The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

UUCS Sermons
Sermon by the Reverend Richard R. Davis

Here’s my version of an ancient story, originally attributed to the Buddha.   “There was once a bamboo acrobat and his student who began going from town to town to perform some amazing tricks they had mastered so they could collect fees from appreciative crowds.   When they arrived in the first town, the master set up his bamboo pole, and called for his student to climb the pole and then stand on his shoulder -  “Come, Medakathalika, climb the pole and stand upon my shoulders.”  The student did as he was bid and the master acrobat advised him “Now, lad, you watch out for me and I’ll watch out for you.  And being thus careful for each other, we’ll perform our tricks, amaze the crowd, come down safely and collect a good fee.” 

What this master said just makes good solid sense, doesn’t it?  We do have to work together and watch out for each other.  There can be some pretty nasty falls in life and it’s good to know that someone is there to catch us if lose our balance.   Such altruism is such a noble thing. 

            But the pupil, Medakathalika, didn’t like this idea.  “No, master, that plan will not work.  Rather, you look after yourself – keep your own balance, and I’ll look after myself – keep my balance, and I think that will be our best strategy for avoiding a mishap.  By keeping my own balance, I will, in effect, be protecting you.  And by keeping your balance, you will, in effect, be protecting me.  Because if you fall, I fall.  If I fall, you fall.”   

The Buddha noted:  “The pupil, Medakathalika, had the right idea.  If we, too, are mindful in the way we live our own lives, striving to maintain a balanced attitude, staying focused on the present moment with an attitude of patience and forbearance, loving kindness and compassion, we will be also protecting others because we are maintaining our own spiritual balance, and this will create a situation in which both you and others are protected.”   

            Many of you have heard a modern variation of this parable many times. Every time you fly, the flight attendants tell you that in case of emergency the oxygen masks may drop down.  If so, they advise, don’t try to put it on your child before you put it on yourself.  Put on your own oxygen mask first, then help those who can’t put theirs on.   You’ve got to make sure you get oxygen to your own brain before you can help others.   It’s important to say this because in our culture it’s ethically counter-intuitive--we tend to confuse being centered with being self centered.  Being centered means keeping calm and balanced, come what may, taking necessary care of yourself so you can then care for others.  Being self centered means that you see yourself as the center of the universe and everything revolves around you – it’s an extremely unbalanced way of being.  

            The point the Buddha made in this parable is as valid today as it was in those ancient times when bamboo acrobats toured the Indian subcontinent.   It’s important for us to maintain our balance as we walk down the path of life because when you fall off balance you can hurt yourself and the fellow life acrobats around you.  Sometimes it seems as though entire societies get off balance (often by overreaching or overreacting to something) and everyone tumbles down in a big painful heap.  

            Sometimes I’ve lost my balance and fallen down, and it was not an edifying spectacle.  I could tell you more, except I’m afraid that if you really knew all about this it would destroy my good reputation, you’d withdraw your love, admiration and support, I’d soon be out of a job, my family would disown me and eventually I’d have to wander the streets as a penniless, friendless beggar until I died of malnutrition and exposure to the harsh elements.  OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  I’ve done things in my life that I’m not especially proud of, but there are no horrific skeletons that would lead to such dire consequences. 

I described this extreme scenario to make a point – most folks have some version of that irrational, nightmarish fear lurking around in some dark corner of the mind – the fear that we are just one or two steps away from being disgraced, ostracized and abandoned, cast into extreme poverty, there to die a painful death.  Shakespeare starts off a sonnet with an image of this common fear: “When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcaste state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless (futile) cries, and look upon myself and curse my fate…” 

The fear of such dreadful possibilities is a primal fear.  Contrariwise, we - at least most of us - have a profound yearning to experience the exact opposite of all that – to experience pleasure instead of pain, gain instead of loss, to be praised instead of blamed, and to have a good reputation instead of a bad one. 

In naming these polar opposites I have just snuck some more ancient Buddhist teaching into my remarks.  The Buddha called these experiential extremes “the eight worldly concerns” (or “the eight vicissitudes.”) that vex the hearts and minds of people of all times and places. 

When I first learned about these eight worldly concerns I was perplexed.  I could see why the fear of pain, loss, criticism and the getting a bad reputation are vexing concerns.  They have knocked me off balance many times.  But I don’t lose any sleep worrying that great pleasures might just come my way, or that I just might get too much money, or be too widely praised or enjoy too a sterling reputation.  I don’t see these as problems.

What I have come to realize is that eight vicissitudes in themselves are not the problem – rather, it’s how we relate to them that is the issue.  If you aren’t careful you can fall so far off balance that the consequence will be a great deal of suffering – anxiety, dread, heartache, addictions, fear, loathing.  Any of these eight conditions can throw a person seriously off balance.

Consider pleasure.  It’s good.  I’m not gonna’ knock it.  There are so many great and wonderful pleasures in life, and I’m not some prune dried ascetic here to tell you it’s a sin to have any fun.  Let there be pleasure.  But pay attention – you can fall off balance here because pleasure is so great and wonderful that you want to grab after it and cling to it forever and ever.  You want always to be high on pleasure of one kind or another – to be tasting delightful food, to experience the orgiastic pleasures of the flesh, the pain free oblivion that drugs can bring, the adrenaline thrills, gambling, whatever.  So you lurch after pleasure again and again, which knocks you off balance and you fall into the traps of addiction, obsessions, unhealthy habits.   You wanted the pleasure to be permanent, to have it always, but this can’t be because nothing is permanent, and knowing this deep down inside, you suffer even in the midst of your pleasure.   

Consider gain.  It’s a good thing.  But if you worship exclusively at the shrine of gain, orient your entire life around getting more and more, you will, over time, become transformed into a clenched fisted, uptight hoarder, a total stranger to the generous impulses that keeps good energy flowing throughout our lives. Especially beware of the love of gain that comes at the expense of others--this causes great suffering in our world.  

Consider praise.   I love to be praised, and I don’t think I’m alone here.  We should genuinely praise one another on a regular basis.  What kind of curmudgeon would deny us this harmless boon?  But inordinate attachment to praise creates suffering, because you will always be seeking to please others rather than being true to yourself, always anxious to jump through any hoop to gain approval. 

Then there’s reputation, or fame.  No one can be faulted for wanting to have a good reputation.  In fact, it’s important for others to have a decent regard for you so that they have a basic trust in who you are.  And yet, where there is inordinate attachment to reputation, truth and freedom are the casualties.  There are so many who never speak out, who do the safe thing rather than the right thing to preserve their standing in a society riddled with ignorance, prejudice and superstition.  Our religious movement – founded by those who thought outside the acceptable theological boxes – wouldn’t even exist if the love of reputation had ruled supreme in their lives.  Excessive love of reputation will indeed cause a person to lose their spiritual balance.  

Now you can see why an ancient sage once said that pleasure, gain, praise and reputation are “worldly concerns,” “vicissitudes.”  They are not inherently harmful, but overreaching for them or clinging to them, results in a serious loss of spiritual balance.        

 Now we come to the four vicissitudes that are easy to regard as such:  facing pain, loss, blame and criticism, and disrepute.  Perhaps we’d like skip over these and pretend that they don’t exist.   But they do exist. These are inevitable realities of life. 

One of the hardest aspects of ministry is seeing people go through pain and suffering and loss – more than I’ve ever had to deal with.  And I often wonder if I’d be able to face it with the same measure of grace and forbearance that I’ve seen in many of you.   Honestly, I don’t feel qualified to give you some little pep talk on facing the great pains, losses and sorrows of life with a smile.   Yet still, we’re all in the same basic boat – in mortal, aging bodies in a world where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune can strike any one of us down.  It can be scary if you think about it too much.  But denying these realities won’t make them go away.  If only insures that you are even more ill equipped to face them when they knock at your door – then you can get completely thrown off balance  Better to consider how you’ll greet these four realities.      

Consider pain.  Thanks to palliative care, there is less of it in our world than in former times.  I’m really grateful those novacaine shots dulled the pain when my dentist performed root canals.   But there are limits here.  Pain has not been banished – everyone experiences it to some degree.  The only question is how will you experience it?  Someone – an anonymous source – has said that “Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional.”  That’s comes perilously close to being the glib pronouncement of someone who hasn’t really known great pain, but I believe it contains more than a grain of truth.  The fear of pain does greatly exacerbate our suffering.  We suffer when we run from inevitable pain, when we try to avoid or deny it at all costs.   It is possible to stay balanced, even in the midst of some pain.  I didn’t say it was easy, but I have faith that it is humanly possible to accept inevitable pain, not to run from it. 

Consider loss.  You and I could lose everything in a flash.  The stock market could crash, your house or apartment could burn down, your car could be stolen and the insurance companies could find a way to weasel out of covering any of this.  You could lose your job, anything you think you possess- health, wealth, loved ones - can be snatched away by cruel fate.  Worrying about such dreadful possibilities creates anxiety.   Anxiety – prolonged, low grade mental anguish.  It’s no fun and it solves no problems. Our classic cultural response is to deny or suppress anxiety – go shopping, eat, get drunk, distract oneself.  As Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron has noted, this is like trying to clean your dirty dishes by adding more food onto them.   She recommends instead that you consciously acknowledge your feelings of anxiety, realize that there is much that none of us can control.  In this process you come to realize that being anxious about such potential losses doesn’t help.  By observing the workings of your mind you come to realize that our fears and anxieties are not realities – just worst case scenarios, catastrophic, self condemnatory thoughts that we unquestioningly accept as the gospel truth.   Yet there is another way.  When you simply observe your fears and anxieties, you begin to see that they are just conditioned thought patterns.  By not running away from them but rather, realizing their essential insubstantiality, you can regain your balance (focusing on your breath helps) and learn to face each moment of life as it comes. 

Consider Criticism and Blame.  Even if you do you very best you will not avoid being criticized at some point or another.   Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, Gandhi and any other saint or sage you can mention has felt the brunt of criticism, so what makes any of us think we’ll be spared?   So what do you do in the face of this?  Two classic responses are most typical – you can get defensive, angry enough to launch a counterattack: “How dare someone criticize us!”   Or we can collapse into abject self reproach:  “They’re right.  I am a [choose one or more] weak, stupid, incompetent, selfish, sinful person.”   Criticism can sting so much, and it’s easy for it to knock us off balance.  At such a moment it’s good to remember that you’re neither perfect nor a hopeless case.  There are times when honest criticism is a disguised blessing that will help you improve in some way, painful though it may be at the moment.  And there are times when a person is just lashing out and you were in the line of fire.  If you can remember to stay calm – not launch the counterattack or beat up on yourself, you can keep your balance. 

Finally, consider reputation.  It’s reasonable to want to avoid having a bad  reputation, but this can easily degenerate into obsessing about keeping up appearances.  The perennial question haunts us: “What will others think?”  It can be a concern that hangs around our necks like a ball and chain.  As with fear and anxiety it helps simply to note this inhibiting fear.  That mere recognition of this fear will, over time, diminish its power.  It’s also helpful to remember that as Oscar Wilde - I believe it was - once noted, “You would be less concerned about what others think of you if you knew how seldom they did.”  

Over two and a half thousand years ago a remarkable sage looked deeply and thoughtfully at the human condition.  He recognized these eight ways any of us can fall off balance.  Isn’t it interesting how little has changed in this regard since that time?    Pleasure, pain, loss, gain, praise, blame, good repute, ill repute – these are the facts of all our lives.  They can come to you at any time.  They can throw you off balance. Either you fall forward by lunging after pleasure, gain, praise, good reputation and becoming inordinately attached to these or you can fall backward by recoiling in fear, horror and distaste from the pain, loss, blame and judgment that comes into most every life.   And when you do lose your balance and fall either way, there is some form of suffering:  dread, anguish, anxiety, fear, hate, loathing, greed, despair.  You suffer and so do others around you when you fall off balance.

There is much in life, such as these eight worldly concerns, that lies beyond our control.  Yet we are much more skilled life acrobats than we might give ourselves credit for – we actually can practice staying balanced in the midst of this wondrous life, observing the pleasure and the pain, the gain and the loss, the praise and blame.  The more you practice this spiritual balancing act, the better you get.  You see it all come, you see it all flow by.  It is all transitory, no need to let it knock you off balance because whatever it is, it will pass.   Come what will, come what may, we can choose – that choice really is ours – to stay grounded in this present moment of life with an inner calm, compassion and joy that the vicissitudes of life cannot shake.