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Introduction
to the Wisdom Traditions
Delivered by
Ilona Forgeng, August 24, 2008
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC
Has anyone here noticed these plaques on the wall? Have you wondered why these are here? Where they come from?
Right after the Fellowship moved into its first “home of its own” we gathered a group of artists together to produce these World Religion plaques for the walls. The artists were given rounds of wood and chose a religion. From there, it was up to them. This, when we seldom got more than 15 people at Sunday services. I hope you all are as impressed as I with the quality of what they produced.
The Islam Plaque was done by Fred Zink. He and his wife were early members, but are no longer with us.
Marty Chandler did our labyrinth plaque. The labrynth represents the nature religions, the animistic religions, the primitive religions. The labyrinth is old as time; it is one of the oldest religious symbols, found in Stone Age sites all over Europe.
And Fran Knapp did our Hindu plaque, the Aum, the sacred syllable of the Hindu religion. Aum is the sound of the infinite.
The Buddhist Eight-Spoked wheel, the Dharmachakra, symbolizes the eightfold noble path. It was done by Steve Greer, a talented artist from Jacksonville who was a member at the time.
Paula Urban did the Star of David, Solomon’s Seal or the hexagram. The Star has only recently become the official symbol of Judaism, but has been a Jewish symbol since as early as the 1300’s.
The Yin and the Yang is the symbol used by both Confucists and Taoists. Kerwin Schaeffer did the needlework and I took that and mounted it in the frame. It is a depiction of the unity of opposites. In Chinese, there is no “and;” it is yinyang.
And then Mary Bartlett has created our symbol for Christianity. As Unitarian Christians say, they take Jesus right up to the foot of the cross.
And in the center are the Unitarian and the Universalist symbols that John and I collaborated on, though we often don’t see the Universalist symbol, but just the Unitarian. The off-centered cross represents a religion that honors its Christian origin, but leaves room at the center for other beliefs. As we often say in our closing words, the chalice represents the light of truth, the warmth of community and the fire of commitment.
So, why did we choose the world religions as our symbol? Look at the back of your order of service. See, right below the principles?
The living tradition which we share draws from many sources. And the third one down is
Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual
life.
From the very beginning this fellowship reached out to these other religions for wisdom to inspire us, for truths worth living by, for ideas that are useful to us, worthy of God, and make us a blessing to ourselves and others.
A few months ago I suggested that the worship committee consider doing a series of sermons on the world religions. We have done a smattering of programs, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Judaic, but they did not focus so much on this perspective of looking at them as wisdom traditions.
And guess what? The Worship Committee thought it was such a good idea that they elected me to present this series on the Wisdom Traditions.
Today we begin a series of sermons focusing on wisdom found in these traditions, Wisdom from the world's religions that inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;. We will sift through some of the wisdom teachings and perhaps find meanings that might inspire each of us, ideas that might make us say, “Ah, yes, I’d never thought of it that way.”
There are many reasons to learn about other religions, not the least of which is to help us live in our multicultural society, our cross-cultural world. And assuming we are open minded, there is wisdom in all of these religions, too, truths that have lasted through millennia. Huston Smith said that religions are the winnowers of the world’s wisdom, but he admits that not everything about religion is wise. Karen Armstrong says that religions survive only as long as they are useful. It is up to each of us to determine if what we find will be both useful and wise.
We are going to talk about religion at its best, not as it has been twisted to the uses of fear, anger and exclusion. We will not discuss how Christianity led to the inquisition, or the misuse of Islam that makes murder acceptable in the name of Jihad or the injustice of the caste system of India.
Good religion is always about making us part of a bigger story. The spirit of honest religion is about becoming more human, loving and giving. Good, honest religion is about finding new understandings that call us to personal transformations. The ultimate value of a religion, the ultimate scale by which to judge a religion, is the extent to which it helps us give meaning to our lives, meaning and purpose, and the extent to which it encourages us to live more fully and more honestly, more authentically.
Of course we will talk a little about the history of each religion, and perhaps a little about the details of its worship and mythology, but rather than focusing on the Gods of India (and there are perhaps as many as 3 million of them), we will center our attention on ideas such as Atman and Brahman, the divinity we all share, the meaning of the Hindu greeting of Namaste. We will be looking for those transcendent ideas that will help us understand who we are and who we might be, how we should live our lives and how we can relate to one another.
The sociologist sees religion as that which is of ultimate importance for a person or group and includes such characteristics as symbol, myth, scripture, doctrine, ritual, sacred time and ethics. Religious behavior may reach back as far as 300,000 years, coinciding with the first appearance of early humans, when we begin to see intentional, ritual burials that seem to indicate a belief in something surviving death. Religion came into being because it served certain social and psychological needs. The earliest religions were concerned with survival, with fertility and with the hunt. The earliest religions seem to have been personal, not organized, not collective. It was not until long after the first cities emerged that a priesthood developed. Early religion was largely mythological, full of creation stories, hero sagas and a multiplicity of gods. Then, somewhere around 500 to 600 BCE, philosophy overtook mythology. In what is called the Axial Age, religion changed across Southern Europe and Asia. The foundations of the spiritual and ethical dimensions we recognize in religion today were laid independently and nearly simultaneously.
Somehow in China with Confucius and Lao Tsu, in India with the Upanishads and the Buddha, in the Middle East with the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures and in Greece with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the foundations were laid of the great religions of the world we will be discussing.
How do these world religions relate to each other, how should we see them, what should we draw from them. We could say that after reviewing them all we really should see that one or the other is clearly superior and we must choose that superior religion. Pat Robertson aside, this idea is clearly not likely to appeal to Unitarians.
We could say that all religions are basically alike and that at bottom, all religions really teach the same thing. The differences between the religions are minimal compared to the truths they all communicate. For example, there is some version of the Golden Rule in all major religions. But, in fact, all religions have inherent differences in how they view the world and especially how they view our place and purpose in the world.
Many of us agree with Unitarian Minister Forrest Church’s popular vision of the Cathedral of the World that likens religions to stained glass windows, refracting and reflecting the light of truth that shines through each one. For Forrest Church, the differences are cultural and not part of the essential message of the religion. Like Forrest, we will be looking for the patterns that form this essential message.
In truth, of course, we are all the blind men, trying to understand the elephant.
Eastern religions teach that we are all part of everything and part of each other and our greatest yearning is for reunion with God, or the universe, or creation, truth, or however you choose to define it. They see our souls progressing, growing, becoming more whole and less separate from creation. The Abrahamic religions see us as separate, as sinful and needing outside intervention to overcome our sinful natures. Joseph Campbell has a delightful metaphor for this in the idea of atonement vs. at-one-ment, both spelled the same, atonement for our sins vs. at-one-ment with nature. What do these critical differences make to the way we see the world, we who were brought up in the western tradition, and how would we see ourselves and the world had we been raised thinking of ourselves as part of, rather than apart from, nature? If we thought of ourselves as having the seed of a Buddha within us rather than the sins of Adam?
The eastern religions tend to see time very differently than we in the west do. The eastern concept is of constantly repeating cycles; travel to Benares and you know you are living in eternity. Travel to New York and you are unquestionably in the here and now. But, thanks to the idea of constantly repeating cycles, Indian society has traditionally shown patience with the way things happen to be right now. That patience would never satisfy the western mind for whom tomorrow a better world must be possible. Time is linear to a westerner and as a result we see a progression, we think in terms of progress, even, quite often, of a beginning, a middle and an end. The Indian sees an unending eternity of cycles.
The psychoanalyst, Victor Frankl, said that as human beings, we must find meaning in our lives. What is our purpose on earth. Is there one? The variety of religious definitions of the purpose of life range from “avoid evil” to “increase happiness.” Are we after peace and harmony, helping each other, finding God, serving God, submitting to the will of God, reuniting with God, are we after gaining wealth or gaining nirvana. Or, contrary to my mother, are we really put on this earth to pick up after our children. Or is there no meaning to life but that which we, ourselves bring to it.
What can we learn from a religion whose highest ideal is compassion, what does a religion based on our roles in society and our relations with each other have to teach us? Can we do much better than, “Do justice, honor mercy and love your neighbor?”
How should we react to suffering? Religion attempts to reconcile us to life’s injustices. The Abrahamic religions have many variants on the concept that we suffer simply because it is God’s will and to not accept suffering is to rebel against the will of God. Is suffering beyond our understanding, as Job found? Is suffering in this life a result of the misdeeds of a prior life, or is suffering a sure path to heaven? Can we learn to say, as the Buddha did, that all life is suffering and can we then learn to participate joyfully in the sorrows of life?
What do we expect of an afterlife? Do we, like the atheists, expect to return to nothingness? Like the Hindus, will we return, time after infinite time, working toward final reunion with the ultimate? Like the Christians, will we be judged for all eternity on what we have done in this brief existence? And what does this mean for how we should be living our lives today? “Let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
Interestingly, all religions tell us that we are flawed creatures, we humans. Christianity says we are born with original sin, Islam says we are forgetful of our true nature, Judaism says we constantly miss the mark, in India the flaw is ignorance, in China we are an uncarved block. The Buddha said that we hold too tight to our illusions. But all religions tend to agree that our real flaw is that we put ourselves above others, that we create an in group and an out group. At heart, religions are trying to say that we need to see others as mirrors of ourselves. “Thou art that,” “I-thou.
Huston Smith says that a vital faith is more like a work of art than a cafeteria tray. We will be looking, this next year, over some possible “truths worth living by.” But we are not looking to take a little of this and a little of that to build our personal faith. I hope you will find ideas worth pursuing, worth thinking about, worth sculpting into something which is your own work of art, something you can use to help you become a blessing to yourself and others.
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