Turn off
your mind, relax
And float
down stream
It is not
dying
It is not
dying
Lay down all
thought
Surrender to
the void
It is
shining
It is
shining
That you may
see the meaning of within
It is being
It is being
That love is
all
And love is
everyone
It is
knowing
It is
knowing
Those lyrics were written by John Lennon in 1966, after the
Beatles had become interested in a variety of Eastern and Western philosophies.
Fellow Beatle and meditator George Harrison later said of his friend’s song, “It
describes perfectly what happens in meditation. When the songs says, lay down
all thought, it is pointing out the fact that from birth to death all we ever
do is think: we have one thought, another thought, another thought, but in
meditation you can go beyond that to that shining, loving, pure being within.
Now, coming from 60’s rock stars some might think that just seems weird or
psychedelic, maybe even dangerous or non-Christian. But when we consider the
following quote from Jesus scholar Marcus Borg, we can see that John
Lennon just might be touching on something Jesus would recognize. Borg says of
first century Jewish mystics like Jesus, “Of them it is said in the Jewish
tradition that they would still their hearts before God before they would heal,
the practice of wordless meditation is not simply an Eastern tradition, but is
central to the Jewish-Christian tradition as well”. When early Jews and Christians
used the imagery of the heart, they often did so to speak of internal
transformation—stilling the heart was stilling the mind, they would as the
songs says, “lay down all thought”--so they could know God directly—and that is
surely transformative. This practice goes way back before Jesus. Think of the
Psalmist’s words, “Be still and know that I am God”. In other words quiet your
mind down and know God.
Jewish mystics like Jesus and Paul would still their minds, or
enter a state of consciousness beyond thought through meditation—when I say
thought I mean our ideas and the conditioned response of memory. As I was looking at the scriptures and
commentaries for today—I kept looking at the surface meaning of the text and
thinking, no, these words don’t exist in a vacuum; this all fits into the
larger vision of Jesus and early Christianity. Which is, as Thomas Keating
says, “The transmission of the experience of Ultimate Reality or God that Jesus
had.” Christianity is meant to bring us into the close, direct, immediate
presence of God.
Our Gospel reading for today, the parable of the wheat and
the weeds, a story about the human condition, appears in Matthew, the version
we just heard, and the Gospel of Thomas. I think this is significant, for
Matthew and Thomas are both heavily indebted to Jewish mysticism. In other
words, scholars have identified these texts as being especially concerned with
human beings directly encountering God. Also, we heard the explanation of the
parable—but that is written in very old symbolic language—so for us, the
parable requires an explanation that gets at the human experience those symbols
are referring to.
The beginning of the story tells us
that the kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in
his field—meaning -our existence is rooted in and comes out of God. Spirit-filled
people like Jesus certainly believed this was so. The myth of the fall was
operative for first century Jews and this parable reflects the themes of the
story of the fall. Mythically, Transformation or salvation involves a return to
that state of closeness that existed between God and humanity before Adam
messed it all up. In our epistle reading, Paul describes a return to that state
as being adopted—being an heir of God. I contend the modern Christian must go
beyond the myth or the story—must go beyond the ancient and symbolic
description toward the actual experience those words are pointing toward. And
the experience of being close to God was brought about for people like Jesus
and Paul by stilling their minds through meditation and deep forms of prayer. The
modern Christian must remember that closeness or even union with God was not
only for ancient people.
So in the beginning there was just
someone sowing good seed in his field. And then, while everybody was asleep—or
not paying attention—an “enemy” comes and sows weeds among the wheat. This is
interesting—the Aramaic word Jesus would have used that we translate as enemy
can mean “owner” or the “head of a family”. So we start with God and now, when
nobody is paying attention, this owner
comes in and sows weeds among the wheat—and the tricky thing is, the weeds
looked exactly like the wheat. I ask
you—who sows weeds among your wheat? Is it the devil? Some evil “other” or is
it yourself, the owner or possessor of your thoughts? I don’t know about you
but it’s my thinking that causes me problems--That keeps me from really
experiencing God or the eternal. Why? Because thought is time—psychological
time, and the eternal is beyond time. Thought is measurable and conditioned and
the eternal or God is immeasurable and unconditioned. The tricky little enemy
sowing weeds among God’s wheat is myself or my thinking, really, the problem is
often thought itself. In the story all this happens when there is no one paying
attention—because thinking itself is often why I’m not paying attention to God
or reality—even when I think I’m thinking about God—because I can’t really
think about God—God can be experienced—not thought about—What I think about is
a projection of my own mind. Ideas about
God are not God, although humans have a nasty habit of confusing their
ideas about God with God—and then we use them to divide people, or worse kill
people. We confuse our ideas about truth with Truth; in other words our weeds
look like wheat to us. Did you ever really look at your own thoughts? Not think
about your thoughts but just observe your thinking. My sense of myself and so
many other things depends on conditioned responses. And this can cause me great
problems for I tend to confuse past and present—and allow the past to dominate the present. For instance, I hear
something about a person or a group of people today and that helps form the
image I have of them tomorrow. Why are we so controlled by thought; that manipulative,
clever, cunning thinking that has caused so much division, war, anxiety and fear.
Have you ever noticed how thought is
always chattering, running on and on, not even stopping during sleep sometimes?
Did you ever notice how lost you can get in your thoughts—so that you are
isolated, cut off from the world? All,
and I mean all of the great mystical traditions, including, as I said earlier, Jesus’
own, have emphasized going beyond thought—so that the mind can be still and
know God, or the ultimate reality. My weeds are my own thoughts—and again,
they often look deceptively like God’s wheat so I mistake them for that which
is ultimately important or real. Surely, the real problem is not
thought—because obviously it has its uses—just like the weeds in the story, the actual problem is the supreme importance
we give thought—turning ideas into God—confusing the wheat and the weeds.
Just look at the world today, from Jesus’ homeland, to Ukraine, to our own
local news.
So many of Jesus’ parables challenge our way of thinking—
challenge our ideas—especially when it comes to ideas about God. Think about
the parable that immediately follows the parable of the weeds in Matthew, the
Mustard Seed parable—Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven is like a Mustard
Seed---to his first listeners Mustard was a weed—a nasty weed that they tried
to keep out of their fields—but yet Jesus says the Kingdom is like a mustard
seed. He is saying the kingdom is not what you think it is—God is not what you
think she/he is. Jesus is challenging thinking—challenging thought itself. Parables work that way—just like Zen koans, they
defy the logical mind.
Now, back to the story—so, after the wheat comes up the weeds
came up as well. And some people come and ask the householder if he wants them
to pull up the weeds. He says, no, for if you do you will confuse the wheat and
the weeds and pull out the wheat as well—so let them grow together until the
harvest.
We can’t separate the weeds and the wheat because we can’t
control our own transformation. We can’t use the discerning mind, the thinking
mind, to get rid of the problem—because it
is so often the problem! We have to let go of the desire to control our
transformation. We have to let go and let God. This is so difficult for us because all we know is the conditioned
mind, our ideas, our thoughts. And we want to use that to engineer our
spiritual transformation. The thinking mind may help us design cars, I phones,
pills, and bombs, but we cannot think our way into God. If that were possible,
brilliant scientists and theologians could all be Christs. Brilliant science or
theology can modify the old creation but it cannot bring in the New Creation.
Only the Christ can do that!
The householder says at the harvest time he will tell the
reapers to get rid of the weeds and gather the wheat into his barn. In other
words, at the harvest or when the so-called rule of God is established—when we truly let go and let God--that
part of us that is temporal and conditioned will be separated from that part
of us that some call the True self, or the unconditioned Self that lies deep
within us. In the end, ultimately,—God runs the show. God is the one who
controls or engineers our transformation.
So, turn off your mind, lay down all thought, relax and float
down stream.
Amen.
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