The First Teaching

 “Burying the lede” is a journalism term for when the most important idea is buried
deep within an article. (They invented a new spelling to differentiate it from the lead used to make typeface for the printing process.)

            A quick look at the first teachings of Jesus and Buddha reveals one thing: They most definitely did not bury the lede. Instead, their first teachings conveyed the central theme of what would become their life’s work.

            The gospels tell us that after Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River, he went into the wilderness for forty days. When he returned the first thing he said was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 3:2) Repent is an awkward rendering of metanoia, meaning “change of mind.”

On the heels of his own profound transformation, Jesus begins his teaching career not with a demand for obedience, nor with a call to obsess shamefully about our mistakes, but with the suggestion that we simply let go of our old ways of thinking—our prejudices, our conditioning, and our second-hand explanations. What’s the point of learning new information, no matter how true and insightful that information, if the very cognitive routes by which we process that information are clogged with distorting, structural errors? It is not a new world we need, but new eyes and a new mind with which to see and understand the world.

            In India 500 years earlier a young seeker named Siddartha Gautama had his own spiritual transformation in the wilderness. After a long period of study, practice, and meditation, Siddhartha shifted, seeing through the fog of conditioned consciousness, glimpsing the essential nature of things, and thereby earning the nickname Buddha—“the one who woke up.”

            After his enlightenment Buddha walked out of the woods and met with a few old friends in a deer park near Benares. There he gave his first teaching—the Deer Park Sermon—the two core themes being the Middle Path and the Four Noble Truths.

            Born from his own experience, Buddha suggested avoiding the twin extremes of over-indulgence and self-mortification. Both paths are equally self-obsessed and lead nowhere. Instead, walk the middle path of moderation and follow the Four Noble Truths.

            The first three of the Four Noble Truths are, simply put: life is characterized by suffering and dissatisfaction, suffering and dissatisfaction are primarily caused by attachments and cravings, and reducing attachments and cravings would reduce suffering and dissatisfaction. The Fourth Noble Truth is a list of action items called the Eightfold Path.

The first three Noble Truths are the diagnosis and prognosis. The Eightfold Path is the prescription, the behavioral and thought-level changes that would reduce selfish attachments, which would in turn release us from the wheel of suffering and dissatisfaction. Many of the eight suggestions have to do with learning how to think differently. In a word, Buddha is counseling metanoia. As he said in The Dhammapada, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought: we are formed and molded by our thoughts.”

            Our mind is the tool with which we grip and hold the world. Before we can change the world, we must change our minds. And the work begins not with second-hand explanations but with the immediacy of self-examination, courageous purging, and loving transformation. As we suspected all along, wisdom is an inside job. 

[This piece was first published in my A to Zen column in the July/August issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

The Emptiness of God

Like every religion Hinduism evolved over many centuries, each successive wave
of conquest and migration adding new and often conflicting elements. Like a snowball rolling down hill, over time religions hide their internal contradictions beneath layers of apparent coherence. But closer inspection melts the façade revealing the depths.

            Beneath the brash polytheism of Hinduism lies a quiet philosophy of non-duality—the metaphysical claim that all is one. So which is it? Is divinity to be found in hundreds of diverse gods and goddesses, or is divinity a singularity, the very ground of being, a boundless, formless field in which all energy, consciousness, and matter takes form? The answer, I’m afraid, is yes.

            Nowhere is this contradiction more powerfully exposed than in the Kena Upanishad, composed around 3,000 years ago. In this playful parable the gods Agni, Vayu, and Indra have just defeated some demons and restored order. As they proudly pat each other on the back a mysterious being appears. It is Brahman, the formless One from whom all the gods draw their power. But they don’t recognize their visitor.

            Agni approached the being saying, “I am Agni, god of fire. I can burn anything.”

            “Burn this,” said the being, tossing down a piece of straw. Agni tried to burn it but it would not burn. He slunk back to Vayu and Indra defeated.

            Vayu approached the mysterious being.

            “Who are you?” the being asked.

            “I am Vayu, god of air. I can blow anything around.”

            “Let’s see if you can move this,” the being said, pointing to the piece of straw.

            Vayu tried and tried but could not move the straw an inch. He too slunk back to his friends defeated.

            Agni and Vayu turned to Indra, their leader, and said, “You have got to find out who this mysterious being is!”

            As Indra approached the being it vanished and in its place stood Uma, the Goddess of Wisdom.

            “Who was that being?” Indra asked.

            “That was Brahman,” she said, “from whom comes all your power and glory.”

            It was up to the Great Goddess to bring these proud boys back down to the ground by reminding them that they are not the source of ultimate power—they are merely its instruments. The deeper wisdom is clear. All of our powers and abilities come from a deeper source. Our consciousness is an aspect of the one consciousness. Our creativity is an aspect of the one creativity. Our loving is an expression of the one love coursing through all energy, matter, and manifestation. Each of us is the embodied presence of the formless sacred source of the universe. But it’s ok if we forget sometimes—even the gods forget.

            Now comes the final realization—that our idea of God is just that, an idea. What the idea re-presents is beyond concepts, forms, and words. All god-portraits are foregrounds of a depth that goes down and down and down. The idea of God is an empty chair—there’s no one or nothing sitting there. Our concepts are helpful until we forget that they are empty, and that the reality to which they refer forever eludes our conceptual grasp. But we experience this ultimate reality here and now in the gaps between our thoughts, in our loving kindness, and in the beauty of the field out of which our lives arise like poppies in the summer sun.

[This piece was originally published in my A to Zen column in the May/June 2023 edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

Love is the Mystery

There is a higher reality that words, concepts, and sermons can’t reach. We try to
point to this reality with carefully wrought language, theology, and doctrine, but the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The map is not the place. The menu is not the food.

For those of us who teach, preach, and write this news is somewhat deflating. We thought we were getting close to naming the mystery. But in the end, all we can do is cultivate in others a willingness to deepen into the mystery that wells up through the cracks of their own lives. This is why Buddha simply held up a flower and didn’t say a word. This is why Lao Tzu wrote that “Those who say don’t know, and those who know don’t say.” Even Jesus seemed exasperated as he chastised his disciples in chapter thirteen of the Gospel of Thomas. “I am not your teacher,” he said. “Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring I have tended.”

If the teacher is not the message, and if the message cannot be received second-hand, then why do we gather in spiritual community to hear sermons about how to better ourselves and draw closer to the sacred source? As a guy who often gives those sermons, this strikes me as a particularly urgent question. What, in the end, are spiritual teachings for? Why do we need any of this?

You might as well ask a tree why it leans toward the sun. We love language, talking, and teaching because concepts are what we know. They’re how we know. In a way, they feed us.

First we perceive the world, then shape those perceptions into thoughts. As Adam named the animals, we name the concepts taking up residency in our consciousness, even going so far as to order them into hierarchies, because with naming comes judgment, prejudice, and bias. There is no such thing as value-neutral thought. We fall asleep and forget that we do not know the world as it is—we know only our thoughts about the world. This dynamic leaves us vulnerable to self-aggrandizing narratives that lionize us while diminishing the other. Prejudice seems baked into cognition itself.

Our innate need to discriminate and ascribe hierarchies must be deliberately disrupted and discarded. The good news is that the deeper part of us already knows this. Beneath the conceptual realm there is a concept-free field of awareness unbound by the limitations of thought. The world’s wisdom traditions call it by many names—Atman, Buddha-mind, spirit, inner Christ—and it is our essential nature. We have our being there. The conceptual mind is ill-equipped to experience this deeper reality. Realizing one’s sacred nature is more a process of  unlearning, of getting out of our own way. No matter how Herculean the effort, how can you become what you already are?

One of the most notable hallmarks of awakening is humility. Less and less do you need to prove that you are right. You recognize that every religion is true—that they all work, like maps, to show the way home. You stop straining and start softening. Freedom replaces fear and anxiety. You no longer argue about the meanings of words. All of the names of God are fine. Or none at all. In the end, only one word—love—serves us best as the name of the nameless mystery that we are. 

[This piece was first published in my A to Zen column in the March/April 2023 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

The Wordless Sermon

Zen Buddhism traces its origin to a single afternoon in the life of the Buddha.
One day Buddha gathered his followers for a dharma talk as he had done many times before. But on this day he simply held up a flower and didn’t say a word. How would you feel if your minister tried that this Sunday in church? Awkward rustling sweeping through the congregation. Sideways glances turning to outright confusion. But on that long-ago afternoon, one man, Kashyapa, met eyes with Buddha and smiled.

When the Indian Buddhist teacher Bodhidharma brought Zen Buddhism to China in the fifth century CE he penned the famous mission statement of this nascent movement: “A special tradition outside the scriptures, not dependent on words or letters, directly pointing to the mind, and seeing into one’s true nature and attaining Buddhahood.”

As a movement, Zen Buddhism replaced all of the normal trappings of religion—scriptures and beliefs, devotion to deities, dependence on authorities—with the direct experience of life as it is, pulled into sharper focus through the practice of meditation. In fact, the Japanese word Zen is a rendering of the Chinese word Chan, which is a rendering of the Sanskrit word dhyana meaning “meditation.” At the heart of the entire Zen project is the claim that we already are what we seek. We just have to empty out enough to realize it.

Another hallmark of Zen is its refreshing dearth of boundaries. “Your entire life is Zen,” said Bodhidharma. Our natural proclivity for compartmentalization is gently (and sometimes not so gently) shaken loose in the practice of Zen.

After a recent talk on Zen Buddhism, a woman raised her hand and said, “I came here looking for something tangible, but this was all very abstract.” She was right. I felt her disappointment. She was looking for guidance. An old Zen story popped into my mind. Maybe this will help I thought.

A young man went to stay in a Zen monastery. They graciously took him in and he was invited to participate in all the activities of the community, primarily meditation and chores—lots and lots of chores. One week passed, then another, then another. But nobody was talking to him about Zen. His frustration grew. Finally, he worked up the courage to go see the master. 

“I came here to learn about Zen,” he exclaimed. “I have been here a whole month now and no one has said one word to me about Zen!”

“Have you eaten?” asked the master.

“Yes.”

“The go wash your bowl.”

Stories like this drive us into the immediacy of this moment, reminding us that true religion is not in books, beliefs, ministers, or rituals. All of those things are the plates we eat off of—they are not the food. Lived experience is the food. Every lunch is as sacred as a Eucharist. Washing your bowl sanctifies this moment as powerfully as any prayer. The mind asks for answers and explanations. But when the Buddha held up that flower, he was gently rebuking our tendency to build conceptual barriers between us and the here and now. 

Kashyapa understood what the congregation did not—that something sacred passes between us in every moment as if there are no barriers at all. Because there aren’t. Kashyapa passed the test, becoming the second patriarch after the Buddha. He understood the wordless sermon.

[This piece was originally published in my A to Zen column in the January/February 2023 issue of Unity Magazine and is reproduced here with permission.]

The Masks of Eternity

According to a Gallup poll, the number of Americans who believe in God has
dropped to an all-time low of 81%. But what slips through the net of general questions like that are all the nuances that make religion interesting. Like what do you mean by God?

When we try to answer that question we find ourselves stumbling through the ruins of an ancient city whose long dead architects are unavailable to explain their designs, facades, and monuments. We mouth theological hearsay, second-hand creeds, and threadbare apologetics until we don’t even hear the sound of our own voices anymore.

In his own journey from altar boy to preeminent scholar of religion and mythology, Joseph Campbell brought lived experience and intellectual honesty to the journey so many of us are on—who, what, and where is God?

Campbell argued that all of our God-concepts are masks that we hang on the indefinable mystery beyond conceptual thought. Some cultures personify the mystery as a conscious entity with specific qualities and characteristics, including gender. Other cultures conceive of the mystery as a pantheon of thousands of gods and goddesses. Still others prefer to leave the mystery as it is—ineffable, beyond all names and forms, and impersonal, like Brahman, Dao, or the Force.

What matters most is not which of those conceptual masks is correct but  realizing that we are the ones who make these masks of eternity. So powerful is our longing to reconnect with the divine source from which and we and all things come that our indefatigable creativity builds a bridge across a chasm our minds cannot cross--a bridge made of myths, images, and poetic narratives.

Three factors determine the shape of our masks of eternity: our environment, our sociology, and our needs. The gods of Pacific Islanders are sea turtles and dolphins. The gods of the Navajo and Hopi of the American Southwest are coyotes, ravens, and spiders. We model our masks after the familiar things in our immediate environment.

In addition, we shape our God concepts around models of power we find in our own societies. In patriarchal cultures gods tend to be male. In matriarchal societies the Great Goddess prevails. We project our limited and local sense of power onto the heavens.

And finally, our masks of eternity are born from our unmet needs. Constantly under siege from warring enemies? You need a warrior god. Wounded and suffering? You need a healing god. Struggling to find sustenance? You need a god of abundance and prosperity. The mystery behind the masks eludes our conceptual grasp, but we never tire of creating out of the womb of our environment, sociology, and needs an infinite variety of God-concepts to protect, serve, and preserve us.

In the end, the masks become the final obstacle to be overcome. If you really want to know God, you have to forget everything you know about God. As Meister Eckhart put it, "God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction." Maybe it's best not to think about God as a separate entity at all, but the space within which we move. The apostle Paul said it best: "All can seek the Deity, feeling their way toward God and succeeding in finding God. For God is not far from any of us, since it is in God that we live and move and have our being." (Act 17:27-28)

 

[This piece was first published in my "A to Zen" column in the November/December edition of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]