My general attitude towards the NKT hasn’t changed. As I wrote then:

“Although my own approach to the Dharma is very different from that of the NKT, I have been interested to watch the movement’s progress. Even more than the FWBO, the NKT is stigmatized by many other Buddhists, and ties between Geshe Kelsang and the rest of the Tibetan Buddhist community have long been severed. Conversely, NKT members tend to idealise its approach as ‘pure’ and ‘uncontaminated’. While I find this conflict sad, I don’t subscribe to either viewpoint, which means that–for all the disputes and stigmatisation–I regard NKT members as fellow Buddhists, just like their critics, and would like to feel a connection with them as such.”

To fill this out a little I will shortly be posting an article I wrote some time ago on the Dorje Shugden dispute.

In 2010 the NKT adopted a new constitution: A Moral Discipline Guide: the Internal Rules of The New Kadampa Tradition – International Kadampa Buddhist Union which I recently read it with some interest. Over the years I have been involved in comparable issues in my own movement, which is now called the Triratna Buddhist Community, as recounted in my article Growing Pains: an Inside View of Change in the FWBO, and it’s interesting to me to see how others are addressing similar issues.

Dekyong: the NKT's new General Spiritual Director

I was prompted to write in 2007 by the news that Samden Gyatso, the NKT’s General Spiritual Director (GSD) and appointed successor to the founder Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, had stepped down amid accusations of sexual impropriety. This followed the resignation in similar circumstances of his predecessor, Thubten Gyatso, some years before. Another NKT monk, Kelsang Khyenrab, who I know a little, became the movement’s new GSD (I think this was formalized in 2008), while Kelsang Dekyong, an American nun, became the Deputy Spiritual Director (DSD). In 2010 Khyenrab stepped down due to ill-health and Dekyong became the new General Spiritual Director. This seemingly smooth transition all occurred according to the arrangements set out in The Rules.

In my previous article I suggested that more collegiate, cooperative arrangements might evolve. In fact, The Rules centralize organisational and spiritual authority in the General Spiritual Director and Deputy and stipulate a high degree of uniformity across the movement. The GSD and DSD have the power to authorise new NKT centres, grant monastic ordinations, conduct certain tantric empowerments and recommend and or appoint the principal NKT teachers including NKT Centre Directors (points 5.1-7 of The Rules). Indeed, the GSD is ‘the Spiritual Director of each and every NKT-IKBU Dharma Centre’ (1.2). More than this, The Rules state that ‘The GSD shall be regarded as the representative of the Founder of the NKT-IKBU, Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso.’ This is straightforward in a way: the GSD lives at the Manjushri Institute in Cumbria, which is Kelsang Gyatso’s main residence and presumably works in consultation with him. However, The Rules also outline how the organisation will run after the 81 year-old founder’s eventual demise, which lends this item a somewhat mystical hue. The GSD will be Kelsang Gyatso’s representative even when he is dead: and the whole movement is built around a system of training that involves intensive study of Kelsang Gyatso’s books. No other books are available in NKT centres and reading other expositions of Buddhist teachings is discouraged. There’s an important caveat: the GSD and DSD each serve four year terms and ‘shall not be eligible for immediate re-election’ (5.9). Normally, the Deputy will replace the outgoing General Spiritual Director and will step in if he or she resigns prematurely, as happened in Khyenrab’s case. There are also provisions for removing a General Director who misbehaves in various ways (7.1-4). The new Deputy is nominated by the Directors of the NKT-IKBU charity and elected by the members (the NKT centres).

The main thrust of The Rules is to centralise power within the NKT and enable central bodies to ensure that all NKT activities are in accordance with standard practice. All NKT centres must adopt a model constitution, become members of the overall NKT-IKBU UK-based charity (1.4), and follow its decisions. What’s more, individual teachers can only publicly teach material that accords with NKT doctrines and they may only publish material that has been centrally approved (11.4).

Time will tell how these arrangements work out for the organisation, and I know that in practice things can be rather different from how they seem in theory. Also, I haven’t had a chance to discuss these issues with NKT members to find out how they look from within the organisation. Nonetheless, several points emerge for me in relation to the points I raised in my earlier article. By instituting this rotating leadership the NKT has found a way to limit its dependence on a single individual. That seems prudent and realistic, given their experience with past General Spiritual Directors. However, these arrangements certainly don’t encourage diversity or greater collegiality, moving instead from dependence on a living teacher to dependence on a body of texts and teachings.

In some ways that has always been the NKT’s approach. Geshe Kelsang is considered authoritative because of his ability to pass on and clarify teachings that have come to him through his lineage. The personal qualities his disciples find in him enable him to fulfil this role, but he himself isn’t the primary focus of devotion. NKT literature repeatedly states that the movement presents ‘the pure tradition of Mahayana Buddhism (1) passed down in an ‘unbroken lineage’ that has flowed through Atisha, Tsongkhapa and later Gelugpa teachers. Authority lies with the lineage and Geshe Kelsang is authoritative because he passes that on.

Personally, I find the reliance on lineage problematic, but that’s a much wider issue than the NKT and I intend to write about it in a future blog post. The present point is the NKT’s approach to lineage and authority and where that leaves the organisation. No doubt, having total faith in a particular set of texts brings great clarity and focus, and I assume this is a reason for the phenomenal success of the NKT. In recent years it has left most other Buddhist movements, certainly including my own, far behind in terms of numbers involved and the speed of expansion. There’s a very clear NKT orthodoxy. I don’t think that orthodoxy is necessarily bad, but it easily turns into dogma. Actually, there may even be a case for dogma, but after dogma come intransigence, rigidity and eventually fundamentalism. Writers such as Steven Schettini and Stephen Batchelor have recently written about these tendencies in their Gelug training – the same training that Geshe Kelsang himself received. And while Geshe Kelsang has streamlined Gelug material, his books operate within the same parameters.

Within the framework established by the rules there appears to be no room for divergent views within the organisation, and little room for individual creativity in how the teachings are expressed. It would seem that all NKT centres are being enjoined to keep repeating the same material in the same way in perpetuity under the strict controlling eyes of central NKT authorities. The Rules contain so many safeguards that one can only imagine that they address concern that centres will diverge from standard teaching or leave the NKT altogether, that Resident Teachers will give tantric initiations without authorisation, that senior people will say things that don’t fit with the orthodoxy and that any or all of these things would be a disaster.

My own view, which comes from my experience within the Triratna Buddhist Community, is that there is value in the teacher’s authority but also value in the student’s individuality and capacity to think and understand things for him or herself. I happen to believe that this matches the Buddha’s teachings. I increasingly sense that there is an inevitable tension between autonomy and receptivity for individuals and between order and chaos for organisations. That tension can be creative, and if you try to eliminate it by imposing order and conformity I suspect you create fresh problems. By the way, I don’t think the Triratna Buddhist Community has fully resolved its own issues about authority, leadership and diversity, and I may write more about that as well. However, I do think we have faced them squarely and discussed them from first principles.

The Rules will make the NKT streamlined, uniform and efficient, but perhaps that  a certain amount of chaos is an essential ingredient of freedom and creativity. Without these I doubt we can’t really flourish either as human beings or as Buddhists. I also think that approaching the truth requires an awareness of the contingency, as opposed to the uncontaminated purity, of our beliefs. Sangha – the Buddhist practice of creating spiritual community – requires faith and harmony between individuals, but, for me, a mature engagement with sangha requires space for dialogue, debate, exploration and uncertainty.

The Buddha was walking from one town to another in the heart of the great empire of Magadha in Northern India, accompanied by five hundred monks. One imagines them walking slowly and mindfully, perhaps with their heads bowed, each holding the begging bowl that was one of their few possessions. And they would have walked in silence. Monks presumably like talking as much as anyone else, and there are scenes in the discourses in which the Buddha comes across monks who are chattering away. But in the presence of the Buddha or his senior disciples the monks generally behaved themselves and maintained ‘noble silence’.

Walking a little behind the Buddha along the same road were Suppiya, a practitioner belonging to another sect, and his disciple, Brahmadatta. Not long before, two other practitioners—Mogallana and Sariputta—had left Suppiya’s sect to become the Buddha’s leading disciples, and Suppiya was ill-disposed to the man he found walking ahead of him. All down the road he loudly criticized the Buddha and his monks to Brahmadatta, and the boy defended them just as vigorously. That night the Buddha’s group pitched camp, perhaps meditating together in the darkness before lying down to sleep. But the silence was broken by the voices of Suppiya and Brahmadatta continuing to argue.

The next morning a group of monks sat together to discuss the conversation they had overheard. From the account of their discussion that we are given it seems that they didn’t know how to respond, and what they say seems confused: ‘Isn’t it extraordinary that the Buddha is so great that different people respond to him in such different ways.’ They sound rather like a politician who is criticized from the left and the right and argues that this shows that their policy must be correct.

At this point the Buddha joined the monks, and added his perspective. He wasn’t interested in the content of what Suppiya and Brahmadatta were saying or even what that might suggest about him. The important aspect was the monks’ attitude on hearing praise and criticism.

“Monks, if anyone should speak in disparagement of me, of the Dhamma [the Buddha’s teaching] or of the Sangha [the community of which they were members], you should not be angry, resentful or upset on that account. If you were to be angry or displeased at such disparagement, that would only be a hindrance to you. For if others disparage me, the Dhamma or the Sangha, then you must explain what is incorrect as being incorrect, saying: ‘That is incorrect, that is false, that is not our way, that is not found among us.’”

If we could all practice these words of the Buddha, the world would truly be a different place. When we are criticized we feel under attack, and defensive instincts kick in physically and emotionally. Our stomach tightens, our mouth becomes dry, our shoulder muscles tense—but we usually don’t notice these responses, and we often don’t even notice consciously that we are feeling ‘angry, resentful or upset’. Our attention is drawn instead to the thoughts that spring up in our mind in response to the attack. The Buddha parodies our reactions in The Dhammapada: we think to ourselves, ‘He hurt me, he abused me, he robbed me.’ I think you should repeat these with a whiny voice to get the proper effect.

As anyone involved in teaching Buddhism in the West will know, the Buddhist view that anger should not be expressed raises understandable concerns among people encountering it for the first time. “Does that mean I must repress my experience? I’ve been a doormat all my life and I need to be assertive and express what I am feeling!” The answer is in the reason the Buddha gives for not getting defensive: ‘That would only be a hindrance to you.’ In other words, the emotional hooks that join us to emotions like anger also fasten us to painful and reactive ways of thinking and, in the end, these are hurt us (to say nothing of the people with whom we are angry). Another version of the problem of denial affects more experienced practitioners, who can use this teaching to avoid saying difficult things. We may even hide our emotional responses from ourselves beneath a blanket of meditative calm so that we can preserve a sense of ourselves as ‘good Buddhists’.

In fact, the Buddha’s stress is on being honest and truthful, and presumably this can include honesty about our feelings. But there is a world of difference between telling someone that you are feeling upset, and bawling them out! The Buddha is not saying that we should be entirely passive, and simply accept whatever is thrown at us. He suggests that that the monks should indeed respond to criticism, and he cites a case where the criticism is incorrect, saying that we should calmly offer a true account. To be fair, I think this needs to be supplemented by saying that when we believe a criticism to be true we should accept it and admit our faults. So there is a case for debate and disagreement among Buddhists and between Buddhists and followers of other beliefs, but the key is how you go about it. As one western Buddhist teacher puts it: ‘Better dishonest collusion rather than honest collision,’ but reasonable discussion is better than either.

The stoicism the Buddha advocates in the face of criticism might be difficult enough to accept and apply, but what the Buddha suggests next is an even harder practice:

“But, monks, if others should speak in praise of me, of the Dhamma or of the Sangha, you should not on that account be pleased, happy or elated. If you were to be pleased, happy or elated at such praise that would only be a hindrance to you. If others praise me the Dharma or the Sangha, you should acknowledge the truth of what is true, saying: “That is correct, that is right, that is our way, that is found among us.”

Not taking pleasure in praise is a stern standard. We all want—perhaps we need—the appreciation of others, especially if we are trying to keep going in a difficult undertaking, such as practising Buddhism. And surely, offering this is precisely what the Buddha had in mind when he enjoined his followers to practice ‘kindly or loving speech’. But as every flatterer knows, the listener’s need for affirmation can override their awareness of the truth, leaving them prey to forces that cause suffering.

The key word is ‘elated’. The Buddha is warning against the tendency of the mind to appropriate praise to augment the prideful ego. It may that we become swollen by applause, or it may be that we cling to it to stave off self-hatred. Either way, we are engaged in an skewed emotional response that preempts honest self-awareness. It is not that we should reject praise, just that we should not become attached to it. Once again, there is an important unstated corollary to the principle the Buddha outlines: if we receive undeserved praise for qualities we do not possess, we should put the record straight.

In the discourse the monks are not faced directly with Suppiya’s criticisms. They simply overhear the discussion and this scenario offers the opportunity for them to observe the dynamic of praise and blame more dispassionately than if they had been involved in it themselves. It can be disconcerting to overhear other people talk about you (although, as Oscar Wilde says, the only thing worse is people not talking about you), but it offers a chance to notice how you feel and find a creative response.

I have discussed the implications of the Buddha’s words for individuals who are responding to criticism and praise, but in the discourse Suppiya is criticizing the group to which the monks belong, and is even easier to rationalize our defensiveness when our group rather than ourselves, is under attack. In fact, this is what you encounter when you open a newspaper—especially when religion is involved. According to the teaching in this discourse, there is no place for ‘righteous indignation’, let alone a notion like blasphemy (which, amazingly, is still a crime in the UK, where I live). Conversely, there is no place for ‘triumphalism’, the malaise within the Catholic Church that was identified by Vatican II whereby one mistakes worldly success (grand buildings, swelling membership, and so on) for spiritual integrity. It is reassuring that this advice appears on the first page of the user manual of early Buddhism, although it has to be said that both indignation and triumphalism can be found among Buddhists in both Asia and the West.

When I read a teaching by the Buddha like this one Sutta it seems that I encounter a quite incredible reasonableness. On one hand his advice is extremely simple, but on the other it is very hard to apply, and I think the cause of this combination is that the teaching goes very deep. Seriously undertaking to moderate our responses to praise and criticism is a profound, transformative practice—as far reaching, I suspect, as the most esoteric meditation practice. To achieve the degree of equanimity the Buddha proposes we shall need a great deal of help, and will need to consider aspects of communication that are not quite so simple as what the Buddha outlines: understanding why someone may be criticising us and empathizing with them; learning to distinguish facts from interpretations; learning to acknowledge our angry responses without being driven by them; and expressing what we believe to be true in ways that others can hear. But we can be guided in our more psychological concerns by the touchstone the Buddha suggests in The Brahmajala Sutta: find what is true—as opposed to what we would like to be the case—and let that be our guide.

For the full text of this sutta see http://www.buddhistinformation.com/ida_b_wells_memorial_sutra_library/brahmajala_sutta.htm

This article first appeared on www.tricycle.com

I wonder what it’s like to be Fred Goodwin right now? An electrician’s son, he rose quickly and became a leading figure in the financial world. In his first five years as CEO the Royal Bank of Scotland transformed from a solid provincial institution into a leading player in global finance, notching up huge profits. Goodwin was consulted by governments, showered with money and the boy from Paisley became a Knight of the Realm. Then came the crash. Goodwin rose during the worldwide financial boom and he fell when the markets failed. We know the rest.

It’s understandable that a knighthood awarded for services to banking is withdrawn if the bank fails at huge public expense. But as the story played out this week, I found myself thinking about Goodwin himself. He’s reviled for the self-belief, ruthlessness and willingness to take risks that once brought him praise. He’s cited as a symbol of an entire system that’s larger than any individual and seemed, at the time, so amazingly successful. You’d understand if Goodwin felt hurt and bewildered by the turn of events.
But I feel the story shows a larger pattern than the rights and wrongs of bankers and their rewards. The Buddha said that our lives are affected by what he called ‘the Worldly Winds’. There are four pairs: gain and loss, status and disgrace, praise and censure, pleasure and pain. If things go well we think our success will continue for ever. But the winds that bring success can also bring failure and reproach, as Goodwin has discovered.
The only truth we can be sure of is that everything is impermanent. We speak of the financial bubble, and Shakespeare spoke of ‘the bubble, reputation’. We suffer, the Buddha said, because we are beguiled by the apparent solidity of our good fortune. It goes to our heads, and only when the bubble bursts do we understand its insubstantiality.
Maturity, then, means not being intoxicated by success or attached to what we gain. Taken further, that even-mindedness is the root of what Buddhists call wisdom. It’s a tall order, but the consequences of not doing so are daily played out before us in stories such as Fred Goodwin’s, and in our own lives as well.

There are many more that aren’t online, and I’ve recently been discussing with some others how to make these more available.

Meanwhile, to give a sense of the inspiration behind the magazine, here’s a video from 1997, and below is the Editorial from the first issue, which still seems pretty good to me.

Dharma Life: First Editorial

Thought for the Day 24/12/2012

For many people in post-industrial towns with rising unemployment it’s galling to hear the cry, ‘Go South East, young man!’ We learned in yesterday’s report from the Centre for Cities that already prosperous areas with workforces that are well adapted to the modern global economy are weathering the recession much better than deprived areas that rely on a shrinking public sector. But there’s a cost to encouraging people to move where there are jobs rather than bringing jobs to where people already live. It has to do with belonging, history and cultural identity.

As the son of a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, I grew up deeply mistrustful of nationalism and notions of an ideological connection to the land. Becoming a Buddhist reinforced my belief that we’re all human beings first, and fundamentally the same, whatever our culture. However, my outlook been modified by moving to Wales and marrying a proud Welsh woman who can trace where her family has lived through many generations. I’m struck by the strength of community feeling in South Wales, and its connection to the culture and history of Wales itself. I’m also happy that we’re planning a Welsh language education for our son. When children everywhere grow up with the same global brands and icons, I value the distinctiveness and deep roots of a particular culture.

It’s true that incomers like me can be infected by a misty fantasy of Welshness, which the locals find particularly annoying. There’s a downside to community, and I hear about this when my Welsh friends complain about parochialism and closed-mindedness. Buddhist teachings remind me that any label whatsoever – including ‘Welsh’, ‘British’, ‘Buddhist’, ‘atheist’ or anything else – can become a psychological prop. For when we cling too tightly to a narrow sense of identity it can lead to intolerance, sectarianism and racism. And yet, while the social problems left here by the end of mining and steel are real enough, my Welsh friends would balk at the suggestion that those who can’t find work should head down the M4. That’s because they value the threads of connection and rootedness that still exist in this region.

The most impressive people I know are also the most individual and in that sense they’ve left behind the labels that define their identity. That’s something to aspire to, but it requires the kind of psychological stability that grows from knowing who you are and where you belong. However strongly the economic winds rage, our society will be poorer if they blow away that sense of belonging.

When my two year-old son got his main Christmas present his face lit with intense happiness. Then he learned he couldn’t have all the other presents he wanted and he howled with frustration. It’s a familiar problem to parents. As the government’s Wellbeing Agenda recognises, being happy is a central human concern. But it’s elusive. It’s not the same as pleasure, and, as my son discovered, some happiness produces craving and then brings misery. Yesterday’s report from the institute of Economic Affairs questioned whether fostering happiness is the business of the state at all.

Nonetheless, psychology has learned that states like stress and depression aren’t as intractable as they seem and we can to foster wellbeing by adjusting our attitudes and behaviour. The Happiness Movement urges us to help others, keep learning and have a positive approach, and over the years I’ve tried to follow similar advice from the Buddha. However, I think Buddhism has something distinctive to contribute to the debate.

Buddhism starts with the fundamental character of human existence. Everything we experience, it says, is impermanent and constantly changing. That’s true of our possessions, our relationships and our bodies, as I’m uncomfortably reminded whenever I look in the mirror and wonder where my hair went. Everyone wants to find happiness and avoid suffering, but we go about this in unhelpful ways: clinging to what we find pleasant and resisting what we find unpleasant. Finding an alternative means changing not just our behaviour, but our minds themselves; drawing on our inner resources, rather than seeking happiness outside ourselves; and adapting ourselves to life as it is, not as we’d like it to be.

This is an agenda for personal change, not just a philosophy. It follows that a simpler life with fewer possessions will probably leave us happier than a complex life with more. Clarity and understanding are more helpful than constant stimulation and entertainment. And generosity and compassion accord with the truth that we are deeply connected to others and therefore bring more satisfaction than selfishly pursuing our own concerns.

The Wellbeing Agenda is encouraging because it suggests that we can take the initiative in creating our happiness. But that inevitably raises fundamental questions about what happiness really is and how it comes into being. That’s where Buddhist insights into experience and Buddhist practices for changing the mind, can help. The issue for Buddhism isn’t how we can make ourselves happy, but how we can live in accordance with reality so that happiness naturally arises.

Looking ahead at a bad time, politicians cite the Golden Jubilee and the Olympics as sources of hope for 2012, but personally, I’m looking forward to the Dickens bicentenary. Perennially and globally popular, Dickens is celebrated as a comedian, a story teller and a creator of characters. But for me his continuing relevance is as one of our greatest moralists. Critics may think it naïve to look to literature for moral instruction, but anyone who seeks a moral compass that is guided by something other than revelation or utilitarian calculation can learn something from Dickens.

What happens to a person in a Dickens novel, usually reflects the character that governs how they see the world. Take Great Expectations, adapted so brilliantly last week on BBC1, whose central story is the moral education of Pip. He learns that his dreams of social advancement are built on illusions and finally understands that meaning and happiness grow from loyalty, affection and what we would call integrity. That’s hardly a unique insight, but the morality is fresh because its lessons are embedded in experience. Dickens’ art isn’t narrowly didactic. His intricate patterns of meaning, symbols and themes keep prompting the reader’s reflections on character and motivation and lead us to other, more elusive kinds of meaning.

The skeletal, white-clad Miss Havisham has tried to freeze time at the moment of her ruined wedding, and her despair and hatred create an icy world of death-in-life. The putrefaction that fills Satis House matches the decay of Miss Havisham’s mind, but it also tells us that no act of will can stop time’s progress. Both a frail, unhappy woman and an archetype of the evil life-destroying queen, Miss Havisham hovers on the border between psychopathology and myth. In the world of Great Expectations realism and allegory are wound together in an indivisible whole.

For Dickens, every character is a moral actor, whether they know it or now, inhabiting a fictional world that is imbued with a meaning and where every action has significance. That’s art, not argument, but it’s a compelling vision of life. As a Buddhist I connect it with karma: the teaching that every willed action is morally important and shapes our lives. But I don’t want to appropriate Dickens, whose moral vision is available to people of all religions and none. That’s important, and even 200 years on, I believe that Dickens and his peers can help our muliticultural and predominantly secular society as we seek a shared way to think about our common values.

I glanced across, trying not to be obvious. All I saw was an old woman eating her soup. David leaned forward. ‘She’s like a Rembrandt.’

I looked again and noticed her intent concentration. She was very old, her body shrunk to a few feet, and every movement was a painful effort. Slowly, very slowly, she raised her spoon from her bowl to her mouth. And slowly she lowered it again. Her face was creased into a web of lines, as if her skin was fracturing and these lines, held together only by the power of her will, were all that bound her flesh. Her eyes gazed at the bowl and her attention focused the room. In the weakness of her body all that existed for her was this moment and the act of eating. Her clothes were plain and black, and outlined her against the bare wall. The light around her seemed to hover, fixing and framing her image.

‘I wish I had a camera,’ I said.

‘No,’ said David. ‘It’s perfect as it is. You don’t have to make a picture out of it.’

I looked again and saw David was right. Her face, her concentration, and the aching slowness of her movements were all perfect. She was like a Rembrandt painting, and her image embodied, in its way, their grace and stillness. But Rembrandt was simply a guide to this instant, this glimpse of a woman’s dignity in the face of her body’s decay and the palpable approach of death. This moment of quiet grace was the product of her presence and David’s appreciative gaze, through which its beauty had been disclosed.

If I had sat alone in the café I probably wouldn’t have noticed the woman at all. David showed me how to look, and most importantly he showed me that it is a mistake to appropriate such a moment. To see how extraordinary, unique and beautiful is each moment of our lives we need to let go of the grasping mind and them be.

by Andrew Rawlinson (Open Court, 1997) £31.50

Review by Vishvapani

Not long ago, when the East was axiomatically ‘mystical’, teachers of eastern religions were assumed to be possibly mad, probably bad, and certainly dangerous to know. Then, as eastern gurus came to be taken more seriously, western seekers flocked to their ashrams and zendos. The consequence is that two generations of westerners have now practised and sometimes mastered their teachings.