Walk Softly Live Gently

The following is from a post dated 9.8.2003 on my original self designed website:

I am reading again from ‘One Taste’ by Ken
Wilbur. I’m almost finished with it. It was a difficult read for me, but very
enlightening just the same. He uses an analogy that I also used on occasion
to explain how we can be ‘one’ and yet be individual at the same time. To
quote from page 337 responding to a question from an interviewer:

* KW: “One intelligence that flashes in many different forms. As the Christian

mystics put it, we have the eye of flesh, the eye of mind, and the eye of
contemplation-all of which are ultimately lit by the Spirit, rigpa, (one
intelligence), or Big Mind but each of which nonetheless has its own domain,
its own truths, its own knowing. And, most important, mastering one eye
does not necessarily mean you master the others. As we were saying, these
are relatively independent streams”.

SUN: So the eye of contemplation is capable of disclosing absolute truth or
Emptiness (Spirit), whereas the eye of mind and the eye of flesh can disclose
only relative truth and conventional realities.
KW: Yes, I think that is a fair summary of what are after all some very
complex issues.

The traditional analogy is the ocean and its waves. The wetness of the water is The Spirit or Suchness. All waves are equally wet. One wave isn’t wetter than
another. And thus, if I discover the wetness of any wave, I have discovered
the wetness of all. When I directly recognize Emptiness or Spirit or the
wetness of my own being, right here, right now, then I have discovered the
ultimate truth of all other waves as well. Spirit is not a Really Big Wave set
apart from little waves, but is the wetness equally present in all waves, high
or low, big or small, sacred or profane-which is why Spirit cannot be used to
prefer one wave over another.

Enlightenment is thus not catching a really big wave, but noticing the
already present wetness of whatever wave I’m on. Moreover, I am then
radically liberated from the narrow identification with this little wave called
‘me’. I am literally ‘One Taste’ with the entire ocean and all its waves. And
that taste is wetness, suchness, Emptiness, the Spirit, the utter transparency
of the Great Perfection”.