It is essential to have a heart like that of the Universe

Sunset taken from Cam Valley Crematorium after conducting the funeral of a friend of mine in January 2019

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)

—o0o—

The extremely useful and delightful Etymology Online site run by “The Sciolist” tells us:

Fad (noun). 1834, “hobby, pet project” (adjective faddy is from 1824), of uncertain origin. Perhaps shortened from fiddle-faddle. Or perhaps from French fadaise “trifle, nonsense,” which is ultimately from Latin fatuus “stupid.” From 1881 as “fashion, craze,” or as Century Dictionary has it, “trivial fancy adopted and pursued for a time with irrational zeal.”

When I read this last week I realised that I have been living though an age characterised by fads. The ones I particularly remember as a child growing up in the late 1960s and 1970s include, the Chopper bicycle, the Space Hopper, the skateboard, Swing-Ball and the Binatone TV Ping-Pong game. All of them were sold to us as, and felt by me and many of my friends to be, “must-haves”, and all of which — perhaps except for the skateboard — have turned out to be quickly passing fads, simply trivial fancies adopted and pursued for a time with irrational zeal before being superseded by the next fad. And, thinking about it further, I can see that what was true fifty plus years ago is now even truer today, with new fads proliferating at an almost incomprehensible rate. The hyper-consumerist world in which we live is a cultural and social whirlpool that is able to suck countless millions of people into an ever more confining, crushing, disorienting, dizzying, and ultimately profoundly dissatisfying way of moving through life. As such, this consumerist whirlpool condemns all those caught up in its vortex never to experience the kind of creative, liberative, leisurely and freely rambling and mindful way of being in the world that can truly gift a person with both a profoundly satisfying and sustainable way of living.

Now, at this point, let me return to where I began, with the word “fad.” I was thinking about this word because, as part of my ongoing reading about Konkokyo — which is a kind of creative, inquiring free and liberative form of Shinto that began in 1859 — I came across this passage:

“Tenchi Kane No Kami [which, remember, last week I suggested we might also name after Spinoza as God-or-Nature] is a kami that has existed since the beginning of time, not any time in-between. The Universe is not a passing fad. Something which is not a fad will not end” (III Konko Kyoso Gorikai 7 1, 2, Voice of the Universe 3).

Now this is, surely, a good way of putting a truth we can all affirm because the Universe is clearly not a passing fad. Indeed, according to the current estimate published by NASA, the age of the universe is about 13.7 billion years, with an uncertainty of only around 200 million years. To help you get some sense of how long a period of time that is, it’s helpful to recall that the Earth itself is only about 4.5 billion years old and that, as John McPhee beautifully put it in his 1981 book, “Basin and Range,” if we consider the planet Earth’s age as the old measure of the English yard — i.e. the distance from the King’s nose to the tip of his outstretched fingers — then “in a single stroke with a medium-grained nail file you could eradicate human history.”

But the passage I have just quoted from the Konkokyo Kyoten doesn’t just state the undeniable, but perhaps somewhat prosaic truth that the Universe is not a passing fad, only to leave it at that. Instead, it goes on to suggest what I think is a rather beautiful and helpful lesson:
 
“It is essential to have a heart like that of the Universe. Even those who don’t practice faith receive Kami’s blessings” (III Konko Kyoso Gorikai 7 1, 2 & Voice of the Universe 3)

Let me unfold these two sentences, at least as I understand them.

Firstly, “It is essential to have a heart like that of the Universe.”

Well, clearly, we humans can’t compete with the Universe in terms of age. In comparison with the Universe every human life — and probably Homo sapiens as a whole — is always going to be akin to a passing fad. But, if all things are Tenchi Kane No Kami, then our own heart and body is also the heart and body of the Universe, and we can, therefore, find ways consciously to embody the same spirit of Tenchi Kane No Kame that we absolutely know is not a passing fad. To remind you, Konkokyo understands Tenchi Kane No Kame to be “the spirit and energy that flows through galaxies, planets, air, earth, and life” which continually gives “birth to new galaxies, winks out brilliant stars, gracefully opens the dew-moistened petals of a flower in spring, whisks away the last remaining leaf from a bare tree in winter, enables our hearts to beat” and “sustains and nurtures the cycle of life.” I feel sure Spinoza intuited something very similar to this when he suggested we mortal creatures, whose days are short like grass and the flower of the field which the wind passes over and is gone, should strive always to be living life “sub specie aeternitatis” — i.e., under the aspect of eternity. Indeed, it seems to me that, in their own different ways, Spinoza and Konkokyo are both suggesting that what we should be seeking is not to live a life as long as that of the Universe — that is clearly impossible no matter what the multi-billion (and soon to be trillion) dollar transhumanist, tech-bros claim — but, instead we should be seeking to live the comparatively short life we are gracefully and mysterious gifted with in a way that is fully aware and grateful of the eternal Something — Tenchi Kane No Kami — that is both the heart and body of a Universe that is about 13.7 billion years old, and the heart and body of a human life that lasts, if we’re lucky, only three score years and ten.

But what about the second sentence of the lesson, “Even those who don’t practice faith receive Kami’s blessings”?

Well, I think this speaks hopefully and compassionately to the huge group of people — which surely has included each of us at one time or another — who have been caught up in the whirlpool of passing consumerist fads which means they cannot stop for long enough to experience the mystery and miracle of the world under the aspect of eternity, and so cannot find peace, harmony and joy in knowing they have an eternal heart and body like that of the Universe. But to come to know this, they must begin to practice a faith that offers a way to escape the powerful centripetal force of the whirlpool of passing fads that is inexorably sucking them down the plughole of despair.  

And how does a person escape this whirlpool? Well, the only way I know is for us to stop. Stop and put down our phones, turn off our computers and TVs and faithfully to take up practices like going for a mindful walk or cycle ride, Seiza Meditation (Quiet Sitting) or attending a service such as this Service of Mindful Meditation, Music and Conversation, that is to say anything during which we are able to begin properly to notice and pay attention to what’s going on, to notice and pay proper attention to what’s going on in what’s going on, and then through these disciplines to begin to learn how to be mindful more and more of the time so that, together, we can begin to perceive, and thus consciously and gratefully receive, Tenchi Kane No Kame’s or God-or-Nature’s blessings; blessings that, in truth, are always already being given everywhere and across all time. As the Konkyoko Kyoten also says:

“Although Kami cannot be seen, you are constantly walking within and through the midst of Kami. Even while fertilizing a field or walking along a path, you are in Tenchi Kane No Kami’s hiromae [広前 — which simply means a broad and wide hall or place for gatherings or ceremonies]. The whole world is Tenchi Kane No Kami’s hiromae” (III Konko Kyoso Gorikai 6 & Voice of the Universe 7)
 
And, to conclude today, all I want to add is that these daily disciplines of stopping and of becoming mindful of, and grateful for, all our blessings, is, I think, what is meant by having a heart like that of the Universe. And it is only by faithfully following this kind of spiritual path that we can have genuine hope of escaping the destructive whirlpool of consumer fads that continues to be so threatening the well-being of our most beautiful, but often bruised and hurting world.