Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘For me, the language of ‘the sacred’ points to that which is radically other. Religion and spirituality are human constructs – shelters we build to invite or hold onto encounters with the other – but the sacred names what lies beyond these shelters, the experience which compels us to construct them. The sacred may be encountered, but such encounters bring us to a place where language fails. In all the traditions I’ve spent time around, there seems to be an acknowledgement of this in the deliberate strangeness of the use of language. Think of the unpronounceable name of G-d in the Hebrew Bible, or the first lines of the Tao:

The way that can be spoken of is not the eternal way; The name that can be named is not the eternal name.‘ (from the Writing Home newsletter)

I have been thinking a fair amount recently about how every human wisdom tradition has a way of pointing to the ineffable, and that it would be remiss of us not to remember this as we move through life. Though as we say in Zen, you don’t want to stay there.