Questions from Spiritual Seekers
Answered by Dr. Paul Hourihan

Question: In a Zen text representing a sage’s opinion, we read that everything is perfect just the way it is; hence, there is no necessity of struggle. Could you comment on this? 

Answer: “Everything is perfect just the way it is.” This is a profound observation, undoubtedly. Certainly from the standpoint of a Buddha or the All-Knowing Intelligence, everything is all right the way it is, surely. All is evolving as it should, but built into Buddha before his enlightenment was the need to surpass himself, the need to transcend himself. Unless he had struggled all those years, he never would have attained the serenity of that moment when he said everything is fine the way it is. The two are true, but from different points of view. The observation that everything is fine and perfect the way it is—is from the supreme standpoint of a saint like Buddha. But from any other standpoint, it is inadequate. It was not true of Buddha himself until he reached his enlightenment. His mortifications and struggles are even terrifying to contemplate. He was driven as few men have ever been, and having been so driven, he then reached the Buddha state. Christ also presumably had that state and would know as much as Buddha did, and yet his Sermon on the Mount, his central utterance—as Gandhi, and all of us have recognized―is full of urgency. There is the same eternal urgency about his teaching: Awake! Awake! You must push on. 

So the observation is right, but from the standpoint of a realized soul. We have not reached that state, therefore we must struggle to remove the obstructions that are preventing our own realization. So in some way both are true. Everything is moving along as it should but this also presupposes that at each stage we are burning with a desire to advance. That is part of the rightness of everyone being in their right place; without this part of our being that desires to advance, we would be static. 

Question: It’s been said that attaining enlightenment is really much easier than we had been led to believe, that it is as simple as falling off a log. Is this true? 

Answer: Whatever the path is that we are taking to find out who we are, apparently when we come into that realization, the ecstasy is not only the ecstasy of joy and freedom, but the ecstasy of unbelief: “How could I have missed this? It was here all the time. The truth that I have now experienced was with me and was me all along. It was the Truth of my life. There was no other Truth in my life but that, and yet I had ignored it and paid attention to everything else but that. And now that I have found it, how could I have ever missed it?” So this is the statement of the realized soul who comes into himself or herself for the first time. We are not in that position. We are in the earlier state of taking the unreal for the Real. 

Again, as in the first question, this is a statement of experience by a realized soul. But, we have lived so long in a state of misdirection that it is hard to conceive that we will come to the Truth like falling off a log.

See also: Words of Wisdom: Spiritual Life and Questions on the Path

QUESTIONS ON THE PATH

Answered by Dr. Paul Hourihan, edited by Anna Hourihan from lecture transcripts

Question: How can we know for sure that the Divine is within, that the God we seek is in the “heaven within” and not in the “heaven above”?

PH: The only way we can be certain is by a direct personal experience of the indwelling Spirit. Short of that, the path of practical mysticism—that is, the path of personal discovery through meditation is the other way.

By meditation we can know the Truth that will make us free.

By a non-meditative life we have no alternative except to believe that God and man are forever different and separate.

By non-meditation we are constantly and irresistibly aware of differences everywhere, of distinctions, of “them and us,” of the “saved and unsaved,” of some things superior, other things inferior. Rather than going directly to the Source itself, we believe in dogmas, forms, and symbols as substitutes for the Divine Reality that is flowing all around us and within us.

By meditation, however, we come to know that there is only One—one Truth, though we may reach it through different paths.

Question: How do we know what the Truth is and when to speak the truth?

PH: Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita said one should always speak the truth, but to the right person, in the right manner and at the right time. If these three conditions are not present, then we should be silent. We shouldn’t lie; we have the option of saying nothing.

The Truth we are referring to is the deep mystical truth—Buddha's truth, the truth of the Upanishads, and Jesus’ truth when he says “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” According to the Upanishads the discovery and knowledge of the Divine Self within is the experience of the Truth.

We are conditioned to believe that the outer, the material world is the real, and as a result we identify with our bodies and minds; but Truth—that our true nature is Spirit, is Divine—is ever present. We perceive it little by little just as glimmers of light at dawn gradually start to appear even before the sun itself appears. The Truth is fully known through the mystical experience, which is like the bright noonday sun that allows no shadows—all phases of life are illumined, everything is exposed by the light of the Divine Self.

See also Words of Wisdom: Truth, Knowledge and Meditation and articles: Questions from SPIRITUAL SEEKErs, and TRUTH: THE HIGHEST PRINCIPLE.

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