The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

"Which Zone are You In?"

The Reverend Richard R. Davis -- September 2008

            Several decades ago as I was nearing the natural end a late adolescent journey through the arid wasteland of nihilism (a negative faith in nothing) – I became good friends and roommate with a Chinese engineering student from India .  He recommended I read a book on Buddhism.  I did – and then I continued reading more books on the subject, and I was enthralled – here was a religious philosophy that was grounded in human experience and awareness.  It held out the glowing promise of enlightenment – escaping the bondage of individual ego, transcending all sorrow and suffering to enter a realm infinite freedom, bliss, compassion.  Heaven on earth – that sounded pretty good to me.  Soon enough, I realized that if was serious about attaining enlightenment I needed to stop reading books and begin a practice of meditation.  I did, and it was not easy.  After each painful fifteen minute session with my roommate (the sitting position was hard on my knees) I would do a mental self check and ask myself "am I enlightened yet?"  The answer was always "no, you haven't broken through to the other side yet."  Still, I did notice feeling a bit more calm and clear.

            But what I really wanted was to be enlightened, to live in the realm of never ending spiritual bliss.  I was tired of not being enlightened, of having to deal with anxiety and despair and pain and loneliness.  I wanted to live my life in paradise, not a vale of tears.  I got rid of most of my few possessions, said goodbye to my friends, hitchhiked across the continent and became a general member (lay practitioner) at the Zen Buddhist Center in San Francisco .  (This was the late sixties – early seventies - when a lot of idealistic youth were dropping out of society and choosing alternative paths.) 

            Now instead of fifteen minutes of meditation a day there were several forty minute periods every day.  Every couple of months there was a sesshin where we meditated for long stretches in an austere, unheated hall patrolled by serious minded monks and priests in black robes and with shaved heads who did not tolerate squirming.  It was the hardest thing I'd ever done and the payoff was what?  Not a whole lot for me.  I just wasn't that good at meditating.  I couldn't master the posture, I couldn't quiet my mind, I couldn't wait for each forty minute period of meditation to end.  For me the word sesshin (intensive sessions of meditation) became roughly the equivalent of what the word "inquisition" would have been to a heretic in medieval Spain – nothing but the prospect of prolonged pain.   My yearning for enlightenment had been strong but eventually my aversion to suffering and discomfort got the upper hand.  I had tried – for several years, in fact - to make the Zen Buddhist team, but eventually, I sadly concluded that I didn't belong in the spiritual major leagues at that point in my life.

            So I went on what I called a "Dharma vacation."  (Dharma is a Buddhist term for the true teaching, the body of wisdom – and I took an indefinite leave of absence from seeking to master this).  Which is to say, I slacked off  – way, way off.  In my heart of hearts I did not abandon my core spiritual convictions but shoved them aside.   My chosen path of growth had proven too rocky, steep, arduous, stressful.  I chose to let go of my spiritual discipline and spend all the time I could in my comfort zone, doing the things I liked.  I floundered some, but fortunately, my life did not go completely down the tubes.  Beethoven was still there to keep me from getting too lost.  Then, too, I did go back to school and completed my undergraduate degree and after exploring various vocational options finally acknowledged a calling to the Unitarian Universalist ministry.  I attended a liberal Christian theology school – usually as the sole UU in a student body of several hundred - and gained a good intellectual and practical foundation for the practice of ministry, but this training was very academically oriented.  Spiritual discipline was not part of the curriculum, and it was no longer a part of my life.   I grew intellectually and I learned, as a hospital chaplain, to embody the role of minister.  But my chosen spiritual discipline lay neglected, gathering dust in the back corners of my mind.  

            Now my story might sound somewhat exceptional and exotic, but it's really not.  It follows a fairly common pattern among people who choose various paths of growth or self improvement.   A few years ago a similar pattern widely manifested among Christians in America when it became popular to ask the question:  "What would Jesus do?"   This question became so widespread that it was summarized on a bracelet as an acronym:  WWJD?   This question is meant to serve as a spiritual reference point that can be asked as you walk your daily path and decisions need to be made about what to do, how to act or not act as you face life's many complexities.  The question was bound to lead many people to the same place I ended up.  You see, in my early adult years the implicit question that guided me in my life was "What would Buddha do?"  Buddha and Jesus, although they came from vastly different cultural and religious contexts, seem to have had quite a bit in common.  (Indeed, there are several books out showing parallel ideas and sayings of these two spiritual giants.) 

            Therein lies the problem.  The Buddha and Jesus are giants – or at least that's how we envision them (who really knows what they were really like?), and so as far as we're concerned they were spiritual giants.  Now, unless you're self deluded, when you stand up next to one of the greatest spiritual giants in human history you're probably going to feel pretty puny, inadequate, unworthy.  And if you set an ambitious goal of growing to where you can see eye to eye with your spiritual idol you're most likely setting yourself up for failure.  After all, what Jesus and Buddha and other such spiritual luminaries did was radical and revolutionary.  They may serve as good reminders of humankind's spiritual potential but does that mean they are they good models for the kind of day to day living we must do?  The Buddha left a position of comfort and prestige (he was a prince), abandoned his wife and son, shed all his possessions and went off to meditate in the forest.  Jesus left his family, too, and went about challenging the status quo.  After his first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth they tried to throw him off a cliff, and after a short three year wandering ministry they finally did nail him to a cross. 

            I wonder how many people there are who in the first blush of youth used to ask themselves "what would Jesus do?" who now just push this question to the back of their minds because they feel that whatever Jesus would do is beyond them. After all, how many of us are willing to give away all we have, take to the open road and preach a gospel of love, facing all sorts of dangers and uncertainties or wander off alone into the forest to meditate?  People would think you were a nut if you did this, and they might be right. 

            Here's a thought.  If Jesus or Buddha were around today I honestly don't think they'd want us to go around asking ourselves what THEY would do.  They might appreciate the intent of this question but say that it is framed wrong.  The question we should ask ourselves in not "what would Buddha or Jesus or Mohammad do?  Each person should ask, "Given who I am as a unique individual, living in my particular historical, cultural, social context, what should I be doing now to live a meaningful life?    

The underlying premise of such questions as "what would Jesus/ Buddha/ Gandhi/ or whoever is your ideal person/ do?"  is that you're not good enough, that you should completely ignore who you are.  Is that what's called for when you take some spiritual journey or aim for some goal of growth, self improvement – that you ignore who you are and instantly try to become someone you are not?   So many have tried and failed to do this and walked away from the whole enterprise feeling like abject failures. 

  And that's a real shame because Buddha and Jesus and other saints, sages and prophetic leaders can be good guides – their teachings, their wisdom, their courage and resolution can shed light on our paths, showing us the way to lives of love, service and compassion.  But each of us has to walk our own path – not someone else's path. 

As we walk your own unique path there are three distinct directions you might choose.  When baseball great Yogi Berra used to give directions to his house he would say, "when you get to the fork in the road, take it."   People thought Yogi was a little dense, but in fact, either direction you took would wind around to Yogi's house, so it didn't matter which path you chose.  The direction you take on this three pronged fork in the road does matter – they lead to different places entirely.  You can choose to go along as always, not striving to change or grow because it seems that it would require more effort than you're willing to expend, and it would make you feel uncomfortable and you really don't want to leave your comfort zone.  So you choose to stay there – in your unchanging comfort zone.   Or, you can swing too the opposite extreme and decide that you need a complete moral/spiritual/physical makeover and aim to make radical changes in your life – this puts you in the stress zone because extreme and sudden change is very stressful.

The problem with the comfort zone is that it shrinks over time as the world around you changes.  You stagnate there.  The problem with the stress zone is that it demands too much of us, which can activate feelings of fear and dread and a fight or flight syndrome kicks in – which can send you scurrying back to the comfort zone to lick your wounds, have some ice cream, veg out, take a Dharma vacation.  Often, as in my earlier experience with meditation, you can bounce back and forth from one of these zones to the other.  (An aside:  Sometimes you do have to go to the stress zone for necessary change.  You don't slowly cut down on heroin or methamphetamine use.  You have to quit.  As an old proverb puts it:  "it doesn't work to cross a twenty foot chasm in two ten foot leaps). 

So what's the third alternative to the comfort and stress zones?   Here's what I've discovered.  Even though I pretty much abandoned the practice of meditation for a number of years I always remembered certain times in my earlier life when it had had a truly beneficial impact upon me, but the severity of the discipline as I was trying to impose upon myself scared me away – I was trying to be like the historical Buddha and I'm not.   

Then I entered the ministry twenty plus years ago – officially taking on the role of spiritual and religious leader.   Much of what I planned to preach about had to do with being calm, centered and compassionate as we face the turmoil of life – because I really do believe that's important.  So the question naturally presented itself:  Was I going to practice at least some of what I preached or not?  I had to decide.  I did.  I opted to leave my comfort zone, avoid jumping into the stress zone, but rather, enter the stretch zone.  That is, I made a vow to meditate at least 30 minutes every day, come hell or high water.  Only physical illness could be used as an excuse not to fulfill this daily commitment.  It was a good thing for me to do.  In a life full of a good deal of folly and mistakes, this was surely one of the wisest decisions I've ever made.  Over the years this practice has stretched me – helped me grow.  Now I am much more likely to meditate at least an hour a day, usually more, because it's what I genuinely want to do.   This year I plan of attending some retreats, too. 

It's good to make a solid commitment to entering the stretch zone in whatever arena is most fitting for you – it may involve spiritual, physical or intellectual exercise or counseling for personal growth or striving for professional growth or spending more time organizing your life or serving the community or learning some new skill – do what's congruent with who you are - stretch into the new area that is inviting you in now.  Living in the stretch zone means always looking at your life and keeping your heart and mind open to the possibilities for gentle expansion and continual growth – not once a year but often.   The stretch zone is where true growth and creativity takes place. 

Let me now confess that what I have been saying this morning can be summed up in one word:  "Kaizen" – originally a Buddhist term that translates "renew the heart and make it good."  It's the practice of making small and continual improvements in your life – of living in the stretch zone.  It's very congruent with a Unitarian Universalist perspective.  It is said that we are often asked where we stand – to which we respond that we do not stand at all, we move.  That is to say, we stretch and grow as new opportunities, new insight, new wisdom appears before us.  So, have a good, long stretch.