Religions differ but yet are one in basic doctrine

Learning Point No 399

The lord saint has said that the purpose of welfare services is to relieve the suffering of the needy so that they have some basic comforts and the three meals a day and a shelter. 

The members who carried this out in the early years of mission were putting doctrine of loving kindness into practice. 

The ultimate is not only to fill the stomachs of men and give shelter but also to fill the minds of men with peace so as to enrich and save souls. 

The minds of men must be filled with the knowledge of the doctrine basic to and common to all religions. 

There is need for peace come what may. We cannot have peace by running away from life. We also can have no peace when we go for all in life, thinking that what we want, heaven must provide. 

What Heaven promises is peace that comes from what Buddhists call the Middle Way - avoiding denial of life at one end and overindulgence of life at the other end. 

Taoists refer to yin yang balance of polarities or contingencies in life. We should never ever let the contingencies like praise blame, gain loss, and the ups and downs in life swirl us around and get the better of us. We shall ride, balance and be atop the yin and yang like the feet of Lord Bo Tien atop the elements in his seated pose image. 

Christians refer to the grace of God and not just good works. Salvation cannot be by doing good deeds for good deeds must be sincerely done without expectations of good returns. For such motive of expecting good returns is not good. 

Men must find peace in God through Jesus and be motivated to do good thereafter. The motivation is the peace that God gives and that fills the vacuum in the spirit of man. This will spur men to be good.

Good deeds motivated by ego so as to have recognition and stature is simply not good enough. Such motivation will blow up the ego and make men feel exalted, conceited and unpleasant as well as abrasive to other men. 

They will then displace the presence of God in them with the presence of ego. Ego will distance men from fellow men and God. 

Subdue the ego but not deny it. Submit it to be part of God so as to be borderless, merge with God and thereby realise the grace of God. There is no denial of self  nor indulgence but merely submitting it to be part of God. 

This is very much alike the Middle Way concept for Nirvana or Enlightenment that Buddhists talk about and to the Tao or Way of Yin and Yang Balance that yields divine inner peace that Taoists refer to. 

By the grace of God, peace and life motivated by being one with God will spur men to love other men and beings and to be truly good. One then does good not for blowing up one's ego but because one is with God and God with him. There is no place for personal ego space or pride. 

Religions differ but yet are one, more so in the underlying basic doctrine. Only men with shallow thinking argue till kingdom come that they are correct and others wrong and that religions are different. 

This above is an elucidation of the Inner Truth that Lord Bo Tien talks about. The older term for Inner Truth is the Four Pillar Doctrine. 

Four Pillar refers to the four cardinal directions. Religions are the pillars of the House of God with Heaven or Sky as roof. All men and beings are in the Universal House or Temple.