Sunday, July 21, 2013
The dream of me and you.
“The traveler has to
knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all
the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.”[i]
Buddha is not a
personal name. Instead it is a designation that means Awakened. Before awakening we all live in a deluded state of mind
seeing ourselves in a very restricted way, separate and apart, not only from
one another but from our source as well. We are imprisoned in a nightmare,
thinking all the while that the dream is real. Only the nightmare doesn’t seem
bad at times. So long as we possess what we desire, and believe in bright tomorrows,
the dream seems acceptable and becomes normal.
But life has a way of disrupting our status quo of
acceptable norms. One moment we are sailing along under an azure sky, the wind
in our sails and warmed by the sun of happiness. In a heartbeat the sky
darkens, clouds of despair cover the sun, darkness turns the seas into waves of
chaos and our happiness is lost. Thus our normal becomes vacillations between
highs and lows as what we desire comes and goes. This pattern repeats time and
again and we react with the seemingly realistic expectation that this is life and it could be worse. The
sun will come out tomorrow and behind every dark cloud there is a silver lining.
After all, there are many in our world who have it much worse and if we are
wise (so we reason) we will save during the good times for the bad times that
will surely come. But life is tough and we find it difficult to store away
needed reserves AND look to the needs of others. We have our hands full of
taking care of ourselves and loved ones. There simply isn’t enough to do both
and we rationalize that the lives of others would be better if only they would
be more industrious. And without even noticing, justified greed and alienation
set in and our heart becomes hard. Denial and defensiveness emerge, only to be
followed by anger and hostility. There is me and mine versus others and theirs.
This is our normal world, governed and dominated by an image we hold of
extended family and ourselves.
For most, this is an acceptable norm, but for others the
pattern leads to a quest to find a better way and this compels us to journey
far and wide, to the bookstore and beyond. Perhaps we can read how others
discovered the better way. Perhaps we can find that better way in exotic lands
among the gurus who possess secrets. So we leave home and travel to wellsprings
of expected wisdom.
I say all of this without judgment but rather with a deep
sense of compassion. I’ve been to all of these places and gone through the same
losing dreams, not knowing I was in a dream. I know of the frustration, the
heartache, the disappointment and despair. I’ve tried, and failed, to hold the
changing sea of happiness in my tight, possessive fist. So I know. That journey
failed me and it will fail all who travel that pathway. And the reason why it
fails is because the solutions are nowhere other than within our own hearts and
minds. The solution is to awaken from that dream and discover the truth of our
unity with others and our source. Wherever we go, there we are. It is as Tagore
says, we go far and wide only to discover the answers within.
We are, as Hakuin Zenji[ii]
said, like a child of a wealthy home wandering among the poor, or, as Jesus
taught in his parable of the prodigal son, eating from the trough of pigs while
a banquet awaits us,[iii]or worried
for our survival even though God cares for the lilies of the field.[iv]
The log in our eye that clouds our vision is our own dream of egotism. Remove
the log and we’ll be able to see what is always present, has always been
present, and will never stop being present. Then we will see suchness—things as
they are. Then we will see that, in spite of the nightmare of poverty, there is
abundance. It is everywhere evident, because everything conceivable resides
within our own mind. There is no separation between the outside and the inside.
The gate is wide open, and there is no gatekeeper other than the one we imagine
within our dream of untruth.
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