Akuppa: Strive On Five ways to stay sane and true and survive global meltdown
BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10
Buddhafield Dharma Series I: Festival Talks 2009-10 An introduction These booklets have come out of the Dharma teaching on the Buddhafield Festival , and the wider Buddhafield project. Originally posted as audio talks on FreeBuddhistAudio (www.freebuddhistaudio.com/browse?p=Buddhafield), they’ve now been edited and published on-line to reach a wider audience. You’ll find the rest of the series online at issuu.com/buddhafield . Buddhafield itself is at www.buddhafield.com or on Facebook - and in a field in the West of England! Thanks to Akasati for most of the work in preparing and editing them for publication. Her essay introducing the series is available at http://issuu.com/buddhafield/docs/akasati-ecology_buddhism_and_buddhafield?viewMode=presentation
December 2010
AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
Akuppa: Strive On! Five ways to stay sane and true and survive global meltdown We seem to hear a lot about survival nowadays. Now that things like climate change and peak oil have seeped into our consciousnesses, our egos have needed to find ways to defend themselves against what’s going on. It started with denial, or ignoring. We’ve seen all sorts of strategies for denial – pretending it’s not happening or pretending it’s someone else’s responsibility. But this has got more difficult as time goes by and as evidence has mounted up. So it seems that the next strategy of our ego is to think ‘right, I will survive!’ ‘How am I going to survive whatever comes? I’m not assuming that there is going to be global meltdown. I don’t know the future. But I do note that there seems to be a fear that is around, in my own consciousness and in other peoples’ consciousnesses. Part of it is a fear that there may be a breakdown in the ordered, civilized society that we have, or a breakdown in our very means of survival. The fear is there. I’ve seen it in myself – thinking ‘how am I going to get through this?’ I also sense from general discussions that this is on people’s minds.
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So if that fear is there, then let’s look at it. I think it’s always instructive in any case to ask ourselves, how would I cope if things fell apart? That’s a healthy thing to ask, at least from time to time. To help us think about this, I’d like to draw on the experience of people who are really up against it. What does happen to human beings in very extreme situations? What does it mean to survive, and how do people survive? And more to the point, how do people survive with humanity, with their humanity intact? One of the survival fantasies we might have is to imagine oneself holed up in a bunker somewhere with 3,000 tins of beans, and hopefully a tin opener. But what would be the point of surviving if you’re going to be completely cut off from the rest of humanity? The act of separating yourself off like that would have an effect on you, on who you are. It would be a very isolated, defensive state of being. Could you really say, even if that strategy worked for you, that that would really constitute human survival? It would be physical survival of the body, but would it really be the survival of yourself as a human being?
AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
So I’m not just talking about physical survival, but about what it would mean to survive fully. Perhaps it would even be better not to survive physically, but to keep one’s humanity, if that’s possible. The foundation that underpins the five ways of surviving – the ‘strive on’ part of the title, is, in a word, discipline. The first thing we need to survive global meltdown, or any extreme circumstance, is discipline. That might seem a bit of an odd word to choose. What do I mean by this? A friend of mine is facing life imprisonment for a crime he didn’t commit. His only prospect of getting out would be to admit to a crime which, I’m quite convinced, he didn’t do. I remember that when I first met him, the advice that he’d been given by other people in the prison was ‘gym, library’. That means, get yourself down to the gym, to keep yourself physically going; and go to the library, or education classes, to keep your mind active. In his case, he’s added a third – gym, library, meditation. He says that he wakes up every morning, in his prison cell, realizing that he’s still there. And he realises that if he doesn’t keep the initiative with himself, that he’d sink into a downward spiral of bitterness, which would completely consume him if he gave it energy. Another danger would be to lapse into complete lassitude, or institutionalization,
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drudging round the exercise yard as some of them do. Through ‘Gym, library and meditation’ – he’s doing exactly what he needs to do, keeping the initiative with body, mind and heart. He’s not allowing the system to take him over. And he does it with real discipline. It’s helping him to survive with his humanity intact, not sinking into a spiral of bitterness or numbness. The Buddha, in his last words, said, “With mindfulness, strive on!” The word that is translated as ‘mindfulness’ was ‘apramada’, which means something like being vigilant, or on guard. It is mindfulness in the sense of keeping the initiative with yourself, keeping a locus of control. We can’t control the world out there, but what we can do, at least to a considerable extent, is to learn better to control the world ‘in here’, and be aware of the dangers of negative states of mind. So the Buddha’s final exhortation is to keep the initiative with ourselves, because he knew that that is really the foundation of everything. Without it, we’re lost. Two and a half thousand years later, if things unfold the way they seem to be unfolding, it could be that peak oil and climate change bring about some sort of crisis or collapse. That means it’s the Buddhists of our generation, or the following generation, who will AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
be the ones ‘striving on’, taking the Buddhist tradition forward, into that crucial time in history. It’s down to us how we survive, how our community survives, and how the Dharma survives. And you could extend that to any of the great spiritual traditions. Whatever spiritual tradition you’re from, we are the ones who will need to dig deep enough within them to help that meet whatever crisis is to come. It’s down to us. And the foundation we need is a sense of discipline, keeping the initiative. So what are the particular ways of surviving with humanity, or staying sane and true? I suggest five ways, drawn from the five ethical precepts of Buddhism.
1. Don’t lose sight of the unity of humanity. I say this because there seems to be a direction that history is going in – a fortress mentality that we have in the privileged societies we’re living in. We hear the phrases ‘Fortress Europe’, ‘Fortress North America’ or ‘Fortress Australia’. We live in a society where unfair economic relations are bolstered by huge arsenals of armaments. It’s very tempting to rest in the security that gives us, here in one of the more privileged countries of BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10
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the world. I can sense that in myself, the subconscious thought ‘we’re alright here aren’t we, because we’ve got Trident or whatever’. It’s probably very deluded thinking in any case, but there’s still a temptation to give in to that sort of security. The question we have to ask ourselves is, do we assent to that state of affairs? Maybe it’s in who we vote for. But I think the main way we assent to that state of affairs is through our silence, through doing nothing. It’s what we don’t say rather than what we do. But we need to hold dear to a universal perspective is something, for the sake of our humanity. If we’re going to survive as human beings, it’s simply impossible to do that while cutting off great swathes of the human race. Sangharakshita, when he talks about why he is a Buddhist, says “this is one of the reasons why I am a Buddhist. I believe that humanity is basically one. I believe that it is possible for any human being to communicate with AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
any other human being, to feel for any other human being, to be friends with any other human being. This is what I truly and deeply believe. This belief is part of my own experience. It is part of my own life. It is part of me. I cannot live without this belief, and I would rather die than give it up.” That’s a very strong statement. It resonates with many of us, but I wonder if might that be tested at some point - or is it already being tested? The Dalai Lama uses the phrase ‘universal responsibility’. He believes that what we need to cultivate in the world is the sense of us all being responsible for each other, more of a family. We all need to think beyond just our own security, or our own country’s security. There just needs to be more thinking on a global level, of us all taking universal responsibility. The unity of humanity is part of our experience. In a way, it’s a very ordinary thing. If you think about how BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10
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you feel in yourself when you act either ethically or unethically towards somebody else, you might find that your own deepest happiness is a really a mirror of how you treat other people. That simple experience is pointing to the very profound truth of interconnectedness. It’s pointing to the truth that human beings, and all life, are intrinsically one. That is part of our experience. So let’s not lose sight of the oneness of humanity, whatever fear systems try to provoke in us. When the powers that be try to provoke in us a sense of fear, in order to justify more arms or more threats to our freedom, we need to resist this and keep a vision of humanity as one. 2. Give yourself to community. We really need to throw ourselves into community in one form or another. One of the roots of the problems in the world is the atomization into consuming units. We need to really break out of that. I’m not talking about something we might do for an hour a week, but AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
something that, as it were, breaks down the walls of our individual houses. We need to break out of that idea of ourselves, or our households, as the basic consuming building blocks of society. Why is this so important? Again, I’d like to draw here on lessons from people who have been in extreme situations. There was a study done of American soldiers who survived the Vietnam War. Some of those who survived lived on as isolated, traumatized individuals, their humanity not fully and healthily intact. Others, though, apparently managed to reintegrate themselves into society when they got back. The research asked why that was, and what was it that allowed some to survive happily and some not. Part of the answer was just down to age. The 19 yearolds just didn’t have the means, and a lot of those didn’t survive happily. Of the rest, there were three ways in which soldiers behaved in Vietnam. There were those who just gave up, and went along with whatever was happening. A second group went to the other extreme – they were the Rambos, who just BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10
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completely hardened themselves and did whatever they needed to do to survive. These were the ones who got involved in atrocities against the Vietnamese. Both of those groups, if they did survive and get back to America, were the ones most likely to experience trauma and not reintegrate themselves back into society. But there was a third group - those who did manage to survive more happily. Their behaviour while in Vietnam had followed the following pattern:
They took responsibility for others as well as themselves They were willing to challenge orders they believed to be ill-advised They had a realistic sense of the danger they faced; they had fear; they accepted that they had that fear and did what they needed to do; they kept some sense of initiative They avoided getting into rage; they realized that rage and anger were dangerous in
AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
themselves and weren’t going to help them survive. They didn’t get into hatred of the enemy, despite what they were encouraged to do by their superiors They were lucky!
I find that fascinating and moving. In taking responsibility for others, they didn’t close off. That’s what giving yourself to community is - taking responsibility for others. It seems that this is essential for surviving extreme circumstances, and indeed life anyway, with humanity. It’s an integral part of being human. If it’s worth surviving, it’s worth surviving together. A similar story came from some research about people who survived disasters at sea. There were those who just gave up, those who went off by themselves, and a third group who cooperated with others. There was an interview with a man who survived the sinking of the Estonia. He managed to clamber out of the ship BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10
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himself, but he still lives with the trauma, haunted by the fact that he hadn’t taken the simple step to look behind him and reach out to one or two other people. So there seems to be this same pattern that we can go passive, or be Rambos, or take the middle ground of reaching out to those around us. And we need to do that before things really fall apart. If we’re going to prepare for a world in which things are going to get more difficult, then we need to build community now. There are no better things you can do than that. 3. Don’t get tied in to harmful lifestyles. We’re all, to varying extents, implicated. We’re all part of the consuming economic system, which is founded on global inequality and an unsustainable relationship with the natural world. There are all sorts of ways we can reduce our impact – fair trade, buying organic food and so on. But there’s something very simple at the root of all of this, which is just to resist the idea that’s put out by the mass media about what it is to lead a happy, material lifestyle. We just need to walk away AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
from that. We can just consume less. We can just stop buying into the whole system of supermarkets, longdistance food, and exploitative relationships. It’s not easy. For me, it is a progressive thing. A friend of mine was talking recently about what’s going to happen when the Sainsbury’s lorries stop turning up. Just how dependent we are on these transport systems and how delicate those systems are? The more we walk away and find other ways of meeting our needs, the more robust our lifestyles will be, the better prepared we’ll be for the day the Sainsbury’s wagons might stop rolling. 4.
Speak out! There is a way of viewing the world as one big complex of interlocking systems. Everything affects everything else. And this includes our voices, our whole faculty for communication - speaking, writing, playing music, whatever it might be. Life on the planet is a system that’s out of kilter at the moment. Our voices are part of that system. Life on earth
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needs feedback mechanisms in the realm of human activity. And we are it. Who else is going to speak out for the visible signs of distress on the planet and within humanity? If we find ourselves amongst those who are sensitive to those things, if we have a feeling response when we see the pollution of the oceans or the great inequalities in human society, then we need to speak. In whatever way we have, we can speak out – perhaps through political activism, perhaps through conversations with your friends, writing things, singing songs – whatever it is. We just need to express it. In doing so, we’re affirming and strengthening our own connection with life. It’s not out of a dry sense of duty, it’s life affirming and strengthening. Sometimes we find ourselves not speaking out. Why is that, why is it that we don’t give expression to the pain we feel about the state of the world? It could be fear the fear of not fitting in, the fear of going against the grain, or a just a lack of confidence. Maybe we think, ‘I feel this, but I don’t feel very informed, and you have AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
to understand everything about economics or whatever before you express an opinion’. I think we don’t need to worry about that. If we say, ‘this is what I see, and this is the way I feel about it’, no-one can argue against that. They can’t deny your experience. It’s not just a question of speaking out, but learning how to speak out in a way that will be heard. It’s quite easy when talking about these sort of things to speak in a way that’s gloomy, or full of anger. Sometimes, all we’re doing is adding to the sum total of anger or anxiety in the world. This again is why we need to keep an initiative with our awareness. We need to talk honestly, but not in a way that spreads gloom or anger. If you do that, people either get gloomy or angry themselves, or they just switch off and discount you. Just saying, with self-awareness and honesty, what you see and how you feel is a clean way of communicating. 5.
Keep the broadest possible perspective. It’s very easy in a time like ours to lose the perspective of who we are as humanity, where we’ve come from
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and where we’re going. This is one of the themes that the activist and writer Joanna Macy talks about quite a lot. She says we need to have a sense of ourselves within a much bigger story. If our basic mindset is, ‘here I am as one isolated individual, and out there are all the great problems in the world’, then of course we’ll feel overwhelmed and powerless. The resources ‘in here’ are a drop in the ocean compared to what we need to bring about the scale of change required ‘out there’. But the root of the problem is the story, the basic mindset. We need to change the story. We need a sense of ourselves as something bigger. We’re part of an emerging human story. Look at how people have coped in previous crises in history, how they’ve brought about change in quite unexpected ways that might not have been predictable at the time. We need a sense of openness. We need to have a story that includes the future, so that we remember that what we do now bears fruit in future generations. Think, for example, of the Buddhafield Festival. It came about through the efforts AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
of a huge number of people. There are the people who work to put the site together in the days before the festival. There are the people who organize it and get everything together in the weeks and months beforehand. There are all the people who have decided to turn up and join in. Going further back, there are the people who started Buddhafield in the 1990’s. And going further back, there are the people who have carried on the Buddhist tradition from one generation to the next. Without any of these, the festival wouldn’t happen. Everything we do is creating the world for the next generation. We need to keep a sense of that to keep ourselves going. It’s important what world we create today - it really matters. Every action builds something that will make it easier for people in the future, including ourselves, to survive. From Buddhist teachings, we can take an even bigger perspective. This is one that takes some training in - it’s not something one can just take on. That is to look outside of time and space altogether. In this perspective, our positive actions that affirm life need BUDDHAFIELD DHARMA SERIES I: FESTIVAL TALKS 2009-10
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no justification, because they are intrinsically precious and worthwhile. Even if everything were to fall apart in five minutes time, those actions aren’t lost. There’s something adamantine, diamond-like, about any action that connects us with others. It’s difficult to rationalize it in any way, but one of the things that we’re trying to wake ourselves up to in Buddhist practice is to come to that perspective. We act how we act because it’s beautiful, not that we want to bring about a certain result in time. I find this very liberating. In an age where global meltdown is being talked about, and where the worst case scenarios are that humanity doesn’t physically survive, then how do we keep ourselves going, what’s the point? The answer is in our ordinary experience. Acts of kindness are just beautiful in themselves. They are what the Buddha called the deathless, because they transcend life and death altogether. How and why that is the case I don’t know, but I have a conviction that it is the case.
AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN
So whatever we do, we need to broaden our perspective from the little ‘me, myself versus the world’ mentality – to include other people, to include a bigger time perspective, and ultimately to have a perspective that is outside of time altogether. So those are the five ways to stay sane and true. The foundation is discipline, keeping the initiative with yourself in body, heart, and mind. We need to keep a vision of humanity, give ourselves to community, avoid being implicated in systems that cause harm and division, speak out, and keep the broadest possible perspective. In doing those things, we survive, in the deepest, fullest sense of the word, and what is most precious about our humanity will not be lost.
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Appendix
AKUPPA: STRIVE ON - FIVE WAYS TO STAY SANE AND TRUE AND SURVIVE GLOBAL MELTDOWN