By Rev. Russell Daye
St. Andrew's United Church, Halifax

Pugs, PlayStations, and Peevishness

Joel 2:21-27, Matthew 6:24-34

As many of you know, my whole family was recently restricted to the confines of our home for nine or ten days because we had caught the H1N1 flu. This experience taught me many things.

The first thing I learned, or actually re-learned, was just how generous are our friends and community, including the St. Andrew's community. We received almost daily care packages of such things as macaroni and cheese, chicken lasagne, DVD's, milk and bread, fresh veggies - even chocolate chip cookies and coke. All of these were dropped off at the end of our front walkway and only some of the good Samaritans fled running when they saw us coming to pick them up.

The second thing I learned is that the H1N1 virus only slows 6 and 8 year old boys down for about two days and, after that, when confined to small spaces, they become adept at bouncing off walls, using their mother's makeup in strange ways, climbing kitchen cupboards in search of forbidden snacks, and testing the structural capacity of a house to absorb sound. The third thing I learned is that one-year-old pugs quite enjoy having this kind of entertainment and are most capable of reaching the heights of frenzy modelled by 6 and 8 year old boys. The fourth thing I learned is that pugs need to be let out to do their business more often under such circumstances ... or there will be accidents.

I learned many other things, but I'll tell you about only one more. My imposed and extended retreat taught me much about the First Noble Truth of Buddhism. Some translators of the Buddhist scriptures define the first Noble Truth in this way: 'all life is suffering.' But this definition is too unsubtle, and needs to be nuanced by a closer look at those scriptures, which were written in the ancient languages of Pali and Sanscrit. Here is an excerpt from the Pali cannon, in particular the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta:

"Now this, monks, is the Noble Truth of dukkha: Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, & despair are dukkha; association with the unbeloved is dukkha; separation from the loved is dukkha; not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha."

The First Noble Truth is that all life is 'dukkha.' But what does this ancient word mean. It has been translated into English as 'suffering', as I said, but also as 'unhappiness', 'craving', 'clinging', or 'attachment'. These latter words are a good clue. In this teaching there is a sense that human unhappiness arises from attachment and craving. We are attached to pleasure, and flee from pain. We cling to people and places we like and are repulsed by those we don't like. We crave the experiences and objects we enjoy, and suffer when we can't have them.

As I learned by observing the creatures who shared my retreat last week, the lives of pugs and children provide many good object lessons in dukkha. Let me give you a couple examples. Pugs are pretty happy little dogs, and our pug, named Pokey, has a happy, curly tail almost all the time. But just when you think he'd be happiest, when there is food around and the possibility of a tasty morsel, his tail droops and he starts to show signs of anxiety. The presence of food, which to a pug is a big deal, provides a craving and the poor little guy cannot be certain that it will be satisfied. Even when he does get a morsel, his anxiety doesn't diminish because there is the ambiguous possibility of another.

The same pattern emerges with my boys and their greatest addiction: their DS, which is like a PlayStation or Xbox but is hand-held and portable. The presence of the DS in the house provides a constant source of craving, one that cannot be satisfied by 20 or 30 or whatever number of minutes on that demonic device. No matter how long they play, they are always grumpy about the end of the session. Craving can never be extinguished. All sessions end in unhappiness. Now these little parables of attachment seem funny and inconsequential, but I think they really do provide a window in to human unhappiness on a larger scale. Listen to a teaching of Jesus:

(25)"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (26)Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (27)And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?"

Like the Buddha, Jesus understood just how deeply human nature is shaped by fears and cravings, which are so often but different manifestations of the same attachments. He understood that so called grown-ups have a level of suffering beyond that of children and animals, for we not only experience the unfulfilled cravings of today, but we can imagine the non-fulfillment of even more deeply felt needs tomorrow. What if I lose my health? What if I lose my wealth? What if I cannot continue to perform at this level and lose the respect and security I have earned?

Craving, attachment, and fear may have played their necessary roles in our evolution, but, lodged in the human soul, they fester and rot and combine in nasty ways and are responsible for an enormous measure of human suffering. In individuals it is easy to see the ways they manifest: anxiety disorders; addictions; envy; unbridled ambition; rampant consumption. We are in so many ways like a pug around food or a child with a DS: we chase after satisfaction, but there is no finish line in this game. The pursuit of happiness makes us unhappy.

But the real mess begins not in the hungry little soul of the individual, for our souls are not hermetically sealed. They run together and join each other in a collective soul where craving, attachment, and fear metastasize in massive and unholy ways. We know the list: great and growing inequality; an economy that runs on craving and fear, which would collapse without them, and so becomes ingenious in their production; the consumption of resources and generation of pollution at rates that push us to the brink.

If you could put the Buddha and Jesus in time machines and bring them forward to today, I think they would be both shocked and unsurprised at what they found. What is striking is that the medicine that each of these great physicians of the soul offered is still very good medicine for our times. The Buddha's medicine was non-attachment. He taught practices that people could engage in that would cut the bonds of craving and fear. Jesus' medicine is both like and unlike Buddha's. They are different in key ways but compatible; there is no contraindication to using both! Jesus' teachings can lead to non-attachment, in fact they inevitably do if followed carefully, but they begin in a different place: with a relationship of trust in God and gratitude toward the blessings She bestows.

The prophet Joel captures well the essence of this teaching: do not be afraid soil, do not be afraid animals, do not be afraid children, do not be afraid human beings; rejoice for the pastures will be green and grain and oil and wine will flow. Jesus and Joel both teach out of the world view of the Hebrew Scriptures, which root human good in the good of all creation - with other creatures, even the micro-organisms of the soil. Trust in the creator, who will continue to bless you.

But how do we have this trust? How do we live in trust? At this point, our Buddhist friends have something to teach us. It is a reminder of what Jesus taught. Prayer and practice are necessary if we are not going to fall into the pit of craving, attachment and fear. One of the things that has always puzzled me over the years is that the people who have received the most are not generally the happiest. The people who have been blesses with unusual measures of beauty or intelligence or talent or wealth seem no happier that those with lesser measures. In fact, many of these people seem to convey an attitude of thinking that the world owes them something. One can say the same thing of nations.

How do we cast off craving and fear and live in trust? It seems to me that the best way to grow trust in the blessings of tomorrow is to be grounded in gratitude for the gifts of yesterday and today. Joel gets it in one line: 'do not fear … but be grateful and rejoice.' So here is a spiritual practice that will turn you from dukkha and toward trust: begin each day with a prayer of thanksgiving. Upon your first perception of light, give thanks for 5 things. I promise that that little prayer, offered daily, will be like a sword that cuts through craving, attachment, and fear.