Passing on the Flame

This talk was given at Cambridge Buddhist Centre,Sangha Day,November 2018

The main point I want to get across is that Buddhism is active and outgoing and friendly. Fledgling birds learn to fly and then they fly. They don’t stand on the tree branch asking all the other birds to look at their wonderful wings or pontificating about the best ways to fly, the best techniques and so on. No when they learn to fly, they fly. That’s the whole point of having wings.

Secret Wings  

We cry that we are weak although 

We will not stir our secret wings;
The world is dark - because we are
Blind to the starriness of things.

Oh cry no more that you are weak
But stir and spread your secret wings,
And say `The world is bright, because
We glimpse the starriness of things.'

Soar with your rainbow plumes and reach
That near-far land where all are one,
Where Beauty's face is aye unveiled
And every star shall be a sun. (Sangharakshita, Complete Works, Vol.25,p.185)

Just as the whole point of having wings is to fly, the whole point of having some insight into the reality of having no fixed and isolated self is to transcend that fixed ego identity in our relationship to the world and in our relationships with the people we encounter.

One of the reasons I have been asked to give this talk is because I will be stepping down from the role of Chair of the Centre next summer. I am aware that many people are sad about this and have a great deal of fondness and respect for me. I am also aware that I am not so special. I don’t have any great gifts or talents. What I have is a passion for the Dharma as an active force in the world. Ever since I came across the Triratna Community I have been actively engaged, participating, helping out. Before I was a Mitra I volunteered to do things around the Centre, I attended classes, I participated. When I became a Mitra I volunteered around the Centre, I attended classes and retreats, I supported classes and retreats, I cooked, I cleaned,I painted. I participated as fully as possible. When I became an Order Member I attended classes and retreats and festival days, I helped out, I participated, I engaged. I made friends. For thirty five years I have been fully engaged, I have participated, I have been active. If there is any flame for me to pass on that is it. That is the message. Participate, engage, be active, help out, make friends, be a friend, do things. Be involved in the life of the Centre; in classes and courses and retreats and festivals and put yourself forward to help out whenever and wherever you can. Be a friend to the Sangha and to people you meet.

Buddhism is active, not passive; it’s participative, not passive;it is for participants, not spectators, it’s engaged, not passive. Loving kindness is active. It is actively lived out in relationship to others and to all life. Awareness is active. It is actively lived out in our relationships with others and the world. Insight is active. It is actively lived out in our relationships with others and with the world. The flame of the Dharma is the spirit of the Dharma and the spirit of the Dharma is loving kindness, compassionate activity, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. In passing on the flame we are passing on the active living spirit of loving kindness, compassionate activity, sympathetic joy and equanimity.

This phrase about passing on the flame comes from a quote from Gustav Mahler, who said “tradition is the handing on of the flame, and not the worship of ashes.”

To worship ashes would be to worship something lifeless; a mere form of words that no longer inspires and inspirits and enflames hearts and minds and moves those hearts and minds to action and engagement. Ashes are to remind us of past glories. Flames fill us with the passion to act now. The flame of the Dharma inspires and inspirits and enflames hearts and minds and moves those hearts and minds to action and engagement.

The flames that we pass on are the flames of transformation. That is what the flame on my kesa represents. In the spirit of the Dharma we transform ourselves and we encourage others in their transformation of themselves and we do that in order to bring about the transformation of the world, of humanity. We have the aim of the total transformation of consciousness in ourselves and all of humanity but we don’t have the expectation. We pursue perfection without any expectation of perfection.

How do we transform ourselves and how do we encourage transformation in others? How do we fan the flames of the Dharma in our own hearts and how do we pass on that flame to others? The answer in short is loving kindness, friendliness, spiritual friendship, metta. Our Order grows out of friendship and it’s purpose is to disseminate loving kindness and friendship far and wide. Friendship demands commitment. Our friendships grow slowly, like oak trees; they start from the acorn of friendliness and gradually grow and and spread their branches, bringing comfort and refuge to more and more creatures. Our friendships form part of a big network connecting us to many people around the world, just as oak trees are connected and communicate underground through a network of tiny mycorrhizal filaments. Examples could be given of friendships spanning the world – the Cambridge Sangha is connected to the Turkish Sangha through Nayadipa, to the Estonian and Finnish Sanghas through Vidyasakhi, and there are many other friendships that connect us here in Cambridge to Sanghas across the world in India, Australia, NZ, Mexico, US, Canada and so on.

The spirit of a Triratna Centre is the spirit of friendliness, growing into friendship. That means that we listen to each other, take an interest in each other and do our best to have open and honest communication. We pass on the flame of friendliness by being friendly; by listening, taking an interest, by communicating in an open and honest way. In Triratna we try to create lots of different contexts to enable friendship to develop, to enable communication to go deeper. We have courses and classes and the teams that run them. We have study groups and Going for Refuge groups and Order chapters. We have festival days, seven a year at this Centre, and above all we have retreats. And we have residential communities and work situations.

In order to ignite and eventually pass on the flame of friendship we need to participate in as many of these contexts as possible. By being on a team for a class or course or being in a study group or Going for refuge group or by going on retreat we are engaging in conditions that allow and encourage good communication, conditions that enable friendships to grow. We are nurturing the oak tree of friendliness and enabling it to spread it’s branches. Or to switch metaphor ; we are passing on the flame in a very tangible way. So many times I have heard people say that when they first encountered Triratna, went to a Triratna Centre or on a retreat, that what impressed them most was the atmosphere of friendliness and friendship or simply somebody listening to them. This friendliness, this Metta, this loving kindness is the spirit of Triratna and we pass it on by being deeply immersed in it. It is what we need for ourselves and it is what the world needs. As Albert Schweitzer put it: “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” Albert Schweitzer. (https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/flame)

From friendliness grows friendship, from friendship grows happiness, from happiness grows an outward looking attitude and from that happy, outward looking attitude grows compassion and sympathetic joy. In other words, by engaging with and immersing ourselves in this spirit of friendliness we put ourselves on the path to transcending egotism, the path to awakening from the dull slumber of self-centredness. And we become able to help others to awake from their self-inflicted suffering of self-obsession. But in order to help others to see how they are causing their own suffering you have to have some insight into how you are causing your own suffering.

The suffering I am talking about here is existential suffering, it is the Dukkha of the Four Noble Truths. Dukkha is unsatisfactoriness and this unsatisfactoriness arises out of wanting what you can’t have and not wanting what you can’t avoid. What you can’t have is permanence; what you can’t have is full satisfaction from mundane things or full satisfaction from your relationships with others. What you can’t avoid is sickness and death; you can’t avoid impermanence; you can’t avoid dissatisfaction; you can’t avoid your own limitations and the limitations of other people. We can’t avoid reality. We can’t avoid the reality that everything happens because of conditions and without the right combination of conditions things don’t happen. However much we wish things were otherwise. Wishing things were other than they are is another kind of suffering. Dukkha or unsatisfactoriness comes about because we are blind to reality and desperately try to create our own little island of reality isolated from the greater reality. How then do we see through our tendency to cause our own suffering?

Through awareness. We need to become aware of the ways in which we resist reality, the ways in which we try to manipulate reality and bargain with reality. We need to notice the subjective and even egotistical nature of much of our experience. There was a time some years ago, whenever I experienced any negative mental state, irritation, anger, impatience, loneliness,anxiety, I made a practice of asking myself ‘where is the egotism in this?’. I found that helpful, even liberating.

We need to notice that when we say that somebody or something makes us angry, that we are at that moment disclaiming responsibility for our own state of mind and therefore denying reality. We need to notice the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening. The way we manufacture our own ‘fake news’, our very own ‘alternative facts’. We need to notice that when we feel guilty about something we didn’t do we are distorting reality, making up stories. We need to notice that when we resist the compliments and rejoicings of others, we are resisting reality; trying to stick with old stories. We need to notice: we need to be aware: we need to reflect on the life we are living, the life of our mind; the real life. We need to notice our expectations and understand how expectation is the main pre-condition for disappointment. We need to notice how happiness arises in us and put ourselves in the right conditions for happiness to arise.

This noticing, this awareness, this reflection process, this is how wisdom dawns on us. This is how we become aware of how we cause our own dissatisfaction and this is how we get on the Path to happiness and contentment. This is also how we become genuinely compassionate and helpful to others, as we see more clearly how they are causing their own suffering and we are able to refuse to collaborate in their ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ and all those stories people constantly create where they are the hero or villain of their own little world. Through this process of reflection, noticing and awareness we will come to understand more deeply the wisdom of Shantideva in the Bodhicaryavatara when he says “ Why be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use of being unhappy about something if it cannot be remedied ?” (Chapter 6, verse 10.)

Wisdom begins with some insight into how we cause our own suffering and how, by implication, we can cause our own happiness. This insight takes us out of the boundaries of a narrow fixed self-identity; it breaches the walls of the fortress of self that we build up. Our mundane, common-sense, wisdom advises us to take care of self-interest first, to defend and protect our status, our possessions, our rights. That is the wisdom of the world. Buddhist wisdom tells us that what is in our best interests is the development of loving kindness. The Karaniya Metta Sutta begins with the line, “This is what should be done by one who knows his own good “ and goes on to talk about ethics and loving kindness.

Sympathetic joy comes more easily to us if we have embodied some of the wisdom of seeing how we cause our own suffering; the wisdom of taking responsibility for our own states of mind and the wisdom of putting ourselves in conditions that give rise to happiness. If we are self- centred and concerned with our own status and security we may find it difficult to be glad when others experience good fortune. We might instead be jealous or envious or we might compare ourselves unfavourably with them and give ourselves a hard time or we might have a sense of injustice. We might think, why do they have all the luck? What about me?

In this regard I remember that before I was ordained I saw some others being ordained, people I knew, and I didn’t feel sympathetic joy, I didn’t feel at all celebratory or happy about it. This was very uncomfortable. I could reason with myself that if I wanted to join the Order, then I must think it was a good thing to be part of the Order and therefore I should be delighted that others were joining the Order. I could reason like that, I could see the sense of that, but that wasn’t what I was feeling then. What I was feeling was quite different; I felt resentful and a sense of unfairness and I made comparisons. But I didn’t deny what I was feeling, I didn’t pretend to myself that I was happy about the situation. So I was in an uncomfortable position. I knew what I ought to be feeling and I knew what I was feeling and it was painful to experience such a conflict.

What I did was I investigated it thoroughly, I probed into the basis for my emotions and I felt humiliated to realise that I had some very wrong views about what ordination meant. My ideas were all correct on the surface but my emotional responses were the key to what my real views were and my real views were wrong. I saw that at an emotional level I was relating to ordination as being about having some sort of status conferred on me and not being ordained as being denied something, love or approval. This led me to sort out my views and arrive at a much more real and liberating view of what ordination really meant; that it meant making a decision to dedicate my life to practising the Dharma. Seeing that more clearly I was able to make that decision more cleanly and dedicate my life to Dharma practice without any need to make comparisons with others or even any need to be ordained. And paradoxically, that of course meant that I was now more ready to be ordained. The point I am making is that even if we can’t experience real sympathetic joy sometimes, we can still use our experience as the raw material for reflection and gain a little wisdom.

I have said that the flame the we are passing on is loving kindness, compassionate activity , sympathetic joy and equanimity. What is equanimity? It is not indifference. It is not cold-heartedness. Just like metta, compassionate activity and sympathetic joy, equanimity involves a lessening of egotism, a diminishing of self-centredness. Equanimity means not being attached to particular outcomes for reasons of personal self-interest. Equanimity means a loosening of all attachments. Attachment here means possessiveness; possessiveness about possessions, possessiveness about people and possessiveness in relation to what happens, how things turn out. Attachment leads to distress when possessions are damaged or cease to be possessions in some way. Attachment leads to distress when people don’t comply with expectations or when they depart. Attachment to outcomes leads to distress when we don’t get our own way. Of course, attachment can also lead to elation or delight when we do get our own way, when people conform to our expectations and stand by us, when possessions remain in our possession and continue to satisfy us.

This distress and this delight are not equanimous because equanimity is not dependent on externals. Equanimity is a kind of inner peace or contentment that allows us to easily let go of any expectations in relation to our surroundings, things, people and outcomes. When we are not concerned with ‘me’ and ‘mine’ all the time and when we can be contented with simple things, then we can experience equanimity. When we can allow other people to live their own lives and make their own decisions, even their own mistakes, then we can experience equanimity. When we can keep our good humour, even when people don’t listen to us or show us respect, then we can experience equanimity. When we can be happy whether others approve or disapprove of us, then we are equanimous. In short when we are not blown off course by the worldly winds of gain and loss, fame and infamy, praise and blame, pleasure and pain, then we will truly experience equanimity. Like compassion and sympathetic joy, equanimity comes from wisdom. It is born out of practising awareness and reflection when we are experiencing distress or elation. As Rudyard Kipling might have said: “If you can keep your head, when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”, then you’ll be equanimous, my friend.

I have been talking about the spirit of the Dharma and the spirit of Triratna in terms of what we call the four Brahma Viharas or four Immeasurables. Of these four the most important is metta, loving kindness. All the others grow from loving kindness. There is one more positive emotion I want to mention and that is Shraddha. Shraddha, which is often translated as faith, is loving kindness directed towards what is highest for us. In the case of a Buddhist, shraddha is directed towards the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The reason I want to mention Shraddha is because it is the motivating force; it is what motivates and energises us to look into ourselves, into our behaviour and thoughts deeply and thoroughly. It is what energises and motivates us to transform ourselves and it is what motivates and energises us to engage and participate and co-operate within the spiritual community. It is what energises and motivates us to be open-hearted and open-handed in our empathy and generosity towards others.

We speak of faith in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, but what does it really mean? What really motivates us? When we are convinced that it is possible to grow and develop, to transform ourselves for the better and when we are convinced that the methods of Buddhism will enable us to grow and develop and when we have a conviction that change is not just possible but highly desirable, is the most desirable thing, then we will be motivated. This not just an intellectual conviction, it is in our hearts; it is being emotionally convinced as well as intellectually and rationally convinced. When we have a yearning or longing to emulate the Buddha and the great Buddhists who have gone before us, then we will be motivated. Strong conviction and yearning towards something higher is what we need. If we just have a vague feeling that Buddhism is nice and Buddhists are nice and the Buddha was a nice man, it probably won’t motivate us hugely.

However shraddha or faith is innate, it is part of human consciousness and it can be further developed. We can develop shraddha through reflection, study, meditation and spiritual friendship. And if we practise like that, then from our own experience we will have the evidence on which our conviction can be based and out of which a longing for even greater wisdom and compassion can emerge.

The reason I wanted to mention shraddha is because it is the primary motivating force that gives us the desire and impetus to want to pass on the flame and it is at the same time the flame that we are passing on. I have said that the flame is Metta and we are passing on loving kindness. But even more basic or primary than metta is our faith, our conviction, our confidence in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha as the medicine for the worlds sickness. This is the flame that has to burn within us and the flame that has to burn within our community if we are to avoid the worshipping of ashes. Good intentions, good works and being nice people are the ashes that are left when a Sangha ceases to burn and flame with a strong conviction of the supreme wisdom of the Buddha and his teachings.

I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons I have been asked to give this talk is because I am handing on the Chairmanship of the Centre next Summer. But what I have really been trying to hand on for the last thirty years at least, is my deep and abiding faith in the Dharma. This is what has sustained me through difficulties, it is what has motivated me to shoulder responsibility, it is what has allowed me to be unconcerned about personal material security. It is why I have immersed myself in the work of the Order; that work being the passing on of the spirit of the Dharma as taught and revealed to us by Bhante Sangharakshita.

My faith in the Dharma began long before I knew anything about the Dharma. It began as a conviction that there must be deeper meaning and a bigger purpose to life than material security and procreation. When that faith encountered Buddhism it found a channel to flow through. It found expression. And when I encountered the teaching of Bhante Sangharakshita my faith was augmented by clarity and by the inspiring beauty of the vast vision of the Buddha and the concrete way it was expressed by Bhante.

Since the age of twenty eight I have dived into a total immersion in the Triratna Community and Order and in Dharma practice of all kinds. That total immersion has brought me many blessings. And the greatest blessing it has brought is that I have been able to pass on something of value to others and to many others. This feels like fulfilling life’s purpose. The message I want to pass on now is that Buddhism is active and that if you are to fully benefit from the wealth and richness of the Dharma you have to immerse yourself in it. If you want to benefit from the wealth and richness of the conditions in the Triratna Community you have to immerse yourself in it. And you immerse yourself in it by engaging and participating in the work of the Sangha; classes, courses, retreats, festivals, friendships, study groups and so on.

In order to pass on the flame you have to be consumed by the flame and become the flame. Flame passes on flame by lighting many flames. The flame is innate but it is ignited, it is given life, by the breath from the words of our teachers. My teacher was and is Bhante Sangharakshita. When Bhante died I wrote this: “Bhante Sangharakshita is dead; long live Bhante Sangharakshita. Long may he live in our hearts as we feel and express our appreciation and gratitude for the beauty of a life that has touched all of our lives and transformed us. Long may he live in our spiritual communion with each other, our love for each other and our harmonious co-operation in continuing his great work of building the Buddhaland. Long may he live in our study and practice of his teachings such as: mind reactive and creative, the spiral path, the true individual, the higher evolution, the spiritual significance of confession, the centrality of going for refuge, spiritual friendship, building the Buddhaland and the importance of the imagination and the arts . Long may he live in our cherishing of his legacy of talks, seminars, Q&A sessions, books, poetry, memoirs: his Complete Works. Long may he live in our kalyana mitrata; our handing on of the spirit and substance of what is distinctive about Triratna. Long may he live in the lineage of preceptors and all the men and women yet to enter our Order; all the women and men yet to be born even who will respond to his unique and clear elucidation of the Buddha’s teachings. I have faith that all of this will happen and that many centuries from now the name of Bhante Sangharakshita will be honoured and he will still be inspiring new generations of Dharma practitioners.” (Shabda, Triratna Order Journal,Dec 2018) Bhante has passed on the flame to us, let us tend it and pass it on to many others.