What I try to do is narrow the sermon series down to one big question. In this case the question is: What happens when grace happens? I knew I wanted to preach about grace. I just felt as if it was time for our church to be refreshed and see the beauty of God's grace - the uniqueness of the Christian grace as compared to the teachings of other world religions on forgiveness.
Count it one of the highest virtues upon earth to educate faithfully the children of others, which so few, and scarcely any, do by their own.
I celebrate teaching that enables transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom.
We teach what we like to learn and the reason many people go into teaching is vicariously to reexperience the primary joy experienced the first time they learned something they loved.
I remember getting out of grad school and coming to New York and not wanting to get a teaching job because I wanted to work on my own, to develop my own ideas. There isn't that time now. Artists are exhibiting while they are still in grad school. There isn't that safety cushion.
We need to bring the spiritual dimension back into yoga and encourage students to look for teachings and practices that will take them to the next level.
Plato used the dialogue format because the exchange of views, the posing and answering of questions, showed that understanding is a living, dynamic process. He distrusted writing because the settled character of the written word makes it look as if truth can be fixed and made to stand still. It is worth remembering that this greatest advocate of the objective reality of truth also believed that our access to that truth was sustained in reasoned discussion.
The fundamental characteristic of the scientific method is honesty. In dealing with any question, science asks no favors. . . . I believe that constant use of the scientific method must in the end leave its impress upon him who uses it. . . . A life spent in accordance with scientific teachings would be of a high order. It would practically conform to the teachings of the highest types of religion. The motives would be different, but so far as conduct is concerned the results would be practically identical.
Buddhas continue to live on through their teachings as dharma bodies. Their spirits become manifest in the sangha (spiritual community) where their teachings are passed on.
Really, all religious teachings can be boiled down to: “Just be cool. Don’t be an asshole.
Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.
If true religion is to beam upon us, our principle must be, that it is necessary to begin with heavenly teaching, and that it is impossible for any man to obtain even the minutest portion of right and sound doctrine without being a disciple of Scripture.
I've taught, and the first thing I did when I taught art, was not to teach art.
The teaching that we receive is not necessarily very accurate. The value systems that our cultures have developed are not every open. They are very restrictive. We live in an age that is not enlightened.
Sometimes the most powerful way to teach our children to understand a doctrine is to teach in the context of what they are experiencing right at that moment. These moments are spontaneous and unplanned and happen in the normal flow of family life. They come and go quickly, so we need to be alert and recognize a teaching moment when our children come to us with a question or a worry.
Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.
You don't need fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. You just need people with the desire to better themselves.
Sometimes, the only way to learn something really well is to revert to the state of mind of a novice and reawaken to the raw observations that you have accumulated instead of relying on the conclusions you have reached from the exogenous premises absorbed through teaching and bookish learning.
Buddha himself taught different teachings to different people under different circumstances. For some people, there are beliefs based on a Creator. For others, no Creator. The only "definitive truth" for Buddhism is the absolute negation of any one truth as the Definitive Truth.
The idea that somehow "no self, no problem"- I don't exist because I don't have a self- would be a mistaken understanding. However, the selflessness teaching is not that hard to understand. What it means is a type of self that people feel they have, like a fixed, unchanging identity. Either they know they have it, or for some, they feel they need to seek it, and possibly have an experience where they feel like they found something. That type of fixed, unchanging, essential self, or absolute self doesn't exist. That's what "no self" means.
