Thursday, 4/4/13
Each time the Risen Christ appeared to his disciples
he used the same greeting. He said, “Peace be with you.” We wonder what brought
that on. It wasn’t that he had found them quarreling, and that he wanted them
to make up. It seemed, rather, that he wanted each of them to be untroubled. He
wanted each of them to be at peace with himself.
History acknowledges two great masters of the art
of gaining interior peace. One was the Seventh Century B.C. Siddartha Guatama, the founder of
Buddhism. The other was the Sixteenth Century A.D . Spanish mystic, St. John of
the Cross. Both of them taught that the secret of interior peace lay in
stopping our desiring. They differed in the motivation they proposed for
putting an end to desiring.
Siddartha, prince of the Sakya Clan of northeast India, had wealth, power, and beautiful companions, but seeing that none of those things last, he was not happy with them. Then, one day he saw a sick old man who was smiling; and on asking for the secret of that man’s joy, he was told the man was happy because he had found enlightenment, or peace.
Siddartha gave up his wealth, power, and beautiful
friends, and he wandered for decades, seeking out the answers for interior
peace. Although it had meant little to him at the time, he often thought back
on Alara Kalama, a hermit who spent his hours chanting the seven words, “God is
all things, I am illusion.”
Wearied from years of searching, Siddartha planted
himself beneath a fig tree, declaring, “Though skin and bones and blood dry up,
I will not rise before I find enlightenment. He sat on and on, turning blue, and
he found he could not shut off the memory of Alara Kalama chanting, “God is all
things, I am illusion.” At last, he embraced those words, saying, “I am just an
illusion, and as such, I have no business desiring peace, or anything else.”
With that, he stopped desiring, and he rose up enlightened. He had become the
Buddha, the “enlightened one.”
St. John of the Cross came to the same conclusion.
He taught that since it was frustrated desires that robbed us of interior
peace, stopping all desiring was the way to peace. In that he was in step with
Siddartha. Where he departed from Siddartha was in finding motivation for
stopping desires.
1 comment:
What a clear and distinctive
comparison !
THANK YOU, FATHER.
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