Bhikku Bodhi: "An End to the Future"

Ven. Bhikku Bodhi

We live in perilous times. War, poverty, hunger, accelerating climate change and obtuse, unresponsive governments constitute a global crisis which threatens the prospects of humanity's future, as the Venerable Bhikku Bodhi points out in the attached Google TechTalk.

"An end to the future, at least to the human future, is now easily imaginable," Bodhi observes. "Even if the end point of the future doesn't occur in our own lifetime," he warns, "there is a very real danger that it might occur at some point in the present century, even during the lifetimes of your children or grandchildren."

"During our daily lives when our attention is involved in our day-to-day tasks and projects," Bodhi notes, "these kinds of thoughts normally don't trouble us. But if we step back for a few moments and reflect, we can easily see that these claims are not exaggeration. The dangers are very real, and when we take them seriously, as we should take them, they can send a chill down our spines."

All living things are interconnected as parts of a unified field, Bodhi points out in a recent issue of Tricycle (Fall, 2011), and such interconnectedness "bids us consider the long-term effects our deeds exert on other people, on all beings endowed with sentience, and on the entire biosphere."

"In minimal terms," he asserts, "this means that we cannot tolerate behaviour that endangers vast sections of the world's population. We cannot use the earth's resources in ways that result in the mass extinction of species, with unpredictable results. We cannot spend billions on the fratricidal activity of war, while a billion people suffer from hunger, sleep on the streets, and die from easily curable illnesses. We cannot burn fuels that irreversibly alter the climate, or discharge toxic substances into our water and air, without initiating chain reactions that will eventually poison ourselves."

"For the spiritual life to unleash its full potential as a fountainhead of grace and blessings, the wisdom of selfishness on its own is not sufficient," Bodhi points out. "Wisdom has to be joined with another force that galvanizes the will to act. The force needed to empower wisdom is compassion. Both wisdom and compassion shift our sense of identity away from ourselves toward the wider human, biotic, and cosmic community to which we belong."

In addressing his audience at Google, Bodhi asserts that the existential problems and challenges we face may be seen as "many manifestations of a deep and hidden spiritual malignancy that is infecting human society. And the common root of all these problems," he notes, "might be briefly described as a stubborn insistence on placing narrow, short-term, self-centered interests above the long-range good of the broader human community."

"What is needed above all else," he points out, "is a new orientation . . . a kind of universal consciousness that will enable us to regard others as being essentially the same as oneself. We have to learn to reject the demands of self-interest and acquire this universal perspective from which the welfare of all appears to be just as important as our own good. That is, we have to outgrow the narrow egocentric and ethnocentric attitudes to which we are normally committed, and instead embrace a worldcentric ethic that gives priority to the well-being of all."

"Such a worldcentric ethic should be moulded upon three guidelines," he suggests. "First, we have to overcome exploitative greed with global generosity, helpfulness and cooperation. Second, to replace hatred, suspicion and vengeance with a policy of kindness, tolerance and forgiveness. And third, we have to recognize that the world is an interconnected whole such that irresponsible behaviour anywhere has potentially harmful consequences everywhere."

"These guidelines," Bodhi points out, "can constitute the nucleus of a global ethic to which all of the world's great spiritual traditions could easily subscribe, without requiring any kind of exclusive adherence to Buddhism."

The New Biology: Where Mind Meets Matter

The attached two-part lecture by Dr. Bruce Lipton will fundamentally change your understanding of the human body, the process of evolution, and perhaps your life. It is that powerful.

Dr. Lipton, a prize-winning cellular biologist, is a pioneer in the field of epigenetics - the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.

That we are not simply the product of our genes, but rather the product of our perceptions of the world is a crucial point that Dr. Lipton demonstrates by taking us through the entire cellular and biological mechanisms understood by "the New Biology" - a field informed by quantum rather than classical mechanics. The all-pervading consciousness that exists within our enviroment, it turns out - in biology as in physics - plays the central role in shaping our world, including our bodies.

Clocking in at roughly three hours, the attached video lecture is nonetheless a truly must-watch documentary, as Dr. Lipton clearly and lucidly explains how changes in the scientific paradigms of biology itself are impacting everything from neo-natal care and disease prevention, to the role of Big Pharma, to the role that spirituality has in optimizing the health and well-being of the individual.

"Right Livelihood" versus "Right Living"

What is "right livelihood"? When first exposed to the teachings of the Buddha and the dharma of the Eightfold Path, I was under the assumption that "right livelihood" referred solely to the means by which one made one's living. For example, working as a hangman or in a slaughterhouse, or working as a pimp or pornographer, would be "wrong livelihood" as a result of the harm that such occupations causes to other beings as well as to the state of one's own being. Now, however, I wonder if "right livelihood" does not extend far beyond the mere way one earns a living, but rather extends to the totality of how one lives.

In the face of pollution, global warming and a man-made environmental crisis that has resulted in a thousand-fold multiplication of the rate at which whole species become extinct does not the whole impact of how one lives become relevant? If one commutes 100 kilometres a day just to work, does this not speak to whether one has right livelihood? If one eats food that is imported from countries thousands of kilometers away does this not impact others and constitute an unwise way of living? Certainly, these and so many other examples of daily activities that are essential to maintaining our "standard of living" in the West (and increasingly in the East) must impact whether or not we are living wisely.

There is, of course the traditional dharma strictures on "right action" which consists of avoiding killing, stealing, lying, sexual improprieties and ingestion of intoxicants, but are there not many gray areas that are very much a part of our day-to-day existence that fall outside of these traditional strictures? Perhaps, therefore, it is more relevant in the increasingly interrelated lives we live today to talk of "right living" instead of merely "right livelihood."

Living simply in harmony with one's local environment, it would seem, is the key to "right living." Taking public transport rather than one's own vehicle, or walking or bicycling rather than taking public transit, it would seem, is one factor to promote harmony and balance. Living in a small space, rather than a large house is another. Eating locally and organically would be a third of many wise strategies one might uses to maximize a truly wise way of living. Reducing, reusing and recycling the materials one uses is an obvious fourth. Yet, how differently we in the West typically live.

This is not a wholesale rejection of our modern, technological way of life. As Robert Pirsig observed in his classic work, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:"

" . . . (F)light from and hatred of technology is self-defeating. The Buddha, the Godhead resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a (motorcycle) transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself."

When facing the existential crisis that would impel me forward on a spiritual quest for meaning in my life - a path that would open me to the dharma teachings of Buddhism, Taoism and the Advaita Vedanta, along with other spiritual traditions - I was sure of only one thing: unvoiced, I nonetheless I sensed that I wanted to "walk gently through the world and leave only shallow footprints." Yet, how difficult it is, I have found, to live up to that ideal.

When even the traditional strictures on "right action" and "right livelihood" prove difficult to live up to in this fast-paced, fast-lived, fast-food culture, making a vow to strive for radical "right living" is indeed challenging. Nevertheless, the necessity of a radical change in lifestyle if we are to survive the current existential problems we face makes such an individual (and eventually collective) intention seem inevitable.

The Evolution of Consciousness: A Global Imperative

"Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very survival - this is humanity's challenge now. The dysfunction of the egoic human mind, recognized already more than 2,500 years ago by the ancient wisdom teachers and now magnified through science and technology, is for the first time threatening the survival of the planet. Until very recently, the transformation of human consciousness - also pointed to by the ancient teachers - was no more than a possibility, realized by a few rare individuals here and there, irrespective of cultural or religious background. A widespread flowering of human consciousness did not happen because it was not imperative."

"A significant portion of the world's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness."

-- Eckhart Tolle --
("A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose")

"Evolve or die." These are strong words, but they capture the essence of the stark choice that we have confronted ourselves with as the result of an ever burgeoning scientific technology unchecked by effective religious, spiritual or moral insight and actions. While virtually all of our ways of life have been fundamentally altered by our embrace of the last several centuries of technological change, it appears to be only now that the need for a wholesale change in the very nature of our consciousness is becoming readily apparent - or an evolutionary imperative, as Tolle notes.

While there is a plethora of material out there (including Tolle's powerful first book "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment") describing what needs to be done to change one's level of consciousness, and how that might be achieved, it is by no means an easy challenge. Few truly evolutionary challenges are.

"If," writes philosopher Gerald Heard, "we are to advance through the evolution of consciousness beyond self-consciousness, to reunite consciousness now divided into the self-conscious and subconscious, and bring about a new and single quality of awareness and being, there is required of us a peculiar and rare quality of attention. It must be intense but without effort and strain. It must be that over-plus of evolutionary energy, which we call curiosity, and the German tongue calls Neuiger, the new appetite, raised to what Plato called illuminating wonder."

"Indeed," Heard observes, "because we are now so deeply prejudiced in favour of the assumption that it is only possible for one real experience to be presented to us, and that can only be the world of common sense, the necessary state of mind required for enlargement of consciousness must be one which is even without expectation."

"We are waiting for an experience of which we have no conception from the past," he points out, "and that being so, any clear expectation must distort or even completely inhibit a radically new awareness."

[Gerald Heard, "Pain, Sex and Time," pp. 164-165.]

Fortunately, since Heard's time (he wrote those words in the dark days just before the onset of the Second World War), we have had breakthroughs in technology which have allowed those who have experienced equal breakthroughs in consciousness itself to intimately share their experiences (and methodologies) with us.

Below, are two teachers, the "neo-Buddhist" teacher Adyashanti and Tolle himself, sharing their integral teachings with us. Each shares the fundamental insight that there is an untapped, inherent state of higher consciousness within each of us.

Krishnamurti: On Psychological Security

What does it take to experience true security in an age that seems obsessed with being secure? Literally, billions of dollars are spent each year, by countries large and small, to purchase armaments in an attempt to obtain security by pure force. Yet, at a psychological and emotional level, individuals in these societies probably feel less secure then they ever have.

In a talk that predates the rise of the national security state, the late spiritual teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, examines our individual and collective need for security and explores whether psychologically security is even possible.

Throughout millennia, Krishnamurti notes, humanity has always sought physical security - adequate food, clothing and shelter - but has never managed to arrange a society that could provide these basic needs in adequate abundance to all. Perhaps it is this reality, he suggests, that compels an additional need for a psychological sense of security that is almost impossible for a society to attain, but which is possible to the individual.

"Desire for physical security," Krishnamurti observes, "has psychologically taken over the physical demands. One needs physical security, and that is the function of a good society." However, he notes, "each human being seeks pyschological security, inward security, relying on belief - holding on - hoping there, by inner belief, to find security in an idea, in a person, in a concept, in an experience."

But, he asks: "Does he ever find security in any of it . . . and if he doesn't why does he hold onto it?"

"For centuries, he suggests, "a belief has been created, and one accepts it naturally from childhood, and it is easier to follow what has been the tradition rather than to break away from it."

In the attached videos (from 1979), Krishnamurti examines how we have set up society after society that has failed to provide basic security - in terms of providing adequate food, clothes and shelter - and questions if, in light of this, we have the ability to critically examine the societies we have set up, and perhaps move from that critical examination towards true psychological security.

Jung and Krishnamurti: Society in Crisis

Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986)

What role does the individual play in the development of the state, and what role does the state play in the the development of the individual?  Have we reached a point where "sustainable development" no longer makes sense and we should be focusing on "developing sustainability," first by examining the effects that modern life has on the individual and his or her consciousness?

Two of the greatest and most innovative voices of the twentieth-century - the philosopher/spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti, and the great psychologist Carl Jung - both point to the minimal effect that the individual has in the development of the state, and the huge effect the state has in the development of the individual. And both point to the dangers inherent in these realities of modern life.

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

"The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life)," writes Jung, "no longer lie(s) in individual development but in in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself."

"The individual," Jung observes, "is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses."

"The rulers, in their turn," he  notes, "are just as much social units as the ruled and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied."

[C.J. Jung, "The Undiscovered Self," page 22.]

Jung's analysis, written in 1957, is a devastating indictment of modern society, and one about which he gives a dire warning, in the following video clip. In it, Jung observes that man will "not stand forever his nullification," and then pointedly warns that, "we are the origin of all coming evil."




For his part, Krishnamurti notes that "(t)here is conflict between man and society because man is in conflict within himself. and the conflict is between that which is static and that which is living. Society is the outward expression of man," he observes, and "(t)he conflict between himself and society is the conflict within himself."

"This conflict, within and without," Krishnamurti notes,"will ever exist until the highest intelligence (in man) is awakened."

"To be a good citizen is to function efficiently within the pattern of a given society," he observes. "Efficiency and conformity are demanded of the citizen, as they toughen him, make him ruthless; and then he is capable of sacrificing the man to the citizen. A good citizen is not necessarily a good man; but a good man is bound to be a right citizen, not of any particular society or country. Because he is primarily a good man, his actions will not be anti-social, he will not be against another man. He will live in co-operation with other good men; he will not seek authority, for he has no authority; he will be capable of efficiency without its ruthlessness. The citizen attempts to sacrifice the man; but the man who is searching out the highest intelligence will naturally shun the stupidities of the citizen."

"The intelligent man will bring about a good society," Krishnamurti notes, "but a good citizen will not give birth to a society in which man can be of the highest intelligence. The conflict between the citizen and the man is inevitable," he concludes, "if the citizen predominates; and any society which disregards the man is doomed."

[Krishnamurti, "Commentaries on Living: First Series," page 51.]

Mankind faces "a crisis in consciousness," Krishnamurti warns in the YouTube video, below, as a result of the society it has built. "Considering what the world is now," he observes, "with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality aggression and so on, man is still as he was. He is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive; and, he has built a society along these lines."



So what needs to be done in order to face such a "crisis in consciousness," and to avoid "the coming evil" which Jung warns of? Krishnamurti, suggests that there needs to be a transformation both in mankind's consciousness and in our focus from the future to the existential problems of our mutual present.

"The State sacrifices the present for the future," Krishnamurti notes, "ever safeguarding itself for the future; it regards the future as all-important, and not the present. But to the intelligent man, the present is of the highest importance, the now and not the tomorrow."

"What is can be understood only with the fading of tomorrow," he concludes. "The understanding of what is brings about transformation in the immediate present. It is this transformation which is of supreme importance, and not how to reconcile the citizen with the man. When this transformation takes place, the conflict between the man and the citizen ceases."

[Ibid., page 52.]