Only what happens to you is your sacred teacher, follow the observation of Berrien Berends, whether you get old, lose a loved one, or become ill. The secret, Berends says, is to learn to sit at the feet of your life and be taught. That means being constantly alert to your experience and always being receptive to life's teachings. Even in ordinary living, never mind for such Job-like sufferings, no one is really an expert. A good teacher sometimes knows that he has nothing to say. The best teaching emanates from what happens to the teacher and how he lives. That is why in a famous Hasidic tale of how to teach-and learn-a disciple goes to see his Rebbe not to hear what he has to say but to watch closely how he ties his shoelaces.
Self-healing through enlightenment is not a highly complicated, mystical or philosophical achievement. It is a return to the simplicity of life. Transcendence isn't a supernatural striving but a potentially natural occurrence. Yet, by our psychologizing, interpreting, and medicating attitude, we treat ourselves as objects. Even our ordinary physical acts are laced with many unnatural layers. We don't simply eat, we dine, we have power lunches, we balance our diet. We don't simply sleep, we want REM, we want to record our dreams and bring them for interpretation. We don't simply have sex, we want to make a statement with sex, a commitment or its avoidance, we send messages through sex, we want to exercise power, display superiority or rejection. No wonder we frequently have problems in eating, sleeping, and making love.
No therapy, no medication, and no meditation returns to us our natural existence unless we stop searching or imposing meanings on our bodily functions. All these visceral functions are regulated by the "old" part of the brain, the subcortical system. The intrusion of the human mind, the cortical system, into visceral activities generates turmoil, not enlightenment. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying tells this Zen story:
The disciple asked his Master:
"Master, how do you put enlightenment into action?"
"By eating and by sleeping," answered the master:
The disciple was perplexed. "But Master, everybody sleeps and everybody eats."
To this the Master replied, "But not everybody eats when they eat, and not everybody sleeps when they sleep."
This kind of spiritual simplicity isn't an extraordinary occurrence belonging only to Zen masters. In The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, such enlightenment is described as "something not exotic, not fantastic, not for an elite, but for all of humanity...it is unexpectedly ordinary. Spiritual truth is not something elaborate and esoteric, it is in fact profound common sense...It is not being some omnipotent spiritual superman, but becoming at last a true human being." In this sense, it is no wonder that Buddhist tradition calls the nature of mind "the wisdom of ordinariness." Yes, our true nature and the nature of all beings is not something unreal and out of reach. The irony is that it is our so-called ordinary and real world that is extraordinary and fantastic.
T. Byram Karasu, MD is the author of The Art of Serenity
