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INTERFAITH
UNITY IN MEDITATION
a presentation by Dr. Swami Veda Bharati
I pay homage to the venerable
fellow waves of divine light here; deep homage to you.
I pay homage to those guides of many paths and religions who
for thousands of years have gathered to exchange their
spiritual experiences with each other, have shared a certain
path of interior peace and silence.
I pay homage to the Source of interior peace and silence.
In the words of Rig Veda:
One Fire alone, kindled variously, blazes in many flames
One Sun alone grants power to all these forms in the
universe
One Dawn alone illuminates all so many entities
One alone it is that has become the manifold all.
This oneness is not to be enunciated but to be experienced
in that state of consciousness from where all religions have
emerged, a state of deep contemplation.
The Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree for forty nine days;
all the Bodhisattvas and eighty-four siddhas; the Ch’an and
Zen masters;
Zarathustra’s ten years of solitude and contemplation in a
cave;
The Sufis who abolished their ‘I’,
Christ in solitude for 40 days;
Desert fathers who vanquished the devil’s darkness;
St. Francis of Assisi, St. John of the Cross;
Rabiya of Basra, Lalla of Kashmir, Santa Teresa of Avila,
Sister Clara; The
monks on the Mount Athos, and those in the subterranean
caves of the monasteries of Ethiopia;
Those entering “dream time”, the wise elders, guiding their
novices into the realities of the “other” realms on all
continents and civilizations in all millenniums – they who
have taken short cuts to knowledge without inventing a
script;
The ten Gurus, attuned to Akal Purukh, who incessantly heard
the unstruck sound, anhad naad, in every breath and became
dwellers of the Palace of the Void, sunna-mahal.
The meditation masters, the Yogis, in the Himalayas;
The Rishis of the Vedas and the
Upanishads experiencing within and then revealing to the
world the methods in meditation;
Unveiled in their deep contemplative meditative state it is
that all religions have originated.
If we do not seek to enter the same contemplative state as
theirs we shall continue to misread and misinterpret what
these guides of humanity have been repeatedly teaching us:
The Kingdom of Heaven is within you; You are the temple of
God. May I ask you
to join these ancient guides of humanity in the experience
of unity in silence?
Please bring your awareness only to the space that the
temple of God, your body, is occupying,
With eyes closed lightly;
Both feet on the ground.
Rest your hands lightly on your thighs or on your knees.
Enter the silence within.
Choose a word from your own tradition:
Christians may choose Jesus or Abba or Ave Maria.
Muslims may remember Allaho or La-Ilah.
Mazdayasnians may choose Ashem Vohu or Vohu Mano.
Theravada Buddhists may choose the word Buddho.
The Sikhs may choose Wahe Guru.
The Mahayana Buddhists may choose the name or seed-syllable
of their favourite form of the Buddha or Bodhisattva
manifestation.
The Hindus may select the name of their ishta, their
favourite name for God or for the Divine Mother.
Now with the eyes closed, relax your forehead.
Feel the flow and the touch of the divine gift called the
breath.
Feel the flow and the touch of the breath in the nostrils.
Breathe gently, slowly, smoothly.
When you come to the end of a breath let there be no pause.
Immediately begin to feel the next breath.
While feeling the
flow and the touch of the breath in the nostrils, think the
sacred name or phrase you have chosen. Not in the mouth nor
on the tongue. Only in the mind.
Breathing out, think that name, and
without a break, breathing in, think that name.
No break between the breaths.
No break in the thought of the divine name along with the
breath flow.
All conflicts of the mind settle down and merge into the
flow of a single stream.
Continue to feel the breath with the divine name as a
thought.
Observe how the mind, Name and the breath are flowing
together as a single stream; the entire mind becoming an
even flowing stream.
Maintaining the flow of this stream, gently open your eyes.
Let the flow of silence and peace continue.
Only a mind at peace will generate peace among religions,
ethnicities and the various peoples. Resolve to be the
source of that peace. Maintain the flow of this awareness.
Again, I pay homage to those Masters of the past thousands
of years who have in the same manner as here gathered many
times in history to bring and string together the peoples of
manifold doctrines and rituals into a single stream of peace
and silence.
I pay homage to you all, the fellow waves of divine light.
Observe that even though the names of God chosen were many,
the silence of all was only one.
It is thus that the faithful of all religions may pray
together.
Maintain the flow
of the unifying stream even as you listen to other teachers
of wisdom in this confluence of minds.
May God, all the
Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, prophets, Incarnations and the Gurus
of all Lineages bless us all. |
