BEING

BEING

Being is the degree to which higher centers are present. Because our connection to higher centers is not permanent, consciousness waxes and wanes. So likewise does our being fluctuate. We read the same books and listen to the Teacher, older students and our friends week after week, month after month, year after year, often reading and hearing the same information and the same teaching and the same perspectives on what it takes to introduce and prolong presence. And then, one day we read a sentence or hear an observation expressed as if for the first time, and our inner-work, gains another level of profundity further strengthening the connection to higher centers. This is a change of being.

We mustn’t equate being with experience. For example, the works of Shakespeare, Bach, Leonardo or Dante, to name just a few, their external output, their works are highly visible and incomparable. We look and listen to their works and we’re transported. But before we equate the visible and sublime work of these individuals, there’s also the unknown architects of the Great Pyramids, the quiet wisdom of the Tibetan mystic Milarepa, the gentle, whimsical prose of Lewis Carroll, the unknown and unknowable struggles of some the Biblical prophets. Although much quieter and less visible than the artists previously mentioned, when our own being is sufficiently developed in order to access the wisdom the latter imparted, the state they usher us towards is, as Walt Whitman poetically stated, ‘charged with untellable wisdom’.

The stone relief image of the Buddha under the bodhi tree is a portrayal of higher centers sitting content in themselves, content with BEing present, undisturbed by the many i’s, attitudes, opinions, thoughts and emotions. The expression on his face is that of a completely serene equanimity. And while this image helps us understand the being of an enlightened individual, what of the artist or sculptor who created this work? He or she imparts his or her own being across space and time, silently and subtly raising our own.

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Buddha under Bodhi Tree Stone relief, Indian 3rd century

Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.