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Diversity - The Beauty Of Difference.


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I've spent quite a bit of time on various forums. Sometimes a word is said, an opinion offered, a phrase posted that "sticks". One such was when someone spoke of the "beauty of difference". Often it seems that a different haircut, a lifestyle that varies from our own, a different type of clothing leads not to rejoicing in the sheer diversity of our humanity, but instead can make us close up in a defensive ball, even a knot of fear. Which seems sad, and worse than sad when the fear evolves into persecution........and on a larger scale, wars/killing.

 

For me, truth IS one. At the heart of reality is "one", not two. Again, for me, this one is "The Hidden Ground of Love" that can have no explanation, that cannot be possessed, defined.........but can only be shared and served - if we could but learn a little true selflessness, and become - as it were - "empty", just as the "one" is "empty", thus being able to be all things. Well, enough mumbo jumbo!

 

My own Pure Land path has its own symbolism, that of gold for the undifferentiated oneness of ultimate reality, and the lotus flower for the individual suchness of each and every one of us, in fact of each and every "thing". So in depictions of the Pure Land there are fields of golden lotus flowers, dancing I suppose like Wordsworth's daffodils - if I might wax lyrical!

 

So "truth" is indeed "one". Yet truth is NOT a "creed" to which we must all conform, nor a style of dress or a particular haircut (!); it can never be restricted to any one book, or any particular interpretation of it. This would be to replace the Living Word with words. As we Buddhists are fond of saying - ad nauseum - "do not mistake the finger that points for the moon itself", or as per William Blake (who spoke with angels and claimed he could touch the sky with his finger)....we must see not with the eye, but thro' the eye, unless we want to believe a lie!

 

Well, there you go. A call for the beauty of difference.

 

 

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