ESSENCE

A familiar verse in Zen readings is said to have originated during the Tang dynasty in China. As such, it may have grown out of Taoism. It has often been attributed to Bodhidharma, who brought Zen from India to China. In true Zen fashion nobody really knows who composed it, and in true Zen fashion, it really doesn’t matter.

A special communication outside written words;

No dependence upon words and letters;

Direct pointing to the mind;

Seeing into one’s own nature.

So, what is one’s own nature?

Among many textbook answers are enlightenment, awakening, intuition, actuality, self-knowledge, transcendence, spirituality, and so on and on.

The English word spirit comes from Latin spiritus "breath.” It has many different meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance, or to without presence or form.

        For some Native American groups, such as the Hopi and the Zuni, everything has a natural spirit. There is the spirit of rain, of clouds, of animals, of the earth, of rocks.

Kami are Japanese spirits that are honored in Shinto. They can be forces of nature, elements of the landscape, and beings as well as the qualities that these beings express.

Kami are not separate from nature but are of nature. They are manifestations of the interconnectedness of the universe, and are considered to be typical of what humanity should strive toward. To be in harmony with the aspects of nature is to be conscious of the way of the kami.

Though the word kami is translated multiple ways into English, no one English word expresses its full meaning. The ambiguity of the meaning conveys the ambiguous nature of kami themselves.

In Bali I once watched an Indonesian woman set out a bowl of fresh flowers and cooked rice.

She spoke better English than I spoke Indonesian, and when I asked her about what I assumed was her bird feeder she told me the offering was not for the wellbeing of the birds, but for the spirits of the birds.

She went on to explain that all creatures, places, and objects possessed a spiritual nature.

        Granted that the word spirit is an okay term, in respect to Zen it is limited.

           Essence is the basic, real, and consistent nature of a thing. It is the property that makes something what it fundamentally is. Essence is not soul, not ego, not supernatural, not a ghost. It is the characteristic of a living thing, or a place, or an inanimate object.

One time a friend and I were camping in the New Mexico desert, and our fireside talk drifted to matters cosmological. I casually mentioned something about the essence of all things, particularly stones.

Then I mentioned the living essence of stones.

My friend, who was a Christian minister, scoffed, and said, “I suppose you talk to them.”

I said, “Of course.”

And he accused me of animism.

For years afterward he would ask me if I was still talking to any stones.

Essence is the nonphysical part of something. In Japanese the word kokoro has three basic meanings: the heart and its functions; the mind and its functions; and the center, or essence of something.

Most of us are familiar with the word gassho. It’s the Asian custom of placing the palms close to the chest and bowing. Gassho is given not only to a person, but to a place or to a thing. Gassho symbolizes the unity of being, the truth about life. It represents you and me, light and dark, ignorance and wisdom, life and death.

Most important, gassho represents the inter-connectedness with everything.

The essence of existence.

          Now for a koan to take with you. You won’t be tested or graded on your response. In fact I don’t want to know your answer because it is uniquely your answer.

          The koan is this.

          What is the essence of existence?

          Not the meaning of life, because as mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote, “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.”

          What is the essence of existence?