Sangharakshita - The Purpose and Practice of Buddhist Meditation: A Source Book of Teachings

The Purpose and Practice of

Buddhist Meditation

a source book of teachings

Sangharakshita

Ibis Publications

Published by Ibis Publications
The Annexe
Coddington Court
Ledbury
Herefordshire
HR8 1JL

Sangharakshita 2012

Cover illustration: Head, 1981 by Cecil Collins (1908-89). Many thanks to the Monnow Valley arts centre in Herefordshire, the Cecil Collins estate and the Tate Gallery for permission to use the image.

Printed by Berforts Information Press in the UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

print ISBN 978-0-9574700-0-2

ebook ISBN 978-0-9574700-1-9

The right of Sangharakshita to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Although Sangharakshita first came across Buddhism in his native England, it was in the East that he learned to meditate. Not initially in an ashram or a vihara; this was not the 1960s but the 1940s, and he made his first attempts to meditate sitting on his bunk in the army quarters he shared with his fellow conscripts. At the end of the war, he set out with a friend as a homeless wanderer, seeking spiritual instruction and advice on meditation wherever he could find it. He was eventually ordained in the Theravda Buddhist tradition, and settled in the Himalayan town of Kalimpong, where he made contact with many Tibetan refugees, among them lamas who became his friends and teachers, and from them he learned much about Tibetan Buddhist practices. He also spent many hours discussing meditation with Mr C.M. Chen, a Zen practitioner who lived as a hermit in the Kalimpong bazaar. (Notes were taken of these discussions, and they are now available on line at www.yogichen.org .)

During the twenty years he lived in India, Sangharakshita learned many meditation techniques and methods, but the mainstays of his practice were the mindfulness of breathing and the development of loving kindness (mett-bhvan), and it was these two practices that he taught when he returned to England in the 1960s. In the decade that followed, in addition to the basis of mindfulness and mett he taught more practices, to create a system of meditation which he first outlined specifically in a seminar given to members of the Western (now Triratna) Buddhist Order in 1976. He elaborated further in a talk given in 1978, which was later published in A Guide to the Buddhist Path. More details of the story of how Sangharakshita began to practise meditation and how his system of meditation system evolved are included in the introductory section of this book. (For an excellent presentation of the system of meditation, see the work of Cittapala, who has devoted much time and creative energy to a synthesis of it, the results of which can be found at www.cittapala.org .)

The rest of the book is a collection of some of Sangharakshitas writings and teachings on meditation, some of it taken from previously published works, but much of it edited from previously unpublished seminar transcripts. In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, Sangharakshita spent many hours in discussion with the men and women who had joined, or wanted to join, the Buddhist order he founded in 1968 then known as the Western Buddhist Order, now renamed as the Triratna Buddhist Order. The seminars were usually based on a text from the Buddhist tradition, whether a sutta from the Pli canon, a Mahyna sutra or one of the songs of Milarepa, but the discussion would be wide-ranging, and whatever the ostensible subject, conversation would often turn to how everybody was getting on with their meditation practice. Full transcripts are available at www.freebuddhistaudio.com ; for this book Shantavira and I have sifted through the millions of words to find material specifically on the subject of meditation, and we present some of it here. There is more buried treasure; one of my hopes for this book is that it will bring awareness to the wealth of teaching contained in these transcripts.

For the purpose of this book, seminar extracts have been lightly edited, with the aim of focusing on topics specifically relating to meditation. I decided to keep to the question and answer format simply because I found it heartening, and thought others might as well, to read the questions and insights of the seminar participants, as well as Sangharakshitas answers. Its a reminder that teaching is a communication, which depends on students as well as a teacher. The names of the participants have been replaced simply by Q for question. I hope no one will be troubled by this. The names are not always given in the transcripts anyway, but I hope the effect of Q is to help one as a reader to feel that one might be asking the question oneself Q being a sort of Everyman or Everywoman especially when the question is a heartfelt wail along the lines of But this is so boring! or Isnt this all horribly self-obsessed? or Im having trouble understanding ... We can be grateful to those who blurted out the kind of question that others might have hesitated to ask. Of course, some of the questioners then have by now been distinguished meditation teachers themselves for decades, and some have written their own books about meditation. Some have helped to found and run meditation retreat centres, some have spent years on solitary retreat, and some have found entirely other ways to live out their commitment to spiritual life. Its entirely possible that one or two have scarcely looked at a meditation cushion from that day to this.

Almost all of the seminars and lectures on which this book is based took place during the time when Sangharakshita was in full flow as a teacher and adviser, a role which over time others have been able to share. This means that some of the themes, topics and controversies about meditation that have exercised the Order in more recent times are only minimally represented here perhaps to the disappointment of some readers. Im aware that during this time Sangharakshita has spoken in all kinds of contexts, recorded in all kinds of media, and there is sure to be more to be included in a future second edition, or perhaps a second volume. If youre aware of something that you feel should be included, please get in touch.

Of the topics tackled in this book, some are covered much more fully than others, depending on the material available, though I have tried to include at least something about all the areas of the subject that Sangharakshita has mentioned over the years. Some aspects of meditation and Buddhist practice (Insight, for example) have particularly interested or puzzled seminar participants over the years, while Sangharakshita himself has repeatedly drawn attention to themes he clearly considers especially important (mett being one clear example).

What has struck me in reading all these seminars is how much effort Sangharakshita has always made to make sure that those in a discussion are making sense of what was being said, hence his often-repeated question: Do you see what I mean?, which could have been an alternative title for the book. Although most discussions of the kind are rather too long for inclusion, Ive included at least a few exchanges in which Sangharakshita is asking the questions, trying to draw out answers people didnt even know they knew. Quite often he says, in answer to a query, Well, consult your own experience. On other occasions, though, it is the Buddhist tradition to which we are referred. The seminars are based on Buddhist texts from a wide variety of sources, and the source text has been quoted in this book where appropriate; so the teachings here come from many Buddhist schools and traditions. Endnotes have been added to help you find source material.