Call to Worship
by Rev. McGee
This morning, with the help of some of our UUCA Buddhists, we will seek out the Big Answer of Buddhism, the sixth in our series exploring the Challenges of Religious Pluralism this year. More than 20 covenant groups as well as the church school and other groups in the church are discussing these religious traditions and their answers to the personal and planetary problems of our day. It is here in a religious community of concerned and caring people that we not only ask the most difficult questions but seek out the most meaningful answers to those questions.
I Believe in Buddhism
by Suzan Chastain
I was born and raised a Unitarian Universalist, believing in the power and responsibility of humanity, finding connections in nature, and meaning in social action.
These are still core values for me.
But there came a time, several years ago, when in the midst of a personal crisis I came to recognize (to my dismay) that something was missing;a deeper spirituality. Not a smorgesboard spirituality of a little of this and a little of that, but a deeper spiritual practice.
In Buddhism I found a spiritual path that compliments my UU values. Buddha said, "Be a lamp unto yourself." He said, "My teachings are merely a finger pointing at the moon--they are not the moon."
Now I'm not 100% Buddhist. I have trouble with some concepts like reincarnation and I'm not expecting "enlightenment" anytime soon.
But in Buddhism I have found powerful spiritual tools I can use to profoundly enrich life: practices such as concentration, mindfulness, and compassion.
Through concentration practices I am learning to let go. The rough edges of life seem to soften when I practice concentration.
Through mindfulness practices I am learning how to see what is true right here, right now. Through mindfulness practices I am feeling a greater sense of wholeness; an increased connection with even those parts of myself I'd deny. And feeling a deeper sense of connection with that interdependent web of which we are a part.
Compassion practices--We UUs are pretty good at feeling compassion for those who are poor or hungry, sick or oppressed. One of the lessons of Buddhism is that there is a difference between feeling pity and feeling compassion. And there is an even more important teaching; the teaching that we are all the same in some fundamental ways. In other words, there is no "us" and "them" in Buddhism.
So from Buddhism I am learning how to practice compassion for all others. Even for those who wish us harm. And I am working on what sometimes is the most difficult practice for me--how to have compassion for myself.
Reading
"Please Call Me By My True Names" by Thich Nhat Hanh
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope,
the rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the
surface of the river,
and I am the bird, which, when spring comes,arrives in time to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the
clear water of a pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who,
approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly
weapons to Uganda.
I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee
on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after
being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with
plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his
"debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes
flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it
fills up the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughs
at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.Sermon:
The Big Answers 6 “Buddhism – Being Compassion”Did everyone bring your duct tape with you this morning? Aren’t you aware that duct tape and plastic is our latest defense system against terrorism?
Now don’t get me wrong. I love my duct-tape. One of my favorite web sites is 101 Uses for Duct Tape, which includes this spiritual quotation: "Duct tape is like the force: It has a dark side and a light side and it holds the universe together."
But even that web site does not have duct tape listed as a defense against terrorism. Who would have thought! My guess is that duct tape is as useful against terrorists as it was against that huge snow storm Mother Nature dumped on us last week.
I believe we would be much safer, at least from terrorists, if we used more compassion and less duct tape. Buddhism has many answers to today’s problems, but I believe The Big Answer of Buddhism is “being compassion.”
Many of you know the story of the Buddha. In the year 560 B.C.E. at the foot of the Himalaya Mountains, a child by the name of Siddhartha Gautama was born. We know little of his early life, but we do know that his father was a wealthy king, and that Siddhartha lived in luxury. At the age of sixteen Siddhartha married a neighboring princess who gave birth to a son. Siddhartha seemed to have everything a young man could want: wealth, power, a loving wife, and a healthy child.
Legend has it that when Siddhartha was born a fortune-teller prophesied that the young boy would one day be either a king who would unify all of India, or he would become a world redeemer. His father decided to steer Siddhartha toward the higher salary bracket, and so he built a secluded pleasure palace protected by guards so that Siddhartha would be shielded from the suffering of the world.
One day Siddhartha managed to escape his father’s protection and was shocked to look upon an old decrepit man. That day Siddhartha learned the fact of old age. The next day Siddhartha encountered a man racked with disease lying by the road. On that day he learned about sickness and infirmity. On the third day he saw a corpse, and he learned about death. And then on the fourth day Siddhartha looked upon a monk with shaven head, ocher robe, and bowl; on that day he learned the possibility of withdrawal from the world.
This story is a legend, and yet it expresses the reality that Siddhartha must have experienced: a discontent with his luxurious and protected life and an intense yearning for a deeper reality. Instead of closing his eyes to the pain, Siddhartha felt an overwhelming need to know why people suffered and then he desperately wanted to alleviate their sorrow.
And so Siddhartha began a six year pilgrimage. His goal was to attain enlightenment by eliminating all the desires of the body. He fasted until he almost starved; he allowed his body to be abused by the elements; he denied his body any of the pleasures that it yearned for. Finally, one day, on the brink of death, he realized that asceticism was bringing him destruction rather than liberation.
Soon after that realization Siddhartha walked into a grove and sat at the foot of a fig tree. Under that tree, which later became known as the Bodhi, or the Knowledge Tree, Siddhartha entered into a long period of meditation that was to change the lives of millions of people around the world for centuries to come.
While sitting in the lotus position, with eyes closed, immersed in silence, Siddhartha woke up: he awoke not from a physical sleep but a spiritual one. In the stillness he experienced a universal oneness.
When Siddhartha opened his eyes he was the Buddha, the awakened one. It had been as if his entire life was an unclear dream, and now, finally, he had awakened to the real world. Suddenly, he could see through all the shapes and forms to the unified essence of life itself. Finally, he could understand the causes of suffering and how to overcome the pain of living. And he could feel a compassion that knew no bounds.
The Buddha bypassed all the theology and mythology that most religions get bogged down in, and zeroed in on what he thought were the most important questions of human existence: Why do we suffer, how do we cope with our suffering, and how do we alleviate the suffering of others?
He told us that we cannot protect ourselves from suffering with wealth and weapons. We cannot protect ourselves from danger and pain by wrapping ourselves in duct tape and plastic.
The Buddha’s answer to the question of why we suffer is that suffering comes from attachment. When we attach ourselves to objects or people we become vulnerable to the pain of loss.
In this church we are all learning to let go of Rev. Gelbein when she retires this summer, and that’s not easy for me as well as all of you or for her. We have all become attached to each other, and yet now it’s time to loosen those attachments. But hopefully by doing so, we can see Joan in a new light, as more of a person and less of a role.
Many people have the impression that Buddhism tells us the solution is not to get attached in the first place. But the Buddha tells us that attachment is not the problem in itself; it’s what we become attached to. The message of Buddhism is to detach ourselves from the unreal, the illusory, and the temporal – not from the real, the true, and the permanent. By detaching ourselves from what is called maya, or illusion, we are released from the pain of loss when the inevitable comes about.
There’s a wonderful story from the Zen Buddhists that goes like this:
“Two Buddhist monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.
“Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection and in tears.
"Come on, girl," said Tanzan at once. Feeling compassion for her, he lifted her in his arms and carried her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he told Tanzan, "especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"
"I left the girl there," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"
As this story shows, detachment doesn’t mean that we ignore and reject the world around us. To be detached doesn’t require letting go of others; it requires letting go of our own ego, our need to possess and control.
This is what it’s all about. When we are able to let go of our ego, then we fully appreciate the blessings of relationship and the joy of compassion.
Think of an important relationship in your life. If your attachment to that person is a result of your own egotistical needs (and every relationship has some of that), then the pain of losing that person when the inevitability happens is greater because she or he is no longer around to fulfill those needs. It’s like pulling duct tape off bare skin.
But the more you are able to let go of your ego in that relationship the more you can appreciate that person for who she or he really is as a human being. You can see her needs instead of your own. You can feel his pain instead of being a victim of your own projections. You can share her joy instead of fearing that she has something you don’t. And you can see that person as a mask for the divine.
But to have this kind of relationship requires a great deal of discipline. It means that we must discipline ourselves through the use of meditation and mindfulness to constantly cut away the duct tape of attachment.
Do you get it? This is a very difficult concept for Westerners, but the duct tape certainly helps me to understand it better.
If you use the people and objects around you primarily to meet your needs, to gratify your greed, to stroke your ego, then you are like someone walking around with all of their possessions dragging behind them dangling from duct tape. Do you get the picture?
At it’s worst, we become like Golem in Lord of the Rings whose life revolves around his precious. Bertrand Russell wisely wrote that, “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”
If you are disciplined to take your ego – that part of you that is needy and greedy – out of the relationship, then the duct tape of attachment falls away, and you can experience a new freedom and joy. When you have the courage to let go of the ego, then you enter into a mindful relationship that truly appreciates the world around you as a miraculous expression of the essence of life itself.
Another choice of course is to run away from any attachment. In her book called Buddha Karen Armstrong tells about her experience of searching for God as a nun. She practiced the extreme asceticism of her order, only to discover, like the Buddha, that this kind of self-punishing regime can be more egotistical than materialism. Asceticism is like wrapping yourself in plastic and duct tape in fear of the world.
But asceticism is not the drug of choice for most of us; it is an addiction to materialism. The Dalai Lama tells us that “those living in the materially developed countries...are in some ways less satisfied, are less happy, and to some extend suffer more than those living in the least developed countries. ... They [meaning us] are so caught up with the idea of acquiring still more that they make no room for anything else in their lives. As a result, they are constantly tormented ... plagued with mental and emotional suffering...” [Ethics For The New Millennium]
He’s right. We are addicted to materialism and greed, and we don’t even allow ourselves to be aware of the pain this addiction causes us. That’s why the Dalai Lama emphasizes the need for compassion to begin with ourselves. We need to open our hearts to our own pain, the loneliness, the superficiality, the lack of meaning in our lives, before we can feel genuine compassion for others.
Both of these extremes of asceticism and addiction can be avoided by letting go of our egos, our sense of self-importance, the feeling that we must have what we want no matter what the consequences to others. The result of dethroning the egotistical self is that we can then allow the void to be filled by someone else, someone who is suffering, who is grieving, who is in need. With the self out of the way, we can clearly see into the heart of others – as well as ourselves -- feeling their pain, sensing their loneliness, connecting with our commonality.
When the young Siddhartha gazed upon the old and the sick and the dead he experienced a pure sorrow and an outpouring of total sympathy for those beings who apparently had nothing to do with him. He experienced true compassion.
Joseph Campbell writes that “Compassion ... is just what the word says; it is ‘suffering with.’ It is the immediate participation in the suffering of another to such a degree that you forget yourself and your own safety and spontaneously do what is necessary.”
And the Buddha did just that: he suffered along with others. He shared in their pain, not only experiencing it as if it were his own, but then doing what he could to alleviate the sorrow. A Tibetan description of the Buddha describes him as “a thousand eyes that see the pain in all corners of the universe and a thousand arms to reach out to all corners of the universe to extend his help.”
Compassion is at the heart of all the world religions. Each faith at its best helps its followers to discover that by giving ourselves away we become fully created to bring greater things into being, to become complete human beings, people for whom the divine can speak through.
It’s a mistake to understand compassion as a personal sacrifice and a great effort. In reality when our ego is out of the way compassion is a natural and joyful response to those around us. When we can not only practice compassion but be compassion we are able to experience the permanent ecstacy of Sunyata, or the Big Mind.
Sunyata is the sense of being in harmony with the universe, of spaciousness of spirit, and an absence of clinging. To enter into the Big Mind is to feel a universal awareness and a boundless heart toward all beings.
Meditation is a tool we can use to enter into the Big Mind so that we may be alert and present to what is going on in the moment, absorbed in being who we are, and realizing that this One Mind is beyond our limited selves. Small mind is when the ego grasps us in its clutches; Big Mind is when we let go of the self, of individuality and enter into a higher consciousness of commonality.
The Big Answer of Buddhism is that in this time of impending war and violence and neglect of those who are suffering from poverty and deprivation we need to be compassion. “Compassion,” wrote Frederick Buechner. “is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
May the Big Mind be our Big Answer to the suffering of life. And may compassion be not just a belief but a way of living and being in the world.
Amen.
Benediction
Let us end with this blessing by the Buddha:
“Let all beings be happy, weak or strong, up high, middle or lower state, small or great, visible or invisible, near or far away, alive or still to be born, may they all be entirely happy. Let no body lie to anybody or despise any single being whatsoever. May nobody wish harm to any single creature out of anger or hatred. Let us cherish all creatures as a mother her only child. May our loving thoughts fill the whole world, above, below, across, without limit, with a boundless good will toward the whole world, unrestricted, free of hatred and enmity.”
Shalom, Salaam, Blessed be, Amen!
Questions to consider for covenant groups or for your own personal use:
1) How do you live a compassionate life?
2) What has helped you to be more compassionate?
3) What would it take for you to be a Buddhist?
4) How attached are you to the “stuff” in your life?
5) How much is your ego involved in your personal relationships?
6) How do you compare UU values with Buddhist values?
