Love Serve Meditate Realize

Monday, Apr 26, 2010 This week’s Food for Thought – April 26, 2010

TRUST

Don’t waste your life for that which is going to be taken away.  Trust life.  If you trust, only then can you drop your knowledge, only then can you put your mind aside.  And with trust, something immense opens up. Then this life is no longer ordinary life, it becomes full of God, overflowing.  When the heart is innocent and the walls have disappeared, you are bridged with infinity.  And you are not deceived;  there is nothing that can be taken away from you.  That which can be taken away from you is not worth keeping, and that which cannot be taken away from you, why should one be afraid of its being taken away? – It cannot be taken away, there is no possibility.  You cannot lose your real treasure. —Osho


Monday, Apr 19, 2010 This week’s Food for Thought – April 19, 2010

THE ETHIC OF RESTRAINT

—His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ethics For The New Millennium

If we retain our peace of mind and thereby our happiness, it follows that, alongside a more rational and disinterested approach to our negative thoughts and emotions, we must cultivate a strong habit of restraint in response to them.  Negative thoughts and emotions are what cause us to act unethically.

Furthermore, because afflictive emotion is also the source of our own internal suffering—in that it is the basis of frustration, confusion, insecurity, anxiety, and the very loss of self-respect which undermines our sense of confidence—failure to do so means that we will remain in a state of perpetual mental and emotional discomfort.  Inner peace will be impossible.  In place of happiness there will be insecurity.  Anxiety and depression will never be far away.


At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. — Albert Schweitzer



Monday, Apr 12, 2010 This week’s Food for Thought – April 12, 2010

Do not believe a thing simply because it has been said.

Do not put your faith in traditions only because

They have been honored by many generations.

Do not believe a thing because the general opinion believes

It to be true or because it has been said repeatedly.

Do not believe a thing because of the single witness

Of one of the sages of antiquity.

Do not believe a thing because the probabilities are in its favor,

Or because you are in the habit of believing it to be true.

Do not believe in that which comes to your imagination,

Thinking that it must be the revelation of a superior Being.

Believe nothing that binds you to the sole

Authority of your masters or priests.

That which you have tried yourself, which you have experienced,

Which you have recognized as true,

And which will be beneficial to you and to others;

Believe that, and shape your conduct to it.

—Buddha


Monday, Apr 05, 2010 This week’s Food for Thought – April 5, 2010

The world as a whole has forgotten the real meaning of the word love.  Love has been so abused and crucified by man that very few people know what true love is.  Just as oil is present in every part of the olive, so love permeates every part of creation.  But to define love is very difficult, for the same reason that words cannot fully describe the flavor of an orange.  You have to taste the fruit to know its flavor.  So with love.  All of you have tasted love in some form in your hearts; therefore, you know a little about what it is.  But you have not understood how to develop love, how to purify and expand it into divine love.  A spark of this divine love exists in most hearts in the beginning of life, but is usually lost, because man does not know how to cultivate it.

Many people wouldn’t think it even necessary to analyze what love is.  They recognize love as the feeling they have for their relatives, friends, and others to whom they are strongly attracted.  But there is much more to it than that.  The only way I can describe real love to you is to tell you its effect.  If you could feel even a particle of divine love, so great would be your joy—so overpowering—you could not contain it.

Think deeply about what I am telling you.  The satisfaction of love is not in the feeling itself, but in the joy that feeling brings. Love gives joy.  We love love because it gives us such intoxicating happiness.  So love is not the ultimate; the ultimate is bliss.  God is Sat-Chit-Ananda, ever-lasting, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss.  We, as souls, are individualized Sat-Chit-Ananda.  “From Joy we have come, in Joy we live and have our being, and in that sacred Joy we will one day melt.” (Taittitya Upanishad 3-6-1)  All the divine emotions—love, compassion, courage, self-sacrifice, humility—would be meaningless without joy.  Joy means exhilaration, an expression of ultimate Bliss.

Man’s experience of joy originates in the brain, in the subtle center of God consciousness that the yogis call sahasrara, or thousand-petaled lotus.  Yet the actual feeling of joy is experienced not in the head, but in the heart.  From the divine seat of God-consciousness in the brain, joy descends into the heart center and manifests there.  That joy comes from God’s bliss—the essential and ultimate attribute of Spirit.

Paramahansa Yogananda, The Divine Romance, October 10, 1943


EARTH DAY 40TH ANNIVERSARY
SUPPORT YOUR MOTHER APRIL 22,2010


Today I am a mighty oak
We are a breath of fresh air
I am clear blue sky
We are a green valley
I am healthy food
We are clear water
I am a river
We are an endangered species
This is your day
This is your way
To honor the Earth
I am Earth Day

DO SOMETHING FOR ALL OF US.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE NOW…FOR LATER

LOVE OUR MOTHER April 22,2010