lotusinthemud

Epitaph - By Merrit Malloy

A poem with a profoundly beautiful message about death and grief and love. It’s a meditation that’s often read before Kaddish, part of Jewish mourning rituals:

When I die

Give what’s left of me away

To children

And old men that wait to die.

 

And if you need to cry,

Cry for your brother

Walking the street beside you.

And when you need me,

Put your arms

Around anyone

And give them

What you need to give to me.

 

I want to leave you something,

Something better

Than words

Or sounds.

 

Look for me

In the people I’ve known

Or loved,

And if you cannot give me away,

At least let me live on in your eyes

And not your mind.

 

You can love me most

By letting

Hands touch hands,

By letting bodies touch bodies,

And by letting go

Of children

That need to be free.

 

Love doesn’t die,

People do.

So, when all that’s left of me

Is love,

Give me away.

 

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Faith in the Midst of the Fire ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

PAIN IN A BOMBU WORLD

In the on-line order meeting this past Saturday I said that in relation to the current world crisis caused by the arrival of a virus for which, as yet, we have no cure, I am a happy pessimist.  I’ll say a little more on this subject.

Firstly, the pessimist.  Clearly, in the present situation, there are large numbers of heroic individuals who are doing everything they can to ease the suffering of others.  Most of these are ordinary people doing relatively ordinary jobs.  Stocking shelves in a supermarket or sitting at the till was not, until this eventuality, widely regarded as a heroic activity.  Then there are nurses and doctors who, in many cases, are in serious danger.  Yesterday a doctor died here in France from the virus contracted by contact with a patient. 

The suffering is real.  To die in this way is no picnic.  Furthermore, those who are in hospital are often elderly people, already frail, and they have the added misfortune that their younger relatives are prohibited from coming to comfort them.  A miserable situation indeed.  And it may come to any of us. I myself must be in one of the risk categories due to my age and existing lung damage, but even people much younger and fitter are sometimes falling foul of the most terrible effects.  The fatal element in the illness is caused by one’s own body’s defensive reaction to the virus that, as it struggles against the invader, inflames the inside of the lungs making it impossible to breathe.

The Buddha spoke of eight afflictions - birth, aging, disease and death, loss, association with what we hate, failure, and the skandhas. In this epidemic many of these are conspiring to make our existence one big heap of dukkha.

Now I have been following events and reading commentaries in the media and there are a number of essays expressing the sincere wish that this will be the kind of shock that will lead us into a better world once the crisis is over.  The examples of heroism may become the norm for us all.  A new era of love and kindness may dawn.  There are also items suggesting what needs to be done in terms of international cooperation, restoring faith in ethical leadership, and trusting the good sense of the honest citizen.  All of these accounts are inspiring and often wise.  However, I have no expectation that they shall come to pass.  This is my pessimism.

There were hurricanes and we did not heed.  There were fires in the great forests and we did not heed. There were floods.  Now there is a pestilence.  Will this turn the hearts of the rich to help the poor, the profiteers to share their gains, the warmongers to turn to pacifism - probably not.

I am not so sanguine about human nature.  I recognise that we are all bombu.  What will actually happen will not be a function of wise collective human decision making nor of responsible citizens having confidence in virtuous governments. It will, rather, be a function of decisions made on the hop with little thought for the long term consequences.  This is partly because we do not have the prescience to know what those consequences are going to be.  There undoubtedly will be many, but predicting them is not at all easy.  Some projections can be made on the basis of what is already happening, but it is of the essence of situations like this that the unexpected will triumph.

The scourge will probably last longer than governments are currently assuming.  To have it all over by mid-summer is probably wildly optimistic.  There will obviously be a massive economic effect from the measures already in place.  It will take a long time to get "back to normal" if that ever happens, and along the way a lot of the capital that civilisation depends upon will have simply disappeared.  Governments will almost certainly have to start printing money as the only way of getting out of the huge debts they are currently running up. and this will probably fuel a sudden surge of inflation  The USA will be in a fair degree of chaos because it does not have the systems of social control that exist in the Old World, and as it is the leading economy that chaos spells trouble for everybody else on top of the damage that will already have been done directly by the virus.  So we may well be on the cusp of a descent into a period of considerable disorder.  This is my pessimism.

DHARMA-VINAYA

How does one remain happy, or at least sanguine, in the midst?  By faith and practice.  The Buddha has given us the Dharma-vinaya.  It may be a bit old and rusty after all these centuries.  It may have degenerated somewhat.  We may even be in the Kali Yuga - Mappo - the Dharma ending age; but even in Mappo it is possible for there to be upwellings of faith and practice (which is what Dharma-vinaya originally meant).  In fact, in the history of the world, it has often been in the Dark Ages that the finest spirit has shone light in the gloom.  The Dharma given by Buddha is a recipe for a noble life in the very midst of the realm of poison.  Like the proverbial peacock, it transforms the poison into nourishment.

Furthermore, even if one is the last person on the planet in possession of this precious Dharma treasure, it alone is enough to carry one through the fires at the end of the universe.  Therefore, I am not afraid.  Death has no sting.  The test of one’s Dharma practice is the manner in which one faces death.  If I ask my Japanese friends what Pureland Buddhism is all about they are likely to say that it is about “the one great moment”.  The one great moment is the one that we shall all pass through - the moment of death.  So the question is, are you ready?  When something like this plague comes along, we are all called to think of our death and of the deaths of those around us.  How we meet this determines the whole tenor of our lives.   

None of us knows exactly how the nembutsu works, how the grace of Amida unfolds, how the Pure Land will appear, but we can have faith.  We can have absolute confidence that at that great moment we are going home, and that beyond that going home other destinies shall unfold.  Those who live with faith in the prayers of Buddha shall all be Buddhas one day and those who entrust to the heart to heart bond that supports us in the sangha shall meet in the Pure Land one way of another.

When I sat by the bedside of my mother in the last week of her life, I was inspired by her calm acceptance.  She had me describe the Buddhist teaching on the afterlife and there was a great peace between us.  Those who are close to death participate in a spirit that is often completely occluded in the hubbub of everyday, supposedly healthy, life.  I place my faith in that spirit.  Whether the precise descriptions that one reads in the great texts are exact or not matters not one whit. An iota of such faith will carry one through.  Therefore, I am happy.

And if one has such spiritual confidence, then, if one is granted more years, that joy and ease cannot help but spread, like a positive virus, infecting those who are not inoculated against it.  They may be few - those with but little dust - but they will be a leaven and through them the Dharma of Buddha will continue to inspire, the grace of compassion shall continue to be transmitted, and there will be a light in the world, not withstanding that the majority retain a herd immunity to accepting it.

Do not be dismayed by the greed, hate and delusion that is around - the hoarding and the negligence of sane instructions - even the pessimistic prospect.  People find it difficult to change and when they are frightened they often act in ways that multiply the dukkha rather than making it a spring-board for awakening.  We are all such foolish beings.  Do not expect too much, but have faith.  Though the world be all on fire, the Dharma enables one to walk through that fire to help the one in need.  Trust. Namo Amida Bu.

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Unmodernising Buddhism ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

BUDDHIST MODERNISM

One reads a good deal these days about Buddhist modernism.  This is a movement that began in South and South East Asia as a resistance to colonialism.  Local Buddhists wanted to present their countries as “modern” and so injected a lot of Western rationalist prejudices into their culture and religion in order to make it look  more compatible with science which was, in the West, becoming dominant over the established monotheistic religions.  It became possible to say that Buddhism was the most scientific religion, or even that it was not a religion at all but rather a way of life, a philosophy and a science of the mind.

This strategy proved more successful than even its inventors had hoped.  Not only did it stimulate a rejuvenation of Buddhism in Asia, it led to this new Buddhist modernism or modernised Buddhism being imported into the West.  By deliberately playing to all the prejudices of Western culture, a new Buddhist product had been created that had direct appeal to Westerners alienated from their traditional faith traditions.  In the process the modernisation went further and further.  Buddhism was presented as a psychological technique leading to happiness, free from rituals, superstition, gods, priests and any kind of superstition.  In other words, Buddhist modernism became, as many writers have now pointed out, a new fabrication that has precious little in common with Buddhism as practised for the twenty five centuries or so up to 1900, or, indeed, with Buddhism as still actually practised by ordinary folk in Thailand, Taiwan or Tokyo.

WESTERN CULTURAL ACCRETIONS

So now we face a situation where Buddhism in the West has absorbed a mulitude of values and attitudes that have no connection with Buddha, but have their roots in Europen history and North American concerns. 

There have been a number of reactions to this situation.

1/ As Buddhism has become more established in the West Buddhist groups have sought legitimacy and have established institutions.  Temples, monasteries and centres have come into being.  Generally these strike some compromise between their historic tradition and what is necessary to be sufficiently popular in a Western context to keep people coming through the door.

2/  Some people and groups have sought to extend Buddhism into or even identify it with current “progressive” Western concerns - ecology, psychology, gender equality, democracy, social justice, racial parity, and so on.  Sometimes this is a bit of a stretch since traditional Buddhist texts do not mention most of these subjects.  It can be argued, however, that Buddhism did advance what is recognisably a psychology and that since it taught universal compassion, these are naturally the modern forms of such.

3/  Some have taken techniques from Buddhism and applied them in the service of amelioration of contemporary ills.  In the process, in order to make them acceptable to modern sensibilities, they have carried moderisation to an extreme, stripping out every trace of religiosity.  The most widespread and notable case is “mindfulness” about which I have written extensively elsewhere.

4/  There has emerged a quasi-spiritual quasi-commercial phenomenon called New Age.  This is a kind of hotch-potch of popular spiritual and magical ideas combining a variety of (often mutually contradictory) principles such and practices drawn from Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Druidism, Shamanism, Sufism and so on.

5/  In the forms of Buddhism now popular in the West there has emerged a broadly recognisable consensus around such principles as interdependence (or interbeing), non-duality, Buddha nature, present-momentism, expanded consciousness and awareness. 

6/ All of this has been linked to an almost complete identification of Buddhism with the practice of meditation, especially three forms of contemplation: insight meditation, metta (loving kindness) practice, and choiceless awareness.  Most Western people now assume that meditation and Buddhism are more or less synonyms.

7/  Most recently Buddhist modernism has struck up an alliance with neuroscience, a branch of science that has been rescued from moribundity by the discovery of neuroplasticity.  If the brain can change, then Buddhism, presenting itself as a set of meditation techniques, can claim to be the methodology for improving the brain.

8/  Some more academically minded, surveying this scene, have despaired of the idea that there is really any such thing as Buddhism.  Rather they see a diversity of forms, more appropriately studied by anthropology than religious studies or theology, that have some family connection, but no core essence.

There are others. There is no doubt that this has produced a fertile and creative melting pot situation in which new ideas and new forms periodically emerge and, broadly, this is all to the good as far as it goes.  However, in the plethora of adaptations and confusions, the actual salvation that Buddhism offered tends to get lost or submerged.  This feels rather unsatisfactory, but one cannot go backwards, so the question become how to go forwards from here.

I recently spoke at a conference.  The speaker who followed after me was Chinese.  He started his presentation by saying (and I paraphrase from memory) “Doctor Brazier and I are on opposite, perhaps complimentary, tracks.  He is trying to remind Westerners that there was a perfectly good, functioning Buddhism before it got contaminated with modern Western culture and I am trying to persuade Easterners that Buddhism needs modernising and reforming to conform to the needs of the contemporary world.”  No doubt he and I shall go on learning from one another.

BUDDHISM IS A RELIGION: YOU CAN BELIEVE IT

I am a Western born and Western educated person.  I share many of the views of my progressive liberal friends and even some of those of my more conservative ones.  None of these, however, take priority over my faith. I do not see Buddhism as a way of advancing other causes and I do not think that the Dharma of Buddha needs to be modified to fit us.  We need to modify ourselves to fit it.

I came into Buddhism from the position of an already established spiritual outlook.  To me, religion is not something to be rejected out of hand as old fashioned, nor is it a modern invention, as some have suggested.  As I see it, people have a fundamental spiritual need and an unavoidable intuition of a beyond.  We call ourselves homo sapiens, but this is a conceit.  It would be truer to call ourselves homo religioso.  Every culture generates, in one way or another, a dimension that is recognisably religious.   

Everything in ordinary life is finite, impermanent, incomplete, measurable and non-ultimate, but to say that this is all is to deny the unavoidable intuition.  All worldy things can be counted, but, as Einsteinn is supposed to have said, not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.  There are numbers, but there is also zero and infinity and these beyond-the-limit items, which we all intuit, do not behave like rational numbers.  The same is true with the lived life: we experience a great diversity of conditional circumstances, but somehow the mind cannot avoid intuiting the unconditional.  To me, this is what Buddhism is fundamentally about. This is what Buddha designated as the only possibility of true liberation. 

My own approach therefore has been

1/ to study the sutras and try, as best I can, to glean the real message

2/ to strip away the Western cultural accretions and try to find the true spirit

3/ to take it that the core of Buddhism is, on the one hand, an answer to the religious longing of people, and, on the other, a way to let the Beyond into our lives

4/ to take seriously the assumption of pious Buddhists that Buddha can help

5/ to not be afraid of ritual, symbolism, poetry, priestly roles and overt religious forms; their replacement by socio-political equivalents is not progress

6/ on the observation that most Buddhists do not meditate, to not assume that Buddhism is a technique

7/ to take it that Buddhism is seriously religious and is not simply an anthropological cultural category or congeries of diverse practice forms lacking ultimate meaning

8/ to assume that Buddhism is not designed to answer “modern” questions, but rather to satisfy the heart and soul of people in all cultures in all times, like any other major religion

I respect the religious impulse.  That does not mean that I approve of the subversion of religion by politics in order to set communities against one another.  Nor, contrarily, does it mean that I think all religions are the same.  I see them as vehicles.  The well designed ones can get you from here to infinity.  Some will give you a more comfortable ride than others.

Modernist people are often completely cut off from their religious heart.  They think in materialistic terms and lack a sense of spirit.  Their world is disenchanted and they think that this is reality, whereas, in fact, it is a spiritual desert.

In a nutshell, the problem is that we have taken the bhakti out of Buddhism.  We have tried to make it into a cold, clinical, secular, utilitarian, intellectual rationalism with a set of techniques that can be used as remedies for modern ills.  It is not and never was like that until this modernism came along.  To hear modern Buddhists, one would think that Buddha never mentioned such things as faith or devotion, yet for most Asian Buddhists throughout history faith and devotion have been precisely what Buddhism has always been about. That is bhakti.  Bhakti is to throw oneself heart and soul into the hands of Buddha.  It is free fall.  or, at the simplest level, it is to kneel in humility, place a flower on the altar, and receive the blessing in one's heart. This is what we have lost.  It is not that we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, it is that we only have bathwater and the baby has gone.

MISSING THE POINT

A simple example of where we have got to is the fact that almost all Western Buddhists like the idea that Buddhism teaches that everything is impermanent.  This sounds like science and it is the kind of phrase that can be applied to a multitude of situations.  However, it completely misses the point that what Buddha actually taught was that all worldly things are impermanent and impermanent things offer no reliable or permanent spiritual refuge.  This was not the Buddha stating a hypothesis about physical reality, it was an injunction to find that which is not impermanent, to find the true refuge.  Finding such a true refuge - nirvana - is the core of Buddhism.  Modern Western Buddhism has lost this core.  But if you take the heart out, the body no longer lives.  At best you are left with a mechanism, a robot. Buddhist modernism is such a robot. It has no soul, no spirit, no religion.

Somebody wrote to me recently and said that they had been to an event at which the presenters had been asked if they were Buddhists.  One of the presenters had said that yes, he was Buddhist, but immediately hastened to say that Buddhism is not a religion and that for him it was simply a collection of techniques that could make life less stressful.  My correspondent found this unsatisfying, which is why he wrote to me about it.  No doubt the presenter was in some degree nervous of alienating the audience if he showed anything more than this very watered down idea.  Perhaps he really was wishy washy or perhaps he just did not have the courage of his faith.  Unfortunately, in the contemporary West, wishy-washy is the norm and, often, the only socially acceptable stance.

To unmodernise Buddhism does not mean adopting tenth century packaging nor pretending that we are not twenty first century Europeans or North Americans, but it does mean finding some way to put the bhakti back into Buddhism.  Buddhism needs rehydrating; it needs to rediscover its passion.  When Buddha gave teachings people danced for joy, the hair on their necks stood up, they wept and sang. Where has this gone?  Rationalism launches no ships.

Somehow we have inoculated ourselves against drinking the living water.  In our haste to expel anything that seems remotely superstitious we have become academic.  To say that something is merely academic is to say that it does not really matter.  The modernised Buddhism is a hobby that does not really matter.  Real Buddhism is about salvation and liberation and this is not achieved through something that is merely a hobby or an intellectual interest.  Real Buddhism has a vast cosmic vision that includes the possibility of myriad lives in myriad realms, with beings rising and falling according to their deeds.  It is not just giving impartial attention in the present moment; it encompasses destinies in the perspective of eternity.  Somehow we have made something inherently vast and magnificent into something trivial and cheap - an easy sell.  For sure we have established Buddhism in some of our academic citadels and we have infiltrated vaguely Buddhistic ideas and techniques into society at large, and this is better than nothing, but it is still a long way short of the liberation promised.  Many are wasting for want of the Dharma.  I hope that some few shall understand.

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Good Deeds Attract No Retribution ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

A CONTROVERSIAL ESSAY

Tao Sheng (360-434) was an important figure in the history of Chinese religion. He was a younger contemporary of Kumarajiva and of Hui Yuan and he spent time with both of them as well as at his home temple further to the east. He wrote a number of important essays and commentaries, some of which met with sharp rejection at the time but which had a profound impact upon the later evolution of Buddhism.

One of these essays was called “Good Deeds Attract No Retribution”. In it he made the highly controversial observation that good karma ties one to samsara just as much as bad karma. All karma is, therefore, retribution, and Buddhas are beyond this.

This point is still worth airing today. Most people tend to think that accumulating good karma brings one closer to enlightenment and some believe that enlightenment is simply the result of accumulating a sufficient amount of good karma.

Certainly, there are plenty of Buddhist texts that tell us that those who reach enlightenment have served innumerable Buddhas throughout untold ages of time. According to Tao Sheng, however, this is not a matter of accumulating positive karma. Such service does not attract any kind of karma at all.

Enlightenment is not an extension of, nor the pinnacle of, worldliness, even good worldliness. It is something different altogether. This is a point that Dogen also makes in his essay Genjo Koan which is, in many ways, a restatement of Tao Sheng’s idea eight hundred years later.

There is a vitally important subtlety here and it is one of the reasons that the Dharma is often stated to be difficult to grasp. We might say that it is non-intuitive. No amount of good deeds will, of itself, yield enlightenment, and although the enlightened do many things that we shall ordinarily designate as “good” they have no intention of doing good as such.

By extension, this also means that no amount of meditation, chanting, ceremonies, prostrations or other merit accumulating activity will produce enlightenment either. These things may yield good consequences of various kinds, but these consequences all lie within and keep one enmeshed in samsara.

THE BUDDHA’S EYE VIEW

So, if Buddhas are not doing good, what are they doing? To understand this it is helpful to distinguish the outside and inside view. Observing the Buddha interacting with Kisogotami, one could say that he is doing her good in that he triggers her into a genuine grief for her dead child that ultimately results in her leaving behind the state of madness in which she initially approached him. This is the outside view. It is what the observer would see and what we, looking from a great distance of time and space, notice.

Considering the inside view, however, Buddha is not so much trying to help the woman as bringing her to an understanding of what is true. In effect, he says, Go round the village and talk to people and you will find that everybody has lost a dear one. Grief is everywhere. She does so and discovers that this is so. This enables her to let go of her child, have her own grief, and then move on.

What karma does Buddha get for this good deed? None whatsoever, says Tao Sheng, because he never had a karma generating intention. He merely pointed out what is true. He did what was appropriate to the encounter, nothing more. If you ask me, do I have two arms and I say yes, there is no karma. If I were to lie and say I have three or only one, then there would be karma if, as is likely, there had been some self-serving intention behind the lie. Or, if I said yes proudly, there would be karma because there would have been some self-serving intention behind the pride. But a simple statement of fact does not carry such intention and only intentional action yields karma.

TWO KINDS OF GOOD

Tao Sheng is relying upon a distinction between what we could call ordinary good deeds and truly good deeds. Ordinary good deeds create good karma. Truly good deeds create no karma. The latter are part of a life of liberation that is not tied to samsara. They are paramita. Paramita means that things are viewed from the Buddha’s eye view, not the ordinary view: they are “from the other shore”.

Ordinarily good deeds are done with some sense of credit or merit involved. One does something good expecting a good outcome in two ways. The first way is that one has an aim to bring about some good in the world - one aims to get results. One often only notices the emotional force of this in retrospect on those occasions when things do not go according to plan and one feels disappointment or chagrin, or suffers a loss of motivation to carry on. It is at that point that one realises, perhaps, how attached one was to outcome.

The second way is that one hopes to keep or improve one’s own good standing. Tao Sheng is saying that Buddhas do not do things in this spirit. The Buddha’s good reputation is not contrived. He did not set out to become a celebrity. The good results that he brings about in the world are a natural consequence of living in the Dharma, not an appeal for votes. This means that truly good deeds are done for love, with no thought of reward. The Buddha is not goal oriented.

WITHOUT HUBRIS

Another way of looking at this is that when one does something on one’s own account, there is karma, but when one simply does the Buddha’s bidding, there is no karma, neither good nor bad. Buddha action and Buddha mind are outside the ambit of karma. Buddha is not trying to be a good person nor trying to live a good life. He is just conforming to the truth, inconvenient or not.

This is why Dogen says that the person in satori becomes a mirror. They reflect the truth. They are not trying to change the truth. The mirror does not change what reflects in it.

Much modern discussion of spirituality and religion is moralistic. It is concerned with the question “What should one do?” and this is related to the idea that one has a duty to change the world and make it better. This way of thinking involves an element of hubris that generates karma and so makes the whole enterprise self-defeating. I am often asked questions in which a hypothetical situation is posed and I am asked “What should one do in that situation?” The Buddhist answer will always be, Do or say what is true, insofar as the hearer or audience is open to receiving it. Sometimes revealing the truth involves paradox, but this does not change the principle. Saying that one has three arms might be a way of awakening the questioner to the fact that she knew the real answer - two - all along, before she asked the question.

A Buddha is doing whatever expresses the truth of the situation in hand. This is the epitome of faith. It has no element of self. It generates no karma. There is no accumulation (alaya). In this sense, we can say that the Buddha is clean and empty. Each situation is, as it were, completely used up in situ. The Buddha might set out to do something - build a temple, say - and the effort fails for various reasons. The Buddha does not lament, he moves on.

WITHOUT ATTACHMENT TO GOAL

It might be asked, But what if the Buddha is a gardener? He plants the seed with an intention to get a plant later on. Is this not a karma generating activity? The answer is negative. When the Buddha plants a seed, or goes to the supermarket, or sets out on alms round, he does so with an open heart and mind. The seed might grow, the supermarket might sell what is needed, something might or might not be put in his bowl. Buddha-mind is straight forward. If we are out of spagetti one can either go to the shop or go without. If one goes to the shop they might not have any and one might buy potatoes instead. Or, perhaps the shelves are bare, nothing is put in one’s bowl and one goes hungry. The Buddha is worthy (outside view) but has no sense of entitlement (inside view).

There was an occasion when there was a dispute in the sangha between vinaya monks and sutra monks. Tempers ran high. Buddha called the groups together and pointed out the truth and consequence - If you carry on like this it will end in tears. It made no difference. The conflict continued unabated. Buddha tried three times. Still no change. The Buddha took up his robe and bowl and left and went into the forest. A while later he arrived at a different group of monks who were living in harmony. He stayed with them. Some time later the disputing monks realised their folly and came to make amends.

Enlightenment is profound acceptance. It is not earned. It is not a matter of always getting what one wants. Things still go wrong or go right according to the laws of the universe. It attracts no karma. From the inside view, the merit of Buddha is zero; from the outside view, and for this very reason, it is infinite. The good deeds of the Buddha are not like ordinary good deeds. They are paramita. They attract no retribution.

*****

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Nembutsu Verses ~ Dharmavidya

Feelings 

changeable as the weather.

Namo Amida Bu -

the silver lining

in every cloud.

 

Working and resting,

like a turning wheel.

Namo Amida Bu,

the hub,

is always reliable.

Paravritti (part 8 - final part): Faith and Courage ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

In both turning away and turning toward the element of faith is of crucial importance. Without it the turning does not complete because, panicking inside, we cling on to our old ways. In the case of turning away, one might arrive at the feeling of revulsion, yet still slip back into the bad habit. We might indulge obsessions and addictions until we feel sick and this might give us pause. However, one might then drift back. Think how many people have given up smoking for a short time, but soon taken it up again.

This happens because, however loathsome or foolish the habit, it still served some purpose in our life. It still fed the ego. We tend to dignify our bad habits by calling them “needs” and when we are without them we feel “needy”. To bear this feeling of lack requires faith. Buddhism is about faith in emptiness. The ego fights back and always wants to fill the emptiness, usually with something unwholesome.

Similarly, in the case of turning toward. One might have a generous impulse, but then, as from nowhere, a string of thoughts urging caution spring up. Soon one has talked oneself out of it, or, we might say, Mara has talked one out of it. By then, in any case, the moment has passed. Perhaps one now feels badly about oneself, but, however that may be, the fact is that the opportunity has been lost. To not give in to such cowardly thinking requires faith. Faith means knowing what Mara is up to yet acting anyway.

THE FAITH TO PLUNGE INTO LIFE

The life of faith is thus also one of much spontaneity, exuberance and enthusiasm. The kind of Buddhism we are talking about here is not one of cold detachment. It is not by ever greater self-control that one becomes liberated, but by releasing the energy of joy, compassion, and belief in what one is doing and living.

Where does such faith come from, one might ask? The bedrock of our faith is confidence that we - even beings such as we, prone, as we are, to such cowardice, addiction, obsession and destructiveness - are loved and cared for by the Buddhas. The light of their smile is always shining and even though we live in the tormenting realm of impermanence, there is a spirit that is not impermanent that runs like a silver thread through every dimension of existence. This spirit has the feeling of emptiness. It is beyond purity and impurity. It is the light that comes from the Tathagata who glances back.

In Buddhism, we call this refuge. We take refuge from the harm that might otherwise be done by our wayward mind; we find a shelter, a pure abode, where emptiness is experienced, not as terrifying, but as total liberation. Alone, we are inclined to panic, but when we have Buddha always in mind as our spiritual companion, we can turn back, confront Mara, and defeat him, since nothing prevents us. Finding inner silence and stillness, we become invisible to his armies, and this calm is then experienced, not as a loss, but as a lightness and ease - something to be happily grateful for.

Thus, when paravritti occurs, conforming to the precepts ceases to be an effort and becomes the only natural way to act. In fact, we no longer need precepts as our natural action will be what precepts attempt to point out. Self-power means exerting effort in order to conform oneself to the path, but in the condition of paravritti such effort is non-effort.

CONCLUSION
In this series I have tried to show how paravritti gives us a practical sense of spiritual awakening and the life that flows from the awakening of faith. We can be inspired by the examples of the Buddhas and ancestors. Each of them turned back from the seduction of conventional life and social posing and so were able to live authentic lives. They were each very distinct persons, aware of human limitation, yet free in spirit.

The idea of turning back can be applied in the many different ways in which we can experience natural freedom. I hope this exploration helps us to appreciate many different Buddhist teachings that all inspire us to make a crucial turn in our lives.

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Conceit ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

“I’m better than these people” “I’ll never be as good as these people” “They’re all cleverer than me” “I must let everybody know that I know important people” “I’ll include in my little speech all the important books and concepts I have read so that others know I’m not inferior” “I’m worth it” “I’m not really worth it” “I don’t love myself enough” - with thoughts such as these people ruin their lives and distract themselves from the glory of existence.

Personal worth is not worth thinking about. If there is a job to do, get on with it as best can. If there is no job to do or duty to fulfil, use the time to contemplate - say the nembutsu. Contemplate the majesty, wisdom and compassion of the Tathagata. Study the forms of nature and the vastness of the firmament.

Know one’s limitations, vulnerability and bombu nature, but don’t put a score on it and don’t engage in relative comparison with others. We are all bombu. That’s enough. To go beyond that is pride and conceit, whether one rates oneself high or low.

When we obsess about our own self-worth, self-entitlement, self-esteem, adequacy, or value, we become dysfunctional, stop learning and find it difficult to interact or cooperate. We become boring. When a person says such things as “I don’t want to sound arrogant” it often means that they are about to say some arrogant things. The urge wells up to show others how one is not actually the worm that one secretly believes oneself to be. However, it is really of no importance whether one is a worm or not. That is not what life is about and is not worth thinking about.

The fact that we become preoccupied with our personal worth is one of the main roots of delusion that Buddha was concerned to try to eliminate. There is no reality in it and it is the foundation of most criticism and conflict. People do not have a relative value. Buddha is not keeping score.  Put-ups and put-downs are childish. Don’t dish them out and if they come your way, smile inwardly at the stupidity of it, have a little compassion for the poor soul who is caught up in it, remember that one is oneself also vulnerable, and say Namo Amida Bu.

Conceit has many layers and here I have only highlighted the most superficial ones. Nonetheless, even these can cause us a lot of trouble. What is the antidote? Faith!  But when you realise that, in some situation, the gremlins have won and you have got caught up in competition, boasting, timidity or the like, the thing to do is to see it clearly and then laugh wholeheartedly at the human condition. We are all in this same leaky boat.

Recognising our bombu nature is one of the three foundations of the Amida Way. Another is the principle that only nembutsu is true and real. Don’t get caught up in pretending to be something else. Just deal in the objective situation, say the nembutsu and trust in the Trikaya. That is sufficient. All else is just a lack of faith.

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Amida Samadhi ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya: 

INSIGHT AND CALM

In the approach known now as Insight Meditation, there are two phases to practise. The first is to calm the mind and the second is “looking into the true nature of things as they are”. In other words, calm is a basis for the development of insight. However, in our Amida Shu approach it is the other way around. First we enquire into the state of things and then we offer whatever insight we have to the Buddhas who then bestow their blessing of great peace. So in this schema, insight leads to calm, which is to say to peace of mind, for which the Japanese term is anjin, sometimes translated as “settled faith”.

SETTLING

Why does faith need to “settle”? Everybody has faith, or, in most cases, a variety of faiths, that are, much of the time, at odds with one another, all vying for priority. When we say “faith” here, for practical purposes we can say we are referring to what one puts one’s faith in. It might be financial security, or a political cause, or a relationship, or one’s own cleverness, or good health, or many other things. A little insight reveals all of these to be unreliable. they are all subject to conditions and therefore impermanent. None of them constitutes a true refuge, yet all of these things exercise us in ways that are stressful and demanding.

OFFERING

Insight, therefore, can be unsettling. Seeing into the state of things is challenging. The only reliable way to overcome this disturbance is to admit one’s own incapacity to solve the riddle. In Buddhism, one does this by offering all of this to the Buddhas. This is our prayer: “Oh Buddha, please receive my offering. Please receive all the complicated puzzle that is my life. I give it all to you in confidence that you alone know how to deploy it within your scheme of harmony.”

We do not have to use these words; in fact, it is better to use one’s own words and to be specific about what it is that one is offering today, which might be sorrow, or joy, or anger, or longing, or confusion, or whatever. It might be arrogance, or generosity, or stubbornness, or chagrin, or achievement, or defeat. It might be tears. It might be the unreliability of body and mind. It will be whatever one has discovered in one’s inner search. The point is that it is not a matter of offering the right thing, but rather of being honest about what one has found within and offering it unconditionally.

PEACE

The Buddhas are always offering their peace. Only when we turn toward them and unburden ourselves do we actually receive it. This receiving can be quite physical. One can feel peace and calm descending through one’s body as one offers one’s offering up.

Such peace comes because when we take refuge in Buddha, or, we can say, in Buddhadharma, all our faith is reunified. The reunification of faith is samadhi. This makes one into a suitable channel for the descent of the Buddha light into the heart. This, therefore, is the Amida Samadhi, the samadhi without measure, without limit, that is completely centred, yet boundless. This is what Honen means by “gazing upon the moon”. Here “the moon” represents the spiritual light. Standing outside on a summer’s night and gazing at the physical moon in the sky gives one a sense of peace. This, therefore, has become a way of representing the act of taking refuge. In taking refuge one gazes upon a moon that is eternally present, outside of time, always shedding its benign light.

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Awareness of States ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

Buddhism praises awareness, especially awareness of presently arisen states. There is a value in being aware of what is arising, being aware of what is persisting, what is fading away. Thus I might notice that a feeling of sadness is arising, or that sadness is persisting, or that the sadness is fading, or that happiness is arising, or that happiness is persisting, or that the happiness in me is melting away, and so on.

As with all exercises, there are good ways to do this and there are also pitfalls. Let us firstly consider the pitfalls. If one does this as a deliberate meditative exercise, it is at first interesting, but after a time one will tire of it because it does not, in itself, lead anywhere. One observes one thing after another and then one’s mind wanders off onto more interesting topics.

Secondly, there is a danger of over-doing. If one is ardently trying to be aware of every arising state then one observes. Let us say, one observes sadness. One is now in the state of observing sadness, so one should observe this. One is now in the state of observing oneself observing sadness, so one should observe this. One falls into an infinite regression, observing oneself observing oneself observing oneself observing sadness and so on. It become absurd. So there is the danger of fatigue and that of absurdity.

So what is the better way? It is not enough to be ardently aware. One also has to be mindful of one’s purpose. If one’s purpose is to live a life of faith, then noticing states takes place within the frame of this purpose. Thus, on the one hand, one investigates how what one observes relates to one’s faith and, on the other hand, one realises how one’s faith transcends what one observes.

How does what one observes relate to one’s faith? If I notice sadness or happiness or anger or joy or envy or sympathy or whatever, then I know that I am a creature that is of the nature to give rise to such things; I am a vehicle for them; they pass through me. Knowing this, I also know that it must be thus for other beings also, and this is the foundation of compassion, the grounding of love. We are all here together in the same boat. The alloy of this observation with faith is courage. Seeing things as they are gives confidence. It permits joy when things go well and equanimity when circumstances are adverse. These are some of the ways that awareness of states relates to faith. Much reflection is possible in this area.

How does one understand that faith transcends what one observes? The states one observes come and go. They are like visitors, whereas faith persists. One’s refuge in Buddhadharma encompasses all states. We should not think that Buddhist practice is matter at arriving at one particular state and remaining there permanently. The flow of states cannot be arrested. Yet when one has discovered one’s faith, it does not wash away. It is not a conditioned state, but participation in what is unconditioned. It is of eternity.*

Awareness is not, in itself, a factor of enlightenment, but it is a contributor. Correctly used, the development of greater awareness of the flow of consciousness brings insight, therapeutic gain, and a degree of liberation. Wrongly applied it merely leads to confusion or fatigue. Awareness rightly used deepens understanding and strengthens one’s capacity to be of benefit to others. It is a wonderful enhancement of one’s precious human life.

FOOTNOTE

* [Digression: A person might object that his faith wavers. This is not true faith. This is probably merely belief. Beliefs are always subject to doubt. There has been much confusion caused by equating faith with belief. I do not know whether the heavens and hells exist or not. I do not know whether gods exist or not. If I think they do or I think they do not, these are beliefs and they are open to doubt either way. Faith, however, is something more fundamental. Faith is the deep intuition that enables one to recognise Dharma when one encounters it. One may express one’s faith in formulations, but really faith transcends them. I may say that I have faith in Buddha but my faith would remain even if the word Buddha had never appeared in my experience. Buddhism is a vehicle for my faith. It is a good vehicle, but if it were not available there would be others.]

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Shunyata as Aloneness ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

EMPTINESS

Buddhism talks a good deal about shunyata, emptiness. What is this emptiness? The earliest Buddhist texts provide a psychology of what we could call the point mind - a mind without content. Our modern (and later Buddhist) psychologies speak a lot about the content of the mind and much therapy and education is devoted to filling the mind up with supposedly good things. So is the mind full or empty?

The Japanese psychologist Tomoda who translated the works of Carl Rogers into Japanese and then went on to develop a system of psychology closely related to Buddhist and Taoist thought was particularly struck by the way that Rogers’ method (if not his theory) provided the client with a safe space in which he could be entirely alone, even though in the presence of the therapist.

ALONENESS

To my way of understanding, the idea of shunyata can well be approached through this matter of aloneness. When one dies one is alone. One is alone facing a complete unknown. Whatever your belief about the afterlife, now what is happening for real and you know that something very powerful is taking place that you actually have no knowledge about. You can enter it in fear or in faith, but either way you do so alone. This is emptiness. Whatever connections, relations, loves, achievements or projects you have accomplished in your earthly life, all are left. You are alone. This is shunyata.

Buddhist enlightenment - spiritual awakening - is like this: to die before you die, to find that utter aloneness while still hale and fit for action here in this world. That is also faith, for you dare not enter such a state without great faith. It is a kind of fearlessness, which is not really to say that one never experiences the feeling of dread as a sensation, but rather that one has access to something that carries one through all difficulties. This something may be called the bodaishin or bodhichitta. It is not something that one can possess, but it is never unavailable.

IN PRACTICE

Buddhism has a multitude of methods for helping people to approach such a state, but the final step - that in which one is seized by an other power - one must, as at death, take utterly alone, and, as at death, it is not something one can contrive nor be in control of.