Imagination
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 4 minute read This excerpt is taken from the chapter on ‘Buddhist Practice’ and follows on from the section on ‘Insight.’ Imagination Conditionality has a constructive aspect—when conditions come together to produce something new, just as much as it has the destructive one—when conditions fall apart, as we rehearsed in the latter meditations. In order to build something new—as it were from the ashes—we need to engage what Sangharakshita calls our Imaginal faculty. Just as we used constructive imagination in the metta bhavana, we need to use it to chart the path to Nirvana; ‘lmagination is a power or capacity or even faculty of the individual.… Everyone has that faculty of imagination as a potentiality and it is the essential vehicle of a genuine moral, aesthetic, and spiritual life.… As a potentiality it is intrinsic to the human mind. It does not however actively function in everyone, or at least it does not function as a dominant or controlling force and is not at all conscious. It must be recognized, educated, and cultivated if it is to come into decisive play. The metaphor of faculty teaches us the attitude we need if that cultivation and education are to take place. It is not a matter of constructing something or bringing something into being, but of discovering a capacity we already have, identifying it and giving it importance—just as athletes might develop bodily skills they were born with once they recognize their capacity. We each need to feed the imaginal faculty we already have so it grows in range and vitality and plays an increasingly significant part in our lives.’[1] The way imagination works is the mind selects an image which it assigns significance to, and then ‘follows’; for example, if we wanted to encourage ourselves to be more courageous, we might identify with a superhero on TV, using their qualities as a blueprint or lead. The challenge then becomes whether or not our life lives up to that vision; if we never actually are heroic in real life, then our imagination in this case is fantasy. But if our contemplation of that person does result in our being more heroic, then we might call that imagination proper. But without imagination in the first place, there would be nothing for us to live up to. Right View is that view which is in line with Reality—the way that things are, which leads to Nirvana. Man cannot take too much reality, which is why we need poetry, myth and symbol as intermediaries to help us approach it. Symbols...
Ritual and devotion
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 5 minute read This excerpt is taken from the chapter on ‘Buddhist Practice and follows on from the section on ‘Imagination.’ Ritual and devotion Ritual and devotion is an important aspect of Buddhist practice, which most Buddhists engage in, to some degree—although admittedly some people are more temperamentally averse to it than others.[1] Some of that resistance may be due to the person questioning the value of imagination per se—as in seeing imagination as fantasy, and therefore as a form of delusion—but this is a wrong view: when imagination takes us into a world of unreality—then it is fantasy, but when it brings us closer to reality—then it is Imagination proper. Generally, ritual and devotion are a way of building confidence in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha; through bringing them to mind and engaging with them emotionally—even physically—as when we make offerings to, or bow to, a Buddhist shrine. Image of Wat Phra Dhammakaya in Pathum Thani, Thailand by suc on Pixabay. Confidence Shraddha means “to place one’s heart upon” and represents an emotional interest in Buddhist practice and the confidence that such practice will bring ourselves and others the happiness that we desire; to the extent that faith (in Buddhism) is present, a person’s attention, thought and emotion—that is, the whole of their citta—is oriented towards its object. This idea is reflected in the fact that there are three grounds for confidence in Buddhism—reason, intuition and experience. Unlike its equivalent in theistic religion, faith in Buddhism is never blind. And just as reflection practices are designed to cultivate wisdom, by guiding the intellect towards Right View, devotional practices are designed to cultivate confidence, by guiding our emotions towards the Buddhist Ideal. What we value we adorn! The design of the Apple iPhone ‘adorns’ the view that ‘technology will solve all our problems.’ Buddhist devotional practices such as offering a stick of incense, bowing to a shrine or performing a devotional ceremony (called a puja) similarly adorn an idea—but a very different one, that the practise of Buddhism will satisfy our deepest needs. They thus help solidify our emotional connection with it. Reviewing what we explored in Chapter 1: the Buddha Aksobhya represents Non-Literalism—seeing poetry or symbolism as such; the Buddha Ratnasambhava represents the Quality of Refuge—taking up the highest value object of devotion; the Buddha Amitabha represents Non-Skepticism—acting ‘as if’ a story is true if to do so is helpful or effective; the Buddha Amoghasiddhi represents Effective Ritual Action—acting ritually in a way that fortifies devotion to a particular Ideal; and the Buddha Vairocana represents Effective Transformation—transforming the individual through the effective...
The theme of ‘Change’ in Postmodernism
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 8 minute read This excerpt is from the chapter ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset’ and follows the section on Postmodernism. The theme of ‘Change’ [Mathew] Mullins gives an example of the ‘change theme’ from postmodern fiction: ‘Perhaps the best illustration of this notion of change comes from Octavia Butler’s unfinished Parable Trilogy. In the two completed novels, Parable of the Sower[1] and Parable of the Talents, Butler’s protagonist and primary narrator Lauren Olamina records her experiences in a not-so-distant apocalyptic future where the infrastructure of the US government has withered, and the rule of law has become legend. After her walled neighborhood is attacked and burned by local drug addicts, Lauren leaves her hometown and her father’s orthodox Christian religion behind and strikes out with two other survivors on a northbound journey in search of jobs and safety.’[2] Image by qimono on Pixabay. Earthseed ‘Along the way she develops the religion she had begun to craft for herself as an alternative to her father’s faith, a set of verses she calls Earthseed. The God of Earthseed is change: All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. ‘God is change, and change is also God. Each of the Earthseed verses either directly or obliquely speaks to the nature of change, and the most important aspect of change is its ubiquity, its atmospheric, foundational, state-of-things, all-encompassing nature. …’ ‘As Lauren develops her religion, she retains the language of “God” to talk about change. Various characters question this approach: “But it’s not a god. It’s not a person or an intelligence or even a thing. It’s just … I don’t know an idea,” says a young man named Travis. ‘Her new religion changes traditional Christianity by reimagining God as an impersonal force rather than a personal being. When Travis points out that no one worships impersonal forces such as change or the second law of thermodynamics, Lauren responds, “I hope not […] Earthseed deals with ongoing reality not with supernatural authority figures.”[3] Here we are in the realm of secular religion: ‘Most of Butler’s characters do not struggle with Earthseed as a practice. They struggle with changing their minds about who or what God is. They struggle with “ongoing reality.” Postmodernism deals with ongoing reality.’[4] In other words, they struggle to accept a religion whose concern is not with discerning an ethical structure to the Universe and aligning oneself with it, but: ‘with the processual nature of...
Postmodernism
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 5 minute read This excerpt is from the beginning of the chapter ‘Postmodernism and the academic mindset.’ Beyond the Postmodern Mind In Beyond the Postmodern Mind, Huston Smith states; ‘The dominant assumptions of an age colour the thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and images of the men and women who live within it’;[1] he outlines three great ‘configurations’ of such basic assumptions; the Greco-Roman or Classical period—which flourished up to the fourth century CE; the Christian worldview—which dominated Europe until the seventeenth century; and the era instigated by modern science, which ‘has come to be capsulated in the phrase ‘the Modern Mind,’[2] or just ‘modernity.’ Modernism[3] The modern outlook can be summarized by identifying its three controlling presuppositions. ‘First, that reality may be personal is less certain and less important than that it is ordered. Second, man’s reason is capable of discerning this order as it manifests itself in the laws of nature. Third, the path to human fulfilment consists primarily in discovering these laws, utilizing them where this in possible and complying with them where it is not.’[4] Modernism took its cues from the new worldview that Science introduced, but Smith claims that twentieth century science has abandoned not just that worldview but worldviews generally.[5] He uses a great image to illustrate this: ‘the Modern Mind’s mistake was to think that seeing further in a horizontal direction would compensate for loss of the vertical dimension.[6] If we visualize a line that wanders upward and then downward again to silhouette the Himalayan range, it is as if Modernity grabbed hold of both ends of that line and stretched them apart. Image by 12019 on Pixabay. This collapsed the humps to a straight line along the base of the range, but Modernity reasoned that since that line could be indefinitely extended, it would enclose a volume greater than the one the line originally defined.’[7] In other words, Modernity—underpinned by the natural attitude (the philosophical stance of science)—has ‘flattened out’ values. In Chapter 1 I explored how this is inevitably the case because Science and values occupy different domains—Science deals in third-person evidence, whereas values—represented by Religion (of whatever sort)—are an ‘affair of the heart’, and are thus represented by first-person evidence. Ketumati expresses his personal impression of the state of the world in early 2022 at the beginning of his talk Ethics and Transcendence in the 21st Century–Lifeview as Primary.[8] He talks about the distasteful end of the year orgy of consumption as problematic given the general state of the planet and the mood of darkness...
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...
Secular Religion
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 9 minute read Diving into Chapter 1, ‘The Evidence Bases of Religion, Politics and Science,’ this excerpt goes into the way that secularity can foster its own religion: including, according to Professor of Religious Studies Jeff Wilson, the modern mindfulness movement. The secular myth The word ‘secular’ simply means ‘of the age:’ today this means ‘aligned with the Western paradigm of scientific materialism.’ The myth of Science holds that, in an age of technological advancement, it might be possible for man—if only he could perfect science–to exercise complete dominion over his environment, thus creating an ideal materialist society. Imagination from this perspective can be seen as a subjective sideshow, emotion-based therefore unreliable, for ’dreamy idlers’ who, incapable of meeting the demands of a materialistic society, opt for alternative lifestyles such as those rooted in religion or the arts, as a means of escape. Along the former lines, Christopher Hitchens wrote in his memoir, Hitch-22: ‘I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.’ This view is bolstered by the belief that no life continues after death: a perspective criticized by the Buddha as speculative overreach[1] (and perhaps emanating from a disdain for current existence:) thus individuals replace the transcendent with the secular, investing the latter with a sacred quality and prompting the pursuit of a materialist or socio-political agenda with a fervour akin to religious dedication. ‘Death is certain,” [Hitchens] wrote in The Portable Atheist, “replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.’[2] Hitchens articulates his personal code of ethics: ‘Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the “transcendent” and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.’[3] This code is akin to a religion, if we...
The Symbol
Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book… © Mahabodhi Burton 7 minute read Diving into Chapter 1, ‘The Evidence Bases of Religion, Science and Politics,’ this excerpt explores Imagination in the Coleridgeian sense and the symbol as ‘conductor’ of Reality (Capital R.) It follows on from Kindness as a common thread amongst religions. Imagination and ‘Poetic Logic’ As religion freely applies the use of ritual and symbolism, it is important, now—in our coverage of the topic—to spend some time understanding the principles behind those; as well as introducing ourselves to the most important archetypal figures in the Buddhist pantheon. The term Industrial Revolution characterizes the period in Britain between 1760 and 1840, in which a shift took place from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. In 1816 Coleridge published the statesman’s manual[1] in which he speaks of the industrial era as suffering from ‘a general contagion of mechanic philosophy’; it being ‘the product of an unenlivened generalizing understanding’: he felt that many people—particularly the higher classes—confused the faculty of imagination with fantasy and he wanted to correct that view: to do so he coined the term esemplastic: meaning ‘to shape into one’, to describe the creative imagination: ‘The Biographia Literaria was one of Coleridge’s main critical studies in which he discusses the elements and process of writing. In this work, Coleridge establishes a criterion for good literature, making a distinction between the imagination and “fancy”. Whereas fancy rested on the mechanical and passive operations of one’s mind to accumulate and store data, imagination held a “mysterious power” to extract “hidden ideas and meaning” from such data. Thus, Coleridge argues that good literary works employ the use of the imagination and describes its power to “shape into one” and to “convey a new sense” as esemplastic. ‘He emphasizes the necessity of creating such a term as it distinguishes the imagination as extraordinary and as “it would aid the recollection of my meaning and prevent it being confounded with the usual import of the word imagination. Use of the word has been limited to describing mental processes and writing, such as “the esemplastic power of a great mind to simplify the difficult”, or “the esemplastic power of the poetic imagination”. ‘The meaning conveyed in such a sentence is the process of someone, most likely a poet, taking images, words, and emotions from a number of realms of human endeavour and thought and unifying them all into a single work. Coleridge argues that such an accomplishment requires an enormous effort of the imagination and, therefore, should be granted with its own term.’[2] As Kulananda says:...
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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