Somewhere along the path of spiritual awakening, an amazing transformation begins to occur. When we wake up to the true nature of reality, we no longer see a world of good and bad, right and wrong, positive and negative, or heaven and hell. We do not see good people and bad people or good events and bad events.
Rather, everything becomes perfect just as it is. Nothing needs to change. Nothing needs to be different. We realize that not a single atom in the universe is out of place; everything is exactly as it is supposed to be.
You might say we see the world functioning the way God sees it: all going according to plan.
The bliss of this awakening is quite clear and there is wide consensus to its truth, as similar experiences have been reported by great mystics, saints, and enlightened beings across time. In Hinduism, the famous Vedanta phrase, satcitananda, most often translates to “truth, consciousness, bliss” and is used to signify the bliss that arises when we discover the truth of our own being.
Perennial joy or passing pleasure?
In fact, this bliss is so transcendent and glorious that most spiritual paths begin by dissuading the spiritual practitioners from looking for happiness in anything material, for the lasting spiritual joy we have the capacity to experience far surpasses any temporary experience of pleasure. For example in the Katha Upanishad, a sacred Hindu and Vedanta text, it is written:
Perennial joy or passing pleasure?
This is the choice one is to make always.
The wise recognize this, but not
The ignorant.
This passage demonstrates that a truly wise person is in touch with the blissful nature of their experience, of which the common person is barely even aware.
The Christian Mystic Thomas Merton also explained that we will only begin to fully live by discovering the bliss of our true nature:
Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for spiritual joy. And, if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy, you have not yet begun to live.
So across religions and across time you see the same message repeated again and again: nothing in the physical universe will ever be as good as the bliss of discovering our true nature.
This all sounds pretty wonderful, but quite contrary to our common experience. So, how do we get there? How do we not get so caught up in the material world, instead tuning into a deeper and more expansive version of ourselves?
The answer I have found again and again is that we must work with this pernicious experience of desire. We have to look deeply at our supposed “wants” and decide if our happiness arises simply from enough of our desires being met or by not having any desires at all.
Our constant desires–which manifest when we crave the things we want and avoid the things we don’t want–leave us little time to just sit and be. The common human experience is to simply run from one state of dissatisfaction to the next, constantly looking for more and better.
The spiritual path, however, penetrates the truth of our desires and discovers that happiness is not found through material fulfillment but rather by being free of any desire whatsoever. We see this in countless spiritual communities that abound with stories describing an enlightened being as a person totally unperturbed by the changing vagaries of life.
Being free from desire
For example, in the Mahabharata, a great Hindu text, we see the truth behind not differentiating between the things we normally value as good and the things we value as poor:
That man becomes certainly freed who regards (as worthy of his acceptance) only a handful of corn, for the support of life, from amidst millions upon millions of carts loaded with grain, and who disregards the difference between a shed of bamboo and reeds and a palatial mansion.
This passage is as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago when it was written. We all desire the big house, new car, and fastest phone. Such desires bind us to the material world. True freedom, on the other hand, is being just as happy in a small shack as in a huge mansion, just as content with a small bowl of food as a large, luxurious buffet.
In yoga philosophy, it is said true yoga is the state of needing nothing. In Taoism, Lao Tzu tells us that “the truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.” The Third Chinese Patriarch of Chán put it this way,
The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
Only by letting go of all desire–including the desire to get rid of desire–will we ever know truth and ever be at peace. Another quote I love by Lao Tzu goes,
Be content with that you have,
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
Those words perfectly encapsulate the transformation that happens when we finally let go of wanting and aversion. We no longer resist what is; we no longer divide the world up into “mine” and “not mine” or good and bad. A natural sense of contentment arises, and the whole world feels at peace.
Is that so? The story of Hakuin
This place of freedom is perfectly expressed in the well-known Zen story titled “Is that so?” In it, a beautiful girl in the village becomes pregnant. Her angry parents demand to know who the father is. At first hesitant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally points to Hakuin, the Zen master who lives on the outskirts of town.
When the baby is born, the outraged parents confront Hakuin and demand that he takes care of the child. When they tell the monk the child is his, he replies calmly, “Is that so?” Hakuin then accepts the child and takes care of it for many months.
Eventually, the daughter can no longer withstand the lie she had told. She confesses that the real father was a young man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately go to Hakuin and explain what had happened. “Is that so?” Hakuin calmly asks again as he hands them back the child.
When most people hear this story, they balk at the idea that a man could be just as happy with being accused of rape and being forced to take care of a new baby as he is having his child taken away from him. But the story exemplifies that life will always throw unexpected things our way. We might get fired from our job or lose a loved one. Our car will break down, our children will disappoint us, our political candidate will lose.
No one knows what the future will hold, so our task is to cultivate a resilient mind that remains peaceful through the ups and downs of our lives and to live with an open heart, no matter what. As the great teacher Ram Dass taught, “you have to–with eyes open–be able to keep your heart open in hell.”
So, I’m just supposed to sit back and allow bad things to happen?
Inevitably, any time I talk about this wisdom and the great teachings that have been passed along for generations, a student will always raise their hand and ask the same question. The more progressive a student is, the more likely they are to object. For students deep in the world of social justice and human rights, the idea of accepting things as they are, just as they are, is too hard a pill to swallow.
Invariably, all the questions boil down to the same fundamental questions along the lines of “Am I just supposed to sit back and allow bad things to happen to me or to others?” Questions like: “So, a woman in an abusive relationship should just stay in it?” or “A person of color should just accept injustice and oppression?” The implication is that acceptance also implies a certain passivity. There is also the objection that, with such tremendous suffering in the world, how could anyone say that everything is exactly as it is supposed to be?
The first way to answer these questions is simple: this teaching is not for anyone else but you. The spiritual path is based around personal liberation, and the teachings only apply to someone who is on the path. Would a guru tell a homeless person the famous axiom “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”? No, they would not.
But, if a person–any person–walked into the ashram, approached the guru, and expressed the challenges in their life and their desire to be free of them, then this particular piece of wisdom would be appropriate. Your guru might even recommend that you go on a fast for 10 days in order to begin the process of cultivating nonattachment to sense pleasures. But, if a poor person came up to the same guru and said, “I haven’t eaten for 10 days,” they would not respond, “Ah, so you are progressing on your path.” That would be absurd.
So, the teachings of awakening are not for abstract people in abusive relationships or those navigating a system of injustice, but for a person on the path looking to free themselves from the vagaries of life, no matter their own background.
The great yogic sage Patanjali is clear in his sutra 2.31, explaining that the path of yoga is “valid in all spheres, irrespective of one’s class, place, time, or circumstance.” This means that wisdom teachings are for everyone, and everything is capable of waking to the true nature of reality, no matter how hard their life situation is.
Keep in mind that this teaching was written two thousand years ago, before modern medicine and technological advancements, before gender equality, and in the middle of a culture built around the caste system. Even with such “disadvantages,” the wisdom teachings are for anyone open to hearing them, and just as applicable to the rich and the poor, to the advantaged and the disadvantaged. This is because our liberation is an internal shift in our consciousness and does not require any external stimulus to happen.
There is another very important insight that this line of questioning involves, however, and it takes us to the heart of what it truly means to be an enlightened being. Why is there suffering in the world, and what are we to do about it? Sure, maybe my spiritual awakening will cure me of my suffering and liberate me from karmic bondage, but what of the suffering of others?
This is an incredibly important, rich, and complex question–one that deserves its own post, which I will post next week, appropriately entitled, Why is there suffering in the world?
