Deeds vs. Intentions
Righteousness Is Not Self-Righteousness
Reading and Affirmation for April
From the book The Beatitudes: Their Inner Meaning by Swami Kriyananda
Deeds vs. Intentions
Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.
The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.
Jesus Christ emphasized repeatedly the spirit, not the letter, of the law. In Chapter 5 of the Gospel of St. Matthew he speaks of the sin of killing, and of the legal punishment attendant on that sin, but says that more important than the act is the desire to kill, or to do harm. He shows that the sin of harmful desire goes beyond merely wanting to kill.
“My message to you,” he said, “is this: Whoever is angry with his brother without cause already stands condemned; whoever contemptuously calls his brother a fool shall answer for it to the Supreme Council; and whoever calls his brother an outcast of God shall be in danger of hellfire.”
“Brother,” here, means any other human being. For all of us in the highest sense are brothers and sisters – children of our one Father-Mother, God. The true self of one is the Self of all. To hurt another is, even if one doesn’t realize it, to hurt oneself.
Swami Kriyananda in The Path recalls an episode in which the Master, Paramhansa Yogananda, revealed his sense of identity even with the plants. “One day,” Kriyananda wrote, “we were moving a delicate but rather heavy tropical plant into position on the hillside. Our handling evidently was too rough, for Master cried out, ‘Be careful what you are doing. Can’t you feel? It’s alive!’”
To wish death to anyone – to wish even harm to another creature – is to deny in oneself the reality of that divine life of which all of us are manifestations. It is, in short, to deny the eternal truth, proclaimed by the Bhagavad Gita in the second Chapter:
This Self is never born, nor does it perish. Once existing, it cannot ever cease to be. It is birthless, eternal, changeless, ever itself. It is not slain when the body is slain.
Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.
Whispers From Eternity
97. Demand that my bubble of life become the Sea of Life
O Father, I am a wave of consciousness on the bosom of Thy cosmic ocean. I am a bubble: oh, make me the sea!
Paramhansa Yogananda
Inspiration from the Rays of One Light
“My message to you,” he said, “is this: Whoever is angry with his brother without cause already stands condemned; whoever contemptuously calls his brother a fool shall answer for it to the Supreme Council; and whoever calls his brother an outcast of God shall be in danger of hellfire.”
Matthew 5:22
We will take these meaningful words into our meditation together for deep reflection and contemplation. But firstly, we will listen to the beautiful Psalm of David, sung by Mary Kretzmann.
Psalm of David
Listen to the Psalm of David
Reflect, Meditate and Listen to Instrumental Music
Reflection from the Rays of the One Light
Peace Sangha
This week, I was inspired by the teaching:
“Whoever is angry with his brother without cause already stands condemned; whoever contemptuously calls his brother a fool shall answer for it; and whoever calls his brother an outcast of God shall be in danger of hellfire.” — Matthew 5:22
These words reminded me of the sacred responsibility we carry in our thoughts, in the care of our speech, and in how we see one another. From this reflection, I felt moved to write a poem called “The One Light in Us All”.
The One Light in Us All
We light the candle
In your Divine Grace
We walk this world as many faces
Yet the one breath
Moves quietly through us
A single wind, stirring countless leaves
The heart of another
Is not separate from mine
Or the eternal leaves
That whispers the beats to my rhythm
To help my soul remember
To wound a Brother is to bruise the very place where my own spirit lives.
To cast out a sister is to lose a part of myself that no love can ever replace
We all wait around the same eternal well
Children of the One
Created in the Ray of the Same Light
From the same Father and Mother
In seeing you clearly, I learn to see myself
In honouring your wholeness, I return to my Home, my Centred, quiet Self
In learning to Forever Love You, I remember what we have always been
One Family
One Flame
One Infinite Self
May Thy will be Done
Guide us back, Again and Again
To the One Light in Us All
Aum Peace Amen
