Elizabeth Palmer Peabody died on this day in 1894. While I think it more appropriate for UUs to mark the birthdays of our revered ancestors, it is the ancient tradition of the Christian church to mark the days of significant people’s passing (for obvious reasons if you follow normative Christian theology). Noticing Peabody’s death in this context sent my mind to thinking of UU Buddhist saints. That is it set me to thinking about those people informed by Unitarian Universalism and Buddhism, or in some way could be seen as such and who through their lives and or their writings helped to further this project.
So, near the front I’d think of Henry David Thoreau, the namesake for our UU Zen group in Newton. (Even though he probably is best thought of as a proto-UU Taoist…) And for that matter hard not to think of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the namesake for the UU Zen group at the First Church in Boston (at the suggestion of their minister as Emerson’s father served as their minister and Emerson himself served the Second parish which folded back into the First church somewhere along the line…) whose theology admittedly is a little harder to reconcile with most understandings of Buddhism. But nonetheless his celebration of the natural and his profound spirituality feels close enough for a UU Buddhist to honor…
The list easily continues down to recent history. I think for instance of Tom Ahlburn, Dorrie Senghas and Frederick Streng of blessed memory. And among the living examples of finding the liberal spiritual way in both Unitarian Universalism and Buddhism I think of Gene
Reeves and Bob Senghas.
These are exemplars, people who show us through the examples of their lives as well as where it is they give their attention, ways we might walk.
For all of them I’m thankful.
And back to that beginning of it all. Here I would have to name first of all Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. While even yet it is generally credited to her colleague and friend Thoreau, it was Peabody who first produced an English version of a fragment of a Buddhist sacred text. She translated from a French version a chapter of the Lotus Sutra, which was published in the Transcendentalist journal the Dial in 1844.
Thank you Elizabeth! You set quite a ball rolling.
And thanks to all of you for showing what might be.
Something powerful is revealing itself, and you all are holding up the lamps that reveal its contours…
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