Satyalila

My friend, Alokada, asked me to give this short talk at the National Order Weekend at Padmaloka in December 2006. “Time and Energy” is definitely one of my “themes” or “things” and another friend, Mokshadakini, asked me, the day before, how I felt about giving a talk on something I’ve got in a pickle with so much with over the years – and lately in particular. I pondered this and it occurred to me that there would be many friends in the room when I gave the talk who had helped me wrestle with this.. ie how to do all I aspire to do, without “overdoing” it. (I actually counted up about 12 people present who fell into this category!) I pondered the question quite a bit when I should have been meditating and again, later, as I circumnambulated Dhardo Rimpoche’s stupa outside the shrine room. In the end a word came to me. It was “unrepentent”… and then a wonderful quote from Mary Oliver (who was actually writing about her engagement with poetry) came to mind. The quote was “I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame.” So I guess this is a talk on work that is very much still in progress and will be.

In preparing the talk, I came across a mitra project on this very theme which I did 10 years ago and in it, there was this quote…

“Philosophers have explained space. They have not explained time. It is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible; without it, nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair truly astonishing when one examines it. You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with 24 hours of the unmanufactured tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of possessions. A highly singular commodity, showered upon you in a manner as singular as the commodity itself!
For remark! No one can take it from you. It is unstealable. And no one receives either more or less than you receive.
Talk about an ideal democracy! In the realm of time there is no aristocracy of wealth, and no aristocracy of intellect. Genius is not rewarded by even an extra hour a day. And there is no punishment. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you… Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt! You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you. You cannot waste the next hour; it is kept for you.”

This was the famous novelist Arnold Bennett writing in 1908 in his little book “How to live on 24 hours a day” which I found in a second hand bookshop on the Isle of Wight in 1995. [I discovered you can download this book for free now from www.gutenberg.org]

If you think about it, we can’t literally GIVE time or energy, but our attitude towards both has a huge effect on our ability to give other things. The nub of this issue, it seems to me, is whether we feel we have enough time and energy to enable us to give the other gifts like fearlessness, education and, of course, the Dharma.

Now, interestingly, in Vision and Transformation Bhante chose to describe “Time, energy and thought” as one of the gifts of the Bodhisattva in place of the more traditional “merit”. I suspect this may have been a shrewd kind of skilful means – however much of a beginner one is, one can relate to the idea of time and energy. Indeed, in our culture we can be perhaps a bit preoccupied with the fact that we don’t have enough of either!

When I did the mitra project on this very theme ten years ago, I seached for quotes on both time and energy from traditional Buddhist sources and also from western culture. It was interesting to find that that there was a lot about energy (and not much about time!) in the traditional sources, whereas it was quite the reverse in, say the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, which gives more than 3 columns-worth of entries for time and a measly 4 entries to energy.

In “Altruism and Individualism in the Spiritual Life” Bhante defines “what can be given” as “whatever we can possess” – which is an interesting one to ponder.

Part of learning to practise effectively is learning what conditions we need to set up in order to enable us to do and be what we aspire to do and be – on, indeed, to give what we aspire to give. Bhante describes generosity as “the basic Buddhist virtue” and has at some point re-cast the bodhisattva vow in terms of “giving what we can, when we can”…..

Time and energy are related. How we think/feel about our time can affect our energy and motivation profoundly. There are so many ways of stretching and expanding our ideas about time and this can have a huge and exciting effect on our energy – and our capacity to GIVE. (Because we can only truly give from a sense of abundance).

The basic and fundamental issue with both time and energy is our tendency to see both as finite. This can be very demotivating!

We need to understand a balance (for practical purposes) between

·(a)the need to recognise that mundane time and energy are finite so that we don’t squander them. (“This opportune moment is extremely hard to meet….”)

and at the same time…

(b)the need to keep in touch with the aspect of eternity and limitless energy which is represented by the transcendental so that we really believe we can transcend ourselves and our limitations (perhaps over many lifetimes!).

I remember years ago Khemajoti telling me a story about Anjali on one of the Tuscany retreats who was very busy that year with quite a number of women to ordain. Khemajoti asked her how she was managing to keep giving so much time and energy to so many women. She said that for half an hour each day she lay on her bed and imagined she was on solitary retreat…. For her, at that time, that seemed to do the trick! That’s stayed with me for years and I find it very inspiring.

I did ask Anjali if she minded me telling you this. She said it was fine, although she doubted that other people would find it that inspiring. She added that this hadn’t really been an ideal situation, but that it was simply a means to respond to what needed doing. (And it occurred to me that many of us might not be here now, were it not for people like Anjali being able to do things like that!)

Thinking more about our relationship to time and I was struck by the irony of the idea of time management. Actually we can’t manage time. It’s kind of obvious, really, but in fact we can only manage ourselves within time… It might seem like semantics but actually I think it’s an important point. (And it’s interesting to speculate about whether there’d be such a good take up if time management courses were called something like self-management or even perhaps self-discipline!)

So the next thing I want to talk about is the fact that it’s never too late!

I feel as if “it’s too late” was one of the mantras of my childhood – not just that whenever I wanted to start a game of Monopoly it was decreed to be “too late in the evening” but a general feeling of “oh, it’s not worth it now” or “maybe another day”. As is often the way with these things from childhood, I’ve railed against this way of seeing things for 30 years and one of the things I love about the Dharma is the sense that it’s NEVER too late, there is always SOMETHING that one can do (or give!) and that this will have an effect.

We could see this as one useful function of the traditional Buddhist teaching on rebirth… that actually we have lifetimes and lifetimes in which to practise so we needn’t worry, from that point of view about running out of time if we are practising wholeheartedly and creating the conditions for a positive rebirth. We’re not going to run out road… if we just keep practising in the right way, more and more of it will roll out in front of us. So in that sense, there is no shortage of time.

Another perspective on “it’s never too late” is that passage from the Dhammapada (Ch 8 (The Thousands) v 112)….

Better it is to live one day strenuous and resolute than to live a hundred years sluggish and dissipated.

or Bhante’s translation:

Better than a hundred years lived lazily and with inferior energy is one single day lived with energy aroused and fortified.

I think that something that profoundly affects our ability to give is a feeling that “it’s not really worth it” or “it won’t make that much difference”…. all those demotivating things which make a thousand or ten thousand of us all keep our pound coins in our pockets whereas one of from each of us could have a significant effect if we put them all together.

But I seem to have strayed into the language of money (again!) and my brief was time and energy. So I’ve quote the Dhammapada and now I want to quote something from a very contemporary, management-speak source, which is another thing I really love and find very motivating (and because we’re Western Buddhists we can have both simultaneously!)

It’s called the Pareto Principle – or the 80/20 rule and many of you are probably familiar with it. Pareto was an economist and he found that it had been proven time and again, in all sorts of business situations, that 80% of our result comes from 20% of our time and efforts. I find that hugely motivating. Rather than fretting about all those hours and hours in which I might have been constructive, engaged and generous, but was not, I can, instead, focus my energies on at least getting my act together for 20% of the time. If I can really do that THEN I can still have a big effect. There is always something we can do, always some way we can give. Even if we think it’s too late and we’ve not much to give. Even if it’s a simple thank you…

When I was part of the team running the wholefood shop in Croydon we decided one year to send out thank you cards to everyone who’d helped us out during the year as a volunteers. There was one person who’d come in just once and done a couple of hours to help us out one lunchtime. We wrote her a thank you card. As a result of this she got back in touch with us and came and helped out pretty much EVERY Saturday lunchtime for the next year – and at that time we really needed that help. So the fact that we put some time and energy into saying “thank you” had a disproportionately positive result for us. In return, Jane was very generous to us volunteering every Saturday lunchtime, even tho’ she worked full time all week.

A year or two later she was still volunteering but then for various reasons needed to leave her job. As a result of her volunteering, she ended up working full time for a whole year or two in the shop at a time when she really needed work… (and the shop really needed staff!)

So to recap. As I said at the start, it’s a bit ironic but if you look at it literally then we can’t actually given ANYONE time or energy. But on the other hand if we don’t feel we have enough of both, it can be almost impossible to give anything many other things.

I wanted to end with my favourite quote from Dhardo Rimpoche:

“People feel that life is short. Because of this, instead of working for others, they just try to acquire wealth for themselves. If we live in this way, we become isolated. Our lives become like bubbles on the surface of water. But people can be inspired by action. [Which we might understand in this context as energy, or virya] If they see something is happening, they start to give… If you work hard in the right way, it will spread like light.”

Satyalila
November 2006

This is the unedited script of a talk which I wrote for a beginners’ course which Bahiya ran at the Bristol Buddhist Centre in September 2006

It’s been great to be given the opportunity to look again – and look further – into this really fundamental teaching of the Buddha. One of the things I love about spiritual practise is that you don’t just do something and head on to the next thing…. there is a richness and depth in re-visiting the familiar, going deeper with it and understanding with more and more of oneself over a period of years.

Last week Kamalamani talked about the Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path are inextricably linked:

There is suffering
There is a cause of suffering
There is an end to suffering
There is a way leading to the end of suffering.

Now last week you perhaps began to get a glimpse that on one level the teaching of the Buddha is simple. Very simple. And yet on another level, it’s not simple at all! When you start really to look into what’s being said, what it means for you, when you start really to question for yourself what you are being taught, it’s maybe not so straight forward as you thought. That’s fine! There’s a traditional story from which we have a kind of saying that the teaching of the Buddha is so simple that a child of 3 could understand it, yet an old person of 80 cannot put it into practice.

I’m saying all this by way of preamble because when I talk about the Noble Eightfold Path you will discover right at the start that there are some seeming contradictions. This is a good thing so look out for it and value it. It’s the contradictions and the questions that are like grit in the oyster of our spiritual practice – so I hope you have lots of questions.

Path or Flower?

Now the very first thing to say about the Noble Eightfold Path is that if you just think of it as a path to get you from A to B then you’re missing out. In the original Sanskrit it is called the arya-astangika-marga.
arya means noble or holy
asta means eight
marga means path

but anga actually means limb, member or even shoot.

So if you hear “Noble Eightfold Path” you might get an image – as someone said recently in our study group – of a lovely yellow brick road leading off over the horizon towards enlightenment. Now this can be helpful – I’ve always quite liked the idea of the spiritual life as a journey, but it can also cause problems if one gets too literal with it. At times I’ve got so caught up in the idea of “getting somewhere” on this yellow brick road that I’ve felt like I was battling my way up the north face of the Eiger with gritted teeth. At such times it can be good to remember that there is another way of seeing the so-called Noble Eightfold “Path”, and that is as as flower or tree of which the various petals or limbs gradually unfold until one is, as it were, “blossoming” into enlightenment.

I like the fact that there’s something for everyone here – if you want to see it as a gung-ho, noble quest, striding forth, you can. If you want to see it as gradually cultivating and unfolding yourself and your spiritual qualities, that’s fine too! Across the whole Buddhist World there are people following both approaches – and we could have a whole course just exploring that, and those differences. But what matters is that we are practising, that we are not just sitting round thinking what a good idea all these teachings are, but we’re actually setting out on the path ourself (or cultivating ways to help our own petals flop open!). I think what’s important is to be aware of which of these approaches engages your heart and mind and, if it’s helpful, to use the image as a tool. A final note on this, before I move on the “limbs” themselves, and that is that it may well be that at times your heart is into striding up that mountain and at other times you might need to be tending your flower (ie yourself AS the flower) in its pot.

The Path that is Two Paths

The next thing to say is that actually the Noble Eightfol Path is two paths, not one. I’ll just recap the eight limbs or stages and then explain:

Perfect Vision
Perfect Emotion
Perfect Speech
Perfect Action
Perfect Livelihood
Perfect Effort
Perfect Awareness
Perfect Samadhi

The way it divides into two paths is that the first of the eight, Perfect Vision, is seen as the Path of Vision and the remaining 7 limbs are seen as the Path of Transformation. There’s a lot one could say about this and Sangharakshita’s book, Vision and Transformation, goes into this in some detail.

Sangharakshita says, “Perfect Vision represents the phase of initial spiritual insight and experience, whereas the rest of the Eightfold Path represents the transformation of one’s whole being , in all its heights and depths, in all its aspects, in accordance with that initial insight and experience.”

The Path of Vision

The Path starts for all of us with some kind of Vision, often an experience of suffering or sometimes a seemingly spontaneous glimpse of something profound which inspires us. To return to our images, we might see it as the glimpse of a mountain top towards which we want to move or one could see it as the glimpse of something tiny and embryonic which we sense can unfold into much, much more.

When we say “vision”, it’s not just an intellectual thing. We’re talking about something which goes beyond a dry intellectual understanding – a kind of spark which ignites within us, for whatever reason. The reason we refer to “perfect” vision is that we’re talking about a glimpse of something that is in line with reality, with truth, with the way things really are. Cultivating or treading the Path of Vision is about trying more and more to see things the way they really are, for example recognising that things we often think of permanent are, in fact, impermanent – the job, the house… and especially, of course, people. Clinging to the view that these things are permanent and unchangeable is one of the causes of suffering (the second Noble Truth).

One final thing to say about the Path of Vision is that it isn’t some great lofty thing out there and over there… something that we come to “at some point”. Everyone here is already on the Path of Vision. The fact that you have walked in through the door of the Buddhist Centre, that you have signed up for this 8-week course was motivated by something, some experience, some glimpse, some inspiration. If we’ve time at the end it might be interesting for us to share these experiences, if people would like to.

Path of Transformation – the remaining 7 steps or limbs…

So, we’ve had our glimpse of Perfect Vision, and now we come to the remaining 7 stages of the path.

Perfect Emotion

Perfect Emotion is the second limb of the eight-fold path and the first step on the “path of transformation”. This is very significant. We can’t begin to transform, can’t begin to move along the path unless “our heart is in it”, unless we are emotionally engaged.

How often have you tried to make changes in your life, even on a mundane level and encountered this struggle? eg trying to lose weight, take up exercise or pursue a course of study? We have a great idea and it seems fantastic. Yes! Let’s do it!… and then we fizzle out after a bit.

Sangharakshita says that “For most of us, the central problem of the spiritual life is to find emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding.”

So how do we engage our hearts as well as our minds? Well, traditionally there are meditation practises which help us to do this. The “Brahma Viharas” or sublime-abodes are a practical way of helping s to cultivate kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. Tonight we’ll be learning the metta Bhavana which is the first of the brahma viharas and the foundation for all the others. So before you go home tonight, you’ll have had at least some taste of how to begin to cultivate Perfect Emotion.

The other very simple way to cultivate Perfect Emotion is to practise dana or generosity. This is one of the basic “Buddhist Virtues” and it’s said that even if one can’t practice meditation, even if one is having difficulty practising ethics, then at least one can give, one can practise generosity. We cannot overestimate how important the transforming effect of this can be.

A final note on Perfect Emotion before we move on, and that concerns ritual. Now for man people the connotation of ritual is “rites and rituals” – a kind of worthy “going through the motions”… (I always think of being at school at having to stand in assembly and say prayers and the only thing I was ever truly aware of at that time was that I always seemed to have a runny nose and I never seemed to have a hankie…. Anyhow. The Buddhist perspective on ritual is that it serves and important role in helping us to develop Perfect Emotion, helping us to engage our hearts as well as our minds. We practise the 7-fold puja (puja means worship), we chant, we build shrines… Now just as I was saying earlier, that some people’s hearts engage with the image of treading a path, others with the image of a flower unfolding, just so with ritual: it doesn’t work for everyone and it’s not obligatory. It’s good not to make a premature decision about this and also to recognise that one’s relationship with it may change over time. But ritual can be a very powerful way to cultivate positive emotion.

Perfect Speech

This brings us to the part of the path or flower which concerns ethics. The week after next, Chittamani is going to talk more about this, but we’ll make a start tonight.

So the first part of ethics that we’re considering is Perfect Speech. Now it’s interesting that speech has a whole limb or petal to itself. It’s not just lumped in with other kinds of ethical behaviour in the next section of the path, which is Perfect Action.

Buddhism recognises what a huge effect speech has on our hearts and minds and so no only does speech have a whole section of the Noble Eightfold Path to itself, it constitutes no less than four of the ten ethical precepts which one takes when one is ordained.

So how can we practise perfect speech? Well, traditionall we look at it both in terms of the negative (what we’re not going to do) and the positive (what we aspire to do). So…. we…

avoid untruthful speech and practise truthful speech
avoid unkind/harsh speech and practise kindly speech
avoid harmful speech and practise helpful speech
avoid disharmonious speech and practise harmonious speech.

Sangharakshita explores this more in his book The Ten Pillars which is all about the 10 ethical precepts and I’m sure Chittamani will say a lot more about this when he’s here.

Perfect Action

So having talked about Perfect Speech we can go to the next step which is Perfect Action, the step of the path concerned with transforming ourselves by ethical action. Now an important thing to say about the Buddhist conception of ethics is that the Buddhist precepts should not be confused with any Christian idea of morality or seen as “laws” or commandments. Buddhist Ethical precepts are not imposed but rather they are often described as “training principles”.

Their significance is not theological (in the sense of obedience to some deity). Their significance is psychological. That is to say, acting unethically (or unskilfully, as we usually say) has an effect on our minds which prevents us from moving forwards on the path, prevents us from unfolding our true spiritual potential.

It’s been said that the ethical precepts describe how an enlightened being would spontaneously act. So observing the precepts helps us to have a glimpse of that. It gives us a taste of what it is like to more away from being motivated by greed, hatred and delusion (about which Simhanada will talk more on week 6 of this course when you get to the Tibetan Wheel of Life).

So what are the ethical precepts? We’ve looked at speech already, which is the fourth of the 5 precepts which are traditionally chanted. One takes a further 5 at ordination, of which 3 relate to speech, but the main list of 5 ethical precepts is as follows:

avoid harming beings cultivate kindness
avoid taking the not-given cultivate generosity
avoid sexual misconduct cultivate stillness, simplicity & contentment
avoid untruthful speech cultivate truthful speech
avoid intoxicants cultivate mindfulness, clear & radiant

Right Livelihood

So we’ve learnt that an important aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path is that our actions (including our speech) have consequences for whether we can progress along the path. The next limb of the path recognises that , if we spend the greater part of the day at work, it has a big effect on us and our ability to practise ethics. It’s great to come to the Buddhist Centre and practise ethics and read Dharma books… but how do we relate this to how most of us spend the best part of our waking hours, ie at work?

The practise of Right Livelihood was stressed by the Buddha and he gave specific teachings about the kinds of occupations which would be unhelpful to people wanting to practise the spiritual life. For example, working in a slaughterhouse would make it impossible to practise the first ethical precept about not harming living beings and so on.

But Right Livelihood (just the like the precepts) isn’t just about avoiding the unskilful. It’s also about cultivating the positive and I love this facet of the path. Work as spiritual practise has always fascinated me and, if you think about it, if we can practise and work at the same time it gives us lots more time. Maybe we sit on our cushions for 30-40 minutes a day, or even an hour or two. But most of us are at work for about 7-8 hours. There’s no time now to go into detail now, but we can bring many facets of our practise, many limbs of the Noble Eightfold Path right into the midst of our everyday life – and also have a very positive effect by doing so. I’ve written an article specifically about this and it’s on my website, which is on the handout I’ve written for tonight.

Phew. So now we’ve explored 5 of the 8 limbs of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. So we’ve got 3 to go – but the further along the path you get, the less there is to say, so we won’t be long now!

Perfect Effort

Now I like the teaching on Perfect Effort – probably because I’ve had some very funny ideas about it over the years – especially when I’ve been clinging on by my finger nails on the north face of the Eiger! The spiritual life is an active life and it does need effort, but not just any old effort, Perfect Effort. So there are two things I want to mention in respect of Perfect Effort. One’s a story and one’s a list:

There’s a story about a disciple of the Buddha’s called Sona. …

Parable of the Lute

“Once the Blessed One lived near Rajagaha on Vulture Peak. At that time, while the venerable Sona lived alone and secluded in the Cool Forest, this thought occurred to him:

Afterward, the venerable Sona kept his energy balanced behind the Spiritual Faculties, and in this way focused his attention. And the venerable Sona, living alone and secluded, diligent, ardent and resolute, soon realized here and now, through his own direct knowledge, that unequaled goal of the holy life.

So that’s the story of the Lute. The list is a nice practical one about using effort in relation to our mind and what we call our “mental states”. These can either be positive or negative, skilful or unskilful. Obviously the positive ones help us along the path and the negative ones don’t – you’ll perhaps hear more about this when you get to second ring on the Wheel of Life later in the course. There is a traditional teaching called “

the Four Right Efforts

” which is all about how we work with these different mental states, a bit like looking after a garden, the four efforts are: preventing, eradicating, cultivating or maintaining.

So we prevent the arising of unskilful mental states by guarding the gateways of the senses, by not letting in unskilful or unhelpful thoughts, patterns or habits, just as we prevent weeds from taking hold in a garden or on an allotment by covering the ground in black plastic or old carpet.

We eradicate unskilful mental states by noticing them and not letting them get a hold – a bit like hooking weeds out of the garden, before they’ve had a chance to really take a hold and start producing more seeds and more weeds…

We cultivate positive mental states through the practise of ethics and the metta Bhavana meditation we’ll be doing later, just as we cultivate the flowers we want in our gardens.

And when we’ve got our garden (or our mind) starting to be more how we want it to be, then we don’t just sit back, we have to maintain it and that means carrying on practising, pruning a bit here and there, hooking out the odd intrusive thought or weed and so on.

So that’s the Four Right Efforts: preventing, eradicating, cultivating and maintaining.

Perfect Awareness

The penultimate state of the path is Perfect Awareness, also translated as Perfect Mindfulness, tho’ the literal meaning is something like memory or recollection.

In order to come more and more into line with reality, in to move towards or unfold into our Perfect Vision, we need to be mindful, we need to be aware.

Traditionally there are 4 levels of mindfulness or awarness:

Awareness of Things
Awareness of Self
Awareness of Other People
Awareness of Reality/Truth/The Ultimate

This list of four begins with simply being aware of what we are doing while we are doing it – really noticing the dishes we are washing, the pavement we are walking on. We can gradually become more aware of ourselves – we do this with the mindfulness of breathing, where we gradually more and more aware of our breath. Just as in the metta Bhavana meditation, we can then extend this awareness out to other people and, ultimately, to reality itself.

Perfect Samadhi

This brings us right to the last Noble Truth which is Perfect Samadhi, a difficult word to translate. It’s sometimes translated as “Perfect Meditation” but that doesn’t quite do it, really. Literally it means “the state of being firmly fixed or established” either in terms of being concentrated on a single object, or more profoundly, that one’s whole being is established in a certain mode of consciousness or awareness in the sense of enlightenment or Buddhahood.

Sangharakshita talks more of this in “Vision and Transformation” but I suspect that we’ve probably had enough detail for one night. Let’s just say that in a way Perfect Samadhi might represent one of the peaks of the mountain we glimpsed at the beginning, but represents reaching there, rather that seeing it from a distance.

However, the story doesn’t end there. As I said at the beginning, spiritual practise isn’t a case of simply having a vision and getting from A to B as a one-off, linear activity. So let’s assume we get to a point of practising Perfect Samadhi. What do we see? Well, just like climbing a mountain, we get to that peak and look out, only to discover that actually the real mountain still lies ahead of us, we get a different glimpse of what Perfect Vision really is and so we have no choice but to set forth again on the path, to unfold the flower more and more deeply to allow our own natural purity and Buddha nature to unfold.

Recommended Reading:
Vision and Transformation – Sangharakshita
The Ten Pillars – Sangharakshita
The Path with Heart – Jack Kornfield
After the Ecstasy the Laundry – Jack Kornfield

Satyalila – September 2006