“Remember your deepest name.” –Naomi Shihab Nye

From a student of Buddhism I learn about the secret word. His teacher gave him a word in a language he doesn’t know that he uses while meditating.

“What is your secret word?” I ask.

“I can’t tell you,” he answers.

“But what does your word mean? Do you know?”

Well, yes, he secretly looked it up but he isn’t telling me.

And I think, can I, can I, can I pick one more religion from the magic hat and claim it as my own? I don’t know that I can. I can only know that Buddhism is about nothing, even if you are given a special word to repeat to help place yourself in the deepest river. And the deepest river isn’t a drug and it isn’t a blue light but it is a place and I will meet you there.

What is prayer but the deepest communion with both nothing and your deepest name? Can you claim your birthright? Can you call yourself nothing and everything? What is the quality you want to embody that is really just a doorway to the divine? And why are we all trying to reach the divine? I am pretty sure that is has something to do with traffic, the man that glared at me, the woman that honked, and my desire to run fast, as fast as I humanly can, in search of the deepest river.