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Dust & Lotus Blossoms · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:11
So this morning I want to pick up on something that Tara Palita
0:15
was talking about a couple of weeks ago.
0:18
For those of you who were here, he was talking about the
0:22
Buddhist enlightenment. So that the central event of
0:26
Buddhism or the the starting point, the the place where
0:29
Buddhism kind of springs from, is this event in history, this
0:36
moment in time, this moment in the life of the Buddha where he
0:40
gains what we call enlightenment, whatever that
0:43
might be, that happens. And then it's tells us in the
0:49
old texts that the Buddha is visited by a God, so God called
0:56
Brahma Sahampati, whose name means something like Lord of
1:01
Lord of all the world, a Lord of 1000 worlds, something like
1:04
this. He appears before the Buddha and
1:09
he can see that the Buddha is inclined not to teach what he
1:14
has discovered. So the Buddha sat there and he,
1:17
it's so earth shattering what's happened to him that he's not
1:22
sure if people can understand it.
1:25
He's not sure if he'll be able to communicate it.
1:28
So Brahma Sahampati appears and he pleads with the Buddha to
1:32
teach what he has discovered to to communicate it, to share it
1:37
with other people. And the way he puts it, Brahma
1:40
Sahampati says to the Buddha that there are those in the
1:45
world who are wasting away through not hearing the Dharma.
1:50
He says there are some beings with little dust in their eyes
1:56
who are wasting away from not hearing the Dharma.
1:59
So please communicate the Dharma.
2:03
The Buddha hears that, and then he has this vision where he
2:06
looks out upon the world kind of in his imagination, and he sees
2:12
that what Brahma Sahampati has said is true, that there are
2:17
beings out there with little dust in their eyes who are
2:21
wasting away through not hearing the Dharma, but who would be
2:25
able to understand it. And as he kind of explores that
2:31
in his imagination, he also starts to see this pool of
2:35
lotuses with Lotus flowers growing at different stages of
2:39
development out of the the mud and The Dirty water and coming
2:45
into flower. And with that, the Buddha
2:47
decides, oh, he just does it. He, I'm not sure he even thinks
2:52
it through. It's just this urge to go and
2:54
teach. So we've just been celebrating
2:57
the Buddha's enlightenment in the last week.
3:00
The last weekend we had our big festival, the next big festival
3:04
days in July. And that's when we celebrate the
3:07
moment where the Buddha did communicate successfully his
3:11
enlightenment to somebody else, then to somebody else, then to
3:15
somebody else, and the whole thing kind of spread and
3:19
exploded and survived. In a sense, the Buddha's
3:23
insight, his realization, survived.
3:26
So we'll celebrate that in July. But I just want to pick up on
3:32
this moment where Brahma Sahampati appears and speaks to
3:38
the Buddha about beings with little dust in their eyes, and
3:42
then this vision of the Lotus pool as as beings being like
3:47
Lotus, Lotus flowers. SO2 images for this morning,
3:51
Dust and Lotuses. I have a very visual way of
3:57
thinking, so I'm just going to speak about these two images and
4:02
or allow the images to speak to us because I think they contain
4:08
a lot of richness. So I'm not going anywhere with
4:13
it other than into these two images.
4:15
So let's see what happens. So first of all, in Dust, so
4:24
dust and this statement that there are beings with little
4:29
dust in their eyes, I mean that the the metaphor is immediately
4:35
obvious to us that there's this distinction between seeing and
4:41
not seeing. So dust is stopping a see.
4:44
If we have dust in our eyes, no dust then seeing.
4:49
So we're in the realm of of being able to see or not be able
4:53
to see. And Buddhism often uses images
4:59
of not seeing or blindness to describe the unenlightened
5:04
state. So we could say a state of
5:07
delusion or a state of ignorance.
5:10
Funnily enough, I came into the room this morning and this has
5:13
been stuck on the wall and I wanted to refer to it and it was
5:17
just here. So I will do that.
5:22
So this picture here is 1 of what are called the 12 nidanas,
5:26
which circle around the edge. We're not going to go into them,
5:29
but this is the, if you like the beginning.
5:32
And this is a representation of ignorance.
5:35
And it's a blind man with a stick kind of staggering and
5:39
trying to find his way. So this, this notion of being
5:43
blind or being blinded, having something in the eyes is an
5:47
image that Buddhism uses to try to communicate the state of
5:52
ignorance of not seeing and of not knowing.
5:56
But then the question for me is why dust?
6:00
Why does Brahma Samhati talk about dust in the eyes?
6:05
Why? And I was thinking earlier in
6:09
the week, Well, maybe it's it's culturally relevant.
6:12
So if you were in ancient India, Pakistan, Nepal, very hot
6:18
places, very dry, there's probably dust flying around.
6:22
People get in their eyes. It's a common experience.
6:26
So I was thinking maybe it's more of a cultural thing, Can't
6:29
connect with it. Here in Germany, there's not so
6:32
much dust flying around. And then there's been all this
6:35
pollen floating around in the air this week.
6:40
And on Thursday night I went to meet Max and Peter and I was
6:45
cycling on my bike and when I got to them, for the 1st 5
6:48
minutes I just couldn't really speak because I had something in
6:51
my eye and it was really painful and it took ages to kind of get
6:57
the thing out. So this, this idea of having
7:02
dust in the eyes, it's not just that we can't see, it's that not
7:06
being able to see is painful. Yeah.
7:10
So the Buddha's communicating or promise a hamperty in this case,
7:15
that that the state of ignorance, the state of being
7:18
deluded, not being able to see clearly.
7:22
It's not just neutral, it's painful.
7:27
It's painful when we get something in the eye, when we
7:29
get dust in the eye. It reminded me of this image, I
7:35
don't know if people have seen it, of the Dust Bowl in the US
7:39
and Canada in the 1930s. There's this image of a woman,
7:43
the migrant mother, I think, is the name of the photograph.
7:47
Dorothea Lang, I think, isn't it?
7:50
Yeah. OK.
7:51
Some Americans in the room giving me the thumbs up.
7:55
So there's this image of this woman in the 1930s.
7:57
She has two children who are turned away from the camera,
8:01
just resting on the shoulders, and her face is covered in dust.
8:07
The expression is one of real anguish, anxiety, pain.
8:13
This whole Dust Bowl thing in America in the 30s, it's like
8:17
entire swathes of land were just destroyed by drought and by wind
8:24
blowing the dry soil away and just creating these huge clouds
8:30
of dust, displacing people from their homes, creating hunger,
8:35
malnutrition, people getting pneumonia from inhaling all the
8:40
dust. So it's more than just dust in
8:44
the eye. We can think of dust as a
8:46
metaphor for that whole human experience of, yeah, things like
8:53
hunger, poverty, displacement, illness, sickness as well.
9:00
So this, this image of dust, I think can communicate a lot to
9:04
us. The Buddhist tradition also, we
9:09
find this in the text uses, uses the image of dust in a slightly
9:13
different way to communicate the suffering and the pain of the
9:18
human condition. Sometimes the Buddha would speak
9:22
in terms of the household life. He was comparing it with his own
9:26
lifestyle of just wandering freely around the country.
9:31
The household life is cramped and dusty, so life at home is
9:37
cramped and dusty, whereas the homeless life that he lived was
9:41
free, like the air, so free to move.
9:46
Yeah. And that could be read as a
9:48
critique of people who live at home and have families versus
9:52
people who just go off and do their own thing.
9:56
But I think it's more nuanced than that, more subtle than
10:00
that. So I would say this is a
10:03
metaphor, again, for any situation or set of conditions
10:08
where we feel stuck and we feel limited, like there's a dust on
10:14
our lives. Yeah, we're stuck in the
10:18
habitual, in habit, and that feels closed tight.
10:24
Dust settles. Funnily enough, this week I've
10:29
been moving a lot of furniture around and you know, when you
10:32
pull out the piece of furniture that's been there for five years
10:36
and behind it, there's just all these cobwebs and dust and just
10:42
just moving it out, cleaning behind it, putting it somewhere
10:47
else. The the feeling of freedom that
10:49
brings, It's really interesting. I was sat there last night just
10:54
just experiencing all this kind of free flowing energy.
10:57
Maybe that's what Feng shui is all about.
10:59
I know nothing about it, but so even just within a household,
11:04
within our own homes, moving things and dusting creates this
11:09
sense of freedom, this movement. So this, yeah, this sense that
11:15
dust is both an image for pain, suffering, but also the pain and
11:21
suffering of, yeah, feeling stuck in our habits, not being
11:26
able to move, not being able to change, not being free to grow.
11:31
I think this image of dust carries that.
11:36
And the Buddhist tradition talks in a lot of detail about
11:39
suffering and different kind of levels or degrees of suffering.
11:44
And I guess that's why Brahma Sahampati also talks about some
11:51
beings have less dust in their eyes or little dust in their
11:56
eyes. It implies, doesn't it, that
11:59
some have lots, others have less.
12:01
Yeah. So let me just refer again to
12:05
this image that somebody's very helpfully put on the wall.
12:11
So if you're unfamiliar with this image, it's the the wheel
12:14
of life. And we actually have it on the
12:17
wall. Sometimes people just miss it,
12:20
which is interesting because it's massive.
12:23
On the red wall. We have a big painting of the
12:26
Wheel of Life, so you can have a look on your way out as well.
12:30
But in the the middle, I'll have to get a pointer.
12:35
We have the 12 links around the edge, starting with ignorance.
12:39
But on the more inner circle, we have these six different realms,
12:45
and it's said that they represent six different realms
12:49
in the cosmos. So one of them is the human
12:52
realm, but then we have all these other realms as well and
12:57
they demonstrate or display, I think, suffering of of different
13:02
kinds. So the whole thing is a
13:05
depiction of, of the human condition and the inherent
13:09
suffering in the human condition.
13:12
The six rounds kind of break that down into, well, it could
13:15
be this bad, it could be a bit better, it could be too good.
13:22
So we have an animal realm. Sorry, I'll point it out.
13:28
So we have an animal realm where there's suffering because
13:32
everything is just instinctual. There's no, again, habit,
13:37
cramped, dusty. We're just stuck in kind of
13:40
animal instincts. So that can be painful.
13:45
That's there. Here we have the realm of what
13:47
are known as the jealous gods or The Archers.
13:50
So they're always trying to go to war with another God realm.
13:55
And again, that's painful. Envy, jealousy, always wanting
13:59
to be in a state of combat and fight.
14:03
Then we have the realm of the hungry ghosts.
14:07
So the pain of the hungry ghosts is that even though they can eat
14:11
food, nothing can go down. They've just got these big
14:14
swollen bellies. Nothing satisfies.
14:19
There's always hunger for more and more and more.
14:23
And then right at the bottom we have the hell realms.
14:27
So kind of on fire, terrible angry looking creatures, skulls,
14:37
you get the picture. So maybe that's the worst one in
14:41
some respects, but they're all communicating.
14:45
There are these different states of being and different degrees
14:50
of suffering with different intensities.
14:54
I'll talk about the others in a moment.
15:01
So maybe maybe we can just hear in those descriptions.
15:04
Maybe you can relate to it. We don't have to take them as
15:08
literal realms, although maybe we could from a certain point of
15:13
view. But maybe you can relate to them
15:16
just in your own lives. There are certainly times where
15:18
I feel like a hungry ghost. Yeah, when however much I eat or
15:25
however much of something I get, there's always a drive for
15:28
something more. Definitely times where I feel
15:31
jealousy, envy, particularly if somebody gives a better talk
15:37
than me, for example. Not not all the time.
15:43
Hell, realms where things are just completely swamping you.
15:47
There's there's seemingly no way out and animal realms where
15:51
we're just being driven by our instinct.
15:55
So these are all different ways that we can experience
15:59
suffering. But coming back to dust, there's
16:04
another type of dust that I want to talk about which relates to
16:07
one of the other realms, and that is fairy dust.
16:13
So my young niece, she likes to play with this stuff like
16:16
glitter in a tube, which is very cleverly marketed as fairy dust.
16:22
And yes, all cute and everything.
16:26
I was looking into this whole notion of fairy dust, and
16:29
apparently there's this whole investigation into where fairy
16:34
stories begin to express dust or have some kind of connection
16:41
between fairies or other otherworldly creatures
16:46
sprinkling dust and using dust. And it seems like it it kind of
16:52
takes different forms. And then when JM Barry wrote the
16:57
play Peter Pan in the early 20th century, it became like Disney
17:03
fied that. That's where it kind of explodes
17:05
in. And now into the glitter tubes.
17:10
So Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, the the little fairy, she sprinkles
17:16
dust in the eyes of children, and that means that they can
17:20
then fly, and they can fly to Neverland.
17:24
And Neverland is the kind of manifestation of all their
17:28
daydreams. Yeah.
17:30
So fairy dust creates this ability to fly into Daydream
17:34
worlds from a Buddhist point of view.
17:42
Sounds wonderful, doesn't it? And pleasurable.
17:46
And I'm, I'm definitely not dissing fantasy and imagination
17:50
because I think it's a really important human quality and I
17:54
would say even essential to gaining enlightenment.
17:58
But misused that, that capacity of the imagination can take us
18:03
into these kind of fairy lands where actually, even though it
18:09
feels very pleasant and magical, it might be disconnecting us
18:13
from what's really happening, and therefore it becomes another
18:16
source of suffering. So we all know that, don't we?
18:20
Because we've all done meditation, and probably at some
18:23
point in the meditation we go to Neverland.
18:28
Whether a fairy comes and sprinkles something in our eyes
18:31
or whether it's just our own karma, there's another question.
18:35
But we end up spiraling off into a fantasy land, which Buddhism
18:42
calls prepuncture. So proliferating mental thought,
18:47
mental activity and fantasy so that that creates another kind
18:54
of suffering. So an intoxication, you could
18:57
say. It's a bit like a drunkenness,
18:59
isn't it, That the drug gets sprinkled in the eye and and we
19:04
are drunk, we stop seeing. And maybe that relates to the
19:08
the realm of the six, which is at the top, the God realm, where
19:13
the gods experience so much pleasure.
19:15
In this Buddhist cosmology, they experience pleasure so intensely
19:21
that they just get a bit complacent.
19:24
They, if you like, forget about the lower realms.
19:26
They forget about the the truth of suffering, intoxicated with
19:32
their own pleasure. And that can only last for so
19:34
long. I'm not sure how long the
19:38
Buddhist commentators say they're in there, but I think
19:42
it's a long time. It can be a long time, but
19:45
eventually it will end. That will come to an end, and
19:49
there'll be a dropping down into other more painful experiences.
19:57
So where are we the image of dust then?
20:02
I think it's a it's a good metaphor for.
20:05
Experiencing in these six realms the suffering of human life,
20:12
both the the the suffering that comes through ordinary painful
20:17
experience, whether it's physical, emotional,
20:22
existential, but also the suffering that can come through
20:26
an intoxication with pleasure. And yeah, that is also
20:32
represented by what we have in the middle of that wheel, these
20:35
three animals. So there's a cock or a rooster
20:41
is biting the tail of a snake, which is biting the tail of a
20:45
pig, which is biting the tail of the rooster and so on.
20:50
So we've got this circle of three animals and they, if you
20:54
like, they represent how we respond to painful experience
20:58
and pleasurable experience. So with the pleasurable
21:02
experience, there's the desire for more of it that's
21:07
represented by the cockerel or the rooster.
21:10
With the painful experience, there's a desire to get rid of
21:14
it, for it to go away, an aversion to it that's
21:18
represented by the snake. And both of those things, the
21:22
pushing away the, the wanting more of are both rooted in
21:28
ignorance, delusion, blindness, blinded by the dust.
21:32
And that's represented by the pig.
21:36
All three, to my mind, are dusty animals.
21:41
Yeah. I've got an image of the
21:43
cockerel. You know how they kind of scrape
21:46
in the dust? I used to live near a farm, and
21:48
we would see them quite often scratching in the dirt and kind
21:52
of nestling down the feathers in the dirt.
21:54
And sometimes you would see where they'd been just from the
21:57
hole that they'd left. But the snake as well, the snake
22:01
going through the dusty desert, a pig covered in mud.
22:07
Then it dries, doesn't it, in the sun and cakes off and lakes
22:12
everywhere and dust again. So these animals themselves, I
22:16
think, can be bound up in this image, this metaphor of dust.
22:24
So there's a thought. But it's not the whole story.
22:36
So we also have the image of the Lotus.
22:38
So let's move on to thinking about the Lotus.
22:42
So Brahma Sahampati says this to the Buddha, that there are
22:46
beings who are wasting away who are suffering through not
22:51
hearing the Dharma. But there are those with little
22:54
dust in their eyes who would be able to understand.
23:01
And the Buddha, the Buddha clearly gets the communication
23:05
from Brahma Sahampati. But also there's this additional
23:09
thing that happens where we're told that the Buddha sees the
23:13
reality of that, but also sees lotuses, sees lotuses growing
23:21
out of the water. And that's what moves him then
23:26
to go and to teach. So let's look also at the image
23:30
of the Lotus, See what we can draw out of the image of the
23:33
Lotus. And what, what again, are we
23:37
being told through this image about our human condition and
23:43
what is possible? So Lotus is, I mean, you, you
23:51
will all be familiar with them. They're all around the Buddhist
23:54
centre, very traditional ancient Indian and other cultures as
24:00
well. Take the Lotus as a symbol for
24:05
growth, the potential for growth, the potential for
24:11
development, unfoldment from something, let's say dark into
24:16
something light and beautiful. They literally, you can see it
24:20
in that image there. They grow out of water.
24:23
So the roots of the Lotus are deeply in the mud, usually of
24:29
kind of swampy areas, boggy areas.
24:35
So it's a bit like our dust again, isn't it, But slightly
24:38
more moist, growing out of the mud, growing out of the dirt.
24:43
And the Lotus has to struggle through this dark water, this
24:49
kind of murky water that's difficult to see through,
24:53
difficult for light to penetrate into.
24:56
And yet they do. They come out and it's not that
24:59
they're just a little thing, is it?
25:03
They're these spectacular, radiant flowers of different
25:08
colours. Amazing when you see one,
25:13
there's always that. We used to have a pond at the
25:16
retreat centre where I lived and sometimes you'd get the water
25:20
Lily would come and you'd know it was coming because it would
25:25
come out like this, just a tip. And then the next day a bit more
25:28
and then a bit more. But then it was always a
25:30
surprise when you came and it was suddenly just there.
25:35
It's like, I can't quite believe it that it's grown out of this
25:39
pond that's full of kind of weed.
25:43
So the the Lotus then is clearly a symbol for human potential.
25:50
So if this is a representation of unenlightened consciousness
25:55
or life rooted in ignorance, not knowing, not seeing the pain of
26:02
that, well, we can grow out of that.
26:06
Like a Lotus, we can grow out of that.
26:09
It might be a challenge, might mean pushing through dark
26:13
waters, but yet the Buddha's vision seems to be communicating
26:18
that actually the potential is there to grow out of the mud and
26:24
transform and unfold into something beautiful, radiant,
26:31
even pure. You know, Lotuses are
26:35
apparently, well, I'm not going to exaggerate because some of
26:40
you might be botanists or something, but I think they're,
26:43
they're very, very waterproof. Let's just put it like that.
26:47
Yeah. OK.
26:49
Yeah. It won't touch them.
26:51
Exactly. OK, Good.
26:53
Good. So what was the term?
26:55
Aquaphobic? Yeah.
26:57
So there's this sense of the Lotus being being pure.
27:01
It can't be touched. It can't be dirtied by, let's
27:05
say, rain water or something. Yeah, so clearly there that that
27:13
as an image is communicating something of human potential.
27:18
And also the the fact that that applies to everybody.
27:22
I think the the Buddha's vision here is universal.
27:28
He sees that lotuses are at different stages of development,
27:31
some in the mud, some pushing through, some poking out of the
27:36
water. And given the right conditions,
27:42
again, anyone who's done any gardening knows to make the
27:45
flowers grow, you have to have certain conditions.
27:49
They have to have light, they have to have water, you have to
27:52
weed around them, maybe feed them.
27:56
So if we, if we put the seed of ourselves, let's say, in the
28:01
right conditions, then growth can happen.
28:06
The conditions, therefore, might be classic description of the
28:11
Buddhist path, living ethically, looking into our ethical lives,
28:16
meditation, studying, developing right view, clarifying the
28:23
nature of existence, of reality. It might be rituals that speak
28:29
to the heart. It might be spiritual,
28:31
friendship and community. These are all things that are
28:34
conditions that can allow our deepest potential that that
28:41
flower, that Lotus to grow and to blossom.
28:46
But the conditions are needed. That's why Buddhism is always
28:50
described as a path of personal responsibility.
28:55
We're not we're not. What's the word?
28:59
We're not trapped or locked into some kind of fate.
29:03
It's not a given what what's going to happen of our lives.
29:07
There is we do have an agency. We can take responsibility,
29:14
reorganize the conditions like me pulling out the furniture.
29:18
It's possible the furniture of our lives can move.
29:22
The cobwebs can be dusted, the dust can be blown off.
29:26
It's just knowing, isn't it? What, what are the right
29:29
conditions? Maybe Buddhism for you can help
29:33
in discovering that. And if we do find sets of
29:38
conditions that are working and we maintain them, I don't see
29:42
any end to that growth. But having said all that, let's
29:54
just explore the image a bit further because there can be a,
29:57
there's a kind of shadow side to speaking like that that I'm
30:01
increasingly aware of. I think it's completely true
30:05
what I just said about growing, developing, putting ourselves in
30:09
the right conditions. The danger is that then we think
30:13
it's all about effort and willpower, and all we have to do
30:19
is try really hard and the Lotus will come.
30:22
But again, gardening, you know, that can't happen.
30:25
You can't force a flower to grow.
30:30
There's also, with that kind of language, the expectation of
30:33
increasingly upward growth, like we should be always getting
30:38
better and better and better, which might feed into a
30:41
particular cultural view that life is always about growing,
30:48
getting bigger, getting better. And sometimes I don't think life
30:53
is like that. There is a cyclical aspect to
30:58
life that maybe we've lost in our culture, a recognition of
31:01
that. So can we somehow bring in
31:05
another perspective, another side, using the image of the
31:10
Lotus? This has been a particular
31:14
working ground for me, let's say in in the years of, yeah, trying
31:19
to force things to happen, seeing it doesn't work and
31:22
wondering what else to do instead, because that can be
31:26
another sort of intoxication. We can just as the fairy dust is
31:32
an intoxication, we can turn our spiritual life or aspiration
31:37
into another intoxicant. In the Odyssey by Homer, there's
31:44
a he goes to a particular island.
31:47
Do you know the story, like Odysseus trying to get home to
31:51
Ithaca after the battle of Troy and having all these is a, I
31:59
hope the Rotobulg work is not quite as adventurous as this,
32:02
but he's having all these adventures.
32:04
And at one point they land on an island which is inhabited by a
32:08
tribe of Lotus eaters. And they're eating these
32:12
lotuses. And the lotuses are kind of like
32:14
drugs, which kind of makes them all into fantasy.
32:20
And, and Odysseus's men, they keep forgetting that they're
32:24
trying to get home to Ithaca because they're just eating all
32:28
these lotuses. And I love that image because if
32:30
we're not careful, as much as we're trying to create the
32:33
conditions for our Lotus to grow, we don't want to start
32:38
eating it through some sort of intoxication.
32:41
With this, I'm going to be great and develop and be really
32:46
spiritual. I think we need something a bit
32:48
more subtle than that. So going back to the image and
32:53
the Lotus, what else can we learn from that image that can
32:59
help us avoid that pitfall? So what was I going to say?
33:09
This is good because now my talk is suddenly not on an upward
33:12
trajectory. It's good to be humbled.
33:17
I'm going to have to look at my notes.
33:23
So the first thing is the Lotus image.
33:26
There's growth, there's upward, there's coming out into the
33:30
beautiful flower, but the roots are never lost.
33:35
The the seed in the mud of the swamp in a sense is still there.
33:43
So we don't leave behind the dirt.
33:46
We don't leave behind the mud. Doesn't mean we're affected by
33:50
in the same way when we're up and like this, but there's still
33:54
a connection. I think that's important in, in
33:59
many ways, many respects. One might might be to say that,
34:04
well actually, OK, I'll speak personally.
34:10
So for myself, there's been this urge to want to grow and to
34:14
unfold and to flower and be brilliant and radiant and
34:18
aquophobic at the expense of losing touch with the ground.
34:25
Yeah. So let's use the human body
34:28
rather than the flower as the metaphor to be so much kind of
34:32
up and going that I kind of forget the ground beneath my
34:36
feet. Yeah.
34:37
So there's something about remaining grounded, or we could
34:42
even say kind of growing down. So not just growing up, but
34:46
growing down. And yeah, that's a lesson I've
34:50
had to learn to find those moments, like has just happened
34:55
in the talk where I forget where I'm going and realize, ah, OK,
35:01
grow down here. Yeah.
35:03
So really acknowledge my own weaknesses, acknowledge my own
35:08
shortcomings, acknowledge my own sufferings, rather than just
35:12
trying to escape from them and avoid them.
35:15
Embrace them. Let them be part of the whole
35:19
picture. Maybe there's some significance
35:23
in the nutrition. Yeah, that's good, isn't it?
35:27
So in the pond, presumably there's all the nutrients in the
35:31
soil that the flower needs. Yeah.
35:34
So. So there's something about not
35:36
leaving behind the the roots, the soil, the earth in our
35:42
spiritual flight upward. And we need both.
35:45
Yeah. I don't think it's possible to
35:51
become this or what this represents without that kind of
35:55
whole system. The other thing that relates to
36:03
that, I think, is that this Lotus vision also, it places the
36:07
emphasis on relationship. So it's not just about 1 Lotus
36:12
growing, it's a whole pool. But the Buddha's vision is of a
36:17
whole pool of lotuses. They share an ecosystem.
36:23
And it's the same for us. We're a whole room full of
36:26
people. Every one of us here has our own
36:29
personal quest. Let's say we've all come here
36:34
for a reason. Today my reason might be
36:37
different to the people's reasons, and yet we've all come
36:40
together in the same place to do the same practices.
36:44
So we're part of the same spiritual ecosystem, just maybe
36:49
just for this morning, for those of you who've been coming around
36:53
for a while or even part of the order again, you could look at
36:58
that as an ecosystem. We're all in relation to each
37:01
other and our practice is nourished again by other
37:06
people's. We even challenge each other and
37:10
that can also be a source of growth.
37:13
So seeing ourselves as being part of a network of other
37:18
practitioners, a community, a spiritual community, again, I
37:24
think helps us avoid the the tendency, which I definitely
37:30
have and maybe a lot of you have, of making it all too
37:34
subjective. Yeah, we're we don't want that.
37:38
We're trying to be less and less selfish or self-centered.
37:42
But because it's a habit, it just keeps reasserting itself.
37:47
So to be able to see ourselves and also to be and participate
37:54
in community or as we would call it Sanger that that is such a
38:01
help on the path, I think. And then the last thing I'll
38:08
say, I think, is getting close to the end another way that,
38:14
well, I don't know, I don't even want to talk about it like that.
38:17
So it's easy to give explanations, isn't it?
38:19
We've been looking at dust. We've been looking at lotuses as
38:23
images. And I've kind of been drawing
38:25
out like, what do these images mean?
38:28
What can they show us? How can they help us?
38:32
So to some extent, there's been explanation.
38:35
OK, so dust is a metaphor for human suffering, painful dust in
38:41
the eyes, it represents this, and this itself represents the
38:46
suffering of the human condition.
38:49
Then there's the Lotus. It represents our potential
38:52
human growth, but human growth upwards and downwards, and human
38:57
growth as community. But we're still in the realm of
39:02
explaining what the images and symbols are pointing to, which
39:09
is all great and all helpful. It's definitely helpful for me.
39:12
As I said, I've got this image based mind, but the problem is
39:19
if we overdo that, the one thing we lose is the image.
39:26
So we might lose the image itself of dust in the eyes or we
39:30
might lose the image of the Lotus because we've jumped onto
39:34
the explanation and the abstract way of thinking about it.
39:38
So just for a moment, let's go back just to the images and just
39:44
be with the image of dust in the eyes or the image of the Lotus,
39:52
and maybe just dwelling on the image is the meaning.
40:02
So remember for the Buddha, he has the vision and then he acts.
40:08
It doesn't say the Buddha saw all these lotuses.
40:12
Growing in different stages of development.
40:14
And then he thought our human beings are like that because
40:18
human beings are suffering. And then it doesn't say that.
40:22
It just says the vision opened up.
40:25
And then the Buddha said wide open of the doors to the
40:29
deathless, let those who have ears or who can hear release
40:34
their faith. And then he was off to
40:37
communicate the Dom. So he has the vision and he
40:41
just, he knows what to do. So maybe if we just bring to
40:46
mind dust in the eyes, bring to mind Lotus growing out of the
40:53
water, maybe that on its own does something to us because
41:01
that that then changes how we see, how we perceive.
41:11
There's this, I'm, I'm conscious of this because I know Tara
41:14
Politan is reading His Dark Materials at the moment by
41:18
Philip Pullman. And I've started reading The
41:20
Book of Dust, which is one of the prequel trilogy, which is
41:27
obviously why I've been interested in Dust.
41:29
But in these novels, in case you don't know, Philip Pullman
41:33
speaks of dust as a kind of magical substance.
41:37
So it's related to consciousness.
41:39
So the more conscious a person becomes, the more dust is
41:44
attracted around them. Which is interesting, isn't it?
41:48
Because in a way, the more conscious we become through
41:51
practice, through meditation, ethical lives, we might see
41:56
suffering more vividly. So the dust might actually
42:00
become more apparent to us. Yeah.
42:03
So. So consciousness attracts this
42:06
dust like magical substance, but it's also the dust in the novels
42:12
that connects a person with their diamond or their animal
42:16
counterpart or spirit or Angel. It's an amazing set of novels.
42:22
You should read them if you haven't.
42:24
So every character in the novel also has an animal who's around
42:28
them and somehow expresses their inner nature.
42:32
So the dust connects one with the diamond.
42:37
And I'm saying this because the images, if we just contemplate
42:41
the images, maybe we are again, more immediately in touch with
42:49
what we're seeing. So I bet you've had the
42:53
experience where it's probably in this room because there's so
42:56
much light where you just see a particle of dust and it's like
43:03
illuminated. And maybe especially when we've
43:06
finished a meditation, you open your eyes and you can see the
43:08
dust and it's like, wow, wow, dust.
43:16
There's normally we don't even see it.
43:18
Or if we do, we think, ah, we should clean a bit.
43:20
That's really it. So the point is that if if we
43:25
train ourselves in seeing immediately without the need to
43:30
layer in all the explanations, maybe we just see how magical
43:34
everything is. I was again the other day with
43:39
Max and Peter and they were talking about spring and how
43:43
it's like spring's happening and it's as if it's the first time
43:48
spring has ever happened, which I think they were saying was to
43:53
do with their practice here. And it's not that they've never
43:57
seen spring before. Obviously they're what, 30
44:01
something, I'm guessing. So they've they've they've seen
44:04
many springs, but they've never really seen it.
44:08
So again, it's just an invitation for us just to see,
44:13
not having to explain. And yet the exploration, the
44:18
explanations can all be helpful. So I hope this little excursion
44:25
around dust and lotuses has been helpful in some way.
44:32
Thank you for listening.