Wider Horizons

This is the fourth in a series of six talks on Wisdom given at the London Buddhist Centre in 2000

There is a story that the Buddha said that all ordinary people are mad. He probably didn't say it or if he did he probably didn't say it quite like that. But let's assume it's true anyway. The reason we might be considered to be mad, from an enlightened point of view, is because we behave as if changing things were permanent, as if unreal things were real, as if painful things were pleasant and as if ugly things were beautiful.

These are known as the four ‘perversities’ or the four topsy-turvy views (viparyasas). Buddhism makes a distinction, at least provisionally, between Samsara and Nirvana. Samsara is the unenlightened state, it is cyclic existence, it is the constant round of birth and death that we fall into because of our spiritual ignorance. Nirvana is the Enlightened state; it transcends the cycle of birth and death. This distinction between Samsara and Nirvana is, as I said, provisional. It is how we have to approach things because of our unawakened, dualistic perceptions.

There is, of course, only one Reality. Those who Awake to the true nature of Reality do not pass into some parallel Universe or some other dimension. The distinction is really that they are Awake and we are asleep. They can see Reality as it is, we see Reality in a topsy-turvy, perverse way. For instance, we see what is changing as permanent. This does not mean that we think nothing ever changes – that would be perverse indeed – but we behave and live our lives as if we and the transient things of the world were permanent. Perhaps we see this most clearly when we suffer a loss. If our partner or lover decides to leave us, we get upset because having believed in eternal romance, we can’t cope with the inevitable transience. If we lose our favourite pen, or our bicycle is stolen or our TV breaks down, we get upset and annoyed and rail against the injustice because we are attached to things and want them always to remain the same and remain with us. And especially perhaps when someone close to us dies, we are shocked by the unfairness of it. Why did they have to die? And perhaps they weren’t even old. Because we identify ourselves and other people with our bodies we see what is simply part of a process as something final and fatal. But we are not our bodies, other people are not their bodies and when the body ceases to function, nothing final has happened really. That body and those senses have always been in a process of change and gradual dissolution. That is the reality of physical existence. Things come into being, flourish for a while, then decay and die. If we could relate to others in a more real way, rather than becoming attached to their form and senses, we would have a totally different experience of death. But to relate to others differently we would have to relate to ourselves differently. We would have to realise that we are simply a constantly changing process, a mind/body continuum.

However, we usually behave as if we are fixed, unchanging, and substantial. We have a sense of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ that seems quite real and solid. We may even come to accept our essential impermanence but we think ‘I’ am changing. These changes are happening to ‘me’. So we cling to an ‘I’, an ‘ego’ which is ultimately unreal. This does not mean we don’t have a personality, it simply means that there is nothing ultimately real about our personality, it is change, it is process. But we are subject to the topsy-turvy view that we are a fixed self and this means that we try to take some things in to enhance this self and keep some things out to protect the self. Like a walled city, with gates to allow in what is needed and wanted and defences to attack and keep out what is not wanted, we proceed through life giving vent to craving and ill will. And, of course, this perversity lived out in the lives of individuals is also lived out collectively between nations and tribes and groups of all kinds. This can lead to such horrors as war and extermination camps and torture chambers. No wonder the Buddha might have said ordinary people are mad!

We also hold to the topsy-turvy view that satisfaction is to be gained where satisfaction cannot be gained. In the last chapter we mentioned this in terms of false refuges. For instance, many people are convinced that life would be a real bed of roses if only they had enough money. With money they could do whatever they wanted, go on holiday whenever they liked, they wouldn’t have to work and so on. But it is also well known that very wealthy people are not necessarily happy and, in fact, are frequently unhappy. Money cannot buy existential wholeness, or even love for that matter. That bed of roses still has thorns in it. Many people also think they will be really happy if only they find the right partner – Mr. Right or Ms. Right. And sometimes people will go through many relationships before it dawns on them that the perfect person of their dreams is just a dream, is just a projection of their own mind and will not be found outside them. Some people, of course, never realise this. Others realise it enough to know that their real happiness will not be found in that direction and others half realise it, so that they learn to put up with less than they want, sometimes contentedly, sometimes grumpily. Some people stake their happiness on security in old age. They decide to work hard and put by enough savings and earn a good pension so that when they retire they will be able to do all those things they enjoy; travelling and golf and gardening and going to the theatre and so on. It is a big gamble. They may not be able to do those things when they are older, due to ill health or even loss of interest. Or the whole financial and political order that savings and pensions depend upon may not be quite as stable as it seems. It is only as stable as the human beings who operate it and that is not very stable at all. This does not mean that you should not try to provide for your old age, just that that it is unwise to postpone your life. As E.M. Forster put it “ We can spend our whole life preparing to live”

We could probably multiply examples of how people expect to gain some sort of permanent satisfaction from the transient processes of life. But lets look at the fourth topsy-turvy view. This is the feeling that what is ugly is really beautiful. It is easy to misunderstand this. It is not saying that there is no beauty in the world. What it is saying is that what we normally consider to be beautiful is relatively ugly compared to the greater beauty of Nirvana. So these four viparyasas (topsy-turvies) are how the unenlightened experience the world and themselves. The Enlightened see the world of the unenlightened completely differently. To the Enlightened the world of the unenlightened is characterised by impermanence, insubstantiality and suffering. To move from the world of the unenlightened to the world of the Enlightened we need to experience Insight into the true nature of unenlightened existence. By penetrating deeply into the true nature of unenlightened existence (Samsara) we arrive at the doors of liberation and pass through it into Nirvana, the world of Awakened existence which is permanent, blissful but still insubstantial.

Gaining Insight (Vipassana) then is first of all having a direct realisation of the true nature of unenlightened existence. It is seeing or experiencing the world as we know it as being characterised by impermanence, insubstantiality and unsatisfactoriness. These are the 3 Lakshanas or ‘marks’ of unenlightened existence and if we penetrate deeply enough into any one of them we will see the other two.

So let us look at each one in turn. Firstly, Impermanence (Pali, annicca, Sanskrit, anitya). From the point of view of someone with Insight, someone who is Awakened or irreversibly on the path to Awakening, this whole Universe and everything in it is impermanent, transient. This is not just a point of view, this is an experience. Our own bodies are changing all the time, however imperceptibly, our minds are changing very rapidly and our emotions are in constant flux. The world of nature, from the tiniest plant or insect to the biggest mountain, is changing too. And the stars and planets are changing, indeed, some of the stars we see in the night sky are already extinct. And from the perspective of Buddhist cosmology, Universes too come into being, continue for a time and then pass away.

Science tells us that there is no such thing as matter, only various forms of energy. This should make it easier for us to see the truth of impermanence. Perhaps it does. However, what really needs to change is not our ideas about the world and ourselves but our emotional responses which drive our behaviour. This is much more difficult to accomplish but it can be accomplished as the records of the Buddhist scriptures and commentaries for over two and a half thousand years can testify.

The second ‘mark’ of unenlightened existence we will look at is insubstantiality (Pali, annatta, Sanskrit, anatman). As I said earlier, we may accept, at least intellectually, that all things are transient including ourselves but we may still retain the sense that change happens to ‘me’, that ‘I’ am changing. So this Lakshana is realised by turning our concentrated awareness inwards and investigating our experience. We look at the five skandhas, the five constituents of personality and see that there is nothing fixed or permanent in any of them, there is no ‘self’ to be found in them. The five skandhas, which we will be familiar with from the ‘Heart Sutra’, are form, feeling, perception, volitions and consciousness. There is no ‘I’ which changes, there is only change, only process, only transience. And turning our attention to others we see that the same applies to them. They are also devoid of any fixed self. They too are change. Even on superficial reflection we can see how this sort of realisation would radically alter our relationship to ourself and to others. Another practice which helps to loosen our clinging to a self or ego is the Six Element practice. In this practice we systematically go through body and mind and see that all the elements are transitory and therefore not ‘me’ or ‘mine’. This practice is taken up by people about to be ordained into the Western Buddhist Order. Ordination represents a spiritual death and rebirth and, therefore, it is best to loosen the attachment to a fixed self as much as possible at that time. An interesting point about this characteristic of unenlightened existence is that it is also a characteristic of Enlightened existence. Nirvana is also insubstantial. This is because nothing can be said of Nirvana, it is ineffable. It cannot be defined in any way, whether as existent or non-existent. It cannot even be defined as Nirvana because that imposes limits on it. It suggests that it is something other than Samsara, whereas really the Enlightened state transcends all distinctions including the distinction between Samsara and Nirvana. This can remind us not to take concepts too literally and to remember that language is limited in how far it can go to express the Transcendental.

The next characteristic or ‘mark’ of unenlightened existence is that it is unsatisfactory (Pali, dukkha, Sanskrit, duhkha). Dukkha covers the entire spectrum of experience from grossest physical pain to the most subtle forms of psychological or existential unease. The Buddha usually outlines seven different kinds of unsatisfactoriness. These are birth, old age, sickness, death, contact with what one dislikes, separation from what one likes and not getting what one wants.

In addition to these the Buddhist scholar, Dr. Edward Conze, has pointed out four kinds of hidden unsatisfactoriness. Let’s just briefly go through all of these. Birth is physical suffering for the mother, emotionally stressful for the father and probably very disruptive, not to say traumatic for the baby. Old age is characterised by physical deterioration, loss of memory, dependence on others and, in some cases, senility and other unpleasant discomforts. Sickness is not pleasant. It is physically uncomfortable, at times painful and it is distressing and the cause of fear and anxiety. And apart from physical illness there are all sorts of stress and neuroses which are also a cause of suffering. Death is suffering for those who are bereaved. It is also unsatisfactory to know that all our loved ones will die and that we too will die. And the approach of death can cause great distress for those who have regrets. Contact with what one dislikes is unsatisfactory. This could be our work, it could be other people, it could simply be the weather but often we can find ourselves in situations or with people we don’t like which is stressful and upsetting. Being separated from what we do like is unsatisfactory. We’ve mentioned bereavement already. Then people are separated from friends and family by war and famine and natural disasters. This sort of thing can have a life shattering effect from which people never recover. This separation from what we like can happen on a smaller scale when something is lost or stolen. And finally, it is unsatisfactory not to get what we want. This is the pain of disappointment and frustration. You can see it very clearly in young children who stamp their feet and scream when denied what they want. And this stamping and screaming carries on into adulthood, except it is internalised and perhaps only emerges as bitterness or swearing or anger on particularly frustrating occasions. So those are the seven kinds of unsatisfactoriness mentioned by the Buddha.

As well as these fairly obvious forms of suffering, there is concealed suffering and Dr. Conze points out four aspects to this. Firstly, there are pleasant experiences which cause suffering to others. Two examples of this are the enjoyment of eating meat which causes obvious suffering to animals. This could be extended to dairy products too. The other example is being very wealthy. The reason these are cited as examples of concealed suffering is because usually in these cases we are dimly aware that our pleasure is another’s pain and this dim awareness taints the pleasure for us and gives us an uneasy conscience. We feel guilty even though we may not be quite sure why. This is a form of dukkha.

The second form of concealed suffering is when we experience something as pleasant but we are afraid of losing it. An example given here is power. Those who have power find it hard to trust anybody out of the fear of losing their power. An image from the Pali Canon for this kind of thing is that of the hawk flying off with a piece of meat in its claws and the other hawks fly after it. But they don’t peck at the meat, they peck at the hawk until it loosens its grip. The world of politics and business can be like this.

The third kind of hidden dukkha is the experience of something pleasant that binds us to something unpleasant. The example given is the body. We experience all sorts of pleasant sensations through the body but because we have a body we also experience all sorts of unpleasant sensations. We can’t have the one without the other.

The last kind of hidden unsatisfactoriness is that the deepest yearnings of the heart are never fulfilled by worldly pleasures. We are always left with a feeling of lacking something, of feeling empty even. This is because there is something in us that only responds to the spiritual, to the Transcendental even. There is something in us that yearns for Nirvana, that ultimate peace. This is what gives rise to shraddha and sets us on the spiritual path. You could say this is our Buddha nature.

So those are the three Lakshanas, the three characteristics of unenlightened existence: impermanence, insubstantiality and unsatisfactoriness. When Insight arises in us this is how we see unenlightened existence. And we can help to bring about Insight by penetrating deeply into one or all of these Lakshanas.

The experience of one with Insight is permanent, insubstantial and blissful. It is permanent in the sense that the Awake can never fall back into being unawake. It is insubstantial in that it is indefinable, as we’ve already said and it is blissful because there is no longer any craving or aversion. We don’t want anything and we don’t not want anything. As David Smith puts it in his Record of Awakening, “It became clearer and clearer that everything in this great, big beautiful world of trees, rivers and mountains is only a creation of mind.” Seeing that all is mind created we are no longer attached or afraid.

The three Lakshanas are gateways to liberation and when we investigate them deeply, thoroughly and effectively we emerge into the three Liberations or three Vimokshas. The three Vimokshas are the Imageless, the Unbiased and the Void.

The Imageless (animitta) is the freedom we experience when we penetrate deeply into impermanence. It means that we will no longer feel the need to label things with words or thoughts. We have transcended the level of concepts and have a direct experience of Reality of which nothing can be said or even thought.

The Unbiased (apranihita) is the liberation experienced when the lakshana of unsatisfactoriness is probed into deeply. Unbiased means there is no leaning in any direction, no tendency towards this or that. There is just complete calm and equanimity. Utter peace.

The Void (Shunyata) is the freedom attained when insubstantiality is penetrated to its depths. The Void translates Shunyata. Shunyata is the term employed by Mahayana Buddhism to counteract any tendency to dualism, such as the tendency to see Samsara and Nirvana as separate. Shunyata is the experience of realising the emptiness or voidness of the distinction between Samsara and Nirvana.

These three doors of liberation, the Lakshanas and Vimokshas, are also sometimes related to three Bodhisattvas, Avalokitesvara, Manjushri and Vajrapani.

Avolokitesvara is the embodiment of Compassion and those who meditate on his form and chant his mantra are developing that compassion within themselves. Compassion is the response of a truly loving heart to suffering. Compassion is not horrified by suffering nor is it sentimental about those who suffer. The suffering which Avolokitesvara is responding to is the suffering of the unenlightened, which they cause themselves through their craving, ill will and delusion. Sometimes this compassion will come as an unpleasant shock because it is a wake up call, a call to wake up from the slumber of spiritual ignorance and make the effort to see things as they really are, not as we want them to be. Those who are compassionate may not always be nice to us. The Buddha, for instance, wasn’t nice. Sometimes in the Pali Canon he is depicted as quite fierce. For instance, in the story of Saccaka (Culasaccakasutta, Majjhima Nikaya, 35), he completely humiliates Saccaka. Clearly, for someone so inflated and egotistic as Saccaka, a complete humiliation was all that was going to break through and allow his better nature a chance to come to the fore. Avolokitesvara appears in many forms. One of the most evocative is the eleven-headed, thousand-armed form. He has eleven heads so that he can see in every direction and know where his compassionate activity is needed. He has a thousand hands each holding different implements to symbolise the variety of responses needed when dealing with the suffering of the world. And each hand has an eye in the palm. This is the eye of Wisdom because Compassion is never divorced from Wisdom. At his heart he holds a jewel, the wish-fulfilling jewel, which is the jewel of full and perfect Enlightenment. Meditating on Avolokitesvara and chanting his mantra – om mani padme hum – is another way to open up the door to liberation and free ourselves from suffering.

Vajrapani is the embodiment of liberated Energy. When we enter liberation through the doorway of Insight into impermanence, tremendous energy is released. We are not limited by words, concepts, and thoughts. We are able to flow with the energy of the universe. Vajrapani is Energy. He is the energy that breaks through all obstacles. The energy that takes risks, that is not held back by fears. Those who meditate on Vajrapani and chant his mantra develop the heroic qualities of the warrior, who is fearless and undaunted by forces ranged against him. Vajrapani is often depicted in wrathful form looking very fierce, wielding a vajra and trampling under his feet figures representing greed, hatred and delusion. There is something unstoppable about Vajrapani and contemplating his form and chanting his mantra can put us in touch with that determination and courage which is needed to break through our fears and doubts.

Manjushri is the embodiment of Wisdom. His name means ‘gently auspicious’. He is also known as Manjughosa, ‘the gentle voiced one’. He is depicted as a beautiful youth, a prince, richly adorned and sitting on a blue lotus throne. With his left hand he holds a book to his heart and with his right hand he very delicately holds a large, sharp sword with flames coming off the end. The book is the ‘Perfection of Wisdom’ with its profound paradoxical teachings on Shunyata and the sword is the sword of Wisdom which cuts off all ignorance. We meditate on the figure of Manjushri and chant his mantra – om a ra pa cha na dhih – to help us to develop clarity and see through all the mental obscurations that cloud our minds. These three archetypal Bodhisattvas are known as the Family Protectors. This has nothing to do with ordinary families and home and hearth. The families referred to here are the families of the Buddhas Amitabha, Akshobhya and Vairocana. These were the original three Buddhas that formed the beginning of what later developed into the Mandala of the five Dhyana Buddhas, or the Mandala of the five Jinas. In the next talk we will look at the five Jinas and their respective Wisdoms.

Perspectives on Realisation

This is the third in a series of six talks on Wisdom given at the London Buddhist Centre in 2000

We began by looking at Right View, which is the conceptual expression of a direct apprehension of Reality. When that Right View becomes a direct realisation, it is Perfect Vision. We then looked at the Path that leads us towards a direct experience of Reality. Now we are going to look at various ways in which that experience of Reality, that direct Realisation, has been described. Like Cortez and his men in Keat’s famous poem, we have come to the mountain top and now standing, “Silent, upon a peak in Darien”, we can survey the surrounding terrain. All those who have reached that peak have had different ways of explaining what they saw; they have used different metaphors and emphasised different aspects. We are going to explore some of these different metaphors and emphases.

There are, of course, many ways of conveying spiritual Insight or Realisation and not all of them are conceptual. There are the beautiful, rich images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with their gestures, colours and emblems. We will look at some of them later in this series of talks. There was the famous occasion when the Buddha simply held up a flower and one of the monks achieved Awakening on the spot. This is sometimes said to be the beginning of the Zen tradition. There are also mantras, sound symbols, which convey the essence of Enlightenment. There is also the record that simply seeing the Buddha was enough to convey to the first five disciples that he had realised the Truth. His physical presence communicated his Realisation.

There are all these different ways in which Insight can be communicated as well as the more conceptual formulations. But even the conceptual formulations are largely poetic – metaphorical, so we must be careful not to take them too literally. We are going to look at Entering the Stream, Turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness, the arising of the Bodhicitta and Real Going For Refuge.

Firstly, Entering the Stream. The Stream is the Stream of irreversible Insight into the true nature of Reality. When one Enters the Stream then one can never fall back from the spiritual path. One has seen or experienced something on such a deep level, in such a real way, that one can never again see things in the old, unawakened way. Traditionally, it is said that someone becomes a Stream Entrant when they break through the first three of what are known as the Ten Fetters. The Ten Fetters are self-view, sceptical doubt, dependence on moral rules and rituals as ends in themselves, sense desire, ill will, craving for existence in the realm of form, craving for existence in the realm of no-form, conceit, agitation and delusion.

The first three have to be broken through in order to Enter the Stream which flows to Enlightenment. To break these fetters means to be no longer affected by them in any way. The first fetter is self-view. This means the belief that we have a fixed, unchanging self. This belief affects how we relate to others, how we view our own abilities and capacities, how we think about the future, even how we view the past. If we break through this fetter then we are no longer limited by the sense of being ‘me’, a fixed entity. We begin to have a more fluid, flexible sense of ourselves and our capacities and abilities and we also have more flowing relationships with others. We no longer fix ourselves with regard to the future. We refuse to predict how we will respond in any particular situation. How could an unfixed, changing stream of thoughts, perceptions, feelings and so on, predict its future responses. And we have a less fixed perception of our past and what actually happened. This fetter has been called the fetter of habit by Sangharakshita (The Taste of Freedom). Our normal way of being is habitual. We consist of habits, especially habitual ways of thinking, responding and perceiving. These habits are what we identify with.

For instance, we might have a habit of self-hatred and this leads us on to the habit of perceiving and construing what other people say and do as an expression of dislike for us and this leads us to a habit of responding to other people with anger and this, of course, leads them to dislike us which, of course, proves to us that nobody likes us and that we are, in fact, unlovable. So, a habit like this can be like a closed circle, perpetuating itself. This is the Wheel of Life in action and this is fixed self-view.

We break habits through creativity. In other words, with awareness we can learn to respond differently. We can develop the ability to choose how to respond to any situation and then respond in a creative rather than habitual manner. In this way, we break out of the circular trap – we break the fetter of habit.

The second fetter is the fetter of sceptical doubt. This could, perhaps, also be called the fetter of rationalisation as Tejananda refers to it in his excellent book The Buddhist Path to Awakening. We rationalise in order to get what we want and avoid what we don’t want. So our rationalisations are an expression of our habitual self-view. With this fetter, the tendency is to remain vague, even deliberately vague, about what the Dharma really says. We would rather preserve our own version of reality intact, so we come up with rationalisations to show that the Dharma couldn’t possibly be saying anything different or shouldn’t be saying anything different. As Tejananda puts it in The Buddhist Path to Awakening, “we are determined to do what we want to do – and if this happens not to be in accord with the way things really are, well, so much the worse for the way things really are. In reality, of course, it is so much the worse for us.” This kind of sceptical doubt is to be distinguished from the sort of questioning that is determined to get to the truth whether it is palatable or not. The sceptical doubt of the second fetter wants to avoid the truth or by-pass it somehow. In order to combat this tendency we need to develop our faith in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Our aspiration needs to be strengthened so that what we want becomes more and more what the Three Jewels have to offer. We looked at ways of developing and strengthening shraddha in the previous chapter, when we spoke about Right Emotion. Perhaps we could just add here that contact with spiritual friends, especially those with more faith than us, can be a major help in overcoming the fetter of doubt or rationalisation. It is said that one of the seven characteristics of a Stream Entrant is that he or she is endowed with unshakeable faith in the Three Jewels. That is as you would expect, since the fetter of doubt is broken.

The third fetter is reliance on moral rules and religious observances as ends in themselves. This is sometimes referred to as ‘going through the motions’. All Buddhist practices are means to an end, not ends in themselves. If we find ourselves getting overly attached to a practice and even defensive about it, then we are probably starting to relate to it as an end in itself. This can be the case whether it is the five precepts or tantric ritual. The Dharma has one flavour, the Buddha said, the flavour of freedom. All Dharma practice conduces to freedom from greed, hatred and delusion. When we get attached to practices in an egotistic way and start to relate to them as ends rather than means, then they are no longer Dharma practices and will probably just enhance our ill will, ignorance and craving. To counteract this tendency we need to constantly try to go deeper with our practice. We need to constantly try to bring a fresh approach and fresh enthusiasm to our practice. If we are content with a superficial meditation practice or a superficial practice of ethics or a superficial relationship to Puja, we are likely to fall into ‘going through the motions’ and even a defensive attachment to our lack of initiative. Breaking the third fetter requires an effort to maintain ‘beginner’s mind’, that enthusiastic engagement which often characterises our initial meeting with the Dharma. Those are the three fetters which we need to break through in order to Enter the Stream that flows irreversibly to Enlightenment.

This stage of spiritual Insight is sometimes also referred to as the attainment of ‘Knowledge and Vision of things as they really are’ (yathabhutajnanadarshan). This is the eighth stage on the spiritual path of the 12 positive nidanas or links. The first of these nidanas is an awareness of suffering, especially an awareness that our greed and ill will causes us suffering. In dependence upon this awareness arises faith in the Ideal of Enlightenment. This faith leads us to practise ethics. In dependence upon faith, therefore, the joy of a clear conscience arises. In dependence upon the joy of a clear conscience we are able to engage in tranquillity meditation and in dependence upon that we can undertake insight meditation. This, in turn, is the condition for the arising of ‘Knowledge and Vision of things as they really are’. And this stage represents the point of no-return, the point of irreversibility, in other words, Stream Entry.

Another way of giving expression to the experience of Insight into the nature of Reality is called, “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness” (Paravritti). The “Turning About” is a teaching of the Yogachara School of Buddhism and it is quite complex, so I’m not going to go into it in detail here. Perhaps the most important factor that this teaching is pointing to is the profundity and radical nature of the experience of Awakening. There is a complete “turning about” in the depths of our being. We are, as it were, turned upside down and inside out when we see into the true nature of Reality. This emphasises the fact that spiritual insight is not a matter of gaining knowledge or mastering obscure philosophical points but, rather, a matter of profound and far-reaching change to the heart and mind of the individual.

When the paravritti, the turning about, takes place, all distinction between subject and object disappear, all distinction between ‘I’ in here and the world outside is left behind and there is an experience of what is called One Mind (cittamatra) or Mind Only. As Sangharakshita puts it, “The experience of one mind is like a great expanse of water, absolutely pure, absolutely transparent, with nothing in it, not a speck, other than the water itself”. (Sangharakshita, Complete Works, Vol.2, p.275)

According to the Yogachara teaching, everything we say or do or think or experience leaves a trace in our mind or consciousness. This trace or impression left in our consciousness is conceived of as a seed, a seed that will eventually bear fruit. There are pure seeds and impure seeds. The impure seeds are deposited in consciousness as a result of our unskilfulness – our greed, ill will and delusion. The pure seeds are deposited in our consciousness as a result of our more skilful and spiritual thoughts, words and actions. The more we dedicate ourselves to spiritual practice and dedicate our lives to spiritual goals, the more pure seeds we deposit in what is called the ‘storehouse consciousness’ (alaya vijnana).

When the pure seeds outweigh the impure seeds, eventually the impure seeds get pushed right out of the way and this constitutes the experience of “turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness”. To put it another way, eventually our spiritual practice purifies us of all past unskilfulness and our purified consciousness can have a direct experience of Reality.

The heartening thing about this teaching is that it assures us that our practice is having an effect even though we may not be able to see the effect and it also reminds us that even the smallest of skilful thoughts or words or deeds makes a difference. Spiritual practice is cumulative and if we ‘stay with it’, it eventually brings results.

Another way of speaking about spiritual Insight is in terms of the Arising of the Will to Enlightenment (Bodhicitta utpada). The teaching of the Bodhicitta, the Will to Enlightenment, very strongly emphasises the compassionate aspect of spiritual Awakening. Anyone who embarks on the spiritual path is likely, at some point, to experience the wish to withdraw from the world, to have nothing more to do with its madness and trivia. Also, any spiritual practitioner is likely to experience a wish to involve himself or herself with the world out of compassion for the mass of suffering. These two tendencies – the tendency towards withdrawal from the world and the tendency towards compassionate involvement with the world – set up a conflict. If we withdraw completely, we may set up a tendency in our own psyche which will prove to be an obstacle to the attainment of Supreme Enlightenment, because Supreme Enlightenment is definitely compassionate. If we involve ourselves too much with the world we may lose touch with our spiritual Ideals and become swamped in the unending demands of the world.

We need to do both and allow the conflict to intensify even. The eventual resolution of this conflict is what is known as the arising of the Bodhicitta. At this point, one experiences being involved in the world and withdrawn from it at the same time. Here is how Sangharakshita describes it,

“At that point something happens. It is very difficult to describe exactly what does happen, but we can think of it provisionally as an explosion. The tension which has been generated through following simultaneously these two contradictory trends results in a breakthrough into a higher dimension of spiritual consciousness. Withdrawal and involvement are no longer two separate trends, not because they have been artificially amalgamated into one, but because the plane or level on which their duality existed, or on which it was possible for them to be two things, has been transcended. When that explosion occurs, one has the experience of being simultaneously withdrawn and involved, simultaneously out of the world and in the world.” (Sangharakshita, The Meaning of Conversion in Buddhism, p. 60/61)

So Wisdom and Compassion coalesce and there is no longer any conflict.

There are two practices which are specifically undertaken in order to bring about the Arising of the Bodhicitta. These are the Sevenfold Puja and Vasubandhu’s four factors.

The Sevenfold Puja culminates in the Transference of Merits and Self Surrender and the aim of the Puja is to engender this attitude in us. This is the attitude of not practising just for our own sake but for the sake of all sentient beings. The Sevenfold Puja can be seen not just as a ritual but also as a series of practices which we can perform all the time. Or we could see it as a series of attitudes which we need to bring to all our practice. And, chiefly, in relation to the Arising of the Bodhicitta we need to encourage the attitude and practice of dedicating all our efforts to Enlightenment for the sake of all. After every meditation, after every generous act, after every confession or forgiveness, after any skilfulness of body, speech or mind, we should transfer the merits by reciting the Transference of Merits verse or something similar, such as, “What ever merit accrues from my skilfulness, I dedicate it to Enlightenment, not just for my own benefit but for the benefit of all.” If we practise in this way, we will be engendering the spirit of the Bodhicitta right from the start of our spiritual journey and, therefore, preparing ourselves for the attainment of Supreme Enlightenment.

Vasubandhu’s four factors are a series of four practices which encourage the arising of the Bodhicitta. They are, firstly recollection of the Buddhas, secondly, reflecting on the faults of conditioned existence, thirdly, reflecting on the suffering of sentient beings and, fourthly, contemplation of the virtues of the Enlightened Ones.

Recollecting the Buddhas is a practice for developing faith and the conviction that we too can become Awakened or Enlightened. Reflecting on the faults of conditioned existence enables us to loosen our attachments and withdraw from mundane involvement. Reflecting on the sufferings of sentient beings is to give rise to compassion and help us to open our hearts. Contemplating the virtues of the Enlightened Ones enables us to develop those virtues ourselves so that eventually the heart of compassion opens in us and the Arising of the Bodhicitta is accomplished. So the Arising of the Bodhicitta emphasises the altruistic aspect of the spiritual life and reminds us that Wisdom and Compassion are not really two separate things. The Energy of the Awakened Ones pours forth spontaneously in a flow of Wise Compassion, Compassionate Wisdom, which invites the world to the feast of the Dharma where true satisfaction is to be found.

Now we come to the last of our different perspectives on the Realisation of the Truth. This is Real Going For Refuge. The Three Refuges are the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. They are refuges from suffering. Because of the Buddha’s experience of Enlightenment, because of his communication of that experience and because others down the ages have received that communication and had their own Realisation – because of all this, there is a way out of suffering, there is a refuge from suffering.

We are always taking refuge in something; we are always seeking security from the trials and tribulations of life. Our refuge may be our career, our sexual relationship, drugs, possessions and so on. This is natural enough. We don’t want to suffer. We want to be happy. The only problem with these refuges is that they don’t work, they are not dependable. From the Buddhist perspective the only dependable refuges are the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, also known as the Three Jewels because of their preciousness.

How do we Go For Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha? And it is worth noting that we do need to go for refuge, it is not something passive, it is something we do, it is an activity.

We Go For Refuge to the Buddha by being devoted to the Buddha. Going For Refuge to the Buddha is essentially an act of faith. It is a deep conviction of the possibility of Enlightenment for all, including ourselves. As we’ve mentioned already, one way to develop this faith is to reflect on the life of the Buddha and also on the lives of other great Buddhist teachers including, of course, our own teacher, Sangharakshita. We could also reflect on the effect that the Dharma has had on our lives so far and generate a sense of gratitude to the Buddha and others for making this possible.

Going For Refuge to the Dharma involves knowing the Dharma and practising it. We get to know the Dharma by studying it, discussing it and reflecting on it. We cannot really Go For Refuge to the Dharma if we don’t know what the Dharma is with some degree of clarity. The Buddha, and other Enlightened teachers since, have endeavoured to express the Truth in many ways for our benefit. We need to make the effort to actively receive this teaching and allow it to have an effect in our lives. We practise the Dharma, of course, by practising ethics, meditation, contemplation, puja and friendship. Going For Refuge to the Dharma is a constant pursuit of the Truth. The truth about ourselves and the Truth of existence. This pursuit is at times a difficult struggle but there isn’t really anything else meaningful that one can do with one’s life.

Going For Refuge to the Sangha can be understood in two main ways. Firstly, there is the Sangha of all those who have gained Enlightenment or are irreversible on the path to Enlightenment. This is the Arya Sangha. This is the Sangha which is completely dependable. And we Go For Refuge to the Sangha by accepting guidance and by becoming Awakened ourselves. Secondly, there is the Sangha of all practising Buddhists and especially those practising within the same context as us. We Go For Refuge to (or perhaps better to say ‘with’) this Sangha by being in friendly and meaningful communication. The Sangha is a network of harmonious relationships based on the common Going For Refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Arya Sangha. It is essential and immensely helpful to be in contact with like-minded people as we practise the spiritual life in the midst of a world which tries to seduce and drag us in the opposite direction.

There are four levels to Going For Refuge. There is the level of ethnic going for refuge which means that someone is born into a Buddhist culture and reveres the Three Jewels as part of their culture but doesn’t necessarily do any practice. Then there is provisional Going For Refuge. This is when someone has a strong heartfelt response to the Dharma and begins to practise but they are not yet ready or able to dedicate their life to Dharma practice. It may be that there are lingering doubts or fears, or it may be that they have some psychological difficulty such as lack of confidence in themselves or an uncontrollable temper. If they carry on practising, in time, they will be able to make a stronger commitment to the Three Jewels. That is when we arrive at the level of effective Going For Refuge. When one is effectively Going For Refuge one commits one’s life to practising the Dharma and sharing it with others. One vows to practise for the sake of all beings. Real Going For Refuge is when one’s commitment to the Three Jewels is characterised by unshakeable faith and unblemished morality. Unblemished morality means that any ethical lapses will be confessed immediately. At this level of Going For Refuge one has begun to embody the Refuges and one is now irreversibly on the Path.

So we have looked at some different ways of expressing the experience of Awakening to the true nature of Reality. We have explored briefly Stream Entry, The Turning about in the Deepest Seat of Consciousness, The Arising of the Bodhicitta and Real Going For Refuge. These perspectives on Realisation are by no means an exhaustive list but they are perhaps sufficient to show us that Buddhism is united by spiritual experience, even though there are many different ways of conveying that experience.

We have been standing on the mountain peak surveying the scene and describing some of the sights. In the next talk we will take a closer look at the experience of Awakening and open out to a more cosmic perspective.

Lifting the Veil

This is the second in a series of six talks on Wisdom given at the London Buddhist Centre in 2000

Many of us prefer to spend our time looking in any direction other than the direction pointed out by the finger of the Dharma. We may be content to ignore the finger and keep our gaze fixed on the ground of mundane concerns or we may become fascinated by the finger rather than what it’s pointing to, so that we become overly concerned with a sort of self-centred quest for happiness or strong experiences. But the moon of Reality shines on and sometimes we glimpse it out of the corner of our eye or when prostrated by the events of life.

People get a glimpse of the true nature of Reality in all sorts of ways. Sometimes it’s an experience such as a bereavement that stops us in our tracks and reveals to us a different vision of life and our relation to the rest of humanity. For some it may be a drug induced experience or others may have an intellectual breakthrough when reading or discussing. Great art can confront us with a new way of seeing or it could be meeting a person who has stopped playing the usual games of human interaction that shifts our viewpoint. There are many ways in which we may have a first glimpse of an alternative Reality to the mundane life of school, work, retirement and death. A Reality that puts everything we do into a much bigger perspective.

Usually this glimpse does not have any lasting effect and indeed many people put it out of their minds completely and just get on with the business of living in the accepted and expected fashion. But some people cannot rest easy with an ordinary life. They want to know more, they want to grasp the meaning. They are not satisfied. This was my own experience. At the age of eighteen I started work as an accountant and was training in that profession, but I became increasingly dissatisfied by the limited vision of a life that centred around possessions and procreation and I just could not continue. At the age of twenty two I gave up my career and most of my possessions and went wandering in search of the meaning of life. That may seem hopelessly idealistic, but I have never regretted that step and I do feel that I have found a larger vision. I have meaning and the perspective of the Dharma. Fortunately for people like me, there are ways of preparing oneself to have a more permanent and far-reaching vision of Reality. There is a finger pointing at the moon. There is the teaching of the Buddha, the Dharma, which enables us to set up the conditions that allow Insight to arise. One of the earliest and most popular teachings of the Buddha is what is known as the Noble Eight Fold Path. It is also a very comprehensive teaching. In fact, you don’t really need to look any further. If you practice the Noble Eight Fold Path and penetrate deeply enough into it, it will take you all the way to Enlightenment.

The first step of the Eight Fold Path is Right View. Briefly, Right View is the acceptance that the Buddha was enlightened and that we too can gain Enlightenment. It is the acceptance that higher states of consciousness exist and are possible to attain. It is also the acceptance that all things are impermanent including every aspect of ourselves and that everything arises in dependence upon conditions. Right View is an acceptance and understanding of these things; it is even a belief in them. It has an intellectual element, which is the understanding and an emotional aspect, which we could call shraddha, or faith. This first stage of the Eight Fold Path is the stage of vision; we see, we understand something of what life could be and we want to follow the path to greater understanding and vision. The rest of the Eight Fold Path is all concerned with transformation. We have to transform ourselves until we are refined and aware and receptive enough to have a direct experience or realisation of Reality. The steps of the Path are not linear. It is more a case of practising all the elements simultaneously. The path of transformation involves Right Emotion, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Samadhi or Meditation. I am going to say something about each of these because they are all necessary to lifting the veil of ignorance and opening ourselves up to Insight into the true nature of Reality.

The first stage is Right Emotion. This is pointing to the fact that our emotional orientation is very fundamental to our progress on the Path. This stage is sometimes called Right Motivation. The spiritual path of its very nature requires an altruistic motivation right from the start. A narrow self-obsessed emotional bias is a great hindrance. This stage of Right Emotion encourages us to develop positive emotions towards ourselves and others. It is, of course, necessary to feel positive towards ourselves, to appreciate and value and care for ourselves, because otherwise it will be impossible to value, appreciate and care for others. The main positive emotions we need to encourage in ourselves are the emotion of Metta, loving kindness and the emotion of Shraddha, faith and devotion. Metta is the emotion we want to feel towards ourselves and others and all living things. Shraddha is the emotion we want to feel towards the ideal and its embodiments – the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

There are four main practices for developing these emotions which I want to mention briefly. Firstly, there is the Metta Bhavana, which could be described as the most beautiful and profound of all practices. In this practice, we encourage ourselves to form an intention and heartfelt wish for the well-being of ourselves, our friends, our enemies and all humans and non-humans throughout the universe. If we take this practice for enough and deep enough it can lead us to Insight into the interpenetration of all life. But initially, it is enough to wish ourselves well and wish others well as wholeheartedly as we can.

Then there is the practice of friendship, which takes the Metta Bhavana into the realm of actual human relations. This is one of the most powerful and effective practices we can engage with. We are trying to relate from the best in us to the best in others, while maintaining an awareness of all that needs to be transformed. The practise of friendship is really the practise of befriending; it is active rather than passive.

Thirdly, there is the practice of inspirational reading and study. The Buddhist scriptures and some commentaries are the product of minds that have attained Insight and, therefore, they can lift us up into that realm and give us a glimpse of that vision of existence. There are many texts to read; a couple of popular ones are the Dhammapada and the Bodhicaryavatara, both of which are full of treasures to be cherished and revisited often. A favourite book of mine is The Ten Pillars of Buddhism by Sangharakshita, which I find inspiring and encouraging. It is better to have one or two texts to return to repeatedly than to have something different every week. A mind permeated by Insight is subtle and deep and it requires careful attention for us to really come into contact with that subtlety and depth.

Fourthly, there is the practice of Puja and especially the Sevenfold Puja, which is of course based on the Bodhicaryavatara. The practice of Puja has a refining and uplifting effect on us and helps us to develop an emotional connection to a more expansive and even cosmic perspective on the spiritual life. It helps to bring the more imaginative and non-rational aspects of us into the work and play of spiritual transformation.

The practices of the Metta Bhavana and friendship help us to develop Metta, which is a heartfelt wish for the wellbeing of ourselves and others and the practices of inspirational reading and study and Puja help us to develop and strengthen Shraddha – our aspiration to awake to Reality.

The next stage of the Eight Fold Path is Right Speech. There are five elements to Right Speech. These are seasonable speech, truthful speech, kindly speech, meaningful speech and harmonising speech. Perhaps, to be a bit paradoxical, we could say that silence is another element of Right Speech.

Seasonable speech means being appropriate in our speech, speaking at the right time and not just blurting out whatever is on our minds, whenever we want to or wherever we happen to be. This demands awareness of the situation, awareness of other people and a certain amount of patience.

Truthful communication is essential to Right Speech, because there is no real communication without truthfulness. The reason we are tempted to deviate from truth is because we usually want to get our own way. We are tempted to exaggerate or diminish the facts or to omit some things altogether in order to get what we want. Being honest with others depends on us being honest with ourselves, and noticing when we are deliberately obfuscating the truth for selfish ends. Most of us do not tell outright lies but can be given to omission and inaccuracy in our communication and this is what we have to watch out for and try to correct. Another point about truthful speech is that we need to remember to be appropriate. It may not be the time or place to say something even if it is the truth. The positive emotion of loving kindness needs to inform our speech too.

That brings us to kindly speech. Kindly speech is the opposite of harsh speech. Speech is harsh which is crude and/or based in negative mental states such as anger, hatred, greed, resentment and so on. Swearing is harsh because it invariably expresses a negative mental state such as cynicism or ill-will. Sometimes humour is harsh because people can mix malice with their humour and use it to undermine others.

Kindly speech is the expression of kindness. If we cannot be kindly in our speech then perhaps it is time for us to be silent. Kindness treats other people as people; harshness treats other people as objects. Kindness is more in tune with the vision of the Buddha, the vision of a completely inter-related universe.

The next part of Right Speech is meaningful speech. Meaningful speech is speech which relates either directly or indirectly to the life of spiritual endeavour. This does not mean that it is talk about Buddhism. Rather, it is the communication of a meaningful person with a meaningful life. Frivolous, banal and meaningless talk is the product of meaningless, frivolous and banal lives. If we are in pursuit of meaning and depth, our speech will naturally become meaningful without any overtly, self-conscious effort on our part to be ‘deep’. However, there will always be a tendency for conversation to veer towards the trivial and even the unskilful when a group of people get together. So there is a need for awareness and a need to endeavour to change course if a conversation is veering too far into the fog of meaningless chatter.

Harmonising speech is probably the highest form of speech. This is deliberately using speech to create harmony between people. Two ways to practise harmonising speech are, firstly, to rejoice in people’s merits when they are not present, speaking well of people behind their backs and, secondly, to pass on any praise you have heard. Harmonising speech is vitally important to the life of the Sangha and is one of the skilful means used by the Bodhisattva to bring about the unification of the Sangha.

Now we come to the stage of Right Action. With the stage of Right Emotion there is a transformation of the emotions and a development of positivity. Then, that positivity passes into our speech and here it passes into our actions. Now, usually one would speak of Right Action in terms of the precepts, especially the five precepts and that is as it should be. Right Action is all kinds of skilful action. But I want to simplify it somewhat and say that if you practice generosity of body, speech and mind, then you will be practising Right Action. Generosity is the basic Right Action. For many Buddhists this is their main practice, perhaps even their only practice and it is a practice that everyone can do. There is nothing complicated or esoteric about giving. You just give. It’s as simple as that. You give and you carry on giving. Simple as it is, however, if it is done in the right spirit, generosity can be a transforming practice, leading us to insights into the law of karma and the interconnectedness of life. The right spirit is to not expect anything in return for what we give. Ideally, we shouldn’t even expect acknowledgement. Just to give for the sake of giving is the practice. We don’t have to make it known that we are being generous, neither do we have to keep it secret. We simply give and let the consequences take care of themselves. So Right Action can be seen in terms of generosity and generosity is a practice open to everyone, all the time.

Next we come to Right Livelihood. Traditionally, Right Livelihood is seen in terms of ethical livelihood. It is livelihood that does not involve trading in living beings, trading in poisons, weapons or intoxicants or engaging in gambling or astrology. Basically, a Right Livelihood is one that causes no harm to other living beings and does not encourage spiritual ignorance. In the FWBO we have developed team-based right livelihood projects, which take the practice of right livelihood further. Rather than simply being a matter of abstaining from certain things, two new positive elements have been added. These are the practices of friendship and generosity. The project itself will be ethical in the traditional sense and the people forming the team will also be engaged in the practice of Sangha. They will be developing spiritual friendship and helping to create spiritual community. In addition, the project will be concerned to generate funds for the propagation of the Dharma, not just for the people working there. It is seen as important that people work in a context where they are serving something higher. By giving away profits for the sake of the Dharma the workers in a team are able to make a direct connection between their relatively mundane tasks and the bigger vision of making the Dharma available to as many people as possible.

Most people spend a lot of their time engaged in earning a livelihood and, therefore, it is important that their livelihood is helpful to their spiritual practice and not only helpful but even part of their spiritual practice.

Whether one works in team-based right livelihood or some other form of right livelihood, it is necessary that the work itself be part of one’s Dharma practice. One can work mindfully, with kindness, in a spirit of generosity, endeavouring to practise Right Speech and of course, one can donate ones surplus income to Dharma projects. In this way, our whole life gradually becomes Dharma practice and we progress on the Path.

This takes us to the next stage which is Right Effort. Usually, Right Effort is spoken of in terms of the four right efforts. These are the effort to develop positive mental states, the effort to transform unskilful mental states, the effort to prevent the arising of unskilful states and the effort to maintain skilful mental states.

I would like to leave those to you to follow up for yourself and speak instead about Right Effort in terms of the advice given by David Smith in his book A Record of Awakening. He says,

“I would say from my experience and observation that the great challenge we in the West face … is to develop the ability to stay with the practice. It is not difficult to observe people wandering around changing teachers and traditions, avoiding practice when they are not getting what they think they should be getting from their efforts, or just avoiding themselves with their restless wanderings. This willingness to stick with things is the most difficult aspect of practice that we face, because it is going against the current that has been carrying us along all our lives.”

The effort we have to make is the effort to endure, the effort to stick with our practice through all the ups and downs. We live in a culture of instant gratification and that influences every aspect of our lives including our approach to spiritual practice. However there is no short-cut to Insight and as we tread the Path there will be happy times, even blissful times and also difficult and desolate times. This is the terrain of spiritual practice and if we stay with it we will eventually win through to Insight. The Indian poet Tagore says, “no hurried Path of success, forcibly cut by the greed of result, can be the true path”. That is one way of looking at Right Effort.

Now we come to Right Mindfulness. There are two main aspects to mindfulness. These are called sati and sampajana. Sati is mindfulness of the present moment, being totally present to our experience. Sampajana is awareness of our purpose and direction, being aware of where we have come from and where we are going.

Mindfulness is perhaps the most important of all the spiritual qualities. The practice of mindfulness or awareness is what eventually takes us to Enlightenment. Awareness taken to the nth degree is Enlightenment. There are four dimensions to awareness. These involve awareness of self, things, other people and Reality.

Awareness of oneself includes awareness of the body, of thoughts and of emotions. It is easier to maintain awareness of our thoughts and emotions if we reduce input. If we read a lot of newspapers and magazines and watch lots of TV, it will be very difficult for us to be aware of our thoughts and emotions. Our minds will be too busy digesting other people’s, often not very savoury, thoughts and emotions.

We need to saturate our awareness of ourselves with kindness. When we become aware of the nastier aspects of our psyche, we don’t try to push them away nor do we need to berate ourselves for having faults. We just need to maintain awareness, accepting with kindness that that is an aspect of how we are at present. This sort of acceptance of our present state is not the same as indulging negative emotions. Indulgence is when we think or say, “that’s how I am, it can’t be helped, you’ll just have to like it or lump it”. Indulgence doesn’t want to change and has lost sight of the bigger picture, which includes all the positive emotions and aspirations. Positive acceptance of our unskilful thoughts and emotions maintains the bigger perspective that includes the skilful and is intent on allowing the light of awareness to transform us.

Awareness of things includes awareness of the environment in an ecological sense, as well as in an aesthetic sense. Awareness of others is primarily concerned with an awareness of the effect that we have on others. In other words, it’s an ethical awareness. Awareness of Reality involves staying connected with our spiritual Ideal, whether through reflection, mantra chanting, puja, meditation, study or whatever methods that work for us. Mindfulness is very comprehensive and extremely important. You can never have too much mindfulness.

The final stage of the Noble Eight Fold Path is Right Meditation or Right Samadhi. Samadhi is often translated as ‘concentration’ but that might give the wrong impression, because Samadhi is really “an experience of wholeness at a very high level of awareness”. To give a better idea of what this final stage of the Eight Fold Path is about I’ll quote Sangharakshita,

“In the first place Samadhi is not something that can be acquired forcibly or artificially by means of exercises or techniques. They may be of incidental help but fundamentally Samadhi represents a spiritual growth or evolution of the whole being. It is not enough just to concentrate your mind on an object for half an hour at a time if the rest of your life is pulling in the opposite direction. If ninety nine percent of your life is oriented in the direction of the mundane, it is no use spending just half an hour a day trying to orient it in a spiritual direction. … Meditation proper represents the spearhead of a basic re-orientation of one’s whole being. … Knowledge and vision of things as they really are arises when, in the state of Samadhi, we get our first glimpse of Reality itself, free from all veils and observations. It’s like the moment when you get to the top of a high mountain and the clouds roll aside to reveal the vast expanse of the horizon. Samadhi represents getting to the peak, the vantage point from which you can see Reality itself”. (The Meaning of Conversion in Buddhism, pp 44-45)

Right Samadhi is not just concentration or meditation in a narrow sense, it is the “transformation and integration of the whole psyche in all its sublimest heights and most abysmal depths”. That then is the Noble Eight Fold Path. That is the finger pointing at the moon. That is what we need to do to start to lift the veil of ignorance from the face of the moon of Reality.

But that is, of course, not the only approach to our realisation of the Wisdom of the Buddha. Another traditional method, which focuses especially on Wisdom, is what is known as the three levels of Wisdom or the three Wisdoms. These three are sruta-maya prajna, cinta-maya prajna and bhavana-maya prajna; listening, reflecting and meditating. These can be seen as a progression from listening through reflection to meditation or each one can be seen as a path in itself. In his lecture entitled ‘Standing on Holy Ground’, Sangharakshita speaks of these three as three separate paths for the three types of individual. The three types of individual are the faith follower, the Dharma follower and the body witness.

The faith follower is predominantly devotional, the doctrine follower is predominantly scholarly or intellectual and the body witness is predominantly meditative or mystical. These types indicate that temperament plays a part in spiritual life and must be taken into account. As the parable of the Rain Cloud in the White Lotus Sutra indicates, the rain of the Dharma falls equally on all but everybody grows according to their own nature.

The listening wisdom (sruta-maya prajna) is the practice best suited to the faith follower. Listening involves an active receptivity to the Dharma, whether in the Sutras or in talks and lectures and someone who is predominantly devotional is likely to be very receptive and able to respond creatively to the guidance received.

The wisdom of reflection (cinta-maya prajna) is suited to the doctrine follower who will be able to emotionally engage with the analysis of concepts and the intricacies of the different formulations of the path and goal. Reflection involves turning over the concepts of the Dharma in one’s mind, until one has reached a level of understanding where one has made the teachings one own. One knows what it means for oneself.

The meditative wisdom (bhavana-maya prajna) is best suited to the meditative type, the body witness. This wisdom involves a direct realisation of the Truth unmediated by concepts and demands an ability to sustain concentration and plumb depths of the psyche until Reality is revealed like a vision.

Although the three wisdoms can be seen in this way as pertaining to different types of individual, it is probably best for most of us to think of them as a progression. Most of us will not be so clearly of one definite temperament and, therefore, it is best for us to practice these as three levels of wisdom. We start by listening to the Dharma, reading scriptures and commentaries, taking part in discussion and study and in this way familiarising ourselves with many different teachings. Then we begin to reflect on perhaps just one teaching which particularly appeals to us and we keep coming back to it for months and years, remembering David Smith’s exhortation to ‘stay with it’. In this way we go deeper into the Dharma and gain greater understanding. Then, when on retreat, we can bring our contemplation into our more concentrated mind and gradually we will begin to have little flashes of realisation, glimpses of what the Dharma is really saying, until eventually the flashes get brighter and our glimpses become a clearer vision, even a Perfect Vision and we move from treading the mundane path to treading the Transcendental Path. The veil of ignorance will have lifted and we will have united all the teachings and perspectives in our own being.

The View From The Top

This is the first in a series of six talks on Wisdom given at the London Buddhist Centre in 2000


“Have you not seen, O have you not seen,
that billions have lived in China, in Japan
None have been immortal, from time immemorial:
Ancient sage kings or tyrants, good subjects or bad.
Fair ladies and homely – who could enjoy eternal youth?
Noble men and lowly alike without exception, die away;
They have all died, reduced to dust and ashes;
The singing halls and dancing stages have become the abodes of foxes.
Transient as dreams, bubbles or lightening all are perpetual travellers.
Have you not seen, O have you not seen,
This has been man’s fate, how can you alone live forever?”
(To a Nobleman in Kyoto – Kukai. From ‘Major Works’)

Everybody dies. This is one thing all human beings have in common. It is the one great momentous fact of life. Death is quite an amazing thing; so amazing that we cannot really believe it. We cannot really take in the fact of death – our own death, the death of our good friends, the death of our families, the death of our children. It is too enormous to comprehend. And yet it is a fact – indeed the only fact of life is death. I sometimes ponder as I am out and about in London that not one single person I see in the street will be alive in, say, 100 years time. Not a single person on the Tube is going to live forever. I imagine all the people passing by as dying or dead – and it does seem truly astonishing, hard to believe. We live life in the shadow of Death. We could say that our lives are a response to death. How we live our lives is our answer to the problem of death.

Some people respond by ignoring death and hiding from it. They proceed as if they will live forever. This, strange to say, is probably the majority response to death. Priority is given to creating a secure future, materially secure at least. Others respond to the fact of death with despair, despondency. This can lead to addiction, suicide, depression, even insanity. In some ways, this is a more reasonable response. At least it recognises that there is a problem. Because the problem of death is the problem of life. It poses the question, what is life for? or, what is the meaning of life? Some of us turn to religion or philosophy for answers to this dilemma – if life culminates in death, what is the point of life?

Some religions point to an afterlife state of either bliss or torment. The answer to the problem is to live a good life, obedient to the commandments of the deity and after death you will be rewarded and sent to a place of happiness for all eternity – no more worries. This is obviously a very attractive option and many people adopt this belief very sincerely and wholeheartedly. Depending on the degree of their sincerity and wholeheartedness, the emphasis will not be on security and wealth and happiness in this life but on doing what’s necessary to attain eternal bliss in the next life. Some philosophies deny the existence of a deity or an afterlife and suggest that this life is all we have. Progress and happiness will be measured in scientific and material terms. Marxism is an example of this. Or on a more everyday level the credo is ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’. The first of these views of existence is known as eternalism and the second as nihilism.

Buddhism is neither eternalist nor nihilist. Buddhism says that when we die, when the body ceases to function, consciousness continues. The momentum of habits and tendencies – the volition, the willing, that has taken us through life carries on and finds rebirth in another body, assuming we have not obtained Enlightenment. The Enlightened have more choice. The unenlightened are at the mercy of habitual forces that take them round and round in circles over and over again. The Enlightened can be creative and move from better to best – from life to more life – from Wisdom to greater Wisdom.

According to Buddhism, what we experience at death is the result of our actions. This is true during our lifetime, it is true at death and it is true for future lifetimes. How we behave, how we speak and how we think determines the whole tendency and momentum of our consciousness and we experience consequences in the form of suffering or happiness, ignorance or wisdom.

Everything arises in dependence upon conditions. What we experience upon the dissolution of the body, when we breathe our last breath, depends upon the conditions we have established in our lifetime and in previous lifetimes. Buddhism says that it is possible for consciousness to evolve and to keep on evolving to the point of Enlightenment, which is not a point at all but a word to indicate a state of continuous evolving creativity in Wisdom and Compassion. When consciousness evolves, when we make the effort to evolve, then eventually we experience an Insight into the true nature of Reality. The nature of this Insight is such that we are no longer attached to self, no longer attached to our ego-identity. There is no longer the strong sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’. This means that there is no longer death for us. Death is death for us because of our attachment to self and because we associate our self so strongly with the physical. Enlightenment is known as the 'deathless' because it is not something that comes and goes but the underlying reality of the universe. And we could also say when there is no attachment to self there is no death for us.

For Buddhism, both eternalism and nihilism are wrong views ( micchaditthi). They are wrong ways of seeing life and death and they lead to wrong ways of thinking and behaving. Eternalism is a wrong view because it posits an eternal, unchanging self that persists whether under conditions of torment or bliss. There is in some theistic religions the notion of the soul being cleansed or purged, which might be seen as change, but strictly speaking the soul doesn’t change, it is simply either more or less blemished.

The main problem with eternalism is that change isn’t possible. Buddhism specifically denies the existence of a fixed, unchanging soul – this is the doctrine of annatta (or anatman in Sanskrit). This is usually rendered into English as the doctrine of Insubstantiality or No-Self. It states that there is no fixed, unchanging substance whether physical or mental, that could be called a soul or a self. This applies also to any notions of God as creator. One thing that can follow from an eternalist view that relies on obedience to God, is that people don’t take enough responsibility for themselves – too much is left to or seen as the ‘will of God’. Another outcome that has often manifested is intolerance. Because so much is at stake, it is more than a matter of life or death – it’s a matter of eternal happiness and security, a huge amount of fear can ensue, fear of incurring the displeasure of the supreme authority and so nobody can be allowed to rock the boat and, if necessary, people must be forced into line. This is perfectly understandable really – if your security and comfort for
all eternity is at stake, you don’t want to end up with a raw deal because of someone else’s wrong-doing or disobedience. So the main practice for a sincere eternalist must be obedience to the instructions and demands of the supreme Power. Many people, of course, are nominally eternalist, in that they think of themselves as followers of a theistic religion, but by practice they are nihilist.

A nihilist does not believe in any afterlife. Death is the end. We are simply sophisticated machines and there are no higher states to attain to, whether in heaven after death or in terms of evolving consciousness. You are very unlikely to come across many people who subscribe to a strictly nihilist view, although there were certainly plenty about at the time of the Buddha. Most people these days seem to have a mish-mash of beliefs and views which vaguely affect how they live. Although I think it is safe to say that whatever people believe, in terms of practice, what people actually do, then in this country, materialism is the majority view and materialism is a form of nihilism. Of course, there are degrees of materialism and the majority of people probably hold eternalist views but practice nihilism which is a confused state of affairs to say the least. But this is nothing new and at the time of the Buddha there were also people who held all sorts of views, with varying degrees of clarity and confusion.

As it says in the Brahmajala Sutta ( Digha Nikaya):
“ There are some ascetics and Brahmins who are Eternalists, who proclaim the eternity of the self and the
world….”
“ There are, monks, some ascetics and Brahmins who are partly Eternalists and Partly Non-Eternalists,
who proclaim the partial eternity and the partial non-eternity of the self and the world……”
“ There are, monks, some ascetics and Brahmins who are Finitists and Infinitists, and who proclaim the
finitude and infinitude of the world…..”
“ There are, monks, some ascetics and Brahmins who are Eel-Wrigglers. When asked about this or that
matter, they resort to evasive statements, and they wriggle like eels…..”
“ There are, monks, some ascetics and Brahmins who are Chance-Originationists, and who proclaim the
chance origin of the self and the world…..” (The Long Discourses of the Buddha, trans. M. Walshe, Sutta 1)


These are just a few of the views that were prevalent then. The Buddha enumerates sixty four.
Wrong views can be broadly classified under two headings – eternalist and nihilist. How are we affected by these views? To what degree are we still under the influence of wrong views (micchaditthi)? Well, for most of us, most of the time, we are very strongly under the influence of wrong views. This is because views are not just a matter of ideas in any purely intellectual sense (if there is such a thing) but rather, views have a large emotional content, so that we may hold an idea that tends in one direction but act as if we believed the opposite. This, as I said, is probably the case for the majority of people and it is also true for Buddhists.

We may subscribe to the notion that we have no fixed self but, nevertheless, we act as though we had. If I have no fixed self then I cannot predict how I will respond in any given situation and I won’t be worried about possible failure of humiliation. But most of us think we know exactly how we will respond – we say, ‘I can’t do that’, ‘I won’t be able to cope’ or ‘So and so is always late or tired or good humoured’. We predict that we will in the future be as we were in the past or others will in the future be as they have been in the past – in other words, that we or they are fixed and unchanging.

Or we may admire the simplicity and calmness of the lives of the great sages – we may even recite the precept - “with stillness, simplicity and contentment I purify my body” – but our actual lives are neither still, simple nor content and perhaps not even tending in that direction. We may actually be more into spending our time shopping, watching television or surfing the net. These discrepancies occur. We are all to some degree or other split, even in conflict with ourselves. In fact, often as we proceed on the spiritual Path the internal conflict can become worse before it gets better.

As Sangharakshita puts it – “the central problem of the spiritual life is finding emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding”. But perhaps we need to get our intellectual understandings clear first. We need to know what Right View is. The Pali term for Right View is Samma ditthi (Sanskrit Samyag Drsti). Ditthi is a view and Samma is ‘right’ or ‘correct’ or even ‘perfect’. Wrong view is Miccha ditthi. Right view is based upon the Buddha’s Enlightenment experience. It is not an idea or an opinion. It is a vision. The Buddha saw how things really are and then later he communicated what he saw. This communication of the Buddha’s vision or the Buddha’s experience is Right View. The first thing the Buddha realised is that he had gained Enlightenment.

In the Ariyapariyesana Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya it says:
“ Then, bhikkhus, being myself subject to birth, having understood the danger in what is subject to birth, seeking the unborn supreme security from bondage, Nibbana, I attained the unborn supreme security from bondage, Nibbana; being myself subject to ageing, having understood the danger in what is subject to ageing, seeking the unageing supreme security from bondage, Nibbana, I attained the unageing supreme security from bondage, Nibbana;”
Similarly for sickness, death, sorrow and defilement.
“ The knowledge and vision arose in me: ‘My deliverance is unshakeable; this is my last birth; now there is no renewal of being.” (The Middle Length Disdourses of the Buddha, trans. Nanamoli & Bodhi, Sutta 26)


From this it follows that it is possible for a human being to gain Enlightenment. From that it follows that human beings can evolve, can change, can grow and develop spiritually. There are higher states of consciousness; it is possible to attain to higher states and to see things as they really are. It is possible to become Enlightened. From a Buddhist perspective this is a Right View and as such it is essential to the practice of the spiritual Path. If Buddhism could be said to have an ‘article of Faith’, then this is it; it is possible for any human being to attain to higher states of consciousness and
knowledge and vision of Reality. From this it follows that there is no fixed, unchanging soul or self.
The Buddha expressed his experience of Enlightenment in terms of what is known as the Law of
Conditionality (Pali, paticca samuppada, Sanskrit, pratitya samutpada). It goes as follows: “This being, that becomes, from the arising of this, that arises. This not being, that does not become. From the ceasing of this, that ceases.”

These two sentences contain the essence of Buddhism and are an expression of Perfect View. Everything that happens, everything that exists, arises in dependence upon conditions, when those conditions are no longer present, then that event or thing will cease to be. All of Buddhist doctrine and practice flows from this. Perhaps the most important practical implication is the law of karma and the ethical precepts. Karma means ‘action’ and the law of karma is an application of conditionality to the sphere of ethics, the sphere of volitional activity of body, speech or mind.. Basically, it means that actions have consequences. Skilful actions have benign consequences and unskilful actions
have bad consequences. Skilful actions are any deeds or speech or thoughts based in mental states of
loving kindness, generosity and spiritual wisdom. Unskilful actions are any deeds, speech or thought
arising from mental states of ill will, greed and spiritual ignorance.

Wrong views (Micchaditthi) arise out of unskilful mental states. It is important that we make efforts to transform our unskilful mental states into skilful mental states because that is how we can move from Wrong View to Right View. We bring about that transformation with the practice of meditation and the training precepts, as well as through study of Dharma texts and commentaries.

Sometimes people don’t like to hear the terms Right View and Wrong View, because they feel that nobody is in a position to say what is right or wrong or they feel that nobody should be told that they are wrong. There are so many views, they say, and who can say which are right and which are wrong. Some people may even feel that it is intolerant to speak in terms of Right View and Wrong View. There are three points I would like to make with regard to this.

Firstly, the terms Right View and Wrong View are only one possible translation of the Pali terms
Sammaditthi and Micchaditthi respectively. However, I don’t think we should shy away from using the terms ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in this respect because I think the impact and precision they carry gives exactly the correct or right sense of what is meant. Secondly, there is a difference between a view in the sense of ‘ditthi’ as in Sammaditthi and an opinion. A view in this sense is the result of a realisation, an experience, a result of seeing something, whereas an opinion is the result of speculation or thinking or more frequently the result of someone else’s thinking, which we have read or heard. And wrong views are often held very teanaciously because they have an emotional basis, that can make them feel necessary to an individual's sense of identity. Thirdly, Right View is the conceptual expression of the Buddha’s experience and, therefore, the acceptance of Right View is initially an act of faith or Shraddha on our part.

Shraddha includes the 3 elements of intuition, reason and experience. We intuit that what the Buddha said is true and our thinking confirms our intuition and in time our experience confirms both. Because, of course, if Right View is true, if it does accurately correspond with how things really are, then it must be possible to demonstrate that, it must be testable. By practising, by living in accordance with Right View we will be able to see for ourselves the truth. In fact, if we are open-minded enough, we will be able to see the truth of the Dharma even if we don’t practise. Observing the precepts has consequences for us and not observing the precepts also has consequences. Meditating has consequences and not meditating has consequences. Although in the second case our consciousness may be too clouded for us to be able to judge the consequences.

Before Siddhartha Gautama left home he is said to have seen four sights which, as it were, woke him up. We can take this to mean that he saw these sights as if for the first time rather than literally for the first time. Or we can see this as an analogy for the spiritual blindness that afflicts most of humanity. However, we take it, the story is that he saw a sick person, an old person and a corpse and these awakened him to the suffering inherent in life and to the existential question – what is life for? what does it mean? The fourth sight was a wandering mendicant and this gave him a glimpse of other possibilities. You could see this as his first intuition of Right View or Perfect View. He took this very seriously, acted upon it and the rest is history, as we say. Although it is actually much more than history, it is timeless Wisdom.

There is a distinction to be made between mundane Right View and Transcendental Right View.
The Mahacattarisaka Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya puts it like this:
“ Right View, I say, is twofold: there is right view that is affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening on the side of attachment; and there is right view that is noble, taintless, supramundane, a factor of the path.” (The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, Sutta 117)


Bhante Sangharakshita distinguishes these two by referring to the Transcendental view as Perfect Vision. Right View is the conceptual expression of the Buddha’s experience and to the extent that we hold that view, we have Right View. On a very basic level this means, as I said earlier, holding the view that there are higher states of consciousness and that we can by our own efforts attain to those states. It also implies accepting the practices of meditation and the ethical precepts.

Perfect Vision is the vision of one who has had an experience of Insight into the true nature of Reality for himself or herself. This is not just a glimpse but also an experience that transforms how we see and experience ourselves and others. This is not the same as Enlightenment because although at this stage we have had our vision of existence completely transformed, there is still work to do to completely transform ourselves in accordance with that vision. But this experience is known as the ‘point of no return’, from now on we are irreversibly on the spiritual Path.

Right View is necessary if we are to attain Perfect Vision and Perfect Vision sets us firmly on the road to Nirvana, Enlightenment. Here is how Sangharakshita explains Perfect Vision with the help of a simile:
“ Imagine we want to make a journey to climb some lofty mountain peak. What do we do? First we study a map of the terrain, of the surrounding foothills, and of the mountain itself. This study of the map corresponds to the theoretical study of Buddhist doctrine, to knowing all about the Madhyamikas, the Yogacarins, the Sarvastivadins, and so on. But we have to actually start our journey, we have to get going – we have at least to get to base camp. This corresponds to our preliminary practice of the Buddha’s teaching. Eventually, after several days, weeks, or months of travelling, we catch a glimpse of the distant mountain peak which is the object of our journey. We have come only a little way, and are still far from the foot of the mountain, but there in the distance we see the shining snow peak. We have a direct perception – a vision – of it, although from a very great distance. This glimpse of the peak corresponds to Perfect Vision and it gives us inspiration and
encouragement to continue our journey. “ (Sangharakshita, Vision and Transformation, p.32)

According to the Buddha, the Dharma is a finger pointing at the moon. In other words, the teachings of the Buddha point us in the right direction, the direction of Wisdom, the direction of Perfect Vision. What we have to do is look at the moon, see the moon for ourselves, face-to-face, so to speak. We need to have a direct experience of Reality, a vision of how things really are.