In the training community I lived in, one of the old rules was that people should not be attached to their rooms, and trainees were moved around every few months, keeping their belongings in a single box.
By the time I moved into that community that practice had ceased, and most people had their own rooms.
I lived and trained there for four years, as an Amidist Buddhist monk, before deciding to give up some of my vows and become a priest. (In our order we have two ordination tracks, one which is more friar like, and one which is more vicar like).
Although we are a Pureland Order much of the training I received was in a Zen spirit. My teacher trained with Jiyu-Kennett Roshi, a Soto Zen Master, before choosing the Pureland teachings as the most appropriate vehicle for his own teachings, and some of the style of training he received in the Zen monastery was passed onto us. (more…)
I became a Pureland Buddhist in 2006. I didn’t know anything about Pureland Buddhism at the time. I had been practicing Buddhism for a few years, and then I met Dharmavidya and the Amida community. I knew that I wanted to join this community and have Dharmavidya as my teacher. That was enough.
I learnt about bonbu nature: we are foolish beings of wayward passion; full of greed, hate and delusion. I learnt that Amida Buddha, the Buddha of wisdom and acceptance, loves us just as we are.
I saw the shadow of those teachings. What in medieval Japan was called licensed evil: if we are loved just as we are, if we are going to be reborn in Amida’s Pure Land regardless of our karma, why bother to do good at all? (more…)
After a very peopled few days it is quiet in the temple today. It is lunchtime, and the only other person I have seen waved at me from a top floor window, whilst I was in the garden, before disappearing again.
Satya got up at 5:30am this morning and went to a half-day yoga retreat at a converted flour-mill out in the countryside. I slept in until 9am, had breakfast and a cup of tea in the garden, and started the very good Ali Smith novel. The Accidental.
In a recent blog post, floatsam and jetsom, my teacher, Dharmavidya, writes about the difficulty of practising in the modern age: the pressures of work have increased with technology, rather than decreased, we are increasingly connected to each other and the world through social media, and the connections we do have are less personal.
I grew up in a world where this was already true, although it may have become more so, and I found it easier to take refuge in impersonal connections than to make meaningful relationships with people. That’s why my first experience of living in community was such a challenge. I was plunged into a world of real connection and intimacy. Part of my reaction to that environment was to draw in and protect myself, but at the same time I did begin to learn to trust people and to understand that it was possible to be vulnerable with another person, that not everyone would let you down, and that even when that did happen there was something that would hold me, and meant I would be okay.
On Thursday evening, after a day of seeing clients, Satya and I went out with some friends to support our new housemate who was playing at an open-mic night. On Friday morning we held our usual morning service, supported a friend who thought they had just received some bad news (it turned out to be crossed wires), supported another friend by going with them to their mother’s funeral, had our lively community meal, and hosted a quiz night. On Saturday we met friends for coffee, made new friends, my family came over for tea in the afternoon, and then we had a Eurovision Song Contest party in the evening. Yesterday (Sunday) we had morning service, I had a one-to-one with a Sangha member, and then spent the day in the garden with our volunteers.
A few years ago that amount of time spent with people would have exhausted me and in the midst of it all I would have been desperately looking forward to today, a clear day without much social activity. But I notice that not only have I survived the last few days, I enjoyed them, and I am looking forward to catching up with another friend at the Malvern Food Festival this afternoon.
Whilst I’m not clinging on to the quiet space of this morning like my life depends on it, it still feels important to have space to myself.
When I spend time with people (probably when anyone spends time with other people) inevitably some part of my ego is provoked. In the past, when I really struggled sometimes to be around others, there was a great deal of ego noise, worrying what other people thought, trying to protect my self-image, trying not to provoke other people because I didn’t trust their reactions, and so on.
There’s not just my own stuff at play. Whenever we spend with others they often unconsciously ask us to take on roles in their own ego-dramas, either to prove something they believe about the world (other people can’t be trusted, say, or other people will save me) or to try and disprove it by testing it to extinction. For me, those unconscious invitations take some energy to decline, especially if they happen to provoke some of my own ego-noise. It takes energy to treat people even-handedly, and not buy into the games they are playing (and that I play too, of course).
Over the years my own ego-noise has quietened down and it has become increasingly easier to become social.
What allowed that process to happen? Learning to have faith in others, and being around others who reward my faith in them by accepting me, mostly, just as I am; being interested in the specifics of my ego-noise, what exactly am I afraid of, and where does that fear come from; and learning to accept myself as I am and not worrying too much when I do find it more difficult to be around others. It can also help to be interested in other people’s process too, not so that I can judge them, but so that I can find a deep empathy for their position. When I have true understanding it is much easier to have compassion for others, and to gently decline their unconscious invitations to play ego-games.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get to the position of having completely clean relationships with people though, and that’s why spaces like this morning are important. When it’s quiet around me, my own stirred up ego has time to settle down and become quiet, ready for the next social engagement.
Dharmavidya has some good advice too, in that blog post I mentioned:
If we treasure simplicity and do not unnecessarily complicate our existence, the burden will be lighter. If we treasure both friendship and solitude, we will find opportunities for spiritual refreshment. If we have faith, then we can let go of many worries and take things as they come, trusting that there are always deeper purposes at work. However complex the system within which we live our lives, there is always some space, some emptiness, pauses in which a simple prayer may return us to peace and bliss.
There is a thin pink streak of light in the eastern sky. The sun is well over the horizon and that last thread of colour tells me what a glorious sunrise I would have seen if I had been up a little earlier.
The valley is heavy with mist; a few hilltops and the tips of the tallest trees stand above the almost liquid fog. A little closer to me the fields and gardens I can see are covered with a heavy frost. Not for the first time I can understand why C.S. Lewis and Tolkien used to come walking here.
There is something magical about a morning like this one. Looking out to this view gives me a sense of a much bigger world, a world beyond my own concerns and even a world even beyond what I can see outside. Somehow the mist which covers up what is there gives my imagination the space to image what isn’t there too.
It is me looking out into this magical scene: me with my ordinary body that aches in the cold and complains when I eat too much at Christmas, and my ordinary mind that takes selfish concerns and makes them into the whole of the world.
And I am living with ordinary people. Although we live in a space which inspires us to connect with something greater (and I am sure that tempers the selfishness) each of us carries our own concerns and dysfunctions with us.
When I first moved into a Buddhist community nearly 10 years ago I remember imagining that I could leave of all my baggage at the door. Just by stepping over the threshold I thought I could become someone new.
I have become someone new – but that process was fuelled by all of the baggage (excuse the mixed metaphor) rather than despite it.
As we move into the New Year it feels important to me to remember both halves of this picture: the beautiful magical landscape and also the ordinary human beings that live within it.
It is all too easy to forget how beautiful the world is. We create our own suffering and our selfishness bumps up against other people’s and then turns in on itself again.
It can be easy to make the same mistake in the other direction as well. To only see the ideal and become blind to the suffering of ourselves and others in case it disturbs the sense of peace we have gazing at the landscape. This is another form of selfishness, harder to see, but equally problematic as what we don’t see piles up and eventually comes tumbling down on us much more heavily than if we had paid attention to it sooner.
I will make a resolution to keep the beautiful landscape in the corner of my eye, to sometimes gaze at it with both eyes, and also to see the ordinary foolish beings (myself included) inhabiting this landscape. It is from the relationship between the two that compassion appears.
This post also appeared on the Amida Mandala website
One of the most common ways of dealing with anything challenging is to pretend that it doesn’t exist. You come home huffing and puffing but claim to be fine when a friend asks you what’s up. Eventually you start to believe that you are fine. The general sense of dissatisfaction that you carry with you is ‘just how things are’, and nothing will change that.
The alternative would be to acknowledge what really happened to you that day you came home upset, but something in you feels like facing it would be a bad idea.
Or your boss criticises you but you don’t want to stand up for yourself because it feels too much like conflict and you have been burnt in the past. You tell yourself, I’m fine. Your boss keeps walking all over you and that’s ‘just the way things are’.
Or a really great opportunity opens up and part of you really wants to take it but something stops you because you are afraid of success, or afraid of being out of control. You miss the opportunity and say, I’m fine. You live with the sense of having missed out, and in those times when you’re not blaming others, you feel guilty that you didn’t take that great opportunity. You tell everyone you’re fine. It’s ‘just the way things are’.
When we ignore parts of our experience, we are living with one foot in the past.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
One of the benefits of a meditation practice is coming to wholeness. We learn to be with the whole of life: to welcome all experiences, however difficult, so that we can deal with them and move forwards.
When you practice breathing mediation you are asked not to change the way that you breathe, but just to pay attention to your breath. Notice if it’s a short breath or a long breath, a shallow breath or a deep breath. Notice how long you pause for in between breaths.
In this way you are practicing being with what is true. In breathing meditation we’re just choosing to pay attention to one aspect of reality, and as our practice matures we begin to include other aspects too.
As well (or instead of) being aware of how you breathe, you might start to pay attention to the sensations in your body. Which muscles are tense today, and which are relaxed?
You might eventually move on to paying attention to your thoughts. A thought arises and you notice what it is without getting caught by it. You just notice the impulse to fantasise about buying a yacht, instead of following that impulse through and spending ten minutes deciding between different yachts in your mind.
The common thread in all of these practices is non-rejection. Instead of thinking, “Oh no, I’m breathing wrong!” you really pay attention to how you are breathing right now. Instead of thinking about what you are having for dinner in order to take your mind off the cramp in your leg when you are sitting in meditation, you just really notice the cramp in your leg.
Instead of shying away from the unpleasant thoughts in your mind you say, “Oh, that’s what I’m like… interesting.”
Mindfulness meditation gives us a great place to practice this attitude of non-rejecting, but in order to live a completely fulfilling life we must take this attitude off the mediation cushion and into our whole lives.
Instead of cutting off parts of our experience, we give our attention to them. We allow ourselves to notice what it was about that day that upset us so much.
Although ignoring what we don’t like might serve us well in the short term, if we do ignore parts of our experience we’re not really letting go or moving on and we end up living less than fulfilled lives.
When we allow ourselves to just notice what is real, we can start to deal with it.
Instead of pretending that everything is fine, we can say, “Yes, that happened. Now what?”
Seeing what is real in the world can bring up uncomfortable responses in us. We might really feel upset for the first time about that time our boss criticised us, (or guilty that we didn’t respond appropriately at the time). These uncomfortable feelings are natural responses to events and we can apply the same ‘just noticing’ mind to them as in our meditation practices.
As our practice matures, we become more able to experience the whole of the world, and more able to just notice our reactions without getting overwhelmed by them. From this spaciousness, we can then begin to deal with whatever we are presented with.
This is the real gift of mindfulness practice: creating space so that we slowly become comfortable with more and more of our experience. As we become more able to be with our whole experience it becomes easier to be at ease in each moment – to let go of what is holding us back and move forwards wholeheartedly.
Explore your mindfulness practice one-to-one?
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