Thursday, August 24, 2006

What it means to be a seeker

I have a lot of respect for the teacher and writer Lama Surya Das. Here's a passage from his book, Awakening to the Sacred:
Seekers want to understand and explore themselves as well as the universe with all its mysteries, both known and unknowable. In their hearts, seekers believe that the universe makes sense and their lives have meaning. They believe not only that truth exists, but that it can indeed be found, and experienced.

When I was young, and even more foolish than I am today, I believed that one had to travel far and wide in order to seek truth, divine reality, or whatever you call it. I believed that truth would most likely be found in the world's so-called sacred places. Yet the fact is that truth is everywhere; it knows no religious, cultural, temporal, or ethnic bounds. Truth is the perfect circle. Its center is everywhere; its circumference stretches into infinite space. The land on which we stand is sacred, no matter where we stand.
So, no, you don't have to make a pilgrimage to India or Tibet or Canterbury to find the sacred. You can make a pilgrimage within. The important thing is to begin and not to give up.

1 comment:

  1. Truth is everywhere, God is everywhere.

    I remember my friend Alan Barrow talking with an inmate during a Kairos weekend. The man was struggling with the presence of Jesus in his life. "Where was Jesus when I killed a man?" he asked. Alan's answer was "He was right beside you, weeping."

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