What makes a real community?

1. What makes a real community, a real Sangha? 

Christ by John Everett Millais

In the Pasadika Sutta in the Pali Cannon the Buddha expresses his pleasure that his disciples are proficient in the true Dharma, and that among the sangha there are experienced, trained and skilled teachers who are liberated and able to proclaim the Dharma and refute wrong ways, that there are middle ranking disciples who are experienced and trained, that there are novices and lay followers, that there are males and females, celibate and non-celibate. In this way the perfect life flourishes. It is clear from this passage that Buddha drew huge satisfaction from the existence of this community that he had brought together. This was his boast. He had created a wholesome community; one in which there would not be major quarrelling or trouble and which had a capacity to be of benefit to people far and wide. We would be mistaken to think that the Buddhist path is something just for individuals or that the Buddha would have been satisfied with a situation where each individual had their practice that they got on with in their own way in their own space. He certainly did tailor his injunctions to the needs and temperament of individuals, but the life that he led them toward was one in which there was a whole and wholesome community with all its constituent parts playing their respective roles, each complementing the others.

—Dharmavidya

The word "community" is on everyone's lips, but the reality is that we are living in a vast marketplace, where everyone is a consumer, but no one is a neighbor. Every day we are bombarded with goods gone ballistic and services turned sadistic. Even in the best of neighborhoods, we are afraid to go out at night. Is it any wonder that, when we go home at night, we try to draw the night about us like a cocoon? How to form a community, then, is not a rhetorical question. It is the most urgent issue before us... There is a new wind blowing in the world, and it whispers to us that the time for community has come. We are frightened by this wind, for sometimes its whisper becomes a scream. The wind can be as loud as a hurricane and as penetrating as a tornado. We run for shelter to what used to be our communities, only to find that the rooms that once kept us safe are now only walls that keep us apart from each other. We keep looking for the larger world. We want the larger world to take us in, and keep us warm, and make us safe. We want the world to be our community. We want it to be real. Well, why not? It is not too much to ask, really. We are learning how to overcome our own fears and how to find our own faiths. We are learning how to listen to each other. This is the only way to build community, and this is where we start.

—Sally Clay

[Nationalism] is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members... yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion... This fraternity... makes it possible... for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings."

—Benedict Anderson

2. What's lacking in an "imagined community"?

Published originally on Buddhist Travellers in 2012.

Third Noble Truth (Interactive): which drinks make you drunk?

This is a continuation of the following earlier posts on the First and Second Noble Truths:

Interactive First Noble Truth: what is the nature of our experience of life?

Interactive Second Noble Truth: why does life suck sometimes?

The first of the five faculties in Buddhism is faith. It is the starting point of every religious and spiritual tradition. It is not blind faith, but conviction or self-confidence. It is the ability to make a choice. 

That which is sweet first is bitter,

That which is bitter first is sweet.

To each a choice, then it all depends

On effort and unflagging will

To reach the city of your choice.

–Lalla

The city of our choice is not something concrete, or an intention of the ego. Rather, it is abstract, pure intent, a choice of the heart. Choices of the heart are always abstract. The path of heart may be difficult at first – there is nothing concrete to hold onto (it is a letting go) – but in the long run it will always turn out more pleasant.

When this faculty of faith is developed, it becomes a powerful force. It becomes the first power. To do good is to be faithful to abstract intent. To do evil is to be waylaid and distracted along the path.

And what causes us to be waylaid?

Before we try to answer that question, we recall the Buddhist paradigm (discussed in the Interactive First Noble Truth) of first examining the nature, before turning to the origin or cause, then looking at the purpose or consequence, and finally at the way to proceed. What is the nature of being waylaid? We might recall the five hindrances of day-dreaming, boredom, doubt, ill-will and agitation. But, in short, it is the interference of the mind that causes us to deviate from the straight path. Metaphorically, it is drunkenness. And what causes drunkenness? It is drink. With wisdom of which drinks have this effect, what is the consequence of abstaining from those drinks? It is sobriety or clarity. And finally, the way to proceed along with faith, with wisdom and with “effort and unflagging will”, is clearly to be mindful as to what we drink.

We can’t go to two cities at once! That would be called “seeing double”, a true sign of drunkenness. It is a cliché of Zen: when you do X, just do X; when you do Y, just do Y. Some students after long instruction of this by their Zen master were shocked to see him eating breakfast and reading the newspaper at the same time. “What’s the problem?” he replied to them. “When you eat and read, just eat and read.” Right then, that’s all the jokes done with. The rest will be all suffering. Actually, the cessation of suffering. It's no joking matter, lol.

Even if we have wisdom and refrain from the drink that causes drunkenness, still the craving for that drink remains and will cause suffering if not addressed. The craving is itself an interference of the mind, or a drink that we’d do well to refrain from. As we learnt in the Interactive Second Noble Truth, we must go to the root, and the root of that which disturbs peace of mind, or gives rise to dukkha, is tanha, the thirst and attachment to those drinks that lead us away from our city into the vineyards of drunkenness.

But again we ask, which drinks are these that lead us astray? 

Because this wisdom will get us a long way to avoiding them. If we recognize something as an unwanted attachment or addiction, then this recognition is the first step in helping us to be rid of it. It will give us the gift of disillusionment in that which causes us to suffer. If it is a strong addiction though, disillusionment won’t necessarily be enough to change our behaviour. Then we might try transference, and swap our craving for one drink with craving for another. We do this all the time in most interesting ways, for example doing things which give us pleasure to cancel or make up for that which gives us pain. We can all see this in our towns, how the evening and weekend binges release all the tension built up over the course of the day and week. Or at a more moderate level, how food and exercise are great relievers of stress. This is all well and good, but we may come to notice in time how pleasure and pain create patterns, some of which may distract us from the city of our choice. And the drunkenness borne of pleasure is the harder of the two to shake… because it feels so good! What if we didn’t or couldn’t transfer our craving or act on it in some way? I would call this “sucking it up” or cessation. Our capacity for cessation is much greater than we imagine it to be. But if the pain is too great, or we lack resolve, we might not succeed and this might discourage us completely. Our response might be avoidance, escape, sleep, cessation from the path altogether. This may do as a stop-gap to buy us time, but ultimately we must embrace life and face up to our cravings. And whether we employ disillusionment, transference or cessation, there is a seed of wisdom whose contemplation is at the heart of the Third Noble Truth: in the fullness of time, all that arises will also cease.

In the game of intent, we must surrender the battles that fuel our drunkenness – neither win them nor lose them, but realize their cessation – in order to win the war. Only when our desire aligns perfectly with our intent, when all other cravings are vanquished or by transference replaced by our true desire, all mind-addictions ceased or replaced by the addiction to Dhamma, and all our love unified in the name of Love, then are we truly on our way to the city of our choice!

For the third time I ask, which are these battles which fuel our drunken state and waste our energy?

I would say: all that does not belong to the city of our choice, all that is not of Truth, all that is not of the Heart, all that is not the drink of the Beloved. Could I be less abstract? More practically useful? I will think more on it… how about you? The questions I’ve been sizing up in this blog may be summarized as follows:

1. What is the city of your choice?

2. What leads you away from the city of your choice?

3. How do you vanquish that which leads you away from the city of your choice?

Let the real work begin! Buddha’s Third Noble Truth encourages us that absolute success is possible and may we set about realizing it. May all answers that you seek come to you, and may they be an expression of “heart”.

I pass the blog over to you! As always, your criticism and feedback is dearly welcomed, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on these questions.

Second Noble Truth (Interactive): why does life suck sometimes?

The Four Noble Truths form the basis of Buddha's philosophy. The purpose is purely ethical, grounded in subjective experience, so instead of studying the nature of life and reality objectively (in terms of scientific laws, random phenomena, natural selection etc.), we study our experience.

The First Noble Truth (discussed earlier here) is about understanding imperfection and suffering. The Second Noble Truth asks us to look into the causes of imperfection and suffering… So let us explore the roots of suffering. I've included my answers, and am continuing to investigate... The hope is that we can arrive at our own understanding independently of our knowledge of what the Second Noble Truth says and then compare and drill deeper. 

1. What makes you mad?

What makes me mad is human stupidity and lack of consideration for the lives of others. Thoughtless selfishness I can forgive because we all need to become more mindful, learn from our mistakes and do our best not to repeat them, but at least the intention must be there to be acting for the best. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I’ve always believed that every road is. Ok, so we need to learn to be more mindful, but also forgive ourselves and others when we err. What makes me mad though is the intentional setting up of “us and them” which is a betrayal of the belief in equality, often motivated by power and greed, and accompanied by the restrictions of people’s freedoms and the treatment of individuals as statistics to be labelled and quantified and their approval maximized. Yes, what makes me mad is the betrayal of the three cornerstones of the democratic ideal, of equality, freedom and compassion, and of those who sow seeds of fear and hate that contribute to their degradation.

2. What makes you sad?

What makes me sad is that through the prolonged exposure of things that make us mad, we have developed a tolerance for them, almost become immune. This would make me mad also if it weren’t for the fact that I see it in myself and I find it completely understandable. What makes me sad is how children always have such high ideals and when they become adults they betray those ideals. What makes me sad is the powerlessness of the individual in the face of cruel reality, the short-sightedness of collective humanity, the inevitability of death and the loss of that which we hold dear.

3. What makes you frustrated?

What makes me frustrated is lack of “flow”. When life flows, what does that word “frustration” mean? It doesn’t exist! What obstructs the flow? It is difficulty, tiredness, uncertainty, confusion, helplessness, shame, distraction. And what keeps the river of life flowing over and around these obstacles of frustration with harmonious music. It is calm, energy, wisdom, understanding, power, love, intent. With greater mindfulness, perhaps we can catch the frustration before it arises. With less mindfulness, perhaps we can catch it after it arises. But if we do not catch it, then in time it sets and becomes a tributary of the river of life itself. I don’t even know why I’m frustrated this very instant, but I know that I am! It is my frustration of not understanding the Second Noble Truth, wanting to understand it better, that has driven me to write this blog. So perhaps frustration serves a purpose after all… 

4. What is your response to frustration?

Avoidance! Escape into thinking about something else without frustration, listening to music, reading, sleep, in the hope that the mind can rest, and return to find the state of flow that was lost. Sometimes this can work. Resting too long, the frustration can be forgotten, but it hasn’t necessarily gone away. Sooner rather than later, it must be actively addressed or it will become like a silent sadness never spoken or a gnawing pain whose cause of suffering to our life we fail to even recognize.

5. What is bothering you that you do not want to talk about?

I don’t want to talk about it! For sure there are plenty of things, but what is the fundamental issue at the core, not something external, but something which lies within, something perhaps deeply buried about which everything revolves? What is the source of your shame and your pain? What do you not want to talk about? Do you even have a clue? Perhaps this is something to meditate on, in stillness find the answer and contemplate how to address it. It would sure be useful to know…

6. What should the next question be?

I hand the blog over to you! You can answer any way you like, but let it be an expression of "desire"... oops, did I spill the beans there? I want it to come from you!

First Noble Truth (Interactive): what is the nature of our experience of life?

The First Noble Truth is the first of four Truths that the Buddha taught in his very first discourse after enlightenment, now known as the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, literally “the discourse that sets the vehicle of teaching in motion”. These four truths seek to awaken us to an understanding of (1) the nature of life, (2) the origin of life, (3) the purpose of life, and (4) the way of fulfilling life’s purpose. 

This quartet of nature, origin, purpose and way is thus a paradigm of Buddhist philosophy. The first object of enquiry might have been “the world”, but Buddha like Descartes two thousand years later saw the need to ground his philosophy in subjective experience, in “life”.

1. What, in your opinion, is the foundation ground of knowledge that, through its understanding, all else will fall into place? 

God? The universe? Life? 

Unlike traditional Western philosophy, Buddha’s epistemological quest is intensely spiritual both in its purpose and its process. Buddha showed little interest in metaphysics or speculations in general except where they were of use in helping accomplish the difficult and personal process of awakening to the truth of life. The Four Noble Truths are found not in the statements themselves, but in our meditative contemplation and understanding of them. This is described in the teaching as a threefold process, though there is actually a zeroth stage that is taken for granted: (0) the opening the heart to the discovery of truth, (1) knowing or at least believing that we know the truth, (2) acting on the truth, putting into practicing what we know, and (3) awakening, for once we are fully awakened to a truth, then the truth acts on us. 

This quartet of being open to, knowing, acting on and being truth thus forms a paradigm for Buddhist ethics. So, the ethical quest is founded by truth, and conversely, we shall see on reading the Four Noble Truths that the seeds of truth are planted in the noble ground of ethics. The Four Noble Truths are so-called because the process of engaging with them is ennobling. And this is the purpose of this blog.

2. What, in your opinion, is the nature of our experience that we call life?

Consciousness? Growth? Unpredictability? Imperfection? Insubstantiality? Fun?

I pass the blog over to you! You can answer in any way you like, but let it be an expression of "life"... I want it to come from you.

Second Noble Truth (Interactive) follows here:
http://itsokei.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/second-noble-truth-interactive-why-is.html

A Question about Love (BT)

Here are two poems. The first (by me) is about a state of almost baby love, of peaceful bliss, loving kindness, inner peace and joy, yet without power and passion. The second (my version of a translation of a poem by Goethe) is about pure yearning, of desire and self burnt up in the fire of passion, yet without loving kindness, inner peace and joy.

Buddhist philosophy, as I understand it, would say that desire is destructive and that expectation leads to disappointment, but might it not be that destruction and disappointment are necessary to make space for their opposites in creativity and happiness, in order for love to be productive and powerful? Do we not need desire and ego as fuel for the fire of passion? Or is peaceful love and bliss a better love and if so, how to harness its hidden power?

Blessed Bliss

I sit beside a smile
And soon I’m smiling too,
The smile becomes a laugh
And then I’m laughing too
Down to the naked breast
Where I lay my head
And nestle in its shade.
In this state of bliss,
Desiring nothing more,
I softly fall asleep.

—okei



Blessed Longing

Tell it to none except the wise
For the common crowd will sneer.
I wish to praise the dancing eyes
That sparkle for death’s final tear.

When the calm unfolds the love-night
That created you, where you create,
An unknown yearning comes alight,
A candle that will be your fate.

Darkness now no longer snares you,
Shadows lose their ancient force
As this deep desire tears through you
To soar to higher intercourse.

Now no distance checks your flight.
You come on wings enchanted, rash
To meld yourself into the light
And like a moth you’re burnt to ash.
So long as you’ve not met this test
Of living death and then rebirth,
You shall remain a gloomy guest
On this dark earth.

—Goethe (1814)


Addendum: I now offer you a third poem, representing another type of love, of friendship, which both has the Buddhist qualities of loving kindness, inner peace and joy, but also the productive qualities of power and passion that motivate action.



Blessed Friendship

Up the branch he makes a dart,
Flicks his tail and looks around,
Down at the girl who made him start
Dropping chestnuts on the ground.

Cautiously he does descend,
Grabs a nut, then jumps away,
But soon the girl becomes his friend
And how she wishes he could stay!

But he must go and gather nuts
And hide away from winter’s frost.
Her fingertips still bear the cuts,
Love bites that were friendship’s cost.

So for her friend one early morn,
She fills her bag with nuts she's found
And empties them onto the lawn
And hopes in spring he’ll be around.


This post was originally published at Buddhist Travelers.

Seeking Guidance

At some point when you feel in a relaxed state of mind, ask yourself questions, and go deep inside yourself and listen to the answers. After each answer you get in reply, write down the answer exactly as you hear it, neatly enough so that you can read it later, before returning to the relaxed state to ask another question. Thanks to Cyn for the inspiration to do this.

So here is an imaginary conversation...no visual cues... just questions and answers, just like Yahoo Answers, but with me as both asker and answerer.


What should I ask for?
You should ask for that which will guide you to greater wisdom of the self, for wisdom of the self is everything.

Where does will come from?
It comes from inside, from Source.

Where do I find morality?
Morality is like diving into a pool. If you do not come up for oxygen, you will drown. Morality is that which sustains us, gives us direction. You will know when you are ready. Temptation is distraction.

How to tell if something is a distraction?
Feel it! Say, is this oxygen that will sustain me and take me forward, or is it something that distracts and holds me back. Do I need it?

So when we reach a state of needing nothing, do we run out of morals and is everything distraction?
We no longer need morals to sustain us. We are at peace.

Long pause in a still meditative state before I ask again...

This state of not needing anything, is it an amoral state?
The waters are cool and light. You do not need oxygen. You do not need warmth. You have it inside you and you can go where you will.

If two paths are presented to you, how to choose?
You have free will. You have choice. But a bad path in a pool filled with light will be very clear to you.

Is there anything else I should ask, and may I share this?
Yes, you should write it down and contemplate it. Ask "Why?"

Why? ... what?
Why I am here?

Why are you here?
Because you sent for me.

Thank you for coming.
All is in the asking.