S
a t i p a n y a
S
p R I N G ’10
Dear
Friends!
I hope this spring newsletter finds you all
well and happy!
Newsletter followed by Treasurer’s
Report
&
Two Essays
Third Anniversary: By June we will have completed our first three years. And as usual we shall
celebrate our birthday this year on Sunday morning, 27th June. If
you are living close enough to get to Satipanya by
This past year
has had the feel of routine. That’s not a bad thing - at least for me! I
feel I can settle back now and truly relish being here. Needless to say I feel
most fortunate to be living in such beautiful country and having the wonderful
support to do so.
Stupa: Last year we also saw the stupa built. I am planning to have a blessing of the stupa
towards the end of June, 2011 by which time it will have a reliquary to top it.
Pictures of the stupa will be on the website in time. I hope to invite our
senior monks from the order again. It will be our fourth year which number
always signifies completion for me – and 2011 adds
up to four! Numerologists among you will read something more profound into
this, I am sure.
Statue: Is there a sculptor among you or someone you know with meditation
experience? I am looking for someone to sculpt a Buddha statue for the island.
It would be about 60/0 cm high.
Property: And that really brings to an end what we
needed to do to set up the property as a Buddhist spiritual training centre.
There are always other improvements that can be made, but they are not
absolutely necessary at this time. So we can pay off yet another tranche of the mortgage.We hope
to be down to £50,000 this year. For details, please read the Treasurer’s Note overleaf.
Building next door: The scare we had of a domestic building
at our gate has receded. Rumour tells us they were unable to get permission. I
don’t think we will ever get to know the full story.
Morris/a the Mole: In fact we now have more than one mole.
Morris, having overcome all the hoops and hurdles we put him/her through and
still finding our property most agreeable, has decided to invite friends and
family. We expect the worse. However, we hope to finally move them by paving
the area. Alas!
Facilitator: Andrew will be leaving at the end of
this month. I and the Trust are enormously grateful not just for his managing,
but also for all the work he did on the property and with such careful skill.
We wish him all the best for the future and he is always welcome.
He writes: ‘To anyone interested in taking time
out to develop their spiritual/contemplative life, Satipanya offers a unique,
powerful and rich opportunity. Time in abundance for meditation, study and
reflection, mixed the general duties of running the centre. A spell of time at
Satipanya can and will drive your understanding to new depths utterly
priceless.”
Keng
comes soon and will be inducted. I shall now be putting a permanent advert onto
the website for a facilitator because I suspect that there will have to be a
new person every year.
Courses: The Mahasi Courses are being overbooked and I am concerned that our
regulars here don’t miss out. So we shall reserve four places for up to
two months before a course.
Noirin will be teaching an MBSR/Vipassana course
Fri.3 - Thurs. 9 December.
Passaddhi in
Onward!
Treasurer’s
Note
Running
Costs: Regarding
the courses being held at the centre, the numbers of people attending, and
donations, are essentially covering the running costs. Courses during 2009 were again well
attended, but again for those attending a course, if you are in employment and
can offer more than the £25 per day, this would be very welcome to cover those
attending who may not be able to offer this much.
Planned
Developments: The plans this year are for various
items to be renovated such as the oil heating system and the guttering which is
estimated to cost in the region of £7000. There are further areas that we are
researching into such solar heating to help with heating, particularly the hot
water of the centre, but also photovoltaics for ppower generation particularly now that grants are
available. Although intial costs are high, it makes
running costs low and this approach also demonstrates how we are seeking to
benefit the environment.
It would be
good to make the centre and associated buildings wheel chair accessible, but
that will require a
major building works approach with relevant planning application.
At a less cost there is a meditation hall that we are now considering which
would truly enhance the centre facilities.
Financial Approach: We will again be aiming to reduce the
mortgage even further this financial year with the amount dependant on available
funds but this could be a further £20,000 to £25,000 depending also on which
further developments take precedence. We are very much dependent on bank
mandates and able to manage the financial obligations of running the Trust. As
Bhante has mentioned, it is mainly the accumulation of monthly gifts that has
enabled us to stay on top of the financial obligations with your mandates
giving ~ £750 p.m. Many thanks to everyone who can continue
to give us these substantial amounts. One-off donations also continue to
help in funding the planned improvements.
Such are the dire financial predictions that we worry about losing
some of these mandates so, if you are not already offering a mandate, even a
monthly £2 amount adds up to a really worthy gift!
As the centre comes into its fourth year please visit the site and
see how your contributions have help the make all this work possible and to see
how the centre operates.
Thank you for your continuing support.
Nick Costaras
Treasurer on behalf of the Trustees
Tel.: +44 (0)20 8674 0194
Email :
treasurer@satipanya.org.uk
Vipassana, Therapy and
Medicinal Drugs
Two questions
arise frequently concerning the practice of vipassana, insight meditation: Is
there a role for therapy in spiritual practice? Is there a role for medicinal
drugs?
In the Buddhist
Tradition in general, but especially so in Theravada, a student would either
live close to their teacher (usually a monastic) or live with their teacher in
a monastery as a layperson. As a samanera (lower orders) or a junior monastic
they would stay with their teacher for at least five years. In other words,
contact would be continuous and most probably long lasting. The relationship
would be concerned with a person’s understanding of the Buddhadhamma
(teachings of the Buddha) and spiritual growth. The latter would include
vipassana and mindfulness in ordinary daily life where both social and personal
difficulties may arise. As for relationships within the family, local
community, at work or in the wider society, the teacher would be there to
consult. And with personal psychological problems – any continuous
practice of vipassana will unveil unresolved conditionings – the teacher
would be the one to approach for guidance.
In the West
this system rarely pertains. I was lucky. I had two very good teachers resident
in
In the meantime
we have to find solutions. Fortunately these days, many psychotherapeutic and
counselling techniques have emerged and many charities and groups have formed
to deal with specific sufferings such as grief, anxiety and depression. The
danger here is conflict of teachings and guidance. So much depends on the therapist or group
leader for the orientation of their therapy and group. For instance, an
advanced student of mine was told by her therapist that meditation would do her
harm! So beware of therapists who have limited or no understanding or practice
of vipassana and have yet formulated clear opinions. I also attended a
self-help group for people suffering from depression and from a Buddhist
perspective they were actually making things worse for themselves.
So it would
seem that a student grounded in vipassana and perhaps in Buddhadhamma who wants
help with personal or social problems must find someone tuned in to their way
of thinking. A therapy could possibly be more effective than vipassana for a
particular problem. The reason for this is that vipassana is a specific
practice aimed at spiritual insights, although it does purify the heart and
mind. But in the case of severe problems such as alcohol addiction and severe
eating problems vipassana brings insight into the cause of the suffering and
allows personal psychological trauma to be healed, but the programme run by AA,
for instance, is considered extremely effective in dealing with the
psychological and habitual nature of such a problem.
I asked a
practising therapist and long-time meditator, Richard Gilpin,
about seeking a therapist. He replied: ‘The standard party line amongst
therapists is that the most important thing is to find the therapist that works
for you. This can only be a trial and error process (check
out a few and decide who you want to spill your beans to). The model of
therapy your therapist trained in will generally become of secondary
importance. It’s the relationship that counts, as the old line goes. The
other reason for the therapist being more important than the therapy is that
most therapists have, to some degree, integrated different models into their
own therapeutic style – often one, say, Gestalt therapist’s
style will be unrecognisable to another for a particular client. Therapy
tends to be a lot more idiosyncratic than practice schools, although of course
the latter also have huge variety.’
And I agree
with him when he says: ‘I guess this all fits similarly to how one might
be drawn to a particular spiritual teacher and how that teacher will offer the
teachings in a way quite distinct from another in the same tradition.’
When I met other
vipassana teachers I was surprised by how varied their methods were, often
intermingling techniques from other Buddhist traditions. This would be rare in
the East where each vipassana tradition tends to be seen as whole and entire
and where respect for one’s teacher would prohibit experimentation. And I
must confess I am guilty myself!
So it would
seem that just as hatha yoga and chi kung/t’ai chi complement vipassana as physical exercises
and exercises in calm concentration, so certain therapies may also be good
supports. Certain therapies are grounded in the Buddhadhamma such as Core
Process Psychotherapy, taught and based at the Karuna Institute www.karuna-institute.co.uk , Tara Rokpa, a Tibetan Buddhism based therapy www.tararokpa.org,
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy www.mbct.com, and Mindfulness Based Stress
Reduction. Some are influenced by or have similar understanding to Buddhadhamma
such as Focusing, Gestalt, Psychosynthesis and Jungian therapy. I am told that
Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) has interesting Buddhist parallels.
As for taking
medicinal drugs, it was once a no-no in Buddhist circles, but now is seen more
as skilful means. The hard line considers all suffering is due to karma and so
we must endure. But I think a more skilful and compassionate line is the use of
drugs to relieve severe conditions and establish a balance of mind wherein
understanding and virtue can grow. For in such severe conditions as clinical
depression, anxiety disorder and schizophrenia, and even for periods when
circumstances become intolerable, a person is caught as in a storm and only in
exceptional cases are they able to find that objectivity wherein insight can be
made as in the film, A Beautiful Mind
(highly recommended). In time patients may wean themselves off the drugs under
medical supervision. Buddhadhamma, spring 2009 – ‘Medicate or
Meditate’ carries a very good article on this topic centring on
depression. To repeat, it is very much a matter of finding a therapist or
doctor with whom one resonates.
Finally, it is
important to acknowledge that whether we practise with a vipassana teacher,
with or without a therapist, with or without medicinal drugs, we are the ones
who must do the work. We heal ourselves. We can only be assisted in the
process. The Buddha simply shows the way. There is no easy way. Alas!
Struggling with Anatta.
The idea of anatta (often translated as ‘not-self’) used to
fascinate me – inspiring a lovely image of an expanded mind which covered
the whole universe. Some texts mentioned
fear – but I just knew I
wouldn’t be afraid … until I caught a brief glimpse and realised,
to my horror, that the expanded mind didn’t include me – that “I” was left behind for that brief
moment and that “I” would always be left behind in the experience
of anatta. It was so obvious – the words not-self said it plainly – but I
skipped over this till the moment of insight.
Now I
don’t often think about anatta … there
are no nice images to entice me and thoughts fade into vagueness. It’s a
relief if my mind simply relaxes, gives up on the
question. I feel the breath going in and out, and am relieved to know that the
whole system functions, that life happens, even though it’s all beyond my
understanding.
But in deep
meditation I still fight hard against this truth. I may be experiencing the
rising and falling of the breath, with thoughts and emotions coming and going,
and forget myself within the flow of experience. But if there comes a sense of
something strange and new, then a strong sense of “me” emerges,
straining to master the situation. On the out-breath, I feel myself daring to
relax, wondering “what is it that I am experiencing?” I can
feel various sensations – softness or heat in various tissues perhaps
– these are comforting, suggesting there is nothing to be afraid of. But
there is usually tension as well in other tissues, and a scary gap opens up
between ‘me’ (where it’s all soft and warm and safe
and known) and ‘that’ (whatever lurks in the vague,
unexplored, seemingly uninhabitable tension).
It feels as if
I must die to cross that gap into the unknown. Having been at this juncture so
often, I can encourage myself the only thing to die will be fear. But I have to
let go of these thoughts and memories in order to relax completely into the
felt sense of my present experience.
Fear wins and I
snatch at the next in-breath, tensing and gasping in an effort to hold on to
all I know, to prevent myself dissolving into the unknown. This effort in turn
becomes unbearable and the wish to relax and trust persuades me to breathe out
again. The struggle continues until somehow fear dissolves and my senses can
explore what was previously beyond my comfort zone. To my surprise I find I
recognise a newfound depth of friendliness and ease within myself – as if
it were a place I once inhabited within my psyche but had long forgotten.
Although I would love to hold onto this experience forever, I find I must forgo
all temptation to interfere. Friendliness cannot be imprisoned and any attempt
to control obliterates ease.
The truth of anatta sinks in a little
deeper as I learn that I am not in control of what I most value within myself. At my best, I am beyond my own
understanding and control. As Mary Oliver says in the last lines of her poem
“Sleeping in the
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at
least a dozen times
into something better.
Noirin Sheahan