Drugs, DNA, death or delusion (see yesterday's post), the pursuit of pleasure, the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of self-realisation and enlightenment have zigzagged between thousands of points of view for thousands of years. What is enlightenment? What does it mean to be spiritually awakened? What is the spiritual quest all about?
Here are two views – of the same Reality – which have deluded me:
VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE
The universe, physical and metaphysical, is all one Reality. Therefore, there can be only one Truth; one wisdom.
The purpose of human life is the discovery of Truth. Contemplation of Truth is the end.
The practice of love and non-attachment is the greatest virtue. Virtue is not the end, but the indispensable means to becoming one with the divine Reality.
VIEW OF THE SELF
Man possesses a double nature: a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self.
Man’s life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so acquire knowledge of the divine Reality.
Right action is the way to knowledge. It purifies the mind, and it is only to a mind purified from the ego that the intuition of the divine Reality can come.
If man chooses to become what he potentially already is, an eternal Self, he too can be eternally united with the divine Reality.
Man’s spiritual quest begins with the ego and ends in wisdom.
[I’m not 100% sure if these are the teachings of the Great Masters, or of the great religions of the world, but they seem to have cropped up in various discussions over the years.]
30 May 2005
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1 comment:
Hmm..but the buddhist view of reality is much simpler..it says no eternal life, no heaven hell, nothing. Just cause and effect, cause and effect. When you die, thats all there is.
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