surlingham, the home of padmaloka. click to enlarge

I saw in the new year on corstorphine hill with edinburgh's spectacular firework display.
for the rest of january, i was involved in discussion with the chairs at dhanakosa, with new private preceptors and with the mitra convenors, both at padmaloka, and with bhante, subhuti and mahamati at madhyamaloka.

I was at the chairs meeting to talk about the plans for fwbo central, (details in the previous post). bubbling under the surface, though, was a deeper discussion around the issue of 'coherence'. the last few years have seen a major organisational restructuring in the f/wbo, and something of a spiritual upheaval. we deliberately encouraged a process decentralisation and autonomy: of individuals; of centres, of the order, movement and college. this looser and more decentralised structure was a healthy and a needed development.

more recently, though, it's becoming obvious that the decentralisation needs to be balanced with more emphasis about what connects us. this seems to have been emerging independently in meetings of the preceptors' college, the chairs, the mitra convenors and with order members involved in meditation teaching.

the organisational decentralisation of the last few years has had a big impact on our spiritual teaching, and not one that we entirely foresaw, when the decentralisation coincided with a period of intense questioning triggered by the criticisms made by yashomitra in his 2003 letter.

two of the strongest unifying influences on our teaching in the past were the ordination training at padmaloka and tiratanaloka; and the mitra study courses, which meant that each centre had more or less the same syllabus of dharma teaching. both of those influences meant that people from every centre were using more or less the same framework of ideas and practices. they certainly supported unity, but perhaps they had also become too uniform.

in the last few years ordination training has been decentralised, and the mitra study syllabus is no longer taught at every centre. in the climate of less central organisation and more cultural questioning, a wider range of meditation practices and approaches to the dharma has been taught, and some significant differences in meditation teaching have developed between the retreat centres and the urban centres. some of this experiment has been stimulating and valuable, but it has also created a degree of confusion.

rebalancing
my own sense is that something is shifting. i've been struck by how many discussions i've been in recently that recognise a need for rebalancing. there are some specific steps being taken to provide that balance. perhaps the most concrete one is the new mitra study course, put together by saccanama, and with the strong support of the chairs , the preceptors' college and the mitra convenors. one of the issues with the most energy in it has been about 'formless practice', a strand of our meditation teaching which has developed very strongly in the last few years, and its relationship to the more sat in on discussion on this at the colloquium at madhyamaloka in august. the discussion carried on at the dhanakosa chairs meeting, and again at the private preceptors retreat and chairs meeting, both at padmaloka in january. maybe the best short summary of this important discussion came from a short memo from kamalasila and tejananda, both of whom are influential in teaching formless practice. after the august colloquium, they wrote:

Formless meditation is an aspect of Just Sitting in our system of meditation...
...It connects with all aspects of our practice (such as ethics, kalyanamitrata, and Dharma study). ...formless meditation does not operate in isolation from these, replace other meditation practices... nor supersede other aspects of practice!

wildernesses of the heart
this clarity about how our practices hang together into a coherent system of training is important, i think. in a recent paper, Subhuti discusses the Cetokhila Sutta. He quotes a passage from the sutta, where the Buddha talks about the conditions needed for spiritual growth. It is impossible, the sutta says, for any bhikkhu ‘to come to growth’ who has not ‘abandoned five wildernesses of the heart’. The five ‘wildernesses of the heart' are, ‘being doubtful, uncertain, undecided or unconfident in relation to five things. The first three of these are the refuges: the Teacher, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

But then the text gets more specific. The fourth and fifth of the five wildernesses are doubt, uncertainty, lack of confidence in relation to the ‘training’, and to our ‘companions in the spiritual life’. The refuges are principles; but to be practical spiritual supports, the principles have to take a specific form. In every tradition, the dharma has to be expressed in a particular set of teachings, a particular set of practices, a particular set of precepts: a ‘training’.

One of the things we need as practitioners, as a practice community, is clarity and confidence in the shared, specific practices and precepts of our own practice community, and in the depth of spiritual experience within that community. This is not primarily an organisational matter, it’s a spiritual one. The sutta is saying that this clarity and confidence is a necessary condition for growth.

It has been an interesting, demanding, stimulating few years, and maybe a little chaotic.
it seems to me there's a deeper clarity about the details of our 'training', which includes what's positive in the experience of the last few years, beginning to emerge.