Ch.5 - Our Rite of Passage

"These leaves in my hand represent the knowledge I have shared with you, which is for the cessation of suffering”

From Will-Driven to Willingness-to-Do

Spiritual Adulthood, The Unity and Connection of All Things

Are We Really Waking Up?

[This chapter discusses how the spiritual path is our invitation to evolve to a higher and more functional state of being. From spiritual Adolescence to spiritual adulthood]

"These leaves in my hand represent the knowledge I have shared with you, which is for the cessation of suffering”

What is the essence of what the Buddha was trying to teach us? It is easy to get lost in ideas with all these teachings of the Buddha, the Eightfold Noble Path, the Four Noble Truths, Dharma, Dependent Origination and so on. But really everything he taught was pointing at one thing and one thing alone. One day he picked up a handful of leaves from the forest floor and turned to his assistant Ananda and said, ‘You know, Ananda, these leaves in my hand represent the knowledge I have shared with you, which is for the cessation of suffering. All the leaves on the forest floor represent all the knowledge that there is.’ He did not teach what he taught to satisfy folk's thirst for knowledge. He taught out of compassion, desiring others to be free from suffering.

He had only a single wish, and that was to show the way out of suffering, having realised it for himself. He wanted to show what suffering is, what are its causes and the way out of it. He never spoke unprompted and when he did speak he was very direct. He did not pander to people’s sensitivities but spoke a truth that related directly to their predicament. He was pretty brutal on that account because what actually constitutes the cessation of suffering is something that takes tremendous maturity to accept.

It may well be that it takes us a while before each of us feels ready to imbibe the essence of what the Buddha was telling us. When I say it takes maturity, I do not mean that in a judgemental way, but in an evolutionary way, because we go through processes in the life from one lifetime to another, and there are developments and stages in that process of evolving that we pass through that create in us fundamental changes in our attitude towards life.

I often speak about the path out of suffering as a rite of passage. The rite of passage that the Eightfold Noble Path represents is the rite of passage out of spiritual adolescence into spiritual maturity. I do not mean the idea that when you are twenty-two years old you should be a woman or a man now. I am talking about the transformation of our conscious perspective upon life that prompts us to function in a completely different way, with full spiritual maturity, as opposed to the self-focused, egoic attitude of adolescence.

In the process of growing up there are phases in our life when it is most definitely all about me. When you are born you are just a pure expression of life - although anyone who has had children knows that children do not arrive as completely blank pages. We do bring something with us, but it is a relatively clean start. Whatever we bring into life, it is still a fresh start. And then we grow up and as we do so we gradually develop this extraordinarily complex idea of ourselves and there comes a point when our whole universe is all about me. We are absolutely at the centre of the universe and we are the most important thing in it and if we do not get attended to, then our world is going to fall apart.

Now this egoic sense of self is very strong in some and not so strong in others. Maybe you have had children, maybe you have had more than one child and I am sure you can see that some children come through and they have an enormous sense of their own personal needs or an enormous need to be seen. And there are other children who come through who are quite happy to chip along and do their thing without the need to be seen.

This need to be seen evolves and gets more elaborate as we transition from childhood into adolescence, at which point life is very much about staking our claim on the world and making sure that the world knows who I am.

From Will-Driven to Willingness-to-Do

Then there comes a point when we ought to make the transition into adulthood, from being an extremely will-driven, volitional person who is at the centre of our universe, into a more selfless, mature person willing to be a functional member of the group. And this is our rite of passage. The point at which we leave our adolescent perspective behind and ascend into full adulthood, willing to serve and perform our function and play our part in maintaining the functionality of the group as a whole.

The Buddha talked about humans as being volitional (will-driven) or functional (responsive to the needs of the group). The unawakened being he calls volitional, and is someone driven by personal will and the desire to make the world the way they want it, to move things in the direction that they perceive they should go. An awakened being is what he called a functional being, performing their function seamlessly so they are a contributor and not an inconvenience to others around them in the way in which they live. They do not draw upon others or create a mess in the way that they do things.

So when we actually get to that point of being functional it does not actually matter what the function is, because we are seated right within the root of ourselves as a being, knowing that performing that function is part of what allows the universe to continue to turn without conflict. And that transition out of adolescence into adulthood is the point at which we let go the idea of who I think I want to become, should be, am meant to be, and find out who we actually are. By only pursuing our egoic ambitions regardless of how appropriate they are we often create chaos, confusion and conflict.

Of course, when we are adolescent there are all sorts of ideas of who we would like to grow up to be that run amok in our head and it is all about being the most important person. What is the single biggest marker of adolescence? The idea that I am special. What is the first thing we are going to need to get over if we are going to make that transition into adulthood? It is getting over the idea that we are special. It is realising we are not special. There are eight billion of us here and not long after we are gone no one is going to know we were here. Someone who thinks they are special makes a right old hoo-ha going about doing what they are doing and is often a nuisance to those around them.

A special human being is one who is able to move seamlessly in this world without creating a stink, but who contributes positively to the welfare of others while doing so. One who lives without being an inconvenience to others, without drawing or pulling energy from others, without poaching energy off others in order to be seen or to get their way. And without imposing their energy all over others in the process of being here. Such a person may go totally unnoticed in the world, but what they contribute is greater than what they take.

Now if we can accept this invitation to grow up gracefully then we will discover that our needs are far fewer than we thought and we are far more likely to make a positive contribution with our lives. If we cannot grow up and accept it gracefully, we take our adolescent attitude into what ought to be adulthood. In doing so we create inconvenience all around us, for ourselves and others, and generally become hard to serve and of many needs. In this way it is easy to become someone who takes far more than they give back in life.

Spiritual Adulthood, The Unity and Connection of All Things

Now, this is what it is to come into mature adulthood and it does not mark you as special from the next person. It ought to mark you as the same because it points to the fact that you have recognised that unity and connectedness between you and the next person rather than that sense of separation. In a functional society that ought to happen naturally in the process of growing up, and indeed sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. We may still be stuck in a very childish attitude towards ourselves and others even when we are fifty or sixty. We may even die with this attitude. So this rite of passage into full adulthood or full maturity does not necessarily happen in the life. It may or may not.

One of my students provides support to those who are in positions of great authority, at the top of big companies and institutions. He has said to me on a number of occasions that he meets many people whose lives are totally held together by those below them because they cannot function effectively in the position of great responsibility that they have found themselves in.

Now there are people out there who are struggling. There are people out there who are merely coping. And there are people out there who are flourishing. What they do with their lives has no bearing upon whether they are struggling, coping or flourishing. I can tell you that some of the most confused, dysfunctional human beings on the planet are the people in positions of power and leadership, because they got there as an act of personal will driven by ambition rather than simply as a reflection of their merits.

When such a person reaches a position of authority they often have no idea how to hold the energy that they are supposed to hold. This causes no end of inconvenience to everybody beneath them who are running around like headless chickens, trying to keep the show on the road, and that creates a mess. One well-organised assistant or one well-organised administrator is infinitely more important, even if they do not recognise it, than a messy leader.

A poorly organised leader makes a far greater mess than most. A well-organised assistant, for example, makes the world around him function beautifully. A teacher who is a mess creates chaos and confusion. An administrator who is shambolic, who is in the position of keeping the show on the road but is actually poorly organised, creates a mess. But a well-organised administrator keeps the cogs turning and is far more important than the leader.

The point is that if, in our narcissism, we strive for more influence and power than is appropriate, it is not only the cause of our own suffering, but of great suffering for others. This is why I always say we should reflect deeply upon the difference between our ambition, which might seek to be the best, and our aspiration, which seeks to do our best.

The idea that the most important person is the person at the top is a figment of your own imagination rooted in your idea that you need to be special and have to be seen as important to feel special.

Society seems to be hung up on the idea that I need to be special, more special than the next person, or at least more important. It is not necessary, it is nonsense. There are lots and lots of very wilful people out there making a nuisance and making a mess, making life incredibly difficult for others, in various ways.

It is not about what you think you want to be. I want to be a leader, I want to be a rock star. That is a figment of your own imagination dreamed up by your ego. Even the idea that ‘I want to be an activist who is going to change the world’, if it is rooted in a deep feeling of anger and resentment at the way things are, is going to cause more conflict than it resolves.

Behind all our elaborate egoic ideas of what we think we need to be, there is a function which when you start performing it you unfold at a soul level and flourish. In fact very often it is only when we start doing things that we might have thought would be completely contrary to our initial ideas that we start to develop and grow beyond the place that we are currently at.

So it is important to let go the idea of how important can I be or how special can I be, and start to reflect upon how useful, helpful and functional can I be.

To do this we need to get in touch with our own soul, and take the focus off our idea of ourselves and who we think we need to be and what we think we have got to show the world. The world is not interested. Because sooner or later we will be gone, and then not long after that we will be forgotten. The real thing is whether we were able to turn up completely in our life and recognise what we are a part of.

A skilful human being moves like a stick through water and does not leave that much of a trace. A skilful human being is not an inconvenience to the world that they are a part of, but contributes in some way that goes unnoticed. That is what it is to be functional. So when you set your stall out and decide where you think you need to go in this life there is only one thing that makes your life a real act of merit, and that is service. There are countless ways of serving, of being a contributor. It does not mean you have to be special. Going unnoticed means you can get on with the job of doing and being, performing your function.

One of the greatest acts of service and merit is the selfless love of raising children. In fact parenting is the pathway by which most people renew their merit in this life, through serving selflessly those in their care. But of course it is equally the area in which we can through selfishness fail to renew our merit.

And yet today, we see governments pressurised into supporting parents to get back to work as soon as possible after a child is born because the household is so expensive to maintain that both parents have to work. Both the mother and father are often having to work so that they can afford to pay for childcare. This is quite possibly the single biggest indicator of how our modern society has become lost and fixated upon status and material gain, and lost sight of the real value of service and contribution. I cannot imagine there being many people who have positions at work where they are needed more than by their children.

The point at which we choose to become parents is the point at which we are put through our rite of passage, if we have not already gone through it. If we do not transition out of our adolescent fixation with ourselves and learn at that point how to serve selflessly, then we can easily start to bring suffering not just to ourselves but to others. It seems that rather than seeing the raising of children as the highest of honours, the stay home parent is now almost marginalised.

Sometimes parents seem willing to pass the opportunity to serve their children on to others so that they can continue their pursuit of prestige, material gain and status. We need to reflect seriously on this, because it is much harder to make merit with our lives elsewhere than it is through the raising of a functional and supported family unit.

So that deportment that is bent on personal gain, that conduct that seeks the approval of some, often at the expense of others, is vanity. It is rooted in pride and our need to compare ourselves to others as better. And we need to get over the idea that we might think we are not as good. It is a nonsense. A functional human being does not compare themselves to others. They just get on with the job of being who they are.

And when you are performing your function coherently, extraordinary things can be done with the slightest of gestures that might take very little energy to do. But they can make a profound difference. Because it is not an act of imposing your will upon the world to make things happen. It is just an alignment with a current that is working through you.

As human beings, or groups of people, we do not have a very good track record of getting on well for long periods of time. Sooner or later people bang their heads together with their egos or ideas of self. It is not until a group self-organises at a functional level that the individuals comprising it stop comparing themselves to others and vying for position, worrying how important they are, and just put their heads down and get on. And that is when a group functions, a collective functions, flourishes and evolves.

When you are happy to be who you are, performing whatever function it is, and delighting in the doing of it, you play your part in the growth of everybody around you. But when you are messy or ego-driven, performing a function when you do not have deeply within you the skills to do it, that is a mismatch between who you are and the energy that you have got and what you are trying to achieve. In this way the group does not flourish.

Are We Really Waking Up?

So in this dialogue we are all having now about making this evolution to a higher level of consciousness, we need to ask ourselves - are we really waking up? When reflecting on the evolution into mature adulthood at a group level, we need to understand that we are living in an adolescent society. We are not living in one that is driven by mature adult principles. We are living in a society that is driven by the perceived need to compare ourselves to others as better, same or worse, and our value as a human being is written in terms of how I compare to the next person in terms of the display I can show the world.

That is not how you will be judged when you finally pass. You will not be judged. All you will take with you is the quality of your mind and the merit or lack of it that you have made with your life. You will either be at peace with yourself or you will not, and that is the mind you will take on with you.

So let us get over all this lunacy of trying to prove something. It is a nonsense. We are here to find peace with what it is that we are a part of, and from there, when we have found it, we will find our own way to function beautifully. So make that making peace with yourself the front line and trust that you will find your position in this world along the way. And be prepared to be surprised by where you end up. And be open to it.

In our approach to life, how does this transition into adulthood actually express itself? Sloth and torpor is one of the major hindrances in life, and this is our unwillingness to do what needs to be done. It is in effect laziness. Other hindrances such as desire and greed are the perceived need to have something now, that stops us finding peace with what we have.

When we transition from adolescence into adulthood, our sloth and torpor need to be transformed into a willingness to do. Because, as our greed and desire become surmounted, it is our willingness to do that brings forth a new kind of enthusiasm and energy behind our lives.

This word willingness is a really key word – there is a big difference between wilfulness and willingness. It is our willingness that allows us to be with things as they are, and evolve with them and see every challenge as a teacher. It is our willingness to do what needs to be done that turns us into a functional contributor to the well-being of others.

It is important that we do not try to force this trans-ition into adulthood upon ourselves too early in life, but it is also important that we embrace it when it is time. That does not mean that we do not carry with us a joyful, almost childlike delight in life and what goes on around us. No-one is suggesting that in the process of growing up we should become dry. There is always room for something of the childlike wonder, that delight, that excitement, that adventure in life. But the broken adolescent principles that might have driven us will someday have to be let go if we are going to make peace with ourselves.

But you do not have to make it happen now. It is not about trying to slay your ego. Recognise the role that time has to play, and get a sense of perspective on the journey that you are on. And then make friends with where you are at on that journey, and get a sense of where you are going.

If you are not yet ready to let go the ego, you may still feel the need to seek personal resolution to some of the wounds you carry. There is nothing wrong with this and there is no fixed rule about what time in our lives we become truly ready to let go. There is something in this life that has so much intelligence to it that a conscious human being who is open and trusting, though they may take knocks, will get to a place of grace by the end of it. So we take it on the chin. We get up, we get over it. And we slowly and in stages stop being a nuisance to ourselves and others.

It might start at one level, hearing something like this, or we might think 'What?!' But if we really get in touch with our heart and we are willing to listen to it, it is also the biggest relief to hear it. Because within that becoming functional will be your unique expression of what it is to be human. And that is deeply personal, and something to deeply connect with. And it is not dry, it is exquisitely alive. It just does not need to make a big splash or get a round of applause.

I tell the story of the yogi who comes up to his master and says, 'So, Master, what was it that you did before you were enlightened?' And he replies, 'Why, I chopped wood and carried water.' 'And now you’re enlightened, what do you do?' 'Why, I chop wood and carry water.' It does not matter what you do if you can find a way of doing it with heart.

So give yourself permission to find out who you are, to meet yourself there, and just be what you came here to be. And do not worry about the fact that one day you will be gone and totally forgotten. Dance it while you are here, without making a nuisance of yourself. And see if you can get to that point where you can recognise, can touch, that intelligence that rests in the background that is taking care of you, that has never judged you, that is just waiting for you to make contact.

It is our awakening out of the friction of adolescence into mature adulthood, where ideas of self are not the reference point of our experience any more, that is the essence of the Buddha’s Dharma. And it is easy to get lost with this, trying to fathom out what it is the Buddha is trying to say. We might think that he is telling us that there is no self there, there is no ‘me’, that this idea of me is an elaboration, a figment of our imagination, but we do not experience existence as such. We experience very much a sense of ourselves as the galvanising force and influence within our lives. And yet we hear that this experience of no-self is our awakening.

So the Buddha is teaching us about no-self, which is the hub, the pith, the core of this teaching. Dependent Origination, the whole chain of Dependent Origination, starts with ignorance. At the beginning of the causal chain of Dependent Origination is ignorance, which is not understanding that this idea of ‘me’ is a figment of my imagination, is an illusion, caused by my unwise attention to the experience I am involved in.

No-self is not an idea to grapple with. You cannot just sit there and say, ‘Yes, the third Noble Truth is the realisation of no-self as the cessation of suffering.’ Because we are jolly well experiencing ourself as ourself and we are right at the forefront of that experience. So this no-self most certainly is not a truth at the moment, is it?

We are not talking about subscribing to that view. We are talking about the way in which we engage in the experience of life that brings an immediacy to it, that it is not crowded out by a sense of self.

Gradually, as this egoic aspect of our mind gets relinquished, there is more and more immersion in what we are experiencing and less and less sense of me. This complete fixation on myself, my needs, my perception, how I relate to others, who I think others are, what I think my life is about, is nothing but a noise and a distraction that filters out the immediacy of our experience.

We are not talking about subscribing to the view or the idea of no-self. We are talking about an experience of no self. And it does not come from figuring it all out but by developing awareness to the point at which perception of self fades from our experience and we begin to enter more completely into it. That is not something that we can think through, although we can contemplate it to a degree. It either happens to us or it does not happen to us.

The process of making this transition, this rite of passage out of adolescence to the point at which we stand in a fully mature state, simply willing to participate in the experience of being alive, reaching the point of understanding that my idea of myself does not matter, takes a maturity that comes upon us gradually. You cannot make it happen. Some people’s idea of self is extremely strong, is extremely elaborate, is extremely invested in and this is why it often takes the experience of suffering to prompt them to relinquish it.

In a way we are often willing to suffer no end of affliction to hold on to this idea of ourself when actually that suffering would be so much less if we gave it up.

So how willing or unwilling are we to let go these ideas of ourself and meet who we actually are, as we are? How ready are we to move unnoticed in this world, knowing that it is enough just to be a part of it? Because that is the point of spiritual maturity or adulthood, when we are willing to relinquish and let go and free ourselves of all the energy that we have gathered around us for the purposes of showing the world who we are. That is what is exhausting, that is what takes endless upholding, that is what we haemorrhage most of our vitality towards when we are very fixated on self.

The less fixated on self we are, the less energy we have to spin around the upholding of it, the freer we are, the more spacious we become, the less we worry about the outcome, the less important the outcome is and the more we can move through life frictionlessly.

So have a look at it. Ask yourself, ‘Am I ready to start unpacking the ego and leaving it behind?’ No one is forcing you to do anything, and letting go is not something anyone can tell you you must do. There is a timely unfolding at a soul level that happens when we are ripe for it. Often it takes suffering that we are not willing to forebear any more that prompts us to relinquish.

How far you have to suffer on account of your ego is entirely up to you actually. And that is what pride is. This dogged insistence to keep ‘me’ in the equation and this insistence on comparing myself to others. ‘Am I doing all right? Am I good enough? Am I as good? Am I better?’ Whether it is arrogance or whether it is some sense of lack of self-esteem it is all pride, and whether it is strong in you or weak in you is all dependent on how strongly you are attached to your idea of yourself.

Life is constantly inviting us to let go this idea of ourselves so that we can completely live it. If you see that and something clicks and your ideas start to be dismantled, there is a blissful and painless experience of letting go. If you are trying to let go your suffering, only prompted by your desire not to suffer, but there is an unwillingness to let go this idea of self or ego, then it is a painful letting go. This is part of what the Buddha meant when he said there are some who progress painlessly and others who progress painfully.

Life is complete without each of us and if any of us were to disappear in a puff of smoke right now, it would not skip a beat. When we can delight in that idea, instead of being horrified by it, we learn to really dance, to do whatever, without clinging to it. It does not matter. The universe is not waiting for you to figure it out or waiting to hear what you have to say about it. It is waiting for you to turn up and experience it completely.

There is the rite of passage that the Eightfold Noble Path is pointing towards, and it is that transition out of adolescence into adulthood. It is the release of that huge amount of energy we spin around us and the interference that that produces in the universe, to that point of willingness to function as a functional member of the group which is all of us.

You may well cut wood, carry water, chop vegetables, build a spaceship, discover the cure for cancer. It does not matter. You do it functionally, willingly, coherently, as part of your immersion in the process of life. But it does not matter. Engage completely, but understand it does not matter. Be sincere about what you do but do not take yourself too seriously. That is what it is to be functional rather than volitional, just willingness to do rather than a desire and need to do.

Once our personal needs are few and we are both easy to serve and serve easily, we will not need to spin so much energy out of the universe in our direction. And once we reach that willingness to do, we will probably find ourselves making our own small contribution to the well-being of those around us.