Reading from The Truth about the Truth edited by Walter Truett Anderson, pp 7-8

“We are all emerging from out of the security of our tribes, traditions, religions and worldviews into a global civilization that is dazzlingly, overwhelmingly pluralistic.

Surrounded by so many truths, we can’t help but revise our concept of truth itself: our beliefs about belief. [As one philosopher puts it] truth is made rather than found. This idea is not exactly new. It came into the Eastern world with Buddhism about 2,500 years ago, and into the Western world at about the same time with Heraclites….[the Greek philosopher].

Seeing truth as made, not found….means understanding that all our stories about what’s out there—all our scientific facts, our religious teachings, our society’s beliefs, even our personal perceptions—are the products of a highly creative interaction between human minds and the cosmos. The cosmos may be found; but the ideas we form about it, and the things we say about it, are made.”

Sermon

         There was a time when truth was absolute in the western world. From the fourth to the sixth centuries, bishops met to decide how to interpret the new Christian scriptures that had been adopted as the “Word of God,” and the creed of Christianity was born. Until the sixteenth century, the church of the Roman Empire taught its world view to all of the people in the east and west who came under its control. When people began to not accept the world view as taught to them, the floodgates of creativity opened and diverse ideas arose in religion, philosophy, art, and science.

         Our “world view” is the way we think about the world and our place in it; it is the way we think about relationships, politics, art, religion and so on. We each have a world view that is our truth. Unitarianism and Universalism were particular world views that arose in reaction to a religious world view that saw people as being hopelessly evil and lost; this was the Calvinist world view.

         In the twentieth century, Unitarians believed that humankind was on an ever- expanding path of progress and improvement. From the late 1800’s until the early 1960’s, instead of the Principles we have now, most Unitarians recited this statement of faith:

         The Fatherhood of God.
         The Brotherhood of Man.
         The Leadership of Jesus.
         Salvation by Character.
         The Progress of Mankind onward and upward forever.

vAnd many of you knew this statement by heart. By the late 1960’s, women were beginning to question why we spoke of God as a man—God the Father. It is possible that few Unitarians (and also Universalists) actually believed that God was male but women wanted our current world view expressed in the language that revealed more precisely what we truly believe. It would be another twenty years before “mankind” became “humankind.” If you read books published before this time, you would find that “he” and “him” were used for men and women, unless only women were explicitly referred to. It had been the tradition for hundreds of years. We began questioning tradition. You could say that we were becoming more and more aware of how we collectively construct so-called “truth” and “reality” by accepting the world view of the majority and not challenging it, and that language was a powerful component of supporting current reality. Gender roles were being closel y considered as were whether women could do many jobs that were traditionally filled by men. The 1970’s were the first time we heard of stay-at-home Dads. I personally knew a stay-at-home Dad.

         During the 1980’s we, the Unitarian Universalists, published a new hymnbook where God was no longer referred to as “He” or “Lord.” Why did we do this? We wanted our hymnbook to reflect our current world view; it also helped us to become clear about our world view. It forced us all to reconsider the written and spoken language. At first there was awkwardness in degenderizing God language, but now I am so used to it that when I use a hymnbook in another church that has not degenderized the language, it feels and sounds strange to me. And yet I understand that this reflects the world view of the people of that congregation, and I remind myself that I am a guest there and I must temporarily enter into their world view while I am their guest. Perhaps you have found a clash of your own world view (or perspective on things) with that of your family or old friends.

         In our society, we will find that there are world views that are more acceptable than others. Liberal religionist world views are less accepted that traditional world views. Walter Anderson says, “…if you aspire to become President of the United States, you would do well to demonstrate that you are firmly rooted in traditional American culture. Act like a white, middle-class family man and show up in church once in a while….If you meditate, keep it a secret!” (p.113, Anderson)

         You could not be your authentic self if you wanted to run for president. Hmmm, now that’s an interesting point—authentic self; what is your “authentic self.” In other words, who are you? Are you the same self with everybody, or do you find you are different with different people. If all of your friends and family got together, would they each describe you in the same way? Which “self” would they describe?

         Some people define the “self” as the role he or she plays in society, such as mother, father, policeman, nurse, and so on. (As an aside, notice that I said “he or she,” whereas in the past we would just have said “he.”) For a science-oriented person, the self is defined by objective facts, such as intelligence, abilities, and what tests say about you. Another type of person, perhaps a spiritual person, might say that the self is defined by his or her inner self. And yet another type might say that there is no one self; his or her self is created in response to whatever life circumstances are presented in the moment. For myself, I wonder whether we are not all of these, depending upon what life requires of us.

         Most of the world’s religions define the human person as a being created by God, and this person needs to have rules to live by so that we will treat one another well. The most common command is the Golden Rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you. The person is urged to improve himself or herself by following the rules of the religion.

         The basic teaching about the self in Hinduism is that there are two-selves-in-one, so to speak—a Self with a capital ‘S’ and a self with a small ‘s.’ The Self with a capital “S” is the Atman, or the God part of the human being. The person progresses by becoming aware of the Atman, or Godself within himself and acting in accordance with it.

         A foundational teaching of the Buddha, was that the ‘Self’ (with a capital ‘S’) is an illusion, “…a creation of Mind that is not innate to our spiritual makeup but is, instead, constructed out of our identification with experience in each moment, thus providing a sense of continuity in time and space. He (the Buddha) believed that the Self as a concept and as an experience needs to be discarded for the attainment of freedom, which occurs by seeing through the layers of … illusion to the essential emptiness and to the idea that we give things substance or ‘reality’ with our minds.” (pp. 145,146, Connie Zweig in Anderson)

         Buddhist teachers say that this is the hardest concept for westerners to grasp in Buddhism. They are not saying that you do not exist as a self (with a small “s”). They are saying that there is no such concept as a soul that exists for all time.

         When a woman heard of this “no-self” concept, she said, “If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?”

         If we believe this—that there is no Self, or no soul, and that we are creating reality in every minute, it can certainly invoke a far different world view that we might have ever had before. The Buddhists don’t say that upon death you melt into nothingness; they just say that it is likely that some flicker of you goes on but that it just cannot be verified. All that can be known is that you are here now in every moment and that is all that can be known. They advise that you do Zen meditation to experience this “in-the-momentness,” for truth can only be known in the present moment of this life. This is enlightenment. The practice of zazen, or sitting meditation or stillness is what is needed for the human mind to comprehend what it means to be in the present moment with the clarity that the present moment brings, the moment without having regret of the past or worry for the future.

         Western Buddhists do have a world view but it is influenced by their concept of no-self. They know that people need guidelines to lead their lives and they live by the Eight-fold path prescribed by the Buddha. These have the flavor of our Principles. They are:

         1. Right understanding
         2. Right thought
         3. Right speech
         4. Right action
         5. Right livelihood
         6. Right effort
         7. Right mindfulness
         8. Right concentration

         Knowing our own world view is to know our own truth. It is something we must discover for ourselves. It is the wisdom that has no teacher. The more we practice being in the moment and ponder our response to life’s big questions (like who am I; what is this self I call Me), the more our wisdom that has no teacher develops. Our world view can be made by each of us unless we choose to accept the world view of others. Unitarian Universalists have often joked that we make up our beliefs as we go along. Perhaps this joke is actually a valid way of being religious; it is the creative process of truth-making.

         It was very nice indeed getting together with some of you yesterday at our home yesterday. It was also quite wonderful sitting in the quietness of the garden afterwards experiencing the cool gusts of wind, watching the activity of the birds, and just being. I do not know whether big ‘S’ Self or small ‘s’ self was experiencing it all but there is certainly joy in being in the moment. I am not ready for the no-self idea that modern (or post-modern) philosophers are talking about these days. But I like the counsel of a Jewish woman in the Tao of Zen Judaism (on the Internet site www.sillymusic.com/jewish_jokes), she says, “Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Forget these simple things and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems!” May we discover our own truth, our own world view, and share it so that we may know one another better.

References

The following has inspired and informed this sermon:

Anderson, Walter Truett. The Truth about the Truth: De-confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam Book, 1995.