The Kingdom of Heaven is where?

Getting to the Kingdom

“The kingdom of God will not come if you watch for it.  Nor will anyone be able to say, ‘it is here’ or ‘it is there.’  For the kingdom of God is within you.”

                                                                        Gospel of Luke

“Self is everywhere, shining forth out of all beings, vaster that the vast, subtler than the most subtle, unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat.  Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth.  He who finds it is free; he has found himself; he has solved the great riddle; his heart forever is at peace.”

                                                                        The Upanishads

“Nirvana is right here, before our eyes; this very place is the Lotus Land; this very body, the Buddha.” 

                                                                        Zen Master Hakuin

            When I was a child, the wisdom of the day was to dose children cod-liver oil everyday and laxatives frequently.  The science of the time believed that rest in the heat of the day could protect against polio and tuberculosis.  A little later, antibiotics were given for almost every ailment, even viruses.  Still later, parents were told to ignore their newborn baby’s cries and put them on a strict four-hour schedule of feeding.  All of these accepted norms have, thankfully, gone by the wayside.  We are still a work in progress, and regardless of how much we know, there is always more to learn.

            Scientist who are working on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland say they are most excited about what they can’t predict will happen because it presents the possibility for new and unexpected learning.  The technology for building such a sophisticated machine took more than forty years of planning.   We are learning new things about the universe almost everyday.  And yet, what we know is merely a tiny percentage of what there is to know.  As amazing as it is, our intellect is still limited.

Regardless of how much we know, how hard we study, or how learned we become, we will never experience God, or any of God’s ‘by-products’--- grace, faith, peace, joy, love---by way of our thinking brain.  We can’t get to 'heaven’ or ‘nirvana’ by thinking.  The experience of infinite freedom, peace and serenity, of connectedness and spaciousness is only arrived at by being fully present to the experience in the moment.  Not thinking about it, but being in it.  Not grasping to understand, explain or analyze, but being wholly focused and consciously aware, in this body, at this time. 

Our need to understand is at once our greatest gift and our biggest stumbling block.  The last place we think to look for God is within the quiet of our own hearts. 

                                                            Keeping the faith,

                                                            Jane