“In the
gap between subject and object
lies the entire misery of humankind.”
- J. Krishnamurti
As the story goes (and I can barely remember
any of it now) I was walking through the rain
on a cold Autumn evening in Oxford. The sky was
getting dark; I was wrapped up warm in my new
coat. And suddenly and without warning, the search
for something more apparently fell away,
and with it all separation and loneliness.
And with the death of separation, I was everything
that arose: I was the darkening sky, I was the
middle aged man walking his golden retriever,
I was the little old lady hobbling along in her
waterproofs. I was the ducks, the swans, the
geese, the funny looking bird with the red streak
on its forehead. I was the trees in all their
autumnal glory, I was the sludge sticking to
my feet, I was my body, all of it, arms and legs
and torso and face and hands and feet and neck
and hair and genitals, the whole damn lot. I
was the raindrops falling on my head (although
it was not my head, I did not own it, but it
was undeniably there, and so to call it "my
head" is as good as anything). I was the splish-splash of
water on the ground, I was the water collecting
into puddles, I was the water swelling the pond
until it looked fit to burst its banks, I was
the trees soaked by water, I was my coat soaked
by water, I was the water soaking everything,
I was everything being soaked, I was the water
soaking itself.
And everything that for so long had seemed
so ordinary had suddenly become so extraordinary,
and I wondered if, in fact, it hadn't been this
way all along: that perhaps for my whole life
it had been this way, so utterly alive, so clear,
so vibrant. Perhaps in my lifelong quest to reach
the spectacular and the dramatic, I had missed
the ordinary, and with it, and through it, and
in it, the utterly extraordinary.
And the utterly extraordinary on this day was
awash with rain, and I was not separate from
any of it, that is to say, I was not there at
all. As the old Zen master had said upon hearing
the sound of the bell ringing, "there was
no I, and no bell, just the ringing", so
it was on this day: there was no "I" experiencing
this clarity, there was only the clarity, only
the utterly obvious presenting itself in each
and every moment.
Of course, I had no way of knowing any of this
at the time. At the time, thought was not there
to claim any of this as an “experience”.
There was just what was happening, but no way
of knowing it. The words came later.
And there was an all-pervading feeling that
everything was okay with the world,
there was an equanimity and a sense of peace
which seemed to underlie everything there was;
it was as though everything was simply a manifestation
of this peace, as if nothing existed apart from
peace, in its infinite guises. And I was the
peace, and the duck over there was it too, and
the wrinkly old lady still waddling along was
the peace, and the peace was all around, everything
just vibrated with it, this grace, this presence
that was utterly unconditional and free, this
overwhelming love that seemed to be the very
essence of the world, the very reason for it,
the Alpha and the Omega of it all. The word "God" seemed
to point to it too, and the word "Tao",
and "Buddha". This was the self-authenticating
experience that all religions seemed to point
to in the end. This seemed to be the very essence
of faith: death of the self, death of the "little
me" with its petty desires and complaints
and futile plans, death of everything that separates
the individual from God, death of even the idea
of God himself ("if you see the Buddha,
kill him") and a plunge into Nothingness,
the Nothingness that reveals itself as the God
beyond God, the Nothingness that all things are
in their essence, the Nothingness that gives
rise to all form, the Nothingness that is the
world itself in all its pain and wonder, the
Nothingness that is total Fullness.
And yet this so-called "religious experience" is
not really an experience at all, since the one
who experiences, the "me", is the very
thing which is no more. No, this is something
beyond, something prior to, all experience. It
is the foundation of all experience, the ground
of existence itself, and nobody could ever experience
that, even if the world lasted another billion
years.
*
That day, there was nobody there, and yet everything
was there in its place. Beyond experience or
lack of it, there were the ducks flapping their
little wings, there were the raindrops trickling
down my neck, there were the puddles under my
shoes which were now caked in mud, there was
the grey sky, there were other bodies, just like
mine, splashing through the puddles, some walking
their dogs, some alone, some cuddling up to their
loved ones, some running frantically to escape
the downpour.
And there was a great compassion. Not a sentimental
compassion, not a narcissistic compassion, but
a compassion that seemed to be part of what it
meant to be alive on that day, a compassion which
seemed to be the very essence of life, a compassion
which seemed to pulsate through all living things,
a compassion which said that none of us were
separate from each other, that nothing at all
was really separate from anything else, that
your pain was identical to my pain, that your
joy was my joy, not because these were principles
we'd read in the Bible or taken on authority
from those we held in high esteem, not because
these were ideals that we tried to live up to,
but because this seemed to be the way of things,
this seemed to be the nature of manifestation:
that we were all expressions of something infinitely
larger than ourselves.
But even the word "ourselves" seemed
to imply that we were separate, and therefore
this was a compassion which was beyond words,
beyond language; indeed this compassion transcended
any idea of “compassion”, this compassion
arose from the fact that there actually is
no separation at all, that separation is
an illusion, that in fact we are each
other, that I am you, that you are me, that we
cannot be ourselves without others, that I cannot
be I without you, and you cannot be you without
me, not in some wishy-washy lovey-dovey sentimental
way, but really, honestly: we need each
other, we are bound to each other, we cannot
live without each other, we cannot live without
everything else. I cannot live without that tree
I'm walking under, without the raindrops that
have made their way down my back, without the
old woman who's managed to waddle a little further
down the path (she's being so very careful to
avoid the puddles, bless her!), without the pond,
without the ducks, without the swans, without
my new coat keeping me warm, without the man
with the dog who smiles and says “hi” as
he walks past.
We are bound to each other, all things are
bound to all things, which is to say there are
not really any separate "things" at
all, there is only Oneness, only the whole, only
the Buddha, only Christ, only the Tao, only God
himself, and nothing exists apart from anything
else.
And so to say that on that day there was no "I" is
really to say that there was only God, there
was only Christ, there was only the Tao, only
Buddha, only Oneness, only Spirit, and Jeff had
exploded into it all, Jeff was nowhere to be
found, in the sense that he was not separate
from everything that arose. Jeff was just a story
spun by a storyteller with a vivid imagination,
Jeff was missing from the scene and yet infused
into it, Jeff was nothing and he was everything,
he was present to his own absence and absent
to his presence, he was life itself, in its entirety,
and yet he, in all truth, had died.
And yes, there were tears. What else is there
to do but cry at such a discovery? A discovery
which really wasn't a discovery at all, because
nothing had been found, since nothing had really
ever been lost. This clarity had always been
there, I'd just been looking elsewhere my whole
life and ignoring the utterly obvious. God had
always been right there, in the present moment,
in the midst of things, but I'd spent my life
seeking Him in the future. The Buddha Mind had
been my own mind, always, but I'd spent years
trying to attain it. Christ had been crucified
and resurrected and was walking in the midst
of us, drenching our lives in unconditional love,
but for a lifetime I had assumed he was elsewhere,
in some other world (or in this world but not
in my own life, at least).
No, nothing had been found, because nothing
had ever been lost. But perhaps it was the realisation
of the utterly obvious that hit me that day,
the realisation that there was nothing to
realise, that everything I ever wanted was
always right there in front of me and always
would be, that peace and love and joy were always
freely available in each and every moment, that
love, pure unconditional love, the love of Jesus,
the love of Buddha, the love that passes all
understanding was the very ground of all things,
the very reason for anything being here in the
first place. It was there, always there, always
waiting patiently for me to return home.
And there, in the rain, on that day, I knew
finally that I was home, and what's more, that
I would always be home, that I had always been
home, through it all, through all the tears and
the pain, through the dark times and the desperate
times and all the times I thought I'd never make
it, through all those times and more, the Home
of all Homes had been there. The possibility
of the Kingdom of Heaven was always present,
the grace of God was always an open invitation,
through thick and thin, through sickness and
through health, through all that, world without
end....
*
It was a very ordinary walk on a very ordinary,
and very wet, Autumn day. And yet, in that ordinariness,
the extraordinary revealed itself, shining through
the wetness and the darkness and the sludge on
the ground, shining so brightly that I was no
more, that I dissolved into that brightness and
became it.
And yet, that makes it sound way too special.
That day, in the rain, nothing really happened
at all. It was just a very ordinary walk on a
very ordinary day.
I left through the large iron gates, crossed
the road and waited for the bus, huddling in
the shelter with several others.
Nothing had changed and everything had changed.
I had glimpsed something, something deep and
profound and in some ways shocking, and yet something
that was utterly ordinary and somewhat unsurprising.
Yes, it was unsurprising that the very
ordinary should turn out to be the only meaning
of life, that who I took myself to be should
turn out to be just a nice fairy story.
Yes, it was unsurprising, that the divine should
be in the utterly ordinary, that God should be
one with the world, present in and as each and
every thing.
I boarded the bus and as the rain streamed
down the dirty windows I smiled to myself. What
a gift - to be alive now of all moments, to be
in this body of all bodies, to be here, in this
place of all places, even though it is all a
dream, even though it is all impermanent, even
though if we really look, we find nothing but
emptiness...
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