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.