ONE RIVER, MANY WELLS: WISDOM SPRINGING FROM WORLD FAITHS
Matthew Fox
In this book I try to go to the core of human religious traditions as we know them to find the spirituality that is there. It is clear that once we return to the depth or core of religion we find much more than dogmas, concepts, institutions, commands. We find a striving for experience of the Divine, however that be spoken of, we find both form and formlessness, male and female, experience and practice. We also find that in their core and depth we do not encounter many different religions so much as one experience that is expressed variously and with great diversity and color flowing in the name of different traditions and cultures.
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"When we look into our own hearts and begin to discover what is confused and what is brilliant, what is bitter and what is sweet, it isn't just ourselves that we're discovering. We're discovering the universe. When we discover the Buddha that we are, we realize that everything and everyone is Buddha." Pema Chodron
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"Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg delivered an address in 1970 on 'The Meaning of Beauty in the Exact Sciences." In that talk he called mathematics 'the archetype of the beauty of the world', and he invoked the philosopher Plotinus, who said 'Beauty is the translucence, through the material phenomena, of the eternal splendor of the 'One'.'"
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"The Shahadah is the Islamic prayer of unity: 'La illaha illa Ilah hu' (Nothing exists save God). It is like the Jewish prayer: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is One.'"
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"Your existence, my dear, O love my dear, has been sealed and marked 'too sacred', 'too sacred', by the Beloved – to ever end! Indeed, God has written a thousand promises all over your heart that say, Life, life, life is far too sacred to ever end." Hafiz, 'God's Bucket'
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"Mechtild of Magdeburg said: 'God is not only fatherly. God is also mother who lifts her loved child from the ground to her knee.'"
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"There is something in the spirit of man that knows that the dualism, however apparently binding, runs out, exhausts itself, and leaves a core of assurance that the ultimate destiny of man is good." Howard Thurman
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"The glory of humanity is to be a brilliant mirror or image of Divinity."
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"Indeed, every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of divinity."
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"Today we are told that atoms are not impenetrable – they are more like bubbles than like billiard balls and their linking up is what forms molecules, whose linking up forms cells, whose linking up forms organisms, whose linking up forms communities. Behold! Now we have a basis in physics once again to honor community."
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"God is breath. All that breathes resides in the Only Being." New Testament, John 4:24, Aramaic translation
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"The earth is sacred. Therefore the actions of the earth are sacred. All things are interconnected."
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"The African universe is conceived as a unified spiritual totality….all being within it is organically interrelated and interdependent." Dona Richards, African-American philosopher
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"Ramakrishna teaches about the Divine Mother when he says: 'Whatever we see or think about is the manifestation of the Mother, of the Primordial Energy, the Primal Consciousness.'"
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"Self-sacrificing and forgiving compassion are the ultimate fulfillment of person-in-community and the ultimate revelation of the character of God." Martin Luther King
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"From the lowliest insect to the most perfect sage, there breathes the same Universal Spirit, which assumes innumerable forms." B. K. S. Iyengar, 'Light on Yoga'
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"God is one, his glory multiplying in many forms." Raimundo Panikkar, 'The Vedic Experience'
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"Creation is the extension of God. Creation is God encountered in time and space. Creation is the infinite in the garb of the finite. To attend to Creation is to attend to God." Ancient Rabbinic teaching
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"The truth is that interdependence exists at the microcosmic and macrocosmic and psychic levels of existence."
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"The Spirit is the supreme abode wherein dwells all that moves and breathes and sees….His radiance illumines all Creation." Mundaka Upanishad
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"There is one underground river – but there are many wells into that river: an African well, a Taoist well, a Buddhist well, a Jewish well, a Muslim well, a Goddess well, a Christian well, and aboriginal wells. Many wells but one river."
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"The Celts all considered themselves children of a Great Mother Goddess."
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"God is a great underground river that no one can dam up and no one can stop." Meister Eckhart
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"Isness is God." Meister Eckhart
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"In the Gospel of John, the Christ says: 'I am the true vine. I am the resurrection. I am the gate. I am the good shepherd. I am the light of the world….I am the bread of life."
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"Joy is our true nature and finding the eternal now is doable. It returns us to our origins of joy."
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