- With Loyalty To My Teachers

That was a long full stop. More of a dash really since my last entry. These past five months have gone very quickly as I have flung myself into my Order life and begun to discover a little what it is to be an Order Member. On the outside, I have taken on teaching commitments at the Centre and in an outreach context not far from where I live. I also led my first retreat over the New Year. I have been to two National Order weekends and one Regional and I am in a chapter which meets weekly. On top of that I have been meeting up with more people. Plus, I did a talk to a few hundred people just after I was ordained. On the inside, I feel this is what I have been building up to and I am keen to do : get more involved, lead things, explore my name. It has been richly rewarding yet it can also all too easily mean that all the space in my life gets filled up and there is too much to do before I can get the chance to reflect and take stock of what is going on. I feel a solitary brewing up though this will have to wait until after I get back from India. I leave on my maiden voyage there on April 1^st and spend a week in the Bihar travelling round the Buddhist sights and ‘places in which the Bodhisattvas have been’. Then I go to the Punjab via Delhi. So many people think I am mad to go in April because of the heat. Some have even proffered further advice to do with mozzis and other beasties wee and bigger, water, diet, armed brigands and various scams. I am left in no doubt that this will be, at the very least, an adventure.

Since my ordination I have had three marvellous occasions to encounter Bhante Sangharakshita. The first was back in November when, at a fund raising event, I had the honour to read out four of his poems and sing with others four more poems poignantly and sensitively set to music by my friend Vipulakirti. Bhante was very appreciative of all our efforts. I also had just a couple of minutes with him last week when he came to the Buddhist centre to hear Vishvapani talk around his book about the life of the Buddha. However, I met up with him at length in January.

Something happens when I am in his presence. Erudite and precise as his writings are they are idiosyncratic and need the full engagement of my brain. When I am with him in person my heart, intuition and imagination gently slip into gear as well. I was wondering whether in trying to evoke this, his presence, whilst one is not in his company, is a bit like us practising our sadhana where we try to imagine a Buddha or a Bodhisattva and approach the qualities embodied in such figures to which we aspire. There is a pivotal paper published very recently by Subhuti around this theme following discussions with Bhante about sadhana and its significance along with the importance of (re-)imagining the historical Buddha. This paper has given rise to much discussion and debate within the Order, too.

In 2014 it will be 50 years since Richard Hoggart founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS). I went there between 1975 and 1979 towards the end of Stuart Hall’s tenure. He is still to me the most gifted and able teacher I have encountered, both as a learner and a teacher, and as an observer in my job which has taken me into countless educational institutions over the last 24 years. He is also on my Refuge Tree in that I owe him such a debt of gratitude for contributing to my expansion and receptivity to ideas and differing points of view. That attitude permeated the place and built rather creatively upon the strong critical and classical education I formatively received at Durham. Stuart is in good company on my Refuge Tree along with St Francis, Shakespeare, as well as, more traditionally my two Preceptors, Bhante and his teachers, the Arahats, Bodhisattvas, archetypal Buddhas, Dharma teachings, devas and the three Buddhas of the past, present and future who figure most centrally. One of the four ordination vows I took was 'With loyalty to my teachers I accept this ordination', so it is quite natural and fitting that Stuart should be there, too.

I thought I might do a portraiture project of some of the influential thinkers and teachers who have passed through the portals of CCCS, with view to mounting an exhibition which celebrates this institution (which was closed down some 9 years ago). Richard Hoggart is too ill to be photographed, so naturally, I thought to start with Stuart who is in so many ways the most influential person to be associated with the Centre. I am doing the project with critical and sympathetic input and support of Roger Shannon, who like me, in the end took a non-academic route away from academia and we have drawn up a list of people whom we think I should photograph.

I was to be assisted further under the very capable tutelage of Michael Green who was one of the three full-time lecturers at the Centre when I was there - along with Stuart and Richard Johnson. Michael was there to the bitter end when it closed down in 2002. He was very keen on this project and full of advice unfortunately not all of it transmitted before his untimely death in December. He gave so much to so many and was sharp, witty, well-read and had, so it seemed, boundless energy. Naturally, I was going to photograph him but he only lived round the corner and I thought there was no rush. Perhaps rush is the wrong word. But we never know when our time has come. In a strange way I have felt uncannily closer to him since his death, partly because I have got to know his daughter Emily very well and her partner, Paul, as ell as Alison whom I already knew quite well. But also because with the family and Mark Erickson (one of the last in post to turn off the light) we are organising a memorial event for him later in the year.

- Introducing Mahasiddhi

Advent
Sangharakshita

I listened all day for the knock of the Stranger,
And I often looked out from the door.
The table was scrubbed, the brass shining,
And well swept the floor.

The shadows grew longer and longer,
In the grate the fire flickered and died.
`It's too late. He never will come now'
I said, and sighed.

I sat there musing and musing,
The spinning-wheel still at my side.
The moonlight came in through the window
White like a bride.

As the clock struck twelve I heard nothing
But felt He had come and stayed
Waiting outside. And I listened -
And I was afraid.

My ordination retreat took place within the context of a retreat concentrating on the mythic realm centring on the Refuge Tree – the visualisation meditation which builds up all aspects of Going For Refuge and which includes the Buddhas of past, present and future, the Boddhisattvas, the Arhants, Bhante’s (our teacher’s) teachers, the Dharma, the jinas (the five archetypal Buddhas) plus Vajrasattva, teachers of the past, the lotuses, the devas and the blue sky itself as well as oneself and all sentient beings, thus the whole cosmos across time. All this involves the encouragement and engagement of the imaginal. The imaginal, as the word implies, requires the imagination and is a completely different way of relating thought, emotion and intuition and melding them together. It is a spacious set of experiences where anything (and maybe everything!) can come up. And a fair amount did for me. I had a sense of presence for people not there or now dead. I felt like a huge space was opening up – well, it would have to be colossal in order to accommodate the Buddha! Furthermore, as I approached my private ordination and was doing the six element practice every day, there was definitely a sense of sloughing off an old (then current) version of ‘self’. This first week I spent going through a spectrum of emotions chiefly joy and fear, the fear as described in Bhante’s poem Advent.

My Private Ordination was magical. The private ordination is when you go alone to be ordained by one’s private preceptor, in my case, Vajragupta who gave the 10 precepts (instead of the 5 that are undertaken by a mitra), before whom I made 3 offerings of flower, candle and incense and where he witnessed me reciting the refuges and precepts. It is also the moment that I was given my new name along with the explanation of it. So I walked from the shrine room at Padmaloka along a candlelit walkway more like an airport runway to the kuta, the hut where I met with Vajragupta. At one point there is a choice of path. If I went to the right I could have pulled out and not gone with no hard feelings. But I stayed on course, one which I began nearly 6 years ago, but in many ways one I began 43 years ago. The symbolism and indeed reality of going it alone means that no one is forcing me, I am under no pressure and it is my choice. I go for ordination alone as I will die alone (thus linking with the 6 element practice). It also means that if no one else were to believe in the Buddha and Dharma I would go ahead and spread that word and set about building a sangha.

Inside the kuta, along with Vajragupta who was waiting for me were rupas of Buddhas and Boddhisattvas, and beautiful cloths and sparking gems as well as candles, flowers and incense. It was as if I had entered another world, and I had, one which had been partially created in the week prior in the prostration practice, 6 element practice and the pujas (ritual and devotion) which we had been doing. Thus it was in that place at that time at approximately 8.50 pm on Saturday 18 September Mahasiddhi was born.

My name means ‘Great Accomplishment or Success’. Vajragupta was much struck some years ago when on a day retreat on the worldly winds – pleasure – pain, loss – gain, fame – infamy, praise – blame, those kinds of oppositions which seem to determine our mood and sometimes a whole lot more besides – I said I was particularly buffeted about by the winds of Success and Failure. I have done a lot of things with my life. I guess we all have, but I have to admit that fear of failure and seeking success have been major drivers for me throughout my life. Briefly, having felt a failure at school, I started the world of work as a photographer when I was 15 before discovering the motivation to go grab some Promethean fire of education for myself, in part motivated by seeing the Sultanganj Buddha in Birmingham’s Museum and Art Gallery which in turn prompted me to read something on Buddhism. Then followed a long period of academic engagement before turning my attention to photography (originally as an academic interest) and spending over a decade as a sports photographer before drifting into other areas of photographic specialism. My new name has given me the opportunity to count my blessings and rejoice in them: my family and friendships chief among them.

But lest I should be tempted by the vanities (through the one half of praise and blame) to see myself in terms of great success, my name, most crucially for my practice, has a teaching or reminder in it, namely, to go beyond the samsaric world and seek the greater spiritual accomplishment of Equanimity way beyond the range of those worldly winds no matter how strong they blow and blast. I am beginning to see that my private Preceptor has given me a practice and a mandala that contains the whole of my life. Where I have been, who I have been and the potentiality of what or who I may become. It is also a very big coat that I love already enormously but it is way too big for me at the moment!

At the same time as being given my name, Vajragupta also gave me my sadhana practice: the Buddha – in my case – on whom I shall meditate for the rest of my life and seek to become. Yes it is a very big coat indeed. But I am so thrilled to be doing the Akshobhya practice, the practice of the blue Buddha to whom I have been drawn for so long already. So the period between ordinations was spent exploring these spaces even more: early days engaging with my sadhana, more 6 element practice and renunciation and shedding – or merely letting go.

The Public Ordination was a sheer delight. I was so much more nervous than I thought I’d be. Partly because with my family and friends (sangha and non-sangha) coming to witness my going for refuge and becoming part of the Triratna Buddhist Order and hearing my name for the time (because only Vajragupta and I knew it up till this point) I was concerned that all these parts of my life would come together. But I needn’t have worried. The whole retreat was about integration and this ceremonious celebration was the culmination. It was a sheer delight.

- Looking Forward to Ordination

In a week’s time I shall be on my ordination retreat at Padmaloka, the men’s retreat centre (near Norwich) for the Triratna Buddhist Order. It is only a fortnight long but represents the last staging post of the past six years since I asked for ordination. In part the process involves a spiritual death of the old Roy and the birth of the new whoever. All being well – there is always the caution of non-certainty where ordination is concerned – I shall be privately ordained in two weeks time when my private preceptor, Vajragupta, gives me my new name and I undertake to follow 10 precepts instead of 5 I currently follow as a mitra, and make 4 vows. This part of the ceremony represents the fact that I alone go for refuge to the three jewels of the Buddha, the Dharma (the Buddha’s teaching and the path) and the Sangha (the spiritual community I combine with). In just under a week after that I will – all being well – be ordained publicly by Padmavajra. When Padmavajra ordains me and the other ordinand, he is standing in for Bhante, our teacher, Urgyen Sangharakshita, who in turn is standing for Buddha. This public ordination expresses the fact that I am joining the Triratna Buddhist Order. I have witnessed and photographed only one ordination before and it was a powerful experience for all present not just for the ordinand at the time. It all takes place within the highly appropriate context of a retreat which explores the mythic dimensions of going for refuge.

I have just come back from China where I visited a number of Buddhist temples. It was good preparation for my ordination to be on land where Buddhism has established such deep and sinuous roots. I saw monks and nuns and heard chanting and accumulated lots of images of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Arahants and other significant icons such as the 4 Heavenly Kings. There were Chan versions, Tibetan and Theravadin styles. But all fingers seemed to be pointing at the same moon, the very same one which, hopefully, will be full for me on the 23^rd September.

- Penned Portraits: Homage à Penn

I went to see the Irving Penn Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery recently and thought I had seen the death of digital. Crystal clean and sparkling crisp printing and developing reminding me of all the qualities of silver halide that I had so quickly forgotten. The acutance that gives the sharp edges, a good black and a controlled highlight but above all the confidence to print dark.

I love digi and all the immediacy that comes with it and the enormous possibilities it affords for post production – certainly more than that in the days of conventional silver halide. It is so much more easy to work on parts of an image in terms of colour balance, exposure and sharpening let alone greater transformations of the original. And yet in Penn’s portraits the simplicity of the black and white image handled the challenges of available light so well. That’s all he worked with. That and his rapport with the subjects. In the shadow area, there is quite often a hint of highlight, a glint in the eye of the sitter catching some other highlight reflected. And yet there is the full gamut of greys represented. What is dark is meant to be, much like in Rembrandt’s work nicely poised in A Night Watch where the light doesn’t fall you can’t make out so well the objects that miss the passing lamp. Penn seems to have mastered these dark arts early on in the ‘40s before emulsions got more sophisticated and printing papers yielded more gradation and subtlety. This early apprenticeship served him throughout his career where neither his technical understanding and mastery nor eye for a pose imposed or patiently staked out deserted him.

I could still buy film now and paper I guess and try and get my Leitz Focomat enlarger back from the then young student I donated it to (whom I suspect hasn’t used it – why would she?) but how long for. Plus any large images commissioned now are digitised and printed either by ink jet or etched by laser onto a silver halide paper such as does the Lambda printer. So maybe talk of digital death is somewhat exaggerated. The prints are great though. As are Don McCullin’s in his exhibition at the Imperial war Museum, Manchester, Shaped by War. But his is another story.

- Suvannavira: To Russia with Metta

Recently I had the privilege of Suvannavira staying with me. He is a anagarika and as such lives a life of celibacy with no fixed abode, even though he occasionally participates in community living, and no career and very little in the way of goods and chattels. He is the embodiment of non-attachment and going forth. He is currently re-learning Russian which was his mother tongue but was lost when overlaid with English from the age of 4 when he came over to live in the UK. He intends to establish the teaching of the Buddha according to the interpretation and translation of Bhante Urgyen Sangharakshita. This project is a substantial undertaking, but if anyone can do it, Suvannavira can. He has been circulating friends and contacts with the details of the three Russian language websites so that they can be linked to, something which will increase their prominence and presence in web searches. So here is what he would like us to do if we are able.

The three sites are:

Russian fwbo.org http://russian.fwbo.org

Russian Wildmind http://russian.wildmind.org/

buddhayana.ru http://www.buddhayana.ru/

- this contains 4 books and the first year of the new Mitra study course.

However not many people access or look for these sites via search engines. What is needed are more links from other websites, so if you can add them to your website links page, this would help enormously.

Using ‘FWBO’ is becoming out of date as the new name change becomes widespread, and in due course it will be changed but for now, russian.fwbo.org http://russian.fwbo.org/ will be kept as it is.

Having websites in Russian visible with search engine will help Suvannavira greatly as he will imminently be living in Moscow and working for the Dharma there. ©www.roypeters.co.uk

- Some Dharma

I have had some good contact and quite a bit of input from Varasahaya and Vipulakirti relating to my scribbling on dharmic and Dharmic which has occasioned further reflection on my part. I was aware that I hedged around attempting a definition of Dharma and perhaps I was not as precise as I should have been. The main point I’d like now to say about what I said there is that Wordsworth’s words could be said more accurately to express something of the spiritual experience rather than be taken to express something of the Dharma.

What I didn’t say and which I think Vipulakirti amply furnishes is that to be fully Dharmic all four Noble Truths have to be present:

the truth of suffering/unsatisfactoriness,

the truth of the causes of suffering/unsatisfactoriness,

the truth of the cessation of suffering/unsatisfactoriness (Nirvana) and

the truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering/unsatisfactoriness.

Furthermore, Vipulakirti quoted an exchange between the Buddha and Mahaprajapati Gautami, which I find both useful and illuminating which goes something like this:

Lord, what is your teaching? There are so many different versions, so many interpretations. How are we to know what is the correct one? How are we to know what you really, truly taught? What is the criterion of your teaching, your Dharma?"

The Buddha's reply was quite unambiguous. He said,

Whatever conduces to purity, that is my teaching.
Whatever conduces to freedom, that is my teaching.
Whatever conduces to decrease of worldly gains and acquisitions, that is my teaching.
Whatever conduces to simplicity, that is my teaching.
Whatever conduces to contentment, that is my teaching.
Whatever conduces to individuality, that is my teaching.
Whatever conduces to energy, that is my teaching.
Whatever conduces to delight in good, that is my teaching.

© www.roypeters.co.uk

- dharmic & Dharmic

I frequently hear the use of the term ‘dharmic’. At least I talk a lot about certain things, events, occasions or possibilities as being ‘dharmic’. These may be poems, lines in poems, novels, bits of philosophy, films, or something from within the very fabric of life experience itself. Strictly speaking, dharmic should only be applied to what the Buddha said and taught and if it isn’t what the Buddha said and taught then it can’t be called Dharmic or emanating from the Dharma. Of course this canon might well extend to the great teachers including our own Sangharakshita. In that respect Dharmic becomes the adjective of Dharma. But I mainly use it – even when speaking – in the lower case. ‘dharmic’ in this sense relates to opportunities to perceive the Dharma in some way through a kind of portal which non-canonical non-Buddhist texts may point to or lead us towards.

Schopenhauer’s notion of causality, was succinctly expressed by A C Grayling on In Our Time, Radio 4 October 09, as ‘everything that is has to have been produced by a set of antecedent conditions’. This chimes in with pratitya samutpada or conditioned co-production.

So many of Wordsworth’s lines - especially some of those written above Tintern Abbey - talks about ‘the spirit that rolls through all things’ as in:

A motion and a spirit, that impels


All thinking things, all objects of all thought,


And rolls through all things.

In this expression of something transcendental, he could be taking about Going For Refuge on a cosmic scale!

Predating the Buddha, Dharma for Hindus was synonymous with the eternal law of the cosmos, thus in Sanskrit that is one of its meanings. It connotes habit, law, social and moral duty and behaviour consistent with this ‘eternal’ law. For Buddhists, it becomes the truth of non-dualistic reality.

Art, culture, the arts, the whole aesthetic will can lead us toward the Dharma and articulate it for us. Of the Four Visions (old age, sickness, death and the monk on the road with a serene expression) maybe all four are present and well expressed for dharma wayfarers (dharmacharis and dharmacharinis) but the absence of the 4^th sight means that such insights can only remain dharmic as opposed to Dharmic. In La Robe et L’Échelle, Cabrel sings of ‘ces portes qui donnent vers le ciel’ – opportunities for us to pass trough certain thresholds to another space and order of being.

Maybe there are Dharmic possibilities in every moment but it is only by cultivating awareness, compassion and wisdom and practising ethics and, yes, making the most of dharmic opportunities that we go towards that ideal and line up our practice with our ideals.©www.roypeters.co.uk