Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
A Very Small Meditation on Last Things

A Very Small Meditation on Last Things

Last updated on: May 14, 2015 at 7:10 am by James Ford

A Very Small Meditation on Last Things 2015-05-14T07:10:22-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Yesterday afternoon I returned from a two-night “retreat” with Unitarian Universalist clergy down on Cape Cod. My use of scare quotes around the word retreat is simply because as a Zen person there’s a bit of a cognitive dissonance between my usual experience of retreat and what happens in any retreat outside my Zen context.

Setting the Zen aside, it was a retreat, a withdrawal from the regular. It featured a series of presentations and breakouts by a very accomplished younger minister working for our New England regional association, presenting the results of what data there is about the newer generation coming up, and what trends we might expect going forward within churches in general and for our liberal communities in particular. Longer, perhaps on speculation than data, it was nonetheless interesting.

The rest of our time was unstructured. That I liked a whole lot. I divided my time up into two rough halves. The smaller, I acknowledge, I spent with the colleagues. All of whom I have something near unique in common with, and so a rare opportunity, to commiserate. The larger half of the free time, I withdrew, and mostly read. A murder mystery. And during the day! Total Yum.

But, what generates this brief meditation (another word with multiple uses in my life…) is how this was my last Unitarian Universalist clergy retreat as a settled minister, as a “called” minister as we say in the trade. There will be other retreats. I have accepted an invitation to a slightly less than full time interim position in California starting in September. But, I will never again stand to be elected the minister, that is “the” minister of a church, with all the joys and responsibilities that means. And I will no longer be directly concerned in quite the same way with and involved in the long term view for a congregation, its life, and its health.

So, this was very much a last thing.

I’ve been doing a lot of these last things of late. Last meetings. Last lunches. There are about thirty days left for these things to happen before Jan and I pack up what is left of our worldly goods and drive out to Long Beach.

And being of that sort of turn of mind, I find myself thinking of end times.

As the calendar turned toward the year 2000, there was a minor secular apocalypse, where people were certain all sorts of computers that didn’t have programing dates for the twenty-first century were going to stop working. There were stories of planes falling out of the sky. And cities turned off. I personally knew people who were storing away food, and I suspect in one or two cases, guns and ammo. I had the privilege of making fun of my friends scheduling a sermon to be preached on the first Sunday in that new millennium, which If I recall correctly happened on a Saturday, and which I titled “Apocalypse When?” I figured nothing significant by way of disaster would happen, and proceeded on that assumption. Also, if things had collapsed, people would be too busy doing other things to notice my sermon title…

The last time there was a similar major turn of the calendar, from 999 to 1000, I understand there were similar concerns, although more clearly of a spiritual nature, return of Christ than our secular all the computers are going to crash version.

And, that’s merely meant to illustrate our human, well, at least our Western Judeo-Christian-Muslim sense of time beginning and ending dramatically. Others of the big religions have end times, too, but their cosmic speculations tend to be more cyclic. At least in the Hindu-Buddhist universes.

But, end times do come.

Mostly smaller end times. Like our move. Bigger, if still personal, like the little fact we are all of us going to die.

And, there are bigger real life end times. I think anyone standing in the way of the hordes sweeping out of Mongolia were facing an apocalypse just as true and literal as anything one can read in the Revelation of John. Except for the resurrection part.

In some schools of Buddhism, people, monks and nuns, the religious professionals, at least, are encouraged to go and meditate in grave yards.

Noticing the transitory nature of things can be helpful.

Noticing that every blessed thing made of parts will in fact come apart at some point is an important thing to notice.

Get that fact in our bones and it changes how we relate to things.

Or, can.

And I think that shift in relationship to our world and ourselves is generally salutary, or, again, can be. Me, I’m committed to noticing.

So, I’m trying to take the lessons as they’re being presented, whether the cosmos is consciously setting it up for me (highly unlikely, it does seem the universe is for the most part has other fish to fry) or just the fact of the narrative of my life, and Jan’s, means we’re in the midst of some serious disruptions, and without running too quickly to interpretations, I try just to notice.

And from there, there actually is one lesson to quickly get:

Passing, passing.

And out of that:

Holding, and cherishing, and knowing we are at the same time letting go, or being let go of.

It’s all part of that practice of noticing we’re not so much nouns, and a lot more verbs.

A very useful thing to notice…

Almost comforting…

Uncategorized

Previous Post

May 12, 2015

DANCING IN THE KALI YUGA: A Story of My Life Up Until Now

Next Post

May 15, 2015 B B King Dies

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Samuel David Solomon Eli