There is an opportunity to answer a lot of questions between birth and death, but you have to ask them first.
Life is a question.
Questions
beget questions.
Questions
are your best teacher.
The
most profound questions are often the simplest. The most profound
answers are often the simplest, too.
What
happens when you die is not the question; the question is what
happens when you live.
We are very influenced by the world around us. The views and attitudes of the time and place in which we live pervade our lives and it is extremely difficult to step back and see things from a higher or bigger perspective. We have been influenced since childhood by various views, attitudes, beliefs and conventions. Sometimes we are more under the sway of past conditioning sometimes we are more under the sway of present conditioning.
Monogamous marriage based on personal emotion is an example of a recent historical convention that has a huge impact on us and on what we conceive of as normal. The internet and social media are examples of current conditioning factors that have a huge impact on us and our sense of identity. Credit cards, advertising, nationalism are all relatively new phenomena which have had and continue to have a huge impact on us. Often we are unconscious of this and we are also often unconscious of the more personal conditioning and conventions of our upbringing which continue to influence our behaviour, attitudes and ideas; the impact of our relationship with our father and mother, the impact of any religious conditioning and so on.
All of these things are influencing us all the time and these influences will sometimes be at variance with the Buddha's teachings about skilfulness and unskilfulness. That is why it is important to become aware of how we have been and are being conditioned and influenced. Reflection, meditation and time spent alone all help with this.
Enlightenment can be talked about in many ways. One very common way is to talk in terms of the perfection or consummation of Wisdom, Compassion and Energy. But of course we are swimming in very unfamiliar waters when we dive into the topic of Enlightenment or Nirvana. We need to come to the surface and indeed come back to earth and ask ourselves, what is the relevance of all of this to me and to my life now.
There is plenty of hatred, conflict and polarisation in the world and if we are to help to alleviate some of that we need to become aware of and deal with our own inner conflicts, which often manifest in our lives as conflict with others. There is a great deal of unhappiness, dissatisfaction and mental ill-health in the world and if we are to help we need to become aware of and learn how to deal with our own unhappiness and dissatisfaction. There is plenty of greed, craving, addiction and consumption in the world, which is leading us into more suffering. If we are to help we need to become aware of and deal with our own craving, greed and addictions. This is something of the relevance of the Buddha and his Awakening to our lives. But really we each need to individually ask ourselves the questions about what our life is for and what we want to do with our period alive and also to look with objective and kindly eyes at what we are actually doing with our lives. Self deception helps no-one.
The whole universe is interconnected and that of course includes us. There is no such thing as an isolated individual. We may experience isolation on a social or psychological level but real isolation from the rest of the living universe is not possible. We eat food which we buy in a shop where we are served by people and the food was put on the shelves by others and delivered by others and harvested and grown by others and the soil was prepared by others and the seeds provided by others and the plants grew because there was sufficient light and moisture and space. All of these things connect us to vast numbers of people and to the sun and the climate and the earth’s atmosphere and the solar system, the galaxy and beyond. We cannot be isolated from life. Even when we are dead our body returns to the earth and nourishes the plants and worms.
We are also connected to other people by virtue of influence and effect. The influence they have on us and the effect we have on them. Virtually everything we know, all our knowledge, comes from somebody else. We learn from books, from other people, parents, teachers etc., and it is a completely rare event for anyone to have an original thought and even when that does happen it is in relationship to all the thoughts others have had previously in a particular area, whether it is art or mathematics or science. We have imbibed influences since birth and we continue to imbibe them. To a large degree we are made up of influences whether from other people or the climate or the environment we live in. All these things form and shape our consciousness, affect our thoughts and emotions and are very much who we are. In a sense all we are is interconnection. There is nothing solid or substantial or fixed that we can point to and say that’s me, completely unaffected by any influence from elsewhere.
The other side of this is that we are always having an effect. We are always influencing. Some people are referred to as influential people, but, in fact, everybody is influential. It is not possible to have no effect on anybody or anything. By eating food you have bought in a shop, you have had an effect on the shop and those who work there and the whole chain of supply. I read an interview in a magazine with the CEO of Tesco’s. The point was put to him that a huge store like Tesco has a lot of power, too much power even. He said that from where he stood all the power was with the consumer and he had to be constantly attentive and sensitive to what shoppers wanted or didn’t want. Otherwise even the biggest business could collapse quite quickly. There is obviously a lot of truth in that. But more immediately than that we have an effect on people we come into contact with. We can never know how much of an effect we are having. Sometimes we say or do something quite small and it has a big effect on someone. Perhaps a little act of generosity where it was not expected or a sharp word or a flippant remark.
Meditation is not about having big experiences. Meditation is a continuous flow of positive mental states and when we sit to meditate what is important is the effort we make not the experience we have. We may have a very pleasant experience but if we are not making an effort to take things further then it is not a good meditation. A good meditation is one in which we make an effort to change our habitual negative mental states or make an effort to maintain our positive mental states and use them as a basis for penetrating deeper into the nature of reality. Effort has to be appropriate and balanced of course. We need to know and acknowledge where we are starting from and be patient and persistent in our efforts to change.
I want to say something positive about consumerism. One of the reasons I want to say something positive about consumerism is that barring catastrophe, it is going to be with us for a long time and those who have not had the opportunity to consume the so-called good things of life are going to want to. In the foreseeable future we are likely to have more consumerism rather than less, with India, China, South America and eventually Africa stepping on to the train to go shopping with everybody else. Given that that is what we have and are likely to have, what positive possibilities does consumerism hold for us?
It has been said we are consumers rather than citizens. I was thinking about this and I came to the conclusion that it may not be such a bad thing if people were less identified with being citizens. Being a citizen implies belonging to a particular nation with all the characteristics of group mentality that that implies. It can lead to a sort of defensiveness and isolationism that is both oppressive and dangerous. Consumerism on the other hand crosses boundaries and cultures and at the level of international business it creates a world of connections and relationships that have the potential to defuse dangerous situations. On the personal level it gives a certain amount of power to the consumer. When you vote in an election you exercise some power, but also when you spend money you exercise power. You exercise power because, just as with your vote, you can make a choice. Your vote gives you a choice every four years or so to say who you want to govern or what policies you favour. The money in your pocket gives you a choice every day to say which products and companies you want to support and which you would prefer not to. Businesses, even the biggest of them, are quite sensitive to what the consumer wants and doesn’t want. It has even been noted that sometimes business is ahead of government in its thinking on issues of an ethical or ecological nature. Being consumers means we are connected to a vast international web of trade which has a positive side to it and we can exercise some power in this network of trading by making informed choices about where to spend our money. Another point worth noting is that businesses are sensitive to criticism and if you see a business doing something you think is unethical, it is worth writing a letter to point it out. Business people and politicians know that for every two people that complain there are probably another twenty who have the same complaint but stay silent.
In the story of the great Tibetan yogi, Padmasambhava, he encounters a monstrous character who is known as Black Salvation and also as Matarangara, which means 'the one who devours his mother'. The depiction of Black Salvation is a description of everything that is repulsive and revolting and monstrous and it is a symbolic way of saying that Samsara is repulsive and monstrous. It is a way of saying that what we have to overcome on the way to spiritual awakening is something that has tremendous power and energy and fills our world, a huge monstrous presence.
For our society I think the great monster is what is known as consumerism, or the idea of progress through consumer led growth. Why is consumerism monstrous, a Matarangara, one who devours his mother, a Black Salvation? The view, put very simply, is that happiness and fulfilment are a product of economic well-being. Your security, your contentment, is dependent on the possession of a sufficient amount of money and goods. And as our irrational minds engage with this view, our natural craving assumes that greater happiness and fulfilment is achieved by a steady accumulation of money and possessions. Also an offshoot of this view, is the view that choice is a supreme good and having choice is the equivalent of freedom. The more choice we have, the more freedom we have.
Another head of this many headed monster says everything is something to be purchased and appropriated whether it's a smart phone, an overcoat, a car or meditation, yoga and Buddhism. Individualism is also part of the logic of consumerism. Individualism leads us to consider ourselves as somehow separate from and unconnected to others. Consumerism also encourages narcissism; the tendency to see everything in terms of how it affects me and the self-centredness and vanity that goes with that.
In a culture of consumerism we are consumers before we are anything else. Before we are citizens or family members or adherents of a religious doctrine. Above all of that we are consumers, that is our identity and if we refuse that identity we will find ourselves pitted against the many headed hydra of consumerism. In Greek mythology when one of the heads of the monster Hydra is cut off, two more grow in its place. That would suggest that in encountering the many headed demon of consumerism we need a more subtle and intelligent approach. Cutting off heads that regrow doubly is no solution. In the work of overcoming the demons of the mind and the demons of the marketplace, we need intelligence and awareness, alertness and love.
