Rising

"I have acknowledged that practical gains that come from being able to look at the world through others’ eyes are major.  They enable corporations to do business with China, and diplomats to stumble less often.  But the greatest gains need no tally.  To glimpse what belonging means to the Japanese; to sense with a Burmese grandmother what passes in life and what endures; to understand how Hindus can regard their personalities as masks that overlay the Infinite within; to crack the paradox of a Zen monk who assures you that everything is holy but scrupulously refrains from certain acts—to swing such things into view is to add dimensions to the glance of spirit.  It is to have another world to live in.  The only good thing that is good without qualification is not (as Kant argued) the good will, for a will can mean well in cramped quarters.  The only thing that is unqualifiedly good is extended vision, the enlargement of one’s understanding of the ultimate nature of things." 

Religion alive confronts the individual with the most momentous option life can present.  It calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertake, a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit.  The call is to confront reality, to master the self.  Those who dare to hear and follow that secret call soon learn the dangers and difficulties of its lonely journey.

A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to traverse,

A difficult path is this—the poets declare!

 -Huston Smith, The World's Religions