"Why is a tree sacred? Because a tree is a tree," said the Sage.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
The obligation falls upon us to foster in ourselves the sensibilities that modernity has suppressed or even denigrated. ... Without awe, our lives are impoverished, our society decays.
*Abraham Joshua Heschel. Thunder in the Soul: To Be Known by God.
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Chasing the extraordinary is a temptation for spiritual aspirates. When we pursue the unusual, we are chasing a thought. We evolve from chasing after the extraordinary to experiencing the ordinary as miraculous.
There is a point at which either can be, but we see it is all notional. We no longer need to undergo unique spiritual states or miraculous happenings. Life is neither. Life is. Life does not come and go. All else does. What you would call your greatest spiritual experience is like a flicker in time.
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You know, it is one of the most marvelous things in life to discover something unexpectedly, spontaneously, to come upon something without premeditation, and instantly to see the beauty, the sacredness, the reality of it. But a mind that is seeking and wanting to find is never in that position at all.
*Jiddu Krishnamurti. On God.
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On another occasion, Hachirōbei came [to the Buddhist, Master Bankei] and said: "The [Buddhist] teachers of old performed all sorts of miracles. Can your Reverence perform miracles too?"
The Master replied: "What sort of things were these 'miracles?'"
Hachirōbei said: "In Echigo, the founder of the True Pure Land Sect had someone hold up a piece of paper on one side of the river, and when he took up his brush on the opposite bank, he perfectly inscribed the six characters namu amida butsu [Homage to, or I take refuge in, Amida Buddha], so that to this day everyone speaks reverently of the ' nembutsu' [Mindfulness of Buddha] that crossed the river."
The Master laughed and said: "If that's the sort of thing you mean, people who practice magic and the like can do even better! Really, to bring up the doings of such people in a place for the true teaching of Buddhism is like trying to compare dogs and cats to men."
*Peter Haskel. Bankei Zen: Translations from The Record of Bankei. Ed. Yoshito Hakeda.
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The difference between the ordinary and the miraculous is in the mind - it is a thought. These opposites are how we have been taught to divide reality. Hence, we are educated to resist what is the neither that encompasses both thoughts as an attempt to make sense of reality.
We evolve to realize walking on Earth is as miraculous as walking on air or water. And to meet a stranger in the checkout line at a grocery store is as holy as meeting Jesus or Buddha.
We increasingly sense the sacred everywhere. The fascination with the extraordinary is transformed into this realization of the amazing ordinariness that is neither miraculous nor not so. To say, "That is miraculous" is to say, "That is that."
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One welcomes the sense of the sacred when it arises; one does not lament when it is absent. What emerges is a subtle wonder of what people call ordinary. This wonderment shifts in intensity, possibly being silent at times. It is free of egoic emotionality. It does not arise from or reside in the ego. When wonder is present, the self-sense recedes.
Encounters, places, or experiences can engender or intensify wonder, but it does not require anything to manifest. Sometimes, a sense of religious awe arises, from slight to overwhelming. In time, the sense of sacredness becomes like a natural environment, present but no longer felt as unusual - we may even drop all words for it, for the words pale so in light of the sense itself.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*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.
