This talk was given at the official opening of the Mid-Essex Buddhist Centre 22nd April 2017
When I was a teenager I wanted desperately to know what life was all about. I was hungry for answers to all kinds of questions. I couldn’t find answers – indeed often I didn’t even know what the questions were – I couldn’t formulate them. I just had a sense of wanting something – wanting to know something, wanting to understand something. At the age of 17 I realised that I was not a Catholic, as everyone around me seemed to be, I was not even a Christian, I didn’t believe in the existence of an omnipotent, creator God who sat in judgement on individuals. I knew what I didn’t believe – I had no idea what I did believe. I read voraciously, I devoured books, searching for answers to the great existential questions.
I left my home in rural Ireland at the age of 18 and went to London. I worked in accountancy and auditing and studied to become an accountant. All the time I was unhappy to the point of distress because I could not see what was the point of being alive. I was really bothered by this. I could see clearly what I could do with my life – I could continue my studies, get a qualification as an accountant, get a good well paid job, perhaps become a partner in a firm of accountants, buy a house and car, get married, have children and so on. I could see that very clearly spread out before me and at the age of 20/ 21 I felt deeply unsatisfied at the prospect. I don’t know why this was because others seemed very content with this vision of life and it seemed to give a sense of purpose to peoples lives. I felt a kind of hopelessness at the prospect.
At age of 22, on the basis of a dream I’d had I gave up my career and decided I was going to go in search of the meaning of life. Others thought I was nutty. And by all reasonable standards, I guess I was. I knew it meant that I was going to be poor and I accepted that. I spent the next five years on that search – travelling around Britain and Europe. I settled in Berlin for a few years and just at the end of my time there I was introduced to Buddhism by a Sri Lankan monk. He taught me the five ethical precepts of Buddhism and a meditation on Loving Kindness. I was struck by these teachings, but what struck me even more was the congruency between the teachings and the monk – he really did seem to embody what he was talking about. This was such a contrast to the priests of my childhood that it made a big impression on me. I experienced an immediate sense of relief and I just knew I had found what I was looking for, even though at that stage I knew nothing about Buddhism and it wasn’t easy to find good books or teachers then.
Back in Britain I came across the Triratna Buddhist Community and here the teaching was put in a way that I found very accessible and I decided to get involved and I have been fully engaged with practising and later teaching Buddhism ever since.
What is Buddhism – what was it that gave me that sense of meaning and purpose I had been yearning for. Initially for me it was simply the ethical precepts and meditation – and what I really liked, what attracted me so much was that it was so practical – it was something you did, not just a bunch of good ideas. And that is a key to understanding Buddhism – above all Buddhism is a method, a set of practices to transform the individual. And is based on a vision of existence that Buddhists know as Nirvana, Enlightenment, Awakening.
Buddhism begins with the Buddha – It begins with a human experience, the experience of Awakening to the true nature of Reality. Siddhartha Gautama was born and died, just like any other human being, but he attained to the state of being a Buddha – the word ‘Buddha’ means ‘one who has Awakened’.
Most of us experience ourselves as separate from the world – we are a subject with a subjective experience and out there is a world of ‘objects’, including other people, separate from us. That is a common sense view of reality.
Modern quantum physics tells us that this common sense view is a delusion and that world of solid objects is not what it seems, atoms are mainly empty space and therefore most of what seems so solid is in fact empty space and what seems so inert is in a constant state of flux. And it is even more mysterious than that since the basic particles, which modern science has identified as the essence of ‘stuff’ are not only particles but also waves. And whether they are particles or waves depends on whether they are observed or not – weirdly, interaction with consciousness changes ‘matter’. Mind is primary.
Our common sense view of the world outside is a delusion and according to Buddhism our common sense view of our self is also a delusion. If we investigate thoroughly we will not find anything that we can call a self, nothing fixed, separate. Nothing substantial. No unchanging essence. Physically we are changing all the time, mentally, emotionally – in every way we are in a state of constant change, constant flux. The world of so called objects is a constant process of change; the world of subject – what we think of as ‘me’ is also a constant process of change. So we have these two seemingly separate processes interacting.
What Buddhism tells us is that everything and everyone is intimately interrelated. Everything arises because of conditions – a vast multiplicity of conditions – and all those conditions are in turn happening because of other conditions and so on. Nothing is isolated – nothing happens of itself – everything is related to everything else in some way.
When this is deeply understood, not understood in an intellectual sense but deeply realised. When this fact of inter-connectedness, inter-relation is deeply, deeply realised and becomes part of our consciousness, then what arises is spontaneous compassion. This is not the Compassion of a self/ subject doing something for or to others who are experienced as separate objects out there. This is the spontaneous inevitable activity of a mind, a consciousness, that experiences no separation between subject and object, self and other. This is the compassion of one who has Awakened – a Buddha.
Buddhism arose when the Gautama the Buddha managed to communicate his vision of existence to others and they realised it deeply for themselves, so that they too experienced what he had experienced and became Buddhas too.
The essential message of Buddhism is practical – We cause ourselves suffering by trying to live from a deluded view of reality – divided into a real self which wants to get something from or defend itself against a real other. Our suffering is caused by wanting what we can’t have and not wanting what we can’t avoid. Buddhism says we can change ourselves and develop our minds so that we can have a clearer and more accurate view of ourselves and the world. Change is inevitable – some of it, such as ageing is beyond our control, but on the level of choice, willed action, volitions, we can choose to change in a positive direction or not.
This is the law of Karma: Actions have consequences. Good actions – those based in mental states that are expansive, kindly, generous and aware lead to positive consequences for ourselves and others. Those actions based in narrow mental states of greed, hatred and unawareness lead to bad consequences for ourselves and others. Buddhism speaks of actions which are skilful or unskilful – Skilfull actions come from expansive, positive states of mind and Unskilful actions come from narrow, negative states of mind.
The five ethical precepts of Buddhism are a guide to the kind of behaviour that is skilful – they are not rules or commandments but rather principles, even training principles of an ethical life. It was these precepts that I responded to so strongly when I first encountered them.
The 5 Precepts:
I undertake the training principle to refrain from harming living beings and put positively – with deeds of loving kindness, I purify my body.
So this is firstly something that is freely undertaken ( not a command to be obeyed) and secondly, it is a training, something to be practised as you’d practise running or drawing or playing a musical instrument. And it’s about non-violence towards living things – which is why many Buddhists are Vegetarian or Vegan.
I undertake the training principle to refrain from taking the not given or with open handed generosity ...
The principle here is generosity and overcoming the greed or craving to possess things. Purifying the body means purifying our actions or more simply being ethical and caring in the things we do.
Refrain from sexual misconduct.
This is about refraining from any kind of coercion, exploitation or manipulation in order to obtain sexual graticification. It is not about whether you are hetero, homo sexual, bisexual or what happens in private between consenting adults. It is an extension of the first precept of non-harming to the arena of sexual relations – because sexual desire is such a strong force in the lives of most people – a force of nature. The positive counterpart to this is about developing stillness, simplicity and contentment.
Refraining from false speech, truthful communication.
Without truth there can be no trust and without trust there is no social order, no society. We depend on being able to trust others – otherwise our lives become impossible. We can only communicate and build relationships on the basis of trust and trust requires truthfulness. Other speech precepts – Kindly, Helpful, Harmonising opposites of harsh, unhelpful and slanderous.
Refraining from intoxicants that cloud the mind.
Mindfulness. I think intoxicants by definition are meant to cloud the mind – often that is the main reason why people drink or take drugs, they want to cloud their minds, they want to escape from their normal awareness. So this precept is about mindfulness, awareness and creating the conditions which allow greater awareness to emerge.
You could say that there are two basic principles of Buddhist Ethics – Metta, usually translated as loving kindness and Sati, often translated as awareness or mindfulness. Buddhism is saying that we need to train ourselves in both of these, develop both of these , in order to become more ethical and incidentally happier. Mindfulness or awareness is initially a process of getting to know ourselves better and becoming intimately acquainted with how our mind works and then it expands out to include everything and everyone else and eventually embraces all of reality.
Loving kindness approaches the same goal from another direction – focussing on the well-being of all including ourselves and in that way developing a deep understanding and realisation about our inter-relatedness and the nature of reality.
These two principles – awareness and loving kindness – can be applied to all of our relations with others, our relations with all living things and even our relationship to so-called inanimate objects. Awareness and kindness are the basis of an deep ecology of consciousness and life.
Meditation is a method to help us develop these qualities – it is a way of working on the mind with the mind to cultivate a stream of positive mental states. On the basis of these practices we are enabled to approach the experience of Gautama the Buddha , the perfection of wisdom and compassion, which goes beyond all notions of self and other, all notions of fixedness or separateness – to the activity of spontaneous compassion.
The first step to wisdom is a receptivity to the teaching – listening, hearing, taking in what is being taught by the Buddha. The second step is reflecting what has been taken in, making it our own, understanding it intellectually, applying it to our actual lives, seeing for ourselves that it works. The third and highest level of wisdom is the deep realisation which means that we become wisdom, we become compassion, we become loving kindness and awareness. We awaken to how things really are.
So that is a very rapid and condensed description of what Buddhism is from someone who has been a Buddhist for over 30 years. I hope it has been comprehensible. Now what is a Buddhist Centre for. We are here to celebrate the opening of this new Buddhist Centre – the Mid- Essex Buddhist Centre. What is the point of a Buddhist Centre. A Buddhist Centre exists to give people access to the conditions that will enable them to practice the ethical principles, learn to meditate and begin to move in the direction of wisdom and compassion. A Buddhist centre makes available the teachings of the Buddha, in an accessible form, the teachings of ethics, meditation and wisdom. People can come along and take what they want from those teachings – some will just want to learn to meditate, or practice some mindfulness – others will want to take things further and deeper. All are welcome.
Above all A Buddhist Centre is a spiritual community of like minded people who wish to share what they have gained and learned with all who are interested and who support each other in their efforts by developing friendships, studying together, going on retreat together and encouraging and helping each other. Both friendliness and calmness should be the palpable atmosphere of any Buddhist Centre. I hope that many of you will be part of helping to create that atmosphere over the coming years and I hope that many more people will come along in the coming years to experience that atmosphere of loving kindness and awareness.
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