The necessity of laughter on the spiritual path

Good morning, everyone. Really enjoying the sunshine, really enjoying the scaffold-free view again. And if you can get down into the garden and see the, the back of the temple, it's really looking really smart. So gratitude to Elliot. Welcome to Mark and Chris joining us online. So on Wednesday night I read from this book, Love Poems from God, translated by Daniel Ladinsky. 12 people from different traditions, different times. I think all of them— yeah, none of them alive, all of them from quite a while ago. And I read a poem by Saint Teresa of Ávila about desperation, the necessity of desperation on the spiritual path. You'll be pleased to hear that today's poem is about laughter. So this is called 'Laughter Came from Every Brick.' And when I say 'He' in the text, it's He with a capital H. Just these two words he spoke changed my life. Enjoy me. What a burden I thought I was to carry, a crucifix as did he. Love once said to me, 'I know a song, would you like to hear it?' And laughter came from every brick in the street and from every pore in the sky. After a night of prayer, He changed my life when he sang 'Enjoy Me.' So I'll read it again. Laughter came from every brick. Just these two words he spoke changed my life. Enjoy me. What a burden I thought I was to carry, a crucifix, as did he. Love once said to me, I know a song, would you like to hear it? And laughter came from every brick in the street and from every pore in the sky. After a night of prayer, he changed my life when he sang Enjoy Me. It feels like the right weather for laughter to be coming from every brick. As you sit, as we sit together and in silence, you might just want to enjoy the room smiling, the Buddha's smile is infectious. Maybe let it infect you as we sit together.

Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum! Oh my— oh ma mi ta ba hum! Oh ma Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Namah Shivaya. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Amitabha Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Nami Tabahum.

Om Nami Tabahum.

Om Nam Tabahum.

For refuge I go to the Buddha. The one who is awake and full of love. Namo Buddhaya. For refuge I go to the Dharma. All that guides us to wisdom and compassion. Namo Dharmaya. For refuge I go to the Sangha. For refuge I go to the Sangha. Those who live in the Buddha's light. Those who live in the Buddha's light. Namo Sanghaya. Namo Sanghaya. For refuge I go to the Earth. For refuge I go to the Earth. The holy ground of awakening. The holy ground of awakening. Namo Brum Yai. Namo Brum Yai. With faith in The Four Refuges— With faith in The Four Refugees—and in light of our human tendencies—we pray that we may become aware— We pray that we may become aware—of when we take life. Of when we take life. We pray that we may become aware—We pray that we make them aware—of when we take what is not freely given. When you think it's enough for me to give him? We pray that we may become aware— when we fall into sexual misconduct— We pray that we may become aware of when we fall into wrong speech. We pray that we may become aware of when we become intoxicated. Of when we become intoxicated. No blame. No blame. Be kind. Be kind. Love everything. Love everything.

Innumerable are sentient beings. We vow to save them all. Inexhaustible are deluded passions. We vow to transform them all. Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings. We vow to master them all. Infinite is the Buddha's way. We vow to fulfill it completely.

So many years ago, Casper told me a story about something that happened when they went to, uh, Frosselholme Monastery up north. You probably heard this, Kona, and, um, that's what happens when you've come a while, you get to hear the same stories. And they were being shown around the monastery. At the time, Kasp was a part of a— it was, they were monastic in their own little community, and they were being shown round by one of their head monks, who was very seriously talking to them about how to behave in the shrine room, that it was really important that you didn't wear shoes, and you never pointed your feet towards the Buddha. Those kind of etiquette things that you don't know until you, until you're told them. And as this head monk was kind of expounding about the, the importance and the seriousness of those, those ways of being, one of the older nuns wandered past, and they had long robes kind of right down to the floor. And this nun lifted up her robes and she was wearing wellies underneath. She'd obviously just been out in the garden, was kind of walking through and just kind of, you know, winked at them all a little bit. And that little moment of humor from that woman, who knows who she was, passed through Caspar to me, to you all. And it's just really delightful. It's just a really delightful moment, um, that also feels to me very sacred. There is something really serious about spiritual practice, and it is really important that we, um, that we take it seriously. There was a new person on Wednesday who was a little bit chaotic and I didn't actually notice that they sat down with their shoes on. Gyarmey noticed and asked if they could just put, you know, politely, could you put— I was like, oh, because there's something about these ways that we pay respect to the Buddha. Of course it doesn't, you know, it's not, uh, it's, it's a traditional thing. It could be something else. It could be that we never— I don't know, for some different religions it's about covering parts of your body or there's, there's, uh, the thing itself is less important than the, the, uh, this is how we do things here. We don't put flowers, um, with thorns on. So the, the roses will have had their thorns removed because the Buddha doesn't need protection. So, so the shrine flowers never have thorns. Um, the, uh, the water from the offering bowls is emptied onto a living thing, into the garden or onto plants. We don't— we don't waste that holy water. So there are these little things that we pay attention to and that we learn over time that allow us to pay respect in a particular way. And I think that serious spiritual practitioners have a twinkle in their eye. You've only got to think about the Dalai Lama to Desmond Tutu to know about that twinkle. And I think humor has various functions in the spiritual life. The first, maybe most important one, is that it punctures our ego. That when we start to take ourselves too seriously, we can just kind of catch the Buddha's wry smile at us and just see ourselves through the Buddha's fond eyes. 'Oh yeah, they're building themselves up again,' or they're, you know, getting carried away with this or that. But it keeps us humble, and, you know, like a balloon, we need puncturing often, self-inflates again. Humor also, I think, allows us to receive, to come into contact with receiving something sacred, like the moment with the, the nun and her Wellingtons. And it also allows us to— and it also is a natural consequence. It connects us. It's also a natural consequence of moving into a way of seeing the world which is, which is a, with a spiritual foundation, that when we, when we learn to have the eyes of the Buddha, even if it's just for moments, then as it says in the poem, laughter starts coming from, from the walls. Everything kind of wakes up and has a kind of a delight to it and a lightness to it. I think Rumi speaks really well about that lightness, and it's funny. It's actually funny. I'm just remembering, um, in the old days when we did sutra study in the Buddhist House where I first met Caspar, David, our old teacher, would do sutra study and would read the Buddhist texts, the sutras, And the way he read them, they were funny. They were kind of— the Buddha often had this kind of wry sense of humor. And I really like that way of reading them, that, you know, the Buddha would have encountered all kinds of weird and wonderful people with all kinds of weird and wonderful questions. And I just imagine him a lot of the time going, Okay, here we are. Let's just, let's just be playful with this and make an offering. And that kind of fondness that comes from really deeply knowing how it is to be human, how it is for other people to be human, and really appreciating that kind of that quirkiness, that that kind of the flaws that sparkle somehow. So I'll finish by reading just the poem on the next page to this one, which tickled me, and it's called 'Not Yet Tickled.' How did those priests ever get so serious and preach all that gloom? I don't think God tickles them yet. Beloved, hurry. fragrance and birth herself, reflecting our careful efforts and all the causes for our prosperity. From the fruits of understanding served wisely, may we and our beings be expanded with goodness and compassion. May the awakening of forgetfulness— Announcements. Somebody has asked if they can take refuge, so if you'd be interested in joining the list of people who'd like to take refuge for the first time with this community or reaffirm your refuge, let me know. We'll look at some dates. On the 7th of March, we have a chanting morning, which is an opportunity to really have an experience of a deeper kind of immersion into them. But soup and soup, when is that? The 7th of March. So it's between 10:30. We do practices all morning and 10:30 till 1, and then soup at 1. So you don't have to stay for the whole time, but I think if you're here, you know, come to as much as you can. Basically, we usually say, oh, just come for 20 minutes. It's actually, if you do 20 minutes, you don't really You don't see the benefit. Exactly. You're scared. You can come to Tony and Anne. You can pop in and out. You can pop in and out, yeah. You can go and have a drink and come back in. You've got a Sunday workday? Yes, I can't remember what it is. Sunday the 8th, I think. Oh, it's after John Day. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And that's going to be focused on the car park, car park on the side of it. Brilliant, brilliant. I've got— I'm going to put that in my diary. Yes, you're not going to put it back. I like to do great. You can— yeah, look, Ken's doing his— Ken is doing some shrine and altar practice. If you do want to volunteer and you can't make the open mornings, then do talk to one of the stewards and they will give you something to do. We have a new card machine if you haven't already had the pleasure of using it. I have, I think it's great. And we also, you may have seen a fundraiser to hopefully raise money to do the sides of the building to match the beautiful back of the building. If you don't have, if you have a little bit of money, it would be great to have it. If you have a lot of money, give us a lot of money. But if you have friends who have a lot of money who have some fondness for you, they can be good people to forward the thing. I'm being serious here. Because you know, it's a way for people that have a bit more money to support something that is at the heart of the community here. So if they know you and they trust you, then they might be willing to put some money in the hat. So we've got £420 so far, we need £12,000, and I think most of that's come from the Minister so far, but it's a good start, it's a good start, and anything that we raise is great. The Buffum kind of ran down because of the building work, so it would be great to just kind of Now we've got the rooms filled, we're moving in the right direction again, but it'll take a while for that to happen. So thank you very much. Anything else, Danny? No, off the top of my head. Hopefully you'll join us for a cup of tea. I'll finish with a closing prayer. Blessed by our Father's light, may we care for all living things and the whole earth.