(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. - Well, thanks very much, Nargajevtus. I feel quite moved actually. But I really liked what Nargajevtus said, because in a way, that's how our movement works. So we have a teacher, Sangerakshita, but the way that that Dharma, that teaching is communicated is through friendship, you know. And so I've learned something from Sangerakshita, Banti. I pass it on to my friends. My friends pass it on to the next generation. And so it goes on. And so everything that we've got here is really based on friendship. And friendship is probably the main way that we exemplify the altruistic dimension of spiritual practice, you know, the other regarding aspect. We just befriend people and no strings attached. So I'm very pleased that Rudad Chandra's asked me to do this talk because it's something that I believe in quite strongly. And I believe that this is a series of talks on the altruistic dimension of spiritual practice. And I've been asked to give a talk on Kshanti. And Kshanti, it's a beautiful word. It means patience. And it's one of the six perfections that's practiced by the Bodhisattva. And the Bodhisattva is someone in whom, the Bodhicitta, the altruistic dimension of spiritual practice has arisen. It's the awakened heart. And it's an intense desire to gain enlightenment, not just for one's own sake, but for the sake of all, for the sake of all beings. So the Bodhisattva ideal is the altruistic ideal. And taken to perfection, it's something that, and it's something that's at the heart of our Buddhist movement, the Teeratna Buddhist community. So to train in the altruistic ideal, and really there's no spiritual life without it, we train in the six perfections. And some of you, I'm sure, have come across the six perfections. And the six perfections are generosity and ethics, patience and energy and meditation and wisdom. And they tend to go together in pairs like that. 'Cause my jacket is a little bit cold. And I just want to say that I think it's very important to notice that the Bodhisattva path, the Buddhist life, starts with dharma or generosity. That's the first of the six perfections. I'm going to talk about Shanti, but I just want to mention Dharna. It's not a question of so much of what you give. It's more a question of attitude. So through generosity, we're trying to turn around our deep seated attitude of looking at situations and people in terms of what they can do for us and turn it around to what we can actually do for them, what we can give to them. And like all the perfections, we practice them until they become spontaneous, until they become a natural expression of who we are. And when they become a natural expression, they become perfections. But we're sort of training in those qualities. So Shanti has been spoken of as one of the most beautiful words in the whole Buddhist vocabulary. And it's certainly a word that's very rich in meaning. And Sanger actually speaks with Shanti like this. He says it's difficult to translate Shanti by any one English word because it means a number of things. It means patience, patience with people, patience when things don't go your way. It means tolerance, allowing people to have their own thoughts, their own ideas, their own beliefs, even their own prejudices. And it means love and kindness. And it also means openness, willingness to take things in, especially receptivity to higher spiritual truths. So Shanti means all those things. So Shanti really is a form of love. It's a form of matter and compassion. And it's love in a particular sense. It's love under difficult circumstances. So in a sense, it's love when there's no reason to love. When things get difficult, when people get difficult, that's when we practise Shanti. That's when matter becomes Shanti. And it's also the antidote to anger or hatred. So developing Shanti works against anger and hatred. And it includes forgiveness and also genuine humility. So you can see Shanti is a huge subject. And I just want to touch on three aspects. Patience with ourselves, patience with other people and spiritual receptivity. And there's much more that could be said about this. It could be possible to give a whole series of talks on Shanti. But I've only got about 40 minutes. So I'll just touch on those three areas. So first of all, patience with ourselves. And it's said that matter starts with ourselves. So I suppose Shanti also has to start with ourselves. Because what we tend to find is that we treat other people very much in the same way that we treat ourselves. And the expectations that we have of others are usually the sort of expectations we have of ourselves. So if we're impatient with ourselves, we're likely to be impatient with other people. If we're patient with ourselves, we're more likely to be patient with others. So firstly, there's patience in relation to our own bodies. Patiently enduring, the aches and pains and the illnesses that are part of having a body. And it's winter now in Sweden. And some of you probably have some recent experience of this. So it's important to look after our bodies and to care for our bodies. And there's much talk in the Buddhist tradition of the preciousness of the human body. And it's the human body that enables us also to strive for enlightenment. So it's a support for practicing the spiritual life. At the same time, it's important to recognize that the body's impermanent. It doesn't last, it ages, it gets ill, it hurts. And eventually, it breaks down, and we die. And it's important to recognize this. And really, it just means accepting that the facts of human life. We do what we can to look after our bodies, but we recognize that however much we look after the body, we also have to realize that it's not fully under our control. So even if we don't get ill, sooner or later, we grow old and we die. And we try to accept that gracefully. We try to accept old age gracefully. We try to accept death gracefully. And it's interesting, I was talking with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, who's been very ill for a long time. He had Hepatitis C. And for a long time, he thought he was going to die. And when I was talking to him, he thought that death wasn't overrated. He thought that death wasn't such a big deal as we make it out to be. He thought that actually it wasn't such an interruption as we make it out to be. And he had a strong belief in re-becoming rebirth, whatever. But I found that quite interesting to reflect on. So there's not only death, but there's old age. And I think old age is quite difficult to accept. And old age is something that we struggle with. I think we have a culture of youth and health. And old age is perhaps seen as something undesirable. So part of Buddhist practice is coming to terms with old age. And I remember Sangrakshita himself saying that he was prepared for death, but he wasn't fully prepared for old age and the loss of his independence. Because as he got older, he started to lose his eyesight. And other people needed to help him. And he was fiercely independent. And he liked to go off by himself sometimes because he's a very public figure. And just be private and just be anonymous. But because he lost his eyesight, he wasn't able to do that. So the cultivation of this aspect of patience involves reflecting, reminding ourselves that we get old, we grow, and eventually we'll die. Not in a gloomy sort of way. When we talk about death, people often think it's quite gloomy. But just facing the facts of life, of having a body and recognizing this, opening up to it through such practices as reflection on impermanence and the six element practice in a highly positive context of matter. So that we're not unprepared. So that we actually start to develop the human and spiritual resources in our lives. So that when old age and death come, we've got something inside us which can help us to come to terms with that. So that's Chashanti in relation to the body. And the Buddha in his early life, before he was a Buddha, before he was enlightened, realized that because we're so intoxicated with our own youth and health, we feel disgusted and humiliated when we see sickness, aging and death. That's quite strong language. And I think it's quite easy to react to that sort of language. But if you look at it, I think it's probably true that we tend to block out suffering. We tend to block out old age. We tend to block out death because we don't want to accept. This is going to happen to us as well. So if we're able to accept our own aging and death, we're also able to accept it in others and feel empathy and a metaphor for them. And we come to realize that we're much more connected to others than we thought. And because we're connected to others, also there's no point in getting impatient with old people because they're slow or because they can't keep up. Okay, I want to move on. And I want to move on to patience in relation to ourselves with regard to our spiritual progress. And I think it's very important, first of all, to recognize that spiritual growth and unfoldment depends upon setting up the right conditions and not upon our willpower. And I think this is an important point because I meet lots of people who think they can force themselves into higher states of consciousness, and I've tried to do it myself as well. And it doesn't work, and it just leads to frustration. So we're much better ground if we think of just setting up the conditions for spiritual growth rather than trying to get into any particular state. And Sangerakshita uses an image here. He says that it's a little bit like someone trying to grow a plant, and they keep pulling up the plant to look at the roots to see if it's growing. It doesn't work, does it? I think what often holds us back is actually not trusting the conditions that we have. And because we don't trust in our meditation practices, in our friendships, in our Dharma study and so on, we're not able to give ourselves fully to them. We hold back, and I think that's what probably holds us back more than anything. So we get impatient for results without putting in the effort to create the conditions we need to grow. And I gave that reading before the Mehta Bhavna, and it's a natural law that the next stage of the spiritual life arises out of the fullness of the stage we're practicing. So if we just get on with our practice, whatever our practice is at the moment, say we've just come along quite recently, we're doing the Mehta Bhavna and the mind was breathing, if we go fully into that and fully into our practice of ethics, something will just arise out, that the next stage will just arise quite naturally. And I know that if I'm hungry for higher teachings, I just have to look at the teachings I've already got and ask myself, "Am I actually practicing those as fully as I can?" For ethics, for instance, the ten precepts in a way I've hardly scratched the surface. And so, look more to gain more deeply into the practices that you already have. And I think progress in spiritual life is much more to do with the intensity and the commitment we can bring to our overall practice. Not just what we're doing on the meditation cushion, but how much we're able to practice in every situation in life. I think it's very easy to underestimate how deep a change it requires to make spiritual progress. And the Yoga Chara talks about turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness. So it's almost as if we've got to turn something around that's very, very deep in us. And it takes a long time and getting impatient with ourselves isn't going to make it happen any quicker. I think another thing that's important to remember is that we grow at different speeds. Some people grow more quickly than others. We bring different things to our practice. So there's no point in comparing ourselves with other people or comparing our rate of change with others. Sometimes it's not clear even if we're growing and changing at all. Sometimes there are periods in our spiritual life where we can feel as if we're going backwards. But that's not the case, but it can feel like that. And I think that's why we need spiritual friends. You know, people who've got a broader perspective on our lives. Sometimes we lose perspective ourselves on how our lives are going. So as I said, sometimes I think it's easy to lose confidence and to feel daunted by how difficult it is to make substantial spiritual progress. Or we compare our progress with others. And I think we've all had the experience of being on retreat. And we're sitting in the shrine, we're meditating, and everybody else looks so happy. And they've got this little Buddhist smile on their faces. And then we're just sitting there and we're struggling with our meditation practice. Or maybe we come to a class like this class and we think everybody's getting on so well. You know, they've all got friends here. They all look so well connected. And then we talk to them and we find out, you know, they feel just as sort of out their depth or whatever it is as we do. Or just as sort of on their own as we do. So I think it's, I don't think we need to compare ourselves with others. I think we can really trust in our practice there. Where I live at Pabmaloka, I work on an ordination team. So we help to prepare people for ordination. And it can get very, very intense sometimes. You know, we have retreats with a lot of people on them. We see a lot of people every day. We're probably leading groups and so on and other things. And sometimes we sit in the team meeting and one of us says, I feel like the weak link in the team. And, you know, you can feel that. So you just say, well, actually, you know, I feel like, you know, you're all doing so well. I'm really struggling. I feel like I'm the weak link. And then someone else says, no, no, no, you're not the weak link. I'm the weak link. And, you know, it can feel like that sometimes. So, you know, communicate. If you think that other people are doing so well and you're not, just communicate and get another perspective on it. And you'll find it's probably not quite like how you thought. And I personally find it helpful to remember that practicing the Buddhist life is not about being perfect, you know. And it's not about reaching any particular stage. It's much more about that you're making the effort to grow and to change regardless of where you are on the path. You don't need to worry too much about where you are on the path. The important fact is that you're actually making the effort to change. And I think a big part of practicing dharma is just reminding ourselves repeatedly what we're trying to do. We're going to forget that what we're trying to do is just to respond to every situation with awareness and kindness. That's all we're trying to do, really. That's what it really comes down to. But we forget that again and again. You know, we lose our temper with somebody. We forget to meditate whatever. And we don't need to make a big drama of it if that happens. You know, we're not the worst Buddhist in the world. You know, when that happens, we just have to remember, okay, well, I've lost, I've forgotten what I'm trying to do. And we just go back to practice and we get on with the practice. And the great Mahayana teacher, Asanga said, the essentials of practice are to purify your intention by remembering and to make correction after failure. So we're going to forget again again what we're doing, developing awareness and kindness. And we just have to keep coming back and remembering and going back to practice. And that's really the essence of, you know, the practice of kashanti in relation to our own practice. And traditionally, practicing shanty also includes patients with discomfort, inconvenience and from criticism from the teacher. That's the traditional forms. And I suppose this really comes down to how much are we prepared to put ourselves out to practice the dharma. It's a cold night outside, you know, are we prepared to actually go to the class? We're tired after work. It's Friday night and we've booked on a retreat. Do we actually still go on the retreat or do we decide it's just too much effort, you know, and I've worked too hard. Or do we make the effort to go? And so on and so forth. At the time of the Buddha, in popular in India at that time, there are all sorts of ascetic practices. So if you walk through jungle, you'd see people standing on one leg or, you know, eating no food or practising no food or going without sleep or sitting, meditating in the noonday sun. And there was this widely held belief that if you mortified your body, your spirit would be set free. And that was a very common belief at the time of the Buddha. And he tried it for a number of years and he found it was totally useless. It didn't work. He didn't get anywhere with it. But after his enlightenment, some of his disciples wanted these ascetic practices. They wanted to, they were quite attached and they wanted to be given some sort of ascetic practice. So what the Buddha said was, we'll just practice patience. Just practice kashanti. If you practice patience, that will be enough. That will really try you. And particularly other people. That will be enough. You don't need to stand on one leg for hours and hours. And I was out with Swen today and we were out for a walk and he reminded me that in Swedish, patience is tall and mould. So mould is, I believe, courage. So actually patience is a heroic virtue. You need courage to practice patience because it means responding with love to difficulty. To difficult people, to difficult situations. And you need to be quite heroic to do that. You need to really, really conquer your thinking and strangle day to do that. Yeah, exert yourself. That's the word. So other people give us plenty of opportunity to practice patience. Just as we give other people that same opportunity and it's important to remember that. Other people can be very difficult, especially when they don't do what we want them to do, when we want them to do. And I remember when I lived in Sweden, I had a friend who I used to go for walks with in the forest and we'd get into the forest and there'd be nobody around. And my friend would say, brah, ingen, manifra. So we all feel like that sometimes. We feel like just getting away from people and just being by ourselves. And it's true that the spiritual life is very often associated with solitude and going away and meditating on your own. And that's part of the spiritual life. But the other part of the spiritual life is coming into deeper and deeper relationship with others. And strangely enough, that's the more difficult part. So I'm going to be a bit autobiographical and I hope you'll excuse me. By nature, I'm an impatient person as people who knew me here know only too well. And I've had to work quite a lot with developing patients. And I learned quite a lot about developing patients living in Sweden. Not because anything you did. I've always had a lot of energy. And I was attracted to Verea, which is the other side of the coin, which is energy. The quality that balances Kshanti. And patients always seem to me like a bit of a dull sort of quality, you know, a bit boring. But when I came to work with VBV in Stockholm, I came to realize that if you're going to work with other people, if you're going to help create a sangha, a spiritual community, you're going to need patients. And perhaps you're going to need that quality more than any other quality. And so I really value my time here in terms of I had to learn patients. And with work I'm doing now as well. I'm working with all sorts of different people. And I have to be patient. And it still doesn't come easy. But I just see how important quality it is. And by patience, I don't mean just enduring people. I don't mean just putting up with people. And when they go, you think, "Ah, that was really difficult." What I mean is learning to love people. And you know, patients, Kshanti is an aspect of matter. It's an aspect of love. And feeling better for people for who they actually are, rather than who I'd like them to be. And I think we find that sometimes. We meet somebody. And we have an idea of them. We like them. And then we start to get to know them more deeply. And as we get to know a person more deeply, we find they're all sorts of bits we just don't like. But that's when friendship really starts. It's when you meet those bits of the other person that you don't like and you keep going. That's when friendship really starts. That's when friendship becomes something deeper than just having interests in common. I practice Buddha and he practices Buddha and so on. So when I came to Sweden, I had all sorts of ideas about the Sangha, what it should be. And I felt impatient that things were not happening faster. And I'm very grateful to everyone who was so patient with my impatience. And after about three years, after being here three years, I sort of realised that instead of trying to get other people to practice the Dharma in the way that I thought it would be good for them to practice. I should just try to be open to how they wanted to practice the Dharma and see what I could do to help them. And that really was the turning point of my stay in Sweden. And after that, I was much happier. Other people were naturally much happier. And strangely enough, things started happening much more quickly. And the Sangha started to come together much more fully than it had done before. And strangely enough, when I was preparing this talk, I was looking at some notebooks that I kept at about that time when I was living in Sweden. And I found this quote from Sangha Akshita. And it sums up exactly what I was trying to say. So I'll just read it. So this is what he says. He says, "We may start on the Bodhisattva path. Not by thinking, I shall lead all beings in Nirvana, but by resolving, I shall try to see these beings as they are in themselves and see what their needs are, rather than constantly looking to see how they can fulfil my needs." Yeah? So seeing these beings as they are, looking what their needs are, rather than looking for other people to fulfil our needs. And he says, "This is the essential revolution called for by the Bodhisattva vow." Okay, so in our Buddhist order and movement, there's this strong emphasis on Sangha, and on working together to create Sangha and to spread the Dharma. And when you work closely together, it's very testing. And the reason it's testing is not just that people have different views, but they care very deeply about what they're doing. Everybody in the Sangha cares very deeply about the Sangha, but very often they want to do things differently. And so there's a lot of emotion involved, a lot of energy involved. And as I said, when we get to know people, when we practice Sangha together, we come more strongly into relationship with others. And when that happens, difficulties, differences of approach, personality clashes will arise. And in normal friendships, friendships outside the Sangha, we'd probably just give up on them, and we'd walk away. We'd go and find some other friends. Trouble is, in the Sangha, they're not going to go away. The people in this room, some of you, you're going to be with each other for the rest of your lives. You're going to be coming to the centre, you're going to be going on retreat together. So we have to do something to actually change that, to come into harmony with them. And that draws more out of us, so it is quite a potent practice, creating Sangha. So our ideals touch us deeply. And if we stay with it, it tests our metta, tests our practice of shanty, and forces us to take in other points of view, other ways of doing things, and broaden out, and not cling so tightly to our own separate selfhood. Our own sense of our self has isolated from others. Our cramped little ego identity, which we've all got, which limits us, and restricts us. So in the end, shanty, working closely with others to spread the dharma, comes to be an insight practice. It's a practice through which we begin to transcend self and other. We begin to go beyond ourselves in our own views, and become receptive to others' views. And in that way, we start to approach insight, we start to break down the distinction between self and other. And I was very struck at an order convention last summer, when around 400 order members came together. And there's some very strong and divergent views in our order about what the order is and how best to practice. And I've come to realise it's always going to be like that. There are always going to be debates going on. There are always going to be differences of opinion. And that's a good thing, you know, because it's part of the creativity of the order. And if everybody just agreed, if everybody had the same view, then it wouldn't be a dynamic order. It wouldn't be a creative order. So there's this natural difference of opinion. And we can't do anything to stop the difference of opinion. And it would be a bad thing to do so. And, you know, people are going to clash, they're all going to have different views on things. But what we can do is we can practice shanty, we can practice tolerance in relation to other people's views. And we can practice meta towards them, even when we disagree with them. And what struck me most about that convention last summer was that you could have 400 people together, holding a whole range of views, but they could meet together in harmony and in a spirit of meta. So for me, that really gave me confidence in the order. Not everybody thought the same, but that people could feel differently and still meet in harmony. And I know some of us were here, were there for that convention. But people do fall out, and sometimes people who we try to help may even turn against us. And they may criticize us publicly, they may respond to us with anger and with hatred. And when people start to go more deeply into practicing the Dharma, all sorts of forces get stirred up. And some of them are not very pleasant. And when this happens, to practice shanty means to practice forgiveness. Not in an naive way, it's not that you just pretend something hasn't happened. You remember, so you don't make the mistake again, but you forgive, you don't hold grudges. And the perfection of patience is compared to a great ocean, because whatever falls into it, it's not disturbed, it doesn't react. But none of us are great Bodhisattvas, so we all need methods for working with ourselves, with our minds, when other people hurt us, when other people cause us harm. And in the Jullon for Liberation by Gampopa, he suggests five different methods. And I just want to mention those very quickly. So this is how to practice patience and forgiveness towards others who have harmed us or hurt us. So the first one, I think, is particularly appropriate with friends and loved ones, who we've fallen out with. And it might be people in our own family, it might be people that we've been in a relationship with, or even married to, and that's broken up. And the first method is that you expand the context to include your whole relationship with that person over a period of time. So it may be that this person who's been dear to you has hurt you, but you've known them for a long time. And you just reflect that during that time that you've known them, there's been many instances where they've been kind to you. So you have a, you know, they've hurt you, but there are many kindnesses, and there are many perhaps good memories from your association with them. And that way you start to get the hurt into perspective. You get it into perspective of your whole experience of the person and your whole relationship with the person. And I had something like that last summer, I fell out with one of my brothers, and I was very hurt by something that happened. And I'd known him for over 40 years, and, you know, all my life, almost in my life. And it was just very good, just to reflect on the times in the past when he'd been kind to me, and, you know, where he'd helped me. And yes, okay, you know, there's this difficulty between us now, but there was much more to our relationship than the difficulty. So you broaden out. So that's the first method. The second method is to try to understand the other person, and it's said that to understand all is to forgive all. So somebody's hurt you, and you see that action as coming out of their conditioning, and you try to understand them. And this, you see this sometimes when you hear someone's life story. Maybe someone behaves in particular ways, you hear their life story, and you can see their actions in the context of their lives, and you can understand why they act the way they do. And I was talking to a friend recently, and this friend was telling me that research has been showing recently that we're much, much more conditioned by our early life than we realized, than researchers realized in the past. So a lot of the way we behave, a lot of our behavior, is conditioned by our past. So if we see that and they've hurt us, it makes it less personal. So we try to understand them. We try to understand where they're coming from. So we say, so that's the second method. The third method says that you may have a passing murderous impulse towards someone who's hurt you. That may sound extreme, but maybe not so extreme. So you reflect that by killing, you deny them the possibility of change, that human life is precious. That's a very Mahayana type of reflection. But maybe for us we could say that we don't cut off from people. So if somebody's hurt us, we don't cut off from them, we don't just shun them and cut them off. Because that also denies them the possibility of change. If we just say, okay, we have nothing to do with you, you've hurt me, I'm cutting you off. That denies them the possibility of change, at least in relation to you. And also, your friendship may mean more to them, even though they're behaving badly, than you realize. And you may be their main contact with Adama as well. So cutting off from someone is analogous to killing, so we don't cut off. We keep the relationship alive, we keep the connection. Fourthly, you reflect that people suffer so much, there's so much suffering in the world. Perhaps it's not always obvious that people suffer, but you start to look a bit more deeply into people's lives, and of course there's suffering there, it's a fact of life. So people suffer so much, and even though somebody's done something to harm us, we don't want to add to their suffering. We don't want to make things worse. So this just requires a bit of imagination, and then we can forgive them. We don't want to make their suffering worse. We don't want to cause them any more harm. Life's difficult enough. And lastly, you reflect that you're trying to develop the bodhi chitta, or if you like meta, towards all beings. Not just towards your friends and your family, you're trying to develop meta towards all beings, even those beings that have harmed you. And that requires quite a lot of reflection, I think, to get to that. But I think what you can say is you broaden out your meta. So you begin to develop your meta more strongly towards people that aren't just your friends and your family. Okay. Lastly, I want to move on to shanty as spiritual receptivity. And some of you will be familiar with an incident from the white lotus sutra, as a Mahayana sutra. And in the white lotus sutra, the Buddha is sitting deep in meditation. And he's sitting in a midst of a gathering of tens of thousands of arahants and bodhisattvas. And he sits for a long, long time in meditation, deeply absorbed in meditation. And eventually, he opens his eyes, and he announces that the ultimate truth of things is very difficult to understand. And his disciples ask him to communicate the ultimate truth to them. And he says that he will communicate a further teaching that goes beyond anything that they've already understood. And at that point, 5,000 arahants stand up and walk out saying a higher truth, a further teaching, impossible. And they go. And this story, I think, illustrates the tendency in spiritual life to think that we've got nothing more to learn. And obviously, we're not going to say we've got nothing more to learn, but we may have the attitude that we already know at all. And we know that there's nothing fresh. It's all old hat. So we close down to new experiences. We close down to deeper understandings. And I think this gets more difficult. It gets more difficult to stay open the longer we've been practicing, and also as we get older. So we need to consciously cultivate an attitude of spiritual openness and receptivity, and not settle down. That's the big danger in spiritual life, settling down. So we need to even cultivate an attitude of beginner's mind, of freshness in relation to the Dharma. And I want to touch on some areas of shanty as spiritual receptivity, and then I'm going to close. So first of all, spiritual receptivity to Kalyana Mitrata, and Kalyana Mitrata is spiritual friendship. And this means staying open to the possibility that others might be more spiritually developed, might have more experience in the spiritual life than we do ourselves. And, you know, not just people who've been ordained for a long time. I mean, if you've been ordained for a long time, you need to be open to everybody. You know, someone might just walk through the door, and they might have much, much more experience than one has oneself. But it means being prepared to learn from others, and being sensitive to that possibility. When you enter into communication from other people with other people, that they may have a bigger perspective, a more vivid and intense spiritual life than one does once. And then one can actually learn from them. Secondly, receptivity in relation to views. And practicing the Dharma challenges our views. The Dharma is quite radical, and it challenges our conventional views. So the Dharma gives a radically different perspective on our usual way of seeing things and our values in life. And I just want to give up one example. There's a common view, I think, that money will provide security. Yeah? That you need to save money, and that will provide you with security. Maybe it goes along with life insurance, and so on and so forth. I think that's fair enough, you know. I think it's good to provide for those things. But it's not necessarily going to provide security. And all Buddhist schools teach practicing Buddhist to reflect on the inevitability of death. I mentioned this earlier, but also to reflect that we don't know when we're going to die. So the uncertainty of the time of death, and thirdly, that at death is only spiritual practice that's going to count. It's only what we've done with our minds, the resources that we've cultivated within us that's going to matter at the time of death. So where's the security? I think this raises all sorts of interesting questions. Do we believe it? Is it true? What's most important to us? What do we prioritize? What do we devote our time to? So we question our assumptions, we stay open to the truth. We're open to actually looking at the views that we hold. And I don't think we like uncertainty. We like to fix things, we like to tie up loose ends, we like to think we've understood things. But when we strive to gain insight, when we strive to see things as they really are, we come against our limitations of understanding. So part of spiritual receptivity is staying open to uncertainty. Leaving things open, not trying to come to premature conclusions, not trying to tie things up, but staying open to the mystery of life and the mystery of other people, the mystery of ourselves, if you like. And Papa Samba, the great Buddhist teacher who brought Buddhism to Tibet, said this. He said, "Let these three expressions. I do not have, I do not understand, I do not know, be repeated over and over again. That is the heart of my advice. I do not have, I do not understand, I do not know." Okay, lastly, receptivity to the spiritual influence of the Buddhas and archetypal Bodhisattvas. I think it's very important to be able to imagine what enlightenment the goal of the spiritual life actually is. And we need something to engage our imagination. So it needs to be an imagination of something we can actually become ourselves. So it needs to be enlightenment in the form of another person. And that's why enlightenment in the form of a Buddha, or a Bodhisattva, is so important. The Buddha started off as a human being and he gained enlightenment. We're human beings, we too can gain enlightenment. So the Buddha is the main refuge. And the more faith we have, the more we're able to open up to the inspiration, to the spiritual influences of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The more we're able to sense subtle presence of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the more we're actually going to be able to open up to what they actually represent. And if you've practiced Puja, you've probably had the experience at the end of the Puja, when the mantras die away, there's a silence. And it's not an empty silence, it's a silence that's imbued with presence. It's imbued with the presence, the qualities of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, if we're receptive enough to them. And this becomes even more important, even more part of our lives, if we take up a visualization practice of a Buddha figure at ordination. And if we take up visualizing a Buddha or Bodhisattva, this becomes the center of our spiritual practice. It gives us something to relate our practice back to, an enlightened being, just like us, in a way it's us, when we gain enlightenment. That's what the Buddha or Bodhisattva that we visualise actually is. So in a way it's a way of connecting up with what really matters. And I want to finish by reading you a story, it's quite a short story. But it ties together quite a lot of what I've been saying about Kshanti as patience with our efforts to practice the Dharma. And also Kshanti as spiritual receptivity to the influence of the Buddhas. And it's a story about a great Buddhist teacher meditating on the Buddha Maitreya, the Buddha of Love. It's also a story about how spiritual breakthroughs cannot be forced, but arise independence upon conditions. And it's a breakthrough that occurs through love, through meta and Kshanti. So I'll finish with this story. In his youth he completed intensive studies in a monastery, and in middle life withdrew to a cave to meditate. He determined not to give up his meditation until Maitreya, the Bodhisattva of love and compassion, and the Buddha to come, manifested himself openly before him. When after three years he had no results, he became discouraged and left his cave. Nearby he met a man who was making a needle from an iron spike by rubbing it with a piece of cotton. Seeing this, his patience returned, and he went back to the cave and meditated unceasingly for six years more. Still, Maitreya did not manifest himself. Disheartened, but he had meditated for nine years without even sign of success, a sanger again left his cave. Outside he saw how a rock had been completely worn away by single drops of water, and the beating wings of passing birds. Again, his patience returned, and he resumed his meditation, this time for another three years. But finally, a sanger disbared completely of realising his aim and set out on the journey to return to his monastery. On the outskirts of Achincha, he saw an old she-dog whose hindquarters were raw and crawling with maggots. He felt great pity for her and wanted to relieve her suffering, but could not bear to destroy the maggots. Instead, he cut a piece of flesh from his own thigh and placed it near the dog. He then put out his tongue and prepared to transfer the larvae, the larvae, one by one, but the sight of the wound was so disgusting that he had to close his eyes. Suddenly, there was a great ringing in his ears, and he opened his eyes. Standing before him in a magnificent radiant light was Maitreya. Despite his joy, Arya Asanga exclaimed without thinking, "Why did you not come to me during the twelve years?" I earnestly meditated. Maitreya answered, "I was with you all the time. But you could not see me because you did not yet have great compassion. If you do not believe me, carry me through the town on your shoulders and try to show me to the people." Then, Arya Asanga raised Maitreya on his shoulder and carried him through the town, hoping to let everyone see the wonderful Buddha. But no one in the town saw Maitreya, and only one old woman even saw the dog. I'm happy to answer any questions about Shanti or anything else if you have anything you'd like to ask. I've got a few minutes left. I'll be patient. I think it's just that you have to go deeper with people. I think what you've got in common in a sense is that you're trying to practice a dharma with people together. You may feel that you haven't actually got much in common with people. Perhaps people you meet on retreat or so on. But you need to give it time, I think. Sometimes what I've found myself is it's the people that I've found it difficult. I've had to work at developing a friendship. I've had to look deeper at my own resources and they've actually end up being the best friendships. We're ones that have come quite easy and we both like jazz and we both like going to art galleries and so on. That's more superficial, that's more surface and perhaps I can get along like that for quite a while. But I think it's with people that I might even feel a bit of a version for at first when I first meet them. Or that communication doesn't flow that easily. That sometimes you've ended up with the deepest friendships. I think the other thing is that there are different forms of friendship. Some friendships are where you're very intimate with people. But there are other friendships where they just develop just through being around somebody over years and years. And you may not even have very intimate conversations. But you meditate together, you go on retreat together and something builds up over time. So it's not like a love affair. You know, friendship's not like a love affair. It's something that develops much more slowly and it doesn't have the same intensity as a love affair. But in a sense it can go very, very deep. Whereas a love affair can happen very quickly and it can be over very quickly as well. And you have these very intense feelings. Whereas friendship's just something that's much more slow burning. And it needs time, you know, so you give it time. So again, you need shanty in friendship. You need patience. So again, there are a lot of other things in the world. I don't know how many people are doing this. I don't know how many people are doing this. I don't know how many people are doing this. I don't know how many people are doing this. Yeah, I think what I've learned is you can't impose your views on other people. And you can't, you can't, you know, people have to be free to choose. So if people don't feel free to choose, then they can't really involve themselves. And it's only when people feel free to choose and they can come and go and they can approach things at their own time in their own way that they can actually involve themselves more wholeheartedly. If people can't say no, they can't say yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think there is. I think there is. You know, I think sometimes you do, you know, I mean, I wouldn't do it. I think sometimes there is a need to actually cut off with somebody. If they're trying to harm you or something like that, you know, or whatever. Or maybe you need to have space from people sometimes. I think the thing to do is not to give up too easily on people. You know, I think sometimes, you know, as soon as we have some sort of argument with somebody, we're very quick to withdraw. And I think sometimes we can go back and we can talk to them and we can find a way through that. But I think there is a boundary. You know, there is a limit. Yeah. I think, I mean, I think the obvious example for me is, is Banti. You know, my teacher, you know, I think he's just incredibly patient with us. You know, and I think he's, you know, he's been the teacher of our movement since about 1960, you know, and 1965. And he has this incredible correspondence. You know, people don't, you know, people don't always treat him well. You know, sometimes people react to him. They see him as an authority. All sorts of things go on. But I do feel that he's very, very patient. You know, and he's put up with a lot of people's immaturity and so on. But he's always kept the connections open. So I think he's an example for me. I'm sure there are others as well. What is happening now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a very mysterious thing, you know, because I think when we start, when we start out practicing the Dharma, we think very much in terms of our own efforts, you know, making, making effort in, in meditation and so on, you know, and striving ourselves. But as we go on, we start to realize that there's something coming back. You know, that this, and I don't, it's not God, you know, but it's very, very difficult to put it into words. But there is something, there are forces of love and compassion and so on in the universe. And in a sense, one's trying to align oneself with those forces so that they can affect us. And so we're trying to bring our own behavior. We're trying to make our own behavior more compassionate and more aware. And then it feels as if something almost comes in from, from the outside, as if we get some help with that from outside. So in Japanese, but when they talk about self-power and other power, you know, and in the early stage of spiritual life, you practice self-power. But then you open up to the forces of wisdom and compassion in the universe. And that's very much what we do as order members doing visualization practice. So at the time of our ordination, we take up a visualization practice of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva. We visualize them and we recite the mantra. And something happens and we, somehow the qualities start to rub off on us, they start to affect us. So you can see the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures as a symbolic representation of the qualities of enlightenment. But it's a very mysterious thing, and I couldn't argue it in empirical terms. I couldn't prove it. I hope that's helpful. There's a lot more that could be said. Yeah, quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose so, but I tend to think that if you familiarize yourself with something, it starts to lose its fear. You know, it's when we resist it and we push it away, that it becomes more frightening. And I tend to think that a lot of our fear of death is to do with, that we identify so strongly with the physical body. And that we tend to think that when the physical body goes, that's an end. But I think through meditation, you begin to get a sense that you begin to identify more with the mind. And begin to realize that as you begin to let go, you also let go of things being a particular way. And I think as you gradually let go more and more in meditation, you begin to let go of that attachment to a physical body. So in a sense, it starts to become, it doesn't become, it ceases to be something so final. That's afraid about the best I can do. So I think it's our attachment that makes death so frightening, but I'm not so sure that death in itself is frightening. Can you see what I mean? I think what happens is if you get irritated, later you reflect on it, you say, "Okay, I lost my temper." That brings more awareness into that. And then the next time, maybe you catch it a bit earlier, until eventually, as you bring more awareness to it, and with the help of meditation, you catch it as you're starting to get irritated and before you open your mouth and say something. Yeah, okay, we better stop there. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [silence]
