The Front Lines; Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries by Noah Levine.

Read Part ONE and TWO of Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries here.

THE FRONT LINES

For a real revolution to take place, our spiritual life and practice have to be so much more than just getting our ass on the meditation cushion for a period of time each day

Our sitting meditation is only the formal training period in our spiritual life

Perhaps we dedicate an hour or two to formal meditation each day, but we are still left with another fourteen hours or so. As was covered in the earlier discussion of the eightfold path, our actions, words, and livelihood are all integral aspects of our spiritual practice. Meditation is a requirement and a necessity for spiritual revolutionaries, but we are not meditating merely to become good at meditation. And our intention is not simply to have pleasant spiritual experiences during meditation. We are, as Gandhi put it, attempting to “be the change we wish to see in the world.”

The whole point of spiritual practice is to have a meaningful and fulfilling life of ease and well-being and to utilize our life’s energy to bring about positive change in the world. The practices of generosity, renunciation, compassionate action, and kindness are the external forces of creating that positive change. As spiritual revolutionaries, our intention is not to live our whole life in silence on a meditation cushion; it is to bring the wisdom and compassion that develops in formal spiritual practice into our relationships with each other and into all aspects of our lives. The formal practice period teaches us many valuable things that then get integrated into our life.

That’s why the formal practice of silent investigative present- time awareness is extremely necessary.

The desire to have insight into the impermanent, impersonal, and unsatisfactory nature of things is a noble one. But we must continue to, as the Buddha suggested, “strive forth with diligence.” This is where the rubber hits the road. With the mind fine-tuned through meditative training, we then continue forward in the outer revolution of meeting ignorance with understanding and hatred with compassion. The understanding and compassion that develop through meditation’s natural response result in wise action—action such as taking the practice to the streets, serving the needy, protecting the oppressed, and educating the masses in the universal truths of kindness, generosity, and forgiveness.

Through talking with each other and having community, we see that every one of us is experiencing the same things. At heart, everyone has resistance and attachment. As we saw earlier, this is the Buddha’s first noble truth, that suffering is a truth of human existence. It happens for all of us and there is a cause behind it, which is the craving for things to be different than they are. So the pain in life is a given that we all have to deal with, but by our actions we add extra suffering and dissatisfaction on top of that pain. We see that it is true for everyone.

Stepping off the cushion, out of Buddhist boot camp, and into our lives, we take our enlightened understanding of pain and begin to react with more care, love, and compassion for ourselves and each other. Eventually this comes naturally. It is the heart’s natural expression of our own process of liberation, our own inklings of freedom, our own incipient awakeness. With each moment of caring, compassion, and responding with love to ourselves, there is a natural unfolding or extension of that, which is to be more loving, kind, and compassionate toward others.

Once we have acknowledged how much suffering we’ve experienced in our lives, and once we have clearly seen how much suffering there is in the world, the only rational response is an engaged compassion toward all forms of suffering. As spiritual revolutionaries, we must commit our life’s energy to creating positive change.

We must honor our altruistic intention to not only purify our own heart and mind but to actually bring freedom to this world by responding with care and compassion to the overwhelming ignorance and suffering we feel and see; by directly addressing, through nonviolent actions, the constant destruction of life; by responding with compassionate and generous acts of service to the fear and greed and hatred that pervade the human experience.

The compassionate response of spiritual revolutionaries is both natural and cultivated. It is a natural outcome of our deliberate internal transformation, an intentional choice to use our life’s energy to not only free ourselves from confusion but to help others get free from confusion as well. To respond with friendliness and compassion not only to our own pain, but to that of the world.

Yet for many of us, the needs of the world feel too pressing to wait until a genuine compassionate understanding develops. Perhaps you have already been reacting with anger in an attempt to change the world. Anger is a very understandable and natural reaction to oppression. But anger, which is motivated by fear, is also a source of suffering. If we want to eradicate suffering, it makes sense to start with our own. But we don’t have to wait till we are free from suffering to take positive action in the world. As our meditation practices develop and our perspective transforms, the old anger reaction becomes the new compassionate response. Outwardly, the difference may be minimal, but inwardly, there is a big difference between acting out of anger and acting out of compassion.

My feeling is that service-oriented actions must be an integral part of our gradual transformation. In the Buddhist mythology there are many stories of all of the lifetimes of compassionate acts of service the Buddha engaged in prior to his birth as Sid and his final awakening. In one life he was a generous king; in another a compassionate animal. Sometimes he incarnated in hell realms, sometimes in heaven realms, but his progression from lifetime to lifetime was always motivated by an altruistic intention.

Although different schools of Buddhism have different views on this path of compassionate action, I think all would agree that anyone who is committed to the intention of non-violent alleviation of suffering for all beings is what is referred to as a bodhisattva—that is, someone who is committed to waking up and helping others to wake up (in the Buddhist sense of being free from suffering).

The path of the spiritual revolutionary is the path of the bodhisattva

On this path we have many tools: education, resources, protection from harm, and the ability in inspire spiritual awakening

Mohawk Punk Buddha Statue. Dharma Punx Merch at Against The Stream.

Knowing that we have the ability, on some level or another, to help each other alleviate suffering, we need through our practice to bring that intention into the forefront of all our endeavors in this lifetime. This is done by developing a sincere and altruistic motivation. To this end, bodhisattvas may say something like,

May my life’s energy be of benefit to all beings. May I be of service. I commit my life’s energy to compassionate work.

The Buddha talks about altruistic motivation being a prerequisite to enlightenment in the eightfold path, when addressing our livelihood. Not only do we have to use our livelihood or life’s energy in a way that is non-harming to really get free; we have to take it that extra step and do something positive, helping each other along the way. This does not mean that we have to stop our chosen career and become a social worker or dedicate ourselves to feeding the starving masses, although those are both good options. For many of us, that something extra may be just a shift in attitude and motivation, whatever we are doing, wherever we are in our lives. A shift toward the intention to respond to each person we meet with more caring, more kindness and understanding. A shift toward being more compassionate and wise with our life’s energy.

Although our motivation to help others may be sincere, it is important to acknowledge that it may not always be 100 percent altruistic. There is often a mixed motivation for serving. Sometimes it feels as if we have to serve in order to forgive ourselves for the harm we have caused and the negativity we have created. Such a response could be motivated by guilt, but it could likewise come from a healthy sense of regret and a commitment to karmic purification. At other times we may be motivated to serve out of a desire to look good—to appear altruistic and thereby gain praise.

If we feel a drive to use all of our life’s energy to serve, it is essential that we be clear about our motivation, even (and especially) when it is selfish. Serving feels good. We like the experience of getting out of our self-centered thoughts and feelings by focusing our attention on doing good for others. We gain love and respect from those we help. But we must constantly be reminded that, as the Buddha has been rumored to have said,

We could search the whole world and never find another being more worthy of our love than ourself.

In other words, the truest altruism is to include oneself at all times, making sure that our intention is to serve all beings, not just others.

Once we have found some level of ease and well-being in life, due to our spiritual practice and service, we don’t get to just relax and enjoy it. Knowing that the happiness and freedom we have found in life are very much a part of the fact that we’ve committed to serve all beings with our life’s energy and not expend it in selfish pursuits, we continue on that path as a natural course of action, doing all we can to bring about positive change. After all, the point of the spiritual revolution is not about how much money we can make or how much pleasure we can experience, but about how we can serve the truth of interconnected existence and defy the lies of selfishness and separateness.

The transformation from a selfish spiritual desire (I need to do this for myself) to a more altruistic desire (I dedicate my life’s energy to the benefit of all beings) is a gradual one for most. Yet when that motivation changes, it is natural to have a spontaneous prayer arise that says something like, “May all beings benefit from my life’s energy.” This is the natural response of the awakened heart.

The path to awakening our hearts is through caring, not only about us, but also about each other, about all beings. Our mindfulness meditation practice, our formal and informal training, develops insight into the three characteristics of impermanence, the nature of self, and the way that we create suffering. That wisdom is liberating, but it is only one wing of freedom. The other wing is compassion. For most, some level of wisdom must be developed before true compassion can be uncovered. Then their care, generosity, understanding, and skillful response to suffering are genuine.

These are the two wings of the revolution: wisdom and compassion. Without caring and compassion, all the wisdom in the world is only so much more weight. It takes caring and understanding for a fully awakened heart to soar to freedom.