Constant Change

This talk was given in Cambridge Buddhist Centre in May 2005 (under the title Siddhartha) and in London in Feb 2008 

Impermanence is central to Buddhism. This fact, this truth, is that everything at every level is changing, from galaxies to thoughts, from personal emotions to planets, in fact everything is change. Change is constant. You can treat this talk as a reflection; one of my points will be the importance of reflecting particularly using your imagination, reflecting imaginatively.

I'm going to look at the life of the Buddha before he was the Buddha because that's possibly more relevant to us, Siddhartha before he was the Buddha struggling to follow the path. I'm going to use this part of the Buddha's life as a kind of symbol, a representation of the life of any human being. Buddhism consists of the Path and teaching which enable all human consciousness to unfold and evolve into the Awakened state - Awakened to the true nature of Reality.

In this talk I want to look at that Path as it is illustrated by the life of Siddhartha. The story of the life of Siddhartha is a universal story and the significant episodes in that life indicate truths relevant to the spiritual life of any practitioner. I’m going to look at some of these episodes, from the Four Sights up to the four archetypal images associated with the Enlightenment experience and I want to draw out the universal significance of each episode and perhaps a few points that could be of specific significance to us here today.

I’ll begin with the episode known as the Four Sights. I believe this episode prefigures the later story of the appearance of Mara, the Earth Goddess, Brahma Sahampati and Mucalinda at the time of the Awakening. We’ll look at these parallels later. The story of the four sights tells us that Siddhartha had led a very sheltered life, protected by his father from all suffering, but as a restless young man he found a way to get out and have some wider experience. What he experienced was seeing a sick person, an old person, and a corpse for the first time in his life and also a wandering holy man. These sights, we are told, had a profound effect on him and led to him giving up his life of luxury and going forth into the world in search of truth and a solution to the problem of human suffering.

You could take this story literally, that he had never encountered sickness, old age and death before, or you could understand it as meaning that he saw these things as if for the first time. In other words, he saw the significance of sickness, aging and death. He saw that it was what happened to everyone and what would happen to him. He saw it clearly, with the full force of a shock. He saw it in such a way that he couldn’t deny it, couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t just carry on living as if everything was the same as before. Now death was a reality for him, illness and old age were realities and they had to be faced up to. He couldn’t go back to a superficial life in the face of these existential facts which had shocked him into waking up to the naked insecurity of life. This was a process of insight for Siddhartha and it is a process that happens for many people, perhaps it has happened to some of us here. For some people this sort of awakening has a profound life-changing effect and they set out on the journey of spiritual searching and spiritual discovery, as Siddhartha did.

For others the experience gradually fades and old habits take over so that they manage to ignore their deeper experiences. Some people deliberately bury their insight into life’s insecurity, beneath a life of hedonism or even addiction. And some people embark on the spiritual quest, but get lost along the way or begin to use their spiritual practice as a way of avoiding the raw truths of sickness, old age and death rather than as a way of facing and transcending them. But many of us, hopefully all of us here, are inspired by the image of the wandering holy man - the image of someone who gives up everything for the sake of truth, someone whose life is a wholehearted quest for truth.

Seeing these four sights is not an easy matter and I don’t believe it is usually a one-off event. Seeing these four sights is a process of deepening insight, a process of dawning clarity, a process of emotional, intellectual and spiritual adjustment to the fact that life is change. Sickness, old age and death are inevitable because change is the nature of life. The more deeply we see and understand this, the more acceptable it becomes and therefore the less we suffer by trying to resist change. This process of seeing the four sights,seeing them deeply, being affected by them, understanding and being moved by the significance of them, can go on throughout our life and it is worth our while reflecting on these four sights again and again.

We can ask ourselves questions. What is my attitude to illness? Do I see any deeper significance in it? Is my attitude to illness different when it affects me and when it affects others? Why is it different? Similarly with old age and death. What are my attitudes to old age and death? Am I aware of old age and death around me? Am I aware of myself as someone subject to old age and death? And what does the wandering holy man mean to me? Is there an equivalent of the wandering holy man in my life? Is there something which reminds me of the deeper significance of life? How often am I aware of that dimension represented by the wandering holy man? Am I moved to action by the image of the wandering holy man and the spiritual dimension of life? Perhaps for some of us the question will be - have I really seen the four sights and if I have, am I still aware of them?

Because I've been healthy all my life it comes as a shock to me when I get sick, it’s something I don't normally experience or reflect upon. As I get older I am having to take it on board more. Sangharakshita some years ago when he was experiencing the effects of old age, including the loss of some of his eyesight, said that he had reflected deeply on death but he hadn't reflected deeply enough on old age and it's affects. It's not easy to be aware of these things.

Siddhartha did see the four sights. He saw them very deeply. He saw the significance of sickness, old age and death and the wandering holy man and it shook him to the core of his being. He could not be the same again; he had to change his life. He left home and set out in quest of the truth, in quest of the answer to the problem of human suffering. This episode in his life is known as the Going Forth. Going forth doesn't just apply to the Buddha it can apply to anyone of us and in different ways. Some of us may go forth in the traditional way and undertake something like a journey. Sangharakshita talks about going forth in terms of getting rid of his papers, passport and all those things and journeying around India on foot. When I was twenty two I gave up my career and possessions to go in search of meaning. That was the result of seeing an older person in the work place retiring and seeing how empty their life was after spending fifty years in that job, it just shook me and I gave up everything. I did find Buddhism six years later.

The Going Forth represents a reorientation of one’s whole life. It involves actively moving away from the mundane, self-interested values of the world around us and moving towards values that are compassionate and based in a deeper awareness of the nature of life. Sometimes it is quite difficult to see what the values of the world are because we are so much in the world and so much influenced by what we read and hear, a bit like fish swimming in water. We can't see the water, the influence of the internet, TV , social media and so on. If we are not sufficiently aware, we may not even notice that certain values are being promulgated all the time by the media, by politicians and so on.

Some of the more obvious values today are: that choice is a good thing, that economic growth is a good thing, that nation states have a real existence, that quality of life can be measured by the ability to buy things and so on. And some of the values will be so much a part of the air that we breathe that we will apply them to our spiritual practice without even noticing. For instance I have noticed that the notion of choice has become more and more prevalent over the past five to ten years. Politicians tell us that what people want is choice and on the internet, on TV, in the shopping centres, we are inundated with offers of choice. And of course, we often believe it, we believe that we are being offered genuine choices and that having these choices gives us greater freedom.

We become enthralled to the idea that choice means freedom and we start to look for choice in our spiritual life, a choice of practices, a choice of lifestyles, a choice of teachings, a choice of teachers and so on. And of course the choice is there, a whole spiritual supermarket of choices, a whole shopping mall of choices, even within Buddhism. Then of course there are all the tasty morsels from elsewhere, from various therapies and other disciplines, a whole smorgasbord of choices. This one value of the world we live in could potentially cause us a great deal of confusion and lead us astray on all sorts of interesting sidetracks, and away from depth of experience, especially if we haven't fully seen the four sights yet. I am not saying it is wrong to investigate other practices - just that we should go for depth in what we do.

Going Forth then, is a re-orientation of our life towards the spiritual values of awareness and compassion, the value of awakening more and more to reality, and we need to examine other values in the light of this. For instance, does the multiplication of choices lead to greater awareness and compassion? Does nationalism or consumerism lead to greater awareness and compassion? What values do we have? What values are promoting greater awareness and compassion in our lives? What values are hindering our awakening to reality? What values are obscuring our vision of the four sights?

The questions mean reflecting, and the importance of reflecting on life and experience. It’s not such a good idea to expect immediate answers from yourself or anybody else the important thing is the question not the answer, the best answers come from the depth of your own experience. If you have an attitude of question, of reflecting then in your ordinary life as experience happens you will be reflecting because you will be bringing that attitude to what ever happens. You will be seeing the significance.

For Siddhartha, Going Forth meant a complete change in his life,internally and externally. For each of us it may mean that or it may mean something else. Whatever it means I think that it is also best seen as an ongoing process rather than a one-off event. As we will see it was an on-going event for Siddhartha too. The event symbolises the process - a process that carries on until awakening dawns. It is the process of letting go of everything that holds us back from seeing clearly the truth of constant change and living our lives by the truth of constant change.

The truth of constant change applies to our bodies, our thoughts, our emotions, it applies to other people, it applies to everything in this world, it applies to the whole universe. The truth of constant change transcends death because death is only a moment in the vast interplay of energies we call life. We go forth from limitations, limiting views, limiting values, towards an open road, an open dimension where we can live in harmony with the reality of constant change. Walt Whitman evokes this attitude joyfully in his Song of the Open Road:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, 

Healthy, free, the world before me, 

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,

Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,

Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,

Strong and content I travel the open road.

Here is how the Sutta Nipata puts it

“Now I will tell the going Forth. How he, the Mighty Seer, went forth. How he was questioned and described the reason for his going forth. The crowded life lived in a house exhales an atmosphere of dust; but life gone forth is open wide: he saw this, and he chose the going forth.” (Life of the Buddha, Nanamoli, p.11) Let’s hope that given all the choices we have, we too choose the Going forth again and again.

The next episode in the life of Siddhartha that I would like to look at briefly is his attainment of Dhyana. Siddhartha became the disciple of Alara Kalama first and later of Uddaka Ramaputta and under these teachers he became adept at entering dhyanic states of consciousness - right up to the highest formless dhyanas. He was such a good disciple that Alara Kalama asked him to become co-leader of his community and Uddaka Ramaputta asked him to take over complete leadership of his community. However Siddhartha was not satisfied and was well aware that he was still within the realm of egotism and had not solved the problem of suffering. He left these teachers and went forth yet again - this time to a life of great austerities. I think many of us would love to be able to get into dhyanic states at will. Indeed many of us probably feel that not being able to attain to the dhyanas means that we cannot meditate and we may even become despondent about meditation and perhaps give up. But Dhyana is not the aim of spiritual practice - it is a pleasant side-effect. In some Tibetan traditions the student is warned against Dhyana and told to come out of it as quickly a possible - it is regarded as a dangerous distraction.

In the Brahmajala Sutta (Digha Nikaya,Sutta1) the Buddha outlines the 62 wrong views to be avoided if one is to make spiritual progress. Now the interesting thing about these wrong views is that most of them arise out of some kind of higher experience and quite a few arise from misinterpretation of higher Dhyanic experience. As Kamalashila put it in a talk on the subject, “It seems that if one practices within a framework of self-view, then every attainment in meditation will simply confirm that view.” The danger of dhyanic experience is that it may lead into a cul-de-sac of wrong views, which block any further spiritual progress.

Siddhartha saw this and went forth from Dhyana. Perhaps we need to reflect on the significance of this. If we are regularly in Dhyana - we may need to let go of it and go forth into deeper insight and if we are regularly yearning to experience Dhyana perhaps we need to go forth from that yearning and start to see our meditation practice as being concerned with truth seeking rather than pleasure seeking. The pleasure will arise of its’ own accord.

Siddhartha undertook severe austerities, in line with practices current at the time. It was felt that the demands of the body, for food, sex, warmth and so on, were a major hindrance to spiritual insights and therefore the body had to be subdued. It is said that he took this to an extreme too, but in the end he realised that was not helping and he went forth from the life of austerities too - his third major Going Forth. I don‘t think there are any people in the Triratna Community who undertake austerities, but perhaps there are still some lessons to be learned here.

Siddhartha moved from blissful practices to painful practices, hoping that what he didn’t gain through bliss he would gain through pain. And it is true for many people in the Triratna Community that there can be an over-emphasis on pain. We can give a lot of attention to painful emotional experiences and value them perhaps more than we need to, even considering them to be somehow more authentic or real, than pleasurable experience. The American psychotherapist and mystic, Suzanne Segal, talks about this from her experience as a therapist. She says: “the negative is usually taken to be the truth. After all, the negative is so compelling and seems so deep. The positive is regarded as superficial and temporary, but, ah, the negative! When it arises, we believe we’re really in the presence of truth.

Connecting with others in our Western therapeutic culture is often based on a sharing of problems. When someone refuses to reveal what is most difficult in their lives, they are said to be ‘withholding or ‘cut-off’ or ‘untrustworthy’. When their problems are known, however, they are thought to be revealing the truth about themselves. This overvaluing of the negative is rampant in our culture. Just about every person who sits across from me in my office and speaks to me about their lives believes that what is negative about them is most true. They are convinced that they carry something rotten at their core, that they are bad deep down, and that they will always return to the negative, which is the real bottom line.” (Suzanne Segal,Collision With the Infinite, p. 153)

For some of us at least there may be a sense in which we could helpfully go forth from an over-emphasis on the painful aspects of experience. We could deliberately affirm what is positive in our lives, some people have a practice of thinking at the end of the day - what did I enjoy today? If you think of five or ten things that you enjoyed today it can give you quite a different perspective on life. If you deliberately think of even very small things that you've enjoyed, like the light through the trees or the clouds in the sky, you find that you start to notice enjoyable things and you start to have more enjoyment in your life. It’s good to do a practice like that as it affirms what's positive and what's enjoyable in your day-to-day life.

Sometimes it is said that Siddhartha was making an unbalanced effort in practising austerities and he needed to find a middle way of more balanced effort. This is not borne out by the texts, which represent him as making a strong, even forceful effort, when he sat beneath the Bodhi tree. What was wrong about his effort in austerity was that it was effort in the wrong direction, effort leading nowhere. What we have to consider about our spiritual efforts is not so much a matter of quantity, but rather a matter of quality. We don’t need to worry too much that our efforts might be too strong, what we really need to pay attention to is whether our efforts are effective, spiritually speaking. Whether they are leading in the direction of truth. The direction of more Compassion, more Metta.

Siddhartha went forth again, in the process losing his reputation, and being criticised by his former companions. Going Forth can bring unpopularity it seems. Your friends and family might think you're being foolish or a failure if you turn your back on material values.

He took some nourishment and sat down beneath a peepul tree, thereafter known as the Bodhi tree. This tree prefigures the image of Mucalinda - naga and youthful hero. The tree represents a uniting of the heights and depths. Its’ roots go deep down into the rock and its’ branches soar heavenwards. It is generating energy in the hidden depths and manifesting beauty and protectiveness in the world. This uniting of opposites, depths and heights, inner and outer, symbolises the enlightened state, a state of completeness uniting Wisdom and Compassion, uniting energy and stillness. This is something worth reflecting on - do we have a sense of heights and depths on our lives? What do we mean by heights? and depths? In what way are our heights and depths not united? In what ways are they united? How could we bring about more unity of our heights and depths? Or to put it another way, do our ideals, aspirations, dreams and imaginings have a strong connection with our on-going awareness of ourselves, physically, emotionally and mentally? Are the branches connected to the roots by a trunk of awareness and metta?

Siddhartha was sheltered by the tree or more prosaically, his aspiration and faith gave him protection. And he needed protection because now he is assailed by Mara. Mara is the personification of resistance to spiritual awaking. Firstly he is attacked by Mara’s army, then tempted by Mara’s daughters and then Mara tries to undermine his confidence. So here we have very dynamic images for hatred, craving and ignorance.

Mara’s army attacks with arrows and spears but all the missiles hurled at Siddhartha turn into flowers, blossoms and settle gently at his feet. This attack of Mara’s army represents a massive internal conflict. Siddhartha’s unshakeable determination is coming up against all the forces of his psyche that resist the implications of spiritual death. This is an inevitable part of any spiritual endeavour.

We are never one hundred percent behind our spiritual aspirations and so we experience conflict and you could say that dealing with this conflict is the raw material of our spiritual practice. That's what we are working with; our aspirations and our actual desires and experience. We can take that raw material of inner conflict and do something creative with it. If we don’t deal with our inner conflict it will begin to manifest externally and we will end up blaming other people for our lack of spiritual progress and limitations. It can seem more reasonable and comfortable to blame others for our hindrances and settle down into a habit of rumbling resentment. On one level inner conflict is a manifestation of the unintegrated psyche and the disparate parts have to come into some sort of relationship - just as the Buddha’s awareness and faith comes into relationship with Mara’s armies and the conflict resolves into flower blossom - symbols of beauty and growth.

On another level inner conflict is a manifestation of the ego’s resistance to reality. It’s an existential thing this inner conflict. Experiencing inner conflict doesn't mean we are bad or un-spiritual or incapable of practice, it is what happens if you try to lead a spiritual life.

Either way it is more creative to recognise inner conflict for what it is and take awareness into it. We have to become acutely aware of how we resist spiritual insight and how we cause ourselves suffering. If we manage to do this thoroughly then our resistances will subside. For instance, we have an ideal of spiritual community, an ideal of harmony and co-operation and goodwill. We value friendship and collective activities. But then we may find ourselves feeling lonely or isolated. We can feel that our ideal is not working and this can lead to a conflict within us, a conflict between our personal experience and our ideal. This could lead us to blame the other people around us. It is because they are selfish or because they are unfriendly or because they are English or whatever; that’s why your ideal of a harmonious spiritual community is not happening and that’s why you feel lonely. Or you might blame the circumstances; it’s because community life is unnatural or because the Buddhist Centre is not being properly run or whatever. We often look outside ourselves for causes and we find lots of imperfections in the people and the world around us which seem plausible reasons for our dissatisfaction. But we could take a different approach. We could assume that our conflict was a manifestation of egotism in some form and once again I’m not saying that egotism is bad but we could investigate it from that standpoint. We could ask ourselves: in what way am I being selfish? How is my loneliness and isolation a manifestation of selfishness? And we might discover some things to make us sit up and take action. We might realise that the antidote to loneliness lies in our own hands. We need to think of others and go out to them, befriend them. It’s a kind of counter-intuitive response; loneliness doesn’t mean I need friends, it means I need to befriend others. In a way, what we discover if we look deeply into our dissatisfaction is that we are both victim and perpetrator, we are experiencing suffering and causing suffering and if we see that clearly enough we stop perpetrating our own suffering and the spears and arrows of inner conflict turn into benign blossoms.

Another aspect of Mara’s army is that they represent fear- our worst nightmares - all the fears that hold us back from living more fully. Fear is one of the most tangible experiences of ego that we can have. Where there is fear there is ego. Where there is fear there is self-centredness. The Tantric yogis go into the cremation grounds at night to encounter fear, to encounter ego in a very potent form and by facing fear they break through to a new level of freedom, symbolised by the dakini.

Most of us have no need to find a cremation ground. We experience fears, large and small, all the time. Sometimes it is just the fear of being with other people or the fear of being alone. We can try to notice our fears and make use of them in our spiritual practice, by taking little risks here and there we gain a little more freedom and develop the habit of freedom and confidence. On a little personal note here, at the time of my ordination one of my greatest fears was the fear of speaking in public, which I assumed every Order Member had to do. I was even on the verge of holding back from ordination, to avoid ever having to speak in public. It was only by doing it that I gradually discovered it wasn’t as bad as I had feared.

After Mara’s army we have Mara’s daughters - Siddhartha was a heterosexual man and so Mara’s daughters represent craving for sense pleasures. Siddhartha is not having an easy time, it’s one distraction after another. Earlier we were told that he could get into dhyana at will and now he is enmeshed in conflict and distraction. From one point of view he is having a really bad meditation; anger, ill-will, fear and craving! I’m sure some of you are familiar with this kind of meditation, or at least you’ve heard about it. But Siddhartha knows what he is doing. He is deliberately facing all the resistance, all the egotistic forces of his own mind and transforming them into something positive. Mara’s daughters, the energy of craving, are transformed into inspiration - the energy of faith or shraddha - represented by the Earth Goddess. Mara’s armies, the energies of inner conflict, are transformed into compassion, represented by Brahma Sahampati. And Mara himself, the energy of ignorance, is transformed into the great Wisdom represented by Mucalinda.

In the Vimalakirti Nirdesa - Mara tries to make a gift of his daughters to a monk, who refuses to accept them, but Vimalakirti does accept them and turns them into teachers of the Dharma. Mara’s daughters are the energies of desire, which can move from being desire for sense pleasure to being desire for the Dharma; from kama chandha to dhamma chandha. In the symbolism associated with Siddhartha’s struggle, the Earth Goddess, Vasundhara, could be seen as his muse, his inspiration, his Dhamma chandha - she is the transformation of the energies represented by Mara’s daughters. The Earth Goddess is a witness to Siddhartha’s practice over lifetimes; she is an appeal to experience. In the context of transforming the energies of craving, this means that if we bring awareness to our actual experience, we will see that our dissatisfaction has never been fully satisfied by succumbing to our sense craving. In fact our craving for sense pleasure is itself dissatisfaction, it is dukkha. Our experience is telling us the truth and if we listen often enough, eventually we will hear.

The earth Goddess is also an appeal to experience in the face of doubt and lack of confidence. Mara suggests to Siddhartha that he is wasting his time. He could be having a good life with plenty of money, property, power -whatever he wanted. It’s all his for the taking. Who does he think he is anyway, trying to solve the problem of human suffering! He is assailed by doubts, doubting whether what he is doing makes sense and doubting whether he is capable of attaining to Wisdom. Any one on the spiritual path is going to experience doubt about whether what you are doing makes sense and if you are capable of it. The Earth Goddess emerges and reassures him that she has witnessed all his efforts and he is indeed capable and worthy of gaining Enlightenment. The Earth Goddess has always been there. She represents something timeless, eternal and she can attest that the pursuit of truth is worthy and worthwhile endeavour for human consciousness. Perhaps we could even say that the Earth goddess asserts that it is natural for human consciousness to want to evolve towards the truth. She is hinting at something that is made more explicit later in the White Lotus Sutra, that the Dharma is eternal or timeless. Reality is always Reality and has always been Reality and will always be Reality. This is the answer to Mara’s attempts to sow the seeds of doubt.

When we experience doubt we may find it helpful to reflect on what spiritual experience we have had and what spiritual progress we have made. We may also find it helpful to reflect on the millions of people down the generation who have been inspired and uplifted by the Dharma - a concrete testimony to the power and efficacy of the Dharma. When we are beset by doubts, what we need is to appeal to experience and inspiration - our own experience and inspiration and the experience and inspiration of others -if we do that we will have the Earth Goddess on our side. If we are experiencing doubt we will need the help of others.

The next episode represents a big turning point, a kind of internal going forth. Brahma Sahampati appears. The story says that the Buddha was inclined to keep his realisation to himself because nobody would be able to understand it and Brahma Sahampati appeared before him, telling him there were some who would understand and pleading with him to teach what he had discovered. Brahma Sahampati represents great compassion arising in the mind of Siddhartha. Previously he has been concerned with an internal struggle to overcome fear, hatred, craving and doubt but now he is turning outward, he is becoming concerned with the fear, hatred, craving and doubt of others. Having seen through the causes of suffering in himself he now wants to help others to the same realisation.

This process is mirrored in our own lives. Often we take up the spiritual life for a mixture of selfish and idealistic reasons and as we practice we experience the conflict between our recalcitrant egotism and our altruistic aspirations. We necessarily become concerned with ourselves, with the workings of our own mind, the trajectory of our own habits and so on. However in time we should experience a quietening of the inner turmoil and a growing concern for the spiritual welfare of others and a willingness to help others through the mess of their inner conflicts.

As with all the other episodes in the life of Siddhartha, this episode also represents a process - the process of growing generosity and compassion. We all have our own version of Brahma Sahampati, a voice urging us to acts of generosity and kindness. As we progress spiritually we will find ourselves listening to that voice more and more. The more we hear that voice and pay heed to it, the more we can be sure we are developing spiritually.

The next episode is the appearance of Mucalinda, the Serpent King. He appears in order to protect Siddhartha from the rain. He wraps his coils around Siddhartha and spreads his hood over him. This image reminds us of the Bodhi tree shading Siddhartha from the sun. When the rain stops the serpent king transforms into a young man and salutes the Buddha. This young man, about sixteen years old, represents the prince of beauty and purity and is later seen in the forms of the archetypal Bodhisattvas, the great spiritual heroes. The serpent king, the king of the Nagas, come from the depths of the ocean. Nagas are associated with wisdom, with depth of understanding. The great Buddhist sage Nagarjuna is said to have travelled to the depths of the ocean where the Naga kings transmitted to him the Prajnaparamita sutra. The Naga king stands for Wisdom and the youth is the spiritual Hero, the Bodhisattva, acting compassionately in the world. The Serpent king and youth represent again the unity of heights and depths, as in the image of the Bodhi tree, but now at a higher level, the level of wisdom/compassion, stillness/activity. The serpent is also an image of tremendous energy; the gathered energies of the Enlightened consciousness.

Our spiritual life is fed and nourished by images and symbols and our imagination is the crucible in which our lives are transformed into energy streams of Wisdom and Compassion. We need the images and symbols of the life of Siddhartha and there are some I haven’t touched on. We need to allow our imagination time to engage with the whole rich panoply of images that Buddhism offers. It doesn’t do to reject some images as not suitable. All the images are interconnected. They are a huge symbolic pattern of psychic growth and if we reject some images we may be disrupting the pattern and making our psychic life more difficult. I mention this because in recent years some people have wanted to reject the image of the young hero, but here with Mucalinda we see that the young hero is integral to a complete image, a union of opposites. Usually when we want to reject symbols or images it's because we are taking them too literally, we are giving them a literal meaning, so we should reject literalism in the realm of symbols not the symbols themselves.

We began with the four sights: sickness,which mirrors Mara, the sickness of the mind, humanity’s illness. Then old age, which mirrors the appeal to experience and ageless wisdom of the Earth Goddess. Then death, which mirrors the death of all the vestiges of ego or selfishness when Great Compassion arises, as in the episode of Brahma Sahampati and finally the wandering holy man, the symbol of the pursuit of Reality, mirrors Mucalinda, the Serpent king and young hero, representing that reality at its height. The wandering holy man is also an image for the rest of the Buddha’s life. It's the archetype of spiritual life.

We have been through a spiral of interweaving images, each with many meanings and each sparking off more and more imaginative reflection. This is the story of Siddhartha and this is our story, this is your story, because Siddhartha represents the individual human being. Siddhartha is every man and every woman. Siddhartha was born, as we are born. What Siddhartha attained, we too can attain. What Siddhartha overcame, we too can overcome.

This world of imagination and symbols, this world of heights and depths, intuited, imagined and experienced - this is the context in which we grow old, gain wisdom, suffer and experience pleasure. This is the rich tapestry of human existence. This is the context of constant change, constant letting go, constant growth and decay in which we live and die.

This vast context of flowing, constant change gives us a perspective that can comfort our suffering and loss and can be a call to freedom for our exuberance and inspiration. We have only to engage with it, imaginatively and wholeheartedly, then death will be less important and life will be more full and meaningful.

I will conclude by giving the last word to a Christian monk and mystic, who was moved, inspired and awakened by Buddhist images. Thomas Merton, the American Trappist monk travelled widely in Asia and had many contacts with Buddhism.

At a place called Polunnaruwa in Sri Lanka there are some huge Buddha images carved from rock. There is a seated Buddha and a reclining Parinirvana Buddha and a standing figure of Ananda. When Thomas Merton visited there in 1968 these Buddha figures had a profound effect on him. Here is how he describes it in his journal: “Polunnaruwa with its vast area under trees. Fences. Few people. No beggars. A dirt road. Lost. Then we find Gal Vihara and the other monastic complex stupas. Cells. Distant mountains, like Yucatan.

The path dips down to Gal Vihara; a wide, quiet hollow, surrounded by trees. A low outcrop of rock with a cave cut into it, and beside the cave a big-seated Buddha on the left, a reclining Buddha on the right, and Ananda, I guess, standing by the head of the reclining Buddha. In the cave, another seated Buddha. I am able to approach the Buddha barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle.

I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity and fluidity of shape and line, the design of the monumental bodies composed into rock shape and landscape, figure, rock, and tree. And the sweep of bare rock sloping away on the other side of the hollow, where you can go back and see different aspects of the figures.

Looking at these figures, I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tired vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. The sheer evidence of the reclining figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with arms folded. The thing about all this is that there is no puzzle, no problem, no ‘mystery’. All problems are resolved, and everything is clear, simply because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all life, is charged with dharmakaya - everything is emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual vitality running together in one aesthetic illumination......

I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else remains, but I have now seen and pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise......

It is pure, complete. It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered. It does not need to be discovered. It is we who need to discover it.” (Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton, p. 435.)

The Meaning of the Stupa

 This talk was given in the warehouse at Windhorse:Evolution, December 2005

A circle is an ancient and universal symbol for humanity, indicating wholeness or completeness and defining a sacred space. Rituals which involve walking or dancing around in a circular motion are very common. And a circle with a dot at its' centre is another symbol. In the Indian tradition this dot is called bindu, which means a “ seed” or “drop”. It means the essence. In the Anuyoga of the Tantric tradition bindu means consciousness.

In Buddhism the mandala is an important symbol and at the centre of any mandala is its essence. The centre of the mandala is what's most important and everything else is arranged around that centre, in service to it. If the Buddha is at the centre of the mandala everything else in the mandala emanates from the Buddha and honours the Buddha, is in relationship to him. Looked at from above, a stupa and its surroundings constitute a mandala, a sacred space in which circular ritual occurs. The stupa itself is the dot, the bindu, the essence at the centre of the mandala. The mandala consists of the dot, the circle and a protective square around that. Usually a mandala has four gateways or entrances. In some traditions these symbolise the Four Immeasurables (Brahma Viharas); loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.

A stupa symbolises the essence of what our lives are about and it is contained within a sacred and protective space. All of this can be seen in physical terms, but it only has meaning in symbolic terms. There is a physical stupa and a symbolic stupa, a physical space and a symbolic space. Although most people can see the physical object and space, not everyone will be able to see the symbolic stupa and the symbolic space. The world of symbols is the world of the imagination and the symbolism of mandalas and stupas are the language of a refined and receptive imagination.

There are different ways to think about a stupa. You could think about the historical development of the stupa and its architectural story in different cultures. You could think about its significance as a monument to the dead. Or you could look at it purely in terms of symbolism. Because symbolism is the language of imagination and of the non-rational, it is not possible to completely explain a symbol. A symbol has endless meanings. You can always open up to new levels of understanding and new depths of feeling in relation to a symbol. This is true of the stupa too. There is no one neat explanation of a stupa. It is not like a sign; say a no-smoking sign or men at work sign, which has only one meaning.

A symbol doesn't have any one meaning. A stupa doesn't have any one meaning. It has a multitude of meanings and it has many layers of meaning. The meaning of the stupa and the meaning of any symbol is closely connected with the state of consciousness of the person who comes into contact with it. But having knowledge about the stupa or any symbol helps us to become more receptive to its symbolism. It helps us to have a more feeling relationship with it. In the Tibetan tradition there are eight different kinds of stupa, each having its own symbolism centred around different events in the life of the Buddha. We won't go into all of that now. From a Buddhist perspective we consist of body, speech and mind and the stupa and its mandala can be looked at in terms of body, speech and mind too. It is probably most helpful to look at the stupa and its mandala in terms of consciousness and energy.

Consciousness is the sum total of our thoughts, emotions, imaginings, mental images and so on. This consciousness transformed into sound is our speech; speech includes writing, singing, or any mode of communication. Consciousness manifests through our body as activity. The world of created objects, buildings, cars, toys, computers, desks, rupas, is all a manifestation of collective human consciousness. All those things we see around us are what human consciousness looks like in this time and place. You could say that all the created objects and cultivated landscapes that we see around us are symbols of human consciousness. And a stupa is a symbol of human consciousness in a very concentrated form, it is an essence. Depending on which tradition you look at a stupa might symbolise the Enlightened mind; the highest state to which human consciousness can attain. Or it might symbolise stages of refinement or development of consciousness. I think it is more useful as a spiritual aid to see the stupa as symbolising progressive stages of consciousness. I'll go through these stages briefly and then look at the stupa in the context of its mandala and relate it all to body, speech and mind, and consider the significance for us of having a stupa here.

The lowest part of the stupa here is the base and not part of the stupa. It is a plinth for holding the stupa. Then there is a lotus and the first section of the stupa is on the lotus. This first section is associated with the earth element. Earth symbolises solidity, resistance, inertia, and fertility. The next section is associated with water. Water symbolises fluidity, flowing movement on one level, symbolic of action and reaction . The third section is associated with fire. Fire is heat and it rises upwards and is symbolic of inspiration, and aspiration toward an ideal. The next section is associated with air. Air can move in every direction simultaneously. Air is symbolic of radiating energy, compassionate activity, universal loving kindness. The final piece is the flaming drop which is associated with space, where every thing happens. This is the highest point. This is consciousness at its highest or most expansive.

These sections, one on top of the other, rising to a pinnacle, can be seen as a progressive refinement of energy and a progressive development of consciousness. Each level can be associated with a particular kind of activity, and a particular kind of communication and particular states of mind. Another way of seeing it is as levels of awareness and levels of loving kindness. The stupa is an image of each and every one of us. When you look at the stupa you see yourself, you see your friends, you see the people you don't like. The stupa is a symbol of every person. In the stupa you can see what you are, what level of consciousness you inhabit and you can see your potential. Conversely you could say that each person is a stupa. Each person contains within themselves either the potential or the actuality of what the stupa represents. In case this is too abstract for some of you, let's get down to what it means both individually and collectively in terms of body, speech and mind.

Before that though, just a few words about the mandala which the stupa stands at the centre of. When we circumambulate the stupa we are creating a sacred space. It is as if we are drawing a circle in the air with our bodies and the circle defines the sacred space around the stupa. What takes place within that circle is aimed at cultivating the progression of consciousness symbolised by the sections of the stupa. Beyond the circle is the rest of the mandala. The question is what is the symbolic significance of the rest of the mandala in relation to the stupa.

The space around the stupa is the protective mandala and as such everything in the space, everything that happens, is related to the stupa, even, you could say, an expression of the stupa. The space around the stupa is part of a process of gradually transforming energy and even of refining energy. And how we approach our life is also a process of transforming energy in both an individual and collective sense. Individually on the level of mind, we are trying to transform our thoughts, emotions and aspirations from being relatively self-centred to being both self and other centred and beyond that to transcending the distinction between self and other. We can elevate ourselves, our work, our life and progress up through the levels of consciousness, symbolised in the stupa, by means of our mental attitude to life.

We could be very resistant and consequently feel very tired and lacking in energy, experiencing the inertia of resistance to the reality of our life. This would keep us on the lower levels of the stupa, on the levels of the earth and water elements. Our life would then be a bit miserable and we would oscillate between feeling depressed and resentful and justifying that to ourselves, And perhaps feeling superior because of how justified we are in being resentful and depressed. And that kind of mental state would be expressed through our complaining speech and in our bodies which would feel sluggish and lacking in energy. That is the earth and water level of consciousness.

I think there are two main things we can do if we find ourselves in this kind of mental state. We can try to change the mental state or we can look for a more suitable environment to live in. Neither is easy. We can try to change the mental state by working on the mind directly through introspection and reflection. Or by working on our speech, through developing ethical awareness. Or by doing something to change our physical state, by engaging in yoga or martial art or something like that. Or it may be that none of that is quite enough and that we are simply in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing and need to find some different way of giving expression to our energy and aspirations. Of course this is not easy. When we are in a state of inertia or reactivity, everything seems impossible and we feel that we are a victim and can't do anything. This is a very difficult state to get out of. Sometimes therapy helps, sometimes talking with friends helps, sometimes a change in circumstances helps, sometimes some external happening shocks us out of it. A death or accident or illness shocks us into activity. But probably most important is recognising when you are in such a state of earth-like inertia and water reactivity and then desiring to move on. That desire can become an intention to do something.

When we are out of that state and in the state symbolised by the fire element, then we are in touch with our inspiration. We are motivated and our energy feels freer and it is easy to engage and even feel joy in our life and in all of our activities. Our verbal expression, our speech, becomes lighter and more friendly and helpful and physically we feel able to move about with a kind of lightness and our tiredness is just tiredness from effort and somehow satisfying. This is a pleasant state to be in and it makes life easier for us. The value of this from a spiritual perspective is that we become more able to reflect on our experiences and on what life is all about. We can begin to penetrate more deeply into reality. The danger is that we feel comfortable and complacent and don't make any effort to reflect or introspect. We are happy and content enough and don't feel any need to think about our life or reflect on the world about us. This level of consciousness,symbolised by the fire element, can be characterised by strong feelings of aspiration towards the ideal, inspiration, contentment but also possible complacency and a kind of refined selfishness.

When we are content and happy and inspired it is very important that we reflect. We need to reflect on our internal world, the fleeting thoughts and feelings, the dreams, the fantasies and we need to reflect on the external world of people, objects and events and how we experience them. As I said earlier, all of our environment is an expression of human consciousness, even a symbol of consciousness and the more we engage with it and reflect, the more deeply we will understand the nature of life, and the reality of life. Reflection and introspection like this can lead us into a vision of reality, an insight into the truth of life. It can lead us to wisdom. And this is where we pass into the level of consciousness symbolised by the air element.

This is characterised by energy that moves freely in all directions. In spiritual terms, this is compassionate activity. It is the Bodhicitta, the mind intent on Enlightenment for the sake of all. This is what wisdom or insight really is. It is the realisation, at a very deep level, that all life is interconnected and that what we do to any life form is done to ourselves. We are part of life, intimately and profoundly part of life, not separate from it. Spiritual ignorance is the egotism which persuades us that we are separate from life and from other people. Wisdom is the insight, the definite knowledge, that we are completely interconnected with all living things, through all time. And the outcome of this realisation or the expression of this realisation is compassion, which is what this level of the stupa symbolises. The air that invisibly nourishes and moves freely everywhere. Like air, there are no boundaries to compassion and no fanfare at its coming or going.

The top of the stupa, the flaming drop, symbolises the heights of human consciousness, the state of Enlightenment. It is a symbol full of mystery and without end. A stupa doesn't end and the flaming drop is there to symbolise its infinity, its continued and constant progression beyond language, beyond time, beyond space, beyond grasping. Your imagination and intuition has to take you to some glimpse of the vast firmament of cosmic consciousness. And this is the essence, this is the central point, from which everything emerges. This is what is at the centre of our lives. Our task as spiritual beings and aspiring Buddhas is to try to maintain an awareness of the connection between the flaming drop of Enlightenment and our daily activities, our daily thoughts and words. How can we do that? How can we bridge the gap between these lofty high ideas of wisdom , compassion, universal loving kindness and our ordinary everyday lives?

I could come up with some answers, both theoretical and practical, but it is really only you who can know what is feasible, bearing in mind your own capacities and abilities and the demands of your life. You need to work out what are the best practical steps you can take to help yourself to fulfil the promise and potential of the stupa. How you can be your own stupa riding up through progressive levels of consciousness and encouraging the release of energy and the arising of wisdom and compassion.

The Vortex of Compassion

This talk was given at Padmaloka Retreat Centre, September 2004

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Great Day

Hurrah for revolution and cannon-shot!

A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.

Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!

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

(Selected Poetry p 190)

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

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

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

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

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