ON FAITH

'Weave in Faith; God will provide the thread' --
so says an ancient Indian proverb about the art of weaving the cloth of life.

Read on further to find out what others have to say on the subject of Faith:

Faith is a state of openness or trust.
To have faith is like when you trust yourself to the water.
You don't grab hold of the water when you swim, because if you do,
you will become stiff and tight in the water, and sink.
You have to relax, and the attitude of faith is
the very opposite of clinging, and holding on.
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion,
and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe
becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight.
But the attitude of faith is to let go,
and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be. -- Alan Watts

All that thought suggests to me, I can do.
All that thought reveals in me, I can become.
This should be the unshakable faith in my Self,
Because God dwells in me. ~Sri Aurobindo

No one can call upon God without knowing Him.
St.Augustine wonders:
"May it be that a man must implore You before he can know You?"
The only things to count on are longing and the occult directives of desire.
Does this mean that prayer must come before faith?
Perhaps, 'not knowing' is the first condition of prayer. Can that be?
Augustine finds his working answer in Scripture:
"How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?
They shall praise the Lord that seek him."
Longing is the only sure knowledge, that core of human instinct
which unfurls its song of praise. ~Saint Augustine

Shraddha:
The nearest English equivalent (to this Sanskrit term)
is Faith, but it means much more.
It is the set of values, axioms, prejudices, and pre-possessions
that colours our perceptions, governs our thinking, dictates our responses,
and shapes our lives, generally without our even being aware of its presence and power.
Shraddha is not an intellectual abstraction; it is our very substance.
The Gita says (17:3) --
"A person is what his Shraddha is."
The Bible using similar words, says:
"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

There is nothing passive about Shraddha. It is full of potency.
For it prompts action, conditions behavior,
and determines how we see and therefore, respond to the world around us.
The power to heal or harm is inherent in our ideas of ourselves.

Yet Shraddha is not brute determination or wishful thinking.
Our lives are an eloquent expression of our beliefs:
what we deem worth having, doing, attaining, being.
What we strive for shows what we value.
We back our Shraddha with our time, our energy, our very lives.
Thus Shraddha determines destiny.

As the Buddha put it:
"All that we are is the result of what we thought.
We are made of our thoughts,
we are moulded by our thoughts."
As we think, so we become. ~Eknath Easwaran

At points in our life, everything we believe in collapses into a deep, dark hole,
and we feel that all of our previous efforts to live an honest, principled life have been in vain. There is a crisis of faith—a place void of spirit and dominated by utter hopelessness.
There are no guides, no hints at where to go next.
There is no life in front of you and no one to talk to.
This emptiness seems barren.
But a new kind of faith arises directly
out of our depressive thoughts and emotions,
and we no longer crave comfort from anyone else. ~Thomas Moore

When all your efforts end in failure,
it means that you are being taught the lesson
that, not your own efforts,
but God's Grace alone can bring success.
And you should seek His Grace.

When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and
you must take a step into the darkness of the unknown,
believe that one of two things will happen to you:
Either there will be something solid for you to stand on, or
You will be taught how to fly. ~ Patrick Overton

The Guru tells the disciple:
"This is the truth that I have experienced."
and explains and instructs.
The disciple, with deep faith in the Guru,
travels the path, and ultimately exclaims:
"I too have now experienced the truth that my Guru spoke of."
There is no such thing as 'blind' faith!
_________________________

Discovering purpose

ON PURPOSE

What is the life which most of us lead every day? Basically, it consists of actions to earn enough resources to enable us to acquire things which we want. We want to acquire these things because we expect that through them we will have the sensory experiences which we desire to have.
Since we are driven by our wants and since we cannot fulfill all the wants, we should audit our wants carefully with reference to a check-list and accept a commitment to fulfill only.those which pass this audit. Actions decided upon in this systematic manner will be greatly empowering because everytime we want any thing, we will have made it a habit to ask ourselves these questions:
· What experience am I looking for?
· Do I need this experience?
· Will it make me happy in the long run?
· Keeping in view that my time-resource is limited, can I afford the investment of the necessary time?
· What other activity/experience will I have to forego to be able to afford this? Is such a sacrifice acceptable?
· Am I making a wise choice, over-all?
· A good way of knowing what want we should select and why, is by knowing our purpose in life:
· A purpose is not a goal; for a goal is something that is reached. A purpose is only a direction. We use our purpose to set our course in life.
· A purpose is never achieved; it is fulfilled in each moment that we are "on purpose." When we are "on course," we are on "purpose."
· A purpose is not created. We already have a purpose; we have to discover it. We have always had a purpose and it has always been the same. Our purpose for the remainder of our lifetime remains the same.
When we become consciously aware of our purpose, it's easier to choose actions and our goals and reach them. The litmus test of any action is simply to ask the question: "Does this action fulfill my purpose?" The answer may be yes or no and we always have the option of choosing whether we want the action or not. But it is always wise to remember that there is a certain value to being ‘on purpose.’ Once we discover this value through the practice of staying on course, we will always act to fulfill our ‘purpose.’
How do we discover our purpose? If we listen carefully, we will hear or sense a voice inside ourselves. It's the voice of our inner teacher. We must train ourselves to listen to it. Amidst all the din of the other voices in there, the inner teacher reminds us constantly: "I am here, very close to you. I'm your friend and I love you. If you listen to me, I can guide you." We have to listen to this teacher if we want to lead a purposeful life.
It is necessary to seek this guide; a navigator cannot steer course without a compass and a knowledge of the destination to reach. Religion/philosophy is the book of instruction which assists us in this seeking.