Be gentle with yourself. Be kind to yourself. You may not be perfect, but you are all youve got to work with. The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are. Bhante Henepola GunaratanaAncient yogis who have attained complete knowledge and passed along the teachings say that God created the world for Him in which to play, and He can be seen in every part of it. The world is not a solid substance, not the final reality; it is a form of the Self, a play of divine Consciousness, a symbol of joy. The founder of Siddha Yoga, Bhagwan Nityananda was a great spiritual teacher of India. His teachings embody the guidelines for a spiritual practice that many follow today though they may have filtered through other styles of practice.For Bhagwan Nityananda, all religions were equal. He saw all sects, all ideologies, and all philosophies as equal. He would teach that each sect or doctrine or creed is a different path leading to the same goal. Many paths lead to the same destination. Similarly, through all these different spiritual practices one can attain the same divine state.The core of Bhagwan Nityanandas teaching is The heart is the hub of all sacred places; go there and roam. The basis of the practice of self-realization or Siddha Yoga is, Honor your Self, Worship your Self, Meditate on your Self, God dwells with you as you. According to Bhagwan, meditation is the most important part of this philosophy.On the other hand the Buddha did not claim to be divine. He taught that he merely points the way to nirvana, but it is up to each individual to practice in order to get there. The concept of a personal God does not fit into the Buddhist system of religion. Buddhism teaches that all manifestations in the universe are God.Zen master Shunryu Suzuki describes his concept of God as follows: If God after making the world puts Himself outside it, He is no longer God. If! He sepa rates Himself from the world or wants to separate Himself, He is not God. The world is not the world when it is separated from God. God must be in the world and the world in God.
