Session 1 - 8.1.13 Roger HERE (Dr Roger Prentice - onesummit AT gmail DOT com) UPDATED 1.3.14 V
IMAGINE: Imagine a beautiful walled garden. In the wall of the garden there are a number of doorways. For each doorway there is at least one great teacher ‘pointing’ to the Oneness in the garden, through whom we can enter - primarily through stillness & silence. What do we experience & realize in taking our place in the ‘One Garden’?
DESCRIPTION & MISSION = ‘One Garden’ = healing wisdom for greater happiness & peace
The ‘One Garden’ = living in balance - two wings i) connection to the whole & ii) Perennial Wisdom/Philosophy. Together = Awaken:Detach:Serve
AWAKEN
“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.” Thich Nhat Hanh SL p504
A) • There’s a reality beyond the material world:
• Which is uncreated.
• It pervades everything,
• but remains (as a whole) beyond the reach of human knowledge and understanding.
DETACH
“A man is a slave to anything he cannot part with that is less than himself.” - George MacDonald
B) • You approach that reality by:
• Distinguishing ego from true self
• Understanding the nature of desire
• Becoming unattached
• Forgetting about preferences
• Not working for personal gain
• Letting go of thoughts
• Redirecting your attention
• Being devoted
• Being humble
• Invoking that reality
• Surrendering
C) • That reality approaches you through:
• Grace
• The teacher (s/he seems to appear whenever you need to move on up through the next stage)
D) • You’re transformed - enlightened - so that you embody or reflect that reality by:
• ‘Dying’ and ‘being reborn’ (i.e transformed and living more by the true higher self than the lower self!)
SERVE
“The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve”. - Albert Schweitzer
E) . You then find (even better) ways to serve - realizing that all work done in the spirit of service can be ranked as worship.
For an alternative model of Perennial Philosophy by Ken Wilber see HERE My three word version is Awake: Detach: Serve, as above.
Duality, Oneness & The Perennial Philosophy model
The Perennial Philosophy model - a Christian-Buddhist comparison (Very short version)
In Christian terms, the four steps are:
In Buddhist terms:
“He who knows (only) one (religion), knows none.” (Max Muller)
“God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.” - Empedocles
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anon. “God has no religion.” - Ghandi
“Our own life has to be our message.” TNH
“I am because we are.’ - from Swahili. c.f. “You are therefore I am.” - Satish Kumar
“Feelings come & go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor” TNH Step into Fre
"Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one's own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom. By making us drink right from the fountain of life it liberates us from all the yokes under which we finite beings are usually suffering in this world." D T Suzuki
SEED QUESTION/s: “Are we one? Are you one? Are you One? In what and how are we one? What experiences have you had that taught you that you are part of a Whole? What events test or challenge that sense of being-at-one? Does the drop become part of the Ocean and then become a drop again? What is the relationship between the ‘2 wings’ i.e between I) connection in sensing Oneness and II) the 10,000 dualities - concepts, beliefs, words?
PRACTICE: after Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh: “ Smile, Breathe, Go mindfully.”