Stephen: Concluding talk on the theme of the
Stephen: earthly eightfold path. I'm inclining that way now.
Stephen: But before I
Stephen: focus in on this final phase.
Stephen: that of one's voice speech.
Stephen: I'd like to put it into the context of the
Stephen: the the chart here, the cartography of care. So I hope you've brought your copy of it along.
Stephen: If not, well, you'll just have to do it out it it's not too important
Stephen: data.
There you go. You're saying.
Stephen: What can you do? And I don't think there are any spares either.
Stephen: this I call this the cartography of Care, because cartography is a kind of a map
Stephen: map, of course, is not the Territory, but it does provide us with an orientation. It provides us with a sense of where we're going. of what we're going to encounter along the way.
Stephen: and it identifies the key points of
Stephen: reference.
Stephen: as you can see, and we've already looked at this
Stephen: already. I break this down primarily into the 4
Stephen: tasks, and these are these 4 columns. color coded to correspond with the those primary elements of
Stephen: of color element season.
Stephen: and so on.
Stephen: But at the heart of it lies
Stephen: the column, the thickest
Stephen: Horizontal column at the bottom, which is labeled The 32 Virtues and skills.
Stephen: And that's why I'm just going to briefly
Stephen: go through that and see how these virtues and skills correlate with each of the 4 tasks.
Stephen: Now, this correlation. The identifying of the
Stephen: particular virtues and skills to the particular tasks or or paths is not found in the Pali tradition.
Stephen: It has survived in the Mahayana traditions that went to Tibet through an Indian North Indian school called the Sevastavada.
Stephen: not
Stephen: the the schools that developed in Sri Lanka, and then went into Southeast Asia.
Stephen: So
Stephen: the first task is to
Stephen: embrace
Stephen: suffering, to embrace life.
Stephen: One of the burning questions someone put in the box asked about this term embrace. So I'll say a little bit about that.
Stephen: The word impali is parina. which literally means something like comprehend. literally fully know something.
Stephen: But the word puri means around
Stephen: like a Parikrma means a circumambulation
Stephen: route that goes round a mountain or a monastery.
Stephen: So it's a kind of knowing that is also something that is encompassing. The Tibetans translate it as Yong Sousheba. which means to know something in its entirety
Stephen: completely.
Stephen: There is a definition the Buddha gave of what it means to embrace or to comprehend, or to know something completely.
Stephen: And in this text
Stephen: he's he's, he asked himself. What is it to know? Fully to embrace.
Stephen: and he says.
Stephen: to be without greed, to be without hatred, to be without
Stephen: opinions or confusion.
Stephen: which strikes one as a bit odd.
Stephen: because that's exactly the same definition he gives to Nirvana exactly the same definition he gives to what is unconditioned.
Stephen: and exactly the same definition he gives for the deathless.
Stephen: So I understand by that that this embrace
Stephen: is somehow Nirvanic.
Stephen: This is a comprehension, and embrace an engagement with life, with suffering that is not inflected
Stephen: by our attachments, greed.
Stephen: desire. hatred. fear. pre-formed opinions, to which were attached confusions, misperceptions, and so on.
Stephen: So to embrace life is in a way to do so from a non reactive space. And this points, I think, to something rather important. It shows that
Stephen: already
Stephen: the third task, seeing reactivity stop, is implicit. In the first.
Stephen: there's already a taste
Stephen: of that non-reactivity in the very notion of
Stephen: embracing life.
Stephen: When this is converted into a path, it's called the path of formation. This is the the phase of the practice in which you anywhere begin to form yourself.
Stephen: Cultivate yourself, create yourself! Was that dimension to it as well. and it begins with the 4 foundations of mindfulness
Stephen: which I understand to be
Stephen: the existential dimension of mindfulness.
Stephen: mindfulness that takes into account the sheer fact of our being alive, and we know that through
Stephen: our body. in the first instance. the sensations in our body. the pumping of our heart. the firing of the neurons in our brain.
Stephen: and that then extends into what we call feeling or feeling tone.
Stephen: that this body is not just something.
Stephen: There's a set of of neutral facts.
Stephen: It always feels a certain way. Our experience of the world impacts us in such such a way that is agreeable, disagreeable.
Stephen: or neither one or the other. Somewhere along a spectrum
Stephen: between agony
Stephen: and ecstasy. So to be mindful of
Stephen: how we feel.
Stephen: not just of the sensations or the fact of being embodied.
Stephen: and that
Stephen: in turn leads us to be aware and conscious of our
Stephen: our state of mind.
Stephen: But again, the word mind that I've I've rendered here, as mind is once again cheetah
Stephen: and cheetah. I would prefer in a way to translate as soul. so to be mindful. not just of your mental states, which sounds a bit analytic.
Stephen: but rather to be deeply aware
Stephen: of the movements within the depths of you.
Stephen: the movements within your heart.
Stephen: And when you look at the way it's presented. It's about recognizing what is rising up and moving you to respond to react.
Stephen: It's not just about mental states in that sense. We need to see this as an embodied. soulful consciousness.
Stephen: and then also to be aware of your ideas and thoughts which are not just, your random ideas and thoughts that pop into your mind.
Stephen: but particularly to pay attention to these clusters of virtue, to be aware of
Stephen: the 5 hindrances, the 7 factors of awakening
Stephen: the eightfold path, to to hold in mind, to bear in mind.
Stephen: not to notice, as they happen as you would a feeling or a sensation, but to bear in mind your values
Stephen: to bear in mind the dharma as a teaching. as as a way of life.
Stephen: This is the first step in this process of formation, which then
Stephen: is followed by the making of a resolve. Pardon.
Stephen: In other words, we don't just pay attention to what's going on, or what we value, but that serves as the foundation for what we commit ourselves to do in the world.
Stephen: to create the conditions
Stephen: for the good to come about, to create the conditions that will prevent what is destructive and negative
Stephen: from happening
Stephen: both inwardly and outwardly, as we saw
Stephen: already in the practice of application.
Stephen: And those resolves,
Stephen: set the tone or set the direction of our life the broad vision of what it is we aspire to do in the world. but that alone is not enough. It requires
Stephen: the capacity to
Stephen: be creative. So we now have the 4 steps of
Stephen: creativity to be to be clear about what we aspire for
Stephen: to have the courage, the perseverance, to pursue those goals
Stephen: once again to come back into touch with our intuition. Here I've mentioned
Stephen: which again, once again is the word cheetah
Stephen: soul.
Stephen: If you like these heartfelt yearnings.
Stephen: he's heartfelt
Stephen: sense of being alive
Stephen: and tapping into that
Stephen: intuitive resource as a way to to come up with new ideas, new possibilities
Stephen: that we then try out through experimentation
the fourth step.
Stephen: And now we move into the second of these 4 tasks which, as a path.
Stephen: is called the path of unification.
Stephen: in which we recognize that
Stephen: the task of letting reactivity be. which is what is primary in this phase of practice requires that we bring our
Stephen: energies, as it were.
Stephen: into unison, into harmony with one another.
Stephen: because, although we have a clearer sense of our existential condition. Through our mindfulness we have resolved ourselves to create certain conditions in our
Stephen: self and in the world in which we've engaged our creativity. To do that.
Stephen: we find that there are many patterns of our
Stephen: in a life patents
Stephen: in the structures of our world that hinder and impede
Stephen: those longings.
Stephen: classically. greed, hatred, delusion.
Stephen: these kind of reactive patterns get in the way they block that process. They keep us stuck frustrated.
Stephen: So the second path that, letting that reactivity be is a path in which
Stephen: we seek to unify and harmonize ourselves in a way that allows us to
Stephen: fulfill what we have resolved. and to free up. And this is crucial. our creative energy. our capacity to imagine
Stephen: new ways of doing things of living on earth.
Stephen: And this I would call characterized by a mindfulness that is not so much existential but therapeutic.
Stephen: And it's the kind of mindfulness used in this context that's become the mindfulness we find in Mbsr. And Nbct. And elsewhere. It's mindfulness is therapy.
Stephen: And so, although mindfulness in my list is Number 3,
Stephen: in the course of the last few days I've elevated it to Number one.
Stephen: So all of the 4 columns start with mindfulness. Mindfulness, by the way, is the only virtue and skill
Stephen: that occurs in all 4 tasks which again points to its centrality.
Stephen: So therapeutic mindfulness is learning how to heal, as it were, these these patterns of thinking, of feeling, of emoting, of belief and attachment that get in the way of allowing us to flourish.
Stephen: allowing our communities to flourish.
Stephen: So in that sense
Stephen: they're called powers
Stephen: or strengths in the traditional language.
Stephen: and there are 5 of them, the 5 Powers, the 5 strengths which the Buddha.
Stephen: when he compares to the 5 strings of a lute or a guitar, a stringed instrument of vener
Stephen: and He talks of how our practice needs to be like a well-tuned musical instrument, the guitar.
Stephen: and he gives us the instance of that. The 5
Stephen: these 5 qualities. So it's about harmonizing.
Stephen: bringing getting ourselves in tune.
Stephen: as it were. through mindfulness in the first instance. which is mindfulness of reactivity as it arises, and letting it be.
Stephen: it's courage.
Stephen: Sorry the next one. It's it's confidence or faith.
Stephen: And again, I think we can read that
Stephen: through the whole spectrum from just basic self-confidence. You know, I can do this to faith in a quasi or even
Stephen: completely religious.
Stephen: feel what a recognition of what we're ultimately concerned about in our lives, and having the the trust and the confidence that this is
Stephen: a way of being
Stephen: that I can follow through. And as Winton was talking about, we can understand this just as well within a
Stephen: secular context, a secular faith
Stephen: to have trust and faith and love.
what will break down, what is finite.
Stephen: what will change? What will in a sense fail us
Stephen: to place our faith in that. rather than in something eternal.
Stephen: Courage, appears again
Stephen: collectedness, samadhi. meditation. and then discernment.
Stephen: The capacity to differentiate the capacity to, in a sense, be more probing, acute in our awareness, in our consciousness, often translated as wisdom.
Stephen: Hanya.
Stephen: But Panya here doesn't mean so much wisdom, which is really the result of these practices rather than as the capacity to finally discriminate and judge
Stephen: power of judgment. Really. in this context, to see more clearly what is going on. to be able to analyze, to understand more vividly, with greater clarity because of
Stephen: of focus, collectiveness, courage.
Stephen: confidence. and mindfulness.
Stephen: And that second task. this process of unification
Stephen: of harmonisation then provides the condition
Stephen: where we can enter what is called the path of vision. or the path of seeing.
Stephen: in which we see the stopping of reactivity, which is the third task.
Stephen: And here
Stephen: again it starts with mindfulness, but mindfulness. I think we should understand, not so much as an existential mindfulness or a therapeutic mindfulness.
Stephen: but a contemplative mindfulness to be mindful of this non reactive state.
Possibility
Stephen: within us. And again, as I mentioned, I think before. to be aware and mindful of reactivity is already Nirvanic. The mindfulness itself is already not reactive.
Stephen: It's a non-reactive state of mind. So even if our mind is churning with all kinds of
Stephen: difficult emotions and worries, and so on. You can be aware of that.
Stephen: You can be aware in a contemplative way you can be at peace with your own turmoil.
Stephen: That I feel is one of the great gifts of this practice. It
Stephen: it doesn't have. You don't have to get rid of this stuff, in fact, that probably is impossible.
Stephen: but you can be at peace with it.
Stephen: You can relate to it in a profoundly different way, and the guided meditation I offered a couple of days ago was effectively guiding us through these 7 facets of
Stephen: of being awake.
Stephen: Wakefulness or awakening. so mindfulness.
Stephen: wonder, courage, joy.
Stephen: stillness, collectiveness.
Stephen: equanimacy.
Stephen: and.
Stephen: as you may remember, I reversed the process. We started with mindfulness, and then we connected with the non-reactive
Stephen: cushion on which we were sitting.
Stephen: where we found equanimity, and then we rose to collectiveness, stillness, joy in the heart.
Stephen: courage in the throat.
Stephen: speech. and then wonder.
Stephen: The center of our brain.
Stephen: and that is really the contemplative
Stephen: core of Dharma. Practice is what one might consider to be the vertical dimension of the path. the dimension of depth
Stephen: as opposed to the dimension of breath.
Stephen: It's the point at which we drop down and ground ourselves. It's it's the turning point. really. from a life
Stephen: driven to a large degree by habit and reaction.
Stephen: conditioning to a life in which we find a grounding in ourselves from which new possibilities
Stephen: can emerge
Stephen: as a path.
Stephen: and that's where we get to where we are on this course a the eightfold par. So the Afol path. therefore. does not lead to
Stephen: Nirvana
non reactivity.
Stephen: It so it it is. It comes from this Nirvanic contemplative space, this vertical dimension of our lives
Stephen: in the Sevastavada tradition, in the, in, the, in the terminology of the 4 Paths. It is the path of cultivation which is exactly how the Buddha described it.
Stephen: In the first discourse. The noble eightfold path is to be cultivated
Stephen: is to be brought into being, and to that extent the mindfulness that that grounds it
Stephen: is ethical. It's an ethical mindfulness. It's an awareness of of what our values are. It's an awareness of our perspective on life.
Stephen: It's an awareness of what we wish to realize for ourselves, for others.
Stephen: It has to do with the kind of world we wish to bring into being.
Stephen: So we've already looked briefly at mindfulness which, as you'll remember in my handout. is far more than just mind-body
Stephen: feelings, and so on, but extends to our awareness of the kind of beings we are in the kind of world we inhabit in so talented.
Stephen: And then we go through collectiveness, which again is the third
Stephen: task.
Stephen: And then we looked at perspective which brings us back in a way to all 4 tasks.
Stephen: Then we looked at imagination.
Stephen: which leads us to the threshold of action.
Stephen: and we then considered application.
Stephen: How we realize these values in the specific context of the world.
Stephen: Starting with our own inner life. this ethics of consciousness, this capacity, we have to change ourselves.
Stephen: to transform our own inner behaviors, to become more conscious of our psychology.
Stephen: and that then leads us to
Stephen: what we do. what we say in the world. We've looked now at survival what we do in order to survive to maintain our existence.
Stephen: and particularly with the idea of of how we can
Stephen: find a way of
Stephen: leading a more simple life through an understanding of what really are our fundamental needs
Stephen: as opposed to our non
Stephen: necessary desires and longings. How can we ground ourselves
Stephen: in a way of life that meets our needs, but is not a slave to our desires and our wants?
Stephen: And yesterday we took that further into the idea of work.
Stephen: and how work
Stephen: following Hannah Arendt is all of those things we do to create the kind of
Stephen: civilizations and cultures.
Stephen: cities, systems of transport, whatever it might be, healthcare justice, and so on. The the human artifice
Stephen: that we build over generations that withstands the
Stephen: natural empathy! It's not not empathy, entropy of life itself. How things are always
Stephen: in palm. fading away, breaking down civilizations or
Stephen: cultures seek to
Stephen: build something relatively permanent
Stephen: within this world of change. And that's what Iran calls the world, basically.
Stephen: But now today. in conclusion, we reached the eighth
Stephen: of these,
Stephen: we reached the eighth.
Stephen: and although it's the final step
Stephen: in this particular configuration, that's remember something that
Stephen: I've configured, because I feel it to be more
Stephen: in tune with the kind of situation we find ourselves now.
Stephen: but it's no more, but it's just another configuration that may be more or less appropriate.
Stephen: But when we get to voice.
Stephen: we enter into another kind of action. A rent calls it simply action.
Stephen: which she differentiates between
Stephen: what we, the the labor that we need to do in order basically just to survive, to have the necessities of life
Stephen: as well as the work we do with our hands and our brains that construct and maintain and develop
Stephen: the different institutions and homes and buildings, and so forth, that constitute the human world.
Stephen: I'll just read what she says in order to be a home
Stephen: for men and women during their life on earth.
Stephen: The human artifice must be a place fit for action and speech.
Stephen: for activities that are not only entirely useless
Stephen: for the necessities of life, labor, survival.
Stephen: but of an entirely different nature
Stephen: from the manifold activities of fabrication
Stephen: by which the world itself. and all things in it are produced.
Stephen: So again, her text is a little bit dense. But the main point
Stephen: is that there's another kind of action, another kind of doing which for her.
Stephen: I think also. the Buddha
Stephen: is about how we give voice, how we speak, how we say, what matters and how we do things that
Stephen: engage us in conversations with other human beings. About how we should live on this earth.
Stephen: how we should live in this world that we have created.
Stephen: How can we best survive on this planet? That's the primary role
Stephen: of a
Stephen: action or hear voice.
Stephen: It's quite different from labor. It's completely different also from all of the work we do to create and sustain the world.
Stephen: It's of another order of activity.
Stephen: So both in the Greek and in the Buddhist traditions
Stephen: voice or speech
Stephen: comes as what defines us as human.
Stephen: For Aristotle. the human being was the
Stephen: zoon Logon, Econ, the being who has Logos, the being who thinks and speaks.
Stephen: That's what distinguishes the human from from
Stephen: in Aristotelian terms.
Stephen: from the non-human
Stephen: forms of life on earth.
Stephen: And we also find a definition that I learned when I was a Tibetan Buddhist monk.
Stephen: Of the human being is defined as mache dung.
Stephen: In Tibetan. Marci means knows how to speak, and dong gore.
Stephen: and knows how to understand meanings.
Stephen: the being who speaks and understands meanings.
Stephen: So once in both cases it's speech that defines us. So I think it's even on that basis worth considering. Speech
Stephen: as that which enables us to be fully human.
Stephen: and therefore to present voice as the culmination of the eightfold
Stephen: pass.
Stephen: but we can be fully
Stephen: capable of thinking and speaking and understanding meanings without actually ever finding our own voice.
Stephen: Remember the
Stephen: eightfold path. When you enter the eightfold path, according to the Pali text. you become someone who is independent of others
Stephen: in your practice.
Stephen: Someone who, therefore. is no longer determined in what you do by systems of morality
Stephen: rules
Stephen: is no longer determined by simply following the inco. You know the imprinted voices in your own mind the voices of your political, cultural, and religious
Stephen: leaders. For example, your parents, your spouses, your bosses.
Stephen: So again, reactivity is not just about psychological events. It's also about internalized voices
Stephen: that pop up. You can't do that.
Stephen: You might hear someone say in your mind.
Stephen: and Who's that person? Well, it might be your father. It might be the schoolteacher. It might be the local priest.
Stephen: so it doesn't mean that you suppress or reject these voices. They might be saying something rather important and worthwhile. But you don't have to be somehow.
Stephen: you know, driven and conditioned by them, and somehow unable to break free from their authority.
Stephen: So to the extent to which we live. Our lives, according to the injunctions of others, were not really free. and our lives, therefore, are not really our own.
Stephen: So to own our lives
Stephen: means that we need the courage to speak out.
Stephen: to make statements through words and deeds
in the public space that lies between human beings.
Stephen: The realm of speech is the in-between
Stephen: between you and me. the polis
Stephen: in ancient Greece, Greece, in Athens.
Stephen: where people would meet to discuss how to live
Stephen: in the city. And for Irant. She says that
Stephen: hmm.
Stephen: With word and deed
Stephen: we insert, insert ourselves into the human world.
Stephen: and this insertion, she says, is like a second birth.
Stephen: In other words, we are reborn.
Stephen: Again this idea
Stephen: echoes the idea of the hatching of eggs.
Stephen: these 32 skills and virtues
Stephen: exactly what the Buddha names as that which we have to cultivate
Stephen: bring into being, and to do so in the manner of a hen with her eggs. So the the 4 mindfulness is the 4 resolves, the 4 steps of creativity, the 5 powers, the 7 facets of awakening in the eightfold path
Stephen: are basically each of them like a cluster of eggs.
Stephen: And
Stephen: the egg is a powerful image of
Stephen: birth.
bringing into being a new life.
Stephen: And this gets picked up in Mahayana Buddhism with the idea of the to target a garba
Stephen: to to target a
Stephen: is a word the Buddha uses about himself. But really it's it means something like the one who is just so. The true person
Stephen: we find in Chinese thought very close to this idea, the true person, the the authentic self.
Stephen: and the tatagata garba is the womb
Stephen: or the egg.
Stephen: The word means both in in Sanskrit and Pali.
Stephen: that gives birth to an authentic self, a true person.
Stephen: the one who is just so, who's not pretending, who's not somehow
Stephen: dissembling. but is
Stephen: truly their own person.
Stephen: I'm going to give you an example. And again, some of you have probably read this in the handout
Stephen: to illustrate what it means to find your voice and become your
Stephen: become a true person.
Stephen: a person who's no longer
Stephen: just working to maintain the necessities of life, to survive, who's no longer just working in order to build a Maintainer.
Stephen: you know, an institution or a world in that sense.
Stephen: but a person whose life has moved into speech
Stephen: and into action. And this is the example of Rosa Parks.
Stephen: who in December, 1955. In fact, there was an article in the BBC. The other day on that December first, which was the day she did. It
Stephen: is she refused the order of a bus driver to vacate her seat to allow a white passenger to take her.
Stephen: and this simple act of disobedience
Stephen: became a key point in the Civil rights movement in the United States.
Stephen: But Rosa Parks
Stephen: didn't. She didn't. So all she said was, I don't think I should stand up.
Stephen: And she didn't do anything. She just sat there.
Stephen: And this is the power of of this kind of action
Stephen: in a way, although she said very little, she found her voice.
Stephen: and although she did very little, she acted in a way that had massive
Stephen: repercussions.
Stephen: she was arrested
Stephen: necessarily because she broke the law in Alabama.
Stephen: And he wasn't the first black person to do that. Others had also refused to move and got arrested and then fined.
Stephen: But for some reason her act occurred at the
Stephen: just the right moment.
Stephen: It was the moment when the Civil rights movement was really building up.
Stephen: you know, becoming a powerful force, and it was the moment when a young minister called Martin Luther King
Stephen: was rising to prominence.
Stephen: and this triggered what became known as the the Mont, the Montgomery Bus. By but Bus Boycott.
Stephen: The black people of Montgomery, refused to use the buses.
Stephen: They walked for miles to their work instead.
Stephen: and that became a cause celebrant
Stephen: in the United States, and
Stephen: brought Martin Luther King to prominence.
Stephen: led to.
Stephen: you know, the abandoning of those Jim Crow laws in the South.
Stephen: and this was done because one woman said.
Stephen: I don't think I should stand up. Just sat there
Stephen: now. Of course there are echoes of this with civil disobedience. In other
Stephen: context, one thinks obviously a Gandhi in India and his, you know.
Stephen: refusal to eat until the fighting between Muslims and
Stephen: Hindus after partition came to a stop.
Stephen: And I think it's also something we can learn from in how we deal with our current.
Crisis of
Stephen: climate change. social inequality, and so on. That doesn't mean we just. you know, we we don't get up from sitting on a bus seat.
Stephen: but we need our imagination to come up with what would be the equivalent
Stephen: in this situation? Do we have the imagination to to do that?
Stephen: Some of these extinction rebellion activities have been groups of people sitting meditating on Westminster Bridge in London and blocking the traffic
Stephen: the oil anti oil groups in England, too, just sat down on the motorways.
Stephen: So Rosa Parks, largely silent act was a statement of principle for which she was prepared to suffer. It didn't make her life any easier. She was fired from a job. She had to leave Montgomery
Stephen: to live elsewhere.
Stephen: but what she said afterwards, in recollecting that moment, she said. I felt a determination cover my body
Stephen: like a quilt on a winter's night.
Stephen: It's a beautiful way of framing. you know her courage essentially.
Stephen: and of course we find greater Tunburg in our time. you know, refusing to go to school. They're not doing anything. just stopping and not going to school.
Stephen: so that again, I think, is an example of what might inspire us to
stop
Stephen: doing something. Stop
Stephen: investing in.
Stephen: you know.
Stephen: in in companies that support fossil fuels, whatever it might be.
Stephen: So by taking this kind of stand. these these people, these women, in this case.
Stephen: enabled their lives to be told as stories
Stephen: they revealed who they were. Their lives became a kind of praxis
Stephen: there were. Their activities were no longer reducible to what they did in terms of their labor or their work.
Stephen: but they're elements. Their actions became
Stephen: elements of a biography against which others could consciously or unconsciously measure
Stephen: themselves.
Stephen: So to find your voice, in a way.
Stephen: might be called
Stephen: to find how to become a practicing human.
Stephen: Your life itself, your your human being.
Stephen: becomes a practice, and I think we use this word. This is a phrase from a German philosopher whose name I momentarily forgot.
Stephen: But
Stephen: I think this is, you know, we use the word practice dharma practice. But in a sense that practice is about learning how to make our lives a practice, our life
practice
Stephen: so that it becomes an inspiration. It can be read as a story
Stephen: that may go on to be an example to others long after you're gone.
Stephen: Hannah Arendt herself was an activist in her way.
Stephen: constantly working on issues of injustice.
Stephen: and so forth, and her life stands out to me
Stephen: as a very powerful a story that continues to
Stephen: in a way, give a voice to those who don't have a voice who have not yet found their voice.
Stephen: but finding a voice.
Stephen: is not just about speaking. It's not about saying something or doing something. It's also about
Stephen: learning how to listen.
Stephen: learning how to hear others. It's not just a one-way process.
Stephen: I think there's just as much
Stephen: a necessity
Stephen: for us to be able to open our ears and not just literally
Stephen: to hear more clearly the sound waves that impact us.
Stephen: but to somehow be more open to hear
Stephen: the cries of the war.
Stephen: The Bodhisattva. Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion in Chinese is called Guanyin. which means the one who hears the sound.
Stephen: In other words, it's a hearing of the heart.
Stephen: not a hearing
Stephen: of the ears. It's to be sensitive to be open to
Stephen: the you know, the suffering of the world of which we are a part.
Stephen: The ethical philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas.
Stephen: another student of Heidegger, like I rent
Stephen: has, you know, is well known for his
Stephen: idea that ethics
Stephen: has its beginnings in our capacity
Stephen: to hear the injunction, the silent injunction
Stephen: that is present in the face
Stephen: of the other.
Stephen: specifically other persons. humans. But of course, we can also see this in other forms of life. Animal life. My cat, for example. and for loving us
Stephen: before any words are spoken. The face, when you look another person in the eyes.
Stephen: whether it's a friend or a stranger.
Stephen: or even someone you don't like. There is the injunction.
Stephen: the pleading, almost do not kill me. Do not hurt me.
Stephen: and to to sensitize oneself to this call. as he calls it.
Stephen: is
Stephen: is the very foundation of awakening that ethical responsiveness
Stephen: to heed that call nowadays. you know, we might actually again. We. you know, can we hear the call of the of the environment. of the ecosystem
Stephen: of the planet?
Stephen: Metaphorically. when you see and witness destruction and depredation and pollution. There's something being despoiled.
Stephen: the very
Stephen: environment that enables us to live.
Stephen: and is from hearing this call that
Stephen: one can be moved to respond.
Stephen: So the kind of aware, you know, what is driving hopefully, the response to the climate crisis is also
Stephen: a deeper sensibility to to hear
Stephen: what's going on.
Stephen: and that requires, I do feel, a certain level of contemplative depth.
Stephen: and this, I feel, is what the dharma
Stephen: can bring to this whole movement.
Stephen: But, in fact, it is
Stephen: many of the people involved in it. Ex extinction, rebellion, for example, are Buddhists. secular Buddhists, some of them, perhaps.
Stephen: but nonetheless, those who have
Stephen: in a way come to this movement
Stephen: out of their contemplative experiences.
Stephen: Another dimension of
Stephen: finding your own voice
Stephen: is a through the making and understanding of art.
Stephen: so to become a writer. For example. as in my case.
Stephen: in order to to find your own voice, you need to differentiate what you're saying
Stephen: from the voices of those other writers and speakers that you admire.
Stephen: and a lot of art, whether it's visual art or music
Stephen: or writing. When you embark on that
Stephen: process. Initially, you find what you're doing is
Stephen: kind of version of what you admire
Stephen: in other people's work. It's derivative in that sense.
Stephen: Harold Bloom, the American pretty. Talked about the anxiety of influence. how, when you make a sculpture, or write a piece of music, or write a poem.
Stephen: the worry that what you're doing is basically doing a sort of imitation, or a copy of
Stephen: your favourite poet or artist, or whatever. And that's a phrase phase you inevitably have to go through.
Stephen: Because you're part of a tradition. You'll never escape that. And my own struggle to be a writer.
Stephen: and to some extent an artist has been to has been to work through those inspirations, you know, valuing them and acknowledging them, but mainly
Stephen: acknowledging them
Stephen: as exemplars of people who found their own voice.
Stephen: So in some sense you have to leave them behind.
Stephen: And that's a huge challenge. It's not easy. You can't do it by any kind of
Stephen: technical procedure.
Stephen: and
Stephen: it's only when a piece of writing or a piece of art has broken free
Stephen: from the influences that gave rise to it.
Stephen: as well, as I think, also the intentions of the artist who made it.
Stephen: Does that work of art
Stephen: have the capacity to speak to generations of human beings long after the artist has been forgotten.
Stephen: I think of again of the paintings at of Lascale and some of the ancient cave.
Stephen: you know, cliff paintings of the aboriginal peoples, the native Americans, and so on. These works still speak. They're still
Stephen: embodying a voice
Stephen: from the past that still addresses and moves us. Today.
Stephen: So in many ways, although works of art are fabricated by human hands, just as bicycles and computers.
Stephen: the artwork transcends the the the mere utility of objects. Art, in a way, is work at play.
Stephen: Art works are basically useless. And you can't do anything with a painting
Stephen: like you can with a bicycle or a computer. It has no purpose in that sense.
Stephen: and yet we value it. And in fact, we value probably in all human cultures. works of art even though they're useless. they serve no purpose
Stephen: that their sole justification is themselves. They simply invite
Stephen: contemplation. reflection
Stephen: that, of course, is true with with visual arts.
Stephen: with sculpture, with literature, and so on.
Stephen: But there are other arts that don't have that kind of poems. and particularly these would be the performing arts. music. dance.
Stephen: theatre.
Stephen: and, unlike books and paintings.
Stephen: all that survive of them physically are are scripts and scores.
Stephen: and each
Stephen: time they're performed they are interpreted anew.
Stephen: and it's for this reason that there is a fluidity.
Stephen: that allows endless variations in interpretation.
Stephen: That vanishes as soon as that particular performance is over.
Stephen: Cinema actually is a kind of in between the 2. It's got relative permanence. It's not like a theatre piece. It's fixed.
Stephen: and
Stephen: it's perhaps for this reason
Stephen: that in a drama.
Stephen: in a play, in the performance of a piece of music
Stephen: you're somehow shown a story.
Stephen: particularly in theatre
Stephen: about people who have lived imaginary people or
Stephen: historical figures. and this somehow stands out as
Stephen: a performance that in can come to mirror
Stephen: and serve an example, for our own performance. I think these Greek plays that
Stephen: Winton was speaking about are not only showing the audience
Stephen: a story about Oedipus, for example.
Stephen: from which they can learn something profound about the human condition. But they're also somehow
Stephen: pointing to the fact that our own life
Stephen: is a performance or can be a performance on the stage of the world.
Stephen: the stage of the city, the community
Stephen: that what we do, what we say, how we present ourselves, how we are
Stephen: in a show
Stephen: who we are. We are actually performing.
Stephen: We're being seen, we're being heard. And so our practice of finding our voice.
Stephen: It's not just about what we say in words. It's what we say through how we appear in the world.
Stephen: And it's at this point that you can understand how voice and action and performance, all kind of come down to the same thing.
Stephen: For Hannah Arendt
Stephen: Theatre is the political art par excellence.
Stephen: but it's in theatre
Stephen: that the political sphere of life is transposed into art.
Stephen: and once your voice, and once your life becomes a practice, you again exit effectively, are exhibiting your own story, and however humble or modest that might be.
Stephen: one shouldn't get grandiose ideas about being a performer on the stage of the world
like some famous person.
Stephen: But even in the most humble and intimate settings.
Stephen: to recognize that
Stephen: you are there for someone who is showing what you value
Stephen: most deeply, and you are also aware in how you fail to do that. how you blow it.
how you screw up. how you make a fool of yourself.
Stephen: So I think, culminating this eightfold path. In this way
Stephen: in a sense. recognizes how
Stephen: our live. in a sense, can become a political act in a very small scale. or in a very
Stephen: large scale.
Stephen: The the same processes I feel are going on
Stephen: because you strive, as it were, to emulate through your words and your deeds
Stephen: the kind of person you aspire to be.
Stephen: You want to be the best possible version of yourself when you're engaging with others.
Stephen: particularly, you know, in so in all social, so in all social situations, and you also strive through your words and your deeds to participate in building the kind of world
Stephen: you long for all beings to inhabit.
Stephen: It's not just about personal virtues, but it's also through your example and through what you value and through what you support in your activities.
Stephen: You're also suggesting
Stephen: a kind of world
can think that through in different ways.
Stephen: But that, I think, is again taking charge of your life.
Stephen: And
Stephen: you know, exhibiting yourself in the world. or, as we've been saying
Stephen: already. this is how
Stephen: you become a good ancestor.
Stephen: so I'll stop here. We'll have a 5 min. Break and come back
Stephen: at about 8 min or 7 min before the hours.
Stephen: And remember also at 110'clock at the end of the tea break.
Stephen: We're going to have a meeting in here for those who would like to explore the question of
Stephen: Sangha.
Stephen: again, we do have to finish fairly punctually, because
Stephen: there's another meeting here at 11.
Stephen: So who would like to respond? Go on
Stephen: her microphone.
Stephen: Everything that we've been talking about through the week. and there's something I would invite your reflection on if you wish, and have something to say. You talk about
Stephen: becoming the person that we want to be. But there's also becoming the person that we are.
Stephen: and
Stephen: they're subtly interrelated and subtly different, and can get in the way of each other. And the thing that exemplifies it for me is the story in the the books, then in the art of archery.
Stephen: Eugen Herigal, who's a Swiss philosopher living in Japan in the 1930 S. Studies Japanese archery with a great master, and he cannot pull the bow because it is too difficult
Stephen: and he tries and he tries, and he tries, and one day he goes home and he does it in front of the mirror, and he says, I see what I need to do. He adjusts what he does, goes back the next day and shows the master who bows and says end of lesson, and he assumes it's because he succeeded he gets a little note saying, Don't come back and see me again.
Stephen: because you cheated.
Stephen: and there's something about having taken the external route rather than the internal route
Stephen: to discover
Stephen: how it is that he drew his bow. Not how one draws one's bow, and I wonder if you've got any comment about the interplay between
Stephen: discovering who you are and finding your own voice and discovering the person and becoming the person you want to be.
Stephen: Well.
Stephen: there's a text I was going to look at by Nagarjuna that in touches on this point.
Stephen: nagarja says
Stephen: If the self, if if I were my 5 aggregates, my body and mine, then I would come and go like them. He says, I would be as as ephemeral and transient as they are.
Stephen: the implication being that I'm not as ephemeral and transient as they are. But Buddhists are so committed to the dogma of impermanence that they insist that the self must be in permanent. But the Guardian is saying, actually.
Stephen: the self is something constant.
Stephen: The self doesn't come and go. The sense I have of being me, Stephen
Stephen: is. I'm completely convinced that the little boy who used to play with his train set
Stephen: 60 years ago exactly the same person who's speaking to you now. and I don't think that's a I don't think that's a complete fiction, and it's true.
Stephen: from my point of view, at least, it may be
Stephen: epistemologically incorrect that that's not the point. In other words, there is a sense we have of
Stephen: who we are. That remains pretty much constant.
Stephen: And so when you say, as we've been saying, to aspire to become the person you
Stephen: want to be.
Stephen: you'll always be the person you are
Stephen: in that sense you could never get out of that. You're not going to go, and it's not suddenly going to become another person like
Stephen: Peter or Winter.
Stephen: You'll always be here.
Stephen: And so there's there's a kind of paradox
Stephen: involved here.
Stephen: about
Stephen: becoming the aspiring to be the person you want to be, while also that always being you.
Stephen: And so it's not so much that the person that changes. But it's what the person says and does that changes what we have control over.
Stephen: Are the words that come out of our mouth, the actions that
Stephen: expressed by our body. the things that we do, the ways we impact other people. So in some ways
Stephen: it's still the same you that is doing all of those things.
Stephen: You're not becoming another person. But you are exemplifying, or let's say you are optimizing.
Stephen: manifesting
Stephen: those qualities that you've always, perhaps at some level, sought to realize in your life.
Stephen: if if I may, I
Stephen: meant more that there is a task of discovering who you are, and there is a task of discovering. Oh, I see, inspiring what you aspire to, and the person may find themselves in a new position or situation. We say she's finally discovered herself.
Stephen: She moves in a different way. She relates in a different way to look in her eyes is different.
Stephen: Yeah, well, that would be in a way, I think you know, finding yourself find becoming
Stephen: the person you are. That's no longer in, as it were, clouded and hidden by all of the voices that are coming from somewhere else. You've broken free in a way
Stephen: from what has obscured
Stephen: your own unique potential, as it were, because of your being in thrall to the authorities and powers that
Stephen: have governed your life up to that point.
Stephen: So that is that, yeah, I agree. I think that is a moment at which you
Stephen: find yourself in a way. But I do find all of this language around self, incredibly slippery.
Stephen: and paradoxical in many ways. But yeah, I agree with you. I think that is certainly a perfectly
Stephen: adequate way of expressing that
Stephen: we've got Lena online, followed by Die, and then Bernard
Stephen: Lena! Hi!
Lena: Hi, Steven!
Lena: And thank you for this week. So I would like to expand a bit on greater 2 Berg.
Lena: because I think her story is such an inspiring example and almost an embodiment of the talks and the work we have done this week
Lena: on ourselves. How she found her voice because,
Lena: At 13, when she was around 13, she was severely depressed about the climate overwhelmed
Lena: and
Lena: She was bullied at school, and she she became mute.
Lena: She didn't talk at all.
Lena: She virtually only talked to her parents, her sister and one teacher at school.
Lena: And I'm just thinking that it is.
Lena: and easy to to sort of O also the
Lena: diminish and the impact of the young people, in a sense, just because they are are young, whereas I think that that is the very point of her impact.
Lena: And I see her almost like my T. Check as well. We can learn from her, I think, just as much as our past heroes. They're important, but even
Lena: a young person to day is very important. From sitting alone in front of the Swedish Parliament
Lena: in 2,018 I happened to be there, so I walked past her on my way into the city, and I saw her sitting there as a lone figure, and she almost looked like. Ii thought, what is she doing? What is this girl doing? Is she begging? So I went up to her and I asked, You know, I asked, that. What are you doing? And are you okay?
Lena: And she said, I'm I'm
Lena: strike. I'm on a school strike for the climate.
Lena: And I said something in name, probably like that very good, and continued on my way. When I came back
a couple of hours later, after having been in the city.
Lena: I saw her still sitting there, but now she had a few more people, only about a handful
Lena: and
Lena: IA couple of weeks later I came back to Australia, and then she was in the papers.
Lena: Even here in Australia.
Lena: And now, 5 years later.
Lena: I have read that she has about 5 million followers, and the majority of them are under 25 years
Lena: and she's now written, or or she hasn't written herself, which collected. It's a book called The Climate Book, and I thought maybe people might be interested in looking at that. It has been criticized for being anti capitalist.
Lena: But she
Lena: II would just think, is that the way she found her voice? Because then she said, and of course the the other thing. Why, I thought about it, Steven, was because you mentioned Rosa Parks, which she says was her inspiration.
Lena: and that's why she, you know. started her own
Lena: strike. And
Lena: So she's been doing it for 5 years now, but she's finished school now, so she's 20.
Lena: That's when she was interviewed at the I listened just the other day on an interview, and that was done on the baby BBC. If somebody is interested to listen to that by somebody called Amal Rajan.
Lena: and
Lena: and that was in relation to this climate book, of course, and
Lena: and
Lena: and she's very she was very stern and serious when she was sitting in front of the Swedish Parliament. But at this interview. She's funny. She's giggling. She's laughing, even though she's talking about all this serious things. So she's found her found a bit of joy as well in the midst of it all, and I also thought that I what she said, one quote in that interview is
Lena: like, she said, feeling despair is a privilege, not an option.
Lena: And I thought that was a very good quote. So I just wanted to mention it.
Stephen: Thank you very much, Leona. No, that's wonderful
Stephen: wonderful. Thank you.
Stephen: We've got dye up next.
DiPelletier: Thank you, Stephen, for the week. and all the other teachers as well. My question is going to go back to the climate crisis
DiPelletier: and put it beside our talk about the path.
DiPelletier: and it fits quite well with the voice I don't read as widely or as deeply as a lot of the speakers hear in the audience. And I'm not on
DiPelletier: social media.
DiPelletier: but the thing that I am hearing least about that is of an interest to me, and everything to do with all the climate crisis,
DiPelletier: refugees of the future, etc. Is the population explosion. It's it's not an explosion implies something very quick. whereas this is just a relentless growth in the world.
DiPelletier: And let's not forget that the demographics of that are changing in different countries.
DiPelletier: And perhaps not to the betterment of of the future.
DiPelletier: It's easy. Well, I'm saying I am not hearing a voice about that particular factor very strongly.
DiPelletier: When I look at action on that going back to the path. it's pretty hard for us to try to take
DiPelletier: action on
DiPelletier: overpopulation. and I just wondered if you have any comments about that, please.
Stephen: Well, first I have to acknowledge that I it's not something I'm I'm very well
Stephen: versed in. I don't. It's not a topic I've given much attention to.
Stephen: But what I have picked up is that
Stephen: is, that is, that it's it's not across the globe.
Stephen: Populations in developed countries are shrinking. And, in fact, in Japan. They. I've just read something the other day that
Stephen: I think like just last year the population of Japan decreased by that 800,000.
Stephen: And there's a great concern in Japan that if this rate of population decline continues, the society will become increasingly less able to sustain itself. You'll have a smaller and smaller working
Stephen: body of people
Stephen: having to support a growing number of
Stephen: of aging people. And this could be catastrophic in some
Stephen: census for Japan. They're trying to encourage people to have more kids. It seems that. And again, I don't want. I'm I'm not expert on this, and I don't want to make stupid generalizations.
Stephen: but it there does seem to be a correlation between
Stephen: societies that can
Stephen: provide education, health care, particularly for girls and women.
Stephen: certain patriarchal structures, certain endemic forms of injustice and poverty
Stephen: that once these issues are addressed that they seem to be the greatest
Stephen: predict of stabilizing, and then even a falling away of
Stephen: population. There's a population explosion in those countries that unleashed
Stephen: able to provide those provisions for their citizens.
Stephen: and
Stephen: and so forth. So I don't think it's just the I don't think it's true that the the world post population is apparently still growing. But
Stephen: that's not something that will go on exponentially. I don't think. But again, I'm really out of my
Stephen: comfort zone here.
Stephen: But clearly it is an issue. Yeah, absolutely.
Stephen: Thank you.
DiPelletier: Thank you.
Stephen: Bernard's. Next thing we've got the Nora
Stephen: Stephen. I think that you will recognize these words. Buddhism has become to me a philosophy of action and responsibility.
Stephen: I provide. It provides me a framework of value, ideas and practice with new to blah blah blah blah blah blah! So it's a peak from your book
Stephen: after Buddhism. At that time you were presenting the 8 full pass.
Stephen: Let's say the more
Stephen: traditional conventional
Stephen: way, and I embrace this. I see this this way of of of doing, the, of going through the
Stephen: passing through the at full pass.
Stephen: So my point here is, in no way a way to challenge that. You are deconstructing, and we're constricting it in another way but I always
Stephen: so. 3 dimension, even if it is always a wheel, not a sequence whatever. The more the moral dimension, the A/C core dimension and the spiritual dimension.
Stephen: the more dimension which help me to get a vision, to know how much effort, what I could put in achieving this vision going going on the way to to my to achieve my intention.
Stephen: Dsic, I think
Stephen: what I'm doing. I say, what I'm doing, I do. And the mindfulness and and and awareness of consciousness to
measure
Stephen: how much I progress. And well or bad, I progress
Stephen: in the way we we, we have the help, the hateful pass
Stephen: this morning.
Stephen: I missed a little bit the ethical
Stephen: dimension of the sequence of
Stephen: I think I speak. I speak.
Stephen: and I do
Stephen: which to me was always going gradually. I can II have a choice to stop
Stephen: my thinking and not to voice what I sold. and not doing what
Stephen: I said.
Stephen: and
Stephen: putting these 3 things together at the same time in a single dimension, single cluster of of of value.
Stephen: was helping me to, to to have Isaac and yeah to to to progress. The I thought the the the right way.
Stephen: Where do we find? I mean?
Stephen: III have a I have a bit of answer. But where do we find this?
Stephen: The strength of such a cluster in in the new form that you are presenting the
Stephen: hatefulness. No, thank you for that. I think you probably mean
Stephen: the the A 4 path, traditionally, is divided up into Cila samadhi and Pagania morality, Celer
Stephen: samadhi meditation.
Stephen: And Pania was.
Stephen: And II guess you're referring to that. Yeah, you said moral ethics. And something. That is the standard way. But curiously, you don't. I think you don't find that in the in the early sources that distinction and I find it always been a little bit cumbersome
Stephen: personally, but it's is very much, I think, acknowledging that those 3 dimensions are somehow.
Stephen: you know, central as a sequence, as you say.
Stephen: to structure, a sense of the evolution and the development of the part.
Stephen: If you look at this reconfiguration, you'll see in. In fact, it's not such a big departure from that.
Stephen: The the main difference basically is, I've taken the last 2 steps, samadhi, mindfulness and concentration and put them at the beginning.
Stephen: But if you think of the eightfold path as a feedback loop.
Stephen: in other words, it's not just a straight line, beginning and end, but when you get to the end that that brings you back to the beginning again.
Stephen: the sequence is still very much the same as before.
Stephen: So I just. I'm starting at mindfulness rather than starting at
Stephen: view or perspective.
Stephen: So mindfulness.
Stephen: meditation becomes for me the foundation of
Stephen: the capacity to see the world in a new way, have another perspective.
Stephen: and that perspective then leads to imagination. thought
Stephen: and that then becomes the foundation for how we then apply ourselves. We work on our intentions. and there is the beginning of ethics, and that then leads us to how we survive, how we work
Stephen: and how we speak. So that's remaining in much the same sequence. The the the changes are not as as as as major as they might look at first glance, and they still on a very much
Stephen: the the the core of of of contemplation, which is now at the beginning
Stephen: philosophy or punya wisdom which is in view, which is in imagination and ethics which is in application, survival
Stephen: work, and voice. That's how I would now break that up
Stephen: according to those 3
Stephen: primary I agree, but it's more diluted, more diffuse in
Stephen: well, I think so. Actually. In fact, I would also actually argue that we need to think of a ethics rather than morality.
Stephen: and in fact, the whole thing is ethics, as far as I'm concerned.
Stephen: the the Afo path is a modality is a way of describing human flourish.
Stephen: and that is about becoming the kind of person you seek to be.
Stephen: and that is how I would define ethics.
Stephen: though that ethics is bounded is founded on certain moral values. Yes, that's quite clear. but yeah, if you prefer, if you preferred the other way, then stick to that.
Stephen: it's up to you. It's just just a suggestion.
Stephen: Thank you. Oh, so my contribution is just back on the issue of population growth.
Stephen: so this year China saw for the first time ever a decline in population office, I mean, recorded history. And there's actually reason to believe that the population is going to decline quite rapidly, possibly by 50%, by the end of the century worldwide, or in China.
Stephen: which is cause for panic among the the
Stephen: politicians in China because of the impact of that on the economy. And what have you? But yeah, the the trend that you
pointed out is right as the
Stephen: as the prosperity and economic well-being of the country goes up and only associated services. And what have you with that?
Stephen: The population? So the the prediction is actually, population will start to decline. I think you know, before the end of the century, whether or not we have ruined the globe before that happens. Who knows but it used to be a source of consternation for me? Because you know, the
Stephen: I've been on the whole climate change thing for a long time, and I remember reading, even like more than 10 years ago, that on an individual level, the worst thing you can do for the environment is, have a child, you know human lifetime of consumption
Stephen: into the world.
Stephen: Now, if talking about vegetarian vegetarianism makes me unpopular, try talking about, you know, not having children. It's one of those elephants in the room that you just couldn't talk about. But yeah. So it's been a bit of a relief to me actually to to hear that population will decline.
Yeah.
Stephen: thanks, Lori. We've got the Brisbane group, Brisbane group. And then we've got Andy and someone over here, and then back to online, if there's time.
Stephen: And if the questions could be as succinct as possible, too, that would help.
Meg: I'm done. I'm very good at being succinct. So here's here's what I'm going to say, this terrific on the on the voice, and that's the attention that you're giving to finding our voice. And I'm very conscious, even if if we see it in this in this week about you know what's involved in even contributing to this?
Meg: also that. I wanted to say it's really happy women like Rosa and Greta as somebody. That was
Meg: a lovely story to hear about Greta finding
Meg: her voice. The thing I wanted to ask you, Stephen, was that in the leavener's quote.
Meg: where about, you know, in the first look at the face what were saying? Don't kill me
Meg: now as as women. That's not an uncommon you know that kind of speaks to me
Meg: but when I my face
Meg: to another woman, and is my face saying, to another woman.
Meg: diet, kill me!
Meg: It. It feels to me like that's that's something that men are likely to want to set, you know, in this
Meg: all sorts of cultures, having ways of.
Meg: you know, like mariculture, for example, of speaking to that of, you know, dealing with that.
Meg: But when it's
a a woman
Meg: presenting her face to another woman.
Meg: Is that what we're saying to each other? I don't feel that we are, but
Stephen: well, I'm not a woman so clearly. I'm not the best person to ask. The I also feel that language is very, is very strong.
Stephen: and it interestingly, it reflects. For example, you know, the the 10 Commandments. I think it does.
Stephen: At least the Buddhist also start with, do not kill is the first one right?
Stephen: But the whole of the ethic is more broadly framed in the idea of causing harm
Stephen: or hurting.
Stephen: and it might be more gender neutral, let's say to, instead of saying, Do not kill me, say, do not hurt me.
Stephen: Do not hurt me, do not harm me. Do not lie to me. You could almost put all of the presets in that. Do not do not steal from me. Do not abuse me.
Stephen: you know. Do do not lie to me. I think it's it's shorthand, really for
Stephen: a way of talking about ethical injunctions? It's really trying to answer the question, why should we be good?
Stephen: Why should we not harm people? And I think Levinas's answer is a very compelling one is because that
Stephen: is a silent injunction we hear whenever we encounter openly
Stephen: another being.
Stephen: And again, should it really just be humans? Or what about animals, for example?
Stephen: I've often thought about that.
Stephen: Martin Buber has a similar idea about the I Thou relationship which so easily deteriorates into I it.
Stephen: It's again both coming from the Jewish tradition and both recognizing that the primacy of ethics is grounded in the immediate relationship that you have with the other person for boober. It's being constantly aware that you're engaging the other person as you
Stephen: rather than it.
Stephen: and how easily we
Stephen: slip into a language or behaviour that treats the other person as a means to our ends
Stephen: rather than an end in him or herself. which is actually a Kantian idea.
Stephen: So, however, we, I think the bigger picture is not to get caught up in the particular terminology.
Stephen: but to try to understand how ethics is founded on actual interpersonal relationships rather than some
Stephen: some sort of God-given theory
Stephen: or or set of, you know.
Stephen: rules. regulations.
Stephen: principles, that ethics begins in the in the encounter with the other being.
Stephen: That's the key point, I think.
Meg: Thank you. Let's see
Stephen: who is the next.
Stephen: It was me. I'm not sure whether this is gonna have time for a response to whether it'll just be a comment. But I'll leave that up to you. I echo. Go, and some
Stephen: thanks for today's summation.
Stephen: II guess, calling it a summation if you like. And I. There were a lot of new things that came up
Stephen: in this fold of the path today.
Stephen: I think this is beyond a question of semantics. So I'm just going to explain again. As you know, my interest in indigenous Australian cultures. Ii just the the statement when I read last night and when you said it again today about art being useless.
Stephen: that distinction for me had a little tension, because if I think about
Stephen: many examples across the world but but my own practice as as an artist, my first degree many years ago, but also working with indigenous cultures and so forth.
Stephen: much
Stephen: possibly all art has a very important purpose.
Stephen: And in in there's a spectrum. and a lot of
Stephen: elders will will talk about. Oh, that was just a nice picture like that's just design or something, and that could be a way of saying, I actually don't know what that symbol means. But if you look at cave paintings and you
Stephen: are educated about
Stephen: the meaning, it's all about communication. A lot of it's about survival like that is men's business over there. That's where you find water at this time of year. The kangaroos are here. Water lilies are there. So there's a lot of it's basically
Stephen: the word I would use if you wanted an umbrella term is communication
Stephen: about communicating something, and it might be a collective voice of our tribe. It might be a voice, me, but I feel that
Stephen: when I went through art school myself many years ago. We talk about all I don't do art for anyone else. It's just for me.
Stephen: But I even
Stephen: in II even almost doubt that even if the artwork that you make doesn't see the light of day. To what extent are you
Stephen: aiming to communicate something, and in which case I don't see it as being useless. So I don't know whether that's a question or something you should comment about.
Stephen: What I'm trying to get at is, that is, is to recognize that there's a non instrumental function in art.
Stephen: It can't be valued purely in terms of its usefulness.
Stephen: And clearly the examples you give you could might say, you know the
Stephen: sixteenth century paintings of the Madonna and the Child, I mean, they clearly serve a purpose
Stephen: to inspire faith to. you know, making revere God, or whatever it might be, and you can see that in many, many, many forms of art.
Stephen: But what I'm getting at, and perhaps this is a little bit precious. I admit that
Stephen: is that where certain works of art seem to be able to transcend the mere instrumental value of that work. Of course, in aboriginal art. I'm sure it has all kinds of uses in their society.
Stephen: but I as a work of art, it is also something that even if you knew nothing about all of that. it would still speak to you the the point. And I agree with you completely about communication
Stephen: art is, and that's why I use it. It's a form of voice.
Stephen: That's where it's included. There. It's a way in which we communicate. If it didn't communicate. It would be totally
Stephen: in the more general were use of that word
Stephen: but there's something about II hesitate to use words like great art. but
Stephen: like the cave paintings I've seen in France, for example, these for me, are great art, because they communicate to me, even though I don't have a clue what they were originally used for.
Stephen: and that.
Stephen: and and and likewise, you know, Leonardo, or whatever that speaks to me, even though I don't.
Stephen: You know I'm not a Christian. It doesn't speak to me in that religious. There's no religious significance to me, but nonetheless it says something about
Stephen: the core
Stephen: of what it means to be human is communicated through those works. And that's really the point I'm trying to make. Maybe I'm making it to
Stephen: privileged. I don't know.
Stephen: But thank you for that. No, I think it's an important. It is important to recognize that we clearly are operating within a spectrum. Here.
Stephen: I would agree totally that if if heart doesn't communicate it's failed.
Stephen: then it can communicate practical information.
Stephen: or it can support a religious belief. But some of the stuff that's communicating practical information is transformative.
Stephen: And even if I see it, I don't understand what it's communicating, so I don't see it as being useless. But anyway, defining the term useless semantics. I just needed then to nail that down.
Stephen: It is nearly. Is there one more question? Yes, quickly.
Stephen: I'm happy to ask someone 5 min possible should be
Stephen: awesome.
Stephen: It's relates to the point that Bernard made before. I'll try to put it briefly. I noticed, of course, that mindfulness now is at at the top, and voice is is at the end.
Stephen: So the question is, whether the inclusion of mindfulness at the beginning which you have already provided, 2 reasons for.
Stephen: whether it would also serve the purpose
Stephen: of bringing it back to the individual.
Stephen: promoting
Stephen: self-determination and autonomy. Starting from an ethical position that is not moralistic, coming from God or coming from your parents, or coming even from your community community.
Stephen: but giving yourself the opportunity to introspect
Stephen: and to start to identify a seed of ethics.
Stephen: Within yourself.
Stephen: and
Stephen: cause that goes back to all the way to the voice at the end which is to discover yourself, which is to connect with yourself. So I saw the inclusion of mindfulness, the beginning and voice at the end, as extremely
Stephen: conducive to this interpretation that just gave.
Stephen: I'd like to know whether
Stephen: this is something that was in your thinking is in your thinking, has motivated this framing, or this is completely coincidental.
Stephen: What do you have to say today?
Stephen: I honestly can't answer that question, because, to be perfectly honest, I forget
Stephen: these ideas go through so many iterations. I actually forget. This is also a function of my age. I think. Now I forget where these ideas came from, why I started out on these lines of inquiry. And I don't think, actually, that's terribly important.
Stephen: I think the important thing is, does the end product
Stephen: actually work or not, or speak to people or not.
Stephen: and the rest is academic.
Stephen: Thank you. Thank you.
Stephen: And.