December 2003 Newsletter

Vipassana.com Newsletter
from the Vipassana Fellowship

December 2003 Edition

"Often reciting the sacred texts, but not applying them,
- like a heedless cowherd who counts only others' cattle -
one does not share the blessings of the holy life."

January Meditation Course

Registration for Vipassana Fellowship's January 2004 course is now open. The course takes the form of a multimedia program with online support and lasts for 90 days. Suitable for both new and experienced meditators, the course introduces techniques from the calm and insight traditions of Buddhist Meditation. We begin with Mindfulness of Breathing and follow this with Lovingkindness and other 'sublime abode' practices before introducing vipassana or insight meditation. Each of the techniques is clearly outlined and placed in context. The course also provides an introduction to the teachings of the Theravada tradition. It will be led and supported by Andrew Quernmore, an experienced meditation teacher based in the UK, who has been leading online courses since 1997.

See http://course.vipassana.com for details and registration.

Meeting the Buddha, Alone, on the Empty Shore
by Leonard Price

A veneer of credulity and feeble optimism covers the dark preoccupations of our lives. In an age marked everywhere with signs of spiritual decay, we somehow remain ever entranced by new toys, ever receptive to the latest balderdash from noisy charlatans, and ever ready to abandon the present moment for the lure of the next. Let it be rumored that "self-fulfillment" has been glimpsed in somebody's book or therapy or religion, and immediately a cloud of dust obscures the sun as we stampede into the new territory -- only to find ourselves, puzzlingly, still in the same dull company. Do we really want happiness, or only titillation? It's hard to say, because we rarely sit still long enough to examine the matter. Suspecting dimly that life is treacherous, we keep moving fast to avoid calamity.

If we are credulous, we are no less skeptical. We are quick to believe but find belief intolerable. We topple today's idols and from their fragments eagerly assemble tomorrow's. We pace up and down the shores of doubt, rousing one another with shouts of encouragement, but stepping into the river we find the water cold, and promptly conclude there's a better crossing further down.

The water is always cold. Somebody sees a vision over the horizon, and the chilled troops waste no more time at this spot. In our solitary reflections we may notice our inconstancy and regretfully wonder, "Has it always been thus?" If we are Buddhists we are bound to answer, "Yes." This endlessly mutable landscape of disappointment, this lurch and halt of conviction, is called Samsara.

We are accustomed to regarding the "cycle of birth" and death as a remote, cosmic scheme of creation and dissolution. In fact, Samsara whirls with cyclonic force here in the prosaic moment, here in the wavering and furtive mind. If this is, that is. Out of ignorance rises craving; out of craving rises the whole mass of anxiety and suffering. We deceive ourselves even in our desire for happiness. Our pursuit of pleasure or "self-fulfillment" is also a flight from despair. Uneasy with the deteriorating present, we leap with unseemly greed toward the future, which, fictitious creature that it is, soon fails us and leaves us exactly where we were. The great wheel turns, and has turned, and will turn again.

Freedom from Samsara does not spring from finding the right teacher or the right temple or the right style of meditations. We must instead begin by discarding false expedients, brief enthusiasms, fashions, platitudes, and most of all, excuses. Self-excuse is just grease for the wheel. Ah, we sigh, if only we had met the Buddha in person! Vain foolishness, this. The Buddha was never to be found in six feet of flesh. In his time and in ours he is only seen in the destruction of the defilements, in the giving up of excuses, evasions, and willful blindness. If we earnestly strive to distinguish between the false and the true, the shallow and the profound, the path of the Buddha takes shape before us.

But after so many years of quick credulity and quicker doubt, of lukewarm and ambivalent effort, how can we make it across that cold, lonely river of ignorance? If we divest ourselves of false and trivial comforts shall we not be left naked? Indeed we shall. And it is in precisely that condition that we may encounter the Buddha. Buddhism is, after all, a religion of renunciation -- renunciation of wrong thoughts, wrong speech, and wrong deeds. When we give up our shabby illusions and the manifold hiding places of the mind we find ourselves naked and ready for the first time to see the world without distortion. Whereas before we may have nominally accepted the reality of impermanence, suffering, and non-self, now we may begin to discern these truths directly and realize our predicament. The old cliche, "The Buddhas only point the way," strikes us with fresh significance. Buddhism demands that we help ourselves, and here on the long, empty shore where we have so often wandered we may at last appreciate the task ahead.

The world around us may be crass and wicked, but not so crass and wicked as our own deluded minds. We feast on the bones of cynicism and are not satisfied. We give new names to iniquity and pursue it in shadows. We mistake the pleasant for the good and perennially follow the easiest course. Then in our accidental nights of fear we stare in bafflement at the four walls and ask ourselves, "Haven't I tried?" Silence replies with silence, and there's nothing left for us but to blunder after a new ghost of happiness, and thereby give the wheel of Samsara another spin.

Credulity is not faith, nor is skepticism wisdom. The noble follower of the Buddha proceeds with a balanced mind, considering the world as he finds it, shunning the harmful and welcoming the useful. He crosses the flood of Samsara on the raft of Dhamma, knowing that nobody will make the effort for him. What distinguishes such a person from; his fellows is not necessarily brilliance of mind, but plain and simple perseverance, the resolve to follow the true course no matter how long it may take. We can do likewise if we set ourselves firmly on the path.

Delay is the luxury of ignorance. We commonly suppose Nibbana, the ultimate purity and freedom, to be something infinitely far away and terrifically difficult to reach. We think of the Buddha as long departed. But Nibbana is near for those who would have it near, and the Buddha is as close as true Dhamma truly observed. What is required of us is to let go of our crumbling, mortal toys and to come down, alone, to the long shore of renunciation. In that exhilarating solitude we may meet the Buddha, whose body is wisdom, whose face is compassion, and whose hand points out the waypoints directly to the deep and hidden purity in our hearts.

Samatha plus vipassana

A course participant writes:

What technical differences are there between samatha and vipassana meditation?

Andrew replies:

We will look at this in greater detail when we begin to practice the first vipassana technique. Briefly, though, samatha meditation produces states of great concentration, calmness and tranquillity and is usually developed by training the attention upon a single object. Samatha meditation is found in many different spiritual traditions and is not unique to Buddhism. It has the capacity to bring about highly developed and blissful spiritual states (known as the jhanas) but cannot, on its own, bring full enlightenment. It is a strong support for vipassana practice and brings some benefits that would not be found in vipassana practice alone. Some kinds of samatha practice (such as the brahmaviharas or sublime abodes) have an important role to play in developing the "heart" - the warm qualities that ease our relationships with others and ourselves.

Vipassana meditation's aim is not to develop calmness and tranquillity. Its purpose is to develop a special kind of clear view that allows us to break through the habitual patterns we have developed that prevent us from seeing things as they really are. It strips away the delusions we have about life that prevent us from choosing to act skilfully. The Buddha said that vipassana (insight) was necessary to reach the goal of this path. Rather than working with a single meditation object (as in samatha) we employ a particular method of looking at whatever objects arise through our sense faculties. Buddhism recognizes the five senses (as they are known in the West) plus mind. Potentially, anything that we become conscious of through one of these 6 'sense doors' becomes an object of meditation. Through looking carefully at what is present we can come to know the underlying structures and laws on which life here is built and can come to know the realities of our own existence. This is the key to liberation, according to the Buddha.

Practising both vipassana and samatha meditation is the approach that the Buddha, himself, took and represents the most balanced way of working. If one wishes, it is possible to develop the samatha practices to a high level first before bringing the vipassana form of 'special seeing' to bear on the fruits of samatha. This is called yuganaddha, or 'yoking together' of the two practices. Practised together, and with the right approach to sila (virtue, morality), this represents a complete path.

With metta

Andrew

The Vipassana.com Newsletter is published about 10 times each year and is sent only on request and to previous participants of our courses.Vipassana.com is the web site of the Vipassana Fellowship - an organisation dedicated to the dissemination of accurate and useful information on Buddhist meditation practices as found in the Theravada tradition. Our next mailing will be in January.