Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Jataka tales

  • 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 Tree Spirit’s Mistake

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon text may contain typographical errors. The sermon was actually delivered by Bev Burgess, worship associate, because I was out of town on family leave.

    Readings

    [The first reading was the poem “Global Warming Blues” by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie. Here’s the poet reciting her poem:]

    The second reading this morning is part of a poem about ecological recovery. It’s an excerpt from the poem “New Ecology” by Ernesto Cardenal. This poem takes place in Nicaragua, some years after the authoritarian Somoza regime collapsed. The poet writes:

    In September more coyotes were seen near San Ubaldo.
    More alligators, soon after the victory…
    The bird population has tripled, we’re told…
    Somoza’s people also destroyed the lakes, rivers, and mountains.
    Somoza used to sell the green turtle of the Caribbean.
    They used to export turtle eggs and iguanas by the truckload.
    The loggerhead turtle was being wiped out…
    In danger of extinction the jungle’s tiger cat,

    Its soft jungle-colored fur…
    But the sawfish and the freshwater shark could finally breathe again.
    Tisma is teeming once more with herons reflected in its mirrors
    We’re going to decontaminate Lake Managua.
    The humans weren’t the only ones who longed for liberation.
    The whole ecology has been moaning….

    Sermon: “The Tree Spirit’s Mistake”

    Here we are, just finishing one of the warmest winters on record here in New England. We have had some cold snaps, and we definitely knew that it was winter, but over the course of this year’s heating season, temperatures have been surprisingly mild. This is actually a good thing for many of us, considering how much energy prices have risen this year. But it’s also not such a good thing, insofar as it reminds us of the looming ecological crisis. Mild winter weather means we’re probably going to have to brace ourselves for more scorching weather in the summer, and maybe another drought. We might even say that the ecological crisis is no longer looming, it is upon us.

    So what should we do? Of course we’re going to take political action. Of course we’ll encourage technological fixes. But I also feel that our ecological crisis must be addressed spiritually. I’ll tell you an old Buddhist story to explain what I mean.

    Once upon a time, Kokālika, who was one of the followers of the Buddha, asked his friends Sāriputta and Moggallāna to travel with him back to his own country. They refused to go, and the three friends exchanged harsh words.

    One of Buddha’s followers said sadly, “Kokālika can’t live without his two friends, but he can’t live with them, either.”

    “That reminds me of a story,” said Buddha, and he told his followers this tale:

    Once upon a time, two tree-spirits lived in a forest. One was a small, modest tree; the other was a large majestic tree. In that same forest lived a ferocious tiger and a fearsome lion. This lion and this tiger killed and ate any animal they could get their paws on. They were messy eaters, and left rotting chunks of meat all over the forest floor. Because of them, no human being dared set foot in the forest.

    The smaller tree-spirit decided they did not like the smell of rotting meat. The little tree-spirit told the great tree-spirit that they were going to drive the lion and tiger out of the forest.

    “My friend,” said the great tree-spirit, “don’t you see that these two creatures protect our beloved forest? If you drive them out of the forest, human beings will come into our home and cut all us trees down for firewood.”

    But the little tree-spirit didn’t listen. The very next day, they assumed the shape of a large and terrible monster, and drove the tiger and lion out of the forest.

    As soon as the human beings realized that the tiger and the lion had left the forest, they came in and cut down half the trees. This frightened the little tree spirit, who cried out to the great tree spirit, “You were right, I should never have driven the tiger and the lion out of our forest. What can I do?”

    “Go find the tiger and the lion and invite them to return,” said the great tree spirit. “That’s our only hope.”

    The little tree spirit found the tiger and the lion and asked them to return. But the tiger and the lion just growled, and rudely replied, “We shall never return.” The next day, the humans returned, cut down all the trees, and the forest was gone.

    The Buddha finished telling this story, and paused. The Buddha and all his followers believed that they had lived many previous lives, and his followers knew this story was about one of his previous lives. The Buddha continued: “I’m sure you guessed that the little tree spirit was Kokālika, the lion was Sāriputta, and the tiger was Moggallāna.” To which one of his followers responded, “And you, Buddha, were the great tree spirit.”

    At first, this story sounds like an ecological parable that’s easy to understand. We start with a stable ecosystem. The foolish tree-spirit upsets the balance of the ecosystem by getting rid of the large predators. The ecosystem begins to collapse. When the foolish tree-spirit tries to fix their mistake, they realize that upsetting the balance of an ecosystem is easy, but it’s difficult to restore that balance once it’s been upset.

    But there is more to the story than that. The story really begins, not in the forest, but with conflict within the Buddha’s religious community. Three of the Buddha’s followers cannot get along. Their constant fighting upsets the balance of the community. The Buddha is trying to teach his followers that the quality of their human community affects the world around them. What we do in our religious communities, how we treat one another, affects more than just the people within our little communities.

    We Unitarian Universalists teach ourselves something similar when we talk about respect for the interdependent web. A theologian named Bernard Loomer was one of the first to bring the idea of the interdependent web to Unitarian Universalists. Loomer had had a long career as a Presbyterian theologian when he began attending the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, California. The Berkeley Unitarian Universalists, when they realized the spiritual depths of his teaching, arranged for him to give weekly talks. In 1984, during one of those talks, Loomer told them that most people had misunderstood Jesus of Nazareth. When Jesus of Nazareth was speaking about what he called “the Kingdom of God,” he was using first century Jewish language to describe how all things are connected and dependent upon one another. While Jesus referred to this concept as the “Kingdom of God,” Loomer called it the “interdependent web of existence.” The interdependent web of existence means all human beings are connected, and we must treat each other as we ourselves wish to be treated. All living beings are connected in the same way, and all living beings are connected with the non-living world, with air and rock and water and sunlight, in one grand interdependent web of existence.

    The old Universalists hinted at the same thing when they said, “God is love.” We might re-interpret that old Universalist statement for modern times something like this: God is not some transcendent supernatural being that exists outside of and beyond the world of science and reason; instead, God is the love that connects all things in an interdependent web. This is another positive statement of the power of the interdependent web of existence.

    In the poem “Global Warming Blues,” Mariahdessa Ekere Tallie tells us what happens when we deny the interdependent web, when we deny our connection to all humans and to all living beings and to all non-living things. When we deny the interdependent web of existence, we get global warming and our towns become rivers, bodies floating and water high. (Or, for those of us who live here on the South Shore, we have surprisingly mild winters, and hot summers with too little rain.) The poet tells us: “Seem like for Big Men’s living / little folks has got to die.” The Big Men ignore the interdependent web; they deny their connectedness to other humans, to other living beings.

    It matters how we human beings connect to one another. When we deny the interdependent web that binds all human beings together, we also deny the interdependent web that binds humans to non-human beings. The two cannot be separated. Systemic racism allows a few human beings to exploit and dominate other human beings. In the same way, the ecological crisis stems from a system that allows us human beings to exploit all living beings. Systemic sexism results in sexual harassment, gender pay gaps, and rape culture. And this is tied to a system that allows human beings to rape and exploit the earth and non-human beings.

    How can we repair the damage that has been done to the interdependent web of all existence, human and non-human? You may say to yourself, I recycle, I compost, isn’t that enough? You may say, Does this mean I have to fight global climate change and racism and sexism and ableism and everything else all at the same time? That’s too much for someone who’s already working two jobs and trying to raise children.

    But this does not have to be overwhelming. The Buddha taught his community a simple but profound truth: how they treated each other within their religious community made a difference in the wider world. The quality of our relationships inside our religious communities makes a difference in the wider world. As we work together to eliminate systemic racism inside our religious communities, we show the world that human relationships can be healed. As we gradually eliminate the sexism that still continues inside our religious communities, we teach both ourselves and the wider world that human relationships can be founded on something other than exploitation and dominance. What we do inside our religious communities is part of the interdependent web. As we learn to live together in love, we help heal the entire interdependent web of all existence.

    We can keep on recycling and composting, working two jobs and raising our children. And direct political action is still necessary. And we can spread spiritual renewal within our religious communities, by living together in love. As we repair the interdependent web of existence within our religious communities, we also draw strength from that religious community, and with that strength we can bring love to the world around us. The love we bring to the world will combine with the love others are bringing. And so the healing of the world begins in a small way, in the interactions of this gathered community. May that healing continue to grow among us, as plants continue to grow in the depths of winter until at last springtime bursts forth in all its glory.

  • Calming the Quarrel

    Reading

    The reading this morning is rather long, but I think you’ll find it engaging. It is a Buddhist story, Jataka tale no. 33, translated by Viggo Fausboll, and published in 1873 in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. I have lightly edited and modernized the language.

    “Living in harmony.” The Master related this story, while living in the grove of banyan-trees near Kapilavatthu, in reference to a dispute he had just witnessed. The Master, admonishing his royal relations, said: ‘Dispute between relatives is not becoming. Even animals which had conquered their enemies while living in concord, when quarreling suffered great destruction.’ Then his royal relatives called upon him to tell this story.

    Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was king of Benares, the Bodhisattva was born a quail. He lived in the wood, with a following of many thousands of quails.

    One day a quail-hunter went their dwelling-place and counterfeited the cry of quails. When the hunter saw that they had assembled, he threw his net over them, and after drawing it together, he filled his basket. He went to his house, sold the quails, and thus had his livelihood with that money.

    The Bodhisattva said to the quails, “This quail-hunter destroys our kin. But I know a means by which he will not be able to catch us. As soon as he throws the net over us, each of you put your head into one mesh of the net. Then fly together and lift the net and carry it to a thorn-bush. This being done, we shall escape each from under his place.”

    Saying, “Very good!” they all promised to do so.

    The next day when the quail-hunter threw the net over them, they lifted the net together, and having cast it on a thorn-bush, they themselves fled away from underneath. It took so long for the fowler to extricate the net from the thorn-bush that it became dark, and he went away empty-handed.

    Day after day, the quails continued in the same way. Each day the quail-hunter went to his house empty-handed. His wife grew angry, saying, “You come empty-handed every day. I think you are keeping another household.”

    The fowler said, “Dear, I have no other household. Those quails live in harmony, and as soon as I throw my net on them, they fly away with it and cast it on a thorn-bush, and so escape. But fear not, they will not always live in harmony. Thou must not grieve. When they fall into disunion, I will take them all. Then I shall come and make your face smile.” Then he repeated this short poem:

    While they agree, the birds go
    and carry off the net;
    but when they quarrel
    they will fall into my power.

    Not long thereafter, one quail, descending on the pasture-ground, unawares trod on the head of another. The other was angry, and said, “Who trod on my head?” The first said, “Be not angry, I trod upon you unawares.” Yet the first quail was angry. They began to quarrel. Before long, one said scornfully, “It is thou, I suppose, that liftest the net all by yourself.”

    Hearing them quarreling, the Bodhisatta thought, “For those who quarrel there is no safety. Now they will not lift the net together. Then they will incur great destruction, and the quail-hutner will capture them. I cannot stay in this place any longer.” So he gathered together his close followers and flew away.

    Soon the quail-hunter returned. Once again, he counterfeited the cry of the quails, and when they had assembled he threw the net over them. Then one quail said mockingly, “They say that last time while lifting the net, the feathers on thy head fell off. Now this time, lift!” Another said, “While thou wert lifting the net, thy wings on both sides dropped. Now you lift.”

    While they quarreled thus, the fowler threw his net over them, gathered them together, and filled his basket. He went home, showed all the quails to his wife, and made her smile.

    Having finished telling this story, the Master said, “Thus, O King! dispute among kinfolk is the root of destruction.” Having given this moral instruction, he completed the story by saying: “At that time the unwise quail was Devadatta, while I was the wise quail.”

    Sermon: “Calming the Quarrel”

    The reading this morning is one of the Jataka tales. The Jataka tales are ostensibly stories about one of the Buddha’s previous lives. At the same time, they are stories that often help us reflect on the problems of day to day life.

    The Jataka tales typically start with a brief description of a problem faced by Buddha’s followers. The problem reminds Buddha of one of his previous lives — for, being an enlightened being he can remember all of his five hundred or so previous lives. The Buddha tells the story of this previous life, and concludes by drawing a moral to instruct his followers in how to live a better life. So there’s a framing story that presents an opening problem, a story told by Buddha, and a conclusion of the framing story, with a closing moral.

    This reading this morning was Jataka tale number 33, the Sammodamāna-Jātaka. You have probably heard it before, in some form or another, for it is one of the best-known stories in the South Asian cultural legacy. It’s a simple story, the kind of story you tell to your children to keep siblings from fighting with one another. Although perhaps we hope that children don’t feel the full horror of the ending of the story. When the quails quarrel, the quail-hunter captures them, and crushes them in a basket, where not doubt they panic and trod on one another’s heads and smother one another, until they are pulled out and sold for someone’s dinner. In short, as a result of their quarreling, they die a miserable death.

    This story reminds me of the current situation in the United States. We face problems that can kill some of us. Those problems include things like a decrease in the number of decent jobs, an opioid crisis, racial injustice, a looming environmental disaster, and conflict with aggressive nations like Russia and North Korea. We have been told — we know in our hearts — that if we could just work together, we could address these problems. If we could keep our common goals in the forefront of our minds, we could work together. Only if we work together can we extricate ourselves from the danger.

    So (to paraphrase a catchphrase made popular in 1896 by Christian Socialist Charles Sheldon), when we are faced with overwhelming social problems, we first ask the question: What would Buddha do? Then we ask the question: Can we follow the Buddha’s lead?

    What does Buddha do in the story of the quails? He first tries persuasion and leadership. He gently explains the problem to the other quails: the reason so many of them are disappearing is that a quail-hunter is using a net to catch them. He then explains what they can do to avoid the problem: they can fly up together, lifting the net. And finally he persuades them to try.

    Can we follow the Buddha’s lead? At first glance, it looks like we can follow the Buddha’s lead. We face more complex problems than the quails faced. We face — among other things — loss of jobs, an opioid crisis, racial injustice, environmental disaster, and international conflict. But if we worked together, we could address these problems.

    On the other hand, we also know that not everyone is in complete agreement with the nature of the problems facing us. The quails in the story seemed to be in agreement about the problem facing them. But we today do not agree about everything. For example, some people in the United States would add same-sex marriage to the list of problems facing us; while we Unitarian Universalists generally support same sex marriage. So at second glance, it looks like we cannot follow the Buddha’s lead.

    But if we look again, I think we can indeed follow the Buddha’s lead. We do not have to agree on everything in order to work together. As an example of what I mean, I can point to the last two Unitarian Universalist congregations I served. Both those congregations did a lot to fight homelessness. Both of those Unitarian Universalist congregations had to team up with other congregations in order to carry on an effective fight against homelessness, and some of those other congregations we worked with were bitterly opposed to same sex marriage. But we managed to put aside our differences to work together towards a common goal.

    And I suspect the story of the quails glosses over some of the problems the Buddha faced to convince the other quails to work together. The story makes it sound easy, but I’m willing to bet that the Buddhas had to do a lot of persuading and explaining to get the quails to work together.

    The real miracle in this story is that the Buddha did all that persuading and explaining without losing his temper, without losing his cool. He managed to not get into any fights with the other quails. He managed to stay calm and centered. And remember too that at this point he wasn’t yet the Buddha; he had not yet achieved Enlightenment. In that incarnation, he was merely a Boddhisatva, that is, someone who has the potential to reach Enlightenment. The progressive Buddhists I know believe we all have the potential to achieve Enlightenment, meaning each of us (in that specific sense) is a Boddhisatva.

    In other words, we — you and I — have the capability to do what the Buddha did in his incarnation as a quail. We have the capability to persuade and explain how to work together for the common good. And to do that, we will have to be like the Buddha, and remain calm and centered.

    That’s the hard part, isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty good at persuading and explaining. But in order to be good at explaining and persuading, you have to stay calm and centered. I found this out when I was selling building materials. I quickly learned that if you came across as desperate, you were likely to lose the sale. Similarly, if the Buddha had come across as desperate, half the quails would just stop listening to him. He cultivated a state of being where he was both fully aware of the danger — it was, after all, a matter of life and death — and he did not let the danger ruffle the calm of his soul.

    And this, it seems to me, is one of the big problems we face in the United States today. We are letting danger ruffle the calm of our souls. We go from passive to frantic very quickly. When we become frantic, we are no longer effective at either explaining or persuading.

    So how can we stay calm and centered? This is something that religion is actually quite useful for. In fact, helping people stay calm and centered is one of the default settings in just about any organized religion. And most organized religions offer a number of different techniques we can use to stay calm and centered. We human beings are a diverse lot, and organized religions typically offer more than one path to being calm and centered. Buddhism, for example, encourages people to meditate, to study sacred texts, to chant, to gather together in community, to give offerings and alms, and Zen Buddhists even get to practice archery.

    Or, more to the point, take our own organized religion, Unitarian Universalism. In our worship service alone, we offer a diversity of paths: we can sit in community, we can sing, we can listen to music, we can share our joys and sorrows, we can listen to a sermon, we even have a short time of silence for those of us who need silence. Beyond Sunday morning worship, you can join a Circle Ministry group, you can go on a meditation retreat, you can do hands-on volunteering, you can lead worship yourself in the summer. These are all spiritual practices you can find in our congregation, practices that can help you get calm and centered.

    And I suspect the most important aspect of Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice, or indeed of any organized religion, is the communal aspect. Thich Nhat Hahn, one of the most interesting Buddhist thinkers of the past few decades, used the term “inter-being” to describe how we are linked to all beings. Thich Nhat Hahn said, “You cannot be by yourself alone, you have to inter-be with everything else.” (1) We Unitarian Universalists often use the phrase, “the interdependent web of existence,” which means much the same thing. (2)

    “You cannot be by yourself alone.” This is the most important part of learning how to be calm and centered. “You have to inter-be with everything else.” This is how the Buddha remained calm and centered in the story about the quails: he was always fully aware of how he was “inter-being” with all the other quails, and indeed with all existence.

    So in our spiritual practices, this is what we must always remain fully aware of: we are all part of each other; we all “inter-be.” It’s fairly easy to remember that when we gather for Sunday worship services. We mostly like one another, and while there are inevitably feuds and squabbles in every congregation, the bonds between us end to be stronger than the weak forces trying to pull us apart. So we gather for Sunday worship — or for Circle Ministry, or to volunteer, or for a mediation retreat — we gather together with people we more or less get along with, and that is the key to our spiritual practice. We remember what it is to get along with other people. We remember inter-being.

    The next step is to take that spiritual practice out into the wider world. When we hear something inflammatory on social media, we can remember that feeling of inter-being. Instead of lashing out, we remain calm and centered. Remaining calm and centered, we can stay focused on what’s really important: that we must work together if we’re going to get out of this mess we’re in. And so we can remember that we don’t need to react to that inflammatory social media post. When we don’t react to that social media post, that helps other to back down, so that they can return to being calm and centered. So it is that calmness can spread, and so it might be that we can learn to work together again.

    Not that this is an easy task. It’s hard to remember about inter-being. It’s hard to really and truly believe in the interdependent web of existence. That’s why we keep coming back to communities like this one; we all need constant reminders. Well, maybe not all of us. It does seem that there are a few special persons, like the Buddha, who don’t need constant reminders. The rest of us rely on each other, we rely on our gathered community, to help us stay calm and centered. And then we’re able to take that feeling of calm, that feeling of being centered, out into the world. May it be so: may we spread calm wherever we go in our lives; may we live our lives as if we are all interdependent.

    Notes

    (1) Dharma talk by Thich Nhat Hanh, 1998, “The Island of Self” http://www.purifymind.com/IslandSelf.htm This dharma talk was reprinted in a slightly different form in the book No Mud No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering (Parallax Press). Available as a print book or ebook from Parallax Press or it can be borrowed online from the Internet Archive.

    (2) The phrase “interdependent web of existence” comes from theologian Bernard Loomer, who was affiliated with the Unitarian Unviersalists and the Presbyterians. Loomer used the phrase to describe what Jesus of Nazareth meant by the phrase “the Kingdom of Heaven.” One can also find parallels between the concepts of interdependence and intersubjectivity, and the Jewish Philopher Martin Buber’s book I and Thou. While all these concepts have distinct differences, arising in part out of the distinctly different religious traditions from whence they come, nevertheless the parallels are striking.