Practice Notes: Reclining Meditation

The Buddha taught that mindfulness should be established in all four basic bodily postures: sitting, standing, walking and lying down. So, what about using reclining as a basis for mindfulness?

Mindful reclining is useful for a number of reasons. Firstly, obviously we all do it every day; and when you’re sick, reclining can be for an extended period – so why not establish mindfulness in this posture?   

 

An additional circumstance where reclining is quite essential is when bodily conditions (knees, back, etc.) make it difficult to sit (or walk) for long. Do we have to consider reclining as a cop-out, or for lazy people? Can we let go of the myth that true cultivation can only occur when one is in lotus posture, in radiant health and a serene environment?

Also reclining gives us an opportunity to soften will power, the ‘do it’ drive.  Sometimes we do need to make a strong determination to resist habits and persevere in terms of Dhamma. But that’s one mode of effort and energy. It can get locked; like you’re pushing a door that sometimes needs to be steadily held on its hinge and allowed to slowly swing open. That takes a psychological effort of restraint, open listening and patient sensitivity. If instead the focus has become tight by default, it can feed into the controlling psychology, where a big ‘I am [doing this (not very well)]’ gets established. The wrong basis for effort. 

To emphasize: mindful reclining is not a heedless slump. It can help to release some of the subliminal or non-subliminal tension of holding ourselves (and everything else) together. And held with mindfulness and careful attention, it can help you sustain a contemplative practice while relinquishing a considerable amount of will power: you can’t wilfully lie down with the idea that you’re going to achieve something. It also takes you into more subliminal mental states, where you’re not your daily working self. And both of these help to loosen up the sense of ‘I am.’

A motivation I’d like to encourage in reclining meditation is one of regeneration. Of course we sleep in order to regenerate. But sometimes people don’t rest very well, because even in sleep, the fundamental tension hasn’t been released. But through mindfully refreshing the receptive energy in the body, we learn how to undo stress that runs very deep.

 

Form 1: On your back

Preliminaries

Begin by using a form that places you on your back: reclining on the back with the feet flat on the floor and the legs bent so that the knees point to the ceiling. The reason for this is firstly because it keeps you more wakeful, and mind and heart need to be present and tuned into the exercise in order to open to its regenerative effects.

Secondly, if you have your legs out straight, the lumbar spine doesn't rest on the ground. Relaxing the spine is one of the principles of reclining meditation; this supports relaxation of many structural muscles, and that affects the mind.

Because the back can be quite stiff and stressed, I suggest some preliminary exercises to open the spine. The first of these is to put your hands behind your head (like you’re lying on the beach) and then, relaxing your neck completely, use your hands to draw the skull up, slowly, gently, so you can feel the neck vertebrae opening all the way into the area between the shoulder blades. When you get to the end of that stretch, take a few breaths. Then lower the head back onto the ground just like you’re laying a baby into a cradle; then release the fingers. This helps the top end of the spine and the neck muscles – and that affects the head which is often the GHQ and agent of action. We want to release the default tension in the head that comes with the ‘on the go’ sense.

Let the inhalation come in, at it’s own time and its own rate. An involuntary natural and progressive movement. It’s rather like sunrise; something lights up from the rest state to initiate a swelling movement.  Call that 'something lighting up' the ‘fire’ element; be receptive to its life-bringing quality.
 
You exercise the other end of the spine like this: bring your knees up, wrap your hands around your knees and squeeze your knees towards your chest. Hold that for a while. It presses your lumbar region onto the floor; if you roll on that region a little, you give it a massage.
 
When you complete that, and having released the arch in the lumbar spine, come into the stable form with the knees pointing up. Then bring your legs apart and let your knees tip towards each other, so that when they meet, they form a supportive steeple. This arrangement will allow the legs to relax in that form.

Take a small rolled up towel (or similar) and slide it behind your neck (or, as in the illustration) so the neck can also feel supported. Then bring your hands over until your hands rest together on your torso, wherever you feel like resting them. This could be on your chest, or abdominal region. It gives a comfortable ‘held’ tone to the posture. You might also appreciate the ‘secluded/private’ feel that draping a blanket over your body offers.

Return to Nature
 
As you get settled in, simplify your body-image by sensing the body in terms of ‘elements’ – natural impressions. So, the impression of your back contacting the earth, call that firm groundedness, the ‘earth’ element. Earth element supports; you can rest everything on the earth. Focus on that and resonate with that theme as you let the earth carry your physical and even psychological weight. All your yesterdays and tomorrows and uncertainties: release your strategies and let the earth do the carrying.
 
Then the ‘space’ element. Imagine you have a canopy arcing over you, rising from the ground below your feet to the ground immediately above your head with the high point of the arc over the centre of the body. Within that ‘tent’ is your personal protected space. When you breathe in, you open into that sheltering space. Let your chest open, face relax. Then at the end of the inhalation, let the belly drop with the out-breath, relaxing deeply into the ground. Get the sense of sinking down into that support, relaxing the muscles and the nerves. Breathing out, returning to earth.

As you feel your embodied presence swelling, you realise how fluid bodily form is. This fluidity is the ‘water’ element, that which dissolves, moves through and softens all boundaries. Let go into that tidal flow.

The last element becomes apparent when the inhalation completes itself. There is a micro-pause and then the sense of descending air, a breeze moving down from space and back to the earth.

Spend some time getting into the feel of these embodied impressions, allowing your impression of your body to be of a form that is part of Nature, and which changes in a regular, calm and repeated way. (It’s probably a more valid and useful impression than the normal personal or socially-imprinted one!) Body is a form in Nature, not a personal possession. Nature brought it here. Nature’s doing it. Nature is breathing through it. So there’s a release of psychological weight and ‘do it’ signals.

Then contemplate the energies, mental impressions and memories that move through when, by reclining, you shift the energy body down a few gears. Experiences that would be buried when you’re in a higher active mode may start to come to the surface. And you come into a more primary (even uterine) state of being. Energies and moods may be flurrying or irregular, so keep resonating with the safety of being carried in this tidal flow of breathing. Keep your focus wide and spacious. You may want to add a simple refrain or mantra. As always, let things arise and cease.

Moving to upright

When it’s time to return to upright, bring up the suggestion that this form is capable of autonomy and can separate itself from the earth. It can move; movement is a sign of autonomy. But don’t do anything right now; just get the sense that energy can move through and organise movement. Fire element again. This is like the sun coming up at dawn; the sun doesn’t rush. We just bring in the message ‘this form can move.’ 

See which parts of your body would like to move. You might rotate your ankles or wrists; but keep your head relaxed – that’s not needed now. The first point is to establish the sense of body as a single unit through the slight twisting and turning in your back. As that flexion gives you the sense of the body as a single entity, begin to activate your fingers, hands and legs. With your knees being upright, if you gently tip them over, that will cause a rolling with no effort. When they touch the ground, strengthen in the legs, and use your arms to push you up. Don’t pull your head up, keep it relaxed. 

When you get upright, roll your neck around and let that movement roll your head. Then open your eyes for orientation, stretch and come into the sitting position.

*****

Form 2: On your (right) side

With reclining, the posture needs to be formal, to keep you wakeful. When reclining on one side (on the right is apparently less stressful for the heart), you focus on the long axis of the form. Arrange the body into an approximately straight line to avoid going foetal. Place a cushion under your arm and rest your head in the palm of your right hand. Let your left arm extend down your left flank, or relaxed across your chest. Then sweep a focus on the long line of the body from the soles of your feet, up through your body and into your head.

Attention generally wants to contract, either to snuggle into a warm space in your torso, or to grab and scurry around with thoughts or the emotions. So maintain the long span of attention, slowly sweeping from head to feet, letting mind-stuff and inclinations bubble past. You can use your relaxed breathing to time and moderate the sweeping.
.

Your feet should be lined up, one on top of the other; that allows your attention to connect to the slight pressure that occurs with contact. As that gets clearer, lightly stretch the toes and soles. Soles of the feet are sensitive, so you can feel a slightly tingly energy there. (It may help to imagine somebody is going to be tickling your feet.) As you follow the flow of breathing, open the soles so the energy of the breathing meets the energy in them. Over time, you can sense this energy coming into the ankles, and it’s possible to sense its tidal flow extending a little at a time from the soles of the feet, up the spine and into the head. 

This flow might not trace an unbroken line. It’s more like a railway line with tunnels. The sensitive areas are probably in the lower abdomen and behind the heart; they’re like a series of signposts along the way. The line might get clearer. Anyway, sweep down the body into the soles of the feet, and then with one end of your attention in the soles of your feet stretch and flex it to cover the entire body.

Extend your attention into your right hand, the one cradling your head. As with the soles of the feet, if it is open, and as attention fills it, it will tingle. So spread your attention from the contact between your hand and head into a widening region of the head. Relax the brow and around the eyes, and forehead, where the skin is thin and sensitive, and relax the muscles there that activate with thinking. 

Extend that receptive scan around to the temple, where the skin is also thin, and there’s a pulse. Now you might be able to sense the top of your head, the scalp. Here your receptivity should be like listening with the top of your head to the space above it. Don’t force this. As you sustain an extended top-to-toe awareness, it’s as if, between those two poles, your body is suspended like a bead on a thread.

If you can’t sense that yet, don’t think about it, and don’t adopt a tight focus. Just feel that regular tide of breathing, that rhythmic expansion and subsiding through as much of the entire body as is open and available. Breathing in, breathing out, mindful of what is there. 

And notice what isn’t ….The day isn’t there. The name isn’t there. History isn’t there. Noticing when those are absent, you feel fuller, but more spacious and less obstructed. How much do you need of time and circumstance? Can you take a break? Touch into this fundamental life energy and open to receive it as it moves through. 

May this be well. Gratitude.

****

The theme of reclining meditation, is ‘I’ve done enough.’ In that awake state of rest your system has time to rebuild, because it’s not doing any work. Then your receptive nourishing energy it can refresh places that are strained or stressed; and that rebuilds your heart, so your mind is contented.

This process should be given 20-40 minutes; then open your eyes, gently turning the head to and fro so that the visual is connected to the home base of touch.  As you return to everyday perspectives, attend and inquire into any impulses or mental tones that arise. May all be well.

 

Dealing with the world of shock, grief and anxiety

 

Going on almsround, people stop me and ask me what I think about the state of the world. I say, well, it’s ... errmmm … problematic. It’s the stuff that the Buddha says we should know, and through fully comprehending it, find release. What he was pointing to was the psycho-physical ‘personal world’ but the qualities and energies that you encounter there reflect the world as it’s presented through the media. Or at least an aspect: the outflow of the human mind in terms of conflict, crime, sport, and economics, with some fashion or cultural add-ons. Details change.

My view and input as a Buddhist samana (= ‘monk’ or ‘nun’), one who has stepped out of the mainstream, refers to the facet of human experience that can balance ‘the world’, and through that find the place of no-suffering. That is, there is an awareness/wisdom that encompasses experience but doesn’t participate in its energies and attitudes. This doesn’t mean that I think that people shouldn’t have jobs and children, make money or vote – but my part in the great human body is to be a heart that just steadily pumps some warmth and clarity into the consciousness where impressions of the world arises. 

So what am I, or anyone, going to do about … the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia,Yemen, Taliban, Myanmar … and so on. One can read analyses that point the finger at western imperialism, or the stranglehold of the economic super-powers as underlying causes, and one can debate this and that. But how does all that make you feel? And what are you going to do about it? If I was in a position where I could pull a lever and stop it all, I’d be doing that.

I also think it’s good that there are organizations that offer resources and healing, and that there are protests and petitions that try to give attention to the problems of the world. They at least express social conscience and concern - ‘guardians of the world’ in Buddhist terms – and that is encouraging. However, they often work best by stepping back from taking sides and finding the neutral negotiation point. But trying to find that place in the midst of atrocities takes some deep work. Yet it's obvious that the underlying causes of violence and conflict derive from the corruptions and blind-spots of the human mind. Once the mind is intoxicated with views and opinions, with mine and theirs, then there is no evil it will not do. Best then to step out of political viewpoints. Naming the current aggressors may be a political truth, and may bring around remedial action, but it’s not a noble truth, one that meets suffering and resolves it. 

There are occasions when the two truths meet. After the Second World War, there was global political dialogue as to what the new status quo was going to be. There were voices that proposed that Japan no longer be an independent nation, but one supervised by others; reparations, loss of territory and so on. But the prime minister (or president) of Sri Lanka, being a Buddhist, came out with the famous lines from the Dhammapada, ‘hatred doesn’t stop with hatred, it’s only through love that hatred ceases.’ He felt that the best thing to do was not to take revenge, but to follow the healing process of Dhamma. People respected that, and so Japan was allowed to be an independent nation, and has been a law-abiding peaceful member of the family of nations ever since. 

It was pretty much the same with post-war Germany, where support to rebuild the nation was offered. But even more than the material support, there came around a change in one of the major sources of long-term conflict in Europe: inter-European rivalry and conflict between Germany and France.  Wars had been going on between these two for about 500 years; you would have thought that the accumulation of so much mistrust and bitterness would have ruled out a rapprochement. But after two World Wars, the scale of the European catastrophe was so great that it caused a wider focus. Everybody’s hurt everybody. Everybody’s lost their friends and parents. To get out of this, the only thing we can do comes through an attitude shift; to soften the boundary between us. So they started what is now called the European Union. 

The EU still has boundaries and where there are boundaries, there are problems, internally (Do we all agree? Do we have to?) and externally (immigration and relationships with other blocs)  But at least it has stopped the warfare that had been going on inside of Europe for millennia. However the rule is that where there are boundaries, sharing across them is a crucial part of any solution.

For example, one of the most significant moments in the riots that deceptive social media recently whipped up in the UK was when an imam from a Muslim congregation began distributing food to the ‘anti-Muslim’ rioters. One rioter, at least, realised that he didn’t actually have a problem with Muslims (probably didn’t know anything about Islam) or immigrants. The more fundamental issue was, and is, the frustration around inequality and wages, stirred up by years of divisive political rhetoric (which drew the UK out of the EU). Something called ‘immigration’ – the outsider, the foreigner - is blamed as being responsible for it.  So there were scenarios of patriotic people who felt that it was their patriotic duty to attack other British people and smash their property. Which asks questions about what being part of a nation means. Perhaps the idea ‘nation’ is an attempt to transfer the elusive ‘we’ sense onto a manageable socio-political structure. And who gets left out with that? Anyway, if you put aside the confusing topic of who does and who doesn’t belong, and to what, you get in touch with people, not ideological projections. That’s where the projections and the hatred can cease.

What remains for me is the moral outrage at the level of deceit, aggression and violence-inciting speech that floods the public domain. Transforming that outrage into resolved and outspoken demonstrations of non-aggression and inclusivity (as also happened in Britain) is a moral duty in these intense times. It may come down to sharing non-exclusive time. I've previously suggested that presidents step out of role and invite their opponents for a meal; or go to each other’s countries and dance together. But with the current status quo, maybe their children should start the get-together. Or just get their dogs to meet. (Step at a time!) Where can one begin?

Well it seems to me that the fundamental duty of all of us is one of clearing and regenerating good heart. It’s not just an emotional tonic, it’s about human order – and health. It’s vital to dispel the lie about humans. We are not ‘others’; we are not even ‘self’. We cannot be defined by any ideology, though we adopt them. And we adopt them because we lose access to a stable and unbiased heart. The stable and clear heart/citta, is joyful, empathetic and reflectively wise. Only a return to that sets the mind straight; political or religious ideologies will not do it. These set up the basis for projections that justify discrimination and persecution. Basically people don’t hate people; they get frightened or hungry or angry … and there’s a point which their hearts lose balance and empathy, and when that happens, the politics and the ideologies and the generalisations take over.

Do you also recognise how all this connects to the growing number of mental health issues? It’s down to depletion of heart/citta. In these times, the impact of receiving so much fear, shock and greed-inducing input, via news and social media, uses and abuses the receptive energy we call heart. So some of the heart-sensitivity shuts down; you lose empathy, you get distracted and reactive. For some, greed and power-lust springs from that. For others it’s caused by threat and results in violence. Notice how much of this messaging springs from a screen, where there is no empathetic presence – and there’s plenty of misinformation.

Without empathetic presence, your heart isn’t tuned in to discharging stress. Then the experience of ‘me’ and ‘others’ crystallises, you lose your sense of empathy and balance, and negative emotions arise. These can burst into violent or abusive actions, or, if you don’t act upon them but don’t release them, negative states take over the mind.

One of these is resentment, rage directed against the others or ‘the system’. On the other hand, you can get stuck in guilt and regret and feeling hopeless. Either way, if stress isn’t discharged, those energies rush though the heart and leave it depleted or sickened, or depleted. Depression sickens. Loneliness sickens. Depravity sickens. The heart loses its buoyancy and radiance; and, as heart energies are felt to be mine and my self, the assumption arises that ‘I am a depressed person, a misfit’. Actually, nobody is a depressed person, but there is a depression-causing misfit: deflated or corrosive states don’t fit the nature of heart. If you don’t resolve them, you become them; you lose emotional resilience, joy and the ability to regenerate. And then you’re prone to participate in the world of depression, resentment and selfishness.

Some an aim of Dhamma practice is to clear the negative, return to the truth of heart, and learn about the world. We use the body as we’re living in as a support. Because in the embodied condition, we can detect energies that steady and support a balanced heart. And they encourage the discharge of stress. To put it very simply, when you breathe out, you can let go. If the heart is in touch with that embodied presence, it feels naturally and comfortably supported; it’s non-reactive. So, in testing times, we need to put some effort into maintaining embodied presence from top to toe and into the ground to get the stability in order to not spin out into floods of emotion.

However, you also have to learn to moderate - how much pressure can you take at any given time? That takes mindful discernment. So Dhamma practice is not just a matter of feeling, but of mindfuIness; of holding the feeling in the presence of stability.

It’s like holding the rope on a bucket when you drop it down the well: you don’t just descend into the realm of emotions without mindfulness immersed in the body. No, you lower the bucket of the heart on a rope, and acknowledge: I can be with this much grief or anxiety at this time. If the bucket is going upside down, it’s time to pull up a little - that’s too much right now - but you don’t haul out of the well. You gain discernment at the point where you keep in touch with embodiment in order to feel what’s being felt without going so deeply into it that it overwhelms you. Then we can learn: that’s an emotion, it’s not a person, it’s not another, it’s not myself. Nothing need be added or subtracted from that truth. 

This process will allow citta to come to a stability where its reactions and its fear and its agitations ceases. That’s obviously for our own welfare, we feel comfortable. It’s for the welfare of others because from this state, I will not be producing reactions of righteousness, hatred, violence, nor will I be producing feelings of fear, impotence or despond. My heart will be steady. Therefore, what arises from it will be just truthful, sagacious, loving, equanimous, for the welfare of others. 

We’re no longer interested in blaming, righteousness and shaking our fists. All that’s just adding to the negative brew. We also are no longer interested in consumerism. We find it pointless and silly. We’re no longer distracting ourselves or using alcohol – because we find all that distasteful. Then, as we’re social creatures, the overall health of the individual is going to lead to health in the social fabric. And if the social fabric is healthy, the likelihood is the leaders we empower are going to be sane and balanced. Because the leaders arise from the social fabric that allows them to be in that position. 

At any rate this is what the world can teach us. We learn that if we create boundaries in the heart, then those boundaries block the flowering of understanding, ethically-attuned awareness, and sanity. It may be that some of us can lead, or invent, or educate or heal, but for all of us, if we can come through this human world stronger, more resilient, more endowed, then we’ve done some good. It cannot be that it will not be for the welfare of others.

Birthday in the Deathless

 

Luang Por Sumedho’s 90th birthday! The notion swam around in the minds of many sangha members through his 89th and even 88th year. A man who had exercised well and taken good care, he seemed capable of extending the lifespan into the tenth decade ...  surely a commemoration was due – and not just for staying alive, but on account of transmitting Buddha-Dhamma in the West in terms of a way of living that has always linked ‘inner’, meditative cultivation to the ‘outer’ training in terms of ethics and lifestyle. Without a Dhamma that's lived humanly and warmly, we only have books, intensive retreats and lectures. His has been a transmission well worth marking.

 

Of course, Luang Por's verbal teachings did come to the fore as worthy of presentation ... so we created a publication of quotes from his books. But, as his major work has been one of establishing a sangha in the West and supporting hundreds maybe thousands of gone-forth and householder disciples, the real marker had to be a live event, a maha-sangha gathering.  And it was going to have global attraction, so, bearing in mind that Sangha members would be limited in their travel capacity during the Rains Retreat during which his 90th birthday ( July 27th) actually fell, we chose May 19th as a suitable date.  There was no question as to the site: it had to be Amaravati, 'the Deathless Realm', his current and longstanding residence and the only place large enough to accommodate such a gathering. 

 

I arrived there on May 13th with the intention to both help out and to warm up gradually to the occasion by meeting sangha members as they came in. So I landed, as on many occasions, in the Bhikkhu Vihara - a couple of long single-story converted huts possessing all the charm of a storage unit, but brightly painted and clasped by scraps of garden. This living territory of a couple of dozen samanas and assorted guests and volunteers is a compact warren. The section that I was domiciled in consists of a series of small cells strung along either side of a narrow corridor. Animation in the thin-walled rooms is constrained by the space, and subdued out of respect for one's neighbours. Similarly, proceeding down a corridor that is only slightly wider than the average body requires courtesy; residents quickly determine who has right of way, and one party shifts into one of the two passing niches to allow the other through. However, the corridor empties into a spacious common room where relaxed conviviality amidst a range of teas, juices and coffees is the norm. Here monks from Poland, Guyana, America, Australia, Thailand, Switzerland, Britain, Germany (and so on) merge and mingle in the 'all-flavours' mode of the Western Sangha. It's an updated version of those clusterings that preface some of the suttas ... scenarios wherein a group of monks are engaged in conversation – some edifying, some desultory chit-chat – when the Buddha walks in. One can imagine that backs straightened when the Lord inquired as to the topic of their conversation; however in the Amaravati common room, the normal response is to be offered a place to sit, and a mug of whatever. You find common ground and see what unfolds from there.

 

However, on May 13th the common room was a transit area with resident monks moving through with backpacks of gear to camp out or lodge in a loaned house nearby. A visit there revealed a garden sprouting green, blue and sandy-brown micro tents, and rooms with mattresses in rows to accommodate the nomads. Amaravati's roofs would largely be offering shelter to visiting sangha elders. Even there, the influx of samanas was restricted by invitation to one or two representatives from each monastery, plus senior add-ons such as myself. The allowance for the laity was more generous, but largely stipulated camping in Amaravati's field; most however stayed nearby or came just for the day.

 

Over the next few days, people flowed in from America, Canada, New Zealand, several European countries and of course Thailand. In the Bhikkhu VIhara, doors of the rooms sported many an illustrious name. But here the occasion wasn't one of being an abbot or a renowned teacher but of good-humoured mingling framed with gestures of respect and studded with anecdotes and shared memories. This time for conviviality brought back memories of a three-month retreat when Luang Por had deliberately ratcheted down on intensity and silence and emphasised contentment and the enjoyment of noble companionship. But at this time, Luang Por himself made no public appearance until Friday 17th. That's how it is these days: personal meetings with him are arranged and rationed with an attendant monk monitoring time and energy. I didn’t expect to connect with him on this occasion, imagining that such time as he had would be allocated to those who visit less often.  Like many, I've had a good helping of his presence, teaching and example. He has introduced me to the state where there's no need; no-one could begrudge a man of such generosity a little quiet time. 

 

As I said, Luang Por made few appearances, but his name and his Dhamma body were the unifying centre piece. He had carried Luang Por Chah's way of practice from N.E.Thailand to Britain and the West; he had inspired and supported at least eight monasteries ranging from New Zealand to New Hampshire; no one else has transmitted and modified the Thai Forest tradition in a foreign culture to the extent that he has – while embracing contemplative practice in other non-Buddhist traditions. His physical form is now stooped with age; his eyesight is poor even with glasses; his hearing is weak, even with hearing aids, and the huge feet now lose sensation and make walking without a guide hazardous. But the presence was much as ever, as, guided into the assembly by his even larger attendant to begin the occasion on the Friday evening, Luang Por delivered a short address expressing his gratitude for the mind-state behind the event and for the legacy he had received from the Buddha via Luang Por Chah. His voice is not as strong as it used to be, but the mental intention and the straight-from-the- heart directness were as ever. The assembly listened in silence, taking in his words; then he rose from his seat and left.

 

Amaravati’s abbot, Ajahn Amaro, was, on the other hand, constantly and genially engaged, greeting and inviting senior Ajahns, and informing the rest of us of the ongoing program. The seating arrangements and flow of human traffic were impeccably choreographed through a largely invisible logistical process that involved all residents. Opening a door on a cramped office and glancing at a complex spreadsheet of names, events and places spread out on a large monitor was enough to evoke a dizzy admiration for the community's endeavours. People gave up their dwellings and served long hours. One lay woman told me of spending six hours in the kitchen cleaning dishes and pans. I could only guess at the duties of the guides, cooks and office workers. But despite the intensity of an atmosphere charged with poignant reflection, reverence and human energies, a mood of genuine ease and happiness floated above it all. It was a fitting commemoration of someone who committed to duty while making it look enjoyable.

 

The visiting sangha included a significant representation from Thailand. Some of those Ajahns were senior to Luang Por in terms of years in the Order, others had shared time with him for forty years or more. Most of us were considerably junior to Luang Por and saw him as a spiritual father.  Some like myself have a stock of memories and anecdotes and a recognition of the changes that this remarkable bhikkhu has been through in the last 45 years. It's impossible to condense all that into a simple unified 'Ajahn Sumedho teaches this' except with remarks such as 'unwavering, wide-spanning mind', 'devoted to authentic realisation'; 'generous with his time, and accessible'.  For the last twenty years he hasn’t been involved with the day-to-day running of any monastery, and gone are the days of working alongside Ajahn Sumedho with a paintbrush. So for the junior sangha, Luang Por Sumedho is a figure of veneration and respect rather than a daily companion. As is the way of things, the presence of the Teacher now has to be conveyed by the demeanour of those who followed him.

 

For a newcomer, the birthday party must have confounded any expectations. No alcohol, no dancing – just a couple of days when a large number of people gathered inside the Temple: a body of monks in ochre robes, nuns in brown, anagarikas in white, and a sea of lay people of all kinds. Everyone seated upright, unmoving, and silent. We must’ve looked like cutouts until one of a chosen few was invited to ascend to a seat to give a presentation. Many of the talks, given in Thai, were unintelligible to the Westerners until translated, but ripples and focal shifts among the Thai laity gave a hint of the animated nature of each discourse, some lyrical, some humorous, some bringing the earth and forests of Ubon into the mind. Western Ajahns followed suit with appreciative reflections. People came and went in the breaks, Luang Por Sumedho was absent. No conformist organisation this one.

 

You can listen to the talks on the Amaravati website (www.amaravati.org) and catch some of it, but you can’t get what it was like to be in a space wrapped by the silent attention of several hundred people and infused with gratitude for the teaching, the example and the company on this rocky spiritual path. Fittingly, Luang Por's final appearance was to ask forgiveness from the most senior Elder, Luang Por Liem, and to offer it to the rest of us. That gesture of sharing humility and openness encompassed the hearts of around 130 samanas and 500 lay people.  Then, as things went quiet, he slowly made his way out of the assembly. It was finished.

 

After that we were all on our respective ways. Abbots bundled down the road to Cittaviveka for a business meeting, some samanas picked up their schedules and teaching duties, while others prepared for their tudong wandering. Most just headed for some quiet space to breathe out for a week. Following the Master, into the silence.

 

Ubuntu: entering the Cosmos

 (A retreat gathering at Dharmagiri, Kwa-Zula Natal, South Africa)

If there’s one word of Zulu that you know it’s probably ‘ubuntu’– ‘interconnectivity’. 'Ubuntu' is a grounding sense in Zulu communities, and in any tribal or familial collective the world over: it’s the ‘we’ sense. That is, my relative autonomy is balanced within a view that I am part of a greater whole which has brought me into life, offers me value, guidance and support – and to which I am therefore responsible.

The ‘we’ sense is fundamental to human intelligence: if our ancestors hadn’t cooperated on the plains of Africa to forage, defend, hunt and to share the spoils with the others, we would never have survived in the midst of creatures who were more powerful than ourselves. In later developments this sense was the foundation for tribal and clan loyalties. The leader of the tribe was the essential axis of the collective body, a person who mediated between the mundane and spiritual domains, as well as between disputing parties within the tribe. The chief was made so by the will and respect of the tribe and had to be a good listener. If he failed or was corrupt in such a role the tribe would likely walk away. Hence the Zulu saying: ‘No chief, no tribe; no tribe, no chief.’

Models of the rightly-centred cosmos with the principled leader at its axis existed elsewhere: the Emperor as the Son of Heaven in China and Japan, and the democratic leaders of the early Greek principalities. And there was the converse: in the Greek micro-states, the leader who was out of touch with spiritual principles was called ‘tyrannos’ – ‘tyrant’.

The significant role of the human leader within the cosmos has been succinctly illuminated in the Buddhist scriptures: '...when kings are principled, royal officials become principled. … brahmins and householders … people of town and country become principled. When the people of town and country are principled, the courses of the sun and moon become regular. … the stars and constellations … the days and nights … the months and fortnights … the seasons and years become regular. … the blowing of the winds becomes regular and orderly. … the deities are not angered … … the heavens provide plenty of rain. When the heavens provide plenty of rain, the crops ripen well. When people eat crops that have ripened well, they become long-lived, beautiful, strong, and healthy.'

And the converse: '...when kings are unprincipled.... the crops ripen erratically. When people eat crops that have ripened erratically, they become short-lived, ugly, weak, and sickly.' (A.4:70)

Social, natural, supernatural: it’s an interconnected cosmos. And the axis that keeps it balances and in harmony is ethics – as modelled and directed by principled leadership. Doesn’t this particular presentation say something important and obvious about climate breakdown. While not the sole factor in terms of the climate crisis, world leaders have not used their power in a way that would adequately address the most pressing problem that humans (and animal life in general) face. Instead, unprincipled tyrannical forces are apparent in the political world, and augmented by ‘demagogracy’: rule through spouting nationalist ideology. Demagogues play on the flaw of the tribe – that a tribe tends to exclude and find conflict with other tribes. The demagogue tyrant sets people against each other, even within the same nation. However, note the platform: claims of providing for the welfare of the nation are being made by someone motivated by inflated self-interest.

In pre-mechanistic societies the ‘tribal flaw’ was mediated by principles such as always marrying a member of another tribe, or participating in great tribal gatherings. The Iroquois Confederation of North America, while waging war on other tribes, would bring together the five nations of their confederacy with feasting, dancing, and appropriate dialogue. This is similar to the practice of the sundry samana fraternities of Buddhist India: periodically there would be a 'sangīti', a great sangha gathering marked with chanting teachings on Dhamma and Vinaya in unison. So, with an awareness of the need for, and the fragility of, collective harmony, there also arises an innate understanding that participation in embodied ritual is a means to evoke and return to the harmonious collective. I am moved to wonder whether if the presidents, ayatollahs and kings of today's world would gather and sing and dance together on a regular basis, it might achieve what speeches from a podium are failing to do. It could be an interesting experiment.

The sense of the collective carries such a powerful signal that people gravitate towards it in ways that are beyond rationality. It gives the individual something meaningful to belong to. Vigorous and uplifting collectives can gather around a football team, rock star, or designer label, as well as around ideologies – complete with the tribal flaw of setting themselves apart from and in conflict with the rest. On the other hand: no meaning, no tribe. Rebel collectives form, anarchic forces come to the fore when a nation or institution sense fails to provide belonging, and what that means, while expecting obedience. The cult of the individual takes over – with its highs and lows. The high is the movement towards a Nature that the society has ignored: the Romantic vision of living in accord with Nature and following your own intuition.. The low gets internalized as antisocial isolation, cynicism and depression. This internal malaise is supported by the broad disregard for truthful speech – how can there be any kind of fellowship if you can’t trust what the others are saying? When the leader’s capacity for truthful and harmonious dialogue is low, the social fabric is bound to get threadbare. Add to this the competitive and institutionalized society, loss of connectivity at home and at work, and the ‘we’ sense collapses. Or doesn’t get established in the first place. Loss of ethics > loss of relational health > mental illness, dystopia, lessening of life expectancy, and even suicide. Time magazine April 25,2018 cites a study that claims that social isolation is 'associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.'

The view of the all-inclusive cosmos with integrity as the axis makes sense as an idea, but the invocation of the cosmos requires collective embodied participation: ritual. This point hardly need be made in traditional Buddhist cultures, where gathering into a ritually defined collective is a major part of the practice. You go to the temple, you get together with as many others as possible, make offerings and request and recite the Refuges and Precepts, and, accompanied by the chanting of a group of samanas, you dedicate the puñña of your actions to your friends and relatives, near and far, alive or dead. Thus, you enter and are welcomed into an uplifting, ethical and loving collective. In such a sacred atmosphere, you make commitments, you acknowledge shortcomings, you offer and ask for forgiveness. I’ve known a group made up of Cambodian refugees, strongly polarized between the conflicting factions of the country, people whose relatives had killed each other, manage to form a harmonious whole in the monastery around chanting, and offering to the Triple Gem.  The hearts of many can be gathered and steadied within the spiritual cosmos that includes all that has been, is and will come to be.

In contemporary western Buddhist practice however, meditative occasions generally occur without such a setting. Ritual may bring uncomfortable resonances of enforced religiosity and subservience to the will of the Church, so it isn't used. Instead, we gather together in shared isolation on 'retreats'. We don’t speak to each other, eye-contact is discouraged, and we sit on our separate mats in allocated places in row. There is no face-to-face experience except perhaps momentarily over the daily chores.

Such a scenario is useful with regard to sense restraint and reducing impact for stressed or sensitive people. It supports privacy and contemplation. But I doubt whether it can suitably attend to the dysfunction that is rampant in the fragmented collective of our politicized era. Even in its less inflamed sense, the perspective of being an isolated individual configures people’s spiritual practice: if there is no fully lived sense of a transpersonal and supportive reality beyond our own efforts and constructions, all our efforts have to be made by a self that's already exhausted and inadequate. We may well aspire to the well-being of all, but individually, we're feeling unable to find value in ourselves and are aware of being led by our own flawed individuality. And, just as the leader who ruled without access to the sublime transpersonal becomes 'tyrant', the isolated ego takes on the form of the critical and mean-hearted 'inner tyrant', an energy and a voice that continually criticizes and demands effort from its host while offering no support, warmth or positive suggestions.

How is it possible to get beyond self, if self is the tyrant who rules with no awareness of a spiritual power beyond its domain? How does the rightly-centred collective get directly felt (rather than held as a theory)? Well, what can and does happen is that all we who are present gather our integrity, get over the sense of not having a 'good' voice (you don't have to do opera), sit up, relax the shoulders, open the chest and throat – and chant. And listen. It doesn't matter at first what you chant, just attend to the miracle whereby breath, as it moves through the chest and throat produces sound with just a tiny inflection of the vocal cords. Skin vibrates in the throat – so there is living, animate, sound. Skin vibrates in the ear – your living animate sound is heard. Bones in the head and chest subtly shiver, telling you that you're alive, here, part of a breathing and attentive cosmos. And as you allow your tentative murmur to come forth, your hearing picks up the murmurs, tones and breathed sounds of others. The sounds merge. Who they are and who you are doesn't matter at this time. There is no personal interaction; but as the sounds are heard as merging with each other, the attentive heart – which has been listening to the sound of its life – begins to sense harmony and feel glad to be part of an overarching and reliable whole. This widening of the heart is devotion. And when that arises, you can invite Buddhas, guardians, guides and parents into its space to offer specific meaning.

Devotion arises as a heart-energy that's distinct from the tyrant will; so it gives you a feel for what 'right' effort is – not a strain, but a joyful opening of citta as heart within a domain that is timeless and selfless. It takes some effort to attune to the right view of the interconnected cosmos, but once you do, living in accord with its golden rule – ‘to others as to myself’ - becomes a natural felt sense. It is respectful rather than conformist; and it opens in sympathy and goodwill to the living forms that arise in one's awareness (as self or other). Rather than rules and laws, this is the virtue (sila) that acts as the foundation for mindfulness and the enlightenment faculties:

When your virtue is well purified and your view straight, based upon virtue, established upon virtue, you should develop the four establishments of mindfulness ….’ (S.47:3)

So too, bhikkhus, based upon virtue, established upon virtue, a bhikkhu develops and cultivates the seven factors of enlightenment, and thereby he achieves greatness and expansiveness in wholesome states. (S.46.1)

This sense of virtue goes beyond the boundaries of the precepts. It is the practice of attuning to the field of cause and effect, of right view as whole view. It also is about determining to maintain, respect and honour the integrity that holds our cosmos in balance. In this balance of receptive and directive energies, mindfulness arises as an attention that is spacious and yet collected; a steady loop around what we experience; an attention that can receive the ripples of stress and dis-ease with a listening that heals and releases. Then reactivity, guilt and judgement subside. And one can rightly attune to the Buddha's directive: to follow ‘that which is for my welfare, for the welfare of others and leads to nibbāna.’(M.19)

I

The Pioneering Spirit

I’m currently spending a month on self-retreat at the Buddhist Retreat Centre in Ixopo, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. It’s off the beaten Dhamma track of America, Europe and Asia, but that’s one of the reasons I come here. The Centre occupies about 300 acres of hill in the rural backcountry and is the most beautiful retreat centre I have come across in over 40 years of teaching. One admirable touch is the way that the centre honours the location, with its traditional thatch-roofed 'rondavels', and by offering work to local villagers - as well as through the support it gives to a social welfare organization working with AIDS orphans. 

I’ve been coming here since 1985 to teach – they need some support, and I’m an 'off the track' kind of person – and since then that mission has grown to include two other centres Dharmagiri and Emoyeni (and there are other places that I don't cover). They're even further off the track.  And that makes it interesting. Things are fresh, and for sure there's enough suffering in South Africa to satisfy anyone's need to teach the Dhamma. Crucially, there's also enough faith for people to come, listen and practise.

The quality of faith, as well as the material foundation of Buddha-Dhamma in South Africa, is on account of a few remarkable pioneers. In the case of the BRC, this means Louis van Loon who opened the place in the early 1980s. Louis was born in the Netherlands in 1935, but came out to South Africa after the Second World War on a migration scheme that offered free passage and 50 guilders to people to leave the Netherlands and seek their fortune overseas. Louis established himself as an award-winning architect. In the late 60’s he was working in Sri Lanka and became grievously sick, so sick that he didn’t know whether he was going to make it. Lying on a mattress soaked with his own sweat and in a semi-delirious state, he made a vow that if he could get through this illness, he'd dedicate his life to doing something for the peace and well-being of human beings. A vision arose of a hill rain-swept hill, that’s all. He recovered, returned to South Africa and with this vision in his mind felt he should start looking for property. Based in Durban, he started scanning newspapers for property, and found that there was an old farm going up for sale out in the backcountry. So he jumped in his car, picked up the estate agent and drove out there. It was pouring with rain as they drove up an overgrown and muddy dirt track and stopped at a barbed-wire fence. The estate agent pointed through the windscreen and said 'It's out there.’ Louis got out of the car, peered through the rain and dense mist and heard an inner voice say 'This is it. You've come home.''I’ll take it', he said.

That was 1969. For the next eleven years he put his own money and labour into clearing the land, building huts, a meditation hall,  a stupa, accommodation, kitchen and so on to establish a Buddhist retreat centre. In a fundamentalist Calvinist culture, this itself was a leap. Then he started looking round for teachers and invited various monks and teachers .... In 1984, an invitation was made to our sangha, and Ajahn Anando, one of the original group who accompanied Luang Por Sumedho to the UK, was sent. He ended up extending his stay to help Louis sculpt a 5 metre high Buddha-image that now presides over the Centre. I came along in 1985 to install relics in the Buddha's head and consecrate the site. Now the BRC is an established Dhamma-refuge and an accredited wildlife sanctuary – but struggling to make ends meet. The world! While hostility, distraction and consumerism remain popular and rake in millions, it's often the case that Dhamma centres with their incalculable offerings and blessings barely get by .... However, Louis heading into his 89th year, is living his last years in contentment. {Afterword: Louis has subsequently passed away, peacefully. on March 27 this year.} Sadhu, Louis, anumodana!

To take another example: George Sharp was working in London as a commercial artist working in advertising. Stressed. Depressed. Drinking. More depressed. One day sitting in a subway train his eyes looked out the window and saw a poster saying 'Meditation' ... that led him to a small tenement house in Hampstead ( a 'Buddhist Vihara') and a thin man in robes sitting at a desk who looked up and said 'Yes?'  George said, ‘I’d like to die please.’ The bhikkhu (his name was Kapilavaddho) said ‘I think we can help you. Come along this evening, I’m giving a talk.’ So George went along to a teaching on dependent origination that mostly went straight over his head –  but at the end of it he said to Ven. Kapilavaddho that as far as he could understand it, what the bhikkhu was saying was that this self that’s causing so many problems doesn’t actually exist. ‘Yes’, said Ven. Kapilavaddho,'That’s about it.'

Intrigued, George became a committed meditator and supporter, and soon was the Secretary of the Trust that supported the Vihara. Ven. Kapilavaddho was already in his 70s, rather frail, and pretty soon disrobed. But after meditating all night, George came to the resolution that he would somehow dedicate his life to fulfilling what Ven. Kapilavaddho had envisioned: the establishment of a native monastic sangha in Britain.  People said it couldn’t be done ... But after a few more auspicious events ( an American bhikkhu called Sumedho happened by, a woodland in West Sussex was donated, and George spent the Trust's funds on purchasing a derelict house on first glance – in the rain as usual) ... And so Cittaviveka, the first forest monastery in the West, was born.

Many pioneers – explorers and inventors – fail; many give and lose their lives. But in terms of the human spirit, it’s the risk-taking jump in the dark with nothing more than wholesome intention and resolve that is kept alive and strengthened. This is how Dhamma was established in the world: the Awakened One, who had not yet even formulated a teaching, picked up his bowl and began a walk through the suffering world that meant offering teachings until his dying breath some 45 years later. Most of us who have Gone Forth, especially into cultures where Buddhism isn't established, draw inspiration from that example and attempt to follow it. 

The mindful exert themselves. They are not attached to any home; like swans that abandon the lake, they leave home after home behind. (Dhammapada 91).

As in the example of Louis or George, or a hundred other pioneers of the spirit, the leap of faith is not limited to samanas. It is an aspect of heart that is innate in human beings; and this is why the pioneer, the one Gone Forth, attracts those with a little dust in their eyes. But the Buddha as pioneer, added a further string to his bow: with no office, secretariat, or infrastructure, he established management among a group of anarchic wandering recluses. That is, despite personally moving through the labyrinth of the human mind, despite presenting teachings that would direct a varied range of people to do the same (for over 2,500 years and across the world), he said that his work was not complete until he had encouraged the growth of the 'Four-Fold Assembly' (male and female renunciants and householders) to supervise his Dhamma-Vinaya. Yes, the Dhamma-Vinaya was to be the teacher after the Buddha's passing, but the well-practising community was to be the custodian of the Dhamma-Vinaya.

Management and pioneering don't generally fit together very well. Pioneers are strong, sometimes stubborn, individuals; management requires co-operation and moderation of ideals to fit reality. But the Buddha was, as usual, one-pointed in this respect. After his passing there was to be no leader, no patriarch or king, just collective management. Any sangha was conjoined to meet frequently, begin the meeting in harmony, conduct business in harmony and conclude in harmony. Ethical standards were always the number one priority. Complaints and invitations from the householders, and points of conflict and controversy among the samanas were to be addressed – but measured against the standard of 'not abolishing what has been laid down and not creating new rules.'  Proposed adaptations that depend on a majority agreement can take a great deal of patience.

However, when one reflects on other ways in which human collectives are managed, this Buddhist standard remains a pioneering example. Management requires authority, authority handles power, and power is a heady drug.  In the political arena, a powerful leader may be elected, or it may be one of these staged elections – but basically ... if you want to be a leader you need megabucks and all kinds of connections with a corporate world to fund and support you (who will expect your favour), and it helps if you have a massive ego, and are prepared to tell comforting lies. Much the same can be said for the business world - it's OK to undercut and crush smaller businesses, and deal in products that are detrimental to the environment and even to the people who purchase them. Ethics are not on the agenda. Such management leads to the desert, or even the graveyard, of the human spirit. 

Management is powerful. Therefore the authority that accrues to the monastic Sangha is to be carefully oriented around a strong ethical and renunciant core. Inner strength is needed because the teachings attracts human energy, and that exposes the Sangha to worldly pressure. The Buddha numbered kings and merchants among his followers, and they supported monasteries. So, throughout history, wealth and power have washed over the Sangha – and swept away those who have been corrupted by it. Yet without well-established monasteries, how would the teachings have reached the lay community? How would texts been standardised and transmitted?  For sure, corruption has occurred, and probably always will where wealth and renown accrue; hence the Buddha's exhortation on proper management details personal responsibility: ‘as long as they do not fall prey to desires which arise in them and lead to rebirth … ; as long as they are devoted to forest lodgings …; as long as they preserve their personal mindfulness... [the Sangha] may be expected to grow and not decline.' 

Management that prioritizes ethics, cooperation and faith over convenience, progress and gains takes an ongoing pioneering effort. But the spirit finds its way. How the Dhamma community responded to the lockdown phase of the Covid era. How teachers and institutions just started reaching out to offer support, talks, even retreats online, all at no fee. Most, if not all, of them went into financial crisis, some barely made it, some, like BRC, are still trying to get back to financial health. We just get by, and that seems about right.

In my situation  at Cittaviveka, I'd heard of online teaching, but felt that this was not for me. How can I teach a screen? If no-one is there, where do I get the signs from the listener that guides what and how to teach? But first the Abbot asked me...and then a devoted upāsikā in Singapore reached out with her Zoom room –  and within three days I was online. And haven't looked back. The culmination of a series of online sessions were the global retreats, whereby upāsikās and upāsakas across the planet, mostly having never even met before, joined together to form a support network. This tackled the problem of time differences through a group of volunteers in Singapore and Malaysia offering the room and the technical nous, and a cluster of people up in Ireland and America keeping the whole thing together, even loading recorded talks onto a Google Drive folder so that those who could not be present could tune in when they woke up in their own location. The first of these retreats gathered 540 people into a Dhamma-occasion; three more followed. It was exhausting, heartful and wonderful: great Dhamma practice, great management.

Although the world is more highly managed than ever before, it's remote management and remote service. If you go to Pietermaritzburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal or Pittsburgh, Ohio you see the same franchises, the same shopping malls and the same styles of clothing. Place doesn't count. Looking for a service, one is directed to a  website which promises support if you download this and subscribe to that... after which you may well-receive a message such as 'Support not available for this product, a newer model can be purchased here',' or 'No-one is available to receive your call, please try again.' Who knows the conditions under which those goods were produced? How about the pay the workers received?  Who knows? The message and reality is that 'No one is here.' Meanwhile state control, and surveillance by parties unknown and unaccountable promise security. But megatons of bombs, missile and drones have not provided that; just an increase in the use of bombs, missiles and drones and the perpetuation of the astounding belief that this strategy is inevitable, necessary and conducive to peace. People take to the streets in protest, but no-one's listening. They're not here..

So in such a cynical, confused and deceitful age, the pioneering spirit means keeping the human spirit alive. It doesn’t mean not having a place to live; it does mean abandoning fixed securities and the longing for certainty that hobbles initiative. It's about being prepared to step out of the socially constructed identity to ask the big questions that mortality and the miracle of being alive present. ‘Where are we going, and how?’

The BRC arranged for a taxi to collect me at Durban airport; there is no public transport. The Zulu driver opened the back door for me to get in, but I chose the front seat. It's his country; I make myself available. He looked life-worn and tired, but after a few minutes of silence, opened the conversation. His name was Prince.  As he spelled out in his own earthy terms, things aren't good. A growing number of people are disillusioned with the ANC (the ruling party). 'They're just looking after themselves, not the country. It was better before (in the apartheid era)'.  I've heard this before, but it's still difficult to swallow. Recently Durban had no water supply for four days. On highways busy with trucks, we pass by the usual high-density clusters of tin-roofed single story huts. No roads in the settlement, just footpaths. Kids running around, laundry flapping on the fences. Prince asks about me, and I talk about life in the monastery: everything shared, guests come to stay, no fees. No lying, no fighting. 'Come and live here,' says Prince, 'More people should live like you.' 

It's all familiar and sad; another pioneering movement that lost its way. We take a back road, then a dirt track and get to the BRC. The Centre has maintained its ethos through apartheid, the bloody conflicts between Inkatha and ANC, and the AIDS epidemic, and is still managing as South African infrastructure and optimism sag under corporate criminality.  We climb out of the car and I give Prince a hug; he responds with a big smile. Sometimes it seems that's all one can do. It's good to be here.

*See Buddhist Retreat Centre for details.