Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART XXXIII
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GoodWill IS Love in Action
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Our excursion yesterday took us down a path driven by the words of a song written by a man who would likely not be seen as a man of faith from his career but WE KNOW that we cannot tell a man’s heart and, except for the fruit of one’s Life, we cannot tell a man at ALL. The Master tells us that “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them” and while the context is in regard to false prophets or false teachers, this saying should be constructed to include ALL men who have ought to say that can influence. The Master gives us other keys to looking at others saying that we should “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” (Luke 6:37); and adding further on that question to us ALL: “Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?” (Luke 12:57) which has little meaning of its own until we see it in relation to His saying from the Gospel of John saying: “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (John 7:24). Having said all of this we come to our point which is that in the infinite range of degrees of Soul contact, there are likely very many who have done as is prescribed and who seek the things of God and His righteousness in some way that is outside of religion and what WE may consider spiritual pursuits but who have some insight into “the wisdom that is from above” (James 3:17); it is in this Wisdom than much can come. We must ever remember that this Wisdom is likely interpreted by the personality, the mind and the emotions, and what a man may believe that he KNOWS, up until such time as he is free from the vanity and the illusion and the glamour of Life in form at which time he will Truly Know. Some who have brought to humanity new and better ideas and who had, in our view, overcome much of the “all I know” attitude which itself is steeped in the illusory nature of the world of things, include men which we have mentioned before like Einstein and Emerson; men who have brought great discoveries in science and philosophy, discoveries that last and which change the lives of many.
I am a patriot and I love my county
Because my country is all I know
I want to be with my family people who understand me
I’ve got nowhere else to go
The words above may not change many lives on their own but in our context and in our promotion they can have the effect that we intended to show in our essay yesterday and that is that it is what we KNOW that frames our daily lives. This may seem anticlimactic when said this way but when we understand that it is the cause of how a man in form may act and when we can grasp the concept and understand and change it, we have done much to help our realization of the Truths of Life in form as we discussed in the last post. We as men in form can be a product of where we are born insofar as nation and religion and sex and race and conduct ourselves as we have been shown or, we can break out of the mold that forms us and we can be a product of the True Life of the Soul on Earth. This mold that is formed by the illusion and the glamour and the vanity of Life in form itself which, when broken, allows us to stand and claim as the Master did: “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
Understanding then what makes us act as men in form is an important step in understanding our brother as well and when we see that we are all the same, when we can see as the Buddha tells us, “See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do? He who seeks happiness, By hurting those who seek happiness, Will never find happiness. For your brother is like you. He wants to be happy. Never harm him“5, we are well on our way to being FREE. When we are able to see at the same time the reality of the Master’s words which we call the Golden Rule saying: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31) we take a great step toward FREEDOM. Our overriding point here must be that even for those who do not realize the Soul, the Christ Within, even for those that are irreligious, that there is a reality in this understanding that is that most ALL men go through Life acting upon “all I know“. In the realization that ALL men are doing likewise there can and should be a greater and mutual understanding, and when a man can come to understand that he is not merely this form that comes and goes on this Earth with the attitude of “let us eat and drink ; for to morrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32), the entire race can make real progress.
Reincarnation has been long taught in the East as a part of the Hindu, the Buddhist and other religions but the teaching is warped for the many by the same fate that befalls ALL True religion and this is interpreted doctrine. Doctrines regarding this great undertaking of unknown mechanisms take on the same nature as the Christian doctrines of heaven and hell; they are steeped in lore and the product of misinformation and superstition. In the realm of reincarnation these doctrines result in beliefs like the transmigration of Souls into the lower kingdoms and there is no reality in this doctrine that is still taught today, a doctrine that fails to consider the divinity of the individual Soul that IS man. When we can look at Life KNOWING that one is a Spirit that is using this body and personality for some purpose we will have come far. We can then begin to see that through the use of form the Spirit does, as the Soul, progress in his ability to bring forth through the form the Love and the Power that IS the Soul and that in each successive incarnation this ability is furthered from the perspective of the ability to control the form Life and the very nature of the psychic and physical forms that one can build and use. If we can but see the objective of Life in form itself as the progressive evolution that can create on the Earth a race of Souls consciously using form and thereby ‘spiritualizing’ the entirety of this planetary Life we would see men in the form of the apostles and the disciples of the Master 2000 years ago, men whose way was Love and who expressed this Love and spiritual Power for the benefit of ALL. It is in this vision that we should see that we are ALL the SAME in essence; divine beings working out our required objective of overcoming the world through the expression of the Love and the Power of the Soul. And, in this vision there IS GoodWill, and brotherhood, harmony and Peace.
As a part of this understanding is it is good to understand the reality of Life in form as we experience it as well, and this has been our subject over the last several months as we have seen it from the perspective of the words that we discovered in the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans regarding the vanity into which we are subjected as a race from the beginning. We have explored and tried to explain this in a comprehensible way so that we can understand that this is the way of Life in form and a part of the Great and Awesome Plan of God. Paul tells us that this is and has been the way and he tells us of our destiny as well and most ALL of the words of the Master and of His apostles are directed at telling us how we might gain that destiny. For clarity we again post the apostles words: “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). Here is our plight and the promise of our redemption as the destiny of man is found in Paul’s simple saying that we “shall be delivered “. From a different perspective these words from the Buddha that we have been using as our Quote of the Day tell us this same thing by way of instruction on how to live. We must remember that the Buddha is speaking to disciples much in the same way that the Master does much of the time and this precludes some degree of understanding. The Buddha says:
Do not live in the world, In distraction and false dreams. Outside the dharma. Arise and watch. Follow the way joyfully through this world and beyond. Follow the way of virtue. Follow the way joyfully Through this world and on beyond! For consider the world – A bubble, a mirage. See the world as it is, And death shall overlook you. Come, consider the world, A painted chariot for kings, A trap for fools. But he who sees goes free. As the moon slips from behind a cloud And shines, So the master comes out from behind his ignorance And shines. The world is in darkness. How few have eyes to see! How few the birds who escape the net and fly to heaven!5
We cover these sayings by the Buddha in some detail in In the Words of Jesus parts 273- 275 and we will not be looking today in this same depth; we will be looking at them from a slightly different perspective as we have covered much since we last discussed these ideas. The message here from the Buddha is the same as the message of the Christ albeit from a different perspective and this is the same message that we try to consistently deliver. Can we see from the context that the distraction and false dreams are but the illusion and the glamour of which we speak and the mammon of which the Master speaks. From the Master’s perspective, while He does not use the word mammon frequently, He does refer to it often and by example we should look at His teachings on treasure and on those things for which we are to “take no thought“. Our understanding should be that ALL these things of the world are the distraction and the desire or perceived need for them are false dreams and these same are also illusion and glamour from these same perspectives.
The next words here are very significant in some of the religions of the East; the dharma can be seen as a combination of the law and of one’s duty. Dharma is the righteousness of Christianity and can be seen as the Will of the Father when looked at from the perspective seen in the Master’s words saying: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). The Buddha then is saying that to live in the world encompassed by illusion and glamour, one is not living in righteousness and according to the Will of the Father. The command to Arise and watch can be seen in the same Light as we use the idea of focus and, much like we said in the last essay, this idea of focus is the intent of many of the Master’s words and sayings. To Arise and watch is to be attentive and to be attentive is to focus and hence we have this same idea from the Buddha.
We should readily understand the idea of follow the way for this is what ALL spiritual writings are about; we can call it the Path or we can see in this the strait gate but no matter how we envision it, it is the way of righteousness as we can see in the repetition of these words by the Buddha next tied to the idea of virtue. We should note here the idea of the afterlife as the beyond and this is of course an open ended term. Some believe that the Buddha does not teach that there is a Soul but careful reading will reveal the Soul in so many things that He says and here is an inkling of that in the idea of through this world and beyond. This beyond is not so much a place as it is a state of being through which is carried one’s following of the way which is much like the Master’s idea of “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21)…..there is no place to go.
The Buddha next tells us to see the world as it really is, as illusion and glamour and the vanity to which we as men are subjected. He calls this A bubble, a mirage and He tells us that we can get past death and be in a place where death shall overlook you. This of course should be seen as it is intended and in the context of the overall theme; from the spiritual point of view being trapped in the illusion and the glamour is a death of sorts for the Soul as it cannot progress so long as the form life is in the clutches of this vanity. Speaking again about the world, the Buddha tells us what it can be to those who are focused upon it, those who do not see; He tells us it is A painted chariot for kings which would seem to say that it is what they want and they like; it is to their pleasure. He tells us also that it is A trap for fools and this is likely meant to be the plight of the average man who believes what he see and he hears. The end of this for our essay today is in the reality that we understand from our many essays and this is that he who sees goes free; he who realizes the Presence of his own Soul, the Christ Within is the one who Truly sees and is Truly FREE.
The closing line in these verses from the Dhammapada, How few the birds who escape the net and fly to heaven! is a verse that we have discussed many times in conjunction with the Master’s words “strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14).
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
Note on the Quote of the Day
This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.
As we found ourselves devoting much of this essay to the teachings of the Buddha we will leave with this one as the Quote of the Day, it is about being awake.
Wakefulness is the way to life. The fool sleeps As if he were already dead, But the master is awake And he lives forever. He watches. He is clear. How happy he is! For he sees that wakefulness is life. How happy he is, Following the path of the awakened. With great perseverance He meditates, seeking Freedom and happiness. So awake, reflect, watch. Work with care and attention. Live in the way And the light will grow in you. By watching and working The master makes for himself an island Which the flood cannot overwhelm. The fool is careless. But the master guards his watching. It is his most precious treasure. He never gives in to desire. He meditates. And in the strength of his resolve He discovers true happiness. He overcomes desire – And from the tower of his wisdom He looks down with dispassion Upon the sorrowing crowd. From the mountain top He looks down at those Who live close to the ground. Mindful among the mindless, Awake while others dream, Swift as the race horse He outstrips the field. By watching Indra became king of the gods. How wonderful it is to watch. How foolish to sleep. The beggar who guards his mind And fears the waywardness of his thoughts Burns through every bond With the fire of his vigilance. The beggar who guards his mind And fears his own confusion Cannot fall. He has found his way to peace.
Repeating our comments from a previous post: This is another selection from the Dhammapada, the sayings of the Buddha, from the chapter called Wakefulness. The ideas here are simple for the awakened but for the unawakened they can be very difficult. This is much like the sayings of the Christ, especially the last one that we discussed from John’s Gospel. Wakefulness here can be likened to our idea of focus on the Christ Within, the Soul, the spiritual Life. Sleep is just the opposite and can be likened to focus upon the things of the world. To be awake is to see things as they Truly are and to be asleep is to see things in the illusion and the glamour of the world. Wakefulness makes a man the master of his own Life while sleep makes one the fool. Wakefulness is striving to enter at the strait gate while being asleep is to float aimlessly on the waves of the ways of the world where one may think that he is getting somewhere only to realize in the end that he has gone nowhere, accomplished nothing.
- 5 The Dhammapada Translated by Thomas Byrom
