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A Hidden Wholeness
There is in all visible things … a hidden wholeness.
—THOMAS MERTON
Many spiritual traditions and practices begin with a single question: Who am I? The question is a persistent and intimate companion. The search for our essence, our identity, is fundamental; it is as necessary for individuals as for nations, tribes, races, and spiritual communities. Who am I? Am I spirit or flesh? Am I sacred or secular? Am I irrevocably shaped by the circumstances of my personal history, or am I still free to move and grow, to uncover a new and brighter path? Am I fragile or am I strong, am I broken or am I whole? When I listen deeply to my inner life, what do I hear? What is the substance of my soul, the core of my being? What is my true nature?
Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” What does this mean, to be the light of the world? In the same manner the Buddha, in his parting words of comfort and advice to his disciples, insisted: “Be lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence. Hold to the truth within yourselves as the only truth.” We are, he said, all Buddhas, filled with divine nature.
How do we find this nature? The instant we begin to look deep inside ourselves, we often discover what we perceive as imperfections in our character and personality, and we confront any lingering doubts we may have about our spiritual worthiness. Perhaps we begin our spiritual journey by trying to rid ourselves of everything that is wrong with us, to cleanse ourselves of our negative qualities, to purify ourselves of our defects—in short, to become like the saints. But perhaps the more gentle and ultimately more accurate path is the one that leads us directly into the fertile garden of our own spirit, into what Merton calls our “hidden wholeness.” Our most fruitful practice is the one that most gently leads us into ourselves just as we are, into the innate perfection of our true nature.
When the time came for Jesus to be baptized, he went to John the Baptist, a prophet preaching in the wilderness. When John baptized Jesus, the heavens opened, and the spirit of God descended like a dove and alighted upon Jesus. Then a voice from heaven spoke clearly and with great authority: “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased.” At this point in the gospel story, at his baptism in the river, we find out who Jesus really is: He is the son of God. For Jesus, this baptism marks the beginning of a long journey that will fully reveal his true identity.
Immediately after he is baptized, Jesus is led into the wilderness. He must prove to himself and to God that he understands his divine nature. There he is tempted by Satan, who tries to entice Jesus to bargain away his spiritual power for worldly comforts and powers. He tries to induce Jesus to do things that would dishonor the truth of who he is, to settle for less than his spiritual destiny. With courageous resolve Jesus refuses again and again to bargain away his allegiance to his divine birthright. Jesus finally sends Satan away, and the angels flock to minister to Jesus. Now, more clearly than ever before, Jesus can feel with absolute certainty who he is. He is a child of God.
The story of the Buddha’s awakening is not unlike the Jesus story. Young Siddhartha was raised in a palace. When he grew older and discovered the inevitability of illness, old age, and death, he resolved to undertake austere ascetic practices to cleanse his mind and body, thereby attaining freedom from suffering. But his asceticism seemed to bring him only weakness and more suffering. In his most extreme moment of self-mortification, he recalled the first time he had sat in meditation, when he was nine years old, in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree. He remembered how the refreshing ease of that sitting had brought him a sense of clarity and calm. At that moment Siddhartha decided to seek a middle path, to cultivate a more gentle practice of mindful attention to the quality of his experience.
Siddhartha sat under a tree and resolved to meditate until all was revealed to him. Finally, at the rising of the morning star, he saw clearly the nature of joy and sorrow, birth and death. He saw into the nature of all things, perceiving his own true nature as well. Freed at last from the prison of ignorance and illusion, Siddhartha was now the Buddha—meaning, simply, “the one who is awake.”
In the Hebrew tradition, the prophet Jeremiah was a passionate defender of the spiritual path. Jeremiah spoke eloquently and often to the people of Jerusalem, urging them to remember their relationship with their God. In one exquisite Old Testament passage, Jeremiah has awakened from a dream in which God offers to renew the intimate covenant with the people of Jerusalem, promising to remain within and among them forever: “Behold, I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
In everyday life this recognition of our fundamental identity may not be quite so dramatic as it was for Jesus, the Buddha, or Jeremiah, but our acknowledgment of who we are is no less precious or necessary. Whether we call ourselves father or mother, lover or friend, weak or strong, Democrat or Republican, the naming of who we are will set the course of our life, determine what we love, how we live, and what gifts we will bring to the family of the earth.
If we are unsure of who we are, we will live tentatively, always guessing at where we should go and what we should do. But when we know who we are and feel comfortable with ourselves, we can live clearly and courageously. Bolstered by a strong sense of our own nature, assisted by reliable inner voices, we are guided toward what is necessary and right.
Jack Kornfield, a friend and respected teacher of Buddhism in the West, relates the following story:
There is a tribe in Africa where the birth date of a child is counted—not from when they’re born, nor from when they are conceived—but from the day that the child was a thought in its mother’s mind.
And when a woman decides that she will have a child, she goes off and sits under a tree, by herself, and she listens until she can hear the song of the child that wants to come. And after she’s heard the song of this child, she comes back to the man who will be the child’s father, and she teaches it to him. And then, when they make love to physically conceive the child, some of that time they sing the song of the child, as a way to invite it.
And then, when the mother is pregnant, the mother teaches that child’s song to the midwives and the old women of the village, so that when the child is born, the old women and the people around her sing the child’s song to welcome it. And then, as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child’s song. If the child falls, or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it. Or perhaps the child does something wonderful, or goes through the rites of puberty—then as a way of honoring this person, the people of the village sing his or her song.
And it goes this way through their life—in marriage, the songs are sung, together. And finally, when this child is lying in bed, ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song, and they sing—for the last time—the song to that person.
What is our song? How do we name ourselves? Which word, when we speak it, reveals what is most deeply true about this inner voice, our deepest heart, our fundamental nature?
Every time I ask myself this question, it drives me a little deeper—and each time the answer reveals a little more about the complexion of my life. When I am “child of an alcoholic,” I feel small and afraid. When I am “therapist,” I feel caring, sometimes grateful, sometimes grandiose, sometimes overwhelmed. When I am “father,” I feel responsible, watchful. When I am “minister,” I feel peaceful, although at times self-important or pretentious. Each name brings a way of seeing and responding to the world; I walk differently, with a different gait, a different balance.
The more time I spend on the earth, the more I yearn to go deeper, to find the place that lies beneath these names. For the last ten years, I have practiced various forms of meditation. Meditation helps me feel the shape, the texture of my inner life. Here, in the quiet, I can begin to taste what Buddhists would call my true nature, what Jews call the still, small voice, what Christians call the holy spirit.
When I am able to listen carefully, I find that in meditation I discover that even my inner identity is always changing. In those moments when I sit quietly, I gradually become aware of particular sensations as they arise and fall away in the body and mind. The more I listen, the clearer these sensations become. I may feel the sensation of “tired,” for example, or “stiff,” or “hungry.” These are simply sensations arising. Similarly, I feel the rising and falling of the breath as it seems to breathe itself in rhythm. Likewise I may feel sadness, joy, fear, or peace, one following another. None of the sensations remains the same. So is it not possible that we ourselves are changing all the while? With every breath, the possibility of a new aspect of self arises.
