According to Loy, classic Western examples of identifying evil include anti-Semitism, and, more recently, Islamophobia. Loy will suggest that instead of drawing a sharp duality between what is good and evil, a new model should be developed that distinguishes between two different and diverse modes of “being in the world.”
Loy’s presentation is part of Trinity University’s Difficult Dialogues initiative. For the rest of the fall semester, Trinity will host other events to examine the issue of Islamophobia. Funding for Difficult Dialogues initiative is provided by the Ford Foundation.
For more information, contact Ruqayya Khan, associate professor of religion, at 210-999-8428.
Contact Information: Russell Guerrero
210-999-8406
russell.guerrero@trinity.edu
Sending Institution: Trinity University
Story Date: Sept. 10, 2007
Keywords: Trinity University, religion, Bush,
al-Qaeda, holy war, Islam
Dear Friends, The Fall issue of William Samuel's Child Within Journals are now available on line..... You can read them at www.williamsamuel.com Any questions or comments or if need anything, please feel free to call or email me, Sandy Jones And then this little item from one of Bill's books sort of jumped up and begged to be sent along with this email. Seemed like a little Sunday Morning Light for us all......I hope you like it.
Page 188 A Guide To Awareness And Tranquillity By William Samuel
Were does misery come from?
Nearly always, a “miserable experience” arises from the evaluation of “things,” but the equanimity everyone wants resides beyond “things” with the Real—and the Real is That which is being this consciousness of things.
For a time one seems bound to the belief that his misery is “out there,” even while his agony is the “awful feeling of fear and foreboding within.” One may believe an errant member of a family is the cause the agony, but it the agony of that belief which is felt within as a disturbance of ones’ equanimity. To eliminate the agony, for the past ten thousand years we have been doing everything possible to change the suspected cause of it ”out there” with the husband, daughter, business or something else. We have believed that if we could see an external situation change, automatically we would feel the restoration of some degree of equanimity; and we did, perhaps, for short time, until something else “out there” failed to gee-haw.
Now listen: This procedure puts us and
leaves us at the mercy of “thing”! This makes
the ‘feeling within” tributary to
appearances without. This is self-imposed slavery.
The presence (or absence) of something we see is good or
bad only as we are of the opinion that it is good
or bad. The image has no value of its own. We
have given it value (hence power) based on its
desirability--“I like it; or don’t like it.”
Yet, all enlightened instruction speaks of the joy to be
experienced when desire is overcome. Can one
conceive of a more immediate way to overcome the desire
for things than to recognize their valuelessness and then
to perceive the impossibility of being on who desires
We have been told that Heaven, Tranquillity, is within. Heaven is opinionless, desireless Awareness. As long as we look to people, things, or conditions for happiness, we are making “heaven” tributary to the object of perception. One who stands identified as tranquil Awareness itself finds people, things and conditions tributary to his harmonious Identity.
Tranquility is our Identity. We are not another identity attempting to experience the absence of desire. If we believe we find happiness and harmony, then we must believe we can lose them. In addition, we must believe they are absent (or can be) at the moment. We can no more be absent from Identity then light can be absent. Much Love and Light to Everyone! Sandy