Akshobhya: Holding Up The Mirror

This talk was given at the London Buddhist Centre in 1997 as the final talk in a series on six on the topic of Kshanti

I began the first talk (The Antidote to Snakebite) in this series of talks on Kshanti with a quote from the novel Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. The quote was a description of the Tibetan Wheel of Life. The Tibetan Wheel of Life is a visual depiction of the cycle of mundane existence. As the centre of thewheel of life are a cock a snake and a pig biting each others tails. They represent greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance, the basic mental poisons which keep the whole cyclic process going. The second circle of the wheel shows people descending and ascending, which indicates that within the round of mundane existence it is possible to go downwards into more negative mental states or upwards into more positive mental states. The third circle of the Wheel shows six realms of conditioned existence into which we can be reborn. They are the god realm, the realm of the titans, the hungry ghost realm, the hell realm, the animal realm and the human realm. These can also be seen to represent mental states that we inhabit from day to day or even from minute to minute. The outermost circle of the Wheel is a pictorial representation of the twelve links in the realm of cyclic conditionality which describe how the whole process of mundane existence goes round and round, lifetime after lifetime.

In that first talk I said that Kshanti was the antidote to the snakebite of anger and hatred. In the second talk (Kneeling in the Snow) on Patience I said that patience created a gap between feeling and the response to feeling. This corresponds to the point on the outer circle of the Wheel of Life between feeling and craving. This is the point where it is possible to break free of the reactive round of cyclic conditionality and move on to the creative spiral of accumulative conditionality. In the third talk (The Helpful Enemy) I said that forgiveness was the creative response that broke the cycle of negativity, forgiveness being a letting go of any desire for revenge or retaliation. Tolerance is a maintaining of the positive emotion and clarity of mind that assures progress on the spiral path and Receptivity to the sublime Truth of the Dharma is what eventually allows us to have knowledge and vision of things as they really are. This point of Insight is the point of no return. From this point we are assured of gaining Enlightenment.

The state of Enlightenment is described in various ways. It is described as Nirvana, Knowledge of the destruction of the mental poisons, an unconditioned way of seeing the conditioned, realisation of the One Mind and so on. None of the concepts is adequate. Language is necessarily dualistic and therefore incapable of encompassing experience beyond the dualism of subject and object. The experience of Enlightenment can be hinted at in poetry and metaphor, but not really described. Another approach to communicating the experience of Enlightenment is through the language of images and symbols. One of the most important sets of images and symbols is what is known as the Mandala of the Five Jinas or Five Buddhas.

The mandala is a circle symbol that occurs all over the world and it indicates a state of wholeness or completeness. The Mandala of the Five Jinas indicates the richness and abundance of the Enlightened Mind by depicting five Buddhas, each of which represents Enlightenment in its totality and each of which emphasises a particular aspect of Enlightenment. Traditionally, you enter the Mandala in the East, which, strangely enough is at the bottom of the picture. The Buddha in the East is Akshobya, the Imperturbable. Then you move around to the South on the left hand side of the picture and here you find Ratnasambhava, the Buddha of Generosity. In the West, at the top of the picture, you meet Amitabha, The Buddha of Love and Compassion. The Buddha of the North is Amoghasiddhi, the Buddha of Action and Fearlessness. At the Centre of the Mandala is Vairocana, the Illuminator.

Each of the Five Buddhas is associated with a particular colour, hand gesture, animal and emblem. All of this amounts to an extraordinarily rich symbolism. Each of the Buddhas is also associated with a particular mental poison. The five poisons are greed, hatred, spiritual ignorance, pride and envy. It is as if the Buddhas represent the complete transformation of a particular poison into something totally positive. The poison of hatred, anger or ill-will is associated with Akshobya.

Kshanti is the method by which hatred and anger is to be transformed and Akshobya is the end result of the complete transformation of hatred. This is the main connection between Ksanti-Paramita and the Buddha Akshobya. In the course of this talk I will draw out some more connections between the symbolism and attributes of Akshobya and the different aspects of Kshanti.

The Sanskrit word 'akshobya' means unshakeable. The Buddha Akshobya received the name because he took a vow in a previous lifetime never to give way to anger or malice, never to be unethical and many other things. Over lifetimes he was unshakeable in holding to his vow and thus became eventually the Buddha Akshobya, the unshakeable or imperturbable. Unshakeable means unwavering or firm and imperturbable means calm. This aspect of Akshobya the represents the dedication which is unwavering and calm, not easily disrupted. What the unshakeability and imperturbability of Akshobya is teaching us is that we must be determined and steadfast in our practice of the Dharma and not allow ourselves to be put off or dispirited by minor setbacks or upsets. All too often we are lacking in stamina. We don't perhaps have sufficient motivation or vision to rouse us to heroic effort.

Politicians for instance seem to have tremendous stamina although they may not put it to very skilful use. People in theatre or pop stars have stamina. In the world of business people exert themselves strenuously. It seems that when people are motivated enough they can perform great feats of energetic striving. Often the motivation is quite selfish in character. In the spiritual life we need that kind of stamina too. We need it in order to make the consistent effort that personal development demands and we need it if we are to be of help to others. Sangharakshita commented on this in a study seminar in . He said, “We are so effete in the spiritual life, more often than not. We cant stand any sort of strain; after any bit of extra effort we have to go away and rest, have a little holiday, sit down for a while, play a record and take things easy. Its pathetic! (Laughter.) Here you are, aspiring to gain Enlightenment, which is after all the most difficult thing you can possibly propose to yourself, and look how easily one usually takes it – what an easy time one gives oneself. And there, [[on the other hand]] are people aiming at the very inferior, trivial, easily attained things like the Presidency of the United States. Just look at the massive effort they are putting in – it puts us to shame!”( Mitrata, The Bodhisattva Ideal, 'Masculinity' and 'Femininity' in the Spiritual Life, p.46)

If you read the life of Sangharakshita or of other great Buddhists or remarkable practitioners from other religious traditions, you will find they all had great stamina and the ability and willingness to make consistent effort in pursuit of their goals. How can we develop stamina? The answer is with practice. We touched on this earlier in the talk on patience when Shantideva was quoted as saying, “There is nothing which remains difficult if it is practised. So, through practice with minor discomforts, even major discomfort becomes bearable” (Bodhicaryavatara, chapter on Kshanti) If we are to develop stamina we need to learn how to endure discomfort, whether it is physical discomfort or emotional discomfort. Endurance is an aspect of Kshanti. In the Dhammapada there are some verses that use the image of an elephant in connection with endurance. Verse 320 says: “I will endure words that hurt in silent peace as the strong elephant endures in battle arrows sent by the bow, for many people lack self-control.” And verse 327 says: “Find joy in watchfulness: guard well your mind. Uplift yourself from your lower self, even as an elephant draws himself out of a muddy swamp.” Verse 325 warns us against too much comfort-seeking and distraction. “The man who is lazy and a glutton, who eats large meals and rolls in his sleep, who is like a pig which is fed in the sty, this fool is reborn to a life of death.”

The elephants who bear the throne of Akshobya on their back can serve to remind us of the need for endurance. The elephants, because they are beneath the lotus, which symbolises the Transcendental, are here to represent the highest reaches of the mundane. They symbolise the unshakeable, imperturbable qualities that were perfected by Akshobya before he gained Enlightenment. They are the steadfast, calm, fearless foundation for the ego-shattering experience of Insight. They represent the ability to endure the ultimate discomfort of having no place to hide from the fierce light of Reality.

The quality of endurance is probably not very popular these days. Comfort and instant gratification are the hallmarks of our society. Endurance and the ability to postpone gratification of desires are hallmarks of the spiritual life. In his book “The Sibling Society”, Robert Bly argues that people no longer want to grow up and face the difficulties of adulthood. Instead we are creating what he calls a sibling society, a society of adolescents which demands little in the way of responsibility and difficult work. He says; “When enough people have slid backward into a sibling state of mind, society can no longer demand difficult and subtle work from its people – because the standards are no longer visible. Without the labour of artists, for example, to incorporate past achievements – in brushwork, in treatment of light, in depth of emotion, in mythological intensity – people with some talent can pretend to be genuine artists. Their choices seem to be to cannibalise ancient art, or to create absurdly ugly art that “makes a statement”. They don't ask themselves or each other for depth or intensity, and most contemporary critics pretend not to miss them.”

Bly goes on to define an adult as “a person not governed by the demands for immediate pleasure, comfort and excitement.” And in confessional tone he says: “The adult quality that has been hardest for me, as a greedy person, to understand is renunciation. The older I get, the more beautiful the word renunciation seems to me.”

If Bly is right and I suspect he has a point, then we have the task of not only counteracting our own tendencies to shy away from everything uncomfortable, but also the task of going against a strong trend in the society around us. We need to be on our mettle. Nothing worthwhile is achieved without dedicated effort and willingness to endure whatever privations occur along the way. If we want to achieve anything worthwhile with our lives we need to learn to endure and thereby build stamina. Sangharakshita touches on this when he says: “Perhaps our daily routine should be such that we are strengthened rather than weakened. Not too many mornings lying in bed; not taking things too easily; not too many holidays; not too many visits to the cinema. Quite apart from the question of distraction, all this can be very weakening. Under modern conditions we can end up rather weak creatures if were not careful. We very rarely have to work hard day after day, week after week, month after month, as many people in the world still have to do just to survive. We very rarely work for the Dharma with that sort of vigour and indifference to hardship and discomfort.” (Complete Works,Vol.16,p.207) The elephant of endurance is not disturbed or perturbed or put off by a few criticisms or by people being difficult. Endurance depends on a higher vision which sustains us through the discomforts of spiritual development.

In the palm of his left hand Akshobya holds a vajra. The vajra symbolises a union of opposites. One end of the vajra represents the mental poisons and the other end the five Wisdoms. The vajra is also a symbol of great energy directed toward breaking through to Enlightenment. The negative quality associated with Akshobya is anger or hatred. So the vajra here is a representation of the transformation of hatred into wisdom and of the enormous energy that is released by that transformation. As Vessantara puts it in “Meeting the Buddhas” : “....hatred can be redirected and used to further our development. When we are experiencing it there is often a kind of clear, cold precision to the way in which we see the faults of things. It is a state completely devoid of sentimentality or vagueness. We just have to see what the real enemy is. Once we hate suffering and ignorance, and are hell-bent on destroying them, that energy leads us to Akshobya's Pure Land rather than into the hells of violence and despair.” We transform our anger through the practices of patience and forgiveness, thus releasing energy for further spiritual development.

Our anger and hatred is often born out of our fear and insecurity. It is a defence against all that threatens our egotism. By letting go of anger we allow ourselves to feel the fear and also paradoxically gain confidence in ourselves as spiritual beings. We can re-direct the energy of our anger into taking those small risks that enable us to go beyond our current limitations. In this way we can become more confident and secure in our individuality and less prone to taking offence or holding on to grudges. The vajra is a profoundly optimistic symbol, indicating not only that all negative emotions can be transformed in Transcendent Wisdom, but that the seeds of Wisdom lie in those very negative emotions. A similar idea is expressed by the fact that the lotus, symbolising transcendental attainment has its roots in the mud of mundane concerns.

The right hand of Akshobya touches the earth. We encountered the earth-touching mudra (bhumisparsa-mudra) in the previous talk on receptivity (Creative Listening).

There we saw that at the time of the Buddhas Enlightenment he was challenged by Mara to produce a witness to testify to his right to sit on the Vajrasana, the spot where all the Buddhas of the past had gained Enlightenment. In response, the Buddha touched the earth and the Earth Goddess arose and testified that he had practised the Perfections in hundreds of previous lives and was therefore entitled to sit on the Vajrasana. In more conceptual terms we are told elsewhere that at the time of his Enlightenment the Buddha was able to remember all his previous lives. This episode refers to an overcoming of all vestiges of doubt by referring back to the experience of practising virtuous conduct over many lifetimes. This is also a reference to the law of Karma which states that skilful activity has beneficial consequences for us. If we behave skilfully we can expect to experience the fruits of that activity at some time. At the time of his Enlightenment the Buddha was experiencing the fruition of his skilfulness over many lifetimes. We can be confident that if we want to achieve spiritual progress and happiness, the law of Karma guarantees our success so long as we make the effort. If we get into a mood of doubting or despondency, we can look back at whatever is positive in our lives and feel assured that it is not lost or wasted. We can use that as a new starting point to stabilise us. To touch the earth of our skilful actions is to gain confidence and stability. Perhaps sometimes we should literally touch the earth in a ritual manner to feel for ourselves the stabilising effect of the bhumisparsa-mudra and all that it symbolises. Try it sometime when you're sitting in meditation posture. In terms of Kshanti, we saw earlier that this is an aspect of receptivity. We could say it is receptivity to the immutable law of Karma.

The next aspect of Akshobya I would like to look at is the most important quality of all – the Mirror-like Wisdom. The essential quality of a Buddha is Wisdom and when we contemplate or meditate on an archetypal Buddha we are trying to open up to that Wisdom and allow it to permeate our whole being to the point where we become the Wisdom. When we contemplate Akshobya we are trying to make ourselves receptive to his essence, which is the Mirror-like wisdom. The Mirror-like Wisdom reflects absolutely faithfully everything that comes into contact with it. It sees everything just as it is, with no preferences, no judgments, no ideas added on. The mind which is suffused with the Mirror-like Wisdom is completely impartial. It feels no need to choose one thing above another, it is not affected by one thing more than another, just as a mirror reflects faithfully what ever is put in front of it and doesn't retain some reflections and reject others. The mind which has attained to the Mirror-like Wisdom has of course transcended all duality of subject and object. It has seen through the illusory nature of conditioned existence and is beyond all distinctions, even the distinction between Samsara and Nirvana.

Has this any relevance for us on our comparatively low level of spiritual insight? Is there any lesson we can take from the Wisdom of Akshobya and apply it to our lives right now? And how does this relate to Kshanti? There are two connections I would like to make which I think are relevant to us here and now. These are to do with the areas of clear thinking and objectivity. The Mirror-like Wisdom, in particular, puts me in mind of clarity of thought. It seems to emphasise the absence of vagueness or confusion.

The opposite of clear thinking is, of course, vague or woolly thinking, which isn't really thinking at all. Usually we just let our minds wander around, like slightly demented characters, picking up pits and pieces here and there. Then we construct all sorts of views and opinions out of these bits and pieces and imagine that we've had some ideas. Most of our ideas are not our own, but simply an amalgam of various things we've heard or read, put together by our conditioned prejudices, to create a world view that keeps us reasonably sane. One of the first things we need to do if we are to develop clear thinking is to become aware of the extent to which all out thinking is influenced by the conditions which have surrounded us since birth.

Although we may like to think of ourselves as independently minded and wise to the world, we are more likely to be completely immersed in views and ideas that we simply ingested from the world around us in the same way that we learnt to speak. In fact the analogy with learning to speak is not just an analogy, because the very language carries meaning and ideas in it which we accept unquestioningly until something erupts in our experience that makes us sit up and take notice. In Buddhist terms it is not sufficient however for us to analyse or deconstruct language. What we really need to do is develop greater mindfulness and try to filter all our thinking through the purifying insights of Right View. To do that we need to have Right View or at least know what Right View is.

There can be no real or fruitful communication in the Sangha if we are starting from different or even opposing world views. For instance, to give an absurd example, if your basic world view is that suffering will be brought to an end by the demise of Capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat and my basic world view is that the extinction of suffering depends on the individual making the effort to develop spiritually in co-operation with other like-minded individuals, then although we may seem to speaking the same language and even in broad agreement at times, in fact we will be worlds apart and not communicating at all.

In the Sangha we want to foster genuine communication and therefore we need to establish the basis of Right View and carry on our discussions in terms of Right View. To do this we have to make an attempt to weed out the wrong views that inevitably could our minds, because the world we live in is awash with them. There is a direct connection between reducing input and clear thinking. What we feed into our minds is what comes out as views and opinions If we feed our minds on a daily dose of news and media, that is what will have the biggest influence on our thinking. If we feast our minds on a daily repast of Buddhist scriptures and commentaries then they will begin to form the basis for our thinking and as Buddhists that would be an altogether healthier diet for us. It is not just the content of what we read that affects our thinking but also the style. If we read books that are written by people who can think clearly and express themselves clearly, that will help us to think clearly ourselves.

The topic of clear thinking is not unrelated to the topic of objectivity. To be objective we need to be able to distinguish opinions from facts. This is not necessarily very common. A simple example that is given is the way people say something like 'its a terrible day' when what they mean is 'its raining'. The terrible day is a value judgment and a matter of opinion. The rain is a fact. In order to be objective and therefore truthful we need to be able to tell what is a value judgment or opinion and what is a fact. So for instance when we use terms like always and ever as in “I'm always last to know what's going on” or “Nobody ever listens to me” we are probably being poetic rather than factual. But its important for us to realise that, otherwise we start to believe ourselves on an emotional level and that can have significant consequences. I'm not suggesting that we should never use idiomatic speech, but rather that we should try to be clear about what is subjective and what is objective in our communication.

Often we hold very strongly to our views and this is for very subjective, emotional reasons and one way of beginning to loosen our attachment to views is to start to see the element of subjectivity and emotionality and try to distinguish that from what is objective and factual. The basic wrong view that we all suffer under is the view that we are a separate self or ego-identity and this conditions most of out other views. This sense of separate selfhood, as I said in the first talk in this series (The Antidote to Snakebite), is the fundamental prejudice from which all others flow. To begin to undermine or attenuate this view we need to approach it from many angles. We need to cultivate self-metta, we need to practise generosity, we need to immerse ourselves in Buddhist study, we need to experience solitude and we need to make an effort to distinguish what is objective from what is subjective in our thoughts and words. If we achieve greater clarity we will be able to practise greater tolerance towards those who are different from us and those we disagree with, without being vague or woolly or compromising our real beliefs.

The Mirror-like Wisdom of Akshobya is neither subjective nor objective. It is Transcendental and therefore beyond views altogether. Here Reality is experience, experience is Reality. As Vessantara puts it in Meeting the Buddhas – when we enter the mandala “we see the deep blue figure of the Immutable Buddha, holding the thunderbolt sceptre of Reality which smashes through all our ideas and concepts about it. At the same time the dark blue fingertips of his right hand touch the earth, the earth of direct experience, which is the only thing upon which any of us can finally rely.”

To finish off this series of talks on Kshanti I will just leave on the mountain peak of the Diamond Sutra with its description of the highest level of Kshanti-Paramita. This is what it says, “Moreover, Subhuti, the Tathagatas perfection of patience is really no perfection. And why? Because, Subhuti, when the king of Kalinga cut my flesh from every limb, at that time I had no perception of a self, of a being, of a soul, or a person. And why? If, Subhuti, at that time I had a perception of a self, I would also have had a perception of ill-will at that time. And so, if I had had a perception of a being, of a soul, or of a person. With my superknowledge I recall that in the past I have for five hundred births led the life of a sage devoted to patience. Then also have I had no perception of a self, a being, a soul, or a person.”

The Power of the Precepts

A talk given at the Men’s National Order Weekend, Padmaloka, November 1997

I was asked to give a practical talk on our practice of the Precepts in the Triratna Order and how we might improve it. The first question that occurred to me was: am I in any position to assess our practice of the Precepts in the Order? And if I am to give practical suggestions on how to improve it, what is practical? What might be practical for one person might be impractical for another. We do recognise the principle of spiritual hierarchy so what might be practical for one Order member might not be practical for another, who has perhaps just been ordained. So there are some problems with this brief to give a practical talk on our practice of the Precepts in the Order and how we might improve it.

The theme of this weekend arose out of the talk that Bhante Sangharakshita gave on the Order Convention. In the course of that talk he said: “I sometimes get the impression that not all Order members are as scrupulous, shall we say, about the observance of the ten Precepts as they might be.” Rather than trying to assess for myself what the state of our practice of the Precepts is I am just going to accept Bhante’s comment as an accurate assessment of where the Order is at in terms of the observance of the Precepts, i.e. not sufficiently scrupulous.

To give a practical talk on how we could improve our practice of the Precepts means to give a practical talk on how we could be more scrupulous in our practice of the Precepts. So what does it mean to be scrupulous? According to a dictionary I consulted scrupulous means the same as punctilious, which means of course giving attention to detail. So this is the meaning I am going to concentrate on in the talk. I am going to attempt to make a few practical suggestions about how we could give more attention to detail in our ethical lives. How we could be more punctilious in our observance of the ten Precepts.

I am going to do this first of all by looking at some things which I think hinder us, which are obstacles to our ethical practice. And then I am going to make some suggestions about the individual Precepts. Whether my suggestions are practical or not I will leave up to you to decide.

What prevents us from being scrupulous in our observance of the Precepts? I would like to suggest there are three things in particular that hold us back from giving more attention to detail in our ethical lives: firstly, God, secondly, the comfort culture, and thirdly, psychological problems. Obviously these three are intimately connected with each other, but I am going to consider them separately just to see if we can learn anything from a closer look.

God

Now Order members don’t believe in God as far as I am aware. However, the concept of an all-powerful omniscient deity who has to be obeyed under threat of terrible punishment is a concept that has gripped and shaped our collective psyche for many generations. And it is a concept that still carries enormous power in the world around us and has affected many if not all of us, and affected us deeply. As Buddhists we have to free ourselves from the powerful grip of this God concept. What this often means is blasphemy and rebellion against authority. To be free to live a truly spiritual life we have to stop being the obedient children of this tyrannical father God. So we learn disobedience. Just, as in the same way adolescents rebel against their parents in their bid for the freedom of adulthood, so, disobedience to God and to the decrees of God is the adolescent stage of the spiritual life. And as such it is an important and essential stage of the spiritual life.

Now it is easy to fool ourselves that we are free from the fear of God and free from the grip of this God concept when in fact we may still be simply in the stage of adolescent rebellion against it. And when we are in this stage of rebellion we may see the power of the tyrant, as it were, all about us. We have antennae that read everything in terms of authority or freedom. And anything that smacks of authority is to be rejected. We may be like the adolescent who rejects everything that is to do with the past, maybe rejects all art and music or literature of past generations, because it is associated with the past, and in that way throwing out the baby of excellence, as it were, with the bathwater of restrictions.

When it comes to this area of ethics we definitely have no time for commandments. That is hardly surprising. And we are definitely in favour of ethical principles. But there is a huge ground between commandments on the one hand, and ethical principles on the other. And this ground is filled with things like vows, resolutions, rules, personal precepts and confession. And in this middle ground between commandments and principles we can sometimes make the mistake of associating these rules or personal precepts or resolutions or confessions with authority. And in our eagerness to reject authority we depotentiate our practice of the Precepts.

To be scrupulous, to be punctilious, in our practice of the Precepts might mean placing restrictions on ourselves. It might mean a certain amount of condemnation even, or at least passing an unfavourable judgement on our actions. But restriction, judgement, are authoritarian and we can’t have that! Sometimes we will shy away from a scrupulous detailed observance of the Precepts and stay in the safer ground of broad principles. And that safer ground of broad principles can allow us a huge freedom to rationalise and even be complacent. I think many of us may have difficulties with authority or anything that smacks of authority, difficulties which come out of our struggle to free ourselves of the tyranny of a cranky deity. But these difficulties can also hinder us in our punctilious, and scrupulous, practice of the Precepts.

I don’t have any quick answer to this. If someone has difficulty with authority, is frequently upset about what some authority is telling them to do, even some authority perhaps in the Order, then I would say they need to begin by acknowledging to themselves that they are probably still in this phase of rebellion and consider, with the help of their friends, how they are going to move on to the stage of a more genuine freedom and individuality. To be in a sort of unthinking rebellion against authority is to be in the grip of authority as much as being in unthinking conformity.

The Comfort Culture

In many ways the comfort culture may be the mundane world’s rebellion against the restrictive God concept. The comfort culture is the culture of consumerism, of shop 'til you drop, the culture of image, designer happiness, accumulation, hype and excitement. And the comfort culture is what we are surrounded by–it is the strongest, most prevalent idea in the word around us. It is so pervasive that it is hardly noticeable; it is hardly noticeable as a phenomenon, it is just the way things are. The comfort culture sells images of satisfaction. And the more we expose ourselves to it the more affected we become by these images of satisfaction. And the more we are affected by the images of satisfaction that are purveyed by the comfort culture the more our behaviour becomes determined by them. We pursue the images of satisfaction and we pursue those images by consuming the objects associated with those images: the objects are cars, computers, hifi, mobile phones, the latest, the best, the biggest, the fastest, the most horsepower, the most RAM, all that. And in this way we get into the excitement of the comfort culture which can, it seems, satisfy every desire and create a hundred more. So excitement is satisfaction in that world. To be alive is to be excited by something. To want something and to buy and consume is satisfaction. And this is the world we live in, this is the world that tries to embrace us in its seductive arms all the time. And we fall for it, we love it.

Our love for these images of satisfaction can become a real obstacle to a scrupulous observance of the Precepts because our greed can so quickly and so easily be rationalised into a need. We don’t just want the latest or the biggest or the best computer or smartphone, for instance, we need it. It is faster and of course it will save time for more Dharmic things, won’t it? Kulananda talks about that particular example in his book Western Buddhism, he calls it techno-lust. I am sure you can think of your own examples. There is a need for particular kinds of clothing, there is a need for special haircuts, or whatever.

In the face of the comfort culture, it might be a good idea for us to value boredom more. Because the comfort culture is all to do with excitement, to be alive is to be excited as it were, it might do for us to value boredom and in that way wean ourselves off this sort of excitement that is valued around us.

Psychological Problems

In my time involved in the Triratna Community I would say there is one main psychological difficulty which I have observed as affecting most strongly people’s ability to practise anything–to practise ethics, meditation or friendship–and that difficulty is simply self-hatred, self-hatred in all its forms and manifestations. I am constantly in contact with newcomers, regulars, Mitras, Mitras who have asked for ordination, and Order members, and I have observed that this self-hatred in one form or another is what hinders most people on the spiritual path. And I have seen this among Order members, even quite senior Order members.

In terms of ethical practice, self-hatred seems to badly affect anyone’s ability to give, to communicate, and makes it difficult to practice any of the Precepts. It seems to me that self-metta is absolutely fundamental to the practice of the Precepts, especially at the level of effective Going for Refuge. Because I think to Go for Refuge effectively requires that the Precepts are more than just a discipline. We need to practise the Precepts from the heart. And that means having a heart that is warmed by metta. I think we need to take very seriously the development of metta. Do we experience self-metta? If not, what are we doing about it? What is self-metta anyway? Sometimes I have noticed that people can have a an unrealistic notion about metta as if it were some sort of powerful peak experience that could only be sustained for a short time. Or alternatively, some people have a sort of overly sentimental idea of metta as some sort of all-embracing mother love that doesn’t discriminate, isn’t critical. I would say that self-metta is a realistic self-appraisal in a spirit of good will and in a context of development. With an experience of self-metta we can be critical of ourselves without undermining ourselves, we can be proud of our achievements without being big headed. All that is required is a realistic self-appraisal in a spirit of good will. And I think without that we can remain for a long time on a sort of roller-coaster of feelings of inferiority, superiority, equality, ill will, intoxication, passivity, and so on. A lack of self-metta is definitely an obstacle to practising the Precepts and so we should give serious attention to the development of metta if we want to be more scrupulous in our observance of the ten Precepts.

Motivation

So far I have just mentioned a few things which I think are hindrances to ethical practice. So what can we do? I think, as with so many things, if we are to really change anything we need to be motivated. If our heart is not in it there will be little change. As Bhante Sangharakshita puts it: “the central problem of the spiritual life is finding emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding”. Assuming that we have an intellectual understanding that we need to be more scrupulous in our observance of the Precepts, what then is the emotional equivalent of that understanding? I would say that we need to be able to relate the detailed practice of the Precepts to our own happiness firstly, and secondly to the compassionate work of the Order.

If we can see how we personally benefit from a scrupulous practice of the Precepts, how we attain happiness through ethical thoroughness, then we will be motivated, our heart will be in it and we may even take action to change something. If we cannot see how we can benefit from a more scrupulous observance of the Precepts then we will have little motivation to extend ourselves in that area. And we probably won’t change anything. We need to have a clear heartfelt sense of where our own benefit lies if we are to make the changes that a more scrupulous observance of the Precepts would demand.

And we also need to be able to make a definite, direct connection between the compassionate work of the Order and a more scrupulous ethical practice. The compassionate work of the Order involves making the Dharma available to all who wish to respond to it. And to this end we establish Centres, communities, businesses and we teach meditation and Buddhism.

Sometimes we see the work of the Order as teaching the Dharma, spreading the Dharma. I would like to make a distinction between teaching the Dharma and teaching about Buddhism. I think there is a definite place for teaching about Buddhism, but essentially the compassionate work of the Order is to teach the Dharma. And the difference between the two is that you can teach about Buddhism without the need to exemplify it, but you have to exemplify it in order to teach the Dharma. The best way to teach the Dharma is to exemplify it. Sometimes we may have to talk about Enlightenment or shunyata or whatever and we can only repeat what Buddhist tradition or Bhante have to say, but our most effective Dharma teaching I think is not what we say but what we do, how we live our lives. I think Dharma teaching without exemplification can have a very hollow sound.

It is in the small things of our lives, the details of how we live our lives–what we read, how we conduct our relationships, what our attitude is to the washing-up, or whatever–that others can see the Dharma manifesting. And that is why a scrupulous observance of the Precepts is essential to the compassionate work of the Order. If we are not scrupulous in this area then our ability to spread the Dharma is compromised and by association the ability of the Order to spread the Dharma is weakened. Our love of the Dharma and our desire to introduce others to it can be a strong motivation to a more detailed, a more punctilious, practice of the Precepts. To be strongly motivated, to find this emotional equivalent to our intellectual understanding, we need to be able to relate the observance of the Precepts to our personal Myth, as it were, and to the Myth of the Order.

The First Precept

I spoke about metta earlier, specifically self-metta. And I think the most practical thing that any of us can do in relation to the first Precept is to ensure that our predominant attitude towards ourselves is one of metta. And to do this we need to take practical steps, apart from the obvious one of doing the metta bhavana practice. For instance, we need to be willing to take responsibility for our own mental states. Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this to a gathering of Order members, however I have frequently encountered Order members who blame their negative mental states on other people or on the world about them. For instance, sometimes Order members experience loneliness and isolation–and they don’t seem to accept that it is their own responsibility to do something about that. To continue to inhabit that sort of mental state I think is a fairly gross form of selfishness, and to continue for years I think is quite irresponsible. Similarly I think with fear and anger and so on. We need to be responsible and to act responsibly with regard to our own mental states. And of course we need to take responsibility for ensuring our own relative happiness and positivity.

I think another area to look at in relation to the first Precept is the area of disputes, especially disputes or falling out between Order members. I think we can expect Order members to disagree, we can expect Order members even to strongly disagree, we can expect Order members to upset each other, we can expect Order members to take offence and to fall out. We can expect all of that because most Order members are still imprisoned, as it were, by egotism to a fairly strong degree. However, even though we can expect Order members to have arguments and rows and to fall out I think we can also expect, and indeed I think we must expect, Order members to quite quickly come to the point of forgiveness and apology. Because forgiveness is essential to the health and long life of the Order. And forgiveness also should definitely not be dependant on apology. If we are in a state of mind where we feel unforgiving towards another Order member, or indeed towards anyone, we need to do all we can to get to the point of being able to forgive. We must forgive, we should forgive, we have to forgive. The Order is more important than our pride or our feelings of hurt. And the unity of the Order is more important than our rows or our arguments or even our opinions.

As a practical suggestion I would suggest that we should not be out of harmony with another Order member for more than three months. I think three months is too long but making allowances for weakness of character let’s say three months. After three months you should be ready to forgive. If you are not then you need to enlist the help of your Chapter and your spiritual friends just to get you to the point of forgiveness. Perhaps also reading or studying the Bodhicaryavatara, which has a lot to say about forgiveness and is quite uncompromising about it.

In Sukhavati community where I live we do a ritual of a forgiveness ceremony whenever someone leaves the community. And I suggest that every Chapter could do a ritual forgiveness ceremony, maybe annually, or even every six months. In our ceremony, in the context of a metta bhavana, or after a metta bhavana, one person stands up and goes to each other person in turn and says, ‘I forgive you for any harm you may have caused me and I ask you to forgive me for any harm I may have caused you’. And the other person says, ‘I forgive you’. So it is quite simple. But it is also quite a strong ritual; it does have an effect. In a Chapter each person could take a turn to stand up and go around the circle asking and offering forgiveness. This can, as I said, be a strong ritual and I think has a very beneficial effect.

One final suggestion with regard to the first Precept. We see vegetarianism as an extension of the principle of the first Precept, non-harmimg. The reason we don’t eat sausages and so on is because we would consider that as giving support to an industry that harms living beings. And vegans apply that to dairy products also. Now I think the same principle applies to the consumption of alcohol. If we drink alcohol we are giving support to an industry that causes a lot of harm, a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, to living beings. I think alcohol tends to cause most harm to human beings, who are higher up on the hierarchy of consciousness. It could therefore be argued that alcohol, and the alcohol industry, cause greater harm than the meat industry, and that drinking alcohol is therefore a greater contradiction to the principle of the first Precept, the principle of loving kindness, even than the consumption of meat. So I would say that if we seriously want to be more scrupulous in our observance of the Precepts we should not drink alcohol at all. (I think there are other arguments against alcohol as well, to do with land usage and so on, which I won’t go into now.)

The Second Precept

The second Precept is about our relationship to possessions and the whole notion of ownership. Bhante has made it quite clear that the ideal for the Order is common ownership. He has also said that a step on the way to common ownership and to loosening our attachment to possessions is to share the use of what we own. I think some people do try to move towards this ideal of common ownership, although by its nature it is not realisable unless more and more of us take it seriously.

However, I don’t want to talk about how we own things but rather about what we own. I think that a simple lifestyle in terms of fewness of possessions is an implication of the second Precept. I said earlier that we are constantly being seduced and tempted by the comfort culture around us. We are being encouraged and induced into accumulating things, our greed is encouraged, we are told over and over again that we need more, we need more of everything, we need bigger, better, faster things. Without them our lives can only be dull, boring, unsatisfying. Whereas with more things, more possessions, more devices, more toys, we will have an exciting, vibrant, fulfilling life. Now the message of the Dharma, as I understand it, is the opposite of this: it leads to frugality.

I think we need to be more scrupulous about what we do with our money if we wish to be more scrupulous in our observance of the second Precept. The accumulation of possessions is ungenerous. We need to identify what our needs are and try to give up our greeds as it were, our greedy addictions. All Order members could take the very practical step of giving up cigarettes, alcohol and leisure drugs. I think the consumption of these things just sullies the purity of your own mind and body and it also besmirches the purity of the Order.

We need to be careful not to succumb to the advertised reality around us, which in many ways is anathema to the Dharma. We need to question ourselves whenever we spend money. I think even when we contemplate spending, say, more than £10 or £20 we should question ourselves. We need to gradually adopt the more revolutionary lifestyle of few possessions, of non-accumulation and of sharing. And our surplus should be spent in such a way as to promote the message of the Dharma and specifically the message of Bhante Sangharakshita.

These are all very practical suggestions which would involve us in a more scrupulous, a more detailed, attention to large areas of our lives. And just to add to this, I would expect that those who take the Anagarika vow would lead the way in this and exemplify the simple life quite fully.

The Third Precept

I just want to make one practical suggestion in relation to the third Precept, and that is with regard to the beginning and ending of sexual relationships. I think there should be a sort of etiquette or protocol in the Order and in the movement with regard to starting and finishing sexual relationships. Firstly, I think any Order member whose sexual relationship finishes should leave a period of say six months or so before starting another one. Secondly, when you are about to start a new sexual relationship I think you should find out who the person was involved with before. If it was someone in the Triratna Community go and talk to them, let them know what is happening, just as a matter of courtesy even. Thirdly, allow a period of time to get to know somebody before getting involved in a sexual relationship.

I spoke to Bhante about this last year and he said that he thought people were too quick to start having sex rather than getting to know each other first. He was advocating that they get to know each other first, which I think is advocating a sort of period of courtship. And fourthly, before getting involved in a new relationship I think it is a good idea to consult with your friends and Chapter members as to whether they think this particular person is suitable for you and whether you should be getting involved in a relationship at this particular time.

The Speech Precepts

Moving on to the speech Precepts. The Buddha spoke of five kinds of Right Speech: seasonable speech, kindly speech, meaningful speech, harmonising speech and truthful speech.

First of all, I want to recommend seasonable speech. This could be seen as an aspect of kindly or harmonising speech. Seasonable speech means of course speaking in the right season or at the right time. So it is appropriate speech. And to speak in this way requires awareness of others. Often when we speak, what is happening is simply the sound of our own selfishness. It is difficult to pinpoint or give examples of seasonable speech because by definition it applies to particular persons, places, times and so on. But perhaps an example that most Order members are familiar with is that of critical feedback after a talk. If someone gives a talk and you feel they have made mistakes or they have done a really bad job or they could improve a bit here and there, it would of course be good to let them know in time. I think it is necessary though to be sensitive to people, especially if someone is perhaps inexperienced or a bit nervous about speaking. I think it would be unnecessary and insensitive to criticise someone’s talk immediately after they have finished speaking. You can always wait. I think it would show a lack of empathy or even an over-obsession with our own opinions. I have come across examples of fairly gross insensitivity in this area which is why I mention it.

But seasonable speech applies all the time. And as I said, it is a question of maintaining awareness of others so that we can be appropriate. Giving feedback to Mitras is another area where seasonable speech is extremely important. It is not necessary, it is not even helpful, to tell Mitras everything we think about them right now. And especially not if we don’t have a friendship with them.

With regard to truthful speech I just want to mention one area and that is money. I have noticed that some people, and this includes Order members, seem to exaggerate quite a lot with regard to money. For instance, I have heard people say, ‘I have no money’, when it was obviously not true. I have heard people say they couldn’t afford something such as going on an Order Weekend or a retreat when what they actually meant was that they want to spend their money on other things. I know money and our relationship to money is a very complex thing, but I think the least we could do is to be factually accurate when we communicate with each other about money. So let’s say, ‘I have £20, £50’, or whatever, rather than, ‘I have no money’, unless we actually mean that we have no money.

With regard to harsh speech I want to follow Bhante, I want to mention swearing. Bhante does this in the Ten Pillars of Buddhism. There are still Order members who swear. Why is this? One reason that sometimes is given is that it is part of someone’s conditioning, usually working-class conditioning, it is just a natural way to speak. Another reason given is that it is the way to express strong emotion, strong feeling.

As regards working-class conditioning I think it is pretty pathetic for any Order member to continue to identify themselves in those terms. I myself come from a background which could be described as working-class, or at least aspiring in that direction, where swearing was very common for me. Certainly as an adolescent I would have been swearing constantly and later in my twenties, I mixed with Irish building workers in the pubs of Camden Town and Cricklewood and it was unlikely for a sentence to pass without a swear word, or actually several swear words. I think adolescent swearing, like adolescent smoking or adolescent drinking, is an understandable sort of bravado or machismo by which young boys try to push themselves through to manhood. The swearing of building workers and others is often just an extension of adolescent bravado. Because often these men are people who haven’t quite grown up, whose confidence needs to be constantly bolstered up by swearing, by drinking, by smoking. I think I grew up a bit and grew out of the need for swearing (and, as it happens, cigarettes and alcohol). But do Order members still need to exhibit this sort of swaggering bravado of adolescence by swearing? Is it a rebellion against some sort of imagined authority? Or is it in the interests of cultural authenticity? I think there is not much that is authentic about swearing actually. In my opinion it is always a sort of facade for something else, for lack of confidence or even for verbal insufficiency let’s say.

The argument that swearing expresses strong feeling doesn’t really wash with me either. It is more likely to be the opposite I think, it can be used to give the impression that strong feeling is being expressed. It is like people using words like ‘fantastic’ or ‘brilliant’ or ‘magnificent’; if they use these words a lot after a while you realise that they are not expressing strong feeling, what they are doing is desperately trying to experience some feeling. The words are signalling what they would like to feel rather than what they actually do feel. I think, similarly, swearing indicates a desire to feel strongly but doesn’t necessarily indicate strong feeling. It is more like an actor’s technique. Anyway, my practical suggestion is that we just drop it. We don’t need to swear in the Order, it is unnecessary and it is uncouth.

I don’t have any specific suggestions to make about the Precept of meaningful speech. I just note in passing that our Order, our movement, is multicultural and it is becoming more and more so all the time. Just to mention one thing: humour is often very culture specific. So we need to be aware that what we find funny may not be funny to other people. And it is not due to some terrible deficiency on their part necessarily, it might be due to some deficiency on our part that we make such parochial jokes.

I think harmonising speech is probably the most effective use we can put our tongues to. The Sangha thrives on harmonising speech and we should practise it as often as we can, both in speech and in writing. Especially we should take every opportunity to pass on any compliments or any praise that we have heard about someone else.

I think we should not say anything about another Order member that we would not be willing to say to them, unless there is an extremely good reason. Backbiting, slander and rumour-mongering still sometimes occur in the Order. And this is very disruptive to the spirit of the Order. The spirit of the Order is a spirit of trust and generosity. If we have a criticism of a fellow Order member we should talk to them about it, not tell others about it, and certainly not publish it in Shabda. For one thing I think our perceptions may not always be entirely objective. If another Order member has been unskilful and has been unkind to us, what would be the reason for telling everybody, for publishing it widely? Is it to damage their reputation? Is it to get revenge? The principles of the Dharma demand that we forgive. The principles of the Dharma demand that we counter unkindness and unskilfulness with metta and skilfulness. There is no excuse for slander or backbiting. I think they are particularly damaging to the trust that the Order depends on.

What we say makes a difference, and we want it to make a positive difference rather than an undermining or a disruptive difference. We need to be quite punctilious about our speech. The timing, the tone, the appropriateness to our listeners, and our motivations, all need to come under scrutiny. We all have a way to go. Perhaps the first step is just taking seriously the fact that our words do have an effect.

The Mind Precepts

I don’t know if there is much of a practical nature that I can say about the mind Precepts. With the Precept on tranquillity I would simply like to suggest that we acknowledge our tendency to distraction and grasping and consider what ways we can refine our distractions, or focus our grasping on something more worthwhile. If we are distracted by computers or smartphones, to use that example again and we crave all the latest updates of software, hardware and so on, perhaps we could shift our interest slightly, shift our interest perhaps to more philosophical questions like the Dharmic implications of information technology for instance, or how the soul of humanity is coping with the impact of scientific progress. We could try to actually think creatively from a Dharmic perspective about what we are involved in rather than just being swine-like consumers of whatever is served up by international corporations to us. And we could refine our sexual cravings by pursuit of beauty–this is commonly spoken about in the Order–through the arts, especially through attempting creative activity ourselves, creative writing, painting, pottery, sculpture, or whatever. The basic point is to attempt to refine our distractions as a way to become less distracted and more creative.

The ninth Precept asks us to change hatred into compassion. I would just like to use it as an opportunity to reiterate the importance of forgiveness. In the Sangha we have to forgive each other, there is no alternative. If you are harbouring any grudges or nursing any feelings of resentment or feeling offended you are not contributing to the welfare of the Sangha. The unity of the Sangha is of supreme importance, it is through the Sangha that the Dharma can be effectively communicated, both verbally and by exemplification, and it is through the Sangha that we can gain insight into the reality of transcendent consciousness. Now forgiveness is not easy, we need to work at making it a habit. If we feel offended and find ourselves in mental states of ill will or resentment the creative way forward is to forgive. Until we forgive we can’t really engage in any constructive dialogue, even if the person who offended us was unskilful or even in the wrong. If we are someone who frequently finds ourselves annoyed, irritated, angry, we need to see that that is our problem. If we frequently get hot under the collar about something or other then we need to take a good look under our collar. Our anger and ill will is our problem, it is not some one else’s, and in the Sangha forgiveness is our only constructive creative course of action.

The tenth Precept: transforming ignorance into wisdom, or refraining from wrong views. Now Bhante has actually given some quite practical and useful advice in relation to this precept in the Ten Pillars of Buddhism so I won’t repeat that. I just want to mention a few things about how we view ourselves. Sometimes I think people get caught in a particular view of themselves because of the language they use. The language they use and the mental models they have can be too static, not as dynamic as a Dharmic view needs to be. For instance, when we talk about our unconscious we can have a static view of an actually existing unconscious, a bit like a box with lots of things locked inside. Or we can have a static view of the past, seeing our memories in terms that are too concrete. Or we can have a static view of ‘my ego’, ‘my anger’, ‘my greed’. Through over familiarity with the language these things can take on the status of existing entities as it were. But memories are dynamic, the past didn’t just happen to us, we happened to the past as well. And we continue to affect the past, just as past events may continue to affect us. What we are unconscious of is always changing, we move in and out of consciousness. Similarly, our responses of anger or greed or generosity or whatever, are very fluid, very complex. I think we could even try to view ourselves in dynamic terms and to speak of ourselves as a process, as a continuum of responses, skilful, unskilful, creative, reactive. We are always changing, always in process, and we need to recognise this in the language we use to describe our experience and in the models we use to think about ourselves.

Language is metaphor, and metaphor has the power to shape the world. The word, as it were, is always made flesh and therefore we need to use the words appropriate to the ideas that we want to see taking flesh in the world. A practical way to work at changing wrong views is to work at changing the way we talk about our experience, so we use a dynamic language, a language of process. Let us speak in terms of how we are responding to events and people, and in terms of choosing our responses, rather than in terms of our unconscious or our ego or our unfortunate past, or whatever. We can use language and models of thinking that liberate us, liberate us to change, or we could use models and language that confine us. The Buddhist view of the universe is dynamic: conditioned co-production is a dynamic ever-changing model, unlike for instance the theistic model with its strangely fixed elements. Our world and its language and its metaphors has been heavily influenced by a theistic world view and we need to consciously work against that to change our view of ourselves and to change ourselves. My practical suggestion for the tenth Precept is that we look closely at the words we use to talk about our experience and the models we use to think about ourselves.

Conclusion

I said earlier on that we will only take action to become more scrupulous in our observance of the ten Precepts if we feel motivated, if we find emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding. Now, as Order members, most of us are motivated by the aspiration to Go for Refuge, to deepen and strengthen the effect on us of our Going for Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. According to Bhante: “The relation between one’s Going for Refuge and one’s observance of the Precepts is an organic one, observance of the Precepts being as much an expression of Going for Refuge as the flower is an expression of the seed or his oeuvre an expression of the writer or artist. ... Going for Refuge, or commitment to the Three Jewels, is one’s life-blood as a Buddhist. Observance of the Precepts represents the circulation of that blood through every fibre of one’s being. By its very nature blood must circulate. If it does not circulate this means that the organism to which it belongs is dead, and that the blood itself, stagnating, will soon cease to be blood. Similarly, by its very nature the Going for Refuge must find expression in the observance of the Precepts. If it does not find such expression this means that as a Buddhist one is virtually dead and that the Going for Refuge itself, becoming more and more mechanical, will soon cease to be effectively such.” (The Ten Pillars of Buddhism, pages 20-21)

If we are motivated to Go for Refuge effectively that necessarily means that we need to be motivated to deepen and strengthen our observance of the Precepts. To deepen and strengthen our observance of the Precepts we need to pay attention to the details of how we practice the Precepts, we need to be ethically scrupulous. And according to Bhante Sangharakshita, or according to my précis of Bhante, we are not yet sufficiently scrupulous in our observance of the Precepts.

Creative Listening

This is the fifth chapter of my booklet Kshanti, originally given as part of a series of talks at the London Buddhist Centre in 1997

Receptivity requires energy and effort. It is perhaps understandable that receptivity should be thought of as passive. You don't have to make an effort to receive. Or so we think, at least. But what about receiving criticism or praise, don't we have to make an effort to listen to what is being said and remain open to it?

Receptivity as an aspect of Kshanti is receptivity to the Buddha’s teaching. Creative listening or creative reading is listening or reading in a way that is not passive. It means actively engaging with whatever is being heard or read, asking oneself how does it apply to me, how is it related to the actual practice of the spiritual life.

Receptivity presupposes something worth receiving and somebody capable of expounding it. To be receptive therefore we need to have faith in the Buddha’s teaching (the Dharma), faith that it does emanate from a higher state of consciousness, and also faith in spiritual hierarchy, faith that there are those who are more spiritually developed than we are, who have understood and experienced the Dharma more deeply. Sraddha, which is faith in the Buddhist sense, is based on intuition, reason, and experience. Our initial intuition is later confirmed by our reason and experience and this gives rise to even greater faith. Our faith in the Dharma is initially an intuition. There is a response in us, something resonates with our experience, it feels true. Later, after some practice we know that it works from our own experience. And reasoning from this we can deduce that even more is possible. The Dharma is not just words or concepts however. It is a living thing. It manifests in the lives of individuals. Our faith is also based on seeing that there are some individuals, who as a result of practising the Dharma are more aware and more friendly what we are. Or it may be that we feel there is something about people who practise the Dharma which we like, even though we don't quite know what it is. And we want to discover more. We want to experience for ourselves the benefits of the Dharma. So we listen, we learn, we practise. We try to be receptive to what we read and to what we hear from those we respect and look up to. We acknowledge that we have something to learn and that there are people who can teach us both by their words and by their behaviour. We acknowledge the existence of a spiritual hierarchy, a hierarchy of spiritual development.

Spiritual hierarchy is not a matter of titles or status. That is ecclesiastical hierarchy. Until Insight is attained it is possible for people to fall back to a lower level. It is quite difficult to see spiritual hierarchy. Spiritual hierarchy manifests in how someone behaves and how they are. It is not about what people say necessarily, although what people say and how they say it may give some indication of their spiritual development. If someone is manipulative, exploitative, harsh, unkind, greedy, deceiving or boastful about their attainments then we can be sure that they are not particularly spiritually developed. On the other hand if someone is mindful, kind, generous, truthful and objective then they are more likely to be spiritually experienced. However it is not easy to judge whether someone is compassionate, aware and earnestly striving unless we know them very well. And even then, unless we ourselves are on the same level of spiritual development or a higher level we may not be able to really know how developed someone is. This is why it is sometimes said in traditional Buddhism, that the disciple doesn't choose the guru, but rather the guru chooses the disciple, by which is meant that the disciple is in no position to recognise the guru. We don't need to be in contact with someone who is vastly more spiritually developed in order to make progress. We just need someone who is a little bit more experienced than us, who can give us a helping hand. But we do need to have someone to look up to, someone we consider more spiritually developed, otherwise the Dharma is dead. If we have faith in the Dharma and faith in spiritual hierarchy, we can practise receptivity.

Of course we can be receptive in a more ordinary sense to our friends who are on the same level as us, spiritually speaking. Sometimes an ordinary friend can point things out to us or give us a different perspective, especially when we are in a mood. We can learn from all sorts of people and situations if we are receptive enough, if our responses are creative enough. There are lessons about impermanence and suffering confronting us all the time, if we care to look. What can you learn by observing your parents? What can you learn by observing your children? What can you learn from your responses to various stimuli as you walk down the street? What can you learn about yourself from your attitudes to food, money, sex, clothing and so on? If you are listening creatively, the world is all the time teaching its lessons.

We can also be receptive to ourselves in the sense of acknowledging and reflecting on our experience and achievements. This is a good way to build confidence and self-metta. At the time of the Buddha’s Enlightenment it is said that he was attacked by Mara and tempted by Mara (the personification of evil) and when this failed to disrupt or disturb him, Mara tried a different tack. He said, ‘What right have you to sit here on the spot where the Buddhas of the past have sat, who do you think you are?’ The Buddha’s response was to touch the earth and when he touched the earth, the Earth Goddess arose and she testified that the Buddha had practised spiritual virtues for many lifetimes and was therefore ready to sit on the vajrasana, the throne of Enlightenment. We could understand this attack by Mara to mean that at the time of Enlightenment there arose in the Buddha’s mind thoughts of hatred, craving and doubt and he dealt with them by suffusing them with awareness. He overcame the doubt by referring back to his experience and achievements. We can do this too. We can look back on our experience and achievements and gain confidence from them. In this way we can be receptive to ourselves and make creative use of our lives.

There are many different elements to receptivity. There is entreaty and supplication, as in the Sevenfold Puja. (1) There is listening, reflecting and meditating, shruta-mayi prajna, chinta-mayi prajna and bhavana-mayi prajna; the three kinds of wisdom. There is self-examination and self- questioning. There is scepticism as opposed to cynicism. And there is humiliation through contact with Reality.

The sevenfold Puja is a Buddhist ritual which is performed regularly to cultivate spiritual emotions. The seven stages are recognition of the Ideal, devotion, dedication, confession, rejoicing, receptivity and giving up personal gain. The sixth stage, the stage of receptivity, is called Entreaty and Supplication. In this section of the puja, what we are doing in effect is asking for a teaching. We are declaring our receptivity to the Dharma. Of course it is not enough to say we are receptive, we have to actually be receptive. Sometimes we ask questions as a way of avoiding the truth rather than penetrating deeper into it. Being receptive to the Dharma is not simply a matter of acquiring more knowledge, it is more a case of being willing to change as a result of the new insights we gain from hearing the Dharma. It is not easy to have an open mind and an open heart. Our fear and insecurity urges us to put up defences and be closed to whatever disturbs the status quo. Our intellectual arrogance leads us to think we have understood the Dharma before we have allowed the meaning to touch us. It is easy to understand the words but miss the point. So when we are asking to hear the Dharma, whether at the Entreaty and Supplication stage of the puja of in a study group, we need to be genuinely open to the message of the

Dharma, which means recognising the fears, insecurity and arrogance that keep us closed and suspending our prejudices for a while. There is a story from the Zen tradition about a professor who visits a Zen master to ask some question. After they've spoken a little the Zen master offers him some tea, which the professor gladly accepts. The Zen master begins to pour the tea and he keeps pouring and the tea rises to the rim of the cup and over the rim and he keeps pouring. The professor is astonished at this and he watches the tea come up over the rim of the saucer and start to flow onto the table. Eventually, unable to hold himself back, he says rather loudly, ‘My cup is full, you can’t get any more in.’ And the Zen master looked straight at him, the way Zen masters always do in these stories and said, ‘Yes, exactly, your cup is full, come back when you are ready to receive the answers to your questions.’ Obviously the point of the story is that although the professor was asking for instruction, he was not actually receptive enough to really take it in.

The three levels of wisdom, shruta-mayi prajna or listening, chinta-mayi prajna or reflecting and bhavana-mayi prajna or meditating, give us an idea of how to be really receptive. Listening, sruta-maya prajna, which includes reading, is concerned with gaining knowledge of the Dharma in a fairly ordinary sense. This means learning about the Four Noble Truths, The Noble Eightfold Path, the law of conditionality, the five precepts and so on. We need to have a knowledge of these basic teachings, so that when we manage to concentrate our minds and want to use that concentration to penetrate deeper into the Truth, we will have something to work with. Otherwise as Sangharakshita puts it, our concentration will be of no more use to us than a sharpened pencil to a man who cannot read or write. (2)

Chinta-mayi prajna or reflecting corresponds more to what I have called creative listening. At this point we are turning over in our minds what we have heard or read and making it our own, so to speak. We are going deeper into the meaning of what we have received and allowing it to affect our lives. This stage of reflection is, you could say, the stage of mundane receptivity and it paves the way for bhavana-mayi prajna or meditation, which in this context if the stage of Transcendental Insight, At this point, bhavana-maya prajna, one is not reflecting on the Truth, but one has to some extent become the Truth. This is the stage of the perfection of receptivity, when the Dharma has permeated ones whole being and one is utterly changed by it.

Of course receptivity is not only a matter of listening to others and taking in what is said. We also need to listen to and question ourselves. This involves self-examination in the sense of trying to be honest with oneself about what one does or does not understand and being honest with oneself about just how receptive or not one is. It is better to be clear that we honestly don't like a particular teaching and don’t want to practise it than to just avoid it or pretend that we accept it. For instance, for a number of years I didn't like the teaching about the four dhyanas, the four levels of meditative concentration. I used to find it depressing and just avoided it. It took me some time to realise that it was meant as a helpful guide to recognising and understanding meditative states rather than as a judgment on my poor attempts at concentration. Recognising that I simply didn't like the teaching was a starting point from which I could understand what was really going on. I just felt bad about my ability as a meditator, and my lack of confidence in my abilities was nothing to do with the teaching of the four dhyanas. Self-examination can help us to become more self-aware.

By questioning oneself I mean asking oneself how a particular teaching or particular aspect of the Dharma applies to ones life. How is it going to help me to progress spiritually? What should I do as a result of this? Does this teaching have any practical application in my life? How does it connect with other things I have heard or read? For instance, do the contents of this book have any application to my life? Do I want to change anything in my life as a result of reading this?

This questioning attitude can also be related to scepticism. It is reasonable to be sceptical with regard to what you read or hear. To be sceptical is to question or to accept things provisionally. This is better than being gullible. However we need to be careful that our scepticism doesn't become cynicism. Cynicism is a negative mental state that tends to undermine everything of value and seeks to drag everything down to a low level. Cynicism is a form of ill-will or hatred.

Scepticism on the other hand is a reasonable questioning, a suspension of judgment and it can be very positively motivated. At its best, scepticism is an attitude of seeking the truth and not settling for less. In this way scepticism is related to receptivity. Blind faith is not necessary in Buddhism. All teachings are meant to be put to the test and accepted or rejected according to whether they conduce to spiritual development or hinder it. We must be careful though that we do test the teachings rigorously, whether in our thinking or practice and not reject what we merely dislike. Spiritual intelligence is something quite different from intellectual ability in the ordinary sense. Spiritual intelligence is an intuitive knowing of the truths of impermanence and conditionality that goes far beyond any mere understanding of the concepts. So when we subject the Dharma to sceptical questioning, intuition and experience should come into play as much as intellectual examination. Also traditionally it is recommended that we have recourse to those whom we consider to be wise and not rely totally on our own ability to perceive the truth. We may simply not have the capacity as yet. This point is illustrated in the Kalama Sutta. The Kalamas of

Kesaputta were confused by all the different teachings they heard about how to attain the Transcendental and they asked the Buddha how they could tell what was correct and what wasn't. The Buddha said,

“Now Kalamas, do not ye go by hearsay, nor by what is handed down by others, nor by what people say, nor by what is stated on the authority of your traditional teachings. Do not go by reasoning, nor by inferring, nor by argument as to method, nor from reflection on and approval of an opinion, nor out of respect, thinking a recluse must be deferred to. But, Kalamas, when you know, of yourselves: "These teachings are not good; they are blameworthy; they are condemned by the wise: these teachings, when followed out and put in practice, conduce to loss and suffering" - then reject them.”

There are three things to note about this. Firstly, the questioning is about methods of attaining the Transcendental, not about the existence of a transcendental state or the possibility of attaining it. The existence of a transcendental state is by its very nature not susceptible to sceptical reasoning. Secondly, the teachings are to be tested by the results achieved from practising them. In other words, experience is the real touchstone. Thirdly, the testimony of the Wise needs to be listened to carefully. In being receptive to what we hear and read there is no need for us to be gullible, but to really know for ourselves what is true we have to practise the teachings and consider the views of those who are more spiritually experienced

If we are truly receptive to the Dharma we will be humiliated by it. As the Diamond Sutra says, "those sons of good family, who will take up these very Sutras, and will bear them in mind, recite and study them, they will be humbled, well humbled will they be!" (4)

The Dharma undermines our ego-identity and although we may think this is a very good thing and nod approvingly when we hear about it, when it actually starts to happen to us we may feel very distressed indeed. We may even think that the Dharma is not really working properly, because we intended to gain happiness and well-being and instead we are feeling miserable. The spiritual life is a happy life but it is not an easy life and as we become more aware we will discover unpleasant truths about ourselves, This means that the Dharma is working. A process of purification is underway and we need to recognise this. We may feel humiliated because we are not the person we thought we were or wanted others to think we were, but there is no need to be despondent. As the process of gaining greater self-knowledge and purifying ourselves carries on we will gradually emerge happier and brighter. Spiritual rebirth often involves a humiliating journey through the dark night of the soul. This is what having our ego-identity undermined involves. We have to be transformed, broken down and re-assembled, not simply re- decorated with a new label such as Buddhist or Venerable or Reverend.

My strongest personal experience of this was in 1986 when I was invited on an Ordination retreat in Tuscany. I was invited in March and by May I had started to experience all the parts of my psyche that didn't want to have anything to do with Ordination or spiritual life. I went to Tuscany but Sangharakshita felt he couldn't ordain me because of the emotionally unstable state I was in. This was a shock. I was devastated. My pride was squashed. My ego-sense was disoriented and I entered a dark night of the soul; depression, anger, doubt, isolation, fear.

But it was impermanent thankfully and here I am, testimony to the fact that humiliation is not fatal.

Traditionally, the disciple was humiliated by the guru in order that the ego got a good bashing. But really there is probably no need for anyone to humiliate us in this way. If we practise the Dharma, if we meditate and enter into communication with others, if we develop ethical sensitivity and if we study the teachings, we will find ourselves humbled often enough by our own selfishness and the sublimity of the Ideal.

To be humiliated by the Dharma is one thing, to practise humility another. Humility as it is usually understood is not necessarily a positive thing and may often be simply a form of inverted pride. It may even be a way of avoiding humiliation. As James Boswell puts it in "The Life of Samuel Johnson" – “Sometimes [humility] may proceed from a man’s strong consciousness of his faults being observed. He knows that others would throw him down, and therefore he had better lie down softly of his own accord.” (5) So it is not enough to be humble. In "Wisdom Beyond Words" Sangharakshita puts it like this

“You need to take risks. If you don't ever face the possibility of failure then you don't ever face the possibility of humiliation and therefore of growth. Failure will only have meaning for you if you have made a tremendous effort to succeed. The terrible temptation is to venture nothing. But in fact, the less you risk, the greater your fear of failure, and the greater the potential humiliation. So much becomes invested in the imperative of success that you cannot even give a lecture in case it should not be an astounding success. You become paralysed. You haven't gone beyond success and failure; you are beneath them. It you're not careful, you become someone with a great future behind them.” (6)

By taking risks we can be humiliated. We need to learn to make the most of humiliation. It is an opportunity to loosen our grip on our ego- identity, an opportunity to become a little less attached to our fixed self view and therefore an opportunity for spiritual insight. There are all sorts of ordinary situations which we might find humiliating. Travelling in a foreign country where we don't speak the language could be humiliating. Being ill and losing control over our body can be humiliating. Growing old and being patronised by younger people could be humiliating. Giving a public talk and making a mess of it could be humiliating. Trying to be friendly to someone and getting rejected can be humiliating [NOTE]. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples. Probably everyone has their own particular fear of failure, which could involve the risk of humiliation. So there are plenty of opportunities on a fairly mundane level for us to have an experience of undermining our ego identity. But receptivity to the Dharma will enable us to do a much more systematic and thorough job.

Receptivity to the Dharma will turn us inside out and upside down as it were. It will transform us. As Sangharakshita puts it, “Receptivity means that one should be prepared for a radical change in ones whole mode of being, ones whole way of life, ones whole way of looking at things.” (7) Often we are not prepared for such radical change and so we resist. We don't really want to see things differently. We don't really want to see the truth although it may be staring us in the face. For instance, the fact of death is extremely difficult to really grasp, to feel with our whole being. We can see it all around us if we look, but we don't take it in, we don't let it affect us to the core of our being. It takes much reflection and practice before we can really face the fact of death and especially the fact of our own death. The story of Kisa Gotami illustrates this point:

“…….at that this moment there came up a young girl carrying a dead baby on her hip. I had seen her when I was last in Savatthi. Her name was Kisa Gotami. She was thin of body and plain of feature, and born of a poor family. She had been treated disdainfully by all, especially by her husband’s family. Then she had borne a son, and people no longer saw her ugly features, but respected her for he boy-child. That was when I had last seen her. Now the child lay dead upon her hip and she was distraught with grief. She told the Master that she had gone from door to door pleading with folk to give her medicine to restore her child to life, but they had all laughed at her. Then one kinder than the others had told her of the Master, saying that he could give her medicine for her child. And that was why she now came. She held forth the child to the Master, and the depth of agony in her eyes made her seem crazed. He looked upon her with deep tenderness and said:

“Sister, go enter the town and bring back a mustard seed; but - it must come from a house where no one yet has died.” The young girl took the dust from his feet and departed with great hope and joy. That evening she returned. “Gotami, have you found the little mustard seed?” he asked. “The work of the little mustard seed has been done,” she answered, and went on to tell him what had happened. She had inquired of the first house for a little mustard seed, which the great Buddha had said would cure her child. The folk there were glad to give her mustard seed, for they felt pity for her. Then she added: “But the mustard seed must be from a house where none has yet died.” Then they of that house said softly: “Who shall say how many have diedhere? Last week the house-mother died here. The dead are many; the living are few.”

“Such mustard seed will then have no virtue,” she said, and departed sorrowfully to a second house, where she was told the same thing, and then to a third, but always they of the house replied: “The dead are many; the living are few.” By evening she knew her quest would have no ending, and the dead child grew heavy on her hip. Suddenly it came to her that it was out of his great compassion the Master had sent her upon this quest that she might find out for herself the first great truth that all must suffer. Her eyes filled with tears that the World Honoured One should seek to help her, even her, the despised and ugly one. She took the dead child and laid him in a charnel field, for she was poor and had no money for cremation. It was late at night when the Master finished teaching Kisa Gotami. He looked across to the city where the lights flickered and were

extinguished, as one by one the folk lay down to sleep. Even so, he concluded, as little lights are the lives of men. They flicker for an instant and are gone.” (8)

The Buddha was patient with Kisa Gotami but he didn't try to protect her from the truth. He set her up to receive the teaching gradually. She was receptive to the truth and seeing the implications, sought out further teaching. Her openness to the truth brought about a radical transformation. Receptivity means being prepared for radical and total transformation. As Robert Thurman puts it:

“In the face of the incomprehensibility of things, ordinary knowledge and especially convictions are utterly lost; this is because the mind loses its capacity to objectify anything and has nothing to grasp onto. The mind reaches a stage where it can bear its lack of bearings, as it were, can endure this kind of extreme openness.” (9)

I have been trying to communicate the importance of patience, forgiveness and tolerance, both in our individual lives and on the world stage. This is summed up in the verse from the Dhammapada which I have quoted frequently: “Not by hatred are hatreds ever pacified here. They are pacified by love. This is the eternal law.” In South Africa this eternal law has been courageously put into practice in the Truth and reconciliation process. One of the great champions of this process and these virtues is South Africa’s Bishop Desmond Tutu and I would like to give him the last word:

“Forgiveness is not abstract or woolly. It comes when we recognise our relatedness, what we call ubuntu. It’s warm and welcoming and means “I am because you are.” (10)

Notes:

1. Puja, Windhorse 1999
2. Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism, Windhorse 1993, p.194
3. Numerical Discourses of the Buddha, trans. Nyanaponika & Bodhi, Altamira 1999, p.65
4. Sangharakshita,Wisdom Beyond Words, Windhorse 1993, p.157
5. J. Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
6. Sangharakshita,Wisdom Beyond Words, Windhorse 1993, p.160
7. Sangharakshita, Masculinity and Femininity in the Spiritual Life, Lions Roar, Norwich 1987, p.13
8. Marie Beauzeville Byles, Footprints of the Buddha,Quest 1972, p.96/97
9. The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti, trans. R. Thurman, introduction.
10. Dharma Life magazine, No. 9, Windhorse 1998, p.35