Two Homilies

A number of years ago, I wrote a piece for my Humanities students, which I still use, called "The Four Paths to the Sacred." In it I made the case that all the religious and spiritual traditions on the planet could be classified according to the four directions:

1. SOUTH--The Path of Learning (Ancient and Indigenous religious traditions, involving their own culturally specific mythologies and traditions)
2. EAST--The Path of Teaching (Far Eastern religious traditions, involving ramifying lineages of teachers and students of the Dharma).
3. WEST--The Path of Healing (The Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--all positing one Creator God, and involving themes of redemption and healing played out through their sacred history).
4. NORTH--The Path of Creating (The modern, secular traditions that emphasize human reason, freedom, and creativity--from the European Renaissance to the present).

I concluded with the view that our best bet, in this time of global crisis and the need for global healing, would be simultaneously to nurture our own chosen spiritual orientation, while remaining open to, and learning from, the wisdom available from all four paths, worldwide. The Buddha speaks of 84,000 Dharma doors--and of course "84,000" is simply a metaphor for an infinite number. The point is, of course, that good Dharma teachings can be found in all four of these paths--in every spiritual tradition on the planet. (This view has also been embraced and promoted by many modern-day Bodhisattvas, such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh.)

Pursuant to this, I would like to share two short Dharma teachings from the Western Path of Healing and the Northern Path of Creating. The first is from a Seventh Century English nun, St. Hilda, a talented, spiritually accomplished woman who founded the magnificent Whitby Abbey in north Yorkshire as a joint monastery for both monks and nuns. While on a walk through the Yorkshire countryside several years ago, my wife and I came upon a tiny village, almost a ghost town, called Ellerburn, and there we found an ancient roadside chapel, smelling of mildew, which was dedicated to St. Hilda. At the front was a slate tablet inscribed with a short homily from St Hilda, which provides some basic instruction to novice monks and nuns. Here it is:

A Homily of St. Hilda

Trade with the gifts God has given you.

Bend your minds to holy learning

that you may escape the fretting moths of littleness of mind

that would wear out your souls.

Brace your wills to actions

that they may not be the spoils of weak desires.

Train your hearts and lips to song

which gives courage to the soul

Being buffeted by trials,

learn to laugh.

Being reproved,

give thanks.

Having failed,

determine to succeed.

This is pure, 200 proof Dharma--aside from the obligatory Western reference to God, it could as easily have been written by Pema Chodron as by St. Hilda.

The other piece is from Walt Whitman's introduction to the 1855 version of Leaves of Grass--a wonderful, visionary example of the Path of Creating--the Sacred as the autonomous self--which characterized the Romantic movement in both Europe and America:

This is what you shall do

by Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Amen to both Hilda and Walt!