Spiritual Friendship and Ethics

This talk was given in the Cambridge Buddhist Centre, March 2013 

This year it is thirty years since I became a Buddhist. In August of 1983 I was in West Berlin, as it was then called. I had been there for over two years and I was about to leave. Just a week before I left I went to visit the Buddhist Temple in Frohnau, in the suburbs of Berlin. I had been there before to use the library and enjoy the gardens, but this was the first time that one of the resident monks approached me and spoke to me. He asked me whether I meditated and I told him that I chanted a mantra, which I had learned from a book. He sat down and taught me the Metta Bhavana and talked to me about the five precepts. This conversation had a huge impact on me and by the end of it I was a Buddhist and I have been ever since. The monk was from Sri Lanka and his name was Maha Dhammanisanthi. He asked me to send him a photo of myself so that he could include me in his Metta Bhavana practice. I did send him a photo. When I visited Berlin again seven years later he had left and gone back to Sri Lanka, and I never saw him again. But I am very grateful to him and I regard him as my first Kalyana Mitra. Eight or nine months later I got involved with the Triratna Buddhist Community . This was as a result of reading a book by Subhuti called Buddhism for today. When I read this book I knew immediately I wanted to get involved with Triratna.

The first Order Member I met when I got involved with Triratna was Danavira. He helped me in many practical ways including with housing and looked after me extremely well. He was a real exemplar of generosity. Then I met Atula who was very at home in the world of dreams, emotions and psychology and who helped me open up emotionally and cope with distress. When I started working at the London Buddhist Centre I was working with a man called Colin Lavender who later became Sumangala. He was a very close friend of mine for many many years. There are many others over the years who have helped me enormously just by being there to listen and by befriending me. There were Satyabandhu, Vimalabandhu, Maitreyabandhu. Now there are many people that I am a spiritual friend (Kalyana Mitra) to and people who want me to be their preceptor. I hope I can give them some of what I have received from others over the last thirty years.

Spiritual friendship is one of the main gifts I have received from involvement in the Triratna Community and Order and it is a gift, whether receiving or giving. I experienced the very idea of spiritual friendship and the practice as gifts from Bhante Sangharakshita and therefore he too has been a Kalyana Mitra to me over the last thirty years. Looking back like this and remembering all those friendships and connections which are woven into the tapestry of my life and considering all the friendships and connections I am involved with in my life just now, and also reflecting on all the friendships and connections that I will encounter in the future, I feel very rich. This is where the wealth of my life is; not in property, not in bank accounts, but in friendships and relationships. It is other people who give my life a sense of richness and abundance.

Also when I look at all these relationships I have a sense of the flow of spiritual friendship from Bhante to people like Subhuti, Atula, and Danavira and from them to me and from me to others and from those others to more and more people and so on. A giant river of Kalyana Mitrata flowing on and on down the generations. Or to change the image: it's a huge matrix of connections stretching over space and time, encompassing the lives of more and more people. And what it is all about is people communicating with other people and what is being communicated is the experience and understanding of the Dharma. The Dharma, the message of the Buddha, is being passed on through relationships of one kind or another. The Dharma, is animated, is given life by being practised, and those who practice begin to embody the Dharma. It is this living, breathing Dharma that gets passed on through Kalyana Mitrata.

The Buddha was of course the original spiritual friend. After his Enlightenment he sought out people he could communicate with and when his communication had transformed the hearts and minds of his first sixty disciples or friends, he asked them to go off and communicate with others: "go now and wander for the welfare and happiness of many, out of compassion for the world, for the benefit, welfare and happiness of gods and men. Teach the law that is good in the beginning, good in the middle and good in the end, with the meaning and the letter. Explain a holy life that is utterly perfect and pure. There are creatures with little dust on their eyes will be lost through not hearing the law." (Nanamoli, Life of the Buddha, p.52)

In the Dhammapada he teaches the importance of association with the spiritually mature. He says: "

One should not associate with friends who are evildoers nor with persons who are despicable; associate with friends who are virtuous, associate with the best of men." (Verse 78, trans. Radhakrishnan) The words for 'friends who are virtuous' are mitte Kalyane.

Spiritual friendship is at the heart of Buddhism. In the beginning our practice is to be receptive to those who can guide us; later on our practice is to be mutually supportive with those on the path with us and later still our practice is to share our experience and knowledge of the Dharma with others. This is Buddhism in a nutshell: learn how to practice, practice, share your experience of practice with others, and this is all about spiritual friendship. Friendship based on common spiritual aspiration and a common spiritual practice. Spiritual practice does not mean meditation practice. Meditation is only a small part for most of us. In a 24 hour day we spend about seven hours asleep and perhaps one hour meditating. The other 12 hours are the really important part of the day for spiritual practice.

What then is spiritual practice? Perhaps we need first to answer the question - what do we mean by spiritual? Based on our understanding of what the spiritual is we will be able to understand better what spiritual practices and what spiritual friendship is and how they relate to each other and this in turn will help us to understand the relationship between spiritual friendship and ethics, which is of course the theme of this talk.

The spiritual in the Buddhist context is that which relates to states of consciousness which transcend our normal mundane mind experience. Our mundane experience is fundamentally flavoured by our ego identity. According to the Buddha this means that normal mundane consciousness is characterised by greed; which is a grasping after whatever will enhance our sense of self, possessions, people, comfort, security and so on. Normal mundane consciousness is also characterised by aversion; pushing away anything that appears to threaten our sense of self, people, events, demands, and so on. Normal mundane consciousness is also characterised by lack of wisdom about the true nature of reality even a wilful turning away from the fact of impermanence, the fact that actions have consequences, the fact of our own delusion.

Transcending this mundane mind means moving towards becoming generous, abundant, non-grasping, non-attached, instead of greedy and a grasping. It means becoming loving, kind, open and receptive, rather than averse and hateful. Transcending our mundane mind means becoming wise and fully accepting of the impermanence of our self and all things, and fully accepting of the need to change and grow and develop into a more mature and expansive human being.

The essence of practice is repetition. To practice is to repeat something again and again. Just as a musician or an athlete practises. Spiritual practice is the repeated activity of body, speech and mind which enables us to attain the spiritual. Spiritual practice is the repeated activity of body, speech and mind which enables us to transcend our egotism and grow into embodiments of compassion and wisdom.

Spiritual friendship is the friendship between people who are committed to and engaged in spiritual practice. The repeated activities which together make up a spiritual practice are: acts of giving, acts of kindness, words of kindness, truthful, helpful and harmonising words, and thoughts of kindness and generosity. All of this is in a context of a growing awareness. As our awareness grows our activities of body, speech and mind can become more sensitive to others and more subtle.

Awareness is developed through meditation in conjunction with and in interaction with other people who share our aspirations and practices. Meditation if it is isolated from the context of interaction with others who share our aspirations and practice, can in the worst case lead to greater delusion rather than a greater awareness. This is why spiritual friendship is so important, a spiritual friend in the form of a teacher or guide can help us to understand our own experience better and prevent us from interpretations that don't lead to spiritual growth. Spiritual friends who are on the same level of experience support us through difficult times and also help with the mutual exploration of experience. And spiritual friends who are less spiritually developed provide a context in which the truth of our spiritual insights are tested; are we really more aware, more honest and open, kinder and more generous than we were before? This is tested when we begin to share our experience with others.

The big test of our growing spiritual maturity is not whether we can focus on the tip of our nose for half an hour, it's not whether we have peak experiences of bliss when we meditate, it's not whether we can sit in meditation for ten hours a day. These things may all be very valuable and a great boost to our spiritual practice, but the real test, what is of real significance, is what happens in our interactions with other people . When our actions, words and mental states become more kusala, skilful, and others are able to experience that our actions, words and mental states are kusala – then we are truly making progress in the direction of higher states of consciousness. We are beginning to embody the spiritual and are becoming spiritual beings.

Ethics is the word we often use in place of kusala or sila or sikkhapada. Kusala means skilful. Sikkhapada is the training principle. Kusala is how a spiritual being behaves. Someone who has realised the true nature of reality, whether a Stream Entrant or a Buddha is kusala, skilful. What they do is kusala, what they say is kusala and what they think and feel is kusala. Kusala describes the world of a Buddha.

When we decide that we want to grow and develop and move in the direction of Buddhahood, we start by trying to make our actions kusala, our words kusala and our minds kusala. The most fundamental act that moves towards Buddhahood is the act of giving because it transcends self-centredness. Giving is the basis of kusala. In terms of words it is honesty that is most basic and in terms of thoughts and feelings it is Metta, loving kindness, which is most basic. The foundations of our spiritual life are giving, honesty and Metta and these are practised towards ourselves and towards others.

Spiritual friends are an essential ingredient in any life dedicated to spiritual practice and the attainment of Buddhahood. They are essential because we can learn from them. Without the Buddha there would be no Dharma, without Bhante Sangharakshita there would be no Triratna Community and Triratna Order, without the Triratna Order there would be no Cambridge Buddhist Centre, without the creation of the Cambridge Buddhist Centre you would not be listening to me here tonight. The flow of spiritual friendship from the Buddha down the generations has found expression in this event that is happening right now. Many, many people have led up to this moment.

A second reason why spiritual friends are essential to our spiritual practice is that it is only through communication that we can really gain self-awareness. By communication I mean confiding in others so that we are not burdened by secrets. I mean confessing our unskilfulness so that we are not burdened by a bad conscience. I mean giving expression to our experience and understandings so that we don't fall into false interpretations. I also mean listening, so that our awareness and sensitivity grows stronger

A third reason why spiritual friends are essential to our spiritual practice is that they are aware of us. We are trying to realise, to penetrate into the true nature of reality and we do this by reflecting on concepts such as impermanence or karma, by meditating, by engaging our imagination with the qualities and lives of the Buddha's, by training ourselves in ethics. All of these help us to see into reality. But other people have the unique quality of being able to return our awareness. What we are, who we are is more surely reflected back to us by others than by any concept, image for experience. We can control to some extent our reflections, experiences and interpretations but we cannot control another person's awareness. If we are open to it and willing to explore it in the spirit of the spiritual adventure, we can gain a huge amount from hearing and seeing and experiencing how other people respond to us. With close friends we can invite them to tell us how they experience us and then reflect on that as an aspect of reality. Spiritual friends are essential to spiritual practice because we learn from them, we can communicate with them and they are aware of us.

I first became a Buddhist through a brief encounter with a Buddhist monk and what impressed me most was not what he said to me, but the congruency between what he was saying and how he was living his life. It was the fact that he was actually putting into practice what he was talking about that really touched me and drew a deep response from me which has shaped my life ever since. That is the power of the person.

It was reading Subhuti's book Buddhism for Today, that got me involved with the Triratna Community. In this case it was the ideas, but it was also the fact that people were living out the ideas. I had no illusions at that time about idealistic people. I knew that people can be very idealistic and very nasty at the same time. That was my experience. But they were idealistic and trying to put their ideas into practice by creating Buddhist centres, communities and right livelihood businesses. I was deeply impressed by that and I still am. When I see the work being done here at the Buddhist Centre to provide these facilities these events, I am impressed and inspired. When I reflect on how many other people are doing selfless things in a similar way throughout the Triratna Community around the world, I am even more inspired and impressed.

When I got involved with the Triratna Community the first Order Member I met was Danavira and he was so kind to me. He found me a place to live in his small community and he looked out for me and befriended me. Through him I saw generosity in action and learned some of the fundamentals of spiritual life I also learned that I shouldn't take people for granted. I had a habit at that time of making decisions without telling anybody. I decided to ask to become a Mitra without telling Danavira even though I was living and working with him at that time. I think he found this bit strange, if not upsetting. I learned from that that friendship is not just something you can be a passive recipient of, you have to engage and reveal your thoughts and feelings. Not to do so was not kusala, not skilful. It was not being sensitive and taking into account another person's feelings .

Another friend I learned from early on was Atula. The main things I learned from Atula were, the importance of being aware of people, the importance of listening and not just with your ears, and the importance of being aware of your own emotions and motivations. Atula was another exemplar of kindness and generosity and I was a direct recipient of that. I found that being on the receiving end of kindness, help, generosity and friendship made me question my view of myself, which at that time was quite negative. Other people treated me better than I treated myself. Other people thought more highly of me than I thought of myself. Other people could see the good and the valuable in me that I couldn't see in myself. In this way other people contributed very directly and tangibly to the whole process of development. Atula was one of those people, perhaps the one who had the biggest impact on me. And for that I am extremely grateful.

I was learning from others, from what they said and from how they acted, they exemplified something for me and they also explained many things to me. This was kusala Karma. I was learning about what kusala means through experiencing it from others. Spiritual friendship conveyed ethics in the most direct way.

At the same time that I was learning from people who were more spiritually experienced than I was, I was also exploring and discussing things, practising alongside other friends who were at the same or similar level to me. Friends like Sumangala, Aryaguna, Satyabandhu, Vimalabandhu and many more. Being young men we no doubt sometimes competed with each other, but we were also very open and honest with each other and from that I learned that I shared a lot in common with others. My struggles were not unique to me, my idealism was not unique to me, my confusion was not unique to me. I found it immensely helpful to be able to share all of me with at least some other people and to know them deeply enough to see what was universal experience. I also learned from these friends that we all have different strengths and weaknesses and therefore can support each other. Although we all had struggles and confusions and doubts they were not the same struggles or the same confusions. One of us might struggle to understand and another might struggle with faith and yet another with concentration and through friendship we were able to help each other along the path and provide a context in which we could all explore what was kusala and what was not kusala, and confide and confess when we were clearly falling short or when we were just unsure.

After I was ordained in 1988, I increasingly found myself in the position where others were looking to me to explain and exemplify kusala. This is challenging and if you engage with it, it encourages you to become a bigger and a better person just to be able to give guidance to others. I trust that many friends have benefited from my explanations and my example. I trust it because it's what they have told me many times. But I have gained a great deal from these friends too, the people to whom I am a Kalyana Mitra and those I have ordained and those who have studied with me. They have inspired me and heartened me. Seeing them make progress on the spiritual path has been the source of profound joy to me and has enhanced my faith in the Buddha dharma. Friends like Priyavajra, Danapriya, Satyadasa and Maitrighosha , among many others, people I have seen growing and changing from their early tentative steps on the path to now, when they have become substantial guides and exemplars themselves. This is such a delight to see it is hard to explain. Perhaps it is similar to being a parent. Together with these friends I have also explored and continue to explore what is kusala and that keeps my own ethical sensitivity alive, keeps me on my toes so to speak.

And now there are others who have asked me to ordain them and before my eyes I see them growing and because of previous experience I have a good sense of what they can and will become. Friends like Dougie Fraser, Pedro Vidal, Pete Cox, all very different, but all sincerely energetically on the path and all thoroughly engaged with trying to practice and explore what is kusala. Encouraging and guiding these men is a big part of my spiritual practice and it's also a big inspiration and encouragement to me.

Traditionally the relationship between spiritual friendship and ethics is spoken about in terms of appatrapya (ottapa in Pali). Usually this is envisaged as what happens in spiritual friendship between someone who is more spiritually experienced and someone who is less spiritually experienced. Appatrapya is the emotion that arises for the less experienced person when they are unskilful and they bring to mind the person who is their guide and teacher. You could say it's a feeling of having let themselves down or of having let down their friend and guide. It is a pang of conscience that is heightened by the thought of the teacher or friend. Sometimes it's translated as 'shame', but I don't think that quite gets it. In my experience it's more like a sense of regret accompanied by a resolve to do better next time. It's a kind of strengthening emotion. It is building the muscles of kusala behaviour. The example of the teacher, of what's possible, assists that process.

So far in this talk I tried to clarify what spiritual friendship is and how it relates to spiritual practice and how that connects with ethics, kusala Karma. And I've used examples from my own life to try to describe the process of spiritual friendship giving rise to actions, words, and mental states which are kusala. I've also tried to make clear the fundamental importance to spiritual progress of actions words and thoughts which are kusala.

Before I finish I will just go into a little more detail, using the five precepts as a framework. The first precept is about refraining from harming living beings and put positively it is about engaging in acts of loving-kindness. The first recipient of your loving-kindness needs to be yourself. As the form of the Metta Bhavana indicates, loving-kindness overflows out to others. However sometimes it is easier and more practical to start by developing loving-kindness towards friends. Many people find it easier to get in touch with goodwill towards friends and then, as it were, treat themselves as a friend. Also by acting in ways that are kind and helpful, even when we are not experiencing the mental state of kindness, can cause kindness to arise. We tend to think that mental states are primary and our actions emerge from our thoughts and emotions. However, in our experience it can easily be seen that the opposite is also true. If we act as if we were experiencing kindness, love or generosity, the action will influence our minds and lead to states of mind that can then flow out into more acts of kindness and thus create a positive spiral of spiritual momentum. If we actively befriend people by being kind to them we will benefit from that in many ways.

The second precept is about not taking what is not freely given and more positively it is about giving. The connection between spiritual friendship and giving is clear. Spiritual friendship is all about giving; giving material things, giving help and assistance, giving encouragement, giving praise, giving criticism, giving our experience, talents and gifts. Generosity is almost always kusala. If it's not skilful, it probably doesn't deserve the name of generosity. Sometimes people may give money or property or time but without stating it they are expecting something in return. In their own mind that giving is part of a bargain. But this is not really giving: this is making a down payment or a deposit and expecting to earn interest or a reward. Friendship is not a transaction, it is not a bargain and it only really works well when you're not expecting or demanding a return. Paradoxically the less you want from friendship the more you can get and the more you want the less you get.

The third precept is about refraining from sexual misconduct and more positively it is about contentment. Sexual misconduct is about the whole sorry business whereby human beings use violence, coercion, emotional blackmail, exploitation and manipulative behaviour to satisfy sexual desire. Contentment is about dealing with the dissatisfactions that underlie our overemphasis on sexual relations. There are two levels to our fascination with sex. There is the level of the basic animal drive and much of civilisation is about bringing a measure of control and discipline to that. Every human society has its rules and norms to regulate this basic drive. The rules and norms can vary enormously, what is or is not acceptable can vary enormously. These rules of society are often tied in with questions of property ownership and peaceful relations between clans, tribes or nations. So that to breach the rules is not just a personal matter but something that affects the stability of the society.

The second level to our fascination with sex is more emotional and psychological. In order to have sex you have to be physically intimate with another person and this physical intimacy becomes a way into emotional intimacy. However physical intimacy is not emotional intimacy and all sorts of problems can arise when a society accepts and encourages the view that physical intimacy is emotional intimacy. Aligned with this is the view that there cannot really be emotional intimacy without physical intimacy. This is the view that has grown up in many societies over the last couple of hundred years. Sex has become, to some extent, divorced from questions of property and alliances and has become more a question of a search for emotional fulfilment. This is the romantic ideal. The positive side of this is that people are not forced into unsuitable relationships or relationships that are repulsive to them. The downside is that it can overload one relationship with too many expectations. Especially a relationship that is sometimes built on the shaky foundations of a physical attraction and physical intimacy. The spiritual community can help by being a further source of emotional fulfilment. When we have friends with whom we are emotionally intimate, it can take some weight off the relationship where we are also physically intimate. It helps us to lower the expectations we have of our sexual partner, which can also help us to become more content. Contentment is a state of feeling rich and fulfilled, so that there isn't a constant aching yearning for something more or someone more. If we are content and feeling emotionally rich there is less temptation for us to try to manipulate others for our satisfaction..

The fourth precept is about avoiding falsehood and being truthful. Being truthful is not so easy and probably all of us have at some time in our lives told lies, either large or small. Sometimes we lie to gain some advantage, sometimes we lie to avoid conflict, sometimes we lie to be polite, sometimes we lie for no discernible reason at all, perhaps it just gives us a sense of power. But at some time or other we have all probably done it. And sometimes we lie most to our nearest and dearest; husband, wife, parents, children, partner, lover, siblings. We lie to keep the peace, to avoid upsetting people and so on. What's the problem with being untruthful? If telling lies can help to keep the peace, avoid conflict, avoid upsetting people, what's so wrong with that? It removes the basis for a relationship; it removes trust.

If we have been on the receiving end of lies and deception we probably all know what it feels like and how it changes our view of the person who has lied to us or deceived us. It leaves us unsure of what is or is not true. We are unsure what to trust. We start to think, if that bit of the picture is not true, could it be that there is more that's false. What can we trust? We find that what we thought was solid ground is actually quite shaky. Being deceived can be much more upsetting than whatever the deception was trying to hide. For instance, sometimes in families, the parents don't want to upset the children by telling them about a diagnosis of cancer, or something of that nature. But of course that deprives them of the opportunity to give their love and support and also the opportunity to come to terms with the probable loss of a mother or father. It can be very heartbreaking to be deceived in this way. Or sometimes the children insist to the parent that they will get better when it is obvious that they won't. This can make the process of dying more difficult than it needs to be. Even lies that are told with good intentions can have very unfavourable consequences.

By definition spiritual friendship has to be based on truthful communication. There can be no spiritual friendship if what is communicated is false or meant to deceive in some way. Deceiving a spiritual friend is in the end self deception. Spiritual friendship can be a context in which we learn to be more and more honest, including honest with ourselves.

The fifth precept is about avoiding things that cloud the mind and developing more mindfulness. When we are practising kusala karma in the context of spiritual friendships we are developing awareness of others through observing and listening to them and we are developing awareness of ourselves by being reflected back. Intoxication with alcohol or other drugs is a method of becoming less aware and avoiding our inner life and is not compatible with spiritual friendship.

All the precepts together are kusala karma – skilful action – and they enhance spiritual friendship and are enhanced by spiritual friendship. In this talk which is on the theme of spiritual friendship and ethics I have tried to avoid the word ' ethics' as much as possible. I have also avoided the word 'morality' and I avoided the phrase 'training principles'. I don't find any of these terms satisfactory – 'ethics' sounds like an academic discipline, ' morality' conjures images of a disapproving deity, ' training principles' could be about weightlifting or business management. I have opted instead for kusala karma – skilful action or simply kusala – skilful.

Kusala is a word that is easy to say, it has a pleasant sound and as Buddhists we are free to clothe it in positive connotations just as we have done with the word Metta. Perhaps it will catch on, so that we can speak of our practice of kusala karma or even trying to be kusala and it will carry connotations of positive emotion, friendliness, awareness, honesty, kindness and generosity. It could become for us a word so rich in meaning that just to hear it would be uplifting. A word like friendship, which is also uplifting just to hear, because it carries so many positive associations. Friendliness, friend, friendship are all very positive words and what they stand for is even more positive.

Spiritual friendship is wholly positive and a source of great joy. Kusala karma is wholly positive and a source of great joy. It's important to understand spiritual friendship and kusala, are completely intertwined and that both are the fertile soil out of which spiritual insights grow. If we understand this and act upon it, spiritual progress is inevitable and all our other insights and understandings will have a stable basis in the reality of human interaction and the reality of actions having consequences.

The Reality of Spiritual Friendship

This talk was given at Triratna Order Day in Cambridge Buddhist Centre, April 7th 2013

We have all heard the story about Ananda and the Buddha. Ananda says to the Buddha that he has realised that Kalyana Mitrata is half the spiritual life and the Buddha responds – “say not so Ananda, say not so, it is the whole of the spiritual life”.

Here is how it is told in the Samyuta Nikaya and following this story the message is repeated and emphasised in a dialogue between Sariputta and the Buddha.

"Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling among the Shakyans where there was a town of the Shakyans named Nagaraka. Then the Venerable Ananda approached the Blessed One. Having approached, he paid homage to the Blessed One, sat down to one side and said to him . Venerable sire, this is half of the holy life, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.

"Not so, Ananda! Not so, Ananda! This is the entire holy life, Ananda, that is, good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship." (The Connected Discourses, trans. Bodhi, p. 1524)

I have realised that although I have been familiar with this story for a long time and have accepted it on a superficial level, I am not sure I have ever really fully believed it. I thought I'd use this talk is an opportunity to reflect on this exchange between Ananda and the Buddha and explore what it might mean in practice if one was to fully accept and act on the assertion that spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life. I want to start my reflections by trying to clarify what we mean by the spiritual life, then I want to explore what the Buddha meant by Kalyana Mitrata and hopefully that will help to show that Kalyana Mitrata is indeed the whole of the spiritual life.

The spiritual life is the phrase we use to translate Brahmacarya and it's worth noting that it's not a literal translation. Brahmacarya is an image, spiritual life is a concept. Brahma is, in Indian mythology, the king of the gods. Brahma stands for that which is highest in the universe. From a Buddhist perspective that which is highest in the universe is Nirvana, Buddhahood, Enlightenment; so the Brahmacarya is the Buddhacarya or the Bodhicarya. We have come across the term Bodhicarya before, as in the Bodhicarya avatara. Carya is the way, as in the path or the practices or the methods or means. The Bodhicarya is the way or the means to Awakening. If we say Kalyana Mitrata is the whole of the Brahmacarya, this means that Kalyana Mitrata is the whole of the Bodhicarya; the whole of the way or means to Awakening. The means and the end are not separate. The end is included in the means. That which is the whole of the way is also the whole of the goal.

What Is Awakening? It's worth noting that it's an image – a metaphor of waking up from a sleep. Shakespeare says "our little life is rounded out by a sleep". However the Buddha says our life is one big sleep and we need to wake up. The metaphor of sleep and waking only partially works, because of course we cannot stay awake permanently. Sleep is essential to our well-being, whereas Bodhi is a permanent Awakening. And when the Awakening that is Bodhi happens, it is not possible to go back into the sleep of ignorance. Ignorance is not essential to our well-being. What the metaphor is really doing is trying to give us a feeling for the experience of realisation or spiritual awakening, by saying it's like waking up from a deep sleep. It's contrasting two states that we are familiar with, sleep and wakefulness, to hint at what Bodhi is. Nirvana is also a metaphor; the blowing out of the fires of the passions. Enlightenment is another metaphor; bringing light into the darkness.

After his awakening the Buddha spoke of his experience in terms of liberation from the rounds of rebirth,another metaphor, and he spoke of the house builder who had been seen and could no longer build the house; an image of discovery and revelation. Conceptually, probably the most familiar description of the Buddha's insight is in terms of pratitya samutpada, the law of dependent origination or conditioned co production, or more simply the law of conditionality.

The Buddha saw or experienced or woke up to the fact that everything arises in dependence upon conditions and ceases when those conditions cease or in other words he saw or understood or experienced or awoke to the fact that everything is impermanent and insubstantial. The Brahmacarya is the way or the means leading to this insight into or experience of the nature of reality. The spiritual life is the life that is lived as a means of reaching this insight, this vision, experience or realisation of reality.

When it is said that Kalyana Mitrata is all of the spiritual life, a definite link or connection is being made between Kalyana Mitrata and pratitya samutpada. A definite link or connection is being made between Kalyana Mitrata and impermanence and insubstantiality. A definite link is being made between Kalyana Mitrata and all those metaphors pointing to the Buddha's experience; awakening, nirvana, liberation from rebirth, bringing light into the darkness, destroying the house of ignorance. All of these are linked to Kalyana Mitrata and the Buddha seems to be saying that Kalyana Mitrata is essential, indeed the most essential element needed, if we are to achieve this insight or realisation. It would appear therefore that it's important to get a grasp of what is meant by Kalyana Mitrata.

Mitrata means friendship (Mittata in Pali) and is of course related to Mitra meaning friend and maitri or metta meaning friendliness. In the Pali English dictionary Kalyana Mitra has two meanings, one general and one more technical. Here is how Subhuti describes it in his book on spiritual friendship, "the Pali Text Society's Pali English dictionary offers two definitions of Kalyana Mitra. The first one is 'a good companion, a virtuous friend, an honest, pure friend.' Such a friend is said to 'have faith, be virtuous, learned, liberal and wise.' In the second sense, a Kalyana Mitra is 'a spiritual guide, a spiritual adviser.' In this case there clearly is an unequal or hierarchical aspect to the relationship: a guide must be someone whose spiritual knowledge and experience are superior to one's own". (Subhuti, Buddhism and Friendship, p.25)

The phrase Kalyana Mitrata encompasses both of these meaning and this corresponds to what Bhante Sangharakshita calls horizontal and vertical friendships. Vertical friendship refers to the relationship between teacher and pupil and the Buddha refers to himself as a Kalyana Mitra in the story quoted earlier from Samyuta Nikaya.

The other use of Kalyana Mitra seems to be often combined with two synonymous phrases kalyānasahāyo and kalyānasampavanko, which are translated as 'good associates, good companions' by John D Ireland. Sometimes the word 'comrade' is used. This usage emphasises a personal relationship. In the Rhinoceros Horn Sutta, which is often taken to be an exhortation to live in seclusion, what the Buddha actually says is, if you can't find a good friend then you're better off living alone. "If one finds a wise friend, a companion living according to good virtues, prudent and having conquered all dangers, then live with him happily and mindfully. Certainly we praise the acquisition of friendship and friends – those who are either higher or equal in attainment or development should be associated with. Not finding such friends enjoying blameless food, let one live alone.” (Saddhatissa, Sutta Nipata, 1985, p.5)

This aspect of Kalyana Mitrata as a personal relationship is further emphasised on other occasions by the Buddha. For example in the Anguttara Nikaya the Buddha gives a teaching to his lay disciple Dighajanu: "And what is good friendship (Kalyana Mitrata)? Here – in whatever village or town a family man dwells, he associates with householders or their sons, whether young or old who are of mature virtue, accomplished in faith, virtue, generosity and wisdom; he converses with them and engages in discussions with them. He emulates them in regard to their accomplishment in faith, virtue, generosity and wisdom. This is called good friendship.” (Nyanaponika & Bodhi, Numerical Discourses,1999, p.221)

On another occasion the Buddha speaks to King Pasenadi. He tells the King the story of how Ananda came to him saying that Kalyana Mitrata was half the spiritual life and he recounts his response to Ananda. He continues: "therefore, great King, you should train yourself thus: I will be one who has good friends, good companions, good comrades. It is in such a way that you should train yourself.” (The Connected Discourses, trans. Bodhi, p.181)

Kalyana Mitrata covers a spectrum of relationships; friendship with fellow aspirants who are pursuing the path with us; this is the spiritual community whether lay or monk. The spectrum goes through to teachers, guides and Awakened Ones. The Buddha seems to be saying all of this is essential. All of this wide spectrum of Kalyana Mitrata is the means to Bodhi, is the whole of the Bodhicarya. This is the beginning, middle and end of the spiritual life.

To understand this better I think we need to explore more deeply and in more detail what the Dharma life is about. The Buddha talks about his realisation in terms of liberation from the rounds of rebirth, he also speaks of it in terms of discovering the builder of the house of ignorance and of being like finding a lost city in a great jungle. Then in what seems like more conceptual terms he talks about his realisation in terms of pratitya samutpada. "When this exists, that comes to be. With the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be. With the cessation of this, that ceases." (The Middle Length Discourses,Sutta 79, trans. Bodhi,p.655) This insight that everything arises in dependence upon conditions is to be applied to our human predicament. What is the human predicament? The human predicament is that our lives are unsatisfactory and the ways in which we go about trying to find happiness and security don't work and then we die. As Woody Allen puts it: "Life is full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness and it's all over much too quickly.” (Woody Allen. Annie Hall, opening scene)

Here is how Vishvapani puts it in more Buddhist terms: "Dukkha encompasses all the unsatisfactoriness that is inherent in life, and the sense that something is awry even when things go well. For Gautama, this was more than a mild unease: it was a shattering awareness of aspects of reality he had previously ignored. He had a remarkable talent for identifying the universal truths in particular experiences, but he may have been helped by spiritual teachings heard in Kapilavastu. He later quoted powerful verses, attributed to an ancient teacher called Araka, which say that human life vanishes as quickly as, the dew drop on the tip of a blade of grass – a bubble on the surface of the water –a line drawn on water –a river that has arisen faraway in the mountains – the life of humans is brief and fleeting and full of pain and despair, the verses continue. You should heed advice, do what is wholesome practice the spiritual life; there is no escape from death". (Vishvapani Blomfeld, Gautama,2012, p.32) The question for Siddhartha and the question for all thinking human beings is what can we do about this state of affairs. What is life about really?

Dukkha arises in dependence on conditions. Therefore if we can discover those conditions and eradicate them we can destroy Dukkha. When the Buddha looked deeply into his mind he saw that craving and attachment were root causes of suffering. So the question becomes, how do you remove craving and attachment from your mind?

Craving and attachment are so strong because of the notion of a fixed permanent and substantial self. This notion, which is ignorance, is also a cause of suffering. And because of the notion of self-essence there is also a strong urge to protect that self and this gives rise to aversion and hatred. This unholy threesome of belief in self that is fixed and permanent, craving to satisfy that self and aversion to protect that self; these three are causes of suffering. But these go very deeply and cannot be dismissed just by saying so.

First it has to become ever more clear to the individual who wants to be free that the fixed and permanent self is not real. Pratitya samutpada applies to the self. It says everything is process and what we think of as 'I' or 'me' is also a process, an ever changing process. First we need to see that. And to see that, we have to become aware of our own experience in more and more subtle ways. We need to become aware of the fact that we do have the notion of a fixed, separate, permanent self . More than a notion; a deep attachment. We need to become aware of how we build and protect and enhance this sense of self, this sense of I and me and mine. However, there is a danger here too. If we spend a lot of time and energy on the self or ego; trying to undermine ego clinging or thinking in terms of 'my ego does this or does that', we can inadvertently create more self and more ego.

Bhante Sangharakshita warns about this in his book Living Wisely: "The language we use can be less than helpful when it comes to the ego. Expressions like "transcending the ego" can create a lot of confusion by apparently fixing something non-existent in the form of an apparent object of knowledge. The result is nonsensical: we talk of getting rid of something that never existed or even denying this object of intense interest and concern any reality at all. The ego we say is not real. If we are not careful, we can spend a lot of time talking about something that does not exist in such a way that it becomes more real to us than it was before we started making so much of it." (Living Wisely, 2013, p. 25)

His remedy for this is, as usual, quite clear and simple. He says: "If our gut feeling is that we have or are a self, it can feel as if the Dharma is going to take something away from us that is central to who we are, when in fact the Dharma is there to help us see ourselves, whatever we may be, more clearly. Instead of challenging ourselves to explode our deluded conception of the self directly, it may be more helpful to think of breaking out of the closed circle of self interest that is the emotional expression of our delusion. We can think of expanding that circle through the cultivation of Metta or loving-kindness until our self interest is absorbed in a concern for the welfare of all living beings. Overcoming ego is not just an idea; it is an experience, a way of life." (Living Wisely, 2013,p. 23)

We want to be aware of our ego identity in the sense of being aware of when we are closed in on ourselves, when we are too self concerned, or self obsessed, but at the same time we want to avoid that awareness becoming another form of self-centredness of self obsession. "The ego is a way of behaving a kind of revolving on our own axis", as Subhuti puts it. To free ourselves from this we need to behave differently, more expansively "by going out of yourself, by orbiting around something bigger than yourself".

Bhante goes on to say: "Instead of saying that the ego does not exist or that it is not real, you could say instead that to be constantly turning in upon yourself is not the most satisfying form of existence. There are better options available to you. Instead of saying to yourself "just drop the ego", you can say, "let yourself open up a little" or even "let yourself go". To the extent that you think of others with genuine concern, you are non-egotistic. Even if you are just thinking of your own wife and children, that is an important step towards being non-egotistic. Thinking about your family is certainly a more effective way of beginning to realise the truth than just reading about it and understanding it intellectually.” (Living Wisely, 2013,p. 26)

In the Buddhist tradition there are methods for doing this more systematically as a meditation practice. For me it has been the Ratnasambhava practice – which is all about expansiveness, abundance and richness. There is also the practice of exchanging self for other in different forms; Bodhichitta practice, Tonglen, Brahma Viharas. Because self view is a delusion, other-view is also a delusion and because this is the nature of reality the implication of realising this reality is that we become naturally compassionate. By practising compassion in the form of exchange of self for others and developing empathy we begin to embody the wisdom of pratitya samutpada.

Coming back to the theme of spiritual friendship, it is perhaps obvious, that if we are to practice exchange of self for other we have to begin with those others who are closest to us. There is no point in making practice more difficult than it has to be. It should be easier to practice exchanging self for other with close friends and then in time we may be able to extend that further and further until it encompasses all beings. As Subhuti puts it: "we can start to practice the exchange of self and other simply by being more and more mindful of the needs of our friends, and putting them before our own. Whenever one makes some kind of sacrifice, and gives up something for the sake of a friend, one takes another small step forward on the path of transcending self: one enters more deeply into the friends subjectivity and lets go attachment to one's own. In Anuruddha's words, "why should I not set aside what I wish to do and do what these venerable one's wish to do?” (Subhuti, Buddhism and Friendship, 2004, p.110)

Any shraddha, any motivation to spiritual practice, must include a spark of compassion. Those who see and experience the human predicament as a spiritual problem already have sufficient imagination to see that this is not just their personal predicament. Those who consider what is a universal predicament to be their very own predicament, will look for solutions that in the end won't work. Those who lack the imagination to see the predicament at all will not be motivated to a spiritual path.

Siddhartha was motivated by his own suffering, mental, psychological and existential suffering. But he also saw that his predicament was a universal problem so there was the spark of compassion in his quest from the beginning. Most of us will have had something of this experience even if we were only dimly aware of it.

After his enlightenment the Buddha's life is all about sharing his insights with others and doing what he could to help them to alleviate their suffering. Compassionate activity is the expression of the wisdom that sees the impermanence and insubstantiality of self and others. You may have wonderful peak experiences in meditation, but unless they manifest in the world as friendly, kindly activity, they are of no greater significance than getting drunk. You may study the Pali canon, the Sanskrit sutras and all of Tibetan Buddhism, but unless it leads to friendly, kindly activity in the world, it is of no more significance than reading a newspaper.

Buddhism makes no sense without compassion or to put it more explicitly in terms of today's topic – Buddhism makes no sense without Kalyana Mitrata. As Bhante Sangharakshita puts it in Living with Kindness: "Metta and insight are not separate aims. Indeed, Metta is a necessary aspect of insight, and with reflection on the real nature of Metta, insight will shine through. Having developed Metta in a limited sense as an equal kindness towards others, you can go on to reflect on whether there is really any difference between yourself and others and, if so, what that difference might be. Thus reflecting, you will begin to see that the idea that ' I am I' and ' he is he' is no more than a delusion, and in that way Metta begins to blend with insight." "When Metta is experienced in this fully expansive mode and is universal in its scope, there is no experience of a self that is separate from anyone or anything else. To speak of oneself at this stage is almost a contradiction in terms. Forgetting the self as a reference point, no longer asking what any given situation means for you alone, you can go on indefinitely and happily expanding the breadth and depth of your interest and positivity." (Living with Kindness, p. 134 &136)

Kalyana Mitrata whether vertical or horizontal, whether we are guiding or teaching others, learning from others or being mutually supportive, is all part of the flow of compassionate activity and that's why it is the whole of the spiritual life. At the beginning when we can only be receptive, our motivation for wanting to learn has within it the spark of compassion. The unease, the Dukkha, which propels us to take up the spiritual quest is not just a purely personal unease. It is an intuitive sense that life has meaning beyond our current understanding and experience. And with a bit of luck, or is it merit, we find someone, or a group to teach us the path and put our yearnings into context and our first experiences of Kalyana Mitrata are of being helped by those more experienced.

Each one of us can probably make a list of those who helped us get started on the path. Some who had not much more understanding than ourselves, some who had vastly more understanding, some we met only through books or videos, some we had very personal relationships with. I can immediately bring to mind many people who looked out for me when I was torn and troubled in my first few years as a Buddhist. They all acted in a selfless way with great kindness and got precious little back from me as I was so self obsessed and troubled by psychological conflict. It was my first experience of Kalyana Mitrata and I was mainly unaware of it and often ungrateful. Only later did I realise how much people had done for me and experience a great deal of gratitude. I try to be aware now of what is being done by others that benefits me. They may not even be trying to benefit me in particular but I am a recipient of a lot of selfless acts on the part of many people. Of course there are also people who do give to me personally and often I find myself receiving help in my spiritual practice from people who don't know that they are helping me. I'm inspired by someone's enthusiasm, chastened by their ethical sensitivity and encouraged to reflect more deeply by their questions.

Kalyana Mitrata is the living out of the compassionate project of Buddhism, the project of friendly and kindly activity. For all of us it means sharing our experience of living the spiritual life, whether in groups of various kinds, in one-to-one conversations or in formal teaching situations. Our participation in the life of the spiritual community can be Kalyana Mitrata, our participation in the life of the local Buddhist Centre can be Kalyana Mitrata, all of our interactions have the potential to be Kalyana Mitrata.

Finally, and I will finish with this, here is how Bhante Sangharakshita sums up this whole topic with his characteristic clarity and simplicity.

"The Brahmacarya or spiritual life is that way of life that leads to the Brahmaloka or spiritual world. But how is it able to do this? To fully answer we must turn to yet another early Buddhist text: in the MahaGovinda sutta we find this very question being asked: "how does a mortal reach the immortal Brahma world?" In other words how can one cross from the transient to the eternal? And the answer given is short and simple. "One reaches the Brahma world by giving up all possessive thoughts, all thoughts of me and mine." In other words, one reaches the Brahmaloka by giving up egotism and selfishness, by giving up all sense of I. Thus the intimate connection between spiritual friendship and spiritual life starts to come into focus. Spiritual friendship is a training in unselfishness, in egolessness. You share everything with your friend or friends. You speak to them kindly and affectionately, and show concern for their welfare, especially their spiritual welfare. You treat them in the same way you treat yourself – that is, you treat them as being equal with yourself. You relate to them with an attitude of Metta, not according to where the power between you lies. Learning to relate to our friends in this way, we will gradually learn to respond to the whole world with Metta, with unselfishness. It is in this way that spiritual friendship is indeed the whole of the spiritual life." (The Essential Sangharakshita, p. 511 & 512)

The Freedom of Giving

This talk was given at Cambridge Buddhist Centre on Sunday 18th March 2012

There are many kinds of freedom: for instance political freedom; freedom from persecution and oppression, freedom to choose our political representatives. Economic freedom; freedom from poverty. Psychological freedom; freedom from debilitating conditions like depression, chronic anxiety or compulsive obsessions. And then there is spiritual freedom. It is spiritual freedom that I want to talk about today - spiritual freedom and its relation to giving.

What is spiritual freedom? perhaps the most straightforward definition is that it is freedom from craving, ill-will and the delusion of ego-identity. We could also say it is freedom to give and to love. It might seem strange to assert that we are not free to give and to love, but that is in effect what Buddhism is saying. We may have the political freedom to give and to love, we may have the economic freedom to give and to love, we may have the psychological freedom to give and to love, but our giving and our loving is compromised by our lack of spiritual freedom. because we are enchanted by the ego delusion our giving and our loving is limited, restricted, diminished, confined, impoverished, stop and start.

Complete spiritual freedom is Enlightenment; liberation from all the mental poisons, liberation from states of mind such as craving, hatred, delusion, envy, pride and fear. Freedom from subjective limitations. When we free ourselves from these states of mind, when we become completely free in the spiritual sense, then we are free to give and to love fully; there are no longer any barriers to a continuous flow of generosity and love. On the way to complete liberation we use the practices of metta (loving kindness) and dana (generosity) to gradually become more free, gradually dissolve the boundaries that restrict us.

All Buddhist practices are about freeing ourselves in this way. Buddhism is practical. There is a task and there is a set of tools with which to accomplish the task. We need only to understand the task and to use the tools. The task is to free ourselves from the delusion of ego-identity and it's manifestations in neurotic craving, ill-will, pride, envy and fear or to put it more positively the task is to free ourselves so that we become embodiments of love and generosity.

In order to free your self in this way you need to be able to see how these mental poisons manifest in you. You have to become aware of the thoughts and emotions, which are proud or envious or anxious and so on. And you also need to be aware of the generous and kind thoughts and emotions that you experience.

You have to be aware of how the poisonous thoughts and emotions slip out through your speech and actions and aware of how you give expression to your more positive thoughts and emotions.

This level of awareness and self-knowledge is achieved partly through meditation, partly through study and reflection, partly through open communication with friends, partly through the positivity engendered by rituals and definitely by intensifying all of these by going on retreat regularly.

Sometimes people think that meditation must be the primary way of gaining greater awareness and self-knowledge and meditation is indeed very important. However it has to be balanced by other practices or it can itself become an exercise in subtle craving, where we are always in pursuit of some special experience. It is possible to do a lot of meditation and remain deluded or even increase our delusions, so it is important to touch earth with communication that challenges our habits and self-questioning that challenges our egotism. In my own experience it has been the practices of communication, confession and confiding – in other words, spiritual friendship- which has frequently led to greater awareness and self-knowledge.

When we are trying to free ourselves we are not just trying to free ourselves from negative states of mind like hatred, greed, pride or fear, we are also trying to free ourselves to be more loving and more giving, we are trying to free ourselves so that we become embodiments of love and generosity. The aim is for the qualities of love and generosity to flow spontaneously through us and from us.

It is important then that we become aware of how these positive qualities manifest in our thoughts and emotions, in our speech and in our actions. As we become more aware of these positive qualities in us, we need to nurture and encourage them. We may, for instance, become aware of urges to give or to say a kind word, we may become aware of our generous acts or our friendly, encouraging speech. In all of these lie the seeds of our freedom and the more we can give these positive qualities and these positive actions space to flourish and multiply, the more free we will become.

How does this work? How do positive mental states and positive actions lead to greater freedom. Negative mental states and unskilful actions have a limiting and isolating affect on us. The more greedy we are, for instance, the more we come to inhabit a narrow and narrowing world; becoming more isolated from others and more obsessed with our own security, comfort and gratification. On the other hand as we allow our generosity to flow unhindered we find ourselves connecting with others, experiencing more expansive mental states and in time, less anxiety about our security and comfort.

The development of positive mental states and acting from those mental states leads to greater freedom because it leads us out of the dark cave of deluded self-obsession and out into the more open space of heart-connections with other people. It helps us to soften the defensive and protective boundaries we build around ourselves. This leads to greater freedom because it is in accordance with the nature of reality. In reality our minds and hearts are not fixed and isolated entities to be defended and protected. Rather we are fluid processes needing the fresh air of kindness, generosity and wisdom to fulfil our full human potential, the potential to awaken from the sleep of delusion.

I have been speaking about this process of becoming free in terms of moving from greed to giving. We could equally speak about moving from anger and hatred to love and kindness. These unskilful mental states also have the effect of isolating us, leaving us in a narrow world where we sit like some disgruntled spider at the centre of a web of resentment and blame weaving stories of self-justification and righteous indignation.

As Shantideva says in the Bodhicaryavatara: “Even friends shrink from him. He gives but is not honoured. In short, there is no sense in which someone prone to anger is well off.” It is easy to see that when we are friendly, kind and loving we are naturally connected to other people and experience the security of friendship and positivity.

Lets come back to the theme of giving and how it leads to freedom in the sense of awakening. We are probably all familiar with the word 'Dana' , which means giving, the act of giving. There is another word which we may be less familiar with – this is 'caga' (chaaga) which means generosity – the quality of generosity or the quality of liberality as it is sometimes translated.

Caga is known as one of the noble treasures. In the Anguttara Nikaya there is a sutta where the Buddha is speaking to Migara's mother, whose name is Visakha. He first tells her about four qualities she needs in order to be successful in the worldly life and then he goes on to say: “when a woman possesses four other qualities she is heading for victory in the other world (in other words the spiritual world) . What four? Here a woman is accomplished in faith, virtue, generosity and wisdom.” (Anguttara Nikaya, 8.49) These are sraddha, sila, caga and prajna and are known as the treasures. He later says the same thing to a man called Dighajanu. (AN,8.54)

Dana is the practice of giving which leads to the mental state of caga and caga is the mental state of generosity which is expressed in acts of giving. Caga is the generous mind which leads to freedom. Freedom from all clinging or attachment to 'me', or 'mine'; freedom from possessiveness and any sense of inner poverty. Sometimes caga is translated as relinquishment – it's the mind that is not holding on tightly to anything.

We can speak of generosity as a quality of the mind, but in a way that is not quite right. What we are aiming at through the practice of dana is not to become a generous person; a person who possesses the quality of generosity. What we are really aiming for is to become generosity.

We are not fixed centres of consciousness on to which we add qualities such as generosity, loving kindness and wisdom. We are fluid processes, ever changing, consciousness constantly in the process of being created. We are not so much creatures, we are more like the process of creating and what is being created is generosity, loving kindness and wisdom. These qualities become the nature of consciousness rather than attributes of consciousness.

By acting generously we modify our being. Everything we do, say and think modifies us to some degree and those things we do most frequently or say most frequently or think most frequently, modify us the most. We are shaped and moulded by the constancy and consistency of our actions, our speech and the stories we tell ourselves.If we are frequently generous in action, in words and in thought we will be on the way to becoming embodiments of generosity – caga.

In trying to be generous, we will inevitably encounter our attachments, our clinging, our insecurities and this is one of the great spiritual benefits of dana. In order to overcome or expand beyond the boundaries imposed on us by insecurity, attachment and clinging, we need to become more and more aware of how these mental states manifest in our lives and how they restrict our freedom.

Non-attachment is one of the fifty one mental states mentioned in the Yogachara Abhidhamma, early Buddhist philosophy. Non-attachment (alobha) is a positive mental state. Alobha literally means non-greed.

Bhante Sangharakshita says this about non-attachment in his book Know Your Mind : “The traditional image for non-attachment is that of thistle down blown on the wind. One is serene, confident, balanced in oneself. One doesn't settle on or stick to things, because one is self-contained. One doesn't need to be appropriating things or people so as to feel fulfilled. one doesn't insist on keeping certain elements of experience to oneself, or maintaining certain patterns of experience that support a particular idea of oneself. One has the confidence and the wider vision to be free from being neurotically involved with things. As should be clear, generosity is intrinsic to this positive mental event.” (Sangharakshita, Know your Mind, p.130)

The practice of generosity helps us to attain this state of being 'serene, confident, balanced' . The practice of generosity challenges our insecurities and attachments and in this way makes us aware of how we 'appropriate things or people so as to feel fulfilled'. For instance, if we feel the urge to respond to an appeal for donations, we may immediately become aware of our insecurity in relation to money and our attachment to money as something that helps us to feel secure. Or if there is an appeal for volunteers to help out with some event, we may immediately become aware of how attached we are to our spare time. By becoming aware in this way we give ourselves a greater opportunity to become free from 'being neurotically involved with things'.

In this short quote about non-attachment confidence is mentioned twice; one is 'serene, confident, balanced' and 'one has the confidence and wider vision to be free from being neurotically involved with things'. Confidence is crucial to our ability to be generous. The English word confidence has it's roots in the Latin 'fides', which means trust or faith. It is trust or faith that enables us to be generous and to become embodiments of generosity. We usually use the Sanskrit word 'shraddha' or the Pali 'saddha' when we talk about faith in Buddhism. These words come from a root meaning 'to place the heart upon.' The English word 'creed' from the Latin 'credo' has a similar root.

What does it mean to 'place the heart upon' ? When we speak of the heart in this way we are usually talking about our emotions, we are talking about what we love. Placing the heart on something is a kind of falling in love. It is not an idea about something, it is a full-blooded response to something. Neil Young recorded a song entitled 'I believe in you' and it's obvious he is using the word 'believe' here in the sense of 'I love you' ' I think you're wonderful'. He is not saying I believe that you exist! Faith in the sense of placing the heart on something is much more like this. It is a response of love and moving towards. A very strong, motivating, even at times overwhelming response and just like falling in love it has the feeling of great richness and abundance, joy and delight.

When we talk about faith or confidence in Buddhism what is it that we have faith in? What are we confident about? Or to put it another way what do we place our heart on, what do we fall in love with? In a conceptual sense it is the nature of reality, it is the law of karma and in a more emotional sense it is the Buddha or perhaps our teachers or archetypal forms of the Buddha such as Amitabha or Ratnasambhava or Green Tara.

The point is that if we are to let go of attachments, of clinging neurotically to possessions or people, we need to have an inner sense of richness and abundance and this inner richness and abundance arises from our shraddha ,our confidence, trust or faith in something or someone far greater than our own limited ego sense. Without this heartfelt response to something higher, something that transcends us, something greater than us, it is not really possible or even desirable to try to let go of our attachments, because we will be letting go into an impoverished space.

It may be that to begin with we only have a vague intuition of something, a glimpse of something more to life, and that we have to take a leap, a leap of faith, into practising meditation and ethics and studying the Dharma and listening to talks and by doing this our confidence grows stronger because we start to see more clearly that the Dharma works and that there is more depth and profundity to it than we had ever realised.

For instance, if we reflect on our actions, of body , speech and mind, and reflect on the consequences of our actions, then in time we can gain greater trust and confidence in the law of karma. We will see that we can rely on it. We can feel secure that our actions do have consequences, that skilful actions have positive consequences and unskilful actions have negative consequences. And that can lead us to feel secure that by giving we ourselves will benefit greatly.

Whether our faith, our confidence in the Buddha and his teaching is a strong and immediate force in our lives or whether it is something we have to work at to develop over time, it is the source of the energy, emotion and passion which we need in order to feel an inner abundance, an inner wealth, and which will motivate us to practice a generosity of spirit in all our relationships both with ourselves and with others.

In this talk I have deliberately not tried to be very practical. I have not talked about what we can give, to whom we can give, or how to give. I want to leave it to you to work out what it all means in practical terms, what you could do. I will be content if some of you are inspired by the vision of dana and caga, the practice of giving and the quality of generosity.

Giving benefits the giver most and the greatest benefit is freedom. When we move outwards from our self-island in acts of generosity we touch the lives and hearts of others. The connections we make in this touching of lives and hearts form the basis of true security and free us from the need to build a citadel of self-protection. We can free ourselves from our sense of isolation and insecurity through the counter intuitive practice of dismantling the walls we hide behind.

Happy Indeed We Live

This talk was given at Cambridge Buddhist Centre on Sangha Day, November 2011

The Buddha often talked about the importance of Spiritual Community. Before he died he talked to his disciples about the conditions for the stability and continuity of the Sangha and on another occasion he exhorted them to look after each other as if they were family and early on he sent them out to spread the Dharma far and wide for the welfare of the many. His vision for the spiritual community was a vision of a community of people who made continuous efforts to transform themselves , who took his teaching out into the world and who were supportive of each other. The Spiritual community is both a condition for spiritual practice and a spiritual practice in itself. We need the support of others in order to practice and we need to support others in order for them to practice effectively. In the Dhammapada that vision is given in a very condensed form in the following three verses: (verses 197/198/199)

“Happy indeed we live, friendly amid the haters. Among men who hate we dwell free from hate.
Happy indeed we live, healthy amid the sick. Among men who are sick we dwell free from sickness.
Happy indeed we live, content amid the greedy. Among men who are greedy we dwell free from greed.”

I will look into these three verses and try to draw out their relevance to us as a spiritual community. All three verses speak about being happy in the midst of or among those who are greedy, sick and given to hatred. The ideal being put forward is not one of complete withdrawal from the world but of being in the world and unsullied by it. Being in the world but not being worldly. It is an ideal of remaining in positive and skilful mental states even when surrounded by those who are predominantly negative and unskilful.

The reason for being in the world in this way is to spread the truth of the Dharma out of compassion for the suffering caused by spiritual ignorance. This is what came to be known later as the Bodhisattva ideal. That is the first thing to note about the spiritual community; to be an effective spiritual community it has to be in the midst of the world and working for the welfare of all. This is not to say that individual members of the spiritual community should not withdraw from the world from time to time. It is important that we all have the opportunity to withdraw from the world and be alone on occasions. In fact it is probably not possible to attain to the state of being happy among those who are unskilful and negative unless we do withdraw into retreat quite frequently.

Each of the verses begins with “Happy indeed we live”. The word for 'happy' here is 'susukham'. 'Sukha' is the word for 'happy' – we use it sometimes in the mantra 'sabbe satha sukhi hontu', meaning 'may all beings be happy'. Adding the prefix 'su' intensifies the word – 'sukha ' is happy, and 'susukha' is something like 'very happy'. In other words this is not just ordinary happiness, it is an intense happiness, a deep happiness and given the context it is an unshakeable happiness. It is a kind of equanimity. This is a very high ideal.

This happiness is not a fleeting ephemeral thing,it is not a good mood, it is a deep river of positivity flowing right through our whole being continuously. For most of us this is something yet to be achieved. This is what we are aiming for. This does not of course mean that the verses have no relevance for us. The verses give us a sense of the direction in which we are heading both individually and collectively. We are aiming for this deep integrated happiness – 'susukha' – which will enable us to be an effective spiritual community easing the suffering of the world and deepening our own insights.

Then the verses talk about what that looks like in practice; friendly amid the haters, healthy amid the sick and content amid the greedy. This gives us an idea of how to practice to achieve the state of happiness. When we are happy in this sense we will be friendly amid the haters, healthy amid the sick and content amid the greedy and in order to get to the state of happiness we can practice these things that are manifestations of that particular consciousness. This is the same principle that applies to ethical practice. The precepts are a description of how one who is Enlightened acts spontaneously and in order for us to be able to attain to the same experience we practice the precepts as a discipline.

How then do we practice being 'friendly amid the haters'? There are various elements to friendliness and various levels of friendliness. Friendliness includes hospitality, being interested in others, listening to others, being a friend in the sense of befriending others and it also includes Metta,(loving kindness) Karuna,(compassion) and Mudita (sympathetic joy). And as with the Metta Bhavana we can practice friendliness towards ourselves, our friends, our families, our work colleagues, the local community, the rest of the city, the whole country, all other countries and all other forms of life.

The practice of hospitality for us as sangha members should involve making any new person feel welcome here in the Buddhist Centre, whether they are a visiting Order Member or mitra who is new to this centre or someone who has come in out of curiosity or those who have booked on a course. Hospitality also means being welcoming and friendly even to those we are familiar with. Many of us may be shy or introverts and therefore have a tendency to sit quietly in the background and others of us may have our own set of friends whom we want to chat with, but we need to always try to be aware of others and be friendly and welcoming to them. This means going beyond our comfort zone sometimes, but it is a necessary stage on the way to being so lacking in ego that we are deeply happy all the time.

If we are to become the sort of people who can be friendly amid the haters, we need to start by being friendly amid the friendly and that means being hospitable and welcoming in the first instance.

To engage more deeply with the Spiritual community we need to be interested in others and we need to listen to them. Being aware of others and taking an interest in them is a training on the path to compassionate involvement in the world. The most practical way to develop this faculty is by learning to listen – listening to what is being said and being aware of what is being communicated non-verbally too. In the Sangha we will have some friendships which are much more intimate, where we share ourselves more fully. It is important for our spiritual and psychological welfare that we have good friends and the only way to have good friends is by befriending people. Friendship is active; it is something we do rather than something that happens to us.

To work on this ideal of being 'friendly amid the haters', we need to make an effort to be friendly in whatever situation we find ourselves in. We can try to be friendly with our family for instance and friendly with our work colleagues. These are two arenas that can often bring out the worst in us and sometimes we have to make a special effort to maintain awareness of our aspirations; to be happy and friendly in the midst of the world.

The reason why these situations, especially perhaps the family, can be especially difficult is because we have roles that can be limiting. We may be a husband or wife, a mother or father, a daughter or son, a grandfather or grandmother and sometimes these roles can be a hindrance to being a human being in relationship with other human beings in the family context. We have to make an effort to see our mother as another person in her own right or we have to make an effort to relate to our son as a person independent of us. But this is the sort of effort in awareness and friendliness that will lead us in the direction of our ideal.

Friendliness in relation to the wider community is a matter of taking an interest and supporting positive initiatives that encourage the values of kindness, generosity and awareness. There are many positive things happening in the world beyond the Buddhist Community, whether in the area of the arts or ecology or caring for the elderly and less fortunate, and as a sangha we need to be aware of what's going and and co-operate with and encourage what is positive and life enhancing when and where we can. Perhaps the very least we can do is to rejoice in what is well done, whether it has been done by a local politician or business person or artist or whoever. Being 'friendly amid the haters' means above all that we do not take sides in any acrimonious disputes and where possible we try to calm troubled waters, if not build bridges over them.

The next verse is a little more difficult to understand. It exhorts us to be 'healthy among those who are sick'. Now we could take this literally, because research has shown that those who are happy are generally healthier and live longer than those who are not happy. And the Buddha speaks about non-violence, (another way of talking about friendliness), as being beneficial to health in the Culakammavibhanga Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya (no.135). Also in the Anguttara Nikaya there are eleven positive results of practising Loving Kindness, some of which would be very health giving, such as sleeping well, not having bad dreams, not being injured by weapons or poison, having a serene complexion and not being confused when death approaches.

However, you can also take this verse about being healthy among those who are sick in a more poetic way. In the Maagandiya Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya (75), the Buddha meets a wanderer who doesn't like him called Maagandiya and in the course of their discussion the Buddha recites a little verse and then proceeds to explain it. The verse is “The greatest of all gains is health. Nibbana is the greatest bliss, The eightfold path is the best of paths, For it leads to the deathless”. He goes on to explain what he means by sickness and health. He talks about clinging to the five skandhas as the disease and the cessation of clinging as health. Clinging to the five skandhas is another way of talking about clinging to a fixed self-view, or clinging to ego.

Being healthy among those who are sick comes to mean being egoless among those who are egotistic, or more simply being selfless among those who are selfish. This verse of the Dhammapada is about overcoming the delusion which binds us to selfishness through fear and ignorance. Being deeply happy and therefore being able to let go of self-centredness becomes easier if we are able to realise on a deep level that we are constantly changing beings and that all around us is also constantly changing so that the attempt to shore up our security by grasping and clinging on to our sense of self or to possessions or people will only cause pain and suffering.

In case this all sounds a bit abstract, here is a quote from Bhante Sangharakshita that gets to the heart of the matter in a very direct way. “A common misapprehension is to think of Insight and egolessness in abstract, even metaphysical, terms rather than as comprising concretely-lived attitudes and behaviour. But realizing the truth of egolessness simply means being truly and deeply unselfish. To contemplate the principle of egolessness as some special principle that is somehow separate from our actual behaviour will leave it as far away as ever. If we find it difficult to realize the ultimate emptiness of self, the solution is to try to be a little less selfish. The understanding comes after the experience, not before.” (Living with Kindness, p.134) It is worth noting that most of us probably have some experience of being selfless on occasion and are therefore not completely at sea when it comes to having some understanding of the truth of egolessness.

Let's have a look at what some of those concretely-lived attitudes might be if we want to be 'healthy amid the sick'. Well firstly it is important that we look after our physical health, so that we can practise the Dharma and be of use to others. In the Bodhiraajakumaara Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 85) the Buddha outlines five things that enable someone to practise the Dharma and the first is “being free from illness and affliction, possessing a good digestion” Eating nourishing food and taking exercise are part of our spiritual practice and as well as helping ourselves can have a positive influence on others.

If we look at some of the unhealthy delusions that we could be prone to, this might enable us to see what it would be like to have healthy attitudes and behaviour. Here then are some of the things that come to mind when I think about our delusions:

the delusion that we can have a perfect life
the delusion that anything will last forever
that material things bring lasting satisfaction
that we are victims and others are to blame for our dissatisfaction
that security is a matter of money or housing
that we can control the future
that we know what other people are thinking (especially about us)
the delusion that we are not dependant on others

If we are to have 'concretely-lived attitudes and behaviours' that lead us to being 'happy indeed- healthy amid the sick' , we will need to try to let go of our delusions- there are many more than I have mentioned.

Becoming even more practical, we could start by looking at our relationships with other people and consider how we might be more wise and less deluded in those. For instance, we could ask are we possessive in relation to partners or lovers ? Do we allow them the freedom to live their own lives and be themselves or are we trying to mould and change them to suit ourselves? In relation to parents: do we expect them to take responsibility for us and always be there for us or can we see them as individuals who have their own needs and desires? In relation to children: do we feel that we own them or do we let them go at the appropriate age? In relation to friends: do we treat them as supports to lean on all the time or do we also provide them with the warmth and support they need? In relation to the wider sangha: do we think in terms of what we can get for ourselves or do we think about what we can contribute? And similarly in relation to the local community or the country: do we expect to be provided for without having to contribute? Do we think in terms of our rights only or do we also think in terms of our duties?

The third verse of the Dhammapada that we are looking at is “happy indeed we live, content amid the greedy.” The word used for greed here, ' ussuka', has a sense of restless longing to it. Sometimes it is translated as restlessness. Contentment has the sense of not being restless. Contentment manifests in non-attachment, which could be more positively described as generosity and a sense of abundance. Contentment also expresses itself as living a simple life, with few possessions and taking joy in ordinary beauty. Contentment allows us to be generous and think of others.

To develop contentment we need to learn to find enjoyment and satisfaction in simple things: the colours of the leaves, the lights of cars on a wet street, rain falling in puddles, flowers, pebbles, a wrinkled face, a smile. Or the pleasure of sitting still, or walking or the sound of voices in the street, or the taste of water. There are so many things that we can enjoy if we can relax into being aware of them. If we can relax into the present free of restlessness we can get even greater enjoyment from chatting with friends or seeing a painting or listening to the wind.

Contentment can also be cultivated by focussing on what is positive in our lives and cultivating a sense of gratitude for all that we have. We could reflect at the end of each day on what enjoyment and pleasure there has been during the day. It might be the pleasure of seeing a happy child or the evening light on the autumn leaves or it might be a chat we've had or a friendly interaction with a shop assistant or even our usual breakfast. It's a matter of noticing what is good and pleasing in life and one effect of making the effort to do that is that you start to notice more and more things that you enjoy.

Another aspect of contentment is having a bigger perspective on our lives and the events and people we encounter. If we place ourselves in a context of vast time and cosmic space, or in the context of the great Freedom envisaged by the Dharma, we can start to see that our worries and stresses are perhaps not as significant as we take them to be when we are without any bigger perspective.

Contentment is the opposite to greed, because it is the absence of a restless longing for more stimulation. Generosity is the natural activity of contentment and acting generously can help to cultivate contentment, as we go beyond a narrow self-focus again and again. There are no shortage of outlets for generosity within the sangha and beyond the sangha.

The most obvious way to be generous is to give money to our Buddhist Centre, which is the institution that fosters the growth of the local sangha. People have all sorts of conditioning and emotions around money and it is an area where a great deal of attachment and delusion can be experienced. Because of that it is an area in which we can learn a great deal about ourselves and our deepest motivations.

Issues of security and identity are often experienced in our attitudes to money. If we want to make spiritual progress then a thorough exploration of our relationship to money will be very helpful. And it will be even more helpful if we do it in the context of the sangha: exploring with others what money means to us, what our conditioning around money is, how our attitudes to money affect the rest of our lives, and what is real or delusional in our relation to money. It is even worth trying to understand what money is. All of that could help us to be less neurotic and more generous with money and all that it represents and symbolises in our lives.

Other areas for the expression of generosity are volunteering, whether within the sangha or outside, and in our personal practice of ecological awareness. We can volunteer to help out at the Buddhist centre, something which we would probably gain a great deal from as well as benefiting the Centre. We can also volunteer in the local community as some of our friends do. I have known people in the sangha who volunteer at a night shelter or for the Samaritans or to write letters for Amnesty International. All very positive contributions to the community.

Ecological awareness is a matter of extending the meaning of the first precept, the precept of non-violence or loving kindness, to all aspects of our relationship with the world around us. It is necessary that we come to see clearly that we are not separate from our environment, but that we are intimately bound up with it. It is not the case that we have humanity on one side and the natural environment on the other side. We are an intrinsic part of the natural environment. In order to practise loving kindness even towards ourselves we need also to practise loving kindness towards the whole natural environment.

I have been talking about these three verses of the Dhammapada:
“Happy indeed we live, friendly amid the haters. Among men who hate we dwell free form hate.
Happy indeed we live, healthy amid the sick. Among men who are sick we dwell free from sickness.
Happy indeed we live, content amid the greedy. Among men who are greedy we dwell free from greed.”

I have been talking about these verses as an expression of the Buddha's vision for the Sangha. I said at the beginning that the Buddha's vision of the spiritual community was a vision of a community of people who worked on themselves to develop positive mental states and go beyond selfishness completely, a community of people who would go out into the world and share the Dharma with others, for the welfare of the many and a community of people who would befriend and support each other in these endeavours. This is what spiritual community is about in the Buddhist tradition and this is what the Triratna Buddhist Community is about too.

The Triratna Buddhist Community is a community of people who want to grow in awareness and kindness, a community of people who want to share the message of that awareness and kindness with others and a community of people who are willing to befriend and support each other in all of this.

We grow in awareness and kindness by meditating, going on retreat, being ethical, reflecting on the Dharma and communicating with our friends. We share the message of awareness and kindness, the message of the Dharma, by living it, teaching it, and helping those who are able to live it and teach it more fully than we can as yet. We can support each other by being friendly, by taking responsibility for our own mental states, both positive and negative (not attributing them to or blaming them on others) and by giving encouragement, money and a helping hand where needed.

A Sangha that is effective will have a positive affect on the world around it; it will be a beacon of sanity in a deluded world. We can be that Sangha at the local level and on a much larger scale by integrating as fully as possible with the wider Triratna Buddhist Community throughout the country and throughout the world.