Spiritual Tradition Quotes

To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people.

The Dalai Lama, these days, encourages Westerners not to take up Buddhism, partly because he feels that our roots are deep in other traditions, and we should go deeper into our own traditions rather than just acquiring the surfaces of others.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.

I felt we must separate political responsibility. The Dalai Lama should not carry that burden. So that is my selfish reason - to protect the old Dalai Lama tradition. It is safer without political involvement.

Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.

Tradition is the thief of power. There is no area of our lives where that theft is more evident than in the area of divine healing.

Virtually every spiritual tradition teaches that your higher self is the presence of God within you.

The stone which Jacob consecrated at Bethel the generation of the living continues to anoint, paying the tithes which of old he vowed to the house of God there.

The Psalms offer us a way of joining in a chorus of praise and prayer that has been going on for millennia and across all cultures. Not to try to inhabit them, while continuing to invent non-psalmic 'worship' based on our own feelings of the moment, risks being like a spoiled child who, taken to the summit of Table Mountain with the city and the ocean spread out before him, refuses to gaze at the view because he is playing with his Game Boy

People read a lot of stories about witches, fairies, paranormals, and children possessed by evil spirits. They go to films showing rituals featuring pentagrams, swords, and invocations. That's fine, people need to give free reign to their imagination and to go through certain stages. Anyone who gets through those stages without being deceived will eventually get in touch with the Tradition.

Every spiritual tradition has this idea of death and resurrection. It's not unique to Christianity.

There is no gay leader anywhere near the stature of Martin Luther King, because black activism drew on the profound spiritual tradition of the church, to which gay political rhetoric is childishly hostile.

I wanted to write about voodoo tradition that I feel has been very important to survival of black people here: people of the African diaspora, people of this region, and throughout the south.

When I was a kid, I'd kneel down at the side of my bed every night before I went to sleep, and my mother and I would say a Greek prayer to the Virgin Mary.

The consciousness of being borne up by a spiritual tradition that goes back for centuries gives one a feeling of confidence and security in the face of all passing strains and stresses.

In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.

The Church's teaching isn't an official statement, but the cumulative understanding of all the people who have loved and experienced Jesus through time.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

I think that voodoo as a spiritual tradition has been demonized for so long in popular culture. I wanted to write against that and write a character who practiced that spiritual tradition who was not evil and intent on creating zombies or causing pain through voodoo dolls or whatever.

There are times, you know, it's said in the Spiritual Tradition, just a glimpse at an enlightened personage can convey immense information at the sub-conscious level that sprouts later, that we don't even know.

I am not a theologian or a historian, and I feel no call to become a defender of the faith, so in my case, the search for what remains valuable focuses on language itself: Catholic prayer, ritual, the naming of things.

Down through the ages, there has always been the spiritual path. It's been passed on - it always will be - and if anybody ever wants it in any age, it's always there.

The teachings of Tibetan Buddhism have been passed down for a long time now. They have that system pretty well figured out.

The real goal of a spiritual tradition should not be ascent, but openness, vulnerability, and this does not require great experiences but, on the contrary, very ordinary ones. Charisma is easy; presence, self-remembering, is terribly difficult, and where the real work lies.

I'm a Sikh; it's part of my religious tradition to never cut my hair and keep it wrapped in a turban.