Happy cows chewing the dharma cud!

Cows digest grass. It’s not so easy to break down the cellulose to get the nutrients they need. In order to facilitate this they have four stomach compartments, and they chew the cud…(see below)

We humans just chew our food a bit then swallow it…down to the stomach where most digestion occurs.

However , we are not so used to digesting the very healthy kind of food found in this text and need to keep at it, with it, over time…chewing more diligently than a cow chewing grass!

James, i think, said he had made eighteen different translations of this…That’s going to provide a qualitatively different  level of nourishment from the casual  ‘Oh yes I’ve read that’ (My ego-driven quick response on mire than one occasion!)

Following on from the advice he gave, mentioned in the previous post, on how to listen to the talks…in the latest, third, weekend’s teachings, James suggested how we might engage with the texts to maximise our receptivity to the depth of wisdom from which they originate.

He invited us to write the text out by hand. This will deepen our relationship with it… and at the same time we can make a note of anything which is not clear to us. Then checking this with the commentary which opens out the text making it more accessible.
If queries remain then answers are available…!

Repeated engagement will surely effect incremental or perhaps, through time, sudden changes.

Simply Being (1998 edition) was the first Dharma Book I read and, despite the teachers encouragement to take it really slowly, line by line, I could not do that.
From a young age I was addicted to reading – the next page, the next page the next chapter – devouring without any reflection.
This habitual way of reading has taken many years to change… to slow down and really engage whole-heartedly… has not come quickly or easily.

At the beginning I would read through the texts and the notes that went with them a few times but found them hard to digest. Lacking ease and familiarity with the concepts and vocabulary i could not unlock them, and mostly happily engaged with part 2 The Talks instead!
Even there I skated over the second paragraph where it suggests that the ideas presented are to be engaged with and struggled with for the maximum benefit to be obtained. I was just struggling to engage…

The more recent edition was a revelation and, for me, much easier to engage with, so if you haven’t updated you might well find that worthwhile…
But even then the texts were challenging…but opening up a bit, and becoming more ‘relatable to’.
For me this was largely thanks to the Macclesfield teachings where there was time for James to expound the different aspects of the dharma tree in a way which engaged directly with our conditioning… and also through reading and engaging with other dharma writings by James and many others.

Surely some of the headaches from trying to engage with this text, as given in the book, will be much eased by the commentary that he has been giving over these four sessions…

Gradually the words and their meaning and our alignment with them come together… the blurred and cloudy vision clears…
Then the import and impact are such that giving time to receive becomes the only way that’s fitting.

Read a bit, reflect, meditate… repeat…this can become a fully satisfying engagement rather than an onerous task to be completed

Here’s the  link to the third video ( most recent, March 13/14) in the series of four Lama Chetsangpa talks.

If you scroll down below that you will find the previous two.

Question: Why do cows have three stomachs?

Answer: Cows are true ruminants, which means they have four stomachs, the first of which is the rumen. When a cow takes a bite of grass, it chews it briefly, mixing it with a large amount of saliva. The grass then passes to the rumen, which is a large pouch. The rumen does not produce digestive juices. Instead, it is a fermentation chamber that contains millions of bacteria. These microbes produce digestive enzymes that break down the cellulose in the plants. When a cow “chews its cud,” it returns a small lump, or bolus, of food from the rumen to the mouth, where it is thoroughly chewed. When the cow swallows the bolus for the second time, it is finer and settles at the bottom of the rumen. The rumen contracts, forcing some of this well-chewed food into the second stomach, or reticulum. From there it passes to the omasum (third stomach), where water is extracted. It then enters the true, or fourth, stomach, the abomasum, where gastric juices (containing hydrochloric acid) are added to the food. This kills and disintegrates the microbes from the rumen, making the nutrients in the microbes available for later digestion and absorption.

Source of info on cows stomachs!

photo:Jim Champion / Cattle ruminating at Latchmore Bottom, New Forest

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cattle_ruminating_at_Latchmore_Bottom,New_Forest–geograph.org.uk-_157259.jpg

My question is… dear fish…
whether you identify as British?
Spanish or perhaps Flemish…?

The fish replies:
You who address me as ‘a fish’…?
your question suggests ownership

I see your interest is upon which country’s dish
my heated form should lie
if humans cause my life to die…

…perhaps
in decompressing rapidly
when i am hauled up from the sea.

So many of us,
weight… in net,
compressed…
then split and gutted, each like all the rest.

My corpse sold on… for what money they are able
until i lie upon a dinner table…
and am
eaten before too late…
before my own expiry date…?!

That’s a ‘fishy’ joke! : )
But humour won’t save me…
this hapless denizen of the sea!

As a fish, to you I am
worth more dead… than alive!!!

However –

I don’t want you to pity me
but to take this opportunity

To tell you how it is for us,
deeply affected
by you land-bound populace.

I know, habitually through time,
you ‘humans’ feed on flesh…
like many of us living in the brine.

I am not angry, do not judge…
but wish for you
to realise how bad it is for us…

and it is getting worse!

And you should care – for us, for you…
affected by the chemicals
we eat, our bodies change.
This knowledge is not new…

as you eat us… i grieve to think…
you concentrate
whatever chemicals were in our food and drink.

Water which is thirty per cent more acidic that it used to be
has changed our world
… information kindly shared by Mark Carney*

And we,
just as you humans
would, suffer experientially…
living continuously in/drinking in
water of such high acidity

Water pH affects reproduction rates
… heavy metals concentrate…
so stress increase with falling biodiversity
and worse…

We don’t have ‘plants’ to treat the water in the sea
but we need you to do something… because,
chemically,
it’s become disgusting –
dangerously.

Environmentally our friends the whales… can help,
with carbon capture, eco-balancing – oxygen assist
if doubtful you can check on this…

However they who have been eaten sustainably
on the Faroe Islands for many years
… are no longer considered fit to eat.
The levels of mercury and other heavy metals in their bodies are high enough to be implicated as causal factors
in increasing rates of Parkinson’s disease in humans.

The impact of this on the whales is unknown…
but to imagine they are they completely impervious
…and creatures lower down the ‘food chain’ unaffected
defies your ‘reliance on science’.


Like our bird-friends we become entangled in your fishing nets
and other aspects of your detritus…
Like them, our bellies fill with plastic floating in the sea
… and micro-plastic’s found internally.

Some humans have to manage their food intake, artificially
reducing the size of their stomach to stay alive.
We do not have this difficulty…

…if we swallow plastic and it doesn’t pass through
we may well not survive…
it’s certain that we will not thrive
with the capacity of our stomachs so reduced.

So when you catch us,
cooks note this
your dish will be a mix of food …
non-food chemicals and some plastics!

Speaking for the whales…there has been criticism lately of the behaviour of some of them.
Recently a pod of orcas in the Mediterranean have been head-butting boats sometimes damaging the boats and frightening the noise-making occupants.
The orcas are not built to head-butt solid objects, they may have big headaches after this, but as yet no human has been killed or hurt.

But humans have attacked these orcas… their pod is close to extinction due to human interference.

I’d like to remind you that when you humans first met the whales they were delighted to greet you and were very playful.
In time they realised that meeting you, oftentimes, meant death…

You killed them and used them for food,
as fuel for your lights,
as shapers in corsetry to make the female form more appealing to the male;
… for lubrication, for cosmetics, soaps, vanishes, paints, laquer, perfumes, vitamins, carvings…

Killing followed killing, the whales became wary
… they learned…

Your boats’ propellers have chewed into their bodies, and they sink.

One way or another they have died in great numbers, almost to extinction.

Some fisherman regard them as their enemy… competing for their fish (their fish!)… and kill and mutilate them.

Across the wide oceans the whales who used to sing…
voices travelling half-way around the world,
have to shout loudly to be heard above the shipping noise
(subtle communicative nuances are lost in shouting)

Navigation becomes a nightmare
as extraneous sounds impede interpretation…
poisonous chemicals impact on neural functioning…
untimely deaths of young and old inhibit transmission of knowledge…
and the starlight patterning is occluded by satellites and space junk.

Yet despite all this, such massive provocation
there are as i said, as yet, no human deaths from Orca attacks.

In Australia there have been more shark attacks than usual, and overall seventeen attacks and eight deaths…
One response, typical of humans, is
‘we need to kill them’.

Whilst we are not humans and anthropomorphizing us is unwise,
we are sentient and intelligent, we communicate and feel pain
… please, I beg you, do not react to our behaviour in this way.

It will not help the situation.
Many of us are, with good reason at this time, very disturbed…
we live in these oceans
but you ‘guests’ treat our home as your toilets, larders…
swimming pools…

Building for leisure, trade, or base for future fights
along our shores and in our world,
means noise continues day and night

Hungry to find, and to take out more
disturbing the depths, the crust,
your machinery explores

Pollution follows every entry
that you make into the water
and below the sea

I plead with you,
knowing your desolation in the face of your current crisis of viral infection, and human tendencies to fight over resources,
not to use your energy to fight over who will get the greater share of our bodies…

But to turn your energy instead towards health and survival,
towards of health of the waters that we live in,
the waters that nourish us, that nourish you…

That we may share this earth and it’s waters
Treating our environment and each other
respectfully,

with love,

from what ‘you humans’, ha ha, call

A fish

picture: wikipedia licence creative commons
*(2020 Governor of the bank of England… in his final Reith lecture)

note…some fish are less susceptible to the hazards of marine life.
If you eat us perhaps you’ll seek what’s best…
for, as with plants, when we are penned, kept close in nets,
chemicals are often used to keep us ‘healthiest’
…or maybe not…

In some other cultures and countries it’s not yet New Year.
For those following the Chinese lunar calendar it falls on the 12th of Feb, for ‘Persians’ the New Year, Nowruz, begins around March 20 – for Parsis it’s August 16/ 17th…lots of different ideas about the timing of new beginnings!

Maybe you remember a talk James gave – as I remember it quite well it was probably a Macclesfield talk – when he was laughing at the idea of getting rid of four o’clock or some other time that was deemed unpleasant. ‘You don’t have to say “Stop the clock! I just can’t bear four o’clock” … four o’clock is going by itself.’

Recently we have heard, very much, ‘I’ll be glad to see the back of 2020’ ‘Thank God 2020 has gone!’
With that there seemed to be assumptions that all the difficulties would end as the clock strikes, and the New Year will be inevitably better than the previous year.

But relative reality, the world of entities, as it is usually construed, does not work like that. With that view, what happens now is inextricably linked with what has happened in the past and is always shifting and changing. There is an interconnecting web of causal factors through time leading to an inter-dependent, inter-linked network of effects arising in the present,
and what may seem a better year for some will, no doubt, seem far worse for others.

Yet 2020 was a year of our limited life-span, one that we won’t have a chance to experience again; and every moment of those manifold unique experiences has vanished, gone forever, all by themselves…
To say it was a ‘rubbish year’ denies the rich complexity and variety, and
truly, any memories of 2020 or before are thoughts arising now – currently in 2021…and are also vanishing

Some neighbours recently said to me ‘I’m just waiting ’til it’s over and life can begin again and we can get back to normal’.
Marking time, or passing time or wishing life away… when you realise how swiftly it flies… seems a terrible waste…
Given the option, would we really rather have been anaesthetised for the previous 365 days than choose to live them, to fully experience whatever movements, joys and sorrows and all, arising and passing? There is such a big difference between enduring life and living.

Many years ago I picked up a piece of photocopy paper from the floor of our derelict new home. The chimney had just imploded and a couple of centuries of soot lay over everything… I turned it over and it said:

Out of the gloom a Voice spoken unto me and said
‘Smile and be happy, things could be worse’
So I smiled and was happy and behold… things did get worse.
That was my experience!

However, true happiness arises not from accentuating the positive or an optimism that ‘things can only get better!’ or ‘counting your blessings’ all of which can change our mood (and gratitude for everything is a good place to start)…. but with a dharma understanding, from wisdom.

And a few days ago I found, jotted down on an envelope in a kitchen drawer, a quote from James which is a distillation of a buddha’s teaching:
‘The root of dissatisfaction is attachment to experience based on a misunderstanding of the nature of experience.’

Yesterday at the shops I met a man and a woman, one carrying a paint can the other bags of material for stuffing…’I see you’ve got stuff for your projects in hand’…’Well, what else is there to do…?’ she said.
It was a bit too cold and windy for suggesting exploring the statement above!

2020 has come and gone and we did whatever we did, but what’s more worthwhile for 2021 than to deeply realise what a correct understanding of the nature of experience would be?
That realisation and the ensuing freedom from dukkha that the dharma offers would be the best ever birthday present to yourself and the world…as you would become ever fresh – new beginnings with every moment of the Year.

Some new dates to hear about all this:
James’ on-line teaching program recommences on Wednesday 20th Jan…rolling through to March
Check under Events on the simplybeing.co.uk website

As ‘human beings’ we will cling
to any kind of covering.

To thoughts, to thought-formed ‘objects’,
ideas, words, beliefs…

… which, in imagining a fixity,
give shaping to identity.

Its maintenance depends
for safety, for stability,

for ‘freedom from anxiety’
upon grasping –

clutching at straws…
at fig leaves blowing in the wind ?!

Tensions from these delusions
find release…

resolved in wisdom’s
naked peace

A

Wisdom is expressed on the simplybeing.co.uk website

under ‘New and Recent’ you will find recents talks

to ease the tensions of the heart/mind…

and love flows from that easing

May all find what they need, over this Christmas and always!

Much of what i have written on this web-site has a dualistic orientation.
As we get to non-duality from duality…this is our starting point.

Reading some of what i have written along the last ten years of the journey might invite dipping a toe in the water with the thought…’we are not so very different, it would be very possible for me too, to take up the invitation to journey deeper into the dharma towards its heart…and perhaps discover that it is the truth of my own.’

There is a beautiful book ‘Buddhist offerings 365 Days’ which was my companion in the early years…gorgeous pictures and a reflection for each day…
One i had in mind when writing this post connected gratitude thankfulness and love. In deep dharma love arises from wisdom…but the journey may well start or be aided by the the softening of gratitude.

It’s unusual for me to advertise anything on this website…we all find our own ways of contributing to what is beneficial in this world…but what follows is a little different. 

Earlier this year I made a donation to the charity Calcutta Rescues’ major fundraiser … and they have followed through with a lovely idea they had to thank their donors by creating a concert full of joy.

I offered to post a link to share this with you…it’s being broadcast live this Sunday December 13th … and from past experiences of their creativity i am sure it will be highly enjoyable!!!

So here is the invitation from the organiser to :

Hi Holly. (Holly is young enough to have just started school) How are you doing?

‘I’m OK’… smiles

I’ve just been up underneath the trees, it’s really windy isn’t it?

‘Yep’

I was listening to the sounds underneath the tree… do you listen to that sometimes too?

‘Yes’

What’s sounds do you hear?

Holly thinks, seriously, and looks at me… a big smile crosses her face and she declares:

‘Rustle…!’

Mmmm…hmmm…and can you tell me what the sound is when the wind blows even stronger… and more and more trees are waving their leaves and branches?

Holly thinks again…smiles… and puts on a bigger emphasis

‘Rustle…!!’

OK…. So what sound would you hear when all the trees are joining in… and dry leaves are blowing past your feet really quickly down the tarmac road…

Holly considers for a while and then gets back to me… loudly proudly and happily:

‘RUSSELL!!!’

Interesting… Do you think maybe they are all calling out for their dear friend Russell?

Laughter from Holly, and the parents who are there as well.

What you could try, one day if you like, is to stand under the trees but kind of sit inside your ear… and let the sound fill you up completely… And feel how that is ….

Then there is no ‘thinking about’…
which word makes a noise closest to the sound?
… or which word the sound is supposed to sound like…?

But you will really get the sound of the sound….

I know I asked for it in this case, but trying to ‘can’ experience into words is like a kind of desiccation for later re-presentation… a feebly ghost-like gesture towards the amazing actual.

‘Thinking about’ what leaves sound like brings about an abstraction…
Holly disappears into the ‘thought chamber’ and comes back with what she has learned….

The problem with that is we kind of hang a label around the neck of what is always a unique experience – and write on it what we have learned… or our opinion of it… or someone else’s opinion of it.

Then encounters which are fresh seem similar to us. We stop looking and listening, directly experiencing, because we already know.

Instead of there being a co-emergent arising in the field of experience (where I become as I find myself in relation to what is arising, within awareness)… we become the subject, separated. Searching for the right label – as we imagine it to be, then reading off and using what we have written on the label to inform our response.

Using these labels to define/quantify/ qualify experience seems smart but it deadens the world for us, it’s like pouring ash over it.

Abstracted from the actual we sleep through many moments of our lives… in thinking about this or that thought…in pouring in our life energy into them, linking them to make tapestries, arriving at ‘certainties’….

Busy writing on water…we forget…
how the game started…
how the blinkers came on… and we started to believe what we thought to be true.

Some sayings and koans I have come across seem easy to understand… others have i parked in puzzlement…’the penny may drop later’.

Sometimes we are just not open to what is being allude to… other times there is a symbolic content which is only comprehensible if you have the key to the hidden meaning, current at that time and place.

Perhaps you’ve come across the story about a man who wanted to paint something as a gift for the abbot of a monastery – I had trouble with this one for years.

To the dismay of the artist the abbot requested a dragon to be painted on the temple ceiling.

The artist said that he had never seen a dragon so was not sure he could do this.
The abbot was surprised, he said there were many around the temple.

The artist used his imagination and painted something.

The abbot was not impressed… so the artist tried again.

The abbot found it better but explained that he wanted it painted so that the dragon would be really ‘life-like’ – so that he could feel the warmth of the dragon’s breath.

The artist fully let go into the creative process.
It took him a long time but when he finally presented it to the abbot… leading him into the temple and inviting him to look up… he knew that he had succeed. The abbot was clearly delighted.

The artist looked up again at his finished work… had a heart attack and died!

What!!! I thought to myself!? This man offers a gift… he tries so hard and finally, successfully completes this extraordinary task.

Such skill and effort…dedication rewarded by a heart attack!!!

How is that fair … or in any way a good teaching?

Well as I have learned from my teacher life is not ‘fair’… ‘that is children’s logic’. So that’s the first complaint dismissed…

Is it a good teaching?…. I would now say so…

At the time I was ignoring what was going on – the process.

With engagement … the notion of a dragon becomes more real for the artist.
With practice he becomes very good at conjuring up a dragon shape in his mind.
Finally he succeeds in making an arrangement of colours on a surface…creating a shape which had the potential to be interpreted as a life-like impression of a dragon…by someone who has a notion of dragons.

The abbott was not terrified by the image… although it looked life-like he knew it was not alive.

However the artist forgot… he forgot that what he saw when he looked up was an image, the creativity of his own mind…
He took it to be real… a big mistake… and frightened himself to death

It is an explanation and a warning…

The dharma invites us to be curious… to see what we are up to… and to be clear about the nature of what is arising in the mind (and what is the nature of the mind).

As we see what we are up to… we see that we are not compelled to give solidity to arisings, to thoughts feelings and sensations.
Compounding them, imbuing them with a false sense of reality, and believing in our own creativity… is normal but not natural

Such activity is a habit of confusion – and it is blinding, diminishing, exhausting, unsatisfying…and potentially lethal!

No doubt alternate views are available :-)… but nonetheless less the Dharma offers respite and recovery, a welcome home for us convicted thought-addicts!

P.s. The guy who was so good with ‘smoke and mirrors’ – producing special effects which, allied with appropriate music, helped to create a rich environment for the envisionment of phantasmagoria in some ‘spiritualist’ meetings in the early 20th century… was apparently driven mad by what he thought he saw.

Today sees the rising of the new moon…

and here to complement that are two poems shared by Shambhala Publications from a book of poetry: The First Free Women – Poems of the early Buddhist nuns.

This collection  of poems was composed around the time of the Buddha and called the Therigatha, which translates as ‘verses of the elder nuns’.  It has been revived by Matty Weingast.

Buddahadarma notes that these were written long before it was safe to utter the words ‘women’ and ‘liberation’ in the same sentence… we are now so very fortunate.

The open heart is not ‘gender biased’ in nature, nurture… nor availability

Emptiness and fulness – the kindness ahhh…

James is speaking on the potential depth of that tomorrow…

Our true kindness, arising from our openness, is of a very different quality from our intentional and conceptualised efforts.

If you  are not able to listen tomorrow no doubt it will be up on the website shortly… but you may find the transcript of an earlier talk on this topic – Emptiness equanimity and kindness  illuminating…like the full moon bursting through the clouds!!!

New Moon image:wikipedia uploaded to Flicr byQuimGil license: creative commons