Spirituality as Quest, Pt. 4 -- Buddha; Reading a Story, Pt. 8

Our passage from the Word of God today is Luke 1:3 which reads: "It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus."

Our quote today is from C. S. Lewis. He said: "Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."

In this podcast, we are using as our texts: "Literature and Spirituality" by Yaw Adu-Gyamfi (yaw a-do yam-fi) and Mark Ray Schmidt, and "Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing" by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. If you enjoy this podcast, please feel free to purchase any one of these books from our website.

Our first topic for today is "Spirituality as Quest, Part 4 - Buddha" from the book, "Literature and Spirituality" by Yaw Adu-Gyamfi and Mark Ray Schmidt.

Here is our third and last selection from Buddha's Dhammapada.

Chapter XVI (16) - PLEASURE.

He who gives himself to vanity, and does not give himself to meditation, forgetting the real aim (of life) and grasping at pleasure, will in time envy him who has exerted himself in meditation.

Let no man ever look for what is pleasant, or what is unpleasant. Not to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is pain to see what is unpleasant.

 

Let, therefore, no man love anything; loss of the beloved is evil. Those who love nothing and hate nothing, have no fetters.

From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear; he who is free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear.

From affection comes grief, from affection comes fear; he who is free from affection knows neither grief nor fear.

From lust comes grief, from lust comes fear; he who is free from lust knows neither grief nor fear.

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Our second topic for today is "Reading a Story, Part 8" from the book, "Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing" by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.

Another traditional form of storytelling is the parable. Like the fable, a parable is a brief narrative that teaches a moral, but unlike the fable, its plot is plausibly realistic, and the main characters are human rather than anthropomorphized (an-thruh-puh-mawr-fahyz) animals or natural forces. The other key difference is that parables usually possess a more mysterious and suggestive tone. A fable customarily ends by explicitly stating its moral, but parables often present their morals implicitly, and their meanings can be open to several interpretations.

In the Western tradition, the literary conventions of the parable are largely based on the brief stories told by Jesus in His preaching. The forty-three parables recounted in the four Gospels reveal how frequently he used the form to teach. Jesus designed His parables to have two levels of meaning - a literal story that could immediately be understood by the crowds He addressed and a deeper meaning fully comprehended only by His disciples, an inner circle who understood the nature of His ministry. The parable was also widely used by Eastern philosophers. The Taoist sage Chuang Tzu often portrayed the principles of Tao - which he called the "Way of Nature" - in witty parables such as one traditionally titled "Independence."

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