All of my life is a normal one or not, whether people think it's a normal one, depends very
much on one's conception of normality, or it's normal. What is normality? I think I
need to clarify that Christian fact. I myself feel a very normal person. I feel I'm not
only very normal, I feel I'm very healthy in fact, on every level. But I'm quite sure
that there are people who would think that I'm leading a quite abnormal, even unhealthy,
even eccentric sort of life, but I certainly wouldn't accept that. My life has been from
your source of very deep satisfaction. They feel it's normal in the best sense of the
time. And as much as my whole life has been dedicated, as far as I'm able to dedicate
it to the realization of higher spiritual values, to me nothing could bring me a normal
person. But anyway, he was trying to force temple entry for the insatiables in one of
the big temples of Banaras.
I had spout fever when I was just turned eight. I remember the occasion very well. I remember
very clearly the time when it was actually discovered to have almost a sort of visual
memory of the doctor, our GP, coming to see me. I remember him standing me up in front
of the window and looking at my chest and finding those sorts of respects and saying
to my parents who were holding the apartment while he's got scarlet fever. And that meant
that he had to go off to hospital. I was in there for about three weeks, I think. I missed
him. I remember that my mother came to collect me and one of the nurses in the ward who'd
been looking after me, who seems to have been a rather perceptive woman, talked my mother
aside as a saint. I think there's something wrong with his heart. He's got a very, very
fast pulse and I think you'd better take him back to his GP and get him properly examined.
So that was done. The treatment at that time apparently was just to immobilise the patient.
So I was put into bed and I was just kept lying there and lying there. I wasn't allowed
to sit up by my own efforts and I passed most of my time reading. Originally I was after
only eight years old. A father used to go and get me a boys magazine every morning. I remember
his family thought we should have the boys magazine. The woman actually was a very small
one. Lying in bed I could see the owl clock which had been given by my parents a year
or two before. On the wall it was a sort of wooden fretwork owl and it had a weight hanging
on the chain and the pendulum. The pendulum went back and forth making a loud tick tock
tick tock. And in accordance with the tick tock, in accordance with the movement of
the pendulum, the eyes of the owl would move from left to right, from right to left. Tick
tock, tick tock. And I used to lie there for hours I suppose to watch it. This owl clock
and listening to the tick tock. I remember that when he was very very soon my father
taught me a prayer that his grandmother had taught him. But later on when I came to learn
about the Buddha and the Buddha I thought well, they've got to be considered too. So rather
evening I think this lasted only a few months. I used to address my 8-time prayers to these
three figures. But eventually of course God, Jesus, only dropped out and only the Buddha
remained. During the period that I was evacuated to the West Country when I was in Torquay
I found in the public library there a book called The Isis Unveiled by Madame Blavatsky,
the founder of the Theosophical Society. And this book, Isis Unveiled, made a tremendous
impression on me. And after reading it I realised that I just wasn't a Christian. When it was
about, I suppose it was 15 or 16, I had this sort of mystical experience near the main
corner in Torquay. I was walking along the high street, I suppose this was the Torquay
Street. I was walking along the high street and I suddenly experienced everything you
were seeing in the distance, the fire distance, the sound of the traffic, the sound of the
people. All those sounds are just faded away into the distance. And eventually I think
I actually disappeared. And I seemed to find myself in a sort of void. I seemed to find
myself in a state almost of pure consciousness, one might say. And I was walking through this
void and this consciousness. And it was also me. So in a way I was walking through myself.
When I was 18 of course I was conscripted, like everybody else. I hadn't thought I would
be conscripted, on account of my heart condition. I'd assumed that I would just be exempted.
But I was examined, I was re-examined, I was examined by a specialist. And I was told
by the brass clip, nothing when we go hard at all. So into the army I went. I did have
a bit of a shock. I heard things like never in a bird reform, especially in the better
currently, the Torques since we call it both selfs. We got the impression, re-enxed as
a way to, that married men had only one interest in life, and that was sex. After I'd been
about a year in the army I was put on a boat with my colleagues. And I suppose one can
call it a troop ship, as part of a convoy. And because we were not told where we'd
begun. There was all sorts of specter relations before we were beginning. I was praying that
the rumor that we were going to be sent to India was true. I arrived in India, the troop
ship docked, the Bombay Docks. And I just saw initially a long row of corrugated buildings.
I also remember lots of cranes idly swimming on the dock side. And as we got nearer and
for nearer, these corrugated iron buildings became bigger. And I saw lots of little dark
mainly glowing cliffs running around. From Bombay I was taken by a troop train to Delhi.
And Delhi was once I was in Delhi. Especially old Delhi, everything cleaned, everything
was in pictures. So when I'd been a few weeks in India, I really felt very much at home.
People do quite often ask me how I came to leave the army. And I suppose I have to
confess that technically I did desert. But I was also so. I considered myself subtly justified
in deserting. The war was ended. I'd done my duties, such as it was. And I wanted to get
on with the living of my own life. So I decided to take not only my life into my own hands,
but even, I might say, the law into my own hands. I felt I was morally quite justified
in doing this. So I managed to go on leave, visiting my relations. My uncle and his wife
in Calcutta. And at the end of my leave, I just disappeared. We discarded our circular
dress. I destroyed my identification papers. We gave away our possessions. So from the
little hill station, because I only walked, and walked, and walked right down to the plains.
And there, I was wondering, life began. Obviously, I didn't forget my parents from this time.
When I was in Colombo, in fact, I waited to go for them. And though, by that time, I
separated. Saying that I thought I wanted to become a Buddhist monk, I'm leaving the
army. So I got a reply from each of them. My father wrote back saying,
if your life is your own, you must do with it whatever you think is best. My mother
wrote back and said, become a monk if you want to, but I hope you'll come and see me sometimes.
After I was ordained officially as a Buddhist novice monk, I took up the traditional Buddhist
tradition. According to Buddhist tradition, we're not supposed to ask. My ordination as
a Buddhist monk took place in Sodomath. Sodomath being the place where the Buddha delivered
his first teaching after his enlightenment, after the occasion when he became the Buddha
in coming home, and eventually founded a monastery there. And that was the headquarters for my
book, not only in the swimming area, but over a large part of India. We don't have any
walls in Buddhism. We have principles. We have ethical principles which we try to embody
in our lives. There's the principle of not harming other living beings. Now, this is,
again, not a wall. The principle is laid down. It is not said, thou shalt be a vegetarian.
But if we imbibe that principle with non-violence of not harming other living beings, if you
try to make it a part of your life, very likely you will end up feeling that you can't eat
meat because eating a wheat involves killing. In the same way, there's the principle of
not exploiting other living beings, not taking from them by force or fraud, what they're
not willing to give you, similarly, as the principle of abstaining from risk behaviour
in sexual matters, sexual relationships, not exploiting other people's sexual life. And
then, very importantly, there's the principle of truthful speech. This is something I've
been thinking about a lot in recent years, because it seems to me less and less importance
has been attached in the world of God, just to plain ordinary truth from this. There's
a sort of, what did all of them call it, a sort of new speak, there are various forms
of new speak which really deviate from plain direct truthfulness. Not only truthfulness,
we attach very great importance and realism to speaking kindly to other people, affectionately
to other people, not gossiping, not slandering. These are all forms of white speech, all forms
of truthfulness. And finally, there is the principle of not taking any drink or drug
that clouds the mind. What is in doesn't say you've got to be a tea totaler again, no
rule is left down, but Buddhism certainly does say, keep your mind clear and bright.
Don't be funky, don't cloud it. I personally think of Buddhism as a very reasonable
religion, and I think that is precisely the reason why it doesn't appeal to some people.
While people like everything very extreme and very exaggerated and carried away by their
feelings, but that isn't really the style of Buddhism. It wasn't the style of the
historical Buddha. From all that we know about him, we know that he was a reasonable person.
He was prepared to talk, to discuss, prepared to listen. He didn't threaten and formulate.
He just tried to convince people by purely reasonable, purely rational means.
Sometimes I'm asked about the intolerance of Christianity, but it's not a question
of the intolerance simply of Christianity. I think it's a question of the intolerance
of that whole group of religions, which we call the Semitic religions, Judaism, Islam
and Christianity. They all have a very pronounced streak of intolerance, and that would seem
to me to be tied up very often with the idea of one God who is a jealous God, who doesn't
like people to worship other gods, who wants to be the only God, and that inevitably leads
to intolerance. There's quite a few more meaning Christians nowadays who would like to forget
the past, would like to forget the medieval past, would like to forget that centuries
ago people were born at the stake, in the thousands even, in the name of Christianity,
in the name of Christ, with the full blessing and approval of the Catholic Church. But
in my view we can't really forget those things ourselves, and not allow Christians to forget
those things themselves, because the basic doctrinal assumptions of Christianity are
there, and at what bottom Christianity is still a quite dogmatic religion, and I personally
believe that if circumstances were to change, if certain churches at least were to get back
a secular pie that they had some centuries ago, they would start behaving in much the
same way, again. When I speak of basic doctrinal assumptions, I mean things like the divinity
of Christ, and the fact that Christ is the only Saviour. I remember one occasion when
I had a talk with a missionary, and he told me to my face that I'd be going straight to
hell, and not only that, but I'd be going to a worse hell, and if there is a worse hell,
because not only had I gone astray myself by being a Buddhist, I'd let others astray
by teaching Buddhism.
The three jewels are quite simply the Buddha, the enlightened human spiritual teacher, the
founder of the whole Buddhist tradition, or religion, even. The Dharma is simply his
teaching, the teaching of the way that leads to the achievement of the state of enlightenment,
the same state of enlightenment that the Buddha himself achieved. The Sangha is the spiritual
community, as we call it, of all those who are following the Dharma, the Buddha's teaching,
and trying to become like the Buddha, trying to realise the state of enlightenment of the
Buddha Buddha. So these are the three jewels, and going for refuge, or going for refuge
too, to three jewels, means making the three jewels the most important thing in your life.
And of course, by that, there is the idea of karma, that what you've done in a previous
existence, with some extent at least, determines the nature of your experience in a future
existence. Putting it very simply, Buddhism does believe, or Buddhism does teach that
we don't have just this one life, or this life front, another life, and another world
after it. Buddhism does teach that we have a whole series of lives that we lived before,
we live now, and we will live again after death. I've defined meditation as consisting
essentially in a flow, a continuous flow of what we call skillful mental states, that
it is states of love, states of good will, states of clarity, states of joy. When you
have a continuous, uninterrupted flow of such thoughts on a higher and higher level, more
and more subtle than passing through your mind, in and all the time, that is meditation, that
is your meditative state, and you can't really get anywhere in Buddhism without, or anywhere
in spiritual life, without first achieving that kind of state, and it becoming more or
less habitual. Some people would like to think that the spiritual life is very easy, this
has certainly not been my experience. I think I probably found it a little bit more easy
than some other people I know, but it certainly hasn't been really easy at all, there have
been difficulties at every step, and I'm very, very doubtful about those teachers, single
inverted commies, who offer easy panaceas, sometimes one hears of weak end enlightenment
courses being advertised. You go along apparently just for the weekend, usually just on luxury
hotel, and you hear certain lectures, you do certain exercises, and hopefully at the
end of the weekend you're well on your way to enlightenment, if not actually enlightened.
This I think really is an absolute travesty of spiritual life. I don't think the sort
of transformation, the sort of radical transformation that the spiritual life calls for can be achieved
as easily as that. How will the world become a better place? Better of course is a rather
ambiguous term. I think we've become in many parts of the world better material, but we
haven't become better spiritually, we haven't perhaps even become better psychologically.
So far as the West is concerned, I don't think we can easily generalise about the world as
far as the West is concerned. I think we must place much less emphasis on material values
or to put it even more plainly on consuming values, we mustn't think of ourselves just
as consumers. Someone showed me a little sloven printed on a sticker the other day which
says around something like this, I purchase therefore I am. And this is really much the
attitude of a lot of people and so there's going to be no question of the betterment
of the world until we get over that sort of attitude. And I'm all willing to share with
others less fortunate than we do ourselves have. If someone would have asked me what I
thought I had given to the world, I think I should say that I hoped I had given to the
world an example even of clear thinking and I'd hope that I'd given a vision to the
world, a higher vision, a vision of what the individual man and woman can be or could be
and a vision of what the world, society, mankind at large could be.
Thank you.
