The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the notion of individualism in spirituality, suggesting that true understanding is communal and universal.
John Templeton's quote emphasizes the inherent interconnectedness of all existence, suggesting that the search for God as a solitary pursuit is misguided. Just as a wave is fundamentally part of the ocean, individuals are part of a larger spiritual reality, and the quest for understanding should transcend self-centered desires for personal enlightenment.
In practice
During a discussion on spirituality at a community gathering.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.
Life is made up not necessarily of great sacrifices or high-level duties but of little things. The smiles, the kindnesses, the commitments and obligations and responsibilities that are given habitually and lovingly are the blessings that win and preserve the heart and bring comfort to one's self as we as to others. This is the ministry of service performed by every useful life.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
The objective of our religious foundations is to teach people that they are hurting themselves when they say they believe something. What we should realize is we know almost nothing about God and therefore we should be eager to search and to learn.
Three of my children are medical doctors; they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.
I focus on spiritual wealth now, and I'm busier, more enthusiastic, and more joyful than I have ever been.
The prison industrial complex is perhaps, at least domestically, the most striking example of us putting profit before people. It all stems from one basic misunderstanding: that the public good can be shepherded by private interests.
Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.
And when a whirl-winde hath blowne the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Church-yard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebian bran.
We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done- of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired! There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time.
Where do vanished objects go?" "Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything," replied Professor McGonagall. "Nicely phrased," replied the eagle door knocker, and the door swung open.
Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.
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