All About Me and Nothing About Me
Sermon by Steve Edington
March 11, 2007
On this Sunday one year ago-which fell on March 12 - I did a "Happy Birthday Jack Kerouac" sermon as that was his actual birth date. My only difficulty in writing it was deciding what to leave out so it wouldn't get too terribly long. As this Sunday approached, to my surprise really, I had several people ask me if I was going to do another Kerouac sermon this time around. What I couldn't tell, with some of them anyway, was if they were asking because they wanted to be here for it; or that they were going to stay home if I did. But no, I don't plan on initiating a Second Sunday-in-March-is-Kerouac-Sunday tradition. I'll stick to talking about Jesus on Palm Sunday and let it go at that.
However, as I rolled the notion around a bit, I did come up with an alternative idea for the second Sunday in March. How about if I use this Sunday to build a sermon around the life and work of certain other writers or poets who were a part of what is generally termed the Beat Generation writers? That might work. I did use a good deal of my sabbatical time - as I parceled it out over the past few years - writing a book on the subject. This way you can see what I was up to back during that time.
So, when I looked at the subject I'd already chosen for this Sunday - before I came up with this notion - I decided that the writer who does the best job of addressing it is Gary Snyder. Mr. Snyder, who is approaching his 77th birthday, lives in east-central California near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He published his first book of poems in 1950 when he was 20 years old; and his latest collection of essays, titled Back on the Fire, came out about a month ago. His short volume of poetry, Turtle Island, won him the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry back in 1975. When we initiated our Green Sanctuary program two weeks ago, Rick Branscomb read one of the poems from the Turtle Island collection for our Words for Reflection. Gary Snyder is an ardent, and politically active, environmentalist and a near life-long scholar and practitioner of Zen Buddhism.
So, with that brief introduction, I'm going to keep Gary in the wings right now, and bring him on a bit later, so I can finally get to my actual sermon topic which is "All About Me and Nothing About Me." I know that's not the title I put in the Newsletter and which ran in yesterday's paper - which was something about Strong Ego and No Ego. When I realized that that title didn't even make a whole heck of lot of sense to me, I figured I needed a new one.
It's all about me and nothing about me. I've come to believe that one of the keys to living a balanced and meaning-full life lies in learning how to live in that very paradox; in that mix between having a strong personal center and a strong personal focus, while also knowing that the life of the world and universe in no way revolves around you. It is the same paradox Jesus of Nazareth spoke of when he said, "Whoever will lose his (or her) life shall find it." It is passages like these, by the way, that lead me believe that Jesus was really a Zen Buddhist Master several centuries before Zen Masters were called Zen Masters. You can come back on Palm Sunday to hear me expand on that one.
I'll offer a personal example of my sermon title, which I hope does not come off as being too odd or too depressing. Among the times when I feel the most focused and centered, is when I'm right in the act conducting a funeral or memorial service. It is one of the things that clearly goes with the territory of this career and calling I'm in. I know the reason this type of example comes to mind right now is because over the past five or six weeks I've conducted three such services, here in this room, under three very different circumstances when it came to how the death occurred. I plan these services usually in consultation with the family. Other persons are sometimes involved in it, but I'm the one who attends to the overall flow of the service. And when I look out at those who are in these pews I can feel the attention centering in right here in a way that let's me know that I'd better know who I am and what I'm doing. In that sense, what is going on is about me.
But in an equally real sense what's happening in such a setting has absolutely nothing to do with me at all. I'm only here to be a vehicle, or a channel of sorts, for those who need to both grieve a loss as well as honor and celebrate a life that has touched their lives in any number of ways. What is really happening in such a moment is what's going on in the thoughts, the minds, and the hearts of those in front of me.
It's a little hard to describe, but at a time when I feel the most centered and focused and self-aware - because nothing else is cluttering up my head right then except for what I'm doing and saying right then - is also the very same time when I'm absorbed in a moment that goes way, way beyond, and leaves well behind, who I am and what I'm doing. About me and nothing at all about me all at the same time - a true Zen moment, and one of those moments when I at least momentarily grasp the truth of losing one's life in order to find it.
You do not, of course, have to conduct a funeral to have such an experience. Most of you, I would guess, can identify moments when you were so into the moment that you didn't even know you were in the moment. This, I believe, is the point of various kinds of Buddhist meditation or chanting. It is to clear the mind to the point that you are both deeply self-aware, while also - at least in that moment - having gotten completely over yourself.
We do not, because we cannot, live such moments in perpetuity. Listen to these lines from a book that attempts to interpret Buddhism for people like me who need to have it interpreted for them: "Who are you when you drink the first mouthful of some fresh tea? Unless you're squandering the moment, you're communing with tea. Just Ahhh, ever thus. Tea moment. (But) the self you're so familiar with won't necessarily quit its day job and vanish overnight...You'll always be the unique person you are."
Those lines are from a book called The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism. When I saw it on bookstore shelf my first thought was, "What self-respecting Buddhist scholar would put his or her name on a book with a title like that?" Then I picked it up and discovered that I knew the author! He's a fellow named Gary Gach - and doggone if I haven't actually shared a pot of tea with him. I didn't quite attain the "Tea Moment" he describes, but ours was a very pleasant meeting; and, ah... most of our conversation was about such very worldly matters as to how to promote and sell our respective books. As Gary says, the self you generally carry around doesn't quit its day job just because it provides you with a Zen moment now and then. But Mr. Gach is a very good Buddhist scholar and practitioner. So I stood there in the bookstore and felt like I owed him an apology for thinking snide things about him before I realized who it was I was thinking snide thoughts about.
But such moments - call them Zen Moments or Tea Moments or All-About-Me-and-Nothing-About-Me Moments - do offer an insight into living meaningfully in the world that goes beyond the experience of the moment itself. It has to do with living in the push and pull between two countervailing truths. One truth is that life is to be taken seriously, by which I mean being aware of how you are living it, of how you are attending to all that life demands of you, being aware of how your actions as well as your very being are affecting others as well as the earth upon which you walk - all of that sort of conscientious thinking and acting and being.
The other, countervailing, truth to be appreciated is that as far as the universe is concerned it doesn't really matter one whit whether I'm here or not. The world will do as it pleases. When I keep those two countervailing truths in balance I find I can feel very strongly and passionately involved in the life I'm living while also having a good laugh at myself for taking it all so seriously.
On that note I'm going to bring Gary Snyder back in here. I guess the subtitle of this sermon could be "Two Buddhists Named Gary - Gach and Snyder." From what I've been able to learn of his life and work Gary Snyder seems to be one of those people who can keep those two truths I've just mentioned in balance. By way of a very quick biographical sketch, Snyder was raised in some very rural areas of the Pacific Northwest, mostly in Oregon. He worked in logging camps in his early days, as a number of his poems reflect. He published his first book of poems while a student at Reed College. He worked as a fire lookout for the National Forest Service until being black-listed during the McCarthy Era as a member of a Communist-front organization due to his very brief membership the National Maritime Union, which he only joined in order to get a three month job on a merchant ship. Such was the national climate in the early 1950s.
Snyder came to the Bay Area to study Asian languages at Berkeley in the mid 1950s, and then went to live in Japan for a time in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Kyoto. Back in the United States he was able to make a living as a poet and lecturer on environmental issues especially after the publication of Turtle Island. He eventually came onto the faculty at the University of California at Davis, before retiring, but not really retiring, to the rural area of California where he now lives. He was first introduced to the wider world clear back in 1958 as the central character in Jack Kerouac's novel The Dharma Bums as Japhy Ryder.
All of that by way of a very roundabout introduction to a poem of his that I'll read as I think it speaks well to living in and living out the two truths I spoke about a few minutes ago. Snyder wrote this in November of 1973 after testifying before a United States congressional committee on behalf of a piece of environmental legislation. The poem is titled It Pleases and it is part of the Turtle Island collection.
Far above the dome
Of the capitol -
It's true!
A large bird soars
Against white cloud,
Wings arced,
Sailing easy in this
Humid Southern sun-burned
breeze -
the dark suited policeman
watches tourist cars -
And the center, The center of power is nothing! Nothing here. Old white domes, Strangely quiet people,
Earth-sky-bird patterns
Idly interlacing
The world does what it pleases.
Gary Snyder comes clear across the country to advocate before a legislative body on behalf of an earth and a world that he feels deeply and passionately connected to. And then he comes out and looks up and sees that the real center of power is somewhere beyond his human effort which he continues to take seriously nonetheless. "Earth, sky, bird patterns idly interlacing. The world does what it pleases."
This is a stance I try to maintain - sometimes doing a better job of it than others. That is to say, focusing my personal energies on living as meaningfully as I can while also knowing that I am completely contained in a Larger process, a Larger Life, that does what it pleases.
I'm going to wrap this up with yet another poem from another poet I've been spending a lot of time with lately. This past week I finally finished the book on our UU poet, troubadour, and minister Ric Masten that I've been working on for the past year or so. There's still a lot of tweaking and editing to be done, but the content part is completed. Ric approaches the topic I've been discussing today by saying be both believes and does not believe in personal free choice. Sure, we can, and we do, make finite choices about what we want to do and who we want to be; but in a much broader sense, he maintains, we live a life that has chosen us. I'll let his poem, which he has somewhat ironically titled Master of Ceremonies speak for itself. It was Ric's request, which I was happy to grant, that our book close with this poem:
Master of Ceremonies
I refuse to believe in personal free choice it feels like I have it but when I back away from something I have chosen it always turns out that the choice I made was based on something I didn't choose.
I arrived predetermined gifts, and talents, DNA, IQ, disposition all of which begat the artist that begat the actor/playwright that begat the troubadour that begat the poet the begat the minister adding up to the master of ceremonies I am now
I ask myself how lucky can you be? able to make a good livelihood by assisting the creation of unforgettable moments for audience and congregation but most of all for the couples I've danced with on the beaches and rocky promontories that grace the Big Sur coast Ethan and Kathryn "I now pronounce you husband and wife" and by saying so help shape the future for someone who doesn't believe that my choices are free I rejoice in the life that has chosen me.
We make choices that are about us - while also living lives that are chosen in ways that are not about us at all. Such is the yin/yang of living itself.
Our closing hymn is a poetic adaptation of the well-known 13th chapter of the New Testament book of First Corinthians - sometimes called the "love chapter". It gets read at a lot of weddings. What it's saying is that for all we attain in life - for all that's about us; it really counts for little unless we are giving to, and showing love for, that which is beyond us as well.
Stephen D. Edington
March 11, 2007
