Sermon

INTRODUCTION: When I was stocking my kitchen a few months back, one of the things I bought at the store was salt. The particular salt I bought was Morton’s. And the reason I bought Morton’s was because of the display on the side that pictured a 1914 ad of a little girl, under an umbrella, in a rainstorm, with her package of salt leaking as she walked in the rain. The slogan has survived until this good day. You know it well: “When it rains, it pours.”

That slogan has become a part of our national lexicon. But now it has very little to do with salt, other than the slogan for Morton’s. Rather, it describes a situation in life: When things start going bad sometimes, or so it seems according to the slogan, “When it rains, it pours.” Things get worse, instead of better.

I’ve thought of that, especially in relation to people I’ve counseled with through the years in times of trouble. Seldom, if ever, was it only one thing that brought them in. If they were having financial difficulties, it usually also included problems at work, their car had quit running, one of the kids was sick, the rent was past due, and their marriage was in trouble. As we would say in Texas, “If it weren’t for bad luck, they wouldn’t have any luck at all.”

Once, in a counseling session like that, when a young mother shared with me the difficulties she was facing in her life, I gave her a copy of the late Dr. Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled. I asked her to read the first part of it before we met again.

When she came back the next week, she brought the book with her and placed it on my desk, unread. She said, “The first sentence in the book says, ‘Life is difficult.’ I don’t need a book to tell me that.”

That seems an especially appropriate story to tell, because the focus of the sermon today is “Buddhism’s Take on Holism.” And the quotation in Dr. Peck’s book – “Life is difficult” – is one of many ways to translate the first of the four Noble Truths of Buddhism. So what does the Buddha say about holism?

Now in considering Buddhism or any ancient religion, we have to remember its context: Buddhism is at least 2,500 years old and was born in the midst of the squalor and poverty of ancient India. For their teeming masses, the most basic needs were unmet and the struggle of life was a moment-by-moment drama for many. So when Buddhism says, “Suffering permeates life,” or life is difficult, life is unsatisfactory, life is unfair, in one sense it refers to the very real and basic struggle to survive in a poverty stricken region, to find food, water, and shelter.

Using Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Values,” we would say that in those ancient times, the basic biological requirements of life were missing, that first level in the hierarchy of values was absent. So, yes, in those circumstances, for certain, suffering permeates life.

Even today, I’m sure you’ve had some of the same painful responses as I about the pictures in the newspapers and on television of skin-and-bones, heavy-laden mothers carrying starving babies in their arms in the Sudan and Darfur, or the many places in our world where the masses are in such desperate straits. No doubt whatsoever: Living itself is very, very difficult.

But in America, more than almost any other place of the globe, we have the presumption that everything should be fine. Everyone should be healthy; we should all have enough money. Everything should be equal and fair. Disasters shouldn’t happen; injustice shouldn’t occur; illness and sudden death shouldn’t strike. People shouldn’t have unhappy childhoods. We should all have good and fulfilling relationships, good careers and feel very pleased with our lives. Everything should all be A-ok.[2] In fact, suffering seems almost un-American!

Steve Kowit wrote a poem in the April issue of Sun Magazine about this very point, which I want to share with you. It’s about a teacher, discussing the First Noble Truth with his very diverse adult audience. His poem goes like this:

The First Noble Truth

They adore the Buddha. But when I pick up the chalk & scratch on the board, Dukka: the First Noble Truth – Suffering permeates life -- no one looks pleased. After a moment of general grumbling, Marie Elena mumbles aloud, “I’m not sure that’s true.” Then Deegan pipes in, Bullshit [Baloney] deluxe – and that breaks the ice & everyone laughs. But a laugh with an uneasy edge, buzzing the way wires back in the walls sizzle before they’re ready to blow. Then Carlos Padilla leaps to his feet and says, Suffering – no way! That’s just the tiniest dot! Life is joy to the max! Just walking around in bare feet, or drinking an icy Fanta, or sprawling out on the grass doing lunch with a couple of homies, or sweating it out on the basketball court on a hot afternoon…Feisty, full of exuberant health & good looks & charm, Carlos, defending our common lot with such good-natured, passionate faith even I can’t help but grin, cheering him on. When he’s done with that funny harangue, half a dozen start clapping. But others remain unconvinced: it’s there on their faces. Some of the older ones in the back of the room, & Sean & TY – & Ahmad for sure. While the ones filled with the pleased, undauntable juices of life are clapping & laughing, these others smile uneasily, discomforted, silent….One stares at the back of his hand. Another listens politely, stroking her long, gray, beautiful hair. To my left, the clock on the wall is much too insistently ticking away: time to stop all this chatter; time to release the slew of them back into this piercingly rapturous, inexplicable world. This very life – exquisite beyond measure, & everywhere freighted with sorrow. Dukka: the First Noble Truth.

Now, we won’t go into the notion of karma and reincarnation, and the Buddha’s solution for breaking the cycle of suffering. Rather, the issue today is more one of understanding how Buddhism contributes to making life whole, more meaningful and enabling of our dealing with the realities of life, whether they be good, bad or indifferent. So, is life difficult?

This past week I visited in the hospital with Doug Cartwright, who in the middle of the night awakened to his heart beating furiously, what was diagnosed as atrial fibrillation. I also visited in the Pavilion – the hospital at Shell Point – with Marie Miller, who for seven long months has been fighting clotting in her legs and more recently facing urinary tract issues. Another member of our congregation learned of a brother’s alcoholism for the first time and the devastation it’s causing.

Some of us have issues of our own that might be as bad or worse than those. For example, what must it feel like if we have same-sex orientation and pick up the local newspaper and read the Neanderthal and bigoted views of Cal Thomas in yesterday’s News-Press attacking homosexuality? It’s not just Thomas, but also the president, the Congress, and a constant chorus of demagogues beating up over and over on the most oppressed segment of our society. In looking at life from that angle, do we say, “Yes, sometimes life is difficult; yes, for some of us, suffering permeates life.”

And yet there are others of us for whom life could not be better. We’ve got the world by the tail on a downhill slide. As Carlos in the poem said, “Life is joy to the max.”

The question though, in whatever state were are in, is where do we go for meaning and purpose…to where do we turn for self-understanding…what do we do when we face with unease the next day’s dawning?

Buddhism’s response is to suggest that the world is one…it’s all connected. There’s not a heaven or hell…there’s not a supernatural place where we go when we die…there’s not a god somewhere looking out over us. What we see is what we get. There’s one world, one Universe, one creation, and it’s all one.

Moreover, according to Buddhism, so are our individual lives all one…our body, mind and spirit. They are all connected. My mind doesn’t act independently of my body, or spirit. What affects one part, affects the whole.

Though it comes from the Chinese, acupuncture illustrates the same point. Next week, at 9 a.m., acupuncturist Bin Lan is going to do a workshop over in the Edwards Building for us on acupuncture. (You will remember that she and Ngure are the parents of the four young violinists who have played for us.) She will demonstrate on a patient what she actually does. While she or he is processing, Bin Lan will also talk about the principles and philosophy of acupuncture, as well as take questions. How is it that placing needles in the body can be healing? In the West, we’re taught to think of needles as hurting, not healing.

I mention that in the context of my trip next Friday to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida where I’m going to see my son Brett and his family. His wife Tamara, not quite two years ago, was struggling with heavy-duty gastro-intestinal disorders, having had eight major surgeries below her navel. Her father is a wealthy Dallas orthodontist and had taken her to the best clinics and physicians in America.

But for years, her body just wouldn’t function right, and because of that her physicians at Baylor Medical in Dallas said she shouldn’t risk getting pregnant. The only teeny tiny option was another major surgery in which the large intestine would be removed and the small intestine connected to the colon. And though she would have a miserable two years after that, there was a 50-50 chance she might start functioning regularly and then a slight possibility she might consider becoming pregnant. Those are daunting odds.

She came to Ft. Myers for a second opinion and saw Dr. Evelyn Kessel, my G-I physician, and a member of this congregation, who went through Tamara’s records and consulted with an OB-GYN. After an hour-and-a-half session Dr. Kessel told her, “I wouldn’t recommend the radical surgery being proposed.”

Tamara went home devastated…with seemingly no hope for a regularly functioning body, or the possibility of having a baby…of starting a family. Then a friend in Dallas said, “Why don’t you go see Dr. Chen.” He is an acupuncturist.

Now think for a moment with our Western mind: body here, mind here, and spirit, we don’t know where. What possibly could acupuncture, meridians, yin and yang, and the balancing of opposites, have to do with our gastro intestinal system?

But Tamara, having nothing to lose, and respectful of her friend’s concern, dutifully went to see this Korean acupuncturist practicing in Dallas. After examining her, he said, “If you will come to see me twice a week for a year, I think I can help you.”

Can you believe? In three weeks, she began to function regularly for the first time since she was a teen. And lo, and behold, she missed that month’s period.

Incredulous, and not willing to tell anyone, she went to the drugstore and purchased a home pregnancy kit to determine if there might just be a teeny tiny possibility she was indeed pregnant. The kit said, yes, she was. Unbelieving, she went to her physician, and her test also said, yes.

But she and Brett were afraid to tell anyone, because Tamara’s body had failed to function properly for so long, they were afraid to get their hopes up. But after 2 ½ months, she was really, genuinely, for real pregnant, and they told all of us in the family.

When we heard it, we were thrilled beyond measure, but also worried, sure that she would have a troubled pregnancy…one of those where she had to stay in bed constantly, with her feet up, filled with constant concern for the slightest hiccup. Instead, she went to term, and little Ella Rose was born just last July, and soon blossomed to the 95^th percentile in weight, has not really been sick a day in her first year. And her father, Brett, called me Thursday night to proclaim that Ella’s first word had just been said: “Da-da!”

How did that happen? How did putting needles in a 29-year-old woman’s body, result in the miracle of birth, and a healthy functioning baby?

Certainly, it helps that Tamara works out regularly, controls her weight, and has great medical care. But as the acupuncturist would say, “It’s all connected.” Body, mind and spirit.

As to the Buddha’s claim that “Life is suffering,” I would simply have to say, that’s not been my experience. I realize that compared to others, my life is so blessed. True, like many of you, I have lost mother, father, and brothers. I did suffer through an incredibly painful divorce, in which I agonized over my children’s hurt, for years on end and still do. Some of you were present at the huge disappointment I had in ministry: The events at Shire Lane were the most painful experience I have ever had in a lifetime as a clergy. Health-wise, I’ve suffered a heart attack and a triple bypass. And along the way there have been other significant ups and downs.

But I can honestly say, without reservation, that my life has not been permeated with suffering. I have been blessed beyond measure. And I have been enabled by friends, loved ones, and people like you at those times when most needed.

So if tomorrow, the roof caves in…if all I’ve worked and dreamed for fails…if life itself comes to an end…I know without any reluctance, that I can say, it’s been one heck of a life. It’s not been permeated by suffering.

Rather, what an incredible existence to be born in America, to loving clergy parents in the Pentecostal Holiness Church, to have the opportunities of schooling and education, to have the gift of loving relationships, and incredible children and grandchildren, sisters and brother. Life is good, Siddhartha, despite the suffering that comes with it.

And how wonderful it is to be part of a religious community where we can take the best of a given religion, try it out, add to it and take away from it, reject it, or accept it. We don’t have to label it as the one true way, or blast it as false and heresy. When Buddhism says it’s up to us, we can accept that. When Siddartha says we’re all connected, and that we’re all one, we can accept that as well. But we don’t have to accept what doesn’t seem so, anymore than we have to accept the notion of original sin or that we’re all going to hell.

As Dr. Viktor Frankl so eloquently articulates in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, we can choose to make life meaningful no matter where we are. Amen and blessed be.

[1] Unitarian Summer 2006: Given on June 25, 2006, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] Maureen Yeomans (edited).