Teachers: we have a couple of of questions, and
Teachers: the first one is, what is the significance? No Buddhist symbols and iconography at the venue or on any of the program materials. And a follow-up question, is this the way forward for secular Buddhism? It's not quite clear whether this means the absence of symbols, or whether this kind of format we'll take it loosely as both.
Teachers: Do you want to say something about that? No.
Lenore, not until after you've given your blow. Okay?
Teachers: Well, I mean, one answer is because we're in a Catholic center.
Teachers: If this had been a Buddhist center, if we'd rented a space in the Buddhist center, we would have all the Buddhist stuff around, and it wouldn't have been a problem.
Teachers: There is a I think, but without anything like that, and with the respect for our Catholic hosts, then
Teachers: we're quite happy
Teachers: to be here, and I think secularity
Teachers: in a way I like to think of as a space of tolerance.
Teachers: of toleration.
Teachers: The secular approach is not against religion.
Teachers: A secular approach is one in which we're happy for all religions to coexist
Teachers: and interact. And a secular perspective is one that can hold those differences rather than get into conflict one between the other.
Teachers: But if this were to be a space which didn't have any preexisting
Teachers: Catholic or Buddhist symbology. I think we simply wouldn't have anything.
Teachers: and at least that's my opinion. Again, secular. Buddhism is not a school with doctrines, and it's a work in progress.
Teachers: and different people have different senses of it. But for myself.
Teachers: just as for me. A secular Buddhist approach means going back to the sources.
Teachers: the early sources of Buddhist teaching. As we find, particularly in the Pali tradition, it's about recovering something that I feel at some level has been lost. It's been buried by the weight of orthodoxy and metaphysics and complicated beliefs and rituals and priesthoods and hierarchies. A secular approach to the Dharma is about
Teachers: politely suspending all of the superstructure. and trying to get back to where the ground is on which that superstructure was built.
Teachers: Hence the return to the early text, and hence also the usage of
Teachers: a form of of historical criticism that is very much a feature of our
Teachers: post-enlightenment way of thinking in the West. In other words, we don't see Buddhism as some kind of timeless
Teachers: teaching that never changes, and that just has to be preserved. But we see Buddhism very crucially, as something that
Teachers: emerges and develops and changes and grows and declines because of the particular circumstances in which it finds itself.
Teachers: But just as we go back to, or I go back to these early
Teachers: texts, and and to find another ground from which to begin. I also
Teachers: honor very much the earliest examples of Buddhist architecture and art as we find them
Teachers: primarily in India.
Teachers: As you know, Buddhism was pretty much. and of
Teachers: Buddhism pretty much went extinct. By about the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries in India the temples were destroyed, partly by Islamic invasion, partly by resurgent Romanical Hinduism and Buddhism died out.
Teachers: and hence we have very, very few structures or images or statues
Teachers: that have survived from the Indian subcontinent.
Teachers: and the oldest of those we find in a number of what are called rock cut temples, or sometimes they're called cave temples, the most famous of which are places like Ajanta and Elora, Kahla, Barja, Bedsa, Kanheri, and other places in India, where we find the remains
Teachers: of Buddhist temples that go back about 2,000 years, in other words to the period about between 4, from about 400 years after the Buddhist death, to about 500 years around the time of Christ.
Teachers: and remarkably, there are a number of such sites in India.
Teachers: Where we can actually see
Teachers: very clearly how the spaces that the early Buddhists created.
Teachers: and those spaces the earliest ones
Teachers: are striking because they are an iconic.
Teachers: which means there are no Buddha images.
Teachers: There is no attempt to represent the Buddha in a human or in a divine form. Instead, you find traditional. In most of them
Teachers: you find large halls with pillars going around the inside or
Teachers: walkway, and you find in the apps, as it were, the the curved end, a very, very simple stupor, which is comprised just of a cylinder.
Teachers: the sphere in a cube. and that's it.
Teachers: Now these may have been painted, we can't tell, it's too much time has gone by, but the fact is that when you enter these spaces and some of them, even though they're 2,000 years old, are in almost perfect condition.
Teachers: for the simple reason that you can't destroy a void. These are empty spaces that have been. They haven't been built. They've been excavated.
Teachers: so there's nothing you can knock down. There's nothing you can, nothing that can fall down the pillars that go around the edges of the temples serve no structural purpose whatsoever
Teachers: could take them all out. Nothing would happen. They're there to replicate
Teachers: through excavation what it would be like to be in a Buddhist temple that was freestanding and built out of stone and brick and thatch, and whatever. And I find these spaces immensely inspiring
Teachers: because they return us basically to a spiritual or religious or sacred, or whatever you call it, space that didn't require any iconography or images or pictures.
Teachers: When you go to a Janta
Teachers: Ajanta was built in 2 phases, first phase, starting about the first century BC. In which this completely an iconic, and then later phases that go up to about the eighth century RAD. And there they are, just packed with images and icons and carvings on the walls, and it's just like almost a sort of
Teachers: almost a sort of psychedelic excess of imagery. So you can actually see the history of Buddhism, carved in stone
Teachers: from the absence of icons to the
Teachers: excess of icons.
Teachers: So to me, a secular Buddhism could perhaps be inspired by returning to these these an iconic, very simple open spaces.
Teachers: Is this the way forward for secular Buddhism? Maybe I don't know. Do you want to, either of you say something about that. So yeah. no one have anything. I'd just add my usual lens through which I look at these things is, how does it help?
Teachers: So if we were to have a bunch of
Teachers: Buddhist iconography here, what? What impact would that have?
Teachers: How would that help? And I'm always apropos our conversation just now I'm always alert to the possibility that it can drive identity, forming
Teachers: identity, forming
Teachers: so selfing. I've been really conscious ever since I started exploring Madama.
Teachers: of any time that I've considered adding any kind of statue or picture, or anything that identifies me as a Buddhist.
Teachers: and I've just been really not to say I don't have any. I do have a small little one that sits on my desk at home, and one
Teachers: another one, but
Teachers: really really watchful, for I think it's very, very easy for selfing to to ride in on the coat tails
Teachers: of
Teachers: of statues and off and
Teachers: bumper stickers, and you know you name it so? Not necessarily. But just
Teachers: how does it help disabled for each
Teachers: hang on a second? Hang on a second. Hi, I'm Peter. You're talking about the physical objects regards
Teachers: identifying you. But don't the subjects that you
Teachers: are intrigued by, and the subjects you talk about, and the words you use self, you
Teachers: as a Buddhist.
Teachers: So
Teachers: I'm not sure anybody else can self me. I think it's very much an internal process. Okay, so
Teachers: if you, if you're using a physical object on your desk, and we could look at Lunori and say, he's a Buddhist, because he has these on a desk. That's one way we identify you as a Buddhist. But if you use Buddhist terminology, if you use Buddhist
Teachers: ethics, if you use, then.
Teachers: by default, you're self-em as Buddhist.
Teachers: so what's wrong with that? Yeah, I don't. I don't know that I agree with you, Peter. I think the process of
Teachers: using a certain language. I mean, that can just come to be the way that you think, and the way that you understand, and the way that you describe. And, to be honest.
Teachers: I wouldn't use even those kind of terms if I'm talking to a non-buddhist.
Teachers: Whereas if I was, if I was selfing around Buddhism, if I was thinking, you know it's sort of making me feel good to be a Buddhist, and I want to project that in my knee. Brush out there.
Teachers: I might actually drop in a few esoteric terms to my non Buddhist friends.
Teachers: you know, to show them that I'm a bit of spiritual Bizo, whereas I really don't do that, and I try to
Teachers: speak as straightforwardly as I can. Even in Sangha. I mean, I've got a couple of Sangha members here. They might comment on that, but I guess I'm just putting it out there.
Teachers: Such a big problem to self for a start. But that's another conversation. But just by our actions it's it's it's almost impossible not to project like you're selling a book. It's not about invertebrates.
Teachers: It's about
Teachers: Buddhism. So we see your name on that book.
Teachers: So that's not a statue. It's just another form of selfthing.
Teachers: That's the way I see. Yes, the way I see it is. It's only selfing. If I am trying to consolidate. construct, promote an identity. And I'm not doing that with that book
Teachers: I'm offering a that was an act of self that was an act of compassion.
Teachers: Yeah.
Teachers: let's go.
Teachers: My name's John. I'm not sure if you've got other burning questions. Ca, we have one other. Yeah, just while we're on this theme.
Teachers: and the fact that going back to Socrates X. Number of 1,000 years. what? Why, we only going back that far
Teachers: because it just rang a Bell Stephen, when you talked about the places in India. And yet we go around Australia. There are examples of rock art that's 40, 50, 60,000 years old.
Teachers: and we somehow are missing a whole lot of Pre Christ pre-buda spirituality
that could be quite enlightening.
Teachers: No, I take that point, and, in fact, close to where we live. In France we have Lascaux and all of the great Magdalen period, prehistoric art which I love.
Teachers: But and that goes back 24 up to 40,000 years old.
Teachers: But I don't quite see that in the same.
Teachers: Frey I'm trying to. I'm considering this question
Teachers: primarily in terms of
Teachers: of the Buddhist tradition, which doesn't go back further than 2.5,000 years.
Teachers: So I frame it very much. In that case. what I like. What I find meaningful about the early Buddhist material is that it is an attempt to give shape and form to a tradition of which I feel
Teachers: you know a part. It's something that is deep in the history of the tradition to which I feel
Teachers: that I belong in some way.
Teachers: What I love about the
Teachers: particularly the prehistoric art that we find in Southwest France is, that
Teachers: is, that you find yourself before these beautiful works of art.
Teachers: and you find your mind wanting to
Teachers: saying, why do they do it?
Teachers: What does it mean? And that I find? And of course there's no way of knowing.
Teachers: It's endless speculation amongst experts so-called. The reality is, you're confronted with something that is undeniably human.
Teachers: And but some of the very first evidence of of human artifacts. And yet you cannot satisfy that craving to know why. And so you're confronted with something that is fundamental, fundamentally mysterious. And yet it still speaks to you as a human being at a very, very deep level. In other words, it allows a kind of wordless astonishment and wonder.
Teachers: And that has you know, I think, a very, very powerful impact. And I agree with you. I think it's important that we tap back into the deep roots of human culture which once again go back to pre-modern
Teachers: cultures. Any of the religions we currently know, but that to me is a different experience to the experience I would find in one of these temples in India.
Meg: Okay.
Meg: Hello! Should we continue with this?
Meg: We can't hear you, Suzanne. Can you hear me now? Okay, thank you. And thank you all. I'm gonna my questions a little different back to some of the earlier talk this afternoon about uncertainty
Meg: and and the talk, the talk, the 2 talks I've heard this afternoon.
Meg: The concern about like a certainty and uncertainty, and the and the issues of coming to grips with that, and so on. But I think one of the key themes this week is we are faced with the most appalling and powerful uncertainties. Through climate change.
Meg: where, like as human beings, we've always lived with degrees of uncertainty. In Australia, we're familiar with things like. you know, floods, fires, droughts, and so on. Where?
Meg: But now I'm coming from, Adelaide. We can't. We can't be that certain anymore that the Jacaranda trees are going to keep, you know, flowering in November.
Meg: So my question is, in a sense, how do we now live with
Meg: this much more egregious huge? Certainly, which is causing, as you know, as you all have talked about
Meg: distress, dismay, despair, but also whole range of new activism that is incredibly encouraging as well. And I'd like I'd like to hear your at least little bit of some thoughts on how we're facing that. That
Meg: such a powerful amount of uncertainty now. thanks.
Teachers: well, we're actually kind of at time. Unfortunately, would it be possible, Suzanne, to hold that question until tomorrow? This session was aimed at burning questions that people had sent us, either by the zoom or by the box here.
Teachers: Your question is a very important one, and perhaps we could each briefly comment on it now. But I think to have a more reflective answer. It might be best to hold that
Teachers: tomorrow. It's not a thing that's going to go away. We're not going to go talking about something else. So that's not a problem.
Teachers: Would one of Winton, would you like to?
Just to say very briefly. what we were talking about this afternoon was
Teachers: the need to respond to the situation, however horrendous it might seem
Teachers: later in later in this portrayal.
Teachers: I'll be talking a bit about strategy and tactics.
Teachers: And I think we we really do need to be tactical. It needs to establish
Teachers: mobilisation going on the testing. Again.
Teachers: I would change ecological discussion and absolutely unsustainable
Teachers: social
Teachers: inequality, the horizontal dimension of inequality. And
Teachers: it's great that there's that mobilization. It's essential that there is that mobilization.
Teachers: But there really does need to be a strategy for taking down
Teachers: courses that are created.
Teachers: So I will. That's a bit easier. But I think I'll
Teachers: but visibly there. So if you don't want to.
Teachers: I want to present this to tactically
high-risk
Teachers: echo. What I said before is.
Teachers: it's unpleasant and
Teachers: respond anyway.
Teachers: I actually through the course of writing my talks for this week, I said to my husband last week, and I've been an environmental supporter forever.
Teachers: And I said to my husband last week. I think we need to do more.
Teachers: and I probably already do more than the average person on the street in terms of my own personal choices.
Teachers: but just the act of looking at it closely and
Teachers: acting anyway, even though it's uncomfortable and uncertain, and
Teachers: we don't know if it will work.
Teachers: Okay. So thank you very much, Suzanne. We'll come back to that point and
come on.
Teachers: And now we have a final tip. So we're going to have a final tip. Maybe you'd like to stand up and shake yourselves around a bit. So some of the stiffness from.