SPIRITUAL SINKHOLE: A SHORT STORY

The bottom fell out from under him.  At first he thought he was in the "dark night of the soul," but then, more hopefully, that he was in the Zen state of enlightenment, liberation.

The sudden "pop" like the bursting of a balloon made it feel like enlightenment, and indeed he assumed the Zen way of life right after, the way of no-mind or beginner's mind, where he walked when he felt like walking, ate when he was hungry, and slept when he was sleepy.  He felt free.  This was all well and good except for one thing:  God was not part of it.

He reminded himself that Buddhism is atheistic, or at least that God, if He exists, is not the point in Buddhism.  Yet God was the whole point with him, and his current feeling, whatever it was that happened to him, was the biggest of all points.

So it was back to the sinkhole where he was buried alive.  One thought, though, by God's grace, saved him.  A person gets into trouble when he perceives God as separate from himself, rather than part of himself.  It is the difference between Christianity and Advaita Vedanta, between dualism and nondualism. Vedanta teaches that never for one instant is God not with you, because the Atman in you is God. Any feeling of abandonment one has is imaginary, not the fact of it.

At the top of the sinkhole there was light all of a sudden, there was a way out.