Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.
Bede GriffithsTags: reality religion spirit concepts
Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.
Bede GriffithsTags: religion atheism agnosticism idols
God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
Bede GriffithsIt is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.
Bede GriffithsTags: christianity religion tolerance conversion
I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
Bede Griffiths...Nobody know when he is going to die. It is no good simply putting it off all the time, as we tend to do. If you face it, you realize you hold your life in your hands, and you're ready to let go at any moment. I think that is real wisdom.
Bede GriffithsI was suddenly made aware of another world of beauty and mystery
such as I had never imagined to exist, except in poetry.
It was as though I had begun to see and smell and hear for the first
time. The world appeared to me as Wordsworth describes
with “the glory and freshness of a dream.” The sight of a wild rose
growing on a hedge, the scent of lime-tree blossoms caught
suddenly as I rode down a hill on a bicycle, came to me like
visitations from another world. But it was not only my senses
that were awakened. I experienced an overwhelming emotion
in the presence of nature, especially at evening. It began
to have a kind of sacramental character for me. I approached it
with a sense of almost religious awe and , in a hush that
comes before sunset, I felt again the presence of an almost
unfathomable mystery. The song of the birds, the shape
of the trees, the colors of the sunset, were so many signs
of the presence, which seemed to be drawing me to itself.
Tags: nature transcendence
I liked the solitude and the silence of the woods and the hills. I felt there the sense of a presence, something undefined and mysterious, which was reflected in the faces of the flowers and the movements of birds and animals, in the sunlight falling through the leaves and in the sound of running water, in the wind blowing on the hills and the wide expanse of earth and sky.
Bede GriffithsWhen we approach the Upanishads for an understanding of the Cosmic Mystery, we are coming to the very heart of the Hindu experience of God. This is what we want to try to understand, not with our minds, but with our hearts: to enter into the heart and continually remind ourselves that the Upanishads are intended to lead us to the heart. The Greek fathers of the Church used to say, "Lead the thoughts from the head into the heart and keep them there." This is to open to the Cosmic Mystery.
Bede GriffithsThere is a beautiful expression of this in the Chandogya Upanishad: 'There is this City of Brahman, (that is the body), and in this city there is a shrine, and in that shrine there is a small lotus, and in that lotus there is a small space, (akasa). Now what exists within that small space, that is to be sought, that is to be understood.' This is the great discovery of the Upanishads, this inner shrine, this guha, or cave of the heart, where the inner meaning of life, of all human existence, is to be found.
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