This talk was given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre to an audience of men who had requested ordination into the Triratna Order, August 1998
I'm not sure what was intended when I was given this double-barrelled title: Self-Transcendence and the Spiritual Quest. Anyway, it's probably worth noting that we are dealing here with two different metaphors for the spiritual life, two different images. Transcendence means “rising above”. Ascending is going up – Christ ascended into heaven according to traditional Christianity; it's in reference to something above. Transcending is rising above - it happens in reference to something lower – something beneath and in this instance it is the sense of self; we are talking about rising above or transcending the self.
Then we have the other image – the quest. A quest is a journey in search of something. So if we put these two images together we have the compound image of rising above and going in search of. With the phrase “spiritual quest”, spiritual refers to the object of the quest and the type of quest. The type of quest is spiritual – so it's not a mundane quest, it's not a psychological quest, it's a spiritual quest – spiritual of course refers to moving in the direction of higher states of consciousness, of greater awareness. It's a spiritual quest also in the sense that the object of the quest is the spiritual or in fact we might say the transcendental. We are in quest of higher states of consciousness that transcend our ordinary mundane experience of consciousness and give us insight into the true nature of reality. To do this of course we have to rise above or transcend our ordinary consciousness.
The spiritual quest is a pursuit of self-transcendence. Self-transcendence is the spiritual quest. I'd like you to note, by the way, that the phrases I've been using – states of consciousness, higher states of consciousness, insight, the true nature of reality are all metaphors – they are all ways of using words to conjure images to endeavour to convey meaning. We shouldn't take any of this too literally or in too fixed a way. Literalism chokes meaning. Fixing things deprives them of life. We are dealing with process – always dealing with process. The process of transcending the process of self.
This being that being that becomes, from the arising of this, that arises. This not being that does not become. From the ceasing of this, that ceases. This is the law of conditionality – pratitya samutpada – which is so central to the Buddha's teaching. It is saying basically that everything arises in dependence upon conditions and passes away when those conditions are no longer there. This applies to universes, planets, stars, people, mosquitoes, turnips, cartoon characters, books, diseases and so on. And of course it applies to this concept of self. Self arises in dependence upon conditions and self is transcended in dependence on conditions.
Before I go any further let me state quite clearly that self is not bad – a sense of self is not bad – in fact a sense of self is a very useful and helpful thing. So what is self? I'll come at that a bit obliquely - via a short quotation from Bhante Sangharakshita. He is talking about distractions and he says: “There is nothing easier than to get sidetracked (in this Way), to succumb to the gravitational pull of the conditioned. We have a deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with the mundane, the trivial, the everyday, at the expense of our spiritual development: in a word, to be over-concerned with comfort.” (Complete Works, Vol.16, p.536)
You could say say that this “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort” is what is meant by self and this is what we need to transcend. But before we go on to that – let me backtrack a bit – I said that the self is not a bad thing, that it is useful, even helpful. So why is this? Well you could say this is the great achievement of mankind. We have evolved to the point where we can distinguish self from other. This is an achievement, this self-awareness. And it is because of this that we are capable of seeking our own comfort. Many of us may in fact need to complete this process and learn to identify and distinguish ourselves more fully – free of projections. The self or the idea of self is useful and helpful because without it we couldn't embark on the quest for self-transcendence.
The self is the “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort”. Or, in other words, the deeply ingrained tendency to avoid suffering at all costs. This deeply ingrained tendency manifests as habits. We have strong habitual tendencies of body, speech and mind and these habits go to make up our self – our sense of who we are. These habits are our response to the world – these habits are how we deal with the world, how we deal with the business of avoiding suffering and achieving comfort. We have habits of competitiveness, or conformity, defensiveness or passivity, being superior or inferior, all sorts of habits, habits of being likeable, habits of isolating ourselves, habits of dependency, habits of self-sufficiency.
The one thing all these sorts of habits have in common is that they don't work. We are desperate to avoid suffering and our habitual tendencies keep causing us suffering. They cause us suffering because they come into conflict with the deeply ingrained habits of others and also because they come into conflict with our spiritual aspirations and into conflict with reality.
The quest for self-transcendence becomes a quest to break these habits and overcome the conflicts. By overcoming internal conflict we achieve greater wholeness or integrity, by overcoming external conflict we achieve genuine happiness and by breaking our habits we become more and more creative.
However comfort is our guiding principle, we want to escape suffering and be happy. Our habits are in service of this guiding principle. But conflict and suffering arises because our habits don't work, they are not in accordance with reality. So the process of self-transcendence requires us to:
redefine comfort in spiritual terms
to identify, and
break through our negative habitual tendencies, and
to overcome conflict.
To re-define comfort in spiritual terms, perhaps we could look at it in terms of needs. We are concerned with our needs. There are different kinds of needs – physical needs, psychological and emotional needs and spiritual needs. The level of needs that we are usually concerned with – even over-concerned with – are the needs of a physical, emotional and psychological nature. It is the case that we have needs on this level. On the physical level we need food, clothing, shelter and medicine. On the psychological and emotional level we need to be loved and appreciated by ourselves and others. When we fulfil these basic needs we are then in a position to fulfil our spiritual needs. Spiritual needs are of a different kind, of a different order, and we get into all sorts of confusion by thinking of a physical or psychological need as a spiritual need. Spiritual needs are what we need in order to attain higher states of consciousness, to achieve greater awareness and empathy, greater insight and compassion. Our spiritual needs are paradoxically not so much to do with ourselves, but more to do with our relationship with the world about us. Essentially you are the only person who can supply your spiritual needs, although paradoxically again you need other people in order to do that.
In my opinion the three most essential spiritual needs we have are the need to be generous, the need to co-operate and the need to communicate. As I said only you can supply these, although you need others in order to do so. So this is how I've redefined comfort in spiritual terms. In spiritual terms if you want to avoid suffering, if you want comfort and happiness – you need to give, to co-operate and to communicate. That's what we are aiming at and to get there we need to identify our negative habits, identify that “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort” and how exactly it manifests in our life; how do we go about avoiding suffering? When we identify our habits we can start to look at how to break them.
The methods we have at our disposal are meditation in various forms, study, ethical practice, friendship and puja. There are also indirect methods such as yoga, karate, dance and other physical disciplines, and the arts, music, painting and so on. All of these can help us to break old habits – some are more appropriate than others depending on the individual.
Through meditation we can gain knowledge, we can become more aware of who we are, what our tendencies, habits and drives are, what we project out onto the world and other people. We can also start to change ourselves, change our attitudes and develop more positive, wholesome and effective habits and tendencies. Meditation is very useful. But it only works if we do it and do it consistently. If we are playing about with meditation, having a snooze, daydreaming, only doing it when we feel like it, when it's comfortable, then we are probably simply perpetuating old habits rather than being creative.
Then there's study. Study ought to challenge our views and assumptions and give us food for thought and personal precepts to put into practice. We need to read and discuss and reflect on what we read and see how it applies to our lives and make connections between different texts, different formulations of the Path. We need to ask ourselves whether we understand what we are reading, then whether we agree with it and then whether we can practice it. If we study properly we can gain a lot in understanding and practical help with our spiritual practice. Study can also leave us feeling bewildered and even frightened, which of course is not necessarily a bad thing.
Ethical practice also helps us to break bad habits and develop more wholesome ways of thinking, speaking and acting. I think all mitras who've asked for ordination should be trying to practice the ten precepts – in particular the more full elaboration of the speech precepts. Many of our habitual tendencies will emerge in our speech, eg. competitiveness, arrogance, passivity etc, and a more thorough awareness of our speech will help us to pinpoint those tendencies and then the four speech precepts give us detail guidance on how to develop more positive, skilful speech.
Sometimes, mitras say- “but Order members don't do such and such, why should I?” and it is unfortunately true that some order members sometimes fall below acceptable standards with regard to observing the precepts. This is not however a reason for you not to make an effort, quite the contrary, it is all the more reason why you should try to be more meticulous in ethical practice. The future of the order Is in your hands and you can set higher standards.
Going back to the question of needs you could say that observing the precepts will help us to fulfil all our spiritual needs. On the basis of a thorough ethical practice we are in a position to transcend the habitual tendencies that keep us going round the wheel of reactivity. We should pay special attention to the positive formulation of the precepts and engage in deeds of loving kindness, for example, or endeavour to change hatred into compassion. The positive formulation of the ten precepts is a profound, far-reaching and eminently practical teaching, which we should pay very careful attention to.
The Positive Precepts
With deeds of loving kindness, I purify my body.
Then we come to friendship as a means of breaking our unskilful habitual tendencies. It is very difficult, even extremely difficult, for us to recognise our own habits. We are our habits to a large degree and our faculty of perception is also saturated with our habits. It's like one of those puzzles where you have to spot the picture in amongst all the dots – when it's pointed out, you can't not see it – but before that it's invisible. Our habits are largely invisible to us and so we need someone else to do us the service of pointing them out. And if it's someone we know and love and trust then we will be all the more likely to take on board what's being said. We will be open to feedback.
Spiritual friendship is based around a common spiritual aspiration – that's what we have in common with our spiritual friend. We can get our spiritual needs met in a spiritual friendship: our need to be generous and loving, our need to communicate, our need to co-operate. Communication, of course, involves listening just as much, if not more, than talking. In our friendships we can practice openness – openness in the sense of revealing ourself to our friend and openness in the sense of being receptive to feedback about our unskilful habits. There is a lot that can be said about friendship, but I will leave you to investigate the various sources for yourself.
Now we come to puja and devotion as a method for breaking through or overcoming unskilful habits and tendencies. Puja and devotional ritual takes us beyond ourselves imaginatively. It allows us to gain a larger, broader, higher perspective and from that perspective we can see what tendencies we need to encourage and what tendencies to discourage. For example, in the Sevenfold Puja each verse encapsulates a tendency which we need to encourage – each verse is a practice in itself, which can be taken further outside the actual ritual and practised with body, speech, and mind.
Worship is an attitude of mind which recognises what is higher, recognises spiritual hierarchy and that attitude can affect our speech, how we speak about our teachers, the Buddha, our Kalyana mitras and it can also affect our actions. We can make offerings, give gifts to shrines, and to those we respect for their spiritual qualities. I will leave you to reflect on the other stages of the puja and how they might be practised.
The same question applies to the prostration practice – how do you practice prostrations when you are not prostrating? How do you bring that perspective and attitude into your life and how does it affect your “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort”? How does it relate to self-transcendence? Devotional practice opens out to other dimensions and therefore generates a sense of wonder beyond rational explanation – but nevertheless we should reflect on devotional practice too.
I mentioned earlier that there are also many indirect methods and I just want to highlight one here – that is physical exercise. I think everyone who is serious about going for refuge to the Three Jewels should engage in some physical exercise and some people should do quite a lot of exercise. We need energy for spiritual practice and emotional energy and physical energy are closely related. Exercise helps stimulate our physical energy and also leaves us in a better position to emotionally engage with this whole adventure of creating ourselves anew.
I've talked about the self being our “deeply ingrained tendency to be over-concerned with comfort”. I've said we need to identify our particular habitual or deeply ingrained tendencies and then we need to apply ourselves to overcoming and changing those habits. We do this by means of meditation, study, ethics, friendship, devotion and various indirect methods including physical exercise. Now I would like to look at some particular habitual tendencies we may have and try to indicate how we can overcome these tendencies by meeting our own spiritual needs for giving, co-operating and communicating.
First of all there is the tendency to compare ourselves with others and see ourselves as being superior, inferior or equal to them. Here we have various degrees of pride and humility, which come to the same thing. The characteristic of this tendency is an obsession with one's position in relation to others. Schoolboys do it all the time, measuring themselves against each other in all sorts of ways and establishing a pecking order. Some of us carry it on beyond the schoolyard. The antidote to this kind of thing is generosity. The practice of generosity changes your relationship to others, changes your attitude and if you practice it well you become more concerned with them as individuals rather than as objects of comparison.
The arrogance of feeling superior to others is doomed to failure and is probably just an over-compensation for lack of self-esteem. The arrogance of feeling inferior to others is simply an unwillingness to take responsibility for oneself and the arrogance of feeling equal to others is just blind to the facts of life. All this arrogance is characterised by too much self-obsession. Generosity looks outwards, generosity asks what others need, how they can be helped, how they can be happy even and in this way counteracts any tendency to be over-concerned with ourselves and our position in relation to others. Generosity is also a spiritual need. It gives us a sense of worth and confidence and it sets us very firmly on the path to self-transcendence. When you mount the steed of generosity the journey of the spiritual quest becomes much easier.
Another two habits that some of might be prone to are either competitiveness or conformity. If we are habitually competitive we need to always assert our point of view, our opinion and even get our own way. We live in fear that someone will put one over on us, we will be sidelined, ignored or overwhelmed in some way and so we just have to continually assert ourselves and be in the right. If things don't go as we want we'll get angry or storm off. 'Nobody tells me what to do' is the attitude.
The opposite tendency and probably just as bad is conformity. Out of a sort of desperation for love or approval we will unthinkingly go along with everything. We will be very nice and smiley and unobtrusive and never say what we think or feel. We may not even allow ourselves to be aware of what we think or feel. Our attitude is 'don't rock the boat' at all costs and it can cost us dearly.
The antidote to both of these tendencies is genuine co-operation. Co-operation is not conformity: neither is it everybody having a voice in every decision. Sometimes we co-operate by doing what someone tells us and sometimes we co-operate by questioning things. The principle behind co-operation is the principle of metta – loving kindness. Metta like generosity takes us away from over-focus on ourselves and out into a broader perspective. To co-operate we need to have a broad awareness of what the project actually is and it may take time for us to understand that. For instance in the case of residential communities and team-based right livelihood projects, it can take a few years to really understand what you are involved in. Until we do really understand, we co-operate by helping those who do understand and by endeavouring to understand. When we come to an understanding of what we are involved in and have a reasonably wide perspective on it, then we co-operate by doing whatever enables the project to fulfil its aims. In the case of Triratna projects that is usually to create Sangha, spiritual community. In the end co-operation comes down to a matter of friendship. When you are in a situation that requires co-operation, instead of asking how could I co-operate, you could ask how can I be a friend in this situation. Is asserting myself the best way to be a friend or is letting others having their own way the best way to be a friend. It is not always easy to tell, but at least you can bring some reflection to bear on the situation, rather than simply acting out of habit and either competing or conforming. Co-operation is friendliness or Metta in the arena of a particular task or project. There are projects within projects too – for example the whole Triratna Buddhist Community is a project, within that a particular residential community is a project, and perhaps within a community a study group is a project – they all require understanding of what is being aimed at and a willingness to co-operate. Co-operation is the only mode of being that is really in accordance with reality and therefore when we co-operate we are meeting a spiritual need for ourselves and others.
Defensiveness and passivity are two more forms of habitual behaviour which we can be prone to. Defensiveness is an attitude of not listening, not being receptive. Usually when people are deeply insecure, they are defensive, because the alternative seems like death. This is a very difficult habit to deal with, because by it's nature, it is very difficult to admit to, very difficult to accept. If it is pointed out, another defence is likely to come into play. It requires a lot of openness, a lot of trust and a lot of communication and love, to overcome this debilitating habit which is such a strong hindrance to spiritual progress. If you are a very defensive character you probably need to recognise the depth of insecurity and lack of confidence that lies behind the habit and try to bring that into communication with someone you trust. To be always defended is to be trapped inside a suit of armour that is slowly suffocating you. Friendship is the solution. If you know someone who is like this, the only way you can help is with patient friendship, building trust over years, so that they can gradually shed their armour plating and show their tenderness and love to the world.
Passivity is our unwillingness to come into real communication, a sort of wilful timidity. Perhaps it's because of fear of conflict or because of some childhood conditioning about being stupid or slow-witted. Whatever the reason, being passive can lead to loneliness and feelings of isolation. It's as if we expect other people to do all the work of communication and be a friend to us even though we refuse to communicate. A passive person has to at some point take full responsibility for their own loneliness and isolation and decide to befriend others by taking an interest in them and revealing something of their inner world to them.
Whether we are defensive and prone to bursts of anger and temper or passive and prone to isolating ourselves and hiding, we need to break through the habit through communication, through friendship. Giving friendship, taking an interest in other people and being honest about ourselves is necessary to our spiritual growth. It is a spiritual need and like all spiritual needs, we can only satisfy it by making the effort to do so. It is unlikely to happen to us.
I've been looking at this whole topic of self-transcendence and the spiritual quest from various angles and I've tried to keep it fairly practical. Our self consists of deeply ingrained tendencies and habits – most of them keeping us tied to the wheel of suffering. We need to become aware of our own particular habits, recognise them, name them then we need to work on overcoming them by all the various means at our disposal. Above all we should always bear in mind and try to meet our spiritual needs – to be generous, to co-operate ad to communicate. If we do this, we will be on the way to fulfilling our spiritual quest for self-transcendence.
No comments:
Post a Comment