This post is going to be a bit contentious, but I believe it to be worth it.

I’m going to suggest that an updated version of Buddhism — and other spiritual paths — is urgently needed if they are to be accessible to 21st-century people. As a start, I suggest that “bodhisattvas” are renamed “Nirvaneans”, and “Living Buddhas”, “Posthumans”.

“Nirvanic experience” should also be regarded as accessible to the many and as a normal part of “growing up”, not some fabled Pure Land only visible to the ancients. Until we change our terminology and show that Nirvana is as true for us today as it was for Gautama Siddhartha 2500 years ago, living spirituality will remain the preserve of fossilized religions and charlatans.

With this in mind let’s take a look at one of the great Buddhist scriptures :

The Flower Garland (Avatamsaka) Sutra of Hua Yen Buddhism has had a great influence on the development of Zen. It brims with stunning insights into the nature of reality and is known for its magical, cascading descriptions which numb the senses and tumble us into Enlightenment by the sheer exuberance of it all. Buddha Lands without end, reflecting in jewels without end, come flashing out from the pages of these exotic volumes. No scriptural work comes closer to the wild dance of life itself than the immense, final volume of the Avatamsaka Sutra.

“Avatamsaka” refers to the garland of flowers around the neck of the Universal Buddha, whose concentration is said to summon up the spectre of the world.

The sutra presents the flowing patterns of life as the immoveable concentration of the Buddha, or Awakened Mind. There is thus a completely unhindered interpenetration between the Absolute principle, call it what you will, and the normal life that we lead from day to day.

These nirvanically-realized principles are not readily accessible to materialistic moderns who rely heavily on intellectual solutions to daily problems and challenges. Hua Yen Buddhism can be difficult at times but, like all of Buddhism, the doctrine dissolves into “seeing”, a concentrated, continuous awareness of the ocean of being, or Buddha-nature. In the final book of the Flower Garland Sutra, the monk Sagaramegha explains his doctrine of the universal eye by which he maintains his awareness at all times of the unborn Buddha-mind, represented by consciousness within and space without, here depicted as the ocean:

“Son, I have been living here in Sagaramukha (Ocean-
Door) for twelve years, having focused my mind on the
ocean and kept it present in my awareness, reflecting
on the measureless vastness of the great ocean, its
pure clarity, its unfathomable depth, its gradual
deepening, its variety of deposits of precious
substances, the measurelessness of its body of water,
its infinity, its being the dwelling place of various
immense creatures … and how it neither increases nor
decreases. I think: is there anything else in the
world as vast as the great ocean, as broad, as
measureless, as deep, as various?”

The book expounds the Hua Yen vision of the world as the vast state of concentration of the Buddha. All objects and happenings in the world are his teachings for sentient beings, and their lives are their means of practice. The Buddha is raised to the status of an all-embracing cosmic principle, the one consciousness behind all things. Gautama, the historical Buddha, participates as Vairocana Buddha, reality itself.

Despite his constant presence before all beings, however, he is only recognized by Posthumans. Ordinary mortals fail to identify his “body” which is the functioning of the world, their everday reality realm. As it’s put in the “Great Treatise” of the Taoist I Ching, “The kind man discovers it and calls it kind. The wise man discovers it and calls it wise. The people use it day by day and are not aware of it, for the way of the superior man is rare.” Again, “It possesses everything in complete abundance : this is its great field of action. It renews everything daily : this is its glorious power.”

The Flower Garland sutra is concerned with “clarifying the eye of unobstructed knowledge” in ordinary people. The means for this are twofold : the great guiding principle of the Buddha himself, fully revealed in his world — this is the path of the quick-witted, and the way of “enlightening beings”, the bodhisattvas (Nirvaneans), who return to the world of birth and death to bring all creatures to enlightened Posthumanity. The imperative for human beings is to develop the “ocean reflection” through nirvanic experiences, whereby reality can be seen directly at all times.

“The universally good always fills the universe
With various bodies flowing everywhere,
With concentration, psychic powers, skill and strength,
In a universal voice teaching extensively without hindrance.”

All our ancient religions have been distorted out of all recognition with time. Until we reassess them with an authentic “nirvanic eye”, they will become increasingly inaccessible to the majority, and the playground of fanatics.

We have a new blog in the network, Numinous Places, devoted to sacred places, people and objects. It’s being authored by Adelle Tilton our Creme de la Femme editor, and Deborah Woehr who blogs Supernatural for us.

I’ve just put up a post on Arunachala Hill and Ramana Maharshi, which I thought might be appreciated by readers of this blog.

Hop over to sample the world’s numinous places.

That may seem a slight exaggeration, but a new survey conducted by Access/BMRB indicates that most Britons think they have psychic powers.

Half of the population claims to have had a premonition in a dream, while 60pc believe in the possibility of psychic abilities. This suggests that the paranormal is entering the mainstream of everyday life, at least in the UK.

The survey, carried out on more than 1000 adults, also found that greater than 25pc of respondents said they had known a family member was suffering illness or severe problems before being told. Forty-three percent claimed that they had read someone else’s thoughts.

Interestingly, more than two-thirds said they knew when someone else was looking at them, even if they were out of sight. This has been confirmed by the experiments of Dr Rupert Sheldrake, and outlined in his book: The Sense Of Being Stared At.

Sheldrake has confirmed that there are “spiritual” fields, detectable by observation rather than instrument, though these are being developed. He calls them morphic and morphogenic fields. It’s a fruitful area of study and one we will come back to in the future posts.

I’ve been checking up on some of the reviews of the Peaceful Warrior movie and they seem pretty mixed, as author Dan Millman said over on our Celebrity at Work blog. However, the audiences were not so critical. Here are a few snippets:

“By turns a riveting study of the world of competitive gymnastics, a parable for an alternative vision for today’s society, and a study in the psychology of mentoring, ‘Peaceful Warrior’ is a satisfying movie-going experience, with or without ‘the message’.”
– Les Wright, CULTUREVULTURE.NET

“While speaking with Millman recently about Peaceful Warrior, the author confirmed that my Chicken Soup Theory had severely plagued the many versions of script.”
– Kevin Biggers, FILMSTEW.COM

“I found some enjoyment by watching it as though it were an updated, Americanized version of some 1980 Hong Kong movie about training at the Shaolin Temple — which it pretty much is, come to think of it.”
– Andy Klein, LOS ANGELES CITYBEAT

“This woozily uplifting saga is big on homilies and deficient in just about everything else.”
– Peter Rainer, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

“The filmmakers can’t be faulted for trying; it’s a decent effort, but nevertheless misses out in both the mind and body categories, and rather overdoes the spirit.”
– Bridget Byrne, BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE

“The sometimes dreamy pace of Peaceful Warrior is offset by good rapport among Nolte, co-star Scott Mechlowicz and an engaging ensemble cast.”
– David Germain, ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Peaceful Warrior begins promisingly, with welcome doses of quirky humor holding the syrupy bathos at bay, yet it ultimately becomes just another average inspirational, sports-themed flick, albeit with an overlay of New Age philosophizing.”
– Timothy Knight, REEL.COM

“It may often seem like an extra-pretentious Karate Kid for grown-ups, but Warrior’s soul lessons go much deeper, to universally vital places.”
– Bob Strauss, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS

“Strong performances by Scott Mechlowicz as Millman and Nick Nolte as the mysterious mechanic who changes his life ground the film in effective drama.”
– Sheri Linden, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“The film is better than it has any right to be, considering the prosaic source.”
– Ruthe Stein, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Well, critics tend toward cynicism and they did their job well. Readers of the book may hold different views. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s released here in England.