Miraculous Moment: The Journey to Here - Stephen Morris

We live in terribly troubled times. Perhaps people everywhere, throughout the whole of history, have also done so. After all, at the root of our problems, colossal and seemingly insurmountable on a global scale, disheartening and painful to behold on a community one, are greed, ego-centrism, and self-loathing, which takes the form of hatred and violence when directed outwardly, and despair and self-destruction when turned inwards.

Still, many people are able to ‘count their blessings’ and manage to live relatively peaceful, happy, contented lives, experiencing the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows inherent in the human situation. Following the lead of those before and around us, we often live in the absence of serious questioning and critique. It is as if we preferred not to look too closely at what we are doing. Yet, in all honesty, should we not ask if we, ourselves, are not troubled?

It is a pertinent question for all of us, and it is one that has certainly received significant attention in a religious context. To some degree or other each of us has pondered those nagging, philosophical questions that our very existence on earth seems to pose. ‘Who am I?’ ‘Why am I here?’ ‘Does God exist?’ ‘What is really real?’ ‘Is there a heaven?’ Do not these perennial, universal questions sprout from deep inside us, from where we ourselves are, in a very basic sense, troubled? They can be very bothersome to grapple with, and for that reason we tend to let them pass or even block them out. We may all entertain these questions, but who actually addresses them? Who in their lives have committed themselves and made it a mission to solve this basic, existential dilemma and resolved the matter so as to become free and untroubled?

Is it not for having done exactly this that we admire the great sages and philosophers of the world? How often do we look at ‘awakened’ ones, and marvel? We think of them as extraordinary individuals, sometimes even as divine beings, and wish to emulate (if not worship) them. We see them as offering us something special, and, indeed, they do offer us something special, something very special. ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you¹’ is what Jesus was able to say to his friends; and at another time he told a group who had gathered to hear him: ‘The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light.²’

It goes without saying that peace is not a commodity, something which can be handed to another, let alone bartered away. The only way one can give peace is by being peace; and if Jesus talked about a sound eye and a body that is full of light, it is because his eye was sound and his body was full of light. All one can ultimately offer to another human being is himself or herself. Thus a Taoist saying often attributed to Lao Tzu reads:

If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. . . Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation³.

To agree that those individuals who have struggled to transform themselves and have ‘awakened’ do indeed offer to others their own freedom, their ‘light’, their ‘peace’, their ‘wakefulness’, is all well and good; but what about the other side of that same coin? Does that reveal a picture that is equally inviting to examine?

As human beings, are we not all essentially in the same boat? Whether we consider the closest of relationships, what any parent genuinely has to give a child, or a husband his wife; or special roles, such as what a teacher truly offers a student or a priest a parishioner; or the bonds of friendship, even acquaintances; at any given moment, with whomever we may come into contact on this planet, can we ever give anything except ourselves? Stripped of any roles and standing in naked reality, if what we have to offer other beings is who and what we are, is it not also obvious that if we do not share our clarity, then we impart our confusion? Thus, in the scripture quoted above, Jesus completes his thought by saying: `. . . but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!’⁴

This spotlight on each of us underscores how in a realistic (and spiritual) way we are intricately involved with each other. The import of Jesus’ point seems to me elucidated when a contemporary Buddhist practitioner writes:

We cannot choose whether to engage with the world, only how to. Our life is a story being continuously related to others through every detail of our being: Facial expressions, body language, clothes, inflections of speech — whether we like it or not.⁵

We are all intricately bound together, and any kind of enlightened religious understanding of life recognizes this fact. Sticking with the Buddhist perspective for a moment, another modern writer reminds us: ‘The highest form of awakening is Buddhahood that has a single clear focus: The deliverance of all beings drowning in the ocean of samsara.’⁶

Plainly, tremendous implications are enshrined in any individual’s ‘self-transformation’. It is never merely private business, for there is always more at stake than one’s personal inner peace and well-being. The other beings in one’s life, all whom one touches, are also affected. Indeed, is not all of humanity ultimately entailed? And what about the world itself? If the planet is polluted and this earth is dying, is it not because humans are sick? We are, on the whole, simply not integrated.

However much we may want to cling to our current condition, somewhere deep inside all of us we know that doing so will never be completely satisfying, and that ultimately the issue of reality goes quite beyond ourselves. The movement towards ‘peace’ or ‘light’ is a powerful, perennial theme precisely because it is the most natural thing in the world. In the quest for self-transformation, it is not only our own inner, deepest self that is pining; the whole cosmos is pulling at us. The search for ‘awakening’ is the fundamental impulse of the universe at work.

Nature is not asleep; people are. The universe is intelligent; it is alive; it is awake; and it is awaiting. And who knows but, if we listen intently, very carefully, we might discover that it is calling to us.

The Journey

This movement towards the ‘light’, this attempt to find peace, this struggle to awaken, this yearning for the holy, is often depicted in terms of a ‘journey’. It is a compelling motif in literature, not only because it represents simultaneously the desire of an individual soul for freedom and the drive of the universe for health, but also because it is an analogy with which almost anyone can readily identify. After all, who among us has never longed for the supreme adventure?

We know what it is like to grow tired of the dull routine of our lives, and weary of the same old places, the same old faces, the same old everything. How often have we wanted to simply leave where we are? And is it not natural to long for fresh scenes? We would dearly love to travel to new lands, exciting, exotic places, where we might meet new and interesting people, experience their customs, taste their food, see what their homes are like, come across unfamiliar vegetation or wildlife, some strange creatures, where we might perhaps behold snowcapped mountains, the endless brown desert, the thick luscious green of jungle. There are reasons why we relish adventure stories and turn real life explorers into heroes.

These days, right at the beginning of the twenty-first century, individuals who are rich enough and not ashamed to admit it, and who seek the consummate thrill, can rig a joy ride to the moon! But is it to the moon even that people ultimately yearn to go?

The soul’s search for peace, for ultimate reality, for ‘God’, if you will, can be likened to a long voyage. The major problem, though, is that the destination cannot possibly be ascertained, for the spiritual journey is one into the unknown. It is as if we were all living on the coast, with the sea a constant presence in our daily lives. We know that the waters can be dark, turbulent, foreboding, as well as calm, peaceful, inviting. As we look out, our hearts are drawn to the sea, and we wish we could explore it. We wonder how far it stretches and desire to know where it ends and what might be on the other side. Still, relatively few — those rare, brave souls — ever venture out. Most of us remain on shore where it is safe and where we feel comfortable and secure.

But if we never set sail, what course is left to us? All we can do is sit on the dock and dream about what it might be like; and then turn our attention to our contracted lives, finding what pleasure we can in a world that will forever remain mundane to us, where we can eventually learn to be ‘happy’ but where we will never truly be at peace.

And as sad a scenario as this may be for any single individual, is it not compounded by an aspect that makes it quite cutting? None of us lives in a vacuum. What about those around us, especially children? As youngsters grow, with a full view of the expanse of a shining sea and drawn to its magic, will they not wonder and desire to know, and ask us the very same questions we once asked ourselves? What shall we say? What can we say? Shall we be honest and tell them frankly that we do not know, or shall we perhaps live with our fingers crossed in the hope that young, naturally inquiring souls will never ask? More likely still, shall we not demonstrate to them by our example, day in and day out, by how we spend our time and live our lives, how to ignore, and to forget, their aching hearts and that vision of a blue, beckoning ocean and all that it represents?

It is unfortunate, if not maddening, that the overwhelming majority of us cannot respond adequately to these basic questions. To escape the dilemma, we tend to accept, and pass on to others, the conventional response, which suggests that no one can know what is on ‘the other side’ during life, and that we shall find our answers ‘when we die’. Thus we go about our business unconcerned, yet restless.

It was precisely this state of affairs that so perplexed the Buddha. When as a young man he saw so vividly that we all would grow old and die, he marveled: ‘and yet with such a sight before it the world goes on quite unperturbed⁷.’ His reaction makes perfect sense, especially when you consider that, just as Columbus and the likes of Columbus crossed the ocean to the other shore and lived to tell about it, so have the Buddha and the likes of the Buddha traversed the sea of existence and compassionately offered, and continue to offer, their report.

Yet if the search for truth, the very quest for freedom of the spirit, is portrayed as going on a journey, we are often presented in religious literature with an interesting, if not incredible, twist; and that is we are already where we are going, and actually have been there all along. We are in the very same position as the man in a Buddhist story, which tells the tale of a young fellow who sets off on a long journey but loses his money on the way and winds up utterly destitute. He suffers many hardships and great pain, but could have broken out of his misery at any moment, for his mother and father had sewn a most precious jewel into the hem of his garment — but had neglected to tell him.

Miraculous Moment

The route to awakening, to liberation, may, like a physical voyage, prove a time-consuming, arduous process, but no motion is involved, for all markers point to where we are already standing. There was never a single need to budge. It is not a case of going horizontally, from point A to point B. If any movement is indicated, we might consider it as vertical, into the depths of our present reality. Indeed, how far must we go to find — ourselves?

This point is wonderfully illustrated in that memorable account of the encounter between the Indian master, Bodhidharma, and his Chinese student, Hui-K’o, considered the first and second patriarchs respectively of the Zen tradition. Here is but one version of that legendary exchange:

Hui-k’o again and again asked Bodhidharma for instruction, but was always refused. Yet he continued to sit in meditation outside the cave, waiting patiently in the snow in the hope that Bodhidharma would at last relent. In desperation he finally cut off his left arm and presented it to Bodhidharma as a token of his agonized sincerity. At this Bodhidharma at last asked Hui-k’o what he wanted.

‘I have no peace of mind’, said Hui-k’o.

‘Please pacify my mind.’

‘Bring your mind here before me’,

replied Bodhidharma, ‘and I will pacify it.’

‘But when I seek my own mind’, said Hui-k’o, ‘I cannot find it.’

‘There,’ snapped Bodhidharma, ‘I have pacified your mind.’⁸

This scene takes place at the Shaolin Temple of Sung Mountain in China and we might wonder what both men are doing there in the first place. The master, Bodhidharma, was certainly not seeking anything. He had obviously made his own spiritual journey as a young man in India and, motivated by compassion, had situated himself at the temple. He is not proselytizing, nor even preaching; but he is, as masters at peace with themselves tend to be, available.

Hui-k’o, on the other hand, had been to several other places in his search before arriving to learn from Bodhidharma, and he is far from being at peace. The monk is, instead, caught in the throes of his tumultuous inner voyage. His dedication and perseverance are marked by his remaining all night in the snow, while the fantastic act of cutting off his left arm symbolizes both his desperation and absolute determination. He is fully prepared, at that moment, to learn the supreme lesson.

The ‘mind’ which Hui-k’o seeks to pacify cannot be presented to the master for the simple reason that it does not exist. It is not a thing, with any real substance. It is merely a fabrication, a net woven of memories, ideas, expectations — in a word, of thought. The poor fellow had been desperately struggling to break out of the world of thought by thinking (more thoughts), until now, because, with a little help from Bodhidharma, he is virtually shocked into the realization that thought itself is the problem, and the world of his own little ‘mind’ a rather grand illusion.

To suggest that Hui-k’o has broken through his own ‘mind’ and has gone beyond thought may seem enigmatic, until we remember that common thread which runs through spiritual direction East and West, namely the recommendation to pay attention to the here and now. Certainly Buddhists continually highlight the present moment and insist that it alone is truly real. They further hold that there is ‘One Mind’ common to all awakened individuals, which is to say that they share the same (boundless) perspective. The western philosopher Heraclitus, a contemporary of the Buddha, made the same point: ‘The waking have one world in common; sleepers have each a private world of his own.’ Considering Bodhidharma and Hui-k’o, or anybody else for that matter, it makes perfect sense.

Bring a small group of people, say five individuals, together, and is it not the case that all that they can truly share is the reality before them? Strictly speaking, is there any other ‘reality’? Each of course has his or her own personal history, but is it real? What about the future? Would that not amount to five separate ideas? And consider the matter on a global scale. What is the past, except countless individual memories? The future is six billion dreams. The present, though, quakes with sacred vibrancy. The whole cosmos is alive and aware, but it does not think. Nature is not hampered by a past or apprehensive over a future; it just is.

When an individual human organism emerges from the cocoon-like, restrictive confines of her little ‘mind’ into the radiance of the absolute present moment, the boundaries of the very ‘self’ melt away. In the exhilaration of such a release, one feels alive, buoyant, and not at all cut off from other beings or Nature itself. The present has no beginning and no ending; it is its own source. All that could ever be called real presents itself, and it is right here, always here and only here, that the holy opens up. However momentarily, how many have not known a lightness and supreme sense of unity with all that exists, so stirring and solemn that it can only be called LOVE? Is not peace palpable, and is not life — ordinary, everyday life — in any now-moment, the greatest wonder to behold?

How wondrously supernatural,

And how miraculous this!

I draw water, and I carry fuel!9

Thus wrote the Zen poet Ho-koji, and Walt Whitman sang:

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods . . .

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim — the rocks — the motion of the waves — the ships with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?¹⁰

Conclusion

As people, endowed not only with the capacity for divine awareness but encumbered with self-consciousness, we often wonder what it might be like to go on that ‘final journey’; rarely does it occur to us that we are already on it. That wise student of mythology, Joseph Campbell, once suggested:

Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts — but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.¹¹

Breaking through to the Eternal Now, where all of life is realized as emanating from a single, boundless source, the Absolute Present, effects a transformation in understanding when it comes to things religious. We might describe this as a transition — from myth to metaphor — whereby stories depicting past (and future) dramas and mysteries are seen as symbolizing present realities.

Take, for example, the Christian notion of the Incarnation of Christ. To the overwhelming majority of believers within the tradition, the idea stands for a historical event. Jesus was unique in the history of humankind and is viewed literally as ‘the Son of God’. Or course, most of the people in the world are not Christians, and they quite naturally consider the special role of Jesus as ‘Christ’, if they are aware of the story at all, as mythology. There is still a third possible interpretation. For those devoted and daring individuals who have made their own journeys, the Incarnation of Christ may be seen as neither history nor mythology, but as metaphor.

Go back to the miraculous birth story, and that beautiful, moving scene that is remembered and re-enacted the world over. For so many people Christmas is the most festive and joyous time of the year, a season of giving and receiving, of sharing and gleeful celebration. For little ones it is absolutely magical, full of colorful lights, music and song and mystery. And it revolves around the tale of a pair of unwed peasants, simple, devout people who could find no room in which to stay on a cold, glistening night in the dead of winter, but they were allowed by a compassionate soul to take shelter with the animals. As the time grew near for the woman to give birth, a bright and glorious star shone in the sky. The light served as a guide for wise men who were being drawn to a holy event, and as the song of angels filled the air, a baby was born, a divine being, before whom kings were pleased to kneel and pay homage. The story fills us with gratitude and awe, and we imagine what it might be like, even long to be transported there, to be present at such a miraculous moment. Hearing sweet, celestial music, we envision ourselves overcome by a sense of the holy and see ourselves prostrate before a baby, who is God himself. We are reminded that life is meant to be lived in the presence of the sacred, and in some place inside each of us we know that there is a magnificent star shining brightly in the heavens for every being who has ever appeared on this earth. Was there ever an infant who was not born in a manger?

Notes:

1. John 14:27.
2. Matthew 6:22.
3. Novak, Philip, The World’s Wisdom (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995), p. 170.
4. Matthew 6:23.
5. Batchelor, Stephen, Buddhism without Beliefs (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1997), p. 107.
6. Unno, Taitetsu, River of Fire, River of Water (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 63.
7. See The World’s Wisdom, p.52.
8. Watts, Alan, The Way of Zen (New York: Random House Inc., 1957), p. 87.
9. See DT Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series) (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1961), p. 319.
10.Whitman, Walt, `Miracles’.
11. Campbell, Joseph, The Power of Myth (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 86.

© "The Theosophist" (March 2003) published by the Theosophical Society, Adyar, Chennai 600 020. www.ts-adyar.org. Reprinted with permission.

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