takes place without any violation of the immutable counsel of God. Let them, then, in like manner believe regarding the world that it too could be made in time, and yet that God, in making it, did not alter His eternal design.
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For if eternity and time are rightly distinguished by this, that time does not exist without some movement and transition, while in eternity there is no change, who does not see that there could have been no time had not some creature been made, which by some motion could give birth to change,the various parts of which motion and change, as they cannot be[Pg 443] simultaneous, succeed one another, and thus, in these shorter or longer intervals of duration, time would begin? Since then, God, in whose eternity is no change at all, is the Creator and Ordainer of time, I do not see how He can be said to have created the world after spaces of time had elapsed, unless it be said that prior to the world there was some creature by whose movement time could pass. And if the sacred and infallible scriptures say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, in order that it may be understood that He had made nothing previously,for if He had made anything before the rest, this thing would rather be said to have been made "in the beginning,"then assuredly the world was made, not in time, but simultaneously with time. For that which is made in time is made both after and before some time,after that which is past, before that which is future. But none could then be past, for there was no creature by whose movements its duration could be measured. But simultaneously with time the world was made, if in the world's creation change and motion were created, as seems evident from the order of the first six or seven days. For in these days the morning and evening are counted, until, on the sixth day, all things which God then made were finished, and on the seventh the rest of God was mysteriously and sublimely signalized. What kind of days these were it is extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible for us to conceive, and how much more to say!
7. Of the nature of the first days, which are said to have had morning and evening, before there was a sun.
We see, indeed, that our ordinary days have no evening but by the setting, and no morning but by the rising, of the sun; but the first three days of all were passed without sun, since it is reported to have been made on the fourth day. And first of all, indeed, light was made by the word of God, and God, we read, separated it from the darkness, and called the light Day, and the darkness Night; but what kind of light that was, and by what periodic movement it made evening and morning, is beyond the reach of our senses; neither can we understand how it was, and yet must unhesitatingly believe it. For either it was some material light, whether proceeding from the upper[Pg 444] parts of the world, far removed from our sight, or from the spot where the sun was afterwards kindled; or under the name of light the holy city was signified, composed of holy angels and blessed spirits, the city of which the apostle says, "Jerusalem which is above is our eternal mother in heaven;"[454] and in another place, "For ye are all the children of the light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness."[455] Yet in some respects we may appropriately speak of a morning and evening of this day also. For the knowledge of the creature is, in comparison of the knowledge of the Creator, but a twilight; and so it dawns and breaks into morning when the creature is drawn to the praise and love of the Creator; and night never falls when the Creator is not forsaken through love of the creature. In fine, scripture, when it would recount those days in order, never mentions the word night. It never says, "Night was," but "The evening and the morning were the first day." So of the second and the rest. And, indeed, the knowledge of created things contemplated by themselves is, so to speak, more colourless than when they are seen in the wisdom of God, as in the art by which they were made. Therefore evening is a more suitable figure than night; and yet, as I said, morning returns when the creature returns to the praise and love of the Creator. When it does so in the knowledge of itself, that is the first day; when in the knowledge of the firmament, which is the name given to the sky between the waters above and those beneath, that is the second day; when in the knowledge of the earth, and the sea, and all things that grow out of the earth, that is the third day; when in the knowledge of the greater and less luminaries, and all the stars, that is the fourth day; when in the knowledge of all animals that swim in the waters and that fly in the air, that is the fifth day; when in the knowledge of all animals that live on the earth, and of man himself, that is the sixth day.[456]
8. What we are to understand of God's resting on the seventh day, after the six days' work.
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9. What the scriptures teach us to believe concerning the creation of the angels.
At present, since I have undertaken to treat of the origin of the holy city, and first of the holy angels, who constitute a large part of this city, and indeed the more blessed part, since they have never been expatriated, I will give myself to the task of explaining, by God's help, and as far as seems suitable, the scriptures which relate to this point. Where scripture speaks of the world's creation, it is not plainly said whether or when the angels were created; but if mention of them is made, it is implicitly under the name of "heaven," when it is said, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," or perhaps rather under the name of "light," of which presently. But that they were wholly omitted, I[Pg 446] am unable to believe, because it is written that God on the seventh day rested from all His works which He made; and this very book itself begins, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," so that before heaven and earth God seems to have made nothing. Since, therefore, He began with the heavens and the earth, and the earth itself, as scripture adds, was at first invisible and formless, light not being as yet made, and darkness covering the face of the deep (that is to say, covering an undefined chaos of earth and sea, for where light is not, darkness must needs be),and then when all things, which are recorded to have been completed in six days, were created and arranged, how should the angels be omitted, as if they were not among the works of God, from which on the seventh day He rested? Yet, though the fact that the angels are the work of God is not omitted here, it is indeed not explicitly mentioned; but elsewhere Holy scripture asserts it in the clearest manner. For in the Hymn of the Three Children in the Furnace it was said, "O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord;"[457] and among these works mentioned afterwards in detail, the angels are named. And in the psalm it is said, "Praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the heights. Praise ye Him, all His angels; praise ye Him, all His hosts. Praise ye Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all ye stars of light. Praise Him, ye heaven of heavens; and ye waters that be above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for He commanded, and they were created."[458] Here the angels are most expressly and by divine authority said to have been made by God, for of them among the other heavenly things it is said, "He commanded, and they were created." Who, then, will be bold enough to suggest that the angels were made after the six days' creation? If any one is so foolish, his folly is disposed of by a scripture of like authority, where God says, "When the stars were made, the angels praised me with a loud voice."[459] The angels therefore existed before the stars; and the stars were made the fourth day. Shall we then say that they were made the third day? Far from it; for we know what was made that day. The earth was separated from the water, and each[Pg 447] element took its own distinct form, and the earth produced all that grows on it. On the second day, then? Not even on this; for on it the firmament was made between the waters above and beneath, and was called "Heaven," in which firmament the stars were made on the fourth day. There is no question, then, that if the angels are included in the works of God during these six days, they are that light which was called "Day," and whose unity scripture signalizes by calling that day not the "first day," but "one day."[460] For the second day, the third, and the rest are not other days; but the same "one" day is repeated to complete the number six or seven, so that there should be knowledge both of God's works and of His rest. For when God said, "Let there be light, and there was light," if we are justified in understanding in this light the creation of the angels, then certainly they were created partakers of the eternal light which is the unchangeable Wisdom of God, by which all things were made, and whom we call the only-begotten Son of God; so that they, being illumined by the Light that created them, might themselves become light and be called "Day," in participation of that unchangeable Light and Day which is the Word of God, by whom both themselves and all else were made. "The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,"[461]this Light lighteth also every pure angel, that he may be light not in himself, but in God; from whom if an angel turn away, he becomes impure, as are all those who are called unclean spirits, and are no longer light in the Lord, but darkness in themselves, being deprived of the participation of Light eternal. For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name "evil."[462]
10. Of the simple and unchangeable Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, one God, in whom substance and quality are identical.
There is, accordingly, a good which is alone simple, and therefore alone unchangeable, and this is God. By this Good[Pg 448] have all others been created, but not simple, and therefore not unchangeable. "Created," I say,that is, made, not begotten. For that which is begotten of the simple Good is simple as itself, and the same as itself. These two we call the Father and the Son; and both together with the Holy Spirit are one God; and to this Spirit the epithet Holy is in scripture, as it were, appropriated. And He is another than the Father and the Son, for He is neither the Father nor the Son. I say "another," not "another thing," because He is equally with them the simple Good, unchangeable and co-eternal. And this Trinity is one God; and none the less simple because a Trinity. For we do not say that the nature of the good is simple, because the Father alone possesses it, or the Son alone, or the Holy Ghost alone; nor do we say, with the Sabellian heretics, that it is only nominally a Trinity, and has no real distinction of persons; but we say it is simple, because it is what it has, with the exception of the relation of the persons to one another. For, in regard to this relation, it is true that the Father has a Son, and yet is not Himself the Son; and the Son has a Father, and is not Himself the Father. But, as regards Himself, irrespective of relation to the other, each is what He has; thus, He is in Himself living, for He has life, and is Himself the Life which He has.
It is for this reason, then, that the nature of the Trinity is called simple, because it has not anything which it can lose, and because it is not one thing and its contents another, as a cup and the liquor, or a body and its colour, or the air and the light or heat of it, or a mind and its wisdom. For none of these is what it has: the cup is not liquor, nor the body colour, nor the air light and heat, nor the mind wisdom. And hence they can be deprived of what they have, and can be turned or changed into other qualities and states, so that the cup may be emptied of the liquid of which it is full, the body be discoloured, the air darken, the mind grow silly. The incorruptible body which is promised to the saints in the resurrection cannot, indeed, lose its quality of incorruption, but the bodily substance and the quality of incorruption are not the same thing. For the quality of incorruption resides entire in each several part, not greater in one and less in[Pg 449] another; for no part is more incorruptible than another. The body, indeed, is itself greater in whole than in part; and one part of it is larger, another smaller, yet is not the larger more incorruptible than the smaller. The body, then, which is not in each of its parts a whole body, is one thing; incorruptibility, which is throughout complete, is another thing;for every part of the incorruptible body, however unequal to the rest otherwise, is equally incorrupt. For the hand, e.g., is not more incorrupt than the finger because it is larger than the finger; so, though finger and hand are unequal, their incorruptibility is equal. Thus, although incorruptibility is inseparable from an incorruptible body, yet the substance of the body is one thing, the quality of incorruption another. And therefore the body is not what it has. The soul itself, too, though it be always wise (as it will be eternally when it is redeemed), will be so by participating in the unchangeable wisdom, which it is not; for though the air be never robbed of the light that is shed abroad in it, it is not on that account the same thing as the light. I do not mean that the soul is air, as has been supposed by some who could not conceive a spiritual nature;[463] but, with much dissimilarity, the two things have a kind of likeness, which makes it suitable to say that the immaterial soul is illumined with the immaterial light of the simple wisdom of God, as the material air is irradiated with material light, and that, as the air, when deprived of this light, grows dark, (for material darkness is nothing else than air wanting light,[464]) so the soul, deprived of the light of wisdom, grows dark.
According to this, then, those things which are essentially and truly divine are called simple, because in them quality and substance are identical, and because they are divine, or wise, or blessed in themselves, and without extraneous supplement. In Holy scripture, it is true, the Spirit of wisdom is[Pg 450] called "manifold"[465] because it contains many things in it; but what it contains it also is, and it being one is all these things. For neither are there many wisdoms, but one, in which are untold and infinite treasures of things intellectual, wherein are all invisible and unchangeable reasons of things visible and changeable which were created by it.[466] For God made nothing unwittingly; not even a human workman can be said to do so. But if He knew all that He made, He made only those things which He had known. Whence flows a very striking but true conclusion, that this world could not be known to us unless it existed, but could not have existed unless it had been known to God.
11. Whether the angels that fell partook of the blessedness which the holy angels have always enjoyed from the time of their creation.
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From all this, it will readily occur to any one that the blessedness which an intelligent being desires as its legitimate object results from a combination of these two things, namely, that it uninterruptedly enjoy the unchangeable good, which is God; and that it be delivered from all dubiety, and know certainly that it shall eternally abide in the same enjoyment. That it is so with the angels of light we piously believe; but that the fallen angels, who by their own default lost that light, did not enjoy this blessedness even before they sinned, reason bids us conclude. Yet if their life was of any duration before they fell, we must allow them a blessedness of some kind, though not that which is accompanied with foresight. Or, if it seems hard to believe that, when the angels were created, some were created in ignorance either of their perseverance or their fall, while others were most certainly assured of the eternity of their felicity,if it is hard to believe that they were not all from the beginning on an equal footing, until these who are now evil did of their own will fall away from the light of goodness, certainly it is much harder to believe that the holy angels are now uncertain of their eternal blessedness, and do not know regarding themselves as much as we have been able to gather regarding them from the Holy scriptures. For what catholic Christian does not know that no new devil will ever arise among the good angels, as he knows that this present devil will never again return into the[Pg 453] fellowship of the good? For the truth in the gospel promises to the saints and the faithful that they will be equal to the angels of God; and it is also promised them that they will "go away into life eternal."[469] But if we are certain that we shall never lapse from eternal felicity, while they are not certain, then we shall not be their equals, but their superiors. But as the truth never deceives, and as we shall be their equals, they must be certain of their blessedness. And because the evil angels could not be certain of that, since their blessedness was destined to come to an end, it follows either that the angels were unequal, or that, if equal, the good angels were assured of the eternity of their blessedness after the perdition of the others; unless, possibly, some one may say that the words of the Lord about the devil, "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth,"[470] are to be understood as if he was not only a murderer from the beginning of the human race, when man, whom he could kill by his deceit, was made, but also that he did not abide in the truth from the time of his own creation, and was accordingly never blessed with the holy angels, but refused to submit to his Creator, and proudly exulted as if in a private lordship of his own, and was thus deceived and deceiving. For the dominion of the Almighty cannot be eluded; and he who will not piously submit himself to things as they are, proudly feigns, and mocks himself with a state of things that does not exist; so that what the blessed Apostle John says thus becomes intelligible: "The devil sinneth from the beginning,"[471]that is, from the time he was created he refused righteousness which none but a will piously subject to God can enjoy. Whoever adopts this opinion at least disagrees with those heretics the Manichees, and with any other pestilential sect that may suppose that the devil has derived from some adverse evil principle a nature proper to himself. These persons are so befooled by error, that, although they acknowledge with ourselves the authority of the gospels, they do not notice that the Lord did not say, "The devil was naturally a stranger to the truth," but "The devil abode not in the truth," by which He meant us to understand that he[Pg 454] had fallen from the truth, in which, if he had abode, he would have become a partaker of it, and have remained in blessedness along with the holy angels.[472]
14. An explanation of what is said of the devil, that he did not abide in the truth, because the truth was not in him.
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Then, we must not pass from this passage of scripture without noticing that when God said, "Let there be light, and there was light," it was immediately added, "And God saw the light that it was good." No such expression followed the statement that He separated the light from the darkness, and called the light Day and the darkness Night, lest the seal of His approval might seem to be set on such darkness, as well as on the light. For when the darkness was not subject of disapprobation, as when it was divided by the heavenly bodies from this light which our eyes discern, the statement that God saw that it was good is inserted, not before, but after the division is recorded. "And God set them," so runs the passage, "in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good." For He approved of both, because both were sinless. But where God said, "Let there be light, and there was light; and God saw the light that it was good;" and the narrative goes on, "and God divided the light from the darkness: and God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night," there was not in this place subjoined the statement, "And God saw that it was good," lest both should be designated good, while one of them was evil, not by nature, but by its own fault. And therefore, in this case, the light alone received the approbation of the Creator, while the angelic darkness, though it had been ordained, was yet not approved.
21. Of God's eternal and unchangeable knowledge and will, whereby all He has made pleased Him in the eternal design as well as in the actual result.
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But it is much more surprising that some even of those who, with ourselves, believe that there is one only source of all things, and that no nature which is not divine can exist unless originated by that Creator, have yet refused to accept with a good and simple faith this so good and simple a reason of the world's creation, that a good God made it good; and that the things created, being different from God, were inferior to Him, and yet were good, being created by none other than He. But they say that souls, though not, indeed, parts of God, but created by Him, sinned by abandoning God; that, in proportion to their various sins, they merited different degrees of debasement from heaven to earth, and diverse bodies as prison-houses; and that this is the world, and this the cause of its creation, not the production of good things, but the restraining of evil. Origen is justly blamed for holding this opinion. For in the books which he entitles , that is, Of origins, this is his sentiment, this his utterance. And I cannot sufficiently express my astonishment, that a man so erudite and well versed in ecclesiastical literature, should not have observed, in the first place, how opposed this is to the meaning of this authoritative scripture, which, in recounting all the works of[Pg 464] God, regularly adds, "And God saw that it was good;" and, when all were completed, inserts the words, "And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good."[491] Was it not obviously meant to be understood that there was no other cause of the world's creation than that good creatures should be made by a good God? In this creation, had no one sinned, the world would have been filled and beautified with natures good without exception; and though there is sin, all things are not therefore full of sin, for the great majority of the heavenly inhabitants preserve their nature's integrity. And the sinful will, though it violated the order of its own nature, did not on that account escape the laws of God, who justly orders all things for good. For as the beauty of a picture is increased by well-managed shadows, so, to the eye that has skill to discern it, the universe is beautified even by sinners, though, considered by themselves, their deformity is a sad blemish.
In the second place, Origen, and all who think with him, ought to have seen that if it were the true opinion that the world was created in order that souls might, for their sins, be accommodated with bodies in which they should be shut up as in houses of correction, the more venial sinners receiving lighter and more ethereal bodies, while the grosser and graver sinners received bodies more crass and grovelling, then it would follow that the devils, who are deepest in wickedness, ought, rather than even wicked men, to have earthly bodies, since these are the grossest and least ethereal of all. But in point of fact, that we might see that the deserts of souls are not to be estimated by the qualities of bodies, the wickedest devil possesses an ethereal body, while man, wicked, it is true, but with a wickedness small and venial in comparison with his, received even before his sin a body of clay. And what more foolish assertion can be advanced than that God, by this sun of ours, did not design to benefit the material creation, or lend lustre to its loveliness, and therefore created one single sun for this single world, but that it so happened that one soul only had so sinned as to deserve to be enclosed in such a body as it is? On this principle, if it had chanced that not[Pg 465] one, but two, yea, or ten, or a hundred had sinned similarly, and with a like degree of guilt, then this world would have one hundred suns. And that such is not the case, is due not to the considerate foresight of the Creator, contriving the safety and beauty of things material, but rather to the fact that so fine a quality of sinning was hit upon by only one soul, so that it alone has merited such a body. Manifestly persons holding such opinions should aim at confining, not souls of which they know not what they say, but themselves, lest they fall, and deservedly, far indeed from the truth. And as to these three answers which I formerly recommended when in the case of any creature the questions are put, Who made it? By what means? Why? that it should be replied, God, By the Word, Because it was good,as to these three answers, it is very questionable whether the Trinity itself is thus mystically indicated, that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, or whether there is some good reason for this acceptation in this passage of scripture,this, I say, is questionable, and one can't be expected to explain everything in one volume.
24. Of the divine Trinity, and the indications of its presence scattered everywhere among its works.
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These works are recorded to have been completed in six days (the same day being six times repeated), because six is a perfect number,not because God required a protracted time, as if He could not at once create all things, which then should mark the course of time by the movements proper to them, but because the perfection of the works was signified by the number six. For the number six is the first which is made up of its own[496] parts, i.e., of its sixth, third, and half, which are respectively one, two, and three, and which make a total of six. In this way of looking at a number, those are said to be its parts which exactly divide it, as a half, a third, a fourth, or a fraction with any denominator,e.g., four is a part of nine, but not therefore an aliquot part; but one is, for it is the ninth part; and three is, for it is the third. Yet these two parts, the ninth and the third, or one and three, are far from making its whole sum of nine. So again, in the number ten, four is a part, yet does not divide it; but one is an aliquot part, for it is a tenth; so it has a fifth, which is two; and a half, which is five. But these three parts, a tenth, a fifth, and a half, or one, two, and five, added together, do not make ten, but eight. Of the number twelve, again, the parts added together exceed the whole; for it has a twelfth, that is, one; a sixth, or two; a fourth, which is three; a third, which is four; and a half, which is six. But one, two, three, four, and six make up, not twelve, but more, viz. sixteen. So much I have thought fit to state for the sake of illustrating the perfection of the number six, which is, as I said, the first which[Pg 475] is exactly made up of its own parts added together; and in this number of days God finished His work.[497] And, therefore, we must not despise the science of numbers, which, in many passages of holy scripture, is found to be of eminent service to the careful interpreter.[498] Neither has it been without reason numbered among God's praises, "Thou hast ordered all things in number, and measure, and weight."[499]
31. Of the seventh day, in which completeness and repose are celebrated.
But, on the seventh day (i.e., the same day repeated seven times, which number is also a perfect one, though for another reason), the rest of God is set forth, and then, too, we first hear of its being hallowed. So that God did not wish to hallow this day by His works, but by His rest, which has no evening, for it is not a creature; so that, being known in one way in the Word of God, and in another in itself, it should make a twofold knowledge, daylight and dusk (day and evening). Much more might be said about the perfection of the number seven, but this book is already too long, and I fear lest I should seem to catch at an opportunity of airing my little smattering of science more childishly than profitably. I must speak, therefore, in moderation and with dignity, lest, in too keenly following "number," I be accused of forgetting "weight" and "measure." Suffice it here to say, that three is the first whole number that is odd, four the first that is even, and of these two, seven is composed. On this account it is often put for all numbers together, as, "A just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again,"[500]that is, let him fall never so often, he will not perish (and this was meant to be understood not of sins, but of afflictions conducing to lowliness). Again, "Seven times a day will I praise Thee,"[501] which elsewhere is expressed thus, "I will bless the Lord at all times."[502] And many such instances are found in the divine authorities, in which the number seven is, as I said, commonly used to express the whole, or the completeness of anything.[Pg 476] And so the Holy Spirit, of whom the Lord says, "He will teach you all truth,"[503] is signified by this number.[504] In it is the rest of God, the rest His people find in Him. For rest is in the whole, i.e. in perfect completeness, while in the part there is labour. And thus we labour as long as we know in part; "but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away."[505] It is even with toil we search into the scriptures themselves. But the holy angels, towards whose society and assembly we sigh while in this our toilsome pilgrimage, as they already abide in their eternal home, so do they enjoy perfect facility of knowledge and felicity of rest. It is without difficulty that they help us; for their spiritual movements, pure and free, cost them no effort.
32. Of the opinion that the angels were created before the world.
But if some one oppose our opinion, and say that the holy angels are not referred to when it is said, "Let there be light, and there was light;" if he suppose or teach that some material light, then first created, was meant, and that the angels were created, not only before the firmament dividing the waters and named "the heaven," but also before the time signified in the words, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;" if he allege that this phrase, "In the beginning," does not mean that nothing was made before (for the angels were), but that God made all things by His Wisdom or Word, who is named in scripture "the Beginning," as He Himself, in the gospel, replied to the Jews when they asked Him who He was, that He was the Beginning;[506]I will not contest the point, chiefly because it gives me the liveliest satisfaction to find the Trinity celebrated in the very beginning of the book of Genesis. For, having said, "In the Beginning God created the heaven and the earth," meaning that the Father made them in the Son (as the psalm testifies where it says, "How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! in Wisdom[Pg 477] hast Thou made them all"[507]), a little afterwards mention is fitly made of the Holy Spirit also. For, when it had been told us what kind of earth God created at first, or what the mass or matter was which God, under the name of "heaven and earth," had provided for the construction of the world, as is told in the additional words, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep," then, for the sake of completing the mention of the Trinity, it is immediately added, "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Let each one, then, take it as he pleases; for it is so profound a passage, that it may well suggest, for the exercise of the reader's tact, many opinions, and none of them widely departing from the rule of faith. At the same time, let none doubt that the holy angels in their heavenly abodes are, though not, indeed, co-eternal with God, yet secure and certain of eternal and true felicity. To their company the Lord teaches that His little ones belong; and not only says, "They shall be equal to the angels of God,"[508] but shows, too, what blessed contemplation the angels themselves enjoy, saying, "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."[509]
33. Of the two different and dissimilar communities of angels, which are not inappropriately signified by the names light and darkness.
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Some,[516] however, have supposed that the angelic hosts are somehow referred to under the name of waters, and that this is what is meant by, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters:"[517] that the waters above should be understood of the angels, and those below either of the visible waters, or of the multitude of bad angels, or of the nations of men. If this be so, then it does not here appear when the angels were created, but when they were separated. Though there have not been wanting men foolish and wicked enough[518] to deny that the waters were made by God, because it is nowhere written, "God said, Let there be waters." With equal folly they might say the same of the earth, for nowhere do we read, "God said, Let the earth be." But, say they, it is written, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."[Pg 480] Yes, and there the water is meant, for both are included in one word. For "the sea is His," as the psalm says, "and He made it; and His hands formed the dry land."[519] But those who would understand the angels by the waters above the skies have a difficulty about the specific gravity of the elements, and fear that the waters, owing to their fluidity and weight, could not be set in the upper parts of the world. So that, if they were to construct a man upon their own principles, they would not put in his head any moist humours, or "phlegm" as the Greeks call it, and which acts the part of water among the elements of our body. But, in God's handiwork, the head is the seat of the phlegm, and surely most fitly; and yet, according to their supposition, so absurdly that if we were not aware of the fact, and were informed by this same record that God had put a moist and cold and therefore heavy humour in the uppermost part of man's body, these world-weighers would refuse belief. And if they were confronted with the authority of scripture, they would maintain that something else must be meant by the words. But, were we to investigate and discover all the details which are written in this divine book regarding the creation of the world, we should have much to say, and should widely digress from the proposed aim of this work. Since, then, we have now said what seemed needful regarding these two diverse and contrary communities of angels, in which the origin of the two human communities (of which we intend to speak anon) is also found, let us at once bring this book also to a conclusion.
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BOOK XIII. - That death is penal, and had its origin in Adam's sin, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
Let us, then, speak in the customary way,no man ought to speak otherwise, and let us call the time before death come, "before death;" as it is written, "Praise no man before his death."[586] And when it has happened, let us say that "after death" this or that took place. And of the present time let us speak as best we can, as when we say, "He, when dying, made his will, and left this or that to such and such persons,"though, of course, he could not do so unless he were living, and did this rather before death than in death. And let us use the same phraseology as scripture uses; for it makes no scruple of saying that the dead are not after but in death. So that verse, "For in death there is no remembrance of thee."[587] For until the resurrection men are justly said to be in death; as every one is said to be in sleep till he awakes. However, though we can say of persons in sleep that they are sleeping, we cannot speak in this way of the dead, and say they are dying. For, so far as regards the death of the body, of which we are now speaking, one cannot say that those who are already separated from their bodies continue dying. But this, you see, is just what I was saying,that no words can explain how either the dying are said to live, or how the dead are said, even after death, to be in death. For how can they be after death if they be in death, especially when we do not even call them dying, as we call those in sleep, sleeping; and those in languor, languishing; and those in grief, grieving; and those in life, living? And yet the dead, until they rise again, are said to be in death, but cannot be called dying.
And therefore I think it has not unsuitably nor inappropriately come to pass, though not by the intention of man, yet perhaps with divine purpose, that this Latin word moritur cannot be declined by the grammarians according to the rule followed by similar words. For oritur gives the form ortus est for the perfect; and all similar verbs form this tense from their perfect participles. But if we ask the perfect of moritur, we get the regular answer, mortuus[Pg 533] est with a double u. For thus mortuus is pronounced, like fatuus, arduus, conspicuus, and similar words, which are not perfect participles but adjectives, and are declined without regard to tense. But mortuus, though in form an adjective, is used as perfect participle, as if that were to be declined which cannot be declined; and thus it has suitably come to pass that, as the thing itself cannot in point of fact be declined, so neither can the word significant of the act be declined. Yet, by the aid of our Redeemer's grace, we may manage at least to decline the second. For that is more grievous still, and, indeed, of all evils the worst, since it consists not in the separation of soul and body, but in the uniting of both in death eternal. And there, in striking contrast to our present conditions, men will not be before or after death, but always in death; and thus never living, never dead, but endlessly dying. And never can a man be more disastrously in death than when death itself shall be deathless.
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But the philosophers against whom we are defending the city of God, that is, His Church, seem to themselves to have good cause to deride us, because we say that the separation of the soul from the body is to be held as part of man's punishment. For they suppose that the blessedness of the soul then only is complete, when it is quite denuded of the body, and returns to God a pure and simple, and, as it were, naked soul. On this point, if I should find nothing in their own literature to refute this opinion, I should be forced laboriously to demonstrate that it is not the body, but the corruptibility of the body, which is a burden to the soul. Hence that sentence of scripture we quoted in a foregoing book, "For the corruptible body presseth down the soul."[593] The word corruptible is added to show that the soul is burdened, not by any body whatsoever, but by the body such as it has become in consequence of sin. And even though the word had not been added, we could understand nothing else. But when Plato most expressly declares that the gods who are made by the Supreme have immortal bodies, and when he introduces their Maker himself promising them as a great boon that they should abide in their bodies eternally, and never by any death be loosed from them, why do these adversaries of ours, for the sake of troubling the Christian faith, feign to be ignorant of what they quite well know, and even prefer to contradict themselves rather than lose an opportunity of contradicting us? Here are Plato's words, as Cicero[Pg 537] has translated them,[594] in which he introduces the Supreme addressing the gods He had made, and saying, "Ye who are sprung from a divine stock, consider of what works I am the parent and author. These (your bodies) are indestructible so long as I will it; although all that is composed can be destroyed. But it is wicked to dissolve what reason has compacted. But, seeing that ye have been born, ye cannot indeed be immortal and indestructible; yet ye shall by no means be destroyed, nor shall any fates consign you to death, and prove superior to my will, which is a stronger assurance of your perpetuity than those bodies to which ye were joined when ye were born." Plato, you see, says that the gods are both mortal by the connection of the body and soul, and yet are rendered immortal by the will and decree of their Maker. If, therefore, it is a punishment to the soul to be connected with any body whatever, why does God address them as if they were afraid of death, that is, of the separation of soul and body? Why does He seek to reassure them by promising them immortality, not in virtue of their nature, which is composite and not simple, but by virtue of His invincible will, whereby He can effect that neither things born die, nor things compounded be dissolved, but preserved eternally?
Whether this opinion of Plato's about the stars is true or not, is another question. For we cannot at once grant to him that these luminous bodies or globes, which by day and night shine on the earth with the light of their bodily substance, have also intellectual and blessed souls which animate each its own body, as he confidently affirms of the universe itself, as if it were one huge animal, in which all other animals were contained.[595] But this, as I said, is another question, which we[Pg 538] have not undertaken to discuss at present. This much only I deemed right to bring forward, in opposition to those who so pride themselves on being, or on being called Platonists, that they blush to be Christians, and who cannot brook to be called by a name which the common people also bear, lest they vulgarize the philosophers' coterie, which is proud in proportion to its exclusiveness. These men, seeking a weak point in the Christian doctrine, select for attack the eternity of the body, as if it were a contradiction to contend for the blessedness of the soul, and to wish it to be always resident in the body, bound, as it were, in a lamentable chain; and this although Plato, their own founder and master, affirms that it was granted by the Supreme as a boon to the gods He had made, that they should not die, that is, should not be separated from the bodies with which He had connected them.
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On this account some allegorize all that concerns Paradise itself, where the first men, the parents of the human race, are, according to the truth of holy scripture, recorded to have been; and they understand all its trees and fruit-bearing plants as virtues and habits of life, as if they had no existence in the external world, but were only so spoken of or related for the sake of spiritual meanings. As if there could not be a real terrestrial Paradise! As if there never existed these two women, Sarah and Hagar, nor the two sons who were born to Abraham, the one of the bond woman, the other of the free, because the apostle says that in them the two covenants were prefigured; or as if water never flowed from the rock when Moses struck it, because therein Christ can be seen in a figure, as the same apostle says, "Now that rock was Christ!"[602] No[Pg 546] one, then, denies that Paradise may signify the life of the blessed; its four rivers, the four virtues, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice; its trees, all useful knowledge; its fruits, the customs of the godly; its tree of life, wisdom herself, the mother of all good; and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the experience of a broken commandment. The punishment which God appointed was in itself a just, and therefore a good thing; but man's experience of it is not good.
These things can also and more profitably be understood of the Church, so that they become prophetic foreshadowings of things to come. Thus Paradise is the Church, as it is called in the Canticles;[603] the four rivers of Paradise are the four gospels; the fruit-trees the saints, and the fruit their works; the tree of life is the holy of holies, Christ; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the will's free choice. For if man despise the will of God, he can only destroy himself; and so he learns the difference between consecrating himself to the common good and revelling in his own. For he who loves himself is abandoned to himself, in order that, being overwhelmed with fears and sorrows, he may cry, if there be yet soul in him to feel his ills, in the words of the psalm, "My soul is cast down within me,"[604] and when chastened, may say, "Because of his strength I will wait upon Thee."[605] These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put upon Paradise without giving offence to any one, while yet we believe the strict truth of the history, confirmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts.[606]
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Thus the apostle states that the first man was made in an animal body. For, wishing to distinguish the animal body which now is from the spiritual, which is to be in the resurrection, he says, "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." Then, to prove this, he goes on, "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." And to show what the animated body is, he says, "Thus it was written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."[613] He wished thus to show what the animated body is, though scripture did not say of the first man Adam, when his soul was created by the breath of God, "Man was made in an animated body," but "Man was made a living soul."[614] By these words, therefore, "The first man was made a living soul," the apostle wishes man's animated body to be understood. But how he wishes the spiritual body to be understood he shows when he adds, "But the last Adam was made a quickening spirit," plainly referring to Christ, who has so risen from the dead that He cannot die any more. He then goes on to say, "But that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual." And here he much more clearly asserts that he referred to the animal body when he said that the first man[Pg 550] was made a living soul, and to the spiritual when he said that the last man was made a quickening spirit. The animal body is the first, being such as the first Adam had, and which would not have died had he not sinned, being such also as we now have, its nature being changed and vitiated by sin to the extent of bringing us under the necessity of death, and being such as even Christ condescended first of all to assume, not indeed of necessity, but of choice; but afterwards comes the spiritual body, which already is worn by anticipation by Christ as our head, and will be worn by His members in the resurrection of the dead.
Then the apostle subjoins a notable difference between these two men, saying, "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."[615] So he elsewhere says, "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;"[616] but in very deed this shall be accomplished when that which is animal in us by our birth shall have become spiritual in our resurrection. For, to use his words again, "We are saved by hope."[617] Now we bear the image of the earthly man by the propagation of sin and death, which pass on us by ordinary generation; but we bear the image of the heavenly by the grace of pardon and life eternal, which regeneration confers upon us through the Mediator of God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. And He is the heavenly Man of Paul's passage, because He came from heaven to be clothed with a body of earthly mortality, that He might clo the it with heavenly immortality. And he calls others heavenly, because by grace they become His members, that, together with them, He may become one Christ, as head and body. In the same epistle he puts this yet more clearly: "Since by man came death, by Man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,"[618]that is to say, in a spiritual body which shall be made a quickening spirit. Not[Pg 551] that all who die in Adam shall be members of Christ,for the great majority shall be punished in eternal death,but he uses the word "all" in both clauses, because, as no one dies in an animal body except in Adam, so no one is quickened a spiritual body save in Christ. We are not, then, by any means to suppose that we shall in the resurrection have such a body as the first man had before he sinned, nor that the words, "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy," are to be understood of that which was brought about by sin; for we are not to think that Adam had a spiritual body before he fell, and that, in punishment of his sin, it was changed into an animal body. If this be thought, small heed has been given to the words of so great a teacher, who says, "There is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body; as it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul." Was it after sin he was made so? or was not this the primal condition of man from which the blessed apostle selects his testimony to show what the animal body is?
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Some have hastily supposed from the words, "God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,"[619] that a soul was not then first given to man, but that the soul already given was quickened by the Holy Ghost. They are encouraged in this supposition by the fact that the Lord Jesus after His resurrection breathed on His disciples, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit."[620] From this they suppose that the same thing was effected in either case, as if the evangelist had gone on to say, And they became living souls. But if he had made this addition, we should only understand that the Spirit is in some way the life of souls, and that without Him reasonable souls must be accounted dead, though their bodies seem to live before our eyes. But that this was not what happened when man was created, the very words of the narrative sufficiently show: "And God made man dust of the earth;" which some have thought to render more clearly by the words, "And God formed man of the clay[Pg 552] of the earth." For it had before been said that "there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground,"[621] in order that the reference to clay, formed of this moisture and dust, might be understood. For on this verse there immediately follows the announcement, "And God created man dust of the earth;" so those Greek manuscripts have it from which this passage has been translated into Latin. But whether one prefers to read "created" or "formed," where the Greek reads , is of little importance; yet "formed" is the better rendering. But those who preferred "created" thought they thus avoided the ambiguity arising from the fact, that in the Latin language the usage obtains that those are said to form a thing who frame some feigned and fictitious thing. This man, then, who was created of the dust of the earth, or of the moistened dust or clay,this "dust of the earth" (that I may use the express words of scripture) was made, as the apostle teaches, an animated body when he received a soul. This man, he says, "was made a living soul;" that is, this fashioned dust was made a living soul.
They say, Already he had a soul, else he would not be called a man; for man is not a body alone, nor a soul alone, but a being composed of both. This, indeed, is true, that the soul is not the whole man, but the better part of man; the body not the whole, but the inferior part of man; and that then, when both are joined, they receive the name of man,which, however, they do not severally lose even when we speak of them singly. For who is prohibited from saying, in colloquial usage, "That man is dead, and is now at rest or in torment," though this can be spoken only of the soul; or "He is buried in such and such a place," though this refers only to the body? Will they say that scripture follows no such usage? On the contrary, it so thoroughly adopts it, that even while a man is alive, and body and soul are united, it calls each of them singly by the name "man," speaking of the soul as the "inward man," and of the body as the "outward man,"[622] as if there were two men, though both together are indeed but one. But we must understand in what sense man is said to be in the image of God, and is yet dust, and to return to the[Pg 553] dust. The former is spoken of the rational soul, which God by His breathing, or, to speak more appropriately, by His inspiration, conveyed to man, that is, to his body; but the latter refers to his body, which God formed of the dust, and to which a soul was given, that it might become a living body, that is, that man might become a living soul.
Wherefore, when our Lord breathed on His disciples, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," He certainly wished it to be understood that the Holy Ghost was not only the Spirit of the Father, but of the only-begotten Son Himself. For the same Spirit is, indeed, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, making with them the trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, not a creature, but the Creator. For neither was that material breath which proceeded from the mouth of His flesh the very substance and nature of the Holy Spirit, but rather the intimation, as I said, that the Holy Spirit was common to the Father and to the Son; for they have not each a separate Spirit, but both one and the same. Now this Spirit is always spoken of in sacred scripture by the Greek word , as the Lord, too, named Him in the place cited when He gave Him to His disciples, and intimated the gift by the breathing of His lips; and there does not occur to me any place in the whole scriptures where He is otherwise named. But in this passage where it is said, "And the Lord formed man dust of the earth, and breathed, or inspired, into his face the breath of life;" the Greek has not , the usual word for the Holy Spirit, but , a word more frequently used of the creature than of the Creator; and for this reason some Latin interpreters have preferred to render it by "breath" rather than "spirit." For this word occurs also in the Greek in Isa. lvii. 16, where God says, "I have made all breath," meaning, doubtless, all souls. Accordingly, this word is sometimes rendered "breath," sometimes "spirit," sometimes "inspiration," sometimes "aspiration," sometimes "soul," even when it is used of God. , on the other hand, is uniformly rendered "spirit," whether of man, of whom the apostle says, "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?"[623] or of beast, as in the book of[Pg 554] Solomon, "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"[624] or of that physical spirit which is called wind, for so the Psalmist calls it: "Fire and hail; snow and vapours; stormy wind;"[625] or of the uncreated Creator Spirit, of whom the Lord said in the gospel, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," indicating the gift by the breathing of His mouth; and when He says, "Go ye and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"[626] words which very expressly and excellently commend the Trinity; and where it is said, "God is a Spirit;"[627] and in very many other places of the sacred writings. In all these quotations from scripture we do not find in the Greek the word used, but , and in the Latin, not flatus, but spiritus. Wherefore, referring again to that place where it is written, "He inspired," or, to speak more properly, "breathed into his face the breath of life," even though the Greek had not used (as it has) but , it would not on that account necessarily follow that the Creator Spirit, who in the Trinity is distinctively called the Holy Ghost, was meant, since, as has been said, it is plain that is used not only of the Creator, but also of the creature.
But, say they, when the scripture used the word "spirit,"[628] it would not have added "of life" unless it meant us to understand the Holy Spirit; nor, when it said, "Man became a soul," would it also have inserted the word "living" unless that life of the soul were signified which is imparted to it from above by the gift of God. For, seeing that the soul by itself has a proper life of its own, what need, they ask, was there of adding living, save only to show that the life which is given it by the Holy Spirit was meant? What is this but to fight strenuously for their own conjectures, while they carelessly neglect the teaching of scripture? Without troubling themselves much, they might have found in a preceding page of this very book of Genesis the words, "Let the earth bring forth the living soul,"[629] when all the terrestrial animals were created. Then at a slight interval, but still in the same book,[Pg 555] was it impossible for them to notice this verse, "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died," by which it was signified that all the animals which lived on the earth had perished in the deluge? If, then, we find that scripture is accustomed to speak both of the "living soul" and the "spirit of life" even in reference to beasts; and if in this place, where it is said, "All things which have the spirit of life," the word , not , is used; why may we not say, What need was there to add "living," since the soul cannot exist without being alive? or, What need to add "of life" after the word spirit? But we understand that scripture used these expressions in its ordinary style so long as it speaks of animals, that is, animated bodies, in which the soul serves as the residence of sensation; but when man is spoken of, we forget the ordinary and established usage of scripture, whereby it signifies that man received a rational soul, which was not produced out of the waters and the earth like the other living creatures, but was created by the breath of God. Yet this creation was so ordered that the human soul should live in an animal body, like those other animals of which the scripture said, "Let the earth produce every living soul," and regarding which it again says that in them is the breath of life, where the word and not is used in the Greek, and where certainly not the Holy Spirit, but their spirit, is signified under that name.
But, again, they object that breath is understood to have been emitted from the mouth of God; and if we believe that is the soul, we must consequently acknowledge it to be of the same substance, and equal to that wisdom, which says, "I come out of the mouth of the Most High."[630] Wisdom, indeed, does not say it was breathed out of the mouth of God, but proceeded out of it. But as we are able, when we breathe, to make a breath, not of our own human nature, but of the surrounding air, which we inhale and exhale as we draw our breath and brea the again, so almighty God was able to make breath, not of His own nature, nor of the creature beneath Him, but even of nothing; and this breath, when He communicated it to man's body, He is most appropriately said to[Pg 556] have breathed or inspired,the Immaterial breathing it also immaterial, but the Immutable not also the immutable; for it was created, He uncreated. Yet, that these persons who are forward to quote scripture, and yet know not the usages of its language, may know that not only what is equal and consubstantial with God is said to proceed out of His mouth, let them hear or read what God says: "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."[631]
There is no ground, then, for our objecting, when the apostle so expressly distinguishes the animal body from the spiritual,that is to say, the body in which we now are from that in which we are to be. He says, "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."[632] Of all which words of his we have previously spoken. The animal body, accordingly, in which the apostle says that the first man Adam was made, was not so made that it could not die at all, but so that it should not die unless he should have sinned. That body, indeed, which shall be made spiritual and immortal by the quickening Spirit shall not be able to die at all; as the soul has been created immortal, and therefore, although by sin it may be said to die, and does lose a certain life of its own, namely, the Spirit of God, by whom it was enabled to live wisely and blessedly, yet it does not cease living a kind of life, though a miserable, because it is immortal by creation. So, too, the rebellious angels, though by sinning they did in a sense die, because they forsook God, the Fountain of life, which while they drank they were able to live wisely and well, yet they could not so die as to utterly cease living and[Pg 557] feeling, for they are immortals by creation. And so, after the final judgment, they shall be hurled into the second death, and not even there be deprived of life or of sensation, but shall suffer torment. But those men who have been embraced by God's grace, and are become the fellow-citizens of the holy angels who have continued in bliss, shall never more either sin or die, being endued with spiritual bodies; yet, being clothed with immortality, such as the angels enjoy, of which they cannot be divested even by sinning, the nature of their flesh shall continue the same, but all carnal corruption and unwieldiness shall be removed.
BOOK XII. - Of the creation of angels and men, and of the origin of evil, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
In scripture they are called God's enemies who oppose His rule, not by nature, but by vice; having no power to hurt Him, but only themselves. For they are His enemies, not through their power to hurt, but by their will to oppose Him. For God is unchangeable, and wholly proof against injury. Therefore the vice which makes those who are called His enemies resist Him, is an evil not to God, but to themselves. And to them it is an evil, solely because it corrupts the good of their nature. It is not nature, therefore, but vice, which is contrary to God. For that which is evil is contrary to the good. And who will deny that God is the supreme good? Vice, therefore, is contrary to God, as evil to good. Further, the nature it vitiates is a good, and therefore to this good also it is contrary. But while it is contrary to God only as evil to good, it is contrary to the nature it vitiates, both as evil and as hurtful. For to God no evils are hurtful; but only to natures mutable and corruptible, though, by the testimony of the vices themselves, originally good. For were they not good, vices could not hurt them. For how do they hurt them but by depriving them of integrity, beauty, welfare, virtue, and, in short, whatever natural good vice is wont to diminish or destroy? But if there be no good to take away, then no injury can be done, and consequently there can be no vice. For it is impossible that there should be a harmless vice. Whence we gather, that though vice cannot injure the unchangeable good, it can injure nothing but good; because it does not exist where it does not injure. This, then, may be thus formulated: Vice cannot be in the highest good, and cannot be but in some good. Things solely good, therefore, can in some circumstances exist; things solely evil, never; for even those natures which are vitiated by an evil will, so far indeed as they are vitiated, are evil, but in so far as they[Pg 485] are natures they are good. And when a vitiated nature is punished, besides the good it has in being a nature, it has this also, that it is not unpunished.[524] For this is just, and certainly everything just is a good. For no one is punished for natural, but for voluntary vices. For even the vice which by the force of habit and long continuance has become a second nature, had its origin in the will. For at present we are speaking of the vices of the nature, which has a mental capacity for that enlightenment which discriminates between what is just and what is unjust.
4. Of the nature of irrational and lifeless creatures, which in their own kind and order do not mar the beauty of the universe.
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Besides, this too has to be inquired into, whether, if the[Pg 493] good angels made their own will good, they did so with or without will? If without, then it was not their doing. If with, was the will good or bad? If bad, how could a bad will give birth to a good one? If good, then already they had a good will. And who made this will, which already they had, but He who created them with a good will, or with that chaste love by which they cleaved to Him, in one and the same act creating their nature, and endowing it with grace? And thus we are driven to believe that the holy angels never existed without a good will or the love of God. But the angels who, though created good, are yet evil now, became so by their own will. And this will was not made evil by their good nature, unless by its voluntary defection from good; for good is not the cause of evil, but a defection from good is. These angels, therefore, either received less of the grace of the divine love than those who persevered in the same; or if both were created equally good, then, while the one fell by their evil will, the others were more abundantly assisted, and attained to that pitch of blessedness at which they became certain they should never fall from it,as we have already shown in the preceding book.[528] We must therefore acknowledge, with the praise due to the Creator, that not only of holy men, but also of the holy angels, it can be said that "the love of God is shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto them."[529] And that not only of men, but primarily and principally of angels it is true, as it is written, "It is good to draw near to God."[530] And those who have this good in common, have, both with Him to whom they draw near, and with one another, a holy fellowship, and form one city of GodHis living sacrifice, and His living temple. And I see that, as I have now spoken of the rise of this city among the angels, it is time to speak of the origin of that part of it which is hereafter to be united to the immortal angels, and which at present is being gathered from among mortal men, and is either sojourning on earth, or, in the persons of those who have passed through death, is resting in the secret receptacles and abodes of disembodied spirits. For from one man, whom God created as the first, the whole[Pg 494] human race descended, according to the faith of Holy scripture, which deservedly is of wonderful authority among all nations throughout the world; since, among its other true statements, it predicted, by its divine foresight, that all nations would give credit to it.
10. Of the falseness of the history which allots many thousand years to the world's past.
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As to those who are always asking why man was not created during these countless ages of the infinitely extended past, and came into being so lately that, according to scripture, less than 6000 years have elapsed since he began to be, I would reply to them regarding the creation of man, just as I replied regarding the origin of the world to those who will not believe that it is not eternal, but had a beginning, which even Plato himself most plainly declares, though some think his statement was not consistent with his real opinion.[537] If it[Pg 497] offends them that the time that has elapsed since the creation of man is so short, and his years so few according to our authorities, let them take this into consideration, that nothing that has a limit is long, and that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable eternity. Consequently, if there had elapsed since the creation of man, I do not say five or six, but even sixty or six hundred thousand years, or sixty times as many, or six hundred or six hundred thousand times as many, or this sum multiplied until it could no longer be expressed in numbers, the same question could still be put, Why was he not made before? For the past and boundless eternity during which God abstained from creating man is so great, that, compare it with what vast and untold number of ages you please, so long as there is a definite conclusion of this term of time, it is not even as if you compared the minutest drop of water with the ocean that everywhere flows around the globe. For of these two, one indeed is very small, the other incomparably vast, yet both are finite; but that space of time which starts from some beginning, and is limited by some termination, be it of what extent it may, if you compare it with that which has no beginning, I know not whether to say we should count it the very minutest thing, or nothing at all. For, take this limited time, and deduct from the end of it, one by one, the briefest moments (as you might take day by day from a man's life, beginning at the day in which he now lives, back to that of his birth), and though the number of moments you must subtract in this backward movement be so great that no word can express it, yet this subtraction will some time carry you to the beginning. But if you take away from a time which has no beginning, I do not say brief moments one by one, nor yet hours, or days, or months, or years even in quantities, but terms of years so vast that they cannot be named by the most skilful arithmetician,take away terms of years as vast as that which we have supposed to be gradually consumed by the deduction of moments, and take them away not once and again repeatedly, but always, and what do you effect, what do you make by your deduction, since you never reach the beginning which has no existence? Wherefore, that[Pg 498] which we now demand after five thousand odd years, our descendants might with like curiosity demand after six hundred thousand years, supposing these dying generations of men continue so long to decay and be renewed, and supposing posterity continues as weak and ignorant as ourselves. The same question might have been asked by those who have lived before us, and while man was even newer upon earth. The first man himself, in short, might, the day after, or the very day of his creation, have asked why he was created no sooner. And no matter at what earlier or later period he had been created, this controversy about the commencement of this world's history would have had precisely the same difficulties as it has now.
13. Of the revolution of the ages, which some philosophers believe will bring all things round again, after a certain fixed cycle, to the same order and form as at first.
BOOK XIV. - Of the punishment and results of mans first sin, and of the propagation of man without lust, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
We have already stated in the preceding books that God, desiring not only that the human race might be able by their similarity of nature to associate with one another, but also that they might be bound together in harmony and peace by the ties of relationship, was pleased to derive all men from one individual, and created man with such a nature that the members of the race should not have died, had not the two first (of whom the one was created out of nothing, and the other out of him) merited this by their disobedience; for by them so great a sin was committed, that by it the human nature was altered for the worse, and was transmitted also to their posterity, liable to sin and subject to death. And the kingdom of death so reigned over men, that the deserved penalty of sin would have hurled all headlong even into the second death, of which there is no end, had not the undeserved grace of God saved some therefrom. And[Pg 2] thus it has come to pass, that though there are very many and great nations all over the earth, whose rites and customs, speech, arms, and dress, are distinguished by marked differences, yet there are no more than two kinds of human society, which we may justly call two cities, according to the language of our scriptures. The one consists of those who wish to live after the flesh, the other of those who wish to live after the spirit; and when they severally achieve what they wish, they live in peace, each after their kind.
2. Of carnal life, which is to be understood not only of living in bodily indulgence, but also of living in the vices of the inner man.
First, we must see what it is to live after the flesh, and what to live after the spirit. For any one who either does not recollect, or does not sufficiently weigh, the language of sacred scripture, may, on first hearing what we have said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers live after the flesh, because they place man's highest good in bodily pleasure; and that those others do so who have been of opinion that in some form or other bodily good is man's supreme good; and that the mass of men do so who, without dogmatizing or philosophizing on the subject, are so prone to lust that they cannot delight in any pleasure save such as they receive from bodily sensations: and he may suppose that the Stoics, who place the supreme good of men in the soul, live after the spirit; for what is man's soul, if not spirit? But in the sense of the divine scripture both are proved to live after the flesh. For by flesh it means not only the body of a terrestrial and mortal animal, as when it says, "All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds,"[2] but it uses this word in many other significations; and among these various usages, a frequent one is to use flesh for man himself, the nature of man taking the part for the whole, as in the words, "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;"[3] for what does he mean here by "no flesh" but "no man?" And this, indeed, he shortly after says more plainly: "No man shall be justified by the law;"[4] and in the Epistle to the Galatians, "Knowing that a man is not justified by the[Pg 3] works of the law." And so we understand the words, "And the Word was made flesh,"[5]that is, man, which some not accepting in its right sense, have supposed that Christ had not a human soul.[6] For as the whole is used for the part in the words of Mary Magdalene in the Gospel, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him,"[7] by which she meant only the flesh of Christ, which she supposed had been taken from the tomb where it had been buried, so the part is used for the whole, flesh being named, while man is referred to, as in the quotations above cited.
Since, then, scripture uses the word flesh in many ways, which there is not time to collect and investigate, if we are to ascertain what it is to live after the flesh (which is certainly evil, though the nature of flesh is not itself evil), we must carefully examine that passage of the epistle which the Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, in which he says, "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God."[8] This whole passage of the apostolic epistle being considered, so far as it bears on the matter in hand, will be sufficient to answer the question, what it is to live after the flesh. For among the works of the flesh which he said were manifest, and which he cited for condemnation, we find not only those which concern the pleasure of the flesh, as fornications, uncleanness, lasciviousness, drunkenness, revellings, but also those which, though they be remote from fleshly pleasure, reveal the vices of the soul. For who does not see that idolatries, witchcrafts, hatreds, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings, are vices rather of the soul than of the flesh? For it is quite possible for a man to abstain from fleshly pleasures for the sake of idolatry or some heretical error; and yet, even when he does so, he is proved by this apostolic authority to be living after the flesh; and in[Pg 4] abstaining from fleshly pleasure, he is proved to be practising damnable works of the flesh. Who that has enmity has it not in his soul? or who would say to his enemy, or to the man he thinks his enemy, You have a bad flesh towards me, and not rather, You have a bad spirit towards me? In fine, if any one heard of what I may call "carnalities," he would not fail to attribute them to the carnal part of man; so no one doubts that "animosities" belong to the soul of man. Why then does the doctor of the Gentiles in faith and verity call all these and similar things works of the flesh, unless because, by that mode of speech whereby the part is used for the whole, he means us to understand by the word flesh the man himself?
3. That sin is caused not by the flesh, but by the soul, and that the corruption contracted from sin is not sin, but sin's punishment.
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7. That the words love and regard (amor and dilectio) are in scripture used indifferently of good and evil affection.
He who resolves to love God, and to love his neighbour as himself, not according to man but according to God, is on account of this love said to be of a good will; and this is in scripture more commonly called charity, but it is also, even in the same books, called love. For the apostle says that the man to be elected as a ruler of the people must be a lover of good.[25] And when the Lord Himself had asked Peter, "Hast thou a regard for me (diligis) more than these?" Peter replied, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee." And again a second time the Lord asked not whether Peter loved (amaret) Him, but whether he had a regard (diligeret) for Him, and he again answered, "Lord, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee." But on the third interrogation the Lord Himself no longer says, "Hast thou a regard (diligis) for me," but "Lovest thou (amas) me?" And then the evangelist adds, "Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, Lovest thou (amas) me?" though the Lord had not said three times but only once, "Lovest thou (amas) me?" and twice "Diligis me?" from which we gather that, even when the Lord said "diligis," He used an equivalent for "amas." Peter, too, throughout used one word[Pg 11] for the one thing, and the third time also replied, "Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love (amo) Thee."[26]
I have judged it right to mention this, because some are of opinion that charity or regard (dilectio) is one thing, love (amor) another. They say that dilectio is used of a good affection, amor of an evil love. But it is very certain that even secular literature knows no such distinction. However, it is for the philosophers to determine whether and how they differ, though their own writings sufficiently testify that they make great account of love (amor) placed on good objects, and even on God Himself. But we wished to show that the scriptures of our religion, whose authority we prefer to all writings whatsoever, make no distinction between amor, dilectio, and caritas; and we have already shown that amor is used in a good connection. And if any one fancy that amor is no doubt used both of good and bad loves, but that dilectio is reserved for the good only, let him remember what the psalm says, "He that loveth (diligit) iniquity hateth his own soul;"[27] and the words of the Apostle John, "If any man love (diligere) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him."[28] Here you have in one passage dilectio used both in a good and a bad sense. And if any one demands an instance of amor being used in a bad sense (for we have already shown its use in a good sense), let him read the words, "For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money."[29]
The right will is, therefore, well-directed love, and the wrong will is ill-directed love. Love, then, yearning to have what is loved, is desire; and having and enjoying it, is joy; fleeing what is opposed to it, it is fear; and feeling what is opposed to it, when it has befallen it, it is sadness. Now these motions are evil if the love is evil; good if the love is good. What we assert let us prove from scripture. The apostle "desires to depart, and to be with Christ."[30] And, "My soul desired to long for Thy judgments;"[31] or if it is more appropriate to say, "My soul longed to desire Thy judgments." And, "The desire of wisdom bringeth to a kingdom."[Pg 12][32] Yet there has always obtained the usage of understanding desire and concupiscence in a bad sense if the object be not defined. But joy is used in a good sense: "Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous."[33] And, "Thou hast put gladness in my heart."[34] And, "Thou wilt fill me with joy with Thy countenance."[35] Fear is used in a good sense by the apostle when he says, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling."[36] And, "Be not high-minded, but fear."[37] And, "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."[38] But with respect to sadness, which Cicero prefers to call sickness (gritudo), and Virgil pain (dolor) (as he says, "Dolent gaudentque"[39]), but which I prefer to call sorrow, because sickness and pain are more commonly used to express bodily suffering,with respect to this emotion, I say, the question whether it can be used in a good sense is more difficult.
8. Of the three perturbations, which the Stoics admitted in the soul of the wise man to the exclusion of grief or sadness, which the manly mind ought not to experience.
Those emotions which the Greeks call , and which Cicero calls constanti, the Stoics would restrict to three; and, instead of three "perturbations" in the soul of the wise man, they substituted severally, in place of desire, will; in place of joy, contentment; and for fear, caution; and as to sickness or pain, which we, to avoid ambiguity, preferred to call sorrow, they denied that it could exist in the mind of a wise man. Will, they say, seeks the good, for this the wise man does. Contentment has its object in good that is possessed, and this the wise man continually possesses. Caution avoids evil, and this the wise man ought to avoid. But sorrow arises from evil that has already happened; and as they suppose that no evil can happen to the wise man, there can be no representative of sorrow in his mind. According to them, therefore, none but the wise man wills, is contented, uses caution; and that the fool can do no more than desire, rejoice, fear, be sad. The former three affections[Pg 13] Cicero calls constanti, the last four perturbationes. Many, however, call these last passions; and, as I have said, the Greeks call the former , and the latter . And when I made a careful examination of scripture to find whether this terminology was sanctioned by it, I came upon this saying of the prophet: "There is no contentment to the wicked, saith the Lord;"[40] as if the wicked might more properly rejoice than be contented regarding evils, for contentment is the property of the good and godly. I found also that verse in the Gospel: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them;"[41] which seems to imply that evil or shameful things may be the object of desire, but not of will. Indeed, some interpreters have added "good things" to make the expression more in conformity with customary usage, and have given this meaning, "Whatsoever good deeds that ye would that men should do unto you." For they thought that this would prevent any one from wishing other men to provide him with unseemly, not to say shameful, gratifications,luxurious banquets, for example,on the supposition that if he returned the like to them he would be fulfilling this precept. In the Greek Gospel, however, from which the Latin is translated, "good" does not occur, but only, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them," and, as I believe, because "good" is already included in the word "would;" for He does not say "desire."
Yet though we may sometimes avail ourselves of these precise proprieties of language, we are not to be always bridled by them; and when we read those writers against whose authority it is unlawful to reclaim, we must accept the meanings above mentioned in passages where a right sense can be educed by no other interpretation, as in those instances we adduced partly from the prophet, partly from the Gospel. For who does not know that the wicked exult with joy? Yet "there is no contentment for the wicked, saith the Lord." And how so, unless because contentment, when the word is used in its proper and distinctive significance, means something different from joy? In like manner,[Pg 14] who would deny that it were wrong to enjoin upon men that whatever they desire others to do to them they should themselves do to others, lest they should mutually please one another by shameful and illicit pleasure? And yet the precept, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them," is very wholesome and just. And how is this, unless because the will is in this place used strictly, and signifies that will which cannot have evil for its object? But ordinary phraseology would not have allowed the saying, "Be unwilling to make any manner of lie,"[42] had there not been also an evil will, whose wickedness separates it from that which the angels celebrated, "Peace on earth, of good will to men."[43] For "good" is superfluous if there is no other kind of will but good will. And why should the apostle have mentioned it among the praises of charity as a great thing, that "it rejoices not in iniquity," unless because wickedness does so rejoice? For even with secular writers these words are used indifferently. For Cicero, that most fertile of orators, says, "I desire, conscript fathers, to be merciful."[44] And who would be so pedantic as to say that he should have said "I will" rather than "I desire," because the word is used in a good connection? Again, in Terence, the profligate youth, burning with wild lust, says, "I will nothing else than Philumena."[45] That this "will" was lust is sufficiently indicated by the answer of his old servant which is there introduced: "How much better were it to try and banish that love from your heart, than to speak so as uselessly to inflame your passion still more!" And that contentment was used by secular writers in a bad sense, that verse of Virgil testifies, in which he most succinctly comprehends these four perturbations,
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But so far as regards this question of mental perturbations, we have answered these philosophers in the ninth book[50] of this work, showing that it is rather a verbal than a real dispute, and that they seek contention rather than truth. Among ourselves, according to the sacred scriptures and sound doctrine, the citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice. And because their love is[Pg 16] rightly placed, all these affections of theirs are right. They fear eternal punishment, they desire eternal life; they grieve because they themselves groan within themselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of their body;[51] they rejoice in hope, because there "shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory."[52] In like manner they fear to sin, they desire to persevere; they grieve in sin, they rejoice in good works. They fear to sin, because they hear that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."[53] They desire to persevere, because they hear that it is written, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved."[54] They grieve for sin, hearing that "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."[55] They rejoice in good works, because they hear that "the Lord loveth a cheerful giver."[56] In like manner, according as they are strong or weak, they fear or desire to be tempted, grieve or rejoice in temptation. They fear to be tempted, because they hear the injunction, "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted."[57] They desire to be tempted, because they hear one of the heroes of the city of God saying, "Examine me, O Lord, and tempt me: try my reins and my heart."[58] They grieve in temptations, because they see Peter weeping;[59] they rejoice in temptations, because they hear James saying, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations."[60]
And not only on their own account do they experience these emotions, but also on account of those whose deliverance they desire and whose perdition they fear, and whose loss or salvation affects them with grief or with joy. For if we who have come into the Church from among the Gentiles may suitably instance that noble and mighty hero who glories in his infirmities, the teacher (doctor) of the nations in faith and truth, who also laboured more than all his fellow-apostles, and instructed the tribes of God's people by his[Pg 17] epistles, which edified not only those of his own time, but all those who were to be gathered in,that hero, I say, and athlete of Christ, instructed by Him, anointed of His Spirit, crucified with Him, glorious in Him, lawfully maintaining a great conflict on the theatre of this world, and being made a spectacle to angels and men,[61] and pressing onwards for the prize of his high calling,[62]very joyfully do we with the eyes of faith behold him rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep;[63] though hampered by fightings without and fears within;[64] desiring to depart and to be with Christ;[65] longing to see the Romans, that he might have some fruit among them as among other Gentiles;[66] being jealous over the Corinthians, and fearing in that jealousy lest their minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ;[67] having great heaviness and continual sorrow of heart for the Israelites,[68] because they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God;[69] and expressing not only his sorrow, but bitter lamentation over some who had formally sinned and had not repented of their uncleanness and fornications.[70]
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But because God foresaw all things, and was therefore not ignorant that man also would fall, we ought to consider this holy city in connection with what God foresaw and ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not embrace God's ordination. For man, by his sin, could not disturb the divine counsel, nor compel God to change what He had decreed; for God's foreknowledge had anticipated both,that is to say, both how evil the man whom He had created good should become, and what good He Himself should even thus derive from him. For though God is said to change His determinations (so that in a tropical sense the Holy scripture says even that God repented[86]), this is said with reference to man's expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with reference to that which the Almighty had foreknown that He would do. Accordingly God, as it is written, made man upright,[87] and consequently with a good will. For if he had not had a good will, he could not have been upright. The good will, then, is the work of God; for God created him with it. But the first evil will, which preceded all man's evil acts, was rather a kind of falling away from the work of God to its own works than any positive work. And therefore the acts resulting were evil, not having God, but the will itself for their end; so that the will or the man himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be not in harmony with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a vice or blemish, yet it is true of it as of all vice, that it cannot exist except in a nature, and only in a nature created out of nothing, and not in that which the Creator has begotten of Himself, as He begot the Word, by whom all things were made. For though God formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth itself, and every earthly material, is absolutely created out of nothing; and man's soul, too, God created out[Pg 23] of nothing, and joined to the body, when He made man. But evils are so thoroughly overcome by good, that though they are permitted to exist, for the sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can make a good use even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as in the true and supreme God Himself, and as in every invisible and visible celestial creature that exists above this murky atmosphere; but evil cannot exist without good, because the natures in which evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are good. And evil is removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had been introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that which had been vitiated and depraved. The will, therefore, is then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins. Such was it given us by God; and this being lost by its own fault, can only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it. And therefore the truth says, "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed;"[88] which is equivalent to saying, If the Son shall save you, ye shall be saved indeed. For He is our Liberator, inasmuch as He is our Saviour.
Man then lived with God for his rule in a paradise at once physical and spiritual. For neither was it a paradise only physical for the advantage of the body, and not also spiritual for the advantage of the mind; nor was it only spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his internal sensations, and not also physical to afford him enjoyment through his external senses. But obviously it was both for both ends. But after that proud and therefore envious angel (of whose fall I have said as much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books of this work, as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God's angels, became his angels), preferring to rule with a kind of pomp of empire rather than to be another's subject, fell from the spiritual Paradise, and essaying to insinuate his persuasive guile into the mind of man, whose unfallen condition provoked him to envy now that himself was fallen, he chose the serpent as his mouthpiece in that bodily Paradise in which it and all the other earthly animals were living with those two human beings, the man and his wife, subject to[Pg 24] them, and harmless; and he chose the serpent because, being slippery, and moving in tortuous windings, it was suitable for his purpose. And this animal being subdued to his wicked ends by the presence and superior force of his angelic nature, he abused as his instrument, and first tried his deceit upon the woman, making his assault upon the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might gradually gain the whole, and not supposing that the man would readily give ear to him, or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman. For as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they blindly wished him to make an idol, and yet yielded to constraint; and as it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as to suppose that idols should be worshipped, but was drawn over to such sacrilege by the blandishments of women; so we cannot believe that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil's word to be truth, and therefore transgressed God's law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the woman, the husb and to the wife, the one human being to the only other human being. For not without significance did the apostle say, "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression;"[89] but he speaks thus, because the woman accepted as true what the serpent told her, but the man could not bear to be severed from his only companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin. He was not on this account less culpable, but sinned with his eyes open. And so the apostle does not say, "He did not sin," but "He was not deceived." For he shows that he sinned when he says, "By one man sin entered into the world,"[90] and immediately after more distinctly, "In the likeness of Adam's transgression." But he meant that those are deceived who do not judge that which they do to be sin; but he knew. Otherwise how were it true "Adam was not deceived?" But having as yet no experience of the divine severity, he was possibly deceived in so far as he thought his sin venial. And consequently he was not deceived as the woman was deceived, but he was deceived as to the judgment which would be passed on his apology: "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me, and I did[Pg 25] eat."[91] What need of saying more? Although they were not both deceived by credulity, yet both were entangled in the snares of the devil, and taken by sin.
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Our first parents fell into open disobedience because already they were secretly corrupted; for the evil act had never been done had not an evil will preceded it. And what is the origin of our evil will but pride? For "pride is the beginning of sin."[92] And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation, when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and[Pg 26] becomes a kind of end to itself. This happens when it becomes its own satisfaction. And it does so when it falls away from that unchangeable good which ought to satisfy it more than itself. This falling away is spontaneous; for if the will had remained stedfast in the love of that higher and changeless good by which it was illumined to intelligence and kindled into love, it would not have turned away to find satisfaction in itself, and so become frigid and benighted; the woman would not have believed the serpent spoke the truth, nor would the man have preferred the request of his wife to the comm and of God, nor have supposed that it was a venial transgression to cleave to the partner of his life even in a partnership of sin. The wicked deed, then,that is to say, the transgression of eating the forbidden fruit,was committed by persons who were already wicked. That "evil fruit"[93] could be brought forth only by "a corrupt tree." But that the tree was evil was not the result of nature; for certainly it could become so only by the vice of the will, and vice is contrary to nature. Now, nature could not have been depraved by vice had it not been made out of nothing. Consequently, that it is a nature, this is because it is made by God; but that it falls away from Him, this is because it is made out of nothing. But man did not so fall away[94] as to become absolutely nothing; but being turned towards himself, his being became more contracted than it was when he clave to Him who supremely is. Accordingly, to exist in himself, that is, to be his own satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to become a nonentity, but to approximate to that. And therefore the holy scriptures designate the proud by another name, "self-pleasers." For it is good to have the heart lifted up, yet not to one's self, for this is proud, but to the Lord, for this is obedient, and can be the act only of the humble. There is, therefore, something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore[Pg 27] humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolting from Him who is supreme, falls to a low condition; and then comes to pass what is written: "Thou castedst them down when they lifted up themselves."[95] For he does not say, "when they had been lifted up," as if first they were exalted, and then afterwards cast down; but "when they lifted up themselves" even then they were cast down,that is to say, the very lifting up was already a fall. And therefore it is that humility is specially recommended to the city of God as it sojourns in this world, and is specially exhibited in the city of God, and in the person of Christ its King; while the contrary vice of pride, according to the testimony of the sacred writings, specially rules his adversary the devil. And certainly this is the great difference which distinguishes the two cities of which we speak, the one being the society of the godly men, the other of the ungodly, each associated with the angels that adhere to their party, and the one guided and fashioned by love of self, the other by love of God.
The devil, then, would not have ensnared man in the open and manifest sin of doing what God had forbidden, had man not already begun to live for himself. It was this that made him listen with pleasure to the words, "Ye shall be as gods,"[96] which they would much more readily have accomplished by obediently adhering to their supreme and true end than by proudly living to themselves. For created gods are gods not by virtue of what is in themselves, but by a participation of the true God. By craving to be more, man becomes less; and by aspiring to be self-sufficing, he fell away from Him who truly suffices him. Accordingly, this wicked desire which prompts man to please himself as if he were himself light, and which thus turns him away from that light by which, had he followed it, he would himself have become light,this wicked desire, I say, already secretly existed in him, and the open sin was but its consequence. For that is true which is written, "Pride goeth before destruction, and before honour is humility;"[97] that is to say, secret ruin precedes open ruin, while the former is not counted ruin. For who counts exaltation[Pg 28] ruin, though no sooner is the Highest forsaken than a fall is begun? But who does not recognise it as ruin, when there occurs an evident and indubitable transgression of the commandment? And consequently, God's prohibition had reference to such an act as, when committed, could not be defended on any pretence of doing what was righteous.[98] And I make bold to say that it is useful for the proud to fall into an open and indisputable transgression, and so displease themselves, as already, by pleasing themselves, they had fallen. For Peter was in a healthier condition when he wept and was dissatisfied with himself, than when he boldly presumed and satisfied himself. And this is averred by the sacred Psalmist when he says, "Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Thy name, O Lord;"[99] that is, that they who have pleased themselves in seeking their own glory may be pleased and satisfied with Thee in seeking Thy glory.
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In short, to say all in a word, what but disobedience was the punishment of disobedience in that sin? For what else[Pg 30] is man's misery but his own disobedience to himself, so that in consequence of his not being willing to do what he could do, he now wills to do what he cannot? For though he could not do all things in Paradise before he sinned, yet he wished to do only what he could do, and therefore he could do all things he wished. But now, as we recognise in his offspring, and as divine scripture testifies, "Man is like to vanity."[102] For who can count how many things he wishes which he cannot do, so long as he is disobedient to himself, that is, so long as his mind and his flesh do not obey his will? For in spite of himself his mind is both frequently disturbed, and his flesh suffers, and grows old, and dies; and in spite of ourselves we suffer whatever else we suffer, and which we would not suffer if our nature absolutely and in all its parts obeyed our will. But is it not the infirmities of the flesh which hamper it in its service? Yet what does it matter how its service is hampered, so long as the fact remains, that by the just retri bution of the sovereign God whom we refused to be subject to and serve, our flesh, which was subjected to us, now torments us by insubordination, although our disobedience brought trouble on ourselves, not upon God? For He is not in need of our service as we of our body's; and therefore what we did was no punishment to Him, but what we receive is so to us. And the pains which are called bodily are pains of the soul in and from the body. For what pain or desire can the flesh feel by itself and without the soul? But when the flesh is said to desire or to suffer, it is meant, as we have explained, that the man does so, or some part of the soul which is affected by the sensation of the flesh, whether a harsh sensation causing pain, or gentle, causing pleasure. But pain in the flesh is only a discomfort of the soul arising from the flesh, and a kind of shrinking from its suffering, as the pain of the soul which is called sadness is a shrinking from those things which have happened to us in spite of ourselves. But sadness is frequently preceded by fear, which is itself in the soul, not in the flesh; while bodily pain is not preceded by any kind of fear of the flesh, which can be felt in the flesh before the pain. But pleasure is preceded[Pg 31] by a certain appetite which is felt in the flesh like a craving, as hunger and thirst and that generative appetite which is most commonly identified with the name "lust," though this is the generic word for all desires. For anger itself was defined by the ancients as nothing else than the lust of revenge;[103] although sometimes a man is angry even at inanimate objects which cannot feel his vengeance, as when one breaks a pen, or crushes a quill that writes badly. Yet even this, though less reasonable, is in its way a lust of revenge, and is, so to speak, a mysterious kind of shadow of [the great law of] retri bution, that they who do evil should suffer evil. There is therefore a lust for revenge, which is called anger; there is a lust of money, which goes by the name of avarice; there is a lust of conquering, no matter by what means, which is called opinionativeness; there is a lust of applause, which is named boasting. There are many and various lusts, of which some have names of their own, while others have not. For who could readily give a name to the lust of ruling, which yet has a powerful influence in the soul of tyrants, as civil wars bear witness?
16. Of the evil of lust,a word which, though applicable to many vices, is specially appropriated to sexual uncleanness.
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Far be it, then, from us to suppose that our first parents in Paradise felt that lust which caused them afterwards to blush and hide their nakedness, or that by its means they should have fulfilled the benediction of God, "Increase and multiply and replenish the earth;"[113] for it was after sin that lust began. It was after sin that our nature, having lost the power it had over the whole body, but not having lost all shame, perceived, noticed, blushed at, and covered it. But that blessing upon marriage, which encouraged them to increase and multiply and replenish the earth, though, it continued even after they had sinned, was yet given before they sinned, in order that the procreation of children might be recognised as part of the glory of marriage, and not of the punishment of sin. But now, men being ignorant of the blessedness of Paradise, suppose that children could not have been begotten there in any other way than they know them to be begotten now, i.e. by lust, at which even honourable marriage blushes; some not simply rejecting, but sceptically deriding the divine scriptures, in which we read that our first parents, after they sinned, were ashamed of their nakedness, and covered it; while others, though they accept and honour scripture, yet conceive that this expression, "Increase and multiply," refers not to carnal fecundity, because a similar expression is used of the soul in the words, "Thou wilt multiply me with strength in my soul;"[114] and so, too, in the words which follow in Genesis, "And replenish the earth, and subdue it," they understand by the earth the body which the soul fills with its presence, and which it rules over when it is multiplied in strength. And they hold that children could no more then than now be begotten without lust, which, after sin, was kindled, observed, blushed for, and covered; and even that children would not have been born in Paradise, but only outside of it, as in fact it turned out. For it was after they were expelled from it that they came together to beget children, and begot them.
[Pg 38]
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But we, for our part, have no manner of doubt that to increase and multiply and replenish the earth in virtue of the blessing of God, is a gift of marriage as God instituted it from the beginning before man sinned, when He created them male and female,in other words, two sexes manifestly distinct. And it was this work of God on which His blessing was pronounced. For no sooner had scripture said, "Male and female created He them,"[115] than it immediately continues, "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Increase, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it," etc. And though all these things may not unsuitably be interpreted in a spiritual sense, yet "male and female" cannot be understood of two things in one man, as if there were in him one thing which rules, another which is ruled; but it is quite clear that they were created male and female, with bodies of different sexes, for the very purpose of begetting offspring, and so increasing, multiplying, and replenishing the earth; and it is great folly to oppose so plain a fact. It was not of the spirit which commands and the body which obeys, nor of the rational soul which rules and the irrational desire which is ruled, nor of the contemplative virtue which is supreme and the active which is subject, nor of the understanding of the mind and the sense of the body, but plainly of the matrimonial union by which the sexes are mutually bound together, that our Lord, when asked whether it were lawful for any cause to put away one's wife (for on account of the hardness of the hearts of the Israelites Moses permitted a bill of divorcement to be given), answered and said, "Have ye not read that He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."[116] It is certain, then, that from the first men were created, as we see and know them to be now, of two sexes, male and female, and that they are called one, either on account of the matrimonial union, or on account of[Pg 39] the origin of the woman, who was created from the side of the man. And it is by this original example, which God Himself instituted, that the apostle admonishes all husbands to love their own wives in particular.[117]
23. Whether generation should have taken place even in Paradise had man not sinned, or whether there should have been any contention there between chastity and lust.
BOOK XIX. - A review of the philosophical opinions regarding the Supreme Good, and a comparison of these opinions with the Christian belief regarding happiness, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
And thus we may say of peace, as we have said of eternal life, that it is the end of our good; and the rather because the Psalmist says of the city of God, the subject of this laborious work, "Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion: for He hath streng thened the bars of thy gates; He hath blessed thy children within thee; who hath made thy borders peace."[638] For when the bars of her gates shall be streng thened, none shall go in or come out from her; consequently we ought to understand the peace of her borders as[Pg 315] that final peace we are wishing to declare. For even the mystical name of the city itself, that is, Jerusalem, means, as I have already said, "Vision of Peace." But as the word peace is employed in connection with things in this world in which certainly life eternal has no place, we have preferred to call the end or supreme good of this city life eternal rather than peace. Of this end the apostle says, "But now, being freed from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end life eternal."[639] But, on the other hand, as those who are not familiar with scripture may suppose that the life of the wicked is eternal life, either because of the immortality of the soul, which some of the philosophers even have recognised, or because of the endless punishment of the wicked, which forms a part of our faith, and which seems impossible unless the wicked live for ever, it may therefore be advisable, in order that every one may readily understand what we mean, to say that the end or supreme good of this city is either peace in eternal life, or eternal life in peace. For peace is a good so great, that even in this earthly and mortal life there is no word we hear with such pleasure, nothing we desire with such zest, or find to be more thoroughly gratifying. So that if we dwell for a little longer on this subject, we shall not, in my opinion, be wearisome to our readers, who will attend both for the sake of understanding what is the end of this city of which we speak, and for the sake of the sweetness of peace which is dear to all.
12. That even the fierceness of war and all the disquietude of men make towards this one end of peace, which every nature desires.
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This is prescribed by the order of nature: it is thus that God has created man. For "let them," He says, "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every creeping thing which creepeth on the earth."[644] He did not intend that His rational creature, who[Pg 324] was made in His image, should have dominion over anything but the irrational creation,not man over man, but man over the beasts. And hence the righteous men in primitive times were made shepherds of cattle rather than kings of men, God intending thus to teach us what the relative position of the creatures is, and what the desert of sin; for it is with justice, we believe, that the condition of slavery is the result of sin. And this is why we do not find the word "slave" in any part of scripture until righteous Noah branded the sin of his son with this name. It is a name, therefore, introduced by sin and not by nature. The origin of the Latin word for slave is supposed to be found in the circumstance that those who by the law of war were liable to be killed were sometimes preserved by their victors, and were hence called servants.[645] And these circumstances could never have arisen save through sin. For even when we wage a just war, our adversaries must be sinning; and every victory, even though gained by wicked men, is a result of the first judgment of God, who humbles the vanquished either for the sake of removing or of punishing their sins. Witness that man of God, Daniel, who, when he was in captivity, confessed to God his own sins and the sins of his people, and declares with pious grief that these were the cause of the captivity.[646] The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the dominion of his fellow,that which does not happen save by the judgment of God, with whom is no unrighteousness, and who knows how to award fit punishments to every variety of offence. But our Master in heaven says, "Every one who doeth sin is the servant of sin."[647] And thus there are many wicked masters who have religious men as their slaves, and who are yet themselves in bondage; "for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage."[648] And beyond question it is a happier thing to be the slave of a man than of a lust; for even this very lust of ruling, to mention no others, lays waste men's hearts with the most ruthless dominion. Moreover, when men are subjected to one another in a peaceful order, the lowly position does as much good to the servant as the proud position[Pg 325] does harm to the master. But by nature, as God first created us, no one is the slave either of man or of sin. This servitude is, however, penal, and is appointed by that law which enjoins the preservation of the natural order and forbids its disturbance; for if nothing had been done in violation of that law, there would have been nothing to restrain by penal servitude. And therefore the apostle admonishes slaves to be subject to their masters, and to serve them heartily and with good-will, so that, if they cannot be freed by their masters, they may themselves make their slavery in some sort free, by serving not in crafty fear, but in faithful love, until all unrighteousness pass away, and all principality and every human power be brought to nothing, and God be all in all.
16. Of equitable rule.
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As regards the uncertainty about everything which Varro alleges to be the differentiating characteristic of the New Academy, the city of God thoroughly detests such doubt as madness. Regarding matters which it apprehends by the mind and reason it has most absolute certainty, although its knowledge is limited because of the corruptible body pressing down the mind, for, as the apostle says, "We know in part."[650] It believes also the evidence of the senses which the mind uses by aid of the body; for [if one who trusts his senses is sometimes deceived], he is more wretchedly deceived who fancies he should never trust them. It believes also the Holy scriptures, old and new, which we call canonical, and which are the source of the faith by which the just lives,[651] and by which we walk without doubting whilst we are absent from the Lord.[652] So long as this faith remains inviolate and firm, we may without blame entertain doubts regarding some[Pg 329] things which we have neither perceived by sense nor by reason, and which have not been revealed to us by the canonical scriptures, nor come to our knowledge through witnesses whom it is absurd to disbelieve.
19. Of the dress and habits of the Christian people.
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When Porphyry or Hecate praises Christ, and adds that He gave Himself to the Christians as a fatal gift, that they might be involved in error, he exposes, as he thinks, the causes of this error. But before I cite his words to that purpose, I would ask, If Christ did thus give Himself to the Christians to involve them in error, did He do so willingly, or against His will? If willingly, how is He righteous? If against His will, how is He blessed? However, let us hear the causes of this error. "There are," he says, "in a certain place very small earthly spirits, subject to the power of evil demons. The wise men of the Hebrews, among whom was this Jesus, as you have heard from the oracles of Apollo cited above, turned religious persons from these very wicked demons and minor spirits, and taught them rather to worship the celestial gods, and especially to adore God the Father. This," he said, "the gods enjoin; and we have already shown how they admonish the soul to turn to God, and comm and it to worship Him. But the ignorant and the ungodly, who are not destined to receive favours from the gods, nor to know the immortal Jupiter, not listening to the gods and their messages, have turned away from all gods, and have not only refused to hate, but have venerated the prohibited demons. Professing to worship God, they refuse to do those things by which alone God is worshipped. For God, indeed, being the Father of all, is in need of nothing; but for us it is good to adore Him by means of justice, chastity, and other virtues, and thus to make life itself a prayer to Him, by inquiring into and imitating His nature. For inquiry," says he, "purifies and imitation deifies us, by moving us nearer to Him." He is right in so far as he proclaims God the Father, and the conduct by which we should worship Him. Of such precepts the prophetic books of the Hebrews are full, when they praise or blame the life of the saints. But in speaking of the Christians he is in error,[Pg 338] and calumniates them as much as is desired by the demons whom he takes for gods, as if it were difficult for any man to recollect the disgraceful and shameful actions which used to be done in the theatres and temples to please the gods, and to compare with these things what is heard in our churches, and what is offered to the true God, and from this comparison to conclude where character is edified, and where it is ruined. But who but a diabolical spirit has told or suggested to this man so manifest and vain a lie, as that the Christians reverenced rather than hated the demons, whose worship the Hebrews prohibited? But that God, whom the Hebrew sages worshipped, forbids sacrifice to be offered even to the holy angels of heaven and divine powers, whom we, in this our pilgrimage, venerate and love as our most blessed fellow-citizens. For in the law which God gave to His Hebrew people He utters this menace, as in a voice of thunder: "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed."[659] And that no one might suppose that this prohibition extends only to the very wicked demons and earthly spirits, whom this philosopher calls very small and inferior,for even these are in the scripture called gods, not of the Hebrews, but of the nations, as the Septuagint translators have shown in the psalm where it is said, "For all the gods of the nations are demons,"[660]that no one might suppose, I say, that sacrifice to these demons was prohibited, but that sacrifice might be offered to all or some of the celestials, it was immediately added, "save unto the Lord alone."[661] The God of the Hebrews, then, to whom this renowned philosopher bears this signal testimony, gave to His Hebrew people a law, composed in the Hebrew language, and not obscure and unknown, but published now in every nation, and in this law it is written, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord alone, he shall be utterly destroyed." What need is there to seek further proofs in the law or the prophets of this same thing? Seek, we need not say, for the passages are neither few nor difficult to find; but what need to collect[Pg 339] and apply to my argument the proofs which are thickly sown and obvious, and by which it appears clear as day that sacrifice may be paid to none but the supreme and true God? Here is one brief but decided, even menacing, and certainly true utterance of that God whom the wisest of our adversaries so highly extol. Let this be listened to, feared, fulfilled, that there may be no disobedient soul cut off. "He that sacrifices," He says, not because He needs anything, but because it behoves us to be His possession. Hence the Psalmist in the Hebrew scriptures sings, "I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, for Thou needest not my good."[662] For we ourselves, who are His own city, are His most noble and worthy sacrifice, and it is this mystery we celebrate in our sacrifices, which are well known to the faithful, as we have explained in the preceding books. For through the prophets the oracles of God declared that the sacrifices which the Jews offered as a shadow of that which was to be would cease, and that the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun, would offer one sacrifice. From these oracles, which we now see accomplished, we have made such selections as seemed suitable to our purpose in this work. And therefore, where there is not this righteousness whereby the one supreme God rules the obedient city according to His grace, so that it sacrifices to none but Him, and whereby, in all the citizens of this obedient city, the soul consequently rules the body and reason the vices in the rightful order, so that, as the individual just man, so also the community and people of the just, live by faith, which works by love, that love whereby man loves God as He ought to be loved, and his neighbour as himself,there, I say, there is not an assemblage associated by a common acknowledgment of right, and by a community of interests. But if there is not this, there is not a people, if our definition be true, and therefore there is no republic; for where there is no people there can be no republic.
24. The definition which must be given of a people and a republic, in order to vindicate the assumption of these titles by the Romans and by other kingdoms.
BOOK X. - Porphyrys doctrine of redemption, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
For this is the worship which is due to the Divinity, or, to speak more accurately, to the Deity; and, to express this worship in a single word, as there does not occur to me any Latin term sufficiently exact, I shall avail myself, whenever necessary, of a Greek word. , whenever it occurs in scripture, is rendered by the word service. But that service which is due to men, and in reference to which the apostle writes that servants must be subject to their own masters,[365] is usually designated by another word in Greek,[366] whereas the service which is paid to God alone by worship, is always, or almost always, called in the usage of those who wrote from the divine oracles. This cannot so well be called simply "cultus," for in that case it would not seem to be due exclusively to God; for the same word is applied to the respect we pay either to the memory or the living presence of men. From it, too, we derive the words agriculture, colonist, and others.[367] And the hea then call their gods "clicol," not because they worship heaven, but because they dwell in it, and as it were colonize it,not in the sense in which we call those colonists who are attached to their native soil to cultivate it[Pg 384] under the rule of the owners, but in the sense in which the great master of the Latin language says, "There was an ancient city inhabited by Tyrian colonists."[368] He called them colonists, not because they cultivated the soil, but because they inhabited the city. So, too, cities that have hived off from larger cities are called colonies. Consequently, while it is quite true that, using the word in a special sense, "cult" can be rendered to none but God, yet, as the word is applied to other things besides, the cult due to God cannot in Latin be expressed by this word alone.
The word "religion" might seem to express more definitely the worship due to God alone, and therefore Latin translators have used this word to represent ; yet, as not only the uneducated, but also the best instructed, use the word religion to express human ties, and relationships, and affinities, it would inevitably introduce ambiguity to use this word in discussing the worship of God, unable as we are to say that religion is nothing else than the worship of God, without contradicting the common usage which applies this word to the observance of social relationships. "Piety," again, or, as the Greeks say, , is commonly understood as the proper designation of the worship of God. Yet this word also is used of dutifulness to parents. The common people, too, use it of works of charity, which, I suppose, arises from the circumstance that God enjoins the performance of such works, and declares that He is pleased with them instead of, or in preference to sacrifices. From this usage it has also come to pass that God Himself is called pious,[369] in which sense the Greeks never use , though is applied to works of charity by their common people also. In some passages of scripture, therefore, they have sought to preserve the distinction by using not , the more general word, but , which literally denotes the worship of God. We, on the other hand, cannot express either of these ideas by one word. This worship, then, which in Greek is called , and in Latin "servitus" [service], but the service due to God only; this worship, which in Greek is called , and in[Pg 385] Latin "religio," but the religion by which we are bound to God only; this worship, which they call , but which we cannot express in one word, but call it the worship of God,this, we say, belongs only to that God who is the true God, and who makes His worshippers gods.[370] And therefore, whoever these immortal and blessed inhabitants of heaven be, if they do not love us, and wish us to be blessed, then we ought not to worship them; and if they do love us and desire our happiness, they cannot wish us to be made happy by any other means than they themselves have enjoyed,for how could they wish our blessedness to flow from one source, theirs from another?
2. The opinion of Plotinus the Platonist regarding enlightenment from above.
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And who is so foolish as to suppose that the things offered to God are needed by Him for some uses of His own? Divine scripture in many places explodes this idea. Not to be wearisome, suffice it to quote this brief saying from a psalm: "I have said to the Lord, Thou art my God: for Thou needest not my goodness."[377] We must believe, then, that God has no need, not only of cattle, or any other earthly and material thing, but even of man's righteousness, and that whatever right worship is paid to God profits not Him, but man. For no man would say he did a benefit to a fountain by drinking, or to the light by seeing. And the fact that the ancient church offered animal sacrifices, which the people of God now-a-days reads of without imitating, proves nothing else than this, that those sacrifices signified the things which we do for the purpose of drawing near to God, and inducing our neighbour to do the same. A sacrifice, therefore, is the visible sacrament or sacred sign of an invisible sacrifice. Hence that penitent in the psalm, or it may be the Psalmist himself, entreating God to be merciful to his sins, says, "If Thou desiredst sacrifice, I would give it: Thou delightest not in whole burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a broken heart: a heart contrite and humble God will not despise."[378] Observe how, in the very words in which he is expressing God's refusal of sacrifice, he shows that God requires sacrifice. He does[Pg 389] not desire the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but He desires the sacrifice of a contrite heart. Thus, that sacrifice which he says God does not wish, is the symbol of the sacrifice which God does wish. God does not wish sacrifices in the sense in which foolish people think He wishes them, viz. to gratify His own pleasure. For if He had not wished that the sacrifices He requires, as, e.g., a heart contrite and humbled by penitent sorrow, should be symbolized by those sacrifices which He was thought to desire because pleasant to Himself, the old law would never have enjoined their presentation; and they were destined to be merged when the fit opportunity arrived, in order that men might not suppose that the sacrifices themselves, rather than the things symbolized by them, were pleasing to God or acceptable in us. Hence, in another passage from another psalm, he says, "If I were hungry, I would not tell thee; for the world is mine and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?"[379] as if He should say, Supposing such things were necessary to me, I would never ask thee for what I have in my own hand. Then he goes on to mention what these signify: "Offer unto God the sacrifice of praise, and pay thy vows unto the Most High. And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."[380] So in another prophet: "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Hath He showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"[381] In the words of this prophet, these two things are distinguished and set forth with sufficient explicitness, that God does not require these sacrifices for their own sakes, and that He does require the sacrifices which they symbolize. In the epistle entitled "To the Hebrews" it is said, "To do good and to communicate, forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased."[382] And so,[Pg 390] when it is written, "I desire mercy rather than sacrifice,"[383] nothing else is meant than that one sacrifice is preferred to another; for that which in common speech is called sacrifice is only the symbol of the true sacrifice. Now mercy is the true sacrifice, and therefore it is said, as I have just quoted, "with such sacrifices God is well pleased." All the divine ordinances, therefore, which we read concerning the sacrifices in the service of the tabernacle or the temple, we are to refer to the love of God and our neighbour. For "on these two commandments," as it is written, "hang all the law and the prophets."[384]
6. Of the true and perfect sacrifice.
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It is very right that these blessed and immortal spirits, who inhabit celestial dwellings, and rejoice in the communications of their Creator's fulness, firm in His eternity, assured in His truth, holy by His grace, since they compassionately and tenderly regard us miserable mortals, and wish us to become immortal and happy, do not desire us to sacrifice to themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice they know themselves to be in common with us. For we and they together are the one city of God, to which it is said in the psalm, "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God;"[393] the human part sojourning here below, the angelic aiding from above. For from that heavenly city, in which God's will is the intelligible and unchangeable law, from that heavenly council-chamber,for they sit in counsel regarding us,that holy scripture, descended to us by the ministry of angels, in which it is written, "He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed,"[394]this scripture, this law, these precepts, have been confirmed by such miracles, that it is sufficiently evident to whom these immortal and blessed spirits, who desire us to be like themselves, wish us to sacrifice.
8. Of the miracles which God has condescended to adhibit, through the ministry of angels, to His promises for the confirmation of the faith of the godly.
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As for those miracles which history ascribes to the gods of the hea then,I do not refer to those prodigies which at intervals happen from some unknown physical causes, and which are arranged and appointed by Divine Providence, such as monstrous births, and unusual meteorological phenomena, whether startling only, or also injurious, and which are said to be brought about and removed by communication with demons, and by their most deceitful craft,but I refer to these prodigies which manifestly enough are wrought by their power and force, as, that the household gods which neas carried from Troy in his flight moved from place to place; that Tarquin cut a whetstone with a razor; that the Epidaurian serpent attached himself as a companion to sculapius on his voyage to Rome; that the ship in which the image of the Phrygian mother stood, and which could not be moved by a host of men and oxen, was moved by one weak woman, who[Pg 406] attached her girdle to the vessel and drew it, as proof of her chastity; that a vestal, whose virginity was questioned, removed the suspicion by carrying from the Tiber a sieve full of water without any of it dropping: these, then, and the like, are by no means to be compared for greatness and virtue to those which, we read, were wrought among God's people. How much less can we compare those marvels, which even the laws of hea then nations prohibit and punish,I mean the magical and theurgic marvels, of which the great part are merely illusions practised upon the senses, as the drawing down of the moon, "that," as Lucan says, "it may shed a stronger influence on the plants?"[407] And if some of these do seem to equal those which are wrought by the godly, the end for which they are wrought distinguishes the two, and shows that ours are incomparably the more excellent. For those miracles commend the worship of a plurality of gods, who deserve worship the less the more they demand it; but these of ours commend the worship of the one God, who, both by the testimony of His own scriptures, and by the eventual abolition of sacrifices, proves that He needs no such offerings. If, therefore, any angels demand sacrifice for themselves, we must prefer those who demand it, not for themselves, but for God, the Creator of all, whom they serve. For thus they prove how sincerely they love us, since they wish by sacrifice to subject us, not to themselves, but to Him by the contemplation of whom they themselves are blessed, and to bring us to Him from whom they themselves have never strayed. If, on the other hand, any angels wish us to sacrifice, not to one, but to many, not, indeed, to themselves, but to the gods whose angels they are, we must in this case also prefer those who are the angels of the one God of gods, and who so bid us to worship Him as to preclude our worshipping any other. But, further, if it be the case, as their pride and deceitfulness rather indicate, that they are neither good angels nor the angels of good gods, but wicked demons, who wish sacrifice to be paid, not to the one only and supreme God, but to themselves, what better protection against them can we choose than that of the one God whom the good angels serve, the angels who bid us[Pg 407] sacrifice, not to themselves, but to Him whose sacrifice we ourselves ought to be?
17. Concerning the ark of the covenant, and the miraculous signs whereby God au thenticated the law and the promise.
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But in order to your acquiescence in this truth, it is lowliness that is requisite, and to this it is extremely difficult to bend you. For what is there incredible, especially to men like you, accustomed to speculation, which might have predisposed you to believe in this,what is there incredible, I say, in the assertion that God assumed a human soul and body? You yourselves ascribe such excellence to the intellectual soul, which is, after all, the human soul, that you maintain that it can become consubstantial with that intelligence of the Father whom you believe in as the Son of God. What incredible thing is it, then, if some one soul be assumed by Him in an ineffable and unique manner for the salvation of many?[Pg 425] Moreover, our nature itself testifies that a man is incomplete unless a body be united with the soul. This certainly would be more incredible, were it not of all things the most common; for we should more easily believe in a union between spirit and spirit, or, to use your own terminology, between the incorporeal and the incorporeal, even though the one were human, the other divine, the one changeable and the other unchangeable, than in a union between the corporeal and the incorporeal. But perhaps it is the unprecedented birth of a body from a virgin that staggers you? But, so far from this being a difficulty, it ought rather to assist you to receive our religion, that a miraculous person was born miraculously. Or, do you find a difficulty in the fact that, after His body had been given up to death, and had been changed into a higher kind of body by resurrection, and was now no longer mortal but incorruptible, He carried it up into heavenly places? Perhaps you refuse to believe this, because you remember that Porphyry, in these very books from which I have cited so much, and which treat of the return of the soul, so frequently teaches that a body of every kind is to be escaped from, in order that the soul may dwell in blessedness with God. But here, in place of following Porphyry, you ought rather to have corrected him, especially since you agree with him in believing such incredible things about the soul of this visible world and huge material frame. For, as scholars of Plato, you hold that the world is an animal, and a very happy animal, which you wish to be also everlasting. How, then, is it never to be loosed from a body, and yet never lose its happiness, if, in order to the happiness of the soul, the body must be left behind? The sun, too, and the other stars, you not only acknowledge to be bodies, in which you have the cordial assent of all seeing men, but also, in obedience to what you reckon a profounder insight, you declare that they are very blessed animals, and eternal, together with their bodies. Why is it, then, that when the Christian faith is pressed upon you, you forget, or pretend to ignore, what you habitually discuss or teach? Why is it that you refuse to be Christians, on the ground that you hold opinions which, in fact, you yourselves demolish? Is it not because Christ came in lowliness, and ye are proud? The[Pg 426] precise nature of the resurrection bodies of the saints may sometimes occasion discussion among those who are best read in the Christian scriptures; yet there is not among us the smallest doubt that they shall be everlasting, and of a nature exemplified in the instance of Christ's risen body. But whatever be their nature, since we maintain that they shall be absolutely incorruptible and immortal, and shall offer no hindrance to the soul's contemplation by which it is fixed in God, and as you say that among the celestials the bodies of the eternally blessed are eternal, why do you maintain that, in order to blessedness, every body must be escaped from? Why do you thus seek such a plausible reason for escaping from the Christian faith, if not because, as I again say, Christ is humble and ye proud? Are ye ashamed to be corrected? This is the vice of the proud. It is, forsooth, a degradation for learned men to pass from the school of Plato to the discipleship of Christ, who by His Spirit taught a fisherman to think and to say, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."[427] The old saint Simplicianus, afterwards bishop of Milan, used to tell me that a certain Platonist was in the habit of saying that this opening passage of the holy gospel, entitled "According to John," should be written in letters of gold, and hung up in all churches in the most conspicuous place. But the proud scorn to take God for their Master, because "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."[428] So that, with these miserable creatures, it is not enough that they are sick, but they boast of their sickness, and are ashamed of the medicine which could heal them. And, doing so, they secure not elevation, but a more disastrous fall.
30. Porphyry's emendations and modifications of Platonism.
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This, then, is the universal way of the soul's deliverance, the way that is granted by the divine compassion to the nations universally. And no nation to which the knowledge of it has already come, or may hereafter come, ought to demand, Why so soon? or, Why so late?for the design of Him who sends it is impenetrable by human capacity. This was felt by Porphyry when he confined himself to saying that this gift of God was not yet received, and had not yet come to his knowledge. For, though this was so, he did not on that account pronounce that the way itself had no existence. This, I say, is the universal way for the deliverance of believers, concerning which the faithful Abraham received the divine assurance, "In thy seed shall all nations be blessed."[434] He, indeed, was by birth a Chaldan; but, that he might receive these great promises, and that there might be propagated from him a seed "disposed by angels in the hand of a Mediator,"[435] in whom this universal way, thrown open to all nations for the deliverance of the soul, might be found, he was ordered to leave his country, and kindred, and father's house. Then was he himself, first of all, delivered from the Chaldan superstitions, and by his obedience worshipped the one true God, whose promises he faithfully trusted. This is the universal way, of which it is said in holy prophecy, "God be merciful unto us, and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us; that Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health among all nations."[436] And hence, when our Saviour, so long after, had taken flesh of the seed of Abraham, He says of Himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."[437] This is the universal way, of which so long before it had been predicted, "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the[Pg 433] word of the Lord from Jerusalem."[438] This way, therefore, is not the property of one, but of all nations. The law and the word of the Lord did not remain in Zion and Jerusalem, but issued thence to be universally diffused. And therefore the Mediator Himself, after His resurrection, says to His alarmed disciples, "These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then opened He their understandings that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."[439] This is the universal way of the soul's deliverance, which the holy angels and the holy prophets formerly disclosed where they could among the few men who found the grace of God, and especially in the Hebrew nation, whose commonwealth was, as it were, consecrated to prefigure and fore-announce the city of God which was to be gathered from all nations, by their tabernacle, and temple, and priesthood, and sacrifices. In some explicit statements, and in many obscure foreshadowings, this way was declared; but latterly came the Mediator Himself in the flesh, and His blessed apostles, revealing how the grace of the New Testament more openly explained what had been obscurely hinted to preceding generations, in conformity with the relation of the ages of the human race, and as it pleased God in His wisdom to appoint, who also bore them witness with signs and miracles, some of which I have cited above. For not only were there visions of angels, and words heard from those heavenly ministrants, but also men of God, armed with the word of simple piety, cast out unclean spirits from the bodies and senses of men, and healed deformities and sicknesses; the wild beasts of earth and sea, the birds of air, inanimate things, the elements, the stars, obeyed their divine commands; the powers of hell gave way before them, the dead were restored to life. I say nothing of the miracles peculiar and proper to the Saviour's own person, especially the nativity[Pg 434] and the resurrection; in the one of which He wrought only the mystery of a virgin maternity, while in the other He furnished an instance of the resurrection which all shall at last experience. This way purifies the whole man, and prepares the mortal in all his parts for immortality. For, to prevent us from seeking for one purgation for the part which Porphyry calls intellectual, and another for the part he calls spiritual, and another for the body itself, our most mighty and truthful Purifier and Saviour assumed the whole human nature. Except by this way, which has been present among men both during the period of the promises and of the proclamation of their fulfilment, no man has been delivered, no man is delivered, no man shall be delivered.
As to Porphyry's statement that the universal way of the soul's deliverance had not yet come to his knowledge by any acquaintance he had with history, I would ask, what more remarkable history can be found than that which has taken possession of the whole world by its authoritative voice? or what more trustworthy than that which narrates past events, and predicts the future with equal clearness, and in the unfulfilled predictions of which we are constrained to believe by those that are already fulfilled? For neither Porphyry nor any Platonists can despise divination and prediction, even of things that pertain to this life and earthly matters, though they justly despise ordinary soothsaying and the divination that is connected with magical arts. They deny that these are the predictions of great men, or are to be considered important, and they are right; for they are founded, either on the foresight of subsidiary causes, as to a professional eye much of the course of a disease is foreseen by certain premonitory symptoms, or the unclean demons predict what they have resolved to do, that they may thus work upon the thoughts and desires of the wicked with an appearance of authority, and incline human frailty to imitate their impure actions. It is not such things that the saints who walk in the universal way care to predict as important, although, for the purpose of commending the faith, they knew and often predicted even such things as could not be detected by human observation, nor be readily verified by experience. But there[Pg 435] were other truly important and divine events which they predicted, in so far as it was given them to know the will of God. For the incarnation of Christ, and all those important marvels that were accomplished in Him, and done in His name; the repentance of men and the conversion of their wills to God; the remission of sins, the grace of righteousness, the faith of the pious, and the multitudes in all parts of the world who believe in the true divinity; the overthrow of idolatry and demon worship, and the testing of the faithful by trials; the purification of those who persevered, and their deliverance from all evil; the day of judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the eternal damnation of the community of the ungodly, and the eternal kingdom of the most glorious city of God, ever-blessed in the enjoyment of the vision of God,these things were predicted and promised in the scriptures of this way; and of these we see so many fulfilled, that we justly and piously trust that the rest will also come to pass. As for those who do not believe, and consequently do not understand, that this is the way which leads straight to the vision of God and to eternal fellowship with Him, according to the true predictions and statements of the Holy scriptures, they may storm at our position, but they cannot storm it.
And therefore, in these ten books, though not meeting, I dare say, the expectation of some, yet I have, as the true God and Lord has vouchsafed to aid me, satisfied the desire of certain persons, by refuting the objections of the ungodly, who prefer their own gods to the Founder of the holy city, about which we undertook to speak. Of these ten books, the first five were directed against those who think we should worship the gods for the sake of the blessings of this life, and the second five against those who think we should worship them for the sake of the life which is to be after death. And now, in fulfilment of the promise I made in the first book, I shall go on to say, as God shall aid me, what I think needs to be said regarding the origin, history, and deserved ends of the two cities, which, as already remarked, are in this world commingled and implicated with one another.
BOOK XVIII. - A parallel history of the earthly and heavenly cities from the time of Abraham to the end of the world, #City of God, #Saint Augustine of Hippo, #Christianity
At this time, Cyrus king of Persia, who also ruled the Chaldeans and Assyrians, having somewhat relaxed the captivity of the Jews, made fifty thousand of them return in order to rebuild the temple. They only began the first foundations and built the altar; but, owing to hostile invasions, they were unable to go on, and the work was put off to the time of Darius. During the same time also those things were done which are written in the book of Judith, which, indeed, the Jews are said not to have received into the canon of the scriptures. Under Darius king of Persia, then, on the completion of the seventy years predicted by Jeremiah the prophet, the captivity of the Jews was brought to an end, and they were restored to liberty. Tarquin then reigned as the seventh king of the Romans. On his expulsion, they also began to be free from the rule of their kings. Down to this time the people of Israel had prophets; but, although they were numerous, the canonical writings of only a few of them have been preserved among the Jews and among us. In closing the previous book, I promised to set down something in this one about them, and I shall now do so.
27. Of the times of the prophets whose oracles are contained in books, and who sang many things about the call of the Gentiles at the time when the Roman kingdom began and the Assyrian came to an end.
In order that we may be able to consider these times, let us go back a little to earlier times. At the beginning of the book of the prophet Hosea, who is placed first of twelve, it is written, "The word of the Lord which came to Hosea in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah."[509] Amos also writes that he prophesied in the days of Uzziah, and adds the name of Jeroboam king of Israel, who lived at the same[Pg 247] time.[510] Isaiah the son of Amosei ther the above-named prophet, or, as is rather affirmed, another who was not a prophet, but was called by the same namealso puts at the head of his book these four kings named by Hosea, saying by way of preface that he prophesied in their days.[511] Micah also names the same times as those of his prophecy, after the days of Uzziah;[512] for he names the same three kings as Hosea named,Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. We find from their own writings that these men prophesied contemporaneously. To these are added Jonah in the reign of Uzziah, and Joel in that of Jotham, who succeeded Uzziah. But we can find the date of these two prophets in the chronicles,[513] not in their own writings, for they say nothing about it themselves. Now these days extend from Procas king of the Latins, or his predecessor Aventinus, down to Romulus king of the Romans, or even to the beginning of the reign of his successor, Numa Pompilius. Hezekiah king of Judah certainly reigned till then. So that thus these fountains of prophecy, as I may call them, burst forth at once during those times when the Assyrian kingdom failed and the Roman began; so that, just as in the first period of the Assyrian kingdom Abraham arose, to whom the most distinct promises were made that all nations should be blessed in his seed, so at the beginning of the western Babylon, in the time of whose government Christ was to come in whom these promises were to be fulfilled, the oracles of the prophets were given not only in spoken but in written words, for a testimony that so great a thing should come to pass. For although the people of Israel hardly ever lacked prophets from the time when they began to have kings, these were only for their own use, not for that of the nations. But when the more manifestly prophetic scripture began to be formed, which was to benefit the nations too, it was fitting that it should begin when this city was founded which was to rule the nations.
28. Of the things pertaining to the gospel of Christ which Hosea and Amos prophesied.
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In his prayer, with a song, to whom but the Lord Christ does he say, "O Lord, I have heard Thy hearing, and was afraid: O Lord, I have considered Thy works, and was greatly afraid?"[534] What is this but the inexpressible admiration of the foreknown, new, and sudden salvation of men? "In the midst of two living creatures thou shalt be recognised." What is this but either between the two testaments, or between the[Pg 253] two thieves, or between Moses and Elias talking with Him on the mount? "While the years draw nigh, Thou wilt be recognised; at the coming of the time Thou wilt be shown," does not even need exposition. "While my soul shall be troubled at Him, in wrath Thou wilt be mindful of mercy." What is this but that He puts Himself for the Jews, of whose nation He was, who were troubled with great anger and crucified Christ, when He, mindful of mercy, said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?"[535] "God shall come from Teman, and the Holy One from the shady and close mountain."[536] What is said here, "He shall come from Teman," some interpret "from the south," or "from the south-west," by which is signified the noonday, that is, the fervour of charity and the splendour of truth. "The shady and close mountain" might be understood in many ways, yet I prefer to take it as meaning the depth of the divine scriptures, in which Christ is prophesied: for in the scriptures there are many things shady and close which exercise the mind of the reader; and Christ comes thence when he who has understanding finds Him there. "His power covereth up the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise." What is this but what is also said in the psalm, "Be Thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; and Thy glory above all the earth?"[537] "His splendour shall be as the light." What is it but that the fame of Him shall illuminate believers? "Horns are in His hands." What is this but the trophy of the cross? "And He hath placed the firm charity of His strength"[538] needs no exposition. "Before His face shall go the word, and it shall go forth into the field after His feet." What is this but that He should both be announced before His coming hither and after His return hence? "He stood, and the earth was moved." What is this but that "He stood" for succour, "and the earth was moved" to believe? "He regarded, and the nations melted;" that is, He had compassion, and made the people penitent. "The mountains are broken with violence;" that is, through the power of those who work miracles the pride of the haughty is broken. "The everlasting hills flowed down;"[Pg 254] that is, they are humbled in time that they may be lifted up for eternity. "I saw His goings [made] eternal for His labours;" that is, I beheld His labour of love not left without the reward of eternity. "The tents of Ethiopia shall be greatly afraid, and the tents of the land of Midian;" that is, even those nations which are not under the Roman authority, being suddenly terrified by the news of Thy wonderful works, shall become a Christian people. "Wert Thou angry at the rivers, O Lord? or was Thy fury against the rivers? or was Thy rage against the sea?" This is said because He does not now come to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.[539] "For Thou shalt mount upon Thy horses, and Thy riding shall be salvation;" that is, Thine evangelists shall carry Thee, for they are guided by Thee, and Thy gospel is salvation to them that believe in Thee. "Bending, Thou wilt bend Thy bow against the sceptres, saith the Lord;" that is, Thou wilt threaten even the kings of the earth with Thy judgment. "The earth shall be cleft with rivers;" that is, by the sermons of those who preach Thee flowing in upon them, men's hearts shall be opened to make confession, to whom it is said, "Rend your hearts and not your garments."[540] What does "The people shall see Thee and grieve" mean, but that in mourning they shall be blessed?[541] What is "Scattering the waters in marching," but that by walking in those who everywhere proclaim Thee, Thou wilt scatter hither and thither the streams of Thy doctrine? What is "The abyss uttered its voice?" Is it not that the depth of the human heart expressed what it perceived? The words, "The depth of its phantasy," are an explanation of the previous verse, for the depth is the abyss; and "Uttered its voice" is to be understood before them, that is, as we have said, it expressed what it perceived. Now the phantasy is the vision, which it did not hold or conceal, but poured forth in confession. "The sun was raised up, and the moon stood still in her course;" that is, Christ ascended into heaven, and the Church was established under her King. "Thy darts shall go in the light;" that is, Thy words shall not be sent in secret, but openly. For He had said to His own disciples, "What I tell[Pg 255] you in darkness, that speak ye in the light."[542] "By threatening thou shalt diminish the earth;" that is, by that threatening Thou shalt humble men. "And in fury Thou shalt cast down the nations;" for in punishing those who exalt themselves Thou dashest them one against another. "Thou wentest forth for the salvation of Thy people, that Thou mightest save Thy Christ; Thou hast sent death on the heads of the wicked." None of these words require exposition. "Thou hast lifted up the bonds, even to the neck." This may be understood even of the good bonds of wisdom, that the feet may be put into its fetters, and the neck into its collar. "Thou hast struck off in amazement of mind the bonds" must be understood for, He lifts up the good and strikes off the bad, about which it is said to Him, "Thou hast broken asunder my bonds,"[543] and that "in amazement of mind," that is, wonderfully. "The heads of the mighty shall be moved in it;" to wit, in that wonder. "They shall open their teeth like a poor man eating secretly." For some of the mighty among the Jews shall come to the Lord, admiring His works and words, and shall greedily eat the bread of His doctrine in secret for fear of the Jews, just as the Gospel has shown they did. "And Thou hast sent into the sea Thy horses, troubling many waters," which are nothing else than many people; for unless all were troubled, some would not be converted with fear, others pursued with fury. "I gave heed, and my belly trembled at the voice of the prayer of my lips; and trembling entered into my bones, and my habit of body was troubled under me." He gave heed to those things which he said, and was himself terrified at his own prayer, which he had poured forth prophetically, and in which he discerned things to come. For when many people are troubled, he saw the threatening tribulation of the Church, and at once acknowledged himself a member of it, and said, "I shall rest in the day of tribulation," as being one of those who are rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation.[544] "That I may ascend," he says, "among the people of my pilgrimage," departing quite from the wicked people of his carnal kinship, who are not pilgrims in this earth, and do not seek the country above.[545] "Although[Pg 256] the fig-tree," he says, "shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall lie, and the fields shall yield no meat; the sheep shall be cut off from the meat, and there shall be no oxen in the stalls." He sees that nation which was to slay Christ about to lose the abundance of spiritual supplies, which, in prophetic fashion, he has set forth by the figure of earthly plenty. And because that nation was to suffer such wrath of God, because, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, it wished to establish its own,[546] he immediately says, "Yet will I rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in God my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He will set my feet in completion; He will place me above the heights, that I may conquer in His song," to wit, in that song of which something similar is said in the psalm, "He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my goings, and put in my mouth a new song, a hymn to our God."[547] He therefore conquers in the song of the Lord, who takes pleasure in His praise, not in his own; that "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."[548] But some copies have, "I will joy in God my Jesus," which seems to me better than the version of those who, wishing to put it in Latin, have not set down that very name which for us it is dearer and sweeter to name.
33. What Jeremiah and Zephaniah have, by the prophetic Spirit, spoken before concerning Christ and the calling of the nations.
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Malachi, foretelling the Church which we now behold propagated through Christ, says most openly to the Jews, in the person of God, "I have no pleasure in you, and I will not accept a gift at your hand. For from the rising even to the going down of the sun, my name is great among the nations; and in every place sacrifice shall be made, and a pure oblation shall be offered unto my name: for my name shall be great among the nations, saith the Lord."[566] Since we can already see this sacrifice offered to God in every place, from the rising of the sun to his going down, through Christ's priesthood after the order of Melchisedec, while the Jews, to whom it was said, "I have no pleasure in you, neither will I accept a gift at your hand," cannot deny that their sacrifice has ceased, why do they still look for another Christ, when they read this in the prophecy, and see it fulfilled, which could not be fulfilled except through Him? And a little after he says of Him, in the person of God, "My covenant was with Him of life and peace; and I gave to Him that He might fear me with fear, and be afraid before my name. The law of truth was in His mouth: directing in peace He hath walked with me, and hath turned many away from iniquity. For the Priest's lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at His mouth: for He is the Angel of the Lord Almighty."[567] Nor is it to be wondered at that Christ Jesus is called the Angel of the[Pg 261] Almighty God. For just as He is called a servant on account of the form of a servant in which He came to men, so He is called an angel on account of the evangel which He proclaimed to men. For if we interpret these Greek words, evangel is "good news," and angel is "messenger." Again he says of Him, "Behold I will send mine angel, and He will look out the way before my face: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come into His temple, even the Angel of the testament, whom ye desire. Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at His appearing?"[568] In this place he has foretold both the first and second advent of Christ: the first, to wit, of which he says, "And He shall come suddenly into His temple;" that is, into His flesh, of which He said in the Gospel, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again."[569] And of the second advent he says, "Behold, He cometh, saith the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at His appearing?" But what he says, "The Lord whom ye seek, and the Angel of the testament whom ye desire," just means that even the Jews, according to the scriptures which they read, shall seek and desire Christ. But many of them did not acknowledge that He whom they sought and desired had come, being blinded in their hearts, which were preoccupied with their own merits. Now what he here calls the testament, either above, where he says, "My testament had been with Him," or here, where he has called Him the Angel of the testament, we ought, beyond a doubt, to take to be the new testament, in which the things promised are eternal, and not the old, in which they are only temporal. Yet many who are weak are troubled when they see the wicked abound in such temporal things, because they value them greatly, and serve the true God to be rewarded with them. On this account, to distinguish the eternal blessedness of the new testament, which shall be given only to the good, from the earthly felicity of the old, which for the most part is given to the bad as well, the same prophet says, "Ye have made your words burdensome to me: yet ye have said, In what have we spoken ill of Thee? Ye have said,[Pg 262] Foolish is every one who serves God; and what profit is it that we have kept His observances, and that we have walked as suppliants before the face of the Lord Almighty? And now we call the aliens blessed; yea, all that do wicked things are built up again; yea, they are opposed to God and are saved. They that feared the Lord uttered these reproaches every one to his neighbour: and the Lord hearkened and heard; and He wrote a book of remembrance before Him, for them that fear the Lord and that revere His name."[570] By that book is meant the New Testament. Finally, let us hear what follows: "And they shall be an acquisition for me, saith the Lord Almighty, in the day which I make; and I will choose them as a man chooseth his son that serveth him. And ye shall return, and shall discern between the just and the unjust, and between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not. For, behold, the day cometh burning as an oven, and it shall burn them up; and all the aliens and all that do wickedly shall be stubble: and the day that shall come will set them on fire, saith the Lord Almighty, and shall leave neither root nor branch. And unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, and health shall be in His wings; and ye shall go forth, and exult as calves let loose from bonds. And ye shall tread down the wicked, and they shall be ashes under your feet, in the day in which I shall do [this], saith the Lord Almighty."[571] This day is the day of judgment, of which, if God will, we shall speak more fully in its own place.
36. About Esdras and the books of the Maccabees.
After these three prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, during the same period of the liberation of the people from the Babylonian servitude Esdras also wrote, who is historical rather than prophetical, as is also the book called Esther, which is found to relate, for the praise of God, events not far from those times; unless, perhaps, Esdras is to be understood as prophesying of Christ in that passage where, on a question having arisen among certain young men as to what is the strongest thing, when one had said kings, another wine, the third women, who for the most part rule kings, yet that[Pg 263] same third youth demonstrated that the truth is victorious over all.[572] For by consulting the Gospel we learn that Christ is the Truth. From this time, when the temple was rebuilt, down to the time of Aristobulus, the Jews had not kings but princes; and the reckoning of their dates is found, not in the Holy scriptures which are called canonical, but in others, among which are also the books of the Maccabees. These are held as canonical, not by the Jews, but by the Church, on account of the extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs, who, before Christ had come in the flesh, contended for the law of God even unto death, and endured most grievous and horrible evils.
37. That prophetic records are found which are more ancient than any fountain of the Gentile philosophy.
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If I may recall far more ancient times, our patriarch Noah was certainly even before that great deluge, and I might not undeservedly call him a prophet, forasmuch as the ark he made, in which he escaped with his family, was itself a prophecy of our times.[574] What of Enoch, the seventh from Adam? Does not the canonical epistle of the Apostle Jude declare that he prophesied?[575] But the writings of these men could not be held as authoritative either among the Jews or us, on account of their too great antiquity, which made it seem needful to regard them with suspicion, lest false things should be set forth instead of true. For some writings which are said to be theirs are quoted by those who, according to their own[Pg 265] humour, loosely believe what they please. But the purity of the canon has not admitted these writings, not because the authority of these men who pleased God is rejected, but because they are not believed to be theirs. Nor ought it to appear strange if writings for which so great antiquity is claimed are held in suspicion, seeing that in the very history of the kings of Judah and Israel containing their acts, which we believe to belong to the canonical scripture, very many things are mentioned which are not explained there, but are said to be found in other books which the prophets wrote, the very names of these prophets being sometimes given, and yet they are not found in the canon which the people of God received. Now I confess the reason of this is hidden from me; only I think that even those men, to whom certainly the Holy Spirit revealed those things which ought to be held as of religious authority, might write some things as men by historical diligence, and others as prophets by divine inspiration; and these things were so distinct, that it was judged that the former should be ascribed to themselves, but the latter to God speaking through them: and so the one pertained to the abundance of knowledge, the other to the authority of religion. In that authority the canon is guarded. So that, if any writings outside of it are now brought forward under the name of the ancient prophets, they cannot serve even as an aid to knowledge, because it is uncertain whether they are genuine; and on this account they are not trusted, especially those of them in which some things are found that are even contrary to the truth of the canonical books, so that it is quite apparent they do not belong to them.
39. About the Hebrew written characters which that language always possessed.
Now we must not believe that Heber, from whose name the word Hebrew is derived, preserved and transmitted the Hebrew language to Abraham only as a spoken language, and that the Hebrew letters began with the giving of the law through Moses; but rather that this language, along with its letters, was preserved by that succession of fathers. Moses, indeed, appointed some among the people of God to teach letters, before they could know any letters of the divine law.[Pg 266] The scripture calls these men , who may be called in Latin inductores or introductores of letters, because they, as it were, introduce them into the hearts of the learners, or rather lead those whom they teach into them. Therefore no nation could vaunt itself over our patriarchs and prophets by any wicked vanity for the antiquity of its wisdom; since not even Egypt, which is wont falsely and vainly to glory in the antiquity of her doctrines, is found to have preceded in time the wisdom of our patriarchs in her own wisdom, such as it is. Neither will any one dare to say that they were most skilful in wonderful sciences before they knew letters, that is, before Isis came and taught them there. Besides, what, for the most part, was that memorable doctrine of theirs which was called wisdom but astronomy, and it may be some other sciences of that kind, which usually have more power to exercise men's wit than to enlighten their minds with true wisdom? As regards philosophy, which professes to teach men something which shall make them happy, studies of that kind flourished in those lands about the times of Mercury whom they called Trismegistus, long before the sages and philosophers of Greece, but yet after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, and even after Moses himself. At that time, indeed, when Moses was born, Atlas is found to have lived, that great astronomer, the brother of Prometheus, and maternal grandson of the elder Mercury, of whom that Mercury Trismegistus was the grandson.
40. About the most mendacious vanity of the Egyptians, in which they ascribe to their science an antiquity of a hundred thousand years.
--
41. About the discord of philosophic opinion, and the concord of the scriptures that are held as canonical by the Church.
But let us omit further examination of history, and return to the philosophers from whom we digressed to these things. They seem to have laboured in their studies for no other end than to find out how to live in a way proper for laying hold of blessedness. Why, then, have the disciples dissented from their masters, and the fellow-disciples from one another, except because as men they have sought after these things by human sense and human reasonings? Now, although there might be among them a desire of glory, so that each wished to be thought wiser and more acute than another, and in no way addicted to the judgment of others, but the inventor of his own dogma and opinion, yet I may grant that there were some, or even very many of them, whose love of truth severed them from their teachers or fellow-disciples, that they might strive for what they thought was the truth, whether it was so or not. But what can human misery do, or how or where can it reach forth, so as to attain blessedness, if divine authority does not lead it? Finally, let our authors, among whom the canon of the sacred books is fixed and bounded, be far from disagreeing in any[Pg 268] respect. It is not without good reason, then, that not merely a few people prating in the schools and gymnasia in captious disputations, but so many and great people, both learned and unlearned, in countries and cities, have believed that God spoke to them or by them, i.e. the canonical writers, when they wrote these books. There ought, indeed, to be but few of them, lest on account of their multitude what ought to be religiously esteemed should grow cheap; and yet not so few that their agreement should not be wonderful. For among the multitude of philosophers, who in their works have left behind them the monuments of their dogmas, no one will easily find any who agree in all their opinions. But to show this is too long a task for this work.
--
42. By what dispensation of God's providence the sacred scriptures of the Old Testament were translated out of Hebrew into Greek, that they might be made known to all the nations.
One of the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt, desired to know and have these sacred books. For after Alexander of Macedon, who is also styled the Great, had by his most wonderful, but by no means enduring power, subdued the whole of Asia, yea, almost the whole world, partly by force of arms, partly by terror, and, among other kingdoms of the East, had entered and obtained Judea also, on his death his generals did not peaceably divide that most ample kingdom among them for a possession, but rather dissipated it, wasting all things by wars. Then Egypt began to have the Ptolemies as her kings. The first of them, the son of Lagus, carried many captive out of Judea into Egypt. But another Ptolemy, called Philadelphus, who succeeded him, permitted all whom he had brought under the yoke to return free; and, more than that, sent kingly gifts to the temple of God, and begged Eleazar, who was the high priest, to give him the scriptures, which he had heard by report were truly divine, and therefore greatly desired to have in that most noble library he had made. When the high[Pg 271] priest had sent them to him in Hebrew, he afterwards demanded interpreters of him, and there were given him seventy-two, out of each of the twelve tribes six men, most learned in both languages, to wit, the Hebrew and Greek; and their translation is now by custom called the Septuagint. It is reported, indeed, that there was an agreement in their words so wonderful, stupendous, and plainly divine, that when they had sat at this work, each one apart (for so it pleased Ptolemy to test their fidelity), they differed from each other in no word which had the same meaning and force, or in the order of the words; but, as if the translators had been one, so what all had translated was one, because in very deed the one Spirit had been in them all. And they received so wonderful a gift of God, in order that the authority of these scriptures might be commended not as human but divine, as indeed it was, for the benefit of the nations who should at some time believe, as we now see them doing.
43. Of the authority of the Septuagint translation, which, saving the honour of the Hebrew original, is to be preferred to all translations.
For while there were other interpreters who translated these sacred oracles out of the Hebrew tongue into Greek, as Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and also that translation which, as the name of the author is unknown, is quoted as the fifth edition, yet the Church has received this Septuagint translation just as if it were the only one; and it has been used by the Greek Christian people, most of whom are not aware that there is any other. From this translation there has also been made a translation in the Latin tongue, which the Latin churches use. Our times, however, have enjoyed the advantage of the presbyter Jerome, a man most learned, and skilled in all three languages, who translated these same scriptures into the Latin speech, not from the Greek, but from the Hebrew. But although the Jews acknowledge this very learned labour of his to be faithful, while they contend that the Septuagint translators have erred in many places, still the churches of Christ judge that no one should be preferred to the authority of so many men, chosen for this very great work by Eleazar, who was then high priest; for even if there had not appeared in them one spirit, without doubt divine, and[Pg 272] the seventy learned men had, after the manner of men, compared together the words of their translation, that what pleased them all might stand, no single translator ought to be preferred to them; but since so great a sign of divinity has appeared in them, certainly, if any other translator of their scriptures from the Hebrew into any other tongue is faithful, in that case he agrees with these seventy translators, and if he is not found to agree with them, then we ought to believe that the prophetic gift is with them. For the same Spirit who was in the prophets when they spoke these things was also in the seventy men when they translated them, so that assuredly they could also say something else, just as if the prophet himself had said both, because it would be the same Spirit who said both; and could say the same thing differently, so that, although the words were not the same, yet the same meaning should shine forth to those of good understanding; and could omit or add something, so that even by this it might be shown that there was in that work not human bondage, which the translator owed to the words, but rather divine power, which filled and ruled the mind of the translator. Some, however, have thought that the Greek copies of the Septuagint version should be emended from the Hebrew copies; yet they did not dare to take away what the Hebrew lacked and the Septuagint had, but only added what was found in the Hebrew copies and was lacking in the Septuagint, and noted them by placing at the beginning of the verses certain marks in the form of stars which they call asterisks. And those things which the Hebrew copies have not, but the Septuagint have, they have in like manner marked at the beginning of the verses by horizontal spit-shaped marks like those by which we denote ounces; and many copies having these marks are circulated even in Latin.[578] But we cannot, without inspecting both kinds of copies, find out those things which are neither omitted nor added, but expressed differently, whether they yield another meaning not in itself unsuitable, or can be shown to explain the same meaning in another way. If, then, as it behoves us, we behold nothing else in these scriptures than what the Spirit of God has spoken through[Pg 273] men, if anything is in the Hebrew copies and is not in the version of the Seventy, the Spirit of God did not choose to say it through them, but only through the prophets. But whatever is in the Septuagint and not in the Hebrew copies, the same Spirit chose rather to say through the latter, thus showing that both were prophets. For in that manner He spoke as He chose, some things through Isaiah, some through Jeremiah, some through several prophets, or else the same thing through this prophet and through that. Further, whatever is found in both editions, that one and the same Spirit willed to say through both, but so as that the former preceded in prophesying, and the latter followed in prophetically interpreting them; because, as the one Spirit of peace was in the former when they spoke true and concordant words, so the selfsame one Spirit hath appeared in the latter, when, without mutual conference, they yet interpreted all things as if with one mouth.
44. How the threat of the destruction of the Ninevites is to be understood, which in the Hebrew extends to forty days, while in the Septuagint it is contracted to three.
--
For not long after, on the arrival of Alexander, it was subdued, when, although there was no pillaging, because they dared not resist him, and thus, being very easily subdued, received him peaceably, yet the glory of that house was not so great as it was when under the free power of their own kings. Alexander, indeed, offered up sacrifices in the temple of God, not as a convert to His worship in true piety, but thinking, with impious folly, that He was to be worshipped along with false gods. Then Ptolemy son of Lagus, whom I have already mentioned, after Alexander's death carried them captive into Egypt. His successor, Ptolemy Philadelphus, most benevolently dismissed them; and by him it was brought about, as I have narrated a little before, that we should have the Septuagint version of the scriptures. Then they were crushed by the wars which are explained in the books of the Maccabees. Afterward they were taken captive by Ptolemy king of Alexandria, who was called Epiphanes. Then Antiochus king of Syria compelled them by many and most grievous evils to[Pg 276] worship idols, and filled the temple itself with the sacrilegious superstitions of the Gentiles. Yet their most vigorous leader Judas, who is also called Maccabus, after beating the generals of Antiochus, cleansed it from all that defilement of idolatry.
But not long after, one Alcimus, although an alien from the sacerdotal tribe, was, through ambition, made pontiff, which was an impious thing. After almost fifty years, during which they never had peace, although they prospered in some affairs, Aristobulus first assumed the diadem among them, and was made both king and pontiff. Before that, indeed, from the time of their return from the Babylonish captivity and the rebuilding of the temple, they had not kings, but generals or principes. Although a king himself may be called a prince, from his principality in governing, and a leader, because he leads the army, but it does not follow that all who are princes and leaders may also be called kings, as that Aristobulus was. He was succeeded by Alexander, also both king and pontiff, who is reported to have reigned over them cruelly. After him his wife Alexandra was queen of the Jews, and from her time downwards more grievous evils pursued them; for this Alexandra's sons, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, when contending with each other for the kingdom, called in the Roman forces against the nation of Israel. For Hyrcanus asked assistance from them against his brother. At that time Rome had already subdued Africa and Greece, and ruled extensively in other parts of the world also, and yet, as if unable to bear her own weight, had, in a manner, broken herself by her own size. For indeed she had come to grave domestic seditions, and from that to social wars, and by and by to civil wars, and had enfeebled and worn herself out so much, that the changed state of the republic, in which she should be governed by kings, was now imminent. Pompey then, a most illustrious prince of the Roman people, having entered Judea with an army, took the city, threw open the temple, not with the devotion of a suppliant, but with the authority of a conqueror, and went, not reverently, but profanely, into the holy of holies, where it was lawful for none but the pontiff to enter. Having established Hyrcanus in the pontificate, and set Antipater over the subjugated nation as[Pg 277] guardian or procurator, as they were then called, he led Aristobulus with him bound. From that time the Jews also began to be Roman tri butaries. Afterward Cassius plundered the very temple. Then after a few years it was their desert to have Herod, a king of foreign birth, in whose reign Christ was born. For the time had now come signified by the prophetic Spirit through the mouth of the patriarch Jacob, when he says, "There shall not be lacking a prince out of Judah, nor a teacher from his loins, until He shall come for whom it is reserved; and He is the expectation of the nations."[583] There lacked not therefore a Jewish prince of the Jews until that Herod, who was the first king of a foreign race received by them. Therefore it was now the time when He should come for whom that was reserved which is promised in the New Testament, that He should be the expectation of the nations. But it was not possible that the nations should expect He would come, as we see they did, to do judgment in the splendour of power, unless they should first believe in Him when He came to suffer judgment in the humility of patience.
--
While Herod, therefore, reigned in Judea, and Csar Augustus was emperor at Rome, the state of the republic being already changed, and the world being set at peace by him, Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judah, man manifest out of a human virgin, God hidden out of God the Father. For so had the prophet foretold: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb, and bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel, which, being interpreted, is, God with us."[584] He did many miracles that He might commend God in Himself, some of which, even as many as seemed sufficient to proclaim Him, are contained in the evangelic scripture. The first of these is, that He was so wonderfully born, and the last, that with His body raised up again from the dead He ascended into heaven. But the Jews who slew Him, and would not believe in Him, because it behoved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly[Pg 278] rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ. And very many of them, considering this, even before His passion, but chiefly after His resurrection, believed on Him, of whom it was predicted, "Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved."[585] But the rest are blinded, of whom it was predicted, "Let their table be made before them a trap, and a retri bution, and a stumbling-block. Let their eyes be darkened lest they see, and bow down their back alway."[586] Therefore, when they do not believe our scriptures, their own, which they blindly read, are fulfilled in them, lest perchance any one should say that the Christians have forged these prophecies about Christ which are quoted under the name of the sibyl, or of others, if such there be, who do not belong to the Jewish people. For us, indeed, those suffice which are quoted from the books of our enemies, to whom we make our acknowledgment, on account of this testimony which, in spite of themselves, they contri bute by their possession of these books, while they themselves are dispersed among all nations, wherever the Church of Christ is spread abroad. For a prophecy about this thing was sent before in the Psalms, which they also read, where it is written, "My God, His mercy shall prevent me. My God hath shown me concerning mine enemies, that Thou shalt not slay them, lest they should at last forget Thy law: disperse them in Thy might."[587] Therefore God has shown the Church in her enemies the Jews the grace of His compassion, since, as saith the apostle, "their offence is the salvation of the Gentiles."[588] And therefore He has not slain them, that is, He has not let the knowledge that they are Jews be lost in them, although they have been conquered by the Romans, lest they should forget the law of God, and their testimony should be of no avail in this matter of which we treat. But it was not enough that he should say, "Slay them not, lest they should[Pg 279] at last forget Thy law," unless he had also added, "Disperse them;" because if they had only been in their own land with that testimony of the scriptures, and not everywhere, certainly the Church which is everywhere could not have had them as witnesses among all nations to the prophecies which were sent before concerning Christ.
47. Whether before Christian times there were any outside of the Israelite race who belonged to the fellowship of the heavenly city.
--
Then was fulfilled that prophecy, "Out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem;"[600] and the prediction of the Lord Christ Himself, when, after the resurrection, "He opened the understanding" of His amazed disciples "that they might understand the scriptures, and said unto them that thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and[Pg 283] that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."[601] And again, when, in reply to their questioning about the day of His last coming, He said, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power; but ye shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and even unto the ends of the earth."[602] First of all, the Church spread herself abroad from Jerusalem; and when very many in Judea and Samaria had believed, she also went into other nations by those who announced the gospel, whom, as lights, He Himself had both prepared by His word and kindled by His Holy Spirit. For He had said to them, "Fear ye not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul."[603] And that they might not be frozen with fear, they burned with the fire of charity. Finally, the gospel of Christ was preached in the whole world, not only by those who had seen and heard Him both before His passion and after His resurrection, but also after their death by their successors, amid the horrible persecutions, diverse torments and deaths of the martyrs, God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost,[604] that the people of the nations, believing in Him who was crucified for their redemption, might venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which they had poured forth with devilish fury, and the very kings by whose laws the Church had been laid waste might become profitably subject to that name they had cruelly striven to take away from the earth, and might begin to persecute the false gods for whose sake the worshippers of the true God had formerly been persecuted.
51. That the catholic faith may be confirmed even by the dissensions of the heretics.
--
For it is not to be thought that what the same teacher says can at any time fail, "Whoever will live piously in Christ shall suffer persecution."[608] Because even when those who are without do not rage, and thus there seems to be, and really is, tranquillity, which brings very much consolation, especially to the weak, yet there are not wanting, yea, there[Pg 285] are many within who by their abandoned manners torment the hearts of those who live piously, since by them the Christian and catholic name is blasphemed; and the dearer that name is to those who will live piously in Christ, the more do they grieve that through the wicked, who have a place within, it comes to be less loved than pious minds desire. The heretics themselves also, since they are thought to have the Christian name and sacraments, scriptures, and profession, cause great grief in the hearts of the pious, both because many who wish to be Christians are compelled by their dissensions to hesitate, and many evil-speakers also find in them matter for blaspheming the Christian name, because they too are at any rate called Christians. By these and similar depraved manners and errors of men, those who will live piously in Christ suffer persecution, even when no one molests or vexes their body; for they suffer this persecution, not in their bodies, but in their hearts. Whence is that word, "According to the multitude of my griefs in my heart;" for he does not say, in my body. Yet, on the other hand, none of them can perish, because the immutable divine promises are thought of. And because the apostle says, "The Lord knoweth them that are His;[609] for whom He did foreknow, He also predestinated [to be] conformed to the image of His Son,"[610] none of them can perish; therefore it follows in that psalm, "Thy consolations have delighted my soul."[611] But that grief which arises in the hearts of the pious, who are persecuted by the manners of bad or false Christians, is profitable to the sufferers, because it proceeds from the charity in which they do not wish them either to perish or to hinder the salvation of others. Finally, great consolations grow out of their chastisement, which imbue the souls of the pious with a fecundity as great as the pains with which they were troubled concerning their own perdition. Thus in this world, in these evil days, not only from the time of the bodily presence of Christ and His apostles, but even from that of Abel, whom first his wicked brother slew because he was righteous,[612] and thenceforth even to the end of this world, the Church has[Pg 286] gone forward on pilgrimage amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God.
52. Whether we should believe what some think, that, as the ten persecutions which are past have been fulfilled, there remains no other beyond the eleventh, which must happen in the very time of Antichrist.
--
Truly Jesus Himself shall extinguish by His presence that last persecution which is to be made by Antichrist. For so it is written, that "He shall slay him with the breath of His mouth, and empty him with the brightness of His presence."[613] It is customary to ask, When shall that be? But this is quite unreasonable. For had it been profitable for us to know this, by whom could it better have been told than by God Himself, the Master, when the disciples questioned Him? For they were not silent when with Him, but inquired of Him, saying, "Lord, wilt Thou at this time present the kingdom to Israel, or when?"[614] But He said, "It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own power." When they got that answer, they had not at all questioned Him about the hour, or day, or year, but about the time. In vain, then, do we attempt to compute definitely the years that may remain to this world, when we may hear from the mouth of the Truth that it is not for us to know this. Yet some have said that four hundred, some five hundred, others a thousand years, may be completed from the ascension of the Lord up to His final coming. But to point out how each of them supports his own opinion would take too long, and is not necessary; for indeed they use human conjectures, and bring forward nothing certain from the authority of the canonical scriptures. But on this subject He puts aside the figures of the calculators, and orders silence, who says, "It is not for you to know the times, which the Father hath put in His own power."
[Pg 289]
--- Overview of noun scripture
The noun scripture has 2 senses (first 1 from tagged texts)
1. (5) Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word ::: (the sacred writings of the Christian religions; "he went to carry the Word to the heathen")
2. scripture, sacred scripture ::: (any writing that is regarded as sacred by a religious group)
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun scripture
2 senses of scripture
Sense 1
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
Sense 2
scripture, sacred scripture
=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> writing, written material, piece of writing
=> written communication, written language, black and white
=> communication
=> abstraction, abstract entity
=> entity
--- Hyponyms of noun scripture
2 senses of scripture
Sense 1
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> family Bible
HAS INSTANCE=> Vulgate
HAS INSTANCE=> Douay Bible, Douay Version, Douay-Rheims Bible, Douay-Rheims Version, Rheims-Douay Bible, Rheims-Douay Version
HAS INSTANCE=> Authorized Version, King James Version, King James Bible
HAS INSTANCE=> Revised Version
HAS INSTANCE=> New English Bible
HAS INSTANCE=> American Standard Version, American Revised Version
HAS INSTANCE=> Revised Standard Version
Sense 2
scripture, sacred scripture
=> canon
--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun scripture
2 senses of scripture
Sense 1
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
Sense 2
scripture, sacred scripture
=> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun scripture
2 senses of scripture
Sense 1
Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
-> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> scripture, sacred scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Adi Granth, Granth, Granth Sahib
HAS INSTANCE=> Avesta, Zend-Avesta
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavadgita, Gita
HAS INSTANCE=> Mahabharata, Mahabharatam, Mahabharatum
=> Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> Paralipomenon
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah
HAS INSTANCE=> Tanakh, Tanach, Hebrew Scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Prophets, Nebiim
HAS INSTANCE=> Hagiographa, Ketubim, Writings
=> Testament
=> Gospel, Gospels, evangel
=> Synoptic Gospels, Synoptics
HAS INSTANCE=> Book of Mormon
=> prayer
=> service book
=> Apocrypha
=> sapiential book, wisdom book, wisdom literature
=> Pseudepigrapha
HAS INSTANCE=> Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
=> Talmudic literature
HAS INSTANCE=> Gemara
HAS INSTANCE=> Mishna, Mishnah
=> Vedic literature, Veda
HAS INSTANCE=> Upanishad
=> mantra
=> psalm
HAS INSTANCE=> Psalm
Sense 2
scripture, sacred scripture
-> sacred text, sacred writing, religious writing, religious text
=> scripture, sacred scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Adi Granth, Granth, Granth Sahib
HAS INSTANCE=> Avesta, Zend-Avesta
HAS INSTANCE=> Bhagavad-Gita, Bhagavadgita, Gita
HAS INSTANCE=> Mahabharata, Mahabharatam, Mahabharatum
=> Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word
=> Paralipomenon
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah, Pentateuch, Laws
HAS INSTANCE=> Torah
HAS INSTANCE=> Tanakh, Tanach, Hebrew Scripture
HAS INSTANCE=> Prophets, Nebiim
HAS INSTANCE=> Hagiographa, Ketubim, Writings
=> Testament
=> Gospel, Gospels, evangel
=> Synoptic Gospels, Synoptics
HAS INSTANCE=> Book of Mormon
=> prayer
=> service book
=> Apocrypha
=> sapiential book, wisdom book, wisdom literature
=> Pseudepigrapha
HAS INSTANCE=> Koran, Quran, al-Qur'an, Book
=> Talmudic literature
HAS INSTANCE=> Gemara
HAS INSTANCE=> Mishna, Mishnah
=> Vedic literature, Veda
HAS INSTANCE=> Upanishad
=> mantra
=> psalm
HAS INSTANCE=> Psalm
--- Grep of noun scripture
hebrew scripture
holy scripture
sacred scripture
scripture
Wikipedia - Aitareya Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Akshaya Patra -- Divine Vessel in Hindu Scriptures
Wikipedia - AM-aM-9M-^EgulimalM-DM-+ya SM-EM-+tra -- Mahayana Buddhist scripture
Wikipedia - ApauruM-aM-9M-#eya -- Term used to describe the Vedas, the earliest scripture in Hinduism, meaning 'superhuman'
Wikipedia - Atharvaveda -- One of four Veds, ancient scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Avestan alphabet -- Alphabet used mainly to write Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian scripture Avesta
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Wikipedia - Biblical canon -- Set of texts which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture
Wikipedia - Book of the Law of the Lord -- Scripture used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)
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Wikipedia - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Buddhist scripture
Wikipedia - Canon of Scripture
Wikipedia - Canon of scripture
Wikipedia - Category:Sikh scripture
Wikipedia - Chandogya Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Daksha -- Son of Brahma in Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Deposit of faith -- The body of revealed truth in the Scriptures and Tradition proposed by the Roman Catholic Church
Wikipedia - Divine Incantations Scripture
Wikipedia - DM-DM-+gha Nikaya -- Buddhist scripture, "Collection of Long Discourses"
Wikipedia - Durvasa -- A sage in Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Edward Wheeler Scripture
Wikipedia - Guru Granth Sahib -- Primary scripture of Sikhism
Wikipedia - Hebrew Bible -- Canonical collection of Hebrew scriptures
Wikipedia - Hebrew Scriptures
Wikipedia - Hebrew Scripture
Wikipedia - Hidden Words -- BahaM-JM-
Wikipedia - Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Hindu scripture
Wikipedia - Hiranyaksha -- Asura in Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Holy Scripture
Wikipedia - Holy scripture
Wikipedia - Huangdi Yinfujing -- Daoist scripture
Wikipedia - Isha Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Jain Scriptures
Wikipedia - Kalayavana -- A king in Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Katha Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Kena Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - List of Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - List of numbers in Hindu scriptures -- Wikipedia list article
Wikipedia - Maitrayaniya Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Mandukya Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Markandeya -- Sage in Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Sruti -- Authoritative scripture of Hinduism, created by Rishis (sages), after inspired creativity
Wikipedia - Menaka -- Beauty from Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Miracles of Gautama Buddha -- Supernatural feats and abilities attributed to Gautama Buddha by the Buddhist scriptures
Wikipedia - Mul Mantar -- Opening words of the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib
Wikipedia - Mundaka Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Names for books of Judeo-Christian scripture -- Judeo-Christian scripture
Wikipedia - New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures -- Jehovah's Witnesses Bible translation
Wikipedia - Nidhi -- Hindu scriptures,
Wikipedia - Niranjan -- Sanskrit term in Hindu religious scripture
Wikipedia - Nomina sacra -- The abbreviation of several frequently occurring divine names or titles, especially in Greek manuscripts of Holy Scripture
Wikipedia - Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament -- Jewish scripture hello quoted to support the claim that Jesus is the Messiah
Wikipedia - Palaramachandran version -- First published version of Akilam, the scripture of Ayyavazhi
Wikipedia - PaM-aM-9M--M-aM-9M--hana -- Buddhist scripture
Wikipedia - Pericope -- Set of verses that forms one coherent unit or thought; usually of sacred scripture
Wikipedia - Portal:Christianity/Selected scripture
Wikipedia - Prashna Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Prima scriptura -- Christian doctrine that canonized scripture is "first" or "above all" other sources of divine revelation
Wikipedia - Raslila -- Part of the story of Krishna described in Hindu scriptures
Wikipedia - Roman Catholic theology of Scripture
Wikipedia - Rukmangada -- King in Hindu scripture
Wikipedia - Sacred Scriptures Bethel Edition -- Sacred Name Bible
Wikipedia - Sacred Scripture
Wikipedia - Sacred scripture
Wikipedia - SaM-aM-9M-^Cyutta Nikaya -- Buddhist scripture
Wikipedia - Samaritan Pentateuch -- Text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, written in the Samaritan alphabet and considered as the holy scriptures by the Samaritans
Wikipedia - Sant Bhasha -- Language composed of vocabulary common to northern Indian languages, used in Sikh scripture
Wikipedia - Sarpa Satra -- Yagna (Sacrifice) in Hindu Scriptures
Wikipedia - Satrajit -- Father of Satyabhama in Hindu Scriptures
Wikipedia - Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
Wikipedia - Scriptural reasoning -- Religious studies of scriptures
Wikipedia - Scriptures
Wikipedia - Scripture
Wikipedia - Septuagint -- Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures
Wikipedia - Sidrat al-Muntaha -- Sacred tree in Islamic scripture, marking the boundary which no creation can pass
Wikipedia - Sutta Nipata -- Buddhist scripture, sutta collection in the Khuddaka Nikaya of the Pali Canon
Wikipedia - Taittiriya Upanishad -- One of the ancient Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Talmudical hermeneutics -- Methods for the investigation and determination of the meaning of the Scriptures
Wikipedia - Targum -- Aramaic translation of the Jewish scriptures
Wikipedia - Template talk:Hindu scriptures and texts
Wikipedia - Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs -- Apocryphal scripture connected with the Bible
Wikipedia - The Canon of Scripture
Wikipedia - Theologoumenon -- Theological statement which cannot be directly regarded as the official teaching of the Church; belief or clarification by theologians upon a theological matter not clearly formulated in the Scriptures or Church dogma
Wikipedia - Theology of Huldrych Zwingli -- Theological view that considered scripture a higher authority then the church fathers
Wikipedia - Twisted Scriptures
Wikipedia - Vedas -- Ancient scriptures of Hinduism
Wikipedia - Verbal plenary preservation -- The whole of Scripture with all its words even to the jot and tittle is perfectly preserved by God in the apographs
Wikipedia - VibhaM-aM-9M-^Ega -- Buddhist scripture, part of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism
Wikipedia - Vyasa (title) -- Title given to the sage or Rishi who divides the Hindu holy scripture Vedas in every Dvapara Yuga of every Yuga cycle
Wikipedia - Zen scriptures
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The Secret Scripture (2016) ::: 6.7/10 -- PG-13 | 1h 48min | Drama, Romance | 13 October 2017 (USA) -- A woman keeps a diary of her extended stay at a mental hospital. Director: Jim Sheridan Writers: Sebastian Barry (based on the novel by), Jim Sheridan | 1 more credit
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