Ratnasambhava: Forever Giving

This is the text of a talk given in Windhorse:Evolution warehouse on 15th August 2009. 

Ratnasambhava is part of the very rich symbolism of Vajrayana Buddhism. The reason why someone meditates on a particular form of Tantric symbolism is quite mysterious. It is quite mysterious to me why I have come to have this association or relationship with Ratnasambhava. It began very simply with something I read about Mamaki who is the female consort of Ratnasambhava and represents the Wisdom aspect. However beyond that it seemed to be a spontaneous arising of images in meditation that sealed the bond with Ratnasambhava. As with any Tantric image the symbolism is rich and intricate and has all sorts of connections with the whole system of symbolism which is the language of the Tantra.

It is as if our minds have a deep pattern of wholeness which is not expressible in words and concepts but which images and symbols are able to embody and communicate at deeper and deeper levels of integration and awareness. And the images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas give expression to the most Awakened states of consciousness possible. Each Buddha and Bodhisattva expresses in symbolic form the whole of the Enlightened experience and each emphasises some particular aspect at the same time. Each figure speaks to us individually in different ways and is also a complete symbolic communication and embodiment of Enlightenment.

Ratnasambhava is one of the Buddhas in the mandala of the five Buddhas or five Jinas. The whole Mandala is a symbol of Enlightened consciousness and each of the five Buddhas is also a complete symbol of Enlightenment, but each one emphasises a particular aspect. Akshobya, the blue Buddha, emphasises patience, imperturbability and objectivity. Amitabha, the red Buddha, emphasises tranquillity, depth, love and the wisdom that sees uniqueness. Amoghasiddhi, the green Buddha, emphasises courage, confidence and compassionate action. Vairocana, the white Buddha, emphasises communication of the Dharma. Ratnasambhava, who is yellow or golden yellow, emphasises generosity, beauty and the wisdom that sees how all beings are the same.

The image of Ratnasambhava is of a Buddha seated in full lotus posture on a white moon disc which is in the centre of a yellow lotus. The lotus throne is supported on the backs of four golden yellow horses. Ratnasambhava’s body is made of golden yellow light and he is wearing richly embroidered yellow robes. His right hand is resting on his right knee with the open hand facing palm outwards. This is the gesture of supreme giving, the varada mudra. His left hand is resting in his lap with the palm facing upwards and resting on the open palm is a shining jewel. His hair is blue/black in colour and he is smiling compassionately. Around his head is an aura of green light and around his body is an aura of blue light. Ratnasambhava is associated with the qualities of giving, richness and abundance, expansiveness, beauty, creativity and the Wisdom of Equality. I want to go into some of this symbolism in more detail and draw out it’s significance for the life of spiritual commitment.

I will begin with the horses. Horses were a symbol of wealth. Anyone who possessed horses was wealthy, a bit like owning a BMW or SUV. Because Ratnasambhava is associated with spiritual richness and the attitude of abundance and generosity, the horses became the symbol of that. More psychologically the horse symbolises the natural animal energies which are gathered together, integrated and focussed so that they come to be supportive of spiritual endeavour and spiritual experience. Energies which would be expended in craving or aversion are sublimated and channelled until they are no longer a hindrance but rather a help to spiritual efforts. Or to put it more simply rather than ill-will, resentment, arrogance, pride, greed and so on, we transform our energies into something more positive and this transformation is symbolised by the horses steadily supporting the lotus throne of Ratnasambhava.

Beneath the lotus is the mundane mind and above the lotus is transcendental consciousness, so the lotus symbolises the transition from the mundane to the transcendental. The transition from the selfish in all it’s subtlety to the selfless in all it’s sublimity.

The horses represent the highest of mundane consciousness, a great concentration of energies which is sufficient to enable a breakthrough into an altogether different level of consciousness, an altogether different perspective on life and it’s experiences. The mundane experience of life, whether gross or subtle, is an experience that is filtered through a narrow sense of self, a sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, a sense of possessiveness, defensiveness, fear, insecurity, pride, status seeking and so on. The fully Awakened consciousness on the other hand, is free of insecurity and status seeking, free of any sense of possessiveness or defensiveness, free of all sense of ‘I’ or ‘mine’.

In between these two – the mundane and the fully Awakened consciousness – there is a whole spectrum of relatively more awakened, more transcendent states. In the various Buddhist traditions these are referred to in many ways. For instance there is the sequence of Stream Entrant, Once returner, Non-Returner and Arahant. There is the Bodhisattva Path and the bhumis. There are the levels of Going for refuge.

Practically speaking it is probably best that we see this as a continuum from a relatively self-centred state of consciousness or awareness to a more and more expansive state of awareness. The more expansive state of awareness is equally concerned with self and others and able more and more to relate to the spiritual potential of others rather than just to their personalities or their usefulness. The lotus can be seen to represent this continuum of awareness which is what the spiritual path really is. The metaphor of the spiritual path is an image for the growth in awareness and compassion that gradually becomes an awakening into Reality. We are the path to the extent that we are growing, changing and expanding in awareness.

In the middle of the lotus there is a moon mat of brilliant white light. This represents the purity at the heart of the awakening mind. Perfect morality or purity is associated with the non-returner of the Pali Canon. We could see the horses as representing dhyanic states, the lotus representing insight or stream entry and the moon mat is the stage of the non-returner or perfect purity. This is a spiral path in symbolic form. By making an effort to observe the ethical principles in all aspects of our lives and in more and more subtle ways, we pursue a process of purification and this process can continue for a long time, burning up more and more of the scattered debris of our previous unskilfulness.

The practice of purification involves confession of our faults and rejoicing in our merits and aspirations. In order to purify our minds we try to become aware of when we are indulging in unskilful mental states. Meditation enables us to slow down enough to notice the tendency of our mind. When we become aware that our mind is tending towards the unskilful or is completely immersed in unskilful attitudes, then we have to remind ourselves of our higher aspirations and the attitudes and awareness that characterise a purified and skilful mind. Sometimes we may need to look deeper into the roots of our unskilful mental states before we can develop a more positive awareness. For example, we may find that we are angry and going over and over in our mind some situation that has given rise to anger. We may need to look deeper into why our response is one of anger. Perhaps we are anxious or frightened about something and anger is a kind of defence or perhaps we had expectations of love and attention that we didn’t get. Then we can look deeper still and gradually uncover the existential insecurity and constructed ego identity that lie behind our response to the world, our responses to other people.

By reflecting deeply in this way our ethical practice becomes insight practice and we move from developing skilful sates to experiencing a state of purity, a state of pure awareness. This state of pure awareness is what the moon disc in the middle of the yellow lotus represents. This clear pure skilful state is the basis for the awakened mind represented by Ratnasambhava. Ratnasambhava sits on the moon disc in full lotus posture. His body is made of golden yellow light.

Golden yellow is a very rich vibrant colour. This continues the theme of richness and abundance associated with Ratnasambhava. Golden yellow is the colour of ripeness, of harvest, the fruits of the earth, and the rewards of labour. It is the colour most associated with the sun at it’s brightest, so it is the colour of life, aliveness. Ratnasambhava is intensely alive; the Awakened consciousness is here shown as the most vibrantly alive that we can be, bursting with the light of wisdom and drawing out the life and light of others, causing growth and ripening.

If we want to talk about this in terms of practice, then golden yellow represents the practice of encouraging – seeing the seeds of wisdom and compassion in ourselves and others and encouraging them to grow and ripen. Ratnasambhava is the great Encourager. The whole symbolism of richness, abundance and generosity is encouraging – coaxing the best out of us – encouraging the little seedlings of goodwill and affection and awareness to germinate and grow into fully blossoming loving kindness and wisdom and bear fruit in compassionate activity.

This is where the colour yellow evokes the Wisdom of Equality which is the particular aspect of wisdom associated with Ratnasambhava. The Wisdom of Equality is a very heightened awareness of the spiritual potential of all living beings. If you have a heightened awareness of the spiritual potential of others then you regard them all as equally important, equally valuable and you treat them with equal kindness and consideration. As with all the five Wisdoms associated with the Buddhas of the mandala, when you look closely you see that wisdom is compassion. Compassion in the sense of Maha Karuna –the Great Compassion – is the response of a Buddha to deluded beings.

Sometimes we think of compassion as a response to suffering, a kindly and helpful response to the physical and emotional pains of others. The Great Compassion is a response to the existential pain of deluded beings, it’s a response to the suffering caused by spiritual ignorance. The Buddha’s compassion goes towards all unenlightened beings regardless of whether they themselves realise that they are suffering. For example in the images of the Tibetan wheel of life the Buddha is depicted as playing the music of impermanence in the realm of the gods. This is Maha Karuna in action – the god’s do not know they are suffering but from the perspective of a Buddha they are. Perhaps they don’t even want to be reminded of impermanence!

Ratnasambhava’s Wisdom, the Wisdom of Equality, Samatajnana, is also the Wisdom that sees clearly the sameness of all beings in that all beings live within the Reality of Pratitya Samutpada (conditioned co-arising). Pratitya Samutpada is the reality that everything in the entire universe arises in dependence upon conditions and therefore all beings, physically and mentally, arise in dependence upon conditions and all of the conditions are interlinked. All beings are part of the conditions in dependence upon which all beings arise. There are no beings who do not arise in dependence upon conditions and there are no beings who are not conditions for the arising of other phenomena. Because we inhabit a world of beings we are totally inter-connected and inter-dependent and therefore we are fundamentally, essentially, the same. The Wisdom of equality sees and experiences this so deeply that the only possible response to others is compassion.

The right hand of Ratnasambhava is extended in the mudra or gesture of supreme giving. This symbolises the continuous flow of generosity or compassion towards all beings. This continuous flow is the visible manifestation of the Awakened mind that has seen deeply into the truth of conditioned co-production, or dependent arising, as pratitya samutpada is sometimes translated. The left hand of Ratnasambhava rests in his lap and a radiant jewel rests on the palm of his hand. The jewel is yet another symbol for the Enlightened mind. It is precious, invaluable, and it radiates light in all directions. Sometimes it is spoken of as the wish-fulfilling jewel, the jewel that grants all skilful wishes.

The two hands of Ratnasambhava taken together form a symbolism of the internal and the external, stillness and activity, the fullness of being overflowing into the fullness of giving. This is a unification of opposites or at least what can seem to be opposites from an unawakened perspective. We tend to swing between withdrawal into stillness, followed by activity or a focus on inner life, the inner world followed by a focus on the external world, a concern with self followed by a concern with others. But this symbolism, which is repeated again and again in different ways in the images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, is telling us that these seeming opposites can be united, need to be united and will be united if we continue to progress spiritually.

We learn to be still in the midst of activity, to be aware of others and the external world without losing awareness of self. We come to experience for ourselves the sense of abundance and richness that is not depleted but rather enriched by giving. The two hands of Ratnasambhava form a kind of circle, an endless flow of energy, an endless flow of compassion; a mind purified and manifesting in compassionate activity and compassionate activity enhancing the purity of the Awakened mind.

Taken all together the symbolism of Ratnasambhava is all about expanding awareness in every direction. It is about including everything in awareness, or to put that a bit more mystically it is about expanding the mind, expanding consciousness until mind and the universe coincide, become synonymous.

What that means on a more everyday, down to earth, level is mindfulness. Mindfulness is the key practice in Buddhism. In the teaching of the five spiritual faculties there are two pairs of opposites ,wisdom and faith and meditation and energy, and the balancing faculty is mindfulness. It is the practice of mindfulness that brings everything else together. What we are aiming for is an inter-connected mindfulness. We need to be aware of ourselves; our thoughts, emotions, words and actions. We need to be aware of other people in the same way. We need to be aware of our environment, the objects, space, light and colour around us. We need to be aware of reality; of impermanence, of the unsatisfactoriness of worldly things, of the higher truth represented by the Buddha. But our awareness in all these areas, all these dimensions, needs to be interconnected. We need to be aware of how everything affects everything else, how everything is always part of the conditions for something else. How does our environment affect us? How do we affect our environment? What effect do other people have on us and, even more importantly, what effect do we have on other people? In what way does Reality impact on us, on our environment, on other people? What is the effect of the potential for Awakening on our lives? Asking ourselves questions and reflecting in this way we can develop an inter-connected awareness, which is an essential basis for Awakening.

The symbolism of Ratnasambhava is encouraging this kind of interconnected awareness. When we take our awareness deeper into ourselves and further out in to the world around us, the promise is that we will experience great beauty and access to energy that is always flowing out into generous activity. This interconnected awareness is alive, rich and abundant. In symbolic terms it is golden yellow, a sun that gives warmth and nourishment everywhere equally and encourages us to grow and to emerge from the solid resistant earth of our mundane egoistic selves.

Ratnasambhava is known as the Buddha of Generosity and also as the Buddha of Beauty. What is Beauty as an aspect of the awakened Mind? The beautiful mind or the mind of beauty is the mind which sees and experiences everything from a non-utilitarian perspective. It is an aesthetic appreciation rather than a consideration of usefulness.

Bhante Sangharakshita talks about this in his book, Living Ethically. He says: “The Buddha remarks more than once in the Pali scriptures that a sign or characteristic of metta (loving kindness) is that you see things as beautiful, subha. This is because the key element of both subha and metta, which raises them above ordinary human emotion, is disinterested awareness. …. a pure delight in the object for it’s own sake”. (p.86) He goes on to say, “The aesthetic attitude is one that sees everything, including other people, with a warm and clear awareness, and appreciates things just as they are, without thinking how they could be improved or put to some use.” (p.92)

Our unawakened perspective is often materialistic and utilitarian in relation to the rest of the world. We tend to want to possess or accumulate that which enhances our sense of self and we want to exclude that which threatens our ego identity. The attitude of Beauty excludes nothing. This brings us back to Ratnasambhava’s Wisdom of Equality as represented by his consort Mamaki. Mamaki is known as the ‘my’ or ‘mine’ maker, in the sense that she makes everything her own, nothing is excluded and there is no grasping and no aversion.

What does this mean for us? We are engaged in this project of awakening to reality, the spiritual life, and one way of thinking about that is that we are trying to become bigger. We are trying to expand and develop an awareness that misses nothing, that denies nothing. We are trying to develop an attitude that does not condemn or praise what arises in our own minds too quickly. We accept what arises, reflect deeply on it and rely on the transforming power of awareness in alliance with our spiritual aspirations. Our spiritual aspiration is the context of all our practice. We usually talk about this as faith, (Sraddha in Sanskrit). Because of our spiritual aspirations we are able to distinguish between skilful and unskilful mental states and our task is to bring awareness to all mental states equally, so that they can all be transformed towards the more skilful, towards wisdom and compassion.

The auras around the head and body of Ratnasambhava symbolise the effects of the process of the accumulation of merit and wisdom. When we are skilful in our actions, speech and thoughts it is as if we create a field of influence around us, an aura, which has an affect on others. The green aura around the head of Ratnasambhava represents the accumulation of wisdom and the blue aura around his body represents the accumulation of merit. This word ‘accumulation’ indicates that this is a process – the arising of insight into the nature of Reality is a process, Awakening is a process and the building up of purity of mind and merit, which enables us to be compassionate, is also a process. Our spiritual life is a process of unfolding like the leaves of the lotus unfold or growing like the lotus grows from the mud in the depths of the lake. As the Dhammapada says, using a different image, “Do not underestimate the good, thinking ‘it will not approach me’. A water pot becomes full by the constant falling of drops of water. Similarly the wise man little by little fills himself with good”. (verse 122)

I hope I have managed to convey something of the meaning of Ratnasambhava. I would like to finish off with a poem by the English poet Philip Larkin, which is called Solar and could almost be about Ratnasambhava.

Suspended lion face

Spilling at the centre 

Of an unfurnished sky 

How still you stand,

And how unaided

Single stalkless flower

You pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees you

Simplified by distance

Into an origin,

Your petalled head of flames

continouously exploding.

Heat is the echo of your

Gold.

Coined there among

Lonely horizontals

You exist openly.

Our needs hourly

Climb and return like angels.

Unclosing like a hand,

You give for ever.

Spiritual Community

 This talk was given to an audience of members of the Triratna Order in 2008

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This is how Charles Dickens begins the Tale of Two Cities and he is referring to how the French Revolution was seen from Britain depending on the political views of the people speaking.

We could perhaps adapt this to looking at the Triratna Order and Community at this time of our 40th anniversary. For some people it is closer to being the best of times and for others unfortunately the worst of times. Some of us think this is the best of Buddhist Communities and the best of Orders and Bhante Sangharakshita is the best of teachers and the best of Kalyana Mitras, Others, who are probably no longer with us, see us as the worst of Communities the worst of Orders and Bhante as the worst of teachers. This is probably the subjective experience of almost everything in this world of ours – it is always the best of times and the worst of times, depending on where we are looking from.

For me it has been the best of times, our Community and Order have been the best of Communities and Orders and Bhante has been the best of teachers. I have of course encountered difficulties, personal difficulties because of my own psychology and conditioning and difficulties with other people, which I have, of course, been inclined to see as being because of their psychology and conditioning. Nevertheless it has been the best of times for me and that will inevitably colour whatever I say about spiritual community.

My conversion to Buddhism happened in 1983 as the result of meeting a Sri Lankan monk called Ven. Maha Dhammanisanthi. I met him at the Buddhistisches Haus in Frohnau, West Berlin. I had some previous knowledge of Buddhism from reading but it had not had a strong or life changing impact. It was this encounter with a practising Buddhist that made all the difference to me. In meeting the Ven. Dhammanisanthi I experienced the congruency of words and a way of life. That is what he represented for me and after an hours conversation with him I knew that I was a Buddhist and that I had found what I had been searching for.

It was meeting with the spiritual community in the form of that Sri Lankan monk that was the crucial turning point for me. When I came across Triratna about a year later through Subhuti’s book Buddhism for Today, it was the the fact that people were living and working together and trying to create the seeds of a new society that inspired me and drew me in. I interpreted this as a congruency between words and actions and I think anything less than this sort of active idealism would have just seemed like ordinary religious hypocrisy to me, something I was very familiar with from my upbringing in catholic Ireland.

All through my involvement with the Order and Community what has been of most help to me is the other people around me. I have a depth of gratitude to people who were so kind and patient with me in my first tottering steps on the spiritual path and who helped me so much by befriending me, listening to me, exhorting me, drawing me out, and being examples to me. And as I have learned to walk the path under my own steam, I have found that extending a helping hand to others has been a strong and transformative practice, which puts flesh on the bones of the Dharma.

The example of the lives of practitioners around me was important to me from the beginning, it strengthened my faith in the Dharma. I had a strong faith in what was taught to me by Bhante and Subhuti, through their writings, about the importance of Spiritual Friendship, about the need to co-create the best conditions in which to experience friendship and transcend self-centredness, about the value of living and working together as a context for friendship and transcendence of egotism. I began with faith without very much experience, and now I can honestly say that after many years of steady application, I have no doubts whatsoever about the truth of what Bhante has always asserted; spiritual friendship is of central importance to spiritual life and residential communities and working situations provide excellent opportunities for dissolving the tight knot of egotism that is the motivating force for so much that we think, say and do.

Some of the institutions of Triratna such as residential communities and right livelihood businesses have gone through difficult times in the past and I think a lot of Order Members have lost faith in the spiritual efficacy of these contexts for practice. I would not try to persuade anyone from this view although I don’t share it. For me what is paramount is the spiritual friendship which is enabled by these situations rather than the institutions as ends in themselves. What I would want to encourage is spiritual friendship and I would hope that if sufficient numbers of Order Members really took to heart the importance of spiritual friendship and the dependence of such friendship on conditions – conditions which involve spending time with other people, getting to know them intimately in different situations, engaging with them in many different ways- if as I say this was taken seriously then I feel sure that in time other contexts will develop that will enable and encourage spiritual friendship to flourish. In the Anguttara Nikaya the Buddha says that to really know another person you need to live with them, have dealings with them, see them cope with misfortune and have conversation with them. A bit more than a weekly chat over a cup of coffee. If we focus on building friendships between us then the institutions which support those friendships will grow up naturally as they did in the past, because they will grow out of our need and our enthusiasm.

Something else which I learned from my teachers early on was that the Buddha insisted during the last weeks of his life that the health and well-being of the Spiritual community depended on coming together frequently and in large numbers. I have tried to practice this and I have found that it has become a great source of happiness in my life. By resisting my natural introverted tendency to steer clear of large numbers of people as frequently as possible, I feel I have come to a better understanding of what the Buddha was talking about and it seems to me to go to the heart of spiritual community.

Until we meet a person and experience their presence as a living consciousness, our experience of them is necessarily subjective. We relate to them in the privacy of our own mind as an idea of a person, even a fixed idea of a person, rather than as a real multi-dimensional person in all their complexity and mysteriousness.

It is essential to meet people and to become more intensely aware of them – of their uniqueness and similarity- it is essential if we are to get any grasp on the notion of interconnectedness. It is essential to meet people and interact with them on as deep a level as possible if we are really to establish insight into the fluid, non-fixed, non-separate, interconnected nature of consciousness.

Bhante Sangharakshita talks about this as ‘vital mutual responsiveness’ and the’ third order of consciousness’. I don’t believe the third order of consciousness can be experienced without very frequent personal face-to-face interactions. Communication via the internet won’t do it; it lacks too many dimensions, and written communication is also not enough. What we need is face-to-face interaction. We need to spend time with some people on a daily or weekly basis and establish trust, understanding, friendship and mutual helpfulness. This forms a group which is an atom of the larger spiritual community and when all these atoms of friendship and mutual helpfulness come together the result can be very uplifting – approaching that third order consciousness – an inspiring spiritual community in which we are collectively our own teacher, our own guru, an embodiment of the Dharma that inspires us to more wholeheartedness. We become our own teacher and inspiration.

As I said, this fact of meeting other Order Members face to face and communicating with them and listening to them, being mutually aware is at the heart of what spiritual community is about. It is the meeting place of wisdom and compassion, where at best we can see through our own fixed self-view and it’s expression in selfishness and isolation and we can also see into the world of others and begin to erode barriers as we act on our natural impulses of generosity and kindness.

Within this ‘vital mutual responsiveness’, this ‘third order of consciousness’, the problems of spiritual hierarchy, of authority and autonomy are not problems. Spiritual hierarchy is only a problem if the spiritual community has degenerated into something less or is only a problem for those who perceive the spiritual community as having degenerated, as being a group. If we are aware of people as people, of Order Members as spiritual beings and if we come into contact with them personally, rather than relate to an idea of them which is simply a product of our imagination, then we can rely on spiritual hierarchy to manifest naturally in the course of our interactions. It is not something fixed or static and who will be in the position of learning and who will be in the position of being receptive to new or higher perspectives is not something that can be established by titles or badges or kesas or roles. It is fluid and changing as everything is. And to be paradoxical we could say that those who are likely to be higher in the spiritual hierarchy are those who are most receptive to learning.

Autonomy is an issue for some people. They experience their autonomy to make decisions about how they live as being under threat when they encounter someone speaking with confidence and authority. This seems to me to be a psychological problem; the problem of lack of confidence or lack of self-esteem which can manifest as feeling inferior to others and sometimes manifests as compensating for those feelings of inferiority by acting in a superior way and being very critical of others. It can also be an existential issue – in that our ego identity is threatened by our own idealistic response to the Dharma.

As far as life in the Triratna Community is concerned I always felt – from my earliest involvement that Triratna and it’s institutions were something that we were creating together and therefore something I could have an influence on and an input into. It seemed to be a simple matter of being involved and engaged, like playing a game. You can’t score a goal unless you’re on the pitch.

From the first week of my involvement I threw myself into the collective work. I painted the windows of the London Buddhist Centre reception room, then I helped out with transcribing a seminar and within about three months I was working full time at the LBC. This all seemed very natural to me and still is. I have not found any reason to curtail my involvement and I still feel that the Community and it’s institutions are in the process of being created and probably always will be. That is the nature of reality. Being involved is for me just a logical extension of what I have decided to do with my life, committing myself to the practice and sharing of the Dharma.

Although spiritual hierarchy is not a fixed and final thing, what is more an established fact is that some people have helped us and are helping us and when we see this, when we recognise that we are receiving something from others it is natural that we should experience gratitude and loyalty. Even if the situation changes and they fall from grace in our eyes, nevertheless the fact remains that we have been helped by them, we have benefited and it would be ungracious and dishonest for us to dismiss or denigrate what was given to us. Loyalty to our teachers, preceptors and Kalyana Mitras is a matter of personal integrity and natural gratitude, not to mention good manners and propriety.

However, it is unfortunately a well established fact of human nature to be ungrateful and to denigrate those who have helped us. It is one of the ways in which egotism works. That is why Langritampa’s verses on mind training include one which says:

Even if someone I have helped

And in whom I have placed my hopes 

Does great wrong by harming me 

May I see them as an excellent spiritual friend.

(Eight Verses for Training the Mind, Geshe Sonam Rinchen,p.86)

And of course the Buddha had to put up with this kind of thing too. His disciple Sunnakkhatta left the Order because the Buddha would not perform miracles for him and then he went around criticising the Buddha to others. (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta12) Although loyalty and gratitude to teachers is something quite natural it is also quite natural for some people to be ungrateful and critical and there is no need for us to be particularly surprised or even unhappy when it happens.

This Order of ours, this order of men and women who have made a commitment to live by the Dharma and to share the fruits of that life with others, is a precious and fragile thing. It is not an organisation or corporation. It has no legal existence, it has no literal existence. It is a current of spiritual energy manifesting through the lives of individuals but given form and force by the power of collective practice and the power of imagination. It is fragile and precious, like a dream, and it’s survival and strength depends on our individual efforts:

It’s survival and strength depends on our efforts to come together frequently in large numbers, on our efforts to be aware, mutually aware, on our efforts to move from selfish self-interest to true self-interest and on the frequent expression of kindness and gratitude among ourselves and beyond. Above all the survival and strength of this precious and fragile Order depends on the arising of 'knowledge and vision of things as they really are' (yathabhutajnanadarshana) in a substantial number of Order Members.

We could be well organised, we could have good ordination courses, we could come together frequently, we could be an exemplary body of people in all sorts of ways, but to really ensure our spiritual survival we need Insight, we need the Bodhi heart to be manifest in our midst. Then we will be able to withstand ‘the slings and arrows of misfortune’ and the constant blowing of the winds of materialism that would otherwise chill our hearts.

Bhante Sangharakshita was a great teacher and a man of profound insights, but as the Vimalakirti Nirdesa tells us a Buddhaland is built from living beings. A spiritual community is built from living beings and in creating the Order, Bhante needed willing, cooperative, energetic and capable beings. If we are to continue to build our Buddhaland, continue to create the Order we need to be willing, cooperative, energetic and capable and we need to be welcoming to all those willing, cooperative energetic and capable beings who will want to be part of our Order as the years and generations come and go.

Bhante has already given us a legacy of teachings which is vast and deep. Buried within all those teachings are many treasures, termas, to be unearthed by future generations and given life and form. We as an Order and Community are very young, a mere speck on the radar of time. There is scope for developments beyond our current achievements and even beyond our current imagination. But to come back to the present I will leave the last word to Bhante. At the end of the first chapter of ‘What is the Sangha’ he says:

“There is no future for Buddhism without a truly united and committed spiritual community, dedicated to practising together. And when Buddhists do come together in the true spirit of sangha, there is then the possibility of inhabiting, for a while at least, the dharmadhatu, the realm of the Dharma. In this realm, all we do is practise the Dharma, all we talk about is the Dharma, and when we are still and silent, we enjoy the Dharma in stillness and silence together. The clouds of stress and anxiety that so often hang over mundane life are dispersed, and the fountains of inspiration within our hearts are renewed.” (Complete Works, Vol.3,p.402)

Wesak Reflections

This talk was given at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre in 2008

Today we are celebrating Wesak. The word wesak is a Sinhalese version of the Indian Vaisakha, which is the full moon that corresponds to our month of May. It was under the full moon of Vaisakha that the Buddha gained Enlightenment according to tradition. And so today, quite close to that full moon, we are celebrating the Buddha’s great achievement – his Awakening, his Enlightenment. The first question that probably occurs to us when we hear this is – what is Enlightenment, what is awakening? And what is its relevance to us here in 21^st century Britain.

Enlightenment is a profound insight into the nature of reality and a simultaneously arising great compassion for all deluded beings. It is the perfection of Wisdom and Compassion. It is the overcoming of all greed, hatred and delusion. It is Nirvana, the blowing out of the fires of negative selfish emotions.  

There are many ways we could talk about Enlightenment, but in the end we have to try to grasp what it is about intuitively and imaginatively and what we really need to get a feeling for is the direction of Enlightenment, because Enlightenment is not a thing, it is not something that can be possessed or gained or grasped. It is a process, it is a creative journey it is a direction to be intuited, experienced and internalised. When we are being kind, generous, wise, thoughtful, aware, loving, then we are partaking of the direction of Enlightenment, however imperfectly. Of course, when we are harsh and thoughtless and unaware etc., then we are heading in the opposite direction, we are heading in the direction of Dukkha, suffering. It is easy to see how this is relevant to our lives and to all human life.

The Buddha’s teaching highlights for us the fact that all our dissatisfaction comes from delusion. We suffer because we are ignorant. If we can remove the delusion then the suffering, the dissatisfaction will also be removed. It is possible to remove the delusion. We know that because the Buddha did it and all his Enlightened followers since have also done it.

The Buddha has given detailed instructions, teachings on how to achieve freedom from delusion and suffering. In order for us to progress in the direction of Enlightenment and away from ignorance we need, first of all, to notice and acknowledge our dissatisfaction, secondly we need the ability and willingness to change, thirdly we need external conditions that are helpful and fourthly we need to undertake the practices of generosity, the ethical precepts, meditation and reflection.

Noticing and acknowledging our dissatisfaction involves being aware of what we are doing and why we do it, it involves being aware of the tendency of our mind and emotions, what are we thinking about and why, what do we want and why. Our practices of meditation, mindfulness and reflection help us to have a clearer and more objective view of ourselves and are therefore fundamental to any spiritual endeavour.

Our ability and willingness to change is something I’d like to go into a bit more. When we use the terminology of Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels, we are talking about our ability and willingness to change. Within the Buddhist tradition, if we have spiritual aspirations it is important that we pay close attention to our ability and willingness to change. Later I will say something about external conditions and the four practices of generosity, the ethical precepts, meditation and reflection. Our ability to change and our willingness to change could be seen as internal conditions that need to be established in our life to enable us to go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The external conditions, which I will say a little bit about later, are prior in the sense that good external conditions help us to establish the best internal conditions.

I am going to talk about ability to change and willingness to change as two separate things. They are my own categories and as with all categories are not to be taken too literally, they are just a convenient way of speaking about something, they have no ultimate validity, just as the Noble Eightfold Path as a list has no ultimate validity – it could be the sevenfold or ninefold path.

In order to have an effective spiritual life we need to be willing to follow the spiritual path as taught by the Buddha and all the great Buddhist teachers and especially as taught by our own teacher Bhante Sangharakshita and we need to be capable of practising what we have been taught. What do we need to do to be more capable of living the spiritual life? How can we increase and enhance our ability to live the spiritual life?

Perhaps you are already perfectly capable of living the spiritual life and practising the Buddha’s teachings, in which case you simply need to get on with it. However I know that some people do struggle and I have often struggled myself. Our ability to practice the Dharma, that is our ability to meditate, to practice ethics, to communicate openly, honestly and with kindness, to befriend people, our ability to reflect, to be honest with ourselves, to take responsibility for our mental states, to access and express faith and devotion; our ability to engage in all of these is affected by our conditioning, the conditioning we have received since infancy within our family, and from the society around us, the conditioning that we are all the time subject to from all the ideas and behaviours we encounter. Our ability to practice the Dharma is also affected by our psychology and temperament and how we have responded to our conditioning. And how we continue to respond to our conditioning.

Also from the perspective of the Buddha and the whole Buddhist tradition to date we are also the product of our karma – our intentional actions over many lifetimes, and that too affects our ability to practise the Dharma. In order to develop, enhance and build our ability to practice spiritual life we need to pay attention to our conditioning, our psychology and our intentional actions of body, speech and mind.

I had a very strong Roman Catholic conditioning and also a strong nationalistic conditioning from childhood until I left home at the age of eighteen. When I started meditating and committed myself to the Buddhist path back in 1983 I had to spend about five years understanding and dealing with the consequences of this conditioning, which undermined my ability to practice the Dharma in many ways. I also spent many more years discovering what was positive and helpful in that conditioning. And some aspects of the conditioning went so deep that I was still making discoveries about how my conditioning had affected me two decades after I had first started practising. For the past decade I have not made any major discoveries in this area so maybe I have got to the bottom of it or maybe there is something buried deeper than I have managed to dig.

The reason I mention this is just to emphasise that we need to take time and pay close attention to our conditioning in order to really know who we are and in order to practise as fully as possible. I used writing, meditation, reflecting, discussion, dream analysis, conscious visualisation, auto hypnosis, painting, yoga, tai chi, dharma study, solitary retreats. All of these were ways in which I delved deeper and deeper into who I was and came to know myself and my abilities better. You may need to try different things, but I thing solitary retreats is one of the most effective ways of really getting to know yourself and of course in the context of a solitary retreat you can try different things out, such as dream analysis or drawing and painting.

Of course our conditioning in childhood goes very deep and can affect us for the rest of our lives, but conditioning doesn’t stop when we grow up. We are being conditioned by the world around us all the time and this is something that is in some ways even harder to recognise and do something about. It demands a lot of awareness. One way of noticing the affect something has on us is to remove it from our lives for a while. For instance if we don’t watch television for a few months, when we return to it we will have quite a different awareness of it’s impact, or similarly with the internet or even just using technology. This is another reason why retreats of all kinds are so useful. They insert a gap, however short, into our lives. A period when we are not engaging with our usual conditioning factors. I have heard however that some people bring their mobile phones on retreat and use them to stay in touch with people. There may be exceptional circumstances when this is necessary, but apart from that I would say it is, to be blunt, quite a silly thing to do, and undermines the value of the retreat considerably.

We can of course experience a lot of resistance to dealing with our conditioning and our psychological traits, tendencies and attitudes. We are comfortable with what we have even if it’s a mess. It’s our mess and we can live with it. Anything beyond what we are accustomed to can be experienced as threatening and frightening.

There are three things we need to do in relation to our habitual ways of being in order to help ourselves to develop the ability to change radically. Firstly we need to accept our habits and tendencies without condemnation. If we feel insecure, for instance, we need to accept that we feel insecure and not condemn ourselves for having that feeling. Or if we often feel angry we need to accept that and not condemn ourselves. It is just a fact – 'I often feel insecure or I often feel angry' – we can say it to ourselves and just acknowledge it as a fact. Secondly we need to become aware of how that habit or tendency manifests, how it gets expressed. For instance ,insecurity might manifest as a desire to please everybody or it might manifest as anger. Or anger might manifest passively in an unwillingness to listen or co-operate or it might manifest in harsh speech. Thirdly we need to take responsibility for this mental tendency or habit. We can say to ourselves – 'yes it is me, it is my mind, my mental states. It is not somebody else’s mind; it is not an inevitable consequence of any circumstances or any event. It is just my habit.'

This taking responsibility for our mental states as fully as possible is an important element in gaining insight into how our minds work and in giving ourselves the ability to change. Until we are able to see and accept that our mental states are something we do, rather than something that happens to us, it is virtually impossible to change. When we do see deeply and clearly that our mental states are something we are doing rather than something that is happening to us, then it is as if habits dissolve in the light of that awareness. There are different levels to seeing into our own minds and we may find that we have to come back again and again to seeing the same habit or pattern at work before we finally see through it completely and it dissolves away.

We also need to see deeply and clearly that our positive mental states are something we do and don’t just happen to us. In seeing this we learn that we can choose positive states of mind, we learn that we can choose to see the world around us in different ways, we can choose to highlight the ugliness or the beauty, we can choose to see the suffering of others or see others as obstacles to our satisfaction. We can choose to be angry or understanding and we can choose to feel lonely or connected. In order for all this to happen we need to accept our mental states without condemning ourselves if they are negative and without getting big headed if they are positive. We need to become aware of how we give expression to our mental states and we need to take responsibility for our own minds at deeper and deeper levels.

As well as working with our conditioning and our psychology, the Buddhist tradition asks us to look very closely at our intentional actions of body speech and mind, our karma, in a word. If we pay close attention to whether our actions, our speech and our thoughts and emotions are skilful or unskilful, we can begin to develop the sensitivity to notice very quickly whether we are being skilful or unskilful. We can also develop the ability to create new attitudes, and a new experience by choosing to act in ways that are skilful. We can deliberately and intentionally be kind and generous in what we do, honest and harmonious in what we say and kind in our thoughts. This is the creation of new karma, which leads to the creation of a new person, a new experience, and a new identity – a major step out of dissatisfaction and into contentment.

When we try to develop our ability to live the spiritual life through looking deeply into our conditioning and psychology and by practising intentional positivity, we encounter resistance within our hearts and minds. Everybody I know who tries to live a spiritual life experiences internal conflict at some time or other. If you have not yet experienced internal conflict of some kind you probably will if you continue to become more aware. There is a basic conflict between our aspiration to Enlightenment and the strong attraction towards mundane life. Even when we get beyond the psychological conflicts, we may experience conflicts about how best to give expression to our spiritual commitment. For instance Bhante Sangharakshita experienced the conflict between the desire to be a poet and the desire to be a monk. Some people experience a conflict between wanting to help others and a desire to withdraw from the world. Many of us experience a conflict between the desire to lead a simple life and the constant craving engendered by this consumer society. Or we may experience a conflict between our aspiration and desire to be generous and our feelings of insecurity and attachment.

There is a conflict between being unenlightened, or deluded and our aspiration to Enlightenment. This is not something to worry about or criticise ourselves for. It is just the nature of samsara, the nature of unenlightened consciousness. There are two ways to avoid this sort of conflict – one is to become less and less aware so that you are so thoroughly deluded that that is all you know and experience and the other is to become more and more aware so that you see through the conflict completely or rather rise above it.

There is a Sutta in the Pali canon, which I think highlights in a very dramatic way this conflict between delusion and Reality. It is the Culasaccaka Sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya, No 35. In this Sutta the main character Saccaka is a man who likes to debate philosophical questions and he has a very high opinion of his own abilities as a debater. He boasts “ I see no recluse or Brahmin, the head of an order, the head of a group, the teacher of a group, even one claiming to be accomplished and fully enlightened, who would not shake, shiver and tremble if he were to engage in debate with me, and sweat under the armpits if he were to engage in debate with me. Even if I were to engage a senseless post in debate, it would shake, shiver and tremble if it were to engage in debate with me, so what shall I say of a human being?” (The Middle Length Discourses, trans. Bodhi, p.322)

Then he hears that the Buddha is in the area and he goes to the local people, the Lichavis and he tells them he is going to have a debate with the Buddha which it will be worth their while hearing. He boasts again, “ Come forth, good Lichavis, come forth ! Today there will be some conversation between me and the recluse Gotama. If the recluse Gotama maintains before me what was maintained before me by one of his famous disciples, the bhikkhu named Assaji, then just as a strong man might seize a long-haired ram by the hair and drag him to and drag him fro and drag him round about, so in debate I will drag the recluse Gotama to and drag him fro and drag him round about.” (p. 323) He goes on in this way, giving three more examples of how he will defeat and humiliate the recluse Gotama.

He meets the Buddha with a crowd of onlookers and he asks the Buddha some questions. However the Buddha asks him something in return and he cannot answer without losing the argument so he remains silent and the text says, “ A second time the Blessed One asked the same question and a second time Saccaka the Nigantha’s son was silent. Then the Blessed One said to him: ‘ Aggivesana, answer now. Now is not the time to be silent. If anyone, when asked a reasonable question up to the third time by the Tathagata, still does not answer, his head splits into seven pieces there and then’. Now on that occasion a thunderbolt-wielding spirit holding an iron thunderbolt that burned, blazed and glowed, appeared in the air above Saccaka the Nigantha’s son, thinking: ‘ If this Saccaka the Nigantha’s son, when asked a reasonable question up to the third time by the Blessed One, still does not answer, I shall split his head in seven pieces here and now.’ The Blessed One saw the thunderbolt-wielding spirit and so did Saccaka the Nigantha’s son. Then Saccaka the Nigantha’s son was frightened, alarmed, and terrified. Seeking his shelter, asylum and refuge in the Blessed One he said: ‘ Ask me, Master Gotama, I will answer.” (p.326)

I won’t tell you the rest of the story, except to say that Saccaka is thoroughly humiliated. But what strikes me about this image of the thunderbolt wielding spirit about to split Saccaka's head and the fact that both he and the Buddha are aware of it, is that it is a very graphic image of the conflict between Reality and delusion and the suffering that will follow if we deliberately ignore or deny Reality. And of course that is what most of us are doing most of the time. The Sutta portrays Saccaka as arrogant and proud and later we see the Buddha humiliating him in a way that seems almost cruel – until we understand the spiritual message that is being conveyed. Reality humiliates the ego-centred consciousness. In later Buddhism we see this in the Diamond Sutra where the Buddha says: “those sons and daughters of good family, who will take up these very Sutras, and will bear them in mind, recite and study them, they will be humbled, - well humbled will they be! And why? The impure deeds these beings have done in their former lives, and which are liable to lead them into the states of woe, - in this very life they will, by means of that humiliation, annul those impure deeds of their former lives, and they will reach the Enlightenment of a Buddha.” (Sangharakshita, Complete Works, Vol.14, p.486) Internal conflict is part and parcel of spiritual practice and sometimes on the spiritual path we have to accept that we are not as clever or wise or compassionate as we think we are, but the humiliation of that is purifying and a symptom of progress on the Path.

I have been talking about our ability to practice the Dharma. Now I would like to say a little about our willingness to live the spiritual life and there may be some overlap with what I have already said. Our willingness to practice is hampered by our deluded sense of a fixed, separate self. Having this deluded sense of a fixed, separate self leads us to expend energy defending that self and continuing to construct and create that self. In order to escape this delusion of a fixed separate self we need acceptance, awareness, reflection and action.

We need acceptance in the sense that we need to accept that we are egotistical and self-centred – whether in a crude or subtle way. This is not any reason to feel bad about ourselves, it is simply a matter of accepting that we are as yet unenlightened, unawakened and therefore deluded and the delusion finds expression in an egotistical way through our actions, words and thoughts. This initial acceptance of our egotism is an acknowledgement that we need spiritual practice, that the spiritual path is essential for our well-being.

Then we need awareness of how this deluded view of a fixed separate self is expressed in our lives. In what ways are we egotistical? We can ask ourselves from time to time in what way am I being egotistical. Or even, when we find ourselves in some particular state, for example, anxiety; we could ask where is the egotism in this. If we are lonely, we can ask where is the egotism in this. If we are gregarious, we can ask where is the egotism in this. Even our positive qualities can be hijacked by our sense of self. For example when I first started meditating I realised that much of my generosity previously had been unconsciously giving me a sense of superiority and was a way of dealing with insecurity. Seeing through that allowed me to become a bit more genuinely generous.

As well as acceptance and awareness we need to reflect. In particular we need to study the Dharma so that our minds become permeated by the concepts of the Dharma – the law of conditionality, karma, the six perfections and so on. When our minds are permeated by the concepts of the Dharma we can reflect on our own experience with the help of these concepts and gradually over time we gain greater insight into our own mind, our own experience and by extension into the minds of others and into the nature of reality. A natural consequence of this is to experience compassion. If we experience compassion we will act on it. In fact compassion isn’t really a feeling or emotion, as we normally understand them, it is better thought of as an activity – ultimately it is the only activity of an enlightened mind.

I have been talking about the internal conditions that we need to create in order to live an effective spiritual life. An effective spiritual life is one that is tending towards Insight and compassionate activity. These internal conditions will enhance our willingness and ability to follow the Buddha’s teaching. In order to help ourselves to create these internal conditions for spiritual practice we need to have good external conditions. The main external condition we need is a Sangha, a spiritual community. We can only have a spiritual community if we engage in creating a spiritual community. A spiritual community is not something abstract and it is not simply a group of people or an organisation. A spiritual community is something dynamic and changing. It is the interactions, the open, honest, kindly communication between people who hold a common spiritual ideal and a common practice.

To create the essential external condition for spiritual practice, spiritual community, we need to engage with others who share our ideals and our practices. We need to gradually befriend some people and build trust and honest, open connections. To do this we need to spend time with people. This is one of the reasons why retreats are so valuable; they allow an opportunity for deeper communication. Of course it is not enough just to see people on retreat, which is why the Buddhist Centre with all its activities is such a great resource. Some people of course want to engage with each other even more deeply by living together in community and by working together. However we go about creating spiritual community we will need to befriend people by listening to them, empathising with them, thinking of them, rejoicing in them and being generous to them. If we do this we will create a growing network of kindness and goodwill, which is Sangha.

If we can establish the internal conditions of being able and willing to live a spiritual live and the external condition of spiritual community, which supports us, then our practice will be enhanced enormously.That practice is essentially the practice of generosity, ethics, meditation and reflection.

Generosity means thinking of other people, being aware of them and being willing to help them with time, energy, money, sharing knowledge, creating positive conditions and so on. It is about giving appropriately bearing in mind our own capacity and what is needed. Ethics is all about loving kindness (metta) and awareness. It means bringing metta and awareness into all our relationships, whether our relationship to our self, to other people, to the environment, to parents, mentors, children, politicians, animals, birds, teenagers, and so on – it is about becoming mettaful and aware so that everything and everybody we come into contact with is perceived through the eyes of metta and awareness.

Meditation is the means to opening into higher more refined states of consciousness, and it is important that it doesn’t just remain a technique that we use for an hour a day, but rather permeates our whole life. An effective meditator should be in a higher state of consciousness all the time and this is expressed in positive emotion, awareness of other people, awareness of the world around and a free flowing energy. Reflection is what deepens spiritual practice into Insight. We reflect in meditation, or by thinking about things, or we reflect by writing and by engaging in discussion and study.

Today is Wesak. We are celebrating the occasion when Siddhartha became a Buddha – an Awakened one. Before he became a Buddha he had to make an effort, he had to practice generosity, ethics, meditation and reflection just as we do. In the Dvedhavitakka Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya, 19) he says: “Bhikkhus, before my Enlightenment, while I was still an unenlightened Bodhisatta, it occurred to me: ‘ Suppose that I divide my thoughts into two classes.’ Then I set on one side thoughts of sensual desire, thoughts of ill-will, and thoughts of cruelty and I set on the other side thoughts of renunciation, thoughts of non- ill will and thoughts of non-cruelty.” (The Middle Length Discourse, trans. Bodhi, p.207)

He goes on to talk about how he would become aware of his state of mind and then he would deliberately reflect on the consequences of that mental state – in terms of the effect on himself, the effect on others and whether it would move him in the direction of Enlightenment. I find this Sutta quite helpful and encouraging. Although the basic idea is quite simple and it is a teaching to be found in various forms throughout the Buddhist scriptures, the teaching of right effort, there is something particularly encouraging about how the Buddha talks about himself having to make this effort, needing to reflect, needing to meditate. He says he also noticed that if he spent too much time thinking and reflecting he would get stressed and his antidote to mental stress and strain was to meditate.

According to this Sutta, Siddhartha was not some kind of superman. He experienced negative mental states; he had to make an effort to be aware and an effort to change his state of mind. He had to be careful not to strain too much by thinking too much, so he would relax into meditation to refresh his mind and body. Here we see Siddhartha practising awareness of mental states (which includes emotions), we see him bringing an ethical dimension into his reflections; reflecting on the consequences of his mental states and we see him meditating to refresh himself.

The practice not mentioned here is generosity; in the Sutta he speaks instead of renunciation. However all Buddhist practice is done within an understood and implied context of generosity and compassion. The whole point of Buddhist practice is to alleviate the suffering of ourselves and others by transcending narrow egotism and going beyond the greed, the ill-will and the delusion which are all about bolstering up a sense of a fixed and separate self. This going beyond greed, ill-will and delusion is the ultimate generosity. It is also the ultimate happiness, Nirvana, the blowing out of the flames of all negative emotions.

This is what the Buddha achieved sitting beneath the Bodhi tree. It is this triumph, this victory of all that is best in human consciousness over all that is worst, which we celebrate at Wesak. And the celebration is a reminder to us of what Buddhism is really about; namely, Awakening to wisdom and compassion. It is also an encouragement to us because the Buddha was human and subject to the same mental conflict and struggles that we are subject to and he has shown that it is possible to go beyond these conflicts and struggles. That is why the Buddha is a true refuge. He can be relied upon. That is why the Dharma, his teaching is a true refuge. It can be relied upon. That is also why the spiritual community of his enlightened followers are a true refuge. To make progress we need to move ever closer to those refuges by practising generosity, ethics, meditation and reflection.