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Introduction
Let me start with a story.
A non asked her master:"What's heaven and hell?".
The master answered:"Suppose you have a table filled with the most enjoyable food you can imagine. All people sitting round the table have however very long forks (2 meters) bound to their arms. They cannot use their hands therefore. Do you see it?"
The non answered:"yes".
The master continued:"Now, hell is where all those people are trying to fill their own mouths, but all in vain. Not one gram of food reaches their mouths. They become more and more hungry. They are even fighting and trying to take the food that others have taken on their forks. So they even don't succeed in taking food on their own forks. Do you see it ?"
The non asked:"Yes, that surely is hell. But what's heaven?"
The master replied:"Now, imagine those same people quietly taking food on their forks and pointing to the mouths of the one sitting across the table enabling him/her to take the food into his/her mouth. No one is fighting and bellies become filled. Isn't that heaven?"
Let's continue with a quote stemming from Kahlil Gibran:"
I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit."
If we look at the modern history then we see that religions are "fighting" against each other. Even within the same religion brothers and sisters are fighting against each other. See the war in Iraq where sounnites are fighting sjiites, in Ireland catholics fighting protestants, ...
Fighting for a religion is a fundamental paradox. The word "religion" itself stems from the Latin verb "religere" which means "connecting". Fighting is dissolving, believing is connecting.
Fundamentally if there is one God, as stated in Monotheism, then the God of the Islam IS the God of the Christians IS the Manitou of the Indian religion IS the Great Spirit of Buddhism IS the Jahweh of the Judes IS the many Gods of Hinduism, ...
I know. Some and even many readers may begin to stagger and to protest.
Each religion likes to cling to their own vision of God. As a result differences emerge and in the worst case wars can start.
Instead of searching differences and being stubborn concerning the righteousness of our own religion and the "wrongness" of all the others, we should be conscious of the fact that we all emerge from earth and do have the same core mind.
Religious experience in itself is an experience that transcends the distinction between "me and everything else outside me". This is realised by body and mind. In the religious experience we feel, see and become conscious of the fact that "you are me and the whole world is nothing else than me and I'm nothing else but the whole world". How can I pollute the world afterwards? How can I insist in killing animals and human beings? How can I ...
Why should it be created ?
The creation of an international spiritual-meditation center will help to point out to others that we can live happily together, embracing the differences within the other(s). Think of the beautiful Nepalese greeting:"Namaste" meaning "I bow for your inner light".
Therefore it's my dream and life goal to create an international spiritual-meditation center.
The purpose will be to enable every religion to use this center to practice the religious exercices in their own form and to deal with the root of their own religion.
The second purpose will be to have a weekly moment of "silence meeting" where different religion practitioners can meet in silence embracing the same Pure Mind (call it God, Allah, Manitou, Shiva, ...) in order to facilitate interreligious encounters.
The third purpose will be to create a platform for monthly meetings where different participants will have discussions on different issues (reality and religious related) in order to make clear what the standpoint of each religion is and to search for a common standpoint (let's say a sort of compromise).
If the sky is really the limit, why not dream of an international spiritual-center as the center of all religions where all religions are represented. This center could come out with shared standpoints concerning the genuine and humanly right directions that humans have to follow in order to prevent human extinction.
The fourth purpose will be to make a clear statement that WE CAN LIVE TOGETHER DESPITE THE DIFFERENCES IN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND VIEWS.
The last but not least purpose will be to give free shelter to one vagrant or homeless man/woman every day as an enduring remembrance of all those troubled people in the world.
Future
The international spiritual-meditation center will explicitely focus on the facilitation of the religious experience (call it Enlightenment, ...) and invite meditation masters from different religions for intensive religious practices.
So it may be possible that during a week a Sufi master is giving instructions on meditating techniques and practices and the week after a Buddhist master is giving a sesshin (intensive zen meditation retreat) and the week thereafter a Catholic religious priest gives instructions on the "Jezus prayer", ....
As a spiritual center we will try to invite representatives of each religion each year in order to talk and think about the huge problems in the world and how we can resolve them.
The spiritual-meditation center therefore needs a huge amount of money for construction. We need a meditation place (20 persons for a start ), individual rooms, kitchen, bathrooms, toilets, secretary place, ... on private and remote grounds in the woods of the Ardennen in Belgium. Belgium is furthermore in Europe a rather central area (European Parliament and UNO in Brussels).
Every journey begins with the first step. Every donation will lead to the end: the creation of an international spiritual-meditation center.
Let me end with another quote from Thomas Carlyle:"Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct."
It's my conviction that the least thing I can do is to try to create it. Not trying it, is living a lazy and certainly an easy life. I cannot but ask every one to help to create this center.
The world must become conscious of the fact that we have to transcend the differences between the religions and focus on our common goal: to make this world a better place for every living and sentient being.
I also can imagine that you as a reader are asking yourself. Who is this guy? Is he a crook, trying to get my money out of my pockets? If you like to know who I am, please click on the link of my name.
I thank you for your time and attention reading this website. May we all help each other and so making this earth a better place to live.
