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*Sa'd Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari, Sufi poet, 1300s -
"I" and "you" are but
the lattices in the niches of a lamp,
through which the One Light shines.
"I" and "you" are
the veil
between heaven and earth.
Lift this veil,
and you will no longer see
the bond of sects and creeds.
When "I" and "you"
do not exist...
What is
mosque or
synagogue or
Temple of Fire?
*
Yukui (1625-79), Chinese, Chan Buddhist nun -
"Inscribed on a Mirror"
We meet and scrutinize each other,
I confront my own nature;
If within there is no self, then
each and every thing is intimate.
I am fond of this mirror, which like autumn water
is completely clear,
Always the same, whether reflecting the face
of a foreigner or a Chinese.
*
We meet and scrutinize each other, I confront my own nature...
When we meet, do we see just the other? Or do we see ourselves? Both?
Yikui says we meet and we scrutinize each other. She admits a duality of "I" and "other." Yet, too, through the otherness of the other, a self, in the appearance of Yikui, sees itself. There is no clear demarcation between Yikui and the other; otherwise, she would not see herself through seeing the other. Yet what self does Yikui see when she meets the other?
We mirror other to other. This means I cannot know myself as an individual: that is, one divided from others. Otherness is appearance without substance. Person is a persona; individual is one who thinks the self can exist apart from the other self. That person is not.
The individual is not. That is, it exists as an absence. It is a shadow, a real shadow. The problem arises when the self thinks the shadow is itself; life becomes I-me and they-them, rather than we, which is a single I.
If within there is no self, then each and every thing is intimate...
Do we not long for intimacy? From which arises that desire? Do we not feel revived when experiencing it with anyone or anything?
"Within" there is no self. To the ego-driven, this is a disaster. To the one seeking freedom, it is good news. The self, seeing its illusory nature, is free from captivity to itself.
That which is not self cannot suffer the disarray of feelings and thoughts. The self not a self will always find suffering to sustain its illusion that it is. The self, not itself, unawakened to its shadowy appearance, cannot tolerate the Light and, with it, the bliss of Spirit.
Hence, "within" indicates seeing intimately: not within in the sense of inside the body, as many believe a soul hovers inside the skin and bones.
*
The belief in an individual self is based on external causes and conditions. The Self is free of causes and conditions. The Self is the unborn and undying. When seeing the self through meeting the appearance of the other, you see yourself, not the person, not the individual, not the one with a name and address. Your form was given a name, you were not.
And more, "each and every thing is intimate." Intimacy becomes the natural environment of one realizing - and not just in theory - that they are not apart from, but part of the whole.
There is no nature outside yourself. No self exists apart from nature. To help save the planet, for example, is to help save yourself, and all beings. You cannot choose this intimacy, for it is, but you can choose to realize it. Then you are no longer walking around asleep. You no longer see yourself as superior to the natural world: you are it.
Because the self is all selves, you can never be alone. Yet, you must know the experience of being alone to realize this for yourself. As you grow in intimacy with Silence, you grow in intimacy with others. Yet, this does not mean you will appear this way to others. Intimacy is not necessarily sociable, not as the mass of selves who believe they are islands to themselves commonly understands.
One could say, "But I do not feel intimate with everything? I do not feel one with others?" Realizing what the poet speaks of is not a feeling, and it can be intimate with feeling and not feeling intimate. And one can be intimate with not feeling intimate - that is intimate. Yet, in the realization, if not in the foreground, the truth of this is always still present, not as an idea, but as a lived reality. The more you evolve into the knowing, the less you are prone to the magic-show of separateness.
"Prone" does not mean the magic-show disappears; your attachment to it does. You are not bewitched by it. You can still enjoy the magic-show: God does, for God is part of it.
*
I am fond of this mirror, which like autumn water is completely clear...
The mirror we are is "clear." No speck of dust has settled or can settle on it. True Nature does not need to ask forgiveness of sins. It does not need to repent. It does not need to go to a rite of confession. It is an original purity, before sins, before repentance, before a rite of confession.
I was raised on what is called in conservative, evangelical Christianity "original sin." Some guy long ago sinned, so I was born, so I was taught, estranged from God, with no good in me. Also, I was taught I was born in the image and likeness of God. No one explained how I could be born in the image and likeness of God, and as I was taught, "totally depraved." Weird! And a horrific teaching! Sad that so many children are taught this nonsense. One is saying to the child, "You're a skin bag of crap! And God is really, really displeased with you."
Thankfully, over time, I came to discern differently. When I say True Nature is innocent, I mean this not even in a moral sense. I mean it like the mirror without dust. Before "good" or "bad," "guilty" or "not guilty" - terms belonging in the worlds of dust - is innocence, free of the fetters of that dusty domain of deception. Along with innocence, we can say "natural." The Path is a becoming more natural, not supernatural.
Still, there is a chance here of misunderstanding. I speak of True Nature. And we live with the tension of two truths: we essentially are True Nature, and True Nature has taken on itself the form of many I's. I's can do a lot of harm to themselves and others.
In the human realm of I-me, we need to rediscover the innocence. The formless I is not lost; the form I-me is the lostness, and it needs to confess, repent, and seek to realize itself as a shadow of the Source - and this is so whether you believe in God or not.
Always the same, whether reflecting the face of a foreigner or a Chinese...
The self lives in the realm of change. Change is ceaseless. When you look in a mirror, you see the fact of change. You know birth was, and death is to become. This is due to the Incorporeal clothing itself with matter, and the Word entering the stream of time - as Christian Scripture reads, "And the Word assumed flesh." The Word remains the Word; flesh remains flesh. Yet, these are not separate.
Nothing remains the same in the realm of forms. Nothing changes in the realm of the Immaterial. I-me was born, ages, and dies. I-am is never born, will never die. I-am is 'is,' which means not in the sequence of time. I-am is always now, and there is no other now. So, the Self lives in the moment without moments.
There is no self to live forever, for eternity is outside time, and time is within eternity. Thus, when you see yourself in the mirror through meeting the other, you see something outside sequence. You see something that has longed to be free of duration, in time to awaken to the Truth, to realize the illusion, but real illusion, of the boundaries of materiality.
In the mirror of the Self, all selves are seen as they are. The nature of True Nature is welcome, for it already includes the diversity of otherness, what the poet refers to as "the face of a foreigner or a Chinese." Hence, the poet's form, Chinese, includes the "foreigner" as other, yet not a stranger.
Hence, the famed Song of Zazen, by Hakuin, Buddhist sage, begins...
All beings by nature are Buddha,
As ice by nature is water.
Apart from water there is no ice;
Apart from beings, no Buddha.
We are so 'into' each other... Without you, no Buddha. Without you, no Jesus. Without you, no your best friend, mother, father, fellow employee, and no the person at the checkout at the grocery store,... There is only one Mirror - and you are it!... as much as a Buddha or a Jesus or anyone.
* * *
Tree and fruit
fruit and tree
tree is tree
fruit is fruit
tree is fruit
fruit is tree
so you, so me...
every being...
one atom is the universe
*
True Nature sees all in diversity as its own kin in form. Intimacy includes all, for intimacy is intimacy, and it cannot be partial intimacy. This intimacy is foreign to the ego, so the ego must, in time, learn surrender to True Nature, or True Nature will be hindered from experiencing itself through the other. As ego grows in surrender, True Nature shines forth to the degree of the surrender.
The Christian Scripture says, therefore, "Prostrate yourself under the mighty hand of God, and God will lift you up." True Nature welcomes this humbling. Ego struggles to accept it. Surrendering, however, the ego is lifted into the sky of True Nature by yielding the illusion of its elitism. In remembrance, the self sees its place at the altar of Grace, of Christ. Not merely a Christian Christ, or religious Christ - Christ - Inclusive Be-ing. Christ, Absolute Intimacy. Christ, the One appearing as all - both Face and Mirror.
Therefore, to move to a practice of spontaneous inclusion, one must move beyond the ideal of oneness - all the talk about oneness, inclusion, justice for all, is nothing more. One must yield to that which can only be inclusive, for it can be no other. To do this, as the poet enjoys this welcome, we need a Path that leads the egocentric self back to the Self, which sees itself mirrored back to itself as the one self in the guise of the otherness of religions, political parties, races, sexual orientations, genders, skin colors, ... Christ is all that. Buddha was and is. Variety is the Face of God. Life.
*
(C) brian k wilcox, 2026
*Sa'd Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari poem, The Secret Rose Garden of Sa'd Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari.
**Poem by Yikui. In Beata Grant. Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns.
***Song of Zazen. Bussho Lahn. Singing and Dancing Are the Voice of the Law: A Commentary on Hakuin's "Song of Zazen.". Norman Waddell's translation of the "Song."
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