The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the kind you bring up there.
-Robert M. Pirsig (1928-2017, Author of philosophical novels, including the bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.)
* * *
Monk: "What teaching goes beyond the buddhas and patriarchs?"
Yu-men: "Sesame Cake."
* * *
Pirsig's words can apply to any spiritual path. It could, for example, read -
The only Christ you'll find in a church is the Christ you bring there.
or
The only Allah you'll meet in the Mosque is the Allah you bring with you.
* * *
Humans are apt to specialize certain places, like magical zones, going to them thinking they will get an automatic shower of Light by just showing up. Likely not to happen.
The holy - sacred - enlightened - awakened ... place is already with you. If you are not awake to the Light where you are, do you think you will be because you go somewhere else, like a designated God zone?
* * *
The meeting between Yu-men and the monk may seem like a silly story. Possibly, but profound-silly, if so. What does Sesame Cake have to do with the monk's question? Is Yu-men taking the monk's question seriously? Yes, he is - Semsame Cake! Do you see?
Sesame Cake is a demystifying of the sacred. The word mystery is over-cooked. We scurry to it too soon. Using "mystery" is like "God," it can make sacredness sound inaccessible, something so foreign we just cannot relate well to it, so we plead ignorance - like something mind-blowing: Boom! Wow!
Is something mysterious simply for it cannot fit inside our very-very-very limited brains? If so, maybe everything is mysterious. If so, maybe the word becomes a distraction? A distancing? An alienating of the mystery of the feeling of our feet standing where we stand or our butt sitting where we sit?
What about Apple Pie - I will switch from Sesemae Cake to Apple Pie, for I can do that, and I have never eaten Sesame Cake. Do you like Apple Pie? You might like it hot, right out of the oven. I do - even though I am on a low-sugar diet and have not had hot Apple Pie in many years (oh! but I remember). You might like ice cream on it and enjoy watching it melt and seep and slide over the sides. And the smell... deliciously inviting. Then... Yum! Yum! You just enjoy it. You take a fork and lift a piece. It gets in your mouth. Taste arises. You swallow. Tummy. Intimacy.
Apple Pie is Apple Pie. You do not separate from it to analyze it. You do not distance yourself from it with words. You eat it! Yu-men invites the monk to leap out of his head and enjoy Apple Pie. Yu-men wisely refuses to get caught in theorizing, philosophizing, and theologizing. Apple Pie can teach the monk as much as all the scriptures, for teaching is much more than learning worded information. And - whoopie! - Apple Pie will not indoctrinate you or create two classes of people, orthodox and heterodox. Another thing I like about Apple Pie is I do not have to say an Apple Pie creed. I like that - at least, I do, though I respect many might find benefit in such recitation. If so, good; if not, good, too.
* * *
Kabir (1398-1518), the famed Indian poet sage, said, "Wherever you are is the entry point." Okay, yes, the entry point means there is something we could call mystery or Mystery, or God, or many words. So, Apple Pie can be an entry point. Yet, we need fully to experience the sacredness of Apple Pie first fully, or we will likely not enter anywhere. We will just eat apple pie, not Apple Pie. We will have denuded the material landscape of its sacred-in-itself in our specializing of another realm (spiritual, religious, holy, the Mystery, God).
When we desacralize matter - mountain bottoms and butt bottoms included - we close the door. We erase the entry point. So, running to another place will probably leave us in the same Lightless space, for the Lightless is us, not any place. But when you can drink the Light on main street, you can drink the Light on back street. Nothing is simply a means to something.
*Brian K. Wilcox, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
