Dr. John Young                                                                                                3/18/01

Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville

Quiet Mind, Full Heart

            As the Christian or Western spiritual struggle can be seen as a struggle between the demands of the search for truth and a life of love; so, the Buddhist spiritual struggle can be seen as a struggle between the search for enlightenment and a life of compassion.

The Western search for truth has often seemed to imply an iconoclasm, a critical, skeptical, demanding life style that made love seem especially vulnerable and even unrealistic. The Buddhist search for enlightenment has often seemed to imply a dismissal, an unattached, arch, ascetic life style that made compassion seem especially fragile and even otherworldly. Yet, philosophers and theologians from the two different traditions have generally argued that their respective twin goals were equally important and equally necessary to a fulfilled spiritual life. For Westerners, love without truth is a farce; truth without love is a desert. Equally, for Buddhists, compassion without enlightenment is ignorance, while enlightenment without compassion can become lost in selfishness.

            The Buddha realized that much suffering happened in any life. He became persuaded that most of this suffering was caused by unnecessary human cravings and could be dissipated by learning to master many of those cravings. He proposed a life that was based on clear thinking, internal understanding, ethical behavior, and steadily more altruistic living. Westerners have tended to believe that once they found the truth, which they usually assumed were universal truths, that they could resolve most suffering through improvement of the material world. Buddhists have tended to believe that if people became enlightened about the transitory nature of all existence and the self-induced suffering of personal cravings that most suffering could be dissipated by changing one’s internal attitudes. Buddhists urged people to learn to live lives of unattached compassion. Westerners believed that if people were loving that they would generally be happy. Often, Buddhist compassion did not seem very loving to Westerners, and Christian love did not seem very compassionate to Buddhists. So, we have, in these different traditions, matched pairs [enlightenment and compassion, truth and love] that often do not seem compatible, and across the two cultures, analogous pairs [enlightenment and truth, compassion and love] that seem theoretically so parallel and, yet, in practice seem quite distinct.

            In the West, we were determined to understand the real world, to find the truth, and, then, to solve the world’s problems. We assumed that if people knew the truth, then, they could solve the problems. Buddhists decided that the world would always be transitory, changing, evolving, and they determined to get through life with a quiet mind. They decided that if people could become enlightened, could understand themselves and conquer their destructive and neurotic cravings, that, then, the world might not matter much. Now, there is obvious truth, importance, and vitality to both of these positions. As Unitarian Universalists we are committed to not becoming imprisoned by either of these mindsets but rather to learn from both of them. As we begin the 21^st century, it must be obvious that while much can be solved by understanding material truths, that we also need to understand ourselves and to get a grip on our cravings, otherwise, we will eat up, burn out, and destroy the world and ourselves, despite the best of science and technology. This cannot be done alone by treating people as if they were only machines or organisms. The human manipulators must also know their own minds. This is the task of enlightenment, and the Buddhists have important things to teach us in this quest for enlightenment.

            The Buddhists started by struggling with karma, with the doctrine of cause and effect. They wanted to find a loophole in this seemingly inexorable dogma. They decided that it could be done with an attitude adjustment that transformed your life. They decided that the weight of karma could be lightened by realizing the transitory nature of reality, the ephemeral nature of the mind or self, and the situational nature of human rules and interactions. The Buddha wanted people to wake up to these internal realities. He wanted people to live in the here and now. To accomplish this, people needed to spend time in meditation, to look at their own actions and attitudes until they got beneath the ignorance, past the greed, beyond the anger, and surmounted their destructive and neurotic cravings. As each of us know, from our lives, this is not easy to accomplish.

            When we think of a quiet mind, most of us probably begin by thinking of an empty mind. You do not get to a Buddhist’s quiet mind through ignorance. Ignorance is not bliss but chaos for Buddhists. A quiet mind is also not a passive one. Buddhists, at their best, have very active, rational, practical minds. They think about the here and now, the real and honest, the matters of deep integrity and profound influence. The Buddhist quiet mind is fully engaged and yet unattached to cravings, results, success or failure. So, the quiet mind has maximum integrity and minimum pride. The quiet mind is able to concentrate because it has grown beyond blind obsessions and unnecessary attachments. The Buddhist’s quiet mind combines clear practical thinking, not only about the world, but about your own life, mind, and values, with sustained discipline so that every day life becomes, at its best, continuous meditation. The quiet mind is alert, wise, focused, empowered to concentrate, determined to be useful and increasingly unselfish.

            The term unselfish brings us to the other basic Buddhist goal. Enlightenment is necessary but not sufficient. An attitude adjustment is necessary, but it is, basically an internal and selfish process, and the Buddhists decided that the self, in a spiritual or philosophical sense, did not actually exist. So, people, as they become more enlightened, need to fill the vacuum left by dissipated cravings and self-centeredness with progressive altruism, with increasingly selfless service, with active and practical compassion. My term for this in the sermon’s title is a full heart. The four basic Buddhist virtues (illimitables) because we can never have enough of them, are: loving kindness, compassion, joy in the joy of others, and equanimity. Equanimity is that comfortable balance found at the end of enlightenment, but you get to and maintain and enhance this equanimity with the other three virtues: joy in the joy of others, loving kindness, and selfless service.

            Just as the Buddhist turns the full light of her consciousness upon the truths within, she also turns the full light of understanding and caring upon the needs of others. She develops genuine and practical passion with those whom she would serve. Doing so, she escapes devastation, despair, and hopelessness. She sees life and the world as they are. She does not become a good person; rather she becomes a human and humane being, and in doing so, realizes the basic goodness within all humanity. She becomes militant in her selflessness by serving other people. She seizes her opportunities to achieve good karma. She has passion with those whom she helps, but she is not caught in their passion or her own. She is kind but also impartial. She cares for others, but she does so calmly. By diminishing her self-concerns and distractions, she reduces the emotional fever of life, not just as an end-in-itself but so that she may become more effective in her compassion, so that she may do more for other people. For the Buddhist, an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theories. This is not only true during meditation in silence, but it is equally true in working compassionately with other people. If you cannot meditate during active compassion with other people, then your silent sitting is rightly suspect.

            We cannot and dare not try to isolate ourselves and free ourselves while living parasitically upon other people and communities. If we are going to live an enlightened life, we must find how to live with people in compassion. Selfless service is as vital a form of meditation as is silent sitting. Together, they can allow a devout Buddhist to reach her goals, but trying to only sit and study and holding oneself in some type of proud isolation from others is, I believe, a prescription for individual and social disaster. I believe it is also directly contrary to the basic intent of the Buddha’s life and to the best of Buddhist teachings.

            How can we become effectively compassionate? I think that we must learn to live with a full heart. We need to learn to open ourselves to other people in our lives. How can we ever understand ourselves, if we cannot open ourselves to others? Ignorance and fear will continue to rule those who greedily keep to themselves, who cannot be bothered by the people before them, who cannot be interrupted by the people around them. I have become convinced that a quiet mind helps immeasurably to empower a full heart, but I am also equally convinced that a full heart creates the energy and nourishment that make a quiet mind anything more than ignorance, arrogance, or greed. Those focused totally upon personal enlightenment need to recognize that they have become caught in spiritual greed. They are grasping for a selfish wisdom that will turn to ashes in their souls.

            The psychiatrist Rachel Remen, in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, tells two stories about being attached or committed. In the first story, a young man gets lost in a snowstorm and is discovered alive after three days. Eventually, one foot is going to have to be amputated, but he refuses. Finally, in despair, his fiancée, takes off her engagement ring and places it on his rotting little toe. “If you love this foot so much, to die for it, then why don’t you marry your foot?” The next day, he scheduled the operation, for he realized that she was right. He had become attached to his foot, and it was their love that had kept him alive in the snow, and their life in the future together was more important than his foot. In the second story, an elderly woman is facing a terminal cancer, the doctors, including Remen, argue for invasive surgery and chemotherapy, the elderly woman quietly refuses and with her family in support leaves the hospital. Remen and the other doctors were angry because they were not considering the woman’s and her family’s primary commitments but rather their own professional attachments to doing whatever they could medically to help. Remen then philosophizes about attachment and commitment:

“While attachment has its source in personality, in what the Buddhists refer to as the ‘desire nature,’ commitment comes from the soul. In relationship to life, just as in human relationships, attachment closes down options, commitment opens them up. Modern life has made us people of attachment rather than people of commitment. Indeed, many people have found that it is difficult to tell the difference between attachment and commitment in their own lives. Yet attachment leads farther and farther into entrapment. Commitment, though it may sometimes feel constricting, will ultimately lead to greater degrees of freedom. Both involve an experience of holding, sometimes holding against the flow of events or against temptation. One can distinguish between the two in most situations by noticing over time whether one has moved through this activity or this relationship closer to freedom or closer to bondage. Attachment is a reflex, an automatic response which often may not reflect our deepest good. Commitment is a conscious choice, to align ourselves with our most genuine values and our sense of purpose.”

            I invite you, then, to cultivate a quiet mind, a full heart, and a life of commitment. These are deep lessons to be learned from Buddhism, and they amplify, broaden and empower our traditional Western goals of truth and love.

MEDITATION:         

The words for our meditation this morning are from our resident Zen monk, Zenrin Bob Lewis. Zenrin is called Zenrin because he translated the Zenrin Kushu, or the Book of the Zen Grove, into English. When he began this work, he was a mathematics professor, but he left that life to become a Rinzai Zen monk. For some years, he has resided in a room of our buildings and used other rooms of our facilities here at UUCJ, both for his personal needs and for the work of his Zen group. He leads meditation sittings here and around town, and he continues his translation of Zen texts. His group has remained small, but it has and does include members of our congregation and has served a number of people in the Jacksonville area. His group or sangha hopes, in some future year, to have their own land and facilities. Allen Tilley, long-time member of our congregation and our Religious Services Associate this morning, is also a pillar of the Sangha and its Treasurer.

            Some of us may feel more drawn to Zen than some other traditions, but we, as a congregation, remain open to and interested in a wide range of world religious traditions. We hope to support a growing dialogue among Jacksonville groups involved in various spiritual and meditation practices. We trust that Zenrin’s Zen sangha will join us in this

dialogue, and that Zenrin and the sangha will respond actively and generously to our congregational needs as the congregation has and does serve with good will as the sangha’s, and Zenrin’s, host and home.

            The words for meditation are a commentary on saying #127: “A miraculous turnaround. Turn from perfecting yourself to the practice of compassion for others.”