Posts Tagged ‘George Orwell’
Our Mentality Is Our Reality – Sutra Sayings
“The greatest discovery of any generation
is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds.”
~ Albert Schweitzer
“We do not see things as they are;
we see things as we are.”
~ Talmud
“When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.”
~ Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
~ George Orwell, 1984
Our Mentality Is Our Reality
Our mentality
is our reality.
Change your mentality,
to change your reality.
Learn to observe,
and to still your mind.
Open your mind and see its Source.
Still your mind and Be its Source.
Change your mentality
and Be –
Reality.
Ron’s audio recitation of “Our Mentality Is Our Reality”
Ron’s Explanation and Dedication of “Our Mentality Is Our Reality”
Dear Friends,
The foregoing quotations and sutra sayings are based on philosophic concepts similar to those of J. Krishnamurti quoted in De-condition the Mind. And on the crucial principle that: “human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds,” proclaimed by distinguished humanitarian/physician/ philosopher Dr. Albert Schweitzer.
They remind us that our entire space/time “reality” – of apparent separation from each other and Nature – arises with its inevitable problems and sufferings only from thought. And, that we can vastly improve our lives by observing and changing our thoughts, and by stilling and emptying our minds.
Since thought alone creates our problems and sufferings, thought alone can help us gradually transcend them.
May these writings thereby help us live ever happier and soul fulfilling lives.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Transmutation Beyond Computation
“What really counts in life can’t be counted.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“When one loves, one does not calculate.”
~ St. Therese of Lisieux
Transmutation Beyond Computation
Computers are great
and demonstrate
technology that’s fine.
But we can’t compute
the Absolute —
The Mystery Divine.
We’ll never measure
our greatest treasure –
The gift of Life sublime.
But without computation —
in meditation —
To Heaven we may climb,
And find elation
beyond calculation –
Transcending space and time.
Ron’s spoken explanation and recitation of “Transmutation Beyond Calculation”
Ron’s written explanation of “Transmutation Beyond Calculation”
Dear Friends,
After retiring from legal practice in 1992, I immensely enjoyed many years of introspective semi-seclusion in my San Francisco high-rise hermitage, without a computer, TV, or daily newspaper. Rather than following worldly “news”, I preferred to pray, meditate and reflect about perennial spiritual wisdom.
Until then, my public behavior mostly continued to appear “normal” by worldly standards, though inwardly I was processing a radically zen-like change of life.
So many friends and relatives believing that Ron was still a “normal” worldly person, kept urging me to get a computer and go online. Especially because my beloved Guruji had encouraged my intention to “think about God” after retirement, I adamantly refused to go online with the rest of the world.
And privately I wrote these lines”, which I shared with few others:
Inner Net, Not Internet
Ron’s going off-line,
out-of-line, out of linearity.
While the world wants ever more information,
Ron seeks infinite inspiration:
In the Unknown, in the Mystery –
The Mystery of Divinity.
Ultimately, in 2004 I bought a computer to help my son Josh resolve legal problems with his corporate landlord. Soon afterwards I wrote and shared online the foregoing whimsical poem, “Transmutation Beyond Computation”, which I’ve posted above with spoken explanation and recitation, for your enjoyment and possible edification.
Fourteen years after reluctantly going online, I now greatly appreciate miraculous computer technology which has become an essential tool in my life. But still I adamantly endorse prioritizing mindfulness and introspection over following fake “news” or gossip or online worldly trivial pursuits like twittering, tweeting, messaging etc..
So the essential message of “Transmutation Beyond Computation” remains valid, and I hope you’ll consider it.
As George Orwell accurately observed in his prescient classic “1984”,
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
So especially in these dystopian times it is crucial that our mental programming come from the Sacred Heart of Humanity, and not from monopolistic corporate media.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Quotations About Religion
“If there is love in your heart,
you don’t have to worry about rules.”
~ Sri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
Sri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas
Quotations About Religion
“My religion is very simple.
My religion is kindness.”
~ Dalai Lama
“Today, … any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect
of inner values can never be universal, and so will be inadequate.”
“The time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics
that is beyond religion.”
~ Dalai Lama
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
~ Dalai Lama
“This is a time for us to remember that in the name of religion more people have died than in all the wars and natural calamities put together. Now more than ever we must understand that the purpose of religion is not to separate us. True faiths don’t preach hatred and killing, nor did any of the prophets. It is the people who interpret the scriptures who create the divisions. Division comes if we put our ego into the teachings of these religions. Let us strive to be free of that kind of egoism”
~ Swami Satchidananda
“People often ask me, “What religion are you? You talk about the Bible, Koran, Torah. Are you a Hindu?” I say, I am not a Catholic, a Buddhist, or a Hindu, but an Undo. My religion is Undoism. We have done enough damage (with religious dogma). We have to stop doing any more and simply undo the damage we have already done.”
~ Swami Satchidananda – Beyond Words
“The great religions are the ships,
Poets the life boats.
Every sane person I know has jumped overboard.”
~ Hafiz
“I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, and Confucian.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi or Zen. Not any religion, or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, nor out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body nor soul. I belong to the beloved have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, First, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human.”
~ Rumi, ‘Only Breath’
“I have learned so much from God
That I can no longer call myself
a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.”
~ Hafiz
“There is one Cosmic Essence, all-pervading, all-knowing, all-powerful. This nameless formless essence can be approached by any name, any form, any symbol that suites the taste of the individual. Follow your religion, but try to understand the real purpose behind all of the rituals and traditions, and experience that Oneness.”
~ Swami Satchidananda
“Let us accept all the different paths as different rivers running toward the same ocean.”
~ Swami Satchidananda
“Your daily life is your temple and your religion.”
~ Khalil Gibran – “The Prophet”
“True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.”
~ Albert Einstein
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. ”
~ Albert Einstein
“A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”
~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think.
Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
~ George Orwell, 1984
“Irrevocable commitment to any one religion is not only intellectual suicide;
it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world.
Faith is, above all, open-ness—an act of trust in the unknown.”
~ Alan Watts
“Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
“The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
“Religion is the opium of the masses.”
~ Karl Marx
“Religion is confining and imprisoning and toxic because it is based on ideology and dogma. But spirituality is redeeming and universal.”
~ Deepak Chopra
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
~ Mark Twain – Autobiography, 1959
At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.”
~ Aldous Huxley
“There is only one God, the same God regardless of the labels applied by religion. … There is only one religion, the religion of Love;
There is only one language, the language of the Heart;
There is only one caste, the caste of Humanity”
~ Sathya Sai Baba
“Wherever I look, I see men quarrelling in the name of religion — Hindus, Mohammendans, Brahmos, Vaishnavas, and the rest. But they never reflect that He who is called Krishna is also called Siva, and bears the name of the Primal Energy, Jesus, and Allah as well — the same Rama with a thousand names. A lake has several ghats. At one the Hindus take water in pitchers and call it ‘jal’; at another the Mussalmans take water in leather bags and call it ‘pani’. At a third the Christians call it ‘water’. Can we imagine that it is not ‘jal’, but only ‘pani’ or ‘water’? How ridiculous! The substance is One under different names, and everyone is seeking the same substance; only climate, temperament, and name create differences. Let each man follow his own path. If he sincerely and ardently wishes to know God, peace be unto him! He will surely realize Him.”
~ Sri Ramakrishna, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
“Among all my patients in the second half of life … there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life.”
~ Carl Jung
Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
~ John Lennon, “Imagine”
Ron’s comments on urgent necessity of reciprocal empathy,
beyond religion-based behaviors
Dear Friends,
The foregoing quotations about religion have been posted to help us avert worldwide catastrophe from false religious interpretations of prophets’ teachings about peace and unity.
Religious prophets have always preached against killing and violence. And every enduring religious, spiritual or ethical tradition has endorsed the “golden rule” of reciprocal empathy and kindness.
For example,
“What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor: that is the whole of the Torah; all the rest of it is commentary.” ~ Rabbi Hillel – Judaism
“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”
~ Matthew 7:12 – Christianity
“Hurt not others in ways you yourself would find hurtful.”
~ Udana-Varga, 5:18 – Buddhism
“This is the sum of duty: do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.”
~ The Mahabharata, 5:1517 – Hinduism
“Not one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”
~ Fortieth Hadith of an-Nawawi,13 – Islam
Yet, countless people have died and suffered throughout human history in the name of religion, which is often cited to hypocritically justify immoral partisan political or economic desires. Because of advanced technologies, wars and other violent behaviors which for centuries have caused immense miseries, now threaten all planetary life as we have known it.
So – at long last – humans urgently need to abandon wars and warlike behaviors.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
~ Albert Einstein
Humanity can no longer survive, without practicing universal ethical behaviors which transcend divisive religious beliefs cited to justify immorally violent activities.
“Today, … any religion-based answer to the problem of our neglect of inner values can never be universal, and so will be inadequate.”
“The time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics that is beyond religion.”
~ Dalai Lama
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
“The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.
Without them humanity cannot survive.”
~ Dalai Lama
To end wars and warlike behaviors, it is imperative that we honor our hearts’ inner wisdom over divisive religious, political or economic beliefs, so as to transcend problems of violence created from lower ego levels of human consciousness.
With opened hearts may we stop treating others as we don’t wish to be treated ourselves, by practicing the “golden rule” of reciprocal empathy.
May we begin treating all sentient beings with kindness, compassion and empathy – with the same dignity that they wish for themselves.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Our Mentality is Our Reality: Sayings, Quotations and Reflections
“Our mentality is our reality.
Our “reality” is what we think it to be.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Reality” isn’t REAL!
“Reality” is a holographic theater of the mind.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“We do not see things as they are;
we see things as we are.”
~ Talmud
“All appearances are verily one’s own concepts, self-conceived in the mind, like reflections seen in a mirror. To know whether this be so or not, look within thine own mind.”
~ Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche)
“When you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change.”
~ Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
“When your sense of self is no longer tied to thought, is no longer conceptual, there is a depth of feeling, of sensing, of compassion, of loving, that was not there when you were trapped in mental concepts. You are that depth.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you. The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
~ Rumi
“There are two ways of spreading light –
to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
~ Edith Wharton
“Reality’s essence is Divine luminescence.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Our Mentality is Our Reality
We view space/time “reality”
of apparently separate forms and phenomena
through the ‘mirror of the mind’ – with thoughts
from perceptions, memories and attitudinal tendencies.
What we really see is mind’s misperception,
reflection and projection of Self-awareness.
Mind distortedly refracts, reflects and projects
onto the screen of human consciousness
the unseen light of Eternal Awareness.
As a mirror’s reflection depends
on the angle from which it is viewed,
our perception, reflection and response to the world,
depends not only on our state of mind,
but on our unique point of view –
each from a different place in time and space.
As still, clear water best reflects light –
while permitting perception of its depths,
a still, clear mind best reflects and reveals
the Eternal Light of Self-awareness.
The fewer our thoughts, the clearer and calmer our mind,
and the deeper and more transparent our Self-Awareness.
The more disturbed or perturbed the mind,
the more it distorts and obscures the Light of Awareness.
The clearer and calmer our mind,
the more appropriately we respond
to ever changing cosmic energies,
without reflexively reacting to them.
With meditation and other mind-stilling modes,
we clear and enlighten our mind –
from opacity to translucency to transparency –
from mental mirror to window of the soul.
Thereby, with ever expanding awareness
and ever deepening insight,
we can and shall ‘see’ more and more –
we can and shall see what we couldn’t see before.
We can and shall see – and BE:
Wholeness, Holiness, SELF.
And so it shall be!
Ron’s Commentary on Politically Engaged Spirituality With Quiet Minds and Open Hearts.
Dear Friends,
Introduction.
Have you ever wondered why the world seems so crazy? Why so many people worldwide unnecessarily suffer from wars, poverty, illness, lack of basic life-sustaining necessities? Why even in the richest nation on Earth, suffering is ubiquitous? Why even materially super-rich people often become depressed, addicted or mentally disturbed?
Only after my mid-life change of life, did I begin deeply reflecting on root causes of such societal insanity and unhappiness. Today I am sharing with you views about how politically engaged spirituality rooted in mental tranquility can address root causes of current crises.
Silly Sutras is a nonpartisan charitable project, motivated by prophets, not profits. But because of extraordinary worldwide political turmoil and divisiveness which has arisen especially since the election and inauguration of Donald J. Trump, as 25th US President, I feel impelled to share my political perspectives. Please accept my ideas as politically nonpartisan and as intended to be universally relevant to everyone, everywhere regardless of our political propensities or beliefs. However, if you disagree with them, forget them.
My Political History.
Since long before my mid-life spiritual awakening, I have attributed much societal suffering to societal insanity. In the late 1950’s, I was deeply influenced by a classic book “The Sane Society” written by distinguished author-psychotherapist Erich Fromm, who was raised in Germany as an orthodox Jew, and came to the US as a refugee from Hitler’s dystopian society. In the US Fromm wrote about the pathology of ‘normalcy’ in our materialistic society. His classic essay suggested that materialistic Western society was lacking in sanity; that the iniquities, inequities and disharmonies of entire societies were pathological, not just the seemingly separate mental illnesses of people therein.
Like philosopher Karl Marx, Fromm saw capitalistic greed and exploitation of workers as the root of societal pathology. And as antidote he persuasively advocated for democratic socialism. (Much later I learned that my heroes Albert Einstein, the Dalai Lama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. held similar Marxist views about capitalism.)
Especially after the rigged 2000 Bush/Gore election, with Supreme Court selection of the Bush/Cheney administration (despite pending vote recounts), and the ensuing terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 – which I deemed ‘false-flag’ operations instigated by the Bush/Cheney neocon regime and perpetrated to foment hatred against intended Moslem targets of the military industrial complex – I became so caught up in polarized political issues that I began experiencing much anger and agitation and significantly less of the peace of mind that I had long enjoyed after first meeting my Guruji.
However, instead of taking responsibility for my own agitated and combative state of mind, I often complained that Bush and Cheney had ‘brought me down’ from higher states of consciousness.
Ultimately, with mindfulness and soul-searching, I came to see that it was my own disturbed, judgmental and reactive state of mind – not Bush and Cheney – that was bringing me down. And more and more I began viewing apparent societal injustices with relative detachment and even rarely with compassion for the wrongdoers’ ignorance – yet never abandoning my nonviolent relentless pursuit of Truth through social justice as inspired by Gandhi and Jesus.*
[* In arriving at these crucial insights, I received much inspiration from the lives and words of others, whose helpful quotations I have posted in memoirs titled “Spirituality, Religion and Politics” . If interested, I hope you’ll read them.]
Recent Political Events.
The election and inauguration of Donald J. Trump as 45th US president, and his initial executive appointments and decrees have sparked numerous extraordinary worldwide demonstrations and intensely polarized political activities.
Perhaps I’m a crazy “cockeyed optimist”, but I believe that Trump’s ascendancy may prove a major disguised blessing which might not have happened if Hillary Clinton had been declared the US election winner. So I see this as potentially beginning a new age which can advance the highest good for all life on our precious planet.
In my view Trump has sparked unprecedented societal awakenings to longstanding and constantly expanding dystopian “deep state” threats to everyone everywhere, no matter which US corporate-controlled duopoly party has been in purported power. And this is happening when both major parties are justifiably distrusted by most US citizens because they implement the agendas of the super rich 1%, and deep state, rather than addressing the common welfare and overwhelming wishes of the majority of their constituents.
So Trump has been elected at a time when since 9/11/2001 millions of humans have needlessly long-suffered from war, poverty, hunger, physical illness, and psychological pain, and from unwarranted deprivations of political and human rights.; when millions more have experienced stressful anxiety about premature death, terrorism, sickness, homelessness, joblessness, injustice, loss of liberty, etc. And this is a time when countless others compassionately empathize with their long-suffering spiritual siblings. For in this world of relativity we are all relatives.
Orwell’s “1984”.
Did you know that soon after President Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s amazingly prophetic novel “1984″ (written in 1948) synchronistically became #1 Amazon best seller?
I see sudden mass interest in Orwell’s vision – of a cruel and dystopian post-nuclear ‘cold war’ world similar to this post-9/11 world of endless wars against endless alleged terrorist threats – as further confirmation of societal awakening to needless dystopian suffering.
In writing “1984”, Orwell – who was an ardent British democratic socialist – was justifiably concerned that true democratic socialism would be taken over by authoritarian Stalinism and Maoism; and moreover he presciently foresaw how even hegemonic liberal democracies ostensibly committed to freedom could devolve into exploitive imperialistic despotism. His novel seems amazingly apt to current dystopian times. [See e.g. “Orwell’s “1984” – Prescience or Playbook?” ]
Synchronistically I recently learned that the best selling “1984″ print edition most sold by Amazon contains an insightful epilogue or afterword by Dr. Erich Fromm, written soon after he published “The Sane Society”. In analyzing “1984”, Dr. Fromm suggested that the basic philosophical questions raised by Orwell are the existence and meaning of “truth” and “reality”; whether “reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”.
These are both politically prescient and deeply philosophical issues; perennial puzzles at the spiritual heart of our current societal crises.
Moral of the story?.
Q. So how should spiritual aspirants address current crucial political issues and crises?
A. By mindfully recognizing and calming our disturbed, judgmental and reactive states of mind we can best address our crucial political issues and challenges, from our unique perspectives with our unique talents.
Beyond our ‘brain-washed’ thoughts we can thereby realize that our perceived and projected dystopian “reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”; that therefore President Trump is neither a hero nor a villain, but a symptom or manifestation of a psychologically sick society.
Rather than identifying with or believing our confused and illusory thoughts, or what hierarchic political and media authorities tell us, mystics advise us to follow our heart – our deepest intuition, not just the confusing ‘voice in our head’.
As explained by Eckhart Tolle,
“When your sense of self is no longer tied to thought, is no longer conceptual,
there is a depth of feeling, of sensing, of compassion, of loving,
that was not there when you were trapped in mental concepts.
You are that depth.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
Thus, the clearer and calmer our minds, the more our hearts are opened, and the more appropriately we respond to life’s inevitable challenges. To help us remember to open and follow our hearts by clearing our minds, I have posted today the foregoing quotations and essay/poem explaining this important teaching. I hope you’ll consider it.
With quiet minds and open hearts may we together honor the spiritual essence and equality of everyone everywhere – beyond our mentally illusory and superficially divisive designations; may we thus transcend exploitation and discrimination against the world’s most vulnerable sentient beings, and end the iniquity of inequity in our society.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Spirituality, Religion and Politics ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.”
~ Gandhi
“Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.”
~ Gandhi
“Look how the caravan of civilization
has been ambushed.
Fools are everywhere in charge.
Do not practice solitude like Jesus.
Be in the assembly, and take charge of it.”
~ Rumi
“In the present circumstances, no one can afford to assume
that someone else will solve their problems.
Every individual has a responsibility to help guide our global family in the right direction.
Good wishes are not sufficient; we must become actively engaged.”
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from “The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom”
Gandhi
Introduction.
After my mid-life spiritual awakening, my lifestyle changed radically. While publicly maintaining my professional life as a lawyer, privately I soon began living a simple monk-like existence, withdrawing from prior involvement in worldly entertainments and pastimes. For the first time in many years, I was living alone without a partner to influence my way of life. So, following inner inclinations, I stopped watching TV and rarely went to movies or concerts. I became a largely raw-food vegetarian and ate mostly at home rather than in restaurants. Retaining very few pre-divorce friends, I spent more time alone and began associating mainly with people interested in spirituality.
And especially after meeting Guruji in 1978, I felt for the first time an intense longing to return to Divinity. So I began praying fervently for a way to exchange my life of litigation for a life of meditation. But I felt confused and conflicted because I needed income from lawyering to help support my young children.
Whereupon, synchronistically I was given an unforgettable mystical experience which helped resolve that confusion. In a crowded courtroom, I was shown that the Divine is immanent in everyone everywhere – even in crafty lawyers; that experiencing nearness to God is mostly dependent on our state of mind rather than our physical environment. (See https://sillysutras.com/beholding-divine-light-in-a-worldly-courtroom-rons-memoirs/ )
So I became resigned to carrying on my life as a lawyer. However, I remained uncertain about continuing my life-long social justice activities when I yearned to devote more quiet time for meditation, prayer and spiritual practices.
Ultimately, after much soul searching, I honored inner impulses and persisted in pursuing an egalitarian path of politically engaged spirituality, rather than a path of monk-like withdrawal from worldly concerns. Though I respected the reclusive spiritual masters, monks and nuns who indirectly elevate human consciousness through their spiritual and devotional practices, I felt greatest affinity with Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus, and the Dalai Lama, whose non-violent pursuit of social justice greatly inspired me.
My Socialistic Politics.
Though neither of my parents was politically engaged, growing up I felt early affinity with traditional Jewish social justice values. The Torah (old Testament) admonishes Jews not just to give to the poor but to advocate on their behalf. For example, Proverbs 31:9 tells Jews to “speak up, judge righteously, champion the poor and the needy.”
So, in becoming a lawyer and throughout my professional career, my main motivation was to help others; it was not to become rich or famous. Long before my spiritual awakening, I had a deep inner instinct to pursue social justice causes, with considerable egalitarian sensitivity to the “insanity and iniquity of inequity in our society”. For many years I symbolically kept on my desk a placard with this inspiring biblical language:
“He shall rescue the needy from rich oppressors,
The distressed who have no protector.
He will have pity on the needy and poor,
And redeem them from oppression and violence.”
~ Psalm 72:12-14
In the late 1950’s I was deeply influenced and persuaded by then prominent author-psychotherapist Erich Fromm, about the pathology of ‘normalcy’ in our materialistic society. In “The Sane Society” Fromm suggested that materialistic Western society was lacking in sanity; that the inequities and disharmonies of the entire society were pathological, not just the mental illnesses of people therein. Like Karl Marx, Fromm saw capitalistic greed and exploitation of workers at the root of societal pathology, and persuasively he advocated for democratic socialism. (Much later I learned that my heroes Albert Einstein and the Dalai Lame held similar Marxist views.)
Fromm’s essay confirmed and enhanced my instinctive reluctance to selfishly follow materialistic societal goals. And it encouraged me to endorse socialistic political and economic solutions for redressing indiscriminate imposition of inequality in our capitalistic society. Often I became quite passionate and outspoken about my political views that “the more that money rules the world, the more that money ruins the world”.
Especially after the traumatically shocking 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the soon ensuing ‘false flag’ Gulf of Tonkin pretense for escalated and patently insane Viet Nam war devastation, I became aware of the prescience of President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 valedictory caution against dominance of the “military-industrial complex” with “potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power”. And ultimately I perceived that, despite Eisenhower’s warning, ruling power had indeed been misappropriated by people who are ruling and ruining the world, in consort with the military-industrial complex or “deep state”, while presiding over serious curtailments of US constitutional protections and civil liberties.
I saw that just as Hitler in Nazi Germany had molded an insane society to support his pathological pretensions and plans, sociopathic Western leaders of all political parties have used insidious propaganda about contrived enemies and fomented “terrorists” as a pretense to create an insane society which has fearfully condoned or acquiesced in outrageously immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, drone killings of innocent civilians, and plans for attacking Iran, Libya, Syria and other Moslem countries, with radically expanded US military budgets and executive powers, while obscenely enriching entrenched vested interests.
Politically Engaged Spirituality.
After my mid-life spiritual awakening, my radical political views persisted. But, inspired by Gandhi and others, I sought to ‘spiritualize’ my legal advocacy and social justice pursuits, so as to foster rather than impede optimal evolutionary advancement. Though outwardly little changed, inwardly I more and more accepted challenges of my lawyer’s life as opportunities to fulfill moral responsibilities to society, my clients, my family and others, while elevating my spiritual awareness.
But, especially after inauguration of the Bush/Cheney administration and the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 – which I deemed ‘false-flag’ operations perpetrated to foment hatred against intended Moslem targets of the military industrial complex – I became so caught up in polarized political issues that I clearly was experiencing more combative (rajasic) and less elevated (sattvic) energy than before meeting Guruji. However, instead of taking responsibility for my own agitated and combative state of mind, I often complained that Bush and Cheney had ‘brought me down’ from higher states of consciousness.
Ultimately, with mindfulness and soul-searching, I came to see that it was my own disturbed, judgmental and reactive state of mind – not Bush and Cheney – that was bringing me down. And more and more I began viewing apparent injustices with detachment and with compassion for the wrongdoers’ ignorance – yet never abandoning the relentless pursuit of Truth through social justice.
In arriving at these crucial insights, I received much inspiration from the lives and words of others. I have gathered quotations below which have especially helped me. I share them here hoping that they may help you to be ever vigilant concerned spiritual citizens of our precious planet.
And so it shall be!
Spirituality, Religion and Politics Quotes.
Many ancient Indian masters have preached nonviolence as a philosophy. That was a more spiritual understanding of it. Mahatma Gandhi, in this twentieth century, produced a very sophisticated approach because he implemented that very noble philosophy of nonviolence in modern politics, and he succeeded. That is a very great thing. It has represented an evolutionary leap in political consciousness, his experimentation with truth.”
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in an interview with Catherine Ingram, from “The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness”
“What is a wife and what is a harlot? What is a church and what
Is a theatre? are they two and not one? can they exist separate?
Are not religion and politics the same thing? Brotherhood is religion,
O demonstrations of reason dividing families in cruelty and pride!”
~ William Blake (1757-1827), British poet, painter, engraver. Jerusalem, plate 57, repr. In Complete Writings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (1957).
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. …
Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,
And that which is neither deed nor reflection,
but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul,
even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?
Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?
~ Khalil Gibran~ “The Prophet”
“The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both natural and spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity.”
~ Albert Einstein
“True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.”
~ Albert Einstein
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
“All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness … the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.”
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
“This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
We have to have some form of politics. Politics is a form of resolving conflicts. Politics which comes from sincere motivation is constructive.
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
“In the present circumstances, no one can afford to assume that someone else will solve their problems. Every individual has a responsibility to help guide our global family in the right direction. Good wishes are not sufficient; we must become actively engaged.”
~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from “The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom”.
“My philosophy and my politics are inseparably intertwined.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“For me, there is no blasphemy; no theological doctrine to which I am so attached that I am unwilling to hear differing views. Truth is ineffable, so lies are inevitable.”
~ Ron Rattner
The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!
~ Swami Vivekananda
“It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.”
~ Thomas Jefferson
You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it’s always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.
~ Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now.
Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
~ George Orwell – “1984”, Book One, Chapter 5—Syme, pg 46-47
In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.
~ Mark Twain – Autobiography
“At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.”
~ Aldous Huxley
“In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
~ George Orwell – “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”
~ Plato
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
~ Plato
“There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.”
~ Plato
Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance.
~ Vaclav Havel
Where is the justice of political power if it… marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?
~ Kahlil Gibran
An oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society because under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information.
~ Albert Einstein
Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
~ Albert Einstein
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
~ Joseph Goebbels
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like
trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on
stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
