Listen to the Richard Urban Show #76:
Cheon Seong Gyeong 2218
Nothing can quench the hope that burns in the hearts of parents who live all their lives, bound by the cords of love, for the sake of their children, offering their sweat and blood with backs bent by age and faces ravaged by time. Within them resides a force enabling them to clear the obstacles they encounter with a strutting gait however insurmountable they maybe.
The path of a patriot is the same. The ancestors of our nation walked the path of patriotism imbued with a heart of deep love for their parents. Our chershed pride as their descendants who can inherit this love is to love as they did.
Cheon Seong Gyeong 812
If there were two paths, one that goes to heaven and another to hell, on which path would there be more people? There would be more people going to hell. What must God’s heart be like seeing this? How bitter He must feel! How appalled God is to see His sons and daughters, who were supposed to come to heaven, all going to hell. They were to have become the people of a vast nation living together with God in love and with no relation to hell. Think about how it would be if your children had to go to the place of death. All of you will ultimately come to know these things when you pass on to the spirit world. (244-25, 1993.1.29)
Perseverance and Patience
2. Never Give Up, but Persevere to the Very End
Scripture credits with performance not him who begins a task, but him who completes it.Talmud, Sota 13b (Judaism)
He who endures to the end will be saved.Mark 13.13
But Lot’s wife behind him looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.Genesis 19.26
Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart. Galatians 6.9
You have crossed the great ocean; why do you halt so near the shore? Make haste to get on the other side, Gautama; be careful all the while!Uttaradhyayana Sutra 10.34 (Jainism)
To try to achieve anything is like digging a well. You can dig a hole nine fathoms deep, but if you fail to reach the source of water, it is just an abandoned well.Mencius VII.A.29 (Confucianism)
Suppose a man goes to the forest to get some of the pith that grows in the center of a tree and returns with a burden of branches and leaves, thinking that he has secured what he went after; would he not be foolish?
A person seeks a path that will lead him away from misery; and yet, he follows that path a little way, notices some little advance, and immediately becomes proud and conceited. He is like the man who sought pith and came back satisfied with a burden of branches and leaves.
Another man goes into the forest seeking pith and comes back with a load of branches. He is like the person on the path who becomes satisfied with the progress he has made by a little effort, and relaxes his effort and becomes proud and conceited.
Another man comes back carrying a load of bark instead of the pith he was looking for. He is like the person who finds that his mind is becoming calmer and his thoughts clearer, and then relaxes his effort and becomes proud and conceited.
Then another man brings back a load of the woody fiber of the tree instead of the pith. Like him is one who has gained a measure of intuitive insight, and then relaxes his effort. All of these seekers, who become easily satisfied after insufficient effort and become proud and overbearing, relax their efforts and easily fall into idleness. All these people will inevitably face suffering again.
Majjhima Nikaya 1.192-95: Simile of the Pith (Buddhism)
Master Tseng said, “The true Knight of the Way must perforce be both broad-shouldered and stout of heart; his burden is heavy and he has far to go. For Goodness is the burden he has taken upon himself; and must we not grant that it is a heavy one to bear? Only with death does his journey end; then must we not grant that he has far to go?”
Analects 8.7 (C