Ladies and gentlemen, roll-up, roll-up, get your free, free-religious spectacles here . . .
A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation.
(Click on this link to hear a recorded version of the following piece)
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In this book “Doubts and Loves – What is left of Christianity,” Richard Holloway, writes the following:
“[Many religions] want to sell us their special spectacles, which have been theologically tested by experts to give us maximum power for long-distance looking. Given the extraordinary energy and variety of the human species, none of this should surprise us — but buyers should always beware of sellers. By definition they want to move their product, whether it is a Mercedes or a metaphysic” (p. 5).
I think Holloway is right that in the world of religion and spirituality so-called buyers should be aware of so-called sellers and that, therefore, anyone listening to this podcast or reading this blog should be wary about the type of special spectacles I am trying to move each Sunday — well, in fact, all the time.
Well, the first thing to be clear about is that, actually, I am not selling anything at all. This is because the special spectacles I am offering here, and in the Cambridge Unitarian Church where I am minister, and in the online group Cambridge Kiitsu Kyōkai, are always offered wholly free of any charge or obligation.
But, although I’m not SELLING these special spectacles, to stick to Holloway’s metaphor, they are obviously a kind of “product” that I think is worthy of moving, it is the creative, inquiring, free and liberative spirituality that goes by the name of jiyū shūkyō (自由宗教) which I inherited primarily, but not exclusively, from the twentieth-century Japanese Yuniterian (sic) and advocate of free-religion, Imaoka Shin’ichirō.
However, having said all of the above, it’s vital to realise that these spectacles are not anything like the spectacles on offer — and sometimes sale — in most conventional religious circles.
Most sellers of religious spectacles claim that their product is able to reveal to the wearer THE single, correct religious way to view the world. Different religions have their own way of making this claim but, in Christianity — the religious tradition out of which I have come — this is summed up in the well-known and oft-quoted words of Jesus:
“I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, trans. David Bentley Hart).
I’m fairly certain the historical Jesus would never have said that but, for the moment, let me leave this matter unaddressed because, whether or not Jesus actually said it, Christianity has taken it that he did. And once one puts on Christian special spectacles, one’s view of the world can all too quickly become narrowed to a single way, a single truth, a single life. And when I say “narrows” I really do mean that, as some other well-known words attributed to Jesus reveals:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the path leading away to destruction is broad and open, and there are many who enter by it; For narrow is the gate and close-cramped the path leading away to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14, trans. David Bentley Hart).
But the special spectacles on offer here reveal a very different view of how the world is and the way we see it and can interpret and appropriately live within it.
The first thing to observe is that they provide a vision of the world that most types of conventional religion are dreadfully concerned, or even actually frightened, about. This is because the spectacles on offer here reveal an extremely broad and open vision of how religion and spirituality actually works, but it’s a broad vision with an unexpected characteristic. What this characteristic is like can begin to be glimpsed through a consideration of the following parable told by the American Unitarian and Universalist minister, Forrest Church:
“We are standing on the shoreline of a mountain lake, moonlight against our boot tips, mesmerised by the golden carpet laid lapping out over the water as if lowered from the heavens to meet us at the very place we stand. Before us, along the moon’s glorious trail, we can see all the way to the lake’s rocky bottom. Above the sunken branches, we watch the water dance and sparkle, a rack of moonbeams on each ripple’s crest. Across the lake, where the moon is rising, our path turns to liquid gold. Standing on the shore some distance to our right, a man contemplates the same view yet appears shrouded in darkness. To our left stands a woman, her silhouette all but obscured by the blackness that envelops her. Pondering these two apparently benighted people, we wonder to ourselves, ‘What can they possibly be thinking? Encompassed by darkness, the lake before them flat and lifeless, if only they would join us at the foot of the moon’s luminous path, they, too, could bathe in celestial light’” (“The Cathedral of the World — A Universalist Theology”, Beacon Press, Boston 2009, pp. xi-xii).
When we are not wearing the special spectacles on offer here, standing on the lakeside we see before us only a single, narrow, luminous path that leads us straight to the celestial light. When we look to the left and the right and see those other figures in the dark with no luminous path before them leading to the celestial light, we are naturally led to think something like, “I can see that this luminous path before me is the only way, the only truth, and the only life; no one comes to the celestial light except through it.”
But, now, let’s put on the special, creative, inquiring, free and liberative spectacles on offer here and notice, firstly, that, perhaps surprisingly, and cointerintuitively, the moon’s narrow, luminous path before us does not suddenly disappear, or broaden in an obvious way, but still leads us straight to our feet. And, at first, we might think we have been swindled. But keeping them on for a little longer we slowly begin to see — but now in our inward heart and mind — that, although we all, as individual persons, will always have before us some, immediate, narrow luminous path leading to the celestial light, this narrow luminous path, in truth, is found everywhere and so can be considered as being a universal phenomenon, and thus we can think of it as being infinitely broad and open.
These spectacles help us see this phenomenon thanks to the experiences and insights of their first developers, namely, those intrepid practitioners of a creative, inquiring, free and liberative religion or spirituality (or jiyū shūkyō) such as Jesus, Shakyamuni Buddha, Sri Ramakrishna, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Imaoka-sensei, Tenko-san (Tenko Nishida), Konko Daijin and the aforementioned Forrest Church, all of whom dared to turn aside from the single luminous path running to their own feet in order to risk walking along the lakeside of human existence into the apparent darkness in order to discover just what it was that their neighbours were so intently contemplating. Their journeys to where their neighbours were standing quickly began to reveal to them that, miracle of miracles, as they travelled along the lake-shore the single luminous path continued to run to their own feet all the way, up to and including of course, the feet of every one of their neighbours who, it became clear, were not standing in the dark at all. True, because of local conditions, the light was always of a slightly different quality and strength all along the lakeside but, nevertheless, our free-religious forebears were people who helped to craft for us special spectacles that helped revealed to us that the celestial light was running to humanity’s feet EVERYWHERE in the world, and that the darkness was not overcoming it.
The special spectacles freely on offer here have been lovingly crafted across generations and geography, alas often at great personal cost, to help people see and truly understand that no single religion or spirituality can ever either monopolise religious and spiritual truth, nor can it ever be the ultimate embodiment of it. But as it helps reveal this truth, it also teaches us we cannot properly follow each one of those infinite possible paths and that, therefore, we have no choice but to be following the path of jiyū shūkyō from wherever it is we currently are on the shoreline of life, and that will, of necessity, always to be following a kind of narrow path. But the wearer of these special spectacles can find ways to follow the narrow path currently before them, with a clean heart and full belief (pathos), because, as a free-religionist, a jiyū shūkyōjin, they now truly understand that the luminous path runs up to the shoreline of human life everywhere.
“[Many religions] want to sell us their special spectacles, which have been theologically tested by experts to give us maximum power for long-distance looking. Given the extraordinary energy and variety of the human species, none of this should surprise us — but buyers should always beware of sellers. By definition they want to move their product, whether it is a Mercedes or a metaphysic” (p. 5).
I think Holloway is right that in the world of religion and spirituality so-called buyers should be aware of so-called sellers and that, therefore, anyone listening to this podcast or reading this blog should be wary about the type of special spectacles I am trying to move each Sunday — well, in fact, all the time.
Well, the first thing to be clear about is that, actually, I am not selling anything at all. This is because the special spectacles I am offering here, and in the Cambridge Unitarian Church where I am minister, and in the online group Cambridge Kiitsu Kyōkai, are always offered wholly free of any charge or obligation.
But, although I’m not SELLING these special spectacles, to stick to Holloway’s metaphor, they are obviously a kind of “product” that I think is worthy of moving, it is the creative, inquiring, free and liberative spirituality that goes by the name of jiyū shūkyō (自由宗教) which I inherited primarily, but not exclusively, from the twentieth-century Japanese Yuniterian (sic) and advocate of free-religion, Imaoka Shin’ichirō.
However, having said all of the above, it’s vital to realise that these spectacles are not anything like the spectacles on offer — and sometimes sale — in most conventional religious circles.
Most sellers of religious spectacles claim that their product is able to reveal to the wearer THE single, correct religious way to view the world. Different religions have their own way of making this claim but, in Christianity — the religious tradition out of which I have come — this is summed up in the well-known and oft-quoted words of Jesus:
“I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, trans. David Bentley Hart).
I’m fairly certain the historical Jesus would never have said that but, for the moment, let me leave this matter unaddressed because, whether or not Jesus actually said it, Christianity has taken it that he did. And once one puts on Christian special spectacles, one’s view of the world can all too quickly become narrowed to a single way, a single truth, a single life. And when I say “narrows” I really do mean that, as some other well-known words attributed to Jesus reveals:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the path leading away to destruction is broad and open, and there are many who enter by it; For narrow is the gate and close-cramped the path leading away to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14, trans. David Bentley Hart).
But the special spectacles on offer here reveal a very different view of how the world is and the way we see it and can interpret and appropriately live within it.
The first thing to observe is that they provide a vision of the world that most types of conventional religion are dreadfully concerned, or even actually frightened, about. This is because the spectacles on offer here reveal an extremely broad and open vision of how religion and spirituality actually works, but it’s a broad vision with an unexpected characteristic. What this characteristic is like can begin to be glimpsed through a consideration of the following parable told by the American Unitarian and Universalist minister, Forrest Church:
“We are standing on the shoreline of a mountain lake, moonlight against our boot tips, mesmerised by the golden carpet laid lapping out over the water as if lowered from the heavens to meet us at the very place we stand. Before us, along the moon’s glorious trail, we can see all the way to the lake’s rocky bottom. Above the sunken branches, we watch the water dance and sparkle, a rack of moonbeams on each ripple’s crest. Across the lake, where the moon is rising, our path turns to liquid gold. Standing on the shore some distance to our right, a man contemplates the same view yet appears shrouded in darkness. To our left stands a woman, her silhouette all but obscured by the blackness that envelops her. Pondering these two apparently benighted people, we wonder to ourselves, ‘What can they possibly be thinking? Encompassed by darkness, the lake before them flat and lifeless, if only they would join us at the foot of the moon’s luminous path, they, too, could bathe in celestial light’” (“The Cathedral of the World — A Universalist Theology”, Beacon Press, Boston 2009, pp. xi-xii).
When we are not wearing the special spectacles on offer here, standing on the lakeside we see before us only a single, narrow, luminous path that leads us straight to the celestial light. When we look to the left and the right and see those other figures in the dark with no luminous path before them leading to the celestial light, we are naturally led to think something like, “I can see that this luminous path before me is the only way, the only truth, and the only life; no one comes to the celestial light except through it.”
But, now, let’s put on the special, creative, inquiring, free and liberative spectacles on offer here and notice, firstly, that, perhaps surprisingly, and cointerintuitively, the moon’s narrow, luminous path before us does not suddenly disappear, or broaden in an obvious way, but still leads us straight to our feet. And, at first, we might think we have been swindled. But keeping them on for a little longer we slowly begin to see — but now in our inward heart and mind — that, although we all, as individual persons, will always have before us some, immediate, narrow luminous path leading to the celestial light, this narrow luminous path, in truth, is found everywhere and so can be considered as being a universal phenomenon, and thus we can think of it as being infinitely broad and open.
These spectacles help us see this phenomenon thanks to the experiences and insights of their first developers, namely, those intrepid practitioners of a creative, inquiring, free and liberative religion or spirituality (or jiyū shūkyō) such as Jesus, Shakyamuni Buddha, Sri Ramakrishna, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Imaoka-sensei, Tenko-san (Tenko Nishida), Konko Daijin and the aforementioned Forrest Church, all of whom dared to turn aside from the single luminous path running to their own feet in order to risk walking along the lakeside of human existence into the apparent darkness in order to discover just what it was that their neighbours were so intently contemplating. Their journeys to where their neighbours were standing quickly began to reveal to them that, miracle of miracles, as they travelled along the lake-shore the single luminous path continued to run to their own feet all the way, up to and including of course, the feet of every one of their neighbours who, it became clear, were not standing in the dark at all. True, because of local conditions, the light was always of a slightly different quality and strength all along the lakeside but, nevertheless, our free-religious forebears were people who helped to craft for us special spectacles that helped revealed to us that the celestial light was running to humanity’s feet EVERYWHERE in the world, and that the darkness was not overcoming it.
The special spectacles freely on offer here have been lovingly crafted across generations and geography, alas often at great personal cost, to help people see and truly understand that no single religion or spirituality can ever either monopolise religious and spiritual truth, nor can it ever be the ultimate embodiment of it. But as it helps reveal this truth, it also teaches us we cannot properly follow each one of those infinite possible paths and that, therefore, we have no choice but to be following the path of jiyū shūkyō from wherever it is we currently are on the shoreline of life, and that will, of necessity, always to be following a kind of narrow path. But the wearer of these special spectacles can find ways to follow the narrow path currently before them, with a clean heart and full belief (pathos), because, as a free-religionist, a jiyū shūkyōjin, they now truly understand that the luminous path runs up to the shoreline of human life everywhere.
And with this point made, I hope I have comprehensibly enough described the main benefit — blessing in fact — of wearing the special kind of spectacles freely on offer here week after week. And so now you know what product I’m trying to move, I can, with a clean conscience, carry on and say, ladies and gentlemen, roll-up, roll-up, get your free, free religious spectacles here. And why not consider taking a few extra pairs with you when you go and offer them, free of charge, to those whom you meet along the lakeside.
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