Sermon given by Rev. Frank Clarkson, October 24, 2021

Last week I talked about letting down your guard—that it’s in our nature to want to protect and defend ourselves, but in doing so, we cut ourselves off from goodness and possibility. The invitation is to trust that when you take the risk of making yourself vulnerable, you will be held, will be supported, will find liberation and even joy in your daring to stretch and grow. This is my faith, and it has been my experience too.

Recently, in an online gathering, I shared some words from a German Zen master about this way of vulnerability. Karl von Durkheim said if you’re trying to grow and deepen, and you fall upon hard times, then you will seek out someone who will encourage you to risk yourself, rather than turning to one who will comfort you and encourage your old self to survive. “So that you may endure the suffering,” he wrote, “and pass courageously through it, thus making of it a ‘raft that leads to the far shore.’”

The inner life, the spiritual life, it is so interesting and mysterious! It is both a journeying and a sitting still; it requires effort and attention, but if you try too hard, then nothing seems to happen. 

The Buddhist tradition seems to understand and inhabit these paradoxes better than the Western traditions many of us grew up in. Buddhism reminds us that striving only gets us so far; that it helps to let go of our attachments and trust, to stop trying so hard to control things, and rather, relax and let things happen. That you can teach your mind to work in more helpful ways.

After I shared those words about making our suffering “a raft that leads to the far shore,” one of the people in that gathering sent us the essay by Pema Chodron from which today’s reading came:

“When I was about six years old I received an essential teaching from an old woman sitting in the sun. I was walking by her house one day feeling lonely, unloved and mad, kicking anything I could find. Laughing, she said to me, ‘Little girl, don’t you go letting life harden your heart.’

“Right there, I received this pithy instruction: we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice…”

There is so much that can make us anxious or afraid, right? So much out there these days! And there is plenty in here too—hurtful experiences, unhelpful thoughts, old patterns that can be hard to change, old stories that no longer serve us.

Pema Chodron invites us to head into the tender and vulnerable places. To remember and trust that there is a place that’s beyond our ideas of right and wrong, that’s deeper than the dualities we often get trapped within. There is this soft spot within us, within every one of us, a place of compassion and connection and wholeness. 

It’s easy to get worn down by life. To become hardened, embittered, closed off. You can sense this in folks who have been hurt and disappointed so much that they’ve build a shell around themselves to try and protect against any more pain.

And there are other folks who seem to radiate peace and well-being; who have a glow about them, and a gratitude for life. These people have had their share of pain and suffering too, but somehow it has opened them up, made them grateful for the gifts in this moment, and this day. I remember a dying man I met once in the hospital, and what he said: “Even with all its struggles, life is so beautiful.”

We have a choice about how we’re going to respond to the events of our lives. Are you going to go hard or soft? Rather than covering over your soft spot, the invitation is to get to know it; to cultivate and nurture it, like a garden. So it can help you to live a richer and more compassionate life.

Buddhism names four noble truths, that are called noble because they help one to be spiritually aware and free. These four truths are that life involves suffering, that suffering is caused by our attachments, that release from suffering is possible. and there’s a way to get from here to there. Buddhism understands that the problem is here, in our minds. We have all these ideas of how things are supposed to be! But life doesn’t seem to care about our plans!

I remember when I was a new parent, and I was still learning how to attach a cloth diaper to a little baby. One day, it was a particularly messy diaper change, and all of a sudden I had poop all over my hands. And this made me kind of mad! But then a voice came to me, and said, “Who are you, to think you should’t get poop on your hands? Get over yourself.”

Who knows where that voice came from? Maybe it was the presence of that little baby, that little miracle in my midst, that little Buddha who had stolen my heart, even though he was capable of creating such pungent and copious amount of poop! 

Moments of insight do come to us. Maybe even glimpses of enlightenment. Sometimes in surprising places. Buddhism reminds us that life involves suffering, that you don’t have to get mad or feel resentful, it is what is is. And as you develop a spirit of acceptance, of equanimity, you find that little things don’t need to ruffle you so much, you can even have a sense of humor about them. Poop happens, as they say. 

I was listening to a podcast the other day, with a spiritual director and teacher named Sandra Smith. She was talking about how, when something happens that bothers or upsets us, we can react strongly and get hooked, and this can lead us down a slippery slope. But there’s another way, Sandra says. “The shift, for all of us, is from fear to love.”

She’s developed a practice that helps keep her from getting hooked by life’s challenges. When something upsets her, Sandra says, “If I can drop the story about why I’m hurt… can simply feel it, can stay with the physicality of that emotion for 90 seconds…  without attaching it to a story, simply staying with the felt sense of the emotion, because each of us is made of compassion, the body, without any effort on our part except stabilizing attention for 90 seconds, will shift that energy to compassion, to virtue. And then the emotion no longer controls us. We get our higher selves back, and we’re sitting in compassion. It has saved me, many times, to practice that” (Heart of the Enneagram podcast, S2 E1).

This is what Pema Chodron is talking about in our reading today: that we put up defenses to shield and protect ourselves from pain, because we are afraid of getting hurt. And these walls get fortified by our feelings and our stories, the histories we have, particularly with those we love and are close to. But we have this soft spot, which she says “is like a crack in these walls we erect. It’s a natural opening in the barriers we create when we’re afraid. With practice we can learn to find this opening. We can learn to seize that vulnerable moment…”

The invitation is to let down our guard and open ourselves to the gifts that are right here. To remember that we already have what we need; that it’s in here. We have this heart of compassion, this soft spot. Everyone does. And when we lead from that place, then life is better for us all. 

“Take my hand,” Thich Nhat Hanh says,

We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.
Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.
Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.
Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety. 

Earth will be safe when we feel in us enough safety.

Amen.