by Rev. Kathleen McTigue, September 14, 2003
One of the liberating dimensions of Unitarian Universalism is its insistence that we should think for ourselves, judge for ourselves. When it comes to spiritual teachings, our faith encourages us to reach into the wisdom of every religion and test what we find there against our own knowledge and experience. We get to see what resonates and what does not, and form our religious path as we walk it. We weave together those things that touch our spirits, and we leave alone those teachings that make our reason or intellect uneasy.
Many Unitarian Universalists resonate with the teachings and practice of Buddhism because the Buddha taught the same thing. One of the most famous of his phrases was "Be ye lamps unto yourselves'. A central tenet of Buddhist teachings is that nothing should simply be accepted on faith. Practitioners are always urged to look for themselves, see for themselves, test it out in their own experience.
One dimension of Buddhist teachings that I've always left alone is the notion of reincarnation and rebirth. Sometimes it seems to me an idea with real merit and possibility -- after all, how could one lifetime possibly be enough to realize all we should realize about our oneness and who we really are? Other times it seems far-fetched and superstitious.
But most of the time it seems irrelevant to me: since this one lifetime is absolutely all I can handle, why spend any energy wondering what might have come before or what might still come after? So most of the time when I'm reading Buddhist teachings, I skim over anything that has to do with rebirth or with the states of being that are supposed to exist between this life and the next one.
But I found there was something resonant, something that felt true, about the concept of bardo as it was explored in the piece I used as our reading this morning. Like all of you, I am very familiar with a state of mind or state of being characterized by waiting, that internal sense of things being this way only for a little while, only until the anticipated change comes -- and then we'll be where we hope to be.
Sometimes the transition is a big one, like waiting for a wedding to take place, waiting through the months of planning and organizing for the particular moment of ceremony that will end the status as a single person and mark the beginning of married life. Maybe it's a pregnancy, waiting through the months of change and growth, knowing that after nine months the long transition of pregnancy will end and a new life, as a parent, will begin. Or maybe it's a building program, and we wait and watch through the long transition and inconveniences and changes until finally the day arrives and we move in to our new home.
What sometimes doesn't occur to us during these bardo periods, these times of waiting, is that down on a deeper level the transition never really ends. The day after the wedding we wake up as a married person, but then the day unfolds as the days always unfold, and each one will bring to us its own measure of change. When we wake up on our first morning as a parent and begin the care of our child, we start to realize the continuous bardo of parenthood, since every day brings us to new territory as our child grows.
When we're in a particular gap between stages or between choices, we can't help our longing for the transition to be over so we can reach a new plateau and get on about our lives in the changed state that our choices bring us to. But from time to time it's good to remember that in truth, there is no arrival: there is only change -- and with luck, the steady hearts and wakeful minds that we learn to bring to the changes in our lives.
That's what the bardo can teach us, I think: we are always living in a gap between one thing and another. How can we live gracefully with that reality, so that we see it not as a misfortune or a precarious place, but as a luminous gap, full of gift and possibility?
Last year it was very clear to all of us that in this community, we were living within one of the most obvious gaps between one thing and another. We were in the middle of building this space, right in the middle of bringing a large dream to birth. We had made our decision to grow out of our old space, but we had not yet completed or occupied the new one.
Now we've come home to the new space we've made for ourselves. We've begun worshipping here. We have already had the first memorial service in this space, and in a week we'll celebrate its first wedding. It would seem that the bardo is over, that we've completed our transition and are now living in the new incarnation we've made.
But I don't think that's completely true. We've finished a bardo that has to do with space; but the continuous bardo, the luminous gap that never goes away, is the one that has to do with time. Change and transition are brought to us simply by the passage of time, and it will take time for us to comprehend who we are and who we are becoming. It's a process that takes patience, and attentiveness, and kindness toward one another.
I recently came across a short, descriptive paragraph that speaks to a sort of skillful attention that, if we can cultivate it, will allow us to relax into the luminous gap of transition and see the gifts it might bring us. I share this with you with a little trepidation, because I know that all of you who were here last Sunday remember the story I told about monkeys interfering with golf in India, and the catch-phrase I liked, "play the ball where the monkey drops it". My trepidation is due to the fact that this next image I'm offering you has to do with orangutans. No doubt there is some deep and ominous reason for my primate fixation, but I haven't yet figured out what it is…
In any case, this is from an essay by John House called "A Tree With a View".
"Orangutans are largely solitary creatures, and because the ingredients of their preferred diet are widely dispersed, they've developed ways to avoid having to rummage through the canopy all day, expending precious energy in a restless search for food. One of these strategies entails little more than sitting quietly on a high branch and peering off into the dense green air until the desired delicacy announces itself to their gaze. Primatologists who study the apes have called this behavior 'the fruit stare'."
House went on to say that the reason the 'fruit stare' is so helpful to the orangutans is that there is just too much for their eyes to take in at their normal rate of activity. They can't see what's right there in front of them, unless they stay still and look for a longer time, waiting until the larger reality can, in House's words, "announce itself to their gaze".
I think we should take a lesson from the fruit gaze -- though I hasten to add that the lesson is not that we should all start staring placidly off into space. Other people already think this religion is a little weird!
The lesson is that a certain kind of waiting is still called for, even though we've finished one transition and moved ourselves into a new sanctuary. We don't yet know how all of the changes will trickle down; we don't yet know what's called for from our hearts and minds, what new choices are beckoning us. We need to remind each other to cultivate patience. We need to remember that the luminous gap is a place in which we're always living. It is full of gift and possibility -- if we can cultivate the way of looking that will allow those gifts and possibilities to announce themselves to our gaze. May we learn better how to see. Amen.