In Pursuit of a Source-oriented Practice
~ By Ajahn Pasanno ~
This past week I listened to a talk of Ajhan Munindo’s*, and he was talking about the different approaches to practice, different approaches to worldview or self-view. And I thought it was particularly interesting and worthy of ongoing reflection.
Most of us coming from our cultural backgrounds tend to be focussed on goals, which shapes our worldview and self-view: working toward a goal, having to have a goal and having to get rid of things that are the obstacles to that goal. The knock-on effect of this goal-oriented practice is that we feel that we are lacking, missing something, even flawed—damaged in some way and trying to get to some kind of perfection somewhere, sometime, somewhere else. And this keeps us busy for our whole life, but it doesn’t lead to much contentment or satisfaction or even a whole lot of wellbeing.
Buddhism is a different approach. It’s learning how to appreciate that source of the fundamental nature of the mind. It’s here. It’s now. It’s timeless. There is this underlying nature, this radiance of the mind. Like water, it’s basic nature is pure, but can be colored, turbid that make it less than pure.
Buddhism is also something that has puzzled western minds for a long time. Even for ourselves who are inspired by the teachings, inspired by the practice, it’s important to recognize how our own cultural conditions can be affecting us, creating obstacles and problems for ourselves, and not recognized so clearly.
In the late 1970s, an interviewer with the BBC asked the former King of Thailand how do Buddhists conceive of Original Sin. The King responded by saying Buddhists don’t really think in terms of Original Sin, they think more in terms of Original Purity.
Well that’s a whole different worldview, a whole different self-view. The source is something worthy of coming back to rather than conceiving of a goal to get away from something.
It’s not that Buddhist practice is completely goalless and has no motivation, but you free up a lot of energy and motivation if you are not entangling yourself in conceptions of yourself as flawed, lacking or less than.
(*) Ajahn Munindo is the Abbot of Aruna Ratanagiri. For more information, please visit Harnham Buddhist Monastery.
(From ‘The Underlying Radiance of the Mind,' a Dhamma talk offered at Abhayagiri Monastery on 16 May 2020.
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Photograph: From Abhayagiri Monastery Website.