The Buddha's enlightenment

I'd like to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably?

Axial age

It's around 500 B.C.E.. The Persian king Cyrus was preparing to invade Babylon. Pythagoras was alive and Greece’s experiment with democracy was flourishing. The great philosopher Confucius (Kong Qui) was beginning to teach in China and Lao-tzu was laying the foundations for Taoism. Zoroaster founded Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion in Iran up until the coming of Islam. It was a time of revolutionary change the world over – some historians call it the "axial age".

In India, the dominant religion was the Vedic faith, which had been around for a good 1000 years at this point. The Vedas are texts that lay out descriptions of particular rituals (and their associated poems, hymns, etc) for things like fertility, rain, bringing good luck in battle, etc. Over these 1000 years, the highest caste Brahmin priests had assumed more and more power since they were the only ones allowed to perform these rituals and communicate with the Gods. As you can imagine not everybody was happy with this situation...

At around this time a kind of protest movement, or peaceful revolt, to this Brahmin domination started. People from the lower castes, typically the warrior/ruler Kshatriya caste, started renouncing the Brahmin-controlled system and going out into the forest-wilderness to search for another way.

Siddhartha Guatama

At this same time, a boy was born on the very edges of the Vedic/Brahman culture, in Lumbini on what is now the border between India and Nepal – in the foothills of the Himalayas. The little boy, who was called Siddhartha Guatama, was born to the Shakya family clan, and his father happened to be the tribal leader of this small kingdom.

When the baby was born he was taken to the fortune teller (as is the custom in India to this day) and they gave two possible destinies: (1) he was going to be a great, wise and wonderful ruler, or (2) he was going to be a great, wise and wonderful spiritual leader. His father, being a ruler himself, didn’t really like the sound of the second option, so the boy was brought up to be a ruler. He was also brought up in complete luxury with his family not wanting to expose him to any kind of suffering at all. He had a palace for each season, only good-looking, courteous people to wait on him, and as he got older, no end of dancing girls!

One day in his 20s, as he was preparing to take over the rulership of the kingdom, he went out with his chariot driver, Channa, for a drive to have a look around. As they were heading down the road they encountered a sick person hobbling by. The young Siddhartha had never actually seen anybody who was ill before – the old texts says he didn’t even recognise the person as human. “What’s that?” he says, and the chariot driver explained to him. A little further on he saw an old person, slumped over, and again he came to the realisation, through the gentle guidance of Channa, that everybody (including himself) was going to get old. Further down the line still they saw a dead person carried along in a funeral procession. Again the prince was dumbfounded and realised that not only will he get ill and get old, but he will also die.

Siddhartha out with his charioteer having his mind blown!

As you can imagine, he was in shock! Further down the road still he and his chariot driver saw a wandering holy man (a sadhu), and the chariot driver explained that this person was seeking for that which was beyond old age, sickness and death. This very much intrigued Siddhartha.

So the young man had a chat with his wife (who'd just recently given birth) and he somehow convinced her that he wanted to go off to search for himself for "that which was beyond old age, sickness and death". He slipped out of the palace with Channa, his charioteer, in the middle of the night and disappeared into the forest. He was about 29 at this point.

His search

I can't imagine what those first few nights must have been like. He'd grown up in this sheltered life of luxury – what a contrast! However, bearing in mind the age he was living in, there was a whole movement of people in the forests of northern India searching for new ways outside the established Vedic/Brahmin tradition. Over the coming months or years he found a number of different teachers (possibly yogis) to study with, and became very skilled at what they had to offer, but none of them could show him that which was beyond old age, sickness, and death.

After about 6 years of wandering and studying, he got really into fasting and reached a stage of eating just one grain of rice a day... He was on the verge of starvation and saw that, far from seeing clearly, his mind was getting duller by the day. It just so happened that one day a maid named Sujata was wandering by, and, looking at his emaciated body, offered him a bowl of milk rice sweetened with lumps of honey. He accepted it.

A very early statue of an emaciated Buddha-to-be

He started eating properly again an getting his strength back. One day he was sitting by the river Neranjara in northern India and sees a boat going past. Perhaps it was a vision or perhaps real life. On the boat there was somebody playing a veena (a type of Indian guitar). This veena had three strings, one of which is so loose and flappy that he can’t get any sound out of it, and one of which is so tight that the instant he touches it, it just breaks. The middle that’s tuned just right where he can get some music out of it. Seeing this, Siddhartha saw that humans are the same: they don’t work well if you over-tighten things (like doing ascetic practices), and too much slackness doesn’t work either (his life of luxury in the palace). He became convinced that the middle path was the way to go.

So with this in mind, Siddhartha went and sat beneath an enormous fig tree (of the type that has a big root structure with little niches to sit between) and began to meditate. He made a commitment: "Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom." He was at a place called Bodh Gaya, in the modern Indian state of Bihar, and was in his mid-30s at this point.

A Bodhi tree with a big root structure ideal for meditating inside.

Awakening

According to some traditions he sat for just one night. Others say three days and three nights; while others say 45 days. Between his periods of sitting, he apparently mindfully paced up and down a path about 17 steps in length in walking meditation.

After one particularly eventful night of meditation, so it is said, Siddhartha looked up and saw the morning star (Venus) in the golden light of daybreak. At this he had a great awakening and exclaimed "I am enlightened, together with the whole of the great earth and all its sentient beings." He saw in his mind all the life of the world and the planets; of all the past and all the future. He understood the meaning of existence, of why we are here on this earth and what has created us. At long last he found the truth – that which is beyond old age, sickness, and death. The name Buddha means “the awakened one.”

But what is this truth? If you want to know that for yourself, come along to one of our Zen meditation sessions!

Different schools of Buddhism remember the Buddha's awakening at different times during the year. In the Zen school it’s always on December 8th and they call it the Rohatsu retreat – it’s akin to a sort of Zen Christmas! So last night (7th Dec) we sat all through the night (9pm through to 7am) to remember this journey the Buddha took, and to share in his commitment to "not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom".

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I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Skinner Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

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Emptiness in a Christmas bauble

What's in a Christmas bauble?

Probably not much!

Christmas tree baubles are usually empty (unless you've got one of those edible ones filled with chocolately niceness!). But what does "empty" mean? It's not really completely empty – it's filled with vibrating air molecules zipping about bouncing off the walls of the bauble. But even if we were to empty it of air (assuming the bauble would be strong enough to stay up against the vacuum), would it really be empty? No, the vacuum would still be full of electromagnetic radiation (granted there would be no visible light, but there would be plenty of radio waves). The emptiness is really a living, vibrant emptiness full of change and potential. What it's truly empty of is anything fixed or permanent.

Now being, going to nothing

If you've got an old metal bauble, then you might begin to notice some rusting or discolouration from age. If it's glass then it might be a little more hardy, but (sorry to be pessimistic) chances are one day it's going to get smashed... Plastic ones are perhaps the hardiest of all, but even those will be slowly changing and degrading (due to heat, light, or chemicals such as acids or alkalis from your skin).

The point is no matter how strong or well-made it is, it's always going to be changing. As a Zen teacher of mine likes to say "now being, going to nothing" – given a long enough time, there will be absolutely nothing left of the thing we now call the "bauble". Really, the bauble is better thought of as a process rather than a thing.

Your bauble contains the entire Universe

If you've got one of those shiny baubles, then it'll reflect everything around it. And if your tree is covered in shiny baubles, then they'll all be reflecting each other. The whole of your living room will be there in each bauble, and each bauble in each other bauble! This is kind of how reality is. The whole is present in even the tiniest little part.

In a single grain of salt you might rub into your Christmas turkey there are millions of sodium and chlorine atoms bonded together, each atom made of energy in the form of protons, neutrons and electrons – just like every other atom in the entire Universe. And those sodium and chlorine atoms were most likely formed inside a star aeons ago, and wouldn't ever have come into existence if it wasn't for the precise conditions of the early Universe.

So the Universe is made up of a vast interconnected web, or, in the words of the great physicist Heisenberg, "a complicated tissue of events, in which connections of different kinds alternate or overlap or combine." William Blake knew this when he wrote:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Which is very similar to a verse from the Avatamsaka Sutra (pointed out by Mattieu Riccard in his book The Quantum and the Lotus)

As in one atom,
So in all atoms,
All worlds enter therein—
So inconceivable is it.

Enso - the symbol of Zen

Hanging up in the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell where I teach is a large painting of a circle. In Japanese it's called an enso, and is one of the most distinct symbols of Zen. In a way, it's very much like our bauble: vibrantly empty, slowly disintegrating, and containing the entire Universe.

The enso hanging in the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell

Śūnyatā is the Sanskrit/Buddhist word for emptiness (śūnya means zero or nothing), and is studied at great length in the Madhyamaka school of Buddhist philosophy, which was developed around a few hundred CE. To them, sunyata represents the flow of dynamic processes in the Universe, ordered by the laws of nature and by past actions (karma), where everything is interconnected, interrelated, and interpenetrating.

I am a member of the Zenways sangha led by Zen master Daizan Roshi, and I teach meditation, mindfulness and yoga at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

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How many more nuggets of wisdom can you find on your Christmas tree? I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment below, join the discussion.

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Transforming our ego the Yogacara way

Not so long ago a friend of mind had just gone through a difficult breakup and was in need of someone to talk to. We met up for a cup of tea and chatted. She was really hurting, so I did my best to listen patiently and sensitively.

At some point she mentioned how she'd like to go away for a short break to get away from it all. For some reason I took this as an opportunity to mention I'd been to Japan back in the summer, and proceeded to wax lyrical about the trip. Ten minutes later I realised this wasn't helping...!

On reflection I saw I'd been boasting. I had taken this utterly inappropriate moment to talk about myself and how wonderful my life is (bit like I'm doing now...), and had forgotten about my friend and her pain.

To understand why I did this (insensitive bugger that I am) – and why we all have a tendency to do this – let's take another look at the philosophical system I was discussing last week: Yogacara.

Remember, Yogacara is about a 1500 year-old Buddhist philosophy that describes a structure of the mind to rival any modern psychology (beautifully laid out in Thich Nhat Hanh's book "Understanding our Mind"). Yogacara says we have a total of eight types of consciousness:

• The 5 sense-consciousnesses associated with seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling
• Mind consciousness (meaning how the mind perceives the information gathered by our senses). These 6 consciousnesses we discussed last week.
• Manas (which can be translated as something like self-consciousness)
• Storehouse-consciousness

Storehouse consciousness - our seed bank

The primary function of the storehouse-consciousness is to store and preserve all of what in Yogacara are called our "seeds". Seeds are our perceptions, memories, experiences, and habits, but also our potentials, possibilities, and plans. They are things that have the capacity to manifest, and can have positive or negative qualities (like compassion, joy, hope, sorrow, fear, or anger). Our thoughts, words and actions all plant new seeds in the field of our consciousness, and what these seeds generate, so Yogacara says, become the substance of our life.

Manas

Manas is our coordinating function – a bit like the air traffic control desk at a busy airport. It's there trying to make sense of all this data flooding in from our senses and perceptions, and all these potentials, plans and memories arising from our store consciousness.

As we grow up, develop, and begin to take responsibility for ourselves, Yogacara would say manas falls in love with a part of the store consciousness. It sees it as a separate entity, a "self" and grasps onto it firmly, a bit like how a small child would cling to her parent's leg! Manas is more or less equivalent to Freud's term "ego".

Because it becomes attached to the idea of self, it always acts to preserve the self. It is our survival instinct, and for this we have to be very grateful. It's what keeps us alive. If someone tries to hit us, we avoid it – that self-protective response is manas.

The problem is manas is blind. It can easily take us in the wrong direction in its blind pursuit of protecting the self. We can end up throwing the baby out with the bath water, destroying ourselves in order to make the other person suffer.

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the only one who ends up getting burned" – Some Wise Person

So in my example, I digressed into harping on about my own fantastic holiday. My deluded manas sensed an opportunity to reassure me that I'm ok, that my life is better than my friend's, etc, etc., and to generally bolster my ego.

So it was my manas's fault...

But it would be short-sighted to see manas (ego) as the enemy that must be fought until completely destroyed. Without it, who would be controlling all the take-offs and landings at our busy airport? Instead, we should work on transforming manas.

Transforming manas

Problems come when we end up clinging to things we learn or feel as the absolute truth. I feel angry turns into "I am an angry person", or I want some love turns into "I am an unloved person". Like water that freezes and prevents flow, these beliefs become obstacles. Like climbing a ladder, the more we cling to our current knowledge, our current rung, the harder it gets to climb to the next rung.


Through our meditation and yoga practice we begin to realise that, first, these obstacles exist, and that our belief in them creates them. Slowly, slowly we begin to let go of these beliefs and thus the obstacles begin to melt or transform. In our practice we investigate the true nature of the things that manifest from our seeds and start seeing them not as real entities (i.e. things that we cling to and fix into 'absolute truths') but simply as concepts, notions, metaphors, or labels. Eventually (through a lot of practice) our deep-seated belief in a separate "self" is completely released.

Before, manas was the energy of grasping and discriminating. Now it becomes a wisdom that can perceive the true interrelated and interconnected nature of things. As Thich Nhat Hanh says "the capacity to live according to this nature of no discrimination between self and non-self is the wisdom of equality."

I am a member of the Zenways sangha and teach meditation and mindfulness in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

I'd love to hear from you

Have you had problems with your ego recently? Do you see it as the enemy or just as a frightened, blind little animal that needs the right guidance? I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment below, join the discussion.

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Rainbows, consciousness and yogacara

What is a rainbow? Have you ever wondered that?

Scientifically speaking, rainbows are caused by light being refracted (bent) upon entering a droplet of water, reflected on the back of the droplet, and refracted upon leaving the droplet. This double refraction splits up the light since red light is refracted less than blue light.

So for a rainbow to exist we need sunshine and raindrops... but we need one more very crucial thing – a spectator. Unless someone is present at just the right spot, then there's no such thing as a rainbow. It's just light rays hitting the earth – business as usual! Rainbows are therefore phenomena that require an instrument of sense perception – like a person with an eye, or a camera.

Radical externalism

So what is a rainbow? It's not just sunshine or just raindrops, or indeed the combination of sunshine and raindrops. And it's not sunshine, raindrops and a person – because what if that person was looking the other way...?

In this fantastic article, writer Tim Parks interviews Riccardo Manzotti, an Italian psychology teacher who has a very interesting view on what a rainbow is. Parks describes Manzotti as a "radical externalist" – someone who believes "consciousness is a process shared between various otherwise distinct processes which, for convenience’s sake, we [call] subject and object."

So in his view, a rainbow is what happens when a person perceives light being refracted and reflected like this. Of this event of perception, he says "consciousness is spread between the sunlight, the raindrops, and the visual cortex, creating a unique, transitory new whole – the rainbow experience."

This is what makes him an "externalist" – he sees consciousness as being something that transcends the brain, being shared between the things being perceived (object) and the perceiver (subject). This is in contrast to what might be seen as a more orthodox view, where consciousness is seen as being confined within the brain.

Yogacara

It turns out there's a Buddhist philosophical and psychological system called Yogacara that might help us understand this a little more. Although it's a philosophy, the system comes out of actual practice – people doing yoga meditation over a period of centuries ("cara" means practice).

Everyone knows we have five senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, and in order to have these senses we need our sense organs: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and skin.

Yogacara says that the combination of, for example, our eyes and looking at a rainbow, creates "eye-consciousness" (and the same thing for the other senses). Sound familiar? Yogacara also says we have "mind-consciousness", which is what comes about when the mind perceives something external (so in this example, perceiving the rainbow), or starts thinking and imagining.

So our guy Manzotti, without knowing it, is really a yogacarain. He's re-discovered a philosophy that has been around for about 1500 years! But I'm not sure he would be too happy with this since when asked by Parks if he was aware of Buddhist principles he got irritated, saying he tries "to avoid like the plague being mixed up with anything that smells New Age."! New age... pah!

According to Yogacara, consciousness is what arises when we bring the subject and object of perception together. These are really just two aspects of same reality, and, of course, both subject to constant change. Let's think about this for a moment... the subject (that's you, the perceiver) is subject to constant change. We're not (as my Zen teacher likes to say) solid snooker balls bouncing across the table of life. As Manzotti rightly points out, by thinking consciousness is not just confined to the brain, then we see that we are not separate from the world around us. We are subject to constant change. Our consciousness cannot be separate from the world and cannot survive outside the world.

The Buddha is reputed to have said (something like) "Your life is the creation of your mind."
Yogacara (sometimes called the "mind-only" school) gives us a structure to see how we create our life and how we create our sense of who we are.

Next week I'll continue on this theme and talk about how yogacara sees our ego and our (false) sense of self.

I am a member of the Zenways sangha and teach meditation and mindfulness in Camberwell, London. See my website for further details.

I'd love to hear from you

Are you a radical externalist? Do you agree with our consciousness being something created in partnership with what we perceive? I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment below, join the discussion.

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The Buddha on Breathing

Meditating with or on the breath has a very distinguished history! Working with the breath to develop concentration, awareness, and insight dates back to well before the Buddha, into the earliest practices of the sages, mystics, and yogis of the Indian sub-continent.

The Buddha found meditating on the breath incredibly powerful, so placed a very strong emphasis on it in his teaching. On Saturday I went to a mindfulness teachers workshop at the ZenYoga studio on the subject of what the Buddha taught about breathing, run by my Zen teacher Daizan Skinner. 

When he was just 7 years old, sat under a tree while his father (the King of the local province) was presiding over the annual ploughing ceremony, the little Gautama Buddha entered into a spontaneous state of meditation. Tradition says he entered this first state of meditation by means of the breath.

The boy Gautama at 7yrs old sitting under a tree in spontaneous meditation

Later, this experience proved crucial to his spiritual quest towards full liberation from the suffering caused by life. He remembers "I thought of a time when my father was working and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree: quite secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome things I had entered upon and abode in the first meditation."

Interestingly, the Buddha was very much against any practices that held or prolonged the breath – as is found in traditional Hatha Yoga (and was probably widely practised at the time of the Buddha) – he advocated relaxed, natural breathing. Through experience he found that "stopping the in-breaths and out-breaths in [his] mouth and nose... [creates] a loud sound of winds (energy) coming from my ear holes... violent winds in [his] head... and belly." He found "each time, though tireless energy was aroused in me and unremitting mindfulness established [his] body was over-wrought and uncalm because [he] was exhausted by the painful effort."

The sutras claim that "the Buddha himself declared that he realised perfect Self-Awakening through the practice of anapanasati (breath meditation)" and that "concentration by mindfulness of breathing, when developed and cultivated, leads to a pleasant dwelling in this very life and to mindfulness and clear comprehension." He even taught his son, Rahula, "if mindfulness of breath is cultivated with continuous practice, then there is a vast harvest, there is great richness."

After lunch we spent some time meditating on the breath, then looking at the development of breath meditation from the earliest Buddhist accounts, through the different schools that have arisen since, into China and Japan and Zen.

One of the key early Buddhist sutras dealing with the breath is the 'Satipatanna Sutra'. "Sati" has come to be translated as "mindfulness", so this is the 'Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness'. In it, the Buddha explains that the most direct, immediate (or in some translations, the only) way to reach enlightenment is through the four foundations of mindfulness.

These are "contemplating the body in the body", "contemplating the feelings in the feelings", "contemplating consciousness in consciousness", and "contemplating mental objects (i.e. thoughts, ideas, concepts) in mental objects."

He goes on to say "And how does a Bhikkhu [a monk] live contemplating the body in the body? ... [He] goes to an empty place, sits down, crosses his legs, straightens his body, and arouses mindfulness of the breath... Mindful, he breaths in, and mindful, he breaths out." Like this we can contemplate the body in the body via mindfulness of the breath.

Then he says "Let alone seven years, let alone half a month, if anyone would develop these four foundations of mindfulness... for seven days, one of two fruits can be expected for him: either liberating knowledge right here and now, or... non-return (i.e. nirvana)."

Wow, just seven days...!

So it's clear the Buddha held mindfulness of the breath in very high esteem! He says it really is the most direct way to fully wake up and realise the truth.

In the last part of the workshop, we each took on a question relating to what we'd learnt and came up with a little presentation on it. My question was: "How dows this practice relate to the four noble truths?"


The four noble truths were one of the first things the Buddha taught after his great enlightenment, and basically sum up the whole of Buddhist teaching. The four noble truths are:

1. Suffering exists as an inherent part of life
2. Suffering arises due to wanting things we don't have (craving, greed), not wanting things we do have (aversion, hate), and confusion or delusion as to the way things are now.
3. There is a way to end this suffering for good (liberation, enlightenment)
4. And that way is called the 8-fold path, and includes things like right livelihood, right speech, right mindfulness, etc.

By becoming aware of our breath, we automatically bring our attention to the present moment (we can't be breathing in the past or future!). With our attention on how things are right now, breathing and noticing the body in the body, we allow any thoughts, feelings or memories that arise to simply come and go. This presence and non-judgmental acceptance gives rise to an increasing sense of calm and clear understanding. With this clear, relaxed and open mind we begin to see where we are holding on to things (events, feelings, concepts, material objects), rejecting things, wanting things to be different, or being confused. Mindfulness of the breath is the vehicle we use to travel along the road towards the end of suffering.

If you'd like to explore the practice of mindfulness a little more, I run drop-in classes and 8-week courses at the ZenYoga studio in Camberwell, London. See here for more info.

Mindful happiness

One of the homework tasks I set in week 6 of my 8-week course in mindfulness is to write down, each day, 10 things that you're grateful for. It can include the same things or different things, little or big things, people, events, material things, thoughts or emotions. It's a lovely practice! Some people find it hard, some easy, but the point is to become more aware of all that we can be happy and grateful for.

So when I came across the 100 Happy Days Challenge a month or two ago, I signed up immediately! The idea is for 100 days straight you post a picture (or many pictures) of the people, things or events that make you happy to Instagram, Twitter or Facebook with the hashtag "#100HappyDays". I'm currently on day 42 (you can follow me on Instagram @westmoquette).

What is happiness? What is it to you? Just have a think right now...

Wikipedia has a nice definition: "Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy." It's one of those value judgements (like "good" or "holy") that vary from person-to-person, moment-to-moment, and culture-to-culture.

The majority of the European words for "happy" originated from the meaning "lucky", "prosperous", "very glad", or "blithe", but one exception is Welsh, where the word used first meant "wise". "Wise" implies a deeper meaning that's perhaps closer to what religion means by happiness.

Christians might say that happiness is "the grace of loving and being loved by Jesus who gave his life for me." In Catholicism, the end of life is said to consist of a "blessed happiness", or, as described by the 13th-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas, as a "beatific vision of God's essence".

In Buddhism, the path to happiness starts from an understanding of the root causes of what makes us unhappy – what the Buddha termed "dukkha", which translates as something like suffering, anxiety, discontent, unsatisfactoriness. It arises very naturally due to the events of birth, growing up, growing old, sickness and death, and it arises when we try to hold onto things that are actually constantly changing. Suffering originates from either wanting things we don't have, wanting to get rid of things we do have, or being confused or deluded.

The Buddha taught that we can free ourselves from this dukkha, and the way to do that is through studying ourselves and our place in the world through meditation. As he put it, our way out of this mess is to practice right view/understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration (the 8-fold path). What "right" means, is of course a matter to contemplate! Each of us must find our own version of "right". In this context, another word for "right" is "wholesome".

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts. It is made up of our thoughts. 
If one speaks or acts with an unwholesome thought, pain follows, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the wagon.
If one speaks or acts with a wholesome thought, happiness follows, like a shadow that never leaves.
(Dhammapada 1-2)

So in Buddhism, happiness comes from dis-identifying ourselves with our passions, needs and wants. That's not to say we don't enjoy them just the same – in fact if we can let go of wanting things to be any different from what they are right now, then we can enjoy things even more. Being 100% in the moment without any aversion, greed or delusion. This is the practice of mindfulness.

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama

So why don't you join me in taking up the http://100happydays.com challenge?! Let me know if you sign up and I'll follow you!

The Evolving Dharma

"The Evolving Dharma" by Jay Michaelson came out just a couple of months ago, and I came across it via twitter linking to a few blogs about it (like this one). It's billed as a "guide to the meditation revolution", charting how meditation and mindfulness have moved from Buddhist monasteries to self-help groups and retreat centres, to classrooms and hospitals, neuro-research labs and academic conferences. It really sparked my interest.

He begins the book discussing what he calls the post-modern, post-Buddhist, mindfulness movement, which has evolved out of Buddhist practice in the last 20-30 years. Mindfulness is now a completely secular set of techniques for what he describes as brain-hacking, or upgrading the software of our brain, and is indeed a flourishing academic subject, government-endorsed practice, and general buzzword in its own right.

In part two he discusses how the more traditional Buddhist pursuit of awakening or enlightenment is evolving in the west, using much of his own experience (mainly from the Theravadan tradition) as the base. He gives a very eloquent account of his months-long silent retreat exploring concentration and the four dhyana (or jhana) states, then his subsequent retreat looking more into insight, and his experiences of the shadow side – what St. John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul" (which, interestingly, has been the subject of scientific study by Dr. Britton at Brown University).

The subject of the third section is how this "contemplative wisdom" is interacting with our western cultural ideas of religion, spirituality, identity and gender, and is being extended to things like political activism (known as "engaged Buddhism"). He comments on how we're in the age of contributed content (blogs vs. newspapers, etc.), which tends to have the effect of flattening the power structure as people take responsibility for creating their own media. In terms of Buddhism, the consequence may be a decreased emphasis on the role of the guru-teacher. He also talks about the interaction between contemplative practice and social justice, and mentions a few examples of where teachers in the American Buddhist community have fallen foul of their desires.

In general Jay does a great job in describing Buddhism's ongoing journey to the west, looking at its first 100 years of integration and evolution. Being an American he's obviously very US-centric in his description of how Buddhism and meditation practice have encountered "the west". I think most of the trends though are present in Europe (even if the specific teachers he mentions are not), although I'm not sure whether movements such as the Buddhist Jews (so-called BuJus), or queer/gay Buddhists are quite so well-known or outspoken over here. Perhaps this reflects a more progressive or open culture in the US, or maybe just Jay's own background and interests (he's gay and a Jew).

Before reading this book I was worried that this might be another fluffy journalistic account of Buddhism written by someone who hadn't really done much meditation themselves. But I was impressed. Jay has obviously travelled a good way along the meditative journey himself and writes very eloquently about his own experiences. I think this adds a great deal of credence to what he says.

After all, all of us who practice or study yoga, mindfulness, meditation, or zen are actively involved in the evolution of Buddhism to the west. That encounter or dialogue actually comes up more often than you might think – it's a regular topic of discussion at our zen group in London. For example, as Zen students should we wear our formal robes to our weekly meditation session or is a tracksuit more appropriate? Should we bow in gassho to greet each other, or shake hands/kiss on the cheek as you would do in everyday life? Should we chant in Japanese or in English? Obviously we follow our teacher's lead on this, and he must have to think pretty hard about what's most appropriate for the London culture we live in. We're ploughing new and exciting furrows...