Saturday 4 August 2018

More and More of Less and Less

This talk was given at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre, Dharma Day, July 2018

In the introduction to the Ten Pillars of Buddhism Bhante Sangharakshita mentions the principle of ‘more and more of less and less’ in relation to reading about and studying the Dharma. He talks about it in terms of going more deeply into the seemingly basic teachings of Buddhism. He mentions it as a principle of the Triratna Community and suggests that it’s a principle we should take to heart. A principle is defined as “a fundamental truth or a settled rule of action, an attitude which exercises a directing influence in life and behaviour.” The attitude and action that is being recommended is to return again and again to the same teachings and mine them for deeper meanings. This leads to depth of reflection and depth of understanding. In a way what is being suggested is that when we think we have fully grasped a point of Dharma, then that is when we need to look deeper. We can even ask ourselves ‘what have I not understood?’

There are two aspects to this principle; this action and attitude which directs our life and behaviour. The two aspects are the ‘more and more’ aspect and the ‘less and less’ aspect. Let’s look into the less and less aspect first. What does it mean? I think there are two aspects to this as well. It is less and less in terms of the quantity of books we read and talks we listen to and videos we watch and it is less and less in terms of the number of topics we focus on.

To go deeper into any topic we have to, for a time at least, focus on it fairly exclusively and leave other topics to one side. If we are focussed in this way then that will influence our reading and the talks we listen to and so on. For instance if you wanted to go into the topic of Buddhist ethics quite thoroughly, you might read the Ten Pillars of Buddhism, Living Ethically, Bhante’s article Aspects of Buddhist Morality and Abhaya’s booklet, Living The Skilful Life, which is about the Five Precepts.Then you might look at the Pali Canon suttas that deal with ethics. Then you might look at what some other Buddhist writers have to say about ethics and perhaps even see what Western philosophers have said; Schopenhauer for instance and maybe look at William Blake’s take on morality. This is just an example, but you get the idea. By focusing on one topic, that gives direction to your explorations and gradually your understanding will deepen and your knowledge will broaden and of course as you go into any one aspect of Buddhism thoroughly you will discover the connections to other aspects of the Buddha’s teaching and will be led on to further investigations.

The other aspect of this idea of ‘less and less’ is to do with the amount of stuff that is available to us. Just fifty years ago there were very few books on Buddhism and few translations of Buddhist scriptures. Now we are awash with books and with the advent of the internet we can find all sorts of talks and teachings and teachers at a click of the mouse. There are literally hundreds of new Dharma books being published every year. Windhorse Publications, which is a very small publisher probably averages about four or five books a year and then there are publishers like Wisdom, Shambhala, Dharma Publishing and Buddhist writers like the Dalai Lama, Pema Chodren, Joseph Goldstein. would guess there are at least a hundred new Buddhist books coming out every year and probably more. Then we can add to that all the new translations and all the stuff on the internet; thousands of articles, audio talks and video talks. Even Free Buddhist Audio is hard to keep up with. There is just so much available and a lot of it is of very high quality. There is all the Triratna output. The London Buddhist Centre alone produces a mountain of video teachings every year, then there is Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Theravadin and each of those have their sub-divisions. You could be happily lost in a world of Buddhist teachings for a long time. But lost is probably the right word, because we need guidance to navigate all that mass of material. We need to have some idea of what it is best to engage with, otherwise we could be in danger of having a completely random Buddhist training.

As Triratna Buddhists we have that guidance. Other Sanghas have their own teachers. But of course having guidance available and following the guidance are two different things. We can easily ignore guidance. Indeed it is a tendency in our society to feel that we don’t need guidance and that we can find out what we need to know without much assistance. In effect that means that some people decide to be their own Dharma teacher. There is an inherent contradiction in that, but nevertheless it is much more common than we may realise. Even people who attend Buddhism courses to learn about Buddhism can come with the view that they already know. This may seem perverse, but it happens and there are subtle versions of it that we are probably all guilty of. It is very easy for a little knowledge to go to our heads and with the support of our basic egotism we can assume that we know and understand a lot more than we do. This then gets in the way of being receptive to guidance and therefore gets in the way of deepening our understanding.

Triratna Community and Order was born from and built on the teachings of Bhante Sangharakshita and it is obvious that our best guidance as to how to engage with the mass of Buddhist teachings now sloshing around the internet and beyond is to ground ourselves thoroughly in Bhante’s teaching. It is unfortunate that many people don’t do this. But really we need to become Sangharakshita experts by reading and re-reading his work, listening to his talks and delving into the seminars, which most of us only see in edited form. By undertaking deeper and more thorough exploration we not only ingest the content of the teaching but also the spirit and the method, which are also very much part of the unique offering of Bhante and Triratna. The talks given by Order members and their books and articles are mainly commentaries on Bhante’s teaching and therefore very helpful in allowing us to see the same topics from different angles and giving us a glimpse of how different people reflect on the Dharma.

I have been talking about the ‘less and less’ side of the issue of ;more and more of less and less’. And I am recommending less of a spread of teachers and a focus on particular teachings to enable deeper exploration. What about the more and more side of the phrase? What does that refer too? In a word it is all about repetition. In order to learn we need to repeat, in order to remember we need to repeat.

If the ‘less and less’ side of this phrase is concerned with less quantity of books, talks and videos and less quantity of topics at any one time, the ‘more and more’ aspect of the principle of ‘more and more of less and less’ is concerned with more quality of attention to what we are engaging with, more quality reflection, more quality time spent with particular teachings and topics. Less quantity and more quality could sum up this principle of ‘more and more of less and less’. How do we give quality time and attention to a teaching how do we improve the quality of our reflections?

The first thing is to notice what you are interested in. You will only be able to give sufficient time and attention to something you are interested in. No interest no attention. It might even be informative to think about what you don’t give attention to and ask yourself – is it because I am not interested? Sometimes, of course, we don’t know what we are interested in. If you have never heard or read anything about some topic then you are in no position to know whether it interests you or not. Sometimes we don’t look at something because we feel a bit daunted by it. If you find yourself shying away from going into some aspect of the Dharma it may be because you’re not interested or it might be because you feel it is too difficult for you. You can stimulate your interest by hearing what others have to say about something. Another person’s enthusiasm can spark off our interest and engagement. For instance I, heard a talk recently in which someone quoted a verse from a Mahayana text called the Ratnagunasamcayagatha and the way they unfolded what the verse meant to them made me really interested to find out more. If you find a text or idea too difficult you can get a different perspective on it by listening to how other people think about it.

The next step after interest is reflection. There are many ways to reflect. Ratnaguna has written a book on the topic which many of you will have read.(The Art of Reflection) Padmavajra has given a very fine talk on reflection too. I will refer to some of their ideas later. First I just want to share a method I have found useful myself. I happen to like writing and I use writing to reflect. When I write things down I can come back to them and I can see how a train of thought develops. One method is to take a topic, perhaps a short verse and ask a series of questions to help you to go deeper into it.One set of questions you might find useful are as follows:

  1. What is being said – put it in your own words

  2. What do I think about it – do I agree or disagree

  3. What is my emotional response? Comfortable, uncomfortable, nothing and why?

  4. Does it have any relevance to my life now?

  5. Consider the opposite- sometimes not easy at all – but gets you to think about something in a fresh way which may open up new insights.

The important thing with asking questions of yourself as way of reflecting is to not settle for superficial answers. Every answer can give rise to another question. Just like a child, who asks question after question, you can take yourself deeper into a topic by not settling for a one word answer.

In his book The Art of Reflection, Ratnaguna talks about other ways of reflecting on a topic. For instance he mentions talking to yourself This is similar to the writing exercise I have outlined above but without the writing. It is basically having a kind of inner question and answer dialogue with each answer giving rise to a new question. He also suggests the possibility of having an argument with yourself; take both sides and argue it out. He gives an example of an ethical dilemma: you have a friend in another country; does the value of friendship mean that you take flights to visit them or do the ecological concerns mean that you don’t visit them. As well as inner dialogue, he mentions reflective writing, reflection while walking and reflecting with another person. I will leave you to read his book or even better re-read it.

Another point Ratnaguna makes is about the importance of giving time and space to reflection. He talks about having periods of doing nothing. This is the kind of reflection where you are not concerned with a particular topic but allowing something to come to the surface from the depths – like a fish coming to the surface of the water. In this kind of reflecting what you are really doing is getting to know yourself and by noticing where your mind goes you get to see what you are really interested in. If you are nourishing your mind with wholesome input then you may experience some of that emerging to be digested more fully. If you are nourishing your mind on rubbish that is quite likely to emerge. Either way you will be discovering or even uncovering something about yourself and that is very helpful and can be a good foundation for more directed reflections on a particular topic.

In Padmavajras talk and booklet on Listening, Reflecting and Meditating he talks about six different ways of reflecting . Some of them have nice poetic titles. He explores how to reflect under the headings:

  1. Circling like a pigeon

  2. Dropping pebbles in a pool

  3. Significant landscape

  4. How to live, what to do

  5. Cutting like a sword

  6. The ever flowing river of contemplation.

I will just say a few words about each of these. If you are interested you can follow it up by getting the booklet from Padmaloka. (www.padmaloka.org.uk/shop/booklets)

Circling like a pigeon means bringing to mind all the associations you can with a particular topic. When I’m preparing a talk I often start with a mind map. I write the topic in the centre of a page and around it I arrange all the thoughts that come to mind, all the associations I have with that particular topic. That’s the starting point for reflections.

The second way of reflecting – dropping pebbles in a pool – is about reflecting when you are concentrated in meditation or after a puja. You just drop into your mind a word or phrase and just repeat the word or phrase slowly letting it sink deeper into your concentrated mind. That will bring it’s own results.

The third way of reflecting, significant landscape, is to do with being aware of the world around us and using it as a source for reflections. A classic example of this is the way the autumn leaves speak to us of change and impermanence.

The fourth kind of reflection is called ‘how to live, what to do’ and this is basically about relating our reflections to our own experience, our own life. This guards against the Dharma becoming an abstraction or a hobby that you add on to the rest of your life. This involves asking yourself questions, as I mentioned already.

The fifth way of reflecting, cutting like a sword, refers to a reflection that analyses and searches into the heart of a subject, cutting away anything that is not essential. For instance in reflecting on impermanence you look into your own experience and keep looking to see whether there is anything that is permanent. You investigate thoroughly the experience of impermanence in your own life and mind. You would do the same with the notion of ‘self’ or ‘I’ or ‘mine’.

The final recommendation of Padmavajra is to develop the ever flowing river of contemplation. He encourages us to develop a reflection practice, perhaps beginning with short periods of five minutes or less and then taking a rest and so on. If you keep this up then eventually reflecting becomes mare natural and develops a life of it’s own. This then would be the flowing river of contemplation.

These are some ways of reflecting and reflecting is a way of developing the more and more side of the principle of more and more of less and less. Quality of engagement over quantity of things engaged with. As well as interest and reflection, in order to go deeper, we also need encouragement. You can give yourself encouragement by being aware of how much you have learned and how much you have understood. One way of discovering what you know is trying to explain it to others. It’s important to find and take opportunities that demand that you explain things to others. It could be supporting a newcomers class, where you might be asked why you are a Buddhist or what Enlightenment means to you. Often we don’t know what we know until we have to explain it and often we can be surprised by just how much we have learned and how much we understand. It could be a study group or some situation in which you have to give a little talk. All these kinds of situation can draw something out of you and help you to reflect. They can also be encouraging. Just talking with a friend and sharing your understandings can be encouraging and fruitful. By being interested, or discovering what interests you, by reflecting and by finding ways to encourage yourself you will go deeper. You will deepen your understanding of yourself and your understanding of the Dharma. This is what is meant by more and more of less and less.

In the Triratna Community we have a very large body of teachings from Bhante Sangharakshita and there are probably only a handful of people who have engaged with all of those teachings. Perhaps it is too much for any of us to read every book and every seminar and listen to every talk. Fortunately we can get a very good, in depth, understanding of the whole scope of Bhante’s teachings by reading one or two books again and again. For example Subhuti’s book, Sangharakshita: A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition is an excellent overview. Or there is The Essential Sangharakshita published by Wisdom. Or there is the series Living with Kindness, Living with Awareness, Living Ethically and Living Wisely – those four together are a very comprehensive entrance into Bhante’s teachings too. And now over half of the Complete Works have been published and the whole set of twenty seven volumes should be ready by 2023. That will be a constant source inspiration for those who wish to practise within the Triratna tradition. Don't forget to subscribe and create your own library.

What ever way you approach it or whatever books you read I think it is really crucially important that anyone who wishes to practice within the Triratna tradition is thoroughly and continually deepening their understanding of Bhante’s teachings and his whole approach to the Dharma, as systematically as possible. The Mitra Study course (https://thebuddhistcentre.com/mitra/) is very good in this respect but is not sufficient in itself. It needs to be reinforced by further study and reflection and retreats.

I have been in our Order for over thirty years now and was involved with Triratna for four years before that and in all those years I have read and studied much of Bhante Sangharakshita's teachings but not all. And I have returned again and again to some of his books and in returning I have always found something to give me food for thought. Indeed it is often when you think you know something thoroughly that a return visit highlights what you’ve forgotten or what you never noticed in the first place.

I am recommending as strongly as I can that you become an expert on Bhante’s teachings as part of your Dharma life within Triratna and I am also recommending that you take up the principle of ‘more and more of less and less’ or in other words more quality of reflection and less quantity of teachers and teachings. I hope you find this a fruitful way forward with deepening your understanding of the Dharma and increasing your self-knowledge.





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