The Dhyanas
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 6 minute read This excerpt is from Chapter 10 and follows on from The Spiral Path. Samatha meditation The traditional understanding of meditation is that it is the way we work directly on our mind and emotions in order to bring happiness into the world and overcome suffering, for ourselves and others. What we are going to do is first look at samatha or calming meditation and then at vipassana or insight meditation. The literal translation of samatha is ‘calm abiding’;[1] but by calm we don’t just mean unruffled; the implication is much broader than that. The dhyanas Successful samatha meditation is represented by the dhyanas. It could be argued that all Buddhist meditation is meditation on ethics and nothing else, leading as it does to increasingly skilful mental states; symbolized by dhyana. The first and most basic of the dhyanas is described by the Buddha as ‘secluded from unskilful mental states’; the others building upon it, in the sense of being states of increasing skilfulness. In the highest—the fourth dhyana—the meditator is completely focused on Awakening for themselves and others; acting on that vision with power and robustness fortified by equanimity. The hindrances to meditation are five states that in one way or another are un-conducive to bringing happiness into the world. Two concern the mind or body being unready to be skilful because of their energies being too high or too low; with ‘restlessness and anxiety’ the energy in the mind or body is too high to be able to focus clearly; with ‘sloth and torpor’ it is too weak to be useful. The other hindrances to meditation are ‘(irrational) doubt’, ‘sense desire’ and ‘ill-will’; unskilful mental states which I will explore later on. Once the hindrances are completely eradicated one enters into the full mental absorption of the dhyanas, which are, in all likelihood, a —systematisation imposed upon the Buddha’s meditation experience by monks compiling the Buddhist texts at a later date.[2] And while those texts mention eight dhyanas— it is clear that only the first four refer to the Buddha’s experience.[3] The dhyanas are basically a ‘schematic’, representing the four stages a person has to go through in order to be as skilful as they can be and also to clearly see things as they really are, and are exclusively Buddhist.[4] The main thrust of the dhyanas is they manifest increasing mindfulness and skilfulness of mind and body, with two outcomes: The monk maximizes the skilfulness–and thus happiness, brought into the world for himself and others. He makes himself as...
The Spiral Path
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 3 minute read This excerpt commences Chapter 10, ‘Augmentative Conditionality: The Spiral Path.’ The augmentation of conditions Each Foundation of Mindfulness is a condition for bringing into being a relative degree of happiness or suffering, but due to the Law of Conditionality, the combined effect of all four is augmentative; they are ‘made greater by being added to’; if we look after our body; attend in the right way to feeling; develop increasingly skilful states of mind and emotion; and become clearer about the way that things are and work, then the happiness that we bring to ourselves and others is likely to ‘take off’; this is the meaning of dhyana, which is a result of developing skilful mental states through calming meditation (samatha), and which provide the basis for the development of insight (vipassana), culminating in Awakening; these two stages together constituting what is called the Spiral Path. The Wheel and the Spiral The round of endless suffering and the ascent to Nirvana through augmentative conditionality are represented in the Buddhist tradition by the Wheel of Life[1] and the Spiral Path (see diagram). Image source unknown. Effort has been made to establish author. In pictorial versions of the Wheel a ferocious demon called Yama—the ‘Lord of Impermanence’—holds the Wheel like a mirror towards the viewer, as if to say; ‘This is what your life is like.’ At the centre of the Wheel are a pig, a cock and a snake biting each other’s tails, representing respectively ignorance, greed and hatred; the driving forces behind Samsara. Then comes a circle divided vertically into white and black segments, which represents beings rising to greater happiness in the white segment and falling down into greater suffering in the black, according to their karma. Outside of this is a circle, in which there are six ‘realms’, that we can either take literally–as actually existing places—or metaphorically—as psychological states; these are the realms of the gods, titans, humans, animals, hungry ghosts and hell beings. Each is a state one can be born into—or experience—because of one’s karma. On the outer rim are twelve images, each representing a nidana or link: ranging from ignorance through craving all way to old age and death. The Spiral Path Sangharakshita has drawn particular attention to the positive nidana sequence leading to Nirvana, which he calls ‘The Spiral Path.’[2] Bhikkhu Bodhi calls this sequence ‘Transcendental Dependent Arising’,[3] lamenting that it doesn’t get the attention it deserves in Theravada Buddhism.[4] The Spiral Path in the Upanisa Sutta is as...
American Empire in decline
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read This excerpt is taken from the Introduction and follows on from my history. The New World Order Having outlined something of my history, I am going to turn now more to the present, and to the increasing chaos, suffering and insecurity that seems to be enveloping much of the world. Kondratieff Waves The title of this book—‘The Western Gulag’—inexplicably popped into my head just after 9/11: I had read The Kondratieff Waves[1] sometime in the 1980s and was fascinated by the idea of economic cycles in human history; Nikolai Kondratieff was the Russian economist who had advanced the idea that industrial economies go through ‘long waves’ of growth and decline: the length of cycle is up for debate, but by studying the wholesale prices, interest rates, wages, and production he identified a pattern of 40-60 year-long waves, going back as far as 1790. The West had been in an economic up-cycle since the Second World War and, if Kondratieff was correct, was due for a downturn; I must have spent around twenty years waiting for this downturn to happen. David Murrin and the American Empire David Murrin is a global forecaster who wrote a fascinating book Breaking the Code of History[2] in 2010, which expanded on a thesis he had produced in 2002 that all empires go through five phases. 1) Regionalisation 2) Ascension to Empire 3) Maturity 4) Overextension 5) Decline and Legacy.[3] Read blog post. He saw 9/11 as a watershed moment and the beginning of the decline phase of the American empire and has made successful predictions[4] about the progress of that decline phase since. I do remember at the time of 9/11 seeing an article that talked about the end of the American Empire.[5] Read article. Obviously, the fall of the twin towers was a shock, however, it is instructive to compare the tone of an American news discussion on the day before the attack[6] with a similar one today; the 2001 newscast is conversational and human, whereas today’s newscasts have an air of tightness, desperation–and at times, incoherence–as if news media is no longer clear what its purpose is. According to Murrin the Maturity phase of the American Empire lasted from 1945 to its peak around 1972,[7] at which there begins the Overextension phase. ‘There is a pause where the empire becomes highly integrative and tolerant, because at the core people have huge amounts of wealth. They are stable, they have probably separated themselves from...
Building a community
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 4 minute read This excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘Moving Forward‘ and follows on from Re-enchantment. The four ‘means of unification’ (samgrahavastus: pronounced ‘san-graha-vastu’) The Precious Garland of Advice for a King is composed by the great Indian pandit Nagarjuna. The text is famous for its descriptions of the bodhisattva’s path of compassion and for its clear, concise analysis of the Buddha’s teachings on emptiness.[1] In verse 133, Nagarjuna says: You should cause the assembling Of the religious and the worldly Through giving, speaking pleasantly, Purposeful behaviour, and concordant behaviour.[2] In other words, the way that a spiritual community or Sangha is built, is through the dedicated Buddhist (bodhisattva) practicing what are called the four ‘means of unification’ (samgrahavastus.) Of course, the principle can and should apply to building any harmonious community, including a more functional world community. Generosity Firstly, a Buddhist community—or any community–is built through mutual acts of generosity (dana,) whether through gifts of time, attention, financial help, fearlessness, honesty, giving the benefit of the doubt, or through the sharing of the Buddha’s or another’s wise perspective. We build community when we transcend narrow self-interest. ‘As a basis for spiritual life giving engenders and requires faith. Often our reasons for not giving amount to a lack of faith. We don’t want to give because we are worried about depleting our resources whether emotional or financial. The idea of giving can cause insecurity and anxiety. Or we may be so lacking in confidence that we feel we have nothing to give. And of course, our worries and anxieties may prompt us to think that they (whoever they may be) don’t deserve it anyway. We can hold back from giving or only giving in a stinting, miserly, way out of fear, insecurity, or a lack of confidence. ‘But taking up generosity as a definite practise like meditation, not an occasional practice, but an ongoing, regular practise, we can begin to develop a sense of abundance. As the tradition has it, we experience being wealthy and we can come to experience how giving generates abundance. In this way our faith grows too; the faith or confidence that we will receive what we need.’[3] All sorts of unpleasant, shocking, depressing, harrowing things may be going on for us politically, sparking in us righteous indignation or deflation.[4] I have found that focusing on generosity and the person in front of me—probably because that is productive—takes away the pain to some degree. It is not that I am denying real problems; just putting them in...
Black Lives Matter
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 15 minute read This excerpt is taken from the chapter ‘The Woke Mind Virus‘ and follows on from The Woke Mind Virus post. The origin story of Black Lives Matter (BLM) The term ‘Woke’ came into common usage around the middle of President Obama’s second term, circa 2014. Within the black community it originally signalled, ‘to stay alive to sensitive social issues, including racism.’ However, after the shooting of Michael Brown,[1] an African American teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri that year, the term came to be popularized by BLM activists seeking to raise awareness about police shootings of African-Americans.[2] Since that date, similar incidents have continued to occur, in what Michael Mascarenhas, speaking in 2022, puts down to ‘environmental racism:’ ‘The fatal encounters of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Trevyon Martin, to mention only three of the thousands of deaths of people of colour at the hands of White people each year is a form of environmental racism. Their crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The death of Treyvon Martin was in part normalized because a Black teenage boy was walking in a White gated neighbourhood. Before fatally shooting the Black teenager, White neighbourhood watch captain George Zimmerman called 911 and reported a suspicious person in the neighbourhood. Similarly, Eric Garner was simply standing in front of a beauty supply store on Bay Street in Tompkinsville, Staten Island, when he was approached by New York Police Department police officers and strangled to death. Similarly, the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina; Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland; and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, represent just a few more tragic examples of over policing in Black and Brown communities. When found in White spaces, the colour of one’s skin is a key determinant of their experience. The Amy Cooper incident, where a White woman who called the police on Christian Cooper, a Black man, in Central Park, New York, after he asked her to leash her dog is one of the most recent striking examples of this form of environmental racism. Moreover, in most of these fatal cases–the coroner ruled Eric Garner’s death a homicide– predominantly White juries failed to bring charges against the White offenders. In fact, one of the potential jurors in the Treyvon Martin case said: “This could have been prevented had he not been up here,” had this Black youth not been in this White neighbourhood.’[3] After the Ferguson shooting BLM transitioned from...
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