Jiddhu Krishnamurti - There is a quietness
Rated • 30 reviews • spirituality • etresoi.ch
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bluetree/spirituality
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bluetree is a person from Ankara, Turkey
a simple person from Turkey, a Muslim, a lover of compassion, friendship, love, modesty, honesty, sincerity, justice, tolerance, peace, wisdom, sweet hearts, beautiful faces, humanity, kids, animals, nature, books, travel and poetry.
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reflectioncafe.net: On Happiness and Serenity
Rated • 2 reviews • philosophy, spirituality, serenity, books, happiness • blogspot.com
From the interview...
Your book revolves around the concepts and actions of soulfulness and spirituality. Could you explain what you mean by being a soulful and a spiritual person?
The soulful person is one who is patient, generous, forgives mistakes of others, accepts his loved ones as they are, who protects their privacy and solitude, values their interests, celebrates their peculiarities, and seeks no perfection in others. The soulful person is committed to this work energetically and enthusiastically. The ones who harness themselves to their work are like an "ox to a heavy cart;" they burn like a good bonfire, not like a "smoky fire." The soulful person goes down uncharted roads in order to grow full and strong. The spiritual person "kneels at the feet of all creatures," values everything but holds them loosely. He seeks simplicity and the wisdom of ordinariness. The spiritual individual gratefully wants what he already has and smiles with a sacred optimism. The spiritual person believes that we all share a common well, a divine womb. In a state of feeling oneness with the universe, he doesn't capture things but beholds the world as one might look at stars. His or her love is a love with no object. It is just love. By such love, passion is transformed to compassion, with joyful recognition that no seed ever sees its flower. The spiritual person believes in continuity, that we are finite in our presently expressed form, eternal in all other potential forms, that humans, animals, and vegetation all are one product, that eternity is living everywhere and everything.
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http://www.theinterviewwithgod.com/viewmovie.html
Rated • 3 reviews • spirituality • theinterviewwithgod.com
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http://reflectioncafe.blogspot.com/2006/09/islam-and-peac...
Rated • 0 reviews • islam, spirituality, sufism • blogspot.com
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Mystical Traditions - Center for Sacred Sciences
Rated • 39 reviews • religion, spirituality • centerforsacredsciences.org
The Mystical Core of the Great Traditions
Six great religions have shaped the major civilizations that exist today: the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and the three Eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism/Confucianism). These religions seem to be quite at odds with each other when we look at their outer, or exoteric, forms. Not only do they have different rites, rituals, prayers and precepts, but in many cases their most fundamental doctrines about the nature of Reality appear to contradict each other. For example, Judaism's "Thou shalt have no other gods but Me" seems to stand in direct opposition to Hinduism's exuberant worship of three million gods. Christianity's Triune Deity contrasts sharply with Taoism's amorphous Way, while Islam's central tenet, "There are no gods but God," appears completely antithetical to Buddhism's insistence that there is no God at all.
If we dig more deeply, however, we find within each of these religious traditions an inner, or esoteric, stream of teachings given by their mystics--those men and women who claim to have had a direct Realization, or Gnosis, of the Ultimate Nature of Reality. Moreover, if we compare the testimonies of these mystics about the Nature of this Reality, we find that, despite vast separations in time, place, language, and culture, they are strikingly similar--so much so that many scholars have come to view their teachings as constituting a single perennial philosophy which, like some irrepressible flower, keeps blooming again and again in the human psyche.
One of the primary goals of the Center for Sacred Sciences is to preserve and promote the teachings of these mystics and to show exactly what it is they have in common. Here, for example, are nine points agreed upon by mystics of all the great traditions, together with a sampling of quotes which demonstrate this agreement.
1. All mystics agree that Ultimate Reality--whether It is called Allah, Brahman, Buddha-nature, En-sof, God, or the Tao--cannot be grasped by thought or expressed in words. (In fact, the word mystic is related to the word mute, both of which derive from the Greek root mustes, meaning "close-mouthed.")
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continues at:
centerforsacredsciences.org/traditions.html [centerforsacredsciences.org/traditions.html]
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perry2801s blog - StumbleUpon
Rated • 229 reviews • religion, spirituality • stumbleupon.com
a very nice way of comparing major faiths...
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Poetry Chaikhana - Teahouse: Tea Info and Tea as...
Reviewed • 3 reviews • tea, poetry, spirituality • poetry-chaikhana.com
the website has also nice links on tea...
What is a Chaikhana?
A chaikhana is a teahouse along the legendary Silk Road pilgrimage and trading route linking China to the Middle East and Europe. It is a place of rest along the journey, a place to shake off the dust of the road, to sip tea, and to gather together to sing songs of the Divine...
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Pluralism Project - Mission
Rated • 1 review • philosophy, spirituality, religion, ideas • pluralism.org
Our mission is to help Americans engage with the realities of religious diversity through research, outreach, and the active dissemination of resources.
In the past thirty years the religious landscape of the United States has changed radically. There are Islamic centers and mosques, Hindu and Buddhist temples and meditation centers in virtually every major American city. The encounter between people of very different religious traditions takes place in the proximity of our own cities and neighborhoods. The results of the 2000 census underscore the tremendous scope of ethnic change in our society, but tell us little about its religious dimensions or its religious significance.
Pluralism has long been a generative strand of American ideology. Mere diversity or plurality alone, however, does not constitute pluralism. There is lively debate over the implications of our multicultural and multireligious society in civic, religious, and educational institutions. How we appropriate plurality to shape a positive pluralism is one of the most important questions American society faces in the years ahead. It will require all of us to know much more about the new religious landscape of America than we presently know.
The Pluralism Project: World Religions in America is a decade-long research project, with current funding from the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, to engage students in studying the new religious diversity in the United States. We will explore particularly the communities and religious traditions of Asia and the Middle East that have become woven into the religious fabric of the United States in the past twenty-five years. The overall aims of the Pluralism Project are:
1. To document and better understand the changing contours of American religious demography, focusing especially on those cities and towns where the new plurality has been most evident and discerning the ways in which this plurality is both visible and invisible in American public life.
2. To study the religious communities themselves their temples, mosques, gurudwaras and retreat centers, their informal networks and emerging institutions, their forms of adaptation and religious education in the American context, their encounter with the other religious traditions of our common society, and their encounter with civic institutions.
3. To explore the ramifications and implications of America's new plurality through case studies of particular cities and towns, looking at the response of Christian and Jewish communities to their new neighbors; the development of interfaith councils and networks; the new theological and pastoral questions that emerge from the pluralistic context; and the recasting of traditional church-state issues in a wider context.
4. To discern, in light of this work, the emerging meanings of religious "pluralism," both for religious communities and for public institutions, and to consider the real challenges and opportunities of a public commitment to pluralism in the light of the new religious contours of America.
Committee on the Study of Religion - Harvard University
pluralism.org [pluralism.org]
pluralism.org/resources/links/index.php [pluralism.org/resources/links/index.php]
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Ode to Monet on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Rated • 3 reviews • islam, photography, spirituality, sufism, women • flickr.com
WOMEN & SUFISM
Camille Adams Helminski
Gnosis # 30 (Winter 1994)
Part I
Since the beginning of consciousness, human beings, both female and male, have walked the path of reunion with the Source of Being. Though in this world of duality we may find ourselves in different forms, ultimately there is no male or female, only Being. Within the Sufi traditions, the recognition of this truth has encouraged the spiritual maturation of women in a way that has not always been possible in the West.
From the earliest days onward, women have played an important role in the development of Sufism, which is classically understood to have begun with the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad brought a message of integration of spirit and matter, of essence and everyday life, of recognition of the feminine as well as the masculine. Though cultural manifestations have covered over some of the original purity of intention, the words of the Qur'an convey the equality of women and men before the eyes of God. At a time when the goddess-worshiping Arabian tribes were still quite barbaric, even burying infant girls alive in favor of male offspring, this new voice of the Abrahamic tradition attempted to reestablish the recognition of the Unity of Being. It tried to address the imbalances that had arisen, advising respect and honor for the feminine as well as for the graciousness and harmony of nature.
In the early years of this new revelation, Muhammad's beloved wife, Khadija, filled a role of great importance. It was she who sustained, strengthened, and supported him against his own doubt and bewilderment. She stood beside him in the midst of extreme difficulty and anguish and helped carry the light of the new faith. It was to Muhammad's and Khadija's daughter, Fatimah, to whom the deeper mystical understanding of Islam was first conveyed, and indeed she is often recognized as the first Muslim mystic. Her marriage with Ali bound this new manifestation of mysticism into this world, and the seeds of their union began to blossom.
As the mystical side of Islam developed, it was a woman, Rabi'a al-Adawiyya (717-801 A.D.), who first expressed the relationship with the divine in a language we have come to recognize as specifically Sufic by referring to God as the Beloved. Rabi'a was the first human being to speak of the realities of Sufism with a language that anyone could understand. Though she experienced many difficulties in her early years, Rabi'a's starting point was neither a fear of hell nor a desire for paradise, but only love. "God is God," she said, "for this I love God... not because of any gifts, but for Itself." Her aim was to melt her being in God. According to her, one could find God by turning within oneself. As Muhammad said, "He who knows himself knows his Lord." Ultimately it is through love that we are brought into the unity of Being.
Throughout the centuries, women as well as men have continued to carry the light of this love. For many reasons, women have often been less visible and less outspoken than men, but nevertheless they have been active participants. Within some Sufi circles, women were integrated with men in ceremonies; in other orders, women gathered in their own circles of remembrance and worshiped apart from men. Some women devoted themselves to Spirit ascetically, apart from society, as Rabi'a did; others chose the role of benefactress and fostered circles of worship and study. Many of the great masters with whom we in the West are familiar had female teachers, students, and spiritual friends who greatly influenced their thought and being. And wives and mothers gave support to their family members while continuing their own journey towards union with the Beloved.
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click here for the full-text...
altreligion.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm [altreligion.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm]
