“Master, you are wonderful! You have renounced riches and comforts to seek God and teach us wisdom!”“You are reversing the case!” The saint’s face held a mild rebuke. “I have left a few paltry rupees, a few petty pleasures, for a cosmic empire of endless bliss. How then have I denied myself anything? I know the joy of sharing the treasure. Is that a sacrifice? The shortsighted worldly folk are verily the real renunciants! They relinquish an unparalleled divine possession for a poor handful of earthly toys! … The world is full of uneasy believers in an outward security.”I chuckled over this paradoxical view of renunciation—one that puts the cap of Croesus on any saintly beggar, whilst transforming all proud millionaires into unconscious martyrs.
Paramahansa
Yogananda tells this story about Bhaduri Mahasaya in his Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) that I am presently reading. In a
previous post I referred to Yogananda as founder of the Self Realization
Fellowship whose grounds in southern California I frequented in college. While
the supernatural experiences of Eastern tradition reported in this book are hard
for this Westerner to believe, the philosophy is persuasive and powerful.
While
I have not attained the saint’s dispassion toward rupees and “earthly toys,”
many if not most of my colleagues in ministry will identify with the saint’s
preference for the spiritual life. To whatever degree we have “gone without,”
given the culture’s greater monetary valuing of other professions, we have
realized our greater dependency on spiritual treasure—the satisfaction of
pastoral care, of preaching and writing, of attending to matters of the heart
and soul rather than simply to matter and materialism.
A
church member once told me that she was well into adulthood before she
understood that ministers were paid! And I’ve met people who think spiritual
leaders should do what they do for the sheer joy of it, unlike other vocations.
“Worldly
people do not like the candor that shatters their delusions,” Bhaduri Mahasaya
explained to Yogananda. The gurus Yogananda writes about receive rupees in
their slippers from followers. And though I am not a guru, I am grateful that a
few of my readers have put rupees in my slippers!
When
I was ordained by MCC in 2005 after a professional lifetime denied ordination
by the Presbyterian Church simply because I’m gay, I chose for the Gospel lesson
Jesus’ words on God’s Providence from the Sermon on the Mount, which reads in
part, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,
or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the
body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor
reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly [Creator] feeds them.” It is
the scripture that gets me through the tough times when I do not rise to the
level of a saint’s disposition!
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My dad Ted Schuyler, as an artist, had a very similar philosophy. He always felt profoundly grateful to be "allowed" to do the work he loved, which fulfilled his spirit, despite the fact that his wallet was very thin. Of course, as a child I was aware that our family's survival depended not only on God's Providence in which Ted trusted, but also on my mother Lee's superb management skills...and her willingness to refrain from "stressing out" when resources were in short supply.
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