“A boat may stay in water, but water should not stay in the boat. A [person] may live in the world but the world should not live in [her].
-Sri Ramakrishna, Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna. Kolkata: Advainta Ashrama, Paragraph 415.
Watch your boat and bail out the water.
“Nowadays the market for religion is in flux, perhaps more than ever. On the demand side, churches in the Western world are suffering from the global secularisation that began long before the pandemic. Even in America, the most patent example of a rich country that has thrived alongside religion (some say because of it), the share of citizens identifying as Christian has been dropping, from 82% in 2000 to less than 75% in 2020 (see chart 1). According to the latest poll by the World Values Survey, a global network whose secretariat is in Austria, about 30% of Americans say they attend a religious service at least once a week. That is a lot compared with other rich countries. But the figure has fallen steadily from 45% at the turn of the millennium.”
-“The world’s religions face a post-pandemic reckoning.” The Economist. January 8, 2022.
If you can’t find a way to be relevant during a pandemic, perhaps you aren’t relevant?
“Generally, we tend to prepare too much. We say, ‘Once I make a lot of money, then I will go somewhere to study and meditate and become a priest,” or whatever it is we would like to become. But we never do it on the spot. We always speak in terms of, ‘Once I do something, then …” We always plan too much. We want to change our lives rather than use our lives, the present moment as part of the practice, and this hesitation on our part creates a lot of setbacks in our spiritual practice. Most of us have romantic ideas–‘I’m bad now but one day, when I change, I’ll be good.”
-Chogyam Trungpa, “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.” Boston, MA: Shambala Publications, 1987. Pg. 237.
“Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. We are committed to learning and practicing non-attachment to views and being open to others’ experiences and insights in order to benefit from the collective wisdom. We are aware that the knowledge we presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth. Insight is revealed through the practice of compassionate listening, deep looking, and letting go of notions rather than through the accumulation of intellectual knowledge. Truth is found in life, and we will observe life within and around us in every moment, ready to learn throughout our lives.”
-Order of Interbeing, “Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings.” orderofinterbeing.org. April 22, 2012.
Worth reading the entire list on a regular basis.
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