And again (Jesus) said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” – Luke 13:20

From the Heart Sutra Dedication: Enlightened Nature pervades the whole universe, existing right here now.

I have often heard it said that Buddhism is an atheistic religion. That the Buddhists don’t believe in God. And it is true that Buddhists rarely if ever use the word “God.” But, in my experience, Buddhism has a great deal to contribute to Christians in helping us think about or clarify what we mean when we speak of God, and, in so doing, enabling us to have a more genuine understanding and experience of God.

The problem with words is that when we have a word for something, we think we understand what that something is. Thus, for instance, when we use the word “cat,” we envision a smallish furry animal with four legs, whiskers, and a long tail. Even when we use more abstract words, like “truth” or “love,” for example, we still have an inner definition of them, and a sense that we know what we mean, and we believe that we know what the other person means when he or she uses such a term. The trouble is, the more abstract the word, the less agreement there is on what that word really means. And this problem becomes really crucial when we use the word “God.”

What do we mean when we say “God?” Sometimes we say, “God is a Being.” But what do we mean by that? Is God a being like every other being? Is God an existent, or thing, of the same sort as all other things that exist? A sort of super being or existent? Sometimes we say, “God is Beingness itself.” But what on earth (or in heaven) do we mean by that? Now there are whole schools of philosophy that will define beingness for you, but none of these definitions ever really seems to express what God is.

We often say, “God is a person.” But do we really mean to say that God is a person in the same sense that each of us is? As soon as we say the word “person,” the image our mind conjures up is that of a human being.

Now we know that we don’t mean to say that God is a thing or a being or a person in the human sense. We know that these are all metaphors, approximations. That they do not express what we really mean when we say “God.” If we think about it for any length of time, we soon see that any word we use for God is not quite accurate. It all falls short of who we think God is, or of our experience of God.

The trouble is, we don’t think about this very often. We use words for God, and come to believe that these words express what God is. God becomes a being, a person, a parent in our minds, and it is very hard to shake those images. In other words, the words we use to describe God – any words – limit our experience and idea of God. Our words create our conceptions, and any concept we have limits our experience. If I really believe all grapes are sour, all grapes will taste sour to me. Our ideas determine our reality, and our words create our experience. I know that this does not seem true. We think that first we have the experience and then create the word. But, in fact, the opposite is true. We show our babies pictures of cows and say, “This is a cow. The cow says ‘Moo’ and gives milk.” By the time they actually see a cow, they already have a fixed idea of what a cow is, and they experience that idea, not the cow. A baby raised on a farm may experience a cow before learning the word, and have a real experience of the cow. But once that baby knows the word “cow,” her experience of the animal itself is determined by the word. The whole experience of ‘cowness,’ of the earthy smell, the soft eyes, the shifting of the feet, the sound of chewing – all the hundreds of minute experiences that make up a cow – become lost.

In the beautiful archaic language of the King James Version, the third of the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” We are told not to make any likeness of any thing in heaven or on earth or under the earth. Nor should we bow to any image. Christians have often ignored this commandment. There are crosses or crucifixes in nearly every church, and in many traditions, people bow to them. Beautiful stained glass windows, with depictions of the saints and biblical heroes, adorn the great cathedrals. In the Sistine Chapel, there is that magnificent painting of the creation, portraying God as a wise old man, stretching out his hand to the newly created Adam. It is a beautiful painting. But it both expresses and creates an image of God: God is white, male, human, with white hair and a long beard. We have seen that image hundreds of times, starting when we were children, and internalized it. That image has unwittingly defined and expressed Christian belief for centuries. And it has severely limited the experience of God.

The Jewish people, on the other hand, have taken this commandment very seriously indeed. In synagogues, there are floral or abstract designs, at most. Never any portrayal of a human, and absolutely never any depiction of an image of God. Their experience of God may well be limited by other factors. I don’t know. But it isn’t the artwork that suggests to every child or adult who enters the building that God is a white old man. And the Muslims have taken this one step further. The only adornment of mosques is calligraphy – holy words.

What we forget, though, is that words themselves are “graven images.” When we have a word in our minds, a picture of that concept or thing tends to accompany the word. When we say the word “cow,” that childhood picture of “cow” appears in our brains. When we use the word “God,” all of those ideas and images of God that we have held for a lifetime accompany the word. And what we experience as “God” is often these same ideas and pictures. Our concepts become our experience. If our concept of God is a stern judge, we may experience fear when we hear the word. If it is a loving shepherd, we may experience comfort. But what we are experiencing in either case is our own set of beliefs about God.

Shakyamuni Buddha refused to talk about God at all. Whenever he was asked about God, he maintained “noble silence,” we are told. Partly, this was because the Buddha was a very practical man. He wanted to help us learn how to experience reality for ourselves, and did not engage in philosophical discussion. But I think he also was aware of how abstract a term “God” is. How little agreement there is on the meaning of that word. And how strongly we believe that people know what they mean when we use it.

To this day, Buddhists tend not to use the word “God.” But they do use a lot of other words which I believe are very helpful in opening up our concept of God and our experience of God. Words such as “Enlightened Nature, Buddha Nature, original mind or face, the Unborn, vast emptiness, unborn Buddha mind” or simply, with great reverence and love, “lt.” The great advantage of these words is that they are formless; they don’t conjure up a visual image in our minds. To Christian ears, these words do not sound much like god-talk. But listen to this quote of Shakyamuni Buddha from the Udana:

There is (O monks) a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-formed. If, (O monks), there were no not-born, not-brought-to-being, not-made, not-formed, no escape would be discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, formed. But since there is a not-born, a not-brought-to-being, a not-made, a not-formed, therefore an escape is discerned from what is born, brought-to-being, made, formed.

This all sounds a bit odd to our Western ears, although the language is typical of that of the ancient Buddhist Sutras. In effect, what Shakyamuni is saying here is: We know that there is that which is not created because we have the experience of being able to get free of the created. We know because we can experience, that there is something beyond our limited, created world – something prior to and greater than our own limited realities. In other words, Buddha is talking about that reality, that experience, that Christians call God.

This kind of language is very similar to how some o
f the mystics describe God. They speak of God in terms of what God is not. For example, God is not created, not limited, not embodied, unconditioned, unknowable. In fact, any words that we can use about God – even the most exalted words, such as omniscient, omnipotent, compassionate – fall way short of who God really is. God cannot be defined. Any definition of God is limiting and limits our experience of God.

Jesus talked about God a lot, but he never described or defined God for us. Instead, he used simile and metaphor. He told stories, gave us pictures, hints of how he himself understood God. Images, often homely, were his stock-in-trade. This is similar to how Buddhists speak about ultimate reality. The old Zen masters would often say things like, “‘It’ (with a capital I) is like the plum blossoms in spring,” or “‘It’ is like the oak tree in the garden.” Jesus tended to talk about the kingdom of God. He stretched and strained at the language, trying to give us a way into the experience. He frequently said, “The kingdom of God is like…” It is like a farmer sowing seed, a king, a buried treasure, a fishnet, a mustard seed, and in this passage from Luke, yeast.

Now, Christians hear these parables so often that they often don’t actually hear them any more. It ceases to strike us as odd that Jesus would compare the kingdom of God – which is another way of speaking of God – to yeast. Yeast??!! Why yeast? What does yeast have to do with God? It is such ordinary stuff. Nowadays we buy little packets of Fleischmann’s dry yeast at the grocery store. But in Jesus’ day, every housewife would have had a little container of starter – yeast – on the kitchen counter, handy for when she made the next batch of bread. It would have been as ordinary and necessary a household item as a box of Morton’s salt is in our kitchens.

So what is it about yeast that reminded Jesus of God? For me, the line from the Heart Sutra Dedication gives us a clue. “Enlightened Nature pervades whole universe, existing right here, now.” Yeast is like this, isn’t it? Without yeast, flour and water are library paste. But when just a small bit of yeast is added to flour and water, the yeast grows, spreading itself through the whole mixture, turning it into bread. Giving it that wonderful yeasty aroma, forming bubbles, causing it to rise, turning it into something mouth-watering, something delicious.

That’s it, isn’t it? Jesus is telling us that God pervades the whole universe, existing right here, now, in even the most ordinary things. God is that which turns library paste into bread. That which makes the grass grow and the birds sing. That which gives beauty to the sunset. That which makes the peach sweet and the lime tangy. That which makes the rose petals soft and kittens fuzzy. That which gives a cow its cowness. That which makes our hearts swell with joy and gratitude for the goodness of life. In short, it is God who makes life worth living.

How can we capture this in words? How can we hope to define God? Why would we want to? When we try to describe or define God, we limit our ability to experience, to know God. Our definition becomes God for us. We make a graven image of our words.

In Zen practice, we are carefully reminded that words are deceiving. Words are the finger that points to the moon; they are not the moon itself. But we frequently mistake the words for the experience itself; we mistake the finger for the moon. Zen calls us to direct experience of all that is – of Enlightened Nature, of the Unborn, of God. And of the simplest thing in front of us – of the taste of water, the smell of roses, or the sneezing of the person across from us. We can indeed directly experience God or the Unborn in meditation. In fact, that is why we do all of the hard work of meditating. But when we do have that experience, we realize that we have only touched the edge of the hem of God’s garments. That God is infinitely more than we can experience or imagine. And God is infinitely beyond any expression. Words cannot begin to describe the reality of the experience of God – even the tiny fragment that we may see of God.

We do need to put our experience into words. But we need to do so with great humility, knowing that the best we can do will be a pale shadow of the thing itself. How can you describe the taste of a peach? The feel of a cool breeze on your cheek? The scent of a rose? We try, but our words are pallid compared to the experience. It is the poets who seem to come closest, and they do so often by simile – it is like…

Jesus was a great storyteller, a poet. And he, also, taught through simile and metaphor. The kingdom of God is like… He reminded us that God is an experience. God is to be lived. God is the beginning, the end, and the middle of Jesus’ life and of ours. God gives us life and makes that life worth living. God is in the cool breeze, in the song of the bird at sunset, in the person facing us. God touches us in every event, every thing, every person of our lives. This image of yeast is one of dozens that are recorded in Scripture, and perhaps one of hundreds that Jesus actually spoke in his lifetime. But in this image, it seems to me, Jesus is saying, “Rejoice! God permeates the whole universe. God is everywhere, in the smallest and the greatest. God is that which gives life its joy, its richness, its savor. God is life itself. God is the yeast that causes the flour of our lives to rise! Rejoice!”

At the end of this Dharma talk, Jim Sprouse told the following story, which he had heard from Genpo Roshi:

Maezumi Roshi was giving a retreat for a group of Catholic priests in Germany. During the retreat, one of the priests asked Roshi, “Do you believe in God?” Roshi replied, “Of course I don’t. What a childish thing to think!”

Some months later, Maezumi Roshi gave a retreat at the Naropa Institute to a group of Trungpa Rinpoche’s students. One of the students asked him, “Do you believe in God?” Roshi replied, “Of course I do. Just open your eyes. How can you not believe in God?”