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
ZEN BUDDHISM, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM, AND FINDING A LIFE THAT MATTERS

ZEN BUDDHISM, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM, AND FINDING A LIFE THAT MATTERS

Last updated on: February 7, 2016 at 12:01 pm by James Ford

ZEN BUDDHISM, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM, AND FINDING A LIFE THAT MATTERS 2016-02-07T07:47:31-08:00 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.

Zen Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, and Finding a Life that Matters,

Or, Like Someone in the Middle of the Night Reaching Behind Her Head for the Pillow

A Sermon by
James Ishmael Ford

7 February 2016

Unitarian Universalist Church of Long Beach
Long Beach, California

Text

Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use those many hands and eyes?’ Daowu answered, ‘It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind her head for the pillow.’ Yunyan said, ‘I understand.’ Daowu asked, ‘How do you understand it?’ Yunyan said, ‘All over the body are hands and eyes.’ Daowu said, ‘That is very well expressed, but it is only eight-tenths of the answer.’ Yunyan said, ‘How would you say it, Elder Brother?’ Daowu said, ‘Throughout the body are hands and eyes.’

Blue Cliff Record, Case 89

Of the Unitarian Universalist clergy who are also Buddhists, and I’m not quite as rare a bird as that combination might seem, the majority of us appear to have come to Buddhism some time after entering the ministry. A few of us, however, came to Unitarian Universalism as Buddhists. And I’m one of those. So, naturally, my story begins with that Buddhist encounter.

The shortest of versions: After leaving my childhood fundamentalist Baptist faith (we were independents, thinking the Southern Baptists were dangerously liberal, and pretty sure American Baptists weren’t actually Christians) I looked at pretty much the full range of spiritual possibilities to be found in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late nineteen sixties. And let me tell you, there were a lot of options. However, I quickly discovered Zen practice, and found it made all the sense in the world. I’ll return to that in a bit. The upshot is before I was twenty I entered a Buddhist monastery throwing myself full into the discipline.

I stayed just shy of three years at that monastery, which itself moved a couple of times before ending up in Mt Shasta. I ordained and was eventually made a full Zen priest. But, eventually I left. The reasons were many. Perhaps I’ll tell you about them some time. But for our purposes here among my concerns was that Zen Buddhism in the west in all its variations, as best I could tell, lacked a broad sense of community as we understand church or synagogue and with that lacked attention to the needs of children and families as well as giving scant attention to any manifestation within our larger world. Over the years things have improved, at least a little, at least in a few Zen communities. But by then, I’d moved on.

Once again I was at a loss for a spiritual community. And again, I looked around at what was possible. For ages friends directed me toward Unitarian Universalism. “Try it, you’ll like it,” they would say. At first I resisted, but eventually after finding and reading a nineteenth century pamphlet reprint of William Ellery Channing’s renowned Baltimore Sermon, “On Unitarian Christianity,” I thought this really isn’t my mother’s Christianity, and finally, I girded up my loins and attended a UU Sunday service.

During the sermon, well, I fell asleep. Still, I felt there really was something there. I could sense something going on among the people at that church, even if what exactly that was wasn’t immediately obvious. So I kept returning. And I found things happening in my heart and in my life. Over time I realized Zen Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism bring substantial gifts to each other, correcting shortcomings, and deepening possibilities.

What I found in Unitarian Universalism was a powerful sense of community, a place to bring children and to help them find a spiritual sense in this world, a place simply to be together in all those times of life when we so need each other. Of course, for those big things, like births, marriages, and deaths. But also small things like potlucks and finding congenial friends. It was also a place from which to engage my intuition a person should reach out and help in this world together with people whose values I found I share.

I’m not alone in this; a lot of Western Buddhists have found a home within Unitarian Universalism. Now the various published studies of our differing faith stances within our liberal tradition seem to me all to be flawed. Still, between what these studies have suggested and my own best guestimate, leads me to believe somewhere between ten and twenty percent of Unitarian Universalists today consider Buddhism a major current in their theological thinking and identity. For perhaps a majority that means they read a lot of books (we are the people who believe in salvation by bibliography, after all), for some, however, it means taking on specific disciplines. For our denomination, for the sake of argument let’s say ten percent take Buddhism seriously enough to call oneself Buddhist. That would mean about twenty thousand people – which if true makes UU Buddhists the single largest convert Buddhist community in the West. And maybe it’s actually twice that number.

I have a sense of why this has happened. In fact it is this sense that informs me, and has informed what became my twenty-five years as a UU parish minister. My Buddhism, or more accurately my Zen Buddhism, or most accurately my liberal Zen Buddhism brings three things to my life as a Unitarian Universalist and as a UU minister. These are a coherent spiritual discipline, a philosophical ground upon which I can and do stand, and beyond that a spiritual experience, which informs how I try to engage people and the world.

First, that spiritual practice. I frequently summarize Zen’s meditation discipline as “sit down, shut up, and pay attention.” There are postures that support this discipline, which are sufficiently helpful some teachers in my tradition think they’re what its all about. And in a very important sense they’re right. To get inside this practice one needs to deeply understand the term “just this.” If one engages this just this, if one surrenders all the ifs, ands, buts and on the other hands, and instead just drops into the moment, just for a moment, then the sages of the Zen way suggest heaven and earth can reconcile, and even this suffering world can be healed. And I’ve found there’s much truth in this assertion.

Beyond that all I’m going to say here about this discipline is that it is a practice of clarification. It is a relentless watching, particularly a relentless watching of body and mind which opens us up in very interesting ways. Specifically it leads us to a place where our ideas of body and mind fall away. Through this encounter, through this miracle of human consciousness new and more useful perspectives are then revealed.

This leads to what I called the philosophical ground, the great insight. Through some wonderful cosmic play, we Unitarian Universalists while trying to formulate a statement of care for the world in which we live somehow, and I think mostly by accident, formulated what I believe is the secret truth of how we exist. The seventh Principle of Unitarian Universalism is a call to respect for “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

Actually UUs didn’t invent this idea of interconnectedness, just discovered it. Like many have before. For instance, just one possible example, in the Avatamsaka Sutra, a Buddhist text which dates from about the dawn of the Common Era, and which has long association with the Zen schools, contains a strikingly similar image. The Buddhist scholar Francis Cook describes it: “Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each ‘eye’ of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold.”

Professor Cook continues. “If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.”

This image is, of course, meant to be a metaphor, like our interdependent web. It points to living truths. So, we can engage this image and play out the various consequences of what it can mean. And there is power in such philosophical reflections. Or, we can see it as a kind of creed, “this I believe.” I think this idea can be particularly helpful when I am most confused. There are times for simple plain rules, and this one is straight ahead: we’re all in this mess together. From that, even when I have no idea what to do next, I at least feel I should try to be kind. If there were nothing more to it than this, it is a great gift.

But, in fact it is more than a high philosophical assertion about reality, or, even a “belief,” as some rock to cling to in the storm of confusion and hurt. And I believe it is this “more” that is the greatest gift the Buddhist perspective brings to us here in the West. The Zen master Bernie Glassman tells us “I define enlightenment as the depth to which one sees the oneness of life, the interconnectedness of life.” Then joined with that statement is a corollary. Bernie adds, intriguingly, tantalizingly, “And the degree of your enlightenment can be measured by your actions.”

Now the practice of presence, the practice of shutting up and paying attention, the practice of observing body and mind until the ideas of body and mind fall away, leads directly to a personal knowing of this world of intimacy, of our deepest interconnectedness, what Bernie calls our enlightenment, and which I prefer to call our awakening. As one Zen worthy put it, this is like taking a drink of water and knowing for yourself whether it is cool or warm.

And, this takes us to that last thing I spoke of; of those gifts Buddhism brings to Unitarian Universalism, and which we find in Bernie’s corollary to awakening – action. To explore that, let’s turn to that conversation between Yunyan and Daowu. This anecdote is preserved in the twelfth century Chinese anthology of Zen stories called the Blue Cliff Record, one of my favorite Zen documents.

Both Yunyan and Daowu were students of the same teacher and would themselves each become famous teachers. According to some traditions they were actually brothers, but for various reasons this seems unlikely. More interesting to me is how Zen is organized in lineages; that is my teacher had a teacher who had a teacher, in a line that historically goes to early medieval China and mythically all the way back to the Buddha. For me a really interesting thing is how Yunyan is actually my teacher’s teacher’s teacher in an unbroken line running from my life back to the beginning of the ninth century. So, we’re talking at least in spiritual terms of a story about my great great to a pretty large number grandfather.

But the really important thing for us is that both these monks had their ideas of self and other collapse and saw deeply into authentic interconnectedness. At the time this story takes place Daowu perhaps sees a bit deeper than his dharma brother. Although perhaps not. In the great way we play a lot, each of us taking different parts in turn, and play is in fact one of the primary spiritual disciplines. That noted, in this conversation we get a sense of what it means to move from the interdependent web as a really good idea, to where it describes who we actually are.

Now Guanyin is the archetype of compassion. Sometimes portrayed as a man, sometimes as a woman, occasionally in an androgynous form: but always as the deeply, profoundly felt impulse to reach out. This reaching out is the body of awakening. And Daowu says of this need to act, that it comes not through an interpretation of the image of the interdependent web, not through reading the Wealth of Nations, not through solid Marxist analysis, not through an investigation of Mary’s hymn in the Gospel According to Luke (although I suggest Mary is Guanyin. As do the monks at that Buddhist monastery on Ocean Blvd at Redondo who tend that lovely Mary shrine you can visit any time you wish…), not through righteousness of any sort, certainly not righteous anger, a dreadful seducer beckoning us to a confusion of ends and means: but rather like someone turning in her sleep and reaching a hand behind her head to adjust her pillow.

Just this. Ends and means are one thing. Our interdependence and you and I are one thing.

Now an old Zen saying has it that even the Buddha is continuing to practice. And understanding the relationship between our separate identities and the web itself is complex. So, Yunyan’s eighty percent is that this realization is like having eyes and hands all over our bodies. True, true, says his brother. But one hundred percent is that those eyes and hands are our body. No separation, however slight and the universal comes to be known the only place it can be known, in each particular instance, in each particular person.

So, this practice of refinement continues, and continues. And the path becomes one of ever greater intimacy. Each of us coming to know the other as we all walk the great way together constantly transformed and transforming.

So, this is my Unitarian Universalist Buddhist faith. It is the north star of my life, to which I’ve given my life. And, very much, it is as it has been, my ministry.

And, one more thing, I believe, with all my heart, by many names, and none, this is our ministry as Unitarian Universalists, reaching into our own hearts and minds, seeing who we truly are, and then without a second thought reaching out to the world.

Nothing less. Nothing less.

Amen.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

February 6, 2016

Enter the Sultan of Swat

Next Post

February 8, 2016 As Things Fall Apart

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

What specific sin does Paul say is against one's own body?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Drunkenness Sexual immorality Gluttony Self-harm