Sunday Service: The Path of Buddhism - January 11th, 2015

Editor's Note:  Along with a congregational service on Buddhism, our Religious Education programming is devoting time to learning more about this major world religion.  Youth in their Sunday classes will spend time this year on the religion, its tenets and practices - and adults are welcome to attend the five-week course led by Rev. Tom starting January 18th.  Details available HERE

The Path of Buddhism

By Reverend Tom Capo

Preached on 1/11/2015

How many of you know the story of Siddhartha Gautama or as he came to be known, the Buddha?  Well, just so we start in the same place, let me tell you the Cliff Notes version of his life.  His father was a king, who believed that Siddhartha would either become a great king or a great religious leader, and since he wanted his son to become a great king, he kept his son secluded on their castle grounds.  One day Siddhartha went outside the grounds, and saw old people, sad people, and sick people.  He was greatly moved by this exposure.  So he left the castle and started studying with great spiritual teachers and tried many spiritual practices to find how one might cope with the problems of this life.  Eventually, he found himself sitting under a Bodhi tree meditating, and he realized, that is, he became enlightened, that there was a path to deal with suffering in the world.  He realized that there will always be suffering; our lives have ups and downs—that is the way life is.  And suffering is not intended to convey a negative view of the world or of life.   Tibetan Buddhist monk, Pema Chodron (choe drun), wrote: “When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment, or awakening to our true nature, to our fundamental goodness.”  In order to deal with suffering, one needs to have a down-to-earth, reasonable understanding of suffering, and see the world as it is—not as we want it to be.  In other words one day or another there will be suffering in your life—so it is best to learn to cope with suffering without letting it control you.

Sunday Service: The Complexity & Simplicity of Hinduism - Sunday January 4, 2015

The Complexity and Simplicity of Hinduism

Preached on 1/04/2015

By Reverend Tom Capo

First let me share a few interesting facts about Hinduism. (Hindu.BZ.com and hindu facebook)

1. More than 10,000 years ago the institution of marriage was founded and put forth in practice by Hindus.

2. The Rigveda, one of Hindu's holy scriptures, is the oldest literature known to humanity.

3. According to the Vedas, lending money on interest is a bad Karma.  We will talk about Karma later. 

4. According to the Vedas, Om, Hinduism's most sacred sound, is the sound which was present at the time of creation of universe.

5. Parents, teachers, and food are considered next to God.  That makes sense to me somehow.

6. Because of the usefulness of rivers, they are highly revered in Hinduism. People call them mother. 

7. Hindus believe that we get the human body when our soul passes through 8,400,000 species of plants and animals.

I could go on with interesting facts or tell you about the gods and goddesses of Hinduism, or the social caste system--the societal level that each person is assigned based on their birth; or I could talk about the various ways that people practice their faith, or all the religious texts and their meaning to various sects of Hinduism; or I could talk about the various rituals, holidays, and pilgrimages.  If I chose to talk about even one of these in detail, we would be here for a very very long time.  You see Hinduism is a collective term applied to the many philosophical and religious traditions native to India.  In a strict sense there was no 'Hinduism' before modern times, although the sources of Hindu traditions are very ancient.  And Hinduism has no definite starting point that anyone has been able to discover. The traditions which flow into Hinduism may go back several thousand years and some practitioners claim that revelation in Hinduism is eternal; sound familiar?

Sunday Service: Not Just I, Community is We - September 21st, 2014

Not just I, Community is We

Reverend Tom Capo

9/21/2014

A long long time ago

I can still remember how the music used to make me smile

And I knew if I had my chance

That I could make those people dance

And maybe the’d be happy for a while

But February made me shiver

With every paper I’d deliver

Bad news on the doorstep

I couldn’t take one more step

Great works of art, music included, ask the viewer or listener to bring a little of themselves into the experience.  Thus, the meaning of art or music is constantly shifting little, nuanced by whatever the viewer’s or listen’s life, wherever they are on their journey.  Don McLean, the writer and composer of “American Pie” never really talked about what he was trying to say when he wrote the song.  Many other people have attributed meaning to it.  Some say that McLean was talking about the turbulent 60’s, some that McLean was expressing regret over the death of the civil rights movement, some that McLean was bemoaning the death of danceable rock and roll music.  Some have written that McLean was grieving for what he perceived as the death of religion and other traditional ideas from his childhood.   Others have found what they believe to be references to rock musicians Buddy Holly,Janis Joplin, and the Beatles, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and politicians President Jack Kennedy, and Senator Bobby Kennedy.  And we hear names in the song, including communist and socialist revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin, and Karl Marx, in addition to the Catholic Trinity, the father, son, and holy ghost, and actor James Dean.  What could this song have to do with beloved community?  So, how does “America Pie” speak to us about being in covenant with one another as a beloved community?