by Laura K. Secor
I have a Catholic friend. Not a former Catholic – Worcester is full of former Catholics, recovering Catholics, people who flinch at the sight of a nun. But recently I met a person who still attends mass, who still goes to confession, who has Faith with a capital “F”. He loves the music, he loves the ritual, he is in community. One evening he asked me how I feel about my ancestors. He painted a picture that was extremely strange to me. He saw himself after death, in a huge room with all of his ancestors, and he felt their presence, in all their hundreds and thousands, in all their multitudes. He could feel how Catholicism had been a shaping force for all of them, for two thousand years, and he felt connected to them, in a spiritual way. For him, family was not “found family” or step-siblings or the other social bonds that most of us in the UU form. For him, family was blood. It was genetic, it was a lineage. He was tied to the mother who bore him, and the woman who bore her, back through thousands of years. He said, “Catholicism worked out pretty well for all of them.” I wonder if this sense of lineage is common to all Catholics, a sense of spiritual heritage. Perhaps a sense of being the descendants of the blessed?
I understand choosing a family. I don’t understand the traditional version, the one described by my new friend. I wonder if that’s something special that Jews and Catholics share, and maybe Protestants do not? I do feel a connection to the people of my lineage, I guess, but it doesn’t feel spiritual. It feels distinctly intellectual. I’m fascinated that I had ancestors who were surveyors and explorers and trailblazers, and I find them inspiring. But I do not feel as though I am the heir to their spiritual tradition. I’m kind of jealous, I think.
But of course, what we do here at the UU is develop our own beliefs and traditions. One of the teachers who speaks to my heart is Thich Nhat Hanh. The following is excerpted from his book, “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching.”
We think that being born means from nothing we become something, from no one we become someone, from nonbeing we become being. We think that to die means we suddenly go from something to nothing, from someone to no one, from being to nonbeing… When you look at this sheet of paper, you think it belongs to the realm of being. There was a time that it came into existence, a moment in the factory it became a sheet of paper. But before the sheet of paper was born, was it nothing? Can nothing become something? Before it was recognizable as a sheet of paper, it must have been something else – a tree, a branch, sunshine, clouds, the earth. In its former life, the sheet of paper was all these things. If you ask the sheet of paper, “Tell me about all your adventures,” she will tell you, “Talk to a flower, a tree, or a cloud and listen to their stories.” The paper’s story is much like our own. We, too, have many wonderful things to tell. Before we were born, we were also already in our mother, our father, and our ancestors.
If I burn this sheet of paper, will I reduce it to nonbeing? No, it will just be transformed into smoke, heat, and ash. If we put the “continuation” of this sheet of paper into the garden, later, while practicing walking meditation, we may see a little flower and recognize it as the rebirth of the sheet of paper. The smoke will become part of a cloud in the sky, also to continue the adventure. After tomorrow, a little rain may fall on your head, and you will recognize the sheet of paper saying, “Hello”…
Looking deeply, we see that birth is just a notion and death is a notion. Nothing can be born from nothing. When we touch the sheet of paper deeply, when we touch the cloud deeply, when we touch our grandmother deeply, we touch the nature of no birth and no death, ad we are free from sorrow. We already recognize them in many other forms. This is the insight that helped the Buddha become serene, peaceful and fearless. This teaching of the Buddha can help us touch deeply the nature of our being, the ground of our being, so that we can touch the world of no birth and no death. This is the insight that liberates us from fear and sorrow.
To be continued…