Friday, March 02, 2007

Responding to a devotional in which I quoted Sakyong Mipham, someone from the Quaker tradition shared how similar the quote was to something a Quaker writer that he enjoys once said. Calling to the mind George Fox (who many consider to be the founder of Quakerism), I answered his observation with the following comment:

"George Fox and those inspired and influenced by him were/are so similar to other mystics of other traditions...Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Yogananda Paramahansa, Ernest Holmes, Charles Fillmore, Nona Brooks, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mother Teresa, John Shelby Spong, Emmanuel Swedenborg, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Alan Watts...
Regardless of the vocabularies or images they inherited or invented, they each seemed to share a similar interior life, an Innate Wisdom, and an awareness of the unity of all life. I'm always amazed, impressed, and awe-struck by how similar their conclusions were and how they each seem to point toward the same inexpressible, experiential, universal Truth. That Tibetan Buddhist Sakyong Mipham would express the same Wisdom discovered by Friends is no surprise to me. It seems to suggest that we are all really part of the One, the Whole."

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