THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
Letting Go and Trying Harder
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
Delivered July 1, 2001 at the First Unitarian Church of HonoluluIn the beginning the human species was a broadly adaptable, fairly successful browsing animal. We ate, we mated, we nurtured our children, we built shelter for ourselves, and we played. Curious about our world and ourselves, we explored and experimented, finding new and easier, better ways to do things.
But mostly we ate, we mated, we nurtured our children, and we survived. And from the dawn of history there has been a theory-indeed, if the theory is correct, its discovery may well have been the dawn of history.
The theory exists in many forms. Expressed in many different languages, preserved in differing imagery, celebrated in story and song and myth as various as the varying cultures that have known of it.
We are born, we struggle to survive, eating, mating, nurturing our young, and we die. And it is hard. There is much suffering. There is much ignorance. There is much futility. As, too soon, it is over.
It is good. There is much beauty. There are moments of intense joy and satisfaction. There is occasional heroism. And, sometimes, true greatness.
And there is a theory, as old as humankind, that there IS more. The theory is that there is a secret to be wrenched from the heart of the ultimate; there is a way that can be found; a path that can be discovered; a thing that can be known. There is SOMETHING that can make of being born, of mating, of nurturing, of living and dying something MORE--that humankind is meant to be something more than a technologically advanced species of hunters and gatherers--something more than a fairly clever browsing animal. That even if we browse the very stars themselves, each of us is destined for something more than being born and eating,
and nurturing, and enduring, and dying.That is the theory.
It is expressed in the hope of heritage, the passing on to children and to children's children a better world than we found ourselves.
It is expressed in the awareness that the best that we know we could pass on requires our own transformation. It is expressed in every father's frustrated "if only, if only." It is seen in the hundred variations of the dream of a kingdom of God.
Those who have tasted too keenly the sometime ugliness of this world place that dream in another space/time. After the too soon termination of death. And this after-death dream appeals too to the moral ones who have learned to see only their own ugliness, and see all of the world only through those eyes.
But those who have been well loved dream of a kingdom of this earth where all are well loved, as if one nurturing family.
The theory? There is MORE.
It is expressed in all of the religions of the world, distorted by the priests and power brokers into a vision manipulated for social control, distorted by the frightened moralists into little more than a body of "tsk-tsk"s and "naughty-naughtys" to keep life tame and bland. Distorted by the lovers of words and splitters of hairs into an abstract rectilinear body of sterile information to be taught with great superiority.
Distorted by compulsively neat housekeepers into empty but predictable ritual. Distorted, but not dead, it lives at the heart of religion.
It is not religion, but it is nurtured there. Waiting for those few to cut through the tangles to it. It is expressed in art and literature, this reaching for something more. In building and nurturing in all of its many human forms; even, though again distorted, in the striving for power and empire.
But that is the theory--to wrench from the gods who seem to ordain our birthing and mating, nurturing and enduring, and finally, our dying. To wrench from them something more. To find the correct behavior. To fashion the effective ritual. To discover the hidden technique. To figure out the puzzle; whatever.
But to do what must be done to make that something more our own.
One version of the theory is that what prevents us from realizing that something more is SIN.
Now, do not let the petty moralists and the loud electronic preachers deceive you. Sin is not naughtiness. The breaking of their endless and endlessly silly social taboos is not sin.
Enlightenment, salvation, atonement has nothing to do with obeying the Sunday school teachers. Sin is estrangement from the ground of your own being, says this version of the theory. Our completion--that something more--is to be found in coming into right relationship with that in which we live and move and have our being.
The oldest recorded version of the theory is that all of life is Maya: illusion. Banish illusion , experience ultimate reality for yourself, firsthand, and your birth and mating, nurturing and enduring, even your dying will be transformed.
The Hindu version is intellectual. The Buddhist version is affectual. The Christian version is moral/behavioral. The theory is the same. Hidden under layers of the accumulated dust of the ages. Each tradition a facet, looking into the starfire center of the same jewel.
And what lies at the center of that jewel is a set of mysteries, a bundle of paradoxes. Rational, reasonable people often are put off by those paradoxes, seeing them as magic, as mumbo-jumbo, or merely the crude obfuscation of clever charlatans.
They are mysteries--paradoxes--because of trying to speak the truths that have not been experienced by the hearer in language that they have experienced.
What are those paradoxes? Shorn of their esoteric, moralistic, and cultic distortions?
The first paradox is that you can indeed have this something more. It is already yours, and waiting for you to lay hold on it. But, no matter how hard you try, you can't get it, earn it, achieve it, accomplish it. Your every attempt to get it pushes it away from you.
To say that you must let go, not analyze, not try, not use all of your rational, calculating mind to achieve creative interchange or personal transformation, or enlightenment, or salvation, sounds like pietism, quietism, passivity. It is merely the negative way of saying that your little ego ain't it.
The experience reported by those who have been there is one of permitting, of allowing what is already there to manifest itself. And this is the central religious mystery. It lies at the heart of all else. It is the key to effortless morality that needs no laws. It is the key to loving relationships, to faithfulness, to understanding, to joy, to full creative life. So they say.
It feels like a paradox, because we have been convinced that will and strength and concentration are things or acts that require effort. And we understand effort as either the manufacture of energy ex nihilo, or as the hard work job of bending the energy in a way or a direction it does not naturally go.
So, when I tell you that you can have it, but you can't get it; that you must let go of it to possess it, that you must stop thinking to understand; you hear me as telling you to do two contradictory things at the same time. And this is the classic double-bind of all high religion and morality.
Jesus' teaching is rife with it. The whole mountain of Zen is based on it. And all religious teaching uses it.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL thy heart." Thou SHALT love. You are ordered under threat of rejection, damnation, eternal punishment, et overwhelming cetera, to do what can ONLY be done spontaneously.
And, yes, the point is to break your will.
Wrapped in the arms of your sweetheart, petting toward passion's embrace, he/she says, "I've been ORDERED to love you with all my heart and I'm trying real hard."
End of love scene.
Tell me, father, is your son mature? Oh yes, he's fifty years old, and does exactly what I tell him to do! Always asks my permission before he does anything. But, God, is he boring.
What must I do to be saved? How shall I achieve enlightenment? How can I encourage the creative interchange that transforms? How shall I reach spiritual maturity? What must I do to know the truth that makes one free?
The answer keeps coming back, out of the heart of every religious tradition human kind has known: Stop stopping yourself. Life, God, is not withholding. We are. The gift IS given. It had no, has no strings attached. You cannot earn, achieve, accomplish, or grasp what you already have, what is already given, what is already yours and possessed.
And with a straight face, the religious teachers, the gurus, the saints and religious teachers of this world turn to you, and they say, "First, you must make yourself loving. Then you must be pure in heart." Soren Kierkegaard says that purity of heart is to will one thing.
There used to be a beautiful poster. The poster showed somebody in a child's wagon roaring down a hill. On the side of the wagon, it said "Yes." At the bottom of the hill was a big rock, and the rock said, "But . . . . "
No, "Yes, Buts."
Still with a straight face, the teacher turns to you and says, "You must be poor in spirit." The universe only revolves around those who don't demand that the universe revolve around them. Try willing that !
When they taught me to pray, they had me list my wants, told me I had to REALLY BELIEVE that God would grant them, and then they had me add, "Nevertheless, not MY will, Lord, but THINE be done."
Well, heck! The whole point was to get MY wi11 done! If I didn't think that God might change his mind, I wouldn't be bothering to pray in the first place!
You can't MAKE IT HAPPEN. Because, from where you are now, you can't know what to make happen. But you can put yourself in the way of its happening. You can stay IN THE WAY, and sooner or later bump into it, or be bumped into.
The teacher says you cannot make a thunderstorm by carrying around a lightning rod. But if you've got a lightning rod when the thunder storm comes, you can increase your odds on an electrifying experience.
The final paradox is the most interesting.
I have said that you are NOT broken and don't need to be FIXED. And I have said that there is MORE, much more. I have said that if you want it, you have to do at least three impossible things before breakfast. (The Queen of Hearts did six !) But the final paradox is that the way and the goal are one.
You will never get there. There is no THERE to get, or get to. Enlightenment is a joke. And the laugh's on us.
The Christian Gospel, the Good News, that the Church taught before the priests and fakers took over, was not that you MUST be saved and here is the way.
It was rather that you ARE saved. There is nothing you can do to earn it. You couldn't possibly if you tried. But you don't have to. It's already been DONE. You ARE forgiven.
As for experiencing ultimate reality, behind the Maya of illusion; Look, says the teacher, really look! You have been experiencing ultimate reality all along.
From the dawning of history there has been a theory. Indeed, if the theory is correct, the discovery of that theory may well have been the dawn of history.
We are born; we struggle to survive; we eat; we mate; we nurture our young; we endure; and then we die.
But there are those who claim that if you will truly LET GO
--if you will let each experience, each moment of your life, be PRESENT to you, speak to you out of the starfire center of its own eternal NOW--
if you will let that LETTING be its own end,
all of your eating will be the sacred food of the gods.
All of your mating will be an endless dance of joy, a union with the very incarnate body of the sacred itself.
All of your nurturing will be as at the breast of the spirit of life, nurturing the most incredible cosmic adventure.
All of your enduring will be the ecstatic play of a child of the universe.
And your dying will be but completing a circle begun with your birth.
The ultimate, playing for a time the fascinating game of being this fragile, sensuous, vulnerable individual. One precious vision into/onto an infinite cosmos. And then to play it again, and again, in infinite variety.
And those who claim that this theory is true insist that being born, struggling to survive, eating, mating, nurturing young, enduring, and dying is enough.