On Sensuality, Love, and Liberation: Three Approaches to Spirituality

For a long time, I refused to ever use the word “spiritual.” I could not articulate a precise definition, so I discarded it as a useless term. I still don’t have a precise definition, but now I find it useful for pointing to things that can happen in the heart and mind at a deep level, resulting in profound transformations in the way we exist in the world. They are things that go beyond the work we might do in a therapist’s office, but not wholly disconnected from that, either; when we untie the knots of our traumas, we clear out avenues for spiritual expression.

There isn’t a word in the Indian languages the Buddha taught in that could be translated exactly as “spiritual.” The closest is nirāmisa, which literally means “not flesh” or “not raw meat.” In a narrow sense, we might restrict the idea of a Buddhist “spiritual” path to nothing other than that which the Buddha taught as the highest aspiration: complete liberation from suffering, and from the great Wandering (the literal definition of saṃsāra). But, since we really don’t have a precise definition for the word, can there be other options? I’d like to step back and consider.

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