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'The Crossing Over'
River De Chute, Easton, Maine
Saying: We either slow down and live deeply or rush about upon the surfaces.
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The point is ... something like this: If you try to get it either by an instant method because you are lazy or by a long-term method because you are rigorous, you'll discover that you can't get it either way.
*Alan Watts. What Is Zen?.
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Someone asked the Zen teacher, Hasegawa, "How long does it take to obtain our understanding of Zen?" He said, "It may take you three minutes; it may take you thirty years. Then, he spoke, "I mean that."
In What Is Zen?, Alan Watts tells of the above interaction, which he was witness to. He says, "It is that three minutes that tantalizes people!"
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The direct path doesn’t necessarily mean short; it just means direct.
*Francis Lucille. The Perfume of Silence.
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For a drive-through, fast-meal culture, there is no quick delivery of spiritual realization. To say "Yes" is to keep saying "Yes." That "Yes" is always present tense. There is no short-cut, yet it is always present and offering itself for our response.
Yet, too, we can say no one obtains an understanding of the Way, for the Way is always new. Spiritual transformation becomes understanding upon understanding, never just understanding.
At some point, we awaken to the "Yes." Over time, maybe many years, the "Yes" silently speaks itself within us.
We and "Yes" are and become together. Yet, no one can tell you what this "Yes" is. So, it is "Yes."
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Recently, writing to a friend on this matter of the gradualness of the Way, I wrote: "Possibly, rather than gulping down the whole depth, sipping a little at a time is how to explore what it is." I compare this to how we, when children in the rural countryside, would go swimming in ponds, creeks, and water holes. I recall vividly the sense of toes reaching out to prepare me for when I would be stepping in over my head. The toes would stretch to touch the bottom. This tippy-toeing is much like a spiritual path. There is no need to rush. Hence, we do not get discouraged by a seeming lack of progress.
So, what it seems Hasegawa is saying, is, "Forget time, it does not matter. It takes how long it takes." We remove our sight from how far we have come or what we wish to become, and we return here. We neither aim for "three minutes" or "thirty years" - neither matters.
Hence, we are always beginners. After almost 25 years of focused spiritual practice in fulfillment of being vowed to a contemplative life, I am as much as a beginner now as then in 1996.
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There is instructive guidance in the Christian Scripture on this Way as a process. The early Christian apostle Paul wrote, in I Corinthians 15.1-2 (NRSV) -
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news [Gospel] that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you - unless you have come to believe [trust] in vain.
In one "Yes" is the entire Way, yet it is only the beginning. We live with this tension; we relax into it, with no busyness to rush to some end-point. The beginning and the destination are now.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
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