Many / One

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Compiled by JoAnn Kite

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The Nature and Truth of the Great Religions
August Karl Reischauer

1 "No one can really work effectively in enriching the lives of others and bringing them the good life in all its fulness without the spirit of love and friendship."

2 "Man is basically a spiritual being, one in nature with the Eternal and Unitary Ground of all existence."

3 "The supreme value in human life should be seen in the achievement of an ethical and spiritual personality for the individual, and the fellowship of such individuals with each other and with God."

4 "Man, when he is true to himself, stays close to Nature or to the eternal Tao, 'the Way' of all things."

5 "At the heart of all reality is the Infinite and Eternal Being…the infinite Mind and sovereign Will working creatively in all things and through all things with a purpose which it is man's highest interest to know and with which it is man's chief duty to relate himself."

6 "Man is by nature one in essence with the eternal Tao and he should live his life in full realization of this fact and so find a sense of peace and security amid all changes to which human life is heir."

7 "Confucius regarded ethical values and ideals as grounded not simply in human nature as such but rather in the superhuman realm, in 'Heaven' or Ultimate Reality."

8 "The world is ever changing in outward things of human culture. Tongues shall cease and the knowledge of today shall be made obsolete by the new and fuller knowledge of tomorrow, for all human knowledge is fragmentary and like seeing 'in a mirror dimly'; but one thing can remain essentially the same under all the varying conditions of human life and in spite of the widest differences in human culture, and that is the spirit of love."

9 "All have the 'Buddha Nature' as the core of their true being and therefore can become Buddhas when fully enlightened. Not only human beings have this 'Buddha Nature' but all beings, or as it is put more graphically, 'In every particle of dust there dwells a Buddha.'"

10 "When man understands his own deepest nature he realizes his identity with the Eternal Being."

11 "God is the Ultimate Reality and all things owe their origin and continuing existence to Him."

12 "Moral values and meanings are not mere rules invented by man to regulate human society. They are rather man's awareness and understanding of the eternal Moral Order."

13 "Pantheism frankly accepts the things of the outer world as being just as truly an aspect of the Divine or Ultimate Rality as is man's own psychic and spiritual nature."

14 "Reality is basically an Absolute Oneness."

15 "Sufism sees man in his true being essentially one in nature with God."

16 "As Mencius put it: 'The tendency of man's nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There are none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downwards.'"

17 "They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna and Agni….To what is One, the poets give many a name." Rig Veda I. 164. 46

18 "Man's own mind is akin to universal mind and the ultimately real which expresses itself in the objects of Nature."

19 "In the depths of his own true being man is akin to and a part of what is ultimately real and eternal."

20 "What is deepest and truest of man's own spiritual being is at the same time the key to an understanding of Ultimate Reality."

21 "'Sit in the center of yourself and you see what is and shall be,' says a Sufi mystic."

22 "The natural world in its very essence is Divine."

23 "The natural corrolary of the Oneness of God and the unity of mankind is the fundamental equality of all men and races before God. And this means, or should mean, a real democracy of spirit in the relation of men to each other."

24 "Confucius and Mencius maintained that the very core of the truly good life is a life lived in obedience to the moral law and in the awareness that the moral law is grounded in the Eternal."

25 "There is a higher power which shapes the destiny of all, and the individual can rely on this power."

This body of quotes compiled by JoAnn Kite