After 8 days of traveling with Sunim and his family, plus 8 days of Charlene and I traveling alone down Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, Charlene and I have returned to the Orginal Light Temple outside Budapest for the last few days of our visit. We will be ending our trip with an Ancestor Celebration on Sunday.
Of course, there are stories to tell about our adventures. However, this post is not a travel log. There will be opportunities to share those stories later.
I would like to share with you a personal experience from our last day before returning to the temple. We were visiting Mostar, Bosnia before heading back to Budapest and had some time to explore. Somehow, we heard about a Sufi House in a nearby village that was a place of importance since before the Ottoman Empire. This Dervish House, set at the source of the River Buna, has been, and still is, a venue for Sufi Zikr chanting practice. The structure is in a dramatic and beautiful place. The atmosphere of the place is beyond description.
I was contemplating the one universal ancestry shared by all sentient beings. As I traveled, I saw my ancestors in every face I encountered. We think about our ancestors being in some distant past and we carry with us our memory of them. However, my experience is that they are neither in the past nor not in the past. Neither clinging to nor abandoning anything is the middle way.
As I walked up the path to the Sufi house, I felt my heart open like a flower that had no choice but to bloom, as my whole body quivered with what could be described as joyful energy. After a few moments, as I digested this experience, my mind became free of any clinging, or not clinging. Wherever I stood was just right. However, I want to be clear, although I traveled, I did not travel anywhere, although I visited a place of spiritual significance, in reality, there is no place of spiritual significance. It is just a view based on karmic cause and effect.
Beyond our deluded states of mind, concepts, judgments, labels, dualistic views, and beliefs there is our original face. Our original face is like space, it is always right here. This non-duality principle is the source and function of the universe. It has many names in many different traditions. We may call it Orginal Nature, Buddha Nature, or One Mind, but these are just words.
