|
A sermon title like "Spiritual Aeronautics" is such an ambitious name. It could almost cover a year's worth of classes in religion. I was thinking what a very small part of that I'm really trying to work with in these two weeks, and thought that maybe borrowing some concepts from Hinduism might clarify what I can and can't hope to do here.
Hinduism has four different paths, or disciplines, or yogas, to fit four very different kinds of people, because we have different styles of being spiritual. Jnana yoga is salvation or wholeness through understanding, insight. That's closest to our Western intellectual religious traditions, including Unitarians. Bhakti yoga is the path of devotion and love, and we have tried to include a bit of that path with the many candles in the windows. Karma yoga is the path of action or works, like the people here who are more interested in social action than sermons. And Raja yoga is the meditative path of insights into your own soul's divine nature, which we don't really do here as a group.
But of the four paths, the first one is the one most characteristic of Unitarians. Salvation, wholeness, through understanding, through a more complete kind of knowledge. What do we think we believe and what kind of coherence do those beliefs have in our life and the world we're living in? Those are the kinds of questions behind what I'm trying to do with you this morning.
Originally delivered by Rev. Davidson Loehr on 28 March 2004
The text for this and other sermons can be viewed online at
http://austinuu.org/sermons/
34:57
© Davidson Loehr 2004
|
