The Vortex of Compassion

This talk was given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, September 2004

(Vortex - any activity or way of life regarded as irresistibly engulfing)

From birth we all belong to groups of one kind or another, the family group, the tribe, the nation, and as we go through life we can identify ourselves as part of several groups, the working classes, the middle classes, the aristocracy, the wealthy, the poor, the right wing, the left wing, the gay community, the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Jews, the rural community, the urban community, the ecologists, the capitalists, the Real Madrid supporters, the cricket lovers, the railway enthusiasts, the farmers, the pensioners and so on and so on. There are a huge number of ways in which we can identify ourselves, a huge number of groups that we may feel we belong to. Some of these groups are natural and others are ideas or constructs. A family is a natural group, even a tribe is a natural group. But a nation state is largely an idea, as are religions and social classes. But what characterises every group is the presence of group norms, rules and conventions that all of the group members must adhere to.

In addition many groups will reinforce a sense of identity with flags and slogans and badges and emblems and anthems. A particular combination of colours, red and yellow, red, white and blue, elicits a strong emotional response from every member of the group. Or a slogan or song or an emblem arouses the emotions and gives a strong sense of identification with the group. People feel great pride in the achievements of the group, or of any member of the group, winning a football match, winning a war, staging the Olympics, resisting oppression.

Groups form for various reasons: for protection, out of common interest, because of having the same interpretation of history, because of living in the same geographical region, or speaking the same language or believing in the same religious ideas or having similar levels of wealth or poverty. Groups are held together by the emotional appeal of flags, emblems and slogans, by practical benefits, by laws, rules, expectations, and by rituals. Anyone who seriously flouts the norms and conventions of their group will be either destroyed, restrained, expelled or ignored. In our liberal democracy we have many freedoms. Freedoms which our ancestors could not have imagined. We can all be involved in deciding who governs us. In Britain, which is one of the oldest democracies, universal suffrage only came into place fully in 1928 and was extended to include those aged 18 to 21 from 1969. We also have the freedom to practice the religion of our choice and freedom of speech. These are all, historically speaking, relatively recent freedoms, which is something worth remembering. We have many freedoms and to continue to enjoy them we have to both obey the laws of society and exercise our voting rights and citizenship.

Apart from the laws which hold society together and uphold certain freedoms, there are many conventions and norms which our neighbours expect us to observe. In societies that are more traditional and less mobile, there are even more of these unwritten rules. And it is these unwritten rules that can be the most difficult to avoid and can be the greatest obstacle to the spiritual unfolding of any individual. This is partly because the conventions and norms of any society form part of our conditioning from birth and are therefore largely internalised. Spiritual teachings which grow into religious movements eventually have to come to terms with the group. Or rather the group tends to absorb religion, so that religion and its institutions come to serve the group and enact group rituals especially in relation to birth, marriage and death. There is nothing wrong with this. In fact it seems necessary that a society has this element of ritual and ceremony for life's major events. However, for an individual to grow spiritually he or she needs to become free from the pressure of group norms. Spiritual growth and transformation needs freedom of a far-reaching nature and this may not sit well with the needs of the group which requires the individual to be subsumed to the group and a group member first.

For example, the family usually expects you to get an education and a career and to be in a position to look after and support your parents as they grow older. The family also has a desire for its own propagation and therefore has an expectation of more children and more generations. The family also expects the blood tie and the marriage tie to be stronger than any other bonds, such as friendship or the teacher/pupil relationship. These are all perfectly legitimate and reasonable expectations for the family to have, but they could make it difficult to tread the spiritual path because they all entail such large responsibilities or are don't accept the paramount claim of discipleship.

However, even though I say that it is necessary for the individual to become free from group pressure, I don't mean to imply that the group is worthless. Whether it is the nation or the family or the religious or political group, there are important benefits for society that come form people grouping together and forming special interest bonds. Indeed, our Western society is currently in a process of atomisation which is eroding some of the great benefits of group and community loyalty (and leaving us with the less useful aspects of group conditioning). The group in the form of the nation state can provide the conditions in which it is possible to pursue spiritual practice. Things like basic security for the individual and protection of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. In countries where these basic conditions are not in place it is very difficult indeed to engage in Dharma practice.

When I say we have to free ourselves from group norms and group pressure I'm not talking about political revolution or subversion. What the group represents is the weight of conditioning which we have been subjected to from birth. We have to become aware of our conditioning and free ourselves from it to enable us to be able to think and act independently. Having the ability to think and act independently does not imply being against everything. It is a matter of becoming free to transcend selfish concerns. We free ourselves from the bonds of the group so that we can rise to a higher level of consciousness – characterised by positive qualities and a larger perspective. Group consciousness has a narrower perspective and fosters some more negative qualities such as defensiveness and protective aggression.

The groups we belong to have conditioned us and we need to become aware of that conditioning. We have a distinctive family conditioning which affects all our adult relationship, our adult attachment patterns. We have national conditioning which can leave us with all kinds of prejudices and assumptions. We have racial conditioning, cultural conditioning, financial conditioning and so on. And for the past fifty years most children are systematically conditioned from a very young age to become consumers through the very powerful medium of television and now the internet. Problems like child obesity are a direct result. All of this conditioning is so much part of us, that it is very difficult to become aware of it as conditioning. We are, to a large extent, our conditioning and to become aware of that can be both frightening and liberating.

Freeing ourselves from group pressure means freeing ourselves from our conditioning. Freeing ourselves from our conditioning means, first of all, becoming aware of our conditioning and then trying to let go of it, especially in our interactions with others. Often we become aware of our conditioning by moving away from the dominant group. We become more aware of our family conditioning when we leave home. We become more aware of our national conditioning if we move to another country. We become more aware of our racial conditioning when we mix with people of other races. But, becoming aware of our conditioning could just lead to a reinforcing of our conditioning if we simply consider our way to be the norm or the best. We need to become aware of our conditioning and see it from the spiritual perspective. We need to try to see whether it is helping or hindering our spiritual development. Is our conditioning enabling us to be generous or is it making us self-centred? Is our conditioning helping to enlarge our perspective on life or is it narrowing our perspective? Is our conditioning enabling us to face reality or is it keeping us enthralled in delusion? To use Bhante Sangharakshita's terminology, are we becoming more of an individual? A brief definition of an individual, in this context, is a person who is self aware, and “who has consciously undertaken his or her own further development” (Subhuti).

We all have an experience of self, what we call I or me. This self is, according to Buddhism, just an idea. It is a conditioned idea. The notion we have of a self has come into being in dependence on certain conditions. Our idea of a self is mainly determined by the fact that we have a particular kind of body, with a particular sense apparatus. If, for instance, our sense of smell was stronger than our ability to see, that would modify our idea of self considerably. Our ordinary consciousness is conditioned by the senses and functions through the senses. Largely we have a sense-based notion of self. One of the things our body-senses tell us is that we are separate from others, so we construct a self that is separate from other selves.

We also construct a fixed, unchanging self. This would seem to be a resistance to the obvious fact of constant change. Because change is so obvious, constant and incontrovertible, we fix our consciousness. We construct a fixed self which is immutable to all changes of nature. It is just too much for us to fully accept that all is change, including every aspect of consciousness. Our senses interpret change as destruction and our construction of a fixed self is a bastion against all this destruction. This means that we construct a self which is the same always. So we end up with the notion of a fixed self and a separate self because our senses which form the basis for our ordinary consciousness, seem to tell us that this is what we are.

According to Buddhism this is completely wrong. It is a delusion. We should not believe the so-called evidence of our body-sense. We do not have a separate consciousness. In fact we do not even have a separate body. Our body is completely dependent on the bodies of others. For a start our body arose from the bodies of our parents and throughout life we rely on others for warmth, food, and protection. Even the separateness on the physical level is largely illusory. On the level of mind or consciousness this separateness is even more illusory. Our minds are completely conditioned by the evolutionary process and the world we contact through our body/senses. Our consciousness is completely interdependent and interpenetrated with all other human consciousness, past and present. Our sense of separateness is a superficial mistake that doesn't hold up to analysis.

And of course our body is not the same body throughout our life. It changes all the time in every way, so that not even the smallest molecule is the same now as when we were born. This is why the body can repair itself after injury or broken bones. This is why we need to eat. There is nothing fixed or unchanging about the body. It is a continuous chemical process from conception to death and dissolution. When I look at a photo of myself when I was seven, I can say this is a photo of me, but if I think about it more deeply it becomes very difficult to say in what way this is me. It is a snapshot of a point in a chemical and biological process. I might argue that this child is part of my experience, through the action of memory. But my experience tells me that memory is unstable and the flavour of memories can and do change as I change. When I was in my twenties my memories of childhood were predominantly memories of an unhappy childhood. But for many years now my memories of childhood have been predominantly memories of a happy childhood. As I have changed, the past has changed. For me, my relationship to the child in the picture is deeply puzzling and there is nothing fixed about it. I notice that something similar has happened to all of my past and I expect that will carry on. The child and me now are both the same person and completely different. This is the same as how Buddhism talks about rebirth. There is rebirth but no being who is reborn. My mind is constantly changing, not just in a moment to moment way but also in its deeper structure, tone and orientation. There is nowhere to find a fixed self, either in the present or in the past. Of course I forget this or fall into delusion and get into defending a fixed self or projecting a fixed self onto the future just like everybody else. But always somewhere in the background the Dharma is calling me and trying to get me to see through the delusion.

There is a self but it is not fixed and unchanging. There is a sense of identity with a particular body and senses and with a certain flow of mental states, but it is a fluid, flowing, changing self. We cannot predict anything about this self. We cannot really know how we will be in future, how we will respond to situations or people. The past is not a reliable guide to the future, unless you are living a rather mechanical, animal-like life. You can predict that a dog which chases a stick today will chase the stick again tomorrow. You can predict that animals are likely to react in the same way to the same stimulus. But if humans are aware, and especially if humans are trying to become more aware, it is not possible to predict in the same way. Nevertheless we do persist in predicting how we will be in particular situations. We say things like “ I could never do that, I'd be too nervous” or “I always get upset when I see him or her” or we predict the future for ourselves in some way. This is one way of trying to preserve a fixed self. We preserve a fixed self by having a fixed view about ourselves; about how we have always been, about how we are now and about how we will always be. This fixed self-view is what we need to keep dissolving, through our reflections and our actions. Because it is our fixed self-view that keeps us defended and closed. It is at the base of our greed and our ill-will. Our grasping after things and people and experiences is an attempt to shore up and fortify this self that we believe in. Our ill-will and anger is an attempt to defend and keep free from discomfort this self that we believe in. When we talk about becoming an individual or becoming a true individual, we are talking about expanding out beyond the conditioned self. This self which is conditioned by the groups we have belonged to since birth and conditioned by our own thoughts and emotions, words and actions. In dependence upon conditions a fixed and separate self-view has arisen and by creating other conditions we can give rise to a more expansive and creative self-view and begin gradually to actually experience a more expansive and creative and fluid self which interpenetrates with the universe.

There are two major qualities of this more expansive and creative self. These are awareness and love. Our task is to create the conditions in our daily lives which give rise to awareness and love. That is what Buddhism is about. That is what it means to Go for Refuge to the Three Jewels. It means creating the conditions in our daily lives which give rise to love and awareness. Conditions consist of all the things and people we interact with, all the thoughts we have, all the things we talk about, all the things we do. These are all the conditions in which we live. There are other conditions such as the historical period in which we live, the political context, the place, which it may not be in our power to affect. Creating helpful and appropriate conditions for our spiritual practice is a major part of becoming a true individual; a major part of developing and maintaining awareness and loving kindness. The question is, what are helpful conditions? what conditions are most conducive to the emergence of the spiritual qualities of awareness and love? What conditions are most conducive to the emergence of the spiritual qualities of generosity, contentment and honesty?

Two basic conditions that need to be in place are firstly, faith (shraddha) in the Buddha and a conviction that the Dharma is the path to Truth, to Realisation. And the second basic condition is other like-minded people, other people who share your faith and conviction of the Truth of the Dharma and the importance of the Buddha. Faith (shraddha) is that deep response to the Buddha's teaching, which just sees the truth of it; a deep heart-felt intuitive sense of the rightness of the Buddha's vision of Reality. It is this faith or conviction which gives us the energy and will to keep up a personal practice of meditation, ethics, contemplation and devotion for years and years and that personal practice is an essential condition for the emergence of greater and greater awareness and more and more compassion. That personal practice, that personal journey through the labyrinth of our own mind, is an essential condition for the emergence of greater understanding of the nature of existence and for eventual realisation or deep insight into the true nature of existence. Faith (shraddha) and the practices which follow from it will take us a long way on the spiritual path but it is only one wing and won't enable us to really fly up to the heights. For that we need another wing and that is the wing of meaningful connection with like-minded people.

We need meaningful connections with others whose shraddha is also strong and who are able and willing to undertake the journey. The pursuit of these meaningful connections will lead us to want to attend a Buddhist Centre and engage in groups and teams where we can meet and get to know such people. It will lead us to want to be on retreat with such people, where we can have an even deeper and more meaningful encounters. And in some cases it may even lead to wanting to live with such like-minded people in a communal situation and possibly even to wanting to work alongside such precious people. As the years go by, friendships develop, a network of friendships, a network of love and awareness. This is the Dharma coming to life in the spiritual community of like-minded individuals who are motivated by their faith in the Buddha and Dharma. The Dharma is not an abstraction. It has to live. It has to be embodied and the Sangha is where it becomes embodied.

The Sangha, the spiritual community is the living, breathing, striving community of individuals which manifests the Truth in the midst of a largely indifferent world. Each individual is energised by the dynamo of their own shraddha, their own deep heart-felt response to the Buddha's vision. Each individual is energised to practice meditation, to develop loving kindness, to become more aware, to be ethically skilful. When these motivated and transforming individuals come together in friendship an even greater energy is generated which can create even more conditions for the spiritual welfare of all. This is what the Bodhisattva Ideal is about. The Bodhisattva Ideal is the Ideal of attaining Enlightenment for the sake of all beings. The Bodhisattva Ideal is present when the energy to create the best possible conditions for spiritual well-being is aroused and activated. This energy is known traditionally as the Bodhicitta, the heart/mind of Enlightenment. When like-minded individuals motivated by the heart-felt response that is Shraddha, come together in friendship and start to act out of compassion for the world then the energy of Bodhicitta is roused and an effective Sangha is born.

The activity of this energised and dynamic spiritual community has to reach into all aspects of life, economic, social, political, spiritual and as that happens we see a transformation taking place which is not just on the individual level but also on the collective. All of those engaged in such an enterprise and those they come into contact with are gradually creating what could be called a new society, “an economic and social network built up in order to provide the best possible conditions for human growth.” (Subhuti, Buddhism for Today, p129) When I first got involved with the Triratna Buddhist Community in 1984, it was this idea of the new society which inspired me most. I was inspired by the altruism, the generosity of wanting to do something for others as well as myself and the interconnectedness of the two seemed self evident. As Sangharakshita puts it “You cannot help yourself without helping others and you cannot help others without helping yourself.” I wanted to transform myself. I wanted to become become a better person. I wanted to be happier. I wanted to understand more. I wanted to be wiser. But I knew that this was not an end in itself, this was just the necessary precursor to much more far-reaching transformation of the values of the whole society and even the whole of humanity.

This may seem an outlandish and even grandiose way of thinking but I think that is only if we see it in an egoistic way and in a rather limited time-frame. Everything is changing all the time. That is the nature of reality and therefore everything can change and can change for the better. It is worthwhile to try to create the conditions to change the values of humanity from the direction of greed, hatred and spiritual ignorance to the direction of generosity, love and wisdom. This seems to me to be a noble and worthwhile use of one's life force and this is what I understand by the idea and ideal of the new society.

Here is how Subhuti put it in Buddhism for Today, the book which inspired me to get involved with the Triratna Community. “The experience of a retreat is a taste of whole new way of life lived in the midst of a whole New Society, an economic and social network built up in order to provide the best possible conditions for human growth.

The creation of a New Society is the purpose of the Triratna Community. It is unlikely that in any part of the world such a society could ever become coextensive with society as a whole. However, a number of such ideal societies-in-miniature existing in the midst of the wider social context can help those who are in contact with them to grow as human beings and can provide a model for others. The work which Order members and others undertake to bring about the ideal conditions is, it might be said, the political aspect of the Triratna Community. The foundation and dissemination of a social environment in which many people are free to develop is, in the last analysis, the only solution to the problems of a crisis-laden world. To work at one's own development and to seek to help others by creating the institutions and conditions in which as many people as possible can grow is the social and political platform of Triratna” (pp129-130)

In more recent years the Triratna Community is no longer spoken of in these terms. This is because the revolutionary rhetoric of the 1960s and 70s was replaced by the pragmatism of the 1980s and 90s. And the pragmatism of the 1990's has had to give way to the onslaught of the media environment, which has such an influence on many people's concerns. This is an environment of ever shifting sands.

Extremists have monopolised the language of changing the world and the rest of us have to make do with finding solutions to a management problem. Use of resources, people-capital, creating opportunities, are the tasks now. The idealists are anti-global, anti-capitalist, anti-vivisection, anti-war, anti-consumerist, anti-technology. But where is the coherent vision for a better life. Perhaps there is one or perhaps nobody is naïve enough to put forward a political answer to everything, since the communist experiment was such a disastrous failure. I think it is reasonable to be sceptical about any great political or social solutions to the world's problems. I don't believe it is possible to change the world by political revolution. I agree with the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats: 

“The Great Day

Hurrah for revolution and cannon-shot!

A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.

Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!

The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

(Selected Poetry p 190)

But I do believe it is possible for human beings to change. In fact I know from experience that it is possible for human beings to change, to evolve. Therefore I see it as a noble and generous thing to try to provide conditions for as many human beings as possible to change. The first thing I can do is to try to light the fire of shraddha in the hearts of others by letting them see the fire in my own heart. The second thing I can do is come together with like-minded individuals and create a network of friendships, a spiritual community, which has a momentum of energy to carry the message of the Dharma, the Truth, down through the generations, spreading a benevolent influence throughout the world, touching hearts, transforming lives. For that to happen I don't necessarily need the language of revolution or the new society but I think something of the fervour and passion of revolution is needed. This is a great, awesome, all-encompassing vision and it is not going to be brought to life by half-heartedness or timid goodwill. It needs energy, passion, fire. Initially that energy has to be channelled into transforming ourselves; changing our self-centredness into generosity, changing our ill-will into energy for the good, changing our resentment into confidence, changing our blaming of others into activity for the benefit of others, changing our narrow self-interest into a broader perspective.

As we change and others around us change, we gradually become, together, a vibrant spiritual community and then our real Bodhisattva work can begin in earnest, as we co-operate with each other to embody the message of the Buddha for the sake of all beings. This co-operation between emerging individuals to create the conditions for Dharma practice is what a spiritual community is and does. The spiritual community has been spoken of in terms of a “free association of individuals” who experience a “coincidence of wills”. Individual is used here in the positive sense of someone who has transcended group membership, through a growth in awareness and love, and who exhibits positive qualities such as generosity, loyalty, responsibility and creativity. Such individuals come together and form a matrix of goodwill and awareness, out of their coincidence of wills, which provides the ideal conditions for the emergence of even greater awareness and goodwill.

Ideally this is what the Triratna Buddhist Order is. It is a network of friendships, a matrix of goodwill and awareness, a coincidence of wills, a free association of emotionally positive and aware individuals. This Ideal Order is not easy to achieve or to maintain and therefore the creation of friendships, the development of awareness and good will, the practices of co-operation and communications are what an Order Member undertakes to engage with. The institutions of the Order are all geared to this end, creating a network of friendships.

This forms the basis for the altruistic activity of the Order, which, ideally, is a spontaneous flow of energy in pursuit of the welfare of all beings. This energy manifests in the creation of urban Buddhist Centres, Retreat Centres, residential communities, team-based right livelihood enterprises. It also manifests, ideally, in the ethics of how Order members work in their normal jobs as teachers, social workers, computer programmers, or whatever. And this altruistic flow of energy ,ideally, manifests in the family life of Order Members; how they treat their parents, how they bring up their children and how they interact with the rest of society. This altruistic flow of energy, flowing from the commitment and ethical sensibility of Order Members, when it is considered as a whole, is what the Triratna Buddhist Community is. Triratna is the altruistic flow of energy of all Order Members manifesting in the world.

The 1000-armed Avalokitesvara is an image which symbolises the essence of Compassion. Eleven heads look in all directions to see the suffering of beings. This is supreme awareness. A thousand arms reach out, with each hand holding an appropriate implement or offering. They reach out to alleviate suffering wherever it is found. This is supreme love. This supreme awareness and supreme love is the ideal of all Buddhists and it is the practice of the Bodhisattva. The Triratna Buddhist Order seeks to emulate this awareness and love and become an 11-headed, 1000-armed vortex of compassionate activity. This is essentially what a spiritual community is, what Sangha means; this vortex of compassionate activity.