Dear Ipswich Sangha,
As part of our Year of Akshobhya I invited Ruchiraketu from Cambridge to lead a day that would support deepening our individual and collective practice. It was a very rich and inspiring day called Doing Things Together – The Path of Integration. This month I am going to share some of the key points that were illuminated.
The morning was focused on understanding the mind and deepening individual practice.
During the day, Ruchiraketu drew on lists of Basic Buddhism and encouraged us to be familiar with these teachings. He said a list is a matika which means mother or womb, so a starting point. Lists of Dharma are not the end of the story but a framework to start from when we are exploring our own experience. If we know the lists by heart we can access the teachings without getting into thinking. Originally, Buddhism was an oral tradition so practitioners memorised the Dharma, so we can do the same.
Ruchiraketu started with the Noble Eight-fold Path, what is it?
Firstly Right View – you know the reasons you are doing something. Second Right intention – you know the values you want to express. The first two limbs are cognitive. But how do you make your aspirations and values real? You transform through right speech, action and livelihood, right effort, mindfulness and meditation. In meditation we understand the mind to overcome suffering.
He addressed the question of how do we make the transition from daily life to meditation, how do we shift from thinking to direct experience. We have a narrative self and an experiencing self. The difference between these two is that direct experience is not fixed, it is unstable. How do we move away from problem-oriented, fix-it thinking to what is already present?
1. The key shift is from thinking to sensing. Sensing can happen in meditation, bodywork, in nature, in the arts. What conditions support the transition for you?
When we are emotionally challenged we withdraw from the body into the head. We’ll move away from unpleasant experience into our head and thoughts. We move away from natural change, forgetting that mental states come and go, because we get caught up in thinking and problem solving why we feel this way. On the diagram above we want to move from band 1. to band 2, more sensing, less thinking.
2. We set the intention to settle and then it can help to have a non-judgemental kindly discernment to establish if we are present or not. Are we able to see that we are not present and what is happening? In the House of Habit there is a head in the window. If you just see the back of the head it is looking inwards and totally caught up in habitual ways of being. If the face looks outwards it sees that it is caught in habits. So we can move from being in the tumble dryer to observing the tumble dryer.
3. Ruchiraketu stressed the importance of changing your relationship to experience. He cited the Lokaviptti Sutta, AN 6.8, which is about the 8 worldly winds. The Buddha says that both the uninstructed and the instructed worldling encounters the 8 Worldly Winds. However, they have a different response. An uninstructed worldling does not know the winds as they really are. He is elated when he meets gain, fame, praise and pleasure and is dejected when he experiences loss, disrepute, blame and pain. He is involved with likes and dislikes. However, an instructed worldling sees the winds as they really are, impermanent, bound up with suffering and subject to change. He understands things as they really are and they do not engross his mind so he does not become elated or dejected, he has given up likes and dislikes and thus is free from suffering.
4. We looked at the model above which shows the effect of expanding your window of tolerance. It is another way of looking at staying in the GAP on the Wheel of Life between feeling-tone and craving, but brings in a new perspective. The creative mind will respond and remain within the window of tolerance even with greater pleasure and pain. However, the reactive mind means pleasant experience will become craving and unpleasant experience will become aversion. Practicing metta at all moments you are being thrown into reactivity will help bring you back within the window of tolerance.
5. Appreciate it when a condition causes reactivity and suffering.
- thank and appreciate it because it will have brought awareness, e.g, thank the body for alerting me to the allergy instead of anxiety and aversion caused by memories. Expectation can lead to dukkha.
- thank the painful experience because I now know what suffering is like and can empathise with others better and develop compassion.
In the afternoon the focus was on doing things together and it was more interactive.
The fifth limb of the 8-Fold Path is Right-Livelihood. The word ‘right’ is translated from the word samma, which means proper, perfect, whole, complete, thorough, integral. Sangharakshita says it means much more than ‘right’ which can give a rather narrow impression, a purely moralistic interpretation of the Path, things being right or wrong. It is livelihood that supports the path of integration, integrating the whole of ourselves.
Ruchiraketu used a diagram Want to, Chance to, How to and addressed the question of HOW can we make real our aspirations in the conditions of working together.
He encouraged the development of skill rather than striving. Forget climbing up a ladder. The opportunity is right here on the ground. The ladder starts in the rag and bone shop of the heart.
We did a Three Steps Exercise.
- Think of a quality you want to develop. How does it feel?
- Think of a quality you have. How does it feel?
- Bring the experience of 2. into 1.
Generally we found 1. a difficult experience and 2. pleasurable. To develop, start with a grounded positive experience. Start with what’s ok. Then introduce something you want to develop which is more abstract. Then, ‘I can learn this’.
Deepening our GOING for REFUGE to the 3 Jewels can happen through exploring the relationship between Team, Task and Individual. You could see it as an ecosystem with different animals, different individuals, sharing the same environment. Working together can be a joy and a challenge because there will be a positive tension between the individual, the team and the task. It is an exciting shared exploration.
Insert Diagram 4
In groups, we considered the TASK. We explored what is going well at the Centre and then when the positive scene was set what needs to change or develop. See Task on diagram.
Ruchiraketu introduced the Ladder of abstraction – GENERAL <——————> SPECIFIC
Stepping up-and-down can help to clarify the common collective task (which defines the team). Going down the ladder you take ideals and turn them into something experienced. Going up the ladder can help to reconnect with why you are doing something.
Ruchiraketu told the story of the 3 bricks.
Someone asks a bricklayer what they are doing? Three individuals relate to the TASK very differently.
- I am laying a brick
- I am working to feed my family
- I am building a cathedral
Awareness of how different INDIVIDUALS are helps TEAMS to function well.
What do you see?
When working in teams you come to see how we perceive things differently. We learn by both seeing ourselves reflected in others and how we have different conditioning, perceptions and perspectives. This requires communication and friendship.
To help resolve differences of opinion we looked at the Vimilakirti Nidesa Sutra Chapter 9, The Dharma-Door of Nonduality. Instead of being caught in two opposing things, you find the door of non-duality. Here is an example.
‘Rigidity and Compliance are two. When there is no fixed separate self or other, firmness and flexibility are the entrance into nonduality.’
Here there is room to move and explore, there is good listening but you wouldn’t be necessarily quick to give in.
Finally, Ruchiraketu looked at Team, Task and Individual at their highest level and what happens when the gravitational pull of the mundane is dominant.
| At the highest level | Gravitational pull of mundane | |
| TEAM | Spiritual Community | The Group – conformity |
| TASK | Dharma | Identifying ‘self’ with the project |
| INDIVIDUAL | True Individual | Individualism |
With much appreciation to Ruchiraketu who I plan to invite again next year to help us deepen our understanding of how doing things together can deepen our Dharma practice and support individual and collective integration.
May this be of benefit
Shubha
