Thoughts for the week:

March 23  THE POOR IN SPIRIT 

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3)

To be poor in spirit means to have emptied yourself of all desire to exercise personal self-will, and, what is just as important, to have renounced all preconceived opinions in the wholehearted search for God. It means to be willing to set aside your present habits of thought, your present views and prejudices, your present way of life if necessary; to jettison, in fact, anything and everything that can stand in the way of your finding God.

March 24  GREAT POSSESSIONS 

[W]e “have great possessions”; not so much that we are very rich in terms of money, for indeed most people are not, but because we have great possessions in the way of preconceived ideas—confidence in our own judgment, and in the ideas with which we happen to be familiar. We have pride, born of academic distinction; sentimental or material attachment to institutions and organizations; habits of life that we have no desire to renounce; concern for human respect; or perhaps fear of public ridicule. And these possessions keep us chained to the rock of suffering that is our exile from God. 

The poor in spirit suffer from none of these embarrassments, either because they never had them, or because they have risen above them on the tide of spiritual understanding.

Fox, Emmet. Around the Year with Emmet Fox . Harper One. Kindle Edition. (Excerpt)

Religion is the inmost voice of the human heart that under the yoke of a seemingly finite existence groans and travails in pain. Mankind, from their first appearance on earth, have never been satisfied with the finiteness and impermanency of life. They have always been yearning for something that will liberate them from the slavery of this mortal coil...

Ignorant are they who do not recognize the evanescence of worldly things and who tenaciously cleave to then as final realities; who madly struggle to shun the misery brought about by their own folly; who savagely cling to the self against the will of God, as Christian would say; who take particulars as final existences and ignore one pervading reality which underlies them all...

D.T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism