HOLY CONTENTMENT

The Lord send Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.

He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom, and it was like daughter to him.

Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared that for his guest.”

Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity”

Nathan said to David,”You are the man!”
2 Samuel 12:1-7

I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
- Ephesians 4:1-4

To study the way is to study the self
To study the self is to forget the self
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things
Dogen

The story of Nathan confronting David is one of the great stories in scripture. Nathan tells David the touching story about the poor man and the lamb he raises as if it were one of his own children. David is enraged by the selfishness of the rich man. And then Nathan pulls the trigger – pointing out that David's abduction of Bathsheba and killing of her husband Uriah is an exact parallel to his story.

David gets it and repents of what he has done, although nothing can bring Uriah back to life, and Bathsheba continues to be one of his wives, his favorite wife.

The story raises the question,who are we, really? If we could know ourselves as if for the first time, know ourselves from the outside, as it were, would we be surprised? If someone came along and told a story about us, but not identifying us by name or circumstance, how would we react?

Would could we learn? Would we be surprised at the nobility, the goodness we were expressing in our lives? Would we be appalled at what we had done, at who we were?

Above all, what would we learn about ourselves, about who and what we really identified ourselves with – who we really were in our being and in our doing?

Now the story is usually understood and applied as if what we learned would not be good news, and we would need to repent and change our crooked ways. But what I think about being confronted like this is more interesting and valuable.

It is that we would learn more about who and what we were identifying with. How are we creating our identity?

Jack Kornfield, the American Buddhist teacher recounts that in the forest monastery in Burma he entered as a young man, he was asked to inquire into the very nature of identity, asking who we are in the midst of all these roles. As we do, we find the layers of identity opening and dropping away or dissolving gradually through the systematic practice of mindfulness. We discover how our identification with a limited sense of self creates our suffering. Releasing ourselves from these limits can free us from a lifetime of struggle....Our ideas of self are created by identification. The less we cling to ideas of self, the freer and happier we will be.” p62-3

We create our identity, our sense of who we really are, in layers from our earliest childhood unto the present day. All of those layers are precious in a way, because they all represent important experiences in our life, important ways in which we identified with a teacher, or loved one, or role model.

And they all have a place in our psyche. In meditation we learn to place all those layers of our identity in God's hands. Just resting in the presence of Spirit, we are no longer concerned about any of them, neither holding on to them nor pushing them away. Just putting them aside, as it were, so that in the presence, we can find out who we really are. Underneath all of the layers, what if our essential being, our true identity?

When I taught prayer and meditation in the seminary, after spending some days teaching about the practice, on the next to the last day of the class, I would ask the students to participate in a meditation exercise that often had a powerful effect on them. I probably should just do it with you, but it would take more preparation than we have time for on Sunday afternoon, so I will just describe it for you, and you can take it into your meditation in anyway you wish.

I would ask them to write down on ten pieces of paper a sentence beginning with the words, I am. Then they would sort out the papers according to their felt importance.. Then they were to take the papers one at a time, beginning with the least important one and imagine what it would be like to let go of that self identification. When they had let go of all ten of the identifications, and some persons were simply unable to unwilling to do that, then they were to take a fresh piece of paper and write beginning with the words, I am.

Ramana Maharshi, the great Hindu teacher, held that the most important way to liberation was just to ask this question in meditation day by day, for months or years -“Who am I”.

This self inquiry is also the basis for a spiritual psychological school called Psychosynthesis. I ask myself a series of questions in a series that you can create for yourself. I have a body, am I my body? I have feelings, am I my feelings? I have thoughts, am I my thoughts? I have a job, am I my job? And on and on, as far as you wish to go.

It is a powerful approach to meditation and contemplation. When the writer o Ephesians in the Pauline tradition advises us to lead a life worthy of the calling to which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. I think this is what he or she meant. We are not exhorted to put more layers on our psyche, trying to be more humble, and patient and so on, but to inquire or allow Spirit to take us deeper and deeper into our essential identity. Who are we in our essential being?

And that brings us to the wonderful little poem of Dogen, the thirteenth century teacher who brought Chan Buddhism from China to become Zen Buddhism in Japan:
To study the way is to study the self
To study the self is to forget the self
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things

I invite you into this meditation if and as you wish in the silence that now follows.

The Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought.

He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him.

Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared that for his guest.”

Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity”

Nathan said to David,”You are the man!”
2 Samuel 12:1-7

I, therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
- Ephesians 4:1-4

To study the way is to study the self
To study the self is to forget the self
To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things
Dogen