Manchester Buddhist Centre

Dayamala con­tin­ues her inter­na­tional retreat diary and the talks she describes con­tinue to become avail­able to us all

Vajradarshini’s talk has now joined Jnanavaca’s on VideoSangha — it’s almost like being there!

Dayamala’s Monday diary

Jnanavaca’s group con­tin­ues to blow my mind. Yesterday he covered the Copenhagen inter­pret­a­tion of the beha­viour of particles and waves, and Schrödinger’s rela­tion of that to a cat in a box. This would mean the cat could be both alive and dead at the same time! Schrödinger then came up with his multi-world the­ory — that each time we make a choice, the other poten­tial also becomes an actu­al­ity some­where else, so we have mil­lions upon mil­lions of worlds. Do not quote me on any of this rudi­ment­ary understanding!

In the midst of all this quantum phys­ics stuff, I was reminded of dec­ades ago, before I was a Buddhist, read­ing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As my eyes moved from a very simple sen­tence on the left hand page — I’ve for­got­ten what it was – it could have been as simple as the cat sat on the mat – to the right hand page, I real­ised I didn’t know what a cat or a mat was!

I knew I had a decision to make – whether to stop read­ing and try and find out what a cat / mat was, or to carry on read­ing. I really felt that if I stopped to pur­sue it, I would go mad. I chose to read on! In later years, I felt I’d had an oppor­tun­ity to look more closely at the nature of real­ity and hadn’t been able to take it.

Today we’ll look more at the Buddhist implic­a­tions of all this.

Stories and celebration

The story last night was the dia­logue between King Bimbisara and the Buddha on the nature of hap­pi­ness. Once again the chil­dren (and adults!) played their parts really well. Then a sev­en­fold puja ded­ic­ated to Padmasambhava, the Lord of Transformation.

Long mov­ing man­tras open­ing my heart, a superb even­ing. I love being in the shrine room with these num­bers. Gathering in large num­bers really is import­ant to me.

Becoming true individuals

Saddhanandi’s talk — Individualism: hear­ing the demons’ com­fort­ing whis­per — began with the story of the Emperor’s new clothes – a tale, she felt, of indi­vidu­al­ity and group men­tal­ity. She reminded us how soci­ety and cul­ture mould our con­scious­ness. She chal­lenged us to become true indi­vidu­als, to help each other to stand alone but not be sep­ar­ate, to stand together yet be free of the pull of the group.

She sug­ges­ted that in the spir­itual com­munity we are in deep per­sonal rela­tion­ship with each other, have stronger feel­ings for each other, yet are less caught up in them. She told us how Mara gently whis­pers to us, whether that’s a talk with just one sen­tence that ali­en­ates us, or someone get­ting an announce­ment wrong, all sow­ing the seeds of doubt, cre­at­ing them and us.

She urged us to draw nour­ish­ment not from the con­di­tioned, but from some­thing much deeper where Mara can­not reach, exhort­ing us to “Look around, it doesn’t get bet­ter than this.” Another talk well worth listen­ing to.

Metta to all,

Dayamala