kamalashila - community, nature, and reality
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Kamalashila:
Community, Nature, and Reality
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I:
FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
Buddhafield Dharma Series I: Festival Talks 2009-10
An introduction
These booklets have come out of the Dharma teaching on the
Buddhafield Festival , and the wider Buddhafield project.
Originally posted as audio talks on FreeBuddhistAudio
(www.freebuddhistaudio.com/browse?p=Buddhafield), they’ve now
been edited and published on-line to reach a wider audience. You’ll
find the rest of the series online at issuu.com/buddhafield .
Buddhafield itself is at www.buddhafield.com or on Facebook - and
in a field in the West of England!
Thanks to Akasati for most of the work in preparing and editing
them for publication. Her essay introducing the series is available at
issuu.com/buddhafield/docs/akasati-ecology_buddhism_and_buddhafield
December 2010
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 3/29
Kamalashila - Community, Nature, and Reality
Creating effective and satisfying community is perhaps the most
urgent and difficult challenge facing our individualistic,
disconnected world. Maybe something can be learned from
Western Buddhists who have been experimenting with various
solutions since the 60s.
Solitude: the beginning
My own interest in community life comes out of experiences in
solitude, which is really not as peculiar as it sounds. Some years ago
I spent eighteen months on retreat in some woods on a hill in south-
west Wales. It was the most inspiring time of my life and years later
I am still assimilating its effects. I passed my time happily alone in
my dome tent burning wood, drawing water from the hillside – and
discovering that being close to nature provides wings for my
fledgling understanding of things. Afterwards it seemed to me that
rather than spending the rest of my life in continued busy-ness and
travel I should stay in one place and continue exploring the dharma
in natural surroundings – this time with others.
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
My dream was of an ecologically aware Buddhist community. Yet
when I started my retreat, I was not at all interested in ecology. My
reason for going to the countryside was to escape the distraction of
other human beings. I expected insights and realizations to arise in
meditation, not out of my surroundings. I knew I would learn about
lighting fires, tying knots, chopping wood and conserving water, but
I never expected natural things themselves to give insights into the
dharma. Yet in the event every single insight came from these
things. You could say they were instigated by the elements and
local spirits, for whose teachings thirty years of traditional Buddhist
training had prepared me.
As I lived, alone and simple, I became sharply aware of events
around me: seasons changing, the opening flowers, birds,
grasshoppers, frosts and dews. Getting connected with so much
living, interacting variety was like entering a timeless sacred
community, as in the famous Navaho chant:
…All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons
may I walk…
Beautifully joyful birds
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 5/29
On the trail marked with pollen …
With grasshoppers…(and) dew about my feet
may I walk…
With beauty before me … behind me … above me … all around me …
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk…
It is finished in beauty.
As you may be thinking, solitary life was not always marked by
beauty and joy. I managed several dozen times to get myself
trapped in some very unsettling situations, like the night I got
completely lost until the small hours in a fog, or the time I slipped
knee deep into my toilet. However because I had unrestricted time
to deal with such events, and there was no one else around to
confuse me with their scorn, disgust or anxiety, I could experience
each situation much more thoroughly, and the outcomes were
always transforming and positive. Through accepting my situation
again and again came a growing rapport with the surrounding
natural world in which dharma (by which I mean the true nature of
existence and the conditions necessary for seeing it), was far more
evident to me than usual. Moreover such experiences gradually
undermined my natural human pride and rigidity, leading to a series
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
of experiences in which my idea of myself collapsed along with the
world I assumed I was living in. I remember that this illuminating
period especially transformed the way I felt about others. I loved
people before with the usual variations, but now my love came
from somewhere deeper; and despite the isolation from the human
world I felt an immediate connection with all life that I had never
experienced before.
As all practitioners reading this will understand, the conditions for
such transformation were many and various. No doubt the main
influence was a daily commitment to hours of meditation and
reflection. But I am sure an equal part was played by the
surrounding landscape, which constantly reminded me in the most
uncompromising ways of the purpose of my retreat. Along with my
inconstant moods nature appeared variously beautiful, ugly, gentle
or harsh; but there was never any escape from the reality of it.
Whatever the weather or my state of health, if I needed to urinate
or get water and firewood I was forced go outside. I was in my mid
fifties, never in the best of health, and my retreat started in
December. Over the freezing winter months of 2001 (during which
fell a record number of days’ rainfall), whenever I felt very cold or ill
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 7/29
I longed for the convenience of piped water and mains electricity. I
sometimes became impatient with practical matters, cursing the
need to tie a knot or split logs with frozen fingers. However as I got
used to my situation my tetchiness and anxiety dissolved. I began
feeling at home in it all; I began to love it. I saw increasingly that my
resistance to any painful experience – to the irritated person
experiencing pain, and the direct experience of pain itself – were
actually quite unfixed things that would teach me everything about
the dharma… if only I could let the smokescreen of my outrage
disperse and become curious about what was really happening.
Little insights like this enabled me eventually to become a real local,
a native who easily inhabits his environmental niche. And from that
point, I came into a creative and dharma-inspired relationship with
every local plant and animal.
Nature-based Dharma community
I sense that my delusions have been re-establishing themselves in
the years since leaving my retreat, which inevitably happens with
any incomplete insight experience. However I am sure their
dissolution was real at the time, and I am inspired at the possibility
that others could make the same kind of shift. Even more
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
importantly, a community of practitioners can help each other
absorb such experiences into ordinary life. This is what has aroused
my interest in a nature-based dharma community. Insight is not so
hard to achieve – the real work is in its integration and continuance
over the months and years, and the possibility of doing that in
company appeals deeply to me.
I imagine us establishing something large and land based with a
diverse population; a community who would eventually evolve its
own ways of dharma teaching. It would be lively, even controversial
in some respects, yet helpful to society and attractive of visitors.
People would come and attend retreats, meditate, and explore the
Dharma from the point of view of nature and deep ecology.
Nature must have informed the Buddha’s own feeling for the
Dharma. He chose to live in nature even though, after his
Awakening, no one would have thought any the less had he
returned to a conventional indoor life as his basis for teaching. His
decision to remain in the wild seems to indicate that it supported
his realisation better. The Buddha became as considerate of the
needs of non-human beings and plants as his own kind, teaching his
disciples how to cultivate love for snakes and other fear-inspiring
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 9/29
creatures. And his central teaching of vipashyana is a revelation of
the vastness and profundity of Nature as it is beyond all concepts of
space, time, location, and relationship – yet is applicable right here
in the so-called real world, in ethics, love, and helpful activity. A
new, nature-based approach to Dharma would come from this
essential revelation. It would need considerable articulating. It is
not enough to live in nature with mindfulness and curiosity; we also
need to gain some realisation of vipashyana, talk about the
experience, study others’ writings on it, reflect on it, write, and
argue.
Though spiritual practice is always something individual, in an
ecologically aware culture personal relationships are a very
important aspect of Dharma practice. Nature is an infinite field of
relationship and awakening to reality must involve insight into its
meaning. Reality is personal, even though in the Buddhist vision
people are seen not to be permanent entities. Each being has a
personal history that is unique and inalterable. The connections
made with others are inescapable, and are reinforced in every
meeting, thought, and decision. These connections live vividly in all
minds, whether awake or asleep. It is a core aspect of reality.
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
The ideal eco-dharma community
Because ecological awareness is about relationship, the ideal eco-
dharma community would include families and partners as well as
single individuals. It will also be an excellent situation for the
monastic or single-sex communities that have provided the usual
model in our tradition, but the emblematic ecological community is
a mixed-sex environment reflecting the whole of life. Up until now,
because the Triratna Buddhist Order is non-monastic, single sex
situations have tended to provide its setting for intensive dharma
practice. They offer its younger unattached members in particular a
working ground that is clearer, less distracted by the powerful
forces of affairs and relationships.
However in the last two decades hundreds of seasoned
practitioners have left these environments to live alone or with a
partner. They were not simply blown off-track by the winds of the
world. Single sex communities are usually geared to the needs of
newer and younger people, and that emphasis can gradually taper
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 11/29
down the interest of more experienced practitioners. Even though
the absence of the opposite sex often fosters deeper, more relaxed
friendships, not everyone experiences such environments as
friendly. I have personally benefited greatly from many years in
single sex communities and would do most of it all over again, yet I
also know the experience for a significant number of long-term
practitioners has overall been disappointing.
Inevitably, mixed sex Dharma practice communities will involve big
challenges. Family and sexual ties involve strong attachment and it
will take considerable collective experience to manage these well.
Since we have yet to acquire this experience there will be difficult
lessons to learn. There have been spectacular failures in mixed sex
religious communes (especially, for some reason, in the 1980s). No
doubt it helps if the mixture contains many trusted elders living
close by; I think of Dhardo Rinpoche, Sangharakshita’s friend and
teacher in 1950s, whose community in Kalimpong included a large
school for Tibetan refugee children. We have in fact learned a lot
about community dynamics in our formative years, especially about
the relationship between the ideal of spiritual community and the
tendency to fall into group patterns.
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
Ideally, each member of a spiritual community consciously works on
him or herself. They reflect, meditate, practise the precepts, and
thereby come to understand essential truths about themselves.
Unfortunately in a real life situation people can lose interest in such
truths, cease to cultivate meditation and ethical principles, and
become insensitive to the thoughts and feelings motivating their
actions. When that happens it strengthens the tendency to
negative group behaviours like bullying, deference, favouritism, and
competition. These arise within a group when over-dependence on
others obscures the capacity to take initiative in communication.
We may be unconsciously relating to a perceived pecking order. We
might be over-compliant, unwittingly afraid of offending some
authority, or have an unnoticed tendency to manipulate those who
put us in that position. Everyone is subject to group patterns like
these, but the whole purpose of spiritual community is to allow its
members the freedom to reject them and to relate as an individual.
Challenges and needs
In practice, this is a challenge. In families and sexual partnerships
especially, it is not easy to be so free. The attachment we feel
towards a lover, parent, or child can enclose us in a kind of bubble.
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 13/29
A couple beginning their relationship may look to one another for
emotional support in such an exclusive way that they disengage
from community life. Or parents, feeling intensely protective of
their children, may keep them away from other community
members. Group-based feelings are natural enough, yet they can
undermine community life: when others react, we may start feeling
isolated and unable to share. In our disconnected state of society,
where increasing numbers live lonely and die alone, it seems worth
making the effort to form communities of all kinds. As Sangha
members get older, the possibility of sharing with like-minded
friends offers a richer quality of life, not to mention the mutual
inspiration to practise. The alternative is hardly attractive: people
living isolated from the Sangha in old age will easily lose their vision
of Dharma.
Mahayana Buddhism and Deep Ecology unite around the point that
all biological organisms have needs. All beings whatsoever need
others to support their existence. The ideal Mahayana practitioner
– the Bodhisattva –appreciates this. He or she knows the need of
everyone in the web of life, and especially what is needed most of
all: enlightenment. Very few are able to see that enlightenment is a
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
need. The majority of humans, not to mention other organisms,
have to occupy themselves with needs that are far more basic. And
they certainly need attending to; indeed our accumulated neglect of
the needs found in nature is a terrible disaster. It is most
unfortunate that we have so naïvely and so appallingly exploited the
earth and its peoples. Yet there is no point descending into
despondency. A Buddhist ecological community can easily educate
itself about these needs, practise Dharma, help wherever possible,
and avoid doing further damage. We can generate as much of our
own power as possible, eat mainly local, organic food and be more
politically active. In short, we can set a much-needed example of
how everyone will need to start living in a sustainable future.
The need for such an example is very great. The privileged
westernised portion of the human race, entertained as we are in
our comfortable homes, have come to feel that nature hardly
touches us and even that we are more powerful than nature or are
a race beyond it. Yet one only has to consider the effect of normal
events like volcanic eruptions, orbital shifts, and global weather
patterns to see the foolish arrogance of this. Nature can never be
something outside our lives; it is simply everything, from Buddhas to
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 15/29
barcodes, Birkenstocks and bee-eaters. And as Frank Egler famously
expressed it, ecosystems may not only be more complex than we
think, but more so than we can think.
We must cooperate and find a solution to the mess we have made.
The Buddhist approach is to consider the causes, especially those
embedded in our own minds, fixed deep in our attitudes,
relationships and views. Arguably for example our perfectionism –
our apparently bottomless desire for convenience, safety and
orderliness – has been an important condition for humans’ abuse of
the natural world. And in our inward justifications for that misuse
we are influenced by the embedded idea that nature is evil.
European culture is still, after two thousand and more years,
adjusting to the authoritarian suppression of pagan values
containing far more positive understandings of nature. For
millennia nature has been seen as something to be mastered and
risen above, to be transcended if we wish to make spiritual
progress. We were told that the world was made for the benefit of
humankind and that nature is for our use and profit. Accepting this
idea has done little good, it seems.
the environment as home
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
It would be constructive now, rather than viewing the environment
as our enemy, a slave or somewhere we do not belong, to recognise
it as our precious community – as our home. For as ecological
science has shown, all beings and all things are in relationship. By
ignoring this we have gradually fallen into a tragic mess of family
betrayal. The world we have all been busily creating has been
intended, basically, just for ourselves. All other beings have been
regarded as expendable, second class, mere commodities. And the
very few of us benefiting from this stratification (i.e. those in the
privileged richer nations) seem increasingly disconnected from the
natural world from which we have been creating distance. It is
hardly surprising. We are also getting more and more disconnected
from one another, preferring to live in increasingly smaller units –
often just a couple or entirely alone. We are even becoming
increasingly disconnected from ourselves, as our busy lives afford
less and less time for reflection. We tend to identify as ‘me’ our
shifting surface awareness with its endless complexes of likes and
dislikes, perceptions and prejudices. As a result the deeper inner
world of feeling, empathy, ethical sensibility, clear thinking and
heartfelt communication is becoming unavailable to many people.
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 17/29
Community, aloneness, and all beings
Is a certain atomisation in society – and a disengagement from the
group – not desirable from a Buddhist point of view? A popular
view of Buddhism is a path for the lone individual, more or less
separate and disconnected from others. It is true and important
that the training helps individual people struggle with and transcend
their particular conditioning, including social conditioning. Yet at
the same time its methods continually refer to, learn from, give to,
collaborate and share with others. Buddhism speaks to the
individual yet is not an individualistic, narcissistic teaching. It is lived
at least as much for others as oneself.
This implies community; relationships with others are vital if the
practices are to work. The Buddha himself went forth on his quest
for awakening because of other people. It was having seen that
sickness, aging, and death are inescapable, and then encountering a
spiritual practitioner, that prompted him so radically to change his
way of life. We need something of that motivation, too.
No doubt what originally moved us to start meditating and seek
insight was our own suffering, not that of others. However as we
practice, personal suffering reduces. And sooner or later we come
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
to terms with the reality not only that others exist, but that their
sufferings and perceptions of things are as valid, at least, as our
own. This is an opening to the beginnings of compassion, which for
Buddhism is completely inseparable from insight.
Hence the value of extending our idea of our community to include
all that lives. In Mahayana Buddhist countries spiritual practice is
always dedicated ‘for the sake of all beings’. And for indigenous
peoples generally, it is considered civilised to be sensitive to the
existence of non-humans: it reduces our pride and arrogance and
makes us better people. Witnessing animals’ and insects’ special
concerns, troubles and joys brings us down to earth, reminding us of
our responsibilities and our proper place in this world. As animals
we may be at the top of the tree evolutionarily speaking (along with
chimpanzees), but many others are intelligent. Certain others
moreover are far stronger, more sensitive, more industrious and
much more persistent than most humans. Traditional tales like
Aesop’s Fables entertain us with stories about the special qualities
of nonhuman beings – as in the race between the hare and the
tortoise, which is surely instructive in the present context. In
observing how others live there is much we can learn, but first we
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 19/29
must acknowledge them as brothers and sisters in need of our care.
One of the worst effects of our ignoring the lives of other beings –
human as well as non-human – is how that maintains our own
considerable ignorance. Conversely, if we were to cultivate more
awareness of others’ individual lives, however apparently simple
they may be, our understanding of life generally would surely be
transformed.
Shrines: ancestors and beyond-ness
There is a play of reciprocity between ourselves and those we are in
community with. It also takes place across time, as the influence of
our ancestors offers lessons to us in the present. All human
communities have evolved ways to hold their ancestors in memory.
Shrines are often set up for the purpose, as when an offering table
is set for the Buddha in a meditation room, a kitchen shelf is
specially dedicated to the local spirits, a mossy log under a tree
functions as a nature shrine, or some hero’s monument is erected at
the centre of town. All these give their communities a focus for their
highest values. Dedicating a special location to those we respect
provides a medium for connecting to and celebrating them as part
of our community, enhancing everyone’s appreciation of the
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
community culture. This can be seen in war memorials and graves –
community shrines at which people often make offerings as a way
of expressing appreciation of their connection. Again one often
sees by the dusty roadside bunches of flowers poignantly tied, still
in their cellophane or in honour of someone whose life has sadly
ended at that spot.
Such shrines are beautiful despite being disorganised, dirty and
untidy, because they are expressing something beyond this world.
Beyond-ness is what makes a true shine. We can enhance the
simple beauty with lovely arrangements of flowers, skilful
woodwork, silk hangings and golden images, and the devotion thus
expressed can be deeply inspiring. Yet we can overdo the aesthetics
and lose the connection with the other world. A real shrine is never
merely a decorative feature or an art object. It has to be a portal to
another world: it must give actual access to the world of the
Buddhas, the spirits, our ancestors or all three.
In the past, ancestors have played a prominent part in community
awareness, whereas a component in modern alienation seems to be
our loss of a sense of ancestry. How do we feel about our own
ancestors? It is common for modern people to feel virtually
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 21/29
nothing, which is surely indicative, and would be considered a great
impoverishment in any indigenous culture.
In many Buddhist meditations one imagines not only the Buddha in
front, but to the surrounding horizons all beings, starting with one’s
own mother and father. It seems important to connect our feeling
for the Buddha with our sense of having grown up into the world. I
once led a month-long retreat during which the participants, as an
experiment, dedicated a large outdoor shrine to ‘the ancestors’,
which could mean whatever anyone wanted. In the course of
developing the Buddhist loving-kindness meditation (mettabhavana
– often connected with gratitude), we began reflecting on the many
influences we had received in our lives, especially those (like the
Buddha’s) that had brought us to practising the dharma. We all
came to realise how strong an influence (positive and negative) our
own family has been – and from there, all our forebears going back
into history. The connections and memories are intensely,
sometimes painfully alive – and of their nature likely to continue so,
though awareness can transform associated feelings and their
sometimes devastating effects. In creating this shrine we wanted to
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
acknowledge these influences on us, and bring them not only into
our sense of community, but also into our spiritual practice.
Though their influences from the past are fascinatingly powerful, we
often know very little about our own families. If we all lived
together in some West African village as members of a tribe who
had inhabited that area for millennia – or if we were part of an
indigenous Buddhist community in Burma or Tibet – we would all
share the same ancestors, and their memory would be evocative for
everyone in the village. Life’s dimensionality is far blunter for most
of us in the West. Since billions of us have dispersed in migrations
throughout the world we usually have scant knowledge of previous
generations and often scant interest, too. There is even a strange
tendency to feel that life began with our own generation. The
impressions we have, even of the recent past, can seem quaintly
irrelevant, like fading sepia-toned photographs.
This really quite severe loss, of a sense of the past’s living influence
on us now, increases our disconnection. How lonely many of us are
these days. Yet the ancestors remain as influences and memorial
facts, even amidst the complexity of modern life, and offer a rich
wellspring of inspiration. Spiritual practitioners always have the
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 23/29
great teachers of the past available for recall. And even if we know
nothing whatever of our great-great-grandparents, our culture yet
possesses a rich array of myth and written history. Reading myth,
or listening to it, opens a channel for the influence of our ancestors.
In the opinion of Malidoma Some, a West African shamanic teacher,
we in the west need to acknowledge as ancestors major cultural
figures like Shakespeare and Socrates as well as other poets,
writers, philosophers, teachers, artists and social activists.
I did not grasp the importance of any of this until I noticed how
profoundly our retreatants were moved by the shrine we were
building. It began with hardly more than a mossy tree trunk, but
soon people added appreciations of deceased family members
written on wood and then all kinds of offerings started appearing –
flowers, stones, branches, grasses, drawings and carvings – until
after a day or so someone dug a well and filled it with water. A
model boat and some paper fish then appeared, after which
inscribed stones and even money was seen lying on the well
bottom. The well seemed to symbolise the possibility of drawing
refreshment up from the depth of the past. Everyone including me
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
found they wanted to sit by the ancestors’ shrine. It drew you with
its evocative, slightly eerie atmosphere.
After witnessing the feelings involved, I saw how much we need to
feel proud of our human inheritance, and that our own life is
worthwhile. Honouring the ancestors reminds us that people in the
past (like our parents) had strong faith in us and the lives we would
live after them. The ancestors in a way act as mentors, encouraging
us to activate the good and creative within us. Remembering them,
we wish for their blessing.
the blessings of the living
We need the blessing of the living too. How tragically wasteful it
seems, from this perspective, that we have become so uneasy in our
dealings with the elderly. For indigenous peoples the knowledge of
the elders may be vital for survival. No one else may remember
how to survive a set of conditions that last appeared fifty years ago.
The elders are a precious resource. So it is sad to see, in our own
society, how readily the elderly can be dismissed by the less
experienced. It is even sadder to see how fearful men and women
now become at the onset of aging, afraid they will increasingly be
seen as unattractive or irrelevant. The characterising of seniors as
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useless, distasteful, slow and expensive is our culture’s second great
family betrayal, following that of our environmental relations.
Yet all of us are on our way ourselves to becoming elders, just as our
elders are on their way to becoming ancestors. Any elders’ life
experience is invaluable. Elders are by and large good company,
and their wisdom and experience has a potential to profoundly
change lives. If this is valued, their memory will stay alive after
death as they join the ‘world’ of the ancestors.
We can speak of family, cultural and spiritual ancestry. Connecting
to the latter is considered vital in spiritual traditions worldwide, but
is not an easy idea for us in the west. In ethnic forms of Buddhism
throughout Asia some kind of recollection of the school's line of
influence, perhaps a visualisation of a ‘refuge tree’ displaying upon
its branches the lineal teachers, is considered fundamental to a
spiritual path. Its necessity is unclear to us, but amongst people
who live in a nature-connected world it is understood without a
thought that in order to be a community, all must share their lives
with the ancestors, elders and mentors. This brings the blessing of
happiness. Indeed the primary function of community could be said
to be its ability to channel the blessing of the ancestors, since that
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
connection is what keeps its spirit and culture alive. In Buddhist
terminology this is adhisthana, the blessing or ‘grace-waves’ of the
tradition and the culture of dharma stemming from the life of
ancestral Buddhas like Sakyamuni – who actually existed in history
and whose teachings many present readers will have actually
received.
We clearly need some time to develop a realistic appreciation of our
ancestors, elders and mentors. Spiritual groups in the west generally
are discovering they need to adapt the customs they inherit from
eastern lineages to the very different attitudes here. Take for
example the common expectation that a spiritual teacher should be
perfect – and the outrage people frequently seem to feel on
discovering they are not. Yet it seems obvious that teachers will
inevitably be imperfect, and therefore disappointing, in one way or
another. Malidoma Some has some amusing stories about his
relationship with his own spiritual mentor, Uncle Guisso, and how
irritating he found him. ‘I remember more vividly the times when I
yearned to kill him than… when I wanted him.. for my own sake.
Almost every time I was with him, something he did or said,
something he did not do or failed to say, irritated me profoundly
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 27/29
and stole …curses out of my mouth. I must confess that though he
is still alive, I can’t stand seeing him because our conversation is
almost always a slippery journey into the sticky mud of
disappointment. Yet I love my mentor beyond what I can say.’
This mixed emotion rings very true. It reminds me of Buddhist
mentoring, where the teacher sometimes seems engaged
constantly in challenging students, often causing them
embarrassment, irritation and humiliation. Yet evoking these
reactions is not the teacher’s intention - they are the natural
consequence of the ignorance of the student making contact with
the teacher’s wisdom. Feeling that disparity can be difficult and
challenging.
In Tibetan tradition the lama is the root of all blessings. In the
ordination ceremony the preceptor’s crucial act is to pour drops of
consecrated water on the crown that flow down and fill the initiate
with the water of adhisthana. Yet the extraordinary ceremony only
draws attention to something that, from the perspective of the
ancestors, could happen all the time. For we are already in the
presence of the Buddhas, the lineage of teachers, and our
ancestors; we are moreover literally surrounded by all beings on
KAMALASHILA - COMMUNITY, NATURE, AND REALITY
this earth. Their blessings flow from above, below and all directions.
If we are mindful of our relationship to them, we feel our practice
witnessed by all, from unawakened beings to the Buddhas.
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10 PAGE 29/29
Appendix
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