These four stories are powerful exemplars of how certain events can completely open up our whole being to a new vision of reality.
A teacher making a pilgrimage around Mt. Kailash in Tibet
This is an abridged account from Ajahn Sucitto, a monk who is one of my favorite teachers. He was in Tibet on his way to a pilgrimage on Mount Kailash, a holy site for Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains. One day the group he was with got out of their car to have a bite to eat:
“Then we noticed a little line of people coming down a big hill. They look like little balls--grey, brown, ragged, greasy rags--coming toward us. As they approach us, they look at me and their eyes light up [because he is a monk]. Then one by one, they come forward and bend over: they just want a touch from me. When I touch their shoulders, they look up and their eyes light with joy. And they bring the babies...OK, touch the baby. Another one. A whole line of villagers coming down. And every time I bend up, they look up and their eyes lit up with joy.
After a while, the person I was with started crying. He couldn’t handle any more – such vulnerability! People at the end of the material world and they weren’t asking for money or food, they just wanted a blessing! Their eyes lit up to have a blessing. And where is the blessing? The blessing is when we fully acknowledge our own vulnerability, our own death, our mortality, our pain, our uncertainty. We acknowledge it purely, without wavering. And we acknowledge it in another, purely, without wavering. Then the boundaries disappear, and our hearts open up completely. The boundaries of the manifest – the skin, the clothes, the hair, the status, the name, the position – are seen to be just rags, of no real value, of no real worth. When those are seen through the heart, it rises up. That’s where you meet: heart to heart. The meeting is the blessing, and something rejoices in that. This is what the heart needs. It’s always a responsibility to handle the activities of daily life , but we don’t have to let it create fever and confusion. Handle it so that it’s just enough – just enough rags to wear. And meet in the blessing.”
My son in Israel
Over 10 years ago my son went to Israel on a Birthright trip for Americans who have Jewish ancestry. This is an excerpt from his many reflections on the trip:
“It was Sabbath evening at the Wailing Wall. As our group rounded the corner and the Wall stood right in front of me, I could not breathe. I hadn’t even imagined what the Wall would look like, but its intense beauty took my breath away. Our tour guide told us: No cell phones, no cameras, no flashlights. Please be respectful of those keeping the Sabbath. These were valuable words because it meant that we could not distract ourselves on our phones or try to find the best, most artistic photo of the Wall to bring back home. We had no choice but to be present. Present with the sounds of people shouting “am Yisrael, am Yisrael, am Yisrael chai!” (which translates to "the people of Israel live"). Present with the sight of Hasidic Jews in full garb praying in front of the Wall. Present with the energy of pure joy and happiness just because it was Shabbat, another Friday night.
Our newly formed, tight-knit group followed our guide into a circle of about twenty other Birthrighters to join in the chanting and joy. We sang, danced, and paraded our way through the crowd. After about 15 minutes our guide said that we had some free time to explore the Wall on our own. Immediately I knew I had one thing to do: get up to the Wall. That’s it. I didn’t know what I’d do when I got there. I maneuvered my way through the thousands of people and landed myself right up against the Wall.
There I stood. Face to face and looking up at this enormous structure that represents resilience, pride, and on this day, joy. As I closed my eyes, head against the Wall, I decided to just listen to the sound of everything and everyone around me and try to quiet my mind. I heard the mumbling prayers of all the Jews. I felt a comforting warmth soothe my body. Then I slipped into a gentle meditative state, allowing the energy of the Wall and all its people to envelop me. And in this state I began to slowly, passionately recite: “Shema Yisrael…” [a powerful Jewish prayer at weekly Shabbat services.] I didn’t even know where the words were coming from. I hadn't recited that prayer since my Bar Mitzvah, over 10 years earlier. I only even noticed I was chanting when halfway through that first line I slipped out of my meditation as I choked on one of the words. I was crying. Tears were rolling down my cheeks, but I could not stop them. I didn’t want to stop them.
Then, out of nowhere, my grandmother appeared. She was beaming with pure love and pride. My grandma – who had survived the Holocaust, raised two children on her own after her husband died in a tragic accident, and overcome cancer two times in her life only to lose the battle the third time – was staring right into my eyes and giving me the same love, happiness, and affection that she always had. She never displayed sadness, remorse, or anger no matter what was going on. As I stood there feeling my grandma’s presence, my tears began racing down my face taking on the form of sorrow and guilt. Sorrow for her having suffered so many trials and tribulations in her life, and guilt for my never having connected on what meant so much to her: Judaism.
I continued reciting the Shema, but now with my grandma accompanying me. The words continued pouring out with the tears. But now the tears were no longer in the form of guilt and sorrow but rather guidance and connection. I felt guided by the people around me and connected to not only my grandma, but to her husband Oscar, my grandpa, whom I had never met, and to all my mother’s ancestors both living and dead – ones I had met and others I never knew existed. They were all with me, accompanying me in the Shema.
By the time I reached the end of the prayer, my face was swollen with guilt, pride, and love but most of all, connection. It was absolute bliss. And looking around, I was only elevated by the faces of Hasids, soldiers, and fellow Tagliters alike who were all sharing their experience with me.”
A cactus wren nest
When I was in middle school, we literally lived in the Sonoran desert south of Tucson. My dad worked for a mining company and the copper mine was about 15 miles south of Tucson. The company wanted four key people to be nearby when various emergencies happened. So they set down four prefab houses about a mile from the mine, hooked up plumbing and electricity, and then strung a barbed wire fence around the four houses to keep out the range animals.
It was heaven for a kid and hell for a mom. During the four years we lived there, we encountered many residents of the area, including rattlesnakes, king snakes, one poisonous coral snake, tarantulas, scorpions, gila monsters, and numerous "cute" little horned toads. There were some trees, mostly mesquite and palo verde. There were many kinds of cacti, including saguaro, barrel, prickly pear, ocotillo, yucca. There were cholla, called jumping cactus because though the spines look fuzzy, when newcomers attempt to touch them, the spines seem to jump into the person's flesh. Cactus wrens nested in the cholla because they generally grow 6 to 8 feet in height, and their spines make it virtually impossible for predators, especially snakes, to climb up their trunks.
I was given freedom to walk in the desert as long as I didn't go too far away. One day as I was walking, I saw a cactus wren nest in a small opening in the cholla. There were several eggs in the nest, which were visible because both parents were out getting food. From that day I visited the nest regularly. I wanted so badly for the eggs to hatch and it seemed like forever. Finally, one day I saw the baby birds! I then went every day to see them grow.
One day when I was approaching the nest, I saw one of the baby birds making what was possibly its first flight back to the nest. As it made it into the nest safely, I realized that the bird didn't get a second chance. There was almost no margin of error. If it didn't do it right, the spines of the cacti would catch it, and it would die. And while that was terrible, it is how the natural world generally works. I remember having two very powerful and opposing feelings. One was "that's not fair; that's awful." The other was absolute awe. It was a life-changing moment in seeing both the beauty and power of nature and yet the reality that life for all beings ends, and can end in a moment.
Namaste
During my two years in Nepal, I was captured by the beauty of the traditional "Namaste" greeting. Thirty years later, a colleague and I brought a group of college students to Nepal in 2012 after teaching them about Nepal during the semester. On our last day, we asked the students to share their most powerful experiences during the 17 days which included touring the many pagodas and shrines, a flight to Mt. Everest, volunteering in a poor village, being paired with a Nepali college student for a different week in a town in the hills, and a one night home stay with an ethnic group in a small hill village. So many experiences!
To our amazement, the first student said, almost immediately, 'Namaste.' The other six students laughed, their faces nodding in agreement. He then said, "No really. When we first got here, saying Namaste was really cool, but then it became so much more." He pointed out that virtually every time they said Namaste to someone, the same sequence occurred: the person made clear eye contact, smiled, nodded their head, put their hands together, and said Namaste in return, consciously and slowly. A common translation of Namaste in yoga circles is: “The divine in me honors the divine in you; I see you!" Reflecting back on my own experience of Namaste, I think my students were taken by how much more connected they felt with other people when saying Namaste than with the traditional "How are you" in the United States.
Feeling deeply connected--to life and to other people is something we all want and need. Each of the experiences described above can be seen as spiritual in the sense described by Parker Palmer: "the diverse ways we answer the heart’s longing to be connected with the largeness of life." There is an ineffability in each of the experiences that leaves the person realizing that words alone cannot capture the essence, similar to many people's experience of pictures they took and saying that the picture didn't, couldn't, capture the full experience. Some spiritual experiences happen only in extraordinary situations. However, one gift of mindfulness is to also see the extraordinary in the ordinary.