Open Enlightenment

States, Stages, Powers

In this weeks video installment, I tackle the question, ‘What is the relationship between spiritual states, stages, powers and enlightenment?’ asked by OE reader/watcher, Pied Piper. Enjoy…

States, Stages, Powers from Alan Chapman on Vimeo.

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Alone With Ghosts

Fancy a change from your usual meditation practice? Give this a try:

He who practices sadhana is supposed to go at night to a deserted house, a mountaintop, or a cemetery. There he must sit astride a corpse that has been laid on its belly, facing north. He must draw on the corpse’s back a graphic symbol (yantra), usually an inverted triangle, representing Shakti. At this point he evokes elementary forces by reciting mantras and by projecting prana in the corpse with the purpose of animating it… If the rite is successful, this force actually manifests itself in the corpse, whose head will then spin around and speak to the apprentice. The apprentice must be able to impose his will right away on the ‘ghost.’ This practice is considered terrifying and most dangerous. [1]

Maybe it’s not so easy in modern times to dig up a fresh corpse as it may once have been. But suppose that wasn’t the case and you had the means – are you up for it?

Even supposing the head doesn’t turn around and speak (which I imagine is quite likely), this would still be probably one of the most frightening experiences of your life. Even to reach the point where you had proved to yourself the spell didn’t work, you would have to master a massive whack of fear that it just might.

And if the corpse actually did turn around and speak? Well, then you’d have to master a whole whack more…

On Halloween this year I’ll be doing my own version of this ritual. I’ve arranged to spend the night all alone and in the dark in a very haunted place: The Old Police Cells Museum, in the basement of Brighton Town Hall.

Some of the cells have been renovated and turned into a museum, but the remainder are still derelict. They were in use throughout the 19th century, right up until the 1960s. A police chief was murdered there in the 1840s, and who knows how many poor souls died or languished down there in misery. No wonder the place has a reputation for being vigorously haunted.

I’ve wondered for a while about making a point of facing my fear and doing something like this, so I’ve decided to collect sponsorship for the challenge. The proceeds will be split between the museum and the local branch of a national mental health charity, Mind.

I’ll have a night-vision camera for company, but I’m not planning a ‘paranormal investigation’. Instead, I want to see how good my meditation skills are at dealing with fear.

I recently read an account by a paranormal investigator of his most frightening moment. He fled from a house after being physically attacked by a poltergeist:

As I stood in the back garden I contemplated my future in paranormal research. I thought I had been in acceptance that such phenomena existed but apparently not. I had been fooling myself! This was all a bit too real for me… [2]

Fear and reality go hand-in-hand. We can’t fear something unless it becomes real; fear of something that isn’t real we instead call ‘worry’ or ‘anxiety’, whereas – as in the example above – the more real something becomes (especially when it hasn’t quite been recognised before) then the more incredibly, mind-blowingly scary it suddenly is.

But where is ‘real’ when we look at it in our experience? A sensation of reality involves things becoming vivid and impactful. Yet if things are not vivid or impactful, is our experience therefore less or only partially real?

I don’t think so. If it were, then we couldn’t recognise non-vivid experiences as being real – and yet we do. Also, the opposite couldn’t happen either: an experience such as travelling at speed would never cease to be vivid – but of course, over time it does.

Reality is not a concrete quality that experiences do or don’t have, but a description of our relationship to experience. In sensations of threat, awe or powerlessness the causes of these feelings spring into vivid relief as being ‘out there’ and a strong sense of reality is initiated. But this feeling of reality is just the flip-side of the sense of self; generally, the less there is of self, the more reality – and vice versa. But the fact we can recognise and shift between either implies that both are there, bound up in each other. It’s the habit of drawing a dividing-line in different places that makes some experiences feel more real than others.

Now, I’m not saying that being punched in the back by a poltergeist didn’t happen to the paranormal investigator, or wasn’t real, or that he was chicken. But although you can change your circumstances (by running into the garden, for instance) there’s never anywhere to hide from experience. Everything in experience is always how it seems, whether that means things feel vague, or else that things are far too weird or vivid to bear. Fear is what arises when we assume we can somehow hide from experience. If we remain accepting of experience then fear will not arise – and if it does, then we should accept that too.

I’d say it wasn’t quite the case that our paranormal investigator didn’t believe poltergeists were real; he did, I’m sure, but it was the experience of being punched by one that drove him into the garden. Who can say they wouldn’t have reacted the same?

Will I be able to spend a night in haunted cells without cacking my pants? I doubt it. It’s going to take every gramme of willpower to keep me down there. Hopefully, the even worse prospect of letting down my sponsors will keep me standing firm(ish). But if I’m able to make use of them, there should be plenty of opportunities to work with my fear.

I’ve set up a new blog for this project, with more information, a diary of the build-up to the event, and various observations on the paranormal. Drop by if you’re interested – and wish me luck!

References

[1] Julius Evola, The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 1992), p. 96.

[2] Steve Mera, ‘The Invisible Assailant’, Paranormal Magazine, 50 (August 2010), p. 51.

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How to experience enlightenment

How to experience enlightenment from Alan Chapman on Vimeo.

Better late than never, eh? Videos should be more frequent from now on.

My last video transformed the blog into a forum, and amongst many other terrible accusations thrown my way I was rather confusingly compared to Andrew Cohen. Let’s see where this one takes us…

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Everything I’ve Discovered (So Far) About The Astral, Etheric and Physical

In the Western esoteric tradition we have the concepts of the physical, the etheric and the astral, which can be roughly defined by the common-language terms: ‘body’, ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’.

These represent three planes of existence across which human experience is organised. In Buddhism there are the similar concepts of the three kayas (or ‘bodies’): nirmanakaya, sambhogakaya and dharmakaya, but these don’t map quite so tidily onto body, soul and spirit.

Nirmanakaya is perhaps equivalent to ‘physical’, but sambhogakaya embraces both ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’, etheric and astral. Dharmakaya, meanwhile, is a term unique to Buddhism: it represents the plane of experience (or the ‘body’) made available to an enlightened being by his or her realisation of emptiness. There is no simple, single equivalent for this term that I’m aware of within western esotericism.

All of these terms cause confusion and uncertainty – at least within western esotericism, where the most common problem is the difficulty distinguishing between the etheric and the astral. There is another rough correspondence that can help clear this up to a certain extent, the correspondence of etheric and astral with (respectively) emotion and thought, but it’s often difficult to separate our feelings from our thoughts in practice, because both appear similarly ‘mental’ in contrast to physical sensations.

Another common issue is that these concepts are treated as if that’s all they were – just concepts. In fact, they are planes of experience and concepts belong to only one of those planes of experience – the astral. So if we treat these ideas simply as ideas, we limit ourselves to a single plane.

To understand them better, surely it would help if we could find them within our experience and take a direct look at the contrasting roles they play in organising the form that experience takes.

Where are they?

I’ve noticed how, in meditation, there are certain limits imposed on understanding. The greatest of these is the realisation of emptiness, beyond which human understanding is unable to penetrate.

Because emptiness cannot be reduced to a concept, this does not mean that it cannot play any part in human life. It can, but it requires development of the dharmakaya (i.e. the experience of enlightenment) in order for us to participate in those experiences.

What have here is a limit imposed by something that seems to cut across our experience, yet in which – at the same time – we also participate. The realisation of emptiness enables us to see at once how we are cut off from the absolute (because we are relative beings), and yet also how we particpate in the absolute as relative expressions of it.

Development of the dharamkaya usually entails dedicated practice and may not arise naturally. The astral, etheric and physical bodies, in contrast, are available to everyone as given. These too share the characteristic of cutting across or imposing a limit on our experience, yet at the same time providing a new plane of existence in which we can participate.

The astral

In a recent article on the nature of thinking, I pointed out how thoughts are unique in mental life in that we can take it as given that when we are thinking of a certain thing then we are truly thinking of that and not of anything else. Thought is self-validating in the way that if we think of the number five, then we know it is actually five that we are thinking of, and that we cannot be thinking of four or six.

This is in fact a limitation on our experience, but we are so accustomed to it we rarely notice. The self-validating nature of thoughts is what can seduce us into mistaking them for something solid or real. Yet this self-validating aspect is also what allows thinking because, to think, what arises must be limited to what it seems to be.

This limitation marks the entry to the astral: things take on a definite individuality and meaning. And if a thing has a meaning, then symbolisation of that thing also becomes possible. The astral realm is the realm of self-validating, self-sufficient, meaningful and symbolic things.

Compare thinking with dreaming, for instance. Or compare thinking with not thinking at all. Look at thinking in meditation, and it’s possible to see how thinking entails restraint on the mind, yet opens up the possibility of a new kind of participation in experience. By limiting the mind we gain the ability to think.

It begins to become apparent how a human being is a creature whose experience is structured, but this organisation is what gives us a paradoxical freedom. By being made by this structure to think, we acquire the freedom of thought.

The etheric

The etheric is more difficult to notice, but it can be found within our experience at the level of what the Buddhists call ‘formations’. These are raw impressions of things. When the mind is still we can catch them appearing – or, rather, catch the mind assuming the posture that lends them their form.

A formation is raw ‘mind stuff’. It’s like a kind of eddy or whorl or lattice of amalgamated sensations and impressions.

Imagine holding a lump of ice in your hand. Imagine the complex packet of impressions that will arise: cold, smooth, stinging, sharp, angular, dense, slippery, wet, hard… That ‘packet’, overall, assumes a certain form. That form is ‘ice’ in the mind. Poets and artists are very often people who are particularly sensitive to this level of experience.

In meditation we meet a limit when we attempt to probe why a certain appearance assumes the form that it does. There is no answer; things assume their form because if they assumed another then they would be something else.

The form that things take in the mind is arbitrary, in that we have no control or insight into how things appear. But once again this apparent limitation confers a higher freedom. The form things take is imposed, yet this imposition enables us to recognise individual things. The etheric is where form and individuality become possible. We enter a world of separate-seeming things, because of the mind’s inflexibility in the way it presents impressions.

The etheric is the level of form, individuality and immediate experience. It includes feelings and emotions, because these are unreflective responses – they arise, and whatever their cause they are just the way they are. (Unlike thoughts, which progress, develop and spawn corollaries.) Psychic phenomena and morphic resonance are also at this level, because this is where the instances of things are plucked from the flux in which, otherwise, everything is joined.

The physical

The physical is perhaps the most counterintuitive of all the levels because, contrary to the consensus view, it’s the level to which we have least access. In fact, we have no direct sensory access to this level at all.

The physical world comes at us through the body. Let’s suppose we see something, or we feel a touch on our arm – do we experience this sensation in the arm or eye? No. Instead, we somehow experience it as coming from ‘out there’ and arriving ‘in here’. Furthermore, it comes to us not simply as a sensation but it always pertains to something.

We can experience physical sensations only because they are mediated up to us through the etheric and astral levels. They have a form, a meaning, and are experienced via the mind. If a physical sensation had no feelings or thoughts associated with it, then what would be left? If we were truly to have direct access to the physical world then our experience of it would have to be unmediated, and in that case we could no longer maintain a difference between our body and any other physical object.

In meditation we can meet the limit that defines this level if we turn our attention to the qualities presented by experience. For instance, say we experience a sensation of heat: does the sensation of heat that arises actually possess the quality of hotness?

It’s perplexing and counterintuitive at first, but looking closely we see that no, it doesn’t. And the same applies to all physical sensations. The sensation of heat that arises in us is not itself hot; the sensation of wetness that arises is not itself wet; the sensation of greenness that arises (and this is the hardest one, perhaps) is not green. To put it in the terms of orthodox vipassana, we might say that although, of course, greenness is green, yet this thing that arises as my sensation of greenness has its own characteristics: impermanent, insufficient, devoid of any essence. If we look closely and hard enough we can clearly see how the sensation of greenness itself is not the same thing as the quality of being green that it conveys.

The raw experience of greenness is on the etheric level, and the recognition of greenness is on the astral. The physical, meanwhile, is inhabited by the sensation of qualities, but these sensations do not themselves possess those qualities; they are representatives of them.

The astral, etheric and physical are like linings of a spacesuit that every human must wear in order to experience life on earth. The physical is the outermost layer of the spacesuit, a membrane where impressions from the outside world indeed are transformed into precisely that – impressions. If they weren’t impressions, but we had direct access to the physical, this would not be a spacesuit supporting a human life.

The limit that prevents us from direct access to the physical, but confronts us with representations instead, therefore grants us the paradoxical freedom of experience itself.

Materialists and scientists often claim that they deal with physical reality. In fact, they deal almost exclusively with the astral level, which is the domain of meaning and truth. If there were direct access to the physical world there wouldn’t be any need for theories. Yet it wouldn’t be possible for theories to be disproved and more truthful models to be discovered. It is always models and theories that are disproved on the astral level of experience, with no immediate connection to physical reality.

Unnecessary

Specific recognition of these levels is unnecessary for the experience of enlightenment to occur. Astral, etheric and physical (or ‘meaning’, ‘form’ and ‘quality’ as we might also paraphrase them) are components of human experience. But experience itself (no matter what level) has certain characteristics. Earlier I mentioned the three characteristics of the vipassana meditation tradition: impermanence, insufficiency and lack of essence. You could describe these characteristics in other ways, but however you cut it, the experience of enlightenment will depend on realising those characteristics for yourself, leading to a depth of insight that can be applied on each and every level.

Take a plane

To find the astral investigate: How do I know that I am really thinking this and not something else?

To find the etheric investigate: What form does an impression take and why not another?

To find the physical investigate: Does a sensation possess the quality that it conveys?

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Being Ordinary Interview: Life, the Universe and Everything

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Being Ordinary‘s Tom Buckley-Houston. Tom has done a wonderful job in editing down our very long discussion into a listenable interview. Although I talk about some of things I already touch on in this video, we end up discussing a diverse range of topics including astronauts, direct vs developmental paths and even the future of the human species. Check it out here!

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The Gesture

What is ‘understanding’?

Forget those theories of the brain making a picture to itself of the world, and that picture playing the role of truth, and its manufacture constituting the act of understanding. Forget that tedious dualist crap, because it’s clueless and will make you miserable.

We don’t learn a foreign language by learning correspondences between words, but by immersion in the culture where it is spoken. We learn Chinese only by becoming, to the extent we can, Chinese ourselves.

Understanding is not a representation in the mind or brain but a penetration of consciousness by the thing understood. There’s a French proverb, tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, which translates as ‘to understand all is to forgive all’. Understanding is a surrender of self, indistinguishable in many respects from compassion and love.

The world of spirit opens when we recognise our perception of the rose is a part of the rose, not a part of or a picture in our mind. No great artist ever painted a picture of anything. Instead they let the thing into themselves, accommodated it, aligned themselves with it, were penetrated by it. This is seeing.

So how do we learn to see?

Vipassana meditation is one method. Boiling it down to a single mental gesture, I’d sum it up as this: include.

Next time you’re in the meditation hall, listen out for people getting it wrong. Fidgeting is the sound of failure. We go wrong when we react to discomfort; instead include the experience of discomfort into awareness.

Snoring is another sign. Deal with sleepiness by including the experience of sleepiness into awareness. This may involve actually falling asleep – as long as you include the experience of that too, which you can, once you get good at it.

Sighing is a common but subtle sign. The person who sighs has noticed their attention has wandered. They rouse themselves from this ‘break’ and the sigh is a token of steeling themselves for setting off again. But steeling the self is just another word for ego contraction. The vital thing is not to oppose the break with fresh resolve, but to include the break and the lack of resolve into awareness.

If we include the break then we won’t feel the need to sigh, because the constriction of the ego will not have been consolidated, only noted.

When distracting thoughts or strong emotions arise, include them. Do not react, but include them. Or if you react, include into awareness your reaction. Include, include, include.

Make a special effort to include particularly anything that pretends it can’t be included: such as moments of complete unconsciousness, or that sense of a detached, watching self. These are only what they seem to be. Just include that seeming. Any impression or part-impression of them that you can grasp, just include that, and you will have done more than enough. Sooner than you think, understanding will come.

This gesture leads to understanding because this gesture is understanding. Understanding is this letting in, this surrender of self. There is not a picture of reality in your mind, and no need for one. Your mind is in reality. So open it up now please – for Fuck’s sake – and awaken!

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Lost in Translation

I’m only five satsangs in to my teaching career, but I think it’s time for a course correction.

In the past I‘ve always considered the irreverence for authority prevalent in the West to be a good thing. Authority is prone to abuse, and is often faked; respect should only be forthcoming when genuine authority is demonstrated.

In the past I’ve found the offense Eastern teachers take from the Westerner’s failure to acknowledge position and status a quant example of culture shock. I’ve also considered Westerner teachers who bemoan our irreverence to be suffering from their own power trips.

But then I had never tried to teach before; I had never encountered how easily people’s issues can co-opt a session (to their complete ignorance); how the failure to honour a teaching hierarchy (especially on my part) can allow others to sabotage the time with their own lack of integrity by holding forth with their opinions; how a student first needs to recognise the teacher’s function and their own reason for being there before any real teaching can commence.

I’ve experienced all of these things (and more) in my very short time as a teacher. And all of this is due to my own naivety!

My plan was simple: I would adapt a traditional Eastern method of teaching by holding a weekly satsang, where those wishing to explore enlightenment could come and ask me questions as a means of facilitating their own enlightenment. It would be relaxed, open and informal. As I was just starting out, I thought adopting a donation model would work best: the room was cheap, and maybe if everyone gave a couple of pounds, I could cover the room hire and perhaps save a bit of cash that could eventually go towards hiring a bigger and better venue, or perhaps allow me to buy a few cushions for our sits, or even organise a weekend retreat.

But the sad fact is very few people are interested in enlightenment, many cannot and do not recognise the function of a teacher, and some couldn’t care less if the cost of the room is covered if they don’t really have to pay.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we Westerner’s only really respect one thing: what we have paid for.

About turn

I like to think of myself as a quick study rather than a failure, but the truth is I have come realise that I am doing my students or the attendees to my teaching sessions an incredible disservice by not honouring the fact they are Western, thereby failing to offer them:

a). a structured, easy to digest teaching (perhaps in modules or stages).

b). a structured, formal teaching environment.

c). the facility to pay a set price for a given service. Let’s face it: you’re only going to pay for something you actually want, and if you’ve paid for it, you’ll definitely try and get all you can out of it!

So I’ve cancelled my forthcoming satsangs, and I hope in a short while to return with a series of talks/workshops that will cover my teaching in a structured, easy to understand manner, and with a set ticket price.  I hope this will naturally follow on to weekend and week long retreats.

I have gained a few formal students in this period (and I will continue to accept prospective students) with whom I maintain frequent, personal contact on a 1-2-1 basis (which is a bonus as no money is involved). If you were intending to come to one of the cancelled satsangs, and you are genuinely interested in enlightenment, feel free to e-mail me: alan at (replace with @) openenlightenment.org (no spaces) and we’ll see where we go from there.

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The Dirty Little Secret of Awakening

There is something wrong with the Dharma.

A sickness is festering, unchecked, in the shadows of the great Saints, Sages and Prophets. Its symptoms include the countless examples of psychological, physical, and sexual abuses visited upon students and devotees by gurus, the financial exploitation, corruption, fraud, murder and drug abuse perpetrated by teachers from both the East and West, the political infighting evident in every major lineage and school, the outright failure of many traditions in producing awakened practitioners, the reluctance of genuinely awakened individuals in coming forward and openly discussing enlightenment, and the casual racism, sexism, fascism and homophobia still found in ‘spiritual culture’.

Ironically, all of this is the result of an endeavour to uphold the highest standards of morality.

Gestation

It’s been just over nine months since my final awakening, and I’ve recently become aware of how easily I became infected with the sickness, and since beginning to teach, the potential for just how severe the symptoms could become.

Since beginning this blog last year, we’ve been visited by a number of individuals who are so badly infected by the sickness that their only chance of recovery – if any – is a Dharma lobotomy. I expect that what I’m going to write here is probably going to attract more of this type, and probably with further accusations of my awakening being anything but genuine or full (see how many times you can spot something that can’t possibly mean I’m enlightened). But if the Dharma is ever going to recover, someone has to bite the bullet and expose the Dirty Little Secret no one wishes to address.

Early detection

Post-awakening is just as much a learning curve as pre-awakening. For a couple of months after my awakening, I felt like I had been emptied out. I was effortlessly present, blissed out, calm and contented. I had of course experienced something similar with my peak and partial awakenings, and so I knew that this state wouldn’t last forever.

So what had permanently changed?

Although many gurus speak about the eradication of the ego or the self, I already knew pre-awakening that many genuine teachers found this model inaccurate and misleading; and my experience confirmed this. I still had an ego, a self or personality; but it did seem as if the subject/object divide had disappeared for good, and had been replaced by wholeness or completion at a fundamental level. So that must be it: I was no longer a subject!

And the sickness had slipped in by simply changing its name.

Diagnosis

We can readily identify the sickness by considering perhaps the most essential (no pun intended) concept of Buddhism: No-Self.

According to Buddhism, No-Self is one of the three characteristics evident in all phenomena, including human beings. If we observe a sensation close enough, we can see that it has no ‘essence’, despite the fact we readily assume all subjects and objects to possess such a quality.

What this has come to mean, however, is the idea that if we believe or act as though we possess a self, say by performing any actions that can be considered ‘selfish’ or ‘egotistical’, then we are acting from a place of ignorance.

Ergo, the enlightened person must be completely selfless.

In my own case, if I am no longer a subject, that means I must act as if I no longer have the concerns that a subject possesses, no? Which, for all intents and purposes, is exactly the same thing as believing I am selfless.

Furthermore, as I am awakened, I cannot possibly act with selfish, egotistical or ‘ignorant’ intent.  My motivations must always be pure then!

Now stick me in a room, surround me by devotees who also behave as if I am infallibly selfless and pure, and watch as I play out every whim unburdened by conscience (‘My devotees bitch and moan when I force them to practice for 48hrs straight/give me their inheritance for my Open Enlightenment centre/play out my sexual fantasies. Of course, they wouldn’t complain if they were awakened like me; I need to make them work harder/give me more money/perform more interesting sexual feats, more often!’).

The abusive guru and the gullible devotee is but one of the many symptoms of the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness (IBS).

The Dirty Little Secret

The awful truth about awakening (and this has taken me a while to really understand with a degree of clarity) is that the self, ego, personality and even the subject don’t go anywhere, which means that selfish, egotistical, personal and subjective behaviour all remain. If you are greedy, angry and homophobic before awakening, chances are you’ll still be greedy, angry and homophobic afterwards.

If we define awakening as the recognition of our original nature, we can say that the awakened person is simply aware that all phenomenon is original nature; this includes all of the neuroses, issues, and prejudices that come with being a human being. This does not mean the self, ego, personality or subject are eradicated; they are simply seen as perfect, whole and complete. (Get over it.)

Or, to speak in Buddhist terms, No Self does not mean there is no self, but that the self is empty, along with everything else (including your ego, personality, issues, psychosis, facial ticks…and even emptiness itself!).

Perhaps if the concept of Empty Self replaced that of No Self we might go some way to inhibiting the spread of the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness.

Further Symptoms

With selflessness as the yard stick for awakening, it should come as no surprise that:

• Many Dharma practitioners deny and suppress their angry, greedy, lustful, attached, ignorant, anxious, weird, disturbed, restless, unhappy, sad, mad, bad and selfish emotions, thoughts and behaviours, only to have these unwanted and unloved aspects of themselves play out while the practitioner remains oblivious and ignorant to the fact, and usually within a Sangha or group of similarly deluded hypocrites, where everyone pretends they’re the most ‘enlightened’ people on the planet!
• Many awakened practitioners mistakenly believe they are not awakened because they are evidently not selfless.
• Many schools and lineages of enlightenment will not tolerate discussion of awakening for fear of being accused of displaying pride or attachment, resulting in many genuinely awakened practitioners remaining silent about the phenomenon for fear of expulsion/exclusion.
• By denying their prejudices even exist, the racism, sexism, fascism and homophobia (and even heterophobia!) of many practitioners are left unchecked and unaddressed within the ‘spiritual’ community.
• By investing in a poor model of awakening based on the ideal of selflessness, the mainstay of the Dharma community is catastrophically failing in facilitating awakening in themselves and others. The vows of many traditions and lineages have become nothing but a joke.

Treatment

Thankfully, treatment is free and available to everyone, and recovery is fast and virtually guaranteed.

The treatment is three fold:

1). Be honest with yourself and everyone else, even if you’ve invested a lot of time and energy in a certain worldview, tradition or identity that encourages the Ignorant Bliss of Selflessness. If you really care about awakening, show some integrity.

2). Now that you can consciously accept the existence of your ego and issues, you should address them. Sociopath? Have some therapy! Full of hate? Explore the nature and possible root cause of your anger! Proud? Make your competitiveness work for the cause by becoming the best awakened teacher the world has ever seen!

3).Take a sitting session for a minimum of half an hour once a day. While it is true that just before and after awakening selflessness and compassion (amongst other wonderful attributes) spontaneously arise, which positively transform the world like nothing else can, this kind of ‘perfect meditation’ passes; it is therefore down to a daily practice to foster the natural expression of openness, compassion, freedom, wholeness, peace, generosity and selflessness that demonstrates our original nature. Whether awakened or not, enlightenment must be practiced in order that we transform the world; sitting is one such method.

It should be noted that despite everything I’ve said, enlightenment does have a profound effect on a person, and it can change his or her behaviour in a very profound sense; but exactly how and to what degree appears to vary with each individual. I like to think that enlightenment doesn’t produce the perfect human being, but it does produce a better one.

Right, let’s have it

Come on then: just how unenlightened am I?

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Permission to Satsang

Over the holidays my mum asked me how my writing was going. I shrugged my shoulders because progress had been slow (as it always is in the publishing world). But then I remembered there was a new development, and proudly announced that I had held my first satsang recently. I’m not quite sure she fully understood the concept of a satsang, but she nevertheless looked puzzled and asked me that if I was teaching surely I would need some type of qualification from someone. Without going into too many details, I told her my experience spoke for itself, and left it at that.

But experience alone doesn’t make a good teacher, does it?

I’ve said it on this site before, and I’ll say it again: just because you’ve experienced awakening, it doesn’t mean you fully understand it, have an accurate and healthy approach to it or that you are teacher material (not to mention that some awakened people don’t want to teach at all!).

Top Secret

A few commentators on this site are students of Shinzen Young, who advocates maintaining a relationship with a teacher – or someone more advanced along the path – regardless of whether you’ve experienced enlightenment or not. I reached enlightenment without a teacher, and I was lucky enough to do so without making too many big mistakes; but I’m not naive enough to think I won’t make mistakes in the future, and so taking Shinzen’s advice, a few months ago I decided to see if I could find a teacher before taking up the mantle myself.

Of course, Shinzen would be the obvious choice (as recommended by his students), but after reviewing what he offered I decided I really needed someone closer to home who I could talk to face to face. After a bit of a search, I came across Mr. X (I’m not giving his name because I’m not sure he wants any attention), a dharma heir to Master Gudo Nishijima of the Soto Zen lineage. Being a big Dogen fan, I hoped we might have a common ground on which to discuss enlightenment. I prayed he wasn’t going to be one of those strange breed of Zen types who refuse to talk about awakening.

I need not have worried; Mr X was open about enlightenment and versed in many traditions (even my own). His enlightenment had been a gradual falling away affair after his life took a difficult turn, as opposed to my three stage awakening, but he recognised that the process unfolds in a variety of ways (although he seemed to take some time probing me before he seemed sure I was enlightened). I was convinced that his awakening was authentic due to my experience of intersubjective enlightenment upon first meeting him, and because he spoke to my experience.

At the end of the discussion, I was quite thrown when Mr. X asked me what I actually wanted. Why had I come to see him? Was I looking for confirmation of my experience, for permission to teach? I certainly wasn’t looking for anyone’s confirmation or permission (God forbid!), and although I arrived at his doorstep with no clear reason to be there, what I did get was an interesting insight into Mr. X’s experience as a teacher.

Mr. X had begun teaching Zazen and the dharma as per his lineage, and although at one point he had a modest Sangha, he eventually decided to stop teaching a group, to close down his popular website, and to carefully vet any prospective students.  He had met too many ‘damaged people’ he said, and his lineage, no doubt thanks to the popularity of Brad Warner, tended to attract for the most part people who were only interested in having a Zen teacher or belonging to a Zen lineage for the kudos. Mr. X was pretty sure he could make a lot of money if wanted to by publishing the couple of books he had written, shaving his head and by giving talks wearing the special Zen robe he had received at dharma transmission. But this to him has nothing to do awakening or helping others get there.

This gave me a lot to think about. Exactly why did I want to teach? To make money? To be a famous teacher? Was I prepared to take on the responsibility of dealing with ‘damaged people’ or insincere seekers?

Mr. X’s advice was to think about teaching very carefully, and to write a book. That way, people would have something of substance.

The Satsang Has Landed

After thinking about it for a long time, I decided that teaching was a natural progression for me (I am of course already writing a few books!). I think there is much more to be gained by sharing my knowledge and experience than there is from hiding away for fear of having to deal with difficult people or their issues (which I already have some experience with after running a popular occult website for a few years). And of course, I can always visit Mr. X should I need advice.

Whether or not I will make a good teacher remains to be seen. And here’s hoping I don’t become an ego-maniac…(I can hear Duncan now: ‘What do you mean, ‘become’?!’)

My first satsang happened on 17^th December 2009 at the Bonnington Centre in Vauxhall, London. 5 people turned up (7 including me and my wife) which isn’t bad for an inaugural meeting on a cold, wintery night in London. I very much enjoyed myself, although I must confess I found the experience a little bizarre, sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room dispensing off the cuff ‘wisdom’ (ha!), but I was surprised at how relaxed and easy the night went, and at how great the people were who came that night (thankfully no ‘damaged’ people!). I hope everyone else got as much out of it as I did.

I look forward to making the satsang a weekly occurrence (possibly starting mid January), and I hope to record the results and maybe post them here for those who might benefit from them.

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The 4th Turning

The Buddha turned the Wheel of the Dharma three times:

In the 3rd Century BCE, the Buddha turned the Wheel for the first time and created Theravada, a renunciatory and monastic approach, with an emphasis on the Four Noble Truths and the Three Characteristics.

In the 1st Century CE, the Buddha turned the Wheel for the second time and created Mahayana, the Way of the Bodhisattva, with an emphasis on Emptiness and Compassion.

In the 7th Century CE, the Buddha turned the Wheel for the third time and created Vajrayana, the tantric route to enlightenment, with an emphasis on the essential Buddha-nature of all things.

Over the many centuries since the last turning, the Dharma has spread to the West and the world has undergone globalization. We live in a very different society and culture to the one the Buddha was familiar with almost 2 and half millennia ago, and many of the old ways of living the Dharma are no longer relevant to a human living in the 21st Century.

As a community of spiritual practitioners it is up to us to recognise that we are participating in the turning of the Wheel of the Dharma for a 4th time, as we explore and investigate what it means to live the Dharma in the 21st Century, and seek to answer such questions as:

What is the best way of approaching enlightenment and how do we make the Dharma accessible and relevant?

Is monasticism no longer appropriate or even necessary to seriously engaging with the Dharma?

What role does sexuality and romance play in spiritual development?

How is social media transforming spiritual culture and community?

What would Buddha look like as a millennial, awakened human being?

As part of the 4^th Turning, I’m endeavouring to establish a monthly meeting of like-minded souls in order to discuss all of these questions and much more.

The first group meeting happened on Sunday, 29^th Novemember 2009, at the wonderful Royal Academy of Arts in London. Out of the 15 or so members of the google group, 5 showed up, and what a pleasure it was to meet them!

Rohan of 21awake introduced us to his Hear and Now project, a contemporary and accessible guided meditation scheme for practitioners on the go. An innovative and promising endeavour!

Interest was shown in a weekly satsang/sitting group that I will organise to take place in a fortnight.

Stay tuned for the date/time of the next 4^th Turning meeting, and come and join the revolution! (Alternatively, set up a group in your area!)

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