The Essence of Faiths
Whispers from everywhere
Seeing to the bottom of the lake
The mind is like a great lake but, in most people, the surface is rough and the water is not clear. They cannot therefore see into the depths of their mind; they have only a surface, or at best a very shallow, view.
The root of all religious thought lies in getting to know the deep mind. The surface view is seen as an unwholesome disease. The medicine to cure this disease will be some kind of mind training. This can take many forms and has many names. It can be thought of as prayer in most western religions or as meditation in most eastern religions.
Prayer or meditation are not to be thought of as ends in themselves but rather as means to a greater end. This greater end cannot be adequately expressed in words but common phrases for it include 'the peace that passes all understanding', 'becoming One with God (or the Absolute)', 'salvation', 'liberation' or 'complete enlightenment'.
Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a German Dominican monk whose writings are noted for the amazing similarities which they have with the writings of the Zen Masters of China and Japan. Here is what he had to say about a mind in which the waters are still and clear:
"A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or devotion and which does not seek its own interest in anything but is always immersed in God's most precious will, having gone out of what is its own. There is no work which men and women can perform, however small, which does not draw from this its power and its strength."