A SONG OF INTERDEPENDENCE: The Buddhist & Unitarian Universalist Encounter & What It Can Mean for Us All

A SONG OF INTERDEPENDENCE
The Buddhist & Unitarian Universalist Encounter & What It Can Mean for Us All

James Ishmael Ford

20 November 2016
Unitarian Universalist Church in Anaheim
Anaheim, California

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“Buddhism is now an accepted path within Unitarian Universalist circles, and each year more people are discovering the value of Buddhist spiritual practices and the holistic Buddhist view of life. At the same time, UUs are modifying Buddhism to meet their needs for a socially engaged, non-discriminatory, and democratic form of religious practice. The ties between these two traditions, one from the ancient East and the other charting the cutting edge of religion in the West, will only grow stronger and more fruitful in the coming years.” Jeff Wilson, PhD, Professor of Religious and East Asian Studies at the University of Waterloo, author of “Buddhism of the Heart.”

There is a term in Buddhism, “the world is on fire.”

Perhaps you have a sense of what that might mean. For me I believe the fact of what that image is pointing to is much of the reason there are religions. I believe I can even be categorical here. All religions exist in some significant degree in response to that terrible observation, the world is on fire.

Today I want to address how two different and yet complementary responses to the reality of this burning world have met, have challenged each other, and how out of that something new and wondrous is birthing. Today we will explore the meeting of Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism. And with that how new possibilities are emerging, bringing hope for this poor, suffering world. Giving us perspectives useful for us as individuals, and in this hard moment, particularly, particularly in this hard moment as we seek ways to not just survive, but even to flourish.

Let’s see if you’ll agree.

To give this a beginning when there are many possible moments that could be used to mark it out, let’s start in 1844. That’s when a chapter from the Sadharmapundarika-sutra, a foundational Mahayana Buddhist text, the Lotus Sutra was published in the Boston based, and incidentally Transcendentalist Unitarian journal, the Dial. Best I can tell, this chapter published as “The Preaching of Buddha,” was the first Buddhist text to be rendered into the English language.

As a footnote to a footnote, “The Preaching of Buddha” was for many years wrongly credited to Henry David Thoreau. It was a reasonable enough speculation as the chapter was published anonymously while he was editor of the journal, and was well known to be interested in all matters Eastern. The actual translator, however, was the remarkable Unitarian thinker Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Anonymous, as you may have noticed, is quite often a woman.

From that auspicious and complicated beginning the conversation between Unitarians, Universalists and Unitarian Universalists and Buddhists began. But, absolutely, that wasn’t the only event that happened in those complex, dangerous, and often fruitful years running up to our American Civil War. For instance the Unitarian and Buddhist scholar Jeff Wilson outlines the remarkable story of Nakahama Manjiro. In 1841, three years before that Lotus Sutra text appeared is definitely another candidate for marking a beginning of this dialogue between Unitarian Universalism and Buddhism. That’s when Nakahama, at the time a boy along with several other Japanese fishermen was caught up in a sudden storm.

The fishermen were swept out to sea. They were rescued from near certain death by a New Bedford whaling ship. Unable to return to Japan, which by the prevailing sakoku isolation laws would lead to everyone’s instant execution, the ship continued on. Eventually the crew was dropped off in Hawaii, all except for young Nakahama. Captivated by the boy’s intelligence and curiosity about everything he encountered, the ship’s captain William Whitmer took him under his personal care.

They returned to Massachusetts, only to find Whitmer’s Methodist church informing the family that no colored people, although they didn’t actually say colored, were allowed in the church. So, they walked down the street and joined Fairhaven’s Unitarian congregation. With that the boy now known as John Mung grew into adulthood as a Unitarian.

After an adventurous life well worth pursuing in greater detail, and perhaps sometime you will, including following his mentor as a whaler and later as a successful gold prospector, Nakahama Manjiro accumulated enough wealth to allow him to return to Japan a mere decade after he and his companions had been swept out to sea. Once back in Japan he endured the long established test to prevent Christians from entering the country and contaminating it with their alien ideologies. A picture of the Virgin Mary was placed on the ground and he was required to step on it. Up until that point the Christians the Japanese had encountered were all Catholics, and this was a pretty good way to find them out. However, as a Unitarian, Manjiro had no problem walking on the picture.

He would rise to fame and further fortune in Japan, initially through his translation of Bowditch’s Practical Navigator, and with many other books following. Invited to the imperial court he was eventually raised to the rank of Samurai. He grew in wealth and influence. And at court he gathered a circle of disciples among the younger courtiers. In 1868 with the revolt that established the Meiji emperor and an era of reforms, many of his disciples were recruited into leadership. Wilson draws a pretty straight line from Manjiro’s Unitarianism not only to many of the era’s social reforms, but also to many reforms within Buddhist sects, particularly Pure Land and Zen.

So, as if returning the favor, the first Zen master to visit America as part of the 1893 World Parliament of Religions was the Rinzai abbot Soyen Shaku. The abbot had in his youth studied at Keio University, which had been founded by a younger associate of Manjiro’s. Professor Wilson argues that the Zen Buddhism taught at the university was deeply influenced by a progressive spirit of rational inquiry infused with a broad humanism, derived directly from Manjiro’s Unitarian experience.

Two of the abbot’s disciples, Nyogen Senzaki and Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki would prove to be central to introducing Zen to the West. Senzaki influencing a generation of early spiritual seekers on the West coast, introducing them to zazen, Zen’s meditation discipline, and Suzuki most of all as a prolific writer and translator, and through his own disciple Alan Watts, a popularized version of this rationalist, naturalistic, humanistic Zen became the Zen most English speaking people would first encounter. One could say, to this day.

What’s important to distinguish here is how within religious dialogue participants move from misunderstanding and projection to offering subtle coloring and expanded perspectives in each tradition. And sometimes within such encounters the original traditions find themselves profoundly changed, and sometimes whole new traditions emerge. Right off I find myself thinking of how the terrible clash between Islam and Hinduism in Western India created the Sikh tradition. This place of meeting, obviously, is dangerous, but also is incredibly rich, run through with a riot of possibilities.

I suggest something like that is happening right now. In fact the Unitarian Universalist world has become a microcosm of world spiritual dialogue, messy, complicated, internally contradictory, and I find wildly compelling. Some of it will come to nothing, probably most of it. Some will be silly. Some is. And some may open hearts to previously undreamed possibilities. And that’s what I’m interested in. There is something amazing going on. We just need to notice.

Over these past decades as I’ve observed and practiced in this liminal place that is our open Unitarian Universalist Buddhist spirituality, I believe I’ve seen some of the contours of those possibilities as they’re emerging. The list is long, starting with the Buddhist and humanist encounter, but also within our wild tradition, including Buddhist influencing of UU versions of Christianity, Judaism, and paganism. And, I would be remiss to not mention the enormous possibilities for us in the Buddhist conversation with Western psychology. All of these things are important and rich and are seeping into the very farthest corners of our individual and communal assumptions.

As we draw to the end, one point among these many seems most important to me. Today the large majority of Unitarian Universalists feel a deep need to be engaged in the hurt of this world. And at this moment, I suggest, never more so, never more urgently. Now in facing all the turmoil around us, some have observed justice is what love looks like in action. Love. We UUs hold up that word love as a north star. But, what is it? What is it really? Is it in fact anything more than wishful thinking, a vague aspiration to allow us to hope in the face of so much that is ill, in the face of that world which is on fire?

Well, I have a suggestion, at once, as natural as can be, and at the same time an invitation to something powerful. Among the areas of mutual interest for us as Unitarian Universalists and Buddhists are the themes of an emerging theology of radical interdependence. This is where we’re going to find love as meaningful, as, can I say it, the deep truth of our lives.

We UUs have for some time now embraced the seventh principle as a core theological insight, and justly so. In my opinion when it is joined with the first, that holding up of an inherent worth of every individual, we get something dynamic and challenging and absolutely life saving. And it is here that we begin to understand what love actually is. Although it remains always something we see through that famous glass, darkly. That’s the nature of things. We never know completely, we are always in motion, walking through the shadow.

But, there are ways to cast more light on the matter, to understand this sense of love that arises within us, and compels us to action. For instance we can look to Buddhism, and its exploration of interdependence within texts like the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Flower Ornament Sutra, and find what we’ve devoted the past several decades to, has been ruminated on within Buddhism for a thousand years and more. It points to that love which informs our desire for justice. Me, I find understanding love as an experience of radical interdependence is critical for us as we aspire to be of some use in this world.

In Japan there’s a saying. Vision without action is a dream. And, action without vision is a nightmare. Love as radical interdependence is, or should be, our north star. It can guide us through the dark night. And this insight, of course, has direct consequences when we think of specifics such as our ecological concerns, and our viscerally felt need for economic justice. This insight into our true intimacy is both why and, it hints at how we can approach this.

One survey suggests that some ten thousand Unitarian Universalists consider themselves, ourselves, Buddhist. And if one counts the number of those who consider Buddhism a significant influence, that number swells enormously, twice, maybe three times. So something is happening. This perspective is alive and powerful. And every day it grows a little more.

Now, I’m a preacher, by trade and by inclination. As I draw this reflection to a close, here’s some good news I want to share. In these hard, hard times, some good news.

A door has been thrown wide open. And people are walking through it and toward something. I think about this burning world. And, as I think about this, I feel the wisdom of interdependence particularly washed through the insights of Buddhism as the new voice of Unitarian Universalism. It is the every so ancient and ever present insight of love over creed, of love beyond belief. I notice this and despite the terrible things happening all around us, I am filled with hope, hope for us all.

What is happening is that ancient wisdom of healing and guidance is reappearing in ways appropriate for our time, and our place. This period of encounter, clash, confrontation, integration, and synthesis is birthing new ways for us to see and to act. One could even be forgiven for feeling some benign deity is reaching out and giving us a word of hope. It’s that powerful. But, actually, it is as natural as a flower opening in the morning.

Right here. Right now. And, oh my, not a moment too soon: Hope for you and for me. Hope for this burning world.

A song of interdependence.

Amen.