A Buddhist Reflection on Open Spirit's Iftar

Iftar has remained one of my favorite events hosted by Open Spirit. It captures and reflects the values held by Open Spirit so beautifully. It manifests the openness of inviting people from various traditions to bring their food and share in the traditions of our Muslim brothers. Through this night of celebration, the communal spirit also is strengthened and lifted up. 

Running around and helping place the food brought by everyone, I felt a sense of deep joy and gratitude as I saw the long table eventually filled up with the various offerings, as if witnessing a collective blossom brought by every individual’s spark of love and care. 

What struck me during the event and has stayed with me till now was the talk by Saddik Kassim. He described the image of a spiritual tree, with its fruits being the text and the roots being the community and ritual. The image of fruit and roots is especially vivid, as it suggests that while the tree could bear multiple fruits, just as a tradition could carry multiple texts, or multiple layers of interpretation of a single text, their growth and fruition fundamentally depend on the roots. The roots reach deep into the ground and spread widely beneath the surface, gaining nutrition from the connections with surroundings that might not be immediately visible. 

Partly shaped by our highly intellectualized culture, especially after becoming accustomed to the scholarly discussions at divinity school, my first instinct when approaching a tradition has always been to read the texts that describe the tradition. However, it often happens that while reading the text, we can often get caught up in the web woven by languages and words, habitually making inferences and inter-textual interpretations, as if trying to make sense of how the fruits are connected to other fruits. Maybe each text can only be fathomed by seeking its roots, not only the genetic formulation and chemical compounds of the fruit, but also the context that the text lives in, which enables its birth and growth. 

I could not help but connect this talk with the writings of an anthropologist, Veena Das. In her Textures of the Ordinary, she wrote that “ethics is a spirit that infuses everyday life, in which we are not aspiring to escape the ordinary but rather seeking to descend into it as a way of becoming moral subjects”. She argued that the learning is not about “learning a set of rules nor of evoking transcendental, objectively agreed upon values but rather of the cultivation of sensibilities within the everyday.” This shift of focus, from the abstract philosophical principles to the everyday life, is a practice of tracing the fruits of the tree to the roots. 

How were we gathering in this communal space? What do we know of each other from the food we brought, or from the food that we chose to eat? What happened in the space when Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists all bowed down and prostrated on the blanket, following the prayers of our Muslim brother? What does it mean that we all chose to gather here to spend the night together and celebrate the act of fasting? How are our individual, or communal, trees of spirit strengthened through this night of gathering? In our gathering, how does the “ordinary” become transcendent? 

As a Buddhist, I find the Iftar familiar in many ways. If the way to perceive teachings is to trace them back to their roots, which points to community and rituals, how could these traditions be different in teaching us the importance of loving our neighbors as ourselves? Whether it’s through the practice of loving-kindness, through the modeling and faith in Jesus Christ, or through sharing food during Ramadan, the trace of love with open hearts and humble minds could be easily felt and recognized. The act of prostration aligns the self between the heaven and the earth, and among a community of people bearing similar but different traditions. The act of fasting connects people through a shared experience of hunger and suffering, and the space created by the absence of material possession opens up room for spiritual renewal and regeneration.  

May the roots of the tree of spirit grow stronger and spread wider. May this gathering remind us of the beauty and sacredness of the ordinary life. May we see through the disagreements that often surface in our conversations and reach instead for the deeper connections that shape our shared humanity.  May we continue to love one another and gather again to share food at the same table.  

--Yining Lu