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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"Your own Mind shines forth, unobscured, for all living beings. Your own Mind is originally pure and clear as the sky. Your original wisdom is as continuous and unstoppable as the current of a mighty river. To know whether or not this is true, look inside your own Mind." Pahmasambhava, Buddhist writer
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"Everything teems with richness, everything aspires to ascend and be purified. Everything sings, celebrates, serves, develops, evolves, uplifts, aspires to be arranged in oneness." The Kabbalah
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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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"The earth is sacred. Therefore the actions of the earth are sacred. All things are interconnected."
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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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"My neighbor and I have the same origins; we have the same life-experience and a common destiny; we are the obverse and reverse sides of one entity; we are unchanging equals; we are the faces which see themselves in each other." The Zulu Personal Declaration of 1825
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"There is a fundamental structure of interrelatedness and interdependability inherent in all living things, at microscopic levels of existence and in human society….The origin and goal of community, therefore, is the Mind of God, which is coming to Itself in time." Walter E. Fluker
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| 8 |
"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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"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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"All men of wisdom have one religion; they all have one caste; they all behold the face of the One!" Dadu, 16th century Indian saint-poet
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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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"The glory of humanity is to be a brilliant mirror or image of Divinity."
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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 truth is that interdependence exists at the microcosmic and macrocosmic and psychic levels of existence."
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"From this beautiful One beauty comes to be in all beings." Thomas Aquinas
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"All Creation is on fire with sacredness; the Buddha nature and the Cosmic Christ and the image of God reside in the very light (photons) present in every atom in the universe."
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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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"Joy is our true nature and finding the eternal now is doable. It returns us to our origins of joy."
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"The Celts all considered themselves children of a Great Mother Goddess."
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"Muhammad said: 'All people are equal, as equal as the teeth of a comb.'"
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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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"The Spirit who is in the body does not grow old and does not die, and no one can ever kill the Spirit who is everlasting. This is the real castle of Brahman wherein dwells all the love of the universe. It is Atman, pure Spirit, beyond sorrow, old age, and death." The Upanishads
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"Our imaginations are holy, the Holy Spirit works through us when we create and participate in the ongoing Creation of self, society, universe, and mind."
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"The Divinity we image is a light-filled, light-making, enlightening, warm, radiant, glorious face."
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"Beautiful you rise, O eternal living god! You are radiant, lovely, powerful. Your love is great, all-encompassing." Egyptian hymn, ca. 1550 bce
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