by Paul Greer
A Buddhist Reflection: The Sangha – Community of the Moon
In Buddhism the moon is revered as a highly auspicious symbol, indicting both the luminosity and “coolness” of awakened consciousness. In the Tibetan tradition, the moon is often shown as a crescent under a solar disc, indicating the view of enlightenment as a union of compassion (moon) and wisdom (sun). In the Wheel of Becoming, the Buddha is often depicted pointing at both, indicating the human potential for liberation from Mara’s realm of death.
According to tradition, the most important events in the Buddha’s life were said to have taken place under a full moon, including his birth, renunciation, enlightenment, first sermon, and death. Interestingly, an epitaph for the Future Buddha of the world – Maitreya – is Prince Moonlight. Of particular note in reference to Smith’s rendition are the thirty-two rays of light surrounding the moon – the marks of a Mahapurusha, suggesting the appearance of a Buddha in the world.
In Theravadin countries even today, Buddhist practice is organized around the phases of the moon. The full moon and new moon in particular are regarded at times of significant spiritual reflection and training, and during these days lay Buddhists will often extend their normal practice of the “five precepts” to eight of the “ten precepts” followed by novices. The new moon and full moon days are especially important to ordained monks (bhikkhus) and nuns (bhikkhunis), when they will come together as a community and recite the Pattimokkha precepts. These are the standards of ethical conduct expected of those who are ordained; the principles that regulate and maintain the harmony of the monastic community – The Sangha.
The Sangha is one of the three refuges and jewels of Buddhism, indicating what Buddhists hold to be the foundational role of supportive fellowship in the quest for spiritual development. According to the Buddha in the Upaddha Sutta, the companionship, friendship and support offered by the Sangha represents not just “half,” but the “whole” of the spiritual life.
The Sangha really began when the Buddha “set in motion” the teaching of the Dharma through his first sermon under a full moon to the five ascetics at the Deer Park near Sarnath. Here, we are told, the ascetic Kondanna gained insight and awakening. “‘Kondanna has indeed understood!’” exclaimed the Buddha.19 Initially, admittance to the Sangha was a very simple affair; but as it became increasingly organized, more complex procedures and regulations for admittance and community cohesion were developed. Today, Sangha Day remembers not the five ascetics from the Deer Park, but the Buddha’s first recitation of the Pattimokkha precepts to 1250 arhats – again under a full moon - at Veluvana Vihara.
The Sangha was a truly revolutionary community for its time. Moving against the norms of Brahminical culture, the Buddha opened the doors of his new movement to the lowest castes, and redefined Brahmin status in terms of ethical conduct. Although hesitant at first, he also opened the doors of his new movement to women, liberating them from a society which severely curtailed their social and spiritual opportunities. This sense of liberation and emancipation from crushing domesticity is given full expression in a poem by Sumangala’s mother, found in the Therigatha collection:
O woman well set free! how free am I,
How throughly free from kitchen drudgery!
Me stained and squalid 'mong my cooking-pots
My brutal husband ranked as even less
Than the sunshades he sits and weaves alway.
Purged now of all my former lust and hate,
I dwell, musing at ease beneath the shade
Of spreading boughs–O, but 'tis well with me!20
The Sangha has a variety of functions, the primary one being to provide the best environmental conditions for individual and communal spiritual development. Yet, it is also there to provide an example of enlightened living to the lay community. From its inception, the Buddha made it quite clear that the Sangha should not develop in isolation from society as a whole, and towards this end, forbade its members from owning property or growing and preparing their own food. The Sangha was made to be dependant on the larger community for its survival and sustenance. As a reciprocal gesture, the monks and nuns were obliged to provide the laity with spiritual example, teaching and guidance. The Buddhist monk or nun as Ling says has not rejected society to chase private illumination, which would be in direct opposition to Buddhism’s “repudiation of individualism.” In contrast with traditional practices of the time, which insisted that spiritual development meant “a life of solitude,” the Sangha represented “life in the community.”21 The third role of the Sangha appears more revolutionary – to stand together as one community, and from this position of strength and solidarity, communicate the Buddha’s message of liberation to the whole world:
“Therefore, stand ye together, assist one another, and strengthen one another’s efforts. Be like unto brothers; one in love, one in holiness, and one in your zeal for the truth. Spread the truth and preach the doctrine in all quarters of the world, so that in the end all living creatures will be citizens of the kingdom of righteousness. This is the holy brotherhood; this is the church, the congregation of the saints of the Buddha; this is the Sangha that establishes a communion among all those who have taken their refuge in the Buddha."22
The Sun (19)
General Overview
The RWS version of this card shows a naked smiling child, riding bare-back on a white horse. In his left hand he bears a red banner on a pole. Behind the child we see a wall, with four sunflowers clearly visible. Above the child, the sun shines in its full glory.
There can be little doubt that the figure of The Sun card is that of the Greek solar deity Apollo, God of intelligence, reason, medicine and light. In art, just like our child in the card, Apollo is often depicted as a nude youth, conforming to Greek aesthetics of male perfection. Apollo is also associated with horses, particularly in the Celtic lands influenced by his cult, where he went by the title of Apollo Atepomarus – The Great Horseman. The wall in the card reminds us that the name Apollo is derived from the Doric term apella, meaning wall or enclosure, reflecting the god's link with animal husbandry. The sunflowers behind the wall recall the story of his lover Leucothea and her sister Clytia, whom he turned into a sunflower for betraying his trust. His banner and pole, like that of St George's, celebrate his victory over some chthonic horror, in this case, Python. The child's flower crown is also suggestive of Apollo's crown of bay laurel. A number of Tarot decks make the card's connection with Apollo more explicit, from Giovanni Vacchetta’s 1893 design, to that found in the more recent Mythic Tarot.
Apollo became the poster boy for the European Enlightenment; a pertinent symbol for the forces of light and reason, science and technology, which would drive away all traces of irrationality and superstition. Yet the danger of Apollo’s sun, as with The Emperor, is in its denial of the dark, the intuitive, the emotional and the irrational, and the lopsided elevation of detached intellectualism and reliance upon technological innovation. The peril of Apollo's “brightness” as James Hillman says, is that it presents of vision of life severed from “feminine ways,” and is thus psychologically destructive.1 The technological and otherworldly trajectory of such lopsided thinking perhaps finds its most apt expression in the memorable image of the 1969 “Apollo” landing-team, plunging their flag of scientific transcendence into the pythonic omphalos of the actual moon.
Apollo’s Enlightenment Project, which sought to build a new society based on reason married to the narrative of progress, has failed. It has failed because it unsuccessfully addressed the question of the inner creative life of humanity, and our need to maintain what Jung terms the “psychic balance.” “Progress” we have certainly made, but this has been achieved through further secondary narratives of regulation and control, based on the view that our “fallen” and irrational nature needs constant subjugation, surveillance, or denial, if civilization is to “endure.” The Enlightenment project has mirrored Freud’s view that civilization sits atop a broili
ng cauldron of selfish, violent and pleasure-seeking impulses, and therefore can only continue through a certain measure of “coercion.”2 We have to this extent been left in an oppressive world “bereft of the gods,” and yet ironically, for an elite at least, one that has divinized the seven deadly sins.
There is a dawning apprehension that this state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely. The nightmarish and explosive emergence of religious fundamentalism – from the Middle-East to the Mid-West - can no longer be glibly passed over as mere medievalism to be pacified with the baubles of conglomerate franchising; but indications of a bursting forth of repressed psychological forces that must be attended to.3 What we need in effect is a new “religion,” whether we call it this or not. Our hope, as many now realize, lies in the establishment of a religious form of life that can bring together the worlds the reason and sentiment, of rationality and emotion, and marry them together in a new mysterium coniunctionis fit for the Twenty-First Century.
As a united pair, the Tarot cards of Sun and Moon suggest such a new synthesis. This is recognized by Gardner’s channeled Sun, who declares that although we have served him with “increasing efficiency” over the centuries, by himself in us, we “become too bright.” We have allowed him “no queen upon which to shine.” He urges us to worship “my queen, your imaginations” as we worship him. In the same way, his channeled Moon declares that neither a “womb centered” nor “head centered” civilization is now enough - “[y]ou need both to perform miracles.”4 Such a union reflects what Owen Barfield’s developmental model of human consciousness describes as the era of Final Participation, in which humanity moves once more towards a position of reconciliation with nature, psyche and the body; grounded in a new holistic synthesis of reason, imagination, and creativity.5 The religious form of this emerging era is that of a re-enchanted “everyday life”; a numinous materialism blending the worlds of mystery and technology, emotion and reason, liberation and social cohesion. This is a marriage which heals the trauma bequeathed to us in the cultural and spiritual transition from the matrifocal Empress to the patriarchal Emperor and his theological extension, The Hierophant. It is a union which seeks the best of both worlds and at the same time provides an alternative to the rule of all transcendent patriarchs. In the ecstatic, visionary, and certainly prophetic theology of Sophocles: “‘Lord Helios [Sun], Lord of the Sacred Flame, You who are the weapon of Hekate of the Roads, which she bears when she leads in Olympus …’”6
A hint of this new synthesis is actually contained within The Sun card itself. We are reminded that Apollo is not merely the God of reason and light, but also that of prophecy, poetry and music, often depicted with a lyre in his hand. He has close ties too with the world of nature, being the defender of herds and flocks. Ethically, he is associated with the Golden Mean, the middle way of virtue and moderation, his oracular shrine at Delphi bearing the words meden agan – “nothing in excess.” In mythology he is also depicted as a skilled archer, working in harmony with his twin sister Artemis, the hunter goddess of the moon, often conflated with Diana. This important partnership with his sister is perhaps vaguely recalled in some older renditions of The Sun card, which show naked twins laughing and celebrating together. The image from the Wirth deck in particular stands out as being very suggestive of this divine pair. Of note too is the fact that one of Apollo’s epithets is Hekatos – the masculine form of Hekate, often translated as far-reaching one or shooter from afar.
The bringing together of the natural and spiritual, the rational and the imaginative, in a new meaningful unity, is a striking feature of Neopaganism and other earth-based spiritualities. Why? – because when divinity is viewed as something within rather than above nature, then science can be seen as the means of investigating the sacred reality of which we are all part. In pantheistic spiritualities, as Harold Wood says, “knowing God” is “ecology in its broadest sense.” By means of scientific investigation, the pantheist attains a closer relationship with what he or she conceives as “the divine.”7 For Starhawk, similarly, a Goddess religion of the future should be “firmly grounded in science.” Worship in Goddess religion can move from meditations on ancient Goddess images to reflections on “the structure of the atom.” An earth-centered spirituality can take the insights from the various sciences and combine them with ritual and myth, to inspire us with “wonder at the richness of life.”8 Yet it is not just in its conversation with science that Neopaganism shimmers with the spirit of Apollo. As Howard Eilberg-Schwartz has recognized, Wicca and other contemporary earth-based spiritualities are “Enlightenment Religions” because they share a number of important ideals and attitudes with their humanistic forbears. These include antagonism towards organized religion; the location of authority within the self and community – not text or tradition; and a pragmatic, eclectic and experimental approach to belief and truth.9
The Sun’s vision of a possible future spirituality also reaches out to embrace a renewed sense of wonder, play and creativity. This is particularly apparent in the symbol of the naked child, riding his horse with natural and playful abandon, without stirrups, reins or saddle to support him. Nichols concurs, and views the card as indicating a sense of “play” and “delight”; a return to that neglected part within which remains “experimental, primitive and whole.”10
In this respect it is notable that Matthew Fox and others link the growth of creation-centered Christianity with a renewed appreciation of human creativity. Indeed, one of the sustained criticisms of mainstream Christianity has been its separation of spirituality from creativity and imagination. Nicolas Berdyaev for example considers the rupture between church and world, salvation and creativity, to be the most “tormenting” problem of our age. He traces this problem to a religious heritage that teaches that creativity is of little value in relation to the fate of the individual’s soul after death. It is difficult to be creative when “one is threatened with damnation.” He suggests that the Church move away from this “degenerate” form of Christianity towards one that embraces the ancient concern with theosis - the transfiguration of the world and humanity, not “personal salvation.”11
For Fox, creativity is an integral part of what it means to be made “in the image of God.” We are reminded too, he says, that Jesus was not a priest nor an intellectual, but a poet and storyteller who told his followers to “do likewise.”12 In the creation-centered tradition, God’s creative powers are viewed as ongoing, not chained to the Genesis creation narrative. Fox shares the views of medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart, who declares that the essence of God is “birthing” and that God from his “divine maternity bed” has extended to us the same power to “eternally give birth.”13 We are called, says Fox, to be “co-creators” with the divine.
In the Story of the Buddha: The Spread of a Reasonable Dharma
After the establishment of the Sangha, the Buddha spend the remaining forty-five years of his life teaching the Dharma to any who would listen, and debating with those who were antagonistic towards his new philosophy of awakening. His empirical and logical outlook, as G. S. P. Misra reports, heralded “a new trend in the realm of thinking” which was to have a profound impact on Indian religiosity.14 A substantial part of this new approach was an unflinching critique of the practices of the Brahmins, especially the efficacy of their rituals, which seemed to deny the empirically and ethically obvious. He opposed the Brahminical view that by washing in a sacred river one could purify oneself from breaches of caste duty or ethical misconduct. In the Vatthupama Sutta, the Brahmin Sundarika Bharadvaja inquires of the Buddha why he did not bathe in the nearby Bahuka river, which brought liberation, merit, and washed away “evil actions.” In reply the Buddha stated the obvious – no amount of washing can purify someone committed to “cruel and brutal deeds.” To be pure, one must be “pure in heart.”15 In the Therigatha, the Bhikkhuni Punnika added to the Buddha’s critique, pointing out that the logic of such rituals would lead us to the conclusion that fr
ogs and turtles, water snakes and crocodiles, all “straight to heaven will go.” Moreover, if these streams carried away our evil, they would also “bear away thy merit too, leaving thee stripped and bare.”16 The Buddha, as previously mentioned, was also critical of blood sacrifices, which he saw as wasteful, cruel and ethically of little use. A better “sacrifice” would be that of deeds filled with compassion and generosity. Overall, the Buddha saw an unreflective reliance upon ritual as one of the “ten fetters” which prevented humanity’s ethical development and spiritual awakening.
By contrast, the Buddha invited people to follow the Dharma by first putting it to the test in their own lives. In the Kalama Sutta, as mentioned previously, he told his followers to abandon the ten traditional sources of belief, and trust their own judgement and reasoning. When people recognize within themselves that his teachings lead to well-being and “happiness,” then they should adopt and practice them.17
Another feature of his message was a pragmatic and agnostic approach to issues of a supernatural or metaphysical nature. In the Kevatta Sutta, the householder Kevaddha informs the Buddha that there are many potential converts in the nearby settlement of Nalanda. He suggests that if a monk were to perform a miracle, then he would gain many new adherents. While not denying the reality of supernormal powers, the Buddha replies that there is only one real miracle – the “miracle” of instruction; the “miracle” of the Dharma. On another occasion, the Buddha met an ascetic by the bank of a river who had practiced austerities for twenty-five years. The Buddha asked him what he had gained from all those years of self-mortification. With some pride, the ascetic replied that he could now walk on water. Here, the Buddha pointed out that his miraculous achievement was worth a penny, since he could cross the river on the nearby ferry for that price. It would have been better for him to have used his time to develop insight into suffering and attachment, and liberation from them.18 Such pragmatism is also found the Buddha’s attitudes to the great “indeterminates” – for example, what happens to an enlightened person after death, or whether the world is eternal or not. In the Culamalunkya Sutta the Buddha compared a person absorbed in such questions to a man shot with a poisoned arrow, refusing to have it removed until he discovered the caste of the person who shot him, or what kind of wood the arrow was made from. That person would surely die, with no answers. In the same way, counsels the Buddha, if we want to live we must put vain speculations aside, and stick to that which is really important: the realities of birth, ageing, death, grief and despair – the remedy for which “I prescribe here and now.”19
