Buddhist Audio Books

From 'D. H. Lawrence and the Spiritual Community'

The Spiritual Community must have a common ideal and a common method of practice. As we have seen, the spiritual community consists of individuals. But individuals, i.e. true individuals, do not come ready made: they have to be created; they have to create themselves. A spiritual community, therefore, cannot be established in the sort of way that a group can be established. It comes into existence only when a number of people work on themselves - and on one another - in such a way that they actually become individuals and are able to relate to one another as individuals. But how does one work on oneself? How does one actually become an individual? In order to become an individual one needs a definite method of practice, by which is meant not a mere technique of bringing about ‘results’ irrespective of one’s mental attitude but an effective means of radical self-transformation. In Buddhism the principal method of practice is meditation, in which one works directly on the mind itself, transforming self-consciousness into transcendental consciousness and so on. Lawrence wanted to establish Rananim. But he and his friends were not individuals to start with, though Lawrence himself, at least, had some of the characteristics of the true individual, nor were they able to work on themselves and become individuals. They were unable to work on themselves because they had no common method of practice. All that Lawrence was able to offer them was the prospect of somehow reverting to the preconscious state of the infant, n which self-consciousness does not exist and one feels at one with the whole of existence - thus implying that the preconscious state is higher then the conscious state. Moreover, a definite method of practice presupposes a definite ideal, for a method is a method only in relation to a certain end. Since Lawrence had no clearly defined concept of the individual it was not really possible for him to have the individual as his ideal, and because he did not have the individual as his ideal it was not possible for him and his friends to become individuals, or even to have a means of becoming such. In Buddhism the end in relation to which meditation is the principal means is true individuality. The ultimate ideal of Buddhism is the ideal of human enlightenment, which is not an ideal imposed upon man from without (the kind of pseudo-ideal against which Lawrence protested) but one which is implicit in his own nature and which represents the fulfilment of his nature in the deepest and truest sense.