Stephen: okay, so good morning, everybody.
Stephen: I hope you had a
Stephen: final restful night. If you are here and likewise for those of you
Stephen: at home. This, as we're all obviously aware.
Stephen: is our final morning
Stephen: this week.
Stephen: for me at least, has gone fairly rapidly.
Stephen: and yet it also seems like a long time.
Stephen: That odd experience one often has when
Stephen: you're enjoying something.
Stephen: So this morning we're going to start by some concluding reflections from the 3 of us.
Stephen: Then we'll open up the room for a final Q&A
Stephen: obviously, also
Stephen: with those online.
Stephen: again, it would be helpful if everyone can have a good opportunity to talk that we keep our
Stephen: questions or comments succinct
Stephen: to the point, to optimize the time, and I, at least amongst the 3 of us will reciprocate by trying to make my responses brief and succinct, too.
Stephen: I'd like to begin my reflections by coming back to what I feel to be the starting point. For this whole
Stephen: endeavour. whatever we call it. the practice of the dharma.
Stephen: a sense of spiritual or religious vocation.
Stephen: a life of the mind a philosophical
practice.
Stephen: in other words.
Stephen: recalling and remembering what it is that somehow moved us to
Stephen: find or be interested in such a path.
Stephen: In the first place.
Stephen: and for me it is very much A fundamental sense of wonder or astonishment.
Stephen: Surprise. There's many different words for it. Those moments in our life.
Stephen: however brief. that somehow shock us into an awareness that we're here at all.
Stephen: and that is very often coupled
Stephen: with the recognition that
Stephen: we won't be here for very long
Stephen: that we are very temporary residents on this
Stephen: planet Earth.
Stephen: and in my own practice I spent
Stephen: about 4 years. Focusing on this question, what is this? And I was drawn to that practice, basically because
the Buddhist traditions I was aware of
Stephen: it was the only one the sand tradition
Stephen: that considered these questions
Stephen: to be more
Stephen: vital, more important than all of the brilliant answers that
Stephen: Buddhism has come up with to these questions.
Stephen: I think it's very easy to forget
Stephen: the questions that underlie our lives.
Stephen: and we find, maybe not deliberately, but a certain kind of
complacency, perhaps, in
Stephen: adopting a set of answers. In other words, beliefs, doctrines, views.
Stephen: This is an idea also. We find in Plato.
Stephen: in the theatres, which is one of the dialogues.
Stephen: Socrates acknowledges, how wonder is the origin of philosophy!
Stephen: Thalmazine
Stephen: is the origin of philosophy, the opposite of docks, as I
Stephen: holding opinions or views.
Stephen: and
Stephen: he also talks of
Stephen: how the philosopher
Stephen: is one who somehow lives with the experience of wonder or the feeling of one. But that's how it's usually translated.
Stephen: But in Hannah Arendt.
Stephen: essay on Socrates. She translates that phrase very differently.
Stephen: She says to her.
Stephen: the philosopher is the person who's able to endure
Stephen: wonder is able to tolerate
one
Stephen: he's able to bear.
Stephen: The word is pars, which means pardon.
Stephen: not just feeling, but there's an element of
Stephen: of time.
Stephen: and I feel that our
Stephen: embrace of life, as in the first task, is also the ability to endure the wonder of being alive.
Stephen: to be able to sustain and tolerate that uncertainty. that fundamental uncertainty
Stephen: in Zen. You have the idea that,
Stephen: it's only with great doubt or great questioning that there can be great awakening.
Stephen: If there's only a little doubt
Stephen: there'll only be little awakening, and if there's no doubt at all.
Stephen: no sense of wonder whatsoever.
Stephen: There's no possibility of any awakening
Stephen: at all.
Stephen: and I would
Stephen: I feel that what Arend does in that move in that translation is to connect the early Buddhist tradition with its emphasis on suffering
Stephen: with the later Zen tradition, with its emphasis on question.
Stephen: that they at this point find some common ground.
Stephen: and I also feel it's an utterly relevant to the questions we've been exploring this week around
Stephen: climate change
Stephen: and the other great
Stephen: sufferings of our time.
Stephen: and I think we must be careful not to get too caught up in solving problems
Stephen: which, of course, we need to do with some urgency. I'm not questioning that.
Stephen: but it's easy, I think, perhaps, to forget the underlying deep questions of the fact that that were in this world at all. and to.
Stephen: in a sense, remember
Stephen: the big big picture starting perhaps, with the Big Bang.
Stephen: the evolution of human beings fairly recently, and and the sheer
Stephen: immensity of life itself
Stephen: that in a way exceeds our capacity for representation.
Stephen: It's sublime in that sense. And I feel what we're dealing with with these big
Stephen: challenging issues is
Stephen: connecting with a sense of of the enormity which is both fascinating in a way. but it's also terrifying.
Stephen: It's scary.
Stephen: I'm reminded of Rudolf Otto, who was a German theologian in the 1,900 thirtys, who wrote a book called Dus Heiligen.
Stephen: the Holy.
Stephen: where he talks of the mysterious tremendum.
Stephen: the terrible mystery
in his theistic language of God.
Stephen: that there's something overwhelming
Stephen: about our experience
Stephen: of being this tiny speck of consciousness enveloped
Stephen: in this infinite enormity
Stephen: of live.
Stephen: And what I've been sharing with you
Stephen: this week is trying to outline for
Stephen: people like ourselves today. some kind of framework, some kind of cartography
in which we can find a way of life in which we
Stephen: are embedded in that sense of
Stephen: of enormity, of wonder, and yet at the same time find that.
Stephen: and experienced that as a ground
Stephen: from whence to live meaningfully, ethically.
Stephen: contemplatively. in this world.
Stephen: And the word I've used that I know
Stephen: some people struggle with a bit is the word soul.
Stephen: The word which I translate
Stephen: cheetah heart, mind, if you prefer. But what this refers to really is getting deeply in touch with
Stephen: what animates us Latin for soul is animar.
Stephen: that which animates us, connected to the word animol.
Stephen: and to live, as
Stephen: you know, to not ignore that deep, intuitive, instinctual.
Stephen: So the almost raw. wild
Stephen: dimension of ourselves and resist the temptation to.
Stephen: you know. Think of our practices applying certain technological solutions to problems
Stephen: which is arguably
Stephen: part of the problem.
Stephen: and this has led me to the to focus on these 32
Stephen: virtues and skills which are then aligned with these 4 tasks.
Stephen: And
Stephen: that's basically I feel that has really become the core.
How I understand the dharma.
Stephen: and wish to somehow develop further in my work, and probably this will now go on
Stephen: until I die
Stephen: whenever that is.
Stephen: And there are 2 projects currently underway in which I'm sort of developing. This one is a project called Mindfulness-based Ethical Living
M. Bell for short.
Stephen: that was based on a series of online teachings I gave a couple of years ago. Now
Stephen: through an organisation in Germany, the Buddhist shift on.
Stephen: And there I went through these 32 elements that I covered briefly yesterday morning
Stephen: a way to try to construct a framework for a mindfulness based intervention. That's not about dealing with a pathology.
Stephen: stress or panic attacks or anxiety, but sees but tries to develop a more positively oriented
Stephen: practice of mindfulness. It's not just about meditation. but extends mindfulness to all areas of our life.
Stephen: particularly our ethical life.
Stephen: Thinking of mindfulness is both existential, therapeutic.
Stephen: contemplative. and ethical.
Stephen: The other project that I'm working on in this same regard is the book I'll write next.
Stephen: maybe.
Stephen: but that's the plan. A book which is tentatively called The art of care which will be a companion book to my heart of solitude.
Stephen: And this will take the cartography of care. specifically focusing on the 32 virtues and skills
Stephen: one. Chapter per virtue and skill. 32 chapters in which I'll try to articulate this more
Stephen: more clearly, but without using any Buddhist jargon at all.
Stephen: which is, in fact, a return to what I did with Buddhism without beliefs, which was commissioned as a book that introduced Buddhism without using Buddhist language. I kind of want to try that out again.
Stephen: In other words, a book for the general reader which is rooted in
Stephen: these essentially Buddhist ideas, but doesn't carry any Buddhist
Stephen: luggage, at least not overtly.
Stephen: Another thing that you may find of interest is
program that's now available through Bodie College.
Stephen: where I work in England a small organization that
Stephen: effectively operates courses online and in rented venues. and that's called after Buddhism, and beyond which covers much of the same sort of material
Stephen: but in a somewhat more scholarly way.
Stephen: and that was consisted of 24 half-hour talks
Stephen: over a 12 week period. and this is now available as a self-study program.
Stephen: which you can purchase from Bodie College. It's on video and or obviously with audio and an accompanying workbook.
Stephen: so that may interest you.
Stephen: When I get home in the next few days I'm going to put together a package of this material and
Stephen: and I'm going to send it out to everyone. If you, if you absolutely don't want it, tell me I'll take you off the list.
Stephen: but it'll include the workbook for M. Bell. Mindfulness based ethical living.
Stephen: It will include a link to Bodhi College in the after Buddhism, and beyond course, and it will also include a meditation on being a good ancestor
Stephen: that was developed by my friend Shokee Matsumoto, who was the priest who was instrumental in my visit to Japan, and this is a guided meditation on becoming a good ancestor that he
Stephen: he gave at the Davos World Economic Forum last year.
Stephen: and I thought you'd enjoy that. Rurika has put together a slightly.
Stephen: a good English version of it. So you'll also get a copy of that as well.
Stephen: and that's it from me. and I will hand over to my esteemed college. Mr. Colleague.
Stephen: Mr. Winton Higgins.
Stephen: Thank you, Mr. Bachelor.
Stephen: yes, I suppose feeling uppermost in my mind is gratitude to Stephen for
Stephen: this wonderful reinterpretation specifically of the eightfold path.
Stephen: And it sort of takes me back to
Stephen: a couple of things I extrapolated from Simon Creechley at the beginning of the retreat.
Stephen: The whole idea that we we may think we're through with the past.
Stephen: But the past is not through with us.
Stephen: and there is such extraordinary richness.
Stephen: primarily, of course, for us in the In, in a Dhammic tradition
Stephen: going back 2,500 years, but also our own.
Stephen: Tradition
Stephen: in the West. a contemporaneous development
Stephen: going back to to
Stephen: Greek thought
Stephen: and I'm also thinking of Pritchley's other point
Stephen: that it's the obligation
Stephen: of every generation to reinvent the classics.
Stephen: It doesn't mean reinvent, reinvent them from scratch, but to radically reinterpret them in
Stephen: in terms that matter that are meaningful
Stephen: to the people of this generation, whatever generation this one might be.
Stephen: It's it's it's in fact.
Stephen: it sounds quite dramatic to reinvent
Stephen: the classics every generation. But it is really just good hermeneutic practice. because every all the ancients that we've been quoting
Stephen: were addressing situations in their own time.
Stephen: They were addressing people in their own time?
Stephen: These people had urgent questions, just like we do.
Stephen: And so all of these
Stephen: texts, or all of these sayings that became texts in the case of the Dhamma
Stephen: actually address historical situations
Stephen: that are different from
Stephen: how? Rather and so
Stephen: it's just good hermeneutic practice to say, Well, what is the essence? What is the wisdom in there? And how do we re
Stephen: stated? How do we refashion it in Crichlyson? Reinvent it
Stephen: in order for it to
Stephen: to
Stephen: enlighten our own lives.
Stephen: So
Stephen: this is, I think, what we've done, and it's been wonderful to see how this retreat developed
Stephen: cause as we began to to look at Stephen's reinvention of the eightfold path.
Stephen: It immediately got us in touch with our own
Stephen: problems, the problems of this generation.
Stephen: And so.
Stephen: you know, some of the time I felt
Stephen: The retreat was
Stephen: was kind of
Stephen: becoming a workshop for
Stephen: for climate activism and all that sort of thing. And that's
Stephen: while it was whilst important to maintain the retreat
Stephen: nature
Stephen: of the occasion. It's also fantastic that it's had. This had this byproduct.
Stephen: Lots of ideas, lots of connections between people
Stephen: and between organizations who
Stephen: are in the struggle. So
Stephen: this and a retreat, I think, has been something of an as experiments. and all our progress comes through experimentation.
Stephen: we try something new without knowing how it's going to turn out.
Stephen: And
Stephen: I think this one has turned out trump's
Stephen: so
Stephen: on that happy night
Stephen: I'll hand it over to Ms. Lambert.
Stephen: Alright.
Stephen: thanks, Clinton.
Stephen: I'd like to pick up on a
Stephen: an issue that's come up a number of times over the week.
Stephen: This. What I believe is a false dichotomy between
Stephen: individual
Stephen: engagement in the world and group engagement in the world.
Stephen: It's a false dichotomy, in my view, because there is no such thing as group engagement without individual engagement.
Stephen: It's an individual ethical decision to get out of my own comfort zone and go join a group.
Stephen: and I'm all for joining groups, as I'm sure you've
Stephen: picked up. Given that I've volunteered for them myself.
Stephen: Once we start experiencing a group, and we find
Stephen: it may or may not be all bearing skittles.
Stephen: It's an individual ethical decision
Stephen: to go back
Stephen: next week and do it again.
Stephen: even though it might be a bit uncomfortable
Stephen: when that group asks me to do things that I'm not comfortable with, like doorknocking. For example.
Stephen: it's an individual ethical decision to flex my courage muscle and say yes
Stephen: to that request.
Stephen: Everything that happens is an individual
Stephen: decision in the beginning.
Stephen: and
Stephen: I've been a bit puzzled over the week. Why this tension? Because I don't see any tension there at all. I see them completely integrating and I have been a bit worried because
Stephen: the individual
Stephen: ethical engagement has
Stephen: been put down a few times.
Stephen: That's not important.
Stephen: Don't waste our time on it.
Stephen: and I know I have a very strong individual ethical engagement practice, and through my conversations over lunches and afternoon teas and morning teas, I know I'm not the only one in the room who has that
Stephen: and so
Stephen: I want to say to all of you
Stephen: who have death. I see you. and I honor you.
Stephen: and
Stephen: I respect
Stephen: that, and I respect how difficult it is when that kind of practice is driven purely from
Stephen: a commitment, a deep commitment to one's values
Stephen: when there is no ripple effect of other people around you. Inspirational leaders, organizations, what have you when it's just you
Stephen: and a decision to make a change in your life. Which may or may not be easy.
Stephen: And there are numerous people in this room who have done that and
Stephen: and are doing that, and are in various stages of doing it. And
Stephen: I guess I've
Stephen: attempted throughout the week to bring things back to the to the personal
Stephen: and
Stephen: it might be that that is not to be dismissed.
Stephen: it's
Stephen: where everything starts.
Stephen: And
Stephen: so Interestingly, last night in in the session that we did on nonviolent communication.
Stephen: While the activity was going on, Alan came over.
Stephen: and Allen's been involved for many years in teaching its personal skills. And what have you in in corporates? And he said to me, This is where it gets real.
Stephen: You know the application of our dama in our
Stephen: interpersonal individual world. When we've got a conflict with someone, especially someone we care about, especially someone.
Stephen: you know. If we sense, there might be a rupture in the relationship. And we're feeling our needs aren't being taken into account. And you know, how do we go about that? And
Stephen: My sense is, that is a really honorable place among others, but a really honorable place to put our energy and effort.
Stephen: And
Stephen: there's no reason to have either all thinking on this. There's our individual
Stephen: ethical engagement. There's our community ethical engagement. There's our global ethical ethical engagement. And
Stephen: all of it matters
Stephen: So
Stephen: I just want to
Stephen: balance that up and
Stephen: and on other people in the room who might feel a little bit like their practice, has been
Stephen: a
Stephen: represented as something less throughout the week.
Stephen: That's all I need to say.
Stephen: Thank you, Lenore.
Stephen: So now it's The room is open for all of you
Stephen: and all of you online and
Stephen: we'll pass the mics around as we've been doing. I think we have quite a good system, and just remember to
Stephen: oh, right? Only one mic. Okay.
Stephen: do you need your mic, Quinton? We can do that 10 h if you can still talk
Stephen: just another reminder. Try to keep things brief and succinct. So more people can have an opportunity to share.
Stephen: Thank you. Brains trust. It's lovely, too.
Stephen: Have this time, with all 3 of you on the board. I would like you to please comment on the normative value of any ethical system that secularma tends to want to put forward? Are we languishing in subjective? Are we languishing in relative? Are we able to make normative claims about what people should do? And if so, what are we basing those normative ethics? On what are we grounding them in?
Stephen: Well, I mean, this is actually a very difficult question. and to be to be able to give a sort of a simple answer, too.
Stephen: The basic if what Joe is getting at is, why should we be good
Stephen: in a way, aren't you? And what grounds would be
Stephen: for secular Buddhist approach, what would be the grounds or the rationale for being good?
Stephen: And again, this is a Buddhist approach, and to that extent its starting point is with the experience of Dukkha.
Stephen: of suffering, not just individual suffering, but suffering, as we experience it, as a group, as a community, as a society. And nowadays very much as a planetary
Stephen: world of sentient beings.
Stephen: And I'm always struck by the phrase you find repeatedly in early Buddhism, and throughout
Stephen: that this is a practice that concerns all sentient beings.
Stephen: so that for me.
Stephen: where we begin, it's an acknowledgement, and as the first task suggests a willingness to both understand and embrace
Stephen: the suffering
Stephen: of the greatest number.
Stephen: And
Stephen: from there everything else follows.
Stephen: All the next 32 steps follow.
Stephen: Yeah, I'll just add to that.
Stephen: Your question actually reminded me of philosophy 101 when I was doing it, of art
Stephen: on moral philosophy, you know. Does
Stephen: does God will? What is what is good
Stephen: because it is good, or is it only good because God wills it? We're not in a you know. We're not in a kind of Messianic mode, I think, to
Stephen: say, you know, listen to us because we're somehow authorities, but but rather, I mean, I think it goes back to the basic.
Stephen: the the basic idea of skillfulness.
Stephen: Now, if you understand.
Stephen: then this is what you will do.
Stephen: These are the values you will seek to cultivate. It's a question really of intelligence and knowing
Stephen: it. Because.
Stephen: yeah, when you have that kind of understanding that the dharma is communicating.
Stephen: then the the ethical framework
Stephen: is simply the obvious.
Stephen: So I think that's the basic argument in
in
Stephen: the diamond rather than one of some
Stephen: overarching authority telling us what giving us. A rule book.
Stephen: I remember seeing some data on a survey that had been done in the Us. Asking people which kinds of people they were most afraid of or believed were most dangerous.
Stephen: and atheists were top of the list.
Stephen: That's stuck in my mind
Stephen: for me.
Stephen: Similar to what Stephen said, the baseline is
Stephen: suffering. and then, you know, moves up to the other end with flourishing. But the baseline is suffering, and
Stephen: all sentient beings.
Stephen: Some of you might know the philosopher, I think you know ethicist, Peter Singer. He's an Aussie guy. I think he's professor of ethics at maybe Stanton or something like that.
Stephen: And he's not an animal rights Guy, he's an ethicist.
Stephen: He wrote a fairly definitive book called Animal Liberation, and so he's not a dharma practitioner. He's not an animal rights, Guy.
Stephen: He just simply is looking at the ethics, and he comes to a very dharma view, which is that
Stephen: the issue is suffering. and he goes through a lot of
Stephen: ethical arguments and inspects a lot of ethical ways that we treat non-human animals and comes to the view that
Stephen: if suffering is the benchmark
Stephen: then, you know, we've got to stop using animals like resources.
Stephen: So that to me is just the is quite the simple North Star.
Stephen: Suffering.
Thank you.
Stephen: Can I do a follow-up if everyone else is chilling? I'm interested. Then what does secular Buddhists say, or how do they build in the idea of precepts? I was fascinated that this whole conversation this week had no
Stephen: kind of instructive, or, again, normative value. Is there room for
Stephen: the precepts to be a part of secular dharma? Or is it one of those things that, as you said, Stephen, is more luggage.
Stephen: It's true. I did actually refer to the precepts at 1 point, but not in a very enthusiastic way
Stephen: thus.
Stephen: I felt throughout this week I've been talking to people who already have a practice. So I kind of take that for granted. and I sometimes find it's fine. It's almost little
Stephen: slightly patronizing when you go on a retreat, and they say, No, you mustn't kill, you mustn't steal. We kind of know that.
Stephen: And if we've been doing this practice for any length of time that becomes simply, you know, self-evident.
Stephen: think the precepts are a valuable sort of a set of guidelines.
Stephen: but my concern is when they become, you know, fixed moral rules.
Stephen: And, as I was saying, I think the other day, the the person who has entered into the eightfold path has somehow
Stephen: at least let go of an attachment to moral rules, and has moved from what. in ethical language, would be from a legalistic ethic.
Stephen: In other words, a set of rules to a situational ethic which doesn't ask the question, What's the right thing to do? According to the rules? Being a good Buddhist, it answers the much more difficult question, What is the most loving thing to do in this situation?
Stephen: So in that sense. an ethics of uncertainty or an ethics of care
Stephen: are both situational ethics.
Stephen: So the primacy becomes
Stephen: focusing on the uniqueness of given situations for which no rulebook can give you the answer, or very rarely but recognizing much more vividly what are your core values?
Stephen: And so these 37 skills and virtues are basically an outline of what your core values are
Stephen: mindfulness.
Stephen: love, compassion, etc. Etc.
Stephen: And you seek to honor those values
Stephen: through
Stephen: your responses to unique situations. You find yourself in in the world, everything from a family conflict to the climate crisis. the same principles would be
Stephen: at work.
Stephen: The 5 precepts
Stephen: can be part of that mix for sure.
Stephen: but the danger is to absolutise them and turn them into hard and fast rules, which often are not
Stephen: necessarily adaptable to specific situations.
That's just going
Stephen: so. Gawanander. Yes. so, Stephen, what you're
Stephen: been leading, I think, and we've all been engaged in is rethinking and reimagining fairly well-established Buddhist frameworks
Stephen: I wonder if you've got any comment
Stephen: on
Stephen: the balance, a wise balance between
Stephen: reinterpreting, reimagining, renaming for oneself, so, in a sense, doing one's own practice as you have done with yours and shared with us versus the checking back
Stephen: to the
Stephen: more traditional understandings. And of course, the original Sutras that keeps it honest.
Stephen: Yeah. Cause if I think what you have done with us is, in in a sense an invitation for us to do the same thing. Perhaps it's not, but I would take it in that way. And I just wonder if you've got any comments on that issue of
Stephen: freedom and discipline within that.
Stephen: Yeah, I mean, this is. This has been a central struggle in my whole
Stephen: life as a Dharma practition. I mean, even when I was in my, you know, 1920 years old in India. you know I was being taught stuff by my Tibetan teachers that
Stephen: I knew already. I can't just take that on board uncritically
Stephen: when I'm told about the 18 hot hells, for example. And what do what do you do with that? Well, there are 18 cold hells as well. But
Stephen: the point is that you? So this is, I think, perhaps, the the advantage, and also some, perhaps a disadvantage, of engaging with a tradition in which you haven't been raised.
Stephen: you, you come at it fresh.
Stephen: and maybe with a degree of enthusiasm that traditional
Stephen: members of that religion may not have.
Stephen: But you also come at it largely intellectual. You don't have that embodied
Stephen: emotional connection to the tradition that you would have if you grew up within it. and those who grow up within it
Stephen: like, for example, Margaret, we were talking last night, you know, for them. It's just become just a system of habits.
Stephen: you know. You go to the Temple on certain times, and you do things a certain way, but it's kind of non-critical and not really very
Stephen: alive.
Stephen: So I think the encounter of the dharma with modernity. And I don't want to use this word the West.
Stephen: because I think we're really talking about a global situation. Now, whether we like it or not. We coexist
Stephen: immediately through
Stephen: communication systems with everybody on the planet. And the issues we face are planetary, as we're clearly. And I don't have to say that
Stephen: it's obvious, but that does have implications.
Stephen: It means that the dharma is being looked to for a response to something that is concerning everyone are not only human beings, but animals, fish, birds, everybody.
Stephen: And so. as we've both been saying.
Stephen: the the practice of the dharma
Stephen: as a tradition rather than my own personal sorting out my psychological problems. is entering into a conversation with the past.
Stephen: entering into a dialogue with the great thinkers in particular, the figure of Gortama and his immediate circle, who lived so long ago, which is, of course, filtered through.
Stephen: you know, texts which they did not write.
Stephen: We have all sorts of problems in sorting out what we should give more priority to. It's not easy, this problem.
Stephen: but it's for me. It's I'm I'm always going back to the source materials and the power of these source materials. These classical texts is that they bear repeated reading.
Stephen: That's something my Tibetan teachers drilled home very much. They say. You know you don't. You know what you're studying here is not magazines.
Stephen: You read them a couple of times, and you throw them away. Now these are texts. They're classical texts, like the Bible, the Quran. All of these great works of
Stephen: of spiritual literature, if you wish.
Stephen: have their power because they seem to reveal almost endless depth.
Stephen: And you know you read it one time, and then you
Stephen: continue with your practice. You go back a year or 2 later, and the text reveals more.
Stephen: Keep speaking to.
Stephen: and that to me is a very, very important dimension of our engagement with this practice is that
Stephen: constant return to the the past in order that it can help shed even more new light.
Stephen: The present.
Stephen: and of course provide a foundation for how
Stephen: we envisage and prepare
Stephen: ourselves as individuals and as communities for the future.
Stephen: And then it's a living tradition.
Stephen: Just to add to that, I have a feeling which, saving may agree with or not, that had
Stephen: the emphasis in the development of secular Buddhism
Stephen: has gone from being a critique of
Stephen: what one might loosely call traditional Buddhism, too
Stephen: much more of a suigenerous development, including, of course, a much more intensive reading of
Stephen: it's a classic.
Stephen: and and also for me. I guess this might be a difference between us is that
Stephen: I very much see it as
Stephen: the dumbers putting down roots in Western
in Western culture.
Stephen: just as it put down roots in Chinese culture 2 millennia ago. And and it's been
Stephen: kind of a process of of acculturation that has been repeated many types. And now it's just our turn it. It's not an exercise in Western arrogance or anything like that. We're trying to develop a dharma that
Stephen: that that speaks to us in our own language, and also uses our own
Stephen: cultural and intellectual resources, just as the Chinese did, and they brought in Taoism into into the mix. And so.
Stephen: yeah, II think that yeah, we we no longer.
Stephen: We're no longer feeling it ill at ease with
Stephen: more conventional Buddhists. We're just on a bit of a different track
Stephen: following on from both of those comments for me. II actually can't do anything else
Stephen: but interpret it
Stephen: in my life and in my culture, and in a way that works.
Stephen: II can't, and I'm
Stephen: the responses I've had to the book that I wrote, which those of you who read it would know, you know, is aimed at people who are new to the dumber. Primarily I've had so many people thank me for writing it.
Stephen: cause the Duma would otherwise have been inaccessible.
Stephen: So
Stephen: you know, I love that we're actually embracing doing this in our own culture, because sometimes in this multicultural society, where culture is treated as a really important thing, and we've got to be diverse and all the rest of it, you can sometimes almost be embarrassed to look at it through the lens of our own Western culture.
Stephen: But I found that refreshing.
Stephen: But
Stephen: yeah, I guess for me, and I and I know there are a lot of people like this, because this is the feedback I get about my book is that
Stephen: it's the only way I can do it.
Stephen: maybe here. And then there's
Stephen: yeah, someone online, too. Maybe next
Stephen: it's all here. So I want to circle back to the idea of death and inevitability and uncertainty about dying, and from the secular perspective, just really practically looking for guidance or
Stephen: advice on where to seek resources or practices
Stephen: that one could employ just to get more comfortable. With this idea we all understand the idea we all and like, I like how Winton you said is just a matter of living on rather than thinking about dying. But it's still kind of a taboo. We don't think we don't talk about it until it actually happens. So how do we get comfortable with this particular uncertainty? Thank you.
Stephen: Well, in my in, I can only really speak of my own experience here, and I have found the meditations on death that I was taught by my Tibetan teachers really
Stephen: to be immensely valuable.
Stephen: and that means, in a way, turning your awareness of death into a practice.
Stephen: something that you you come back to again and again. And there are basically 3 elements. To this reflection one is to reflect on the certainty of death.
Stephen: and to really think it through to really keep coming back to that idea. It's like a classical text and keep returning to it.
Stephen: And you'll find reflections on death in all cultures and all societies, too.
Stephen: plenty of material
Stephen: to meditate on the uncertainty of its time is really an extension of the Buddhist meditation on impermanence.
Stephen: and, in fact, the Tibetan phrase is of that is called chile, which means the impermanence which is death.
Stephen: That's the core, existential impermanence in a sense, the only impermanence that really matters.
Stephen: The fact that I am permanent and I'm changing moment to moment, and that, you know, is totally uncertain as to when you know the end will come.
Stephen: and to try to get that idea deep down, built in because that provides us with that a real. It allows us a so, a
Stephen: an awareness that keeps our priorities uppermost in our minds.
Stephen: That's why, it's an ethical practice, because, traditionally.
Stephen: the third step is about. Therefore I should practice the dharma, because only the dharma will continue with me into my next life.
Stephen: Maybe that's the case. I have no idea, but I find it more useful to turn that meditation into a question.
Stephen: If death is certain, if the time is uncertain. What should I do? It's a normative question.
Stephen: And to turn it into a Koan. Basically, what should I do? It's an ethical color that is based upon something that is
Stephen: the only thing that is certain is the uncertainty of what I would tie.
Stephen: Uncertainty is is paradoxically the only thing that we can be sure about.
Stephen: So turn that into, instead of a source of of anxiety and fear, and
Stephen: whatever turn it into a
Stephen: into a focus for refining and reminding yourself of what your priorities in life are.
Stephen: use it as as a measurement to judge what you're doing in your life.
Stephen: and paradoxically. by meditating on death. In this way
Stephen: you become that much more acutely sensitized to the fact that you're alive. and I think by splitting off in a binary fashion.
Stephen: life, good, death, bad. You actually fail
Stephen: to embrace life itself.
Stephen: You're basically pretending that life should be able to go on as long as I want it to. and you assume it kind of will. in a way, you know, emotionally, perhaps so. To try to
Stephen: recognize that death is paradoxically
Stephen: key to gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.
Stephen: as Heidegger calls it. Life is a being towards death
Stephen: always every moment.
Stephen: Yeah, just to flesh that out a little bit. one of my favourite texts in this is,
Stephen: a book that's just been or was published just fairly recently
Stephen: a compilation of the Roman Stoic philosopher Senecas.
Stephen: writings on Death, and the book is called How to Die, and
Stephen: and the first, the first thing it says is.
Stephen: well, don't be afraid of death, because nothing bad can happen to someone who doesn't exist anymore a very straightforward piece of thinking. So
Stephen: what's the problem?
Stephen: Well, the the problem which we can't reduce is that there's a wonderful idea in phenomenology of the life world that each of us.
Stephen: Yeah, we we live in a bigger world. But each of us has a life world. Our life world is the people we know. That the songs that you know. Go on in our minds, all our all our memories.
Stephen: all our you know, the things that are meaningful to us will all be completely wiped.
Stephen: completely deleted. And this, I think, is, is what makes death literally awesome. It it's
Stephen: it, I think, that the sense of awe of that complete
Stephen: annihilation is is amazing.
Stephen: I mean, I keep going back to what I was saying about
Stephen: tied up in contemplation of death.
Stephen: The Swedish practice of durst, Dabney, because I'm looking. I'm throwing out objects which are meaningful to me, but absolutely meaningless to anyone else. Just appritus.
Stephen: So
Stephen: I don't think we can, or indeed should
Stephen: trivialise, then
Stephen: aspect of it.
Stephen: but at the same time understand the point that Heglen makes, that
Stephen: everything that really matters to us, every relationship in particular that really matters to us is premised on the fact that it's at risk. It's at stake. It's mortal.
Stephen: you know. If if if
Stephen: where we're in love with someone.
Stephen: and we're both immortal gods. It's not going to be much of a relationship, really, because we won't care.
Stephen: We won't care. There's nothing to care for.
Stephen: We only care for that which is at stake at risk.
Stephen: And so death, again, is what enriches and informs love
Stephen: agree with all of that. And, as is my role, a practical answer which I think the question was, how do we change the unwillingness to
Stephen: address it? Think about it, integrate it.
Stephen: May we talk about it
Stephen: and talk about it without qualm?
Stephen: I noticed I try to do that. I think about death quite a lot, too, and have integrated.
Stephen: Okay?
Stephen: Didn't know it hid in there.
Stephen: yeah, I've mentioned, I'm building a personal growth program that people can do. And and I've built it into exercises there. But
Stephen: I think the main thing is, if we can get personally
Stephen: comfortable talking about it and
Stephen: find it valuable to talk about
Stephen: that that
Stephen: the main thing that that starts to shift because what I found is, you know, when you first say something about it.
Stephen: there's sort of this?
Stephen: Hush, yeah. Were we allowed to say even saying the word dead like, or died instead of passed away
Stephen: or passed on? Or what have you like? This whole idea of dying is this just even the word people sometimes won't utter?
Stephen: So yeah, I, the only way that I've found is is being at ease talking about it myself
Stephen: as a practical, you know. How can we have an impact? Yeah.
Stephen: thanks.
Next few months
Stephen: we've got Leanne online. Then, Leslie. Then 3 people in the room as well.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yes, good morning, and thank you for this opportunity to sum up our last 9 days. I guess I want to begin by saying that I woke up this morning feeling very unresolved about last night.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): so I listen to John Donna O'donohue.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I listened to something called the inner landscape of beauty. It was a an interview, a podcast and one of the things, he said, is.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): if you realize how vital to your whole spirit and being, and character and mind and health. Friendship actually is.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): you will take time for it. But for so many of us we have to be in trouble before we remember what's essential. It's one of the loneliness of humans that you hold on desperately to things that make you miserable, and you only realize what you have when you are almost about to lose it.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So, listening to you this morning, Lenore, I felt an explosion in my own heart. And now that's moved into my throat, Chakra.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and it's interesting that you said that you felt dismissed with regards to the
discussions on the individual verses.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): The group?
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So I think and and of course I may have been one of those people that have been in that
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): sort of
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): group of those who didn't consider the individual practice important. But that's not the case at all.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I think it's also a matter of whether we are
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): by nature introverts and more introspective compared to, as you said earlier in the the course
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): being an intro, an extrovert.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So my practice began in 1989, with the same Go anchor.
and it has unfolded and evolved and
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): revealed itself throughout the decades. And I think.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): coming back to nonviolent communication last night which I have explored along the way. It didn't land for me at all. But what did land for me with regards to developing
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): those interpersonal
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): skills. But and and taking them into the group
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): was something else which was inside dialogue which enables it, which enabled me to go much deeper
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): in that exploration of the
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): interrelational space. So I needed to express that this morning
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and to say that probably the most relevant thing but came out of why I wrote a work feeling the way I was
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): was indeed about dismissiveness.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And what happened last night was when you said I recall I'll try to use the framework. When I recall
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that you were saying you sent an email with the handouts.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And there was this feeling of that. There was an insistence that you sent the email with the handouts. There was no email received at this end.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And we were having our online, you know, sort of checking in with each other, which we've all been doing, which has been
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): fabulous. And of course we've missed out from those physical interactions that you've all had in the room, which, of course, have the
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): capacity to take things much deeper, and perhaps resolve things much more so. Last night I recognized I was there was this I felt dismissed.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): There was a dismay, you know, because there was dismissiveness of like Look, I've sent the the the email, and you've got the handouts.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): But we hadn't.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And so it was interesting today that you also felt dismissed with regards to
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): your
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): offering your contribution.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And I think that that for me is the only thing that is relevant in And in that
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): resolution of this topic of the individual versus the group when they really are inseparable. And
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and what's important is to find the bridge
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and the bridge for me needs to be much deeper
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): then, perhaps techniques and pathologizing about the individual which has also. I guess. triggered some reactivity within me
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): with regards to self development or personal development, particularly from a psychological perspective.
has been.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): know my experience has been. It's like there's something wrong with me, and I need to fix it. And I need to continue to
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): on that in that endeavor. And I think I've just come to that place of enough.
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): There's something that needs to be deeper than that
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): to thank you for this opportunity.
Stephen: Thank you very much.
Stephen: You want to respond. Yeah, just first of all, on the email
Stephen: did send it. And it didn't go. So you know, yeah, you didn't get it. And and I did send it. But yeah, that's really interesting. That such a small thing. Yeah, we
Stephen: what I'm thinking, as you're saying, that is, ironically, the importance of
Stephen: personal practice. Because we are sensitive. We're sensitive creatures. you know something as small as someone saying, Oh, no. I sent an email.
Stephen: No, I did. You know something as small as that can
Stephen: set of reactivity?
Stephen: You know, someone saying.
Stephen: individual practice is not important, you know, can
Stephen: have an impact.
Stephen: I mean this issue we were exploring yesterday of voice. And how important it is. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the deeper I connection between individual and and group practice. But
Stephen: II agree with you that there's a
Stephen: inextricable.
Stephen: an important link between the 2.
Stephen: Shall we move on to the next question? There's a considerable queue. We've got
Lesley Synge: Leslie on line next. Yes, good morning, dear friends.
Lesley Synge: I'd like to go back to something you said Stephen, about.
Lesley Synge: Remember the big picture. Don't get caught up and let's always remember
Lesley Synge: sublime. And I want to particularly thank you and Martine for
Lesley Synge: the huge effort of coming all this way to Australia.
Lesley Synge: It's it's a it's quite taxing. Being a teacher, I know, as just a teacher of teenagers, a teacher of writing students. But to teach at this level of profundity to us
Lesley Synge: diverse individuals.
Lesley Synge: It is absolutely astonishing to me, and I'm I'm very, very grateful.
So I want to just ask you
Lesley Synge: if you realize that one of the greetings in Australia
Lesley Synge: at the beginning of all meetings these days, thanks to Government intervention, is for an acknowledgment to country, and in that acknowledgement
Lesley Synge: which comes out of an acknowledgment to first nations, people in Australia, we say. we remember our
Lesley Synge: our elders, who are past. present. and emerging, or future. And now I feel a much greater connection. thanks to your teachings.
Lesley Synge: with this great dilemma of living in a white settler society which has a history, as Winton has mentioned, of genocide
Lesley Synge: in terms of somehow bridging, as Leanne was talking about just just so recently bridging
Lesley Synge: really important gaps in our society. And II wasn't sure if you realized how
Lesley Synge: this past, present and emerging concept.
Lesley Synge: Is so aligned with indigenous culture. and I just thank you again.
Lesley Synge: All people who have helped make this happen. Thank you.
Stephen: Thanks, Leslie. Thank you very much, Lesley. Thank you. I think we can move to Judy's question.
Stephen: It's good.
Hmm.
Stephen: okay.
Stephen: A.
Stephen: I guess I've been considering. I think the question of
Stephen: What the chips didn't work.
Stephen: and particularly for for Steven, in terms of one
Stephen: forecast, and and for the course I was after.
Stephen: you know which was written in 15 after Buddhism. Did you say, yeah, when was that? Yeah?
Stephen: And those concepts were there and etc.? And I probably read them quite a few times, and it was just, that's right. Where are you at? In the cycle of practice in life? And coming to this course and rereading it and thinking.
Stephen: reactivity, you know, here I am focusing on letting, going, of suffering or being with suffering, but it had an impact on my practice to sort of refocus on reactivity and stillness, particularly during this retreat.
Stephen: But really the
Stephen: I'm not quite sure if I've got it right or understood it. And so I've been trying to formulate what is my question. But it probably just goes back to in that refashioning
Stephen: truth and past and
Stephen: reactivity.
Stephen: What's your, what's the core intent there? And between suffering
Stephen: and reactivity and the tasks that we have at hand, I guess my basic question. or the larger but basic question, what am I doing with suffering and reactive?
Stephen: Have
Stephen: the problem with writing books is that I once I finish the book, I kind of forget about it. And
Stephen: I obviously don't reread my own stuff, that narcissist
Stephen: and I move on. And I try to get actually. And these sorts of questions
Stephen: you know about my own development of ideas. I'm possibly the worst person to ask frankly.
Stephen: well, I guess the core. If you try to put it in a nutshell. And we're running out of time. So I'll do my utmost to do that. the
Lesley Synge: yeah. The 4 noble truth
Stephen: are essentially true are basically claiming for propositional truths.
Stephen: Life is suffering.
Stephen: The origin of suffering was craving, the ending of suffering is the ending of craving and the path to the ending of craving Nirvana is an overlay fall path. So that's the sort of framework within which Buddhism is generally
Stephen: understood.
Stephen: without going into any detail
Stephen: but my studies, my reflections, my readings. And as someone mentioned, yeah, Reenas, as it mentioned last night, particularly my reading of the work of a British Baku called Niana vir.
Stephen: A shifted that perspective and made me recognise that actually.
Stephen: what really matters is not these truths, whether they're true or not, but how we actually respond to 4 basic facts of life.
Stephen: So in my cartography, I don't speak of truth, but I have reinstated 4 facts, suffering a rising of reactivity, ceasing of reactivity and parthing.
Stephen: and in a nutshell
Stephen: for me the the crucial hinge of the crucial change
Stephen: is to move from thinking of reactivity as the cause
Stephen: of suffering, even though it very often does cause a lot of suffering
Stephen: to recognize that the primary problem is reactivity
Stephen: is that it inhibits and prevents us from flourishing.
Stephen: in other words, from
Stephen: opening up to a space of non-reactive awareness from which the eightfold path can then emerge.
Stephen: and
Stephen: that in a nutshell is kind of the core
Stephen: change
Stephen: in my understanding of Buddhism that has shifted it from what I call a truth-based metaphysics to a task-based ethics.
Oh. she's gossiping.
Stephen: Good. Okay.
Stephen: I think we've got Kate next. If that's
Stephen: thank you, I'd like to come back to to death.
Stephen: And would
Stephen: feel to bring forward Roshie, Joan Halifax! And
Stephen: how incredibly helpful I've found engaging with her work, and
Stephen: broadly, and the book
Stephen: standing at the edge.
Stephen: Can't! We can't think of the whole title at the moment, but deals with engagement including with death, so highly recommend
that book.
Stephen: and
Stephen: and her approach is
Stephen: what stays with me is about
Stephen: being with love.
Stephen: and
Stephen: and it opens us out from from fear to wonder and
Stephen: connection, and and a privilege of engaging and being with people who are dying.
Stephen: the fineness that that comes forward because I suppose.
Stephen: lot of the letting go that that can happen.
Stephen: So it's very beautiful work. And it helped take away a lot of fear and open something else much bigger.
Stephen: And the only other thing on death that I'd like to share because Carol isn't here. The last conversation I had with her before she left was that one of her big responses to what's happening in the world, and what she can do was to retrain in in palliative care and grief, counselling
Stephen: so very much
Stephen: that aspect of care
Stephen: when we don't know what the answers are. The problems are enormous, and a lot of them are outside our view, even our view. And
Stephen: when she said that I made a commitment to share that with the group.
Stephen: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Kim. Thanks, Kate. We've got Jessica next. Then we've got di online. Then we've got des. Then we've got Tim. Then we've got Meg.
Stephen: That's good.
Stephen: thank you. And there's a question for Stephen Stephen. I was just going back to the cartography of care and the the last sort of strand, if you like the commitment. Oh, yeah, which you know, across all 4 tasks.
Stephen: And the
Stephen: essential
Stephen: I was. Gonna say, they cancel each other out. But that's not doesn't sound very positive. I just I was just interested in.
Stephen: If you could unpack this a little bit more. I mean to me when I when I looked at them, and II sort of was was sitting with them, and and I thought. Well.
Stephen: I mean what they are reflecting, of course, is is the uncertainty
Stephen: factor, which is
Stephen: omnipresent. But I just wondered if you could speak a little to this, please the because it seems to me it's like the the sort of the thing to take, you know, to to be taking forward in one's practice, and I was just interested if you could comment on it.
Stephen: Yeah. The 4 commitments which are at the very bottom of the chart are actually drawn from the Chinese tradition.
Stephen: These are in Zen. They're called the 4 great vows
Stephen: in, say, Joan Halifax's community. Every session
Stephen: of at the end of every day's practice. You chant these 4 vows. They are very, very central.
Stephen: and I'd known about them through my own training in Zen.
Stephen: I'm sure you're familiar with them in other iterations, too.
Stephen: But I came across a book written by a Japanese scholar some years ago, in which he showed that these actually are not Zen practices.
Stephen: They're found in early Chinese texts.
Stephen: and that they are understood traditionally
Stephen: as referring to the 4 noble truths.
Stephen: and
Stephen: that then struck me as well.
Stephen: there's a kind of an affirmation
Stephen: that the 4 noble truths are not about believing in what is true, a sort of doctrine or dogma, but the 4 noble truths are actually the foundations for a certain way of committing yourself to live
Stephen: in a particular way.
Stephen: and these 4 vows map on. Very well, therefore, to the 4 tasks.
Stephen: And
Stephen: what I also like about them, is the fact that they're framed paradoxically.
Stephen: In other words, they're presenting you with an impossible task.
Stephen: and one might say, Well, that's a bit ridiculous to the rational mind it probably is.
Stephen: but actually, I think, existentially.
Stephen: It points to something really crucial in particular, a thing like as vast as climate change. I think it's quite relevant.
Stephen: Beings are boundless. In other words, there's an infinite number of them. But I vow to care for them. All
Stephen: reactivity is inexhaustible, but I'm going to let go of.
Stephen: And so so what that points to is the fact that you acknowledge the
Stephen: infinity of suffering, but in acknowledging it you cannot but be called to respond to.
Stephen: even though logically. there's no way you or Brian the next few years of our life are going to sort out the problem.
Stephen: So that also recognizes that we're not dealing with something on a on the purely an individual level, although that although that is clearly where it starts, it starts in your
Stephen: you're yearning to respond to this
Stephen: infinite suffering. See, I will take that on, but at the same time realizing that you can actually never
Stephen: finish it, which suggests that it's the work of generations
Stephen: that you're continuing. Therefore, the work of previous generations. And that's what, in a sense
Stephen: creates and sustains and develops
Stephen: being part of a tradition being part of a Maasanga. If you wish a great community.
and so I've always found these
Stephen: vows
Stephen: personally very poignant. I think they speak a great
Stephen: truth, as it were, about.
Stephen: you know the limitations of our deepest longings. and they undermine any sense of kind of
Stephen: self, grand or self-importance. At the same time they recognise these are tasks that communities over time can seek to fulfill. but are beyond the capacity of a
Stephen: particular person or a particular group
Stephen: we've got die next online.
DiPelletier: This is a comment really, and directed to Lenore. The email came through this morning for me at 9 15,
DiPelletier: which is interesting and validates your actions.
DiPelletier: But it doesn't undo the feelings that you've had when things went a bit awry.
DiPelletier: and I'm sorry about that. But furthermore, it reminded me. as we're so interconnected
DiPelletier: that we have to be cautious
DiPelletier: about the level of, we can get hurt by technology, even in something as simple as sending an email to a group
DiPelletier: that doesn't get there. So just a heightened awareness of
DiPelletier: our responsiveness to when technology kicks us and it hurts
DiPelletier: and how we respond to that. It's it's another dimension of our life of interaction that has the potential for emotional response, anger, response whatever. And I'm not talking about social media. I'm talking about more personal communication.
DiPelletier: So I just wanted to draw that to the attention of the group and thank you for your handout. I will print it.
Stephen: Thanks, dye, I think des is up next. Then we've got Tim, and then we've got the group in Brisbane
Stephen: that just
Stephen: Firstly a comment or 2 on
Stephen: on this.
Stephen: but both come at the the same thing from from a similar angle. Yeah, Woody Allen fabulously said. I know I'm going to die, but I don't want to be there when it happens, and I was also very privileged once to be at a half day workshop with Rob Thurman.
Stephen: And
Stephen: is he know he who's his most famous wing, almost father, other than the Dalai Lama's mate.
Stephen: Who said that? He said, I know you going to die, and I know you going to die, and I know you going to die. But I'm the one that's going to beat the rap. That one who is saying essentially is that we just can't conceive. We can conceive of everybody else's death. We can't conceive of our own, and that's probably the same on the saving graces of living.
Stephen: and it's, you know.
Stephen: consciousness is what is, is. Is our great fear, the loss of consciousness?
And as
Stephen: and Alan Watts said in the the wisdom of insecurity. That consciousness is nature's ingenious mode of self torture.
Stephen: So it's and and I think that's
Stephen: why am I here?
Stephen: And that's why possibly a lot of you were here because it's a kind of self-taughture that we enter into willingly because we're we're we're all seekers
additional.
Stephen: It's not question I'd like to ask. The 3 view
Stephen: is that
Stephen: we
Stephen: we all have, and we all carry a lot of that, whether we like to know
Stephen: some of it good, some of it bad. When I say bad, some of it he helps. Some of it tempers us.
Stephen: and we we have many, many parts to our identities
Stephen: and the the Buddhist side, and is, is one
Stephen: very, very important aspect.
Stephen: and I think that you know what what
Stephen: the 3 of you are doing.
Stephen: Steven's leadership is. how does this apply to us as as people of this time? And how do we integrate it into our lives?
Stephen: And
Stephen: if people ask me, you know, in terms of my how do I define myself religiously or spiritually?
Stephen: And it's an extremely difficult thing for me to do, because ethnically, I come from A, from a a Jewish background, from a family that brought me up in in very steep traditions, even though not religious traditions. And yet my spiritual
Stephen: life. He is much more in the Buddhist. Buddhist informed.
Stephen: So you know whether I'm a don't know whether I'm a Jew, Boo or Boo-ju. It's
Stephen: so what I'm curious about, but I know that it's a constant dialectic.
Stephen: So it's the interplay within me is causes me to to change and to develop and to struggle.
Stephen: So the 3 of you come from some of their yet different backgrounds. And how does that
Stephen: define you in terms of your cultural life as
Stephen: Anglos, Aussies, Anglo-french, and your Buddhist
Stephen: open spirituality.
Stephen: Okay? Well, I was
Stephen: brought up in a secular humanist family. I never went to.
Stephen: I was never given a Christian education. I was excluded from religious education classes. At school I used to sit outside with Jews. the classroom I never set foot in a church, except when the Boy Scouts dragged me there sometimes
Stephen: and I felt something was missing. And that's one of the reasons I was drawn to Buddhism and went off to Asia, and so on. But, as is well known. I've come back to my secular roots.
Stephen: and I think we probably all do that to some extent.
Stephen: I'm you know, the reason. I'm perhaps articulating a secular Buddhism because I was brought up as a secular person.
Stephen: not with a religious framework.
Stephen: I don't think that's an accident, and that's I think that's a crucial part of how
Stephen: me I personally have sought to interpret and read and apply these Buddhist values within a secular context. It's not a theoretical thing it has to do with my own identity.
Stephen: But more recently, I've also been looking back, thinking more about my own ancestors and my great grandfather on my mother's side was a Wesleyan minister
Stephen: in London. a non-conform
Stephen: which I suspect that probably filtered through to me in some way as well.
Stephen: Particularly through my great aunt, who was
Stephen: his daughter, who I knew towards the end of her life. She had a huge impact on my mother.
Stephen: so I suspect I also inherited some of that non-conformist
Stephen: Christianity, and also I have to acknowledge.
Stephen: you know you can't, or let's say it's impossible to deny the fact that I grew up in a Christian culture.
Stephen: that Christian culture, even though you don't go to church, and you don't study the Bible. It's it's in, you know. It permeates
Stephen: our literature, our theatre, our
Stephen: so much of our public life, going into churches. I love churches
Stephen: so on, so I cannot pretend that I don't have a deep influence
Stephen: from the Christian tradition. I think a lot of my moral intuitions are more Christian than Buddhist in some respects.
Stephen: And I wonder if that's not more and more the case as we move into a more global
Stephen: sense of community. The fact that Buddhism has spread through the West. Really, you know, in my lifetime.
Stephen: from virtually being virtually nothing to being now quite visible, at least quite vocal. So I feel that a bit like my friend the Christian theologian, Don Cupet.
Stephen: who also acknowledges this. He says, sometimes I go through the day. And I, when I look back, I think I've been about 60% Christian, 20% Jewish, 5% Buddhist, whatever it might be that we are, whether we like it or not.
Stephen: receivers of a plurality of religious traditions and culture. and that arguably, too.
Stephen: can be maybe most best held within a secular tradition of toleration.
Stephen: of inclusion. So I kind of go through all this stuff all the time. and I'll probably never settle on any one identity.
But well.
Stephen: I'm the product of a mixed marriage, Catholic and Protestant. And when so, when I grew up, this was a real problem.
Stephen: There was absolutely fanatical
Stephen: sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants. When I was growing up.
Stephen: I often reflect back, you know why
Stephen: our anti Semitism was comparatively weak in this country, and it was because we would. The Protestants and the Catholics were too busy fighting each other to really think about anything else.
Stephen: And but I did. Eventually the Protestant bit won
Stephen: went to
Stephen: Low Church Anglican School, and I'd look back on those years
Stephen: with great dislike.
Stephen: But it was, but it was, I think, an important for me to have a grounding in
Stephen: Christian culture, for reasons that Stephen talks about
Stephen: and and to actually understand, be able to understand, for instance, religious art. If you're going to Italy and going to places like
Stephen: the Ufitsi Gallery, and so on. There's an awful lot of really really good.
Stephen: That's all about
Stephen: the Assumption Assumption Association of Mary Crucifixion all the rest of it.
Stephen: And it's
Stephen: and also there's absolutely amazing music that's been written around
Stephen: Christian
Stephen: Christian forms and Christian myths, and so on.
Stephen: I had this remarkable experience a few years ago that some
Stephen: friends of Lenas and mine were coming down from Brisbane.
Stephen: Just at the time there was going to be a terrific performance in the Opera House. old Mozart's Requiem
Stephen: and I and I emailed my friends said. hey? I can get us tickets to this if you want to come with us, because they are coming down to us. The right date.
Stephen: And and the reply was.
Stephen: It's religious. I don't want anything to do with it. And this is this is a man who really
Stephen: likes classical music. And I thought, Wow, you know, if you're going to actually cut out all music and all art that has anything to do with religion. it's going to be an impoverished kind of existence.
and and also
Stephen: reminded of Johannes Brahms, you know, who wanted to express.
Stephen: you know, deep themes around death and mourning and the mystery of death, and he wrote a requiem
Stephen: based on Luther's translation rather than a
Stephen: Latin words, and he wrote it as a as a requiem, as a
Stephen: full on
Stephen: Catholic requiem. He himself was not a believer.
Stephen: And and the requiem has never been performed in a church.
Stephen: But it is just that this is a language. This is a whole rich world of
Stephen: artistry and symbolism, etc. That we inherit.
Stephen: that we can't really, that that we, you know, reject
Stephen: to our own lops.
Stephen: But as for my I mean II guess I
Stephen: you know. Obviously I
Stephen: I
Stephen: became quite unquote of Buddhist in 1987, but I've never understood it as as an identity. It's a practice. And you know, we've got
Stephen: lots and lots of identities is another point that Hegelan makes. We have practical identities as well as cultural identities. We have lots of them, each one of us, and there seems to be little point in kind of
Stephen: getting stuck on on just one.
Stephen: Hello!
Stephen: I get a bit perplexed when someone asks me about my identity
Stephen: because I don't spend any time really thinking about it, or
Stephen: and and I'm not, you know, naive to the fact that you know I'm shaped by cultural influences as much as anyone else. But I remember doing a years ago. A.
Stephen: It's sort of a character development inventory. And one of the questions you one of the questions has a question stem, that is, I am.
Stephen: And then, Dot, Dot, Dot, and you have to fill in the rest.
Stephen: And II sat there sort of stuck on this question because I didn't know what to write
Stephen: all sorts of things at all different times.
Stephen: the the point that Winton just made about practical identities, you know. I
Stephen: there are times when I have to own up and be part of a group, that is, you know, athletes there are, but I don't really fit there, and I don't really hang my sense of identity on being an athlete.
Stephen: When people ask me about my dummer.
Stephen: you sometimes get out. Yeah. You're a Buddhist in in my first response is always well, depends what you mean by Buddhist. and it's more a practical answer that I give. I practice the the Buddhist teachings.
Stephen: I integrate them into my life. But I don't really think of myself as a Buddhist, even an Australian. You know, when I travel overseas I don't. I'm not aware in my day to day that I'm
Stephen: different to these French people or Hispanic people, or
Stephen: you know, Polish people or Hungarian people, that around me, and that may be because I see the world through this lens of the earth dweller
Stephen: rather than
Stephen: the subgroups. And I've been practicing that for a while.
Stephen: Or that I see it through the 9 elements of human flourishing. And so I see you know how those expressions turn up in all different ways, but they're fundamentally the same elements of humanity.
Stephen: so even though I grew up in a Catholic family, you know, had to go to church every week for the first 18 years of my life.
Stephen: 19.
Stephen: I don't.
Stephen: I see that as part of an identity. And nor do I see non-catholicism as an identity.
Stephen: So yeah.
Stephen: it's my identity is not something I spend a lot of time
Stephen: thinking about. And it actually feels a bit of a weird thing when I'm asked about it.
Stephen: Thanks, Lenora.
Stephen: over to Tim, and we've got a question online from the Brisbane group as well. And I think that should probably close us out
Stephen: like I have 2 very annoying
Stephen: genetic disorders.
Stephen: and the medicine for one is not good for the other one.
Stephen: And as I got older all of a sudden the doctors decided that
Stephen: the medicine I was taking was too dangerous for the other. One
Stephen: quality of life never entered the picture.
Stephen: and it's only one step from that to your own death.
Stephen: And I looked at the laws before I came. By the way, the laws about
Stephen: self-assisted death here in Australia versus America, and they're not that very different.
Stephen: And the 1 one big thing is that the quality of life is not primary. It is down. Who knows where, but it's not at the top of the list.
Stephen: Unfortunately. the
Stephen: the doctor's definition of having to have the terminal terminal illness within so much time is hardly ever going to match up with your estimation of your quality of life
Stephen: and your body and your mind telling you this is enough.
Stephen: I would suggest that you treat your death as a vacation.
Stephen: that you pick the departure date.
Stephen: Okay? You pick the mode of travel
Stephen: and you decide what you want to do with all the increments? How much are you? How much baggage are you going to take? How much you're going to leave behind? And in that process
Stephen: of choosing all those different parts, you will find yourself having a good examination of your own death.
Stephen: Thank you. Thank you, Tim.
Stephen: Over to people up in Brisbane.
Meg: Hello! Hello!
Meg: Stephen, thank you.
Meg: So my question is that, how shall we envision
Meg: art on secular Buddhism that speaks to many people.
Meg: And then already Winton has described about the so this is a question. Oh, I can't hear. Very well. Sorry. Oh, pretty.
Meg: Okay. So do you hear me now? Oh, thank you. So my question is, how do you envision art based on
Meg: secular Buddhism? Or how do you.
Meg: de interpret Buddhist art into secular Buddhism in an
Meg: Windon, has already talked a lot about the various art forms. So this is a question to use Steven for the sake of the time as well.
Stephen: Well, I think we have to look at art in 2 ways in this question, how we understand it, how we appreciate it on the one hand and how we we make it
Stephen: on the other.
Stephen: The 2, of course, sort of in, you know, there is a dialectic involved. The art you make will be influenced by the art you appreciate and understand.
Stephen: But I do feel quite strongly that if Buddhism.
Stephen: let alone secular Buddhism, is to really find its voice in the wider
Stephen: world.
Stephen: It needs to find that voice, not just through writing books
Stephen: or giving talks, but through creating art. and that could be visual art. It could be music, it could be poetry.
Stephen: And, in fact, there are.
Stephen: you know, in modern literature. There are a number of
Stephen: recent novels, for example, that have taped up on Buddhist themes.
Stephen: And, in fact.
Stephen: yeah, some novelists who are but you know, are actually practicing Buddhists.
Stephen: But I think we've yet to really.
Stephen: in a sense.
Stephen: arrive at a point where we could say that a Buddhist art or a contemporary Buddhist art is emerging
Stephen: The novelist, Ruth Ozecky. Have you heard of her? She won the Booker prize? No, the Women's Prize for fiction last year for her book.
Stephen: the book of form and emptiness. and she's a Zen priest living in America. and she's a very, very brilliant writer. So there are examples like that.
Stephen: But to me, what's actually more important is how I
Stephen: use my own resources to create art for me.
Stephen: I love art, but I also.
Stephen: and very engaged in creating art.
Stephen: I would like to think of Dharma practice as being quite able to incorporate and to celebrate
Stephen: making art as part of our practice.
Stephen: and I think one of the reasons in my cartography that I've introduced the elements of creativity
Stephen: in the first task, and imagination in the fourth is to acknowledge that fact that for our at least in my own case.
Stephen: the practice of art which I make collages and take photographs and things
Stephen: is very important to my sense of being a practition.
Stephen: I can recognize that there are explicit Buddhist elements in it. But I am not interested in producing an art that is self-consciously Buddhist.
Stephen: I think that compromises in many ways.
Stephen: You know the autonomy of the work of art.
That is a modernist idea.
Stephen: I think. Work art. You should aspire for something that's not
Stephen: admired because it's Buddhist, or because it's postmodernist, but because it's somehow we came back. You mentioned this yesterday. You achieve a way of finding your voice in a form
Stephen: that is able to speak to the human condition and not to the Buddhist condition or the Christian condition.
Stephen: And that's what I would aspire to as as an artist.
Stephen: But I do think it is
Stephen: crucially important that we don't marginalize the arts
Stephen: as
Stephen: in terms of our practice as as Buddhists.
Stephen: Thanks, Stephen, I think that sort of brings the questions to a close. I don't know if any of you want to say something in this last session at the end.
Stephen: I was just going to add that
Stephen: and that er
Stephen: I've written a couple of historical novels.
Well-being.
Stephen: a secular Buddhist and
Stephen: It wasn't in any way an exploration of Buddhist concepts. It was more something that when I
Stephen: bundled secular Buddhism together, I come up Buddhist ethics together. I come up with a single word of decency. And so
Stephen: my 2 novels were about
Stephen: decent people dealing with horrendous situations. In one case, some
Stephen: I
Stephen: people who were involved in the Nuremberg trial, first Nuremberg trial
Stephen: immediately after the end of the Second World War.
Stephen: and it was sort of. And and we're facing incredibly difficult moral decisions, ethical dilemmas, and how there was a sort of
Stephen: coming together
Stephen: people from all sorts of backgrounds into how you deal with this. So it's not about secular Buddhism. But there's a basic inspiration there of how decent people deal with appalling problems, I suppose.
And
okay.
Stephen: okay, so that brings us to a close for this session. So morning tea time, and then we come back for the closing circle.