Good morning thank you for attending the temple this Easter morning. Even though Easter is not a Buddhist holiday there is much in the spirit of the holiday we can appreciate. Today I would like to share with you a connection I make with one part of the Easter story and the Lotus Sutra.
As you know I work as a chaplain and in my work here in Charlotte I am frequently, almost entirely, called to spend time with Christians. Not being raised in a particularly Christian family there is really much of the religion I was not aware of prior to my training to be a chaplain. One of those things was the idea of Saturday in the story of the crucifixion and resurrection Christian celebrate at Easter. Today I would like to talk about Saturday.
In a way the idea of the uncertainty of Saturday after crucifixion is an appropriate metaphor for many things in our lives. In case you don’t know what I am talking about, Saturday was a time of great uncertainty for those early followers of Christ. They had just witnessed their spiritual teachers death the day before. For my Christian friends who may read this, please forgive me if I make some doctrinal errors.
On Saturday those early disciples of Christ who were not yet called Christians were probably very upset, grieving the loss of their teacher just the day before. For us as moderns who know the outcome of the story it is easy to forget how uncertain these people may have felt. They did not know what the future would hold for them. There may have even been the thoughts of giving up, of being spiritually adrift.
In Chapter VI of the Lotus Sutra the arhats say to the Buddha
“We have obtained innumerable treasures although we did not seek them.”
When we read this it is easy to understand both the delight and the acknowledgement of the benefit of the treasure of an improved life condition resulting from our Buddhist practice.
Yet in the time before we see the benefit of our Buddhist faith and practice it isn’t easy to be able to claim any delight in benefits not sought after. There are times in our practice when we may face some serious troubles, when moving forward seems terribly hard if not down right impossible.
I imagine Saturday might have been such a time for the followers of Christ. How do you proceed when the worst has happened? How do you go forward after you have lost a loved one? How do you get up the next day after you have been diagnosed with a terminal disease? How do you have a morning cup of coffee when you need to rush to the hospital to be with a sick or dying loved one? How do you find joy when the worst possible thing has happened to you? How do you praise the benefit of the Lotus Sutra when you see no benefit in the moment?
Sometimes it seems our religious beliefs call on us to do the impossible. Yet isn’t it really the other way around? When we are faced with the seemingly impossible isn’t it our religious or spiritual beliefs the very thing we can rely upon to get us through?
Sometimes we view events as tests of our religion or our faith when really we might better think of it as we have difficulties as a natural part of being alive and religion is what can give us direction in those moments. When you look around at every thing in life think about just how difficult it is to even be alive. Living is a treasure no matter how brief or turbulent it is. Right now there are literally hundreds of dead canker worms on my front porch, there are hundreds more plastered all over the sides of the house. These were living beings that struggled and did not make it. Life is a struggle, but we as humans have an expectation that it will be roses and easy.
We look at resurrection or enlightenment as if this is how every day should be, as if somehow we should expect lives of ease and comfort. We forget too easily the Saturdays of our lives. We forget the years of struggle the Buddha engaged in so he could be awakened. We forget just how tenuous life really is.
Life is the treasure and our awareness of this is the treasure we sometimes are most unaware of and take for granted. This is the first treasure we should celebrate. When we can fully celebrate the treasure of life and realize that Saturday is a key part of that treasure we can be opened to the other treasures in our lives. When we live with a sense of entitlement to lives of ease we delude ourselves and thereby miss the moments of just being alive.
I wish you a joyous day and life as Buddhist, as Christians, as Jews, as Muslims, and as the many other ways of expressing and living as spiritual beings.
