Try to find what’s real and what’s real becomes more distant
try to end delusions and delusions multiply
followers of the Way have an all-embracing place
the moon in the sky and its reflection in the waves
*Stonehouse, China, Buddhist, b. 1271
* * *
On a walk at noon, I see a man standing with his back to me. I have never met him. He is on the porch of his mobile home, looking down; I think he is looking at his phone. I see from around his porch railing a long string of Tibetan prayer flags moving in the wind. I stop. The sight brings with it delight.
I call out, his back still to me: “I see you have your prayer flags.” He does not turn right away but keeps looking downward. I keep looking in his direction, wondering if he will respond, if he heard - I am not sure he heard. He turns and, with a big smile, says, “Yes.” I smile back, then bow with folded hands. He does not seem to know what the bow implies, but he still smiles back. That he does not know is okay; I am content to know what it means. I walk on. The moment walks on.
Some moments walk on with us, long after, ceaseless in their sharing.
The scent of Grace, bound not by time or place, lingers in a place called the heart.
*
Such a moment is a moment, for it is not held within time, for it did not come from time. This is what Jesus meant by "eternal life." Yet, I prefer just "moment." There is only one moment, and it is walking everywhere. We divide it into moments, but it does not divide itself.
* * *
We have moments - see, I just divided it, and will again - offered to us, while we are thinking about the past or future, or just thinking, our thoughts running on autopilot. One of the vows I was given in the mid-90s is the Sacrament of the Present Moment - not past, not future. Yet, the moment is not the sacrament by itself. All is a part of the encounter, all of it is the sacrament. Sacrament is an encounter, a happening. Sacrament is fleshy; it does not exclude anything, even skin-and-bones and soil-and-sky.
Sacrament has often been defined as, “A visible means of an invisible grace.” That may sound churchy. Still, all great contemplative paths teach it in one way or the other. Grace represents something intangible. This means matter is a conduit of that. What “that” is called is secondary to the reality of it. Anyway, no one knows what it is.
Yet, it appears, like in a chance - or apparently chance - meeting between a man walking along the road and another on a nearby porch. Prayer flags can elicit the moment becoming known as sacramental, and the heavens and earth touch. In truth, the sacramental is present, and it is presence, though often unnoticed; the welcome is there, though the door might remain shut. We live surrounded by magic. How do we miss it? Are we conditioned to miss the Subtle, the Obvious?
The key is for us to become a sacrament. That is true nature. Nothing about our life may change, yet we change. We experience sacramental moments, while others may be totally unaware, for they are living elsewhere. We all have a like brain, while consciously, we do not all live on the same planet.
We are part of the same family, yet we have different addresses. Some persons live sacramental lives, others live without enjoying a moment of such intimacy. Most of us likely experience the sacramental at times, at other times we are asleep to it.
One taste of it, however, can whet the appetite for more. Then, we learn a challenging lesson: we must do something for sacramental moments to happen, while nothing we can do will make them happen. Grace is not a quid pro quo partner. In the sacred mathematics, one plus one does not equal two - never; it might equal one or one-hundred. You will never know in advance. Still, you keep adding numbers. You do not make the fruit, but you keep watering the tree, even if the tree appears to be wilting.
*
Okay, I know. But mixing metaphors can be fun, if you decide you want it to be fun. Life is like that. It does not seem to like obvious consistency, only the nonobvious kind. It dances inside and outside circles. You can, too; just do not make it a matter of rebellion.
* * *
Possibly, religion and spirituality are key hindrances to sacramental living for many who long to live sacramentally. Not that this has to be so for us, and not that we can blame these things outright. Yet, we can get locked into the way we are told things are and miss the way things show us, teaching us themselves how they are. Life can tell us what life is, even as love can whisper its secrets to you - are you listening? The moment we decide what something is, usually for an "expert" told us, we tend not to listen anymore to the wisdom thumping us on the head. And there are plenty of tellers in the spirituality supermarket telling us what the mysteries of life are. Blessed are those who say, "I don't know."
*
The wise teachers are not persons teaching persons. They are you teaching yourself. The other, what you call teacher or... is a mirror in which you see yourself.
* * *
Back to my encounter with the man on the porch. For some, such a moment can be felt sacramentally: there is an energy that goes with the encounter, internally felt, and potentially externally, as well. One may sense the outer environment become diaphanous. The mind may immediately or later assign a meaning to the subtle sense, such as joy, love, connection, ... This assignment always arrives as an interpretation based on past experience. In meditation, we can learn how to drop assigned feelings and just feel. However, there is nothing wrong with the assigned meaning; it is just that it never describes what arose in the felt-immediacy of that moment of encounter. Encounter is intimacy, and there is no space for one thought to sneak inside. There are no in-betweens in pure closeness.
For others, a moment like I shared from today - it is passed over as just another time meeting someone - a personality encounter. Two personalities, so persons, they see, interact. Nothing more, nothing less. Still, something deeper is present only not invited to participate. As Carl Jung said, “Invited or not, God is present.” Here, “God” is another word, a thought. We speak of something nonlocal, yet it manifests locally - in a specific place, through particular faces - when the conditions are right for it to appear. It is not temporal, yet it does not mind slipping into a specific time. It is without form and shape, yet it will don a wide array of clothing designs to meet you. It seems not to care much how it appears, only that it does.
* * *
Invited or not, the moment is the same. The question is, “Do we show up for the moment?” Showing up is more than being present. Showing up is the body-and-mind being available to receive and, so, be a channel of the Light. We are not channeling the Light as an experience of self-endeavor; we are the conduit as the river bed is not moving the river. The river is moving itself. The Light is the shining of light.
We can be the spaciousness in which the Sun shines its rays. The rays are it. To live this way is to live our true nature. We are the Sun’s offspring. When we are clear, all will be clear, and there will be no trying to make this natural effulgence happen. All we need to do is return to ourselves, not the selves we were told we were and are. That you are is already present, do you see it?
*
We have been taught to hide from ourselves, and many want us to stay hidden from ourselves. How sad! We can wake up, we can see our beauty and grace. We can celebrate our freedom, we can rejoice in ourselves. Love behaves in that way.
*
it happens of itself
yet you are not outside it
it is not separate from what you see
yet it is not what you see
one is not here
the other there
what is it?
what is it not?
(the question is from nowhere)
if someone says, “This is it”
at once, flee
(or you’ll get caught in the
briar patch... getting out will be a bloody affair)
drop the mind
descend into the body
now, ask yourself:
what do I feel underneath feelings?
Shine with the Sun, You Lotus Blossoms!
* * *
(C) brian k wilcox, 2025
Stonehouse poem, from Red Pine, Trans. & Commentator. The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse.
