Below is a reading followed by the Sunday, March 2, 2025 sermon.
Reading
Dharma Talk
by Thomas Wardle, Zen Master in the Soto tradition
Good morning! Before I read what is printed below, I want to give you some introduction. This reading comes from a sangha talk based on a Zen koan. A sangha is a group of meditators covenanted to support one another over time. A koan is a pithy little poem, question, or statement meant to be brought to the meditation cushion to help foster awakening.
A few more things about this koan: First, the priest is hanging by his teeth from a branch in a tree. We aren’t told why he cant use his feet or his hands, but he can’t, he only has his teeth. Secondly, “Bodhidarma from the West” is the teaching of the Buddha that entered a more Eastern country like China from India which would have been from the West; Buddhism originated from India. So it just means- teachings of the Buddha. Thirdly, while we, who are not Zen priests, might not have any trouble at all, not answering impertinent questions while we are literally hanging by the skin of our teeth, the soul purpose of a Zen priest is to transmit the teachings of the Buddha; the duty to explain to the person asking the question is a real thing. Okay so here is the reading. I invite you to imagine yourself as the priest hanging from a branch by his teeth, or perhaps the person asking the question of the priest.
The priest Xiangyan (Kyogen) said, “It is as though you were up in a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can’t touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asks, ‘What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?’ If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life. What do you do?” ((Take a moment to pause here)…raise your hand when you have imagined yourself either in the tree or the person asking the question from the ground)
This case invites you to find your life in a tree and in a question, but honestly it asks a pretty weird question: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?”
Well, what the hell does that mean? You could be forgiven for feeling it is a bit abstruse, but listen again, listen to the heart-longing, to the desperate sincerity of the asker: “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma coming from the West?”
Don’t let this become an intellectual exercise. I invite you to make the question your own. The words don’t matter too much. In the end, there is really only one question, and the whole world asks it. It is beyond words, but if you listen carefully, your heart will hear it.
Do you hear?
Good. Now, who hears?
Living the Questions
What question of your own do you wish to lift up?
What I have asked a question to a bunch of Unitarian Universalists and know one dares answer?- Ha!
…Okay, wow!
How about this (with teeth clenched), please can you help me?
It’s hard to live the questions. It’s hard even to ask questions. About twenty years ago a really cool curriculum came out for main-line church folk. Guess what it was called? Living the Questions. It was a DVD of all of these great theologians and biblical scholars that would get people to question their assumptions, and you were supposed to stop the DVD and get the people to dive in deep- not by providing answers, but by asking questions. People didn’t like it! It was such a struggle I did not expect. Sometimes I didn’t like it either- I mean hear I was the teacher/minister- I mean aren’t I here to provide the answers?
It got me thinking, why is it that we hate living in the questions so much? Why is it that we so much prefer the answer? And of course all around me at that time the fundamentalist churches were growing by leaps and bounds, and the liberal churches were shrinking, shrinking. And I started to understand something: people like the answers. Answers make people feel safe. Some people like to be told how to think, because they can turn around and tell others how to think- and telling others how to think gives you a sense of power. You see that’s how empires and despotic monarchies work- there’s a whole chain of people telling others how to think- and there is a king on top who hopefully looks and thinks like you. In these societies questions are really dangerous. A king doesn’t want people questioning why he is king or how he got to be king, his viceroys don’t like it either. No branch of government can be independent- nobody can be independent because the king has all the answers.
Hmm… I wonder if there might be some people who are having difficulty right now with questions…. Did you hear they want to make it a law protecting Christians from discrimination, Christians who are for the most part already the majority faith in this country, for the most part (except for the liberal christians who are in the minority) don’t believe in teaching science, history, social studies, English or art in public schools? Why? Because that threatens their biblical view of history, their biblical view of gender relationships, their biblical view ecological dominion.
But here’s the thing: few of these views held today so cherished by project 25 were actually held by our founding fathers and mothers who framed our constitution because they were children of the enlightenment and the enlightenment thought is simply far more liberal than todays conservative religious thought. Conservative religious thought, that wishes to put religion back at the center of all things, is actually a rejection of the enlightenment which wanted to put reason at the center of all things. Democracy just doesn’t work without the enlightenment. Period.
One of the things I love about Attleboro is that there’s this sign that comes out on somebody’s lawn every year around Christmas. It says “Christ is the answer.” The answer to what? What am I going to have for lunch? Christ! Those communion wafers though… they are kind of bland. What if there was a question mark at the end? Christ is the answer? I mean that would be a UU sign right?
But how about this one: “Love is the answer.” Is it though? I mean think about it the last time you really felt love? That time you knew you were no question about it, madly in love? Did it feel like a safe answer, or did it feel like a burning question that was compelling you to write poetry to the object of your romantic desire? Or what if it was when you realized you were falling madly in love with your child or grandchild and you realized that you would do anything, anything to help them no matter how difficult it might be- same thing a question-right? What about a community? Love is the question that brings you to it. And a nation- love is question that brings you to serve and care about it and loose sleep over it. What a big question this is right now!
Our new values, justice, equity, transformation, etc… all based around the great engine question of love at the center of everything we do. I like it!
Ask the question. Live the question. Easy for me to say right? I’m not the one hanging from a branch hanging from my teeth. Or am I? What can I do to love this person more? What is the true meaning of faith? What does it mean to be a beloved community? What does it mean to be a just nation? Oh these questions…. They are breaking my heart!
And people are knocking on our doors more and more! We feel like if we open our mouth we will fall. But what if we helped each other down from the tree one by one, what if together we realized that since the question, like the cake beneath the icing, is always more powerful than the answer lying on top of it, was really worth living for, we rose up and dared asked this: How? Why? For whom? Freedom, liberty and equality is not an answer it is a question. Faith is a question too. These are the questions that must be maintained every day. For if they do not, they become an answer and an answer can only be told by whomever the biggest narcissist in the room might be. Join me in the question. Let us live the question. Blessed be.
