What Is It That We Are Seeking?
Diane Musho Hamilton Sensei is a gifted mediator, facilitator and teacher of Zen and Integral Spirituality. She is the dharma successor of Genpo Roshi, and is his first successor in the Big Mind lineage. She has worked with Ken Wilber and Integral Institute since 2004 and has been the lead trainer on Integral Life Practice. She is also a core founder and faculty of iEvolve: Global Practice Community.
I’d like you to contemplate one of the most important words in Zen practice.
Aspiration.
This word evokes a possibility for something beyond what is now. This is often expressed as desire or longing.
What is it that we are seeking?
Some people I have worked with seek the truth. Some seek peace; others, enlightenment, love, union, realization. Sometimes, we don’t know what we are seeking, but we are drawn to something greater than ourselves. It is hard to express this desire with a word because words are inadequate. But the feeling of yearning or longing is unmistakable.
When did you become a seeker? What were the circumstances? Have things changed since you began your search? What have you found? How is your seeking different now than some years ago?
A friend of mine, who was working in the film industry in Los Angeles, was driving down the freeway when she suddenly realized she had no idea who she was. That prompted a spiritual question: “Who am I?”
This is the fundamental question posed by the great Indian saint, Ramana Maharshi This question is basic to Zen; for instance, when Bodhidharma visits Emperor Wu. The emperor asks, “Who are you?” And Bodhidharma answers, “Don’t know.”
His “Don’t know” is different than the one my friend encountered. Hers occurred at the beginning of her quest, and Bodhidharma’s was a result of a lifetime of practice.
Some people start their spiritual search because they are suffering intensely; they want to find a way to end or to answer for suffering. This the Buddha’s initial motivation. He was the son of privilege, growing up in a palace surrounded by material wealth, and every form of pleasure. But when he ventured out beyond the walls of the palace, he encountered a very sick person, a very old, decrepit person, and a corpse., and lastly, a wandering bikku. As soon as he witnessed the more disturbing side of human existence, he felt compelled to leave the comfort of the palace for good and to follow the path of the seeker.. He ventured beyond his known reality into the wilderness of the spiritual search.
Some people, like Michael Murphy, the co-founder of the Esalen Institute, began their quest after experiencing what he describes as a "hinge moment” in meditation. He dropped out of the pre-med program at Stanford with a new vision for the purpose of his life. Another friend of mine began to seriously practice meditation after one too many nights of hard drinking. It was also a hinge moment, but of a different kind.
Our desire to awaken or to discover truth is very particular to our life, and it has unique qualities and detail. The personal is one dimension of our experience. Another dimension of our experience is that this profound desire, this longing, is an attribute of enlightenment itself. In other words, enlightenment seeks itself.
So human beings are participating in the awakening of the universe to itself.
Intrinsic to who we are as living beings is a deep yearning to know our original nature, who and what we are beyond form and condition. And at the same time, there is a deep yearning, an almost paradoxical yearning, to manifest in form and within our unique situation. This paired yearning, this desire to know the unformed and manifest it in form seems intrinsic to the unfolding of the universe. For we are not other than the universe, we are only a manifestation of it, both in our yearning and our form. Scientists say that the universe has been evolving for 13.7 billion years. Ken Wilber reminds us that it has evolved from quarks to atoms to molecules to cells and livng organisms. Emerging from nothing, each advance of the nervous system, comes greater and greater complexity, and that complexity in form carries more consciousness. So human beings are participating in the awakening of the universe to itself.
A beautiful way to think about aspiration is to remember, each time you sit on your cushion, that your desire to awaken, and your desire to express that awakening, to discover more of who you really are, is an expression of the universe at work, identifying itself through you. It’s not just you coming to the cushion; it is the universe coming to reflect on itself through you—the impulse of evolution. All of life, in fact, is moving because of desire; all creatures co-create through the experience of desire. It is a non-personal force with which you can join as an expression of the universe unfolding and getting to know itself.When we honor our intention, or desire, rather than personalizing it, we can experience it as an attribute of life itself. So in practice, we sit both as complete fulfillment and complete desire.
Yesterday, I sat next to the geraniums on the windowsill in my kitchen.They were an expression of what we are talking about because they are awake, they are present, they are naturally fulfilled. They are drawn toward the sun, not because of a personal impulse to be happy, but because the life in them is drawn naturally toward that which is light; they are reaching out, they are being pulled toward the sun. That is their nature because they are part of the life force itself. So when we surrender our personal ideas about desire, we can join with that universal life force.
The Buddha said have few desires, but have great ones. Have the same desire as the universe.
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