Statement of Faith

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1st Row: ChristianCross, JewishStar of David, HinduAumkar

2nd Row: IslamicStar and crescent, BuddhistWheel of Dharma, ShintoTorii

3rd Row: SikhKhanda, Bahá'ístar, JainAhimsa Symbol

Historical Background

From 1949 to 1967 I was raised in Indiana in an independent fundamentalist Christian church, theologically similar to Disciples of Christ. I attended summer Bible camps and was baptized at age eleven. I learned the essence of the message of Jesus: LOVE.

When I was drafted to fight in Vietnam in 1969 I refused to go. Jesus told me to love, to love even my enemies, so I could not kill Vietnamese I had never met. Based on the teachings of Jesus Christ I claimed religious conscientious objection to war and performed two years of alternative service in a hospital.

In my effort to lead a spiritual life and to practice the teaching of Jesus to love my enemies, I did not receive support from my minister, my church, my family, or my Christian classmates at the University of Indianapolis. They called me unpatriotic, a traitor to my country, and a communist. As a result I left the Christian Church, left home, and began exploring other means of spiritual growth. I explored dozens of alternatives to Christianity and found Jesus was right: Love is the essence.

Over the last thirty-three years I have discovered the Divine can be encountered in many ways. I celebrate the diversity of sacred paths that lead to Self-Knowledge.

Statement of Faith

I am a Christian because I love Jesus Christ, my first spiritual master. I am a Christian mystic, drunk with the divine, hopelessly in love with God. God is a code word: G = That ... O = Which ... D = Is

I am a Hindu who, with the Advaita Vedantists, says: Tat Tvam Asi.

I am a Jew, my life forever enriched by (among other Jews) Martin Buber, Abraham Heschel, and a Jewish carpenter named Jesus. I dance with the Hasidim. I am of the diaspora.

I am a Sufi mystic from the Islamic tradition and I whirl as a dervish until the door to my heart opens and I experience the meaning of “Ishq Allah Mahbud Lillah,” (“God is Love, Lover, and Beloved.”)

I am a Buddhist. I practice vipassana meditation and also have a Zen meditation master, Osho Rajneesh, who, in India, taught me meditation and the meaning of the essence of the Heart Sutra: “Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bhodi Svaha!” (“Gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the beyond, enlightened, Halelujah!)”

I am a Bahai and a Unitarian Universalist and a Quaker. I celebrate the spirit of Emerson’s Oversoul and celebrate the spark of the Divine in every person, revealed through silent waiting.

I am a Sikh, I am a Jain, I am a Hindu. I practice Bhakti Yoga through traditional Hindu and Sikh divine singing of the names of God: Kali, Krishna, Shiva, Vishnu and the sacred creation sound, AUM. This is some of the purest divine wine available.

I am a Native American. I am Inca, Maya, Aztec, Cherokee, Navajo, Lakota. I practice drum rituals, and purified by the sweat lodge I dance the dance of the sun, I invoke the Great Spirit. The earth is my body, the waters are my blood, the air is my breath, and fire is my spirit.

I am a Taoist. I know that the Way that can be spoken is not the Way. I dance the delicate dance of Tai Chi Chuan, following the 108 footprints left in the sand by the Bodhisattva, our Lord Buddha, Lord of Compassion and teacher of the Noble Path and inspiration for the practice of Lovingkindness.

I am an anarchist, a communist, a humanist, an atheist, and a Marxist because they, too, are the children of God and in them I see the light of Divinity. When I was kidnapped by Marxist guerrillas in Colombia, and they had their machine guns trained upon me, I only saw in them God and I felt love for them, my "enemies," following the teachings of Jesus. “Even as ye do unto the least of these....”

I am an agnostic because I have no evidence from personal experience whether God does or does not exist or whether it matters. God may simply be a superfluous hypothesis, born in the mind of man, to explain the unexplainable and soothe the soul when facing the inevitable suffering of old age, sickness, and death. Spirituality has no need for God. Millions in this world lead spiritual lives without a belief in God, among them Buddhists and Taoists like myself.

I am a neo-sannyasin of Osho because I hear his call and respond. 21 "democratic" countries all over the world banned Osho from entering, or threw him out, unable to appreciate his message. Osho is the world’s most prolific, intelligent, and insightful author. I have read about one hundred of Osho’s 350 books: on poets, philosophers, mystics, saints and fellow madmen. I have breathed Osho’s essence and found it to be the same as Jesus: LOVE. I have laughed at Osho’s jokes, I have meditated in his presence, and I hear his message: LIVE! LOVE! LAUGH! From Osho I understand that two of the most important qualities a human being can have are a reverence for life and a sense of humor. Osho initiated me into freedom and gave me my neo-sannyas name: Swami Samarpan David. Swami is a Sanskrit word meaning “Master of oneself.”

Not condemning any part of self, mind or ego, I sing with Walt Whitman, from his ecstatic poem, Leaves of Grass : “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”

I am a natural mystic. I am in love with life and I see divinity everywhere and in everyone. “Judge not, lest ye be judged." I judge not -- embracing Christian, non-Christian, pagan, atheist, and agnostic alike.

For thirty-three years I have searched for Truth in all of the religious traditions of the Planet Earth. I have tried their sacred practices for myself: the Christian mystic’s prayer of union, the Greek Orthodox Jesus prayer, the body prayer of the Sufis, the Dances of Universal Peace and Sufi zikrs, the dance of the Jewish Hasidim, the Hindu’s sacred chants, the active meditations of Osho, the no-mind meditation of Zen, the Taoist Way, the drums and dances of Native Americans, the sacred Buddhist chants, the nonviolence of the Jains, Bhakti Yoga, and a host of other sacred dances and spiritual practices.

I continue to rest in silence, in awareness.

I continue to dance in celebration

of the gift of Life that has been given.

-- Swami Samarpan David (aka David Leslie Kent), 2006

P. S. The world is unreal ; Brahman is real ; the world is Brahman. --Adi Shankara