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May All Beings Be Peaceful
Note: This writing addresses moments of entering a spiritual path or having an experience of deepening in the path. In the path are possibilities for growth, like many fruit can inhere in a single tree. Plant a single orange tree, and in it is inhering all the oranges of its lifespan. It all is now. So, with the path you choose. When on a path, we may have experiences that stand out, leading us into a deeper knowing, a more profound unfolding. We can call these epiphanies or awakening experiences. In entering a path, we can speak of entering the Way; in my evangelical Christian childhood, we spoke of conversion or being saved. The path is a way to experience, learn, and grow in the Way. In the next writing, I plan to focus on the initial entering of a path only and draw from my own life experiences.
A monk once asked a teacher, "I'm new here, how can I enter the Way?" The teacher said, "Listen, do you hear that stream?" The monk said, "Yes, I do." The teacher said, "Enter there."
*John Daido Loori. Mountain Record of Zen Talks.
This "the Way" could be said in different ways. "How can I enter the Kingdom of God?" "The Kingdom of Heaven." "Paradise." "Heaven." "The Pure Land." "The true self." "Love, joy, peace." "Love for myself and all beings."
If someone were to ask, "How do I go to heaven?," one would expect something like this from many people, "Accept Jesus as your lord and savior." That would have been the case in my evangelical, conservative upbringing.
The evangelical might have added, "Confess your sins" to lead into the "Accept ...". They might have taken out the Bible and shared a "plan of salvation." Step 1... 2... 3 ... etc. Still, however replied to, "Jesus lord and savior" was the only way.
No one in my upbringing having asked about entering heaven would have heard in response, "Look over there. See that creek?" "Yeah." "Go jump in."
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Still, we cannot wake up to ourselves - call it what you will - except right where we are. Open doors are everywhere; ways to enter the Way are in all directions, and here. Yes, an evangelical altar call can be a door, so can friends drinking together at a bar. So can the kindness of a stranger, the blueness of the sky, the laughter of an infant, the suffering of a loss, the sense of exhaustion with one's life as it has been, the beauty of a song, or an intangible inner urging. One can experience an opening by silently folding hands in quiet prayer or sitting in Zen meditation or singing a hymn or pop song.
These awakenings are beyond our labels "sacred" and "secular." The openings have no preference of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, nationality, or if one does or does not have a criminal record. There are no unwelcome immigrants or outcasts in this Way. This Way is offensive to many for it is not preferential, elitist, or deserving or undeserving. No wonder many people of religion do not follow the Way, while claiming to worship God. If you truly bow before the Sacred, you become like that. Otherwise, your bow is only a bodily posture. With realization (from French réaliser [c. 1500s], "to make real"), you can bow with your whole being, your entire life without even moving the body.
With realization, you are no longer a believer, for you have realized. Now that you know, belief is not priority anymore. You realize your belief was at best a shadow. This knowing is not an idea or collection of them. The openings of which we speak today are moments of realization. This has nothing to do with what you think; in fact, clinging to what you think - which is what belief is - can close you off from receptivity to the graces of embodied opening.
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When we respond with openness to the Opening, we sense it as something we could not have anticipated. We can never control this. Yet, it is here. We do not find it; it is never lost. And, while we cannot make it happen, we can prepare ourselves for it to happen.
If we do not prepare ourselves, the stream is a stream. If we do, the stream is a stream and an opening to more. However, the stream is more for what is within us. If not in us, it would not happen. A stream cannot awaken anyone; nevertheless, it can resonate with something intimate about us. That seen as outside stimulates an opening of something inside. The two are two, yet in the resonance one.
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Jesus pointed to this stream entering. In the Gospels, "The kingdom of the skies (of God) is within and everywhere." In the Gospel of Thomas, "Lift the rock, and I'm there." Other ways of saying, "You can enter anywhere, yes, here."
Jump into the stream. There. See? Where is a stream for you? Have you ever entered by a stream? Are there streams that open you up to yourself? To love? To meaning? To compassion for yourself and others? To your heart? To God? Could it be the spiritual path is a life of entering the stream again and again... and again ... ? Does it ever end?
(C) brian k wilcox, 2025
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