Author: vajradevi

Quick Tips for Low Times

After the previous blog post ‘Relaxing the Conceptualizing Mind’ for when the thinking mind is strong, I had a request for some specific on-the-spot hints, for when the mind is over-whelmed and caught in the turmoil of negative thoughts and emotions. So here they are. The list is not exhaustive by any means but will hopefully contribute to a disentangling of the heart and mind that supports the growth of awareness and wisdom.

Thoughts combined with emotions can quickly pull us into a vortex that becomes hard to get out of especially if we struggle with the experience and don’t accept that this is how it is right now. At other times the mind can narrow down to become overly focused on something we’re experiencing – forgetting to take in whatever else is happening through the different senses.

Here are a few ways I’ve found helpful in my practice when awareness is losing ground to the storm of the conceptualizing mind. The first few are connected with awareness of feeling and emotion and the last couple more with awareness directly.

  1. See if you can dial up the warmer aspects of awareness – the warmth, ease, acceptance – the qualities of loving kindness naturally present when you look for them. You might focus on the area around your heart. Keep the attention light – just aware of feeling in this area and notice any changes in the quality of the awareness.
  2. Use a Right View perspective to work with any sense of discomfort from struggling with how the mind is. Remind yourself that it’s natural for the mind sometimes to be in conflict or pain or get lost in thoughts and over-thinking a situation. Nothing is wrong – in fact it is an opportunity for the awareness to recognize ‘dukkha’ – dis-ease or stress in your being, something everyone experiences at some time or another. With the help of Right View, we learn not to take it personally when the mind is like this.
  3. A very simple practice we can do over and over is to stay with feeling as an object. This can make a difference if all the thinking is leaving the mind feeling  ‘heady’. For many years I’ve used Jack Kornfield’s little mantra ‘let go of the story and come back to the feeling’ and find it really helpful.
  4. For a while quite consciously take a stronger and more neutral ‘anchor’ for example the breath, the sitting bones or sensations in the hands touching or possibly ‘sounds’ or ‘seeing’ happening. Whenever your attention is pulled back into painful emotions or an over-whelming story, acknowledge that and gently return the attention to the neutral anchor. This is quite an active way of working and it can assist the mind to calm down, and also strengthen awareness. When the mind becomes more settled you can let the anchor go and open up to more objects arising.
  5. Finally, the ‘AND’ practice which I learned from Andrea Fella. This is especially useful when the mind has got sucked into and become identified with a particular experience it is finding unpleasant, though it could also be very pleasant, and we’ve got quite attached to it. It could also be that the mind is simply distracted and not able to rest with present moment experience. This practice is also quite active, but the emphasis is on noticing what’s happening in your direct momentary experience. I think of it as a bit like stretching pizza dough. You’re opening out the mind from the tendency to home in on one strong pull – you notice that object AND what else is there? And there’s the breath, and there’s movement in the ribcage, and there are sounds – cars, a dog, bird song. You use all these objects happening around you to anchor the awareness more strongly in the present moment.

It’s probably best to stick with one of these points and try it out initially. If you’re familiar with the practice of receptive mindfulness you might find the mind naturally moves from one to another for example initially working with ‘feeling’ and then something that helps you anchor more strongly in the present.

You might work with one or more of these points for a whole meditation period or more. Be aware of the mind that wants a strategy to ‘work’ to get rid of something unwanted in the mind. Rather than making things go away it can be helpful to think instead of growing important qualities in the heart-mind like resilience, patience and openness. Overall, we are strengthening awareness, positive emotion and wisdom in the mind.

Relaxing the Conceptualizing Mind

A little story: about 25 years ago I was participating in a meditation workshop exploring thoughts. We were all led through a series of meditative exercises over the course of the morning. I felt very relaxed, present, and happy. The workshop leader then asked a question to which she made clear an answer was not expected but that asking the question could facilitate openness and curiosity to the experience in the moment. The question was ‘where do thoughts come from?’ – and even though she wasn’t looking for an answer – I had one! I didn’t offer it that day but the experience that arose with the question has stayed with me since then.

My ‘answer’ was from a slightly dreamy quality of mind that was simultaneously clear and distinct. ‘Thoughts come from the Alaya (‘store’) consciousness’. This thought took me by surprise but had a close resonance with the experience in the moment. It was clearly a conceptualization, and I was familiar with the idea from the Yogachara Buddhist tradition of the ‘alaya consciousness’ though it wasn’t one I used at all frequently.

The Alaya is said to hold mental impressions of all previous experiences, and these form the seeds of future experiences. It is a way of understanding patterns of behaviour and the momentum behind habits good and bad. It contains the idea that in the past we’ve repeated these habits many times, building up mental and emotional energy that makes them more likely to be repeated again in the present. They are the sum total of what makes us up.

So much for the idea of the alaya, back to my story – what was the actual experience like?

There was a feeling sense of experience as a mass of fragments of thoughts, impulses, and movements of mind. A kind of cosmic mental soup. I saw that some fragments rose to the surface of the mind and were identifiable or distinguishable – not as content but as experience. Others didn’t quite make it to the surface of full consciousness. There was a knowing that the more visible moments had more energy behind them. They were habitual drives and the strongest of them eventually would get expressed for good or ill. The literal seeing felt like the birth of a thought.

Something stayed with me from the short period this meditative experience lasted – some glimmering of an understanding of the nature of the mind and the mental objects within it.

I think about this experience infrequently and yet it came into consciousness during a recent meditation. It was the first time I’d sat for a few days as I’d been unwell with Covid. I still felt weak and breathless but wanted to get back to formal practice. My mind was all over the place, there were lots of thoughts but not enough energy to get involved with them or to be aware of individual arisings.

I found myself dropping in a practice instruction I often give at the end of a retreat when retreatants are about to leave the fairly low ‘conceptual load’ of retreat conditions and return to the ‘high conceptual load’ of daily life. The mental and emotional weight of making decisions large and small, various meetings, talking and using tech takes a lot of energy. The instruction is to find times to ‘rest back from the conceptualizing mind’ and prioritize the awareness mind by doing nothing.

This small thought really opened up my soggy covid brain into spaciousness and ease and a different relationship to mental activity. I was aware of thoughts and other mental movements but from a stance of lightness and brightness. There was a kind of relaxation and release from grasping onto detail and trying to make meaning from the illusive threads of experience. And it was possible to just stay there enjoying it.

When we sit without doing anything in particular there are times when doubts can arise about how we’re practicing, especially when experience isn’t pleasant. The voices of the conceptualizing mind can shout loudly driving us towards the more active ‘doing’ mode. ‘Shouldn’t I be doing something to change whatever is happening now?’. ‘I’ll never get anywhere with practice unless I use more effort’. The thinking mind has these thoughts and a thousand more. But are they true?

At these times we need to hold our nerve. Keep pointing true north. Is awareness present? Is right view/a dharma perspective present? Keep recognizing the conceptualizing thinking mind with its habits and its tendency to dominate other modes of being. Let the Awareness mode grow. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. You don’t know what it will grow into or what habits it will grow out of. It could bring in its wake a tide of ease or a transformative understanding. Keep going.

Rolling with the Waves

I love being in the ocean and particularly when there are decent enough waves that mean you have to either jump over them or dive through them in order to avoid a pummelling. When I get the timing right it’s such a great feeling to jump and be lifted onto the top of the wave. The waves carry you over without effort and you just go with it.

A lot of my recent learnings in practice have seemed to have this flavour and revolve around rolling with the waves or the punches in one way or another.

I’m very familiar with the opposite to this: a sense of ‘self-digging-in’ like an inner putting my foot down because there’s something happening that I don’t like or don’t understand and am resisting. I’ve practised over and again becoming aware of what resistance feels like in the body and mind.

And what I’m noticing recently is that experience arising less frequently.

I’ve been travelling a lot in the past couple of months and travelling is a great way to not have things go the way you want them or expect them to go. Less than 24 hours before I flew to Singapore en route to Australia my flight was cancelled hiking my travel anxiety higher than it already was on my first long haul flight in almost 10 years. Despite the anxiety I found myself rolling with it and 3 hours later I was rebooked via Istanbul instead of Frankfurt but still arriving within 30 minutes of the original flight.

Travelling also meant I was in unfamiliar territory – literally – I didn’t know how to get to the main road from where I was staying, or how to use the tram (not train or bus!), or where I could buy postcards and stamps. Travelling meant I had to remember to take suncream and a hat whenever I went out instead of gloves and thermal underwear. Or more strangely once I got into the Australian bush – a snake ‘kit’ containing a tourniquet and a phone. A certain amount of discombobulation meshed in me alongside the freedom that comes from relaxing into the unknown.

The most emotive reminder of how far I was from home and familiar territory came on the first full day of the second retreat I led. The weather was hot with the promise of a storm. The day was labelled a ‘total fire ban’ day and the danger level described as ‘catastrophic’. Catastrophic is a strong word especially when coupled with the next word I heard – evacuation. Not a choice but a requirement in the terms of our rental agreement. These were more familiar concepts to the retreatants all from different states of Australia but new – and unexpected – to me.

We ended up evacuating without fuss to the Melbourne Buddhist Centre for a day retreat. Though somewhat unnerving I felt calm and just able to do what needed doing. My friend had organized the retreat making sure there were enough car spaces to take us all (though not our luggage) away from any danger. I remember deciding to pack all my teaching notes, not just ones for the day retreat, having to take seriously that although we expected to be back by nightfall we might not be. If a lightening strike from the expected storms coupled with high winds took hold of the dry bush, we might never return. Sitting in meditation together before heading for the city this was a sobering thought.

There is another aspect to this ‘rolling with the punches’ which is more difficult to describe. This is the desire to have what I want or the insecurity I’m used to arising from the fear of not getting what I want – especially in relation to my partner – is diminishing. This is especially visible around time. Time spent together is precious, and even more so now we both have work that takes us away from home a lot. So, something might come up where it looks like he will need to go away just as I arrive back from leading a retreat meaning another stretch of several weeks apart.

 And what I’m finding is that although I may well get a spike of the old ‘what about me’ reaction and feel resistance to more separation, again, it doesn’t have a lot of juice. That reaction doesn’t dominate and the stronger feeling is more likely to be a generous one – I want him to benefit from the opportunities his new job brings despite the initial reaction of what it means to me.

This is such a relief and a delight for the mind! Self-referencing and self-interest are tight and contracting for the mind and heart. They are viscerally painful and to see them arise and roll on through is to experience my mind in a new way. Trust and confidence are more familiar guests in my psyche these days as a result.

These feel like welcome benefits to the practice over many years of allowing and accepting whatever arises in experience. Relaxing and opening to what life (or the mind) throws up and having a felt understanding that whatever is happening is enough.

One final story; this week I had to travel to Birmingham for a medical appointment. Because of a landslip on the route, we were in a rail replacement coach rather than on the train. It became clear on the return journey the driver really didn’t know where he was going. I found the thought ‘has he never heard of Google Maps?’ running through my mind. We circled one small village for what seemed like an age before inexplicably heading back towards Birmingham. At one point, at traffic lights, he decided to turn the 12-ton coach around in the narrow road performing a dangerous (multi) 3-point turn, hitting various curbs at regular intervals. He was a terrible driver, and the journey took more than double the time it should have.

 And yet rather than the desire to just get home taking over I simply enjoyed the countryside around and the sense of bonding with other passengers over our strange journey. I was OK to be with what was happening despite it being at odds with what ‘should’ be happening.

I’m enjoying the pleasure of the mind that is making fewer demands on the world that it be as I want it to be. And as a result, suffering less – because the mind has begun to understand in a deeper way that the world and everyone in it is never going to be just as I want it.

Dreaming the Real

I love this poem by Linda France, and she has kindly given permission for me to use the title for my next online retreat coming up. I so enjoy the juxtaposition of the unreal dream world with what’s real or true. In a very beautiful way Linda walks us into a world of mindfulness of what is, touching and opening the mind not only to truth, but also to love.

I’ve been thinking about references to dreams and dreaming in Buddhism. In the Diamond Sutra we’re advised to practice by viewing conditioned existence as like a phantom or a dream. Something that is ephemeral and insubstantial and that it is possible to wake up from and realise it is not true.

The aggregates (skandhas) of clinging continue the theme encouraging us to view body, feelings, perceptions, as ‘a lump of foam, a bubble, a mirage’ – all of which are completely insubstantial with no way of holding onto them. It’s as if the Buddha is saying – when you cling you can’t trust your senses or your rational mind; it will all disappear as soon as you reach to hold onto it. Even by holding onto an idea in your mind you’ll alter and thereby distort what is being seen or heard or touched or thought about.

Volitional acts are compared to a banana tree which has no heartwood, no centre. Its leaves are tightly packed and wound around each other so they form a firm ‘trunk’. The fifth aggregate – moments of consciousness that we identify as ‘me’, I’m the one noticing all this stuff happening through my body and mind, is like being fooled by a magician and completely taken in by their tricks.

The Buddha didn’t deny a world or a life that has some relative reality. In the relative world we have responsibilities to keep; we go to work; we manage our finances so we can pay our rent or buy things we need. We have people who matter to us, and we do our best to be a good parent or partner or friend. In this world we have values and our ethics matter to us.

 Unfortunately, when we act in the world without an awareness of its dreamlike illusory nature, we get caught in the net of all the views, opinions, and stories we hold onto. The more we struggle the more suffering we unwittingly cause ourselves and others.

What the Buddha was advising was a perspective, a way to view the world that would help us see everything within it, including our own mind and body, in a more accurate way that would alleviate suffering.

This might sound a bit dry, like scraping the icing off a cake before you get to eat it or fluffing the punchline of a joke in a way that kills all the laughter potential. Or when we tell someone our wonderful dream and what was magical becomes clumsy and prosaic over breakfast.

Having other ways that give us a sense of the freedom from suffering are helpful. We can use intermediaries. After all it is hard to imagine being completely free because we can’t rely on our usual reference points – which is our senses. Usually, we know something because we smell, touch, or taste it. Or we see, hear, or think about it. Awakening is not like that. It’s unknown to us; it’s not like this, or similar to that. It’s something else altogether.

What’s good about poetry (and the arts more generally) is they can point us towards the mystery of life and open up responses in us that are not part of our more humdrum existence. We don’t have to explain why we love a painting or a novel or a piece of music. Instead, usually we feel it.

I find I really enjoy having things in my life I can’t explain with the rational mind. I see a cranial-sacral practitioner every six weeks or so. He touches my feet very lightly and I feel clear sensations in my belly. Or I notice a strong emotion that comes out of nowhere. I ‘know’ there’s a connection, but I can’t explain it, and I quite like that I can’t. It’s enough to just hold it very lightly.

Dwelling in the pleasurable non-rational in these (and other) ways helps loosen my grip on what I think I know, as well as holding onto the world around me. Dreams are extremely convincing, and I seem to have to wake up again and again, questioning their substance and making the connection between the unreality of sleeping dream life and waking dream life.

Sometimes though, we do have access to a more direct knowing of what’s real. As a result of meditating or ethical practice or sometimes meaningful communication we access the beauty of a mind that is true and free. It may well be only partially free, or temporarily free but when we feel the flexibility of consciousness that results from it and the mind that is responsive and equanimous or the heart that is softened and open it feels worth all the efforts of practice.

In the words of the poem

 “I want whatever’s real to be enough, at least.

 It’s a place to begin. And to master the art

of loving it; feel it love me back, under my skin.”

‘Dreaming the Real’ Online Retreat

I’m excited to be offering our fourth annual on-line retreat, running in the post-Christmas lull and seeing in the New Year.

The retreat will run for five full days from Thursday 28th December to Monday 1st January. There will be input, led meditations, and the opportunity to ask questions and talk about your practice. In the evenings there will be integrated ritual elements, including a longer evening to mark the New Year.  

The Theme:

Buddhism tells us that life is like a dream and that ‘reality’ is to be found from waking up from the dream and realizing the dreamlike, empty nature of all experiences.

Dreams can convey many things: they can be beautiful, frightening, mundane or mysterious. Like our waking life, dreams are very convincing.

In practice we want to understand what is ultimately ‘real’ while relating in a helpful way to our dream-like world of relative reality.

Mindfulness and right view will enable an intuitive sense of ‘knowing’ of our experience. We’ll look in some detail at the skandha of perception and some of the ways the mind automatically creates concepts. We bring awareness to how we create our worlds and see how we can go beyond them.  

This online retreat is for anyone who has previously participated in a week or more of retreat with me.  I will be supported by Vajrapriya.

The retreat is offered on a dana (donation) basis. I’ll say more about this during the retreat.

The sessions will run from 10.30 – 12.30, 17.00 – 18.00 and 20.00 – 21.00 GMT. There will be optional un-led groups at 16.00 on the first and last days to check-in about your practice and connect with some others on the retreat. Vajrapriya will offer an un-led sit from 07.30 – 08.15 each day.

BOOK ON THE RETREAT

Drop In Meditation Class

The Monday morning online drop in class will be returning from Monday 4th September. It will run (as previously) from 7.30-8.30 BST.

The class is for anyone with an interest in mindfulness meditation with the emphasis on receptivity and wisdom.

The format will be a short introduction, followed by a led meditation and then time for questions or to talk about how your practice was.

The class is run on a dana basis, with a link posted during the class. You can also find the link to paypal on the Drop In Class page on the blogsite.

You can find a link to the page to access the class HERE

What’s so Noble about Suffering?

      

Today the UK news is full of the sentencing of nurse Lucy Letby to a life sentence in prison without the chance of parole. She’s been found guilty of the murder of seven newborn babies and the attempted murder of six others in the hospital where she worked. As part of the sentencing process ‘impact’ statements were read from parents whose babies had been killed or left with life changing disabilities from coming into contact with Letby. Simply reading some of these words it is clear that their suffering is devastating. The parents say that years later the horror and pain is such that it feels like it happened yesterday. The loss of their child is laced with the savage and irreparable pain of the betrayal of trust; their child died deliberately at the hands of their caregiver.

What on earth can Buddhism have to say about that level of distress? What words could possibly give any solace? I’m not sure there are any. Not today at least. And not uninvited, not without them being sought out at the right time and in the right place.

 And yet the Buddha had a lot to say about pain and suffering.

There are of course the well-known stories: the mother, Kisa Gotami, who almost lost her mind after the death of her infant son but who eventually found peace through coming to understand how universal loss is. The Buddha too experienced loss when two of his closest friends and disciples died, one killed at the hands of a rival sect.

At times the Buddha knew that all that could be done with certain kinds of suffering was to do was to try to ‘bear with’ it. He recognised that suffering could completely floor us and that that was OK. In fact, even though what the Buddha meant by ‘suffering’ (dukkha in his own language) was quite particular, and very broad, the main question he asked was ‘is it possible to be with what is happening right now’?

When we’re able to be with what’s happening, perhaps breathing with agony, or walking with terror, or simply acknowledging the rage we feel, there’s sometimes an unexpected relief to our suffering that can take us by surprise. It might just be a tiny shift where there is a momentary release from complete mental contraction. We find we can breathe a little more easily. Or we notice the world around us again perhaps seeing the colour of a flower amongst greyness and flatness.

We find that in moments we can bear the unbearable.

But we can start small with everyday dukkha. Can we learn to ‘bear with’ the dukkha found in daily frustrations and disappointments or our unmet expectations when things don’t go our way? Suffering (we can also talk about a sense of dis-ease or dissatisfaction) arises whenever there is a gap between what’s happening to us and what we want. By being with what is actually happening we narrow the gap created by our desire for things to be other than they are.

So, there’s nothing inherently noble about suffering. And in fact, what the Buddha was referring to, was certain of his disciples who had come to understand the nature of suffering in such a way that it no longer caused them distress and pain. By facing the reality of our experience, rather than dwelling on what we’d prefer or even desperately want, we are cultivating the capacity for such noble qualities as courage and deep acceptance – and ultimately the wisdom and compassion of the ‘noble ones’.

If you live near Shrewsbury, UK and have been meditating within Triratna for at least a year and you would like to explore the Buddha’s teaching of ‘The Four Noble Truths’ I’ll be leading a weekend end workshop on the theme soon. Check it out HERE

Take A Load Off

This morning I led an online Drop-In class set up to help those interested in mindfulness and wisdom practice (sati-panna) keep going in-between retreats. It’s always a challenge to take mindfulness off the cushion and keep the wisdom/right view perspective active so it can notice wrong views and how we are relating to experiences.

The class was centred around learning to maintain awareness while ‘seeing’ is happening. After the meditation I invited observations on how the led practice had been. One of the more experienced practitioners noted how ‘loaded’ the objects in her field of vision had seemed. I asked her to expand a little and she commented that several things seen reminded her of tasks to do, of actions to complete and increased a sense of pressure and busyness in the mind. Other objects provoked memories and associations going back years.

My partner, who was in the meditation, finds it hard to switch off the DIY mode of looking when meditating with eyes open, and affirmed his attention tended to be snagged by a bit of wall that needs replastering, or a light fitting needing replacing.

Often what surrounds us – and particularly when we’re practicing on-line from our own homes – are things that hold deep significance for us. In the room where I was sitting this morning are objects I’ve personally selected because of their beauty (a new lampshade), or been given (a mobile of shells made by a loved one), or they’ve been inherited and are full of resonance (my father-in-law’s pink comfy armchairs) and sometimes the sadness of loss.

Because we are often unused to ‘seeing’ in awareness the objects surroundings us are not seen as practice ‘objects’ but as ‘objects of attachment’. We relate not to the process of ‘seeing’ but of what those objects mean to ‘me’. Even so-called neutral things like the sofa in our sitting room has a flavour of this because – in this instance – of the satisfaction of getting it on ‘Freecycle’ and saving it from landfill. There is attachment to personally doing something seen to be of benefit rather than buying a brand new one.

Think then, how it is with people. When we look at each other, we look with the full complement of ideas and feelings of our history and associations for good or ill. Our memories, particularly of the connections and well-being between us keep our relationships deeply human, but also seen through our deeply conditioned minds. Our inability to look afresh compromises being able to see our friend, husband, neighbour as they are, not as we are. Seeing with awareness allows both the relative human level and the more absolute wisdom level to be known.

What my friend was noticing in the class this morning was how the mind was relating to each object seen – how it was weighted with concepts and ideas that the mind attaches to. In noticing the relationship to objects we see how the mind is affected by them with such things as liking or disliking, task orientated ‘doing mind’ or how the object feeds a sense of self.

We learn a lot about what the mind is doing quite naturally. And when we see this relationship with awareness there is less identification and less attachment. It becomes very interesting to see how the mind takes ownership of even the most neutral seeming objects in our homes.

In doing so we ‘take a load off’; we lighten the burden of association and proliferation in the moment. We allow the mind to simply ‘know’ what’s presenting itself through the senses. And this brings joy to the mind and appreciation for awareness and wisdom simply doing their jobs.

Drop In Class

I’m very pleased we’re going to go ahead with a new Drop In session for a 4-month trial period. It will be a weekly one-hour class, starting on Monday 6th March from 7.30 – 8.30 am BST. It won’t be recorded so will only be available ‘live’.

You can find the zoom link from a designated page on my blog site entitled ‘Drop-in’.

The class will mainly be led by me, but as I’m away quite a bit leading retreats, Vajrapriya and Moksaka will sometimes lead the class. They are both experienced teachers within Triratna and they’ve both worked extensively with me on retreats and have also both experienced Sayadaw U Tejaniya’s teaching directly through being on retreat with him.

The format for each class may vary slightly but will usually include a short introduction, a led meditation, and time for some of you to feedback about your practice. The main element each week will be the led meditation.

The class is open to anyone with an interest in an approach to mindfulness that is receptive and wisdom based. You don’t have to be signed up to the mailing list to come.

The class will run on a dana/donation basis. A link to PayPal will be posted during the session. Alternately you can use the donate button on my blogsite for either a one off or regular donation.

If you’d prefer to send dana directly to a GBP, AUD or Euro account please email me via the contact page to ask for account details.

The ‘Keep Going’ Quality

A few months ago, I spoke about Samvega – the quality of spiritual urgency. These reflections have continued, and the initial spark to the previous post – reading the Buddha’s words in the Anguttara Nikaya – has continued. (I’m now just over 600 pages in with 1000 to go!).

One of the Suttas in the Anguttara Nikaya is called ‘Goad’ which means either ‘to provoke or annoy someone in order to stimulate a reaction’ or ‘to drive cattle with a spiked stick’. The way the word is used in the Sutta is more like the second definition, but the first is relevant too.

The Buddha starts by saying that there are 4 kinds of excellent thoroughbred horses existing in the world. The Sutta uses a familiar device where later it compares and contrasts the thoroughbred horses to excellent thoroughbred persons.

The 4 horses each react differently to the threat of the goad and the suffering it will cause: the first is ‘stirred and acquires a sense of urgency’ when it catches a glimpse of the shadow of the goad, the second when the goad touches its hair, the third when its hide is struck by the goad, and the fourth is motivated only when the goad strikes painfully right to the bone.

The persons, likewise, respond differently to dukkha – suffering: the first excellent thoroughbred person is stirred and acquires urgency (to practice) when they hear of someone suffering an illness or dying in a near-by village. The second doesn’t respond to this suffering that is somewhat removed but only when they actually see a man or a woman sick or dead with their own eyes. The third person is not affected and stirred to action until one of their own family is involved. And the fourth person doesn’t react until they themselves are seriously ill or dying (stricken and racked with pain as the Sutta puts it). Then this excellent thoroughbred person is finally motivated to practice and understand the truth of the Buddha’s teachings. The Sutta is offering a stick approach, rather than the carrot. 

How quickly or slowly do we ‘get it’? Do we learn through repeated and painful life lessons? Or is our sense of Buddha’s words deep and intuitive, and our motivation to follow the path natural and continuous? What motivates us to practice the path? Mostly we don’t learn things without repeated experience of them. Or repeated practising of them.

What can stir us to urgency to practice? One thing I’ve found helpful to bear in mind is that we can’t expect our motivation to always come from within. Finding dharma teachings to remind us of the truth of things is essential and can deepen our motivation to practice. One such verse that will be familiar to some of you can be read aloud, perhaps before we sit to meditate.

The 4 Reminders – taken from the original verses by Tsongkhapa and adapted (see below).

This human birth is precious,
An opportunity to awaken,
But this body is impermanent;
Ready or not, one day I shall die.

So this life I must know
As the tiny splash of a raindrop,
A thing of beauty that disappears
Even as it comes into being.

The karma I create
Shapes the course of my life,
But however I act
Life always has difficulties;
No-one can control it all.
Only the Dharma
Can free me and others
From suffering forever.

Therefore I recall
My heart’s longing for freedom,
And resolve to make use
Of every day and night
To realize it.

[Written/compiled by Viveka and reworked by Vessantara and Vijayamala. This version 2021.]

If you would like to hear more about the quality of spiritual urgency, and its companion quality ‘pasada’ or tranquillity you can check out a talk I gave recently at the shrewsbury triratna buddhist centre.