No Thanks, I’ll Walk
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 19, 2017
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
It is 2:00am and I’m awakened for the third, fourth, maybe fifth time by the sound of a pager beeping. Rolling over to turn on the small light next to the bed, I pick up and glance at the pager, the tiny screen illuminated with a series of letters and numbers, codes and stats related to the incoming trauma. Rubbing my eyes, I get out of bed, straighten out the clothes I was sleeping in, put on my clerical collar and try to tame the stubborn cowlick at the back of my head I always wake up with. Then, with pager, phone, pad and pencil… and a tiny Bible tucked into the various pockets of my sports jacket, I leave the the small on-call chaplain’s room and head for the elevator.
As I descend from the 10th floor down to the 1st I wonder what awaits me. I mean, I know what the trauma is, but I don’t know how calm or chaotic the ER will be, how clean or gory, who else will be present or need to be contacted.
Walking down the long hall to the trauma wing of the ER I feel like a much less glamorous and not nearly as well compensated version of those actor in action movies who walk slowly and calmly as a huge explosion or some other catastrophe erupts behind them. There’s another difference too between those cool movie actors and I. They’re always shown walking away from the explosion or catastrophe, I’m walking into it.
Once I get there I might encounter an anxious doctor who overstep his bounds and pressures me to pray with someone prematurely, before I’ve had a chance to hear their fears or concerns. Or a distraught family member might rail against God specifically… or religion more broadly… in the face of tragedy. Still others might praise or express gratitude for my calming presence or attentive listening while still another might criticize me for not doing or saying more to make them or others feel better.
While the specifics of the experience just described might be limited to that of an on-call hospital chaplain, there contains within this story a far more universal experience: the reality of ever-changing conditions and experiences. Indeed, we all get paged, so to speak, in life… and often. Which is to say, we don’t really know from moment to moment, day to day, year to year, what might come to or befall us…or what others will think of us or our actions. Do we?
For this reason, the Buddha taught life is suffering. Not because it is always horrible, but because of its transient, ever changing nature.
Enter the monk from our first reading. Who, regardless of whether greeted with praise or pelted with scorn, is able to emerge from the fleeting experiences of life and shifting, conditional opinions of others, a free man. But how?
Think for moment when you have experienced praise or scorn, or received good or difficult news and the thoughts and feelings that arose from it. What happened next? Chances are most of us labeled our experience, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant and then attempted to grasp or push it away as if it were something solid that could be held or pushed away.
When we do this we unwittingly accept a ride that hurtles us toward a clash with reality. Yet, as the Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg (In her book Lovingkindness) notes, “No one in this world experiences only pleasure and no pain, and no one experiences only gain and no loss. When we open ourselves to this truth, we discover that there is no need to hold onto or push away.” In other words, we can decline the ride, saying, “No thanks, I’ll walk.”
This is precisely what we see in the story of the monk. Accepting that external conditions are always changing, that no one experiences only pleasure or pain, the monk neither holds nor pushes away the praise or scorn of the people. Ultimately, his freedom is not dependent upon his ability to control life’s unceasing flow of experiences, their variety or content, or the changing opinions of others, but on his capacity to remain grounded in reality and be present to whatever comes his way. In this he exhibits profound equanimity.
Equanimity is both a state and a practice. As a state it may be defined as, “psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind.” (Wikipedia) The practice of equanimity is the intentional engagement in activities which serve to cultivate and promote the state of equanimity.
Equanimity is considered an important or essential virtue in many faith and philosophical traditions including the three Abrahamic faiths, the Baha’i faith, Hinduism, Buddhism and Stoicism. For Unitarian Universalists is directly relates to to our capacity to deeply engage and live into several of our seven principles including “the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and justice, equity and compassion in human relations.”
Sharon Salzburg calls equanimity a gift… a response to the question, “How can a human heart-my heart or your heart-absorb the continual, unremitting contrasts of this life without feeling shattered and thinking we cannot bear it?”
It is not difficult to imagine the state of equanimity, in which one is “undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena” a gift, but where do we find it?
There’s no equanimity store. It isn’t something we can just buy. Nor is it something we can read a book or listen to a podcast or two about and expect to “get it.” Equanimity is a gift we cultivate. A gift we give and receive through its practice.
It begins with an intention to live into a question Sharon Salzburg invites, “What do we want most fundamentally in this life, and do we achieve it through trying to control the endless change of circumstance, or do we achieve it through learning to let go?” She then reminds us, “The practice of equanimity is learning deeply what it means to let go.”
Fortunately for us, in life there is no shortage of opportunities to let go.
I’ve shared before that when I first began to explore my call to ministry I told my mentor I couldn’t possibly go forward in the process unless I knew precisely how I would get from a guy sensing a call to ministry to being an ordained minister with a job. No surprises! It wasn’t until I let go of that condition, that the path began to unfold. And each experience…or surprise (and there were surprises!)… along that path, whether it seemed good, bad or neither at the time, helped create the present moment that has me standing here before your today.
Still, how many of us have felt sad, disappointed or angry because something unexpected came up that caused a change in plans or something we were looking forward to or hoped for didn’t turn out as we expected or happen at all?
And how many of us have, at the start of a vacation…or even the weekend… already begun to mourn its eventual end?
And what about our relationships…
How many times have we been dragged into a sullen or anxious mood because of someone else’s words or actions?
Indeed how many of us find our mood dependent on the approval or disapproval of others? Or the action or inaction of others?
How might such experiences be different if we’re able to let go of the attachments we cling to that so often condition our happiness or tolerance for change?
Within the last six months I’ve re-watched two movies I haven’t seen in a long time, “Good Will Hunting” and “Ordinary People.” Both movies feature powerful scenes that happen to take place in a therapist’s office in which the main character experiences a breakthrough by finally letting go of his struggle to control his experience and allow himself to instead be present to it. Something easier said than done, especially when we know, as Judd Hirsch’s character says to Timothy Hutton’s in “Ordinary People”, “A little advice about feeling, kiddo. Don't expect it always to tickle.”
Yet, equanimity not only helps us connect more fully to the depth and breadth of human experience, it also allows us to be present to pleasure or pain, however intense, without anxiously grasping or pushing away either.
“Equanimity’s strength,” says Sharon Salzberg, “derives from a combination of understanding and trust. It is based on understanding that the conflict and frustration we feel when we can’t control the world doesn’t come from our inability to do so but rather from the fact that we are trying to control the uncontrollable.”
It takes time and a lot of trial and error to absorb this understanding and arrive that deep level of trust. It also takes a sense of humor.
I’m reminded of a good friend from seminary who, upon arriving late to morning prayer, explained that as she was driving in she was practicing a song intended to promote inner calm, the lyrics to which are “When I breathe in, I’ll breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love.” As she was singing, breathing in peace…another driver on the highway cut her off…and instead of love she breathed out an expletive accompanied by a hand gesture.
My own practice reminds me, perhaps most of all, equanimity takes patience. A lot of equanimity’s letting go is in fact a process of unlearning. Our conditioned reactiveness to the constant vicissitudes of life took a long time for us to acquire or learn. We have a lifetime of teachers, time and energy invested in building and maintaining our defenses. In the face of these, it is helpful to again hear the words of our second reading from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”,
I exist as I am, that is enough.
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content.
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me,
And that is myself.
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand
Or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness,
I can wait.
“Change alone is unchanging”, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus reminds us and it was his own study and observation of this reality, that prompted the Buddha to teach life is suffering. While not every religion agrees with the Buddha’s teaching, few, if any, deny suffering is part of the human experience. And most, at least in part, invite or teach us to consider the role our thoughts, feelings and deeds in response to life’s circumstance play in the degree to which we and others suffer. Unitarian Universalism, drawing from the wisdom of many sources, both sacred and secular, invites the same. In so doing we look to teachings and practices which help us better understand and meet reality as it is rather than as we want it to be. Equanimity describes both a state and a practice to help us do just that. Emerging from a place of deep understanding and trust, equanimity gives us the strength to remain grounded, to respond, when offered denial’s wild ride, “No thanks, I’ll walk.”
Amen and Blessed Be
Sermon given at the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
March 19, 2017
by The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
It is 2:00am and I’m awakened for the third, fourth, maybe fifth time by the sound of a pager beeping. Rolling over to turn on the small light next to the bed, I pick up and glance at the pager, the tiny screen illuminated with a series of letters and numbers, codes and stats related to the incoming trauma. Rubbing my eyes, I get out of bed, straighten out the clothes I was sleeping in, put on my clerical collar and try to tame the stubborn cowlick at the back of my head I always wake up with. Then, with pager, phone, pad and pencil… and a tiny Bible tucked into the various pockets of my sports jacket, I leave the the small on-call chaplain’s room and head for the elevator.
As I descend from the 10th floor down to the 1st I wonder what awaits me. I mean, I know what the trauma is, but I don’t know how calm or chaotic the ER will be, how clean or gory, who else will be present or need to be contacted.
Walking down the long hall to the trauma wing of the ER I feel like a much less glamorous and not nearly as well compensated version of those actor in action movies who walk slowly and calmly as a huge explosion or some other catastrophe erupts behind them. There’s another difference too between those cool movie actors and I. They’re always shown walking away from the explosion or catastrophe, I’m walking into it.
Once I get there I might encounter an anxious doctor who overstep his bounds and pressures me to pray with someone prematurely, before I’ve had a chance to hear their fears or concerns. Or a distraught family member might rail against God specifically… or religion more broadly… in the face of tragedy. Still others might praise or express gratitude for my calming presence or attentive listening while still another might criticize me for not doing or saying more to make them or others feel better.
While the specifics of the experience just described might be limited to that of an on-call hospital chaplain, there contains within this story a far more universal experience: the reality of ever-changing conditions and experiences. Indeed, we all get paged, so to speak, in life… and often. Which is to say, we don’t really know from moment to moment, day to day, year to year, what might come to or befall us…or what others will think of us or our actions. Do we?
For this reason, the Buddha taught life is suffering. Not because it is always horrible, but because of its transient, ever changing nature.
Enter the monk from our first reading. Who, regardless of whether greeted with praise or pelted with scorn, is able to emerge from the fleeting experiences of life and shifting, conditional opinions of others, a free man. But how?
Think for moment when you have experienced praise or scorn, or received good or difficult news and the thoughts and feelings that arose from it. What happened next? Chances are most of us labeled our experience, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant and then attempted to grasp or push it away as if it were something solid that could be held or pushed away.
When we do this we unwittingly accept a ride that hurtles us toward a clash with reality. Yet, as the Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzburg (In her book Lovingkindness) notes, “No one in this world experiences only pleasure and no pain, and no one experiences only gain and no loss. When we open ourselves to this truth, we discover that there is no need to hold onto or push away.” In other words, we can decline the ride, saying, “No thanks, I’ll walk.”
This is precisely what we see in the story of the monk. Accepting that external conditions are always changing, that no one experiences only pleasure or pain, the monk neither holds nor pushes away the praise or scorn of the people. Ultimately, his freedom is not dependent upon his ability to control life’s unceasing flow of experiences, their variety or content, or the changing opinions of others, but on his capacity to remain grounded in reality and be present to whatever comes his way. In this he exhibits profound equanimity.
Equanimity is both a state and a practice. As a state it may be defined as, “psychological stability and composure which is undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena that may cause others to lose the balance of their mind.” (Wikipedia) The practice of equanimity is the intentional engagement in activities which serve to cultivate and promote the state of equanimity.
Equanimity is considered an important or essential virtue in many faith and philosophical traditions including the three Abrahamic faiths, the Baha’i faith, Hinduism, Buddhism and Stoicism. For Unitarian Universalists is directly relates to to our capacity to deeply engage and live into several of our seven principles including “the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and justice, equity and compassion in human relations.”
Sharon Salzburg calls equanimity a gift… a response to the question, “How can a human heart-my heart or your heart-absorb the continual, unremitting contrasts of this life without feeling shattered and thinking we cannot bear it?”
It is not difficult to imagine the state of equanimity, in which one is “undisturbed by experience of or exposure to emotions, pain, or other phenomena” a gift, but where do we find it?
There’s no equanimity store. It isn’t something we can just buy. Nor is it something we can read a book or listen to a podcast or two about and expect to “get it.” Equanimity is a gift we cultivate. A gift we give and receive through its practice.
It begins with an intention to live into a question Sharon Salzburg invites, “What do we want most fundamentally in this life, and do we achieve it through trying to control the endless change of circumstance, or do we achieve it through learning to let go?” She then reminds us, “The practice of equanimity is learning deeply what it means to let go.”
Fortunately for us, in life there is no shortage of opportunities to let go.
I’ve shared before that when I first began to explore my call to ministry I told my mentor I couldn’t possibly go forward in the process unless I knew precisely how I would get from a guy sensing a call to ministry to being an ordained minister with a job. No surprises! It wasn’t until I let go of that condition, that the path began to unfold. And each experience…or surprise (and there were surprises!)… along that path, whether it seemed good, bad or neither at the time, helped create the present moment that has me standing here before your today.
Still, how many of us have felt sad, disappointed or angry because something unexpected came up that caused a change in plans or something we were looking forward to or hoped for didn’t turn out as we expected or happen at all?
And how many of us have, at the start of a vacation…or even the weekend… already begun to mourn its eventual end?
And what about our relationships…
How many times have we been dragged into a sullen or anxious mood because of someone else’s words or actions?
Indeed how many of us find our mood dependent on the approval or disapproval of others? Or the action or inaction of others?
How might such experiences be different if we’re able to let go of the attachments we cling to that so often condition our happiness or tolerance for change?
Within the last six months I’ve re-watched two movies I haven’t seen in a long time, “Good Will Hunting” and “Ordinary People.” Both movies feature powerful scenes that happen to take place in a therapist’s office in which the main character experiences a breakthrough by finally letting go of his struggle to control his experience and allow himself to instead be present to it. Something easier said than done, especially when we know, as Judd Hirsch’s character says to Timothy Hutton’s in “Ordinary People”, “A little advice about feeling, kiddo. Don't expect it always to tickle.”
Yet, equanimity not only helps us connect more fully to the depth and breadth of human experience, it also allows us to be present to pleasure or pain, however intense, without anxiously grasping or pushing away either.
“Equanimity’s strength,” says Sharon Salzberg, “derives from a combination of understanding and trust. It is based on understanding that the conflict and frustration we feel when we can’t control the world doesn’t come from our inability to do so but rather from the fact that we are trying to control the uncontrollable.”
It takes time and a lot of trial and error to absorb this understanding and arrive that deep level of trust. It also takes a sense of humor.
I’m reminded of a good friend from seminary who, upon arriving late to morning prayer, explained that as she was driving in she was practicing a song intended to promote inner calm, the lyrics to which are “When I breathe in, I’ll breathe in peace. When I breathe out, I'll breathe out love.” As she was singing, breathing in peace…another driver on the highway cut her off…and instead of love she breathed out an expletive accompanied by a hand gesture.
My own practice reminds me, perhaps most of all, equanimity takes patience. A lot of equanimity’s letting go is in fact a process of unlearning. Our conditioned reactiveness to the constant vicissitudes of life took a long time for us to acquire or learn. We have a lifetime of teachers, time and energy invested in building and maintaining our defenses. In the face of these, it is helpful to again hear the words of our second reading from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”,
I exist as I am, that is enough.
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content.
And if each and all be aware, I sit content.
One world is aware, and by far the largest to me,
And that is myself.
And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand
Or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness,
I can wait.
“Change alone is unchanging”, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus reminds us and it was his own study and observation of this reality, that prompted the Buddha to teach life is suffering. While not every religion agrees with the Buddha’s teaching, few, if any, deny suffering is part of the human experience. And most, at least in part, invite or teach us to consider the role our thoughts, feelings and deeds in response to life’s circumstance play in the degree to which we and others suffer. Unitarian Universalism, drawing from the wisdom of many sources, both sacred and secular, invites the same. In so doing we look to teachings and practices which help us better understand and meet reality as it is rather than as we want it to be. Equanimity describes both a state and a practice to help us do just that. Emerging from a place of deep understanding and trust, equanimity gives us the strength to remain grounded, to respond, when offered denial’s wild ride, “No thanks, I’ll walk.”
Amen and Blessed Be
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