Sex

There are two levels to our fascination with sex. There is the level of the basic animal drive and much of civilisation is about bringing a measure of control and discipline to that. Every human society has its rules and norms to regulate this basic drive. The rules and norms can vary enormously; what is or is not acceptable can vary enormously. These rules of society are often tied in with questions of property ownership and peaceful relations between clans, tribes or nations. So that to breach the rules is not just a personal matter but something that affects the stability of the society.

The second level to our fascination with sex is more emotional and psychological. In order to have sex you have to be physically intimate with another person and this physical intimacy becomes a way into emotional intimacy. However physical intimacy is not emotional intimacy and all sorts of problems can arise when a society accepts and encourages the view that physical intimacy is emotional intimacy. Aligned with this is the view that there cannot really be emotional intimacy without physical intimacy. This is the view that has grown up in many societies over the last couple of hundred years.

Sex has become, to some extent, divorced from questions of property and alliances and has become more a question of a search for emotional fulfillment. This is the romantic ideal. The positive side of this is that people are not forced into unsuitable relationships or relationships that are repulsive to them. The downside is that it can overload one relationship with too many expectations. Especially a relationship that is sometimes built on the shaky foundations of a physical attraction and physical intimacy.

The spiritual community can help by being a further source of emotional fulfillment. When we have friends with whom we are emotionally intimate, it can take some weight off the relationship where we are also physically intimate. It helps us to lower the expectations we have of our sexual partner, which can also help us to become more content. Contentment is a state of feeling rich and fulfilled, so that there isn't a constant aching yearning for something more or someone more. If we are content and feeling emotionally rich there is less temptation for us to try to manipulate others for our satisfaction.

Communication

There is no communication without listening. There is no listening without interest. You have to be interested in the other person, in their life, in their point of view,if you are going to listen to them. If you are not interested in them or if your primary interest is in yourself and getting your opinion heard, then you won’t be able to listen.
Listening requires interest. There is no interest without awareness. In order to be interested in a person or in anything you have to be aware of that person or that thing. If you are not aware you can’t be interested and therefore can’t listen and therefore will not be in communication.

There is no awareness without silence. Silence, stillness, solitude, and reflection are what we need from time to time in order to allow our awareness to grow and expand and deepen. As Bhante Sangharakshita says in Crossing the Stream: “As music is born of silence, and derives its significance therefrom; and as a painting is born of empty space, and derives its significance therefrom; so are our lives born of silence, of stillness, of quietude of spirit, and derive their significance, their distinctive flavour and individual quality, therefrom. The deeper and more frequent are those moments of interior silence and stillness, the more rich in significance, the more truly meaningful, will our lives be. It is the pauses which make beautiful the music of our lives. It is the empty spaces which give richness and significance to them. And it is stillness which makes them truly useful.” (p.95)

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the key practice in Buddhism. It is the practice of mindfulness that brings everything else together. What we are aiming for is an inter-connected mindfulness. We need to be aware of ourselves; our thoughts, emotions, words and actions. We need to be aware of other people in the same way. We need to be aware of our environment, the objects, space, light and colour around us. We need to be aware of reality; of impermanence, of the unsatisfactoriness of worldly things, of the higher truth represented by the Buddha. But our awareness in all these areas, all these dimensions, needs to be interconnected. We need to be aware of how everything affects everything else, how everything is always part of the conditions for something else. How does our environment affect us? How do we affect our environment? What effect do other people have on us and, even more importantly, what effect do we have on other people? In what way does Reality impact on us, on our environment, on other people? What is the effect of the potential for Awakening on our lives? Asking ourselves questions and reflecting in this way we can develop an inter-connected awareness, which is an essential basis for Awakening.

When we take our awareness deeper into ourselves and further out in to the world around us, the promise is that we will experience great beauty and access to energy that is always flowing out into generous activity. This interconnected awareness is alive, rich and abundant. In symbolic terms it is golden yellow, a sun that gives warmth and nourishment everywhere equally and encourages us to grow and to emerge from the solid resistant earth of our mundane egoistic selves.

Fear

The Tantric yogis, we are told, go into the cremation grounds at night to encounter fear, to encounter ego in a very potent form. By facing fear they break through to a new level of freedom. Most of us have no need to find a cremation ground. We experience fears, large and small, all the time. Sometimes it is just the fear of being with other people or the fear of being alone. We can try to notice our fears and make use of them. By taking little risks here and there we gain a little more freedom and develop the habits of freedom and confidence.

Conflict 2

Siddhartha was sheltered by the Bodhi tree or more prosaically, his aspiration and faith gave him protection. And he needed protection because he was assailed by Mara. Mara is the personification of resistance to spiritual awakening. Firstly he was attacked by Mara’s army, then tempted by Mara’s daughters and then Mara tried to undermine his confidence. Here we have very dynamic images for hatred, craving and ignorance.

Mara’s army attacks with arrows and spears but all the missiles hurled at Siddhartha turn into flowers and settle gently at his feet. This attack of Mara’s army represents a massive internal conflict. Siddhartha’s unshakeable determination is coming up against all the forces of his psyche that resist the implications of spiritual death. This is an inevitable part of any spiritual endeavour.

We are never one hundred percent behind our spiritual aspirations and so we experience conflict and dealing with this conflict is the raw material of our spiritual practice. That's what we are working with; our aspirations and our actual desires and experience. We can take that raw material of inner conflict and do something creative with it. If we don’t deal with our inner conflict it will manifest externally and we will end up blaming other people for our lack of spiritual progress and limitations.

On one level inner conflict is a manifestation of the unintegrated psyche and the disparate parts have to come into some sort of relationship. Just as the Buddha’s awareness and faith comes into relationship with Mara’s armies and the conflict resolves into flower blossom; symbols of beauty and growth.

On another level inner conflict is a manifestation of the egoistic resistance to reality. It’s an existential thing this inner conflict. Experiencing inner conflict doesn't mean we are bad or un-spiritual or incapable of practice. It is what happens if you try to lead a spiritual life.

Either way it is more creative to recognise inner conflict for what it is and take awareness into it. We have to become acutely aware of how we resist spiritual insight and how we cause ourselves suffering. If we manage to do this thoroughly then our resistances will subside.

Habits

There are three things we need to do in relation to our habitual ways of being in order to help ourselves to develop the ability to change radically. Firstly we need to accept our habits and tendencies without condemnation. If we feel insecure, for instance, we need to accept that we feel insecure and not condemn ourselves for having that feeling. Or if we often feel angry we need to accept that and not condemn ourselves. It is just a fact – 'I often feel insecure or I often feel angry' – we can say it to ourselves and just acknowledge it as a fact. Secondly we need to become aware of how that habit or tendency manifests, how it gets expressed. For instance, insecurity might manifest as a desire to please everybody or it might manifest as anger. Anger might manifest passively in an unwillingness to listen or co-operate or it might manifest in harsh speech. Thirdly we need to take responsibility for this mental tendency or habit. We can say to ourselves – 'yes it is me, it is my mind, my mental states. It is not somebody else’s mind; it is not an inevitable consequence of any circumstances or any event. It is just my habit.'

This taking responsibility for our mental states as fully as possible is an important element in gaining insight into how our minds work and in giving ourselves the ability to change. Until we are able to see and accept that our states of mind are something we do, rather than something that happens to us, it is virtually impossible to change. When we do see deeply and clearly that our mental states are something we are doing rather than something that is happening to us, then it is as if habits dissolve in the light of that awareness. There are different levels to seeing into our own minds and we may find that we have to come back again and again to seeing the same habit or pattern at work before we finally see through it completely and it dissolves away.

We also need to see deeply and clearly that our positive mental states are something we do and don’t just happen to us. In seeing this we learn that we can choose positive states of mind, we learn that we can choose to see the world around us in different ways, we can choose to highlight the ugliness or the beauty.

Reverence

Reverence is a positive emotion, a positive state of mind. Without reverence for that which is higher and for those who embody something higher or deeper, we are left with our own consciousness as the highest and deepest in the universe. If we cannot look up to and reverence others then by implication we ourselves are the pinnacle of existence. I think reverence is closely related to gratitude. Gratitude is the response we have when we know we have received some benefit and reverence is the response we have when we know that someone or something can benefit us. If we are receptive to any spiritual teacher we will probably experience some reverence and gratitude towards them.

Reverence and devotion are not a temperamental thing, not just a quirk of nature in some people. They are inherent in human nature. Reverence is natural. To lack all sense of reverence is to be artificial rather than natural. It is an artificially adopted position probably based on some alienation from the emotions and over dependence on the intellect. Lack of reverence is an attitude conditioned by the ethos of the society we live in.

Our Western culture and conditioning can sometimes bury and thwart our natural urge towards reverence and receptivity and one of our tasks when we embark on the spiritual path is to become aware of any conditioning like that and try to get in touch with our more natural aspirations and emotions.