Sunday Mornings: An Excellent Excuse to Reconnect to What Matters
Before I recently moved back to Los Angeles, for years I lived quite a distance away from the Buddhist community that I call home. Plenty of folks are in the same position: far from a temple, or without a Buddhist community at all.
At the time living far away was a big change for me, and recollecting that time has reminded me of what I value and miss most about going to temple each Sunday: having the opportunity to connect the now back to our core principles, every week.
I remember when I had only been attending my home temple for a handful of years, they hosted a CPR class in the lecture hall on a Sunday afternoon. The class was well-attended, and after each of us learned the technique and had the chance to practice on a plastic, disembodied torso, the abbot of the temple took the mic to close out the session.
The abbot addressed the group in Chinese, which most of the attendees spoke, though I could only vaguely grasp at the time. One of the comfortably bilingual members of the temple youth group kindly leaned over and paraphrased a translation for me:
My friend whispered, “So… he’s thanking everyone for coming today… Thanking the volunteers for coming to teach us… Now he’s talking about how CPR is an important skill to learn.”
A pause. “Oh, and now he’s relating it back to Buddhism.”
And he stopped there. And while I’m sure the abbot’s words weren’t easy to translate, requiring a technical knowledge of Chinese and English Buddhist terminology, what struck me was what he didn’t translate: the specifics of just how and why learning CPR related back to Buddhist practice.
I’m not sure what the abbot said that afternoon — there are plenty of connections to choose from: Maybe the abbot quoted the Buddha’s admonition to his fellow monks to care for one another as they would care for him. Maybe he mentioned creating good causes and conditions by learning a skill that could save a life. Maybe he invoked Guanyin Bodhisattva, the bodhisattva of compassion, and her ability to ability to manifest in whatever form is needed to help, be it a king, peasant, or a CPR-training volunteer.
Any of these are fine connections, but choosing any specific one wasn’t really the point. That was secondary. What was most important was relating the day’s events to back to our core principles, and to remember to do so each and every time.
There are lots of good reasons to do this. One straightforward reason is that the temple itself was something that all of us attending the workshop had in common, and by relating what we had just learned back to Buddhism, he was aligning it to something we all valued. So if anyone who was gathered there that day wasn’t jiving with the workshop, or second-guessing the legitimacy of giving a person quick, rib-cracking pulses for the greater good, maybe he could get them to think again.
But another reason to connect some topic to Buddhism is to redirect our attention. Coming to the temple every week meant having an excuse to do this, and it’s a tradition that stretches all the way back to the time of the Buddha.
Some of my favorite stories from the Buddhist sutras are just like this: When someone asks the Buddha what the best kind of protective amulet is, his response is to describe various forms of moral character as “the best protection.” When someone asks the Buddha about the existence of psychic powers, he responds with a list of increasingly impressive psychic feats, but concludes that the power of teaching is the greatest of all. Again and again, the Buddha uses opportunities to return to core principles.
I don’t think I’m alone in this, but my favorite Dharma talks aren’t the ones where the speaker imparts something startling and new. Instead they are the talks that are much more like old family stories that get told over and over, so that everyone knows the words. The ones that restate and renew the commitment to strive for freedom, for peace, and for kindness.
We all know how to trace the lines from our everyday worries and joys to these timeless principles. And when we don’t, it’s not because we forget how, it’s just because we don’t. And what a gift it is to be given that reason to reconnect.
Images licensed under Creative Commons by Truckee Meadows Community College and Tom Christensen.
