Community and The Religious Life

So welcome. The last talk I gave on the theme of community was about 2 years ago, just before we moved in to here, and it was really focused around some practical advice that the Buddha gave to people to live well in their own communities. Various things like make sure that you tend to your local shrines, whatever the local practices. Be respectful of that as well as doing your own Buddhist practice, various different things. Whereas today I wanted to be more interested in the relationship between the spiritual experience or the religious life, the inner life if you like, and how that manifests in community, how that affects community, what relationship they all have to each other. I wanted to start with a quote from D.T. Suzuki, who is known for bringing Zen Buddhism to the West, although he also wrote about Pure Land Buddhism. So in one of his essays, and I can't remember which one I'm afraid, he says, "What all schools of Mahayana try to do is live this life of karma and relativity and yet to live at the same time a life of transcendence, a life of spiritual freedom, a life not tied down to the chain of causation. Immanence is only conceivable only with transcendence, and transcendence only with immanence. When one is made to mean anything without the other, neither becomes intelligible. I don't want to unpack that right now, but maybe we'll come back to it later on. But it sort of frames the whole ideas that I have about this. So first of all, what do I mean when I say spiritual experience, or the religious life, or religious experience? As Pure Land Buddhists, we conceive of ourselves as foolish beings, and we put ourselves in relationship with a Buddha called Amida Buddha. In Sanskrit, Amida Buddha's name is Amitābha and Amitāyas, which means infinite life and infinite light. So light is to do with space. There's a sense of energy that pervades all space, is infinite. Light, and life is to do with time. So the infinite life is that it pervades the whole of time as well. So there is an energy that we can tune into that pervades all of space and all of time, and this energy is compassionate. Amida Buddha is the Buddha of acceptance, of compassion, as well as being very wise in the way that all Buddhas Ah, so for Pure Land Buddhists, this energy is personified in the shape of a red-gold Buddha that we put ourselves in relationship to by chanting his name and various other practices. Other Buddhist traditions, other religious traditions, will talk about the experience of the transcendent using different terms. We went to a talk by Tenzin Palmo yesterday evening, and one of the questions at the end was, "Do you believe in God?" And she said she believes in light and intelligence and love, but essentially, like nirvana, God is something that whenever you say something about it, you're inevitably going to miss the mark. And she said the same thing is true of nirvana. As soon as you put it into language, you're already missing the mark. And the early Buddhist schools used a lot of negation, so they said, "Nirvana isn't like this. It's not conceptual thinking. It's not the selfish mind. It's not dividing things up into good and bad." Whereas later Buddhists used more positive language, and they created images like the Pure Land full of jeweled trees, or Buddhas that emit great lights as a more— well, as a way of trying to express some of the same thing but in a positive way rather than a negative way. So saying it's a bit like this: if you imagine being in this beautiful paradise where the birds are singing, and every time you hear the birds sing, another bit of insight appears to you, you feel loved by this light that bathes you completely. That's the Pure Land way of describing the religious experience. In this ordinary life that we have, we're not always lucky enough to feel bathed in the light in a felt sense, um, all the time, or even any of the time. But occasionally we do get a glimpse of that light, either spontaneously or in our meditation practice. And some people in ancient times did see visions of places, or they did experience visions of the Buddha. They probably had practices where they visualized the Buddha in great detail. And the more you do that, um, sometimes the vision sort of comes to life of its own accord, as if it's motivated by a spirit that's not of your own creation. Your conscious mind hasn't created it. And the vision, it becomes awake in a way that you can't possibly have conjured up through, first of all, imagine this, then imagine this, then imagine this. Becomes filled by that light. And so some people have that kind of spiritual experience. For some people, um, They don't necessarily see or hear those really fantastic things. They maybe just have a real sense of being grounded or being suddenly being intimate with everything in the room, because the self, the selfish mind, drops away, and then everything else is crystal clear. It's really present. It's, uh, Dogen said, every being covers the ground it stands on completely. And partly what he meant by that was, sort of, "Boom! Here it is. Boom! Here it is." There's nothing from your own mind that gets in the way, and you're able to see each thing existing. We're going to let in another— I'm just saying this for the benefit of the recording— we're letting in another living being now. So when we were at the talk yesterday evening with Jetsun Tenzin Palmo, I did get a real sense of her clarity, which actually inspired a sense of clarity in me. She was somebody who seemed really present. Um, you could tell. It's sort of a bit silly to say she was realer than real, but that was the sense of her that I had in that room. But of course, everybody is realer than real when we see them through the eyes of the Buddha. Everybody is completely taking up the space that they're in. Just usually we don't see that because we're completely lost in our own worlds, our own biases, our own beliefs. So transcendence can't really be spoken about because every time you miss the mark, but it's something in that area. It's about coming in into a closer contact with reality, but in the external world, but also as the self drops away, or as you feel touched by the Buddha, um, a great sense of kindness that isn't to do with trying to get something for oneself. It's simply just loving everything you encounter. I think it was— there's a poet, Milosz, maybe, who says love is to see. I can't remember exactly how he puts it. Love is to see things as if you're looking at distant things. That's not the best translation, but it's almost like everything is in its place. No one thing draws you in completely. You're just able to love each thing as it appears and let it go. As it disappears, and occasionally we might find ourselves inhabiting those mental states. For a Pure Land Buddhist, I suppose what's important is to know that that's possible, and to know that that energy is there, that reality is there, and loving-kindness is there, that Amida Buddha is there, we would say. Whether we are feeling it in that way, whether we're having a spiritual experience or not. And it's also worth saying that not everybody has this kind of great third eye opening experience, as it's sometimes the dharma eye opening, as it's sometimes talked about in the text. You may not notice it at all, actually. It may be that you just turn around one day and go, oh, I'm living my life in a completely different way to the way that I used to live it, so something has been working on me. I've been touched by something. I guess that brings me to the connection between the karmic life, the lived life, how we are in this world, and that thread of light that connects us to the Buddha. It's possible to think there's no connection between these two things, because some individuals have these kinds of opening experiences arise spontaneously, and they go back into their life and nothing changes. Because they're surrounded by the same conditions, they behave in the same way. Sometimes you might have an experience of being close to the Buddha or seeing reality a little bit clearer to how it really is, and then go and be worse in your ordinary life. Um, maybe you become grandiose, or you believe that you're the chosen one. You know, there's something, uh, So it's possible to think of them as completely separate dimensions. And John Welwood talks about the vertical axis, or the vertical dimension, like being our connection to, we would say, the Pure Land spirituality, Buddha nature, whatever, and the horizontal connection, relationships with other people, with the world, with the environment, and that we need to cultivate both of those separately. Magic. And there's some truth in that, and there is a value in cultivating your relationships without thinking about the spiritual life. But I think they are connected. So I've outlined a bit about the religious life. Let me talk a little bit about some of, uh, how Buddhists live in community or create communities, and then we'll see how they join together. So the earliest Buddhist community was formed by the disciples of the Buddha, monks and nuns who gathered around him, and by lay people who lived their lives but would occasionally come and visit the Buddha, or would be visited by the Buddha. So the core of the community were the monastics, who would occasionally gather together in large or small groups, particularly during the rainy season, and would occasionally go traveling in twos or threes or fours from place to place. Over the lifetime of that community, and over the Buddha's lifetime, they developed a code of ethics called the Vinaya, the precepts for the monks and the nuns. And this really describes the life of the community, and it's really interesting to go and read the Vinaya, not Occasionally you just see lists of the precepts, but if you read the full Vinaya, it also gives some of the background information onto where the stories went, where the stories— it gives some stories as to where the precepts come from. Sorry, I'm laughing because the only one I can think of that's coming to my mind is quite an explicit, sexually explicit one. A lot of the the Vinaya is about things that you can't do sexually, or you shouldn't do. I mean, it's a celibate community, so it makes sense. But of course, the reason for these rules being in place is because people were doing these things. Occasionally a nun would get pregnant. Sometimes a monk would go home and make his ex-wife pregnant because the family was demanding an heir, and he thought, "Well, it's okay, I'll just go and then I'll come back to the community afterwards," without really thinking about taking any responsibility for those actions. So all those sorts of stories are in the Vinaya, but essentially there's three, there seemed to be three kinds of precept when I was reading it. The first is to help you in your personal practice. So the real core ethical ones: right speech, not killing, and not stealing, which also have other implications, but they're really about containing selfish impulses and encouraging altruistic impulses, about creating, yeah, creating a container or a scaffolding for your own personal spiritual life. Then there's the precepts that are about holding the Sangha, the Buddhist community, together. Some of the ones about sexuality, other ones about if somebody gives you a spare robe, how long you're allowed to keep it for before— like, how long you're allowed to have two robes for. You know, you have to make sure that you give your first one away within 3 months. And similarly with alms bowls, how high your seat should be, things like this that were obviously the causes of some strife, and had to, at some point, somebody just had to say, "Well, look, to save all this bickering about who's got the nicest bowl, you can each just have one, and it has to be this, you know, like this and this." And then there's other precepts which are about the relationship between the Buddhist Sangha and the wider community. For example, there's a precept about not digging. If you're a Buddhist monk or nun, you're not allowed to dig into the earth. And it's thought that the reason for this is probably because the Jain community, which was flourishing at the same time, didn't like people digging into the earth because they were really careful about not killing sentient beings, including earthworms and beetles and bugs and so on. Now, from the Buddhist point of view, it's intentional killing that creates karma, because that's what's— that's what leaves a stain in the mind. And so when one of the disciples said to the Buddha, what if a blind man was walking across the road and he treads on a snail, is he going to accrue some karma. And the Buddha said no, because he doesn't know the snail's there. He's walking in good faith. Whereas if you see the snail— maybe it wasn't a snail in the story— but if you see the snail and you then you go, oh, I don't like snails, crunch crunch crunch, that leaves a stain in the mind. So it's about acting with good faith. Um, whereas from the Jain point of view, my understanding is that actually it's the act of killing the rather than the intention that creates the karma. And it seems like this not digging into the earth was done as a sort of a gesture of goodwill to the Jain community. In the same way, not cutting down trees— um, the story that goes along with the precept around not cutting down trees is that a tree deva There's a sort of Western word for tree devas, but it's gone from my head. Anyway, a spirit that inhabited the tree came to the Buddha and complained and said, 'Look, so-and-so has chopped down my tree. Where am I going to live now?' Now, if you believe in tree devas, you can just take that as read that it was actually about protecting the tree devas, but If you don't believe in Tree Divers, then you might think that again it's about being respectful to another religious community that you're coexisting with. There's local people who believe that some trees are sacred. Don't cut those trees down, you know, have some respect for the practices of other religions. So there's these three sorts of rules, uh, and if we look at modern Buddhist communities, our precepts, you probably find similar patterns. So we have precepts to guide us personally, we have precepts about maintaining harmony in the community, not criticizing somebody without their knowledge, for example, not criticizing another order member in front of non-order members, things like that. And then there's also One's about how we engage with the wider community, how we maintain our reputation almost, which you might think is a secondary concern, but actually having good relationships with your neighbors is, um, that's a pretty good thing to aspire to. From a Pure Land Buddhist point of view, these precepts, you could say they describe how a Buddha would behave in any given situation, how an enlightened being would be when he's presented with this situation. Scenario, he doesn't chop down the tree that has the deva living in it. So there's something that to aspire to, but there's something that describes the ideal, not necessarily something that it's possible for us as non-Buddhas to inhabit. However, when we put ourselves in relationship to these precepts and these structures they can act as a mirror to us. If we do find ourselves digging into the earth, um, where the Janes are practicing, or cutting down the Davis tree, or whatever it is, criticizing somebody, what that points to in our own practice is a weakness. And we could say it's— Dharma Vidya talks about it as being a failure of Faith. So generally, any time that we break a precept, it comes from a fear that we have. It comes from self-protection, protection. It comes from trying to maintain our comfort zone. Um, and we only try and maintain our comfort zone, we're only self-protective because we're afraid of what happens when the ego relaxes. We don't know if we're going to be safe or not. If we trust that we're going to be safe when the ego relaxes, um, that's having faith. So you can imagine the body is like a hollow container that can either be completely full of faith, or it can be partly full of faith. And some— sometimes there's blockages in different places depending on our particular karmic histories, our particular experiences in this life or in past lives. So every time we break a precept, there's an opportunity, and there's an opportunity for two things really. There's a training opportunity. So, oh, this is how my faith has failed in this area. So I can either just experiment with keeping the precept and going out of my comfort zone and see what happens, and maybe I'll discover that I'm okay actually when I refrain from criticizing somebody. Maybe I'm still— maybe I don't need to gossip to be accepted by the group, and I discover that if I don't gossip the world doesn't end and I'm still accepted in the group. More importantly, from a Pure Land Buddhist point of view, is the act of remembering that even as you break this precept, that light, that infinite light that goes through space space and time is still present. Reality is still the same as it was when you were keeping the precepts. Everybody is still boom, boom, boom inhabiting their own spaces. Everybody is still lit up by the Buddha's love. Just because we happen to be afraid in that moment and forget that that is the nature of reality and become self-protective, it doesn't alter the nature of reality. It doesn't change the fact that the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are there, that we're being blessed, or that reality has this transcendental quality, whatever words you want to put around it, that nirvana is present as well as samsara. And this is very liberating, and this is— the Pure Land Path is about this moment, really, about this sense of, oh, actually even when I'm breaking the precept, this light is still present. I'm still being lit up in the way that other beings are being lit up. I'm still being received by nirvana, even if I'm withholding myself from nirvana. It doesn't change the nature of nirvana. And paradoxically, it In that moment, there's a relaxation. Faith increases. So the failure can produce an increase in trust. We don't need always to push ourselves through the, "Oh, come on, I'm really going to keep this precept." Actually, sometimes it's when we really deeply understand that we don't keep the precept, and yet, nirvana is still present. Liberation occurs. So the spiritual life can feed into community life in this way. Our personal practice of remembering nirvana, remembering the Buddhas, remembering this light, particularly in moments of difficulty, actually begins to smooth the way and allow us to go outside of our comfort zone, allow us to relax, allow us to be a little bit easier with the people around us. And if we were all enlightened, what a wonderful community we would have, and we'd never need to worry about our comfort zones because we wouldn't, you know, everything would be our comfort zone. But the reality is We do have comfort zones. We do have people that push our buttons sometimes. We do have situations that create defensive feelings in us at times, where you just want to close the door and not visit the world. That's how it is to be human. So given that that's how it is to be human, when we create a community Ideally, we put structures in place that acknowledge the human condition and that acknowledge the possibility for liberation. So, for example, one of the things we do in this community is we extend an invitation for people to come to events, but we don't twist their arm to come. Opportunity events, because sometimes being pushed into something actually makes you dig your heels in more. And yes, that's an opportunity to remember the Buddha and deepen your practice, but sometimes we don't do that. Sometimes we just get fed up and, and it makes things worse. In 2006, I moved into a full-time Buddhist training community, and I stayed there until 2010. We ate every meal together. We had stone passing once or twice a week, a listening circle where we'd speak from the heart. And listen deeply to each other. We had Buddhist practice every morning and most evenings, and in the autumn, at lunchtime, we'd have Buddhist practice as well. We'd often work together. We had a shared economy within the training community, and we had training meetings where we would examine our own nature, and we'd ask ourselves, what could— how could I 'do this differently, what happened.' Now, my initial experience of that Training Community actually was that I was slightly guarded a lot of the time because, actually, well, I was before I went into the Training Community, so it wasn't going to be any different. But because I was continually being exposed to my own failings, really. People would push my buttons and I wouldn't know what to do about it. I'd stew on things. Yeah, so it left me, you know, a bit feeling slightly anxious sometimes. Now, that wasn't my only experience of that community. If it had been, I wouldn't have stayed there. But it was— it did take me to the edge of my comfort zone. If there's too much of that, people don't stay, and people did leave that community. People have left this community, you know. There's— there's— you can't create a community that everybody will feel comfortable in because some people come with karma that just won't fit your particular structures. So partly out of that experience, we only eat together once a week now. The intensity of this community is diluted. It's not a full-time training community in the way that the previous community I was in. And hopefully that gives people a little bit of space themselves to come in and to come out and to, to choose their own distance, uh, to their comfort zone, to the things that they find challenging. Now, that previous community was also embodying the religious life in the way that this one does. Um, it had at its core remembering the transcendental remembering the things that I've just talked about, those experiences, the Buddhas and so on. And that showed in the community. Although I was at my comfort zone, there were very loving people around me. There were people who accepted me just as I was. There was a great deal of goodwill in the community, um, and that's what allowed me to stay, actually, that despite Despite myself, I was still accepted. Despite my occasional passive-aggressive behavior or stewing on things, um, you know, I had very joyful moments as well. I don't want to give a one-sided picture, but for the point of the talk, you know, it was hard sometimes. I was probably challenging to other people sometimes, but there was something about the goodwill of the community, the loving kindness of the individuals of the community, or the loving kindness of the group, which was bigger than the individuals, of course, because everybody else was having their own process. But because they were remembering nirvana, they were remembering the Buddhas, we were in this process of coming up against ourselves, and then remembering nirvana and having that sense of relaxation and being able to come back and relate to each other more intimately, be able to follow the precepts more easily because we were less afraid. And even though I was at the edge of my comfort zone for a great deal of time in that community— I mean, it's a training, it was a training center, that's part of the intention. By the end of those 4 years, I was much less afraid than I had been at the beginning of those 4 years. At the beginning, I might have had a comfort zone of this size. I would do— maybe I would have so many activities, and then I'd feel like, oh, that's too much, I need to create some space in the day, just because I 'These things are really frightening.' At the end of the 4 years, I still had that experience of going, 'Oh gosh, I've got— I feel like my plate is really full,' except rather than having a small, like, side plate, I'd got a huge dinner plate of things that I was doing. So the proof of the experience was in the activity in the world. Yes, so there's specific advice that the Buddha gave to people in their personal practice. And advice with how to live to others, and advice to how to live in community. And that's all really good stuff, but it's sort of, um, it's what I think of as a top-down system. If I put these things in place, then I will get this kind of result. And sometimes there's a benefit in that, but sometimes we just end up tying ourselves in knots because we can't really put it into place because actually we're afraid or insecure, our karma is too heavy, and then it doesn't work and we feel bad about it and we then we just give up on the whole project. Whereas if you understand that those guidelines are the description of the natural outflowing of somebody who is at ease with themselves, somebody who trusts that they're accepted just as they are. Somebody who has a sense of nirvana being present, not necessarily a felt sense, but, um, we know that it's there, therefore it's easier, therefore naturally we behave in ways that are loving and kind because we don't need to protect ourselves. If you think of them as gifts in that way, then the core practice becomes one of remembering spiritual experience of remembering nirvana, of remembering the Buddhas, and going back to that is what transforms this and gives rise to these other behaviors, positive behaviors. But there is a benefit in having those top-down teachings because one, we don't necessarily know from an enlightened position what an enlightened person looks like. So it's quite helpful to have, this is the way the Buddha behaves, he follows these precepts, he's like this in this situation, because it gives us some sense of, oh yeah, now I'm doing those things more naturally, that's a good thing. Or if I find myself doing other things, unskillful things, I can sort of check against these teachings or against these descriptions of the Buddha, and go, oh, there's something going a bit wrong.

Here.

I guess the other thing about community that I haven't mentioned is, is that there's perhaps a value in those kind of things simply because we are unenlightened, and sometimes it's helpful to set boundaries that we do follow consciously, not only for our for our own sake, for our own practice's sake, but for the sake of harmony in the community, or for perhaps even for ethical reasons that we don't necessarily know about, but we accept that this is how this community does things. Um, So it might be that when you live on your own, you— like, we're lucky enough to have our own flat with its kitchenette downstairs. So if we don't do the washing up after dinner, the only person it affects is ourselves. Whereas in the residence community up here, it's a shared kitchen. If they don't do the washing up, if they don't clear up after themselves that affects the whole community. So the rule is that you clean up after yourself and you clear the, you know, you clear the draining board away and you put everything away so that when the next person comes in to use the kitchen, they have a good experience. It doesn't really matter whether you feel like doing it or not, it's just how this community does things. Now, my sense is actually the more that you put yourself, the more that you do that eventually you're going to see the benefits of it, that other people appreciate it, and you just get a sort of sense of satisfaction from doing it that way. So it sort of beds in and becomes natural. But even if it doesn't, you do it to protect the harmony of the community. And I guess that's the same in a sense. There's, there's a few rules or ways of doing things that you just have to sort of do them that way, um, for the sake of the community, regardless of whether you feel like it or not. So what's the— the one thing that I haven't talked about that I'll touch on just before I finish and open up some questions is what's the point of community? Well, from a sort of ordinary society, or a selfish society point of view, you might say that, um, communities are formed when they serve all of the individuals the best, and they break apart, um, when they cease to do that. That's a sort of social Darwinist model, and success in those terms is, um, getting as much as you need to survive and reproduce and so on. And in those terms, we can see, uh, generally in society, when there's an abundance of wealth, of food, of crops, and there tends to be more cooperation. When there is a scarcity of crops and of wealth, there tends to be more competition. That's the animal mind way of creating communities. When it's in our own personal best interest, we'll do it, but when it's in our own personal best interest not to do it, we'll keep all the good stuff for ourselves. The point of view of a religious community is that it comes out of that experience of grace, out of that experience of the transcendental, from a deep-seated faith that reality, you know, there is something more going on than just the survival of the fittest. And that if we play the game of the survival of the fittest, actually, if we're only playing that game, it tends to lead to more suffering. Selfishness leads to suffering. You can see that at work in a minute way in your own life, and if you look into society, you can see that's what happens in society as well. The point of view of a religious community is, um, often we join religious communities because we do want better things for ourselves, like, um, Tenzin Palmo was saying yesterday, you start meditating because you want to feel better in this lifetime, in the future. And then maybe at some point you think, oh, this is nice, I'd like other people to feel better in this lifetime and future lifetimes as well. But the deep meaning of a spiritual community is that you want people to be free from that kind of suffering completely. Or from a Buddhist, pure land Buddhist point of view, the deeper your own faith is, the more at ease you will be in your own skin, the more free from, uh, suffering you will be in this kind of the suffering that the ego creates. Because it's okay just to relax the ego, it's okay to relax selfishness. As that relaxes um, naturally you want that for others. So the religious community comes together to increase the faith of its members and also to perhaps increase the faith of the people who come into contact with it as well. And this isn't a sort of This isn't something that's intellectual, it's something that comes out of the heart experience of our teachers, and that the more we spent— time we spent in these communities seeps into our own hearts as well. So I think I'll pause there. Thank you very much. Namomi tabu. And I'm happy to take any questions or comments if there are any. Excuse me.

Yes, depth of faith. It is very It's really hard to imagine, well for me anyway, and I say it but I think if I'm honest I don't really mean it. Because you say it's the Mahayana tradition really of I'm doing this for the good of everyone else and I'm only in enlightenment when everyone else is enlightened. But I must admit I just want to help a few people that I meet every day and my family. But I must admit It's a big, big leap to think that I want to help everyone, if I'm honest, because I just don't have positive thoughts about certain, certain peoples or people. And it's just quite a big jump, isn't it, really?

Oh yeah, it's a huge factor, mate.

Every person in the world, you think, my God, and every animal.

But what, you know, as I was saying— sorry, go on, finish.

That you might have faith in something, see how poorly you're matching up to the ideal, but is that truly a reflection of lack of faith?

Yes.

Yeah, just is. Yeah.

Well, in this— yeah, in this model it is. Yeah, because my understanding and my experience is that the I mean, there's really— there's two. In Japanese, they often talk about different kinds of faith. So Shinjin is the awakening of faith. That's the opening of the heart to receive the light. And from that moment, your rebirth in the Pure Land is assured. Your own liberation is assured. It doesn't matter what you do after that. You can't destroy it. Yeah, it's unconditional. Um, once you place your trust in Nirvana, you'll be led to Nirvana at some point. In the Pure Land tradition, you know, classically, at the moment of death, Amida will come and greet you and take you to his Pure Land. Then you can learn all about being a good bodhisattva and come back and save everybody else. Yeah, but From that awakening of faith, um, you can then have a settled faith, which is where it doesn't waver, which is great. But also you can have a deepening experience of faith where it sort of filters through and slowly heals all of your neuroses. And when you're completely free of neuroses, then you want good things, you want to liberation for everybody. But you probably won't be completely free of your neuroses. That's how it is to be human. But what you can do in that moment is you cannot allow that recognition of, oh yeah, actually I'm not sure I want to meet so-and-so in the Pure Land. Um, if you can remember that, well, even though I think that the light of the Buddhas is indiscriminate. It is going to bring those people to liberation if faith awakens in their hearts. And that's a very humbling experience. And in that moment of humility, my guess is your faith deepens a little bit. And that isn't that deepening process isn't something you can rush, actually. And it, it increases the more you do bodhisattva work, the more you do good work in the world. Because through the act of engaging with people and being kind to people, you see yourself, you see the good and bad in yourself. And as you see that and then remember nirvana, the Buddhas, the Pure Land, um, those things become healed. So your deepening of faith, in this world at least, co-arises with your bodhisattva activity, with the awakening of faith in other people as they receive kindness from you.

It's still difficult though. My grandma always brought me to say, she said, "Do what's right, no matter what you think you want to do." So like a nerd, I think because I was a kid that tended to follow things, I thought I'll just do what's right. And then you build up a bit of resentment.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

But then you go beyond resentment. Like, I've brought up 3 kids with, with, with, you know, a wife and another partner and things, and you do what's right. And then you— I have a common experience, I often hear women say more than blokes, if I'm honest with you. I've got to that age where people say, 'What do you want to do today then, Robyn?' and I go, 'I've got no clue what I want to do, per se.' So you've almost gone past that resentment. You've just gone to this stage where you haven't got a clue what you want to do because you've just been doing it for family or doing the right thing because your gran brought you up to say, 'Do what's right because when you get older you won't regret it.' Because when you do get older, not at the time, you think, "Yeah, she was right really, mate." Mm, yeah.

Makes you feel better. Yeah, yeah, and that's what I was saying about the washing up really. There is the possibility that if you do keep clearing your own stuff away, eventually you go, "Oh yeah, this is why Casper said to do, to make sure my stuff's clear." It's not guaranteed, but we hope that that's what happens. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, it's hard.

Yeah, in your book, which is a lovely book, by the way. Have you read it?

It's fabulous.

It's quite— I don't mean this condescendingly— it's quite sweet as well as profound. It's just a really lovely, honest book. You talk about faking it. Yeah, sometimes it's sort of good to fake it, but I try— yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I think, you know, from the Buddhist point of view, it's the intention, isn't it, that is carried forward as much as the action. So we do have to mind our intentions, because that's what leaves a trace in the mind. And sometimes just the act of putting yourself in the situation and keep doing good— if you are doing good, you obviously have also got the intention to do good. And sometimes that's what flourishes, you know. That's the whole point of the Vinaya, really. Um, Sila, which is the Buddhist word that's usually translated as ethics, the word literally means restraint. It means not following those impulses to do harmful acts, and if you don't follow them, eventually they fade away. So that, yeah, there's certainly a valid— there's certainly a valid way forward.

Sure, so after the next thing. It's also good to be in a Buddhist community. There was one thing, aspect that I found on a personal level, because I'm a vegetarian, I've had the piss taken out of me all my life, you know. I ran the London Marathon tens and tens of years ago, and someone said to me at this business do, because I used to be a business development manager at one time as well, and they said, you're gonna have to start eating meat now, aren't you, you're gonna do the marathon and all this stuff. And of course what I'm getting at is at work, I'm this sort of, I suppose suppose slightly effeminate, sort of puffy kind of vegetarian. Rob's the vegetarian in there, you know. Then you come down, come to, um, Buddhist community and you're a bit coarser than that, you know, you're the, um, the coarse one then. Yeah, well, you know, so it's sort of good to sort of have that community.

Yeah, it's a great support. Yeah, people who, who think in similar ways to you do, who want to, who who are interested in liberation, yeah, it's really hard to do it on your own. It's much easier to do it with a community of people around you.

It's like with veganism, you say, "Oh, bloody, I'm a vegetarian, I'm going vegan," and someone says, "Oh, well, I'm not even a vegan, I don't even eat," you know.

I don't even eat, it's good though.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it makes our lives easier, you know, because we're immersed in that community, so actually and we don't have to worry so much about people cooking meat for us because most of the people we know don't eat meat, you know, on a basic level. It is easier with other people doing the same things.

Yeah, in a way that sort of comes back to your faith, doesn't it? Yeah, faith to stick by your own convictions. Yeah, I mean, I've been in similar situations as well where it's already you all by people because you want to do something slightly different. And it requires quite a bit of— it can be quite isolating and lonely, even though to all intents and purposes externally you're appearing as one of them, you go along with it. But a deep level, you're feeling quite hurt and isolated because you've— you're not doing the same as everybody else. So that sort of comes— it's like a test of faith in it.

Yeah, as well.

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

I think in, um, the Dhammapada, I think the Buddha says in one of the little readings that you just get— walk on your own if there aren't suitable people.

You go on alone, gravitate to the wise. So, yeah, you know, when you start to spend time with people who are practicing well, it just, um, you just feel, yeah, well, this is the right place to be. It's hard, it's hard to be Yeah, but you carry that out with you.

Yeah, but then I think also, then I would question— I can't— I haven't got the right to automatically reject them just because I think differently.

No, you know what I mean?

I don't mean— I don't mean literally, but you know, sort of to sort of— I try and coexist with people who think differently from me, and I can learn from them as well about my own own prejudices. Because like you were talking about the comfort zone where you were living, I think it's, it's, you know, you were saying about the divinity, losing that connection, remembering that the nirvana, is it, is still there. Well, I don't know about you, but sometimes I think it doesn't You move away from it for whatever reason, and you're saying it's still there. But what if you don't feel it's still there? I mean, your trust in the faith is to say it is still there. What if you don't feel it?

Well, it being there isn't dependent on whether you feel it or not.

Yeah, I know, but how can you progress if you can't feel it?

Well, you just, you know, if you trust that it's there whether you feel it or not, you will tend to behave in such a way as if it is there. You just sort of— it's not quite like faking it till you make it, but it is, it's a bit like that, as you go, well, if it was there, what would I do? Well, I'd do this, so I'll— I think it is there, so I'll do so and so. But yeah, it's hard in those moments. It can be hard in those moments. I think quite normal in my experience, of my own experience, and my experience of speaking to people on the spiritual path, with— they— to have— people often have quite a strong felt sense of the Divine quite early on in their spiritual life, and then it often fades away. Um, and then, yeah, I think that doesn't mean that it's not present, perhaps just that some— our relationship with it has changed, or—

So what do you think is actually happening at that point then, when it appears to have disappeared, if you know what I mean?

Well, I think partly for me is that I'm not actually You could almost say that it's the Divine trusting you and saying, actually, you don't need to feel me. I know that you're going to be able to be kind and compassionate in the world without this felt sense at the moment. So maybe that's one way of understanding it.

A lot of things in the world that we just take on trust. Don't we?

That the moon is round. Yeah, that the sun will come up.

The other side of the moon, but we know it's there and we don't have to feel it. We just trust that that's the way it is.

So it's a kind of, um, I'm not even—

is it taking yourself out of it, you know, by not having to to have a—

yeah, well, the felt sense is a sort of— is, is a kind of selfishness almost, isn't it? It's like, I need to know for myself that you're there. It's like, well, you don't need to know that because I'm going to be there with, with you whether you think so or not.

I think what you said about in the earlier stages, maybe the spiritual path, you do have quite a lot— feels like you've got stuff coming in and you're sort of filled with dealing with it, whatever. And then it's like a bit of a plateau.

So, but hey, I think, um, it's beneficial and skillful to connect with joy in practice, right? Um, but joy is also an energy. So sometimes we can feel depleted, and, um, so we can go to our practices, whether it's breathing or meditation or, you know, and we can cultivate mindfulness and we can also cultivate joy. We're also talking about being at ease with precepts and decisions that we make. That also has to do with connecting with joy in our practice. I think it's really important. Um, and precepts have to do with mindfulness also. We slip when we're not mindful. Um, but we have to cultivate that mindfulness.

So, well, maybe we do, maybe we don't, from the precepts. Yeah, but I guess the position that I'm presenting this evening is that Naturally, we keep the precepts when we're grounded in faith, when we're grounded in refuge. And we can cultivate, we can practice. What you're describing is what I call the top-down practice, so keeping them in mind, and there's a real value in that. But in this Pure Land tradition, the root— rooting ourselves deeply in refuge Following the precepts then is the fruit of the tree rather than the root of the tree.

Maybe it's the tradition that I practice in, but they're inseparable, they're interdependent. So you have a lot of faith which energizes your practice, and when we keep precepts, it gives us more energy for mindfulness, like it's a strong vessel and container for mindfulness. They nourish each other is what I want to say.

It's not just that they're independent, but they nourish each other. Yeah, absolutely, they can do, yeah.

Sometimes I find doing the opposite gets the effect. I was listening to a radio program a few years ago, you know, you come and you try to do what they call the spiritual path, the spiritual life, and this Hindu guy said, 'Why are you doing that? You are a spiritual entity. Why don't you practice being human?' And I must admit, it just changed my practice. Sometimes I just think, a lot of times now, increasingly, I'm just trying to be human because I feel so coarse and ugly and horrible. And I just think, I'm on this earth as a human. If I just try to practice being a human, because I am a spiritual being. And in a way, that's sort sort of made me think, yeah, so I'm— it sort of almost feeds faith then, or you don't think about faith, practice being human, and in a way that gives you a bit of faith or a bit of spirituality if you want that kind of thing.

Yeah.

So it's, um, it was a Hindu who just said, well, why are you practicing? You know, it was a talk on radio.

Yeah. Well, you know, whenever we set up ideals, there's the potential for, um, the flourishing in those ideals, but there's also the potential for the ego to subvert them and cause all sorts of trouble. And for some people, particular ideals will be more tasty to our egos, and some people, other ideals will be more tasty to our egos, and others will be— will undermine our egos more easily. And that's why there's so many different spiritual traditions, because there's so many different characters of people. And sometimes we're attracted to things that will keep us inside our comfort zone and not require us to change, but sometimes we are attracted to things that will feed our practice and allow the selfish mind to relax. I'm going to pause the tape there because we've been going for an hour. Thank you very much. Namomi tabu.