lotus Journal of the Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Issue No.42 W INter 2014 Dr Rewata Dhamma 1929-2004 cover photograph: In this tenth year anniversary of the death of Dr Rewata Dhamma it is fitting to recollect him and all that he did to establish our Centre. OPPORTUNITY FOR MERITORIOUS ACT PAGODA ROOF REPAIRS APPEAL CONTENTS URGENT REPAIRS NEEDED Calendar of Activities 2 Anattā 3/4 (£8070 needed - £1480 donated so far) by Nathabandu Kottegoda Sultanganj Buddha - In Birmingham for another 150 years 5 See p.7 (Vihara News) for details of necessary work to by Adam Jaffer and Keith Munnings be done and progress so far. The Buddha, Anattā and Non Self 6 by Duncan Fyfe Please offer as much or as little as you can afford to Vihara News 7/8 help us maintain this beautiful building for the future (address details on p.8). 2559 BE/2015 EVENTS CALENDAR RETREATS T BIRMINGHAM BUDDHIST VIHARA 10-Day Insight Retreat T DHAMMATALAKA PEACE PAGODA 21-30 Aug (experienced) T BIRMINGHAM BUDDHIST ACADEMY Led by Dr Ottaranyana Designed to enable meditators to experience the FESTIVALS characteristic of impermanence and nature of non-selfhood Buddha Day (Birmingham Museum & Art as part of the process of insight meditation. Gallery) 17 May 12:45pm Mahasi Insight Retrea t 13 December (suitable for all) Buddha Day (Visaka) Led by Bhikkhu Bodhidhamma Dr Rewata Dhamma’s Memorial Service Classic Mahasi insight technique specifically designed for the 3 May 10:30am western mind and taught in a popular dynamic fashion. Dhammacakka Day & Pagoda Anniversary 26 July 10:30am CHILDREN’S CLASSES Abhidhamma & Pavarana Day Sunday class 28 Oct. 7:00pm from 1pm - 3pm Every Sunday except when it falls on Christmas Day and New Kathina Year’s Day. 1st Nov. 10:30am Suitable for 5 + years, but all welcome with or without children. COURSES OF STUDY For further details please contact Ellen on her mobile: 07814 972 460 Abhidhamma or email her at: (Higher Buddhist Philosophy) [email protected] Led by Dr. Ottaranyana Summer Course for Children Vibhanga (the Book of Analysis) (31st July to 2nd Aug.) together with its commentary: ‘The Dispeller of Please bring your children to the Vihara to stay here and learn Delusion’ about Buddhism. This three day course will include a Buddhist Every Thursday 2pm to 4pm film as well as enjoyable teachings. Accommodation will be available in our Vihara and we look forward to our first ever Buddhist Diploma Course children’s course. For information about these classes go to our For details please contact Dr Nagasana: website: [email protected] birminghambuddhistacademy.org. MEDITATION CLASSES FULL MOON Beginners: Chanting in the Pagoda at 7:30pm except on Thurs. 7:30pm festival days. Advanced: 4 Jan., 3 Feb., 4 Mar., Mon. 7:30pm 3 April, 2 May, 1June, 1/31 July, 30 Aug., 28 Sept. PAGODA OPENING 28 Oct., 26 Nov., 26 Dec. Summer 9am – 7pm Winter 9am – 5pm DEVOTEE DAYS The Pagoda is open most days but to avoid disappointment An opportunity for devotees to offer dana lunch please call or e-mail first to ensure there will be someone to the resident monks of the vihara. After lunch available to welcome you and show you around. everyone may take part in a short meditation session followed by a Dhamma talk. The event Phone: 0121 454 6591 or email: will take place on the first Sunday of each month. birminghambuddhistacademy.org. For further details please contact: For school visit contact: Dr Nagasena or Bill Strongman [email protected] 2 Anattā Nathabandu Kottegoda gives us examples of how Not-Self, anattā, is as realizable today as when taught by Lord Buddha n a Sunday morning 30 years ago James Austin, full range of feelings from pleasant to painful that we an American neurologist, was waiting for a train encounter. It is the manner in which one experiences O in London. Dr Austin had come to spend his things. The aggregate of perception, sañña , gives identifi - sabbatical year in England. He glanced aw ay from the cation or recognition. It apprehends objects. The aggregate tracks towards the river Thames. He saw nothing extraor - of mental fabrications or volitional formations, sankhāra , dinary: the gr imy Under ground st ation, a few dingy build - constitutes, for the most part, the will as a forerunner of ings and a pale grey sky. He was thinking about the Zen thoughts, speech and actions that determine our kamma . Buddhist retreat he was headed toward. Suddenly he felt The fifth aggregate is consciousness, viññaṇa . It is the act a sense of enlightenment unlike anything he had experi - of knowing; that is, awareness of what is happening enced before. His sense of individual existence, of sepa - around us. All five aggregates occur so closely interrelated rateness from the physical world around him, evapo rated that they give rise to the delusion of a self. The purpose of ‘like morning mist in a bright dawn.’ He saw things ‘as the teaching was to expose and dispel this misconception, they really are’, he recalls. The sense of ‘I, me, mine’ dis - which Lord Buddha called the most fundamental of appeared. ‘Time was not present,’ he said, ‘I had a sense wrong views. The Buddha presented the aggregates to the of eternity. My old yearnings, loathing, disciples in question-and-answer mode. fear of death and insinuations of sel f- He directed them to apply each aggre - hood vanished. I had been graced by a ‘This is not mine, this is gate to their own experiences and comp rehension of the ultimate nature thereby develop arguments for contem - of things.’ ( Religion and the Brain : not what I am, plation. Firstly, they confirmed that an Newsweek magazine of 7th May 2001. aggregate does not follow any type of Dr James Austin is the author of Zen this is not my self.’ command that may be given. For exam - and the Brain , MIT Press, Mass., USA, ple, ‘Let my body be healthy and not 844pp.) lend itself to disease. Let my feelings be The neuropsychologist Paul Broks thus. Let my feelings not be thus.’ Such wrote in his book Into the Silent Land (Atlantic Books, Lon - orders are disobeyed inevitably. Thus under scrutiny the don, 2004, pages 51,52): ‘The brain has evolved systems aggregates do not constitute a self because they are not dedicated to social cognition and action. It constructs a under the control of a master or self. A second set of ques - model of the organism of which it is a part and, beyond tions and answers on the aggregates followed. The focus this, representation of that organism’s place to other sim - now shifted to their three inter connected general charac - ilar organisms: people. As part of the process it assembles teristics, or marks of existence, of impermanence, anicca , a ‘self,’ which can be thought of as the device we employ unsatisfactoriness, dukkha , and non-selfhood, anattā . They as a means of negotiating the social environment. The idea agreed that each aggregate is subject to impermanence, of a narrative self has a long history with roots in Buddhist which means the cessation of what has come into being. teaching…... There is no central core or ego.’ The Scottish Hence this conditionality leads to dukkha. It arises from the philosopher David Hume had taken exactly the same line intrinsic inability of the aggregates to deliver lasting hap - in the eighteenth century. He said that it was a fiction to piness when one keeps on clinging to conditioned things. expand self beyond any momentary expressions. Further - The disciples came to the conclusion that because all the more, Daniel Dennett, a contemporary American philoso - aggregates are impermanent, subject to unsatisfactoriness pher, says in agreement that the self is ‘an abstract centre and liable to change, they do not constitute a self. This re - of narrative gravity.’ inforced their initial acceptance of anattā , non-selfhood, The second sermon of Lord Buddha, Anatta­lakkhaṇa- because there is no evidence of any type of mastery over sutta , the discourse on the non-existence of self, was given the aggregates. With this reasoning an aggregate cannot 2,500 years ago to the five disciples ( Kondañña,­Bhaddiya, be considered as ‘This is mine, this is what I am, this is my Vappa,­Mahānāma­and­­Assaji ) he addressed five days earlier self.’ By way of contemplation, all varieties of the five ag - in his first sermon, (in which he converted them to his gregates were viewed from different perspectives: past, path) at the same Game Refuge in Sarnath, thirteen km. future or present, subtle or gross, internal or external, northeast of Varanasi. As established before, one’s sense common or sublime and far or near. Thus, for example, of personal identity is made up of components of physical any consciousness must be seen as it actually is, with dis - and mental phenomena called the five aggregates, pañca cernment: ‘This is not mine, this is not what I am, this is khandha . The first aggregate is physical, rūpa . It relates to not my self.’ one’s body. The others pertain to the mental side of exis - By this sermon on anattā , that there is no enduring tence, nāma . The aggregate of feeling, vedanā , includes the self, Lord Buddha contradicted the prevailing beliefs in 3 Brahmanism, what was later to become Hinduism proper, cipating the slaves and uniting the country (in that order) based on the ātman or soul. For instance, the late Indian were more important than himself. leader Mohandas Gandhi is reverentially referred to as The April 1992 special issue of Physics Today had on Mahātmā : a great soul.