[Spiritual] practices are not for know-it-alls. Practices are for those who feel the need for change, growth, development, learning. Practices are for disciples. We could say that rituals are practices of learners, and ritualism is the continuation of the practice by people who have stopped learning. Similarly, we could say that traditions are the heritage of a community of learners, and traditionalism is the continuation of the heritage by people who have stopped learning.

Finding our way again - Brian McLaren

On Saturday a small number of us met up for a day retreat at 118. This is something we occasionally do, believing that it is important in the business of everyday life, to create a little space for a little practice and reflection.

Sundari had suggested that we could explore the subject of devotion; what it means to us; who or what are we devoted to? What have been our experiences of devotional practices? It was also an opportunity to have a little more time to sit together and and chant nembutsu.

We began at ten with a morning service and followed this with some discussion and sharing on devotion. After a delicious lunch we looked at ritual, both within our Buddhist practice and in our everyday lives. We finished the day with some more nembutsu and a closing service and prostrations.

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Bhaktika has been using some of his mediating skills and experience to help out in his local community where there have been some recent trouble on the streets between youths from different communities. This has involved a lot of talking and listening to local people. Sundari noted that it is disturbing to find that they have such conflict right on their doorstep. Bhaktika has lived there for 30 years and so is well placed to be involved. Sundari commented that -

The need for us all to talk to each other is enormous. Occasionally now we go on an evening walkabout and just chat to people.

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The third edition of Sundari’s book has arrived from the publisher! Nice green cover. History made in a small way - it is the first time ever that a textbook on immigration and asylum law has gone to a third edition in the UK. (There was a book that went to a second edition in 1983)

We continue to meet most monday evenings. Give us a call if you are interested in coming along. We usually have a service at 6 p.m. which involves chanting nembutsu, meditation/reflection and a service adapted from the Amida-shu Nien Fo book. We then have a shared meal and a chat/discussion. Its all very informal!

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~Mary Oliver

Our service this week took the form of a memorial and celebration of the life of Saille, our Amida-shu friend from Canada, whose dance with cancer came to a rest recently. Memories were shared, a few syncopated jazz nembutsu were chanted among the homages to Quan Shi Yin. A lot of people will carry her in their hearts.

From Saille: “— and so my dear friends, I hope you will each choose to journey with me on your own ride, walk, jump, dance, skip of this one wild and precious life that we have each been given. I will meet you there —“

I arrive with the debris of the day on my mind. It’s sunny, so I make my way round the back of the house to find Sundari sitting in the sheltered garden. A cup of tea and a piece of cake helps to put the day in some kind of perspective. This may be a Buddhist Sangha night but some things are quintessentially English. Amida Buddhists and Quakers in Sheffield , I have found, share a common liking for cake.

Our evening service takes place on the back lawn. We sit with the sound of birdsong and the hum of the traffic leaving the city. The sun is warm on our skin. The first half of the service is taken up with gently chanting Namo Quan Shi Yin Bosat 108 times and then settling into silence… meditation…. prayer.

We finish the service by chanting the refuges, precepts, bodhisattva vows and invocations and close with prostrations. Right at the end of service, we become aware that we are being watched by some children from next door who are clambering on the adjoining wall. “Why are you praying?” they ask.

Because prayer is good for the soul.

A Sheffield Interfaith Walk takes place on Sunday 13th April at 2.30 p.m. until 5 p.m.

This is intended as a celebration of faith & unity and is organised by the Islamic Society of Britain and Yorkshire and Humber Faiths Forum. The route will run through the Burngreave area of the City.

ALL ARE WELCOME.

Start: St Catherines of Alexandria, Melrose Rd, S3 9DN

End: Firth Park Methodist Church, 8 Stubbin Lane, S5 6QL

Please do come along and say hello!

Karen Armstrong: 2008 TED Prize wish: Charter for Compassion

I have posted a few quotes below from this lovely talk on belief and compassion. But the talk is worth watching for her telling on the Iliad story of the encounter between Priam and Achilles.

Armstrong on Belief

I found some astonishing things in the course of my study that had never occurred to me. Frankly, in the days that when I thought I’d had it with religion, I just found the whole thing absolutely incredible. These doctrines seemed unproven, abstract, and, to my astonishment, when I began seriously studying other traditions, I began to realize that belief, which we make such a fuss about today, is only a very recent religious enthusiasm. It surfaced only in the West, in about the 17th century. The word “belief” itself originally meant to love, to prize, to hold dear. In the 17th century it narrowed its focus, for reasons that I’m exploring in a book I’m writing at the moment, to include — to mean an intellectual ascent to a set of propositions — a credo. I believe did not mean “I accept certain creedal articles of faith.” It meant, “I commit myself. I engage myself.” Indeed, some of the world traditions think very little of religious orthodoxy. In the Qur’an, religious opinion — religious orthodoxy — is dismissed as zanna — self-indulgent guesswork about matters that nobody can be certain of one way or the other but which makes people quarrelsome and stupidly sectarian.

Armstrong on Compassion

So, if religion is not about believing things, what is it about? What I’ve found is that, across the board, religion is about behaving differently. Instead of deciding whether or not you believe in God, first you do something, you behave in a committed way, and then you begin to understand the truths of religion. And religious doctrines are meant to be summons to action: you only understand them when you put them into practice.

Now, pride of place in this practice is given to compassion. And it is an arresting fact that right across the board, in every single one of the major world faiths, compassion — the ability to feel with the other, and the way we’ve been thinking about this evening — is not only the test of any true religiosity, it is also what will bring us into the presence of what Jews, Christians and Muslims call “God” or the “Divine.” It is compassion, says the Buddha, which brings you to Nirvana. Why? Because in compassion, when we feel with the other, we dethrone ourselves from the center of our world and we put another person there. And once we get rid of ego, then we’re ready to see the Divine. And, in particular, every single one of the major traditions has highlighted — has said — has put at the core of their tradition — what’s become known as the Golden Rule. First propounded by Confucius five centuries before Christ, “Do not do unto others what you would not like them to do to you.” That, he said, was the central thread that ran through all his teaching and that his disciples should put into practice all day and every day. And it was the Golden Rule would bring them to the transcendent value that he called rén, human-heartedness, which was a transcendent experience in itself.

And this is absolutely crucial to the monotheisms, too. There’s a famous story about the great rabbi Hillel, the contemporary of Jesus. A pagan came to him and offered to convert to Judaism if the rabbi could recite the whole of Jewish teaching while he stood on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and said, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor — that is the Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study it.”

And “Go and study it” is what he meant. He said, in your exegesis, you must make it clear that every single verse of the Torah is a commentary, a gloss upon the Golden Rule. The great Rabbi Meir said that any interpretation of scripture which led to hatred and disdain or contempt of other people — any people whatsoever — was illegitimate. Saint Augustine made exactly the same point. “Scripture,” he says, “teaches nothing but charity, and we must not leave an interpretation of scripture until we have found a compassionate interpretation of it.” And this struggle to find compassion in some of these rather rebarbative texts is a good dress rehearsal for doing the same in ordinary life.

We had a day of Pureland Practice at 118 today. We were joined by Marie, Mark and Paul and the day included a shared lunch and a discussion around nembutsu practice. It was a relaxed time and we are hoping that we will be able to to offer further weekend events in the coming months. Do let us know if you would be interested in attending!

Meanwhile, our regular monday evening services continue. See the diary page.

Amida Buddhism is a religion of light and love. It is life affirming without being complacent about basic human nature; respectful of universal spirituality but not dependent upon ideas of divine creation or divine judgement. It honours and appreciates the bitter-sweetness of the spiritual struggles of ordinary folk who are attempting to be truly human. It allows for a life of full time devotion without setting up an over-privileged priestly class. It is an engaged spirituality, centred on the prospect of the Pure Land paradise. It is suitable for all people, having a basic practice that is accessible to anybody. It is a path of sudden awakening centred uncompromisingly upon faith. It derives from the very earliest Buddhism and from a direct encounter with the Buddha of all time. It is grounded in the doctrines common to all Buddhist schools, yet offers a unique perspective on them, and, furthermore, does not require the mastery of those doctrines as a condition of awakening. It emphatically asserts that the practice that matters is the utterance of nembutsu in simple faith and that alone. Understanding of the doctrinal framework and support may be satisfying, but it is ancillary to the main spiritual project, which is eminently simple. It does not stand in opposition to other faiths, but reveals the generic nature of faith itself as the wellspring of eternal life. It holds that no religion can be ultimate since even revelation must pass through the medium of human nature. We are foolish beings of blind passion, living, knowingly or unknowingly, in the presence of infinite light, that reflects in us as faith. That gift of faith we either squander or gather in. We express it through ceaseless nembutsu expressing a contrite heart and a mind that is sincere, deep and unconditional. Such is Pureland.

Who loves dies well - Dharmavidya

 Ray writes -

Through January we have been meeting regularly on monday evenings for a meal and practice together.  Tonight though, instead of a service, we chose to attend the candlelit memorial ceremony held at the Winter Garden as part of Holocaust Memorial Day.

I was conscious of just how busy we all are. Sundari with a deadline for the completion of her book manuscript;  Bhaktika not present because he was working late; Stuart about to begin a night shift at the hospital; Sally just starting a new job; Sue also in the early days of her new career as a housing officer; and me, with a head full of planning for people’s alcohol detoxifications! The line of our liturgy that reads “Wishing to practise a religious life in truly simple faith” has become almost a koan for us as we explore what it means to live a buddhist life very much amidst life in the world.

The memorial was moving. There were some readings given by students from the King Edward VII Secondary School, including Benjamin Zephaniah’s powerful poem - We Refugees

Khun Saing spoke of his experiences fleeing from Burma and the home he has found in the UK.

But it was the words of Dr Otto Jakubovic that will stay with me. He started by saying he had been asked to speak for five or six minutes about his experiences as a child in the concentration camps during WWII. An impossible task and he spoke for much longer. He spoke with great dignity and the image that remains is that of a 14 year old boy, arriving at a death camp after an unimaginable train journey in a cramped carriage, walking in a line that seemed to be being segregated into two streams. Puffing out his chest, saying he was 18 and a gardener rather than a just a school boy, he was thus  spared the wavering of a thumb that meant he avoided being immediately sent to  to the gas chambers and instead was led to the camp.  ”You had to have luck to survive” he said.

The event ended with the lighting of candles and affirmations about what people could do right now to address discrimination in our own city and how we can all be a part of being a welcoming, inclusive community.

Ray writes -

Last night, rather than having a sangha evening at 118, we met at the Sheffield Faiths Forum/City of Sanctuary event Sanctuary, Hospitality & Refuge - Sharing our stories - an event for faith communities, held at the Methodist Victoria Hall in the city centre. It was a bitterly cold night but there were fifty plus people in attendance.

Bhaktika helped to facitate the evening which began with some personal reflections from two asylum seekers. Levan, from Chechnya (which he described as “the dark side of Russia”) said that he arrived in Barnsley about five years ago. He is a Christian who found support from a local church. He described how life was initially very difficult, feeling isolated, spending time between college and church. But eventually things began to improve, he began to ply the piano again, he made contacts in Sheffield and improved his English in the supportive environment of conversation clubs. He spoke warmly of the work of ASSIST who he said supported up to 800 destitute asylum seekers in the area. He closed by recounting how he’d attended a carol service recently at Christ Church were there were many faiths gathered together singing. “Many faiths, but One World”.

Ibtisam spoke of how she had grown up in Yemen, a muslim country and had never met people of other faiths whilst there. She spoke of the difficulties of being a young woman and a muslim, travelling alone and becoming a refugee.

She came to this country in 2004. She was fortunate in that she did not have some of the difficulties other people have experienced in obtaining refugee status. Her english was poor, and she initially lived in an arabic community in the Pitsmoor area. it was only when she began venturing further afield, eg attending Castle college did she begin to really meet other people of different faiths. She recounted how when she was initially doing some voluntary work for ASSIST she was reluctant and embarrassed to tell people  where she was working, because it was situated in an office in an christian church! She is currently studying for a degree, and despite her protestations, her English is wonderful!

There were then several readings from various faith communities. Sundari spoke of the Second Mindfulness Training of the Community of Interbeing and then quoted Dharmakara’s fourth vow, from the Larger Pure Land Sutra.

There was a musical interlude from the Zeela Liberian Gospel Choir - which had everyone tapping and swaying!

Food was provided and people then gathered around tables to discuss a broad range of topics, including some questions identified by the organisers. There was then feedback to the larger group.

There were also contributions from Inderjit, Craig and Gordon concerning the roles of the Faith Forum, City of Sanctuary and Sheffield Interfaith, respectively.

The Menu of conversation provided is worth further reflection -

• What do sanctuary/hospitality/refuge mean to me/my faith?
• When have I felt welcome/unwelcome in community?
• What relationships do I and my faith community have with asylum seekers/refugees/migrants?

Sundari, Bhaktika and Ray were able to attend Gareth’s ordination during the Bodhi Retreat. Gareth received the Buddhist name - Kaspalita and becomes a novice amitarya. The picture above shows - Susthama, Prasada, Modgala, Dharmavidya & Kaspalita. It is lovely to be a part of these ceremonies that take place during this winter retreat. It is very moving to hear the vows taken by the amitaryas.