A Heap of Jewels, the Gospel in Brief, and the End of a Cycle

Welcome to our last newsletter of this year, with our wishes for a blessed 2025.

• Our first new library addition this month is a selection from the Sutra of the Heap of Jewels, Ratnakuta Sutra, a major ancient collection of Buddhist sutras, which has been called a small encyclopedia of Indian Mahayana Buddhism.

“… deceitful behavior is like being a forest dweller while not pursuing the good qualities of the forest dweller… deceitful behavior is like wearing refuse rags without the accompanying shame and modesty; deceitful behavior is like dwelling near a mountain and near a tree without understanding dependent co-origination; deceitful behavior is like trying to obtain decocted medicine but not trying to obtain the immortal medicine of the Teaching.”

• Next is Leo Tolstoy’s well-known Gospel in Brief, a very intimate and influential synthesis and exegesis of the Gospels, and a movingly genuine testimony of Tolstoy’s spirituality.

I was led to Christianity neither by theological nor historical investigations but by this—that when I was fifty years old, having asked myself and all the learned men around me what I am and what is the meaning of my life, and received the answer that I am a fortuitous concatenation of atoms and that life has no meaning but is itself an evil, I fell into despair and wanted to put an end to my life; but remembered that formerly in childhood when I believed, life had a meaning for me, and that for the great mass of men about me who believe and are not corrupted by riches life has a meaning; and I doubted the validity of the reply given me by the learned men of my circle and I tried to understand the reply Christianity gives to those who live a real life.

Leo Tolstoy in 1907.

• Finally, with the closing of the year, we present an article by Dominique Wohlschlag, “Guénon and the Kali-yuga”, drawing from original sources to examine the doctrines regarding “the end of times” according to Hindu scriptures. Assessing in detail René Guénon’s influential account of the doctrine of the Four Ages and particularly the last one, Kali-yuga, the author shares observations that enrich and make more clear the complexities of these eschatological teachings.

The Mahabharata describes this age as “prosperous” (pushya-yuga), or even “auspicious” (tushya-yuga). It is auspicious because the age of Krishna offers the spiritual man unexpected compensations, to such an extent… that for this reason many sages of previous ages have regretted not being born in the Kali-yuga!

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