Open Enlightenment

The Three Hares Symbol

The first known example of the symbol of the Three Hares with conjoined ears is dated to 600CE, and it can be found in Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist sites across the globe in England, Western and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East . Its historical meaning is unclear; although the hare as a spiritual archetype is well documented.

Its spiritual but transcultural nature makes the Three Hares the perfect symbol for Open Enlightenment, and the symbol can be used to demonstrate the one commonality between all the paths that lead to enlightenment, in what I call the Three Hares Teaching.

The Three Hares represent three elements respectively:

Philosophy

An individual’s philosophy is determined by experience.

Philosophy is how an individual understands the world, what they value (ethics), who they believe themselves to be (identity), why they believe they exist (purpose), and when (as an activity) they actually consider any of the Big Questions (contemplation).

The practice of philosophy and the ideas examined will determine the focus or direction of the individual’s actions in life.

Focus or Direction

What an individual decides to do, what their focus and direction in life is, and how they prioritise what actions are most important to them – whether conscious or not – is determined by their philosophy. The focus is the reason for doing anything, the sum total of a person’s experience and philosophy thus far.

Action or Experience

An action is determined by the focus or direction of life. The action is also an experience that in turn informs an individual’s philosophy.

So philosophy informs direction, direction informs action, action informs philosophy, and so on.

The Three Hares represent the endless cycle of human behaviour: each one of the hares always follows on the heels of the other, and each hare only ‘has ears’ for the other two.

The unexamined life

For the most part, people spend a very small fraction of their lifetime examining their lives and beliefs about the world, and so their philosophy remains mostly inherited and unconscious. Their intentions are therefore those of their culture and remain unquestioned (‘I must acquire money, I must please God, I must dress a certain way, etc.’). Actions or experiences follow suit accordingly, and so most people simply work, eat, sleep, entertain themselves and exercise faith in untested beliefs, mostly unconscious of any one of the hares and their interrelationship, until the day they die.

Or do they?

The search for wholeness or completion

If we look at the Three Hares symbol we can see that the hares are circumscribed by a circle. This is a symbolic representation of the fact that philosophy, focus and action revolve solely around completion or wholeness.

The search for completion or wholeness is the driving force of the universe.

Enlightenment is the discovery of wholeness.

The spiritual practice

No one changes until experience forces them to. The repetition of events and experiences that fail to deliver completion or wholeness informs a person’s philosophy. Previously unconsidered notions such as the fact happiness isn’t found in cultural habits or that certain personal beliefs might actually be wrong begin to surface. Gradually the focus of life changes, and the person begins to perform new actions that bring forth new experiences, that in turn further develops their philosophy…

Eventually only one focus will remain, and this is the root of all spiritual teachings, traditions and practices or actions that lead to enlightenment. As diverse as all of these relative paths to awakening might be, in a general sense they have all reached the level of philosophy where the process of growth symbolised by the Three Hares has become a conscious concern, a single focus has been formed and a specific action or set of behaviours is devised and performed for one reason only:

Transcendence.

The specifics of spiritual philosophies may differ, but transcendence is the single unified focus or direction of every genuine practice or action that will lead to enlightenment (and the absence of this focus is the sole reason for a practitioner failing to achieve the goal. They simply do not have the will to enlightenment).

A person’s direction in life is informed by his or her philosophy; and so it follows that not everyone is interested or finds value in enlightenment, and even those that may act as if they are concerned about enlightenment may simply be acting the part for very different reasons, from cultural expectations to matters of personal identity.

The Three Hares Teaching is a philosophy that I hope will be of use to those that are ready for it, and will go some way to facilitating the understanding that genuine spirituality is not a specific tradition or technique, but the essence hidden behind all religion.

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