Practice: spiritual bypassing

Good morning.

Welcome everybody. Welcome to people joining on Zoom. We'll begin with a Dharma glimpse that Kema has written. Kema's not here this morning, so Imogen has agreed to read for us.

Thank you. Inviting spaciousness.

I've recently returned from a short breakaway for my birthday where I visited family in Gozo, which is a small island next to Malta. My dad lived there for many years until his death nearly 8 years ago, so it's like a second home, and I soon settle into life once I land. I haven't visited since 2019 although have always said I couldn't live there permanently. The island is very small and I'd probably spend all my time feeding and rescuing their many stray cats. I'm not sure as a Buddhist if there is even a Buddhist community of the island. The main religion is Roman Catholicism, with every small village having their own church. 359 churches in total, 313 in Malta and 46 in Gozo, so nearly one for each day of the week. I spent 4 nights here this time and my holiday was sadly soon over. I'd managed to catch a cold virus on the flight over, so on the day we were traveling home I didn't feel that well. We had non-priority seats and only traveled with a rucksack, which I'd carefully measured and packed to make sure it fitted the airline's measurements. Let's not rush, I said. It doesn't matter if we are last on the plane as we don't have any luggage to go in the overhead compartments. I just need to take it slow. Normally there is a pressure to get on the plane and find space in the overhead lockers for luggage. So my friend Jo and I sat quietly and watched everyone else queuing, got up when called. There was a relaxed spaciousness that I'd not experienced before. Spaciousness feels like having more space in your mind. The experience of gaining spaciousness is the experience of increasingly feeling that you can choose how to interpret events and choose how to respond to emotional energy rather than being a slave to habitual patterns. We boarded the last bus to the plane and got off when it stopped and walked over to the plane. I must have been a bit distracted with my streaming nose and pounding headache, but to my absolute surprise, I I was the first person to board a very empty plane. So how did that happen? I'd let go of the habitual pattern, the urgency to board, which I usually have, and just relaxed into the process. No forcing things, no rush, no stress. So perhaps I should try this relaxed approach more often. I was definitely being cared for that day. I sat back in my seat and had a very uneventful flight home. Namaste.

Thank you.

So moving into a period of quiet meditation, which is an opportunity to observe ourselves. And as we observe ourselves, generally things begin to settle. They settle. Thoughts and feelings settle because in the meditation practice we're leaving them alone. We're not agitating them.

The Buddha once compared meditation to having a jar of muddy water that you shake as you go about your daily life, and then putting the jar down and the water settling because you're not shaking it anymore. So in a meditation practice, we're sitting still, we're not shaking the jar. So Traditionally, we begin by observing the breath, not trying to change how we're breathing, just noticing cooler air entering at the tip of the nose, warmer air leaving. And when thoughts and feelings appear, just noticing, oh, here's a thought about this, here's Here's a feeling of this, and then returning to the breath. So neither pushing things away— when we push them away, they just push back— but nor jumping on them and storytelling and getting involved. We're aiming for the middle. We're aiming for the middle way. You won't always achieve it, but even just the act of sitting quietly puts us on that road. So noticing the breath, returning to the breath. Sometimes when we're observing ourselves in meditation, some feelings might clear and we get a glimpse of the Buddha, which is to say a glimpse of loving kindness. Of compassion, of wisdom. In a moment, we're going to move into a chanting practice where our attention will be consciously directed to the Buddha, reciting the Buddha's name. And in this practice, often we get a glimpse of ourselves as we interrupt, uh, our thoughts and feelings interrupt the process of coming into relationship with the Buddha, because we are inexorably intertwined, like the, the Tai Chi symbol, the yin yang. When we look at our human nature, there's always a little dot of Buddha nature in there, and And when we look at the Buddha, we discover a little dot, a little mirror that reflects ourselves back at us. So we move into reciting Amitābha, which means limitless light, and it's the name of the Buddha. That we particularly reach out to the Buddha that exemplifies those qualities of unconditional love and acceptance.

So now we'll recite the Buddhist refuges and precepts together, which I invite you to repeat after me. But if you want to see them, they are written down on the liturgy sheet. So refuges are the things that we place our trust in as Buddhists. And they represent the different ways the Buddha can appear in the world, or the different ways that that energy of loving kindness can appear in the world. And it's the one thing that all Buddhists around the world have in common. We all take refuge using more or less the same words. And then we'll recite the Five Lay Precepts, which again are common to Buddhist traditions across the world. So again, here you see the two sides of the coin. The things that represent the Buddha appearing in the world, and then an invitation to reflect on our own human nature. Again, both of these things together. So please repeat after me. For refuge, I go to the Buddha, For refuge I go to the Buddha, the one who is awake and full of love. For refuge I go to the Dharma, all that guides us to wisdom and compassion. For refuge I go to the Sangha, those who live in the Buddha's light.

Those who live in Buddha's light—

With faith in the Three Jewels—

With faith in the Three Jewels—

And in light of my human tendencies—

And in light of my human tendencies—

I pray that I may become aware—

I pray that I may become aware—

Of when I take life. —Of when I take life. I pray that I may become aware—

I pray that I may become aware—

of when I take what is not freely given. I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into sexual misconduct. I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into wrong speech. I pray that I may become aware I pray that I may become aware of when I become intoxicated. Of when I become intoxicated.

No blame. No blame.

Be kind. Be kind. Love everything.

Love everything.

And now the Bodhisattva vows, which are in call and response and are a way of describing our heart's longing both to come into complete enlightenment, which is to say to have our hearts filled with love and compassion, and also to bring all other beings to that place as well. In your brahmsanjha peace, we vow to save them all.

Inexhaustible our deluded passions, we vow to transform them all. Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings, we bow to master them all.

Infinite is the Buddha's way, we vow to follow it completely.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Well, lovely to see you all here. It's a bit quieter than usual. A lot of our regulars are on holiday this weekend. Partly the reason I've been emphasizing human nature and Buddha nature is, well, partly because it's like the core teaching of this tradition, so that makes sense. But I've been reading about spiritual bypassing this morning. Someone, a friend of mine, sent me the article by John Welwood who coined the term. It's about 10 years old, the article, but it's very good. I'll put it on the chat later if other people want to read it. And spiritual bypassing is a tendency within spiritual movements, and John Welwood is a Buddhist, so he's talking about Buddhist groups particularly. Where we focus on the transcendent so much that we lose sight of ourselves and end up acting out in ways that harm others. So Buddhists talk about emptiness or enlightenment or nirvana and non-attachment. All of these really powerful teachings that can give us experiences of feeling deeply connected to the Buddha, to the whole of the universe. They can give us experiences of feeling detached from our emotions, which can feel very peaceful. And we can use all of these teachings as a way of avoiding paying attention to the difficult things about being human. So to practice non-attachment means you might hear that described as having no preferences. And there's a famous Chinese Buddhist text that begins, simply avoid choosing, uh, and yet that isn't how it is to live in the world. Non-attachment is choosing but without grasping onto particular outcomes. So I choose to have a cup of Redbush tea, but if it turns out there's none in the cupboard, I'm not devastated because I'm holding the expectation lightly. But we can use that teaching to hide from ourselves because it becomes an ideal. I shouldn't be attached to outcomes. Actually, I know there isn't any Redbush tea in the cupboard, and I am disappointed. I'm not enlightened about that. I'm not devastated by it, so maybe I'm doing okay. But we can even use it to pretend that we don't have any preferences at all. When someone says, what would you like to drink? Oh, I don't mind. And on this kind of very small level, probably this doesn't cause much trouble, apart from maybe you don't get the drink that you really wanted because they've made you something different. But if we practice non-attachment in that spiritual bypassing way, it is going to lead to problems because eventually we will discover, um, that we really did want something, and, and that we didn't acknowledge that, and that has caused problems because actually we make a wrong choice, or we don't make any choice, or something arrives, uh, that disrupts us. And the danger with pretending that we're less attached than we are is that things build up beneath the surface. The wanting, the longing, the grasping, or the disappointment, which turns into resentment, which turns into anger. Because I don't really want anything. Look at me, I'm just enlightened. And then those other things burst out in ways that end up harming ourselves and others. That's one example of spiritual bypassing. And this is why I'm always encouraging people to notice themselves as well as paying attention to the ideals. We need both of these things in our spiritual practice. As I think I talked about this recently, the Ryōkan haiku, which is maple leaf falling showing the front side showing the backside. And it represents this idea like, oh, we have one face that we show to the world, and then we have the stuff that we don't show to the world. And the more we create that split, the more trouble we're going to get into. So genuine spiritual maturity is to be like the maple leaf, where we have Show the front and the back.

Here's all of me.

Other teachings and spiritual experiences can be used in this way as well. If you're constantly having, uh, spiritual experiences of being kind of blissed out from doing visualization practices, um, for example There can be a tendency to disappear into those, and I'm just going to stay blissed out all of the time. And that's— that can be another way of avoiding the pain of being human. I guess that's what we're really talking about. The Buddhism invited us to notice Suffering. It was the first thing he said. It's unavoidable. We have to pay attention to it. A bit like when we're practicing meditation, we notice that it's there. We don't add to it, but we also don't hide from it. It's about being honest. And spiritual bypassing, whether it's pretending to be non-attached or disappearing into a meditative state of bliss really is about avoiding suffering. It's about not wanting to feel pain. And yet when all of these practices are done wisely, they create an atmosphere in which it's possible to notice suffering, to notice our darker impulses, as the precepts invite us to do, without being overwhelmed by pain, without being overwhelmed by shame. And in Pure Land Buddhism, we do that by trusting that here I am with all of my greed, ill will, and ignorance, and here is the Buddha, loving, wise, compassionate, sending that love towards me. And when we have both of these things in balance we have a mature spiritual practice and we're less likely to harm ourselves and others when no need to be.

So we finish practice by bowing to the main shrine, and we do— we go onto the ground. And this works. And this words that we say, namo amitabha, please join in as much or as little as you're able to. So it's fine just to do standing bow, but most of us will go down onto our knees. Namoh Amida Buddha. Namoh Amida Buddha. Namoh Amida Buddha. With gratitude, we offer this incense to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May it be fragrant as Earth herself, reflecting our careful efforts, our wholehearted awareness, and the fruits of understanding slowly ripened. May we and all beings be companions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize our true home.

So come back to standing, our faces Back to each other when the bell rings, first to one side and then the other, to express, uh, gratitude.

And then to the main shrine again, and then tidy our places.

And bow to our seats. In a moment we'll finish with the closing verse, which is on the top of the liturgy sheet, but before we do, a couple of announcements. Next Saturday is the open morning, so you're welcome to come and join us. There'll be various snacks and guided tours and guided meditation sessions. So we'll have practice as usual, and then we'll be around until 1 o'clock. Sunday we're going to be doing some work in the garden in the morning, which you're very welcome to join us for, weather permitting. Um, please do stay and have a cup of tea now if you'd like.

Is there any red bush? Yeah.

This tomorrow? Next Sunday. Yeah, next. Look on the website if you're interested in these things, but next Sunday in the evening we've got a kirtan led by Anji, which is devotional singing, really beautiful, highly recommended. Finally, donation bowl in the hallway, cup of tea after practice. Namaste.

So we just finish by reading the closing verse together.

Blessed by Amitabha's light, may we care for all living things and the holy earth. Namamitabodhu. Thanks everybody.

Um, we've got