St Mary's

Over 10 years ago, myself, Peter and Joan Mooney undertook the arduous car journey to Sydney in Peter’s parents 1973 Green Holden Monaro (not the Kingswood). I think it took longer than 12 hours in this old beast. But that’s another story. We attended an 8 day Zen Buddhist retreat. There were many things I learned and could relate but one that stays with me was the “waking up” meditation. In Zen Meditation, everyone is invited to face the wall sitting upright on a black prayer matt or stool. In the “waking up” meditation, the Zen master walks around the centre of the room with a rather large stick. A stick which he uses to strike the meditator on the shoulder with, if he feels the meditator is falling asleep. If you receive a gentler tap on the back, you are invited to bow and present your neck to the master, which he then strikes with a waking blow. If you were a little sleepy before the strike, believe me, you are far from it, after being struck. Better than a strong cappuccino or flat white, whatever your preference. No more falling asleep for this meditator.This strong invitation to enter the present moment is an experience one doesn’t forget in a hurry. If most of us were brought into the present moment with a strike on the shoulder every time we moved out of the present moment, we could be beaten black and blue beyond recognition within an hour, without a guarantee of being any closer to being in the present moment.

The other night with the opening of the newly renovated hall in Milton, which the Monday night Buddhist group use, I was invited to lead the group in a blessing of the hall. I decided to use the “waking up” meditation, but not exactly in the manner of which I have just described (much to the relief of those gathered). I decided to use water- water is something I use to wake myself up of a morning. Sprinkling water on my face, or sometimes having a shower, depending on how sleepy I am, or how awake I need to be. Water is an excellent element to use in spiritual ritual. Because part of the waking up we are invited to in the spiritual life, is the waking up to the oneness of life, its interconnectedness. Each of us is made up of 90% water. A huge percentage of the planet is made up of water. Being sprinkled with water, we are invited to wake up to the deep connection we have to all of life on this planet. (After this homily we will be invited to WAKE UP with WATER)

The theme of today’s readings is about WAKING UP, opening our spiritual eyes and seeing anew. St Paul writes in the 2^nd reading “Wake up from your sleep, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph 5 ¹⁴). In this sentence is contained the whole message of Good Friday and Easter. The theme of dying to the separate self and putting on the universal divine self, Christ consciousness. For Saint Paul, this is central- “It is no longer I that lives, he writes, but Christ now lives within me”(universal consciousness). That where I live and dwell, there is something much bigger than myself. I am immersed in the divine one life. For St John in his gospel he writes “ for unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, then it can yield a rich harvest”.

The rich harvest of living a life deeply connected to life in all its diversity.

AWAKE to the ONE LIFE of which you are but a wave in a vast ocean. Never separate, always deeply connected and one with.

The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh uses the example of a piece of bread to illustrate this point – a wonderful understanding of Eucharist.

“When we hold a piece of bread to eat, if mindfulness is there, if the Holy Spirit is there, we can eat the bread in a way that will allow us to touch the whole cosmos deeply. A piece of bread contains the sunshine. That is not something difficult to see. Without sunshine, the piece of bread cannot be. A piece of bread contains a cloud. Without a cloud, the wheat cannot grow…without the wheat the baker cannot make bread. One thing contains everything.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this loaf of bread will be possible? No, without sunshine, nothing can be. And if we return the baker to his mother, then we have no bread either. The fact is, that this bread is made up only of “non-bread elements” . And if we return these non-bread elements to their sources, then there can be no bread at all. As insignificant as this loaf of bread is in the universe, it contains everything in the universe. All the universe is within it.” (TNH Going Home)

It is the same with each of us. We are each made up of non-human elements. In each one of us contains everything in the universe. How amazing is that? How sacred is that? How divine is each one of us? Each one of us a walking, talking expression of the entire universe. The Sun, the stars, the oceans, the mountains, the very earth beneath our feet, is contained and makes up who we are. WOW.

The Indian tradition of bowing to one another using the expression Namaste is truly beautiful. Namaste, meaning, the divine in me greets the divine in you.

As we move into the silence I spoke of 2 weeks ago, the great universal wilderness, which Brian last week said we can access in meditation by quieting our busy minds. As we move into this quiet still space where we are truly present, we can sense the divine life essence or as Eckhardt Tolle insightfully writes : “ Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings’ perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence- the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life form – recognize it as one with their own essence, and so love it as themselves”.

Thich Nhat Hanh, so beautifully invites others to call him by his true names in one of his poems. Those names are the names of all that exists.

I would like to finish with some of this poem.

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh

In a moment I will be sprinkling you with WATER – remember you are all ONE with it – One with ALL. WAKE UP.

I will play a CD with Monks and Nuns chanting, from Plum Village – the chant used for this Waking Up meditation.