All Considering

God’s hat – a theology joke

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:43:05 +0000

There were two tribes dwelling near each other. God decided to walk between them. But God wore a two colored hat. One side was red; the other side was blue. So when the two tribes discussed this visit by God, they ended up in argument. “God wore a blue hat. No! God wore a red hat.” To make matters worse, on the walk back, God rotated the hat, so that the blue side would always be facing one tribe and the red side would always face the second tribe. So that each tribe was sure that they had seen both sides of God’s hat.

Chocolate Frosting and Garbage, Thubten Chodron Buddhist quote

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:41:55 +0000

Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy: Spirituality in Daily Life, Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron

A kind heart is one of the principal things we are trying to develop. If we run around childishly telling others, “I’m this religion, and you’re that religion. But, mine is better,” it is like turning chocolate frosting into garbage: what was delicious becomes useless. Instead, we would be much wiser to look inside ourselves and apply the antidotes to intolerance, pride, and attachment. The true criterion of whether we are a religious or spiritual person is whether we have a kind heart toward others and a wise approach to life. These qualities are internal and cannot be seen with our eyes. They are gained by honestly looking at our own thoughts, words and actions, discriminating which ones to encourage and which ones to abandon, and then engaging in the practices to develop compassion and wisdom in order to transform ourselves. Invisible cities, mirages, dreams.

Random posts

A change in blog policy

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:44:19 +0000

To make things a bit easier for me to manage, I’ve set my newsletter Lucifer7 to combine the posts in my various online blogs. But I had planned ahead quite a lot of material to be posted on that newsletter. Most of this will be posted on either All Considering or My Spiritual Quotes. This will mean that on All Considering the percentage of material by me will go down: quotes by others will take a larger place. I hope you all won’t mind.

God and the Absolute, theosophy quote

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:37:03 +0000

W.Q. Judge quote, The Theosophical Forum of New York, December 1892, p. 3)

“Theosophy holds God to be One and eternal, – Absoluteness itself. The Bible says that man was made in the image of God. Man we understand to be composed of seven principles, – a union of the three higher, the immortal principles with the four lower, those which disintegrate and go back to the dust. Are not all these principles, or parts, which are found in man, found also in God? I ask because some teach “Nothing is but Spirit.” Matter seems to me to be one aspect of Spirit. It comes from something and goes back to its place, and there is no place outside of God.

I have not the hardihood, as the Editor has, to affirm in one breath that we must not speculate on the Infinite, and in the next to give attributes to the Infinite, such as immanency in all things, separability from us, and the like, and, taking his advice to confine ourselves to common-sense and what we can know, I waive the discussion on the question of the Absolute or an infinite God. It is hopeless. The quotation in the question proceeds in use therein upon the assumption of a God who can be understood and described either directly or by analogy or contrast. This is wholly beyond me. But I am quite willing to repeat that the Teachers whom I follow say that the Absolute exists and cannot be discovered nor known; that at the dawning of what is commonly called creation and evolution Spirit and Matter appear in space. This I accept, for it fits in with the logic of the rest of the doctrine. They call this the first differentiation. The assertion – made chiefly by the schools of mind-cure – assumes that spirit only is, but cannot explain nor justify the assumption, which is only, indeed, for the purpose of founding other assertions regarding mere bodily ills of no great consequence except to the weak or those devoted to material enjoyments. It is further taught and seemingly with reason that, in all, seven cosmic differentiations take place, and from these the sevenfold constitution of man is derived. His gross body stands for the whole of gross matter, his astral body for another differentiation, his passions for the energy of the heterogeneous cosmos, his life copies another of the seven, and so on until all are complete. But if you postulate a God, you must put man either in him or outside; and if the latter then your God is not infinite, but has in his universe something that is not himself – for the Infinite must be all. It is much safer to construe these Bible verses in the old Theosophical way, which would in the present instance show that man is made in the image of his God, who is his Higher Self. If the other position is adopted, that of postulating a God and giving him any attributes whatever, then your mind can have no possibility of reaching a conclusion save by the arguments and distinctions made by the schoolmen of Europe and the disputing theologians of India, -and that conclusion may temporarily, say for one life, satisfy you, but it will remain false. It belongs to the great number of the illusions of matter which are ever deluding the mind of man.”

Newsletter update & New spiritual stuff on squidoo and Katinka Hesselink Net

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:29:23 +0000

For my newsletter readers:

It turns out that the way I’ve been sending out this newsletter over the past 7 (!) years is becoming too labor intensive. It no longer fits the way I do my online work. I’ve found a new way to organize this – and don’t worry: I’ll make sure you all get included in any new way that I’ll be making my newsletter. But it is the reason that the June issue of Lucifer7 never reached you all, despite having gone online. If you got this mail, you already said you wanted to receive my newsletter the new way (or you’re an All Considering subscriber by mail).

Another issue: apparently someone got into this yahoo account and sent you all some spam. I’ve done what I could to make sure that person doesn’t get in again, but yahoo doesn’t make it easy to report something of this nature. That was the final straw for me to switch to Mailchimp for my monthly newsletter. The format will change, but not the content.

New on Katinka Hesselink Net

The Dalai Lama’s life changed by the Theosophical Society (with thanks to Theosophy Forward)
Talbot Mundy pages saved from the internet archives. Previously put online by Scott Lincoln “Omar” Davis
Taijasa Awareness Meditation, Pablo Sender

New on Squidoo

June 8th 2010: Shamanism and visions

Out of this World: Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein: Real science is always hard to summarize. This book by Ioan Couliano is a book like that. I read the whole thing, but to be honest the most fascinating parts were the introduction and the conclusion. The rest helped flesh it out, but it did get a bit…
Talbot Mundy: Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon) (April 23, 1879 – August 5, 1940) was an English writer. He also wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt. Born in London, at age 16 he ran away from home and began an odyssey in India, Africa, and other pa…
The Wisdom of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Ravi Ravindra: The yoga sutras are two thousand year old spiritual classic. In India every spiritual teacher of any note has written a commentary on it. Ravi Ravindra is the latest of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s students to do the same. For that reason alone this book wil…
Unfinished Autobiography by Alice A. Bailey: I’m not really into Alice Bailey’s work, nor into that of ‘The Tibetan’, but this autobiography is great. Funny, full of self knowledge and simply fascinating from the point of view of esoteric history. Alice Bailey was born and raised in England in…

Blavatsky about the symbolism of the Christian Cross

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 13:33:06 +0000

One of my Dutch readers wondered after reading my piece about symbols, about the meaning of the Christian Cross according to H.P. Blavatsky. I thought I’d look it up. The closest I could find on the topic was Blavatsky on Crucifixion. She says there that:

The cross itself, to which the whole man was attached, is a well-known phallic emblem, representing the strongest form of human-earth sensuality; and that is a very symbol on which to crucify the man to death.

The horizontal stands for the female, the vertical for the male. It’s phallic and limited at least in part because the circle is missing. The circle puts the whole thing in the context of the Universe, the All, the Divine etc. This is why many theosophists prefer the Egyptian cross. Without the circle the cross can only stand as a symbol for something in the world, not for the sumtotal.

Blavatsky compares Jesus on the cross to Prometheus, who also was made to hang and suffer. He hung from a rock, not a cross, but the spiritual significance isn’t much different.

He is another victim, for he is crucified on the Cross of Love, on the rock of human passions, a sacrifice to his devotion to the cause of the spiritual element in Humanity.

but…

after the Cross comes the transfiguration

That is: through suffering and spiritual death, new life is possible in spirit. That’s as far as I can go for the individual interpretation, however there’s also a more universal meaning hinted at here. The spiritual is trapped in the physical, through which it learns and suffers. Were it but free! However, we’re meant to be stuck here.

Comment Zen

This is my interpretation of Blavatsky. Don’t mistake it for my opinion on the subject. I don’t know much about the Divine after all. Other interpretations are welcome.

Using spirituality and psychology as a defence

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:30:50 +0000

1) Someone asking me to become a lecturer on an event asked me about karma:

I hear people saying, about someone else, that their ill health or poverty is ‘bad karma’. Tell that to the starving child in Africa.

She was right of course.

2) I heard a longtime Krishnamurti student saying:

Your whole work is a sign of your conditioning.

Which is not the nicest thing to say.

3) Someone I disagreed with gave me a bucket load of psychoanalysis as an explanation for our disagreement. Thankfully we were able, on practical grounds, to resolve our differences.

These three examples have one thing in common: Knowledge is used as a defense. That is: in order to not have to feel compassion for that child in Africa, their trouble is karma. In order to not have to appreciate someone working on totally different lines than her own, the Krishnamurti inspired spiritual teacher puts their whole work down to ‘conditioning’. The third is perhaps the most common today:

Instead of using psychology to fix ourselves, we take the easy way out and use it to put down those we don’t know how to deal with.

All this doesn’t mean, of course, that the knowledge in question is false. It’s just misapplied.

Karma gave us in the West a lot of wealth (though at present on bond). Wealth is responsibility, and when we collectively give to good causes we implicitly recognize that responsibility. Though we’ll pay the price for collectively living on debt. As for that poor child in Africa – perhaps death (and rebirth) is preferable to living with Aids. Perhaps. These are heartbreaking issues. Let’s not use karma as an excuse to avoid feeling them.

Conditioning is a problem we all have to deal with. I think that teacher has perhaps become conditioned to looking at people through ‘Krishnamurti’-glasses. Despite the words, that’s still conditioning. And like that person I got into a disagreement with, she’s started using his words as a defense, instead of applying them to herself. Which of course is far harder.

There’s nothing wrong with either psychology, Jiddu Krishnamurti or the law of karma as such. But there IS something wrong with us when we misapply them.

NDE, Buddha on karma, Zen Buddhism books

Katinka - Spirituality — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:42:26 +0000

New online
Short Quotes
To the Ancients, Earth was a Living Being

New online

All Considering Spiritual Blog

Buddha on Good and Bad Karma (quotes and explanation) (11)

My spiritual quotes

Squidoo

Short Quotes

Buddha, Dhammapada, Translation Juan Mascaro

165 By oneself the evil is done, and it is oneself who suffers: by oneself the evil is not done, and by one’s Self one becomes pure. The pure and the impure come from oneself: no man can purify another.

166 Let no man endanger his duty, the good of his soul, for the good of another, however great. When he has seen the good of his soul, let him follow it with earnestness.

H.P. Blavatsky, Practical Occultism

To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, puts man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs), so that, with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders.

Jeremy Taylor

Know that you are your greatest enemy, but also your greatest friend.

N. Sri Ram, Thoughts For Aspirants, Second Series

Will in the spiritual sense must co-exist with intelligence and love; it is imbued with all the qualities which pertain to the spiritual nature of man.

Paul Brunton, The Secret Path, Chapter X

Man, eager to improve his machines, forgets to improve himself.

To the Ancients, Earth was a Living Being

From “The Avatar” by AE, Found in Canadian Theosophist, Vol. 14, #10

“To the ancients,” he said, “Earth was a living being. We who walk upon it know no more of the magnificence within it than a gnat lighting on the head of Dante might know of the furnace of passion and imagination beneath. Not only was Earth a living being having soul and spirit as well as body, but it was a household wherein were god folk as well as the whole tribe of elemental or fairy lives. The soul of Earth is our lost Eden. This was the Ildathach or Many-coloured Land of our ancestors, and of which Socrates too spoke, saying Earth was not at all what the geographers supposed it to be, and there was a divine earth superior to this with temples where the gods do truly dwell. Our souls put on coats of skin. That is, they were lost in our bodies here, and at last we fell together outside the divine circle and came to live on surfaces, not even dreaming that within the earth is a spirit which towers up within itself from clay and rock to the infinite glory. Only the poets and mystics have still some vision of the lost Eden. The gods are still in the divine household, and the radiance over the palaces of light appear at times to seers like yourself as dragon-crests of flame or rivers of light running out to the stars. It is time for us to be traveling inward, and if there be an Avatar to come, he may show us the way once more as did the Avatars of the past. How do I know all this? The Earth Spirit has been talking to me ever since I came here, telling me the meanings of all I have read and many things which never were written, and it confirmed that dream I told you about, that there would come a day when the immortals once more would walk among us and be visible heroes to us.”

This is the June issue of my spiritual newsletter Lucifer7.

Searching for peace and serenity

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:52:02 +0000

Someone asked:

I have been on a path in life that has brought me to you.
My thoughts at the moment are how does one decide which new path to take.
My search for peace and serenity has not been fulfilled and I could use some direction.
Any help you may give would be appreciated.

I answered: I can’t believe I’m saying this but here it is: stop searching.

I still have a hard time grasping that I wrote that, because I never quite get why people tout the ‘stop searching’ line. But in this case it’s pretty obvious that the searching is not helping this person, but is adding to their unrest. And if you want ‘peace and serenity’ unrest isn’t exactly a good thing.

Buddha on Good and Bad Karma (quotes and explanation)

Katinka - Spirituality — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:10:35 +0000

People find one of my web projects for the term ‘buddha quotes on karma’. Unfortunately we don’t really know what the Buddha said. Lots of ‘Buddha quotes’ pages online share quotes attributed to Buddha rather indiscriminately. What I mean by that is that these online sources take each sutra attributed to the Buddha literally on that. But for Mahayana Sutras there really isn’t much reason to assume that the historical Buddha had anything to do with it.

So, when I made my Buddha quotes on karma page, I decided to limit myself to the Pali Canon. But that brings up another issue: the Pali Canon is really hard to quote from. What I mean is: the language is convoluted and not concentrated in a way that makes a nice quote usually. These quotes really need translation into normal language. But that’s clearly no longer a Buddha quote. So that’s what this post is: an elaboration of two of those Buddha quotes:

Monks, these four types of karma have been directly realized, verified, & made known by me. Which four? There is karma that is dark with dark result. There is karma that is bright with bright result. There is karma that is dark & bright with dark & bright result. There is karma that is neither dark nor bright with neither dark nor bright result, leading to the ending of karma.

Anguttara Nikaya,AN 4.235, PTS: A ii 235,Ariyamagga Sutta: The Noble Path,translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

This quote shows two things: first ‘bad karma’ isn’t such a strange concept to original Buddhism as many modern Western Buddhists claim.

Second, it’s about the effect of actions (and thoughts and words). Those who’ve thought about karma a bit, often come up with this question: how about actions that have a bad motivation, but a good effect. Say a celebrity sponsors some good cause, mainly to beef up their own reputation… The effect is still mainly good, one would say: that cause gets both money and attention. And that attention is bound to bring in more money. So where’s the negative effect? Well, I think the negative effect is in the cynicism people feel towards this sort of thing. We become good cause jaded.

So this is an example of ‘There is karma that is dark & bright with dark & bright result.’ This quote plainly says that there IS no such thing as karma that is good, but doesn’t have a good effect. Cause and effect are, in Buddhism, clearly linked. And in most cases of course the cause is mixed. Both motive and method of action is usually not perfect, so the effect is likely to be mixed as well.

Another Buddha quote with the same message:

So, Ananda, there is karma that is incapable (of good result) and appears incapable (of good result); there is karma that is incapable (of good result) and appears capable (of good result); there is karma that is capable (of good result) and appears capable (of good result); there is karma that is capable (of good result) and appears incapable (of good result).

Majjhima Nikaya 136: The Great Exposition of Kamma (Mahakammavibhanga Sutta)

All Considering

God’s hat – a theology joke

Related Posts

Chocolate Frosting and Garbage, Thubten Chodron Buddhist quote

Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy: Spirituality in Daily Life, Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron

Random posts

A change in blog policy

Related Posts

God and the Absolute, theosophy quote

W.Q. Judge quote, The Theosophical Forum of New York, December 1892, p. 3)

Related Posts

Newsletter update & New spiritual stuff on squidoo and Katinka Hesselink Net

June 8th 2010: Shamanism and visions

Related Posts

Blavatsky about the symbolism of the Christian Cross

Comment Zen

Related Posts

Using spirituality and psychology as a defence

Related Posts

NDE, Buddha on karma, Zen Buddhism books

New online

Short Quotes

Buddha, Dhammapada, Translation Juan Mascaro

H.P. Blavatsky, Practical Occultism

Jeremy Taylor

N. Sri Ram, Thoughts For Aspirants, Second Series

Paul Brunton, The Secret Path, Chapter X

To the Ancients, Earth was a Living Being

From “The Avatar” by AE, Found in Canadian Theosophist, Vol. 14, #10

Related Posts

Searching for peace and serenity

Related Posts

Buddha on Good and Bad Karma (quotes and explanation)

Related Posts