The Nature of Existence

Led by Saddhaloka, Saddhanandi + Lokeshvara

The Buddha’s teaching on the three lakshanas offers more than simply a statement about existence for us to believe, or advice about how to live or how to consider the world. These teachings confront us with a perspective that can be developed as a powerful tool for liberation. Unfortunately we have a certain invested interest in staying vague and unclear in regards to any teachings which we find too challenging. On this retreat we will explore these fundamental teachings using material from chapter eleven The Nature of Existence in The Three Jewels (Sangharakshita, 1967) and the subsequent seminar held in 1982.
 
Discussing the Dharma with friends in the Order, we can inhabit a deeper understanding and perspective not only of life in general but more particularly of ourselves and the nature of fabrication and views. It is a perspective that can be developed to open up the deepest level of freedom.

‘One could, I think, put it in this way, that the relative reality is the reality which is conditioned in the sense that it is the reality which is a sequence of effects which have arisen in dependence upon causes or conditions. This is relative reality. The whole web of these dependent - in fact interdependent - dharmas, let us say, which arise in dependence upon conditions and cease when those conditions cease, and the fact of their dependence, the fact of their interdependence, this constitutes their conditionality. It also constitutes their emptiness, their voidness, which, of course, constitutes their Absolute Reality. Do you see what I mean? So there is not that distinction between a conditioned reality and an unconditioned reality. The two are - one can only put it in this way though it is inadequate - interwoven together. Do you see what I mean? The illusory reality has no place. That is illusion and to be banished but you are still left with, so to speak, the relative reality and the Absolute Reality but not as two separate principles. The Absolute Reality is the Absolute Reality of the relative reality. There is, as it were, no Absolute Reality separate from the relative reality though, again, that may be a sort of contradiction in terms. It’s as though the Absolute Reality itself needs a basis. It is the Absolute Reality, as I said, of the relative reality.’

- Nature of Existence Seminar, Sangharakshita, 1982

For: Order Members

Start date: 25th May 2018
End date: 1st Jun 2018
Event Type: Residential

Price: Waged/Supported £259  |  Unwaged/Unsupported £182
Non-refundable deposit: £78 (included in prices above)

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