(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. - So, I'm giving you the EP version of a 15 minute talk I gave on the Women's Convention this year. And the theme of the talk was visibility. And it's something that I've been interested about quite a while. And visibility as the fourth site. Now, if you remember the Buddhist story of his enlightenment, he was in the palace and he had these little journeys out, didn't he? Everybody remember, yeah? His first one, he went out and he saw, I think he saw a sick man, then an old man and then a dead person. But the fourth site was the site of the Wandering Menderken. And these mythic stories that are told of the Buddhist journey's enlightenment, the site of the Wandering Menderken with his shaved head, his robe of rags and his bagging ball. And in these, the Wandering Menderken acts as a beacon, a visible inspiration and an invitation to the Buddha to be, to take up the homeless life. So I ask us, how do we become this invitation? How in our persons do we embody this invitation to take up the homeless life, to take up the life of practice? So this is the sort of area I want to look at tonight. So in my life, I first heard of the notion of being visible as the Buddhist. From a report of a talk, I didn't even have to go to the talk, I just heard about the talk. And given by my private preceptor, Virya Devi, on the dunk held ordination retreat. She was, I heard, encouraging ordinary member participation in F.W.B.O. centers. She was asking ordinary members to become visible in the center. I've since heard my friend Sadanandi talk from Sadanandi's, the chair of Taraloka, talk about her desire to be a fourth site in the world. And in talking with her about that, some more, it doesn't spring from any desire to be a shiny, happy example of a life lived perfectly. But more that the children in the classrooms she visits and the women who come on retreat to Taraloka can see and experience first hand that life can be lived differently, that a woman can live without a husband, that she doesn't need children, and she can do happily so. These notions intrigued me, but they didn't help home directly to me until my three-year-old niece Katie asked me a question. At the time Katie was realizing that people die, and that when they die, they leave you stuff. And so she went round everyone, making a request of them in good time before she dies. (audience laughs) So what she chose from each was what she saw as the most important part of them. So she asked her brother for an MPC player. She asked for her sister's makeup. She asked for her cousin's city flat and her shoes. And for me, she said, Auntie Kilodyne, when you die, can I have your clothes and your food? It was staggering. She had noticed two important things that were different and appealing about me to her. I ate differently to everyone else she knew, and I dressed differently. And she wanted both. Whether I wanted to or not, my life choices and lifestyle were acting as a site to others. Whether I liked it or not, I was visible and I was visibly different to those around me. What did I expect? I had a shiny new name, and I chose them to make it my legal name. So I began to explore what it meant for me to act as a fourth site and notice what was emerging in this place for me as a new order member in the world. So what is this visibility I'm talking about? This visibility I'm describing is not the same as raising a public profile, being a media darling, or even being quoted all the time and giving advice and talks at the drop of a hat. For me, it's not at all about quoting the world blue winds of fame and infamy. I've had enough contact with each of them to see that for the most part that a waste of human effort. The visibility I'm describing is to be seen as I am. A human. Making mistakes. Trying my best. Practicing. Not perfect. The visibility I'm describing is the ability to be seen standing beside my principles and not colluding. However seductively, it might seem with unethical conduct. The visibility I'm describing is the ability to show my ideas, thoughts, actions and behaviour to others who will know exactly what I'm talking about and be able to shape them, clarify them, yes, even criticise them. Perfect. This kind of visibility has about three aspects for me. So far, I've only won. The first aspect is that of being capable of my own distress. The second is that of the indefatigable earthworm. And finally, the category of with those who run afraid to die, please step to the front. I don't believe these categories are exhausted. Unbeing capable of my own distress, this first category that comes to mind in terms of being visible in the world, let's just take a mental break and let me read the whole speech, the thing makes in Act V, scene one of Hamlet, my love of Shakespeare coming through here. She is, of course, referring to the death of Ophelia. You'll know this, so just relax and take a wee break from this talk for a minute. There is a willow grows a slant, the brook, that shows his whore leaves in the glassy stream. There, with fantastic garlands, did she make of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long parkfalls? That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead-manned fingers call them. There, on pendant bows, her coronet weights, clambering to hang, an envious sliver brook. When down her witty trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook, her clothes spread wide, and mermaid like they bore her up for a while, which time she chanted snatches of old logs as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and endured unto that element, but long it could not be till her garments, heavy with her drink, pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lathe to muddy death. Thank you. Ophelia was incapable of her own distress and so unable to prevent her death. How often of we like that singing snatches of songs, playing games while our distress is ripping right out of us, and we are the ones who can't see it. We are the last to see it. It has always struck me as one of the most important goals of my own therapeutic and later my spiritual journey to be capable of experiencing my own distress. It may seem an incredibly easy thing for you, but not so for me. I have found it hard to know how much any given thing is affecting me until it's too late. I'm reacting to the trigger and compulsively over eating, smoking, drinking, acting out before I've even been aware that I've been upset. I can so easily shut down and manage a situation or a difficulty without ever allowing the feeling of distress to arise. I find it hard to let what I actually think and feel about an idea arise. So for me, one of the goals of visibility is to be visible to myself. To let myself in on what's going on for me. To take my experience seriously enough for me to act on it. To say you know, I am hurt. It may not be reasonable or uncomfortable for you that it is so, but it is so for me and I'm going to take care of it for me. In this, I'm really helped by having a symptom and my symptom is the desire to eat the universe and binge. That gives me a clue for a hint that all is not well in my world. And after seven years of recovery from addiction to food and before that loads of personal therapy, I can and do notice upset arising and will raise it more often than not in the moment. But having that really big symptom of craving for my drugs helps me draw my attention to the reason which I've overdone it physically, emotionally, or that I'm spiritually out of my depth. I had been using my body as a very public field in which I unconsciously signaled my distress to myself and the world. For years I grew more and more distressed. My body grew bigger from slim to overweight to obese to clinically obese and yet I still refuse to listen. So now I have to live a highly disciplined food life to stay well. This involved a strict routine around eating and certain foods never eating. You'll never see me eating between meals if you do for the hospital. This involves being increasingly capable of the subtle forms of my own distress. This makes me paradoxically, highly visible. Why do you eat in the way you do? And oh my God, how on earth did you lose all that weight? Six stones. What do you mean you never eat cake or bread? Or at the supermarket, people actually stop me and the supermarket go, this is the healthiest basket I've ever seen, do you really eat all these vegetables? Yes, I do. Or at work, the converse of that, at the most recent management conference, I cried when I'm hurt and I'm not denying how painful I find it to be or to feel as I thought I was shut down and marginalised by the new senior management team. So this is how I carry the bowl of the mendicant in the world. In terms of visibility in the world and the second level of action, I'd like to talk about the level of the indefatigable world. You can see that one, do you feel like? I just love it, indefatigable. It comes from, of course, fancy, my great love. I remember a strategy discussion when my husband, my then husband had to say that my then husband, my then wife, my then husband, at the very first Young Communist League AGM National Conference, rather, I was making a speech at, I was 22. He asked me what I thought was more important strategically, getting policies passed or getting people on the Central Committee. I thought policies, he thought people, tomato tomato kind of thing. His view was that the right people on the Central Committee can mitigate or ignore bad policies when they're in power. But it's hard to influence things, if you are an industry of power. It's a very common political dilemma. Well, I bought this idea then, and it could be described as the great man view of history, that history is made up by exceptional individuals who put their heads way above the parapet. I bought that idea then, and that put me on the front lines many times in political action. I became the YCL Women's Organiser, the Scottish Trade Union CND Organiser. I was pregnant with my son and in a small scrum on a minor spicket line. It meant a great deal of personal sacrifice for the struggle. Having two very small children, a political career, a full-time job and being a regional union rep, and my husband's PhD on the go at the same time, I did what any self-respecting psyche would do under that pressure. I had an average breakdown. So, and coincidentally, that's what brought me to the Glasgow Buddha Centre. The Comrade really didn't like that. Banting, on the other hand, has a much more compassionate view of social action. The view of the indefatigable earthworm. And I'm gonna quote him in this, and it's from page 241 of what is the Sanga. It doesn't matter how humble a level we're operating at or how undramatic our work may be. The true individual is not so much king of the jungle as the indefatigable earthworm. If enough earthworms burrow away under the foundations of even the most substantial building, the soil begins to loosen. It starts to crumble away, the foundations subside, and the whole building is liable to crack and collapse. Likewise, however powerful the existing order may seem, it is not invulnerable to the undermining influence of enough individuals working, whether directly or indirectly, in cooperation. So, here Banti is showing me there is another way to be visible in the world. I don't have to leave the series ranks out of the trenches and onto the field under open bonfire from an unseen enemy. I can work quietly away in what Stephen Covey spoke the habits of seven habits of highly effective people says would describe as my circle of influence. I could work quietly away there and still make a difference in the world. I might not see or be able to predict the outcome, but I can have faith in my intentions and the actions do indeed have consequences. My friend Akupa, who had a similar political career to mine without the pregnancies or the nervous breakdown, I think, spoke of his intense relief when he heard Joanna Macy speak of one of her 12 principle of organizations, principle three. Know that only the whole can repair itself. You cannot fix the world, but you can take part in its self-healing. Healing wounded relationships within you and between you is integral to healing the world. So you can't fix the world. Obviously, but not always obvious to social action-attended individuals like myself. Both Banti and Joanna Macy offer images of visibility in the world of engaged action that are gently more connected and infinitely more compassionate, taking the individual engaged into account. That healing your relationships within yourself is not separate to social action, it is social action. And I've discovered that taking me into the picture, I have to remind myself that the body sat that ideal also includes me in the circle of compassion. Means that somehow I cannot in good conscience leave my experience out of the picture either. And I can't go back to being invisible to myself. I have a duty to try to share that, even if it is, as at the recent staff conference, an ignored and marginalised view. This is just not a good idea for me, but it is emerging into one of the critical ideas of integral collective visibility, of which I'll say more later. And it doesn't have to hurt. On the first no-duer retreat, I attempt no-duer, sorry, no-duer yourself. Joanna Macy keeps trying to come to the streets, and I keep trying to go to them, and then she keeps getting ill. So they end up going to call them no-duer retreats. So, on the first no-duer retreat, I was doing an exercise with my friend, Shadarkani. And I was role-playing the person from the future who was asking her, my ancestor, how she came to take part in the great tunneling, which is the reorientation of the world from industrial abuse to creating sustainable life on earth. What she said stopped me forcibly. She said it was a great joy to take part in the tunneling. That's where all the connection was. We're happier, relaxed people took part in collective action, that they found pleasurable for its own sake, where through friendship and laughter, they created forms of action that were inventive, compassionate, and helped people develop. Those who were opposed to creating sustainable life were great, tired, and unhappy. It was easy to choose the life-affirming path, she said. Was that what I'd been missing in my political life? And to extend my social engagement at work? Where was the beauty? Where did the joy? Did we do it because we can't not do it? Where was the fun? Or did it feel all too familiarly like the kind of duty that gets you to the dentist for root canal work? It'll be good for you in the long term, but it's immediately painful and unpleasant. When I'm connected to others and I deal in this way, the quality of engagement is one of the bodysack but at play. The experience is generally a deep and satisfying pleasure. The impulses I would not consider not doing it. I don't make persuaded, and I generally don't care if the rest of the world isn't on the parade as well, because I'm having a great time. With this approach, several of us from the F.W.B.O. here went on a five day peace march from Fastlane Naval Base to Edinburgh, the base of the Scottish Parliament in 2006. We had no game plan, we had no strategy, we were just interested and open, and our usual happy friendly selves. What emerged was the singing. We started to sing first with a few others, just to keep ourselves entertained. It was raining, heavy buckets, and it was a long walk and somewhere in the middle of Bathgate, it gets a bit tedious. What we started naturally was we just started to sing, and it wasn't just us, it was a lot of, I'm here, it's here. Yeah, yeah, you were there, you were there. We just started to sing, it wasn't us, there were some folk singers there, and there were just, something to this chant, but the singing was much more fun. So, we started to sing with a few others, and then we taught each other songs, and then more and more, and eventually, five days later, we arrived in Edinburgh, in the middle of a torrential downpour, a joyful singing demonstration. Wave after wave of song down high street, people just kind of look and go from the start. Just the joy. And what stunned looks, what a difference. We were just so happy, you could see it. How can you get a bunch of damage to it? I brought for five days, select from fortunate, but it was fantastic. A real sense of tribe, and a real sense of joy, radiating out of us. What a change to hear that, voices lifted in song for peace, not anger. Being visible to yourself, and receptive to your inner body's that about play, lead you to ask, what will you engage with in the world? Now, what am I gonna do? And there's two quotes that kind of, I think, bring this a bit more alive. One's getting a bit like wallpaper, and now you see it so many places, but it's nonetheless good. Do not ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and don't do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. And that's from Howard Fermil. And in Rodney Smith's Voices of Insight, when he talks about insight in terms of a spiritual practice, he says, "Aliveness has no definite expression. "Anything we do with passion "can be done in a spirit of service. "If it feeds us, it will feed the world." So when I give service or take action to the world from a place of aliveness in myself, from taking myself into account, I am a fourth sight to people I don't know. I become inadvertently, both an invitation and an inspiration to practice. My thoughts of the last re-while, in the last year, I noticed I needed conversation with certain people like I need air. And it's not just that I like to talk. I travel regularly to Newcastle to talk to Cooper, just to talk to Cooper, to London, Tarawoka, just to talk to my friends. I hate traveling. Only my friends will get me on a train for a conversation. So, it's just like I cannot not talk to some friends. I learn in conversation. New ideas come out of me in the course of conversation. And I wondered if others might learn in that way too. I have become increasingly fascinated by conscious conversation as a medium of influencing and learning from each other. And at work as another form of treatment, as you may have guessed already, I love to talk. In Pyramids, the room one day last year, I came across a book called "The Conversation Cafes", creating meaningful dialogue for large groups of people. And it seemed a perfect tool for the indefatigable earthworm in me. Formed as it is on the basis of a trust that there is more to be learned from each other than we can possibly imagine. And based on a systems view of the world. The cafe form has been both right for my work in addictions and in the saga. We have hosted several conversations. One of the earliest was between addicts, family members, service providers and policy makers. It was an underground event and you only like to use your first name. And we didn't advertise it. You're only invited by personal invite. It was very delightful. So in St. Andrew's Square, six day of people came. First name only, no state has no rules. And they began a conversation with each other at small tables, 60 of them. What an event to see tensions between them give rise to connection. And smiles give rise to tears. And embraces as people shared their most meaningful experiences with each other and were heard. As a host of cafes. I burrow away creating the conditions for conversations. Just trusting in the human capacity to connect. And I actually see very well. The biggest was 350 that I've done this year. And that was at the joint convention just in August. So I'll go back to the question set by my husband 26 years ago. People in power or policies. And the indefatigable worm inspires me to do neither. I neither want to noble politicians for policies or put people in power. But I'm more encouraged to bring ordinary people together and trust to their desire for connection. I'm less interested in being on TV and in the press or even my own particular weakness is being the darling of the conference circuit. And I'm more interested in sharing ideas and conversation and appreciating others like. So why is this so completely compelling for me? This kind of visibility. What is it that's so entrancing for me about this? I'm still not over it. When I was named by Maria Debe, she saw something of an understanding in me of the Bodhi Chitta, something about the collective arising of the Bodhi Chitta. And for me, this, all this visibility in myself and this connectedness and this is all and this action is about how we, the collective nature of the Bodhi Chitta. It will not arise particularly in me but among us. And for that to happen, we need to create the conditions. So this feeling in me is given voice and I'll get another quote from Joanna Mason. Living systems, Joanna talks about, I'm good at all unpack it. Living systems evolve in complexity, flexibility and intelligence through interaction with each other. We are living systems and we evolve and we become more complex, more flexible and more intelligent through interaction with each other. These interactions require openness and vulnerability in order to process the flow of energy and information. You cannot get truth and energy and new ideas from lies and deceit and hiding. It requires vulnerability and openness. They bring into play new responses and new possibilities not previously present, increasing the capacity to effect change. This interdependent release of fresh potential is called synergy. It is like grief because it brings an increase of power beyond one's own capacity as a separate entity and that's from a world of self, world just lover by Joanna Mason. Without my openness to myself and willingness to be vulnerable to the world and share my experience as I see it, the possibilities for change are severely curtailed. Without your openness and vulnerability, I cannot learn from you. Together we can't create the new. Where is it going to come from if we're all stuck in our static place and we won't let it go? The body cheddar arising feels to me like the transcendental counterpart of this synergy. If you think of this mundane synergy that happens when people get together and suddenly their energy arises and something new comes out of that that none of us have guessed before, then the transcendental version of that is the body cheddar. Bante often describes this as each of us shining our particular light on a given situation, honestly and truthfully and from the collective light that there's something new can emerge which meets everyone's need but which none of us could have imagined on our own. So in this I cannot do what I do without my friends. I am one of an army of earthworms making my contribution to the grand work of moving earth. Visibility in the world is a by-product of that. The principle 11 from Joanna Macy, you do not need to see the results of your work. Your actions have unanticipated and far-reaching effects that may not be visible to you in your lifetime. This is my robe of wrath. The final aspect I'm just going to speak about very briefly. I've talked about my robe, I've talked about my bowl, so where's my shaped head? The third part of the aspect of the mannequin. And I was really aware last night I went to see a film and I was really aware that my talk is very much about the current context that we have in Britain and the very, very auspicious conditions we have. We can practice without fear. We are allowed to be Buddhist. I can call myself Kaludarini. In every place that I go, I don't have to hide, I don't have to be ashamed. I don't have to pretend to be what I'm not. Maria Devi always asked me a very interesting question. When I was a mittra, doing my mittra study, she asked me a question. She asked us all a question. She said, "Would you be prepared to die for your practice?" I know it. Yeah? And it's not, and it's a stranger, it was, you know, it seemed like, "Whoa, yeah, what's that about?" And it's not such a left field question when you consider what's happened in Tibet. We just die for the practice in Tibet, or in Burma in 2007. I just watched that film last night and watched a monk being shot for his practice, being burned. So that's the question. Would you be, I would leave you with. One of those questions is that, yes, within the current context, we're very, very comfortable, but those conditions can change, and the world as it is is an uncertain place, and our practice is both a help in that. How do we know? How do we know when it's right? Well, there is the shambhala prophecy, which I was going to read to you, but unless you're feeling quite, it's just a short one. Do you want to hear the prophecy? There comes a great time when all life in Earth is in danger. Great, barbarian powers have arisen. Although these powers spend their wealth in preparations to annihilate one another, they have much in common. Weapons of unfathomable, destructive power, and technologies that lay waste through our world. In this era, when the future of sentient life hangs by the fearless of threads, the kingdom of shambhala emerges. You cannot go there. It exists in the hearts and minds of the shambhala warriors. What they must move on always is the terrain of the barbarians themselves. Now is the time when great courage, moral and physical courage is required of the shambhala warriors, where they must go into the very heart of barbarian power. To dismantle the weapons in every sense of the terror, they must go into the corridors of power where decisions are made. The shambhala warriors have the courage to do this because they know that these weapons are mind made, made by the human mind, and they can be unmade by the human mind. The shambhala warriors train in the use of two weapons, compassion, recognition of our pain for the world, and wisdom, the experience of our radical interconnectedness with our life. So that's an 8th century Tibetan prophecy believed by some Tibetans to refer to this time, and it was told to Joanna Mase by Cho Gao Rinpoche. So there is a call, there is a call to know sometime when it's time for your practice, when it's time for you to act. Victor Frankall, our Joanna Fenderbridge's red man's search for meaning, talked about being in the concentration camps, as a psychiatrist in the concentration camps. His book is one of the most moving books, most influential books on me actually. And in one stage in his journey in the concentration camps, they were moving people left, right and center. He was a psychiatrist, and he was trying to look after the people with, I can't remember what illness they had. They were close to death, there was a group of them, and they were to be transported out. And he was sure that they were going to die. They were going to their death. And he was the only thing that was the nearest thing to adopt for these people. He was the only person caring for them. And he had the choice, one of the guards gave him the choice of avoiding the deportation. And he debated on it. He knew that at that time he knew that if he went on that deportation it was certain death. And yet, and he had the choice, he could have avoided it. And he had to sit and consult with his heart. And what his heart said was that these people need me. "I'm going to die, I'll die with them." That is what I need to do. So he went with them. He choose to do the right thing in that moment. That's how you choose. You choose to do the right thing in that moment. For him, he chose to do the right thing in that moment. And that's what he consulted his heart. And he said, for his beating, he wanted to be with these people in their last moment. So he went with them, got on the trucks and was loaded away with them. The concentration camp he was in was bombed. And the trucks that he was in were the only people who survived. Now, the point that he made that choice, he did not know that was going to happen. He thought he was going to sit and death, and yet he walked forward. So my third practice comes from a quote from that film is, "With those who are unafraid to die, step to the front." That's what they said in Burma, and that's what they said in the demonstration. "With those who are unafraid to die, step to the front." And the monks took up their bowls, and they turned their bowls over. And they refused to accept arms from the generals, the monks. And they were short. So we practice. We practice. We are visible. But let's pray for those good conditions. I pray for good conditions for all of us. And if one day life asks me the question, "With those who are unafraid to die, please step forward." I hope I can step forward with head forward. This is my sheethead. Thank you. [applause] We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] You
