Buddhism, Pyrrhonism & The Search For Enlightenment

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Photo of seated Gandhara_Buddha sculpture from the Berlin Museum

17th-Century illustration of Greek philosopher PyrrhoMy journey on the path started a long time ago; initially started by an old secondary school teacher who pointed out the differences between the various religions that existed in the modern world. She called it Religious Education and I have a feeling she was just supposed to stick to Christian Dogma.

Over several weeks we explored world religions, and it should come as no surprise that I was attracted to Buddhism. The religion that depended on no external agency to prop you up. I was always fiercely independent, and I guess it just made sense to me.

Since that time I have immersed myself in the various schools of Buddhist thought, but lurking like a shadow behind me was a fascination for the Hellenistic traditions. Greek philosophy had always interested me, but I was unlikely to study the Greek Classics in a secondary modern school in the North East of England.

I first noticed these traditions when I took up a study of astronomy at the age of 11.

I loved looking at the sky at night, and I remember my first book on astronomy vividly. In fact, I still have it. It was the ‘Observers Book of Astronomy’. A small slim volume that was filled with images of constellations and pictures of nebulae, clusters, spiral galaxies and the planets.

I remember learning the Greek alphabet from that book.

“Learning the Greek alphabet?” I hear you ask…

Let me explain.

Stars are of varying brightness and in order to catalogue them, astronomers of ages past used the Greek alphabet as a prefix for the star’s name.

So the constellation of Canis Major (The Great Dog from Greek mythology) is made up of stars of varying brightness. The brightest star in that constellation Sirius is called Alpha Canis Major.

Alpha being the first letter of the Greek alphabet. Beta is the second and so on.

My point is is that I had a fascination for all things Greek but didn’t pursue it as a philosophical subject. I was heavily invested in Buddhism and wouldn’t allow myself to be distracted by all this ‘Western Philosophy’.

As my interest in Buddhism developed and my thinking matured, I took an interest in the historical aspects of Buddhism, but information back then was scarce and there were lots of gaps in my knowledge. Gaps that were being gradually filled by the work of Trevor Ling in his book ‘The Buddha’.

At last someone was putting Buddhism into context, using hard data and evidence rather than repeating hearsay.

None of my Buddhist teachers could answer the questions I threw at them, and they kept the party line, parroting what their teachers had taught them with little recourse for independent thinking.

A very dogmatic approach to Buddhism.

I was shocked they hadn’t looked at what the academics were doing, and I was simply admonished and told to concentrate on practicing Buddhism.

Whatever that meant!

No one for example challenged the ideas of karma and rebirth. Concepts that seemed to contradict many of the ideas that early Buddhism talked about.

But even the so-called primary sources (The Pali Canon) were full of contradictions, and I needed more. I was hungry for information that would help me come to terms with the human condition. I was having an existential crisis!

I read as much as I could on what we knew of early Buddhism and reconciled myself to the fact that I needed to follow my own path (as the Buddha always recommended), when I came across a kindred spirit in the form of Stephen Batchelor. He had the same doubts as me, and I guess many others, and was writing about the subject using Pali texts and referenced Western philosophers too.

I noticed he often referred to the Greek philosopher Pyrrho, and this intrigued me. I had heard of Pyrrho the Skeptic and had not been lucky enough to read the ‘Works of Sextus Empiricus’. I just didn’t see it being relevant at that time.

It was, it turns out, the missing link.

The piece of the puzzle and the key to a new door.

It was just what I needed.

Before I turned into a dogmatist!

I instantly began to study the Greek philosophers, and I soaked up their ideas like a sponge. Just when I thought I was getting my head around Skepticism along came Adrian Kuzminski and Christopher Beckwith.

They suggested that the Indians had influenced The Greeks (although some academics say it may have been the other way round) and cited specifically Pyrrho and his ideas.

I was onto something.

Suddenly everything became clear. Many of the problems I had been having with traditional Buddhist thought started to evolve and to change. I meditated on these ideas and the old accretions of Buddhism I had been clinging onto dropped away. Even Zen started making sense and I was able to reread Nagarjuna and make sense of it for the first time.

So where does that leave me?

I am constantly going on about maps and how we can expand our maps. Before these events happened, I thought my map was pretty good. It turns out I only had the one!

Now I have an atlas!

One of the maps in my new atlas concerns meditation.

This has always been an important chapter for me and has guided me through many hard times.

I thought I knew all about it but then…

I also learned that the Greeks never had a tradition of practicing meditation in the sense that the Indian traditions followed.

Although Pyrrho evidently spent 5 years with Alexander the Great on his campaigns in India, where he met Sramanas (Holy Men) and gymnosophists who undoubtedly practiced yogas of some kind, he never brought back to Greece the idea that meditation was a useful tool.

It didn’t seem to be important to ones journey to achieve tranquility.

The Buddhists call this Nirvana, and Pyrrho called it Ataraxia.

When I read this, it reminded me of some early discourses of the Buddha, when it was said that people became “awakened” just by hearing the Buddha talk.

This idea that you needed to meditate for years to achieve tranquility was therefore probably not necessary. My teachers had taught me that meditation was a prerequisite to enlightenment.

That enlightenment (whatever that means) could only be achieved by certain people, and that it was revelatory and almost otherworldly. It was inevitably linked to other ‘truths’ such as karma and rebirth!

Dogmatic nonsense…

In fact, it was said that many people understood his teachings just by listening. I’m also sure that the Buddha just didn’t sit in meditation (which is the usual image associated with the Buddha) but that he entered into discourse and argument with many other learned teachers of his time. Just as Pyrrho and other philosophers had done in Ancient Greece.

So why am I going on about this then?

Because it has changed the way I meditate and it may help you if you have reached a sticking point.

Sometimes I do just sit and at other times I think of a belief I have and pull it apart. I dissect it and put counter arguments together until the belief itself has no meaning and I ‘suspend judgement’ and it has been revelatory.

I will explore this method in much more detail in my next post and this will be the subject of my forthcoming book:

Beyond Beliefs

The Practice Of Zazen Or Just Sitting Meditation

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Image of meditating Buddhist monk in red robes sitting with hands in lap

Just sitting…

When I first got into meditation, it was back in the late 60s and there was little or no instruction available. I attended my first formal Zazen session at a small gathering of middle class Buddhists literally ‘just up the road’ from my family home.

I visited Throssel Hole Priory where I eventually took Jukai and also attended formal training sessions with Kalu Rimpoche at Samye Ling Monastic Centre in Eskdalemuir. I was fully intending to take ordination as a novice at that point, but life got in the way and I married had kids etc, etc.

Although the approaches were different, they all had the same effect (if you can call it that). They taught me awareness and concentration that have proved invaluable in my day-to-day life.

There are many approaches to meditation and we have explored a couple of those at our regular training sessions. We are currently working with concentration on the breath and of course, my favourite ‘just sitting’.

Just sitting, or Zazen as I know it, was taught to me at Throssel hole Priory, near Hexham by Jiyu Kennet roshi, and is known as Shi Kan Ta Za in the Soto Zen tradition (more about that later).

Here is the method in the way that I was taught and echoes the words of Soto Zen Teacher Dogen Zenji in the 13th century

1)   Find a quiet spot and cast aside all involvements and cease the 10,000 things.

2)   Early morning practice is good

3)   Sit on a zafu (cushion)

4)   Keep spine straight

5)   Eyes open “neither wide open, nor half-closed”

Remember, Zazen is not a spiritual practice. It is the effort of mind and body.

The 4 points of Zazen 

The first thing I asked was what should I be thinking about.

“Good is not considered, bad is not considered. It is beyond mind, will, or consciousness and beyond mindfulness, thought or reflection”

  1. Hi Shi Ryo Non thinking.
  2. Sho Shin Tan Za Sitting up, right making the body right.
  3. Shin Jin Datsu Raku Dropping off body and mind.
  4. Shi Kan Ta Za Just sitting.

The word Hi Shi Ryo means non thinking.

“What the hell is that?” I asked the question and was told just “think non-thinking”

In other words, start paying attention to your thought processes. The processes and not the actual thoughts. Thoughts don’t just go on continually and there are little spaces between them. Observe the gaps.

You could say that there are two types of thoughts:

The trivial thoughts that pop up and disappear and the complex thoughts that grab out attention and take us along for a ride.

So…

To practice thinking not thinking, ignore the first lot and learn not to foment the second lot. Just look at the natural spaces between all of them .

Dogen spent a great deal of time addressing the physicality of Zazen.

Sho Shin Tan Za means right posture and regulated sitting. Posture is a great measure of how well your meditation is going, so pay attention to how you are sitting and watch what happens.

Are you relaxed or tense?

So sit up and not down!

Shin Jin Datsu Raku, or the dropping off of body and mind.

The famous Soto teacher Gudo Nishijima calls it the balance of the autonomic nervous system, or the balance between thought and feeling.

In Buddhism we make no distinction between the mental and the physical. Both are connected.

Finally, we come to Shi Kan Ta Za, or just sitting. Mind you, that doesn’t mean to just sit around aimlessly.

Shi kan means earnestly, or intently, and the first character in the second word Ta means hit or strike.

The final character Za means sit.

The image when I first heard this description evoked the hitting of the cushion as you sat down. Really meaning it with pure intention.

With action!

No bells, no whistles or mystical trances.

No search for ‘enlightenment’ or daft attempts at self-improvement .

Zazen is simply sitting there…

So… Off you go!

Don’t forget to join me every Tuesday evening at 6.00 PM (UK time) for our online meditation and discussion session.

Click here to register for the Higherway Code Meditation Group

 

 

Zen Mind, Beginners Mind – From Tibetan Buddhism to Pyrrhonism

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Buddhism, books, bowls and brass Buddhas are just some of my Buddhist accoutrements
Buddhism, books, bowls and brass Buddhas are just some of my Buddhist accoutrements

In Zen they talk an awful lot about beginners mind.

I remember reading Shunryu Suzuki wonderful little book back in the 70s and being struck by its simplicity and then relatively recently reading ‘Outlines of Pyrrhonism’ and suddenly Suzuki made sense… at last!

In fact, since reading ‘Outlines of Pyrrhonism’ things have become simpler. Many of the books on Zen and in particular the Chinese sources have suddenly come together in one vast explosion of understanding.

Or is it ‘overstanding’?

I think what was missing was my beginner’s mind!

I think I was attempting to read too much into the books and ideas without:

“Dropping Away Body and Mind,” as Dogen says.

I was over-intellectualising everything.

I needed a good dose of Pyrrho.

It seems to reach the parts others don’t just reach, and it does it through argument rather than sitting all day on a cushion.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing and maybe I didn’t believe that the western philosophers could offer me anything of any value and I was wrong.

Maybe they weren’t exotic enough for me.

Living in the North East as a youngster, I felt that there should be more to life.

Working in the ship repair yards on the Tyne wasn’t exotic!

It was dirty, oily, cold and usually wet.

The clanking and crashing of steel and the incessant buzz of arc welders everywhere assailed the senses. It was a visceral place and in retrospect I probably missed the beauty of it.

I spent most of my time thinking about the future, about how I would escape and become a Monk. I would sit on the quayside lost in thought watching the clouds on the horizon out at sea thinking about what it would be like to be in the Himalayas.

Cold, crisp air, clear intense blue skies filled with billowing white clouds, Tibetan Prayer flags flapping in the freezing Tibetan air and the thought of meditating all day entranced me.

My reverie being quickly broken by the harsh tones of the Foreman Jimmy.

“Kung Fu… What yee deein? Get your tools and come ower here!”

(my nickname in the shipyards was Kung Fu)

His index finger always seemed to be up his right nostril and his other was always scratching his crotch.

Definitely not exotic.

So I found myself getting wrapped up in Tibetan Buddhism. It was a comforting religion and the rituals and accoutrements fascinated me. They were other worldly and unusual.

Different.

Looking back, it did not differ from the traditions of the Christian Faith that I had no interest in. Lots of metaphysics, prayers, chanting and incense; but offering me little in the way of helping me get an answer to my existential questions.

I was replacing one set of dogmas for another more exotic set.

Not at all conducive to awakening and putting me even deeper into a trance. Hypnotic mumbo jumbo.

I read all I could and got deeply embroiled in the Vajrayana tradition studying at Samye Ling Monastic Centre.

I even contemplated taking monastic vows.

But after investing many years of thought, reading and practice, I was certain that no one here could give me the answers. The ideology had too many contradictions for me.

I took my search further afield with Japanese Zen and the Soto tradition.

For me, Zen made much more sense. It was simple, austere and although at times confusing, it liberated my mind. I still felt however that as before I was trying to find an identity.

Albeit a Japanese one this time!

I was always looking too far outside myself.

Fast forward to the present day and although my journey continues I have found a still point in my thought processes. Stephen Batchelor’s excellent books kicked off a process that led me to studying Hellenistic Philosophies and they drew me into reading Pyrrho and following Doug Bates on Facebook.

His book “Pyrrho’s Way” was published and BANG!… This was it.

I remember my first Jukai, a 7 day retreat culminating in Lay Ordination complete with a new Japanese name, at Throssel Hole Zen Priory and attempting to rationalise Beginners Mind to no avail. (

I thought hours of Zazen (seated meditation) would give me the answer, but no.

Upon a first reading of Outlines of Pyrrhonism, something tipped me over into an altered state. In fact, I think it didn’t so much alter my state but allowed me to see something that was so obvious I felt that I had already glimpsed it before.

My problem had been that I had wanted to KNOW something.

I had been searching so hard that I was no longer opening myself up to any other possibilities.

That is quite sad when I think about it now.

Being someone who knew something was more important than being awake.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the experts there are few”

as Suzuki says in his introduction to “Zen Mind, Beginners Mind”.

I was trying to be an expert!

With Pyrrho (and with Zen) I dropped my fixed views about things and now when I read Suzuki’s words:

“The essence of Zen is ‘not always so’”

It makes sense. It really makes sense to me.

It’s a great maxim to have and fits in perfectly with Pyrrho’s maxims of which I will write next post.

So next time when you sit…

Sit with:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the experts there are few”

and tell me if your body and mind drops away.

But don’t worry if it doesn’t!

This will be the subject of my next online meditation sessions.

Join me every Tuesday night at 6pm on Zoom.

…Find your Beginners Mind…

Click here to join the Higherway Code online meditation group 

Turn and face the strange, ch… ch… ch… changes

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Bob Spour poses in his robes in Broughton Road South Shields circa 1973

Ch… Ch… Ch… Changes…..

Was one of my favorite songs when I was a teenager. If you don’t know it, you should be ashamed of yourself. It’s one of David Bowie’s great songs and for me meant a lot more than just its surface structure. It’s not just a nice tune!

The lyrics were about impermanence. Impermanence of the self and the environment. It’s one of the driving principles of Early Buddhism and is central to its main teaching that life is Dukkha.

“Still don’t know what I was waiting for

And my time was running wild, a million dead-end street and

Every time I thought I’d got it made

It seemed the taste was not so sweet

So I turned myself to face me

But I’ve never caught a glimpse

Of how the others must see the faker

I’m much too fast to take that test”

“Bloody brilliant”

I thought when I first put my all-time favourite Bowie Album on the turntable. The Album I am of course talking about is Hunky Dory. Check out Quicksand, yet another great track. Maybe I will chat about that on another day.

So before this post turns into the David Bowie Appreciation Society; back to the task at hand. Writing this blog…

I realised at an early age that everything was subject to change.

My early life was peppered with what some people would consider catastrophic changes.

The certainty of my childhood was shattered when my father left my mother for another woman and I still think that  remember it clearly. My mother was left with 6 kid, of which I was the eldest, and the family went through some sort of crises.

I was 12 and just getting into my study of Zen Buddhism and it was meditation and reading that actually helped me make sense of it all. My mother attempted suicide and I vaguely remember her being taken to hospital as I was packed off to my grandmothers a mile away.

Her house always seemed large and spacious compared to our little two roomed terrace. She had a big black range with a constant fire burning in the grate. I used to love making toast on a fork in front of it. She had butter and jam to go on the crisp white bread. At home we used margarine! My grandparents also had a front garden and a large backyard with a shed! Very posh!

She even had an upstairs. It was great and I could lie in bed and listen to the town hall clock chime on the hour, every hour with its deep resonant tone. Even as I write this I am transported back to Broughton Road and I can smell the faint whiff of mothballs. A smell you no longer have in houses, but the thought takes me back to the 60s.

So change for me was the norm, and I embraced it. If I hadn’t, I would probably have ended up with all sorts of neuroses. Which some of my siblings did suffer. I tried to explain my ideas to them over the years, but my attempts fell on deaf ears sadly.

I now tell my students to Embrace change and let go of the reactive habitual responses they have. When they do they achieve what can only be described as Freedom.

Freedom though is never an absolute and is always relative to something else.

“Freedom from Debt”

“Freedom to Grow”

“Freedom to believe”

“Freedom for others”

and so on…

My  understanding of freedom was that once I realised that things weren’t permanent, were not fixed, I was released from self-centred confusion. These confusions were the chains that would bind me. I never believed  that the ego, my sense of self, was real. I never felt I had a fixed identity and still don’t.

“I still don’t know what I will be when I grow up!”

In the words of Mr Bowie:

“So I turned myself to face me

But I’ve never caught a glimpse”

I think I live my life simply, having a response appropriate to the situation I find myself in without judgement and having no fixed pre-conceived ideas or opinions. I have opinions that I share but go to great pains to understand that they too are subject to change.

If that makes sense?

These attitudes allow me to realise the possibilities of creating an authentic path through life unhindered by attachments and cravings.

I realised that reactive habits are the chains of the free.

This is why I use some NLP in my work as it gives me the tools to help people intervene when the shit hit the fan. It’s a quick fix that allows you to move on.

We lose our freedom by clinging to ideas, and beliefs that we believe have permanency. Usually we hang onto them because they’re familiar and safe. Confusion and Fear fill our minds and all because we need to hang onto our sense of self. A self we believe exists independently of impermanence.

Self-Help and positive thinking play on that fear, which is why people go back to it time and time again. Which is exactly why the Self-Help industry makes so much money!

It’s a great model for creating wealth because you get trapped by thinking you are going to be free.

For me this is where the Meditation crossed over with the NLP and Hellenistic philosophical thought.

Meditation is not the be all and end all to end your unhappiness. If you think that, you have missed the point.

We simply use meditation to cultivate awareness of this moment in time.

The present moment.

When we do that, we can think clearly. When we meditate we have no expectations, no desire and then we suddenly find that the chains fall away.

We are Awake as the Buddhists say!

Kung Fu, Beer & Zen – On The Road To Enlightenment

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Geordie Buddhist Bob Spour South Shields 1974 flushing the zen toilet
Kung Fu, Beer & Zen – On The Road To Enlightenment

Write a new blog they said!

It will be easy, they said!

Make it about Zen and Pyrrho and your journey through the world of philosophy, martial arts, comedy, Motion Capture and Acting.

Tell us about the olden days Bob and what it was like in the 18th Century!

So I said yes!

I always say Yes!

I am a people pleaser!

It’s funny really because I like my own company as well as being with others.

I have no preference.

That has been my attitude to things since I can remember.

I enjoyed the solitude of sitting facing the cold grey sea off the coast of South Shields, my hometown. I would look across to the distant horizon and imagine what was lying out there just out of reach. I found a spot with some friends once. I think I was 14, and we called it the end of the world. It was a little outcrop of rock that jutted out into the sea and although the town was only a couple of miles away, I always felt that I was in the middle of nowhere.

I felt I was alone with others.

I loved it.

When I went through my Tibetan phase (The Kargyupta School of Mahayana Buddhism) me and a few crazy friends took some Tibetan Prayer Flags and hung them down there and watched them flap about in the cold easterly wind that always seemed to be blowing. To be honest, I can never remember it being cold. I guess I was used to it.

Ever since I was 12, I had this realisation that I was different. Maybe I wanted to be different. I’m not sure, but I never wanted to conform to the norms of my working class life. We lived in pretty grim circumstances compared to today, but I never felt I wanted for anything. I had books from the Library and I had my crazy Buddhist friends and my martial arts to keep me going.

When I finally succumbed to the pressures of working class life and got a Fitter/Turners apprenticeship in the Middle Docks, they called me ‘Kung Fu’. This was a character from a TV series. He was a Chinese American Shaolin monk. I like that appellation. I liked the name, and it meant I was different. Not arrogant different, just comically so. I liked to make people laugh, even if I was the butt of the joke.

I didn’t go out drinking or smoking with the lads from the shipyard. I would rather sit and discuss philosophy, music or make up strange and weird comedy shit that at that time made no sense to anyone but my close friend. However, I  still lived a life that shaped me. I’m still being shaped. By my environment and the influences in it. I’m still chasing that solitude at the end of the world and I hope I never catch it. Once I take ownership of it I know it will vanish. Like trying to grasp water. I have always enjoyed the journey and not the destination.

Before Lockdown, I drove a lot. I enjoy driving and being alone in the car. Driving to Aberdeen and deliberately taking as long as I could just to savour the time on the road. Once I had arrived I also enjoyed the time with the guys up there. Teaching Muay Thai and self protection. Talking to different people with fresh ideas and sharing a meal or two. I have made a family outside of my own family and this journey continues. It’s just happening online at the moment.

My childhood taught me one really important thing.

Embrace Change.

Change is the constant that governs us all and that will be my next blog post.