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Venerable Ajahn Candasiri -
Beyond
Belief
This
summer Ajahn Candasiri helped to conduct a Christian/Buddhist retreat at
Worth Abbey in East Sussex. She offers some reflections on the event.
Having been brought up in a nominally Christian culture, I attended
church regularly and passed through its traditional rites of passage.
Although there was already quite a deep sense of devotion and reverence
for the mystery of the sacraments, in my late teens I entered a period
of disaffection. It was as though the transition to adulthood required
some sort of rebellion against 'the believed', and a plunging into the
experience of life itself. Fortunately it wasn't long before the
limitation of the worldly pleasures in easing the sorrows and
difficulties of human existence became quite obvious, and I began to be
interested in meditation. Over time there was a gradual rekindling of
interest in Christian spirituality, and I was blessed with good friends
and guides along the way. However, in spite of such blessings, I could
find no way of reconciling what I perceived to be the ideal of spiritual
life with the pathetic struggles of the mind and heart towards actually
living it.
At the time, there were neither the concepts nor the words to express
it, but basically it was a case of dukkha being thoroughly tasted. So
the heart was well primed for the Buddha's teaching of Dukkha, and the
Way to End Dukkha; it says in the Upanisa Sutta that 'Suffering brings
faith' (Kindred Sayings: Ch xii, On Cause 3.23). I attended a ten-day
retreat with Ajahn Sumedho, and it became obvious that this was the Path
I needed to follow. There was no turning back. The retreat enabled
insight into the teachings and practices of Theravada Buddhism, but it
also, to my surprise brought new light into the teachings of the
Christian gospels; I could see that at some level these teachings were
pointing to a way of life and renunciation that seemed to accord more or
less exactly with the Way that I had just discovered in Buddhism.
One thing led to another in what felt like a truly awesome and
miraculous process and now, after almost two decades of practice as a
nun in the Buddhist monastic communities of Chithurst and Amaravati, an
opportunity has arisen to present Buddhist teachings in the context of a
Christian/Buddhist retreat.This is the second year that I have
participated in such a retreat at Worth Abbey in East Sussex. Father
Roger Bacon, whose inspiration this has been, encouraged and
'engineered' the event. I shared the responsibility for guiding the
retreat with Elizabeth West, who had formerly been a nun for 25 years
and is now resident at the Christian Meditation Centre in London.
I have to admit that such a retreat is not a completely comfortable
experience for me. Last year I had found that the juxtaposition of a
Buddha rupa and icon of Christ on the main shrine felt strange – almost
as though the reverence one wished to accord these remarkable beings
could only be adequately expressed on separate shrines. This was what I
had planned to suggest for this year, with the central shrine simple: no
image – just candles, incense and flowers. Interestingly, it was soon
clear that Elizabeth had had exactly the opposite vision of how it
should be, and a young friend had made a painting to represent that
vision: Jesus Christ and the Buddha standing in an attitude of
friendship, presenting teachings side by side. It is an image that is
challenging (even shocking) for some, while for others it brought a
sense of relief, even delight. Why should they not be there at the same
level? It represented a challenge to any Christians who might have had
the view that the Buddha was "only an ordinary human being, who is now
dead"; similarly for Buddhists, who might have been tempted to speak of
Jesus as, "only a bodhisattva – who probably learnt what he knew from
Buddhists anyway!" Needless to say, the retreat itself fostered no such
prejudice; it was not an exercise in 'comparing and contrasting' the two
traditions. Rather, it was an opportunity to find and to rest in the
silence that is beyond words, images or concepts. Of the 40 or so people
who attended the retreat, the majority were practising Christians, many
of them with an already well established meditation practice. There were
also Buddhists who had followed a similar path to my own and felt the
need to review their relationship with the Christian doctrines and
observances they had moved away from. Several had attended similar
retreats before – others had had little or no experience of meditation.
At the start of the retreat, I noticed a tinge of concern on hearing of
the joy and peace that those on the previous year's retreat had
experienced, for spiritual practice, although simple and
straightforward, is not necessarily easy. In a sense it is like giving
birth...I'm told that often the mother remembers only the joy of the
experience; that nature seems to blot out any memory of the agony of
labour. I was not surprised when, at the end, many people commented on
how difficult they had found it. However, I suspect that last year it
had been difficult too, and the memory had been overlaid with the sense
of happiness and peace that arose as a result of those very efforts! It
was heartening though to hear of the joy and lightness that their
efforts brought; new insights into ancient teachings, and to have had an
opportunity to practice with an assortment of tools that could be
implemented within the context of everyday life.
Elizabeth and I had no particular plan, other that an agreement to share
equally in the teaching, alternating sessions throughout the days.
Themes seemed to emerge quite naturally – often in response to what had
gone before. For myself, I also felt the need to present at least the
basic framework of Buddhist teachings, since the majority of retreatants
were from a Christian background and were continuing to use the
structures within that tradition as the basis for their personal
practice.
One striking feature of the retreat was how little seemed to be required
in terms of interpretation or 'packaging'; there was an extraordinary
openness in people, so that it didn't seem to be necessary to explain or
justify what was being presented. Of course the terms, Buddha, Dhamma,
Sangha required some interpretation, but seeing them as Wisdom, Truth
and Goodness immediately transformed them into something that was in
tune with a common aspiration about which there could be no
disagreement. Similarly, prayer, when described as 'being completely
present with what is', didn't seem to be that much different from
mindfulness; whether in the context of formal meditation or in 'daily
life practice'. The Buddhist teaching on the Four Noble Truths points
clearly to the mechanism that limits or blocks perfect prayerfulness or
mindfulness: to the greed, aversion and wrong ways of regarding
ourselves, and to the way of gradually freeing the heart from these
hindrances.
In considering the practice of metta/karuna (kindliness and compassion),
a resonance could be felt with the basic principle of intercessory
prayer. A difference (or may be it's not such a difference) is that in
Buddhist practice these are qualities that can be brought forth from
within the heart itself and consciously directed, whereas often for
Christians, it is a matter of making a petition, relying on a higher
being 'out there' to fix things on our behalf. However, we found it
useful to reflect that perhaps the link with the Source of kindliness
and compassion is to be found deep within the human heart also.... Could
these be simply different ways of speaking of the same thing? Perhaps
one of the most significant insights of the retreat was that in order
for it to be truly effective, this metta/karuna has to be directed first
of all towards ourselves; we have to be kind, patient and accepting of
ourselves – of our own suffering, weakness and limitation. The extent to
which these can be manifested towards others is in direct proportion to
the level of understanding, acceptance and forgiveness of these within
ourselves. It is quite impossible to love and be truly compassionate for
others if, at the same time, we continuously nag and hate ourselves for
our faults and weaknesses!
So whatever our chosen Path, we need first of all to be clear about
where we are and where we want to go. In other words, there needs to be
an honest recognition of our own shortcomings, as well as an
appreciation of our wholesome aspiration. We need to learn to recollect
our own goodness as a way of gladdening the heart and bringing a sense
of self respect, instead of chastising ourselves continually. In this
way we can investigate the consequences of our mistakes or 'sins', and
then put such painful experience to good use as an incentive to try to
understand why we went wrong, and consider how we can avoid repeating
them; we don't allow feelings of guilt or inadequacy to overwhelm us. I
am left with many impressions: the simple spaciousness of the main
sanctuary from which the brothers' melodious office could be heard
during our morning meditation, the changing light, the sunshine, wind
and rain; the smiles, tears and laughter and, above all, that attentive
silence – human beings together picking up and chewing over teachings,
testing them out, extracting goodness from the practice, and filling the
heart with that which goes beyond words. As the young artist commented
touchingly in the final sharing, "I realise that it is the silence which
brings us together, not an image, concept or idea."
Forest Sangha Newsletter: October 1997, Number 42
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