This sermon was delivered by Dr. Alan Miller on June 14, 2009. It was preceded by The Story of Jakushin.Most of us at one time or another have heard someone say "I'm not religious, but I am very spiritual." It may be that you have said it yourself. I of course have never said it. But then I was for many years part of a Department of Religion at a University, so I naturally have been against getting rid of the word "religion." If the issue is either spirituality or religion, then it may be that many people use the word "spirituality" as a way of protecting themselves from some perhaps obscure feelings, perhaps from some sense of guilt. Modern life after all is busy enough without the bother of religion. A more serious note was recently struck by Linda Fleming, who was the first to make use of our new Death with Dignity law, to end her own life. She is quoted as saying, "I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death." Clearly, the term spirituality can point to the most profound meaning. So I invite you to explore with me that meaning or those meanings.
The first problem that many have with the word "religion" is that it implies belief in and assent to a rather specific set of propositions or assertions; that is, a creed. How often have you had someone ask, when they heard you say you were a Unitarian Universalist, "Well, what do you people believe?" The simplest questions always seem to require the most complex answers. People who have never entered a church share this Christian cultural assumption, that religion is all about belief. I have been struggling against this cultural bias most of my adult life, because I long ago became convinced that religion is not primarily about belief. I tend to agree with Robert Solomon, a professional philosopher, who boldly asserts in his book Spirituality for the Skeptic, that "Most religious beliefs are more like club passwords or code words than propositions that can be explicated or defended." [p 13] Creeds are primarily of sociological but not of philosophical or theological significance; like a special handshake they serve to identify the in-group, and thus to separate it from everybody else.
So when spirituality is juxtaposed to religion there is more to it than matters of belief. Most often people seem to be making a distinction between certain feelings, experiences, a kind of orientation to life on the one hand, and, on the other, religion as a social institution: what is often referred to as organized religion. And organized religion, among other things, is what we are doing at this very moment. My goodness yes, we are organized: setup and takedown people scurrying here and there, snacks put out, coffee made, music chosen and practiced, sermons written, money collected, social outreach planned, children's religious education programmed, small groups scheduled, and never forget committee meetings — and lots of other things tended to. For myself, all these activities are both necessary and important; but critics of organized religion do have a point, namely, that the busyness of religion can and sometimes does obscure something more fundamental and far more precious. And spirituality is as good a name as any for that something. Indeed that something is or ought to be the essence, the driving force, the spirit, of organized religion. Ideally, if one approaches even the busyness of organized religion as a spiritual practice, spirituality and religion are not separated.
Let me be clear that by spirituality I do not mean to suggest that there is a kind of substance, called spirit, which is distinct from and stands over against matter. Nor is spirituality a code-word for "supernatural" as over against the natural. Both spirit and supernature are traditional ways of conceptualizing the spiritual; they are not the only ways of doings so, and they are not my ways. To me, everything is natural: but notice that nature can sometimes be experienced as extraordinary, special, mysterious, and awe-inspiring, as well as merely ordinary. So I want to use the term "spirituality" to mean experiential — which is I think what many people do mean by it: it is the experience, however momentary, of what theologian Paul Tillich called the "depth dimension" of human existence. Spiritual moments are those from which we derive adjectives like "sacred" and "holy." It may be seeing the glory of a sunset, or the majesty of a mountain, hearing the delightful song of a bird, giving birth to a child, or coping with the death of a loved one. It may be in hearing our joys and sorrows, in singing a particularly moving hymn, or the sublime blending of your voice with others in harmony. Characteristically, these experiences are largely unencumbered by elaborate belief systems, although they may and historically have given rise to many such systems.
I claim that these experiences are not merely powerful, nor merely generative of feelings; they are more specific than that. We often say that they "take us out of our selves," which is the literal meaning of the word, ecstasy. I claim that these experiences are moments when we feel powerfully connected to something far greater than ourselves, something of great, perhaps of ultimate worth. Further, these are moments in which we spontaneously take up a worshipful stance toward that something. Worship, remember, means to express and affirm what is of great worth. In such moments the connection may be so powerful that the usual separation between self and other dissolves.
That to me is spirituality at its most powerful. Further, such experiences point beyond themselves: they press for expression, for action. And that is where organized religion comes in again, because it directs and focuses that expression.
Such moments of spiritual experience are at least potentially transformative: we are or can be forever changed by them. I believe that such experiences, which I have called spiritual, are moments in which the self is expanded, or, which is the same thing, connected, to something, perhaps to everything. William Houff in his book, Infinity in Your Hand, affirms that "Spiritual implies connectedness, a transcendence of the separated self. Spiritual may mean connection not only with the human community but also with the great chain of life — with what Albert Schweitzer meant when he said 'one with all life that comes within one's reach.'" [p 180] Spirituality, rather than being separate from religion, is in fact the essence of religion. The function of religion, what it ideally does, is first to enable or nurture spiritual experience, which in turn are moments of self-transformation. And second, with transformation of self, religion shapes the work of transforming the world.
So spirituality does not so much tell us what to do; rather it tells us how to do it. The most succinct and powerful way of putting this I have discovered comes from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. That text describes spirituality as the union of action (which it calls karma) and mindful awareness (which it calls yoga). Karma-yoga then means to work without desiring the fruits of work: "Let not thy motive be the fruits of action; nor let thy attachment be to inaction. Fixed in yoga... perform actions, abandoning attachment and remaining even-minded in success and failure; for serenity of mind is called yoga...." Mindful awareness means holding in mind, frequent re-minding, keeping part of the mind focused while in the midst of daily activity. It means to cultivate a self that can do that.
Religions generate and institutionalize many methods whereby self-transformation can be accomplished or at least made more probable. We are all familiar with the conversion experience, favored by evangelical Christians. (If you have ever attended a revival, you know how powerful this can be.) More broadly in the Christian tradition rituals of confession and absolution are available in the regular attendance at (usually) Sunday services. Although these are part of my own upbringing, at some point they stopped working for me. A conversion experience can indeed be life-changing, but it still requires regular reinforcement in Sunday services. If all you want is to return to a state of grace (God's forgiveness), then this is fine.
We UU's aren't given to confession much, perhaps because we don't find it effective in bringing about real self-transformation; or perhaps because it makes us uncomfortable. But we do make use of the Sunday rituals of reinforcement. Here we come together to remind ourselves of who we are and who we want to become, and especially of our connection to each other and to some greater mystery. Prayer, especially contemplative prayer, has often been seen in Western religions to be potentially transformative. Such prayer asks nothing: it is the quiet cultivation of listening. It can be undertaken in solitude or in a group, as the Quakers do, and we do in preparation for our Joys and Sorrows, or in other times of silence.
But rather than speak abstractly of spiritual practice let me tell you about a Buddhist practice that I find myself using more and more: It is a form of meditation in which certain ideas and feelings are cultivated. It is very old — at least 1700 years. It consists of 4 subjects of meditation. These four alone among all the catalogued subjects are approved for use at any time and under any circumstances. All others are supposed to be prescribed by a meditation master only for particular circumstances and are therefore "limited." The Four Unlimiteds these 4 are called, because they are always salutary. So they are "safe" for a beginner like me. Although they may be considered virtues in the sense that they can and should be incorporated into one's character, they are in fact spiritual exercises.
The Four Unlimiteds (Catvari apramanani)
1. Friendliness (Maitri)
2. Compassion (Karuna)
3. Sympathetic Joy (Mudita)
4. Equanimity (Upeksa)
Each of these should be held in mind, considered, examined and applied to those who people our world. I find that for me it works best to begin with those whom I find it easy to love — my family, my closest friends, yes my dog, and quite a few trees with whom I have a personal relationship. Then I can extend it to myself, whom I have always found it difficult to love (I distinguish here between self-absorption and self-love). Then I try to extend it to my enemies — specific people if possible, or even categories, such as the miscreants so lavishly described on the 5 o]clock news, or the misguided driver right in front of me who signals left and turns right. The overall direction though is from the one or the few to the many: I expand my purview to acquaintances, then to all humanity, and finally to all beings. What I find is that in this process my self, my ordinary ego-self, seems continually to expand until at least momentarily it contains all. Put another way, by making room for all, the self — although still present — diminishes in importance by becoming only one among many.
But let us look more closely:
- Friendliness (kindness). Maitri
- Being open to the other
- Listening
- Caring and sharing
- The I-Thou relationship
- Forgiving oneself?
- Compassion. Karuna. ( Can be thought of as a natural outgrowth of friendliness.)
- Acknowledging one's own suffering
- Feeling the pain and suffering of another as your own
- Willingness to help bind up wounds, seek justice
- Sympathetic Joy. Mudita. (It is the flip side of compassion.)
- Acknowledging one's own good fortune; feeing gratitude
- Celebrating the good-fortune and accomplishments of others
- Without envy or comparisons to one's own situation
- Equanimity. Upeksa. (this is the tough one.)
- Even-mindedness; dis-interest (not lack of interest)
- Letting anger, fear, greed, hate arise but observing them only
- Not buying into them & thus not reinforcing them
- Not owning them
- Not dwelling on them or linking them up with past events
- Not allowing them to issue in hurtful action
- Cosmo-centrism and not ego-centrism
The Mahayana Buddhist tradition presents as its ideal the bodhisattva — the fully accomplished one, the great saint. Although some today — including the Dalai Lama if I read him correctly — find this ideal impossibly high, in fact unattainable, even the extreme statement of it is instructive. The following description is from the Ratnagotravibhaga:
It is through his compassionate skill in means for others that he is tied toLet me leave you with this thought: it may be that all forms of spirituality require that we be of two minds: one ordinary, and one extraordinary; one that puts the ego-self at the center, and one that de-centers that self. We need to strengthen the extraordinary mind so that it can infuse the ordinary mind. Perhaps these two minds can even merge, bodhisattva-like, if only for brief moments.
the world,
And that, though he has attained the state of a saint, yet he appears to be
in the state of an ordinary person.
She has gone beyond all that is worldly, yet she has not moved out of the
world;
In the world she pursues her course for the world's weal, unstained by
worldly taints.
As a lotus flower, though it grows in water, is not polluted by the water —
So he, though born in the world, is not polluted by worldly things.
Like a fire, her mind constantly blazes up into good works for others;
At the same time she always remains merged in the calm of the highest
meditative state...
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