Chalice Lighting Words
Eric Rodenburg
From Chuang Tzu, Chapter six, “The Great and Venerable Teacher.”
The Way has its reality and its signs but is without action or form. You can hand it down but you cannot receive it. It is its own source, its own root. Before Heaven and Earth existed it was there, firm from ancient times. It gave spirituality to the spirits and to God: it gave birth to Heaven and to earth. It exists beyond the highest point, and yet you cannot call it lofty; it exists beneath the limit of the six directions, and yet you cannot call it deep. It was born before Heaven and earth, and yet you cannot say it has been there for long; it is earlier than the earliest time, and yet you cannot call it old
The Chalice is lit, yet the light is within you.
Call to Worship
Today’s sermon on Taoism is the sixth in our series on the Challenge of Religious Pluralism. We have been looking at various religions to discover what some of the answers are that each has given to the question of life’s meaning. Hopefully, wisdom found in all religions can find their way into our spiritual lives.
We come together in this special place
Knowing that each one has journeyed long and hard.
Some have traveled deserts of loneliness and pain.
Others have bounced in with the joyful commotion of families and friends.
We rest together, knowing we rest only briefly;
Our journeys continue even in the middle of this gracious pause.
May our connections with each other, here and now,
Ease and up-lift our journeying.
Let us worship together and be grateful for this time.
Meditation
From the book, “365 Tao, Daily Meditations” by Deng Ming-Dao
A meditation on War from the Taoist perspective, because we know that, today, a war with Iraq is imminent.
Weapons are tools of ill omen
Wielded by the ignorant.
If their use is unavoidable,
The wise act with restraint.
The greatest sorrow is to be a veteran,
Witness to the atrocities of humanity.
If you hold a real weapon in your hand, you will feel its character strongly. It begs to be used. It is fearsome. Its only purpose is death, and its power is not just in the material from which it is made, but also from the intention of its makers.
It is regrettable that weapons must sometimes be used, but occasionally, survival demands it. The wise go forth with weapons only as a last resort. They never rejoice in the skill of weapons, nor do they glorify war.
When death, pain, and destruction are visited upon what you hold to be most sacred, the spiritual price is devastating. What hurts more than one’s own suffering is bearing witness to the suffering of others. The regret of seeing human beings at their worst and the sheer pain of not being able to help the victims can never be redeemed. If you go personally to war, you cross the line yourself. You sacrifice ideals for survival and the fury of killing. That alters you forever. That is why no one rushes to be a veteran. Think before you want to change so unalterably. The stakes are not merely one’s life, but one’s very humanity.
Reading and Comments
My name is Eric Rodenburg. I’ve been a member of this church for 13 years.
Until 1975, my only acquaintance with Taoism was through the Tao Te Ching and while I found it interesting, it seemed obscure and removed from everyday life.
At the time I was, a poorly acculturated ex-military brat who’d lived in many other cultures and spoken a few other languages, but did not feel grounded or belonging to any one group. Although I was free, I was alone. So, finding Chuang Tzu’s brand of Taoism, embedded as it is in ordinary life, changed the way I dealt with the world. I could be free and still exist within society, while rejecting its norms, beliefs, and behaviors.
Chuang Tzu helped me define my place in the cosmos and define myself as a spiritual materialist. He taught me to be suspicious of words and debates over their meanings. Chuang Tzu helped me to understand that distinctions, like good-bad, black-white, beautiful-ugly or life and death, are just intellectual baggage that obscures the underlying unity of experience, the unity of the universe. “The sage embraces things,” he says, “ordinary men discriminate among them and parade their discrimination a before others.” He helped me to not take myself too seriously but to try to stay in the present, and in the flow. And he taught me that the rejection of social norms and judgements doesn’t mean you can’t live happily among other people.
The greatest thing I have learned from Chuang Tzu is that life is a dance to be done on the stage of the universe, done with as much grace and style that one can muster and that all, of whatever station or ability, can participate equally.
I’d like to share with you, this story from the rich and varied work of Chuang Tzu:
Cook Ting was cutting up and ox for Lord Wen-hui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee -- zip! zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Ching-shou music.
"Ah, this is marvelous!" said Lord Wen-hui. "Imagine skill reaching such heights!"
Cook Ting laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now -- now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, through the big openings, and follow things as they are.. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint.
"A good cook changes his knife once a year -- because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month -- because he hacks. I've had this knife for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, there's plenty of room -- more than enough for the blade to play about it..
"However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I am doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with greatest subtlety, until -- flop! The whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away."
"Excellent!" said Lord Wen-hui. "I have heard the words of Cook Ting and learned how to care for life!"
This is my favorite story from Chuang Tzu. I take it to mean that when I follow the Tao, or natural path, there is no opposition. There is no need to hack through barriers and so dull my spirit. This story has also epitomized to me the Taoist theme of inaction and I try, although often fail, to trust the Tao by being in the moment, to not intellectualize about what I am doing, and to pay attention to what is happening around me. And this has worked for me, I trust that the process of life will take me to where I need to be.
Chuang Tzu has helped me to define a spiritual universe, one without a god, of course, but one where I, and you, are just as meaningful as the wheeling galaxies or a garden grub. A universe where I can experience the undefinable, the Tao, the Way, and through this experience feel connected to all that there is. Taoism has helped me to define myself as a spiritual being, but one who is grounded in reality, grounded in the Universe as it is.
Sermon -
I’m going to begin with an ending; an ending written by Alan Watts.
Watts was well-known, in the 60’s and 70’s as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular, and Indian and Chinese philosophy in general. Towards the end of his life, he gave talks on Taoism, and seminars at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
It has been Michael’s and my purpose in this series of sermons about the essential messages, or “Big Answers,” of the Big Religions, is that we discover what can be relevant in our own lives as modern day Unitarian Universalists.
So – here is Alan Watts, at the conclusion of one of his talks about Taoism, turning its wisdom over to you. He wrote:
In the end, we must decide what we really want to know about.
Do we trust nature, or would we rather try to manage the whole thing?
Do we want to be some kind of omnipotent god, in control of it all, or do we want to enjoy it instead? After all, we can’t enjoy what we are anxiously trying to control. One of the nicest things about our bodies is that we don’t have to think about them all the time. If when you woke up in the morning you had to think about every detail of your circulation, you would never get through your day.
It was well said: “The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
The song of birds, the voices of insects are all means of conveying truth to the mind. In flowers and grasses we see the messages of the Tao.
The scholar, pure and clear of mind, serene and open of heart, should find in everything that which is nourishing.
But if you want to know where the flowers come from, even the god of spring doesn’t know.
And now, let’s circle round to the Tao, which seems a good thing to do because this philosophy is the antithesis of linear thinking.
In fact, here’s a charming bit of Tao-ishness from Chuang Tzu, the Chinese philosopher who lived between 399 and 295 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era). Chuang Tzu, born about 200 years after Lao Tzu, the Daddy of Tao, took the Taoist position and developed it further.
After hearing this, you won’t think that, at the hand of Chuang Tzu, the Tao became more clear. But, you’ll hear both the wisdom of Tao and the sense of humor of this ancient sage:
There is a beginning.
There is not yet beginning to be a beginning.
There is not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning.
There is being.
There is nonbeing.
There is not yet beginning to be nonbeing.
There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing.
Suddenly there is nonbeing. But I do not know, when it comes to nonbeing, which is really being and which is nonbeing.
Now I have just said something.
But I don’t know whether what I have said has really said something, or whether it hasn’t said anything.”
Of course, I am not being linear in my sermon structure right now; sort of flip-flopping from one thing to another and confusing you. I apologize. On the other hand, I’ve just been in the flow of the Tao; not “stopping the river,” of my thoughts, you might say.
This river of philosophical thought does, however, have a source.
Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophical tradition whose origins extend back to 3000 B.C.E. It was an oral tradition at first. No one knows much about the earliest people, but surely they experienced a oneness with nature, and in stories passed down the idea and images that became Tao.
Around 500 BCE, the first written works appeared. The works were attributed to the legendary Taoist sages, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.
Lao Tzu is said to be the author of the Tao Te Ching, “The Book of the Way and Its Power.” It is an anthology of ancient sayings, poems, and proverbs.
Chuang Tzu, is the name of the book written by a Taoist named Chuang Chou. It is a collection of stories and monologues illustrating and expounding the teachings of the Tao Te Ching. Together they represent the philosophical and practical core of classical Taoism.
I want to tell you about three basic aspects of Taoism: The Tao, or the Way; the understanding of polarity expressed in Yin-Yang, and the principle of non-action called, wu-wei.
After each, I will pause to speak an affirmation to join us, here and now, with the spirit of Taoism in our lives today.
First, we will attempt to understand the Tao. Right away there’s a problem. Lao Tzu says at the opening of the Tao Te Ching – “the Tao that can be spoken of is not the Tao.” He also says – “those who know, do not speak, those who speak, do not know.”
But, Lao Tzu did indeed speak! The Tao Te Ching has some 5,000 words in it. We can think of Lao Tzu as using words like a poet, to reveal an experience of life, the realm from which all words emerge. The problem is in confusing words with their reference – with that which words describe. If someone points her finger at the moon, we must look at the moon, and not at the finger. So, words are the poetically pointing fingers: what is the Tao?
Tao means basically, “the way,” or “course”; the course of nature.
Nature is always in a constant state of flux and transformation. You can’t step twice into the same river. Lao Tzu could have said that.
Tao implies vitality and movement. You can’t fully grasp the Tao with rigid concepts and language, any more than you can capture flowing water in a bucket, or wind in your hands.
And, before I go much further, I need to warn you that speaking paradoxically is the method used by the ancient sages of the Tao. Like Buddhism, the teacher speaks in ways your brain can’t compute. The words don’t make sense – those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak! But their intention is to knock you off your usual logical way of thinking, open your mind, set your intuition in gear, and give you “a feel” for understanding the mystery; the Tao.
The Tao is a transcendent state of being—beyond the reality of the mind and its words, and beyond the reality of the senses. Yet, paradoxically, that essence, which is not seen, not known, is also always right here, right now- in the course of a stream or the flow of your own breath. The Tao is available to our perception when we are fully in the present. It is the life that moves through all things.
Why can’t we speak of the Tao? One reason is that we are Tao, so there is nowhere to find an outside perspective from which to know it. Can the subject be the object of its own knowledge?
Alan Watts, in his book, “Taoism: Way Beyond Seeking,” writes:
… you are the universe. Your eyes are apertures through which it is aware of itself—holes in the wall as it were. So you look, you blink: now you see it, now you don’t. It is very simple. And therefore the big questions – What is it? What am I supposed to do? What is human destiny? Why are we here? – will slowly disappear, and their disappearance will be the answer. The answer is that what is going on can’t be described. The Tao cannot be described. It is simultaneously departing and arriving, always flowing, constantly changing. That is the meaning of “The eternal Tao” – the flow, the drift, the process of nature, the Watercourse Way.
Ch’an or Zen Buddhism is a later fusion of Buddhism and Taoism, and has much in common with Taoism. This verse of Zen Buddhist teaching reveals Tao:
(As I) sit quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes and grass grows of itself.
Nature is that which happens by itself, and that is a process that is not fundamentally under our control. It happens all on its own, just as our breathing is happening all on its own, and just as our heart is beating all on its own – and the fundamental wisdom behind Taoist philosophy is that the process on nature is to be trusted.
Tao is a reality that can understood deeply without being able to define it. A Chinese poet put it this way:
Plucking chrysanthemums along the eastern fence,
gazing in silence at the southern hills,
birds fly home in pairs,
through the soft mountain air of dusk.
In all these things there is deep meaning,
but when we’re about to express it,
we suddenly forget the words.
In our deepest intuition most of us sense that there is some kind of unity underlying everything; underlying the mystery that we can’t understand – a unity that underlies all opposites. We find that we can’t separate one from the other.
I speak now an Affirmation to join us together, today, in the spirit of the Tao:
I now know my life is peaceful and harmonious.
I keep the one in my life.
I am one with all life on this planet; all that there is.
I respect myself and the process.
I harmonize with nature and all others in my world.
I accept greater peace in my life now.
And so it is.
We come now to the second principle of Taoism -- the Yin-Yang polarity – expressed in the well known symbol on the cover of your Order of Service.
In the Tao Te Ching it is written:
“The Tao is One.
From the One come yin and yang;
From these two, creative energy;
From energy, ten thousand things,
The forms of all creation.
All life embodies yin
And embraces yang,
Through their union
Achieving harmony.”
At the very roots of Chinese thinking and feeling there lies the principle of polarity, which is not to be confused with the ideas of opposition or conflict. In the metaphors of other cultures, light is at war with darkness, life with death, good with evil, positive with negative—which results in a desire to cultivate one and be rid of the other. For most of us, in order to think about life, we need to make comparisons, so we split things in two.
To the Chinese, the poles are different aspects of the one and same system, so that the disappearance of one of them would be the disappearance of the whole system. One of the two poles is yang (positive) and yin (negative). The art of life is not seen as holding to yang and banishing yin, but as keeping the two in balance because there cannot be one without the other.
The yin-yang principle isn’t what we would ordinarily call a dualism. It is, rather, an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity.
One yin and one yang is called the Tao. The union of yin and yang is the eternal pattern of the universe.
There is no absolutely good or bad, as illustrated in this Taoist story of a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “May be.” The next day the horse returned, and brought with it six wild horses. The neighbors came again exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, “may be.” And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbors came to offer sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “May be.” The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to take young men for the army, but because of the broken leg, the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, “May be.”
The yin-yang view of the world is serenely cyclic. Fortune and misfortune, life and death, whether on small scale or vast, come and go everlastingly without beginning or end, and the whole system protected from monotony by the fact that, in just the same way, remembering alternates with forgetting.
I speak now an Affirmation to join us together, today, in the spirit of yin and yang:
I now know my life is peaceful and harmonious.
I’m aware of the patterns in and around me.
I balance the yin and yang in my life.
I respect myself and the process.
I harmonize with nature and all others in my world.
I accept greater peace in my life now.
And so it is.
Now, I’d like to tell you about the third principle of Taoism -- Wu Wei.
I love this one – it is so appealing to me, and so hard to do. I want to experience the freedom of “not doing,” and going with the flow! (And, maybe I will, after I retire!)
Wu-wei means “not doing.” Lao Tzu says, in the maddening way his teaching can jolt our reasoning minds -- “The Tao does nothing, and yet nothing is left undone.”
But, the “doing nothing” that is wu-wei is not laziness or passivity; in the context of Taoist writings it quite clearly means “not forcing.” Wu-wei as “not forcing” is what is meant by going with the grain, rolling with the punches, swimming with the current, trimming sails to the wind, and taking the tide at its flood.
Wu-wei is the life-style of one who follows the Tao, and must be understood primarily as a form of intelligence—that is, of knowing the principles, structures, and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy in dealing with them. Wu wei is an intellectual intelligence, and it is also the unconscious or intuitive intelligence of the whole organism; it is the intelligence of the innate nervous system.
Water has long been the symbol of the action of wu wei. It flows naturally, conforms to its environment, yet also possesses tremendous strength. Just consider the effect of the flow of water over thousands of years on what we know of as the Grand Canyon.
In the Tao Te Ching, it is written:
“The wisest person
Trusts the process
Without seeking to control.”
Chuang Tzu writes of the method he used to help others attain the Tao.
“I kept on telling him [about the Tao, using images and stories]; after three days, he began to be able to disregard all worldly matters. I kept on telling him; after seven days, he began to be able to disregard all external things as being separate entities.”
The teacher continues to suggest the nature of the Tao, and I kept on telling him and eventually the student could disregard his own ego existence. I kept on telling him, and he could gain a vision of the One. I kept on telling him until he could transcend the distinction of past and present. I kept on telling him until he entered the realm of no opposites, where life and death are no more. I kept on telling him, until he understood that internal and external were blended into unity.
Learning to understand wu-wei was not the result of some discipline, as meditation or Yoga, but a conversation aimed at opening the channels of intuition in which one simply, finally, and suddenly, “gets it!”
The world is a spiritual vessel, and cannot be forced.
Force spoils it; grasping it only leads to losing it.
I know my life is peaceful and harmonious.
I affirm the wisdom of wu wei.
I practice harmonious action, nonviolent attitude, and attention to process.
I am careful with my timing.
I respect myself and the process.
I harmonize with nature and all others in my world.
I accept greater peace in my life now.
And so it is.
Remember? At the beginning of the sermon I offered an ending. We are at the end of the sermon, and I go back to those thoughts, and others, to prepare, yet again, another beginning:
In the end, we must decide what we really want to know about. Our decision will reveal what we must dare to do.
Do we trust nature, or would we rather try to mange the whole world? Many have already made a perilous choice.
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to experience. This is the Tao.
If you let go of resistance, which is ego, you discover you are what you experience. Your experience and you are the same. Your thoughts are you, your feelings are you. So there is no necessity whatsoever to try to stand aside from them and say, “You, go away!” In other words, if you can trust yourself to the flow of whatever’s going on, you won’t need to resist it. And you will find that going with the flow works very well.
It is this attitude of letting your mind work by itself, of letting your eyes see for themselves, that is the preliminary movement toward naturalness in the way the Taoists understand that word.
The song of birds, the voices of insects are all means of conveying truth to the mind. In flowers and grasses we see messages of the Tao.
I am saying, “Be aware of Tao.”
Isn’t that simple?
No – let’s reduce the lesson more:
I am saying, “Be Tao.”
Now you know!!
Benediction
Deep Peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of a never-ending love to you.
Deep peace to you.
Amen, Shalom, and Blessed Be!
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Questions for Covenant Groups:
1. What about the Tao’s lesson of ONENESS? It is meant to lead us to seek peace, not in fragmentation or narcissistic isolation from the world, but in wholehearted participation in it. Your comments?
2. In the Tao Te Ching, it’s written: “The wisest person trusts the process without seeking to control.” What do you think about this and how does it play out in your own life?
3. The Tao Te Ching teaches that life is dynamic, its changing patterns comprised of yang and yin, the polarities found throughout nature. Examples: Yin – negative, Yang – positive; Yin – feminine, Yang – masculine; Yin – feeling ,Yang – thinking; Yin – knowing, Yang – doing; Yin – water, Yang – stone; Yin – reflective, Yang – outgoing. How do you experience yin and yang? What can you do to bring greater balance to your life?
4. How is this Eastern philosophy different from our Western ways of thinking and doing?
Suggested Reading
Tao; The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts, 1975, Pantheon Books, NY.
What is Tao? By Alan Watts, 2000, New World Library, Novato, CA.
365 Tao, Daily Meditations, by Deng Ming-Dao, 1992, HarperSanFrancisco.
The Tao is Silent by Raymond M. Smullyan, 1977, HarperSanFrancisco.
