However You Choose to Seek

Some straight, some winding, some underground. All reach the same destination.

Thank you for listening!

Take this reflection into the silence, and I'll see you next time.

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Transcript

"Sisters and brothers of America."

Chicago, 1893. These words from a young Indian monk triggered a two-minute standing ovation. The Western intellectuals had expected primitive Eastern mysticism. Instead, Swami Vivekananda offered kinship.

"Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth," he declared. "I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning may be the death-knell of all fanaticism.”

Christian ministers shifted uncomfortably. He was saying their belief that only Christians could be saved was just another form of fanaticism.

Vivekananda was known for telling a story that captured religious narrowness perfectly. A well-frog meets an ocean-frog. "How big is your ocean?" asks the well-frog. When told it's vast beyond imagination, he declares the other frog a liar. Nothing could be larger than his well.

"I am a Hindu," Vivekananda smiled. "I am sitting in my own little well and thinking that the whole world is my little well."

The Christian ministers and Western philosophers in the hall recognized themselves. They too were well-frogs, declaring their theology the only ocean.

By the Parliament's end, Vivekananda's message had crystallized. In his closing address, he warned: "If anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart." His vision was clear. "Upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: 'Help and not Fight.'"

Ten thousand years before Chicago's Parliament, Indian sages had already discovered what Vivekananda proclaimed. The Vedas speak of "Truth is one; men call it by various names.”

Just like a thousand rivers flowing toward the ocean. Each follows its own path. Some straight, some winding, some underground. All reach the same destination. The sages saw human seeking the same way. Every tradition thinking itself the only way was another frog in another well.

"Help and not fight." Vivekananda's vision remains unfinished. We still dig our sectarian wells. We still declare our narrow views absolute. We still mistake our particular path for the only way forward.

But the ocean remains. Vast, patient, receiving every river regardless of its route. Like those ancient sages understood, like Vivekananda demonstrated in Chicago, truth doesn't belong to any one tradition.

It belongs to all who seek it. However they choose to seek.