Sermon: The Self-Help Commandment: Do Not Covet

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The Self-Help Commandment: Do Not Covet

Ana Levy-Lyons

March 23, 2014

First Unitarian, Brooklyn

It turns out that evangelical Pastor Mark Driscoll of the 13,000-member Mars Hill Church stole my idea and he is also doing a sermon series on the 10 Commandments. His are a little different from mine, though. We haven’t been able to plagiarize each other very much. But I am going to lift from him a series of questions he asked his congregation when he preached on the commandment lo tachmod – do not covet.

Think about these questions: If you could have anyone’s home – the home of anyone in the world – where would you live? If you could have anyone’s spouse or partner, who would you be with? If you could have anyone’s stuff – anything at all – technology, clothes, a car – what stuff would you take? If you could have the abilities or talents of anyone in the world, whose would you have?

Driscoll says, “If you answered those questions, you’re a coveter. If you didn’t, you’re a liar.” And he’s right. We all covet. Could you feel how even thinking about these questions awakened coveting within you? When we stop to think about what we might covet, the coveting intensifies. This is one of the paradoxes of this commandment – it’s like being told, “Don’t think about a white rabbit.” Thinking about not thinking about something makes you think about it. And the Biblical commandment spells out exactly what you’re supposed to not covet. You’re supposed to not covet your neighbor’s house, wife (presumably husband as well), ox, donkey, servant, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. What better way to make someone covet something than to say, “See that? You can’t have it and you can’t want it.” So… what’s going on with this commandment?

Some of us might protest, “You can’t make a law about how we should feel! We can’t control how we feel, we can only control what we do!” And lo tachmod is kind of an outlier in this sense. It’s the only commandment of the big Ten that deals with an internal, spiritual feeling or state of mind. All the others deal directly with actions and with our ethical behavior “out there” in the world – things you should do or not do. This one deals with what’s going on “in here.” It’s the only commandment that, if you break it, no one will know but you. But I think by including it as a “commandment,” the Biblical author was assuming that we actually do have some agency in our internal life just like we do in our actions. The idea that you can’t help what you feel, that we are just overcome like rag dolls by our emotions and desires, is maybe a 19^th-century Romantic idea. Maybe the ancient Israelites believed that humans have a free will so extensive that it reaches inward even to the depths of our being.

The Ten Commandments were developed or received by a people whose self-understanding, at least, was that they had recently escaped from slavery in Egypt. They had escaped from a place where laws subjugated and demeaned them. Once they were free, they had to try to start a society from scratch and the temptation must have been great to have no laws at all. But they were wise enough to recognize that without any laws or guidelines for living, there would be a “lord of the flies” situation that would not be happy for anyone. So the commandments emerged as a way to structure a just and peaceful society and, more importantly, to teach people how to lead a good life. I won’t say necessarily a “happy” life because that word is so modern and American and smacks of trite individualism. But a good life. A meaningful life. A fulfilling life. The wisdom of all the commandments is that they teach us how to live.

And so it is that at the end of this list of the important things that we should and shouldn’t do in our relationship with God and with others, we are taught to attend to ourselves spiritually. To live the good life, we need to find gratitude for what we have and not be constantly craving something else. We could almost extrapolate and extend this commandment and it would say, “Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s partner, or your neighbor’s ox, donkey, servant, or anything that belongs to your neighbor because coveting like this will make you miserable. Longing for things that you can’t and shouldn’t have will keep you in a perpetual state of restless desire that will render you unable to appreciate the gifts you do have in your own life. It’s all ephemeral anyway.”

This concern about desire and attachment leading to suffering sounds very Buddhist. And in fact, it’s interesting to note that some scholars date the writing of the Ten Commandments as late as the 5^th century BCE and if this is true, then it coincides with the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Might there have been some cross-pollination between these spiritual traditions? In Buddhism, coveting or greed is considered one of the “three poisons” that cause suffering and get in the way of enlightenment. The Sanskrit word for it is “raga.” I want to share with you a reading about this from one of the Buddhist sacred texts.

But first you have to know what “monkey lime” is. Monkey lime was a kind of sticky pitch substance used by monkey hunters to trap monkeys. The monkey would be attracted to the good smell and put a paw in it and that paw would get stuck. The monkey would get further involved, putting another paw down to get the first one out, and get that one stuck as well. Finally all four paws and the monkey’s nose would be stuck in it and that would be bad news for the monkey.

 So here’s the reading from the Buddhist text, the Visuddhimagga:

“Greed has the characteristic of grasping an object like monkey lime. Its function is sticking, like meat put in a hot pan. It is manifested as not giving up… Its proximate cause is seeing enjoyment in things that lead to bondage. Swelling with the current of craving, it should be regarded as taking (beings) with it to states of loss, as a swift-flowing river does to the great ocean.”

So coveting worldly things takes us away from ourselves, like a swift-flowing river takes things to the ocean. We get involved in our craving and lose our center, our peace, our God-self.

Several of the other commandments also lend themselves really easily to a Buddhist interpretation if you want to look at them that way, especially the first one. The first Commandment teaches that we should have no other gods besides YHWH – if you remember, that’s the name of God that is simply the verb “to be.” It’s reality. It’s what is. We should have no gods other than that which is. Buddhism is all about a kind of devotion to what is and to nothing other than what is. It’s really beautiful.

Both traditions teach us to come into the present, into reality, to see things as they are without the overlay of our assumptions, desires, and constructions. Both traditions teach that we shouldn’t grovel before the things that we covet but rather retain a kind of spiritual dignity. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, has written an interpretive translation of the Jewish morning prayers and he brings these ideas together, saying, “Don’t let your cravings delude you. Don’t let your cravings become your gods. Don’t debase yourself before them.”

So we’re still left with the question of how. How can we change our inner experience of life so that we don’t stuck in the monkey lime, coveting our neighbor’s stuff? Buddhism gives us meditation – the intentional discipline of repeatedly reeling in the monkey mind from its excursions and returning simply to what is. Judaism gives us daily prayers and blessings for all that we have. The rabbis teach that we should say 100 blessings a day, thanking God for each meal we eat, each beautiful thing we see, even for the functioning of our bodies when we go to the bathroom. Gratitude. The Sabbath is another practice that allows us, for a set period of time, to enter the beauty of what is, instead of grasping after something else. These are all tools at our disposal to help us lead the good life. They are the exact opposite of Mark Driscoll’s questions – instead of stimulating coveting, these practices stimulate gratitude.

 There’s also just the day-to-day practice of being aware of our coveting. I think if we’re really honest with ourselves, we know that to some extent, we can control it. We can choose to indulge our fantasies about something or someone we might like to have, or choose not to. When the thought comes up, we can get involved in it and feed the fire or we can say to ourselves, “This is monkey lime. I don’t want to get stuck there. That’s not who I want to be or what I want to focus on. Let’s go somewhere else, brain.” And just having that sincere intention can help. It’s not 100% but it helps.

 In Buddhist philosophy, the reason why coveting creates suffering is because it perpetuates the myth of separation. To covet, there have to be two parties involved – the coveter and the coveted. In Buddhism the division between self and other is an illusion. It’s not real. And so in Buddhism we draw together self and other through practice and learn to see the oneness of the world.

 And just holding the intention to keep the “do not covet” Commandment can serve as a buffer zone around the other Commandments or the other ethical goals of your life. This may, in fact, be part of its purpose. If you don’t even covet your neighbor’s iPad, you’re definitely not going to steal it. If you don’t covet your neighbor’s partner, you’re not going to commit adultery. Keeping an intention like this, creates a kind of wholeness in your life. You’re not as fragmented between what you do and what you desire, who you appear to be outside and who you are inside. It’s a way of living with integrity and drawing the parts of yourself together.

 The message is clear from both traditions: we are all one and our beautiful world is suffused with blessings. Get in touch with gratitude for the miracle of it all and that gratitude will fuel an ethical life and a peaceful heart. If you could have anyone’s life, whose life would you have? How about the life of the person who doesn’t want anyone else’s life. The life of a person at peace with themselves who knows that there is nothing to covet and nothing to crave because they are one with the universe.