WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.110 Stephen: I hope everyone rested well. 2 00:00:07.980 --> 00:00:09.990 Stephen: So this morning we're going to 3 00:00:10.490 --> 00:00:13.120 Stephen: begin looking at. 4 00:00:13.520 --> 00:00:20.109 Stephen: The more, the most explicitly active dimensions of this 5 00:00:20.620 --> 00:00:24.600 Stephen: worldly eightfold path. survival 6 00:00:25.890 --> 00:00:29.890 Stephen: work and voice 7 00:00:30.230 --> 00:00:33.830 Stephen: usually translated as livelihood, action. 8 00:00:33.910 --> 00:00:35.349 Stephen: and speech. 9 00:00:36.860 --> 00:00:39.320 Stephen: But before I get on to that, I'd like to 10 00:00:39.860 --> 00:00:47.040 Stephen: say a little bit about how I arrived at this, these formulations, and also 11 00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:56.700 Stephen: what has helped me to at least begin to think about them within the frame of the Dharma. 12 00:00:58.650 --> 00:01:00.550 Stephen: And this goes back to 13 00:01:00.820 --> 00:01:06.049 Stephen: A figure from the twentieth century called Hannah Arent. 14 00:01:06.340 --> 00:01:10.709 Stephen: I'm sure some of you are familiar with her work, others may be less so 15 00:01:12.370 --> 00:01:16.959 Stephen: for those of you who don't know who she is. She was. 16 00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:26.019 Stephen: or she described herself as a political theorist. She was reluctant to use the word philosophy. 17 00:01:26.790 --> 00:01:33.750 Stephen: She was born in the early part of the twentieth century in what is now East Germany. 18 00:01:33.890 --> 00:01:39.020 Stephen: In the Jewish family she was extraordinarily bright. 19 00:01:39.270 --> 00:01:46.049 Stephen: She studied philosophy with 2 of the greatest thinkers of the last century. 20 00:01:46.530 --> 00:01:47.899 but Martin Heidegger 21 00:01:47.950 --> 00:01:49.210 Stephen: initially. 22 00:01:49.230 --> 00:01:52.170 Stephen: and then she did her doctorate with 23 00:01:52.200 --> 00:01:54.060 Stephen: Carl Jasper's. 24 00:01:55.370 --> 00:01:56.839 Stephen: with whom she 25 00:01:56.940 --> 00:02:01.290 Stephen: remained alive, and he remained her lifelong mentor, also 26 00:02:02.900 --> 00:02:19.730 Stephen: as a Jew, she was forced to flee Germany in the 19 early 1930, S. When Hitler came to power. and she stayed in Paris, and again she was involved with some of the greatest thinkers of the French existentialist movement. 27 00:02:21.380 --> 00:02:30.270 Stephen: When the Germans, the Nazis invaded or threatened to invade France, she had to flee from them. Eventually 28 00:02:30.360 --> 00:02:34.459 Stephen: she was able to get passage to New York. 29 00:02:35.060 --> 00:02:40.049 Stephen: I think in 1 41 with her husband, and she spent the rest of her life 30 00:02:40.200 --> 00:02:44.710 Stephen: living in New York. She died in in 1,979, 31 00:02:46.630 --> 00:02:54.540 Stephen: and so she lived throughout some of the most turbulent years of the twentieth century, and she was right at the heart 32 00:02:54.860 --> 00:02:58.299 Stephen: of the conflict. and she was engaged with 33 00:02:58.680 --> 00:03:05.450 Stephen: some of the most influential thinkers and activists during that period. 34 00:03:05.850 --> 00:03:08.929 Stephen: Her life itself is extraordinarily rich. 35 00:03:10.290 --> 00:03:14.669 Stephen: if you're interested in her, there's a very good biography by 36 00:03:14.900 --> 00:03:20.190 Stephen: Elizabeth Levy Brewer. called for love of this world. 37 00:03:21.500 --> 00:03:25.450 Stephen: and that title, I think, too, captures very much. 38 00:03:25.890 --> 00:03:32.229 Stephen: I rents passionate concern for how to live on this earth. 39 00:03:34.110 --> 00:03:37.200 Stephen: she wrote to 2 main 40 00:03:37.300 --> 00:03:39.190 Stephen: works, which 41 00:03:39.540 --> 00:03:41.500 Stephen: are clearly philosophical. 42 00:03:41.990 --> 00:03:45.090 Stephen: One is called The Human Condition. 43 00:03:45.340 --> 00:03:48.479 Stephen: which he published towards the end of the 1950 s. 44 00:03:48.710 --> 00:03:57.939 Stephen: And the other is called the Life of the Mind. which she was still working on when she died in the late 70 S. And she didn't, in fact, complete it. 45 00:03:59.820 --> 00:04:00.570 Here. 46 00:04:02.380 --> 00:04:12.179 Stephen: I was very struck when I read the opening pages to the Human Condition, which was written. published, I think, about 1,958, 47 00:04:13.400 --> 00:04:22.489 Stephen: and in the preface she reflects upon an event that had just happened that really struck her, and that was the launch of the so first Sputnik. 48 00:04:23.070 --> 00:04:25.759 Stephen: the Russian spacecraft that managed to 49 00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:29.869 Stephen: go around the to make an orbit around the globe. 50 00:04:32.390 --> 00:04:40.150 Stephen: and you get the sense very clearly that she sees this as a dangerous and unwelcome move. 51 00:04:41.290 --> 00:04:48.639 Stephen: particularly because she sees it as an abandonment of the earth. 52 00:04:50.510 --> 00:04:54.819 Stephen: She sees it as a step towards leaving the earth behind. 53 00:04:56.750 --> 00:04:57.720 Stephen: and 54 00:04:59.620 --> 00:05:03.200 Stephen: she makes this remarkable comment. 55 00:05:03.870 --> 00:05:10.300 Stephen: which he doesn't really extrapolate or explain. She says earth 56 00:05:10.690 --> 00:05:13.800 Stephen: the earth is the quintessence 57 00:05:14.370 --> 00:05:16.090 Stephen: of the human condition. 58 00:05:17.150 --> 00:05:21.129 Stephen: The earth is the quintessence of the human condition. 59 00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:30.370 Stephen: I find that very striking. And of course, when we read this stuff now. 70 years later. 60 00:05:31.010 --> 00:05:36.170 Stephen: It resonates in ways that it could not possibly have resonated with 61 00:05:36.630 --> 00:05:37.599 Stephen: at around. 62 00:05:39.580 --> 00:05:51.070 Stephen: Now, I remember last summer I was actually sitting out on a hillside in France one evening, looking at the stars, and we saw Elon Musk's train of satellites. 63 00:05:51.270 --> 00:05:51.930 Stephen: Okay. 64 00:05:53.000 --> 00:05:55.270 Stephen: going off into space. 65 00:05:55.530 --> 00:06:08.280 Stephen: a very different association in our minds now, probably, probably, and of course, the notion of the earth is the quintessence of the human condition, and yet we seem to be running away from it 66 00:06:08.330 --> 00:06:17.000 Stephen: is all the more poignant in the conditions under which we find ourselves today in which we have been talking. 67 00:06:17.540 --> 00:06:20.989 Stephen: you know, with passion and concern and worry 68 00:06:21.340 --> 00:06:24.619 Stephen: as to how to deal with the crises we're creating. 69 00:06:27.140 --> 00:06:34.169 Stephen: Like her teacher, Martin Heidegger. who is a problematic figure in many ways. 70 00:06:35.400 --> 00:06:38.470 Stephen: particularly because of his association with the Nazis. 71 00:06:39.960 --> 00:06:50.320 Stephen: She was also very concerned about the power of technology. and I think this could have been in the background of her concern about the Sputnik 72 00:06:51.560 --> 00:07:01.660 Stephen: Heidegger, although he didn't, hadn't actually formulated this idea by that time. Saw technology not so much as a threat 73 00:07:02.320 --> 00:07:10.219 Stephen: because of its machinery and tools, and so forth, although that's obviously part of it. But what worried him more 74 00:07:10.800 --> 00:07:16.260 Stephen: was how technology was beginning to form and shape the way 75 00:07:16.540 --> 00:07:18.400 Stephen: in which we saw the world 76 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:21.890 Stephen: in our language. On this retreat 77 00:07:21.900 --> 00:07:23.279 Stephen: he saw us 78 00:07:23.350 --> 00:07:25.439 Stephen: as becoming 79 00:07:25.750 --> 00:07:31.419 Stephen: completely captivated by a technological perspective. 80 00:07:31.860 --> 00:07:35.240 Stephen: He called it an attacklogis of Gestalt. 81 00:07:35.520 --> 00:07:39.500 Stephen: Gestell means a frame. a technological frame. 82 00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:43.919 Stephen: And yet the danger of this is, we're not aware. 83 00:07:46.210 --> 00:07:59.039 Stephen: Arendt remained close to Heidegger again through after after the war period they continued to meet and correspond. and clearly she would have been influenced by his concerns. 84 00:08:00.120 --> 00:08:01.360 Stephen: and 85 00:08:02.260 --> 00:08:14.600 Stephen: a technological frame is one in which we. we see error, error, we, we, we. we live our lives as though it's a question of just solving problems. 86 00:08:16.440 --> 00:08:21.840 Stephen: And technology is basically a generic word for 87 00:08:21.900 --> 00:08:27.360 Stephen: figuring out a series of logical steps whereby the problem can be solved. 88 00:08:30.010 --> 00:08:36.569 Stephen: Joanna Mason once said regarding climate change. 89 00:08:36.740 --> 00:08:42.980 Stephen: she says, you know, we think technology will get us out of this mess. 90 00:08:43.700 --> 00:08:47.359 Stephen: But technology is not to be depended on. 91 00:08:47.690 --> 00:08:50.810 Stephen: It's what got us into this mess. 92 00:08:53.790 --> 00:09:01.779 Stephen: And I'm concerned also how meditation, mindfulness is often presented as a technology. A technique 93 00:09:02.690 --> 00:09:06.079 Stephen: in it in German is to serve more does tech technique 94 00:09:06.240 --> 00:09:17.639 Stephen: is the same word technology technique. We miss that connection in English, perhaps. and we quite unthinkingly assume that meditation is a kind of science of the mind. 95 00:09:18.420 --> 00:09:29.369 Stephen: a phrase much used even by figures like the dialogue. as though it's a kind of spiritual technology that can fix our problem of suffering. 96 00:09:30.740 --> 00:09:36.400 Stephen: Failing to recognise that suffering, that birth, sick, this aging and death are not problems to be solved 97 00:09:37.710 --> 00:09:41.390 Stephen: effectively. They are. They are mysteries to be embraced. 98 00:09:42.720 --> 00:09:44.459 Stephen: But I'm going off my subject 99 00:09:47.060 --> 00:09:57.850 Stephen: so around clearly, even 70 years ago. was concerned about many of the same issues that we're concerned today. 100 00:09:58.930 --> 00:10:00.320 Stephen: And what we 101 00:10:00.350 --> 00:10:03.190 Stephen: are now witnessing is, in a sense. 102 00:10:03.550 --> 00:10:05.770 Stephen: the the magnification 103 00:10:06.890 --> 00:10:17.919 Stephen: of the question of how we live on earth, how we seek to avoid, deny, escape the earth, and how we are great, more and more enthrall 104 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:21.330 Stephen: to technologies 105 00:10:21.730 --> 00:10:24.690 Stephen: that are threatening to sort of take over 106 00:10:25.020 --> 00:10:31.920 Stephen: humankind. AI being obviously the one that may concern us particularly today. 107 00:10:36.420 --> 00:10:37.430 Stephen: Now. 108 00:10:37.620 --> 00:10:40.850 Stephen: Rent also. 109 00:10:40.920 --> 00:10:47.090 Stephen: Following. What Winton said yesterday afternoon was, was very much a civic Republican. 110 00:10:48.010 --> 00:10:50.999 Stephen: One of the things she admired about America. 111 00:10:51.100 --> 00:10:55.600 Stephen: The founding of America were how the Town Hall meetings. 112 00:10:55.790 --> 00:10:59.309 Stephen: now, of course, subverted by the figures like Donald Trump. 113 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:07.140 Stephen: but, in other words, participatory democracy on a small scale, where political events 114 00:11:07.330 --> 00:11:11.790 Stephen: are discussed in dedicated spaces by the people they conserve. 115 00:11:12.840 --> 00:11:14.340 Stephen: She was a passionate 116 00:11:14.700 --> 00:11:21.520 Stephen: admirer of this way of doing politics likewise. She was very much rooted in 117 00:11:21.710 --> 00:11:25.330 Stephen: the ancient Greek idea of the polis 118 00:11:26.290 --> 00:11:29.069 Stephen: that she continually goes back to that. 119 00:11:35.050 --> 00:11:36.970 Stephen: But in in some ways 120 00:11:38.930 --> 00:11:49.409 Stephen: Renz, work was trying to figure out how we can. you know, recover some of these lost values as a means of 121 00:11:49.690 --> 00:11:53.159 Stephen: mitigating, if not preventing, some of the 122 00:11:53.660 --> 00:11:59.810 Stephen: potential crises she kind of intuitively foresaw 123 00:12:05.170 --> 00:12:09.260 Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): now what she does in in the human condition. 124 00:12:09.390 --> 00:12:10.659 Stephen: Her first book 125 00:12:11.290 --> 00:12:18.420 Stephen: is to focus on what she calls love, the vita activa, the active line. 126 00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:23.410 Stephen: the second part of what we're exploring here today. 127 00:12:23.640 --> 00:12:30.800 Stephen: And she thinks of it in terms of 3 main components, labor work and action. 128 00:12:32.320 --> 00:12:38.070 Stephen: And that's basically the model I've adopted in thinking out 129 00:12:38.270 --> 00:12:40.740 Stephen: survival work 130 00:12:40.780 --> 00:12:44.460 Stephen: and voice. So I'm very much following her there 131 00:12:45.560 --> 00:12:57.170 Stephen: in her second book. The Life of the Mind. He also does the same thing with the Vita contemplativa, the the contemplative life. the inner life, if you wish. 132 00:12:57.460 --> 00:12:58.430 Stephen: by 133 00:12:59.290 --> 00:13:01.270 Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): considering, thinking. 134 00:13:01.360 --> 00:13:03.960 Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): willing. judging. 135 00:13:05.360 --> 00:13:09.749 Stephen: she doesn't finish this book, she never writes the section, judging. 136 00:13:10.330 --> 00:13:12.660 Stephen: and she leaves off 137 00:13:13.100 --> 00:13:28.230 Stephen: at the end of the second part, which she completed with a certain sense of failure. I feel she seems somehow disappointed. do you? She was trying to do in her 2 philosophical works was to 138 00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:29.450 Stephen: present 139 00:13:31.550 --> 00:13:38.769 Stephen: picture of how human beings could live in a way in which the contemplative life 140 00:13:38.920 --> 00:13:45.260 Stephen: and the active life were integrated. She was very much aware of how. 141 00:13:46.330 --> 00:13:52.510 Stephen: in the ancient times, whether it be ancient Greece, or whether it be the Christian Middle Ages. 142 00:13:52.600 --> 00:14:04.060 Stephen: The contemplative life was considered very much to be. you know, the best kind of life, the life to which you would aspire, where the really a 143 00:14:04.400 --> 00:14:06.150 Stephen: crucial human 144 00:14:06.430 --> 00:14:13.819 Stephen: questions and abilities were cultivated and refined, and the active life was somehow seen, as 145 00:14:14.440 --> 00:14:15.980 Stephen: you know, inferior to that. 146 00:14:17.500 --> 00:14:25.740 Stephen: She also notices how in the nineteenth century, and certainly into the twentieth century, that kind of gets turned on its head. 147 00:14:27.020 --> 00:14:38.940 Stephen: Primacy is given to the active life. and the contemplative life is sort of parceled off into university departments. studying philosophy, and so on. 148 00:14:39.020 --> 00:14:42.450 or monasteries or spiritual places, and it becomes 149 00:14:42.590 --> 00:14:49.290 Stephen: really rather marginalized. and I think what she wanted to do was not to replace. 150 00:14:49.930 --> 00:14:59.189 Stephen: you know, restore the priority of the contemplative life, but to find a way to integrate the 2 to balance the 2 out. 151 00:15:00.970 --> 00:15:02.709 Stephen: and that's very much 152 00:15:03.120 --> 00:15:18.759 Stephen: what I'm trying to do in this worldly eightfold path is to not to restore meditation as the be all, and end all of human life, but rather to try to find a framework in which they can both 153 00:15:19.490 --> 00:15:22.390 Stephen: provide a 154 00:15:22.540 --> 00:15:29.340 Stephen: a framework for how we can fully flourish as persons and as societies. 155 00:15:30.910 --> 00:15:38.549 Stephen: and I think the eightfold path. as the Buddha laid it out, is likewise 156 00:15:39.690 --> 00:15:42.500 Stephen: quite, I think, irrespective of 157 00:15:43.550 --> 00:15:50.680 Stephen: the way I'm presenting it here. It's composed of active and contemplative dimensions. 158 00:15:51.410 --> 00:15:53.020 Stephen: Buddhism, however. 159 00:15:53.550 --> 00:16:00.619 Stephen: certainly gave priority through most of its history to the contemplative life. 160 00:16:02.110 --> 00:16:05.910 Stephen: Hence the afol path culminates in 161 00:16:05.940 --> 00:16:09.760 Stephen: contemplation, in mindfulness, in samadhi. 162 00:16:10.060 --> 00:16:12.259 Stephen: as though that's kind of where it's all going. 163 00:16:12.870 --> 00:16:16.330 Stephen: And a lot of Buddhism, historically, has 164 00:16:16.690 --> 00:16:18.749 Stephen: had that emphasis. 165 00:16:20.170 --> 00:16:24.680 Stephen: There have been exceptions. There have been movements against that. 166 00:16:24.730 --> 00:16:30.350 Stephen: Shin ran in Japan, Nietzsche, and likewise in Japan. 167 00:16:30.770 --> 00:16:32.840 Stephen: began to push the other way. 168 00:16:33.320 --> 00:16:38.450 Stephen: and in our twentieth century. We also find figures, particularly 169 00:16:38.870 --> 00:16:48.050 Stephen: and Boomeral Ambekar in India. who saw the Dharma as a way of social justice. political empowerment. 170 00:16:49.040 --> 00:16:53.999 Stephen: and figures of the engaged Buddhist movement like Tiknat Han 171 00:16:54.190 --> 00:16:55.900 Stephen: trying to push things back. 172 00:16:57.000 --> 00:16:58.010 Stephen: But 173 00:16:58.270 --> 00:17:04.550 Stephen: I feel that this can only really be achieved if we rethink the foundations of the whole 174 00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:06.079 Stephen: dharmic 175 00:17:06.380 --> 00:17:08.790 Stephen: philosophy, as it were. 176 00:17:09.280 --> 00:17:14.119 Stephen: And that's what we're trying to do, what I'm trying to do to do here 177 00:17:15.849 --> 00:17:19.840 Stephen: now. Hannah Arant had no interest in Buddhism whatsoever. 178 00:17:21.579 --> 00:17:25.680 Stephen: There's never not a single mention of it in her work. 179 00:17:26.099 --> 00:17:28.339 Stephen: And she seems 180 00:17:29.040 --> 00:17:40.449 Stephen: she she doesn't even express an opinion about it. She totally ignores it. Now you might think that that's characteristic of those kinds of philosophers in 181 00:17:40.510 --> 00:17:42.000 Stephen: at that period. 182 00:17:42.940 --> 00:17:46.750 Stephen: but is particularly odd in the case of Hannah Arant. 183 00:17:46.780 --> 00:17:50.810 Stephen: because both her husband. Heinrich Bluffer. 184 00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:56.979 Stephen: and her teacher and mentor, Karl Yasper's, were very interested in the Buddha. 185 00:18:00.040 --> 00:18:03.410 Stephen: Bluka Blucher, who was a 186 00:18:03.750 --> 00:18:06.939 Stephen: he was a member of the Spartacus. He was. 187 00:18:07.270 --> 00:18:15.020 Stephen: He was part of Rosa Luxemburg's group in the early part of the twentieth century, and she was a radical activist 188 00:18:15.090 --> 00:18:16.180 Stephen: Communist. 189 00:18:16.740 --> 00:18:29.130 Stephen: He came to develop a course that he taught in Massachusetts at Bard College for much of his life, in which he focused on trying to articulate a kind of global philosophy 190 00:18:29.250 --> 00:18:32.810 Stephen: in which the Buddha and Socrates. 191 00:18:33.060 --> 00:18:39.720 Stephen: and to answer. and Jesus would all be given equal status. 192 00:18:40.570 --> 00:18:52.139 Stephen: And this was done in concert with Kaliaspus. Karl Yasmus is the philosopher who invented the term the Axial Age. 193 00:18:52.970 --> 00:18:59.789 Stephen: in which he he recognized a period around the time of the Buddha and Socrates, Confucius. 194 00:19:00.370 --> 00:19:01.500 Stephen: Jesus. 195 00:19:01.580 --> 00:19:04.769 Stephen: where humankind sort of made 196 00:19:05.070 --> 00:19:08.580 Stephen: a radical shift into a life 197 00:19:08.850 --> 00:19:18.209 Stephen: that essentially framed what we now would call, you know our history, our culture right into modernity. 198 00:19:18.640 --> 00:19:21.849 Stephen: And Yasper's wrote a little book 199 00:19:22.360 --> 00:19:24.330 Stephen: called Buddha. 200 00:19:24.390 --> 00:19:28.490 Stephen: Socrates. Confucius. Jesus. 201 00:19:29.800 --> 00:19:30.650 Stephen: and. 202 00:19:31.140 --> 00:19:36.390 Stephen: as a way to, as it were, recognize that we're moving into a global 203 00:19:37.390 --> 00:19:39.650 Stephen: community 204 00:19:39.970 --> 00:19:43.129 Stephen: in which these figures are no longer just the 205 00:19:43.800 --> 00:19:50.189 Stephen: belong to particular forms of human culture that actually 206 00:19:50.370 --> 00:19:57.149 Stephen: are what, in the English translation of the subtitle are paradigmatic individuals. 207 00:19:57.690 --> 00:20:00.630 Stephen: 4 paradigmatic individuals. 208 00:20:02.970 --> 00:20:05.129 Stephen: Now the word paradigmatic 209 00:20:05.630 --> 00:20:10.740 Stephen: is a translation of Yasper's German phrase, Mess Gabund 210 00:20:12.130 --> 00:20:14.830 Stephen: and Nes Gaband means really something 211 00:20:15.010 --> 00:20:20.960 Stephen: quite different. Mess means measure, mess gave and means individuals 212 00:20:21.620 --> 00:20:34.650 Stephen: that allow the become the measures for our lives. In other words, we can we measure ourselves against Socrates, against the Buddha, against Confucius, against Jesus. 213 00:20:34.940 --> 00:20:38.510 Stephen: They're Mess Gaband, which is much better than paradigmatic 214 00:20:40.230 --> 00:20:43.140 Stephen: and a rent 215 00:20:43.410 --> 00:20:48.759 Stephen: who ironically, was the editor of this book, even though she showed no interest in it. 216 00:20:49.770 --> 00:20:54.150 Stephen: clearly saw as her mess Gavin. 217 00:20:54.470 --> 00:20:56.229 Stephen: Figure Socrates. 218 00:20:57.300 --> 00:21:09.709 Stephen: Socrates for her was the figure she keeps going back to. She wrote an essay called Socrates. which was not published during her lifetime. It's collected in a volume called 219 00:21:09.940 --> 00:21:14.989 Stephen: The Promise of Politics. It's it's a brilliant essay. 220 00:21:15.030 --> 00:21:24.640 Stephen: I found it enormously helpful. in which she she frames Socrates as the kind of person against whom she measures her life. 221 00:21:26.030 --> 00:21:29.909 Stephen: And here, whether we're secular Buddhists or religious Buddhists. 222 00:21:30.100 --> 00:21:39.970 Stephen: Gautama. the Buddha. is perhaps most deeply valuable to us. because 223 00:21:40.060 --> 00:21:43.990 Stephen: we can somehow measure our lives against 224 00:21:44.220 --> 00:21:45.220 Stephen: his. 225 00:21:45.610 --> 00:21:53.920 Stephen: The problem, I think, at the time of Jasper's and and Blucher is that the notion of the Buddha was still really rather vague. He hadn't really assumed 226 00:21:54.020 --> 00:21:57.310 Stephen: clear sense of being an historical figure. 227 00:21:57.700 --> 00:22:07.100 Stephen: more sort of quasi divine kind of figure. Recent scholarship enables us to get a slightly better sense 228 00:22:07.110 --> 00:22:14.290 Stephen: of his historical world, and how he was an an you know, an actor within that world. 229 00:22:14.990 --> 00:22:16.780 Stephen: and thereby, I feel. 230 00:22:17.100 --> 00:22:20.350 Stephen: enables us to measure ourselves 231 00:22:20.360 --> 00:22:22.390 Stephen: more adequately 232 00:22:23.560 --> 00:22:24.980 Stephen: against him. 233 00:22:32.590 --> 00:22:39.790 Stephen: So what I want to do now is to to pick up on these 3 main themes 234 00:22:39.950 --> 00:22:41.870 Stephen: of survival. 235 00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:43.920 Stephen: of work 236 00:22:44.120 --> 00:22:48.089 Stephen: and voice, and they will that will take up the 237 00:22:49.700 --> 00:22:52.999 Stephen: remaining through presentations that I'll be giving. 238 00:22:54.690 --> 00:22:56.809 Stephen: So today we're going to look at survival. 239 00:22:58.400 --> 00:23:07.970 Stephen: you're you're used to hearing this as livelihood and livelihood we tend to think of with the kind of work we do. 240 00:23:08.600 --> 00:23:11.270 Stephen: This is this it, I think, is a problem. 241 00:23:12.120 --> 00:23:18.379 Stephen: I'll explain more about this tomorrow how this differentiates itself from work. 242 00:23:19.750 --> 00:23:32.930 Stephen: But the word R. Jiva is almost literally the word survival. Jiva is the Pali Sanskrit word for life. 243 00:23:33.320 --> 00:23:36.929 Stephen: And Jiva! It's a long a. 244 00:23:37.160 --> 00:23:40.510 Stephen: It means 4 live. 245 00:23:45.450 --> 00:23:52.220 Stephen: It has to do with those activities we undertake in order to survive 246 00:23:52.350 --> 00:23:57.140 Stephen: uber Laben, sir. Vive Bieber life 247 00:23:57.530 --> 00:23:59.259 Stephen: to to live on. 248 00:24:01.100 --> 00:24:10.450 Stephen: It's about how we live on, how we keep going. It's very, very fundamental to our existence on Earth. 249 00:24:12.190 --> 00:24:14.510 Stephen: Sometimes, of course, that's through our work. 250 00:24:14.650 --> 00:24:19.210 Stephen: But in many senses as arant makes quite clear. 251 00:24:20.680 --> 00:24:24.079 Stephen: we need to distinguish between work and labor. 252 00:24:25.100 --> 00:24:26.610 Stephen: Survival is 253 00:24:26.620 --> 00:24:28.989 Stephen: primarily about labor. 254 00:24:30.610 --> 00:24:43.790 Stephen: So, no matter how much you want to cultivate a life of the mind. whether that's becoming a philosophy professor. or whether it's becoming a Dharma practition. 255 00:24:44.560 --> 00:24:47.610 Stephen: You won't even be able to start 256 00:24:48.080 --> 00:25:00.430 Stephen: unless if you lack the necessary material conditions again, we because we've been brought up in such a privileged society 257 00:25:00.640 --> 00:25:07.200 Stephen: as we experience here in Australia or in in the West. In general. It's very easy to forget that. 258 00:25:08.200 --> 00:25:10.260 Stephen: you know. Theoretically, we know. 259 00:25:12.340 --> 00:25:17.510 Stephen: but really to recognize that we're only able to do these things 260 00:25:17.530 --> 00:25:21.349 Stephen: because we have the material conditions that support it. 261 00:25:21.700 --> 00:25:28.710 Stephen: If we don't have enough shelter, if we don't have a home. if we don't have enough to eat or drink 262 00:25:28.960 --> 00:25:31.280 Stephen: if we don't have enough clothing. 263 00:25:31.660 --> 00:25:38.620 Stephen: and that doesn't mean just, you know, in some vague general sense, I mean, it means every single day. 264 00:25:40.550 --> 00:25:48.000 Stephen: and I find it in a sense remarkable. The for the last 70 years 265 00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:52.039 Stephen: I've never gone for a single day without enough to eat 266 00:25:52.200 --> 00:25:55.460 Stephen: without having a place to have shelter. 267 00:25:56.090 --> 00:25:58.789 Stephen: and without having adequate clothing. 268 00:26:00.220 --> 00:26:02.140 Stephen: totally take that for granted. 269 00:26:03.670 --> 00:26:10.379 Stephen: But, as we know. that's still probably the privilege of a minority of people on earth. 270 00:26:12.810 --> 00:26:20.199 Stephen: I once mentioned this even in the United States, and there were people in the audience who says, Well, I don't have the security of a home 271 00:26:20.630 --> 00:26:24.380 Stephen: to pay rent. I don't know how I'm gonna pay next month's rent. 272 00:26:27.540 --> 00:26:36.209 Stephen: So I think we really have to bring this notion of survival back to these primary, fundamental requirements, that 273 00:26:36.220 --> 00:26:44.069 Stephen: on which the rest of our life are all of our interests, and in Buddhism, and so on. 274 00:26:45.110 --> 00:26:48.289 Stephen: are able to to happen 275 00:26:48.710 --> 00:26:54.230 Stephen: that we can have periods of leisure like this, where we can just stop doing our jobs or whatever. 276 00:26:55.140 --> 00:27:07.760 Stephen: and come here and do these things. And if we didn't have those things, we'd be obliged to spend most of our waking life acquiring and maintaining 277 00:27:07.850 --> 00:27:13.249 Stephen: these basic necessities simply in order to survive, and millions of people over the world 278 00:27:13.960 --> 00:27:17.190 Stephen: have little choice but to labour 279 00:27:17.640 --> 00:27:23.059 Stephen: from dusk to to from dawn to dusk, just to get enough food on the table 280 00:27:23.430 --> 00:27:25.060 Stephen: to feed their families. 281 00:27:25.180 --> 00:27:31.979 Stephen: And to have sufficient energy for themselves so that they can continue their labor the next day. 282 00:27:33.740 --> 00:27:35.149 Stephen: And if you're a woman 283 00:27:35.390 --> 00:27:40.290 Stephen: your life will be very often taken up with bearing, raising. 284 00:27:40.490 --> 00:27:45.200 Stephen: and caring for children very often, because in a society without. 285 00:27:45.500 --> 00:27:52.329 Stephen: you know, sufficient social supports. you need children to provide for you in your old age. 286 00:27:54.110 --> 00:27:58.600 Stephen: And so you have you. You get caught up in this relentless cycle of 287 00:27:58.710 --> 00:28:03.299 Stephen: labour, reproduction, consumption, and rest. 288 00:28:03.980 --> 00:28:06.989 Stephen: and you're tied to these routines. 289 00:28:07.110 --> 00:28:10.910 Stephen: they'll give you very, very few opportunities 290 00:28:11.030 --> 00:28:13.900 Stephen: for contemplation, creativity. 291 00:28:14.420 --> 00:28:18.789 Stephen: or even active participation in civic life. 292 00:28:20.310 --> 00:28:24.080 Stephen: You don't have the education. You don't have the time. You don't have the space 293 00:28:26.730 --> 00:28:37.809 Stephen: now in in ancient times. How how did the Buddha deal with this? How did the Greeks deal with this the Greeks overcame these obstacles, basically by confining women to the home. 294 00:28:39.580 --> 00:28:43.190 Stephen: so that they could raise children, weave cloth 295 00:28:43.810 --> 00:28:51.200 Stephen: and supervised servants and slaves who performed all the household tasks until the soil. 296 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:54.410 Stephen: This was the the ancient Greek solution. 297 00:28:54.460 --> 00:28:58.399 Stephen: probably not one, you know, you'd be willing to adopt today. 298 00:28:58.980 --> 00:29:00.170 Stephen: and that 299 00:29:00.330 --> 00:29:04.219 Stephen: though that social organization is what allowed 300 00:29:04.350 --> 00:29:16.929 Stephen: the male citizens exclusively. with one or 2 exceptions. to be able to engage in political life and to pursue their interests in the arts and philosophy. 301 00:29:20.600 --> 00:29:24.610 Stephen: and the Buddha did pretty much the same. I mean, he created a 302 00:29:24.750 --> 00:29:29.730 Stephen: celibate communities of men and women. I mean, that's one of the big differences 303 00:29:30.250 --> 00:29:38.250 Stephen: between the ancient Greeks, Socrates and his friends and the Buddha is that there was not the exclusion of women. 304 00:29:40.630 --> 00:29:43.980 Stephen: The Buddha treated men and women equally 305 00:29:44.580 --> 00:29:46.430 Stephen: later, Buddhism lesser. 306 00:29:47.430 --> 00:29:50.370 Stephen: but the original vision of the Sangha. 307 00:29:50.700 --> 00:29:52.650 Stephen: the the assembly 308 00:29:52.910 --> 00:29:58.509 Stephen: included men and women, lay men, lay women, monks, nuns 309 00:29:58.800 --> 00:30:01.090 Stephen: as equal as I pointed out yesterday. 310 00:30:02.630 --> 00:30:11.900 Stephen: and so he created these celibate communities who renounced family life. Domestic life subsisted on arms. 311 00:30:12.260 --> 00:30:17.990 Stephen: which was only possible because there was a surplus of agricultural production in that 312 00:30:18.170 --> 00:30:19.699 Stephen: region of the world 313 00:30:20.030 --> 00:30:25.019 Stephen: and reduce their needs to a bare minimum, led incredibly simple lives. 314 00:30:25.260 --> 00:30:33.329 Stephen: But what this meant was that a privileged minority were able to free themselves from daily toil 315 00:30:33.770 --> 00:30:37.480 Stephen: and dedicate themselves to a life of the mind. 316 00:30:37.590 --> 00:30:50.580 Stephen: But they were only able to do this. because others remained unfree from those constraints in order to provide either for 317 00:30:50.780 --> 00:30:53.310 Stephen: the male sitons and rear of Athens. 318 00:30:53.780 --> 00:30:56.929 the monastics and renunciation 319 00:30:57.040 --> 00:31:02.299 Stephen: who wandered across the Gangetic plains at the time of the Buddha. 320 00:31:04.540 --> 00:31:06.759 Stephen: This situation has now become global. 321 00:31:07.670 --> 00:31:12.819 Stephen: and so those of us who have the education and the leisure to study Plato 322 00:31:12.850 --> 00:31:14.210 Stephen: and Nagarjuna 323 00:31:15.760 --> 00:31:27.710 Stephen: can only do so because of the labor. Numerous other unknown men and women who grow our food. who make our clothes. 324 00:31:27.810 --> 00:31:30.140 Stephen: who provide the raw materials 325 00:31:30.380 --> 00:31:34.950 Stephen: that we need to erect our houses and cities, and so on. 326 00:31:36.320 --> 00:31:39.139 Stephen: And so there are many, many people in this world today 327 00:31:40.220 --> 00:31:44.899 Stephen: who live under conditions of grinding necessity. 328 00:31:45.350 --> 00:31:52.199 Stephen: that give them little, if any, freedom to enjoy the kind of privileges we that we take for granted. 329 00:31:52.680 --> 00:32:00.859 Stephen: So we might aspire to human flourishing. which is a term I'm quite fond of. I think it's it's a beautiful idea. It's a Greek. 330 00:32:01.450 --> 00:32:06.179 Stephen: originally a Greek concept, Eudaemonia, a good life. 331 00:32:06.210 --> 00:32:07.510 a happy life. 332 00:32:08.150 --> 00:32:13.010 Stephen: But we have to recognize that this is achieved 333 00:32:13.380 --> 00:32:18.540 Stephen: at the cost of other human beings being unable 334 00:32:19.190 --> 00:32:20.190 Stephen: to flourish. 335 00:32:27.940 --> 00:32:32.959 Stephen: So what does the Buddha have to say about this? 336 00:32:35.680 --> 00:32:39.719 Stephen: As you're aware? If you've read the Harley discourses and so on. 337 00:32:43.400 --> 00:32:48.790 Stephen: There's very little reflection on on economics, on politics, on 338 00:32:49.790 --> 00:33:00.949 Stephen: organizing society. There is one Suta, one discourse that stands out here, and that's the Sigilavata Suta. the discourse to Siegeala. 339 00:33:00.970 --> 00:33:03.759 Stephen: It's found in the long discourses 340 00:33:03.840 --> 00:33:15.619 Stephen: which does, in fact, lay out the sort of outlines of how you should lead your economic life. It's directed at, not at monks, but at lay people. 341 00:33:16.100 --> 00:33:17.719 Stephen: And it's quite interesting. 342 00:33:18.160 --> 00:33:24.429 Stephen: It shows that the Buddha was was very much aware of the of the conflicts, the needs. 343 00:33:24.560 --> 00:33:27.400 Stephen: He talks about levels of investment 344 00:33:27.420 --> 00:33:29.410 Stephen: from profits and things like that. 345 00:33:30.170 --> 00:33:33.510 Stephen: and that affords us a very valuable glimpse 346 00:33:34.060 --> 00:33:41.599 Stephen: into the working world of his time. He talks about, you know how much free time you should give your employees. 347 00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:51.069 Stephen: but it's not sufficient to really build, as it were. You know, a you know, a Buddhist economics. Let's say 348 00:33:52.350 --> 00:33:55.440 Stephen: it's helpful, but it's not really enough. 349 00:33:57.560 --> 00:33:59.989 Stephen: I think the the text that 350 00:34:00.130 --> 00:34:05.180 Stephen: is perhaps most pertinent when it comes to this question of survival 351 00:34:06.650 --> 00:34:08.750 Stephen: is a short passage 352 00:34:08.790 --> 00:34:11.860 Stephen: where he talks of 353 00:34:13.330 --> 00:34:21.149 Stephen: what? What what he calls the Aryan family, or the Aryan tradition, or the Aryan lineage. 354 00:34:21.489 --> 00:34:36.829 Stephen: And remember, Arian has nothing to do with how that's understood in Germany in the last century, but it has to do with nobility. To to literally, it literally means to be raised up to to have a sort of, and it's not a racial 355 00:34:36.840 --> 00:34:41.880 Stephen: nobility or a social mobility. It's it's it's an inner dignity 356 00:34:43.100 --> 00:34:45.310 Stephen: and an inner sense of 357 00:34:45.380 --> 00:34:47.969 Stephen: of standing upright 358 00:34:48.190 --> 00:34:51.320 Stephen: with nobility and confidence. 359 00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:53.230 Stephen: Pride, perhaps. 360 00:34:54.440 --> 00:34:58.369 Stephen: and he lays out 4 conditions 361 00:35:00.710 --> 00:35:06.950 Stephen: under which such a nobility is able to come about. 362 00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:14.920 Stephen: The first of these is that you contentment with your shelter. 363 00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:19.140 Stephen: that you are contented with your food. 364 00:35:19.850 --> 00:35:22.499 Stephen: then you're contented with your clothing. 365 00:35:24.570 --> 00:35:25.810 and fourthly. 366 00:35:25.820 --> 00:35:31.490 Stephen: that you delight in letting go and cultivation. 367 00:35:35.600 --> 00:35:37.970 Stephen: I first came across this 368 00:35:38.450 --> 00:35:44.399 Stephen: doctrine when I was studying as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Switzerland, and we were. 369 00:35:44.560 --> 00:35:45.940 Stephen: We're actually 370 00:35:46.060 --> 00:35:49.850 Stephen: studying a text on the Buddha nature 371 00:35:51.170 --> 00:35:53.789 Stephen: very much a Mahayana idea, the Buddha. 372 00:35:54.070 --> 00:36:01.010 Stephen: And this short text, which was a textbook in so for Sarah Jay Monastic College in Tibet. 373 00:36:01.600 --> 00:36:06.870 Stephen: identified the source of the concept 374 00:36:07.100 --> 00:36:08.420 Buddha nature 375 00:36:08.700 --> 00:36:09.530 Stephen: here. 376 00:36:11.030 --> 00:36:13.129 Stephen: and that came as a bit of a surprise 377 00:36:13.230 --> 00:36:19.939 Stephen: because you don't normally associate Buddha nature with having enough to eat, having a roof over your head. 378 00:36:20.060 --> 00:36:20.970 Stephen: having 379 00:36:21.160 --> 00:36:23.019 Stephen: enough clothing. 380 00:36:24.130 --> 00:36:27.830 Stephen: But that's where the Tibetans understood 381 00:36:28.130 --> 00:36:31.070 Stephen: the notion of Buddha nature to begin. 382 00:36:33.470 --> 00:36:39.000 Stephen: And one of the reasons for that is because. although we use this word Buddha nature. 383 00:36:39.560 --> 00:36:45.950 Stephen: there isn't actually a term in Pali or Sanskrit or Tibetan for Buddha nature. 384 00:36:46.300 --> 00:36:48.340 Stephen: They tend to use this word 385 00:36:48.490 --> 00:36:50.410 Stephen: Buddha, Gauta. 386 00:36:50.610 --> 00:36:59.910 Stephen: Buddha, Gortra. which means, The Buddha's lineage or family or tradition. 387 00:37:01.270 --> 00:37:08.319 Stephen: Yesterday I mentioned how the Buddha described himself as belonging to the Adicha Gortar. 388 00:37:08.670 --> 00:37:12.050 Stephen: the lineage of the Sun. SUN. 389 00:37:14.200 --> 00:37:19.240 Stephen: And this is a very important idea in ancient India. The idea 390 00:37:19.320 --> 00:37:27.069 Stephen: that you are not just a sort of so a standalone individual as we might think very much in our society. 391 00:37:27.310 --> 00:37:37.280 Stephen: but rather that your existence is rooted in a lineage. in ancestors that goes back a long, long, long way. 392 00:37:38.530 --> 00:37:44.540 Stephen: So once again there is a sense that this Arya Vanz, or this aria Gotra. This 393 00:37:44.900 --> 00:37:48.850 Stephen: noble lineage is something 394 00:37:48.990 --> 00:37:53.359 Stephen: of which you are simply one member amongst myriad. 395 00:37:53.390 --> 00:37:58.500 Stephen: others going back into the past. that your life is a 396 00:37:58.740 --> 00:38:02.369 Stephen: is rooted in that past. It's rooted in the 397 00:38:02.450 --> 00:38:07.980 Stephen: history of living in that way. and thereby 398 00:38:08.050 --> 00:38:12.219 Stephen: that's they are the roots that enable you to flourish 399 00:38:12.640 --> 00:38:19.060 Stephen: in your own nobility in your own becoming awake. 400 00:38:22.820 --> 00:38:28.610 Stephen: Mayana. Buddhism, you know, expands that idea a bit further. But I'm not going to go into that here. 401 00:38:29.760 --> 00:38:41.899 Stephen: But the point is that Buddha nature suggests some kind of sort of inner potential that we might have to become awakened, and that certainly does develop in in later Buddhism. 402 00:38:43.740 --> 00:38:56.830 Stephen: But there's the notion here that in becoming part of such a community of secular Buddhist, let's say that you acknowledge the fact that you're rooted in the past. 403 00:38:58.720 --> 00:39:01.199 Stephen: and a tradition is only a lie 404 00:39:01.470 --> 00:39:03.830 Stephen: in some ways, if 405 00:39:04.130 --> 00:39:10.780 Stephen: it engages in an ongoing conversation with its past. 406 00:39:11.690 --> 00:39:16.870 Stephen: That's an expression that comes from the Scottish philosopher. Alistair Mcintyre. 407 00:39:18.030 --> 00:39:21.969 Stephen: I think it's a very helpful way of understanding what we mean by tradition 408 00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:30.479 Stephen: or lineage. It has to do with A living engagement with the past. So by going back to the early Pali text 409 00:39:30.520 --> 00:39:36.039 Stephen: by going back to the writings of Plato. by going back to the Biblical texts. 410 00:39:36.670 --> 00:39:40.969 Stephen: and not just passively accepting them as the truth. 411 00:39:42.400 --> 00:39:43.720 Stephen: actively 412 00:39:44.070 --> 00:39:52.069 Stephen: engaging in a dialogue, a critical dialogue, a dialogue that asks of them, but what do I do now. 413 00:39:53.150 --> 00:39:54.890 Stephen: That's a living tradition. 414 00:39:57.240 --> 00:39:59.980 Stephen: and it is, is dependent on 415 00:40:00.240 --> 00:40:05.929 Stephen: the presence of the past as it is upon our own ability to try to. 416 00:40:06.510 --> 00:40:11.419 Stephen: you know, figure out how to live on Earth. Now. we're always in a tradition. 417 00:40:12.930 --> 00:40:15.499 Stephen: It's impossible not to be, in a way. 418 00:40:15.800 --> 00:40:19.329 Stephen: But I think for individualistic Westerners. 419 00:40:19.700 --> 00:40:21.919 Stephen: We need to be reminded of this. 420 00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:26.460 Stephen: and at the same time this 421 00:40:27.470 --> 00:40:33.359 Stephen: is an acknowledgement that we, too will become the past. What we do now 422 00:40:34.210 --> 00:40:38.579 Stephen: will likewise be something that people in the future 423 00:40:39.350 --> 00:40:42.410 Stephen: we'll talk about will argue with. 424 00:40:42.940 --> 00:40:47.329 Stephen: We're too part of that tradition, and that, I feel, is a very 425 00:40:47.720 --> 00:40:52.180 Stephen: you know, it's a very challenging responsibility to assume 426 00:40:54.110 --> 00:40:56.809 Stephen: that we will become the ancestors 427 00:40:58.060 --> 00:41:01.109 Stephen: that others will look back to and honor 428 00:41:01.670 --> 00:41:05.999 Stephen: revere, revile. However, it plays out. 429 00:41:09.950 --> 00:41:11.840 Stephen: So the Buddha has this idea. 430 00:41:13.180 --> 00:41:21.180 Stephen: That we're part of a lineage. We're part of a family. We're part of a we're connected to a past, and thereby we are 431 00:41:22.230 --> 00:41:26.149 Stephen: beings who will contribute to the future. 432 00:41:30.100 --> 00:41:41.420 Stephen: But such a lineage, he says, is one that's based upon how to be content to be content with the basic needs of our life. 433 00:41:43.430 --> 00:41:50.740 Stephen: have, have have have have have enough shelter to have enough clothes to have enough food. 434 00:41:51.850 --> 00:42:00.340 Stephen: and only then will we have the time. the opportunity to 435 00:42:02.120 --> 00:42:05.060 Stephen: delight in letting go 436 00:42:05.390 --> 00:42:12.860 Stephen: and cultivation, now letting go, and cultivation refer explicitly to 437 00:42:12.890 --> 00:42:15.080 Stephen: the second and the fourth 438 00:42:15.220 --> 00:42:20.139 Stephen: task. The second task is letting go of reactivity. 439 00:42:20.610 --> 00:42:24.999 Stephen: The fourth task is cultivating the eightfold path. 440 00:42:27.420 --> 00:42:33.670 Stephen: So, in other words. the practice of these tasks requires 441 00:42:33.880 --> 00:42:37.060 Stephen: basic material security. 442 00:42:38.940 --> 00:42:48.260 Stephen: So this would follow logically that a community, or extended further a society 443 00:42:48.720 --> 00:42:52.430 Stephen: which was founded on dharmic 444 00:42:52.480 --> 00:42:53.850 Stephen: principles 445 00:42:53.940 --> 00:43:01.020 Stephen: would be one that would seek to ensure these necessities for its members. 446 00:43:01.850 --> 00:43:04.690 Stephen: Buddhist society, a dharmic society 447 00:43:05.030 --> 00:43:15.539 Stephen: would seek to assure that each member of that society had access to food, clothing, and shelter at the barest minimum. 448 00:43:17.610 --> 00:43:22.200 Stephen: and the duty of the State, therefore. would be to secure 449 00:43:22.300 --> 00:43:26.450 Stephen: the conditions under which men and women 450 00:43:26.750 --> 00:43:28.440 Stephen: could realise their 451 00:43:28.750 --> 00:43:32.290 Stephen: fullest potential as human beings. 452 00:43:33.000 --> 00:43:36.549 Stephen: Now, in some ways a modern welfare state 453 00:43:37.020 --> 00:43:40.180 aspires to precisely these goals, if not more. 454 00:43:40.500 --> 00:43:44.210 Stephen: it would include healthcare education as well. 455 00:43:45.070 --> 00:43:50.559 Stephen: But what I think is the most difficult term to clarify 456 00:43:50.880 --> 00:43:52.760 Stephen: is the word contentma. 457 00:43:55.910 --> 00:44:01.439 Stephen: that it's difficult to find any objective standards 458 00:44:01.530 --> 00:44:04.710 Stephen: for judging what is enough. 459 00:44:07.330 --> 00:44:10.429 Stephen: What in in in in the world we live in today. 460 00:44:10.680 --> 00:44:15.910 Stephen: What would be the barest requirements you would need to feel that I've got enough. 461 00:44:16.900 --> 00:44:24.990 Stephen: We live in a society in a consumerist society is designed in such a way to convince us all the time that we don't have enough. 462 00:44:26.020 --> 00:44:31.750 Stephen: and that, I think, is pushing very, very powerfully against the notion of contempt. 463 00:44:32.220 --> 00:44:36.240 Stephen: Consumerism can't accept the idea of contempt. 464 00:44:37.570 --> 00:44:45.730 Stephen: It's just not possible. It's just not in the equation. You have to feel that you don't have enough. 465 00:44:46.980 --> 00:44:53.640 Stephen: That's what advertising is all about. And the people who run the advertising industry are brilliant psychologists. 466 00:44:54.210 --> 00:45:04.610 Stephen: They understand these mechanisms which the Buddha saw as craving. you know, craving basically is this sense that I don't have enough. 467 00:45:05.490 --> 00:45:13.490 Stephen: I need something more. It's a deep instinct. And consumerism is basically premised on 468 00:45:13.500 --> 00:45:19.379 Stephen: and acts in such a way that it's constantly stimulating the crane. 469 00:45:19.450 --> 00:45:21.130 Stephen: the sense that I don't have enough. 470 00:45:24.330 --> 00:45:30.249 Stephen: So again, what is enough for a monastic ascetic. 471 00:45:30.430 --> 00:45:39.749 Stephen: it might be enough to be content with a thatched hut and a threadbare robe, and a bowl of rice, and a bowl of dahl once a day. 472 00:45:40.260 --> 00:45:46.250 Stephen: But that's not going to be enough for, let's say, a mother of 5. 473 00:45:46.900 --> 00:45:52.989 Stephen: She's not going to be content with that. She needs education, healthcare transport culture. 474 00:45:53.210 --> 00:46:02.219 Stephen: and I think many of us would not be content with a sort of ascetic existence. But then, where do we draw the line? 475 00:46:03.980 --> 00:46:15.869 Stephen: And I feel these are the kind of fundamental questions about creating the conditions under which we can. You know we can live, live a contented and satisfying life. 476 00:46:16.040 --> 00:46:18.519 Stephen: Winton referred back to 477 00:46:18.950 --> 00:46:29.700 Stephen: the, you know, the aboriginal societies, and it would be true of many, many indigenous societies which we would disparagingly call hunter-gatherer societies. 478 00:46:29.940 --> 00:46:34.659 Stephen: But actually, these people probably live far more contented lives than we do. 479 00:46:36.050 --> 00:46:42.319 Stephen: They only had to work 3 or 4 HA day to get the food, clothing, shelter the rest of the time. 480 00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:53.210 Stephen: Enough fun can hang out with their kids. They can get involved in culture and so on. So in many ways we haven't advanced in these terms 481 00:46:53.380 --> 00:46:58.120 Stephen: from society, hunter-gatherer societies. Things have actually got worse 482 00:46:59.170 --> 00:47:06.550 Stephen: in terms of providing the basic contentment that enables us to lead a life of human flourishing. 483 00:47:09.910 --> 00:47:16.870 Stephen: So again, we have to leave that as a question, and that's a question. I hope perhaps we can reflect on ourselves. What would be enough. 484 00:47:18.330 --> 00:47:25.229 Stephen: Do I really need the kind of car I've got, for example, or whatever it might be? These are hugely difficult questions. 485 00:47:30.240 --> 00:47:34.519 Stephen: So I think I'll leave that today. Here at this point. 486 00:47:36.790 --> 00:47:43.249 Stephen: we still have nearly an hour to go, so we've got plenty of time for further discussion. 487 00:47:44.110 --> 00:47:46.950 Stephen: But let's stand up and have a 5 min break 488 00:47:50.540 --> 00:47:52.189 Stephen: yesterday. 489 00:47:52.750 --> 00:47:57.609 Stephen: I'd like first to invite those of you who haven't contributed or spoken 490 00:47:57.680 --> 00:48:09.889 Stephen: in these sessions, to have the first opportunity to do so if you wish. and likewise for those of you online. we'll just open with that invitation, and 491 00:48:11.110 --> 00:48:15.230 Stephen: then we'll move on. Yes. Bernard. 492 00:48:20.080 --> 00:48:22.050 Stephen: good morning, everybody. 493 00:48:22.180 --> 00:48:26.200 Stephen: I believe there is some merit in survival. 494 00:48:27.050 --> 00:48:32.130 Stephen: Oh. because when you are in this 495 00:48:32.600 --> 00:48:36.549 Stephen: mode, you have to think, to run. 496 00:48:37.080 --> 00:48:49.530 Stephen: to think for your life to to do something which in terms of active. It's exactly what what we are aiming at. 497 00:48:49.590 --> 00:48:52.590 Stephen: and I am particularly thinking of some 498 00:48:53.250 --> 00:48:57.280 Buddhist community in the South East Asia, like, yeah. 499 00:48:57.520 --> 00:49:00.550 Stephen: The forest Monk with a zhan jiang. 500 00:49:00.750 --> 00:49:13.480 Stephen: they have no shelter except the forest. I'm sorry they have no shelter, no shelter, no shelter except the forest, and they have to walk around the village 501 00:49:13.750 --> 00:49:18.579 Stephen: to get their food. and that doesn't prevent them from 502 00:49:20.080 --> 00:49:21.469 being in a 503 00:49:22.130 --> 00:49:23.970 Stephen: also contemplative 504 00:49:24.260 --> 00:49:27.719 Stephen: and produce producing live. 505 00:49:28.110 --> 00:49:29.110 Stephen: So 506 00:49:31.010 --> 00:49:33.680 Stephen: survival is necessary, I think. 507 00:49:34.710 --> 00:49:42.129 Stephen: for, for for for action. without survive, without the need to survive. 508 00:49:42.940 --> 00:49:44.029 We don't act. 509 00:49:44.390 --> 00:49:59.379 Stephen: No, I agree completely. No, that's kind of what I was trying to say. The I mean the in ancient India. You had the advantage, as you do in Thailand today is the much of the year. You can get by on very, very little, and you don't need to. 510 00:50:00.070 --> 00:50:12.060 Stephen: You don't need to have actual shelter. You need shelter during the monsoon. That was the case with the Buddha as well. But so shelter is needed but a lot less than say, if you live in. 511 00:50:12.280 --> 00:50:14.270 Stephen: you know, in Norway 512 00:50:14.790 --> 00:50:19.469 Stephen: Place is very hot. It creates the potential to move. 513 00:50:19.590 --> 00:50:23.190 Stephen: Yes, exactly. That's the potential that we need to move. 514 00:50:23.220 --> 00:50:30.910 Stephen: If we are hungry. If we are not hungry, we we don't move. we just we just pick up the food from 515 00:50:31.010 --> 00:50:32.330 Stephen: train. 516 00:50:33.890 --> 00:50:35.700 Stephen: So we need a potential 517 00:50:35.950 --> 00:50:37.600 Stephen: exactly. Thank you. 518 00:50:40.960 --> 00:50:53.670 Stephen: Yeah. Cheese my name's Tritton, just to join the conversation. No, not at all. Kind of a more inexperienced, I guess, in the space. So it's nice to sit back and to listen, to to learn. The kind of academic 519 00:50:53.760 --> 00:51:03.200 Stephen: level of this is in some ways beyond me. But I'm really enjoying it. And at the point now where we're talking about getting into action is really where my interest area is. 520 00:51:03.530 --> 00:51:08.440 Stephen: And I'm kind of I love the transition away from this idea of intention towards 521 00:51:08.580 --> 00:51:14.600 Stephen: imagination. I think that's a really important shift in my understanding of of what's being described before 522 00:51:15.450 --> 00:51:27.380 Stephen: in the way that we use English language. Intentional is almost dead on arrival, you know her best intentions are and tend to get up and meditate, but you know it's almost a foreseen thing that it's it's not going to occur. 523 00:51:27.630 --> 00:51:36.450 Stephen: So that's kind of. And I pick up on that idea of kind of flaccid intentions as you spoke about, I think, is a good term for it. So I'm really interested in. And how do we? 524 00:51:37.130 --> 00:51:50.590 Stephen: I guess, in my role back in Adelaide. But I guess this group being a microcosm of an aware and well resourced group that has the ability to to make action. What's the 525 00:51:50.810 --> 00:52:01.140 Stephen: what do you perceive as the kind of the key barriers in this? Because it's not around labor we're we're kind of. We're benefiting off of, you know, history, past, etc. To come to this place. 526 00:52:01.160 --> 00:52:15.090 Stephen: It's not around a lack of care. It's not around a lack of mindfulness, I guess, in in the context of what we're landing in, but I still see and feel barriers both in myself and in the people here and in the community that are late at home. 527 00:52:15.140 --> 00:52:25.530 Stephen: and you're someone who's been in this space for a long time like you stuck your neck out, and you've kind of worn this for a long time. So I'm really interested to kind of learn from your experience, what are the 528 00:52:26.070 --> 00:52:33.410 Stephen: I guess. Yeah, what are the conditions, or what are the things that you've created within yourself. 529 00:52:33.420 --> 00:52:35.260 Stephen: you know, because we're talking about orate 530 00:52:35.420 --> 00:52:50.979 Stephen: you know, or oratees like the from the Eudarmonia kind of aspect. That kind of living orite is like excellence. Yeah, in the ancient Greek. And I'm interested in that that process that you seem to have created that for yourself, and being able to sustain that over a long period of time. 531 00:52:51.060 --> 00:52:56.909 Stephen: And so in this kind of not the theory of practice, but the practice of practice. How have you sustained it? 532 00:52:58.950 --> 00:53:05.750 Stephen: but I think in some ways it goes back to what Lenore was speaking of last night, which is courage. 533 00:53:06.960 --> 00:53:08.910 Stephen: basically having the 534 00:53:09.030 --> 00:53:18.299 Stephen: the you know, the the strength commitment being clear about what really matters for you most. 535 00:53:19.330 --> 00:53:32.649 Stephen: it's difficult to speak so, you know, totally personally on this, but that's what you ask. I think I was fortunate in growing up. 536 00:53:33.180 --> 00:53:44.650 Stephen: I grew up in a single parent family just with my mother. but my mother was a person very much concerned that her 2 sons would 537 00:53:44.840 --> 00:53:57.350 Stephen: be able to have to lead the kind of lives that they wish to lead. to be independent. and not to stand in their way in doing what they most deeply wanted. 538 00:53:57.590 --> 00:54:09.700 Stephen: I think she felt that this would mean we'd become doctors and architects, but when I chose to become a monk, and my brother chose to become a penniless artist. 539 00:54:09.830 --> 00:54:14.120 Stephen: she started having second. 540 00:54:14.580 --> 00:54:18.620 Stephen: That wasn't part of her subliminal game plan. 541 00:54:18.870 --> 00:54:28.450 Stephen: But in the end of the day she was very proud of us, because we did actually succeed more or less in what we set out to do. And so I think. 542 00:54:28.540 --> 00:54:33.580 Stephen: and that to me is. I think you're the way you're brought up. 543 00:54:35.440 --> 00:54:39.049 Stephen: Suzuki. Roshi. Is a 544 00:54:39.530 --> 00:54:51.249 Stephen: a Japanese teacher in America of the 1960 s. 70, he was once asked, how can we make sure that our children are interested in the dharma like we are 545 00:54:51.370 --> 00:54:54.919 Stephen: what behave like your parents behave to you 546 00:54:58.100 --> 00:55:01.099 Stephen: so I wouldn't underestimate parenting 547 00:55:01.560 --> 00:55:04.350 Stephen: actually. And I'm very, very grateful. 548 00:55:04.970 --> 00:55:09.010 Stephen: you know, to my mother for having taken those risks, I mean stuck a header. 549 00:55:09.660 --> 00:55:17.039 Stephen: but I also grew up in a culture the the 60 s. Which had a kind of what we would now call naive optimism. 550 00:55:17.130 --> 00:55:19.149 Stephen: But that was also an incredible. 551 00:55:19.600 --> 00:55:21.590 Stephen: you know inspiration 552 00:55:22.550 --> 00:55:27.910 Stephen: that gave you the courage to take risks. travel overland to India. 553 00:55:29.200 --> 00:55:31.490 Stephen: which probably young people today wouldn't do 554 00:55:32.590 --> 00:55:42.259 Stephen: so. I don't think you can put it purely in terms of, you know, inner psychological elements like strength of mind, or whatever I think you do have to see it in context. 555 00:55:42.980 --> 00:55:55.349 Stephen: But that again points to the need for our practice to be one that. as we were saying yesterday creates the conditions that will optimize human flourishing. And that means for our kids, for example. 556 00:55:55.530 --> 00:55:56.540 Stephen: our children. 557 00:55:56.740 --> 00:55:59.710 Stephen: our friends, our students. 558 00:56:00.490 --> 00:56:07.959 Stephen: It's an enormous responsibility. but I can certainly acknowledge it myself. And the other source of that kind of 559 00:56:08.570 --> 00:56:14.870 Stephen: in a sense, strength of mind. was with my Tibetan teachers. 560 00:56:15.170 --> 00:56:21.429 Stephen: You know these were people who were refugees in one of the poorest countries in the world India. 561 00:56:22.570 --> 00:56:26.949 Stephen: and yet they somehow embodied 562 00:56:27.050 --> 00:56:29.519 Stephen: quality of humanity! 563 00:56:30.250 --> 00:56:31.930 Stephen: The 564 00:56:31.940 --> 00:56:39.360 Stephen: was certainly far in excess of anything I'd come across amongst religious leaders I've met in the West 565 00:56:39.700 --> 00:56:45.069 Stephen: Christian priests, and so on. who left me very uninspired to be frank. 566 00:56:46.150 --> 00:56:49.170 Stephen: So again. 567 00:56:49.710 --> 00:56:50.679 Stephen: you know. 568 00:56:50.870 --> 00:56:56.610 Stephen: relating to people who seem to embody what you most deeply admire. 569 00:56:57.070 --> 00:57:04.070 Stephen: That's not nothing to do with me. It has to do with the fact that such people are around such communities are around. 570 00:57:04.390 --> 00:57:08.339 Stephen: So again, it points to the importance of establishing. 571 00:57:08.350 --> 00:57:12.320 Stephen: you know, communities that support that kind of 572 00:57:14.700 --> 00:57:15.640 Stephen: of life 573 00:57:17.700 --> 00:57:36.059 Stephen: follow on, perhaps just while there's a bit of movement around the room like I'm interested then in in communities like this, like Lenore's been putting up. What are the 2 most kind of obvious leverage points around eating less meat and switching our super. And I'm interested, I guess, in a group which 574 00:57:36.100 --> 00:57:43.339 Stephen: for ostensibly like this would be a good quality. Sangha. This is a group of people that are kind of, you know, high on that level. But even within our group. 575 00:57:43.390 --> 00:57:51.109 Stephen: I'm sure there's people that haven't engaged in action. And I'm I'm interested in what you kind of diagnose as that issue of 576 00:57:51.530 --> 00:57:55.159 Stephen: of where we are to where the action needs to actually begin. 577 00:57:56.140 --> 00:58:00.400 Stephen: Well, in that in that sense, I mean I would the reason I 578 00:58:00.540 --> 00:58:05.909 Stephen: the reason I committed myself to Buddhists. Philosophy and practice 579 00:58:05.920 --> 00:58:11.639 Stephen: is because for me. I find a template for living 580 00:58:11.950 --> 00:58:16.130 Stephen: like I've mapped out on my cartography of care 581 00:58:16.440 --> 00:58:23.099 Stephen: that I feel does provide us with at least an outline of how to live 582 00:58:23.170 --> 00:58:31.230 Stephen: in such a way that we will overcome those barriers, and we use the word barriers. Buddhists tend to use the word hindrance or obstacle. 583 00:58:31.360 --> 00:58:41.190 Stephen: and they understand these really, as in some sense, is almost instinctual. Reactive patterns 584 00:58:41.400 --> 00:58:53.019 Stephen: are not just psychological, but are probably deep down, stemming from our biological past. You know this deep, you know, instinctive need for security 585 00:58:53.380 --> 00:58:54.630 Stephen: for safety. 586 00:58:54.690 --> 00:59:04.879 Stephen: for having enough food for getting, you know, being safe all of those things. And that's allied with a deep kind of visceral fear 587 00:59:05.020 --> 00:59:07.950 Stephen: and anxiety that we're not going to be safe. 588 00:59:08.650 --> 00:59:15.290 Stephen: And the Buddha, I think, and I'm sure that's true of you know. All great 589 00:59:15.640 --> 00:59:17.990 Stephen: paradigmatic individuals. 590 00:59:18.540 --> 00:59:23.509 Stephen: Is that they've somehow been able to transcend those barriers to not 591 00:59:23.610 --> 00:59:34.630 Stephen: lead a life that's hemmed in by by fear. by the need for security. by the unwillingness, therefore. to take a risk 592 00:59:36.200 --> 00:59:37.490 Stephen: and 593 00:59:38.260 --> 00:59:43.409 Stephen: I guess if I look at it in my own case I was willing to take risks. 594 00:59:44.640 --> 00:59:49.329 Stephen: you know the more that I when you're 18. Yeah, you've got 595 00:59:49.380 --> 01:00:03.830 Stephen: your whole life ahead of you. You can take all kinds of crazy risks, but when you get to be, you're in your mid twenties and you're a Buddhist monk living in the Himalayas, and you don't have any money. You don't have any education. You don't have any career opportunities. 596 01:00:04.070 --> 01:00:08.720 Stephen: And my. My mother's big anxiety was how you're going to get a pension. 597 01:00:10.220 --> 01:00:10.970 I think. 598 01:00:11.240 --> 01:00:19.570 Stephen: she once said to me when I came back on a visit to England, she said. You know, darling, you can't live in Nirvana forever. 599 01:00:27.580 --> 01:00:28.420 Stephen: We're not. 600 01:00:29.640 --> 01:00:36.059 Stephen: I don't know what her theology of Nirvana was, but she clearly was she. 601 01:00:36.810 --> 01:00:38.189 Stephen: You can see the point. 602 01:00:38.630 --> 01:00:42.340 Stephen: and I feel also 603 01:00:42.630 --> 01:00:46.140 Stephen: again following on from what Lenore was saying last night, is that 604 01:00:46.380 --> 01:00:51.750 Stephen: the more you take, the more you have the courage to take a risk, and you actually realize it. 605 01:00:51.980 --> 01:00:53.080 Stephen: you can do it. 606 01:00:54.780 --> 01:00:59.260 Stephen: That strengthens that muscle, as it were, to take more risks. 607 01:01:01.090 --> 01:01:02.080 Stephen: So. 608 01:01:02.220 --> 01:01:08.279 Stephen: so I do think it has a lot to do with what in my cartography is called resolve 609 01:01:09.990 --> 01:01:10.860 Stephen: result. 610 01:01:11.630 --> 01:01:19.829 Stephen: you know, meditating and reflecting and thinking deeply by yourself with others about what really matters 611 01:01:20.810 --> 01:01:30.409 Stephen: one of the meditations. probably the meditation that was the most effective of all the Tibetan Buddhist practices I did over 7 years. was the meditation on death 612 01:01:31.680 --> 01:01:43.190 Stephen: every day. half an hour or so. you know, meditating on. The only thing that's certain in the future is I'm going to die. We all know that. but we don't know that really 613 01:01:43.600 --> 01:01:44.980 Stephen: it's just an idea. 614 01:01:46.240 --> 01:01:51.299 Stephen: Contemplative meditation is about revisiting these 615 01:01:51.610 --> 01:01:56.670 Stephen: home truth almost in such a way that they begin to sink in 616 01:01:57.590 --> 01:02:20.309 Stephen: emotion and climate change would be one of those right now. Yeah, yeah, I think so, would she? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. II guess the people that are probably most active are the people that are potentially meditated most on what this future that we're moving into looks like based on science. Yeah, exactly. And so it's kind of whatever cost. I'm willing to endure any discomfort. I'm willing to move out of my comfort zone because of 617 01:02:20.410 --> 01:02:21.590 Stephen: being out of hold 618 01:02:21.670 --> 01:02:38.829 Stephen: that end point or that that discomfort? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's not enough just to sort of follow. You know, we can all say, Yeah, there's climate change is going to happen. But the question, I think from a Buddhist perspective, would be, how deeply that insight actually 619 01:02:40.010 --> 01:02:44.969 Stephen: embedded in your emotions in your bones. 620 01:02:46.270 --> 01:02:50.070 Stephen: and that I think contemplative practice can do. 621 01:02:51.990 --> 01:03:01.370 Stephen: And but it's a commitment. It takes time. It takes commitment. You have to do it day after day after day after day. Sometimes it's really boring in some places. What more interesting things to do? 622 01:03:01.870 --> 01:03:07.110 Stephen: So it's about, you know, staying true to your fundamental principles and values 623 01:03:07.330 --> 01:03:12.889 Stephen: consciously. not just as an idea, but something you feel in your body 624 01:03:14.540 --> 01:03:19.609 Stephen: that is very important, and that's I'm very grateful to my training was a monk for that. 625 01:03:20.020 --> 01:03:25.720 Stephen: I'm not saying that that's the only way to do it, but it it serves as a sort of paradigmatic example. 626 01:03:26.500 --> 01:03:29.140 Stephen: I would like to imagine a world in which 627 01:03:29.750 --> 01:03:35.589 Stephen: young people had the opportunity, in celebrating university to spend the same amount of time in 628 01:03:35.650 --> 01:03:38.130 Stephen: contemplative training in a monastic set. 629 01:03:39.360 --> 01:03:43.500 Stephen: I think that would be a great good for our world. 630 01:03:45.410 --> 01:03:49.760 Stephen: We've got a question from online from Lesley. If we've finished online. 631 01:03:51.670 --> 01:03:53.750 Lesley Synge: Hi, is it from me? 632 01:03:53.790 --> 01:03:55.690 Stephen: It's for you. Yeah. Who are you? 633 01:03:55.890 --> 01:04:02.239 Lesley Synge: Well, again, Stephen, I just want to express my gratitude to you for coming to Australia. 634 01:04:02.680 --> 01:04:13.259 Lesley Synge: This is my first time I've actually met you in person, even though it's only in zoom. Oh, no! I had met you once before, but it was for such a brief time. And I'm so 635 01:04:13.870 --> 01:04:22.349 Lesley Synge: I'm I'm so grateful for your intellect and sharing it with us. So I wanna ask you a little bit about 636 01:04:22.530 --> 01:04:34.800 Lesley Synge: how you would tease out lineage in relationship to Australia. because we are quite stuck at the moment in that our foundational story 637 01:04:35.010 --> 01:04:43.519 Lesley Synge: is stuck in 90, 1788, as a white settler society. And I'm a white settler 638 01:04:43.770 --> 01:04:49.139 Lesley Synge: descendant, obviously, and I'm also a writer trying to grapple 639 01:04:49.250 --> 01:04:52.589 Lesley Synge: with meaning in our society. 640 01:04:52.700 --> 01:04:54.990 Lesley Synge: So I just wonder. 641 01:04:55.710 --> 01:04:59.570 Lesley Synge: do you feel that one of the 642 01:05:00.150 --> 01:05:17.389 Lesley Synge: things that we can do as white settler descendants is to deepen our understanding of our lineage to something greater than what our civic leaders are telling us, which is, that it all began with the wonders of British colonialism in 1788. 643 01:05:17.790 --> 01:05:24.240 Lesley Synge: If we deepen our sense of lineage to our far, far longer 644 01:05:24.550 --> 01:05:37.329 Lesley Synge: dwelling ancestors like in my case, it's Irish and English and German. Would this help in some way for us to understand ourselves as 645 01:05:37.740 --> 01:05:42.069 Lesley Synge: less shallow human beings who are just defined as, say. 646 01:05:42.120 --> 01:05:44.150 a post-colonial 647 01:05:44.280 --> 01:05:47.310 Lesley Synge: consumer society. Thank you. 648 01:05:47.750 --> 01:05:51.749 Stephen: Thank you. I like the yeah. The the short answer is, yes. 649 01:05:52.080 --> 01:06:05.019 Stephen: I think that would be a good idea. And I think, as I was saying just now, I think there is a great importance in delving back into not only our, you know, history of our let's say, of our 650 01:06:05.790 --> 01:06:08.439 Stephen: being British or whatever it is, but 651 01:06:08.690 --> 01:06:12.539 Stephen: which, frankly, I don't pay an awful lot of attention to attention to. 652 01:06:12.910 --> 01:06:16.609 Stephen: I'm interested in my lineage of being a European 653 01:06:17.210 --> 01:06:26.270 Stephen: but also of being a human being. Really my lineage I trace back to 654 01:06:26.590 --> 01:06:30.500 Stephen: not so much to, you know, within Great Britain or 655 01:06:31.560 --> 01:06:34.400 my, though that immediate past, as it were. 656 01:06:34.850 --> 01:06:38.969 Stephen: Although recently, I yeah, that's true. Actually. 657 01:06:39.330 --> 01:06:42.430 Stephen: anyway, the 658 01:06:44.280 --> 01:06:47.909 Stephen: I find it valuable to go back into deep history. 659 01:06:48.750 --> 01:06:53.970 Stephen: It's helpful. I found it very rewarding just to think of ourselves as 660 01:06:54.270 --> 01:07:01.999 Stephen: part of a species, a homo sapi sapiens, who's been around for a relatively very short time 661 01:07:02.610 --> 01:07:07.430 Stephen: 200,000 years, 250,000 years is the current estimate. 662 01:07:07.570 --> 01:07:13.829 Stephen: Since there have been on this planet people who are anatomically identical to ourselves 663 01:07:13.860 --> 01:07:17.560 Stephen: really little. It's very no, it's almost nothing. tiny. 664 01:07:18.140 --> 01:07:22.369 Stephen: So I think that's worth reflecting on, too, that we are a 665 01:07:23.030 --> 01:07:24.690 Stephen: a species 666 01:07:24.740 --> 01:07:28.350 Stephen: that has burst onto the scene has become. 667 01:07:28.370 --> 01:07:31.440 Stephen: as we know, totally dominant 668 01:07:31.550 --> 01:07:42.679 Stephen: on the earth's surface. And we now know that, following our instincts and our skills and our language abilities and our big brains when you know we're now potentially going to. 669 01:07:42.870 --> 01:07:44.889 Stephen: you know, ended all for ourselves 670 01:07:46.880 --> 01:07:53.889 Stephen: that is in. And I think with the climate change issue that's in. We really do need to accept the kind of beings we. 671 01:07:54.680 --> 01:08:03.410 Stephen: the the that of which we have the race, or the species of which has evolved, of which we are members. 672 01:08:06.410 --> 01:08:14.969 Stephen: Following that I feel it's important to go back to what Jaspers calls these these masks gave, and 673 01:08:15.430 --> 01:08:19.079 Stephen: Individuals, these paradigmatic figures in 674 01:08:19.160 --> 01:08:24.650 Stephen: human history. Remember, human history only goes back about 5,000 years. He was tiny, really. 675 01:08:24.880 --> 01:08:31.349 Stephen: but there are examples of humanity from across the different 676 01:08:31.620 --> 01:08:40.509 Stephen: cultures that we can use as ways to measure ourselves. But prior to that, of course, we have indigenous cultures 677 01:08:40.649 --> 01:08:42.170 Stephen: which in Australia 678 01:08:42.200 --> 01:08:49.209 Stephen: you have the aborigines in other parts of the world, native people in the in the Americas 679 01:08:49.710 --> 01:08:53.739 Stephen: there's really very little. And Africa, of course. 680 01:08:53.960 --> 01:08:57.690 Stephen: and I think to actually go back and reflect 681 01:08:58.689 --> 01:09:00.039 Stephen: and to honor 682 01:09:00.830 --> 01:09:04.929 Stephen: those pre. You know that those non-european 683 01:09:06.210 --> 01:09:09.040 Stephen: nations and peoples. 684 01:09:10.380 --> 01:09:15.260 Stephen: which again, is a way to reconnect very much to the earth. 685 01:09:18.810 --> 01:09:23.419 Stephen: But how we do that, I think, is something we have to sort of figure out for ourselves. 686 01:09:24.390 --> 01:09:28.729 Stephen: But I do think we have to get out of an identity of being. 687 01:09:28.930 --> 01:09:34.210 Stephen: you know, a, you know, a white European settler on 688 01:09:34.910 --> 01:09:42.559 Stephen: a foreign continent that starts in 1,788. I think it's just way too narrow a perspective 689 01:09:42.729 --> 01:09:45.049 Stephen: to have on the lineage 690 01:09:45.430 --> 01:09:47.100 lineages 691 01:09:47.380 --> 01:09:48.949 Stephen: of which we are a part. 692 01:09:50.740 --> 01:09:56.259 Lesley Synge: Yes, I truly agree, but I do think the debate in Australia is quite stuck there at the moment. 693 01:09:56.450 --> 01:10:01.919 Lesley Synge: and as a person who's actually writing some history about aboriginal people in 694 01:10:02.620 --> 01:10:04.290 Lesley Synge: Central Queensland. 695 01:10:04.570 --> 01:10:08.700 Lesley Synge: I tell you what, it's a pretty hard path to tread, because 696 01:10:08.750 --> 01:10:19.409 Lesley Synge: they just feel so little support. I feel as if I'm silenced by you know this dichotomy in Australia going on so your words are very helpful for me. 697 01:10:19.600 --> 01:10:21.280 Lesley Synge: and I thank you again. 698 01:10:21.640 --> 01:10:32.930 Stephen: Thank you. But have the courage to speak out. I mean, you're right, and that suggests that you know you want that. You want that voice to be heard and so stick at it. 699 01:10:33.350 --> 01:10:46.930 Stephen: Get the word out, and the more of us who do that, the more those voices are going to be heard. If we just give up and remain silent. I think we're somehow failing. as we'll see at the end of this course in really 700 01:10:47.090 --> 01:10:48.609 Stephen: finding our voice. 701 01:10:50.070 --> 01:10:54.129 Stephen: which is for Hannah Arendt. The voice was the key to action. 702 01:10:56.160 --> 01:10:57.230 Stephen: I think that's 703 01:10:59.380 --> 01:11:01.759 Stephen: got another question from Kirsten. 704 01:11:02.650 --> 01:11:08.199 Stephen: Oh, yes, Hi. My question is about 705 01:11:08.420 --> 01:11:17.309 Stephen: survival and the focus on shelter and food. And What was the last one. Clothing 706 01:11:17.900 --> 01:11:21.330 Stephen: and while things like 707 01:11:21.500 --> 01:11:24.529 Stephen: illness, health, care is seen to be 708 01:11:24.620 --> 01:11:37.259 Stephen: more of a challenge. You know birth, illness. I've just been reading Martine's book. Let go about the, you know, sort of the. 709 01:11:37.590 --> 01:11:43.390 Stephen: I suppose the hindrance that something like depression can be, and 710 01:11:44.420 --> 01:11:53.630 Stephen: and what? A barrier that can be for people to have a contemplative life before. That's something that they 711 01:11:54.010 --> 01:11:58.749 Stephen: can can sort of breakthrough in a sense. 712 01:11:58.770 --> 01:12:03.399 Stephen: So my question is, why do you think that 713 01:12:03.670 --> 01:12:08.419 Stephen: health isn't more an aspect of survival 714 01:12:08.550 --> 01:12:14.599 Stephen: in the dharma? Well, actually, if you look at the 715 01:12:15.170 --> 01:12:19.499 Stephen: what are called the 4 requisites for a monk. 716 01:12:20.060 --> 01:12:23.179 Stephen: It's food, clothing, shelter, medicine. 717 01:12:23.950 --> 01:12:24.939 Stephen: so it is tough. 718 01:12:26.330 --> 01:12:30.330 Stephen: is not in the text that I read out. but 719 01:12:31.380 --> 01:12:32.720 Stephen: at the very least. 720 01:12:32.890 --> 01:12:37.540 Stephen: It's just the first next thing that you need to sort out. And obviously, if you are. 721 01:12:37.850 --> 01:12:45.049 Stephen: you know, in ill health, whether that be depression, or whether it be some chronic illness, then that's clearly going to. 722 01:12:45.250 --> 01:12:46.670 Stephen: you know, inhibit 723 01:12:46.750 --> 01:13:00.619 Stephen: your ability to to live fully. So you know I get. And and my, I really left you with a question like this morning is, you know, what? What today would be considered to be the basic requirements. 724 01:13:01.140 --> 01:13:06.270 Stephen: what what would be enough? And I think many of us would probably 725 01:13:06.980 --> 01:13:14.749 Stephen: also add something. I think education is not there. For example, health care, education, a justice system 726 01:13:14.960 --> 01:13:17.249 Stephen: likewise, in a rule of law. 727 01:13:18.020 --> 01:13:22.839 Stephen: and I would also add, you know, culture of some kind. 728 01:13:23.420 --> 01:13:29.509 Stephen: Know, I think we can't, what the Buddhist, what what we're finding in these early Buddhist texts 729 01:13:29.700 --> 01:13:31.620 Stephen: is referring to. 730 01:13:31.760 --> 01:13:36.710 Stephen: you know, a culture 2.5,000 years ago in North India is not today. 731 01:13:37.300 --> 01:13:43.409 Stephen: So I think we have to take these texts as kind of guidelines rather than the final word on the mat. 732 01:13:44.800 --> 01:13:50.329 Stephen: But so that's to me. It's more important to take that as a starting point. 733 01:13:50.620 --> 01:13:51.590 Stephen: and then. 734 01:13:52.750 --> 01:13:56.170 Stephen: you know, consider it in terms of how it would be for us today. 735 01:13:56.300 --> 01:14:00.619 Stephen: both personally and in terms of the society and the communities in which we live. 736 01:14:09.150 --> 01:14:10.160 Stephen: There's 737 01:14:17.900 --> 01:14:18.650 so 738 01:14:24.050 --> 01:14:40.510 Stephen: can you speak up a bit? I will get the mic. Sorry. Can you turn the volume up. Oh, that's good. Now it's good. Okay? So you know your comments yo, you re retelling your mother's comment on Nirvana reminded me of 739 01:14:40.660 --> 01:14:55.930 Stephen: Jeffrey Miller, a KA lamasuria. Thus walking into his mother's Sixth Avenue apartment during a bridge game in his flowing robes, and she said, Oh, meet, my son, the Deli llama! 740 01:14:56.850 --> 01:15:01.010 Stephen: My question is 741 01:15:01.080 --> 01:15:12.190 Stephen: with regard to both Hannah and and the Buddha in terms of human nature. as a basis for developing 742 01:15:12.390 --> 01:15:18.590 Stephen: exposes on the human condition. She 743 01:15:19.040 --> 01:15:29.630 Stephen: went through such a terrible period in the thirties and forties. and then I think this book was written, you say, in 58, something like that 744 01:15:29.870 --> 01:15:46.530 Stephen: sorry human condition, human condition which was before she attended the Eiffman trial. And you know my, my! My memory is rusty. I did read a book once on totalitarianism in the sixties. 745 01:15:46.790 --> 01:15:52.999 Stephen: And of course she saw what she coined the been the banality of evil 746 01:15:53.040 --> 01:15:54.470 Stephen: that 747 01:15:56.410 --> 01:16:04.120 Stephen: it was because, administr administratively, people were incredibly. The Germans were very, very good at what they were doing. 748 01:16:04.550 --> 01:16:25.930 Stephen: And that the technology was there to aid and abetted because you couldn't destroy millions of people in Auschwitz if you didn't have the trains to get them there. And you didn't have Cyclone B, which was developed for agriculture and pouring out of the gas chain into the gas chamber. So it was kind of very simple 749 01:16:26.890 --> 01:16:39.109 Stephen: but did she have an underlying view of human nature that then helped her develop? Her view on how we should live? 750 01:16:39.280 --> 01:16:41.490 Stephen: And likewise with the Buddha. 751 01:16:41.950 --> 01:16:49.930 Stephen: even though he managed to get some quite cruel people into become enlightened and to become his allies. 752 01:16:50.090 --> 01:16:52.999 Stephen: is his view on human nature. 753 01:16:53.090 --> 01:16:58.940 Stephen: one which it's basically good, and that one day he'll get Mara to join the club. 754 01:17:00.410 --> 01:17:03.239 Stephen: Well, first about Hannah Rant 755 01:17:03.260 --> 01:17:11.910 Stephen: I read Eichmann in Jerusalem quite recently, and I was struck by a remark she made, she said, when she. 756 01:17:11.970 --> 01:17:17.220 Stephen: the first time she witnessed Eichmann in the courtroom in Jerusalem. 757 01:17:17.640 --> 01:17:26.340 Stephen: she said to herself. his problem, is he? He doesn't know how to think he doesn't. Well, no, he doesn't think. 758 01:17:27.680 --> 01:17:37.299 Stephen: and I think she's and that's a theme that comes back again and again in her last book, The Life of the Mind starts out with thinking. 759 01:17:37.540 --> 01:17:41.690 Stephen: and she doesn't. By thinking she doesn't mean just letting your mind chatter away. 760 01:17:42.200 --> 01:17:44.869 Stephen: It has to do more with Heidegger's Denke. 761 01:17:45.020 --> 01:17:51.620 Stephen: in other words, thinking deeply, consciously, critically, consistently. Again and again 762 01:17:52.010 --> 01:17:53.600 Stephen: she saw the floor 763 01:17:53.750 --> 01:18:01.010 Stephen: in Eichmann, and perhaps the flaw in much of human nature is our failure to to really think 764 01:18:01.380 --> 01:18:05.940 Stephen: what we're doing. We become sort of just cogs in a machine. 765 01:18:06.680 --> 01:18:11.209 Stephen: We just follow orders. I mean. Eichmann didn't think he'd done anything wrong 766 01:18:12.710 --> 01:18:18.890 Stephen: at all. he said. I'm just like any other government function. And 767 01:18:20.010 --> 01:18:25.270 Stephen: and yet, of course, here it comes to epitomise in a way the evil of the regime. 768 01:18:25.690 --> 01:18:27.309 Stephen: Hence the banality 769 01:18:28.130 --> 01:18:31.040 Stephen: of evil in a way that evil doesn't 770 01:18:31.690 --> 01:18:45.360 Stephen: is not only performed by people who are ostensibly nasty at all. and that, I think, is the is the great power of that state is that we can all be complicit in evil. 771 01:18:45.940 --> 01:18:48.920 Stephen: And this again goes back to climate change. 772 01:18:49.170 --> 01:18:52.689 Stephen: We're all complicit. And we shouldn't kid ourselves 773 01:18:53.980 --> 01:19:04.810 Stephen: each time we take a plane or drive a car, or you know, we are actually, you know, using up, you know, we are contributing to the very problem we're campaigning gets. 774 01:19:05.430 --> 01:19:12.069 Stephen: And you know the fact that we are willing participants in the consumer society. You know we're complicit. 775 01:19:13.940 --> 01:19:22.730 Stephen: and that's difficult to to acknowledge. I wouldn't go so far as saying, you know, we're evil any more than icon is evil. But we are. 776 01:19:22.820 --> 01:19:26.320 Stephen: We are complicit to some degree 777 01:19:27.010 --> 01:19:31.660 Stephen: in the very thing we are seeking to 778 01:19:32.040 --> 01:19:32.890 Stephen: to remedy. 779 01:19:35.460 --> 01:19:37.410 Stephen: But as for human nature 780 01:19:38.480 --> 01:19:44.780 Stephen: human nature is, is a relatively recent, somewhat Western idea, and I don't think you can really 781 01:19:44.850 --> 01:19:46.070 Stephen: find a 782 01:19:47.070 --> 01:19:48.689 Stephen: comparable term 783 01:19:48.850 --> 01:19:53.289 Stephen: in Buddhism except when it is the word Suavabova 784 01:19:53.380 --> 01:20:07.469 Stephen: in later Buddhism, which means nature. of which there is, you know, considerable critique. The Majamica philosophers particularly, were very suspicious of any claim that 785 01:20:07.580 --> 01:20:11.499 Stephen: anything has a nature or an essence, or a true being. 786 01:20:11.970 --> 01:20:20.089 Stephen: Nagarjuna's philosophy is basically nice Suava Vaden. It's the the view that there is no essential nature. 787 01:20:21.040 --> 01:20:24.560 Stephen: And I think the Majamika Critique 788 01:20:25.100 --> 01:20:32.360 Stephen: of essential nature here, and that would include an essential human nature. Human beings are essentially good. 789 01:20:32.490 --> 01:20:33.480 Stephen: For example. 790 01:20:33.820 --> 01:20:38.349 Stephen: That's an idea that I find difficult to 791 01:20:38.720 --> 01:20:49.620 Stephen: either understand or to, you know, to to be able able to accept. I've noticed in a lot of Buddhist discourse 792 01:20:49.840 --> 01:20:58.469 Stephen: today there is this tendency to think of I mean Chungpa Chugyam. Trumba uses this expression fundamental goodness 793 01:20:59.090 --> 01:21:04.209 Stephen: and certain ideas of Buddha. Nature. as they developed. 794 01:21:04.590 --> 01:21:22.510 Stephen: you know, in the in the centuries after the Buddha spoke of Buddha nature as being somehow an essential goodness that all of the virtues are already present within us, not just in potential, but in actual fact. 795 01:21:22.980 --> 01:21:28.030 Stephen: that the the our Buddha nature is covered by 796 01:21:28.270 --> 01:21:29.780 Stephen: a layer of 797 01:21:30.130 --> 01:21:41.619 Stephen: defilements in the same way that the sun is hidden by the clouds, and if we could just clear away the clouds, then we would arrive at a sense of our essential goodness. 798 01:21:42.030 --> 01:21:51.510 Stephen: It may be a very useful idea. In other words, it can give people a sense of 799 01:21:51.960 --> 01:22:00.250 Stephen: of confidence in themselves. but I think to take it as literally true. I do find that difficult 800 01:22:00.370 --> 01:22:06.720 Stephen: for me when you clear away reactivity, this non-reactive space we speak of. 801 01:22:07.260 --> 01:22:14.630 Stephen: It's not so much that we arrive at some essential goodness. but we arrive at 802 01:22:15.610 --> 01:22:27.619 Stephen: have a certain kind of freedom. Freedom to make choices which will be in alignment with our values. But are those values already somehow hardwired into us. 803 01:22:28.970 --> 01:22:32.179 Stephen: I don't know if I'm really honest, I don't know. 804 01:22:32.260 --> 01:22:37.800 Stephen: Or are they? Simply as some somehow potential? 805 01:22:38.140 --> 01:22:39.680 Stephen: They're possibilities 806 01:22:39.760 --> 01:22:51.020 Stephen: that we can realize. I have to admit ignorance on this point. I don't know but if you look at the way 807 01:22:51.620 --> 01:22:54.940 Stephen: human beings behave. if you look at the way 808 01:22:55.000 --> 01:22:58.650 Stephen: as a species, we are destroying the very 809 01:22:59.190 --> 01:23:01.670 Stephen: foundations of what gives us life. 810 01:23:02.170 --> 01:23:06.810 Stephen: where? What? What role has fundamental goodness 811 01:23:07.120 --> 01:23:15.570 Stephen: being in preventing that if we were fundamentally good and virtuous and wise, and all these things would we be in the mess we are in? 812 01:23:17.260 --> 01:23:25.220 Stephen: That would be my counter argument to that point, though I like to think of myself as essentially a good guy. But 813 01:23:25.650 --> 01:23:28.590 Stephen: philosophically. I'm not so sure. 814 01:23:29.720 --> 01:23:31.670 Stephen: Thank you for 815 01:23:31.740 --> 01:23:39.910 Stephen: talking so saying that we are complicit in, because I think that's the nub of the problem that we 816 01:23:40.100 --> 01:23:42.540 Stephen: we get so involved in the process 817 01:23:42.660 --> 01:23:50.499 Stephen: that we, no longer generating the process. The process demands that we continue to generate it, say text control. 818 01:23:50.640 --> 01:23:51.950 Stephen: And 819 01:23:52.240 --> 01:23:58.930 Stephen: and even if that's not our intent. my intention, I'm reading 820 01:23:59.140 --> 01:24:07.049 Stephen: American Prometheus on Oppenheimer and the development of the atomic bomb. And it's 821 01:24:07.600 --> 01:24:14.379 Stephen: it's exactly what happens. They just the process runs away with them to a large degree. 822 01:24:15.990 --> 01:24:23.689 Stephen: Thank you. Des, we've got got a question from Elena online. And then Anna over here. Okay, Alina, online. 823 01:24:24.930 --> 01:24:30.600 Stephen: I'm Lina. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, Samena. 824 01:24:30.650 --> 01:24:35.730 Stephen: yeah, I thought I recognized, huh. 825 01:24:35.950 --> 01:24:46.469 Lena: yeah, II was it. Maybe this is a bit gib, not the the first one. But when I think it was this who was 826 01:24:46.580 --> 01:24:52.110 Lena: talking, and you would in that question about complete 827 01:24:52.140 --> 01:25:02.729 Lena: complicity. And I often feel sometimes, and I think about the German society. And you know you said it's not 828 01:25:02.740 --> 01:25:22.419 Lena: II can't remember if you said it was evil or not. But I often think about us here, you know, and I feel sort of I feel like I can't do anything, but I feel complicit in the way that we treating the asylum seekers. And 829 01:25:22.630 --> 01:25:25.989 Lena: there was, you know, several years ago 830 01:25:26.010 --> 01:25:35.200 Lena: we had I think it was one of the things that started the whole thing with the boats as well. There was a a Norwegian 831 01:25:35.240 --> 01:25:38.369 Lena: ship that came. It's called Tampa. 832 01:25:38.860 --> 01:25:54.619 Lena: and the captain had picked up a lot. A boat of refugees. Boats have, you know, almost were about to sink, and he took all the refugees on board. 833 01:25:55.220 --> 01:26:10.550 Lena: He came, and he was going to deliver them to Australia because they were going to Australia, and and I don't know if they were exactly just on international water or on in Australian waters. 834 01:26:10.680 --> 01:26:20.850 Lena: But he he had. It was a standoff for days with the Australian Government, who was refusing to take them. 835 01:26:21.440 --> 01:26:30.229 Lena: and you know they were. The boat was just lying there with the refugees. This ship, which was a commercial ship. 836 01:26:30.410 --> 01:26:40.929 Lena: and he he said that he was following the laws of the sea, and that is that you help the people that are in distress. 837 01:26:41.330 --> 01:26:51.730 Lena: and eventually the Australian Government had to give in and take them and then put them into detention, of course. And 838 01:26:52.760 --> 01:27:05.680 Lena: It was, you know. I sort of feel all the time when we're treating that he was a good person, the captain. or or it was a good action, a right action. 839 01:27:06.120 --> 01:27:07.730 Lena: and 840 01:27:08.480 --> 01:27:20.159 Lena: I think he was actually given being given an award for it later, a sort of a piece award, or something I can't remember. But anyway, I was thinking, and 841 01:27:20.360 --> 01:27:29.109 Lena: how how bad you can feel when you feel complicit. This doesn't that just came to mind when this was talking about 842 01:27:29.570 --> 01:27:33.620 Stephen: our sort of evenly government in that sense 843 01:27:33.990 --> 01:27:48.359 Lena: and but I also wanted to make a comment about what you said about the society that are built on dharmic principles. This is a bit glib. It just made me 844 01:27:48.510 --> 01:27:56.529 Lena: recall, you know, Marx, vision of society from each according to their ability. 845 01:27:56.760 --> 01:28:02.550 Lena: to each according to their needs, and that is very, very similar. 846 01:28:02.790 --> 01:28:03.660 Stephen: Umhm. 847 01:28:03.820 --> 01:28:17.770 Lena: So he was a bit. He had Buddhist ideas. I don't know. But yeah, I enjoyed your talk immensely. 848 01:28:18.010 --> 01:28:23.149 Stephen: Thank you. No, thank you very much, Lena, and also des 849 01:28:23.480 --> 01:28:31.980 Stephen: question. Thank you. Debt. Yes. thank you. Yeah. I don't think I need to respond. It's not really a question there, but thank you very much for sharing. 850 01:28:32.550 --> 01:28:35.140 Stephen: and I'm sure we can all come up with examples 851 01:28:35.520 --> 01:28:38.430 Stephen: of people who have stood out and acted well 852 01:28:38.930 --> 01:28:43.639 Stephen: and often, you know, met a lot of kickback from 853 01:28:43.940 --> 01:28:51.169 Stephen: the powers that be. and I admire in those people not just. I don't think this captain was just 854 01:28:51.380 --> 01:28:55.550 Stephen: following the law of the sea. I feel there was more to it than that. 855 01:28:56.790 --> 01:29:04.589 Stephen: you know. He was reaching out to people in suffering. Basically. I would like to think that was his primary motive. 856 01:29:05.660 --> 01:29:12.719 Stephen: And I think it's you know, it's important to acknowledge and to celebrate such acts. 857 01:29:13.350 --> 01:29:26.760 Stephen: sure, you know, I mean, there are moments of hope in our world. Sometimes you think things are in a pretty bad way. where sometimes sometimes a person will just 858 01:29:26.850 --> 01:29:32.710 Stephen: like the the Jewish lady who shook have the hand of her Hamas kidnap. 859 01:29:34.710 --> 01:29:40.329 Stephen: and wished in peace. I thought that was a very, very moving moment. 860 01:29:41.100 --> 01:29:43.639 Stephen: In this horrible crisis. 861 01:29:43.850 --> 01:29:48.830 Stephen: because a humanity or the best of humanity shines through in such moments. 862 01:29:49.490 --> 01:29:53.870 Stephen: and I feel that those sorts of examples are crucial 863 01:29:54.550 --> 01:29:59.369 Stephen: if we're to keep us sanity in a way. and our our hope 864 01:30:01.380 --> 01:30:05.329 Stephen: difficult work. But I think pertinent here 865 01:30:07.900 --> 01:30:09.659 Stephen: got a question from Anna. 866 01:30:10.220 --> 01:30:19.540 Stephen: Hi, thanks, and you know, I just want to add to the the gratitude on the importance of this discussion. 867 01:30:20.090 --> 01:30:25.279 Stephen: Yeah. And you know, I'm really interested in that moving 868 01:30:25.440 --> 01:30:33.880 Stephen: to big picture from small picture, or from inner to outer, etc. So I guess this question's bouncing around off 869 01:30:34.240 --> 01:30:38.770 Stephen: of what Des and you were discussing. And Triton's question, too. 870 01:30:38.830 --> 01:30:53.310 Stephen: and that is in a way, what stops us. So even though I'm interested in big picture stuff, this is this is a practice question in a way. So you know, what are the barriers? And 871 01:30:54.060 --> 01:31:04.010 Stephen: you know, in in kind of really interested in activism myself. But you know, also running retreats. You know, things like 872 01:31:04.100 --> 01:31:11.340 Stephen: guilt and overwhelm, etc. Really cripple people. So you know, II think it's it's 873 01:31:11.500 --> 01:31:15.779 Stephen: important. These are places in our practice that we can. 874 01:31:15.880 --> 01:31:25.450 Stephen: We can work. And you know, having a practice for a start that you're inviting us into, that has that movement from inner to outer is really important. 875 01:31:25.830 --> 01:31:29.260 Stephen: I mean, I think, in extinction, rebellion that I'm in. They really 876 01:31:29.800 --> 01:31:35.780 Stephen: try to do that. We have minutes of. We have regeneration, etc. But 877 01:31:36.140 --> 01:31:38.099 Stephen: you know, I 878 01:31:38.320 --> 01:31:49.400 Stephen: before Covid, we had a retreat, basically asking that question, knowing what I know, how am I to live? What am I to do? And we ended up 879 01:31:49.680 --> 01:31:57.120 Stephen: realizing the fact that guilt and overwhelm shame can. Really. It's just where people started. 880 01:31:57.720 --> 01:32:10.190 Stephen: So we ended up really working with not just the scandals. But Sankara's. Actually. you know what you spoke about when speaking with Des. Really those things that 881 01:32:10.250 --> 01:32:14.309 Stephen: those habits of mind, those proclivities we have. 882 01:32:14.400 --> 01:32:19.609 Stephen: that which we inherit from our ancestors, or our culture 883 01:32:19.630 --> 01:32:22.900 Stephen: for our birth, for our 884 01:32:22.980 --> 01:32:35.409 Stephen: who we played with as children, etc. It really pays to well, it said, as a question to you, really, but we found accidentally in that retreat that it really 885 01:32:36.120 --> 01:32:39.459 Stephen: helped people to look at their own Sankaras. 886 01:32:39.540 --> 01:32:44.939 Stephen: If you're wheelchair bound, if you have a hearing problem, if you have depression. 887 01:32:44.960 --> 01:32:56.249 Stephen: if you are frightened of police, for whatever reason, then, these are the boundaries that you work in in your activism in taking your concern for the planet 888 01:32:56.480 --> 01:32:57.789 Stephen: from the Earth. 889 01:32:58.030 --> 01:33:05.290 Stephen: There, you know, it's really important to be in touch with what helps you or hinders you. 890 01:33:05.440 --> 01:33:10.449 Stephen: and they can be the Sinkara's. So we spent. I don't know 5 days 891 01:33:10.880 --> 01:33:15.950 Stephen: not totally, but in that conversation, and people found 892 01:33:16.090 --> 01:33:18.890 Stephen: great solace may be confidence 893 01:33:18.960 --> 01:33:35.790 Stephen: in telling themselves. I have these and kind of awareness, mindfulness, whatever all these skills that we're talking about really help in that process of thinking. Well, II can't do this because of my depression, or because of my blindness. 894 01:33:36.140 --> 01:33:38.460 Stephen: However, I can do this. 895 01:33:38.540 --> 01:33:44.879 Stephen: Then, adding on what Lenore said, just a little bit of extra courage, because this is an emergency. 896 01:33:44.950 --> 01:33:56.760 Stephen: What you do when your house is on fire, you know you might swear, or you might run faster, but when your house is on fire you find out what you can do, and you do a little bit more. 897 01:33:57.560 --> 01:34:00.579 Stephen: So I guess I'm asking you who's a sort of 898 01:34:00.970 --> 01:34:07.169 Stephen: we question. But you know that importance of being in touch with your Sankaras, your habits. 899 01:34:08.840 --> 01:34:12.760 Stephen: Thank you. Yeah. Well, II completely agree on that, and 900 01:34:13.190 --> 01:34:23.979 Stephen: the the word I. You use a Sanskrit parley word Sankara, which some people here might not even be totally clear. What that means. It means habit patterns or something. 901 01:34:24.230 --> 01:34:26.850 Stephen: But one of the reasons I 902 01:34:26.880 --> 01:34:41.039 Stephen: I've chosen to to not use those technical terms anymore. But just to speak of what I call reactivity. I take that as a kind of a a catch-all term for Sankara's, for the 3 poisons, the. 903 01:34:41.160 --> 01:34:46.890 Stephen: you know, craving even the whole lot. I find reactivity 904 01:34:46.970 --> 01:34:50.140 Stephen: for me works. And 905 01:34:51.020 --> 01:34:57.160 Stephen: it also plays very well with the idea of fires, the things these things that flare up 906 01:34:57.210 --> 01:35:00.210 Stephen: and those habit patents. 907 01:35:00.390 --> 01:35:02.140 Stephen: I 908 01:35:02.260 --> 01:35:16.099 Stephen: are not just neutral data. Habit patterns actually invade us. And this and and another way to think of of Sankara's or habit patterns or reactivity is in the mythological figure of Mara. 909 01:35:16.790 --> 01:35:28.629 Stephen: And that's very helpful, too, because Mara gives us a kind of mythic way of handling this stuff. And Mara, you know, Mara, it says, Mara comes up to Buddha and says. 910 01:35:29.480 --> 01:35:31.929 Stephen: right, there's it's as though a person 911 01:35:32.440 --> 01:35:41.470 Stephen: intervenes. Another voice comes into your mind, and literally starts whispering in your ear, as it were, and is very seductive and very, very 912 01:35:41.500 --> 01:35:48.570 Stephen: persuasive. and I really do think we need to find a much richer language 913 01:35:48.640 --> 01:35:54.169 Stephen: to be able to talk about this stuff rather than you know, just citing technical Buddhist term. 914 01:35:54.370 --> 01:36:05.340 Stephen: because I think these things are absolutely crucial and and the very core of the task model is letting go of reactivity and seeing reactivity stop. 915 01:36:05.470 --> 01:36:07.500 Stephen: There's steps 2 and 3 916 01:36:07.780 --> 01:36:12.519 Stephen: in reactivity. Mara Sankara's craving, ignorant, whatever it is. 917 01:36:12.680 --> 01:36:31.170 Stephen: Is basically that which you need to be most closely aware of. You can't let reactivity be or let reactivity go. If you don't know what reactivity is, and I don't mean that in a theoretical way, but you know what it feels like. And the meditation I guided yesterday was. 918 01:36:31.660 --> 01:36:40.289 Stephen: didn't explain anything like that. But the point is the more that you learn to recognize that non-reactive dimension of yourself 919 01:36:41.090 --> 01:36:42.970 Stephen: that I've found 920 01:36:43.650 --> 01:36:47.699 Stephen: allows you to notice the reactivity much more clear 921 01:36:47.750 --> 01:36:51.229 Stephen: that it's that non-reactive space that paradoxically 922 01:36:51.510 --> 01:36:57.689 Stephen: makes you more alert and attuned and sensitized to the first whisperings. The first 923 01:36:57.810 --> 01:37:06.509 Stephen: tremors, the first. as Montaigne calls it, the first little gust of wind that that are the precursor of a storm! 924 01:37:07.520 --> 01:37:12.210 Stephen: Shanti Deva speaks brilliantly about this, too, being like a piece of wood. 925 01:37:12.220 --> 01:37:18.639 Stephen: he says, that's what enables you to have the stillness to see the the very, very 926 01:37:18.970 --> 01:37:32.490 Stephen: stirrings and movements and shifts in these reactive patterns. And these reactive patterns are not just your reactive pans. It's not Anna's problem. We so many reactive patterns are 927 01:37:32.660 --> 01:37:37.010 Stephen: are built into us through our social and political and religious condition. 928 01:37:37.280 --> 01:37:39.070 Stephen: like racism, for example. 929 01:37:39.380 --> 01:37:42.909 Stephen: is, is is a pattern of reactivity. It it rises up 930 01:37:43.420 --> 01:37:44.280 Stephen: unwitting 931 01:37:46.490 --> 01:38:01.410 Stephen: people here trying to work out what they're actually going to do in the next. However long we've got then becoming familiar with your own, because mine are very different to deserts or garins. 932 01:38:01.510 --> 01:38:14.019 Stephen: So to me, the dama for myself and my community, and we call them proclivities. The word that we prefer because it's like a fun word sounds like a swear word. 933 01:38:14.440 --> 01:38:40.470 Stephen: But you know, I think no no matter how many talks we listen to, we're not going to know what we are going to do out there until we know our own, you know. So this practice of knowing your own proclivities and just taking a bit of courage to them, I think, is something that the dharma and retreats can offer for people who do want to become active. 934 01:38:40.530 --> 01:38:45.620 Stephen: No, I completely agree. I actually translate Sankara as inclinations. 935 01:38:47.570 --> 01:39:01.920 Stephen: But again, we're groping towards a language I feel when we speak about these things. But no, you're right. And and that's why, in the 4 task model. It's only when you can see these inclinations, these proclivities clearly 936 01:39:02.070 --> 01:39:04.470 Stephen: in in an embodied way. 937 01:39:05.000 --> 01:39:15.959 Stephen: from a contemplative perspective that you can achieve the kind of understanding and acceptance and freedom from them, such that you're able to act from a non 938 01:39:16.330 --> 01:39:17.440 Stephen: reactive 939 01:39:17.580 --> 01:39:25.619 Stephen: space. And to me the whole point of the Dharma practice is to culminate in action. 940 01:39:26.170 --> 01:39:34.449 Stephen: The eightfold path is basically a sequence of contemplative and then active steps, and it culminates 941 01:39:34.560 --> 01:39:36.430 Stephen: in finding 942 01:39:36.750 --> 01:39:38.050 Stephen: a way to 943 01:39:38.610 --> 01:39:39.410 speak. 944 01:39:39.910 --> 01:39:41.720 Stephen: If you wish to act 945 01:39:41.740 --> 01:39:43.009 Stephen: in that sense. 946 01:39:43.220 --> 01:39:53.070 Stephen: And the clear and the the recognizing. the acknowledging that they're not repressing and pretending these things are not there 947 01:39:53.310 --> 01:40:05.970 Stephen: to have that kind of free and empty space, I think, is the source of of all creativity. whether that be artistic creativity, whether it be having the imagination to. 948 01:40:06.400 --> 01:40:07.129 Stephen: you know. 949 01:40:08.980 --> 01:40:12.849 Stephen: to come up with another kind of action in a protest, whatever it is 950 01:40:13.430 --> 01:40:31.420 Stephen: that to me is the source, and if we can't tap into that, we're likely to be just keep running on. you know, maybe better sets of habits and inclinations and proclivities that we, you know, that are around us, but we've not really internalized 951 01:40:31.470 --> 01:40:37.680 Stephen: our own capacity to act from a non-reactive space. That, I think, is what 952 01:40:38.170 --> 01:40:41.769 Stephen: the Dharma practice actually provides for us 953 01:40:47.250 --> 01:40:55.599 Stephen: reactivity. What I started with with which is what is a barrier which is often shame or guilt, or overwhelm. 954 01:40:55.760 --> 01:40:58.760 Stephen: That kind of practice you speak of 955 01:40:59.030 --> 01:41:00.790 Stephen: is an antidote. 956 01:41:01.150 --> 01:41:11.680 Stephen: felt it. And people in my community that from knowing their proclivities or tendencies, or whatever, and stepping a little bit beyond them. 957 01:41:11.990 --> 01:41:16.410 Stephen: It has really helped them become active. Yeah, exactly. 958 01:41:16.750 --> 01:41:25.159 Stephen: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Do we finish at 1030? We do. And it's tea, coffee time right now. 959 01:41:25.710 --> 01:41:27.350 Stephen: Thank you all very much. 960 01:41:28.380 --> 01:41:29.970 Stephen: Enjoy your tea, coffee.