The Relational Field: Present and Past

My winter’s sojourn this year is in rural Ontario; Tisarana Monastery to be more precise. It’s as much nowhere as many other forest monasteries, but other than offering a space to put down the duties, it also offers me the opportunity to spend contemplative time with Ajahn Viradhammo.

‘Ajahn V’, as he has been known for decades, is my oldest (most long-term) Dhamma brother. We go back some 38 years. Although we have checked in now and then over the years, it’s a special time when I can stay with such a Dhamma-peer in a leisurely and prolonged way – when there is nothing else that either of us has to be involved with. We share about an hour per day.

There are no plans, no set topics; sometimes our sharing is around the horrors of world news, sometimes it’s anecdotes or dialogues about spirit and letter of the Vinaya or discussions about meditation. Sometimes we’re contemplating the squirrels that launch themselves at his bird-feeder. Most important: it’s always inconclusive, a mutual scattering of some breadcrumbs for inquiry and reflection. In this way, a good friend helps you to explore your mind and its views and lay them beside that of others.

Apart from the content of such sharing, and the fact that it is shared, the context is valuable. Which is not Ontario, but a relational field – a psychological space that one’s awareness dwells in and (often unconsciously) refers to. This is the same for everyone.

Obviously, we all feel connected to people and places, but more deeply, awareness (citta) is affected by whatever’s arising in the present as well as by tendencies inherited from the past. The details of how it’s affected make up a ‘field’ of effects, through which one’s mind tends to trawl – notably in meditation. This affective field is partly formed by kamma–one’s intentional actions–but what one inherits is more than that.

Your awareness is also programmed by what has been done to you (or not provided by others). Hence the messages of the family, and the society in which one lives, the withdrawal or non-provision of safety and respect, have lasting effects. In brief, not all that you experience is because of your past actions.

So it’s not all your fault!

This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is from the Blog Reflection “Diversity and Community: the Kamma of Relationship,” Thursday, 26 January 2017.