What is a "sacred text"? and why do we need one?
The
Tao of words, is not the eternal Tao.
The
name that can be named, is not an eternal name.
The
unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming
is the origin of all particular things
Free
from words for particular things, you realize the mystery.
Caught
in words of naming, you see only the manifestations.
Yet
mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
The
source is without name,
The
source is the Tao, the gateway to all understanding
Tao-te-Ching #1
Not so many years ago I dedicated some time to reading the
Tao-te-ching. Though you can read the Tao-te-Ching in a couple of hours, I studied it.
After I thought I knew it pretty well, I encountered a
beautiful passage quoted from another insipirational book and it was attributed to the
Tao-te-Ching. I thought - "no, I know it
pretty well, and I would have noted this passage - I don't recognize this at all - it's
not there."
This took me to a Borders in St. Louis where I pulled versions
of the Tao-te-Ching off the shelf for over two hours - over a dozen versions. There were side by side Chinese/English versions,
one celebrity version, and a cartoon version. I
was looking for that passage, and I found it - it is still my favorite, and one of the
versions in the reading to day - but I was also opening my eyes.
There were so many interpretations, and they were all so
different. Some seemed like instructions to
monarchs, like Confucius, even Machiavelli. Some
seemed liked Asian poetry. Some had a
sense of humor; some were dour. Although they
all had eighty-one pages, the interpretations of some of the pages were very different. Some pages, like the famous "empty pot/ empty
house" page are fairly consistently translated.
Among the results of that evening were a rededication to the
study of the Tao-te-Ching; I led a successful
Adult RE workshop on the Tao last year at First UU, and now, of course, I'm here.
Now this
experience is not unique to me, and certainly not unique to the Tao-te-Ching. Many students of the Judeo-Christian
tradition have certainly had a very similar experience.
Reading the Books of Abraham from the Torah and the Christian Old Testament gives
you some perspective. Mary K. has spent some
time reading Rumi and has discovered a similar diversity among the interpretations of the
great Sufi poet.
Scholars dig and dig to find the "true" bible, or the
"true" Tao-te-Ching. Many dedicate
their lives to peeling back the layers of translation and interpretation. Although the
Tao-te-Ching was written in an active language, it is over 2500 years old. Chinese, the elegantly economical cuneiform-like
character-set of the language has changed in meaning over the centuries in practical use. The number of "written" words,
because there is no alphabet, is fairly small, so the context and connotation are very
significant in subtle texts like the Tao-te-Ching.
And of course, context and connotation change over time. We might compare this to English by asking - how
much different is the meaning of the word "highway" now than it was in the
fourteenth century?
Now for the Bible, there is a different challenge. The Bible was written in many different languages,
most of which have changed radically, and we don't have most of the Bible in it's original
Aramic, or Coptic, or ancient Greek. So
everything we have is translated and mostly we have things translated at several different
times.
Okay, I'll take a contrarian view. I don't care what Lao Tse wrote in the
Tao-te-Ching. The interpretation I like is
the most interpretative. Stephen
Mitchell's. It is the least like the others
and perhaps the least like the oldest Chinese (it's hard for me to tell). Stephen Mitchell is as much religious poet as he
is translator, he is not a Chinese language authority, and he admits to improvising on a
theme in some passages - more power to him. Mary
K. has similar feelings about her favorite Rumi - Andrew Harvey's interpretation. The goal of these poet interpreters is to see
"through" the text to the underlying spiritual meaning within them and deliver
this for seekers of their time and language. They
do this without destroying or replacing the vision in the other versions.
My contrarian view is a humanist one - the thing that makes
sacred texts sacred is that we don't know who wrote them and we don't have the original
version. For thousands of years the Bible and the Tao te Ching have been copied and
translated and purged and edited and collected and annotated and copied again. And my contrarian view is that rather than
corrupting the original text, this handling by countless well meaning, devoted individuals
is a process of refining.
Imagine centuries of monks, students, professors, and devotees
peering through the panes of that text to the underlying meaning, and changing a word
here, a phrase there to make it more relevant.
Like the Bible, the Tao-te-Ching has endured purges, where some devoted
governmental authority burned and banned all of the translation/interpretations but their
percieved "true" one. But the
diversity began anew and older versions were recovered.
For those of us that are, at least in part, humanists, we would
not presume that Lao Tse, or Mark, or David (if, in fact anyone by these names actually
wrote the tracts attributed to them, which is in doubt) hold unique inspiration which
exceeds that of the sum of those devotees that followed them. Today, we have the benefit of so many translations
and interpretations - we can choose and compare and in doing so, we extend the filter. When I say I don't care about Tao-te-Ching
research or biblical research, perhaps it is a gross exaggeration. I am interested in the additional perspective
these efforts provide - but I'm not interested the "Holy Grail" of a
"stifling" definitive version.
Now not all of the world's "sacred texts" qualify by
my definition: the Book of Mormon, the Koran, the writings of Baha-u-alla. Each of these is of fairly recent and fairly
certain origin. Is it any wonder that we
predominantly UUs don't often refer to these sources?
They just don't offer us enough lattitude for refining interpretation -and disagreement. (no wiggle room)
In the Judaic tradition, there is no silly controversy around
Biblical inerrancy. As early as 425 AD the
Rabbi Zohar wrote "The Bible has clothed itself in the outer garments of the world
and woe to the person who looks at the garment as being the Torah. " Respected American Rabbi Harold Schulman wrote
"There is hardly a verse in the Bible taken verbatim that is exempt from embarassment
- blinded by the literal text, the symbolic meanings are invisible. Finding the planks of the ark on Mount Ararat adds
nothing to our knowledge of man's religious struggle for a meaningful existence that is
implicit in the Noah story. "
I'm reminded of the old Hebrew saw: "The Bible is like a
good parent - it is for the young to believe in, the mature to love, and the old to argue
with." This describes well the sacred
text. For the young, who are only developing
their wisdom the text can provides moral guidance and a spiritual lexicon. For the mature who have benefited from it, but
begin through their developing lens of wisdom to see it's flaws, it is to treasure so that
it may be preserved. The venerable, with a
more mature wisdom, can interpret the text, perhaps even extend it.
Interestingly enough, many of the most ancient sacred texts are
anthologies. The Judeo-Christian Bible,
possibly the Tao-te-Ching, and the Upanishads are collections. And the various authors and just as significant,
the editors, are shrouded in time and translation. The
unifying feature of these works is often not the "word of God" or even coherence
of vision, expression, or theme. The unifying
feature is that these were the spiritual stories and verses that the wise of these various
cultures did not want to lose. Not unlike the
mythologies and stories of Greek, Native American, and African cultures which are more
than stories, they preserve and convey symbols of spiritual value.
Stories. It
reminds of an episode of Star Trek-the Next Generation.
Those who saw the show will remember it by the key phrase “Darmok and Gelad at
Tinagra”. In this episode, the
Enterprise was to scheduled encounter the Tamarians – a race that although the
computer translator translated the words of their language they always seemed to speak
nonsense. Though both sides had best
intentions, the encounters always seemed to end in violence. The captain of the Tamarian ship kidnaps Captain
Picard and goes with him to a planet where together they will battle a
“Predator” like monster. As they
battle the monster together, Picard discovers the structure of the Tamarian language. It seems that all of the meaning of the Tamarian
language is expressed in terms of their stories. These
stories describe a lexicon for everything.
Now in a sense, whenever we read the stories of these ancients
we are dealing with the Tamarians. These
stories are the spiritual symbols of their cultures.
In Emerson's Harvard Divinity School Address he raised similar
points about sacred texts and asked the question "Why is the bible closed?" It was not closed by God, but by Catholic
Church leaders in the ninth and tenth centuries of Christianity. Why should not Christians continue to add to their
Bible - including perhaps the works of say, C.S. Lewis, a wonderful writer and powerfully
persuasive Christian.
Guatama Bhudda once described his words as a finger pointing to
the moon. If you looked at the finger, it
could obscure the moon. We know that in
general, our words are inadequate to describe our spirituality; the "right"
words are just not in our language. We deal
in symbols, in shadows, in fingers pointing at the moon.
We should seek to see "through" the words to the truth within or beyond
them. The words are just words after
all. However, when we find sets of word
symbols that work for us, we shouldn't lose them.
We shouldn't fail to convey them to those who also might find truth in them.
With this in mind, I've considered starting my own anthology. Perhaps I can complete it as a gift to my children
for when thy leave the nest, perhaps it will be a gift to my children when I leave this
world. The "gospel according to
Martin" would have ten or twelve pages from the Tao-te-Ching, most of them Stephen
Mitchell's. Two or three long poems of Rumi
or Kahlil Gibran. Some Emerson if the vessel
can bear his beautiful long-windedness. Some
Dickenson and E.E. Cummings and a Psalm or two.
Parables of Jesus. Some stories,
Winnie the Pooh. A few of my own essays and
poems.
With this, I would not presume to start a religion, but rather
to collect those things that describe my search and leave a bread crumb trail in the
wilderness of life for my children, and others that would follow. Some of these crumbs would be lost, some would
look unappetizing. But perhaps it would
provide some sustenance and guidance to others on the journey, even some that live after
my time.
Now, we UUs don't have a sacred text. Though we claim all of the sacred texts in the
world... this is far too much for our
children to believe in, or for us to truly treasure, so we all just wind up precociously
arguing with them. Perhaps we miss having a
sacred text - perhaps it leaves a "hole in our faith". We don't have a template for our young people to
model themselves too. We don't have these
ancient words to treasure which point back to our past and forward to our future.
Although the hymnal is certainly admirable, imagine the folly
of the UUA trying to establish a sacred text. Now,
that would be some series of committee meetings. Such
an effort would be inappropriate anyway because we have congregational polity - our
congregations are sometimes very different.
Now although Live Oak UU is made up of unique individuals, each
with their own perspective. Perhaps more than
other UU congregation I've encountered, the folks here seem to define their spirituality
not just by what they learn or say here, but by the community itself.
And this raises the question - "How about the Gospel
according to the Live Oak spiritual community?"
Would you benefit from a sacred anthology? How
would you construct it? It might take
decades, but wouldn't even the patience of building it say something about your community?
I'm going to close as I opened with a sacred text for me. It is from Andrew Harvey's Rumi:
You
may ask: what then is the use of words?
They
set you searching and excite you to search ..
the
goal of the searching can never be attained through words.
If
that were the case, there would be no need of so much
striving
and passing, praying and longing, and
constant,
consistent self-annihilating before the Glory of the Face.
Human
speech can excite you to seek the meaning, but it is not the meaning itself,
and
you do not see what is being spoken of immediately and in reality.
If
what all men secretly long and hunger for
the
essence of essences and the light of splendor -
could
be knowable simply by words,
you
would never need to die to your false self and to suffer such distress in looking
for
what you do not yet know you secretly are and possess.