Be
a Hero for a Better World ... Every Act of Kindness Makes
a Difference!
INTERFAITH
*
The interdependency of humankind, the relevance
of relationship, the sacredness of creation is ancient,
ancient wisdom.
-- Rebecca
Adamson
*
The indigenous understanding has its basis of spirituality
in a recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence
of all living things, a holistic and balanced view
of the world. All things are bound together. All
things connect. What happens to the Earth happens
to the children of the earth. Humankind has not
woven the web of life; we are but one thread. Whatever
we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
-- Rebecca
Adamson
*
The end of the Cold War removed the immediate
causes of whole destruction -- but not the threat
contained in our knowledge. We must tame this
knowledge with the ideals of justice, caring,
and compassion summoned from our common human
spiritual and moral heritage, if we are to live
in peace and serenity in the twenty-first century.
--
Mahnaz Afkhami
*
Peace among religions is a precondition for world
peace.
-- Swami
Agnivesh
Peace
among religions is a precondition for world peace.
But religions, as religions, can never be at peace
with each other. To enable religions to be instruments
for peace we need to enable, first, religious communities
to progress from religion to spirituality. For the
world order to be one of peace and justice, for
the global village to be a theater of right livelihood,
it is imperative that a new and proactive spiritual
vision commensurate to the challenges of the emerging
world order be enunciated without delay. The challenge
is to make “right livelihood” a universal goal.
Recognizing this value in a symbolic way through
an award like this is a significant step in the
right direction. This is not, however, our journey’s
end. We must not rest until right livelihood is
within reach of every human being upon this earth
we love and cherish. We all have a role to play
in achieving this goal.
-- Swami
Agnivesh
Some
of the wars and conflicts of the past and present
were fought over land and resources, but many have
been over religious differences. In this past century,
a global interfaith movement has been growing, helping
to raise consciousness about the need for tolerance
and understanding between different cultures and
religions. This movement has helped highlight the
common goals that most religions share, such as
the Golden Rule, which is at the heart of nearly
all religious traditions. At the same time, many
throughout the world are discovering that 'spirituality'
-- a deep connection to a greater purpose for humanity
-- is an important driving force in their lives,
even if they aren't religious.
-- Robert
Alan Silverstein
*
"We
may have different religions, different languages,
different colored skin, but we all belong to one human
race."
-- Kofi
Annan
*...Several
million Sarvodaya adherents in Sri Lanka have proved
that they can transcend racial, religious, linguistic
and ethnic barriers to accept a common state of
ideals, principles, and constructive programs to
build a new society as collectively envisioned by
them.
--
Dr.
Ari Ariyaratne
*
"We who have been born Buddhist, Hindu, Christian,
Muslim, or any other faith can be very comfortable
in each others temple's, mosques, and churches,
praying or meditating together to create a spiritual
mass of consciousness which can overcome our greed,
hatred, and illusions."
--
Dr.
Ari Ariyaratne
*
To assert that it is possible to establish peace
between men of different nations is simply to assert
that man, whatever his ethnical background, his
race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable
of reason. Two forces within the individual contribute
to the development of his conscience and of his
morality: reason and sensitivity.
-- Léon
Bourgeois
Whenever
a human being ceases to live for themselves and begins
to care about that which is greater than themselves,
the personality begins to experience ecstasy, joy
and spontaneous liberation. And that's found through
doing, through action, through giving, through deeply
embracing the human experience.
-- Andrew
Cohen
*
never before probably has the need for interfaith
commitment been nearly as great as it is at this
very moment.
-- Walter
Cronkite
It
seems to rise again when the crisis times come,
and this is a time of most severe crisis, as we
all know, not just for the history of the United
States and the survival indeed of our democracy,
but for the future peace of the world. And never
before probably has the need for interfaith commitment
been nearly as great as it is at this very moment.
-- Walter
Cronkite
The
fact that you are here tonight gathered together with
us testifies to the fact you understand the need for this
organization and the need for redoubling our efforts in
this organization to try to assure that democracy as represented
by the United States must depend upon a total freedom
of religion, which is written into our Constitution, of
course, and the mere suggestion that anyone could maintain
that one’s patriotism, one’s devotion to one’s country
can be judged by one’s religion is so vile, so vile that
we have to take to the streets indeed and to put it aside.
-- Walter
Cronkite
"My
religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."
- The
Dalai Lama
*
I appreciate any organization or individual people
who sincerely make an effort to promote harmony
between humanity, and particularly harmony between
the various religions. I consider it very sacred
work and very important work
- The
Dalai Lama
The
problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction
of nature, poverty, hunger and so on, are human-created
problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding
and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood.
We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one
another and the planet we share.
- The
Dalai Lama
"What
we would like to do is change the world-make it a
little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter
themselves as God intended for them to do. And, by
fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly
for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the
destitute…we can, to a certain extent, change the
world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell
of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw
our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever
widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat,
there is nothing that we can do but love, and, dear
God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other,
to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as well as
our friend."
-- Dorothy
Day
"Whenever
I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep
writing about love in these times of tension and strife
which may, at any moment, become for us all a time of
terror, I think to myself: What else is the world interested
in? What else do we all want, each one of us, except to
love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all
our relationships? God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even
the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world,
to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying
to make a world where it is easier for people to love,
to stand in that relationship to each other…There can
never be enough of it."
-- Dorothy
Day
"Our
principle is, and our practices have always been,
to seek peace, and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness
and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare,
and doing that which tends to the peace of all...All
bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny,
with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with
outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence
whatsoever..."
-- George
Fox
“My
generation was bold enough to question many things
and to seek spirituality over religion. We haven’t
succeeded in overthrowing the old order yet, and maybe
there are some meanings to be found in my story about
coming of age spiritually in the latter half of the
twentieth century.”
-- Matthew
Fox
Compassion
is the essence of Jesus’ teaching, and indeed of the teaching
of all great spiritual figures from Mohammed to Isaiah,
from Lao Tzu to Chief Seattle. Yet compassion has been
sentimentalized and severed from its relationship to justice-making
and celebration. Creation Spirituality links the struggle
for justice with the yearning for mysticism.
-- Matthew
Fox
We
were made for something cosmic and will not fit peacefully
into anything much smaller. And when we try to build our
lives around anything much smaller than cosmos we become
grotesque, and our institutions, be they religious or
familial or educational or governmental are asked to do
too much. They become misshapen and malformed and turn
into instruments of cosmic and personal destruction.
-- Matthew
Fox
*
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there
is hatred, let me sow love: where there is injury,
pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is
despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and
where there is sadness, joy.
-- Saint
Francis of Assisi
*
Every time that religion has identified itself or
entangled itself with a particular political movement
or a particular government, religion has been harmed
by that. I see religion as a powerful positive healing
force for this nation and the world. But that force
is blunted, weakened, compromised inestimably, if
we turn religion into a tool for advancing political
strategy; if we make it a matter of how to win political
office; if we treat it as anything other than a sacred
part of life from which we ought to draw sustenance
and values and strength for living courageously as
good citizens.
-- C.
Welton Gaddy
*
"Every religion contains, in varying degrees, elements
of the soft and the hard. For the sake of world peace,
dialogue within religions and among them must strengthen
the softer aspects."
-- Johan
Galtung
*
“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you
friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need.
I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest
Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work
together for unity and love.”
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
It
is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read
sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If
we are to respect others' religions as we would
have them respect our own, a friendly study of the
world's religions is a sacred duty.
-- Mohandas
Gandhi
*
“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship.
I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.
My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that
Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.”
-- Mohandas
K. Gandhi
*
Interfaith dialogue is a must today, and the first
step in establishing it is forgetting the past,
ignoring polemical arguments, and giving precedence
to common points, which far outnumber polemical
ones.
-- M.
Fethullah Gülen
Tolerance,
a term which we sometimes use in place of the words
respect, mercy, generosity, or forbearance, is the
most essential element of moral systems; it is a
very important source of spiritual discipline and
a celestial virtue of perfected people.
-- M.
Fethullah Gülen
Every
breath we take, every step we make, can be filled
with peace, joy, and serenity. We need only to be
awake, alive in the present moment.
-- Thich
Nhat Hanh
*
"Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine,
theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems
of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute
truth."
-- Thich
Nhat Hanh
*
"To me, love, spirituality and life are all the
same thing. To me they're all about honoring the
circle, and they're just different ways of defining
the same understanding. Our society as a whole,
because we have placed our love for money above
our love for life, has devalued the sacred and devalued
love."
-- Julia
Butterfly Hill
It
all began on a day in 1960, sitting in the kitchen of
my Greenwich home with a friend, snacking on peanut butter
sandwiches, talking about what a mess the world was in,
with the spectre of nuclear Armageddon not a remote possibility,
when as if out of nowhere, a light turned on in my mind
and I excitedly saw an antidote -- an ongoing forum where
dialogue and understanding could be promoted by bringing
all the world's religions together under one roof.'
-- Juliet Hollister, founder of the Temple of Understanding
There
is so much work yet to be done. It is so clear to me that
all we have to do is awaken to the fact that we are all
ONE, or as my friend Father Thomas Merton has so rightly
said, 'We are already ONE . . . what we have to become
is what we already are.' It seems so simple, doesn't it?
Yet so much more work to do. So much more work.'
-- Juliet Hollister, founder of the Temple of Understanding
*
In the next 30 years we can destroy our world. With
the very same powers — spiritual, social, scientific
— we can evolve our world. Our mission is to serve
as catalysts for a planetary awakening in our lifetime,
to take a non-violent path to the next stage of our
evolution.
-- Barbara
Marx Hubbard
*
"Let me say this loud and clear. There is a world
of difference between terrorist acts and the Islamic
Shari'a. Islam is not only a religion, but a way of
life. And at its heart lie the sacred principles of
tolerance and dialogue.
-- King
Hussein of Jordan
*
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine
of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into
the religious opinions of others.
-- Thomas
Jefferson
*
"Tolerance
implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs.
Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution
of others." -- John
F. Kennedy
*
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man
is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage
of religious freedom has inspired.
-- Robert
F. Kennedy
*
The force and the strength for peace will come from
people. And that will happen when people start to
realize that all the diversity and differences we
see of nationalities, of religions, of cultures,
of languages, are all beautiful diversities, for
they are only on the surface. And deep down we share
the same humanity, the global humanity. -- Satish
Kumar
“There
will be no peace among the nations without peace among
the religions and no peace among the religions without
dialogue.”
--Fr. Hans Kung
*
…in
place of the Old Bottom Line of money and power, a
New Bottom Line of Love and Generosity is possible.
People of all faiths need to shape a political and
social movement that reaffirms the most generous,
peace-oriented, social justice-committed, and loving
truths of the spiritual heritage of the human race.
-- Rabbi
Michael Lerner
*
[Our biggest opportunity at this moment in history
is] perhaps a deeper connection with all human beings.
That kind of connection, made possible by our various
technologies, simply couldn’t exist before recent
times. The connection guarantees nothing, but it
does offer an opportunity for expressions of a global
spirit, or what I call a “species consciousness”
or “species self.” What that means is not that one
ceases to be an American, or a Christian, or a Muslim,
or a Jew, or a Hindu. One is any of those and at
the same time, in one’s own sense of self, a human
being. This kind of species consciousness is expanding.
Perhaps it represents our greatest opportunity.
--
Robert
Jay Lifton
*
All things are bound together, all things connect.
Whatever befalls the earth, befalls also the children
of the earth." Chief
Oren Lyons, Onandaga Nation
A
life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at
all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is
shaped by the end you live for. You are made in
the image of what you desire.
-- Thomas
Merton
*
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen
awareness of the interdependence of all these living
beings, which are all part of one another, and all
involved in one another.
--
Thomas
Merton
*
One world, one people, living together as a global
family! Young people will cross religious, ethnic
and cultural divides to recognize the universal human
as family. WE ARE ONE and the elders of tomorrow will
carry this torch.
-- Nina
Meyerhof
*
The Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing sustaining
and powerful movement whose interest is to prove that
religion has a healing side as well as a killing side,
and that democracy is the consequence of conscience
-- Bill
Moyers
*
The world’s major religions in the end all want
the same thing, even though they were born in different
places and circumstances on this planet. What the
world needs today is a convergence of the different
religions in the search for and definition of the
cosmic or divine laws which ought to regulate our
behavior on this planet.
--
Robert
Muller
*
"As
believers we all have an opportunity and moral obligation
to recognize our spiritual common ground; to rise
above our differences; to combat prejudice and intolerance."
-- Queen
Noor of Jordan
*
"it
is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting
the inhabitants of the village into one family,
that while each faithfully adheres to the principles
which he most approves, at the same time all shall
think charitably of their neighbours respecting
their religious opinions, and not presumptuously
suppose that theirs alone are right.
-- Robert
Owen
*
Show me a religion that doesn't care about compassion.
Show me a religion that doesn't care about stewardship
of the environment. Show me a religion that doesn't
care about hospitality.
-- Eboo
Patel
"Be
a sweet melody in the great orchestration, instead
of a discordant note. The medicine this sick world
needs is love. Hatred must be replaced by love,
and fear by faith that love will prevail." -- Peace
Pilgrim
Science
is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a
profound source of spirituality. -- Carl
Sagan
What
interfaith seeks to do is to not allow religion to fall
back into confrontational modes, into contemporary crusades
and jihads, rather to move onwards to a new level of interfaith
harmony and understanding."
-- Dr. Karen Singh
*
"I would like the church to be a place where the
questions of people are honored rather than a place
where we have all the answers. The church has to
get out of propaganda. The future will involve us
in more interfaith dialogue. ... We cannot say we
have the only truth."
-- Bishop
John Shelby Spong
''We're
talking about calling the entire world of religion into
a global dialogue,''
-- Bishop William E. Swing
*
"We have to sit down, have a meal together, pray
together and then actually talk together. Then we
realize that, yes, although we have some differences
they are not impassable differences."
-- Pauline
Tangiora
*
If the ecological crisis, for example, is to be
solved and if we are to promote genuine justice
and thus bring real peace to the planet—and with
it the possibility of improving lives on every level,
not just economically, socially, and politically,
but spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually—then,
just on a practical level, we need to have all of
the religions working together."
~ Brother
Wayne Teasdale
"So
many of the wars in history, thousands and thousands of
them for the past five, six, seven thousand years, have
been related to differences in Truth claims. If we can
evolve beyond that problem, then I think there's some
chance that we could retire the whole institution of war
and begin to focus on the peaceful evolution of humanity.
~ Brother
Wayne Teasdale
*
We
are not human beings having a spiritual experience;
we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
-- Pierre
Teilhard De Chardin
*
Love
is a fruit in season at all times and within the
reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no
limit is set. Everyone can reach this love through
meditation, prayer, sacrifice, and an intense inner
life.
~ Mother
Teresa
*
"I honor the path each person is on. I believe that
all of our prayer paths lead to the Great Mystery,
or Spirit, or God."
-- Mary
Thunder
*
Certainly
the vision of the spiritual nature of man and the
universe brings the conviction that the human potential
is unlimited and that we stand at the threshold
over which a quantum leap in consciousness is possible.
~ George
Trevelyan
"My
humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be
human together."
-- Desmond
Tutu
*
We can find common ground only by moving to higher
ground.
-- Jim
Wallis
*
We
believe in taking down the barriers, but we also
believe in the most energetic reconciliation among
peoples by getting them to know each other, talk
each other's languages, understand each other's
fears and beliefs, getting to know each other physically,
philosophically, and spiritually. It is much harder
to kill your near neighbor than the thousands of
unknown and hostile aliens at the other end of a
nuclear missile. We have to create a world in which
there are no unknown, hostile aliens at the other
end of any missiles.
-- Betty
Williams (The Peace People)
In
the context of interfaith encounter, we need to bring
to the surface how our actual beliefs shape what we do
- not simply to agree that kindness is better than cruelty.
-- Rowan D. Williams
The
spiritual path -- is simply the journey of living
our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most
people just don't know it.
-- Marianne
Williamson
*
Love
is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn.
The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear
and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in
our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our
purpose on earth.
-- Marianne
Williamson
*
There is only one river. There is only one sea.
And it flows through you, and it flows through me.
There is only one people. We are one and the same.
We are all one spirit. We are all one name.
-- Peter
Yarrow
