Mind In Harmony

I am consciously reading Mind in Harmony slowly, savoring it. It is the deep kind of book that hits me very deeply, inspires, shows a way forward and also helps one to see all the work I need to do and the importance of resolve in that journey. I know book reviews that bow down to a book that is very profound are often not helpful. What you want is the why to that, but unfortunately when something is much deeper than you, it's hard to articulate why. It's the emotional bowing down that feels significant to the reader. There is too much to express about it. I'm not even half way done with the book, but I know it will be my favorite book of the year, maybe my favorite book of the decade. I've quite enjoyed trying to wrap my mind around Know Your Mind by Sangharakshita. I have not so much delved into the Abhidharma tradition that this book is based off of, and the 51 mental events. This book finally boils this all down so that I can understand the importance.

Critical Ecumenicalism

Subhuti came out with a Buddhist Manifesto.

Go read it, and process what you think, ponder on it.

My feeling was that not much new was said, but it's cool to see it all in one place, but then as I read it, I could feel the spiritual energy coming from it.  Subhuti has a fantastic mind, and he's very active in India and Turkey, and probably a lot more stuff that I don't even know about, including pumping out these amazing essays.  I wish Windhorse would just go ahead and collect them all in a book.  (And reprint Meeting The Buddhas, an awesome awesome book.)  Subhuti is an admirable man.  And by the end of pounding away, he has me wanting to take over the world, create a pure land.  Awesome.

Here is a quote from it:

"The challenge Buddhists face today is to find ways of communicating and practising the Dharma that are truly effective in these new circumstances."


I'm actually having trouble getting quotes off my iPad, so I'll just leave you with this one.  It's a rich document that doesn't really lend to quoting, though there's a lot of interesting stuff in there.  


Googling "Buddhist Manifesto" you only get references to Glenn Wallis' Buddhist Manifesto, from 2009, other than Subhuti's, 2012.  Mr. Wallis has similar themes of getting back to basic Buddhism, which accepting modern developments, founding things on Gotama's teachings.  He sees meditation as the basis, he references the Anapanasati Sutta, and, "careful analysis of the categories of lived experience."  He's afraid that "skillful means" could easily lead to "anything goes":  What would stop us from saying that something was Buddhism?  From there he goes off on solutions that have a faint whiff of recognizability to me, but honestly, I didn't connect ultimately with this manifesto as much as I did with Subhuti's, and therefore I highly recommend Subhuti's as the best on the internet in the summer of 2012--and likely much beyond.

Apt, useful to me, at this moment, Dharma

Subhuti, in a recent essay, writes (edited with American English spellings):

"I suspect that, too often, we tend to think of sraddha only in its affective aspect, and to have an unrealistic idea of how strong that should be. We look for a sort of exhilarating fizz of inspiration, filling our consciousness. But that is not its only or even its most characteristic mode. Faith is not always an ‘obvious’ experience. It can be present as something embedded in our assumptions and behavior, something that is too close to be seen clearly. Sometimes, in moods of critical self examination, we ask ourselves, ‘What do I really want? What am I really interested in? What really inspires me?’  It may appear to us at such moments that the answer is not the Three Jewels. And this can easily make us disheartened, especially if we have been trying to practice the Dharma for a long time. But when this happens, instead of getting despondent, we could try saying to ourselves, ‘Yet, the Dharma does seem true and profound to me. Not only that, but I am still here, still practicing after (however many) years. And if I am here, that can only be because in some sense I want to be here. There must surely be some faith in that.’  In other words, we can try to recognize the strength of the cognitive and volitional aspects of our sraddha, instead of dwelling too much on the apparent weakness of the affective aspect."

When I look at the GFR retreat pictures, the pictures of people on the ordination retreat, over the years, I see a third of the people have been ordained, a third have dropped out, and a third have disappeared and not formally dropped out (maybe).  I'm the last man standing, except a few new guys.  I've been in this process almost 9 years.

Now you can say that it's harder in North America, away from the bosom of the order.  You can say it's harder for someone with a family.  

One talk on FBA, the speaker pointed out that people who immerse themselves in the 3 C's still get ordained pretty quickly; Community, Co-ops and Centers--you live in a single sex Buddhist community, you work in a right livelihood business, and you help out at the local center.  In this way it's like being on retreat, and yet living a worldly existence.  Of course, here in NYC, I would have to start a community, a co-op and have more free time to help out at the center.

Anyway, I think I can be proud I'm "still there," as Subhuti says.  That shows some sraddha.

Remorse and Confession in the Spiritual Community

I'm reading Subhuti's essay "Remorse and Confession in the Spiritual Community", which can be found on FBA.  Not sure when it came out.  I didn't see the paper announced, but a friend hipped me to it.

Reading the following paragraph of Subhuti's, I had a few revelations:

"According to the Buddhist tradition, laziness has three forms. There is laziness as everyone understands it – ‘the laziness that takes delight in lying down and not getting up’. Then there is the laziness that consists of yielding to unskilful impulses when we should resist them. But there is also the laziness of despondency. This is the state of mind in which we tell ourselves, ‘Poor me! What can I do? Not only do I lack x, but I also lack y and z. I’m just not up to it. Ah well, there it is’. This attitude leads to (or rationalises) the giving up of all effort. The tradition unequivocally regards this as a form of laziness: an unwillingness to put forth the virya, or spiritual energy, that is needed to close the gap between ourselves and our Ideal. It is important to distinguish this attitude from the objective self-criticism that is informed by faith and which leads (as we shall see) to confession. But before moving on to discuss confession, we need to look still deeper into sraddha."

So I had this revelation that in a way the following idea snuck into my head:  ‘Poor me! What can I do? Not only do I lack x, but I also lack y and z. I’m just not up to it. Ah well, there it is’

I recognized myself in that, unfortunately.

The second revelation was that I haven't really talked enough to people and connected with others to process my experience.  I'm too much of an isolato, as Melville coined.  I want to be more connected to others.

five niyamas

free buddhist audio : : "rambles around reality 2010 - the five niyamas 2" by subhuti

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Subhuti on Ambedkar

talk by Subhuti

Hello At Last

Hello at last.
You have only
just begun to
know each other.

(Allan Gurganus)

Reading Sara Jenkins’ book Hello At Last, is like meeting someone on retreat and going for a walk with them. On retreat there is a heightened sense of awareness, kindness and receptivity, so in a way you really get to know someone, in a way the ordinary world doesn’t support. There is time, mindfulness and kindness. I have the experience on retreat of wishing everything was retreat. Would not the world be perfect if we could sustain this intensity? I cling to the pleasure of it, and that’s another thing I get to work on while on retreat.

This idea is carried forward into a practical idea of living in a single sex community, working in a team based right livelihood and going along to the center. I’m told it’s like being on retreat in ordinary life. I’m told people make rather rapid progress under such supportive circumstances. Unfortunately, from this perspective, I have a wife and kids, and do not live in the heart of the FWBO order where that would be a real possibility. So my kids are my gurus and I don’t have maximally supportive conditions.

Speaking of living on retreat in ordinary life, don't forget the upcoming Urban Retreat. There are some new photos, videos and talks.

To keep the dharma alive in me, I read. Spending time with a spiritual friend is not easy so reading a book is a kind of substitute. I was quite happy to get to know Sara Jenkins though her personal account of friendship.

Friendship is a lovely subject and Sara Jenkins chooses a more personal approach than Subhuti does in his book, which is much less personal. She writes, “I’m afraid of saying too much, of being too personal. Afraid of saying something I hadn’t realized myself…” (p.72). She is talking about exposing herself to sangha, but her book too is an exposure, deeply personal.

She strikes me as an intellectual introvert; I think I would like her. She experiences TBMSG in India and tries the communication exercises there. I was jealous she went to Pune and toured the sites, met Lokamitra. I’m also reading The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble, a Dalit female memoir. My heart goes out to this community.

My first draft of this review focused on what I felt I would like to talk more to her about, my preference for different language. I wish I could be in dialogue with her. I feel this is a wonderful book, and wish to have her further elaborate certain issues.

Her teacher is from the Zen tradition and she talks a lot about dismantling the self. I have a close friend who likes that talk and finds it helpful. I respect other’s path. I myself don’t find that way of talking about it helpful. I prefer to realize my parts, in my multiplicity and transcend them, act skillfully, in my own interest. Of course with awareness, old selves peal away easily and we mature and plot a more pure path. Which is I think an approximation of what getting rid of ego talk is all about.

She writes about a response she thought of, “…it sounds like something a therapist might say", implying she was being “less than authentic.” (p.63). I wondered about her experiences in therapy, I felt defensive as if she was saying therapist=inauthentic. The section is a quite moving account of how deepens her communication and friendship, and perhaps I’m quibbling, but I wondered where this was based on her experiences in therapy. She is well read and elsewhere jokes about Business Attention Disorder (BAD), a made up disorder to describe her struggles to pay attention to the accounting of money in her life (p. 70), as though she has some familiarity with the DSM.

So I quibble with her book, like I quibble with my close friends, a kind of way of intensifying the dialogue, out of a kind of bizarre friendliness. This is a lovely book which I recommend.

great practice day

We had some visiting order members conduct our practice day with our usual leader in India for the order convention. They have been coming down for a while, so it was not a big change. We went over the essay by Subhuti called Mindfulness and the Mind. We ended the day chanting Sabbe sattā sukhi hontu.

Subhuti's secretary Dharmashalin

Dharmashalin has begun posting videos on youtube about the work in India. That one is his introduction. There are two. The second one is about the NNBY Full Moon Meditation. I raised some money for this.