Seeker: What would life be like for me after spiritual awakening? Sage: Ordinary. Seeker: Only that? Sage: Only that, yet something more.
If you go one way, you get lost If you go two ways, you get lost
Nothing changes, nothing is the same
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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Zen koan -
A monk asked Chinese Buddhist Teacher Zhimen Guanzuo [d. 1081], “What is it when the lotus flower has not yet emerged from the water?” Zhimen said, “The lotus flower.”
The monk asked, “What about after it emerges from the water?” Zhimen said, “The lotus leaves.”
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In Buddhism, the lotus signifies spiritual awakening. The plant is rooted in the muddy bottom of ponds and lakes, like human beings born into a world of suffering. The blossoms germinate underwater. Before they emerge from below, leaves rest atop the water.
In the early centuries of the church, the resurrection was the foremost symbol of its path. The resurrection is a symbol of awakening. Jesus awakened from the dead.
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As lotus blossoms arise from the waters, Jesus does from the tomb. Yet, below or above, lotus blossoms. Yet, in or out, Jesus.
In the Christian Scripture, the image of sleep applies to being spiritually asleep, dead: "Awake! you sleeping ones, and arise from the dead [resurrection], ..." In different words and a different mythology, the Buddha taught the same matter: "Get out of that tomb! Come out into the light!"
Sleepwalkers are walking all around, the Buddha could see. He knew they were not necessarily bad, just sleepwalking. His movement arose from insight and compassion. He was well acquainted with emotional suffering, despite being raised in a wealthy, privileged home. His message was not to get people to another place after death but to relieve suffering now. He never promised to alleviate anyone's suffering; he offered a wisdom teaching - not dogma, not institution, not refuge in a divine being somewhere else - to encourage and guide. He saw our emotional suffering is not essential to our true nature. His teaching, like Jesus' wisdom, is medicine.
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The widespread spiritual dearth in much of the postmodern world is related to materialism, which is a deadly doctrine. Persons deny and curse religions while bowing and kissing the feet of a hollow god. They worship the tree and the self while denying what gives both life. As philosopher Ken Wilber writes, in One Taste: Daily Reflections on Integral Spirituality, "Manifestation is not a sin; getting lost in manifestation is. We think that ego and nature are the only realities in the entire Kosmos, and there is our sin and our suffering." Such flatland ideology and living keeps people asleep to the spirit-depths, shutting out the Sun, while the Sun is one with matter and more than matter. Matter coinheres in dependency on spirit. Hence, nature, in spirit, becomes Nature, and the cosmos becomes Cosmos, and you become more than a self... Self. Yet, when the eyes of the heart open, you see it has always been just this.
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A monk asked Teacher Zhimen, “What is it when the lotus flower has not yet emerged from the water?” Zhimen said, “The lotus flower.”
Blossoms below; leaves above.
The monk asked, “What about after it emerges from the water?” Zhimen said, “The lotus leaves.”
Blossoms above; leaves above.
What has changed? Anything? Yes? No?
Zhimen says, Yes and No.
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I have shared on this site of an astounding, sudden spiritual opening gifted me at age nine. In our tradition, we referred to this as, among varied ways, "being born again," "accepting Jesus into your heart," and "conversion [i.e., a turning, turning about]." Ben Connelly, a Zen Buddhist Teacher, shares of a similar conversion experience -
However, I well recall the startling, utterly disarming moment when a Zen teacher first said to me, “You are Buddha.” The tears pouring from my eyes, the shame suffusing my body from years of addiction and trauma, and my desperate need to be something else, were cracked open in a moment, with a woman in black Buddhist robes embodying a vast compassion that was right in front of me, and suddenly and viscerally within me.
*Inside the Flower Garland Sutra: Huayan Buddhism and the Modern World.
However, spiritual awakenings, while always from and to the depths, what lies hidden under the garment of matter, can be subtle, more like a growing-into rather than a lift-off. The awakening is a seeing of that hidden and matter is known as porous. We see spirit has never been hidden. We see matter, including the ego, is interfused with light. There, however, is no one way or style of awakening. One may seem suddenly to shoot out of the tomb or slowly crawl out of it - it may feel more like being dragged out into the light. Additionally, one cannot say awakening ever ends. Can anyone say when it begins?
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Still, what after? The monk wants to know. We are provided with varied images of what an awakened, a resurrected, life will and should look like. These can be tantalizing and sell. These promises are designed by those who want to market spirituality as a cure-all, be-special product for desperate, hurting people. This does not mean there is always an intention to deceive, yet deception is deception. Such teachings and teachers can lead to immense harm to sincere seekers. And, while few of these groups are cults, they can be cultish. When an egocentric person becomes a leader, it is dangerous for everyone who follows. We have seen many examples of this, politically and religiously.
Likely, the monk had been introduced to some Buddhist assurances of a celestial life on earth, quite appealing, even if unreal. Egoic minds create egoic designs for those suffering from egoism. Often it is our egoic suffering that leads us to seek a fitting relief from ourselves. We realize we are our own sickness, so we cannot be our own healing. The desperation can make us gullible to being abused by so-called enlightened or holy persons and such institutions.
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We need to be wary of anyone sensationalizing spiritual awakening or, as many say in Christianity, getting saved. Awakening is an insult to egocentricity, not because it destroys the ego, but because it dismantles its being centered on itself. The egoic self seeks a hideout to keep itself turned in on itself - a life of self-reflection, looking at itself in its mirror - and looking like a saint, a philanthropist, a despot, or a felon will serve the same purpose. A true spiritual path undresses us, or it is not a spiritual path - it is a game. In the end, the game will not work. Under the disguise, misery will keep aflame. If we keep running from being exposed, even into more and more religion or spirituality, we will never find a resting place.
One cannot get out of a door by putting more locks on the inside of it. Egoic so-called spirituality is still the same poison that led to seeking safe refuge. I was even promised a Christian heaven, full of everything my selfishness could want for itself, while others, I was told, would be burning in everlasting flames. Even more, I would feel no compassion for the burning ones and no shame in worshiping a deity who would create such a hell of merciless torture and heaven of selfish merrymaking.
Do I still believe in God? Well, tell me what you mean, and I might answer. But certainly not a deity that tortures people because they do not agree with him and needs the world to tell him how great and wonderful he is. Such a religion feeds followers poison. It only takes enough people to give and drink for poison to be widely accepted as medicine. The barbaric becomes the commonplace. And persons wonder why some so-called evangelical Christian political leaders can be so cruel and heartless. If one's god does not give a crap about others' suffering and being abused, why would the one who worships that make-believe deity that takes the shape of one's own cruelty and lives only in one's head?
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Korean Buddhist Matthew Juksan Sullizn offers an interesting insight into the emergence of the lotus and its correlation with our spiritual flowering -
The lotus, after all, is just being a lotus - it doesn’t have to think about how to be a lotus. But you, who sit at the water’s edge - you know when the lotus flower has emerged. It is beautiful and it is miraculous. Just look. ... [And you] awakening is not for your own benefit - and that’s why you might not even notice it. Only a bystander, sitting on the edge of your pond, may see the lotus bloom. Or they may not. That is not your concern.
*The Garden of Flowers and Weeds: A New Translation and Commentary on The Blue Cliff Record.
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So, we are back again, and to conclude with, "What will my life be like, if I wake up and get out into the Sunshine?" First, there is no my life. You have never had a life of your own, and you never will. Still, life as you experience it will be like before, yet everything will be different. How? That is a question you might ruminate on, or not. If you do, good, but exploring the menu cannot substitute for eating the meal. Still, not exploring the menu is not advisable. So, let us apply our intellect to guide us on a wise way. Words are not the way, but they are essential. Others have walked the Way before. Their words and lives can guide us. Some people we may know show us the Way. We learn by listening, observing, and walking. We walk with humbleness, humbleness enough to keep learning, growing, and loving, even when we do not know how to do so - we grow as much by what we do not know how to do as what we think we know how to do.
