Traditional Quotes and Symbols
The pure present is the moment of the Absolute: it is now — neither yesterday nor tomorrow — that we stand before God.
It is necessary to accept “God’s will” when evil enters into our destiny and cannot possibly be avoided; indeed, the partially paradoxical nature of All-Possibility requires of man an attitude of conformity to this situation, namely the quality of serenity, of which the sky above us is the visible sign.
Serenity is to keep oneself so to speak above the clouds, in the calm and coolness of emptiness and far from all the dissonances of this lower world; it is never to allow the soul to immerse itself in impasses of disturbances, bitterness, or secret revolt, for it is necessary to beware of implicitly accusing Being when accusing some phenomenon.
We do not say that one should not accuse evil in all justice, we say that one should not accuse it with an attitude of despair, losing sight of the everywhere-present Sovereign Good and, in another respect, of the imperatives of universal equilibrium; the world is what it must be.
Serenity consists in resigning oneself to that destiny, at once unique and permanent, which is the present moment: to this itinerant “now” that no one can avoid and that in its substance pertains to the Eternal.
The man who is conscious of the nature of pure Being willingly remains in the moment that Heaven has assigned him; he is not feverishly straining towards the future nor lovingly or sadly bent over the past. The pure present is the moment of the Absolute: it is now — neither yesterday nor tomorrow — that we stand before God.
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excerpts from Roots of the Human Condition by Frithjof Schuon
The pure present is the moment of the Absolute: it is now — neither yesterday nor tomorrow — that we stand before God.
It is necessary to accept “God’s will” when evil enters into our destiny and cannot possibly be avoided; indeed, the partially paradoxical nature of All-Possibility requires of man an attitude of conformity to this situation, namely the quality of serenity, of which the sky above us is the visible sign.
Serenity is to keep oneself so to speak above the clouds, in the calm and coolness of emptiness and far from all the dissonances of this lower world; it is never to allow the soul to immerse itself in impasses of disturbances, bitterness, or secret revolt, for it is necessary to beware of implicitly accusing Being when accusing some phenomenon.
We do not say that one should not accuse evil in all justice, we say that one should not accuse it with an attitude of despair, losing sight of the everywhere-present Sovereign Good and, in another respect, of the imperatives of universal equilibrium; the world is what it must be.
Serenity consists in resigning oneself to that destiny, at once unique and permanent, which is the present moment: to this itinerant “now” that no one can avoid and that in its substance pertains to the Eternal.
The man who is conscious of the nature of pure Being willingly remains in the moment that Heaven has assigned him; he is not feverishly straining towards the future nor lovingly or sadly bent over the past. The pure present is the moment of the Absolute: it is now — neither yesterday nor tomorrow — that we stand before God.
----
excerpts from Roots of the Human Condition by Frithjof Schuon