|
Brian Wilcox 'Fragrant Plantain Lily'
* * *
Nasruddin, on hands and knees under the brilliant Sunshine, is looking for his keys. A friend arrives, "Nasruddin, what are you searching for?" "My keys." The friend says, "I'll help." He gets on hands and knees and begins seeking. After a time, the friend asks, "Nasruddin, do you recall where you might have last left the keys?" "Oh! somewhere in the house, I'm sure." "Then," asks the friend, "why are we out here in the yard searching?" "Because," said Nasruddin, "there's more light out here."
Spiritually, what is most important is where we are often not looking - some place other than here, some time other than now. Such seeking is like Nasruddin looking for his keys where they are not, only for his reason tells him he is more likely to find them where there is more light. Spiritually waking up means from false ideas and ideals taught us, even spiritual or religious, thwarting our aspirations to discover what we feel we have lost and most need to find.
* * *
When wakeful, we come to see no absolute difference between someone walking on water and another washing dishes, one esteemed enlightened guru and the middle school janitor, India and Portugal, the flower on an altar and wildflowers abloom beside an interstate, attending a prayer gathering at a church and watching a comedy on television, classical music and rock-n-roll, or a wealthy tycoon and a homeless person.
There are relative degrees of edification among aspects of creation - I would not say the local newspaper, for example, is on a par with the Bhagavad Gita or Meister Eckhart's writings, or a drug lord manifests the Light to the degree of a saintly, compassionate being. Forms manifest Spirit at differing degrees, as is so with different persons in the form homo sapien. Spirit is in all creations equally, while not displaying equally through them due to differing porousness.
Buddhists speak of kleshas, or inner positions, more commonly our neuroses. These kleshas refer to that within us that blocks the Light from shining through us. Our nature is primordial purity, even as the Sun's nature is light, yet the Sun does not always appear equally due to conditions in the atmosphere. These obscuring kleshas, sometimes called obscurations, are five: greed, ignorance, hatred, pride, envy. The kleshas are comparable to the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity, arising from the early Desert Fathers: lust (inordinate desire), gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath (anger), envy, pride.
Hence, to perceive and emanate the natural, supernal Light, there are two principal means in Buddhism and common to other paths: purification, accumulation. Purification is the transformation of that within us that obscures the Light - nothing is destroyed, only transformed, for nothing in itself is bad, wrong, godless, sinful, unspiritual, or neurotic. All coming from the Sacred bears the Sacred's Nature. A. Helwa, in Secrets of Divine Love, refers to this purification as "spiritual undressing," saying the spiritual life is more this undressing than a path; that is, we are not going anywhere, only being fitted to perceive and enjoy the One here. Next, accumulation is all that emerges within us in likeness to the Light - higher, more subtle consciousness, and more compassion, insight, intimacy with the One, capacity to forgive, joy, goodwill to all, patience, ... Hence, we become progressively more prepared to perceive, feel, and transmit the Sacred and enjoy intimacy with the Spirit.
The innate goodness within us is like to the Light, so easily perceives and is drawn to commune light-with-Light. To perceive the Beloved, within and without, is to enjoy the Beloved, perception and enjoyment being one. Love is drawn to Love, for Spirit is attracted to Spirit.
We cannot underestimate the degree to which natural disposition, likewise, plays in what we benefit from and are drawn to spiritually. Some see this as karma from a past prior to this incarnation, yet that assumption is not needed to let the mystery of what we are drawn to remain so.
* * *
One looks out and beholds a spiritual wasteland, another sees the Garden of Eden; one sees a Hell realm, another sees a Paradise.
* * *
The Light is absolutely spectacular in being denuded of all garb of sensationalism, amazingly holy in being ordinary. The so-called miraculous may happen, but truly nothing miraculous happened. This is the ultimate disappointment to an ego seeking a remarkable salvation, enlightenment, or liberation. When you spiritually are awakened, you see what you were before looking for and at.
Maybe you looked for Krishna, now you see Krishna everywhere. Perhaps you looked for Jesus' return at the end of the world, now you see Christ appearing now and now and now. Possibly, you looked to go to heaven someday, but now you experience heaven every day. Now, does not this sound disappointing? Or, maybe, this sounds like a welcome relief?
The story of the little fish in the water applies here. The little fish hears about water but cannot find it. He inquires of fish after fish, finally he meets a wise, aged fish. The small fish says, "Sir, I have heard of the wonders of water. I have been searching for it, but I cannot seem to find water, and no one can tell me where it is." The aged fish laughs, saying, "Young one, search no more, you live in the water, as you were born in the water."
We need to be disappointed in our spiritual ideals and ideas, profoundly so, so we come to see spirituality is a word referring to Life itself, to you, to me, to everything, even what stinks to the nostrils and is appalling to the eyes. Holy is holy, for holy includes the whole, not what an ego prefers, even a so-called enlightened, liberated, spiritual, or saved ego.
* * *
A disciple of Zen Master Kassan lived with the master. The disciple left to go on pilgrimage, deciding the instruction of Master Kassan was not suited to him. Everywhere he went, he heard persons praise Master Kassan as the most excellent among teachers. Finally, he returned. He greeted his teacher. He, thinking his teacher had hidden something from him, asked, "Why did you not reveal your profound insight to me?" Master Kassan replied, smiling, "When you boiled rice, did I not light the fire? When you handed out food, did I not hand out my bowl to receive it? When did I ever betray you?" Hearing this, the disciple was awakened to Truth.
* * *
Zen Buddhism presents three stages in our relationship to form, and this seems universally applicable, even if other frameworks appear in varied wisdom paths.
1) Form is form.
What we see is what the object appears to be - we see but do not have insight. A tree is a tree, nothing special unless we find pleasure in trees. If we have a friend, the friend is only a form, a body-bundle of biological, psychological, and sociological traits. We could say, "Who are you?" And we might discover a person is only a person with a job, from a certain place, with a certain accent, being of a certain race and nationality, eats meat or is vegan, ... We could call this materialism: I am a body, you are a body, that is a body. And, then, relating to that body, we relate through memory - nothing fresh arises, not at least to our sight.
2) Form is emptiness.
We see I, you, everything all illusion, only a fleeting appearance - so, insight. One could say, "I have evolved. My friend is no longer a mere biological organism to me, known only in memory, a piece of meat with a story." And, "Rather, my friend is an impermanent manifestation of emptiness - or, God, Allah, the Tao, ...". Here, one can get attached to the illusion and become nihilistic.
3) Form is form and formlessness.
One experiences the union of form and Formlessness, or what appears and what is before appearance and makes appearance ~ all appearances ~ possible. The tree is a tree, and the tree is more than what is appearing as a tree. Life is becoming, we see, the appearance of you, me, the tree, the friend, the raindrop, and the teardrop. Illusion is illusion, but relative to the Absolute's absoluteness. Connecting to the tree, we are connecting to the Creator of the tree, through the tree right before us, that we see, touch, and can put our arms around. Connecting to the Source of the tree, I am connecting to the tree; connecting to the tree, I am connecting with the Source of the tree. In the Quran is an emphasis on created aspects being "signs," so indicators that the aspect does not come from itself, it comes from That from which all blooms into a form. Hence, we are look at the signs and see the Sign-Giver. Insight is important, for otherwise, we see only forms, only surface, and not forms as signs - so in-sight.
* * *
This union of Sprit and created aspects is indicated in a Christian teaching about the early Jesus followers' experience of him. I John 1.1 (GNT) has -
We write to you about the Word of life, which has existed from the very beginning. We have heard it, and we have seen it with our eyes; yes, we have seen it, and our hands have touched it.
* * *
Yet, there is no thought of such in the purity of communion heart-with-Heart - hence, no intellectualization - only the immediate intimacy with seeing and touching and hearing and intuiting, ... As to someone close to you, for example, you are not thinking about this communion, only in the harmony, she and you being the communion. You nurture the connection by experiencing the other.
This is like saying, "God does not think of being God, just is being God." God would not believe in God or think about being God. Only we humans seem to need to tell or remind God God is God. Even atheists employ a conceptualization of God to deny God is God, while that conceptualization is not God at all. Rather, God is intimate with God, for being God, so that there is no separation within God for God to think of being God. Hence, I have referred to the Absolute as Intimacy.
When you know-by-intimacy-with the cool breeze as the union of formless and form, Spirit and matter, you do not believe about or in the breeze, you have direct, unmediated contact with the breeze as a breeze-and-more. The same with any of Nature's aspects.
* * *
Hence, the ancient Hebrews used a word for knowing meaning, not knowing about, but knowing intimately, through experience. This was applied to knowing or knowledge of the Divine or other persons. The verb is yaday. So, we read in the Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis 1.4 -
And Adam knew his wife, Eve, and she conceived and birthed a child, Cain, ...
Therefore, sexual union is an apt metaphor for this intimacy, wherein knowing is intimacy, is direct-experience.
* * *
So, in our story above, when the teacher says, "When you handed out food, did I not hand out my bowl to receive it?" he is speaking of this union of form and formless. The same happening arises with a person taking the Eucharist, when the priest says, "This is the Body of Christ" and "This is the blood of Christ." The Mystery is here, now, unveiled in complete unity, in the wine being drunk, in the host coming to rest on the tongue.
* * *
The inflated ego, including the religiously or spiritually, does not like this simplicity; it interprets simple as simplistic. The spiritualized ego glorifies spectacular manifestations, it wants fireworks enlightenment or bone-shaking conversion or flights into space-realms or meetings with beings from other domains. It would prefer turning water to wine over forgiving the next-door neighbor. It wants a renowned guru or roshi or channeler of some ancient being or a shaman that parades in the heavenly realms or a pastor of a mega-church - some marvelous spiritual VIP -, not a just-Joe or merely-Sarah as an example and means of Grace. Yet, the Sacred dresses up in the garb of the ordinary, overlooked, familiar, and, yes, despised. The spiritual VIP is often just a show, while the apparently too simple-minded don the unassuming beauty of Ineffable Life.
In the Christian Gospels, Jesus being from the city of Nazareth is of import spiritually as a metaphor. Jesus was called, at times, Jesus of Nazareth. Nazareth is identified as the city Jesus grew up as a boy. Nazareth was looked upon as a lowly, back-water place to live, as reflected in this Scripture on the first time Nathaniel, one of Jesus' disciples, meets him - Gospel of John 1.46 (NRSV -
Philip [a disciple] found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law [Torah] and also the prophets [Nebiim] wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth." Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!"
An irony in the Gospel is the one who embodies the celestial Word comes from a town no one - except possibly citizens of it - would wish it come from - lowly Nazareth. Metaphorically, Nazareth reminds us that the most beautiful Grace may be found to arise in a most unlikely, most commonplace and time. The Beloved comes to us, not in riches, but rags. And if we are looking for what we see to be special and spectacular, unique and thrilling, we may miss seeing the Christ, even if the Christ is standing right before us.
* * *
When I served as a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, a young girl, about age 10, walked up to me after the worship meeting. Her mom, standing by her, said, "She wants to tell you something." I leaned down, looking at her eye-with-eye. The little girl quoted a saying from the Gospel of Thomas: "Split wood, I am there. Lift up a rock, you will find me there." This amazed me, and I delightfully commended her. Here was a child, and she could appreciate the wisdom that many much older and so-called wiser beings would think too unbelievable or simple to be true. She knew the Ineffable, being Spirit, could be found under a rock, while some search and search and fail to find It. She knew her Beloved was as present in wood as in that church. She knew our most holy pilgrimage is not to somewhere else so-called holy, but the holy-here.
* * *
Grace is nothing special
that is why Grace is so special
to see Grace
stop looking
where is Grace?
where not?
Grace so near
we miss seeing
arising effortlessly
right here
seeing gracefully
you see Grace happening
in the intimacy here-and-now
so intimate ~
Intimacy
absolutely
your laughter or weeping
can communicate God
as well as any holy book or holy place
one asked a wise man
"When will I finally meet God?"
the sage said
"When you finally arrive here"
* * *
*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
*Translation of Gospel of Thomas, Saying 77, is from Stevan Davis, Trans. The Gospel of Thomas.
|
