April 12: Day 102

STONE TWO CONTINUED
 
Open: I partake of spiritual wisdom and knowledge from a variety of sources and open myself to different insights.

Instruction: Consider the similarities of religious thought.

Today we will look at one specific concept and how different religions shed a variety of light on the subject. The concept we have chosen is Loving-kindness.

• What sort of religion can it be without compassion? You need to show compassion to all living beings. Compassion is the root of all religious faiths. –Hinduism, Basavanna, Vacana 247
• Love covers a multitude of sins. –Christianity, 1 Peter 4.8
• God enjoys justice, kindness, and charity to one’s kindred, and forbids indecency, abomination, and oppression. He admonishes you so that you may take heed. –Islam, Qur’an 16.90
• He who can find no room for others lacks fellow feeling, and to him who lacks fellow feeling, all men are strangers. –Taoism, Chuang Tzu 23
• Do not rebuke an older man but exhort him as you would a father; treat younger men like brothers, older women like mothers, younger women like sisters, in all purity. –Christianity, 1 Timothy 5.1-2
• A man once asked the Prophet what was the best thing in Islam, and the latter replied, “It is to feed the hungry and to give the greeting of peace both to those one knows and to those one does not know.” –Islam, Hadith of Bukhari
• This same thing does the divine voice hear, thunder, repeat: Da! Da! Da! that is, restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad: self-restraint, giving, compassion. Brihadāranyaka Upanishad ch. 5, pt. 2, v. 3[1]

 
Each of these quotes has something to share about loving-kindness. Each quote is able to expand our understanding of what loving-kindness means and how it is to be practiced, and these are only a few of the quotes available from only a few of the religions of the world. Those who want a well-rounded world view of The Divine understand that rejecting insights from religions that we do not adhere to is simply impractical. Truth is truth, and if another religious organization has ways of explaining things that resonate with us, then why shouldn’t we learn from them?

Today’s Assignment is to keep in mind that we are not necessarily encouraging a study of world religions, although we see nothing wrong with that, but rather we are encouraging you to keep an open mind. When wisdom comes from outside your religious/spiritual experience of choice, you can learn from those traditions, too, if you haven’t labeled them as wrong, bad, or evil.

[1] http://www.seadict.com/en/en/the%20upanishads