"Tail of the Tiger: Zen
Life in the 21st Century"
A sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
May 23, 2010
READINGS ANCIENT AND MODERN:
Our ancient reading this morning is attributed to Gautama Buddah,
who lived about 500 years BCE, before the Common Era:
There are Four Reliances:
First, rely on the spirit and meaning of the teachings, not on the
words;
Second, rely on the teachings, not on the personality of the teacher;
Third, rely on real wisdom, not superficial interpretation;
And fourth, rely on the essence of your pure Wisdom Mind, not on
judgmental perceptions.
Our Modern Reading is from, "The Three Dharma Seals,"
by Thich Nhat Hanh:
We may be tempted to say that because things are impermanent, there
is suffering. But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Without
impermanence, life is not possible. How can we transform our suffering
if things are not impermanent? How can our daughter grow up into
a beautiful young lady? How can the situation in the world improve?
We need impermanence for social justice and for hope.
If you suffer, it is not because things are impermanent. It is
because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you
don't suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent.
But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and
you suffer deeply when she passes away.
If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to
make her happy right now. Aware of impermanence, you become positive,
loving and wise. Impermanence is good news. Without impermanence,
nothing would be possible. With impermanence, every door is open
for change. Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.
SERMON:
Some of you may be familiar with this old Buddhist story. It's
one of my favorites and I first came across it years ago. It seems
an older Buddhist monk was walking along with a novitiate. The two
men were on their way back to the monastery from a distant pilgrimage.
Along the way they came upon a rapid but shallow river that they
had to wade across. On the riverbank they met a beautiful young
woman. She was afraid to cross the river herself and so she asked
the monks for their help. Without hesitation the older monk hoisted
her up onto his shoulders, carried her across the water, and set
her down safely on the other side.
The two monks continued on their journey for several hours more,
until eventually they stopped to spend the night at a wayside inn.
Not able to hold his thoughts or his feelings any longer, the young
monk asked the older one, "How could you do that?"
"Do what?" the older man asked.
"Surely it's against all the rules," explained the younger
man. "What you did back there! Touching a woman is simply not
allowed. How could you have? And to have such close contact with
her! This is a violation of our monastic protocol!" He went
on and on.
The old monk listened patiently until the younger one was finally
finished. Then the old monk quietly said, "It seems that you
are still carrying that young woman with you. I set her down and
let go of her, way back at the river crossing."
The first reliance, the Buddha tells us, is to rely on the spirit
and the meaning of the teachings, not on the words.
It seems like sometimes, despite whatever rules to the contrary
there might be or that we might imagine to be, we still need to
do what has to be done and then move on. We can rail against the
realities and the limitations of our lives if we want, or we can
live our way through them. Life is like a tiger - beautiful, strong,
magical and sometimes treacherous. I wonder how much of our life
energy is sometimes used up fighting against the tiger when we might
do well just to grab hold of it by its tail and take the ride that
it has to offer.
I've always been intrigued by Buddhist thought. I think the idea
that Buddhism cannot be understood by the Western mind is inane.
That said, I think that Westerners often do misunderstand Buddhism.
"Rely on real wisdom, not on superficial interpretation,"
the Buddha said.
Detachment is a core element of Buddhism and the thing that I think
many Westerners have a tough time grasping, not because it's hard
to understand but because we take it too literally. We think it
means something it doesn't. The idea of detachment is not to stop
caring about things, about people. Our lives are made beautiful
through our relationships of caring, through our connections with
others and with our world, connections that provide us meaning.
The idea of detachment, as near as I can see, is to care as much
as we possibly can and then to let go of our addiction for controlling
the outcome.
We can love someone, but we can't make them love us back. We can
want to conquer our illnesses, but in the end we will each die.
We can want to create great successes in our lives, but we cannot
make others to yield to our prowess. Still, we can love. We can
heal. And we can strive to do our best.
What Buddhism offers is what we used to call back in the rural
Midwest, common sense. You simply play the cards you're dealt, and
not with the hand you wish you'd been given. You need not be limited
by your circumstance; you are free to create your life unlimited
within those circumstances. The phrase, "If only…"
is the beginning of a prison sentence that will be concluded only
by death, or by being commuted by our acceptance of the proposition,
"I am in or have been given this situation; here is what I
am free to do with in it." The point is, Buddhism reminds us,
to pay attention to what is, and within that attention we will notice
not only who we are, but also what is ours to do.
I'm sporting a couple of new devices this morning that I suspect
none of you can see from your seats. I've grown somewhat weary over
these past few years of having to say the word "what"
so constantly. It's sort of embarrassing after two or three "whats"
to have to say, "Sorry, I still couldn't quite hear you."
The Buddha said to rely on your pure wisdom mind and not on judgmental
deceptions.
I went to an audiologist a couple of weeks ago. Of course I failed
the test thoroughly. So now I have these amazing new hearing aids.
You can hardly see them, even up close. The technology has really
improved in recent years. I can now hear things I didn't even imagine
before. My hearing aids are programmed to scan the audio environment,
and then to hone in on what it is that I'm trying to hear. It's
kind of amazing. Somehow my orientation informs them of what it
is that I'm trying to listen to.
High pitch or low pitch, it doesn't matter. The hearing aids hit
on the pitch I want, and then they enhance the sound of it for me.
If I'm in a noisy room full of people, they will filter out the
extraneous noise and continue to focus on what it is I'm trying
to hear.
That's the most amazing part. These hearing aids are able to filter
out that which is unimportant and focus on what is. So I have these
very high tech, Buddhist bionics operating in my ears. Talk about
metaphors!!
That's one of the greater tasks in life, isn't it? To filter out
the extraneous noises in our lives so that we can pay attention
to what really matters. In our 21st Century work-a-day, consumerist
world, there is a lot of noise constantly clamoring for our attention.
It's not always easy to know what we should be paying attention
to.
School or work can be very demanding. Keeping up with email, Twitter,
Facebook and myriad other high-tech social media can be quite demanding.
Our homes and yards and gardens can be demanding. Responding ethically
and morally to unethical and immoral treatment of our planet, our
fellow human beings and other inhabitants of this Earth can be demanding.
Having white teeth, dark hair, a buff bod and snappy attire to cover
it; those things can all be very demanding as well.
What do we want to hone in on and pay attention to? It's not what
we don't care about, but what we care about most. We are defined,
in some very significant ways, by what we care about most.
None of us want to go without the kind of lifestyles that we have
taken years to assemble. But the truth is we probably could. I sometimes
suspect, myself included, that maybe we should.
What matters? What we love is what matters. What we love deserves
our focus and attention. What is extraneous needs to be relegated
to the backseat and denied any status as a backseat driver in our
lives.
But then there is this other reality that we are stuck with; nothing
is permanent. Nothing lasts forever. The Greek philosopher Heraclites
noted that, "…you can never bathe twice in the same river."
We live dynamic lives in a dynamic universe. What we love is ever
moving, ever changing. What we love - who we love-along with everything
else in life, cannot last forever. Paying attention to what we love,
now, I have to think is of our highest priority.
There is a passage that I love written by Chaim Potok in his novel,
"My Name is Asher Lev." The story concerns the artist
Asher as a young boy. He is walking with his father in the city,
and they come upon a dead bird. The child asks, "Everything
alive would one day be [as] still as that bird?"
"Yes."
"Why?" I asked.
"That's the way the Ribbono shel Olam [God] made the world,
Asher."
"Why?"
"So life would be precious, Asher. Something that is yours
forever is never precious."
Over a month ago when I chose the theme for this morning's service,
I wrote a brief sentence about it for Artis Wodehouse so that she'd
have some kind of idea for what direction to go with for the music
this morning. I wrote, "It will be a treatment on going with
the tiger instead of fighting against it. Something like - ride
with the tide and go with the flow - and about discerning when not
to do that."
When it comes time to actually write a sermon, I'm never the same
person I was the month before when I was imagining it. Things change.
I change. You change. Nothing is permanent. Between then and now,
I've learned about several divorces in our congregation, several
new diagnoses, some of you have experienced deaths of close friends
and family members.
Sometimes we are better off fighting the tiger. Sometimes we are
better off holding on to that tail for dear life. How can we know
when to do which? There is no magic pill. I'm guessing we can only
hope to know by paying attention and mostly by paying attention
to what we love. It's by doing whatever we can to nurture that love
and then by letting go of our attachments to the outcome.
There is another old Buddhist story about a monk, his journey home
and a river crossing. One day, a young Buddhist initiate on his
journey home came to the banks of a wide river. Staring hopelessly
at the great obstacle in front of him, he pondered for hours on
just how to cross such a wide barrier.
Just as he was about to give up his pursuit to continue his journey
he saw and recognized a great teacher on the other side of the river.
The young Buddhist yells over to the teacher, "Oh wise one,
can you tell me how to get to the other side of this river?"
The teacher pondered for a moment looked up and down the river
and finally yelled back, "My son, you are on the other side."
The point is our reality is merely our perspective of our reality.
We are on this side and at least one other side of every experience
we ever have. The point is to recognize our perspective as our perspective,
and then to live through our experience as attentively and as lovingly
as we can. The point is to embrace what is precious and let go of
what happens next; let go of the young woman after we have carried
her across from one side to the other of the river.
One of his students asked Buddha, "Are you the messiah?"
"No," answered Buddha.
"Then are you a healer?"
"No," the Buddha replied.
"Then are you a teacher?" the student persisted.
"No, I am not a teacher."
"Then what are you?" asked the student, exasperated.
"I am awake," Buddha replied.
About my hearing aids, I don't have a clue how they work. It's
like magic, like a miracle that they can discern between what is
meaningful and what is extraneous. I don't know.
About our lives though, we do have a clue. And it is a miracle!
It's a miracle that can be wrought through wakefulness, attentiveness
and intentional living. It's a miracle wrought by sometimes railing
against the challenges of our lives in order to survive, and at
other times by accepting who we are, as we are, amid the whirlwinds
and the bruising, relying on inner wisdom and not superficial trappings.
It's a miracle wrought by preciousness and awe and gratitude and
service. It's a miracle wrought through truly being here, now and
ever now.
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