The Free Seeker

E-Newsletter of the Unitarian Fellowship of Huntington, West Virginia

Editor:  Jack Wilkinson

Issue 19, May 19, 20l0

Program for Sunday, May 23, 2010

Jenny Kerr:  "Autobiography"

            As we have already learned from Matt Christiansen, an autobiography from a younger person can be very enlightening, because it carries some of the future in it.  I'm confident that Jenny's life so far and her planned career trajectory will prove interesting to the entire congregation.  Jenny is a Marshall student and a member of C.U.U.P.S.

Future Programs

May 30:      Fellowship Pot Luck Picnic

June   6:      Open Discussion

June !3:      Ed Necco:  "Free Thinkers:  The History of American Secularism"

June 20:     Jack Wilkinson:  "The Yankee Bard:  The Life and Works of Robert Frost"*

June 27:     Jacqueline Muth:  "Occupied Minds in Occupied Palestine"

* Change from a previous subject

Retrospective of Previous Sunday

            A Serge** enabled us to fix the DVD and thereby to show Randy Miller's contraband movie about the life of the Buddha that he smuggled out of Nepal.  The Buddha was born into a royal household, wherein his mother, the queen, died when he was seven days old.  A handful of commentators took up the narrative while giving their own reflections on the Buddha's significance.  One said that the Buddha can shine out of the eyes of anybody.  Much of what we know of him comes from myth and oral tradition as they unfolded in the early centuries before things got written down.  The child was brought up with every possible luxury.  He was raised delicately, protected from anything at all disturbing.  At age 16 he was married to his cousin with whom he lived a life of sheer pleasure.  Once while making love on a rooftop they slid off, and he polished her off in mid-air, as it were.  (That reminds me of a famous limerick.)  Prince Gautama (for that was his name before he became the Buddha) had three ponds:  one with white lotuses, one with red lotuses, and one with blue lotuses..  (Could this be the origin of our national stars and bars?)  The prophecy about the prince said that he would be either a great ruler who would unite the 16 separate kingdoms of India under one empire, or he would be a great holy man.  Of course, his father was pushing the first alternative. 

            At age 29 he came to a moment of decision.  In the course of his life, despite all efforts to protect him from such knowledge, he had discovered the four great negatives of life:  1) old age or impermanence, 2) sickness or suffering, 3) death, and 4) loss.  His decision was to go out into the world and discover the Truth about life.  In order to be

** Serge Ruiz, Chair of Utilities and Stuff that Breaks Down

able to bear to depart at all he knew he dared not pick up his sleeping child.  That night he departed never to return.

            His temptation came from the god Mara, who appeared to him and told him he was destined to rule a great empire.  Like Christ some half a millenium later he rebuffed his tempter, and the commentators say, "There is no knowledge without sacrifice.  In order to win, you must first lose."  Gautama is alone in the world for the first time.  He cut off his hair and put on a saffron robe.  He went to the sacred Ganges River to solemnize his new mission, and then he retired to the forest.  He knew that the truth he sought could not be discovered in the ancient Vedas.  He told himself, "I'm a frog in a dry well."

            He joined other searchers.  He embraced poverty and celibacy.  He reasoned that suffering was endless and the only way out was to become enlightened, to become the Buddha.  Otherwise it was a case of learning the same lesson over and over again.  He practiced the ancient yoga and other rigors.  He pushed his practices to their limits.  He experienced rarified states of consciousness.  He traded his old guru in for a new one and gave him a fair trial but finally concluded that these tactics did not lead to direct knowledge.  He had tried in the course of his life, first, extreme luxury and then extreme deprivation.  Neither had worked.  Indeed, the body presented a problem, but, apparently, mortification of the flesh was not the answer..  The notion that by punishing the body you could escape its influence was false.  Still, he punished himself for 6 years.  He became the most anorexic of the anorexic dissenters.  He became emaciated.  His spine stood out like a string of beads.  His ribs stuck out like rafters.  His scalp shriveled and withered.  Then he remembered.

            His mind went back to the spring planting festival he had attended with his father, and he was overwhelmed with compassion for all life.  (This is analogous to Albert Schweitzer's epiphany in Africa as he gazed upon the hippos in the river and the phrase 'reverence for life' wafted into his mind.)  He meditated under a rose-apple tree, and nature paid him homage.  Suddenly he had discovered joy in a world that was broken.  Then he thought to himself, "I'd better eat something," and a woman came to him with rice and said, "Eat."  Then and there he decided to live.

            Later:  enlightenment under the bodhi tree.

Light from Jack's Lantern

            Last week I mentioned the Reverend William Sloan Coffin and gave out a few quotes from his book, Credo.  Reading him was like a breeze surging through me, and as a result I've come up with a kind of Christian gestalt, which I shall do my best to frame in philosophical language in order that it might be accessible to some of the literal secularists in our midst. 

            There are three steps, not necessarily in the following order, 

                       Step One:  Laying down one's burdens;

                       Step Two:  Taking up one's cross;  and

                       Step Three:  The leap of faith.

            Step One is not the evasion of one's responsibility.  Rather is it the decision to give up the Angst associated with it.  A few applicable anodynes are (1) Let go and let God, and (2) Rule One:  don't sweat the small stuff, and Rule Two:  it's all small stuff.

            Step Two.  As a symbol the cross antedates Christianity.  Plato said that the soul of humanity was impaled on the world in the form of a cross.  The point is that when we pick up our cross, not only do we lift ourselves but, as Christians, we lift up humanity as well.  Incidentally, we also lift up humanity as Universalists, with or without the Christian imprimatur.

            Step Three.  In my own religious odyssey I got the term 'leap of faith' from theologian Paul Tillich.  The point here is that Love is at the core of reality and supersedes all other particular realities.  If you make the leap, then Love will bear you up. 

            So there you are.  You've laid down your burdens, taken up the cross and leapt into Love's core.  You have found your place in the world.  As Tillich puts it, "You are accepted."  Slowly the shackles fall off, and you are more and more free to be good.