Dear Urban Retreatant,

It was great so many of you managed to come to the day retreat on Saturday. I hope you enjoyed the Urban Retreat and that you benefitted from it, and I hope you enjoyed reading the extracts from Vajragupta’s excellent book. This letter is to suggest some ways to continue your practice.

Many of you felt that you have leant more about how to practice in your daily life, and that even little changes helped you tune into spiritual practice more deeply. I thought I would remind you of some of the things you found useful and encourage you to continue with them in your own way.

Regular meditation. Many of you saw the value of this. You might like to think about to how you could set up a regular meditation practice. What conditions help you? For instance, this might be a good moment to set up a shrine in your room; does keeping a journal help; attending classes?

Support from other like-minded people. Many of you really valued this. How could you continue feeling connected with others who are trying to practice? Regular classes would be one way; meeting up with a friend to talk about meditation; emails…
Reminders. Quite a few of you mentioned how useful the reminders were – so again this might be something to think about continuing.

Ethical Practice. Many of the daily-life practices we were engaging in had a strongly ethical dimension – i.e. how to let go of non-productive, even harmful habits (we all have them!) whilst at the same time enriching our life and becoming more outward looking, generous and happy. How could we continue to develop an ethical life?

Where now?

Further courses/classes. I am leading my Life with Full Attention course from Wednesday 19th (next Wednesday). Life with Full Attention is an intensive course in mindfulness using my book of the same title (the course charge includes the book). It would be an excellent follow-on to the Urban Retreat.

Retreats. I highly recommend that you consider going on a residential retreat. Many of you have discovered just how difficult it is to practice intensively in the city. Time away on retreat to deepen meditation and mindfulness is really important. I’d especially recommend the LBC’s Winter Retreat led by Subhadramati and Jnanavaca from December 22nd – 1st Jan. You can find this here http://www.lbc.org.uk/sibford2011.htm

Hope to see you soon,

Maitreyabandhu and Subhadramati

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Spiritual change isn’t always noticeable; sometimes we don’t give ourselves credit for the changes we’ve made, because we simply don’t notice them. We get used to ourselves, and think this is how we’ve always been. Sometimes it is our friends and acquaintances who reflect back to us how much we’ve changed.

We can also tend to perfectionism in practice, wanting to get it exactly right, and then swinging into defeatism when we don’t, thinking we’ll never change. Perfectionism, thinking that anything less than perfect is total failure, is a subtle form of eternalism (the belief in a perfect, unchanging state). Defeatism, thinking ‘It was less than perfect, so I failed’, is a subtle form of nihilism (the belief that things, in the end, come to nothing). Buddhism rejects both these views, because they are both equally static and fail to realize that life is a continuous process of making and re-making. In fact, you could see perfectionism and defeatism as another pair of worldly winds; creativity could be the quality that rises above them.

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

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The worldly winds are the winds of change. We can experience this constant change, this lack of solidity and predictability of life, as a kind of groundlessness and uncertainness, which we try to deny, or distract ourselves from. The Buddhist spiritual life, on the other hand, is about facing up to change. If we can understand it more deeply, it ceases to be threatening, but becomes full of possibility.

We gradually develop a more even-minded attitude to the world, even amidst storms and unrest. We are not even-minded in the sense of feeling less, or being less passionate. In fact, because our energy is less taken up in anxiety, we are more able to appreciate and enjoy. There is an increased sensitivity and openness to the world. We are less fixed on certain outcomes, more able to be open to different possibilities, more flexible and adaptable. There is even a growing sense of timelessness; for it is our craving and aversion that pile the pressure of time upon us. We still care deeply and passionately about things in the world, and yet at the same time we are not personally invested in the outcomes.

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

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Rather than reacting and just trying to swing back from loss to gain, or from blame to praise, and so on, we try to respond with awareness of the worldly winds. We can try to turn those swings back and forth into spiritual opportunities. If we’ve allowed our mood or self-view to be swayed by them, this is our chance to regain the initiative. Rather than hoping or expecting that the world will give us what we want all the time, we look at what we can bring to the situation. We see the worldly winds as teachers, spurring us on to develop patience, courage, or whatever response the situation calls for. We welcome the challenge, relish the chance to grow. Just having this attitude, bringing it to mind, remembering it in the thick of things, already makes a difference. We’ve regained the initiative. We’ve found a way to engage meaningfully and creatively with our circumstances. We may begin to feel quite differently about the situation we’re in.

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

The Buddha once gave a teaching called the ‘Two Arrows’. He said that inevitably we will sometimes experience pain and discomfort, and often what we do is resist that pain, or worry about it, or complain, or feel bitter, and so on. In other words, to an experience of physical pain we add a further layer of mental and emotional pain. This second layer of pain is added by us; it is not inevitable. The Buddha said it is as if we have been hit by an arrow, but then we fire a second arrow into ourselves.

What happens next in this process of resistance, says the Buddha, is that we try to avoid the pain by finding some distraction. We look for something – anything – which will give us some degree of pleasure and take our mind off the pain. We think that the only way to escape from pain is to block it off with some other kind of experience. Those distractions may take many different forms: watching hours of TV, smoking, talking non-stop, or tidying your office for the fifth time that day. It is a desperate strategy of trying to swing from pain back to pleasure.

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

By Maitreyabandhu

Most of us won’t ever experience much fame or infamy, celebrity or notoriety. But these worldly winds may still be at work if we are blown about by our desire to be popular, well-liked, or at the centre of attention. Maybe we sometimes laugh at jokes that aren’t funny because we don’t want to be disliked. Or we find we are not really listening to what the other person is saying; we’re just waiting to jump in with our own joke, so we can be the centre of attention. Or we notice how our attitude to people at work is conditioned by whether they are liked by everyone else, and by how that popularity or unpopularity might rub off on us. We have an almost primeval urge to fit in, but also to stand out. This instinct has endured through human history. We still want to be different enough to be interesting, but similar enough to fit in.

When we are being more individual, our sense of value and worth comes from our inner values, and also from our relationships with people we love and who love us, and want to support our individuality. Our sense of worth doesn’t come from without, from worldly values, or from how we are seen in the eyes of the world. Being an individual doesn’t mean we can’t change or adapt our beliefs or opinions as a result of discussion with other people, but we won’t change them simply in order to fit in.

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

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We’ll be buffeted by gain and loss if we relate to the world as a struggle to get what we want. A radically different strategy to take, a way to turn the rules on their head and play the game differently, is to practise generosity, to try to relate to the world on the basis of ‘what I can give’ rather than ‘what I can get’.

We can try this in an area of life that we all have to deal with sometimes, and some of us cope with every day: driving or cycling in busy traffic, or walking through crowded streets. Driving, cycling or walking through a busy city is like a mirror to your state of mind. If you are not in such a good state, you may notice the journey is stop/start/stop/start: you proceed abruptly, jumpily, pushily, tetchily. When you are in a good state you can navigate busy situations with much more awareness and therefore much more ‘flow’ and smoothness of travel. Maybe you can turn this into a deliberate practice: the tai chi of traffic!

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

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However hard we try, we will not please everyone all the time. Praise and blame become ‘worldly winds’ when we are blown about by them, and when our confidence or self-view is inflated or deflated, blown up or punctured, depending on which way the wind blows.

There is often a culture of blame operating in the world around us. Gossip in the workplace often consists of blaming and complaining. A lot of political discussion is likewise based on praise or blame… Blame is often about control; it is where we put our disgruntlement when we don’t get what we want. Our frustration needs an outlet, so we find someone to blame. It must be somebody’s fault! Blaming restores our sense of power over the world; it is a way of shoring up the illusion of control … Nietzsche, ever-sharp, observed that ‘we praise or blame according to whether the one or the other offers a greater opportunity for our power of judgement to shine out’.

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

What are your hopes and intentions for the week?

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A journey from underground into the London Buddhist Centre this morning.

Whatever our circumstances in life, even if we are young and healthy, talented and popular, we’ll still experience gain and loss, pleasure and pain at some time or other. The worldly winds are those circumstances in life which we cannot completely control; our only choice is in how we respond to them. Sometimes we are caught off-guard, and they blow us about, we sway and swing, our minds get into a spin. Like the wind fanning the flames of a fire, we allow the worldly winds to set the fires of craving and aversion blazing in our hearts.

Learning to sail the worldly winds involves learning when we need to give up on our desires, adjusting them to the reality of the situation. Whilst matching our desires to the world will be difficult, expecting the world to match our desires is futile.

From Sailing the Worldly Winds: Buddhist Way Through the Ups and Downs of Life, by Vajragupta.

Dear Urban Retreatant,

It’s just two days till the Urban Retreat, so we thought we’d write and suggest how best to approach the retreat.

• For the vision of the retreat have a look at our short video at vimeo.com/29783049
• If possible come to the day retreat on the 8th as we will be guiding you how to turn your day-to-day life into a retreat.
• Please bring a notebook and pen on the day retreat, as well as vegetarian lunch to share. Doors open at 9.30am.
• Come along to as many events on the Urban Retreat as possible – it will help you make the most of the retreat. See our programme on: LBC.org.uk/urban2011.htm
• Join us on online at UrbanRetreat.lbc.org.uk, Facebook.com/LondonBuddhistCentre or Twitter.com/LondonBuddhist, write about your retreat, share your experiences, post photos on our Facebook page and keep in touch
• This year’s retreat is part of an International Urban Retreat – people will be participating in an Urban Retreat all over the world. Find out more at TheBuddhistCentre.com
• The Urban Retreat is on a donation basis. We will be launching Make More of Giving – our new Gift Aid system where we can claim 25% on cash donations from UK taxpayers. All we’ll need you to do is fill in a simple form and from then on we can make more of any cash donation you make. So if you give us £10 – we can turn it into £12.50.

We are all very excited about the retreat and looking forward to seeing you on it.

Yours in the Dharma,

Maitreyabandhu, Subhadramati, Akashadevi and Satyadaya

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