Old English discipul, from  Latin discipulus ‘pupil’; later influenced or superseded in Middle English by Old French deciple.

So the master directs His straying thoughts. Like a fish out of water, Stranded on the shore, Thoughts thrash and quiver, For how can they shake off desire? They tremble, they are unsteady, They wander at their own will. It is good to control them, And to master them brings happiness. But how subtle they are, How elusive! The task is to quiet them, And by ruling them to find happiness. With single-mindedness The master quells his thoughts. He ends their wandering. Seated in the cave of the heart, He finds freedom. How can a troubled mind understand the way? If a man is disturbed He will never be filled with knowledge. An untroubled mind, No longer seeking to consider What is right and what is wrong, A mind beyond judgments, Watches and understands. Know that the body is a fragile jar and make a castle of your mind. In every trial Let understanding fight for you To defend what you have won. For soon the body is discarded, Then what does it feel? A useless log of wood, it lies on the ground, Then what does it know? Your worst enemy cannot harm you As much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, No one can help you as much, Not even your father or your mother. (Dhammapada)

A mind that seeks its own liking, be it confirmation of its fears or reasons to follow its likings is deaf and blind for truth.

Man conditionally seeks confirmation of their line of thought .

“Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart” (Psalm 119:2)

The truths that opens up your relationship to God is won not so much by the clarity of your intellect, but by the purity of your heart. The doors of wisdom, through which you must pass to see God, are not broken down by the brute force of a strong mind alone.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10).  The intellect must be in good working order, for its work is indispensable. But it is the pure heart that opens the door and keeps you on the path to God. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Let’s be careful, however, not to diminish the importance of rational thinking where God is concerned. We dare not de-emphasize the intellect, for there is no such thing as a right relationship with God except on the basis of propositional truth, the God of truth. But what determines whether the intellect gets the information it needs to make its approach to God? Is it not the purity of our desire not merely to study the subject of God, but lovingly to serve Him?

There are many reasons why people might be interested in religion and pursue the idea of God intellectually. And entire lifetimes have been spent in this study by people who never came to know Him in the here-and-now, and will not see Him in the hereafter (Matthew 7:21-23). The sober truth about religion is that diligent study only becomes the diligent seeking of God when the intellect is driven by a pure heart. And whether you’ve actually sought God or not is evidenced more by the tokens of discipleship than those of scholarship. “God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.”

You know these things, of course, but you forget them. You need to be reminded that seeking God is not an exclusively intellectual endeavour. Perhaps because it is easier just to think about God than to be an actual disciple, you need to be warned that God is more than an idea.

At the day of judgment you will not be asked what you have read but what you have done.

Let us at least be able to say, I have been reading the articles on truth & revelations and took action, a true step to unite.

25-03-2008

Moshiya van den Broek