Remembering loving kindness
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 6 minute read This excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘Kindness front and centre‘ and follows on from Mindfulness and the Five Paths. Remembering loving kindness as a central aspect of the path When Sangharakshita gave a seminar on the Precious Garland[1] in 1976 he laid a foundation for what was to become his central exposition of the Dharma,[2] namely that the path consisted of five elements: Integration Positive Emotion Spiritual Death Spiritual Rebirth Spiritual Receptivity[3] Where he links integration with mindfulness and positive emotion with the four right efforts. As we saw earlier, the Path of Accumulation consists of: The four foundations of mindfulness, which represent establishing the appropriate domains of mindfulness The four right efforts,[4] which represent energy being put into 1) overcoming the four foundations as sources of suffering and 2) establishing them as sources of happiness The four bases of success,[5] which represent the states of meditative concentration that are achieved when our efforts have been successful[6] Sangharakshita is concerned to dispel a common view that one only has to bring mindfulness to a situation for it to naturally resolve. He points out that, because the four right efforts follow on from the four foundations of mindfulness in the teaching of the Five Paths, this indicates that not everything can be achieved by force of mindfulness, the effort to develop the skilful also needs to be involved. ‘In a way (the Five Paths) goes a bit against the Theravada teaching, which does seem, perhaps one can say, a bit dry; if you just try to do everything by force of mindfulness, everything by force of awareness: so that isn’t the Mahayana path, clearly.’[7] Mindfulness on its own has an effect, he says, although it is not a very great effect, compared to when it is combined with the four right efforts.[8] ‘So, it’s as though, when one is practising simply awareness, and simply mindfulness, you are just watching, you’re just the observer. The mere fact of your watching, the mere fact of your observing–body, feelings, thoughts, and thinking as it were of higher things. This has its overall effect, but it’s not a very great effect, and not a very deep effect. …. But when you’re practising the four great efforts you are ‘doing’ something in a much more radical way. You’re bringing about much greater changes. You’re actually making a positive direct effort to throw out the unskilful, to bring in the skilful to an ever greater and greater degree. So this is a much more intensive form of practise.’[9] Linking the four right...
Mindfulness and the Five Paths
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 4 minute read This excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘Kindness front and centre‘ and follows on from Kindness and the Five Paths. Mindfulness and the Five Paths Throughout the Pali Canon we see mindfulness described in a number of ways; in the Satipatthana Sutta it is described as a foundation (satipatthana.) Elsewhere it is described as a spiritual faculty (satindriya,) a power (satibala,) a factor of Awakening (sati bojjangha) and a limb of the Noble Eightfold Path (samma sati.) The Five Paths essentially combine these five forms of mindfulness into one coherent path. Firstly, we have the Path of Accumulation: this is where we build up punja-jnana, merit and knowledge. In other words, we accumulate a basis of positive karma through practicing skilful action and developing knowledge (jnana). At this stage the monk practises the four foundations of mindfulness, the four right efforts and the four bases of success. Secondly, there is the Path of Preparation: this involves the monk preparing himself for the stage of Insight. The Mahayanacommentaries talk of the monk deepening his insight into emptiness and becomes more aware of the impermanent nature of existence and of the ‘faults of Samsara’. As his own plight and that of the beings around him appears more tenuous, he will gravitate towards taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. At this stage the monk practises mindfulness as a spiritual faculty and a power, in order to cultivate the five spiritual faculties and develop them into the five powers (a power is a spiritual faculty made unshakeable.) Thirdly, there is the Path of Seeing: this involves the monk gains insight, seeing clearly the nature of reality: the equivalent of stream entry in Nikaya Buddhism. At this stage the monk practises mindfulnessas a factor of Awakening. Fourthly, there is the Path of Practice: this involves the monk practising the transcendental Noble Eightfold Path, on the basis of that insight. At this stage the monk practises perfect mindfulness. Fifthly, there is the Path of No More Learning: this marks the attainment of Buddhahood. The compilers of the Five Paths must have had good reason to structure the path in the way that they did: the Five Paths effectively: Combine all of the Buddhist teachings on mindfulnessinto one coherent system Reassert the importance of developing samatha (the Paths of Accumulation and Preparation) in preparation for developing vipassana(the Path of Seeing) Assert that the Path of Vision (the Path of Seeing) precedes the Path of Transformation (the Path of Practice) Critique the idea that mindfulness is solely concerned with bringing awareness to mental phenomena (as in, practising...
Kindness and the Five Paths
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 6 minute read This excerpt commences the chapter ‘Kindness Front and Centre.’ Kindness and the Mahayana Five Paths The path to Nirvana—as expressed the Satipatthana Sutta—can tend to be interpreted by Theravada commentators as narrowly focusing upon renunciation; mindfulness of the body and its movements; the mechanical noting of experience within slow walking meditation, and through that practice, noticing how the nature of everything one experiences is subject to impermanence, insubstantiality and inherent suffering (the three lakshanas.) That path also offers challenging insight meditations – such as the meditation on the stages of decomposition of a corpse – for more serious practitioners.[1] The drawback of this approach, though, is that practices and meditations which focus on emotional development, such as the metta bhavana and devotional practices tend to be either side-lined or treated nominally. This narrow and somewhat intellectual approach is attractive to those who identify their Buddhism with wanting a certain personal meditative experience, along with, hopefully, the eventual confirmation of a certain level of spiritual attainment: Buddhism as ‘spiritual materialism.’ Wanting to cater for this desire among westerners for spiritual attainments – in the view that it somehow furthers Buddhism, Eastern teachers have perhaps wilfully ignored certain inconvenient truths, like the centrality of emotional development in life and on the path. However, Mahayana Buddhism – and particularly its expression in Tibetan Buddhism – restores this focus and puts kindness back front and centre. Alienation When Sangharakshita returned to Britain in the 1960s, he observed that Westerners were being taught mindfulness in this narrow way and that it was leading them into states of alienation. Subhuti relates Sangharakshita’s views concerning some of the causes of alienation and we might recognize these same patterns in many young people today. Image by coombesy on Pixabay. When we find that certain feelings are unacceptable, we suppress our real emotions, and ‘assume we experience what we think others want us to feel.’ This pattern extends to thoughts: ‘As to thoughts, we are not so much alienated from them as fail to have any thoughts at all,’ because so many agencies are telling us what to think. ‘The state of alienation … coupled with a wrong understanding of Buddhism, … leads to the extreme zombie-like states witnessed by Sangharakshita.’[2] That wrong understanding of Buddhism can be due to a corrupted form of objectivity: ‘Sometimes, for instance, mindfulness itself is interpreted as standing aloof from experience, watching one’s body, feelings, and thoughts as though from a distance–here the practice of mindfulness is the systematic cultivation of alienation!’[3] Or a wrong view about ethics may...
The Bush Pandemic Plan
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 4 minute read This excerpt is taken from the appendix ‘No-Man’s-Land: The Unclaimed Area Beyond the Domains of Religion, Politics and Science‘ and follows on from the debate around Ivermectin. President Bush’s pandemic plan Still outstanding is the question of the effectiveness of the West’s response to the pandemic: an October 2020 Telegraph article states: ‘Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Imagine if a world leader, a president with unlimited resources, had marshalled a crack team of scientists to devise a pandemic strategy that could have prevented a new respiratory virus from turning western society upside down. ‘A strategy specifically designed to hold back a lethal new pathogen long enough to allow a vaccine or other pharmaceutical interventions to be created without the need for a total lockdown. A strategy that was not just academic but one which had been approved as policy, operationalized and shared with allies around the world, including Britain. ‘Looking at the world today you would think it was China and its neighbours across southeast Asia which had developed such a protocol. They are the nations which acted quickly to control Covid-19 through a carefully crafted set of social distancing measures or “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (NPIs), as they are technically known. ‘Yes, they too have taken a hit, but by acting early, national lockdowns have been brief or avoided completely, as have large-scale deaths, direct and indirect. Moreover, they have dramatically limited damage to their economies and their geopolitical power and status has surged as a result.’[1] US President George W. Bush, and his deputy Dick Cheney, had, in 2003, ordered a social distancing plan be researched, devised and tested in order to protect America from a new pandemic pathogen, man-made or naturally occurring. They placed the full might of the Department for Homeland Security behind it and made sure it was in place and ready to be deployed before they left office in January 2009. The plan was announced in December 2005.[2] In that plan were some key recommendations, one of which was that the public needed to hear a coherent message from government and media sources, so that they did not become confused: this is the exact opposite of what actually happened! Back in 2005 the information marketplace as it is now, wasn’t available to us, for better or worse. In 2020, when the pandemic arrived the scientific debate about issues like mask-wearing and social-distancing therefore took place in public, in a cacophony of informed and uninformed opinions over which nobody was in control....
Taking Offence
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 2 minute read This excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘The Woke Mind Virus’ and follows on from the Woke Mind Virus. An accelerating trend in taking offence In his book Woke Racism, John McWhorter shares how in 2008, Christian Lander joked in Stuff White People Like that being offended was something a certain brand of white people enjoyed, alongside attending film festivals and wearing vintage T-shirts. He says that today, such a person hearing that joke would likely: ‘launch into a hissing tirade about how there is nothing funny about people trying to dismantle the prevalence of white supremacy and all whites’ “complicitness” in it. If he were to write that book today, Lander would be unlikely to include that joke, which is an indication of the extent to which there is something in the air that we hadn’t seen until quite recently.’[1] He says a critical mass of white liberals no longer quietly pride themselves in knowing they need to be offended about certain things, ‘but now see it as a duty to excoriate and shun those (including black people) who don’t share their degree of offence. To some, all of that may sound like mere matters of manner and texture.’[2] Third Wave Antiracism, McWhorter claims, harms black people ‘in the name of its guiding impulses:’ by insisting that racism is in play when black boys are overrepresented among those suspended or expelled from schools for violence, a practice which not only leads to such violence persisting but a declining skillset among the young black population. And white liberals are complicit in this affair. The high priests of Woke today: Joel Kotkin’s Clerisy (See Chapter 3,) tell us just how we should speak and think. Religion though, McWhorter contends, has a place neither in the classroom, nor in the elite university, nor in our codes of ethics, nor in delineating how members of society express themselves, and ‘almost all of us spontaneously understand that and see any misunderstanding of the premise as backward.’[3] ‘Yet, since about 2015, a peculiar contingent is slowly headlocking us into making an exception, supposing that this particular new religion is so incontestably correct, so gorgeously surpassing millennia of brilliant philosophers’ attempts to identify the ultimate morality, that we can only bow down in humble acquiescence.’[4] The liberal middle-classes are often fully unaware of just what they are doing: ‘Question these people for real and they howl as if having a finger pulled backward. But it isn’t that they don’t want their power taken away: The Elect see themselves as speaking truth...
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