Zen

What is Zen?

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Zen is really extraordinarily simple as long as one doesn't try to be cute about it or beat around the bush! Zen is simply the sensation and the clear understanding… that there is behind the multiplicity of events and creatures in this universe simply one energy – and it appears as you, and everything is it. The practice of Zen is to understand that one energy so as to "feel it in your bones." - Alan Watts

Zen is to religion what a Japanese "rock garden" is to a garden. Zen knows no god, no afterlife, no good and no evil, as the rock-garden knows no flowers, herbs or shrubs. It has no doctrine or holy writ: its teaching is transmitted mainly in the form of parables as ambiguous as the pebbles in the rock-garden which symbolise now a mountain, now a fleeting tiger. When a disciple asks "What is Zen?", the master's traditional answer is "Three pounds of flax" or "A decaying noodle" or "A toilet stick" or a whack on the pupil's head. - Arthur Koestler

There are in Zen no sacred books or dogmatic tenets, nor are there any symbolic formulae through which an access might be gained into the signification of Zen. If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer, Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one's own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way. - Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

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Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

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Spiritual Journey

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Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world. - Alan W. Watts

Our usual understanding of life is dualistic: you and I, this and that, good and bad. But actually, these discriminations are themselves the awareness of the Universal existence. "You" means to be aware of the Universe in the form of you, and "I" means to be aware of it in the form of I. You and I are just swinging doors... - Shunryu Suzuki

Every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all result of a law which cannot err. - Unknown

By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive. - Albert Schweitzer

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

Thank you for stopping by. Follow me if you find my posts interesting. If you know of anyone who might appreciate them, do recommend the blog to them.
Please refer to the right hand side of the page for related Spiritual topics.

You might also like to have a look at my other blog - This Wonder-ful Life

Cheers!

God

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God is omnipotent; God is wholly good; and yet evil exists. There seems to be some contradiction between these three propositions, so that if any two of them were true the third would be false. But at the same time all three are essential parts of most theological positions: the theologian it seems, at once must adhere and cannot consistently adhere to all three. - J. L. Mackie

If God’s work in creation is so Great, why does it need redemption? Why does God make such an imperfect creation that needs saving, and how can this be called ‘Great?’ The whole plot – God makes a rotten creation that needs saving, so he sends his only-begotten and much-beloved son to be viciously crucified – is grotesque. What kind of almighty creator chooses this as his Creation? - M. Murdock

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God? - Epicurus

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Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

Thank you for stopping by. Follow me if you find my posts interesting. If you know of anyone who might appreciate them, do recommend the blog to them.
Please refer to the right hand side of the page for related Spiritual topics.

You might also like to have a look at my other blog - This Wonder-ful Life

Cheers!

Faith

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We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions. - Bertrand Russell

You either have faith that a God exists, or you ‘know’. You can’t know and have faith, or have faith and know, you know? - Michael Sherlock

To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly. - Benjamin Franklin

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Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

Thank you for stopping by. Follow me if you find my posts interesting. If you know of anyone who might appreciate them, do recommend the blog to them.
Please refer to the right hand side of the page for related Spiritual topics.

You might also like to have a look at my other blog - This Wonder-ful Life

Cheers!

Churches

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Since the earliest days the church, as an organization, has thrown itself violently against every effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings. - H. L. Mencken

Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches. - St. Thomas Aquinas

Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory? - Charles de Lint

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Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

Thank you for stopping by. Follow me if you find my posts interesting. If you know of anyone who might appreciate them, do recommend the blog to them.
Please refer to the right hand side of the page for related Spiritual topics.

You might also like to have a look at my other blog - This Wonder-ful Life

Cheers!

Christianity

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Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems, is the fraud of the age. It serves to detach the species from the natural world, and likewise, each other. It supports blind submission to authority. - Unknown

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. - James Madison

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity... it produces only atheists and fanatics. - Thomas Paine

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Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

Thank you for stopping by. Follow me if you find my posts interesting. If you know of anyone who might appreciate them, do recommend the blog to them.
Please refer to the right hand side of the page for related Spiritual topics.

You might also like to have a look at my other blog - This Wonder-ful Life

Cheers!

The Bible

To be fair, I haven’t read the entire bible. I have read a few pages of it in my younger days. It was enough for me to believe it was all a sham.

How many people read the entire Bible? And can one seriously believe in the Bible after having read it thoroughly? I think anyone with a brain would, having read the bible, cast the book aside and never believe a word it said.

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You are, of course, free to interpret the Bible differently – though isn't it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith failed? - Sam Harris

It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. - Thomas Paine

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. - George Bernard Shaw

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived. - Isaac Asimov

The inspiration of the Bible depends upon the ignorance of the gentleman who reads it. - Robert Ingersoll

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Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

Thank you for stopping by. Follow me if you find my posts interesting. If you know of anyone who might appreciate them, do recommend the blog to them.
Please refer to the right hand side of the page for related Spiritual topics.

You might also like to have a look at my other blog - This Wonder-ful Life

Cheers!

Spirituality

The Spiritual journey is a personal thing. Teachers may open doors, or point the way, but you have to go on the journey on your own. If you are lucky, you may find fellow travellers along the way. But, ultimately, you are on your own.

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Life is not a prison and spirituality need not be an attempt to escape from life. - Unknown

Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness. - Eckhart Tolle

Awakening is not to know what this reality is. Awakening is to know what reality is not. It is to cease identifying oneself with any object of knowledge whatsoever. - Alan Watts

Your work is not to drag the world kicking and screaming into a new awareness. Your job is to simply do your work… sacredly, secretly, and silently... and those with ‘eyes to see and ears to hear’, will respond. - The Ardurians

As a progressive and evolving being, man is where he is that he may learn that he may grow; and as he learns the spiritual lesson which any circumstance contains for him, it passes away and gives place to other circumstances. - James Allen

*********************************************

Wishing you a pleasant experience on your spiritual journey.

Namaste 🙏

Thank you for stopping by. Follow me if you find my posts interesting. If you know of anyone who might appreciate them, do recommend the blog to them.
Please refer to the right hand side of the page for related Spiritual topics.

You might also like to have a look at my other blog - This Wonder-ful Life

Cheers!