Join us for the Peaceful Families; Peaceful World workshop, August 26th to August 28th in Harpers Ferry WV and online.
August 26- Abstinence-Centered Curriculum Training
August 27- Exposition of the Divine Principle Study
August 28- Strengthening Families and Communities Forum (Free)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1143
What is the knowledge of this human world needed for? What is power needed for and what is wealth needed for? Are things like humanistic love or humanistic family necessary? We must deny them. Fallen human beings are a tribe that has inherited the blood of Satan, the adulterer. We must reject all those things. (188-234, 1989.2.26)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1142
Where did your love line begin? Where was its starting point? It began from evil. The chief instigator of this evil was Satan, the devil. How is he related to this problem? He is the adulterer of love. Human beings were born inheriting the blood and flesh of this adulterer. Then, do we want to receive the adulterer’s love? Did you want to receive the love of the impure lineage inherited from the adulterer? No, you did not. That is the problem. (35-90, 1970.10.4)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1186
Since the vertical and horizontal indemnity, the indemnity of the eight stages was completed, last year, on August 31, 1989, I went to Alaska, the northernmost place in the western world, and conducted the “Ceremony of the Settlement of the Eight Stages.” It was conducted at the northernmost place. Then on September 1, I announced the “ideology centered on the Heavenly Father.” It is the ideology of salvation through love, which we know as the parent-centered ideology. This ideology urges us to love everyone. Satan cannot oppose love. If Satan does not oppose the Unification Church on its way, it will spread worldwide in a flash. (199-157, 1990.2.16)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1075
Why do you feel tired when you study? It is because you study for yourself. Instead, think that the survival of the thirty million people of Korea depends on the one page or one sentence that lies before you. Study with the mind-set that the addition of one word of vocabulary will save those thirty million people and that the loss of one word will doom the same number of people. Accordingly, with that seriousness offer even more devotion.
It is not because your memory is lacking. You never forget what happens in an extremely serious moment, do you? Study at the risk of your life. You can feel the beating of your heart when you are serious. In such serious moments, can you forget what you are determined to do? To be forgetful is just a question of degree. (35-38, 1970.9.27)
Non-Attachment to Wealth and Possessions
WEALTH AND POSSESSIONS ARE SHACKLES that chain us to the fallen world. They promote greed and avarice, increasing self-centered desire. The love of money has been called “the root of all evil,” and materialism has become a great obstacle to humanity’s spiritual progress. Traditionally, the path to God has required renunciation of wealth and attachment to material goods. Monks and nuns typically take formal vows of poverty. Yet ordinary people may live free from possessiveness, sacrificing wealth for the sake of a greater good. Some contribute generously to charities; others forgo lucrative careers to care for a sick family member or to go on a mission to help people in need. They find peace of mind and great satisfaction having given up the anxiety of keeping and amassing material things for a life of giving and service.
Father Moon links the religious teaching of non-attachment with his philosophy of true love. He explains that God’s love begins from the foundation of non-possessiveness, while people who are attached to possessions find that their possessions get in the way of expressing love. This principle applies not only to our relationship with God and in daily life with our loved ones, but also to the well-being of nations and this planet Earth.
- Money as a Cause of Downfall
The love of money is the root of all evils.
1 Timothy 6.10Woe is he… who has gathered riches and counted them over, thinking his riches have made him immortal!
Qur’an 104.1-3
Do not race after riches, do not risk your life for success, or you will let slip the Heaven within you.
Chuang Tzu 29 (Taoism)
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Deuteronomy 8.3, Matthew 4.4
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.
Matthew 6.24
Riches ruin the foolish, but not those in quest of the Beyond. Through craving for riches the ignorant man ruins himself as he does others.
Dhammapada 355 (Buddhism)
“I got this today,” they say; “tomorrow I shall get that. This wealth is mine, and that will be mine too. I have destroyed my enemies. I shall destroy others too! Am I not like God? I enjoy what I want. I am successful. I am powerful. I am happy. I am rich and well-born. Who is equal to me? I will perform sacrifices and give gifts, and rejoice in my own generosity.” This is how they go on, deluded by ignorance. Bound by their greed and entangled in a web of delusion, whirled about by a fragmented mind, they fall into a dark hell.
Bhagavad-Gita 16.13-16 (Hinduism)
When they see merchandise or diversion they scatter off to it, and they leave you standing. Say, “What is with God is better than diversion and merchandise. God is the best of providers.”
Qur’an 62.11
He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain: this also is vanity.
When goods increase, they increase who eat them; and what gain has their owner but to see them with his eyes?
Sweet is the sleep of a laborer, whether he eats little or much; but the surfeit of the rich will not let him sleep.
There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches were kept by their owner to his hurt, and those riches were lost in a bad venture; and he is father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand.
As he came from his mother’s womb he shall go again, naked as he came, and shall take nothing for his toil, which he may carry away in his hand.
Ecclesiastes 5.10-15
The life of moneymaking is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful for the sake of something else.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.5 (Hellenism)
You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself— without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat. For discipline is perfect evenness of mind.
Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill.
Bhagavad-Gita 2.47-50 (Hinduism)
The impulse “I want” and the impulse “I’ll have”—lose them! That is where most people get stuck; without those, you can use your eyes to guide you through this suffering state.
Sutta Nipata 706 (Buddhism)
Busy not yourself with this world, for with fire we test gold, and with gold we test our servants.
Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, Arabic 54 (Bahá’i Faith)