Nottingham Buddhist Centre

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Transforming Adversity into the Path of Enlightenment

If you are anything like me, you may have noticed over the last few days a certain visceral response going on in your body - shoulders hunching, back tensing, thighs tightening and jaw setting in a certain position, not to mention those stomach muscles! This level of response to what is happening may not be under our conscious control and wouldn’t be thought of as volitional in the Buddhist sense but it does indicate an underlying view about how we see such an unprecedented event as the Coronavirus pandemic.

Often we respond to anything that disrupts our normal patterns as a problem or threat and as we do so, much of our energy can get locked into a defensive posture - physically, emotionally and mentally. So one of the key ways to work with our response is to transform our attitude to it. This may happen in stages.

Firstly, we have to just accept what is happening. No matter how much we want it to be otherwise, Coronavirus is here and here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. Aversion and resistance are in nobodies best interest and will only make matters worse for us and others. In order to cultivate this acceptance of the situation, we may have to let go of cherished plans for the coming weeks and accept a level of discomfort and difficulty in our day-to-day lives. This in turn may lead us to look at previously unconscious expectations we have about our lives, but more of that later …

Secondly, we have to work out what it is possible for us to do and take responsibility for and what is beyond our control. In Mahayana Buddhist tradition, two of the six Bodhisattva Perfections are Virya and Kshanti. Virya is the active expenditure of energy to achieve skilful aims and in these circumstances might find expression in taking due care with our health and keeping to Government guidelines about avoiding spreading the virus. However, even if we do all of this, we may not stay safe from the virus. Kshanti on the other hand is the ability to remain in positive states when there are adverse circumstances beyond our control. It is usually translated as patience or forbearance.

According to Shantideva, the author of the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, it is the antidote to hatred and aversion -

‘There is no evil equal to hatred, and no spiritual practice equal to forbearance.’

This ability not to fall into aversion and hatred and to maintain a positive mental state in difficult times is one we will all need to cultivate over the coming weeks and months. So we need to do what we can through virya and forbear what we cannot change through a practice of kshanti.

Thirdly, beyond just accepting what is happening and practicing virya and kshanti, we can enter into the domain of the Buddhist Mind Training practice which advises us to ‘Transform Adversity into the Path of Enlightenment’. Here we can train ourselves to see what appears to our normal mindset as an obstruction or difficulty as, instead, a great opportunity. This is counter-intuitive thinking writ large and may take some time to both understand and practice.

A friend of mine used to use the phrase ‘pattern interrupt’ and it has stayed with me for the last 25 years and more. Such ‘pattern interrupts’ give us the chance to drop unskilful or unnecessary habits and patterns of behaviour and develop more appropriate and creative ones. But without the pattern interrupt , we don’t necessarily even see those old or unhelpful habits. So we can see the Coronavirus Pandemic as a pattern interrupt on a grand scale, one that doesn’t just affect us individually but interrupts vast societal patterns of behaviour too. Perhaps in these unprecedented times we can, as a society, learn to imagine a completely new way of relating to each other, a new kind of society.

The pandemic also cuts through what is inessential in our lives and gives us the chance to reflect on what, and who, is really important to us. And the difficulties it throws up may mean we have to take our Buddhist practice much deeper than when our life is going swimmingly and we are comfortable and cosseted by all that our consumer society normally provides for us. So allow these adverse conditions to prompt a deeper level of practice and become part of ‘the Path to Enlightenment’.

But to return to our unconscious expectations, I am reminded of a poem by Sangharakshita called ‘Life is King’.

Hour after hour, day

After day we try

To grasp the Ungraspable, pinpoint

The Unpredictable. Flowers

Wither when touched, ice

Suddenly cracks beneath our feet. Vainly

We try to track birdflight through the sky trace

Dumb fish through deep water, try

To anticipate the earned smile the soft

Reward, even

Try to grasp our own lives. But Life

Slips through our fingers

Like snow. Life

Cannot belong to us. We

Belong to Life.

Life Is King.

Only by letting go of our unconscious expectations and desires can we really begin to see that Life is King. The Coronavirus pandemic, for all its difficulties, stresses and challenges, gives us the opportunity to let go and realise that we belong to life.

Saccanama