Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte and#8220;Seven Bodhyangas,and#8221; by Sangharakshita, is an excerpt from the talk and#8220;Mind: Reactive and Creative.and#8221; Here, Sangharakshita describes in detail the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, a creative spiral path of spiritual development.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Seven Bodhyangas
[music] Dharma Vites 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. [music] Now for the symbol of the path. The path works on a quite different principle. The wheel of life, as representing the reactive mind, works on the principle of round and round, over and over again, repetition. But the path works on the principle of not round and round, but up and up indefinitely. There are many formulations to describe, or to depict this sort of up and up process. And I'm going to take this evening, only one of them, which happens to be perhaps almost the best known. And that is, the formula of what is known as the Seven Bodhiyangas. The seven limbs or links in the process are enlightened. For the process of the creative mind, as its source, ever higher and higher, in the direction of nirvana, or the direction of enlightenment. Now, the first of these links, the first of these limbs, as it were, is what is called shmriti, which means mindfulness, which means recollection, which corresponds, we may say, to awareness, or self-awareness. And as I've already indicated, as I've already suggested, the spiritual life, or the higher evolution, if you like to call it, begins with just this. Most of the time, normal people are conscious, but we may say they are not self-conscious. The inner sense of where, but they are not self-aware, they don't remember themselves. And as I've said, they are, as it were, all the time asleep. So the first step, the first stage, the first Bodhiyanka, is what we call this awareness, or this mindfulness, or this becoming not self-conscious in the psychological sense, but self-conscious in the sense of conscious of our self, and realizing ourselves, being aware of ourselves, of a living and a growing person. So this is the first Bodhiyanka. Then the second one, what we call Dharma, Prabhichaya. Dharma here means simply mental states, not doctrine or teaching, mental states. Prabhichaya means analysis. So this link, this Bodhiyanka, means the analysis of mental states. Having become aware of ourselves, remembering ourselves, what do we then do? We start looking at our mental context. We start looking at our mental states, not only looking at them, but sorting them out, trying to make up our minds, trying to determine what mental states are of a reactive nature. What mental states are of a creative nature? At least awareness having been developed, the seed of awareness is there, the seed of creativity is there. So at this stage, try to sort out. Try to see how much in us there is of the reactive mind, how much in us there is of the creative mind, and distinguish these two quite clearly. And know, as we're from moment to moment, when we're being reactive and when we're being creative. And at first of all, we shall find that most of the time we are being or have been reactive, really often we know only in retrospect. But sometimes we shall know, or we shall become aware, that we have been, or we are, not reactive, but creative. And in this way, we sort out our mental states. This is Dharma Prabhicaya. And then the third Bodhiyanka, the third link, is what we call virya, or energy, or viga. And this is very important indeed. It's not enough to contemplate these different states. It's not enough to see just to what extent the mind is reactive, to what extent it is created, and so on. We have, with viga and with energy, to cultivate that which is creative, to make it more creative as it were, to release more from within, and gradually minimize that which is reactive. So this requires a tremendous effort all the time. Most of us are only ready to, as it were, rest on our eyes. We make a tremendous spirit sometimes. We change the meditation class on Monday. We have a lecture on Tuesday. Thirdly, another meditation class on Friday may be a seminar before we make a tremendous effort. But then we take two weeks off, and we're not seen again. This is what happens most of the time. People come make an effort, but it's in fits and starts, in birth to the enthusiasm, but the slow steady sustained effort. This is usually not them. So we go a little bit forward, then back we slide. Go a bit forward again, slide paths even further back. And this is the sum total of our spiritual life, most of the time. So unremitting energy of vigor is necessary, all the time awareness, all the time analysis of our mental states where the reactive are creative. And all the time vigor and energy on this effort is attempt at least to increase the creative side and to gradually weed out to cause to wane away the reactive side more and more. Then fourthly, what we call prety, often translates as rapture, but it's more like joy, it's more like ecstasy. It's a sort of ecstasy or joy which has come welling up within us. Especially at the time of meditation, when we have made an effort, when the creative side is functioning, and all the energy which was blocked, formed in the reactive process of the mind, is released from that process and wells up into the creative process of the mind. And then we experience that as an intense sort of psychophysical rapture of bliss, which may even be experienced in the physical body. I spoken about this on other occasions elsewhere, so no need to go into it very much today. And then next, the fifth link, prostrumpti, which is literally calm or pacification, but I sometimes bring rid of tension release. At the stage of rapture, there's a mental experience of bliss, a physical sort of counterpart of that. But in this stage, the physical side calms down, and all that is left is a state of bliss and happiness and joy felt within. And one may even be at this stage quite oblivious to the physical body. And that brings us to the sixth, but younger, the sixth link in the chain as it were at the creative mind, and this is samāti. Usually samāti means one-pointedness of mind. Here we can take it to mean not just concentration, not even just meditation in the ordinary sense, but as it was a harmonization of all the forces of our mind, both conscious and unconscious. The bringing of them together, sort of union of opposites of what we saw as talking the day before yesterday, on an ever higher and higher level. Sometimes people think that samāti, or concentration, is the forcible fixation of the mind in a point. They say for example, you take some mature object like this, they have bell or a matchbook, and you concentrate on it. So most people just look like this, and they think that they are concentrating, but this has got nothing to do with concentration. Not forcible fixation of attention. Concentration, samāti, really means the harmonization of all the forces of the mind, conscious and unconscious. So sort of marriage, if you like, between the forces of the depth and the forces of the height, the unconscious and the unconscious. The masculine and feminine forces, the yin and the yak, are sort of two-in-oneness of all these forces at the highest possible level. So there's integration, so there's harmony, so that in a sense very beauty. So this is all covered by the samāti. And then, seventh and lastly, or pakshā. Or pakshā means literally, equanimity. It's not the same old pakshā that we have in the forebrum of the harvest, where we get metacaruna, mudita, or pakshā. That's on the lower level. This is on a higher, more metaphysical, transcendental level. So here we may say, well pakshā means the state of complete equilibrium of the mind, complete stability. If you like axiality of the mind, centrality of the mind, on the highest possible level, so that it cannot be moved. So the mind becomes, as well, like a great ball, like a great globe, from which everything, as it were, bounces or slides off. Nothing can throw it out of gear. Nothing can, as it were, effect or upset. It's perfect stability and equilibrium. So this will all pakshā, the Buddha exemplified when he's set, when he's the Bodhi tree, in meditation, and when Māra, the evil one, launched against him, or his armies of hate and fear and greed and jealousy, and he was unmoved, untouched, unsturt by all that. So this complete equanimity and stability of mind at the highest possible level, this is what we call a pakshā. And it's out of this equanimity, at this level, that the highest of all kinds of creativity springs to the right, which is what we call compassion, born of the enlightened mind, the compassion which directs itself, after, as it were in enlightenment, through the good and the welfare of all sentient beings. So these seven Bodhyangas, awareness, discrimination between reactive and creative mental states, energy, rapture, then tension release, samārty and finally equanimity, these illustrate, just illustrate the whole process of the creative mind. They demonstrate how the creative mind functions, how it doesn't react, how it acts, how it goes as it were, from perfection to ever greater and greater and greater perfection, not reacting wrong to an opposite, in a cyclical fashion, but going up and up as well as wrong and wrong in a sort of spark. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]