Tag Archives: Buddhism

Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh (A summary)

This post is just a  summary of this excellent book in which Thich Nhat Hanh does a wonderful job of reminding us just how simple Zen is. This post summarises Part One – Breathe: You Are Alive.


peaceEditor’s introduction

Peace is every step.
The shining red sun is my heart.
Each flower smiles with me.
How green, how fresh all that grows.
How cool the wind blows.
Peace is every step.
It turns the endless path to joy.

Peace is not be sought externally, but in slowing down and enjoying each step, each breath.

Part One – Breath! You are Alive

24 brand new hours

Every new day we have the opportunity to live and spread peace. Peace is already with us, the question is whether we allow ourselves to realise this.

We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We have difficulty remembering to be present in this moment, which is the only moment there is to be alive.

This book is a wake up bell – a reminder that we can only be happy in this present moment.

The Dandelion Has My Smile

You should start the day with a smile, it is the source of all peace and happiness.

If you lose your smile, remember that the dandelion and others, all of those who support you in your efforts to be happy, are keeping it for you. If you remember this, all you need do is breath consciously for a while and your smile will return to you.

Conscious Breathing

Hanh has calligraphed the phrase ‘breath, you are alive’ onto a wall in his meditation room.

Breath unifies mind and body, doing so consciously brings us into this present moment.

Breathing and smiling are two very important things

To breath consciously just say ‘breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out’.

Present Moment, Wonderful Moment

In our busy society, it is a great fortune to be able to breathe consciously. We can take a few moments to do this almost anywhere – at home, at work, commuting. This is a recommended meditation for beginners or someone with 50 years practice.

The basic practice is this – sit and say

Breathing in I calm my body
Breathing out I smile
Dwelling in the present moment,
I know this is a wonderful moment.

Or simply

Calming
Smiling
Present moment
Wonderful moment.

Our appointment with life is with this present moment, if not now, then when?

Thinking Less

Most of the time we think too much, and much of it is useless, as if we had a cassette tape going on in our heads.

Conscious breathing can give us a rest from this, because the above ‘mantra’ is just a tool of concentration, not thought.

After a few minutes CB we should feel quite refreshed because we regain ourselves.

It is important to be in the present moment, because the past in gone and the future not yet here.

Nourishing Awareness in Each Moment

Being in society we often feel harassed, our sense bombarded by all sorts of things. Hanh now has it in for TV –

‘Do you ever find yourself watching a TV program? The raucous noises, the explosions, gunfire are upsetting, and yet you don’t get up and turn it off. Why do you torture yourself in this way? Watching a bad TV program, we become the TV program. We are what we feel and perceive, so why do we open our windows to sensationalist productions made for profit? We are too undemanding of ourselves,, to lonely or bored to create our own lives. By watching TV mindlessly we allow others to guide us, we need to be more careful.

Of course I am not just talking about television, all around us every day there are lures set by our fellows and ourselves – how many times a day do we become lost and scattered by them?

We must be very careful to protect our fate and our peace. It is good to withdraw every now again, close our senses to the world and renew ourselves. (However, many of us find this scary.) At first we might withdraw to nature, or the forest, to escape the chaos of modern life and to clear our senses and this will help us to re-engage with ordinary life in a more controlled manner.

However it is important not to close ourselves off altogether, because there are many miracles outside.

Sitting Anywhere

You can practice conscious breathing anywhere, even just for a few moments.

Sitting Meditation

The lotus or half lotus position is best, if not a chair, or lying down.

We sit to cultivate mindfulness, peace and non violence, not to endure pain, so it is fine to adjust yourself if pain sets in. Occasionally combine sitting with walking meditation – basically whatever feels natural.

Do not use meditation to avoid confronting your problems, they will just return if not dealt with.

Meditation should be practiced gently but steadily throughout our daily life, not wasting a single moment to see into the true nature of life, including our every day problems.

Bells of Mindfulness

Every time you hear a bell, return to yourself, breathing in and out and smiling. Say ‘Listen, listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true self.”

Even non-sounds, such as rays of sunlight can return us to this wonderful, present moment.

Cookie of Childhood

This section starts with Hanh relaying how he used to eat Cookies very slowly. Eating slowly and mindfully is a most important practice.

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.

Tangerine of Mindfulness

If I offer you a freshly picked tangerine to enjoy, I think the degree to which you enjoy it will depend on your mindfulness.

You can see everything in the universe in one tangerine (the tree, the roots, the earth, the blossoms, the wind, the sunlight). When you peel it and smell it, it’s wonderful. You can take your time eating a tangerine and be very happy.

The Eucharist

In a drastic way, Jesus was trying to wake up his disciples – When we eat, we should be mindful, when we see people we should be mindful. If we are mindful life is real in this present moment, if not then people are as ghosts.

Eating Mindfully

The Purpose of Eating is to Eat.

Before eating, set the table, breath and smile at each other. Not many people do this, but it is very important.

We should be appreciative of the food we eat when so many are starving in the world. Eating is a good opportunity to generate compassion.

We can eat silently, or talk, but only positive talk, nothing distracts from the simple pleasure of being in the moment and eating in friendship.

Washing Dishes

The idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can only occur when you are not doing them. The dishes themselves and the fact that I am here washing them are miracles!

If I am incapable of enjoying washing the dishes, I will be incapable of enjoying dessert, forever dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment.

Each action done in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred.

We do the dishes, not only to have clean dishes, but to do the dishes.

Walking Meditation

Walking can be very enjoyable. We walk slowly, alone or with friends. If possible in some beautiful place, walking not in order to arrive, but just to walk.

Shake off all worries and anxieties, not thinking about the future or the past, just enjoy the walking in the present moment.

If we walk in a hurried manner, we only sow seeds of anxiety. Instead, we should walk as if we are the happiest person on earth, planting peace and serenity.

While you walk, count your breaths, co-ordinate your breath with your paces, as many as you need, and if you want to stop a while and look around you.

Telephone Meditation

The telephone is very convenient, but we can be tyrannised by it. When we hear the phone ring it often causes some anxiety, and when we talk we often talk of trivial things and forget ourselves. We are victims of our telephone.

(Try replacing the word telephone with Smartphone and this is even more true.)

Next time you hear the phone ring say ‘listen, listen, this wonderful sound brings me back to my true self. Breathe and smile and be in control of yourself, for two rings, and then pick up the phone, in consciousness – then how fortunate for the other person. If you are both doing this, it transforms the whole experience.

Driving Meditation

We often don’t need to use the car, rather we use it as a means of escaping from facing up to ourselves. Hence this poem to help overcome this.

Before starting the car
I know where I am going
The car and I are One
If the car goes fast I go fast.

The message here is – wherever the car goes, my self goes, there is no escape. If we realise this, we may choose not to drive, and go for a meditative walk instead.

The car and I are one – the car is not an instrument which we control, when we drive, we become the car – with all its destructive powers.

We should also aim to be in the present moment rather than thinking about arriving – this way red lights won’t be quite as irritating.

When driving – if stuck in traffic, do not fight this, this is useless. When you see a red light, breathe and smile instead, use it as a chance to practice.

It is not just going for a drive which we use to distract ourselves from ourselves, from the pain of being alone with ourselves which we cannot stand – our culture offers us many things to distract us, to keep us busy.

Decompartmentalisation

Mindfulness should not just be something we do in the meditation hall. We should bring mindfulness into our daily lives, into every moment. We should practice smiling while cutting carrots, and in general be mindful when at work and in our leisure time. We need to discuss among ourselves how best to do this.

Breathing and Scything

Here Thay relays the time he bought a Scythe – he found that if he coordinated his breathing with his movements, and concentrated on what he was doing in an unhurried manner, he could work for long periods, if not he tired quickly.

He then says that he takes care to not tire himself by getting out of breath, he practices non violence on his body because it is just a means to an end.

One day an old man offered to show him how to use a Scythe and although more adept adopted a similar style to what Thay had taught himself. Every time he sees someone cutting grass with a Scythe he knows they are practicing awareness.

Aimlessness

In the West, we are very goal oriented, we know where we want to go, but along the way we often forget to enjoy ourselves along the route.

There is a word in Buddhism that means ‘wishlessness’, or ‘aimlessness’. The idea is that you do not put something in front of you and run after it, because everything you need is right here, in yourself.

Whatever we do we should do in an aimless way. The point of doing anything, is just to do it.

Often we tell ourselves don’t just sit there, do something. But in fact, the opposite may be more useful – don’t just do something, sit there! We need to learn to stop from time to time in order to see clearly.

This basically involves being mindful – which is the foundation of happiness. If we are mindful we can learn to take pleasure in the many miracles that we usually just take for granted.

We should appreciate more what we have – there are so many things in life which we do not appreciate because we are too busy trying to get somewhere else.

Our Life is a Work of Art

We have developed a habit of looking at things with the intention of getting something. However, this is wrong. Instead we should look at things just in order to be with them, with no gaining thought.

The point of meditation is just to be with ourselves and the world. If we are capable of stopping, we will see, and if we can see then we will understand.

When we do not trouble ourselves about living life as a work of art, if we just live each moment fully with no gaining thought, then our life becomes a work of art. When we learn to be peace then our life as art will truly flourish.

Hope as an obstacle

When I think deeply about the nature of hope I see something tragic. We need to abandon hope in order to fully realise the joy in this present moment. Hope is for the future, and although it can help us deal with the present moment, that is all it can do. Instead of focusing on hope for the future we should channel our energies into now.

A.J. Must said – there is no way to peace, peace is the way. Thus it should be with our life, don’t focus on doing something now in order to be happy, learn to focus on the moment and be happiness in what you doing.

Flower insights

Starts with the flower sermon: when someone holds out a flower to you, they want you to see it, but in order to see it you need to be fully yourself, not thinking about the meaning of the flower.

When you are really yourself then you can enjoy life in this present moment.

Breathing Room

We have a room for everything – but not for mindfulness, Every household should have a breathing room, where we can sit and start the day in meditation, or for reconciliation.

Hanh now imagines a scene where a husband and wife have an altercation, but instead of escalating the row, the husband withdraws to the breathing room, and sounds a bell. The wife feels better because she knows her husband is taking time out. The daughter who witnessed the slight altercation feels relieved and also goes into the breathing room, another bell sounds, which reminds the wife she should now go and join her husband and daughter. Now the whole family, by virtue of a bell and a breathing room are sitting in reconciliation.

Hanh rounds off by saying he knows of families where the children start their day with brief meditation sessions and that every household should have a breathing room.

Nice!

Continuing the Journey

This section of the book has been concerned with mindfulness practice, or how to be mindful in a variety of situations. Mindfulness is the cornerstone of a happy life. The next section deals with how to deal with unpleasant emotions.

On Not watching TV and Meditating Instead (a lifestyle experiment)

 

The Dalai Lama of Tibet practices meditation four hours a day, the same length of time the average American spends watching TV. Now it’s obvious I’m not the Dalai Lama, and I’m reasonably certain I’m not his reincarnation born 40 odd years too early either, but like the DL I have recently tried to cut down my TV use and meditate more instead, although it’s taken me some time to commit to it properly.

Halfway through Le Tour 2014 I unplugged my TV and put it in the office, promising myself I would break my habits of watching TV over dinner and indulging in the occasional bout of idle channel hopping, but I pretty quickly just got into the routine of watching whatever on iPlayer or 4OD on the iPad or laptop.

On Sunday 4th January, however, I finally committed to watching no TV for a week, and I’m still abstaining. With the two exceptions of watching the final four minutes of The Dead Poet’s Society (don’t ask) and about eight minutes of a classic episode of ‘Why Don’t You’ on YouTube (again, don’t ask!) I have managed to be TV free at home ever since.

At the same time I also started to severely restrict the use of anything involving a screen. This means spending as little time in front of them as possible, and limiting the number of screens and ‘windows’ I expose myself to in any one period. Ideally, I try and limit myself to reading one book/ website at a time and writing into one Open Office Document at a time (like this!), rather than flitting backwards and forwards between multiple sources.

Also on the 4th January, I made a commitment to the following ‘evening disciplines’ –

  1. Leave work promptly – 16.45 at the very latest (I start at 7.45).
  2. Run or do circuits most days after work. (Although in fairness I did this anyway)
  3. Spend about half an hour tidying and cleaning every evening except Friday and Sunday (I even have a roster for certain rooms on certain days.
  4. Meditate for 40 minutes immediately following tidying.
  5. Do ‘soft meditation’ for 40 minutes before going to bed at 21.30 at the latest.
  6. Do a minimum of 4*40 meditation sessions on Saturdays and Sundays.*

This typically leaves me with 30 mins to an hour to do something else in the evenings, with plenty more time at the weekends.

After just two weeks, and they weren’t the easiest of weeks at work either, I’ve noticed the following benefits of not watching TV and meditating instead.

  1. I’m sleeping much more soundly. I’ve never actually had (ever!) a problem sleeping, but this last week my sleep has been even more sound. Sound is a good word to describe it actually, as would be ‘denser’, ‘heavier’, more intense, more complete, oh hang on, maybe ‘deeper’ is the word I’m looking for.
  2. My outlook on life has slowed down – I feel more centred, more stable, calmer, more in-control.
  3. Interestingly, although I only have a scant hour to cram in some ‘me-time’ I’d say I’ve been more productive in those hours than compared to double the amount of time without the meditation (I can see why the corporate world is into this mindfulness stuff, just don’t mention Right Livelihood!).
  4. On those few occasions I have gone online, I find myself more irritated by the whole experience – I am much more aware of and intolerant of the sheer amount of advertising, the explicit purpose of which is to distract me from what it is I am actually doing.

To conclude…

Technically speaking this isn’t a very good experiment because I’ve changed three variables at once (The amount of TV/ Internet Use and meditation) BUT in practical terms given that the former two are the antithesis of the later, I don’t think the benefits would have accrued as much if I hadn’t replaced the former two with the later: meditation (and mindfulness) require a calm mind, TV and the internet encourage a hyperactive mind. It may well be that had I maintained my habitual usage of TV and just increased my meditation hours (in which case I’d have to sleep less, so that wouldn’t work experimentally either), the effect of meditation would merely be to calm down the increased hyperactivity in my mind caused by media-indulgence. So it’s naff as an experiment, but it works!

In short, try it, stop watching TV etc. and start meditating instead.

*This may sound like a lot of hours – If you’re new to meditating, this much may be too much so you might need to spend a few years building up to it. I’ve been meditating for 20 years on and off, more seriously for about eight years after I spent a year taking formal Zen classes (after which I realised I didn’t need the formality), and I’m fairly sure that two-three hours a day is as much as is useful to me at the moment (by useful I mean conducive to promoting mindfulness in daily life). If you’re new to meditation, less may be more. Also, go to classes if you’re new to it!

 

Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagan – A Summary

 

PART ONE – THE PERENNIAL PROBLEM

Chapter One – The Human Situation (pp15-24)

Hagan starts the chapter with a ‘banquet analogy’ – the human condition is like starving people sitting at a banquet but not eating because they fail to realise that the release from their hunger is right in front of them.

Most of us sense there is something amiss with our lives but don’t have any idea what to do about this. We long for something, we feel pain and loss etc. but we don’t realise that everything we need to resolve this suffering is right here before us.

The truth is that all of the misery we bring to ourself and others is of our own doing. It stems from our own ignorance our own inability to see things as they really are.

Buddhism does not offer a life free of problems – as outlined in the The 84th problem story:

A man came to the Buddha and explained all of his many problems. The Buddha told the man that everyone has problems, 83 problems to be exact, and that he could not help him to solve any of them, but he could help him with the 84th problem… the fact that he wanted to have no problems.

We think we need to exterminate our problems – eradicate them – but the simple truth is problems will always be with us, dissatisfaction will always be with us – weeds will grow though we hate them and flowers will fall though we love them – we need to accept this and not live our lives as if we can change this.

  • The first truth of the buddha-dharma is that human life is characterised by dissatisfaction and we need to accept this.
  • The second truth is that this dissatisfaction arises within us.
  • The third truth is that we can realise the origins of this dissatisfaction and put an end to it
  • The fourth truth is the way to end this suffering – the noble eightfold path – the way to Nirvana, or freedom of mind.

In Buddhism our journey is into here and now, but how do we do this?

In order to experience the answer to this questions there needs to be three realisations –

  1. That life is truly fleeting
  2. That you are already complete or whole
  3. That you are your own refuge, your own salvation.

Pick up a flower – it is beautiful and yet it dies. How can we deal with this, do we substitute a plastic rose? No – we want the real rose precisely because it is fleeting, precious.

Thus it is with human life – each one of us is a living thing that dies. Your body and mind are always changing. You are nothing but change itself.

Examine the body and mind – everything about it is fleeting. Every aspect of our experience is also fleeting – our wants, needs, relationships are all subject to death.

Vitality consists of this birth and death. Our lives are vibrant because of change and yet we often want to keep things the same – and it is this (clinging) that is the greatest source of woe in our lives.

You are already in reality whether you see it or not… you are already enlightened – all you have to do is attend to the moment to realise this – and stop blocking your interpretation of the moment.

In the Buddha’s final talk he said that each of you must be a light unto yourselves. No one else is the final authority – this means you have the power to wake up in the here and now – you are responsible for finding your own way.

In other words we are already prepared for anything that might come along. All we need to do is to be aware in this moment – we are already supported and sustained within this moment – there is nothing out there to get – we just need to realise this! Everything in this moment is whole, complete.

Seeing this truth is the Buddha’s noble eightfold path – it is seeing what our problem is and then resolving to do something about it. All Aspects of the path are about this moment! Morality is about this moment and meditation is about this moment.

You are already right where you need to be to start out on this path into the moment.

Chapter Two – A wheel out of kilter (pp 25 – 32)

Duhkha is the first of the four noble truths – often described as suffering but this is not a good description because duhkha also incorporates pleasure.

In sanskrit duhkha is often paired with sukha which means satisfactory, but unsatisfactoriness doesn’t quite hit the mark as a translation either.

Duhkha actually comes from a word meaning a wheel out of kilter – imagine this – if a potter’s wheel is out of kilter we make unnecessary hardship for ourselves every time we wish to make a pot. Or imagine riding on a cart with a dodgy wheel – the bumps as we go along becoming increasingly irritating.

Ordinary human life is like this – something basic and important isn’t right and with each turn of the wheel each passing day this bothers us and causes us pain.

Of course there are moments of pleasure but at the end of the day this wheel out of kilter will always. Bring us back to our pain.

What can we do about this? We can begin by seeing clearly what the nature of the problem is.

(P26) We’ve all heard the expression ‘seeing is believing’ but the fact is, seeing and believing are opposites – belief is at best informed conjecture about reality but seeing is direct, unadulterated experience – it is the direct perception of reality itself.

Once you see reality, belief becomes unnecessary. Indeed belief can stand in the way of clear, direct perception.

Truth and reality are there for you to see, only independent of you putting labels on it. We can only have truth by seeing it, not naming it or holding onto it.

Truth or reality is not something vague or mysterious. You don’t have to go to someone else to find it, and you won’t find it in a book. Truth comes through seeing and it requires no further verification.

Hagan now uses the example of an unclear picture (on p28) which looks like a man lying down, but it’s not clear – attached to this is some confusion, or uncertainty about what the picture is – this is how most of us go through life – he now asks us to look again at the picture which is actually a cow – he says that once we realise this we have an ‘aha’ moment of clarity – which is like waking up (personally the picture still doesn’t look like a cow to me, but I get the point he’s making – who cares what the picture looks like anyway!).

Seeing is absolute clarity, whereas simply having an idea involves some confusion. Enlightenment is just a profound waking up, profound realisation about the here and now!

Seeing means waking up, having a profound ‘aha’ moment, it is about the here and now. When you clearly see the situation you are in, things clear up. This waking up is called Enlightenment and it is available to everyone in every moment without exception.

Personally I find D.T Suzuki’s account of the nature of Enlightenment clearer than this. See Zen for Beginners by D.T. Suzuki for more details. (NB this other book is not as easy going as this one).

(P29) As long as we remain in our state of confusion, our minds are characterised by Dukha. In fact there are three kinds of Dukha –

  1. Straightforward pain, both physical and mental. Pain is a fact of life, the only way we can deal with it is to face it squarely.
  2. The second form of Dukkha is change. Wherever we look everything is characterised by change and if we exist in a state of confusion change is experienced as dissatisfaction. We deal with change by longing to keep things the same or by conceptualising – trying to pin things down to give things meaning. Basically any attempt to create something as I want it to be is a manifestation of Dukkha (the way out of this is simply to see reality).
  3. The third form of Dukkha is harder to see than the other two, it is the Dukkha of being. As long as you see yourself as a distinct being then you must die and this realisation carries with it Dukkha. This is also to be found in the simple realisation that I do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions such as ‘what is the purpose of life’, for example.

We cannot ourselves find answers to these questions, but we can through direct experience know the answers and thus end our suffering.

Chapter Three (pp33 – 43) Coming

The second truth of the buddha-dharma is the arising of dukha – DukKha arises from thirst – craving, wanting, trying to get the object of our desires. This craving takes one of these three forms…

  1. Physical and mental desire
  2. The desire to not die
  3. The desire for release from this life.

Name your affliction, and you will find that it is your desire, your craving, your wanting.

However, we tend not to notice this, we are ignorant that it is our desires for this or that which are the cause of our suffering. Instead, we go through life thinking ‘if I only I could get that, then I would be happy’. This is delusion, confusion, ignorance.

We are confused about what we really want, all we really want is to be awake!

If only we could deal with this 84th problem our other problems would seem less and we would be less caught up in the silly ups and downs associated with easing suffering through attachment to this or that. The ups and downs wouldn’t disappear, the 83 problems would still be there, but they would have less hold over us.

(P34) In Zen monasteries you must pay constant attention to what you are doing. All your activities are prescribed, and they’re carried out in deliberate stillness. After a time, this can get to you (as it did to one particular zen student) who went to see the master and said. ‘I can’t take this any more, I want out’ The master said ‘O.K, then leave’ As he started for the door the teacher said ‘that’s not your door’ Oh! Sorry.’ The startled fellow looked around and spotted a second door. As he headed for it the teacher said ‘That’s not your door’ ‘Oh!’ He looked around for another door. He could see that behind the teacher was a little door normally used by the teacher’s attendant. As he headed for that door the teacher screamed at him ‘That’s not your door!’ Totally bewildered and exasperated, the poor fellow said. ‘What do you mean? There’s no other door! You told me I could leave, but there’s no door I can leave by!’ ”If there’s no door you can leave by,’ said the teacher ‘then sit down’.

This means that we need to face our problems by paying attention to what is going on, face up to them rather than running away which is what most of us do.

I actually quite like this – you want to leave (your problems)  but there is no door to leave by – this is because you are the source of your problems. Our failure to realise this keeps us looking externally for solutions.

Our worst problems are not natural disasters – natural disasters actually bring us together.

Our worst problems (deep-rooted and subtle?) are created by us, as a result of our trying to create good times and avoid bad times, but these come and go of themselves.

Instead of trying to achieve this or that we should just be focussed on the present moment. Happiness is here, it isn’t there. Problems arise from our inability to see clearly the simple truth that good and bad times come and go by themselves irrespective of my desires (life is just flux). —-   Breaking the grip of ignorance rests with just seeing. You notice you want a Pizza, and you just note it, you don’t do anything about it. In this way, you stop feeding craving. (Easier said than done, I know!)

The problem is that it is hard to see see clearly. The mind has a tendency to lean – ‘I like this or that’ – craving or aversion. In the Enlightened mind there is no such leaning.

Dukkha – suffering, pain – is associated with choice. The more we fail to understand this, the more we’ll be caught up in Dukkha. And the more we’ll not see the subtlety of it.

We live in a culture where we’re taught to see freedom as the maximisation of choice. But this is not true freedom at all. In fact, it’s a form of bondage. True freedom doesn’t lie in the maximisation of choice, but ironically is most easily found in a life where there is little choice…. Consider this: often the more serious the choice, the easier it becomes to make it. _

When petty choices occupy the mind, necessity is forgotten, the mind is ill at ease for want of the petty thing. When we needlessly clutter our mind with inconsequential choices dissatisfaction is the result. (39)

(p40) Let’s consider the way intention is joined with Dukkha

The buddha-dharma is all about seeing when we act of intent, which is what most of us do most of the time by trying to bring about some desired end. Intent is important, very important!

Hagan illustrates this with a story about his going camping. He awoke to find that the roof of his car had been slashed and thought it was vandals, this caused mental anguish. Later he realised it was a Racoon who had slashed the roof to get some cookies. His anguish disappeared because there was no longer any bad intent behind the action.

The chapter ends with a reminder that walking the buddha-dharma is not about doing good because good and bad are relatives, tinged with duality (illustrated by the horse story)… The buddha-dharma is about seeing our craving (but not stopping it).

The horse story…

The horse of a wise Chinese farmer ran away. When his neighbour came to console him the farmer said ‘who knows what’s good or bad?’

When his horse returned the next day with a herd of horses following her, the foolish neighbour came to congratulate him on his good fortune.

‘who knows what’s good or bad?’ said the famer.

Then, when the farmer’s son broke his leg trying to ride one of the new horses, the foolish neighbour came to console him again.

‘Who knows what’s good or bad?’ said the farmer.

When the army passed through, conscripting men for the army, they passed over the farmer’s son because of his broken leg. When the foolish man again came to congratulate the farmer =, the farmer replied ‘Who know’s what’s good or bad’?

And so on….

—–

Ideas of good and bad are dualistic, the point is to SEE in a way that is beyond these, not quelching your desire, just SEEing the way that mind leans.. it’s inclinations and it’s intents.

Chapter Four: Going (pp44 -52)

The Buddha’s third truth is that the cessation of suffering is possible, a state referred to by the Buddha as ‘unborn ungrown and unconditioned’, a state which we can see but which we cannot pin down.

The opposite of this, the born, grown and conditioned is everything you can conceive of, including yourself.

Nirvana is seeing completely that everything is just flux or change. Hagan uses the story of his friend dying of cancer who suddenly realises he is about to die to illustrate this. The author says to him ‘wherever we go, its always like this’ and his friend understood – meaning (I think) that his dying friend had seen that everything is change and accepted it, even his own death. (Note – that’s actually pretty hard core!)

Recall that everything is constant flux and change. Nothing endures. Yet we long for permanence and as a result we suffer, for we find none. There seems to be only this coming and going, coming and going. This is true of the physical universe, and it is true of our minds. Nirvana is seeing completely that this is so.

(P47) We do not see this – we tend to think of ourselves as distinct entities existing through time, but we cannot find a moment when we came into being – our conception is fundamentally linked to our parents, there is no ultimate separation. The truth is, you cannot find ‘coming into being’.

What we call a person the Buddha simply referred to as ‘stream’.

The same problem occurs with anything conceivable – with anything, beginnings and ends are inconceivable, there is just ceaseless flow and change, yet we perceive things to have a distinct beginning and end because we are foolish.

All three of our desires (*) arise because of our confusion (our inability to realise) that reality is just change.

Because of this ignorance we erroneously fixate on permanence, we think permance is possible – we think that if we only get this then ‘I will be happy’, but in reality, all states of happiness are impermanent (thus what is the point in fixating on them?)

Similarly, because we fixate on our own existence we desire to not die, but in reality if you are born then you will die.

Finally, because (in our ignorance) this is so unbearable, we long for non-existence. All three of these desires arise because of our confusion about change. NB This final one (I think) is the vauge sense of subtle dis-ease that resides at the back of our minds, it is the kind of dis-ease that we will only find exists if we try to sit quietly and realise that we cannot do so.

(*) 1. Physical and mental desire 2. The desire to not die 3. The desire for release from this life.

The Buddha talked of extinguishing these desires but how is this possible? There are two ways. The first the Buddha called less desire and the second forgetting the self.

We have the ability to see our situation our human condition for what it really is. A starting point would be to perceive that we overload our senses, we become addicted to all manner of sense- stimulators, we need to see this, we also need to see that we tend to overload our lives with thoughts.

A second way is to forget the self by doing things for or with others

____

We tend to live our lives with some idea of control… we do a task to achieve a desired end, and when we fail to do this we suffer. The buddhist solution to this is to acknowledge that we never had control in the first place.

At the centre of our desire for control is our sense of self… If we can realise that ‘I’ don’t really exist, there is profound liberation in this!

On this the Buddha said

‘Just as a man shudders with horror when he steps on a serpent, but laughs when he looks down and sees that it is only a rope, so I discovered one day that what I was calling ‘I’ cannot be found, and all fear and anxiety vanished with my mistake’.

The buddha-dharma points the way for each of us to wake up from this same basic mistake. And when we awaken, our fears and anxieties quite naturally vanish, as the night fades away at the rising of the sun.

Chapter Five – The Art of Seeing (pp53-59)

The fourth truth of the Buddha is the way to realise the end of suffering – the noble eightfold path. An odd thing about this path is that it is not a path from a to b – as soon as we step on it all aspects are realised at once.

The eight aspects of the path are

  1. Right view
  2. Right intention
  3. Right speech
  4. Right action
  5. Right livelihood
  6. Right effort
  7. Right mindfulness
  8. Right meditation

Right does not mean right as opposed to wrong – but right as in ‘this works’ or as in ‘being in sync with reality’. It refers to being in touch with reality rather than being deluded by our own prejudices. ‘Right’ means conducive to awakening.

Right view

Normally when we take a view on some aspect of life we take a snap shot picture and hold onto it and people with different views peel off into separate camps and sometimes go after each other.   The view of a Buddha isn’t like this – it is not an ordinary frozen view. Right view means not being caught by ideas, concepts, beliefs or opinions.

The view of a Buddha is of how things are , or of constant change. If we know that all is change, then how can there be fixed views?

Right view is the dynamic view of the world as a whole. It cannot come into conflict with other views because it already encompasses everything else!

Right intention

There is a story of Socrates and a youth who comes to learn from him – when crossing a stream Socrates holds the youth’s head under water and he starts to fight for air. On letting him up, Socrates says ‘when you fight for truth as you fight for air then come back and see me’ – that is right intention.

You cannot learn truth from anyone, it is seen through your own resolve. It means getting on with the job of awakening.

Right speech

This basically involves not lying not speaking ill and not chatting idly.

There are many practical reasons for practising thus – basically to awaken you need to be here and now and lying, speaking ill and chatting distract you from the here and now and disturb the mind.

All that is said on right action is that it is action that stems from a clear and unfettered mind.

Right livelihood means choosing a profession that does not not do harm to others or the planet because how can this be conducive to peace of mind?

Right effort is a conscious and on-going engagement with each moment. It is the willing abandonment of our fragmented mentality and dualistic thought moment after moment and the encouragement of healthy and wholesome states of mind.

Right mindfulness means not forgetting what our real problem is – Dukkha. Right mindfulness means being mindful of how we react to states of mind in each moment.

Right meditation means collecting the mind so it becomes focussed centred and aware.

These eight aspects of the path should not be taken on faith but tested to see if they are conducive to awakening.

The chapter ends by mentioning the precepts and that these are guidelines rather than rules. Ultimately all that there is is the context you are in and your own mind – seeing things as they are moment to moment and acting accordingly is what there is. Hard and fast rules are not conducive to this.

 

PART TWO: THE WAY TO WAKE UP

Chapter Six – Wisdom (pp63-76)

Our prison is in us – it is in our own mind, our own thinking. We fail to see our situation for what it really is. As yang chu says – ‘we pass by the joys of life without realising we’ve missed anything’. The path to freeing the mind is not like an ordinary path. It does not lead anywhere it has no destination. As soon as you set foot on this path you have literally traversed it in its entirety.

First you have to set foot on the path, and this is right view – the idea that there is something askew or painful about human existence. What would satisfy the aching, the craving of the human heart? Nothing outside of us can do this because as soon as one craving is satisfied another arises.

So let us take a different approach and not try to define what it is we want. We do not know what we truly want because what we truly want is intangible. In fact true happiness simply involves seeing in the moment, but because we do not see this then we fixate on a search to find something to make us happy, while the only thing that can make us happy is what’s here and now – we just need to see what is going on in ourselves.

Right view is not a fixed idea it is simply awareness of how things come to be. Right view is seeing reality in its wholeness – think of a puma and a deer – we feel sorry that the deer will be eaten by the puma, so we put bells on the deer – the puma then starves so the deer population goes up which leads to overgrazing and deers dying.

Compassion alone is not enough, you need to see the whole. In life we tend to categorise and compartmentalise – we package complex events so we can understand them. But life is messier than this – in reality things are much more fluid and this is hard work to grasp and accept. In trying to understand the world we leave things out – we fail to realise that in reality there is not a clearly defined object to observe or for that matter a clearly defined observer.

Right view is beyond categories, beyond good and bad and the only way we can realise it is to be right here and right now.

( P69) – We tend to hold a static view of ourselves too – for example – ‘I’m a nervous type of person or I’m Norwegian… The truth is that I am not anything in-particular and neither is anyone else. When we lock onto an identity all we’re doing is locking onto a rigid world view, and making ourselves easier to offend. Another way we bind ourselves is through trying to explain things – ‘a means b’ and so on.

In fact, reality in the moment explains itself and so it doesn’t need explaining. How can we explain the truth without removing ourselves from it? Yet we do not see this, instead we go on seeking ever more refined or complicated explanations, and all we ever get is more and more contradictions, while Reality itself defies conceptualisation.

Having said this, it is possible to see, to perceive reality even if we can’t conceive it.

Concepts cannot be reality because conceptualising involves putting boundaries around things that are all interconnected. Take the example of a book – in reality the book is fundamentally linked to the sun because trees require the sun.

In a famous zen story emperor Wu of China asked Bodhidharma ‘who are you’, Bodhidharma replied ‘not knowing’. There is no identity there. Bodhidharma sees reality, not a thing with a name. In other words right view isn’t in the eye of the beholder, there is no beholder there.

(P73) Right intention Is simply about being here in this moment. Being awake is actually the absence of intention, because you cannot both be here and hold any intent, any gaining thought. If we are not awake then right intention is simply to be awake – now, with no gaining thought.

Hagan now relays the story of the meditating zen student and the teacher polishing the tile – no amount of meditating will make you a Buddha. Meditation should be all the time, it does not begin or end with a bell, it begins with your intention, so start paying attention – now! Being awake is just being awake, there is no reason for being awake – other than it’s better than not being awake which consists of pain anger and delusion.

(So nb right intention is actually about being now and stopping habitual ways of action that lead to suffering)

Being awake is the mind not leaning, the mind not thinking ‘I like this or I dislike that’ – these leanings lead to greed and aversion, and gaining thoughts. How to stop the mind leaning? You simply have to pay attention to what you are doing and how your mind reacts, then the mind eventually will straighten up of its own accord, you cannot force it to stop leaning – if you try to do this it will simply lean all the more.

Chapter Seven – Morality (pp77-94)

Right speech should be directed towards awakening for self and others – when you speak consider whether you are doing it to manipulate others or doing it to assist in awakening.

Hagan quotes the Buddha on what right speech is – basically being truthful, not gossiping and speaking to promote harmony.

On listening – if someone tells you something about someone else, all they are really revealing is stuff about themselves. You should realise that as soon as something is put into speech it is skewed by the speaker – thus always withhold judgement on the thing someone is speaking about, especially if it is someone you have never met before.

Right speech should be directed towards awakening for self and others – when you speak consider whether you are doing it to manipulate others or doing it to assist in awakening.   Hagan quotes the Buddha on what right speech is – basically being truthful, not gossiping and speaking to promote harmony.

On listening – if someone tells you something about someone else, all they are really revealing is stuff about themselves. You should realise that as soon as something is put into speech it is skewed by the speaker – thus always withhold judgement on the thing someone is speaking about, especially if it is someone you have never met before.   Right speech involves right listening which means seeing the whole picture including the speaker, be careful not to swallow pre packaged stories.   We need to be careful when speaking of others – whether we are downplaying or bigging them up we are leaning and not speaking the truth. In fact, putting people on a pedestal is probably the worst because this way we must create idols and to be free we need to be free of idols (nb celebrity).

Do not talk about people as if they are saints or monsters, to do so is to fail to recognise our common humanity. It is is within the capacity of human nature to act monstrously or saintly and we can do likewise. Really good or really evil people are not essentially different to us.

Sometimes it is necessary to say things people don’t want to hear for their long term good – eg a child running to a busy road or an addict.

It is impossible to give rules on how to speak that are hard and fast – much of what needs to be said, or not said, depends on the situation. What is important than when you speak to people you examine your intention – if your intention is to help them wake up then you should be speaking compassionately and the appropriate words and tone should follow in any given situation.

Where enlightenment is concerned it is beyond conceptualisation so in truth there is nothing to say.

Ryokan, a Japanese Zen poet, wrote this poem –

Maple leaf

Falling down

Showing front

Showing back

This action exemplifies right action – how different this kind of action is to the willed, goal-oriented action we are familiar with. The maple leaf’s action is natural and unwilled yet the way we act is different, if we were leaves we would either fall off in summer (running away), hang on until winter or we would wilfully try and be unleaf like and pile down rather than drift. These two types of action have two different results.

Usually discussions of morality are about rules – but there are no rules in Buddhism only guidelines- the dharma is not about rules and regulations that have been taught and accepted it is about seeing – rules are only useful when you do not see – in seeing we act naturally.

Shunryu Suzuki says that if we try to put dots on a page in a random fashion we will find this difficult as usually patterns will emerge because our minds unwittingly follow hidden rules. If we saw the whole we could arrange dots in a random fashion. Randomness involves us being with the whole, order stems from our deluded attempts to control the whole which leads to Dukkha.

When we fancy ourselves to be a particular thing with a name we see ourselves as we would a cork in a stream. In reality there is only stream, change and flow. The recognition of this as our actual experience is utter release from Dukkha.

Seeing alone leads to greater levels of moral development (nb not all monks necessarily see) because through seeing we don’t lie because we see that lying leads to confusion. Hence this is not about rules – in fact morality is beyond rules – morality can be seen but not put into rules – even the do unto others rule is flawed because different people often need to be treated differently.

The golden rule of the awakened is in fact ‘do unto others as you would not have them do unto you’ – the problem with the usual positive formulation is that it carries prescriptions, or things that should be done and this set of rules is objectifying which takes us away from the moment – thus the awakened wants of others and wants for others no objectification, to allow for freedom in the moment and real seeing. Hence the negative prescription of this imperative. (NB in the meantime there are precepts…). This avoids the problems associated with doing good which can stem form positive formulations of morality which can breed arrogance and hostility.

Another way of looking at right action is action as free of self.

Now there’s a quick note on freedom – which is not freedom to choose – but freedom to be awake or not.

Right livelihood simply says do not judge others – look at your own situation and how you respond to it.

Finally – right action is fundamentally about examining your own life – remember the only real choice we have is whether or not we choose to wake up!

Chapter Eight – Practice (pp95-109)

This chapter deals with right effort, right mindfulness and right meditation

Sit for a moment, and try not to think of an elephant. Now try to picture a square circle You will notice that both of these exercises are impossible.

Often, though, we put our efforts into tasks very much like these – trying to achieve goals which are impossible, we think of effort as something that involves straining, forcing or pushing. But with what the Buddha called right effort, there is no straining or forcing, because right effort is cojoined with right view – when you see that putting your hand in the flame is painful, you don’t have to strain to keep yourself from doing it, it just follows naturally.

Right effort means simply being present. It means being here, staying here, and seeing what is happening in this moment. It’s not about trying to achieve or control something, which is like trying to not think of an elephant. Right effort is the naturalness of becoming this moment.

This is not normally how we understand effort – we usually understand it as to control, improve, change something – human history is full of such examples, and here we are in our improved society wondering if the earth will survive!

Right effort is cutting off the fragmented and fractured states of mind that have already arisen in us – for example we see ourselves as being separate from the world, and the world as consisting of separate things (rather than a more wholesome, holistic seeing). This leads our mind to be full of thoughts such as ‘I must do this’ or ‘avoid doing that’ – Right effort just means seeing this fragmented state, not feeding it by worrying about it or acting on it, or trying to stop it – if we just see it, it will come into full awareness of its own accord.

All you have to do in right effort is continually bring yourself back to seeing – to see is to heal.

Right effort is also bringing about and preserving aware, collected, wholesome and integrated states of mind. Hagan uses the metaphor of being able to take a horse to water but not being able to make that horse drink. If we are the horse in this analogy, being led to the Buddha Dharma, drinking is like making right effort. The problem is that, although we are all thirsty (remember that deep aching of the heart), we don’t realise it, and also, although we are standing at the water trough, we don’t realise that our water is easily in reach.

Normally, if something seems valuable to us, we feel we have to work hard to get it – in the case of awakening this doesn’t work. Hagan now relays the tale of the fellow and the Zen master…. how long will it take to become Enlightened…. 10/20/ 30 years.

Donning robes has nothing to do with being enlightened – these can actually detract you from right effort – all right effort is is being in this moment. You don’t need anything else to do this.

(p100) Now Hagan deals with the different types of mindfulness…

Mindfulness of the body is to do with how the body moves, and physical senses such as smell and taste. Thich Nat Hanh suggests we savour each sense as if we were a returned astronaut, having touched back down on earth for the first time in years.

We should also be mindful of our feelings – whether we are inclined to like or dislike things for example – over time we will be less compelled to act on these things if we become more mindful of them – feelings will have less of a hold over us.

We should also be aware of our minds – in doing so you will notice (probably) an internal monologue, often moronic, that chatters much of the time – the problem is we often identify with many of these thoughts, and this is the source of much of our suffering. In time, through mindfulness, we will realise that this internal monologue, our ideas are just as fleeting as our physical sensations.

Finally, there is awareness of Dukkha itself.

In mindfulness practise it is important not to chastise yourself – all you need to do is to see that this and that arises, and when you see that attachment to certain arisings leads to suffering, you will come to cease such attachment just naturally!

While right mindfulness is to return to actual experience right meditation is simply staying with our immediate experience, moment by moment. In sitting meditation (zazen in Japanese) the focus of our activity involves the bare minimum, just body, mind and breath. He now quotes a passage from Zen master Dogen’s ‘universal recommendation for sitting meditation’ on how to do formal breath meditation. Hagan then mentions that you can sit in a chair, or kneeling. After sorting our posture, Hagan then says… Place your focus on your breath – just follow it. As you do, thoughts will arise. Don’t be bothered by them. Don’t try to drive them away. If you leave them alone, they’ll depart of their own accord. This is how to ‘cease all the movements of the conscious mind’. You cannot do it by direct application of will. Don’t strive for some special state of mind, there is no special state of mind. Striving will only disturb you.

Sitting meditation is just awareness of breath, that is all.

How long to spend in meditation? Hagan says he doesn’t know – more important is that you do it regularly. When its time to eat, eat, when its time to meditate, meditate.

You need to allow yourself the space to have thoughts and feelings, just let them be, don’t try and stop them, and they will calm down by themselves.

Breath is the perfect vehicle for meditation because it is the boundary between internal and external, place your attention there and you will see that there is no you, and no outside.

Do not approach meditation as business as usual, meditation is not business as usual. We are not doing it to achieve anything, it is not a useful activity, it is for its own sake…. do not expect anything from it. Dogen notes that when you practice meditation you… cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest. If you want to attain thusness, you should practise thusness without delay.

If we taste reality, we must engage it directly. If you have the least gaining idea, you are not fully engaged.

Right meditation is where everything is alive, where we neither create nor manipulate, possess nor obsess, neither try nor fail.

Chapter Nine – Freedom (pp 110-)

There are two types of knowledge – One consists of beliefs, opinions and conjectures, an intellectual grasping of concepts – this is not true knowing and the result of relying on more conceptual knowledge is more fear, discomfort and confusion. We think our beliefs and ideas can be relied on to give us satisfaction, but if we examine them carefully, we realise that they only temporarily satisfy us…. in fact, they are our primary sources of anxiety and fear, because they are always subject to contradiction and doubt.

By their very nature, all our ideas are frozen views – fragments of reality, separated from the whole. Because what we rely on (conception) is different to what we see (perception) there is unrest in our minds. Underneath all, we are uneasy, and furthermore we know it.

The fact is, were already enlightened, even now. We know truth, we just habitually overlay our direct experience of truth with thoughts, our beliefs opinions and ideas, developing conceptual frameworks without knowing what it is we are doing.

(p111) The problem isn’t that we do this, we cant help but conceptualise…. the problem is that we do not realise we are doing this… and we run away with our thoughts, thinking we have captured some aspect of reality. What we overlook is that underneath our ideas, reality is shifting, and thus we cannot help but experience doubt. This is the deep end of dukkha – existential angst. In the very moment we overlay our direct experience with concepts doubt is attached to it. The biggest mistake we make in all this is by separating out self and other – this leads us to look for satisfaction out there – we even turn enlightenment into an object, but if we examine our direct experience, we realise that such dualities do not exist.

As we’ve seen, there’s a second type of view, right view – which is simply seeing reality for what it is. It’s relying on bare attention… true immediate, direct experience of the world in and of itself, it is seeing thus. Herein lies freedom of mind, and fearlessness.

With the two types of views there are two kinds of mind….. we all have what we could call ordinary minds – the mind you’ve always assumed you’ve had. It is a calculating, discriminating mind, a fragmented mind. It’s the mind of ordinary consciousness, what we call ‘my mind’.

But there is another kind of mind, unborn, ungrown and unconditioned – to this mind, there is no other mind. This mind is nothing other than the whole. This mind is there in every moment, always switched on, all we need to do is rest our frontal lobes in order to see it. This means letting our conscious mind die down, like ripples on a pond.

Another reminder – that you can’t get to seeing, you can only see.

At the close of our millennium, it’s getting harder and harder for us to find meaning in our lives. We’ve seen through too many of the old stories. Even though we no longer believe in God, we swing between cynicism and dogmatism to inject meaning into our lives. We don’t easily understand that we create this problem or that problem of meaninglessness ourselves through our deluded thinking. If we could just see this moment for what it is, meaninglessness would never arise in the first place. It is in our very trying to define and arrange things for ourselves – trying to identify and assign meanings to things – that we end up creating a world that is ultimately meaningless.

Liberation of mind is realising that we don’t need to buy any story at all. We just need to see reality.

The deep, hollow ache of the heart arises from a life in search of meaning. But its by our very desire to find meaning (I think he means in fixing the world through concepts) that we create meaninglessness (NB – If we live in a society where people are objectifying themselves and there appear to be multiple meanings to see through then surely this makes it more difficult to see that these efforts result in meaninglessness – because this mistaken quest for meaning is the norm… and now there are many meanings to choose between.)

Reality – if we see it – is where questions of meaning are transcended, it just is.

At least he finishes off by saying that the eightfold path is like a raft….

Also, NB – A lot of this stuff is I think really for monks maybe???? (A la Bikkhu Bodhi) – the rest of us are so mired, we need help a bit lower down the order of awareness maybe???

‘Buddhist Sociology’ by Inge Bell – A summary

Summary of Bell, I.P (1979) “Buddhist Sociology: Some Thoughts on the Convergence of Sociology and Eastern Paths of Liberation” in Scott G. McNall, ed. Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology. New York: St Martin’s Press.

I haven’t done any commentary on this yet, but I thought I’d get this summary out anyway…

The first explicit call for a ‘Buddhist Sociology’ was made by Inge Bell (1979) who suggested that an examination of sociology from within the perspective of the ‘eastern  disciplines’ could  challenge some of the theoretical assumptions of Sociology,  inform research methods, and contribute to a critique of the profession itself.

Buddhist challenges to sociological notions of socialisation

In contrast to sociology’s view of socialisation as a mainly positive process, Bell conceputalised the realisation of Enlightenment as a process of desocialisation in which the individual unlearns everything society has taught them, including dualisms such as good and evil, subject and object, casting the enlightened being as one who, having gone through the process of desocialisation, was free to deviate from social norms and, able to see the world afresh without human concepts.

Bell further suggested that the process of realising Satori, or Enlightenment did not involve resocialisation, a process instead variously described as ‘assimilating a thought system which denies the validity of all thought systems; ‘regaining the qualities of childhood’, and ‘experiencing an expansive, unlimtied state of existence in which ‘every deed expresses originality, creativity…. [in which there is] no conventionality, creativity, no inhibitory motivation….’

Bell however did not entirely dismiss the utility of Socialisation, and accepted that there were some posiitve aspects, such as learning  language, learning to use technology and learning basic social codes, which she contrasted to ‘dangerous’ aspects of socialisation which were those tied to and generated by conern for the fate of the self, such as ideas about the afterlife; beliefs that one can be immortalised through celebrity, myths which justify the will to power, and the master illusion of the self as seperate from its environment.

Buddhist challenges to sociological conceptions of the self

Bell congratulated sociologists such as Mead and Bulmer for recognising that socialisation normally results in the creation of an ideal social-self, which is seperate from the ‘subjectively experienced self’, and that emotional problems such as anxiety can emerge when the ideal self and the ‘me’ don’t converge, but went on to criticise them for viewing the ideal-self as a necessary construction and a legitimate structure without which the individual could not function socially, and one which enabled goal-oriented behaviour, underlying a growth-process.

Bell contrasted this to the ‘Eastern view’ according to which the self is not a fixed entity, rather only a series of occurances and experiences,  and as such ‘I’ am merely a process, a continuous creation and re-creation, changing as ‘I’ enter each social situation. In such a view subjective reflections on one’s ‘ideal-self’ merely represent a refusal to accept reality fully (and thus one has to question the validity of engaging in depth-studies of the constructions of such ficticious selves)

Bell suggested that Peter Berger’s micro-analysis of the self came closest to Buddhist conceptions of the self, evidenced in such lines as ‘deception and self-deception are at the very heart of social reality….. in the end we must return to the nightmare moment when we feel ourselves stripped of all names and identities’, but criticised Berger for seeeing the proccess of realising one’s lack of self’ as a wholly negative process.

As a way of overcoming the attendent fear at the ‘death of the self’ Bell argued that we should incorporate the possibility of an Enlightened being into Sociological analysis, a being who plays many roles but does not use them to confer a sense of self; and one who has seen through the view that the self is normal and inevitable, but none the less goes on as before, but does so with a sense of lightness.

Finally in this section, Bell pointed out that incorporating an Eastern sense of self into the sociological imagination would help us realise that there is something more valuable than the conceptualising, knowledge creating ntellect, called basic intelligence, which is our ability to perceive and deal with reality without reference to accumulated knowledge.

A Buddhist contribution to methods

In a relatively short section on Metholodogy, Bell suggested that the Eastern paths could offer social researchers a  potential way of going beyond the distortions which arise because of self-interest and to engage in genuinley value-free research.

She celebrated Mannheim, Mills and Gouldner for their realisation that to do so man must understand his own position in history and how this shapes perception, but then argued that intellect alone was not enough to lift us above our values. To illustrate this, she cited the example of Mannheim (Ideology and Utopia) who, having developed an analysis of how social position formed ideology, went on to evelate his own class, the ‘social intelligensia’ to the position of the only group in society capable of seeing objectively.

Bell concluded that self-interest is rooted not in intellect, but in emotion, and so in order to transcend self-interest, we need detachment from our emotions, and ultimately to detach ourselves from self. She went on to say that enlightenment must revolutionise the practise of Sociology, which to my mind implies that Bell was suggesting that some form of spiritual training towards self-transcendence is necessary to realise a truly value-free sociology.

Toward an Enlightened Sociology

In this section, Bell vents her frustration at the fact that Sociology has almost nothing to say about how students might actually live in order to raise the quality of their lives, and that this should be remedied by restoring teaching, and personal contact between teacher and student as a central value of the profession in order to encourage students to engage in ‘enlightened self appraisal’.

She suggests that the teaching of Sociology would be most useful if it focused on encouraging students to reflect on what can be changed, as well as offering adivse on how to cope with what cannot be changed. Bell believed that at the root of all of this lay a deep-appraisal of the universe and one’s place in it, which meant getting over the notions that ‘good’ is whatever contributes to ‘my happiness and security’ and ‘bad’ is whatever threatens these things.

As a means to develop such an outlook, she suggested that the teaching of Sociology should focus on developing students’ empathetic understanding, rooted in cultural relativism which could be promoted  in a number of ways: students might be required to live in some unfamiliar part of society for a year, they might be guided into what she calls ‘sociadrama’, involving taking on the roles of others, as well as visits from various people.

Toward a Practicing Sociology

In this section Bell criticised the profession of Sociology, on a number of grounds for being full of ideas about reforming society, but making little connection between these ideas and their day-to-day actions. She cites as examples:

  • Theorising about community while junior colleagues suffer from insecure positions.
  • Moaning about inequality while thinking their own students are unworthy of their attention.
  • Claiming to be concerend with improving society yet being primarily concerend with career advancement
  • Supporting the competitive system of publish-or-perish which leads to a obstructive body of material that demeans those who write.

Ultimately Bell argued that the problem of professional Sociology was that it demythologised American culture, only to replace it with the myth of ‘academaya’, where the professional role was one of striving, competing and deadly seriousness. She saw all of this as a highly developed form of concern with the ego which propogated the idea of goal-orientation as the only possible mode of human conduct. In Bell’s own words…. ‘we enlighten our students to the edge of liberation only to ensnare them again in the authority structure of the acadamy and the related professions’.

Bibliography

Bell, I.P (1979) “Buddhist Sociology: Some Thoughts on the Convergence of Sociology and Eastern Paths of Liberation” in Scott G. McNall, ed. Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology. New York: St Martin’s Press.

A Buddhist wouldn’t Criticise Fashion, but the thought might sometimes arise…

This is a not-so-brief post on why I think Fashion is pointless – from a Buddhist point of view. It starts off with an allotment analogy but ends up with 6 reasons why I don’t like Fashion. (NB this first draft is quite abstract, I’ll jazz it up with a few pop. Culture references laters….)

Here we go……

When I go to my allotment I don’t tend to think too much about what I wear, other than to ensure suitable functionality for the tasks in hand. I just chuck on a pair of old walking trousers or traccy bottoms, combined with an out of shape T shirt and sweater – and of course my wellies – and off I trot.

Dressing for the allotment should be a model for dressing in wider society – because on the allotment, what you wear simply doesn’t matter, no one is in the slightest bit interested in judging you by your attire, and your outward appearance is almost completely irrelevant to your engagement with the land, the veg. and other people.

In fact, if you take a moment to reflect on it, what you wear is actually largely irrelevant to realising true happiness in the Buddhist sense of the word, where happiness is defined as realising a stable peace, or equanimity of mind.  

Happiness in Buddhism requires one to walk the ‘Noble Eight Fold Path – and there is absolutely no reason why wearing basic, functional, even tatty, clothes, should prevent you from practising any of the following aspects of this path (narrowed down to 6 because of ease of analysis) –

  1. Reflecting, as you are now, on Buddhism and striving to know your ‘inner self’
  2. Acting with compassion towards other beings.
  3. Renouncing your attachment to particular things –
  4. Doing a worthwhile job – other than requiring certain clothes for functionality in some areas of work.
  5. Leading a routine life that avoids being too fussy and has too much emphasis on ‘picking and choosing’.
  6. Developing meditative awareness – other than requiring clothes of sufficient comfort and warmth.

No, there is no reason whatsoever, that you should be prevented from ‘walking the Buddhist path’ for lack of fancy clothes. In fact, where two aspects of the path are concerned – renunciation and trying to avoid being fussy through avoiding picking and choosing – giving up your desire for particular clothes and not worrying about what you wear would actually be positive steps towards their realisation.

Maybe it’s the fact that I love Buddhism so much that I enjoy the near total irrelevance of attire to human interaction on the allotment – there is definite synergy between the two; and maybe this also explains why I generally dislike most of society so much – because the allotment is actually the only ordinary day-to-day ‘public domain’ I can think of where what you wear simply doesn’t matter.

This is probably why, when I sometimes nip from my allotment into town in order to feed my coffee addiction (I’m not a perfect Buddhist), I feel slightly ill at ease when I’m standing in the coffee queue – I’m not dressed appropriately for playing the ‘expressing my middle class identity through spending £2.50 on some frothy milk and four shots of espresso to go’ game. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t exactly suffer anxiety attacks over this, and I’m not about to stop wearing my scruffy old allotment clothes, but I can feel the ‘you look too scruffy for this place vibe’ coming off some fellow coffee-expressers.

Now perhaps you think I’m being over-sensitive, but if you know me, you know I’m not exactly a sensitive person, so I think this vibe I feel is real – and it’s a result of the logic of ‘having to wear particular clothes in particular situations’ having penetrated so deeply into the average person’s psyche that they actually judge me – ME! – on the clothes I wear rather than ‘my deeper-self’ (which is f**king marvellous btw.)

I mean think about it – learning how to pick appropriate styles of clothes for particular situations is a basic part of our early socialisation – Work, weekends, weddings, for example, all require us to ‘know what to wear’, and in our fashion conscious age, we’re expected to select particular colours and cuts that suit our skin tone, body type, and age. Worse, we are called upon to periodically change our wardrobes to accommodate the latest season’s fashion – autumn/ winter – spring/summer – For all I know things now change more often and less predictably – frankly I couldn’t give a toss if they do.

Worse still – for some members of society, clothes aren’t just about fitting in – they are about standing out – and a considerable amount of money is spent on ‘shopping as leisure’ – many people going into debt in order to ‘look good’. And of course this whole process of adornment doesn’t stop at clothes – there’s also hair, nails and accessories. Obviously, at the time of writing, women have things a lot worse than men.

Worse still – many friendships and relationships are periodically colonised by clothes-shopping rituals – where you pair  or group-up and parade around the shops reflecting on how certain combinations of clothes suit or not. This is actually regarded as fun by millions of people in Britain.

You’ve probably got the impression that I don’t approve of the time, money and effort so many people put into picking and choosing their items of clothing – and the reason I don’t approve is because this ritual that is so precious to so many people in Britain, this leisure pursuit that is so embedded in our popular-culture, all of this time, money and effort will do absolutely nothing at all to make you truly happy, at least not if you want to achieve happiness in the Buddhist sense of the word.

If we go back to the Noble Eight Fold Path you’ll see what I mean – Considering six of the aspects that lead to happiness – we can now see how the ritual of clothes shopping in order to express yourself through outward appearance is actually the antithesis of what you should/ should not be doing-

  1. True happiness requires you to know your ‘inner self’- clothes shopping involves reflecting on what outward forms of dress you think are acceptable/ desirable, or what forms of clothes say a certain something about your ‘social personality’ and then buying or not buying.
  2. True happiness requires that you act with compassion towards other beings – assuming you are shopping alone – you are focussing entirely on how other people see you – purely selfish, the antithesis of compassion. If you are helping someone else select clothes, you may think you are being compassionate, but you are in fact lying to them by perpetuating the notion that outward appearance matters more than ‘inner self’
  3. True happiness requires renouncing your attachment to particular things – shopping involves, obviously, attaching your social self to particular clothes etc.
  4. True happiness requires doing a worthwhile job – Functionality aside – If you are competent in a certain field – you can do a good job whatever you are wearing – but today some professions now require a certain style – There is a possibility that those who can master this style may be deemed more suitable for the job than someone less stylish and yet more competent. Attachment to appearance makes this situation more likely
  5. True happiness requires one to leading a routine life that avoids being too fussy and has too much emphasis on ‘picking and choosing’ – as with no 3. It is obvious that clothes shopping – involving picking and choosing by its very nature – is the antithesis of this.
  6. True happiness requires one to developing meditative awareness – worrying about what you look like and how you appear to others can only work against this.

 

As a penultimate note I’ll just make one brief qualification – I do think one will generally be happier if clothes are functional to tasks at hand, clean, and fit appropriately. Besides these requirements, I fail to see how buying any new clothes in the next decade could possibly lead to my being any happier.

Finally, If the six reasons above aren’t enough to convince you that spending time, effort and money on fashion is a waste of time – try this for a closing thought – think about it logically – the only people who really care what you look like probably care what they look like – this means that they are probably walking around either worrying about how crap they think they look, or lauding over how good they think they look on any particular day. Either way, they probably aren’t paying you that much attention, so you may as well not bother trying to impress them.

A Buddhist inspired critique of Conspicuous Consumption

I hope this actually makes sense – I think I may have overcooked it! May add in a few examples to illustrate what I actually mean laters.

The purpose of this blog post is to outline a Buddhist inspired critique of ‘conspicuous consumption’ – which I define as ‘the act of picking, choosing and purchasing products and services with the intention of other people noticing either the products or the effects of the services purchased’.

As I see it – Conspicuous consumption directly contradicts many Buddhist values, seems to go against every aspect of the Buddha’s noble eightfold path, and encourages a number of negative human emotions. For example, because it is inherently linked to the process of ‘self-expression’ it promotes, in the literal sense of the word, self-ish-ness, it is a practice rooted in ignorance (of the truth of no-I) that essentially involves lying in public about the true nature of self by parading around one’s carefully ‘constructed self’. It also involves attaching oneself to objects, making one’s continued happiness dependent on the continued consumption of these objects, thus promoting a condition of radical unfreedom, while at the same time encouraging us to define the very concept of ‘freedom’ as the ‘freedom to pick and choose objects with which to construct my identity’ rather than seeing freedom as being about seeking ‘release from the necessity of being attached to particular objects which I deem to be significant’. Furthermore, the imperative to ‘identify through consumption’ requires money – and thus conspicuous consumption can, in some cases, encourage individuals to seek a livelihood primarily for its monetary reward rather than its social usefulness. Finally, this ritual demands that others pay attention to the ‘social self’ I am expressing’ – thus entangling others into a web of constant distraction in which we are all expected to pay close attention to the microscopic detail of numerous social selves, rather than simply focusing on ‘what we are actually doing’ – which ultimately works against the Buddhist goal of meditative practice in daily life.

The rest of this post analyses how conspicuous consumption goes against many Buddhist values –

The first problem with conspicuous consumption is that it works to prevent the individual from quietly sitting down and realizing the ‘true nature of self’, which (and to the non-Buddhist this will sound paradoxical) is that there is no inherent, distinct, isolated ‘self’. Conspicuous consumption is the antithesis of this simple, albeit hard to realise truth, as it is a self-expressive act which involves ‘me’ investing time and money in picking and choosing products and services that ‘I’ like in order to consciously construct a ‘social- identity’ – an identity that, ultimately, has no essential nature outside of the effort that I put into constructing it.

Conspicuous Consumption is thus, quite literally, an act which promotes ‘self-ish-ness’ – in the sense that ‘I’ start with the assumption that not only do ‘I’ exist, but that ‘I’ am significant enough to warrant other people’s attention when ‘I’ express myself through the products and services ‘I’ consume –  ‘I’ then return the favour of other people’s attention by noticing and commenting on their consumption habits, the end result being that our ‘society’ consists of people mutually engaged in the reflexive construction and expression of fictitious selves.

A preferred alternative to this farcical world of mutually reinforced ignorance would be a society in which we really do (and, again, somewhat paradoxically) act as individuals and quietly reflect on the ‘truth of non-self’ – which involves the gradual, and difficult to accept realisation that ‘I’ don’t actually exist as an independent identity at all, but rather, at root, ‘I’ am just one with everything else, and, in the grand scheme of things, am simply not that significant.  

The second problem with conspicuous consumption is that it encourages us to seek happiness through attachment, rather than peace of mind through freedom.

The fundamental logic of conspicuous consumption involves linking together a selection of things, and then linking these things to ‘my idea of myself’ – and then consuming this selection of things in a public space, thereby constructing a ‘social identity’. The problem here is that my social identity is dependent upon things outside of myself – it is thus contingent and fragile – and open to the possibility of being destroyed unless I can maintain the continued consumption of those things which ‘I’ deam to be significant. This notion of ‘self identity through conspicuous consumption’ is characterised by a profound sense of unfreedom –because it locks ‘me’ into a cycle of continuous consumption in order to maintain myself. Put another way, identity construction through conspicuous consumption is identity consumption through attachment, which stands in contrasts to the Buddhist notion of seeking happiness through non attachment.

To make matters worse, we fail to see that this ritual of consumption is characterised by ‘unfreedom’ because, in our collective ignorance, we have come to define ‘freedom’ as the ‘freedom to pick and choose a selection of objects in process of identity construction’ – rather than defining freedom as ‘freedom from contingent identity construction through conspicuous consumption’.

A third and, for now final, problem with conspicuous consumption is that it demands attention from others and thus distracts us from the mundanities of daily life.

Think about it – there is an assumption behind the act of conspicuous consumption that other people should pay attention to ‘my social self’ – which in turn means their making the effort to understand the subtle meanings that I give to the products and services which I consume.  

It is usually expected, for example, that people at least acknowledge new items of clothing, or a new haircut, or that ‘I’ve been on another holiday’ – and the closer my relationship to another person – the more attention they are expected to pay to my consumption choices.

The assumption that the fictitious self I have constructed is important enough to warrant input from other people really is the height of selfish arrogance – not only do I distract myself with consideration of how ‘I’ appear to others, but I also expect others to recognise and thereby assist in the perpetuation of this fictitious and insubstantial self-identity. Ultimately, this works to distract the attention of others away from ‘whatever they may be doing’ – away from the calm, meditative practices of daily life that are crucial to developing the kind of sustained concentration necessary for realising true peace of mind.

Of course the conspicuous consumption does not make it impossible for individuals to lead a Buddhist inspired lifestyle in some respects, but its very logic is so antithetical to Buddhist Ontology and the potential to discourage Buddhist ethical practice so huge, that if anyone wants to achieve real happiness, rooted in truth, it is probably best to avoid it altogether.

So to conclude, if you want to develop lasting, stable happiness, or more accurately peace of mind, that is non-contingent, and based on the ‘truth of self’, and if you wish to contribute to the construction of a society which allows others the freedom to do likewise, then don’t waste your time on constructing a fake and insubstantial social identity through conspicuous consumption.

So what – you may ask – is the alternative? Well, for a start, you could just sit there!