Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Non-Western Religious Traditions

  • Three Buddhist Stories

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Moment for All Ages

    The Quails and the Net

    Gautama Buddha was a great holy man who lived long, long ago in India. He was so wise that people came from far and wide to learn from him. Many of these people stayed with him, and became his bhikkus, or his followers.

    Once upon a time, Buddha noticed that several of his followers spent a great deal of time arguing among themselves. These bhikkus began to disturb the other people who had come to learn from Buddha. Buddha felt that because of their arguing, they were not making progress toward becoming truly enlightened beings. That evening, Buddha sat all his followers down together, and told them this story:

    “Once upon a time, long, long ago, there lived a large flock of quails in a forest. Now in near this very same forest there lived a hunter who made his living from capturing quails and selling them to people who wanted to eat them. Every day this hunter would slip quietly into the forest and sit hidden behind a big bush. Then he would imitate the call of a quail so perfectly that the quail thought the hunter was one of them.

    “Upon hearing the hunter’s call, the quail would come out of the safe places where they had been gathering food. When they came into the open, the hunter would leap out from his hiding place and throw a big net over as many quails as he could reach. He would bundle up the net and take all the quail away to the marketplace to be sold to people who would eat them for dinner.

    “The quails did not like this. And they grew frightened because the hunter captured so many of them. The quail decided to hold a meeting to discuss the problem. A wise quail said to the others:

    “‘The net the hunter throws over us isn’t heavy. As soon as he throws the net over us, if we all fly up together at the same time, we can lift the net up with us and get away.’

    “The other quails thought this was a good plan. They all agreed to fly up together and escape the next time the hunter threw the net over them.

    “The next day, the hunter came back to the forest. He imitated the call of a quail and all the quail were fooled again. Then he threw the net over as many quail as he could reach, expecting to bundle them up as always.

    “This time, however, was different. Before the hunter could bundle them up, all the quail flew up in the air together. They lifted the net up with them, and settled down together into a nearby rose bush. The net got tangled up in the thorns of the rose bush, and the quail scurried away to safety.

    “The hunter was left to pick his net out of the sharp thorns. After hours of work, he finally untangled his net. He walked home, tired and discouraged.

    “The next day, the hunter came back to try his luck again. He imitated the quail’s call. All the quail came running. When they felt the net settle over them, they flew into a nearby rose bush, leaving the net caught on the sharp thorns. Once again, the hunter was left to untangle his net, with no quails to sell at the market.

    “This went on for some days. The hunter was growing more and more discouraged. Finally, one day the hunter came back into the forest, gave his imitation of the quail’s call, and threw his net over the quail when they came out into the open.

    “But when it came time for all the quail to fly up together, one quail happened to step on the foot of another.

    “‘Hey,’ said the second quail, ‘who kicked me?’

    “‘No one kicked you,’ said a third quail.

    “A fourth quail said, ‘Oh, he’s just complaining because he’s lazy; he never lifts his share of the net.’

    “Another quail said, ‘Who are you to talk? You do very little flying, leaving the hard work to the rest of us.’

    “As the quail fought and bickered among themselves, the hunter bundled them up in his net and carried them off to market. They were all fat, plump quails, and the hunter got a good price for them.”

    The followers of Buddha all believed they had lived many lives in the past, sometimes as animals, sometimes as humans, sometimes as gods. Buddha told them that the story of the quails was really a story of them in one of their past lives.

    “When you were on this earth as quails,” said the Buddha, “you argued among yourselves, and got caught by the hunter, and were eaten for dinner that very night. You are no longer quails. Is it not time for you to stop arguing among yourselves?”

    The bhikkus who had been arguing so much grew embarrassed and ashamed, and from that day on, so it is told, they no longer engaged in silly arguments.(1)

    Reading

    The first reading was the poem “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” by Derek Walcott (not included here due to copyright).

    The second reading was a very short poem by Rabindranath Tagore:

    We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. [Stray Birds #75]

    Sermon

    This morning, I’m going to retell three Buddhist stories from the Jataka Tales, one of the earliest collections of Buddhist writings. Each of these stories tells a tale from one of Gotama Buddha’s previous lives. For, you see, when Siddhartha Gotama achieved enlightenment, he was able to remember every single one of his previous lives.

    I find it fascinating that Buddha had over five hundred previous lives. In Western culture, we are much more likely to think that we each get one life, and after that life is over we either go to heaven, or to oblivion. Time is linear for most Westerners, but circular for Buddhists. We are encountering a very different mindset in these stories.

    The Jataka Tales mostly begin with a framing story: something happened in the community that gathered around Gotama Buddha, and Buddha tells a story from one of his previous lives in order to help the people in the community get along better.

    With that in mind, let’s consider the first story, which I told as the “Moment for All Ages”: the story of the quails and the net. This is a well-known story, and doubtless many of you have heard it before. In Western culture, the story is often told as a parable showing the importance of cooperation. Derek Walcott’s poem “The Season of Phantasmal Peace” offers a variation of that interpretation. The poem opens with an image taken directly from this Jataka Tale:

    Then all the nations of birds lifted together
    the huge net of the shadows of this earth
    in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues,
    stitching and crossing it….

    If only human beings could learn how to cooperate, as do the birds, then we could have a world filled with peace!

    Indeed, today’s world feels much like what happens in the story when the quails start to argue with each other. One quail accuses another of stepping on their foot; another quail says that someone is not lifting their share of the net; while another quail says that someone else didn’t do their share of flying. This sound very much like what we hear from our world leaders these days. And what is the result of all this bickering? Here’s how the Buddha told of the outcome:

    “As the quail fought and bickered among themselves, the hunter bundled them up in his net and carried them off to market. They were all fat, plump quails, and the hunter got a very good price for them.”

    Buddha doesn’t say we should never argue — he’s telling us that we should have enough humility so we don’t let our arguments get in the way of accomplishing our common goals.

    This is true both in a small community like that gathered around Buddha, and the world community of nations. It’s always easy to blame our world leaders for acting like the quails in the net, yet we too must take responsibility for our actions in our families, in the workplace, in all the community groups we may belong to. Having the humility to admit when we are wrong turns out to be necessary ingredient for peaceful communities.

    The next Jataka Tale is one you may have heard in a different form, but try to let go of your expectations….

    The Tale of the Dhak Tree

    One day, four of Buddha’s followers came up to him and asked how they might learn to meditate and rise above earthly things. Buddha explained to the four bhikkus how they might do so, and each went off to learn a different kind of meditation. The first learned the Six Spheres of Touch. The second learned the Five Elements of Being. The third learned the Four Principal Elements. The fourth learned the Eighteen Constituents of Being. Each one learned how to meditate so well, they each achieved Enlightenment and became a holy person.

    One day all four of these bhikkus came back to tell the Buddha what they had done. Each of them claimed that their way was the best form of mediation. At last one of them said, “Buddha, each of us has achieved Enlightenment, but we each used a different type of meditation. How could this be?”

    And Buddha said, “It is like the four brothers who saw the dhak tree….”

    Once upon a time Bramadatta, the King of Benares, had four sons. One day, the four sons sent for a charioteer and said to him, “We want to see a dhak tree [Butea monosperma]. Show us one!”

    “Very well,” said the charioteer . “Let me begin by showing the eldest.”

    The charioteer took the eldest to the forest. It was late winter, so the eldest brother saw the dhak tree at the time when the buds had not yet begun to swell, and the tree looked dead.

    The charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Two months went by until at last the charioteer could bring the second brother to see the dhak tree. It was spring, and the tree was entirely covered with reddish-orange flowers.

    The charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Two more months went by until at last the charioteer could bring the third brother to see the dhak tree. It was summer now, the flowers were gone, and the tree was covered with leaves.

    he charioteer could not return to the dhak tree right away. Months went by until the fourth brother declared he could wait no longer. The charioteer brought him to see the dhak tree. Now it was autumn, and the tree was covered with long seed-pods.

    When all four brothers had seen the dhak tree, they sat down together, and talked about what the dhak tree was like.

    “It is like a bunch of dead twigs,” said the first.

    “No, it is reddish like a piece of meat,” said the second.

    “No, it has leaves like a banyan tree,” said the third.

    “No, it looks like an acacia tree with its long seed pods,” said the fourth.

    None of them liked the answers the other gave. They ran to find their father. “Father,” they asked, “tell us, what is the dhak tree like?”

    “You have all seen the tree,” the king said. “You tell me what it’s like.”

    The four brothers gave the king their four different answers: it is like dead twigs, it is like meat, it has leaves like a banyan, it has seed pods like the acacia.

    “You have all seen the tree,” said the king. “But when the charioteer showed you the tree, you didn’t ask him what the tree looked like at other times of the year. This is where your mistake lies.” And the king recited a poem:

    Each one of you has gone to view the tree,
    Yet you remain in great perplexity
    Because you did not ask the charioteer
    Just how it looked at other times of year.

    Buddha then spoke to the four bhikkus. “These four brothers did not ask themselves what the tree looked like in different times of the year, and so they fell into doubt. In just the same way, the four of you have fallen into doubt about what is true and right.” Then the Buddha gave another stanza for the king’s poem:

    If you know truth, and yet the whole you cannot see,
    You’ll be unsure, like those four brothers and the tree.(2)

    I love the framing story of this Jataka Tale. The four bhikkus have each achieved enlightenment, yet they still feel the need to argue about which method for attaining enlightenment is best. You would think they would realize that they learned of the four different types of meditation from the same person, from Buddha, which would imply that he felt each meditation system was of equal value. Yet although they have achieved enlightenment, perhaps they have not yet achieved humility. The framing story is telling us that there is no end to spiritual growth; even when you think you have attained some major spiritual accomplishment, you are not yet finished.

    This wisdom of Buddhas reminds me a bit of the wisdom of Jesus. Jesus chose several of his followers to be especially close to him, yet they constantly misinterpret Jesus’s teachings; at which point, Jesus assists them in proceeding farther along their spiritual journey. I also get the sense that both Jesus and Buddha realize they have fallen short as spiritual teachers — their spiritual guidance is not wholly adequate for the needs of limited, fallible human beings — and they both have the humility to understand that they, too, have human failings.

    This comes back to one of our basic Unitarian teachings. In my Unitarian Universalist Sunday school, when I was a child, we heard stories about both Jesus and Buddha. Our teachers always made it clear that neither Jesus nor Buddha was God; they were each much wiser than the rest of us, but they were not infallible. Their greatness lay in their ability to show us we all have the capacity to choose to become better human beings.

    And with that in mind, here’s another story….

    King Usinara and the Huge Hound

    One day, the followers of Buddha were sitting in the Hall of Truth talking with one another.

    “Isn’t it amazing,” one of them said, “that the Buddha gave up a beautiful home, and now lives only for the good of the world?”

    “Yes,” said another, “isn’t it amazing that he has attained supreme wisdom, yet rather than making himself rich, he goes about teaching goodness?”

    Buddha came into the Hall and heard them talking. “Yes, it is true,” said the Buddha. “Even in my previous lives, even then when I had not attained supreme wisdom, I still always tried to live for the good of the world. Let me tell you the story of one of my previous lives.” This is the story the Buddha told:

    Once upon a time, there reigned a king named Usinara. Under the rule of this king, the people had given up doing good, and instead they followed the paths of evil-doing. Sakka, the ruler of all the gods, looked upon this, and saw that the people were suffering because they did evil.

    “What shall I do, now?” he said to himself. “Ah, I have it! I will scare and terrify humankind. And when I see they are terrified, I will comfort them, I will tell them the universal Law of life, I will restore their moral compasses!”

    Sakka turned his divine charioteer Matali into a huge black hound, with four tusks each as big as a plantain, with a hideous shape and a fat belly. Sakka fastened this horrible dog with a chain, and turned himself into a hunter. Together they walked to King Usinara’s city.

    “Everything is doomed to destruction!” the hunter cried out, so loudly that he terrified everyone within earshot. He repeated this cry as he walked up to the very gates of the city.

    The people of the city saw the huge dog and heard the hunter’s cries, and hurried into the city to tell the king what had happened. The king ordered the city gates to be closed. But the hunter and the huge dog leaped over the wall.

    When they saw that the hunter and the dog had gotten inside the city, everyone ran away to find a place to hide. Those who could not get to their houses in time ran to the king’s palace to find safety.

    The hunter and the dog came to the palace. The dog raised itself up, put its paws on the window of the room where the king was hiding, and barked. Its bark was a huge roaring that seemed to go from the depths of the earth to the highest heaven. The people were terrified by this, and no one could say a word.

    At last the king plucked up his courage, and went to the window. He called out to the hunter: “Ho, huntsman! why did your hound roar?”

    “The hound is hungry,” said the hunter.

    “Well,” said the king, “I will order some food for it.”

    The king told his servants to give all the food in the palace to the dog. The huge dog gulped all the food down in one mouthful, then roared again.

    Again the king called out the window: “Huntsman! Why does your dog still roar?”

    “My hound is still hungry,” said the hunter.

    Then the king had all the food for all his elephants and all his horses and all his other animals brought and given to the huge dog. Once again, the dog swallowed it in one gulp. So the king had all the food in the entire city brought. The huge dog swallowed all that in one gulp, and then roared again.

    Terrified with fear, the king thought to himself, “This is no ordinary dog. I must ask why he has come.” He said to the hunter: “Why does this huge hound, with sharp white fangs as big as plantains, come here with you?”

    “The dog comes to eat my enemies,” said the hunter.

    “And who are your enemies?” said the king.

    “All those people who are smart and educated, but who use their skill only to acquire money. All those who do not take care of their parents, once their parents get old. All those who betray their friends or spouses or siblings. All those who pretend to follow religious principles, but who actually do whatever they want. All those who are criminals, who kill and rob. All those who have hearts filled with evil, and who are evil and deceitful.

    “These,” said the hunter, “are all are my enemies, O king!”

    And the hunter made as though he would let the hound leap forth and devour all those who were his enemies. But as all the people froze in terror, he held the hound by the leash.

    Then Sakka shed his disguise of a hunter. By his power he rose and poised himself in the air, and said: “O great king, I am Sakka, ruler of the gods! I saw how this land had become corrupt; I saw humans were suffering because they were doing evil; and I came here with my huge hungry hound. If you wish to keep me out of your land, you must all stop doing evil.”

    King Usinara and all the people saw they must return to the ways of virtue. They must stop doing evil, or the huge dog would remain hungry, and would keep roaring!

    And when Sakka and Matali saw that the people had turned away from evil, and once again followed the paths of good — then they returned to the home of the gods.

    When Buddha finished telling this story, he said: “So you see, in my former lives I lived for the good of the world.” Buddha then added: “My follower and friend, Ananda, was Matali. And I was Sakka.”(3)

    I like to think of this story as a parable about the limits of human knowledge. King Usinara and his people had lost the knowledge of how to be good, and it took a huge frightening roaring dog to scare them into the knowledge of how foolish and wrongheaded they had been. This is a good metaphor for what it feels like when I have had to confront my own foolishness and wrongheadedness.

    Earlier this week, I was talking over these stories with Kate Sullivan, our director of spiritual exploration. The stories made her think of two questions for reflection:

    What did you think you knew, only to find that you didn’t actually know it?

    And when you realized you didn’t know, were you courageous enough to humble yourself?

    I’ll leave you with those questions.

    Sources for the stories

    (1) Source: Jataka tale no. 33, from The Jataka, or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births, in six volumes, ed. E. B. Cowell (Cambridge Univ., 1895-1907).
    (2) Source: Kimsukopama-Jataka, Jataka tale no. 248, in the Cowell translation.
    (3) Source: Maha-Kanha Jataka, Jataka tale no. 469, in the Cowell translation.

  • The Best Things in Life

    Sermon and moment for all ages copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. More than the usual number of typos and errors in the text, but I didn’t have time to fix them — sorry!

    Moment for All Ages: “Prince Gotama and the Four Sights”

    Once upon a time, a prince named Gotama lived in a royal palace in the land of Kapilavastu, which was on the border between the countries we now call India and Nepal. Gotama’s family was very wealthy. As he grew up, the prince had everything money could buy. He had servants to take care of every need. He had the finest food. He had all the toys he could wish for.

    The story is told that while Gotama was still young, a sage came to visit his parents, the King and the Queen. This sage was very wise. He looked at the young boy and said, “This child will grow up to be either a great king, or a great spiritual leader.”

    Now his father wanted Gotama to become king after the father died. Therefore, the King decided that the young prince must never see anything that might raise spiritual questions in him. The King instructed everyone in the palace that Prince Gotama must never be allowed to go outside the palace grounds by himself, lest he fall into conversation with a wandering spiritual person. The King also ruled that Prince Toama must not see anyone who was ill, or disabled in any way, nor anyone who was old. The King also ruled that if someone died, the prince should hear nothing of it. Thus the King hoped to keep the prince from asking any spiritual questions.

    To keep Gotama happy, the King and Queen gave him everything he could want, so that he would want to stay inside the palace grounds. And when he was old enough, they found the kindest and most beautiful young woman in all the kingdom to marry the Prince. Both the prince and his new wife were vary happy, and they became even more happy when they had their first child together. The King and Queen hoped that the prince had forgotten his wish to leave the palace on his own.

    One day, when he was twenty nine years old, Gotama went out of the palace to go hunting, accompanied by his servant Channa. As they were riding along on their two horses, they came upon a man lying beside a rock, groaning in pain.

    “What is wrong with this man?” asked Gotama.

    “He is ill,” said Channa.

    “But why is he in such pain?” said Gotama.

    “It is the way of life,” said Chana. “It is just what happens when people are ill.” And they rode on.

    When he was back at the palace, he tried to ask the wise men there about illness, but they would not answer his questions.

    Gotama and Channa went out hunting again. As they rode along, they passed a woman whose hair was white and whose skin was wrinkled, and who used a cane to walk.

    “What is wrong with this woman?” asked Gotama.

    “She is old,” said Channa.

    “But what do you mean by ‘old’?” said Gotama.

    “It is the way of life,” said Channa. “It happens to anyone who lives a long time.”

    Back at the palace, Gotama tried to ask the wise men there about being old, but they would not answer his questions.

    Gotama and Channa went out hunting again. As they rode along, they came across man lying as if asleep. But Gotama could not wake him.

    “What is wrong with this man?” asked Gotama.

    “He is dead,” said Channa. “This is the way of life, people must one day die.”

    Gotama and Channa went out hunting a fourth time and saw a wandering holy person. Gotama asked Channa who he was.

    “He is a wandering holy person,” said Channa. “He wanders around the world begging for his food, and seeking spiritual enlightenment.”

    This was something Prince Gotama had never heard of before. That night, Gotama could not sleep. He remembered both the suffering he had seen, and the holy man seeking enlightenment. Gotama realized that he himself would one day face illness, old age, and death.

    “I must leave the palace where I’m always protected,” he thought to himself. “I must find answers to my questions.”

    He got up, and told Channa to saddle his horse. The he looked in at the bedroom where his wife and their child lay sleeping. If he left the palace, he worried that his his wife and son would not be safe. He didn’t want to make them go with him.

    He stood looking at them, wondering what to do. Should he stay? Or should he go?

    As it happens, we know what Prince Gotama did. He left his wife and child behind, went out into the wide world, and after many hardships he became the Buddha, the Enlightened One, one of the greatest spiritual leaders the world has ever known. Knowing that, what would you do? Would you stay and become a great king, or leave and become a great spiritual leader? Would you give up the chance of being enlightened to stay with your family?

    Readings

    The first reading is from “The Wealth of Nations,” book 4, chapter 1, by Adam Smith.

    “A rich country, in the same manner as a rich man, is supposed to be a country abounding in money; and to heap up gold and silver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it. For some time after the discovery of America, the first inquiry of the Spaniards, when they arrived upon any unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighborhood. By the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if the country was worth the conquering.

    “Plano Carpino, a monk sent ambassador from the King of France to one of the sons of the famous Genghis Khan, says, that the Tartars used frequently to ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France. Their inquiry had the same object with that of the Spaniards. They wanted to know if the country was rich enough to be worth the conquering. Among the Tartars, as among all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of tho use of money, cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of value. Wealth, therefore, according to them, consisted in cattle, as according to the Spaniards it consisted in gold and silver. Of the two, the Tartar notion, perhaps, was the nearest to the truth.”

    The second reading was the lyrics from the song “Money (that’s What I Want),” a song written by Janie Bradford and Berry Gordy in 1959.

    Sermon: “The Best Things in Life”

    What are the best things in life? We like to pretend that the best things in life are free. Janie Bradford and Berry Gordy skewered that pious sentiment way back in 1959 with their song “Money (That’s What I Want).” In the song, Bradford and Gordy said they believed that “Money don’t get everything, it’s true / But what it don’t get I can’t use.”

    So what are we to believe? Do we believe that the best things in life are free? Or do we believe that money is what’s really important? I’d like to think out loud about this question by presenting you with some case studies.

    The very brief case study is the story of Genghis Khan’s son, as told by Adam Smith, one of the primary theorists of capitalism. Genghis Khan, as you will recall, was the leader of the Mongol Empire. His people lived on the steppes of central Asia, and periodically erupted from the steppes to invade Europe, the Middle East, and China, pillaging as they went and leaving destruction in their wake. According to Adam Smith, Genghis Khan’s son did not ask how much money — how much gold and silver — there was in France, but rather he wanted to know how many sheep or oxen. The point here is that different societies measure wealth in different ways. While the Spaniards wanted to know how much gold and silver they would get before they invaded a foreign land, whereas the Mongol Empire wanted to know how many cattle they would get, they just had different ways of measuring wealth. If Janie Bradford and Berry Gordy wanted their song to be true across cultures, I guess they should have named their song “Wealth (That’s What I Want).”

    However, this still doesn’t answer the question of whether the best things is life are free, or whether wealth is all that matters. So let’s turn to the case of Prince Siddhartha Gotama, which we heard in this morning’s Moment for All Ages.

    As you recall, Siddartha Gotama was raised by his parents so that he was never exposed to anything that might upset him — he was never exposed to anything that might him start asking big difficult questions about the meaning of life. In particular, his parents did not want Prince Gotama to see anyone ill, anyone old, anyone who had died, nor anyone who followed a religious vocation. This desire to protect their child from everything unpleasant and difficult backfired on them. As soon as Siddhartha Gotama saw the Four Sights — an ill person, and old person, a dead person, and a religious person — he immediately conceived an intense desire to know why there was suffering in the world. This intense spiritual yearning caused Siddhartha Gotama to want to leave the wealthy and comfortable life he had been living, safe inside the palace walls, and go outside to enter into the life of a wandering saddhu [sah-doo], that is, a spiritual seeker who has renounced worldly life in order to focus on higher matters.

    I will say parenthetically that I find this to be one of the most difficult stories of any major religious tradition. In order to become a saddhu, Prince Gotama basically abandons his wife and his baby — that is what I find difficult. In most retellings of the story, Prince Gotama stands looking at his sleeping wife and child. He wants to give them one last kiss and caress. But he knows that if he does so, they would awaken, and probably convince him not to leave. So he turns away and leaves them behind without even saying goodbye. I really don’t like that part of the story.

    However, this does tell us something about how Siddhartha Gotama might answer the question of whether the best things in life are free, or whether the best thing in life is money. And his is not a simple answer to the question. On the one hand, Siddhartha Gotama clearly believes that for him, the best thing is to leave money behind. The best things in life are not just free, the best things in life require the absence of money. It is only in the absence of money, thinks Siddhartha Gotama, that he will be able to find what he is seeking for. And of course that’s exactly what happens for Siddhartha Gotama — by living a life without wealth, he is able find the enlightenment that he seeks. He in fact becomes the Buddha, the Enlightened One. After his enlightenment, he turns to teaching others how to deal with suffering in this world; and according to some sources, after his enlightenment, he does reconnect with his wife and their son.

    On the other hand, Siddhartha Gotama did not take his wife and their baby out into the world to lead the lives of wandering spiritual seekers. Not to put too fine a point on it, but to become a wandering saddhu was to choose to live on the street, to become what we now call an unhoused person, to sleep outdoors and beg for your food, and more than likely to go sleep cold and hungry as often as not. That is not the kind of life that anyone would choose for their baby. Siddhartha Gotama knew that if he left his wife and baby behind, they would be cared for and cherished and loved by his parents.

    So here is how Siddhartha Gotama answered the question. For himself, Siddhartha Gotama believed that the best things in life are free, and he wanted to abandon all his wealth so that it could not distract him from the burning spiritual questions he had to answer. But for his child, and incidentally for his wife, Siddhartha Gotama believed that the best things in life are not free, and that what they really needed and wanted was money.

    Now I’ll turn to a third and even more complex case study. This is the case study of Juanita and Wally Nelson. My spouse Carol first met Juanita and Wally Nelson in the 1990s, when they used to attend meetings of the Northeast Organic Farmer’s Association (or NOFA). They were hard to miss, for not only were they older than most of the other people at NOFA events, they were also some of the very few non-White organic farmers in those days. But Juanita and Wally Nelson’s story is far more complex than the story of an older Black couple who decided to become organic farmers.

    Their story is worth telling in some detail. It will serve as my third and final case study. And I think it will further help us to answer the question of whether the best things in life are free, or not. I’m going to focus on Juanita Nelson to tell the story, because I was able to get more details of her life from her oral history interview, which you can read on the Massachusetts Department of Education website.

    Juanita Morrow was born in 1923, and grew up in Cleveland. She was a student at Howard University for two years, and in 1943 while at Howard she was arrested for the first time when she and some classmates tried to get served at a segregated restaurant.She had to drop out of college after two years for financial reasons, and began working as a reporter. In 1944, while she was a reporter, she interviewed a conscientious objector named Wally Nelson. Wally was a pacifist who refused to serve in the military for moral reasons. Juanita realized that she was a pacifist too, and when Wally was released from federal prison after the Second World War was over, they became — in her words — partners. They went on to work with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), helping to end Jim Crow racial discrimination in the United States.

    As committed pacifists, they gradually came to the realization that they did not want to support the military industrial complex in any way, if they could help it. And so in 1970, when Juanita was 47 and Wally was 61 years old, they started farming and living off the land. Although they were not religious themselves, as pacifists they got to know many Quakers — pacifism is one of the central religious beliefs of Quakerism — and theQuakers who were running an alternative school at the Woolman Hill Quaker center in Deerfield, Massachusetts, invited them to come live there. Which they did. Wally died there in 2002, and Juanita stayed there until she was no longer able to care for herself. She died at a friend’s home in 2015.

    Even though Juanita and Wally Nelson were not religious, they remind me a great deal of Siddhartha Gotama. Like Siddhartha Gotama, they decided to renounce the world of money and wealth. Instead of money and wealth, they pursued higher values — Siddhartha Gotama pursued his quest for the truth about human suffering; Juanita and Wally Nelson pursued their truth about peacemaking and pacifism. Siddhartha Gotama lived as a wandering saddhu, which was not an easy life — there were many times when he did not get enough to eat. Juanita and Wally Nelson refused to buy anything if they could help it, and while they were able to build a comfortable house using salvaged materials, they refused to have electric power or indoor plumbing. Juanita wrote a number of pieces about what it was like to live off the land, both the inconvenience of it, and the power of it. I’d like to read to you from one of these pieces she wrote, a poem called “Outhouse Blues”:

    Well, I try to grow my own food, competing with the bugs,
    I even make my own soap and my own ceramic mugs.
    I figure that the less I buy, the less I compromise
    With Standard Oil and ITT and those other gouging guys….

    Oh, but it ain’t easy, when it’s rainy and there’s mud
    To put on my old bathrobe and walk out in that crud;
    I look out through the open door and see a distant star
    And sometimes think this simple life is taking things too far.

    Juanita and Wally Nelson gave up a comfortable life — gave up wealth and money — in order to pursue the higher purpose of peacemaking. But in this poem, Juanita also acknowledges the attractions of having money. If she had money, she wouldn’t have to go out into the cold and the rain and the mud to use the outhouse. For Juanita and Wally Nelson, money and wealth may have their uses, but they can also distract you from following the highest purposes of life. So we can see that the Nelsons had much in common with Siddhartha Gotama. In a funny kind of a way, the Nelsons had something in common with Adam Smith, who concluded that the desire for wealth could lead to war; Genghis Khan’s son wanted to know how many cattle lived in France, so he could decide if that country were worth invading.

    All this is very interesting, but we still don’t have a simple answer to the questions with which I began. Do we believe that the best things in life are free? Or do we believe that money is what’s really important? Siddhartha Gotama abandoned his life of wealth in the palace, because that wealth was keeping him from answering some urgent spiritual questions. But he left his wife and baby in the palace, where there was sufficient wealth to take adequate care of them. Juanita Nelson left behind a comfortable American middle class life, because the comfort that came with her relative wealth was keeping her from pursuing an urgently moral course of action. But she acknowledged the very real downsides that came with living without money.

    I’m not convinced that we can ever have final answers to these questions. Yet we can reach some fairly obvious conclusions. First of all, as Siddhartha Gotama knew, poverty and life on the streets is not good for children. Children need adequate food and secure and stable homes. Secondly, money and wealth do seem to get in the way of spiritual progress. I don’t know why this is so, although perhaps it’s because wealth can cause to covetousness, and covetousness can lead to greed, and greed can end up in war and violence.

    What these stories seem to be telling us is that there is a balance between having money, and not having money — and that balance is hard to find. Having too much money does seem to bring problems. Thus Siddhartha Gotama felt that the extreme wealth of his family insulated him from reality, and kept him from from making spiritual progress. Where your money comes from can also bring problems. In an extreme case, Juanita and Wally Nelson felt that all money in our society is tied in with the military industrial complex, and thus having any money kept them from making the moral and ethical path they wanted to follow. But even though money might have problems associated with it, money is good when it is used to help us to raise our children; money is good when it is used to take care of those who are weaker and more vulnerable.

    More generally, perhaps money can become a good thing if it can help us turn our highest values into reality. If you can use what money you have at your disposal to support your highest moral and ethical values, then perhaps money can become a positive good. Although by doing so, you can run into other people trying to use their money to support moral and ethical values which are in conflict with yours. So for example, I support First Parish financially, in part because we’re willing to fly a rainbow flag in front of the Meetinghouse to show that we support LGBTQ+ rights; while there are those in this town (and I’ve heard from a couple of them) who are angered by the fact that we have a rainbow flag in front of the Meetinghouse. If money can promote our values in the wider world, then we run into the far larger problem of how to mediate between competing values; but that’s a topic for another sermon.

    That’s my inconclusive conclusion for this sermon. I will only add that First Parish is beginning our annual fundraising campaign this week. Since I believe First Parish promotes my values in our community, I’ll be giving at least two and a half percent of my annual income to support First Parish and those values; this in addition to my other charitable giving.

  • Why I’m Not a Buddhist (But Maybe You Should Be)

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Opening words

    The opening words were the poem “Interbeing” by Thich Nhat Hanh. To read it, go to this webpage and scroll down.

    Readings

    The first reading comes from the book “Why I Am Not a Buddhist” by Evan Thompson, a philosopher who has studied Buddhist philosophy extensively:

    “I didn’t want to be someone who just wrote about Buddhist philosophy without practicing meditation and experiencing what the philosophy was supposedly about. ‘That’s like readings about sex and never having any,’ American Buddhist devotees would say to me…. Looking for a path forward, I visited many Buddhist meditation centers over the years of writing my philosophy dissertation, … and doing my postdoctoral work. But I couldn’t connect with any of them. It didn’t feel right to count my breath in Korean or chant in Japanese or try to do complex visualization of Tibetan Buddhist deities…. I wonder whether I was being too uptight and why I couldn’t just let go….”

    The second reading is from an essay by Rev. Takashi Kenryu Tsuji titled “The Heart of the Buddha-Dharma: Following the Jodo-Shinshu Path”:

    Shinran Shonin and the teachers before him explained that the Pure Land was situated in the western corners of the universe, zillions of miles away. It was pictured as a very beautiful place, free of suffering, where everyone is happy. Philosophically speaking, however, the Pure Land does not refer to a specific location out there somewhere. Rather, the Pure Land is symbolic; it symbolizes the transcendence of relativity, of all limited qualities, of the finiteness of human life. In this transcendence, there is Compassion-Wisdom, an active moving, spiritual force. The Pure Land ideal is the culmination of the teaching of Wisdom and Compassion.

    (As quoted by Jeff Wilson in Dixie Dharma, UNC Press, 2012)

    Sermon: Why I’m Not a Buddhist (But Maybe You Should Be)

    I’m going to begin with some introductory remarks. Then I’ll tell you why I’m not a Buddhist, even though I’m fascinated by Buddhism. And I’ll wind up talking about some forms of Buddhism that seem worthy of your attention.

    First, the introductory remarks:

    When First Parish posted this sermon topic on the Cohasset 143 Facebook page, one or two commenters made it clear why they are not Buddhists. One person made their point in simple, straightforward terms: “I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ as My Lord [and] Savior.” Another person, presumably also a conservative Christian, wrote: “They [meaning Buddhists] don’t worship a God!” Actually, what this person meant was that Buddhists don’t worship the Christian God, which is a true statement. And if you’re a conservative Christian, these are both worthy reasons for not being a Buddhist.

    Yet another conservative Christian scornfully wrote: “‘I am the Lord thy God thou shalt not have false gods before me.’ — The First Commandment. (Did you not ‘get’ that basic point Reverend?)” This comment is worth paying attention to, because it’s an example of a conservative Christian assuming that everyone should believe exactly what they believe. But it’s not just conservative Christians who make this assumption. The vocal critic of religion Richard Dawkins takes the same attitude towards those who are not the kind of atheist he is; and Dawkins has an unfortunate tendency to anathematize atheists who differ from his own views, as for example atheists who belong to a religious organization like this one.

    I find these kinds of comments troubling mostly because they reveal an unpleasant truth about the current state of society in the United States today. All of us in the United States today are prone to believe that we are right and that people who disagree with us are wrong. We either hate Donald Trump or we hate Joe Biden, and anyone who disagrees with us is a horrible person. We are either right-to-lifers or we are pro-choicers, and anyone who disagrees with us is a horrible person. We are either conservative Christians, or we are not, and anyone who is not like us is a horrible person.

    Unfortunately, this kind of attitude makes it difficult to listen to those who might have different viewpoints or experiences from ours. As we are seeing in the House of Representatives right now, this kind of attitude makes it hard to have a functioning democracy. And we are all guilty of it. It’s so much a part of the atmosphere that I’m willing to bet everyone in this room has made a disparaging comment about someone with whom they disagree. I know I’ve done it.

    It’s not good for us to be this way. This kind of thing can make us angry, and when you get angry you can feel the negative effects of that anger in your body.

    That’s one of the reasons I wanted to give this sermon. I am not giving a sermon titled, “I’m not a Buddhist, and you shouldn’t be either or you’ll burn in hell.” I am not giving a sermon titled, “I’m a Buddhist and if you were a truly good person, you’d be one too.” Instead, I’m trying to respect the diversity in our world, while at the same time trying to think with you about what is true.

    That’s the introduction. Now I’ll tell you very briefly why I’m not a Buddhist.

    When I was a Unitarian Universalist teenager, Pat Green, the assistant minister of our church ran our youth group, and one week he talked to us about Zen Buddhism. Pat told us about “the sound of one hand clapping” and sitting meditation and all the rest. All of us in the youth group were fascinated. And I continued to try to learn about Zen Buddhism over the next couple of decades. Ultimately, I discovered that learning about Buddhism was a lot of work — I’m one of those people who, if I’m going to do something, have to pursue the highest level of excellence. I could have wound up like the philosopher Evan Thompson in the first reading, who not only read Buddhist philosophy in the original languages, but also spent a great deal of time learning Buddhist practices. Unlike Evan Thompson, I had grown up in a religious tradition that I felt comfortable in, and I finally realized that I was doing just fine as a Unitarian Universalist. Maybe I was simply lazy, but eventually I stopped trying to pursue Zen Buddhism, or any kind of Buddhist practice.

    So that’s why I’m not a Buddhist. But one thing I hope you noticed in that little story is that it’s perfectly acceptable for a Unitarian Universalist to participate in more than one religious tradition. You can be a Unitarian Universalist, while at the same time practicing Buddhism, or taking Buddhism seriously. Nor is this something that’s limited to Unitarian Universalists. It is increasingly common in Western society for a person to have more than one religious affiliation. This has long been the case in other societies — as for example in some east Asian societies, where it is common for an individual to feel connected to Buddhism, Daoism, and folk religions all at the same time. We began to see multiple religious affiliations emerge in the West in the middle of the last century. The Trappist monk Thomas Merton was one of the people who popularized the notion of multiple religious affiliations, when he began to augment his Christian practices with Buddhist practices.

    The notion of having multiple religious affiliations seriously annoys some conservative Christians, as we heard at the beginning of this sermon. We have a different point of view. We feel it’s OK to have multiple religious affiliations. Even if you have only one religious affiliation, we feel that encountering other religious traditions can help widen our perspectives and give us a better understanding of what it means to be human. With that in mind, I’d like to point out some varieties of Buddhism that might be worthy of your attention.

    First and foremost, we have a Buddhist meditation group right here within First Parish. This group is led by Christine Allen, who is both a practicing Buddhist and a Unitarian Universalist. She has spent years developing her own Buddhist meditation practice, and has a deep understanding of Buddhist philosophy. You can find one of her dharma talks on the First Parish website, a talk she gave at a meditation retreat she led in Trueblood Hall last year. If you’re looking for an introduction to Buddhist practice and thought, Christine Allen and the First Parish meditation group would be a good place to start.

    Our First Parish group represents a strand of Buddhism that we might call Westernized Buddhism. As Buddhism spread around the world from India where it originated, it has taken on the cultural characteristics of the places it has spread to. Westernized Buddhism adapts Buddhist thought and practice to Western cultures and Western languages. This makes it easier for Westerners to engage with Buddhism, without having to learn another language or new cultural norms.

    I do have to point out that there is one form of Westernized Buddhism that it’s best to avoid. That’s the Buddhism that’s become fashionable in Silicon Valley in recent years. That’s the Buddhism that says if you practice meditation and mindfulness, you can become more successful in your career because mindfulness training allows you to work incredibly long hours in spite of poor work-life balance. I like to call this the “Prosperity Dharma,” because it’s analogous to the “Prosperity Gospel” of Christianity. The Prosperity Gospel of Christianity tells you to believe in God, give lots of money to the preacher who preaching the Prosperity Gospel to you, and that will make you financially successful. But the Prosperity Gospel really has nothing to do with Christianity, just as the Prosperity Dharma really has nothing to due with Buddhism — these aren’t religions, they’re ways for other people to make money from your credulity.

    The Prosperity Dharma has a couple of other problems. Carolyn Chen, a sociologist at the University of California in Berkeley, has pointed out that the people who push the Prosperity Dharma in Silicon Valley are mostly affluent White people who are openly dismissive of Asian Buddhist traditions and practices. Instead of being Westernized Buddhism, this is what Chen calls this “Whitened Buddhism”: “it erases the ‘ethnic’ and ‘religious’ Buddhism of Asians and Asian Americans in favor of the thinking of White Westerners.” It’s a subtle form of racism.

    I’m also troubled when the advocates of the Prosperity Dharma want to teach mindfulness in the schools to help children deal with stress. This perverts the real purpose of Buddhism. Mindfulness is not supposed to help your child deal with stress so they can get into Harvard. Buddhism is supposed to make you a better person. Prosperity Dharma treats children as a means to an end. Real Buddhism, like all real religions, treats persons as ends in themselves.

    Now that we’ve disposed of the Prosperity Dharma, let’s look at a couple of other forms of Buddhism.

    If I were going to affiliate with a Buddhist group, my first choice would be the Buddhist Churches of America. This is a Pure Land Buddhist group affiliated with the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha tradition based in Kyoto, Japan. Pure Land Buddhism reminds me of our own Universalist tradition. The old Universalists, using Christian terms, said that everyone gets to go to heaven. Pure Land Buddhists say that everyone can can enter Buddha’s Pure land, everyone can achieve Buddhahood. Just as we Unitarian Universalists have translated the old Universalist ideas into modern terms, so the Buddhist Churches of America have translated the old ideas of the Pure Land into modern terms — we heard this in the second reading today, where Rev. Takashi Kenryu Tsuji said, “The Pure Land ideal is the culmination of the teaching of Wisdom and Compassion.” I also like the fact that the Buddhist Churches of America do not place much emphasis on meditation, because I have a hard time meditating. Sadly, the closest Buddhist Church of America is in New York, but if there were one nearby I would love to see if there were a way for our congregations to work together.

    And if I were going to affiliate with a Buddhist group, my second choice would be to affiliate with the Engaged Buddhism tradition, whose best known advocate is the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Engaged Buddhism teaches that a primary purpose of religion is to make this world a better place. Engaged Buddhism started out by working for world peace, and they have since expanded into other social justice work such a human rights work and women’s rights. Beyond that, Thich Nhat Hanh is, in my opinion, one of the best religious writers of the past fifty years. Even though I’m not a Buddhist, I’ve gotten a lot from Thich Nhat Hanh’s books on pacifism and peace. In particular, his concept of “interbeing” — which we heard a little about in the first reading — has given me a new way to think about world peace.

    We began by hearing from some people who commented on the Cohasset 143 Facebook page, telling us how they restrict themselves to one exclusive religious tradition. By contrast, we Unitarian Universalists are open to other religious points of view, and curious about other religion. We believe it is acceptable to have more than one religious affiliation. You can be a Unitarian Universalist, and you can be a Buddhist — just as you can be a Unitarian Universalist and an atheist, or you can be a Unitarian Universalist and a Christian. You can even be all of these things at once.

    This brings me to one final point I’d like to leave you with. When we talk with people who have a different religious outlook from ours, we don’t have to be defensive. We don’t have to immediately tell them about our religious outlook. We can respect the diversity in our world, while at the same time respecting our own religious outlook. We can engage in respectful dialogue that will enrich us, and make the world a more peaceful place.