Last week, I noted Mahatma
Gandhi’s summary of the religion of Hinduism: “To learn to see the Lord in ALL
creatures and then act accordingly.” I love that synopsis, and I happen to
think that if we could hear from Jesus on the subject, he’d be 100% comfortable
with those exact same words summarizing the essence of his yoke, his teaching,
his gospel.
Today, I want us to look more closely at what is behind
Gandhi’s words, or perhaps, better put, what is underneath his definition of
Hinduism. To understand Hinduism and its purpose, we need to begin by understanding
the Hindu concept of Brahman and Atman.
Hindus believe in one God in many manifestations or
forms. Their God - with a capital G – is Brahman. But Hindus also believe that
each and every creature has, at the very core of our being – a piece, a sliver,
a flame of God. It is called the Atman. So deep down in our heart and soul is a
piece of God Himself, that is always there and always will be there.
Does any of this sound familiar…God giving us all a part
or piece of him, to live forever inside us. God making us in his own image,
imprinting on our hearts his own self? In this morning’s passage from John 14,
which Helen read, Jesus said,
“And
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another counselor to help you and be with you forever— the
Spirit of truth. The world cannot
accept God, because it neither sees nor knows God. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as
orphans; I will come to you…On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
What a great concept - that God lives and dwells within
us! And by the way, did you know that Hinduism is more than 3000 years older
than Christianity? So this concept of a God who dwells inside human hearts was
NOT Jesus’ idea. This notion of an Atman was around way before Jesus, another
reason we ought to be a bit more humble about our faith and a bit more
respectful of other faiths.
So Hindus believe in this Atman, this particular
manifestation of God that abides in every living creature. But what I think is
even cooler is the fact Hindus also believe that this Atman – while it never
goes away – does get covered up, buried, squelched by all the crap that we put
and allow into our lives. Huston Smith
puts it this way:
“The Eternal Atman is buried within us, under an almost impenetrable mass of distractions,
delusions, and self-serving instincts
that comprise our surface selves. A chimney,” continues Smith, “can be covered with dust, dirt, and mud to the point where no light pierces it at all. The human
project, according to Hindu philosophy,
therefore, is to clean one’s chimney, to uncover that buried light within – the Atman - so that it may radiate
fully.”
This, then, in essence, is what the spiritual journey of
every Hindu is about – clearing off the dust that covers our Atman, the sliver
of the Divine within. (Didn’t Jesus say something about not letting the light
that he put in our lives get covered up or hidden under a bushel?) For some, ash
might take the form of material possessions; or it could be ash that is
produced by all the technology we expose ourselves to, or the damaging
relationships. The ash on our Atman could be produced by drug and alcohol use;
or by any of the countless things we allow to poison our minds and bodies. But guess
what Hindus believe to be the worst atman burier of all? The mind. The mind is the most likely force
that will bury the Atman in all those incessant thoughts we allow to run around
up there.
Hindus often describe the mind as a “drunken, crazed
monkey, cavorting about in its cage.” One Hindu teacher wrote, “I tell my hand
to rise and it obeys. I tell my mind to be still and it mocks my command.”
So every Hindu practice is aimed at doing the same thing;
freeing the Atman, allowing its light to shine. And since the mind is the
biggest barrier to that happening, Hindu practices are about trying to clear
the mind, trying to shut down this raging producer of ash. Have you ever
noticed how much garbage runs around in your mind? How much worry and regret
and fear. It’s non-stop. And so it shouldn’t surprise us that virtually all Hindu
religious practices are aimed at quieting the mind, silencing all the other
voices, so that the voice of the Atman – the voice of God – can finally be
heard.
This is one of the reasons our yoga studios are so full
and our churches are so empty. Yoga may seem to you like a form of physical
exercise and stretching. But the very word “yoga” means unity; it’s one of the
many Hindu disciplines designed to reunite the Atman with the Brahman. In yoga,
the practitioner gets quiet, both outside and inside. For it is only out of the
silence that God can speak.
We should know plenty about this from our own Christian
tradition. We remember Elijah in I Kings 19, right? He so wanted and needed to
hear from God. He begged God to speak to him. An earthquake came but God wasn’t
in the earthquake; a raging fire came but God wasn’t in the fire; a huge
hurricane wind blew but God wasn’t in the wind. And after the wind, a still
small voice. It was only in the silence that Elijah could hear the still small
voice, the gentle whisper of God.
How hard it is for us to be still and stay still…How
difficult it is for us to enter silence and abide there. Our lives have become
so accustomed to noise that silence scares us. Our worship services – yes, even
here – have become so filled with noise in the form of words and readings and
songs and sermons. Where has all the silence gone? When does God get to speak…?
This brings me to the second thing that we Christians need
to learn from our Hindu brothers and sisters. I think we need to learn how to
pray all over again and pray more like Hindus pray. When Hindus pray they don’t
talk – not even silently, in their heads. Hindus seek to empty their minds when
they pray – not fill them with requests and needs and all manner of things they
want God or Brahman to know about.
Hindus meditate and do the hard, hard work of creating
silence –without and within – and then staying there. There are no shortcuts
for quieting one’s mind – that raging monkey we talked about before. If you
really want to get all the ash, all the crap off your Atman, that real presence
of the Divine in you, you’ve got to sit quietly and listen…Listen.
It’s a shame that we have to turn to Hindu’s to learn how
to pray, to learn the value of being silent and keeping still. I’m reminded of
one of my favorite stories about Mother Teresa, a Christian who knows how to
pray. Toward the end of his life, Peter Jennings interviewed Mother Teresa and
asked, “When you pray, Mother Teresa, what do you say…?” That diminutive little
giant of the Christian faith scrunched up her wrinkled face, gave Mr. Jennings
a confused look, and said, “Say…? Say? I don’t say anything when I pray. I
listen. I listen.”
I believe her. I believe that she spent a huge portion of
her life in silence, listening for God and His still, small voice, AND, because
of all that listening, that tiny woman was able to do some HUGE things! We
Christians need to reconnect with our own tradition of stillness and silence.
We should know a little something about “be still and know that I am God.”
(Psalm 46:10) We should know something about not filling our prayer time with
words – be they spoken out loud or silently in our heads. What was it Jesus
said in our morning gospel passage?
And
when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites… Do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they
will be heard because of their many
words. 8 Do not be like them, for
your Father knows what you need before
you ask him.
It’s time we started
to listen in our prayers. It’s time we started trusting that God already knows
what we want and need. Prayer is not so much about God hearing from us; true
prayer is about us hearing from God. It is about us getting quiet enough and still
enough and unplugged enough to hear God.
Tony Campolo, one of my favorite
Christian speakers of all time – who will be speaking up in Petoskey later this
month – once compared the way we pray and the way it must make God feel to a
one-sided phone conversation. Joan answers the phone and hands it to her
husband Tom, saying, “It’s for you.” Tom picks it up. “Oh, hey, Josh…Yeah, I’ve
been busy. Work is crazy, non-stop. The kids are going in a million directions
and it seems I’m running a chauffer service. All the church stuff is really
ramping up. So busy. I’ve been traveling a lot too. There’s just no time for
anything…Ok, I’ll talk to you later, man.” Tom hangs up and says, “Man, Josh
sure doesn’t say very much.” Joan replies, “How could he? You never gave him a
chance! You talked non-stop.” Campolo says that most Christians pray that very
same way. We never shut up. We allow no room for God. For us, prayer has
become, truly, a one-way conversation, and yet, we complain that God never
speaks to us nor answers our prayers.
Hinduism is a
beautiful, beautiful faith. It has been around far longer than Christianity and
it has much to teach us. Jesus and his teachings were clearly and heavily
influenced by Hinduism, certainly in the two areas we looked at this morning. I
thank God for Hinduism and what it has taught me, and the way that studying its
principles has made me a better Christian. Amen.
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