The Power of Presence

A Sermon by Paul Linn about Buddhist and Christian Philosophy, at NCUU, Sunday, May 27, 2001.

Pleased to be back with you, thanks to Pat and Marc for arranging another visit for me and to all of you for coming here to be together this morning.

Rather than this being so much a talk, which at best would be informative and more importantly inspirational, I’d like it to be a kind of meditation.

A meditation on essential spirituality, a meditation on the essence of the religious / spiritual life.

Perhaps a meditation where the very deepest, sublime and beautiful within us can be called to the foreground of consciousness and shared.

A meditation where we can know and appreciate words and their meanings and the silence between the words.

What moves within us that we might never quite be able to describe and how this might be related to the very best of what the spoken word and silence can evoke.

Meditation was once defined to me in the simple terms, “listening to God”, while prayer was described as “talking to God”.

So with this as a springboard……….. here is a question for our inquiry……

What did Jesus and the Buddha have in common ?

1) both had a body and mind just like all of us.

2) Both practiced renunciation and certain degrees of asceticism

3) Both were teachers of the highest order, teaching in their own unique ways that love is supreme……..and both embodied and thus lived the love that they taught and brought to this world…..like the Sun.

If we are know the Truth of Unbounded Love (kind of Freedom) here and now, how is it that we come to this understanding ?

(2)

If the eyes are the window to the soul, then in the eyes of each of us there resides an Essence behind and beyond the personality and character that we each so uniquely manifest. When each of us manifests our uniqueness…….

Grains of sand on the beaches, not a single one of has the same fingerprint, no one before you are after you can truly be the same as you, and in fact each moment of life that each of us lives is unique and can never be repeated.

This absolutely unique expression that each of us brings to this world could be called the non – sameness of ever widening diverse multiplicity.

Experiencing yourself, others and the world this way is in part what I feel Jesus meant when he spoke about the abundant life, the sure hearts release

Clearly, when speaking about the abundant life, he did not mean more and better material things, instead it seems he wanted us to experience the unique and diverse expression of our human beingness.

At the same time we can find and redefine what Paul Tillich called the “courage to be” ourselves as we embrace our uniqueness, we are simultaneously intimately connected to each other and this world we live in.

We are connected thru the food we eat, the nourishment we find in each others company and the very air we breathe.

Each human being is unique while at the same time each human being is part of a interconnected web of Life…..and this Life is most tangible in the very presence that fills this room right now.

This presence has qualities that can be felt and described…….

It is attentiveness, wakefulness, mindfulness (the full mind), it is caring and compassionate therefore it is heartfulness (the full heart), it is curious and interested, therefore it is wise…..it is radiant, therefore it is joyful, it is unifying, therefore it is liberating.

What does this presence liberate us from?What does this presence help heal ?…..the feeling of separateness.

(3)

The feeling of seperateness that is born from getting absorbed into states of mind (often afflictive) which constrict consciousness and inhibit its expression.

The separateness that moves thru the mind as fear, loneliness, isolation, despair and depression.

This separateness has its cause in the…………

Untreated and unworked thru wounds to the psyche born from conflicted relationships that cause us to not trust the Life of relationship and therefore at times to remain closed to what others are offering us.

But more deeply the separateness that is born from a often unconscious belief that we somehow do not deserve the very best of the abundant life (sure hearts release) and that if we manage to break thru and consider that we do deserve it after all, many of us are then caught up in trying to come to it at some fortunate time in the future.

Does redemption only come about thru suffering ? If this is so, then we must toil for freedom thru the passage of time. What can bring the saint and sinner together ?

The true teachings of peace and liberation do not evaluate humans, the sole concern is with suffering and its end…….. in this, one and all are equal.

The Amazing yet sobering good news is that there is no future, except what the mind manifests (in the present moment) in the form of thoughts about what might happen, there is no past except what comes into the present moment in the form of memory.

There is only the living present, the living now, all things happen in this sense of now and the human can only know this now thru the power of presence.

Even Roy Oberson eluded to this when he sang its now or never.

So one expression of the abundant life is the uniqueness that we each express, the non-sameness of individuality and yet another is the presence

(4)

that we all share………….. when we look closely we can see that it is this presence that shines thru the eyes, that comes thru the touch and rests ever here behind all the unique expressions that make up this Life.

There is a third and additional vital area where this presence shines, in this third area we find a deep and powerful medicine of healing and transformation.

In getting to know this third area we have the opportunity to understand the marriage between the human and the divine, the personal and the universal.

This third area is the humbling and purifying force of forgiveness…..in this we discover that the imperfections of others and ourselves can be accepted

and indeed made perfect.

The good I would do, I do not and the evil which I would not do, I do. Who will deliver me from this bondage. – St. Paul

We may understand the teachings of wisdom and love quite well and yet we may still at times judge ourselves or others or we may act or speak at times with anger or fear in our minds……for this we need the medicine of forgiveness.

Life provides us with so many opportunities to meet the small infractions of others or ourselves with something which is never small or insignificant, forgiving force of nonjudgementalness. Not condoning the action….the person.

We discover that we change and grow psychologically and spiritually by accepting ourselves as we are, rather than thru trying to be someone or somewhere we imagine is better than where we are right now.

We are free to allow ourselves and others to learn thru so called errors….and we are free to offer ourselves and others forgiveness.

And this is the way out of the bondage that St. Paul describes.

The Power of presence is the essence of the abundant life, healing and emancipation, and it is the intelligence behind the force of forgiveness.