Layer 379 . . . Education, Supporting Teachers, Changing Schools, Ken Robinson, and a Royal Wedding

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Aaaaaarrrgggghhhh! Camilla described the announcement of the royal engagement as "wicked"!!!!!!!!!!!

According to Wikipedia, William Windsor (known as Billy), was a goat who served as a lance corporal in the 1st Battalion, the Royal Welsh, an infantry battalion of the British Army, from 2001 until 2009.

William and Kate are both 28 years old and complete twats. Embarrassingly so.

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For more on the value of silence, and on instinctual intelligence and intuition - visit Layer 104.

Also this page in the London Review of Books for a list of books about silence -

http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/home.php?cat=418

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Start The Week

"Through poetry we can make the people we love live forever."

On Start The Week this week there was a conversation about the way in which a great poem can make someone - i.e. its subject - immortal. A great poem can capture the absolute essence of someone. The really great thing about Dylan's tribute poem to Woody Guthrie is that it captures the spirit of the man and his life without really describing the man at all - simply likening him to a lamp or a candle or an oil well, or the magnificence of the Grand Canyon, or a bringer of hope. That's real brilliance.

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Education Oxzen

Katharine Birbalsingh and John Bangs were on the radio yesterday talking about underachievement and behaviour in English schools. Ms B, of course, created a stir by speaking out polemically at the recent Tory party conference.

How to improve classroom discipline, eh? Hmmmmmm.

Ms B believes we need to be 'a lot harder', impose 'a lot more structure', and 'show less compassion' towards the problem kids. Oh well - that should do it.

Thankfully John Bangs spoke really well about the need to make learning "far more exciting, far more relevant". He accused Ms B of talking 'hyperbolae', though he meant hyperbole. He recommended we pay attention to what people like Tony Sewell say about anger management, about motivating kids properly, and about using 'a range of disciplinary techniques and classroom strategies'. He also pointed out that it's not helpful to make generalisations about schools.

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To really understand what's wrong in our most challenging schools it's worth reading the whole of an article that was published in today's Education Guardian.

Why are new teachers leaving in droves?

Nearly half of all newly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years. Charlie Carroll went on the road for a year, working in the most challenging schools, to find out why

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/16/teaching-problem-schools

The idea, when it came, was fully formed, sparked by a surprising statistic I read one morning in the staffroom: nearly half of all England's newly qualified teachers were leaving the profession within their first five years.

I wanted to know why.

So I took to the road to find out:

I spent a year travelling through the 10 areas of the country that were deemed as having the most challenging schools, one month in each, and teaching in those schools. By witnessing the frontline, I could find an answer to why so many teachers were fleeing the profession, and I could journey through my own country – and experience it as I never had before.

My working day was dominated by confrontations with aggressive, disaffected or miserable teenagers.

These were children with a proliferation of asbos; children on terrifyingly high dosages of Ritalin; some with criminal records and, already in their short lives, histories of violence.

I had also seen in these challenging areas some wonderful schools, which, beset as they were with their difficult intake, would still thrive against the odds – three of the schools I had worked at in particularly difficult areas had achieved outstanding status in their most recent Ofsted inspections. What was it, then, that set these schools apart?

It had felt to me in these schools that a teacher really could make a difference. Supported by good and hands-on senior management teams – rather than by shadowy headteachers who rarely enter their classrooms – the teachers knew that any sanctions they implemented would be backed up, which empowered them, in turn, to support and encourage their students to achieve to the best of their capabilities. In one school, when a pupil shouted an expletive at me, the head put him on a temporary exclusion for swearing at a teacher. This kind of thing is what counts.

My aim had been to find out why so many teachers were leaving. And I think I did find my answer – a score of them, in fact, and a few ideas about what can be done to make things better. In order to stop teachers leaving, it's useless throwing money at them (no teacher teaches for the money), or implementing structural innovations such as academies or free schools. Instead, changes need to be made at a much more fundamental, frontline level, which involves supporting teachers and assisting them to support their students to learn and achieve to their maximum capability – which is, after all, what teachers train to do.

Such changes are not dramatic or expensive. They merely require a slight shift in the cultural attitude. With more power to stop violence in the classrooms, with more freedom to exclude those students who cannot cope with mainstream education, with smaller class-sizes, with an enhanced communication between teachers and parents, with protection for teachers against the overwhelming fear of litigation, with the encouragement of a zero-tolerance approach to such unacceptable misbehaviour as violence and psychological abuse (such as cyber-bullying), and with the removal of the league table culture – where schools are unfairly ranked by a cold system of results-based numbers – perhaps teachers would be encouraged to remain in their profession and continue to provide the service so invaluable to this country's future.

I still teach, and at times still love it, but I don't know for how much longer. For, until such changes are implemented, it is this teacher's opinion that the professional exodus will continue.

• Charlie Carroll is a pseudonym. All names have been changed. On The Edge by Charlie Carroll is published by Monday Books, price £8.99.

The great thing about this piece is that hits the nail right on the head. Yes, there are poor teachers who can't cut the mustard and can't cope, but there are also thousands of teachers who would be able to cope and even do well if they had the proper backing of senior management that are determined to get to grips with the really challenging kids and their families. It's true that this requires the determination to spend hundreds of hours of unstinting attention focused on the aggressive and disruptive kids, talking with and counselling children and parents - but there simply is no other way.

You try to understand why the kids are unable to show proper self-control and why they lack so much emotional and social and spiritual intelligence. Then you make it very clear to them where the boundaries lie, and what action will be taken if they fail to control themselves, fail to opt into the school's ethos, and fail to keep within the boundaries. You then apply the sanctions you have outlined in your discussions, which will be gradual, and not harsh, but will eventually end with fixed term and even permanent exclusions.

Of course this assumes that the school is also doing its utmost to make every part of every day worthwhile for the kids - enjoyable, stimulating, rewarding, creative, satisfying and motivating. The child has to WANT to come to school.

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Ken Robinson and the Coming Education Revolution

Everyone who's interested in education simply has to take a look at this brilliant video of Ken Robinson talking about education and schools, and changing paradigms:

http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/video-sir-ken-robinson-changing-education-paradigms-rsanimate/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=player_embedded

http://www.sirkenrobinson.com/

Also this TED talk:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-4964296663335083307#

See also Layers 162, 171 and 233. 

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Here's something I've missed about Sats, the schools' boycott, the NUT, the NAHT, and Gove

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315657/End-SATs-11-year-olds-2-years-teachers-boycott.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1192939/Tories-pledge-abolish-SAT-tests-11-year-old-children.html
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Layer 38 License To Kill

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Bob Dylan - Infidels

License To Kill

Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don't change soon, he will.
Oh, man has invented his doom,
First step was touching the moon.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there as the night grows still.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, they take him and they teach him and they groom him for life
And they set him on a path where he's bound to get ill,
Then they bury him with stars,
Sell his body like they do used cars.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there facin' the hill.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, he's hell-bent for destruction, he's afraid and confused,
And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill.
All he believes are his eyes
And his eyes, they just tell him lies.

But there's a woman on my block,
Sitting there in a cold chill.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Ya may be a noisemaker, spirit maker,
Heartbreaker, backbreaker,
Leave no stone unturned.
May be an actor in a plot,
That might be all that you got
'Til your error you clearly learn.

Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool
And when he sees his reflection, he's fulfilled.
Oh, man is opposed to fair play,
He wants it all and he wants it his way.

Now, there's a woman on my block,
She just sit there as the night grows still.
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?


Violence 1

Do soldiers have a license to kill?

“Waltz With Bashir” is “a daring new animated documentary that follows Israeli director Ari Folman as he tries to piece together memories of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps“.

It’s in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Folman was on the radio this morning explaining how he intends to do everything he can to persuade his sons never to take part in any violence whatsoever, regardless of any demands that the State or the Army may make of them. He wants his work to persuade everyone that violence can never be a solution to conflict.

“Folman was a soldier in the Israeli army when it invaded Lebanon earlier that year. It allowed Christian militiamen into the refugee camps and stood by as they went on a killing spree shortly after the assassination of their leader, Bashir Gemayel.”

Well there’s still hope for the Middle East, and for the world, when artists like Folman are able to release powerful films that highlight State and military atrocities, and make the case for shunning violent solutions to problems in all circumstances.


Violence 2

Bob sings, “Oh, man is opposed to fair play,
He wants it all and he wants it his way.”
(License To Kill)

Well this now clearly includes girls and women, as we know it always has, though maybe to a smaller degree.

This week we’ve been hearing news reports that more and more girls are behaving aggressively and violently, and being generally anti-social. Factors are assumed to be alcohol, our ‘pushy, acquisitive age‘, an ‘economy driven by competition’, and an attitude that’s usually described as ‘laddish’, which presumably means being loud, crude, cocky, rude, insensitive, threatening, gangsterish, binge-drinking, insulting, bragging, attention-seeking, inconsiderate, lacking self-control, over-sexed and generally disgusting.

Clearly what we’re dealing with here are girls who completely lack emotional, social and spiritual intelligence, and we need to ask ourselves why. It’s not hard to see that there are issues about role models, cultural influences, values, greed, sensation-seeking, etc.

And still our education system does nothing to provide for the real developmental needs of these young people, which are to do with substantial amounts of time to consider themselves and others objectively, philosophically and psychologically; to learn something about desirable human values; to learn techniques of self-restraint and self-control; to learn how to relate in positive ways to others, including those outside of the immediate peer group, etc.

None of the above work and learning is really happening, and where it is timetabled in schools it isn’t done well, and it generally isn’t taken seriously, either by the kids or the teachers, and especially the kids who are most in need of it. Neither are schools offering one to one and small group counseling sessions, or opportunities to explore kids’ levels and aspects of EQ and SQ with sympathetic adults. It’s not in the National Curriculum, you see. Kids often have to actually get themselves permanently excluded from mainstream schools before they can access some of the good things and the good teachers that may be on offer in Special Schools. How mad is that?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/16/ukcrime.gender

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/15/ukcrime.youthjustice1

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Here’s another stanza of Bob’s to think about, from another track from Infidels, a track called “I and I”.

Took an untrodden path once, where the swift don't win the race,
It goes to the worthy, who can divine the word of truth.
Took a stranger to teach me, to look into justice's beautiful face
And to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Note the words “worthy”, “truth”, and “divine” - which are favourite words of mine.

As in

“And think not that you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”

It’s always good to re-read “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran from time to time.

http://leb.net/gibran/works/prophet/prophet.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5484/Gibran.htm

Collins defines “divine” as:

“To perceive or understand (something) by intuition or insight” (spiritual intelligence) and
“To discern (a hidden or future reality) as though by supernatural power”.

The whole notion of hidden realities I find very interesting. This is fertile territory for reflection and meditation. As is the whole realm of the spiritual, the metaphysical, the supernatural, if you like. This is indeed the realm of intuition and insight. Looking within, not without.

We must train ourselves to let insight pierce and illuminate the dark areas, where logic, reason and the senses cannot penetrate, since our knowledge is always so limited and so open to interpretation, since our senses often fail to make sense of what’s around us, since reason is often based on false premises.

We need these things on the school curriculum.

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Another song to check out on Infidels is “Man Of Peace”.

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/peace.html

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/license.html

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/iandi.html
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Layer 24 Chopping Wood, Carrying Water, and the Ox-Herding Pictures

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Here are more quotations from Zohar and Marshall’s ‘Spiritual Intelligence’.

"The mystics of every great tradition have spoken of something within the self. It is the pure light that shines or burns within us. Spoken of in such terms, the centre sounds awe-inspiring, attractive and holy - but perhaps too abstract for many of us to grasp. Yet each of us lives it and experiences it when we live our daily lives in a spiritually intelligent way.

It is the feeling of holiness in everyday objects and events, the sense of the sacred in an act of loving, the almost unbearable ecstasy we feel when understanding something deeply for the first time, the sense of elation when we bring something new into the world, the sense of deep satisfaction when we see justice done, the deep sense of peace when we know that that which we serve also serves ‘God’.

All six of the spiritual paths lead to the centre, to an experience that could be called ‘enlightenment’. But when lived in the most spiritually intelligent way possible all paths also lead from the centre, back to the world. The Buddha returned to the world so that all might become enlightened.

An ordinary person high in SQ does not just seek the bliss of knowing the centre, but responds to it spontaneously and then takes responsibility for bringing back to share with the world the light he has seen, the energy he has gained, the integrity he has experienced. He becomes an enlightened parent, an enlightened teacher, an enlightened cook, an enlightened lover, and so on.

None of us is really complete, really whole, really enlightened, until we have found a creative way to live, to love deeply and without selfishness, to serve our fellows, to be ‘servant leaders’.

The high SQ or enlightenment that we achieve has about it the incredible grace of the everyday. In Zen Buddhism there is a saying, ‘Before I was enlightened, I hewed wood and drew water. After enlightenment, I hewed wood and drew water.’ This is not saying that enlightenment does not bring progress and transformation, but rather that real transformation is to bring us back to the place from which we started, only now to live it fully alive and aware.

In A Manual of Zen Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki reproduces some fifteenth-century versions of ten original twelfth-century Chinese drawings, with accompanying texts, that illustrate the Zen understanding of enlightenment. They use the allegory of a man herding an ox.

All paths lead to and from the centre. Following them is a quest, but at a certain point realising them is an act of surrender. Even the craving to become enlightened eventually disappears."

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I strongly recommend reading Zohar and Marshall’s book.

It’s interesting that they include in it the entire sequence of the Ox-Herding pictures.

The Ox-Herding pictures are brilliant. To me they represent the process of discovering a thing called Zen, wanting to seek its goal of enlightenment, and after much study and practice starting to understand the central idea of Zen, and how to live a Zen life, which is indeed possible for anyone who is prepared to spend some time studying and reflecting on Zen thought. I first came across the pictures several years ago, and  appreciated what a superb metaphor they are. My understanding of the story is as follows.

* A young man decides to seek enlightenment, or his true self, as represented by the Ox.
* At first he sees only the footprints of the ox, or impressions and signs of what the ox (Zen enlightenment, his authentic self) might be like and where it may be found.
* Finally he sees the ox itself, and has a clear sight of the form of the body, the way it moves, etc. But it is still away in the distance.
* After some time he manages to approach the ox, and tries to hold on to it and tame it, to make it his own. However he realises that the ox is too powerful, and will only go with him if it chooses to.
* After training himself, and becoming familiar with the ways of the ox, he is ready to approach it in the right spirit of gentleness, friendship and respect.
* The ox allows him to ride on his back, and takes him back to his village.
* The ox then disappears, and the young man wonders whether the ox is after all an illusion. His life, and the whole of life, suddenly seems empty.
* He then realises that the whole of existence is an illusion, and that it is pointless to want to ‘possess’ the ox, or even stay with it, to be obsessive and possessive of the ox.
* He now sees himself as the fool on the hill, as someone who has foolishly considered that one may possess wisdom, or wealth, or power, or enlightenment. Everything depends on living each day as well as possible, and recognising the joy and bliss of everyday reality. He understands that real enlightenment consists of living life humbly, simply, unconcerned with possessions, status, salvation, etc.
* He now comes down from his hill, goes back into society, and lives amongst the people, trusting that his behaviour and attitude will bring support, encouragement and inspiration to those he meets, happy to serve others and happy to live an ordinary life, fully aware of how precious it is. To be back where he started, but now living life fully alive and aware.

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This is what D.T. Suzuki says in a book called Living By Zen, in a chapter called Approaches To Satori:

“The study of Zen requires great intellectual integrity and strength of character. The persistent pursuit of one task is no easy business, especially when this involves the disregarding of worldly affairs. But unless it is sustained by great spiritual aspirations, the study of Zen will be impossible.

“The separation of ourselves from the all-embracing, all submerging “ocean” [of life] is the function of the intelligence, for it is because of this that we crave for the water of life. Here lies the great spiritual tragedy of man; the water of life is desired, and this water surrounds him, soaks him, enters into every fibre and every cell of his tissues, is indeed himself, and yet he does not realise it and seeks it outside of himself, even beyond the “great ocean”. [The quest for heaven and an ‘afterlife’.]

“The intelligence is a great mischief-worker, and yet without it we shall never be able to wake up the greater one. It separates us from the ocean in which we live; if not for this separation we should be found forever slumbering under the waves, unseeing and ignorant. The only trouble is, as Gensha says, that we look for “the great ocean” in words, concepts, and their various combinations, and the result is that we know nothing and understand nothing.”

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All of this argues for the need to use to use all of our intelligences in combination, and only by doing so can we find Zen and live a life of enlightenment. Only by using all of our senses, plus our powers of intuition and empathy, plus our instincts and our passion, as well as our intellects, can we become fully ourselves, become self-actualised, become at one with ourselves and others, and with the cosmos.

Learning to do this is the challenge facing each and every one of us, and facing our society. So far, very few of us seem to understand this. Why indeed should we - when our schools, our media, and our so-called leaders are themselves generally ignorant of these truths? Or if they do recognise these truths then they pay them very little attention, preferring instead to attend to mainly material goals and the things that seem to be important in achieving those material goals.

It’s as though the human race has never moved on from scrabbling for survival, spending every day seeking food and shelter, concerned only with material security and well-being. And yet even so-called primitive humans, through their immediate connection with nature and its majesty, and having time to appreciate it in all its awe and wonder, probably possessed higher degrees of spiritual intelligence and enlightenment and happiness than we do.

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Interestingly, Suzuki uses the word “actualisation” in Living By Zen. Given that he wrote it back in the nineteen forties, I wonder whether Maslow acquired the word and the concept from Suzuki and Zen?

This is what Suzuki wrote in the chapter on satori, on pages 54 and 55:

“Zen is not interested so much in conceptualisation as in “existential thinking”, so-called. Satori is said to take place when consciousness realises a state of “one thought”, which is ichinen in Japanese, and is the shortest possible unit of time.

“When time is reduced to a point with no durability, it is ‘absolute present’ or ‘eternal now’. From the point of view of existential thinking, this ‘absolute present’ is no abstraction; it is, on the contrary, alive with creative vitality. Satori is the experience of this fact

“The ‘eternal now’ is the absolute point of time where there is no past left behind, no future waiting ahead. Satori stands at this point, where potentialities are about to actualise themselves. Satori does not come out of death [i.e. it's not in ‘heaven’]; it is at the very moment of actualisation. It is in fact the moment itself, which means that it is life as it lives itself. "

Layer 22 Emotional Intelligence

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This computer’s spell check has just made me realise that the words ‘meditating’ and ‘editing’ have great similarities in both structure and meaning. In states of meditation we allow our unconscious and our conscious awarenesses to connect, communicate, and transform. The work of the editor is to review a whole body of thought or expression, to spot errors and inconsistencies, to highlight misconceptions and flaws, to delete whatever is inappropriate and false, to recognise the need for greater clarity and perspicacity, to come up with ideas for more accurate and more truthful modes of representation and understanding. To be a meditator is to be an editor.

To be a philosopher is to be a meditator and an editor. I take philosophy to be concerned with ways of understanding the world and self. Everyone engages with philosophy at some time, at some level.

I spent the weekend experiencing alternating states of enlightenment and confusion, which, you might rightly say, is the normal human condition. The difference with this weekend was that the ‘enlightenment’ felt quite extreme, and the confusion was extremely perplexing.

Driving south on Saturday I found myself slipping in and out of meditating on IQ and SQ.

In my philosophy the axis of IQ runs from intellectual to instinctual.
Intellectual intelligence can be characterised as “reflective/contemplative”.

Instinctual intelligence can be described as “reactive”. Much of it is pre-programmed into the primitive core of the brain, well away from the frontal lobes where conscious thought is processed. We breathe, we eat, we cry, we laugh, we move instinctually. Through early experiences, when the brain is still forming, we learn to react without conscious thought to various stimuli. Hence flight and fight and freeze reactions. The physical act of sex is clearly instinctual. Though making love involves all of our intelligences.

The axis of SQ (spiritual intelligence) runs from physical to metaphysical (spiritual).
Physical intelligence can be called “sensory”. The senses don’t provide us with ‘facts’, but they do supply us with crucial and clear impressions of our surroundings.

Metaphysical intelligence is essentially “intuitive”. It has nothing to do with facts, or logic, or sensory impressions. Most ‘creative’ ‘thinking’ derives from intuition - sudden revelations or ideas that come into our consciousness seemingly from nowhere. Intuitive thoughts may be triggered by existing ideas and sensory impressions, but they don’t rely on them.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about where intuition fits into the larger scheme of things - where it stems from, and which intelligence it works through. Metaphysical intelligence works through direct KNOWING. It doesn’t need facts or logic or sensory input to make sense of the world. It just KNOWS. Intuition is simply KNOWING.

Prior to the development of ‘scientific’ ways of understanding the world, prior to the ‘Enlightenment’, our KNOWING was essentially through direct experience (use of the senses - physical intelligence) and through intuition. Ever since the Enlightenment these earlier forms of discovery and knowing have been downgraded and seen as somehow belonging to the realm of the ‘feminine’, and therefore inferior or even invalid.

The worship of the intellect and all that can be quantified and categorised has continued apace. Ours is the scientific age. We believe we’re living in the Age of Enlightenment, and yet it seems to me the worship of science and IQ is in itself extremely ignorant, especially when it tries to downgrade and belittle the other types of intelligence. Though to be fair, the more enlightened scientists recognise the value of imagination and intuition.

Driving south I was also meditating on the third axis of intelligence, which connects emotional intelligence with social intelligence, what been referred to as EQ. Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence, inspired me in so many ways, and I’ve thought for some time that I understand what emotional intelligence is, and how it operates.

Suddenly I found myself realising that I’ve been missing something. Something very important to do with emotions. Specifically: what they are, how they operate and how they can be a positive form of intelligence. That’s a very big something to be missing for someone who feels he knows something about emotional intelligence.

Social intelligence is less problematic. Goleman didn’t make this entirely clear, I felt, but I now believe that social intelligence works through empathy. It is in fact empathetic. Without the quality of empathy we cannot relate positively and creatively to others.

Goleman has recently published a book called Social Intelligence, which I’m part way though reading. He clearly thought that social intelligence needed a whole book to itself in order to do justice to it. Empathy seems to me fairly easy to understand, as a concept, though much harder to accomplish in practice, for some people at least.

But emotions? If they are in some senses the antithesis of logic, reason and intuition, and the opposite of empathy, how on earth can they really be seen as an ‘intelligence’? What positive life-force do they possess? What was their evolutionary benefit or necessity? What word encapsulates their positive functioning, if any?

I felt challenged and frustrated by these questions, and spent much of the weekend trying to grapple with them and figure out some answers.

I ask the question about which word encapsulates the positive functioning of emotions, and I say ‘if any’ because I recently finished reading Goleman’s book ‘Destructive Emotions - And How We Can Overcome Them - A Dialogue with the Dalai Lama’. The whole tenor of the book is that emotions are extremely problematic, and as with his ‘Emotional Intelligence’, the need is for us to develop the habit of engaging the intellect, the frontal cortex, and using it to put a brake on the workings of destructive emotions, the key emotions being hatred, greed and jealousy.

Since the outcomes of the unrestrained expression of these emotions are usually so dire, in terms of violence, exploitation, abuse, etc, it’s obvious why we need to apply those brakes. So we need to stop, and think, and remind ourselves of those probable consequences of passionate actions if they are unrestrained, whenever we feel ourselves in the grip of powerful, destructive emotions.

I reckon the emotions are what Freud described as the Id - the dark energy within each of us. Freud (I nearly wrote Fraud) also saw the emotions as something problematic, troubling and potentially destructive, and therefore in need of control by what he called the Superego - the surrounding culture’s commandments and strictures, and its threat of punishment for behaviour that was is any way licentious, anarchic, unorthodox, libidinous, chaotic, nihilistic, etc.

But surely emotions can also be positive? Is love an emotion? Love is impossible to define, but it’s surely possible to experience love - for example a love of life, or for some people a love of God - without emotional engagement. Love can be entirely spiritual, and therefore the emotional realm cannot lay claim to love as belonging to it exclusively. Maybe we can have an intellectual love of mathematics and philosophy. We can love nature, and love art and other works of creation without emotional engagement.

However, it seems fair to say that love is more powerful when the emotions are engaged. So I think what the emotions are really about, their unique factor, their exclusive mode of operation, is PASSION. Here we have a powerful and evocative word and a concept which is also neutral, in that we can be passionate in both a positive as well as a negative way.

We know about crimes of passion. But we also know about loving passionately in a positive way. We can live life passionately. Passion is a driving force, a fire within us. We can use it positively or negatively. Passion provides the energy for our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our relationships, and our ambitions. Passion fuels our creativity. It’s the fuel for the engine, the oven, the furnace, and the boiler. It’s the heat in the sun that makes life possible and worthwhile. It’s the rays that nurture the crops in the fields, the trees in the forests and the life in the seas.

But passion can also cause wars and other sorts of destruction. Passion is potentially very dangerous - like fire, like nuclear power, like ultra-violet rays. It can be toxic and radioactive, carcinogenic and all-consuming. When it’s truly out of control then it can neutralise and eliminate intellect and spirit, and destroy us physically.

It does what it does, and we need to work hard at ensuring its energy is properly harnessed and directed, and consumed in moderation. We cannot binge on it and seek to use it as a stimulant, an opiate, a hallucinogenic or an anti-depressant.

Perhaps for these reasons we need to stop seeing hatred, anger and jealousy as emanating from or residing within the realms of the emotions. Maybe we should see these afflictions as being as much to do with negative ‘thoughts’ and negative ‘feelings’ as merely negative ‘emotions’. Maybe they’re much more complex than mere emotions.

Why not consider the emotional realm as being just a field of energy that has both its light and its dark aspects - containing the potential for both light and dark ‘passion’? Maybe we don’t do this because we find it so difficult to think of emotion (or passion) in the abstract, without attaching it to some other concept. But difficulty shouldn’t prevent us from making the effort and the attempt.

These past few weeks I’ve been enjoying listening to and reading about the various theories, philosophies and ideas circulating in the ether and in the airwaves and in cyberspace concerning our confusion about the nature of reality, consciousness and human perception. Last week’s ‘In Our Time’ on Radio 4 on Materialism was a good example. We’re still arguing about whether the philosophy of materialism makes sense!

Clearly we still have a long way to go in our shared understanding of consciousness, perception and the workings of our brains, our spirits and our souls. We are still trying to figure out whether spirits and souls really exist, let alone whether they’re located in our brains, or elsewhere.

It’s obvious that many scientists are of the view that even if there seems to be a spirit and a soul and they’re situated in and operate within our brain (which seems to be indicated by real-time brain scanners) then they’re really just a physiological and a material phenomenon and therefore they don’t really exist because they’re just a part of the material that’s our brain, and the way it operates, insofar as they believe that the physical brain, the intellect and the spirit are part of our corporeal reality and are therefore synonymous with 'body'. Therefore there is only the material, only the body, and spirit and soul don't actually exist. It’s all nonsense really.

We have this difficulty because of the dominance of science, logic and the intellect in Western philosophy and usually feel the need to investigate phenomena primarily from the basis of ‘scientific’ and data-based research and exploration. Intuitive and metaphysical thinking seems to have little or no validity, and is therefore dismissed as “New Age” or hippy nonsense.

But for now I’m happy to stick with my new thought - that emotions are the energy that causes passion, and what we’ve traditionally called emotions are in fact the by-product of some dark form of the energy we may call passion, and also consist of feelings and ideas that have become negatively warped and twisted.

Therefore anger is just anger, and has components of negative ideas, negative emotions (passion), and negative feelings.

Similarly jealousy is just jealousy. Hatred is just hatred. Resentment is just resentment. Perhaps these can be considered ego-states. They're not emotions as such, or at least they're not emotions pure and simple. Certainly they're the opposite of whatever connects us with others.

Love, on the other hand, is just love, and usually has components of passion, knowledge, input from the senses and feelings.

Layer 15 Enlightenment

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What is the goal of Zen? The answer is Satori, the Zen term for Enlightenment. Satori IS Zen.

Christmas Humphries says, “Since Satori lies beyond the intellect, which alone can define and describe, one cannot define Satori”. Think of awe and wonder - how do you describe such ‘feelings’? Awesome? Wonderful? Not quite adequate, is it?

Humphries goes on to say, “Silence alone can describe it, the silence of the mystic, of the saint, of the artist in the presence of great beauty; of the lover and the poet when the fetters of time and space have for a moment fallen away”.

However, whilst I’d agree with Humphries that words are inadequate to describe satori, I would argue that there’s a crucial problem of language, which affects understanding, in saying that Satori lies beyond the intellect.

I think it’s important to describe the experience of satori as being on a different plane or continuum of intelligence - call it SQ or spiritual intelligence - which might be seen as being at right-angles to, or complementary to, the intellectual plane, or IQ.

This metaphysical (or spiritual) awareness, which I think it’s important to see as a separate kind of intelligence, connects directly to the transcendental and the divine, to a kind of collective super-consciousness, through the faculty of intuition, which needs no words or concepts in order to perceive truth and reality.

Intuition, which has characteristically been neglected in ‘western’ ‘intellectual’ discourse, or seen as somehow ‘female’ and therefore inferior to intellect, is the key mode of operation for metaphysical or spiritual intelligence. It’s what we rather clumsily tend to characterise as a “sixth sense”, though it’s not a sense, and it’s not an instinct either. It’s definitely not a product of the intellect. And it has nothing to do with tests, exams and academia.

It’s not an emotion, and it’s nothing to do with empathy, which are both types intelligence on the third plane of understanding or awareness, sometimes referred to as emotional/social intelligence, or EQ.

Humphries goes on to say that satori “is not out of the body or out of the world; on the contrary, the world and all in it is seen and enjoyed more fully than before. At first it is reached in flashes which come and go. Later it comes in profound meditation, or when the mind, by this device or that, is raised to its highest plane.”

Again, I think there’s an important language issue here, which is more than just semantics, and which tends to hinder a clear understanding of satori and spiritual intelligence. I would argue that it’s not the mind that’s being raised to a higher plane - it’s the whole of our consciousness, or our awareness. And it’s our spiritual intelligence, which is informed by intuition, that’s the motive force which raises our consciousness through the experience of satori.

We talk about ‘flashes of intuition’, and these tend to enter the mind when it is still, when conscious thought is switched off - sometimes though meditation, sometimes through exhaustion, sometimes through just being in a place of great beauty, sometimes in the presence of great art or great music. Intuition, in its very nature, is very difficult to think about, difficult to describe or apprehend.

It just somehow happens when it happens - or, in modern society, it happens much too infrequently. Intuition occurs whenever it’s necessary and appropriate, providing it has an opportunity to break through into our conscious awareness.

What Humphries doesn’t mention is that satori can sometimes occur through the use of certain drugs - so-called mind-expanding drugs such as cannabis, LSD, ecstasy and ‘magic mushrooms’ - at least in the initial stages of their use. Unfortunately such drugs also tend to impair our functioning in various ways, and I believe it’s true to say that the only ‘high’ worth having, at least in the long term, is a natural high.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that Humphries only alludes to the fact that the tantric path, through sex and orgasm, can also enable us to experience a ‘high’ - the satori of “the lover and the poet when the fetters of time and space have for a moment fallen away . . .”

The tantric path can often take us to a peak of satori - can instantly transport us to the mountain top where suddenly we have a view and a perspective of life and the meaning of life that was previously beyond our vision. It’s surely beyond dispute that our bodies of themselves can give us (through sheer physical bliss and release) an instant experience of metaphysical bliss, or satori. To lie in the arms of a lover and experience a sense of blissful togetherness after making love is satori indeed.

It’s also important to understand that through the tantric route it’s not just sensual pleasure, as great as that may be, which transports us so readily to those higher levels of consciousness or awareness. It’s the feeling of wholeness and completeness that sometimes comes after making love, after orgasm.

It’s release, it’s fulfilment, it’s having arrived at a place that perhaps we didn’t even know existed - a place beyond worldly cares, beyond desire, beyond need, beyond anything other than just BEING. Such a wordless state of satori is in my view even greater and more blissful than KNOWING. This is the true essence of Zen, and of satori, and enlightenment, which are one and the same.

I’m putting great emphasis on the tantric route here because it’s something that many of us may be familiar with, even if we’ve never had any other blissful satori experiences in other ways - through meditation, contemplation of nature, etc.

However, it’s important to say that sex and sexual pleasure is by no means guaranteed to take us to satori - even sex with someone we love - and certainly not orgasm through masturbation, even though that provides pleasure and a certain amount of release from physical and emotional frustration.

Satori is about far more than pleasure. It’s THE peak experience. It’s the ultimate feeling that’s beyond sensual, intellectual, and emotional pleasures, though it can be approached through any of those routes - through the pleasures of the mind, the senses, the emotions.

It is simply sheer spiritual bliss, which has nothing to do with god or divinity, other than the pure divine spirit that lies within us all. It’s the recognition of and experience of that spirit. The development of (and continuous connection with) that spirit, and the spirit of the universe, is what I understand by spiritual intelligence, by enlightenment, and by Zen.

* . . . . . * . . . . . * . . . . . * . . . . . * . . . . . *

The consequences of the growth of spiritual development in individuals and in society as a whole (though some say we’re now going backwards in our increasingly materialistic world) is a very big subject, to be explored in future chapters of this blog.

The big issue of how we might achieve higher levels of satori, Zen, or spiritual intelligence through attempts to consciously provide for it and develop it in young and old alike, must also be taken on in other chapters.

The important thing to recognise is that our ‘western’ societies and religions hardly even register this as a concern or an issue, and certainly don’t, on the whole, address themselves to raising awareness of it, let alone pursue the urgent need to raise levels of spiritual intelligence in order to deal with the urgent problems of our materialistic and increasingly violent societies, with their ever-increasing levels of mental, emotional and spiritual sickness. What we see instead are politicians and pundits pontificating on how to deal with the effects of such sickness, rather than how to deal with the root causes.

Perhaps the times are beginning to change. Perhaps books like Richard Layard’s Happiness and Sue Palmer’s Toxic Childhood are making us more aware of the need to change the ways in which we live in the modern world.

Perhaps the Dalai Lama’s call for a spiritual revolution, which he makes in his book Ancient Wisdom, Modern World, will sooner or later strike a chord that will resonate throughout the world. Some would say perhaps pigs may fly.

In the meantime those of us who see the need and see the glass as half full must join together and keep on working for this change, this revolution, which tried to get off the ground in various places throughout the western world back in the Sixties, but didn’t have a powerful enough engine.

Perhaps the credit crunch and the partial collapse of the banking system and indeed the shaking foundations of capitalism will be responsible for a sudden shift in consciousness, a sudden demand for change, a sudden urge to unite and fight for a more enlightened world.

Then again, not. Perhaps we must just continue to go forward slowly, individually and collectively - with linked arms, comrades and colleagues determined to do the work on ourselves which we first and foremost need to do, assisting others along the way as best we can.
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Layer 14 Zen Buddhism - Breaking The Chain

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More quotations from Christmas Humphries.

Zen is the apotheosis of Buddhism. This direct assault upon the citadel of Truth, without reliance upon concepts (of God or soul or salvation), or the use of scripture, ritual or vow, is unique.

So fierce, indeed, is the Zen technique, and so scornful of the usual apparatus of religion, that it has been doubted whether Zen is a Buddhist School at all. The task in hand is the breaking down of the bars of the intellect that the mind may be freed for the light of Enlightenment.

In Zen the familiar props of religion are cast away. The purpose of Zen is to pass beyond the intellect. The intellect has its uses and it is an essential faculty of the human mind. But just as the emotions have their use and abuse, their range of usefulness and a limit to that range, so the intellect, by which men reach to the stars in science and philosophy, must pause and fail at the gates of spiritual knowledge. For the intellect can learn about it but can never, as the finest intellects discover, KNOW.

What KNOWS? The answer is Buddhi, the faculty of direct awareness [intuition, metaphysical or spiritual intelligence]. The intellect is itself a device or means, and Zen is the way of direct enlightenment. All must be freely abandoned before the seeker finds. Even the fact of seeking, and the will to find.

Bodhidharma, known as Daruma in Japan, expressed his teaching in four lines of verse:

A special transmission outside the Scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the soul of man;
Seeing into one’s own nature.

First the intellect must be transcended - for it is where the intellect pauses, baffled and at bay, that Zen begins. The intellect is a developed instrument for the use of knowledge, but only the senses and the intuition acquire knowledge at first hand. The thought-machine, therefore, too easily becomes a cage, a workshop for the handling of second-hand material.

Just as the senses acquire direct experience by touch and taste and the like [what I would call feelings], so Buddhi, intuition, acquires direct experience [often through those ‘feelings’ - often through feeling awe and wonder in response to sensory stimulus] and KNOWS.

In the ideal process of development, this higher faculty [Buddhi] increasingly illumines the thinking mind; in usual practice the intellect claims a final validity and closes its doors to direct experience. Hence Zen is largely a breaking into the closed doors of the human mind to let the light without flood in, and any and every process that will shock the mind into such an opening is useful and may be used.

Zen has produced its own techniques for the sudden path to Satori, the Zen name for Enlightenment. The two most famous devices of Rinzai Zen (less used in the Soto branch) are the MONDO, a form of rapid question and answer between Master and pupil, and the KOAN, a compressed form of mondo - a question, word or phrase that is insoluble by or unintelligible to the intellect. [e.g. What’s the sound of one hand clapping? Most of the questions we ask ourselves are pretty stupid. ‘Why am I here?’ Duh! ‘What is God?’]

‘How shall I escape from the wheel of birth and death?’ asked a pupil? The Master asked in reply, ‘Who puts you under restraint?’ A laugh, an oath, a shout, a shaking, even a blow may do what years of ‘meditation’ have failed to achieve.

Asked why he meditated all day long, a pupil replied that he desired to become a Buddha. The Master picked up a brick and began to rub it. Asked what he was doing he explained that he wished to make a mirror. ‘But no amount of polishing will make a mirror!’ ‘If so, no amount of sitting cross-legged will make thee a Buddha’, was the deep reply.

[Mondos and Koans tend to produce dialogue or interactions that appear to be basically nonsense - that is non-sense - which is the essence of Zen. Intuition and direct experience - metaphysical intelligence - are ways of directly KNOWING that don’t require mediation by ‘sense’ - meaning intellectual or verbal or conceptual or analytical means.]

Sense is the product of reasoning and logic, of the laws of thought; Zen roars with laughter at all of them. Zen is the joke in a joke, and cannot, like a joke, be ‘explained’. It is the life within the form; it is that which reasoning tries to enshrine and frequently strangles. It is the river of life that cares not for the palaces of thought, the dictionaries and definitions, the understanding or the decisions of those upon its banks.

Zen technique, therefore, is like an explosive, designed to break the log-jam in the river, to let the waters flow freely, and all who flow with them ride free.

Theravada Buddhist philosophy is all arranged in three of this and four of that with a twelve-fold Chain of Causation. Very neat, says the Zen practitioner, but as Dr Suzuki says, ‘The Buddha was not the mere discoverer of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation: he took the chain in his hands and broke it into pieces, so that it would never again bind him to slavery’. In Zen the emphasis is on the breaking and not on the chain.

All objects, of thought or emotion, whether things we touch or the things that stand in our mental way, must sooner or later be smashed and removed. As the Master Rinzai himself proclaimed, ‘Do not get yourself entangled with any object, but stand above, pass on, and be free’. All phrases, dogmas, formulas; all schools and codes; all systems of thought and philosophy, all ‘isms’ including Buddhism, all these are means to the end of KNOWING, and easily become [though are not easily perceived as] obstacles in the way.

Zen technique is designed to develop the mind to the limits of thought and then to drive it to the verge of the precipice, where thought can go no further. Why not go over? For only then can WE go on, and progress is a walking on and on to the Goal.

It is true that at a later stage one learns that there is no walking and no Goal, but that is Zen . . . . Meanwhile, until we achieve the goal of purposelessness, let us have this purpose: Said the Master Ummon to his monks, ‘If you walk, just walk; if you sit, just sit. But don’t wobble!’

[The Zen attitude is that we need to focus in the Now, and give our full attention to whatever we are doing, so as to do it, whatever it is, properly. The assumption is that we only choose to do the things in life that are important and necessary to us at a given time, and we should cease to endlessly worry about things we’ve done in the past, or may do in the future. ‘By our actions you shall know us’, and we should ensure that our actions are proper and good, even if they are only walking or sitting. We can’t change the past, we can’t control the future, but we can be mindful of ourselves from moment to moment, and ensure that our lives are well lived in the present.]

Layer 13 More Thoughts On Buddhism

It now seems incredible to me that our education system does not insist that we all need a thorough understanding of Buddhism - its ideas, beliefs and practices. It seems self-evident that we should all be able to benefit from its philosophy, psychology and day to day practices, especially meditation.

As an educationalist I take a different approach to learning about Buddhism, and especially Zen, than that normally taken by religious ‘believers’. Young people in particular should not be subjected to any form of indoctrination by adherents to a particular faith. In any case they don’t in general have any inclination to sit for long hours of ‘instruction’, and they don’t have the time or inclination to read complicated textbooks on what appear to be esoteric matters beyond their own experience or interest.

What I see the need for is initially some sort of concise overview of the key ideas of Zen or Buddhism in general, which ought to stimulate the novice to undertake further enquiries and studies. If the summary or overview fails to do this, then clearly the reader is not ready for further exploration. But we do need to provide short, stimulating texts that will hopefully whet the appetite to find out more.

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To begin with, we need to understand the role of intuition, using processes of direct experience and meditation, in developing and expanding metaphysical or spiritual intelligence.

What Buddhists call Buddhi is a faculty - call it intuition - that has the power of direct dynamic spiritual awareness [or metaphysical intelligence], unfiltered by the intellect and its bewildering myriad of helpful and unhelpful words and concepts. Ultimately words, as human constructs, can mean whatever we want them to mean. Wisdom and enlightenment, which are eternal and immutable and lie beyond the intellect, are acquired from Buddhi.

Where is the opportunity to acquire wisdom and enlightenment in our schools and colleges?
To be a Buddha is to be Awakened, Enlightened, made Aware. Which of us wouldn’t aspire to this, or aspire to even a small degree of spiritual awareness, wisdom or intelligence? But how many are fortunate enough to have spiritual intelligence as part of their school or college curricula? Is learning ‘about’ morality and religion actually contributing to the development of “direct dynamic spiritual awareness”? Of course not.

Satori (the Zen word for spiritual experience), and Samadhi (the last step on the Noble Eightfold Path) are steps on the way to enlightenment and wisdom. Nirvana (or Nibbana) is its human goal.

“Yet beyond [Nirvana] lies Parinirvana, for Buddhism is a process of becoming, and admits no conceivable end.” (Humphries)

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More quotes from Christmas Humphries:

It is the criterion of all Buddhist teaching that it conduces to the achievement of Enlightenment.
Bodhi, supreme Wisdom (Maha Bodhi), is the purpose of all study, of all morality, of all attempts at self-development. It is for this that the false and separative self is slain and the true Self steadily developed; it is the sole end of all progress on the Eightfold Path; it is the Buddh in Buddhism.

In the end each living thing will achieve Enlightenment. This is the hope and the promise of Buddhism. All study and attempted practice that loses sight of this ultimate, supreme experience may be useful, but it is not Buddhism.

‘Our essence of mind is intrinsically pure’, according to the Patriarch Hui-neng. ‘All things are only its manifestations, and good deeds and evil deeds are only the result of good thoughts and evil thoughts respectively.’ Imagination, thought and willpower make deeds, and by our deeds we make ourselves. ‘All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts, and is made up of them.’

To Buddhists, therefore, all weight and emphasis is on the mind, and none on circumstance. ‘Our mind should stand aloof from circumstances, and on no account should we allow circumstances to influence the function of our mind.’ All value lies in the mind.

To the Buddhist the moment alone is of supreme importance; all speculation and all conceptual belief are therefore valueless until made real.

[We should be valued by others and learn to value ourselves for our day to day actions and deeds. There is no point in dwelling upon or speculating about the past or the future. Only in the Now can we find joy and satori, and contribute to the joy and satori of others.]

Now is the moment of salvation, of the making an end of suffering. ‘Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof’, and its undoing.

Life is a bridge - build no house upon it; it is a river - cling not to its banks; a gymnasium - use it to develop the mind on the apparatus of circumstance; a journey - take it and walk on!

It is hard indeed to focus on infinity, and all men have at times preferred to focus on something just so much ahead of them, and not too far. Hence thoughts of Gods and gods, Saints and Saviours.

And yet, the Void is already full. It is filled with Tao or Zen or Life or Light. These names are man-made noises for the Infinite. ‘The Light is within thee’, said the Egyptian Hierophants; ‘Let the Light shine’.

The Mahayana stands upon the twin pillars of Wisdom and Compassion, of Law which manifests as justice, and Love which proves as mercy. Yet ‘Love is the fulfilling of the Law’, and like light and darkness, male and female, life and form, the two are ultimately and immediately One. [Yin & Yang. Justice is the dark side of love. Those who fail to love, those who hurt others, can expect to reap what they sow. Karma will return to them their lack of Loving-kindness, manifesting as some kind of self-punishment, as it were.]

Cause and effect are one, though we see the two sides of the coin in the relative illusion of time. For causation is only interrelation expanded into the ‘past’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ for convenience of our understanding.

Each must perfect himself, his own brief vortex in the flow of life; each is responsible for the changing complex of attributes called Self which grows only as the craving ‘ego’ dies.

‘Work out your own salvation with diligence’, said the Buddha. How? It is immaterial. The mountain peak is indifferent to the path by which men climb.

[As is the peak of Maslow’s pyramid!]

There is the soft way of Shin Buddhism. There is the harder road of the Theravada, with its Right Understanding and Right Action. Then there is the hardest (because the straightest) road of Zen - the direct road up the mountain-side. Meanwhile, for the vast majority of men, there is no road at all, only the drift of suffering minds.

The implications of the doctrine of Karma (Cause-Effect) are vast, and frightening to all but the strongest mind. If all that we are is the result of what we have thought [and done], then all that we shall be is the result of what we are thinking now [and what we do].

We are building now our tomorrow, creating hour by hour our heaven or hell. There is no such thing as luck or chance, and no such thing as fate. We are predestined now by the previous exercise of our own freewill. The world of time and space is seen as the workshop of an individual character.

[The so-called self] contains no single permanent factor, nor anything resembling a changeless and immortal ‘soul’. The evolving consciousness achieves successive states of spiritual development [or intelligence].

The Four Noble Truths concern the omnipresence of suffering; its cause (selfish desire); its cure (elimination of that separative desire); and the way to this removal. ‘Cease to do evil; learn to do good; cleanse your own heart’ - this is the teaching of the Buddhas.

There is no word of faith [in Buddhism], save that which a man has in a guide who tells him of a journey and a goal and a way to it; no word of a Saviour who will make that journey for him. Each must develop his own mind. There is no instrument yet invented that can do more than the mind of man can do when its powers are fully developed.

The purpose of Buddhism is to attain enlightenment, and in the lower stages of the climb all means and devices are legitimate, to be discarded when their use is ended. (Like a raft after crossing a river on it, to mix the metaphor.)

There comes a time, however, when all devices are seen as hindrances, and even the Scriptures are fetters about the awakening mind. Authority is a term which daily lessens in meaning, and the sole criterion of all value passes within. The faculty of Buddhi (intuition) slowly but steadily awakens, and the world of discrimination, which lives by the dreary comparison of opposites, is steadily left behind.

Tolerance widens, compassion deepens, serenity becomes a constant companion which neither the passions nor the problems of the human mind disturb. Certainty comes with intuitive awareness, and though sorrow still be the portion of the ever-returning night, joy as certainly comes with the morning.

The developed will begins to take the hill straight. The veils fall steadily and there comes an increasing awareness of that which lies beyond all veils. The ‘three fires’of greed, anger and illusion begin to die for want of fuelling. The stream is entered and all effort becomes increasingly ‘right’ effort.

In brief, the faculty of Buddhi [spiritual intelligence] is awakening, and the fact that it dwells in all [of us] and needs but awakening is cardinal to Buddhism. ‘So far as Buddha-nature is concerned, there is no difference between an enlightened man and an ignorant one. What makes the difference is that one realises it while the other is ignorant of it.’ (The Sutra of Wei Lang.)

In the words of The Voice of the Silence, ‘ Seek in the impersonal for the eternal man, and having sought him out, look inward - thou art Buddha!’

The process of becoming is a circle; the process of becoming more, of growth, is a spiral, either up or down according as the growth is towards or away from wholeness. Buddhism begins with the Buddha’s Enlightenment and ends with man’s.

And the final goal? We know not, nor is it yet, or likely to be for aeons to come, our immediate concern. The faint of heart will ever seek some resting-place, some weak finality; for the strong, the first and the last word is and ever more will be - Walk On!