A System Of Meditation

8/10/2019 A System Of Meditation

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A System of Meditation- Revisited

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Contents

Introduction & Prospect

Section 1. A System of Meditation an overview

in outline

what is meditation?

working effectively with temporal and spatial models

regular and irregular steps

the five basic methods of meditation

how to correlate the two different systems?

balanced effort

Section 2. The Four Stages of A System of Meditation

integration, positive emotion, spiritual death, spiritual rebirth

just sitting

Section 3. A System of Meditationcontextualised

the five principal stages of spiritual life

stage of vision

stage of transformation

stage of compassionate activity

traditional sources

Section 4. Related issues

mula yogas

vipashyana practice

other practices?

pure awareness practice Bodhisattvahood in time and space; Buddhahood in eternity

Appendices:

1. A System of Meditation

2. Meditation the expanding consciousness(excerpt);

3. Precious Garland Seminar (excerpt)

4. Nature of Sadhana and its relationship to Going for Refuge inthe Context of Ordination into the Western Buddhist Order

5. Notes on a forum on meditation between members of thePreceptors College and the Vajraloka teaching team, June 2000

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MEDITATION

Here perpetual incense burns

The heart to meditation turns,

And all delights and passions spurns.

A thousand brilliant hues arise,

More lovely than the evening skies,

And pictures paint before our eyes.

All the spirits storm and stress

Is stilled into a nothingness,

And healing powers descend and bless.

Refreshed, we rise and turn again

To mingle with this world of pain,

As on roses falls the rain.

Sangharakshita 1947


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Introduction

This booklet is being written 25 years afterSangharakshitas lecture A System ofMeditation1was given during the 1978 OrderConvention, just prior to the 10th anniversaryof the founding of the Order. My purpose isfairly modest: to contribute to this years Orderconvention by encouraging Order members tolook afresh at Sangharakshitas A System ofMeditation. To this end I have revisited theoriginal lecture and drawn together otherteaching of his relevant to meditation, mainlyquoting or paraphrasing from his lectures,seminars and writing. As a result there is aninevitable mixture of literary styles -something the reader will have to tolerate withgood humour. I am indebted to theconsiderable work of the Spoken Word editors

as well as Silabhadras transcribing work.

One of my concerns is to representSangharakshita accurately; I dont regardmyself as saying anything new or which thevast majority of us will not probably haveheard already. However, I am assuming that asignificant proportion of us may not haveanything other than a passing familiarity withA System of Meditation, which many will haveencountered in edited form in A Guide to theBuddhist Path. For those people in particular,I aim to highlight a good number, but not all,

of the basic points. Of course it is impossibleto treat the subject comprehensively: I cannotpresent everything that Sangharakshita haswritten about or said on all the differentaspects of meditation touched on in theoriginal lecture. This is certainly not thedefinitive last word on the subject. There arebound to be a number of loose ends, whichmay seem rather unsatisfactory to somereaders. Whilst I anticipate speakers on theConvention presenting their own particulartake on how to engage creatively with A

System of Meditation, my purpose is lessambitious. Here I want to stimulate you, thereader, to examine one of Sangharakshitasmore important teachings with a view togaining even greater clarity, perspective andconfidence in it, and renewed enthusiasm toexplore and practise it.

For some time there has been discussionwithin the Order and Movement about our

1held at Vinehall School, Robertsbridge, Sussex,

UK, on March 29th 1978, Sangharakshita, A

System of Meditation, Lecture No. 135 in theDharmachakra catalogue, also available from

www.dharmatranscripts.com

practice of meditation, and questioningwhether it is based on an effective model. Inmy view Sangharakshitas A System ofMeditationis more flexible, more inclusive andless prescriptive than some credit it with

being. I have faith that a great deal can beaccomplished by using it creatively. Wherethere is scope for improving on it, I propose itis mainly for practitioners with particularinterests to explore in greater depth some ofthe Systems implications. Beyond that Ibelieve that for many of us it is a simplematter of rising to the challenge of actuallyputting it into practice.

Ive enjoyed the opportunity to write thisinasmuch as my own understanding of thetopic has become much clearer; Ive also had

the good fortune to discuss withSangharakshita some points that Ive wishedto clarify. I am grateful to Kamalashila,Ratnaprabha, Subhuti, Tejananda, Varamitra,Vidyamala, Vidyasuri and Viveka for theircontributions to this project.

prospect

Section One explores the general principlesinforming A System of Meditation, and how towork with it practically. To gain a quick

overview of the original lecture, immediatelybelow are relevant excerpts from that lecturewhich outline the four principal stages ofmeditation envisaged by this system. (Averbatim transcript of A System of Meditationis included in the appendices).

Section Two explores each of these principalstages more fully. The first half of SectionThree considers another closely relatedteaching of Sangharakshitas which shedslight on the principles of the system; thesecond half establishes the systems

traditional antecedents in early Buddhistteaching. The final section goes on to exploresome questions that arise when relating thissystem to other forms of traditional practice.

Unfortunately due to pressure of time its beenimpossible to identify the page numbers of allquotes from Unedited Seminars for thereferences in the footnotes.


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Table 1: Sangharakshitas A System of Meditation

STAGE Awareness

&Integration

PositiveEmotion

SpiritualDeath

SpiritualRebirth

PRACTICE(S)

Mindfulnessof Breathing

Jus

tSitting

mettabhavana

karunabhavana

muditabhavana

upeksabhavana

Jus

tSitting

Recollection of the

Six Elements

Recollection ofImpermanence

Recollection ofDeath

ContemplatingConditionality: the24 nidanachain

Reflection on

sunyata

Jus

tSitting

Visualisation

&

mantrarecitation

Jus

tSitting


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Section 1. A System of Meditation an overview

A System of Meditationin outline

...[Im going to] take up the different methodsof meditation current in the Order, current inthe Movement, and see in what way they linkup into a series. In fact, into what I havecalled perhaps a trifle ambitiously asystem. That is to say, an organic system, aliving system, not a dead, mechanical systemput together in an artificial manner. ... [Weneed to be] clear as to how, if at all, they [the

meditation practices] are related, how theylink up, how they are interconnected. ... Whatwe need is a progressive arrangement; anarrangement that takes us forward step bystep and stage by stage, and its thisthat weare concerned with now. We are concernedwith the methods of meditation as a definiteprogressive sequence, a cumulativesequence.

... [We] see there are four great stages, fourgreat turning points. The first great stage isthe stage of integration. That's the first thing

you must do in connection with meditation integrate. Integration is achieved mainlythrough Mindfulness of Breathing, as well aswith the help of mindfulness and awareness ingeneral. Here, in this stage, we develop anintegrated self.

... Then secondly, the stage of emotionalpositivity. This is achieved mainly through thedevelopment of Metta, Karuna, Mudita, andso on. Here, the integrated self is raised to ahigher, more refined, at the same time morepowerful level.

... Thirdly, the stage of spiritual death,achieved mainly through the Recollection ofthe Six Elements, as well as through theRecollection of Impermanence, Death, and soon, as well as the sunyatameditations. Herethat refined self is destroyed, or, rather isseen through, and we experience sunyata.

... Fourthly, comes the stage of spiritualrebirth; and this is achieved through thevisualisation and mantra recitation practice;abstract visualisation, as we may call it, alsohelps; that is to says the visualisation ofgeometric forms and letters.

[Lastly] ... one must be careful that [all] thisconscious effort [exerted in these othermeditations] does not become too willed,even too wilful, and in order to counteract thistendency, in order to guard against thispossibility, we can practisejust sitting. Inother words, practise just sitting in betweenthe other methods, ... [i.e.] taking hold of /letting go, ... action / non-action. In this waywe achieve a perfectly balanced practice ofmeditation, a perfectly balanced spiritual life,

and in this way the whole system ofmeditation becomes complete.2

2Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation


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what is meditation?

To summarise the outline of Sangharakshitaslecture given above, we could say thatmeditation starts with the process of cultivatingawareness or mindfulness, and consequentlybecoming more integrated. On the basis ofthis, we develop positive emotion. Then thehappy, healthy, mature human being who hascome about as a result of meditating in thisway has to die spiritually, and thereby entersthe phase of spiritual rebirth. A System ofMeditationdescribes how to progresssystematically in meditation from earlybeginnings to a more fully developed andcomplete practice. It describes the keyelements that can progressively unfold and becultivated.

More generally speaking, meditation is thesubjective way of raising, so to speak, ourlevel of consciousness, which we do byworking directly on our mind itself.3There maybe a temptation to think of meditation in termsof technique. Even though technique verydefinitely has to be learned and mastered,meditation is not so much a science ordiscipline as an art, and in this art, as in allothers, it is inner experience rather thantechnique which is all-important. If we grab atthe end result without being willing to engagewith the actual process, we will never get it. It

is even possible to master all the techniques ofmeditation at least of concentration and tobe able to go through all the exercises, but toremain very far from the real spirit ofmeditation.4

Sangharakshita speculates that this was,effectively, what the Buddha-to-be realised,when he recollected his childhood experienceof spontaneously entering into the first dhyana,and understood that this was the key toEnlightenment. It is otherwise difficult tounderstand what such an elementary spiritual

experience might signify to one who hadapparently entered into such heights as theformless dhyanasunder his former teachers,without feeling that he had attained the goal towhich he aspired. What he realised was thathis previous mastery of meditation had beenforced, and that this was why it had notachieved his end. Progress had been made,but only part of Siddhartha had been involvedin that progress because it had been3Sangharakshita, Human Enlightenment, What

Meditation Really Is, Windhorse, 1980, p. 374after Sangharakshita, No. 33 Meditation the

expanding consciousness,dharmatranscripts

produced through sheer willpower. It was notso much the first dhyanain itself that was theanswer, but the natural manner in which hehad entered into that state. The answer was toallow a natural unfolding of the whole being to

take place.5

Our motivation in meditation is crucial: why dowe want to do it? Meditation only really worksif we want to change, and to the extent towhich we embrace that change. Our motivealso plays a crucial role in how we experiencethe results of practice. For example, if what wereally want is pleasure, happiness or bliss,then our ensuing experience will mirror thismotive. Essential as these are to Buddhistmeditation, such positive experience will beshort-lived if it has no genuine foundation in

commitment to an evolution in our wholecharacter and outlook: our philosophy of life.6

In meditation we choose to create anuninterrupted flow of skilful mental states7whether we are sitting, walking, standing, ordoing anything else with a view to ourbecoming increasingly enlightened. As suchmeditation involves much more than what wethink of as sitting on the cushion. In fact, whatwe do outside of actual sitting practice goeshand-in-hand with what we do on the cushion,the one affecting the other; we set off on the

wrong foot if we compartmentalise ourmeditation practice(s) off from the rest of ourlifes activities. The states of mind that weexperience through our actions during the day,and during the course of our life in general, willbe the ones we have to address in ourmeditation, whatever they are. If we aredistracted, unreflective, self-indulgent andreactive in our daily life, then that is what weneed to work with; we should not forceourselves into the opposite direction in ourmeditation. If we do, we may even get someshort-lived results. But this is not the Buddhist

way which comes from the wish to bring abouta total transformation of our being. 8

5after Sangharakshita, from an early version of an

edited manuscript of a seminar on the Satipatthana

Sutta and Questions and Answers based on the

Satipatthana sutta; the final version of this

manuscript is published as Sangharakshita, Living

with Awareness, Windhorse, Aug. 2003. Hence

page numbers unfortunately are not available.6ibid.,7Sangharakshita, Door of Liberation, Unedited

Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, p. 2728Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript on the

Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)


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working effectively with temporal andspatial models

Why did Sangharakshita go to the trouble offormulating a system at all? Its worth notingthat the title A System of Meditationspecifically indicates this isAsystem that is,

one of potentially a number. In other words,Sangharakshita is not suggesting that this isthe only system of meditation possible. In theoriginal lecture, he explained: [Im going to]take up the different methods of meditationcurrent in the Order, current in the Movement,and see in what way they link up into a series.I don't propose to take up absolutely all themethods of meditation that are currentamongst us, but certainly all the moreimportant and widespread and well-knownones. And in this way I hope to be able to givean outline of the system of meditation. Thedetails you should be able to fill in foryourselves from your own experience. ... All ofyou have practised some of them, and some ofyou might have practised all of them. But youmight not be very clear as to how, if at all, theyare related, how they link up, how they areinterconnected. ... What we need is aprogressive arrangement; an arrangement thattakes us forward step by step and stage bystage, and its thisthat we are concerned withnow. We are concerned with the methods ofmeditation as a definite progressive sequence,

a cumulative sequence.9

Sangharakshitas system describestherelationship between parts of a seamlesswhole: the dynamic of relations betweenparticularly salient features of the meditatorsevolving experience. Importantly, the nature ofwhat is being described is organic: it is aliveand not inert or mechanical. A system is ineffect a model or map of living reality, oftenusing or implying an image to describe itscomplexity. Here the system describes atemporal progression a cumulative sequence

of stages through time of the meditatorchanging, evolving and transforming. How weengage with these descriptions is crucial. Theproblem is more in our own minds than in themodels we use: it is our tendency to take ideasliterally: to take models of things for the thingsthemselves, so to speak; to take the picture ofwhat is going on for what is going on. Evenwith an aspect of ourselves that is clearlyobservable, the physical body, the reality of itsworkings is almost impossible to envisage ...10

9Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation10Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript on the

To work effectively with Sangharakshitas ASystem of Meditation, we need an attitude ofcreative flexibility that intuits the spiritintended. Although systems lend themselvesto being tabulated, a table puts experience inboxes, correlating one labelled box withanother. Consequently we can all too easilysuccumb to the temptation of interpreting atable with an over-literal mind. Rigid formalismsqueezes the life out of what is intended toconvey a fluid interdependence betweenconnecting parts of a functioning organicentity ourselves.

To help to make A System of Meditationasrelevant as possible to us Sangharakshita hasused contemporary English terms to describethe cumulative sequence of progressivestages in meditative experience. This isreminiscent of the new terms he devised todescribe the dhyanas: integration, inspiration,permeation and radiation. Sangharakshitaexplained why has he done this: We havedevised fresh English names perhaps moretruly communicative, meaningful andsignificant ... than the original Pali and Sanskritterms. ... This is the sort of way in which wehave been trying to 'naturalise' Buddhism; notto speak ... in an abstract, analytical,psychological sort of way, not even so muchnowadays in terms of poetic metaphor, but inthis very plain, straightforward way.11One

downside of using English terms in this way isthat it may not be immediately obvious to whatextent they are based in traditional Buddhistteaching. However, A System of Meditationisfirmly based in the Buddhist tradition, such asthe Five Paths, as I show in the second half ofSection Three.

In his lecture Sangharakshita deliberatelychooses a temporalmodel, speaking of ASystem of Meditationin terms of progressingthrough time, as it were, from one stage of atask to the next. We can liken this to following

a cooking recipe the dish were makingprogressively taking on new forms in theprocess of transformation from raw ingredientsto completion. The advantage of this temporalway of looking at meditation is that it helps usto know what to do next: not only can we getperspective of where we are now in theprocess and what we need to do to developour current experience more fully, we can alsoanticipate what is the next stage in ourpractice. In order to bring about that next stage

Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)11Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation


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we can either take up a new practice, or lookfor a new way with which to engage with ourexisting practice(s).

The last point is important to a fullerunderstanding of this System. What is clearerin later exposition is Sangharakshitas

distinction between the four key stages (ofintegration, positive emotion, spiritual deathand rebirth), and the practices he recommendsas being the best one(s) to develop thosestages. When he refers to these practices askeypractices in the lecture, he does notmeanthat they are the only way to develop thesestages. For example, integration is not oneand the same thing as the mindfulness ofbreathing practice. The latter is helpful, and inSangharakshitas view a very importantpractice in developing integration, but it is notthe only way; other practices can achieve thistoo. The same can be said of the mettabhavanaas a way to achieve positive emotion,and so on.12

Therefore, contrary to a commonmisunderstanding of what Sangharakshita issaying, to progress through the four stagesdoes notnecessitate doing all the practicesmentioned in the lecture. In principle,developing the four distinct stages ofmeditation can be achieved using any one (ormore) of the practices Sangharakshita

mentions, as summarised in Table 2, or indeedany other genuinely effective meditationpractice. The mindfulness of breathing or thesix element practice, for example, could beused as a the sole means of progressingthrough all these four stages. But to do so thepractice(s) would have to be developed quiteconsciously in ways in which the standardbeginners version of the practice is notdescribed.13It is clear that in the case of theanapana-satimethod there is a well-developedtradition, based on the Pali suttas14, whichdoes indeed develop very methodically in such

a way as to enable the practitioner to progress,in effect, through the four stages. Whilst suchtraditional approaches map out a completepath in their own terms, if we useSangharakshitas system as a means of

12after Sangharashita, unrecorded seminar,

November 200213ibid.,14see Satipatthana Sutta, MN. 10; DN 22.

Anapana-sati Sutta, MN. 118; Rosenberg, Breath

by Breath, Shambala, 1998; Buddhadasa Bhikkhu,

Mindfulness with Breathing, Wisdom, 1996,Nyanaponika Thera, The Heart of Buddhist

Meditation, Rider, 1980

interpreting what is most essential in them, thiswill help us to make them particularly effectivetools.

Table 2: A System of Meditation: practiceswith stages of meditation

Mindfulness of Breathing

Awareness Positive Emotion Spiritual Death Spiritual Rebirth

Metta bhavana Awareness Positive Emotion

Spiritual Death Spiritual Rebirth

Recollection of the Six Elements, Recollectionof Impermanence, Recollection of Death,Contemplating Conditionality: the 24 nidanachain, Reflection onsunyata

Awareness Positive Emotion Spiritual Death Spiritual Rebirth

Visualisation & mantra recitation Awareness Positive Emotion Spiritual Death Spiritual Rebirth


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regular and irregular steps

It would be easy to conclude that we can only move on from an earlier to a later stage assay, from Integration to Positive Emotion once the earlier is fully developed. But how would weknow when that was? Fortunately this is only theoretical because spiritual life is not schematic

but governed by spiral conditionality. One of the characteristics of a spiral is that it traverses thesame ground, so to speak, again and again, but each time at a higher level. As we practiseshamathameditation, we have some experience, let's say, of the dhyanas. Then having becomerelatively integrated and emotionally positive, we experience spiritual death through the practiceof the six element meditation. After experiencing that to some extent, we then experience rebirththrough the visualisation practice, but again only to some extent.

So in actual practice we dont gocompletely through one stage first,perfecting that, and then completelythrough the next. To do so would befollowing the path of regular steps verystrictly, but that is not actually what

happens. We go round and round,again and again, each time on a higherlevel: having been reborn, we are ableto be more integrated and emotionallypositive; consequently we are able todie spiritually to an even greaterextent; dying to an even greater extentwe're spiritually reborn more truly. Wego on in this way until we have the fullexperience of integration and positiveemotion followed by the full experienceof spiritual death, followed by the full

experience of spiritual rebirth.

15

What Sangharakshita describesabove is effectively the nature of theprogressive sequence of spiralconditionality, which this diagramattempts to summarize.

15

after Sangharakshita, Mitra Retreat 1985 , Unedited Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, pp. ??


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the five basic methods of meditation

In A System of MeditationSangharakshita explicitly draws out how thissystem is different to an earlier model that appears in Yogi ChensMeditation, Systematic and Practical.16He used this eleven yearsearlier in 1967 in his lecture, Meditation The ExpandingConsciousness17, given within months of the founding of the FWBO.

(See appendix 2, for an extract from the original lecture.) He calledthis The Five Basic Methods of Meditation; each one of the fivemethods not only developing a positive spiritual quality but also beingthe antidote to a particular mental poison.18(See Table 4 below19).

He states: the relationship between the methods is, as it were,spatial20rather than temporal. Here you don't, as it were, progressfrom one method to another; the methods are all, as it were, on thesame level, arranged like a sort of pentad21 similar to his spatialarrangement of the Five Spiritual Faculties.22 Whichever practice wechoose to do at one particular time is taken up because we want todevelop a particular spiritual quality counteractive to a currentlyprevailing mental poison. For example, we practise the mindfulness of

breathing both to counteract distraction and to develop awareness andconcentration; or, we may decide to do the mettabhavanaboth tocounteract aversion and to develop loving kindness.

Table 4: The Five Basic Methods of Meditation

MeditationType

Meditation MethodCounteracts

PoisonDevelops

Mindfulness of Breathing Distractionmindfulness, awareness,

concentrationTranquillity

(shamatha) metta bhavana Hatred metta

Contemplation of Impurity orDecay

Craving Inner peace and freedom

Six Element Practice Conceit clarity regarding nature of self

Insight

(vipashyana)

Contemplation of Conditionalit Ignorance wisdom

16C.M. Chen, Meditation, Systematic and Practical, published privately, 1980, p.12117Lecture No. 33, Dharmachakra, or dharmatranscripts. See also Sangharakshita, What is the Dharma, Ch.

11, The Threefold Path: Meditation, Windhorse 1998, pp. 181 200; and Sangharakshita, A Guide to the

Buddhist Path The Five Basic Methods of Meditation, Windhorse 1996, pp. 151 15418Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation19after Kamalashila, Meditation The Buddhist Way of Tranquillity and Insight, Windhorse 1999, pp. 191ff -

this table is not an exact copy of Kamalashilas but follows the terminology of the original lecture. However

there is no contradiction, as Kamalashilas discussion clarifies. See also: Sangharakshita,A Guide to the

Buddhist Path, The Five Basic Methods of Meditation, Windhorse, 1996, p. 151ff20Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation21Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation22

faith (sraddha) counterbalancing wisdom (prajna), and concentration (samadhi) counterbalancing energy(virya), (each pair forming, as it were, opposing poles of two lines crossed at right angles), all balanced by

mindfulness (smrti), (at the centre of the crossed lines). See also last paragraph of Section 3 in this booklet.


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how to correlate the two different systems?

Two different systems using a number of common terms raiseobvious questions as to their relationship: to what extent dothey complement or contradict one another, and how do wework with both? I have tried to correlate the two systems belowin a manner of one-to-one correspondences. But this is notwholly satisfactory since it not only leaves out the stage ofSpiritual Rebirth as well as Visualisation and mantra recitationpractices, but also the practice(s) of reflecting on sunyata. Theattempt is Procustean, falling foul of literalism.

However using both systems side-by-side need not confuse.The two complement one another insofar as one emphasisesprimarily the temporal perspective, the other primarily thespatial. Such a distinction as between temporal and spatial canonly be provisional simply because time and space being thetwo principal dimensions into which discriminativeconsciousness (vijnana) bifurcates necessarily go hand-in-hand; each system has both. Sangharakshita introduced thesecond system to give a different perspective. Consequently wecan use each system to examine and work with our experiencefrom a distinct point of view. With two perspectives we canmore accurately orientate ourselves in terms of both our currentexperience, and what we might choose to do next. They alsohelp us decide whether what we are doing now is contributingto our overall progress.

Table 5: The two systems correlated?

MeditationType Meditation Method CounteractsPoison Develops

Mindfulness of Breathing Distractionmindfulness,concentration

Awareness &IntegrationTranquillity

(shamatha)metta bhavana Hatred metta

PositiveEmotion

Contemplation of Impurity orDecay

Recollection of Impermanence

Recollection of Death

CravingInner peace and

freedom

Six Element Practice Conceitclarity regarding

nature of self

Insight

(vipashyana)

Contemplation ofConditionality

Ignorance wisdom

Spiritual Death


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The temporal emphasis of A System ofMeditationadopts the perspective of anevolving, developing organism. But it isimportant to understand that the nature of thegrowth is not a mechanical addition of onepart to another, like bricks being stacked to

make a wall. Later forms of the organismarise in dependence upon, and areconditioned by, earlier forms just as anadults body grows out of a childs.Furthermore, what is a dominant feature atone stage of growth may be rather moreimplicit than overt at another as for examplewith a cakes sugar, eggs and flour before andafter being mixed and baked.23The qualitiesdeveloped in an earlier stage of meditationare integral to the development of the laterstage(s), and yet in the process of those laterstages developing they become radicallyrefined. This means that our understanding ofwhat is involved by way of practice willchange, perhaps even very radically,depending on how much we transformourselves. The challenges of developingintegration and positive emotion, for example,will be very different depending on how far wehave progressed.

By contrast, the spatial emphasis employed inThe Five Basic Methods of Meditationencourages a holistic perspective of our

minds at any one momentin time. To whatextent are mindfulness, metta, tranquillity,wisdom and a clarity regarding the nature ofself present, in contradistinction to distraction,enmity, craving, conceit and ignorance? Touse the analogy of a plant, a spatial viewgives us an overview of the relationshipbetween all the important factors contributingto the plants vitality at any one point in time.The whole plant requires requires a correctbalance of water, sunlight, temperature,minerals, pH, etc. Where there is animbalance, we can act appropriately to

redress it.

Sangharakshita seems to have developed anappreciation of the difference between theseemphases for the first time in the early fifties.He recounts: While I listened enthralled,Lama Govinda explained how one took upfirst one kind of spiritual practice, thenanother, in accordance with the various needsof ones developing spiritual life. It was not,however, that on taking up a new practice one

23

It is interesting to note that the literal translationof samskrta, normally translated as conditioned, is

confected.

discarded the old practice and put it behindone, so to speak. What one did was add thenew practice to the old and incorporate bothin a higher unity. In this way ones meditationor spiritual practice would, over the years,gradually become an ever richer and morecomplex thing. As Lama Govinda spoke, I hada vision of petal being added to petal, or facetto facet, until one had a thousand-petalledrose or a thousand-faceted crystal ballcomplete in all its glory. What Lama Govindawas doing, of course, was speaking ofmeditation or spiritual practice, indeed, ofthe spiritual life itself in terms of the gradualbuilding up of a mandala. In other words, hewas speaking of it not only in terms of timebut in terms of space. Hitherto I had thoughtof it as a progression from stage to stage, orlevel to level. Now I also saw it as unfolding

from an ever more truly central point into anever increasing number of different aspectsand dimensions.24

In ASurvey of BuddhismSangharakshitaexplores a traditional approach to these twoperspectives. He makes a distinction betweenspatio-analytical, and dynamic-syntheticalpractices; the two acting as complementaryapproaches to cultivating insight so as todestroy the twofold nature of ignorance(avidya). A practice such as analysis of thefive skandhas, or recollection of impurity and

decay are a good examples of the former.This proceeds by analysing the phenomena ofour experience into ever smaller constituentparts; thereby demonstrating that phenomenaare always composite, and that nowhere canwe find any thing so minute that it cannot befurther subdivided. In doing this we come tosee how we usually wrongly misconstrue ourexperience, and more pertinently our sense ofself, as possessing a fundamentallyunchanging, and self-sustaining essence. Byrevealing the components of our experience

to be a transitory assemblage of evanescentparts, their unreality, save as mere names,becomes evident. The purpose of the practiceis to break our attachment to wholes.25

The dynamic-synthetical approach to practiceexplores how every thing arises independence on a multiplicity of conditions,thereby demonstrating how nothing lives or

24Sangharakshita Facing Mount Kanchenjunga,

Windhorse, 1991, p. 28025

after Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism,Ch. 1 Section 12: The True Nature of Dharmas,

Windhorse, 2001, pp. 120 5


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moves by its own power.26It is more temporalin character, as in the case of reflecting on thenidanasequence where we think in terms ofsuccession of experiences, or components ofthem: in dependence upon A, B arises; whenA ceases, B ceases.27

The two approaches are interconnected:between the parts into which a given objectmay be analysed, a number of relations exist;similarly, the relations between objects maybe analysed into different kinds. The twoapproaches are ultimately one, pointingbeyond themselves to an insight into thenature of things. The six element practice is agood example, inasmuch as we analyse ourexperience of our self into the constituentelements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Space andConsciousness. At the same time weacknowledge how each exists in dependenceupon the others, and how, when we let go ofour attachment and possessiveness towardthem, we become free.28

balanced effort

The complementary nature of these twosystems of meditation is integral to theBuddhist approach to spiritual practice ingeneral. Buddhism not only teaches abalanced spiritual ideal, emphasising a

number of apparently contrasting qualitiessuch as faith and wisdom, but also recognisesthat to progress spiritually we have to developin a balanced way.

For example, when trying to develop the fivespiritual faculties, if faith is not balanced bywisdom it can become blind and fanatical. Ifwisdom is not balanced by faith it can becomeas dry as dust. If energy is not balanced byconcentration and meditation it can becomerestlessness. And if concentration andmeditation are not balanced by vigour, they

can degenerate into sloth and torpor.29

So,this is the nature of following the spiritualpath at any stage. If you start by developing26after Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism,

Ch. 1 Section 12: The True Nature of Dharmas,

Windhorse, 2001, pp. 120527after Sangharakshita, The Three Jewels

Womens Q&A 1985, Unedited Seminar On,

dharmatranscripts, pp. (3J180)28after Sangharakshita, A Survey of Buddhism,

Ch. 1 Section 12: The True Nature of Dharmas,

Windhorse, 2001, pp. 120529

after Sangharakshita, Buddhist Life & Work,Lecture No. 30, Dharmachakra &

dharmatranscripts

faith, sooner or later you will have to developthe balancing quality, wisdom and viceversa.30

Sangharakshita observes: Buddhist spirituallife is the balanced life at the highest possiblelevel, in the broadest possible sense. If were

not trying to be balanced then were not reallypractising Buddhism. Being Buddhist reallymeans always trying to avoid slipping intoextremes, or rather rising above the tendencyto slide to one extreme or the other. It meanslooking for a point of balance, the pivot orfulcrum, as it were, between, or rather above,the extremes. And we do this through theexercise of mindfulness31; mindfulness isitself the balancing agent. It is only throughmindfulness that we can balance faith andwisdom, energy and meditativeconcentration.32 But this is not to say thatmindfulness can be said ever to stand alonein any literal sense. In practice we cant reallyhave any one faculty without also having theothers, even if in a lesser degree. They are allpresent. One of them may predominate, butthe fact that it is there at all means that theothers are there, at least embryonically. Andthe spiritual effectiveness with which anyfaculty operates will depend on the degree towhich it is balanced by the others.33

Similarly we can apply this perspective to both

A System of Meditationand The FiveMethods of Meditation,seeking to find abalance of spiritual qualities, avoidingextremes, and recognising the inherent spiralnature of the meditative process.

30Sangharakshita, The Bodhisattva Ideal

Wisdom & Compassion in Buddhism, Windhorse

1999, p.4531Sangharakshita, What is the Dharma,Windhorse

1998, p. 15632after Sangharakshita, Buddhist Life & Work,

Lecture No. 3033Sangharakshita, What is the Dharma,Windhorse

1998, p. 156


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14

MEDITATION ON A FLAME

Twisting, writhing, leaping,Low curtseying, ne'er the same,

Burns in its silver cresset,

Blue-eyed, a tawny flame.

Life from the air receiving,

Light to the world it gives;

No winds its pride extinguish:

Because it yeilds it lives.

Yet drop by drop, in darkness,

Consumeth that whereon

Its bright fantastic beauty

Must feed, or else begone.

For whether fire or water,

Earth, air, or flower or stone,

The seen lives from the Unseen,

The known on the Unknown.

And man, within whose bosom

Lurks the subtlest flame of all,

Must feed on The Undying

Or flicker, fade and fall

Must feed on The Undying,

On that which has no name,

But which the Dark Sage calleth

'An Ever-Living Flame'.

Sangharakshita


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Section 2. A System of Meditation the four stages

In this section my purpose is simply tointroduce each of the stages, picking outsome highlights from Sangharakshitasteaching on meditation and the Dharma thatseem particularly relevant and significant.Each introduction gives an overview; but ofcourse much more could be said: both interms of Sangharakshitas thinking inconnection with these themes, and in terms ofexpanding on them in new and interestingways.

stage 1. integration

Mindfulness, or awareness effectivelysynonymous terms are the alpha andomega of spiritual life: the first thing you mustdo in the spiritual life is to be aware ofyourself. The next thing, and the next thingafter that, is to continue to be aware ofyourself.34Awareness is integral to all fourstages of A System of Meditation. Each stageof the system spells out the implications ofdeveloping mindful, aware, integration withincreasing depth, significance and radicaleffect. The labels of integration, emotional

positivity, spiritual death, and spiritualrebirth draw our attention to the particularcharacter of this seamless process as itunfolds.35

With growing awareness and integrationcomes growing individuality. Individuality isessentially integrated. ... [The notion of]unintegrated individuality is a contradiction interms.36To the extent we remainunintegrated, we are just a jumble ofconflicting desires, even conflicting selves,loosely tied together with the thread of a

name and an address!37Our fragmentednature becomes particularly apparent whenwe sit down to meditate - and can make it allthe harder to do so effectively. Knitting thevarious selves together through mindfulness,

34Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript on the

Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)35after Sangharashita in an unrecorded study

seminar, November 200236Sangharakshita, The Precious Garland,

Unedited Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, pp. 33734237ibid.,

we overcome conflict and disharmony withinourselves, we get ourselves functioning as a

smoothly working whole38

and build astrengthened sense of continuity. Ourdifferent energies, interests, desires do notwork against another; because all ourenergies start working co-operatively, allflowing in effectively the same direction, wecan commit ourselves more fully, and therebyprogress.39

The far-reaching nature of awareness, andhence integration, is of course spelt out in theteachings of the Four Foundations ofMindfulness of the SatipatthanaSutta,40as

well as Sangharakshitas Four Dimensions ofAwareness.41We may start by being mindfulof our breath (anapana-sati), but that is onlythe beginning.42With this key meditationpractice we first learn to become increasinglyaware of our body and then extend this to ourinternal life, to how our mind works, to ourfeelings, emotions, and thoughts, andexternally we apply this within our dailyactivity, and particularly to our involvementwith others. As the process becomesincreasingly penetrating so we begin to

discern the true nature of how things reallyare shining through everything. Thisdeveloping awareness is transformative: wechange. Life and meditation merge.43

There is a great deal more to mindfulnessthan simple awareness or concentratedattention. A fuller understanding of threeclosely associated terms, smrti(concentration, undistractedness, recollectionand memory being some of the more

38ibid.,39

after Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation40Four Foundations of Mindfulness (satipatthana)

are: awareness of the Body (kaya) and its

movements; awareness of feelings (vedana),

whether painful, pleasant or neutral; awareness of

thoughts or mind (citta); awareness of mental

objects (dhamma)41Sangharakshitas Four Dimensions of

Awareness are: of things, or environment; of

oneself (including, potentially, all the objects of the

satipatthanaformulation); of people; of Reality. See

Sangharakshita, Vision and Transformation,

Windhorse, 1999, p. 123ff42Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation43after Sangharashita in an unrecorded study

seminar, November 2002


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16

important denotations), samprajanya(clearcomprehension44) and apramada (alertness,or literally non-heedlessness), helps to drawout the radical implications.Awareness isactive and intelligent; it involvesunderstanding how what we are doing issuited to both our immediate task and ourbroader spiritual vision and goal. It is alsocreative, in actively choosing how to engageto a spiritually productive effect. Crucially,through hard experience we learn anawareness of the conditions that supportmindfulness and those that undermine it, aswell as developing the ability to actively guardthose conditions. Our practice involves beingaware of the significance of cultivatingawareness, of why we need to be aware andintegrated not just in terms of its overallimpact on our lives, but in the particular detail

of our everyday life. In this way we remainaware of where, minute by minute, and day byday, mindfulness is taking us. Throughreflecting upon our progress in developing thisquality, we become increasingly aware of theeffects of bringing it to the centre of our life.True mindfulness isat the same time free,spontaneous and joyful.45

A major consequence of cultivatingawareness is that we integrate the whole ofour self: our intellect, emotions and volition,thereby realising our heights and depths. This

begins with horozontal integration, describedearlier in terms of harmonizing our differentselves; and continues with verticalintegration, in the course of which engagewith the second stage ofA System ofMeditation. In the course of verticalintegration, we transform our deeper emotionsand drives, and develop increasinglysignificant meditative experience, particularlyvia absorption in dhyana. All this helps us todirectly experience the impact of the Dharmain our lives.46

But how do we become more aware? Often,the painful consequences of our previous lackof awareness make us aware of having been

44after Subhuti, 1) of functional clarity, 2) of

purpose i.e. means and ends consonant, 3)

suitability of continuity of practice and endeavour,

4) reality45after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript on

the Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)46after Sangharakshita, What is the Sangha? the

nature of spiritual community, Windhorse, 2000, p.

107ff; see also, Sangharakshita, HumanEnlightenment, What Meditation Really Is,

Windhorse, 1980, p. 42

unaware; awareness is forced upon us, as itwere, by dukkha. We then are painfully awareof the need to be more mindful in the future.Our job is to make the most of each momentof mindfulness, not waste it in fruitless regretsabout the period of unmindfulness it hassucceeded, or in grandiose fantasies aboutthe transformed practice it is heralding.47Ofcourse we learn this as one of the essentialskills of how to meditate.

The difficulty with painful feeling is that weprefer not to experience it. Consequentlythere is a tendency to develop a type ofawareness with not much feeling; this is whatSangharakshita identifies as alienatedawareness. At the other extreme, we canhave feelingful experience but with littleawareness. In alienated awareness welooking atourselves, or are aware ofourselves, so to speak, from a distance,without actually feelingourselves, especiallyour emotions. In cultivating integratedawareness what we aim to do is to bring aheightened feeling and a heightenedawareness brought together: 'feeling withawareness, awareness with feeling'; feelingand awareness coalesce. It is not so much anawareness offeeling but an awareness withfeeling, even an awareness in the midstoffeeling.48A particularly effective antidote toany tendency toward alienated awareness is

to focus on developing positive emotion,which we come to in the next section.

Difficulties with developing integratedawareness are frequently experienced asmental hindrances which we oftenencounter in the early stages of trying tomeditate. But applying the prescribed'antidotes' to the hindrances as a sort of firstaid measure during the meditation sessionitself is only useful to a point. Hindrances are,of course, not just found in meditation. If weare aiming truly to transform our states of

awareness, the relatively small amount oftime we spend in meditation cannot outweighthe consequences of a life spent without aconsistent level of mindfulness. Weexperience the hindrances in meditationbecause this is our usual state throughoutdaily life. It is our whole way of life andeveryday mental habits that are going to

47after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript of

a seminar on Satipatthana Sutta(see footnote 5)48after: Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation;

Guide to the Buddhist Path, Windhorse 1996, p.155 ff; Preceptsof the Gurus-Third Seminar,

Unedited Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, 346.txt


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17

determine our experience in meditation, forbetter or worse. A consistent practice ofmindfulness before and after meditation willdo far more to overcome the hindrances thananything we decide to do in the midst of it. Ifwe cannot build positive and integrated statesof mind outside our practice of meditation,then by the time we get round to invoking theantidotes in the course of our meditation, it isreally too late. The antidotes may succeed inpatching up our meditation temporarily, sothat we can just about hobble our way to theend of a particular session, but we need morethan that. We need a radical approach. Themore we can unify the mind in the ordinarycircumstances of daily life the more likely wewill be to experience concentration inmeditation. Achieving concentration dependson establishing a way of living that is more

harmonious, contented, energetic,confidence-inspiring, other-regarding; lessrestless, grasping, lazy, rancourous andcynical.49

In order to bring this about, we have to makeclear decisions about the things that will belikely to affect us. The hindrances, asconditioned phenomena, never arise inisolation. We have to make it a practice towatch out for the hindrances in daily life andto set up the kinds of conditions in which theyare unlikely to occur, or likely to occur only in

a weakened form. Once we get to know ourhabits of mind, we can avoid situations whichtend to stimulate recurrent patterns ofunskilful behaviour.

When it comes to the hindrances, it isessential to keep the initiative. This is largelya question of taking personal responsibility forthe situations we find ourselves in.Unfortunately, we can sometimes try to shrugoff responsibility by disguising as a practicalnecessity what is really our personal choice.We can present our decisions as dictated by

circumstances, or by other people, as thoughthe whole matter were out of our hands. Inreality there are very few occasions when wecan say, truthfully, 'I had really no choice.' Atevery moment of awareness we have thechoice of taking ourselves out of a distraction,of changing what we are doing. Invariably, it isnot so much the world or 'life' that has drawnus away from the path, as our own innermotivation.50

49

after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript onthe Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)50ibid.,

Awareness is the quintessential spiritualquality characterising both path and goal. Butmindfulness as a sole practice by which togain Enlightenment is seen within theMahayana as an unusual methodology.Unless we are exceptionally healthy, we arelikely to practice in an unbalanced manner, atleast to some extent.

Sangharakshita suggests this is perhaps allthe more the case under modern Westerncircumstances: The Buddha's early followerswould not have known the radical alienation inconsciousness that characterises modern life,with its endless concrete, its mass travel, itsassaults on the senses, its all-pervasive andmeaningless media messages. ... One wouldimagine that a relatively integrated andbalanced person, practising, say, themindfulness of breathing would feel at thesame time a happiness and goodwill towardsothers, quite naturally and spontaneously. Forsuch a person, the method of the satipatthanasuttaas it has come down to us in the Palicanon would be quite sufficient in itself. But itis unlikely to be so for us in the modern age.Nowadays, we cannot take the teaching ofmindfulness as a completely self-sufficientmethod without engaging the other-regardingaspect of our nature, with which so much ofour deeper energies is tied up throughpractices such as the mettabhavana, and

devotional practices.51

51ibid.,


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stage 2. positive emotion

On the basis of an emerging integratedawareness, we enter into the second stage ofA System of Meditation, and cultivate positiveemotion through practices such as the mettabhavana. These involve a more deliberatelydynamic engagement with the inner life of ourmind, and particularly with our feelings andemotions. As we progress into this stage, thenatural implications of developing awarenessand integration unfold: if the first stage of ASystem of Meditationcan be said to becharacterised by an emphasis on horizontalintegration, the second stage continues theprocess of vertical integration.52On the basisof a certain amount of horizontal integration,we can actively engage in integrating deeperpsychic energies, drawing on hitherto

unengaged emotions. Furthermore, thisdeveloping awareness naturally gives rise togreater ethical sensitivity. By focusing thisawareness on what is happening in our heartand mind (dharmavicaya) we are able topractise the Four Right Efforts (samyak-prahana): we set out to remove the unskilfulstates that have arisen, prevent furtherunskilful states arising, whilst maintaining andbringing further skilful states into being.53

Metta, (loving kindness or friendliness), is ofcourse the fundamental positive emotion.

However, this stage also involves thedevelopment of all the positive emotions,including the other three brahmaviharasofkaruna(compassion), mudita(sympatheticjoy), and upeksa(calm, tranquillity andequanimity) as well as sraddha (faith) andothers enumerated in lists such as the elevenpositive mental events. This is not as dauntingas it may first appear since by their verynature positive emotions tend to cohere, tointegrate more and more with each otherbeing simply different aspects of the creative

mind. A positive action or mental state willpartake in some sense in all the positivemental events.54

An essential prerequisite to developingpositive emotion is our ability to distinguishfeeling (vedana) from emotion.55The point to

52see Sangharakshita, Human Enlightenment,

What Meditation Really Is, Windhorse, 1980, p. 4253after Sangharakshita, Know Your Mind,

Windhorse, 1998, p. 26, and p. 23854Sangharakshita, Know Your Mind the

psychological dimension of ethics in buddhism,Windhorse 1998, p. 1185548there is no one Buddhist term which translates

be emphasised with regard to emotions is thatthey are not produced automatically. Weactively manufacture them out of the rawmaterial of our feelings; they are actions ofthe mind. For example, if we have a painfulexperience, we can choose whether or not tomanufacture hatred out of it.56So it is notenough just to 'get in touch' with our feelings although clarity as to what they are isimportant: we must also learn to how tochoose to act with skilful, positive emotion.

Our natural tendency is to want to get awayfrom feelings which are painful, and to havemore of feelings which are pleasant: throughthose volitions we can easily find ourselvesindulging some form of hatred or craving. Weavoid this by coming back to the feeling itself;developing our awareness of the bare feelingis a crucial part of our practice. But we are notjust noting the quality of our feeling, we arealso acknowledging the ethical status andkarmic significance of what has brought it intobeing, deciding whether or not we want topursue it any further, and then acting on thatdecision.57

If we can start to distinguish more clearlybetween the feelings we receive asimpressions and that which we createourselves in response to those impressions the volitional element of our emotions we

can begin to take more responsibility for ourstates of mind. We become less able tosuppress feelings that we need to be aware ofin order to respond creatively to them. Just aswe can indulge in negative emotion as a wayof evading uncomfortable feelings, we can tryto summon up positive emotion for the samereason. However, we will experience truepositive emotion only by looking unblinkinglyat our real feelings, and our real emotions.58

It is emotion that moves us to act, and actioninvolves energy. Sangharakshita often refers

to energy in discussing this stage. As well asdeveloping a deeper awareness of our

exactly to the English word emotion; cetana,

karmaand samskaraare the closest terms, but all

have slightly different connotations to the English

term. For fuller discussion on vedanasee

Sangharakshita, Know Your Mind the

psychological dimension of ethics in buddhism,

Windhorse 1998, p. 72 8356Sangharakshita, Know Your Mind the


Windhorse 1998, p. 7357

after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript onthe Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)58ibid.,


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energies, we also need to gradually gatherthem together: directing them and challengingthem; intensifying, deepening and graduallyrefining them, until eventually we transformthem into one strong current of not simplypositive emotion, but spiritual emotion.Integral to this process is resolving thetension and conflicts between our differentenergies or interests. As we get our prioritiesclearer, its increasingly obvious that unskilfulactions are just that: unhelpful and bungling.The deeper perspective in our practice ofethics (shila) is to avoid blocking, misusing,manipulating, exploiting, appropriating orpoisoning our own energy as well as that ofothers, and to act with skilfulness, releasingever more creative energies for the benefit ofall. On the basis of this we can enter realmsof spiritual beauty such as the meditative

absorptions, or dhyanas. However, thisgathering together of energies is not to bepractised only in sitting meditation, importantas this is. More fundamentally, we aim tobecome emotionally positive whatever we aredoing, whether sitting, walking, working,talking, or just being quietly by our self.59

Often our difficulty is not so much in havingenergy; its more in finding sufficient energy ofan appropriate quality. Our energy arisesspontaneously in connection with definiteobjects of pleasure and interest, and the

nature of these will influence the quality of ourenergy as we all know, we cant jump frombeing preoccupied with worldly pleasuresstraight into the first dhyana. Pleasurablefeeling is not in itself unskilful, but it becomesthe occasion for unskillfulness to the extentwe lose our awareness to it. Contrary to acommon misunderstanding, we shouldntexpect to give up all pleasures to get onto thespiritual path. Indeed spiritual life is very mucha question of pleasure. The point is that werefine our energy as we put it into more

refined objects; if our energy is crude, we canonly put it into crude things. The key is to trainour aesthetic response, to coax our emotionsto develop an increasing refinement until weare able to enjoy meditation with the kind ofintensity that at present we perhaps associateonly with sex and food. At the outset it is amatter of encouraging emotionally richsensuous enjoyment over mere sensualindulgence.60

59

Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation60after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript on

the Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)

Skilful enjoyment which is based in positiveemotion is essential to sustaining a sense ofvitality, enthusiasm and interest in the spirituallife. It becomes an increasingly strikingcomponent in our practice, arising not as aresult of the pursuit of pleasure but rather asthe fruit of positive effort to transform ourawareness. If we allow ourselves to becomeaddicted to ephemeral, worldly pleasures, weare surrendering both our own capacity toexercise choice and our ability to activelycultivate greater awareness of our feelings,energy and emotion in the pursuit of morerefined pleasure. Whilst satisfying our appetitefor sensual pleasure can involve enjoyingintensely pleasurable feeling, it does notnecessarily involve any deep emotion.Emotion, in contrast to mere enjoyment, isactive. It denotes outward movement,

expressive of energy. Pleasure is a fruit ofpositive emotion; positive emotion itself is thatactive energy in conscious pursuit of thegood.61

Often discussion as in the above sectionson integration and positive emotion elucidating the nature of the Buddhist path isnecessarily in terms of personal development.However, the danger with this is that we getoverly self-concerned, which runs counter to

the overall aim of Buddhist practice: totranscend the illusion of self-other, or subject-object, duality. However we try to approachultimate reality it is always usdoing it, and aslong as we are trying to attain it just for ourself, we will fail.62 Shantideva speaks of thisnon-dual perspective in terms of getting rid ofsuffering itself, wherever it exists in theuniverse, saying whether it is you thathappens to be suffering, or whether it issomebody else, doesn't matter very much tothat overall intention.63So in developing ourself we need to cultivate an other-regarding

attitude: we cannot become more trulyself-aware without becoming more aware ofothers and cultivating a positive emotionalattitude of selflessness.64

We may start practising the mettabhavanaand developing positive emotion with a view

61ibid.,62ibid.,63Shantideva, Bodhicaryavatara, Ch. 8 Perfection

of Meditative Absorption, v. 102ff, trans.. Kate

Crosby, Andrew Skilton, OUP, 1996, p.9764after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript on

the Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)


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to getting into higher states of consciousness,becoming a better person, even gainingEnlightenment. In doing so, we take otherpeople as objects for the development of ourmetta: we wish other people well so that wewill become a better, happier person. But thepractice only works if we really do becomeconcerned about the welfare of others; andwhen that happens our original reason fordoing the practice changes significantly. Ourown personal development can no longer bea separate issue from the spiritual welfare ofother people. So it could be said that the bestway to approach reality is via the other,because we naturally approach it from thepoint of view of self anyway. By helping otherswe begin to register that others are just asreal and just as important as we are, and weengage in something which we can be certain

will be helping to break down the subject-object dichotomy. To put it very simply, it isnot enough to feel unselfish we have to beunselfish, which means acting unselfishly.This is the only way to break down the barrierbetween subject and object. Self and otherhave to become interchangeable as thesource of motive for our actions. We realiseas a matter of factthat there is no differencebetween self and other.65

The most significant feature of Insight is theindividual's growing freedom from an

exclusive or enclosed field of concern centringon the self, from our innate egotism and evenselfishness.66We make the experience ofmettathe starting point for the development ofInsight when we develop intense mettatowards all equally, as in the fifth stage of themettabhavana, or when we cultivate upeksabhavana. We seek to act as though therewere no difference between our self andothers: when others are just as near and dearto us as our self we are no longer under thegrosser illusions of selfhood although

subtler fetters still remain. In this way thepractice of cultivating positive emotion can bea vipashyanapractice, and the experiencearising therefrom develop into Insight.67

65after Sangharakshita, Know Your Mind the


Windhorse, 1998, p. 25366after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript on

the Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)67after Sangharakshita, Unedited Seminars On:

Door of Liberation, 683.txt; 1982 Womens

Mahaparanibbana Sutta, p. ; Hedonism and theSpiritual Life, 092.txt; Mitrata Omnibus 1981

preordination, p. , dharmatranscripts

If you want to develop Perfect Wisdom, ...[anexcellent practice], perhaps surprisingly, is themetta bhavana. ... The Enlightenment of theBuddha was not a cold, detached knowledge.He saw with warmth; he saw with feeling;what is more, he saw everything as beingpure, or subha, which also means beautiful. ...When out of metta, you see things asbeautiful, you naturally experience joy anddelight. And out of that joy and delight flowspontaneity, freedom, creativity, and energy.This flow from metta to joy to freedom andenergy is the constant experience of theBodhisattva. The Bodhisattvas wisdom in thefullest sense therefore includes metta. In asense, we could even say that mettaisprajna.68

68

Sangharakshita, Wisdom beyond Words thebuddhist vision of ultimate reality, Windhorse,

2000, p. 186


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stage 3. spiritual death

The discussion of the previous two stages of cultivating integration and positive emotion might seem to suggest that that is all weneed do. Certainly, through practising the firsttwo stages we achieve a great deal. But wecan go further: each successive stage of ASystem of Meditationmaps out theimplications.

Supposing we are even a true individual atleast psychologically speaking supposingwe have got as far as that, then what comesnext? What is the next step after that? ... Thenext step is death! The happy, healthyindividual which you are now must die! ... Themundane individuality, pure and perfectthough it may be, must be broken up, ...transcended. ... Only when the conditionedindividuality dies [can] the unconditionedindividuality as we can call it begin toemerge. ... And here the key practice is theRecollection of the Six Elements.69

Sangharakshita recommends the six elementpractice because, in his experience, it suitsthe majority of practitioners. This isparticularly so he says, because it's concrete;it involves an element of feeling let's say, notvisualisation in the ordinary sense butsomething of that nature, and so it has a

stronger effect and breaks down one's I-sense more effectively than the otherpractices.70But those who find otherpractices such as the recollection of death (asin the root verses of the Bardo), or ofimpermanence, or the contemplation of the 24nidanachain, or of sunyatamore inspiringand useful should use them.

In using the terminology of death,Sangharakshita clearly means to draw ourattention to the radically existential nature ofpractice at this stage in A System of

Meditation. It is redolent of the inevitablechoice we all make between ignoble or noblepaths: either the mortal and conditioned inpursuit of the mortal and conditioned, or themortal and conditioned in pursuit of immortaland unconditioned the Deathless. Such aperspective gives a particular gravity tomaking decisions about our life; indeed, thechoice confronts us in every situation at everymoment in our life: to either react or respondcreatively.71The creative mind is essential to

69Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation70Sangharakshita, Q&A 1978 Order Convention71after Sangharakshita, Aryapariyesana Sutta,

the process of meditating effectively atwhatever stage were practising; we have ineffect been making this choice right from theoutset.

At this stage of meditation, the particularlypertinent characteristic of that creativity is a

radical willingness to change, to give up,relinquish, let go, renounce, go forth fromidentifying with our old self; to break free ofour attachment to our individualised mundaneconsciousness, however happy, refined andmature. We need to go beyond identifyingwith our illusion of a self-sufficient and self-sustaining, irreducible self.72We aim torelinquish all that our conditioned selfassociates with and founds itself upon. To doso we use insight (vipashyana) practice which is covered more fully in Section 3 underthe stage of vision and Section 4 undervipashyanapractices and thereby enjoyeven more positive experience than theprevious two stages of meditation, whichnevertheless are an essential foundation.

Within the six element practice we practiseletting go of the elements Earth, Water, Fire,Air, Space, and even our limitedconsciousness, i.e. all the constituents of ourpsycho-physical experience. As we revieweach one, we reflect on our conditioned,impermanent and insubstantial nature, which

is not a reliable source of self-identity. Welearn how our usual sense of our self islimited and limiting.73In this way the sixelement practice is a sunyatameditationbecause it helps us to realise the emptinessof our own mundane individuality. When weno longer rely for our identity and security onour conditioned selfs habitual constructs, onour perception of the material world, and onour usual mental processes, then ourindividual consciousness is free to withdrawfrom them, to die into, so to speak, universalconsciousness, and in a sense realise its

everlasting identity with it.74

It is not as though our individuality simplymerges into something non-individual, or evensupra-individual, so that we become ratherfeatureless. We become more 'ourselves' than

Unedited Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, pp.72after Sangharakshita,A Survey of Buddhism,

Windhorse, 2001, p. 121 ff73after Subhuti, Sangharakshita A New Voice in

the Buddhist Tradition,Windhorse, 1994, p. 20474

after Sangharakshita, The Bodhisattva Vow,Lecture No. 67; The Bodhisattva Ideal Wisdom&

Compassion in Buddhism, Windhorse, 1999, p.83


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ever before. There is a indescribable fusion ofindividuality and universality; we are moreuniversal, but at the same time moreindividual. Paradoxically, it is the individualthat expresses universal experience. If therewasn't limited form, what medium could therebe for the expression of the universalexperience? The use of the term 'universal'can be misleading, if it makes us think ofsomething abstract and common. When theindividual attains the universal, it is not asthough the individual is merged intosomething which is non-individual. From aspiritual point of view, universality is aparticular way in which the individualbehaves. For instance, when the individual isdeveloping metta, it is an individual beinguniversal. Universality is an attitude thatpertains essentially and distinctively to the

individual.75

According to the Bardo Thodol, for those whohave prepared sufficiently, the assuredopportunity for experiencing universalconsciousness is at the time of death. Thenwe may experience the full impact of oursunyatanature as a brilliant clear light, whenthe son-light returns to and merges into themother-light; but if we are unable to sustainthis, consciousness is re-individualised.76

In the final part of the six element practice we

aim to learn how to make the transition touniversal consciousness, i.e. to experienceour intrinsic essential, void or empty (sunya)nature, by letting go of, or transcending ourdiscriminative, analytical, dualisticconsciousness (vijnana) that, in associatingwith the other four skandhas,77creates ourexperience of our mundane self and world.We see that it is in the coming together ofinternal and external sense-bases that ourdualistic awareness arises; we see that theexperience of subject and of object arise independence upon each other and that there is

no fixed continuity of person. Sunyataas ametaphor for the death of the conditioned selfdoesnt mean complete nothingness orannihilation; sunyatais a transcendent non-discriminative awareness (jnana), which issymbolised both by the blue sky of visualised

75after Sangharakshita, Mitrata 84, p.42; or, Q&As

on The White Lotus Sutra, Mens Study Leaders,

Padmaloka, 1986, dharmatranscripts,76after Sangharakshita ,Q&A 1978 Order

Convention; also,The Bodhisattva Ideal Wisdom

& Compassion in Buddhism, Windhorse, 1999,p.8377rupa, vedana, samjna, samskara

sadhanasand by the figures in the FiveBuddha Mandala.78Again, it is important toremember what a deeply satisfying,enjoyable, even blissful experience this is.

Obviously to learn to do this takes time andpractice. What were trying to do in the six

element practice is break free of the poison ofconceit, particularly in the form our self-view(satkayadrsti), the first of the three fetters79

(samyojana).80Our 'ego', complete with likesand dislikes, views and so on, is a self-perpetuating illusion, arising only independence upon our previous actions, ouringrained habits of consciousness. Eventhough in reality there is no separationbetween subject and object, we are unable toplunge into reality, simply due to the mind-made fetters which hold us back.81Thereason why this is so hard is that we hold verystrongly to the conviction that change in ourdeepest being is unthinkable. We takeourselves as we are now as a given, assomething absolute, and we want it that way:we are what we are, and cant, and even,wont change. Were unable to conceive ofour self any other way; were wilfully resistantto the possibility of changing, developing,transforming our self except in a relativelysuperficial sense.82

The fact is were frightened: we intuitively

understand the precariousness of ourindividuality and life. Awareness of our fragileexistence is inseparably connected withawareness of our death of not existing.Such is the basic root of all fear.83For ourego, spiritual death portends completedisintegration, dissipation, erasure,obliteration, blotting out. But this feardissolves when we willingly transcend ourhabitual egotism, our holding on andattachment to our old self, our self-preoccupation, our selfishness. The essentialthing is to have the experience of an infinite

78after Sangharakshita ,Q&A 1978 Order

Convention79satkayadrsti, vicikitsa (doubt) , silavrata-

paramarsa (attachment to rites and rituals as ends

in themselves)80after Sangharakshita, TheThree Jewels,

Unedited Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, pp.81Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript of a

seminar on the Satipatthana Sutta (see Note 6)82after Sangharakshita, TheThree Jewels,

Unedited Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, pp.83

after Sangharakshita, TheDoor of Liberation,Unedited Seminar On, dharmatranscripts, pp.

[683.txt]


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expansion[my italics] of consciousness. Oneshouldnt take this image of the smallerconsciousness merging into the greater tooliterally; the metaphor of a dewdrop slippinginto the sea, shining or otherwise, is just ametaphor. ... The physical universe isntexcluded from this infinite consciousness, butit doesnt constitute a barrier to it. Its asthough ones consciousness goes through it.It is not that something literally isnt there thatwas there before, but it is no longer seen asan obstacle; it becomes transparent, as itwere.84

We actually embrace death when we gobeyond our mundane individuality; in dying weare transformed. There is no really radicalspiritual change, no total transformation,without being willing to die in terms of whatwe were before. We have to be ready to giveup our old life, to forget old problems and oldsolutions. We have to be ready to make acompletely fresh start. If we want to becompletely transformed, we must die.85

In transforming ourselves we not only breakfree from old habitual patterns, we freeourselves to act in wholly new ways. Thetaste of freedom is the theme of one ofSangharakshitas classic lectures describingthe process. Hand in hand with spiritual deathcomes spiritual rebirth the former only

makes sense in the light of the latter, and thelatter can only arise to the extent the former iscomplete and wholehearted. This isclassically symbolised in the archetypalimagery describing the BuddhasEnlightenment, and his victory over Mara,over death.

84Sangharakshita, The Bodhisattva Ideal

Wisdom & Compassion in Buddhism, Windhorse,

1999, p.8385after Sangharakshita , Jewel Ornament of

Liberation, Ch. 1 The Motive, Unedited Seminar

On, dharmatranscripts, pp. [248.txt]; after

Sangharakshita, Transforming Self & World themes from the Sutra of Golden Light, Windhorse

1995, p. 46ff

stage 4. spiritual rebirth

The notion of spiritual rebirth is of a change inthe individual so radical that they become anew person, a new human being. When themundane self has died, what happens next isthat, ... out of that experience of the death ofthe conditioned mundane self, in not verytraditional language, the TranscendentalSelfarises ... the newyou you as you will be ifonly you allow yourself to die.86

This type of language might appear to be atodds with the doctrine of anatman, or no-Self.But this is not actually the case. "The [self]atmanthat is being denied ... is our presentbeing conceived as something ultimate,beyond which there is no wider or higherpossibility, or which we are never going totranscend. ... What the doctrine is getting at isthat beyond our present mode of existenceand experience there are other dimensions ofbeing which we can grow towards in a waythat is inconceivable to our present sense ofindividuality."87So, "we do not ... have to dropthe concept of 'self', so long as we are clearthat it is an operational concept."88"The fact isthat we dohave a self as the sum total of ouractivities, our thinking, our seeing, our feeling,our willing, and our imagining. ... Theanatmandoctrine simply warns us not toabstract an entity apart from and somehow

activating these processes. There issomething else behind them ... anotherdimension of consciousness, ... evenEnlightenment [but it is only to be thought ofas a transcendent 'self', in the sense of beingbeyond time and space.]89

A good model for our practice is one thatinvolves the refining of the empirical self making it ever more positive until itevaporates ... in some higher dimension.Associated with the real empirical self is ahealthy desire and even a healthy anger or

energy which is neither good nor bad, but justhappens to be the raw even crude materials that we need to work on andtransform into something beautiful. Theempirical self is as necessary to the Buddhistas clay is to the potter. ... We can even speakof 'something' that grows, and sort out themetaphysics of that 'something' afterwards. At

86Sangharakshita, A System of Meditation87Sangharakshita, Wisdom Beyond Words

Sense and Non-sense in the Buddhist

Prajnaparamita tradition, Windhorse, 1993, p.12988ibid., p.22089ibid., p.130


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the appropriate time we will appreciate thatthis development of consciousness involvestranscending our present individuality, andbecoming part of something much larger."90

So the reason for this use of language ofspiritual rebirth and a Transcendental Self is

to guard against any abstract or impersonalinterpretation of what it means to beenlightened. In aspiring to becomingEnlightened, to eventually becoming like oneor another enlightened human figure whetherhistorical or archetypal, our ideal necessarilyfinds expression in human form. Theinadequacy of all positive descriptions beingfully admitted, it is not a question of definingthe Goal as being, in the ultimate sense,personal, but of describing it as thoughit wassuch for practical purposes. After all,personality, even of the normal human type,is the highest category available to ordinaryconsciousness and premature renunciation ofthe use of it might involve the risk of the Goalbeing conceived not as transcendent topersonality so much as infra-personal.91

The Buddhist model of the path is dualistic inthat it necessarily has to propose a goal tomake it meaningful. Being dualistic, thismodel is appropriate for most practicalspiritual purposes in consideration of the path,but it is certainly problematic when the path

involves addressing the goal, because as the'end' of the 'path' the goal necessarilysuggests something fixed, final and static.The Buddha's reluctance to provide asubstantial description of the Enlightenedstate (the word 'state' is itself unhelpfullycognate with 'static') simply reflects hisawareness of the inadequacy of dualisticlanguage with reference to non-dual reality.Indeed, the notion of some final state in whichwe remain, perfected and immutable, seemsstrangely inadequate to the vital fervour andcommitment with which we need to pursue it.

The Buddhist path is essentially a creativeprocess, transforming something positive intosomething more positive, and creating fromthat something still more positive again.92

Instead of drifting on the winds and tides ofthe world, one fixes upon a clear goal, andeven against a head wind, one tacks backand forth, sometimes quite obliquely, but

90 ibid., p.13091Sangharakshita, The Three Jewels, Windhorse,

1998, p.120, quoted in Subhuti, A New Voice, p.

20592after Sangharakshita, from edited manuscript of

a seminar on Satipatthana Sutta (see footnote 5)

maintaining a steady course. The importantthing is to get the feel of this gradualprogression, of everything coming together, ofenergy welling up and of a continuous forwardmovement that runs right up to the attainmentof Insight, and even beyond it.93The creativemind, being the principle of the spiritual path,continually finds fresh expression in a gradualyet progressive sequence. We constantlyreinvent ourselves in the image of our highestideals; Path and Goal merge.

However we conceive of our ideal, this stageof meditation, of spiritual rebirth, marks ourcoming into communication with it, Going forRefuge to it, having increasingly direct contactwith it. We become personally involved atevery level of our being, finding ever greatersignificance, meaning and fulfilment inexperiencing our vision of our highertranscendental self. This new being in effectarises out of the one single transcendentalreality of which all the different Buddhas andBodhisattvas are an expression eachexpresses this from a different perspective toour unenlightened minds. In our Going forRefuge to the Three Jewels we form adecisive connection with one or anothertranscendental form into which we are strivingto evolve. This is the pinnacle of A System ofMeditation,its apotheosis: meditationenvisaged in its fullest and most creative

form.

The meditation practice(s) that Ordermembers take up at ordination theirsadhana is the focus for this creativity andthe means for bridging the gap betweenaspiration and eventual realisation.Sangharakshita has made it clear that oursadhananeed not necessarily involvevisualisation practice and mantra recitation,although this has been the norm for manyyears.94Within A System of MeditationSangharakshita recommends visualisation

and mantra recitation as the best way todevelop the stage of spiritual rebirth. Asshould be clear by now, he acknowledgesother forms of practice may serve thispurpose, though this is not something he hasdwelt on in his own teaching. He has alsomade it clear that commitment to a specificform of practice is distinct though clearlyrelated to the choice of figure that embodiesthe vision of the Goal. Commitment to thatfigure at ordination does not necessarily entail93

ibid.,94after Sangharakshita ,Q&As with Theris 2002,

dharmatranscripts, p. 11ff


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an undertaking to visualise that figure as partof the sadhana, although for many it does.This is explained in Subhutis Shabda article.(See appendix no. 4).95This means, forexample, that anapana-satior the six elementpractice can be chosen as a sadhana.

Whatever the sadhana,it is used as themeans to realising spiritual rebirth, andinasmuch as all the prior stages of A Systemof Meditationare integral to it, a means alsoto integration, positive emotion and spiritualdeath. This is not to say that at times wemight not choose to take up other practices todevelop specific qualities that we feel in needof developing, such as using mettabhavana,or bodhicitta practice to help address theneed to develop positive emotion. What itdoes mean is that we will actively seek waysto embody all four stages, or emphases, of ASystem of Meditationin our sadhana, and thatdepending on what seems appropriate wemay choose to focus on now one emphasis,now another.

Essential to the stages of spiritual death andrebirth is the attempt to develop Insight(vipashyana). This has already been touchedon when discussing Spiritual Death. It also isdiscussed more fully in Section 3 under thestage of vision, and again in Section 4 underthe heading of Vipashyana practices.

Whatever practice(s) we use to cultivate thesestages of spiritual death and rebirth, we willhave to consciously address the issue of howto develop Insight. Sangharakshita in ASystem of MeditationrecommendsVisualisation and mantra recitation as beingparticularly efficacious in this - which is whyso many Order members use this as theirsadhanapractice. The discussion belowdraws out the implications of following thisapproach.

Being able to use visualisation as a effective

means of vipashyanais based in ourresponse of sraddhato the visualised figure ofour choice. Its helpful to appreciate that themiddle way between either reductionism orliteralism in relating to the visualised figure isthe emergence of a latent spiritual facultycalled by Sangharakshita the Imaginal orhigher visionary faculty. This Imaginal faculty,in being an inseparable fusion and harmonyof our reason and emotion, gives access to

95Subhuti, The nature of Sadhana and its

relationship to Going for Refuge in the Context ofOrdination into the Western Buddhist Order,

Shabda, October 2001, p. 71 ff

poetic truth, or truth of the imagination, andeventually to the higher supra-historical,supra-rational reality of the Dharma of whichthe figure is then an expression. In otherwords the figure becomes an archetypalimage or symbol for us we find our selfdeeply moved by it; it speaks to us ofsomething much higher, or deeper, andbeyond mundane reality. And the meaning ofthis symbol cannot be exhausted by words indeed the danger is that we may think thatwith an explanation of the symbol, weveunderstood it. The figure being imbued withthis significance as a symbolic archetypalimage, we find a progressive unfolding ofmeaning and truth as we contemplate it.

But though I have spoken of the imaginalfaculty, the expression should not, in a sense,be taken too literally. The imagination, orimage-perceiving faculty, is not so much afaculty among faculties as the man thespiritual man himself. It is spoken of as afaculty because, in the case of the vastmajority of people, it exists in such arudimentary form that it appears to be simplya faculty like, for instance, reason oremotion, or because it has not yet beendeveloped or manifested at all. The imaginalfaculty is, in reality, the man himself, becausewhen one truly perceives an i

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A System Of Meditation