Self-Transcendence and the Spiritual Quest

This talk was given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre to an audience of men who had requested ordination into the Triratna Order, August 1998

I'm not sure what was intended when I was given this double-barrelled title: Self-Transcendence and the Spiritual Quest. Anyway, it's probably worth noting that we are dealing here with two different metaphors for the spiritual life, two different images. Transcendence means “rising above”. Ascending is going up – Christ ascended into heaven according to traditional Christianity; it's in reference to something above. Transcending is rising above - it happens in reference to something lower – something beneath and in this instance it is the sense of self; we are talking about rising above or transcending the self.

Then we have the other image – the quest. A quest is a journey in search of something. So if we put these two images together we have the compound image of rising above and going in search of. With the phrase “spiritual quest”, spiritual refers to the object of the quest and the type of quest. The type of quest is spiritual – so it's not a mundane quest, it's not a psychological quest, it's a spiritual quest – spiritual of course refers to moving in the direction of higher states of consciousness, of greater awareness. It's a spiritual quest also in the sense that the object of the quest is the spiritual or in fact we might say the transcendental. We are in quest of higher states of consciousness that transcend our ordinary mundane experience of consciousness and give us insight into the true nature of reality. To do this of course we have to rise above or transcend our ordinary consciousness.

The spiritual quest is a pursuit of self-transcendence. Self-transcendence is the spiritual quest. I'd like you to note, by the way, that the phrases I've been using – states of consciousness, higher states of consciousness, insight, the true nature of reality are all metaphors – they are all ways of using words to conjure images to endeavour to convey meaning. We shouldn't take any of this too literally or in too fixed a way. Literalism chokes meaning. Fixing things deprives them of life. We are dealing with process – always dealing with process. The process of transcending the process of self.

This being that being that becomes, from the arising of this, that arises. This not being that does not become. From the ceasing of this, that ceases. This is the law of conditionality – pratitya samutpada – which is so central to the Buddha's teaching. It is saying basically that everything arises in dependence upon conditions and passes away when those conditions are no longer there. This applies to universes, planets, stars, people, mosquitoes, turnips, cartoon characters, books, diseases and so on. And of course it applies to this concept of self. Self arises in dependence upon conditions and self is transcended in dependence on conditions.

Before I go any further let me state quite clearly that self is not bad – a sense of self is not bad – in fact a sense of self is a very useful and helpful thing. So what is self? I'll come at that a bit obliquely - via a short quotation from Bhante Sangharakshita. He is talking about distractions and he says: “There is nothing easier than to get sidetracked (in this Way), to succumb to the gravitational pull of the conditioned. We have a deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with the mundane, the trivial, the everyday, at the expense of our spiritual development: in a word, to be over-concerned with comfort.” (Complete Works, Vol.16, p.536)

You could say say that this “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort” is what is meant by self and this is what we need to transcend. But before we go on to that – let me backtrack a bit – I said that the self is not a bad thing, that it is useful, even helpful. So why is this? Well you could say this is the great achievement of mankind. We have evolved to the point where we can distinguish self from other. This is an achievement, this self-awareness. And it is because of this that we are capable of seeking our own comfort. Many of us may in fact need to complete this process and learn to identify and distinguish ourselves more fully – free of projections. The self or the idea of self is useful and helpful because without it we couldn't embark on the quest for self-transcendence.

The self is the “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort”. Or, in other words, the deeply ingrained tendency to avoid suffering at all costs. This deeply ingrained tendency manifests as habits. We have strong habitual tendencies of body, speech and mind and these habits go to make up our self – our sense of who we are. These habits are our response to the world – these habits are how we deal with the world, how we deal with the business of avoiding suffering and achieving comfort. We have habits of competitiveness, or conformity, defensiveness or passivity, being superior or inferior, all sorts of habits, habits of being likeable, habits of isolating ourselves, habits of dependency, habits of self-sufficiency.

The one thing all these sorts of habits have in common is that they don't work. We are desperate to avoid suffering and our habitual tendencies keep causing us suffering. They cause us suffering because they come into conflict with the deeply ingrained habits of others and also because they come into conflict with our spiritual aspirations and into conflict with reality.

The quest for self-transcendence becomes a quest to break these habits and overcome the conflicts. By overcoming internal conflict we achieve greater wholeness or integrity, by overcoming external conflict we achieve genuine happiness and by breaking our habits we become more and more creative.

However comfort is our guiding principle, we want to escape suffering and be happy. Our habits are in service of this guiding principle. But conflict and suffering arises because our habits don't work, they are not in accordance with reality. So the process of self-transcendence requires us to:

1. redefine comfort in spiritual terms

2. to identify, and

3. break through our negative habitual tendencies, and

4. to overcome conflict.

To re-define comfort in spiritual terms, perhaps we could look at it in terms of needs. We are concerned with our needs. There are different kinds of needs – physical needs, psychological and emotional needs and spiritual needs. The level of needs that we are usually concerned with – even over-concerned with – are the needs of a physical, emotional and psychological nature. It is the case that we have needs on this level. On the physical level we need food, clothing, shelter and medicine. On the psychological and emotional level we need to be loved and appreciated by ourselves and others. When we fulfil these basic needs we are then in a position to fulfil our spiritual needs. Spiritual needs are of a different kind, of a different order, and we get into all sorts of confusion by thinking of a physical or psychological need as a spiritual need. Spiritual needs are what we need in order to attain higher states of consciousness, to achieve greater awareness and empathy, greater insight and compassion. Our spiritual needs are paradoxically not so much to do with ourselves, but more to do with our relationship with the world about us. Essentially you are the only person who can supply your spiritual needs, although paradoxically again you need other people in order to do that.

In my opinion the three most essential spiritual needs we have are the need to be generous, the need to co-operate and the need to communicate. As I said only you can supply these, although you need others in order to do so. So this is how I've redefined comfort in spiritual terms. In spiritual terms if you want to avoid suffering, if you want comfort and happiness – you need to give, to co-operate and to communicate. That's what we are aiming at and to get there we need to identify our negative habits, identify that “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort” and how exactly it manifests in our life; how do we go about avoiding suffering? When we identify our habits we can start to look at how to break them.

The methods we have at our disposal are meditation in various forms, study, ethical practice, friendship and puja. There are also indirect methods such as yoga, karate, dance and other physical disciplines, and the arts, music, painting and so on. All of these can help us to break old habits – some are more appropriate than others depending on the individual.

Through meditation we can gain knowledge, we can become more aware of who we are, what our tendencies, habits and drives are, what we project out onto the world and other people. We can also start to change ourselves, change our attitudes and develop more positive, wholesome and effective habits and tendencies. Meditation is very useful. But it only works if we do it and do it consistently. If we are playing about with meditation, having a snooze, daydreaming, only doing it when we feel like it, when it's comfortable, then we are probably simply perpetuating old habits rather than being creative.

Then there's study. Study ought to challenge our views and assumptions and give us food for thought and personal precepts to put into practice. We need to read and discuss and reflect on what we read and see how it applies to our lives and make connections between different texts, different formulations of the Path. We need to ask ourselves whether we understand what we are reading, then whether we agree with it and then whether we can practice it. If we study properly we can gain a lot in understanding and practical help with our spiritual practice. Study can also leave us feeling bewildered and even frightened, which of course is not necessarily a bad thing.

Ethical practice also helps us to break bad habits and develop more wholesome ways of thinking, speaking and acting. I think all mitras who've asked for ordination should be trying to practice the ten precepts – in particular the more full elaboration of the speech precepts. Many of our habitual tendencies will emerge in our speech, eg. competitiveness, arrogance, passivity etc, and a more thorough awareness of our speech will help us to pinpoint those tendencies and then the four speech precepts give us detail guidance on how to develop more positive, skilful speech.

Sometimes, mitras say- “but Order members don't do such and such, why should I?” and it is unfortunately true that some order members sometimes fall below acceptable standards with regard to observing the precepts. This is not however a reason for you not to make an effort, quite the contrary, it is all the more reason why you should try to be more meticulous in ethical practice. The future of the order Is in your hands and you can set higher standards.

Going back to the question of needs you could say that observing the precepts will help us to fulfil all our spiritual needs. On the basis of a thorough ethical practice we are in a position to transcend the habitual tendencies that keep us going round the wheel of reactivity. We should pay special attention to the positive formulation of the precepts and engage in deeds of loving kindness, for example, or endeavour to change hatred into compassion. The positive formulation of the ten precepts is a profound, far-reaching and eminently practical teaching, which we should pay very careful attention to.

The Positive Precepts

With deeds of loving kindness, I purify my body.

With open handed generosity, I purify my body.

With stillness, simplicity and contentment, I purify my body.

With truthful communication, I purify my speech.

With kindly communication, I purify my speech.

With helpful communication, I purify my speech.

With harmonious communication, I purify my speech

Abandoning covetousness for tranquillity, I purify my mind.

Changing hatred into compassion, I purify my mind.

Transforming ignorance into wisdom, I purify my mind.

Then we come to friendship as a means of breaking our unskilful habitual tendencies. It is very difficult, even extremely difficult, for us to recognise our own habits. We are our habits to a large degree and our faculty of perception is also saturated with our habits. It's like one of those puzzles where you have to spot the picture in amongst all the dots – when it's pointed out, you can't not see it – but before that it's invisible. Our habits are largely invisible to us and so we need someone else to do us the service of pointing them out. And if it's someone we know and love and trust then we will be all the more likely to take on board what's being said. We will be open to feedback.

Spiritual friendship is based around a common spiritual aspiration – that's what we have in common with our spiritual friend. We can get our spiritual needs met in a spiritual friendship: our need to be generous and loving, our need to communicate, our need to co-operate. Communication, of course, involves listening just as much, if not more, than talking. In our friendships we can practice openness – openness in the sense of revealing ourself to our friend and openness in the sense of being receptive to feedback about our unskilful habits. There is a lot that can be said about friendship, but I will leave you to investigate the various sources for yourself.

Now we come to puja and devotion as a method for breaking through or overcoming unskilful habits and tendencies. Puja and devotional ritual takes us beyond ourselves imaginatively. It allows us to gain a larger, broader, higher perspective and from that perspective we can see what tendencies we need to encourage and what tendencies to discourage. For example, in the Sevenfold Puja each verse encapsulates a tendency which we need to encourage – each verse is a practice in itself, which can be taken further outside the actual ritual and practised with body, speech, and mind.

Worship is an attitude of mind which recognises what is higher, recognises spiritual hierarchy and that attitude can affect our speech, how we speak about our teachers, the Buddha, our Kalyana mitras and it can also affect our actions. We can make offerings, give gifts to shrines, and to those we respect for their spiritual qualities. I will leave you to reflect on the other stages of the puja and how they might be practised.

The same question applies to the prostration practice – how do you practice prostrations when you are not prostrating? How do you bring that perspective and attitude into your life and how does it affect your “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort”? How does it relate to self-transcendence? Devotional practice opens out to other dimensions and therefore generates a sense of wonder beyond rational explanation – but nevertheless we should reflect on devotional practice too.

I mentioned earlier that there are also many indirect methods and I just want to highlight one here – that is physical exercise. I think everyone who is serious about going for refuge to the Three Jewels should engage in some physical exercise and some people should do quite a lot of exercise. We need energy for spiritual practice and emotional energy and physical energy are closely related. Exercise helps stimulate our physical energy and also leaves us in a better position to emotionally engage with this whole adventure of creating ourselves anew.

I've talked about the self being our “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort”. I've said we need to identify our particular habitual or deeply ingrained tendencies and then we need to apply ourselves to overcoming and changing those habits. We do this by means of meditation, study, ethics, friendship, devotion and various indirect methods including physical exercise. Now I would like to look at some particular habitual tendencies we may have and try to indicate how we can overcome these tendencies by meeting our own spiritual needs for giving, co-operating and communicating.

First of all there is the tendency to compare ourselves with others and see ourselves as being superior, inferior or equal to them. Here we have various degrees of pride and humility, which come to the same thing. The characteristic of this tendency is an obsession with one's position in relation to others. Schoolboys do it all the time, measuring themselves against each other in all sorts of ways and establishing a pecking order. Some of us carry it on beyond the schoolyard. The antidote to this kind of thing is generosity. The practice of generosity changes your relationship to others, changes your attitude and if you practice it well you become more concerned with them as individuals rather than as objects of comparison.

The arrogance of feeling superior to others is doomed to failure and is probably just an over-compensation for lack of self-esteem. The arrogance of feeling inferior to others is simply an unwillingness to take responsibility for oneself and the arrogance of feeling equal to others is just blind to the facts of life. All this arrogance is characterised by too much self-obsession. Generosity looks outwards, generosity asks what others need, how they can be helped, how they can be happy even and in this way counteracts any tendency to be over-concerned with ourselves and our position in relation to others. Generosity is also a spiritual need. It gives us a sense of worth and confidence and it sets us very firmly on the path to self-transcendence. When you mount the steed of generosity the journey of the spiritual quest becomes much easier.

Another two habits that some of might be prone to are either competitiveness or conformity. If we are habitually competitive we need to always assert our point of view, our opinion and even get our own way. We live in fear that someone will put one over on us, we will be sidelined, ignored or overwhelmed in some way and so we just have to continually assert ourselves and be in the right. If things don't go as we want we'll get angry or storm off. 'Nobody tells me what to do' is the attitude.

The opposite tendency and probably just as bad is conformity. Out of a sort of desperation for love or approval we will unthinkingly go along with everything. We will be very nice and smiley and unobtrusive and never say what we think or feel. We may not even allow ourselves to be aware of what we think or feel. Our attitude is 'don't rock the boat' at all costs and it can cost us dearly.

The antidote to both of these tendencies is genuine co-operation. Co-operation is not conformity: neither is it everybody having a voice in every decision. Sometimes we co-operate by doing what someone tells us and sometimes we co-operate by questioning things. The principle behind co-operation is the principle of metta – loving kindness. Metta like generosity takes us away from over-focus on ourselves and out into a broader perspective. To co-operate we need to have a broad awareness of what the project actually is and it may take time for us to understand that. For instance in the case of residential communities and team-based right livelihood projects, it can take a few years to really understand what you are involved in. Until we do really understand, we co-operate by helping those who do understand and by endeavouring to understand. When we come to an understanding of what we are involved in and have a reasonably wide perspective on it, then we co-operate by doing whatever enables the project to fulfil its aims. In the case of Triratna projects that is usually to create Sangha, spiritual community. In the end co-operation comes down to a matter of friendship. When you are in a situation that requires co-operation, instead of asking how could I co-operate, you could ask how can I be a friend in this situation. Is asserting myself the best way to be a friend or is letting others having their own way the best way to be a friend. It is not always easy to tell, but at least you can bring some reflection to bear on the situation, rather than simply acting out of habit and either competing or conforming. Co-operation is friendliness or Metta in the arena of a particular task or project. There are projects within projects too – for example the whole Triratna Buddhist Community is a project, within that a particular residential community is a project, and perhaps within a community a study group is a project – they all require understanding of what is being aimed at and a willingness to co-operate. Co-operation is the only mode of being that is really in accordance with reality and therefore when we co-operate we are meeting a spiritual need for ourselves and others.

Defensiveness and passivity are two more forms of habitual behaviour which we can be prone to. Defensiveness is an attitude of not listening, not being receptive. Usually when people are deeply insecure, they are defensive, because the alternative seems like death. This is a very difficult habit to deal with, because by it's nature, it is very difficult to admit to, very difficult to accept. If it is pointed out, another defence is likely to come into play. It requires a lot of openness, a lot of trust and a lot of communication and love, to overcome this debilitating habit which is such a strong hindrance to spiritual progress. If you are a very defensive character you probably need to recognise the depth of insecurity and lack of confidence that lies behind the habit and try to bring that into communication with someone you trust. To be always defended is to be trapped inside a suit of armour that is slowly suffocating you. Friendship is the solution. If you know someone who is like this, the only way you can help is with patient friendship, building trust over years, so that they can gradually shed their armour plating and show their tenderness and love to the world.

Passivity is our unwillingness to come into real communication, a sort of wilful timidity. Perhaps it's because of fear of conflict or because of some childhood conditioning about being stupid or slow-witted. Whatever the reason, being passive can lead to loneliness and feelings of isolation. It's as if we expect other people to do all the work of communication and be a friend to us even though we refuse to communicate. A passive person has to at some point take full responsibility for their own loneliness and isolation and decide to befriend others by taking an interest in them and revealing something of their inner world to them.

Whether we are defensive and prone to bursts of anger and temper or passive and prone to isolating ourselves and hiding, we need to break through the habit through communication, through friendship. Giving friendship, taking an interest in other people and being honest about ourselves is necessary to our spiritual growth. It is a spiritual need and like all spiritual needs, we can only satisfy it by making the effort to do so. It is unlikely to happen to us.

I've been looking at this whole topic of self-transcendence and the spiritual quest from various angles and I've tried to keep it fairly practical. Our self consists of deeply ingrained tendencies and habits – most of them keeping us tied to the wheel of suffering. We need to become aware of our own particular habits, recognise them, name them then we need to work on overcoming them by all the various means at our disposal. Above all we should always bear in mind and try to meet our spiritual needs – to be generous, to co-operate ad to communicate. If we do this, we will be on the way to fulfilling our spiritual quest for self-transcendence.

Not Just Another Lifestyle

This talk was given to an audience of people living in residential communities around the London Buddhist Centre, 1998

The Right Conditions

"...... the retreat must end, and everyone has to go back to wherever they came from. And it is noticeable that people who have experienced a retreat for the first time can be quite reluctant to leave. They can even become tearful at the prospect of going back to less helpful conditions. Indeed, because we generally have to return to a boring or otherwise stressful job, to a noisy crowded city, or to a difficult domestic situation, the change in us does not always last. Nevertheless there is one lasting benefit: we have seen that it is possible to change, that - given the right conditions - we can develop." (Buddhism for Today and Tomorrow, p. 49)

It was out of the retreat experience that Triratna residential communities grew. People wanted to create or prolong the conditions they had experienced on retreat when they came back to the city and so some of them decided to live together. The community is the Sangha at home, just as the Team Based Right Livelihood is the Sangha at work. So a community is a place where you live with other Buddhists, live with others who share your aspirations. Not just live with other Buddhists, but communicate with them. As Sangharakshita puts it, in a community "you are free to relate at the deepest level of your being, which is very stimulating and inspiring - and also very challenging and demanding."

The Bare Minimum

You are free to relate to others at the deepest level of your being. As a Buddhist, this means you are free to relate to others in terms of Going For Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. People move into communities so that they can grow and develop, so that they can develop friendships and meditate with others. There is no cultural or ethnic level of Going For Refuge for Triratna Buddhists in the West. People who live in Triratna communities are either provisionally or effectively Going For Refuge - or fluctuating between the two.

A community is a group of people living together with the aspiration to Go For Refuge more deeply, as the main bond between them. Two of the advantages of living in a community are that you can enjoy the company of other Buddhists and that you can engage in daily spiritual practice with other Buddhists. What this means in practice is that when we live in a community we meditate together daily, we study together (probably less frequently) and we actively work at cultivating friendships.

These are I think the minimum requirements in order for any community to be really worthy of the name of a Triratna Buddhist community. Now it has to be said that frequently our communities fall short of this bare minimum. I hope in this talk to at least encourage you, if I don't manage to inspire you, to engage in your community life at the level of this minimum - meditate together daily, or at least six days a week, study together sometimes and actively cultivate friendships with others in the community.

Collective Practice

It is extremely important that we meditate together. It's as if the sum total of our efforts in collective practice is greater than the sum of the parts. You can build up a connection with people just by engaging in a collective meditation and puja together. I have had the experience of feeling irritated or annoyed with someone and then seeing them make an offering to the shrine or seeing them meditate has helped to change my response to them. Seeing somebody practice can be very encouraging. We can feel supported by each others efforts to practise. We need each others support in order to continually make an effort to cultivate metta and mindfulness. In other words we need each others support in order to make spiritual progress, and one very concrete and inspiring way to give that support is through collective practice. If we don't engage in the collective practice of meditation and puja in our communities we will not be getting the full benefit of community life. We will be missing out on an important area of communication, interaction and mutual support and encouragement.

I think it's also important that we study together. In study we not only sort out our ideas and become clearer, but we also have an opportunity to relate to each other on the basis of our ideals, on the basis of what is most meaningful to us. This can have the effect of inspiring us to greater efforts, clarifying what our lives are about and bringing us into closer relationship with each other. Every community should have some time for study and that study should affect your life. Sangharakshita has said that we should distil some precepts from our study sessions. In other words we should always ask ourselves what does this mean for me?, what difference does this make to my life?, why is this important?

Friendship

Now we come to the nucleus of community life. Right at the centre of community life is friendship. Cultivating friendships is, you could say, the raison d'être of the residential spiritual community. Of course it is not enough just to live with people. Friendship won't necessarily happen to you. It is something you have to do. Friendship is an activity, it requires effort. You have to make an effort to be friends with people. You have to take an interest in their life. Don't expect somebody to be interested in you if you are not interested in them. Friendship is something mutual. A mutual interest, a mutual caring, eventually a mutual love. So don't expect friendship to happen to you.

To cultivate friendship you need to spend time with someone and you need to be patient because it takes time. You don't necessarily have to have 'deep and meaningful ' conversations all the time. It is enough initially to have some shared experience and shared aspiration. It is of course necessary to go beyond the superficial level of communication from time to time, but there is no need to have intense, soul-searching, problem sharing talk all the time. In fact that might introduce unnecessary tension into a budding friendship. It is possible to be serious and light at the same time. You need to spend time with someone to cultivate friendship, you need to take an interest, and you need to be patient. You also need to bear them in mind when they are not present. Give them gifts. Keep a photograph when you go on retreat. Take a photograph of your whole community with you. In a community we shouldn't be on superficial terms with anybody and we should have a much stronger bond with somebody. We should have at least one good friend, or be cultivating a friendship with someone and we should be aware of others as spiritual aspirants. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of friendship in communities. I would go so far as to say that if you don't meditate, if you don't study, at the very least cultivate friendship.

Ecology

Another advantage of community living which has wide ramifications both ethically and socially is that community living is more ecologically beneficial than living alone or in a small family unit. Shared use of fridge, freezer, washing machine, water heaters and so on, could make a huge difference to our environment if it were a sufficiently widespread practice. In this respect we may indeed be pioneering a lifestyle of great significance for our society at large.

Little Things Make a Difference

As we pursue the practicalities of community living, we can feel a sense of adventure and experiment. There will always be a strong tendency for us to simply re-create whatever domestic situation we were most familiar with, perhaps out of a desire for security. But we don't have to follow the models of suburban domesticity or current fashion. We can be much more daring than that. We can be radical in our experimentation and create from the principles and practices of community living, the sort of conditions which are most conducive to spiritual development. We can ask ourselves what part the internet and social media play in community life. Do they help or hinder communication and friendship? We can reflect on our attitudes to the practical chores, the washing-up, cleaning, watering plants and so on. Do we see them as opportunities to practice generosity and mindfulness?

I've said that friendship is central to community living. Friendship is grounded in communication. The communication which shows what we really feel and think is often not verbal. We may think that our most authentic and deep communication happens over a cappuccino in a cafe but often we will communicate much more of ourselves through the way we respond to the details of life. How do we respond to the washing up or our household chores? How do respond to somebody else's habits? What is our attitude to sharing things?

Sharing should be our key word in communities. If there is ever any question in your mind about the way forward through any particular dilemma, then call to mind this word 'sharing' and see what solutions it carries in its wake. Sharing is of course an attitude of generosity. We need to bring the spirit of generosity, the spirit of sharing, into every aspect of our community living. When we cook we are sharing. When we wash up we are sharing. When we clean the bath we are sharing. When we water the plants we are sharing. When we feed the cat we are sharing. We can help ourselves immensely by doing all the small things with an attitude of sharing, in a spirit of generosity. If we do these things begrudgingly or angrily or with resentment we only cultivate negativity. This is something which can be quite easily overlooked in community living. We know that community life is about collective meditation and study and cultivating friendship. But we can easily forget that cultivating friendships is not just about reporting-in, not just about heart-to-heart talks, not just about community evenings - it is also and equally about how we live the details of our lives together, how we share our living space, how we interact with each other about the small everyday, routine matters that constitute the business of living in a community. It is not just a matter of what we do but also of how we do it, our attitudes and views and beliefs which can affect the community atmosphere so strongly.

The Imperfect Community

Into this whole topic of our response to the details of community living comes our response to how others in the community behave. There is plenty of scope for righteous indignation in a community. There is always something to be annoyed about. All our differences emerge quite quickly in a community: our different standards regarding tidiness and cleanliness, our different views about what is homely and what isn't, our different views about what is beautiful or what is kitsch, our different tastes in food. Lots of differences become apparent. And on top of that there are all our little faults and foibles which we can't hide so easily. And then there is our unmindfulness, our laziness and our selfishness. All in all it seems a miracle that communities function at all when there is so much that could go wrong. We need to bear in mind the fact, the indisputable fact, that the perfect community doesn't exist.

To live in a community is to live in an imperfect community. Now your idea of the perfect community may be of one that is very clean and tidy or one that is very lackadaisical and easy going, one that is decorated with Zen-like simplicity or one that is teeming with objects and colours. Your perfect community might have a diet of all organic food or all health foods or your ideal community might have loads of butter, French bread and coffee. You cannot have your ideal community. Because it's a community and your own ideas, views, desires, and wants cannot always prevail. That is the whole point of it. It leads us beyond ourselves. It knocks off the rough edges of our selfishness and moves us towards co-operation, sharing and generosity. You could say that if you find that you are not getting what you want, if your views are not prevailing, that it is a very good thing. It is good to learn to live in the bigger, broader world of other people's ideas and ways of being and to loosen our attachment to our own way of being, our own way of doing, our fixed selves. This is what communities are about. A community helps us to enter into the world of other people's lives in a very intense and intimate way and it is because of this that community living is a spiritual practice, a practice that can lead to an expansiveness of consciousness and even to insight into the true nature of our relations with other human beings, insight into the nature of the reality of life.

Opening the Heart

We all have needs, emotional needs, physical needs, cultural needs. Two basic emotional needs are firstly the need to feel emotionally secure and positive and secondly the need to experience some pleasure in our life. So our communities need to be or become situations in which we are nurtured into emotional positivity and security and situations in which we have an experience of pleasure. This does not deny the need for the discipline of spiritual practice and the need for challenging communication. Indeed, without the discipline of spiritual practice and the challenge of open and honest communication it is unlikely that community life could give us any pleasure or be helpful in developing emotional positivity and security.

Emotional positivity and emotional security is another way of speaking about metta. We need to experience metta in our lives. We need to value and appreciate ourselves. We need to feel loved by others. This is what spiritual friendship is about. It's about the experience of metta in relationship. Friendship, as I said earlier, is not something that happens to you, it is something you do. You need to befriend people in order to experience friendship. Metta is also something that doesn't happen to you, you have to cultivate metta. If you want to fulfil the basic emotional need for positivity and security you have to take action. You have to enter into communication with others. You have to reveal yourself. You have to lower your defences and open your heart and mind to others. According to Sangharakshita, "It has been said that self-disclosure, the making of oneself known to another human being, is essential to human health and happiness."

We need to disclose and reveal our ideals, our enthusiasm, our joy, out faith, our love, especially our love, our inspiration, our understanding. We need to reveal our tenderness, our fears, our needs. We need to disclose our mistakes, our unskilfulness, our ill-will, our greed, our confusion. By disclosing or revealing what is hidden in our hearts and minds we begin to create connections with others and we start to cultivate the tender shoots of friendship in our communities.

We can begin very simply by just letting other people in the community know where we are going when we go out and what we are doing in our lives generally This is just a matter of courtesy and sharing the externals of our lives. We can also care for each other when we are ill . Sometimes it's enough just to be aware that someone is ill and check up on them from time to time. Sometimes more care and attention may be required. It's worth noting that people have different responses to illness. Some people may want lots of visits, others may prefer to be left alone. Some people feel very sorry for themselves and moan and groan so that everybody knows about the slightest imperfection in their health. Others carry on working and being cheerful even when they are quite ill. So the same response is not appropriate to everyone. We need to try to be aware of each other to a sufficient degree to act appropriately. In a sense we have to be like family to each other - or at least what family symbolises - caring, tenderness, intimacy, a safe haven.

Not Just Another Lifestyle

If we all make the effort to be aware of our fellow community members and look out for their welfare, we will create an environment of happiness and pleasure, which we will want to live in. We will also be moving beyond the limitations of self-concern and selfishness and entering the more spiritual realms of metta and generosity. This of course will be to our own benefit as well as to the benefit of others. Other people are part of the conditions of our lives, part of the conditions that will enable us to live the spiritual life. It is not possible to live the spiritual life divorced from other people. By entering into community life we learn about other people: about their differences and their similarities, about the need for co-operation and friendship. We start to gain some insight into the immensity and sublimity of the Bodhisattva Ideal. By finding ourselves up against our limitations in relation to others we gradually begin to realise the absolute necessity of the spiritual perspective, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of humanity. Community living is not just another lifestyle, it's an insight practice.

Complacency

As with any spiritual practice, we are likely to experience resistance. There are two kinds of resistance to the practice of community living which I would like to highlight. They are complacency and complaining. Perhaps you could say the first is characteristic of the greed type and the second is more characteristic of the hate type. It's probably obvious what happens with the deluded type! Complacency or settling down is a kind of resistance to community living. It's the tendency to try to replicate in your community whatever form of domesticity you have been most comfortable with. It's a case of old habits re-asserting themselves. It could manifest as an over-concern or even obsession with comfort. The furniture has to be just so and the curtains and the carpets and so on. I'm not saying that the furniture and carpets and curtains and so on are completely unimportant. They have their place, and it is important that our community environments are aesthetically pleasing, but if you find yourself or your whole community concerned mainly with these things, then you are going astray and beginning to settle down into something different from a community.

Complacency also manifests as an attitude that expects spiritual progress to be inevitable in a communal situation. "I'm in a community, so all is well." Sangharakshita describes this very well in a seminar on The Jewel Ornament of Liberation. He says ...." If you're not careful you can adopt an attitude of complacency to an admittedly positive situation. It isn't that the situation isn't positive, it is highly positive. It isn't that you should necessarily be out of that situation, no, it may well be the best situation for you - but it is only an opportunity, it is not an achievement.” Community living is a spiritual practice and it requires conscious effort like all spiritual practice. If you are to make progress in your community situation you need to make a conscious effort to develop spiritual friendship, a conscious effort to engage in collective meditation practice and a conscious effort to co-operate and develop a generous spirit. This conscious effort, and the awareness of the need for this conscious effort is the antidote to complacency.

Complaining

The other main resistance to the practice of community living is complaining. At its worst, this is an attitude that the community would be fine if it weren't for the other people. This obviously completely misses the point of community living. More often we tend to complain that others are not doing their household chores, or that they are not tidy enough or that they are too tidy or they are too loud or whatever. Basically, they are not enough like ourselves. All of these things may be legitimate cause for complaint or criticism but sometimes we get into a habit of complaining instead of communicating. Our complaints become very general, they are about 'someone' - ''someone' is not behaving as we would like, 'someone' is doing this or 'someone' is doing that. What begins to happen is that we feel at odds with the rest of the community, we feel that we are being offended, perhaps deliberately and we complain to anyone who will listen. This is not communication and it is not in the spirit of community living. In a community we need to realise and accept that other people are going to be different from us, they will have different standards and different tastes and part of the whole point of community living is to learn to live in harmony with people who are very different from us - this is how we achieve Sangha.

It may be that sometimes someone's behaviour falls below a level that is acceptable and then that is an occasion for communication and perhaps criticism. But there is no real benefit from a habitual attitude of complaint and we need to recognise it, confess it and move on. It is very important in a community that we take responsibility for our own mental states and don't try to off-load our negativity onto others. It is especially important simply because we do spend quite a lot of time with those with whom we live. In our community life, we should perhaps think much more in terms of confession, rather than complaint. Confess our negative mental states, rather than get into complaining about what may after all be trivialities, given the overall context of Going For Refuge.

Pleasure

I would like just to look briefly at one more topic before I conclude and that is pleasure. We need to have some pleasure in our communities The spiritual life involves a process of refining our pleasures. The most basic pleasures that most people have in their lives are food, sex and entertainment. We don't have to give up these things in order to make spiritual progress, but as we make spiritual progress we will hopefully find that other more refined pleasures enter into our lives as well and eventually we may quite naturally give up things that seem essential now. Pleasure is refined through civilisation. Civilisation is defined as intellectual, cultural and moral refinement.

Our pleasures are refined through a process of education, cultural activity and human relationships. We need to bring these elements into our communities too. Our moral refinement is achieved through the cultivation of friendship. At present I think we may have little cultural activity within our communities and perhaps this is something we should remedy. Many of you may be very well educated in the conventional sense, you've passed exams, you've got degrees, but conventional education may be too specialised to have a civilising effect. We need to educate ourselves further in ways that enhance our understanding of the common humanity we share. Sometimes just living and sharing with other people in a community is an education in the diversity and unity of human experience.

In our communities we need to bear in mind the refinement of pleasure and we need to set up the appropriate conditions for this. What those conditions are I cannot say and they will probably be different for different combinations of people. But they will involve the deepening of friendship and ethical sensitivity, the engagement in cultural activity and improved understanding of the human condition through study, discussion and debate.

If we apply ourselves to community living wholeheartedly and with a spirit of adventure and exploration we will eventually move closer to the ideal community described in Culagosinga Sutta. We will "live in concord, as friendly and undisputing as milk and water, viewing each other with kindly eyes". (Majjhima Nikaya, sutta 31)

An Influential Man

This talk was given at the London Buddhist Centre for the Buddha Day festival, May 1998

Today we are celebrating the traditional Buddhist festival of Wesak. Wesak is essentially the occasion of the Buddha's Enlightenment. It celebrates the moment when Siddhartha Gautama saw into the nature of Reality and had such a profound and far-reaching realisation that he became something more than merely human – a Buddha.

The word “Wesak” is the Sinhalese Vasakha. Vasakha is the Pali word for the Indian month of Vaishakha. Siddhartha Gautama is said to have gained Enlightenment at Vaishakha Purnima – which is the full moon day of the month of Vaishakha. This corresponds to our May full moon. So strictly speaking tomorrow is Wesak or Buddha Day as we prefer to call, as we are not a Sinhalese tradition. For Buddhists then, this day celebrates the most important event in the history of humanity so far – the Enlightenment of the Buddha.

It is important for us to understand the significance of this event. What did happen on that full moon night over 2500 years ago? Usually it is said that it is impossible to put into words what the experience of Enlightenment is. It is beyond language, beyond concepts, beyond space and time even. Then making an attempt to put it into words or somehow give a sense of it we say that it is the perfection of Wisdom, Compassion and Energy. Or we say that it is a transcending of the self/other dichotomy, an experience of transcending all sense of separateness between self and other and deeply realising the interconnectedness of all that lives. We say that Enlightenment is a vision of how things really are – a vision, an insight into Absolute Reality, an experience of Reality, an embodying of Reality. It is the overcoming of all greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance. We also speak of the Enlightenment as an Insight into the law of conditionality. And of course on the level of archetypes we have all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who communicate Enlightenment via the symbolism of colour, gesture and so on.

I thought that rather than try to explain or describe the experience of Enlightenment which is probably impossible, rather than give a philosophy of Enlightenment or even a poetry of Enlightenment, I thought I would approach the topic backwards so to speak and try to get a sense of the Enlightened Mind by looking at the effect that it has had down the generations.

As a result of his Enlightenment experience the Buddha had a big influence on the lives of many people when he was still living and he continues to have a big influence today – we are celebrating this Buddha Day because we have come under the influence of the Buddha in one way or another. As the title of the talk indicates, the Buddha was and is an influential man – a very influential man.

The question then is what kind of influence has the Buddha had and is the Buddha having? To answer this we could...

1. look at the history of Buddhism and the the way people have responded to the Buddha's message down the centuries.

2. We could try to discern the Buddha's influence by looking at Buddhist cultures

3. we could look at our own response to the Buddha's message and see how we have been influenced by the Buddha.

First of all I thought it would be interesting to take a quick look at the impressions of some people travelling in Buddhist countries.

In 1923, Alexandra David-Neel was the first European woman to visit Lhasa in Tibet. She comments on the humour, light-heartedness and positivity of the Tibetans. She speaks of

What these travellers remark on is the light-hearted, cheerful, good humour of the Northern Buddhists and the relaxed, carefree character of the Thais. Overall what is being experienced is

One of the greatest influences the Buddha has had is in the area of ethics and positive emotion. Buddhism has encouraged and enabled people to develop great positivity and give expression to it through generosity, hospitality and good humour. This is the relatively superficial view of the Buddha's influence.

On a deeper level the Buddha has communicated to people a meaningful vision of existence. This vision of existence spoke to and moved people during the Buddha's lifetime and it still speaks to and moves us today. This is a vision of the conscious evolution of individual consciousness into the great expansiveness of Enlightenment. It is a vision of the interdependence and interpenetration of all life. It is a vision of the great flow and flux of life, myriad conditions giving rise to further conditions. It is a vision of of the ability of the individual to step into this great flow and flux of life and give it conscious direction, through actions of body, speech and mind. It is a vision of the spiritual growth and development of the individual. It is a vision of a great many individuals choosing to pursue the path to Enlightenment together, in the unity of spiritual community. It is a vision of self-aware compassionate activity on a cosmic scale. A vision of life fulfilling its highest destiny.

And it is this vision communicated by the Buddha which has had such a huge impact on the lives of many millions of people for the past twenty five centuries and continues to have an impact on the lives of many millions today. When the Buddha was still alive the impact was very direct. Bhante Sangharakshita observes: “Sometimes, when reading the Buddhist scriptures, we get the impression that the Dharma is a matter of lists, the five of this and the six of that and so on – an excessively schematized and tabulated thing. But it certainly wasn’t like that at the beginning. It was all fresh, original, and creative. The Buddha would speak from the depths of his spiritual experience. He would expound the Truth and show the Way leading to Enlightenment, and the person to whom he was speaking would be absolutely astounded and overwhelmed. In some cases he might not be able to speak or do more than stammer a few incoherent words. Something had been revealed to him. Something had burst upon him that was above and beyond his ordinary understanding. For an instant, at least, he had glimpsed the Truth, and the experience had staggered him. Time and again, on occasions of this sort, the scriptures tell us that the person concerned exclaimed, ‘Excellent, lord, excellent! As if one should set up again that which had been overthrown or reveal that which had been hidden, or should disclose the road to one that was astray, or should carry a lamp into darkness, saying, “They that have eyes will see!” even so hath the Truth been manifested by the Exalted One in many ways.’ In this manner would he express himself. Then, out of the depth of his gratitude, such a person would fervently declare, ‘Buddham saranam gacchami! Dhammam saranam gacchami! Sangham saranam gacchami! To the Buddha for refuge I go! To the Dharma for refuge I go! To the Sangha for refuge I go!” (Complete Works, Vol.2,p.291)

The influence of the Buddha has of course been transmitted through various outstanding individuals during the course of the history of Buddhism – Ananda, Shariputra, Bodhidharma, Dogen, Hakuin, Hui Neng, Vasubandhu, Buddhaghosha, Nagarjuna, Padmasambhava, Milarepa, Tsong Khapa, Ryokan, Anagarika Dharmapala, Lama Govinda, Thich Nhat Hanh, The Dalai Lama, Dr Ambedkar and Sangharakshita, to name but a few. It has also been transmitted faithfully and comprehensively by innumerable less well known men and women down the ages and the Buddha's vision and message continues to be transmitted in this way, from individual to individual and you could say, I am here today playing my small part in this great pattern of influence. And you too are playing your part. Those of you who hear the message of the Buddha and who respond from the depths of your heart to the vision and take up the practices of meditation, ethics and friendship – you too will have an influence on the world; you will be part of this great cosmic drama of universal compassion. If you practice you will change, you will be transformed and that transformation will communicate something to others who will be moved to take up the challenge and they too will be transformed and so the vision of the Buddha will be transmitted through space and time for the benefit of all beings – those born and those yet to be born. Our sincere practice of the Dharma is the greatest legacy we can leave to future generations.

We can all have an influence on the world – an influence for the better. We do all have an influence whether we like it or not and whether we know it or not.

Other people have an experience of our influence, often they will know better than we do what kind of effect we have. They may not tell us, of course. For instance, you will know much better than I, what effect or influence this talk is having. I would only know if you all responded in some extreme way, like falling asleep or walking out. However, I can tell that many of you are interested in what I'm saying and listening to it and therefore so long as it is in accordance with the truth, it will have a beneficial effect on some people and at least not a harmful effect on anyone.

We can gain some idea of the effect we have by noticing how other people relate to us. Of course some people will relate to us purely subjectively, but if almost everyone we know relates to us as friendly or relates to us as unfriendly, relates to us with fear or relates to us with pleasure, it does indicate something about the influence we are having and it is worth our while noticing it, acknowledging it and endeavouring to gain some self-knowledge by contemplating it. Probably, all of us want to have a good influence, a beneficial influence and according to Buddhism we can choose to do this. We can decide to move in the direction of having a enhancing influence on those we come into contact with.

The kind of influence that any Buddhist would want to have is an influence similar to or along the lines of the influence of the Buddha. The influence which the Buddha had is the quintessential Buddhist influence. To have this kind of influence we need to behave and speak and think as far as possible as the Buddha would have done. We need to emulate the Buddha. And fortunately for us we have a very succinct and clear description of how the Buddha acted in the

Training in the precepts

It is not a matter of of pointing out other people's mistakes and faults, it is not even a matter of complaining about other people's mistakes and faults, it is, as I said, a matter of training ourselves to respond creatively to whatever happens. If we train ourselves in this way then we will have a beneficial, life-enhancing influence. If we have a close friend who can encourage us and point out when we are falling short of keeping the Precepts and rejoice when we do well, that will be an enormous help. If we want to have a good influence, it is also worth our while putting energy into befriending people. If we befriend someone, we both benefit from the friendship. Our observance of the Precepts and our friendship will help us to be more emotionally positive, emotionally expansive and this is a very good basis for our meditation practice.

If we want to have an influence along the same lines as the influence of the Buddha, in other words a Buddhist influence, we need to understand and observe the Precepts, we need to befriend people and we need to engage in the “willing of the Good” which is the essence of meditation.

As I said earlier we all have an influence, we all have an effect. Even if we think we are invisible, or a wimp or a weakling, or incapable in one way or another – we are still having an effect. We are all influential people. The question we need to ask ourselves is what kind of influence am I having? And answer as honestly as possible. (It's one of the perversities of human nature that those who have a good influence often think they're having a bad influence and vice versa). It could be said that the practice of Buddhism is a practice of positive influence – as the Threefold Puja says “

The practice of Buddhism is a practice of being mindful, kind, generous, appreciative and honest and by embodying these qualities of mindfulness, kindness, generosity, appreciation and honesty we influence others to practice also. This is essentially what a Bodhisattva does. A Bodhisattva influences others to live the spiritual life, the life of awareness and altruism. A Bodhisattva is someone who is dedicated to gaining Enlightenment for the sake of all living beings, including of course himself or herself.

One way in which we can speak about the life-work of a Bodhisattva is in terms of building the Buddhaland. The Buddhaland is the Bodhisattva's sphere of influence and a Buddhaland consists of all the living beings who respond to the influence of the Bodhisattva, all those who take up the life of ever-growing awareness and altruism, the spiritual life, in other words, all those who are themselves aspiring Bodhisattvas. The Buddhaland is a co-operative effort then. A Buddhaland is not a place. It is a fellowship of individuals who are putting Buddhist values and principles into practice, under the influence of someone who is far more spiritually advanced.

There are various ways in which the Bodhisattvas or the spiritually mature can communicate their influence. One of the ways is traditionally spoken of as skilful means. Skilful means means refer to the fact that the Bodhisattva communicates with people on their own level and in their own language so to speak. Skilful means is the seventh Paramita or Perfection of the Bodhisattva. Most of you will have heard of the six Perfections – however there are ten perfections, the last four are less frequently referred to and skilful means is the seventh. Skilful means is explained in terms of..

1. the four Pratisamvids – ie the four analytical knowledges

2. the four Sangrahavastus – ie the for means of unification of the Sangha, and

3. the dharanis or magical formulae.

The four analytical knowledges are

• the analytical knowledge of Phenomena

• the analytical knowledge of Meaning

• the analytical knowledge of Etymology, and

• the analytical knowledge of Courage

I'm not going to say any more about them here. If you want to know more, see Sangharakshita, Complete Works, Vol.16,p.488. I'm not going to say anything about the Dharanis either.

What I want to concentrate on is the four Sangrahavasstus – the four means of Unification of the Sangha. These are important practices which have the effect of creating spiritual community and spiritual community is essential to the spiritual life. The influence which we all need to have is an influence which encourages, and cultivates and creates spiritual Community. The four Sangrahavastus tell us how to do this. It may seem that all this is beyond you, that I'm talking about Bodhisattvas and spiritually advanced people and it's all too much for you.

We all need to practice at our own level and have a beneficial effect at our own level. This is how we progress. There is nothing static about the spiritual life – it is a constantly evolving process and as we evolve we can benefit others by making a genuine effort – even if we frequently fall short of the Ideal. We just have to be honest about the gap between our ideals and values and our actual attainments and practice. If we are honest, if we communicate ourselves, then we will have a positive effect on others. Authenticity is recognisable and attractive.

Whatever stage of the Path we are at, we can practice the four Sangrahavastus, the four Means of Unification of the Spiritual community and have a good influence or be a good influence. The four Sangrahavastus are..

• Dana or generosity

• Priyavadita – kindly speech

• Arthacarya – beneficial activity, and

• Samanarthata – exemplification.

This is what we have to practice: generosity, Kindly Speech, Beneficial Activity and Exemplification, in order to develop a united and co-operative Sangha.

Generosity

I've already mentioned the Precepts and generosity is of course the principle behind the second precept. Dana is also the first of the Perfections. And now here we have Dana again in the seventh Perfection as the first of the four Sangrahavastus. This gives us some indication of the importance of generosity in the Buddhist tradition, at every level of the spiritual Path. With the second Precept we are training ourselves to be more generous. We try to notice and act upon our generous impulses. We try to develop a more spontaneous open-handedness. Dana as the first Paramita is a more natural, spontaneous outflow or eruption of our general positivity and Dana as a Sangrahavastu is primarily motivated by friendship towards everyone we meet. We understand deeply the importance of a co-operative collective effort to practice the spiritual life, we understand and are deeply moved by the possibilities of Sangha and we give of ourselves and our possessions as a natural response to the Ideal of Spiritual Community. We experience a genuine, even inspired, motivation to befriend others and out of that we act generously. We want everybody to experience the benefits of the Dharma and Sangha and we do what we can to help them.

Dana as a Sangrahavastu, as a means of Unification of the Sangha, could be spoken of as co-operation. We give because we want to co-operate with the whole collective project of the Sangha, which is creating the conditions for spiritual practice. Co-operation is the emotion of Metta taken into the realm of action and manifesting as a spirit of generosity. This spirit of generosity, which is co-operation, is the hallmark of Sangha, the life-blood of Sangha and the whole point of Sangha.

Kindly Speech

Kindly speech as a Sangrahavastu, a means of Unification of the Sangha, corresponds to the principle of harmonising speech, which is the principle behind the seventh of the ten Precepts. Kindly speech is the exact opposite of slanderous speech. It is the exact opposite of speaking ill of people behind their backs. It could be characterised as speaking well of people behind their backs and spreading whatever good you hear about people.

Gossip and slander involve speaking ill of people and spreading bad reports – usually all justified on the grounds of truthful communication. According to Buddhism it is not enough to be truthful in our speech, our speech also needs to be appropriate, kindly, meaningful and harmonising.

Kindly speech, Priyavadita, the second Sangrahavastu is a rejoicing in others, especially when they are not present, and spreading good reports about people – enhancing their reputation. We could do a lot more of this. It is obvious how this would help to develop a unified and co-operative Sangha. Obviously we all have faults and shortcomings, but there is no need to dwell on other people's faults or weaknesses, just having shortcomings is burdensome enough. We need to try to relate to the best in people – relate to them as aspiring Bodhisattvas. If we have to criticise others, and it will be necessary sometimes, we need to do so from a basis of metta, of compassion even. If we do that it will still be Kindly speech.

Beneficial Activity

What this is about is sharing our experience with others, our experience of the Dharma. It is even a sharing of inspiration. For example sharing our inspiration for meditation or study or friendship or ethics or Puja. We sometimes feel inspired, excited even, by the whole adventure of the spiritual life and it is good to share that with others. I'll just mention two little warnings here. Firstly, it's best to share our enthusiasm with those who want to hear – it can be very demoralising to try to share it with those who mock or don't care, to cast pearls before swine, as the biblical phrase has it. Secondly, when sharing our experience we should be careful to be clear that it is

Exemplification

This means simply that it is not enough to talk and read about our values, we have to embody them to some degree too. We need to practice the virtues to the best of our ability. This is what has the greatest influence for good in the world, people actually practising and embodying their values and ideals to the best of their ability. We will fall short of what we know to be the best way to behave and speak, but we can pick ourselves up again and carry on making an effort. In this way we will change and grow and have an ever greater influence on those we come into contact with. An act of kindness or an act of generosity speaks louder than whole volumes of words about kindness and generosity.

Exemplification is not a matter of pretending to be better than we are, hiding our imperfections from view. It is a matter of trying to change ourselves by putting into actual practice what we deeply believe in. If we do that we will change and begin to embody the qualities which we venerate. If we are real Buddhists we will be, to some degree, exemplars of the spiritual life and we will have a positive influence.

I have been talking about influence and how to have a beneficial influence in the world. All of what I've been saying has its ultimate source with the Buddha Shakyamuni and his experience of Enlightenment on that full moon night in the month of Vaishaka. From his experience, his tremendous insight into the nature of Reality there has come an influence that has echoed down the centuries, resounding in the lives of great individual teachers and in the lives of millions of ordinary Buddhists. This influence has touched and transformed the lives of many of us here in the Western world at the beginning of the twentieth century.

We are candles burning with the flame of the Dharma, some blazing more strongly than others perhaps, some

Our aim as Buddhists is not just to be Buddhists but eventually to be Buddhas. In the meantime the message of my talk is that we are all influential people, we all have an influence and the question is what kind of influence do we have. And following on from that we can make a conscious decision to have a beneficial influence. We can do this by understanding the spirit of the Precepts and putting them into practice. By meditating, by befriending people and by practising the four Sangrahavastus:

We can be an influence for good in the world because we are influential people just as Shakyamuni was an influential man – or to be more precise, an influential Buddha.

Vajrapani - The Archetype of Energy

This talk was given at the London Buddhist Centre in 1998

When we want to connect with ideals, with what we aspire to, we need to use our imagination. An ideal, especially a spiritual ideal, is always beyond us, beyond our experience, beyond our knowledge and so we have to use intuition and imagination to make contact with what our ideals are like when realised.

In the Buddhist tradition those who have gone ahead, so to speak, those who have attained to higher states of consciousness and to Insight have tried to communicate their experience. To do this they have resorted to words and concepts, to images, sounds, colours, and even to paradox. From the depths of spiritual insight and experience there has poured forth a vast, abundant treasure of teachings in all these forms. From the depths of meditation experience there arose the various images, colours and sounds that represent the archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. These images are the embodiment of profound spiritual experience and although they are all different – Tara, Amitabha, Manjughosha and so on - they are also all the same – they all represent the fullness of the Enlightenment experience, while emphasising a particular aspect. There is only one archetypal Buddha or Bodhisattva in a sense and that one has manifested in myriad forms through the spiritual experience of many unique individual practitioners. And so when we contemplate the figure of an archetypal Buddha or Bodhisattva we are contemplating Enlightenment, we are contemplating the highest possible spiritual ideal. To do that we need to be able to allow our imagination to engage and interact with the form and colour before us.

Let us turn then to Vajrapani and allow our imagination and intuition to engage with him. On first sight Vajrapani is not exactly attractive – he is fierce and terrifying - liberated, free, unconventional – doesn't care what you think of him, gone beyond the vain pursuit of facade and posturing.

He is a dark blue colour. He has fierce, glaring eyes, sharp protruding teeth. He wears a crown of skulls. He is naked apart form a tiger skin wrapped around his loins. His fierceness is a skin, you have to look deeper than the surface, look into the deep blue of Vajrapani. He is moving to his right, stamping his great feet – under his feet he is crushing two human figures. He is holding a Vajra in his right hand and all around his body there is a halo of flames. All in all he is a frightening sight.

The figures he is stamping on, crushing beneath his feet, represent greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance. He is victorious over these forces of the mind. He dances the dance of victory – the ecstatic dance of triumph over the forces of negativity and debilitating habit. In his right hand he holds a Vajra. Vajra means “thunderbolt” or even “diamond thunderbolt”. It represents the energetic and even destructive aspect of Enlightenment.

The Wisdom of Enlightenment destroys all ignorance. It destroys all negativity. It destroys all egotism, all selfishness. It destroys self-pity, it destroys hatred, it destroys disharmony. Vajrapani holds the Vajra aloft, ready to hurl it, ready to put to flight all that is inimicable to the Dharma. Vajrapani is the quintessential warrior hero. Standing lone against all odds, defending truth and beauty. His left hand is in the gesture that wards off evil – demons and enemies of the Dharma. The flames surrounding Vajrapani indicate the passionate fiery energy of transformation, burning up impurities. To transform ourselves or the world, we need to have a passion for our ideals. We need the single-mindedness and wholeheartedness that produces the hot furnace of energy represented by those flames. Energy is fundamental to the spiritual life, indeed to all life. Vajrapani is the embodiment of the powerful unstoppable energy that is required to break through into Insight, breakthrough into Reality, break out of the prison of egotism.

The energy required for spiritual transformation is called Virya. Virya is energy in pursuit of the good. Sometimes people speak of having different kinds of energy – creative energy, sexual energy, physical energy, mental energy etc. The image that comes to mind is of a petrol station with different kinds of fuel. It's as if people see their energy in this way sometimes. Personally I think this is probably not a useful way to think about our energy. I think it can be alienating. We can get to the point of speaking about our energy as if it were some “thing”apart from us. So that “I don't seem to have the energy” can be a euphemism for “I'm not interested”. We all have energy, vitality, vigour. That's what it means to be alive. To have vitality, energy. What often happens though is that we dissipate our energy, we waste it – we allow it to leak out. And then we feel dull and listless.

I want to talk about about Virya - energy in pursuit of the good - under three headings, Conservation, Consummation, and Courage.

Conservation

As I said we often waste our energy – allowing it to leak out. Basically the main way we waste energy is through distractions and through the indulging in negative emotions, such as fear, anger, ill-will, jealousy, self-pity, worrying about the past, irrational guilt, and so on. The demons that Vajrapani is warding off.

We often allow our energy to flow in many different directions simultaneously. And then we haven't got much left to live the spiritual life. Some of the things we put our energy into may even be going in the opposite direction to our spiritual aspirations. For instance, if we watch violent movies, this will affect our minds and make mediation more difficult.

Some of the main areas where we invest our energy usually, apart from the spiritual life, are in our addictions, our leisure activities, our work and family. Some of these overlap of course. Before I say anything about any of these, I would like to issue a warning- that is, that change takes time and you should not expect yourself to be able to focus your energy in the spiritual life fully, until you've been practising for some time. Spiritual transformation is a process and it happens gradually over time, with periods of fast growth and even breakthrough, and periods when perhaps nothing much seems to happen. If you're practising, it is always happening on another level.

The biggest addiction for most people these days seems to be sex or more precisely the romantic relationship, which is held together by sex. The only thing I want to say about this is that we need to be more aware of how much energy we give to this area and how it affects our spiritual progress. I'm not advocating that people give up sex – it's not a simple matter and most of us are just not capable of maintaining contentment without some sexual outlet. But it does take up energy, both physically and emotionally and we need to become more conscious of that as a first step in moving towards giving our sexual activity and sexual relationship a more appropriate place in our lives i.e. not centre stage.

As regards our leisure activities, we can often waste a lot of energy in the pursuit of pleasure. And quite often what we think will bring us pleasure doesn't satisfy us at all. Whether it is sex, cinema, TV, internet, newspapers or whatever – we are often left with a feeling that it's been a bit of a waste of time. We do need pleasure and leisure in our lives, but strangely, for many of us it takes years and years to fully realise where our pleasure and leisure needs are really satisfied. In the meantime we squander a lot of energy on absurdities ( Since this talk was given the absurdities have multiplied enormously via Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and more.)

A first step that we need to take is to become more discriminating in what we do with our leisure time and more discriminating in what stimuli or input we engage with every day. This is not easy – it requires mindfulness and emotional maturity and I must admit that many of us don't have sufficient mindfulness and discipline to discriminate effectively about what is spiritually beneficial and what is spiritually detrimental. I'm posing a tough question when I ask you to become more discriminating about what to input into your mind. Nevertheless, in the spirit of Vajrapani, I will pose the question – I will lay down the challenge, which is a challenge to myself too. Weakness of resolve is not a spiritual virtue. Without a strong resolve to do better and an ability to carry it through we can carry on forever wobbling, dithering or dozing.

Apart from our addiction to romantic relationships and our rather indiscriminate pursuit of pleasure, we also waste energy through the verbal expression of negative emotion. This is complaining, grumbling, fault-finding , gossip, nagging, self-pity, self-hatred, undermining others – all these are ways in which we waste energy verbally. We waste energy anyway by talking too much, but negative speech takes a heavier toll on our energy. It's exhausting because it is pushing against Reality- it's a way we have of trying to keep reality at bay. The reality of our interconnectedness with all humanity and all of life. All these negative expressions are our way of trying to shore up our defences. We need to work hard to keep our chaotic tongues in check. I don't mean that we should deny our feelings of negativity – I think we should acknowledge them, recognise them and confess them, but not pour them over people.

Whether we waste our energy through our addictions or distractions or verbal expression of negative emotions, the first step towards stopping the leaks and conserving energy is awareness – recognition of what's happening. Acknowledging honestly and frankly to ourselves what we do with our energy. The next step is developing positive emotion. And this obviously starts with ourselves. We need to to develop a genuinely positive attitude towards ourselves. Sometimes people develop a sort of pseudo-positive attitude towards themselves, in which they will sing their own praises and acknowledge their good qualities but won't do anything much to help themselves progress. This is the sort of attitude that says - “Well, I'm pretty okay. I've got my faults, but I'm alright and there you are, take me or leave me”. A genuine positive attitude towards yourself looks for the best in yourself, looks for your good qualities, acknowledges them and strives to make them grow. A genuine positive attitude is one that is always endeavouring to enhance, encourage and nourish the best in ourselves and others.

It's not enough to just sort of like ourselves in some vague way – we need to clearly recognise our unique qualities and our positive responses and to deliberately give attention to them. We need to deliberately nourish and encourage what is best in ourselves. If we do this we will experience Metta, and if we experience metta we will experience a measure of contentment and satisfaction and therefore we will experience less of a craving to distract ourselves or dissipate our energy and more of a genuine desire to channel our energy into spiritual growth and caring for others. Positive emotion is essential to the spiritual life. If we frequently feel restless and anxious and chase after all sorts of distractions and addictions, it is because we are lacking in Metta. We don't really care for ourselves enough. If we really care for ourselves, we will experience greater energy and vitality. We will feel alive and glad to be alive.

As far as conserving energy that is wasted through negative speech is concerned, well we need to just stop it basically. We need to stop grumbling and complaining and criticising and gossiping and nagging and undermining others and cynicism and self-pity. Traditionally these states are personified as demons – we need to ward off the demons. We need to take responsibility for our mental states as being our mental states and acknowledge and confess negativity rather than waste energy pouring it all over other people.

Consummation

What do I mean by Consummation of energy? Usually we hear the word consummation in relation to sexual intercourse in marriage. A marriage is consummated by sexual intercourse. Consummation means to bring to completion. That which is consummated has been completed. So what is meant by the consummation of energy - the bringing to completion of energy. What I'm getting at here is the appropriate channelling of energy, the appropriate use of energy, which indicates psychological integration and is the expression of psychological integration. A whole person, a complete person and integrated person, uses or channels energy in an appropriate way.

I want to talk about consummation of energy under the headings of, unblocking energy, sublimating and refining energy and channelling energy.

Quite often people find at the very early stages of the spiritual path that their energy is not fully available to them - in other words, their energy is blocked. This manifests often in a lack of emotionality, an inability to feel emotions. There can be all sorts of reasons for repression of the emotional life – e.g. guilt about sex due to wrong education and bad religion or fear of being hurt or engaging in mechanical routine work or not having any outlet for inspiration or creativity or big disappointments in life or even just an absence of any real communication. There are all sorts of reasons why our emotional energy might be blocked and what we have to do is unblock it.

We unblock energy and emotions first of all through meditation and introspection. In meditation this quite often happens spontaneously as you get concentrated. Communication is another obvious way to unblock energy. You may have noticed that after a good session of communication exercises you feel energised and alive. The communication exercises are just to loosen us up and wake us up to the possibilities in communication, the possibilities for affirmation, acknowledgement, and expression, bring the best in us into relation with the best in others, that we have all the time in the Sangha. (for an explanation of communication exercises see Subhuti, Sangharakshita:A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition, p.160)

Some kind of creative work also helps to unblock energy. By creative work I don't mean composing poetry or painting pictures, necessarily. I mean work that is related to your spiritual aspirations – either because it is obviously ethical in a life enhancing way or because it is together with other Buddhists or somehow helps you to grow and develop spiritually. Work in a Triratna team-based right livelihood is creative because it is ethical, it encourages growth and development and it is in co-operation with other Buddhists. I recommend it. Physical exercise is another important way to keep energy moving. When our energy gets more and more unblocked, we can waste it or we can sublimate it and refine it. Usually we choose to waste it.

To sublimate and refine our emotional energy we need to quite consciously and deliberately put a check on the expression we give to our energy. The opposite to refined is coarse and coarse energy is not sufficient for the spiritual life. To engage with meditation, ethical practice and higher states of consciousness, we need to have a refined sensitivity. We refine ourselves by engaging our emotions and our energy in more refined and sensitive activities, such as the arts. Even interaction with beauty in the form of landscapes can have a refining effect on us. The point here is about not wasting energy through an indiscriminate pursuit of distractions. If we are more discriminating about where we engage our energies, more discriminating about what we read, what we watch at the cinema or on TV, more discriminating even in our conversation - if we are more discriminating we can choose the refined over the coarse and develop gradually the necessary sensitivity to practice the spiritual life.

Here is what Bhante Sangharakshita says about the sublimation and refining of emotions in his essay Advice to a Young Poet: “it should be clearly understood that emotion is essentially a force, and that it has a natural tendency to express itself in some outward form.If this force is consciously checked, so that it is no longer able to express itself in the normal manner, the inhibited energy will assume a subtler and more powerful form, and therefore tend to expressions on a higher plane of experience. Feelings are like fountains, in which water, unable to to find an outlet on its own level, shoots up through a narrow aperture to leap a hundred feet in the air. It should be noted that the 'check' of which we speak is a conscious and deliberate process; were it unconscious, then the inhibited emotion would simply be pressed down beneath the conscious surface of the mind into the unconscious depths below and what disturbance a repressed emotion is capable of creating has been too strongly insisted on by psychoanalysts to need repetition.” (The Religion of Art,p. 131/132)

It's up to each individual how they refine their emotions but the necessity of a refined emotional energy is applicable to all. After the unblocking, and the sublimation and refining of energy, there comes the channelling of energy. This is the final consummation.

The channelling of energy is basically a practice of moment to moment mindfulness. There is a channelling of energy that takes place in terms of choosing a context – that could broadly be labelled commitment. Choosing a context might mean choosing a particular spiritual group, in our case Triratna and within that framework, choosing a context could mean, living in a community, working in a team-based right livelihood, staying with the family or whatever, and then within that situation the implications of practice are followed through with mindfulness.

We have to consistently make decisions about what we do and to be able to make those decisions we have to be awake to the choices we are being presented with. Sometimes people don't even realise that they are making decisions because they are totally unaware of the choices confronting them. When that happens we act purely from habit and are more asleep than awake, more dead than alive. So we need to to try to wake up to the choices in our lives and make decisions about what to do with our energy, both in terms of the wider context in which to live our lives and in terms of the moment to moment business of living. When we are awake and alive in this way, we are more like complete or whole persons and our emotional energy is consummated in a constant stream of creativity.

Courage

We need courage to go beyond the limitations of our personality and self image. We need courage to let down our defences, to come out from behind the facade of our personality and enter into genuine communication with each other. We need courage to break through our doubts and fears and move into more expansive ways of being. We need courage to be wholehearted, to throw ourselves into the practice of the Dharma. We even need courage to be generous. The practice of Buddhism needs a heroic attitude, a pioneering, adventurous attitude. The archetypal Bodhisattva Vajrapani is also an archetypal hero or warrior. He represents an active, fearless approach overcoming limitations and doubts. This attitude or approach is also symbolised in Tantric Buddhism by the cremation ground. To quote Bhante, “The cremation ground is the place where you come face to face with everything that you usually avoid”. What you face in the cremation ground is death and fear and loneliness and perhaps even insanity.” “The cremation ground represents a crucial situation, a situation of crisis into which one deliberately plunges oneself, a situation on which one is compelled to change. You come face to face in the cremation ground with yourself. You know yourself. You know your weaknesses and your strength.” (Mitrata, The Tantric Path 5, p.12)

If we are to develop courage we will have to put ourselves into crucial situations, discover our own personal cremation grounds. For some people doing communication exercises is a crucial situation, something they fear. For others speaking up in a group is a crucial situation. Others again fear to let anyone see their sadness or insecurity. For some people there is even a fear of expressing affection. Each of us has our own crucial situation, our own cremation ground and this is the arena in which we can be heroic. This is where we can muster our energies and go forward courageously breaking through limitations, taking risks. The more we can take these personal risks and move beyond our current limitations, the greater will be our ability to progress spiritually, to expand our consciousness, and rise to higher levels.

We could say that in the spiritual life there are two great hindrances: the tendency to settle down and the tendency towards distraction. We need to become more aware of any tendency we may have to settle down, whether of body, speech or mind. As we grow older it is natural for us to start to settle down into habitual behaviour, habitual ways of communicating and habitual mental states. But settling down is death to our spiritual practice (a slow death!), so we need to be aware of this tendency and actively work against it.

Settling down in terms of body can mean having a strong attachment to our bit of territory, our house or flat, our room and our possessions, our money, and our way of doing things. Settling down in terms of speech means getting into habitual ways of speaking without much reference to the precepts. We may no longer be asking ourselves whether our speech is truthful or exaggerated, whether it's kindly or cutting, whether it's meaningful or trivial, whether it's harmonising or gossipy. Settling down in terms of mind means allowing yourself to indulge in habitual negative mental states on the grounds of that is who you are. We can settle down with self-pity or irritability or anxiety or loneliness, because even though they are painful they are what we are used to.

The opposite of settling down is going forth. Vajrapani could be seen as the Bodhisattva of Going Forth, always watching out for complacency and moving on, going beyond, breaking through. I think we need to guard against any tendency to settle down and give ourselves a good shake from time to time.

Whatever particular activity or situation is our current cremation ground or crucial situation, we are all aiming to increase our own confidence, this is the self-regarding aspect of courage and we are also aiming to achieve genuine, heartfelt, open communication with others. Confidence can be built up simply by the activity of spiritual practice. If we practice we will progress. We need to avoid any unrealistic expectations in the early stages of the spiritual life and not expect our meditations to be blissful or our communication to be transcendent all the time. If we make the effort to practice we can be sure that we are good enough to practice and progress. You don't need to be young, you don't need to be old, you don't need to be educated, you don't need to be artistic, you don't need to be special. In fact it's probably quite arrogant for someone to think that the Dharma is not within their capability – that would be a claim to being special indeed. We can be confident that we can practice and that consistent practice does bear fruit in higher states of consciousness and more expansive awareness.

Communication is the other area where we need to proceed with courage. As we enter into closer communication with other people, as we begin to form friendships and those friendships go deeper and become more intimate, we encounter two potential difficulties. These are that our normal tendencies to attraction or aversion becomes heightened and emphasised. We might find to our discomfort that our friendliness is turning into feelings of sexual attraction. And, at least for those who are not homosexually inclined, this can be very uncomfortable indeed. It can cause all sorts of fears and confusion to arise. This is something that often happens and is simply another area for communication. This happened to me, about ten years ago, in two of my closest friendships and for a time caused me great confusion and distress but when I eventually communicated to my friends what was going on, there was not a problem. The main issue had been my bottling up of something that I felt uncomfortable about. In those of homosexual inclination, there can be confusion between romance and spiritual friendship.

We may also find that as we get closer to someone we experience strong feelings of anger or resentment towards them. Again we can communicate our way through this if there is enough genuine friendliness there. As Vessantara puts it in “Meeting the Buddhas”, “these strong feelings are just the dragons that guard the treasure of intimate communication and deep friendship.” (p.167)

Vajrapani is the embodiment of energy. He is the embodiment of Virya – energy in pursuit of the good – energy raised to its highest level. He dances the passionate fiery dance of transformation. He stands naked and fearless before the forces of ignorance and limitation and hurls his vajra thunderbolt with the power of wisdom at all that threatens the Truth of the Dharma. He is energy and courage, he is fearlessness and freedom, and as we watch him his halo of raging fire starts to grow and expand and reach out to us, touching us with the heat of his fiery passion for truth, and awakening within us the spirit of adventure, of going forth, the spirit of the hero warrior ready to enter the field of spiritual endeavour, wholeheartedly and courageously.