Saying For Today: We participate in sacralizing places, persons, and objects. Relatively, holiness requires our participation. How can anything be holy for us if we do not treat it as such?
A Glorious Fall Morning... in Massachusetts
Woolman Hill Retreat Center, Deerfield, MA
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The following writing I penned, except the opening scripture, at Treetop Zen Center, Oakland, Maine, 8.31.2022.
I use "sacred," "holy," and "spiritual" to refer to a single reality. However, what such words connote is known only in the experience they point to. I respect that different faith traditions will prefer different ways of speaking of the subject herein.
May this writing encourage the reader in experiencing the Holy in her or his daily life.
I devote this writing to the spiritual awakening of all beings. May all be loved and feel loved, and you, too.
Brian K. Wilcox, 9.2.2022 Damariscotta, Maine
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And each seraph (a species of angelic being) chanted with the others, "Holy, Holy, Holy! is Yahveh (the LORD) of Hosts. The whole earth is filled with his majesty!"
*Isaiah 6.3 (TaNaK, Hebrew Bible)
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Here I sit on a Wednesday morning, in Silence, at Treetop Zen Center, Oakland, Maine. This time is a holy time apart. This place is a sacred place set apart. I am surrounded by objects and land reminding me of the holiness to live and breathe with all beings daily. This place is like the places I encountered before I arrived and will after, yet different. I have gone on these retreats alone for over 25 years. Why?
Treetop Zen Center - and other places I have gone into the Silence - is no more holy than anywhere else, not absolutely, but it is, at least to some persons. And, possibly, by being here, I will leave more attentive to the sacredness of everyone and everything I encounter, including myself.
Through spiritual practice, like these times away in silence for aloneness, prayer, and spiritual contemplation, including honoring the holiness of varied traditions, I have come to see and feel the sacredness all about me in a progressively deepening way. For that, I am grateful.
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This writing addresses the matter of holiness. I ask, "How is it that we experience and honor some things as holy and not other things, yet, know, by experience, that everything is holy?" Is that possible? Is it helpful? Or do we need to drop the holy, sacred, or spiritual as a mere old-fashioned or deluded idea?
Below, a young girl called Satsujo seems to say there is nothing sacred or, possibly, she says everything is. Or does she? Perhaps, she says more than she appears to say. But, first, what does an anonymous Sage say to us? Does he say more than he seems to say on holiness?
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A devotee asked, "Why are some things considered holy, others not?" "Because," replied the Sage. The man asked, "What do you mean, 'because'?" "I mean 'because,'" said the Sage.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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A Buddhist lay practitioner took his young daughter with him when visiting the Zen teacher, Hakuin (Japan, 1686-1769). Satsujo, even as a child, was devoted to practicing the Dharma, or Buddhist teaching.
When Satsujo was sixteen, her parents were concerned she would not find a husband. They asked her to pray to Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. She did this day and night during all of her activities. Before long, Satsujo had a spiritual awakening.
One day, Satsujo's father peeked into her room and saw her sitting on a copy of the Lotus Sutra. He shouted, "What are you doing, sitting on this precious scripture?" Satsujo replied, "How is this wonderful sutra different from my butt?"
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This story teaches through contrast: the Lotus Sutra, the butt. These two seem incompatible, even contradictory. Many say the Sutra is holy. How many esteem the butt sacred?
The Lotus Sutra (4th Century) depicts teaching given by the Buddha shortly before his death. The Sutra is one of the most esteemed and influential Buddhist scriptures, and a number of Buddhist sects are founded upon its wisdom.
The butt... well, we all have one. This feature serves as a sexual attraction, likely assisting in the continuance of the species through copulation. A study resulted in most men, for example, saying the butt was what most attracted them sexually to women. Outside of a fated, biologically-determined attraction, one could wonder why a butt would sexually arouse anyone, considering what other purposes the butt serves.
Thus, we have this stark contrast between holy scripture and fleshly rear. The contradiction appears to be between what is holy and unholy, spiritual and unspiritual, sacred and profane. But is there a contradiction? Satsujo says, "No."
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Why does Satsujo say "No"? She sees differently than most others, including her shocked father. The story mentions her awakening. The awakening is to a different seeing and, so, experience.
Yet, would I say to a Christian, "Use your Bible as a cushion to sit on"? Or to a Muslim, "Use the Koran as a pillow for your head"? No.
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When a pastor, I was alarmed to discover, upon arriving to serve a church, that the leader of the youth group, a non-ordained layperson, was serving chocolate milk and cookies for Eucharist. Is this respectful? Did this teach young persons to hold in honor certain things as deserving of being treated as sacred in contrast to other things? Should a person non-ordained bless the Eucharist, esteemed the most sacred of rites of our church? He was gone soon after my arrival. He did not say why he left. Later, after I was leaving the pastorate, he met with me and told me apologetically he had had a dislike for me. He did not say why, and I did not sense a need to inquire. Possibly, for I disagreed with his carefree approach to what, to me, deserves a more considered, respectful treatment.
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Satsujo demonstrates the absolute truth complementing the relative truth, not negating or contradicting it. Her act is exceptional, for it is not the norm. But, in itself, her action is not exceptional.
In wisdom, we realize the absolute and relative are aspects of a single Reality. We experience the Truth in apparently contradictory ways. Hence, the use of paradox is key to any spiritual teaching.
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So, what about the Lotus Sutra? The Bible? Relics of a saint? A statute of the Buddha? A pilgrimage site? A church building? An altar? Our meditation cushion? Our spiritual teacher? Is it holy? Is it not? Each of us can ask such questions of how to relate to any object or person in our spiritual path revered as sacred, or holy.
My reply to this apparent dilemma is "Yes" and "Yes." What we decide is holy is holy - or better, becomes for us holy - while everything is holy for being itself. The bread and juice we served at Holy Communion were no more or less holy than the cookies and chocolate milk, yet, contextually and relatively, they were more holy. We, as a faith tradition, had decided so. Also, the practice itself, over centuries, had made it so.
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I have written elsewhere of having lived in a barn near the home I was raised in. I cleaned it out and moved in in my early 50s. I called the barn the Hermitage of Peace. It was a holy place for me - even if for no one else - yet, the same barn from before I was born into the Handtown community. The barn was holy for it is part of Nature, of Creation, yet it became holy for I decided so. I rented it for just forty dollars monthly. I set it aside as a place for living the vows conferred on me, and it became the center for that sacred Work.
We participate in sacralizing places, persons, and objects. Relatively, holiness requires our participation. How can anything be holy for us if we do not treat it as such?
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I have written prior and taught others, "If something is not holy, nothing is holy." Likewise, however, if everything is not holy, then nothing can become holy.
We likely have all experienced a sense of the sacredness of specific moments, persons, objects, events, or places. We experience this as a quality of energy or presence. This sense of the Sacred arises through the interface of the past, the present, and ourselves - including, often, the expectations we bring to the encounter.
Yet, as we open to the unity and co-dependent arising of Life, we begin experiencing what we once called ordinary, in contrast to sacred, as sacred. The whole world becomes for us, for seen so, as a holy communion. Honoring certain relative things as sacred reminds us of the holiness of all else.
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For many years, I wore a clerical collar. The sect I served in did not require such attire. Yet, I felt it was a way to honor the Sacred and a reminder to myself and others of the Sacred. I did not go about feeling holier-than-thou but recognizing that my role and person represented something beyond myself and that others need - as I do - reminding of. We need such reminding, for we easily forget and get entangled in the minutia of the little-of-importance we are invited to give attention to. That a secularized culture, including much institutional religion, denuded of the sense of sacredness, does not appreciate this need does not mean it is not a need; possibly, it is more a need.
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In my room, there are varied holy objects. Among them are Tibetan prayer flags, a Tibetan Buddhist dorje and bell, Tibetan malas, statues of the Buddha, Kuan Yin, and Shiva, a picture of Jesus, an icon of the Holy Trinity, a Chalice, and the Holy Bible. They remind me everything is sacred, including this body that goes with me wherever I go.
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So, "Yes" and "Yes," Satsujo, all is holy, and some things are sacred in contrast to others. Or, better - maybe the Sage says it best, "Because."
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and notation of title and place of the 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.
