APPENDICES

Questionable Thai Temple

As the decades rolled by, I found my practice peaked and troughed, in significant part because urban life is largely antithetical to spiritual practices, and also because meditation groups are emotionally toxic; yes, meditation groups are emotionally toxic. You may well ask what collection of people does not come with a measure of toxicity anyway? But there is something particularly painful about people who get religious about things, more so if you are sensitive. And yet spiritual community is indispensable, as much for the knowledge it imparts as inspirational company. To underline the potential danger of other people in your long-term mindfulness practice, I will outline a few personal examples. I will keep as brief as I can.

In the zeroes, I paid a visit to a Thai Buddhist city temple in East London, U.K. It was the end house of a terrace, with a large garage and large garden. My need was to keep my meditation practice going. As the front door was locked, I knocked and entered the temple via the back door. I saw two Thai monks lounging on sofas, watching football. This impromptu encounter actually said it all, and I should have left it at that, but my need to find spiritual comradeship and a place to meditate regularly was high.

From the outset, the head monk made me feel like persona non grata unless, I later came to realise, I donated alms, even though the temple already received generous support, and I required nothing material from them. I would have donated something except I was so broke I would have benefited from alms myself. I was literally counting pennies to get through the week.

The head monk likened the temple to a church, although it did not provide a weekly meditation. This I found questionable, as an active church would provide a weekly Mass. Who would provide financial support for a priest or pastor who did not make Mass available? To be fair, in the Thai Buddhist tradition, laity are not expected to meditate, but if monks do not either, just what do they adhere to that Siddhatta Gotama prescribed? A weekly meditation did start for a couple of weeks or so, but only the two resident monks and myself turned up.

During the few meditations we had, they projected hatred towards me. How do I know this? Because I felt it, during the meditations, and while cycling home, twice narrowly avoiding unpleasant encounters. The two monks were curiously surprised when I turned up the following week. Did they expect me to be extinguished perhaps?

I met a few Thai lay people during my visits to the temple. Most looked at me like I had two heads, and some were offensive with it. The xenophobia was palpable and I did not need to speak Thai to grasp this. After a couple of visits, I had a good idea they were a lost cause, but before I drew up my conclusions of the Thai tradition, and planned my next move, I wanted more insight into these people, and to be sure of my reasons for moving on. I wanted to avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water.

The head monk always made things hard going. On one occasion, he insisted I attend an afternoon at the temple, no reason given. It turned out to be the head monk, a bunch of women, and a table of less-than-fresh Thai food. I was told to eat, while everyone looked on. I could not understand what the woman serving me was saying, and before I knew it, she was spitting venom at me. She had asked whether the food was too spicy and I had not answered because I had not understood her accent. I was left disturbed by the experience and the underlying tone of it all. Today, I have zero doubts that it was a deference test, to see how much submission I was prepared to show them.

On another occasion, with Wesak celebrations pending, the head monk told me, in his usual infantilising way, I “had better” attend, and something about being a good Buddhist. The celebrations were held in a public hall and my prescience told me to be ready for some encounter. Curiously, no one spoke to me, or even smiled at me, including the head monk who had insisted I attend. Towards the end of celebrations, I took a plastic bin bag and started picking up litter. The head monk looked at me, shooed me away with his hands as though I was a scoundrel, and barked something derisory. Moments later from across the hall, he started shouting loudly at me, beetroot red in the face. It silenced the hall and then the incident was gone.

Later, I offered a gift to the head speaker, a monk and head of a boys’ school in Sri Lanka. It was a DVD film I had made about a quantum mechanism behind push-gravity. He refused to take it from me, telling me to post it to him in Sri Lanka. He was, though, upset at being invited to come all that way and given only seconds to speak. Still, as a monk he should have preserved his equanimity and acted with grace towards a donor.

Power Games and Vinaya

Back at the temple, the head monk took delight, insisting, for some reason, in showing me the monks’ sleeping quarters. There are strict rules that a monk should live by, listed in a book called the Vinaya. The rules and guidelines therein are not presented as quotes of the Buddha, and it was not committed to paper until just after the Buddha had passed, so we might well question their authenticity. But it states a bhikkhu may have a hut built from the alms he has collected for himself. Its dimensions are limited to approximately 3 x 1.75 metres, measured from the outside. The bedroom looked slightly oversized, although still very small. It contained a bunk-bed, which infringed Vinaya rules, as a monk’s bed should be low-slung, no more than a height of 65cm (pācittiya 87).

I cannot be sure why the head monk wanted me to see his sleeping quarters but I got the impression he was implying something outside of Vinaya rules, and so I left him in mid-sentence. This was not the only allusion to sexual activity that the head monk raised.

The Vinaya states that initiation of sexual contact involving a monk or nun, even if only for a momentary liaison, is an offence that requires the convening of a formal meeting for discussion by the saṅgha. Nevertheless, the head monk suggested I enter into a homosexual relationship with the other monk who had taken quite a shine to me. He said this was tolerated in the monks’ communities in Thailand. I rejected the offer. However, he did not stop there. He told me an anecdote about a nun in Thailand who was so attractive the monks kept falling in love with her, so she disfigured her face with hot irons. He suggested I disfigure my face in the same way. I should say here that the other monk did not do or say anything to involve himself, even though he was there at the time.

There were a couple of occasions when he insisted I use the monks’ personal toilet, which was strictly out of bounds to anyone else. I did not need a toilet, but to calm him down I went to look at it and deliberately did not use it. On another day, with the other monk present, he became animated, loudly ranting and raving, claiming I had left a filthy mess. He came to a stop after I calmly repeated that I had never used the toilet.

Interaction with the head monk was almost invariably demeaning. His English was only ever as good as he needed it to be in the moment. He once gave me a lambasting over strimming cord for the garden, claiming I had promised to buy it. I had not, and I could not afford it anyway. What he really wanted from me was obedience.

He once tried to impress the significance of Thailand upon me by boasting that the film The King and I, lead part played by Yul Brynner, was based on Thai culture. On another occasion he was less than complimentary about the Thai King. These comments came on the back of his exhortation for me to learn Thai, go to Thailand, and ordain as a monk, specifically at a place where monks shared space with tigers. He implied Buddhism stopped the tigers eating the monks. I asked if the tigers were well fed and had big bellies. “Yes,” was the reply. They both seemed taken aback when I pointed out that they were well fed to stop the tigers eating the monks.

Authority, Deference, and the Dhamma

He once accused me of hating Thai people because the Americans killed Vietnamese Buddhists during the Vietnam war. He said I was on their side, implying I would kill Buddhists. His comments were hypothetical and illogical. Nevertheless, I said, “You kill those who kill.” I meant that then and I mean that now, but then, I have never claimed to be a bhikkhu nor monk. According to Sāriputta, this is in direct contradiction to what the Buddha taught:

But there is also Aṅgulimāla’s experience to consider. He was “murderous, bloody-handed, given to blows and violence, merciless to living beings” (MN86:2). He tried to murder the Buddha, in addition to wearing a finger cut from those he had murdered. Nevertheless, he became an arahant in the same life, not without first overcoming his grosser nature, it has to be said.

He once boasted that he gets invited to some sort of Buddhist High Council meeting in Thailand, not that his prestige was ever going to curry favour with me. Besides, I have no doubt there is more than one Buddhist High Council in Thailand, claiming superiority in some way. I heard him say, in quiet tones to the other monk, something about needing to preserve his reputation in Thailand, and that he would drive me away, even if he had to die doing so. I repeated this back to him. The other monk, red-faced and surprised, then asked me if I spoke Thai. The head monk agreed on behalf of us all that there was mind-reading.

The head monk once told me that if I did not bow to the statue of the Buddha, and low, I would not be allowed to attend the temple. I did this more out of interest in knowing what his response would be, rather than respect for a shabby statue. As my face was on the floor, I turned to look at the head monk, who was watching me. He gleefully displayed his Schadenfreude. He never asked me to bow to the statue again and neither did I bother. It was, in essence, a game of power. This event, more than any other single experience of the Thai tradition, convinced me the tradition was deeply flawed and psychologically unhealthy. There is no requirement to bow to a statue of the Buddha. In fact, the Canon suggests quite the opposite. The Buddha once admonished Bhikkhu Vakkali for staring, saying, “Enough, Vakkali! Why do you want to see this foul body? One who sees the Dhamma sees me; one who sees me sees the Dhamma” (SN III 22.87).

Today, laity now worship monks, whereas originally the laity were advised to hold a bhikkhu to account. The Buddha recommended the laity inspect a bhikkhu’s integrity, advising them to question the wise amongst the Saṅgha, and any teaching passed off as Dhamma should be “compared with the suttas and reviewed in the light of the discipline” (DN16:4.8). Bhikkhus are expected to provide the laity with clarification regarding edifying and difficult teachings, in return for support.

This may be Buddhism, but it is not what Siddhatta Gotama taught. Giving away one’s power should never be the case, lest you end up waiting to be saved.

Buddha Qualities and Yellow Necks

The head monk did his best not to let me use the front door. Apparently, leaving by the front door meant I was destined to become a Buddha. He insisted I use the back door to leave. I was chastised several times not to enter or leave by the front door, and the head monk did this with disproportionate alarm.

On my last visit to them, after the attempt to publicly humiliate me at Wesak, the other monk tried to tell me about a Thai superstition concerning leaving and entering a temple by the front door. Whatever the parameters were, I understood it could foretell whether a person would become a Buddha. They had told me I had some Buddha qualities: the shape of my body, facial hair, curly hair, and so on.

The fact was, I did not want to be a Buddha. All Buddhas have the same challenging biography. Further, there is no substantive difference between a Buddha and an arahant, except that a Buddha reveals lost wisdom. The Canon tells us even Siddhatta Gotama, the historical Buddha of this era, did not want to teach. He had to be persuaded by the god Brahmā Sahampati, who was aware of what the Buddha was thinking, and put forward the argument: “there are beings with little dust in their eyes, who are wasting through not hearing the Dhamma” (MN26:20).

The head monk mocked me, claiming that when I died I would end up in a realm where I helped others, implying that I was neither a Buddha nor arahant. I asked him where he would go upon death, and he very solemnly said “hell”, hung his head, looked at the other monk and smirked. The name for those who manipulate another’s emotions is narcissist.

The Buddha taught that rules and rituals treated dogmatically cannot bring Nibbāna. Buddha-Dhamma is not to be ritualised. Whatever strategies are used in one’s effort towards Nibbāna, they are merely tools and not the product. The Buddha certainly did not approve of ritualistic animal slaughter (SN I 3:9).

There is a prophecy in the Canon, attributed to the Buddha, warning that in the future there will be a group of evil Buddhist monks. He referred to them as Gotrabhuno Kāsāvakaṇṭhā, commonly translated as Yellow Necks, although it does not refer to any specific colour, let alone yellow. It says this group wears the colours of a bhikkhu’s robe around their necks.

The lesson here, then, is to walk away from monks who demean you and lack integrity, and give to those who support you with edifying teachings. Wearing saffron robes, per se, meant nothing to the Buddha. He taught the measure of a person was the ability to follow a good ethic, and that a true man does not have to wear robes (MN113:20). The Buddha never asked anyone to be under his rule. He said the Tathāgata has no “teacher’s fist” in respect of doctrines.

Conclusion

It was clear I had allowed myself to be passively coerced by passive aggression into being a people-pleaser in exchange for group meditation, which the monks despised providing. The trade-off proved painful.

Do not let anyone tell you psychic skills can only be used for good. Psychic powers, the siddhi, are developed by sustained attention. There is nothing exclusive or esoteric about them. The reader will no doubt have their own experiences. A set of ethics is needed to control them. All powers need some measure of control.

And how much respect should we give to prestige anyway? One can do one’s own research to learn about the moral integrity of the world’s religious leaders. It is less than what it should be, is it not? Our spiritual future requires taking back one’s authority. I suspect the medium to long-term future of society involves more self-reliance and independence; one’s own merit to survive the arrogance of current leadership. The institution before humanity.

We should remember that the original Saṅgha relied on just enough for sustainable practice and health. Siddhatta Gotama, posthumously entitled the Buddha, did not practice today’s Buddhism. Anciently, a bhikkhu had zero authority, and indeed begged for subsistence. This teaching is not legitimising evil Saṅgha. It is saying that evil characters will succeed in passing themselves off as Saṅgha. However, those who give to the Yellow Necks, believing they are legitimate, will still receive the same merit as giving to innocent Saṅgha.

The Buddha actually warned against adherence to mere rules and ritual: “Bhikkhus, when you know the Dhamma to be similar to the raft, you should abandon even the teachings, how much more so things contrary to the teaching” (MN22:14).

Bad Communities

I found it made no difference whether I attended an urban centre, a retreat centre run by urbanites, or a monastery run by monks, I have always found the environments unbearably toxic. While living with one group, I toughed it out with as much integrity as I could muster for several years. It led me to a crisis that took years to get over. Having explored the Thai tradition of monks in the UK, some exclusively Thai, some mixed, I found them to be no different. I have known monks tell lies, search retreatants’ belongings, take what is not theirs and belittle retreatants.

Whether monastic or urban, the local community often hate them. Xenophobia perhaps? No, I have found Buddhists love hitting people with emotional missives; giving the evil eye is pandemic amongst some who would call themselves Buddhists.

These are unregulated environments and my experience of them taught me there is no evil beyond the unaccountable. People love power. It is an aphrodisiac. I recall one Buddhist using the phrase the “way of love and the way of power”.

Urban communities are just as questionable. My experience of communities is that they offer less opportunity for spiritual practice than living alone.

Loveless Buddha

Emotion is gross and so has to be calmed for meditation. The way to do this is indirectly. As it is said, what you resist persists. The practitioner of mindfulness and meditation will notice the downplay of emotion during mindfulness and meditation. Meditation is emotionless but not necessarily meaningless. Unless this distinction is seen and understood, it is possible that one can introduce lovelessness into one’s life, especially as the bhikkhu’s life does not condone intimate relationship. Indeed, the bhikkhu has severed the bonds of family life.

Retreat Centres

A regular ruse these places use is to challenge and frighten you on whether you should be there. They seem a little too eager to call police and remove people who might not have gone through the right channels. Despite what might be claimed, these environments are significantly unregulated, with a dangerous undercurrent of people-politics. Running with the herd becomes a safe haven for most who frequent these places.

Always keep your proof of booking. I was once asked to leave a retreat amid the worst snow storm the UK had witnessed in decades. It was luck that got me from one side of the country to the other.

There is always a sexual pressure present during a retreat, and being cruel does it for some. Whilst a retreat centre is split into gender-isolated areas, bisexuals are able to derive a vicarious sexual thrill through their mischief. Whatever the environment, expect some measure of negative interaction. You have to be proactive in dealing with these people; they are not going to stop. It is easy to see why the Buddha sought solitude and recommended meditation “born of seclusion” (MN39:15).

A monastery or retreat is not the place to treat depression, but a gradual approach to mindfulness is helpful. A gradual approach!

Bodily Discomforts and Dreams

We need to look at bodily discomforts as they are a significant cause of cognitive disturbance. Bodily discomforts constantly instigate the memories and feelings that impinge on awareness. Bodily discomfort is the major source of daydreaming and night dreaming. Prophetic dreams aside, mundane dreams are constantly relating your physical needs to you, although they are not much more articulate at this than a cattle prod.

A daydream typically draws on a memory and somehow adds a tinge, or more, of negative feeling to it. That is what I mean by cattle prod. You have to know what direction to go in. You have to know where your requirement lies. Do you eat, drink, sleep, smoke? There is a skill to this, just as there is to looking after oneself properly. A failure to address one’s requirements often manifests as an inability to concentrate.

Mundane night dreams are about the condition of your body and are easy to interpret. Quite simply, uncomfortable dreams mean you feel uncomfortable about something. Conversely, sweet night dreams mean you have little pressing bodily need. If you want better sleep, look into your diet. I have said for years, even on national radio, insomnia is a bowel issue.

The Buddha prescribed eating once a day for better health and better meditation. Bhikkhu Bhaddāli pointed out that such an eating regime might give rise to nervousness and anxiety. The Buddha suggested Bhaddāli eat half of his alms for breakfast, and the rest later (MN65:3). Remember this is advice to bhikkhus, not urbanites.

What one does during the day clearly can affect one at night. This is noted in the Vammika discourse (MN23:4), where the Buddha explains, “What one thinks and ponders by night based upon one’s actions during the day is the ‘fuming by night.’” The lesson here is: wind down the excitement during the day for better sleep at night.

But there are prophetic day and night dreams. Like mundane dreams, prophetic dreams play out in the same audio-visual faculties, and so qualitatively they can seem much of a muchness. So how do we distinguish the mundane from the prophetic? In a word: detail. Prophetic dreams are slightly clearer in detail and you are more likely to remember them for this.

Buddhist, Christian, and Contemporary Spiritual Perspectives

I suspect most people reading this book are not concerned about becoming Buddhist. And why would they be? Why should we care about where we get our wisdom? I am closing this part of the book on this point because the spiritualist movement has significantly risen in popularity over recent decades. By spiritual, I mean interest in that which is not material. That is a wide area of interest that curiously correlates to the world’s fomenting unrest. One understandably wonders what life is all about, and where one’s best efforts lie. Just who is not interested in wisdom and the end of suffering?

There are two end-game scenarios to end all suffering. There is extinction, which is what Buddhism espouses and calls Parinibbāna. To the best of my research, Buddhism is the only spiritual credo that teaches this. The alternative is that there is some expression of oneself attaining eternal succour under the safety of some ultimate place or being. So, which is it? At least, which understanding is most credible: succoured by the ultimate for eternity, or extinction?

The advent of the internet has been helpful for shining some light on this question. It is presenting a wealth of empirically sourced data in the field of near-death experiences (NDEs). People have ostensibly died and then been resuscitated. There is a remarkably high degree of consistency in what gets independently reported, which makes it compelling for comparative study with orthodox beliefs.

NDEs are eagerly scrutinised by what is called the lightworker. The modern spiritual perspective often espouses the belief that the Earth is a living, evolving entity, and that sentient beings are transitioning from our current three dimensions of awareness to five dimensions. In Buddhist language, this means people will be living more jhānicly. To get some grasp of this, think of the wood-turner’s absorbed awareness, which is first and second jhānic experience. For third and fourth jhānic experiences, think empathy, clairvoyance, prescience, astral travel, healing, bilocation, and so on. That is the kind of experience awakening people can expect. We will cover Buddhist miracles, the siddhi powers, later.

The modern spiritualist, often called a lightworker, takes siddhi skills in their stride, while the Buddhist often frowns on them as a distraction to Nibbāna. I can say from experience that intense vipassanā meditation enhances psychic cognisance — without a shadow of a doubt. I once found myself bilocating at will before I had even read about the phenomenon. A psychic is experienced enough to use siddhi powers at will. Buddhist doctrine says jhānic experience is commensurate with one’s next rebirth, notwithstanding Parinibbāna. Be clear about the why, the what, and the when of your spiritual practices.

Regardless of differing lexicons, there are many points to compare between belief systems. How far apart is the lightworker’s practice of “feel the gratitude” from the Brahmā Vihāras, or the difference between “raising one’s frequency” and subtler consciousness through meditation, and “higher vibrational beings” from the canonical gods?

There are a couple of fundamental questions arising. How does the lightworker evaluate pleasure and discomfort? If I practice Buddhist vipassanā, am I committing myself to extinction? I see no satisfying answer regarding the end game. The irresolvable part comes because no one can return from Parinibbāna to vouch for the truth of it. Parinibbāna is accepted on faith, not fact. If there is suññatā in this life, is suññatā permanent upon death?

The lightworker says that we are the Eye of Wisdom, the I Am Consciousness, and we are eternal. Thus, death of our true self is not possible. If death is not possible, then Parinibbāna is also not possible. But if we are eternal, who has lived to the end of eternity to vouch for this? We will do well here to recall the Buddha’s view on pondering eternity, which is that it is a thicket of views that conduces to madness (MN72:14).

Modern spiritual perspective says there is a cosmological view that the Earth is universally acknowledged as a uniquely difficult planet to live on, and that we volunteered to be reborn here, even agreeing a “soul contract”, which involves undertaking a great deal of personal suffering. The soul contract and the Matrix are a thicket of views few have time for. And so, I satisfy myself with a comparison to Darwinian evolution.

By taking our grief with reasonable grace, by following a set of good ethics, by vipassanā, by meditation, we refine ourselves and contribute to the manifestation of higher consciousness, a New Jerusalem, 5D, our next stage in evolution. This inspires me to look at what the Bible says of the Kingdom of Heaven.

One common theme in the parables of the Kingdom of Heaven is about what is in one’s heart, and not about one’s worldly status. The rich man was too attached to his wealth, the workers were too attached to their rate of pay, and the wrongly dressed man lacked respect for himself, while the well-to-do lacked respect for others.

So the jhānas, the siddhi powers, 5D and heaven on earth are all brought about by the attenuation of grossness through ethical practice, mindfulness and meditation. We have free will to attend the feast or reject it. Here endeth our comparison of the Kingdom of Heaven, 5D and jhānic experience.

The next part of this book is an investigation into the teachings of the Pāli Canon, and fathoming its many concepts and terms. They are often prosaic and nebulous and present a jigsaw that no one should be left to piece together without help.