Maybe we should switch to a positive example, the loving kindness meditation, which is a standard practice in almost all forms of Buddhism. It is also primarily (in the beginning) a visual meditation. You imagine a loved one in front of you and radiate loving kindness to them, a wish or desire for them to be well. If that’s hard, then you could imagine them sick or ill or crying and if you love them then it shouldn’t be too long before this concern for their well-being arises, a desire for them to be OK and happy, aka loving kindness. To start with the meditation will be 99% mental pictures and 1% recognising this wispy, ghostly ‘desire for the other’ idea, like looking at a castle through the gloom, far off in the distance. But with practice, then the meditation can extend the pure loving kindness and it is somehow ‘freer’ of the mental pictures, existing in a pure form under the will.
Then the next stage of the meditation is to imagine a stranger before you, someone you don’t know, who is sick or crying or in trouble and you try and feel the same loving kindness, and it isn’t as easy as you don’t know this person and so are attached to form a little and it’s perhaps a little harder, but they are still human, you have empathy and eventually can do the same and feel long stints of unbroken loving kindness inbetween the mental pictures of a suffering stranger.
The last stage is to imagine your worst enemy, the person you dislike the most in the world, or perhaps an evil person, a criminal or whatever. The natural reaction is aversion and so you need to have a strong will to inspire the FREE and INDEPENDENT loving kindness inbetween mental pictures of this individual and apply it to them. What you are doing here, to a degree, is disavowing the world. The are inner and outer senses and feelings are usually reactions, but when you can create and MAINTAIN this WISH of loving kindness, then IT IS YOUR ABIDE, it is a resting place, it doesn’t require the will of concentration to sustain but is you yourself simply existing. It is one of the four noble efforts, to create a positive state that is not yet existing, and then maintain a positive state once it already exists.
The Four Brahma Viharas
This idea of a constant ‘resting state’ of the mind is taken to the next stage with the Four Brahma Viharas, which are also known as abodes. They are four qualities to meditate on and develop concentration, but the word ‘abode’ means to take on a permanent state that you never leave. Abode is your living place, your home. It’s the default place you go when you are not out or busy somewhere. It’s interesting as I recall biblical references to ‘many mansions’, a mansion is a great, magnificent living place and the Brahma Viharas relate to heavenly abodes, Brahma is the name of God (vihara means dwelling or abode). The four Brahma Vihara are:
- Metta: Loving-kindness
- Karuna: Compassion
- Mudita: Joyful sympathy
- Upekkha: Equanimity
The first one, Metta, has a specific sutra (teaching) which is like a poem and chanted in Buddhist monasteries around the world, and it refers to loving kindness as the ‘sublime abiding’. Again, abiding is a living place, your home. What does sublime mean: below the surface. It can mean profound, transcendental or divine — but it’s not a tangible thing. We’re describing a state. Let’s consider it with a negative. If you are in an angry state, how do you know that? Take it out and show me the ‘anger’. It’s not a thing, it’s an…. abiding. It’s a ghostly dark-matter, in that you only know it’s there from the effect and what radiates from it, angry thoughts, inner-talk, outer shit-talk, angry daydreams, angry gestures, —- but all from a ghostly state that you are now living in. It is 100% intangible but you 100% know what I’m talking about because you’ve ‘lived there’ before — well, perhaps passed through. Living in anger isn’t the goal, the goals are the four above! They can be chosen as underlying abidings of the mind.
All of this is possible because your WILL is the power of creation, in your mind. You can easily choose a thought, a mental picture, a daydream, a feeling, an inner-voice saying something, and it is easily created, effortlessly. Now sustaining a chosen state does in fact, take effort, and training. This is essentially Buddhist training, the Dharma is the Dharma, what led to awakening for the Buddha will work for us also. So we need to cease certain things in the mind that lead one away from awakening (unwholesome) and hold others (wholesome), the keyword being ‘hold’, it’s necessary to hold pictures and thoughts steady in the mind until certain ideas and feelings become ‘dwellings’ or sublime abidings.
So, the entire inner-world can be created and maintained by your WILL. This is the training. How is this relevant to the whole premise of this work now? The methods of Buddhism which lead to awakening are using the mental faculties that create the world. I want to refer to the first words of the Dharmapada, the collected sayings of the Buddha, which many monks around the world are expected to know by heart. I’ll use the translation by Gill Fronsdal as I transcribed his talks for three years volunteering for IMC and so am well versed in his writing.
‘All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never leaves.
‘Just as the cart follows the ox that draws it, so too does suffering follow the one who speaks or acts with an impure mind.’
The verse is clearly saying that the world we experience is created by our minds. The ox comes first, and pulls a cart which leave the tracks. The tracks behind the ox show the direction the ox has taken. Our experience, the things we experience with our senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, came from our minds first.
Think about it, there is nothing in the world that wasn’t imagined first. Yes, there are ‘natural’ things, like trees and birds, but even though not invented by human thought, THEY ARE YOUR IMAGINATION. Therefore, the same control that will create the conditions for awakening, can also cause events in the world, life circumstances, poverty or abundance, beggars and millionaires. Creating a ‘divine abode’ or ‘dwelling place’ of loving kindness will lead to you being that person, and ultimately towards awakening as the concept of a separate self/ego is swallowed up in the unceasing consideration of other. But also, a dwelling can be abundance, you can have, what they call in New Age circles, an abundance consciousness or mindset that will create the external circumstances of financial abundance (or whatever you want).
But isn’t this contrary to the message (and formula) of awakening, which is about dissolving the concept (idea) or self (with other ideas, and then none). To this, the answer can be both yes and no. There is grasping, which is unwholesome and leads away from awakening, as it is a desire for certain sensory experience (say owning and driving a sports car) which doesn’t exist now and so that desire fuels more thinking, and the desire itself can be unhappy. But the car is a form, a feeling of satiation (of having) can be free and rather than tied onto DESIRED outcomes, held alone as a shining light of understanding that radiates congruent mental phenomenon of possibility, which feeds into a future reality.
The Buddha recognised the need to live in the world. One of the paths of the eightfold path is I’right livelihood’, meaning making a living, having enough money and material goods to be comfortable. For himself, he embraced minimalism and could exist by begging and that was enough for him because his needs were few and it was ethical as it didn’t exploit anyone. Also, his livelihood was teaching, which is giving. Whatever resources he accepted was ultimately in the support of others.
We have various material needs and desires in life, but there are ways that can cause grasping and lead to an idea of self. You might want a sports car to impress other people, or you might want it to gift to a friend who has had a hard time. The things we desire in life, even if they are opulent and abundant and involve money, can be ethical and geared towards other people, community or a deeper life purpose. Wealth is the power to do great things, if you so choose.
In considering changing or consciously creating reality, then we might speculate on how it exists.