They say that the Valle de Elqui is a mystical place. Mountains cast shadows over dead or dying vineyards, and a river cuts through cracked earth, pressed in on both sides by green banks. At night, the universe is put on display, and telescopes pull whole galaxies in for a closer look. Some say there are magnetic forces that lend the valley a sort of gravitating power, a focal point of energy at the center of the world. Each of these things, the stars, the mountains, the rivers, the natural forces at work, compound to make this a divine place. And it is here that I think about what divinity means.
I have seen glaciers stretch across the horizon. I have watched sunsets and sunrises on different costs cast the same oranges, pinks, purples, and baby blues. I have watched moonlight filter through the wreckage of a sunken ship as I sit on a sand bed. I have been to places that are strikingly beautiful without thinking of God for a moment. Here, in this valley, I do.
I'm not sure that I believe in God enough to designate a pronoun or delineate from my beliefs an entity that is a separate individual. I don't believe that God, or the divine, exists in any way that we would be able to articulate. When the Buddha reached enlightenment, he refused to teach. He believed there was no way for him to formulate and convey a way to enlightenment. Brahma/God had to beg him to continue his existence on earth and teach what he had learned through his individual experience. But the Buddha knew that many times, the teachings get in the way of learning.
I spent the afternoon by the river, listening like Hesse's Siddhartha did. I didn't hear what he heard, but I listened anyway. I meditated for the first time in months with the sound of white water running in the background. I wrote down my thoughts, scribbling out half-formed beliefs and rhetorical questions. I reached zero conclusions, and I feel just as distant from understanding as I did before. I'm not even sure that understanding is a goal I have or an objective to reach.
I came here with three concrete objectives: drink pisco, read poetry, and watch the stars scatter across the night sky. Yes, it was the most romantic vacation I could think of, and like the Romantics before me, I contemplated my relationship with the divine. I was intentionally existential.
Going back to my normal, un-Romantic life, I ask myself what it all means. In the silence that follows, I keep going, waiting for the next time I get the chance to come back to this valley and shout out over the void.
I have seen glaciers stretch across the horizon. I have watched sunsets and sunrises on different costs cast the same oranges, pinks, purples, and baby blues. I have watched moonlight filter through the wreckage of a sunken ship as I sit on a sand bed. I have been to places that are strikingly beautiful without thinking of God for a moment. Here, in this valley, I do.
I'm not sure that I believe in God enough to designate a pronoun or delineate from my beliefs an entity that is a separate individual. I don't believe that God, or the divine, exists in any way that we would be able to articulate. When the Buddha reached enlightenment, he refused to teach. He believed there was no way for him to formulate and convey a way to enlightenment. Brahma/God had to beg him to continue his existence on earth and teach what he had learned through his individual experience. But the Buddha knew that many times, the teachings get in the way of learning.
“[A] true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found what he sought, such a man could approve of every doctrine, each and every one, every path, every goal; nothing separated him any longer from all those thousands of others who lived in the eternal, who breathed the Divine.” -Hermann Hesse, SiddharthaOut of all of the teachings in the world (Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, etc.), none are perfect. None convey divinity simply because divinity, by nature, cannot be conveyed. Each religion is a path that is limited by language and the distance that separates a story from an experience. Each seeks to express the ineffable, and all of our sermons, services, and ceremonies are merely shadows on a cave wall.
I spent the afternoon by the river, listening like Hesse's Siddhartha did. I didn't hear what he heard, but I listened anyway. I meditated for the first time in months with the sound of white water running in the background. I wrote down my thoughts, scribbling out half-formed beliefs and rhetorical questions. I reached zero conclusions, and I feel just as distant from understanding as I did before. I'm not even sure that understanding is a goal I have or an objective to reach.
I came here with three concrete objectives: drink pisco, read poetry, and watch the stars scatter across the night sky. Yes, it was the most romantic vacation I could think of, and like the Romantics before me, I contemplated my relationship with the divine. I was intentionally existential.
Going back to my normal, un-Romantic life, I ask myself what it all means. In the silence that follows, I keep going, waiting for the next time I get the chance to come back to this valley and shout out over the void.
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