Get your Dream House today!

A little while ago the Buddhist world celebrated Wesak, the Enlightenment of the Buddha. There are many records and stories surrounding that event of about 2500 years ago, some of them of encounters with great mythical creatures, gods and maras, and attempts to disctract him by violent or seductive means.

And then amongst it all, as a response to his awakening experience, the Buddha became down-right practical and talked about house building! I love this section, here in verse 154 of the Dhammapada:

House-builder, you are seen! You will not build me a house again. All your rafters are broken and your ridgepole is shattered. My mind is freed from the conditioned and craving is ended.

Maybe a curious thing to say? How can we understand it?

To me this speaks of the fact that we are always busy, building something: we build a sense of self, of who we are, others are, and what the world around us is. Once we have an idea of our self, anything quantifiable, like that we are a lawyer, teacher, mother, or that we are more confident than we were a year ago... or that we finally got over that hurt we felt - or any other kind of conclusion about ourselves - what often happens is, that that idea gets challenged. Our seeming certainty gets blown about...

I get all sorts of house images as I write - just now the memory of the little piggy who built a house of straw and then the wind blew it down ... or was it the wolf?

Yet, like the little piggy, we rebuild. Next with sticks, then with bricks....can we be sure, this will hold? Maybe bricks are better than straw, but it is not so hard to demolish houses or concrete & mortar, as we can see in the news every day...

This insight from the Buddha is not an advice to be in the world in an unsafe way, expose ourselves to harm and abuse, without protecting ouselves. It is asking us to see, who is building our house - who is building my sense of 'me & you'? Can we see her at work?

Can we see her/him, when we e.g. come into a new situation, and we cover up our little insecurity, by projecting a 'me', a someone, we think might be liked here, or impress others? How about other suituations in daily life, when maybe we insist on something, want to be sure of our views, while the facts are often highly complex....? Or even in our meditation practice, when we get actively involved in trying to create the kind of experience we think we should have - rather than just listen, be present with what is here, now ... maybe it is to our liking, or we might need to sit with some pain or discomfort. Can we see the builder getting busy, starting to construct a way out?

James Low comments on the verse from the Dhammapada, saying, "'House-builder' refers to attachment to phenomena which are taken to have inherent existence. When the fact that they are empty of imagined essence and substance becomes clear to us then the mind is free of the conditioned entities it has 'created' by its own involvement. Conditioning mental activity is impermanent and its product, conditioned phenomena, is also impermanent. Seeing this, the builder of the house is made redundant"

The Buddha saw through the attempts by the house-builder, who seems to keep us safe. He also recognized, that though the house builder thinks of himself as important, as the expert, he is not. We are safe already, without ridgepole and rafters - and we can experience that, little by little, if we just receive what is here already, in the situation we find ourselves in, and find ourselves responding from this listening. Staying open, constructing less.

I hope we can find joy in many open spaces this summer!

This year you can join me in a lot of elemental explorations: have a look at the newsletter I just sent out yesterday. Below are some of the events coming up.

Please get in touch if you have questions.

Check out what's coming up in 2025:

Dance of the Elements/ Der Tanz der Elemente (September, Deutschland - English & German)

Wild Open Heart: exploring the practice of the Metta Bhavana (October, Scotland)

The Eight Worldy Winds: online from October - an exploration of the winds that blow us around...

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