by Rev. Terry Davis
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
on February 15, 2015
I attended a Unitarian Universalist ministers’ conference earlier this month in Pacific Grove, California. Close to 500 ministers were there. We spent the week learning some new ways we could continue our ministry of creating vibrant worship services and healthy faith communities. The setting for the conference was a state-run lodge and park, which is situated on 35 acres right next to the Pacific Ocean . . . a lovely place.
On the morning of my departure, I had about 40 minutes before the airport shuttle was to arrive. While I had had a few opportunities to enjoy the natural beauty of our surroundings, I had not yet taken a walk on the beach. So, I decided that now was my chance. Dressed in business travel clothes, I walked down to the water and took a dirt path that ran parallel to the ocean instead of attempting to walk on the sand in my loafers and wool slacks.
It was a sunny – and very windy – day. The ocean waves rose high like walls of blue and green glass. They curled and crashed against the rocks that jutted out of the sea. The seagulls seemed to be suspended in mid-air as they flew against the strong gusts. Small flowers and other vegetation quivered in the wind, their roots hanging onto to something beneath the white sand. As I walked directly into the wind, it plastered my clothes against my body. The damp air smelled like salt and seaweed.
It was invigorating to be there.
As I made my way along the path, I saw a woman and her dog ahead of me, walking in my direction. The woman’s long hair was brown and streaked with gray. It was whipping in wind in all directions. It looked like it may have left her scalp entirely if it weren’t for the tight red knit cap she wore on top of it.
The hair of her dog, which was a russet-colored Golden Retriever, was also whipping about. Yet, like me, the dog seemed energized by the wind, water, salt and sand. It was leaping ahead of its owner, its tail wagging furiously, nose sniffing everything.
As they got closer, the woman paused and held her dog near her to make space for me to pass them. Instead, I held out my hand so that the dog could sniff it (which she did).
“Oh, I take it you’re a dog lover?” the woman said, raising her voice over the whistle of the wind. “I can’t always be too sure.”
As I petted her dog and we started talking, I noticed a large shaved spot that covered her dog’s entire left hindquarter.
“Cancer?” I asked.
“No,” she replied. Instead she described the auto-immune disease her dog was being treated for. “She’s bouncing back pretty well,” the woman said. “Maggie loves her walks.”
“That’s wonderful,” I told her. “My dog Leo had a similar shaved spot, but it was because were treating him for what turned out to be bone cancer. He didn’t make it and died this past December.” My voice cracked on the last sentence.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said in a gentle voice. “It’s hard to lose them. They’re family.”
I could feel tears springing to my eyes as she said this, and I felt a moment’s embarrassment. I wasn’t going to cry right in front of a perfect stranger standing next to the Pacific Ocean, was I? But it was too late. They were already spilling down my cheeks.
“Yes, Leo was part of our family. It has been hard,” I said. Giving her dog one last pat, I added, “I hope Maggie keeps doing well and has a happy life.”
We said our good-byes, and I turned and watched them continue their walk along the path, with Maggie jumping ahead as before.
As I reflect several weeks later on that encounter on the beach, I can’t help but think that Maggie was happy dog – and a loved dog. The woman who cared for her seemed content in that moment, too. It seemed that love and happiness was intertwined for them, and I wonder if the same isn’t true for all of us.
American author and philosopher Robert Heinlein wrote, “Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” This quote seems to express the notion that love depends upon the mutuality of happiness. In other words, when your happiness is my happiness, I’m experiencing the very nature of love.
On the other hand, in our reading this morning, it appears that the Dalai Lama sees happiness not as a component of love but, rather, as the goal of life. “The purpose of our life is to seek happiness,” he said, which quite honestly is not at all what I thought life was supposed to be about. “Love one another” has been my creed, and I expected my personal happiness to flow from that.
Have I been approaching this love and happiness business backwards all this time?
On this day after Valentine’s Day, I think it’s appropriate to put the topic of love and happiness under the microscope for a few minutes. This morning, I’d like to take a closer look at the Dalai Lama’s belief that the pursuit of happiness is not selfish, but critical to one’s well-being and to a healthy world. And, I’d also like to examine Robert Heinlein’s belief that when we recognize that another’s happiness is critical to our own, this creates the condition we know as love.
Do the philosophies of these two teachers intersect? And, if so, how might I take them forward for greater joy in my life? How might they change my relationships to others? How might they give my life a clearer sense of direction?
First, in thinking about Heinlein’s philosophy, I can easily point to my relationship with my dog Leo as an example of experiencing another’s happiness as essential to my own and understanding this priority as love.
Whenever Gail and I took Leo for a walk around our neighborhood, I would find myself smiling at the way he pranced down the sidewalk. He held his head up high.
With every step, his ears bobbed up and down. Everything about him seemed to be bursting with joy. Leo always felt happy on his walks. His happiness was my happiness. And feeling happy was the way I knew that I loved him.
I think one of the hardest things for Gail and me in the month before Leo’s death was that we recognized that his happiness was diminishing. He was suffering from a number of health issues, which made it increasingly difficult for him to do the things that brought him joy.
He could no long jump on the couch and sit next to us. He gradually lost interest in playing. And, the distance he could walk became shorter and shorter, until he couldn’t go on his beloved walks around the neighborhood block at all.
Leo’s unhappiness became our unhappiness. And feeling unhappy was another way that I knew that I loved him.
In fact, I’ve gathered from my life with Leo that experiencing love fully depends on both the presence and the absence of another’s happiness. In other words, while someone’s happiness may ultimately bring love into our lives, it may take their sadness for the depth of our love for them to be fully known.
If I trust what Robert Heinlein says is true about the relationship between love and another’s happiness, then what I am to think about what the Dalai Lama said – that the purpose of life is to pursue happiness? If he truly is referring to the pursuit of my own happiness, then how can I accept that this is not a selfish way to live?
To retrain myself to see the pursuit of my own happiness as good for me and for others is to accept a concept the Dalai Lama identifies later in his book as the fundamental gentleness of each human being. He doesn’t deny the existence of anger and aggression, but believes that they’re emotions that “arise when we are frustrated in our efforts to achieve love and affection.” His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living [ref](Riverhead Books, New York, NY: 1998), 55.[/ref]
Fundamental gentleness, on the other hand, he says will guide all of our actions – including our pursuit of happiness – in a way that produces the greatest good. In other words, if I’m pursuing my own happiness from a place of compassion and gentleness, there is no way I can do this in a selfish manner.
While Robert Heinlein says that another’s happiness is essential to our own, the Dalai Lama takes things a step further by suggesting that putting another’s happiness first is a natural way for us to live. Putting another’s happiness first doesn’t compete with the pursuit of happiness . . . it is the pursuit of happiness.
The Dalai Lama’s teaching seems to suggest that it’s only when we act with love and compassion that we increase the amount of happiness in our lives.
It seems that these teachings from the East and the West are saying that the happiness of others is essential to love and love for others is essential to happiness.
So, which approach should we choose?
I must confess that the Dalai Lama’s belief that the purpose of our life is to seek happiness has gotten my attention. This way of thinking seems to reveal the Dalai Lama’s faith in the triumph of our fundamental gentleness . . . just, perhaps, as Unitarian Universalism’s First Principle reveals our faith in the inherent value of all people.
Yet, I pause with this approach when I think about those who are oppressed in our world. I wonder whether the pursuit of happiness is truly realistic in these circumstances.
What does the pursuit of happiness look like for those who are lonely, sick, or imprisoned? What does mean for those who experience the desperation of hunger and poverty? How does it work for those who are the victims of hatred and violence?
Author, Holocaust survivor, and peace activist Elie Wiesel believed the pursuit of meaning, rather than the pursuit of happiness, was more essential to one’s sense of well-being – although he also believed that it’s possible to experience happiness by discovering meaning. He wrote:
“If we seek only happiness, then we will be disappointed from time to time. If we seek meaning, then life and all its ambiguities are reflected in a variety of experiences that can also be sources of happiness.”[ref]Rabbi David Lyons, The God of Me: Imaging God throughout Your Lifetime. Jewish Lights, 2011.[/ref]
Wiesel understandably struggled with making meaning of his experience at Auschwitz. He lost his faith in God and faith in human goodness as a teenager in the Nazi concentration camp. And yet after his liberation, Wiesel was able to channel his suffering into a life dedicated to combatting indifference, intolerance and injustice.
Decades later, it seems that Wiesel’s work on behalf of those who suffer from oppression has not only brought his life meaning, but has brought him a measure of happiness. His horrific personal experience reminds us that we can’t afford to remaining silent to the social injustices that affect people all around us. And, his activism is a reminder that we have a responsibility to make it possible for others to pursue happiness.
As we go from here, let’s not be afraid to put the pursuit of happiness at the center of our spiritual journey. If love is the condition in which the happiness of another is essential to our own, then let’s allow our pursuit to be guided by the gentleness and compassion that reside at the core of our being.
And, if we’re going through a time of sadness or struggle and happiness seems hopelessly out of reach, may we hold on to those people, experiences and beliefs that give us strength.
May those of us who are steady stand by the sides of those who are suffering, letting them know that they’re not alone in their time of need.
May we know our own true happiness will only fully return when theirs does, too.
May it be so for you and for me. Amen.