A UU Sermon about the Flower Ceremony (with a Buddhist lens)
Homily Earth Tale Rev. Taylor
It is said that the shortest of the Buddha’s sermons went something like this: The Buddha had his disciples sitting around him; he reached down, plucked a flower and held it up. He spoke not a word. In that silence, one of his disciples became enlightened. Consider these flowers and consider how we fit into this amazing universe together.
There is something in our annual Flower Ceremony that always puts me in a certain frame of mind. I grow contemplative bordering on the mystic. What is it about flowers that we find so alluring and companionable? Certainly, their fragrance and color, their variety and wild abundance. And we find meaningful connections to these flowers and ourselves. We too have fragrance and color; we too arrive in such variety and – when we let ourselves – are capable of wild abandon. But there is more. These flowers are transient, they blossom and die all around us constantly. And yet they persist. So, it is with us as well.
Allow me a second Buddhist story, it pairs well with the one about the flower. This second story is from Thich Nhat Hanh (from at least a few decades back.) He has walking across a collage campus with several people after a lecture. This story is an autumn story, rather than a spring story about flowers. In this story, Thich Nhat Hanh and the others were walking and the ground was strewn with many-colored leaves that had recently fallen to the ground. Suddenly Thich Nhat Hanh stops, points to a leaf and shouts, “You’re faking!”
I love this story. I know I’ve told it before and some of you may remember it. I know my inclination is to look at autumn and think of things dying, or everything letting go. But the Buddhist teacher is right. Autumn is simply one point in the ever-circling spiral of life. The dead leaf is part of the grander cycle of rebirth – it just isn’t revealing that aspect of it at the moment. The leaves that are dying are not really dying.
What if the flowers are faking too? Because they are, you know. They are no more the epitome of life than the leaf in autumn is the epitome of death. The flower is one moment in the full cycle. And like us, it has unfolded into this moment of being and is on its way to somewhere else. But in this moment, ah, such color, such vibrance, such life.
Yes, the flower may be fixed in my mind, in my memory like a photo. A moment out of countless moments when it happens to be in its fullness. But in truth, that moment is a tension. The flower is in its fullness, in beautiful bloom; and it is at the same time on its journey from seed to compost – the full breadth of its living. The flower is faking when it shows us only its full glory, because it is not only that moment; it is also in the middle of a long, elegant journey.
We call it ‘living in the moment’ when we do it. We call it, ‘mindfully present.’ But the flower is faking. Its wholeness is not contained in the moment of full bloom. So it is with us. When we are living in the moment, when we are mindfully present, we do not stop being part of the ongoing circle and cycle of living. When we are living in the moment we are not escaping from the past or ignoring the future. We are in that full journey right now.
One more story. This one is from Anthony DeMello in his book One Minute Wisdom.
The Master smiled, “Tell me, my dear, when you were born did you come into the world like a star from the sky or out of it like a leaf from a tree?” All day long [the student] pondered that strange question of the Master. Then she suddenly saw the answer and fell into Enlightenment. (DeMello, Anthony, One Minute Wisdom, p121)
We were not dropped here into this moment, we grew here. We are not transplanted into nature, we are nature. We, like the blooming flower and the dying leaf, are the earth. We are a local embodiment of the universe. Walt Whitman famously said “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” We, like the grass, are the journey-work of the stars. And at any given moment, we are here – a leaf on the ground, a flower in bloom – ebbing or flowing; we are here.
I hope you may remember that when you are in a more barren or difficult season of your life, the flower is always part of the journey. even when it is ‘not yet’ or is ‘no longer.’ The flower is always with us and it is always on its way. And so are we.
In a world without end,
may it be so.
Rev. Douglas Taylor 