Well, because of this, we believe that religion is a very important dimension of our responsibility and of our social responsibility. It's not just a matter of social security. And at the same time, it is a challenge in our realized Let's see. So I'd like to develop that, that we cannot really focus on the meeting of religions, the meeting of spiritual traditions. They cannot be challenged, challenged, even out of their sight. So I'd like to draw the notion of our social responsibility to improve responsibility for spirituality.

[01:11]

And our social responsibility does improve this concern for the spiritual welfare of all mankind. Because in life and health system, we are concerned with the happiness of it, no matter what is your own social responsibility. But my concern is always the happiness of it. And happiness is inseparably connected with spirit love. That is the first point I'd like to make here while I think about that. By spirit love, I want to explain spirituality. Spirituality doesn't mean applied religion, if you want to put it this way. Religion lives out in every human being. That's all. It's nothing abstract or imaginary or surreal.

[02:16]

But it's just, spirituality is our living out in each life of our religion. That's what religion is. And by religion, in the widest sense, I mean our quest for meaning, for ultimate meaning, frankly. The various religions, who is it in Judah, Babylon, whatever else it may be, are just so many ways of being in a search for meaning, search for the meaning. And therefore, I think it's an interesting and fairly good way of putting it that religion elicits our egregious interest in our search for meaning, our search for opulence. That includes, in a sense, even thinking. And it is very important not to define religious innovation that may force us to introduce God as

[03:24]

in this particular very sense of God. Surely when we say that religion is a quest for ultimate being, we have excluded God. We have excluded everything in this time, those who believe in God. He is the source of us, the source of all humanity. But if we refuse God in our recognition, then we have excluded not only atheists who have been weakly religious, for example, but more weakly religious than those who are bigots. But we have also excluded St. Boris, who not only believes in God, but doesn't believe in all of the reality which is exactly what we mean by God. So if you see religion as the quest of need, the quest for need, man's quest for need, man's quest for ultimate need, eventually, and spirituality, and the acquisition of this religious question every day, just how does that question evolve when we influence the way I make coffins, or something of that sort.

[04:34]

That's not spiritual. If it doesn't, I'm just not a very spiritual person. And we have to face But if we see it in this context, then certainly spirituality is quite central to our social concern because ultimately our social concern is the concern for everybody's happiness. And happiness is impossible for human beings without rising meaning. In fact, this is just what our happiness depends on. There's just one question. Have we found meaning or are we finding meaning in whatever we are doing and suffering or not? You can easily check this again with your own experience. You simply have to ask yourself, how is it true? You think of one person whom you know who is really happy.

[05:36]

The happiest person you know. And then think of the unhappiest person you know. Or stressful person. Or someone whom you really know very well. And then you think, you need to ask yourself, what's the difference between the two? Because the difference lies in what the one person have his own wealth and power and other desirable things? Well, maybe not. Maybe the one that is the happy one has much less than the desperate one. What has really been worked on is that the one person who is happy is finding whatever he or she is experiencing really good, and the other one thinks that everything we can think of was worthwhile being here. And that is uselessly absurd. So that is the difference. To the extent to which we find meaning, we bring something to it. To which we bring something to us,

[06:38]

We are happy. There have been people who were tortured to death, slowly, and looked perfectly happy throughout. Not pleased, not comfortable, but perfectly happy. And there are other people who were absolutely happy in their jobs, and they committed suicide, just to get out, because it was unbearable, but absolutely absurd. So, what that means is, That's why, in meaning, I don't mean something tax-like, but simply, what does it mean by God? God. Does it make a difference? Does it make a difference to be very different? Meaningful in the same manner. It makes a difference. It means something. It does something. And there we are leaving off with, again, something that is not necessarily given when we speak of our own purpose.

[07:45]

And I'm coming back to this, the very important thing, that there is such a thing as a life that can form its purpose for activity, for its meaning in us. Meaning and purpose should not be separated from one another, should not be fought against one another, but simply because something's purposeful, it does not yet have meaning. And this is a perspective that comes immediately into our social concerns, because in life, life of the world, of where we function or what makes me rise today, I'm thinking, for instance, of Professor of Organistic Biology at the University of California, who I know, and who says, from Koksaba on stage, that we saw a couple of days ago, he's not a Christian. He's not a believer in any religion. But Koksaba, honestly, he says, I need something of that sort.

[08:49]

And he says, we know up to today how to do most anything. And there was anything we could relax about. But we don't know what to do. We have the purpose completely in our hands. Everything in the house has gone. All we need to do is push a button. But we don't know what. How do we know what? And then you go to the religious leaders. And you expect them to tell you what to do, because that's the area of religion, not the area of purpose, but the area of meaning. The meaning comes into all of us. You expect them to tell you what to do. And then if you come up against the next problem, then it ends. Those men and women who are expected to be your religious leaders, give you the laws. when you ask what to do.

[09:52]

And there are thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of people out there who say, we don't want news and documents. We want to know why that's a mentality commitment. And that is the other part with regard to me. And one of the last points I want to make If you start out with ethics, that is, with rules and laws, with the labor of things, or all things are laid out and just be quick. And that, unfortunately, is what we have to have by duty if and when we are going to get religious education. If you start out with ethics, you'll never get to religion. There is no way from rules and laws to religion. But let me start out with religion. We have to get rid of it. It can't be avoided.

[10:55]

And there is a tremendous amount of lies going on today. We see this. In fact, we see hundreds of people, thousands of people are going to other spiritual conditions, Buddhist, Hinduism, anti-Semitic legislation, Sufism, anything. Why don't they come to their own spots in the Catholic Churches? Because all that we are offering them is not, or mostly what we are offering them is not. They go somewhere where they get a religious experience. And I have seen on one occasion four hundred young people listening to a swami who gave them simply spoons and forks for one hour, just one after the other.

[12:09]

They'd eat it all up, they were so enthusiastic about it. But that was after nine days of an expensive spiritual experience. And so then they wanted to take that from them. On another occasion, the same money, essentially, because I was at the chapel, you know, And there were so many students who wanted to be students, like outsiders, sisters, fathers, fathers. And the hall was just completely filled for the lecture. So they put ladders in the video, and they carried it out, and they came in through the windows, and mixed it in through the windows. have usually been expected to prevent us as a very good nation. But one of the nuns was overheard saying to her companion, but this is saying anything that my heart is missing is there. But absolutely no. But why keep it all there?

[13:12]

I mean, we eat it all up and we don't come to the expectedness to get it. because they do not want news and gossip. They do not want to start off with edicts. They want to start off with religious experience. And if you give a person religious experience, then the thought experience through which we find meaning in our life, and then the truth and gossip come from our imagined experience. They are simply the response to the religious experience. And that is where the power of social responsibility lies in providing that religious experience. And if we have to say that we have to admit that we don't provide this religious experience,

[14:16]

and that this is the reason why our young people go to other sources, that is kind of quite in this day and age the challenge to be our own spirit child. And how do we get into this religion of Jainism? We do not formally get into it. through something that's specially set up to provide a religious experience. But we get it through religion. Now we do need acceptance, we do need to set up the right path, and take a little push down in that. But really where our spiritual life comes in, and our spiritual experience, is in our everyday lives. And this is what we are teaching. Right now, You find yourself in one of those rare occasions where you can get swallowed, in which you get a little additional polygon, take a little time out, consider where you really stand, and go back on.

[15:28]

But if this, if your spiritual experience is limited to those stages, it is nil. Now it really begins, now it becomes, that's where it really begins, to live a life of prayer. And if we can really, in the end of doing, really exchange in terms of life and prayer, then you are already in a position to offer what they are really looking for. And anybody can become a guru in this sense. And everybody is called to become a guru in this sense. I'm not really worried about the young people who follow Buddhist teachers or Hindu teachers or any other spiritual teacher.

[16:29]

I'm much more worried about their parents. I mean that they are scared. For one thing, I have met so very many young people But of course we would have to say, and that depends on all of us, that humanly speaking, there is no way for them, no direct way for them to access spirituality. Through something or other that has happened that forces their existence away, that acts as a block, and the Christian message is inaccessible to them. It has been presented to them at a different time, or maybe not presented alive, but something else interferes in such a way that whatever they consider to be the issue, or connected to the issue, They have to be judgmental if they really want to find God, if they want to be honest with themselves.

[17:37]

This is not their fault in many cases. It's our fault if we want to find God. Christianity has been presented to many people in our own society, or the Christian message, in such a way that they must reject it if they want to find God. And so thank God that there are other teachers there who point the way to God, and lead them there, and when they get there, they are there anyway. It doesn't matter too much whether they are Christians or other things. But what happens normally, and that's very encouraging, especially for the more traditional minds of the ones among us. But normally what happens is that once they have fallen spiritually, once they have fallen into Israelite, once they have fallen abroad as the source ofosity, very soon the Jewish-Christian context comes back. because they are formed very early in life.

[18:39]

And so, I know literally scores of people, of whom you can say they would have never found Christ through Christianity, many Christian teachers. But who have found him explicitly, and have found the church, and have found the sacraments, through Buddhists or through Hindus. Because once they find the spiritual dimension in their life, which is somehow blocked by the Christian education, they come back to their earlier experience, to the forms and to the imagery in which they grew up in a very early moment. And therefore, like they did, our challenge is to in our prayer life, because prayer life, not saying prayers, but our prayer life, as we tried to develop that yesterday, our life in communication with God, that is our spiritual life, that is spirituality, that is self-spirituality, that quest for meaning of life, a way of living from which nothing is excluded at all.

[19:57]

And what I'd like to point out to you is that as we go more deeply into our own Christian spirituality, our own Christian tradition, the most authentic Christian tradition, we open our eyes towards the other great spiritual traditions. That is what is happening. You don't have to As a Buddhist teacher, it's important to find what is really a segment of the heart of Buddhists. You don't have to have a teacher's room in order to find what's at the very heart of Buddhism. Because, maybe it's wasteful reading, it's wrong, and Or is it that for us that this question is inter-dimensional? We are just so many dimensions of one another. So I would like tonight to develop that from our own tradition of creating, from our own traditional tradition of creating.

[21:05]

It only goes deeper than that. we will discover more of the dimensions that the other spiritual conditions have cultivated, and have cultivated in many cases, much deeper and much more faithful, more faithful than we have. But that doesn't mean that they are not ours. What's different? We must start out with what is our most conditional or of the most rarely dealt with form of prayer. And that is, most of what I've tried to say last night, our communication with God through literally every word that comes from God. The most individual way for a Jew, or a Christian, or a Muslim to put that matter,

[22:07]

For someone who is not part of the Biblical tradition, the most Biblical way of finding healing in life, in God, is to understand whatever happens to us, or whatever we experience, as a Word of God that comes to us, that reaches us. Everything we see is God speaking to us. Everything we hear is God speaking to us. Everything we perceive in whatever way, however, is God communicating with us through these words, through these various syllables, as I said last time, into which the one eternal word, God, is spoken out. Those various ways in which the one eternal word, God, is spelt out. There's another one with those specific scores, of which I wrote one or two last night, which illustrates them really good. It's about one of the great masters, Rabbi Kishtian.

[23:10]

And Tartinides said that he could never quote his master. but not by its supposed to do it. Supposed to quote a good saying in the name of King Mussolini, I think, expressing it very well, but as you said, it's teleported back, not yet teleported, but seems to have been advanced. And the reason is this, that this has to start every sermon by quoting scripture. giving us a little scripture passage, I'm actually going to give that to him. And the scripture passage started, initially, with the birds, and God spoke, and that's on the passage. And when Rabbi Zuzia heard, and God spoke, that was enough of the sermon for him. And he was already in ecstasy, and carried on to such an extent that they had to take him out of the synagogue, or wherever it was, And then the story tells that he was standing in the hall, or in the woodshed, and he was reading the vines and crying out, God, stop!

[24:15]

God, stop! And Rodney Hoover recounted the story to him. He says, and as soon as they are no more, Rodney said, all I've got to do is go to the servants. Rodney did that. Because with one word, the world is created. And with one word, the world is to be. And that is what makes Juvenalist Christianity great, that God speaks. And everything else becomes meaningful to us because we believe that God speaks. And this is not restricted to us, to its early believers, but is so basic to our Western culture that it has infiltrated everywhere. and people who may not be identified with any church or any spiritual tradition may want to have nothing to do with any organized religion, will still experience meaning in terms of a word, the best.

[25:26]

Whenever anything means something to me, I say it. It says something to me. When it becomes meaningful to you, you say, that speaks to me, that tells me something. These are references to the verb. It becomes a verb. When it's meaningless to you, you say, this is absurd to me. The very term absurd speaks the whole story, right? Because literally, absurd means absolutely dead. And when you say, this is absurd, or that is absurd, you have really said something about yourself, not about the outcome at all. You have simply said, I'm absolutely dead to what this situation or this thing or this verse wants to tell me. Nice to see you. I am led to believe the word of God that is coming to me here and now, and that is why I am in this situation now, sir.

[26:31]

Really, I am, sir, I am absolutely led. And the exact absurdity is that all our beings are only listening or obeying. We have the choice to be a lifestyle that is observed, that we cannot listen, or a meaningful life, and that is what we need. Well, it began in that full extent of becoming a formalist anti-responsivist. That's where the social responsibility comes in. The response, not just sitting back and listening to each other, we have now, in a bit of a way, but the response into this, that's what Paul Keeley ended in God knows. So, the Most of you know how important for Beacons is the whole Judeo-Christian tradition. For Beacons, in that divine sense, living by the word of God.

[27:32]

That is the force of prayer, which is the most typical expression of Christian and Jewish spirituality. Living by the word of God. And for those of you who are here with me and admire us, I can't see this injustice, this slander of people living by the word. I think that after the last Wednesday night in Lech, on the eve of Mardi Gras, you know, there's at least a dozen talks, and I've tried to have not too much overlap with what I do here, because I know there are quite a lot of people from the environment. This listening to the word, living by the word of God, We think a lot that it's not for a whole evening, just one meeting. We said something about it last night. In France, The notion of a verb as the reality that is meaningful to us is so central to our whole outlook, whether we're Christians or Jews or just Westerners, that it is almost impossible for us to realize that another tradition could find meaning, could embark on that quest for ultimate meaning which stands in it by another way than the verb.

[28:58]

And he should be able to appreciate, but it costs some effort. There is a story, a Buddhist story, which narrows this almost perfectly. It's a story about an associate who was so struck by the punchline, God's teeth. And the punchline of that story is, I have heard the sound of north-south. It is one of those, it starts out with one of those riddles. One of the students of a queen, one of the great Zen teachers, Roshi. And Roshi, you have probably heard this story about this master giving the student the riddle. leads him to his spiritual awakening, and to frustrate his reasoning mind to the point that he finally overcomes his reasoning and goes beyond reasoning.

[30:13]

And the riddle that the passage gives to the disciple in this case is, for the chapter mentions, so you have to learn the sound of two men's chatter. Two men's chatter. What is the sound of one man's chatter? It was the sound of twice what came down. It was the worst sound of what came down. And we were doing hundreds of this and vessels with it for a whole year. And finally, when we had the insight, they came down and stressed me the other way, but they might have heard the sound of proposal. Now if you think that you can't figure it out, well, you're already on the wrong track. You could strengthen the point if you can't figure it out. But there is something that goes beyond light. And there must be something that goes beyond light. And that is the sun. The whole sun.

[31:06]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ