Not Two: Unitarian Universalisn and Buddhism

A Sermon by The Rev. Wayne B. Arnason

Co- Minister at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church

Perached at Oberlin Fellowship November 12, 2006

First Reading from Dogen

To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things.

Second Reading from Rev. James Ford

This blending of Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism has been especially dynamic for the last two decades. But its roots are deep in the nineteenth century. In fact the first Buddhist text published in English was a translation by the Transcendentalist Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, published in an 1844 issue of the Dial.

Western Buddhists of many different schools who are now seeking ways to integrate their experiences of East and West are discovering Unitarian Universalism as a true home. Increasingly Buddhists have been integrated into this great Western tradition as a rich variation on our liberal religious theme.

Certainly we UU Buddhists have found many treasures. Possibly the most important offering of Unitarian Universalism is religious education for our children. UU religious education programs are perfect for Western Buddhists who want to raise children with some knowledge of our ancestral religions but also with a world religion perspective and, of course, with an openness to Buddhism.

Many Western Buddhists have been looking for ways to bring our perspectives into the world in a more engaged way. My first UU friends were right. Unitarian Universalism has long been committed to justice and social activism in ways that make sense to many Western Buddhists. Here we found both possibilities for enriching our lives and the lives of those we care about.

And, I'm pleased to point out, we Western Buddhists also come bringing gifts. Probably the greatest gift we can bring to Unitarian Universalism is meditation. There are a host of practices that might be useful to Unitarian Universalists. Among these are concentration disciplines and the powerful practice of Metta, loving kindness. I believe the most important are the practices of pure attention - Vipassana, Zen, and Dzog-chen. Each is a variation of the original disciplines taught by the Buddha and his immediate followers. Each has to do with simple and plain attention.

Out of this paying attention, bare attention, just noticing, generations of people have found a way through the traps of our dividing consciousness to see that we share a common ground of being. One teacher puts it this way: We are each of us different, stars and people, flies and dirt. But we all belong to the same family. We have a single family name. And that name is the great silence.

SERMON:

The morning routine I share with my wife begins with three spiritual practices that are associated with Unitarian Universalism. We begin our day by lighting a modified chalice, in the form of a candle on a little home altar we keep. Then, sitting near that altar, we sip on a cup of coffee that we had set to brew at the time we planned to wake up. Then we talk – we talk about how we slept, how we feel, what the day holds, how we’ll stay connected today, sermon ideas we’ve been having, problems that are on our minds. All three of these practices are part of the experience most Unitarian Universalists have when they come to church, and they are representative of the fact that we are pretty much dyed in the wool Unitarian Universalists. My own UU lineage goes back four generations, which is hard to find outside of New England.

But after we finish our coffee and conversation, we go on to do something else, something that reveals and invites a different religious identity that is also part of who I am. We sit, and little round cushions, for twenty to thirty minutes, and we meditate. Before we get up, when the meditation practice is coming to an end, I make a vow out loud - a vow to do four impossible things. All this before breakfast! The four impossible things include saving all beings, extinguishing all desires, mastering all opportunities to realize Buddhist teachings, and attaining enlightenment. The way I make these promises is through chanting the Great Vows, which in different languages and in different translations within different languages are chanted around the world in Buddhist communities and monasteries at least once in every day.

In the version used at my sangha at Zen Mountain Monastery in new York, they are chanted at the end of each day in the monotone style that is part of Japanese Zen liturgy. They sound like this: “Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them,

“Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them,

“The dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them,

“The Buddha Way is unattainable, I vow to attain it.”

Now, is this goofy or what??

What is this clean cut Icelandic Canadian Unitarian boy doing, sitting cross legged and chanting in a Japanese-sounding monotone about four impossible things before breakfast? Is this spiritual? Is it more spiritual than walking in the woods in the fall weather, like Henry David Thoreau, or is it less spiritual than having a born-again experience and giving your life over to Jesus?

My hope today is to offer some personal perspectives on why I find no contradiction between lighting my chalice and chanting these vows every day, why for me they are not two things, but one thing.

Please understand that in offering you these thoughts today I don’t pretend to be any kind of authority. I know what I know because of my teacher, my reading, and my own experience, but not because I claim any authority to be able to teach you about Buddhism. What authority I have as a religious leader comes from my ordination as a Unitarian Universalist minister, and it is in that context that I am speaking to you today. In the course of sharing what little understanding I may have, I hope that you might come away with a better understanding of some of the things that are attracting Unitarian Universalists and people from many other traditions in the West to practicing Buddhism in some form.

It is of course not new that people in the West are practicing Buddhism. Henry David Thoreau knew Elizabeth Peabody and read the Dial and had his own copy of the Buddhist scripture that she translated there in the same French version that she was working from. He spoke of “my Buddha”, and explored in his solitary retreat at Walden the ancient practice of contemplative silence, and the wanderings of his busy mind. The Unitarian Universalist connection, at least intellectually, to the arrival of Buddhism in America is strong.

I want to give you the punch line to this sermon right away at the beginning, rather than leave you in suspense. That way, if you get really bored, you can leave and still go away knowing the punch line and perhaps remembering it as your life goes on. That’s how Buddhist study seems to work. They tell you the punch line right away, like comedian Johnny Carson’s character The Amazing Karnak. Your challenge is to figure out what the question really is in order to complete the joke. If you do, we all get to laugh, and that’s the reward. No heaven. No hell. Just a good laugh, and maybe a nod of the head that says “I get it.”

So here’s the punch line: All of these impossible things that I vow to do before breakfast are impossible because they are already done. All things are interconnected and interdependent. That’s why sentient beings are already saved. That’s why desires have ended. That’s why the dharmas are mastered. That’s why the Buddha Way has already been attained.

Where else do you hear that all things are interconnected and interdependent? In the seventh principle of Unitarian Universalism, in its affirmation of the interdependent web of all things, of which we are all a part. The interdependent web is a metaphor that has ever clearer meanings in the sciences of physics, biology, astronomy, and cosmology – as well as in the stories and images of religion. It is a religious affirmation that has captured the imaginations and the loyalty of Unitarian Universalists of otherwise very different theological beliefs.

So – the punch line of this sermon is that the entire universe is not many things, not two things, but one thing – an interdependent web of causation and effect – all co-creating each and every one of us. So if that’s the punch line, what’s the question?

The question is: How do I realize the reality of this truth??

Let me spend a little time with this word “realize”. In conventional speaking, we tend to use this word synonymously with the word “understand”, as in the sentence “I had trouble following the sermon at first but then I realized what it was all about”. You could just as easily say “but then I understood what it was all about”. But the word “realize” as used in Buddhist teaching means more than just intellectual understanding, or following a line of argument, or learning something new. It very literally means what the word itself implies. It means “to make real”. Ideas about enlightenment, about how the world works, about what spiritual practice is supposed to do are ultimately just ideas and they are only one component of what we need to live our lives with joy, equanimity, and integrity, aware of our interdependence. When you make a teaching “real”, it means that you have consumed it, absorbed it, made it part of your whole body and mind. Realizing the teaching is “being the teaching”, not just understanding the teaching and being able to recite it back to yourself or to a congregation the way I am doing now. I think Margery Williams, the author of The Velveteen Rabbit had herself a decent Buddhist definition of “real” when she had the Rabbit ask the Skin Horse:

“What is REAL?” .

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt….It doesn’t happen all at once.”

Making real, or realizing the Great Vows, doesn’t happen all at once either, and it doesn’t happen in the same way, at the same pace, or even through the same process for everyone who gets involved in Buddhist practice. Despite the fact that the central teachings of Buddhism are the same all over the world, it’s a religion that happens in many diverse forms, and each person who practices it follows a different path. This is particularly true in the Zen school, which holds that enlightenment is realizing the mind of the Buddha, as something available to and inherent in everybody, that is passed on outside the formal learning represented by the scriptures. The word “transmission” is used to describe what can be a very short or a very long process of making real the inherent Buddha nature that is within you.

There is no story in Buddhism that provides a stronger reminder of how each person must find their own realization, their own way to enlightenment, to making the teachings and the vows real within them, than the story of Guatama Buddha’s two most famous disciples, Mahakayashapa and Ananda. Mahakayashapa was a relative novice when he first encountered the Buddha, but there was apparently a powerful connection between them. When they first met, and made eye contact, Buddha moved over to make room for Mahakayashapa on his cushion. Tradition says that in eight days of study Mahakayashapa attained his first enlightenment experience. Around this time, Buddha was preaching from the top of a small mountain called Vulture Peak just outside the ancient city Rajgir, India. It was there, sixteen years after his own Enlightenment experience, that Buddha set forth what became the essential collection of his teachings to an assembly which tradition says consisted of 5,000 monks, nuns and laity. At one point in his sermon, Buddha held up a Lotus Flower and twirled it in his hand to illustrate a point. He looked towards Mahakayashapa who was in the crowd that day and their eyes met. Buddha blinked. Mahakayashapa gave back an almost imperceptible smile. What happened in that moment? I don’t really know, but this moment reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell’s idea of “tipping points”, certain moments of equilibrium that are reached and then passed where there is enough energy, enough will, enough openness, enough courage for a community or a country or an individual to step into a new way of being. Mahakayashapa had done just that. Buddha saw it, and came over to Mahakayashapa and to the surprise of all present gave him his own robe and bowl, saying: this “ wonderful Dharma door that establishes no texts and is a special transmission outside the scriptures, I entrust to Mahakayashapa." Essentially, what he had done is designated Mahakayashapa as his successor teacher, because he recognized that he had the same mind, that he had realized his true nature. Mahakayashapa was so recognized by the assembly and since then has been called The First Ancestor.

Now if you were Ananda, you might imagine that this would be hard to take. Ananda was actually a cousin of Buddha’s. He was born on the same day that Buddha attained enlightenment. His name means “happiness and joy”. When he was of appropriate age, he became a student of Buddha’s and was his attendant. He spent the most time of anyone with Buddha. He was a brilliant man, with an amazing mind and a photographic memory. He listened to every word that the Buddha said over twenty years and he committed his sermons to memory. Buddha described him as foremost in learning and gave him much approval and respect. If there was anyone that people expected would be Buddha’s successor as teacher of the Assembly after his death, it was bound to be Ananda. Ananada was there in the crowd when Buddha twirled his flower, and blinked. But Ananda didn’t get it. Whatever was recognized or made real in that moment was something that didn’t happen for Ananada.

Ananda continued in his service to Buddha and when Buddha died, he attended Mahakayashapa for twenty more years. Mahakayashapa asked him to help communicate the teachings. He would often ask Ananda to recite to the Assembly what the Buddha had said, and everyone agreed that he could do so impeccably. But the transmission of the light, that tipping point, where the teachings all came together and were realized within and without you , had never happened for Ananda.

Finally, one day after these twenty years of learning and service with Mahakayashapa, Ananda felt compelled to ask him a question that had been nagging it him: “Master”, he said, “When Buddha gave you the robe and bowl, did he give you anything else?” Mahakayashapa looked at him, and replied : “Ananada”.

“Yes, master.”

“TAKE DOWN THE FLAGPOLE AT THE GATE”.

In that moment, Ananda reached his tipping point. He was ready to be the Second Ancestor, and is so recognized by Buddhists today. The flagpole at the gate was used in monastic communities as a sign that the teacher was giving a talk, was expounding the dharma. When the flag was lowered, the talk was over. Mahakayashapa said to Ananada, “Take down the flagpole” (not the flag). Not only is the teaching over, you need no flagpole to raise any more flags ever again.

I’ve always felt more akin to Ananda than to Mahakayashapa. I think I’m one of those plodders who is really good at absorbing the teachings and giving them back, but slow and steady in making them real. That’s why I wanted to become a formal Buddhist student, receive the Buddhist precepts, and recite the vows. It’s like raising the flag every morning. It’s a reminder that there is teaching about to take place as the day unfolds that can help me realize some things I know intellectually to be true, but that I haven’t absorbed into my whole body and mind quite yet.

Buddhism is a very rich and diverse religious tradition, with as many sects and variations as Protestant Christianity has. My attraction to it, and the attraction that many UU’s who practice Buddhism feel to it, is built around the simple practice that is involved in meditation, a practice which I would summarize as doing just one thing at one time. What comes up in meditation can be characterized as desires (that word from the great vows) but more specifically they are usually thoughts about the past, the future, how much your knees or ankles hurt, anything but the simple act of being aware of what’s right in front of you rather than the picture show in your head. In one of the other translations of the Great Vows, the word that’s used is “abandoning” desires. I like that. It reminds me that the desires represented by our continuous thought stream hold us like a burning luxury ship that will never make it to the other side of the ocean. Realizing that all you really need is one little lifeboat that represents doing one thing at one time, allows you to abandon the ship of desire for the lifeboat of the present moment.

Let me come back to the punch line I gave you at the beginning of the sermon. All things are connected and interdependent. The Unitarian Universalist message that resonates with this teaching is profound, but it stops short of the next step that Buddhism takes. That line from the Great vows that says The Buddha way is in fact unattainable says that because there’s nothing to attain. You already have everything you need. You just don’t know it or can’t see it. We offer this same understanding in our church communities. We tell people that salvation is not in a life that happens af6ter you are born again or go to heaven, but that its right here and now. Practicing this understanding together with others is so important because through and with others you increasingly begin to see what realization looks like in practice. At West Shore Church we describe our “adult education program” a little differently than many of our churches do. We call it “Practicing a Unitarian Universalist Religious Life. “ The initials of that program spell out the acronym PUURL or “Pearl”, because we believe we have something to offer people that is na Pearl of Great Price. The Unitarian Universalist Way of Life is not an easy path, but a difficult path. It’s not a path that you realize because you sign a membership book, but because you live your life in ways that embody and teach the values of freedom, tolerance, reason, and justice. Whether you embody this way of life quickly, like Mahakayashapa, or slowly, like Ananada, is not as important as the fact that it does happen, and it will happen, as you remain committed to our practice.

I’d like to conclude with some words from my Zen teacher, John Daido Loori Roshi, who represents the 88th generation of Zen Buddhist teachers in a line that reaches back to Buddha, mind to mind. He speaks an affirmation that I apply not only to my Buddhist identity, but to the Unitarian Universalist identity and lineage that is equally important to me, when he says:

“Let’s manifest the wisdom and compassion that is the life of the Buddha, that is the life of Ananada and Mayakashyapa, the life of the countless men and women who have preceded us, and who have passed on this teaching so that we have the opportunity to practice it in our own lives. There is only way to repay their kindness, and that is to awaken, not to squander our own lives. To keep it alive..and make it possible for other generations to follow. “

May it be so.