a taste of water

[AUDIO AND TEXT]

I would like to read from the flyleaf of the book A Taste Of Water, by Father Thomas Hand, and Chwen Jiuan A. Lee. This book was published back in 1990. The subtitle of the book is Christianity Through Buddhist Eyes. This is the authors’ rendering of a story from the Bible, from the New Testament, in which Thomas the Apostle wonders about what is the kingdom of God. So, here’s their rendering of that:

Thomas, one of the 12, said to Jesus,

   “What is the kingdom of God?”

Jesus handed a cup of water to Thomas

   and said, “Here, taste this.”

Thomas asked, “But—

   what is the kingdom of God?”

Jesus smiled and said nothing.

With this, Thomas was filled with the Holy Spirit.

That kind of serves as the koan, doesn’t it, that we can ponder. I guess ponder is not the right word, because that’s a mental activity. But we can engage this koan – it sort of presents to us the whole matter, doesn’t it? In a way, the whole matter that we’re here to engage.

In Zen, there are several koans that I think pose pretty much the same situation. They start with: “a monk asked the master what is Buddha?” And the master will give some answer or some response. Maybe he puts a fragrant flower under the monk’s nose. Or maybe he does the same, gives him a cup of water and says, taste this. Or maybe he strums a chord on his stringed instrument, his lute, or whatever. And at the end of these koans, they may say something like “and the monk was suddenly enlightened.” Well, we’ve already established that enlightenment is a is a stopping word. So maybe we don’t want to go to that point, maybe we want to say in that moment, the monk experienced his essential nature by the Master’s gesture.

It’s really quite simple. This is a glimpse, what this verse and those koans describe, is a glimpse of essential nature. That happens in a moment, in a flash. It’s an instantaneous recognition or realization of what it’s all about, basically, and after having had that glimpse, we probably most of us fall back into our normal way of seeing in the phenomenal world. But having had that glimpse, just that one little flash, of clarity, of realization, we know that what we’re here for, and what we’re here as … we know what that is, we know, we see it clearly.

As we continue our practice, those glimpses may begin to inform our conduct and our experience of being alive, of being with one another, of being in the world, of what the world is, of what we are … that happening, that taste of water, that sniff of the fragrant flower, that sound of the strumming of the lute, we begin to realize that and carry it with us more and more. Day to day, moment to moment. And we begin to be kind of suffused with the joy and with the freedom that that glimpse has given us. Just for the moment of that encounter, and we are transformed thereby.

Thomas, one of the 12, said to Jesus,

   “What is the kingdom of God?”

Jesus handed a cup of water to Thomas

   and said, “Here, taste this.”

Thomas asked, “But—

   what is the kingdom of God?”

Jesus smiled and said nothing.

With this, Thomas was filled with the Holy Spirit.

Just as we can be filled with the joy of realization, when we get that glimpse of essential nature.

So, carry that with you through the next half hour; meditate upon it if you’d like. But let it sink down into your heart and, and just experience the clarity of Jesus’s action and Thomas’s having been suffused with, in their words, the Holy Spirit. For me, it’s the joy of liberation.