Generosity is the beginning of the spiritual life. While we still have worldly, sensuous desires and priorities, we begin by sharing what we have with others. This is the first way we open the mind beyond ourselves. There can be a lot of joy in this. We can go further and start giving things away. We can begin to enjoy clearing things out and wonder why we held on to so much stuff. This can be our first real taste of renunciation.

A life of sharing brings us naturally closer to our fellow human beings. We consequently become more sensitive to how other people feel. We do not want to cause suffering in others and we feel naturally inclined to live a virtuous life. We thus develop a sense of contentment and a mind clear of regret. Rather we develop a mind that cares. This way is now more pleasant than the sensuous life, and our desires begin to naturally fade.

The fading of desire gives us a new set of eyes on the world, especially on the body. The mind free of desire sees the body very differently and we are led toward a life of renunciation, of complete freedom from desire.






I offer this for your reflection,
Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk/

Many people these days look for shortcuts on the spiritual path. They engage in extreme practices of one kind or another to try to get to some kind of special experience. Everyone I have met who goes this way (with my nearly 40 years in spiritual circles, this is a lot of people) ends up simply lost. Let us be charitable and assume for a moment that these shortcuts can take us to the right place (even if in most cases this is highly debatable). Then we can suggest an analogy: Imagine if I told you to run into the forest as fast and as far as you could go, not looking where you are going and without any kind of guide. For sure you would get somewhere quickly but you would not enjoy the journey and you would not know where you were or how you got there. You may not even be able to find your way back.

In contrast if we follow the path step by step, the journey is as pleasant as the destination, and we remain clear. We know where we are and how to find our way forward or back. Moreover the deepest spiritual experiences arise not just out of a particular event but out of a deep, direct understanding of the world and of our mind. And actually, the understanding as such is the most important but also the most pleasant aspect, the source of the highest, most stable bliss.
 
So even the best shortcuts look pretty limited in value to me; and the worst examples can, of course, be highly dangerous.








I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno 
http://www.openthesky.co.uk


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At one extreme we have materialism, we are our body. On the other extreme we have eternalism, we are like space or light. In the latter case we have gone too far thinking, perhaps, that the body is a mistake. The body is not a mistake. It is the mind clinging to it that is the mistake. Right view, in the middle, is that we are the mind and may become part of the greater Mind, extending beyond the body – first of all as the body in a bright space. The Mind abides in space and is aware of the body rather than abiding in the body and being aware of space. This is the Mind that knows both space and objects within that space, the non-grasping mind. It is a mind that enters and abides in space, not by withdrawing from things, but through maintaining a proper relationship with everything within the space, through the light touch of detachment. 

Ultimate reality thus runs parallel to conventional reality. The Buddha is not in heaven looking down on the suffering of the world. The Buddha brings heaven down to Earth.
                                                     





I offer this for your reflection,
Ajahn Kalyāno
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http://www.openthesky.co.uk/

A good meditation group is one in which there is a sense of group support, like a family. A bit of friendly competition is alright as well, we can see who can sit the longest! It is also a place to ask questions of a teacher and compare notes with our peers. In order to avoid boasting and unhealthy competition, questions within the group should be asked in a general way, not in a personal way. Personal questions are best kept for an individual interview with a teacher. The other aspect to avoid is gossip. We should keep the personal things shared by our spiritual companions to ourselves and only talk to the teacher if we are concerned and worried about something.

Ideally there should be a strict adherence to the five precepts within the group. This is a chance for people to try these out if they are not yet committed to these in their lives. Keeping the precepts is something that creates a stable foundation upon which a committed meditation practice can be built. And moreover, the precepts can keep a group free of unfortunate dramas!

The benefits of a group are underestimated. It can be great to find someone you can call and talk to about your practice, for example, someone with a similar inclination in practise or who is in a similar life situation, especially if you become a contemplative as well as a meditator.




​I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno 
http://www.openthesky.co.uk

Buddhism offers us the hope of finding a safe refuge beyond the body in the emptiness of the mind through letting go. Thus to a Buddhist who has faith the response to the possible end of the world or to the end of our lives is the same. Meditate, meditate before its too late!  For those with less faith in such an outcome but faith enough to meditate, the same practice can still win the refuge of a source of peace and stability of mind through difficult times. 

This path of faith is one way through it all that is like finding a way within our minds to blast off into space. Yet where will we end up? We don't know. 

And what about the world?

If we add wisdom to such faith we can realise that we can find a safe space, a refuge within the world. If the world survives or ends we can then we stay right where we are. Then we know where we will end up. We will end up right here. This emptiness here and now we can get to know and how it relates to any phenomenon that comes within it in a way that it remains empty. We can learn how to relate to all the movement of the world and remain still, at peace, secure. Then, here in this down to earth spirituality, compassion also flowers.

Wisdom takes us to the highest refuge. This is the wisdom that sees the impermanence of all things and lets go. The mind that lets go like this is then not withdrawn but detached. And yet to see and let go the mind must be able to look on from a safe refuge. Building such a refuge is therefore our task. 

 








I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno 
http://www.openthesky.co.uk




      

There have been so many instances throughout history of religion going astray that it is understandable that people turn away from religion toward a freer spirituality. What can be lost in this transition, however, is the sense of something timeless that comes from a long history or tradition and the social cohesion this creates. The prayers, rites and rituals that the modern spiritual seeker tends to shy away from can have their place; and yet for a religion to remain alive, the true meaning of such acts must be borne continually in mind.

This is part of the work of religion that keeps it pure. The temptation these days then is to turn our backs on religion rather than taking our part in maintaining this purity, but then we end up on a lonely journey. Rather than entering in to the positive karmic stream of a group we are isolated. In my own case I vastly under-estimated the potential of such group karma, the karma of a culture or tradition.

I took for granted much of the positive karma of my own culture which created a degree of social justice and welfare. This justice and welfare could be a clear example in the modern society of the power of group karma. The system was so anonymous it was hard for the benevolence of the society to really touch the heart. Religion can serve to make this bridge between the personal and the universal, defining our relationship to the whole in a skilful way.

Then our religion will not be a source of conflict but of peace; not a source of empty solace but a real refuge.







I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno 
http://www.openthesky.co.uk


​

The Buddha's teaching is often understood as describing phenomena not as entities but as an interconnected weave of related things where there is being but no independent self. To see like this is certainly a shift of view in the right direction. But if we can see deeper and view all things as truths or dhammas, then they are things no more. There is no being, only knowing. Things are not then relational in any mechanistic way. They are information or meaning, true or false, right or wrong. They relate more as a dialogue or debate. Taking birth in a human body will naturally generate the same debates within the mind of different people, which form actions and their consequences. They are expressed and feed back into the culture, into a greater mind. The repeating patterns of information constitute a kind of rebirth over and over in different people. Strong perceptions will be formed that dominate thought within any particular culture. Just as the information in our genes can be passed on from one person to another, so can these cultural or religious truths.

If we start to think in these ways it can open up our minds to other possibilities of life after death.

What about the ultimate possibility? When the Buddha is asked about what happens to an arahant after death he says 'existence does not apply, non-existence does not apply.' What could this mean? If the mind finds an abiding in emptiness then it does not exist but is not annihilated either. In another sense this also applies to information or truth. The truth of something is not the substance of it so it does not exist in this way and yet it is real. When the mind sees the truth it can enter and abide in emptiness. This is how the transcendent mind is part of nature – or we might say it is and it isn't. Within the mind there is no knower or known there is only knowing.

When this knowing is raised to the level of wisdom and results in the experience of samādhi this is no different. The space of samādhi is empty, there is nothing there. The brightness of the emptiness can fool us that there is a being there, a Knower, that we have become something or found our true nature or Buddha-nature through samādhi. The Thai forest tradition calls the Buddha the 'One who Knows' but that need not suggest a being. The eternal Buddha is not a being but is the result of an eternal knowing. So whenever this brightness arises in the mind we must not grasp it, either as an experience nor by way of an idea, but shine it on the world. If it arises within the breath we can shine it into the body. This is the way to the ultimate for 'here in this fathom long body lies the beginning and the end of the world' (AN 4.45.).





I offer this for your reflection,

Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk/

The experience of samādhi can be clarifying or deluding. If we can keep our perspective we enter into a more spacious, unified experience of life. Samādhi becomes a space that our experience of ourselves can open into. Our experience of thought or feeling is no longer confined to the body. 

If, however, we grasp at the space in some way we can get lost. We can simply become spaced out. We can be indulging in the sense of space to the point we lose our mindfulness. 

A deeper illusion is that we take the space to be something. When the mind enters space it goes bright. This brightness can seem substantial, when it is actually empty. This is a much bigger mistake than it may seem. It can be very difficult to see anything wrong in our experience, it is so pleasant we fall in love with it. Yet if we thus see samādhi as something arising rather than something ceasing this points us in completely the wrong direction. We will see samādhi as something we generate rather than the result of letting go. We will not be able to open to the experience but instead be grasping and closing down the very space we are looking for. 

If samādhi arises more strongly we experience brightness arising in a particular pattern. This varies from one person to another. What we are seeing is the result of the hindrances lessening or ceasing. The different experiences of samādhi represent the slowing down or stopping of the hindrances – or ultimately their complete reversal.

If, for example our experience of the hindrances is like a darkness rising up through the body then when this slows down then we will experience the opposite, a light coming down to us from above. We might mistake this to mean that we are opening to an energy from above, from heaven, and we end up looking in the wrong place for the source of this brightness, we are led away from it. 

When the hindrances cease we will experience a stable brightness. This we could mistake to be our eternal soul (I describe this illusion in the poem and picture series ‘Rain from heaven’).

When the hindrances are reversed, brightness rises from below in the place of the darkness and we have truly overcome the hindrances and turned the mind over. We are filled with a light where there is no sense of self. We are free of the illusions that get us stuck. This experience arises out of insight or Knowing. So there is both clarity as to the external world and as to the empty nature of the mind. We realise there is no need to be anything and the Knowing mind is free. We have glimpsed the ultimate.








I offer this for your reflection,
Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk/

So many people I meet associate spirituality with supernatural experiences or beliefs of some kind or another. Many are then either dismissive or afraid. On the other hand they can think they know nothing if they have not had such an experience, or try to manufacture such experiences in one way or another. Some people go to dangerous extremes to try to find something, others just try to make something special out of the ordinary experiences they have.

Spirituality is not about getting a special experience its about giving. When you give freely from the heart then the heart opens and you will be open to true spiritual experience.

I have been lucky. My grandmother and great-aunt were both very devoted religious people and they were just impossibly kind and patient. So this is the image I have always had of what the spiritual life is all about and I began my spiritual life with the right attitude. Now I also understand that supernatural experiences can come around very naturally to someone who leads a very pure life, but because these experiences are so natural there is no fear or confusion.



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I offer this for your reflection

Ajahn Kalyāno 
http://www.openthesky.co.uk

​

To see spiritual life as something different to or apart from the mundane is to separate ourselves off from life – into our inner world. Developing our inner life can indeed be fruitful in many ways, it can be a source of great pleasure, and yet we will need to return to find the meeting point between this inner world and the outer in order to develop real wisdom and find true liberation. This meeting point is the body and we develop wisdom as we embody our spirituality.

First of all let us look for a more mundane sense for how embodiment might be. If we intellectually accept the view of an embodied mind we can wonder how the body is the centre of all our experience if often we are not aware of it –  it would be counter-intuitive. We could describe this process intellectually like this: “the phenomenology of the lived body is able to overcome dualistic concepts of the mind as an inner realm of representations that mirror the outside world. Instead, by the mediation of the lived body the individual is in constant relationship to the world.” (Embodiment and psychopathology: a phenomenological perspective Thomas Fuchs and Jann E. Schlimme.)

However we can overcome the dualistic concepts ultimately only by overcoming the dualistic experience. This is possible. Then to articulate the new experience is to give words to such a sanity.

Body awareness keeps us within the world. In addition to so recognise our place in the world we need to recognise the nature of our minds. There is still a dualism in the sense that the mind is dependently originated. The concepts and experience of embodiment recognise the dependence of mental on physical and look for sanity by aligning our experience accordingly.

What is missed, and what is an enduring source of dualism is that the mind does have a limited life of its own. This inner life can be functional or dysfunctional. If it remains in contact with reality it is functional. If it drifts away from reality it is dysfunctional. So instead of this inner life being like a mirror to the outside world it needs to be placed back outside where it belongs. This is actually the natural result of forming a coherent body image – it flushes the content of the mind out of the body in our subjective experience, to leave a blissful empty mind within the body, this emptiness extends beyond the body so now we experience the body in the larger, empty mind. If the body image then remains we have the full picture, the nature of this image is then seen to determine the nature of our field of awareness and hence the nature of all the objects within it. Through using the body to open up a field of awareness that connects us with the world, we discover a way of seeing not just the objects within our minds but the nature of the mind itself as the space in which all objects of mind arise and cease.

Our first experiences of the mind itself will not be one of space. It will be to see the movements of our thoughts and feelings, their place in the field. We will clearly see when our minds are effected by greed or aversion, something that we will realise is not clear when we get drawn into the objects themselves. Then it is not just a matter of being aware of our greed but letting go of it by re-examining the object. This is through examination and a relaxing, calming and subsequent opening of the mind around an object.

This is then difficult also because when the mind encounters space it is so pleasant the mind gets entranced by that. We begin to calm and open our attention only to get stuck on the calm and cease really paying attention. Then there is a need to ground ourselves at least. Yet, better than this, if there is wisdom we discover that our attention to an object becomes a source of space because it leads to letting go. This is where everything comes together, where the bliss of samādhi and the sense world come together.






I offer this for your reflection. 

Ajahn Kalyāno 
http://www.openthesky.co.uk


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