by Ray Jason
A black-crowned night heron was
clinging to my anchor chain, searching the quiet sea for a fish. As the sun eased its orange rim just above
the horizon, the little bird looked up, and so did I. This sunrise held exceptional promise because
of the cloud formations scattered about.
There were immense walls of dense cumulus flanking a high ceiling of
delicate cirrus. When the sun fully
emerged from the sea, it transformed the sky into a magnificent, amber
cathedral. Here was a radiant sanctuary
worthy of Mother Ocean.
Spellbound by this magnificent
panorama, I found myself searching for the best word to describe it, and then
it came to me – HOLY! This led me to a
rather startling revelation. I suddenly
realized that my life had evolved to the point where my little sailing ship
had become a one-person, floating monastery. I had become a seeker of the hallowed and
enduring qualities that illuminate the human mystery.
But my quest is for the sacred
without the profane - for Spirituality without Big Religion. My pursuit is to go beyond just the material facets
of Life and embrace the truly transcendent aspects that give one’s existence
extra layers of meaning and richness. And
for me, the foundation of that sanctity is Nature. How can one not revere the utterly amazing
impossibility of our life here on Earth?
Looking up at the heavens last
night, as my boat tugged gently at her anchor, what did I see? I saw thousands of other celestial bodies
that are completely barren because they are either too cold or too hot or too
dry. And yet we are blessed with a splendor
of life-forms that is truly astonishing.
They range from the miniature seahorse to the humpback whale – from the
hummingbird to the condor – from the gecko to the hippo. And how can we not marvel at the wondrous
biospheres where they live: jungles and deserts and prairies and mountains and
oceans and glaciers. The mysterious fact
that we are the one life-lush planet amidst all of these life-less planets, is
a genuine miracle.
So, why do we invent invisible men in the sky to worship, when the abundance and diversity of Nature is far more worthy of our reverence? The answer is fairly straightforward. It is because we have very little choice. Most “believers” have it pounded into them when they are very young and know nothing of the world. They are essentially brainwashed when they are at their most defenseless. Children have established a bond of trust with their parents because they have taught them that fire burns and snakes bite and traffic is dangerous. So why would they not believe their parents when they indoctrinate them with religion?
But these formative children only hear the “religion
is good” side of the story. No one
catalogs for them the long list of evils that religion is directly responsible
for such as:
·
Holy wars and Crusades
·
Witch-hunts
·
Claiming that
innocent babies are born “soiled”
·
Human sacrifice
·
Suicide bombings
·
Forcing unwanted
children on already overburdened families
·
Justification for
slavery
·
Fostering the
terrifying myth of Hell
·
Rejection of
scientific discoveries
·
Subordination of
women to second class status
·
Demonization of
our natural and healthy sexuality
That probably seems like a mind-numbing list of
horrors that can be directly laid at the doorstep of Big Religion, but they are
all indisputably true - either historically or currently. And to make things even worse, religion is
founded upon two beliefs that cannot even be proven: that there is a God and
that there is a Heaven. This is a con
man’s dream. The claims cannot be verified
- and yet the suckers will sign up for it – by the billions!
On the other hand, my type of spirituality, which is
reverence for Nature and the Universe, and which is often called Pantheism, has
never fostered any of the evils that institutional churches have repeatedly
spawned down the centuries. So, the big
question seems to be: How can our species ever grow into adulthood, if we
continue to view the world through a veil of Iron Age superstitions?
And this brings us back to my little one-person,
floating monastery. I have adopted what
I perceive as the wisest aspects of the contemplative life. But I have rejected many of the restrictions
of both the Western and Eastern styles of monasticism such as hierarchy,
rigidity, conformity and surrender of self.
Instead I embrace these characteristics of The Monk’s Path: simplicity, reflection,
silence, austerity, solitude, cleanliness, slowness, discipline, physical
exertion and a simple diet.
This doesn’t mean that I live like a hermit in a cave
eating grubs and scorpions. I enjoy going
to town for supplies and to visit with friends.
And I am not always “out in the islas.”
Sometimes I am even in a marina for boat projects or internet essay
research or even for some creature comforts.
But I do abide by the main thrust of the monastic life, which is the
exiling of oneself from the frenzy of the normal world in the hopes of gaining
a better understanding of Life.
That quest for knowledge is one of the things that sets
me at odds with the Big Churches. They
do not want their members to be critical thinkers. They want their flocks to surrender their
free will and their rational powers to the dogma that the priests or mullahs
or rabbis impose upon them. They want
control and obedience.
*******
It took about an hour for that golden cathedral of
clouds and sunlight to dissipate. I was
amazed that the little night heron sat there as transfixed as I was for the
entire time. They normally head for the
dark shelter of the mangroves at first light.
That glorious alignment of clouds and light was so magisterial that it mesmerized
both of us.
Sadly, we humans have lost our awareness that we are
still animals. But some of us have
retained that ancestral memory in our core being. And so on that enchanted morning, a big
animal and a little animal sat together in amazement. How lucky we were to dwell in a world of such
miraculous beauty.