A Presentation at the All Believers Network Symposium
September 5, 2005
Perhaps one of the most inspiring passages in the Buddhist literature is the paean to joy that was uttered by the Buddha upon his attainment of enlightenment. Because it bears so much upon the issue of exclusion and inclusion, I would like to share it with you.
Through many a birth in existence wandered I,
seeking, but not finding, the builder of this house.
Sorrowful is repeated birth.
O house builder, thou art seen. Thou shalt build no house again.
All thy rafters are broken. Thy ridge-pole is shattered.
Mind attains the unconditioned.
Achieved is the end of craving.
Buddha
Of course, the question immediately arises: Who is the house builder, and what is the house?
The house builder is none other than our own egos. From a healthy perspective, it is that dynamic force that propels us to seek food, clothing, shelter, procreation, and social kinship. But, it can also turn into habitual patterns of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, addictive attachments, destructive aversive behavior, and the struggle for power and control over our community and environment. In Darwinian terms you might call it our instinct for survival and predominance. Arthur Schopenhauer called it the “will to power”. The writer Robert Ardrey, called it the “territorial imperative”.
On the other hand, if the ego is the builder, then the house is the edifice that we build in the process of living out our lives. It is the sum of all our conditioning: everything we have learned and experienced from the moment of birth through our years of growth and maturation. It is our stories, it is our histories, it is the specific pattern of cause and effect through which our lives have evolved and become manifest. It is our identities, it is who we have become. It is our sense of our own selves, our self image, with which we identify, become attached to, and often defend, at all costs. On the other hand, it is also what differentiates us from others and makes us unique. But, it is also what can isolate us from others.
The rafters and the ridge pole are the architectural elements that support the house. The rafters are the mental defilements, or passions, such as desire, craving, aversion, illusion, conceit, and false views. The ridge-pole, which supports the rafters, is ignorance, the root cause of all the passions. The shattering of the ridge pole of ignorance by wisdom results in the complete demolition of the house.
When the house is demolished, the mind attains the unconditioned. It is that state that is beyond all conditions, beyond all birth and death, beyond cause and effect. It is a state that is unborn and yet never dies, a state that is not created in time, nor is it created at all. Some have called it the Ground of Being, or Ultimate Reality, or Nirvana. Various faith traditions have called it the Divine Presence, Divine Consciousness, Universal Mind Consciousness, Universal Love, the Divine Mystery, or, simply, God.
What is most important, however, is what happens when one allows one’s house to fall away. In that moment one attains a sense of pure existential Being and experiences a connection and openness to the larger sacred context within which, and through which, all life exists. It is within that larger space that self and other fall away, and all life and reality are affirmed and unified.
If we operate at the level of our ego selves, or what Buddhists call Conventional Reality, we are bound by the unique and specific conditions that make us different and isolate us from others. But, if we operate at the level of what is called Ultimate Reality, the distinctions fall away and we experience a unity that allows empathy, acceptance, understanding, compassion, and love.
Whether we operate with an attitude of exclusion or of inclusion is largely determined by the extent to which we have released ourselves from the tyranny of our own egos into the unconditioned, sacred nature of Being that permeates all life.
Yet, at the same time as Buddhists we are also taught that what is Conventional and what is Ultimate is not separate. Just as the waves and currents that form the turbulence on the surface of the ocean are comprised of the same water that constitutes the stillness and silence of the depths, each one of us is, in fact, a conventional person, of flesh and bones, living in time and space. Yet, each one of us carries within ourselves that which is timeless, infinite, and beautiful. So, we strive to bring that spaciousness into our everyday lives with an understanding that allows a measure of acceptance, understanding, wisdom, compassion, and, ultimately, serenity and peace.
In the same way, by honoring what is unique and special, while seeing what is universal and timeless within every faith tradition, let us reach beyond the differences that define exclusivity, and find that ground of commonality that begins to truly define a sense of inclusivity and interconnection in our lives.
It is through our own personal spiritual journeys that we are able to come to greater understanding, wisdom, and empathy, so that within our own hearts and within our own communities, we may be better able to open ourselves further to ourselves and, in doing so, to those around us.
Thank you very much.
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