Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
Kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.
If we could reach the Lord through immersion in water,
I would have asked to be born a fish in this life.
If we could reach Him through nothing but berries and wild nuts,
Then surely the saints would have been monkeys when they came from the womb!
If we could reach him by munching lettuce and dry leaves,
Then the goats would surely go to the Holy One before us!
If the worship of stone statues could bring us all the way,
I would have adored a granite mountain years ago.
Mirabai says: The heat of midnight tears will bring you to God.
Mirabai was a 16th-century mystic and poet. In our previous blog we noted that the term Midnight Tears might be a reference to unfelt grief that we may carry inside. Grief is almost always present in our lives--to some degree. But in the past few years more grief than usual has been added to the lives of many of us. Today we are awash in Midnight Tears.
Another meaning of Midnight Tears lies is the inevitable (and largely unseen) grief resulting from our spiritual journey itself. Mirabai alludes to this in the first two lines of her poem:
Listen, my friend, this road is the heart opening,
Kissing his feet, resistance broken, tears all night.
“This road” refers to our spiritual journey. “Kissing his feet,” refers to the humility and devotion required to engage, and to stay on, the spiritual path.
Mirabai was not a Buddhist; she was Hindu and a devotee of the god Krishna. The devotion to our journey is not to another being, but to our own true nature. In the early Buddhist traditions, devotion was largely in the form of dedicating one’s life to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. In the early centuries of Buddhism, intense spiritual practice (devotion) was generally limited to monastics.
To become a monk one had to release everything--including his personal identity. A similar version of this is recorded in the Christian Gospels, where Jesus admonished his disciples to “Leave everything and follow me.” Monastics in most every tradition are required to do that very same thing: give up everything; die to your old life.
Most of us are not monastics. We need not dump all of our possessions, shave our heads, and join a monastery. And yet, the spiritual journey does require us to let go of our attachment to possessions and identity. We must be willing to let it all go.
Letting go, inwardly or outwardly, usually results in much grief. This is especially true if we give up our former identity. This is much more difficult than releasing our possessions. The tears we shed may not always be visible, but Midnight Tears are as real as the liquid variety.
Often most of our grief is the denied grief from previous losses in our life. Our attachment to our roles, possessions and relationships may be a means of protecting our self from feeling this suppressed grief. Suppression may serve a functional purpose, but ultimately it is not satisfying--it doesn’t work in the long run.
We close with a story of a knight in shining armor.
This knight fought many wars and served hid king very bravely. He was awarded the highest medals of Honor. But years of battle left him sad and lonely. He missed his family; so he finally retired and came home to his wife and two children. They were very happy to see him—and he them, as well.
But when he tried to embrace his wife and hug his children, his armor got in the way. He tried to remove it, but he discovered that it would not come off! He tried cutting it, sawing it, and pouring acid on it, but nothing could cut or dissolve it. The armor that had saved his life in battle many times was now a serious hindrance in his life.
His relationship with his family deteriorated. He grew very frustrated, lonely and sad. And finally, for the first time in many years, he began to cry. He cried for a long time, and then he discovered--at long last--the one thing that could dissolve his armor--his tears.
The heat of midnight tears brings us close to God; not because God enjoys our suffering, but because our grief melts the barrier that we have unwittingly placed between our self and our own heart--and thus between our self and God.