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Stephen:  okay, so good morning, everybody.

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Stephen: I hope you had a

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Stephen: final restful night. If you are here and likewise for those of you

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Stephen: at home. This, as we're all obviously aware.

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Stephen: is our final morning

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Stephen: this week.

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Stephen:  for me at least, has gone fairly rapidly.

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Stephen: and yet it also seems like a long time.

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Stephen: That odd experience one often has when

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Stephen: you're enjoying something.

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Stephen: So this morning we're going to start by some concluding reflections from the 3 of us.

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Stephen: Then we'll open up the room for a final Q&A

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Stephen:  obviously, also

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Stephen: with those online.

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Stephen:  again, it would be helpful if everyone can have a good opportunity to talk that we keep our

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Stephen: questions or comments succinct

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Stephen: to the point, to optimize the time, and I, at least amongst the 3 of us will reciprocate by trying to make my responses brief and succinct, too.

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Stephen: I'd like to begin my reflections by coming back to what I feel to be the starting point. For this whole

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Stephen: endeavour. whatever we call it. the practice of the dharma.

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Stephen: a sense of spiritual or religious vocation.

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Stephen: a life of the mind a philosophical

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practice.

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Stephen: in other words.

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Stephen: recalling and remembering what it is that somehow moved us to

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Stephen: find or be interested in such a path.

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Stephen: In the first place.

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Stephen: and for me it is very much A fundamental sense of wonder or astonishment.

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Stephen: Surprise. There's many different words for it.  Those moments in our life.

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Stephen: however brief. that somehow shock us into an awareness that we're here at all.

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Stephen: and that is very often coupled

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Stephen: with the recognition that

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Stephen: we won't be here for very long

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Stephen: that we are very temporary residents on this

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Stephen: planet Earth.

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Stephen: and in my own practice I spent

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Stephen: about 4 years. Focusing on this question, what is this? And I was drawn to that practice, basically because

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the Buddhist traditions I was aware of

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Stephen: it was the only one the sand tradition

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Stephen: that considered these questions

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Stephen: to be more

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Stephen: vital, more important than all of the brilliant answers that

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Stephen: Buddhism has come up with to these questions.

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Stephen: I think it's very easy to forget

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Stephen: the questions that underlie our lives.

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Stephen: and we find, maybe not deliberately, but a certain kind of

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complacency, perhaps, in

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Stephen: adopting a set of answers. In other words, beliefs, doctrines, views.

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Stephen: This is an idea also. We find in Plato.

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Stephen: in the theatres, which is one of the dialogues.

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Stephen: Socrates acknowledges, how wonder is the origin of philosophy!

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Stephen: Thalmazine

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Stephen: is the origin of philosophy, the opposite of docks, as I

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Stephen: holding opinions or views.

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Stephen: and

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Stephen: he also talks of

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Stephen: how the philosopher

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Stephen: is one who somehow lives with the experience of wonder or the feeling of one. But that's how it's usually translated.

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Stephen: But in Hannah Arendt.

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Stephen: essay on Socrates. She translates that phrase very differently.

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Stephen: She says to her.

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Stephen: the philosopher is the person who's able to endure

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Stephen: wonder is able to tolerate

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one

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Stephen: he's able to bear.

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Stephen: The word is pars, which means pardon.

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Stephen: not just feeling, but there's an element of

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Stephen: of time.

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Stephen: and I feel that our

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Stephen: embrace of life, as in the first task, is also the ability to endure the wonder of being alive.

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Stephen: to be able to sustain and tolerate that uncertainty. that fundamental uncertainty

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Stephen: in Zen. You have the idea that,

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Stephen: it's only with great doubt or great questioning that there can be great awakening.

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Stephen: If there's only a little doubt

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Stephen: there'll only be little awakening, and if there's no doubt at all.

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Stephen: no sense of wonder whatsoever.

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Stephen: There's no possibility of any awakening

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Stephen: at all.

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Stephen: and I would

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Stephen: I feel that what Arend does in that move in that translation is to connect the early Buddhist tradition with its emphasis on suffering

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Stephen: with the later Zen tradition, with its emphasis on question.

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Stephen: that they at this point find some common ground.

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Stephen: and I also feel it's an utterly relevant to the questions we've been exploring this week around

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Stephen: climate change

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Stephen: and the other great

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Stephen: sufferings of our time.

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Stephen: and I think we must be careful not to get too caught up in solving problems

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Stephen: which, of course, we need to do with some urgency. I'm not questioning that.

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Stephen: but it's easy, I think, perhaps, to forget the underlying deep questions of the fact that that were in this world at all. and to.

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Stephen: in a sense, remember

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Stephen: the big big picture starting perhaps, with the Big Bang.

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Stephen: the evolution of human beings fairly recently, and and the sheer

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Stephen: immensity of life itself

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Stephen: that in a way exceeds our capacity for representation.

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Stephen: It's sublime in that sense. And I feel what we're dealing with with these big

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Stephen: challenging issues is

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Stephen: connecting with a sense of of the enormity which is both fascinating in a way. but it's also terrifying.

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Stephen: It's scary.

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Stephen: I'm reminded of Rudolf Otto, who was a German theologian in the 1,900 thirtys, who wrote a book called Dus Heiligen.

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Stephen: the Holy.

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Stephen: where he talks of the mysterious tremendum.

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Stephen: the terrible mystery

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in his theistic language of God.

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Stephen: that there's something overwhelming

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Stephen: about our experience

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Stephen: of being this tiny speck of consciousness enveloped

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Stephen: in this infinite enormity

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Stephen: of live.

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Stephen: And what I've been sharing with you

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Stephen: this week is trying to outline for

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Stephen: people like ourselves today. some kind of framework, some kind of cartography

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in which we can find a way of life in which we

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Stephen: are embedded in that sense of

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Stephen: of enormity, of wonder, and yet at the same time find that.

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Stephen: and experienced that as a ground

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Stephen: from whence to live meaningfully, ethically.

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Stephen: contemplatively. in this world.

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Stephen: And the word I've used that I know

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Stephen: some people struggle with a bit is the word soul.

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Stephen: The word which I translate

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Stephen: cheetah heart, mind, if you prefer. But what this refers to really is getting deeply in touch with

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Stephen: what animates us Latin for soul is animar.

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Stephen: that which animates us, connected to the word animol.

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Stephen: and to live, as

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Stephen: you know, to not ignore that deep, intuitive, instinctual.

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Stephen: So the almost raw. wild

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Stephen: dimension of ourselves and resist the temptation to.

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Stephen: you know. Think of our practices applying certain technological solutions to problems

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Stephen: which is arguably

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Stephen: part of the problem.

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Stephen: and this has led me to the to focus on these 32

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Stephen: virtues and skills which are then aligned with these 4 tasks.

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Stephen: And

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Stephen: that's basically I feel that has really become the core.

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How I understand the dharma.

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Stephen: and wish to somehow develop further in my work, and probably this will now go on

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Stephen: until I die

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Stephen: whenever that is.

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Stephen: And there are 2 projects currently underway in which I'm sort of developing. This one is a project called Mindfulness-based Ethical Living

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M. Bell for short.

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Stephen: that was based on a series of online teachings I gave a couple of years ago. Now

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Stephen: through an organisation in Germany, the Buddhist shift on.

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Stephen: And there I went through these 32 elements that I covered briefly yesterday morning

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Stephen: a way to try to construct a framework for a mindfulness based intervention. That's not about dealing with a pathology.

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Stephen: stress or panic attacks or anxiety, but sees but tries to develop a more positively oriented

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Stephen: practice of mindfulness. It's not just about meditation. but extends mindfulness to all areas of our life.

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Stephen: particularly our ethical life.

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Stephen: Thinking of mindfulness is both existential, therapeutic.

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Stephen: contemplative. and ethical.

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Stephen: The other project that I'm working on in this same regard is the book I'll write next.

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Stephen: maybe.

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Stephen: but that's the plan. A book which is tentatively called The art of care which will be a companion book to my heart of solitude.

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Stephen: And this will take the cartography of care. specifically focusing on the 32 virtues and skills

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Stephen: one. Chapter per virtue and skill. 32 chapters in which I'll try to articulate this more

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Stephen: more clearly, but without using any Buddhist jargon at all.

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Stephen: which is, in fact, a return to what I did with Buddhism without beliefs, which was commissioned as a book that introduced Buddhism without using Buddhist language. I kind of want to try that out again.

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Stephen: In other words, a book for the general reader which is rooted in

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Stephen: these essentially Buddhist ideas, but doesn't carry any Buddhist

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Stephen: luggage, at least not overtly.

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Stephen: Another thing that you may find of interest is

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program that's now available through Bodie College.

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Stephen: where I work in England a small organization that

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Stephen: effectively operates courses online and in rented venues. and that's called after Buddhism, and beyond which covers much of the same sort of material

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Stephen: but in a somewhat more scholarly way.

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Stephen: and that was consisted of 24 half-hour talks

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Stephen: over a 12 week period. and this is now available as a self-study program.

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Stephen:  which you can purchase from Bodie College. It's on video and or obviously with audio and an accompanying workbook.

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Stephen: so that may interest you.

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Stephen: When I get home in the next few days I'm going to put together a package of this material and

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Stephen: and I'm going to send it out to everyone. If you, if you absolutely don't want it, tell me I'll take you off the list.

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Stephen: but it'll include the workbook for M. Bell. Mindfulness based ethical living.

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Stephen: It will include a link to Bodhi College in the after Buddhism, and beyond course, and it will also include a meditation on being a good ancestor

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Stephen: that was developed by my friend Shokee Matsumoto, who was the priest who was instrumental in my visit to Japan, and this is a guided meditation on becoming a good ancestor that he

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Stephen: he gave at the Davos World Economic Forum last year.

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Stephen: and I thought you'd enjoy that. Rurika has put together a slightly.

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Stephen: a good English version of it. So you'll also get a copy of that as well.

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Stephen: and that's it from me. and I will hand over to my esteemed college. Mr. Colleague.

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Stephen: Mr. Winton Higgins.

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Stephen: Thank you, Mr. Bachelor.

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Stephen:  yes, I suppose feeling uppermost in my mind is gratitude to Stephen for

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Stephen: this wonderful reinterpretation specifically of the eightfold path.

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Stephen: And it sort of takes me back to

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Stephen: a couple of things I extrapolated from Simon Creechley at the beginning of the retreat.

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Stephen: The whole idea that we we may think we're through with the past.

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Stephen: But the past is not through with us.

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Stephen: and there is such extraordinary richness.

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Stephen: primarily, of course, for us in the In, in a Dhammic tradition

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Stephen: going back 2,500 years, but also our own.

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Stephen: Tradition

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Stephen: in the West. a contemporaneous development

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Stephen: going back to to

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Stephen: Greek thought

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Stephen: and I'm also thinking of Pritchley's other point

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Stephen: that it's the obligation

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Stephen: of every generation to reinvent the classics.

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Stephen: It doesn't mean reinvent, reinvent them from scratch, but to radically reinterpret them in

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Stephen: in terms that matter that are meaningful

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Stephen: to the people of this generation, whatever generation this one might be.

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Stephen: It's it's it's in fact.

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Stephen: it sounds quite dramatic to reinvent

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Stephen: the classics every generation. But it is really just good hermeneutic practice. because every all the ancients that we've been quoting

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Stephen: were addressing situations in their own time.

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Stephen: They were addressing people in their own time?

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Stephen: These people had urgent questions, just like we do.

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Stephen: And so all of these

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Stephen: texts, or all of these sayings that became texts in the case of the Dhamma

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Stephen: actually address historical situations

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Stephen: that are different from

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Stephen: how? Rather and so

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Stephen: it's just good hermeneutic practice to say, Well, what is the essence? What is the wisdom in there? And how do we re

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Stephen: stated? How do we refashion it in Crichlyson? Reinvent it

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Stephen: in order for it to

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Stephen: to

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Stephen: enlighten our own lives.

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Stephen: So

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Stephen:  this is, I think, what we've done, and it's been wonderful to see how this retreat developed

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Stephen: cause as we began to to look at Stephen's reinvention of the eightfold path.

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Stephen: It immediately got us in touch with our own

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Stephen: problems, the problems of this generation.

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Stephen: And so.

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Stephen: you know, some of the time I felt

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Stephen: The retreat was

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Stephen: was kind of

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Stephen: becoming a workshop for

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Stephen: for climate activism and all that sort of thing. And that's

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Stephen: while it was whilst important to maintain the retreat

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Stephen: nature

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Stephen: of the occasion. It's also fantastic that it's had. This had this byproduct.

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Stephen: Lots of ideas, lots of connections between people

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Stephen: and between organizations who

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Stephen: are in the struggle. So

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Stephen: this and a retreat, I think, has been something of an as experiments. and all our progress comes through experimentation.

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Stephen: we try something new without knowing how it's going to turn out.

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Stephen: And

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Stephen: I think this one has turned out trump's

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Stephen: so

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Stephen: on that happy night

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Stephen: I'll hand it over to Ms. Lambert.

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Stephen: Alright.

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Stephen: thanks, Clinton.

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Stephen: I'd like to pick up on a

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Stephen: an issue that's come up a number of times over the week.

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Stephen:  This. What I believe is a false dichotomy between

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Stephen: individual

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Stephen: engagement in the world and group engagement in the world.

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Stephen:  It's a false dichotomy, in my view, because there is no such thing as group engagement without individual engagement.

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Stephen: It's an individual ethical decision to get out of my own comfort zone and go join a group.

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Stephen: and I'm all for joining groups, as I'm sure you've

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Stephen: picked up. Given that I've volunteered for them myself.

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Stephen: Once we start experiencing a group, and we find

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Stephen: it may or may not be all bearing skittles.

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Stephen: It's an individual ethical decision

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Stephen: to go back

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Stephen: next week and do it again.

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Stephen: even though it might be a bit uncomfortable

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Stephen: when that group asks me to do things that I'm not comfortable with, like doorknocking. For example.

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Stephen: it's an individual ethical decision to flex my courage muscle and say yes

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Stephen: to that request.

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Stephen: Everything that happens is an individual

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Stephen: decision in the beginning.

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Stephen: and

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Stephen: I've been a bit puzzled over the week. Why this tension? Because I don't see any tension there at all. I see them completely integrating  and I have been a bit worried because

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Stephen: the individual

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Stephen: ethical engagement has

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Stephen: been put down a few times.

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Stephen: That's not important.

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Stephen: Don't waste our time on it.

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Stephen: and I know I have a very strong individual ethical engagement practice, and through my conversations over lunches and afternoon teas and morning teas, I know I'm not the only one in the room who has that

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Stephen: and so

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Stephen: I want to say to all of you

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Stephen: who have death. I see you. and I honor you.

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Stephen: and

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Stephen: I respect

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Stephen: that, and I respect how difficult it is when that kind of practice is driven purely from

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Stephen: a commitment, a deep commitment to one's values

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Stephen: when there is no ripple effect of other people around you. Inspirational leaders, organizations, what have you when it's just you

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Stephen: and a decision to make a change in your life. Which may or may not be easy.

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Stephen: And there are numerous people in this room who have done that and

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Stephen: and are doing that, and are in various stages of doing it. And

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Stephen: I guess I've

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Stephen: attempted throughout the week to bring things back to the to the personal

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Stephen: and

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Stephen: it might be that that is not to be dismissed.

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Stephen:  it's

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Stephen: where everything starts.

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Stephen: And

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Stephen: so Interestingly, last night in in the session that we did on nonviolent communication.

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Stephen: While the activity was going on, Alan came over.

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Stephen: and Allen's been involved for many years in teaching its personal skills. And what have you in in corporates? And he said to me, This is where it gets real.

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Stephen: You know the application of our dama in our

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Stephen: interpersonal individual world. When we've got a conflict with someone, especially someone we care about, especially someone.

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Stephen: you know. If we sense, there might be a rupture in the relationship. And we're feeling our needs aren't being taken into account. And you know, how do we go about that? And

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Stephen: My sense is, that is a really honorable place among others, but a really honorable place to put our energy and effort.

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Stephen: And

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Stephen: there's no reason to have either all thinking on this. There's our individual

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Stephen: ethical engagement. There's our community ethical engagement. There's our global ethical ethical engagement. And

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Stephen: all of it matters

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Stephen:  So

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Stephen: I just want to

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Stephen: balance that up and

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Stephen: and on other people in the room who might feel a little bit like their practice, has been

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Stephen: a

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Stephen: represented as something less throughout the week.

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Stephen: That's all I need to say.

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Stephen: Thank you, Lenore.

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Stephen: So now it's The room is open for all of you

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Stephen: and all of you online and

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Stephen: we'll pass the mics around as we've been doing. I think we have quite a good system, and just remember to

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Stephen: oh, right? Only one mic. Okay.

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Stephen: do you need your mic, Quinton? We can do that 10 h if you can still talk

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Stephen: just another reminder. Try to keep things brief and succinct. So more people can have an opportunity to share.

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Stephen: Thank you. Brains trust. It's lovely, too.

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Stephen: Have this time, with all 3 of you on the board. I would like you to please comment on the normative value of any ethical system that secularma tends to want to put forward? Are we languishing in subjective? Are we languishing in relative? Are we able to make normative claims about what people should do? And if so, what are we basing those normative ethics? On what are we grounding them in?

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Stephen:  Well, I mean, this is actually a very difficult question. and to be to be able to give a sort of a simple answer, too.

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Stephen: The basic if what Joe is getting at is, why should we be good

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Stephen: in a way, aren't you? And what grounds would be

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Stephen: for secular Buddhist approach, what would be the grounds or the rationale for being good?

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Stephen: And again, this is a Buddhist approach, and to that extent its starting point is with the experience of Dukkha.

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Stephen: of suffering, not just individual suffering, but suffering, as we experience it, as a group, as a community, as a society. And nowadays very much as a planetary

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Stephen: world of sentient beings.

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Stephen: And I'm always struck by the phrase you find repeatedly in early Buddhism, and throughout

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Stephen: that this is a practice that concerns all sentient beings.

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Stephen: so that for me.

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Stephen: where we begin, it's an acknowledgement, and as the first task suggests a willingness to both understand and embrace

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Stephen: the suffering

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Stephen: of the greatest number.

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Stephen: And

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Stephen: from there everything else follows.

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Stephen: All the next 32 steps follow.

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Stephen: Yeah, I'll just add to that.

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Stephen: Your question actually reminded me of philosophy 101 when I was doing it, of art

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Stephen: on moral philosophy, you know. Does

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Stephen: does God will? What is what is good

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Stephen: because it is good, or is it only good because God wills it? We're not in a you know. We're not in a kind of Messianic mode, I think, to

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Stephen: say, you know, listen to us because we're somehow authorities, but but rather, I mean, I think it goes back to the basic.

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Stephen:  the the basic idea of skillfulness.

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Stephen: Now, if you understand.

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Stephen: then this is what you will do.

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Stephen: These are the values you will seek to cultivate. It's a question really of intelligence and knowing

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Stephen: it. Because.

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Stephen: yeah, when you have that kind of understanding that the dharma is communicating.

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Stephen: then the the ethical framework

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Stephen: is simply the obvious.

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Stephen: So I think that's the basic argument in

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in

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Stephen: the diamond rather than one of some

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Stephen: overarching authority telling us what giving us. A rule book.

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Stephen: I remember seeing some data on a survey that had been done in the Us. Asking people which kinds of people they were most afraid of or believed were most dangerous.

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Stephen: and atheists were top of the list.

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Stephen: That's stuck in my mind

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Stephen: for me.

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Stephen: Similar to what Stephen said, the baseline is

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Stephen: suffering. and then, you know, moves up to the other end with flourishing. But the baseline is suffering, and

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Stephen:  all sentient beings.

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Stephen: Some of you might know the philosopher, I think you know ethicist, Peter Singer. He's an Aussie guy. I think he's professor of ethics at maybe Stanton or something like that.

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Stephen: And he's not an animal rights Guy, he's an ethicist.

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Stephen: He wrote a fairly definitive book called Animal Liberation, and so he's not a dharma practitioner. He's not an animal rights, Guy.

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Stephen: He just simply is looking at the ethics, and he comes to a very dharma view, which is that

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Stephen: the issue is suffering. and he goes through a lot of

359
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Stephen:  ethical arguments and inspects a lot of ethical ways that we treat non-human animals and comes to the view that

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Stephen: if suffering is the benchmark

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Stephen:  then, you know, we've got to stop using animals like resources.

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Stephen: So that to me is just the is quite the simple North Star.

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Stephen: Suffering.

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Thank you.

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Stephen: Can I do a follow-up if everyone else is chilling? I'm interested. Then what does secular Buddhists say, or how do they build in the idea of precepts? I was fascinated that this whole conversation this week had no

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Stephen: kind of instructive, or, again, normative value. Is there room for

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Stephen: the precepts to be a part of secular dharma? Or is it one of those things that, as you said, Stephen, is more luggage.

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Stephen:  It's true. I did actually refer to the precepts at 1 point, but not in a very enthusiastic way

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Stephen: thus.

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Stephen:  I felt throughout this week I've been talking to people who already have a practice. So I kind of take that for granted. and I sometimes find it's fine. It's almost little

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Stephen: slightly patronizing when you go on a retreat, and they say, No, you mustn't kill, you mustn't steal. We kind of know that.

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Stephen: And if we've been doing this practice for any length of time that becomes simply, you know, self-evident.

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Stephen: think the precepts are a valuable sort of a set of guidelines.

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Stephen: but my concern is when they become, you know, fixed moral rules.

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Stephen: And, as I was saying, I think the other day, the the person who has entered into the eightfold path has somehow

376
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Stephen: at least let go of an attachment to moral rules, and has moved from what. in ethical language, would be from a legalistic ethic.

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Stephen: In other words, a set of rules to a situational ethic which doesn't ask the question, What's the right thing to do? According to the rules? Being a good Buddhist, it answers the much more difficult question, What is the most loving thing to do in this situation?

378
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Stephen: So in that sense. an ethics of uncertainty or an ethics of care

379
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Stephen: are both situational ethics.

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Stephen: So the primacy becomes

381
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Stephen: focusing on the uniqueness of given situations for which no rulebook can give you the answer, or very rarely  but recognizing much more vividly what are your core values?

382
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Stephen: And so these 37 skills and virtues are basically an outline of what your core values are

383
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Stephen: mindfulness.

384
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Stephen: love, compassion, etc. Etc.

385
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Stephen: And you seek to honor those values

386
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Stephen: through

387
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Stephen: your responses to unique situations. You find yourself in in the world, everything from a family conflict to the climate crisis. the same principles would be

388
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Stephen: at work.

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Stephen: The 5 precepts

390
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Stephen: can be part of that mix for sure.

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Stephen: but the danger is to absolutise them and turn them into hard and fast rules, which often are not

392
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Stephen: necessarily adaptable to specific situations.

393
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That's just going

394
00:36:05.430 --> 00:36:11.859
Stephen: so. Gawanander. Yes. so, Stephen, what you're

395
00:36:11.900 --> 00:36:22.639
Stephen: been leading, I think, and we've all been engaged in is rethinking and reimagining fairly well-established Buddhist frameworks

396
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Stephen: I wonder if you've got any comment

397
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Stephen: on

398
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Stephen: the balance, a wise balance between

399
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Stephen: reinterpreting, reimagining, renaming for oneself, so, in a sense, doing one's own practice as you have done with yours and shared with us versus the checking back

400
00:36:45.730 --> 00:36:47.070
Stephen: to the

401
00:36:47.250 --> 00:36:54.080
Stephen: more traditional understandings. And of course, the original Sutras that keeps it honest.

402
00:36:54.330 --> 00:37:10.600
Stephen: Yeah. Cause if I think what you have done with us is, in in a sense an invitation for us to do the same thing. Perhaps it's not, but I would take it in that way. And I just wonder if you've got any comments on that issue of

403
00:37:10.840 --> 00:37:13.179
Stephen: freedom and discipline within that.

404
00:37:14.190 --> 00:37:18.430
Stephen: Yeah, I mean, this is. This has been a central struggle in my whole

405
00:37:19.080 --> 00:37:30.219
Stephen: life as a Dharma practition. I mean, even when I was in my, you know, 1920 years old in India. you know I was being taught stuff by my Tibetan teachers that

406
00:37:30.340 --> 00:37:35.449
Stephen: I knew already. I can't just take that on board uncritically

407
00:37:35.560 --> 00:37:45.030
Stephen: when I'm told about the 18 hot hells, for example. And what do what do you do with that? Well, there are 18 cold hells as well. But

408
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Stephen: the point is that you? So this is, I think, perhaps, the the advantage, and also some, perhaps a disadvantage, of engaging with a tradition in which you haven't been raised.

409
00:37:56.420 --> 00:37:59.519
Stephen: you, you come at it fresh.

410
00:38:00.090 --> 00:38:04.199
Stephen: and maybe with a degree of enthusiasm that traditional

411
00:38:04.320 --> 00:38:06.649
Stephen: members of that religion may not have.

412
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Stephen: But you also come at it largely intellectual. You don't have that embodied

413
00:38:12.260 --> 00:38:21.170
Stephen: emotional connection to the tradition that you would have if you grew up within it. and those who grow up within it

414
00:38:21.290 --> 00:38:27.769
Stephen: like, for example, Margaret, we were talking last night, you know, for them. It's just become just a system of habits.

415
00:38:28.270 --> 00:38:34.720
Stephen: you know. You go to the Temple on certain times, and you do things a certain way, but it's kind of non-critical and not really very

416
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Stephen: alive.

417
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Stephen: So I think the encounter of the dharma with modernity. And I don't want to use this word the West.

418
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Stephen: because I think we're really talking about a global situation. Now, whether we like it or not. We coexist

419
00:38:49.890 --> 00:38:51.400
Stephen: immediately through

420
00:38:51.660 --> 00:38:58.919
Stephen: communication systems with everybody on the planet. And the issues we face are planetary, as we're clearly. And I don't have to say that

421
00:38:59.030 --> 00:39:01.690
Stephen: it's obvious, but that does have implications.

422
00:39:02.070 --> 00:39:15.749
Stephen: It means that the dharma is being looked to for a response to something that is concerning everyone are not only human beings, but animals, fish, birds, everybody.

423
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Stephen: And so. as we've both been saying.

424
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Stephen:  the the practice of the dharma

425
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Stephen: as a tradition rather than my own personal sorting out my psychological problems. is entering into a conversation with the past.

426
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Stephen: entering into a dialogue with the great thinkers in particular, the figure of Gortama and his immediate circle, who lived so long ago, which is, of course, filtered through.

427
00:39:50.740 --> 00:39:53.409
Stephen: you know, texts which they did not write.

428
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Stephen: We have all sorts of problems in sorting out what we should give more priority to. It's not easy, this problem.

429
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Stephen: but it's for me. It's I'm I'm always going back to the source materials and the power of these source materials. These classical texts is that they bear repeated reading.

430
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Stephen: That's something my Tibetan teachers drilled home very much. They say. You know you don't. You know what you're studying here is not magazines.

431
00:40:26.320 --> 00:40:34.869
Stephen: You read them a couple of times, and you throw them away. Now these are texts. They're classical texts, like the Bible, the Quran. All of these great works of

432
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Stephen: of spiritual literature, if you wish.

433
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Stephen: have their power because they seem to reveal almost endless depth.

434
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Stephen: And you know you read it one time, and then you

435
00:40:49.220 --> 00:40:53.960
Stephen: continue with your practice. You go back a year or 2 later, and the text reveals more.

436
00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:56.630
Stephen: Keep speaking to.

437
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Stephen: and that to me is a very, very important dimension of our engagement with this practice is that

438
00:41:04.280 --> 00:41:11.690
Stephen: constant return to the the past in order that it can help shed even more new light.

439
00:41:12.330 --> 00:41:13.180
Stephen: The present.

440
00:41:13.340 --> 00:41:16.529
Stephen: and of course provide a foundation for how

441
00:41:16.570 --> 00:41:18.699
Stephen: we envisage and prepare

442
00:41:18.760 --> 00:41:22.660
Stephen: ourselves as individuals and as communities for the future.

443
00:41:22.840 --> 00:41:24.749
Stephen: And then it's a living tradition.

444
00:41:28.600 --> 00:41:38.280
Stephen: Just to add to that, I have a feeling which, saving may agree with or not, that had

445
00:41:38.440 --> 00:41:42.509
Stephen: the emphasis in the development of secular Buddhism

446
00:41:42.930 --> 00:41:47.450
Stephen: has gone from being a critique of

447
00:41:48.130 --> 00:41:52.019
Stephen: what one might loosely call traditional Buddhism, too

448
00:41:52.300 --> 00:42:00.419
Stephen: much more of a suigenerous development, including, of course, a much more intensive reading of

449
00:42:01.140 --> 00:42:02.730
Stephen: it's a classic.

450
00:42:03.210 --> 00:42:11.029
Stephen: and and also for me. I guess this might be a difference between us is that

451
00:42:11.180 --> 00:42:13.239
Stephen: I very much see it as

452
00:42:13.770 --> 00:42:17.340
Stephen: the dumbers putting down roots in Western

453
00:42:17.490 --> 00:42:19.550
in Western culture.

454
00:42:19.880 --> 00:42:26.769
Stephen: just as it put down roots in Chinese culture 2 millennia ago. And and it's been

455
00:42:26.780 --> 00:42:46.920
Stephen: kind of a process of of acculturation that has been repeated many types. And now it's just our turn it. It's not an exercise in Western arrogance or anything like that. We're trying to develop a dharma that

456
00:42:47.580 --> 00:42:53.020
Stephen: that that speaks to us in our own language, and also uses our own

457
00:42:54.070 --> 00:43:06.360
Stephen: cultural and intellectual resources, just as the Chinese did, and they brought in Taoism into into the mix. And so.

458
00:43:06.440 --> 00:43:10.109
Stephen: yeah, II think that yeah, we we no longer.

459
00:43:11.290 --> 00:43:14.760
Stephen: We're no longer feeling it ill at ease with

460
00:43:15.270 --> 00:43:20.059
Stephen: more conventional Buddhists. We're just on a bit of a different track

461
00:43:25.690 --> 00:43:32.190
Stephen: following on from both of those comments for me. II actually can't do anything else

462
00:43:32.300 --> 00:43:34.830
Stephen: but interpret it

463
00:43:34.950 --> 00:43:40.209
Stephen: in my life and in my culture, and in a way that works.

464
00:43:40.840 --> 00:43:43.250
Stephen: II can't, and I'm

465
00:43:43.820 --> 00:43:59.520
Stephen: the responses I've had to the book that I wrote, which those of you who read it would know, you know, is aimed at people who are new to the dumber. Primarily I've had so many people thank me for writing it.

466
00:43:59.590 --> 00:44:04.060
Stephen: cause the Duma would otherwise have been inaccessible.

467
00:44:05.730 --> 00:44:07.010
Stephen: So

468
00:44:08.760 --> 00:44:27.919
Stephen: you know, I love that we're actually embracing doing this in our own culture, because sometimes in this multicultural society, where culture is treated as a really important thing, and we've got to be diverse and all the rest of it, you can sometimes almost be embarrassed to look at it through the lens of our own Western culture.

469
00:44:28.380 --> 00:44:31.160
Stephen:  But I found that refreshing.

470
00:44:31.540 --> 00:44:32.630
Stephen: But

471
00:44:33.010 --> 00:44:41.130
Stephen: yeah, I guess for me, and I and I know there are a lot of people like this, because this is the feedback I get about my book is that

472
00:44:41.920 --> 00:44:43.850
Stephen: it's the only way I can do it.

473
00:44:49.430 --> 00:44:53.820
Stephen:  maybe here. And then there's

474
00:44:53.890 --> 00:44:56.770
Stephen: yeah, someone online, too. Maybe next

475
00:44:57.540 --> 00:45:15.979
Stephen: it's all here. So I want to circle back to the idea of death and inevitability and uncertainty about dying, and from the secular perspective, just really practically looking for guidance or

476
00:45:16.030 --> 00:45:21.110
Stephen: advice on where to seek resources or practices

477
00:45:21.130 --> 00:45:44.930
Stephen: that one could employ just to get more comfortable. With this idea we all understand the idea we all and like, I like how Winton you said is just a matter of living on rather than thinking about dying. But it's still kind of a taboo. We don't think we don't talk about it until it actually happens. So how do we get comfortable with this particular uncertainty? Thank you.

478
00:45:46.840 --> 00:45:57.130
Stephen: Well, in my in, I can only really speak of my own experience here, and I have found the meditations on death that I was taught by my Tibetan teachers really

479
00:45:57.340 --> 00:46:00.410
Stephen: to be immensely valuable.

480
00:46:01.190 --> 00:46:07.099
Stephen: and that means, in a way, turning your awareness of death into a practice.

481
00:46:08.060 --> 00:46:20.160
Stephen: something that you you come back to again and again. And there are basically 3 elements. To this reflection one is to reflect on the certainty of death.

482
00:46:20.650 --> 00:46:28.070
Stephen: and to really think it through to really keep coming back to that idea. It's like a classical text and keep returning to it.

483
00:46:28.260 --> 00:46:32.680
Stephen: And you'll find reflections on death in all cultures and all societies, too.

484
00:46:32.720 --> 00:46:33.980
Stephen: plenty of material

485
00:46:35.040 --> 00:46:42.990
Stephen: to meditate on the uncertainty of its time is really an extension of the Buddhist meditation on impermanence.

486
00:46:43.130 --> 00:46:50.470
Stephen: and, in fact, the Tibetan phrase is of that is called chile, which means the impermanence which is death.

487
00:46:51.180 --> 00:46:56.419
Stephen: That's the core, existential impermanence in a sense, the only impermanence that really matters.

488
00:46:56.690 --> 00:47:06.380
Stephen: The fact that I am permanent and I'm changing moment to moment, and that, you know, is totally uncertain as to when you know the end will come.

489
00:47:06.460 --> 00:47:18.980
Stephen: and to try to get that idea deep down, built in because that provides us with that a real. It allows us a so, a

490
00:47:19.190 --> 00:47:24.939
Stephen: an awareness that keeps our priorities uppermost in our minds.

491
00:47:26.570 --> 00:47:31.779
Stephen: That's why, it's an ethical practice, because, traditionally.

492
00:47:32.090 --> 00:47:38.839
Stephen: the third step is about. Therefore I should practice the dharma, because only the dharma will continue with me into my next life.

493
00:47:39.090 --> 00:47:47.260
Stephen: Maybe that's the case. I have no idea, but I find it more useful to turn that meditation into a question.

494
00:47:47.380 --> 00:47:53.220
Stephen: If death is certain, if the time is uncertain. What should I do? It's a normative question.

495
00:47:53.890 --> 00:48:02.269
Stephen: And to turn it into a Koan. Basically, what should I do? It's an ethical color that is based upon something that is

496
00:48:02.660 --> 00:48:08.199
Stephen: the only thing that is certain is the uncertainty of what I would tie.

497
00:48:08.210 --> 00:48:12.779
Stephen: Uncertainty is is paradoxically the only thing that we can be sure about.

498
00:48:13.720 --> 00:48:19.469
Stephen: So turn that into, instead of a source of of anxiety and fear, and

499
00:48:19.650 --> 00:48:21.719
Stephen: whatever turn it into a

500
00:48:22.370 --> 00:48:30.410
Stephen: into a focus for refining and reminding yourself of what your priorities in life are.

501
00:48:30.870 --> 00:48:35.560
Stephen: use it as as a measurement to judge what you're doing in your life.

502
00:48:35.600 --> 00:48:41.010
Stephen: and paradoxically. by meditating on death. In this way

503
00:48:41.370 --> 00:48:51.890
Stephen: you become that much more acutely sensitized to the fact that you're alive. and I think by splitting off in a binary fashion.

504
00:48:51.930 --> 00:48:56.490
Stephen: life, good, death, bad. You actually fail

505
00:48:56.580 --> 00:48:59.370
Stephen: to embrace life itself.

506
00:48:59.430 --> 00:49:11.149
Stephen: You're basically pretending that life should be able to go on as long as I want it to. and you assume it kind of will. in a way, you know, emotionally, perhaps so. To try to

507
00:49:11.220 --> 00:49:15.290
Stephen: recognize that death is paradoxically

508
00:49:15.630 --> 00:49:19.940
Stephen: key to gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.

509
00:49:20.570 --> 00:49:24.979
Stephen: as Heidegger calls it. Life is a being towards death

510
00:49:26.710 --> 00:49:28.059
Stephen: always every moment.

511
00:49:33.860 --> 00:49:42.160
Stephen: Yeah, just to flesh that out a little bit. one of my favourite texts in this is,

512
00:49:42.250 --> 00:49:46.930
Stephen: a book that's just been or was published just fairly recently

513
00:49:47.190 --> 00:49:52.370
Stephen: a compilation of the Roman Stoic philosopher Senecas.

514
00:49:52.480 --> 00:49:59.120
Stephen:  writings on Death, and the book is called How to Die, and

515
00:49:59.130 --> 00:50:02.999
Stephen: and the first, the first thing it says is.

516
00:50:03.270 --> 00:50:16.079
Stephen: well, don't be afraid of death, because nothing bad can happen to someone who doesn't exist anymore a very straightforward piece of thinking. So

517
00:50:16.280 --> 00:50:17.900
Stephen: what's the problem?

518
00:50:17.930 --> 00:50:30.979
Stephen: Well, the the problem which we can't reduce is that there's a wonderful idea in phenomenology of the life world that each of us.

519
00:50:31.290 --> 00:50:47.840
Stephen: Yeah, we we live in a bigger world. But each of us has a life world. Our life world is the people we know. That the songs that you know. Go on in our minds, all our all our memories.

520
00:50:47.850 --> 00:50:57.129
Stephen: all our you know, the things that are meaningful to us will all be completely wiped.

521
00:50:57.240 --> 00:51:05.820
Stephen: completely deleted. And this, I think, is, is what makes death literally awesome. It it's

522
00:51:05.840 --> 00:51:10.829
Stephen: it, I think, that the sense of awe of that complete

523
00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:14.450
Stephen: annihilation is is amazing.

524
00:51:14.470 --> 00:51:17.050
Stephen: I mean, I keep going back to what I was saying about

525
00:51:17.910 --> 00:51:21.189
Stephen: tied up in contemplation of death.

526
00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:34.020
Stephen: The Swedish practice of durst, Dabney, because I'm looking. I'm throwing out objects which are meaningful to me, but absolutely meaningless to anyone else. Just appritus.

527
00:51:34.260 --> 00:51:35.540
Stephen: So

528
00:51:35.580 --> 00:51:40.820
Stephen: I don't think we can, or indeed should

529
00:51:41.370 --> 00:51:43.810
Stephen: trivialise, then

530
00:51:43.880 --> 00:51:45.169
Stephen: aspect of it.

531
00:51:45.370 --> 00:51:49.919
Stephen: but at the same time understand the point that Heglen makes, that

532
00:51:50.040 --> 00:52:04.559
Stephen: everything that really matters to us, every relationship in particular that really matters to us is premised on the fact that it's at risk. It's at stake. It's mortal.

533
00:52:05.130 --> 00:52:08.069
Stephen: you know. If if if

534
00:52:08.390 --> 00:52:11.610
Stephen: where we're in love with someone.

535
00:52:11.730 --> 00:52:19.170
Stephen: and we're both immortal gods. It's not going to be much of a relationship, really, because we won't care.

536
00:52:19.200 --> 00:52:21.569
Stephen: We won't care. There's nothing to care for.

537
00:52:22.100 --> 00:52:26.589
Stephen: We only care for that which is at stake at risk.

538
00:52:27.020 --> 00:52:32.009
Stephen: And so death, again, is what enriches and informs love

539
00:52:36.170 --> 00:52:44.400
Stephen: agree with all of that. And, as is my role, a practical answer which I think the question was, how do we change the unwillingness to

540
00:52:44.610 --> 00:52:46.960
Stephen: address it? Think about it, integrate it.

541
00:52:47.210 --> 00:52:50.519
Stephen:  May we talk about it

542
00:52:51.170 --> 00:52:53.199
Stephen: and talk about it without qualm?

543
00:52:54.120 --> 00:53:00.229
Stephen: I noticed I try to do that. I think about death quite a lot, too, and have integrated.

544
00:53:09.390 --> 00:53:10.280
Stephen: Okay?

545
00:53:19.390 --> 00:53:20.989
Stephen: Didn't know it hid in there.

546
00:53:22.490 --> 00:53:34.230
Stephen:  yeah, I've mentioned, I'm building a personal growth program that people can do. And and I've built it into exercises there. But

547
00:53:34.530 --> 00:53:38.750
Stephen: I think the main thing is, if we can get personally

548
00:53:39.070 --> 00:53:42.530
Stephen: comfortable talking about it and

549
00:53:42.890 --> 00:53:44.810
Stephen: find it valuable to talk about

550
00:53:45.690 --> 00:53:48.160
Stephen: that that

551
00:53:48.550 --> 00:53:55.609
Stephen: the main thing that that starts to shift because what I found is, you know, when you first say something about it.

552
00:53:55.830 --> 00:53:57.030
Stephen: there's sort of this?

553
00:53:57.190 --> 00:54:05.589
Stephen: Hush, yeah. Were we allowed to say even saying the word dead like, or died instead of passed away

554
00:54:06.120 --> 00:54:13.359
Stephen: or passed on? Or what have you like? This whole idea of dying is this just even the word people sometimes won't utter?

555
00:54:13.900 --> 00:54:23.530
Stephen: So yeah, I, the only way that I've found is is being at ease talking about it myself

556
00:54:24.410 --> 00:54:28.910
Stephen: as a practical, you know. How can we have an impact? Yeah.

557
00:54:30.110 --> 00:54:30.960
Stephen: thanks.

558
00:54:31.190 --> 00:54:32.379
Next few months

559
00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:45.020
Stephen: we've got Leanne online. Then, Leslie. Then 3 people in the room as well.

560
00:54:49.220 --> 00:55:03.650
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yes, good morning, and thank you for this opportunity to sum up our last 9 days. I guess I want to begin by saying that I woke up this morning feeling very unresolved about last night.

561
00:55:03.810 --> 00:55:06.929
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): so I listen to John Donna O'donohue.

562
00:55:07.070 --> 00:55:17.799
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and I listened to something called the inner landscape of beauty. It was a an interview, a podcast and one of the things, he said, is.

563
00:55:17.870 --> 00:55:25.660
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): if you realize how vital to your whole spirit and being, and character and mind and health. Friendship actually is.

564
00:55:25.700 --> 00:55:42.859
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): you will take time for it. But for so many of us we have to be in trouble before we remember what's essential. It's one of the loneliness of humans that you hold on desperately to things that make you miserable, and you only realize what you have when you are almost about to lose it.

565
00:55:43.430 --> 00:55:52.559
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So, listening to you this morning, Lenore, I felt an explosion in my own heart. And now that's moved into my throat, Chakra.

566
00:55:53.070 --> 00:55:59.370
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and it's interesting that you said that you felt dismissed with regards to the

567
00:55:59.430 --> 00:56:02.400
discussions on the individual verses.

568
00:56:02.640 --> 00:56:05.980
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country):  The group?

569
00:56:06.410 --> 00:56:13.100
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So I think and and of course I may have been one of those people that have been in that

570
00:56:13.320 --> 00:56:16.879
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): sort of

571
00:56:16.910 --> 00:56:23.990
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): group of those who didn't consider the individual practice important. But that's not the case at all.

572
00:56:24.270 --> 00:56:27.519
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I think it's also a matter of whether we are

573
00:56:27.570 --> 00:56:36.089
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): by nature introverts and more introspective compared to, as you said earlier in the the course

574
00:56:36.330 --> 00:56:38.810
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): being an intro, an extrovert.

575
00:56:39.300 --> 00:56:44.439
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): So my practice began in 1989, with the same Go anchor.

576
00:56:44.880 --> 00:56:48.130
and it has unfolded and evolved and

577
00:56:48.420 --> 00:56:54.430
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): revealed itself throughout the decades. And I think.

578
00:56:54.580 --> 00:57:09.039
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): coming back to nonviolent communication last night which I have explored along the way. It didn't land for me at all. But what did land for me with regards to developing

579
00:57:09.130 --> 00:57:10.939
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): those interpersonal

580
00:57:12.220 --> 00:57:15.930
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): skills. But and and taking them into the group

581
00:57:16.030 --> 00:57:24.230
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): was something else which was inside dialogue which enables it, which enabled me to go much deeper

582
00:57:24.790 --> 00:57:28.250
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): in that exploration of the

583
00:57:28.580 --> 00:57:35.610
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): interrelational space. So I needed to express that this morning

584
00:57:35.980 --> 00:57:46.879
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and to say that probably the most relevant thing but came out of why I wrote a work feeling the way I was

585
00:57:46.910 --> 00:57:50.160
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): was indeed about dismissiveness.

586
00:57:51.240 --> 00:58:02.400
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And what happened last night was when you said I recall I'll try to use the framework. When I recall

587
00:58:02.430 --> 00:58:06.759
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that you were saying you sent an email with the handouts.

588
00:58:06.930 --> 00:58:17.380
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And there was this feeling of that. There was an insistence that you sent the email with the handouts. There was no email received at this end.

589
00:58:17.580 --> 00:58:24.059
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And we were having our online, you know, sort of checking in with each other, which we've all been doing, which has been

590
00:58:24.140 --> 00:58:32.429
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): fabulous. And of course we've missed out from those physical interactions that you've all had in the room, which, of course, have the

591
00:58:32.450 --> 00:58:44.279
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): capacity to take things much deeper, and perhaps resolve things much more so. Last night I recognized I was there was this I felt dismissed.

592
00:58:45.950 --> 00:58:52.510
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): There was a dismay, you know, because there was dismissiveness of like Look, I've sent the the the email, and you've got the handouts.

593
00:58:52.760 --> 00:58:54.060
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): But we hadn't.

594
00:58:54.180 --> 00:59:01.269
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And so it was interesting today that you also felt dismissed with regards to

595
00:59:01.300 --> 00:59:02.460
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): your

596
00:59:03.210 --> 00:59:06.349
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): offering your contribution.

597
00:59:06.850 --> 00:59:14.480
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And I think that that for me is the only thing that is relevant in And in that

598
00:59:14.810 --> 00:59:22.490
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): resolution of this topic of the individual versus the group when they really are inseparable. And

599
00:59:22.560 --> 00:59:25.490
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and what's important is to find the bridge

600
00:59:25.940 --> 00:59:29.600
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and the bridge for me needs to be much deeper

601
00:59:29.780 --> 00:59:42.150
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): then, perhaps techniques and pathologizing about the individual which has also. I guess. triggered some reactivity within me

602
00:59:42.210 --> 00:59:49.489
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): with regards to self development or personal development, particularly from a psychological perspective.

603
00:59:49.530 --> 00:59:50.730
has been.

604
00:59:50.740 --> 00:59:58.320
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): know my experience has been. It's like there's something wrong with me, and I need to fix it. And I need to continue to

605
00:59:58.360 --> 01:00:03.889
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): on that in that endeavor. And I think I've just come to that place of enough.

606
01:00:04.270 --> 01:00:06.950
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): There's something that needs to be deeper than that

607
01:00:07.290 --> 01:00:09.309
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): to thank you for this opportunity.

608
01:00:11.480 --> 01:00:13.180
Stephen: Thank you very much.

609
01:00:13.430 --> 01:00:18.340
Stephen: You want to respond. Yeah, just first of all, on the email

610
01:00:18.400 --> 01:00:32.059
Stephen: did send it. And it didn't go. So you know, yeah, you didn't get it. And and I did send it. But yeah, that's really interesting. That such a small thing. Yeah, we

611
01:00:32.330 --> 01:00:38.429
Stephen: what I'm thinking, as you're saying, that is, ironically, the importance of

612
01:00:39.780 --> 01:00:49.839
Stephen: personal practice. Because we are sensitive. We're sensitive creatures. you know something as small as someone saying, Oh, no. I sent an email.

613
01:00:50.250 --> 01:00:53.959
Stephen: No, I did. You know something as small as that can

614
01:00:54.320 --> 01:00:55.980
Stephen: set of reactivity?

615
01:00:56.340 --> 01:00:59.439
Stephen: You know, someone saying.

616
01:00:59.880 --> 01:01:06.039
Stephen:  individual practice is not important, you know, can

617
01:01:06.090 --> 01:01:07.450
Stephen: have an impact.

618
01:01:07.510 --> 01:01:24.140
Stephen: I mean this issue we were exploring yesterday of voice. And how important it is. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the deeper I connection between individual and and group practice. But

619
01:01:24.220 --> 01:01:27.139
Stephen: II agree with you that there's a

620
01:01:27.690 --> 01:01:29.120
Stephen: inextricable.

621
01:01:29.140 --> 01:01:31.629
Stephen: an important link between the 2.

622
01:01:34.240 --> 01:01:39.300
Stephen: Shall we move on to the next question? There's a considerable queue. We've got

623
01:01:39.690 --> 01:01:44.239
Lesley Synge: Leslie on line next. Yes, good morning, dear friends.

624
01:01:44.280 --> 01:01:48.809
Lesley Synge: I'd like to go back to something you said Stephen, about.

625
01:01:48.980 --> 01:01:54.640
Lesley Synge: Remember the big picture. Don't get caught up and let's always remember

626
01:01:54.750 --> 01:01:59.850
Lesley Synge: sublime. And I want to particularly thank you and Martine for

627
01:02:00.130 --> 01:02:04.679
Lesley Synge: the huge effort of coming all this way to Australia.

628
01:02:04.950 --> 01:02:20.160
Lesley Synge: It's it's a it's quite taxing. Being a teacher, I know, as just a teacher of teenagers, a teacher of writing students. But to teach at this level of profundity to us

629
01:02:20.360 --> 01:02:22.300
Lesley Synge: diverse individuals.

630
01:02:22.430 --> 01:02:28.440
Lesley Synge: It is absolutely astonishing to me, and I'm I'm very, very grateful.

631
01:02:28.460 --> 01:02:31.099
So I want to just ask you

632
01:02:31.340 --> 01:02:35.619
Lesley Synge: if you realize that one of the greetings in Australia

633
01:02:36.120 --> 01:02:46.849
Lesley Synge: at the beginning of all meetings these days, thanks to Government intervention, is for an acknowledgment to country, and in that acknowledgement

634
01:02:47.070 --> 01:02:56.289
Lesley Synge: which comes out of an acknowledgment to first nations, people in Australia, we say. we remember our

635
01:02:57.420 --> 01:03:10.370
Lesley Synge: our elders, who are past. present. and emerging, or future. And now I feel a much greater connection. thanks to your teachings.

636
01:03:10.940 --> 01:03:19.950
Lesley Synge: with this great dilemma of living in a white settler society which has a history, as Winton has mentioned, of genocide

637
01:03:20.720 --> 01:03:30.020
Lesley Synge:  in terms of somehow bridging, as Leanne was talking about just just so recently bridging

638
01:03:30.160 --> 01:03:38.590
Lesley Synge: really important gaps in our society. And II wasn't sure if you realized how

639
01:03:38.660 --> 01:03:42.969
Lesley Synge: this past, present and emerging concept.

640
01:03:44.220 --> 01:03:50.369
Lesley Synge: Is so aligned with indigenous culture. and I just thank you again.

641
01:03:50.650 --> 01:03:54.079
Lesley Synge: All people who have helped make this happen. Thank you.

642
01:03:56.950 --> 01:04:05.299
Stephen: Thanks, Leslie. Thank you very much, Lesley. Thank you. I think we can move to Judy's question.

643
01:04:07.350 --> 01:04:08.100
Stephen: It's good.

644
01:04:09.380 --> 01:04:10.070
Hmm.

645
01:04:10.180 --> 01:04:10.850
Stephen: okay.

646
01:04:13.280 --> 01:04:14.130
Stephen: A.

647
01:04:14.840 --> 01:04:21.320
Stephen: I guess I've been considering. I think the question of

648
01:04:21.530 --> 01:04:24.760
Stephen: What the chips didn't work.

649
01:04:24.960 --> 01:04:29.089
Stephen: and particularly for for Steven, in terms of one

650
01:04:30.460 --> 01:04:35.690
Stephen: forecast, and and for the course I was after.

651
01:04:36.200 --> 01:04:45.459
Stephen: you know which was written in 15 after Buddhism. Did you say, yeah, when was that? Yeah?

652
01:04:46.050 --> 01:04:59.250
Stephen: And those concepts were there and etc.? And I probably read them quite a few times, and it was just, that's right. Where are you at? In the cycle of practice in life? And coming to this course and rereading it and thinking.

653
01:05:00.050 --> 01:05:17.649
Stephen: reactivity, you know, here I am focusing on letting, going, of suffering or being with suffering, but it had an impact on my practice to sort of refocus on reactivity and stillness, particularly during this retreat.

654
01:05:17.800 --> 01:05:19.620
Stephen: But really the

655
01:05:19.660 --> 01:05:30.129
Stephen: I'm not quite sure if I've got it right or understood it. And so I've been trying to formulate what is my question. But it probably just goes back to in that refashioning

656
01:05:30.240 --> 01:05:34.620
Stephen: truth and past and

657
01:05:34.640 --> 01:05:36.280
Stephen: reactivity.

658
01:05:36.340 --> 01:05:43.569
Stephen: What's your, what's the core intent there? And between suffering

659
01:05:43.580 --> 01:05:55.759
Stephen: and reactivity and the tasks that we have at hand, I guess my basic question. or the larger but basic question, what am I doing with suffering and reactive?

660
01:05:55.880 --> 01:05:56.800
Stephen: Have

661
01:05:59.200 --> 01:06:06.570
Stephen: the problem with writing books is that I once I finish the book, I kind of forget about it. And

662
01:06:06.830 --> 01:06:10.959
Stephen: I obviously don't reread my own stuff, that narcissist

663
01:06:11.550 --> 01:06:17.009
Stephen: and I move on. And I try to get actually. And these sorts of questions

664
01:06:17.600 --> 01:06:26.670
Stephen: you know about my own development of ideas. I'm possibly the worst person to ask frankly.

665
01:06:28.930 --> 01:06:39.970
Stephen: well, I guess the core. If you try to put it in a nutshell. And we're running out of time. So I'll do my utmost to do that.  the

666
01:06:40.880 --> 01:06:43.309
Lesley Synge: yeah. The 4 noble truth

667
01:06:43.820 --> 01:06:49.809
Stephen: are essentially true are basically claiming for propositional truths.

668
01:06:50.070 --> 01:06:51.530
Stephen: Life is suffering.

669
01:06:51.650 --> 01:07:06.249
Stephen: The origin of suffering was craving, the ending of suffering is the ending of craving and the path to the ending of craving Nirvana is an overlay fall path. So that's the sort of framework within which Buddhism is generally

670
01:07:06.450 --> 01:07:07.490
Stephen: understood.

671
01:07:08.430 --> 01:07:11.460
Stephen:  without going into any detail

672
01:07:12.410 --> 01:07:25.899
Stephen: but my studies, my reflections, my readings. And as someone mentioned, yeah, Reenas, as it mentioned last night, particularly my reading of the work of a British Baku called Niana vir.

673
01:07:26.360 --> 01:07:32.920
Stephen: A shifted that perspective and made me recognise that actually.

674
01:07:33.680 --> 01:07:42.409
Stephen: what really matters is not these truths, whether they're true or not, but how we actually respond to 4 basic facts of life.

675
01:07:42.670 --> 01:07:55.260
Stephen: So in my cartography, I don't speak of truth, but I have reinstated 4 facts, suffering a rising of reactivity, ceasing of reactivity and parthing.

676
01:07:56.530 --> 01:07:59.879
Stephen: and in a nutshell

677
01:08:00.110 --> 01:08:05.290
Stephen: for me the the crucial hinge of the crucial change

678
01:08:05.670 --> 01:08:11.630
Stephen: is to move from thinking of reactivity as the cause

679
01:08:11.900 --> 01:08:18.360
Stephen: of suffering, even though it very often does cause a lot of suffering

680
01:08:18.800 --> 01:08:23.370
Stephen: to recognize that the primary problem is reactivity

681
01:08:23.439 --> 01:08:28.220
Stephen: is that it inhibits and prevents us from flourishing.

682
01:08:28.439 --> 01:08:30.000
Stephen: in other words, from

683
01:08:30.040 --> 01:08:38.290
Stephen: opening up to a space of non-reactive awareness from which the eightfold path can then emerge.

684
01:08:39.050 --> 01:08:39.910
Stephen: and

685
01:08:40.130 --> 01:08:43.930
Stephen: that in a nutshell is kind of the core

686
01:08:44.319 --> 01:08:45.600
Stephen: change

687
01:08:46.210 --> 01:08:55.729
Stephen: in my understanding of Buddhism that has shifted it from what I call a truth-based metaphysics to a task-based ethics.

688
01:09:00.359 --> 01:09:03.529
Oh. she's gossiping.

689
01:09:03.899 --> 01:09:05.550
Stephen: Good. Okay.

690
01:09:06.700 --> 01:09:09.409
Stephen: I think we've got Kate next. If that's

691
01:09:10.600 --> 01:09:14.590
Stephen: thank you, I'd like to come back to to death.

692
01:09:15.250 --> 01:09:18.689
Stephen: And would

693
01:09:18.990 --> 01:09:23.969
Stephen: feel to bring forward Roshie, Joan Halifax! And

694
01:09:24.170 --> 01:09:31.180
Stephen: how incredibly helpful I've found engaging with her work, and

695
01:09:31.779 --> 01:09:35.390
Stephen: broadly, and the book

696
01:09:35.930 --> 01:09:38.779
Stephen: standing at the edge.

697
01:09:39.660 --> 01:09:49.100
Stephen: Can't! We can't think of the whole title at the moment, but deals with engagement including with death, so highly recommend

698
01:09:49.160 --> 01:09:50.209
that book.

699
01:09:50.380 --> 01:09:51.479
Stephen: and

700
01:09:53.189 --> 01:09:56.959
Stephen: and her approach is

701
01:09:58.650 --> 01:10:01.170
Stephen: what stays with me is about

702
01:10:01.750 --> 01:10:03.809
Stephen: being with love.

703
01:10:04.870 --> 01:10:06.010
Stephen: and

704
01:10:06.970 --> 01:10:12.719
Stephen: and it opens us out from from fear to wonder and

705
01:10:12.840 --> 01:10:21.080
Stephen: connection, and and a privilege of engaging and being with people who are dying.

706
01:10:21.310 --> 01:10:25.989
Stephen: the fineness that that comes forward because I suppose.

707
01:10:26.200 --> 01:10:28.950
Stephen: lot of the letting go that that can happen.

708
01:10:29.230 --> 01:10:37.620
Stephen: So it's very beautiful work. And it helped take away a lot of fear and open something else much bigger.

709
01:10:38.310 --> 01:10:59.720
Stephen: And the only other thing on death that I'd like to share because Carol isn't here. The last conversation I had with her before she left was that one of her big responses to what's happening in the world, and what she can do was to retrain in in palliative care and grief, counselling

710
01:10:59.740 --> 01:11:01.310
Stephen: so very much

711
01:11:01.330 --> 01:11:03.330
Stephen: that aspect of care

712
01:11:03.420 --> 01:11:16.519
Stephen: when we don't know what the answers are. The problems are enormous, and a lot of them are outside our view, even our view. And

713
01:11:17.030 --> 01:11:20.289
Stephen: when she said that I made a commitment to share that with the group.

714
01:11:20.690 --> 01:11:30.610
Stephen: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Kim. Thanks, Kate. We've got Jessica next. Then we've got di online. Then we've got des. Then we've got Tim. Then we've got Meg.

715
01:11:35.270 --> 01:11:36.470
Stephen: That's good.

716
01:11:37.370 --> 01:11:54.029
Stephen: thank you. And there's a question for Stephen Stephen. I was just going back to the cartography of care and the the last sort of strand, if you like the commitment. Oh, yeah, which you know, across all 4 tasks.

717
01:11:54.270 --> 01:11:56.029
Stephen: And the

718
01:11:57.450 --> 01:12:00.640
Stephen:  essential

719
01:12:01.350 --> 01:12:09.600
Stephen:  I was. Gonna say, they cancel each other out. But that's not doesn't sound very positive. I just I was just interested in.

720
01:12:10.010 --> 01:12:18.349
Stephen: If you could unpack this a little bit more. I mean to me when I when I looked at them, and II sort of was was sitting with them, and and I thought. Well.

721
01:12:19.030 --> 01:12:22.840
Stephen: I mean what they are reflecting, of course, is is the uncertainty

722
01:12:23.190 --> 01:12:25.990
Stephen:  factor, which is

723
01:12:26.350 --> 01:12:36.879
Stephen: omnipresent. But I just wondered if you could speak a little to this, please the because it seems to me it's like the the sort of the thing to take, you know, to to be taking forward in one's practice, and I was just interested if you could comment on it.

724
01:12:37.370 --> 01:12:46.089
Stephen: Yeah. The 4 commitments which are at the very bottom of the chart are actually drawn from the Chinese tradition.

725
01:12:46.520 --> 01:12:49.790
Stephen: These are in Zen. They're called the 4 great vows

726
01:12:50.630 --> 01:12:55.349
Stephen: in, say, Joan Halifax's community. Every session

727
01:12:55.840 --> 01:13:02.659
Stephen: of at the end of every day's practice. You chant these 4 vows. They are very, very central.

728
01:13:03.150 --> 01:13:07.490
Stephen: and I'd known about them through my own training in Zen.

729
01:13:07.500 --> 01:13:11.559
Stephen: I'm sure you're familiar with them in other iterations, too.

730
01:13:12.060 --> 01:13:23.479
Stephen: But I came across a book written by a Japanese scholar some years ago, in which he showed that these actually are not Zen practices.

731
01:13:23.700 --> 01:13:27.869
Stephen: They're found in early Chinese texts.

732
01:13:27.940 --> 01:13:31.650
Stephen: and that they are understood traditionally

733
01:13:31.670 --> 01:13:34.670
Stephen: as referring to the 4 noble truths.

734
01:13:35.710 --> 01:13:36.760
Stephen: and

735
01:13:37.240 --> 01:13:40.549
Stephen: that then struck me as well.

736
01:13:40.580 --> 01:13:42.819
Stephen: there's a kind of an affirmation

737
01:13:42.910 --> 01:13:54.549
Stephen: that the 4 noble truths are not about believing in what is true, a sort of doctrine or dogma, but the 4 noble truths are actually the foundations for a certain way of committing yourself to live

738
01:13:55.000 --> 01:13:56.570
Stephen: in a particular way.

739
01:13:56.660 --> 01:14:03.789
Stephen: and these 4 vows map on. Very well, therefore, to the 4 tasks.

740
01:14:05.380 --> 01:14:06.370
Stephen: And

741
01:14:06.660 --> 01:14:14.150
Stephen: what I also like about them, is the fact that they're framed paradoxically.

742
01:14:14.990 --> 01:14:18.409
Stephen: In other words, they're presenting you with an impossible task.

743
01:14:19.250 --> 01:14:24.520
Stephen: and one might say, Well, that's a bit ridiculous to the rational mind it probably is.

744
01:14:24.530 --> 01:14:27.379
Stephen: but actually, I think, existentially.

745
01:14:27.510 --> 01:14:34.429
Stephen: It points to something really crucial in particular, a thing like as vast as climate change. I think it's quite relevant.

746
01:14:34.540 --> 01:14:40.200
Stephen: Beings are boundless. In other words, there's an infinite number of them. But I vow to care for them. All

747
01:14:41.440 --> 01:14:45.460
Stephen: reactivity is inexhaustible, but I'm going to let go of.

748
01:14:45.980 --> 01:14:53.750
Stephen: And so so what that points to is the fact that you acknowledge the

749
01:14:53.840 --> 01:15:01.160
Stephen: infinity of suffering, but in acknowledging it you cannot but be called to respond to.

750
01:15:01.650 --> 01:15:07.830
Stephen: even though logically. there's no way you or Brian the next few years of our life are going to sort out the problem.

751
01:15:08.150 --> 01:15:19.129
Stephen: So that also recognizes that we're not dealing with something on a on the purely an individual level, although that although that is clearly where it starts, it starts in your

752
01:15:20.000 --> 01:15:23.490
Stephen: you're yearning to respond to this

753
01:15:24.150 --> 01:15:30.379
Stephen: infinite suffering. See, I will take that on, but at the same time realizing that you can actually never

754
01:15:30.720 --> 01:15:35.749
Stephen: finish it, which suggests that it's the work of generations

755
01:15:36.130 --> 01:15:42.050
Stephen: that you're continuing. Therefore, the work of previous generations. And that's what, in a sense

756
01:15:42.720 --> 01:15:46.100
Stephen: creates and sustains and develops

757
01:15:46.340 --> 01:15:52.230
Stephen: being part of a tradition being part of a Maasanga. If you wish a great community.

758
01:15:53.160 --> 01:15:55.390
and so I've always found these

759
01:15:55.690 --> 01:15:56.790
Stephen: vows

760
01:15:58.320 --> 01:16:03.200
Stephen: personally very poignant. I think they speak a great

761
01:16:03.440 --> 01:16:05.860
Stephen: truth, as it were, about.

762
01:16:06.390 --> 01:16:13.990
Stephen: you know the limitations of our deepest longings. and they undermine any sense of kind of

763
01:16:14.990 --> 01:16:28.710
Stephen: self, grand or self-importance. At the same time they recognise these are tasks that communities over time can seek to fulfill. but are beyond the capacity of a

764
01:16:28.810 --> 01:16:31.449
Stephen: particular person or a particular group

765
01:16:34.960 --> 01:16:37.539
Stephen: we've got die next online.

766
01:16:39.260 --> 01:16:47.200
DiPelletier: This is a comment really, and directed to Lenore. The email came through this morning for me at 9 15,

767
01:16:47.390 --> 01:16:51.060
DiPelletier: which is interesting and validates your actions.

768
01:16:51.120 --> 01:16:56.970
DiPelletier: But it doesn't undo the feelings that you've had when things went a bit awry.

769
01:16:57.360 --> 01:17:05.510
DiPelletier: and I'm sorry about that. But furthermore, it reminded me. as we're so interconnected

770
01:17:05.690 --> 01:17:08.499
DiPelletier: that we have to be cautious

771
01:17:08.910 --> 01:17:16.479
DiPelletier: about the level of, we can get hurt by technology, even in something as simple as sending an email to a group

772
01:17:16.590 --> 01:17:20.830
DiPelletier: that doesn't get there. So just a heightened awareness of

773
01:17:21.300 --> 01:17:26.180
DiPelletier: our responsiveness to when technology kicks us and it hurts

774
01:17:26.810 --> 01:17:41.719
DiPelletier: and how we respond to that. It's it's another dimension of our life of interaction that has the potential for emotional response, anger, response whatever. And I'm not talking about social media. I'm talking about more personal communication.

775
01:17:41.980 --> 01:17:47.860
DiPelletier: So I just wanted to draw that to the attention of the group and thank you for your handout. I will print it.

776
01:17:50.100 --> 01:17:55.179
Stephen: Thanks, dye, I think des is up next. Then we've got Tim, and then we've got the group in Brisbane

777
01:17:57.290 --> 01:17:58.609
Stephen: that just

778
01:18:00.390 --> 01:18:03.699
Stephen: Firstly a comment or 2 on

779
01:18:04.110 --> 01:18:05.880
Stephen: on this.

780
01:18:06.710 --> 01:18:23.789
Stephen: but both come at the the same thing from from a similar angle. Yeah, Woody Allen fabulously said. I know I'm going to die, but I don't want to be there when it happens, and I was also very privileged once to be at a half day workshop with Rob Thurman.

781
01:18:23.880 --> 01:18:25.340
Stephen: And

782
01:18:25.660 --> 01:18:32.469
Stephen: is he know he who's his most famous wing, almost father, other than the Dalai Lama's mate.

783
01:18:32.590 --> 01:18:53.139
Stephen: Who said that? He said, I know you going to die, and I know you going to die, and I know you going to die. But I'm the one that's going to beat the rap. That one who is saying essentially is that we just can't conceive. We can conceive of everybody else's death. We can't conceive of our own, and that's probably the same on the saving graces of living.

784
01:18:53.590 --> 01:18:56.360
Stephen: and it's, you know.

785
01:18:56.530 --> 01:19:04.440
Stephen:  consciousness is what is, is. Is our great fear, the loss of consciousness?

786
01:19:05.230 --> 01:19:07.300
And as

787
01:19:08.570 --> 01:19:20.569
Stephen: and Alan Watts said in the the wisdom of insecurity. That consciousness is nature's ingenious mode of self torture.

788
01:19:20.930 --> 01:19:24.599
Stephen: So it's and and I think that's

789
01:19:26.540 --> 01:19:29.209
Stephen: why am I here?

790
01:19:29.320 --> 01:19:41.779
Stephen: And that's why possibly a lot of you were here because it's a kind of self-taughture that we enter into willingly because we're we're we're all seekers

791
01:19:43.380 --> 01:19:44.300
additional.

792
01:19:45.150 --> 01:19:50.490
Stephen: It's not question I'd like to ask. The 3 view

793
01:19:51.110 --> 01:19:53.400
Stephen: is that

794
01:19:53.600 --> 01:19:55.030
Stephen: we

795
01:19:55.840 --> 01:20:01.739
Stephen: we all have, and we all carry a lot of that, whether we like to know

796
01:20:02.610 --> 01:20:11.549
Stephen: some of it good, some of it bad. When I say bad, some of it he helps. Some of it tempers us.

797
01:20:12.830 --> 01:20:20.319
Stephen:  and we we have many, many parts to our identities

798
01:20:20.880 --> 01:20:26.799
Stephen: and the the Buddhist side, and is, is one

799
01:20:26.860 --> 01:20:29.089
Stephen: very, very important aspect.

800
01:20:29.310 --> 01:20:32.329
Stephen: and I think that you know what what

801
01:20:32.350 --> 01:20:34.730
Stephen: the 3 of you are doing.

802
01:20:34.900 --> 01:20:45.690
Stephen: Steven's leadership is. how does this apply to us as as people of this time? And how do we integrate it into our lives?

803
01:20:46.080 --> 01:20:47.260
Stephen: And

804
01:20:47.410 --> 01:20:54.999
Stephen: if people ask me, you know, in terms of my how do I define myself religiously or spiritually?

805
01:20:55.050 --> 01:21:14.280
Stephen: And it's an extremely difficult thing for me to do, because ethnically, I come from A, from a a Jewish background, from a family that brought me up in in very steep traditions, even though not religious traditions. And yet my spiritual

806
01:21:14.420 --> 01:21:19.610
Stephen: life. He is much more in the Buddhist. Buddhist informed.

807
01:21:20.100 --> 01:21:27.519
Stephen: So you know whether I'm a don't know whether I'm a Jew, Boo or Boo-ju. It's

808
01:21:27.900 --> 01:21:33.550
Stephen: so what I'm curious about, but I know that it's a constant dialectic.

809
01:21:33.900 --> 01:21:41.700
Stephen: So it's the interplay within me is causes me to to change and to develop and to struggle.

810
01:21:42.310 --> 01:21:50.390
Stephen: So the 3 of you come from some of their yet different backgrounds. And how does that

811
01:21:50.460 --> 01:21:56.900
Stephen: define you in terms of your cultural life as

812
01:21:57.360 --> 01:22:06.770
Stephen:  Anglos, Aussies, Anglo-french, and your Buddhist

813
01:22:07.100 --> 01:22:09.050
Stephen: open spirituality.

814
01:22:10.640 --> 01:22:13.790
Stephen: Okay? Well, I was

815
01:22:13.940 --> 01:22:19.500
Stephen: brought up in a secular humanist family. I never went to.

816
01:22:19.980 --> 01:22:34.740
Stephen: I was never given a Christian education. I was excluded from religious education classes. At school I used to sit outside with Jews. the classroom I never set foot in a church, except when the Boy Scouts dragged me there sometimes

817
01:22:35.130 --> 01:22:48.300
Stephen: and I felt something was missing. And that's one of the reasons I was drawn to Buddhism and went off to Asia, and so on. But, as is well known. I've come back to my secular roots.

818
01:22:49.340 --> 01:22:52.210
Stephen: and I think we probably all do that to some extent.

819
01:22:52.580 --> 01:23:01.109
Stephen: I'm you know, the reason. I'm perhaps articulating a secular Buddhism because I was brought up as a secular person.

820
01:23:01.210 --> 01:23:03.589
Stephen: not with a religious framework.

821
01:23:03.620 --> 01:23:09.299
Stephen: I don't think that's an accident, and that's I think that's a crucial part of how

822
01:23:09.580 --> 01:23:21.299
Stephen: me I personally have sought to interpret and read and apply these Buddhist values within a secular context. It's not a theoretical thing it has to do with my own identity.

823
01:23:21.880 --> 01:23:35.610
Stephen: But more recently, I've also been looking back, thinking more about my own ancestors and my great grandfather on my mother's side was a Wesleyan minister

824
01:23:35.980 --> 01:23:38.620
Stephen: in London. a non-conform

825
01:23:39.770 --> 01:23:44.269
Stephen: which I suspect that probably filtered through to me in some way as well.

826
01:23:45.090 --> 01:23:48.270
Stephen: Particularly through my great aunt, who was

827
01:23:49.300 --> 01:23:55.309
Stephen: his daughter, who I knew towards the end of her life. She had a huge impact on my mother.

828
01:23:55.900 --> 01:24:01.109
Stephen: so I suspect I also inherited some of that non-conformist

829
01:24:01.120 --> 01:24:06.170
Stephen: Christianity, and also I have to acknowledge.

830
01:24:06.670 --> 01:24:11.930
Stephen: you know you can't, or let's say it's impossible to deny the fact that I grew up in a Christian culture.

831
01:24:12.600 --> 01:24:20.220
Stephen: that Christian culture, even though you don't go to church, and you don't study the Bible. It's it's in, you know. It permeates

832
01:24:20.290 --> 01:24:22.710
Stephen: our literature, our theatre, our

833
01:24:23.720 --> 01:24:27.879
Stephen: so much of our public life, going into churches. I love churches

834
01:24:28.560 --> 01:24:34.870
Stephen: so on, so I cannot pretend that I don't have a deep influence

835
01:24:35.180 --> 01:24:41.790
Stephen: from the Christian tradition. I think a lot of my moral intuitions are more Christian than Buddhist in some respects.

836
01:24:42.320 --> 01:24:47.369
Stephen: And I wonder if that's not more and more the case as we move into a more global

837
01:24:48.220 --> 01:24:55.370
Stephen: sense of community. The fact that Buddhism has spread through the West. Really, you know, in my lifetime.

838
01:24:55.540 --> 01:25:07.160
Stephen: from virtually being virtually nothing to being now quite visible, at least quite vocal. So I feel that a bit like my friend the Christian theologian, Don Cupet.

839
01:25:07.280 --> 01:25:21.219
Stephen: who also acknowledges this. He says, sometimes I go through the day. And I, when I look back, I think I've been about 60% Christian, 20% Jewish, 5% Buddhist, whatever it might be that we are, whether we like it or not.

840
01:25:21.480 --> 01:25:28.499
Stephen: receivers of a plurality of religious traditions and culture. and that arguably, too.

841
01:25:28.940 --> 01:25:35.099
Stephen: can be maybe most best held within a secular tradition of toleration.

842
01:25:35.320 --> 01:25:43.490
Stephen: of inclusion. So I kind of go through all this stuff all the time. and I'll probably never settle on any one identity.

843
01:25:46.340 --> 01:25:47.279
But well.

844
01:25:47.430 --> 01:25:59.429
Stephen: I'm the product of a mixed marriage, Catholic and Protestant. And when so, when I grew up, this was a real problem.

845
01:26:00.060 --> 01:26:04.119
Stephen: There was absolutely fanatical

846
01:26:05.160 --> 01:26:09.959
Stephen: sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants. When I was growing up.

847
01:26:10.100 --> 01:26:13.050
Stephen: I often reflect back, you know why

848
01:26:13.470 --> 01:26:26.489
Stephen: our anti Semitism was comparatively weak in this country, and it was because we would. The Protestants and the Catholics were too busy fighting each other to really think about anything else.

849
01:26:26.750 --> 01:26:32.809
Stephen: And but I did. Eventually the Protestant bit won

850
01:26:32.970 --> 01:26:34.430
Stephen: went to

851
01:26:35.230 --> 01:26:41.110
Stephen: Low Church Anglican School, and I'd look back on those years

852
01:26:41.280 --> 01:26:45.860
Stephen: with great dislike.

853
01:26:46.050 --> 01:26:52.689
Stephen: But it was, but it was, I think, an important for me to have a grounding in

854
01:26:53.420 --> 01:26:58.950
Stephen: Christian culture, for reasons that Stephen talks about

855
01:26:59.160 --> 01:27:08.680
Stephen: and and to actually understand, be able to understand, for instance, religious art. If you're going to Italy and going to places like

856
01:27:09.020 --> 01:27:15.809
Stephen: the Ufitsi Gallery, and so on. There's an awful lot of really really good.

857
01:27:16.070 --> 01:27:18.689
Stephen: That's all about

858
01:27:18.770 --> 01:27:28.879
Stephen: the Assumption Assumption Association of Mary Crucifixion all the rest of it.

859
01:27:29.010 --> 01:27:30.210
Stephen: And it's

860
01:27:30.590 --> 01:27:35.920
Stephen: and also there's absolutely amazing music that's been written around

861
01:27:37.890 --> 01:27:39.220
Stephen: Christian

862
01:27:39.450 --> 01:27:43.610
Stephen: Christian forms and Christian myths, and so on.

863
01:27:43.630 --> 01:27:47.389
Stephen: I had this remarkable experience a few years ago that some

864
01:27:47.550 --> 01:27:51.230
Stephen: friends of Lenas and mine were coming down from Brisbane.

865
01:27:51.310 --> 01:27:58.810
Stephen: Just at the time there was going to be a terrific performance in the Opera House. old Mozart's Requiem

866
01:27:59.070 --> 01:28:08.759
Stephen: and I and I emailed my friends said. hey? I can get us tickets to this if you want to come with us, because they are coming down to us. The right date.

867
01:28:09.250 --> 01:28:11.139
Stephen: And and the reply was.

868
01:28:11.460 --> 01:28:17.350
Stephen: It's religious. I don't want anything to do with it. And this is this is a man who really

869
01:28:17.540 --> 01:28:31.659
Stephen: likes classical music. And I thought, Wow, you know, if you're going to actually cut out all music and all art that has anything to do with religion. it's going to be an impoverished kind of existence.

870
01:28:32.080 --> 01:28:34.109
and and also

871
01:28:34.170 --> 01:28:39.570
Stephen: reminded of Johannes Brahms, you know, who wanted to express.

872
01:28:39.910 --> 01:28:47.969
Stephen: you know, deep themes around death and mourning and the mystery of death, and he wrote a requiem

873
01:28:48.390 --> 01:28:52.810
Stephen: based on Luther's translation rather than a

874
01:28:53.100 --> 01:29:00.010
Stephen: Latin words, and he wrote it as a as a requiem, as a

875
01:29:00.490 --> 01:29:01.660
Stephen: full on

876
01:29:02.030 --> 01:29:06.390
Stephen: Catholic requiem. He himself was not a believer.

877
01:29:06.960 --> 01:29:11.669
Stephen: And and the requiem has never been performed in a church.

878
01:29:13.290 --> 01:29:19.120
Stephen: But it is just that this is a language. This is a whole rich world of

879
01:29:19.290 --> 01:29:24.419
Stephen: artistry and symbolism, etc. That we inherit.

880
01:29:24.740 --> 01:29:28.810
Stephen: that we can't really, that that we, you know, reject

881
01:29:28.930 --> 01:29:31.020
Stephen: to our own lops.

882
01:29:31.760 --> 01:29:35.030
Stephen: But as for my I mean II guess I

883
01:29:35.130 --> 01:29:37.179
Stephen: you know. Obviously I

884
01:29:37.580 --> 01:29:38.670
Stephen: I

885
01:29:38.710 --> 01:29:49.649
Stephen: became quite unquote of Buddhist in 1987, but I've never understood it as as an identity. It's a practice. And you know, we've got

886
01:29:49.860 --> 01:30:04.799
Stephen: lots and lots of identities is another point that Hegelan makes. We have practical identities as well as cultural identities. We have lots of them, each one of us, and there seems to be little point in kind of

887
01:30:04.830 --> 01:30:07.559
Stephen: getting stuck on on just one.

888
01:30:15.220 --> 01:30:16.170
Stephen: Hello!

889
01:30:17.640 --> 01:30:23.340
Stephen: I get a bit perplexed when someone asks me about my identity

890
01:30:24.010 --> 01:30:29.679
Stephen: because I don't spend any time really thinking about it, or

891
01:30:31.740 --> 01:30:44.600
Stephen: and and I'm not, you know, naive to the fact that you know I'm shaped by cultural influences as much as anyone else. But I remember doing a years ago. A.

892
01:30:44.730 --> 01:30:54.560
Stephen: It's sort of a character development inventory. And one of the questions you one of the questions has a question stem, that is, I am.

893
01:30:54.700 --> 01:30:57.660
Stephen: And then, Dot, Dot, Dot, and you have to fill in the rest.

894
01:30:58.380 --> 01:31:06.439
Stephen: And II sat there sort of stuck on this question because I didn't know what to write

895
01:31:06.830 --> 01:31:11.110
Stephen: all sorts of things at all different times.

896
01:31:12.020 --> 01:31:16.730
Stephen: the the point that Winton just made about practical identities, you know. I

897
01:31:17.390 --> 01:31:29.610
Stephen: there are times when I have to own up and be part of a group, that is, you know, athletes there are, but I don't really fit there, and I don't really hang my sense of identity on being an athlete.

898
01:31:29.790 --> 01:31:34.190
Stephen: When people ask me about my dummer.

899
01:31:35.770 --> 01:31:50.070
Stephen: you sometimes get out. Yeah. You're a Buddhist in in my first response is always well, depends what you mean by Buddhist. and it's more a practical answer that I give. I practice the the Buddhist teachings.

900
01:31:50.290 --> 01:32:04.429
Stephen: I integrate them into my life. But I don't really think of myself as a Buddhist, even an Australian. You know, when I travel overseas I don't. I'm not aware in my day to day that I'm

901
01:32:05.300 --> 01:32:08.749
Stephen: different to these French people or Hispanic people, or

902
01:32:08.970 --> 01:32:19.119
Stephen: you know, Polish people or Hungarian people, that around me, and that may be because I see the world through this lens of the earth dweller

903
01:32:19.360 --> 01:32:21.060
Stephen: rather than

904
01:32:21.520 --> 01:32:24.880
Stephen: the subgroups. And I've been practicing that for a while.

905
01:32:25.070 --> 01:32:37.170
Stephen: Or that I see it through the 9 elements of human flourishing. And so I see you know how those expressions turn up in all different ways, but they're fundamentally the same elements of humanity.

906
01:32:37.530 --> 01:32:47.329
Stephen:  so even though I grew up in a Catholic family, you know, had to go to church every week for the first 18 years of my life.

907
01:32:47.470 --> 01:32:48.600
Stephen: 19.

908
01:32:48.760 --> 01:32:50.840
Stephen: I don't.

909
01:32:51.550 --> 01:32:58.709
Stephen: I see that as part of an identity. And nor do I see non-catholicism as an identity.

910
01:32:59.880 --> 01:33:01.190
Stephen: So yeah.

911
01:33:03.160 --> 01:33:08.619
Stephen: it's my identity is not something I spend a lot of time

912
01:33:09.580 --> 01:33:15.179
Stephen: thinking about. And it actually feels a bit of a weird thing when I'm asked about it.

913
01:33:16.070 --> 01:33:17.220
Stephen: Thanks, Lenora.

914
01:33:17.390 --> 01:33:22.819
Stephen: over to Tim, and we've got a question online from the Brisbane group as well. And I think that should probably close us out

915
01:33:24.670 --> 01:33:29.310
Stephen: like I have 2 very annoying

916
01:33:29.380 --> 01:33:31.620
Stephen: genetic disorders.

917
01:33:31.830 --> 01:33:35.060
Stephen: and the medicine for one is not good for the other one.

918
01:33:36.380 --> 01:33:42.830
Stephen: And as I got older all of a sudden the doctors decided that

919
01:33:43.720 --> 01:33:47.390
Stephen: the medicine I was taking was too dangerous for the other. One

920
01:33:48.020 --> 01:33:51.230
Stephen: quality of life never entered the picture.

921
01:33:52.430 --> 01:33:57.120
Stephen: and it's only one step from that to your own death.

922
01:33:58.380 --> 01:34:03.880
Stephen: And I looked at the laws before I came. By the way, the laws about

923
01:34:04.370 --> 01:34:10.179
Stephen: self-assisted death here in Australia versus America, and they're not that very different.

924
01:34:12.620 --> 01:34:23.549
Stephen: And the 1 one big thing is that the quality of life is not primary. It is down. Who knows where, but it's not at the top of the list.

925
01:34:23.900 --> 01:34:26.610
Stephen: Unfortunately. the

926
01:34:29.490 --> 01:34:43.210
Stephen: the doctor's definition of having to have the terminal terminal illness within so much time is hardly ever going to match up with your estimation of your quality of life

927
01:34:43.480 --> 01:34:48.199
Stephen: and your body and your mind telling you this is enough.

928
01:34:51.260 --> 01:34:56.299
Stephen: I would suggest that you treat your death as a vacation.

929
01:34:56.990 --> 01:34:59.259
Stephen: that you pick the departure date.

930
01:34:59.680 --> 01:35:02.580
Stephen: Okay? You pick the mode of travel

931
01:35:03.550 --> 01:35:14.190
Stephen: and you decide what you want to do with all the increments? How much are you? How much baggage are you going to take? How much you're going to leave behind? And in that process

932
01:35:14.280 --> 01:35:23.180
Stephen: of choosing all those different parts, you will find yourself having a good examination of your own death.

933
01:35:26.540 --> 01:35:29.710
Stephen: Thank you. Thank you, Tim.

934
01:35:32.120 --> 01:35:34.880
Stephen: Over to people up in Brisbane.

935
01:35:36.060 --> 01:35:38.960
Meg: Hello! Hello!

936
01:35:39.190 --> 01:35:42.130
Meg: Stephen, thank you.

937
01:35:42.440 --> 01:35:48.200
Meg: So my question is that, how shall we envision

938
01:35:48.360 --> 01:35:53.490
Meg: art on secular Buddhism that speaks to many people.

939
01:35:54.190 --> 01:36:05.979
Meg: And then already Winton has described about the so this is a question. Oh, I can't hear. Very well. Sorry. Oh, pretty.

940
01:36:06.840 --> 01:36:15.939
Meg: Okay. So do you hear me now? Oh, thank you. So my question is, how do you envision art based on

941
01:36:16.070 --> 01:36:18.990
Meg: secular Buddhism? Or how do you.

942
01:36:20.900 --> 01:36:27.500
Meg: de interpret Buddhist art into secular Buddhism in an

943
01:36:27.530 --> 01:36:36.989
Meg: Windon, has already talked a lot about the various art forms. So this is a question to use Steven for the sake of the time as well.

944
01:36:40.060 --> 01:36:52.460
Stephen: Well, I think we have to look at art in 2 ways in this question, how we understand it, how we appreciate it on the one hand and how we we make it

945
01:36:53.490 --> 01:36:54.420
Stephen: on the other.

946
01:36:55.980 --> 01:37:05.119
Stephen: The 2, of course, sort of in, you know, there is a dialectic involved. The art you make will be influenced by the art you appreciate and understand.

947
01:37:05.220 --> 01:37:10.320
Stephen: But I do feel quite strongly that if Buddhism.

948
01:37:10.510 --> 01:37:17.409
Stephen: let alone secular Buddhism, is to really find its voice in the wider

949
01:37:17.670 --> 01:37:18.720
Stephen: world.

950
01:37:18.960 --> 01:37:23.829
Stephen: It needs to find that voice, not just through writing books

951
01:37:24.040 --> 01:37:32.829
Stephen: or giving talks, but through creating art. and that could be visual art. It could be music, it could be poetry.

952
01:37:33.040 --> 01:37:35.560
Stephen: And, in fact, there are.

953
01:37:35.710 --> 01:37:39.009
Stephen: you know, in modern literature. There are a number of

954
01:37:39.100 --> 01:37:43.950
Stephen: recent novels, for example, that have taped up on Buddhist themes.

955
01:37:44.220 --> 01:37:46.429
Stephen:  And, in fact.

956
01:37:46.690 --> 01:37:52.090
Stephen: yeah, some novelists who are but you know, are actually practicing Buddhists.

957
01:37:52.900 --> 01:37:56.410
Stephen: But I think we've yet to really.

958
01:37:56.850 --> 01:37:58.140
Stephen: in a sense.

959
01:37:58.210 --> 01:38:06.430
Stephen: arrive at a point where we could say that a Buddhist art or a contemporary Buddhist art is emerging

960
01:38:06.770 --> 01:38:17.969
Stephen:  The novelist, Ruth Ozecky. Have you heard of her? She won the Booker prize? No, the Women's Prize for fiction last year for her book.

961
01:38:18.680 --> 01:38:28.699
Stephen: the book of form and emptiness. and she's a Zen priest living in America. and she's a very, very brilliant writer. So there are examples like that.

962
01:38:28.750 --> 01:38:33.369
Stephen: But to me, what's actually more important is how I

963
01:38:33.410 --> 01:38:39.750
Stephen: use my own resources to create art for me.

964
01:38:39.940 --> 01:38:42.559
Stephen: I love art, but I also.

965
01:38:43.600 --> 01:38:46.520
Stephen: and very engaged in creating art.

966
01:38:46.580 --> 01:38:56.949
Stephen: I would like to think of Dharma practice as being quite able to incorporate and to celebrate

967
01:38:57.150 --> 01:38:59.920
Stephen: making art as part of our practice.

968
01:39:00.480 --> 01:39:07.879
Stephen: and I think one of the reasons in my cartography that I've introduced the elements of creativity

969
01:39:08.360 --> 01:39:18.030
Stephen: in the first task, and imagination in the fourth is to acknowledge that fact that for our at least in my own case.

970
01:39:18.290 --> 01:39:23.479
Stephen: the practice of art which I make collages and take photographs and things

971
01:39:23.840 --> 01:39:28.869
Stephen: is very important to my sense of being a practition.

972
01:39:29.650 --> 01:39:43.569
Stephen:  I can recognize that there are explicit Buddhist elements in it. But I am not interested in producing an art that is self-consciously Buddhist.

973
01:39:43.990 --> 01:39:47.040
Stephen: I think that compromises in many ways.

974
01:39:47.170 --> 01:39:51.420
Stephen: You know the autonomy of the work of art.

975
01:39:51.990 --> 01:39:54.189
That is a modernist idea.

976
01:39:54.510 --> 01:39:59.179
Stephen: I think. Work art. You should aspire for something that's not

977
01:39:59.740 --> 01:40:12.240
Stephen: admired because it's Buddhist, or because it's postmodernist, but because it's somehow we came back. You mentioned this yesterday. You achieve a way of finding your voice in a form

978
01:40:12.250 --> 01:40:20.289
Stephen: that is able to speak to the human condition and not to the Buddhist condition or the Christian condition.

979
01:40:20.620 --> 01:40:24.690
Stephen: And that's what I would aspire to as as an artist.

980
01:40:24.970 --> 01:40:27.060
Stephen: But I do think it is

981
01:40:27.290 --> 01:40:32.270
Stephen: crucially important that we don't marginalize the arts

982
01:40:33.470 --> 01:40:34.240
Stephen: as

983
01:40:34.410 --> 01:40:38.090
Stephen: in terms of our practice as as Buddhists.

984
01:40:42.130 --> 01:40:48.910
Stephen: Thanks, Stephen, I think that sort of brings the questions to a close. I don't know if any of you want to say something in this last session at the end.

985
01:40:49.200 --> 01:40:51.689
Stephen: I was just going to add that

986
01:40:51.910 --> 01:40:54.469
Stephen: and that er

987
01:40:54.480 --> 01:40:58.150
Stephen: I've written a couple of historical novels.

988
01:40:58.800 --> 01:41:00.220
Well-being.

989
01:41:00.470 --> 01:41:03.800
Stephen: a secular Buddhist and

990
01:41:04.130 --> 01:41:13.240
Stephen: It wasn't in any way an exploration of Buddhist concepts. It was more something that when I

991
01:41:13.310 --> 01:41:23.720
Stephen: bundled secular Buddhism together, I come up Buddhist ethics together. I come up with a single word of decency. And so

992
01:41:23.830 --> 01:41:25.870
Stephen: my 2 novels were about

993
01:41:25.960 --> 01:41:32.090
Stephen: decent people dealing with horrendous situations. In one case, some

994
01:41:32.270 --> 01:41:33.530
Stephen: I

995
01:41:33.570 --> 01:41:40.029
Stephen: people who were involved in the Nuremberg trial, first Nuremberg trial

996
01:41:40.350 --> 01:41:43.450
Stephen: immediately after the end of the Second World War.

997
01:41:44.080 --> 01:41:56.480
Stephen: and it was sort of. And and we're facing incredibly difficult moral decisions, ethical dilemmas, and how there was a sort of

998
01:41:56.800 --> 01:41:58.250
Stephen: coming together

999
01:41:59.710 --> 01:42:14.939
Stephen: people from all sorts of backgrounds into how you deal with this. So it's not about secular Buddhism. But there's a basic inspiration there of how decent people deal with appalling problems, I suppose.

1000
01:42:15.810 --> 01:42:16.520
And

1001
01:42:21.280 --> 01:42:22.080
okay.

1002
01:42:22.180 --> 01:42:29.229
Stephen: okay, so that brings us to a close for this session. So morning tea time, and then we come back for the closing circle.