Simplicity
December
10, 2000
Life
is really simple, but men insist on making it complicated.
Confucius
Simplicity
is the intention, purity in the affection; simplicity turns to God, purity
unites with and enjoys him.
Thomas
ã Kempis
Five
centuries before Jesus Christ, Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching
offered a prescription for simple living:
Everyone
says my way of life is of a simpleton.
Being
largely the way of a simpleton is what makes it worthwhile.
It
is simple. If it were not the way of a simpleton,
it
would have been worthless long ago.
These
possessions of a simpleton,
being
the three I choose and cherish:
To
be humble, to care, to be fair.
When
a man is humble, he can grow.
When
a man cares, he is unafraid.
When
a man is fair, he has enough for others.
In
another translation by Stephen Mitchell:
Some say that my
teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty
but impractical.
But to those who
have looked inside themselves,
This nonsense makes
perfect sense.
And to those who put
it into practice,
This loftiness has
roots that go deep.
I have just three
things to teach:
Simplicity,
patience, compassion.
These three are your
greatest treasures.
Simple in actions
and in thoughts,
You return to the
source of being.
Patient with both
friends and enemies,
You accord with the
way things are.
Compassionate toward
yourself,
You reconcile all
beings in the world.
Living
a simple life means keeping our priorities in order.
I got lots of input this week about how I might go about doing that.
It’s interesting how all this input arrives, but more about that later,
as Lao Tzu counseled, patience!
Ernest
Holmes, in the Science of Mind says on page 37,
“We
are bound because we are first free; the power which appears to bind us is the
only power in the universe which can free us.
This is why Jesus summed up His whole philosophy in this simple
statement: ‘It is done unto you as you believe.’
The great Teacher looked so deeply into Nature, that She revealed Her
fundamental simplicity to him. That
‘believe’ and that ‘as’ symbolize heaven and hell.
And so we suffer, not because suffering is imposed upon us, but because
we are ignorant of our true nature.”
Recently,
ideas for how we do that are definitely up for grabs.
With a title like “Simplicity,” and an Internet search for the
keyword “Simplicity” to assist me, I found the web page for Simplicity, the
pattern maker for home seamsters. I
was reminded of a time in my childhood when I was learning how to sew.
At first, I was assigned a very simple little skirt constructed of
gingham so I could follow the lines of the gingham. I successfully joined it
together to become a skirt that I wore until high school, when miniskirts became
the fashion of choice.
Then
I began learning to sew more complex garments and along with the complexity came
the concern that I might destroy my project in the process of learning how to do
it. Now there was an interesting
and dangerous idea that I have been playing with ever since!
Since I paid for all the materials out of babysitting money, I knew the
value of what I could be wasting. Nevertheless,
I did finally learn how to ease a sleeve that was bigger than the armhole it was
to be joined to, and once again, I was able to wear the product of my efforts.
And so, in learning to sew, I learned about simplicity and complexity,
and in particular, that the greater the complexity the more opportunity to
destroy the very thing we wish to accomplish would arise. Neither in a
philosophy class nor a literature class, but in the most practical of classes
for a girl in the 60’s, I learned about simplicity in Home Ec!
This
week, as I was beginning to think about Sunday’s topic, I found I received in
the mail a few things in the mail that said that they were about simplicity.
One is an article from the magazine Yes! and is by Duane
Elgin, the author of Voluntary Simplicity and a contributing editor.
It’s called garden of simplicity.
Let me share a bit from it with you.
[readings
from page 40 of Yes! magazine]
I
also received a rather large envelope attempting to gain my subscription to
RealSimple a new magazine. Let me show you it’s rather complicated and duplicative
contents and share with you some observations about looking "out
there" for guidance that ought to be confined to the inner space of the
individual.
Lastly,
yesterday I received a quarterly resource guide entitled “Alternatives for
Simple Living.” Apparently, from what I can see in this little catalog, an
entire subculture is contemplating what simplicity means. There are books about simplicity from the point of view of
living a simple Christian life, there are many resources for living in community
with other people committed to living in ecological balance, and for those who
wish to opt out of the consumer frenzy of Christmas. There must be millions of people who are looking for how to
simplify their lives!
This
is an American tradition, I think right away of the Shakers, the Quakers,
Mennonites, the Amish, and many others who have sought within their faith the
guidance to live a life closer to God via the path of the least distraction.
There is also in every other faith a path of asceticism, this is why many
people become monks, priests and nuns in other faiths, because, at least in
part, in so doing they remove some part of the distraction of civilized life and
to discover their essential spiritual nature.
What
we learned from the Transcendentalists, and Thoreau in particular:
I
went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and
not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep
and suck all the marrow of life....
Henry
David Thoreau
Walden,
Thoreau's account of a year spent alone in a cabin by a pond in the woods, is
one of the most influential and compelling books in American literature.
The ideas I learned there are inextricably tied up with my intellectual
and imaginative life. I first read Walden
when I was studying American Literature in High School, probably at 16.
I find it difficult to speak of Thoreau with any air of impartiality. Any number
of his well-aimed and concise remarks have registered so deeply in my
consciousness as to assume a life of their own within me, as if his ideas are my
own.
I
studied Walden again during my Practitioner studies and was reawakened to
its powerfully intense, romantic energies, the sense that life is boundless,
experimental, provisionary, ever-fluid and unpredictable; the conviction that
whatever the destiny of the outer self, the truest self is inward, secret,
inviolable. Thoreau teaches us to
resist our own gravitation toward the outer, larger, fiercely competitive and
complex world of responsibility, false courage, and 'reputation.'
Thoreau encourages us to spurn this world, to go within oneself to find
the richness innate in being a sacred and lively human being on ones own,
related to the whole, but thoroughly capable of a abundantly simple life where
ones needs are met and where squandering ones life is seen as a missed
opportunity for the development of ones own self-expression.
This is the point of true self-expression then. “It
the proof of high culture to say the greatest matters in the simplest way.”
Said Thoreau’s friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Albert
Einstein wisely said: “When I am
judging a theory, I ask myself whether, if I were God, I would have arranged the
world in such a way.” He said a
number of very thoughtful things about simplicity and I will share them with you
also:
“Everything
should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
“God
always takes the simplest way.”
“When
the solution is simple, God is answering.”
‘Spirit
Works for Us by Working Through Us’
One
of the ways that we complicate our lives is by taking credit for all the
good that happens anywhere near ourselves.
We sometimes take credit as if we are the center of the universe. Ever notice yourself doing that?
Or was that some other group of human beings? Here is a response to the
praise and obeisance of a follower who wishes to acknowledge and give credit,
and Lord Krishna’s response from the Bhagavad Gita, which I find very
instructive:
Merit?
Merit? Brother, who told thee I have merit?
Merit
have I none, nor ever did I have.
What
merit hath a straw?
The
weaver shapes a basket with it.
If
the basket be fair it is not the merit of the straw;
It
is his skill who maketh it.
I
am that straw which once lay at the great Weaver’s feet.
But
God, the Compassionate, took it in God’s sacred hands and fashioned it.
Now
I cherish this basket of God’s fashioning.
To
gather God’s blessing.
Humility,
unostentatious ness, non-injury, forgiveness, simplicity,
purity,
steadfastness, self-control; this is declared to be wisdom.
What
is opposed to this is ignorance.
We
have to remember how it is that all the ordinary miracles of Life occur.
Celebrate that you open and become vulnerable, and that in so doing that
Spirit pours through you! Celebrate
that you have awakened to this ordinary miracle and know that it was ever
present, responding always when and if we make ourselves available to Spirit. “It is the Father who doeth the works.” The same SIMPLE power that was in Christ Jesus is within us,
so long as we remember who “doeth the works” and honor the channel for
creative Spirit basic to our design. We
are spiritual beings having a human experience.
It is up to us how human it is: the more we take credit, the more human
our experience. The more we
recognize the principle that “Spirit works for Us by Working Through Us,”
the more we experience our lives as spiritual by design.
Here
is “A Prayer of Creation”
God,
Father and Mother and Lord of all,
We
stretch out our hands unhesitatingly toward all creation which you set before
us. In your creation you have planted the seed of all that is to come. In it
is the source and secret of all our destinies. To touch it, to allow it to
touch us is to surrender to forces which would tear us away from self in order
to drive us into risk, into constant renewal, into an austere detachment from
self. It is to acquire a taste for that which is above everything, an affinity
for the joy which we have only glimpsed at in this life. Lord God, we are
willing to be possessed by you, to be bound to you and led by your
inexpressible power toward those heights that alone we would never dare to
climb.
Like
all humanity, sometimes we fear the future, heavy with mystery and wonder. We
know that the person who is filled with an impassioned love of the Creator God
hidden in the forces which bring increase to the earth, that person will be
lifted up by the earth, as if in the immensity of a mother's arms, to
contemplate the face of God. May this communion with you increase our vision
of our union with the universe. Toward this vision may we direct all our
energy, our knowledge, our purpose, our human convictions and our love of life
and of you.
Amen.
Adapted
from Teilhard de Chardin’s, Hymn of the Universe
Epictetus,
the Greek Stoic philosopher counseled well:
"Never
call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal about theories – simply act
according to them. When, for example, you’re at a party – don’t talk about
how people ought to eat and drink, but simply eat and drink as you should.
Silence is a fine thing. Don’t toss philosophical theorems out for debate, for
there is danger in throwing out what you have not digested. If anyone tells you
that you know nothing, and you are not bothered by it, you can be sure that you
have begun your inner work. Sheep, for example, don’t throw up their
grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten. Rather, after inwardly
digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. So should you not
debate philosophy, but demonstrate the actions produced by the philosophy after
it has been digested."
Plato
tells us, “Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depends on
simplicity.” In a sense, he is
telling us that to emulate God, we have to keep things simple.
This is not difficult to demonstrate.
There
was a wonderful woman years ago who walked out her door and decided that she
would live day to day as a mendicant. She
would no longer concern herself with the work of the world and would depend on
the “kindness of strangers” for what she would eat and where she would
sleep. She dedicated her life to
the accomplishment of Peace. She
traveled the United States for many years on foot.
She was known as the Peace Pilgrim.
Imagine the courage to leave ones possessions behind and trust that
everything one needs will be provided. She
tells us: “Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. If you have them,
you have to take care of them! There is great freedom in simplicity of living.
It is those who have enough but not too much who are the happiest.”
Charles Fillmore tells us” It is the childlike mind that finds the
kingdom.” Those who met this
woman were forever changed in their attitudes about what is enough.
This is certainly one of the key ideas we can find a definition for in
our personal lives.
I will not say that there is a quantification
that can arrive from anywhere but within ones own self to answer this, but this
is a time of year when to know this is to remain calm and centered within the
Love of God. Yesterday, Dan and I
went to get something to eat and to purchase the candelabra on the piano.
This required that we go to Stanford Shopping Mall on a Saturday during
December. We immediately had to
find an experience of patience just to find a parking place.
There is not a greater symbol of consumerism than such a place as this!
Simplicity is simply not one of the 3 primary ideas that are being sold
there. But we got our burritos and
then went on to the store where I had located this candelabra that represents
for us in its numbers the seven major spiritual traditions, one candle for those
traditions that have passed away, and one for those yet to be.
For me, this was a sacred purpose, one that I have kept an eye out for,
but which finally came to my mailbox in my ordinary life. But just go into Crate
and Barrel and see if you can continue to keep it simple! First I found lids for Kelly’s Christmas gift, then I found
an easel for the welcome table sign I have been planning, a pouring spout for
olive oil, and the perfect vase for flowers on the table for a ritual
hand-washing I had planned for our first service of the New Year.
American Philosopher, George Santayana said that “The spirit's foe in
man has not been simplicity, but sophistication.”
We might remember that simple lesson that I learned in Home Ec, that
added complexity moves us toward destroying that which we have desired most, a
simple honest relationship with Spirit. We
are the ones who determine what our riches will be.
Thank
you for being here today!
Emerson
Center for
