Notes and Quotes

Earth Day is celebrated at convenience late in April -- an excellent idea, not having it tied to the calendar. It's been observed at the Monastery in Ganges, Michigan, for the last several years, and at the interfaith retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, was marked by an Earth Puja etc. Swami Yogeshananda hoped to arrange a repeat of the Earth worship the following April.

In belated respect to this year's [1993] Earth Day we print the following:

If the world were a global village of 100 people, over 70 of them would be unable to read, and only 1 would have a college education. Over 50 would be suffering from malnutrition, and over 30 would live in what we call sub-standard housing.

If the world were a global village of 100 residents, 6 of them would be from the United States. Those 6 would have half the village's entire income; the other 94 would exist on the other half. How would the wealthy 6 live "in peace" with their neighbors? Surely they would be driven to arm themselves against the other 94... perhaps even to spend, as we do, more per person on military "defense" than the total personal income of the others.

Is the Perennial Philosophy uncovered at separate, independent spots on the globe? Or is the real case a migration of it, once discovered and passed by forgotten tradelanes and travellers to other cultures? Thus runs the debate. But why not both? In any case, note what Nicholas of Cusa says, in the 15th Century:

"God is like an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."

"The soul is a circle of which the circumference is in a body. God is a circle whose circumference is nowhere but whose center is everywhere."

-- SwamiVivekananda, 19th C.

"The only field in which this [oneness] is possible is the field of sunyata [emptiness] which can have its circumference nowhere and its center everywhere. Only on the field of sunyata can the totality of things, each of which is absolutely unique and an absolute center of all things, at the same time be gathered into one."

-- Keiji Nishitani, 20th C.

Nicholas of Cusa's "Interpenetration of light and the dark forces":

The Chinese yin-yang: