ONE GOD – ONE FAITH: –

There is only one God, one faith. Let the people believe firmly and do not fear anything.

Every prayer, which comes from the heart, is agreeable to God.

I maintain that every major religion of the world – Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Tao- ism, Zoroastrianism – has similar ideas of love, the same goal of benefiting humanity through spiritual practice, and the same effects of making their followers into better human beings… Differences of dogma may be ascribed to differences of time and circumstance as well as cultural influences.

No one faith is perfect. All faiths are equally dear to their respective devotees. What is wanted, therefore, is a living friendly contact among the followers of the great religions of the world and not a clash among them in the fruitless attempt on the part of each community to show superiority of its faith over the rest.

NAMASTE: – is the form of greetings by Hindus, which means – I honor in you that place in you where the LORD resides, and when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, then there is only ONE of us.”

GOD OF LOVE: –

I go for refuge to God who is ONE in the silence of Eternity, pure radiance of beauty and perfection, in which we find our peace. He is the bridge supreme, which leads to immortality, and the Spirit of fire, which burns the dross of lower life. He is the God, the God of love.

The entire world is being driven insane by this single phrase: “My religion alone is true.” O Mother, you have shown me that no clock is entirely accurate. Only the transcendent sun of knowledge remains on time. Who can make a system from Divine Mystery? But if any sincere practitioner, within whatever culture or religion, prays and meditates with great devotion and commitment to Truth alone, Your Grace will flood his mind and heart, O Mother. His particular sacred tradition will be opened and illuminated. He will reach the one goal of spiritual evolution. How I long to pray with sincere Christians in their churches and to bow and prostrate with devoted Muslims in their mosques!

All religions are glorious!

The Christian is not to become a Muslim, a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor is a Muslim, a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet persevere his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth. If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world, it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity, and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every sytem has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart.

One God explained in the form of a joke: –

There were three friends, a Christian, a Muslim and a Hindu. They were to cross a river one day, but the river was flooded with water. Christian goes first, prays for Jesus Christ and started walking towards the river, slowly the water recedes and he crosses the river. The Muslim goes second, prays for Allah and started walking towards the river, slowly the water recedes and he crosses the river. Hindu thought in his mind that Christian prayed for only Jesus Christ and crossed the river, Muslim prayed for Allah only and crossed the river, so I am going to pray for all my Gods and they will surely come and save me. So he started chanting “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Radhe Shyam, Hare Vishnu Bhagwan etc. and slowly started walking towards the river, but the river water did not recede and he drowned. In heaven he was produced in front of God and he started complaining to God that he prayed for so many Gods and no one came to save him. God said “ Oh Stupid Hindu, I am only One God with many names and forms, when Christian called me, I wore the clothes of Jesus Christ and went to save him, when Muslim called me, I wore the clothes of Mohamed and went to save him, but when you called me with so many names, I just kept on changing the clothes to suit that name and I could not come to rescue you.

ONE GOD WHO IS FATHER OF ALL: –

GOD, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in man-made churches, temples or mosques. Nor does he need anything that we can supply by working for him, since it is he himself who gives life and breath and everything else to everyone. From one man he created all races of mankind and made them live throughout the whole earth. He himself fixed beforehand the exact times and the limits of the places where they would live. He did this so they would look for him, and perhaps find him as they felt around for him. Yet God is actually not far from anyone of us; as someone has said, ‘In him we live and move and exist.’

There is but ONE GOD. He is all that is. He is the Creator of all things and He is all-pervasive. He is without fear and without enmity. He is timeless, unborn and self-existent. He is the Enlightener and He can be realized by grace of Himself alone. He was in the beginning; He was in all ages. The True One is, was, and shall forever be. He is one, He is the first. He is all that is. Eternal Truth is His Name. He is the creator of all. Fearing naught, striking fear in naught; timeless is His image. Not begotten, He is self-existent. He was in the beginning; He is through all ages; He shall be the One who lives forever. Beyond thought, no thinking can conceive Him. How true it is that God has no favorites, but that in every nation those who are God fearing and do what is right are acceptable for him.”

The One God is the Father of all, we are all his Children.

The One God is the cause of all causes; knowledge and wisdom are His Gifts to us. He is not far, He is not near, and He is with us all. Praise the Lord with abiding love. If I can unite in myself, in my own spiritual life, the thought of the East and the West, of the Greek and Latin Fathers, I will create in myself a reunion of the divided Churches, temples & mosques and from that unity in myself can come the exterior and visible unity of these places of worship. For, if we want to bring together East and West, we cannot do it by imposing one upon the other.

Our religious traditions at their most authentic should free us to find traces of GOD in all things. GOD loves all manner of our being in the world and has made all things in harmony. As in our inner work, so our communal work for justice and peace is futile if we insist on the primacy of one form of being human over another, of one religion over others, or by choosing a mono-cultural path toward Joy for all beings that share this planet. God loves our infinite diversity and has choreographed an ordered dance of different stars.

PAIN AND SUFFERING IN LIFE: –

There is a difference between physical pains, which is a physiological process, and suffering, which is our mental and emotional response to the pain. So the question arises – can finding, an underlying purpose and meaning behind our pain modify our attitude about it? And can a change in attitude lessen the degree to which we suffer when we are physically injured?

To view pain not as universal enemy as seen in the west but as a remarkable, elegant, and sophisticated biological system that warns us of damage to our body and thus protects us.

There is no doubt that our attitude and mental outlook can strongly affect the degree to which we suffer when we are in physical pain. Let’s say, for instance, that two individuals, a construction worker and a concert pianist suffer the same finger injury, while the amount of physical pain might be the same for both individuals, the construction worker might suffer very little and in fact rejoice if the injury resulted in a month of paid vacation which he or she was in need of, whereas the same injury could result in intense suffering to the pianist who viewed playing as his or her primary source of joy in life.

The idea that our mental attitude influences our ability to perceive and endure pain is not limited to theoretical situations such as above; it has been demonstrated by many scientific studies and experiments. Researchers looking in to this issue began by tracing the pathways of how pain is perceived and experienced. Pain begins with a sensory signal – an alarm that goes off when nerve endings are stimulated by something that is sensed as dangerous. Millions of signals are sent through the spinal cord on the base of the brain. These signals are then sorted out and a message is sent to higher areas of the brain telling of pain. The brain then sorts through the prescreened message and decides on the response. It is at this stage that the mind can assign value and meaning to the pain and intensify or modify our perception of pain.

We convert pain in to suffering in the mind.

To loosen the suffering of pain, we need to make a crucial distinction between the pain of pain and the pain we create by our thoughts about the pain. Fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, and helplessness are all mental and emotional responses that can intensify pain. So, in developing an approach to dealing with pain, we can of course work at the lower levels of pain perception, using the tools of modern medicine such as medications and other procedures, but we can also work at the higher levels by modifying our outlook and attitude.

Other experiments with human beings, involving hypnosis and placebos, have also demonstrated that in many cases the higher brain functions can overrule the pain signals from the lower stages on the pain pathway. They not only warn us and protects us, but it unifies us. Without pain sensation in our hands or feet, those parts no longer seem to belong to our body. It is our suffering that is the most basic element that we share with others, the factor that unifies us with all living creatures.

Suffering according to Buddhism: –

According to Buddhism all suffering is due to desires and that liberation involves their suppression, by following the “Noble eight fold path”

1. Right Action
2. Right Belief
3. Right Aspiration
4. Right Speech
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Endeavor
7. Right Thought
8. Right Meditation