One Garden?
One Garden?
First draft. Excuse me if you find any misspellings.
Read or listen to this writing:
Once there was a boy who lived in a beautiful garden that was surrounded with a golden gate. This garden was filled with flowers that had beautiful colors and soothing aromatherapy. He was instructed by his parents to maintain and keep the garden everyday.
His parents also taught him that this was the only beautiful garden in the whole world, it offers the best aromatherapy, it has the most exquisite and lustrous colors. They also taught him to beware of other gardens that reside outside from this garden, those gardens smelled horrific, it offers nothing, it lacks color and were made out of artificial material that appeared like real flowers but were imitation.
Many people like these other gardens but they are fooled and do not know what is the real garden. One day the boy asked his parents, “have you ever saw these flowers face to face?” and the parents replied, “No, there is no need to because because we believe it is as mentioned, therefore it is truth.”
Ever since they taught him these things, the boy always sat in the garden and pondering on that idea and question it in his mind, but it didn’t dare to verbally mentioned his questions.
So one day when his parents were sleeping, the boy decided to venture off on his own outside of the garden to find the other gardens. So the boy grabbed some flowers from his garden and went out on his journey.
He walked for miles and miles. He finally came across a beautiful garden that didn’t have a gate surrounding it, in fact there were people going in and going out freely. This garden had a long field filled with beautiful flowers.
The boy ran closer to the flowers to see if they were fake flowers and if they smelled horrific like his parents had taught him. He went up to the flowers and smelled them. He paused for a second in amazement, because the flowers had a distinctive beautiful smell just like the flowers he knew from his garden. The flower petals were soft and gentle and contained a beautiful color just like the flowers from his garden. He loved the flowers so much that he grabbed a few and put them together with his first batch of flowers and continued his journey.
He walked for miles and miles and came across another garden without a gate.
He went into the garden and discovered the same as the other garden. The flowers were real, they smelled beautifully, and they gave him the same soothing feeling when he smelled them just like the flowers from his garden. He loved the flowers so much that he grabbed a few and put them together with his first batch of flowers and continued his journey.
The boy walked and walked in his journey and came across a several other gardens. He experienced the same thing as every garden he came across, they contained real flowers and they smelled beautifully. He plucked flowers from every garden he came across and created himself a bouquet of flowers.
The boy decided to start walking back home. As he was walking he started to think about the things he learned in his journey. He learned that all of the flowers in the bouquet had a distinctive fragrance, they all had different colors, they were all beautiful, and most of all they were real flowers. He learned that a flower is a flower no matter. He thought to himself, “why would someone say such bad things about these flowers, if they never experienced the flowers personally?”
Once the boy returned back home to his garden, he ran up to his parents and gave them the bouquet of flowers and said, “this is for you, all of these beautiful flowers are for you.” They looked at the bouquet of flowers and said, “I only see our beautiful flowers in that bunch, the other flowers we do not recognize therefore we will not consider them to be flowers.” The boy said “but these are flowers from the other garden, they are real, just smell and touch them and you will see for yourself.” The parents looked at the boy with disgust and said, “we will not smell or touch these fake flowers. Why have you strayed so far from the true garden? You have become delusional.” The boy tried and tried to convince his parents but they will not listen to him, so the boy gave up.
The boy decided to leave the garden and create his own garden filled with flowers from the seeds he collected from all of the gardens in the world. The garden grew up to be beautiful with soothing aromatherapy. This garden attracted many people from all around the world to come and find a place to rest and be happy.
The boy grew up to be a happy and free man. He learn to not accept anything in face value but to exam and question until he found the answers, and that is what he did.
Each garden represents a religion. The boy represents the person that is seeking the Truth. The parents represent the religious teachers or leaders that follow a religion with blind faith and has accepted a concept without questioning anything. These concepts are doctrines and dogmas, that shape the fundamental ideals of a religious organization.
Since most of these doctrines were set up by human beings, it cannot help itself but to contain some “selfish” views that produced discrimination, and division. History clearly reveals the painful results from these selfish religious point of views.
One of the selfish religious point of views that I use as a example in this story is the false perception of uniqueness or separateness. The boy parents was teaching him that there was no other garden like the garden they have, and the boy discovered that this was not true. This scene represents the reality of the many religions that are in this world, that offer the Truth, but some religious groups say there is only one Way or there is only one Truth, and this is not true.
Religions are an expression of who and what God is, or what Truth is, or what the Way is, or what Love is, or what Peace is, or what Wisdom is (I can go on and on with these labels…”of what ____ is”…).
All religions have truth but it is not fully understood with the human small limited mind. So people create or say hard comments or ideas that this is not true, or this is true and they get into a whole dualistic religious debate. Within all these wars, arguments, and debates, nothing but death, anger, division, contention and ignorance has been generated from it.
Don’t use your energy to debate about whether or not God is real, don’t debate about Jesus being a Jew or an African, don’t debate about if Buddha was a false prophet. All of these debates stem from ignorance, which do not lead to anything.
In fact, what we should being doing is acknowledge all the positive things that come out from these religions, see what these religions have in common, and you will realize the answer is “LOVE, COMPASSION, PEACE, PURENESS OF HEART AND MIND.” Forget about the name calling or labeling, I am a Christian, I am a Buddhist, I am a Hindu, I am a Jew, I am a Muslim…WHO CARES about that!!! None of those things matter. What matters is that you become human and join other humans to act like humans and love one another.
To discover the Truth in all the religions requires an open mind, a non-judging mind and as a human being, that is not easy. Us human beings are habit forming creatures. It is hard to reprogram a mind to think differently, but when it is done, it is liberating! That is when you start to feel free.
There was a time where I was following Christianity for many years, with a one sided view of, “this is the only one true religion” view. After the third year, I had a falling out from the religion, where I left the entire faith because I wanted to explore the world at the age of nineteen. After consuming all the goodies the world had to offer, I found no peace in any of those things. I learned that there was nothing in this world that could satisfy my cravings.
My life was in complete mayhem. I smoked so much marijuana day and night to make me feel better, because I was depressed, but I was in complete denial that I was depressed. This cycle of misery was for thirteen years. As years gone by, I got married, I got my own place to live but I kept on with my bad habits. Marijuana took me away from the realities of life, but after the high was gone, I was miserable and I often took my anger on my wife with hateful words. My marriage was so rocky that I was planning for a divorce because I thought I could find peace in another women, but little did I know the problem was within me.
To put a cherry on top on my misery I got laid off from my job. Now I was forced to really stop and reflect on my life. I said the first thing I need to stop is smoking pot, because this is keeping me from seeing reality. So once I stopped I started visiting a psychiatrist and he started to medicate me with pills. One side of me liked it, but the other side of me didn’t want this. So I stop seeing the psychiatrist and I started to go back to my spiritual roots which was Christianity.
I started to read Proverbs from the old testament, and that helped me to gain spiritual strength to slowly pull away from bad habits and quit smoking. I started visiting churches and it helped me a lot, but something was missing. I loved Jesus but I couldn’t see Jesus the way people from the church was seeing Jesus. I didn’t like the idea of this is the only Way and everything else is false. So I stop my visits to churches and stood home. My quest went on for months, day and night, without giving up. I made this my personal mission.
I decided to read other scriptures from other religions like Hinduism, Bahai, Islam, Sikhism, Gnostic, Buddhism and they all had beautiful things. But out of all things Buddhism stood out from the rest to me. The saying from the Buddha that stood out for me was when He said, “Do not take anything as the truth, exam it.” So that is what I did, I exam everything.
One day I thought about a tattoo that I got 6 years ago when I was 27 yrs old. I never stop to think about the meaning of my tattoo. The tattoo I have is a Shambhala Dragon. I started to do a google search on the web, and I happen to find out that in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere in Inner Asia. I never knew this tattoo on my arm had some connection to Buddhism. So it gave me more of a interest to read more about Buddhism. One day when I was staying over my father in laws house, I came across one of his books from Shambhala publications, a book from Pema Chodron about Loving Kindness, and the word Shambhala stood out to me, so I picked it up and started reading it.
I don’t believe in coincidences so I took it as a sign to follow this path. Ever since reading that book I started to buy more books and practice meditation. To make a long story short, I had to discover for myself that there is Truth in all religions, its just explained differently, but you will have to jump over the hurdles of the “selfish” religious views that are found mixed in religion. I have chosen Buddhism as a guide for me in following the Truth, but it doesn’t stop me from reading the bible or other beautiful sutras from other religions, with a more practical and non-dogmatic view.
Removing or dispelling the ignorance from dogmatic views is not an easy thing to do, it requires a lot patience and determination. If this is something that is happening to you, do not give up. There was a time when I almost gave up on religion completely and I was going to believe in nothing because I was sick of it all. But I continued to seek, ask questions, and I found the light in the midst of the darkness. That is the reason I created this blog, to help people in finding their path.
I hope this writing was of some kind of help to you as it was for me in a big way.
We are One, let us walk together, let us shine together and help every brother and sister in this world with this light that is growing within us, second after second.
Namaste!
Your Internet Friend, Happy Holidays!
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