Selfing and Othering

Just like many of you, I’m sure, I’ve been following the football with keen interest. I’ve been enjoying the unusual experience of following an England team that actually believes it can win and is free of the scars of past traumatic defeats. But one of the things that always strikes me is the sheer tribalism of the sport, of any sport, I suppose. Booing the opponent’s national anthem, for instance, has become a sad yet inevitable feature of international sporting fixtures. This to me is a good example of what I call “othering”. When we “other” people, we see them as different from us in some fundamental way, often accompanied by suspicion, fear or even hatred. Racism, nationalism, sexism, homophobia and the like are all rooted in this tendency.

Buddhism doesn’t have a lot to say about “othering” in this way. But it has a great deal to say about the other side of the coin, which I will call “selfing”. According to Buddhism, belief in a permanent, fixed and separate self is one of the fetters which bind us to suffering. At a personal level, we identify with our body, our feelings or our thoughts and opinions. At the interpersonal level, we identify this self with the selves of our nearest-and-dearest, perhaps with our group of friends, or our football club. At the societal level, that identification may be with our culture, our political beliefs or our nation. But the problem is that anyone who isn’t in that group, who doesn’t support that team or share our feelings, say, about Brexit, becomes “other”. We’ve seen in recent years a very strong tendency to polarisation in our society, Brexit being a good example, where many of us may never associate with people who hold different views. The result can be demonisation and a complete lack of fellow-feeling and empathy. That is corrosive, both for us as individuals and for the society we share. But what do we do about it?

The Buddha taught that our idea of the self as separate and fixed is simply wrong. But we cling to the idea that there is something solid and enduring there and experience pain and grief when things don’t go the way we want. Our body ages and changes and is subject to sickness, our emotions are fickle and fluid, and, as anyone who’s ever meditated will know, our mind has a mind of its own, with thoughts just thinking themselves. But it’s that conviction that we are somehow fixed and separate which is also at the root of all the “othering” we do and the pain it causes. Difference can feel threatening, make us uneasy and unsure. One way to overcome this is to observe our experience closely and reflect that there really is nothing enduring there, nothing ultimately fixed or separate, so that, at some point, insight will arise and, with it, release from bondage. That requires quite a lot of application and clarity of mind. But another way to approach this is simply through the cultivation of loving-kindness. When we do this, perhaps in meditation, we reflect that everyone else is in the same boat, feeling the pain of separation and wanting to be happy, safe and free from suffering. Reflecting in this way is a powerful tool for the transformation of the heart and the perfect antidote to “othering”. Where there is love, there can be no “othering” and, where there is no “othering”, the painful bonds of “selfing” can, at least for a time, be loosened. So here’s my suggestion: when you get a quiet moment, try to see what you have in common with the people on the other side of the self/other divide in your life, which is a lot.  They have human fears and hopes, just like you. They want to be happy, just as you do, and they want to avoid suffering, just as you do. I can confidently say that this practice has changed my life, and I’m sure it will make a difference to yours.

"Normality" and the need for gratitude

 

Since lockdown began in March, everyone’s been asking when things will get back to normal. This is entirely understandable, as none of us have ever experienced the effects of a pandemic in our lifetime. We’re living through a phase in which some basic freedoms have been curtailed, such as our freedom to associate with as many people as we like when we like, just to pop out to the pub without booking, and to hang out in enclosed spaces without the lurking fear of contagion. What used to be normal now seems like a memory from another era, and there’s even the fear that Christmas will somehow be cancelled.

But, looking at it from a Buddhist point of view, I would challenge the very idea that there is such thing as normal in this sense. The idea of normal implies a kind of consistent and stable state to which things will automatically default when everything gets sorted out. Once the pandemic is over, life will return to exactly what it was. We can be forgiven for holding this view because the post-war generations, at least in our part of the world, have lived through a time of exceptional peace, prosperity and stability, where every generation has consistently been better off than the preceding one. There are many reasons for this, including stable international institutions and scientific progress, but recent economic, health and environmental shocks seem to me to be bringing that trend to an end.

Buddhism teaches that all things arise in dependence upon conditions. Change or remove the conditions, and you change the outcome. This applies to everything from solar systems to societies, empires to ecosystems - and the mounting evidence of the seriousness of the global ecological crisis we’re all in illustrates the point very well. For too long, our species has assumed a degree of separateness from the natural world – that we can insulate ourselves from the effects of our own polluting and destructive behaviour. But it seems increasingly clear from global reports of extreme weather events bringing fire and flood, not to mention the ravaging of biodiversity, that this is not the case.

I think our response to this should be twofold. The first response is a practical one: Firstly, we need to change our individual and collective behaviours to stop wreaking havoc on our fragile planet. But we also need something like a spiritual response, by which I mean we need to recognise our dependence on the intricate web of conditions that is the natural world and cultivate a response of both awe and humility: awe at the breath-taking beauty of our world and humility as we recognise the precariousness of our position. Instead of taking things for granted, which is what the idea of normal implies, I think we need to cultivate gratitude in the light of the amazing natural riches that have given and continue to give us so much.

So let’s stop taking things for granted. Take some time today to reflect on everything the world has given you and be grateful. And let’s do what we can to ensure that future generations will have the same reasons for gratitude as we do.

Coronavirus, hubris and the green shoots

 

As I was out for my precious hour of exercise the other day, I started musing about the nature of the predicament that Coronavirus has cast us into. I couldn’t help reflect on how ironic it was that the most successful and powerful species the planet has ever known has been forced to retreat to the margins of a world it has become used to having absolute mastery over. And by what? Well, by a tiny bundle of DNA scraps, lipids and proteins way too small for the human eye to see. The phrase “The microscopic will inherit the earth” came to mind, with apologies to the gospel according to Matthew!

OK, so it won’t come to that – not this time, anyway – but what I find myself really hoping for is a learning from this situation. A learning for our species, a learning about hubris. One of the core Buddhist teachings is that all things arise in dependence upon conditions. This applies to climate patterns, human societies, economic systems, and the evolution of viruses alike. But we’ve grown used to seeing ourselves as distinct from nature, able to lord over it and bend it to our will without any negative side-effects. In our pursuit of an ever-higher standard of living, ever more stuff, ever more luxury, we’ve lost touch with our true place in the natural order. The consequences of climate change we’ve seen played out in our own county – does anyone remember those hundred-year floods from another world? – and this current health emergency are showing us that we aren’t above the system, that we can’t seal ourselves off from the natural world and expect to get away with it.

So what do I hope for? Well, in some ways I’m seeing the green shoots of that already in the midst of this pandemic. People rediscovering the virtues of and need for community cooperation. Members of my Buddhist community smiling and waving at each other in videoconferences. People standing on their doorsteps and balconies applauding our health workers. People in cities enjoying fresh and sweetly scented air free of traffic fumes and the majesty of the night sky without the constant rumble of jet engines and vapour trails. Birdsong over quiet streets. The other day, I thought I heard a skylark by the river. And a herd of goats has made its home in the vacant streets of Llandudno. In the midst of so much economic and social upheaval, I sense the emergence of a reconnection with society and the natural world, and that has to be good.

Of course, once this is all over, people will get back into cars and planes and there will be an explosion of social interaction; that’s only natural. But I desperately hope his won’t come at the expense of the natural world, that we won’t re-cocoon ourselves in complacency.

Some of you listening will be self-isolating. Some of you will be feeling the stress of being cooped up and the economic pinch. But for those of you who can, listen to the birds and enjoy the fresh, fume-free air. And reach out to people, maybe those you’ve been out of touch with for ages. For those of you who feel isolated, I know that armies of volunteers are trying to get in touch with you. This crisis is bringing out the best of many people, and it’s that which will get us through it with, I hope, some lasting lessons for a better world.

Conceit

 Sunday 1 June 2019

 To say the country is divided at the moment would be something of an understatement! As the whole Brexit saga rolls on endlessly, I’m sure I can speak for many when I say I’ve started groaning inwardly whenever politicians line up to trot out the same lines, especially from the opposite side of the divide from where I find myself. But I’ve also noticed a disturbing impulse in myself, which I’ve never had before, to shout at the people I disagree with when they come on the radio or TV. And I’ve come to see the underlying not-so-subtle view that holding the views I do on the subject makes me somehow superior to the people who disagree with me, as if I occupy the moral and intellectual high ground. It’s so easy, not just to say that I’m right and they’re wrong, but also to dismiss them wholesale as fools or bigots or whatever you will. As well as being an expression of ill-will, it also points to the operation in my mind and heart of conceit.

Buddhism has a great deal to say about conceit. In fact, it’s one of what are known as the five poisons, the others being greed, hatred, spiritual ignorance and distractedness. And poisonous is a good word to describe its effect. But it isn’t just about thinking you’re better than other people. It also comes into play when you think others are better than you, when you do yourself down. In the Buddhist community, I often hear people say they can’t meditate. They’re sure it’s a valuable thing to be able to do, and they recognise that others can do it, it’s just that they can’t. My teacher Sangharakshita, when faced with someone talking like that, is reported to have asked “What’s so special about you then?”, turning the whole thing on its head.

We make snap judgements based on conceit all the time. We see people who are cleverer than us, richer and more successful as well as those who we secretly look down on because of the way they look or speak or the views they hold. Whichever way we go, however, the issue is one of comparison based on difference. And seeing difference serves only to separate and isolate us, which is a bad thing. As the old quotation has it, “comparisons are odious”.

Buddhism offers an antidote to this in a meditation called the metta bhavana, in which we set out to cultivate good will to all beings, starting with ourselves and going on to consider a good friend, someone we don’t know well, someone we struggle with and, finally, all beings. This practice can help us truly see people, to recognise that everyone wants the same thing: to be happy and free of suffering - even though we express those wishes in different ways. We stop comparing and start empathising. To recall this whenever the urge to compare arises can help free us of ill-will. I need to work harder at this in these times of division and I’d encourage you to do the same. Whenever you find your blood boiling at what someone else says or start doing yourself down, stop, take a breath and wish yourself or the other person well instead. I know from experience that it’s a transformative practice – why not try it out for yourself?

Why we don't help and what we can do about it

My family and I have just returned from a very rich and varied week in New York, where we did all the usual tourist things, including a visit to the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero, a trip up the Empire State Building and a boat ride out to Liberty Island. This was all very wonderful and enriching, but what I want to share with you is a little incident that I must admit wasn’t one of my finest moments but gave me plenty of cause for reflection. We were just heading into the Coney Island subway after a happy afternoon spent on the beach, when a row broke out between a man and a woman who were waiting to board a bus. I’ve no idea what it was about, but suffice to say voices were raised, and there was a fair amount of pushing and shoving, which ended up with the woman falling over with the trolley she had with her. It was a slo-mo fall, which would have been quite comical if it hadn’t been so sad, but what happened next was remarkable. Nothing happened. The other people in the queue and standing around stood looking at her as she lay on the ground. Worse still, so did I. I was no more than 20 yards away and could easily have darted over to help her up, but I didn’t. She was eventually helped to her feet by a young man, and a police officer strolled over to sort things out. It was a minor incident, but I felt very remorseful as we caught the train and started ruminating. Why didn’t I help? I can only conclude that it was what you might call the Somebody Else’s Problem syndrome. I didn’t know her, she wasn’t a family member or a friend, so she wasn’t in my immediate sphere of concern. Had it been one of my kids, you can rest assured that I would have been straight in there. But this stranger somehow didn’t merit my care or attention.

OK, so this reflects badly on me, but I dare say I wouldn’t have been alone in my reaction. After all, how often do we pass homeless people by, for instance, without even acknowledging them. They have nothing to do with us, so why bother? A more creative response is suggested by 8^th century Buddhist monk Shantideva, author of a famous work on how to lead an ideal Buddhist life. He makes the point that, if we have a pain in our foot, we will act to alleviate it, so why don’t we respond equally quickly to the pain of others, to whom we are connected by our common humanity and shared desire to be happy? The problem, he suggests, lies in a failure of imagination, which is the basis of empathy. As the poet Shelley says: “A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.” This I see as being one of the primary tasks of my practice as a Buddhist. 

Fortunately, I have a tried and tested meditation to help me out. In the metta bhavana, or loving-kindness meditation, we bring to mind various people, some we know well and some we don’t, some we like and some we don’t, and simply wish them well. We step out of the narratives of preference and self-interest and try to see them as human beings just like us, with the same hopes and fears, desire to be loved and not to suffer.

My point is that you don’t necessarily have to sit down to meditate to do this. It just requires awareness of others and a willingness to see what we have in common. I wish I’d recalled this in those few moments when I was standing looking at that poor lady on the ground. But next time I’m resolved to do better. And I would really suggest that you do the same. When, for instance, you pass that homeless person in a doorway, really try to see them as a fellow human being. Even if you don’t want to give them money, which I think is a perfectly legitimate choice, make eye contact, greet them, make them feel seen. If someone is in distress, stop and help them. You will feel better, more connected, and so will they. Everyone wins, and the world is a better place for it.

Sugar

Last Saturday morning, I caught one of my sons gazing glumly into his bowl of cereal. The cereal in question was one of those brands you can get which are a bit chocolatey but low in sugar. When I asked him what the matter was, he told me it didn’t taste of anything. That’s because you’re used to having more sugar in your cereal, I told him, so you’re not used to tasting anything but sugar. At that point I had a sudden flashback to when I was a boy, to times when I used to spoon such a thick layer of white sugar onto my Weetabix that you could have measured it with a ruler. So what I ended upwith was the texture of Weetabix with the taste of sugar. It was only when I was heading into adulthood that I actually discovered what Weetabix tasted like when not slathered in the white stuff. The same thing happened when I gave up sugar in my tea and coffee; the initial experience was really weird, but I soon got used to the distinctive and subtle differences in flavour between different types of coffee and tea.

This really got me thinking. Not only are most people in the modern age overexposed to sugar and other strong flavours to the point that we can often barely taste the food in front of us, but the same thing applies to varying degrees to all our other senses. You can’t go into a shop without being bombarded by Muzak, for instance, even in the loos! I don’t know about you, but I personally have no desire to listen to generic pop music while doing my business! We’re also bombarded by adverts of various kinds demanding our attention - the genius of the advertising industry lies in its ability to constantly draw us out of ourselves into a world of want. And then of course, we stick on the TV or the radio or get involved in the seductive world of social media on our mobile devices, and before we know it, we’ve lost all relationship with what’s actually going on, with our own inner life and experience.

And then I recalled another experience which resounds down the years as clear as the moment it happened. I was on retreat once, when somebody put a cup down on a work surface in the kitchen. I’ve no idea how many countless times I’ve heard cups going down on work surfaces, but this noise struck me for its exceptional purity, like the striking of a beautiful bell. The reason was that I’d been meditating a lot and was enjoying states of unusual mental and emotional clarity, free of the usual distractions of modern life. This enabled me to enjoy and relish even the simplest of sense experiences. And the experience resonated so strongly with me that I’ve never forgotten it, even a quarter of a century later.

These days I like to take time out to do nothing, to throw down my mobile and switch off the TV, to experience the simple messages of my senses in all their subtlety and shades of beauty. I’m not saying I do this very often, but when I do, I feel at my most relaxed and alive. There really is so much richness in even the little experiences conveyed by our senses. So my advice would be to do the same, at least every now and again. Turn off the box, turn off your phone, turn off your computer and give yourself the chance to enjoy the beauty of even the most ordinary and mundane of experiences. You’ll experience a richness that you would never otherwise have thought to look for.

Losing the remote - and keeping your cool

The other evening I was looking forward to sitting down in front of the TV. The problem was however that I couldn’t find the remote. I’m sure you know how it is: every device has its own remote, and the smaller the box, the smaller the remote that goes with it. And our box is pretty small. Having hunted in and under the sofas and even in the shoe drawer for good measure, I found myself getting increasingly exasperated, even slightly panicky. What if it never turned up? How would we watch TV? Would I have to spend money replacing it? It was a very unpleasant state to be in. Happily, my partner was unruffled and pointed out that we could just plug the aerial into the back of the TV the old fashioned way and watch it like that.

Sound familiar? And the point is this wasn’t a new response on my part. It’s actually pretty much the response I have every time we mislay a remote. Which is where one of the Buddha’s core teachings comes in: that actions have consequences, and that actions committed when we’re in mental states characterized by anger, frustration and the like cause us to suffer. Worse still, repeatedly acting in that way is habit-forming. Just as rivulets of water gradually carve a path out of the rock over which they flow, causing them to follow the same path with less and less possibility of diversion, repeatedly giving way to anger and resentment in the same circumstances makes it all the more likely that we will do so again next time around. In fact, much of human behaviour operates in this kind of reactive mode, simply repeating actions that we have done many times before, with all the unpleasantness that follows.

This is the Buddhist principle of karma. It has nothing to do with fate or some preordained path in life. What it means is exactly what I’ve described above: that acting in a particular way has the effect of shaping our character for the future. Giving into anger, frustration and resentment makes us more likely to do so again in the future, to the point where we run the risk of becoming angry, frustrated and resentful people.

But fortunately it works the other way too. The more we act with patience, out of love, concern for others and generosity, the more our hearts will open, and the more likely it is that our behaviour will in general be characterized by those qualities. We all act in these ways some of the time – they aren’t the preserve of the enlightened! But what we need to do is consciously apply ourselves to acting out of these positive states more and more often – and not giving in to their negative counterparts. In this way we’ll set up positive habits for the future.

The best way to go about this might be to start small. In my case, it might simply be to accept that TV remotes sometimes get lost, realise it’s not the end of the world, count to ten and let go. I’m sure you have your equivalent little unhelpful habit too. So next time you find yourself getting wound up about the same old little thing, take a breath, pause and try and let go of it. You’ll find, as I do when I manage it, that it’s a real relief. On the other hand, try not to miss opportunities to show kindness and generosity when they present themselves. I’ve no doubt this is the beginning of the path to greater happiness and contentment, and I’m sure you’ll find it is too.

Parinirvana, death and freedom

So today's festival day marks the Buddha's great decease in the sala tree grove at Kusinagara at the end of a period of wandering and teaching that apparently lasted up to 45 years. The Pali scriptures record the occasion very fully. One particularly touching episode relates the story of the lamentation of Ananda, the Buddha's cousin and attendant for the last 25 years of his life: it's quite short so I'll quote it in full:

Then Ven. Ananda, going into a [nearby] building, stood leaning against the door jamb, weeping: "Here I am, still in training, with work left to do, and the total Unbinding of my teacher is about to occur — the teacher who has had such sympathy for me!"

Then the Blessed One said to the monks, "Monks, where is Ananda?"

"Lord, Ven. Ananda, having gone into that building, stands leaning against the door jamb, weeping: 'Here I am, still in training, with work left to do, and the total Unbinding of my teacher is about to occur — the teacher who has had such sympathy for me!'"

Then the Blessed One told a certain monk, "Come, monk. In my name, call Ananda, saying, 'The Teacher calls you, my friend.'"

"As you say, lord," the monk answered and, having gone to Ven. Ananda, on arrival he said, "The Teacher calls you, my friend."

"As you say, my friend," Ven. Ananda replied. Then he went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there, the Blessed One said to him, "Enough, Ananda. Don't grieve. Don't lament. Haven't I already taught you the state of growing different with regard to all things dear & appealing, the state of becoming separate, the state of becoming otherwise? What else is there to expect? It's impossible that one could forbid anything born, existent, fabricated, & subject to disintegration from disintegrating.

"For a long time, Ananda, you have waited on the Tathagata with physical acts of good will — helpful, happy, whole-hearted, without limit; with verbal acts of good will... with mental acts of good will — helpful, happy, whole-hearted, without limit. You are one who has made merit. Commit yourself to exertion, and soon you will be without mental fermentations."

This is a lovely episode isn't it, although you can't help but feel that Ananda's grief is directed at his own sense of loss, which I guess is always the nature of grief: "here I am with work left to do, but my teacher is now about to leave me". But it's particularly worth noting that the Buddha tells Ananda not to grieve, as the Buddha's passing is both natural and inevitable, fully in accordance with his teaching of impermanence, and Ananda cannot expect not to be separated from that which is dear and appealing. Even on his deathbed the Buddha's concern is with the welfare of his disciple, that he should fully understand and act on what he has been taught. His attitude is one of total kindness and encouragement. He doesn't sound like a man who is worried that his life's about to be snuffed out. He doesn't sound scared. I don't know about you, but I get scared when I think about my own death. I can only reflect on it for a short while before my mind just kind of slides off into more comfortable territory. The difference is, of course, that the Buddha is enlightened, that he has already experienced klesha-nirvana, an awakening that eliminates all negative mental states and all confusion regarding the nature of reality, and Ananda has not. So Ananda is, from our point of view, understandably upset that the Buddha 's time of "unbinding" is at hand.

But hang on a minute. The Buddha is already enlightened, fully emancipated. So what is this "unbinding" that Ananda refers to? When I looked up "unbinding" online I found that it is used as a synonym for nirvana itself, one explanation being that nirvana is like the extinguishing of a flame that is bound to its fuel, releasing the flame from bondage, unbinding it. But if the Buddha isn't yet fully unbound, something is still binding him until the point of death. But what?

The answer lies in the title of today's festival - Parinirvana Day. What Parinirvana means is "nirvana without remainder". To see what that means we should compare the two types of nirvana I've already mentioned: klesha-nirvana and Parinirvana. As I said, klesha-nirvana arises with the extinction of the passions, of all negative mental states and views concerning the nature of reality. But what's left behind? Well, the answer is the Buddha's psychophysical organism, his senses, his total experience of embodiment on any plane of conditioned existence. This is the remainder in nirvana without remainder. It's a telling expression: the Buddha's entire embodied experience dismissed, as it were, as leftovers. It does at the very least indicate a perspective that is unimaginably different from ours! There's also a sense of deep mystery: if the remainder is everything we experience in this life, what on earth can be experienced as being outside it? Thats a tricky one, and I'll return to it later.

Nirvana without remainder in the sources I've found refers to nirvana without the five skandhas. Many of you will be familiar with these from the Heart Sutra, which contains the lines "the Bodhisattva of compassion, when he meditated deeply, saw the emptiness of all five skandhas and sundered the bonds that caused him suffering". The sutra then goes on to say what they are, in some cases a bit idiosyncratically. I'll tell you about them in a moment. But first its already worth noting here the association between the skandhas and suffering.

The skandhas, the remainder abandoned by the Buddha at the point of Parinirvana, are basically a way of describing the sum total of our experience. I prefer talking in terms of experience rather than material or stuff out there because our experience is all we can know, and anything else is speculation. They are the experience of physical form, feeling in the primary sense of pleasant, painful and neutral, perception, actions and consciousness. Between them, according to early Buddhist teachings, they completely exhaust anything we can possibly experience in the universe.

Firstly, form, or rupa. The rupa skandha covers the experience relayed via the physical senses. It is everything we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. You might say that it is the world "out there", although it also includes our embodied sense of ourselves - our own physicality. Traditionally it is talked about principally in terms of the four great elements or earth, water, fire and air plus a whole load of secondary experiences which I won't go into now. Let's try to get a sense of this in immediate practical terms. Put out your hand and touch something, the floor or your chair or leg. What happens? Well, there's an experience of solidity, of resistance. You can't put your hand through it. That is the earth element. But at the same time there's a feeling of flexibility, of flow. If you press down your flesh gives way, and if you move your fingers you get a sense of fluidity. That's the water element. There is also an experience of temperature, warm or cold. That's fire. And lastly, in your hands and in your whole body there's a sense of expansion, of buoyancy. They aren't like slabs of rock or dead fish. That's the air element. And between them these elements make up all the essentials of our experience of materiality.

And if you look closely you'll find that the experience comes with a feeling tone. It might be mildly pleasant, mildly unpleasant or too neutral for you to identify a particular feeling tone. But of course we're all familiar with pleasant and painful feelings in our lives, from toothache to heartbreak. All of these start with simple hedonic feeling, which is vedana, which can be physical or mental. If you've ever discussed the wheel of life, you will know how crucial vedana is in the generation of suffering. But more of that in a minute.

If you look at your hand, a couple of things happen. You see a particular shape with bits sticking out of it, lines, shadow and light, colour tones, and you recognise it as "my hand". That's perception - sanna - which is our faculty for recognising things, say colours or shapes, and using our previous experience of them to categorise the objects that have them as this or that. This is of course a useful skill, as it enables me to tell the difference between a bus and a biscuit.

I can use my hands in various ways. I can make a cup of tea as an act of thoughtfulness for a friend or reluctantly because I’ve been asked but don’t really want to; I can paint a picture to beautify my own mind and delight other people or to curry favour with a totalitarian regime, or I can fire a gun in sport or in anger. These actions all condition certain effects, and those effects depend on the mental state in which I perform the action. Negative mental states give rise to suffering, positive mental states conduce to happiness, and neutral mental states have no particular karmic effect. Volitional actions that give rise to particular consequences are known as samskaras. I've also heard them described as all the actions that make up our life, which is all of them really.

And finally, what makes it possible for me to perceive my hands, to see or smell them, to touch with them? The answer is consciousness. Our western view of consciousness tends to see it as a kind of field that surrounds us, into which objects enter and are then registered by that consciousness, but the Buddhist take on it is different. early Buddhist teaching has it that each sense organ is associated with a particular consciousness: eye consciousness, ear consciousness and so on, and that for an act of perception to take place there needs to be a functioning organ, an object "out there" and consciousness to link the two. Consciousness only arises under these conditions. So consciousness isn't an ever-present field that surrounds us but is instead dependent on conditions to manifest. This is vinnana, the fifth and last of the skandhas, of the elements that make up all our experience.

So to recap, we have form, feeling, perception, action and consciousness. And that's all. There is nothing else.

All very interesting, perhaps (at least to me!), but what does it have to do with enlightenment and the Buddha and us? Well, a lot. The composite word often used in the Pali scriptures is "upadanakhanda", which means "the skandhas afflicted by clinging". The unenlightened many folk don't just have skandhas, they have skandhas afflicted by clinging. The enlightened, in contrast, do not, except inasmuch as their skandhas are objects of clinging for the unenlightened. What does this all mean? Well, I think it means that we ordinary people take our skandhas and add the idea of a self to them. My form, my feelings, my perceptions, my actions and my consciousness. And it is this positing of a self that opens us up to suffering. If things are mine, then losing them will cause me suffering. A belief in me in here sets up an opposition with everything else out there, and that is a recipe for tension and unhappiness. And this all arises on the basis of an illusion, as the self we posit just isn't there.

Let's examine this a bit. If something is truly mine, then I would expect to be able to dispose of it as I see fit, like I do my car or my computer. But in terms of the skandhas that doesn't really hold water. If rupa or form were really mine, I would be able to control the information conveyed by my senses. Instead of bumping up against a wall, I ought to be able to walk through it or at least to choose the physical experience I have. But I can't. I can only experience the physical sensations that the conditions – the particular materiality of my body - allow me to experience. So rupa depends on conditions. And if I am really rupa, what happens when I'm asleep can no longer feel my body? Do I cease to be? What about someone who is paralysed from the neck down? Or someone who loses a limb? Are they any less themselves? I think the answer has to be no. So rupa can't be any basis for an independent and autonomous me. The same goes for feelings or vedana: not even the Buddha could control painful, neutral or pleasant sensations except on a temporary basis by going into dhyāna. So how can I possibly hope to? And vedanā are transient, changing constantly and not enduring for ever. And what about perceptions? I can't look at Abhayanara and see Napoleon or Harry Potter, unless I'm delusional that is. I can’t see a car and perceive a wombat. I can try to make my perceptions more accurate, for instance by recognising a rope as a rope and not a snake, but the basic stuff that experience presents to me is given by the nature of my senses and the information they relay to me, backed up by all my past experience. And my perceptions are continuously changing. To see this, all you have to do is get up and turn in a circle. As the visual field changes, so does your visual perception. You can’t do anything about it. So this doesn't admit the possibility of an autonomous me calling the perceptual shots. And, as far as samskaras go, I will admit that I can to some extent control my actions, but we probably all know how easy it is to be controlled by them. And there is never any complete autonomy in our actions, as they are all conditioned by motives that arise from feeling and perception. These motives may be skilful or unskilful, but, because they are conditioned, they do not constitute a self. And, lastly, there is consciousness, which in Buddhism is nothing other than a moment-by-moment arising in dependence on the presence of sense organs and sense objects. The tendency to put all these things together to create a separate and enduring "me" is very strong, and the feeling we have of that self is very strong, but, as Chökyi Nyima Rimpoche puts it, the closer you look, the more elusive it gets.

So positing a self on the basis of the skandhas - clinging to them - causes us suffering. The self needs protecting by pushing away things that appear threatening to it and trying to cling on to things it thinks will make it happy. This kind of push-pull tension is virtually ever-present and leads to enormous amounts of dissatisfaction. I’m sure none of you needs to hear any more about this to know that it’s true!

The Buddha also had skandhas. He had senses, feelings, perceptions, actions and consciousness. But his realisation consisted in seeing that no permanent self was to be found in them. With this realisation came the end of identification, the end of all kinds of emotional and psychological suffering. He let go of identifying the skandhas as being him. When seen in this light, the idea of the skandhas as "remainder" starts to make sense. Whatever the Buddha was, he wasn't to be found in the skandhas. This recalls the line from the Heart Sutra: "the Bodhisattva of compassion, when he meditated deeply, saw the emptiness of all five skandhas, and sundered the bonds that caused him suffering." No longer beset by ideas of me or mine, the Buddha cut off all suffering at the root.

Well, not quite all suffering. There was still suffering in the remainder. Particularly when he got old, the Buddha's body was a source of constant discomfort. He would get backache, and at one point he memorably describes his body as being like a broken-down old cart, held together by straps. It is said that he could only escape from physical discomfort by going into dhyana. But the difference between him and us was that not identifying with the experience meant that he didn't suffer any of the psychological or emotional suffering that we normally do when the skandhas don't play ball.

So we get the idea of the Buddha's skandhas binding him to the material plane, even though his mind was completely free - and completely unfathomable. If the Buddha wasn't to be found in any of the skandhas, where was he? Well, there's the problem. If the five skandhas exhaust everything that can be experienced, what is there outside them? The Pali word to describe this mysterious realm is Lokuttara, which, rather unhelpfully, means "above the world". So if you're not careful you can start imagining some kind of realm above and beyond the suffering of samsara, a bit like the Christian heaven, into which the Buddha happily ascended in spirit and then, at the point of his death, in his entirety. I've recently been reading an interesting little book called "Honest to God", written in 1962 by the then bishop of Woolwich, John Robinson, which deals with the same problematic issue from a Christian perspective. Robinson says that the traditional Christian idea of God "up there", beyond the reach of straining church spires, was at some point replaced by the idea of God "out there": one spatial metaphor replaced by another. But his point was that increasing scientific understanding of the universe rendered this idea absurd for modern people, and a completely different understanding of transcendence was needed: the presence of the divine in everyday things, sanctified by love, like the bread and wine. This struck a real chord with me: the problem lies in the concepts themselves. The skandhas are not things in themselves: they are merely limited concepts that have a certain instrumental value but are empty of real existence, of self. And the idea of nirvana, of emptiness itself, is likewise a concept, an inspiring one perhaps, but limited nonetheless in our understanding to a particular state or set of states experienced by an entity. In reality there is no difference between them: the distinction between the conditioned existence that we create by grasping the skandhas and the unconditioned nature of nirvana is ultimately illusory. To become free, the Buddha had to let go of an idea of there being a self that could be free or unfree. And this ultimate freedom was realised with the final abandonment of the skandhas at Parinirvana. Even to say the Buddha became free is to miss the point, to posit an entity that could attain to freedom. Perhaps the closest we can get is simply to say that the Buddha was – is - freedom itself, above any categories of freedom or bondage. A freedom that is ultimate bliss - for, without limits of any kind, how could there be suffering of any kind - and compassion for anyone stuck in notions of self or, for that matter, not-self. A freedom that was supreme letting go.

Which brings me to my final point, which intersects with our practice. When we get involved in the Dharma we are quite naturally looking to better ourselves, to change, to become kinder, more aware, and wiser. There's nothing wrong with any of this, but I would argue that we tend to see progress in the Dharma life as equivalent to becoming a better me: kinder, more aware, but still essentially me. And the reason we can't comprehend enlightenment is because it is impossible for us to think in terms other than being us, essentially separate and recognisable, albeit with various bells and whistles. This is what you might call the developmental model. Great, but not sufficient on its own. I think we also need to engage with letting go, letting go of identification with our skandhas, of ourselves as a particular being. Letting go of boundaries, of self-interest. And I think we have practices that allow us to do this. Take the metta bhavana for instance. Viewed in one way, it is a practice of developing kindness, becoming kinder and friendlier. Viewed in another, however, it's about letting go of the difference between ourselves and other people, transcending them, being united with others in a field of love. And even the good old mindfulness of breathing. Is it a concentration exercise or an opportunity to see the changing nature of our experience and to cease to identify with it? What about simple acts of generosity? A truly generous impulse is a momentary realisation of the emptiness of any distinction between ourselves and the recipient of our generosity. It offers a glimpse of that mysterious state that is neither of the world nor not of the world, not in the skandhas but nowhere else either.

So this is the question I would like to leave you with. When you think of your Dharma life, what terms do you think in? Do you think of adding positive qualities onto yourself but staying essentially the same, or do you also experience those mysterious moments in which the self loses traction, and you find yourself in a state of greater openness and connectedness with others?

The stories we tell ourselves and how they cause us suffering

A few weeks ago I was on retreat when I came across someone who’d just arrived a little late and was in conversation with another retreatant in the lounge. I said hello but didn’t get a reply. Feeling a bit put out, I wandered over the tea bar and started concocting a story in my mind about the guy who’d ignored me: he didn’t like me, or I wasn’t important enough to talk to or he had better things to do. None of this made me feel any happier. Anyway, it turned out he simply hadn’t heard me and came over to say hello. So my story got blown out of the water, and we then got on fine.

This is a trivial example of something much more serious that the Buddhist tradition calls “papancha”, best translated as mental proliferation. It goes something like this: something happens, like being ignored as I was, that gives you an unpleasant feeling, and, on the basis of that feeling you interpret the event a certain way, just as I did on retreat. Before you know it, that interpretation has taken shape and solidified into its own reality through a process of thought. This rapidly gets out of control and creates a version of the world that may have nothing to do with what actually happened.

And our interpretation of what happens isn’t random. It’s determined by all sorts of factors like our previous experience, self-view, education, social background, the media and many others. In my example, my response was coloured by a tendency to lack self-confidence and my selective memory of previous encounters with the same man.

The reason this is so serious is that it’s how over-identification with ideology and fanaticism arise. If you’re only ever exposed to one narrative, like radical Islamism or the relentless demonization of immigrants, contact with certain people will give rise to an unpleasant feeling. This can colour your perceptions of them to the extent that they can cease to be human. And when people cease to be human, it’s easier to wish them ill and actively commit acts of harm, as we’ve seen so tragically in recent weeks.

So what can we do about it? The Buddhist take on the stories we concoct is to see them as just that: stories. How often do we stop to consider whether we’re in full possession of the facts when we give our opinion about things? The Buddha tells us to go right back to that unpleasant feeling and not to get involved in fabricating stories that may cause us to act in ways we later regret. This involves a high level of attention and mindfulness – and a readiness to question our experience.

And then, of course, there’s love. Just as clinging too tightly to a particular story can prevent us from seeing other people as human, trying to cultivate love will do the opposite. If we can truly learn to love people we will never run the risk of dehumanizing them.

Buddhism offers a wonderful practice for the development of love, sometimes referred to in the tradition as “loving-kindness”. You start by cultivating well-wishing towards yourself, reflecting on the fact that you want to be happy and well. You then bring to mind a good friend, and wish the same for them. By degrees you move on to someone you don’t know well, someone you find difficult, and all people and sentient beings everywhere. I know from experience that this is a wonderfully effective practice. And if everyone did it, there would be much less room for conflict and strife in the world.

But even if you don’t meditate you can still pause every now and again and reflect on whether the way you’re acting or speaking is subtly dehumanizing someone, and what the underlying view is. I would strongly recommend that you give this a try, as it can make the world of difference to your relationships with all sorts of people.

Suffering and the Self

I’ve just been dealing with some disturbing news: one of the translation agencies I work for has given me some negative feedback about my work and announced a scaling-back, for the time being at least, of the type and amount of work I can do for them. The e-mail came on a Friday afternoon, which rather put a damper on my weekend!

This isn’t very nice, as anyone who has been criticised will know! But, as I’ve been reflecting on its implications, I’ve come to realise that, oddly enough, my discomfort isn’t so much about the possible loss of livelihood. No, what bothers me much more is the challenge this represents to my idea of who I am – to my self, you might say.

Buddhism tells us that all unenlightened people are subject to suffering in various forms. This isn’t of course to say that we suffer all the time – life for most of us is a mix of pleasurable and painful experience - but what it does mean is that a thread of suffering is woven right through the tapestry of individual lives: bodily pain, the loss of a relationship, fear of future unhappiness and a basic sense of lack are all forms of suffering that we will all encounter at some time or other. The tradition goes on to say that all emotional and mental suffering is due to our inability to see that everything is subject to change and nothing mundane can be relied on to make us happy. This goes in particular for our own individual self, which is no more than an ever-changing flux of passing physical, emotional and mental events which change as our conditions change. But we believe that this self is somehow fixed and unchanging, fundamentally separate from the world around it – and the only way to bridge the gap - to be happy - is through things like material possessions, relationships, membership of groups of one kind or another - and status. And when they fail to satisfy us - which they inevitably do - we suffer.

Which brings us back to my uncomfortable experience. My sense of identity revolves, as it does for everyone else, around strong and fixed ideas of who I am. Here are just a few of them: I am a capable, professional translator, able to hold my head up high in the world of work. But to be told out of the blue that I might not be as capable and professional as I thought has delivered a stiff challenge to this sense of my self, and I’ve been observing how my ego has been thrashing about like a landed fish trying to hold on to my certainty – they must be wrong, I must defend myself, how dare they…? This has been very painful. Yet, objectively speaking, the facts are simple: if they’re wrong, and I’m as good as I think I am, then there’s no problem. If I’m not, I can learn from the experience and improve – again, no problem. This doesn’t suddenly make me a bad or worthless person. But because this sense of self is so strong – yet so easily challenged – it’s very difficult to be rational.

What I’ve been trying to do is observe the suffering brought about by the gyrations of my mind and understand as deeply as I can that the cause of my own suffering is my sense of separate selfhood. Not easy, but it has kept things in perspective. Freedom from suffering isn’t to be found in blaming others for our unhappiness – the only way to free ourselves is to take on board that what really makes us unhappy is our strong sense of self. So, the next time someone criticises you, consider this: either they have a point, which will provide an opportunity for you to grow and develop, or they don’t, so why get upset about it? 

Contentment vs consumerism

posted 11 Jan 2016, 13:49 by Akasharaja Bruton

As another Christmas season passes and you clear away the tree, the decorations and all the discarded wrapping paper, you may be looking back on a period of frantic shopping and consumption and perhaps feeling the after effects – on your bank account and your waistline! It’s no coincidence that January sees the launch of various initiatives to reduce consumption, what with Dry January, where the emphasis is on abstaining from alcohol, and even Veganuary, in which various celebs line up to urge us to refrain from consuming  animal products for the month. Whatever you may feel about these causes, I think they touch on a point which is important from the point of view of human wellbeing and happiness and is stressed time and again in Buddhism – the need to moderate consumption and to look within for more real and lasting sources of contentment and happiness.

The advertising industry is of course always telling us that consumption is the path to happiness. Just think of all those beautiful and smiling young people – and they are almost invariably young – we see in adverts promoting new cars, perfumes and mobile phones. The clear message is that having particular consumer goods will bring us lasting happiness. There’s no denying the thrill you get from a new car or a new phone but, as you probably know from experience, the thrill fades and the sense of lack returns. And off we go again on the consumerist treadmill, looking for that next object of desire which will permanently banish all dissatisfaction. You and I may both know this, at least rationally, but, in my case, the knowledge doesn’t stop me from yearning for the next generation of Bluetooth loudspeakers in the hope of a blissful tomorrow.

I exaggerate of course – but perhaps only a little! We may not consciously think like that, but the emotional attachment to external objects as sources of lasting satisfaction runs very deep. Buddhism addresses this problem head on with its core teaching that craving is the cause of dissatisfaction and even suffering. Because the things we yearn for aren’t permanent – they break and get lost – and sooner or later we get bored with them because we’re looking for happiness from things outside ourselves that can’t ultimately provide it.

My teacher and the founder of my Order, Sangharakshita, teaches that the positive antidote to craving is the cultivation of stillness, simplicity and contentment – and those things can only come from within. Sometimes when I sit down to meditate on the breath, I’m struck by a sense of relief at the sheer simplicity of what I’m doing. I don’t need any gadgets or apps, all I have to do is watch my breath as it comes and goes and, if I’m lucky, the sense of restless craving for sense experience will fade and I’m left with a deep sense of satisfaction and contentment in the experience itself. Meditation may well of course not be your thing, but I think the point holds good – true satisfaction can only be found within. There are other ways to experience this, and I’m sure I’ve talked about them before, such as sitting quietly on your own or with a friend, being in nature or being happily immersed in a really good book. Perhaps you might try to find your own source of inner contentment this year – I guarantee that you will notice the benefit!

Happiness

posted 23 Oct 2015, 19:23 by Akasharaja Bruton

A couple of Saturdays ago I spent about an hour out and about on the streets of Shrewsbury talking to people in the streets with a reporter from BBC Radio Shropshire. The simple but profound question he was asking was this: what makes you happy? The topic had come up in the light of the announcement that day that the Dalai Lama had endorsed a series of happiness classes to be held the length and breadth of the country. But what exactly is happiness, and how do we achieve it?

So off we went, and I was wondering what sort of answers people would come up with. Might we hear about material security and money, work and holidays? But in the event nearly everyone talked about other people – about being with friends and loved ones, enjoying companionship and having fun. This was positive enough in itself, but at least one person we talked to spoke explicitly about happiness coming from doing things for others. Being in a relationship with others based not on what you get from them, but what you can give. As a practicing Buddhist, I found this answer particularly heartwarming: after all, generosity is sometimes described as the primary Buddhist virtue. As my teacher says, you might not be very good at meditating or very mindful, but you can always give.

So what’s the connection between giving and happiness? Well, it’s just that – connection! Human beings are social animals and, as we found out in when we started asking around, like connecting with others. But what can happen when we’re unhappy and things go wrong is that we withdraw from others – both physically and emotionally – and get too wrapped up in what’s going on to remember to relate to others – except, perhaps, as the cause of our problems. This is really odd if you think about it, because it’s the one thing that’s guaranteed to make us feel more isolated, more self-referential and less connected with others. Isolation of this kind denies our fellow feeling, our sense of empathy with others. Our sense of self contracts, and we feel tense, tight and unhappy.

But when you give, the opposite happens. Giving arises out of a recognition that other people have needs and feelings just like us; and actually doing something about it – not just having warm thoughts – leads to a feeling of connection, of expansiveness, of lightness. In other words, happiness! As one of the ancient scriptures has it: “Before giving, glad; while giving, the mind is bright & clear; having given, one is gratified.” Even if you don’t feel great, you can still give – in fact, giving is one of the things you can do that is guaranteed to help lift you out of gloomy self-preoccupation.

Giving can take many forms: you can of course give money and things to good causes, but you can also give your time, your energy, your enthusiasm and even your encouragement. For me those things are directed at sharing the Buddha’s teachings, because I believe that’s the best possible use of the resources I have to offer. But giving can relate to all sorts of things, as long as you consider them worthwhile and beneficial to human happiness.

I’m sure I’m not saying anything that you don’t already know. After all, most people give readily in all sorts of situations. But I would encourage you to do what you might not necessarily think of at the time – and goodness knows I forget often enough myself – and give even when you’re feeling down and out of connection. Personal experience tells me that way happiness lies. But why not find out for yourself?

Giving

posted 23 Oct 2015, 19:22 by Akasharaja Bruton

At the moment my focus is very much on our new Buddhist centre, which opens its doors in Shrewsbury for the first time this coming Wednesday. This is a very exciting moment for everyone involved, and we hope it’ll really benefit the whole county – and, who knows, places beyond!

And yet, I can’t help thinking about something one of my fellow Order members said when he came to give a talk a few months ago, that he wished we could just call them Human Being centres rather than Buddhist centres. This might sound a bit flippant, but I think I know what he meant. After all, a Buddhist centre is basically a place where people can come together on the basis of shared values to support and connect with each other. Those values include kindness and friendliness, receptivity and awareness, openness to one another’s aspirations and positive qualities, and a shared wish to further develop those qualities. OK, so there is of course the explicitly Buddhist dimension of enlightenment - ultimate wisdom and compassion - but even that is, in a way, these same qualities writ large, and I hope people won’t need to worry about that too much to feel welcome with us.

My friend’s point was that Buddhism doesn’t hold the monopoly when it comes to a desire to express and experience positive emotion, to give and receive friendship and to connect with other people – to go beyond the narrow confines of our separate and often isolated lives. The desire to connect in a meaningful way, to be able to share ourselves and our inner lives, is a deeply held and universal human wish, and I think you could even go so far as to say that a life lived without this kind of connection isn’t a fully human life at all.

And yet, if you look around you, you surely can’t help but notice how much of our connection with each other is a pseudo, virtual connection. See how many people go about their daily lives glued to their phones, following each other on Facebook and Twitter rather than actually engaging with the flesh-and-blood human beings around them. But the point stands: the desire to connect is there, even if it finds expression in what for previous generations would be a weirdly detached way.

And I don’t think it necessarily takes a lot to get that connection going. A few days ago I was walking out of school, having dropped the boys off, and the mother of one of my older boy’s classmates was walking out alongside me. As we walked our separate paths, I reflected on what was holding me back from talking to her – perhaps a fear of being inappropriate or invading her private space or simply not being interesting enough to merit her attention! So what I did was override those self-referential concerns and start a conversation. And, guess what, she just lit up, and we had a really nice chat, and I came away feeling that it had made a difference to my day and perhaps also to hers. OK, so it wasn’t a deep and meaningful conversation, but the point is that it opened a door to possible future communication and – who knows – perhaps even friendship.

Some people are naturally good at this sort of thing. I know I’m not, but breaking an old habit enabled me to start forming a new one. You might also be one of those somewhat shy individuals, but taking a leap like I did on that occasion can bring surprising rewards. So next time you have an opportunity to connect with someone you don’t know, why not just try to connect? It might just make your day – or, for that matter, theirs!

Akasharaja's return - the lessons learned

posted 5 Nov 2014, 17:56 by Akasharaja Bruton   [ updated 12 hours ago ]

If you were listening to this show about 18 months ago you may have heard me announce that my family and I were heading off to Germany to start a new chapter in our lives.

So what, you might well ask, am I doing back here on BBC Radio Shropshire? Well, there's a long and a short version of the story. The long one I don't have time for, so I'll give you the short one: it was hard going and, in the end, it didn't work out, so we decided after six months to put everything into reverse, cut our losses and head back to Shrewsbury where, fortunately, we still had a house. The whole adventure was pretty expensive, set back our elder son's schooling by half a year and was, in a positive way, a bit humiliating. Let me explain.

In a way, the humiliation bit is pretty obvious. We made a major decision, it turned out to be the wrong one, and we had to give in and come back. But the positive angle is that, through this experience, I got to know myself a lot better, and that's always a good thing. Part of what had motivated me to return to Berlin was, as it turned out, a desire to recapture the brilliant experience I had there a few years earlier, the first time my partner and I had lived there. So, whenever I felt bored or dissatisfied after we returned to England - which was often - I always recalled the good old days - and longed for them to return.

But the second time round we went with two kids. And, surprise surprise, it wasn't the same. We had moved away from the support of close family into a situation that wasn't actually that supportive. As anyone who has kids will know, no matter how much you love and enjoy them, bringing them up in the day to day is hard work wherever you live - and restricts your freedom to do whatever you please. In other words, enjoying the cultural life of the city and swanning around in cafes was no longer the order of the day. To put it in a nutshell, the grass wasn't actually greener on the other side! I was forced to acknowledge that I had been responding to an experience of dissatisfaction in my life in England with a yearning to seek escape from it by changing the externals - in this case, my location. Humiliating but insightful!

Perhaps you've had this kind of experience. If only I had another job, a better house or a different car, I would be happy. And yet, Buddhism teaches that the true source of dissatisfaction lies in the mind. As the first verse of the Dhammapada, an early Buddhist scripture has it, experience is made of mind, led by mind, preceded by mind. If our mind is impure, suffering will follow as the wheel of the cart follows the hoof of the ox - a potent image of bondage! And the reverse is true: happiness follows the pure mind like a shadow that never leaves, with all the lightness the image implies. An impure mind is a mind caught up in craving, hatred and confusion, whereas a pure mind is characterized by clarity, positivity and contentment. A pure mind will find happiness, enjoyment and fulfillment in mindfulness of the here and now, will know contentment in the everyday beauty of ordinary life. Of course there are sometimes situations that objectively bring pain and difficulty - and we should try to change them if we can. But, if you are just bored and restless, it's really worth stopping, looking honestly at what your mind is doing and attending more closely to the beauty that everyday life offers, in time spent with a friend, in nature, or even just sitting quietly. In the park with my sons a few days ago in one of those slightly restless and dissatisfied moods, I suddenly found myself watching the leaves fall and realized that what I had just there was perfect in itself. Life in the awareness of the moment offers astonishing riches. Try it - you might be surprised by what you find!
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Ethics – the path of the warrior

posted 21 May 2014, 23:17 by Akasharaja Bruton   [ updated 12 hours ago ]

Why bother with ethics? Haven’t many of us as post-Christians spent years extricating ourselves from a moral system under which, as Sangharakshita has memorably said, we are told what to do and what not to do, for reasons we’re not clear about, by a being in whose existence we no longer believe? Doesn’t Buddhism point the way to freedom from the straitjacket of externally applied obligations, which are, according to the Old Testament at least, literally set in stone? Isn’t the whole idea rather dull? Isn’t the Dharma supposed to have the taste of freedom?

 This is of course all exaggerated, but I suspect there’s something in it. As far as the taste of freedom is concerned, I clearly remember years ago being on retreat with a man who cited the “taste of freedom” as justification for doing what he wanted, which in this case involved behaving badly, certainly inappropriately for a retreat! Perhaps there is an underlying tendency to regard ethical systems as inhibitors to freedom. I know, in my own case, that what very often goes on is a sort of barely conscious quid pro quo arrangement: if I do something ethical, I can let myself off the hook by doing something unethical as a kind of reward for being “good”. In other words, what I really want to do is the unethical thing – that’s where I see the freedom.

As I was musing on this talk at about 2 o’clock this morning, it came to me with astonishing clarity for the wee small hours that ethics is in fact nothing other than a means to liberation. The implications of this rather excited me, and I’d like to share them with you. Happily they also tie in rather neatly with the overall theme of this series of evenings, which is ethics as the path of the spiritual warrior.

Let’s start by looking at the place of ethics in Buddhism. But before we even do that, let’s look at what Buddhism actually is. Some people say it’s a religion; others maintain that it’s a philosophy. But I feel you can sidestep this thorny issue rather neatly by calling it a path. A path leads from one place to another. In our case, it leads from a state of unenlightenment to a state of enlightenment, to Buddhahood. And what characterises that state of unenlightenment? Let’s turn to the Pali canon for guidance. These verses are taken from the Dhammapada:

342. Beset by craving, people run about like an entrapped hare. Held fast by mental fetters, they come to suffering again and again for a long time.

343. Beset by craving, people run about like an entrapped hare. Therefore, one who yearns to be passion-free should destroy his own craving.

And these come from the Anguttara nikaya AN 3.71, the Channa Sutta:

 "An aversive person, his mind bound up, overcome with aversion, engages in bodily misconduct, in verbal misconduct, in mental misconduct. But having abandoned aversion, he doesn't engage in bodily misconduct, in verbal misconduct, or in mental misconduct.

"An aversive person, his mind bound up, overcome with aversion, doesn't discern, as it actually is, what is of profit to himself, what is of profit to others, what is of profit to both. But having abandoned aversion, he discerns, as it actually is, what is of profit to himself, what is of profit to others, what is of profit to both.

"Aversion, my friend, makes you blind, makes you sightless, makes you ignorant. It brings about the cessation of discernment, is conducive to trouble, and does not lead to Unbinding.

And, last but not least, we have the story of Prince Jayasena from the Dantabhumi sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya. It’s quite long, so I won’t quote the whole thing, but the gist is that a certain prince, who clearly spends life in the pursuit of pleasure, comes for instruction to one of the Buddha’s disciples, only to promptly dismiss as impossible what he is actually told. Whereupon the Buddha, having heard the story, says this:

 Prince Jayasena [is] hemmed in, blocked, obstructed, enveloped by this mass of ignorance. Indeed, that Prince Jayasena, living as he does in the midst of sense-pleasures, enjoying sense-pleasures, being consumed by thoughts of sense-pleasures, eager in the search for sense-pleasures, should know or see or attain or realize that which can be known... seen... attained... realized by renunciation — such a situation does not exist.

In other words, Jayasena is so bound by ignorance that he is simply incapable of recognising the truth of what the Buddha’s disciple has taught him:  that abandoning the quest for sense pleasures leads to

So what’s the common theme? It’s bondage. Craving binds us, aversion binds us, ignorance binds us. In other words, the state of unenlightenment, characterised as it is by craving, aversion and ignorance of the true nature of things, is a state of bondage. And the state of enlightenment, as we have all heard many times, is characterised by the opposite: freedom from craving and aversion and direct knowledge that true happiness is only to be attained by the cultivation of that freedom.

So, if Buddhism is a path from one to the other, what does that path consist of? Well, there are various ways of describing it, but one of the best known is the threefold path of ethics, meditation and wisdom – sila, samadhi, panna - emphasised by the Buddha especially toward the end of his life. The order here is not arbitrary: the path to freedom begins with ethics. So ethics is an essential means of liberation. Without it, liberation is impossible.

How does this work? And where does the spiritual warrior fit in?

It’s well known that Buddhist ethics is an ethics of intention. In other words, if you act from particular states of mind, particular consequences follow. As indicated above, acting out of craving, aversion or ignorance leads to bondage, to suffering, for oneself and others. Whereas acting out, for instance, of kindness, awareness, generosity and compassion leads to states of freedom from remorse, fear, craving and anger, and results in happiness, for oneself and others. This is crucial, because it shows that ethics in Buddhism is a question of mental states: it comes from within, from our own motivations, our own intentions. It isn’t imposed on us on stone tablets like the Ten Commandments.

This means that we are responsible for our ethical life. But what is the nature of that ethical life?

Most of you will be familiar with the five precepts. Here they are:



1.

I undertake the training rule to abstain from killing.

Pāṇātipātā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.

2.

I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given.

Adinnādānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.

3.

I undertake the training rule to avoid sexual misconduct.

Kāmesumicchācāra veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.

4.

I undertake the training rule to abstain from false speech.

Musāvādā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.

5.

I undertake the training rule to abstain from fermented drink that causes heedlessness.

Surāmerayamajjapamādaṭṭhānā veramaṇī sikkhāpadaṃ samādiyāmi.[6]

The Sanskrit term for “precept” is shikshapada. We come across the Pali version of this when we recite the five precepts during a puja. It literally means something like object or item of training: a training principle. So when we recite the precepts we are actually saying that we are undergoing training in sila, in ethics. When you train, you learn to do something. My son Sam frequently gets upset when he can’t do something first time, and we always tell him that he has to practise. So it is with sila, or ethics. We aren’t going to get it right first time. Ethics is a form of training, a discipline. The words we use to define ethically positive or ethically negative actions are telling: we talk about skilful and unskilful actions, rather than good or bad, or good or evil. Ethics is a skill, something you can become skilled in. But what are we in training for? The answer is simple. We’re in training to become Buddhas, to attain enlightenment. If you like, we’re all trainee Buddhas. We’re training in liberation, freedom from bondage. But how do you do that?

The Buddha was born a khattiya or a member of the warrior caste, and he uses martial image to describe the onslaught of his own unreconstructed, unenlightened, reactive tendencies in the form of Mara’s armies during his enlightenment experience. And, in a way, what we have to do is take on our own unskilful, negative reactive tendencies and develop skilful and creative tendencies to counteract them. It’s a bit like being in battle. This of course needs to be heavily qualified so as to prevent us from beating ourselves up and treating ourselves harshly. If we were guided purely by the “negative” precepts, those which instruct us to refrain from particular behaviours, we might end up at a rather joyless halfway house. So I don’t take life, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, tell lies or take intoxicants, but I might end up a rather self-righteous and joyless person. What makes the difference here is the addition, as far as I know unique to Triratna, of the five positive precepts:



With deeds of loving kindness, I purify my body.
With open-handed generosity, I purify my body.
With stillness, simplicity, and contentment, I purify my body.
With truthful communication, I purify my speech.
With mindfulness, clear and radiant, I purify my mind.



The weapons we need are expressed in the positive precepts, and they are all based on metta, or loving kindness. I won’t go into detail here because that is what the rest of the course is about. But you can see that the precepts fall into three categories of action: those of body, speech and mind. In other words, they cover all of our behaviour: physical, verbal and mental. So the Buddhist ethical life involves bringing the weapon of loving kindness to bear on our tendencies toward craving, aversion and ignorance. If we are not trying to do this, then meditation will be virtually impossible, just an endless struggle against streams of distraction based on various forms of craving, aversion and ignorance. And it goes pretty much without saying that any form of wisdom, which, if you have been following the spiral path series, relies on the attainment of joy, rapture, peace, bliss and concentration, can be ruled out.

So I hope I’ve been able to show that ethics is an essential part of the path to liberation, that it involves training and practice and that, frankly, it’s something of a battle, albeit one which we can join with the weapon of loving kindness, toward ourselves and other beings.

Change!

posted 3 Jun 2013, 13:52 by Akasharaja Bruton

Over the last eight months or so, the dominant feature of my life has been change. My mother died in September. Since then, my father has set off on a new life journey and has just remarried. There are lots of reasons why this is a good thing, and neither he nor I have any doubt that my mother would have approved. A consequence of this is the imminent sale of the family home where my brother and I grew up. We were there last weekend, sifting through the contents of our past, looking for whatever we wanted to take with us. I came across scrapbooks I compiled as a little boy, letters from various past loves, photos of my mother, of my parents’ wedding and of their parents and families, some dating back many, many years. But the house seemed vacant, a little mournful, as if already emptied of life. And, to cap it all, my family and I are heading off overseas, back to Berlin, where we lived until we moved to Shropshire in 2009. Leaving behind us our own family home, a friendly neighbourhood, a safe town and a lively Buddhist community to embark on a new adventure. Again, there are many reasons for this, not least a desire to open up new potentials, to benefit from the breadth of experience that this move will give all of us: my partner and me, and our children alike.

 Buddhism strongly emphasises impermanence and a deep understanding and acceptance of it as the key to wisdom and happiness. The Buddha’s last recorded words were “all conditioned things are impermanent – with mindfulness, strive!” Buddhists try to recognise that the objects and relationships the world has to offer can’t provide enduring satisfaction because they don’t last. Everything that has a beginning also comes to an end. And clinging to impermanent things and relationships causes us to suffer.

 All this may sound a bit grim – and yet, my point is that we can turn this on its head and say “Everything that has an end has a beginning!” It’s impermanence that allows new things to happen. Yes, my old family home is empty of life right now, but it will very shortly be home to a new family; other children will hopefully grow up happily within its walls and enjoy playing in the lovely garden my mother took such pride in and on which her ashes lie scattered. Our two little boys will learn new skills, a new language and gain a different and valuable perspective on life. My partner and I will face new challenges and opportunities and hopefully grow as people as a result. My father and his new wife – both recently bereaved - will enjoy the consolation of a new relationship and the life-changing possibilities that will bring.

 My point is that change is not just to be feared. It can’t in any case be avoided - and can bring with it all sorts of new opportunities. We can choose to cling to the past, to old habits, refuse to let go – or we can approach change with a sense of new beginnings and opportunities. So next time a change thrusts itself upon you, why not try to look at it like that?

Reflections on Bodhgaya

posted 10 Mar 2013, 15:13 by Akasharaja Bruton

Just over a week ago I was still in the northern Indian town of Bodhgaya,
sitting with other members of the Triratna Buddhist Order at the foot of a
spreading fig tree at the spot where Siddhartha Gautama was sitting 2500
years ago when he gained enlightenment and became the Buddha. You couldn't
exactly call the atmosphere contemplative. Voices in any number of different
languages were intoning Buddhist scriptures, Tibetan monks were bashing
cymbals and playing wailing trumpets. White-clad Japanese devotees were
rubbing shoulders with yellow-robed monks chanting through portable
amplifiers. There was even the occasional fight between snarling feral dogs.
And we were doing our bit for the general atmosphere too, performing our
rituals and chanting our chants. All this was set against the typical Indian
background of blaring car horns. It was bedlam. But it was also wonderful to
be part of: hordes of people from all over the world with no common language
or cultural background or anything other than a shared devotion to the
Buddha and his teachings. It was inspiring, and I felt incredibly connected.
I no longer needed to be an Englishman, a European or even a foreigner.
Those labels didn't matter any more. I was just a follower of the Buddha
together with other followers of the Buddha.

That's all well and good if you're a Buddhist, you may say. But I think
there is a point here which can be applied more generally. In our tradition
we teach a meditation practice concerned with the development of
loving-kindness. This meditation involves bringing specific people to mind
and wishing them well, sending loving-kindness their way. One of these is a
so-called neutral person, someone you don't have any particular feelings
for. You know the kind of thing: a neighbour you're on nodding terms with,
or a woman you see on the bus. To help the flow of well wishing, I encourage
learners to reflect on what they have in common with the neutral person:
they both want to be happy, have hopes and fears, love and are loved in
return. In other words, there's a lot more connecting than separating them!
Just like my experience in India: regardless of gender, nationality,
language, customs, or differences in material prosperity, there was a deep
kinship based on what we as Buddhists had in common. And what all human
beings, Buddhist or otherwise, have in common is a desire to be happy, to
avoid suffering. This applies in Shrewsbury just as it does in Singapore or
Saskatchewan!

This insight can help us overcome barriers of indifference to other people.
I sometimes make it a practice to look at people when I'm out and about, to
observe them as they chat on their mobiles, scratch their ears, or laugh
with their friends. Taking people in in this way helps me see them as
individuals who want to be happy as badly as I do, where I normally barely
register their existence. Taking notice of people you don't automatically
have any feelings for makes them come alive for you. So why not try it too?
You might just be surprised by your response.

Blog from Bodhgaya

posted 27 Feb 2013, 06:59 by Akasharaja Bruton

I could write about all sorts of things - and that was my intention when I got to India about 5 days ago - about first impressions, the long train journey across northern India, about arriving at Gaya and being driven down streets with wandering cattle, tuk-tuks, cycle rickshaws, dust, heat and smells to our land at Bodh Gaya, about meeting other Order members, both Indian and western. But all of that is, if truth be known, a side show - even the International Order convention, with its discussion groups and talks, meals and meetings. A side show to the main event, which is the Vajrasana, the seat of the Buddha's Enlightenment, the spreading boughs of the ancient Bodhi tree underneath which we have sat to meditate, prostrate and practise puja, at the heart of the Maha Bodhi temple complex.

Here I no longer have to be an Englishman, a westerner or even a foreigner. Here I can just be what I most deeply feel called to be - a Dharma farer, someone who wants to practise the Dharma, to Go for Refuge more and more deeply. Worlds away from the neat streets and green gardens of Shrewsbury,rubbing shoulders with ochre-clad bhikkhus, Tibetan monks, Japanese lay followers with their prim face masks to keep out the pollution - and it is dreadful here. Sitting to meditate and being photographed by practitioners from all traditions, some of whom will no doubt be marvelling at the sight of a motley crowd of Indians and westerners, men and women, being led in puja by a Scottish woman and an Indian man, hearing the cacophony of Tibetan drums and trumpets, the amplified chanting of Pali verses by Theravada bhikkhus - which, when I stop to listen, I recognise as the words of the Tiratana Vandana! You might think it impossible to find stillness under such conditions, but such is the concentrated flow of devotion that it is easy to be carried along by it to a place of deeper contentment and significance. Outside the walls of the temple complex, the noise of car and tuk-tuk horns and the commercial bustle of rows of stalls hawking Buddhist artefacts add yet more richness to the fascinating and, at times, contradictory mix that is this place.

But, having spent some time here, one thing I feel very deeply. The spirit of Buddhism is vibrant and alive here, as all the various traditions converge on their common fountainhead and source. And to think that I wasn't originally intending to come! I am so very glad I did - and this time I won't wait another 25 years before returning to India.

Akasharaja, Bodh Gaya, February 27 2013

Living well in the face of death

posted 24 Oct 2012, 11:49 by Akasharaja Bruton   [ updated 12 hours ago ]

On my desk at home I have a picture postcard from the Hermitage gallery in St. Petersburg. On the back in my mother’s slightly spidery handwriting there is the usual brief and breezy holiday greeting from the cruise she and dad were on. The postcard was posted on August 26 in Tallinn, Estonia. During the cruise it seemed that mum had pulled a muscle and she was in quite a lot of pain, which continued when she got home. About a week later she was admitted to hospital for tests. A week after that, on September 15, she was dead, overcome by the tumour which had been growing on her liver.

 Fortunately, I and most of the rest of the family were able to see her the evening before she died. I’m so glad that I was able to tell her how grateful I was for everything she’d done and assure her that her children and grandchildren had turned out well, something she could be very satisfied with. I was also glad, even though it was a bit strange for me as an ordained Buddhist, to stand up a couple of weeks later in the church in which I had been baptised to tell the packed congregation about my mum as I knew her. I have to say it was comforting to see a lot of familiar faces from my childhood, even though I have since taken another path. I was moved to see the obvious expressions of love for my mum and dad. I’m still moved now.

 Mum didn’t want to go. The weekend before she had told me that there was so much she still wanted to be part of and experience before her death. She had agreed to a course of chemotherapy and wanted to fight her corner against the cancer. But there simply wasn’t time; it was all so fast.


My point is this: we can never know when our time is up, so we should live our lives as fully as possible. Every day could be the last day we have. When I spoke about mum in the church and heard other friends and family members talk about her, I realised just how full her life had been. Most importantly, perhaps, it was defined by the love and care she felt for many, not just those close to her. She wasn’t very demonstrative – as I put it, she measured out her feelings carefully, but I knew that they came from an inexhaustible reservoir, and I finished my little talk with an undertaking to love as fully as she did.

 There is a very pertinent line in the Buddhist scriptures which is this: “The days and nights are relentlessly passing: how well are you using your time?” This something we all need to consider – as the scripture has it, “again and again”. How much time do we waste with ill-will, falling out with each other, grumbling and being suspicious of others? Nor is it enough just to fill our time with busyness: what really matters is how we do what we do. If we love well and give of ourselves, then we will make the most of every opportunity our life offers us.

 So I would invite you to think about your life, about its uncertainties, and to look at whether you are making the most of it. Every day brings an opportunity for kindness, concern for others, generosity and compassion. So why not take full advantage of it while you can?