Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu experience - self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light - constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work.
*Sam Harris. Waking Up. A Guide to Spirituality without Religion.
Whatever holiness would be, it would be as natural as a flower opening to the sun or the feel of rain upon the skin, or it would not be holiness. Holiness is a word for something that just is, and making holiness something that is not but can be, that one can get, is one of the unnatural teachings of almost all religion. In this sense, most religion teaches us to be unnatural, and this is oddly and illogically called holy or love or something else.
*Arem Nahariim-Samadhi.
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Emperor Wu of Liang asked the Great Master Bodhidharma, "What is the highest meaning of the holy truths?" Bodhidharma said, "Empty, without holiness."
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These above words, found in The Blue Cliff Record, by a Buddhist Chan Master, Yuanwu Keqin (b. 1063), caught my attention. Possibly, partly due to my experience of the pursuit of holiness for decades - which was a passionate pursuit and possibly largely motivated by an unconscious compensation for the love and approval I felt was absent from my life, since a youth. - Is not all our pursuing, of anyone or anything, a witness to something we feel we are missing and ought to have?
So, why, now, intrigued by the humor and wisdom of "Empty, without holiness"? I see the shadow-side of such a pursuit of holiness, or of thinking I am or am not holy. The pursuit led to seeing the ultimate futility of continuing the pursuit.
Yes, at a point, we could say trying to be holy is okay, even essential. But, at another point, we could say trying to be holy is seen to be a distraction from Life. Also, we see the pursuit of holiness is likely always personal, so egoic, and inevitably leads to self-righteousness, a sense of spiritual superiority, which is exactly what holiness is not. This is like being in a game and you must win and know others lose. Somehow, designed into this holiness program is that a "divine being" will be impressed with you. Now, again, exactly what holiness would not be. So, self-pride is always the result of feeling one has pursued and gained holiness and, so, the approval of "God."
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So, yes, the higher wisdom, regardless of the spiritual path, Bodhidharma speaks. This wisdom is not to seek to be holy, not to pursue holiness at all.
A wise spiritual path leads one through the pursuit of whatever - holiness, salvation, enlightenment, love ... - to realization - not merely an idea - that what is already present is natural and to be allowed to be what it is. When empty of needing to be holy or to seek to be holy, I am free to enjoy holiness. When the pursuit stops, the Heart is receptive to receive and share, naturally, and the knowledge arises that Home is where we are and we are neither in need of any "God" approving nor threat of disapproving of us. Possibly, in this, we learn a Joy in which what one would call "God" shares with us in a Communion of Grace free of threat of disapproval or need for approval. Possibly, this Communion is "God."
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*Peace, Bart, Flickr
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*Lotus of the Heart is a Work of Arem Nahariim-Samadhi ~ a Hospice Chaplain, interspiritual author, writer, poet, and bicyclist. He is someone in love with Life and inviting others to that same ecstasy of Love ~ and, by the way, herein is nothing he claims as his own.
