This article first appeared in the September – December 2023 Portobello Buddhist Priory Newsletter. This version has been edited.

These are a few personal thoughts about ‘darkness’. I am not exploring how concepts of dark and light are used throughout Zen: that is a slightly different topic.

So, let us consider ‘darkness’ while negotiating a forest of somewhat over-used metaphors. We all know, for example, that the lotus has to have its roots in the dark mud. The Dark Night of the Soul, a theological term with a specific meaning, has become common currency to suggest any very dark spiritual or psychological time.

Common phrases abound. ‘In the dark, a dark plot, dark humour’ (which I respond to) and ‘we all have a dark side’. Then there is Dante’s ‘dark wood’. The etymological meaning is of something ‘hidden’ and I can identify with this. I prefer this slant to the common negative or ‘bad’ associations in circulation.

(I did a web search on ‘darkness’ and was intrigued to see an article titled, Celebrating Darkness. The gist of it I think was that we can’t rely on our senses in the dark but we can rest in the unknowable. And trust the darkness. I think the Christian classic, The Cloud of Unknowing describes and explores this view.)

Buddha Nature was hidden from me for decades. I couldn’t trust that I was worthy or had a ‘spark of the divine’ as it is sometimes expressed. Other people had it but not me.

Everyone seems to prefer lightness to darkness. However, I love looking at the night sky: at double stars, galaxies and nebulae. I complain because the sky isn’t dark enough! It is only a sky free from light pollution that enables us to see some galaxies and faint nebulae. (Is there a metaphor there? The darker the sky, the more fainter objects can be seen.)

In my late teens I identified with a dark view of life, thinking it was truer to reality. Others preferred sweetness and light. It is said that the common denominator to any trauma is loss.

I lost connection with Buddha nature at the boundary of adolescence when I went to boarding school. Institutional abuse resulted in my distrust of adults and various kinds of defensiveness. Looking back more than 60 years it seems I have lived in darkness – in the sense of not seeing my true nature, and being driven by self-concerned thoughts and feelings (darkness = something hidden). Even in this one-sided, apparently negative view of darkness there was/is something enlightening.

This ‘something hidden’ aspect is worth contemplating. Many of us for example, may ask a monk, “What am I not seeing?”, when discussing a spiritual problem. There is a sense of something in shadow.

As with many others, the pain and suffering through decades of adult life became so severe that I knew I had to do something about it. That’s when I found Throssel. It would be nice to relate that the darkness was replaced by light – – – but I find dark and light alternate. In ordinary language, there are good and bad days. The ‘ideal’ is not to prefer the light to the dark, but “with the ideal comes the actual.” To let go of the envious, ‘dark’ painful feelings we may have towards another person over and over again for example, may be the action of a Buddha, and may be enough in itself. But we can also investigate ‘who’ or what is feeling the hurt. Is there a substantial self there, or is that a fiction? We may see how a particular knot of hurt formed at an early age and that it is not solid and can be released if we truly trust the unknowable Buddha-mind.

This example comes up a lot for me. We can do this ‘leaving alone’ with any painful feeling. Why cultivate this habit? Because the feeling is obscuring our ‘peaceful, unchanging mind’. But we must be careful not to hate the feelings.

Needless to say I don’t find any of this easy: leaving painful states ‘alone’ is easier said than done. Decades of cynicism and aversion leave a long karmic wake.

As the mind is self-concerned and its modus operandi is made up of trying to maximize pleasant events and minimize the unpleasant, it is little wonder we can take decades to find any stability, or what Rev. Master Jiyu called ‘the third position’.

If ever a suicidal thought surfaced in the future I hope I would have the presence of mind to ask ‘Why are you terrorising yourself Eric?’  Can I extend compassion even towards such extreme feelings-thoughts?

The Unborn, Uncreated Reality is not something that can be described, let alone grasped, but the more we can realise our habitual self is an elaborate self-creation, the more there is space for Spaciousness to be sensed!  ‘IT’ is always there ‘under/behind’ the agitated thoughts and feelings. Some people may call it universal Love.

It may be trite to say the blue sky always exists behind dark clouds. But if there was not an ‘unborn, uncreated, unconditioned, undying’, the metaphorical blue sky, then complete and utter despair would be our lot. I found recently I put into words my personal kōan: ‘to live beyond futility’ – futility and diffidence having been an undercurrent in my life.

I find now in my late 70s I can trust in the inclusive Unborn/Buddha Mind more. A non-Buddhist may say that is wishful thinking, but I’ve experienced timeless, expansive moments where the ‘small, separate self’ has disappeared, so I know the Buddha was only voicing the literal truth in his vast teaching. That’s what keeps me going. I hope I’ve made a friend of darkness.

At the end of our lives we have to go into the seemingly ultimate darkness, so it is probably good that we get acquainted with its many manifestations beforehand.