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.”