What is Sacred World?

By Crystal Gandrud

Sacred World is mind. Not your mind—that is a modern concept of self—just mind. Mind, a word Buddhists hurl around with wanton frequency, is collective. No one owns it. It does not begin or end, it has no origination, nor does it go anywhere. It is not here now. It does not abide. It is everywhere and nowhere. You get the idea. And yet…mind is the function by which we experience all things. You know it by your feelings and sensations and then the thoughts and feeling you have to explain mind’s movements.

Many years ago, I had a small, earth-shattering experience. I’d been practicing and studying a lot at the time. It was the main thing I did when I first admitted that I was probably a fucking mystic even after all my avowals both public and private of allegiance to relativistic, materialistic atheism. I insisted that there was nothing but what facts and if you couldn’t prove it, it didn’t exist. But my nature (let’s call it mind) finally caught up with me and after a very long, very dark depression, I gave in. I was going to die one way or another so I decided to be conscious for it. I attempted to find out what it meant, which meant practicing and studying a lot with people I did not like very much. In spite of myself, I began to experience transitions and moments and even intense feelings with a curiosity not available before. I was softening, opening up, becoming, against my better judgement, just a little bit more relaxed.

One afternoon, on a train going north out of New York City—a train on which I had been a thousand times before—it stalled, as usual. I looked out the window. I do not know if I looked out the window for a long time or just a few moments. There on the tracks were the expected twists of rusting metal and broken concrete and wire and the rubbish that the piles of rubbish collected. I gazed at this mess, warm and content to take in the sight. After a time, a wave of being moved by beauty overtook me. I had the thought, It’s so beautiful. I stared in reverence at the pile. I do not know for how long. And then I remembered that I was a person who did not think rubbish on tracks was beautiful; that hated people who weren’t more thoughtful about disposing of unwanted materials and on and on. But I couldn’t quite make the mess unbeautiful. I still can’t. It was. It reflected something real and deep moving in mind. I had accidentally (although on purpose because of all the practice and study) tuned in to Sacred World.

The world is sacred. As is. No adjustments needed. Which is an insane statement in the face of all the endless suffering. And yet…