Towards the Silent Heart

kitchen table philosophy

Monthly Archives: November 2015


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Look behind racial labels

With racism in all its ugliness creating fear and mistrust on an ever widening scale, Joseph Raffa highlights the need for us to see ourselves as humans first and foremost.

Stamping out racism is surely something that must begin in the home and in the schools. Legislation can make it a punishable crime to utter racist remarks but will it stop its expression?

Societies are enclosed conditioning chambers of variable influences – of language, race, history and traditions. A subtle sense of being different and maybe better than others flows in at an early age.

We are not encouraged to see ourselves as humans first but as nationals with an exclusive background. Distinction takes over and settles in.

So, I am Australian, or Aboriginal or whatever becomes the catchword that identifies humans.

Look under the label – the outer variations for what lies beneath. There you’ll meet the essential human, not only in others but also in yourself.

One and the same life-force flows through all. The conditioned mind divides, creating separation where none exists. It projects the attitude of racial superiority and acts accordingly. This mind needs to step aside and let the heart shine through.

Love, the kind that sees the One Universal Nature in all is what is needed.

Then racism will die a natural death.

 

 

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Choose gentleness – not violence

Joseph Raffa reminds us there is a gentle side to human nature behind the darkness being expressed so widely in our world today.

 

The atmosphere of killing fields, of charnel houses, of cities devastated by bombs is something we can do without. The odour of violent death is not a pleasant one. There is something deeply repulsive about it.

Animals being led to slaughter show the fear in their eyes and in the frenzied behaviour of their bodies. Hasn’t this planet had enough yet? Must we go on living with such behaviour, reflecting the violence, the aggressiveness, the selfishness that has been part of our makeup for so long?

We don’t have to be like this. There is a gentle side to human nature waiting its chance to show what it can do. It doesn’t need the protection of force, of security screens and protective devices, of alliances and other means devised by minds riddled by fear and uncertainty.

Behind the darkness of human living, behind the aggressive mask there is indeed another face – gentle, sensitive, caring. All it needs is a chance to come out and, when humans experience it for themselves, when they dwell in its nature and know it for what it is, never will they choose to dwell in the darkness of human living ever again.

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In the silence of being we discover that which stills every

sound – the sound of breathing, the heart beating, even the

sound of thinking.