Vision
ALL YOU CAN
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
JOHN WESLEY
THE BUILDERS
All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.
Nothing useless is, or low;
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.
For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our todays and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.
Truly shape and fashion these;
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.
In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.
Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house where gods may dwell
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of Time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble, as they seek to climb.
Build today, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure
Shall tomorrow find its place.
Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
MORAL VISION
To the man who lives for an idea, for his country, for the good
of humanity, life has an extensive meaning, and to that extent pain
becomes less important to him. To live the life of goodness is to
live the life of all. Pleasure is for one's own self, but goodness is
concerned with the happiness of all humanity and for all time. From
the point of view of the good, pleasure and pain appear in a different
meaning; so much so, that pleasure may be shunned, and pain be
courted in its place, and death itself be made welcome as giving a
higher value to life. From these higher standpoints of a man's life,
the standpoints of the good, pleasure and pain lose their absolute
value. Martyrs prove it in history, and we prove it every day in our
life in our little martyrdoms. When we take a pitcherful of water
from the sea it has its weight, but when we take a dip into the sea
itself a thousand pitchersful of water flow above our head, and we do
not feel their weight. We have to carry the pitcher of self with our
strength; and so, while on the plane of selfishness pleasure and pain
have their full weight, on the moral plane they are so much lightened
that the man who has reached it appears to us almost superhuman in his
patience under crushing trials, and his forbearance in the face of
malignant persecution.
To live in perfect goodness is to realize one's life in the
infinite. This is the most comprehensive view of life which we can
have by our inherent power of the moral vision of the wholeness of
life. And the teaching of Buddha is to cultivate this moral power to
the highest extent, to know that our field of activities is not bound
to the plane of our narrow self. This is the vision of the heavenly
kingdom of Christ. When we attain to that universal life, which is the
moral life, we become freed from bonds of pleasure and pain, and the
place vacated by our self becomes filled with an unspeakable joy which
springs from measureless love. In this state the soul's activity is
all the more heightened, only its motive power is not from desires,
but in its own joy. This is the Karma-yoga of the Gita, the way to
become one with the infinite activity by the exercise of the activity
of disinterested goodness . .
. .
Just as we find that the stronger the imagination the less is it
merely imaginary and the more is it in harmony with truth, so we see
the more vigorous our individuality the more does it widen towards the
universal. For the greatness of a personality is not in itself but in
its content, which is universal, just as the depth of a lake is
judged not by the size of its cavity but by the depth of its water.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
VISION OF UNITY
Soul must see in its own way; this is by coalescence,
unification; but in seeking thus to know the Unity, it is prevented by
that very unification from recognizing that it has found; it cannot
distinguish itself from the object of this intuition. Nonetheless,
this is our one resource if our philosophy is to give us knowledge of the Unity.
We are in search of unity; we are to come to know the principle
of all, the Good and First; therefore we may not stand away from the
realm of Firsts and lie prostrate among the last: we must strike for
those Firsts, rising from things of sense which are the lasts.
Cleared of all evil in our intention towards the Good, we must ascend
to the Principle within ourselves; from many, we must become one;
only so do we attain to knowledge of that which is Principle and
Unity. We shape ourselves into the Divine Mind; we make over our soul
in trust to the Divine Mind and set it firmly in That; thus what That
sees, the soul will waken to see: it is through the Divine Mind that
we have this vision of the Unity.
PLOTINUS
