All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.
All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.
You cannot bring the traditions forward unless you consider the future for a balanced now.
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
Don't talk to me about Naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
Referring to the Creed, Page said: It is the summary of the fundamental principles of the American political faith as set forth in its greatest documents, its worthiest traditions, and its greatest leaders. His wording of the Creed used passages and phrases from the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and Daniel Webster's reply to Robert Y. Hayne in the Senate in 1830.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
Gardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life. . . . Fortunate gardener, who may preoccupy himself solely with beauty in these difficult and ugly days! He is one of the few people left in this distressful world to carry on the tradition of elegance and charm. A useless member of society, considered in terms of economics, he must not be denied his rightful place. He deserves to share it, however humbly, with the painter and poet.
The nearer I approach the end, the clearer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous yet simple. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song - I have tried all; but I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of that which is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say like many others, "I have finished my day's work" but I cannot say, "I have finished my life's work"; my day's work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. It is an open thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open in the dawn. My work is only beginning; my work is hardly above its foundation. I would gladly see it mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.
I feel within me the future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brisker. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens. The sun's rays bathe my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but the heavens illuminate me with the reflection of-of worlds unknown. Some say the soul results merely from bodily powers. Why, then, does my soul become brighter when my bodily powers begin to waste away? Winter is above me, but eternal spring is within my heart. I inhale even now the fragrance of lilacs, violets, and roses, just as I did when I was twenty. The nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. It is wonderful yet simple. It is a fairy tale; it is history. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and in verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these have I tried. But I feel that I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, "I have finished my day's work." But I cannot say, "I have finished my life." My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, but opens on the dawn.
As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.
The real aim of criticism is not the destruction of cherished traditions - although a due regard for the facts does often compel us to revise older opinions - but a fuller appreciation of the beauty and truth of the creative work on which it fixes its regard. The word "criticism" is derived from the Greek word kritikos, which means "the ability to select or discriminate," hence, to decide or judge. The meaning of criticism is thus discriminating judgment.
The efforts of certain Christian factions to cast themselves as the inheritors of America's Judaeo-Christian tradition find little support in the embarrassing heterodoxy of this Founding Father: "But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own country was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separable as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. . . . The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object. . . ."
About his father: Devoted to the tradition of his ancestors -Maiorum consuetudini deditus
HOW TO STAY PROSPEROUS & FREE IN THE 21st CENTURY Americans have always understood that that this nation is unique among nations in the long march of human history, and as we speed into the next century, we seem to be at a crossroads. We are worried that with so many things out of whack; the traditions and institutions that made America great are under attack, standards continue to be lowered, so many minds seem clouded by the fog of liberalism. So let's stay positive; the personal freedoms we still enjoy; the widespread prosperity and bounty unimaginable in any other time and place; the innovations and progress in medicine, technology, communication, science, business, and more; the standard of living never before attained by so many among a nation's citizens...we wonder, will it last? The questions remain. What will ensure that America continues? Can our culture be reclaimed? How can we stay free in the next century? While people of other countries have been restricted m to pursue prosperity, bounded only by the limits of his or her imagination. Besides, only a conservative would ask how we can STAY prosperous and free in the 21st century. A liberal would whine that only a few are prosperous--the evil rich who have somehow gotten rich off the backs of the poor. Liberals don't notice, or understand freedom. They see victims; the oppressed, the downtrodden, and the have-nots. America has had the original ideas of self-government and self-reliance; for which we must thank our Founding Fathers.
The solution to the nation's problems, depends on the true American achievers. It's people like you, playing by the rules and celebrating and continuing to remind people of the traditions and institutions that made this country great, who can re-create a society that is great once more. It's only by doing the right thing that this country is going to fix itself and survive.
It is true that we have not deliberately or wholly abandoned the Christian element in our tradition, but does that element count with us as it once did? Is the moral tone of the nation - its politics, its business life, its literature, its theatre, its movies, its radio networks, its television stations - Christian?
Every heart that has beat strongly and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, and all flock to their aid.
The Copernican vision of an earth in motion was not without its rudimentary precedents, as Copernicus himself recounts: "For a long time then, I reflected on this confusion in the astronomical traditions concerning the derivation of the motions of the universe's spheres. I began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world. For this reason I undertook the task of rereading the works of all the philosophers which I could obtain to learn whether anyone had ever proposed other motions of the universe's spheres than those expounded by the teachers of astronomy in the schools. And in fact I found in Cicero that Hicetas supposed the earth to move. Later I also discovered in Plutarch that certain others were of this opinion. . . . Therefore, having obtained the opportunity from these sources, I too began to consider the mobility of the earth."
By patience and determination, rather than by a harsh upsetting of tradition, we move toward our national aspirations.... This is the way we get things done in America. One man tells another, does what he can, till the sum of these efforts grows into a national aspiration-a precious goal. Then occurs our miracle of democracy: because the groundwork has been surely laid, the goal is already within our grasp.
Tradition lives because young people come along who catch its romance and add new glories to it.
Build traditions in your families that will bring you together, for they can demonstrate your devotion, love, and support for one another. . . These events would include blessings of children, baptisms, other priesthood ordinances, graduations, missionary farewells, homecomings, and, of course, marriages. Sharing these occasions as a family will help us build a foundation established upon a rock.
Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right.
It should not be strange that the values cherished by all the three major religions are the same, since they originate from a common source. For example, Islam, the predominant religion in the Middle East, accepts as an integral part of its religious teachings both the Old and the New Testaments. If this commonality of moral traditions among the world's major religions does not say something about the universality of religion, it does say something about the universality of mankind. . . .
By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust.
Oregon proper is a sort of nut - a nut with a sweet, rich kernel, but also with a bitter bark and rind-through which you have to gnaw in order to reach the kernel. Portland is the bark or rind. The rich heart of the richest young State in the Union lies nearly two hundred miles in the interior. Portland sits at the seadoor - the very gates of the State. The Orient has met the Occident here in this westmost town. One of these new men, speculator in town lots and land, who was clad in a slouch hat and enormous mud-boots reaching almost to the knees, approached me in Portland. He carried an umbrella thrust up under his arm, while his two forefingers hooked and wrestled resolutely together as he stood before me. He chewed tobacco violently, and now and then fired a brown stream far up and down the new pine sidewalk. "Can't you put this city into poetry? Yes, you kin. What's poetry good for, if it can't rize the price of land? Jist tell 'em we never had a shake. Yes, an' tell 'em that the old men never die; but jist git kivered with moss and blow away. An' tell 'em - yes tell 'em that the timber grows so tall that it takes a man an' two small boys to see to the top of a tree! Yes, an' tell 'em that we have to tie poles to the cows' horns, to let the wrinkles run out on. Yes, biggest country, richest country an' dogondest healthiest country this side of Jerichol! Yes, it is." Drip! drip! drip! Slop! slop! slop! incessantly and all the time, for an uninterrupted half a year, here in this mossy, moldy town of Portland. Rain! rain! rain! until the trees grow out of the cracks and roofs of the houses, and until, tradition says, Mother Nature comes to the aid of the inhabitants and makes them web-footed, like the water-fowl. And even then, and in the face of all this, this man stood up before me with the water fairly bending his umbrella from the weight of the rain - the rain running down his nose, his head, his hair - and there he smilingly bowed and protested that it did not really rain much in Portland; but that down about the mouth of the Columbia, at Astoria, it did "sometimes rain a-right smart."
If God made poets for anything, it was to keep alive the traditions of the pure, the holy, and the beautiful.
Testimony is an integral part of the Black religious tradition. It is the occasion where the believer stands before the community of faith in order to give account of the hope that is in him or her.
President James E. Faust has noted that in contrast to earlier, God-fearing times' a new civil religion seems to be developing in America. He said: The civil religion I refer to is a secular religion. It has no moral absolutes. It is nondenominational. It is non-theistic. It is politically focused. It is antagonistic to religion. It rejects the historic religious traditions of America. It feels strange. If this trend continues, non-belief will be more honored than belief. While all beliefs must be protected, are atheism, agnosticism, cynicism, and moral relativism to be more safeguarded and valued than Christianity, Judaism, and the tenets of Islam, which hold that there is a Supreme Being and that mortals are accountable to him? If so, this would, in my opinion, place America in great moral jeopardy.
