Hello, sacred life

A lesson from tantric Buddhism and children’s books on the hidden beauty in all things.

I have a morning routine with my toddler of reading a sweet little book called Hello, Sacred Life. Written and illustrated by Kim Krans of the Wild Unknown tarot deck, the book simply greets nature, and the elements, as sacred: “Hello, sacred water,” “Hello, sacred fire,” “Hello, sacred moon.”

It’s become one of Max’s favorite books. He picks it out of the book basket, waddles across the room to bring it to me, and sits patiently on my lap while I read it, often handing it back to me when we’ve finished to read it again. 

After reading it aloud for the millionth time, I recently realized that this book had become a way to pass down one of my most deeply-held values. The idea that life is sacred is probably the most important thing I want to teach my son.  

As a practitioner of tantric Buddhism, this belief is at the center of my spiritual practice and my worldview. 

More than anything else, the power of this idea is what drew me to tantra. At the heart of the tantric spiritual path is what one of my teachers, Lama Tsutlrim Allione, calls “sacred world, sacred view.”

In tantra, the world becomes re-enchanted; imbued with luminosity—it all arises from the ground of being (what we might call “source”) and contains that divine or awakened energy. Everything in our lives becomes part of the spiritual path, with nothing excluded. We don’t decide that going to church is sacred, but having sex isn’t; that birth is sacred, but illness and death isn’t; or that our love and compassion is sacred, but our guilt and shame is not. 

Perspective is powerful—in Buddhism, it’s our starting point. When you choose to more formally embark upon a Buddhist path, you begin with the first step of the Eightfold Path (the Buddha’s path to freedom from suffering): right view, a clear understanding of reality that grounds all of our practices and efforts. This is important, because it lays the groundwork for everything we do. 

The path of transformation

The basic view of tantra is a sacredness that permeates everything. 

Tantric, or Vajrayana, Buddhism is known as “diamond vehicle” because it is indestructible. While other Buddhist paths are rooted in renunciation—overcoming distractions, our lower tendencies—tantra embraces them as part of the path. 

There’s no asceticism or renunciation; no efforts to heroically overcome our struggles and difficult emotions or eliminate obstacles. We don’t have to turn away from life to experience true spirituality. It’s all right here, in the mess, the chaos, the mundane, the struggle, the lack, the conflict. Going against traditional ideals of spiritual purity, many traditional tantric teachers even ate meat, drank alcohol and had sex.  

Whether ordinary or mystical, pure or impure, tantra views all of life as a manifestation of awakened energy. All things are infused with radiant luminosity, or “enlightened energy.” Blood and dirt, pleasure and pain, joy and depression. This even includes the things that annoy, frustrate or inconvenience us—what we might think of as taking us away from a meaningful or spiritual life. A letter from the IRS. A mold problem in your basement. Standing in line at the DMV. 

According to the tantric teachings, this awakened energy in any circumstance just needs to be liberated, transformed, in order to be fully realized—in order for us to see it for what it is. Pure wisdom. All our difficult emotions and unhealthy patterns are temporarily confused forms of energy that can be transformed back into their natural wisdom. It’s all workable. 

The ordinary becomes extraordinary when we are able to see the divine presence in it. We don’t have to go on a meditation retreat or do ayahuasca to overcome our struggles and escape from the tedium of everyday life. Instead, we can learn to see the beauty in all of it. 

 “The practice of tantra does not emphasize transcending the world, but transforming it,” said Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the most important teachers to bring Tibetan Buddhism to the West (and himself an unconventional figure). “We learn to work with the world as it is and recognize the sacredness in it.” 

In other words, we don’t have to turn away from life to experience true spirituality.  Trungpa RInpoche also says: “Tantra is the realization of the inherent sacredness of every moment. It is not about rejecting our ordinary experience but recognizing its true nature.”

Through this lens, every obstacle in our lives can be seen as an opportunity to awaken. We can bring it all onto the path and work with it. Getting divorced is as sacred as getting married, if we can meet the experience fully and find the wisdom in it. Learning to see the events of our lives this way is itself a skill and practice. It’s not always easy, but it also doesn’t have to be so hard. It’s really just a shift of perspective. 

Turning towards that which we turn away from

This view reminds us that aging, illness and death—which our cultural conditions us to fear and reject—are sacred, too. 

Turning towards that which we would normally turn away from is the basic approach of Machig Labdrön, an 11th century yogini and one of the first female Tibetan masters, whose lineage I practice and study. 

A mother and brilliant teacher, she originated the practice of Chöd, which was traditionally performed in cemeteries and on charnel grounds, where human bodies were decaying and evil spirits were believed to roam. The idea is to go to the places that scare you (“smelly places, scary places,” as Lama Tsultrim says), to face your fears, and liberate the awakened energy that exists there, too. 

During the chöd practice, the practitioner undergoes a symbolic death, cutting up their own body and serving it as an offering to the “demons”—primarily, to their own fears, difficulties and sources of pain—in a profound act of selflessness and compassion. Making an offering of our own body is a way of deeply honoring what we would normally reject. 

This unusual practice is rooted in the tantric concept of “one taste,” meaning that everything shares the same essence. If we can see all things as having equal value, then we are able to experience life without fear or resistance. We can just be in the flow, fully experiencing our lives, even if it’s not what we may have wanted or chosen for ourselves. We can find the hidden wisdom and value in all of it. 

This Sunday I’m contemplating: What if we treated the worst things that ever happened to us as something sacred? What if the most tedious, unsexy tasks and annoying obligations were also imbued with the sacred? What do we turn away from, and what might happen if we turned towards it? 

— Carolyn