Walking with Eyes Closed: Landscapes of the Sacred

Sarah Jackson
September 26, 2017
In class, we learned that there are four axioms that make a place sacred. Not all people have a spiritual experience when they enter a sacred place. They do not connect or engage with the place, be it local or universal. The place cannot be chosen, the place chooses itself. Lastly, a sacred place was once ordinary and made extraordinary through ritual.
An example of this from my own life is my trip to China right before I turned eight years old. I had found it interesting to go to temples and gardens which held spiritual significance for certain people. Sadly, I was not one of these people. Clamouring onto my parents, I asked when the next meal was or if we could hurry up so we could swim in the hotel pool before our tour guide pushed us onto another bus. I stood on the ground where people meditated and gave thanks, but I walked through it all blindly.
In Landscapes of the Sacred, Belden C. Lane states that identifying a sacred places is “intimately related to states of consciousness” (19). Even though I was fully conscious, my mind was wondering too much. I was thinking too much about the future and not on what was happening to me at that moment. On September 14th, we listened to a song in class (I do not remember the name) about a woman near a creek in disinterested delight. She sings that when snow falls, there is “no clear path” to God. The song explains that nothing is just handed to you and that being somewhere does not automatically make you feel pure and mystical.

It was not enough for me to stand in the temples and look around. Even if I would have taken the time to appreciate where I was and clear my mind, I might not have had anything spiritual happen. Those temples were not obligated to give every sardine packed tourist a grand spiritual journey.

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