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The 8 Guidelines Handbook V1.1 April 2021 Tiratanaloka Handbook Tiratanaloka The Eight Guidelines Tiratanaloka Handbook The Eight Guidelines The Eight Guidelines: Introduction Introduction The purpose of this handbook is to give you the opportunity to look in depth at the material that we will be studying on the The Eight Guidelines retreat at Tiratanaloka. In this handbook we give you material to study for each area we’ll be studying on the retreat. We will also have some talks on the retreat itself where the team will bring out their own personal reflections on the topics covered. , detail. Eight Guidelines are a useful series of reflections, designed to help you reflect on your Dharma practice and your relationship to ordination into the Tiratana Buddhist Order. They aim to enable you to enter into a deeper dialogue with your kalyana mitras, study leaders and potential preceptors. They are not a checklist or imposition onto your experience. Naturally everyone experiences their Dharma life individually and we all have our own path to follow. At the same time, we practise as part of a community with certain principles and a particular approach to the Dharma. In practising as part of that Sangha, there are common themes that emerge that we can usefully explore together. The Eight Guidelines are not a checklist to tick off if you are ready for ordination, they are a series of guidelines for reflection and focussed communication that are useful for Mitras and Order Members alike. As well as the study material in this handbook, it would be helpful if you could read Sangharakshita and Subhuti’s paper ‘What is the Western Buddhist Order’. You can download this in PDF format from Subhuti’s website at http://subhuti.info/essays. Front Image:Qian Xuan EightFlowers, National Palace Museum You can also download as a PDF or buy a book with all their ‘Seven Papers’ together. This will be useful for all our retreats at Tiratanaloka.: http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/subhuti-and- sangharakshita/seven-papers/paperback/ product-21746853.html There is some optional extra study material at the beginning of each section. Some of the optional material is in the form of talks that can be downloaded from the Free Buddhist Audio website at www.freebuddhistaudio.com. These aren’t by any means exhaustive - Free Buddhist Audio is growing and changing all the time so you may find other material equally relevant! We’d ask you to study this material, reflect on it and come prepared with questions and areas you would like to discuss as this will help you to get the most out of your retreat. You might even want to study the material with some of your friends or talk about it with local Order Members. Throughout the material we’ve included questions about how the material relates to your own practice that we’d like you to think about in preparation for the discussion groups on the retreat. It’s important that you let us know if you have problems accessing any of the material we’ve asked you to read, as we’ll be assuming that you have had a chance to look at it before you come. All of us on the team at Tiratanaloka look forward to studying the material with you when you come here. 1 The Eight Guidelines, v1.1 April 2021 2 The Eight Guidelines, v1.1 April 2021 The First Guideline: Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels Reflection Questions Am I going for refuge sincerely? How do I understand the meaning of going for refuge? What is my understanding of and attitude towards the Three Jewels? What false refuges impede my going for refuge to the Three Jewels? Are other motives confused with my request for ordination, such as looking for approval, joining a group or seeking status? Am I going for refuge effectively? How do I create and sustain conditions that support my going for refuge under most circumstances? In what ways have I sustained my commitment to the Three Jewels over time and across a range of contexts (eg. on retreat; in daily life)? In what ways am I going forth? What holds me back? For instance: cultural conditioning, psychological factors, objective circumstances, limited refuges, wrong views, ethics? Further Study Material Sangharakshita gave a talk in 1965, lecture 9, on Going for Refuge, which is part of his series on ‘The Meaning of Conversion in Buddhism’. The whole series can be downloaded from www.freebuddhistaudio.com You may also want to listen to a talk Sangharakshita gave about motivations for practice in 1966, lecture 26. It is called Nirvana and can be downloaded in audio or text from www.freebuddhistaudio.com. Subhuti’s paper Initiation into a New Life also goes into the levels of Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels. You can find this at www.subhuti.info Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels text purpose written by Kalyacitta, drawing on material by Dhammadinna ‘Many people, out of fear, flee for refuge to Sacred hills, woods, groves, trees, and shrines. In reality this is not a safe refuge. In reality this is not the best refuge. Fleeing to such a refuge One is not released from all suffering. Those who go for refuge to the Enlightened One, 3 The Eight Guidelines, v1.1 April 2021 To the Truth, and to the Spiritual Community, For them, this is a safe refuge. For them, this is the best refuge. Having gone to such a refuge, One is released from all suffering.’1 We are all looking for a way out of suffering, or at the very least, a way to distract ourselves from it. As illustrated in these lines from the Dhammapada, one of the earliest set of verses in Buddhism we look in the wrong places for ways to alleviate our pain. We go for refuge all the time, but the only way we can really solve the problem of our suffering is by going for refuge to the Three Jewels. What is my understanding of and attitude towards the Three Jewels? Buddha The Buddha is the vision of human potential, a vision of what we can become. Going for Refuge to the Buddha starts with looking for the Buddha in our own direct experience, which means looking for the vision of potential in people we know, people who are more developed than ourselves. ‘But there is a deeper issue, going to the heart of what it is to lead the Dharma life: unless we can truly imagine the Buddha and his Enlightenment in a way that stirs us deeply we cannot mobilise our energies to Go for Refuge to him. We can only imagine the Buddha wholeheartedly by discovering his image in our own minds, inspired and supported by the images around us.’2 Q: How do you experience the Buddha refuge in your life? Dharma The Dharma is both the truth about the way things are, and the path to realise that truth. Going for Refuge to the Dharma involves having a glimpse of the truth, perhaps embodied in certain teachings with which we can resonate and reflect on. We will come into relationship with the Dharma in our own ways but reflection on Dharmic truths is important for all of us - we need to understand the truth in order to live by it. Q: Can you remember your response when first hearing the Dharma taught? Q: Does a particular teaching hold meaning for you? Q: How do we reflect on the Dharma? Sangha The Sangha refuge represents the potential for communication. ‘A vital mutual responsiveness on the basis of a common ideal and a common principle: a shared exploration of the spiritual world between people who are in a relationship of complete honesty and harmony.’3 Sangharakshita’s insight into the Sangha is that it is much more than being supportive conditions for our own growth, it is intrinsic to the spiritual, if not human, life itself. 1 Dhammapada v188-192 2 Subhuti, Re-Imagining the Buddha 3 Sangharakshita, Going for Refuge, www.freebuddhistaudio.com, 1966 4 The Eight Guidelines, v1.1 April 2021 Communication challenges our sense of separateness and fixity. It is not even a practice, it is the ‘whole of the spiritual life’4. Sangha as a refuge ultimately means Going for Refuge to the men and women who have irreversible Insight into Reality, or in other words the Ārya Sangha. We can go for refuge to them because they won’t turn back, they won’t give up on their Going for Refuge. Q: Is communication intrinsic to human life? Could I Go for Refuge to the Three Jewels alone? Q: To what extent can I Go for Refuge to the Sangha if they are not necessarily the Ārya Sangha? Q: What encourages communication? How do I understand the meaning of Going for Refuge? Going for refuge to the Three Jewels is a response to the suffering that is inherent in conditioned existence and a deeply intuitive way of relating to life. But we often look in the wrong places when we respond in this way. The act of going for refuge can be ‘a fleeing out of fear’, or a grasping after an experience, an object or a person that we think will make us feel better. We go for refuge to all sorts of things that merely distract us from our experience, or complicate an already painful situation. We can see the things to which we go for refuge as true or false refuges - those that can offer the possibility of real satisfaction, and those that can’t.
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