The Inner Life in the Inner City

This talk was given as part of a symposium of talks, on the theme of The Path of the Inner Life, at the 1999 FWBO Day. For the curious a video is available here: https://vimeo.com/30134492

When I was asked to give this talk on the Inner Life, many topics occurred to me. I thought I might talk about meditation. I thought I might talk about active imagination and internal dialogue. I thought I might tell you about my experiences of dream interpretation. I thought I might even explore Padmavajra's teaching on the 6 kinds of reflection. But in the event I have decided to leave all that because time is short and so I am just going to make a few simple points about the Inner Life in the inner city.

I think my main qualification for speaking about the Inner Life in the Inner City is one I share with several million people – i.e. I live in a city. I live in London. perhaps more relevantly, all of my Buddhist life has been more or less in London – except of course, for time spent on retreat. (I guess it is also assumed that I have an inner life.). So by virtue of living in London and by virtue of my presumed inner life, it seems I am amply qualified to speak on the Inner Life in the Inner City.

The “inner city” was originally a euphemism for economically deprived urban areas and it is a phrase that is going out of fashion. I was reading a political discussion document recently and the author had put in a footnote saying that he was not using the term “inner city” because many economically deprived areas were no longer near a city centres. His preferred term was “under-served neighbourhoods” which doesn't have quite the same ring to it; the inner life in the under-served neighbourhood! We could take the phrase inner city to be a poetic way of saying a busy city area. So what about the inner life of the individual in a busy city?

I don't believe it makes any great difference for most of us, in terms of our spiritual practice, whether we live in the city or the countryside. We have the same issues to deal with and nowadays, with modern technology, the internet and satellite and cable TV and mobile phones, the busyness of city life can be experienced anywhere. The inner city takes on a new meaning. It is the city we carry within us. It is a metaphor for our modern lives which we live out in a new habitat -what Robert Hughes the art critic, calls “the forest of media”. In a sense we all live in the inner city because the inner city increasingly lives in us. Incidentally there is an American psychologist, Robert Sardello, whose main work is in the area of City as metaphor.

For the purposes of this talk, I'm taking inner city to mean the busyness of modern life which most of us have to contend with. Now I must admit that I don't especially like the term “inner life”. I don't think of myself as having an inner life. The phrase seems too static to adequately describe or even hint at the life of the mind and heart. And of course there is no such thing as my inner life or your inner life, taken literally. The first thing I want to say about the inner life is that it is a metaphor; it is not to be taken literally. And personally, I think that as a phrase it is probably not very helpful to spiritual practice. Our tendency is to be literal-minded- to take things literally rather than poetically. Our tendency is to believe in the existence of something concrete and actual behind our words. Our tendency is even to believe in something fixed and unchanging behind our words. As Bhante says in his interview in Dharma Life (no 10, p.31) “It is as though the human mind has an inbuilt tendency to slip into literalism, however many warnings are given against it.”

This leads us to having a belief in the existence of some actual, concrete inner life that is ours-our possession almost. We speak of my inner life – his inner life – her inner life – and with the phrase we have an image – perhaps a box-like space containing all sorts of weird and wonderful things. This is a fiction and when seen as a fiction it can be very useful and helpful but when taken as literal fact, it is a hindrance. As James Hillman, the Archetypal psychologist, puts it, “what makes madness is literalism”.

The inner life is a metaphor – a metaphor to indicate the life of the mind - our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, fantasies, dreams, visions, views and so on. The mind is dynamic – always changing, always responding - it is not a thing – there is nothing fixed about it. The main danger in taking the inner life too literally is that we get caught up in the minutiae and cycle of our minds in an unhelpful way and become fascinated, even mesmerised by the intricacies of our thoughts and imaginings. In other words we become self-obsessed. Another unhelpful result of taking the inner life literally is that we think of it as something separate from us, something that affects us but has a life of its own, separate from us. We might say, for instance, “My inner life is causing me problems”, as if it were some sort of indigestion or something like that.

The metaphor of the inner life is meant to remind us of the need for depth of experience and understanding in our lives. Depth is another metaphor and one that can also be taken too literally. In order to progress spiritually we need to be able to concentrate our minds, so that we can sustain reflection and so that we have the energy for practice. We also need to refine our minds so that our imagination and intuition can grasp the subtlety of spiritual truths. This concentration and refinement is what is meant by achieving depth.

The metaphor of higher states of consciousness and the metaphor of depth amount to the same thing. There is no depth of experience and understanding without higher states of consciousness. There are no higher states of consciousness without depth of experience and understanding. Perhaps it might be better to say that we are concerned with expansion of consciousness. Expansion of consciousness involves a deepening awareness of our thoughts, emotions, intuitions, imaginations – a deepening awareness of our minds and it also involves a broadening awareness – awareness of the effect we have on others, awareness of our environment, awareness even of Reality. Depth of awareness refers to inner life. Broad awareness in this context refers to the outer life. These two, inner life and outer life, are intimately related and ultimately are not to be distinguished at all. Eventually the distinction between inner life and outer life is to be transcended.

However for most of us the task is to make the distinction first. Most of us probably don't have enough awareness of the so-called objective yet, never mind transcending the subject/object separation. We have to achieve Duality before transcending it. To become aware of the outer world, the world of object as opposed to subject, we need to exercise our imagination. Imagination is the faculty that takes us beyond our subjective limitations. Imagination frees us from the narrow confines of our own world, as Dharmachari Ananda says in the current issue of Dharma Life (issue no 10).. “Imagination allows me to develop insight and empathy, and to relate to others beyond my own small needs.”

Through the exercise of imagination we can enter other worlds, even other times. And through imagination we can come to appreciate that other people are not extensions of us, they are not planets orbiting the sun of our ego-identity. On the level of experience, they have an objective reality apart from our subjective view of them. Through imagination the whole environment around us, the trees and birds, the buildings, the flowers, the rivers and fountains: everything around us takes on a new vital life, imagination is another form of awareness. Awareness is engagement. When we engage imaginatively with the world around us -the people and the environment – the whole world takes on a new life and a new meaning and our inner life is immeasurably enriched.

Inner life and outer life are intimately connected. They affect each other all the time in a dynamic interplay of awareness, activity and reflection. The inner life is fed by the outer life. Charles Dickens, for instance, loved the teeming chaos of nineteenth century London because it was rich nourishment for his active imagination. The outer life is also influenced by the inner life. If we cultivate loving kindness for instance, we find ourselves in a different world than we do when we entertain resentment and bitterness.

We want to have a rich inner life, but we cannot have a rich inner life, it is not a possession. A rich inner life is something we do. It is dynamic. Mind is dynamic, always changing, always responding. It is better to think that we don't have any inner life – we are constantly in process of creating it and it is constantly in process of being created. To create we need to be creative. Bhante Sangharakshita, has spoken about the creative mind and the reactive mind. The reactive mind functions in a re-active, mechanical, predictable, habitual way. The creative mind, on the other hand, functions in a more spontaneous, free, responsive, non-habitual manner. He says - “the creative mind is above all the aware mind”.

This is another way of looking at the life of the mind – the so-called inner life. We can think of the mind in terms of how it responds. We can think of ourselves in terms of how we respond. We are our responses. Usually we are our habitual responses. But we can become a constant flow of creative responses: energetic, joyful, and optimistic. We can respond to the opportunity for expansiveness in every situation and every encounter. We must, of course, remember that creativity, creative responses can be either active or receptive. Awareness is the key to creativity.

With regard to developing creativity – developing a creative mind – we need to look at awareness of input – what is coming into our minds and awareness of our responses. As regards awareness of input we need to practice what I call the 3 Rs – no, not reading, writing and 'rithmatic! The 3 Rs are Recognise, Reduce, and Refine.

We need to recognise what we allow into our minds. This is very basic awareness. Just simply being aware of what we are doing – what news media we read and how often, what films we go to see, what TV we watch, what we talk about, how we spend our time. This is simply recognising, acknowledging, being aware of the input into our lives and minds.

Then the second of the 3 Rs is reduce input. This is a point that Bhante made in a set of fifteen points for Triratna Order members. We need to feel we have a choice and we need to exercise that choice. We are not totally at the mercy of modern technology. We don't need to be in thrall to the TV or the internet. We can discriminate and an early step in developing creativity is to discriminate between different kinds of input and chose to expose ourselves only to what we want to be exposed to. We are influenced by what we take in and we need to be discriminating about what we allow ourselves to be influenced by. Those who create news media and TV programmes and advertising can be quite ruthless in their quest to grab our attention and to influence us. They employ al sorts of subtleties and however sophisticated we think we are, we get caught. We are influenced. And often, if not usually, we are being manipulated negatively – our greed or our hatred is being encouraged and developed.

Take for instance, a news headline. It's important that we don't just go along with what is fed to us but instead ask yourself why that particular story has been given prominence and why that particular headline. Is it simply because it is the most important thing that is happening in the country or the world, or is somebody trying to manipulate you or even exploit you in some way? The point here is to be discriminating about what input we expose ourselves to and if we are really discriminating, we will reduce input because to be frank, most of the fruit to be found in the 'forest of media' is slightly rotten and will only make us sick.

We also need to reduce the amount of input we are subjected to, simply so that we can have periods of quiet in our lives, even periods of silence. Quiet and silence is very necessary to the cultivation of depth through assimilation of experience and reflection on it. To refine input we probably need to to come out of the forest of media -in so far as that is possible – and enter the garden of higher culture. Through out interaction with the great poets, writers, composers, painters, sculptors and architects, we become refined. Their creative responses to the world, to their environment, can help to develop more creative responses in us. They show us possibilities - they open up new vistas to us – they help us to see things afresh. The work of great artists can elevate us and give us a new kind of awareness of the world about us. A more refined and clear awareness. To use William Blake's phrase, they help us to cleanse the doors of perception. Or as Manjusvara says in Dharma Life, “Art helps us to see ourselves more honestly”.

If we engage with the outer world in this way, and through awareness we begin to recognise, reduce and refine the input into our minds, then we will be developing a creative mind or at least the foundations of a creative mind. By so doing we will be able gradually to transform ourselves -so that our habitual/mechanical reactions become responses, our creative responses become food for reflection, our reflections become insights and our insights become the fabric of a mind that is constantly creative – a mind that is all the time seeking the gap of opportunity for further reflection and further insight.

By practising these 3 Rs, we gradually become more and more aware of our responses and that awareness enables us to be more creative. To practise these 3 Rs – to become more aware and more creative, we have to be disciplined, we have to train ourselves. This is not a discipline or training imposed from outside, it is not a sort of punishment or a restriction of our freedom. Rather this discipline is an assertion of our freedom and our dignity. It is as if we are being taunted and tempted all the time by those who want to rob us of our freedom and dignity, those who want to manipulate and exploit us, and our discipline is our decision to be a free individual preserving the dignity of a creative mind. This discipline requires strength of character. It is like the discipline of Nelson Mandela who preserved his freedom and dignity through long years of imprisonment, in spite of taunts and temptations.

We are surrounded by the forces of the mundane world urging us to be more selfish and more cynical, more nationalistic, more isolated, and we need to strengthen ourselves to withstand that onslaught. There are different kinds of discipline – discipline of appetites for example, or discipline of speech. In The Rainbow Road””, Bhante Sangharakshita relates how one of his friends, an older man, used to say that “a disciplined life gives strength” and we know that this is a practice that Bhante has wholeheartedly taken up. I have tried to follow this example myself to some degree and I do find that a disciplined routine of positive habit is strengthening. It is good to have a routine of getting up at a particular time, going to bed at a particular time and a routine of daily meditation. This sort of routine frees our minds from all sorts of conflict and wasted energy. It leaves us with more energy to engage with the people and activities of the day. Being able to engage more thoroughly means being able to maintain a more thorough awareness and maintaining a more thorough awareness allows us to be creative in our responses, allows us to see gaps of opportunity, where choice is possible. By making positive choices in our lives, by being creative we develop a rich inner life and we we have an enhancing influence on the world around us. We are doubly effective.

The inner life is the life of the mind. The mind can function reactively or creatively. Our responses to other people and to the world around us can be habitual and reactive or new and creative. We need to become more aware of what we are responding to and how we are responding. Through awareness we can transform our responses. If we transform our responses, we transform ourselves.

We need to guard against being literal-minded because literal-mindedness tends to see things as fixed and unchanging and therefore ignore or avoid reality. Metaphor is closer to reality and an awareness of the metaphorical nature of our language and concepts can take us closer to an insight into reality. Literal-mindedness is reactive, an awareness of metaphor is creative. As Bhante says in Dharma Life (No 10 p32). ”We cannot but speak metaphorically, but we have to remain aware that we are speaking metaphorically. It is not just that metaphorical language is useful – it is indispensable.”.

To maintain the freedom to be creative requires vigilance and discipline. The German philosopher Schopenhauer said “the solution of the riddle of the world is only possible through the proper connection of outer with inner experience.” This “proper connection of outer with inner experience” is a matter of mindfulness – a matter of aware engagement – and to create a deeper experience for ourselves, to attain higher states of consciousness – to encourage and develop the inner life, we need to be mindful. We need to be mindful whether we live in the inner city literally or metaphorically. We need to be mindful whether we think in terms of the creative mind or the inner life. As the Dhammapada (Verse 36) says: “the mind is extremely subtle and difficult to grasp, alighting on whatever it pleases. Let the man of understanding keep watch over the mind. A guarded mind brings happiness. The man of understanding guards mindfulness as his chief treasure.”