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The Nembutsu Pure Land Chant Is a Buddhist Way to Foster Gratitude ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya:

Pure Land practice is simple. It doesn’t require that the practitioner be learned in Buddhist thought or exceptional in moral virtue, meditation, or spiritual discipline. It is suitable for those with busy lives, and it is as suitable for those who are struggling with self-destructive habits or feelings of despondency, anger, sadness, or confusion as it is for those who are full of joy in living. It connects us with the beauty in the world, is full of art and poetry, fosters gratitude for all we receive, and restores basic faith.

The origins of Pure Land practice lie in Shakyamuni’s teachings to laypeople and the devotion that people felt toward him during and after his lifetime. The great popularizers of this approach—Shan Tao in 7th-century China and Honen Shonin in 12th-century Japan, and their teachers, disciples, and associates—were people who lived exemplary Buddhist lives and knew the whole range of Buddhist teachings, yet chose to emphasize an approach to practice that was accessible to the ordinary person, no matter what their circumstance, personal virtue, gender, status, or history was. These teachers lived in dark times and offered hope.

Honen Shonin saw his father killed in civil war. He worried about the fate of his mother, who was a Korean immigrant. He was shocked by what he saw of human brutality in the Hogen uprising (1156). He understood that many people were trapped in oppressive social conditions they could do little or nothing about. He instituted the nembutsu, the recitation of the Buddha’s name, as a practice of solidarity with and solace for the oppressed.

How can we put ourselves in relationship with unconditional love and live a life that is open, spontaneous, compassionate, and full of trust?

The questions at the heart of Pure Land Buddhism are perennial and universal: How can we put ourselves in relationship with unconditional love and live a life that is open, spontaneous, compassionate, and full of trust, given that we are only ordinary human beings living in a world that is, as Buddha said, on fire with greed, hate, and delusion? We ourselves are not immune: we are part of this world. How can we entrust ourselves to a way that goes beyond the worries and small-minded concerns that clutter ordinary existence and be part of something greater that contributes to the welfare of all sentient beings, when our capacity is so limited and we are already corrupted by beginningless karma?

THREE CORE ELEMENTS

In Pure Land Buddhism, the great unconditional love that we intuit is embodied in Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Life and Light. In Mahayana Buddhism, of which Pure Land is a part, there is a strong sense that the being of Buddha is not something limited to a single place and time but is universally present and available, inspiring and benefitting us. This is known as the Buddha’s sambhoghakaya aspect. In Pure Land, enlightenment is not so much something to be achieved by personal attainment but rather something that constantly bathes us, a light for the world already given by the boundless presence of buddhas and their teachings.

Then, in contradistinction to this inspiring intuition, Pure Land practice also begins with a recognition that in oneself, one does not perfectly embody such wisdom and compassion; that as a matter of fact and daily evidence, we are deluded beings, emotionally vulnerable and prone to all kinds of errors. This is the state that ordinary people recognize when they say, “I’m only human.” In Japanese it is our bombu nature. In this sense we are literally “foolish beings,” and it is this humble self-recognition that is the second foundation of Pure Land practice.

Putting these two things together—recognition of universal love on the one hand and of our own limited nature on the other—we may suddenly experience a shift, or even a shock. Here we are, prone to greed, hate, and delusion in all their many forms, often acting selfishly and making mistakes, sometimes with dire consequences, yet from the perspective of universal compassion, loved and accepted just as we are. In the language of Pure Land Buddhism, we are accepted by the love of the buddhas, Amida Buddha in particular. In Pure Land practice we recite the Buddha’s name to express our feeling about this, especially our gratitude and wonderment.

These, then, are the three foundations of Pure Land practice. First, to recognize the universal presence. Second, to face our own limited nature. Third, to express wonderment through calling out the name of the Buddha. As we continue with such practice, the calling, as it were, turns around and turns us around. We start to experience it not so much as me calling to the Buddha, but more and more as Buddha calling me. Pure Land Buddhism is, therefore, a “calling” in both senses of the word. It is a practice of calling out, and it is also a sense of being called—a practice that shapes one’s life and provides a spiritual security that transcends even birth and death.

PRACTICING THE NEMBUTSU WAY

There are many ways to call the Buddha’s name, and throughout the Buddhist world devotees do so in one way or another. It may be “Namo Buddhaya,” “Namo Tassa,” or “Buddham saranam gacchami.” In China it may be “Omito Fo” and in Japan “Namo Amida Butsu.” In the West this last tends to be Anglicized as “Namo Amida Bu” in order to preserve the six-syllable form of many Japanese chants. This method of calling the Buddha’s name is known as nembutsu.

The term nembutsu means “mindfulness of Buddha.” Namo Amida Bu means “I call upon measureless Buddha.” However, in reality this practice is not an intellectual or cognitive assertion; it is an expression of sentiment and a way of opening one’s heart to receive. When one recites the nembutsu it is an expression of gratitude and wonderment but also an expression of whatever spiritual feeling is arising at that time. In this sense it is an offering of oneself and a reception of grace. Reciting nembutsu is a two-way street connecting you with Buddha. It is not a straitjacket, not an attempt to squeeze oneself into a prescribed form or arrive at a prespecified state of mind. Each time one says the nembutsu, something different may arise. Whatever one is, one offers, and one receives what one needs. The hallmark of Pure Land is great acceptance, and one of the most difficult things may be to accept that one is already accepted.

Nembutsu can be said, called, chanted, or expressed in any of a great many different ways, rhythms, forms, melodies, and formats, in groups, in big, beautiful formal ceremonies, or while out on one’s own having a walk. Something good happens, “Namo Amida Bu.” Something bad happens, “Namo Amida Bu.” Stuck at traffic lights, “Namo Amida Bu.” Meeting another practitioner, “Namo Amida Bu.” As one gets into it, other practices also start to become forms of nembutsu. Bowing is nembutsu with the body. Acts of generosity are nembutsu for others. Visiting a shrine is nembutsu, because it brings us into mindfulness of Buddha.

What we are talking about is not really a technique but more an approach or orientation. It involves a positive use of imagination and a mobilization of emotion. The whole person is accepted. Pure Land is expressive and poetic. It encompasses the fullness and the pathos of life. It is sometimes said that Pure Land is for those of us who have already failed at more disciplined, ascetic, or demanding approaches, who are perhaps too sensitive, or too artistic, or too ordinary for the more heroic paths. Just say the nembutsu, and keep on saying it, and see.

One thing that we may well see is that insofar as we do take on board the sense that we are accepted even as we are, we tend to become more accepting of others. After all, they are flawed and fallible human beings just as we are, and they are up against the same samsaric difficulties burdened with their own karma, just as we are. We become more sympathetic to the failings of others. We feel loved and more able to love others in return. This is the foundation of true compassion and fellow feeling, which is the universal flavor of the dharma. When we take up the Pure Land orientation, the failures and tragedies that occur confirm rather than shake our faith.

Time to fall
is time to float
for a lotus blossom
     –Zuigen Inagaki

In order to start the practice, you don’t need a clear idea of exactly what Amida is or how nembutsu works. Don’t inhibit your imagination, intuition, or emotion. This is not a creed or a dogma; it is a style. You can generate a sense of Amida as an unfolding wholesome energy, as the spirit that moved the Buddha to live a good life, or as unconditional love, but don’t worry about precision or accuracy. If you just have the sense that nembutsu might be a good thing and do it trusting that it will do its work, that is fine. In fact, it is more than fine, and for a special reason. Where many spiritual practices are about becoming more and more conscious, alert, and sharply aware and precise, Pure Land is more a matter of letting the spiritual sense sink down into one’s unconscious. It is not really that we do the practice so much as that the practice works on us, and it does so quietly, in the background, little by little transforming one’s life. Try it. If it works for you, keep going!

A good way to start practicing nembutsu may be to chant “Namo Amida Bu” for five minutes, once or twice a day. That’s it. You can either say the words or listen to a recording of the chant, which you can find online. Feel free to chant along with audio, or chant alone and vary the speed or pitch to suit your own voice. Some people feel self-conscious when they first start chanting, or worry about whether they’re getting it “right.” These feelings will likely fade after a few days [see “Getting Started” for more tips on beginning your practice].

If it helps, you can also simply incorporate nembutsu into daily life. The founders were aware that many ordinary Chinese or Japanese people would have to do their practice while planting rice seedlings or sailing a boat. In our case it might be mowing the lawn or driving the car.

 

One can’t say exactly how this wholesome energy will affect you—it will depend upon what you need.

Then again, as in any practice, it is good, if possible, to associate with other practitioners. In East Asia this is easy enough, but in the West one might have to reach out through the Internet. It is excellent when we can meet in person and chant together. Chanting is a practice that brings people closer, even if it is via a video link. A nembutsu meeting with some time for chanting and some time for personal sharing can be a great support to practice even when only two or three people are present, although this is even more helpful in a larger group.

In all of these ways we can express thanks for what we receive. A core element of the dharma is the teaching of dependent origination. Everything arises from causes and conditions, which means that everything that we are and everything we have depends upon other things to which we can express gratitude. Nembutsu is the way to do that—a way that not only gives thanks for the specific circumstance but also simultaneously, in a mere six syllables, invokes and connects all involved to the infinite wisdom and compassion of the buddhas. When you get your cup of coffee, “Namo Amida Bu.”

One can’t say exactly how this wholesome energy will affect you—it will depend upon what you need. Sometimes we don’t even know what’s best for ourselves, so we must trust that something good will begin to unfold. As the days go by, you may begin to feel more peaceful or gain more perspective on your problems. Some people notice that they are dealing with their emotions differently and having more patience with themselves and those around them. Most people feel more settled and more secure, less anxious and more natural.

Shinran, the most famous disciple of Honen Shonin, says in one of his songs that the Pure Land is jinen, which is sometimes translated as “naturalness,” or “things in their natural state.” Or as the Pure Land teacher Zuigen Inagaki writes:

Just as you are,
really,
just as you are!

I hope that you enjoy your explorations with nembutsu, and that it brings you the inspiration, peace, courage, and comfort that it has brought me.

Namo Amida Bu!

GETTING STARTED

• You may want to practice at the same time every day to help form a habit. If you’re a morning person, set your alarm ten minutes early. Some people chant during their lunch break or in the evening before they go to bed.
• Choose a quiet space to practice. If you enjoy being outside, try chanting in the garden or while walking.
• Some people like to light a candle or light an incense stick before they begin.
• Chant along with recordings (URLs below), chant alone, or find a friend who’s interested in joining you and chant together.
• If finding privacy for chanting is difficult, just move your lips without making a noise or say the words silently in your head.
• Sometimes you may want to chant for a longer period of time. Some days you won’t find the time, or you’ll forget. That’s OK—just say “Namo Amida Bu” and carry on the next day.

Accompanying Audio:

• amidashu.org/dailynembutsu/prostrations_5mins.mp3
• amidashu.org/dailynembutsu/namoamidabu_5mins.mp3

♦

This article is a part of the special section “Meditations Off the Beaten Path” in Tricycle’s Winter 2018 issue.

 

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Grief Doesn't Take a Holiday

From Widower's Grief - a grief traveler:

 

(Baking Soufflés Against the Daleks)

If you’re grieving, the holidays are the worst time of the year. You’re expected to be happy, and if you aren’t, you feel even worse. Even if your someone died a few years ago, going through the holidays can bring their absence and your sorrow right back. 

Then smiling people in green elf hats and reindeer sweaters try to cheer you up, saying it’s not so bad. Sigh. 

You’re not alone in what you’re feeling. In the neighborhood, other people are dealing with their own struggles, but because they don’t want to talk about it, we don’t know what’s going on and we can’t do anything to help them. 

All of us want to appear strong and self-reliant. So we say we’re fine when people ask and close the door but we shut people out. If you’re struggling this holiday season, and someone asks how you’re doing, tell them. While many will choose not to do anything more, some will, and they can make all the difference.

As snow covers the land in a blanket of white, and cold settles in for the duration, it can seem that everything we love about life, and everything that brings us comfort and joy, has either died or is dying. On the streets we see hurting and broken people walking beneath the holiday lights, and wish that life wasn’t so hard for so many.

 

AND YET …

 

This season strips us down to essentials and makes us realize that we value people more than things. This is why we try so hard to gather with family and friends. We want the reassurance that, even though the year has been rough, our bonds to each other are secure. Even though we are overwhelmed with grief, we still care about each other.

Even if I’m grieving, if I see you loaded down with packages, I will hold the door open. I will get something for you from the top shelf in the store. I will shovel your sidewalk as you endure another round of chemo. I will go into the field to pick up the remnants of your home after a tornado has ripped it apart.

It’s not love that impels me to help you. It’s what I’ve learned because of grief. The compassion of others is what kept me going when I felt broken, defeated, and alone.

Grief has unclenched my hands enough to share what I have with you. It has deepened my breath enough to laugh again, even though I know I’ll be sad later on, and that suffering, hatred, and violence will continue to erupt in the world. Grief has lightened my feet enough to dance today because music is playing and I need to dance if I am going to fend off death.

Death has freed me to care about you. Call the reason love if you want. I call it grief.        

The baking soufflé note at the top is a Doctor Who reference. Oswin (Clara) is trapped on a Dalek world and fighting them. The Daleks are violent, merciless cyborgs who demand total conformity to their will and are out to destroy everyone else. Oswin maintains her resolve and fends off her fears and loneliness by baking soufflés. 

Within us there is unimaginable strength to endure extreme situations. Bake soufflés.

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Surviving Christmas and the New Year ~ Kaspa

Kaspa writes:

We are moving through the longest nights. What happens at this time of year? In the run up to the longest night we put up our decorations and lights, go to parties and come together as happy families at Christmas time. Or we see others doing that and our own attempt to hold off the dark fails — the winter can be a difficult time of year. More likely we are somewhere in between, with good days and bad days: Holding off the dark with celebrations and light on some days, and other days our mood slipping into something gloomier.

What helps?

It helps to know that feelings come and go. The more deeply we examine our feelings the more obvious it becomes that they are always shifting and changing, even in small ways. When I used to fall into an awful mood one of the worst things was imagining that it would last forever – but when I really examined the evidence? What a revelation. Trusting that things will shift and change has been a comfort for me, personally, in darker times.

It helps to trust that it’s good to do good things, even if they don’t bring results straight away. Your good things will be different to my good things, but for me good things are getting outside, getting up and moving my body somehow, and making wise choices about what I eat, I read and watch. These may not lift you from the worst of moods straight away, but taking care of yourself and others is good to do regardless, and I trust that it helps lay down the conditions for better moods in the future.

As the nights become shorter, and the days become longer and we move past Christmas and into the New Year we move away from parties and to new projects and new resolutions, and the adverts on our TVs and in our magazines change from selling rich sugary foods to selling diets. 

Sometimes we get a rush of new energy and plough that into the New Year, lifting ourselves up from where we were before. Sometimes we see all of those advertisements and articles about New Year’s resolutions and become disheartened as we quickly fall into old habits or discover that we don’t have any energy even to start to change.

What helps?

The same kind of things: knowing that feelings come and go, trusting that it’s good to do good things and — importantly — being realistic. There’s no point setting yourself a list of ten great things to do if you only manage a few and then become so disappointed it triggers apathy and feeling terrible. It’s much better to set a few goals that you can meet, and celebrate meeting them.

Sometimes it feels like change isn’t coming, or that the roots of disappointment run deeply. I encourage you to reach out get support. We can feel ashamed of asking for help — but the truth is no one does it on their own, and we all need to lean on other people, sometimes. Call a friend, book an appointment with a therapistor talk to a family member.

The winter can be a wonderful time of year. I’m writing this at the tail end of autumn, there are a few golden leaves left on the trees and the sun is shining brightly. Later on I’ll make a pot of soup, and I’m looking forward to seeing friends later in the week.

I trust that there will be good days, and less good days,and that it’s possible to move gracefully through them all.

If you’d like a little extra support – book a counselling session, or a mindfulness one-to-one with me, and we can explore how things are for you and how to move forward.

A version of this article appeared in All About Malvern

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Do not criticise, accept everything ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

There is a wonderful text that records the saying of the Desert Fathers or Abba. The Abba were hermits who lived in the desert of North Africa in the early Christian period. The stories are of a similar genre to the Buddhist stories of enlightenment encounters that one reads in the records of the transmission of the Dharma.

Here is one of the Abba dialogues:

Abba Poemen: Tell me how to become a monk.
Abba Joseph: If you want to find peace here and hereafter, do not judge anybody and, always ask yourself, “Who am I?”

What is Poemen really asking? The term monk came to mean a person living by a religious rule in a monastery. However, the Abba were in a period before monasticism had fully developed. The great Christian monastic orders did not yet exist. So Poemen is surely asking something more fundamental than how to fulfil a religious role. What is the fundamental meaning of being a monk?

The word monk is closely related to the Greek monos meaning singular. It seems quite likely to me, therefore, that Poemen is asking about something rather close to the Buddhist notion of ekagata. It is quite possible that the abba were influenced by Buddhism and that their concerns were similar. In any case, whether there was influence or not, this is a fundamental question. How can one become alone, not merely in the sense of going into one’s cell and closing the door, but in a more all encompassing manner relevant to every situation in life. A Christian might say, how can I be alone with God? How can one be alone with one’s faith. In Buddhist terms, how can I take refuge completely and be liberated from all the other ties that pull at me, all the internalised voices that chatter on the periphery of the mind, endlessly trying to seduce one into less worthy avenues?

Joseph clearly grasps the nature of Poemen’s concern and agitation. The reference to "peace here and hereafter" tells us that the peace that is sought goes beyond mere happiness here and now. What is being sought is something more basic and enduring, something beyond transient conditions. This tells us something more about the nature of being a monk. The monk’s mind is quiet in a way that is not just an exercise. It has a deep assurance. We can say that the monk entrusts himself to his faith, but even this, perhaps, gives too active a colouring. Grace comes to him, fills him, encompasses him, if he will allow it. Amida descends. But how does one allow it?

So Joseph provides a very practical advice. He says, “Do not judge anybody.” This is the same as the Mahayana precept, “Do not be proud of oneself and devalue others.” It is the real meaning of what in Buddhism we talk about as love and compassion. We are here talking about complete acceptance. It is difficult to convey exactly what this means, because we are so used to living in a world where everything has a positive or negative valuation attached. To accept the bombu nature of another person just as it is is enormously challenging when one has spent one’s whole life assuming one knows what is good and what is bad. We tend to assume that compassion is a matter of discerning what is wrong and removing it in some way. If the other is anxious, we assume, without a moment’s thought, that the best thing would be to remove this anxiety. We take it that that is what would be compassionate. If the other person is dejected, likewise. Similarly if they are angry, jealous, envious or any number of other common human modes of being. This way of understanding compassion, however, is superficial. There is a deeper compassion that accepts the whole person, warts and all. The warts may not be socially approved, but they are what make the person spiritually interesting. All these expressions are saying something about the inner state. When we criticise and think that this or that aspect of a person should be abolished as soon as possible, we are missing a lot. Furthermore, it is not just the other person who experiences such states. We all experience them.

So how can one break the habit of a lifetime and let it go? By reflecting that one is no better oneself. This is the meaning of Joseph’s last remark, to always ask oneself “Who am I?”

Joseph is not here advocating long introspective searching for one’s supposedly true nature or anything so grand. He is just suggesting that if we are honest with ourselves, we soon realise that we are in no position to criticise others because we have all the same impulses within ourselves. They manifest from time to time according to conditions. When the balance of conditions changes, one’s state changes. If one were able to live within the conditions that bear on the other, one would understand.

These days I do a lot of writing. If somebody tells me how brilliant my writing is and how totally thrilled they are with it, I feel my body responding. I try to keep a moderately cool demeanour, but inside the child in me is already jumping up and down with glee. Or, on another occasion somebody remarks that my latest writing is boring, off the point and has completely missed what is important about the subject. Again I try to keep my cool, but inside something is shrinking. I wish it were not so, but there is nothing I can do about it. Well, there is something I can still do, and that is that I can learn from it that this is how it is for every human being. We are all inwardly equipped with a set of reflexes of this kind. We might train ourselves to overcome them to the extent of not acting them out in an embarrassing or destructive fashion, but they are still there.

At the time when one is inclined to criticise or blame somebody else, one has conveniently detached oneself from such self-knowledge. For a short time one implicitly entertains the delusive notion that one is completely immune oneself from the kind of folly that is being made such a show of by the other person. The truth is otherwise. Who am I to criticise?

In Christianity, this message is closely related to the story of the occasion when Jesus came across a group of people who were about to stone to death a woman who had been caught in adultery. Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Nobody moved, and the woman’s life was saved.

In Pureland, we talk about bombu nature. It is the same message. When we say, “Namo,” we are referring to our own guchi nature. Guchi is a Japanese word with several meanings. The relevant one here is that it refers to a foolish person, especially the kind who is likely to grumble about everything. When we say “Namo Amida Bu” there are a thousand meanings, but one of them is that we offer up this internal grumbler to the Buddha. The Buddha is always completely full of warm acceptance and blesses our grumbler just like an innocent child. In this way, the nembutsu brings the grace of Amida to our side, reassuring us that all shall be well and there is no need to worry.

So even if we are not going to go away and live in a monastery nor adopt a religious rule of life, we can all aspire to be monks in this sense of following the path of ekagata. Aware of our own human nature, we can let the grace of Amida provide a little comfort for our internal grumbler, the critical mind that disturbs our peace. We can know that the real peace is not just a matter of the present situation, but is something that transcends all particular conditions, here and hereafter. When we know this we can relax. Circumstances no longer seem so irritating and faith grows.

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Bodhi Day - a message from Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya: 

On December 8 we celebrate the anniversary of the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha. Let us reflect a little upon this.

Siddhartha Gotama was somebody who threw himself into things. In his early life he evidently was a sensitive lad given to reflection and it must have been a deep trouble to him that his birth had occasioned the death of his mother. Encouraged by his family, he did his best to put that inner pain aside by giving himself over to every kind of self-indulgence. Eventually he reached the limit and a sense of revulsion set in. He stole away from home and turned, with similar dedication, to a completely opposite course, that of self-mortification, penance and asceticism. The flesh had to be punished. Again, he pursued this until revulsion and disgust again set in.

When he was at the limit of his powers, down and out, lying in the gutter, his mother descended from heaven and appeared to him. This could, perhaps, have been the end. However, just at this moment, there arrived Sujata, a woman on the way to make an offering to the forest gods. She gave the offering to the poor man and this act of unconditional generosity must have awakened something in his tortured spirit. Over the next few days he passed through a series of life changing experiences and it is this transformation that we celebrate on this day.

It was a great turning around in his life. It gave new meaning and direction. After his awakening, the Buddha was not idle. He spent his life walking the length and breadth of India preaching love, compassion and wisdom and awakening others. He established an order of followers who would spread the light. The way he was was itself the most powerful inspiration. He walked his talk and his most powerful talk was the example that was manifest in his life. He had, it is said, 84,000 encounters and in each case gave an appropriate teaching. Although there are universal principles in the Dharma, the application to each life is unique and his acceptance of people just as they are, even, in one instance, in the case of a mass murderer, was so profound that in each encounter an appropriate blessing naturally emerged.

We are beneficiaries of the great spirit of love that he released into the world. It continues to be transmitted. In order to transmit the Dharma one does not need to have reached some extraordinary level of spiritual accomplishment; one simply needs to set one’s conceit aside and have faith in the grace that he brought into the world and that is always shining. We are all part of the great work, often unconsciously. In simply living our lives in an honest and faithful way, we are as if mirrors for that great light that is so much more than we could shine out of our little stock of personal wisdom.

Siddhartha had tried to avoid his personal pain and then had tried to pay it off. Neither strategy worked. He does not ask us to imitate his way of arriving at the truth, he asks us to be faithful to and grateful for what he has given us. On this day, let us allow ourselves to receive the light and love that have come down through eighty generations from the past and that beckon to us from innumerable generations in the future.

Reflecting upon our own lives, we might feel helpless to tackle the great problems of life and the world and it is true that each individual is often only a tiny influence, but even the smallest dewdrop can reflect the light of the whole moon and the moon in the dewdrop is no less than the whole moon. It is not by the dewdrop trying to be the moon that enlightenment spreads in the world, it is by each of us playing our own part and doing so with a happy heart.

Namo Amida Bu.

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What to do with Dukkha ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

In this piece I would like to briefly restate my understanding of the Four Truths. This is already set out in my books The Feeling Buddha and Not Everything is Impermanent and will be familiar to those of my students who follow my work closely. It will however be new to those who follow conventional ideas about Buddhism. The former group may also find it useful to have a succinct statement.

Basics

The Four Truths are dukkha, samudaya, nirodha and marga. They are often referred to as the Four Noble Truths, but a better translation is Four Truths for Noble Ones.

The commentaries generally take the four to be following the model of a medical prescription or a problem solving formula. On this basis the four represent, respectively, the problem, the cause, the goal and the method. If you follow the method you will defeat the cause, overcome the problem and arrive at the goal. I disagree with this interpretation. I will say why later.

In my understanding, there is a better way to understand this, namely that the four represent, respectively, the stimulus, the response, the alternative and the outcome. Dukkha is inevitable. It spurs us to respond. The response could be better. When it is better we get a better outcome.

Dukkha is the Existential Situation

Let’s clarify that:
Dukkha: Dukkha is our existential situation. This is the starting point. You cannot eliminate dukkha without eliminating sentient life. Dukkha is not something you can get rid off in this life, it is this life.
Samudaya: When we are aroused or disturbed there is energy. We respond. Commonly we deploy that energy to try to get rid of the disturbance. We seek distraction. If that does not work, we seek personal security. If that too is frustrated we become destructive, either to ourselves or others or both. All this tends only to make more dukkha. These three options are included in the original text. The way humans respond to trouble tends to make matters worse.
Nirodha: There is an alternative. When the samudaya energy arises it can be turned to more sublime purpose. This means not letting the energy run wild and not being obsessed with the original dukkha. These details are also mentioned in the text.
Marga: The outcome of nirodha is that one is on a noble path. This is the so-called eightfold path. It is the outcome of using the energy stimulated by our existential situation in a constructive rather than a self-serving manner. That is Buddhism in a nutshell. Humankind, in its scramble to eliminate dukkha is destroying itself and its world. There is an alternative, but few are ready.

An Example

Let me give a strong example. Two babies die. The parents experience dukkha. The dukkha is that we live in such a world where babies sometimes do die. The parent of the first baby goes into a depression from which they never really recover. They seek to distract themselves, but it is never enough. They seek personal security by becoming a workaholic or having materialistic obsessions, but it does not succeed. Often they just long for oblivion. Such a person can be a suicide risk.

The parent of the other child is just as distressed, but turns this energy toward some positive purpose. Perhaps they start a service to help parents who were similarly bereaved or a campaign to find a cure for the disease that killed the baby. Perhaps they enter the religious life or in some other way devote themselves to the service of others. Such a person experiences dukkha just like the other one, but it has a very different outcome. In this second case the outcome is a life with a good vision, good thoughts, good words, good deeds, a right livelihood that involves constructive effort, that keeps good things in mind and that is well-focussed. In other words, they are on Buddha’s eightfold path.

Reasons for the Better Interpretation

1. Formal Reason: I think the better interpretation is more likely and better for a number of reasons. First among these is that we can see that Buddha’s teachings are often given in list form and always the order of the list is important. It says what leads to what. One leads to two leads to three leads to four. The commentarial interpretation does not conform to this pattern. It has two leading to one and four leading to three, In my interpretation, one comes first. Two follows. Three is then a possibility and if it is followed, four results. One two three four is the Buddha’s usual way of talking.

2. Buddha's Own Case: The second reason is that it fits Buddha’s own case. He encountered dukkha. Firstly his mother died giving birth to him. Secondly he saw the “four sights”. That was his starting point. He then tried distraction through the luxuries of palace life, followed by a quest to make himself into a spiritual master who would be immune to suffering, followed by realisation that he was getting nowhere, whereupon he broke his relationships with teachers and fellows and went away and tortured himself. Then he had a turn around and realised an alternative. Thereafter he lived a sublime life. Buddha himself did not become enlightened by following the eightfold path, he found the eightfold path by becoming enlightened.

3. Etymology: A third reason for the better interpretation is that it follows the meanings of the words closely. To begin with the tight translation “truths for noble ones” implies that noble ones do not get rid of dukkha nor samudaya but they do have nirodha and marga too. Samudaya implies “what comes up”. Marge does not mean path in the sense of a road that leads somewhere so much as track in the sense of the trace left by someone who has gone somewhere. The eightfold path is not a prescription, it is a list of the characteristics by which you can identify the animal that left the track. If a person leaves a track with those characteristics then they are enlightened. Only an enlightened person is on the eightfold path. Unenlightened people cannot follow the eightfold path - they are incapable.

4. Common Sense: A fourth reason for the better interpretation is that it makes better sense. As a matter of fact, dukkha does not go away. The commentarial solution only works in the sense, drawn from Indian popular spirituality, that if you totally overcome desire and become extinct you will not be reborn and so will not suffer dukkha any more. Modern Western people want to overcome dukkha, but they don’t want to be extinct. The commentarial goal occurs when you die, not in the midst of life. Only in that sense does it make sense. The modern hijacking of Buddhism as a path to happiness by overcoming desire is misplaced. No matter how much you meditate you will not thereby stop babies dying and parents grieving, nor should you. Buddhism is about living a noble life, not a supine one. Buddha was interested in the “end of dukkha” in the sense of “what is it for?” not in the sense of “how do we get rid of it?” “End” has both meanings in Sanskrit just as it does in English and one can readily be mistaken. All the great religions have to face the question of the meaning of suffering. Buddhism’s answer is that one can make it meaningful by deploying the energy that it gives rise to in positive ways. Then the suffering is not in vain.

5. How Buddha taught: A fifth reason for the better interpretation is that it is in line with Buddha’s other teachings, and especially his method. When Buddha met Kisagotami whose baby had died, he did not tell here how to feel better. He told her to go and listen to the stories of many other bereaved people. No doubt she suffered hearing those stories. She suffered more, but it redirected her energy. She had been trying to get dukkha taken away but now she recognised it fully and this enabled her to turn her life in a new direction. Buddha does not tell people how to escape from suffering, he turns them to face it fully, but then to find a way onward. The same is true when he meets Angulimala the killer or Patacara the mad woman. It is also notable that in none of these three seminal cases did he tell the person to go and meditate, nor to follow the programme of asceticism that he himself had engaged in. None of them were meditators. They did ot get awakened by applying a methodology, but by facing existential reality while inspired by a wise and compassionate helper.

How the Alternative is Possible

When we consider all this we might still ask, how is it possible for a person to come to adopt the alternative rather than just do what most people do? When we look at the three seminal cases we see that they all became inspired. A new spirit came into them. They found faith where previously they had had bitterness or despair. This is the basic character of the spiritual life. It may be framed in a diversity of names and concepts, but truly spiritual people are full of faith and inspiration. It is also notable that they got it through an encounter with Buddha. Throughout the history of Buddhism, when we look at the famous stories, people rarely get enlightened by meditating or doing some formulaic practice; they mostly get enlightened when, after seriously struggling with an existential problem, they have a significant encounter with an enlightened person. Enlightenment is transmitted and encounter is a very important part of this. It is not awarded like an exam result to those who worked hard at a syllabus. It is transmitted when a person in deep existential dilemma finds the light, usually through another person, but certainly through something that comes from beyond themselves. It takes some other power. The idea that everything comes from within is mistaken. Nobody gets enlightened by cutting themselves off except those who, like Buddha, after doing so, realise the mistake they have made.

When Buddha realised his mistake he saw that dukkha is inescapable but that the reaction he had to it did not have to be a disaster, there was an alternative and by taking it he was able to turn his life around. This turning around - paravritti - is the real prescription of Buddhism.

Collective Application

This last point is a rider to the above, but an important one. Thinking on these things one may well see that they apply to humanity as a whole as well as to individuals. Human culture seems desperate in its attempts to eliminate dukkha, be comfortable and find happiness, yet mostly these attempts just make matters worse. Humans are now less well adapted to life on Planet Earth than they were ten thousand years ago. Even then they were already causing a good deal of trouble, disturbing the natural balance. If we cannot turn around, there is a real danger that the remaining species of life that we have not already exterminated will also be lost and we shall painfully go with them. We want comfort so we accumulate things. To get things we want money. To get money we need economic activity. To have more economic activity we make things to  decay quicker so they have to be endlessly replaced. Thus we become  frantic for more, more, more, while squandering what we already have. As we get more glitter we become more shoddy, as we subdue nature we are sawing off the branch we are sitting on. Buddhism is rarely properly understood. When it is there are "some few with but little dust whose lives are turned around. Yet this is not enough to save humanity. There is a hole in the boat and our efforts to avoid getting wet are only tending to make the hole bigger. Will we wake up in time?

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Meditation Sickness ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

OUTLINE

The medical metaphor is used a lot in Buddhist studies. The Buddha is sometimes referred to as “the great physician” curing the dis-eases of the world. The Four Truths which are fundamental to Buddhism - dukkha, samudaya, nirodha and marga - are often explained (wrongly, in my view) as analogous to a medical prescripion. Among these medical metaphors we also find the idea of meditation sickness. I would like to take this notion seriously here and see what we can make of it.

Firstly, I think we should distinguish between meditation sicknesses, meditation obstacles and the corruption of meditation purpose. Meditation sicknesses are states that can come about as a result of meditation, generally meditation that has, in effect, been practised with an unsound motivation (though, necessarily, nobody has perfect motivation at the outset). Meditation obstacles, by contrast, are conditions that make it difficult to meditate in the first place.

Types of meditation sickness:
The following list includes the major and most common forms.
1. Unsustainable infatuation: The practitioner falls in love with the practice in an unsustainable way that in due course often leads to an equally sudden rejection or loss of faith.
2. Pursuit of visions and emotional high: The practitioner pursues the practice primarily in a quest for visionary or psychodelic experiences and is endlessly looking for such novelties.
3. Attachment to heavenly states: The practitioner makes some progress and attains to one of the higher dhyanas and becomes strongly attached to it, wanting only to dwell there.
4. Emptiness disease: The practitioner, having had an insight into emptiness loses all sense of purpose or direction. At an extreme this can become a kind of psychopathy.
5. Self-inflation: The practitioner believes him or herself to be enlightened and in possession of super-normal abilities in a way that leads to recklessness or abuse of others.
6. Reactivation of extreme ego states: Meditation can trigger neurotic or psychotic symptoms in persons already so predisposed.
7. Loss of connection with instinct: The practitioner may become so detached from bodily processes that he or she loses the ability to respond naturally to somatic messages.
8. Accidie: The practitioner becomes weary of spirit and can see no point in the practice or in any other activity.

Types of meditation obstacles:
There are any number, but the following are well represented in Buddhist teachings.
1. Worry and flurry: The person has an aggitated mind, preoccupied by a multiplicity of concerns that will not allow them the repose in which to settle to a contemplative exercise.
2. Over intellectualism: The person is too caught up in theory to be able to get down to actual practice.
3. The Five Hindrances: sensual desire, hatred, sloth, restlessness, and doubt.
4. The three poisons: sensuality, wrath and pride.
5. Presence of overpowering emotions: such a grief
6. Lack of suitable ambient conditions: Thus, in the texts,the meditator is advised to go to a secluded spot.

The obstacles can be considered to be things that good meditation practice might cure, whereas the diseases are things that faulty practice may bring about.

The Corruption of Purpose
I mentioned above that the sicknesses may be the result of pursuing meditation with inappropriate motivation and qualified this by adding that it is more or less inevitable that one has the wrong motivation at the start. I want to stress this point because the rectification of motivation is one of the prime objectives of Buddhism. If a person can attain to right intention they have done nearly everything that Buddha asks. Buddhist ethics are framed largely in terms of intention. The blind man who steps on insects is not at fault because he intended no harm and did not know he was inflicting any.

Meditation has become popular in recent years. This popularity owes a little to individuals becoming genuinely spiritually inspired, but a great deal more to others exploiting it as a path to physical and mental health benefits, as a form of personal effectiveness training or escape from the stress and melancholy induced by modern life. The development of utilitarian mindfulness practice falls into this category, and we have all heard that “it has nothing to do with religion”. However, if meditation does not have a fundamentally religious intention, it may well contribute to a spiritual sickness of one kind or another.

SICKNESSES

Unsustainable Infatuation
Sometimes, when a person “discovers” meditation, they take it on with a great initial enthusiasm. This enthusiasm may be powered by fantasies of what meditation is going to do for them. These imaginings may range from the utilitarian motivations just mentioned - reduce stress, bring unassailable happiness, solve personal problems, or cure depressive symptoms, etc - to various forms of self-enhancement including the idea that one is soon going to become a great Zen master, be enlightened, and have mental powers that will confound one’s rivals and generally make one immune to the slings and arrows of fate. These fantasies, being exaggerated, cannot be sustained indefinitely and when the evidence of non-attainment becomes unavoidable the person may sink into a kind of despair.

More generally we can say that this is a case of the meditator being in flight from the suffering in life. The infatuation is a form of samudaya - an energy that arises in reaction to such suffering. Samudaya can be a stepping stone to spiritual progress - a wake-up call - but more commonly it leads us into patterns that ultimately only multiply the original state of affliction. These are detailed in the textual descriptions of the Second Truth as resorting to sensual distraction, to self-enhancement, or to destructive behaviour. Thus, in this case, the neophyte meditator thinks to gain a sensual benefit and self-enhancement but ends up in despair.

This kind of disappointment is a first instance of meditation sickness - an unfortunate state induced by undertaking the path of meditation with a misguided motive.

Pursuit of Visions and Emotional High
While some are seeking utilitarian benefits, others are looking for “high” experiences. The current wave of popularity of mindfulness is largely driven by utilitarian concerns. However, the wave of popularity that meditation enjoyed in the 1960s and 70s was substantially driven by the idea that meditation could give one experiences even better than psychodelic drugs. Sometimes it does. Then, just as with such drugs, it is possible to become addicted to obtaining such states. This can become an obsession. This is clearly not just a problem of the 60s and 70s in the West since there are many admonitions in Buddhist writings against talking too openly about such experiences. This must be because ancient masters also perceived the danger of people being drawn into the practice for such purposes. If a culture grows up in which people start swapping stories of the particular highs that they have experienced, then new practitioners will be led to think that getting such experiences is the purpose and that having them is evidence of progress.

Ecstatic states are sometimes experienced during meditation, but the purpose of religious contemplation is not that of obtaining such highs. They are an incidental. If one becomes addicted to them, it can become a distraction that corrupts one’s purpose and wastes a lot of time and energy. The vision quest can be a stepping stone, but if one falls in love with the stepping stone one will remain isolated in the middle of the river and eventually, when the flood comes, one will be washed away.

This kind of obsession is a second instance of meditation sickness.

Attachment to Heavenly States
Just as meditation may lead to sensual or emotional highs, at a deeper level it may lead the practitioner into the experience of heavenly states. The difference between a heavenly state and a high is that the high lasts a few hours at most whereas heavenly states can take over one’s whole life. The person who has fallen into a heavenly state may drift around blissed-out not just when performing a meditational exercise, but all day long. Such people may appear to be terribly spiritual. Nothing breaks through their bliss. To them everybody is wonderful and life is wonderful and everything that they encounter is wonderful. Such a person is generally completely unproductive, like a sleep-walker. In fact, they are in a kind of sleep - a pleasant dream that goes on and on. They often have a slightly sleepy or floating manner. They can be pleasant to be with for a limited period of time because their attitude toward one will be something like: “Oh darling, you are so wonderful. You have such a lovely halo,” but if you ask them to do something they will be too preoccupied with listening to angels to be able to cooperate.

This kind of ethereality is a third kind of meditation sickness. In this case it may not be so much a case of wrong initial motivation as of being high-jacked along the way.

Emptiness Disease
Many meditators seek and some obtain insight into emptiness, shunyata. This can also be called “non-duality”. This can seem like a kind of final revelation. Such people may now believe themselves to be enlightened. They have a watertight way of thinking about everything. All distinctions are void. There is only oneness. This compelling notion seems to cut through every dilemma. It is a kind of Parmenidean vision that transcends time and space. It is intoxicating. Now nothing matters. All moral dilemmas are invalid because there is no separation between good and bad, right and wrong or any other dualistic dichotomy.

Emptiness disease in the spiritual context is not the same as people mean when in common speech they talk of feeling empty. That is more similar to accidie which we shall come to below. Here emptiness disease is an attachment to an experience of oneness that initially seems intoxicating, but which has the effect of rendering everything in life pointless. In its milder form it shows as an attachment to a clever intellectualism, but in more developed form it results in a supreme indifference. Such people can appear to be terribly wise and have an answer to everything, but it is not an answer that is ultimately satisfying.

Since the body and physical conditions do not yield to this kind of ultimate logic, the person may start to live a double life. They become blind to many aspects of their own real life, being too taken up by the transcendent enthusiasm to notice their own contradictions. If confronted with them, they will just dismiss the matter as illusory dualism.

This kind of false superiority is a fourth kind of meditation sickness.

Self-inflation
This condition can be linked to either of the previous two or can occur independently. As a result of whatever experiences the pertson has had he or she comes to believe that they have attained to a superior condition in which karmic consequence no longer applies in their case. They have transcended karma. A Zen story tells how such a condition can lead to a hundred rebirths as a fox. Like the Emptiness Disease, this is basically a form of self-deception, but can be compelling to the sufferer. There have been notable instances of spiritual leaders going off the rails and abusing their disciples in various ways while still themselves believing that they were being God’s gift to the world.

Sometimes self-inflation can take a more specific form, well documented in the writings of C G Jung where, as he would put it, the personality becomes inflated by an archetype. The person starts to act as though they themselves embody and incarnate a particular archetypal energy. This might be the saviour, the earth mother, the eternal child, the trickster, or whatever. The person is now, as it were, living directly off a particular instinctive energy without any filtering by anxiety born of experience. Such people can be charismatic and compelling to others. They may readily draw a following of people who enjoy the vibrant energy that surrounds such a person. Some meditation practices involve the practitioner in self-identifying with a deity. If such identification becomes “real” for the practitioner, inflation of this kind can sometimes occur.

It is worth noting that this kind of meditation disease is not the same as charlatanry. The person is genuine in his or her self-belief, even though it may be misguided. The charlatan is somebody who deliberately contrives to pretend to a position whereas the self-inflated person is not consciously tricking anybody.

Reactivated Ego Extremes
Any pre-existing ego state can be reactivated or even amplified or exacerbated by meditation practice. In modern thinking such states can be broadly divided into mild (neurotic) and severe (psychotic). This is not the place to give a full tabulation of such conditions. Simply put, neuroses are conditions characterised by unnecessary or inappropriate fear, worry or depletion of energy whereas psychotic ones are states of more severe detachment from ordinary reality. The former can include obsessions, phobias, anxiety states and melancholy. The latter may include paranoia, megalomania, hearing voices, hallucinations, ideas of reference, mania, so-called endogenous depression and other conditions in which the person lives to a substantial degree in a self-generated illusory world. All such states can be considered to be exaggerated ego responses and, only excluding those who are totally spiritually enlightened, everybody has some such elements in some degree.

When such conditions are acute meditation is counter-indicated. Thus a person who has recently suffered a major bereavement should be weeping, not meditating. In many cases, however, it is impossible to discern the underlying condition. A person may present as completely “normal” yet be carrying within all manner of hang-ups. The discipline and sensory deprivation of many meditation practices may trigger old patterns. Such ego structures are essentially defenses against internalised passions and meditation is a process that accesses and investigates such internal formations, bringing to the surface content that may have been repressed in the past.

Reactivated extreme ego states are a sixth category of meditation sickness..

Loss of contact with instinctive signals
Meditation may increase conscious awareness of bodily signs and signals but increased consciousness may interfere with a more natural connection. It is a common mistake in spirituality to over-value consciousness as though it were the goal of practice. At certain times and phases, one needs conscious awareness and it can be an important stage in learning, but it should not be taken as a goal in and of itself. In excess, it can be counter-productive. Most bodily processes work best without conscious interference. One’s heart, liver, stomach and so on all function perfectly well without instructions from the conscious mind. A central element of consciousness is doubt and an excess of awareness problematises processes that should proceed naturally. A condition can thus arise in which the person loses a natural, unthinking connection with hunger, thirst, the impulse to sleep, feelings of heat and cold and so on. Such detachment from the body can, in some ways, be a spiritual gain, but it can easily also become a handicap. Zen stories that depict enlightenment as a state in which “When hungry, eat, when tired, sleep,” are seeking to guard against this pitfall.

The person who has excessively sought conscious control of bodily processes through yogic or meditational exercises may arrive at a state in which their embodied existence has become endlessly problematic to them. Such a person may easily ruin their physical health by adopting an outlandish diet, disregarding the response of their own body, may deprive themselves of sleep to a degree that induces other physical or psychological symptoms and generally may become a psychological wreck. Typically such people are resistant to any sane advice because they judge that the person who advises healthy living is still a slave to the body and in an inferior spiritual condition to themselves.

Confusion or destruction of the body’s natural “wiring” is thus a seventh kind of meditation sickness.

Accidie
Accidie (from the Greek akēdia) is a state of jadedness or carelessness. This is a meditation sickness that can afflict practitioners of long standing. They may have made some progress in their spiritual life, but arrived at a staleness. Nothing seems to matter anymore. Why practice? Why bother to do anything? There seems no answer. This may afflict the person who lives in solitude. It can also affect the person who lives in a monastery, who goes through the motions of monastic life but for whom it has all become meaningless. This kind of apathy can be regarded as a deficiency of love. Spiritual disciplines may seek to reduce passion and eros but when this goes too far, accidie is the result.
One sometimes sees a similar condition in refugees or people who have been uprooted from or lost connection with the people and conditions that gave their life meaning and purpose. In this latter case the connections of meaning have been broken by traumatic circumstance. In the case of accidie they have been ruptured by the erosion of meaning brought about by deconstructive meditations. Meditations that deconstruct worldly circumstance can be valuable in revealing impermanence and showing the connection between physical being and the natural elements, but carried to excess they leave the practitioner in a state of helpless anomie.

Accidie is a meditation sickness.

CURE

It would be satisfying to be able to produce a corresponding list with remedies for each of the above conditions. This, however, is not appropriate because in general those suffering from such states do not see themselves as having a problem and do not seek a remedy. The condition may be recognised by others and sometimes they might be able to intervene in helpful ways, but most of these maladies are, as one might say, dead ends.

Calling them illnesses or sicknesses is only a metaphor. They have in common with medical conditions that they can lay a person low and interfere with ordinary life but they are not spread by germs or viruses and cannot be cured by the administration of a medicine.

The table below shows some of the structure and correspondences of these conditions. However, it is generally of no use to tell a person that they are suffering from such-and-such a condition, are deficient in this or that and need to rectify the situation. The person will dismiss such information and it may even serve to alienate them and make them more resistant to change. A longer, more oblique or subtle approach is needed. This is all clear from the parable of the prodigal son in the Lotus Sutra,

If we can talk of a cure at all then it must be, in every case, some skilful combination of wisdom and compassion. This is because, when we examine the ailments closely, we see that they each involve some combination of, firstly, alienation from reality and, secondly, misunderstanding. The former is a deficiency of love and the latter of wisdom. One or other of these deficiencies generally predominates. If the guide remains humble, patient, empathic and intrepid, well-grounded and full of fellow-feeling, then he or she will provide a loving example and this will create good conditions, but such humility and patience begins with the awareness that we all suffer from all of these problems in some degree. They are considered “sicknesses” when they run to an extreme, but we all are prey to similar delusions at times.

CONDITION	CATEGORY	LACK	DEFICIENCY
Unsustainable infatuation	Mistaking the purpose	Patience	Wisdom
Search for highs	Mistaking the purpose	Inspiration	Compassion
Heavenly states	Mistaking the goal	Fortitude	Wisdom
Emptiness disease	Mistaking the goal	Empathy	Compassion
Self-inflation	Ego excess	Humility	Wisdom
Old ego states	Ego excess	Faith	Compassion
Loss of instinctive connection	Eros deficiency	Grounding	Wisdom
Accidie	Eros deficiency	Love	Compassion

The above table provides a rough outline of correspondences. In reality nothing is so neat or organised. People are complex. It is never the case that a person is fulfilled in all qualities except one in which they are totally deficient. In reality they have innumerable qualities each in some degree, none fully developed but none totally absent. Consequently, there are rarely simple solutions. Each person is on a path and they may have become stuck for a time, but it is like a stick floating down a river. It may get caught in a backwater, but sooner or later something will change and it will be back in the flow. As in this analogy, the thing that moves a person on is not necessarily something that appears benign at first sight. The winter flood may carry the stick down stream. In the same way, it may be some crisis in life that overwhelms the practitioner's delusion and forces him or her back into the current.

In the story in the sutra, a young man leaves home and goes out into the world and loses his way and his fortune and becomes impoverished. Meanwhile, his father has become rich and successful. One day the son wanders into the town where the father now lives. He sees the father but does not recognise him. He immediately thinks that such a superior man would have no time for the like of himself and fears being captured and enslaved, so he runs away. However the father has seen and recognised the son. For years now the father has been missing the son, but he realises that the son is now frightened of him and unable to recognise the true situation. The father sends one of his men to befriend the son. The man does so and tells the son that there is a menial job going at the big house. The son starts to work in the father’s stables. The father then, from time to time, comes and works alongside him, reducing the son’s fear. Gradually the father advances the son, giving him new responsibilities. Eventually there comes a day when the father jdges that the true situation can be revealed, the son is acknowledged and there is general rejoicing.

We can see many important elements in this story. The “father” here is the spiritual guide and the “son” is the practitioner who has a meditation sickness. The father sees the son but the son does not recognise the father. In other words, the practitioner does not see the problem. The guide sees the problem but cannot do anything about it directly. He has to find a skilful means. The father ponders the matter and finds ways to involve the son based on the son’s existing knowledge and attitude. He gives him things to do that correspond with whatever motivation or felt need the son already does have. The son’s deficiency must be exploited in a way that ultimately leads to a cure. Involving the son provides opportunities for the father to get closer to him. The practitioner gradually comes to trust the guide more and in new ways. Initially, the practitioner may admire the guide from a distance, but tends to view him as belonging to a different species. The father comes down to the level of the son, working beside him. There is a touching moment in the diary of my teacher when she is working with other trainees in the monastery grounds gathering leaves into sacks when she notices that the man wearing the same working clothes working alongside her is the supreme abbot. This moment breaks through one of her stereotypes and releases her to think in new ways. It takes time, patience and care for the father to gradually coax the son into a new perspective. All this is somewhat like approaching a timid animal. The practitioner is not yet ready to understand the true nature of the compassion of the guide which is not based upon superiority but upon a deep family feeling.

Underpinning both love and wisdom there is always faith. It is an act of faith to love and it takes faith to face the truth of life and not run away. We can see the story as one in which the faith of the son is gradually restored and builds until it is strong enough to take on progressively more responsibility, overcome fear and draw closer to the father. The spiritual guide should be amply provided with these three qualities - faith, wisdom and love-compassion. However, even were one as equipped as Buddha himself, one could not heal every case immediately. There are times when a person can be moved along and there are times when they are stuck and nothing can be done until a change of conditions provides an opportunity. In such therapeutic work timing is a vital factor. When he is dying the Buddha says that those who were ready for it he has helped to cross over and those who were not yet ready must await another time. The great sage Honen, in one of his writings, lamants “Where was I at the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. I must, at that time, have just been one of the ignorant masses unable to benefit from the precious gift of the Dharma.”

CONCLUSION

Meditation sickness is different from obstacles to meditation. Obstacles can be overcome by actual meditation practice. Sicknesses are the result of meditation that has gone astray. The practitioner can be expected to fall sick in this sense from time to time and for periods along the way. A skilful guide or good spiritual friends may be able to help the person get back on track or it may be a matter of waiting for a change of life circumstance or divine intervention. However, in this dark age of the Dharma, we are the sick treating the sick, the blind leading the blind. The teacher is, as Chogyam Trumpa said, only a more advanced student, another mortal vulnerable to the same plague.

In this essay I have not addressed the question of obstacles as there is much written on the subject elsewhere. Nor have I spoken about different kinds of meditation and their specific advantages and characteristic pitfalls. Clearly different styles of practice attract different types of practitioner and each has its advantages and its risks. That is material for another essay another day.

The eight kinds of sickness sketched out here may give a rough and ready framework for thinking about the pitfalls of the path and, hopefully, this may help the practitioner to beware and the guide to be patient. Sometimes we are in the one role and sometimes in the other. We are all students and there are always other students to be helped along. If I help you with your homework, perhaps you will help me with mine.

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Reflections on a spiritual life ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

I am a devotee of Amitabha Buddha. Amitabha, or Amida, is the Buddha of all acceptance. This is thus an inclusive creed. This web site, La Ville au Roi (Eleusis) has members who follow at least a dozen formally distinct spiritual paths, but we seem to all get on fine together.

Spirituality has innumerable dimensions. The main practice of Amidism is to recite an invocation of the Buddha. It's main philosophy is to view the person as a fallible mortal in receipt of infinite grace. This is really a pretty generic approach.

We can say, then, that Amidism has three pillars. Firstly reverence for the Buddhas as ultimate, spiritual and/or in-this-world exemplars and benefactors, secondly humility of the person as seeker, pilgrim and practitioner caught up in the conditions of the world, and thirdly the practice of calling. This matter of calling is both on the one hand a "please" and a "thank you" to the greater powers and, on the other hand, a sense of being called, called to do good, to live the spiritual life, to explore the path in as authentic a manner as possible, and to be mindful of age-old wisdom.

This is an approach to spirituality that is orientated to peace in the world and authenticity in the heart. It is not about pretending to be good, nor about suppressing what does not fit. Thus it embraces thought, emotion and action in a balanced way and finds expression through arts and ritual as well as love, work and daily life.

Calling can take many forms and over the centuries many specific practices and styles of ritual, reflection, and contemplation, both individual and in gatherings, have developed as aids to the practitioner and the community. This site often carries discussions of such.

The central scripture of Amidism is the Larger Pureland Sutra which is both a legend and a manifesto for the ordinary person on the bodhisattva path. There is also a Smaller Pureland Sutra (the Amida Kyo), the Contemplation Sutra and the Pratyutpanna Samadhi Sutra. However, Amidists respect all Buddhist texts and those of other faiths insofar as they speak of wisdom, compassion and awakening.

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A few more reflections on being here now ~ Dharmavidya

Dharmavidya writes:

Currently, the idea of “being in the here and now” is à la mode. and I find it a truly interesting matter to reflect upon.

Here and now I am sitting in the middle room in my house in France. The walls are white. The wood stove is black. Observations of this kind seem to introduce a simplicity into my existence and this is something to treasure. In the precise moment that I am making such an observation I am not thinking about whether the car insurance bill needs to be paid, whether the cat needs feeding, what work I am going to do later today and so forth. Thus, to focus upon the here and now can provide a welcome distraction from other thoughts that might be relatively more stressful. This is true notwithstanding the fact that I appreciate my car, love the cat and will probably enjoy the work I shall do.

When I call it distraction I am referring to the fact that the mind always has a focus, broad or narrow, and that when we focus on one thing we inevitably exclude other things. This is a strength and a weakness. It enables concentration and introduces a corresponding and complementary blindness. The things that I am not thinking about remain and will draw my focus sooner or later. My here and now will suddenly be filled with the sound of the cat at the door demanding attention. So we can say that being in the here and now does not, of itself, solve problems; it simply gives us a break from them. Such breaks, such moments of stopping to look, are certainly valuable.

Then we can consider what we experience when we do stop and look. To perceive is also to construe. We are programmed to make sense of things. Why do I call this a room and not a cave? Why my home and not a prison? Why in France? I am sure that the lizard on the wall does not think that he is in France, nor that he is in David’s house, nor, probably, is “house” at all a meaningful idea to him. You might say that that is because lizards are differently constructed to us, but this argument does not stand up to much scrutiny. I do not know for sure what goes through the head of the lizard, but we can reliably assume that it is mostly about food, sex, warmth, protection and bodily well-being. How different is that from you or I? The differences arise when we consider experience. The lizard is probably acutely aware of certain contours in the wall surface, certain cavities where more than once it caught a fly, certain spots where the angle of sunshine is most pleasing, and many other details that I do not notice and have no feelings about; or if I do notice, probably have quite different feelings about, such as, “I really should mix up some lime and fill in that hole one day.”

I experience this as “my”, “house”, in “France” because of my history as a member of the human tribe that has created the useful fiction of countries in order to keep large numbers of our kind organised in a moderately civilised manner, that constructs shelters in a certain way and allocate another useful fiction that we call ownership - this one mostly designed to distribute responsibility - and these things that I construe make a huge difference to how I feel about what I perceive. Sitting in my home in a country that is organised and at peace feels very different from sitting in a prison in an anarchic land, but the walls might still be white and the stove black.

We now, perhaps, start to see two important things about here-and-now-ism. The first is that it can be useful, and an important spiritual discipline, to be able, when one is in prison in an anarchic land with no certainty that one will not be executed tomorrow, to be able to stop and look and see that the walls are white and the stove is black and that the concrete realities of this moment are actually no different from when one was sitting at home elsewhere. Such a reflection can save one from panic and is one of the great “consolations of philosophy”. To be able to be as much at home in a cave as a palace and as much at ease in a palace as in a cave is a mark of spiritual maturity. It is a kind of sublime indifference that marks out the more enlightened person.

The second thing is that we can see that what one construes the here and now to be is a function of past experience and an imagined future. The here and now is given meaning by the there and then. It is only because of my past experience that I now experience this as a room in a house and it is only because of an imagined future social stability imparted to me by the concept of “France” that I have particular feelings and emotions at this moment. These feelings, these spontaneously arising thoughts and these emotions are also a highly significant part of my here and now experience, yet they are formed by the there and then. Thus the actual visceral experience of here and now is a function of there and then, just as it is for the lizard on the wall.

Now we might say that the person who is spiritually illuminated is emancipated from this circumstance of being a function of the past and future. He or she is able to be at ease even in the prison cell with death about to be inflicted tomorrow morning. However, this consolation of philosophy is itself also a function of an experienced past and an imagined future - merely a different one from that of the common person. The phrase “consolation of philosophy” (De consolatione philosophiae) comes from Boethius who, in 523CE, wrote a book with this title while he was in prison awaiting eventual execution. The book is one of the most important books of Western philosophy, bridging the classical and medieval ages and laying down a great many principles that are still to this day the foundation of enlightened thought, here using the term “enlightened” in the Western sense.

Boethius was able to express the consolation of philosophy so clearly because he had absorbed the wisdom of Christianity and of Greek philosophy, especially that of Plato. It was these perennial truths that he kept in mind that enabled him to treasure virtue over circumstance and continue to believe in the goodness of God in the midst of corrupt and treacherous human practice. When one has such a stock of wisdom in one’s heart, one is so much better equipped to “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. Hamlet should have read Boethius.

The idea of being in the here and now is currently connected with the fashion for the practice of “mindfulness”, but we should not lose sight of the fact that mindfulness - sati in Pali, smriti in Sanskrit - in its original Buddhist context, was essentially no different to the philosophy of Boethius, that one is protected by what one keep in mind. To have one’s mind or heart full of the right stuff will ensure that when one looks at the white walls and the black stove one will feel the joy of life and not the misery of despair.

So, I am still sitting in the middle room of my house in France. By most people’s standards it is a little chilly as I have not yet lit the big black wood burner. Perhaps I’ll go and do that now. After all, it has remained there patiently all the while that I have been philosophising and deserves to be fed. Of course, I am perfectly aware that such thoughts are all nonsense, but they too are a charming part of my here and now… or is it my there and then?

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Spontaneity ~ Dharmavidya

QUESTION: What is spontaneity?

SHORT ANSWER: Acting without conscious motive.

ANSWER: Spontaneity, nowadays, tends to mean setting aside one's plan or schedule when one is moved or touched emotionally and allowing oneself to respond directly to those feelings. Originally the word meant to do something by one's own will. The essential idea is one of direct connection with immediate conditions.

We can therefore say that spontaneity occurs when self-consciousness is absent or over-ruled or reduced to the role of a secondary observer. We can imagine the position of a person who arrives intending to make a speech that he or she has rehearsed who, when they go to the rostrum to speak, feels a strong connection to the audience, puts the prepared script aside, and speaks freely from the heart directly to the people present.

Another nuance of spontaneity, therefore, can be to do with originality. To do something that one has never done before, or to do a familiar action in a new way, constitutes a kind of spontaneity. Such an act, whether great or small, has a freshness about it that will not be present when the act is repeated many times. In this sense, 'spontaneous' is the opposite of 'habitual'. In a conversation it is often quite noticeable if a person is saying things that they have said many times before or if they are thinking on their feet and expressing new ideas. This aspect of spontaneity is closely connected with creativity.

Then, again, spontaneity can refer to situations where one did something more or less involuntarily. One might say, for instance, I was feeling sad but when my friend walked into the room there was a spontaneous smile on my face. In this case the person’s own action surprises them. Another example might be: I did not think that I knew that song, but somehow, spontaneously, when the music played, the words came to me. Here, a distant memory or long forgotten experience might be being triggered. In this sense, spontaneity is close to intuition. What we do intuitively we do without conscious motive.

Thus spontaneity generally means without prior contrivance. Thus spontaneous acts can, inter alia, be due to an upsurge of emotion, enthusiasm for a new situation, the triggering of forgotten memories or the expression of unconscious intention. A person who is spontaneous can be either fun or alarming to be with and neither boring nor predictable.

Often our socialisation has the effect of inhibiting spontaneity. In order to avoid infringing social rules one strives to stay in control of one’s thoughts, feelings and actions. As a young person I was terribly shy, always feeling out of my depth in social situations. I still often find them quite challenging. As I have come to take myself less seriously this handicap has lessened.

A spiritually cultivated person is spontaneous much of the time in that the fundamental principles of life are so deeply integrated in him or her that they no longer think about them but simply act well in immediate response to each situation that arises. This is more or less the original meaning of 'mindfulness' - that one's heart/mind be so full of love and compassion that good comes 'naturally'. This, however, is rather different from acting according to rules - such a person is not easily predictable, since there may be a number of possible good responses to any particular situation. Here, ‘situation’ often means what was done or said by another person, so this includes the kind of repartee that one encounters in zen stories.

Spontaneity is associated with high energy states. We form habits as a means of limiting our expenditure of energy and minimising risk, However, if the amount of spontaneity in our lives drops below a certain level everything starts to feel dull and meaningless. Therapy and spiritual practice are, inter alia, concerned to bring spontaneity back into our lives. The times when we feel most engaged in an activity are when we are being most spontaneous.

 

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