The assignment was to free associate. What fun.
“The capacity
for faith is at its strongest in childhood; which is why religions apply
themselves before all else to getting those tender years into their
possession....Religion is truth expressed in allegory and myth and thus made
accessible and digestible to mankind at large...Religion is like a glow worm
that is only visible in the darkness.” (Arthur Schopenhauer, German Philosopher 1788-1860)
Are you kidding?
Really? Someone wrote that down /
said it out loud? That the goal is to
catch’em young when they are most impressionable? That implies that the tenets of religion
won’t stand the test of reasoned scrutiny (associated with adulthood and a more
mature mind). It makes explicit that
religion is something that needs to be snuck in, under the radar. Something that folks get hooked in to - habituated to - before they can question. (Wait, but wasn’t
that something Schopenhaurer was trying to make plain? Ah!)
This certainly is what I experienced in my brief Roman
Catholic upbringing. There was an
explicit positioning of authority, of a source of wisdom that I was to accept
without question. Youthful questioner
that I was, it didn’t work. I kept
asking questions that were not answered to my satisfaction. And thus, the Roman Catholic becomes a
Buddhist - a “practice” more than a religion, in which the core commandment is
to sit, see for yourself.
Funny, as a result of practice, I have a greater respect for
spiritual and religious authority – but I have an internal barometer that tells
me when that authority is real. It’s something that is so evident, i.e., when
someone is grounded as a result of personal exploration and inquiry. And it is a very different presence from
someone who is speaking more from faith than from inquiry and exploration. I wish I could define it clearly – engagement
is evident, openness is evident, active listening, compassion, and love.
I’ve been in the presence of that authority: the words and
lives of my Zen teachers, reading the works of contemporary Zen teachers like
Okumura, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo – a British zen teacher in the Tibetan tradition
who lived for over a decade in a cave in the Himalayas, or Ostaseski, or the hospital's own Rev. S when
she speaks about what is happening in a pastoral counseling encounter. The words and ideas shared by these people
ring true. Religion does not give their
words authority, their words and experience gives authority to their religion,
as they illuminate universal, human truth from the ground of their faith.
And just this weekend, I heard its opposite. A woman who was deeply grounded in her faith.
Who attends regular Bible study. Who
spoke about her concern for her husband’s lack of faith. And the most poignant statement from that
encounter was this: “I know better, and
yet, as I think about it…the lust for life is so strong…..I am so surprised, so
ashamed.” She was unable to find what
she sought from her religion – a world view, reassurance, an end to fear, and
comfort.
So what does Buddhism offer to me? Every morning (okay, most mornings), I rise
from sleep and sit with myself on a cushion in a cold room. I watch what I have come to think of as the
uncontrollable “drool” of my mind activate.
I practice saying “okay” and “what next”. I practice a lightness of view. When the fears emerge I see them as part of
that uncontrollable, unstoppable-as-long-as-I-am-living drool of thought, and
have “faith” that something else will follow, a new fear, a new question, a new
joy, a new anger, a new insight, a new inanity.
I practice compassion towards all of it and treat it….as I would drool. I take it, and myself, with appropriate
lightness. Then, despite whatever has
emerged, I say these words: “May this practice end greed, anger, delusion, and
the hardship of all beings.”
It undercuts ego. I
can’t end all suffering, but I have a “faith” that the practice of clear seeing
and presence, done by millions over millennia, might have the energy to free us
all.
Talk about crazy hope.
“A glowworm invisible only in the dark”? Hmmm.
In a sutra recited daily, Buddhists say:
“Light is also darkness, do not move with it as
darkness. Darkness is light, do not see
it as light. Light and darkness are not
one, not two. Like the foot before and
the foot behind in walking, each thing has its own being, which is not different
from its place and function.” Light
illuminates differences. Darkness shows
them to be less meaningful. In the dim
glow, perhaps we can just be wary and not bump our heads in heedless disrespect
of the terrain of our faith and our very-human struggle!
