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Stupa and Statue for Paddock

The Stupa – A Focus for Devotion

The three steps at the bottom stand for the Three Refuges, Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. This is our saddha, faith as in confidence, trust and by virtue of this, our commitment to follow the path. The more these are polished within us, the less we are hounded by sceptical doubt.

The main body of the stupa is in dry stone walling. This suggests a cliff face and that the path towards liberation is gradual as the Buddha prefers to call it. But frankly it’s hard! Within the stone work, another type of stone will be placed. Two spirals starting from the east and the west sides to form a helix, the one with eight stones for the Noble Eightfold Path and the other seven for the Factors of Enlightenment.

These too parts of the stupa are solid and rest on a considerable foundation to suggest how deeply grounded the Dhamma is reality of our lives. The foundations also contain various offerings as blessings to the ground such as: sand from a beach, a river, a small river, a mountain top and sandal wood. This ‘foundation stone’ was blessed at our opening ceremony in June ’07.

The reliquary at the top suggests both a crown, the fulfilment of our practice and a castle, the stronghold and security of the Paths and Fruits from which we cannot fall back. The turrets symbolise, therefore, Stream-enterer, Once-returner, None-returner and the arahat.

The apron of petals, 24 in all, stand for the Relations of the Abhidhamma and so for the Abhidhamma itself, a later work, but understood to be a clear exposition of the Buddha’s psychology.

Within the glass cage is held a CD with all the scriptures, which of course contains the jewel of the collection, The Discourse on How to Establish Right Mindfulness.

The ‘beehive’ on top has 16 rings, the final one also being a ball, stands for the stages of insight that lead to one of the Paths and Fruits. The top ball also represents Nibbana in this life. The lotus that flowers above to hold a crystal ball is final Nibbana, achieved on the passing of an arahat.

The crystal ball represents a phrase where the Buddha describes the final level of consciousness:

There is a consciousness,
not ‘coloured’ by any of the senses,
without boundary
and in all directions full of light.
Kevadha Sutta DN11

Within this cone relics will be placed, brought from the Mahayangama Cetiya where the Buddha is said to have placed his first footstep on Sri Lanka. In the glass compartment below the cone, a CD with all the scriptures, commentaries and sub-commentaries will be housed.

The cost of the stupa will be about £8000. If you wish to support the building of this stupa, please make that clear when you make you offering.

Many thanks.

The Tuttifrutti Juice of Devotion

I was brought up a Catholic and as boy and young teenager I was into devotion as kids are these days into pop music. All I can say is that it was delicious. I later lost the taste for it as I was drawn to the excitement of young manhood. But the memory remained.

When I restarted my spiritual path in my early twenties, devotion didn’t feature. I was into existentialism and later Zen. Even when I began to practice in the Theravada Tradition, there was little devotion. I bowed and chanted, but more out solidarity than with heart felt meaning. I began to get back into devotional practice through metta, developing loving-kindness. After years of developing the wisdom factor, I began to develop the heart.

Now the heart doesn’t work in words, but in symbols, actions and music. That is spiritual art. And the heart has certain states not peculiar to spiritual life, but pointed in that direction. The devotional heart centres around awe, amazement and wonder; praise, admiration and joy; gratitude and generosity; remorse and dedication. Such emotions we can feel towards pop-stars!

When a young child shows us the portrait he has made of us, we praise it. When someone does well or achieves something worthwhile, we praise it. When Olympic athletes break a record we are full of amazement at their physical prowess. To reflect on the discoveries and inventions of great scientists and works of great artists, is to be filled with awe.

In the same way, to contemplate the enormity of achievement of the Buddha – that there is an end to suffering - is to be filled with awe, amazement, wonder, praise and joy. To contemplate the breath and depth of Dhamma is to be filled with awe, amazement, wonder, praise and joy. To contemplate the achievement of the Disciples of the Buddha who worked through their own struggles to achieve liberation is to be filled with awe, amazement, wonder, praise and joy. To sit with that awe, amazement, wonder, praise and joy in the heart is to adorn our sometimes taxing practice with a garland of the sweetest fruits. How easy, how natural it is to bow.

This is how Janussoni, a Brahmin, expressed his gratitude to the Buddha:

Magnificent, Master Gotama! Magnificent, Master Gotama! Master Gotama has made the Dhamma clear in many ways, as though he were turning upright what had been overthrown, revealing what was hidden, showing the way to one who was lost, or holding up lamp in the dark for those with eyesight to see forms. I go to master Gotama for refuge and to the Dhamma and to the Sangha. From today let Master Gotama remember me as a lay follower who has gone to him for refuge for life.

Further, when we contemplate how we have been affected by the Buddha, the Dhamma he taught, and how indebted we are to those who have continued to refresh the Dhamma by there own striving and attainment, our hearts fill with gratitude. We bow in gratitude. And this very gratitude demands we repay the gift, unrepayable though it is, for it was all given freely. So ‘repay’ we must and this we do by supporting the Dhamma; by behaving according to the Dhamma; by being an exemplary Dhammika. This is what the early followers of Buddhadhamma called themselves, not Buddhists which is a western invention, but Dhammika, Followers of the True Law.

Yet though we try, fail we must. Delusion and the consequent unwholesome qualities engendered hijack us. Then we feel contrite. The feeling of remorse is healing and leads to greater resolution to follow the Path. It brings relief to the heart to apologise to the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha and releases the energy to ‘strive on diligently’.

All this amounts to spiritual love. And if we can develop this love towards the Three jewels, then we can begin to see the Three Jewels in everyone. Herein lies our solidarity with all human beings, indeed all sentient beings.

But devotion needs objects. It needs what T.S.Eliot called an‘objective correlative’. It needs some actual real object that connects the Buddha’s experience to us. Something we can see, hear, touch. Hence, Buddha statues and pictures, temples, Bodhi trees and stupas, chanting and ambulation.

For Satipanya to be complete, I felt it needed to nourish this side of our practice for those so drawn. So, we are going to build a stupa and place a statue of Kwan Yin, the feminine Bodhisattva of compassion on the paddock.

 
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