Moments of luminous awareness, or awakening, are often described as an opening beyond oneself that encompasses everything just as it is. The contrast is resistance and rejection or grasping. At the peak of the “spiritual path,” perhaps the last thing we reject is unenlightenment, spiritual failure, making an ultimate mistake and deviating from the path or losing it altogether. Yet, this is often the very moment when a person experiences a full awakening.
About a month ago, I was speaking with a young philosopher from Germany with a limited understanding of Buddhism. He said, “Isn’t nirvana a state of total detachment from everything, from every aspiration and desire, until you have no more connections to this world?” His impression of full awakening was one in which you become completely divorced from this reality.
“It’s like being dead,” he said, and remarked on his morbid aversion to the ideal.
“No, not at all,” I said and struggled to summarize my experiences. “Awakening is just being completely in touch with reality, which means, not thinking about what isn’t so. That is a sort of detachment, but it’s a detachment from things that do not yet exist.”
“It feels like being alive for the first time,” I added.
In tantric Buddhism, the sensual is a training ground for being with what is, just as it is.
I spent the day at a nude beach on a beautiful river north of town. My boyfriend and I found a secluded sandbank just twenty feet across from the main shore. The main shore was lined with thick trees and tall grasses, and on the far bank, high cliffs meandered in and out of the rich green forest.
We waded through the shallow, clear water. Many days of hot sun had warmed the shining currents. On the soft sand, we laid out a big blanket and ripped off our clothes. I ran around in circles, throwing my arms in the air, bouncing and giggling. “I’m naked! I’m naked outside!” I yelled. My boyfriend laughed at me and chased me into the water.
We reclined in the shapely sands where the water was only inches deep. A school of minnows surrounded us and nipped our legs while we rolled around and teased each other. We dug into the soft river bottom making minnow puddles and burying our feet as though we were five year olds. Occassionally, a portly, hirsute fellow, hearing our laughter, would wander by and start up a comically awkward conversation about the water temperature or river snakes. My amiable boyfriend was happy to talk, his usual warm and welcoming manner unimpeded by the fact that we were at eye level with the fellow’s… well.
After a naked picnic with artichoke salad and other fresh antipasta dishes, I whisked my fine specimen of manhood into the tall grasses of our little island. The grasses were taller than either of us, and we soon discovered, on our way to the sand at their feet, that each one sported about ten big juicy caterpillars. I eventually revealed our secret location to any sunbather within earshot with yelps of “Get it off! Get it off!” My boyfriend laughed at me, and we shuffled back to our blanket where we slept in the afternoon sun.
I’m as brown as a bean and radiating heat like campfire embers. My children were inconsolable after coming home from school, and I long for the company and conversation of a beloved friend, but all of this too can enter awareness just as it is. Discomfort can be met with openness. In the same way I let the minnows nibble my legs. In the same way my boyfriend responded with kindness to the bambling strangers. In the same way we laughed at the caterpillars.
