RSS FEEDEcstatic Mysticism, a quote from Martin Buber
“I am not concerned with finding a conceptual ‘pigeonhole’ for ecstasy. It is the unclassifiable aspect of ecstasy that interest me…The ecstatic individual may be explained in terms of psychology, physiology, pathology; what is important to us is that which remains beyond explanation: the individual’s experience. We pay no heed here to those notions which […]
Dances of Universal Peace
Four days in Southwestern Colorado with about sixty other people, chanting, praying, singing and dancing the Dances of Universal Peace, has reminded me of many things I hold dear, all of you among them. I have held you in my heart often as I opened myself to the mysterious expansion of consciousness that occurs when […]
Gratitude to Refugees from Africa
Amazing African teenagers sang and danced in an event organized to raise money for refugees that Chris and I attended yesterday in Albuquerque. They sang in Swahili and danced with such exuberance that one would never know the hardships they had endured coming to this country, so strange to them, just about 15 months ago […]
After Absence
You have received more love than mail lately from me. For good reason, I assure you. I was told by the eye doctor that the “narrow angles” of something in my eyes would threaten blindness if I did not have surgery immediately. So I did! The doctor wanted me to rest and rest my eyes, […]
Diversity and Oneness
I am spending a brief time of rest, renewal, and reflection in the area of the United States called Four Corners. Here the “corners” of four states touch: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Here, too, different topographical regions touch: towering mountains dip rapidly down to high desert, the temperature dropping ten degrees in a […]
The essence of Buddhism
“Gratitude for the past, service to the present, responsibility for the future…” Huston Smith’s definition of the essence of Buddhism.
Connections
A quotation from the book Creators on Creating: “Myriad connections, though perhaps unseen, exist between all things. While I may jump in the air, I fall down again; and the sun energizes plants and they energize us; molecule after molecule is stacked up to make a tree, which is pulverized to make the paper for […]
The Ultimate, A Quotation
“…It is not that certain peoples such as the old Japanese believed that individual ‘spirits’ or ‘souls’ inhabited stones and trees, but that the One and Only Being, manifesting both simultaneously and successively through an indefinite multiplicity of states, spiritual, psychic, and physical, aroused their awe and received their reverence in and through one of […]
Living in Beauty
All religions share a reverence for the fullness of beauty around us: “The kingdom of God is within you and all around you.” Gnostic Gospel, Christianity “Why should there be a reservoir when there is a flood everywhere?” The Upanishads, Hindu “The Way holds all things within Itself. Like the vastness of the universe, it […]
Through Love Alone
Recently I discovered that my 9th great grandmother was tortured as a witch in Europe during the Inquisition. This led me to reflect yet again on how violence is engendered by religious extremism of every type in every age. The news today is full of stories of ISIS and “radical Islam,” and, on other […]
