Stephen Batchelor

[silver]

This sentence:

To counter it requires resolve of equivalent force to live in another way...what changes is resolve.

made me cry, because I didn't know there was truly another way to live my life after my son's death...a whole other perspective.
It's taken quite a while since showing up here at ST, to realize it.

[silver]

From the book - a 1-page story (Miscellaneous Advice of the Kadampa Masters) just before the section entitled 'Awakening':

One day an old man was circumambulating Reting Monastery.  Geshe Drom said to him:  "Sir, I am happy to see you circumambulating, but wouldn't you prefer to be practicing the dharma?"

Thinking this over, the old man felt he'd better cover himself by reading some Buddhist scriptures.  While he was reading in the temple courtyard, Geshe Drom said: "I am happy to see you reading the dharma, but wouldn't you prefer to be practicing it?"

At this, the old man thought that the best way to cover himself would be to meditate single pointedly.  He put aside his reading and sat on a cushion, his eyes half-closed.  Drom said:  "Good to see you meditating, but wouldn't you rather be practicing the dharma?"

With nothing else left to do, the old man asked: "Geshe-la, please, how should I practice the dharma?"

"When you practice," Drom Replied, "there is no distinction between the dharma and your own mind."

___Tsun ba je gom

[silver]

From the book, an excerpt from the chapter called 'Friendship':

Whenever Buddhism has become a religion, true friendship has tended to be compromised by issues of power.  Both the fellowship and guru-disciple models have given rise to large, impersonal, hierarchic, and authoritarian bodies governed by professional elites.  In many cases, these institutions have become established churches, sanctioned and supported by sovereign states.  This has often led to rigid conservatism and intolerance of dissent.

This process is not inevitable.  It is also possible to imagine a community of friendships in which diversity is celebrated rather than censured.  In which smallness of scale is regarded as success rather than failure.  In which power is shared by all rather than invested in a minority of experts.  In which women and men are treated as genuine equals.  In which questions are valued more than answers. 

[silver]

Sharing...an excerpt from the chapter entitled 'Becoming':

When you first try to make a pot on a wheel, the clay does not obey your fingers.  You end up with a wet, muddy mess.  With practice, though, you become adept at handling clay in relation to the spin of the wheel and can create functional and beautiful things.  I likewise have become adept at configuring myself from the spinning clay of my existence, creating a personality, a home, friendships, children, ideas.

If only the endeavor were not disfigured by confusion and turmoil.  Frustration and bitterness grow instead of compassion and understanding.  I silently rage at a world that fails to appreciate me.  I want just to be left in peace, to be loved and accepted, but for some reason people either ignore me or dismiss me.  Becoming maudlin and self-pitying only makes things worse, but I can't help it. 

So I set out on the absurd task of reordering the world to fit my agenda.  I try to create a perfect situation one in which I have everything I want and nothing I don't want.  I dream of a life in which all imperfections are removed.  In doing so I find myself at odds with the very presence of things.

I find myself confronted with the stubbornness of matter, the fickleness of mood, the ambiguity of perception, the wilfulness of thought and habit.  As a way of controlling these I split reality into two parts: the bit that is mine and the bit that is not.  My body stands in opposition not only to your body but to all other matter.  My feelings are the only ones that really count.  My version of events is always right.  The imperative of my craving is set against the imperative of yours. 

I do not experience matter, mood, perception, and impulse as such but as unique chaotic moments configured in unprecedented and unrepeatable ways.  This complex specificity becomes present because I name what I experience.  Do I ever perceive a dangerous arrangement of shapes and colors?  No.  There's a snake in the pottery shed!

...When the division between myself and the rest of the world is driven by confusion and turmoil, this sharp differentiation hardens even further.  My distinctiveness is frozen into an absolute aloneness.  I feel abandoned, trapped in my body.

Again, I need to stop.  I may be able to start thawing this isolation by focusing on the complexity that I am.  I may be able to ease the spasm of self-centeredness by realizing that I am not a fixed essence but an interactive cluster of processes..

[silver]

This is from Buddhism without Beliefs, Fruition, subsection entitled 'Imagination' ~

The denial of "self" challenges only the notion of a static self independent of body and mind---not the ordinary sense of ourself as a person distinct from everyone else.  This notion of a static self is the primary obstruction to the realization of our unique potential as an individual being.  By dissolving this fiction through a centered vision of the transiency, ambiguity, and contingency of experience, we are freed to create ourself anew.  The notion of the world as an alien reality composed of stubborn, discrete things is likewise the primary obstruction to world-creation.  In dissolving this view through a vision of the world as a dynamic and interrelated whole of which we are an integral part, we are likewise freed to engage with the world afresh.

To realize such visions requires acts of imagination.  No matter how deeply we understand the transient and empty nature of existence, how vividly we experience the intrinsic freedom of reality, how passionately we long to appease the anguish of others, if we cannot imagine forms of life that respond effectively to the situation at hand, we will be limited in what we can do.  Instead of finding a voice that speaks to the unique contingencies of our own situation, we repeat the cliches and dogmas of other epochs.  Instead of creatively participating in a contemporary culture of awakening, we confine ourself to preserving those cultures of a vanishing past.

Self-creation entails imagining ourself in other ways.  Instead of thinking of ourself as a fixed nugget in a shifting current of mental and physical processes, we might consider ourself as a narrative that transforms these processes into an unfolding story.  Life becomes less of a defensive stance to preserve an immutable self and more of an ongoing task to complete an unfinished tale.  As a coherent narrative, our identity's integrity is maintained without having to assume an unmoving metaphysical center around which everything else turns.  Grounded in awareness of transiency, ambiguity, and contingency, such a person values lightness of touch, flexibility and adaptability, a sense of humor and adventure, appreciation of other viewpoints, a celebration of difference.

[silver]

From Buddhism without Beliefs, Fruition chapter, subsection Culture:

The Buddhist and contemporary visions of freedom both support and critique each other.  The Buddhist vision seeks to cultivate a path of individual and social practice that leads to a liberating experience of self and world.  It cannot accept the notion that authentic freedom can be realized in a life driven by confused self-centered craving.  The contemporary vision strives to create and maintain social and political structures that uphold the rights and optimize the creative possibilities of the individual.  It cannot accept the notion that authentic freedom can be realized in a repressive and unjust society.

While it would be futile to try to describe the culture of awakening that might result from the encounter of these visions, two broad themes are beginning to emerge.  These are the distinctively contemporary ways in which dharma practice is becoming individuated, on the one hand, and socially engaged, on the other.

The individuation of dharma practice occurs whenever priority is given to the resolution of a personal existential dilemma over the need to conform to the doctrines of a Buddhist orthodoxy.  Individuation is a process of recovering personal authority through freeing ourselves from the constraints of collectively held belief systems.  If training with a teacher of a certain school leads to a growing dependency on that tradition and a corresponding loss of personal autonomy, then that alliegance may have to be severed.  At the same time, unprecedented exposure to a wide range of Buddhist traditions today make it difficult to accept each school's unquestioned assumption of its own superiority.  I valuing imagination and diversity, such an individuated vision would ultimately empower each practitioner to create his or her own distinctive track within the field of dharma practice.