{"id":11466,"date":"2016-01-06T08:14:21","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T16:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=11466"},"modified":"2016-01-06T10:22:37","modified_gmt":"2016-01-06T18:22:37","slug":"showing-up-the-smallest-of-buddhist-meditations-on-the-festival-of-the-epiphany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2016\/01\/showing-up-the-smallest-of-buddhist-meditations-on-the-festival-of-the-epiphany.html","title":{"rendered":"Showing Up: The Smallest of Buddhist Meditations on the Festival of the Epiphany"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Three<\/a>
\nAs is my wont this morning I was noodling through the Wikipedia list of events for this day in history. Of course I also knew it was the Feast of the Epiphany (or, if you\u2019re of an Eastern Christian inclination, the Theophany), so when I went to the\u201dJune 6\u2033 page, I scrolled down the list to the subsection on holidays. Once there meaning to go to \u201cEpiphany\u201d I accidentally pushed the button for \u201cWestern Christianity.\u201d <\/p>\n

I found it interesting how the article started off with a section on \u201coriginal sin.\u201d Of course that should be true. Religions, for the most part, do seem to start with an observation of how something is wrong. They define that wrong and then offer a solution. <\/p>\n

This certainly is true for the Christian tradition, or, at least, its normative forms. Now, you can play \u201coriginal sin\u201d a couple of ways. There\u2019s the literal Adam and mostly Eve literally sinned, and we their biological descendants, we\u2019ve been screwed ever since. It\u2019s perennially popular. And tends to stand or fall with whether this is an actual historical event. Something I have to admit I don\u2019t even find vaguely possible. Or, and what I\u2019d consider a more useful route, is to see it as metaphorical for some great intuition about that \u201cwrongness\u201d so many people feel. No doubt there\u2019s some interesting stuff in the received tradition to play with for those who go this route. <\/p>\n

Me, I\u2019m particularly interested in how the original sin is eating the fruit of the \u201cknowledge of good and evil.\u201d I find that \u201cknowledge of good and evil\u201d is a delightful description of our human ability to slice and dice, to see what is going on accurately enough to predict the future. Now, we know other animals can do this, as well. I recall when Jan & I lived in a cabin in the woods in northern California many, many years ago. Our cat would sit at a window and watch some critter walk by. As the beast walked out of sight our cat easily ran to another window in the right direction to continue her surveillance. <\/p>\n

But, we humans do more than predict where game or danger might be. We have honed this skill set of observation and analysis to an astonishing degree and now can delve to the very secrets of the cosmos, which indeed, as the scriptures describe, makes us as \u201cgods.\u201d And I believe there is a profound problem that comes with this ability, that comes as naturally as a box and its lid. We take what is a world in motion, where there are no fixed things, but instead, moments created out of conditions, that as those conditions are in flux, immediately reset into some new moment, and so on for as long as there is time; but, and, this is the hard thing, we come to believe those moments are substantial. <\/p>\n

These moments are the things of the world. Cats and dogs, mountains and seas, stars and galaxies, and, of course, you and me. We are, I believe, born precious into the universe. And with our birth comes our death. In a moment. What is wondrous is this \u201coriginal blessing\u201d of a great play that is the cosmos. The \u201coriginal sin\u201d is grasping after that which is passing as if it were permanent. The evil are the things we do to protect that illusion.<\/p>\n

You can think of this as my Buddhist<\/a> Christianity mashup.<\/p>\n

Works for me. <\/p>\n

And, then there\u2019s today. The Epiphany, which means \u201cmanifestation\u201d or, perhaps \u201cstriking appearance.\u201d It\u2019s also called the Theophany, which means \u201ca vision of God.\u201d Here in the West it is most commonly observed on the 6th of January. Although, of course, of course, it doesn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n

Here we get the culmination of the nativity story. It\u2019s the day the wise ones show up with their strange and in some ways terrible gifts.<\/p>\n

Of the various Christian holidays I\u2019ve always liked Christmas best. Easter, while it has all those powerful birth, death, renewal themes is at the same time for too many about escaping the bonds of the flesh. It becomes the worst of those stories we tell to pretend what is, isn\u2019t. Christmas, just as rooted in more ancient things as Easter, is always about a birth of a human being. It is about hope and wonder in ordinary things, the most miraculous and ordinary thing of all for us: the birth of a child.<\/p>\n

And so the festival of the Epiphany is about noticing this. It is the feast of showing up and witnessing what is. It is the celebration of what happens when we wake up to what is actually going on since the creation of the stars themselves. <\/p>\n

For me in my Buddhist understanding of the Christian story the Epiphany is a celebration of what happens when we let go of our grasping and instead tumble into the way things are. Haunted by those gifts, of course. Birth and death are so close together that they are like the two sides of a single hand. That\u2019s the way things are. Miracle. Ordinary. Life and death as one thing. All of history from the beginning to the end collapsed into this moment.<\/p>\n

A moment of noticing, a moment of seeing that child as the very face of God.<\/p>\n

Kind of wonderful.<\/p>\n