We could see true evolution as the evolution of truth or, if we accept as we have discussed (in the article: The Creation) that information has a semi-autonomy from the material world, as the relationship between a greater Mind and the physical universe. We can see the possibility of an influence of purity and coherence flowing out from the Mind – the mind of the Buddha in terms of affairs of the heart or the mind of God (in our conventional use of the word) in terms of the natural, material world. The victories of strength or intelligence that are the factors in natural selection are only temporary triumphs. Longer term the emergence of a cooperative rather than competitive intelligence hold sway. The flow of the world back into the Mind, of the personal view or feeling of a selfish sensuality overcoming truth, we could then see as a possible mechanism and source of impurity. ​In this way we see greed and hatred as going against the very flow of evolution. Or we could say that they are the inner test that the evolving mind wrestles with.

In terms of the mechanism of such a Mind, I am not suggesting that our minds influence DNA but that the information coded there can be seen as part of a greater Mind. This mind holds information at all kinds of levels which may not influence each other directly. They exist within a hierarchy and the information can be active or latent.

To place this view of evolution within the Buddha's teaching, I would understand the term nāma-rūpa in the cycle of dependent origination to mean literally name and form (rather than the translation often suggested of mentality and materiality.) This is the dynamic interplay between information and the form in which it is expressed. The Buddha states that during life, sense consciousness is dependent on name and form. This is the drawing of information out of the world by which we survive in the present moment. This would be the conventional materialist understanding of the mind emerging out of life and furthering life. But the Buddha also states that name and form is dependent on consciousness – that the mind is the forerunner, initiating all of our existence. This is the way in which our existence is created through the reading of information from the past, the following of the truth of nature already embedded in the world. The mind is that truth, the truth of the past generating the truth of the present moment and feeding this into consciousness. This mutual causation between name-and-form and consciousness is the cycle of saṃsāra. The past reaching into the present and the present into the past and the two spinning around each other to generate the future.

The path of liberation is the generation of emptiness rather than form within the mind through wisdom. Name or information does not take material form within the mind when it is not tied up with physical feeling. The mind remains empty in its essence taking the greater Mind also in this direction – that of Knowing rather than Being. The mind discovers that it need not Be anything at all, escaping future birth, if it remains wise. It can become part of the greater Mind that remains detached from the material world. This position of detachment is exemplified within the world by the life of the monk. The monk becomes the person able to remain in this position, supported there by the faithful in order to feed wisdom into the world.

This goal we seek, not through holding a metaphysical view, or through taking a mere view to constitute an existential shift. We seek the goal by noticing the suffering of becoming anything at all and by letting go. The goal is simply the result of this letting go taken to perfection, it is not some kind of metaphysical construction of mind. This letting go is the natural result of seeing with wisdom the suffering of material existence; in contrast the wise, knowing nature of the mind can become a tangible experience that we learn to trust.

In the present moment, the mind is not in the body – the body is in the wise mind. This is the reality and an appreciation we can return to through the practice of mindfulness. This is like a state of innocence and freedom if we can maintain it through wisdom. While if we cannot, then over time the results of our unwise mental activity accumulate in the body, our body remembers, our body and its associated feelings. This is like the mind going out into the world and our body and feelings experiencing the result.

This is not the only source of our contact with the world. Our mind contacts the world in two ways. The above kind of contact is called designation contact. Secondly, contact occurs through what the Buddha calls impingement contact which is things coming at us and contacting the body and feelings (or ‘mental body’) first of all, and then come up into the mind. This kind of contact can then get mixed up with our memories. Feelings from the past and present come together and merge. If we get drawn into this, our minds become locked into time, within an inner vortex. When designations are placed on the objects of the world this is clear, we see mental action and result. When designation turns around towards our feelings then we get drawn into the vortex. It is the case that impingement contact cannot be avoided, designation contact however can be avoided. When the mind can patiently endure, these thoughts need not get drawn in to feelings of impingement.

Also, what we notice subjectively is that in the present moment our thoughts (our designations) are not necessarily located anywhere in the body. These thoughts come from nowhere inside and need not result in bodily feelings. Thus we can have outer designation without contact. This thought is free of contact, it is like free thought rather than thought bound to the world. These are the qualities of wisdom. A wisdom truly sublime.




(If you find this article inspiring, please have a look also at Embodied Spirituality.)



I offer this for your reflection.

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

We think we can avoid suffering by being positive about everything but the reality is that everything we are being positive about is impermanent. We have to run around always looking for new things. This is what most of us take life to be all about.


We pre-occupy ourselves searching for pleasant feeling or avoiding unpleasant feeling. Most of our mind, our personal truth, becomes concerned with that. What we do not realise is that the most pleasant feelings we can find, the highest happiness, lies in the discovery of the deepest truths of life. If we realise this then our search for pleasure can become a search for truth, universal truth.


And what is this search like?


We are not the owners of truth nor the master of truth although we may wish to think so and the truths of our own creation will never match the universal truths. Part of the work of seeing the truth is to relinquish our ambition, our sense of ownership, our sense of self or ego. It is a humble person who realises such truth.


And the deepest truth is not hidden but right in front of the eyes of anyone who can see it. While the mind searches for pleasure in the world it will never see the truth because that truth is the truth of suffering. Suffering is over-looked in the search for pleasure and has to come up from below as ‘all that stuff coming up’ all those bothersome feelings that meditators and therapists alike are trying to get rid of. When the mind, even momentarily, ceases looking for pleasure and simply, calmly observes without judgement of any kind then suffering will be seen.


Then we will realise that if the mind is peaceful it can see suffering without feeling that suffering – experiencing only compassion. Furthermore, if we can see the suffering and let go then all suffering ceases – there is no less love, we experience an unimaginable bliss and we realise that, on a deeper level, all our suffering was caused by us holding on. After we have let go like this we see that it is craving that makes us grasp and suffer all over again and we will be committed to letting go of craving for good by dedicating ourselves to a spiritual path.




I offer this for your reflection,

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


​

------------------------------------------
This is part three of a series of three articles on Ch'i Kung.

1. Buddhist Ch'i Kung – The practical side
2. Stillness in Movement – The meditative side
3. The Creation – The metaphysical side
---------------------------------------------


If we think about it perhaps we can see how all our experience is subjective, that in this sense all we experience is in our minds. We live in the world of our own sense impressions: sights, sounds, smells, taste and touch, and from this our brains construct some kind of image of the world for us to live by. Or at least we can try to see like this when our senses are doing a great job of making everything look real. Not that there is no reality out there, just that we are one step removed from it in our minds. It can actually be very liberating to realise this but it is not easy to change our perception. What can help is shifting our way of looking far away from the norm. What I am proposing is that there is a deeper way of seeing everything – as mind or the result of a greater Mind.


This Mind holds information at all kinds of levels, which may not influence each other directly. They exist within a hierarchy and the information can be active or latent. I am not saying, for example, that our minds influence DNA but that the information coded there can be seen as part of a greater Mind. We could see evolution as the relationship between the greater Mind and the physical universe, as the influence of purity and coherence flowing out from the Mind. The flow of the world back into the Mind is the mechanism and source of impurity.


This way of seeing is essentially impersonal. For our own purposes, in terms of our own liberation, it is enough to see what we usually see as personal as impersonal, to see our minds as minds, not as me or mine. To have this greater, universal view is to create a perception of the world where we see ourselves as a part of the world. It is also to express the result of letting go of the personal viewpoint in a way that can help inspire and educate others who cannot practice deeply enough to realise for themselves. It is a view that can help to shake the illusion of objectivity within the conventional world.


So can we turn things right around?


One way around, the universe looks meaningless – just cause and effect with no soul, empty and hopeless and full of suffering. People can think this is the Buddha’s teaching; this and how to get out of it. We only have to see the difference between creation and control and we see how the universe can be a creation of a universal mind and yet the creator is not the controller. In creating matter, control is lost. The limitations of the material world set a limit on the extent to which happiness can be created there; the best the material could do is point back at the immaterial.


And perhaps this could be the case. Let us look at the physical world as an expression of a greater Mind, a model of the Mind, if you like. Look at the polar opposites spinning around, positive and negative, do they remind you of something? Can you see how patterns are repeated in microcosm and macrocosm? Seriously, can we turn our view around and see not the mind as emerging from the world but that the world emerges from the Mind?


To see like this is turning our view of the world upside-down. But this is hard to see. The senses do not see this way but discern discrete objects. But science helps us see the laws underneath. These laws we can see as the mind of the universe rather than its physical body. This is not eternalism either but to see an evolving Mind, maturing in a relationship with the material world. The physical world is Mind created but this does not mean Mind controlled. So this is not the mind of a creator God as we might understand it. The nature of God is perhaps not what we thought it was either. The essence of the Mind is knowing not being, God is Dhamma. Although it goes both ways on a superficial level, essentially, on the deepest level truth forms being, rather than being and matter forming truth. Seeing this direction of causation is seeing dependent origination – the beginning of everything is knowing or not-knowing, not being or not-being.


There is no reason why the transcendent cannot express itself. It cannot control or it would be controlled, but it can create. Becoming part of this creation, being drawn into it is the big mistake, the creation is not the mistake, it is the way the ineffable can point back at itself – instead of the creator getting drawn into creation, the created gets back to the source.


To create within the fine material realm of the mind is better than materiality, formless is best. And yet there is a relationship here between form and formlessness. The object formed by the space is not the same as the space formed by the object. The interior of a building can be either objects creating space or space creating the objects – the latter impression points back to the ultimate, like the church spire.


We see post-samādhi how the mind can create from emptiness – when the mind is pure it is empty as though it remains in heaven – we can still think but as soon as there is any feeling reaction to the world, the world enters into the mind (as saṅkhārās).


Love is creation from the non-material realm. So to be creating, expressing through the heavens from the ultimate, constitute a non-returning to the material – it is pouring pāramīs (spiritual qualities) into the world, so that good beings can connect to them. 


Conversely, the further we go into materiality, into birth – the further we go from the mind, the source. Ignorance leads to feeling based on materiality. Delight in the material world is feeling based on materiality, not coming out of emptiness nor pointing back to it, not going beyond but trapped in a cycle within the world.


This also shows itself in the cycle of waking and sleep. Instead of images creating feelings in dreams, feelings create images, this is the cycle of saṃsāra fulfilling itself in the unawakened mind. The unwholesome mind pushes us into sleep in order to complete its cycle, to bring the worldly mind to rest. Then the dreams pour into our semi-conscious minds as desire.


If we can understand and see like this we develop the clearest, most unified view of or experience as only Mind or Mind created; as only Mind – past and present. The material world is all a result of the past in the present. When the past dominates the present we have a cycle, when the present dominates the past we are breaking that cycle. The pure creation of wisdom is freedom, the purest emptiness naturally arising out of clear seeing.


[For a deeper elaboration on this, please refer to the article True Evolution.]

------------------------------------------
This is part three of a series of three articles on Ch'i Kung.

1. Buddhist Ch'i Kung – The practical side
2. Stillness in Movement – The meditative side
3. The Creation – The metaphysical side
---------------------------------------------



I offer this for your reflection,

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

---------------------------------------------
This is part one of a series of three articles on Ch'i Kung.

1. Buddhist Ch'i Kung - The practical side
2. Stillness in Movement - The meditative side
3. The Creation - The metaphysical side
---------------------------------------------

​
Introduction
The Taoists believe that ch'i is the ultimate energy from which the entire universe and the essence of all life is derived – beyond the limits of time and space. The stronger the flow of ch'i, the stronger the life energy. This ch'i is something that is experienced in the body as warmth or inner light, the latter being the stronger. There is a clear relationship in such experience between ch'i and space. They seem to appear together in the mind, a sense of space has a certain energy about it. The Chinese believe that because there is ch'i so there is space, space is formed by and subsequently filled by ch'i.


A Buddhist view of the same phenomena would be that because there is space (in the mind) there is ch'i. In Buddhist understanding this kind of energy is related to samādhi, emptiness of mind. It is a mental rather than a physical phenomena, or at least it is related to thought and feeling. (Although the Buddhist view of the mind is that it is far greater than just these.) Emptiness, as the absence of negative emotion, is already a healing force. This is important because we then realise that our state of mind is a crucial factor in the generation of or protection of ch'i and we see the value of keeping moral precepts to protect our minds.


My understanding of an example from history of the result of the dialogue that ensued between these two views is that a 'mind only' school of Taoist philosophy was born that acknowledged the Buddhist view. (For my take on this 'mind only' view and its connection with the Buddha's teaching see my accompanying article 'The Creation'), but if you are intent on the practice, as you should be if you are starting out, please continue and come back to the metaphysics when your practice shows results that you need to integrate into your world view.


Stances
The static stances in Ch'i Kung are our chance to connect with the stillness of the space element. Holding a ball of awareness in front of us, contained within the arms is where we first become aware of an awareness outside of the body – a brightness to the space.


Static stances are also a way of enhancing our awareness of movement. We hold a position until the strength muscles of the body fatigue out and the postural muscles take over. These deeper muscles have a much more refined control over or limbs than the strength muscles. In particular they control the fine rotational movements at the joints. These rotational patterns of movement furthermore work to enhance our three dimensional image of the body in space, aiding the formation of a picture of the body in the mind. We also find we can move in a much more relaxed way in which tension is not induced. There is a sense of effort when we move with the strength muscles, but there is no such sense when the postural muscles are working. Hence it is possible to keep the body upright with absolutely no sense of effort whatsoever, as though our limbs are floating.


Balance and posture
Normal movement is usually also controlled outside our conscious control. An intention is set to move and the body is directed at its goal. The goal is the conscious aspect and our sense for the body is merely background and feedback as to progress. So the conscious control of movement is unusual. Even people with refined bodily skills can lack body awareness. This is developed far more in movement where there is no goal in mind – slow, relaxed movement.


Attention is directed towards the body using the hands. When the hand passes over certain parts of the body there can be a sense of recognition, a feeling that tells us that the hand is there, stronger when the hand is close, weaker when it is further away. Then, as we move we can keep that feeling of connection between the hand and that point. We can ask ourselves, 'how does my body know where my hand is'.


The most important points are the point just below the navel and the point in the middle of the chest. These are the centre of gravity of the whole body – standing; and the upper part of the body – sitting, respectively. As we become more aware of these points as we move, then we become aware of gravity and have an enhanced sense of balance and posture – and an enhanced proprioceptive sense.


It is hard to describe the sense of the body in space; we just know where our limbs are. Actually we do have little receptors in our joints that tell our minds the exact angle at each joint. So this proprioceptive sense is not through a conscious sensation but comes to us in another way which is independent of physical sensations. This makes it an integral part of our body image.


There is a connection here also with awareness of the breathing process. Similar receptors tell us of the movements of our chest and therefore the size of the breath we take. In the Buddha's teaching on mindfulness of breathing, the word used to know whether we take a long or short breath (pajānāti) is a word usually reserved for the knowing of high realisation, not of such mundane affairs. I believe the use of this word is to indicate the importance of this knowing for realisation – that knowing the body in this way is knowing the Dhamma, the Dhamma is the body, or more precisely the body image formed through mindfulness.


The body image arises in the mind when the effort is not too tight or too loose. Our awareness needs to be relaxed and open yet held to stay with its object. Then we find a part of the body to focus on in more detail. When one part reveals itself in detail then the rest will tend to come. So there is no need to try to imagine the whole body. In fact imagination is not necessary at all. An image will arise naturally in time. (Moreover, unless samādhi is highly developed, the body image will be just a mental image of the surface of the body. This is fine however.)


Fully developed mindfulness of the body
As we develop a sense of the weight of the body or its 'earth element' we discover the interesting fact that this sense of weight varies – as we become aware of the space element the weight lightens and can even disappear altogether. We feel extraordinarily light. Now we begin to see how subjective our experience of the body is, we are shifting the objective physical impression of it. Gradually this new impression becomes an image in the mind. Instead of sensing our mind in our body we have made a shift to experiencing the body in the open, calm mind.


In the Buddha's teaching the theory is that mindfulness of the body, a full realistic body image comes around through the awareness of posture, movement and elements. Modern cognitive psychology shows us that such a body image is different, a more discrete image than that formed by sensations. So in the mind these two representations of the body are separate and can be experienced separately at different times. What is perhaps surprising is that experience of the neutral image is far more pleasant than the felt experience. The image effects our feelings radically, cooling them down. This is also surprisingly pleasant and we can begin to lose our taste for the more intense feelings of sensuality. Hence these exercises take us naturally in a spiritual direction.


The breath and movement of ch'i
The pattern of the movement of ch'i is the pattern in which the space element is revealed through mindfulness of breathing, the space being the stillness through which the air is moving. We will only see or sense this pattern going in a particular direction, not another. It is in the reverse direction to the pattern of the feeling of the breath itself. This is something we open up to – it is not a matter of creating this with the imagination.


We can be deceived by the imagination. In the Chinese practice, initially the mind leads the energy but through repetition then the energy leads. But it is merely that the memory starts to lead and the mind in the present follows to reinforce that memory. This creates the illusion of something real that we follow. This is a fake. At best we can be looking for something that others have seen in their body through deep meditation and if we don't find it we are creating what we do not find. This is akin to superstition and imagination replacing genuine psychic ability.


We can also see in our experience that the emptiness of the mind can be extended beyond the body. We can see the brightness of mind move out from the body as we direct it there. We can leave this as a mystery for now and come back to explain this later. This emptiness can therefore potentially resolve problems in others. So, if we are looking for magic it lies in this emptiness. This magic is a separate reality from that of the things of nature, just as space is separate from form, so it does not confuse things – and magic and science can go together, they do not contradict each other.
The practice of samādhi empties the mind and fully accesses this magic.



​
I offer this for your reflection,


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

---------------------------------------------
This is part one of a series of three articles on Ch'i Kung.

1. Buddhist Ch'i Kung - The practical side
2. Stillness in Movement - The meditative side
3. The Creation - The metaphysical side
---------------------------------------------
​

The central teaching of Buddhism is that all things that arise do so according to conditions outside of themselves and cease when these conditions cease. There is therefore no permanent or independent existence but instead an interconnected, interdependent system. This is the nature of the world. To be an independent individual or to perceive oneself as such is thus a deluded perception of the situation. We realise, however, that within the mind there is another interdependence of mind creating truth and truth creating mind. In this sense the mind has a life of its own.


There is also truth or information contained within this world, the laws of nature, that persists. Information exists at many different levels within the system from DNA to neuronal structure and chemistry. If we see all this information as similarly interconnected then we can see a universal mind or source of mind also within the same conditions. The existence of such truth is what can carry the mind beyond individual existence into a wider sphere, this is the medium of rebirth.


When we perceive ourselves as some kind of being or entity then it is hard to see anything permanent or independent about ourselves or the ripples we make in the world. It is hard to see what could be reborn. When we start to see ourselves as truth or meaning we can see how we may be reborn in many different ways.


One example we may give is of DNA. If we have children and pass on our genes then we are passing on something of ourselves, the information contained in the DNA, to the next generation and we are to some extent reborn in our children or grandchildren. This one maybe we all recognise – but is it the best we can do?


On another level we are reborn when people remember us or what we have done or said. It is actually only at higher levels of abstraction that we survive in such a way, not as specifics but as currents of underlying truth. If what we know is just the body and its associated sense faculties then all is lost. Others’ experiences in the sense world will be different from ours. And what is true will last in their memories more than that which was false because it will be reaffirmed.


The way in which we survive the most is in our truth becoming part of something much larger than ourselves. And this need not be our limited personal truth either. To follow and be part of a well established culture is what widens our existence the most. The extent to which the truth that is what we really are is part of the world is the extent to which we are the same as others on a deep level, and not different. This is real self-preservation.


What is this self we are trying to preserve through the great novel or the grand empire, the song or the sword? The humble servant of truth is far greater. I am proud to be the member of the longest surviving Monastic Order in the world. Our survival is a testimony to the deep universal truth the Order embodies. To keep to the same code of conduct over centuries is to keep that truth alive in the world. Our lives speak for themselves.


Mankind fights over ideas trying to sustain a false religion or creed. A true religion has no reason to fight to prove or assert itself, it has its own objective truth. Long live the humble shaveling! This is the way not to eternal being but to the eternal knowing of universal, everlasting, natural truth. There is no eternal being. There never was.


Some natural truth or meaning is buried deep in the structure of things for us to search for. Some of it is right in front of our eyes. Some of it we create ourselves. But all of our experience consists of one kind of meaning or another and all meaning is potentially within our grasp. We can make it all apparent. The meaning we have the most power over is that which we create ourselves. The meaning that has the most power over our lives is that which is most in line with truth.


Then there is a higher order of truth, universal truth, present in everything everywhere. The truth of impermanence is an example. This truth can raise the mind to a universal state, the mind may become time itself and go beyond the grip of impermanence, beyond materiality.


The fact that the body and mind are interdependent, bound up with each other, does not make them the same thing. They exist in parallel, following each other. The structure of DNA, the double helix, is a manifestation of the same thing. The two spirals follow each other. We can do a simple exercise between two people where one person’s hand follows the movement of another. First one person leads and then the other follows. Then we swap over and the leader follows. If we keep swapping over then we start to lose track of who is leading and who is following, we enter the flow and start to follow each other. Suddenly we can feel at One. Internally we can observe the same as the mind leads the body or the body leads the mind except that here the flow is natural, what we are used to. Internally we can need to notice how sometimes it is the body that leads and sometimes the mind. We can be doing the same exercise we have done between us in reverse to discover that the body and mind are not the same. By bringing them together we notice that they are different within our experience.


Objectively speaking we can still accept that the mind is in the brain, we don’t need another view and yet we realise that it is our subjective experience that really matters. Our subjective experience is what we are and it has this kind of semi-autonomy from the physical world, running along in parallel. The more we can follow and go with this flow of nature, paradoxically perhaps, we realise this real semi-autonomy rather than looking for some kind of false independence. From here we go on to discover the empty mind, the transcendent element.


When the highest truth or Dhamma creates the empty mind this is transcendence, detachment. The mind is in the world but not of the world. This is a new relationship we can find with the world that we discover runs very deep into the very nature of our existence and that of the world around us.



I offer this for your reflection,


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

​As we centre the mind within the body we look out at the world through the window of our thoughts and their formative perceptions that are the central axis of the mind. We thus also see clearly and separately what we are projecting on to the world and what information comes back to us – the cause and effect of our mental activity.


This can become a conscious process as we place our states of mind back into or onto the world of their origin. Then, very simply, we can be honestly asking:
“What is it I am averse to here?”
“What is it I am attracted to?”


From a place of spiritual refuge our minds can take a fresh look. We can end up reviewing the priorities of our lives and at the same time see how and where to follow these priorities – a clear experience of body and mind taking us to a clear present-moment view of the world we live in and our relationship to it. We have a clear, broad, open and unified awareness of life.

​Finally to put all this in its ultimate perspective the highest spirituality lies in relinquishing ourselves rather than in self development. It is the happiness of the altruist. It is also the happiness of the wise who, seeing clearly, are freed from their attachment to the impermanent, conditioned world including this illusion we call ourselves. Ultimately this path goes beyond all kinds of being to the realisation of a state of pure truth or knowing. So the true path lies not in a refinement of being (not even in being energy rather than matter) but in a refinement of knowing and seeing which covers all aspects of our experience. The refinement of our minds through meditation is aimed at this. 

​
I offer this for your reflection,

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

​

------------------------------
For an example of my personal experience of the practice of stillness in movement as Chi Kung, please see pages 14-15 of the book Virtue and Reality.



---------------------------------------------
This is part two of a series of three articles on Ch'i Kung.

1. Buddhist Ch'i Kung - The practical side
2. Stillness in Movement - The meditative side
3. The Creation - The metaphysical side
---------------------------------------------

​
​

In seeking both our own well being and that of the world we live in it is not just what we do that is important but how we do it, both in terms of our outer behaviour and how we work with the mind. If our personal relationship to the world is based on desire there will always be potential conflict. If this relationship is based on a higher mindfulness, conflicts can be avoided. We can have the same benevolent intention either way but one way will be fraught with suffering and the other free of suffering.

In Buddhism virtue is based on letting go of desire. We follow the conscious, peaceful mind in the present, not the automatic pilot of desire. We discover the joy of letting go of our desires and following our mindfulness, our spiritual awareness. This is based on the fact that if we honestly observe our own minds we discover that our desires are essentially insatiable. The impermanence of the pleasures of the senses always ultimately frustrates our desire. We also realise that our desires, in the spur of the moment, cannot see that impermanence. This makes desire itself unpleasant and we naturally opt for calm, for peace and for freedom from desire. This, we further discover, can be very liberating. We realise how our desires have been enslaving us all along.
​
If we can thus let go of our desires and enjoy the peace and freedom that ensues it becomes a joyous thing to live humbly and frugally in harmony with nature and have no conflict with other people.

There seems to be a growing acceptance of the fact that the earth is beginning to struggle to accommodate the needs – or, lets be honest – the outright greed of modern man. We can then, perhaps, ask such questions as:

1. What can be done to cure the greed that could lead to humanity's destruction? The overcoming of greed is a central theme in the teaching and practice of Buddhism which is thankfully beginning to find a stronger voice. We are trying to promote a more interdependent view of the world that generates empathy. What we can add to this is firstly that spiritual pleasures, meditation for example, are very eco-friendly; secondly we can give more emphasis to the value of disciplined conduct on the part of the individual. The practical value of this is, of course, recognised, but the power of such discipline to deeply change our relationship to nature is often underestimated. I lived in the tropical forest for years, not permitted by my monk's discipline to kill insects. Over time this transformed my relationship to the ants and mosquitoes that were a constant pest – and consequently to the whole environment into one of harmless communion.

2. What about the helpless anger or despair of the sufferers of this greed? Are there, for example, hidden causes here for the apparent increase in delinquency amongst young people? Or are my eyes on the world just getting too old and sensible? I believe that Buddhism as a source of faith and as a deep psychology can help us understand and manage the emotions related to death or impermanence. It is surely these emotions that turn us away from facing the issues. In Buddhism we teach people both the wisdom to let go of attachment to things and the compassion to stay with those things, hence winning a lighter and more caring touch on life: Recently we had someone come to the monastery to commemorate the recent death of their favourite Aunt. When the ceremony was all over they were trying to talk to the monks but their little girl would not settle. An elderly lady friend of ours in the room was pointed out and recommended as her new Aunt, saying, “there are lots of them in the world.”

3. What if the planet cannot be saved? Then where are we to find hope? We can perhaps see for the first time in the current context how humanity up until now found this in ‘the new generation’. Then what if there were to be no more mankind? Perhaps we find hope in the preservation of human knowledge – the computer chip blasted into space? Yet so much of this knowledge surely concerns and is hence based upon, the earth that may be lost. The earth that one day, however long in the future, must be lost.

To me our greatest if not our only eternal hope is the Dhamma. Dhamma is a source of universal truth. If we can see the full potential Dhamma as it really is, as a part of nature that can never be destroyed, we can have hope. We have a new purpose in life promoting this understanding, this faith in ourselves and in others. If we get this right this is in no way a negation of the transitory aspects of nature. It is rather seeing the Dhamma as the highest expression of nature, its highest evolution – the way that an aspect of nature, one that I believe can be formative, can truly find a permanent basis. I would argue that the enlightened mind, free of limitation in time and place, is capable of reaching back out to the universe, so to speak, from its refuge in the beyond. I think it is possible to argue, based both on philosophy and the experience of deep meditation, that this can be true. This is not a such a simple matter, however. We need to find a number of ways, philosophical and meditative, through which we free up the mind from its material constraints. I have tried to tackle this in the recent book 'Virtue and Reality'. Just to try to give you a taste, to quote from Gregory Bateson:

 “...a miracle is a materialists idea of how to escape from materialism... the reply to crude materialism is not miracles but beauty.” - Mind and Nature

To learn how to understand like in this quote can also be to see like this and to find a new depth of appreciation for nature. This is to see with the quality of 'muditā' (sympathetic joy) at nature's achievement.

If we can find faith in all this as a possibility, we have a hope in those enlightened already and those to come as being able to take human consciousness forward beyond its material constraints. We see the Earth is the perfect training ground for the mind striving for enlightenment and therefore we do whatever we can to preserve it. Having a few more enlightened beings in the world already will also certainly help to preserve the Earth. Interestingly, many Thai Buddhists believe that while there are enlightened beings on the Earth, the Devas (heavenly beings) will protect it from destruction. This is inspiring but I hope such beliefs don't take the place of ecological responsibility on the human level!

To sum up, in addressing these three questions I hope we have done something to tackle the human greed, hatred and delusion respectively that are both at the source of the ecological crisis and are the results of it; they are indeed the forces behind this destructive cycle as a whole, as they are behind all other suffering.

How do we fit together the different strands of the Buddhist attitude toward nature? On one hand there is the truth of interconnectedness, an attitude of respect and harmlessness; and on the other hand a goal of transcendence, to escape from the suffering of samsara. Surely, we might think, one is positive and the other negative? Are they reconcilable?

Let us take the tragic yet also ultimately liberating truth of the impermanence of all things as the central view of Buddhism and look from there. First of all we can understand that it is a positive, loving view of the world that sees impermanence as a tragedy. A negative view of the world would see impermanence as a good thing, good riddance. Have we been too quick to assume that a negative view of samsara is a negative view of the world?

Secondly, have we too quickly made the mistaken assumption that liberation comes about through having a negative view and trying to get away? Liberation does not come about like this at all. There is no place for negativity in the search for transcendence. The Buddha describes trying to get away like this (through 'vibhava-tanha') as like a dog tied to a pole trying to get away by running round and round it. This is not the way. We cannot escape through desire. Liberation comes not through trying to withdraw from this world but through examining it clearly and completely with a peaceful, open mind and penetrating it to its very core. The natural result of this will be to let go and find freedom from attachment and suffering, not somewhere else or at some time in the future but right here and now. To be capable of this the heart must not only have the wisdom to see suffering clearly but also the compassion to see suffering and stay put.

The real purpose of Buddhists withdrawing into nature is not to try to get away from it all but precisely this kind of examination. The deepest truth is to be found in our relationship to nature and to our bodies that are part of nature. The only true way out is to truly enter in, with open and compassionate eyes.

​If this is our understanding and our practice there is no contradiction between our love of nature and our search for freedom. Freedom will be the essence of all things.

Buddhism offers us the hope of finding a safe refuge beyond the body in the blissful 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 and practice Dhamma before its too late! For those with less faith in a possibility of life after death 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.

Our first refuge will be the natural mindfulness that comes from virtue, from a lack of remorse that takes the mind into the past and a letting go of the desire that pulls the mind into the future. This path of faith culminates in samādhi that seems a bit like finding a way within our minds to blast off into space! Yet where will we end up? Do we know?

And what about the world?

If we add wisdom to such faith we realise that we can find a safe space, a deeper refuge within the world. If the world survives or ends we can we stay right where we are, within the empty mind. Then we know where we will end up. We will end up right here. We can get to know this emptiness here and now and find that it is naturally full of spiritual qualities. We find out how this emptiness relates to any phenomenon that comes within it in a way that it remains empty and free. We 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 and the practice becomes wider, not just about meditation.

Then 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, the mind is in the world but not of the world. And yet to see and let go completely the mind must be able to look on from a secure refuge. Building such a refuge is therefore our task.