We Are Fields Before Each Other

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was a Dominican priest and a very influential philosopher and theologian in Italy.  His works had a high impact on Western thought and for the Catholic Church he is the model teacher for the students of priesthood to this day.

Osho says about him, “In the West, there was a great Christian theologian – Thomas  Aquinas. He wrote a very beautiful book of Christian theology, Summa Theologiae. It is a huge book, almost an encyclopedia; Christians have no other book like this in which everything of Christian theology and practices has been explained.

Thomas Aquinas was on his deathbed. He said to his disciples as the last thing that all these fifty volumes of Summa Theologiae are useless, “because I have been unable to say what I wanted to say. So don’t believe in them; otherwise you will cling to them – and the truth has never been in them. The truth is going with me, only the words are staying behind.”

The words of Thomas Aquinas are priceless, every word is a treasure, a diamond. Yet Aquinas himself declared at the time of his death that they are all rubbish.”

Osho, Nowhere To Go But In, Ch 13

This poem by Thomas Aquinas could have been written today, so little has mankind changed since he wrote it:

How is it they live for eons in such harmony –
the billions of stars –

when most men can barely go a minute
without declaring war in their mind against someone they know.

There are wars where no one marches with a flag,
though that does not keep casualties
from mounting.

Our hearts irrigate this earth.
We are fields before
each other.

How can we live in harmony?
First we need to
know

we are all madly in love
with the same
God.

(Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky)