The Golden Cucumber
Did I tell you about the time that I had to go to Tibet? It all started when I decided that I wanted to try out a structured approach to meditation. I grew up Catholic but had always been intrigued by Buddhism, particularly when I realized at the age of around sixteen or seventeen that I wasn’t a Christian. I made a lot of efforts at meditation on my own up to the age of twenty-three or so, but felt as though I’d hit a plateau. I got involved with a local Buddhist meditation group that met on Sunday mornings for meditation and tea.
I excelled at the meditation and developed a close relationship with the group leader, Master Song. He and I sometimes met during the week to talk over tea. At his suggestion, we began to meditate together in the evenings at his studio. In the process of meditation, I began to reach increasingly higher planes of consciousness, reaching levels of awareness that transcended the known Universe. I try to explain to people that this awareness is not a conscious thing, that I don’t “know” everything about the Universe; I simply have an intuitive connection to levels of existence that are greater than the universe in which we live. Master Song understood this, as he was able to reach similar levels of awareness.
After a year of intensive meditation with him, I found that I was consistently becoming a bird in my meditation. Almost immediately upon sitting in the lotus and beginning my mantra, the whole of the Universe would become my body, and I would soar across a sky of astral energy. The far reaches of the cosmos were my great white wings and our own galaxy was the heart that sustained my life energy. I decided that I should tell Master Song of my visions.
“I’ve never told you about the prophecy of the White Heron,” he said. “I had my suspicions when I first met you, and in our time together I’ve come to believe it more every day. This vision you’ve had proves it once and for all.”
He explained to me that just as the mother of the enlightened one had envisioned a white elephant descending into her womb, recent Lamas had begun to envision a white heron that would swoop low and take humanity, which would become an olive branch, into its mouth, carrying it into the peace of timelessness. This fit incredibly well with my insatiable taste for olives ever since I was a child.
“What must I do, Master,” I asked. It was then that he told me about the Golden Cucumber.
“When humanity was banished to life and suffering, it was decided that the banishment should be temporary. Birth and Death were necessary for the Great Spirit to know Joy and Suffering, and because the Universe has existed, Joy and Suffering now are a part of the Great Spirit. In the beginning, a Golden Cucumber was given to existence as the key to end Birth and Death. Only when the heights and depths of life and existence have been reached will an incarnation of peace be able to reach this Golden Cucumber. It is believed that the White Heron might be this incarnation. You must go to Tibet and make the journey to the mountain where the Golden Cucumber is believed to be hidden.”
I agreed to the task and set out a week later for a monastery in Tibet where I was expected. Everyone treated me very well, but no one told me what to do. I spent a week in the monastery meditating with Master Tanz. After a grueling thirty-six hours meditating together in the beautiful main temple, Master Tanz addressed me.
“Now is the time,” he said. “Your spirit has absorbed all that it can here, and now you must make your journey. No one may accompany you, as the Golden Cucumber will obliterate all of those who are not worthy to be in its presence.” Convenient that Master Song left that out before. “The path on the east side of the village will take you as far as anyone has been. Beyond that, you must meditate for guidance.”
The following morning, I set out on my journey. I took nothing with me. I followed the path for three days until I reached a dead-end. I was famished and thirsty, so I made for myself a meal of snow and various roots that I could pull from the hard ground. I fasted for twelve hours before beginning my meditation.
In meditation, I saw clearly the path that I would take to a great gate in the side of the mountain. The gate would open into a vault where I’d find the Golden Cucumber. Upon returning to consciousness, the path remained visible where there’d only been forest and brush before. I continued my journey.
After another five days’ hiking, I reached the spot I’d seen in my vision. At the end of the path, there was a small clearing by a large rocky wall on the side of the mountain. In my vision, this wall was where the gates had been. Again I broke my fast with roots and snow, wondering how I should proceed. I began my meditation twelve hours later. In my meditation, I saw the rock wall change shape until it became the gates of my previous vision. They were much larger than I’d expected, at least a half-mile high and a quarter-mile across. How do you open doors like that? I meditated on the intricately ornate shapes and figures on the doors. After three days of meditation, the symbols began to light in a seemingly random sequence. When all of the symbols had been illuminated, the great gates began to rumble. They slowly opened into the mountain, revealing a vast cave. I returned to consciousness to find that the mountain now resembled the open gates of my vision.
Within the cave, I found hordes of great treasure and riches. What use would the creators of the Universe have for all of this junk? I made my way through the cave until I was at least two miles below the Earth’s surface, deep within the mountain. There, propped against the wall of the cave in between two great golden tomatoes, was the Golden Cucumber. I sat to meditate and find the guidance that I needed in order to fulfill my purpose. Now that I’d arrived, what was I supposed to do with the cucumber? And what would happen when I did that? The Universe would cease to exist, all matter and energy returning to its true form—spirit? I hadn’t given my task a great deal of thought up to this point, as I had believed that I should simply follow the path set out before me, but now that I had nearly reached the end of that path, I wondered about the truth of the prophesy. It obviously hadn’t been completely false; the cucumber did, in fact, exist, and it didn’t seem like anyone had made it this far before. But I was troubled by the fact that I hardly felt as though I had completed my spiritual progress in this life; surely the countless other spirits in the Universe had further progress to make, as well. I let these questions float through my consciousness as I fell away from it, hoping that I might gain some clarity in this communion with the Spirit.
Once again, my body fell away from me as I began to transcend my own life. Something was different this time. Typically, through meditation, my sense of a distinct individual consciousness gives way to the universal consciousness, and I lose touch with the illusion of Self. Of course, it hadn’t always been like that—letting go of Self comes only after much practice and experience with heightened awareness. I wondered if the doubt that I experienced as I began to meditate had affected my willingness to let go, but unlike my early experiences with meditation, I was aware both of Self and of Universe; I was conscious both of my existence in space and time and of the timeless formless truth of spirit beyond the material Universe. I had never imagined that it was possible to experience Spirit and Self simultaneously. I recognized what I had seen before, the Universe from the perspective of Spirit, but had never been able to understand with human consciousness. No matter how I’d transcended space and time before, my knowledge of truth had always been limited to a sort of spiritual knowing that I could never comprehend mentally. Now I could see clearly, and mentally grasp, the truth of the Golden Cucumber and my role in this lifetime. I slipped out of the Spirit and returned to space and time, and I eagerly began my return trip to the monastery, cucumber in hand.
Many were surprised to learn of my reappearance, especially because I had the cucumber in my possession. If I was not the White Heron, why hadn’t the cucumber destroyed me? And if the prophesy was false, then what had become of all of the others who went in search of the cucumber? Or why would the cucumber exist at all, if the prophesy had been a lie? Many renounced me as a fraud, insisting that the cucumber I brought back was a fake and that the real one either never existed or I wasn’t the White Heron and therefore couldn’t find it. I gently explained that my role as White Heron is not as the one who will liberate spirit from time and space, but as the messenger to all conscious beings that the Universe must follow its proper course according to the laws that created it. Matter and energy arose from spirit long before it gave birth to consciousness, and long after conscious beings have ceased to exist, matter and energy will return to Spirit. I now travel the world and carry this message to all who will listen, that consciousness is the gift by which we experience joy and suffering, and the spiritual journey of each individual consciousness, along with the material journey of every particle, is necessary for the Universe to reconcile itself with Spirit. Move forward, I preach, live and enjoy life. Receive the message of hope that the Golden Cucumber represents: we are all Spirit, and when our individual consciousness comes to an end, we will return to pure being, where we will be free to fully appreciate all of the joy and suffering of the Universe, from beginning to end.
I excelled at the meditation and developed a close relationship with the group leader, Master Song. He and I sometimes met during the week to talk over tea. At his suggestion, we began to meditate together in the evenings at his studio. In the process of meditation, I began to reach increasingly higher planes of consciousness, reaching levels of awareness that transcended the known Universe. I try to explain to people that this awareness is not a conscious thing, that I don’t “know” everything about the Universe; I simply have an intuitive connection to levels of existence that are greater than the universe in which we live. Master Song understood this, as he was able to reach similar levels of awareness.
After a year of intensive meditation with him, I found that I was consistently becoming a bird in my meditation. Almost immediately upon sitting in the lotus and beginning my mantra, the whole of the Universe would become my body, and I would soar across a sky of astral energy. The far reaches of the cosmos were my great white wings and our own galaxy was the heart that sustained my life energy. I decided that I should tell Master Song of my visions.
“I’ve never told you about the prophecy of the White Heron,” he said. “I had my suspicions when I first met you, and in our time together I’ve come to believe it more every day. This vision you’ve had proves it once and for all.”
He explained to me that just as the mother of the enlightened one had envisioned a white elephant descending into her womb, recent Lamas had begun to envision a white heron that would swoop low and take humanity, which would become an olive branch, into its mouth, carrying it into the peace of timelessness. This fit incredibly well with my insatiable taste for olives ever since I was a child.
“What must I do, Master,” I asked. It was then that he told me about the Golden Cucumber.
“When humanity was banished to life and suffering, it was decided that the banishment should be temporary. Birth and Death were necessary for the Great Spirit to know Joy and Suffering, and because the Universe has existed, Joy and Suffering now are a part of the Great Spirit. In the beginning, a Golden Cucumber was given to existence as the key to end Birth and Death. Only when the heights and depths of life and existence have been reached will an incarnation of peace be able to reach this Golden Cucumber. It is believed that the White Heron might be this incarnation. You must go to Tibet and make the journey to the mountain where the Golden Cucumber is believed to be hidden.”
I agreed to the task and set out a week later for a monastery in Tibet where I was expected. Everyone treated me very well, but no one told me what to do. I spent a week in the monastery meditating with Master Tanz. After a grueling thirty-six hours meditating together in the beautiful main temple, Master Tanz addressed me.
“Now is the time,” he said. “Your spirit has absorbed all that it can here, and now you must make your journey. No one may accompany you, as the Golden Cucumber will obliterate all of those who are not worthy to be in its presence.” Convenient that Master Song left that out before. “The path on the east side of the village will take you as far as anyone has been. Beyond that, you must meditate for guidance.”
The following morning, I set out on my journey. I took nothing with me. I followed the path for three days until I reached a dead-end. I was famished and thirsty, so I made for myself a meal of snow and various roots that I could pull from the hard ground. I fasted for twelve hours before beginning my meditation.
In meditation, I saw clearly the path that I would take to a great gate in the side of the mountain. The gate would open into a vault where I’d find the Golden Cucumber. Upon returning to consciousness, the path remained visible where there’d only been forest and brush before. I continued my journey.
After another five days’ hiking, I reached the spot I’d seen in my vision. At the end of the path, there was a small clearing by a large rocky wall on the side of the mountain. In my vision, this wall was where the gates had been. Again I broke my fast with roots and snow, wondering how I should proceed. I began my meditation twelve hours later. In my meditation, I saw the rock wall change shape until it became the gates of my previous vision. They were much larger than I’d expected, at least a half-mile high and a quarter-mile across. How do you open doors like that? I meditated on the intricately ornate shapes and figures on the doors. After three days of meditation, the symbols began to light in a seemingly random sequence. When all of the symbols had been illuminated, the great gates began to rumble. They slowly opened into the mountain, revealing a vast cave. I returned to consciousness to find that the mountain now resembled the open gates of my vision.
Within the cave, I found hordes of great treasure and riches. What use would the creators of the Universe have for all of this junk? I made my way through the cave until I was at least two miles below the Earth’s surface, deep within the mountain. There, propped against the wall of the cave in between two great golden tomatoes, was the Golden Cucumber. I sat to meditate and find the guidance that I needed in order to fulfill my purpose. Now that I’d arrived, what was I supposed to do with the cucumber? And what would happen when I did that? The Universe would cease to exist, all matter and energy returning to its true form—spirit? I hadn’t given my task a great deal of thought up to this point, as I had believed that I should simply follow the path set out before me, but now that I had nearly reached the end of that path, I wondered about the truth of the prophesy. It obviously hadn’t been completely false; the cucumber did, in fact, exist, and it didn’t seem like anyone had made it this far before. But I was troubled by the fact that I hardly felt as though I had completed my spiritual progress in this life; surely the countless other spirits in the Universe had further progress to make, as well. I let these questions float through my consciousness as I fell away from it, hoping that I might gain some clarity in this communion with the Spirit.
Once again, my body fell away from me as I began to transcend my own life. Something was different this time. Typically, through meditation, my sense of a distinct individual consciousness gives way to the universal consciousness, and I lose touch with the illusion of Self. Of course, it hadn’t always been like that—letting go of Self comes only after much practice and experience with heightened awareness. I wondered if the doubt that I experienced as I began to meditate had affected my willingness to let go, but unlike my early experiences with meditation, I was aware both of Self and of Universe; I was conscious both of my existence in space and time and of the timeless formless truth of spirit beyond the material Universe. I had never imagined that it was possible to experience Spirit and Self simultaneously. I recognized what I had seen before, the Universe from the perspective of Spirit, but had never been able to understand with human consciousness. No matter how I’d transcended space and time before, my knowledge of truth had always been limited to a sort of spiritual knowing that I could never comprehend mentally. Now I could see clearly, and mentally grasp, the truth of the Golden Cucumber and my role in this lifetime. I slipped out of the Spirit and returned to space and time, and I eagerly began my return trip to the monastery, cucumber in hand.
Many were surprised to learn of my reappearance, especially because I had the cucumber in my possession. If I was not the White Heron, why hadn’t the cucumber destroyed me? And if the prophesy was false, then what had become of all of the others who went in search of the cucumber? Or why would the cucumber exist at all, if the prophesy had been a lie? Many renounced me as a fraud, insisting that the cucumber I brought back was a fake and that the real one either never existed or I wasn’t the White Heron and therefore couldn’t find it. I gently explained that my role as White Heron is not as the one who will liberate spirit from time and space, but as the messenger to all conscious beings that the Universe must follow its proper course according to the laws that created it. Matter and energy arose from spirit long before it gave birth to consciousness, and long after conscious beings have ceased to exist, matter and energy will return to Spirit. I now travel the world and carry this message to all who will listen, that consciousness is the gift by which we experience joy and suffering, and the spiritual journey of each individual consciousness, along with the material journey of every particle, is necessary for the Universe to reconcile itself with Spirit. Move forward, I preach, live and enjoy life. Receive the message of hope that the Golden Cucumber represents: we are all Spirit, and when our individual consciousness comes to an end, we will return to pure being, where we will be free to fully appreciate all of the joy and suffering of the Universe, from beginning to end.
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