The first official day of summer is less than a week away; the days keep getting a little longer for a little longer. Summer is prime time in New England. Father’s Day is this weekend and we will tip our hat to fathers everywhere in the first part of Sunday’s service followed by a message by Jodi Scott titled “Divine Energy; What’s My Connection?” Do we sense our own innate spiritual resources or do we look elsewhere? YouTube Channel content for this week
is a service led by Randi Bradbury and Ira Dyer titled “Happy Hunting,” an exploration into maintaining a positive mindset in a negative world. You will find the link for the YouTube Service included below.
We hope you can join us for one of the services.
In Ministry,
Dave
HOULTON COFFEEHOUSE
June 15, Saturday Evening 7-9 PMThe Cup Cafe, 61 Military Street
FEATURE: Janice Santos 8PM
Open-Mic @7PM
Coffeehouse is this weekend featuring guitarist and singer Janice Santos from Presque Isle. Janice was a member of Purple Ruger and Enigmatic North, and years ago, played retreats and masses at The Common, a monastery of the Discalced Carmelite Friars in Peterborough, NH.
Janice just got back from Mexico where she played in restaurants and bars and she plans to keep playing the county this summer. Janice has performed at the coffeehouse several times before, but it’s been a while so let’s welcome her back! Show your support for local musicians and songwriters by coming to the show and being a part of the experience. Open-mic starts at 7PM and Janice comes on stage at 8PM. Our kitchen has homemade chili on the menu (vegan and beef) and our barista staff will be pulling shots on the espresso machine with our full line of coffee drinks. Salted caramel lattes are our drink special along with electric blue raspberry spritzers
at the fizz bar.
Come early for supper and hang out before the show. Cafe doors open at 5:30PM.
See you at the Cup!
Feel the buzz…
Menu
Vegan Chili (and cheese)Classic Chili (and cheese) Electric Blue Raspberry SpritzerSalted Caramel Latte
Events for Pride Month:
This month, Houlton’s gathering will be heading over to Pride Aroostook’s Pride Festival in Presque Isle! Come join us this Saturday, June 15 from 2:30 – 3:30 PM in the gazebo at Riverside Park in Presque Isle to celebrate pride with Pride Aroostook!
Light refreshments will be provided. Please bring a chair to sit in the gazebo if you’re able to. Please note that Pride Aroostook’s Pride Festival will take place in Riverside Park from 3:00 – 7:00 PM (parade at 5:30!).
June 23, Saturday 2PM
Woodstock, New Brunswick
Last summer Stephen Kinney shared a service on the story of Len & Cub; A Queer History.The authors of the book are appearing at The River Arts Center in Woodstock next week.
THIS WEEK’S YOUTUBE SERVICE:
HERE IS THE SERVICE LINK FOR THIS WEEK’S YOUTUBE SERVICE
(Please note it won’t be active until 10AM on Sunday morning)
HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:
Topic: UUHoulton zoom coffee hourTime: Jun 16, 2024 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87201599041?pwd=hon9Fb9YanmSn66Ya6thubiGDFdU9R.1
Meeting ID: 872 0159 9041Passcode: 066387
Calendar of Events @UUHoulton
June 15 Aroostook Pride Events in Presque Isle
June 15 Houlton Coffeehouse: Janice SantosJune
16 Sunday Service: Jodi Scott
June 23 Sunday Service: MaryAlice Mowry (LGBTQ+ pride service)
June 25 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
June 30 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
July 3 Midnight Madness 4PM-9PM (Curry Night Church Front Lawn)
July 7 Sunday Service
July 9 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
July 13 LGBTQ+ Luncheon 12 Noon
July 13 Houlton Coffeehouse Open-Mic Night
July 14 Sunday Service
July 19 Nirvana Tribute Night 7PM (Cup Cafe)’
July 21 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
July 23 Meditation Group 4PM (online)
July 28 Sunday Service: David Hutchinson
Virtual Offering Plate
If you would like to send in your pledge or donation simply drop an envelope in the mail. The address is listed below. You can also send your donation electronically with our new payment system on the church website. Simply go to uuhoulton.org and click “Donate” on the menu and it will explain how the system works. You can set up a regular monthly payment plan or donate in single transactions. Thank you for your generous support!
UU Church of Houlton
61 Military Street (aka U.S. Route 2), Houlton, ME 04730
See the Universe in a Sunflower
In this teaching from the late Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, he explores how looking deeply at a sunflower can help us discover the reality of interbeing.
9 MAY 2023
I live in Plum Village, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, an area known for its sunflowers. But people who come to Plum Village in April do not see any sunflowers. They hear people saying that there are many sunflowers around, but they cannot see them anywhere. However, if you ask the farmers in the region, they will tell you that they can see the sunflowers very well, because they have already sown the sunflower seeds. They have ploughed the earth, sown the seeds, and spread manure. They know that there only needs to be one more condition for the sunflowers to manifest. That final condition is warmth. As the weather begins to warm up, the sunflower seeds will sprout, and, if the weather continues to be warm in June or July, the sunflowers will bloom.
So the farmers can see things that the visitor cannot yet see. We say that there isn’t a sunflower here because we cannot see all the latent causes and conditions lying in wait. We have the tendency to think that as long as we can’t see the sunflowers, they don’t exist, and that once we can see the sunflowers, they suddenly do exist.
We shouldn’t wait until we see big yellow flowers blooming in the fields to say that the sunflowers are there. They are there, just hidden.
The words “do not exist” are not really correct, but the words “do exist” are not correct either. When something has not yet manifested, we tend to think that it’s in the realm of nonbeing, and when it manifests we say that it’s in the realm of being. But the two categories of being and nonbeing do not correspond to reality. That is why we shouldn’t wait until we see big yellow flowers blooming in the fields to say that the sunflowers are there. They are there, just hidden, and whether or not we see them is only a matter of time and latent conditions.
Our body is also a conditioned thing. It is a manifestation, and there are causes and conditions that need to come together for it to manifest. Like the sunflowers, if one of these elements is not yet there, the body will not yet manifest. The Buddha teaches very clearly that when something manifests it does not come from anywhere, and when it no longer manifests it does not go anywhere. It is not born. It does not die. It does not pass from the realm of being into the realm of nonbeing.
The Ultimate and the Relative
We can speak of two levels of truth: relative (or conventional) truth and ultimate (or absolute) truth.
Ideas of birth and death, being and nonbeing, above and below, coming and going, sameness and difference, defilement and purity, increasing and decreasing, can all be called conventional truths. They are concepts that we use in daily life, and they are useful in the historical dimension, at the level of conventional truth. If we do not have a birth certificate proving our date of birth, how can we get a passport or an identity card?
So birth and death are important. Above and below are important. Left and right are important. Politically you have to know whether you are on the right or on the left. If you are following your GPS, you need to know that left is not right and right is not left.
At the level of conventional truth, these pairs of opposites are everywhere. There is “you” and “me,” there is “father” and “son.” Father and son are not each other; they are distinct from each other. People are different from animals. Animals are different from plants. Plants are different from minerals. At the level of conventional truth there is discrimination and separation. Things are outside of each other. One thing is not another.
This is the realm of the ultimate, where everything is in everything else.
But when we observe more closely, we see something different. We see the ultimate truth that things are really inside of each other. We think that father and son are two different people, but there is really no boundary between them. The father is the continuation of the son into the past, and the son is the continuation of the father into the future. This is the realm of the ultimate, where everything is in everything else. Everything interpenetrates, so the notions of inside and outside do not apply.
The same is true for the notions of above and below. If we are standing in front of an elevator, we need to know if we are going up or down. We need the notions of above and below in order to know whether we will stay on the tenth floor or go to the ground floor. The ground floor must be below and the tenth floor must be above.
But if we ask people in Japan sitting on the other side of the planet, they wouldn’t agree. If they could see us in the elevator going “up,” they would say we are going down. So the notions of above and below are only relatively true. In the ultimate truth there is no below, there is no above. The same is true for all other pairs of opposites: coming and going, birth and death, being and nonbeing.
Finding a Middle Way
Birth and death, being and nonbeing, coming and going, same and different—these cannot be applied to the ultimate truth of any phenomenon. In order to touch the true nature of all phenomena, we need to find a middle way between all these pairs of opposites.
When we encounter polarities, or pairs of opposites, we have the tendency to believe that one must be right and the other wrong. For example, we think that either everything exists, everything is real, or that nothing exists, nothing is real. These are the two extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Either we believe that we have an eternal soul which will live on forever, or we believe that we are just a meaningless collection of atoms and that when we die, we will be extinguished for ever and nothing will be left.
If we are wise, the Heart Sutra can help us to find the middle way between these extremes. This middle way between being and nonbeing is a state of coolness, peace, and nonfear that can be experienced in this very life, with this body and with our five skandhas. It is nirvana.
We waste a lot of time trying to prove whether something exists or doesn’t exist.
The traditional Chinese and Sanskrit versions of the sutra do not mention “no being and no nonbeing.” Traditionally, there are just three pairs of negations in the sutra: “no birth and no death,” “no defilement and no purity,” and “no increasing and no decreasing.” But in order to touch the ultimate truth, we need to transcend all pairs of opposites––all duality.
I have added “no being” and “no nonbeing” in this new translation so that people do not fall into the trap of thinking that emptiness means nonbeing or nonexistence. The understanding of “no being and no nonbeing” helps us to understand “no birth and no death.” It helps us avoid falling into the trap of describing things as either existent or non-existent.
Does God Exist?
In Western theology and philosophy we waste a lot of time trying to prove whether something exists or doesn’t exist. We are preoccupied, for example, with the question: Does God exist? For over 2,000 years people have been debating this without ever coming to any satisfactory conclusion. One group says that there is God, and the other group says there is no God. But in Buddhism, for more than two thousand years, we’ve been saying that the ultimate transcends both being and nonbeing. So if God is the ultimate, then God must certainly transcend both being and nonbeing. We cannot say that God exists, nor can we say that God does not exist, because existence and non-existence are only two faces of one reality.
Interbeing means you cannot be by yourself alone; you can only inter-be.
The view of “being” is one extreme view, and the view of “nonbeing” is another extreme view. We need to transcend both these notions. The term interbeing can help. By adding the prefix “inter” to the word “being” we have a term that is no longer the opposite of nonbeing. Interbeing has no opposite, so we can make use of it to avoid falling into the trap of dualistic thinking.
The term “interbeing” still uses the word “being,” but it helps us to get out of the notion of being. So the notion of interbeing, although it is a notion, helps lead you to the ultimate truth.
Interbeing means you cannot be by yourself alone; you can only inter-be. Interbeing can connect the conventional truth and the ultimate truth, so it can lead you gradually to emptiness. Emptiness represents the ultimate truth, the true nature of reality. On this level, there is no beginning and there is no end. There is no birth and there is no death. And the notions of being and nonbeing are removed.
The two notions of being and nonbeing oppose each other, and so we have to struggle. But when we speak of the ultimate truth, we use words like “emptiness,” and emptiness when used like this also has no opposite. At first, we think emptiness is the opposite of fullness, but emptiness is fullness. You are empty of a separate self, but you are full of the cosmos. So “emptiness” is an expression that we could say is equivalent to “God.” God is the ultimate, and emptiness is the ultimate. Emptiness is the absence of notions and concepts. You cannot describe God with notions and concepts. You cannot say that God is or is not. To say that God exists is nonsense, and to say that God doesn’t exist is nonsense, because notions of being and nonbeing cannot be applied to the ultimate.
In the West, “to be or not to be” has been the question for more than two thousand years. But in Buddhism, being or nonbeing is not the question. We practice transcending the notions of being and nonbeing, and erase the boundary between being and nonbeing in order to see the true nature of reality.
When the Buddha was asked what is the “right view” to have of reality, he described it as the view that transcends being and nonbeing. This is what in Buddhism we call “right view.” So now if somebody asks you whether or not you exist, you can answer, “I am not caught in the notions of existence or non-existence, I am not caught in being or nonbeing, I can only inter-be with everything!”
Adapted from The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries, by Thich Nhat Hanh. © 2017 by Unified Buddhist Church. To be published in May by Palm Leaves Press, a division of Parallax Press.Prayer List
For those working for social justice and societal changePray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nationThe war in Ukraine continuesPrayers for those in Palestine and Israel as the war continues into its seventh monthPrayers for the worsening humanitarian crisis in GazaPrayers for the city of Houston after the recent storm Prayers for Iowa after recent tornados Prayers for those affected by the ongoing heat waves (India, Pakistan, American Southwest)
The Four Limitless Ones Prayer
May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
May we be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
May we not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.
May we dwell in the great equanimity free from anger, aggression and delusion.
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