Week 2 teaching - 18 January 2009

Thank you to everyone who joined us in Vancouver (and virtually in Victoria) for an enthusiastic meeting on Sunday - and for those of you in New York and Germany who wanted to join, our aim is to connect you next week.  A recording of this week's teaching and discussion can be downloaded here.  We talked about:

(1) Our reflections on our homework:

• Why am I on the spiritual path? What am I seeking to get out of it?
  
• When Rinpoche said we should "buy more useless things like Buddha statues, and fewer useful things like iPods", why did he say this? And what did he mean by "useless"?

(2) The first 10 pages of "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula, which cover "The Buddhist attitude of mind", including:

• Individual responsibility: Man is his own master, and no higher being sits in judgment over his destiny; Buddha taught the path to liberation, but we have to walk it ourselves; and since we have to determine right/wrong and good/bad for ourselves, we have to develop our own wisdom - this is why Buddhism is a path of wisdom, rather than a religious system of ethics and morality.
• Freedom of thought, tolerance and doubt: The story of the Kālāmas; the need to develop wisdom, as "To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual"; the story of Upali; how human qualities like love and compassion don't belong to any particular religion.
• No attachment to blind faith, tradition or any teachings or views: The story of Buddha and Pukkasāti in the potter's shed - how the young novice realised his companion was the Buddha because he spoke the truth, rather than vice-versa: how we should take refuge in the truth of the teachings, rather than in the teacher; the story of Kāpathika and how traditions without realisation are "like a line of blind men"; how attachment to any teachings or view, even Buddhism itself, is just another fetter: "O bhikkhus, even this view, which is so pure and clear, if you cling to it, if you fondle it, if you treasure it, if you are attached to it, then you do not understand that the teaching is similar to a raft, which is for crossing over, and not for getting hold of"

For next week, our homework is to read and contemplate the first chapter of Rahula once again (to page 15).  Next week, we hope to complete the chapter and then discuss a teaching by Rinpoche which covers many of these same topics.