Sangha Snapshot 

In this new, monthly, feature, Matt McCarthy will be talking to sangha members, old and new, and finding out what makes them tick.

1. Nick, where were you born and raised, and what brought you to Leeds?

I was born in Lancashire and grew up in a village called Burscough (about ten miles from Southport). They have the best non-league football team in the country! I came to Leeds in 1993 to study for a research degree.

I attended a beginner's meditation class in 1994 run by Jinaraja. It was one of the defining moments of my life. The friendliness of the team made an immediate impression on me and when I sat down on the cushion for the first time I knew I would meditate for the rest of my life. Jinaraja was a huge inspiration and went out of his way with Rijumitra to be welcoming and helpful. I also met Samanartha quite early on and have very fond memories of getting to know people at the centre.

Regular. Lively. Challenging.

Urgent Jumble Appeal

David Turner writes: Friends.  The 2013 JUMBLE is fast approaching and we need more of everything! 

We also need PEOPLE.  Volunteers on March 16th, and earlier to circulate the neighbourhoods of North Leeds with posters, flyers and leaflets.  We already have a small but hauntingly attractive crew for all this but the more beautiful people we have on the board the more fun, aesthetically pleasing & efficient everything becomes.

The Bodhisattva of Compassion

With our theme this month being compassion, it seems the right time to put a word in for a key figure in Buddhism: Avalokitesvara, 'the Lord who looks down in compassion.'

He is pictured here with four arms and one head, so not looking as strange as he does in some representations, which have him with dozens of arms and eleven heads.

How then can we relate to this odd looking figure, part of our mythology as Buddhists, yet foreign and perhaps even alienating to our Western eyes?

One way, perhaps, is to look at what he's there to represent. Bodhisattvas, as you may know, are human and/or mythical beings who work not only for their own enlightenment but for everyone else's too. They may even postpone their own enlightenment on others' account.

So compassion is a key ingredient, which in a way makes Avalokitesvara the quintessential Bodhisattva because he specifically represents compassion. That's what he's doing with all those heads and arms. Vessantara, in his book, 'A Guide to the Bodhisattvas' (available to buy or borrow from the Centre), explains:

'Once upon a time the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara made a great vow that he would deliver all the people of Tibet from suffering, and help them all to gain Enlightenment. He swore that he would strive selflessly to keep his vow. He made a wish that should he ever hesitate, his body would split into a thousand pieces.

He entered a samadhi, a profound meditation on compassion, through which he aimed to lead all beings to Enlightenment by subtle means. After a long period of time he emerged from his meditation, only to find that not even a hundredth of the Tibetan people had been helped by his practice. At this point he became totally dispirited, and thought of giving up his efforts. Instantly his head and body shattered into pieces. In agony he called out to Amitabha, who came to his aid. Amitabha fashioned from the shattered fragments a new body with ten heads and a thousand arms, which could reach out in all directions. Then he set his own head on top. Thus Avalokitesvara was able to carry out his work of dispelling suffering far more effectively than before.'

So the many arms represent Avalokitesvara's tireless reaching out to help others while the heads show that his compassionate gaze extends in all directions. The legend implies it's not possible to fix all the suffering in the world on our own. We need the help of a Buddha or, as Vessantara puts it, 'to participate in the Bodhicitta to some degree, to allow it to manifest through one.'

'the thousand-armed figure... communicates to us at least an inkling of what it would be like to love the world so much that two eyes were not enough to weep for its suffering, and two arms could not begin to embrace it.' 

Avalokitesvara can also be a symbol for a spiritual community, a sangha in which each person is like one of the hands. We could view him as a representation of Leeds Buddhist Centre or the Triratna Buddhist Community as a whole. In fact the thousand-armed Avalokitesvara is the actual symbol of the Triratna Buddhist order

Another way to relate to Avalokitesvara is to chant his mantra, which is one of the best-known of Buddhist mantras.

This Sanskrit mantra, written above in Tibetan script, can be seen everywhere in Tibet, where Avalokitesvara is known as Chenrezig, and the Dalai Lama is said to be an emanation from him. The mantra is chanted a great deal there and also printed onto flags and carved in various places.  

Mantras are used differently by different people and at different times. You can chant them while visualising the figure they represent. You can use them to evoke specific qualities. With Avalokitesvara's mantra, that would be compassion - and wisdom, which is also one of his qualities. For others, a mantra is simply a way to meditate when sitting in silence is too difficult. It can quiet the mind by providing a focus.

He also offers a good explanation of how mantras 'work' on the Wildmind site

Sangha Retreat at Lineham Farm

David MacDougall recalls his first experience of a sangha retreat

Jenny asked if I would contribute to this month's newsletter by writing about my experience of the sangha retreat at Lineham Farm in January. I was actually quite glad of the invitation as I felt like committing at least part of it to paper (or computer screen) anyway! 

Building the shrine

My weekend began with Tony kindly offering me a lift to the farm on Friday (and even came to pick me up in the city centre!); the snowfall started just as we headed off into the evening darkness. By the time we arrived, the land and farm buildings were relit by the brilliant sheen of a heavy snow covering. There was a sense of being further cut off, and shielded, from life in the city by what seemed like now-impassable roads. 

Entering the central farm building, we were met by a roaring fire and a swathe of

Rosemary lovingly makes the crumble for 'afters'

greetings from those who had already arranged themselves around the welcoming hearth. A thrum of culinary activity in the kitchen sent out promise of a nourishing meal. I had been a bit apprehensive about spending a couple of days with people I didn't know well or hadn't even met but I felt immediately comfortable (reminiscent of the first time I came to the Centre). I had never been on retreat before so it was  encouraging to be immersed this convivial atmosphere. 

The puja shrine

A bit of an edge was introduced, however, when the retreat was ceremonially opened and Samanartha announced the theme: 'tearing up the map'. It was an oddly refreshing thought that our preconceived notions were being burnt in the lounge's log fire as we sat in the shrine room! For me, having only really practised the more standard versions of mindfulness of breathing and metta bhavana, the alternative meditations were invigorating and also quite exciting (although, the latter response maybe slightly hindered my mindfulness at times!). 

When the period of silence began later on Saturday, I had time to reflect on the preceding 24 hours, and realised they had been intense. Honest, heart-felt conversations; a lot of them! Plus I was continuing to soak up the rich feeling of spiritual community that I hadn't experienced at that level before. The assimilation of mediation practice into − and the more general shifting of my approach to so many aspects of − my life have been progressing over the past two years at a rate on the scale of plate tectonics. It's just taken some time! However, so many subtle changes have accumulated that they now too seem to be, in magnitude, on that same scale of land masses. 

Snowy walks on the Saturday

The sangha retreat weekend helped me see that and also provided a further source of inspiration. So I want to thank my fellow retreatants, and especially Samanartha for leading us, for this provision. I'm continuing to meditate and to come to Centre as often as I can, and have already booked a week-long retreat at Padmaloka in April. I hope I find such a rich spiritual environment there too!

Thanks to Nick, Samanartha, Matt & Richard 

for the lovely pictures

Living Wisely by Sangharakshita

We are very happy to announce the release of Sangharakshita's Living Wisely.

The following is an extract from Living Wisely by Sangharakshita, reprinted with permission. Copyright 2013, Windhorse Publications

"But even for the faith follower, a basic level of intellectual understanding is indispensable to spiritual progress, and this is something Nāgārjuna goes on to illustrate later in the Precious Garland. It is not enough to store up merit by making offerings to shrines and stupas, by chanting the sacred scriptures, or even by moral action. You have to engage with the deeper truth of things, and this must involve the intellect as well as the emotions, wisdom as well as faith. Ultimately we are looking for a quality of wisdom that supersedes conventional understanding. The term wisdom is therefore open to misunderstanding if it is distinguished from faith in too rigid a way.

Wisdom is not a cognitive as distinct from an emotional faculty. One cannot speak of wisdom in terms either of 'knowing' or of 'feeling'. It is both, once it is experienced at a high enough level. It is an intuitive understanding and also an intuitive feeling. In other words, at a higher level there is no real distinction between faith and wisdom, or devotion and understanding. They are not experienced separately or even jointly. It is comparable to the experience of being deeply engaged in a conversation. You are thinking and feeling at the same time, and it is not possible to distinguish between the two: the thought is the feeling and the feeling is the thought. The attainment of wisdom is like this, albeit at a much higher level.

So Nāgārjuna's aim in the Precious Garland is not to generate an understanding of the Dharma in the king, but to generate the Dharma itself, just as the Buddha is described not as speaking about the Dharma, but as speaking Dharma. Nāgārjuna doesn't want to talk about the truth. He wants to awaken the truth. He is reminding the king of his inherent potential for Enlightenment, for establishing the practices and becoming thereby a vessel of the Dharma.

Through faith one relies on the practices,

Through wisdom one truly knows,

Of these two, wisdom is the chief,

Faith is its prerequisite.

To summarize this verse: it is through faith that you are able to commit yourself to the practices and it is through the practices that you achieve high status. It is then through wisdom that you attain definite goodness and break the hold on your mind of the desire for happiness and high status.

Nāgārjuna's interpretation of faith here seems to be pitched at quite a low level; he seems to be suggesting that it is relatively unimportant compared with wisdom. It is true that the word 'wisdom' implies intellectual cognition, and by definition gives the emotional side of things less emphasis. But to think of it in this way is to miss the heart of the matter. To understand the true relationship between faith and wisdom we do well to consider the teaching of the five spiritual faculties. Here, faith and wisdom are equal and coordinate, each balancing the other, without any suggestion that faith is somehow less important than wisdom. Following this teaching, one cannot say that wisdom is the 'chief' over faith any more than faith is the 'chief' over wisdom. One might just as well say that wisdom is the prerequisite of faith as that faith is the prerequisite of wisdom."

Sangharakshita's Living Wisely is available from the Centre bookshop or from Windhorse Publications

Diary of Events

Please note that the views expressed in this newsletter are the opinions of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Leeds Buddhist Centre, theTriratna Buddhist Community (Leeds) or The Triratna Buddhist Order