The individuation of dharma practice occurs whenever priority is given to the resolution of a personal existential dilemma over the need to conform to the doctrines of a Buddhist orthodoxy. Individuation is a process of recovering personal authority through freeing ourselves from the constraints of collectively held belief systems.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of personal understanding and authenticity in spiritual practice over strict adherence to established beliefs.
Stephen Batchelor highlights the significance of 'individuation' in the practice of dharma, suggesting that true spiritual growth occurs when individuals prioritize resolving their personal existential questions rather than merely conforming to traditional Buddhist doctrines. This process of individuation involves reclaiming personal authority and freedom from collective belief systems, allowing for a more authentic and personal approach to spirituality.
In practice
During a meditation retreat, I reminded participants of the importance of individuation in their dharma practice.
This deep agnosticism is more than the refusal of conventional agnosticism to take a stand on whether God exists or whether the mind survives bodily death. It is the willingness to embrace the fundamental bewilderment of a finite, fallible creature as the basis for leading a life that no longer clings to the superficial consolations of certainty.
I reject karma and rebirth not only because I find them unintelligible, but because I believe they obscure and distort what the Buddha was trying to say. Rather than offering the balm of consolation, the Buddha encouraged us to peer deep and unflinchingly into the heart of the bewildering and painful experience that life can so often be.
Exotic names, robes, insignia of office, titles - the trappings of religion - confuse as much as they help. They endorse the assumption of the existence of an elite whose explicit commitment grants them implicit extraordinariness.
Consciousness is an emergent, contingent, and impermanent phenomenon. It has no magical capacity to break free from the field of events out of which it springs.
A compassionate heart still feels anger, greed, jealousy, and other such emotions. But it accepts them for what they are with equanimity, and cultivates the strength of mind to let them arise and pass without identifying with or acting upon them.
The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks.
There is a daily discussion with our servants about the price of food and the number of loaves: a conference with our presbyters to consider the sins of our people is a very rare occurrence.
I am a spark from the Infinite. _x000D_ I am not flesh and bones. _x000D_ I am light.
The whole of the 20th century has always put the car at the center. So by putting the pedestrian first, you create these livable places, I think, with more attraction and interest and character.
If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.
All nations are imagined communities, and our imagined community is based on a uniquely inspiring set of principles. Americans have proved that they can be loyal to, and will fight on behalf of, a more complex, more cerebral national ideal, one derived from ideas of democracy and justice as opposed to blood and soil.
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
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