Ralph’s Neighborhood

Saturday was the first in a series of day workshops at The Maitri Project, our pastoral care project in Leicester. It was a Buddhist Christian Exploration Engaging with Faith. Partly the day was valuable to me, because it gave me the impetus to interrogate my own faith journey, and to see that I'm now in a position to begin to understand the spirit of faith that underlines religions other than Buddhism: To see religion as a journey towards something ineffable, and that by following the Buddha - we are making the same journey that he made towards the infinite, and to the deathless.

I think that we might all be making this journey, or encountering the infinite in moments, and that it is only the way we clothe this that differs, it is in our descriptions of the unborn, in our mechanical, human, words and ideas that we begin to diverge and it is in clinging to these deadly structures that danger lies.

One day, all interfaith conversations will be like this...
Participant - Buddhist Christian Dialogue.

On Sunday, 17th, Dharmavidya, Prasada, Susthama and I attended the celebration of the 23rd Anniversary of the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Peace Pagoda at Milton Keynes. The aim of the Nipponzan-Myōhōji order, a Nichiren order, is world peace, The first Peace Pagodas were built in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1966.

In my previous post, I spoke of my own mystical or spiritual experience. Now, briefly, I want to say provide some theoretical context for events like this.

There's a great deal of work being done by neurologists on brain/experience correlation, which is all fascinating stuff. So we can point to how the feelings evoked by an opening, are reflected in the brain chemistry, and blood flow and so on. It's difficult to deny the very real physical effects these have, and also the effects of spiritual practice, like mediation.  None of this is really very surprising, if you have  done a lot of mediation, you will probably notice that this affects your experiences of being in the world, how you think and feel and so on. And given where we currently stand in biology we'd expect to see these changes reflected in the brain.

There are a couple of interesting questions around for me at the moment, the first is simply this: although we see brain changes that correlate to experiences (spiritual or otherwise) - how do we bridge the gap between mechanics and our felt experience, our sense of being in the world? This is the classic 'hard problem' of consciousness studies.

There are lots of theories floating around, for example, the functionalists, Dennett and so on, say there's nothing to bridge, what we expiries is simply the result of brain activity, chemistry biology and physics.  Dr. Marshall, who presented a paper on Saturday, briefly mentioned another - that experience, or consciousness, is fundamental to this universe - as something happens, it is experienced, and the more complex the mechanism (like a brain) the more complex the experience. I quite like this, although there is little evidence to support this.

There really is no consensus at the moment.

What's more interesting to me is how we make meaning of our experiences; (again, spiritual or mundane)  do particularly powerful moments change our lives? Change our understanding of the world? Or do we use them to support our existing metaphysic?

Saturday I spent the day in London, at a conference organised by the Alister Hardy Trust a research centre for religious experiences.

A long day, in some ways and much too warm for me, but really interesting talks, and great to meet up with Tony from our London Sangha. There were three speakers, Dr. Paul Marshall, Dr. Peter Moore and Dr. Peter Fenwick. Marshall talked about mystical encounters with the natural world, Moore presented critical arguments  regarding the study of  the mystic ('Should it be limited to the mystic event?', 'Can study of events mean anything more than personal?' and so on) and Fenwick, Emeritus consultant Neuropsychiatric at the Maudsley - presented some recent studies of mind/brain correlation, and studies that suggest mind and consciousness is more expansive than the physical. All fascinating stuff.

Perhaps the most interesting event happened on the coach ride home, when I experienced my own 'opening' or mystical event.  Completely unasked for, and not striven for and separate from any specific practice:

I was warm, I still had the headache that had been plaguing me since the morning, and I couldn't settle in to reading any of the texts I had. I was scrolling though my mp3 player, skipping between different songs, I eventually let it rest with They Might be Giants.

Birdhouse in your soul

I'm not sure which track I was listening to, but gradually I became aware of feeling like my heart was opening like the petals of a lotus flower. I was completely at ease; I thought 'I hadn't realised that I had been tense before..'. I felt a great love for the whole world, I wanted to dance and sing (And I did, a little) and to run and hug everyone on the coach and tell them that everything was okay, just as it was. Better than okay even.

From here I was able to look back at my old, usual self and see what a fool I really was, how I had been caught by traps set by my own mind, and how to be able to love fully was the solution to all of these.  There was a sense of hyper reality.

Although I didn't experience any visual effects, there was a sense of heightened perception and of a great light (no actual light). My  body felt completely alive, high even, and I had the feeling that anything was possible. And that really things were much simpler that I had previously thought.

I also had the sense that a great light, or love was entering me through the top of my head, flowing into me and then being projected from my heart. This was a felt sensation rather than visual, and I almost had a sense that actually that wasn't what was really happening, just a way that I could comprehend the inexplicable.

I was ecstatic, and felt like a new person, connected to, but separate from my normal self, my usual being.  Put simply it felt like I was seeing this world as a Pureland and seeing all the things within as Buddhas.

These feelings, psychical and emotional, lasted for no more than an hour, (perhaps much shorter than this, looking back - I'm not sure) and I returned to my normal self, although feeling a little lighter, and more at ease.

It's difficult to know what triggered this, were the conditions set in place by the conference, and then triggered by the music? Much of what I described is common to many such experiences, although I have had similar before - prior to knowing anything about this are of study. Is the sense of ease I still have with me, an effect of those moments, or other external things which have changed for me, or that I have realised? probably a combination both.

I am left with a greater sense of faith, although I'm not sure in what, and a sense of fluidity, and acceptance  that whatever happens in this life, things really will be okay  in the end. And of course, something to add to the Alister Hardy library, and to our own research project.

Namo Amida Bu
 

From the BBC

The key to a happy relationship could be accepting that some miserable times are unavoidable, experts say.

Therapists from California State University, Fresno and Virginia Tech say accepting these problems is better than striving for perfection.

And they blame cultural fairytales and modern love stories for perpetuating the myth that enjoying a perfect relationship is possible.

The report was published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.

The pursuit of relationship nirvana can be potentially damaging Jan Parker

The authors, Dr Diane Gehart and Dr Eric McCollum say it is a "myth that, with enough effort we can achieve a state without suffering.

The pursuit of any nirvana, if by which you mean perfection in this world, can be damaging. Sound familiar? This is the First Noble Truth, that all the discomfort in life is ultimately unavoidable and that running away form this causes even more suffering.

For more on the noble truths see:

The Feeling Buddha

David Brazier

Taima Mandala

What's this desire for contact?
This yearning in my heart?
To turn away from silence,
Not to stay apart.

'Surround yourself with voices'
The voice inside me cries.
'Support yourself with bodies,
'A friend on every side'

If I rest in silence,
The only voice is mine,
And all its pained echo's
Across the fields of time.

So here is where the hurt is
And where I see my face
Stripped of every makeup,
In the quiet place.

Where screams are whispered softly
Across an endless sea,
Of all my karmic passions,
Here the dragons be.

This darkness seems unending;
No hope for me unless
There's something that's much greater
Something holy; blessed.

And light breaks through the darkness,
Golden threads of love;
A grace full of compassion,
Falling from above.

And though I cannot see its face,
Or know its truest name,
I hear the sound of Dharma
That sings, and sings again.

A symphony of melodies
From heavenly abodes,
Sweeter than the Deva's song,
The music that unfolds.

So now, in silent places,
Where still the pain lives on,
I know that I am held
By something from beyond.

Namo Amida Bu

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