The Turning of the Wheel (2): Buddhism and Quakerism

In my post of 4/24/10, I recalled Albert Schweitzer’s image of Jesus’ failed attempt to stop the turning wheel of history. In this post, I continue with reflections on the phrase “turning of the wheel,” comparing Buddhist uses of the phrase to an interesting use of it in an early Quaker essay in order to highlight an important difference between Quakerism and Buddhism.

Two prominent uses of the turning wheel image in Buddhism are samsara and dharma.

The Wheel of Samsara
The wheel of samsara represents the cycle of life and death (or births and deaths), the seemingly endless round of suffering in which beings are trapped. (See the “Interactive Wheel of Samsara.”) In a way, this image reminds me of Schweitzer ‘s unyielding wheel of history that crushed Jesus. But whereas Jesus attempted to block the wheel’s motion, believing that his divine Father would stop it, the Buddha offered a means for individuals to live as if the wheel were not turning. The Buddha would free human beings not by attempting to stop the wheel of samsara directly, but by setting in motion another wheel, the turning of which would cancel, for those who were ready, the motion of samsara. That other wheel is the dharma (usually translated as “law” or “doctrine”).

The Wheel of Dharma
By preaching the wisdom he had discovered under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha is said to have turned the wheel of the dharma—to have set in motion the transmission of the saving teaching. By turning the wheel of dharma, he would counter the turning of samsara for those who could understand his teaching and put its prescriptions into practice. As the Buddha’s original doctrine developed over the centuries and new forms of Buddhism evolved, the dharma wheel (dharmacakra) would be said to be turned a number of times again, although the validity of later turnings would be disputed by adherents of the original doctrine. But the important point for us here is that for Buddhism the turning of the spiritual wheel, that which is offered as the means of stopping the worldly wheel of suffering, is a presentation of doctrine—one that includes practical methods of realizing the truth of the doctrine, but a presentation of doctrine nonetheless. That contrasts sharply with the Quaker approach, which proposes neither doctrine nor method as the means of salvation.

The Wheel of Love
Anyone acquainted with Buddhism would likely be surprised, as I was, to encounter the image of the salvific turning of the wheel in the writings of the early Quaker Isaac Penington (d. 1679). But Penington’s characteristically Quaker usage of the image illustrates a fundamental difference between Buddhism and Quakerism. For Quakerism, the saving “turning of the wheel” is not teaching or even practice, but something of a different order altogether. Here’s a brief excerpt from Penington’s Some of the Mysteries of God’s Kingdom Glanced At (1663, full passage on pp. 342-343 of Vol. 2 of his Works, emphasis added):

So that if I should yet speak further of … meekness, tenderness, humility, mercy, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, contentedness, [etc.] (all which I had much rather should be read in [Christ’s] book, even in the living book of the eternal Word, than in my writings), I should but speak further of [Christ’s] nature brought up, manifested, and displaying itself in and through the creatures, by his turning the wheel of his life in their hearts.

At first glance, it may seem that Penington, with his references to reading and books, is in fact speaking of a doctrine or teaching that can be written and transmitted. But the book in which he wants us to read virtues is, as he puts it, “the living book of the eternal Word.” That book is read and understood not by being grasped by the eyes and the thinking mind but, as we will see in the full passage below, by being “felt”—for that “book” is the living Christ, the new covenant written not in letters but in spirit, in the heart. (See Jeremiah 31:33-34 and 2 Cor. 3:6.) The virtues listed at the beginning of the excerpt are not qualities to be learned about and subsequently imitated or practiced; they are the presence and action in us of the nature, the very life, of Christ. The Quaker “turning of the wheel” by which we counteract the wheel of suffering in history is the movement, the activity, of the life of Christ within us. And Christ being, as we have noted many times here, the human face of the God who is love, it is in the activity of love—”his turning of the wheel of his life in [our] hearts”—that we find our salvation.

The Buddhist seeks to cancel the effects of samsara by right understanding and practice. Many of us, especially we who are not theists, find that more appealing than the traditional Quaker approach, which, as we see in the full passage from Penington, is a matter of obedience.

Quest. What is obedience?

Ans. It is the subjection of the soul to the law of the Spirit; which subjection floweth from, and is strengthened by, love. To wait to know the mind of God, and perform his will in every thing, through the virtue of the principle of life revealed within, this is the obedience of faith. This is the obedience of the seed, conveyed into the creature by the seed, and it is made partaker of the seed. He is the son who naturally doth the will; he is the faithful witness who testifies concerning the will; yea, and he is the choice servant also.

Mark how every thing in the kingdom, every spiritual thing, refers to Christ, and centres in him. His nature, his virtue, his presence, his power, makes up all. Indeed he is all in all to a believer, only variously manifested and opened in the heart by the Spirit. He is the volume of the whole book, every leaf and line whereof speaks of him, and writes out him in some or other of his sweet and beautiful lineaments. So that if I should yet speak further of other things, as of meekness, tenderness, humility, mercy, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, contentedness, &. (all which I had much rather should be read in his book, even in the living book of the eternal Word, than in my writings), I should but speak further of his nature brought up, manifested, and displaying itself in and through the creatures, by his turning the wheel of his life in their hearts [emphasis added]. But my spirit hasteneth from words, therefore can I not but cut short and pass over these openings in me, that neither my own soul nor others may fix or stay upon words concerning the thing, but may sink in spirit into the feeling of the life itself, and may learn what it is to enjoy it there, and to be comprehended of it, and cease striving to know or comprehend concerning it [emphasis added]. And then I am sure he that hath a taste of this cannot but be willing to sell all the knowledge that can be held in the creaturely vessel, for that knowledge which is living, and is laid up in that treasury, into which the thief and corrupter can by no means steal or break….

But we need not be put off by the theistic imagery of traditional Quakerism, which has always been a very practical religion. The practical Quaker seeks “living” knowledge, which is, in context of the Quaker reading of the Christian tradition, the actual life of love in the heart. In Penington’s theopoetic image, Christ turns the wheel of his love within, and that ongoing experience is “all in all to a believer,” for it is in that turning that Christ is known as the power of love, and it is in our turning inward to that power, and being turned by it, that we are liberated from the wheel of worldly necessity.

Nor need we hesitate for fear that “obedience” or “surrender” might mean subservience to a religious authority or doctrine. On the contrary, it is through surrender to the living love within and among us that we find freedom, the freedom of one who has ceased to resist the light and life in her heart. For the turning of the wheel of love is metanoia, conversion, the turning-around of the mind and heart, the radical change that is our heart’s deepest desire, the new birth into spiritual life. As turning wheels carry us to new places, provide means and power for getting work done, even—in the Ptolemaic system—order the cosmos, so does the turning or activity of the Christ-love in our hearts transform us, empower us, and set us in truthful relation to the universe. And, again, it is love itself, not we, that turns the wheel of salvation, for love is alive in us; we have only to surrender to that love whose beauty and power we already feel, if only faintly, moving within us. The Quaker needs no authority, doctrine, or practice and, in fact, sees them as hindrances; for the Friend, surrender to love is all that is needed, for love is “all in all.”

The Turning of the Wheel (1): Jesus as Poet

In observance of National Poetry Month, I offer the following transcription of vocal ministry from December 29, 1991 (reprinted from my journal). I hope to follow it soon with another post on the topic of “the turning of the wheel.”

Images and quotations have come together for me this morning, bring­ing with them reflections on our relationship with Jesus and the Kingdom of God.

“Finally,” wrote Walt Whitman, “shall come the poet worthy that name; the true Son of God shall come singing his songs.” Whitman’s image has led me to think of Jesus as being a poet—our greatest poet of the spirit, whose creation, the Kingdom of God, remains the highest expression of the power and beauty of what we Friends might call “that of God in every one.”

I know that Jesus did not invent the idea of the Kingdom. What he called the Kingdom of God was a dream shared by the oppressed in his day, a dream that looked to the end of this world of suffering, sin, and death and the birth of a new world of tsedeq—righteousness and justice—and shalom—peace, health, prosperity, even, perhaps, immortality—everything that makes for human well-being and fulfillment. Although Jesus did not create the dream of the Kingdom, and although he seems to have shared a popular expectation of its imminent but future fulfillment, Jesus nonetheless so incarnated the dream in his life and in the possibilities he opened up for those he touched that he moved the dream from the realm of the ideal to the real. Through the power of his poetic genius and the depth of his love, Jesus reached into God’s future and brought a living seed of that future back into the present—a seed that, as he described, grows in darkness and breaks forth into light unexpectedly.

Another image, a striking one, is from Albert Schweitzer’s book The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer said that Jesus threw himself upon the wheel of history in an attempt to bring it to a halt, to bring this world to an end and to usher in the Kingdom of God in its fullness and power; but the wheel continued to turn, and it crushed him. Even now, said Schweitzer, his mangled body hangs on that wheel as it turns, and “this is His victory and His reign.” I’ve meditated on this image often and over many years, and I can only agree that Jesus’ sacrifice was a victory, not because it placated a vindictive God, but because by it he diverted the wheel of history onto a new course, opening up a new world of possibilities within the old.

But the wheel turns yet, and the innocent still are crushed by it. Sometimes in the silence of worship I seem to hear the voices of those who fall under the wheel in our time. They seem to be crying out for the presence of Christ, the Christ we meet in Jesus, the poet who brings the light of tsedeq and shalom into the darkness of their world. And as I reflect on their cries in the light of Whitman’s query, “Who shall soothe these feverish children?”, in the light of the new possibilities opened up by the poetic genius of Jesus, and, in particular this morning, in the light of our Quaker tradition, I must acknowledge in fear and trembling that the longed-for poet is I—is each of us.

For this is the central experience of Quakerism, the basis of our way of life and our witness to the world, that the spirit that was in Jesus is in us and can be the Light and Life and Power by which we live. As Paul said: “With faces unveiled, we reflect as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and are transformed, from glory to glory, into his image…. I live now, no longer I, but Christ lives in me…. We are all members of the one body of Christ; we are all members of one another.”

So although I know that the turning of the wheel of time crushed the poet Jesus long ago, I take courage in the knowledge that his spirit lives on and seeks to be incarnate in us, and I pray, therefore, for our transformation. May the seed that grows in dark­ness and blossoms where least expected grow and blossom and flourish in me—and in all of us. May we, in the unveiling silence of our worship, be joined to the incomprehensible suffering of humanity and of all creation, powerfully typified in the crucified Christ, and in that crucible be transformed into his image, made of one mind with the poetic genius that creates the Kingdom, made fully conscious and cooperating members of his universal body, that we, too, may become poets of the Kingdom, bringing songs of tsedeq and shalom for those who suffer.