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Like to start with a couple of practical things.

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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

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Stephen: burning questions. or even unburning questions.

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Stephen: and you'd like to share them. Then

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Stephen: the box is still there. Please put them in whenever you wish. and

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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.

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Stephen: And also

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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Stephen: we'll be offering it at the afternoon meditation at 5 30 today.

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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.

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Stephen: otherwise you may want to to sit outside or walk or sit elsewhere.

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Stephen: I'd also like that to be recorded

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Stephen: as well, so that if people want to then subsequently use it, they would have a spoken version rather than

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Stephen: a written version of the meditation.

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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

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Stephen: has been made to it so far. But yesterday. during the evening discussion,

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Stephen: Andy raised the question about having lost our connection with the earth.

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Stephen: and so, even before I read the burning question that came up to my mind, because

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Stephen: the very first word in this in this cartography is Earth.

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Stephen: and I'd like to just sort of sketch or offer an you know, a kind of an impression.

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Stephen: What I'm trying to do here that is, that in my thinking around what a secular

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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.

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Stephen: and that has become the the bedrock

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Stephen: on which I've developed and built up my thinking as to what a secular dharma might look like.

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Stephen: Now I can't remember exactly when, but at some point.

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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

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Stephen: in Buddhism. And, in fact, a lot of these

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Stephen: lists here are within 4 columns.

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Stephen: Now, is that an accident?

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Stephen: Is it just a convenient organizational device, or does it tap into other

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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.

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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.

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Stephen: I think it taps into a fourfold patterning of our existence on earth.

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Stephen: and I feel the place we might begin would be with the 4 elements. earth. fire

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Stephen: water.

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Stephen: And then I began to think, Well, are these 4 tasks in any way connected to these other fourfold

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Stephen: features of our life? And I think they are.

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Stephen: Earth is very much the place where we live. It's the foundation of life itself.

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Stephen: and the first task is to embrace life.

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Stephen: to embrace suffering, but understanding, suffering not just to mean pain, but

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Stephen: the whole tragedy.

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Stephen: What John Cabot Zinn calls the full catastrophe.

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Stephen: So earth, in that sense, somewhat metaphorically, does suggest, you know, the very foundation of our life itself.

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Stephen: and that gives a kind of a groundedness, I think, to the eye, to the concept, embrace life.

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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

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Stephen: in the earlier drafts, I was

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Stephen: saying an earthly

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Stephen: eightfold path again. I'm not quite sure why I changed my mind, but I might change it back again.

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Stephen: The second element is fire.

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Stephen: and here the second task is letting go of reactivity and reactivity. In the early Buddhist tradition

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Stephen: is compared to fire

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Stephen: the 3 fires of greed, of hatred, of opinionatedness. Reactivity is that which flares up

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Stephen: like a fire. It's Samudaya means to rise up

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Stephen: reaction like that.

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Stephen: So this, I think, rather obviously lends itself to the the second of these elements.

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Stephen: Fire.

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Stephen: It's that which flares up within us, that which burns, that which destroys. And of course, today

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Stephen: we talk about global warming. We talk about the planet literally heating up.

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Stephen: And I'm not suggesting the Buddha had some sort of prophetic insight into climate change, but nonetheless

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Stephen: it's a very potent image for the condition in which we find ourselves, not just in our own minds.

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Stephen: things flaring up, but now the world is literally

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Stephen: heating up.

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Stephen: So letting go of reactivity is letting go of these inner fires.

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Stephen: But it also means we need to address those outer fires as well.

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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.

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Stephen: So in this way we can connect some of our actual concerns, which.

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Stephen: following our discussions this week, are clearly uppermost in many of our minds. With these 4 tasks. Correlated with these 4 elements.

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Stephen: The third task is seeing reactivity stop.

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Stephen: which means in practice, allowing ourselves to acknowledge, to recognize and to see

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Stephen: a non-reactive space within us.

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Stephen: and the element is air.

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Stephen: Again. It fits rather well.

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We might extend that to space.

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Stephen: It's not something visible. And yet it's something that. as we now know.

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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.

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Stephen: In later Buddhist philosophy

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Stephen: a space is defined by Buddhist logicians as the

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Stephen: the absence of resistance.

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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.

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Stephen: Nothing stands in my way.

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Stephen: There's no hindrance, there's no obstruction which implies that

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Stephen: movement. Free, unimpeded movement then becomes possible.

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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

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Stephen: itself.

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Stephen: And the fourth

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task is

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Stephen: cultivating the eightfold path as we saw yesterday, the eightfold path is equivalent to

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Stephen: the Buddha's understanding of the middle way, and entering the eightfold path is compared to

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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.

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Stephen: And again, that movement is enabled because we're coming from a non-reactive space.

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Stephen: This movement begins when we remove

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Stephen: or we suspend the reactive patterns that basically shut us down.

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Stephen: Reactivity is often called a hindrance or obstacle, and a hindrance or an obstacle is what prevents movement

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Stephen: prevents any kind of flow. Everything gets stuck.

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Stephen: So the afoot path. compared to a stream

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Stephen: very, very naturally fits into the idea of water

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Stephen: which flows. which also gives life.

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Stephen: which takes us somewhere if we think of a stream as always in motion.

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Stephen: heading out towards

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Stephen: let's see.

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Stephen: So it's not too difficult, therefore, to see the 4 tasks as Linkedin to these 4

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Stephen: physical elements.

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Stephen: and I found that very helpful. It takes the idea away from

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Stephen: just, you know, reflection and thinking and theory.

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Stephen: and puts it into immediate relation with

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Stephen: with the earth. with the elements, with fire, with air, with water.

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Stephen: I then correlated this to the 4 colors, and again, it's always struck me as slightly

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Stephen: odd in a way that whenever Buddhists speak of

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Stephen: color they speak of 4 primaries

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Stephen: in the West we speak of 3 primary colors, red, blue.

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Stephen: yellow. in all Buddhist texts. Going back right to the Pali Canon.

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Stephen: Whenever colour is mentioned, you always get 4 colours, red, white.

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Stephen: yellow, so white

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Stephen: is included

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Stephen: when I studied Tibetan Buddhist logic. The first text in the study of logic in Tibetan Buddhism is called Kadok Karma.

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Stephen: which means colour red, white.

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Stephen: but that's just shorthand for

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Stephen: the language of of using a colour as an example of a way to start examining how we think logically or not.

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Stephen: And again.

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primary colors the same. For

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Stephen: we find in the Pali cannon. Now is this just a coincidence

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Stephen: that this is also a fourfoldness, and also, as we can see, the 4 colors map on very tidily to the 4 elements

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Stephen: earth, yellow, fire, red.

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Stephen: white, water, blue.

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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.

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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.

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Stephen: So, in other words, that gives the

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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

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Stephen: also the beginning of aesthetics, how they go together, how we can organize these primary colors.

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Stephen: We may then build on to them the secondary colors, but nonetheless I found that colour

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Stephen: so easily overlooked

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Stephen: also operates as something within this fourfold scheme.

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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

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Stephen: the parallels are quite clear, summer. autumn, winter, spring.

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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.

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Stephen: I mean, it's arbitrary, really, where we can begin. We could begin anywhere but

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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.

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Stephen: Then we come into autumn. and the colour red

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Stephen: again comes to mind, and the falling of leaves.

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Stephen: letting reactivity. Go or be. It's a beautiful image.

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Stephen: the autumn

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Stephen: experience as it's now when I was in Japan.

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Stephen: for the Japanese autumn is a big deal. and especially red maple trees.

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Stephen: And there's hundreds of tourists in Kyodo taking selfies in front of red maple trees.

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Stephen: Winter winter. Again. We associate it with white, with snow.

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Stephen: It's a space in which life has in a sense, gone underground.

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Stephen: It's a space of emptiness.

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Stephen: It's a space of of stillness, and this fits very well, seeing the stopping of reactivity.

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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.

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Stephen: It's the precursor to spring.

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Stephen: It's the precursor to to life, coming back

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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.

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Stephen: So that's just really a just a way of picturing rather than thinking about

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Stephen: these 4 tasks, and in what context they are embedded.

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Stephen: I think there's also parallel to this

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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.

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Stephen: Recent scholarship has shown, I think, quite persuasively.

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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.

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Stephen: What we can glean from the Pali text is the Buddha's community was probably

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Stephen: practicing a kind of animism.

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Stephen: and was probably a solar religion.

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Stephen: The religion that worshiped the sun, which is common throughout the world

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Stephen: in particularly agrarian societies and the Buddha's connection to the sun.

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Stephen: The source of all life, in a way, is, is retained in the the epithet.

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Stephen: Adi chaita!

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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.

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Stephen: the Kinsman of the sun. There are some early pre-iconic Buddhist art that's been found in Gandhara. northwest India.

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Stephen: in which you just have a throne.

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Stephen: a Bodhi tree, and on the Bodhi tree is a stylized image of the sun.

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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?

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Stephen: The first thing he says, he says, I am from the lineage of the sun. the Gaeta.

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Stephen: the lineage, the the line

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Stephen: family, the tribe of those of the sun. So again, a connection to a very

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late material.

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Stephen: naturalistic

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Stephen: phenomena. he's not a worshipper of Brahma or Vishnu, or some Indian God that hasn't arrived yet.

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Stephen: So I feel in all of these ways. And of course I'm thinking in terms of

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Stephen: our renewed awareness of our environment because of the crises

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Stephen: the ecological crises that we, as human beings have have created

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Stephen: is that we're called

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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

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Stephen: we can perhaps elaborate and expand on that.

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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

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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

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Stephen: today, we're going to talk about the the first of the 4

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Stephen: active

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Stephen: elements of the path which is application.

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Stephen: Viama.

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Stephen: Again, this is

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Lou. This is translated in so many different ways, often simply by the word effort.

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Stephen: Unfortunately, there are 3 words for which are translated as effort.

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Stephen: Even within here within this chart.

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Stephen: and it's a little infuriating that there's not a very clear distinction between them

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Stephen: different words, but they're given pretty much the same definition. So

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Stephen: I'm going to interpret this in a way that I think fits with this model.

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Stephen: and that's why I'm calling it application rather than effort rather than courage. resolve which are other possible translations.

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Stephen: So we've spoken so far about the contemplative life.

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Stephen: These qualities that are very much going on within us.

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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

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Stephen: as as a template for leading a good life.

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Stephen: We also, I think, have to consider what Winton called yesterday

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Stephen: the self as a

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Stephen: as a what did he call it? A self as moral agency.

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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.

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Stephen: and to what extent, or what kind of person is it who can lead a consistent

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Stephen: moral.

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Stephen: ethical life.

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Stephen: So this brings us once again back to the topic that Lenore introduced on the first evening, that of self.

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Stephen: And I'm going to. I'd like to just spend a little bit of time. Looking at another way of selling

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Stephen: a way of selfing that has to do with our moral agency. of how we can actually grow

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Stephen: as persons through our contemplations, through our

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Stephen: intentions

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Stephen: and through our acts, and how we impact.

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Stephen: Which is the way I've which it is the the sort of trajectory that I'm framing the eightfold path.

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Stephen: So

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Stephen: perhaps the place to begin is to go back to the Buddha's second discourse.

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Stephen: The first discourse is the one that introduces the 4 tasks. The second discourse, which.

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Stephen: according to the tradition, occurred sometime shortly later, also in the Deer Park, in Sarnath.

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Stephen: in India, near Banaras.

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Stephen: and there the Buddha delivers what's called the the discourse on the characteristic of not self.

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Stephen: The Anata Lakhan Asuta.

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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.

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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

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Stephen: later Buddhist theories of self. I'll just say the the first line is.

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Stephen: if the body was self.

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Stephen: then you should be able to tell the body. What to do

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Stephen: like the you say, be well. don't get sick.

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Stephen: If the feelings were self, you should be able to tell them, you know. Be happy. Don't be sad.

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Stephen: but because the body and the feelings, and the other Condas, the other elements of our existence, are not self.

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Stephen: You can't tell them what to do.

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Stephen: You have no control over them.

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Stephen: They just happen. they arise. and they do so, not according to your volition, your wish. They are out of your control.

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Stephen: They appear. they do their thing, and they disappear.

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Stephen: Now this is a perspective on self that.

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Stephen: paradoxically.

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Stephen: or, let's say implicitly. gives us the clue as to what the self is.

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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

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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.

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Stephen: not you.

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Stephen: They just are the stuff that happens, the givenness of life itself

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Stephen: the results of past causes and conditions.

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Stephen: and that applies to our physical existence, our our feelings, our emotions, our impulses, even consciousness itself.

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Stephen: It's a given

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Stephen: but implicit to that is the idea that

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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.

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Stephen: And what this points to

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Stephen: is that we can infer that the self, as a moral agent is that voice within us that suggests what we should do.

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Stephen: In other words, what I can do as opposed to what I can't do. I can't get my feelings to just

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Stephen: be happy, that I can

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Stephen: make choices that I can act upon, and that can have a difference in the world. In other words.

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Stephen: we might call this

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Stephen: an understanding of a dialogical self.

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Stephen: The self is dialogical. In other words, in simple English

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Stephen: we spend most of our waking life talking to ourselves.

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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.

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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.

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Stephen: There's one part of me that's talking to another part of me. It's as though there are 2 selves.

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Stephen: and we use expressions like, you know, we must try and be at peace with ourselves. We must understand ourselves

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Stephen: as though there's a dialogue, a dialectic

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Stephen: going on.

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Stephen: Now, this point actually really only came clearly to my mind when I was reading the philosophy of Hannah Arendt.

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Stephen: and she picks this up from Socrates.

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Stephen: and she calls it the the the 2 in one self.

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Stephen: the 2 in one.

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Stephen: and I think this 2 in one is actually precisely what's there in the Buddha's second discourse on, not self.

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Stephen: In other words, there are elements

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Stephen: that I have can exercise some agency over in life and elements over which I can't.

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Stephen: Now some of you may be picking up that this is the the fundamental premise of stoicism.

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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.

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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

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Stephen: in your control.

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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

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Stephen: is phrased in in Christian theistic language, God give me the courage to

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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.

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Stephen: It's all Cap, the whole of stoicism. And I would suggest

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Stephen: the second Buddhist.

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Stephen: the second teaching of the Buddha

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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.

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Stephen: That's definitely you know, an issue, an important issue.

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Stephen: But there's also an understanding here of self that is dialogical, and very much to do with differentiating between what I can

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Stephen: manage to do and what I can't. And this has come up in our discussions. What can I do?

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Stephen: Faced with the climate change

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Stephen: some things I probably can't do right now, like, change the capitalist system tomorrow.

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Stephen: There's some things I can do as we've been exploring already. I don't need to go further into that.

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Stephen: but this also touches into the idea the self.

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Stephen: the Self, or me, or you, or the person.

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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.

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Stephen: And this you find also. This notion is quite explicit in a verse of the Dumapuda

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Stephen: verse number 80, which I often quote.

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Stephen: which is

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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.

295
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Stephen: And again, this is often translated. The wise person tames himself

296
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Stephen: or herself. which is a slippery

297
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Stephen: mistranslation, because it takes self, it turns self into a reflexive function of the verb.

298
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Stephen: Train yourself. whereas the Pali has the self in the accusative. Singular.

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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.

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Stephen: It's something that you work.

301
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Stephen: something that you transform something that you irrigate, something that you put together, something that you shape and form.

302
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Stephen: And this is a very dynamic concept of self. The complete opposite of this kind of fixed identity of me.

303
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Stephen: and this, I think, is necessary, for there to be any real sense of being a moral agent.

304
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Stephen: and in terms of this metaphor.

305
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Stephen: we need to understand the self

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Stephen: as a work in progress or as an unfinished project.

307
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Stephen: So, rather than thinking, we have to somehow get rid of the self.

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Stephen: or at least sort of you know, not get so caught up in it.

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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

310
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Stephen: as the Greeks would have had it. or Michel Foucault would have had.

311
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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

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Stephen: reaction.

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Stephen: And it's through those responses, through what we think and what we say and what we do.

314
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Stephen: that we become the kind of person we aspire to be.

315
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Stephen: Of course all of the old conditioning will still

316
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Stephen: be coming into play. It's not. We're not operating in a vacuum. We're operating with a history, with a past.

317
00:35:30.340 --> 00:35:43.480
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

318
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Stephen: leading your life as though it's a kind of creative work of art in a way

319
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Stephen: transforming, shaping, shifting, and so forth.

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Stephen: So

321
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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.

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Stephen: And of course it is. That's definitely part of the story.

323
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Stephen: But the danger is that that negative bias against self

324
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Stephen: obscures these these early texts that I'm referring to that talk of the self in a very non-problematic way.

325
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Stephen: It's just a fact of life. It's who we are. but it's understood as dynamic.

326
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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.

327
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Stephen: So when we cross the threshold from contemplative silence.

328
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Stephen: and that includes mindfulness, collectiveness, perspective imagination. All of this is going on within us, but it's not visible.

329
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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

330
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Stephen: family members can often read you very, very clearly, maybe even more clearly than

331
00:37:30.100 --> 00:37:35.629
Stephen: you can yourself, but for most of the time, as we move around the public realm.

332
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Stephen: we're able to keep much of ourselves hidden.

333
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Stephen: But as soon as we cross the threshold from

334
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Stephen: contemplation, thinking, imagining.

335
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Stephen: into action

336
00:37:51.880 --> 00:37:59.010
Stephen: which is where we're now heading. Then we allow ourselves for the first time

337
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Stephen: in a way to be seen to be heard and to be judged.

338
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Stephen: so the self becomes, as it were, a performer on a stage.

339
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Stephen: If we extend some of the metaphors of theatre.

340
00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:20.090
Stephen: that Winton has been touching on

341
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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.

342
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Stephen: It may be in a very small gesture, as Lenore suggested, the way we

343
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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.

344
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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.

345
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Stephen: the city. the political environment.

346
00:39:13.690 --> 00:39:21.789
Stephen: And once we've said something once we've done something, then those acts cannot be withdrawn.

347
00:39:22.610 --> 00:39:25.830
Stephen: You can't pull them back. You can say I didn't mean that.

348
00:39:26.090 --> 00:39:33.780
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

349
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Stephen: public self.

350
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Stephen: and we are judged. Our life is judged, we are judged, and we judge others

351
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Stephen: often, I think, unjustly, sometimes, maybe generously. But we enter into the sphere of the judgment.

352
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Stephen: Human beings and our actions no longer become just, our private intentions

353
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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.

354
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You know the task we've performed

355
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Stephen: like that church across the way that was built in 41

356
00:40:15.940 --> 00:40:26.109
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.

357
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Stephen: I suppose it can be destroyed.

358
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Stephen: So this brings us very much to the heart of what it means to act.

359
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Stephen: Now

360
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Stephen: I've already mentioned this, but it's worth mentioning it. Again. When the Buddha is asked.

361
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Stephen: What is Karma? What is Karma? What is action? He repeatedly says, action is intention. action is intention, Chetana.

362
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Stephen: Now

363
00:41:04.170 --> 00:41:15.230
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

364
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Stephen: is that

365
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Stephen: the Buddha is acknowledging that actions start in our own

366
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Stephen: minds with our own choices and decisions and judgments.

367
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Stephen: In other words, comma is not just understood as some external activity, or.

368
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Stephen: in fact, in Vedic India, Karma was often understood as ritual activity.

369
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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.

370
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Stephen: The Buddha may be one of the first thinkers

371
00:42:00.500 --> 00:42:01.550
Stephen: in

372
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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.

373
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Stephen: Now, the danger is that we think that we take it completely, literally, and we think that what

374
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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

375
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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.

376
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Stephen: But what it certainly shows is that

377
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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

378
00:43:15.990 --> 00:43:20.970
Stephen: or a decision that's made in the interior of our soul.

379
00:43:21.100 --> 00:43:28.889
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

380
00:43:29.710 --> 00:43:42.520
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

381
00:43:43.300 --> 00:43:45.400
Stephen: are basically the same word.

382
00:43:45.660 --> 00:43:48.280
Stephen: So intention and soul

383
00:43:48.630 --> 00:43:54.029
Stephen: cheetah becomes Chetama in Tibetan. It's very clear it's sem

384
00:43:54.260 --> 00:43:58.019
Stephen: is cheetah or soul, and Sempah

385
00:43:59.010 --> 00:44:04.630
Stephen: is intention very very closely linked words.

386
00:44:07.220 --> 00:44:18.720
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.

387
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Stephen: and we use it weirdly in many ways without any problem. We talk of something being being soulful.

388
00:44:25.900 --> 00:44:31.239
Stephen: we talk of soul music. We talk of having a soul mate, and that doesn't seem to be a problem.

389
00:44:31.780 --> 00:44:44.260
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.

390
00:44:44.400 --> 00:44:47.860
Stephen: That's not even good Christian theology

391
00:44:48.880 --> 00:44:59.399
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.

392
00:45:00.380 --> 00:45:10.110
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

393
00:45:11.320 --> 00:45:25.390
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.

394
00:45:26.210 --> 00:45:32.599
Stephen: So it's got nothing to do with with the, with the self at all it has to do with.

395
00:45:32.970 --> 00:45:36.769
Stephen: as it were, what we feel most deeply.

396
00:45:38.280 --> 00:45:43.799
Stephen: Jung, in German sometimes uses the word Zalish

397
00:45:44.090 --> 00:45:49.819
Stephen: Soulish. and it gets translated into into English as psychological.

398
00:45:50.740 --> 00:45:53.269
Stephen: very different resonance

399
00:45:53.400 --> 00:46:00.359
Stephen: together. But again, I'd like to, you know, at least consider that we might recover

400
00:46:00.590 --> 00:46:04.369
Stephen: this powerful and I think very beautiful word.

401
00:46:05.420 --> 00:46:08.300
Stephen: So Buddhism clearly recognizes that

402
00:46:09.420 --> 00:46:13.310
Stephen: you can't reduce action to intention.

403
00:46:14.570 --> 00:46:24.599
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

404
00:46:25.100 --> 00:46:31.130
Stephen: considering to do something to make a judgment and a decision privately

405
00:46:31.160 --> 00:46:38.049
Stephen: is connected to what we then say and do. There is there is an unbroken continuum

406
00:46:38.240 --> 00:46:47.270
Stephen: between what's first begins to stir in our soul. and then, through further reflection.

407
00:46:48.790 --> 00:46:56.089
Stephen: ends up as a form of words or a deed that has an impact

408
00:46:56.170 --> 00:47:08.329
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.

409
00:47:08.610 --> 00:47:10.470
Stephen: there is no gap.

410
00:47:10.920 --> 00:47:15.709
Stephen: and ethically, too. Therefore, ethics doesn't

411
00:47:15.750 --> 00:47:19.060
Stephen: begin with what we do in the world.

412
00:47:19.360 --> 00:47:22.759
Stephen: Ethics begins with how we think

413
00:47:22.960 --> 00:47:25.390
Stephen: and feel and decide

414
00:47:25.440 --> 00:47:31.659
Stephen: in our minds. And for this reason, traditional Buddhism

415
00:47:31.690 --> 00:47:37.830
Stephen: talks of 3 kinds of actions. It talks of actions of the mind.

416
00:47:38.060 --> 00:47:44.420
Stephen: Manas, not cheetah actions of the mind. actions of the voice.

417
00:47:44.680 --> 00:47:46.790
Stephen: and actions of the body.

418
00:47:47.670 --> 00:47:53.150
Stephen: and we often hear this body speech in mind. It's a classic Buddhist trope.

419
00:47:54.380 --> 00:47:56.820
Stephen: So, in other words.

420
00:47:57.430 --> 00:48:06.199
Stephen: ethics begins in how we act within our own affective ecosystem.

421
00:48:06.330 --> 00:48:08.239
Stephen: So when we sit in meditation.

422
00:48:08.920 --> 00:48:17.150
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.

423
00:48:18.150 --> 00:48:24.630
Stephen: So you're sitting in meditation, and lo and behold! You get distracted you. Then have a choice.

424
00:48:25.680 --> 00:48:29.570
Stephen: You can then make a decision that will result in an act.

425
00:48:29.600 --> 00:48:36.150
Stephen: You'll say no, I'm not going to pursue that very promising fantasy.

426
00:48:37.360 --> 00:48:40.509
Stephen: I'm going to come back to my breath, which is really boring.

427
00:48:40.630 --> 00:48:47.810
Stephen: but that's what I'm committed to. That is already an ethical act. The German

428
00:48:48.040 --> 00:48:50.150
Stephen: philosopher and

429
00:48:50.400 --> 00:48:54.610
Stephen: dharma practitioner, Thomas Metzinger. Some of you might have heard of him.

430
00:48:54.960 --> 00:48:59.189
Stephen: He is trying to develop what he calls an ethics of consciousness

431
00:48:59.990 --> 00:49:19.789
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

432
00:49:19.860 --> 00:49:23.710
Stephen: ecosystem, our own interiority.

433
00:49:24.130 --> 00:49:25.609
Stephen: We can change that.

434
00:49:26.010 --> 00:49:30.640
Stephen: We can affect it positively by decisions we make

435
00:49:30.880 --> 00:49:43.260
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.

436
00:49:43.500 --> 00:49:48.819
Stephen: but particularly in the mindfulness-based therapies. This is what people are being taught to do.

437
00:49:49.160 --> 00:49:51.080
Stephen: They're being taught to actually make

438
00:49:51.170 --> 00:50:05.970
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

439
00:50:06.010 --> 00:50:10.420
Stephen: values, such as inner stillness and non-reactivity.

440
00:50:10.990 --> 00:50:15.439
Stephen: And we and this is often described as a kind of work.

441
00:50:15.870 --> 00:50:25.690
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

442
00:50:26.050 --> 00:50:29.819
Stephen: because I'm struggling all of these things that are basically pushing

443
00:50:29.850 --> 00:50:45.179
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.

444
00:50:48.140 --> 00:50:56.380
Stephen: And finally. we come to effort. To the to application.

445
00:50:57.000 --> 00:51:11.849
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.

446
00:51:12.230 --> 00:51:14.190
Stephen: but classically.

447
00:51:14.360 --> 00:51:18.959
Stephen:  this viamar, this application

448
00:51:19.100 --> 00:51:22.650
Stephen: is broken down into 4

449
00:51:23.550 --> 00:51:25.260
Stephen: tasks really.

450
00:51:25.620 --> 00:51:32.910
Stephen: and these are sometimes called the 4 great efforts and courage, resolve.

451
00:51:33.010 --> 00:51:37.880
Stephen: application, are all defined in exactly the same way.

452
00:51:38.720 --> 00:51:42.149
Stephen: so let me just read those off. Some of you'll be familiar with them.

453
00:51:44.030 --> 00:51:48.169
Stephen: The 4 efforts. And let's say here, the 4 applications

454
00:51:48.270 --> 00:51:55.599
Stephen: have to do essentially with creating the conditions for another way of being.

455
00:51:56.470 --> 00:52:04.220
Stephen: They're about creating conditions. Effort in Buddhism isn't about forcefully pushing your will onto something.

456
00:52:04.580 --> 00:52:11.400
Stephen: It's about creating conditions. And this is very much in line with the principle of dependent arising.

457
00:52:12.370 --> 00:52:19.259
Stephen: If you create the conditions under which a certain result. A certain effect will then

458
00:52:20.250 --> 00:52:22.909
Stephen: come about as its fruit.

459
00:52:23.600 --> 00:52:27.980
Stephen: It's not a strong, willful

460
00:52:28.070 --> 00:52:31.880
Stephen: determination to force yourself onto the situation.

461
00:52:32.160 --> 00:52:36.520
Stephen: Push yourself harder than you can actually manage.

462
00:52:36.550 --> 00:52:46.490
Stephen: But it's about understanding the situations we're in and creating the conditions that will give rise

463
00:52:46.640 --> 00:52:48.690
Stephen: to a different

464
00:52:49.400 --> 00:53:02.140
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.

465
00:53:02.620 --> 00:53:10.220
Stephen: And here we go inevitably into the sphere of politics. How can we create the conditions of

466
00:53:10.420 --> 00:53:22.500
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.

467
00:53:22.810 --> 00:53:41.540
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

468
00:53:41.700 --> 00:53:49.199
Stephen: process that would go on in within our own minds, within our own families, communities, and so forth.

469
00:53:49.340 --> 00:53:52.010
Stephen: So these 4 efforts.

470
00:53:52.020 --> 00:53:59.100
Stephen: the first one is to create conditions so that reactivity will not arise.

471
00:54:00.530 --> 00:54:08.369
Stephen: The second is to create conditions so that reactivity that has arisen

472
00:54:08.690 --> 00:54:10.169
Stephen: will just be left alone.

473
00:54:12.190 --> 00:54:19.000
Stephen: The third is to create conditions for skills and virtues to arise.

474
00:54:19.930 --> 00:54:27.910
Stephen: and the fourth is to create conditions that will sustain and increase skills

475
00:54:28.070 --> 00:54:29.440
Stephen: and virtues.

476
00:54:30.630 --> 00:54:36.869
Stephen: So what we are creating conditions for is a good life.

477
00:54:37.200 --> 00:54:46.259
Stephen: a way of life that's not entangled in our instinctive and conditioned greed and fear hatred.

478
00:54:47.360 --> 00:54:50.419
Stephen: This broad term reactivity.

479
00:54:50.610 --> 00:54:53.839
Stephen: which doesn't get us anywhere, keeps us stuck.

480
00:54:54.040 --> 00:54:58.660
Stephen: keeps us trapped, keeps us blocked, doesn't allow us to flourish

481
00:54:58.940 --> 00:55:04.200
Stephen: and to create other conditions and circumstances

482
00:55:04.240 --> 00:55:06.020
Stephen: that will

483
00:55:06.040 --> 00:55:10.459
Stephen: be more likely to bring about

484
00:55:10.900 --> 00:55:12.550
Stephen: virtue.

485
00:55:13.080 --> 00:55:16.710
Stephen: kindness, compassion, love, wisdom.

486
00:55:17.330 --> 00:55:26.389
Stephen: and once those conditions have begun to happen, to find conditions to reinforce those conditions with

487
00:55:26.580 --> 00:55:39.450
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.

488
00:55:40.570 --> 00:55:46.740
Stephen: you might think, and in the abstract it looks a bit idealistic. But in practice I feel

489
00:55:47.330 --> 00:55:54.169
Stephen: it's calling upon us to engage in radical acts of change.

490
00:55:54.560 --> 00:56:02.050
Stephen: radical acts of self-transformation. And in many ways these 4

491
00:56:02.090 --> 00:56:04.980
Stephen: efforts are

492
00:56:05.200 --> 00:56:09.339
Stephen: just another version of the 4 tasks.

493
00:56:09.390 --> 00:56:18.320
Stephen: They're very similar. Actually, the first task embracing life is creating the condition for

494
00:56:19.100 --> 00:56:21.339
Stephen: letting go of reactivity.

495
00:56:22.110 --> 00:56:30.560
Stephen: letting go of reactivity. The second task is creating the condition for reactivity to come to a stop

496
00:56:32.560 --> 00:56:43.429
Stephen: and seeing the stopping of reactivity. The third task creates the condition for the cultivation of the path.

497
00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:50.049
Stephen: And so what we're tapping into with this rather inadequate word effort

498
00:56:50.620 --> 00:57:04.569
Stephen: is embracing the principle of dependent origination, dependent, arising and seeking to establish conditions that will support the kind of world

499
00:57:04.590 --> 00:57:11.679
Stephen: we want to live in which will support the emergence of the kind of person we aspire to be.

500
00:57:11.980 --> 00:57:21.429
Stephen: In other words, it is a fundamentally ethical project. Traditionally, Buddhism has thought of this in terms of self-development

501
00:57:22.230 --> 00:57:24.429
Stephen: while tacitly acknowledging

502
00:57:24.750 --> 00:57:30.170
Stephen: the development of a society or a community. But I think our challenge today

503
00:57:30.180 --> 00:57:32.680
Stephen: by reading Buddhism in a

504
00:57:32.740 --> 00:57:37.419
Stephen: in a totally secular sense, is to extend that

505
00:57:37.450 --> 00:57:39.640
Stephen: project. That process

506
00:57:39.660 --> 00:57:44.089
Stephen: to the world in which we live

507
00:57:44.570 --> 00:57:47.010
Stephen: is finite planet Earth.

508
00:57:47.230 --> 00:57:50.549
Stephen: To create the conditions that will

509
00:57:50.620 --> 00:57:53.009
Stephen: lead to less reactivity.

510
00:57:53.610 --> 00:57:56.940
Stephen: less flourishing, and create

511
00:57:57.390 --> 00:58:05.520
Stephen: conditions that will hopefully give rise to the greater flourishing of life on Earth.

512
00:58:09.800 --> 00:58:12.259
Stephen: So that's all I have to say today.

513
00:58:14.550 --> 00:58:26.529
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

514
00:58:26.940 --> 00:58:29.610
Stephen: we'll open this up for discussion.

515
00:58:29.850 --> 00:58:31.770
Stephen: Question.

516
00:58:31.780 --> 00:58:35.839
Stephen: from one of our online participants. Lesley.

517
00:58:36.390 --> 00:58:38.529
Stephen: would you like to start, Basley?

518
00:58:38.700 --> 00:58:52.330
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.

519
00:58:52.350 --> 00:58:59.249
Lesley Synge: So I wanted to say particular thanks to your insights and generosity, and sharing your work to all of you.

520
00:58:59.710 --> 00:59:11.830
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.

521
00:59:12.600 --> 00:59:17.870
Lesley Synge: I'd like you to extend this vision with reference to the original teachings of Gottamar

522
00:59:18.180 --> 00:59:26.919
Lesley Synge: even though the community he was elaborating on was mostly directed to the monastic one that gathered to follow him.

523
00:59:26.970 --> 00:59:34.379
Lesley Synge: and he spoke often about how they would keep the community get together during the rains, retreats.

524
00:59:34.440 --> 00:59:52.379
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.

525
00:59:52.430 --> 01:00:03.509
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.

526
01:00:03.960 --> 01:00:15.149
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.

527
01:00:15.450 --> 01:00:22.190
and often burned out in very tragic kind of ways. I think we are going to see

528
01:00:22.400 --> 01:00:29.350
Lesley Synge: massive amount of brilliant minds do the same in the coming chaotic period.

529
01:00:29.470 --> 01:00:39.099
There will be also masses of ordinary people, who will also be spinning out with great anger and heedless actions

530
01:00:39.260 --> 01:00:42.410
Lesley Synge: as they lash out against.

531
01:00:42.970 --> 01:00:52.629
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

532
01:00:52.760 --> 01:00:56.030
Lesley Synge: keep them connected? Thank you.

533
01:00:56.520 --> 01:01:06.839
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.

534
01:01:07.090 --> 01:01:27.059
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.

535
01:01:27.540 --> 01:01:36.629
Stephen: And yet, paradoxically, her life continues today to inspire many, many other people, too. She's very much a living example.

536
01:01:36.730 --> 01:01:40.239
Stephen: not a living example, but a, you know, a human example.

537
01:01:40.410 --> 01:01:45.299
Stephen: an example of a life fully lived, although in many ways.

538
01:01:45.580 --> 01:01:49.139
Stephen: you know, she's self destructed.

539
01:01:49.180 --> 01:01:55.640
Stephen: Her vision was perhaps too extreme in a way to for her to sustain and to bear.

540
01:01:56.210 --> 01:01:57.720
Stephen: So

541
01:01:58.540 --> 01:02:02.239
Stephen: I do think we have to include within our

542
01:02:02.520 --> 01:02:03.610
Stephen: community

543
01:02:03.710 --> 01:02:10.629
Stephen: people of perhaps particular or exceptional gifts. Who are perhaps never going to fit in.

544
01:02:11.030 --> 01:02:13.800
Stephen: and that may, in fact, be their power.

545
01:02:14.020 --> 01:02:18.560
Stephen: be their role. I mean, you take the example of Christ, for example.

546
01:02:19.130 --> 01:02:28.560
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.

547
01:02:29.050 --> 01:02:33.800
Stephen: but and even the Buddha at the end of his life was more or less abandoned.

548
01:02:34.150 --> 01:02:39.390
Stephen: His supporters left him. He died more or less in isolation.

549
01:02:39.610 --> 01:02:54.470
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.

550
01:02:54.670 --> 01:03:09.450
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

551
01:03:09.750 --> 01:03:12.020
Stephen: the passions.

552
01:03:12.040 --> 01:03:15.099
Stephen: the vis, the energy

553
01:03:15.420 --> 01:03:20.819
Stephen: of those who, in a way, are pushing the boundaries

554
01:03:21.250 --> 01:03:47.159
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

555
01:03:47.420 --> 01:03:53.770
Stephen:  and I think a lot of the just think of the people in the past whose lives you admire.

556
01:03:54.080 --> 01:04:02.629
Stephen: and how many of them were in a way held within a safe environment supported by their friends.

557
01:04:03.770 --> 01:04:08.600
Stephen: And how many of them are actually outsiders, outliers?

558
01:04:09.100 --> 01:04:11.550
Stephen: I think we need both. You know.

559
01:04:11.870 --> 01:04:17.270
Stephen: I wouldn't want a community that was too controlling. Because I think that would actually

560
01:04:17.360 --> 01:04:21.240
Stephen: probably create the conditions for these people to break out anyway.

561
01:04:21.370 --> 01:04:29.990
Stephen: as happens. But, on the other hand, if you don't really provide a context within which their lives can be valued

562
01:04:30.120 --> 01:04:31.560
Stephen: and in some way

563
01:04:31.580 --> 01:04:37.350
Stephen: integrated into the broader community of which they're a part.

564
01:04:37.530 --> 01:04:40.960
Stephen: In the case of the Buddha. His Sangha

565
01:04:41.780 --> 01:04:56.290
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.

566
01:04:56.520 --> 01:05:01.509
Stephen: He uses the word Parisa, which means, like assembly.

567
01:05:02.900 --> 01:05:10.039
Stephen: and one of the things we may also return to in our secular revisioning

568
01:05:10.050 --> 01:05:16.790
Stephen: of the Dharma is to this idea of an assembly what the Buddha called a four-fold assembly

569
01:05:17.160 --> 01:05:22.759
Stephen: in which you have. You have monks. You have nuns, you have lay men, you have lay women.

570
01:05:23.340 --> 01:05:26.799
Stephen: I don't particularly like the languaging here.

571
01:05:26.970 --> 01:05:32.150
Stephen: Biku doesn't really mean Monk, and Upasaka doesn't really mean laymen.

572
01:05:32.850 --> 01:05:46.960
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

573
01:05:47.140 --> 01:05:52.790
Stephen: coming together and identifying with this broad community, let's say

574
01:05:52.940 --> 01:05:58.020
Stephen: but he also maintains that each

575
01:05:58.090 --> 01:06:02.389
Stephen: of these 4 groups have exactly the same responsibilities.

576
01:06:03.280 --> 01:06:15.199
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.

577
01:06:15.890 --> 01:06:19.469
Stephen: at least, you know, as an idea, at least.

578
01:06:19.610 --> 01:06:26.360
Stephen: he envisioned a community in which everybody, from each different walk of life

579
01:06:26.480 --> 01:06:31.849
Stephen: would study and practice and train and teach

580
01:06:32.010 --> 01:06:33.010
Stephen: the dharma.

581
01:06:33.620 --> 01:06:38.590
Stephen: He didn't privilege one group as the teachers and the other group as the students.

582
01:06:38.850 --> 01:06:46.479
Stephen: That, I think is striking. It quickly was lost, perhaps for purely pragmatic reasons.

583
01:06:46.580 --> 01:06:47.859
Stephen: That's how it played out.

584
01:06:48.200 --> 01:06:52.100
Stephen: But I would like to think of a Parisa.

585
01:06:52.270 --> 01:07:00.190
Stephen: a secular dharmic community that embraces diversity of interest.

586
01:07:00.240 --> 01:07:03.110
Stephen: of competence of skill.

587
01:07:03.390 --> 01:07:04.460
of

588
01:07:04.510 --> 01:07:05.919
Stephen: you know, focus

589
01:07:05.980 --> 01:07:11.249
Stephen: and accords equal weight to each part of the

590
01:07:11.620 --> 01:07:20.769
Stephen: community rather than one part slowly shifting into becoming the authority, and the others being somehow disempowered to some degree.

591
01:07:23.630 --> 01:07:26.589
Lesley Synge: Thank you. We did that. But thank you very much.

592
01:07:26.770 --> 01:07:31.399
I've got a second question from online from Tina. Ok, Tina.

593
01:07:32.830 --> 01:07:35.279
Tina Gibson: Oh, good. I, Steven, how are you?

594
01:07:36.330 --> 01:07:46.359
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.

595
01:07:46.990 --> 01:07:56.239
Tina Gibson: Just yeah. Makes it so much easier need to understand it and relate to this. So II really appreciate that.

596
01:07:56.450 --> 01:08:04.019
Tina Gibson: And I know, last year in the human flourishing course. you really spoke to the need to do that.

597
01:08:04.240 --> 01:08:13.140
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

598
01:08:13.280 --> 01:08:15.670
Tina Gibson: helpful. So thank you for that.

599
01:08:15.870 --> 01:08:24.390
Tina Gibson:  I wanted to just speak to the word compassion and hear your feelings on that.

600
01:08:24.840 --> 01:08:27.349
Tina Gibson: I know in the past

601
01:08:27.670 --> 01:08:36.080
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.

602
01:08:36.779 --> 01:08:37.810
Tina Gibson: And

603
01:08:38.740 --> 01:08:45.840
Tina Gibson: what I found helpful is looking at compassion as this relational quality that I have.

604
01:08:46.130 --> 01:08:59.000
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

605
01:08:59.290 --> 01:09:01.080
Tina Gibson: what is mine to do.

606
01:09:01.090 --> 01:09:08.959
Tina Gibson: and the the sort of the relational aspect between the contemplative side of this and the active side.

607
01:09:09.560 --> 01:09:16.360
Tina Gibson: and also plays a huge role a little bit what Lesley was saying in preventing burnout.

608
01:09:17.840 --> 01:09:24.720
Tina Gibson: And and I found that this really does start from the inside out. So going back to what you said.

609
01:09:25.010 --> 01:09:37.189
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

610
01:09:37.779 --> 01:09:41.320
Tina Gibson: from what Leonora was talking about last night about

611
01:09:42.760 --> 01:09:46.589
Tina Gibson: non harm. Often it's forgotten that

612
01:09:46.609 --> 01:09:51.970
Tina Gibson: in trying to acquire knowledge and act in a certain way.

613
01:09:52.609 --> 01:09:58.869
Tina Gibson: We can be harming ourselves, you know, from. And this actually ripples out into our world.

614
01:10:00.490 --> 01:10:01.620
Tina Gibson: So

615
01:10:02.020 --> 01:10:17.470
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.

616
01:10:17.920 --> 01:10:21.940
Tina Gibson: I was brought up to think of that word compassion as

617
01:10:22.480 --> 01:10:30.360
Tina Gibson: discriminating. you know, within the my Catholic upbringing it was saints or sinners. Some people got it, some people didn't.

618
01:10:30.680 --> 01:10:37.730
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

619
01:10:38.290 --> 01:10:40.290
Tina Gibson: and learning to

620
01:10:40.310 --> 01:10:44.710
Tina Gibson: see compassion. It doesn't discriminate.

621
01:10:44.740 --> 01:10:57.480
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.

622
01:10:57.700 --> 01:11:02.579
Tina Gibson: you know, and finding that middle way of relating, and how

623
01:11:02.600 --> 01:11:09.089
Tina Gibson: often I can go to strong back, strong front or soft back, soft front, you know, and

624
01:11:09.400 --> 01:11:21.540
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.

625
01:11:21.770 --> 01:11:24.480
Stephen: Well, thank you very much.

626
01:11:24.800 --> 01:11:28.610
Stephen: yeah, I do think I mean, compassion is a charged word.

627
01:11:28.940 --> 01:11:35.979
Stephen: And often it it. It slips quite easily into a sense of having pity for others.

628
01:11:36.560 --> 01:11:39.310
Stephen: In a way, looking down on them.

629
01:11:39.700 --> 01:11:48.509
Stephen: And again, training can have a certain sort of macho quality to it.

630
01:11:48.560 --> 01:12:04.339
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

631
01:12:04.790 --> 01:12:09.830
Stephen: and a relationship that's founded on on a basic sense of equality

632
01:12:10.260 --> 01:12:16.529
Stephen: relationship that is able to to really embrace

633
01:12:16.830 --> 01:12:17.820
Stephen: life.

634
01:12:17.930 --> 01:12:23.430
Stephen: I've always found it helpful to follow the fairly classic Buddhist

635
01:12:23.550 --> 01:12:27.429
Stephen: definitions of compassion and and Meta.

636
01:12:27.470 --> 01:12:32.930
Stephen: or loving kindness or love. that compassion is the wish for others not to suffer.

637
01:12:33.290 --> 01:12:41.399
Stephen: and Meta is the wish for others to be well, wish for others to be happy. And, as you

638
01:12:41.450 --> 01:12:46.929
Stephen: implied, this can sort of become a kind of a rather

639
01:12:47.090 --> 01:12:48.860
moose, soft.

640
01:12:48.950 --> 01:12:51.019
Stephen: just sort of generation of

641
01:12:51.050 --> 01:12:54.430
Stephen: good feelings, but with little backbone.

642
01:12:54.500 --> 01:13:16.929
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.

643
01:13:18.130 --> 01:13:24.430
Stephen: So now I like I enjoyed your reflection. Thank you very much. That was great, very, very good.

644
01:13:25.600 --> 01:13:41.129
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.

645
01:13:41.140 --> 01:13:57.310
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

646
01:13:57.680 --> 01:14:05.419
Ayla Curtis: thanks, obviously for your wonderful teachings and the opportunity to ask questions. I kind of had 2 questions hopefully.

647
01:14:05.730 --> 01:14:24.230
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

648
01:14:24.450 --> 01:14:37.439
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

649
01:14:38.130 --> 01:14:41.810
Ayla Curtis: the self that's understood and conscious, and maybe

650
01:14:42.050 --> 01:14:53.959
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

651
01:14:54.110 --> 01:14:56.359
Ayla Curtis: intention behind the word.

652
01:14:56.860 --> 01:15:10.140
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

653
01:15:10.760 --> 01:15:13.789
Stephen: in in an Asian Buddhist culture.

654
01:15:14.010 --> 01:15:20.249
Stephen: If you ask somebody you know, where is your cheetah? Where is your cheetah, Sam? In Tibetan?

655
01:15:20.260 --> 01:15:21.859
Loosely mined

656
01:15:22.260 --> 01:15:24.619
Stephen: but I translate it as soul.

657
01:15:24.740 --> 01:15:30.100
Stephen: If you ask an Asian Buddhist person where that is, they'll all immediately go like this.

658
01:15:31.150 --> 01:15:34.749
Stephen: and they'll put their hand on their heart. They won't go like this.

659
01:15:36.570 --> 01:15:45.550
Stephen: In other words, this this is why, sometimes it's translated as heart, mind hyphenated.

660
01:15:45.760 --> 01:15:49.599
Stephen: which is a clumsy expression, to say the least.

661
01:15:49.840 --> 01:15:53.709
Stephen: it's sort of it's indecisive. Which way do we go?

662
01:15:53.850 --> 01:15:57.120
Stephen: Soul, of course, captures both.

663
01:15:57.160 --> 01:15:59.509
Stephen: but we don't like the word soul very often.

664
01:15:59.810 --> 01:16:05.689
Stephen:  so it does have to do with a heartfelt quality

665
01:16:06.530 --> 01:16:09.510
Stephen: definitely suggests the notion of heart.

666
01:16:10.220 --> 01:16:18.090
Stephen:  so to be soulful, to be heartfelt. These words sort of resonate at the same pitch.

667
01:16:18.580 --> 01:16:23.129
Stephen: but the only place we find the word soul.

668
01:16:23.800 --> 01:16:30.090
Stephen: In fact, I've not even translated it as soul. Here is in the 4 steps of creativity on the cartography.

669
01:16:30.180 --> 01:16:35.949
Stephen: 4 steps of creativity, aspiration, perseverance, intuition, experimentation.

670
01:16:36.050 --> 01:16:39.970
Stephen: the word intuition is again soul. It's cheetah.

671
01:16:40.820 --> 01:16:50.470
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.

672
01:16:51.150 --> 01:17:01.230
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

673
01:17:02.200 --> 01:17:06.829
Stephen: the reason the logical mind, the rational mind.

674
01:17:06.880 --> 01:17:12.479
Stephen: But it's very much a source of of insight, of knowing

675
01:17:12.980 --> 01:17:17.769
Stephen: the is, we often feel it sort of deep within us somewhere.

676
01:17:17.910 --> 01:17:21.420
Stephen: Jung uses the word

677
01:17:21.590 --> 01:17:24.439
Stephen: Arno intuition

678
01:17:24.690 --> 01:17:43.509
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

679
01:17:43.510 --> 01:18:04.870
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.

680
01:18:05.180 --> 01:18:14.910
Stephen: But at the end of the contest Dionysos says, Well, having heard that contest, I must now check in with my Psyche

681
01:18:15.540 --> 01:18:18.579
Stephen: to decide which is the greatest tragedian.

682
01:18:18.760 --> 01:18:29.809
Stephen: and he chooses Aeschylus over Euripides. But the point, again, is that he uses the word Psyche soul cheetah.

683
01:18:31.010 --> 01:18:46.140
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.

684
01:18:46.860 --> 01:18:52.659
Stephen: we might call it intuition again. So in some ways it's a bit vague and fuzzy.

685
01:18:52.780 --> 01:19:07.830
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.

686
01:19:07.980 --> 01:19:27.549
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

687
01:19:27.810 --> 01:19:34.530
Ayla Curtis: necessarily framed in a negative way. You know, there's a lot of power in that intuition, and that deep knowing

688
01:19:34.590 --> 01:19:37.779
Ayla Curtis: somewhere in this space near the heart

689
01:19:38.170 --> 01:19:43.449
Stephen: absolutely. But again, in usage

690
01:19:43.950 --> 01:19:46.740
Stephen: particularly in Buddhist circles, soul

691
01:19:46.920 --> 01:20:09.500
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

692
01:20:10.230 --> 01:20:21.079
Stephen: that we have this concept. See, Chitta doesn't translate as mind at all. In German, they say Geist, which means like spirit

693
01:20:21.860 --> 01:20:27.200
Stephen: in French, they say. let's pray again. Spirit.

694
01:20:27.820 --> 01:20:37.779
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

695
01:20:38.200 --> 01:20:49.879
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.

696
01:20:49.990 --> 01:20:54.810
Stephen: Of course there are problematic areas around selfing, that's for sure.

697
01:20:54.890 --> 01:21:01.300
Stephen: But to sort of write the whole idea off as suspect is, I think, you know, limiting

698
01:21:02.230 --> 01:21:08.559
Ayla Curtis: on a personal level. I think that's given rise to a lot of self doubt and and questioning in

699
01:21:08.850 --> 01:21:19.069
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.

700
01:21:19.600 --> 01:21:22.770
Ayla Curtis: is it kind of does speak to the power of language if we want to

701
01:21:22.810 --> 01:21:30.499
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.

702
01:21:31.450 --> 01:21:43.379
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

703
01:21:43.870 --> 01:21:53.739
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

704
01:21:54.340 --> 01:22:07.330
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.

705
01:22:07.650 --> 01:22:15.729
Stephen: But I find that though neither of those words are able to bear the load

706
01:22:15.850 --> 01:22:19.650
Stephen: of what is understood as Upper Madra

707
01:22:20.120 --> 01:22:25.800
Stephen: upper Mada is the very last word the Buddha spoke

708
01:22:26.540 --> 01:22:30.520
Stephen: his famous last words were.

709
01:22:31.490 --> 01:22:35.870
Stephen: things fall apart. tread the path.

710
01:22:36.280 --> 01:22:40.159
Stephen: care, tread the path with appamada.

711
01:22:41.140 --> 01:22:55.959
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

712
01:22:56.240 --> 01:22:57.980
Stephen: what his teaching was all about.

713
01:22:58.080 --> 01:23:03.039
Stephen: You know the the world is unstable. It breaks down as does your life.

714
01:23:03.140 --> 01:23:05.379
Stephen: Therefore tread the path

715
01:23:05.590 --> 01:23:08.440
Stephen: the eightfold path with a Permada

716
01:23:08.500 --> 01:23:10.080
Stephen: with diligence.

717
01:23:11.460 --> 01:23:22.029
Stephen:  yeah, maybe. But diligence is kind of vague, and it doesn't really have much weight. I chose the word care

718
01:23:22.270 --> 01:23:35.799
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

719
01:23:35.840 --> 01:23:41.770
Stephen: by an Steinkeller, German scholar and faxama soar. Sorga means care

720
01:23:42.150 --> 01:23:45.880
Stephen: in job. Vach Sama means wakeful.

721
01:23:46.850 --> 01:23:57.109
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.

722
01:23:57.500 --> 01:24:03.040
Stephen: And then, after that, when I started reading the works of Martin Heidegger.

723
01:24:04.040 --> 01:24:06.880
Stephen: There, too, care or Zorge

724
01:24:07.150 --> 01:24:14.349
Stephen: care. Becomes very, very central to his understanding of Darzine, of being in the world

725
01:24:14.720 --> 01:24:16.569
Stephen: or just being here.

726
01:24:16.680 --> 01:24:24.430
Stephen: that that's our primary relationship to to reality, to others, to ourselves is one of care.

727
01:24:25.130 --> 01:24:27.340
Stephen: But you have the trouble with

728
01:24:27.370 --> 01:24:36.519
Stephen: care in English. It doesn't always catch the notion that caring is also

729
01:24:37.430 --> 01:24:42.760
Stephen: there's an element of anxiety or worry

730
01:24:42.910 --> 01:24:56.600
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

731
01:24:56.810 --> 01:25:10.659
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

732
01:25:10.700 --> 01:25:18.820
Stephen: that we worry about. We're concerned about. I care for someone because I don't want them to suffer.

733
01:25:19.800 --> 01:25:25.949
Stephen: So care has this sense again, of giving primacy to our

734
01:25:25.980 --> 01:25:40.129
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.

735
01:25:41.120 --> 01:25:53.320
Stephen: Care is profoundly empathetic in that sense. So I've chosen to translate up Amada as care. It remains undrunkenness

736
01:25:54.140 --> 01:25:57.470
Stephen: undrunk, unintoxicated.

737
01:25:57.940 --> 01:26:09.960
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

738
01:26:10.480 --> 01:26:20.910
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.

739
01:26:21.390 --> 01:26:27.750
Stephen: Apamada care is the virtue that includes all other virtues.

740
01:26:27.830 --> 01:26:49.899
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.

741
01:26:49.970 --> 01:27:01.690
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

742
01:27:02.290 --> 01:27:09.349
Stephen: and a happy accident in the English language is that we can use it in 2 senses. Be careful

743
01:27:09.850 --> 01:27:11.270
Stephen: and caring

744
01:27:11.810 --> 01:27:23.660
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.

745
01:27:23.960 --> 01:27:26.300
Stephen: It has that that sense too

746
01:27:27.680 --> 01:27:29.429
Ayla Curtis: wonderful. Thank you.

747
01:27:29.930 --> 01:27:36.990
Stephen: Tiberio has a question. So we have a couple more questions in in this room. Yes, here.

748
01:27:37.230 --> 01:27:50.650
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.

749
01:27:50.660 --> 01:27:57.930
Stephen: I'm trying to really make a mental model of what we're trying to achieve here, and

750
01:27:58.040 --> 01:28:00.550
Stephen: and in particular, Stephen.

751
01:28:00.660 --> 01:28:22.769
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

752
01:28:23.310 --> 01:28:26.549
Stephen: the Dharma, or the teachings of the Buddha.

753
01:28:27.070 --> 01:28:39.500
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

754
01:28:39.650 --> 01:28:41.660
Stephen: right for you or not, but

755
01:28:42.230 --> 01:28:47.870
Stephen: given that under the assumption of a definition that sounds roughly like that.

756
01:28:48.120 --> 01:28:58.120
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

757
01:28:58.170 --> 01:29:01.770
Stephen: salient. One is skepticism.

758
01:29:02.370 --> 01:29:05.169
Stephen: Amily. You're going back to the first

759
01:29:05.200 --> 01:29:09.829
Stephen: writings you are trying to really get into the mind of the Buddha.

760
01:29:10.090 --> 01:29:12.730
Stephen: and another is ethical

761
01:29:12.950 --> 01:29:14.730
Stephen: attitude.

762
01:29:14.780 --> 01:29:21.740
Stephen: pragmatic ethical attitude towards living in one's life. So the question I have for you is

763
01:29:21.840 --> 01:29:29.880
Stephen: in your skeptical pursuit of the truth. Insofar as we are referring to what the Buddha was really on about.

764
01:29:31.620 --> 01:29:35.620
Stephen: Have you found challenges? In

765
01:29:35.890 --> 01:29:42.870
Stephen: fine, in the gap? Have you found the gap. Have you found gaps between the

766
01:29:43.070 --> 01:29:50.330
Stephen: reality that you saw, or at least a picture that you saw was likely to have been the true picture

767
01:29:51.040 --> 01:29:59.889
Stephen: what you think is required today to live an ethical life

768
01:30:00.030 --> 01:30:02.750
Stephen: in the world we actually live in.

769
01:30:03.150 --> 01:30:25.169
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

770
01:30:25.200 --> 01:30:34.630
Stephen: and your normative resolutions and personal convictions about what is required to change the world for the better

771
01:30:34.660 --> 01:30:35.870
Stephen: today.

772
01:30:37.860 --> 01:30:44.829
Stephen: Oh, well, your summary of my thinking process is

773
01:30:45.010 --> 01:30:47.230
Stephen: pretty much correct.

774
01:30:47.720 --> 01:30:52.190
Stephen: Yes, I'm trying to get back to these early sources, but not exclusively.

775
01:30:52.290 --> 01:31:05.099
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.

776
01:31:05.520 --> 01:31:10.910
Stephen: For example, I think the emphasis on questioning and wonder is not very strong

777
01:31:10.960 --> 01:31:12.650
Stephen: or very explicit

778
01:31:12.760 --> 01:31:19.210
Stephen: in the earliest text, but you find it very powerfully articulated in Z. In particular.

779
01:31:20.180 --> 01:31:26.840
Stephen: Majamac of Philosophy. Someone answered, asked about that that, too. You don't find so well worked out

780
01:31:26.930 --> 01:31:33.859
Stephen: the early texts, but you do find it in Nagarjuna, some of his followers. So that's an element. I would I

781
01:31:34.450 --> 01:31:36.159
Stephen: the Bodhisattva idea!

782
01:31:36.910 --> 01:31:43.220
Stephen: You don't find that so explicitly phrased in the early text, but you find it expressed in Shanti Devon

783
01:31:43.250 --> 01:31:46.629
Stephen: other writers, and that's something I think we can certainly

784
01:31:46.820 --> 01:31:47.850
Stephen: learn from.

785
01:31:48.980 --> 01:31:55.000
Stephen: but pretty much without. Except for those exceptions.

786
01:31:55.590 --> 01:32:05.969
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

787
01:32:06.100 --> 01:32:07.600
Stephen: go to the walls.

788
01:32:07.810 --> 01:32:19.159
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.

789
01:32:19.520 --> 01:32:26.300
Stephen: And so clearly some of those conditions are very different to our own, and therefore what he may

790
01:32:27.070 --> 01:32:31.960
Stephen: speak of as as pertinent to his time may not be so

791
01:32:32.090 --> 01:32:43.049
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

792
01:32:43.260 --> 01:32:44.120
today.

793
01:32:45.460 --> 01:32:57.909
Stephen: You're also correct in isolating. Yeah, identifying skepticism and ethics as the core driving motors of my inquiry.

794
01:32:58.190 --> 01:33:06.639
Stephen: I've actually often asked myself, am I an ethical skeptic, or am IA skeptical ethicist?

795
01:33:07.580 --> 01:33:08.989
Stephen: And it could go either way.

796
01:33:09.800 --> 01:33:24.530
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.

797
01:33:25.450 --> 01:33:36.729
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.

798
01:33:37.310 --> 01:33:47.539
Stephen: and I do feel that at its best early Buddhism. to the extent to which we can excavate it. Somehow

799
01:33:47.660 --> 01:34:06.730
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.

800
01:34:07.200 --> 01:34:10.210
Stephen: I assumed when I was a

801
01:34:10.300 --> 01:34:18.319
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

802
01:34:18.440 --> 01:34:25.429
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

803
01:34:25.910 --> 01:34:32.810
Stephen: the 4 tasks, too. Likewise, these are ideas that are there in the first discourse that never get developed.

804
01:34:33.450 --> 01:34:36.499
Stephen: So something is going on here.

805
01:34:36.740 --> 01:34:42.729
Stephen: And I think what's going on is that after the Buddha died. There was a power struggle.

806
01:34:44.110 --> 01:34:45.290
Stephen: And

807
01:34:45.590 --> 01:34:55.870
Stephen: so essentially, what we have is not just what Gautama said. We have, what a certain body of people in power

808
01:34:56.110 --> 01:34:59.199
wanted us to hear what Gautoma said.

809
01:34:59.620 --> 01:35:06.709
Stephen: and I'm sure the same is true in all religious traditions. But so in other words, we always get a partial picture.

810
01:35:07.320 --> 01:35:24.479
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

811
01:35:24.930 --> 01:35:32.419
Stephen: witnesses, as it were. who speak with Socrates, you have Xenophon, and you have Plato.

812
01:35:32.430 --> 01:35:36.070
Stephen: so you can get at least 2 different takes, and even others

813
01:35:36.190 --> 01:35:45.230
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.

814
01:35:45.980 --> 01:35:54.050
Stephen: Yes, Margaret, we on time already. Well, let's see how difficult your question is, and if

815
01:35:54.300 --> 01:36:04.450
Stephen: I thank you very much for your teaching which I really appreciate. I really felt

816
01:36:04.610 --> 01:36:29.779
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.

817
01:36:29.780 --> 01:36:39.490
Stephen: And so I worked in the area of I work with asylum seekers. So in that sphere

818
01:36:39.680 --> 01:36:47.290
Stephen: where we try to create for another way of being for them, meaning just having basic

819
01:36:47.680 --> 01:36:52.459
Stephen: healthcare employment

820
01:36:52.470 --> 01:37:10.080
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

821
01:37:11.050 --> 01:37:36.780
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.

822
01:37:37.360 --> 01:37:48.809
Stephen: It seems that as a society we need to those in power need to have a convenient

823
01:37:49.050 --> 01:38:18.429
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

824
01:38:18.440 --> 01:38:20.010
Stephen: while

825
01:38:20.270 --> 01:38:41.439
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

826
01:38:41.840 --> 01:38:48.880
Stephen: that change? And have another way of being

827
01:38:48.920 --> 01:38:52.589
Stephen: for for our society, if not the world? Really

828
01:38:54.050 --> 01:38:59.919
Stephen: well, I mean I don't have an answer to that question. Really.

829
01:39:01.230 --> 01:39:05.670
Stephen: I can only speak. I mean I can only speak. I'll just speak about myself.

830
01:39:06.000 --> 01:39:16.439
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.

831
01:39:17.570 --> 01:39:29.849
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

832
01:39:30.120 --> 01:39:31.160
Stephen: their power.

833
01:39:32.850 --> 01:39:39.150
Stephen: And so it's clearly a question that will have to be addressed, not

834
01:39:39.560 --> 01:39:46.790
Stephen: by individuals, but by people working together, probably in the long term

835
01:39:47.210 --> 01:39:52.890
Stephen: to, you know, try to create a different kind of political reality.

836
01:39:53.090 --> 01:40:06.719
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

837
01:40:07.050 --> 01:40:15.430
Stephen: so. Therefore, in terms of my own life. What I do have is an ability to communicate.

838
01:40:15.720 --> 01:40:16.720
Stephen: and

839
01:40:16.860 --> 01:40:26.189
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.

840
01:40:26.350 --> 01:40:42.479
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.

841
01:40:42.740 --> 01:40:45.620
Stephen: I think that's extremely naive.

842
01:40:45.760 --> 01:41:02.510
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

843
01:41:02.780 --> 01:41:08.479
Stephen: way of thinking another way, not of just thinking, but another way of living, another way of behaving.

844
01:41:08.670 --> 01:41:11.869
Stephen: and that's where I've you know, invested my.

845
01:41:12.230 --> 01:41:14.989
Stephen: however many years I'll live on this earth. That's what I'm

846
01:41:15.180 --> 01:41:17.750
Stephen: been trying to do, and

847
01:41:19.220 --> 01:41:20.780
Stephen: of course I can't judge

848
01:41:20.920 --> 01:41:30.400
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

849
01:41:30.640 --> 01:41:38.099
Stephen: I've invested my time, and I'm and I'm I'm quite. I'm quite pleased

850
01:41:38.130 --> 01:41:48.749
Stephen: with the way that some of these early intuitions have played out quite fruitfully in terms of being able to restructure

851
01:41:48.980 --> 01:41:56.620
Stephen:  what the dharma is about in a way that seems to me to be rooted in the very early.

852
01:41:56.720 --> 01:42:03.859
Stephen: This ideas core ideas, and yet is capable of the transition.

853
01:42:04.010 --> 01:42:13.059
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

854
01:42:13.140 --> 01:42:26.830
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.

855
01:42:26.960 --> 01:42:28.020
Stephen: But it's

856
01:42:28.050 --> 01:42:33.799
Stephen: I've just come from Japan. I mean, it's a very well-established system which has got its own character.

857
01:42:33.860 --> 01:42:34.930
Stephen: So this

858
01:42:35.050 --> 01:42:39.780
Stephen: gives me a confidence that there's something within the DNA

859
01:42:40.320 --> 01:42:42.000
Stephen: of the of the Dharma

860
01:42:42.050 --> 01:42:48.329
Stephen: that is able to be both robust and flexible, and that's rare, I think.

861
01:42:48.890 --> 01:42:57.980
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

862
01:42:58.340 --> 01:43:16.799
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.

863
01:43:20.750 --> 01:43:24.169
Stephen: So let's leave it on that happy point

864
01:43:26.060 --> 01:43:32.450
Stephen: that we must draw to a close. Thank you. Those who are online. Thank you. And

865
01:43:32.510 --> 01:43:40.229
Stephen: you had a question, too. You're 7 h. You start tomorrow in your name. True, Tom

866
01:43:40.470 --> 01:43:44.729
Stephen: Tritton, after the Greek god. Triton. Correct?

867
01:43:44.780 --> 01:43:51.219
Stephen: Okay. okay. So I think now we have tea, right? Coffee and stuff.