Sermon by Carolyn Harrod on Discrimination

Advent Sunday 27 Nov 2011: Intent: discrimination

We live in a society which is quite proud of its anti-discrimination laws and so it might seem strange that in this first week of Advent we are urged to focus on discrimination as a positive attribute.

As an Australian society we value the rights that our anti-discrimination laws uphold – the right of all to a fair go, to respect, to the opportunity to have a job, to have decent housing, to have safety on our streets. In this social context, discrimination is defined as “the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, gender or sexual preference.” Discrimination in this regard, involves not just recognising differences, but attaching negative perspectives to particular differences. It is the antithesis of that sense of brotherhood to which we aspire through our spiritual journey.

The Oxford dictionary gives as its second definition of discrimination, the recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another; the ability to judge what is of high quality. This view of discrimination does not involve prejudicial action.

It is discrimination in this sense to which our Epistle and Gospel readings refer. We are advised to discriminate between what is of God and what is not of God; between what nurtures us spiritually and what merely feeds our physical and emotional appetites. We are told to put aside our rioting, our drunkenness, our envy and anger and to focus instead on honouring and loving one another, for love is the fulfilling of the spiritual law.

In both readings, we are reminded that if our attention is only focused on the concerns of daily life, on our material life, then we are spiritually asleep and unaware of our inner, spiritual selves, our link with the Divine. We are urged to come awake, to learn to discriminate between the material and the spiritual, to focus on developing the Christ nature within us – as one beautiful translation describes it, Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. And why is this? Because it is our developed spiritual Self that will be judged worthy to escape the wheel of recurrent physical incarnations and to stand with the Enlightened Ones, with the Christ. As our Gospel describes it: “that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things and to stand before the Son of Man.”

On this first Sunday in Advent we reconfirm our commitment to our spiritual journey, to the awakening and development of our spiritual selves. We are discriminating between those things of the material world that are of ephemeral value, for we discard them at death, and those that aid our spiritual growth which is of lasting value and transcends physical death.

Discrimination is viewed by many spiritual teachers as a vital attribute of those who have entered the path of spiritual development. Krishnamurti, in his book, At the Feet of the Master, describes discrimination as indeed the first qualification to which we must give attention, and he advises that we must be alert to it at every moment of every day. We need to learn to discriminate firstly between the impulses that come from our inner, spiritual selves, and those that come from our physical, emotional and mental selves. We need, also, to learn to discriminate between the right and the wrong, the important and the unimportant, the useful and the useless, the true and the false, the selfish and the unselfish. This is not a quick process because it is all too easy for us to deceive ourselves about our motives, or to make excuses for our decisions.

For instance, discriminating between the true and the false is not merely the function of evaluating what other people are saying. It involves our honest attention to our own thoughts, feelings, words and actions. Spiritual teachers advise us that: we need to think for ourselves and make our own judgements about the reasonableness of a statement or situation, rather than relying on tradition or public opinion. In our thoughts and feelings about others, we need to learn to focus on each person’s spiritual nature (their true Self), to see the spark of divinity within, rather than the outer characteristics that might attract or repel us. We must try to be accurate in our speech and never to repeat gossip; to be open and unselfish in our actions, without manipulation or ulterior motives. In our self-examination, we are often advised to place our thoughts, feelings, words and actions alongside those of a great spiritual teacher such as the Christ, and ask ourselves, what would He think, feel, say or do in this situation.

Many Buddhist teachers, teach the practice of mindfulness as a technique to help develop spiritual discrimination. Mindfulness is nonjudgmental observation of ourselves. When it is fully developed, it includes an element of wise discrimination. Accompanying mindfulness is a sense of whether a particular experience we are having is one that we want to put more energy into, or one we want to stand back from and allow to fade away. Implicit in this, is that we recognize when a thought or feeling is valid or not valid, helpful or not helpful, true or untrue, leading to pain or to freedom from pain.
Mindfulness makes wise discriminations because it intelligently senses what makes us unhappy and what brings us peace. It makes kind discriminations because in a state of mindfulness we refrain from responding to our experiences with anger and frustration.

The ultimate aim of mindfulness is to learn to discriminate between what is truly of the mind of the Buddhas or the Divine and what is ordinary and simply arising from the phenomena of the material world. Bhante Gunaratana says that mindfulness enables us to perceive the true nature of phenomena: that every worldly thing is transitory and ultimately unsatisfying. When we understand the impermanent nature of worldly phenomena, we are no longer attracted to them and our attention becomes focused on the Divine.

So as we continue our journey towards Christmas, symbolic of our spiritual awakening, the birth of the Christ within each one of us, may the capacity of discrimination strengthen our steps. May we daily become stronger in our recognition of the Divine within ourselves and in each other.

As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, Do not model your behaviour on the contemporary world, but let the renewing of your minds transform you, so that you may discern for yourselves what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and mature.  (Romans 12:2)