What Buddhism is and what a Buddhist Centre is for

This talk was given at the official opening of the Mid-Essex Buddhist Centre 22^nd April 2017

When I was a teenager I wanted desperately to know what life was all about. I was hungry for answers to all kinds of questions. I couldn’t find answers – indeed often I didn’t even know what the questions were – I couldn’t formulate them. I just had a sense of wanting something – wanting to know something, wanting to understand something. At the age of 17 I realised that I was not a Catholic, as everyone around me seemed to be, I was not even a Christian, I didn’t believe in the existence of an omnipotent, creator God who sat in judgement on individuals. I knew what I didn’t believe – I had no idea what I did believe. I read voraciously, I devoured books, searching for answers to the great existential questions.

I left my home in rural Ireland at the age of 18 and went to London. I worked in accountancy and auditing and studied to become an accountant. All the time I was unhappy to the point of distress because I could not see what was the point of being alive. I was really bothered by this. I could see clearly what I could do with my life – I could continue my studies, get a qualification as an accountant, get a good well paid job, perhaps become a partner in a firm of accountants, buy a house and car, get married, have children and so on. I could see that very clearly spread out before me and at the age of 20/ 21 I felt deeply unsatisfied at the prospect. I don’t know why this was because others seemed very content with this vision of life and it seemed to give a sense of purpose to peoples lives. I felt a kind of hopelessness at the prospect.

At age of 22, on the basis of a dream I’d had I gave up my career and decided I was going to go in search of the meaning of life. Others thought I was nutty. And by all reasonable standards, I guess I was. I knew it meant that I was going to be poor and I accepted that. I spent the next five years on that search – travelling around Britain and Europe. I settled in Berlin for a few years and just at the end of my time there I was introduced to Buddhism by a Sri Lankan monk. He taught me the five ethical precepts of Buddhism and a meditation on Loving Kindness. I was struck by these teachings, but what struck me even more was the congruency between the teachings and the monk – he really did seem to embody what he was talking about. This was such a contrast to the priests of my childhood that it made a big impression on me. I experienced an immediate sense of relief and I just knew I had found what I was looking for, even though at that stage I knew nothing about Buddhism and it wasn’t easy to find good books or teachers then.

Back in Britain I came across the Triratna Buddhist Community and here the teaching was put in a way that I found very accessible and I decided to get involved and I have been fully engaged with practising and later teaching Buddhism ever since.

What is Buddhism – what was it that gave me that sense of meaning and purpose I had been yearning for. Initially for me it was simply the ethical precepts and meditation – and what I really liked, what attracted me so much was that it was so practical – it was something you did, not just a bunch of good ideas. And that is a key to understanding Buddhism – above all Buddhism is a method, a set of practices to transform the individual. And is based on a vision of existence that Buddhists know as Nirvana, Enlightenment, Awakening.

Buddhism begins with the Buddha – It begins with a human experience, the experience of Awakening to the true nature of Reality. Siddhartha Gautama was born and died, just like any other human being, but he attained to the state of being a Buddha – the word ‘Buddha’ means ‘one who has Awakened’.

Most of us experience ourselves as separate from the world – we are a subject with a subjective experience and out there is a world of ‘objects’, including other people, separate from us. That is a common sense view of reality.

Modern quantum physics tells us that this common sense view is a delusion and that world of solid objects is not what it seems, atoms are mainly empty space and therefore most of what seems so solid is in fact empty space and what seems so inert is in a constant state of flux. And it is even more mysterious than that since the basic particles, which modern science has identified as the essence of ‘stuff’ are not only particles but also waves. And whether they are particles or waves depends on whether they are observed or not – weirdly, interaction with consciousness changes ‘matter’. Mind is primary.

Our common sense view of the world outside is a delusion and according to Buddhism our common sense view of our self is also a delusion. If we investigate thoroughly we will not find anything that we can call a self, nothing fixed, separate. Nothing substantial. No unchanging essence. Physically we are changing all the time, mentally, emotionally – in every way we are in a state of constant change, constant flux. The world of so called objects is a constant process of change; the world of subject – what we think of as ‘me’ is also a constant process of change. So we have these two seemingly separate processes interacting.

What Buddhism tells us is that everything and everyone is intimately interrelated. Everything arises because of conditions – a vast multiplicity of conditions – and all those conditions are in turn happening because of other conditions and so on. Nothing is isolated – nothing happens of itself – everything is related to everything else in some way.

When this is deeply understood, not understood in an intellectual sense but deeply realised. When this fact of inter-connectedness, inter-relation is deeply, deeply realised and becomes part of our consciousness, then what arises is spontaneous compassion. This is not the Compassion of a self/ subject doing something for or to others who are experienced as separate objects out there. This is the spontaneous inevitable activity of a mind, a consciousness, that experiences no separation between subject and object, self and other. This is the compassion of one who has Awakened – a Buddha.

Buddhism arose when the Gautama the Buddha managed to communicate his vision of existence to others and they realised it deeply for themselves, so that they too experienced what he had experienced and became Buddhas too.

The essential message of Buddhism is practical – We cause ourselves suffering by trying to live from a deluded view of reality – divided into a real self which wants to get something from or defend itself against a real other. Our suffering is caused by wanting what we can’t have and not wanting what we can’t avoid. Buddhism says we can change ourselves and develop our minds so that we can have a clearer and more accurate view of ourselves and the world. Change is inevitable – some of it, such as ageing is beyond our control, but on the level of choice, willed action, volitions, we can choose to change in a positive direction or not.

This is the law of Karma: Actions have consequences. Good actions – those based in mental states that are expansive, kindly, generous and aware lead to positive consequences for ourselves and others. Those actions based in narrow mental states of greed, hatred and unawareness lead to bad consequences for ourselves and others. Buddhism speaks of actions which are skilful or unskilful – Skilfull actions come from expansive, positive states of mind and Unskilful actions come from narrow, negative states of mind.

The five ethical precepts of Buddhism are a guide to the kind of behaviour that is skilful – they are not rules or commandments but rather principles, even training principles of an ethical life. It was these precepts that I responded to so strongly when I first encountered them.

The 5 Precepts:

1. I undertake the training principle to refrain from harming living beings and put positively – with deeds of loving kindness, I purify my body.

So this is firstly something that is freely undertaken ( not a command to be obeyed) and secondly, it is a training, something to be practised as you’d practise running or drawing or playing a musical instrument. And it’s about non-violence towards living things – which is why many Buddhists are Vegetarian or Vegan.

2. I undertake the training principle to refrain from taking the not given or with open handed generosity ...

   The principle here is generosity and overcoming the greed or craving to possess things. Purifying the body means purifying our actions or more simply being ethical and caring in the things we do.

3. Refrain from sexual misconduct.

   This is about refraining from any kind of coercion, exploitation or manipulation in order to obtain sexual graticification. It is not about whether you are hetero, homo sexual, bisexual or what happens in private between consenting adults. It is an extension of the first precept of non-harming to the arena of sexual relations – because sexual desire is such a strong force in the lives of most people – a force of nature. The positive counterpart to this is about developing stillness, simplicity and contentment.

4. Refraining from false speech, truthful communication.

   Without truth there can be no trust and without trust there is no social order, no society. We depend on being able to trust others – otherwise our lives become impossible. We can only communicate and build relationships on the basis of trust and trust requires truthfulness. Other speech precepts – Kindly, Helpful, Harmonising opposites of harsh, unhelpful and slanderous.

5. Refraining from intoxicants that cloud the mind.

   Mindfulness. I think intoxicants by definition are meant to cloud the mind – often that is the main reason why people drink or take drugs, they want to cloud their minds, they want to escape from their normal awareness. So this precept is about mindfulness, awareness and creating the conditions which allow greater awareness to emerge.

You could say that there are two basic principles of Buddhist Ethics – Metta, usually translated as loving kindness and Sati, often translated as awareness or mindfulness. Buddhism is saying that we need to train ourselves in both of these, develop both of these , in order to become more ethical and incidentally happier. Mindfulness or awareness is initially a process of getting to know ourselves better and becoming intimately acquainted with how our mind works and then it expands out to include everything and everyone else and eventually embraces all of reality.

Loving kindness approaches the same goal from another direction – focussing on the well-being of all including ourselves and in that way developing a deep understanding and realisation about our inter-relatedness and the nature of reality.

These two principles – awareness and loving kindness – can be applied to all of our relations with others, our relations with all living things and even our relationship to so-called inanimate objects. Awareness and kindness are the basis of an deep ecology of consciousness and life.

Meditation is a method to help us develop these qualities – it is a way of working on the mind with the mind to cultivate a stream of positive mental states. On the basis of these practices we are enabled to approach the experience of Gautama the Buddha , the perfection of wisdom and compassion, which goes beyond all notions of self and other, all notions of fixedness or separateness – to the activity of spontaneous compassion.

The first step to wisdom is a receptivity to the teaching – listening, hearing, taking in what is being taught by the Buddha. The second step is reflecting what has been taken in, making it our own, understanding it intellectually, applying it to our actual lives, seeing for ourselves that it works. The third and highest level of wisdom is the deep realisation which means that we become wisdom, we become compassion, we become loving kindness and awareness. We awaken to how things really are.

So that is a very rapid and condensed description of what Buddhism is from someone who has been a Buddhist for over 30 years. I hope it has been comprehensible. Now what is a Buddhist Centre for. We are here to celebrate the opening of this new Buddhist Centre – the Mid- Essex Buddhist Centre. What is the point of a Buddhist Centre. A Buddhist Centre exists to give people access to the conditions that will enable them to practice the ethical principles, learn to meditate and begin to move in the direction of wisdom and compassion. A Buddhist centre makes available the teachings of the Buddha, in an accessible form, the teachings of ethics, meditation and wisdom. People can come along and take what they want from those teachings – some will just want to learn to meditate, or practice some mindfulness – others will want to take things further and deeper. All are welcome.

Above all A Buddhist Centre is a spiritual community of like minded people who wish to share what they have gained and learned with all who are interested and who support each other in their efforts by developing friendships, studying together, going on retreat together and encouraging and helping each other. Both friendliness and calmness should be the palpable atmosphere of any Buddhist Centre. I hope that many of you will be part of helping to create that atmosphere over the coming years and I hope that many more people will come along in the coming years to experience that atmosphere of loving kindness and awareness.

How to create intensity and depth at Buddhist Centres

This talk was given at the Triratna European Chairs assembly in 2017

I have been asked to talk about how to create depth and intensity at a Buddhist Centre. But what do we mean by intensity and depth? Let’s take depth first: There is term in Pali and Sanskrit that corresponds to ‘depth’ – it is Gambhirataa – Gambhiraa means ‘deep’ and gambhirataa means depth. Gambhira is translated as deep, profound, unfathomable and hard to perceive. It is used in the literal sense to describe a deep lake for instance and it is also used to speak about depth of knowledge and wisdom or depth of meditation. So this metaphor of depth is an ancient one . The opposite in Pali is uttaana which means shallow, superficial or thoughtless. That gives us a hint of what we are aiming for – a move from superficiality to profundity. What this means in a nutshell is that achieving depth is about the movement from a shallow, superficial view of oneself and the world towards a profound and subtle (hard to perceive) view of self and world or in an even smaller nutshell that is the movement from egotism to egolessness, from selfishness to selflessness.

As a matter of interest I think the metaphor of height means exactly the same as the metaphor of depth – but somehow the different metaphors have a different affect on people and lead them to practise differently even. I guess it means we need to be careful about getting too attached to any particular way of talking about practice. So this whole business of moving from egotism to egolessness, from self-centredness to selflessness is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial. But how do we do it and what should we be encouraging others to do.

Before saying anything about that I want to briefly look at what ‘intensity’ might mean in this context. I am not aware that it corresponds to any particular idea in the Suttas or Sutras. However the etymology of the English word ‘intense’ may be helpful in this regard. It comes from a Latin root meaning ‘stretched’. So an intense Dharma life is one that stretches us – a practice that we are stretched by.

Bringing these two ideas together we have the image of going deep and the image of being stretched. In some ways they amount to the same thing, but I am going to approach them as being concerned with two different aspects of Dharma Practice. Attaining depth is about those practices which give us a more profound or deeper understanding and experience of ourselves and of the Dharma. Intensity is about those practices which stretch us when bringing our understanding and experiences into relationship with other people and different situations and circumstances. We could consider intensity to be a collective thing and depth to be a matter of individual practise.

I suspect that there isn’t any one true path to depth – different people will have to concentrate on different things. Broadly speaking gaining depth is about what we often refer to as integration and positive emotion. On the basis of these two we can stretch ourselves in the process which is sometimes referred to as spiritual death. Depth is about doing whatever is necessary to gain greater self-knowledge and greater awareness more broadly. Obviously meditation helps. However I don’t believe meditation is sufficient and it has been my observation that although people can gain greater wisdom through meditation they can also get greater delusion. In the Pali Canon it is recommended that you check your meditation insights against the explicit teachings of the Buddha and the testimony of the wise. It is only in communication that we really gain insight. Meditation is not the whole of the spiritual life. Kalyana Mitrata is according to the Buddha the whole of the spiritual life. However I would say that in between meditation and Kalyana Mitrata there lies another practice which is essential to achieving any depth and that is the practice of reflection - reflecting on our own experience, our responses, our habits, our reactions, our joys. Asking ourselves questions – questioning our centrality in the universe, questioning the pre-eminence of our ideas and viewpoints. All of that leads to depth. Reflecting on our lives in the light of the Dharma also helps. For example, if we find that we have got into a conflict with someone, and it is genuinely obvious that they are in the wrong – we still need to reflect on our own response. If we are upset – why are we upset? How does our upset get expressed? What are the Dharmic perspectives on the situation? Does the third verse of the Dhammapada apply? "He abused me, he struck me, he overpowered me, he robbed me." Those who harbour such thoughts do not still their hatred.” Does the 5^th verse of the Eight Point Mind Training apply?

“When others, out of jealousy
Treat me wrongly with abuse, slander, and scorn,
May I take upon myself the defeat
And offer to others the victory”.

Subhuti talks about Reaction Practice in this regard. In other words the practice of using your own reactions/ responses to situations and to other people as a way of going deeper into how we create ego – how we further the ‘ego project’ to use Vessantara’s phrase. The third verse of the Eight Point Mind Training recommends this exploration too. It says:

“In all my deeds may I probe into my mind,
And as soon as mental and emotional afflictions arise-
As they endanger myself and others-
May I strongly confront them and avert them”.

In order to use our reactions and responses in this way we need to be willing not to take ourselves too seriously – our opinions and our emotions are just the surface ripples churned up by the busy swans feet of our very own ego project.

I have had the experience of seeing people who are very capable and keen meditators, able to get into Dhyanic states frequently, not seeming to change very much. I have known people to be selfish, irritable and unaware of other people , in spite of deep meditation experience. I’ve also known and do know people who are very keen on Dharma study, very knowledgeable about the Dharma able to reflect deeply on the connection between different Dharmic concepts and able to explain the Dharma very well, but not seeming to be transformed by their Dharma knowledge, not seeming to be able to apply what they know so well to their own lives and their own mental states.

This doesn’t mean that meditation and Dharma study are useless, it just means that another factor needs to come into play and that is this practice of reflection on our own responses and reactions, a thorough questioning of ourselves in a spirit of curiosity and adventure. And, of course, reflection on how the Dharma actually applies to our life. Meditation can give us the flexibility of mind and the awareness to be able to do this and Dharma Study can give us the perspective and conceptual framework to make sense of what is happening in our own minds.

We also need to reflect on our happiness and sense of well-being and understand deeply the conditions that have given rise to that. In his lecture on Nirvana, part of which is reproduced in Guide to the Buddhist Path, Bhante Sangharakshita puts it like this: “we should try to understand , much more deeply than just intellectually, why we are what we are. If we are suffering, accept the suffering, and understand why we are suffering. Or, as the case may be, if we are happy, accept the happiness (don’t feel guilty about it ) and understand why we are happy. This understanding is not something merely intellectual; it is something which has to go very deep down indeed. For some people this penetration, or insight, will come in the course of meditation. Meditation is not just fixing the mind on an object, nor just revolving a certain idea in the mind. Meditation involves, among other things, getting down to the bottom of one’s own mind and illuminating one’s mind from the bottom upwards. In other words it involves exposing one’s motives, the deep-seated causes of one’s mental states, the causes of both one’s joy and one’s sorrow. In this way, in awareness, real growth will take place.”

The first step in achieving depth is Meditation and Reflection. I think solitary retreats are also indispensable. We have lives that are full of people and meetings – a lot of interactions with people. It is essential to get away from all that and just be with your own mind for a while – without that I doubt whether going deeper is possible. If I have attained anything that might be called depth I would say it is almost entirely due to solitary retreats. Also, of course, if you don’t go on retreat for your own benefit, then you are in no position to recommend to other people that they go on retreat for their benefit. Perhaps we could look at the question – what could I do to go deeper in self-understanding, deeper in awareness and deeper in my understanding of the Dharma?

Let’s move on to intensity now. As I said earlier, the word ‘intensity’ comes from a root meaning ‘to stretch’. When we are talking about intensity in spiritual practices, we are talking about something that stretches us –in our understanding, in our abilities, in our communication and so on. Attaining depth is about those practices which give us a more profound or deeper understanding and experience of ourselves and of the Dharma. Intensity is about those practices which stretch us when bringing our understanding and experiences into relationship with other people and different situations and circumstances.

We could, for convenience, relate depth to Integration and Positive Emotion and relate intensity to Spiritual Death and Rebirth.

Spiritual Death is an odd phrase and a metaphor that I don’t particularly like. I am not too keen on the word “death”, because although we are speaking metaphorically of a kind of death of egotism, the word death implies something sudden and also the word itself doesn’t have many positive connotations. But what we are talking about here can be very gradual and is highly positive – we are talking about seeing through our delusion of having a fixed and separate self. This seeing through manifests as a movement away from self-centredness to greater and greater selflessness. The wisdom of seeing through our delusion of ego identity manifests as the compassion of selfless activity.

We could use other metaphors for this process, this vision, as well as the metaphor of death. We could talk about Spiritual Victory for instance. In the Dhammapada the Buddha says: “though one should conquer in battle thousands upon thousands of men, yet he who conquers himself is truly the greatest in battle. It is indeed better to conquer oneself than to conquer other people.” (Verse 104) We could talk about ‘freedom of mind’ (cetovimutti), the term the Buddha uses in the Meghiya Sutta, also translated as ‘the hearts release’. When Bhante talked about Spiritual Death in a seminar back in the 1970s he began by referring to it as the Stage of Vision.

Whichever images or metaphors we use the important thing is to understand what is being expressed and sometimes it’s best that we have a number of expressions to guard against literalism and a descent into jargon, where every little expression of generosity is referred to as a Spiritual Death. What we are talking about here is a victory over all kinds of self-centredness and selfishness and pettiness. We are talking about the death of the delusion that we have some kind of fixed permanent essence, a self, which needs to be defended and nourished. We are talking about a release from the prison of isolation that is egotism. We are talking about a vision of complete selflessness known in the Mahayana as the Bodhisattva Ideal. Although we talk about Spiritual Death separate from spiritual rebirth, really there is no separation. When you are released from delusion you are released into a vision. When you let go of selfishness you let go into selflessness. When you are victorious over ignorance you gain the kingdom of wisdom and compassion.

Intensity then is a way of talking about those activities which stretch us beyond our ego project and into the lives of others. Spiritual friendship in all it’s forms is central to what this idea of intensity is getting at. And in the context of a Buddhist Centre intensity is present when the people running the Centre and the activities of the Centre are developing and engaging in spiritual friendship with each other. This may not always be comfortable, just as our meditation and Dharma study isn’t always comfortable, but it can be transformative. When this starts to work well – friendship between people, all of whom are individually seeking depth- then the combined forces of this group of people creates a tangible culture and atmosphere, which others can experience and gradually join in with.

In the Anguttara Nikaya – the chapter of sevens – there is a passage about the seven qualities of a friend. The first three of these qualities are that a friend is someone who ‘gives what is hard to give’, does what is hard to do’, and endures what is hard to endure’. If you have a bunch of people working together all of who are willing to give what is hard to give, do what is hard to do and endure what is hard to endure, then you have a very powerful dynamo of spiritual energy that can transform all those who come into contact with it. What does it mean that something is hard to do, or give or endure. Well as I see it there are two elements to this – the objective and the subjective.

Some things are objectively hard to do – lift a very heavy weight, climb Mount Everest or in terms of giving, it is hard to give up personal comfort or give away all your money and it’s objectively hard to endure a lot of physical pain. However, I think for most of us, most of the time , this practice of giving, doing and enduring what is hard to give, do and endure is more about what we find subjectively difficult. In short it is about whether we are willing to inconvenience ourselves a little for the sake of others or for the sake of the bigger situation or for the sake of the Dharma or our teachers. We are more likely to find it hard to give because of our attachments – to money, things, time, comfort and so on. We are likely to find it hard to do things that stretch us beyond a limited view of ourselves or cause us some anxiety or give rise to fear of conflict and so on. And we are likely find it hard to endure other people being critical of us, having strong opinions that don’t agree with ours and so on.

This practice of developing the ability to give what is difficult to give, do what is difficult to do and endure what is difficult to endure may involve very different things for different people. One person may love to be in front of an audience teaching and find it hard to support a class, another may find it very hard to give a talk or lead a class and want to be in the background all the time. This is not to say that we need to be always challenging ourselves to do things we find difficult, it is more about being willing to do or give or endure the difficult thing when the need arises, especially in the context of supporting our friends in a Buddhist centre.

I have come up with five things I think we need to try to put in place so that a Buddhist Centre becomes a place of that intensity of practice that leads to the arising of Bodhicitta. The first thing is a certain amount of renunciation – especially renunciation of worldly values and worldly identities.

Probably most, if not all, of you will be familiar with the Dasadhamma Sutta. The first verse there says:

“There are ten dhammas which should be reflected upon again and again by one who has gone forth. What are these ten?

I am no longer living according to worldly aims and values. This must be reflected upon again and again by one who has gone forth.” (Anguttara Nikaya,10,48)

I have put this into my own words to make it more relevant to our actual situation:

These are ten things that should be reflected on again and again by an Order member.

I no longer hold to any group identity, such as nationality, gender, sexual orientation, family, skin colour, class, ethnic origin, the wealthy, the poor, socialist, capitalist and so on.

This should be reflected on again and again by an Order Member.

In other words the first thing we need to do is renounce worldly identities and the values that go with them. As far as I can tell many of the problems we have encountered in the Order over the years are to do with the fact that we are so immersed in worldly values, so influenced by worldly values that we are unable to see clearly that we are immersed and influenced by worldly values. Being immersed in worldly values and identities means being heavily influenced by worldly norms, worldly ways of thinking, worldly ways of doing things. If we are to really develop depth and intensity at Centres, some of us at least will need to thoroughly and wholeheartedly renounce worldly values and identities. Or to use the traditional term we need to ‘go forth’ from worldly values and identities.

Then secondly, in our Centres we need to have agreed aims. This may seem obvious and in some ways it is, but as we have often heard it is worth stating the obvious. In Cambridge the team has encapsulated it’s aim in one sentence: “Our aim is to live, practise, realise and communicate the Buddha’s Dharma as elucidated by Bhante Sangharakshita.” Having an agreed aim gives us something that is above individual opinions – a shared aim and value. This is something that a team can come together around, something that helps cohesion.

Thirdly, a team needs to develop trust . Team members need to develop confidence in each other, at least with regards to working together. Without that confidence or trust it becomes very difficult to create the kind of atmosphere and culture that contributes to the intensity of engagement we are trying to encourage. Those who attend a Centre weekly or less often pick up on the atmosphere and are influenced by it – if the atmosphere is one of coldness or tension it will be very off-putting. I don’t think there are any techniques to enable trust to develop – it comes out of working together, communication, having fun together and spending time around each other. And it takes time. I did the Daniel Ofman Four Quadrant Analysis with my team and it was very well received and helpful. That is one possible activity for helping to build trust between people. (see www.toolshero.com/communication-skills/core-quadrant-ofman/).

As the Centre Chair and therefore probably the most influential person in the situation we need to be careful that we are not too attached to particular outcomes in all situations. We need to be big enough to allow other people to take initiative too. And we need to keep an eye on the bigger picture, the principles involved and the perspective of the overarching aim of the Centre, rather than get too caught up with a particular way of doing things or particular solutions to problems. This is much more difficult than it sounds, because we often think our way of doing things is the one that best communicates the principles. It is one of the shadow sides of being confident – being too confident or even a bit over-bearing, without meaning to. Often people will go along with someone who is very confident but they may resent it later, because they feel humiliated or a sense of failure or inferiority. We need to not be too attached to particular outcomes or particular ways of doing things. After all we will eventually leave the situation or drop dead and the world will carry on merrily without us and our genius and the Buddhist Centre will thrive without us too. The more people can contribute to the Centre the more of a hub of energy is created.

Fifthly, there needs to be a spirit of altruism running through everything we do at a Buddhist Centre. We need to encourage and practise generosity in our teaching, in being Kalyana Mitras, in relation to money and in relation to volunteering. This altruistic spirit is really what enables people to move on from a narrow vision of personal development, personal insight, even personal enlightenment – to a greater vision of the spontaneous compassionate activity of the Bodhisattvas. If a Centre has an atmosphere of generous altruism and energy in pursuit of the good – then that stretches everyone who comes into contact with it – it creates the intensity that ultimately gives rise to that outburst of compassion, that outpouring of energy which is often referred to as the arising of the Bodhicitta, the awakening heart.

I’ve said a few things about depth and intensity which I hope help to stimulate your own thoughts. But I would like to end with a quote from Subhuti from his paper entitled A Suprapersonal Force (http://subhuti.info/essays): “Sangharakshita teaches that this kind of intensity is most likely to come about in a team of committed Dharma practitioners, living a simple shared Dharmic way of life, closely and intensively cooperating together in serving the Dharma. These conditions offer the greatest opportunity to enter the Stream of the Dharma. Within such a Dharma community, will be found the best basis for bodhicitta to arise. This is a key understanding underlying Sangharakshita's founding of the Triratna Buddhist Order and Community. When people come together who deeply share a common vision and purpose, their efforts combine in a momentum that draws them all onward, beyond themselves. This is Sangha. If they are able to join in real harmony, with openness and mutual trust, then the weaknesses of each are obviated and their strengths contributed selflessly to their shared Dharma service. Between them they set up a powerful current, by which they are all simultaneously carried along. An intensity of combination is created out of which something more than the sum of the individuals comes into play – bodhicitta arises. If we truly want to let what feels like a suprapersonal force work through us to transform the world, we need to bring conditions of that kind together in daily life. We need to find ways of engaging effectively with Order members and others to serve the Dharma on the basis of Dharma practice and lifestyle. What then emerges is a living culture or atmosphere that immediately strikes others who come in contact with it.”

Going For Refuge

This talk was given at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre in 2017

If you reflect on life and on your own life you probably have some inkling of what you want to do with your life. You have some idea that if you have the chance – you would like to be able to sit back in old age – look back on your life and say, yes, I have lived life to the full. I have done my best and achieved what I could achieve. For some this kind of contemplation brings to mind things like travelling the world or being a millionaire or raising a family successfully.

For a spiritual aspirant and especially for a Buddhist it may bring to mind images of the Buddha or great Buddhists like Milarepa or Padmasambhava and their spiritual achievements. Whatever it brings to mind it’s an exercise worth doing – imagine yourself at the end of your life being able to say I have lived life fully and then reflect on what that would mean for you now. The answer can give shape and direction to your life. For the purposes of this talk living life to the full means doing all that is necessary to lead towards the Awakening that we call Buddhahood. In traditional terms this is spoken of as Saranam Gacchami – going for refuge. Buddham Saranam Gacchami , Dhammam Saranam Gacchami and Sangham Saranam Gacchami; going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This is what we are going to explore in depth in this talk.

Going for refuge to the Buddha

I’m going to look at going for refuge to the Buddha under five headings

affirmation

investigation

transformation

emulation

contemplation

The first thing that going for refuge to the Buddha means is being clear that the Buddha was an Enlightened human being – not a son of God, not the ninth avatar of Vishnu, not a great philosopher like Socrates, not a religious leader but an Awakened or Enlightened human being. What does that mean?

Here is a quote from Bhante Sangharakshita: “Enlightenment – we can say that it is a state of pure, clear, radiant awareness. And it is sometimes specified that in this state of awareness one no longer makes any emotional distinction between oneself and others. That sense we have of an inner world set against a world outside ourselves is entirely transcended. There is just one continuous, pure, and homogeneous awareness extending freely in all directions. It is, moreover, an awareness of things as they really are. This means an awareness of things not as objects, but as transcending the duality of subject and object. Hence this pure, clear awareness is also spoken of as an awareness of Reality. It is a state of knowledge – knowledge not in the ordinary sense of someone accumulating notions of things, but rather a seeing of things directly and truly, unmediated by any separate subject doing the seeing. It is a spiritual vision – even a transcendental vision – which is free from all delusion, or misconception, all wrong, crooked thinking, all vagueness, all obscurity, all mental conditioning, and all prejudice.

However this is not the end of it. Enlightenment can be described as full illumination, as transcendental awareness, as Wisdom. But it is also an overflowing of profound love and compassion for all that lives. It is described, too, as supreme bliss, or complete emancipation – the bliss of release from the subjective ills and limitations of conditioned existence. It is thus also characterised by inexhaustible energy continually bubbling forth, total spontaneity, uninterrupted creativity. At the same time none of these aspects of Enlightenment function separately from one another. Therefore the actual experience cannot be described at all. Only by reflection on the Dharma – reflecting on the Buddha’s teaching as well as his example – by deeper communication with friends, and above all by meditation, can we get some real intimation of what the Enlightenment of a Buddha consists in.” (Complete Works, Vol.3, p.31)

Having a sense of the Buddha as Enlightened, as symbolising the ideal of Enlightenment for all humanity – we can open our hearts in devotion and gratitude and aspiration. As Sangharakshita says “the image of the Buddha with which everyone is familiar seems a figure of unfathomable knowledge and compassion. Its message is not strident or defensive. It does not call for fear and guilt. Instead, it triggers off a subtle perplexity in ourselves, questioning of our deepest assumptions – about what is possible, about what can be known and what cannot be known, about what a human being can become. We may recognise in it something in ourselves that we have not perhaps taken into account; and the belief may stir in us that such knowledge and serenity might be available to ourselves.”

The first stage of going for refuge to the Buddha is affirming that the Buddha was an enlightened human being and therefore an ideal model for all humanity. Buddhism begins with the Buddha. We can use many metaphors – an ideal indicates where we want to go, Buddha nature indicates what we are potentially and nirvana indicates what we want to let go of our escape from.

The second stage is investigation – this refers to getting to know yourself. The Buddha is your ideal – but what or who are you? This aspect of going for refuge involves looking into your conditioning; family, school, society, class, religion, politics. It also involves becoming aware of your habits, your views, your behaviour and your speech. It involves getting to know yourself thoroughly through meditation, communication( includes things like life stories, friendships) and reflection. It’s not about passing judgement on yourself but about being honest with yourself, not hiding from yourself.

The third stage of going for refuge is transformation. Knowing yourself and having a direction to your life means that you can begin to transform yourself in that direction, especially through working on your behaviour and your speech. A key wrong view is not accepting the law of karma – without it practice is pointless. If we have right view and accept the law of karma then we can practice by using the law of karma and relying upon it. We don’t really have right view if we only accept the law of karma intellectually and don’t act upon it.

The fourth stage is emulation. The precepts are a description of the normal behaviour of a Buddha. We can use the idea of emulating the Buddha to encourage us to be ethical, to meditate and reflect and communicate well – that is what the Buddha did. We can read about the Buddha – in books like Gautama by Vishvapani, Life of the Buddha by Nanamoli and of course the Pali Canon. We can read about other great Buddhist teachers – in the Tibetan tradition the Guru is the Buddha for the disciple. We could read about the life of Sangharakshita we could look at the people around us, who do we admire? - who would we like to emulate?

The last stage according to my list is contemplation. The traditional practice is called Buddhanusati – recollection of the Buddha, contemplating the Buddha’s qualities – wisdom, compassion, energy. This could also mean knowing stories from the Buddha’s life. We can also contemplate qualities through reflecting on the symbolism of the archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The symbolism of the five Buddhas is very rich – colours, gestures, animals, and much more. Visualising and contemplating these helps to open our hearts in devotion. Devotional practices are a kind of ritual contemplation of the Buddha and the qualities of Enlightenment. They are meant to move us emotionally so that we recognise that which is higher with receptivity, gratitude and reverence.

In order to go for refuge to the Buddha more deeply we could ask ourselves some questions: what does awakening mean to me? What steps could I take to know myself better? Do I really believe that I could change? What particular quality of the Buddha would I most like to emulate?

Going for refuge to the Dharma

The first thing is to know it. What is the teaching of the Buddha and what is Bhante Sangharakshita's elucidation of the Buddha’s teaching. In order to know the Dharma we need to study, discuss, explore. Especially we need to explore and try to understand pratitya samutpada, dependent arising and its implications. Then we need to apply the Dharma to our lives. Bhante always asked himself “what is the purpose of this teaching?” So for instance – we shouldn’t just think – all things are impermanent and tick the box – got that – okay next. No, we should ask what are the implications for me? Do I really really believe it? We should try to apply it to the things that we are attached to and the people we're attached to. All things – everything and everybody is impermanent – you are impermanent – your legs, your eyes, your ears, your heart – all of you. Your thoughts, your emotions, your resentments, your complaints, your desires – all impermanent. We can go into it deeper and deeper. Impermanence doesn’t just mean that things come to an end it also means that things come into being, it implies growth and we should reflect on that side of impermanence and its implications for ourselves too.

Going for refuge to the Dharma of course means practising the Dharma. That means practising ethics, meditation, going on retreat, friendship and spiritual community, reflection. Reflection is a crucial practice – asking yourself questions such as what do I really believe? What do I want to do with my life? Asking questions can take us deeper and deeper. Going for refuge to the Dharma can be summed up in the words – study, practice, realise. The last of these, realising, is not something that can be forced, it arises in dependence on conditions, on a particular intensity of practice. Realising is a matter of experience followed by embodying the truth of what was experienced in how we live our lives and relate to others.

Going for refuge to the Sangha

According to Bhante 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”. The Dharma is not an abstraction – it is embodied in flesh and blood people. And we need to be in contact with people who embody the Dharma to a greater degree than we do. There is a spiritual hierarchy, but how do we recognise that people are more spiritually advanced? In the Anguttara Nikaya the Buddha talks about the ways to know a person: “four facts about a person, O monks, can be known from four circumstances. By living together with a person his virtue can be known, by having dealings with a person his integrity can be known, in misfortune a person’s fortitude can be known, by conversation a person’s wisdom can be known”. (AN,IV,192)

We also know a person through seeing their faith and their ethical practice. We are connected to the ideal of Enlightenment via the Sangha, especially the people who embody the Dharma to a greater degree than we do. So going for refuge to the Sangha involves finding inspiration and guidance. What inspires us? Do we want or welcome guidance?

In relation to the Sangha of all those on the path with us we go for refuge by being in communication, creating friendships, confiding in confessing. Through all of this we transform ourselves. Sangha supports our practice. It makes possible lifestyles to support practice – you meet others and you can go on retreat with them, study with them, meditate with them, even in some cases live and work with them. Sangha also provides a context where we can give expression to our values and ideals – share with others.

A Buddhist Centre is a result of Sangha and a condition for Sangha to expand and flourish. It is something to be valued as part of our going for refuge to the Sangha. Going for refuge to the Sangha means being engaged in creating Sangha. It’s surprising how easy it is to take the Buddhist Centre and all its activities for granted but it’s worth reminding ourselves and remembering that it only exists because of the generosity of people; people giving their time, people giving their energy, people giving their money, it’s all supported by the generosity and efforts of people.

So that is something about going for refuge to the Buddha, to the Dharma and to the Sangha. I hope it’s taken us a little deeper into these topics.