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Living together in peace...
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Whatever we experience, there is always more to it ...
*David Steindl-Rast. You Are Here: Keywords for Life Explorers.
Whomever we meet, there is always more to them ...
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when you encounter it
it's clearly not like something
it's clearly unlike everything
yet, it is
i've shared about it most of this life ...
throwing ashes into the wind
the Moon
moves in watery reflections
while remaining in the Sky -
that Orb has never come down
but it's light penetrates darkness every night
jump in, you'll never find it
relax, let it find you
though it's never been lost
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A koan of a meeting between the Zen Buddhist priest, Caoshan (840-901), and a student (monk) ...
Monk: A child returned to her parent. Why didn't the parent pay attention to her?
Caoshan: It's quite natural just like that.
Monk: Then, where is the love between parent and child?
Caoshan: The love between parent and child.
Monk: What is the love between parent and child?
Caoshan: It can't be split apart, even when hit with an ax.
*Translation, edited, John Daido Loori. "Caoshan's 'Love between Parent and Child'": In The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen's Three Hundred Koans.
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Commentary
A child returned to her parent. Why didn't the parent pay attention to her?
'Teacher, I've returned to you after being away for several years. I was enthused to return. But now that I have, I'm disappointed. Why are you treating me with such indifference? You seem not to love as you did before.'
It's quite natural just like that.
'There's nothing unnatural about my being overtly inexpressive toward you' (You know, one can be non-overtly expressive of love, don't you?). 'Love can be present in the absence of common gestures. The way you are seeing is unnatural, shaped by what you think love should look like between us. You see what was, not what is. Everything changes, my love doesn't. Look differently, and you'll see differently.'
Then, where is the love between parent and child?
Okay, if you love me, show me. I don't see it. I need objective proof.
The love between parent and child.
'Where?' ... A+ for persistence. A sign he is hungry. But is he prepared to eat? Can he chew meat, or does he need to remain on milk and cookies? Many persons are looking for their two feet? Blessed are those humble enough to ask directions; at least they are aware, unlike pretenders, that they have two feet somewhere.
What is the love between parent and child?
Where? Now... What? ... Loori: "He is still sitting by the river, dying of thirst." ... 'If it's here, apparently I've no idea what it is; so, no matter how much I look, I'll never see. At least give me a hint.' That's all anyone has ever given of this matter at hand. ... This monk may not be ripe, but he is on the way to his limbs hanging heavy with fruit. How many can say that about themselves? ... A good place to be teachable: confusion, reality confronting, shattering assumptions, ideas, beliefs, but how many can bear it? ... Truth... a merciless hammer. ... You cannot pretend it. Either it has you or doesn't. Which is it?
It can't be split apart, even when hit with an ax.
Though there are two - for oneness does not eliminate either -, there is such intimacy, you cannot find a gap anywhere. You can distinguish one from the other, but you cannot separate one from the other. Still, somehow, love moves here to there and there to here, while still and quiet. It leaves no trace. ... The two dancing together in the same shoes. They move, the floor does not. When will the monk see? When ready to see - just like you and me.
Gudo Nishijima, in Master Dogen's Shinji Shobogenzo, [H[e and his student were so close that it was not necessary to show their compassion [i.e., love] with emotional gestures. Even though the Master did not show any overt feeling toward his disciple, the relationship was so concrete [i.e., real, substantial] that even a sword or axe could not cut through it.
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One of the most formidable lessons I have faced on the sacred pilgrimage is the release of identifying love from loving feelings - both in relation to humans and to Spirit. That is, if love is present, I assumed, it will show itself as an emotion. It clothes itself with emotion, but is not an emotion. Otherwise, it would be an emotion among emotions. I still miss, sometimes, those passionate trysts. Thankful for them, I no longer seek them. I know there is so much more, for I have been visited by it, and it is never far away. It is the spacious Sky in which I breathe, and my heart beats. Only, sometimes, the mind thinks otherwise.
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My earlier experience in religiousness was deeply devotional, grounded in love for Jesus, from my evangelical Christian upbringing. And when I began meditating in my mid-30s, meditation was a sharing of loving feelings, including moments of emotional ecstasy. For years, I lived in this emotional aura, often waking up earlier than needed, so enthused to begin time in Quiet with the Beloved. I was in a romantic love affair, and like most romances, it did not last. Yet, what made it possible has lasted.
It took many years to see I had engaged in this love affair partly as a refuge. Such love was a contrast with what I often felt at home and in the world at large. God was my Safe Place. I felt alone in the world, like I did not fit, living with ADD and low-grade depression, shy and lacking social and emotional skills, and Jesus was my Best Friend.
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A problem was that this romantic view led me to the see-saw syndrome, where one goes up and down, always chasing the next ephemeral, emotional high. This view held that feelings of love were the natural state and proof of intimacy, rather than love itself being its own proof, and the absence of the emotion I identified as intimacy did not alter the intimacy.
As we grow beyond personal (self; egocentric) and group (tribal; ethnocentric) consciousness, we enter a space where we experience a withdrawal of such dependence on feelings. Christian mysticism has taught, if we wish to live Pure Love, we must be weaned off such emotional devotion in a relationship with God, to love God for God, not the pleasurable feelings we get from loving God.
John of the Cross called this the Night of the Spirit - different from the Night of the Flesh. In this second Night, Spirit withdraws the sense of its nearness. The soul aches for the prior devotional sentiments, like a lover who feels abandoned by the beloved, or a child pushed from the mother's breasts. Spirit is weaning the devotee away from such reliance toward what Christian contemplatives have called "Pure Love."
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In Pure Love, gestures of love, emotional, within oneself, and physical, toward the other, can arise, and will arise. Yet, reliance on sentimental feeling is no more. These arisings will spring forth and return quickly back into their Fount. You will not be overcome with excitement when they come; however, you may feel a subtle joy. Excitement cannot find a grounding, for it is of the ego, not the Self.
If you met a Buddha or Jesus at a sporting event, it is unlikely you would see them standing and screaming, like so many around them. They would be quietly enjoying the game or match. But they would not be against the excitement others were expressing, either. If either of them did express excitement, it would be brief, like a bubble rising to the surface and quickly bursting - possibly, surprising to them that such occurred. A Buddha or Jesus would be capable of excitement; however, they would have little need, if any, for it, and it would not stick to them. At the same time, they would be joyful beings and enjoy the good things of this life. They would enjoy the common experiences and things more than those who need to chase after excitement after excitement to make themselves feel alive. A Buddha or Jesus would embody life, for our innate nature is life; hence, they would not need to clamor for it, nor do we, when united with the Spirit of Life.
You, living a post-conventional consciousness, will rarely get excited about anything, for you have joined with wakeful appreciation and subtle joy. Being transformed spirit by Spirit, you arrive at an innate liveliness and a natural lightness; whereas, the ego must create heaviness to feel worthy, to feel right. The ego takes life with utmost seriousness, rather than utmost playfulness. You are more thankful, less emotional. You will find excitability less attractive and lean toward calm.
This predilection to lightness is of Presence, for it is its nature. Like a child quietly playing alone, Spirit delights in entertaining itself without calling attention to itself or needing to be heard and seen.
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Spirit has nothing to prove to anyone, even as the Sun shines, for it shines, and the Sun does not get upset if no one is thankful to it or congratulates it. It does not hoop and holler, nor does it compete to outdo anyone or anything; it simply, quietly does what it is. The more you are transformed into post-personal consciousness, the ego being returned into True Nature, so seeing itself as servant of Grace, the more like the Sun you become.
A noble prayer of aspiration would be: "May I become like the Sun." This Sunlikeness is the Natural Great Perfection or Buddha Nature Buddhists speak of, and it is the Imago Dei, or Image of God, Christians speak of, and which their Scripture says is the likeness we share with the Creative Fount. It is the one Self of all selves, a Self all sentient beings share and which manifests according to the creative capacities of each.
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Recently, as times before over the years, when coming out of the meditation, I felt profound, subtle grief. This sorrow, subtle, can occur as one transitions from deep meditation back into everyday awareness, as when moving from deep sleep into waking consciousness. For such experience, I often refer to "feeling" or "sense," rather than emotion, because it does not arise from the ego. The act is one of prior to ego, like returning Home for a time and having to leave, or meeting a Dear Friend and having to say goodbye.
This grief experience reminds me of what many report when having an NDE, and the difficulty of consciousness coming back fully into waking consciousness. We have a similar experience when waking from sleep: we are aware of a joyful restfulness we wish to return to, and so we relax to regain the release of waking consciousness. "Falling to sleep" is often how persons refer to this. We are falling into, for out of the world, or ordinary awareness. We are yielding to an egoic death. The self trying to go to sleep hinders this falling, as the self trying to die to itself becomes a hindrance.
Thus, we want to die to self-consciousness again and fall back into sleep. We may even have a snooze control on our alarm device to ensure we can do this and still get up on time. So, how ironic, many of us fear death, for we see it as the loss of self-consciousness. This self-consciousness is at the root of all our emotional suffering. And we enjoy the loss of self during sleep. The loss of self-consciousness is only a problem to the self. The self cannot exist apart from its self-reflection, and it knows it. So, do we really want to go into some afterlife to a heaven or somewhere else filled with selves?
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In the deep contemplation, there is a feeling, or sense, but it is not an emotion, or a loving feeling. It is a sense of intimacy, unemotional, but clearly present, deeply intimate, and lively. And you are not separate from the intimacy. It is neither within you nor outside you. This closeness is too real, too close to be located, even as you cannot be placed anywhere.
Furthermore, because this intimacy is nonlocal, you may experience sudden, spontaneous connections with others at a distance. I experience this often with an acquaintance from another country. She was my spiritual director. See, distance does not matter, for it is not. The arising of such intimacy feels light, is clear, and comes and goes quickly, while egoic intimacy is dense and clingy. Transpersonal intimacy does not stick, so to speak, so there is no attachment. There is nothing personal about it, yet it involves two persons, even if the other is not aware of it. I do not feel a need for her - or anyone - to sense this connection with me. Not feeling the need for another to experience this with you, while you experience it, is a sign of its natural selflessness. It took me several decades after vowing to a contemplative life to learn to differentiate between this subtle, spiritual connection and the emotional attachment to someone. I got involved in some relationships that were deeply hurtful, partly due to this mistake. I failed to discern between egoic attachment and spiritual intimacy.
Such connections are not manufactured by manipulation, such as using the mind to create intimacy. Spirit itself is the intimacy. And this closeness is most likely to occur only when two or more have developed to a level of consciousness able to experience it. Thus, in secular society, most relationships do not experience this depth of closeness; yet, that does not mean they do not share a degree of intimacy. Many successful relationships function well at a personal level.
Regardless, why does this connection happen between some persons, not others? I cannot but hint at the reason. I can confidently deduce certain conditions must be present to allow it, for that is true of all experience. Still, the connection, unmanifest, is already present with every being, for we share the Ground from which all love and compassion arise into bodily experience.
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What I say here, on such matters, I speak of experience. The experience points to a non-experience. As I have said before, our unspoken direction is from and to something that does not fit within the duality wherein we know experiences. And, in that arising, we return to talk about it - as I do - in words of duality. We do not have a language for the knowing of Intimacy, the Wellspring of all experiences of love and closeness.
Also, this closeness is our fundamental nature; it is not a transcendental state. As Anam Thubten, a Tibetan Buddhist Teacher, writes in Releasing the Knot of the Mind: Instructions on Resting in Stillness and Awareness, "Rigpa (i.e., Mind, Spirit, spirit ...) is the unconditioned dimension of our consciousness that is always present in each of us, even before the ego develops." And, "It is not some type of altered or exalted state of mind." Rather, our everyday mind is an altered state. The spontaneous intimacy is True Nature manifesting free of ego, while ego can become aware of it, but only looking back. That is, the intimacy manifests before awareness of it. And all else other than the intimacy is the illusion, not that it does not exist, but it exists like a shadow: see above verse, the Moon reflected in the waters. How many grow to know this, so look away from the shadows to one That the myriad shadows shadow?
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The monk is being led into a non-emotional, non-personal, beyond-experience love that is more solid than feelings and the ground from which all affectionate sensations and actions take form. These forms are ways we express the formless love, for love is drawn to love itself; better, love expresses itself through us as a form of love for love to show itself to itself. Lovers removing clothes to share love is an image of love unclothing itself to be fully seen as itself, no hiddenness from itself.
Hence, the Christian writer could, in the New Testament, say, "God is love." We can say, too, "I am love" and "We are love." And that being said, we find ways to express love in form, giving and receiving together the shapes among us to connect with each other. The inspiration and intimacy are God, or love, itself.
Consequently, where love appears, God is that, but not anything captured in any three-letter word, G-o-d, or any image of anywhere or anything. Even l-o-v-e is not love, but only a way to indicate something precious and vivifying, fully here in this world; and that we are. To say, "God is that" is to say, "I am that," and God says both, for God is one with our recognition and utterances of truth. There, we feel at home, for we are home. When we experience subtle intimacy with the other, there is only one intimacy. Spirit enjoys seeing itself in the appearance of another, and that is exactly why you do. The spiritual relationship becomes a means to learn to see through appearances to the Non-Appearance, and this heightens your appreciation for and love of appearances.
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(C) 2026, brian k. wilcox
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