In the memoir Eat, Pray, Love, writer Elizabeth Gilbert gives up her entire way of life to spend a year traveling the world, finding spiritual enlightenment along the way. Is it possible to live a life of deep, transformational faith without dropping everything and hitting the road? In your tradition, what is the aim of the spiritual journey?
Elizabeth Gilbert's story in Eat, Pray, Love, of dropping everything and hitting the road to find herself, is the archetypal tale of the hero being called to a journey of self-discovery. Gilbert's genius is in making this ancient lesson feel real, accessible, and relevant.
Sometimes a lesson has to be repeated for thousands of years, not because it wasn't learned the first time but because new people arrive on the scene. The lesson I'm thinking of was that of Siddhartha, a prince on the Nepalese border of northern India. He dropped everything and hit the road, becoming the original, or at least the most famous, dharma bum. He traveled from master to master with his begging bowl, seeking enlightenment. As Gautama the monk he became impressively austere. Instead of a loving wife, a warm bed, and feasts, he tried the opposite: solitude, sleeping by the wayside, and whatever scraps of food he could beg for.
It's still an appealing choice, because we equate austerity with virtue. If the stress of a chaotic world is too much, perhaps harmony lies along a different, quieter, more solitary road. But the moral of Siddhartha's tale led a different way. Leaving home didn't bring enlightenment, nor did austerity, poverty, starving his body, or trying to force his mind to be still. Instead, Siddhartha became someone entirely transformed -- the Buddha -- when he hit upon a new road, the one called "the pathless path."
The pathless path isn't a straight line; it doesn't even lead from point A to point B. The journey takes place entirely in consciousness. A mind overshadowed by fears, hopes, memories, past traumas, and old conditioning finds a way to become free. This sounds impossible at first. How can the mind that is trapped by pain also be the tool for freeing itself? How can a noisy mind find silence? How can peace emerge from discord?
The Buddha offered his answer, which is a variant on an even more ancient answer from the seers or rishis of Vedic India: transcend the personal mind and find universal mind. The personal mind is tied to the ego, and the ego is forever swinging from pleasure to pain and back again. But if you look at awareness when there is no pleasure or pain, when the mind is calm while simply existing, a fascinating journey begins. You have made the first step on the pathless path.
Which is not to dismiss the other path, the one that takes you away from home into a retreat, ashram, meditation center, or holy place. They have their own atmosphere; Seekers have stopped there for a long time; therefore, the mind can breathe a different kind of air, so to speak, an air of tranquility and peace. When you arrive at such a place, two things usually happen. You soak up the peace, enjoying the contrast with your busy life at home. But at the same time you notice how loud your mind is, how much chaos it has absorbed. So these holy place cannot do the work for you. They can only suggest what the pathless path is about.
The inspired Indian poet Kabir points a finger at all spiritual travelers:
There is nothing but water in the holy pools. I know, I have been swimming in them. All the gods sculpted of wood or ivory can't say a word. I know, I have been crying out to them. The Sacred Books of the East are nothing but words. I looked through their covers one day sideways. What Kabir talks of is only what he has lived through. If you have not lived through something, it is not true.
These lines don't deny the worth of spiritual journeying, but they tell us that there is no substitute for first-hand experience. Where you go to find it is irrelevant. In reading about Buddha's life or Gilbert's story, we may still be tempted to believe that leaving one's present geography and associations is the key to self-realization, when in fact the path is entirely within consciousness, and the environment is the extraneous scenery. The journey is always unfolding in our current life and surroundings right now. The true seeker of truth discovers, sooner or later, that truth has been seeking us all along.
Published in the Washington Post
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Things such as compassion, charity, love, peace, kindness, etc. Cut through all the pomp and circumstance and you have the same basic teaching. Love thy neighbor, do as thy will and harm none, Karma and so on. It is the same ladder, yet not everyone who claims to be on any one of these ladders are actually climbing it.
very few in the world have any idea of what you just stated.
"infinity expressing in infinite finite ways"
that is a perfect expression.
in six words you nailed it. wow.
because we are expressions of infinite we not only have original innocence contrary to what the christians and other religions believe we have eternal innocence. ouch that is a massive paradigm shift for the religious masses.
the ego wallows in sin and guilt. ie that want to be separate thing.
here is a big one for me at least.
ignorance has meaning and purpose.
without our ignorance, which is our unawareness of our oneness, there is no "finite ways" for infinite to express its infinity. :-)
the buddha figured out (realized) that the origin of suffering as ignorance but failed to see the meaning and purpose of our unawareness which is our ignorance.
now before anyone responds with attachment, grasping, or craving or desire as the buddha's realization about suffering those are symptoms of what? yep ignorance.
Thanks for so sanctimoniously reiterating two concepts most adults already understand: "It's about the journey, not the destination" and "Where ever you go, there you are".
When you have something useful to say, wake me up...oh, and please stop abusing quantum mechanics theory; that's MY field and clearly you do not know what you are talking about.
That's because this post absolutely doesn't mention any quantum mechanics. At all. So if you found any in it, then you may not know what it is.
We might also add - 'be prepared to abandon all that you have learned' in order to find that truth. Somehow, I like that phrase, and am not always sure exactly why. : )
That comment looks like a Spam comment I get on my blogs sometimes.:)
"I'm in love with this blog."
Me, too.
I don't always know what to say when it comes to commenting on blogs. But I do listen. With my ears and my heart. Especially to your words. When I read them, I hear your voice rather than my own. Which means I've got those English-speaking thoughts with an Indian accent in my head, too.:)
I have my red and black notebook near for taking Deep Thoughts notes.:)
I love that my spiritual journey has led me to you. It was definitely an unexpected surprise. The best surprise ever. And It happened right in this room.: I'm in now.:)
hope your read my words on ignorance as having meaning and purpose. :-)