The Pervasive Nature of Reality

Do not point to the sky and say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' 

For the Great Way, the Kingdom, is vast and perfect, right before your eyes. 

It is not found 'here' or 'there,' for it is everywhere. 

Like the sun that rises or the rain that falls, it touches all things without preference. 

See this One-essence, and you will know that nothing is separate, and nothing is excluded.

Reflection - The Kingdom of Everywhere

My good friends, may we be still for a moment.

(Pause)

Let the breath settle. Let the busy mind, which has been running all day—and perhaps all night—just settle. Let it be here, in this room, with the weight of your body on the seat, with the simple sound of my voice.

We are, by nature, a people who search. We are magnificent searchers. We look for our keys, we look for a parking spot, we look for the perfect job, the perfect partner, the perfect cup of coffee. And, in our quietest moments, we search for peace. We search for truth. We search for God.

We are so accustomed to this search that we have become professionals at it. We look for the Kingdom in holy books. We look for it on silent retreats or in loud, joyous music. We look for it on the top of a mountain or in the quiet of a church, a temple, a zendo. We are always pointing. "Ah, this is holy," we say. "This feeling, this person, this place... this is it."

And in doing so, we are always implying that "it" is not... there. That it is not in the mundane, not in the difficult, not in the person who cuts us off in traffic, not in the ache in our back, not in the pile of bills on the table.

And so, we live in a world we have sliced in two: the sacred "here" and the profane "there."

And into this exhausted, searching mind, our text for today lands with the force of a thunderclap and the gentleness of rain:

Do not point to the sky and say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For the Great Way, the Kingdom, is vast and perfect, right before your eyes. It is not found 'here' or 'there,' for it is everywhere.

This is the end of the search.

The Kingdom is not a place you go to. It is not a reward you earn. It is not a state you achieve. It is the very fabric of the reality you are already in. You are, as one of my Zen ancestors might say, a fish swimming in the ocean, asking, "Pardon me, could you direct me to the water?"

You are breathing the Kingdom. You are seeing it. You are it.

This is what the teaching of The Way of Non-Preference is pointing to. The text says the Way is "like the sun that rises or the rain that falls, it touches all things without preference."

Think about that. The sun does not check your moral report card before it warms your face. The rain does not consult your political affiliation before it waters your garden—and your neighbour's garden, the one you disagree with. As it says in the Sermon, "He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

This is the "disease of the mind" that the Hsin Hsin Ming warns against: "Like and dislike." We are addicted to our preferences. We want the sun, we don't want the rain. We like these people, we don't like those people. We want this feeling (peace, joy) and we reject that feeling (anger, sadness).

And so we are at war with half of reality.

The Way, this text says, has no preferences. And because it has no preferences, it is "vast and perfect." It is whole. To see this is to have your own mind become vast and perfect. It is to stop fighting the rain and to simply let it be rain. It is to stop fighting your own anger and just let it be energy, passing through.

This realization is not unique to one path. It is the heart of all deep wisdom. Look at the great tradition of Advaita Vedanta in Hinduism. It speaks of Brahman, the single, non-dual, all-pervasive Reality. It is everything. It is the rock, it is the river, it is the star, and it is the person sitting next to you. Then, it speaks of Atman, the inmost Self, the light of consciousness within you.

And what is the ultimate realization? What is the Mahavakya, the Great Saying? Tat Tvam Asi. "Thou Art That."

The Self within you (Atman) is identical to the Reality everywhere (Brahman).

This is precisely our text! The Inner Kingdom ("Blessed are the pure in heart") is not separate from the Great Way that is "everywhere." When you look deep enough inside, you find everything. When you look clear-eyed at everything, you find your true Self. The two circles merge. Advaita gives us a profound philosophical and meditative map to this truth that the Zennist points to directly: "right before your eyes." The Kingdom isn't just "within you"; the "you" you think you are is in the Kingdom.

Let's look at another path. In the mystical heart of Islam, the Sufis speak of Wahdat al-Wujud, the Oneness of Being. For the Sufi, God is not a distant judge, but the Beloved, who is, as the Qur'an says, "closer than [your] very jugular vein." The great poet Rumi did not see a world of separate objects. He saw the face of the Beloved everywhere. He wrote, "I, you, he, she, we... in the garden of mystic lovers, these are not true distinctions."

Where the Vedantic path is one of supreme knowledge (jnana), the Sufi path is one of passionate love (bhakti). But see where they arrive! "Nothing is separate, and nothing is excluded." The Sufi polishes the mirror of the heart not to create God, but to reveal that God was the only thing there, all along.

The Zennist, the Vedantist, and the Sufi are all pointing to the same moon. The Zennist just says, "Stop talking about the moon. Look!"

So, what does this mean for us on a Tuesday, when the news is bleak and the dishes are piling up? This is where we find Wisdom in Action and a Higher Ethic.

If the Kingdom is truly everywhere... it is also in the person who makes you angry. It is in the political leader you despise. It is in the fear that grips our world.

When I said, "You have heard it said, 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy,' but I say to you, 'Love your enemies'..."—this was not just a difficult moral instruction. It was a description of reality.

In the One-essence, there are no enemies. There are only different expressions of the one, vast, perfect Way. The "enemy" is the Way, appearing as your teacher of patience. The "anger" is the Way, appearing as your teacher of non-attachment.

This is why "Judge not, that you be not judged." When you judge another, you are drawing a line, creating a "here" and a "there." You are creating a dualism. You are, in that instant, blinding yourself to the pervasive Kingdom. You are trying to cut the "vast and perfect" whole into a "right" and a "wrong." It cannot be done. As the Hsin Hsin Ming says, "Make the smallest distinction, however, and you are as far from it as heaven is from earth."

This is the plank in your own eye. The plank is the act of judging. It is the belief in separation. Once you "remove the plank"—once you stop dividing reality, once you see the One-essence in yourself and the other—then, as the text says, "you will see clearly." You will see that the speck in your brother's eye is just another manifestation of the Way. And you will approach it not with judgment, but with the non-preferential clarity of the sun, or the rain.

Look at our world. Look at the news, filled with the cacophony of our certainties, our conflicts, our desperate pointing: "The problem is there! The evil is there! The fault is with them!" We are a species tearing itself apart in a fever-dream of "here" versus "there."

The practical application of this teaching is the most powerful in the world. It is to build your house on the rock of this non-dual understanding. When the winds of conflict blow, when the floods of fear rise, you stand firm. You see the "us" and "them" as one. You see the "right" and "wrong" as two ends of a single stick. This doesn't mean you become a doormat. No! You act, but you act from a place of wholeness, not from a place of fractured reactivity. You act like the rain, to cool the fires of hatred, not to add more fuel.

In the end, my friends, this all goes Beyond Words.

I can stand here all day and talk about the Way. We can discuss Brahman and Wahdat al-Wujud. We can read the Hsin Hsin Ming and the Sermon on the Mount until our eyes grow tired. But these are all just fingers pointing at the moon.

The text says the Way is "vast and perfect, right before your eyes."

It is not a belief. It is not a concept. It is not a theology. It is experience itself.

It is the feeling of this breath. It is the light in this room. It is the silence underneath all the noise. It is the simple, thrumming, is-ness of this very moment.

So, the search is over. Stop pointing. Stop looking. Just... see.

See that nothing is separate, and nothing is excluded. Not even you. Especially not you.

(Pause)

Go in peace. And perhaps, do the dishes. The Kingdom is right there in the soap and water.