exploring authentic Buddhist practice in our times

The book that I am currently reading is The Gift by Lewis Hyde.  If - like me  - you consider generosity in all her gorgeous dresses to be the true heart of authentic spirituality then I’d say it was pretty much a must read.

Most artists are brought to their vocations when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master.  That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself.  The future artist finds himself or herself moved by a work of art, and, through that experience, comes to labor (american sic) in the service of art until he can profess his own gifts.

Those of us who do not become artists nonetheless attend to art in a similar spirit.  We come to painting, to poetry, to the stage, hoping to revive the soul.  And any artist whose work touches us earns our gratitude.  The connection between art and gift is a subject of a later part of this book, but it deserves mention here, for it is when art acts as an agent of tranformation that we may correctly speak of it as a gift.

A lively culture will have transformative gifts as a general feature, it will have methods of passig knowledge from old to young, it will have spiritual teachings available at all levels of maturation and for the birth of the spiritual self.  And it will have artists whose creations are gifts for the transformation of the race.

It’s lovely.  And I could have literally quoted of dozens of passages relevant to this investigation from the first hundred pages.  And the cover design of the UK edition is really rather beautiful.  And I love the subtitle ‘how the creaive spirit transforms the world’.  But I love even more the original subtitle of the UK edition - The Gift: the erotic life of poetry

Dear Reader,

Blogging is a funny business.  You collect an clumsy idea or a reflection, shape them into still more clumsy words and by pressing publish send the bits out into space.  And enabled by a network of protocols and technological infrastructure that we don’t really understand, one’s writing can be received by anyone with the means.  And that may be that intentionally in the case of someone who has been following the blog for a while or by happenstance, stumbling upon it perhaps through a google search for something far more interesting.

21awake as a blog project is less than a year old and I guess I should have waited until a more conventional anniversary until this post but - to be honest - I could not wait.  So all I wish to say is this:

You don’t know how much it means to me that you read and enjoy this blog.  When I receive a comment of appreciation or one which looks to add a new perspective to whatever issue that particular post might be speaking of at the time, my heart just sings.  Some of you I know very well already, some not in the slightest.  But when this effort is met and acknowledgement in some way, it really is quite moving.

Because this is hard work you know.  The life of a dedicated dhamma practitioner in central London is really quite a lonely one.  And while I am now increasinly used to that, frankly I need all the nutritional supplements I can get.  Of which this is chief, since 21awake has allowed me to connect with some really quite wonderful people from all round the world - like you - and for that I have untold gratitude.

In our ongoing translation of this extraordinary teaching into the realities of our lives, of course it may be the case that we are just making it all up.  But at least I can take comfort in that we are making it all up together.

Practice is a funny business.  You start with a clumsy idea of how the Dhamma all fits together, try to live according to that understanding in an even clumsier manner and trust in the process.  And enabled by processes and dynamics that we don’t really understand, somehow wisdom does its own work.  Such is this mystery - this extraordinary exercise in vulnerability in which we all take part.  Long may it be so.

Thank you.  That’s all.

yours,

Rohan

Thank you to GieselaGiardino for sharing your work through flickr | creative commons

View Meditation Resources Worldwide in a larger map

Sometimes I love the web. This afternoon I was browsing a list of meditation centres worldwide and thought wouldn’t it be much more useful if they were all mapped rather than just presented as a flat list? So rather than wait for anyone to do it I realised that even as a technical inept such as I could hack one together using Google Maps, so here it is.

But of course it’s totally incomplete…so I’m asking for your help.

Click here to see the full map and anyone can put in a pin where they think one is deserved.

To start with I’m using a three-part classification:

• Red pins for monastic residential centres
• Blue pins for lay residential centres
• Green pins for urban/community non-residential groups

Because of my bias/background I’ve started with places in the insight/vipassana tradition but ours is a fluid world so please do feel free to pin any place that you think will be of value.

And especially if you are a blogger, it’d be great if we could distribute the challenge across the web and co-create something really quite useful. You can embed the map in your own post using this link.

21awake is besides itself with excitement with the news that this year’s International Buddhist Film Festival will be taking place at the Barbican in London next month.

There are some remarkable pieces on show including a series of fascinating profiles and also a lovely set of spiritual films from across the world.  set of bardo-related films.

Who’s coming with me?

Sometimes it’s really simple.  You sit,  you walk, you do your chores, all the time resting in the open nature of awareness - just noticing when and why entanglements occur and suffering arises.

Sometimes it’s rarely simply. You sit, you walk, you do your chores, all the time caught in thoughts and habit - a maelstrom of confusion and differentiation.

So when I return from an intensive I’m of course often asked so… was it a good retreat? and to be honest I just don’t know what to say to that any more.

The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts is pretty much the mothership when it comes to the insight tradition in the West and it was just such a thrill to go and practice in such a great place with its inspiring history.  I was drawn by the retreat being led by Rodney Smith,  the lead teacher at Seattle Insight that I’ve found most useful in the last year and it was also co-taught by the excellent Carol Wilson.

An outstanding motif of my retreat was the majesty of real silence and its relationship with noise.  I feel that they dance a lovers’ dance and my main practice at the moment seems to be one of patience, trusting that when the lights come up at the end of the night silence has its partner in the absolutely fullest of embraces, warm and known.

I started this year my heart full of samvega or urgency and frankly it is showing few signs of abating.  If anything it’s enjoying an amplification.  The original motivation for this blog project was to explore what a modern life dedicated to awakening looks like and at the moment I have to say that I just do not know.

What I do know is that I don’t want to be on a retreat in 10/15 years time with Rodney, Carol or their equivalents and sit there asking why I’m not awake.  So if you were to ask me what my greatest fear was I’d have to say that is was that one and that feels like a good place from which to take my next step.

To hear the talks from the retreat you can find them here.  My favourite was Rodney’s Aligning the Mind with the Now of the Body.

Thank you to ®DS for sharing your work through flickr | creative commons

Given that there are so many great Dhamma books already in existence, unless you’ve got something new to say then I really don’t think you should bother.  Enough lotus flower covers already.  Quite frankly I’ve had enough.  And I know I’m going to learn more about the nature of the world by reading a bit of Anna Karenina than yet another eulogy to acceptance in a cute American accent, so please let’s just save the paper.

Facetiousness aside however there have been some books of recent years that have really excited me.  And these have been the books that have the ability to remain deeply authentic to the teaching but are at the same time radically innovative (e.g. Greg Kramer’s Insight Dialogue), most straight-talking (e.g. Dan Ingram’s Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha) or just a little bit sarky (Patrick Ophul’s Buddha Takes No Prisoners).  And then there are the new books which are just so fresh and relevant that their reading has you punching the air with delight.  So it was with Ethan Nichtern’s One City: a declaration of interdependence - arguably the first truly 21st century Dhamma book.

Ethan Nichtern is the founder of the Interdependence Project in New York , a vibrant meditation-centred organisation that encourages a contemplative but engaged relationship with the city.  Having grown up with his parents teaching in the Shambala tradition of Chogyum Trungpa, his naturalised style of practice comes across very strongly in his work.

As Ajahn Munindo so brilliantly puts it, we are all translators.   So when Ethan starts his chapters with quotes from the likes of Dr King, Arundhati Roy and Mos Def, he is using the language that is important to him -  the language that he himself speaks - to carry the essence of the practice.  This is not a token nod to speaking a Dhamma that is “down with the kids” (sic), this is an insightful young guy just talking like he talks.

As someone who is passionate about hearing authentic teachings that literally speak to me, when I read a book of this quality which has chapter headings such as “The Real Internet” and “Cutting Through Infotainment”, quite frankly it’s thrilling.

I am currently recommending two books for people who are interested in the opportunity the world is giving us right now.  One is What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis.  The other is One City.  And while neither are perfect, they are terrifically exciting and like any good provocation will make you look anew.  And if you don’t agree with me, let me know and I’ll give you your money back.

But read them soon because this is zeitgeist stuff.

• Read the preview chapters of One City courtesy of books.google
• Visit the excellent One City blog
• Watch Ethan’s interview with Mark Molaro
• Or watch him talk at Google NYC’s book club

And if anyone from the ID project is listening, next time I’m in NYC, I’d love to pop round and say hi.

Call me old-fashioned but I think that in Dhamma practice wisdom has a very specific meaning - namely seeing things as they are: essentially unsatisfactory, without any lasting qualities and without a fixed centre.  And until it becomes naturalised as a gear of the mind, this mode of seeing asks us for restful effort and wise placement of attention.

So where is the place for instinct?  The place for that which just feels right?  Investigation, and not acceptance,  is the hallmark of the practice and frankly I don’t know if I’m skilled enough at the moment to know the difference between what is subtle defilement and what is just life meeting life.

I saw a clue however earlier this evening as I ran home from work - a delightful route that takes me along the river and through four parks all adjoined, like the city gesturing a giant green open embrace.  Resting at speed in the body, the sense of “in the running just the running” was really quite strong and seeing the natural instinct of the body just knowing what to do felt like a treat.

The important question that I therefore feel I am being asked is: can the flow of instinct and the discerning stance of wisdom be intimate with each other in a way that I don’t know where the arms of one begin and those of the other end?

Having just come back from the five day study retreat, I am a crucible of teachings and reflections at the moment which no doubt will shortly manifest into a blog post or two.  So while I wait for all that material to settle down I thought I’d share something relatively personal.

Over the few years that I’ve been practising this way of seeing, I’ve had the good fortune to work with a number of really rather good Dhamma teachers.  And in the discussions, interviews and informal chats I’ve enjoyed with them, particular teachings or one-liners have really struck me and stuck with me.  In a way they are like my koans - questions and reflections that often appear to consciousness demanding attention and a new level of interpretation.

I don’t think I’m going to provide any commentary about what I think they mean, or indeed what they mean to me but just place them here in the spirit they were given to me - as challenges.  Some make clear sense while others are a little more cryptic perhaps…but I love them all equally.

1. Watch your mind like you’re watching TV.  And if you come and see me again, I want to know how the remote works.

2. When mindfulness is absent - why? why? why?  Why exactly is it absent?

3. We create the meditator to see through the meditator

4. When you stop making one particular object special then what happens?..Everything becomes special

5. The recollection of his past lives was the most important practice the Buddha ever did

Thank you

As someone who works at what is essentially the major public innovation agency in the UK, the recession is naturally  something that I have cause to think about often.

There is a lot of “now-is-the-time” type rhetoric coming from all sorts of quarters, not at least my own area which is that of participatory and web culture, where individuals are being empowered by new digital tools to shape their lives in ways that previously only formal organisations had access to.

So, in the middle of all this, the question that is live for me at the moment is what is the role of the Dhamma in a downturn? And as we rebuild that which is not working, at what point do we stop?

What comes to mind as I reflect on this is one of my favourite verses - the words of the writer and poet Ben Okri from his millenial poem Mental Fight:

You can’t remake the world
Without remaking yourself.
Each new era begins within.
It is an inward event,
With unsuspected possibilities
For inner liberation.

We could use it to turn on
Our inward lights.
We could use it to use even the dark
And negative things positively.
We could use the new era
To clean our eyes,
To see the world differently,
To see ourselves more clearly.

Only free people can make a free world.
Infect the world with your light.
Help fulfill the golden prophecies.
Press forward the human genius.
Our future is greater than our past.

So let’s take Ben’s invitation and look within and look deep.

For from what little I have seen of this - when there is sincerity and interest, the heart knows not recession.

Ok so the title of this post surprises even me. I was watching this really very beautiful interview with Ondrea and Stephen Levine and while I wholeheartedly recommend you check out this set of three from the start, Stephen at one point talks about how Buddhist practice is like the way Mac writes code:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3