Three is a sacred number, whichever spiritual tradition, golden-age culture or religion we consider. A holy trinity – or a threefold holiness? Many start counting from zero and take it as the origin, yet archaic mathematics, and spiritual mathematics even more so, always starts from one, that is, it takes as its beginning not nothing but something. One is God, the ultimate principle, the ego, the king – anything that embodies the supreme something. Compared with this, two is a progression, both more than one and less. More, because it is not one, and less, because it hints at a split, as though it signalled the loss of fullness. It is not twice one, but half of it! God and man, Sun and Moon, light and shadow, good and evil – duality is bound up with two. One is Heaven, two is Earth, one is the believer, two the earthbound mentality. And what is the difference between these two? Heaven and earth…
That is why we must move quickly on to three, which hints at synthesis – one, two, and the sum of these two: three. Three points make the first plane figure possible and mark out a surface, and the triangle then embodies dynamic tension; it is also used as a symbol of God. Thus threeness is at once the restoration of lost fullness, the dynamic of energies straining against one another, and the synthesis of principles: Father Heaven, Mother Earth, and their child: man.
The Christian Trinity is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the three holy things of Buddhism are the Buddha, dharma and sangha, that is, the Enlightened One, the Teaching and the Community. To these three a Buddhist pledges himself when he joins. The holy triad of the Jains is the three jewels – right faith, right knowledge, right conduct – while one of the Hindu triads is the cosmic triad, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva as the deities of creation, preservation and destruction, and another is the trigon of God, teacher, saints, which marks out the points of reference for spiritual practitioners.
It would be easy to list triads: deeds, words, thoughts; beginning, middle and end; thesis, antithesis, synthesis; hell, earth and heaven; father, mother, child – and here three is the number of the child, who is the synthesis of father and mother… And if three is the child, then three is the thought, the end as fulfilment, the synthesis, heaven too, and the transcendence of all.
Time passes in three phases: past, present and future; three qualities hold sway in the world: mass-likeness, energy-nature and light-quality, in other words darkness, impetus and brightness, or ignorance, passion and goodness. Within the bounds of these influences, it is in fact his desires that make up man. The variations of desire are endless: money, women, fame; advantage, esteem, glory; in the better cases purity, beauty, goodness, or truth, knowledge and joy… The wise explain that three desires drive man: the desire for salvation, the desire for wealth and the desire for woman, but in truth, in the latter two it is the very first desire that takes flesh in hidden form. The desire for sensual happiness and for prosperity ought to be pervaded by the desire for virtue.
There are three points of reference for deciding whether a proposition is true or not: revelation, sacred tradition and logic, and in this decision man is aided by three divine powers – knowledge, the power of action and the power of will. For a good disciple to hear good teaching from a good source – that is complete success.
What is more, it is said that three paths towards perfection lie before man: the path of right action, the path of meditation and knowledge, and the path of devotion and love. Or is man's holy trinity only one: happiness, happiness and happiness? Or perhaps knowledge, self-discipline, love, or faith, hope, love? Wherever we start from, the last word is love after all, and beside its cultivation all else is dwarfed. A great art, whose practice is a humanly beautiful and divinely wonderful task. Enough for a lifetime.