Buddhist Romanticism

connectedness, integrity, and belonging. Like groundwater these
essential qualities are our true nature, manifesting whenever we are
able to let go of our limited sense of ourselves, our unworthiness, our
deficiency, and our longing. The experience of our true self is
luminous, sacred, and transforming. The peace and perfection of our
true nature is one of the great mystical reflections of consciousness
described beautifully in a hundred traditions, by Zen and Taoism, by
Native Americans and Western mystics, and by many others.”
* * *
6) This feeling of unity is healing but totally immanent. In other words, (a) it is
temporary and (b) it does not give direct experience of any transcendent,
unconditioned dimension outside of space and time.
7) Any freedom offered by the religious experience—the highest freedom possible
in an organic universe—thus does not transcend the laws of organic causation. It is
conditioned and limited by forces within and without the individual.
8) Because the religious experience can give only a temporary feeling of unity,
religious life is one of pursuing repeated religious experiences in hopes of gaining
an improved feeling for that unity, but never fully achieving it.
“In the maturity of spiritual life, we move from the wisdom of
transcendence to the wisdom of immanence.”
“Enlightenment does exist. It is possible to awaken. Unbounded
freedom and joy, oneness with the Divine, awakening into a state of
timeless grace—these experiences are more common than you know,
and not far away. There is one further truth, however: They don’t
last.”
“The raw material of dharma practice is ourself and our world,
which are to be understood and transformed according to the vision
and values of the dharma itself. This is not a process of self- or worldtranscendence,
but one of self- and world-creation.”
“Awakening is called the highest pleasure (paramam sukham), but
the word is hardly adequate to express this paramount condition of
ultimate well-being. It is not freedom from the conditions in which we
find ourselves (no eternal bliss in this tradition) but it is freedom
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