I speak on the subject of renunciation with some trepidation, as it goes against the generally held view that more is better. What I have to say today was incomprehensible to the 20-year-old Sam who craved electronic stereo components, fast cars, good food, and a millionaire's estate in the countryside of Northern Delware, rubbing shoulders with the DuPont family. My father used to tease me about always wanting to go first class because I had an eye for quality and was willing to pay for it. One of the reasons I went into electrical engineering was because I knew it would allow me to support a luxurious lifestyle.
We are in the middle of Lent which began two and a half weeks ago. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter (not counting Sundays), remembering Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness. Traditionally these 40 days are used as a time of renunciation and prayer. It is common to give something up, to renounce it for Lent, to taste an experience of deprivation which purifies the spirit.
We are also in the middle of Ramadan, a month of fasting from sun up till sun down. And this isn't just food - its EVERYTHING by mouth. Observing Ramadan is one of the five central pillars of the Islamic faith.
Both these religions, as well as many others around the world, use the act of renunciation as a way to remind the devotee that their attachments to the material world are less important and meaningful than their religious commitment. For the Christian, the life in Christ outshines all the pleasures of the world. For the Muslim, the surrender to the will of Allah gives value and meaning to life beyond the greatest riches and treasures of the earth.
What may surprise you is that many Unitarian Universalists are practicing renunciation without knowing it. One of the definitions of the word is to refuse to follow, obey or recognize something. Many U.U.'s have renounced the church in which they were raised as children. A religious tradition that denies human value can kill the spirit rather than nurture it into the service of life. Even though I grew up with Unitarian Universalism, I had to renounce the understanding I had of it as a boy. This youthful understanding of liberal religion was not rich enough to make sense of my life experience. Much as a snake must shed its skin to grow, so must we renounce the foolishness of our youth to mature into adults. That growing process continues throughout our lives as we gain more wisdom and experience.
Some of us practice renunciation to heal a self-inflicted wound. The vow of an alcoholic to stop drinking, or a smoker to stop smoking, is an act abandoning a harmful habit. How many of you have voted for someone and later renounced that office-holder once in power? Some of us, and I'm not going to name names, may have made one or two important decisions in our lives and later publicly abandoned them as mistakes.
So renunciation is not so foreign to us after all. But the definition which causes the concern for most of us is ascetic self-denial. It brings up the image of Saint Benedict throwing himself into a bramble bush, thrashing around to rid himself of an impure thought. It brings up the image of Franciscan Monks who have taken a vow of poverty and wear a simple coarse robe tied with a rope belt. Nuns sequestered from the world in a convent. The Jains who renounce killing so completely that they sweep the path in front of them for fear of harming an insect crawling on the ground. Indian Holy men who even renounce clothing and wander around naked.
Ascetism is anathema to modern western civilization. We believe that the quality of human life improves through social, scientific and technological progress. The more we understand and control the world, shaping it to our needs, the better our lives will be. More is better, onward and upward forever!
Yet all of us must embrace some level of self-denial to mature into adults. My son Andy is approaching the age where he has preferences he can verbalize. He sees me cutting vegetables and says "I want the knife." He gets quite upset when I don't give it to him. He wants the same book read over and over. We are teaching him that we will read the book again if he agrees that this will be the last time. Toilet training is on the horizon - a major experience of self-denial.
Impulse control is central to the self-denial required to mature into an adult. We don't steal someone's hat off their head because we fancy it. We all exercise some control over our diets, often under threat of our physician. We don't say exactly what we think for fear of offending someone. This is one reason I write my sermons - I don't want to say something stupid or offensive that just slips out of my mind bouncing off my tongue.
Renunciation, though goes further. It is a voluntary, uncoerced act of self-denial. It often fits into a larger system of thinking that sees self-denial as a path to spiritual growth.
What got me thinking about renunciation was taking a class in seminary from a Theravadan Buddhist monk. The Theravadan monks take a severe vow of poverty. They are only allowed a few possessions like a toothbrush, a bowl, a simple orange bolt of cloth which they have been wrapping around their bodies in the same way for the last 2500 years. They have no need for a comb since their heads are shaved (men and women). They are not allowed to prepare their own food but must depend on the generosity of their community for leftover scraps. Their life sounds very cold and austere. Yet my teacher remarked that where he came from in Sri Lanka, the monks were often cheerful, gentle, contented and happy people with a good sense of humor. Certainly this was very true of my teacher, who had a lot of personal warmth.
This really opened up the question for me about whether these monks were deluded or whether they were onto something. Could it be true that I could actually be happier with less than with more?
This is a central teaching of many religious traditions. The idea that "Your reward will be in heaven, not on earth" keeps many people content with their suffering rather than resisting tyranny. The idea that dying in Jihad, an Islamic holy war, will send one straight to heaven causes men to commit acts of terrorism and women and children to strap bombs to their chests and destroy themselves in a public place, taking many others with them. Many of our life- denying attitudes that cause us to view our environment as the enemy come from this transcendental disconnection with our earthly home.
The reason I think renunciation has gotten such a bad reputation is because of the way people use it for personal gain. Dieting, the act of renouncing fattening foods, has become a billion-dollar-a-year business. We see beautiful thin women selling themselves along with their dieting products on TV. Sanctimonious celebrants of self-denial strut around singing their own praises as they relate their ordeals of hardship. How many have seen so-called pious people competing to see who is serving the Lord better?
Aldous Huxley put it very well in this quote:
The difference between the mortified, but still proud and self- centered stoic and the unmortified hedonist consists of this: the latter, being flabby, shiftless and at heart rather ashamed of himself, lacks the energy and the motivation to do much harm except to his own body, mind and spirit; the former, because he has all the secondary virtues and looks down on those who are not like himself, is morally equipped to wish and to be able to do harm on the very largest scale and with a perfectly untroubled conscience.[1]
The worst example is when some self-righteous minister stands up and preaches on the value of renunciation while exhibiting little evidence of such behavior. "Fast for forty days and nights," he might preach, while fattening himself on the bounty of the harvest.
Certainly self-righteousness is a false renunciation. Yet there is gold hidden under the dross. Can renunciation serve us as a tool for a better life? Paradoxically, it is through turning away from attachment to the world that the world may be fully honored and appreciated.
Buddhist meditation retreats offered here and around the world give one an opportunity to experience renunciation for as short a time as a weekend and as long at one center as three months. The renunciation for the retreat is quite severe. Of course alcohol, drugs and any other intoxicant is prohibited. Speech is prohibited. Reading is prohibited. No meal is provided after noon. From before the sun rises till late into the night, one alternates between sitting meditation and walking meditation. Even making eye contact with someone else at the retreat is discouraged.
The first time one attends such a retreat, it can be quite difficult to work with these rules until one appreciates the purpose of them. The purpose of all these prohibitions is to create a quiet protected space around the meditator, removing the distractions that stir up mental activity. Once one is no longer distracted by the events in the outer world, the processes, memories and events in one's inner world become much clearer and easier to recognize. If our television sets showed us five or six channels at once, our mind would be bouncing around, pulled by the different images that appear, and probably miss things happening on the channels we weren't watching. By slowing the activity of the mind down, the contents and relationships become clearer and easier to understand. For this purpose, renunciation is helpful, not punitive or harmful.
This was my experience of the ten-day retreats that I have attended. The quiet space created by this collective renunciation allowed me to see deeply into the habit patterns of my mind. Many emotions I had protected myself from surfaced so I could make peace with them and let them go. In the process of letting things go, insights would appear that helped me understand my motivations and behavior. Toward the end of one of the retreats, I tasted the lightness and joy I imagined must have been similar to what my Buddhist teacher in seminary described.
Most of you here, while perhaps interested in my spiritual adventures, have no inclination toward such a form of renunciation. I too have not chosen this life as I feel called to bring transformative experiential wisdom into the reach of the ordinary person. I share my experience in the hope of expanding your appreciation of the value of renunciation.
Perhaps a more accessable understanding of renunciation is voluntary simplicity. Nothing is more difficult than to be simple. Those who came to retire may have cast off many possessions before moving down. Those who need to live in managed care facilities have had to let go of even more. Aging itself can be seen as a process of deprivation or a process of simpification as the eyes become dim, the hearing muffled, and the joints stiffen. As one's activities are limited, there is more space for contemplation and reflection. A wise Sufi teacher put it this way: "When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found."
The most pure form of renunciation is the acceptance and response to the daily events of our lives. Nothing is more challenging or rewarding than sincerely living each day. The best renunciation is the inconspicuous, non-competitive changes to our lifestyle which support our health and the health of our planet. How wise and worthy is the renunciation of unwholesome food. How wise and worthy is the renunciation of an unhealthy habit. How wise and worthy is the decision to treat our body as a temple rather than a palace of pleasure and consumption. How wise and worthy it is to simplify our needs. How wise and worthy it is to recycle our trash and reduce its volume. How wise and worthy it is to reduce our consumption of animal products and byproducts.
Renunciation is part of living a healthy balanced life. Our bodies are overjoyed when a harmful habit is overcome. There can be more space for love in our life when we renounce hatred and the harming of other life forms, living non-violently as much as possible. Life-affirming renunciation can increase the value of our lives, for what is being renounced are the ego-driven delusions of the limited self. There is a great deal more to us than our cravings and aversions. Renouncing them can open a door to an expanded sense of our common humanity.
If you are so inclined, it isn't too late to find something to renounce for Lent. Don't do it to be a Christian. Don't do it because you think I want you to do it. In fact I don't want to know if you do or don't renounce anything.
If you do wish to renounce something, do it as a step of self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-love. Find a way to make it an act of love, for true renunciation is an act of spiritual love.
I shall close with these words from the Tao Te Ching:
The student
learns by daily increment.
The Way is gained by daily loss,
Loss upon
loss until
At last comes rest.
By letting go, it all gets done;
The
world is won by those who let it go!
But when you try and try
The world
is then beyond the winning.
Go in peace,
Make peace,
Be at
peace.
Copyright (c) 1995 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore, All rights
reserved.
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