The Buddha of fearlessness
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 8 minute read This excerpt is from the chapter ‘Safetyism,’ and explores its remedy in the fearless qualities of the dark green Buddha Amoghasiddhi (‘Unobstructed Success.’) Fearlessness So, what is the remedy for Safetyism? Obviously, fearlessness: a quality that the Buddha was known for. Vessantara: ‘On another occasion the Buddha’s cousin, Devadatta, in a fit of jealousy, bribed someone to let loose a wild elephant against the Buddha. We can imagine the scene: people scattering in all directions; Devadatta perhaps hidden somewhere out of harm’s way where he could watch events; the great beast rushing, maddened, towards the one still figure in a mud-dyed yellow robe. It is an extraordinary contrast. The elephant out of control, head tossing, trunk waving, furious; the Buddha still, erect, serene. … As the beast came towards him, the Buddha suffused it with maitri, loving-kindness. Nothing could have entered that enchanted circle of love around the Buddha and maintained thoughts of violence. The mad elephant discovered it was bearing down on the best friend it had in the world. Gradually its charge slowed to a walk, and it reached the Buddha docile and friendly. In this incident we could say that elephant met elephant, for the Buddha was often described as being like a great elephant because of his calm dignity and steady gaze. Perhaps elephant met elephant in a deeper sense too. The Buddha, having gone far beyond dualistic modes of thought, did not feel himself a separate, threatened identity opposed by the huge creature bearing down upon him. His maitri (love) came from a total feeling for, and identification with, the charging animal.’[1] Fear is not overcome by bravado: ‘… ultimately (fearlessness) can come only from insight into Reality. At that point we realize the illusoriness of the ego which we feel for. In particular, fear of dying, the primary fear of which all other are reflections, disappears. … The double vajra reminds us that fearlessness comes from a full and balanced development of all sides of ourselves. Without that, we shall always have a weak side, a vulnerability that we fear for, and keep having to protect. Even more, we shall have an unexplored aspect, an area of uncharted terrain within, whose characteristics we may experience, projected onto the outside world, as people and situations that are unpredictable and threatening. … It is all too easy to keep developing one’s strengths, and to try to make use of them in all situations. Some people even manage to become totally identified with a single talent or a powerful position. From the spiritual point of view...
The Religious Tradition
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 6 minute read This excerpt is from the chapter ‘The Evidence Bases in Religion, Science and Politics,’ and explores how a Wisdom or Religious tradition comes about. It follows on from The Scientific Tradition. The Wisdom tradition But what about a Wisdom tradition such as Buddhism? Here the authors [of The Embodied Mind] draw upon the philosophical tradition of Phenomenology, in particular the work of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Greek word logos traditionally means ‘word, thought, principle, or speech’ and has been used among both philosophers and theologians, and the word phenomenon—which because it comes from the Greek phainomenon, from the verb phainesthai, meaning “to appear, become visible”—means ‘appearance’ and so the word Phenomenology can be glossed; ‘what you can say about the phenomena of experience / what appears to be in the world, (by implication) if you set aside speculative theories, for instance theories about whether you and the world exist, whether there are “real objects” out there.’ Martin Heidegger’s’ answer was ‘you appear in the world as if thrown here’ and the appropriate response to your existential situation was ‘care;’ you should look after yourselves and your world (Heidegger has a critique of technological excess that is very pertinent today). Phenomenology ‘pushes us back onto our experience’, and the authors call this experience ‘first-person experience’ or ‘first-person evidence;’ because it is only accessible to a first person (to an ‘I;’ to oneself). This is relevant today: Critical Race Theory and proponents of Woke assume that all white people are racist. Obviously, it is possible to tell whether someone is racist from their words and actions, but beyond that, such a realization can only come from self-knowledge and awareness: in other words, from a first-person perspective. The only person who can truly know for certain whether they are racist is the person themselves: as they are the sole person with access to their inner world. And what they do with that knowledge is their business: this is how conscience works. In Buddhism, for true confession to take place, the practitioner must see their failing for themselves; any person hearing a confession is only witness to an inner process. Confession therefore is a ‘first-person to first-person’ matter, just as a preceptor witnesses a Buddhist ordinand’s effective going for refuge to the Three Jewels. Varela [co-author of The Embodied Mind] went on the create a new field; Neurophenomenology, bringing together neuroscience—including the scientific study of brainwaves of meditating monks—with first-person reports of meditative experience. I explored these ideas in a Shabda[1] article entitled ‘Consciousness and...
Buddhism and Politics
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 5 minute read Diving into the Preface of ‘The Buddhas and Global Governance,’ this excerpt explores the need to keep apart religion and politics. It follows on from ‘The political bias potential hill’ and the larger post ‘The Twitter Files.’ When you enter the temple, leave your politics at the door The website Apramada was founded by members of the Triratna Buddhist Order ‘to bring Buddhist perspectives to bear on questions facing the world today – a task of urgent importance in an era when public discourse is often clouded by divisive ideologies and partisan animosity.’[1] The Sanskrit term apramada means ‘carefulness, vigilance, cautiousness, steadiness.’ ‘We apply Buddhist ideas and insights to a range of issues in society, culture, politics, science, and philosophy. We also offer clear expositions of fundamental Buddhist teachings and practices, in the hope that people will be drawn to explore them further. In pursuing these ends, we strive to exemplify and promote “wise thinking” and “wise enquiry”.’[2] My colleague Ratnaguna published an article on Apramada entitled, When you enter the temple, leave your politics at the door,[3] examining the problems inherent in bringing politics into a religious context: the main objection being that doing so tends to foster divisiveness and partisanship, whereas the aim of a religion such as Buddhism is to nurture the welfare and happiness of each ‘sovereign’ individual. Cultural and Religion are ‘above Politics’ Culture and Religion can be seen to be ‘above’ Politics (these terms have been capitalized to indicate a general field.) Ratnaguna cites the literary critic Joseph Epstein, who says, ‘To be educated by novels is to believe that human actions are best understood through individual cases, and to believe, further, that every individual case is itself immensely complex.’ Epstein contends that: ‘Most great literature is indeed separable from politics… true culture is above gender, race, and class… the point of view literature teaches is inherently anti-system, anti-theory, and skeptical of all ideas that do not grow out of particular cases…’ Dangers in Ideologies Ratnaguna points to the danger of constructing ideologies: ‘Epstein is not denying the possibility of general truths about ‘human actions’, but he is saying that such truths are truer when they are intuitively recognized in concrete examples rather than constructed as abstract conceptual systems. His words also point to the danger that if we adhere strongly to such an abstract system, we might then think that we are ‘recognising’ it when we are really just superimposing it on what goes on around us.’ (My emphasis.) Ratnaguna compares this ‘ideological’ approach with that of a person who is...
The Systems Model of Creativity
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 20 minute read This excerpt is drawn from the chapter titled ‘The Evidence Bases in Religion, Science, and Politics.’ It delves into the intricate dynamics of the creative process, revealing its three distinct facets: the initial act of creation, often incubated in solitude; the custodians or gatekeepers of the tradition who serve as its public ambassadors; and its eventual integration into mainstream culture. This framework is applicable across various domains, spanning the realms of arts, religion, and science. The Nature of Religion There is no real consensus on what Religion is, although we could generalize and say that religion refers to humanity’s relationship to ‘patterns in the universe’ that are seen as transcendent, sometimes but not always supernatural, and which thus are believed to provide ethical guidance and give meaning to life.[1] To help votaries remain mindful of these patterns, each religion will establish certain places, rituals and narratives as sacred: and thus worthy of reverence; it is through such mindfulness that the religious practitioner believes their life will gain meaning: allowing them to ultimately resolve the existential problems in life: such as old age, sickness and death. Huston Smith is widely regarded as the most eloquent and accessible contemporary authority on the history of religions. In his book The World’s Religions he colourfully outlines the difference between the values purported by religions and how those values often ‘manifest’ on the ground: ‘Perhaps someday someone will write a book about the great religions that roots them to their social settings. This, though, is a book I shall read, not write. … This book is not a balanced account of its subject. The warning is important. I wince to think of the shock if the reader were to close the chapter on Hinduism and step directly into the Hinduism described by Nehru as “a religion that enslaves you”: its Kali Temple in Calcutta, the curse of her caste system, her two million cows revered to the point of nuisance, her fakirs offering their bodies as sacrifice to bedbugs. Or what if the reader were transported to Bali, with its theaters named the Vishnu—Hollywood and its bookstores that do brisk business in Klasik Comics, in which Hindu gods and goddesses mow down hosts of unsightly demons with cosmic ray guns? I know the contrast. I sense it sharply between what I have written of Taoism and the Taoism that surrounded me as a boy in China: its almost complete submergence in augury, necromancy, and superstition. It is like the contrast between the Silent Christ and the Grand Inquisitor, or between the stillness of Bethlehem...
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