2012 April » Secular Buddhism UK

In search of contentment Nina Pope

Apr 292012

I have been pondering on what to write about for some time – keep changing my mind in response to what I read on the site – and to what is happening in my life. For me Buddhist ideas are useful/interesting in so far as I can apply them in my often erratic quest to become more content, to be able to see things in perspective, to be calmer, kinder, wiser, less self-preoccupied.

I have been reflecting on the value of contentment, about contentment as a virtue, about the ‘usefulness’ of soothing the restless mind. The mind that is never satisfied, always demanding that things be different; that my body stop aging, that others agree with me, that I hadn’t said xyz…, that my work be better paid and more engaging, that my big black shaggy dog stop his ear-splitting head-exploding barking every time someone comes to the door (which is happening a lot given the local election next week).

Buddhist thought has many helpful things to say about this, for instance linking contentment with our capacity to see things ‘as they are’ with some equanimity i.e. largely beyond our control, uncertain, unreliable and with the potential to cause pain This recognition can help; I often find it liberating as long as I’m not in the midst of an immediate crisis – or feeling truly harried, although even then, pausing to acknowledge that what is happening, is just an aspect of the whole range of painful things that happen to human beings, can help. Mostly what seems to help is cultivating some kindness towards my experience; honouring my distress rather than judging myself, as I am prone to do, for not being able to manage my emotional life any better (especially after years of practice!)

I like the connection made in Buddhist thought between contentment and virtuous action; if we can ease our instinctive reactions, our demands, fears and aversions, our perceptions are less likely to be so biased and we are more likely to be able to greet our inner – and outer – experience with generosity and equanimity. In ‘The Compassionate Mind’, Professor Paul Gilbert suggests that although humans have evolved a powerful potential for love, altruism and compassion (based on the need to protect offspring) and that our brains are consequently attuned to the needs of others, threats to ourselves or those we love can easily trigger fear, sadness, despair frustration, rage and violence, making a compassionate response less accessible. His research interests lie in seeing how Buddhist practices can help to soothe our ‘threat/self-protection’ and ‘incentive/resource seeking’ systems and to ‘develop contentment and well-being’ by ‘fostering compassion and kindness in ourselves and for others’.

In the (slightly amended) words of the Sedaka Sutta (The Bamboo Acrobat)

Looking after oneself, one looks after others.

Looking after others, one looks after oneself

And how does one look after others by looking after oneself?

Through pursuing the practice of mindfulness, through devoting oneself to it

And how does one look after oneself by looking after others?

Through patience, through harmlessness, through a mind of kindness and sympathy

Thus looking after oneself, one looks after others;

and looking after others, one looks after oneself

Podcaste: Cheri Maples – The Center for Mindfulness and Justice

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Apr 292012

Now available on our partner site, Secular Buddhist Association.

Click here and listen in.

Meditation teacher and police officer Cheri Maples speaks with us today about The Center for Mindfulness and Justice.

Ever been pulled over by a cop? Even off duty police officers who get pulled over have said they experience the same tension as everyone else when that happens. We’re nervous, even if we’ve done nothing wrong, and we all have preconceived notions, often about people — like police. Our minds expect the world to match these templates we have, and they often do. But our practice is also about closer examination, about sincerely and openly investigating our mental formations and gaining insight about them. There are, for example, top cops who are also top meditation teachers and advocates.

Words of Inspiration 13

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Apr 292012

If someone asks

My abode

I reply:

“The east edge of

The Milky Way.”

Like a drifting cloud,

Bound by nothing:

I just let go

Give myself up

To the whim of the wind.

Zen Poet Ryokan (1775 – 1831)

Source: Stevens J., (Trans), Dewdrops on a Loyus Leaf, 1993, Shambala

Words of Inspiration 12

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Apr 222012

Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;

A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream.

(from the Diamond Sutra, translated by A. F. Price)

Source: Kornfield, J., Teachings of the Buddha, 1993, Shambhala.

Eric Weiner, Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine

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Apr 222012

This Podcaste is now available on our partner site Secular Buddhist Association. Click here and listen in.

In some way or other, we’ve all been seekers. Even if we’ve found that which satisfies us and fulfills us, getting there may have taken some experimentation. I suspect it’s fairly uncommon for someone to alway be satisfied from the moment of birth!

This challenge of finding fulfillment is complicated when one is riding the edge of being a skeptic, but maintaining an openness to being spiritual. We may or may not mean spirituality in a supernatural sense, we may take it to be a perfectly natural way of living. But the endless choices remain. Do we join the local church because it’s convenient, or because we deeply and truly believe in what is being said? Do we find our fulfillment comes from learning about science, or from joining a cult? Or do we simply donate our time at a homeless shelter?

These questions are often background noise that we don’t really face directly. Even as meditators, though we may be looking moment by moment at physicality, our responses to stimulus, our perceptions, our thoughts, we may not be looking too closely at the context in which we do that examination. Does this teacher or center have a hard line about rebirth? Do I? And sometimes it takes a specific event in our lives to prompt us to take that ten-thousand foot view.

Meditation in Everyday Life 1 – Anantacitta

Practice No Responses »

Apr 162012

I have to admit from time to time I struggle to keep up a meditation practice. For me it helps immensely to be part of a meditation community. It occurred to me that there may be others out there who feel the same way. Although we are all located in different parts of the world I wondered if we could have a web based meditation community. I would like to suggest that it may be useful to have a weekly theme running through the meditation sessions so I propose using Jon Kabat-Zinn’s “Letting Everything become your Teacher; 100 Lessons in Mindfulness” as a way of doing this. His opening remarks for me are quite pertinent.

Self-Motivation 1

In order for meditation practice to take root in your life and flourish, you will have to know why you are practicing. How else will you be able to sustain non-doing in a world where only doing seems to count? What will get you up early in the morning to sit and follow your breathing when everybody else is snug in bed? What will motivate you to practice when the wheels of the doing world are turning, your obligations and responsibilities are beckoning, and a part of you decides or remembers to take some time for “just being”? What will motivate you to bring moment-to-moment awareness into your daily life? What will prevent your practice from losing energy and becoming stale or from petering out altogether after an initial burst of enthusiasm?

Source Kabat-Zinn J., Letting Everything become your Teacher; 100 Lessons in Mindfulness, 2009, Delta

It would be great if some of you would take part and we could have a discussing no how we are getting on with our meditation using the forum. I would be interested in any comments. Click here please to follow the link, then click ‘Practice’ .

On the definition of Secular Buddhism – Andrew Kennedy

Secular Buddhism 35 Responses »

Apr 122012

It is good that the Guiding Principles of Secular Buddhism remain open to amendment. There have been so many attempts to circumscribe what is and is not Buddhism that it is refreshing to find such principles described as ‘suggestions’, ‘not a perfect description’, and a ‘starting point…to be developed’. In this spirit, I suggest some amendments to the initial, brief definition. Even if not acceptable, my attempt could be thought of as a ‘guest’ version, to provoke discussion.

Rather than:

Secular Buddhism is concerned with the practice of Siddhattha Gotama’s four noble truths in this world. It encourages a naturalistic and pragmatic approach to the teaching, seeking to provide a framework for personal and social development within the cultural context of our time.

I suggest:

Secular Buddhism is committed to practice in the tradition of Siddhattha Gotama, while encouraging pragmatic, naturalistic and imaginative approaches to the teaching, and providing a framework for personal, social, cultural and ecological development within the context of our time.

1) It is worth continuing the search for the most effective ‘joining’ words, even though they are not of prime significance to the overall meaning.

2) Brief definitions are best restricted to a single sentence.

3) ‘…committed to…’ is more positive than ‘…concerned with…’ and suggests the possibility, although not the necessity, of some kind of formal commitment to Secular Buddhism, should an organisational structure eventually emerge.

4) Some (but not all) of the force of ‘…in this world…’ is included in ‘naturalistic’. Addition of ‘imaginative’ allows for the function of veridical fictions: those parts of Buddhist teaching, such as the Jatakas or the Mahayana/Vajrayana pantheon, which may not be entirely true from the perspective of naturalism, but which may be a beneficial part of practice as skilful means.

5) Ian Harris argues cogently that, on balance, Buddhism was not particularly concerned with environmentalism until the modern era [1]. The addition of ‘ecological’ to the definition makes it clear that this issue is now of particular concern to contemporary Buddhists. There could be an additional mention in the Guiding Principles that follow the definition.

6) ‘Cultural’ is moved to a position that enables it to carry the implication that Secular Buddhism can alter the cultural context, not just operate within cultural constraints.

7) There is no mention of the four noble truths in my suggested version. In her study of the Atthakavagga of the Sutta-nipata, Grace Burford argues that there were two different approaches to practice in the very early Buddhist tradition: according to ‘right view’ and according to ‘no-view’. She suggests that a path of practice could include both approaches, but that practice according to a right view (for our purposes the example is the four noble truths) is subsidiary to practice according to no doctrinal formula whatsoever. It is on this basis that I suggest that the four noble truths are not included in the brief definition, although they should be included in the guiding principles that follow. There has been plenty of argument about the right view/no-view distinction, along the lines that practising a view is not the same as holding a view; I doubt if that position is philosophically coherent. Sadly, Burford’s book is out of print, with few used copies on the market, but her thesis is worthy of attention by Secular Buddhists, not least because of her finding that the highest ideal of early Buddhist practice was the perfection of ‘virtue-wisdom-compassion’ in this very life, not ‘escape from continued existence’ [2].

[1] Harris, I. C., 2000, ‘Buddhism and Ecology’, Contemporary Buddhist Ethics, (Richmond, Curzon).

[2] Burford’s argument has been critiqued by Fenn and by Fuller. Vetter and Gomez also discuss the Atthakavagga.

Burford, G., 1991, Desire, Death, and Goodness: The Conflict of Ultimate Values in Theravada Buddhism, (New York, Peter Lang).

Fenn, M., 1996, ‘Review: Ultimate Values in Therav?da’, Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 3, pp. 80-84.

Fuller, P., 2005, The Notion of Ditthi in Therav?da Buddhism, (London, Routledge Curzon).

Gomez, L.O., 1976, ‘Proto-Madhyamaka in the Pali Canon’, Philosophy East and West, 26 (2), pp. 137-165.

Vetter, T., 1988, The Ideas and Meditative Practices of Early Buddhism, (Leiden: Brill), pp.101-106.

Secular Practice -Tony Reardon

Secular Buddhism 28 Responses »

Apr 062012

I’d like hear about what others are doing; what’s usually referred to as practice. I love what Stephen B. said about it being a way of life, not just meditation -where meditation invariably means sitting meditation, i think.

I’t’s been really liberating for me to understand that what i’d been calling meditation are in fact meditation techniques. Eyes closed, body still, following the breath arethree examples that could be contrasted with three others; awareness on the soles of the feet, walking, eyes open. Nothing in list one that’s in list two but both are meditation.

Here’s a quote from Jack Kornfield’s book “living Dharma” that sums up practice for me and might be a basis for discussion.

“The non-intensive approach stresses practice which fits into daily life to help develop wisdom in normal activities at a natural pace. It emphasizes that meditation is practicing a way of being and does not require an intensive, isolated setting. The non-intensive approach allows for gradual deepening of wisdom through daily sitting and natural mindfulness. It is a path without flashy insights and extremes of bliss and high concentration. This can be a difficult path to follow without supplementary intensive practice. Because insight grows slowly we may get discouraged. It is hard to maintain awareness in the midst of a busy life. At times our desire, boredom and day to-day-pain make it hard to continue practice. The tranquility and highs of strong concentration are slow in coming. But the non-intensive approach has great strengths. Wisdom developed is lasting and strong. Attachment to highs and bliss or excessive concentration is avoided. And sincethere is nothing to gain and no time but right now, daily moment to moment practice is where it all leads.” [my italics]

Perhaps interested people could saying something about what they’re after, why they practice, as well as how. Though a lot of things helped i think i was still an essentially unhappy person until i began to practice dhamma in the way Jack talks of -which i actually got from Sayadaw U tejaniya’s ideas.

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