Like to start with a couple of practical things.
Stephen: As you noticed yesterday, we decided, the 3 of us amongst ourselves, that we would drop the burning question session at the end, and allow that simply to become opportunity for feedback and discussion with Lenore, which I think went very well last night, and so that will be the new model. But if you have
Stephen: burning questions. or even unburning questions.
Stephen: and you'd like to share them. Then
Stephen: the box is still there. Please put them in whenever you wish. and
Stephen: Maybe some of you, you know, are less comfortable speaking in a public space like this, or the question you might feel is something you wouldn't like to share in public. Then that's the place to go.
Stephen: And also
Stephen: we're aware that some of you have been very vociferous in asking questions, some of you. We haven't really heard from much, and we'd like to start the question answer sessions today by offering first an opportunity to those
Stephen: who haven't yet addressed a question in public, and that, of course, is also very much the case with those of you online. So we're going to create a an opening. You don't have to do anything. It's up to you. But just for that space to be to be available.
Stephen: The other practical thing is that I've been asked by a number of you whether I would lead a guided meditation on the
Stephen: 9 or 10 point meditation that is found in the handout under collectiveness. It's a meditation on the 7 facets of awakening, and I'm happy to do that, and I
Stephen: we'll be offering it at the afternoon meditation at 5 30 today.
Stephen: I apologize. If there are some of you who are not interested in that, then either you can simply come. All I'll do is say a few words a few points during the meditation.
Stephen: otherwise you may want to to sit outside or walk or sit elsewhere.
Stephen: I'd also like that to be recorded
Stephen: as well, so that if people want to then subsequently use it, they would have a spoken version rather than
Stephen: a written version of the meditation.
Stephen: One of the burning questions that came up yesterday that we didn't address was whether in our talks Winton and I are speaking about this cartography of care which you have in the handout, but very scant, if any reference
Stephen: has been made to it so far. But yesterday. during the evening discussion,
Stephen: Andy raised the question about having lost our connection with the earth.
Stephen: and so, even before I read the burning question that came up to my mind, because
Stephen: the very first word in this in this cartography is Earth.
Stephen: and I'd like to just sort of sketch or offer an you know, a kind of an impression.
Stephen: What I'm trying to do here that is, that in my thinking around what a secular
Stephen: dharma might be my starting point, as you are no doubt aware, is to think of 4 tasks as primary rather than 4 truths.
Stephen: and that has become the the bedrock
Stephen: on which I've developed and built up my thinking as to what a secular dharma might look like.
Stephen: Now I can't remember exactly when, but at some point.
Stephen: either it came up in my own thinking, either. Somebody asked a question I don't remember, but it seemed to me that these 4 tasks are characteristic of a lot of fourfold-ness
Stephen: in Buddhism. And, in fact, a lot of these
Stephen: lists here are within 4 columns.
Stephen: Now, is that an accident?
Stephen: Is it just a convenient organizational device, or does it tap into other
Stephen: fourfold features of our existence as human beings? It's an open question. I don't. I can't really say one or the other.
Stephen: but I suspect it's not an accident. On the other hand, I'm not sure it may be deliberately sort of planned in advance either.
Stephen: I think it taps into a fourfold patterning of our existence on earth.
Stephen: and I feel the place we might begin would be with the 4 elements. earth. fire
Stephen: water.
Stephen: And then I began to think, Well, are these 4 tasks in any way connected to these other fourfold
Stephen: features of our life? And I think they are.
Stephen: Earth is very much the place where we live. It's the foundation of life itself.
Stephen: and the first task is to embrace life.
Stephen: to embrace suffering, but understanding, suffering not just to mean pain, but
Stephen: the whole tragedy.
Stephen: What John Cabot Zinn calls the full catastrophe.
Stephen: So earth, in that sense, somewhat metaphorically, does suggest, you know, the very foundation of our life itself.
Stephen: and that gives a kind of a groundedness, I think, to the eye, to the concept, embrace life.
Stephen: There may be something very earthly about that. And, in fact, in earlier drafts of this very text, which I've now titled a worldly eightfold path
Stephen: in the earlier drafts, I was
Stephen: saying an earthly
Stephen: eightfold path again. I'm not quite sure why I changed my mind, but I might change it back again.
Stephen: The second element is fire.
Stephen: and here the second task is letting go of reactivity and reactivity. In the early Buddhist tradition
Stephen: is compared to fire
Stephen: the 3 fires of greed, of hatred, of opinionatedness. Reactivity is that which flares up
Stephen: like a fire. It's Samudaya means to rise up
Stephen: reaction like that.
Stephen: So this, I think, rather obviously lends itself to the the second of these elements.
Stephen: Fire.
Stephen: It's that which flares up within us, that which burns, that which destroys. And of course, today
Stephen: we talk about global warming. We talk about the planet literally heating up.
Stephen: And I'm not suggesting the Buddha had some sort of prophetic insight into climate change, but nonetheless
Stephen: it's a very potent image for the condition in which we find ourselves, not just in our own minds.
Stephen: things flaring up, but now the world is literally
Stephen: heating up.
Stephen: So letting go of reactivity is letting go of these inner fires.
Stephen: But it also means we need to address those outer fires as well.
Stephen: just as embracing life doesn't just mean our life, or even just other human life or sentient life, but the life of the planet itself.
Stephen: So in this way we can connect some of our actual concerns, which.
Stephen: following our discussions this week, are clearly uppermost in many of our minds. With these 4 tasks. Correlated with these 4 elements.
Stephen: The third task is seeing reactivity stop.
Stephen: which means in practice, allowing ourselves to acknowledge, to recognize and to see
Stephen: a non-reactive space within us.
Stephen: and the element is air.
Stephen: Again. It fits rather well.
We might extend that to space.
Stephen: It's not something visible. And yet it's something that. as we now know.
Stephen: is utterly crucial to our lives to be able to breathe. And yet it's a space. and therefore something that is without obstruction.
Stephen: In later Buddhist philosophy
Stephen: a space is defined by Buddhist logicians as the
Stephen: the absence of resistance.
Stephen: the absence of resistance. So the space in this room is not this big empty space, as we now often think of it in when we use the word space, but it's the fact that I can move from one side of the room to the other.
Stephen: Nothing stands in my way.
Stephen: There's no hindrance, there's no obstruction which implies that
Stephen: movement. Free, unimpeded movement then becomes possible.
Stephen: and I think ideas like emptiness. Ideas like Nirvana, are, in fact, tapping into the image of the non-obtive, non-resistant nature of space, of the air
Stephen: itself.
Stephen: And the fourth
task is
Stephen: cultivating the eightfold path as we saw yesterday, the eightfold path is equivalent to
Stephen: the Buddha's understanding of the middle way, and entering the eightfold path is compared to
Stephen: entering a string. The eightfold path is a stream. In modern psychological parlance we might call it a state of flow. It's when things move.
Stephen: And again, that movement is enabled because we're coming from a non-reactive space.
Stephen: This movement begins when we remove
Stephen: or we suspend the reactive patterns that basically shut us down.
Stephen: Reactivity is often called a hindrance or obstacle, and a hindrance or an obstacle is what prevents movement
Stephen: prevents any kind of flow. Everything gets stuck.
Stephen: So the afoot path. compared to a stream
Stephen: very, very naturally fits into the idea of water
Stephen: which flows. which also gives life.
Stephen: which takes us somewhere if we think of a stream as always in motion.
Stephen: heading out towards
Stephen: let's see.
Stephen: So it's not too difficult, therefore, to see the 4 tasks as Linkedin to these 4
Stephen: physical elements.
Stephen: and I found that very helpful. It takes the idea away from
Stephen: just, you know, reflection and thinking and theory.
Stephen: and puts it into immediate relation with
Stephen: with the earth. with the elements, with fire, with air, with water.
Stephen: I then correlated this to the 4 colors, and again, it's always struck me as slightly
Stephen: odd in a way that whenever Buddhists speak of
Stephen: color they speak of 4 primaries
Stephen: in the West we speak of 3 primary colors, red, blue.
Stephen: yellow. in all Buddhist texts. Going back right to the Pali Canon.
Stephen: Whenever colour is mentioned, you always get 4 colours, red, white.
Stephen: yellow, so white
Stephen: is included
Stephen: when I studied Tibetan Buddhist logic. The first text in the study of logic in Tibetan Buddhism is called Kadok Karma.
Stephen: which means colour red, white.
Stephen: but that's just shorthand for
Stephen: the language of of using a colour as an example of a way to start examining how we think logically or not.
Stephen: And again.
primary colors the same. For
Stephen: we find in the Pali cannon. Now is this just a coincidence
Stephen: that this is also a fourfoldness, and also, as we can see, the 4 colors map on very tidily to the 4 elements
Stephen: earth, yellow, fire, red.
Stephen: white, water, blue.
Stephen: and what I've been doing in my work as a collage artist over the last years is essentially taking these 4 colors and seeing how I can use them as a kind of a guiding principle in in the art I make.
Stephen: and much of the collages I've done are basically quadrants. squares divided into 4 quadrants, one blue, one yellow, one red, one white.
Stephen: So, in other words, that gives the
Stephen: has given me at least the opportunity to explore this as an aesthetics. to think of color, not just as some vaguely interesting fact, but to recognize how color
Stephen: also the beginning of aesthetics, how they go together, how we can organize these primary colors.
Stephen: We may then build on to them the secondary colors, but nonetheless I found that colour
Stephen: so easily overlooked
Stephen: also operates as something within this fourfold scheme.
Stephen: Take it a little bit further. We can look at the seasons, the 4 Seasons again. We don't find this in anybody's texts listed in this way. But again, the
Stephen: the parallels are quite clear, summer. autumn, winter, spring.
Stephen: and the advantage. The interesting thing about that particular sequencing is that it suggests the movement and the growth and the rhythms and the cycles of nature.
Stephen: I mean, it's arbitrary, really, where we can begin. We could begin anywhere but
Stephen: in the 4 tasks. We begin, as it were, with embracing life, and life is at its full in the summer, where the trees and the plants and the animals, and the birds, and so on, are fully flourishing.
Stephen: Then we come into autumn. and the colour red
Stephen: again comes to mind, and the falling of leaves.
Stephen: letting reactivity. Go or be. It's a beautiful image.
Stephen: the autumn
Stephen: experience as it's now when I was in Japan.
Stephen: for the Japanese autumn is a big deal. and especially red maple trees.
Stephen: And there's hundreds of tourists in Kyodo taking selfies in front of red maple trees.
Stephen: Winter winter. Again. We associate it with white, with snow.
Stephen: It's a space in which life has in a sense, gone underground.
Stephen: It's a space of emptiness.
Stephen: It's a space of of stillness, and this fits very well, seeing the stopping of reactivity.
Stephen: Yet that is not the end of the story. Nirvana is not the place where everything ends that the goal of the path like winter.
Stephen: It's the precursor to spring.
Stephen: It's the precursor to to life, coming back
Stephen: as the weather warms up as we move from winter into spring. and things start to grow again. Sprouts appear birds, a lay eggs, and so forth, and so on.
Stephen: So that's just really a just a way of picturing rather than thinking about
Stephen: these 4 tasks, and in what context they are embedded.
Stephen: I think there's also parallel to this
Stephen: a fairly strong case that can be made that the Buddha was actually emerging from a culture that was not anything to do with what we would call Hinduism or Brahmanism.
Stephen: Recent scholarship has shown, I think, quite persuasively.
Stephen: that the world in which the Buddha grew up was not the world in which some of the Buddhist stories are told of of kings in palaces and all that kind of stuff. Those things didn't exist at that time.
Stephen: What we can glean from the Pali text is the Buddha's community was probably
Stephen: practicing a kind of animism.
Stephen: and was probably a solar religion.
Stephen: The religion that worshiped the sun, which is common throughout the world
Stephen: in particularly agrarian societies and the Buddha's connection to the sun.
Stephen: The source of all life, in a way, is, is retained in the the epithet.
Stephen: Adi chaita!
Stephen: Right up and until his death. And right up to today in the Tibetan tradition, for example, the Buddha is called the Kinsman of the Sun.
Stephen: the Kinsman of the sun. There are some early pre-iconic Buddhist art that's been found in Gandhara. northwest India.
Stephen: in which you just have a throne.
Stephen: a Bodhi tree, and on the Bodhi tree is a stylized image of the sun.
Stephen: When the Buddha, before he becomes the Buddha, travels through Magadhah and meets King Bimbosara supposedly, and he's asked, Well, who are you?
Stephen: The first thing he says, he says, I am from the lineage of the sun. the Gaeta.
Stephen: the lineage, the the line
Stephen: family, the tribe of those of the sun. So again, a connection to a very
late material.
Stephen: naturalistic
Stephen: phenomena. he's not a worshipper of Brahma or Vishnu, or some Indian God that hasn't arrived yet.
Stephen: So I feel in all of these ways. And of course I'm thinking in terms of
Stephen: our renewed awareness of our environment because of the crises
Stephen: the ecological crises that we, as human beings have have created
Stephen: is that we're called
Stephen: very much to return to an awareness of the earth much as was suggested last night, and I hope that by framing these practices in that way
Stephen: we can perhaps elaborate and expand on that.
Stephen: I'll come back to this cartography of care as we continue in the next 2 or 3 days, and touch on some of the other elements. But
Stephen: if you can see what I'm trying to do here. You might want to take a closer look at it and look at some of the other elements that are are mentioned
Stephen: today, we're going to talk about the the first of the 4
Stephen: active
Stephen: elements of the path which is application.
Stephen: Viama.
Stephen: Again, this is
Lou. This is translated in so many different ways, often simply by the word effort.
Stephen: Unfortunately, there are 3 words for which are translated as effort.
Stephen: Even within here within this chart.
Stephen: and it's a little infuriating that there's not a very clear distinction between them
Stephen: different words, but they're given pretty much the same definition. So
Stephen: I'm going to interpret this in a way that I think fits with this model.
Stephen: and that's why I'm calling it application rather than effort rather than courage. resolve which are other possible translations.
Stephen: So we've spoken so far about the contemplative life.
Stephen: These qualities that are very much going on within us.
Stephen: and as we exercise, as we value our perspective, as we become more conscious and clear about what really matters for us, what framework of values works for us as a
Stephen: as as a template for leading a good life.
Stephen: We also, I think, have to consider what Winton called yesterday
Stephen: the self as a
Stephen: as a what did he call it? A self as moral agency.
Stephen: If we're going to start talking about ethics, we're going to start talking about doing stuff. And therefore we're talking about the fact that it's you and me who are doing stuff.
Stephen: and to what extent, or what kind of person is it who can lead a consistent
Stephen: moral.
Stephen: ethical life.
Stephen: So this brings us once again back to the topic that Lenore introduced on the first evening, that of self.
Stephen: And I'm going to. I'd like to just spend a little bit of time. Looking at another way of selling
Stephen: a way of selfing that has to do with our moral agency. of how we can actually grow
Stephen: as persons through our contemplations, through our
Stephen: intentions
Stephen: and through our acts, and how we impact.
Stephen: Which is the way I've which it is the the sort of trajectory that I'm framing the eightfold path.
Stephen: So
Stephen: perhaps the place to begin is to go back to the Buddha's second discourse.
Stephen: The first discourse is the one that introduces the 4 tasks. The second discourse, which.
Stephen: according to the tradition, occurred sometime shortly later, also in the Deer Park, in Sarnath.
Stephen: in India, near Banaras.
Stephen: and there the Buddha delivers what's called the the discourse on the characteristic of not self.
Stephen: The Anata Lakhan Asuta.
Stephen: It should be a text that's given great importance in Buddhism, but it's actually sort of hidden away in the sanguten Icaya.
Stephen: It's not that widely known, and when it's when it opens, it's very short text. It's well worth reading. It says something about self that you don't really find developed in other
Stephen: later Buddhist theories of self. I'll just say the the first line is.
Stephen: if the body was self.
Stephen: then you should be able to tell the body. What to do
Stephen: like the you say, be well. don't get sick.
Stephen: If the feelings were self, you should be able to tell them, you know. Be happy. Don't be sad.
Stephen: but because the body and the feelings, and the other Condas, the other elements of our existence, are not self.
Stephen: You can't tell them what to do.
Stephen: You have no control over them.
Stephen: They just happen. they arise. and they do so, not according to your volition, your wish. They are out of your control.
Stephen: They appear. they do their thing, and they disappear.
Stephen: Now this is a perspective on self that.
Stephen: paradoxically.
Stephen: or, let's say implicitly. gives us the clue as to what the self is.
Stephen: There's nowhere in this text. By the way, where the Buddha says the self doesn't exist. It's just. He never says that. In fact, he never says it anywhere
Stephen: in the whole of the Pali Cana. And here it's quite clear he's not denying the existence of the self. He's basically saying, there are elements of our experience that are not me.
Stephen: not you.
Stephen: They just are the stuff that happens, the givenness of life itself
Stephen: the results of past causes and conditions.
Stephen: and that applies to our physical existence, our our feelings, our emotions, our impulses, even consciousness itself.
Stephen: It's a given
Stephen: but implicit to that is the idea that
Stephen: if they, if they were the self, then the self should be, then you should be able to exercise some agency over them. So the idea of agency comes in here.
Stephen: And what this points to
Stephen: is that we can infer that the self, as a moral agent is that voice within us that suggests what we should do.
Stephen: In other words, what I can do as opposed to what I can't do. I can't get my feelings to just
Stephen: be happy, that I can
Stephen: make choices that I can act upon, and that can have a difference in the world. In other words.
Stephen: we might call this
Stephen: an understanding of a dialogical self.
Stephen: The self is dialogical. In other words, in simple English
Stephen: we spend most of our waking life talking to ourselves.
Stephen: there's a little voice in our head that saying, What what am I going to do tomorrow? I think it probably a good idea. If I went out and did this, and maybe not. Maybe I'll go and see a movie instead.
Stephen: It's worth paying attention to. That weird quality of our self is that it's talking to itself. There are 2 poles within this single concept of of me.
Stephen: There's one part of me that's talking to another part of me. It's as though there are 2 selves.
Stephen: and we use expressions like, you know, we must try and be at peace with ourselves. We must understand ourselves
Stephen: as though there's a dialogue, a dialectic
Stephen: going on.
Stephen: Now, this point actually really only came clearly to my mind when I was reading the philosophy of Hannah Arendt.
Stephen: and she picks this up from Socrates.
Stephen: and she calls it the the the 2 in one self.
Stephen: the 2 in one.
Stephen: and I think this 2 in one is actually precisely what's there in the Buddha's second discourse on, not self.
Stephen: In other words, there are elements
Stephen: that I have can exercise some agency over in life and elements over which I can't.
Stephen: Now some of you may be picking up that this is the the fundamental premise of stoicism.
Stephen: the Stoic philosophy of the ancient Greeks that was developed in the century following the death of Socrates and the death of the Buddha.
Stephen: And this is basically what stoicism is about. It's about learning to differentiate what you can have some agency in, and what you cannot have any agency in what is within your control and what is not
Stephen: in your control.
Stephen: and I think this finds its most succinct expression for us today in the very well known serenity. Prayer which is used in alcoholics anonymous
Stephen: is phrased in in Christian theistic language, God give me the courage to
Stephen: change what I can change. God give me the patience to accept what I can't change, and God give me the wisdom to know the difference.
Stephen: It's all Cap, the whole of stoicism. And I would suggest
Stephen: the second Buddhist.
Stephen: the second teaching of the Buddha
Stephen: is encapsulated in that phrase, and this allows us very much to see the self, not just as a sort of fixed, static identity, which is, of course, it also becomes.
Stephen: That's definitely you know, an issue, an important issue.
Stephen: But there's also an understanding here of self that is dialogical, and very much to do with differentiating between what I can
Stephen: manage to do and what I can't. And this has come up in our discussions. What can I do?
Stephen: Faced with the climate change
Stephen: some things I probably can't do right now, like, change the capitalist system tomorrow.
Stephen: There's some things I can do as we've been exploring already. I don't need to go further into that.
Stephen: but this also touches into the idea the self.
Stephen: the Self, or me, or you, or the person.
Stephen: It's not in any sense a fixed thing. An agent is always thinking, speaking, and acting, doing stuff. and in the course of that acting, that self is evolving, transforming, growing, changing.
Stephen: And this you find also. This notion is quite explicit in a verse of the Dumapuda
Stephen: verse number 80, which I often quote.
Stephen: which is
Stephen: just as a farmer irrigates a field, just as an Arrowsmith fashions an arrow, just as A carpenter shapes a piece of wood. So the wise person tames the self.
Stephen: And again, this is often translated. The wise person tames himself
Stephen: or herself. which is a slippery
Stephen: mistranslation, because it takes self, it turns self into a reflexive function of the verb.
Stephen: Train yourself. whereas the Pali has the self in the accusative. Singular.
Stephen: In other words, it's the direct object of the verb, like the field, like the bits of the arrow, like the block of wood.
Stephen: It's something that you work.
Stephen: something that you transform something that you irrigate, something that you put together, something that you shape and form.
Stephen: And this is a very dynamic concept of self. The complete opposite of this kind of fixed identity of me.
Stephen: and this, I think, is necessary, for there to be any real sense of being a moral agent.
Stephen: and in terms of this metaphor.
Stephen: we need to understand the self
Stephen: as a work in progress or as an unfinished project.
Stephen: So, rather than thinking, we have to somehow get rid of the self.
Stephen: or at least sort of you know, not get so caught up in it.
Stephen: In fact, we can understand the practice of the Dharma, as the practice of evolving, of growing, of developing, of of changing ourselves in accordance with how we wish, with the kind of person we wish to be
Stephen: as the Greeks would have had it. or Michel Foucault would have had.
Stephen: In other words, we're constantly in motion. We're constantly confronted with situations that call for a response rather than just a repetitive
Stephen: reaction.
Stephen: And it's through those responses, through what we think and what we say and what we do.
Stephen: that we become the kind of person we aspire to be.
Stephen: Of course all of the old conditioning will still
Stephen: be coming into play. It's not. We're not operating in a vacuum. We're operating with a history, with a past.
Stephen: but an individual past, a cultural past, and so forth and so on. But that doesn't mean that we cannot become a project. In some ways we can almost think of this in terms of
Stephen: leading your life as though it's a kind of creative work of art in a way
Stephen: transforming, shaping, shifting, and so forth.
Stephen: So
Stephen: I think it's helpful in our understanding of self to to readjust what we might be carrying from Buddhist tradition, which is very much about critiquing the self, seeing it basically as a problem.
Stephen: And of course it is. That's definitely part of the story.
Stephen: But the danger is that that negative bias against self
Stephen: obscures these these early texts that I'm referring to that talk of the self in a very non-problematic way.
Stephen: It's just a fact of life. It's who we are. but it's understood as dynamic.
Stephen: ongoing, and effectively a vehicle of moral agency or ethical agency. That's where it all starts to to kick in, as it were.
Stephen: So when we cross the threshold from contemplative silence.
Stephen: and that includes mindfulness, collectiveness, perspective imagination. All of this is going on within us, but it's not visible.
Stephen: It's private, in a sense. You have to get to know someone fairly well before you can begin to read their inner life. Intimate partners and
Stephen: family members can often read you very, very clearly, maybe even more clearly than
Stephen: you can yourself, but for most of the time, as we move around the public realm.
Stephen: we're able to keep much of ourselves hidden.
Stephen: But as soon as we cross the threshold from
Stephen: contemplation, thinking, imagining.
Stephen: into action
Stephen: which is where we're now heading. Then we allow ourselves for the first time
Stephen: in a way to be seen to be heard and to be judged.
Stephen: so the self becomes, as it were, a performer on a stage.
Stephen: If we extend some of the metaphors of theatre.
Stephen: that Winton has been touching on
Stephen: we become performers on a stage. We speak our mind as we say we show ourselves. Maybe we show ourselves as someone who is is furious about an injustice that's going on, and we take a stand.
Stephen: It may be in a very small gesture, as Lenore suggested, the way we
Stephen: wink at the person across on the aisle isle of the train who's just suffered some indignity. And we say, Well, that's life, you know.
Stephen: That's also, we're making where we're visible. We're audible. We are in the world, we're of the world, and we're part of the public sphere, part of what the Greeks called the polis.
Stephen: the city. the political environment.
Stephen: And once we've said something once we've done something, then those acts cannot be withdrawn.
Stephen: You can't pull them back. You can say I didn't mean that.
Stephen: but that's too late. You've said it. You've you've let it slip out, or whatever. So there's something irrevocable about
Stephen: public self.
Stephen: and we are judged. Our life is judged, we are judged, and we judge others
Stephen: often, I think, unjustly, sometimes, maybe generously. But we enter into the sphere of the judgment.
Stephen: Human beings and our actions no longer become just, our private intentions
Stephen: that they become part of the weave of the world itself the things we've done, the things we've executed, the things we've built.
You know the task we've performed
Stephen: like that church across the way that was built in 41
Stephen: long, long time ago. And yet it's now it's still a feature of the world. Today. It's it's become part of the public sphere. It cannot be withdrawn.
Stephen: I suppose it can be destroyed.
Stephen: So this brings us very much to the heart of what it means to act.
Stephen: Now
Stephen: I've already mentioned this, but it's worth mentioning it. Again. When the Buddha is asked.
Stephen: What is Karma? What is Karma? What is action? He repeatedly says, action is intention. action is intention, Chetana.
Stephen: Now
Stephen: I think we can understand this in a number of different ways. Firstly, I think what is in a way revolutionary about this move
Stephen: is that
Stephen: the Buddha is acknowledging that actions start in our own
Stephen: minds with our own choices and decisions and judgments.
Stephen: In other words, comma is not just understood as some external activity, or.
Stephen: in fact, in Vedic India, Karma was often understood as ritual activity.
Stephen: The rituals you needed, or the priests needed to somehow placate the gods, and so on. Karma was sometimes understood as that something very external in a way that keeps the world in order. That's done by a priestly cast.
Stephen: The Buddha may be one of the first thinkers
Stephen: in
Stephen: in the world. And again, Socrates, I think, plays a very similar role in Greece. That action starts with your own personal choices and decisions.
Stephen: Now, the danger is that we think that we take it completely, literally, and we think that what
Stephen: action is just the intention we make, and hence the the emphasis very often in Buddhism, that what matters most is the intention. But, as I said yesterday, when you look at any traditional Buddhist account of of karma or action, it never reduces it just to intention. It recognizes that there need to be intentions, but there also need to be
Stephen: objects, other persons or situations in life, the need to be consciously made actions, and there needs to be also the recognition of a consequence of an act. It's quite complex, and I'm not going to get into that.
Stephen: But what it certainly shows is that
Stephen: that everything we say and everything we do consciously, I think we need to qualify it that way is an outward manifestation of a choice
Stephen: or a decision that's made in the interior of our soul.
Stephen: Now again, I'm using this word soul, which is again one of those. No, no words in Buddhism, because we're not supposed to have a soul
Stephen: and word I'm translating as soul is cheetah. not utter, not self. It's got nothing to do with self. It's cheetah and cheetah and Chetana
Stephen: are basically the same word.
Stephen: So intention and soul
Stephen: cheetah becomes Chetama in Tibetan. It's very clear it's sem
Stephen: is cheetah or soul, and Sempah
Stephen: is intention very very closely linked words.
Stephen: I understand that the word soul carries a lot of baggage for a lot of people, and I'm not insisting that you use it, but I'd like to flag the fact that it's a very. I find it a very beautiful idea.
Stephen: and we use it weirdly in many ways without any problem. We talk of something being being soulful.
Stephen: we talk of soul music. We talk of having a soul mate, and that doesn't seem to be a problem.
Stephen: But as soon as we isolate the word soul, we think of some, you know, some eternal, potentially eternal, hidden bit of me, my mind spirit, whatever that will survive death.
Stephen: That's not even good Christian theology
Stephen: for Thomas Aquinas. The soul was the form of the shape of your body. It wasn't some hidden sort of bit of interiority.
Stephen: the tool. So I'd like to resurrect the word soul. But I'm probably not going to succeed in in in English, in Greek. So
Stephen: it starts with the Greek word Psyche. Like we get psychological. and in Latin it becomes anima. In German it becomes Zaler. In English it becomes soul.
Stephen: So it's got nothing to do with with the, with the self at all it has to do with.
Stephen: as it were, what we feel most deeply.
Stephen: Jung, in German sometimes uses the word Zalish
Stephen: Soulish. and it gets translated into into English as psychological.
Stephen: very different resonance
Stephen: together. But again, I'd like to, you know, at least consider that we might recover
Stephen: this powerful and I think very beautiful word.
Stephen: So Buddhism clearly recognizes that
Stephen: you can't reduce action to intention.
Stephen: But what it does also recognize, which I think is important is that intentions and acts. In other words, the first thought we have of
Stephen: considering to do something to make a judgment and a decision privately
Stephen: is connected to what we then say and do. There is there is an unbroken continuum
Stephen: between what's first begins to stir in our soul. and then, through further reflection.
Stephen: ends up as a form of words or a deed that has an impact
Stephen: in the world. So again, I think we need to get out of this idea that there's an there's an inside and an outside and a kind of a weird kind of space in between. In fact.
Stephen: there is no gap.
Stephen: and ethically, too. Therefore, ethics doesn't
Stephen: begin with what we do in the world.
Stephen: Ethics begins with how we think
Stephen: and feel and decide
Stephen: in our minds. And for this reason, traditional Buddhism
Stephen: talks of 3 kinds of actions. It talks of actions of the mind.
Stephen: Manas, not cheetah actions of the mind. actions of the voice.
Stephen: and actions of the body.
Stephen: and we often hear this body speech in mind. It's a classic Buddhist trope.
Stephen: So, in other words.
Stephen: ethics begins in how we act within our own affective ecosystem.
Stephen: So when we sit in meditation.
Stephen: and let's say we're practicing mindfulness, and one of the instructions is, if you get distracted, bring your attention back to the breath.
Stephen: So you're sitting in meditation, and lo and behold! You get distracted you. Then have a choice.
Stephen: You can then make a decision that will result in an act.
Stephen: You'll say no, I'm not going to pursue that very promising fantasy.
Stephen: I'm going to come back to my breath, which is really boring.
Stephen: but that's what I'm committed to. That is already an ethical act. The German
Stephen: philosopher and
Stephen: dharma practitioner, Thomas Metzinger. Some of you might have heard of him.
Stephen: He is trying to develop what he calls an ethics of consciousness
Stephen: where ethics is actually something that we practice in the interiority and privacy of our own lives, that how we train our mind, as the Tibetans say, is actually a way of making a difference to our own inner
Stephen: ecosystem, our own interiority.
Stephen: We can change that.
Stephen: We can affect it positively by decisions we make
Stephen: to mentally behave in one way as opposed to another, and this, I think, is in many ways something that we already know through psychotherapy, in a sense.
Stephen: but particularly in the mindfulness-based therapies. This is what people are being taught to do.
Stephen: They're being taught to actually make
Stephen: make choices as to how they behave inside their minds, and these are ethical choices. They lead to a healthier state of mind. Let's say they lead to a kind of mind that accords with our
Stephen: values, such as inner stillness and non-reactivity.
Stephen: And we and this is often described as a kind of work.
Stephen: It's hard work. It's difficult, it's challenging. You get tired doing meditation. I don't find meditation relaxing very often I find it really exhausting
Stephen: because I'm struggling all of these things that are basically pushing
Stephen: me away from what I value into fantasies and daydreams, and so on. So it's being able to work with that. And there are many, many different technologies. We might say that different people will find helpful in different ways.
Stephen: And finally. we come to effort. To the to application.
Stephen: I mean, much of what I've been saying is basically describing the context within which we can apply ourselves as moral agents, in which that process begins very much with the efforts we make within our own inner life.
Stephen: but classically.
Stephen: this viamar, this application
Stephen: is broken down into 4
Stephen: tasks really.
Stephen: and these are sometimes called the 4 great efforts and courage, resolve.
Stephen: application, are all defined in exactly the same way.
Stephen: so let me just read those off. Some of you'll be familiar with them.
Stephen: The 4 efforts. And let's say here, the 4 applications
Stephen: have to do essentially with creating the conditions for another way of being.
Stephen: They're about creating conditions. Effort in Buddhism isn't about forcefully pushing your will onto something.
Stephen: It's about creating conditions. And this is very much in line with the principle of dependent arising.
Stephen: If you create the conditions under which a certain result. A certain effect will then
Stephen: come about as its fruit.
Stephen: It's not a strong, willful
Stephen: determination to force yourself onto the situation.
Stephen: Push yourself harder than you can actually manage.
Stephen: But it's about understanding the situations we're in and creating the conditions that will give rise
Stephen: to a different
Stephen: of experience, a different kind of reality. And again, I think we particularly today have to think of this as not about just changing inner conditions, but changing outer conditions.
Stephen: And here we go inevitably into the sphere of politics. How can we create the conditions of
Stephen: governance in our society, for example, in such a way that it would generate a different kind of world. And this is something that Winton will certainly be expanding upon. Further.
Stephen: that this is also this is also an effort, that is about analyzing the world, seeing what's possible, looking at what can be changed in order that a better kind of society can emerge. So it's just an extension really of a similar
Stephen: process that would go on in within our own minds, within our own families, communities, and so forth.
Stephen: So these 4 efforts.
Stephen: the first one is to create conditions so that reactivity will not arise.
Stephen: The second is to create conditions so that reactivity that has arisen
Stephen: will just be left alone.
Stephen: The third is to create conditions for skills and virtues to arise.
Stephen: and the fourth is to create conditions that will sustain and increase skills
Stephen: and virtues.
Stephen: So what we are creating conditions for is a good life.
Stephen: a way of life that's not entangled in our instinctive and conditioned greed and fear hatred.
Stephen: This broad term reactivity.
Stephen: which doesn't get us anywhere, keeps us stuck.
Stephen: keeps us trapped, keeps us blocked, doesn't allow us to flourish
Stephen: and to create other conditions and circumstances
Stephen: that will
Stephen: be more likely to bring about
Stephen: virtue.
Stephen: kindness, compassion, love, wisdom.
Stephen: and once those conditions have begun to happen, to find conditions to reinforce those conditions with
Stephen: other structures, both ways of behavior, but also communities. Sangha's societies in which those conditions will be able to be sustained and further developed.
Stephen: you might think, and in the abstract it looks a bit idealistic. But in practice I feel
Stephen: it's calling upon us to engage in radical acts of change.
Stephen: radical acts of self-transformation. And in many ways these 4
Stephen: efforts are
Stephen: just another version of the 4 tasks.
Stephen: They're very similar. Actually, the first task embracing life is creating the condition for
Stephen: letting go of reactivity.
Stephen: letting go of reactivity. The second task is creating the condition for reactivity to come to a stop
Stephen: and seeing the stopping of reactivity. The third task creates the condition for the cultivation of the path.
Stephen: And so what we're tapping into with this rather inadequate word effort
Stephen: is embracing the principle of dependent origination, dependent, arising and seeking to establish conditions that will support the kind of world
Stephen: we want to live in which will support the emergence of the kind of person we aspire to be.
Stephen: In other words, it is a fundamentally ethical project. Traditionally, Buddhism has thought of this in terms of self-development
Stephen: while tacitly acknowledging
Stephen: the development of a society or a community. But I think our challenge today
Stephen: by reading Buddhism in a
Stephen: in a totally secular sense, is to extend that
Stephen: project. That process
Stephen: to the world in which we live
Stephen: is finite planet Earth.
Stephen: To create the conditions that will
Stephen: lead to less reactivity.
Stephen: less flourishing, and create
Stephen: conditions that will hopefully give rise to the greater flourishing of life on Earth.
Stephen: So that's all I have to say today.
Stephen: Let's have a little pause. Stretch our legs, go to the restroom if we need to, and then 10 to 10 in 4 min
Stephen: we'll open this up for discussion.
Stephen: Question.
Stephen: from one of our online participants. Lesley.
Stephen: would you like to start, Basley?
Lesley Synge: Thank you, Stephen. My question relates to what was spoken about yesterday. And I've just written it down an email. So I'll just find that email. So I just speak more coherently.
Lesley Synge: So I wanted to say particular thanks to your insights and generosity, and sharing your work to all of you.
Lesley Synge: So my question relates to yesterday's point that imagination needs to be held in community, and I guess application needs to be held in community as well.
Lesley Synge: I'd like you to extend this vision with reference to the original teachings of Gottamar
Lesley Synge: even though the community he was elaborating on was mostly directed to the monastic one that gathered to follow him.
Lesley Synge: and he spoke often about how they would keep the community get together during the rains, retreats.
Lesley Synge: I do remember that he spoke about how monks must care for each other care for the sick amongst them, and on parting to ask for forgiveness for wrongs that were committed, there must be so much more, but I can't seem to tease it out myself.
Lesley Synge: and I'm thinking about. During the revolutionary 19 seventies, when I saw, and our society saw many brilliant minds burn out on imaginative visions.
Lesley Synge: They combined them a lot with hedonism and addictive drugs, and we could not seem to hold these creative people close. They went too far away from the rest of us.
and often burned out in very tragic kind of ways. I think we are going to see
Lesley Synge: massive amount of brilliant minds do the same in the coming chaotic period.
There will be also masses of ordinary people, who will also be spinning out with great anger and heedless actions
Lesley Synge: as they lash out against.
Lesley Synge: You know the conditions around them they feel angry about. So my question goes back, what do we do to hold them? How can we
Lesley Synge: keep them connected? Thank you.
Stephen: Thank you, Leslie. It's it's a big question. I don't have simple answer. I don't think that would be responsible to give a simple answer.
Stephen: I've never quite thought of it, quite as you phrased it, but I can see very clearly where you're coming from, and you know the situation that you described, I mean, as you're speaking. I was thinking of Simon Vale that Winton's been mentioning who is a classic case of a brilliant person burning out.
Stephen: And yet, paradoxically, her life continues today to inspire many, many other people, too. She's very much a living example.
Stephen: not a living example, but a, you know, a human example.
Stephen: an example of a life fully lived, although in many ways.
Stephen: you know, she's self destructed.
Stephen: Her vision was perhaps too extreme in a way to for her to sustain and to bear.
Stephen: So
Stephen: I do think we have to include within our
Stephen: community
Stephen: people of perhaps particular or exceptional gifts. Who are perhaps never going to fit in.
Stephen: and that may, in fact, be their power.
Stephen: be their role. I mean, you take the example of Christ, for example.
Stephen: there's someone who died very young. He didn't burn out exactly, but society, you know, got rid of him pretty quickly. Socrates, too, he was a bit older.
Stephen: but and even the Buddha at the end of his life was more or less abandoned.
Stephen: His supporters left him. He died more or less in isolation.
Stephen: So you know, there is something tragic about that. But in a strange way also, it's those extreme lives that very often stand up as beacons of hope for the rest of us.
Stephen: and that's part of it as well. But I also agree that without the support of a strong sense of community. It's difficult to somehow contain
Stephen: the passions.
Stephen: the vis, the energy
Stephen: of those who, in a way, are pushing the boundaries
Stephen: of of convention, of of the sort of standard bourgeois life we might lead. And the danger, of course, is, if we have, too, if we're too enclosing. If we're too kind of Molly coddling and and and holding of these energies and these visions, they perhaps will be also slightly suffocated by that
Stephen: and I think a lot of the just think of the people in the past whose lives you admire.
Stephen: and how many of them were in a way held within a safe environment supported by their friends.
Stephen: And how many of them are actually outsiders, outliers?
Stephen: I think we need both. You know.
Stephen: I wouldn't want a community that was too controlling. Because I think that would actually
Stephen: probably create the conditions for these people to break out anyway.
Stephen: as happens. But, on the other hand, if you don't really provide a context within which their lives can be valued
Stephen: and in some way
Stephen: integrated into the broader community of which they're a part.
Stephen: In the case of the Buddha. His Sangha
Stephen: was, as you say. generally understood as the monastic community. and, as far as I'm aware, he doesn't use the word Sangha to refer to his non-monastic followers.
Stephen: He uses the word Parisa, which means, like assembly.
Stephen: and one of the things we may also return to in our secular revisioning
Stephen: of the Dharma is to this idea of an assembly what the Buddha called a four-fold assembly
Stephen: in which you have. You have monks. You have nuns, you have lay men, you have lay women.
Stephen: I don't particularly like the languaging here.
Stephen: Biku doesn't really mean Monk, and Upasaka doesn't really mean laymen.
Stephen: So we can rethink that. But basically, he saw this fourfold assembly as different people in different walks of life with different levels of commitment
Stephen: coming together and identifying with this broad community, let's say
Stephen: but he also maintains that each
Stephen: of these 4 groups have exactly the same responsibilities.
Stephen: He didn't envisage. A community in which you have the experts and the non-experts, the monks or the teachers and the laypeople that developed later.
Stephen: at least, you know, as an idea, at least.
Stephen: he envisioned a community in which everybody, from each different walk of life
Stephen: would study and practice and train and teach
Stephen: the dharma.
Stephen: He didn't privilege one group as the teachers and the other group as the students.
Stephen: That, I think is striking. It quickly was lost, perhaps for purely pragmatic reasons.
Stephen: That's how it played out.
Stephen: But I would like to think of a Parisa.
Stephen: a secular dharmic community that embraces diversity of interest.
Stephen: of competence of skill.
of
Stephen: you know, focus
Stephen: and accords equal weight to each part of the
Stephen: community rather than one part slowly shifting into becoming the authority, and the others being somehow disempowered to some degree.
Lesley Synge: Thank you. We did that. But thank you very much.
I've got a second question from online from Tina. Ok, Tina.
Tina Gibson: Oh, good. I, Steven, how are you?
Tina Gibson: Firstly, I just wanna a deep bow of gratitude because I find the way that you're putting things into more layman terms.
Tina Gibson: Just yeah. Makes it so much easier need to understand it and relate to this. So II really appreciate that.
Tina Gibson: And I know, last year in the human flourishing course. you really spoke to the need to do that.
Tina Gibson: and how important it was to you at this moment. So, being someone who's kind of a bit neuro diverse. I find the layman terms just so
Tina Gibson: helpful. So thank you for that.
Tina Gibson: I wanted to just speak to the word compassion and hear your feelings on that.
Tina Gibson: I know in the past
Tina Gibson: I've really misunderstood what it means, and I feel there's a lot of people out there in our world that really misunderstand.
Tina Gibson: And
Tina Gibson: what I found helpful is looking at compassion as this relational quality that I have.
Tina Gibson: and it really does play a role I found in. Well, in that serenity prayer, I feel that is a compassionate way of bringing wisdom to that balance of
Tina Gibson: what is mine to do.
Tina Gibson: and the the sort of the relational aspect between the contemplative side of this and the active side.
Tina Gibson: and also plays a huge role a little bit what Lesley was saying in preventing burnout.
Tina Gibson: And and I found that this really does start from the inside out. So going back to what you said.
Tina Gibson: how we relate to the interior of our own soul. Makes a difference in how we can then act out in our world. So I guess I just wanted to name that
Tina Gibson: from what Leonora was talking about last night about
Tina Gibson: non harm. Often it's forgotten that
Tina Gibson: in trying to acquire knowledge and act in a certain way.
Tina Gibson: We can be harming ourselves, you know, from. And this actually ripples out into our world.
Tina Gibson: So
Tina Gibson: even I've exchanged this notion of training the mind to relating to my mind, relating to my inner world, with that same kind of benevolence that I wish to relate to others and to the planet.
Tina Gibson: I was brought up to think of that word compassion as
Tina Gibson: discriminating. you know, within the my Catholic upbringing it was saints or sinners. Some people got it, some people didn't.
Tina Gibson: And this has been a pattern in my inner world. You know, I'm really harmful about certain parts of my inner world
Tina Gibson: and learning to
Tina Gibson: see compassion. It doesn't discriminate.
Tina Gibson: you know it discerns. but it doesn't discriminate. And you know, Roshi Joan, I really appreciated her using the metaphor of of strong backs off front.
Tina Gibson: you know, and finding that middle way of relating, and how
Tina Gibson: often I can go to strong back, strong front or soft back, soft front, you know, and
Tina Gibson: helpful or harmful. Anyway, I've spoken too long. I just wanted to kind of bring it out in its role of sustainably moving forward to look after our planet.
Stephen: Well, thank you very much.
Stephen: yeah, I do think I mean, compassion is a charged word.
Stephen: And often it it. It slips quite easily into a sense of having pity for others.
Stephen: In a way, looking down on them.
Stephen: And again, training can have a certain sort of macho quality to it.
Stephen: getting, you know, control of these feelings and so forth, and applying them. And I do think it's helpful, as you suggest that we, we emphasize more the fact that we're really talking about forms of relationship
Stephen: and a relationship that's founded on on a basic sense of equality
Stephen: relationship that is able to to really embrace
Stephen: life.
Stephen: I've always found it helpful to follow the fairly classic Buddhist
Stephen: definitions of compassion and and Meta.
Stephen: or loving kindness or love. that compassion is the wish for others not to suffer.
Stephen: and Meta is the wish for others to be well, wish for others to be happy. And, as you
Stephen: implied, this can sort of become a kind of a rather
moose, soft.
Stephen: just sort of generation of
Stephen: good feelings, but with little backbone.
Stephen: as as Joan Halifax, I think, very correctly puts it, that we need, as it were, a stronger sense of purpose and commitment in our compassionate acts, and not reduce compassion just to certain feelings that we might experience every now and again.
Stephen: So now I like I enjoyed your reflection. Thank you very much. That was great, very, very good.
Stephen: We've got a third person online. Ayla. Yeah, I haven't seen anyone put their hand up yet, but we're open. So we'll go to Ayla first. And again, if you have a question, catch my eye. So I know. Yeah.
Stephen: And again, just to flag the fact that we're opening a space at the beginning for those who haven't yet spoken. And I noticed neither of you have. So that's good. Is there someone? Yes, there's another lady online. Ayla. Hi, Stephen! Hi, everyone
Ayla Curtis: thanks, obviously for your wonderful teachings and the opportunity to ask questions. I kind of had 2 questions hopefully.
Ayla Curtis: One's a bit of a short one. I might leave that to the end, but it was kind of following on about these charged words. So I guess I was just looking for some clarity about your your use of the word soul, and and what that fully means, cause. I think my understanding, and
Ayla Curtis: perhaps I'm wrong about this was being able to make decisions from the soul. or, you know, set your intentions from the soul, which to me kind of sounds like the the combination of
Ayla Curtis: the self that's understood and conscious, and maybe
Ayla Curtis: those unconscious causes and conditions that maybe aren't quite as examined. And I quite like that. I quite like bringing together the combination of those 2 things. But I'm just wondering was that your
Ayla Curtis: intention behind the word.
Stephen: Okay, no thanks for bringing that up, I mean. And someone else has just been asking me about what I mean by soul and in
Stephen: in in an Asian Buddhist culture.
Stephen: If you ask somebody you know, where is your cheetah? Where is your cheetah, Sam? In Tibetan?
Loosely mined
Stephen: but I translate it as soul.
Stephen: If you ask an Asian Buddhist person where that is, they'll all immediately go like this.
Stephen: and they'll put their hand on their heart. They won't go like this.
Stephen: In other words, this this is why, sometimes it's translated as heart, mind hyphenated.
Stephen: which is a clumsy expression, to say the least.
Stephen: it's sort of it's indecisive. Which way do we go?
Stephen: Soul, of course, captures both.
Stephen: but we don't like the word soul very often.
Stephen: so it does have to do with a heartfelt quality
Stephen: definitely suggests the notion of heart.
Stephen: so to be soulful, to be heartfelt. These words sort of resonate at the same pitch.
Stephen: but the only place we find the word soul.
Stephen: In fact, I've not even translated it as soul. Here is in the 4 steps of creativity on the cartography.
Stephen: 4 steps of creativity, aspiration, perseverance, intuition, experimentation.
Stephen: the word intuition is again soul. It's cheetah.
Stephen: It's the only place. It's only time the word cheetah appears on in these Buddhist lists of virtues. So it's understood as a virtue.
Stephen: the reason I translate it as intuition picks up on what you were saying, too. It's a it's a part of our self. That is not
Stephen: the reason the logical mind, the rational mind.
Stephen: But it's very much a source of of insight, of knowing
Stephen: the is, we often feel it sort of deep within us somewhere.
Stephen: Jung uses the word
Stephen: Arno intuition
Stephen: also. And actually, when I was reading recently, the Greek comedy Frogs by Aristophanes, Aristophanes. The main character Dionysos is sent down to Hades to bring back Euripides to perform
Stephen: a play in Athens, and he goes down to Hades. And there's an argument going on between Euripides and Aeschylus. The 2 great tragedians or 2 of the 3 great tragedians, both of whom are now dead, and they're fighting it out down in Hades. As to who's the best tragedian, so they have a contest. It's very funny.
Stephen: But at the end of the contest Dionysos says, Well, having heard that contest, I must now check in with my Psyche
Stephen: to decide which is the greatest tragedian.
Stephen: and he chooses Aeschylus over Euripides. But the point, again, is that he uses the word Psyche soul cheetah.
Stephen: As again a place of judgment, a place where we make choices and judgments that's not strictly rational, that seems to stem from some place deeper in our body.
Stephen: we might call it intuition again. So in some ways it's a bit vague and fuzzy.
Stephen: but that part arguably, is its strength. Well, that exists. Sorry. That was, I guess, part of the reason I asked the question is, I think, in my mind I've been framing that part of me, maybe as a negative thing that needed to be examined and questioned and understood.
Ayla Curtis: and I guess it does in some way to avoid maybe any traps or pitfalls. But I think. The power of your talk now, and talking about the soul, and and good luck with trying to get that more accepted. But that. Yeah, it's it doesn't have to be something that's
Ayla Curtis: necessarily framed in a negative way. You know, there's a lot of power in that intuition, and that deep knowing
Ayla Curtis: somewhere in this space near the heart
Stephen: absolutely. But again, in usage
Stephen: particularly in Buddhist circles, soul
Stephen: doesn't really work for many people, and we have to accept that and acknowledge that. And the point is to find a language that really articulates as clearly and as as as powerfully as we can so to to bring in new terms, or try to revive old terms, may not always work. But I think it's worth at least flagging. The fact
Stephen: that we have this concept. See, Chitta doesn't translate as mind at all. In German, they say Geist, which means like spirit
Stephen: in French, they say. let's pray again. Spirit.
Stephen: But I don't think we should get too tangled up in these kind of almost philological questions that can take us away from what
Stephen: we know in ourselves, to be true and to be valid and to be real. But I think it is important not to demonise these notions. I don't think we should demonise the word self either, which is another Buddhist habit.
Stephen: Of course there are problematic areas around selfing, that's for sure.
Stephen: But to sort of write the whole idea off as suspect is, I think, you know, limiting
Ayla Curtis: on a personal level. I think that's given rise to a lot of self doubt and and questioning in
Ayla Curtis: maybe not productive ways. So I think, having it reframed as a more of a yeah intuition. All that deep knowing is is a powerful thing.
Ayla Curtis: is it kind of does speak to the power of language if we want to
Ayla Curtis: try and not avoid that part. But yeah, I guess I appreciate that clarification around around. What, how you see it and how you apply it.
Stephen: Thank you. You said you had a second question, a little one at the end. Well, again, kind of use of words. I was curious about your choice of the word care and the cartography of care, and how you've packaged up. I guess those
Ayla Curtis: The tasks under this framework of care. Was there any specific reason for that, or did it just feel natural? Well, it's
Stephen: I'm trying to find a way to translate the Buddhist term Apamada appamada. It's usually rendered as something like diligence or heedfulness.
Stephen: But I find that though neither of those words are able to bear the load
Stephen: of what is understood as Upper Madra
Stephen: upper Mada is the very last word the Buddha spoke
Stephen: his famous last words were.
Stephen: things fall apart. tread the path.
Stephen: care, tread the path with appamada.
Stephen: Now, whether or not he actually said those words we can put to one side. The point is this was a phrase that became in a way summed up. What his immediate follows felt was
Stephen: what his teaching was all about.
Stephen: You know the the world is unstable. It breaks down as does your life.
Stephen: Therefore tread the path
Stephen: the eightfold path with a Permada
Stephen: with diligence.
Stephen: yeah, maybe. But diligence is kind of vague, and it doesn't really have much weight. I chose the word care
Stephen: for a number of reasons, firstly, because in a German translation of Shanti, Deva's Bordichari Avatara, the Guide to the Bodhasatta's way of Life, Upper Madra is translated as Vax summer Zorge in German
Stephen: by an Steinkeller, German scholar and faxama soar. Sorga means care
Stephen: in job. Vach Sama means wakeful.
Stephen: which I think is very, very good translation, but I don't like translating a single word with an adjective, attached, wakeful care or something.
Stephen: And then, after that, when I started reading the works of Martin Heidegger.
Stephen: There, too, care or Zorge
Stephen: care. Becomes very, very central to his understanding of Darzine, of being in the world
Stephen: or just being here.
Stephen: that that's our primary relationship to to reality, to others, to ourselves is one of care.
Stephen: But you have the trouble with
Stephen: care in English. It doesn't always catch the notion that caring is also
Stephen: there's an element of anxiety or worry
Stephen: about care, I mean, we say in English. Still, you know, you know, this seems to be a person who doesn't seem to have any cares at all. Be free of cares, means to be free of worries, free of things we're concerned about
Stephen: so care, both in English and its earlier usage and in German still very much today. And French. Susie also suggests that what we care about is
Stephen: that we worry about. We're concerned about. I care for someone because I don't want them to suffer.
Stephen: So care has this sense again, of giving primacy to our
Stephen: being in the world as a concern for the suffering of oneself. To care for oneself, to care for others is, if you care for someone. If that person then experiences pain that causes you pain.
Stephen: Care is profoundly empathetic in that sense. So I've chosen to translate up Amada as care. It remains undrunkenness
Stephen: undrunk, unintoxicated.
Stephen: and it also the Buddha uses care. The image he uses for care is that of the elephant's footprint. He says that just as the footprint of the elephant
Stephen: is big enough for the footprints of all the other animals of the jungle to fit. There's no footprint bigger than that of the elephant. In the same way.
Stephen: Apamada care is the virtue that includes all other virtues.
Stephen: It's the overriding virtue which, again, is, that is the case for Heidegger. I think it's it reinforces the notion that care is the the virtue that somehow encompasses all the others. It's it's our primary relationship to ourselves, and the world is that of care. So that's the reason I've chosen care.
Ayla Curtis: I really like it because I think it also captures that activeness as well. So caring as something that you do for other people with other people as well as you know, a feeling or an intention
Stephen: and a happy accident in the English language is that we can use it in 2 senses. Be careful
Stephen: and caring
Stephen: both, which have a slightly different sense, and, you know, to to live carefully to live mindfully. It's often, in fact, in some translations it's almost equivalent to mindfulness as well.
Stephen: It has that that sense too
Ayla Curtis: wonderful. Thank you.
Stephen: Tiberio has a question. So we have a couple more questions in in this room. Yes, here.
Stephen: My name is Tiberio, and thank you, Stephen. This has been very illuminating. I have many questions, but I'm going to select just one for now.
Stephen: I'm trying to really make a mental model of what we're trying to achieve here, and
Stephen: and in particular, Stephen.
Stephen: I want to have a better understanding of your thinking process, how it has evolved over the years. So the question we will be trying to get at that point. It seems to me I'm trying to find a way to describe what we're trying to do here. It seems like something like rediscovering and reconceiving
Stephen: the Dharma, or the teachings of the Buddha.
Stephen: so as to inform us how to better live an ethical life in the 20 first century. Something like that. That's the way I'm telling you the story. I'm not sure whether that sounds
Stephen: right for you or not, but
Stephen: given that under the assumption of a definition that sounds roughly like that.
Stephen: I'm really curious about one question to you, which is the following, there are 2 aspects of your approach that strike me. It's very
Stephen: salient. One is skepticism.
Stephen: Amily. You're going back to the first
Stephen: writings you are trying to really get into the mind of the Buddha.
Stephen: and another is ethical
Stephen: attitude.
Stephen: pragmatic ethical attitude towards living in one's life. So the question I have for you is
Stephen: in your skeptical pursuit of the truth. Insofar as we are referring to what the Buddha was really on about.
Stephen: Have you found challenges? In
Stephen: fine, in the gap? Have you found the gap. Have you found gaps between the
Stephen: reality that you saw, or at least a picture that you saw was likely to have been the true picture
Stephen: what you think is required today to live an ethical life
Stephen: in the world we actually live in.
Stephen: There are some hints of that in the conversation up to now like the questions that traditionally, Buddhism apparently didn't pay too much attention as much attention to the active side as opposed to the contemplative side. Have you seen other tensions between your sort of empirical findings
Stephen: and your normative resolutions and personal convictions about what is required to change the world for the better
Stephen: today.
Stephen: Oh, well, your summary of my thinking process is
Stephen: pretty much correct.
Stephen: Yes, I'm trying to get back to these early sources, but not exclusively.
Stephen: because I also recognize that Buddhism has developed, developed and evolved, you know, over hundreds of years. And it's come up with some really good stuff. So I'm not going to jettison that just because you don't find it in the Pali camp. That would be stupid.
Stephen: For example, I think the emphasis on questioning and wonder is not very strong
Stephen: or very explicit
Stephen: in the earliest text, but you find it very powerfully articulated in Z. In particular.
Stephen: Majamac of Philosophy. Someone answered, asked about that that, too. You don't find so well worked out
Stephen: the early texts, but you do find it in Nagarjuna, some of his followers. So that's an element. I would I
Stephen: the Bodhisattva idea!
Stephen: You don't find that so explicitly phrased in the early text, but you find it expressed in Shanti Devon
Stephen: other writers, and that's something I think we can certainly
Stephen: learn from.
Stephen: but pretty much without. Except for those exceptions.
Stephen: I do find that as one goes back to try to get as clear as possible a picture of not only who the person
Stephen: go to the walls.
Stephen: but I think to understand who Gotaman was. You have to understand the sociopolitical economic circumstances in which he emerged. I think it's impossible to understand him in isolation.
Stephen: And so clearly some of those conditions are very different to our own, and therefore what he may
Stephen: speak of as as pertinent to his time may not be so
Stephen: important today, like the establishment of a monastic community, for example, obviously that was quite important for him. But I would question whether that really is so relevant
today.
Stephen: You're also correct in isolating. Yeah, identifying skepticism and ethics as the core driving motors of my inquiry.
Stephen: I've actually often asked myself, am I an ethical skeptic, or am IA skeptical ethicist?
Stephen: And it could go either way.
Stephen: I think the and what I call an ethics of uncertainty in a sense captures that again. that we can lead a fully ethical life without having to ground it on metaphysical certainties.
Stephen: whether it be, you know, the 10 Commandments or the Buddhist precepts, or Buddha being omniscient, and therefore he understood the workings of the law of Karma. We can drop all of that.
Stephen: and I do feel that at its best early Buddhism. to the extent to which we can excavate it. Somehow
Stephen: makes those ideas very clear. And, as I've said many times on this course. when you dig deep back into the tradition, you find yourself surprised, like looking up the discourse on the other. You know the characteristics of not self.
Stephen: I assumed when I was a
Stephen: from my Tibetan Buddhist background that when I finally found that text it would be talking about the fact that there is no inherently existent self
Stephen: doesn't mention that at all. In fact, it goes at it at an angle, as I've described today, which is kind of surprising
Stephen: the 4 tasks, too. Likewise, these are ideas that are there in the first discourse that never get developed.
Stephen: So something is going on here.
Stephen: And I think what's going on is that after the Buddha died. There was a power struggle.
Stephen: And
Stephen: so essentially, what we have is not just what Gautama said. We have, what a certain body of people in power
wanted us to hear what Gautoma said.
Stephen: and I'm sure the same is true in all religious traditions. But so in other words, we always get a partial picture.
Stephen: and so it's very difficult, with using historical critical approaches to really disentangle all of this stuff. And we have, unfortunately, with the early Buddhist materials. We only have one set of primary
Stephen: witnesses, as it were. who speak with Socrates, you have Xenophon, and you have Plato.
Stephen: so you can get at least 2 different takes, and even others
Stephen: some playwrights. I'm going to have to stop them. But yes. all right, let's have one more. That's thank you. That'll have to do.
Stephen: Yes, Margaret, we on time already. Well, let's see how difficult your question is, and if
Stephen: I thank you very much for your teaching which I really appreciate. I really felt
Stephen: that I could identify with what you said about creating the conditions for another way of being so. I feel that for many of us here, if not all of us, we're not just trying to do that for ourselves, but also to try to create another way of being for other people, for our community and the society.
Stephen: And so I worked in the area of I work with asylum seekers. So in that sphere
Stephen: where we try to create for another way of being for them, meaning just having basic
Stephen: healthcare employment
Stephen: food whatever. You see that the system is set up for asylum seekers, who are probably one of the most vulnerable group in our society to be kept
Stephen: at that disadvantage level, because it is very hard for them to access everything, and if they have the luck to have work rights, they're very much kept at the at the entry level, doing hard labor for the rest of the society. And but meanwhile there is so much tribalism.
Stephen: It seems that as a society we need to those in power need to have a convenient
Stephen: football to keep kick around. And recently there was the High Court case, where refugees who were illegally kept in indefinite detention was decided by the High Court to be released. There was a whole uproar in the society about that. So my question is really that
Stephen: while
Stephen: I'm lucky to work in the area which transforms me, and we are managing to do a little bit in transforming these people's lives. But that bigger picture is there for a very intring reason. How do you actually make
Stephen: that change? And have another way of being
Stephen: for for our society, if not the world? Really
Stephen: well, I mean I don't have an answer to that question. Really.
Stephen: I can only speak. I mean I can only speak. I'll just speak about myself.
Stephen: I broadly accept your analysis. It seems fairly self-evident, and I don't have to look to Australia, and the same thing is going on in Britain and France.
Stephen: and, as you say, the political establishments and their allies within corporations and business, and so on. You know they've got, you know they have a very strong vested interest in maintaining their
Stephen: their power.
Stephen: And so it's clearly a question that will have to be addressed, not
Stephen: by individuals, but by people working together, probably in the long term
Stephen: to, you know, try to create a different kind of political reality.
Stephen: and that's clearly, very, very difficult. I would be under no illusions, and not having any great skills or knowledge even of that field. I don't really have a great deal to say
Stephen: so. Therefore, in terms of my own life. What I do have is an ability to communicate.
Stephen: and
Stephen: I am moved by some of these, you know, same fundamental questions that come from my growing up in the 1960. S. Basically, you know, change the world.
Stephen: We need a better way of living on this planet together and at some level that always has been at the root of my motives. But perhaps naively, at the outset, when I got involved in Buddhism, I had the idea. Well, if everyone could practice Buddhism would be fine.
Stephen: I think that's extremely naive.
Stephen: But, on the other hand, once you dig deeper down into the Buddhist teachings, you begin to hit a certain bedrock of basic ideas which strike me as being potentially foundation stones for erecting another
Stephen: way of thinking another way, not of just thinking, but another way of living, another way of behaving.
Stephen: and that's where I've you know, invested my.
Stephen: however many years I'll live on this earth. That's what I'm
Stephen: been trying to do, and
Stephen: of course I can't judge
Stephen: now what possible effect that will have if anything, I don't know. But given my skill set, given my limitations. That's what
Stephen: I've invested my time, and I'm and I'm I'm quite. I'm quite pleased
Stephen: with the way that some of these early intuitions have played out quite fruitfully in terms of being able to restructure
Stephen: what the dharma is about in a way that seems to me to be rooted in the very early.
Stephen: This ideas core ideas, and yet is capable of the transition.
Stephen: the retranslation into a language that speaks to our condition today. And and this, I think is the is the strength of a tradition like Buddhism
Stephen: is that it seems to be sufficiently robust and yet sufficiently flexible to be able to move from one cultural situation to another. So you know, we see that it starts in India.
Stephen: But it's
Stephen: I've just come from Japan. I mean, it's a very well-established system which has got its own character.
Stephen: So this
Stephen: gives me a confidence that there's something within the DNA
Stephen: of the of the Dharma
Stephen: that is able to be both robust and flexible, and that's rare, I think.
Stephen: And so I would hope. And again, the fact that you're spending your time here exploring these sorts of ideas implies that I'm not alone in thinking this
Stephen: and that's kind of what I've dedicated myself to doing. And I I also would accept that if this way, this sort of reconfiguration of the Dharma cannot be translated into broad, collective behaviors and actions, then it's failed.
Stephen: So let's leave it on that happy point
Stephen: that we must draw to a close. Thank you. Those who are online. Thank you. And
Stephen: you had a question, too. You're 7 h. You start tomorrow in your name. True, Tom
Stephen: Tritton, after the Greek god. Triton. Correct?
Stephen: Okay. okay. So I think now we have tea, right? Coffee and stuff.