The Sacred

I was listening to some music by the Hawaiian singer, Teresa Bright a while ago, with my arms in dishwater, washing the cups and plates. I think any kind of water, even sudsy dishwater, can help the creativity and inspiration flow, because it's usually while I'm washing dishes, or having a long soak in the bath, that I get my best flashes of inspiration.

I must have been channeling a Polynesian spirit, because as I listened to the music, the word 'tupu' popped into my head very clearly. When I finished the dishes, I went on the internet and looked it up, to discover that it's the name of an island in the island chain of Tuvalu, which is slowly becoming inundated by the tides, with rising sea levels.

I discovered that our Government is doing nothing to help these people, but rather it has been the New Zealand government who has offered to house them, once they are forced to leave their island home. Our government prefers to dump people on small Pacific islands, not rescue them!

My interest was really sparked then, about this word, so I called my sister, whose boyfriend told me that 'tupu' in Maori means sacred.

Not knowing what I could do with this little piece of information, I didn't put much more thought into it, but just lately I've been thinking a lot about the nature of the sacred and how important it is to me.

The Japanese approach to the sacred has had the most profound affect on my life and I was reminded of this recently, looking at photos of Nicole's family and Margot's recent holiday to Hakone.

When you visit a mountain temple or a temple next to a lake or river in Japan, the temple is more than a scenic place where you can go to pray or take snapshots, if you're a tourist. It is there as a reminder that whatever natural feature it has been built beside, is sacred, is the temple itself, so to speak, or in other words, a marker for the God with which they wish to connect, when they pray there.

Likewise, whenever you see the folded paper prayers attached to ropes strung around natural features like massive hundred year old trees, it's a reminder of the sacredness of that place, that God resides there.

I love the reverence for nature that exists at the heart of Japanese culture. You could argue that this reverence does not transpire to the way most Japanese live, considering the way they are jammed into high rise apartments in some of the most populated cities in the world. In each of these homes, however, for the most part, even the most pokey little apartment will have a small reminder of the beauty of nature, whether it be a flower arrangement in their genkan or a beautiful scroll somewhere set aside from the household clutter.

It is not just that I also have a great love of nature, which makes me feel an affinity with Japanese culture. It is a Buddhist idea that when we admire beauty, we are actually feeling the beauty that comes from within and that everything we perceive on the outside is a reflection of the inside. I now accept that an appreciation of the great beauty of nature puts me in touch with the great beauty that exists at my core and thus I am reminded of my own sacredness.

It was traveling to Japan which first made me aware of this, even though I have had many experiences here in Australia, which left me in awe of the beauty I was witnessing. The difference, is that we don't have temples at sites of great natural beauty. We don't have shrines celebrating that beauty or the sacredness of that particular place. We have scenic look-outs where you can take a great photo and people rarely talk about nature as something sacred. It feels that for the general populace, a whole dimension of the appreciation of nature is lost, as is the spiritual lesson, of connecting that beauty with oneself, yet it is there waiting to be experienced.

We have incredible beauty here in Australia.

It is here to be enjoyed and to teach us things about ourself, if only we have our minds open to learn.

A favourite place of mine is Fingal Heads, just over the border of Queensland, in northern N.S.W. The headland is made of volcanic hexagonal columns which have weathered time and the elements, so that they are smooth and shiny, jutting out of the sandy shoreline like black ocean sentinels.

Years ago, admiring them for their age and endurance to the elements, I felt in awe at how it felt like they have been at that place forever. I was telling a spiritual friend of mine about this awe and she said to me, "You're no different. You've been here forever too." I realise that it's true. In one form or another, even if you don't believe in life after death, or in reincarnation, we have existed and will exist forever too. As Carl Sagan says, "We're all made of star stuff."

Star stuff is sacred too, don't you think?