Interesting discussion this morning after talking about last month's subject of the Absolute we looked at two videos of Oprah and Eckhart on the sacred NOW and his book The New Earth.
We then went on to read that at the end of Candide, Voltaire writes, "We must cultivate our garden." This philosophy of working to change the conditions and circumstances of the world, instead of accepting it as "the best of all possible worlds," is strongly advocated by Voltaire in his satire of optimism. Superficially, it seems that Hegel's writings advocate an opinion contrary to this position.
finally we read about the dance of Siva the Indian Way of expressing the same thing.
Gurudeva sums it up beautifully in Dancing with Siva: "The world is seen as it truly is - sacred - when we behold Siva's cosmic dance. Everything in the universe, all that we see, hear and imagine, is movement. Galaxies soar in movement; atoms swirl in movement. All movement is Siva's dance. When we fight this movement and think it should be other than it is, we are reluctantly dancing with Siva. We are stubbornly resisting, holding ourselves apart, criticizing the natural processes and movements around us. It is by understanding the eternal truths that we bring all areas of our mind into the knowledge of how to accept what is and not wish it to be otherwise. Once this happens, we begin to consciously dance with Siva, to move with the sacred flow that surrounds us, to accept praise and blame, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity in equanimity, the fruit of understanding. We are then gracefully, in unrestrained surrender, dancing with Siva."
