The Beauty of Giving

This talk was given at the London Buddhist Centre in June 1995

This is my fourth talk on the subject of Dana or Generosity in the course of a year. I am quite happy to speak on the subject of Generosity again and again. There are two main reasons why I am happy to speak on this subject. The second reason is because I believe words have an effect and that if I extol the virtues of Generosity often enough and with enough conviction it will encourage myself and others to take the practice of Generosity more seriously, to be more generous, which is the basis of the spiritual life, the starting point for spiritual evolution as opposed to psychological integration. William Wordsworth said: “Words are too awful an instrument for good and evil to be trifled with: They hold above all other external powers a dominion over thoughts.” (Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth, A Life, OUP 1989) I am happy to talk about generosity again and again because I want all of us to be more generous and I hope that talking about it helps to bring that about.

But the first reason, the main reason why I like to talk about generosity, why both the concept and practice of generosity appeals to me, has to do with the Buddha Ratnasambhava. As many of you will know, when someone is ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order they are given or take up a new meditation practice called a Sadhana which involves the visualisation of an archetypal Buddha or Bodhisattva. In my own case the practice I took up involves the visualisation of the Buddha Ratnasambhava.

Ratnasambhava is an archetypal Buddha, one of the Mandala of five Buddhas. An archetypal image expresses more than words or concepts can ever express. That is the great value of an image. It is a higher level of communication, a more subtle and sophisticated level of communication, than mere words and concepts. An archetypal image engages our whole being; body, speech and mind. An archetypal Buddha communicates Enlightenment, communicates the Enlightened mind. Every archetypal Buddha or Bodhisattva communicates Enlightenment in its entirety. However, usually a particular aspect of the Enlightened mind is highlighted or emphasised. It is easier for us, in our limited state of consciousness to relate to an aspect of Enlightenment, to a particular quality of the Enlightened mind. We are limited by our personality and temperament, by our likes and dislikes. Some qualities in us are more emphasised, more clear to us and these qualities respond to their own perfection in the form of an archetypal Buddha or Bodhisattva.

The aspect or quality of the Enlightened Mind which Ratnasambhava communicates is the quality of Generosity. Ratnasambhava is sometimes called the Buddha of Giving. He is associated with riches, with abundance, jewels, exuberance, expansiveness, with the Wish Fulfilling Gem. His mudra is the Varada Mudra, the gesture of supreme generosity.

When we engage with an archetype our imagination and intuition is activated. Deeper levels of our being become involved. If we engage with Ratnasambhava we will be influenced on a deeper level of our being to act generously. Our intuition and imagination will provide the foundations for a more thorough and spontaneous life of giving. Generosity will become more natural to us. As we move towards Ratnasambhava the beauty of generosity will be revealed more and more to us and the urge to give will become a strong influence in our lives. If we are to practise generosity we need to engage with it. We need to have a vision of the heights to which generosity can carry us and engage with that vision from the depths of our being. I hope that by introducing you to Ratnasambhava today, I will be able to help you make that stronger, more intuitive and imaginative, connection with the beauty of giving.

In the rest of my talk I am going to describe Ratnasambhava and try to give you a taste, a glimpse, of what Ratnasambhava represents. Ratnasambhava is golden yellow in colour. He is seated in the full lotus posture. His right hand is extended in the gesture of Supreme Generosity, the Varada Mudra. His left hand rests in his lap holding the Wish Fulfilling Gem. His body is a body of light, golden yellow light. His face expresses compassion, he has blue/black hair and around his head is an aura of green light. Around his body is an aura of blue light. He wears richly embroidered robes. He is seated on a moon disc, in the centre of a yellow lotus. His lotus throne is supported on the backs of four beautiful yellow horses. In the Sadhana practice this whole image is visualised in the midst of a vast clear blue sky.

The lotus is a symbol of the Transcendental, a symbol of Insight, of consciousness that has broken free from the gravitational pull of the mundane and is experiencing a pure vision of things as they really are. So what is above the lotus pertains to the transcendental and what is below the lotus pertains to the mundane. What is below the lotus indicates the mundane qualities that have to be developed and perfected as a basis for the experience of the higher transcendental qualities represented by the archetypal figure of the Buddha or Bodhisattva. In the case of the Ratnasambhava the Buddha of Generosity, the lotus throne is supported by horses.

The horses represent the highest qualities of the mundane world which need to be perfected as a basis for transcendental generosity. Spontaneous, free flowing, natural generosity that makes no distinction between giver and receiver. So what does this mean and what do the horses represent? What do the horses suggest to us?

Just try to imagine these horses. These four magnificent, golden yellow horses, galloping through the clear blue sky. Here is a poem about horses by the South American poet Pablo Neruda, to help our imagining;

I saw horses from the window

I was in Berlin, in winter. The light

was without light, the sky without sky.

The air, white like soaked bread.

And from my window I saw a desolate arena

bitten by the teeth of winter.

Suddenly, conducted by one man

ten horses stepped out of the fog.

Gently wavering, they emerged like flames,

yet for my eyes, they filled the whole world,

empty until this hour. Perfect, burning,

they were like ten gods on large, chaste hooves

with manes like the dream of salt.

Their rumps were worlds and oranges.

Their colour was honey, amber, blazing.

Their necks were towers

cut from the stone of pride,

and energy, like a prisoner,

rose up in their furious eyes.

And there in silence, in the middle

of the day, in a dirty and dishevelled winter,

the intense horses were the blood,

the rhythm, the inciting treasure of life.

I looked and looked and so returned to life: not knowing

there was the fountain, the dance of gold, the sky,

the fire that lives in Beauty.

I shall forget the winter of that dark Berlin.

I shall not forget the light of those horses. (Pablo Neruda, Estravagario 1958)

Some of these lines convey wonderfully the quality of the horses; “energy like a prisoner, rose up in their furious eyes”, and, “the intense horses were the blood, the rhythm, the inciting treasure of life.” Or, “Gently wavering, they emerged like flames”, and again, “Perfect, burning, they were like ten gods on large, chaste hooves.”, “Their colour was honey, amber, blazing”, “I shall not forget the light of those horses.” Pablo Neruda uses the imagery of fire and flames and light and energy to convey something of what the horses meant to him, that intense energy, that burning energy, they symbolised life itself to him, “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower” to quote another poet.(Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems, Everyman 1978, p.8) He says, “I looked and so returned to life”.

The beautiful powerful horses communicated “the inciting treasure of life” to him. And the horses of Ratnasambhava also communicate the “inciting treasure of life”, that intense energy burning with a passion for Beauty, Ratnasambhava’s horses are energy raised to its highest level, sublime energy, channelled, harnessed, ready to burst out into the joy of Transcendental Insight and pour forth in a spontaneous flow of generosity.

To practise generosity we need energy. We need to have a passion for the beautiful vision of the spiritual life in order to rise above the mud swamp of our fears and anxieties. Our hearts, our intuition, our imagination must leap with joy at the vision of a world of unceasing generosity. We must fall in love, fall in love with the ideal of generosity. Then we will have the energy, then we will have the interest, the motivation, to embrace with open hearts the open-handed practice of generosity. The beautiful, powerful, wild horses of our untamed energy can become the sublime passion for Beauty that draws us towards the ideal of our intuition and imagination.

When we bring our attention to our ideal, when we discipline ourselves to focus on the highest in our lives, when we take the risk of abandoning the known for the unknown, when we take the risk of abandoning the security of sex and possessions for the insecurity of Metta and generosity, then we will begin to experience that intense energy surging through us in fierce pursuit of the Highest, of the most Sublime. That energy which enables us to be generous without feeling impoverished, that energy which feels like wealth itself, the wealth of life exploding into abundance and exuberance.

The horses of Ratnasambhava are energy intensified, sublimated and refined. They are the energy of meditation and the energy of artistic creativity. Meditation and intense artistic activity are two different avenues leading to the beautiful city of the spiritual life. Generosity is the gateway to the city of the spiritual life and energy is the key to that gateway, refined, intense energy, the energy of the horses of Ratnasambhava.

Resting on the backs of the beautiful golden yellow horses is a yellow lotus, an enormous, sublime, delicate lotus. The lotus is one of the most universal and profound symbols in Buddhism. Beginning in the dark mud at the bottom of the lake the lotus grows and rises slowly gradually towards the light, eventually it breaks free of its watery element and opens out in its full glory, its breathtaking beauty, it opens out to the light of the sun, it unfolds to its fullest capacity. We too begin in the mud of our mundane experience, the, “foul rag and bone shop of the heart”(WB Yeats, Collected Poems, Macmillan 1978, p.392) and in response to the call of the transcendental, in response to the call of the meaningful, the ideal, we rise towards the light of wisdom, towards the warm rays of compassion. We open out to reveal our full potential, becoming bigger and more beautiful as we practise the Dharma. We learn to know ourselves and gain strength and courage enough to raise ourselves with all our tenderness and softness out of the waters of the mundane into the bright light of the spiritual.

To be a lotus, delicate, tender and open-hearted, standing alone above the safe waters, is a vision that is both inspiring and frightening. As we practise the spiritual life we will grow upwards and outwards like the lotus and our unique beauty will reveal itself and have an inspiring influence on all who see it. The lotus of spiritual Insight delicate and tender as it may seem, rests on the firm foundation of the intense and refined energy represented by the horses of Ratnasambhava. The lotus is also connected to its roots in the dark depths and is nourished from below, the energy being constantly transformed into the pure elixir of higher states of consciousness.

In the centre of the lotus is a white moon mat. This is the radiant pure heart of the fully opened lotus, the radiant purity of the mind expanded with Insight into Reality. And seated on this moon mat, resting on this radiant purity, is the archetypal Buddha Ratnasambhava, the “Jewel Born One” or the “Jewel Producing One”, the Buddha of Generosity with his body of golden yellow light. The yellow of Ratnasambhava is intensely alive and vibrant, and it is also a ripe rich yellow. It is a colour of abundance, of wealth and an expansive alive colour that moves towards you and embraces you in its warmth and penetrates to the core of your being, like the warm yellow rays of the noon day sun warming you to the heart and awakening the seeds of joy and exuberance in the depths of your being. These seeds of joy and exuberance grow and blossom and ripen and bear fruit in acts of love and kindness, in warm laughter and compassionate smiles and in a spontaneous overflowing generosity of spirit. The golden yellow of Ratnasambhava awakens the vibrant life in us, that is the truly human life, the life that exults in warm, loving connection with all beings that live, all beings that share this rich, vibrant life.

Ratnasambhava’s left hand resting in his lap holds the Wish Fulfilling Gem. The beautiful scintillating, light-shattering jewel, blindingly beautiful, emanating radiant streams of light and colour. The jewel is an inexhaustible symbol for the inexhaustible treasure of spiritual riches waiting to be released from the coffers of our fear and ignorance. The Jewel of Ratnasambhava is a Wish Fulfilling Jewel. When you reverence this jewel all your deepest wishes are granted. The Wish Fulfilling Jewel is the Threefold Jewel of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. When you reverence the Threefold Jewel of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha all your dearest wishes are granted. The Threefold Jewel of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is reverenced by making an effort to change, making an effort to grow, making an effort to overcome limiting fears and limiting ideas and expanding into the freedom of wisdom, compassion and commitment.

“We reverence the Buddha and aspire to follow him. What the Buddha overcame we too can overcome. What the Buddha attained we too can attain.” When we recite these lines of the Threefold Puja we are expressing confidence in ourselves. We are seeing the connection, the inevitable connection, between the Jewel-like nature of the Buddha and our own precious jewel-like nature. Here there is no doubt, here there is no hesitation, no self-pity, only confidence, strength, nobility, dignity. “What the Buddha overcame, we too can overcome.”

And then, “We reverence the Dharma and aspire to follow it, The Truth in all its aspects, the Path in all its stages. We aspire to study, practise, realise.” After our confidence in our ability to grow comes our determination to act. Our determination to unlock the jewelled treasures of our hearts. Our determination to realise the essence of that ‘Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus’ which is the Perfection of Wisdom and Compassion. Our determination, to wholeheartedly and single-mindedly realise the magnificent jewel of Transcendental Insight through study and practice. So, “We reverence the Dharma and aspire to follow it, with body, speech and mind until the end.”

Then, “We reverence the Sangha and aspire to follow it, the fellowship of those who tread the Way. As, one by one, we make our own commitment, an ever-widening circle, the Sangha grows.” “One by one, we make our own commitment”, this then is another facet of the Threefold Jewel, after the brilliance of confidence and determination we have commitment. The word commitment comes from a root meaning “to join together”. So, we could use this root meaning to remind us that making a commitment includes the confidence in our ability to change and the determination to make an effort. But more than that, it is that confidence and determination joined together in common cause with others who have similar confidence and determination. Commitment includes both direction and context. It is joining together with others in common cause and with confidence and determination. The incandescent light beams of confidence and determination mingle and blend with the rays of commitment to produce the blazing fire of spiritual passion that burns up all impurities and illuminates the way to Wisdom and Compassion.

The Wish Fulfilling Gem in the left hand of Ratnasambhava emits the blazing light of confidence, determination and commitment. The eternal universal principle of Karma ensures that all our dearest deepest wishes are granted when we strive with diligence to maintain confidence in the Buddha and confidence in ourselves. The Law of Karma ensures that our wishes are granted when we practise with determination to overcome our fears, anxieties and our limiting pride and when we join together in commitment to the most valuable precious Ideals enshrined in the Threefold Gem of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The universal Law of Karma is our guarantee that our efforts will make a difference, and the more we realise the true nature of life, the more we attune our lives to the changing process of life, to the changing process that is life, the more we will experience the freedom of higher states of consciousness.

The Wish Fulfilling Jewel also represents the attitude of wealth and richness with which we can approach life. All too often we have a poverty mentality, we see ourselves as emotionally impoverished or on the verge of emotional bankruptcy and we feel that we have to hoard our precious reserves of love and generosity for ourselves or we will collapse in a heap, and this attitude of emotional miserliness can lead to actual miserliness as we confuse inner wealth and emotional richness with money and possessions. We project our inner wealth and richness onto objects and other people and then we feel we must possess them and hold onto them for our own happiness and well being. The Wish Fulfilling Jewel of Ratnasambhava suggests that we should turn this attitude upside down. Our real happiness and well-being lies in an attitude of abundance, rather than an attitude of impoverishment. An attitude of abundance manifesting in an open-hearted and open-handed sharing of ourselves and our possessions with others.

The Wish Fulfilling Jewel is an image of self-replenishing abundance, constantly pouring out. The pouring out and the replenishment are the same thing. Generosity and the happiness of giving are the same thing. Loving and the joy of loving are the same thing. If your love and your generosity is an overflowing from the abundance of your friendliness and goodwill it will replenish your heart’s happiness. If your love and generosity is a miser’s attempt to bargain with the Law of Karma, you will feel the pain of loss and loneliness.

The Wish Fulfilling Jewel of Ratnasambhava is a symbol suggesting that the only real wealth is inner wealth. The way to nourish inner wealth is to develop confidence, determination and commitment in our Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels. The way to develop confidence, determination and commitment is to give, to give ourselves, to give our possessions, to share our lives with others to the best of our ability, to be open-hearted and open-handed in our interactions, especially within the Sangha.

The right hand of Ratnasambhava is extended in the mudra or gesture of supreme generosity, the Varada Mudra. The right hand does know what the left hand is doing. The lavish richness of the Wish Fulfilling Jewel in the left hand is inextricably linked to the open-handed, outward-looking gesture of the right hand. The spontaneous ceaseless downpouring of compassionate activity that is supreme generosity is the source of the fountain of riches and abundance represented by the Wish Fulfilling Gem. That same spontaneous ceaseless downpouring of compassionate activity is also the activity of the Wish Fulfilling Gem.

The inner abundance that allows us to be unstintingly generous is nourished by our actions and thoughts and words of generosity and it gives rise to further generosity. It is like a circle of generosity feeding generosity or more than a circle, it is a spiral. A spiral in which a little generosity gives rise to more generosity and greater generosity and a greater and greater ability to be generous. The more we give the more we can give. The first drops of generosity become a shower of generosity and eventually we become a veritable monsoon, a joyous downpouring of generosity, nourishing the seeds of spiritual birth in ourselves and others. In this way the spiral of generosity grows and blossoms into a Pure Land, the glorious pure land of Ratnasambhava, where all is abundance and richness and beauty and nobody possesses anything because there is no concept of possession, there is only sharing.

This is the kind of Pure Land that the archetypal image of Ratnasambhava suggests to us. This is the kind of Pure Land that the human realm can become. Ratnasambhava is especially associated with the human realm. It is said that the great failing of the human realm is pride. Pride is the poison of the human realm. Our pride is what holds us back, our pride limits us. Pride could be extended to include all negative comparisons.

We could say that the great failing of the human realm is making negative comparisons. By comparing ourselves with others we limit ourselves and we inhibit the growth of Sangha. We compare ourselves in three main ways. We think of ourselves as superior to others or inferior to others or equal to others. All of these comparisons are unhelpful to us in our striving to live the spiritual life. They are too self-orientated, self-obsessed even. The characteristic quality that moves away from the psychological towards the spiritual is an awareness of others as individuals and a caring for them growing out of that awareness.

To be constantly thinking of ourselves as superior to others or inferior to others or equal to others is to limit ourselves and dwell in a world of self-centred pride. We are not superior to others or inferior to others or equal to others. We are all unique. We are all unique individuals with unique combinations of good and bad qualities. As we grow and develop spiritually, our uniqueness will manifest more and more, our individuality will become more manifest. So it is not helpful to make comparisons with others. If we are really changing, if we are really progressing spiritually any such comparisons become more and more nonsensical.

Acknowledging spiritual hierarchy, the fact that some people are more developed than us, is not the same thing as making negative comparisons. Ratnasambhava comes into the human realm with the message of Generosity and the Wisdom of Equality as antidotes to our tendency to make comparisons. Generosity works against self-centredness in a very obvious way, to give we need to be aware of others and their needs.

The Wisdom of Equality sees the common features of human experience. It sees our “common humanity”. We are all subject to impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and we are all ever-changing processes. We all can develop higher states of consciousness and we are all capable of experiencing Insight into the nature of Reality. In this respect we are all equal, but as personalities, with temperaments and qualities and abilities and conditioning we are all different, all unique, and Reality will manifest through us in a unique and individual way. This is what the parable of the rain cloud in The White Lotus Sutra teaches. Here is what Sangharakshita says in The Drama of Cosmic Enlightenment:

“Now, although the rain falls on all alike, and the sun shines on all alike, the plants themselves are all different and they grow in different ways. A nut grows into a tree, and a seed into a flower; a rose bush produces big red blossoms whereas a crocus bulb produces small yellow ones. Some plants shoot up in the air, others creep along the ground, and others clasp bigger and stronger plants. They all grow according to their own nature. And it is just the same, the parable suggests, with human beings. They all receive the same truth, they all hear what is in principle the same spiritual teaching, and they all grow. But the strange, astonishing, and wonderful thing is that they all grow in different ways. They all grow according to their own nature. People may all hear the same teaching, believe in the same teaching, and follow the same path, but they do what seem to be completely different things. Some become more and more deeply involved in meditation, so that in the end they are spending most of their time meditating and have hardly any contact with other people. Others take up social work. Others burst into song, write poetry, or paint pictures. And others, perhaps the majority, simply go on being themselves. They do not display any specific talent, but just become more and more individual. The paradox is that although we each develop, at the same time we also become more and more like one another: more aware, more sensitive, more compassionate; in a word, more alive.

This means that in the spiritual life there can be no question of regimentation. It is reasonable to expect that, with a little endeavour, all human beings will grow, but it is unreasonable to expect all human beings to grow in the same way.” (Complete Works, Vol. 16, p.126)

The Wisdom of Equality is about having an equal attitude to all, being equally kind, and caring towards all, equally mindful towards all, because all can grow spiritually. It sees sameness in diversity, but it does not try to obliterate the diversity. In the human realm we need to beware of making comparisons which are unhelpful to ourselves and others and instead we need to try to relate to other people as unique individuals sharing in a common humanity. And we need to try to relate to the best in others and in ourselves.

We are not superior to others, we are not inferior to others, we are not equal to others; we are all unique. Some people will, of course be further along the Path than others. The Pure Land of Ratnasambhava begins to arise when we go beyond the self-centredness of making negative comparisons and out of recognition of the value of other people and our interconnectedness with them, we start to rejoice wholeheartedly in their successes and their qualities and we are moved to share our experience, our abilities, our possessions. In The Pure Land of Ratnasambhava, which is called The Glorious, there is no calculation, there is no need for calculation. There is abundance and an exuberant giving out of that sense of abundance. There is a wealth mentality which knows that giving and receiving are the same and therefore has no fear of loss.

Can we transform our Buddhist community into a Pure Land? A Ratnasambhava Pure Land, where there is a culture of abundance, a culture of generosity. A Pure Land pervaded by an atmosphere of friendliness and hospitality. An atmosphere of human kindness. Can we envisage our Buddhist community as a society in which generosity, helpfulness, hospitality and kindness are the natural and spontaneous way for all of us to behave towards each other and towards new people coming into contact with us?

Can we envisage our Buddhist community as a society in which our differences of temperament are acknowledged and valued as part of the rich and vibrant life of the mandala of practitioners?

Can we envisage our Buddhist community as a society in which the spirit of generosity and outgoing expansiveness is so all-pervasive that we feel no need to seek security in possessiveness, whether possession of other people or of things? Can we envisage our Buddhist community as a society in which our sense of security is firmly founded in an experience of interconnectedness and interdependence that manifests as friendliness, kindness, generosity and hospitality? Can we envisage our Buddhist community as a community of people motivated by their highest ideals and aspirations coming together to create an atmosphere of harmony and delight?

If we are to create a better world for ourselves and for future generations we need to have large dreams, we need to imagine the unimaginable and we need to dare to live by the ideal truths of our dreams. If we can let our imagination soar into the Glorious Pure Land of Ratnasambhava, and follow our intuition on wings of courage and commitment we will change ourselves and through ‘the fragrance of the perfect life’ we will change the world. If we want to fly we have to flap our own wings. If we want to make spiritual progress it takes an effort, a dedicated and wholehearted effort. As Sangharakshita puts it in his poem Secret Wings:

“We cry that we are weak although

We will not stir our secret wings;

The world is dark – because we are

Blind to the starriness of things.

Oh cry no more that you are weak

But stir and spread your secret wings,

And say “The world is bright, because

We glimpse the starriness of things”.

Soar with your rainbow plumes and reach

That near-far land where all are one,

Where Beauty’s face is aye unveiled

And every star shall be a sun.” (Complete Works, Vol.25, p.185)

In the spiritual life the next step is the most important step. Without the next step there are no steps. So you need to ask yourself, what is the next step for me? What effort do I have to make now? If you can imagine greatly and are willing to make the effort to take the next step in the direction of your aspiration then spiritual progress is assured.

If we all imagine greatly and make the effort to take the next step we will be building the foundations of our Pure Land, we will be transforming our Buddhist community into a society that supports the spiritual life very fully, a society which encourages us to spread our secret wings and soar towards the pure crystalline peaks of Wisdom and Compassion.

I would like to finish this talk on a slightly different note by reading you a little anecdote told by Sangharakshita in one of his study seminars:

“In 1956 I was invited by the government of India as one of the fifty-seven ‘distinguished Buddhists from the border areas’ to visit Delhi for the 2500th Buddha Jayanti celebrations. In the course of our travels we came to Benares, and one of the other distinguished Buddhists from the border areas, a friend of mine who was a lay Nyingmapa Buddhist, took me into Benares to see a Tibetan Lama – not an incarnate Lama, an ordinary monk – who was living there to learn Sanskrit. His name was Tendzing Gyaltsho. He was over seventy. The Dalai Lama had wanted him to start teaching, but he had refused. He told the Dalai Lama that he was far too busy learning; he hadn’t finished his studies. So he settled in Benares to study Sanskrit. We found him at a place almost like a typical Hindu ashram. He had a little room at the top, but it was quite bare. He was sitting on the floor with a tin trunk in front of him which served as his desk and table, with just a little text on it which he was studying. He was very pleased to see me and we talked for about an hour. As we rose to depart, he said, “I really must give you something”. He looked around the room, but there was absolutely nothing. I could see that he was almost desperate. He had nothing but his mala, so he broke his mala and gave me one bead and said, “Please take this. I must have said many millions of mantras on it. It’s all I have to give you”.(Mitrata, The Bodhisattva Ideal, Altruism and Individualism in the Spiritual Life 2, p. 47)

And that is all I have to give you now too.

From Confidence to Compassion

This talk was given to an audience of Triratna Order members at Padmaloka Retreat Centre in February 1995

Recently Dharmachari Shakyanand died in India and Padmavajra wrote about what sort of person Shakyanand was. He wrote about a tour they went on together:

“My strongest memory of that tour was before a talk in a large village. It was the last talk of the day and we arrived as the sun was setting. As we stepped from the car a marching band started up, drummers began to pound out a rhythm and fireworks began to explode. About twenty village women had lined up either side of the dust road to the village. Each one of them was beautifully dressed and held a shiny brass water pot. Another woman came and anointed us with red powder. It was a magnificent welcome. As I stepped forward to walk between the lines of women, Shakyanand held me back gently with his arm and told me “Padmavajra all this is for Bhante (Sangharakshita). It is not for us. Bhante has made all this possible. This welcome is for Bhante”. I was very moved by this. It was as if he was urging me to offer up this welcome to Bhante because he had made our Dharma teaching tour possible. We were only passing on what Bhante had taught us. Since that time I have often pondered on those few words of Shakyanand’s in that village; often pondered the fact that just about everything of value and substance that I have tried to communicate has come from Bhante.” (Shabda, December 1994)

Anything of substance or value that I have to communicate about Dana comes from Sangharakshita too and I would like to dedicate this talk to Sangharakshita.

I want to start, as I did in a previous talk, by quoting Sangharakshita from the lecture “Perfect Emotion”:

“Dana is the basic Buddhist virtue, without which you can hardly call yourself a Buddhist. Dana consists not so much in the act of giving as in the feeling of wanting to give, of wanting to share what you have with other people.”(Complete Works, Vol.1, p.500 )

Dana is the feeling of wanting to give. If it remains as just a feeling of wanting to give and never passes over into the activity of giving I doubt if it could be called Dana. Then it would simply be blocked energy. Dana is energy that has been freed. Energy that has been freed from the constraints of our selfishness. When we feel the impulse to generosity and act on that impulse we allow our energy to move, we allow the vibrant life swelling within us to expand out into the world. We allow our consciousness to expand and mingle, as it were, with the consciousness of other. Dana is an expansion of consciousness. Dana, the feeling of wanting to give, is a spiritual experience. It is the seed of compassion within us, when we act on the impulse to give we orient ourselves in the direction of the Bodhisattva Ideal, we respond to the call of the Bodhicitta.

In order to practise Dana then we need to firstly experience the feeling of wanting to give and secondly we need to give. We need to experience the impulse and we need to act on it. Do we experience the feeling of wanting to give? Often? Always? Do we give unhesitatingly when we experience that feeling, that impulse to give? I suspect the answer is both yes and no in many cases, in most cases even. What do we have to do in order to experience the feeling of wanting to give more often and more thoroughly? And what do we have to do in order to be able and willing to act on the feeling of wanting to give? Here is a favourite quote from Sangharakshita again;

“There is in fact only one need of one’s own that has to be fulfilled before one can preoccupy oneself effectively with the needs of others, and it is not a physical or material need, but simply a matter of emotional positivity and security. We need to appreciate our own worth and feel that it is appreciated by others, to love ourselves and feel that we are loved by others.” (Complete Works, Vol. 14, p.415 )

This seems very simple. Unfortunately, from my experience, there are quite a lot of people who do not manage this very well, even people who have been ordained for many years. It would seem that this need to appreciate your own worth and feel that it is appreciated by others, love yourself and feel that you are loved by others, is only simple in the sense that it is simple to say. Beyond that it is not necessarily complex but it does seem to be extremely difficult for many people, even for many of us in the Order. Now let us look at this a bit more closely.

Why is it important, in fact necessary, to appreciate and love ourselves? Are we not in danger of becoming a bit self indulgent if we adopt this philosophy? If we say to ourselves, “Well I can’t give, I don’t love myself, and as far as I can see nobody else loves me. So I’ll just have to wait until I love myself and feel sure that others love and appreciate me before I start to give.”

I am sure all of us do give in many ways. But what we are talking about here is giving effectively. There are many examples of people giving quite sincerely, but the effectiveness of the giving being vitiated, being compromised by their feelings of emotional impoverishment. For instance, sometimes in team-based right livelihood workplaces, team members and others start to complain about money and often in my experience this is an indication of the lack of love (Metta) in their lives. Money is seen as a way to cope with feelings of impoverishment, richness is projected onto money. Or sometimes in residential communities, people complain about the domestic habits of others. And when the complaints start to rise to a clamour or even crescendo, there is usually something else behind it all and that something else is often a lack of love and friendship.

These are just two examples of how the effectiveness of our generosity can be impaired by our feelings of emotional impoverishment, our inability ‘to appreciate our own worth and feel that it is appreciated by others.’ So it becomes an urgent necessity for us to do something about this. It becomes an urgent necessity for us to ensure that we love ourselves and feel that we are loved by others, appreciate our own worth and feel that it is appreciated by others. That is what we have to do to increase and enhance the effectiveness of our practice of Dana.

How do we do this? I am going to suggest several ways. First of all I am going to go through a list devised by myself of four ways in which we can love ourselves and four ways in which we can feel that we are loved by others. Then I am going to go through a more traditional list from the Vimalakirti Nirdesa, a list of the eight ways in which Bodhisattvas hurt themselves and from that list I will try to draw out some lessons of relevance to us. First of all my own list. How to love yourself or to appreciate your own worth:

Take Responsibility for it

Touch the Earth of Experience

The Book of Abundance

Do something

Firstly you have to take responsibility for it. It is something you have to do. If you do not love yourself, you need to realise and acknowledge that this is something you are doing to yourself, something you are responsible for. In taking responsibility for appreciating and loving yourself you need to commit yourself to it as a practice and constantly remind yourself of the fundamental necessity of Metta. Also you may need to shake off any assumptions you have about your basic badness. I would say that you should assume that you are okay, in that you are worthwhile rather than worthless. In Christianity everybody is (or at least was) tainted by original sin and should assume themselves to be bad. As Buddhists we know that Enlightenment is possible for all human beings and that we are basically worthwhile, if somewhat blinded by spiritual ignorance. The first step to take in order to love ourselves is to take responsibility for it as an essential element in our spiritual progress.

Secondly, we need to touch the earth of experience, that is the earth of our own experience, and call forth the goddess of our spiritual practice to bear witness to the value of our lives. To be on the spiritual Path is something extraordinary, something of great significance, spiritually, historically and on a cosmic level. We need to take this seriously. To have found a spiritual Path is to have achieved something of greatness in our lives. By reflecting on this, on the spiritual significance, the historical significance and the cosmic significance of the Triratna Buddhist Order and the part we play in it, we may come to understand the meaning and value of what we have achieved and appreciate the enormous worth of what we are doing with this precious life. That reflection is what I call touching the earth of experience.

The third item on my list is the Book of Abundance. This is something I came across in a book called, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway and I thought it was a useful idea especially for those who have a particular difficulty with self-Metta. This is how the author puts it:

“Buy yourself a beautiful notebook, as expensive as you can afford. Start filling it by listing as many positive things in your life – past and present – as you can think of. Don’t stop until you reach 150. Some of you will find more. When you feel you can’t think of any more, you can. Just keep focusing on all the blessings in your life. No matter how small they seem, include them in your book. Each day make entries in your book. Instead of a traditional diary – which for many is comprised of doom and gloom, wish and want – create this book, which in effect simply states ‘I have!’ Note every positive thing, large or small, that happens – a compliment from a friend, a cheerful hello from the postman, a beautiful sky, a chance to contribute, a haircut, a new suit, nourishing food. Notice everything good that happens to you. Look for blessings, and you will notice them all over the place. They will envelop you. There is so much you are not seeing that is already there. There is no need to feel scarcity, when there is such abundance.” (Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, p.184)

That is the Book of Abundance, a simple technique to focus on the positive in your life and give it attention rather than wallowing in the doom and gloom. As members of the Spiritual Community we probably should not need this technique. Our Book of Abundance is our friendships, meditation, ethical and devotional practices. If you have maintained and strengthened your friendships and other practices that will give you the expansive perspective that I am getting at by talking about focusing on the positive in our lives. If you have not developed and strengthened your friendships and other practices or if you have allowed them to diminish or fall away, then you will probably find it difficult to sustain the practice of Dana and you will need to take some steps to cultivate the field of positive emotions within your experience by some means, whether by using the Book of Abundance or Metta Bhavana or re-connecting with your friendships or through the Arts or whatever.

The last point on my list is Do Something. What I am getting at here is a point I have made before. We must make the law of karma work for us if we are to experience a clear conscience and its consequent joyfulness. It is important that we live our lives now. If we wait for confidence to arise before we act, we will never do anything. Confidence comes to us as a consequence of what we do. If we act in spite of lack of confidence we will gain confidence. That is certainly my own experience and it is also the Law of Karma. Karma means action. In his lecture, “Are There Ethics in the Order” Subhuti has this to say about karma:

“Now one of the reasons I think why we become obsessed with our own feelings is that we have little conviction in the efficacy of action. We don’t actually believe that acting can in the end change the way we feel. Therefore we look for techniques and remedies – professional help, the stars, needles, whatever it is – in order to change us because we have no faith in the principle of karma. And this is pretty fundamental. As Buddhists, in Going for Refuge to the Dharma, this is one of the major principles of the Dharma, this is one of the major principles of the Dharma that we take on. We take on the perspective that the universe is fundamentally moral, that morality, that ethics, is part of the nature of things. It is not something adventitious or added on or sort of made up or invented. It is not something that we can choose to have or not to have. The universe is, as it were, moral in its very nature. Skilful action always brings about the appropriate responses, the appropriate effects, both internally and externally. Unskilful action always leads to the appropriate effects within the universe and within our own minds. It is not haphazard or random. The universe does not play dice with us. It is actually part of the universe. The effects that we get from our actions are part of the nature of things, can’t be made in another way – it is the way things actually are. And this is Dharma. This is part of the meaning of Dharma. In a sense you could say that our effort is rewarded. This is something that we can have complete confidence in.” (Are There Ethics In the Order, Padmaloka Books, p.10)

We need to act in the face of our fears and our actions will have the beneficial effect of changing us into more mature, confident, effective, adult people with a capacity to live life fully.

The second part of Sangharakshita’s advice to us if we want to practise the Bodhisattva Ideal is to feel that we are loved by others or feel that we are appreciated by others. How do we do this? Again I have a list of four things:

Listen to what they say

Ask them

Rejoice in Merits

Do Something

I will go through these very briefly. Firstly listen to what other people say to you and about you. If you hear compliments do not brush them off, take them seriously. Often what others most appreciate about us is what we take for granted or even think of as a limitation. So someone might say to me, ‘you are a capable speaker’ and I could think, “But I can’t meditate for peanuts.” Now it might be true that I am not a great meditator, but that is no reason for me to undermine a compliment on some other ability.

Secondly, if it is essential that we feel that we are appreciated by others, and Sangharakshita tells us it is essential, then I think that within the Spiritual Community we should not hesitate to ask others to appreciate us. We should be helping each other to change and one potent way of doing this is with the encouragement of appreciation. So ask someone to appreciate you if necessary; your need is their opportunity.

Thirdly, Rejoice in Merits. What you send out into the world is what comes back to you. We create the world we live in, we create the atmosphere that surrounds us. if we rejoice in the merits of others, even only within the privacy of our hearts, that rejoicing will have an effect on how we interact with others and will influence how others perceive us and relate to us. If we rejoice in others our own lives will be appreciably enhanced.

The fourth point on my list is the same as on the previous list – Do something. We will learn that we are appreciated by others if we act. It gives people something tangible to appreciate and one of the consequences of skilful action is the gratitude of those affected by it.

Now I would like to go on to look at the traditional list from the Vimalakirti Nirdesa. In the sutra the Buddha is telling Maitreya how Bodhisattvas harm themselves. Depending on the translation there is either a list of eight things or four things. I am going to use the list of eight. So there are four ways in which the Beginner Bodhisattvas hurt themselves and there are four ways in which the Senior Bodhisattvas hurt themselves. I hope to be able to draw some positive lessons from these that we can apply to ourselves and that can help us to live in the spirit of generosity. Here is what the Vimalakirti Nirdesa says;

“Maitreya, there are four causes through which beginner Bodhisattvas harm themselves and do not analyse the profound Law. What are these four?

1. On hearing this profound Sutranta not yet heard before, they are afraid, hesitant, and do not delight in it.

2. By asking themselves: “From where does this Sutranta, not yet heard before, come to us?” they put it in question and reject it.

3. On seeing the sons of good family take up, adopt or expound this profound Sutranta, they do not serve them, do not frequent them, do not respect them and do not revere them.

4. Finally, they even go so far as to address criticisms at them.

Such are the four causes through which beginner Bodhisattvas harm themselves and do not analyse the profound Law.

There are four causes through which Bodhisattvas, even while believing in this profound interpretation of the Law, harm themselves and do not rapidly obtain the certainty concerning the non-arising of dharmas. Which are these four?

1. These Bodhisattvas despise and reprove the beginner Bodhisattvas who, even while pledged to the Great Vehicle, have not exercised the practices for a long time.

2. They refuse to receive them and instruct them.

3. Not having great faith in the profound doctrine, they do not have great respect for its very extensive rules. 

4.They help beings through material gifts and not through the giving of the Law.” (Lamotte, The Teaching of Vimalakirti, p.269)

I would like to go through these points one by one and by seeing how we harm ourselves, we may be able to learn how to benefit ourselves. I will leave it to you to interpret for yourselves how the terms Beginner Bodhisattva and Veteran Bodhisattva (as used in the Thurman translation) might apply to us.

First of all the Beginner Bodhisattvas harm themselves by being afraid, hesitant and not delighting in the teaching, or as Thurman translates it, being terrified, doubtful and not rejoicing in the teaching. So we are starting with a lack of Faith. There is fear and doubt and an inability to delight in the good. Faith is needed, confidence is needed. We harm ourselves by our lack of faith. Faith in the Dharma is faith in the Buddha. Faith in the Buddha is faith in the human potential for Enlightenment. This in the end is faith in ourselves, in other words, yet again, to be effective we need to appreciate ourselves and feel that we are appreciated by others, love ourselves and feel that we are loved by others.

The second way the Beginner Bodhisattvas harm themselves is that they ask, “Whence comes this teaching never heard before?” and they reject it. Here we have a lack of openness to new experience, a rejection of what is not already known. So we can harm ourselves by our lack of openness to new experience. As Sangharakshita says in The Religion of Art, “Selfishness is simply unwillingness to face new experiences.” (The Religion of Art, p.87. Complete Works, Vol 26)

Then the Beginner Bodhisattvas hurt themselves by their attitude to those who do take the teaching and practice wholeheartedly. They do not serve them, do not befriend them, do not revere them. So not only is there fear and doubt but also a sort of ‘sour grapes’ attitude to those who do practise and progress. This could be characterised as pride or arrogance. So we can harm ourselves spiritually by having a negative attitude to others who practise.

The last way that the Beginner Bodhisattvas harm themselves is that they go so far as to criticise those who do practise wholeheartedly. Criticism here obviously does not mean constructive feedback. It means carping criticism, cynicism, reactivity. We can harm ourselves by indulging in these.

The Beginner Bodhisattvas harm themselves through lack of faith, lack of openness to new experiences, a negative attitude to those who do practise strongly and by giving voice to that attitude in cynicism and carping criticism. We need to be wary of these four too so that we do not harm ourselves. Conversely we can benefit ourselves by cultivating faith; faith in the Dharma, faith in Sangharakshita, faith in the Order. We can benefit ourselves by being open to new experiences, to changes which benefit our Buddhist movement. We can benefit ourselves by serving, befriending and honouring those who practise more wholeheartedly than ourselves. We benefit ourselves by recognising spiritual hierarchy and we can benefit ourselves by rejoicing and delighting in those who practise wholeheartedly.

If we act like this we will be cultivating and nourishing the field of positive emotion that is essential to the practice of Dana Paramita. If the soil is poor the crops will be poor. The soil must be cultivated and nourished to produce abundant crops. The soil of our positive emotions must be cultivated, developed, and nourished if we are to produce the richness and abundance that bears fruit in acts of generosity.

Let us look now at how the Senior or Veteran Bodhisattvas harm themselves. Firstly, they despise and reproach the Beginner Bodhisattvas who have not been practising for long. So here we have at best a lack of patience and at worst a deliberate undermining of someone else’s attempts to practise. By being impatient, and not encouraging others, we harm ourselves.

Secondly, the Senior Bodhisattvas harm themselves by refusing to receive and instruct the Beginner Bodhisattvas. They refuse to be Kalyana Mitras in other words. So we can harm ourselves by refusing to give Kalyana Mitrata to those less developed than ourselves. If we refuse to give Kalyana Mitrata we strangle the spirit of the Dharma.

Thirdly, the Senior Bodhisattvas harm themselves by not respecting the rules or in other words by not observing the Precepts. We will harm ourselves if we do not respect and observe the Precepts. In my view The Ten Pillars of Buddhism is one of the greatest gifts that Sangharakshita has given us. We ought to study it and revere it, and practise it.

Finally the Senior Bodhisattvas harm themselves by giving material gifts only and not giving the Dharma. We can harm ourselves if we only do good works but do not give of ourselves. As Sangharakshita puts it in Wisdom Beyond Words;

“Any amount of giving of material things in the ordinary worldly sense, however appropriate, necessary, and beneficial it may be on its own level or however meritorious in a traditional Buddhist sense, is completely incomparable with even the smallest amount of giving of the Dharma …

If you go and give just one talk on the Dharma to an audience of people who have never heard the Dharma before, the amount of merit you thereby generate is far greater than if you spent, say, ten thousand lifetimes as a social worker in ten thousand different worlds.” (Complete Works, Vol. 14, p.445)

Like the Senior Bodhisattvas we too can harm ourselves if we are impatient and discouraging to others, if we refuse to give Kalyana Mitrata, if we fail to respect the Precepts and if we do not give the Dharma. On the other hand, we can greatly benefit ourselves by practising patience, by treating others with Metta and encouraging them. We can benefit ourselves by giving Kalyana Mitrata. We can benefit ourselves by putting ourselves wholeheartedly into the observance of the Precepts. We can benefit ourselves by taking every opportunity to spread the Dharma.

I quoted Sangharakshita at the outset as saying that Dana was ‘the feeling of wanting to give’ and I further quoted him as saying that all we need in order to be able to effectively meet the needs of others is emotional positivity and security. “We need to appreciate our own worth and feel that it is appreciated by others, we need to love ourselves and feel that we are loved by others.” I have looked at several of the ingredients necessary to create this emotional positivity and security.

Now I would like to look at a Path of Progress through Generosity that will take us around the Mandala of the five Buddhas. Before we enter the Mandala in the East, we hear the undermining voice of Mara saying, “Who do you think you are? How can you be generous?” Then coming into the sphere of influence of Akshobya we touch the earth of our experience and begin to feel the confidence of our worth. We love ourselves, we feel that we are appreciated. Our life has taken us this far, we are on the spiritual Path; we have received friendship and teaching from those we honour and respect. We have been appreciated indeed.

Our confidence grows into an imperturbable faith in our potential and touching the earth again we call forth the goddess of our creativity, richness and abundance. We are now in the glorious realm of Ratnasambhava. Joyfully, exuberantly, increasingly we are giving impulsively, spontaneously.

We are having a ball with the outpouring of generous feelings and throwing all caution to the winds we let our generous impulses dance free and naked through the sky, until we subside into the rich red tranquillity of Amitabha’s sphere replenishing ourselves in the depths where the expansiveness of Ratnasambhava is nourished, contained, integrated, centred and becomes fierce hot energy directed towards the surmounting of all obstacles.

From the depths we rise, fearless, ready to act, sure of success, skilled in the use of the Law of Karma. We are under the influence of Amoghasiddhi and there is no longer any crisis of confidence. To be alive is to act and to act is to give. To give the Dharma, fearlessly. Having come this far there is an increasing congruency between what we say and what we do and as we move into the realm of Vairocana we find that we are embodying the Dharma more and more so that to speak is to speak Dharma, to think is to think Dharma and to act is to give Dharma. Our Faith in the Dharma and our confidence in ourselves become the same thing.

There are no limits to the benefits of giving. Generosity is as Sangharakshita says, the basic Buddhist virtue and as we grow, as we progress spiritually our generosity moves from Precept to Paramita and from Paramita to Sangrahavastu. From giving as a discipline, to a more spontaneous giving, to giving for the sake of creating Sangha.

I want now to look at two ways of giving before I finish off. These are giving money and giving life and limb. First of all, giving money. As Sangharakshita says in his lecture on Buddhist Economics, “Money is rather a strange thing. One could almost say that money is everything except money. People’s attitude to money is rather strange. The strangest thing about people’s attitude to money perhaps is their reluctance to part with it.” (Complete Works, Vol. 16, p.402)

Do you find people’s reluctance to part with money strange? I do not, but I think Sangharakshita is speaking from a different perspective, a different level of spiritual insight than I am capable of, and from that level, from that perspective, people’s (our) reluctance to part with money is strange. Money is an illusion of security, money is an illusion of wealth. We project richness on to money and then of course we do not want to part with it, we do not want to part with richness. So the wealth and richness that we project on to money makes it a painful business for us to part with it, even for the sake of the Dharma. But part with it we must. If your hopes and fears are hovering around your pot of gold then your life is poor indeed.

We cannot rely on money, on salary, savings or inheritance. We can rely on each other, on friendship, on trust. Trust, according to Sangharakshita, “Is the confidence that the other person will deal with you in accordance with the love mode rather than in accordance with the power mode.” (Seminar on The Sutra of Golden Light, www.freebuddhistaudio.com/texts/read?num=SEM139&at=text&q=trust&p=18)

This trust is what we need to rely on for our security as members of the Spiritual Community rather than on money. We need to loosen our grip on our money. We need to loosen our mental grip on our money so that our minds can become free to grasp other, more subtle things. We need to loosen our physical grip on our money so that the Buddhist community from which we have gained so much and to which we are dedicated can expand and prosper.

There are two levels to the third Precept, namely refraining from sexual misconduct, and then refraining from sexual activity altogether. I would like to suggest that we could have two levels to the second Precept, namely refraining from taking the not given and refraining from unnecessary possessions. If we all refrained from buying or accumulating unnecessary possessions I am sure we could thereby generate substantial funds for the furtherance of the Dharma.

This would involve inconvenience to ourselves and this is how I would like to interpret the giving of life and limb to make it relevant to us. To give life and limb is to be willing to suffer some inconvenience or hardship for the sake of the Dharma. The gratitude we owe to Bhante can only be expressed by giving ourselves wholeheartedly to the practice of the Dharma and by doing all we can to help him actualise his expansive vision of a world permeated by the values and principles of Buddhism.

The Symbolism of Offerings and Self-Sacrifice

With mandarava, blue lotus and jasmine

With all flowers pleasing and fragrant

and with garlands skilfully woven

I pay honour to the princes of the sages,

So worthy of veneration.

I envelop them in clouds of incense,

Sweet and penetrating;

I make them offerings of food, hard and soft,

And pleasing kinds of liquids to drink.

I offer them lamps encrusted with jewels,

Festooned with golden lotus,

On the paving, sprinkled with perfume,

I scatter handfuls of beautiful flowers.

(Puja: The Triratna Book of Buddhist Devotional Texts)

The first section of the seven-fold Puja and the final section of the Threefold Puja are the verses of offering which we are most familiar with. The offerings mentioned in the Threefold Puja are the three traditional offerings of flowers, candles and incense, representing impermanence, Enlightenment and the spiritual life respectively. The offerings mentioned in the first verse of the Seven-fold Puja are flowers, candles, incense, food hard and soft, and water to drink. These are six of the eight traditional offerings to the honoured guest in India. The two missing are water to wash and music.

There are other offerings in Buddhism such as the imaginative offering of all the senses – taste, touch, smell etc – or the imaginative offering of the body in Vajrayana Buddhism. There is also the Mandala offering which is a symbolic offering of the whole universe. However, we don't need to concern ourselves much with those. Whether Tantric, Mahayana or Hinayana, offerings generally are symbolic of worship. Worship is the recognition of a Higher ideal and the expression of reverence and devotion towards that Ideal and towards those who embody it. Worship is also an expression of gratitude that the Ideal, the vision of a higher existence, has been made manifest. Worship is also an orientation towards the Ideal. When we worship, when we make offerings we are recognising that higher states of consciousness are possible and we are turning ourselves in the direction of higher states of consciousness.

The recognition that higher states of consciousness are possible to attain and have been attained by the Buddhas and Bodhsattvas, is a fundamental Right View. According to Buddhism there are Right Views and Wrong Views. Two very basic right views are that all things are impermanent and that the spiritual life is possible; there are higher states of consciousness to be attained. The offering of flowers specifically, represents a recognition of impermanence. All the offerings and the devotional attitude of offering represents the view that the spiritual life is possible, that there are higher states of consciousness. The offering of light, lighted candles, refers specifically to the recognition of Enlightenment as the highest attainment for humanity.

We could say that Offerings symbolise Right View. Right View or Perfect Vision is at the beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path, and offerings are at the beginning of the Sevenfold Puja. This is no accident. The Eightfold Path consists of the Path of Vision and the Path of Transformation. The first stage – Right View – is the Path of Vision and all the other stages are the Path of Transformation: Right Emotion, Right Action, Right Speech, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Meditation. At the very beginning of the spiritual life we need to have a glimpse of the Ideal. We need to have an idea of the goal. We need to have faith in the possibility of change, of personal transformation and with that vision, that faith, we can set out on the Path of Transformation. Similarly at he beginning of the Sevenfold Puja we need to have faith, we need a vision of existence that goes beyond the mundane and materialistic, we need to have some vision or glimpse of the heights.

The Sevenfold Puja is a path leading to the arising of the Bodhicitta. The Bodhicitta is the overwhelming urge or desire to gain Enlightenment for the sake of all beings. The stages of the Sevenfold Puja describe the spiritual practise that has to take place in order for us to arrive at that point – the point of being a Bodhisattva – after that when the Bodhicitta has arisen according to the Mahayana we have to take up the practise of the Six Perfections - Generosity, Ethics, Patience, Energy, Meditation and Wisdom.

As well as representing gratitude and Right View offerings also represent generosity. Generosity, or rather the spirit of generosity is present at the beginning of the spiritual life, in the middle of the spiritual life, and at the end of the spiritual life. When the spirit of generosity is absent there is no spiritual development. There may be psychological development, which is very necessary and useful, but there has to be a spirit of generosity for any self-transcending development, which is what spiritual development really is.

I am careful to say a spirit of generosity rather than generosity because it is possible to give things, give money, give time, give assistance, even give Dharma talks without a spirit of generosity. We can give for our own sake rather than for the sake of others. It is important to give whether we have a spirit of generosity or not, because it is by giving that we develop a spirit of generosity. Generosity is the manifestation of Metta. There is no such thing as metta in the abstract. If it is not manifested, not expressed, in a spirit of generosity, then it is not metta. By doing the metta bhavana, by practising generosity and by making offerings in the context of the Puja we can cultivate a spirit of generosity, which will manifest in the little things of life and make our own lives and other peoples lives a lot happier.

It's worth trying to be aware of our impulses to selfishness and our impulses to generosity, even in small things, because it is by not acting on selfish impulses and by acting on generous impulses that we progress on the spiritual path. This choice is facing us all the time. When we sit down to a meal, we experience selfish impulses and generous impulses; if we are aware we can choose how to act. When we spend money, we can follow selfish impulses or generous impulses; if we are aware we can make a choice. When we are driving a car we can experience selfish and generous impulses and choose how to act. You can probably think of many more examples. A spirit of generosity is the essence of the spiritual life and the essence of the Bodhisattva path.

The Sevenfold Puja is the Bodhisattva Path, the Path to becoming a Bodhisattva, in outline and it begins with Offerings and Worship. That is, it begins with gratitude, Right View and generosity. A point about offerings in the Puja: they should not be taken back. To quote Bhante Sangharakshita: “People have been known to make an offering to the shrine that was particularly meaningful to them, and then take the item away again after the puja, but this waters down the whole idea of offerings, which are a form of dana or giving. The Buddhist tradition is quite unambiguously that an offering, once made, should not be taken back. Otherwise it would be like giving someone a box of chocolates and then taking them back to eat the chocolates yourself. Of course things can be lent to the shrine to beautify it, but that is not the same as making an offering, and you would not place the object on the shrine during the Offerings section of the puja. A clear distinction should be drawn between these two actions.” (Ritual and Devotion in Buddhism, p62-63)

After the Worship and Offerings, the Puja carries on through Salutation, Going for Refuge, Confession, Rejoicing in Merits, Entreaty and Supplication, to Transference of Merits and Self-Surrender. With the verse on Transference of Merits and Self-Surrender we arrive at the topic of Self-Sacrifice. But before we go into that, I'll say a few words about this Path that takes us from Worship and Offerings to the point of Self-Sacrifice. The first thing to note is that the stages of the Puja relate to actual practices in the life of the spiritual aspirant, the aspiring Bodhisattva. They are not just verses for ritual recitation.

The Salutation section represents the practice of expressing respect for the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in an outward physical way. Usually we bow when we enter the Shrine Room and we salute the shrine before we meditate or do puja and we bow or kneel or prostrate when we make offerings. We join our hands together in the Anjali mudra when we perform ritual. All these are means of paying respect to the Three Jewels in an outward physical way. Unfortunately, like many other things, we sometimes do these things in a sloppy unmindful way so that they become more like an insult than a paying of respect. When we enter the Shrine room we could imagine that we are actually meeting someone for whom we have great respect and when we salute the Shrine it is as if we are greeting them. If you were meeting and greeting someone for whom you had great respect you would not do it in an offhand lackadaisical manner. You would be all attention and you would want to make a good impression. The Salutation section of the Puja represents the attitude of of reverence and attention to what we respect and the showing of that reverence in an overt physical way.

There is no special way that you have to make offerings to the shrine during a Puja. In fact you should not feel obliged to make offerings at all. If you feel moved to make an offering by a sense of devotion then by all means do so and it is okay to prostrate in front of the shrine or to kneel and bow or to just bow or to just join your hands in an attitude of reverence.

To move even closer to the Ideal, we Go for Refuge. In other words we make a decision to orientate our lives more and more in the direction of higher states of consciousness, and we make a decision to practise the teachings of the Buddha in co-operation and harmony with others who are doing likewise. Then the recitation of the verses of Refuge, Buddham Saranam Gacchami etc, is a straightforward and profound declaration of that decision, that choice, to orientate our lives more and more in the direction of higher states of consciousness. The precepts bring us down to brass tacks. Here is what we need to do. We need to observe these precepts in order to pave the way for higher states of consciousness, in order to progress spiritually.

When we try to practise the Precepts we come up against our habits of greed and ill-will and wrong views and it is these that we confess in the Confession section. The purpose of confession is to purify us, to relieve us of the burden of our negative mental states and our resistance to change. From the Buddhist point of view the problem with unskilful or negative actions, speech or thoughts is that they take us in the opposite direction to spiritual development. So what we need to do is drop them as quickly as possible and re-inspire ourselves in a positive direction. If someone else is unskilful what we need to do is try to help them re-orientate themselves in the direction of spiritual growth. Buddhism has no time for guilty breast-beating or hellfire and damnation. The Confession stage of the Puja represents our efforts to re-orientate ourselves in the positive direction of spiritual growth after we have had a bout of back-sliding negativity.

The Rejoicing in Merits section sees us well and truly back on track. We are rejoicing in change, and the possibility of change, rejoicing in those who've attained Enlightenment or Insight. Needless to say this is something we also need to practise outside the context of Puja. We need to try to relate to the best in others and rejoice in their good qualities and skilful actions. This benefits ourselves because it creates a more harmonious and pleasant immediate world for us to live in. It benefits others for the same reason.

Now that we are back on track and inspired by the prospect of change and spiritual growth, we are ready to to ask for further teaching. We are more receptive to those who can help us. This is represented by the Entreaty and Supplication stage of the Puja. To be receptive to the teaching of the Buddha, means to allow it to affect our lives. For it to affect our lives, we have to listen to it with an open mind, reflect on its relevance to our lives and be prepared to make changes as a result, even quite radical changes.

The teaching we get is the Heart Sutra, which is a profound Perfection of Wisdom text, making plentiful use of paradox. The essential teaching is that we have no fixed underlying self. Everything, including our bodies and our mental states, arises in dependence on conditions and ceases when those conditions cease. Nothing is permanent. There is only change and flux and process. This is what makes the evolution of consciousness possible. If we gain Insight into this teaching so that it becomes our constant experience and our whole life becomes a living out of it then the Bodhicitta has arisen and we will be totally orientated towards Enlightenment. We will be dedicated to the attainment of Enlightenment for the sake of all beings. This is what self-sacrifice means in Buddhism and it is this self-sacrifice that the final verse of the Puja gives voice to.

The Transference of Merit and Self-Surrender is a joyful recognition of the fact that we are all interdependent, interconnected and that all our spiritual efforts which seem to be for our own development are actually for everyone's benefit. We utter this exuberant shout of joy and give everything away, knowing in our hearts that we don't possess anything anyway, that all that seemed so fixed and solid and ours is like water pouring through our fingers. Our personality, our possessions, our merit, we give it all away, feeling the lightness and freedom of a liberated heart, unfettered by attachments and selfishness.

In the Tantra this attitude is given graphic expression in the form images of bits of the body made from dough. Also in the Chod practice where the practitioner, the Yogi, goes away to a solitary place, preferably a cremation ground and performs rituals in which he imagines his own body being chopped up and churned into a liquid which is then offered to the spirits of the place for their nourishment. What this rather crude symbolism is about is the attitude of non-attachment to what we consider to be ours. The Yogi is facing his attachment and fear head on and overcoming it. I don't think the Chod practice is suitable unless you've been practising for many many years and you have developed a strong basis of metta. This basis of metta is most important and in itself can take years of practice to establish firmly.

But to return to the final verse of the Puja, where we most frequently encounter self-sacrifice or Self-Surrender as it is called. We say:

“May the merit gained in my acting thus, go to the alleviation of the suffering of all beings”.

Here we have the Bodhisattva's job description as it were; the alleviation of the suffering of all beings. It is obviously an impossible task. But the Bodhisattva knows that in Reality there are no beings and that what causes them suffering is their experience of themselves as beings when in reality they are “becomings”. So the Bodhisattva is undaunted by this task because Reality is on his or her side. Things are the way they are and the task is to try to get as many people as possible to see this.

Then we say, “My personality throughout my existences, my possessions and my merit in all three ways, I give up without regard to myself for the benefit of all beings.” Our personality is our habits, our preferences, our likes and dislikes. So we let go of these. We loosen our attachment to our preferences, our likes and dislikes. We may even be willing to go along with other peoples preferences sometimes ! Our possessions, our money, our belongings; we recognise the ephemeral nature of it all and realise that in itself it will not give satisfaction or meaning to our lives. So we dedicate it to the welfare of all. We develop an attitude of sharing and generosity. We try to use our money and possessions in a way that enhances life, rather than just to follow our own narrow wants. And whatever we gain from spiritual practice, we don't allow it to inflate our egotism. We try to use it to benefit everybody. So transference of merit can be an antidote to pride.

Then we go on to say:

“Just as the earth and other elements are serviceable in many ways, to the infinite number of beings, inhabiting limitless space, so may I become that which maintains all beings, situated throughout space, so long as all have not attained to peace.”

“May I become that which maintains all beings” means may I be a support to all beings, may I enrich and enhance their lives. We probably would find it too daunting to think in those terms but we can think in terms of supporting each other. To support someone means to be part of the conditions that helps them to live the spiritual life. So just by being here we are supporting each other. We are together creating conditions conducive to spiritual development. Similarly by being in the shrine room (or on retreat) for meditation or Puja and engaging wholeheartedly with the practices we are supporting each other. By co-operating we are supporting each other. By communicating openly and honestly we are creating an environment for open and honest communication and therefore supporting each other.

The Bodhisattva gives himself or herself completely to creating conditions conducive to spiritual development. They surrender themselves to this great task. This is the meaning of self-sacrifice in Buddhism. Self-sacrifice could be said to symbolise the Bodhisattva Ideal; the Ideal of perfect altruism, of supreme generosity.

Traditionally, in some Buddhist texts, it is said that there are three possible ways to live your life -

1. You can aim for happiness in this present life (the materialistic way)

2. You can wish for happiness in some future existence (Heaven) (theistic), or

3. You can think in terms of gaining Enlightenment for the sake of all beings. 

   The third of these is what is expressed in the Transference of Merits and Self-Surrender.

At the end of the Puja, we have the concluding mantras and among them is the mantra of Tara. Tara is an archetypal Bodhisattva in female form. She is said to have been born from the tears of Avalokitesvara. He looked down on the world and seeing all the suffering he shed tears. Avalokitesvara is the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and Tara represents the quintessence of Compassion. She is green in colour and is depicted as seated on a lotus. Her left leg is drawn up in meditation posture and her right leg is stepping down into the world. Her left hand is holding three lotus flowers, by her left shoulder, and her right hand is extended in the gesture of generosity.

Tara could be seen as uniting the symbolism of offerings and self-sacrifice. Her right hand is extended in the gesture of supreme generosity, an offering of help and comfort to the world. Tara herself is Avalokitesvara's offering, born from his tears of Compassion. For the Bodhisattva there is no distinction between the world and Reality, samsara and nirvana and so the Bodhisattva's feelings of reverence and devotion are transmuted into Compassion for the world of suffering humanity. For the Bodhisattva, to worship and honour the experience of Enlightenment or Buddhahood means to give unstintingly to all who suffer from delusion. When Tara stretches out her hand in the gesture of supreme generosity, it is both an offering of help and comfort and a reverence to the highest of all Ideals, the Perfection of Wisdom and Compassion.

Tara's right leg is stepping down. She is not only offering help, she is taking the medicine of the Dharma out into the world to cure its fevers and ills. This represents the self-sacrifice of the Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva is constantly at the service of the world, “just as the earth and other elements are serviceable in many ways”, the Bodhisattva surrenders all selfish interest to be at the service of those in need of spiritual awakening. We too can try to be of service to each other rather than always thinking “me first” or acting in a “me first” way. We can serve each other, give way to each other, allow our own preferences to be overruled sometimes. All of this is practise in dissolving egotism. The Bodhisattva experiences no egotism and therefore is quite naturally at the service of the spiritually blind as a guide and helper. This outward going compassionate activity of Tara is balanced by the meditative state indicated by the left leg drawn up in meditation posture. The compassionate activity represented by the foot stepping down, is not a mindless do-gooding, it is firmly based in the higher states of consciousness represented by the meditation posture. It is compassionate activity based in Wisdom; the vision of existence that sees impermanence and interconnectedness always and everywhere.

The three lotuses in Tara's left hand traditionally represent the Buddhas of past, present and future. However I like to think of them as also representing the process of spiritual development. There is a process of awakening and expanding and blossoming that we have to go through before we are spontaneously generous and self-sacrificing in the way indicated by the image of Tara. We can begin that process in small ways now and gradually we will find our natural tendencies becoming more and more other regarding, more and more generous and thoughtful and kindly. The process is the process outlined in the Sevenfold Puja. There is nothing forced or harsh about the generosity and self-sacrifice represented by Tara. Tara is depicted in female form, soft green in colour. She is calm, soft and tender and her compassion shines forth like the radiance of some beautiful flower. There is no rending of garments or tearing of flesh just the astounding smile of Beauty.

The Generosity and Self-Sacrifice of the Bodhisattva are the most beautiful of virtues. They represent a total reverence for life, for evolving consciousness and a devotion to the welfare of all beings, that is in essence a devotion to the Highest Ideal, the Ideal of Enlightenment for the sake of all. This devotion, this attitude of reverent generosity is beautifully expressed in the image of the offering goddesses. To quote Bhante Sangharakshita:

“The offering goddesses are frequently visualised in the course of meditation practice. One sees – or feels – flowing from one's heart eight rainbows. These eight rainbows pass out through the crown of one's head and, travelling upwards, fan out. At the end of each rainbow, there is a goddess, a beautiful sixteen-year-old female figure, bearing the appropriate offering – water for drinking, water for washing, incense etc. The eight offering goddesses, at the end of the eight rainbows, make their offerings to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, who are visualised as seated on lotus thrones in the midst of the sky. These offering goddesses represent the essence of worship, represent powerful upsurging devotional feelings, very pure and strong.” (Complete Works, Vol. 13, p.257)