A Bodhisattvas Christmas Carol: Part 5 - Stave Four: Spiritual Insight, letting go of old ways and Vairocana

"Old age, Sickness and Death: it's amongst us, it's in us, it's between us..." - Pramodana, 2013 (see below)
But can we see the ultimate truth of the matter...?

Hey guys, wow, I'm genuinely delighted to see you again, how's it all going? So far we have encountered two of the three Spirits that Dickens has in store for us, and I noticed earlier a pattern emerging; in the story, as we move from spirit to spirit, their verbal exchanges become more concise. The first spirit simply jogs Scrooge's memory, very little advice is given to him. The second spirit is engaging and warm, but isn't afraid of raising his voice and spelling it out to the reader. By the third, we are into the realm of wordless, knowing nods and bony, accusatory gestures. This suggests an awareness on Dickens' part that the most "ponderous", sobering flashes of insight often leave nothing to be said, and reminds me of a beautiful Philip Larkin poem:

"For nations vague as weeds,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.

So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of slowly dying.
The day spent hunting pig 
Or holding a garden-party,

Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves

Nothing to be said." 

                   

                                                                   - Philip Larkin, "Nothing to Be Said"

Philip Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985)
Another dead hero.... 

If we desire to learn how to live, we have to figure out to 'die' properly too. Conversely, if we understand what it really means to die into each moment, if we can better understand the certainty of death and the futility of appropriation in the face of it then life instantly becomes richer and more wonderful for it. We have to learn to let go of our habits, of the stories we tell ourselves, and really open up to and trust that flow of delight and grounded, integrated energy that sends us fearlessly out into the world every day. Today then, I hope to illustrate a bit more clearly what is meant by both insight and death and their importance within this Dickensian masterpiece, the mandala and Stage Three of spiritual life/progress.

With the ringing of the bell still in his ears, we join Scrooge, clearly already shaken when finally, looming out of the shadows, is the chilling hooded figure of the Spirit of Christmas Future. A point I've long-wanted to make is the constant reference to time in the book. Marley's arrival is heralded by a cacophony of bells, Scrooge lives in the shadow of the clock tower and in addition to the large bell signalling the exit of the Spirit of Christmas Present it is an anniversary too - seven years since Marley died, this very night"! Tiny Tim is living on borrowed time, the same borrowed time that Scrooge used to wield power over his debtors - the whole book is about time travel and how we experience time itself. Clearly the overarching message that Dickens wants to convey to us is that time is precious, and getting ever-more so! Perhaps because Scrooge himself is of advancing years, he heeds the final lesson all the more so, but most of us under that age of 50 probably haven't given much thought to dying, not seriously. We are aware of it in a really impersonal way I think, as if it wont happen to us, but to some old person in a hospital bed in at least 30 years time or so (if not longer). 

But life just isn't like that. Most people I know have someone in their lives who has been or will be affected by cancer. I found out tonight that my sister has less than 2 months to live. It has been predicted that by 2020, one in two people born after that point will get cancer in their lifetime. At the Manchester Buddhist Centre, we recently lost an Order Member of nearly 30 years. His name was Pramodana and after being ordained by Sangharakshita himself, he went on to set up medditation classes and Buddhist centres across the North-West, and was instrumental in his involvement with establishing both the Blackburn and the Manchester Sanghas (fellowships of Buddhists). He was a kind and loyal friend to all, down to earth, and somehow managed to integrate an immense compassion with a fiery and wicked sense of humour. He used to enjoy this blog, and was always very encouraging about my writing, giving sound advice invariably skilfully. He was diagnosed on April 5th as having advanced stage 4 kidney cancer. He dedicated his remaining time to reflection, meditation, spreading the Dharma, giving talks, leading Order Member days at the Centre etc, and when he lost the use of his legs and retired to a friends cottage to see out his final weeks, he saw an endless stream of friends and well-wishers. Sangharakshita, on hearing the news, wrote to him rejoicing in his "cheerfulness", sending him much metta, and saying "I'm sure the Dharma is supporting you more strongly than ever." It really did...

As a boy...

Pramodana (far left) and Suvajra (right) with Sangharakshita,  after their Ordination,
January 3rd 1985  

In the late 80's

September 2013

The short goodbye... With his partner Acharasraddha, November 2013

 Pramodana died peacefully surrounded by friends and loved ones on December 1st 2013, having spent his final day in great spirits, "cracking jokes" and laughing with friends (check out www.Pramodana.net for his story in his words). He was 62. Not a day has gone by when I don't think of him. I can't get my head round the fact that I will never seem him again. Never! It's most bizarre, but I'm comforted by his most profound teaching, his final, silent one, and one which shall forever be emblazoned  on my heart. My friend, it was an honour and an inspiration... I loved you more than words can say... Thank you! As I said, in showing others how to die properly, he has taught me a better way of living too... Please consider watching the 15 minute video below... It tells you so much about a wonderfully humble, funny man, and a great teacher... Great talk! 

Fair thee well, my brother... 

SADHU! SADHU! SADHU!

On the ever spinning wheel of life, we are bound to change. Literally shackled to change - we don't change, we are change itself, just as we can't be 'stuck in traffic' - we are the traffic! We can't stay the same. It isn't possible, and if not for a second, much less so for being eternally 21 (Still? Really?) That being said, when life is on the up-swing, when we can can recognise the spiral pattern of progress - 

inspiration + awareness x skilful effort % awareness = positive spiral change 

- in our lives, we develop confidence and faith (shradha) that we are doing the right thing. We open up to deeper forces within us, become aware of higher potentialities, like a range of mountains whose forever-receeding summits are always just out of sight. Something blossoms, and we feel the lotus of compassion opening within our hearts. It's almost like a supra-personal force is working through ourselves, and we may spend much time in states of quiet, absorbed bliss. Regrettably though, we can't 'fix' an imperfect world. Life will always have challenges and no-one can control it all, so eventually, in spite of our best efforts, 'the machine breaks', to quote E.M. Forster. Something will always happen in life; some kind of personal loss, unemployment, illness of offense is caused, and we hit the buffers hard, falling back into old patterns. Though a more authentic, engaging skilful person we now are, something is blocking this new force, this deep attraction to higher values, and our inspiration can dry up if we stop making an effort. So what blocks this inspiration? What is it that damms the stream of the Dharma from flowing though us forever more?  

It's us! It's 'me', 'you' and 'I'. We are the ones holding ourselves back! We fear change, it's scary, it's unknown, and we feel less in control of life. Guess what? We never were! It was all an illusion, an emotional trick played on us by our egos, congratulating us on the great job we've done with our lot in life. We are sometimes too proud to admit it... "I'm a decent person", we rationalise. "I don't need to make any real effort to change, I'm not that bad.. I'm pretty awesome truth be told..." Clinging to self-identity is the root cause of this blockage, so we really need to let go of the old self/selves. We need not so much to let "the old 'me' die", to use a rather melodramatic turn of phrase, but to see clearly that there was never a separate, fixed 'old me' to 'die' in the first place! We, like Scrooge, need to see things as they really are, in their most profound and absolute sense. If he is to change and never go back to his old ways, he really does need to lift the veil of ignorance from his eyes once and for all, and holding his old limiting views up to the light of Vairocana's brilliant white incandescence, discard them once and for all! But without a ghostly visitation to drive the lesson home, how do we stand any chance of that happening? 

Without the aid of time-traveling ghosts, I'm afraid we are going to develop insight the hard way...
It's just as scary, sadly...

The answer lies with spiritual insight, trying to really 'feel' the reality of our situation more deeply. For this chrysalis-like metamorphosis we are attempting, we are going to need to know and understand (at least intellectually or conceptually) a few basic bits of Buddhist doctrine which make it a belief system unlike anything else on earth in either religion or philosophy since the dawn of time itself. Possibly the most important of these teachings, that which marks it out from any of the theistic (creator-God) religions is the principle of "non-fixed self" or "anatnan". I shall explain further, so sit tight, this might get a little bumpy, and please, keep your qualms inside the ride at all times... 

When we investigate phenomena, we need to understand that both the external 'object' (it, he or she) and the 'subject' (me) doing the experiencing are mental constructions of our own making. That is, they both exist solely as reflections or interpretations of sensory experiences in our minds. How often have we stumbled over something in the dark, thinking it was 'X', but with the lights on and a freshly bloodied nose, it turned out to be 'Y' (on that occasion, why would she leave a hoover there?) This occurs as a result of the way experience naturally unfolds through our senses, and for all of us there are two dimensions to conscious experience. Firstly, there is an inward 'perceiving' dimension and secondly, an outward 'perceived' dimension, the former the 'subject' of our awareness, the latter being the 'object' of it. Me 'in here', you 'out there'. We perceive the representation of objects, the "artist's impression", based on our sensory experiences of them. Through no fault of our own, we think and act in terms of a solid, fixed perceiver ("I") standing independent of the perception itself and a real, independent perceived object standing outside the perceived moment too. 'I' tell myself that 'I' am seeing 'my table', and although true on a basic, conventional level, if we start trying to define either the 'I' that perceives, or even the table by playing the game "what's it made of?" (great fun with children and adults alike) we very quickly realise that for all our technological advances, we have never known less or been less able to define so little in this Brave New World of ours. As once physicist famously remarked, we have become exceedingly good about knowing nothing at all, and please bear in mind, he is referring to the 20% of the universe we know about. The other 80% is believed to be made up of  so-called 'dark matter', but we're not really sure because we've never seen proof of it! As we move from an atomic level to a subatomic level, the rules of physics which governs the former has no bearing on the latter whatsoever, in many instances become completely contradictory. For example, an electron can't be observed by looking directly at it, but only by not looking at it, and at which points in-between it is said to both simultaneously exist everywhere on the periphery of the atom, and no-where at all. Moreover, they seem to be aware of when they are being observed! It really is mind boggling! There are always relative layers we can penetrate through, from provisional truths all the way through to absolute or perfect wisdom - the wisdom of the ultimate natures of Life, Death, Reality and Truth. 

Candles and shrine in the Buddha's cave, where he spent many rainy seasons.
 Pilgrimage, February 2013 - Vultures Peak, Rajgir, India

In less abstract terms, we instinctively perceive that the object of our awareness is fixed, independent of other factors and forever-lasting, and then with an arrogance that would be outrageous were it not subconsciously done, we try and attribute those false characteristics to ourselves! 'I' see a nice set of "candles'. The "candles" are the object of my awareness. I see them, I might even smell them, and the mind creates or digs out the folder on the concept 'candle', which conjures up memories of and associations with them so I can respond accordingly i.e. I don't try to eat it. Whist perceiving it, my mind tricks me into thinking that the 'candle' is real in an absolute sense and moreover insidiously, if the perceived (candle) is real and fixed, then so is the perceiver, me. Sadly, this may be far less true than we could ever have imagined. Metaphysically speaking, 'you' couldn't be more wrong, as it were! But what is this 'candleness' we are observing? What is 'a candle'? A consultation of the dictionary reveals:

candle

ˈkand(ə)l/

noun

1. 1.

   a cylinder or block of wax or tallow with a central wick which is lit to produce light as it burns.

   "the candle flickered in the cold night air"
2. 2.

   PHYSICS

   a unit of luminous intensity, superseded by the candela.

verb

1. 1.

   (of a poultry breeder) test (an egg) for freshness or fertility by holding it to the light.

   "the egg was candled—it was fertile"

When we investigate the phenomenon "candle', we see that it can represent a physical object, a measurement of light and is also a verb. When a physical object, it can be said that 'candle' is the word we use to describe a wick, surrounded by wax, possibly with a metal fixing plate at the bottom. It's not that our definition isn't correct, it is. The problems occur when we forget that it only provisionally true. A 'candle' is the label we apply signify, to represent a block of wax with a central wick fabricated for purposes of illumination at that moment in time. We do this to make conversation and shopping easier. 

That's ok, everyone does it, and without this evolutionary mechanism, we simply couldn't survive; to find ourselves suddenly without this framework or reference point can send people insane e.g. when LSD experiences turn nasty. Trust me, it's not pleasant. Centuries of humanity's most brilliant minds seeing the world as concrete, investigable and ultimately real has given rise to the most highly sophisticated technological advances and discoveries imaginable, and many some way beyond that. This self-referential dualism of subjective consciousness is useful for other things too - we have a 'self-image', as we say. It creates memories too, we can project ourselves into the future, and in itself it is this mechanism, this self-aware mind which elevates us above the animal kingdom.

 Our culture reinforces it in us, and we reinforce these assumptions in each other. Fine, up to a point, but the down side is that this characteristic of the human condition also creates all the suffering in our lives. Hatred, Greed and Delusion, the three mental poisons as we saw two days ago, are all born here. Whether we care to admit it or not, deep down we think of ourselves as the most important thing in our life.  I know my happiness is the most important thing to me, and the trick is redefining happiness as well as trying not to treat every idea I encounter as 'real'. For example, that people assume that there are such entities as 'Buddhism', 'Islam' or 'Christianity' shows how ignorant we are of the true nature of reality; they are all just convenient constructs used to convey general information about very vague and disparate belief systems, vague in fact to the point of being virtually useless. Time and time again, we see headlines involving 'Muslim' terrorists or read articles on 'black' actors, yet in the absolute sense, these labels don't actually exist as separate entities in and of themselves. By this I mean, without Muslims, would there be an Islam? All three religions are subject to sectarianism, and just as there are massive fundamental differences between Catholics and Protestants, no two Buddhists practice the Dharma (the path of growth/teachings of the Buddha) in the same way. My cultural conditioning is worlds apart from that of a Tibetan monk, and thus it impossible to say simply "they are both Buddhists". People refer to each other as if these things really mean something absolute (what sport's team is 'theirs' etc,), they treat other human being differently based on these constructs, and over the millennia, many billions of innocent lives have been lost because of people thinking that their deeply held convictions are not only correct, but that the mere presence of such convictions proves it! Labels are limiters! They are just thoughts, concepts and constructs of the human mind, and they are ultimately NOT real in the objective sense i.e. what is 'real' to be is real only to me, an not another being on the planet. It is LITERALLY all in your head Yet countless people today are willing to die for the belief that inside them is a real 'grasper' as the Buddhist tradition puts it (the fabled 'soul' or 'atman') and real things to be grasped at in the 'external' dimension of their experiences. The world is actually all 'internal', when you think about it. This is why colourblindness can be so confusing for people who live with it. When we see a leaf on a tree, when we recognise the species by the shape and the colour, all these stimulus may originate from the external, but they are constructed inside our own minds. Light bounces off the leaf, it strikes the retinal, gets converted and sent along the optic nerve to the brain, which uses these tiny electrical signals to tell us that the leaf has a colour, that it is a green leaf, and we recognise that it is an oak or a pine tree (it is still Christmas, lest we dare forget). 'Green' is a construct in our own mind to describe certain frequencies in the visible spectrum which don't get absorbed by the matter of the leaf and bounce back into our field of vision. What I see as green may not been what you do. What then about all the different shades of green..? And so on... 

My point is simply that the world does exists external to us, there are such things as Christians (in case you were wondering) and that leaves are indeed often green, but all only on a very limited and subjective, provisional level only. As we dig deeper, as we cast the beam of our critical intelligence and reasoning upon various phenomena, we find that these provisional and relative 'truths' or concepts are far too vague and indelicate for anything more than very rudimentary, everyday use. Take the matter of my table again. It looks solid, it is made of wood, and has four legs, so I can see clearly that it is indeed a 'table'. But really, what I'm looking at is a few pieces of wood, held together with pins and iron, which science tells me is actually mostly empty space, on an atomic level. Were I to saw it in half, or even remove the legs and fix them to the other side of the tabletop, then although we still have the same amount of wood, the same number of pins, it would no longer be a 'table'. It's very 'tableness' was completely dependant on other phenomena ( the materials, designer, manufacture etc), so it was never really independent. It was never going to stay unchanging, it wasn't 'fixed' or permanent after all, and in that sense, can we truly ever 'own' anything? Finally, because I no longer have a table, I'm upset - the table itself is eventually a cause of suffering for me one way or another. Therefore Buddhism posits that the three main characteristics or 'lakshanas' (marks/attributes) of the table, in fact... 

ALL worldly, mundane phenomena are:

 

1. Impermanent or 'Anitya' 

(not lasting or fixed eternally)

2. Composite in nature or 'Anatman' 

(existing in dependence on other 'things')

3. A cause of eventual suffering/frustration or 'Dukkha' 

(in themselves, they can't provide eternal happiness as they get old and break)  

This is all mildly (or if you are at all like me, very) interesting, philosophically speaking, but how does this apply to us and our desires to change into a kinder, calmer, more robust person? Spiritual death, the letting got of our old ways and habits is synonymous with spiritual rebirth, the emergence of a new, more evolved, more complete, more alive individual. We gather up all our emotional and psychological energies and aspirations, we put them to good use for the benefit both ourselves and others, and we become more receptive to what can feel like a higher dimension of being. We feel more malleable, more porous, more permeable. We feel more aware to the true nature of things. As we become more spiritually receptive, it can start to feel like we are expanding into the unknown, we make life changes, we see the world a different way. We are becoming more spiritually receptive. Having at least an intellectual understanding of  few key and unique Buddhist teachings  

 More so than ever, as I keep saying, we need to understand develop an emotional equivalent of our intellectual assertions and abstract . Spiritual receptivity is the primary conductor for insight, and the more we can trust that our actions of body, speech and mind, and no figure in the Buddhist pantheon of archetypes comes more readily to mind than the mysterious and ineffable Vairocana.

Vairocana "The Illuminator". His rays of wisdom into the true nature of reality
lights up all worlds, and he turns the golden wheel of the Dharma eternally for the benefit of all beings.

In the bounteous southern realm of Ratnasambhava, as we become more infused with healthy, happy thoughts, we feel can feel lighter, like we have been raised up or are living on a more elevated plane of being. The psychologicalWith Ratnasambhava being associated with the southern realm, as we rise we move closer to the centre of the mandala, we gravitate towards and are subsequently exposed to the all-pervading wisdom of Vairocana. Shining and irradiating a glorious white light like the brightest star in the sky, Vairocana is always associated with the sun. In the same way as the suns beams travel evenly and pervade all of space in every direction, so a Vairocana's wisdom irradiates omnidirectionally. His central wisdom is the wisdom of spiritual insight, of seeing reality exactly as it is as it manifests in every inch if the universe, hence his central positioning within the mandala. Just as his colour, white, is composed of all other colours, so the wisdoms of the other four Buddhas are the distillation of his original all-encompassing wisdom, known as the Dharma-Dhatu, analogous to the attainment or Enlightenment of the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. To symbolise this tie with historical events, Vairocana's symbol is that of the Dharmachakra or the 'Wheel of the Dharma', a golden, sun like wheel whose spokes again remind us of the sun, and so it makes perfect sense that his mudra (the Dharmachakra pawatana mudra) is the gesture of the turning of that Wheel, the propagation of the highest and sublime truths, the truths and teachings we gave already discussed. Relatively easy to comprehend, but incredibly hard to put into practice consistently due to how deeply engrained our previous conditioning and habits are, the teachings of Emtiness (sunyata), of the Middle Way between nihilism and eternalism (unique in the history of human thought), the Four Noble a Truths and the three Lakshanas present enough material for many lifetimes of reflection. Indeed, Sangharakshita has said that one could get all the way to Enlightenment itself simply by feeling our understanding of impermanence. The teachings of the Buddha are like a recipe book. It's no good starving and looking at the pages mournfully wishing you could have the cake when all you need to is buy the ingredients, roll up your sleeves and get on with it! Nothing in this world worth having comes easily. Just ask Scrooge. 

Whether embodying Death, the uncertain future, the wisdom of Vairocana or Spiritual Insight,
the message is clear...

Our budding Bodhisattva is shown a series of scenes, only this time showing the harsh treality of the transience of life and through different scenes, the reader is left to silently absorb the other main lesson, that the consequences of our actions will live on long after we die. Surely the question of whether or not we will be judged by God, Allah or whatever celestial authoritarian you care to believe in is irrelevant. I can't guarantee that you will be judged in some kind of afterlife, but I can GUARANTEE that you will be judged for better or worse by those you leave behind. This is the fate of Scrooge. One by one, he views scenes of an increasingly distressing nature to him, based upon his current spiritual trajectory. Former associates exchange light-hearted banter at the expense of "Old Scratch", (whomever he may be) confessing that even the promise of a free hot meal, priceless in those days, would barely muster in them the energy to attend his funeral. We find out that included in this group is probably his only friend; "we used to stop in the street and and speak whenever we met" he proudly declares. Again, this is incredibly painful to hear for Scrooge, but:

"...nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy."

In case we were in any doubt as to the identity of the deceased, Dickens also takes us to visit Ebeneezer's former housemaid, who is selling the pilfered bed-curtains and garments of "Old Scratch" in an area of disrepute and questionable morality, even by Scrooges pitiful standards . Once more, Scrooge overhears foreboding conversations which trouble him as to the identity of the recently departed and the sad, ignominious end he met:

"..why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself."

The selling of the bedding and clothes "disgusted" Scrooge... They were his, after all!

After this scene, Scrooge backs into a table upon which, "plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man." Dickens refers to good deeds of the dead as immortal and for the first time, Scrooge hears the author's voice personified as his own conscience. The fact that the final spirit "seemed to scatter gloom and mystery" backs up the notion that the silent spirit is indeed the personification of both death and the future. The word "scatter" reminds the reader that the effects of both are indiscriminate and can affect any one of us at any time. Death, strife and tragedy are arbitrary and in effect, the insinuation is that the true glory of man lies in both his character and the capacity to which he uses it to do acts of good in the world in spite of the certainty of death. Therein lies the crowning splendour of our shared humanity, in Dickens' eyes. Surely this is essentially the same profound messages expressed in the insight of Vairocana and the third stage of becoming more spiritually receptivity and spiritual death, as well as going some way to convey the purity and sublime altruism of the Bodhisattva ideal?In addition, "scatter" comes with connotations of agriculture, farming, and reaping what one sows, yet again an expression of conditioned co-production. Man may be mortal, but our skilful action and karma lives on unaffected and brings life to the world from beyond the reaches of death, from the realm of the transcendental.

 "It is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!"

Much as spiritual death and increased receptivity to transformative energy are the most obviously dramatic parts of the path of lasting change, so it follows that this should be he dramatic climax of the story. Again, in terms of psychological realism, Dickens is on the money once more. It was fear of his mortality and subsequent fate which shocked him into seeing the need to change his ways, and knowing  he has to face up to the truth which "leaves nothing to be said", so it makes sense that he doesn't waste time with idle speech with the phantom, who's silence exacerbates Scrooge's already keen sense of urgency. This again is metaphor for the unspoken lesson in this stave - our own impending mortality should leave no time to waste!

"Ghost of the Future!.. I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?'

   It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

   'Lead on!' said Scrooge. 'Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"

Scrooge is not only humbled and contrite but eager to change, desperate, in fact. He want's to let his old self 'die', his future depends solely on a chance to be reborn and although he "feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it", his is now ready to relinquish being the centre of attention in his own world, and instead of being the one wielding the power over other people, by now he can let other people lead him instead, and take their advice to heart. Scrooge's glimpse into the insubstantiality of 'self' and the wider material world allows him to later re-experience that flow of progress and growth that had started way back in stave two. If we can just get out if the way, then we can let our old habits slip away, eventually to be fully replaced by more skilful interests. After all, the path of Buddhism is one of ever-increasing delight and pleasure, on an increasingly refined level the further you go with it.
  

For us, the same reawakening process is true, and for us the perfect meditation to generate direct insight is the Six Element Practice. Once more, I urge you to look it up, but essentially it is a methodical deconstruction of the entire psycho-physical organism that constitutes 'us' into the six elements - Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space (think about it, we all need it to exist) and finally consciousness itself. Through reflecting on the truth that within those aggregates there is no fixed, unchanging 'us' to cling on to, we can actually directly experience what the concepts within the book, the mandala and the third stage are pointing us towards. We will still experience a dualistic view if the world for some time yet, but we don't grab at the experiences, leaving awareness and progress unobstructed. 

The Six Elements:
From bottom to top - Earth, Air, Fire, Water (the green disc), Space (the flame) and Consciousness (the tip) -
This forms the basis for many Buddhist monuments (called Stupas).
This practice is a perfect 'vipassana' or 'insight' meditation.

We need to remain mindful of the deeper, more real, ultimately inexpressible, unknowable dimension of reality and allow this brilliant Wisdom of Vairocana to radiate through every fibre of our being, transforming us whole. The first step towards this level of receptivity is understanding the need to let go of out unskilful ways, and let the old person 'die', with dignity and kindness. We need to work on cultivating a healthy understanding of how little time we might actually have left on this mortal coil. That way, out problems become sacred, a real test, a door into the Dharma, an opportunity really break through! When life become problematic or moments of loss occur, as they inevitably will, we can use them to deepen our emotional understanding of these essential and powerful teachings. These teachings of the Buddha on suffering and why we experience it encourage us to observe our emotional responses to difficulties or things breaking down (the body, a relationship etc), and it gives us a great opportunity to challenge the unskilful, grasping side of our sense of selfhood. We can try to stop ourselves being deliberately mislead by the ego and it's mental constructions. The more we try and spot this in everyday life, the deeper our emotional understandings of the true nature of reality becomes. We can ask "where is this sense of a fixed, separate self?" Are you your thoughts? Your memories? Your habits? Your body? Your feelings? Your personality? Your diet? Your preferences? Are any of those fixed and completely stable? Can we find a 'me', independent of it all, an eternal soul in the Christian (not the poetic) sense? The answer may be a long time coming, and not what you expected, but please, try it for yourself. If your body, speech and mind are all subject to decay, then could Dickens be right about it all? If everything was fixed, then we couldn't change. Technically, we wouldn't be able to breathe (changing our lung capacity), dress ourselves (we couldn't have bought new clothes since birth) or even be born (going from a state of non-existance to the more preferable alternative)... If it wasn't for death, there would be no life. The wisdom of Vairocana reassures us that, ironically, if we have already 'died' in our hearts and minds to our own old ways, then our integrated, skilful deeds and actions can become immortal and in a sense, because there is no permanent 'I' inside of us to die, then in that sense we enter the realm of the deathless and shall live on forever as the fruit of our karma, our intentional actions.    

If we can gather the inner fortitude to "enter the tiger's cave, where many footprints lead in, but none come out again..." (Sangharakshita, talking on the stage of insight and spiritual death) then we too can be reborn in the same way as Scrooge, and what a blessed relief that would be! What we do when 'we' (or more accurately, when the better, more improved version of us) gets to that point, that is another matter altogether. How do we discern between the needs of so many? If so many constructs and labels are only relatively true, what then of the Wisdom of Equality, for example? Stay tuned for the next instalment... Just remember:

"If you die before you die, you wont die when you die." - Vidyamala 

Yours, fondling the shroud longingly,

The Dharma-Farmer xx  

   

Many any merit gained in my acting thus be dedicated to the awakening and happiness of all beings.
This article is dedicated to the memory and skilful means of Dharmachari Pramodana. O now, when the bardo...