|
* * *
Story Two ~ Enticed in the Garden
One sunny afternoon, the Sage sat alone, musing quietly in a flower garden. Initially, he enjoyed gazing upon the many plants and flowers, butterflies and bees. He contemplated each with gratitude in his heart.
In time, he could no longer look upon the garden or even voice inwardly, silently thanks for all the loveliness before him. With this, he closed his eyes, lowered his head, and sat quietly and reverently. He did not think about anything particular; he quietly imbibed the scents of the garden and felt the sunlight showering its light upon him. The scents seemed to be like spirits upon which silent prayers arose into the Sky as praise to some Unknown Source and walked about Earth in adoration of some Unseen Giver.
Someone entered the garden, sat by the Sage, and disrupted his immersion in this rapt silence - a silence in the Sage and which lived in the garden also - Silence meeting Silence. The man said, "Sir, I have no idea how you can sit there amid all this beauty with eyes closed like that." The Sage answered, "My spirit imbibes within, after the eyes witnessed without, that all this seen is a veil of Something even more lovely. That gives Life and Beauty to this; That gives Itself to this. My eyes are closed by the mystery of the Mysterious and rests in quiet praise. By Grace, friend, I have seen this garden unclothed; hence, Love has clothed me with Its ecstasy. The Sage continued, "And, so, I ask you, friend, 'Do you see here with the heart what the eyes cannot see? Do you welcome the Light that leads you from your head into your heart, thought into silence, where, in solitude, the heart sings its silent hymns of adulation before the Altar of our Beloved?"
One of the temptations of the spiritual path is to spiritualize matter, so to reduce Spirit to matter. Instead, Spirit manifests matter. Anywhere we touch the Ocean, we touch God. The sight of a temple or a bird in flight equally can lead us into the Sanctum of Grace. Anything we can contemplate with love leads us to Love.
* * *
"What is this beauty that leads us to the Beautiful?" I see it alike what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche speaks of, in Shambala, as "magic." This magic, or beauty, is not merely beautiful in the sense of pleasing to our sight. This beauty resonates with the beauty within us and all things - one Beautiful. Trungpa writes of this, what Buddhists call the Dharmakaya, Absolute Reality veiled by the material forms of this world:
You might think that something extraordinary will happen to you when you discover magic. Something extra-ordinary does happen. You simply find yourself in the realm of utter reality, complete and thorough reality.
What is this absolute, complete reality? And how different from our usual way of seeing things is this seeing? In Buddhist Dzogchen appears the teaching of the three visions: karmic, or impure vision; experiences of spiritual practitioners; pure vision.
Continued... |
