In times of tragedy it is common to become introspective. This can be an external “blame game” sort of thing, or a puzzling out of the larger “why” do these things happen. There is also a natural tendency to gather together to share grief.
Tulasi called last night after he had returned from a vigil for VT students at WVU. He had attended the event with a friend of his who had played lacrosse with one of the victims, so that made it personal for him.
One of the speakers was a girl from Morgantown who had just come home from VT and who had lost 2 friends.
He also said that the graduate students in counseling were all going down to VT for a week in case they could help out in the healing process.
“We must in all things seek God. But we do not seek Him the way we seek a lost object, a “thing.” He is present to us in our heart, in our personal subjectivity, and to seek Him is to recognize this fact. Yet we cannot be aware of it as a reality unless He reveals His presence to us. He does not reveal Himself simply in our own heart. He reveals Himself to us in the Church, in the community of believers, in the koinonia [liturgical assembly] of those who trust Him and love Him.
“Seeking God is not just an operation of the intellect, or even a contemplative illumination of the mind. We seek God by striving to surrender ourselves to Him whom we do not see, but Who is in all things and through all things and above all things.”
Thomas Merton Seasons of Celebration [SC]. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: 223-24
“If we are searching for knowledge, we should conduct research to find out whether Krsna is not God. Without any objective, what is the point of thousands of years of speculation? The Supreme Lord is so vast that one cannot reach Him by mental speculation. If we travel at the speed of mind and wind for millions of years, it is not possible to reach the Supreme by speculation. There is not one single instance in which one has arrived at the Supreme Absolute Truth by means of his own mental speculation.
“Therefore the word mogha-jnanah indicates that the process of mundane knowledge is bewildering. Through our own endeavor it is not possible to see the sun after it has set. We have to wait until the sun reveals itself in the morning at sunrise. If it is not possible with our limited senses to perceive a material thing like the sun, how is it possible to perceive the nonmaterial? We cannot find out or understand Krsna by our own endeavor. We have to qualify ourselves through Krsna consciousness and wait for Him to reveal Himself.”
RV 4: Knowledge by Way of the Mahatmas, Great Souls
