When we speak about God, what do we mean by that term? Philosophers and theologians have wrestled with this issue for centuries, if not millennia. And we are no closer to a definitive answer. Perhaps we never will, on this side of creation.
Be that as it may, I wish to reflect on God and the cosmos from the angle of experience — direct and immediate experience in the moment of being alive and aware. This is by no means an attempt at an answer, much less a definitive one. Rather I hope to share some observations of consciousness as it plays out in the warp and woof of everyday life, and through that to suggest a way of looking at God and the cosmos that might be unfamiliar for many but resonant for some.
I would like to suggest several themes around which I shall elaborate on my main topic — divine nakedness and cosmic fecundity. First, the theme of simplicity. Second, the reality of ungraspable emptiness that is not a “nothing” or “something” but dynamic contingency beyond grasping and anything to be grasped. Third, the fertile expression of reality as the manifold cosmos in general and as sacred signs (sacraments) in particular.
SIMPLICITY
Authentic spiritual traditions teach simplicity as a virtue and a way of life. A heart that is contented and a mind that is cool are signs of an inner simplicity that manifests in outward simplicity. Such simplicity is not ostentatious, flows freely and naturally, and comes from a ground beyond ego.
A monastic or contemplative who travels lightly and simply in mindful solitude without fanfare and entourage is a radiant display of egoless simplicity. This is quite rare in these days of celebrity spirituality and religious pomp.
Contemplative simplicity can be embodied and enacted not only in monastic settings but also in the complexity of everyday secular life. This means that a non-binary lens is necessary with which to view simplicity. What matters most is the heart posture and mindset of simplicity, not so much the external display of it. Simplicity thus manifests itself in the non-demanding, non-possessive, non-fixated way by which we attend to things, people, events, and situations.
This entails a reverting of attention away from the objects of experience towards the source of experience — awareness itself. Awareness is none other than simple conscious being, knowing that knows itself in every moment of experience. This self-knowing awareness is not a thing or object or person to be grasped. Awareness is not a static impervious person that grasps after things or other persons either. Awareness is empty of standalone and isolated existence, devoid of unchanging identity as a person, yet is utterly bright and luminous in its manifestation of appearances. Brightness or luminosity refers to the capacity of awareness for appearances — its impeded appearance-making potentiality. Appearances are the myriad sensory (i.e. sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) and mental (i.e. thought, perception, emotion, and intention) data cognizable by the mind continuum (that is, mind functions and behaves as a continuity of events like a flowing stream or river). Such appearances can be deemed pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral in hedonic tone.
Not being anything at all means that awareness can be anything whatsoever, in its dynamic becoming that is the creative dance of awareness. In so becoming and expressing, awareness takes on multiple appearances but never ceases to be the luminous knowing of awareness itself. It is precisely because awareness remains awareness that manifold experience is possible.
Hence, in the emptiness of awareness is the fullness of myriad appearances — sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, emotions, and intentions. This empty nature of awareness is not limited to what we might call “your” mind or “my” mind. Awareness simply is. It does not belong to anyone in particular. This awareness that is empty of its permanent independent selfhood is not different or divorced from God’s awareness, which is primordially empty, luminous, and free.
Such empty awareness can be rendered as the divine nakedness of God. While empty or naked, God is not devoid of creative and fertile activity. For God is spontaneously and dynamically emanating, changing, modulating, and playing and sporting with itself (impersonally speaking) or himself (personally speaking) to spawn an infinite multiplicity of things, events, situations, sentient beings, and persons in relationship throughout the cosmos — or that is in fact the very cosmos itself. Such generativity of God is God’s cosmic fecundity.
NO CUP
From another angle of observation, we humans are capable of language and narration, making and telling stories about our lives and about every single thing in the cosmos, even about the cosmos itself. In an existential and self-development sense, people of the world like to ask whether we see our cups as half empty or half full. Motivational speakers cajole us to affirm that our cups are half full — better to see ourselves and things positively (half full) rather than negatively (half empty). Be positive, they say.
Yet others with a faith background might say that we can be thankful that we have a cup at all. This is wonderful. It shows a heart that does not take things for granted, that gives thanks for even the most prosaic blessings in our lives.
Beyond that, we can view it like this: no I, no cup, wherefore empty or full? It is as it is. Unborn. Unoriginated. Unmade. Unformed. This unborn nature of the cup points to its underlying emptiness. Such emptiness is, as previously said, the sheer contingency of all phenomena that makes them not static, isolated, or graspable ultimately. This is the emptiness of inherent existence of phenomena, which is nibbāna. This is also the end of dissatisfaction. And the beginning of true life, ever new.
This definitive cessation of suffering is to be realized and it can be. What realizes this freedom is none other than empty awareness itself, unborn and unconditioned. Awareness is unborn because it has always been and shall timelessly be, as it is. Awareness is unconditioned because it does not depend on causes and conditions or of component parts, even though it is contingent on language and conception in order for it to be articulated. Be that as it may, the naked awareness that is realising emptiness and cessation is inseparable from what it realises and thus is nondual with it. Hence, nibbanic awareness is not essentially different than nibbāna itself, the deathless element.
Nibbāna is none other than divine nakedness, the absolute space of all phenomena at the heart of everything in the cosmos — that is the totality of the cosmos itself. It is precisely this divine nakedness that is absolute space that makes myriad things possible. When we realize that we are nothing, we also see that we are everything. The same is true for every single thing in the cosmos and true for the entire cosmos itself — cosmic fecundity.
SACRAMENT
Finally, let us explore what is sacrament. The divine and the sublime does not isolate itself from the world of appearances but shines through that world by way of signs, symbols, and creative expressions born of deep goodness and spiritual dynamism. The entire cosmos can be seen and lived as a generic outshining of the divine, as long as the egocentric mind releases its hold onto itself as the centre of reality and reverts to its cosmic expanse of consciousness beyond words and ideas. In this movement of return, a clarity and presence of mindfulness emerge to replace busy distraction and anxious grasping. Attention empties itself of its grasped objects and rests in its pure knowing nature devoid of self-making and self-grasping.
From that vantage point, awareness pure and free is selflessly manifesting into form, sound, smell, taste, touch, image, word, intent, meaning, and feeling. In this act of total freedom, the divine displays and enacts a sanctification of the ordinary. Yet in a sense the ordinary is not really so when seen with the eyes of deep looking, of a mindfulness and insight not of this egocentric self. In that light, the entire creation becomes sacramental. All of creation are but signs of the divine consciousness in full display.
That said, there are special spaces and times , objects and persons that unequivocally and starkly demonstrate the unspeakable beauty, unreservedly transformative, and utterly luminous presence of divinity that draws us towards transcendence beyond compare. These special spaces and times are portals of divine enactment and embodiment wherein habitats and persons become sanctified in a total act of grace. Here and now, together in communion with one another, these portals of transcendence and sanctification draw us into the divine mystery that our feeble minds are unable to apprehend by their own strength of intellect and will.
Grace reveals and outpours into ordinary space and time, appearing to limited self-based minds to gratuitously elevate and liberate false selves from bondage to defilement. Grace comes down to set us free, in and through these special portals, special spaces and times. These are Sacraments. They are sacred signs of cosmic fecundity — full of grace — proclaiming the truths of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ, rooted in and flowing from the heart of divine nakedness — sheer empty transparent luminous awareness of infinite potentiality and infinite degrees of freedom.
In the Christian wisdom tradition, we speak of the seven Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation the Eucharist, Penance, Anointing the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. They are concrete and diaphanous sacred signs and expressions — potent means of transcendence and sanctification of our body, mind, heart, will, and soul — freeing our limited and defiled state into the infinitude and purity of divine union, the fullness of Christ. Here, divine nakedness and cosmic fecundity are not two, not one, yet is wordlessly nondual beyond binary categories. Words must end.
God is divine nakedness and cosmic fecundity personified. God can be experienced and recognised. Right here, right now. Shall we?
