INTRODUCTION

UNDERSTANDING
SPRITUALITY
Spiritual concern can be defined in opposition to material concern. Consider a life that was focused
on accumulating wealth and status or power over others, then such a life would completely self
absorbed. One could never step back from such a life to think about the needs of others, so it means
that individual would have no sense of one’s ultimate connection to the rest of the world.

- A selfish life despise connection, and it is unconcerned with matters of ultimate concern.
- When such a life is lacking in spiritual reflection it may be criticized for the refusal to go beyond
on what is immediately in front of it.
Consider a life that focused on spiritual concern which include living a meaningful life and grasping
higher realities, then life would not be selfish in any ordinary sense but neither it would be useful.
This does not mean that spirituality is otherworldly. The impulse to spirituality includes a strong
desire to make sense out of this world, using contemplation, meditation, and other practices to
experience our fundamental connection to nature, the community of human existence, and the
cosmos itself.

- According to philosopher Nietzsche, “ the death of God”, affirms the value of early life against
traditional religion, which has r frequently undermined it. For this life is just a “vale of tears”. He
denies hat the bad things in life constitute an objection to the world’s existence and through his
prophet Zarathustra, he proclaim that this world is sacred.
The world is deep
Deeper than the day had been aware.
Deep is its woe;
Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: go!
But all joy wants eternity—
Wants deep, wants deep eternity.
When you read it, we can say that spirituality concerned with the sacred, for it dwells on those experiences in
which life seems to justify itself. These might be a momentous experiences as when we are confronted by the
vast ocean, the powerful waterfall, or the immensity of space, and even smaller moments in life including
“random acts of human kindness” can be astonishing. Sacred can be viewed as another realm of being entirely,
like heaven, but it may also be discover in the ordinary like in everyday aspects of this life, such as breathing,
walking, or feeling the warmth of sunlight.
- In this view, spirituality can be the solution to crass materialism and selfish preoccupations.
The second perspective on spirituality is to think of it in terms of a personal journey toward self-
fulfillment and connection with the deepest values that underlie our existence.
-spiritual values are those that concern whatever makes life valuable. It is not narcissistic or self-
involved and the spiritual quest involves the achievement of wisdom as well as self
understanding.
-likewise morality is crucial. Spiritual value can be a religious value can be a moral value.
However, there are plenty of spiritual values that are neither religious nor moral, including art,
music, nature and truth. Religion and morality are only spiritually relevant as they advance the
life of individual and make it worth living.
Spiritual life involves challenging the ordinary values that we encounter by not rejecting them but
determining the extent of their validity. It involves searching for the truth about the world through
philosophy, the appreciation of nature, literature, and other forms of spiritual inquiry. It also
involves the cultivation of spiritual attitude such as forgiveness, gratitude, and generosity.
The famous story of Plato's republic epitomizes the spiritual
quest in the context of philosophical reflection.

“See human beings as though they were in an underground cave-like dwelling with its entrance, a long one,
open to the light across the whole width of the cave. They are in it from childhood with their legs and necks in
bonds so they are fixed, seeing only in front of them, unable because of the bond to turn their heads all the way
around. The light is from a fire burning far above behind them. Between the fire and the prisoners there is road
above, along which see a wall, built like the partitions puppet-handlers set in front of the human being and over
which they show the puppets.”
The cave is the spiritual ignorance that we are born into; the chains are the prejudices and received
ideas that we inherit from those who have preceded us, and the images of the wall are the ordinary
delusions of everyday life—power, money, and fame—that we spend so much effort to achieve.

Of course, there are many ways to interpret the story of the cave. First of all, it tells the story of
Socrates, who called established truths into question and pursued the underlying truth of the world.
Less specifically, it describes the spiritual journey of someone who is dissatisfied with the
conventional wisdom of society and its emphasis on what is supposed to be here and now.
The spiritual journey that Plato describes has two parts:
first, there is a movement of personal liberation, second, is
return to the caves in order to help others, and these two are
important aspects of any authentic spiritual quest.

- This is a reasonable criticism to make, but it ignores the fact

that any authentic spiritual enlightenment seems to touch the
ultimate reality that supports us all; and to experience this
reality is to participate in the fundamental reality of life.
The third perspective on spirituality
The cultivation of the self through spiritual practices such as meditation, fasting,
and prayer leads to an intensification of the life of the individual that appears to be self-
involved.
-In buddhism, there are exercises for cultivating compassion, which promote a sense of
connection to the rest of the world.
-In the practice of tonglen, we imagine ourselves breathing in the sufferings of others as if
they were a noxious cloud.
-Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, describes the essence of this practice; “We breathe on what
is painful and unwanted with the sincere wish that we and others could be free of suffering.
-Spiritual practice including tonglen, meditation, prayer and music, can act as catalyst for
inner transformation and growth.
Through practice of tonglen, it becomes possible to experience pour community with all
sentient beings, and this undermines our sense as completely separate individual.
-Spiritual is committed to spiritual as an essential goal, it involves self-overcoming than self-
preoccupation. It leads to an encounter with the world which we experience a sense of our
place in the big picture of things.
- In early Indian philosophical thought, the student is taught by his guide, or guru, to accept
the very limited and secondary character of his own separate existence.
In Shandogya Upanishad, the sage Uddalaka addresses his don, Shvetaketu, and tells him that he is
one with ultimate reality of Brahman:
As the rivers flowing the east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were separate rivers,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they emerge at last into pure Being.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is Self supreme.
You are that Shvetaketu; you are that.
In a profound sense, which is open to spiritual exploration, our underlying Self or (atman) is
held to equivalent to Brahman, or the basic reality that underlies everything that is.

-You are that Shvetaketu. You are that. In other words, spirituality in an important sense
seems to involve the overcoming of the ego since it leads us to identify with the ultimate
truth of the world, as something we must affirm and celebrate for its sake.

- This means that the highest enlightenment may actually be the withdrawal of the self, not
the celebration of the self as some kind of spiritual superman, but overcoming of the self as
a completely separate, self involved being.
THANK YOU !!!!

PREPARED BY:
GERALDINE FUENTES