Reclaiming the Sacred

Sacredness is all around us. When there's truth, when there's something profound, we can sense it. Though we can feel it, sacredness can also be something that we put outside of ourselves, that is then special and worthy of our time and attention. Yet even this is just another expression of our Buddhanature as we externalize our light, our sacredness, to see. 

In Buddhism, we recognize this and work with both an external and internal sense of the sacred. For instance, the path may start with an outward form of the Dharma and slowly lead to more internal recognitions of our sacred nature.

This all starts with a sense of curiosity and appreciation. What may be initially confusing and incomprehensible slowly becomes workable via appreciation based on hearing, contemplating, and meditating on the Dharma. 

We already ritualize our life, whether we know it or not. When we engage with positive, beneficial rituals of sacredness to bring out our innate awakened nature, we purposely invite more peace into our life. But the idea here is not that we are bringing in an external thing to bring more peace; it's more the idea that it is useful to have help in recognizing that we are the peace. 

Initially, we may use an external path or ritual to recognize that, but once we realize and stabilize our essential nature's awareness, the outer aspect served its purpose. Then we become a symbol for others to do the same.

Externalizing the sacred is not only helpful in the beginning; it's more or less unavoidable within our human life. As when we externalize the sacred, we engage methods and practices to recognize and embody a particular principle or view. Within Buddhadharma, this can be something as simple as making a tea offering to a Buddha statue. Of course, the statue itself is just a piece of metal, but it's symbolic of our inner potential for awakening. For someone who has no idea that they have this inner potential for absolute freedom, interacting with that Buddha statue can be an incredibly precious opportunity to recognize their innate potential. 

This also applies to our entire perception, as the world around us and all of the countless beings that occupy it have this same innate potential for awakening. So in a sense, there's a sacredness in everyone we meet and in every situation we encounter, as expressed in our relationships with others and the environment around us.

The sacred is innate and isn't owned by any particular religion or path. A valuable spiritual path and spiritual teacher, for that matter, is one that helps to connect us back to our innate sense of sacredness and the sacredness that is all around us. Healthy forms of ritual can then play vital roles in our path and act as gateways to the sacred. 

Sometimes in our search for cultural relevance, we abandon healthy systems that function as paths to the sacred. Though as we dig deeper and challenge our initial knee-jerk reactions, there is an abundance of treasure to discover within these systems. 

So at its root, our perception is sacred. We can use it to open up in new and profound ways. So especially in Vajrayana Buddhism, we have this sense of sacred outlook, where we're training to see the world as not just a sort of a shit show, but as something that reflects our mind, and that mind is sacred. This can be a joyful way to live life and traverse the path of awakening.