The Bodhisattvas descend, the Bodhichitta is called down, and Parami is off and rolling on her favourite subjectand#8230; and#8220;Energy andamp; The New Societyand#8221; is todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte. and#8220;We must remember to remember to not forget what to remember.and#8221; Exploring Shantidevaand#8217;s and#8216;Bodhicharyavataraand#8217; in relation to the creation of The New Society from the talk and#8220;Energy At Its Most Abundantand#8221;.
Talk given in Cambridge, 2002
[music] Dharma Bites 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 to help us remember, Virya is the antidote to this forgetting. And it's the antidote to three forms of laziness, which I've already read, sloth or indolence, a clinging to what is vile and despondency and self-contempt, sometimes talked about as losing heart. So these are the three lazinesses that Shanti David talks about. And they're quite interesting really if you think about them. In fact, Banti does quote these I realized last night. There's a line in the poem, which says, "Just that," he says, "I pour the clouds, waking those who sleep, putting to flight the hosts of indolence apathy and despair." Indolence apathy and despair. So indolence or sloth, yeah? Just not making the effort, just not quite remembering what we need to do. Clinging to what is vile and apathy are the same thing. Now that's quite interesting, isn't it? Because often it is so much easier to cling to what we know is not creative than to make the effort to be creative. Have you ever noticed that how easy it is to be negative? I'm great at it. It just comes so naturally, you know? I'd love to be a nice person, but there you go. But it's really easy to just fall into old habits. We've had a long time. Our sanskaris have got a lot of weight behind them, yeah? Positive and negative, but often it is so easy. And I suppose it's easy in part because the surroundings that we find ourselves in, in the world, I mean, you know, the conditions that we're often in. Society kind of encourages the negative much more than it does the positive. It actually requires quite an effort sometimes, not just to slide into the sloth of old habits, the apathy of old habits. And a really interesting laziness is despondency and self-contempt losing heart. It's kind of quite, it's difficult sometimes to think that that's laziness because it seems so out of control, doesn't it? If we lose heart in something, it often seems like it's not my fault that I've lost heart. It's because it isn't working. Or because they're not doing what, you know, they should be doing. Or, well, okay, I've made an effort, but I don't have it in me. I'm no up to it. I can't do this. Poor little me. And that's actually laziness. And then the seminar, there's a seminar in the "Buddy Charlie" avatar, where Bunty goes into this quite a bit and he says at the end, "Just stop it. Stop it." Okay. And it's true because sometimes it's a downward spider, isn't it? So I think we need to find ways when we're starting to feel, "I can't do this. It's too much for me." To object to find, because sometimes it might be too much. Sometimes we take things on and we're just not able to do them. But we need to find the line, we need to learn how to discriminate between trying to do something which is not what we're not up to, which can in itself be undermining. And, you know, just letting yourself off the hook too quickly. And I think it's impossible to do that on your own. I think it's only possible to do that unless you're really developed and really individual. But I think, generally speaking, we really need friends to tell us to help us with that. We need what makes and friends and community members and people who know us really well to say, "Look, Pardon me. I do think you can do this one." Or, of course you can, you know. So we need to be able to help each other object to fire the experience in that level and know when we can do something and when we can't and push ourselves that little bit more. Yeah. So the hosts of England's apathy and despair, but the wind horse wakes us up. Very, it reminds us of what we're doing. It is very easy to lose heart and to forget. Yeah. On this retreat that I've just been in, we were studying the group I was in, the Spanish-speaking group, we were studying what is the order. And at the end we were talking about the new society. You remember that phrase, the new society. Call me old-fashioned, I like it, you know. People involved in our movement to a large extent because it had the offer of a new society. I wasn't especially interested in Buddhism. I mean, I wasn't interested in Buddhism, obviously. But I wasn't interested in personal development. That was never really what interested me. In fact, I had to work a bit at that bit. But what interested me really was within that personal development to have the opportunity to create something which had its effect on the world. My background was political, like quite a few people here. I know I had quite a strong political background. I'd got very disillusioned by left-wing politics. But I didn't get disillusioned with the idea of finding a better world, you know. That's really what drove me in a way quite strongly. That was kind of the myth. The wind, the horse that I rode in on was the idea of the new society. And what was so wonderful about the F.W.B.E. and about Banti's approach to Buddhism was that there was a strong possibility of self-development. There were methods to do that. It wasn't just an idea. There were actually methods. But there were also things which opened that and took it into the world. And the idea of right livelihood co-ops, do you remember co-ops? Really excited me. I just thought it was amazing. I thought it was a wonderful kind of ideal. And, you know, for all sorts of reasons, some of them quite erroneous. Because to some extent it fitted in quite well with my socialist background. But also because there was something genuinely really exciting about the idea of forming something together and actually taking that into the world. And I think sometimes people may be coming into intuition now. They come into something so formed, or at least which seems so formed, it probably isn't. The structure probably isn't actually that stable in some ways. But it is stable. There's a lot behind it. There's a lot in it. There's a lot in it that's been an enormous amount of work over a long time, put in to create these conditions. But, you know, in the very early days, it was all kind of like, I remember when it was an old Ford Road. You know, it was just a few, a couple of rooms were stuffing them. And that was like the basis of it. And it's amazing to think what that, you know, has come to now. Well, this fantastic way has been so lovely. So great. But it's come because a few people were stupid enough. And idealistic enough to believe that it could happen. The LBC happened because the booty was stupid enough. And brave enough. And idealistic enough to think that he could do it. And he did it. We're a lot of help from a lot of people. This has got here a lot of help from a lot of people. So I believe in the new society. So there. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebootestaudio.com/community. And thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]
