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Quiet Mind & Open Heart
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Buddhist teacher, Anam Thubten, The Magic of Awareness -
Many spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, teach that life is sacred. ... We can come up with notions of truth or divinity that are supposed to be more sacred, more holy, and more transcendent than life itself. Then we end up worshipping those notions, but we are simply worshipping ideas and concepts. ... There is no grand truth that is beyond life itself.
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Seeker
Sir, I've come here to seek for the truth. How may I find it?
The Sage
Do you mean you don't see it now?
Seeker
No. I've not found it. That's why I came here. How may I find it?
The Sage
How can you find what you already have? If something is in your house, why go outside looking for it?
Seeker
I don't understand. I don't see that I already have it.
The Sage
You don't see you see?
Seeker
Well, why do I fail to see it?
The Sage
You've been seeking truth, now seek to see. When you see, you see truth. When the eyes are open, the eyes see. One does not try to see with closed eyes.
Seeker
So, I'll see the mystery you speak of?
The Sage
You'll see what's common and as plain as day.
Seeker
But I thought you talk about truth being a mystery?
The Sage
The most obvious is the most mysterious, and the most mysterious is the most obvious.
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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The crazy wise man Nasruddin is riding through the village on his jackass. He is turned backward, looking behind. He keeps yelling, "Where's my ass?" A villager cries out, "Nasruddin! You're riding on it!"
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Before we receive spiritual insight, such wisdom seems difficult to attain, as though far away. We may think such understanding is only for a special class of beings, unlike us. Thinking it is for an exceptional order of beings, we may aspire to this special wisdom to be seen as such a being. Or we may covet to be recognized as someone who associates with an apparently special, enlightened being and group following her or him. The pride of wanting to feel and appear special in contrast to others can easily deter us from the truth appearing in everyday garb. In reaching out for the unique, we miss the obvious already waiting in our hands.
After receiving sacred wisdom, we see differently than we had before. We see we had not seen what is most obvious, most near, and most accessable to all who aspire truth above untruth. We come to question anyone's authenticity or truthfulness who parades themselves before others as enlightened, holy, or spiritually spectacular in any way. We come to see truly spectacular beings appear unspectacular, and if they did not, they would not be so spectacular. Their humbleness and authenticity attract us to them.
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Everyone is riding the ass of insight. A spiritual path is training in opening the heart to Reality nearer to us than our thoughts and feelings.
Yet, riding the ass and acting like we do not know where the ass is can be an avoidance of truth. Perhaps, we are afraid of our ideas being challenged, our beliefs being our refuge, not truth. Maybe, we are fearful of what others will think of us, if we question what has been taught us. Or, perhaps, we have been taught to doubt our beliefs is the opposite of faith, even sin against one's god.
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A key to seeing is aspiration. "Aspiration" can be read as "a breathing toward." We need a breathing toward truth to receive truth. And we can only breathe toward truth from where we are breathing now. We begin where we are. Reality is present, yet we have to seek it. We find, in time, our aspiration for insight is grounded in understanding, so understanding was already present to us. Then, seeking dissolves in knowing.
Without the immediacy, the obviousness, of truth, we would have had no grounding from which to aspire for spiritual wisdom. Insight into Reality is as near to us, as self-evident, as the jackass the crazy wise man is riding through the village.
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*© Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*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. The book consists of poems based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
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