Religion's Awe

   Where does religious awe come from? As I am reflecting on this question, I am thinking about how Buddhism has come to Canada, and who is practicing Buddhism. There is something already truly miraculous about this, because people encounter Buddhism from very different experiential paths. If I only focus on Buddhism as a spiritual doctrine and set of edicts, I might fail to connect to the fact that Buddhism is encountered in infinite ways by different people and for different reasons. This is already miraculous in itself because it demonstrates the Heart Sutra proclamation, "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form". Without the specificity of form, Buddhism could not really demonstrate the empty co-mingling of phenomena. Everything would all be subsumed under one object or concept, rather than being seen as parts of an unfolding and ever-changing whole. Without the pervasiveness of emptiness, on the other hand, there would be no change and no mind permeating all the changes.  Through the permeability of all things, an infinite number of changes and combinations are possible.
    I think the sense of awe must come from the inescapable presence of mind, which often requires accident or serendipitous coincidence to really be recognized. It arrives, for instance, when a person inadvertently or intuitively juxtaposes two or more very different concepts which seem unrelated, but in fact are later found to have a deep interconnection that defies logic or mundane reasoning. Are there accidents? I suppose one should trust that there aren't that many real accidents, only discoveries of the permeability of mind in all things. This dance of coincidence goes on and on for ages, until all the mind is realizing its true nature and breaking through the subject/object duality which makes existence such a powerful prison.