Thank you for the question.
Note - Although this talks of God and Buddha it equally refers to Tao.
In Genesis, the Bible says “God made man in His own image.”
Unfortunately, this is often misinterpreted as meaning that mankind is somehow above the rest of the creatures in this world because they have not been made in God’s image like he.
This is man’s ego reinforcing itself and not what the Bible means. It is the opposite of what the Bible is trying to convey.
The Creator and its Creation are not separate. They are One. A single Totality we happen to call God. We are That.
And everything else is the same That.
If no Creation existed, God still IS. We would not be.
Some say “I do not believe in God” not realising that if God did not exist, there could be no disbelief. I say “I do not believe in I”.
But let’s be logical for a moment…
If I am right, and everything is God’s own image, then surely, every single item, animal, thing, and place must express something of God’s Presence equally. A cloud must express it as much as an ant. A bird as much as a mountain.
Moses saw God’s Presence alight in a bush and asked “What are you?” and the reply came “I will be what I will be” (Hebrew) or “I am what I am” (Latin). Or, it doesn’t know what it will be next as there is no next. There is only IS. Only Being. And it does not need to name itself as there is only IT. It is writing to you now, and you are the same It reading the answer.
Jesus saw the Presence in the sky and was baptised as he saw it enter him, then realising it was already there within. He spent forty days in the wilderness listening to the devil. The devil being thought, and ego, and self-belief, that is the only thing obscuring God’s Presence. And he chose Silence and God’s Will/Wisdom instead. Knowing he was not he but He. He then went to the side of a mountain and spoke the Sermon of the Mount.
Buddha saw this Presence while sitting by a tree and glancing up at the Morning Star, and knew there was no self and no self that suffers. He spent forty days under the tree listening to (and seeing through the falsehood of) Maya; temptation, self-belief, thought, and suffering. He then went to the deer park and spoke of The Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Noble Path - that the root of suffering is the belief in a self that suffers.
Kashyapa saw the same Presence in a flower Buddha held at a sermon and knew that enlightenment is instant. The monk Ikkyu while fishing, heard a crow calling “Ikkyu, Ikkyu, Ikkyu” then in between, he heard the Great Silence and Awoke. I felt it in myself, then saw/felt it later in the sky, then everywhere. I knew I was looking at everything that is Me. That the self I had lived as all my life and all its patterns and conditioning wasn’t there, or rather didn’t belong to something individual it was just present within Presence. I am IT looking at ITself in awe and wonder. Agape. How could I have missed what is “hidden in plain view? - [Jesus]”
I was always seeing it but didn’t know. I was blind to it. Jesus healed the blind by helping them to see the Presence of God.
A cloud, an ant, a bird, a mountain, and you and I, all show God’s Presence in the same way.
A person who has realised God’s Presence, and whose sense of self has died [No man shall look upon my face and live - Exodus, the Bible] will see God everywhere in everything. And will know that all places are His Kingdom, and all things are Himself. And nothing is He.
And he or she will see Presence through presence. Will recognise the dark in the light, the mystery in the common.
When the sense of self is seen through as a lie, and the “heart” is pure from the dust of untruth, God’s Presence shines through them. In British lore, this is called The Taliesin, meaning one whose brow is radiant.
This radiance is the Light. It is the Messiah. It is the seen showing the Unseen. It is the lighting of the oil lamp. It is baptism. It is the temple of God. Not brick and mortar but You. You are the Holy Grail. You are the same cup of Silence that Jesus drank from at the Last Supper. The Silent beauty of God’s ever calm Presence. Drinking from the body, the cup that is a container for what cannot be contained. The knowledge that You cannot die. That You has no suffering. That You always IS.
“Be still and know that I am God. [Psalms]”
Be still.
To recognise God in His Creation, simply notice the silence and stillness of Presence within what is present. It will not be “them” that you are seeing, it will be Him. IT.
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