Sunday Service: “What It Means To Be Human” November 30, 2025

Sunday, November 30, 2025
Philosophic Worship Service
11:00 a.m.
Srimati Karuna, Minister

“What It Means To Be Human”
Sunday Bulletin

What does it mean to be human?  Immediately, experiences of the physical and mental challenges we face in life come to mind. How we meet those challenges often reveals the ways of human imperfection.

We have come to believe that, “To err is human.” Yet, we also believe that to “forgive is divine.” To be humane toward other living beings is to have compassion. To be inhumane, is to be cruel and to act without compassion.

We express our humanity when we reveal divinity.  The so-called “man’s inhumanity to man” reflects the fact that we human beings often resort to our baser instincts.  But we know and we have seen countless examples of that spark of divinity in human life that brings love and wisdom amidst the darkness of ignorance and fear. And this gives us hope even in a world full of strife.

“True human life is a process of sacrifice of the immediate, the individual and the apparent for a realization of life that is eternal, infinite and formless. That process of resolution of duality’s contradictions, separation and incomprehension is yoga.”

— Swami Kamalananda

“Hatred ever kills; love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality, for it increases hatred. The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred and to promote love.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“Reason and love define the demands of human nature… The demands of reason and love must not be subordinated to the demands of habit … but on the contrary [one] must ascertain on the basis of the demands of reason and love what is to be habitual.”

— Leo Tolstoy