Abandon hope and fear

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
September 18, 2016
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org

The first strand of the Buddhist eight-fold path is “Right Understanding.” Do you understand how things work? What causes suffering? What is the way to be happy?

Sermon

I see a lot of articles on how to be happy? They have titles like “7 steps to happiness” and “5 things we do to keep ourselves from being happy.” Most people want to be happy. We’ve all felt it. It tends to disappear, though, when our bank account shrinks to nothing, or our shoulder hurts, it shrinks when people we love are in trouble, or when we’re anxious or outraged or suffering.

On the front of your order of service is a photo of a path. The reason for this is that, today, we’re going to start talking a one of the oldest “8 part path to happiness,” which is at the center of Buddhism.

Buddhism is a religion that came up out of Hinduism. A Hindu prince had been sheltered from the world. Not just from the world, but from religion. His mother had died when he was a baby, and a holy man had prophesied that the boy would grow up to be a great general, a king, or a holy man. His father decided to eliminate the holy man option by raising the boy in a palace built just for him. When he was 16 he was given a beautiful wife, and they had a family. When he was in his late 20’s, though, the prince wanted to venture out. On the road, he saw an old man. “What is the matter with him?”

“He is old,” answered the charioteer. “that happens to everyone.”

On subsequent ventures out, he saw a sick person, a dead body and an ascetic. His charioteer explained to him that people get diseases. They get old, they (and by they, I mean we) die.

In growing Despair and horror at the realities of suffering and death, grieving at the thought of losing his mother, his father, his wife and children to these terrible ravages of living in mortal flesh, he decided to go follow the ascetic path. He was so committed to this path, enduring pain, starving himself until his belly button touched his spinal cord, never achieving satisfaction, but always wanting to go farther to find wisdom. Five other Ascetics who were so admiring of his dedication that they became his followers. After years of this, the Buddha realized these holiness practices weren’t going to get him to wisdom and peace. He accepted a bowl of rice from a little girl, took a bath in the river and sat down under a tree. His disciples were shocked, and left him. sat down to meditate. He realized that none of the ascetic practices he had been following we’re going to work. He vowed that he would stay meditating under the tree until he reached Enlightenment period all night and evil demon, Mara the demon of Illusion tempted him with food, beautiful women, power, all the normal people just moved into Nirvana when they reached Enlightenment, things that men are tempted with. Enlightenment was his. Normally but the king of Gods himself Brahma asked the Buddha to stay and teach. He agreed. Now he was hesitant to teach, but the simple truths that had come to him while he was sitting under the tree wood rescue human beings from suffering and unhappiness. He walked to the river where some holy men were sitting, among them the Five Guys who had abandoned the Buddha when he took rice from a little girl.

He preached the truth that had come to him as he sat under the tree for several days and nights

1. Life is out of joint.
2. This suffering, this out of place-ness is caused by desire.
3 if you stop craving/desire, you’ll be happy
4. The way to stop craving is the 8 fold path.

This is the first of eight sermons, over the upcoming months, on the eightfold path of Buddhism. The Eightfold Path is not like eight steps, or little boxes you check off one by one as you accomplish them. It is a path of eight elements interwoven, braided together, having to do with understanding, practice and behavior that Buddhism says will take you on a journey away from suffering and toward freedom. The first component of the path is “Right Understanding.” “Getting it” is the first and continuing job of the person on this path. You get stuck by the temporary nature of good health, by the sudden lightning strike of tragedy and trouble. A friend gets killed in a car accident. You have a heart attack. A piano falls on your head. Suddenly the assurance of ongoingness is gone. Suddenly security looks like a laughable illusion. Your ideas of how things work are upended. Or you catch a glimpse of the truth of how things do work. You have a glimmer of a sense that many people create their own suffering, that disquietude lurks at the corners of most lives, that grief, hope, fear, hunger for security or pleasure or acceptance drive people to do what they do and that satisfaction is elusive. A deeper reality crooks its finger at you and whispers ( if you’re old enough to remember the deeply Buddhist movie “The Matrix) it whispers in Laurence Fishburn’s voice: “Wake up. There must be satisfaction somewhere, let’s go look for it. “

One of the things I find most relaxing about Buddhism is that it doesn’t ask you to take any of this on faith. It asks you to try it out and see if it works for you. Buddhism asks you to start with your experience. Most people’s attention is squandered on the anxiety, all the worry, and the fear in their lives. What will happen to us? Am I doing this right? Will people have a good time at my party? Will I get well again? Will I end up a bag lady? Will I find love? Moment after moment, for most people, is filled with hope that things will go well and fear that things won’t. That life is a roller coaster. In the words of the poet John Prine “Some times you’re up, some times you’re down, it’s a half an inch of water and you think you’re going to drown.”

Things happen to you, then you make stories about the things that happen: that they shouldn’t be happening, that they are a punishment for something you did, that your life is unfair, that you are unlucky and unblessed. Buddhism says all of these thoughts about what happens, all of the roller coaster emotion caused by hoping and fearing makes you suffer. There is a way to end the suffering. In your life, you will have pain, but you don’t have to make yourself extra suffering over the pain. The eightfold path, with its eight elements, is the way to train yourself morality, mentally and emotionally, to be free from suffering from the thoughts you have about what happens. Here are the eight elements: right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

Right understanding, the first strand of the Eightfold Path, “getting it, ” involves seeing how things are. You understand that you suffer because you have attachments to how things should go. You crave, you cling, you hope, you fear.

You have hopes that an interview will go well. You are anxious about it. You worry afterward about whether they liked you. If you get the job you worry about doing it well. If you don’t get the job you wonder why they didn’t like you. You have ideas about how it should go. You have interpretations of how it went, ideas from your interpretations, and you suffer over those.

Someone you love is drinking or using again. You worry about how bad it’s going to get. You feel the feelings from when it was at its worst. You interpret your friend’s using as his not loving you, because if he loved you he would want things to be good for you, and things aren’t good for you when he is using. It feels as though he is doing it to you.

In your thoughts is a way you wish things would go. You have fears about how things could be. All of these things, hopes and fears, cause you suffering. When you are anxious about these things you miss a lot of your life: seeing your other friends, you can barely hear what people are saying to you, you don’t enjoy your food, sleep, sex, beauty, things seem garbled and dim. You are suffering. How could that stop?

Wake up. “Get it” that if you calm and focus your mind you can see reality more clearly. “Get it” that what happens happens. There are certain things you can do to make the interview go well, and you do them. Or not. Then it happens. You get the job. Or not. You can interpret it any way you want to. They didn’t like you?

Maybe. Maybe they had someone else who was a better fit. Maybe this is not your job, maybe yours is coming. If the job wouldn’t have been a good fit for you, you would have been miserable in it. Is that what you wanted?

In meditation we have the chance of seeing the story we are telling ourselves about our life. You can notice the thoughts you are having about what is happening in your life. There are a hundred different stories, and seeing your story is part of getting it. Another part of Right Understanding, of waking up, is understanding the law of Karma. Its literal name is “right view of the ownership of action” The Buddhist teachers say: “Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions; they spring from their actions, are bound to their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, good or bad, of those they shall be heirs.” The Buddhist scriptures, like the Christian scriptures, talk about results of actions as “fruits.” “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If our lives are like a river, it’s as if we are all living downstream from our actions, and the dirty or clean water that runs because of those actions catches us later.

Good actions are morally commendable, helpful to the growth of the spirit, and productive of benefits for yourself and others. Unwholesome actions, to use a more Buddhist word than “bad,” ripen into suffering.

Getting it means that you see that suffering occurs from craving, desire and attachment, that the way to end suffering is to end craving and attachment, that the way to end craving is to attend to the eightfold path of right wisdom and right behavior. To own your actions, your part in any situation, to let go of blaming and clean up what you are putting into the water upstream from where you live.

I have a friend who tells the story of her mother-in-law, Carolyn, at the drive-through window at the bank. The teller had sent out a pen for her to use in filling out her deposit slip. She had dropped the pen, which had fallen underneath the seat of the car. Carolyn could reach the pen, she could get her fingers around it, but she couldn’t pull her hand out with the pen in it. Finally they made a present to her of the pen so she would go on.

We are caught like that with our grasping, unable to be free. What is the pen under your seat? What is keeping you from moving? Do you need to let it go? Do you need to drive to a safe place in the parking lot of the bank, get out of the car, move the seat, and get the pen? Either way, you get unstuck, and unstuck is where we want to be. Oh, and happy. We want to be happy.

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