Sermons

Minister: Rev. Margaret A. Beckman | When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
~ His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama
 

READING   ~ from “The Urgency of Slowing Down” – an interview by Krista Tippett with Pico Iyer. On Being podcast.

MS. TIPPETT: {I was there, because I had started reading you, and you said something that night that I have, all these years, been looking forward to the day when I would be able to discuss it with you. [laughs] I think Paul may have asked you the question that is always out there:} What is the difference between spirituality and religion? And I believe you said this — that spirituality is water, and religion is the tea. {I wondered, what if spirituality is water, and religion is the cup, which carries it forward, although it may be flawed, and we may drop it and break it. I don’t know, what do you think about that?}

MR. IYER: {I love that notion of the cup. If you had just asked me that question now, I would say that spirituality is, as we were just saying, the story of our passionate affair with what is deepest inside us and with the candle that’s always flickering inside us and sometimes almost seems to go out and sometimes blazes. And religion is the community, the framework, the tradition, all the other people into which we bring what we find in solitude. In some ways, I would say very much exactly the thing that you just said.}

I should also say, if I talked about water and tea, I was probably stealing from the Dalai Lama, because he will often say that the most important thing without which we can’t live is kindness. We need that to survive. He says, kindness is water, religion is like tea. It’s a great luxury. It increases the savor of life. It’s wonderful if you have it. But you can survive without tea. You can’t survive without water. Everyday kindness and responsibility is the starting block for every life. So I might have been alluding to him there.

 

READING   from The Kindness Handbook by Sharon Salzberg, Sounds True; Reprint edition (August 1, 2015)

“For kindness to be more fully realized, it needs to be distinguished from being ineffectual or meek. It also needs to be infused with wisdom, supported by courage, and threaded with balance.”

 

SERMON
The Buddhist teacher asks: What is the one thing our human body cannot live without? And we answer: Water. We cannot live without water.

The Buddhist teacher asks: What is the one thing without which our spirit cannot live? And a quizzical look comes across our face. And the teacher smiles and says gently, yet firmly, “Kindness; without kindness, our spirit cannot survive.”

And so, one might say that what water is to our physical survival, kindness is to our spiritual survival.

To have tea for your water is a great and wonderful luxury. It flavors the tea and makes drinking it enjoyable.

Each of us will enjoy our tea in our own ways.

Religion is like tea. For our spiritual health and well-being, having a religion or a spiritual practice is a wonderful luxury that adds depth and joy to our lives. Each of us will engage in practices that suit us and that help us live into our best selves.

We appreciate tea, we need water.
We appreciate religion, we need kindness.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said, “My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.”

This is one of those times when the simplicity of the statement belies the depth and complexity of the experience.

We often speak of kindness as being the thousand acts of kindness that humans share each day around the world.

We know about the ability of a single act of kindness to ease someone’s suffering, perhaps even to save a life. I do not want to diminish the beauty and power of these acts of kindness.

I want to invite us to go beyond acts of kindness and move toward being kindness.

 

Acts of kindness are transactional. It is a moment in time and then the act is finished, the moment gone.
What I’m suggesting is that being kindness is transformational; it becomes part of the essence of who we are. Kindness toward ourselves is essential. Kindness toward others flows from that place of strength and calm.
It motivates us.
It carries us through our difficult and easy times.
It inspires us . . . meaning that we breathe it in – inspire – and it gives us life.
Without kindness, we may not be in a position to ease suffering – for ourselves or for another.

Haleigh Atwood[1] learned about this sort of deep kindness when she offered to be fully present for her partner during a bout of severe anxiety. Her partner was battling demons that Haleigh couldn’t see or understand but that were debilitating to her partner. She says that her response to that suffering was to swoop in and take over the household management and be the “fixer” she usually could and would be.
She says, “My response to her suffering was: I’ll be your hero.”

 

You can imagine that Haleigh couldn’t keep it up. In her desire to provide support and kindness to her partner, Haleigh sacrificed her own well-being.

“Soon I found myself exhausted and neck-deep in my own anxiety. I was depleted, so I began distancing myself emotionally…”

What she gave up was the restoration of her own internal kindness as she went head-long into taking on the suffering of her partner. She lost the ability to be kind and supportive to herself and soon that manifested in not being kind and supportive to her partner. Kindness, she learned, comes from an inner wisdom and strength that was, and is, necessary for her own survival.

We cannot help the person who is weak and suffering from thirst by giving away all the water and leaving none to nourish our own body.

When we truly understand that kindness comes from the inner strength of our own spirit and that we need to nourish and replenish it, kindness becomes an expression of who we are in the world.

Haleigh Atwood says that she brought herself back to own center when she realized that she could only offer support to her partner and ease her suffering when she took care to be kind to herself. She needed to make sure that she was providing sufficient life-force to herself. “Kindness,” she says, “would have included acknowledging my limits, maintaining my sense of self, and addressing face on what was uncomfortable for me. If I had been kind to myself while offering her support, I would have had the energy to be more fully present at appropriate times, instead of constantly being there physically but not having the stores to be there emotionally.”

She goes on to say that eventually she and her partner understood that they each needed to be protective and not cause harm to themselves or each other. Haleigh says, “This was the definition of kindness I had been searching for.”

What we learn from Buddhism is that we can helpful to the world only when we are healthy ourselves. We can relate to the suffering of others when we are aware of our own suffering and taking care of it. Similarly, the kindness we consciously incorporate into our own lives keeps us spiritually strong and grounded. Then, it overflows and spills out of us and flows to others. Our whole way of being in the world and our whole way of interacting with others is kindness. Kindness is our practice; it is our life.

 

Someone said to me a few days ago, “My spouse hates this time of year. He says it brings out the very worst in people.”

What do I say to that? Perhaps there is some truth here. But, I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that the winter holiday season brings out the best in people.

This may well be one of those times when we’re both right.

It is true that we can be stressed out and burdened by all the responsibilities and events of December.

It is true that the winter holiday season can be deeply depressing or sad for some of our friends and neighbors.

It is true that the hustle and bustle can be exhausting and frustrating.

It is true that when our inner reserves are depleted, we can snap at our loved ones and act out against others in frustration or anger.

When there is no kindness left in me, … I have no kindness to offer you!

And yet ….

 

It is also true that we see people reaching out to family and friends with warmth and sincere wishes for a Happy Christmas and a Blessed New Year.

It is also true that we see people offering those random acts of kindness all over the place.

It is also true that love abounds.

There is happiness and joy.

There is peace, at least we reach for peace during this season.

 

And yet, we cannot give what we do not have.

We cannot share from an empty well.

 

Kindness is a gift of this season. When we can accept the gift and embody kindness in our own lives and spirit, then we can give it away freely with no conditions or expectations of any kind.

In the Loving Kindness Meditation, we begin by expressing and embracing kindness for ourselves. Only then, when we are strengthened and enriched in our inner kindness, can we move toward the practice of kindness toward those we love, toward strangers we meet and even toward those whom we find quite difficult. It’s a practice, not an accomplishment.

In this life, we may never master it, but we can begin – and we can keep at it even when we fail. We can come back and begin again, and again and again.

Rachel[2] was in Vermont when her Aunt Ricky died in California. Ricky was her mother’s only sister and was Rachel’s childhood confidant and close companion. Now, Rachel found herself without Ricky – far away in Vermont in winter.

“For me, a Californian with nothing warmer than a thin fleece and borrowed boots, the snow was inconceivable.”

A short time after Ricky died, Rachel walked twenty minutes to the market for groceries. On the way home, the blizzard hit Rachel full force. “I brought the paper bag of groceries up as a shield and, as I did, the bag ripped, and the groceries fell to the street. The milk poured out. The eggs cracked. The oranges rolled down the hill.

I sat down on the sidewalk, and rested my head on my knees, and began to cry a year’s worth of tears. I was shaking, but the tears were warm. At some point, I noticed someone sitting beside me, not too close. While I sobbed, they sat there quietly, just witnessing, a very light hand resting on my back. I do not know how long we sat. Eventually, my shaking subsided. When I finally looked up, tears spent, the person was gone.

I walked home, letting the snow hit me full in the face. Each bone in my body hurt from the cold, but I was lighter than I had been in a long time. I never saw that person’s face, but their kindness has stayed with me and transformed how I relate to the suffering of others. Kindness comes with grace, asks nothing, requires nothing, and leaves its indelible mark. The next morning, there was no trace of the storm, just a faint shine to the world now glistening in the sun.”

 

“When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. And there are ways in which we can consciously work to develop feelings of love and kindness.

For some of us, the most effective way to do so is through religious practices. For others, it may be non-religious practices. What is important is that we each make a sincere effort to take seriously our responsibility for each other and for the natural environment.”- HH The Dalai Lama

 

This holiday season, may we accept the gift of kindness – for ourselves first and foremost. For without kindness, our spirit cannot survive. Then may we make kindness our practice – asking nothing, expecting nothing, simply giving our kindness to the world – leaving an indelible mark on the lives of loved ones and strangers we meet along the way.

Blessed Be.   I Love You.   Amen.

[1] Lion’s Roar Volume Three, Number 6 – January 2019. Published by Lion’s Roar Fundation, Boulder, Colordao.

[2] Ibid.