Could there be anything more close to the Zen way as John Steinbeck’s transcended preacher in The Grapes of Wrath?
“I went into the wilderness like Him [Jesus], without no campin’ stuff.” The fallen, former preacher looked at the stars and looked at the sun rising. Just as Buddha did when he sat under the Bodhi tree at the night of his enlightenment. He just stared. The former preacher wasn’t sure what he was doing, watching, staring, being alert. Suddenly, he felt one with the hill that he was watching, no sense of separation from anything anymore. He felt one, and the union felt holy.
He understood that we were one until some miserable person became aggressive to become an individual, broke away and fought to have more. Until then, a person stood with others, “feeling harnessed to the whole shebang.”
The holy man could not preach anymore at that point. He just appreciated deeply what he already had.
I say, he is right. We are harnessed to the whole shebang, whether we know it or not. I say, we are blessed and whole and holy. All we need to do is sit down, listen, watch natural events, such as the stars and rising star, the people losing, the people being. No matter how bad things are, we are interconnected. There is no “good” or “evil.” There is one, and we are part of it.