Imagine a Sangha

This talk was given at the London Buddhist Centre on Sangha day 2008, which was part of  their 30th anniversary celebrations. 

It is a privilege to be invited to speak on this occasion of the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Centre. Thirty years ago, (3rd December 1978) the shrine room here was dedicated to Dharma practice and the following day Bhante Sangharakshita gave a talk here. In that talk, he spoke about the vision of what he called Sukhavati. The London Buddhist Centre (LBC) was seen then as part of a bigger project called Sukhavati. Sukhavati, traditionally is a Pure Land. It is the pure land of Amitabha, Buddha of infinite light and Buddha of the West -- that is why there is a rupa of Amitabha here. A Pure Land is a place where the Dharma is being constantly expounded and practised. There are no obstacles whatsoever to Dharma practice in the Pure Land -- everything assists Dharma practice, everything is conducive to attaining higher states of consciousness. 

 This project called Sukhavati of which the LBC was part, was envisaged as an attempt to create an environment where everything assisted spiritual practice, everything conduced to positive mental states. As Bhante put it at the time: "Sukhavati is that society and environment, that social and spiritual context, that context of fellowship with one another, which makes it easier for us to evolve, so that instead of frittering away our energies in resisting the effects Society has upon us we can put them into the process of our development as human beings. At present so much of our energy is spent just trying to keep society at bay! So much of it is spent trying to resist society’s ever present, coercive, crushing influence and preserve ourselves a little bit of space within which we can grow and develop! So much of our energy is spent trying to resist the counter - evolutionary forces! In an ideal environment, like that represented by Sukhavati, we will not have to resist all the time, or be on the defensive all the time, and the greater part of our energy will be available for our own individual development in free association with other, like minded people."  (Talk, Authority and the Individual,www.freebuddhistaudio.com/audio/details?num=138) 

These like-minded people are the Sangha -- the spiritual community. The vision for Sukhavati was that these like-minded people would form communities to live together, create businesses or other work situations where they would work together and come together at the Buddhist centre to study, meditate, discuss, teach and relax. The principle behind all this was that in order for Buddhism to flourish it needed to be practised intensively and for that to happen there was a need to transform conditions not helpful to spiritual development into conditions which are helpful. To put it another way, conditions are important for practice and the work of the Sangha and of each individual Buddhist is to create the best possible conditions for Dharma practice. 

What has happened to the vision that Bhante outlined 30 years ago, which, of course, was not just a vision for here, but for the whole Triratna Community. Many people have lived together in communities over the years and many people have benefited from working together in teams and the Centre itself has been a place of study, meditation, discussion, relaxation and teaching. In many ways, what Bhante outlined then did happen. However, in more recent years, it seems that there is less interest in residential communities, and it seems that less people are interested in working together in teams. The centre itself is fully used in many ways and has the additional facility of a retreat centre and will soon have even more facilities downstairs. Has the vision of Sukhavati been a success? Well, the name didn't stick. Nobody thinks of Sukhavati as an umbrella project of which the Centre is a part. As for the rest: well I think it is probably too soon to tell. 

A vision of a new Buddhist movement and Sangha is an historic vision. It is a vision on a very large scale, and it takes much longer than thirty years to achieve fruition. This kind of vision cannot by its nature account for every practicality. It needs to be based on a broad principle that can find new forms, new manifestations, as the generations roll on. Each generation needs to envision afresh, each generation needs to articulate its own dream, its own vision, based on the fundamental principles but taking account of contemporary conditions and issues. For a Sangha to come into being we need like-minded individuals, we need individuals who have an intuition and a conviction that the purpose of life is to evolve spiritually, to evolve higher states of consciousness, characterised by compassion, wisdom and energy. This intuition and conviction leads to a commitment, it leads us to dedicate our lives to what Bhante calls the Higher Evolution of Consciousness. In more traditional Buddhist terms, it leads us to go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. 

Sangha is the fellowship, co-operation and activity of those who dedicate their lives to going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Sangha requires imagination. Going for refuge requires imagination. Spiritual life requires imagination. Perhaps all life requires imagination. Spiritual community happens, where there is imagination and the courage, ability and determination to act from the imagined. Sangha is a vision of an Ideal Human Community, imagined as interactions and relationships between people based in love, imagined in terms of institutions, art, architecture, music, interaction with the natural environment and so on. It is a vision of an ideal human community imagined as a fellowship of individuals who are altruistically motivated and who will work together co-operatively to help each other and all those they come into contact with to awaken spiritually, to awaken to the true meaning and purpose of life. Sangha is a vision of an ideal human community where everybody is dedicated to awakening from ignorance, awakening into Enlightenment, into Wisdom and this provides the primary orientation for people's lives. Sangha is a vision of an ideal human community, imagined as a fellowship of individuals who want to expand beyond any narrow sense of self in as many ways as possible. Sangha is a vision of an ideal human community, and Sangha is the practice of joining together with like-minded others to bring that ideal human community into being. Sangha is about creating Sangha. 

The ideal human community creates itself and to do that it needs dedicated and imaginative people. As Jacob Bronowski said, speaking of imagination: "of all the distinctions between man and animal, the characteristic gift, which makes us human is the power to work with symbolic images: the gift of imagination. The power man has over nature and himself lies in his command of imaginal experience. Almost everything we do, that is worth doing is done first in the mind's eye. The richness of human life is that we have many lives. We live the events that do not happen (and some that cannot) as vividly as those that do. If thereby we die a thousand deaths, that is the price we pay for living a thousand lives. To imagine is the characteristic act not of the poet's mind, or the painters or the scientists, but the mind of man. Imagination is a specifically human gift." (The Reach of Imagination, p.2) Aloka in his talk, The Life and Death of Imagination, speaks about imagination as follows: "by definition the imagination is a liberating faculty, it liberates you from the moment. Without it we would be stuck with whatever our present experience was in this particular moment, we would be stuck with that, we would have no way of projecting into the future and no way of really assimilating the past."  (available as booklet from www.padmaloka.org.uk/shop/booklets)

Just as we need imagination to create sangha, the ideal human community, we need imagination for all the different elements that are involved in the creation of Sangha. These elements are broadly speaking, commitment, interaction, and altruism. Commitment or going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is very succinctly defined by Bhante in his book, What Is the Sangha: "going for refuge to the Buddha means accepting the Buddha and no other as one's ultimate spiritual guide and exemplar. Going for refuge to the Dharma means doing one's utmost to understand, practise, and realise the fundamental import of the Buddha's teaching. And going for refuge to the Sangha means looking for inspiration and guidance to those followers of the Buddha, both past and present, who are spiritually more advanced than oneself."  (Complete Works, Vol.3, p.396) 

We don't know what enlightenment is, we have had no personal contact with the Buddha. To make the Buddha and all that he represents central to our lives, requires imagination. We find ourselves responding very strongly to the Buddha's teaching, and his life and the lives and teachings of his followers down the ages. We find ourselves responding, being attracted and imagination and intuition enables us to envisage a future in which we too can attain to great wisdom and compassion. That response and that intuition are sufficient to motivate us to dedicate our lives to spiritual awakening. When we encounter a spiritual ideal and spiritual practices that attract us so strongly and from so deep a level of our being we embark on a process of integration, gradually more and more of our energy, more and more of our thoughts, emotions and activities, begin to focus and orientate in the same direction. Gradually our psychology becomes more integrated. We experience less conflict between different aspects of our personality. We begin to become more whole as a person, more aware of who we are and what life is about. As this happens, we become more able to make a commitment to the spiritual path. We become more able to place the ideal of evolving to higher states of consciousness at the centre of our lives. When we are able to make this kind of commitment, when we are able to allow the principles embodied in the Buddha, Dharma & Sangha to be central in our lives, then we will begin to organise our lives around them. 

The more committed we are to spiritual growth, the more it will be the primary consideration in every decision we make about our lives. We will always be asking ourselves - is this going to help me to evolve spiritually or will it hinder me. We will be asking this kind of question when we make decisions about where to live, what work to do, how many children to have, what to spend money on, what to do with our leisure time, even how to decorate the house or flat. Ideally, when we are spiritually committed all our actions and decisions will be supportive of that commitment. Because we are often weak and unintegrated, we inevitably fall short of this and do things that undermine our attempts to live the spiritual life and make decisions that take us off the spiritual path. But of course, if the vision is still there, if the deep response to the spiritual ideal is there, then we may be lost for a while, but all is not lost. 

Paradoxically, one of the things that will enable us to stay on the path is if we are honest and realistic enough to acknowledge to ourselves and others when we make choices or do things that hinder our spiritual growth, or take us in the wrong direction. If we rationalise our behaviour and insist that it is really for spiritual reasons, when it obviously isn't, then we are  on a difficult journey indeed. 

Commitment to the Buddha involves using our imagination to grasp the sublime and un-graspable spiritual ideal and then working that out in our lives. Commitment to the Dharma requires study, reflection and discussion. And of course it means putting into practice what we learn from our discussion, reflection and study. It means actually applying the Dharma to our lives. If we don't make the attempt to practice, to apply the principles of the Dharma to our lives, then we will be in danger of being in a fantasy world rather than the world of imagination. As the Buddha says we will be like a donkey who thinks he is a cow: "Suppose, monks, an ass follows close behind a herd of cows thinking: I'm a cow too! I'm a cow too! But he is not like cows in colour, voice or hoof. He just follows close behind a herd of cows thinking: I'm a cow too! I'm a cow too! Just in the same way, monks, we have some monk who follows close behind the order of monks thinking: I'm a monk too! I'm a monk too! But he has not the desire to undertake the training in the higher morality which the other monks possess, nor in the higher thought, nor in that higher insight which other monks possess. He just follows close behind thinking: I'm a monk too! I'm a monk too!" (Anguttara Nikaya 3.81, Gadrabha Sutta) Hopefully, we don't have anyone in this state here saying I'm a Buddhist too! I'm a Buddhist too!, but not really practising. Commitment to the Sangha as one of the three refuges means looking to the Arya Sangha for inspiration and exemplification. 

 The Arya Sangha or noble Sangha is the Sangha of all those who have gained transcendental insight. It is a Sangha that traverses and transcends space and time and embodies the ideal of spiritual realisation, in actual people in different times, different places and different cultures. They are united by the attainment of insight into the nature of Reality. We can be inspired by the existence of the Arya Sangha, because it shows that it is not just one person, the Buddha, who Awakened to the true nature of things, but many people over the last two and a half thousand years have evolved and awakened. And this means that we too can evolve and awaken. We too can become part of the Arya Sangha. This is what we are committing ourselves to. 

In more general terms going for refuge to the Arya Sangha also means recognizing the principle of spiritual hierarchy, recognizing that some people may be more spiritually evolved than we are and some less spiritually evolved than we are. We can learn from those more spiritually developed and we can help those less spiritually developed. But of course, commitment to the Arya Sangha is put into practice in the actual Sangha that we come into contact with. The insight which characterises the Arya Sangha is a matter of seeing clearly with a direct vision what it means to be a human being, it means discovering that constantly creative consciousness that is always latently potential in us and from the perspective of that consciousness we then see the world around, we see what is real. 

One of the things that is seen at that level of insight is that there is no fixed unchanging self separate from a lot of other fixed unchanging selves. Rather, there is a flowing, intermeshed, constantly changing ocean of selves. Each one of us is a sea of changing thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, perceptions and responses and all together we are an interconnected dynamic matrix of consciousness. As the poet Shelley said: "nothing in the world is single, all things by a law Divine in one another's being mingle...". (Love's Philosophy) To live with constant perception of this mingleing is to live without emphasis on a personal distinct and fixed self. It is to live in fluid creativity with other conscious beings, according them equal value with our own consciousness of self. When it comes to the practice of Sangha; creating a Sangha of like-minded people, who eventually evolve into an Arya Sangha, a transcendental sangha, an Ideal Human Community, then we need to work at trying to accord others equal value with ourselves and for both ourselves and others that should be a very high value. We need to work at seeing the potentially creative consciousness in everybody, that consciousness which is awake to Reality. In other words, we try our best to relate to the highest and best in each other. 

We create a Sangha or we engage in the practice of Sangha by interacting with each other, by relating to each other. What this means in practice is observing the ethical training principles and especially the speech precepts. Truthful, kindly, helpful and harmonising speech is what we are aiming for in the Sangha and it is what helps to create the Sangha. When we create a Sangha we are endeavouring to create the best possible conditions for spiritual practice. The Ideal Human Community is one where everything is conducive to spiritual practice, everything is helpful. When conditions are helpful, then we have more energy available for practice because we are not always struggling against the tide of difficult conditions in the world around us. 

There are many conditions which are not helpful to spiritual practice: there are many conditions that are even antithetical to the spiritual life and we use up energy struggling against those things. For instance, the predominant world view around us is that sufficient wealth and material well-being is the road to happiness and contentment. It is a materialistic view. Buddhism acknowledges the need for material well-being, as a starting point but not something to chase after or be attached to as an end in itself. But we live in this world of rampant consumerism and we inevitably get caught up in it, often in ways we don't even notice. We buy what we want rather than what we need. We replace because a replacement is available rather than because we need to replace. We become addicted to the shops as a quick route to satisfaction and remain dissatisfied. To service our high levels of consumption modern life makes many demands on us and is very stressful for many people. Commuting to work each day can be stressful. The work environment itself can be stressful. Family life in our atomised society can be stressful. Bringing up children can be stressful, with a thousand and one pitfalls and dangers. Even leisure can be stressful, if it involves a lot of TV,  Internet and social media all of which tend to sap energy. 

With all the demands and potential stresses of life, it makes sense to try to create better conditions, if we want to make spiritual progress. This brings us back to imagination. To create better conditions for ourselves and others we need to be able to analyse and imagine what those better conditions might look like. One of the conditions we need in order to make spiritual progress is communication with people who share our aspiration and commitment. Communication here means more than the usual exchange of information or chatting about where you've been, what you've seen and who is making up, taking up or breaking up with whom. In the Dedication Ceremony used in the Triratna Community, it says "may our communication with one another be Sangha". This kind of communication goes deeper. It is a communication of what is most meaningful for us, it is a communication that acknowledges and confesses faults and failings, it is a communication that involves listening, empathising and learning. It is a communication, above all, that leads to greater awareness. We become more aware of ourselves, we gain self-knowledge and we become more aware of our friends through this friendly, deep, sometimes moving, sometimes playful, sometimes painful, sometimes ordinary, but always worthwhile communication. So in terms of improving conditions for spiritual life, one of the questions is, what kind of conditions will invite and encourage this kind of deeper, more aware communication to happen. 

This kind of communication requires spending time with someone -- it requires seeing people in lots of different kinds of situations -- seeing them relaxed, seeing them busy, seeing them relating to others, seeing them angry, tired, upset, happy and so on. Meeting in a cafe once a week doesn't really do it. Now the answer to this that Bhante outlined as he spoke thirty years ago, was for people to live and work together in residential spiritual communities and team-based right livelihood businesses, and to have their social interactions focused around the Buddhist centre. Is that the end of it? I said earlier that we need to imagine more, we need to dream and we need to articulate our dreams. The basic need for conditions that enable and encourage deeper communication can perhaps be fulfilled in other ways. 

Thirty years on, the vision of the project that was then called Sukhavati needs to be looked at afresh, needs to be imagined, dreamed, envisioned afresh. It has gone through changes. Some people like the imagery of building the Buddhaland. Whatever we call it, and names can be important, I believe it will be helpful if we imagine on the grandest scale, dream big dreams, and then see whether we can move towards our dreams. For instance, a number of Buddhists now live in flats around this area. Imagine if they all lived in the same block of flats, imagine they all owned that block of flats and then they could make changes, could make decisions about doing some things communally, to save money, to help the environment and to deepen their communication. Imagine bigger than that. Imagine a whole tower block, like the one just across the road, owned and occupied by Buddhists, with many shared facilities - shrine room, meeting room, library, laundry room, perhaps even a dining room, cold store and so on. This would have spiritual and environmental benefits. Imagine bigger than that. Some years back the old town Hall in Patriot Square was for sale and another time it looked like the hospital on the Approach Road might be for sale -imagine a big complex like that -with residential space for individuals, couples, families, small communities, large communities and space for a natural health Centre, an arts centre, a Buddhist Centre, a home for the elderly, study facilities, a library, studios, small businesses. Imagine such a thriving Buddhist community in the heart of London. 

 Okay, not many Triratna Buddhists may want to live in large single sex communities these days, but we can imagine co-housing situations on a large scale that can include space for communites and other types of accommodation for singles, couples and families. Not many Buddhists may want to work in shops or restaurants these days, but we can imagine other types of enterprise, in the caring professions, perhaps in education, architecture, building, technology. It may even be that initially people from similar professions just get together to share their experience and talk about how to practice spiritually in the workplace, how to remain ethical, how to avoid the character assassinations and politics of the workplace, how to have a positive influence. It may be that some people want to look at the altruistic side of work and look into how to generate money for Dharma work. There are ways in which a pooling of resources could occur. I've been amazed at how much good can be done with relatively small amounts of money like £5000 or £10,000. If a group of people involved with the Centre set up a fund and put a little in every month the combined value would be greater than any one person could achieve and a substantial donation could be made to the centre each year similar to what businesses have done in the past. 

 There are other ways in which people can have an intensive experience of communication and working together through teams for retreats, classes and other projects. I don't know how many social events happen around the centre these days, but I think social events are a very good sangha activity and the work that goes into organising them can be a very good way of building spiritual community. The main point I want to make here is that we need to imagine, we need to inspire ourselves with the dream of what could be, what the future could look like. It could be different from any of what I have just mentioned. Perhaps, rather than a big complex, there could be hundreds of small cells of Buddhists around London. 

There was a song that said, "the future is not ours to see, que sera sera, whatever will be will be." This is not completely true; the future is not ours to see, that's true enough, although we can imagine it. But it is not a case of "whatever will be will be", it is more a case of whatever we will to be will be. The future is not ours to see, but we can begin to create it, we can begin to set the train of activities in motion that move in the direction of our future vision. The future is not ours to see, the future is ours to make. The vision needs to be there, the dream, the imagined future and it needs to be articulated. The more we talk about something, the more likely it is to happen. Talking sets up the conditions that begin to attract the right resources. The practicalities can follow. It may take years, generations even, before a vision is realised. And then it may even look quite different from what was originally envisaged, but the important thing is to begin, to dream and talk. Sometimes the money or the people or other resources are just not available, but you can still make a start.

 For instance, when we thought of getting a new retreat centre for the LBC over ten years ago, we didn't have the money, we didn't have the people, we didn't have a place in mind, all we had was the idea, the vision and enthusiasm, determination and courage. Everything else manifested in time and now Vajrasana Retreat Centre is there. At the time some of us had a very big vision of what we wanted; for example, there was going to be a shrine room with large murals painted on panels all-round, and there was going to be a library. It has not happened like that, maybe it will never happen, but a start has been made. The place is there and the potential is there. The will and the vision and the resources to transform it will emerge over time, and what eventually happens will be something we could never have envisaged ten years ago. 

This Buddhist Centre is of course is another vision that began over thirty years ago, with the shell of a burnt out building and a lot of energy and enthusiasm and very little money. It is still emerging, and being created, almost as I speak. The point here is about the importance of vision, a vision of an Ideal Human Community, based in the values and ethics of Buddhism and manifesting in the world in buildings, in institutions, in people living together, in people working together - a Buddhist village, a Buddhist town, a Buddhist Borough, a Buddhist city - libraries, stupas, shrines, workplaces, temples, streets, shops, all imbued with the spirit of the Dharma. Dreams can be as big as we can imagine, and we should articulate our dreams, talk about them, so that they become seeds of a possible future among all the possible futures. Architects can articulate architectural dreams. Doctors can talk about medical dreams. Teachers can have educational dreams, and so on: funeral directors, street cleaners, train drivers, traffic wardens, whatever your profession, whatever your interests, whatever your talents, dream your dreams and give voice to them. All the dreams can be woven together and articulated as our Buddhist vision of a truly human community, an ideal human community, a sangha, permeated by the vision, the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s great insights into the nature of reality and permeated by Bhante's clarity and the radical immediacy of his vision for Buddhism in the West. 

 Going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is essentially an altruistic activity. Our spiritual commitment is essentially a commitment to going beyond egotism and selfishness. This involves an outward expansion of consciousness, outwards to include and integrate all of ourselves, outwards to greater awareness of our self and others, an expansion of consciousness outwards in loving kindness towards our self and others. When all those individuals who are committed to expanding consciousness in this way, come together co-operatively in a Sangha, that Sangha will also be characterised by expansion, expanding outwards to include more people, always open, always encouraging. A Sangha of individuals like this, all working consciously to expand outwards in awareness and loving kindness and co-operating together for the benefit of all, this sangha is the ground from which the Bodhicitta flowers. 

The Bodhicitta, the awakening heart of the Bodhisattva, is not a personal possession. By its nature, by it's altruistic transcendent nature, it must be shared and as Subhuti put it "if it is to be conceptualised then you can see it as what arises among a fellowship of friends, working closely together for their ideals". The practices that give expression to the Bodhicitta are the six perfections -- generosity, ethics, forbearance, energy, meditation and wisdom. Of these generosity is the most important and appropriate for most of us. We could think of generosity as being in essence, an attitude, it is that expansive attitude that moves out towards others in giving and in kindness. Before you can give you need to know what is yours, what belongs to you. And in this context, the primary thing you own, which belongs totally to you, is your mental states. This may seem obvious, but the major stumbling block for many of us on the spiritual path is that we fail to recognize and acknowledge that our mental states are our own, that they belong to us and not to others. What has this got to do with generosity? 

The basic attitude we need to cultivate in the Sangha, the most generous and expansive attitude is the attitude of Metta. When we discover that our attitude towards a fellow Sangha member is not one of Metta, which often happens, then we need to ask ourselves why not?, why is our attitude, not one of Metta? And in answering this we should not be content with an answer that blames them. We should also not be content with an answer that just blames ourself. We need to go deeper than that, we need to seek a perspective of Wisdom. If we acknowledge and recognize that our mental states are our own, our very own responses to people and situations, then we have an opportunity to go deeper, to transform, to gain awareness and even insight and if we do that we become more and more capable of generosity, the movement of expansion in consciousness, ever outwards. 

We need to be trying to expand and move outwards from our habitual states as part of our spiritual practice. We need to move from being an habitual critic to being an encourager. We need to move from being an habitual consumer to being a giver. That applies to how we use the Buddhist centre as well. We need to move from a habit of exclusivity and cliqueishness to openness and hospitality. We need to move from a habit of being a commentator to being a participant. We need to move from the habit of being a spectator to being a player. We need to move from a habit of complaining to taking responsibility. There are probably many more. You could come up with your own personal list. Where there are faults and weaknesses and flaws, there is all the more need for Metta. Metta is realistic, it is not an attitude that is blind to faults and blemishes in oneself or others, but it is an attitude that sees these faults as occasion for kindness, for an expansive, generous attitude. 

That expansive, generous attitude manifests in words and actions, in friendliness, in kindness, in hospitality, in harmonising speech and so on. The attitude of generosity is also an attitude of contentment. It is content with a simple life, not overly focused on accumulating and consuming money or possessions or people or ideas. It is an attitude of being content with less and of finding joy in less. It is an attitude that realises the burdensome nature of possessions, and the tiresomeness of being forever restless, restless for the next meal, the next gadget, the next news bulletin, the next sexual encounter, the next episode of Big Brother and so on. 

The imagination and vision which we apply to the external dimension of Sangha can also be applied to this more internal dimension. We can imagine ourself more developed, more expansive, kinder, more generous and try to get a sense of what that feels like, what does it look like, how would we behave, what does it sound like and so on. Imagination is the first step to realization of the vision of an ideal human community, so also with our self, we can imagine as a first step to realisation and we can articulate to ourselves what we see and experience in imagination. This is why images of archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas can be so spiritually helpful to us. 

On December 4th, 1978, when Bhante gave his talk, the day after this Centre opened, among other things, he said this: "all of us, surely, at least sometimes, are dissatisfied: we feel dissatisfied with the world as it is and aspire to a higher, better, brighter, more beautiful world than that which we at present experience, or in which we seem to live - a world where it will be easier for us to grow and develop. Surely, at least sometimes, we aspire in this way." If we do aspire in this way, then we can imagine all the ways we could possibly create a future Sangha, that is large, harmonious, mutually helpful and an example to the world of how life can be lived both joyfully and meaningfully, an example of an ideal human community. 

Many others have attempted to create ideal human communities with varying degrees of success, like for example, the Fairfield Moravian Settlement in Manchester or the Whiteway Colony following the teachings of Tolstoy, or communities of the 1960s like the UFA Fabrik in Berlin, and so on. We can create our own dynamic Buddhist community here in Bethnal Green, we can dream big dreams, imagine great institutions, architecture, parks, libraries, paintings, schools and so on. We can act together, generously, in a spirit of metta and encouragement and allow the Bodhicitta to arise in our midst. The Bodhicitta, that Awakened consciousness that cannot be the possession of any one person, but is the flowering of the altruistic, compassionate activity of a large group of people, working together, awakening together in harmony and friendly fellowship. We can be a Sangha of visions and dreams, a Sangha that dreams and visions itself into being. Here, even here in this corner of this city, at this time in history. This is a great work and it needs individuals who are committed, hard-working, determined, courageous and generous. Some of those individuals are probably sitting here today. If so, I wish you every success in what is a most worthwhile endeavour, the most worthwhile endeavour, the creation of an ideal human community, an effective Sangha.

 

 

A World of Possibilities

This talk was given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre in 2006

A few months ago I watched a film DVD called “What the bleep do we know”. It is a kind of documentary about quantum physics, but looking at the spiritual implications of what quantum physics says about the nature of matter. I have no idea whether it was portraying a completely idiosyncratic view or whether the views expressed are widely held by physicists. Anyway one of the points that came across quite strongly is that there is nothing fixed abut the material world and it changes by the mere fact of being observed. It is more of the nature of energy, constantly moving ,than of matter as we usually tend to think of it. Or even more like consciousness or thoughts. Following on from that was the idea that the world, reality is completely malleable and therefore we can and do create our own worlds. Consciousness, thoughts and what we think of as matter are not that different. They are all equally ephemeral and impermanent, without any fixed essence or substance. The result of all this is that anything is possible. We are only limited by habitual perceptions and a habitual conceptual framework which means we don’t see reality but our ideas about reality. Anyway this was in my mind when I was asked for a title for this talk about transforming the world. So we have “A World of Possibilities”. I am going to make a few points by way of introduction and then I will approach this whole topic under three headings: education, ecology and economics.

The first point I want to make is that the whole universe is interconnected and that of course includes us. There is no such thing as an isolated individual. We may experience isolation on a social or psychological level but real isolation from the rest of the living universe is not possible. We eat food which we buy in a shop where we are served by people and the food was put on the shelves by others and delivered by others and harvested and grown by others and the soil was prepared by others and the seeds provided by others and the plants grew because there was sufficient light and moisture and space. All of these things connect us to vast numbers of people and to the sun and the climate and the earth’s atmosphere and the solar system, the galaxy and beyond. We cannot be isolated from life. Even when we are dead our body returns to the earth and nourishes the plants and worms.

We are also connected to other people by virtue of influence and effect. The influence they have on us and the effect we have on them. Virtually everything we know, all our knowledge, comes from somebody else. We learn from books, from other people, parents, teachers etc., and it is a completely rare event for anyone to have an original thought and even when that does happen it is in relationship to all the thoughts others have had previously in a particular area, whether it is art or mathematics or science. We are made up of influences which we have imbibed since birth and which we continue to imbibe. It is good to try to become aware of this. What has influenced us, what is influencing us? What do we know? How have we come to know what we know? In our western culture a great emphasis is placed on freedom, independence, choice and so on and we are influenced by this emphasis to such a degree that we can become completely blind to how strongly connected to others we are and how strongly we are being influenced all the time. To a large degree we are made up of influences - whether from other people or the climate or the environment we live in. All these things form and shape our consciousness, affect our thoughts and emotions and are very much who we are. So in a sense all we are is interconnection - there is nothing solid or substantial or fixed that we can point to and say that’s me - completely unaffected by any influence from elsewhere.

The other side of this is that we are always having an effect - we are always influencing. Some people are referred to as influential people, but, in fact, everybody is influential. It is not possible to have no effect on anybody or anything. By eating food you have bought in a shop, you have had an effect on the shop and those who work there and the whole chain of supply. I was reading an interview in a magazine recently with the CEO of Tesco’s. The point was put to him that a huge store like Tesco has a lot of power, too much power even. He said that from where he stood all the power was with the consumer and he had to be constantly attentive and sensitive to what shoppers wanted or didn’t want. Otherwise even the biggest business could collapse quite quickly. There is obviously a lot of truth in that. But more immediately than that we have an effect on people we come into contact with. We can never know how much of an effect we are having. Sometimes we say or do something quite small and it has a big effect on someone. Perhaps a little act of generosity where it was not expected or a sharp word or a flippant remark.

I ordained someone a few years ago who in his early life had spent some time in prison. While he was there he was sent to solitary confinement for gross misbehaviour. He found solitary confinement extremely difficult and the prison warder noticed this and deliberately left the door of his cell ajar and sat in a place where he could be seen. My friend said this was a real act of kindness on the part of that warder and it had a huge effect on him. It was the turning point which led him away from a criminal life and towards a spiritual path.

We won’t always have a dramatic effect on others, but we will have an influence. We could go further and say we are always becoming part of the consciousness of others and they are always becoming part of our consciousness. This is the case even with people that we just see in the street or the park or on the bus. They live in your mind, perhaps only momentarily or perhaps for longer. The more focussed and intense our awareness is the more impact we have on others and also the more impact they have on us.

All this is by way of introduction. To say that we are interconnected with the whole of life and that we are always being influenced and influencing. We are a part of each other, part of the make-up of each other’s consciousness. This is very much the outlook of Tibetan Buddhism: as Reginald Ray puts it in Indestructible Truth: “we humans are one part of a vast, interconnected web of relationships with all other inhabitants of the cosmos, both those still living and those who are awakened. An awareness of these relationships is critical because, to a very large extent, who we are as humans is defined by this network of relations. To be able to know this fact, and to take responsibility for it, gives us a dignified and directed human life. Within Tibetan tradition, the isolated individual – the one who is unaware of the vast cosmos of beings within which we live and who attempts to live as if it did not exist – is lost. He is a dundro, an animal-realm being in human form, controlled by ignorance, with its nose to the ground.” (p. 47)

This view has also had enormous implications for our own modern world. The collapse of the Soviet empire at the end of the 1980s was at least in part due to a recognition of interconnectedness. Here is how Mr Gorbachov puts it: “We had to create new relations together, but for that we needed to understand that the stake placed on confrontation has yielded nothing. It had only led to a situation where the world was divided into opposing camps. It was a policy of blocs, confrontation and the arms race. This policy had only led us to the edge of a precipice. And we found new paths only by realising that we were all part of one civilization and that we lived in one interconnected world. The new thinking was born, and out the new thinking came the new policy”. (Gabriel Partos “The world that came in from the cold” p.234) When we come to look at this world of possibilities and how it might be transformed for the better we need to bear in mind this fact of interconnection and its’ implication for the effect that all of us have, all the time.

Now I will move on to look at the three areas of education, ecology and economics and the bearing they have on transforming the world and making the best of the myriad of possibilities available. When I say education I don’t intend to say anything about the British school system or how universities work. At least not directly. What I want to talk about is our responsibility to educate ourselves about the nature of the world and the reality that we inhabit. I have just been talking about influence and the fact that we influence each other. One of the most obvious ways in which we influence others is through what we do and what we say. However what we do and what we say are based on what we think and feel. It is important to educate our thoughts and emotions so that we can have a beneficial influence through what we do and say.

As Buddhists we have already begun this process, by thinking about and engaging with questions of value and meaning. However, it has been said that laziness is the besetting sin of Buddhists and often we don’t take our investigation and exploration of values and meaning much further than the most basic stage. We might feel we’ve got a grasp of the five precepts and therefore we know enough about Buddhist ethics or we have been told about impermanence and insubstantiality and shunyata and conditionality and so we are familiar with all the most essential aspects of Buddhism. But it doesn’t work like that. We need to be thoroughly familiar with the teaching of the Buddha and other great Buddhist teachers and in our own case, in the Triratna Buddhist Community, we also need to be thoroughly familiar with Bhante Sangharakshita’s interpretation of Buddhist teachings. But this is just the beginning. It’s as if we have been given a box of tools and trained in what each is for and how to use it, but the next step is to actually use these tools.

As Buddhists this means learning to understand our experience more and more in terms of the Dharma. We need to understand our experience of happiness, anger, loneliness and so on, in terms of the Dharma. We need to get a thorough grasp of the central task of Buddhism, which is to undermine and transcend all egotism, all self-centredness. We need to learn how to gradually stop building a fixed self for ourselves and others. This is what the tools are for. This is what all the Dharmic concepts and lists are for and this is a big task; one that we need to bring as many approaches to as we can and a task that we need to patiently pursue for many many years. Our understanding and ability to use the ideas of the Dharma can feed our meditation, so that our meditation is much more than a pleasant interlude in the day. Our meditation can become a slow unveiling of all that is positive in us, all the qualities that out spiritual aspirations point to, until we are face to face with the Buddha nature, which is another way of talking about the complete absence of egotism.

If we educate ourselves by going deeper and deeper into the Buddha’s teaching and if we allow those teachings to really affect our lives then we will change and as we change we will become more and more of an influence for good in the world. To allow the teaching of the Buddha to really affect our lives we need to give them the prominence and priority in our lives, so that it becomes quite natural for us to contemplate and explore our experience primarily via the Dharma. I am not saying we should not use other ways of looking at our experience, just that as Buddhists we need to give pre-eminent position to the Dharma. Personally I have found many other disciplines useful, psychology and art for example. Especially when filtered through a Dharmic perspective. Our education in values and meaning requires us to become as familiar with the teachings of the Buddha as a carpenter is with his tools or as familiar as an astronomer is with the stars. That’s probably a better analogy, as the astronomer knows that there are always new discoveries to be made and new things to learn. That is how it is with the Dharma too.

As well as educating ourselves in the Dharma, I think it is important that we try to have a really broad knowledge of the world around us. We should try to know something of history, art, nature, science, economics, politics and so on. In order to be able to communicate with different kinds of people and be an influence for the good, we need to know something of the different worlds people inhabit. I don’t mean that we need to have a position or opinion about everything but it is helpful to at least know some facts. For instance, in this country, there are issues about immigration, the education system, the health and welfare systems. These issues impact on the lives of millions of people and it’s good if we have at least a minimum of facts available to us. For instance we ought to know the difference between an immigrant, an illegal immigrant and an asylum seeker. Or if we have at least a vague idea of the history of the 20th century we may understand better some of the forces at work in the world, which influence us all.

It is said that a Bodhisattva should be able to communicate with everyone on their own ground, in their own language, so to speak, and that is something for us to aspire to. So that we can use metaphors and examples relevant to people’s lives when we talk to them or try to explain Buddhism to them. There are many opportunities for Buddhists to have a positive influence on the values and discourses of the world around us. And this influence is not necessarily a matter of telling people about Buddhism. It is more a matter of educating our own hearts and minds in the values and meaning of the Dharma so that all our communication is permeated by those values and then people will notice and be affected by it. People will be affected by honesty and generosity and awareness and kindness and that is one way of transforming the world and giving emphasis to one very beneficial possibility in this world of possibilities.

From education in the sense of educating our hearts and minds with a deep sense of values and meaning, it is a short step to ecology. It is a short step because there is a direct link between the state of human consciousness and the effect that consciousness has on its environment. Having mentioned the environment I want to quickly make a distinction between environmentalism and ecology. Environmentalism can be and sometimes is understood to be concerned with the environment we live in, but in talking about the environment we may subtly or not so subtly exclude ourselves. But we are the environment too. That’s why ecology is a better term. It involves a whole system and we are obviously a part of that system. I believe there is a phrase “deep ecology” which I think takes into account factors like consciousness, which is what I would like to talk about.

Ecology includes us. Nature includes us. What we do to ourselves we do to nature. What we do to ourselves, we do to the ecology of the planet. This is again that question of influence or effect I spoke about earlier. It is not just other people that we influence. We influence the whole planet. Our state of mind as human beings is a major factor in the ecology of the world. Much work in the sphere of ecology in recent years is about trying to get human beings to realise this. As Buddhists we have our part to play because as I mentioned earlier, we have available to us a whole toolkit to perform the work of transforming human consciousness. And transforming human consciousness is ecological work. Much of the damage we have caused to the delicate ecological balance has been due to lack of awareness. This lack of awareness was compounded by some ideologies which saw the natural world as separate from humanity and something that had been given to us to use a we wished.

This unawareness and these ideologies are no longer such a big factor, but there is still a great deal of unawareness around the issue of interconnectedness and interdependence and how each individual has an impact on the overall web of conditions. This is where the Buddhist perspective can be very helpful. With a profound teaching like pratitya samutpada available to us we are well equipped to begin understanding and even explaining the reality of the universe. Pratitya samutpada says that everything arises in dependence on conditions which n turn arise in dependence on conditions and so on until all conditions everywhere and in every time are encompassed. In other words, what pratitya samutpada shows, when we penetrate deeply into it, is that everything throughout time and space is inter-related. This is an awe-inspiring vision, which has implications on the cosmic level, and on the personal level. On the universal level it has ecological, political and life or death implications. On the personal level, it is a way to understand and penetrate more deeply into our minds. We tend to think in linear cause and effect terms. For instance, if we apply pratitya samutpada to a situation where we have become angry because of something someone has said, we will find t hat it is not so simple, straightforward and linear. There are a whole multiplicity of conditions which have led to us becoming angry. Some of them may be to do with what’s happening immediately in our life, some may be to do with our conditioning, some may be to do with the other person’s conditioning and what’s happening in their life, some may be to do with spiritual ignorance and resistance to reality and so on – a whole myriad of conditions. If we can work with pratitya samutpada like this we may find a bigger perspective opens up for us and we gradually move away from the narrow linear cause/effect interpretation of reality and come to more and more to see everything in terms of interconnection or inter-relatedness. If we can do this kind of work on our own minds, our own emotional and mental states, then we will be doing ecological work at the deepest level, transforming the structure of consciousness. And it could be argued that a transformation in the structure of human consciousness is in the final analysis the only answer to the problem of a consciousness that blindly destroys it’s own nourishment. However, as well as that work on the mind, I believe, as Buddhists, we should also be trying as far as possible to put all the other ecology enhancing measures into action in our lives. I won’t go into them here because they are well documented. But we all know the sort of thing; energy saving, recycling, a simpler lifestyle, using public transport and so on.

As Buddhists what we have to offer to the ecology of the planet is potentially enormous. Awareness, conditioned co-production with its implications of interconnectedness and of course the image of Indra’s net as a graphic description of the dynamic nature of reality. We can offer these tools and perspectives primarily by putting them into practice in our own lives and transforming ourselves. As we do that we will begin to have a beneficial influence wherever we are and add some creative possibilities to the world of possibilities.

Now to move on to economics. I must say first that I am not an economist and don’t know much about the technicalities of economics although I do find the topic fascinating, especially since so much of it seems to be totally sensitive to mental states, in particular confidence, fear and greed. What I do know is that everybody’s life has some sort of economic aspect to it and this can be the source of pain, fear, confusion, joy, sadness and so on. When it comes to the topic of transforming the world, what does Buddhism have to say about economics? I think it is probably usual for Buddhists to have a go at consumerism when it comes to the topic of economics. The usual argument is that consumerism is blind to the damage it causes, it’s insatiable, it is based on the constant encouraging of greed and so on. I have made all these points myself in talks. But today I want to say something different about consumerism.

But before that, let’s have one more blast of consumerism. Here is a quote from Thai monk and activist Sulak Swaraksha: “Consumerism supports those who have economic and political power by rewarding their hatred, aggression, and anger. And consumerism works hand-in-hand with the modern educational system to encourage cleverness without wisdom. We create delusion in ourselves and call it knowledge. Until the schools reinvest their energy into teaching wholesome, spiritual values instead of reinforcing the delusion that satisfaction and meaning in life can be found by finding a higher-paying job, the schools are just cheerleaders for the advertising agencies, and we believe that consuming more, going faster, and living in greater convenience will bring us happiness. We don't look at the tremendous cost to ourselves, to our environment, and to our souls. Until more people are willing to look at the negative aspects of consumerism, we will not be able to change the situation for the better. Until we understand the roots of greed, hatred, and delusion within ourselves, we will not be free from the temptations of the religion of consumerism, and we will remain stuck in this illusory search for happiness.” (Dharma Rain, Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism, p.182) I have just finished reading a book, Paradox of Choice, which refers to many studies which show that too much choice does lead to unhappiness. Sulak Swaraksha is not just engaging in polemic.

Now I want to say something a bit more positive about consumerism. One of the reasons I want to say something positive about consumerism is that barring catastrophe, it is going to be with us for a long time and those who have not had the opportunity to consume the so-called good things of life are going to want to. In the foreseeable future we are likely to have more consumerism rather than less, with India, China, South America and eventually Africa stepping on to the train to go shopping with everybody else. Given that that is what we have and are likely to have, what positive possibilities does consumerism hold for us?

It has been said that these days we are consumers rather than citizens. I was thinking about this and I came to the conclusion that it may not be such a bad thing if people were less identified with being citizens. Being a citizen implies belonging to a particular nation with all the characteristics of group mentality that that implies. As we saw from the Gorbachov quote earlier, it can lead to a sort of defensiveness and isolationism that is both oppressive and dangerous. Consumerism on the other hand crosses boundaries and cultures and at the level of international business it creates a world of connections and relationships that have the potential to defuse dangerous situations. On the personal level it gives a certain amount of power to the consumer. When you vote in an election you exercise some power, but also when you spend money you exercise power. You exercise power because, just as with your vote, you can make a choice. Your vote gives you a choice every four years or so to say who you want to govern or what policies you favour. The money in your pocket gives you a choice every day to say which products and companies you want to support and which you would prefer not to. From my reading about business it is clear that businesses, even the biggest of them, are quite sensitive to what the consumer wants and doesn’t want. It has even been noted that sometimes business is ahead of government in its thinking on issues of an ethical or ecological nature. Anyway the point I am making is that since we are consumers, that means we are connected to a vast international web of trade which has a positive side to it and we can exercise some power in this network of trading by making informed choices about where to spend our money. Another point worth noting is that businesses are sensitive to criticism and if you see a business doing something you think is unethical, it is worth writing a letter to point it out. Every businessperson and politician knows that for every two people that complain there are probably another 20 who have the same complaint but stay silent.

It is not easy to make choices about our spending. To begin with there is so much conflicting information available and international trade is a complex network. But we can still make an effort. Even seemingly small gestures do make a difference. You might need to support local produce for instance, or organic food or fair trade or ethical trading. You can always do a little research and make some small choices, without having to contemplate changing your whole way of life overnight. This is about the power of the consumer to influence business and government by making spending choices.

But there is more to economics and its potential to transform than what we do with our money. If we go a bit deeper we can begin to look at our whole attitude to money. We could start by considering our conditioning in relation to money. What was the attitude of our parents to money? What part did money play in the family? Was it talked about? What was the emotional flavour of conversations about money? Fear? Anxiety? Freedom? Happiness? Joy? Anger? Insecurity? Did you rebel against family attitudes to money? Have they re-emerged as you have grown older? What is your own conscious attitude to money? What do you spend most of your money on? What does this tell you about yourself? It is a very good exercise in self-awareness to become more and more conscious of what money means to us. It is very easy to have consciously held superficial views and attitudes about money, which are not our real and deep attitudes.

But we can go further and ask what is money? Perhaps we know how we feel about money but do we really know what money is? Money is not pieces of paper. Those pieces of paper or the numbers on your bank statement represent something, but what do they represent? Do they represent bars of gold in the vaults of some bank? If they do, what sense does that make? Mainly what money represents is energy. It is the energy of production and trade and money is a convenient way of exchanging products and services without having to resort to barter every time. The money in your bank account or wallet in some way represents some of your energy. You have expended energy in some way and so much money has come to you. And it is lying there with unrealised potential, latent energy. What you do with it is buy somebody else’s energy or if you save it in the bank, you in effect, give it to someone else to use and the interest is unearned income, unearned because you expend no energy for it.

Money is not a thing. It is a movement of energy, with potential for creation and destruction. Money is full of possibilities. That’s why we like it so much. Our attitude to money can be seen as our attitude to energy and potential and possibility. Another thing about money is that there is no security in it. It is a symbol of security and a very potent symbol but money itself is almost the opposite of secure. Security brings up an image of something fixed, safe, comfortable, but money is fluid, moving, never quite what it seems.

I’m trying to take us deeper into the world of economics and its potential for transformation. And Buddhist economics has to be an economics of generosity. Buddhism tells us that we are not fixed separate entities and that all our ego building, protecting, defending, and enhancing our sense of self, is a gross delusion which brings us nothing but sorrow. Buddhism opens out a vision of a vast interconnected web of relations where consciousness is penetrated by consciousness, consciousness is influenced by consciousness, consciousness is in a dance with consciousness. And this is a dynamic vision of a constant interplay of energies. When we can enter into this vision, as a way of being, the expression of it is happiness, compassion, expansiveness and generosity. It becomes natural to give and receive because that is how things are, that is the nature of reality.

Egotistic vision wants to take and keep. Realistic vision wants to give and give. As ego-identified, self-centred beings who aspire to transcending this deluded state, one of the first and most effective practices to help us on our way is the practice of generosity. When we talk about practice, it is good not to narrow it down to meditation. Ego will of course try to take over the practice and say “Look how generous I am. Look what a good Buddhist I am and I’m so humble about it all too. I must be making a lot of spiritual progress.” Well ego is tenacious but that is the territory we are travelling through; vistas of awareness, jungles of ego, and sometimes plodding, sometimes striding, practice of generosity, ethics and meditation. As Buddhists then, to transform the world of economics, we can try to bring some awareness to it and be as generous as possible. The aim is not to be generous but to become generosity. If we become generosity, we will no longer have any sense of being generous. Generosity of spirit has a very positive effect in the world and introduces a really moving and exuberant possibility into this world of possibilities.

What economics means to most of us is work. We work to get the money to pay the bills and enjoy our leisure. Quite a chunk of most people’s time is spent at work. It is worthwhile giving some thought to the area of work then and considering whether there are choices we can make in that area of our life which would give us a better basis for our spiritual practice. I don’t have any particular suggestions to make. It just seems necessary to seriously consider whether the thing you spend so much of your life doing is helpful to reaching your spiritual aspirations. Does it enable you to be generous? Does it allow you to be ethical, honest, kind? Does it leave enough time and energy for some meditation? And retreat? There is an essay on this whole topic in Roads to Freedom, by Subhuti. (chapter 1)

I’ve been talking about transforming the world. I have looked at this under the headings of education, ecology and economics and I’ve made some points about each of these. But really I have just been making one main point, namely: the reality is that all life is interconnected and following on from this is the point that we are all influenced and influencing all the time. These points can be taken from the Buddhist teaching of pratitya samutpada, conditioned co-production, and if we study, penetrate and try to practise with the implications of this profound teaching, we will transform ourselves and set in motion energies that will transform this world from a vale of tears to a world of possibilities.

Constant Change

This talk was given in Cambridge Buddhist Centre in May 2005 (under the title Siddhartha) and in London in Feb 2008 

Impermanence is central to Buddhism. This fact, this truth, is that everything at every level is changing, from galaxies to thoughts, from personal emotions to planets, in fact everything is change. Change is constant. You can treat this talk as a reflection; one of my points will be the importance of reflecting particularly using your imagination, reflecting imaginatively.

I'm going to look at the life of the Buddha before he was the Buddha because that's possibly more relevant to us, Siddhartha before he was the Buddha struggling to follow the path. I'm going to use this part of the Buddha's life as a kind of symbol, a representation of the life of any human being. Buddhism consists of the Path and teaching which enable all human consciousness to unfold and evolve into the Awakened state - Awakened to the true nature of Reality.

In this talk I want to look at that Path as it is illustrated by the life of Siddhartha. The story of the life of Siddhartha is a universal story and the significant episodes in that life indicate truths relevant to the spiritual life of any practitioner. I’m going to look at some of these episodes, from the Four Sights up to the four archetypal images associated with the Enlightenment experience and I want to draw out the universal significance of each episode and perhaps a few points that could be of specific significance to us here today.

I’ll begin with the episode known as the Four Sights. I believe this episode prefigures the later story of the appearance of Mara, the Earth Goddess, Brahma Sahampati and Mucalinda at the time of the Awakening. We’ll look at these parallels later. The story of the four sights tells us that Siddhartha had led a very sheltered life, protected by his father from all suffering, but as a restless young man he found a way to get out and have some wider experience. What he experienced was seeing a sick person, an old person, and a corpse for the first time in his life and also a wandering holy man. These sights, we are told, had a profound effect on him and led to him giving up his life of luxury and going forth into the world in search of truth and a solution to the problem of human suffering.

You could take this story literally, that he had never encountered sickness, old age and death before, or you could understand it as meaning that he saw these things as if for the first time. In other words, he saw the significance of sickness, aging and death. He saw that it was what happened to everyone and what would happen to him. He saw it clearly, with the full force of a shock. He saw it in such a way that he couldn’t deny it, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t just carry on living as if everything was the same as before. Now death was a reality for him, illness and old age were realities and they had to be faced up to. He couldn’t go back to a superficial life in the face of these existential facts which had shocked him into waking up to the naked insecurity of life. This was a process of insight for Siddhartha and it is a process that happens for many people, perhaps it has happened to some of us here. For some people this sort of awakening has a profound life-changing effect and they set out on the journey of spiritual searching and spiritual discovery, as Siddhartha did.

For others the experience gradually fades and old habits take over so that they manage to ignore their deeper experiences. Some people deliberately bury their insight into life’s insecurity, beneath a life of hedonism or even addiction. And some people embark on the spiritual quest, but get lost along the way or begin to use their spiritual practice as a way of avoiding the raw truths of sickness, old age and death rather than as a way of facing and transcending them. But many of us, hopefully all of us here, are inspired by the image of the wandering holy man - the image of someone who gives up everything for the sake of truth, someone whose life is a wholehearted quest for truth.

Seeing these four sights is not an easy matter and I don’t believe it is usually a one-off event. Seeing these four sights is a process of deepening insight, a process of dawning clarity, a process of emotional, intellectual and spiritual adjustment to the fact that life is change. Sickness, old age and death are inevitable because change is the nature of life. The more deeply we see and understand this, the more acceptable it becomes and therefore the less we suffer by trying to resist change. This process of seeing the four sights,seeing them deeply, being affected by them, understanding and being moved by the significance of them, can go on throughout our life and it is worth our while reflecting on these four sights again and again.

We can ask ourselves questions. What is my attitude to illness? Do I see any deeper significance in it? Is my attitude to illness different when it affects me and when it affects others? Why is it different? Similarly with old age and death. What are my attitudes to old age and death? Am I aware of old age and death around me? Am I aware of myself as someone subject to old age and death? And what does the wandering holy man mean to me? Is there an equivalent of the wandering holy man in my life? Is there something which reminds me of the deeper significance of life? How often am I aware of that dimension represented by the wandering holy man? Am I moved to action by the image of the wandering holy man and the spiritual dimension of life? Perhaps for some of us the question will be - have I really seen the four sights and if I have, am I still aware of them?

Because I've been healthy all my life it comes as a shock to me when I get sick, it’s something I don't normally experience or reflect upon. As I get older I am having to take it on board more. Sangharakshita some years ago when he was experiencing the effects of old age, including the loss of some of his eyesight, said that he had reflected deeply on death but he hadn't reflected deeply enough on old age and it's affects. It's not easy to be aware of these things.

Siddhartha did see the four sights. He saw them very deeply. He saw the significance of sickness, old age and death and the wandering holy man and it shook him to the core of his being. He could not be the same again; he had to change his life. He left home and set out in quest of the truth, in quest of the answer to the problem of human suffering. This episode in his life is known as the Going Forth. Going forth doesn't just apply to the Buddha it can apply to anyone of us and in different ways. Some of us may go forth in the traditional way and undertake something like a journey. Sangharakshita talks about going forth in terms of getting rid of his papers, passport and all those things and journeying around India on foot. When I was twenty two I gave up my career and possessions to go in search of meaning. That was the result of seeing an older person in the work place retiring and seeing how empty their life was after spending fifty years in that job, it just shook me and I gave up everything. I did find Buddhism six years later.

The Going Forth represents a reorientation of one’s whole life. It involves actively moving away from the mundane, self-interested values of the world around us and moving towards values that are compassionate and based in a deeper awareness of the nature of life. Sometimes it is quite difficult to see what the values of the world are because we are so much in the world and so much influenced by what we read and hear, a bit like fish swimming in water. We can't see the water, the influence of the internet, TV , social media and so on. If we are not sufficiently aware, we may not even notice that certain values are being promulgated all the time by the media, by politicians and so on.

Some of the more obvious values today are: that choice is a good thing, that economic growth is a good thing, that nation states have a real existence, that quality of life can be measured by the ability to buy things and so on. And some of the values will be so much a part of the air that we breathe that we will apply them to our spiritual practice without even noticing. For instance I have noticed that the notion of choice has become more and more prevalent over the past five to ten years. Politicians tell us that what people want is choice and on the internet, on TV, in the shopping centres, we are inundated with offers of choice. And of course, we often believe it, we believe that we are being offered genuine choices and that having these choices gives us greater freedom.

We become enthralled to the idea that choice means freedom and we start to look for choice in our spiritual life, a choice of practices, a choice of lifestyles, a choice of teachings, a choice of teachers and so on. And of course the choice is there, a whole spiritual supermarket of choices, a whole shopping mall of choices, even within Buddhism. Then of course there are all the tasty morsels from elsewhere, from various therapies and other disciplines, a whole smorgasbord of choices. This one value of the world we live in could potentially cause us a great deal of confusion and lead us astray on all sorts of interesting sidetracks, and away from depth of experience, especially if we haven't fully seen the four sights yet. I am not saying it is wrong to investigate other practices - just that we should go for depth in what we do.

Going Forth then, is a re-orientation of our life towards the spiritual values of awareness and compassion, the value of awakening more and more to reality, and we need to examine other values in the light of this. For instance, does the multiplication of choices lead to greater awareness and compassion? Does nationalism or consumerism lead to greater awareness and compassion? What values do we have? What values are promoting greater awareness and compassion in our lives? What values are hindering our awakening to reality? What values are obscuring our vision of the four sights?

The questions mean reflecting, and the importance of reflecting on life and experience. It’s not such a good idea to expect immediate answers from yourself or anybody else the important thing is the question not the answer, the best answers come from the depth of your own experience. If you have an attitude of question, of reflecting then in your ordinary life as experience happens you will be reflecting because you will be bringing that attitude to what ever happens. You will be seeing the significance.

For Siddhartha, Going Forth meant a complete change in his life,internally and externally. For each of us it may mean that or it may mean something else. Whatever it means I think that it is also best seen as an ongoing process rather than a one-off event. As we will see it was an on-going event for Siddhartha too. The event symbolises the process - a process that carries on until awakening dawns. It is the process of letting go of everything that holds us back from seeing clearly the truth of constant change and living our lives by the truth of constant change.

The truth of constant change applies to our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions, it applies to other people, it applies to everything in this world, it applies to the whole universe. The truth of constant change transcends death because death is only a moment in the vast interplay of energies we call life. We go forth from limitations, limiting views, limiting values, towards an open road, an open dimension where we can live in harmony with the reality of constant change. Walt Whitman evokes this attitude joyfully in his Song of the Open Road:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 

Healthy, free, the world before me, 

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

Here is how the Sutta Nipata puts it

“Now I will tell the going Forth. How he, the Mighty Seer, went forth. How he was questioned and described the reason for his going forth. The crowded life lived in a house exhales an atmosphere of dust; but life gone forth is open wide: he saw this, and he chose the going forth.” (Life of the Buddha, Nanamoli, p.11) Let’s hope that given all the choices we have, we too choose the Going forth again and again.

The next episode in the life of Siddhartha that I would like to look at briefly is his attainment of Dhyana. Siddhartha became the disciple of Alara Kalama first and later of Uddaka Ramaputta and under these teachers he became adept at entering dhyanic states of consciousness - right up to the highest formless dhyanas. He was such a good disciple that Alara Kalama asked him to become co-leader of his community and Uddaka Ramaputta asked him to take over complete leadership of his community. However Siddhartha was not satisfied and was well aware that he was still within the realm of egotism and had not solved the problem of suffering. He left these teachers and went forth yet again - this time to a life of great austerities. I think many of us would love to be able to get into dhyanic states at will. Indeed many of us probably feel that not being able to attain to the dhyanas means that we cannot meditate and we may even become despondent about meditation and perhaps give up. But Dhyana is not the aim of spiritual practice - it is a pleasant side-effect. In some Tibetan traditions the student is warned against Dhyana and told to come out of it as quickly a possible - it is regarded as a dangerous distraction.

In the Brahmajala Sutta (Digha Nikaya,Sutta1) the Buddha outlines the 62 wrong views to be avoided if one is to make spiritual progress. Now the interesting thing about these wrong views is that most of them arise out of some kind of higher experience and quite a few arise from misinterpretation of higher Dhyanic experience. As Kamalashila put it in a talk on the subject, “It seems that if one practices within a framework of self-view, then every attainment in meditation will simply confirm that view.” The danger of dhyanic experience is that it may lead into a cul-de-sac of wrong views, which block any further spiritual progress.

Siddhartha saw this and went forth from Dhyana. Perhaps we need to reflect on the significance of this. If we are regularly in Dhyana - we may need to let go of it and go forth into deeper insight and if we are regularly yearning to experience Dhyana perhaps we need to go forth from that yearning and start to see our meditation practice as being concerned with truth seeking rather than pleasure seeking. The pleasure will arise of its’ own accord.

Siddhartha undertook severe austerities, in line with practices current at the time. It was felt that the demands of the body, for food, sex, warmth and so on, were a major hindrance to spiritual insights and therefore the body had to be subdued. It is said that he took this to an extreme too, but in the end he realised that was not helping and he went forth from the life of austerities too - his third major Going Forth. I don‘t think there are any people in the Triratna Community who undertake austerities, but perhaps there are still some lessons to be learned here.

Siddhartha moved from blissful practices to painful practices, hoping that what he didn’t gain through bliss he would gain through pain. And it is true for many people in the Triratna Community that there can be an over-emphasis on pain. We can give a lot of attention to painful emotional experiences and value them perhaps more than we need to, even considering them to be somehow more authentic or real, than pleasurable experience. The American psychotherapist and mystic, Suzanne Segal, talks about this from her experience as a therapist. She says: “the negative is usually taken to be the truth. After all, the negative is so compelling and seems so deep. The positive is regarded as superficial and temporary, but, ah, the negative! When it arises, we believe we’re really in the presence of truth.

Connecting with others in our Western therapeutic culture is often based on a sharing of problems. When someone refuses to reveal what is most difficult in their lives, they are said to be ‘withholding or ‘cut-off’ or ‘untrustworthy’. When their problems are known, however, they are thought to be revealing the truth about themselves. This overvaluing of the negative is rampant in our culture. Just about every person who sits across from me in my office and speaks to me about their lives believes that what is negative about them is most true. They are convinced that they carry something rotten at their core, that they are bad deep down, and that they will always return to the negative, which is the real bottom line.” (Suzanne Segal,Collision With the Infinite, p. 153)

For some of us at least there may be a sense in which we could helpfully go forth from an over-emphasis on the painful aspects of experience. We could deliberately affirm what is positive in our lives, some people have a practice of thinking at the end of the day - what did I enjoy today? If you think of five or ten things that you enjoyed today it can give you quite a different perspective on life. If you deliberately think of even very small things that you've enjoyed, like the light through the trees or the clouds in the sky, you find that you start to notice enjoyable things and you start to have more enjoyment in your life. It’s good to do a practice like that as it affirms what's positive and what's enjoyable in your day-to-day life.

Sometimes it is said that Siddhartha was making an unbalanced effort in practising austerities and he needed to find a middle way of more balanced effort. This is not borne out by the texts, which represent him as making a strong, even forceful effort, when he sat beneath the Bodhi tree. What was wrong about his effort in austerity was that it was effort in the wrong direction, effort leading nowhere. What we have to consider about our spiritual efforts is not so much a matter of quantity, but rather a matter of quality. We don’t need to worry too much that our efforts might be too strong, what we really need to pay attention to is whether our efforts are effective, spiritually speaking. Whether they are leading in the direction of truth. The direction of more Compassion, more Metta.

Siddhartha went forth again, in the process losing his reputation, and being criticised by his former companions. Going Forth can bring unpopularity it seems. Your friends and family might think you're being foolish or a failure if you turn your back on material values.

He took some nourishment and sat down beneath a peepul tree, thereafter known as the Bodhi tree. This tree prefigures the image of Mucalinda - naga and youthful hero. The tree represents a uniting of the heights and depths. Its’ roots go deep down into the rock and its’ branches soar heavenwards. It is generating energy in the hidden depths and manifesting beauty and protectiveness in the world. This uniting of opposites, depths and heights, inner and outer, symbolises the enlightened state, a state of completeness uniting Wisdom and Compassion, uniting energy and stillness. This is something worth reflecting on - do we have a sense of heights and depths on our lives? What do we mean by heights? and depths? In what way are our heights and depths not united? In what ways are they united? How could we bring about more unity of our heights and depths? Or to put it another way, do our ideals, aspirations, dreams and imaginings have a strong connection with our on-going awareness of ourselves, physically, emotionally and mentally? Are the branches connected to the roots by a trunk of awareness and metta?

Siddhartha was sheltered by the tree or more prosaically, his aspiration and faith gave him protection. And he needed protection because now he is assailed by Mara. Mara is the personification of resistance to spiritual awaking. Firstly he is attacked by Mara’s army, then tempted by Mara’s daughters and then Mara tries to undermine his confidence. So here we have very dynamic images for hatred, craving and ignorance.

Mara’s army attacks with arrows and spears but all the missiles hurled at Siddhartha turn into flowers, blossoms and settle gently at his feet. This attack of Mara’s army represents a massive internal conflict. Siddhartha’s unshakeable determination is coming up against all the forces of his psyche that resist the implications of spiritual death. This is an inevitable part of any spiritual endeavour.

We are never one hundred percent behind our spiritual aspirations and so we experience conflict and you could say that dealing with this conflict is the raw material of our spiritual practice. That's what we are working with; our aspirations and our actual desires and experience. We can take that raw material of inner conflict and do something creative with it. If we don’t deal with our inner conflict it will begin to manifest externally and we will end up blaming other people for our lack of spiritual progress and limitations. It can seem more reasonable and comfortable to blame others for our hindrances and settle down into a habit of rumbling resentment. On one level inner conflict is a manifestation of the unintegrated psyche and the disparate parts have to come into some sort of relationship - just as the Buddha’s awareness and faith comes into relationship with Mara’s armies and the conflict resolves into flower blossom - symbols of beauty and growth.

On another level inner conflict is a manifestation of the ego’s resistance to reality. It’s an existential thing this inner conflict. Experiencing inner conflict doesn't mean we are bad or un-spiritual or incapable of practice, it is what happens if you try to lead a spiritual life.

Either way it is more creative to recognise inner conflict for what it is and take awareness into it. We have to become acutely aware of how we resist spiritual insight and how we cause ourselves suffering. If we manage to do this thoroughly then our resistances will subside. For instance, we have an ideal of spiritual community, an ideal of harmony and co-operation and goodwill. We value friendship and collective activities. But then we may find ourselves feeling lonely or isolated. We can feel that our ideal is not working and this can lead to a conflict within us, a conflict between our personal experience and our ideal. This could lead us to blame the other people around us. It is because they are selfish or because they are unfriendly or because they are English or whatever; that’s why your ideal of a harmonious spiritual community is not happening and that’s why you feel lonely. Or you might blame the circumstances; it’s because community life is unnatural or because the Buddhist Centre is not being properly run or whatever. We often look outside ourselves for causes and we find lots of imperfections in the people and the world around us which seem plausible reasons for our dissatisfaction. But we could take a different approach. We could assume that our conflict was a manifestation of egotism in some form and once again I’m not saying that egotism is bad but we could investigate it from that standpoint. We could ask ourselves: in what way am I being selfish? How is my loneliness and isolation a manifestation of selfishness? And we might discover some things to make us sit up and take action. We might realise that the antidote to loneliness lies in our own hands. We need to think of others and go out to them, befriend them. It’s a kind of counter-intuitive response; loneliness doesn’t mean I need friends, it means I need to befriend others. In a way, what we discover if we look deeply into our dissatisfaction is that we are both victim and perpetrator, we are experiencing suffering and causing suffering and if we see that clearly enough we stop perpetrating our own suffering and the spears and arrows of inner conflict turn into benign blossoms.

Another aspect of Mara’s army is that they represent fear- our worst nightmares - all the fears that hold us back from living more fully. Fear is one of the most tangible experiences of ego that we can have. Where there is fear there is ego. Where there is fear there is self-centredness. The Tantric yogis go into the cremation grounds at night to encounter fear, to encounter ego in a very potent form and by facing fear they break through to a new level of freedom, symbolised by the dakini.

Most of us have no need to find a cremation ground. We experience fears, large and small, all the time. Sometimes it is just the fear of being with other people or the fear of being alone. We can try to notice our fears and make use of them in our spiritual practice, by taking little risks here and there we gain a little more freedom and develop the habit of freedom and confidence. On a little personal note here, at the time of my ordination one of my greatest fears was the fear of speaking in public, which I assumed every Order Member had to do. I was even on the verge of holding back from ordination, to avoid ever having to speak in public. It was only by doing it that I gradually discovered it wasn’t as bad as I had feared.

After Mara’s army we have Mara’s daughters - Siddhartha was a heterosexual man and so Mara’s daughters represent craving for sense pleasures. Siddhartha is not having an easy time, it’s one distraction after another. Earlier we were told that he could get into dhyana at will and now he is enmeshed in conflict and distraction. From one point of view he is having a really bad meditation; anger, ill-will, fear and craving! I’m sure some of you are familiar with this kind of meditation, or at least you’ve heard about it. But Siddhartha knows what he is doing. He is deliberately facing all the resistance, all the egotistic forces of his own mind and transforming them into something positive. Mara’s daughters, the energy of craving, are transformed into inspiration - the energy of faith or shraddha - represented by the Earth Goddess. Mara’s armies, the energies of inner conflict, are transformed into compassion, represented by Brahma Sahampati. And Mara himself, the energy of ignorance, is transformed into the great Wisdom represented by Mucalinda.

In the Vimalakirti Nirdesa - Mara tries to make a gift of his daughters to a monk, who refuses to accept them, but Vimalakirti does accept them and turns them into teachers of the Dharma. Mara’s daughters are the energies of desire, which can move from being desire for sense pleasure to being desire for the Dharma; from kama chandha to dhamma chandha. In the symbolism associated with Siddhartha’s struggle, the Earth Goddess, Vasundhara, could be seen as his muse, his inspiration, his Dhamma chandha - she is the transformation of the energies represented by Mara’s daughters. The Earth Goddess is a witness to Siddhartha’s practice over lifetimes; she is an appeal to experience. In the context of transforming the energies of craving, this means that if we bring awareness to our actual experience, we will see that our dissatisfaction has never been fully satisfied by succumbing to our sense craving. In fact our craving for sense pleasure is itself dissatisfaction, it is dukkha. Our experience is telling us the truth and if we listen often enough, eventually we will hear.

The earth Goddess is also an appeal to experience in the face of doubt and lack of confidence. Mara suggests to Siddhartha that he is wasting his time. He could be having a good life with plenty of money, property, power -whatever he wanted. It’s all his for the taking. Who does he think he is anyway, trying to solve the problem of human suffering! He is assailed by doubts, doubting whether what he is doing makes sense and doubting whether he is capable of attaining to Wisdom. Any one on the spiritual path is going to experience doubt about whether what you are doing makes sense and if you are capable of it. The Earth Goddess emerges and reassures him that she has witnessed all his efforts and he is indeed capable and worthy of gaining Enlightenment. The Earth Goddess has always been there. She represents something timeless, eternal and she can attest that the pursuit of truth is worthy and worthwhile endeavour for human consciousness. Perhaps we could even say that the Earth goddess asserts that it is natural for human consciousness to want to evolve towards the truth. She is hinting at something that is made more explicit later in the White Lotus Sutra, that the Dharma is eternal or timeless. Reality is always Reality and has always been Reality and will always be Reality. This is the answer to Mara’s attempts to sow the seeds of doubt.

When we experience doubt we may find it helpful to reflect on what spiritual experience we have had and what spiritual progress we have made. We may also find it helpful to reflect on the millions of people down the generation who have been inspired and uplifted by the Dharma - a concrete testimony to the power and efficacy of the Dharma. When we are beset by doubts, what we need is to appeal to experience and inspiration - our own experience and inspiration and the experience and inspiration of others -if we do that we will have the Earth Goddess on our side. If we are experiencing doubt we will need the help of others.

The next episode represents a big turning point, a kind of internal going forth. Brahma Sahampati appears. The story says that the Buddha was inclined to keep his realisation to himself because nobody would be able to understand it and Brahma Sahampati appeared before him, telling him there were some who would understand and pleading with him to teach what he had discovered. Brahma Sahampati represents great compassion arising in the mind of Siddhartha. Previously he has been concerned with an internal struggle to overcome fear, hatred, craving and doubt but now he is turning outward, he is becoming concerned with the fear, hatred, craving and doubt of others. Having seen through the causes of suffering in himself he now wants to help others to the same realisation.

This process is mirrored in our own lives. Often we take up the spiritual life for a mixture of selfish and idealistic reasons and as we practice we experience the conflict between our recalcitrant egotism and our altruistic aspirations. We necessarily become concerned with ourselves, with the workings of our own mind, the trajectory of our own habits and so on. However in time we should experience a quietening of the inner turmoil and a growing concern for the spiritual welfare of others and a willingness to help others through the mess of their inner conflicts.

As with all the other episodes in the life of Siddhartha, this episode also represents a process - the process of growing generosity and compassion. We all have our own version of Brahma Sahampati, a voice urging us to acts of generosity and kindness. As we progress spiritually we will find ourselves listening to that voice more and more. The more we hear that voice and pay heed to it, the more we can be sure we are developing spiritually.

The next episode is the appearance of Mucalinda, the Serpent King. He appears in order to protect Siddhartha from the rain. He wraps his coils around Siddhartha and spreads his hood over him. This image reminds us of the Bodhi tree shading Siddhartha from the sun. When the rain stops the serpent king transforms into a young man and salutes the Buddha. This young man, about sixteen years old, represents the prince of beauty and purity and is later seen in the forms of the archetypal Bodhisattvas, the great spiritual heroes. The serpent king, the king of the Nagas, come from the depths of the ocean. Nagas are associated with wisdom, with depth of understanding. The great Buddhist sage Nagarjuna is said to have travelled to the depths of the ocean where the Naga kings transmitted to him the Prajnaparamita sutra. The Naga king stands for Wisdom and the youth is the spiritual Hero, the Bodhisattva, acting compassionately in the world. The Serpent king and youth represent again the unity of heights and depths, as in the image of the Bodhi tree, but now at a higher level, the level of wisdom/compassion, stillness/activity. The serpent is also an image of tremendous energy; the gathered energies of the Enlightened consciousness.

Our spiritual life is fed and nourished by images and symbols and our imagination is the crucible in which our lives are transformed into energy streams of Wisdom and Compassion. We need the images and symbols of the life of Siddhartha and there are some I haven’t touched on. We need to allow our imagination time to engage with the whole rich panoply of images that Buddhism offers. It doesn’t do to reject some images as not suitable. All the images are interconnected. They are a huge symbolic pattern of psychic growth and if we reject some images we may be disrupting the pattern and making our psychic life more difficult. I mention this because in recent years some people have wanted to reject the image of the young hero, but here with Mucalinda we see that the young hero is integral to a complete image, a union of opposites. Usually when we want to reject symbols or images it's because we are taking them too literally, we are giving them a literal meaning, so we should reject literalism in the realm of symbols not the symbols themselves.

We began with the four sights: sickness,which mirrors Mara, the sickness of the mind, humanity’s illness. Then old age, which mirrors the appeal to experience and ageless wisdom of the Earth Goddess. Then death, which mirrors the death of all the vestiges of ego or selfishness when Great Compassion arises, as in the episode of Brahma Sahampati and finally the wandering holy man, the symbol of the pursuit of Reality, mirrors Mucalinda, the Serpent king and young hero, representing that reality at its height. The wandering holy man is also an image for the rest of the Buddha’s life. It's the archetype of spiritual life.

We have been through a spiral of interweaving images, each with many meanings and each sparking off more and more imaginative reflection. This is the story of Siddhartha and this is our story, this is your story, because Siddhartha represents the individual human being. Siddhartha is every man and every woman. Siddhartha was born, as we are born. What Siddhartha attained, we too can attain. What Siddhartha overcame, we too can overcome.

This world of imagination and symbols, this world of heights and depths, intuited, imagined and experienced - this is the context in which we grow old, gain wisdom, suffer and experience pleasure. This is the rich tapestry of human existence. This is the context of constant change, constant letting go, constant growth and decay in which we live and die.

This vast context of flowing, constant change gives us a perspective that can comfort our suffering and loss and can be a call to freedom for our exuberance and inspiration. We have only to engage with it, imaginatively and wholeheartedly, then death will be less important and life will be more full and meaningful.

I will conclude by giving the last word to a Christian monk and mystic, who was moved, inspired and awakened by Buddhist images. Thomas Merton, the American Trappist monk travelled widely in Asia and had many contacts with Buddhism.

At a place called Polunnaruwa in Sri Lanka there are some huge Buddha images carved from rock. There is a seated Buddha and a reclining Parinirvana Buddha and a standing figure of Ananda. When Thomas Merton visited there in 1968 these Buddha figures had a profound effect on him. Here is how he describes it in his journal: “Polunnaruwa with its vast area under trees. Fences. Few people. No beggars. A dirt road. Lost. Then we find Gal Vihara and the other monastic complex stupas. Cells. Distant mountains, like Yucatan.

The path dips down to Gal Vihara; a wide, quiet hollow, surrounded by trees. A low outcrop of rock with a cave cut into it, and beside the cave a big-seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. I am able to approach the Buddha barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle.

I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into rock shape and landscape, figure, rock, and tree. And the sweep of bare rock sloping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures.

Looking at these figures, I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tired vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The sheer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded. The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, no ‘mystery’. All problems are resolved, and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya - everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual vitality running together in one aesthetic illumination......

I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains, but I have now seen and pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise......

It is pure, complete. It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we who need to discover it.” (Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton, p. 435.)