THE FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF HONOLULU
A Unitarian Universalist Congregation
PAY ATTENTION !
Sermon by Rev. Mike Young
(Preached October 13, 1996 at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu)Some years ago, in Los Angeles, I did a sermon and a subsequent article on Behavior Modification. It was a guaranteed system or technique for manipulating people. And it worked! I taught it to kids who were in trouble, to manipulate their parents. I taught it to parents having trouble with their kids, to manipulate their kids. And it worked ! It was marvelously simple.
And people were horrified !
Manipulate people? How terrible !
But of course we are manipulating people all the time. We just don't PAY ATTENTION to it. In fact, because we are socially responsive beings, responding to one another all the time, we can't help manipulating one another. The only question is whether we are doing it well or poorly, and to whose benefit? Every piece of behavior I exhibit in your presence manipulates you. It influences your perceptions of me, your concepts about me, your expectations of me . . .
Notice I said INFLUENCES, not determines. But, if I stand before you in black robe and clerical collar, that calls forth a different response from you than if I appear here in jeans and tee shirt. Though I may say the very same words, you respond differently to me if my tone of voice is loud and abrasive than if it is smooth and more modulated.
However I behave toward you, if you reward me with your attention, your praise, your friendship, a martini . . . I will tend to continue to behave toward you that way. The basic principle is simply that whatever behavior you reward, you will tend to get more of. And a reward is any pleasant experience that comes AFTER behavior. With this principle you can teach dolphins, dogs, children, parents, lovers, friends, etc., almost anybody anything.
If you do not pay attention to what you're doing, you will still be responding, you will still be rewarding or not rewarding, you will still be teaching them, but without any notion of what it is you're doing, and you are guaranteed to have some rather jolting surprises.
When my child refuses to go to school, and I throw a snit fit every time, and it goes on time after time after time, PAY ATTENTION! There is some subtle mutual teaching and learning going on here.
I once had a family in California that I was working with, where a youngster continued to engage in obstreperous behavior. It became fairly clear to me after interviewing the family, that what was happening was precisely this subtle teaching. It seems that every time the kid did something naughty, the father would offer him a gift if he wouldn't do that anymore.
When the gift comes after the wanted behavior, it stands a chance of getting some effect. When the gift comes before the wanted behavior, that's not learning, that's bribery. And it very efficiently works against you, because you are teaching the child not to do the wanted behavior. It is the behavior that comes immediately before the reward that you will tend to get more of. you reward non-attendance with a gift and you will tend to get more non-attendance.
PAY ATTENTION! Whatever you pay attention to, you will tend to get.
If before doing a service, I fret about doing poorly, about making a mistake, about stumbling over my words, I am more likely to do just that. Because that's what my tension, my At-tension, is on.
If I concentrate on keeping my attention on my homework; do my preparation well; keep my attention on the things I know how to do to do a good job, I probably will! And even if I stumble over a word or two, or make a mistake, it will not throw me, because that's not what my attention is on.
So, PAY ATTENTION, please. Pay attention to what you're paying attention to.
The "power of positive thinking" people make much of this. They get you to leave little notes to yourself in your socks, or similar places like that.
"Hello, Mike, you're going to make a fantastic impression today."
"Hello, Mike, that blonde with the dimple is going to think you're gorgeous."
"Hello, Mike, you're going to be more profound than ever today."
And they have you constantly repeating little mantras to yourself all day long. "I am a money magnet. Good things come to me from everywhere. Ommm. Omne, Padme, Hummm."
You know what? It works ! You feel like a stupid ninny, but it works!
Up to your ears in debt? Take your attention off the outgo. Put it on and keep it on the INcome, and you will do better, make more, enjoy what you have more, and feel more like a success.
Okay. PAY ATTENTION, now. You get what you pay attention to.
It's the same way in religion. Here we can begin to see a little deeper. In the Bible, in the book of Romans, Saint Paul says, "The good I would do, I don't do. The evil that I would not do, that's just what I find myself constantly doing." Why is that? Because I don't obey the Ten Commandments? No, says Saint Paul, precisely because I try to obey the Ten Commandments and the Law. Precisely because I expect myself to, because I subject myself to the Law.
You didn't know that was in the Bible? Read the book of Romans. That's the same book that got Martin Luther in trouble with the Pope. It's a very dangerous book.
Focus your attention on the rules . . . and you will break them. you will see people breaking them. You'll just know that everybody's breaking them ! You will become fascinated with sin.
The Ten Commandments is the cause of soap operas! It is!
And when you -break one of those laws, as inevitably you will, you feel guilty. How delicious! Put people's attention on guilt and sin, and you get twisted, insufferable, unhappy people. They see guilt worthy things everywhere!
I love the story about the little old lady from Pasadena who went into the porn shop. (In California it's always "the little old lady from Pasadena." I don't know what the analog is here.) But, anyhow, she goes into the dirty book store and goes around reading passages from all the books. And finally, shaking her head, she walks out of the store saying, "I knew it! I knew it!"
If she knew it, what did she go in there for?
When you blow it, then feel guilty, PAY ATTENTION! Watch yourself split into that interior critic and the naughty child. Zap! Split! Instant psychosis.
So, what is the appropriate response when you do blow it? As Saint Paul is right, we all (all of us who were properly socialized, which is to say, had at least one or more parents), as ALL of us inevitably do?
A story is told of two celibate Buddhist monks. They were traveling, and they came to a river with a shallow ford but no bridge. There at the side of the road was a beautiful young girl trying to figure out how she was going to get across without getting her skirts all wet.
One of the monks volunteered to help her. He picked her up in his arms, strode across the river, and set her down, dry, on the other side. The monks then went on about their journey.
Near nightfall, the second monk could keep his peace no longer. "How is it," he said "that you carried that lovely girl (and the words were fairly slavered over as they passed his lips) "How is it that you carried that lovely girl across the river, when we monks are sworn never even to touch a woman?" "Friend," said the monk, "You must be VERY tired; I put her down on the other side of the river, but you have been carrying her all these many miles since."
Guilt is putting your attention on the past, on attending the ego, on one's appearance to others of having done some naughty thing. Did you think they thought you were a saint, and now are terribly disappointed? If you did indeed hurt another, undo what's undoable, certainly! Repair the relationship. But guilt? You want guilt, I'll give you guilt.
Jesus was asked about adultery, and needless to say, he didn't recommend it. But, he goes on to say, if you have lusted for her in your heart . . . (Remember President Carter in the "Playboy" magazine interview some years ago?) If you have lusted for her in your heart, you have committed adultery with her already. How's that for guilt, guys?
And yet the point has not to do with the Law. The point has to do with where is your ATTENTION? Jesus pulls the issue completely out of considerations of ego, of appearing to be naughty, of getting caught. Where you put your attention IS who you are. And who you are becoming.
One monk's attention was on helping a girl across a river. But the other monk's attention was on his genitals. When you catch yourself feeling guilty, there is only one useful solution. A nice long cosmic laugh. Then put your attention back where it belongs.
PAY ATTENTION, now, we are getting close to the nub of it! We maintain the split in ourselves--that separation into critic And naughty child, into all the various pieces of our insides--we maintain that split in ourselves by where we put our own attention.
Keep your attention on that ego, on that mask you present to everybody else, on any of those passing pieces of the petulant child, the angry one, the frustrated one, the lustful, greedful one; on all of those passing states of mind that we have been seduced into calling our I, our SELF, and the result is inevitably tragic.
Saint Paul again: "The good that I would do, I don't do. The evil that I would avoid, that is precisely what I keep finding myself doing." That tragic tendency of the human species to stumble on its own good intentions is founded precisely in that split in our own insides. That illusion that those passing states of mind--that little talking to yourself voice on the inside of your head--is somehow who you really are keeps your attention riveted there.
Now, how do you put it somewhere else?
For a few minutes now, everybody don't think of a red monkey.
The moral theories of so much of Christendom put you precisely in the position of being constantly aware of what you are not supposed to do. However, it almost never tells you what you ought to do in any given situation. Ethics are marvelous that way. They are great Monday morning quarterbacks.
How do you put your attention somewhere else?
There is an aikido technique that is at the heart of how to be healthy. In aikido, a Japanese martial art, when an attack does come, the response to the attack is never to resist it; never to meet it head on. The response is always to step aside, to open the door, and go with the attack, and then, gently lay your attacker on the ground!
And leave.
How do you put it somewhere else? Not by wrenching it. Not by trying to twist your belly button two turns to the left and jumping sideways, but simply by leaving it where it is and PAYING ATTENTION to where it is.
Go ahead, leave your attention on that committee of "I's." That whole clump of self-images on your insides: your mother's voice bawling you out; the adults in your life as a child that told you never could do it right; the teacher who looked at your attempt at writing a poem and said, "Boy, are you a hack!" All of the tsk-tskers of your life, all of the attempts at proper behavior that you were seduced into, but that felt completely alien to you. But you put the shirt on anyway and tried to wear it, despite its tightness in the shoulder and the fact that its tail would never stay tucked in.
Take your attention and put it on your committee. As a committee. For what it is. And then turn around and put your attention on who it is that's attending the committee. That, not your committee, is who you are
Listen to their rabble. Listen to those voices sometime. Just listen to 'em. You won't be able to keep from laughing. They are so dumb!
But, be careful how you put them down. That's your committee. You will not get rid of them. You will have them for the rest of your life. But they can become your tools in your service, instead of you in theirs.
This is part of the process of disenthrallment. This is mindfulness. This is also Wu Wei, the state of No Mind. It is the Way and it is the goal of enlightenment. One of the marvelous paradoxes of that whole experience of enlightenment is that the way and the goal are identical.
Jesus says something very close to the same thing when he says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." The Way, the Truth, the Life, all are one thing. Not a bunch of separate pieces.
To discover the fact that you are indeed one with the universe, that you are connected by every fiber of your body and being to the cosmos itself -- to experience that not as an idea Mike talks about, but as a datum of your own life experience --to know it, requires-only that you PAY ATTENTION!
But the world conspires constantly to keep you split. Advertisers focus on keeping you attentive to the spoiled brat, and his or her wants, anxieties and posturings. Politicians keep you attentive to that member of your committee whose needs they can provide the illusion of fulfilling. Each of us will try to keep you in the role most useful to us.
Note that those who would manipulate your ego states do not want to fulfill you. Then you would no longer be manipulable by us! No, they want to hook and addict you.
Freedom--personal power--comes only in disenthralling ourselves. And the enemy--the lever by which others move us--is not out there. It's in here! Those transient ego states that we mistake for ourselves, that get so easily snagged, that capture our attention so easily.
You are already enlightened. You are a Buddha, a Son of God, a Christ.
You are already forgiven; enlightened; whole. There is nothing to achieve, no medal to win, no race to run. you are already there!
PAY ATTENTION! Your freedom and your power is right in your own hand. Now.
One last Zen story:
A young monk came to the monastery to begin his training, and he met the man who was to be his mentor. Full of enthusiasm to begin the process of learning how to be a Zen monk, the young man said, "Well, what should I do?" And his mentor asked, "Have you eaten?" The young man said, "Yes." "Then, wash your dishes," said his mentor. "When we eat, we eat. When we walk, we walk. Above all, don't wobble!"
Thank you for PAYING ATTENTION.