lotusinthemud

Samadhi Soup ~ Dharmavidya

Concentration
Samadhi means concentration - like Heinz concentrated soup. One way to understand Dharma is to concentrate your soup. In your soup there are many ingredients - not just wholesome vegetables like leek and potato. There are also spices called greed, hate and delusion of many kinds. Some like it hot. This concentrated mass of goo is the homeless home, the ever seething cauldron of real life.

False Holiness
Mostly people are trying to dilute, bury or unsoup their soup. Diluting means trying to become pure water. There are lots of wet people wandering around in spiritual centres competing in the race to have the thinnest soup. Yet adding water does not remove the goo - it just spreads it out and makes it thinner so that it ends up making everywhere sticky. This stickiness is called false holiness.

Trusting Trust: Faith Is Enlightenment, Enlightenment is Faith ~ Dharmavidya

Not Just a Starter
Generally, in Buddhist circles, it is said that you need faith in order to enter upon the Dharma Tao but when you have progressed you don’t need faith any more because it is replaced by knowledge and wisdom, but.... Faith is wisdom and complete wisdom is complete faith.

What Do You know?
In the common view, knowledge and faith are taken as mutually exclusive. Faith is what you need when you don’t know. So when you know you won’t need faith. However, what is it that you come to know? In fact, you come to really, really know that you don’t know ~ So faith is IT.

Right now you think that you think that you don’t know, but a big part of you thinks that you are really clever as clever and  God or mummy or whoever just hasn't realised yet just how clever you are. The well of self-conceit is very deep.

The Pit
How are we to deal with this deep well? There are many spiritual practices that purport to tell us how to fill in the well and concrete over the top. People join and start digging. After a while of shovelling earth into the pit they stop and have a look and it looks as big as ever. Then the instructor says, “Well, it takes a long time.” In fact, a few myriad kalpas, so keep digging. Right? Wrong. The pit has no bottom.

Well, it is certainly true that those practices will give you something - many things in fact - self discipline, patience, stress-relief, and so on, just as shovelling into a bottomless pit will strengthen your muscles and, maybe, teach you some patience - and those things are all certainly worth having. After a while most people who go on practising are doing so for those benefits primarily, but something is still missing. Filling in the well can come to be a rather fixed focus and in becoming attached to one’s practice one runs the risk of becoming intolerant, and rather narrow.

Getting Too Square
Buddhism began in the hippy period - it was a happy part of flower power - but now that it is putting down roots, it already has the reputation of being puritanical. Buddhists are those people who won’t let you have any fun any more. It’s no longer a happening - it risks becoming squarer than square.

Is there another way? Yes. The puritan streak is a function of believing that one can do God’s job oneself. At the end of that road, God has been forgotten altogether, and, unfortunately, the world is no more spiritual than before. That is not what Buddha taught. In Buddhism we don’t say God, we say Dharma and the Dharmaskaya, we say the Buddha Tao, the Unborn, Amaravati, there are any number of names for the Nameless. It is not naming it that matters, it is having faith in it.

Clinging is Anxiety
The Buddhist texts talk a lot about giving up clinging. Clinging is the opposite of faith, which is anxiety. It is like being in the swimming pool and being unwilling to let go of the rail on the side. In order to float one has to relax. The puritan impulse is really a clinging to false certainty. One becomes overly convinced that one is on the right track. This was the condition of Shakyamuni during his period of asceticism. Deep down he thought he knew better than his parents, his teachers, his companions, everybody. Result - disaster. The person of wise faith knows that they do not know where the road is taking them. They know something is happning and they are willing, that's all. With willingness, one can play one's part. Then things happen. But opne can never pre-determine the outcome - there are too many variables. Nonetheless, as all the ancient texts say, there are bigger forces at work and one can trust them. They are reliable.

Vast Ignorance
In awakening, faith is not replaced by wisdom, wisdom is faith. Faith is not replaced by knowledge - the knowledge that one gains is knowledge of the immensity of one’s ignorance. That is what truly boggles the mind and allows faith to find its proper place. When one has been completely boggled in this way, there is no need to fill in the well. Throw down the shovel. Or use it as a dancing partner. Be like the characters in the Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra who, when they hear the Dharma, are so ecstatic they dance on tip toe. That’s faith. That is also dhyana, samadhi, and liberation.

Go pick flowers, then visit each other's wells and decorate them, and laugh and laugh. Then the gods will give you wings.

[Thanks for the picture, Carol]

:: link to original on La Ville au Roi (Eleusis)

Cultivating Sangha ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

Getting On with One Another
I have a vision of a world in which there is no war and yet neither are there the causes of war which normally seem to mount whenever there is peace. Peace is not just the absence of armed conflict. For this vision to have any chance of realisation, it behoves as many of us as possible to re-examine the way that we are and the way that, refusing to accept the way we are, we project onto others the blame for our suffering. 

Humans, generally speaking, are social animals that do not much like being together. Or, we could say, they are crafty animals who like to exploit one another while pretending to only have the highest imaginable motives. You and I, we have these traits within ourselves. We are made that way. We need others, but they make us nervous. They make us nervous because we know that they might turn out to be greedy, aggressive, boring or manipulative, just like ourselves.

Beyond Innocence
Of course, there are a few who remain innocents and drift through life happily in a kind of cloud. it is rather nice that such people exist. The diversity of kinds of people is as delightful as the diversity of flowers in a rich meadow. Nonetheless, simply being innocent and, as it were, blind, is not real spiritual maturity. There is something to be said for “becoming as little children” but it is not enough. Simply to breath and smile is a kind of picture of the innocent life, but making doing so into an injunction is liable to be counter-productive.

Indeed, no approach of the separating right from wrong type is likely to work with real human beings except in rather rare cases. 

So my vision depends upon a kind of spiritual maturity. It depends upon knowing who and what we are and realising that, even if we don’t like it, still, in the perspective of the enlightened Buddhas, one is loveable, and, therefore, remarkable as it may seem, so is everybody else.

You Don't Have to Love Everybody
This does not mean that I am advocating that from now on you love everybody. That would be asking far too much. It is easy to offer unattainable ideals. No, what I am talking about is a vision that is actually capable of changing one’s life. The first step is realising that there are perspectives other than one’s own and that amongst those other perspective there is that of the Buddhas who accept everybody exactly as they are. One does not need to think that one must be Buddha oneself - that may or may not happen and it is better to leave it in the lap of hidden powers. The second step is realising that one is as one is with all one’s quirks, propensity to error, shortage of patience, fragments of pride and smugness, gutter-fulls of self-pity and dread, and all the other  stuff that human nature is prone to. Neither of these steps is easy, but the third step is impossible to do by choice or will-power. It is to be touched in one’s heart by the chemistry between the first two. If i truly realise that I am as i am and yet am loved, and so is everybody else, then that realisation is likely to knock the bottom out of one's habitual way of approaching the world.

Alone Yet Not Alone
It is likely to leave one speechless, except, perhaps, for a more or less wordless prayer. If one does find some words they are likely to echo the age old wisdom of all those who have had an “opening” of this kind since the world began and feeling those words spontaneously falling from one's lips may well plunge one into a second layer of catharsis of realising that one is not alone in this.

Think of Shakyamuni Buddha. We say that he was the only Buddha on the planet. Isn’t that a pretty lonely place to be? Answer - no. why not? Because he did not feel alone. He felt he was in the “great lineage”, in communion with all the Buddhas of past, future and present, and assisted by all the great bodhisattvas.

Buddha's Vision
When a worldly person reads this they will think it is all superstitious nonsense. But the fact is that Shakyamuni Buddha walked this earth and preached the Dharma for fifty years without falling into the pit of self-defeat. That is quite something. My vision is no different. My vision is simply to put Buddha’s wish into practice as best I can.

To put Buddha's vision into practice is not really something that one can do all on one's own. We each have some personal adjustment to make, but it is an adjustment that should bring us together. That’s why I have put effort into cultivating and supporting a sangha. The Buddha’s vision was to have sangha assemblies in many places with inspired people to minister to them and to have a cadre of people who had “left home” who were available to go between and do the Dharma work wherever they were called upon. In our sangha we have these roles. We have practitioners; we have ministers; and we have amitaryas. The word amitarya is made up as amita-arya. Amita is Amitabha, the Buddha of all acceptance. Arya are people who follow the Buddha path. So amitaryas are those who, on the one hand, knit together the life of the sangha and, on the other hand, stir it up.

We should not think that a sangha is just a way of getting comfortable and complacent and we certainly should not think of it as running a successful Dharma business selling popular spirituality to as many people as possible. That would be a distraction. There is a virtually infinite amount to do in this world. Above all there is the task of helping all who have a yen for it to come to spiritual maturity. They will be a leaven. To have a world without war does not depend upon the perfection of every individual. It does not even depend upon the perfection of oneself. Trying to perfect oneself is a red herring. It depends on willingness to do the next thing, whatever it may be, and in doing it, to follow one’s heart rather than one’s fear.

As Much Courage as One Has
To practise, to minister, to go forth - these things all require faith and courage, but it is not actually more faith or more courage than people have already got. It is simply a matter of channeling it. It’s a serious matter. Life is not a soap opera.

So, to cultivate sangha, study oneself and get in touch with basic humanity. Realise the commonality of that. Come together and share. Play a part in the greater scheme. Who knows what we shall find along the way. At least we shall find one another and maybe, if we do that, there will be peace in the world.

:: link to original on La Ville au Roi (Eleusis)

Teachers, Disciples and Students ~ Dharmavidya

In Buddhism, and in many spiritual communities, a key role is ascribed to teachers and to those who study and train with them. The former are transmitters of the Dharma and the latter are receivers of it. However, the terms transmitters and receivers does not here mean exactly what the worldly mind tends to make of it. Disciples are also vitally important supports to the life and work of the teacher. 

Darshan
The Dharma is not simply a set of ideas. It is a lived life and a mystic way, a Tao. Nor is it a stereotyped life. Not all teachers sit under bodhi trees. We could say that it is a fullness of life. This fullness is transmitted, but in such a transmission there is no thing that is given - no commodity is involved. The traditions of India, whether Hindu, Jain, Sikh or Buddhist all emphasise darshan. Darchan means being in the presence of the teacher. One acquires the Dharma directly from being with the teacher just as he or she has acquired it by contact with other former teachers. It is a contagion of spirit. 

Teacher-Disciple & Teacher-Student
For this reason there is a crucial difference between students and disciples. Students are consumers of what a teacher teaches. They do seek and receive a commodity. Furthermore, they take what they like and leave the rest. Their commitment is temporary and instrumental. There is nothing wrong about this, but it is a limited function. Typically a student is somebody who does a course. There is a beginning and an end to the course. When the course is over the student goes his own way. I have been a student on many courses. Mostly I cannot remember the names of the teachers. I acquired knowledge or skills and I, or somebody else, paid for me to study. Essentially the relationship is similar to a customer in a shop.

A disciple is something else. A disciple is an adopted child. When the scriptures refer to "a man or woman of good family" they mean the family of the Dharma. The child will carry on the family farm. His or her investment is different from that of a hired hand.

Just as there are students and disciples, there are two different meanings to the word teacher. There are teachers who teach, perhaps in schools or universities, who might not even be Buddhist, but who teach Buddhism in an academic way. A student going to such a teacher may learn a lot about Buddhism. This is quite different from having the Dharma transmitted to one. It is an academic exercise. It may even be an advantage for such a teacher to not be a Buddhist. From the point of view of the academy, one can do religious studies more objectively if one is not a devotee or believer.

Since the word guru has been debased by popular usage and the term lama is restricted to the Tibetans, we currently have no good single word noun for a spiritual Buddhist teacher. For learners, the term disciple does still work. We can describe the two modes, therefore, as teacher-disciple relationship and teacher-student relationship.

The relationship between disciple and teacher lasts forever - “through all bardoes, through all lives”. This is true even if, in this life, there were to be only one meeting between the two people. It is a heart to heart connection in which Dharma is transmitted. Once there has been such, there is karmic affinity. Of course, when such a connection exists, the disciple wants to be with the teacher as much as possible, but what really is possible depends on circumstances. The idea of contagion is a good analogy, though. One can get infected by a short encounter, or a long one.

Teachers are Each Unique
Teachers are not all the same. When I think of my teachers, Kennett Roshi established an order of celibate monastics and used the terminology of medieval Christianity. Saiko Sensei ran a three generation family temple and stressed always the close connection between Dharma and psychology. Trungpa Rimpoche made massive adaptations to Tibetan tradition in order to make the Dharma available to people living in the materialist society of contemporary America. Nai Boonman taught tranquil abiding. Thich Nhat Hanh reformulated the whole of Buddhism into the idiom of mindfulness. 

My heart to heart connection with each of these great figures was, in each case different, yet, in another sense, always the same. The inspiration was the same. The style was always different. There is not one single way of being Buddhist and Buddhism is not a standard from of institution. Buddhism generates many institutions - organisations of many kinds - but they are vehicles, not a destination. Those who think that the vehicle is the important thing may play a part, but they have missed the essence of what is happening. The purpose of a teacher is not to create a perfect organisation. Teachers may, therefore, create many organisations, or none at all, and what they create may follow a pattern, or might not, but, whether it does or not, the Dharma is not the pattern - that is merely superficial.

training as a warrior

TRAINING AS A WARRIOR

Our patterns are well established, seductive, and comforting. Just wishing for them to be ventilated isn’t enough. Those of us who struggle with this know. Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we’re telling ourselves and question their validity? When we are distracted by a strong emotion, do we remember that this is our path? Can we feel the emotion and breathe it into our hearts for ourselves and everyone else? If we can remember to experiment like this even occasionally, we are training as a warrior. And when we can’t practice when distracted but know that we can’t, we are still training well. Never underestimate the power of compassionately recognizing what's going on.

~ The Places That Scare You by Pema Chödrön

Whispers from the Bamboo Grove #32 - Modgala on Freedom

Acharya Modgala

Last weekend, during the Amida Order Retreat at the

Amida Mandala Temple in Malvern,

Acharya Modgala,an Amitarya*, gave this

wonderful talk about her early days with the

Order, including a reading from the book she is

currently writing - giving a glimpse into her

personal spiritual journey during intensive training with

Dharmavidya in France as she learns to face her fears

and find her voice. She tells of some of

her activist experiences and answers questions from

retreatants and the Malvern sangha:


Freedom

:: link to audio
(55minutes 33 sec)

*****

 Here are many more audio teachings

by Amida Ministers, Rev Kaspalita and Rev Satyavani of Amida Mandala

* Among the ordained members of the Amida Order there are two ordination tracks. Those following the ministry track tend to live settled lives developing Dharma activities in their area, performing religious services, and getting socially engaged amidst their local population. Those following the amitarya track live mobile lives in mutually supportive community more like the traditional Buddhist friar (bhikshu).

*****

 The ITZI Conference, Madrid, 25 - 27 September 2015 

:: http://www.itziconference.eu

:: more details here

 

Read previous Whispers from the Bamboo Grove newsletters here

bad reputation

The Dalai Lama reflects on praise and blame in his commentary on lines from Longchen Rabjam's Finding Comfort and Ease in Meditation on the Great Perfection.

See the equality of praise and blame,

approval and disapproval, good

and bad reputation,

For they are just like illusions or

dreams and have no true existence.

 

THIS VERSE REFERS to the Eight Worldly Concerns: wanting to be praised and not wanting to be criticized, wanting happiness and not wanting suffering, wanting gain and not wanting loss, and wanting fame and approval and not wanting rejection and disgrace. We all experience these, don't we?

:: continue reading here

a theory of ethics

Dharmavidya writes:

Ethics are concerned with what is best to do in a situation. However, each situation that actually occurs is unique and the person confronting it at the time is also in a unique point in his or her own spiritual development. Thus, each person, at each point, must make a decision for which no formula can ever be entirely adequate. Nor does one face a situation with an entirely predictable outcome. Sometimes well meant actions produce bad results. Sometimes the inverse is true. In any case one is never in possession of all the relevant information. Thus the ethicality of each act is a function of a struggle within the heart of the individual concerned. We need the courage and faith to make this struggle from a position of love and wisdom, but how is this to be obtained?

We can distinguish between ethical acts that are the application of an ethical formula, injunction or precept and those that spring naturally from a pure heart. We intuitively know that those that spring from a pure heart are the most authentic. This fact, however, does not nullify the usefulness of ethical formulas correctly understood. What is that understanding? It is that such formulas are exercises. Taken in an absolute sense, there is no ethical precept that it is possible for a real human being to keep purely in all respects at all times. One's mind is not totally under control and passions arise unexpectedly. Also, one is inevitably implicated in the actions of others. Further, we live in a world so constituted that life cannot be maintained without harm being done. Thus, any ethical precept, such as "Do not be proud of yourself and devalue others," or "Do not take the life of other sentient beings," if taken seriously, must result in an anguish of the heart. One arrives at the inevitable "I cannot."

Arriving at this impasse experientially, not merely intellectually, and feeling the depth of the anguish embodied therein is of extreme importance. This is the point where the self-perfection project founders and genuine humility is born. From this humility springs gratitude. Although I am a faulty, vulnerable being prone to error and wayward passions, still I am supported by this universe, still I receive help and guidance, still I am fed, cared for and benefitted in innumerable ways. My debt is incalculable. This is the position of humility from which generosity of spirit and compassion in the form of fellow-feeling emerge.

Thus the ethical precepts are spiritual exercises that drive one to a point of looking more deeply into one's nature and seeing that this must be the nature of all. It produces a penetration below the veneer of social life into the reality of human animal nature and its existential situation. This penetration is the root of spiritual maturity. In the mature soul, the self-perfection project is abandoned. The super-ego evaporates. One stands in the position of an authentic, fallible being in the midst of others equally human to oneself. Thus the impetus to harsh judgement of others also evaporates.

Thus by applying and seriously undertaking ethical precepts one is driven into a deep study of oneself that in due course leads to one forgetting oneself, except, perhaps, as an object of amusement. One confronts each situation as it comes with a heart educated by failure, that bows before the lessons of life and learns them readily, free from the burden of self-justification, knowing that one will never be justified, but yet one is enfolded by beneficence. From this state of liberation one acts according to one's truthful perception of the situation. Consequences follow and one accepts them and learns. In acting one knows that one may be wrong, but act one must.

Thus there is a cyclical progress. Through the attempt to apply the exercise of an ethical rule one trains oneself in goodness but in the process learns one's inevitable limitation. From this learning one's heart is educated. Acting with such an educated heart, the actions that spring forth are increasingly those of love and compassion. The heart is light and the world is full of grace. One lives in praise and gratitude. The rightly ordered heart generates a rightly ordered life that others will see as conforming to the kinds of standards that constitute the formulas of virtue.

Between such action and such a heart lies the mental activity of reflection that is both intellectual and intuitive, engaging emotion and will. Seeing what one has done one feels contrition and it is this which softens the heart. When the heart is touched, too, there is a reflection that informs the mind. Contemplation thus mediates between heart and action and finds a refuge that goes beyond self-perfection, self-reliance, self-esteem and all the other forms of self-clinging that only generate a false appearance of spiritual virtue. One finds refuge beyond the self, beyond the ego, free from the super-ego, simply in the reality of the contrast between one's own nature as one honestly encounters it and the transcendent, unconditional ideal that one intuits and that most certainly is our ultimate loadstone.

Reflecting in this way we come to see that ethics is a process, not a formula. The spiritual development of the person is an ethical development which is also an education of the heart through honest experience. Ethics is not a matter of self-justification, not a matter of fear of divine retribution, not a question of maximising utilitarian benefit, nor is it the imposition of a strait-jacket of restrictions. It is an exercise in spiritual growth toward genuine humility. The more that the heart is touched the more readily will it be touched again, opening to all in need.

This progress of the heart is not stress free, although in the long run it brings an infinite peace. In the anguish of honestly confronting one's own nature through the evidence of everyday life one must face an anguish that is in proportion to the self-conceit that one carries within. This painful travail, however, is the most liberating experience that one can know, for it relieves one of the onus of perfectionism and leaves one at home in the world as it is. Great solace lies therein.

:: link

when we find ourselves spinning off...

When we find ourselves spinning off into thoughts that are further and further from the reality that generated them, we need to become aware and notice what sparks our indulgent thinking. Our observation may not arrest the stream of concerns immediately, and they may continue to be a nuisance. But through observation we can begin to find the inner intelligence and clear comprehension that doesn’t believe in all that compulsive speculation. Through learning to observe in this way, we can save ourselves much confusion in life.

~ Christopher Titmuss: An Awakened Life

open to first thought

When you take photographs, just before you click the shutter, your mind is empty and open, just seeing without words. When you stand in front of a blank sheet of paper, about to make a painting or a calligraphy, you have no idea what you will do. Maybe you have some plan for a painting, or you know what symbol you want to calligraph, but you don't actually know what will appear when you put brush to paper. What you do out of trust in open mind will be fresh and spontaneous. Opening to first thought is the way to begin any action properly.

~ Jeremy Hayward, from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #3
From Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith