Tor’s original post on wpmcommunity:
Dear all,
I was browsing through the giftshop of the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore a couple of days ago, when I came across a book entitled ‘ Buddhist Offerings 365 Days’ by Danielle and Olivier Foellmi. The book consists of some 365 photographs of Tibetan or Himalayan subjects by Olivier Foellmi, one for each day of the year accompanied by a text drawn from Buddhist scriptures or spiritual works, grouped into fifty two themes. There is also a companion volume entitled ‘Indian Wisdom 365 Days’ organized on similar lines.
It struck me that a Pantheist work of this nature has yet to be produced, although there are many talented Pantheist photographers, and Pantheist works of art which could illustrate such a volume.
As a preliminary exercise in the production of a Pantheist work of this nature, I have set myself the task of finding 365 Pantheist quotations, with brief comments on the author, which I propose to post to this site over the next year.
To start the ball rolling, I would like to post the following text drawn from a letter by Robinson Jeffers:
“I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, influencing each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. (This is physics, I believe, as well as religion.) The parts change and pass, or die, people and races and rocks and stars; none of them seems to me important in itself, but only the whole. This whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one’s affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one’s self, or on humanity…’
John Robinson Jeffers (January 10, 1887– January 20, 1962) was an poet and playwrite, who lived for most of his life at Big Sur on the coast of California. His work demonstrates a preference for the natural world over what he sees as the negative influence of civilization, and explores the questions of how human beings could find their proper relationship (free of human egocentrism) with the divinity of the beauty of things. Jeffers was an inspiration and friend to western U.S. photographers of the early twentieth century, including Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.
Best regards, Tor
Browse all of Tor’s TFTDs and more
The link below invokes a search for all messages on wpmcommunity with “Pantheist thought for the day” in their subjects. It brings up Tor’s messages plus other comments on them, or other contributions using the same subject. As of this posting there are 46 messages with 35 TFTDs, but that will grow as Tor posts more of them.
Another source of Pan TFTDs
—Tom 09:32, 7 October 2006 (EDT)
Here’s a excellent and huge (perhaps approaching 700) compendium of quotes that I found online, most of which are pantheistic. They appear to have been collected by Anthony Milan at Rensselaer Polytech. Inst. and the file is still being updated. Perhaps he’d be interested in our group…
http://www.rpi.edu/~milana/quotes.htm
The Spinoza group of quotes is copied below…
I call him free who is led solely by reason. – Benedictus de Spinoza
The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts. – Benedictus de Spinoza
Omnia praeclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt. (All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.) – Benedictus de Spinoza
Sedulo curavi, humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere. (I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.) – Benedictus de Spinoza
