(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. - It's funny to be introduced at this point in the retreat 'cause I've been up on this stage every day quite regularly, but it's nice to be told who I am right now. Yeah, so I've been asked to talk, if I'd like to ask me to talk about this theme, individualism, which isn't something which I particularly think about myself, but okay, so I just stepped out into the internet and was lost for several days and now I've returned. Okay, we're pleased to hear that. But first I'm gonna tell you a story. It's a story which I've thought about over the years. I've been living communities since 1984, women's communities since 1984, and throughout my practice of community living and Buddhism, this story sometimes comes into my mind. Once upon a time, there was a vain emperor who was very keen on different kinds of clothes. In fact, he changed his clothes quite often, trying out different things. Yeager, fat face, you know, that sort of thing. And a couple of scoundrels heard about this and they thought that they wanted to sort of play a bit of a trick on him and also earn quite a bit of money. So they introduced themselves to the castle and said to the guy at the door, we've created a set of clothes, or we can create a set of clothes for this emperor, that he's absolutely gonna laugh and you know what he's like about his clothes, you know what he's like about his wardrobes, that's again, love them. So the guy at the door said, "Oh, yeah, okay, right, yeah, "this sounds like a good idea, just come in." So they went to the emperor and they said, we'd like to make you a really beautiful set of clothes. They'll be completely, you know, carbon neutral. They'll be absolutely gorgeous. They're gonna match your eyes perfectly. And what's really marvelous is so fine is that, well, if you're not very intelligent and you're not very accomplished, you're not gonna be able to see them. So it kind of, you know, it sorts people out, basically. But you'll be fine being the emperor. And the emperor, because he's not completely stupid, and he knows that really what he mainly is interested in is clothes. So he's not that intelligent or that accomplished. He thinks, "Ah, I might not be able to see them, "and I'm going to look foolish." And then he thinks, "It'll be okay 'cause nobody, "I won't tell anybody, nobody will know "that I can't see anything." So he says, "Okay, that sounds good, I'm interested." And he asks, oh, does he ask? He asks his prime minister to go and check when the weaving starts. So the blokes get a lot of money. The scoundrels get a lot of money. They get gold thread. They get all sorts of things. They set up a loom. I used to do a lot weaving myself. I'd do all the motions weaving and a thin lap. And the prime minister goes to see them, and he looks, and he looks, and he can't see anything. And the scoundrels, they say, you know, if you're not very accomplished and you're not very intelligent, you can't see anything, but you'll be fine 'cause you're the prime minister. And the prime minister thinks, "Yes, it's gorgeous. "It's absolutely gorgeous. "I love it. "The emperor's going to love it." So then the emperor comes in and the prime minister says, "Is it gorgeous? "Is it going to love it, aren't you?" And the emperor thinks, "Mm, yes. "I kind of suit my complexion, won't it? "Be fine." And they carry it off, although neither of them can see anything at all. You know the story, don't you? So being the emperor and being rather fond of his clothes and having paid an awful lot of money for this carbon neutral, unseeable, unless you're intelligent, set of clothes, organizes a big parade. And you know, he gets dressed up in this set of clothes. He stands in front of the mirror, which because he's not intelligent and very accomplished is kind of embarrassing. So he wears his best underwear, just in case. And he sets forth on a big parade through the town. And luckily for him, everybody's heard the story and they're all rather interested to see who's going to be the stupid one that can't see anything. They're all hanging around in the crowd thinking, "I wonder who's not going to be able to see it." And then they discover they can't see it. The emperor goes past and all they can see is a bloke in some rather fine underwear. It isn't always what you want to see, is it? In a parade. And they don't dare mention that they can't see anything because they don't want to look stupid and everybody else seems to be seeing it. So they don't want to be the one that can't see it. But there is somebody who hasn't heard the story, who hasn't been touched by the story, hasn't got anything invested in anything at all. It's a wee boy and he shouts out, well, you know what he shouts out. It shouts out, "The Emperor's naked is not wearing anything." His father quickly dashes him away somewhere and says, "Don't know, don't say that, "you'll just look stupid." But by then, the crack has appeared and now everybody can see a rather silly bloke in a rather fine set of underwear. And the poor emperor, bless him, the poor emperor, he knows then what's happened and he just carries on because what can you do in that situation, so he just carries on his parade. So don't actually know what the original symbolism of this story is, but it does recur to me every now and then, probably when I'm feeling a little bit nervous about what's happening around me. And I think, I suppose it stands out for me as a tale of a lack of individuality and a tale of group mentality. Nobody wants to appear stupid or speak out. It's also a story of clever con men that get what they want by manipulating people's weaknesses. So for me, it highlights a particular dilemma. How do I know what to trust? How do I know when I'm being conned or misled? I have many thoughts, feelings, perceptions, passing through my experience, passing through my mind. I'm in contact with a lot of people that talk to me about their opinions, their perceptions. How do I know what to trust? When I listen to myself, am I the emperor? Call up in flattery and pride? Or maybe I'm the child speaking the truth? Or maybe I'm just somebody in the crowd who doesn't want to admit they can't see anything and they're probably rather stupid and unaccomplished? What about the opinions of others? Can they be trusted? Is there any real integrity there? Or is it just group mentality that's speaking? The problem is, of course. Well, I'm just a person, aren't I? That's prone to group behaviour. And the people I'm surrounded by are also the same as me, just prone to that sort of thing. So how do I know what to trust in terms of when I'm with others, when I'm with myself, what do I trust? So what's the authority in our lives? What's the reference point? Well, at present, I live in a culture that gives quite a lot of recognition to the individual. It asks us to trust the individual. Everything else is out of our control, but you can look after your own self-interest. You can put money in a pension. You can ensure everything that you own. You can have everything covered. Just look after it yourself. In 1928, Herbert Hoover, the presidential candidate, delivered a speech in which he says, "The American system of rugged individualism." He coins this phrase, "rugged individualism." And he holds this up as a value, and it has a lot of very good values in it. He talks about maintaining individual initiative and enterprise, the rights and responsibilities of the individual, the very basis of liberty and freedom. So the rights of an individual, maintaining individual freedom, maintaining individual integrity, individual initiative, all of this is the basis of our liberty. So it sounds good to me. Why would we not want that? So individualism is a political and social philosophy that just pushes the individual out to the front, puts the values around the individual. It's based on, well, the individual is self-reliant and free. It has a darker side, which is that it opposes authority and all controls over the individual. Society and our culture mold our consciousness. So a strong conditioning factor in my life is the cultural emphasis on the individual and individualism. The values of individualism shape my consciousness. Self-reliance, freedom, privacy, opposition to authority, and a suspicion towards institutions and groups. As a conditioning, it is quite helpful, though. It supports the whole vision of self-development, and it shims with the vision of the Buddha, alone under the Bodhi tree, gaining enlightenment through his own effort. So as a starting point, it isn't one of Mara's arrows. It's a good basis on which to grow from, on which to stand as a Buddhist. We've also got Sankarachta's teachings on the true individual, fantastic teachings. It's something that all of us can respond to. Being responsible, self-aware, experiencing matter. What else does he say? Creative, what did he say? Fidelity, yeah, anything else? So having the values of individualism can take us a long way. We can move towards becoming happy, healthy human being. Unless Mara takes hold of those values and creates arrows with them. So for someone with values around freedom and self-reliance, Mara can show up when our freedom is threatened by other people, particularly organized groups of people like us. [Laughter] So here's something that could be like a railway station at that moment. [Laughter] It's not wild. Anyway, so when we feel like we're being told what to do, that there isn't a choice, it might start off quite simply like a sentence in a talk that slightly alienates you. Or a mistake in the way that an announcement is made. Or maybe just simply you just can't find your meditation cushions because somebody's moved them. Or maybe people laughing at a joke and you didn't hear the beginning. Something happens that is unpleasant and this begins a whole train of thought that leads to anger, disconnection and a lack of receptivity to everything. And you have now become a group of one and everyone else is in another group. So Mara shows up and he's fairly sophisticated. He knows our strengths and our weaknesses. He also knows our ambivalence. He's very keen on ambivalence. He even knows we are going to show up as because we show up so often in the same place. He just does a sit and wait. You're a sitting target in many ways for Mara because we habitually show up always on the same path, don't we? And his comforting whisper starts with a few gentle whispers that gradually undermine our connection with others and splits you off from your own deeper experience. And that's what he's really trying to do. Because if you are in contact with a deeper sense of yourself then he'll lose his grip on you. So he's got to woo you. He's got to be seductive and he's got to be comforting. He's got to be where security is. And he's got to do it in a way that aligns him and his voice with the values that you believe in. So he's hanging out around here whispering something. Sometimes he hangs out there in that shoe lobby with me and he says, "Why do Buddhists have to wear orange and yellow plastic shoes?" Or he hangs out in here and he says, "Does anybody else think this is a weird thing to do with a bank holiday weekend?" Am I the only one thinking this? No, surely I'm not the only one that's thinking that, am I? What is this? I mean, what 6.30 in the morning for come on with a load of blankets, loads of blankets? I mean, what is that? Surely, I mean, isn't that quite a strange thing? Isn't it? Yeah, maybe he's just whispering something right now. Maybe it's a whisper he's been doing for a few days or maybe for a brief moment, it's just that Mara's just been quite quiet because you've been enjoying it, you've been enjoying everything. But you know, is this something you'd share with your friends when you got home in the pub? For goodness' sake? No, I don't think so. I mean, how are you going to tell people what you've been doing without looking really weird? So he's, and he knows your weakness, he does know your weakness. And the thing about Mara is he knows how to sound very reasonable, he's very believable. The arrows that he throws are all about freedom, authenticity, and self-reliance. So how do we know what we can trust? About 18 years ago, I was on a study day with Domrati in the Glasgow Buddhist Centre, and he happened to say something that had a really profound effect on me. He said, "If you can really trust your context, then something will happen that is beyond your imaginings." It was something like that, it's quite an old quote now, but it's whispered down the ages to me, it's something like that. So after hearing this, I went back to my community, and I practiced trusting that particular context. And at supper, I just sat back and trusted, and I experienced bliss. I just simply experienced bliss with those people. Walking across the hall to my room, I reflected on the conditions I had in place in my life, and I felt happy, and I felt blissful. What he said would happen, did happen. So what was going on there? I just began to learn how I was responding from my own authenticity, from my own inner experience. What am I responding to? What are my real values? What is it that I can trust? And I began to learn about having a faith response. So having a faith response means responding to something, it's like placing your heart upon something in that moment. What do you place your heart upon? Sankarachta in the survey says faith can be described. It's a bit like one of the strings of a musical instrument is played, and the same string on another instrument is vibrating with it. When do we feel that vibration in us? When do we feel that response? When do we, as an instrument, get played by moments of kindness, or moments of clarity, or moments of authenticity? When is that string on that instrument vibrating for us? It's an intuitive response. It's not a belief in a religion. It's not a belief in some sort of system. It's simply an intelligent emotional response. It's got more intelligence to it than just simply feelings, and it's got more feeling to it than simply an idea. And it's a response that you have on the inside that you know you can trust. It settles you, and it doesn't have any stories. It isn't propped up by a lot of thoughts and a lot of ideas. But there are two aspects to Damrati's comment, an inner aspect, and an outer aspect, like in Nalavachist talk. So there's my inner experience of trusting my context, but there's also the outer experience of having a context to trust, and both are needed, and both are dependent on me, and I am dependent on both. Creating inner conditions that are trustworthy, this is self-development, and creating individuality. Creating outer conditions that are trustworthy, this is called transforming world and creating anger. As you become more individual, then there's more inner conditions that you can trust. But also, as you relate to others from that level, you are creating more of a trustworthy connection, and around you, the situation becomes trustworthy. So Sangerachter in his book, What is the Sangha, says, "In essence, a spiritual community is a free association of individuals. The first requirement is a number of individuals. You can no more have a spiritual community without individuals than you can have an omelette without eggs." A spiritual community is not created by getting yourself a building, or an exotic form of dress, or a long list of rules. You don't need a building. You don't even need an authentic tradition. You don't even need a religion. What you need are individuals. That is the basic ingredient. In other words, you need a number of people who are relatively emancipated from the group, relatively integrated and aware, and with an inner direction and positive purpose to their lives. Of course, there is a sort of hidden teaching in this, which is you don't create an omelette without cracking eggs, do you? So there's quite a lot of mess involved in eggs and omelets. But do we really believe that, that it only takes individuality and individuals to create a community? When we split off from the community and we look around us, we don't see individuals. We don't see individuality. We see something else that's much more stupid. And why does that happen? A lot of the time that happens because we're not standing in our own individuality. We're not standing in our own inner strength, on our own reference point. And when we're not standing on that, nobody else is either. So we've got to be able to stand alone. Stand alone amidst the community. And this is going to require mindfulness and ethics, becoming aware of ourselves, noticing how thoughts and emotions are conditioned, are habitual, are simply part of a whole stream of experiences, arising up out of conditions. As we become aware of what's going on, we're less governed by the conditioning factors of pleasure and pain. We know thoughts and emotions for what they are. They are not us. We can relax our tendency to identify with them. We cease to identify so much with them. We're becoming an island. We're becoming an island with less and less on it. Whilst awareness gets stronger, the ego gets weaker. What we're standing on is firmer. And we've also got the practice of matter, the practice of developing positive emotion. So we begin to develop more of a connection with other people. We have a less of a preference towards our own happiness. We want others to be happy too. We see people more as they really are. And because of that, we're freer of the views that we have of them. We're less caught up with them. It's quite interesting, isn't it? That you can have stronger feelings for people and be less caught up with them. I've sometimes thought that having laid quite a lot of brown vahara's retreats to how positive emotion is just very simple. Sometimes, because we have to talk about it, we make positive emotion very complicated. That's a very simple experience. And because of that, we think it's something that's very big and very difficult to be. And we expect something to be very dramatic. And that's because most of the time we're dealing with a lot of dramas, which are very dramatic. And a lot of that's tied around negative emotion. Positive emotion isn't like that. So you can no more have a spiritual community without individuals. Then you can have an omelet with our eggs. So the spiritual community, the sangha, is dependent on us as individuals, developing individuality. Sangha actually goes on to describe the sangha in the following way. There should be regular personal contact between these individuals. This is not simply polite social interchange, nor does it involve herding together in a group for psychological warmth and comfort and support. The spiritual community consists of individuals who are in deep personal contact with one another. It will challenge you to be an individual. People there will do what they can to spark off real communication. Yes, you are all trying to develop, but you are trying to develop together. Not only that, but you're trying to help one another to develop. Clearly, such emergent individuals are not going to agree on everything. But there must be a common spiritual framework within which they are trying to develop. Without which they will find it very difficult to help or even understand one another. And it consists mainly of two things - a common spiritual ideal and a common means of realizing that ideal. So we're walking in the same direction and we're walking in the same way. So when maras are arrows are thrown at the Buddha, they turn into flowers. When our mara throws arrows at us, they don't turn into flowers, do they? They turn into warfare. But I've been thinking about that and thinking - it's hard to put this. What aura do those arrows have to pass through in order to turn into flowers? So what does the arrows of individualism have to pass through to become the flowers of individuality? And I've been thinking it's an aura of non-duality. When we hold on to very dualistic views, we see things in terms of absolutes. We are over identified with a particular view and experience. In other words, we see things very black and white and we believe it. In one of us, the seminar, Sangarachia, says there can only be choice where there is duality. You only feel a need to make a choice when you feel or see that there are two things. If you don't see those two things as two things, if you see them not as two things but as one thing, you don't make a choice. There is no need to make a choice. I wish I could actually communicate to you what this really means to me. While I've been writing this talk, I've been trying to really think about this. What this actually means in terms of our individuality and our community. But maybe I'll just say, just trust that those two things are not different. Just for a brief moment. Just trust that they are the same thing. Why not? Conflict arises because duality is not seen at all. It is only seen in a very clumsy way. We get lost in the tendency to absolutize the terms of dualities. So, Sangarachia says, like imagine, say you've lost something and you're very caught up in the fact that you've lost something. All you can think about is the fact that you lost something, that you don't have something. Your mind is completely dominated by this loss and then your mind is completely dominated by what you want to gain and you're enslaved by the dualism. He says, when we cease to absolutize, we experience the loss but it's not overwhelming. Yes, we experience the pleasure of possession but it doesn't take us over completely. There's a wider framework, a bigger context within these experiences take place. Therefore, we are not bothered by them so much. You don't identify with that so much. In absolute terms, there is no subject and object duality. You begin to realize that you suffer on account of your previous enjoyment. The one makes the other possible, the loss and the pain go together. The loss and the pleasure go together. So, we need to reflect on the polarizations that we're creating in our mind, maybe even right now. How do we set up conflict for ourselves? What grasping are you doing that's creating a particular experience of self and other. So, how would the individual and the collective relate within a less polarized, less dualistic framework? Collective practice, the practice of community has a dynamic alchemy, all of its own, has a sensitivity, all of its own. I think of it like a coral reef, a lot of creatures live in it and it's also very susceptible to pollution. So, in that community, I would see the development of myself as an individual and I'd see that the development of myself as an individual was the development of Sanga and it would be the development of Sanga and the development of the Sanga was also the development of myself and it would be the development of myself. Easy to say, hard to understand. That individuality needs to be developed inside and outside. This experience of community needs to be developed outside and also inside. The value of freedom coming back to the individualism, the values of individualism, the value of freedom would still be alive, that the only way to really be free was to be free from the group and that the group lived inside me in my habitual thoughts and patterns as well as outside me in other people's habitual thoughts and patterns and I'd work to become free of that and I'd have the value of independence. Just so you know, these people are catching a taxi. I'd have the value of independence, that the only way to be independent was to stand unsupported by conditions, unsupported by conditioning factors. These factors being all the props that I use to shore up my sense of self, to guard my self-image. I need to live beyond those defences and to be in communication with others who are also standing free, who do not prop me up, who do not shore me up, but who insist on my independence support me in my independence and I need help with that and I'd like to help you too. So at that moment I would be standing alone in the cold wind of the Dharma, of Dharma practice, but I wouldn't be separate. My aloneness would not be dependent on separation because I'd be standing with others, others that were doing what I was doing, standing free, free of the group, but standing together within conditions but free of conditions. It's more like standing within myself but without the pull of the group and I'd know what I could trust, within self and within other. And knowing what I can trust is touching the earth, like the Buddha did when the arrows were thrown at him, he touched the earth. Sanger Echter says in wisdom beyond words, he says, "If we're not rooted in the spiritual life, we are rooted in shallow, stony, loose and shifting soil, maybe even sand, we are rooted in phenomenal reality and we can be blown over by Mara. So we stand very precariously, but if we're rooted in reality our roots go much deeper, we draw sustenance from a much deeper level and we stand much more firmly and grow more vigorously. When you live from the deepest level of reality, that is your practice of wisdom. Your practice is the way that you live. Your whole life is the expression of what you're rooted in. So don't draw your nourishment from any aspect of your conditioned being. Go deeper. Draw it from the depths of the unconditioned. Draw it from the true nature of Dharma, which is also in a sense your own true nature. If you do that, then everything you say, everything you do, everything you think will be your practice of wisdom, the highest perfection. So we need to draw sustenance from a much deeper level, a level where Mara can't reach us, but he does not want you to do that. He will stop you from drawing on that level and he will whisper comforting words to stop you from going there. He will whisper words like individual and group. He will polarise you with others and with yourself. But we need to speak from that level in ourselves and relate from that level in ourselves. If we do that, then that, let me say this again. Well, if I do that, then that will free you to do that. And if you do that, that will free her to do that. And if she does that, then that will free him to do that. And if he does that, then that will free her to do that. And if you do that, then that will free me to do that. And then the inner is trustworthy and the outer is trustworthy. Look around you. It doesn't get any better than this. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebutestaudio.com/community. And thank you. you [BLANK_AUDIO]
