Wordsworth had discerned a 'spirit' which was at one and the same time immanent in and distinct from natural phenomena:'A presence that disturbs me with the joyOf elevated thoughts; a sense sublimeOf...
You cannot be a hero unless you are prepared to give up everything; there is no ascent to the heights without a prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death. Throughout our live...
Eminent monotheists in all three faiths—that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself.
The Taliban travesty, a noxious combination of Deobandi rigidity, tribal chauvinism, and the aggression of the traumatized war orphan.
The attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project.
A myth, therefore, is true because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information. If, however, it does not give us new insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed. If it work...
A person who is impartial, fair, calm, gentle, serene, accepting, and openhearted is indeed a refuge.
A primitive capitalism had developed, which had quite different priorities. The lavish sacrifices had been designed to impress the gods and to enhance the patron’s prestige. By the fifth century, thes...
A truly compassionate person touches a chord in us that resonates with some of our deepest yearnings. People flock to such individuals, because they seem to offer a haven of peace in a violent, angry...
After his death, his followers decided that Jesus had been divine. This did not happen immediately; as we shall see, the doctrine that Jesus had been God in human form was not finalized until the four...
All religious people in any age have to make their traditions address the challenge of their particular modernity,
All the great spiritual traditions have insisted that what holds us back from enlightenment is selfishness and egotism; they have also said that a practical concern for everybody (not simply those who...
Am I my brother’s guardian? Cain asked after he had killed his brother, Abel. We are now living in such an interconnected world that we are all implicated in one another’s history and one another’s tr...
And how could I hope to sense God’s presence when I continually broke the silence, frequently had uncharitable thoughts, and above all, constantly yearned for human affection and wept when reprimanded...
Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something t...
As an inspiration for terrorism, however, nationalism has been far more productive than religion. Terrorism experts agree that the denial of a people’s right to national self-determination and the occ...
As the Daoists pointed out, we often identify with our ideas so strongly that we feel personally assaulted if these are criticized or corrected.
At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion. I
But the state had no jurisdiction over the conscience of the individual and no right, therefore, to fight heresy or lead a holy war. While it could have nothing to do with the spiritual realm, the sta...
By using feminist arguments, for which most had little or no sympathy, as part of their propaganda, the colonialists tainted the cause of feminism in the Muslim world, and helped to distort the faith...
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