Dharma(s) Discovered and Created (Part 1)

As I mentioned earlier in this series of talks, some of what I want to speak about is really for the sake of bringing things to our collective attention, your individual attention, our collective attention for consideration, for reflection -- certain aspects, certain elements, certain strands, certain dimensions of things -- and that reflection and consideration, obviously with the mind, but also with the heart, and with the soul even more so. So what does that mean, to hear something, to ponder it, to mull it over, to digest and let it sink in not just to the mind, not just to the heart, but also to the soul? And so one of those strands, or elements, or aspects that I would like to bring into the light, shine some light on, is the whole question of tradition, or the whole concept of tradition. And I really mean mostly what we might call 'religious' or 'spiritual' traditions. Even if you don't like either of those words, 'religious' or 'spiritual,' you know what I mean.

So perhaps that might strike some of you as a slightly strange subject for a Dharma talk, to talk about the tradition, or what a tradition is, and what's involved in tradition -- I'm not sure. Of course, some of you might think, "Well, Rob, at this point, they're all pretty strange, the Dharma talks, so either way." But I'd like to reflect a little bit on tradition, sort of lay things out, unpack things, open them up, and kind of look at what we've got there. And within that, particularly, I'm talking, obviously, about the tradition of Buddhadharma, the Buddhist tradition, and within that, or as part of what I want to look at, consider, as well, is the place, or how we might conceive of the place of, say, Soulmaking Dharma with respect to Buddhadharma. What's that relationship there? And how do we conceive of Soulmaking Dharma? How do we place it with regard to the tradition of Buddhadharma? And what would it mean to talk about or to consider a Soulmaking Dharma tradition? Too early to say anything like that, but if there were such a thing to evolve in the future, or a feeling of such a thing, a perception of such a thing among certain people, what might we, again, unpack, lay out, that would also have relevance to that kind of situation, that kind of sense of tradition, or a tradition like that?

Some people would say, "Well, we're at a point in history, humanity is at a point in history where it's important to reflect on traditions for all kinds of reasons." So yes, that may well be true. Sort of after modernism, or in the throes modernism, or the dying throes of modernism, or postmodernism, or whatever, it might be true that we're at that juncture, at that point in history. But one could ask, "Is the whole notion of a 'point in history' really a reality?" That's something I'll come back to. Is there really a point in history that we can agree on? "We are at this point of history. This is what characterizes this point in history, this juncture. These are the salient features. This is what's important. This is what constitutes that juncture or that point."

So some would say it's important to talk about tradition, and our sense of that, and our expectations of that, and our views of traditions, our relationships with traditions, because of where humanity is at the current time historically. But I would say, perhaps more important, that if you love practice, and if you are devoted to practice, and if you love the teachings, then as you've heard me point out before, where there is that kind of love and devotion, there is fantasy (in the soulmaking sense of the word). There is a kind of narrative image that potentially has all the qualities of the imaginal, all the elements of the imaginal filled out with beauty, and dimensionality, and eros, etc. So if you love practice and the teachings, if you're devoted to practice and the teachings, there will be wrapped up in that love, and partly supporting that love, a fantasy of practice, and yourself in practice, and the teachings, and that will involve fantasy of the tradition, an idea of the tradition, a sense of the tradition, a relationship with the tradition, an image of the tradition.

That fantasy also feeds your love, so there's, again, a mutual support, a mutual reinforcement, a mutual nourishment, a mutual dependency, if you like, of the love and the devotion on the one hand, and the fantasy on the other. They're not really even separable, so that if you love practice and the teachings, if you're devoted to teachings, there will be the fantasy, and there will be a sense of a tradition as part of that larger fantasy, and you will care about these kinds of things that we're talking about tonight. You'll care about this question of tradition, and what it involves, and what to expect from it, etc. It won't be abstract. It will matter to you. It will be of more than somewhat academic interest.

Not too long ago, I was speaking with a colleague, Stephen Batchelor, and was asking how it was going with Bodhi College, etc. And he was telling me a few things. And one of the things he said was that the course -- they had put together a course, and advertised it online, etc., about the, I think it was called "The Buddhist Roots of Mindfulness" -- so really looking at the origins in the Buddha's teachings in the Pali Canon, etc., of contemporary mindfulness practices and teachings. And he said that surprising to them was the fact that virtually no one registered for that course. There was very little interest for those courses. There was very little interest from people who were either mindfulness practitioners, or participants in mindfulness courses, or mindfulness teachers, or therapeutic mindfulness workers, or whatever.

And they were surprised by that. On reflection, in a way, I'm not that surprised, because it may be that in the way that mindfulness is promoted in some circles these days, and the way it's practised and related to by many, is really as a technique or perhaps a set of techniques for the alleviation of suffering, so that one lives one's life as one lives it, and one just incorporates these techniques as sort of useful and helpful strategies to reduce stress, anxiety, suffering, and dis-ease. And as such, as just a technique that sort of has some utility in relieving stress, and anxiety, or pain, for example, it remains just that: a kind of utilitarian technique. And it rarely, or for many people, it won't ever become more than that. They may practise mindfulness every day for the rest of their lives with a certain kind of commitment. Let's not call it devotion. Let's call it commitment, a certain kind of steadiness of commitment. It's important to them, and it's really helpful, and that's great. But it's never more than that. It's never more than a technique for reducing suffering, so that there isn't the kind of falling in love with practice, and the ethos of practice, and the kind of nebula of dimensions and aspects and elements that kind of constellate around and make up something like a Buddhist practice.

And so, for a person who's just relating to, say, mindfulness as a technique that's helpful in their lives -- you know, that's wonderful, that's great, but there won't be the falling in love. There won't therefore be the fantasy. And there won't be the sense of caring much about tradition, and therefore caring much about the past, and the stories, and the history. So in a way, on reflection, I wasn't too surprised to hear that from Stephen, that there was very little uptake or interest in such a course.

Anyway, if you love -- and I'm assuming most people that listen to this talk will be people who love practice deeply, who have deep devotion to practice, and to teachings -- there will be that fantasy. There will therefore be implicitly some sense of, and care about, and kind of fantasy of and eros for tradition, and everything that's implied in that. So like I said at the beginning, I just want to kind of bring some stuff to light, bring some of the aspects of this question of tradition to light, lay it out. I don't want to conclude too much from that. It's almost like just, as I said, laying out some things on the ground together. We can have a look. I don't want to impose any conclusions that I might have on that kind of laying out of material and considerations. I'll more give it to you to perhaps make your conclusions, but also to, as I said, to ponder, to reflect: "How does this sit with me?" How do all these considerations or these aspects, when we lay them out, and look at them, and say, "Hmm, yes, there's that, and there's that. Hmm. And that. Didn't think of that," how does it land with you? How does it sit in your heart, in your soul, in your mind? What's the response of your being? And what's the responsibility of your being, and the responsibility of your soul? If you care deeply, if you love deeply, again, it goes with duty. If you love deeply, if you're devoted, there's image around. There's eros around. Things are on the verge of, or on their way to being fully imaginal, and part of that will be duty, and part of the duty will be to the teachings, to the tradition, etc.

So in laying all this out, again, I don't want to force any conclusions that I might have, or any perspectives that I might have too much. Obviously, some things, some of that will be inevitable just in the nature of the situation. It's me talking, I'm in the role of the teacher here, some authority with that, some clout with that. But really I'm more interested in the process of how it sits, how it's digested, how it's related to and held in your heart. Certainly, my intention is not to be primarily, even, kind of deconstructive or destructive of loyalties, and notions of tradition, etc., like that. Some might say, "Oh, you're saying some dangerous things, etc." I'm not sure. I don't know about that. I think it's just a matter of maturity, and honesty, and consciousness, and openness of mind. And then what do we do with this? How do we assimilate it, consider it, reflect on it? Where do we move from here? How do we look towards the past, towards the present, towards the future, inwards and outwards, at each other, etc.? So it's really for you, and about your process, and as much as possible I just want to lay some things out for that kind of heart-, mind-, and soul-consideration.

If we just bring up the word 'tradition,' and just kind of immediately what comes to mind when we think about tradition, and sort of throw things in a pot, and when we think about, "What is a 'tradition'? What do we mean by a 'tradition'?" And even more sort of pointedly or relevantly, what do we mean, or what's involved, what needs to be involved and included in a 'healthy' tradition, if we might use such a term, or an alive, a living tradition? What elements and constituents might be necessary to form a healthy, living tradition that retains some coherence and some vitality? So if we just think about it, just briefly. And I don't mean at all to be comprehensive. I just want to throw some things in a pot right now. But some of what I want to throw into that pot right now may not be immediately obvious when we think of what's involved in tradition. I don't intend to be comprehensive at this point, and actually, through none of this talk am I intending to be comprehensive. There's other stuff that I've said before around these subjects, so I don't want to repeat too much. But I do want to kind of unearth or bring to light some elements to consider that, as I said, might not be obvious to many of us at first.

So when we just think, what do you think of when we say 'tradition'? What do you think is included or implied? And if we just think kind of almost off the top of the head, we think, "Oh, tradition kind of implies a community, for a start." So tradition has to be more than one person. And that community has to be spread, if you like. It has to exist in the present, so to speak. There's a community that extends in the present between people. And it also has to have a tie with the past, a flow from the past, and hopefully into the future. So there's a community in the present with a past, with a connection to, a feed from the past. And that community, what's included -- again, we're just kind of throwing into a pot -- what's included, what's necessary for a healthy, living tradition? That community that constitutes a tradition needs to have, we might say, certain things need to be shared by that community.

So one is values. There needs to be a good degree of shared values. Some of what we can put in that pot of values is the goals. What goals, what aims, what ends are considered valuable? And so there has to be a kind of common ground there among the members of the community, extending both from the past, to the present, into the future, and also in the present among constituent members of that community, of that Saṅgha. There needs to also be shared practices, shared -- we might say -- rituals or customs.

Or let's put it this way. Why don't we open it up as a question already, rather than me insisting there needs to be -- I actually don't want to insist. I'd rather put it as a question. Should've said that earlier. Does there need to be, or to what extent does there need to be, in this community, shared values, shared goals, shared practices, shared rituals, shared customs? To what extent does there need to be shared stories, anecdotes from the past of characters, beings, teachers, disciples, etc., practitioners from the tradition? To what extent does there need to be a shared history of that tradition, "This is the history of our tradition"? To what extent does there need to be a shared vocabulary, that certain words become meaningful, important, charged, rich, also function powerfully as shorthands that people practising know what you're talking about when you say "Four Noble Truths," or whatever it is, or "mindfulness," or whatever? So shared vocabulary, shared beliefs. Again, really asking: what extent does a healthy, vital, and living community need to share beliefs, need shared beliefs, shared conceptual frameworks, logoi, and shared ontological commitments (which in a way are partly beliefs -- in other words, what I talked about in one of the talks earlier)?

Somehow, do we, if we're going to feel part of the same community -- me and this person, whoever it is, me and this group -- do we actually have to share ontological commitments, a sense of what we believe and feel and invest in as 'true' (including the implicit epistemological considerations there, of what we believe are the ways to come by knowledge of the truth, etc.)? Does a living, healthy tradition need shared -- what should we call them -- texts? So what is handed, what comes to us -- āgama, in Pali, in Sanskrit is often the word used for the texts, the suttas*.* It means, literally, 'what has come, what has arrived, what has been received,' so to speak. So there is some body of received texts. It could be oral -- it doesn't have to be written, of course -- oral text, and that body forms a focus, and a reference point, and hopefully rich material for study, so that there's a possible process of getting more acquainted with, more steeped in, developing understanding of this material, this āgama, this text, or received teachings.

Not only study: also for 'veneration.' And we can put that in inverted commas. So that might have a certain very obviously religious character, so that a piece of text is venerated to the extent that it's put in a stūpa, and people circumambulate the stūpa, or kiss the text, or bow down to the text, even if they're not even practising it, or don't even understand what it says -- could be that kind of religious veneration. Or it could just be veneration in the sense that one respects the authority of that text, and it holds a certain kind of immovable or unbudgeable power. One has to reckon with what's written in that text. So text, received teachings, oral or written, for study, for veneration, and also for interpretation -- or interpretations, plural.

And so -- and I really want to come back to this -- that sort of focused material, to what extent does it need to be open to interpretations, interpretation and a plurality of interpretations, so that it's not just a one-dimensional, one unilinear text or material? Is there something in the vitality and the health of the tradition that actually needs root texts, core texts, canonical texts to have a certain openness to them, or to be related to as if they had a certain openness? I'm going to come back to this, but there's perhaps a certain tension between latitude of interpretation and, if you like, the letter, if that's the right way of putting it. So that "there's the letter, there's the text, there's the teaching, there's the recording, there's the oral transmission," or whatever, and then, is there a latitude of interpretation? I want to come back to that point later.

Or another way of saying it might be, does there need to be something in the tradition -- not necessarily someone, but something that is regarded as authoritative somehow? The authority resides in that text; if not in that person, or persons, or body, or hierarchy, or whatever, in that text. Does there need to be something that's regarded as authoritative and, in that way, functions as an, as I said, immovable kind of anchor, something one needs to reckon with? But is there a tension between that need for something 'authoritative' -- and I'll put that word 'authoritative' also in inverted commas -- on the one hand, and also a need for some autonomy of the individuals who are involved in that tradition, who are members, if you like, of that tradition? [25:10] So is there some kind of tension? Are both these elements needed? Something needs to be authoritative -- maybe someone as well, maybe just something like a text. And there needs to be some autonomy allowed, some wiggle-room, some latitude of movement, interpretation, of practice, of all that, maybe.

How much diversity does there need to be? Is there a minimum amount of diversity in a tradition that's needed? Is there a maximum amount? What kinds of diversity? Diversity of all kinds -- so not just personalities, and ethnicities, and gender, and sexual orientations, and all that, but all kinds, so even a diversity, for example, of directions within the tradition. So there are suttas in the Pali Canon -- I can't find them right now, but there are suttas in the Pali Canon where the Buddha is talking to someone, and he says, "Look, here are my disciples gathered in Jeta's Grove, or wherever it is, or at someone's park," or somewhere where they're all staying, the Buddha is staying with a bunch of monks and perhaps nuns -- or actually, probably wouldn't stay with the nuns, would they? But anyway. The Buddha is there, and he says, "Look, here, over there, in that corner, or in that part of the field, or that part of the forest, there's the group of monks who are sitting with Moggallāna [one of the Buddha's two chief disciples]. They're sitting with Moggallāna. They're interested in developing their siddhis, their kind of supernormal powers, their psychic powers. And there, over there are the monks sitting with so-and-so, and they're interested in developing this. And over there are the monks sitting with Sāriputta, and they're interested in developing jhāna," or whatever it was, so that within the larger community and the larger tradition, there's a diversity also of directions of what people want to develop, and that's available within that community as a range of choices.

And to what extent does a living tradition need to include both people who are, let's say, further along the path, more advanced, more senior, if you like, as well as those who are newer, who are more junior, who are newer to the teachings, who are just beginning, who are not so developed in their understanding and practice and knowledge?

So you can already hear. "Let's just put things in a box. What do we mean by 'tradition'?" You can already hear, I hope, in what I was saying, it's like, "Hmm, none of these is actually simple." We could just say, "Oh, tradition, it involves this, this, this." And as I said, I'm not trying to be comprehensive. But none of those, when you actually pause to consider what's involved, or what might be involved, or what's healthy there, and what's kind of become too much, or is not enough -- none of these are simple. None of these elements are actually simple at all.

But one of the questions I have for us to consider -- and again, if you love and if you're in love with practice and teachings, these questions, if they're not right now, they will be important to you one day. One of the questions I want to ask is: we're talking about, okay, these are the shared elements that need to be there for a living, healthy tradition. If we turn it around and say, "What differences, what absences of shared ground become fatal for a tradition, fracture it too much, render it dead, or lifeless, or stagnant, or just kind of explode it in some way or another?" So that's a question I have, and again, I think, at this point in history, if we can use that word, use that idea of a time in history, even though it's a questionable one, that's an interesting question to me.

So for example -- and as I mentioned in the other talk, can't remember which one -- you know, if you're going to practise soulmaking dyad or a triad or whatever, as a group doing soulmaking practice together, and there's not the shared conceptual framework, it might not work. It might be frustrating, disappointing, etc. Also, the necessity or the need -- this strange thing -- even for deep friendship, to share ontological commitments regarding the world, cosmology, regarding the nature of human beings. So would that be an example -- say, ontological commitments -- would that be an example of some aspect, the absence of which, as a shared ground, when ontological commitments are not shared or don't overlap enough, that actually becomes fatal for a tradition, because the relationships can't really flourish? And the difference is so basic there in this set of ontological commitments versus that set of ontological commitments -- the difference is so basic that it forms a kind of fracture that becomes an abyss. And two camps within a tradition actually hardly constitute a coherent tradition any more. [32:07]

So all these things we can throw in the pot. And as I said, actually, very quickly we start to realize, "Hmm. None of these is actually simple." They all bear further reflection, further consideration, further opening out and feeling into. Some aspects might be a little less obvious. Again, what's involved, or what's necessary, what's needed and what's necessary to be included in a living, healthy tradition? And some things might be a lot less obvious than some of those, some of the list I've just sort of gone through quite quickly.

So I have a question: is it necessary, does a living, healthy tradition, a vital tradition, does it need some element of mystery or something that is mysterious, perhaps even to the point of relative incomprehensibility that could range from, yeah, the sort of more poetic to the completely almost opaque? Does it need some element of mystery, of something that's not clearly comprehensible? It's a question. That element is, to me, at least, less apparent in, say, Pali Canon Buddhadharma as it's come to us, certainly in the West. In some living traditions in, say, South East Asia -- say, Thailand and Cambodia -- the actual tradition of Pali Canon Buddhism is so wrapped up with other influences.

So for example, in Cambodia, there was actually Mahāyāna at some point in history, for a while. So there are a lot of Mahāyāna teachings wrapped up in Cambodian Buddhism. The vestiges of that are still alive, and colour and shape and influence the tenor and thrust and range and quality of Cambodian Theravāda Buddhism, so-called. In Thailand, if you talk to people who've been monks and nuns in Thailand -- Westerners, you know -- it's totally imbued, it has still retained, for example, the belief that you find all over the Pali Canon, the belief in devas, and angels, and wood spirits, and the spirit of this tree, and the deva that lives in that forest, etc. And that's very much part of the whole tenor, flavour, range, colour of that version of Theravāda Buddhism. But as we've received it in the West, it's less apparent, this sort of element of mystery. It's become more kind of a presentation of something that's sort of more clear-cut rational, it seems to me. But it may still be there.

If I look in other traditions -- and this actually occurred to me because I was reading the translator's introduction of a book called Gates of Light: Sha'are Orah, by Joseph Gikatilla, a medieval Jewish teacher. And the translator, Avi Weinstein, was commenting that this book was written at around the same time as the Zohar. (Zohar sometimes means something like Book of Splendour or Radiance.) It was written around the same time, this book by Joseph Gikatilla called the Gates of Light: Sha'are Orah. But there were two differences, and those differences were very influential in the subsequent histories and receptions of those two books, the Zohar and Rabbi Gikatilla's book Sha'are Orah, Gates of Light. And just to name two of the differences -- well, three differences, let's say.

(1) One was that the Zohar was actually written at around the same time, in 1200 or 1300 -- I can't remember exactly -- thirteenth century Castile Province, Castile, that kind of area -- and was written at that time, but was presented, it was 'faked,' if you like, ostensibly, to be a rediscovered text. It was presented as a rediscovered text that was written in the second century -- so hundreds and hundreds of years earlier. Scholars are now pretty unanimous it was definitely written in the thirteenth century Province Castile, or Catalonia, wherever, but it was presented by its author, or main author/authors, as being an ancient text that was unearthed.

(2) Secondly, it was written in Aramaic, which was no longer a vernacular, was no longer a current language. And it was written in a kind of -- what would you say? -- also a fairly abstruse Aramaic, in a strange kind of version of the language.

(3) And thirdly, it's a very opaque text. It's strange. "What does this mean? What are they talking about?" It's full of kind of poetry, and symbolism that one's not quite sure what they're referring to, and multi-levelled densities of allusions. It's a very mystical, poetic text. Gates of Light, on the other hand, Rabbi Gikatilla's text, was written in contemporary language, easy to understand, a clear exposition taking one through stages of what was ostensibly similar-ish material, in terms of Jewish mysticism and mystical teachings and Kabbalah.

Ironically, perhaps, from a certain point of view, what happened historically was that Gates of Light: Sha'are Orah, this clear text written in contemporary language, designed to be easy to understand, etc., became not very popular at all. Not that many people read it, whereas the Zohar became an incredibly popular text -- venerated, as I said, studied, commentary upon commentary written upon it. It became almost canonical -- not without some contention -- almost canonical in the tradition, in the Jewish religion, and garnered great, great respect and veneration there, even by some people who could not understand the language in it, the Aramaic, and certainly by many people who it remained, even if they could understand the Aramaic, it remained really pretty baffling, what it was talking about.

We could also say it was open. Because of its poetic nature, because of the mysterious language, because of the mystery of what it meant, because of all that, it then could become an object for eros. It could contain within its sort of depths, and mysteries, and darknesses, and allusions, and poetry -- it could allow a wider latitude of interpretation, an infinity of interpretation. It could become, because of its depths and mysteries, because it was kind of unfathomable, because one couldn't just simply reduce it, because it had the beyonds, it could become an object of the erotic-imaginal. One could have eros, and it itself becomes an imaginal object, the Zohar, this book, this teaching, this tradition.

And because it was 'ancient,' or because it was presented as ancient, it could quickly accrue, attract the kind of eros for the ancient, because 'ancient' implies the tradition. And as I said, the fantasy will, where there's love, the fantasy of tradition, the self in relation to the tradition, and to the history, and the past, the fantasy of the past, the fantasy of the characters in the past. Partly, the Zohar is the kind of -- not really 'chronicle,' but it involves passages relating the sort of wandering through Galilee of a small band of mystics, and they're visiting different places in this beautiful land, and discussing different mystical interpretations of Torah, and things like that.

So again, in the fantasy of tradition, if I have a love of a tradition, it involves characters from that history, from that tradition becoming imaginal characters for me, that I have eros towards, that are important to me. So because it was presented as ancient, because also of the kind of relative obfuscation and opacity of it, because it wasn't clear, it allowed more interpretation. It had these dimensions of unfathomability, etc. It's interesting, and also in the language, in the poetic language, and the lack of clarity in the language, very interesting. I have this question: does a living, healthy tradition, if it wants to have rich soil, does it need also elements that are mysterious, even incomprehensible, certainly poetic? So less obvious, certainly, in some of what we have come to receive in the West as Pali Canon Buddhism, maybe less apparent there.

But certainly if you look at other Mahāyāna Buddhism as it's practised in the West, Vajrayāna Buddhism -- absolutely. You know, the original tantric texts are so baffling to us. If you read, pick up the -- I don't know, the Guhyasamāja Tantra or something, and read just a translation of it, it's pretty out there and baffling. And what are they talking about, and why are they talking about this? And who are -- what's it supposed to -- how am I supposed to relate to all this? And so, what's very common in the Vajrayāna tradition is less for people to read texts in their original, but to read commentaries on the text, and even commentaries on the commentaries has become much more usual. And the commentaries, if you think about -- there were actually two Chandrakīrtis, two famous Chandrakīrtis in the history of Buddhism, and the second Chandrakīrti was famous for his tantric commentaries, in particular, on the Guhyasamāja Tantra. And there, as in the Jewish tradition, there are four levels of commentary. So each sentence, even each word, has kind of four levels, is given four levels of meaning. And again, right there, and similarly in Kabbalistic interpretations or commentaries on the Bible, and they talk about the obvious meaning, the hidden meaning, etc., the symbolic meaning.

So the commentaries themselves become rich. The text itself, because of its strangeness, and its mysteriousness, and its partial incomprehensibility, its poetic nature, lends itself, offers itself as a soil for image, for eros, but also for the proliferation of growth out of that soil, further interpretation, the richness of that, interpretations, commentaries upon commentaries, multiple perspectives, etc. And the mystery never goes, because the core text remains mysterious and open. Or if you think about, in Christianity, you know, St John's Gospel of the four canonical gospels in Christianity -- leave aside the apocryphal texts -- but of the four canonical gospels, St John's Gospel is really the odd one out. It reads so differently. It's so mystical in its flavour, and in what it says -- even the opening sentences, very famous: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," etc. What's he talking about? And can't remember now, exactly -- "And the Word was in darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it," etc. "And the darkness did not overcome it." So the mystery of that kind of text, you know, that may be, or the question is, how necessary is that kind of strand and text within the body of a healthy tradition?

Or again, in Christianity, the whole theology that goes with the Trinity, so Trinitarian theology -- the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit -- it's mysterious. And so what you get is lots of interpretations, lots of theories, lots of rational explanations, but it remains at its core a kind of mystery, which retains its mysteriousness, its unfathomability, its beyonds, or at a minimum, its poetic nature; at a maximum, its sort of mystical impenetrability, if you like. So that's a question.

Something, again, in this consideration, this laying out, this unearthing and bringing to light that I would like to do together with you tonight. You know, it's, in a way, obvious to say that a tradition is set in, is part of a larger culture. And in a way, it contributes to that culture. Sometimes it contributes in very obvious and large ways, sometimes less obvious. Even if the tradition is very much a fringe tradition and very much against the stream, so to speak, of the larger society and culture, it's still the fact that a tradition is embedded in a culture. It's part of and it contributes to that wider culture.

But the opposite is also true, so vice versa -- the culture contributes to tradition, whatever that tradition is, the tradition of teachings or practices, etc. The culture, the contemporary culture, and the history of that culture contributes, and forms part of, and certainly shapes and informs the tradition. So that's probably obvious. I imagine it's obvious. But again, can we unpack that a little more, and kind of amplify our considerations of that fact, and our awareness of it?

So again, if we look at other traditions (let's say, Judaism), there was the -- what should we say? -- the importing, the confluence, the inclusion, the integration, the digestion, the assimilation, the reckoning with Greek philosophy (principally Plato and Aristotle) into the body of the Jewish tradition. So as far as I understand, the first person to do this was Philo of Alexandria. He was not well-known, but is beginning to attract more attention just by virtue of the fact that he was the first person to do that, to really consider the whole Jewish teachings, and traditions, and the Torah, and all that in the light of Plato's teachings particularly, and to try and present the Jewish teachings to Greeks and Greek culture in a way that would be understandable for them. So he was quite a significant figure because he was the first person in Western history to do that. And that movement of kind of integration of either or both of Plato and Aristotle's thought, and philosophy, and views into Judaism, into Christianity, into Islam -- it was an undeniable fact, an important event, an important process in all those three religions, all those three traditions. And so he was the first person to do that.

And then, successively, there are different periods in history where an even further integration happened. So again, going back to the Zohar and the sort of blossoming, if you like, or birth of Kabbalistic teachings in Judaism in the twelfth, thirteenth centuries in southwestern Europe, principally, they were also very much influenced by the Neoplatonic teachings. I mean, 'influence' is even an understatement; there was a marriage, an integration, a mingling, a birth, a co-opting of those Neoplatonist teachings within the Jewish teachings, a reconfiguring, a re-presentation, a rethinking of Jewish mystical teachings with an incorporation of Neoplatonic teachings.

A little later -- I can't remember the dates exactly, but somewhere in the Middle Ages -- Maimonides was also a famous Jewish teacher, rabbi, who wrote a lot, very influential, and he favoured more Aristotle's teachings. So what you also get in the three Abrahamic religions is a sort of wrestling with, or contest, or dispute between two different influences from Greek philosophers: one camp, let's say, more influenced by Plato, one camp more influenced by Aristotle. To complicate things, there were texts that were believed to have been written by Aristotle that were actually Platonic. They were misattributed, so people were quoting Aristotle, or thinking they were quoting Aristotle, and claiming they were quoting Aristotle, when it was actually a Platonic teaching, etc. But all this material was worked into the clay, into the fabric of Judaism, of Christianity, of Islam.

So in Christianity, I'm not quite sure where Augustine of Hippo, St Augustine stood with this, because he grew up in a pagan culture, so would've been very familiar with Platonic teachings, etc., but then converted to Christianity. And exactly how he viewed that relationship, or how, or whether they were integrated or not, I'm not sure, but certainly Pseudo-Dionysius, who I've mentioned, was very Platonically influenced, and his teachings became very influential in the Church. I think he's from the fifth century. Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages -- enormously influential and really very consciously borrowing from, working with, relying on the teachings of Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophy for his interpretation and his kind of remodelling of Christian theology, and philosophy, and thinking.

So all that enormous integration, influence, incorporation of Plato and Aristotle's thought into the three Abrahamic religions -- and I don't know, I mean, for me, I almost try to imagine, say, those religions without those influences, and it's hard to imagine. It's so different, and my gut reaction is, they just don't attract me without those kind of more sophisticated developments and integrations of the thought of, say, Plato, for example.

To add to that -- again, if we just take the Jewish tradition as an example, there was, of course -- people travelled, and they talked with each other, and they met, and at some periods and places in history, the interreligious dialogue was very open, and very encouraged, and very, very fertile, so that you get what historians and academics are now tracing: "Oh, that's a Sufi influence. That practice or that view came into Jewish mystical teachings via the Sufis." There was obviously some meeting, some dialogue, some learning, even, between the Jewish Kabbalists and the Sufis, and perhaps there were influences both ways. Of course, when you get into Christian Kabbalah, it's rooted in Jewish Kabbalah, etc.

But all this exists, and it's kind of an inevitable part of history, of the history of a tradition, that the culture contributes, and contributes sometimes in ways that are absolutely fundamental, really almost change the constitution of that religion and the sort of fundamental tenets, really. Can be wrapped up in the same vocabulary, but the whole thinking behind it, and the structures, the conceptual structures, are different. What I'm partly asking is, what are the implications of that? What are the implications of that fact?

So don't think that this just applies to non-Buddhist traditions in the past. It's still going on, still going on today in the Abrahamic religions, and you only need to look at modern Western Buddhadharma, I think -- and you have to think what you think -- but our modern Western Buddhadharma, Insight Meditation tradition, and other contemporary traditions in the West include so much of what has become kind of commonplace, accepted psychological concepts, and notions, and beliefs, aspirations, regularities in the sense of, like, "This is healthy. This is not healthy." So when we talked about self -- and actually the whole notion of 'self' that we not just believe and think but we actually feel is culturally conditioned, and what we regard as, "What's a healthy self? What's a healthy relationship?", all this is very much given to us by the contemporary Western culture of, say, the last, I don't know, hundred and twenty years, hundred and fifty years or so, you know, since Freud and everything that came out of that. And that's, for the most part, really wrapped up. Sometimes it's more to the fore, and the teacher will really incorporate those considerations of sort of mainstream psychology much more obviously into their Dharma teaching. But even if it's not, it's there in the background, influencing, informing, being incorporated.

Modern Western Buddhadharma, I think a lot of it includes, or it's very common to find mixed in elements of what's really a kind of Advaita Vedanta. You can, say, locate passages in Buddhist texts which sort of seem to be saying something similar. But you can also make a strong case: "Well, actually, this isn't the Buddha's teachings. This is someone else. This is Advaita Vedanta teachings." But that's, again, very common for that to become absorbed in the presentation of modern Western Dharma. I'm not sure -- the other Diamond Heart teachings or Ridhwan teachings, are they, for some teachers, are they sort of incorporated, mixed in, in a way, in the presentation of Buddhadharma that's becoming -- in a way, you can't really see the seams and the divisions? They've become part of what the Dharma is.

Neuroscientific notions, beliefs, points of view, models -- how much has that come into our way of thinking? Again, sometimes it's really explicit. A teacher will really present that as some parallel, or evidence, or explanation of what a jhāna is, or how mindfulness is working, or what mindfulness does, or whatever it is. Or it's just there in the background: there's a kind of backdrop belief of what a human being is, really. So very much in the present, I think, it's already there, the contribution of culture, the mixing, the infiltration, the forming of contemporary Dharma tradition, or the state of the Dharma tradition by cultural conditions, artefacts, trends. [1:01:40]

And certainly, if you look at the development of Buddhist tantra, there used to be a popular case or a popular claim that Buddhist tantra was just a co-opting of Hindu tantra, and therefore a kind of assimilation of something alien and impure, and a kind of impurity coming into Buddhism from Hinduism, if 'Hinduism' is even the right word. But more careful scholarship shows that was actually not the case, and Buddhist tantra is actually very influential on Hindu tantra. As time went by, I'm sure they influenced each other. So there's this kind of -- sometimes it's just osmosis, sometimes it's more a deliberate, very worked-out reckoning. So for example, with what I alluded to in the history of Judaism, with Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, and Philo, Maimonides, and Christianity with Aquinas, etc., it's a very deliberate, careful integration and reckoning, and a sense of, "This needs to be included. These developments need to be included. We need to integrate them. We need to consider them." And sometimes it's much more just a kind of osmosis, almost blind.

So as I said, hopefully that's obvious to you. But what if we just, again, unpack it and consider it more, really hold it in our attention? What does this imply? What does this ask of us? How do we feel about this? What's my view of this? And of course, the contemporary culture is also a formative condition, even when those in the tradition or a founding member of the tradition is fighting against the contemporary culture. Just by virtue of it being an opposition, or a foil, or something to contrast oneself with, it becomes a formative influence in a kind of -- I don't know what we would call it -- a 'negative' way.

So I think I've shared this before, but I remember hearing about the Vedic or Brahmanical teaching of, practice of keeping three fires burning. I don't know if people did this in their house, or in the temple, or what. And these three fires, in the Vedic religion and rituals, were part of the creation myth. I don't quite know the details, or I've forgotten them, but one was supposed to keep them burning. And in keeping them burning, one actually sustained the functioning, and the order, and the life of the cosmos -- that the sun would come up tomorrow, that it would rain, etc. And they were representative, these fires (or even constituted somehow), of elements of the Vedic creation myth, so that in perpetuating, in keeping these fires from going out, in keeping them lit, one was participating in the re-creation, the ongoing life of the cosmos. [1:05:18] And all that was rooted in a certain belief, or we now call it a 'myth,' of creation, of the creation of the cosmos.

And the Buddha came along at that time, and of course, there were a lot of people around who were practising in that way, keeping these fires lit, and he took that and sort of turned it on its head, and said, "Actually, you know, you don't want to keep three fires alight. You want to extinguish three fires. You want to put out three fires." And he equated the three fires with three kilesas, three defilements: greed, aversion, and delusion -- greed, hatred, and delusion, or ignorance. He said, "Actually, what you want to do is extinguish these fires. You need to extinguish, get rid of, stamp out greed, hatred, and delusion -- so much so that they never come back." And the word, one of the etymologies of nibbāna, some of you know, is 'to blow out' a fire. It's the extinction of a fire, so that full awakening, one of the sort of definitions of it is 'the extinction of greed, aversion, delusion' -- nibbāna, the extinction of these fires. So he took something that was around him in the contemporary culture, that had a certain influence, and clout, and popularity in contemporary consciousness, and he opposed it. He spun it a different way. We're not trying to create more. We're trying to end creation, get off the wheel of birth and death, of rebirth.

When I heard that, one of the things that occurred to me was, "That's really interesting, how conditioned, even by opposition or through opposition, the Buddha's teachings were." So if, for example, the Vedic myth of creation had two fires in it, and the practice of the Brahmins in the Vedic religion had this ritual of keeping two fires going, or four fires going as opposed to three, would we then have had a Dharma that had four kilesas or two kilesas, dependent on the situation in the contemporary culture? I mean, certainly a case can be made, anyway, to reduce them to two anyway, because one could say greed and aversion are just two sides of the same coin. When we're aversive to something, we're actually greedy for something else. When we're greedy for something, we're actually averse, aversive to its opposite. When I'm aversive to pain, it's because I want pleasure, or neutrality, or whatever. When I'm after whatever it is, pleasant taste, I don't want the absence of pleasant taste -- certainly don't want unpleasant taste. But anyway, my main point is really about the cultural conditioning, the formative influences of culture -- even when they're in opposition.

And something similar is true about the twelve links of dependent origination. It's very central; both these ideas are, these Dharma concepts -- three kilesas and extinguishing them, and the twelve links of dependent origination. The twelve links of dependent origination were also twelve aspects of a Vedic creation myth. So again, the Buddha was in a culture where that was the belief, that was the dominant kind of paradigm, presentation, and his teaching was formed -- he wanted to differentiate it from that, spin it a different way. So again, the creation myth, saying, "Yeah, you know what you're creating with those twelve links? You're creating dukkha. That's what you're creating. Let's not create. Let's stop creating. Let's stop those twelve links." And they have pretty much the same names, even, I think, for the most part, those twelve links or twelve elements of the Vedic creation myth.

I don't know, but I have a strong suspicion that the same is somehow true of the five aggregates. I'm not the first person to comment -- I'm not the first practitioner, but also not the first teacher to comment that it's a strange system when you look at the aggregates, like it doesn't really fit together as a sort of human psychology. Like, why those divisions? What a strange thing. Is it just the case that these were the primary elements of human being, if you like, that were, at that time, at the Buddha's time, popular sort of appropriation points for the sense of self? So that people would either claim that they were the body -- there was a philosophy that "we are the body." That was certainly one philosophy that existed. Certainly, I know another philosophy that existed at that time, another teaching, another religious tradition at the time was, "No, your true nature is bliss" -- in other words, pleasant vedanā. Or obviously consciousness, or intention, which might be a little more close to some contemporary psychologies: "You are your mental formations and your intentions." Or even perception -- people would have certain jhānic perceptions, so for example, one would come to the seventh jhāna, nothingness, and one would take that to be who one was.

So these were extant teachings. These were current, contemporary teachings, in different of the spiritual traditions and philosophies around at the time of Buddha. So I don't know. Did he originate the teachings of the five aggregates? Or did he just look around him and kind of see, "Oh, okay, so this school is identifying with that. That school is identifying with that, or claiming that to be the true self. That school is identifying that to be the true self. That school is identifying this to be the true self," and just collect them together for the purposes of saying, "You know what? None of these are"? Again, it's a Dharma concept that was formed, or perhaps it's a Dharma concept that was formed in opposition, but still culturally conditioned.

If all that is the case, then we say, "How real are these things?" I mean, we can see they're not real because of emptiness and the kinds of reflection -- as I said, greed and aversion are two sides of the same coin. In lots of other ways, they're not real, any of these links, and deep practice into emptiness will show exactly that. There are no aggregates, really. There are no links of dependent origination, really. There are no kilesas, really. They don't form clear-cut, demarcated things. They have no independent existence. But we can add another level of, if you like, emptiness, and say they're also culturally conditioned. How real are they? So easily, in our minds, they can become kind of dogmas or truths, as if they're real, as if they're referring to real things.

But the larger point here is ... well, that's an important point, too, but just to point out that cultural conditioning can happen via opposition, via a tradition wanting to demarcate itself, differentiate itself from what is around it. Or it's wanting to push off in a different direction. So this can happen in all kinds of different ways.

Just the other day, I was talking with someone who works, his job is working with the Dalit Buddhist communities in places in India. Some of you will probably know Dr Ambedkar was a Hindu, and converted to Buddhism. And there's a movement of 'untouchables,' if you know the Indian caste system. There's a sort of gross injustice there -- there's a tiered hierarchy of the castes and the classes in India, and the lowest class, it's even lower than the lowest class, is 'untouchables.' They're outside; they're outside of the caste. And actually, that whole thing is very much drawn along ethnic lines, so it's basically a supposedly metaphysically backed institutional racism and social injustice that, you know, has gone on for centuries and millennia. And in converting, some of these people, untouchables, converting to Buddhism, they then fall outside of the scope of the Hindu caste system. [1:15:02] And this person was saying, actually, in working with those communities, he was sort of thinking about me, because a lot of the teaching of the Buddhism that they propagate in that Dalit community of converts is a kind of rational, secular Buddhism. And he said, "Oh, I thought of you because I know that you've sort of contested that a little bit, the whole premises and objectives of secularism, and even secular Buddhism, etc."

But I thought immediately, "Wow, well, hold on. It's all contextual," and then we spoke about it. It's all contextual. In other words -- and I've said this before -- I see whatever I teach as utterly contextual. In other words, what I say, what emphasis, what even direction the teachings evolve in is dependent on context. So I find myself in situations where I'm talking, in the West, almost exclusively in the West, to people who live in a predominantly secular culture of secular modernity, and in a situation where that kind of ideation, both within and outside of Buddhadharma, has an enormous clout. And so, in a way, the whole Soulmaking Dharma teachings, or much of it, is placed in that context and in response, let's say, in dialogue with the dominance of that kind of thinking of secular modernity. Were I or we in a situation where, like the untouchables in India, one's actually being subject to great injustice, massive -- I mean, unthinkable injustice based on some kind of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo and the sort of hyped-up, mysterious authority of a certain spirituality and cosmology, might the soulmaking teachings, the Soulmaking Dharma, actually be given quite a different spin or have a whole different element in them? Because they would be in that context, and then responding to that, and the dominance of that paradigm, etc.

So, laying some things out. Where does it land? How does it sit with you, all this? So all kinds of influences, both through integration, but also through kind of opposition, integration through opposition, if you like, from culture. Again, if we cast our eyes about us in contemporary Buddhadharma, or even wider than Buddhadharma, we see the prevalence of mindfulness teachings, which is wonderful, in the West. And it's doing so much to help so many people. And there's a whole range of the way it's presented, and the context in which it's presented, and I know only very little about it because I'm not really in that world.

But there's some kind of -- more on the 'pop' end of things, if you like, pop mindfulness, where I've come across mindfulness being defined as non-judgmental awareness, and that definition has actually become prevalent, sometimes even within Buddhism, like it's sort of fed back into Buddhism, in what might be called Buddhadharma as well as secular mindfulness, etc. -- not everywhere, just certain strands. Non-judgmental awareness. Defining it that way can be enormously helpful, but again, if we think about this question of tradition, very quickly you should understand or realize that yes, that can be very helpful. And why is it helpful? It's helpful partly because of our culture of judgmentalism. So again, even that formulation of the tradition was formed in a context. But then, if you study, let's say, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, the original discourse on mindfulness, you realize, "Wow!" Not only that definition of mindfulness as, say, non-judgmental awareness or presence, but also the range of those teachings, it leaves out so much of what's in the basic, fundamental discourse on mindfulness, which is only a few pages long. So completely gone are, for example, the death reflections, and the vivid imagination of one's death and one's rotting corpse, etc., the whole section on foulness of the body. What seems to be gone sometimes is the whole fourth foundation of mindfulness, so there's "non-judgmental awareness of body sensations, non-judgmental awareness of feelings, and pleasantness, and impulses, and non-judgmental awareness of thoughts, moods, mind states, etc.," but the whole fourth foundation, which has a slightly different kind of tack and flavour, is often gone.

So again, if I read about the fourth foundation of mindfulness in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, a lot of it is exactly what would be called, by some teachers of modern mindfulness, 'discrepancy-based processing,' which I've touched on before in the Eros Unfettered talks.^[1] So that phrase, 'discrepancy-based processing,' was, again, a kind of foil to the presentation of mindfulness. Discrepancy-based processing is supposed to be, like, "I'm in this moment, thinking -- not thinking, but feeling there's a discrepancy between what this moment is and what I would like it to be. And I'm processing, or relating to, or viewing, sensing the moment through a lens that's based on that discrepancy, and kind of wanting or wanting to move towards what I think or feel the moment should be." And the teaching is, "Okay, that's fine sometimes. When the tiger is chasing you, it's fine. When you have to catch your train on time, it's fine -- whatever. Some of that, to a certain extent, is important in life. But mindfulness is something different. Mindfulness is *non-*discrepancy-based processing."

But again, reading the fourth foundation, it's hard to take that conclusion away from it. The Buddha talks about feeding the seven factors of awakening. What feeds them? What starves them? And you should feed them, and you should stop starving them. Or the hindrances -- so these are all categories in the fourth foundation of mindfulness: seven factors of awakening, hindrances, other things too. And very much, the thrust of that teaching in the fourth foundation is about feeding and starving. It's about doing. It's about discrepancy. Why do I need to feed? Because there's a discrepancy between what the current state of "How active, and alive, and well, and flourishing are my factors of awakening?" and where they could be, or where it would be better if they'd be. Or vice versa, with the hindrances: there are a lot of hindrances, and it would be better -- there's a discrepancy with where it would be better if they would be. So one is looking in terms of discrepancy, and then instructed to act on that discrepancy in the direction of the sort of desired outcome. And a lot of the other concepts in the fourth foundation are really what I would see as ways of looking or lenses: anattā, or looking in terms of the aggregates, looking in terms of the six sense spheres, the sense modalities. It's not bare attention. It's attention through a certain lens. Why? Because that lens is liberating, because it's a way of looking that liberates. It's a seeing that frees.

So that whole presentation that we get sometimes in pop mindfulness of "mindfulness is non-judgmental awareness," I think I know where it comes from, because so many struggle so much in our culture of fractured communities, ego psychology, and our culture of individualism. There's so much pain that goes with, that comes from judgment, and self-judgment, and judging oneself, and one's experience, and where one is. So it's understandable that mindfulness would be given that kind of -- I'll say 'spin,' but it's more than a spin. It's a kind of truncation, if you like. Yet when we compare it to what we have of the original discourse, it's like, "Wow, it really is a truncation and a kind of partial view, at best." As I said, that foundation does have the encouragement and the directive to discern, to notice the difference between what is and what could be -- what is, and what it would be better if there was -- and to direct oneself towards that, to cultivating that, to cut this or that, to remove it, to strive to engender this or that.

Now, I'm not saying this right now as a criticism of that kind of mindfulness -- I'm really, really not -- a criticism of even those kinds of popular mindfulness. I don't myself have much enthusiasm, or I don't put much hope and investment in, or I don't think highly of this sort of attempted project of "what the Buddha really taught," and this kind of looking back in history, and trying to kind of shave off everything, and kind of try and find the original teachings, pure from any accretions, etc., or any cultural conditionings. I don't subscribe to that project. I think it's not necessarily helpful. Or rather, it can be held in a way that's not necessarily helpful, and not that interesting. I've said this before, but Nietzsche has a phrase -- I can't remember what the German is, but it translates to something like 'the fantasy of origins,' so that we believe that the original thing is better than the thing that developed over time. And of course that's absolutely commonplace in the way that most people who are in a religious tradition think of a religious tradition: "Of course the Buddha's the real deal. Of course the origin and the start is the real deal."

But might it be that the real deal is something that's grown into over time? Like a human being, like anything else that could grow, that it's better, or fuller, or certainly richer, but almost like the more real thing is more in what it moves towards over time, rather than at the origin. And anyway, the whole sort of project of history, historicizing, or historiographing, whatever, that whole project of "Can I look back with a historical lens and do that?", that's a project. I would say, along with a number of other contemporary philosophers, that we, in the project of history, we project backwards. We can't help but bring our agendas, our spins, our perspectives, our contemporary perspectives (which are influenced by all kinds of things), cultural conditions, cultural valuings of what's important, what's significant, what's relevant, what's not relevant, our own personal psychologies (I alluded to all this), our motivations, so that what we select as a central thread, or a central teaching, or "That's just a cultural accretion, or that's an impurity, or whatever," that's all very much conditioned by our own contemporary culture and by our own psychology. And we project that back.

So history, in a way, is not one thing. Referring back to what I said at the beginning of the talk: is there a point in history that we can say, "This is the point in history we're at now," and we can all agree, "Oh yes, that's the point in history we're at"? There are histories. There are versions. There are spins. There are perspectives. There are stories woven -- all coming, in each case, from a different set of conditions that form that perspective, those agendas, those spins, those selections, selectings of certain threads, etc. So a quote from -- this guy's named Jon Snyder. It's from an introduction to a book by Gianni Vattimo called The End of Modernity. And he writes:

The work of such theorists as Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, and Hayden White on the rhetorical and literary elements present in historical writing has belatedly led to a widespread recognition of the narrative, and therefore fictional, basis of a unified image of history. History appears today [rather] as a kind of writing, which persuades its readers through the use of carefully chosen rhetorical strategies of the 'truth' of its account of events ['truth' in inverted commas].^[2]

I remember -- some of you will be familiar with it -- there's a book by Howard Zinn, the US historian, that's called A People's History of the United States, and it's -- what if you write a history of the United States that they don't teach in schools, a history written from the perspective of First Nations, or from African Americans who were slaves, etc.? It's a very different history. So there are histories, there are stories, and the idea that there is one history, and that we can kind of whittle it down and find the 'pure truth' of what was there at the beginning, I would question that. And even if we could, is that necessarily, as I said, is that also just a fantasy of origins, that it's the 'true thing' or the 'real thing,' the 'real Buddhism,' the 'real Dharma'?

So anyway, that was slightly a side point, but my point is, I don't want to criticize so much that pop mindfulness, if we even call it that. The very phrase 'pop mindfulness' sounds critical. But I don't want to criticize that so much as point out the culturally conditioned interpretations and presentations of Buddhadharma, that they are unavoidable. We are in that soup. We are, as Heidegger says, thrown. We're thrown into a certain context of history. We're thrown into certain cultures, and that cannot help but influence, and shape, and direct what we then see, how we relate to things, how we interpret things.

So again, I'm really just wanting to bring certain elements and aspects and considerations to light for your reflection, consideration. What does all this imply to you? What are the implications? How does it land with you? How will you hold all this in your mind, in your heart, in your conceiving, in your view, in your orientations? What's your relationship to it? How does your heart feel? And what will we do with it, in terms of moving forward? [1:33:42]

Some people may be more, if you like, or think of themselves as a kind of purist: "Now, I want the Buddha's original teaching, stripped of everything." Might buy into that kind of fantasy of origin, might buy into the whole so-called historical project, without realizing the projections, might buy into the whole fantasy of what Nietzsche called the fantasy of origins. Is it, though, I would ask, is it even possible to not be thrown? Is it possible to somehow divest oneself, to scrub oneself clean, to cut off and sunder all those cultural accretions, and indoctrinations, and learnings, perspectives, views, values that we have from the culture? Is it possible to do that, to not be thrown, or to be thrown and then to somehow transcend one's thrown state -- thrown into a culture, thrown into a time, thrown into a time in history, place, the culture? Is that possible that we can do that, divest ourselves of that thrownness? And can we have a perspective that isn't culturally conditioned? Or really, when we even try and do that, is there actually just a selective relinquishment, selective relinquishing of this cultural accretion, but I don't see this one that is still operating and driving me, shaping my view, my interest, and what I pay attention to, what I don't see, etc.?

And then this question, as I said: might it be that some of these cultural conditionings, and accretions, and integrations, and shapings, and influences are in fact improvements? How would we decide? What determines that? And what's my loyalty? What's operating? Again, these end up being not just mental questions, certainly not abstract, and not academic, not even just mental. They end up being -- they affect the heart, and they'll affect the soul.

If we open up this whole pot of elements even more, lay it out even more, again, to ask: okay, to what extent -- maybe the whole talk is lots of questions. To what extent does a living, healthy tradition need to share those, what I rattled off at the beginning, in terms of the list of values, beliefs, ontological commitments, texts, etc.? To what extent, and how should we hold the conditionings, and the shapings, and the influences from culture, inevitable, both in history and contemporary? Here's a new question: to what extent is, in fact, conflict within a tradition, so to speak, a necessary part of that tradition being healthy, and being alive and vital? So this, to me, is really interesting. I quote now from a philosopher called Alasdair MacIntyre. Some of you will know him. I think he's still alive. Now, he writes in a book called After Virtue, which is quite a well-known book about ethics. I'm not a huge fan of it, but it was interesting in parts.

So he writes -- I'll just quote a passage. It's a reasonably long passage, but still, he's basically saying that when people talk about tradition, oftentimes, it's sort of polarized between conservative thinkers and those who are opposed to conservatism, so particularly by conservative political theorists, etc., and said, well, there's a way that they look at it that's a little bit misleading, because of their ideological agenda. And he writes:

Characteristically such theorists have followed Burke [Edmund Burke] in contrasting tradition with reason and the stability of tradition with conflict.^[3]

So the contrast of tradition with reason -- in other words, tradition is just received stuff that's not really had the scrutiny of rational thinking, and the stability of tradition, on the one hand, with kind of conflict. Conflict does not go with the stability of tradition. But Alasdair MacIntyre continues:

Both contrasts obfuscate. [They just confuse things. They hide a reality here.] For all reasoning takes place within the context of some traditional mode of thought, transcending through criticism and invention the limitations of what had hitherto been reasoned in that tradition; this is as true of modern physics as of medieval logic. Moreover when a tradition is in good order it is always partially constituted by an argument about the goods the pursuit of which gives to that tradition its particular point and purpose.

I'll say that in other language in case that's a little difficult. So in other words, a healthy tradition, he's saying, "when a tradition is in good order," part of what makes it healthy and "in good order" and alive is that it involves an argument. It's constituted by an argument. About what? About the things that are valuable in that tradition, that give the tradition its point, its purpose. So what is awakening? What are we trying to do? Where should practice lead? What does a good practitioner look like and do, etc.? The argument, rather than being something that's, you know, anathema to tradition, is actually part of a healthy tradition. So he continues:

So when an institution -- a university, say, or a farm, or a hospital -- is the bearer of a tradition of practice or practices, its common life will be partly, but in a centrally important way, constituted by a continuous argument as to what a university is and ought to be or what good farming is or what good medicine is. Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition becomes Burkean [in other words, when there is that dichotomy between, "Okay, if it's a tradition, there's no reason, etc. If there's a tradition, if it's stable, there's no conflict" -- when a tradition becomes like that, becomes Burkean] it is always dying or dead....

A living tradition then is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.

In other words, what's valuable to that tradition and for that tradition. This, to me, it's like, "Oh, yeah. Right." It's partly sort of semi-consciously obvious, but actually one needs to think about it a bit more, so "Oh, yeah. That's actually really part of the weave or the tapestry of what makes a healthy tradition, a vital tradition." John Anderson said:

[Don't] ask of a social institution [in other words, an embodiment, instrument of tradition, or an instrument of part of a tradition]: "What end or purpose does it serve?" but rather [ask] "of what conflicts is it the scene?"^[4]

Now, that can, when you first hear it, sound, "Well, that's pretty pessimistic or even cynical." But seen in the light of what we've just been talking about, what Alasdair MacIntyre was explaining, the need for, the necessity for conflict and argument in a tradition, it's not necessarily pessimistic or cynical at all. And actually, the philosopher A. N. Whitehead wrote something like:

A clash of doctrines is not a disaster -- it is an opportunity.^[5]

A clash of doctrines is not necessarily a disaster. It can be an opportunity. Of course, I could go a bit -- we could go a bit further and say, "But what happens when" -- well, I might ask, "What happens when all that remains of tradition, of a tradition, are words and names?" So if we talk about Buddhist tradition, the word 'awakening,' the word 'suffering.' But the divergence of interpretations of what those words mean has become so wide as to be an abyss. People are talking about completely different things when they're talking about what they think 'awakening' is meaning, or what 'suffering' means to them, what the goal is, etc., what you're relating to and trying to overcome. So when that divergence becomes so wide that it becomes an abyss, and attached to each interpretation are more fundamental, metaphysical, and cosmological views and fantasies -- I would say this is the case among certain, definitely certain, the ones I know, contemporary traditions of Buddhadharma, that actually, some of the rifts there, conceptually, have become close to too wide to navigate in some cases.

So what if that abyss renders argument -- the kind of argument Alasdair MacIntyre is saying is important -- what if it renders argument either impossible, it's become too wide; there's almost like very little common ground, even, to have an argument that's fertile -- or at least seemingly, if not actually, pointless?

Or another possibility, and it may come out of the situation or the perception of the situation that I just described, that kind of thing -- another possibility may be that someone or some sub-group within a tradition either suddenly or gradually stop caring about their identity, or stop identifying with that tradition so much. The eros has gone for the tradition, and so the fantasy of the tradition goes as well, because eros, and the imaginal, the fantasy go together. And in not feeling so identified with that tradition, and not really investing it with eros and imaginal perception, fantasy perception, they actually don't have the energy, or the will, or the desire to engage in the conflict, engage in the argument. And not engaging in the conflict and the argument atrophies the tradition. Their withdrawal, their non-engagement in the conflict actually ends up lessening the tradition, or impoverishing it, or weakening it, or sometimes just killing it. [1:45:50]

I'll read another passage by Alasdair MacIntyre from a different book, from an article. He's kind of elaborating this point that overlaps here, but I think this point is really important. So this is from an article called "Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science." That's a mouthful. So he writes:

[The] connection between narrative and tradition has hitherto gone almost unnoticed, perhaps because tradition has usually been taken seriously only by conservative social theorists.^[6]

Again, so usually, the people that talk about tradition are those with a vested interest or certain spin on tradition, and what it needs to be, and what it means, etc. But he continues:

Yet those features of tradition which emerge as important when the connection between tradition and narrative is understood are ones which conservative theorists are unlikely to attend to.

This is the important point:

For what constitutes a tradition is a conflict of interpretations of that tradition, a conflict which itself has a history susceptible of rival interpretations.

So I'm going to read that again:

What constitutes a tradition is a conflict of interpretations of that tradition, a conflict which itself has a history susceptible of rival interpretations.

In other words, not just the interpretation of the tradition, and the texts, etc., that I was talking about before, but also a conflict about how to read the history of that conflict. "Conflict which itself has a history susceptible of rival interpretations" -- so even the whole argument can be seen from different perspectives, the history of that argument. Then he continues:

If I am a Jew, I have to recognise that the tradition of Judaism is partly constituted by a continuous argument over what it means to be a Jew.

Actually, I think a better example would be Buddhism. But anyway, that's what he wrote. And then he says:

Suppose I am an American: the tradition is one partly constituted by continuous argument over what it means to be American and partly by continuous argument over what it means to have rejected tradition. If I am an historian, I must acknowledge that the tradition of historiography [the writing of history] is partly, but centrally, constituted by arguments about what history is and ought to be, from Hume and Gibbon to Namier and Edward Thompson.

And he writes, he says -- this also is a very important point:

Notice that all three kinds of tradition -- religious, political, intellectual -- involve epistemological debate as a necessary feature of their conflicts.

So we're back to what we talked about in the last talk, and the centrality of epistemology. What was that phrase by Moscovici? "Questions of epistemology are questions of social order." And when we differ about epistemology, in our views of epistemology, in our leanings there, that might be healthy to a certain extent, but it's part of what gets argued about, and again, the abyss can become so wide that it's unbridgeable.

Notice that all three kinds of tradition -- religious, political, intellectual -- involve epistemological debate as a necessary feature of their conflicts. For it is not merely that different participants in a tradition disagree; they also disagree as to how to characterize their disagreements and as to how to resolve them. They disagree as to what constitutes appropriate reasoning, decisive evidence, conclusive proof.

In other words, exactly -- remember what 'epistemology' means: how do I know? What is appropriate reasoning? What is decisive evidence? What is conclusive proof? What are the bases of my knowledge? So epistemological differences actually are quite fundamental to this. They're wrapped up, or the kind of arguments and conflicts that a tradition has to have as part of its health also involve epistemological conflicts, or conflicts about epistemology. But again, I would ask: what happens when they get too wide? What happens when the rift, the rifts over epistemology are more like abysses? All these questions, they're for you. I obviously wrestle with them, as well, but as I said at the beginning, I want them, I want this to be yours.

What else can we unearth here? Part of conflict and argument within traditions and within the institutions that embody, or transmit, or carry -- at least in part -- carry traditions, part of the kind of conflicts that go on are between what we might call 'the conservative tendency' and 'the innovative tendency.' [laughs] You just have to join a board of some institution to see that this will be the case. I would actually view that conflict as a kind of archetypal tug of war between the conservative tendency and the innovative tendency. And there's something archetypal about it. There's something actually inevitable about it.

I just want to point out also, it's not so black and white -- in other words, what's conservative, what's innovative -- but also, it's not that we can point a finger and say, "Oh, that person's always conservative, and that person's always trying to break new ground and be radical." [1:52:35] Anyone and any one person can manifest both tendencies with respect to different aspects of Dharma, Buddhadharma, if we're talking about that as an example. And obviously that's the one that's going to be mostly relevant to most of the people listening to this talk.

So the same person at different times, in different arenas of discussion or debate, could manifest either conservativism or a kind of more radical innovation. But my main point is that it's inevitable. There's something archetypal and therefore inevitable about it. So the whole point about Jung's teachings on archetypes is, these things will occur. They're patterns that occur inevitably in human being and manifestation, inner and outer. So there's an archetypal tug of war between, let's say, conservativism and innovativism, and therefore we need to expect it within a tradition, and within institutions that try and promote, and nourish, and sustain, and support, and offer a tradition in the world.

Expect it, but also, I think, regard it as a creative tension. So again, back to Alasdair MacIntyre, or similar to Alasdair MacIntyre's points, the argument and conflict are actually healthy. And here there's a tension between two seemingly opposed tendencies -- conservativism and, let's say, innovation. And there's something in the difficulty of that, in the rub of that, that we should not just expect but actually, perhaps we can regard it as a blessing, difficult as it can be at times, that conflict of opinions, that pull in two different directions, two different perspectives -- that actually, out of the friction and the ferment of that is a kind of creative tension that can be fertile.

So again, there's an analogy here between what I was talking about in the talks on epistemology and ontology, between the latitude of logoi, the latitude of concepts and conceptual frameworks which we can include in our practice, in our explorations, in our -- if we talk about Soulmaking Dharma, in our remit, and range, and furthering, and growth of Soulmaking Dharma. There's a creative tension, I pointed out, between the latitude of the logoi that we entertain, on one hand, and what we might call the resistance or the constraint of the material on the other hand. If you remember, I was talking about that with regard to science, and with regard to epistemology more widely, mainly. So the constraint of the material is through, "Well, something has to tally with my experience, with my phenomenological observation of things. I can't disregard that." That forms some kind of constraint on the kinds of conceptual frameworks, and concepts, and ideas I can entertain. Something, again, has some kind of authority which, again, forms, to some degree, some kind of constraint on the latitude and range of the logoi, the concepts, and ideas that I build on. And that things have to be -- somewhat, at least -- coherent between all the different elements of ideas, and practice, and what I've received from authority, and my phenomenological observations -- principally, the ideas themselves. Something has to be coherent.

So that need for coherence, or that demand for a certain amount of coherence also forms a certain kind of constraint on the range, the latitude of logoi. So there's an analogy there. And out of that tension between the need for latitude, and the permission, and the legitimization of a certain latitude of logoi -- the tension between that and the constraint, the resistance, the solidity of the material, that it's not, as I said, just thin air. There's something that I need to work with and kind of partly against, to shape this crucible, to mould this crucible. So there are parallels there, now, again, between the considerations of epistemology, ontology, and what we can build conceptually, and therefore what supports and opens, furthers soulmaking. [1:57:29] And this whole notion of creative tension and tradition, the resistance of sort of conservativism versus the latitude of innovation, etc.

And again, I'm putting this out to you, as many of you will already have deep love, and commitment, and devotion to the Soulmaking Dharma. All this applies to Soulmaking Dharma, as well, if we can talk about it as a -- I don't know -- sub-tradition, or tradition, or whatever. All of it, everything that I'm saying applies to that, and needs to be considered -- maybe now, maybe in due course. It all applies because I'm talking generically about traditions.

So to be loyal to the logos of soulmaking will include, I think, a healthy loyalty, an alive loyalty, a vital loyalty, will include elements that are conservative: "Well, what was actually said here? Can we be true to what was said, and not just go off on any whim of direction because it feels good, or feels exciting, or whatever?" It will involve that. It will also involve, I hope, innovation, in time, and integration, and connections with other traditions, with other influences, with other considerations, with other concepts, practices.

So to me, being in the tradition -- I very much feel this in terms of Buddhadharma -- that I am, or we are, or we can be in dialogue with the tradition. It's a two-way thing. And actually, maybe it's more of a polylogue, if that's even a word. It's a multi-personed, multi-pronged conversation. And that's part of what makes it healthy, that there's some rub, and resistance, and tension. It's part of what allows the friction that allows things to ignite in a good way. And of course, that ignition can ignite so that things burn, and something is burnt to cinders, and a fire goes out, and there's nothing left to burn. All this to consider.

Let's add something to the pot, or drag something up from the bottom of the pot for our consideration, to add to all this. Pierre Hadot is a writer -- maybe some of you know him -- and writes about philosophy and different religious traditions. And he has an article called "Philosophy, Exegesis, and Creative Mistakes." 'Exegesis' is a word that means basically something like 'interpretation.' Yeah, so "Philosophy, Interpretation, and Creative Mistakes." And he gives examples of exegetical -- so, interpretive -- practices on authoritative texts, so texts that are considered within a tradition as authoritative, or canonical, or whatever in both philosophy and religion. And those interpretive practices, exegetical practices creating all manner of mistakes. So he lists some examples there, and he writes:

It frequently occurs that exegeses [interpretations] construct entire edifices of interpretation on the basis of a banal or misunderstood [or mistranslated] phrase....

The modern historian may be somewhat disconcerted on coming across such modes of thought, so far removed from his usual manner of reasoning. He is [he/she/they are], however, forced to admit one fact: very often, mistakes and misunderstandings have brought about important evolutions in the history of philosophy [and I'd say, religion and spiritual traditions]. In particular, they have caused new ideas to appear.^[7]

In other words, some of what gets integrated into a tradition, some of how a tradition grows, is not through this very careful, conscious deliberation that we might consider, for example, Thomas Aquinas to have engaged in, in the Middle Ages, with regard to Christianity, and Aristotle, etc. It's actually coming from misunderstanding, and mistranslation, a scribal error, a complete misconstruing, and one isn't even aware of it. And yet, again, paralleling a little bit the story we told about Newton building his whole magnificent edifice of Newtonian physics on two ideas which were later proved to be not valid, untrue -- absolute space and absolute time. Similarly, in traditions, all kinds of errors and mistakes can come in that actually end up proving very fertile for that tradition.

One of my teachers, who's very dear to me, his teaching are very, very dear to me, and hugely influential. And I remember years ago, you know, hearing him talk a lot about, obviously, his teaching of the Buddhadharma, and explaining that, and then sometimes telling stories about the monastery that he was in, and the teacher there, the abbot there, and then reading the abbot's teaching from another source, a more direct source, more direct quote, a sort of extended interview with this abbot, and just being completely struck by, "What on earth? How on earth did my teacher get his teaching from this abbot? Or how on earth could he have interpreted this abbot as saying the things that he then reported him to say?" The whole flavour of it, the whole thrust of it, the direction, the ethos, the feel of it, the scope of it, it was so alien. And I, for one, feel extremely glad that in his -- because he was in Thailand, not speaking Thai, so occasionally he had translators giving him little bits of, translating little bits of the teaching. But the rest of it he had, you know, maybe like pidgin Thai, and had to kind of figure things out, and piece it together, or get the general vibe. [laughs] And I really just wonder whether he came away with something completely different. [2:04:59]

But I, for one, am extremely thankful that that was the case, and that his not knowing the language, and not being very gifted in terms of languages, and whatever he brought in terms of his predispositions, I think, gave birth in him to a Dharma that was extremely influential, and inspiring for me, and beautiful, and very much opened what the Dharma could be. I don't know whether I would have been very much taken with his teacher's Dharma, the abbot's Dharma, had I just heard it translated by someone who was, in fact, completely fluent in Thai. So adding to our mix the possibility in the past, and in the recent present, and even now, and certainly in the future, that there can be what we might call, what Pierre Hadot calls 'creative mistakes,' unwitting errors of all kinds -- misunderstandings, misinterpretations, mistranslations, misconstruals that actually end up being formative and constitutive of a tradition's trajectory. So that, too, is something, I think, that we have to recognize as fact. And again, the question is, how does it land with you? What are we going to do with it? How are we going to view it? How are we going to relate to it? What are our responsibilities there?

So there are all kinds of tensions here. And I was hunting for a sutta. I couldn't find it earlier when I looked. So I found two that were a little bit similar, but there's a sutta somewhere in the Pali Canon where the Buddha hears that a monk is saying, is teaching in a certain way. It was something about the nature of consciousness. And he basically tells the other monks, "Go get that monk. Bring him here." And he sits this monk down, who's teaching something or other about the nature of consciousness that the Buddha did not agree with, and he basically publicly humiliates him -- or from our modern reading, that's what it really sounds like. It's really scathing, in front of the whole assembly of monks, and said, "That's absolutely not what I'm teaching. That's not how to regard consciousness, etc." So I couldn't find that passage,^[8] but I think it's mirrored, or very similar, in another one which I did find, called "The Water Snake Simile." It's in the Majjhima Nikāya, Majjhima 22. And just to listen to some of the language, to get a sense of, in this case, the monk in question had certain views about -- he would say:

As I understand the Dhamma taught by the Blessed One [the Buddha], those acts the Blessed One says are obstructive, when indulged in, are not genuine obstructions.

So the monks told the Buddha, and the Buddha said, "Go get him." And he, again, was plonked in front of the assembly of monks, and basically humiliated him. So let's see what the Buddha says, just to give you a bit of flavour of this. Then the Buddha asked him, "Is it true that you've said that?" And he said, "Yes." And then listen to what the Buddha says:

Worthless man ["worthless man" -- so this is in front of a whole assembly of monks], from whom have you understood that Dhamma taught by me in such a way? Worthless man, haven't I in many ways described obstructive acts? [And then he explains, you know, his actual teaching.] ... But you, worthless man, through your own wrong grasp (of the Dhamma), have both misrepresented us as well as injuring yourself and accumulating much demerit for yourself, for that will lead to your long-term harm & suffering.

And then he turns to the monks that were gathered there, and he said, then the Blessed One said to the monks:

What do you think, monks? Is this monk [his name was Ariṭṭha] ... in this Doctrine & Discipline?

And they say, "How could he be, lord? No, he's not." And it says:

When this was said, the monk Ariṭṭha ... sat silent, abashed, his shoulders drooping, his head down, brooding, at a loss for words.

Then the Buddha doesn't even stop there, and when he was sitting like that, "silent, abashed, his shoulders drooping, his head down, brooding, at a loss for words," the Buddha continues:

Worthless man, you will be recognized for your own pernicious viewpoint. I will cross-examine the monks on this matter.

My point is just, the Buddha is not "Hey! It's cool. Everything goes. You know, people can have their different points of view. We're all a happy family here. Let's not get entangled in arguments about what is the true teaching, the true Dhamma, etc." He's quite scathing and not afraid to publicly, again, what we would read as publicly humiliate. And he's very protective of what he sees as "This is the Dhamma. This is the Dhamma that I have set in motion. And that, whatever that is, is not."

As I said, there was some sutta that was quite similar in terms of its social playing out, but it was more about something about consciousness -- but yeah, I found that one. Another time, it's from the Saṃyutta Nikāya, it's Saṃyutta 16:13:

On one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta's Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika's monastery. Then Ven. Mahā Kassapa [a senior disciple of Buddha] went to the Blessed One and on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side.

Actually, all this is quite instructive about the social aspects of the tradition. And again, this question: what's needed? What's necessary? What's not? And it says:

As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, "What is the cause, lord, what is the reason, why before there were fewer training rules and yet more monks established in final gnosis [arahantship, enlightenment], whereas now there are more training rules and yet fewer monks established in final gnosis?"

And the Buddha says:

That's the way it is, Kassapa. When beings are degenerating and the true Dhamma is disappearing, there are more training rules and yet fewer monks established in final gnosis.

This is within the Buddha's lifetime. This is his perspective as time goes on. I don't know how many years this is after his original enlightenment. He continues, the Buddha:

There is no disappearance of the true Dhamma as long as a counterfeit of the true Dhamma has not arisen in the world, but there is the disappearance of the true Dhamma when a counterfeit of the true Dhamma has arisen in the world.

So in other words, there's false Dhamma. He's pointing out there's a counterfeit Dhamma. There's false teaching putting out, being put forward as true Dhamma, but it's counterfeit. And he's saying, when that's the case, it's like, "Boy, watch out. There's the disappearance of the Dhamma." And he continues:

It's not [this or it's not that] that makes the true Dhamma disappear. It's worthless people who arise right here [within the Saṅgha] who make the true Dhamma disappear. The true Dhamma doesn't disappear the way a boat sinks all at once.

These five downward-leading qualities tend to the confusion and disappearance of the true Dhamma. [So he's obviously been thinking about this.] Which five? There is the case where the monks, nuns, male lay followers, & female lay followers live without respect, without deference, for the Teacher. They live without respect, without deference, for the Dhamma ... for the Saṅgha ... for the training ... for concentration. [Interesting.] These are the five downward-leading qualities that tend to the confusion and disappearance of the true Dhamma.

But these five qualities tend to the stability, the non-confusion, the non-disappearance of the true Dhamma. Which five? There is the case where the monks, nuns, male lay followers, & female lay followers live with respect, with deference, for the Teacher. They live with respect, with deference, for the Dhamma ... for the Saṅgha ... for the training ... for concentration. These are the five qualities that tend to the stability, the non-confusion, the non-disappearance of the true Dhamma.

So he's very much concerned, and yet was not able to completely stop, in his lifetime, this proliferation of what he called 'counterfeit' Dhamma, watering down, mixed teachings, mixed confusions, misrepresentations. And he's really quite strong about it. So you get that whole tension and that whole kind of -- what seems like almost -- to some people's ears, may seem like harshness, and a rigidity, and a narrow-mindedness, and an attachment, and an anxiety on the part of the discoverer or creator of the Dhamma. You get that.

At the same time, there's another story -- and I can't, again, find it -- somewhere in the Pali Canon where, after the Buddha's death, they were trying to codify or collect the teachings and kind of canonize them with the help of Ānanda. And they found this arahant, this old guy -- he was very old. This was some years after the Buddha's death, and he was still alive when the Buddha was alive. And they said, "Well, this is what we've codified so far, like this." And they said it to him, and he sort of said, "Well, okay, that's okay, if that's how you heard it. If it's okay with you, I prefer to stick to the Dhamma that I heard myself from the Blessed One's lips, from the Buddha's lips."^[9] That touches me, when I say that.

And they said to him, "Okay. Since you heard it from the Buddha's lips, you know" -- and he was an arahant, so he had sort of got the certificate of acceptability, of authority, so -- "Okay, you go with that." And there was this agreement to have this diversity of Dhammas there. Actually, they hadn't heard his version. They didn't kind of recognize it. It wasn't part of their codified version. And he wasn't really familiar with theirs. He was like, "Well, okay. We'll just be divergent like that, and it's fine." And there's the mutual respect, and the mutual allowing and inclusion.

So there's this tension between kind of constriction, constraint, authenticity, and latitude. I heard, also, what kind of was interesting to me, that as the tradition went on, the early Buddhist tradition, that -- and this may have started with the ... I'm not sure how much the seeds of this were also in the Buddha, the Buddha's direct words -- but that differences of Vinaya, of the monastic discipline and rules and ethical precepts were actually more significant than differences of interpretation of doctrine and teaching. I don't know if that's true, but I heard that somewhere or other. So that's quite interesting, as well, that, again, within the body of tradition, what latitudes are more acceptable than others?

And somehow, somewhere along the line, again, maybe seeded by something the Buddha said, contrary to some of the other passages that I've just read, that actually, it's okay if people have different, slightly different doctrinal interpretations, or maybe even quite different doctrinal interpretations. But really, differing over interpretations of the Vinaya, the monastic discipline, the laws and the guidelines of behaviour and speech, etc., that's a big deal. So why is that? Or maybe it's because the monks and nuns needed the laity's respect. They were dependent on them for alms. They needed to be regarded by the laity as being noble, upright, strict, and rigorous in their observance, etc. Maybe there was a kind of necessity there for the tradition. It's also the case that when ethics, certainly, gets neglected, there are all kinds of fractures that will almost inevitably follow in a community when the ethics isn't cared for.

I also read -- again, putting these almost, like, divergent pieces of a puzzle together -- that, at the beginning of the Mahāyāna, when the Mahāyāna sort of began to grow and flourish in India, that it was quite common to have monasteries where some practitioners were overtly Mahāyāna practitioners, openly Mahāyāna practitioners, and thought in those terms, and aspired in those terms, and some practitioners were Hīnayāna practitioners. And they co-existed in the same monasteries, very amicably and peacefully, and just agreed to have different views and directions. So that, to me, is really interesting. It doesn't happen now.

When that stopped happening is an interesting question to me. Why it stopped happening is also an interesting question. How much that original, amicable cohabitation was just a result of the fact that, at the beginnings of the Mahāyāna, maybe a Mahāyāna practitioner was just someone who had a slightly different aspiration -- so back to shared goals, you know. All the understanding was the same, but there was just the view that it's also possible for some people to aspire not just to arahantship, but to Buddhahood, which was much more demanding and difficult to attain. [2:20:57] But the whole conceptual frameworks, ontological commitments -- they were all the same. And at some point later in history, the beliefs, the conceptual frameworks, the teachings, the ontological commitments actually became more divergent, and it was no longer possible for those people to consider themselves as really part of the same tradition. So all this, to me, is interesting, you know. What's involved here? What goes on in traditions? What's necessary? To what degree are different elements necessary? To what degree are divergent elements necessary? [2:21:37]

Last thought for now: is there even a kind of higher-level tension that is necessary for a vital, healthy tradition? Is there a so-called -- maybe not meta-level, but a higher-level tension between unity or harmony (better unity, a sense of unity), and also differentiation? So we can be in a tradition with the view, "It's all one. We're all saying the same thing. We're all agreeing." And sometimes to me, that's just baffling. It's obvious that people are talking about different things. And sometimes I say something, and someone interprets it just according to what they already believe, and believes that I'm saying the same thing. So, interesting, at least -- actually quite frustrating.

But we need some sense of unity, at least harmony, but even more unity, so this does form a cohesive tradition, and a tension between that, between unity and harmony, on one hand, and differentiation, on the other hand, because as I pointed out -- I spent a long time talking about this in the Eros Unfettered teachings/series in -- what was it called? Dilemmas and Delineations or something? That and maybe some other talks. It's through careful differentiation, careful discernment: "Actually, that idea is different than that idea. That conceptual basis is different and will lead in a different direction. That word is being used in two different ways, or four different ways, or whatever it is," and actually discerning between them, differentiating between them, because out of that differentiation can come greater efficacy, greater power, greater precision in terms of where we're headed and our ability to actually get there.

By 'power,' I don't mean 'power over,' because that's another thing we haven't really touched on that goes with traditions, and hierarchies, and power over this person, or this group has hierarchical power over another person or group within that tradition. I'm really talking about power as efficacy, efficacy of an idea, the power of an idea, the power of a certain practice or certain way of practising, or way of thinking, or whatever it is. The differentiation, careful distinction and demarcation, delineation of ideas, concepts, practices is actually necessary for practice, for an idea to have power. So maybe there's also this need for careful differentiation, and there's a need for harmony and unity. And so maybe there's a tension between those two, as well, within a tradition.

Let's stop there for now, and there are other aspects I want to also bring to the light, to consider.