Wendy

Bull in a china shop

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nextgov-mediumWhen I started with a little group in  Tiverton some years ago James suggested that I could ‘take along pens knives scissors chopsticks and so on’… or words to that effect.

Sometimes, in order not to interrupt the flow, I trust that things will become clearer in time or through engagement… if I asked him anything by way of clarification I think the answer probably was ‘you have to hold them differently’…err…  yes…and???

As I put together an assortment of articles to take with me I had a glimmering of that to which he was alluding. That everything, everyone, with whom we engage – if the engagement is to be the most attuned or appropriate – requires a unique response, specific to their presentation that time.

I could give you many examples of my not getting that right…however I think this one, which doesn’t involve people, is a good illustration –

I was in charity shop a little while back and when  i went to pick up a painted wooden duck, very similar in appearance to one i once owned …  there was an explosion….it was very surprising …bits of stuff went all over the place.

Luckily I managed to catch a little vase in my skirt before it hit the ground and amazingly the other bits and pieces which I had knocked over were unbroken.

I’m not usually clumsy so what had gone wrong?

Well, it was just that I had picked up the wooden duck, which looked so much like one I had owned some years ago, as though it was the exactly the same. However whilst this duck looked like it was made of wood ( I was not wearing my glasses!) it was in fact pottery – quite a different weight – and, moreover, the head and neck came apart from the body… they formed a lid to a pot… and it that was what I lifted up. I had gauged the amount of energy needed and the trajectory completely wrong and the spare energy scattered everywhere.

So  it is with people. If we are confident that we know how the other is prior to meeting them, or if we meet them without sufficient spaciousness to have a sense of how they actually are ( because we are already full of our own ideas about how they are, or what we have to get across to them)   or if we just have our own constant ‘ way of being’ – take it or leave it this is me! – then the possibility of a beneficial congruence is remote…. and the risk of explosions much greater!

Instead we have to keep looking, take nothing for granted, put our memories aside, and have the confidence to be tentative…trusting that we can regain our balance after a faux pas or mis-step/ mistake… and also play a different tune if that’s what the situation requires.

All of which requires a good degree of openness. Intentionally practising doing it differently will, in my experience only take you so far…  it’s the on-going practice of openness which will naturally lead to that ‘fresh cooking’ in the moment… of/as which James speaks

 

This P.S. arose as a solution to a practical –?what is fitting – problem and might just be useful-

I have a fridge and from time to time the drain hole bungs up and the bottom fills with water. The instructions suggest inserting a little plastic gadget (sometimes supplied) or a straw into the hole. This has worked before but this time no luck!

I didn’t want to call out an engineer to dismantle the drain from the back but, looking on the internet for another solution, i got to see the shape of the drain – its straight for a little bit [the gadget/straw solution works for blockages in this section] but then it then curves away downwards.

I wondered… What would have sufficient strength to clear the blockage…be the right width to fit inside the drain…after insertion- maintain a curve in the right direction so that it would enter the curved part…and be soft enough not to damage the drain ?

…a little while later i caught myself looking at the open plastic ring with the tab – the one that you pull to get the top off a plastic milk carton – as it lay on the side waiting to go into the bin…

Perfect!

 

 

 

Emerson 2016 recordings now available

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The recordings are at last ready to listen to…you can click the link in the title below.

There have been quite a few provocations for those of us involved with this set of recordings. Even at the end there’s a little smiley one…I had suggested saying ‘audio-edited by w.c.’ as it perhaps looks less like wc–toilet …but….. never mind!  ; ) hope you enjoy them.

http://audio.simplybeing.co.uk/2016/07/2016-uk-emerson-take-it-easy/

Fly

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Fly

At one time, little fly, you had the freedom of the space

but then your body  nudged against a tiny sticky filament

and in your struggle to get free

your wings and body were stuck fast

” Fly in a net ”

and yet……..

 

no spider came as answer  to your calls

to turn you into means for its existence

and so,  unwrapped,  flying again became a possibility.

 

Why don’t you move?

you are not dead!

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using a lens and dampened brush

so gently, wash away the unseen residue, the glue,

and be a fly, and fly and be….

 

each moment freed, spontaneously.

 

 

The little net of the ‘ego thought’ catches the passing, fleeting thought… the beginning of the forming of a shape…of solidification and reification  “Open… release…. begin again”…

 

 

 

 

What, no contest, no goal and no gold!?……but then, do they lead to freedom or steal it ?

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The heart/mind not being different,

this is an excerpt i liked from Embracing Each Moment: A Guide to the Awakened Life
written by Anam Thubten, pages 132–133.

The Spiritual Olympics

We don’t have to try to surrender. That sounds too effortful. Then we will have a surrender competition. There is going to be a spiritual marathon, a spiritual Olympics, how about that? Indeed, there is a spiritual Olympics. It is not officially announced. Many people are working really hard trying to be the best meditator, the best ascetic, the most enlightened. So don’t try to surrender with your personal will or deliberate effort. It sounds like too much work, trying to surrender to everything. Instead, go inside. That is all you need to do sometimes. Go inside and let yourself be in touch with your heart. You know how to be in touch with your heart. Your heart is waiting to be recognized. This is why the Tibetan masters often said there are many forms or levels of meditation. The highest level is what they call effortless meditation. When they teach how to meditate, especially the masters from the Nyingma tradition, they always say, “Don’t do anything.” Rest in the present moment. Relax in the natural state of your mind, because if you can relax, rest in the natural state of your own mind, then you will be in touch with your own heart, with your original heart, with your innocent heart, and then surrender is very easy because all of your heart wants it.

Playing ‘Pin the tail on the donkey’….

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In the childrens’ game of ‘Pin the tail on the donkey’ the winner is the one who, whilst blindfolded, manages to pin a pretend tail onto a drawing of a donkey…  closest to the anatomically correct position.

Now, if we were inflatable donkeys…of the kind children might ride in a swimming pool (well i’m sure you’ve seen Loch Ness Monsters in that setting…so donkeys are a possibility…

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….aha, found one… the incredible creativity of the mind!…)

we’d rightly be very wary around pins…for fear of deflation …. sssss….

 

 

In our felt separation – there’s me and there’s you

and we donkeys can make such a hullabaloo
…swapping tails with each other
we say ‘How d’ye do’ but….

we can be quite wary (while holding our pin)
with the thought that ‘the other’
might stick theirs right in…

………………………………..our posterior!

 

In being not donkeys,
the tails are just tales…
and we don’t have that feeling that
we could be nailed.

And, in being (not donkeys)
we don’t fear the pin…
as there isn’t a rump
for the pin to stick in

Just being is us, but it cannot be done
if we spend our time fearing a pain in the bum!

 

This came after a chat about the  behaviours that we do with a friend who is about to be 90…happy birthday Gwen!

 

 

 

Update on Emerson college recordings / “Courageous Compassion”

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IWP_20160713_21_02_00_Pro said it would only take a week or so of free time to get the recordings ready… and this is true, but sometimes there’s more to it than that….

Emerson recordings update  22nd Aug…nearly complete. There have been lots of difficulties in getting hold of the final part of the good recording which Gaynor made…i’ve tried improving mine but the result’s not great… so thankfully a friend who is a sound engineer is going to have a bash today…so…. ready shortly!

The first week back different people i had not seen for years got in touch or visited. Last week I was  away at the Buddhafield festival, which had the theme “Courageous Compassion” and gave a talk in a little tent on the need for wisdom – the wisdom of emptiness or openness – as the basis for the arising of sustainable compassion.

If you are interested here’s the gist of what the talk was based around.

Dualistic, false–relative, compassion… where I am going to act compassionately towards you –  where I, you, and the action are all three seen as entitative –   is a big step up from ‘I just care about me and mine’ but it maintains the sense of separation, of solidity, even superiority …  and, because of its effortful nature, transient effect, and the desire (and often frustrated desire!) involved it can be exhausting.  Jumping in to help a drowning man is great if you can swim and are strong enough to get him safely out without getting yourself into the same predicament…knowing the variable nature of your capacity and working within that is essential at this point.

So different dharma teachings  gesture to the way through this via another approach to suffering.

If we take the bodhisattva vow, as in Mahayana Buddhism, then the intention is to ‘develop’ the mind of the buddha.  Understanding that the compassion that goes with this intention involves a wish to attain enlightenment in order to benefit all ‘others’… to bring them happiness and freedom from suffering in the short term and enlightenment in the longer term…whilst accepting that this longer term may indeed be very, very long!

It seems likely that  in the sustained and concentrated effort of altruistically attempting to attain the perfections of generosity, morality, vigour, patience, concentration and wisdom of a bodhisattva, somehow the custard–like skin of self-referential thoughts holding us in a particular shape thins to the point where there is an understanding of non-duality in the relative sense and perhaps the realisation of prajna as revealed in the Heart Sutra shines through. At this point compassion is fearless rather than courageous.

The view of Tantra  is that of (an initially intentional) transformation of all that is manifesting by viewing it through the lens of the pure relative. Compassion then, as the liberation of all sentient beings, is that of not taking them prisoner, and relating to them as entities in the first place!

The encouragement is to practice until we have integrated the view.  I think it was Gampopa who said to his students who wanted to bring their retreat to a premature conclusion in order to go and  be helpful… ” Do you think there will be nobody left in need of your help down in the valley if you wait until completion of your practice?”

After the initial introduction, the practice of dzogchen is that of absolute compassion arising spontaneously… not being impulsively or thoughtfully contrived but arising naturally from the ground nature, freshly in each moment. So rather than using different strengths of detergent to eventually clean the window, or looking through a different window, its a matter of … throwing the window wide open!

If we overheat or get stuck in the practice of relative compassion we may not get to ask…What  is the nature of this self, this other, these thoughts, this mind?… it is the answer to this that the buddha was seeking… and found and, in deep dharma, taught.

 

Of the different levels of compassion arising from the different views – false relative, pure relative and absolute… these are explained by Patrul Rinpoche in Chapter 7 in the book Simply Being by James Low.

Chapter 3 on the development of bodhicitta is also recommended.

 

 

‘Where to invade next’

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720x405-MCDWHTO_EC042_HThis film is maybe good  to see  after watching The Divide..it shows much that’s good in other   countries’ ways of living.

It’s not a film which I would have thought of going to see… but a friend wanted to and I was in town…so i did and was glad.

It’s not in fact about which country America is really about to invade next…. but about comparing some of the best of humanitarian attitudes in other countries, for example with regard to education, workers rights, attitude towards criminals ( bankers and others!) and contrasting them with what generally happens in the USA.

I had heard of the prison off the coast of Norway where maximum security offenders are treated with respect and rehabilitated  in such a way that the rates of recidivism are astonishingly low compared with the U.K. and U.S. and it was a treat to see the quality of the relationships, both between the inmates and the inmates with their guards…. violence being meted out by the police is unimaginable to prisoners and guards alike. Here prisoners are trusted with the use of large sharp kitchen knives for food prep. in the kitchen…and they are used just for that!          I remember hearing that the training for those working with offenders in prison is lengthy, often at degree level, in countries  where there is a genuine interest in rehabilitation and re–education rather than punishment…the training in our country can be just a matter of months.   Recently there was mention of an intention of making prisoners in this country work productively and there is footage of American prisoners doing just this which is so dispiriting. Their living conditions and working conditions are so poor and they are paid maybe as little as $.37 an hour for franchised work…the contrast is stark.

Having heard a bit about the educational system in Finland it was delightful to see  the faces of the teachers  in whose aim is to  facilitate the growth of healthy happy communicative  citizens,  and who  feel that our method of ‘education to pass standardised tests’ is deadening and diminishing to the potential of teacher and the child. These children have no homework… home time is for friends, family, living life.. not bowed down by hours and hours of homework, in fact they have almost none – yet their educational system is producing students with some of the highest functioning in the world.

In our country we work long hours (though not as long as the USA) and our productivity is a lot lower than in many countries which work shorter hours. The film shows employers in other countries  who actually care about the happiness of the workforce and appreciate the positive impact resulting from involving them in decision-making… and also having them on the board of directors.

There are countries with eight weeks paid leave, generous maternity/paternity leave; countries where those who are stressed can go to a spa on prescription…. it is cheaper than treating people with depression ( way back in 1990 this cost was $44 billion in the USA  of which drug treatment was 10%, one quarter was due to treatment and the rest to absenteeism and premature death… I haven’t looked but I should imagine it’s a great deal more now)

I have heard a senior official in the drug squad pleading for decriminalisation… I don’t think many people wanted to hear what he had to say even though it was clear that he was in a position to know what he was talking about.
In Portugal drugs are not an issue, not a matter of concern for the police, but rehabilitation is  freely available. The Portuguese police who were interviewed appeared horrified and saddened at the lack of humanity in the use of the death-penalty in the USA.

French children, even in deprived areas, who all sit down together for an hour and enjoy a very high quality school meal at lunchtime. Passing food and drink between each other and chatting….lovely!

Yes…  this is  a quick breeze across the upside of many countries.. yet the relaxed faces speak volumes about the healthy impact of the humanitarian attitudes shown. It was a pleasure just  to listen to and see the faces of people around the world who were concerned for the welfare of those around them and were prepared to orientate their lives away from  ‘looking after number one’ to looking after the welfare of the wider community.

A Tunisia woman who had been educated in Paris (and knew much about the USA) was filmed begging for an interest from the USA in that which was good about her country….

Perhaps this is not representative but it stuck in my mind… In 1981 I was in the State Department office in Houston, Texas asking to buy a visa for Guatemala… and I was asked which state that was in? “Well,it’s the country  down from Mexico…two down from the USA!”                                  Many states in America are vast, and the news in each state was mainly about state happenings with some information about national happenings… but as far as international happenings there was very little.

Other countries have other problems and for sure there’s no quick fixes, as you shift one thing it has an impact on others (written pre-referendum!)  … but there is much non-fattening food for thought for both the UK and the USA about how to live well in this film… if you’ve a mind to see it.

Projecting hatred…

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He is about to hit him in the face with his ringed fist but does this man hate this monk?

Well, he’s angry for many many reasons – only one of which is that the monk reported to the police that the demonstrators (of which he is one) had assaulted another man… but he knows nothing about the monk apart from that. He has his opinions and beliefs ….some quite different from those of the monk and some will be  quite similar yet the monk has become a symbol onto which he can project all the  stored frustrations and sense of injustice that he has faced in his life so far.

As Milarepa said ” you menace others with your deadly fangs but in tormenting them, you’re only torturing yourselves.”

He’s projecting the bad out, onto the other … tightening up his heart, his mind, his body, to mete out ‘just desserts’…. in this case onto someone who would not fight back. Taken over by his afflictive emotion the result of his action is a photograph which has  the effect of arousing sympathy for the monk (not what he intended) and this action will do nothing to diminish his own suffering.

The thinking is often that ‘things aren’t working out the way I think they should…and who’s fault is that – well it’s their fault’… So if we punish them or get rid of them that will make things better… right?!!

Has this ever worked?

No…. because it’s never just one person’s or groups’ fault that a situation as it is. In relative reality each situation arises due to a concatenation of events, many many factors have to come together for its occurrence…. and it is then interpreted through our own mental filters and mixed with our concepts and prejudices.

Opinions arising from this process cannot be taken as reliable. The ‘alien other’ has the same nature as ourselves and deep buddhist practice is very much about working with the enemy within… the grasping onto a fixed sense of ‘I’ with all that arises from that.

As that felt sense of separation, feeling oneself to be a separate  self–existing entity, starts to dissolve then tolerance of difference increases and aversion decreases, and situations become more workable.  There is more appreciation of the showing of different forms – the radiance of the mind, empty of inherent self–existence.

…here’s a bit more  from Milarepa

If hate reigns supreme, it chains us to hell.

Great avarice opens the gulf of eternal hunger.

Dulll ignorance makes us no better than animals.

Growing passion ties us to the world of men.

If jealousy takes root, it leads to the realm of warring gods.

Overbearing pride traps us in the land of the heavens.

These are the six fetters that chain us to samsara.

…and maybe if you have time check out the latest vimeo  Seeing clearly and acting gracefully  where the internal definitions and anxieties leading to a contraction – as with the result of the recent referendum – are explored.

P.S. It’s hard to see… but underneath the monks arm there is a rather disturbing figure (you can see this if you click on the photo so it comes up big), a little lady who is really happy and laughing  to see such sport…

…its a very different kind of happiness that we wish for all beings!

 

The Divide

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The focus of this film is the vast ‘wealth divide’ where the top 0.1% of the population of the UK and USA have wealth equal to that of the bottom 90% – illustrated through a look at the lives of seven people.

It was very poignant to see footage of the lived situation of the people at the bottom of the economic divide, and their faces, as they spoke about trying to make ends meet and survive… but also the faces at the top – there is not much joy or freedom in their bunkered situations… manicured and deadened…

Heidegger said ethics is ‘first philosophy’…what is for the benefit of all? This is not operational here. One delightful female banker who had had qualms about the sub-prime market said that ‘when you remove ethics you become very efficient’. Perhaps in some ways it seems so… but the Walmart employee in the film had, prior to the changes within the company, loved her job, felt valued for her contribution both in ideas and behaviour. Through the changes which removed that culture of appreciation and included shifting to unknown flexible hours – the company itself was devalued. She was about to become homeless and did not look likely to survive for long.

The cinema was almost full but, as the man sitting next to me said, ‘unfortunately the people who needed to see this wouldn’t be watching’. But i thought, even if you could get them to watch many, because of their conditioning, would just see people who are a ‘hopeless’, a ‘waste of space’, a ‘drain on the economy’, ‘losers’.

Yet in the USA the ‘KIP’ schools, which operate in in hugely deprived areas and whose overriding focus is to get their students into college, succeed with 33% of their kids…compared with, i think it was, 8% for other schools in these areas of deprivation and a 32% national average …also their students tend not to drop out…

There are many stories of prisoners who turned their lives around with the help of the genuine love and support of others, and people whose lives have changed as a result of being seen to have value – having this different way of seeing themselves reflected back through someone else’s eyes.

You might enjoy this episode of desert island discs with John Timpson and the enlightened attitude to ex-offenders shown by his son, himself, and the firm.

Behaviour patterns tend to insist but have the potential for transformation if they are recognised as such and given space to resolve under a light and kindly attention. There is a beautiful quote which i paraphrase(having lost the original) as……..

” Birds that live on golden mountain take on the colour of the sun”.

So many many factors, causes and conditions, bring about the circumstances in which people find themselves…from a dharma perspective, in ‘relative reality’ karma is operational. So whilst hoping to equalise the ability to utilise the opportunities available is unrealistic… the attitude that genetics or social circumstances are definitional and that it is acceptable to ” fiddle away that which has come to you while Rome burns” does a violence to the potential for people to grow and to show themselves in many different ways… and ignores our interconnectedness. Everybody has ‘buddha–nature’ and to be indifferent to the state of others is to diminish ourselves.

A 70-year-old venture capitalist raised a laugh in the cinema as he explained very determinedly (after a long list of his activities, assets, and achievements…ending with having three children under 13) that he was a ‘Creator’…he was far from thinking that ‘all this will end’, that this ‘self’ is insubstantial and ‘disintegration’ is also on the list.
The possibility of awakening was never part of his game plan…a plan conditioned by his family, mental aptitude, the culture of the time…influenced by so many factors.
Prior to the crash the words ‘greed is good’ were heard without much if any irony; being ‘something in the city’ was admired, and when times were ‘good’ some of these people felt that they could walk on water…and some still do…but it’s ‘for a while’…and was it only the bankers who were greedy or is there some projection going on here?
Life is short how shall we be? We are lucky to know we have choices…and whether or not to judge others may be instinctive, a choice influenced by virtuous intention or, in awareness, no-choice.

A while ago I spent some time with people living in poverty… they had mostly flour and water to eat and drink. The flour was mixed with water to make the major part of their meals and the water was not running water but they had to fetch it in big plastic containers from a tap some distance away. They lived in little caves, just one room, no ensuite!

So these people are near the bottom economic heap and need our help to raise their standard of living…I wonder, shall we create a charity?

I am joking… these were some of the happiest people that I’ve met in my life… no amount of money would make them happier, they were practising the dharma…life had meaning well beyond self-concern.

To be able to practise for the welfare of all beings continuously one doesn’t need a cave…just a heart that’s open to suffering and a desire to practice according to our capacity ….decreasing the divisions created in the mind.

Heaven or hell ? – it’s all in the mind as it moves with our thoughts

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Version 2Some years ago I was doing a strict Goenka vipassana retreat in a monastery in Thailand… the sitting for ten hours a day was hard for someone used to sitting for short periods.
Each day I looked around me  and everyone else seemed to be coping just fine – ‘a bunch of crack meditation ninjas’ – and I thought it was just me, so unused to this kind of practice, who was really struggling with discomfort.
There was no communication allowed during the retreat between the participants  so we could not compare our experiences or encourage each other verbally…yet somehow or other a little nun from Korea and I mostly got up to leave the meditation hall at the same time  every evening…

Two days of the retreat had been billed as being particularly difficult – the first turned out to be easy for me and the second was very very difficult, the pain in my legs was becoming intolerable. At one point, fearing becoming crippled due to the impact on an earlier injury,  I was granted permission to use a chair but that seemed to make matters worse as the blood pooled in my legs, so I went back to the floor and gritted my teeth. I have a reasonable amount of willpower and used that to get through  that day… but that wasn’t the end…. there was the next day and more! The next morning, for the very first time, I skived off to the toilet in the early hours of the meditation and after that it was downhill all the way and it became so hard to stick with it…

Then I remembered a teacher saying ‘well – if you can’t do it, you just can’t do it’.
This may not seem very profound but being able to accept that I might not be able to do it brought about enough relaxation for me to hang in there while my legs shook and shook until they settled and I found that I was still practising after the teacher had left.  On this occasion he had walked out quietly without giving notice of his departure… usually there was a bit of a countdown… and I had been counting the seconds believe me!

So it got easier… in fact it got to be pleasurable – extraordinary! – and that was when a big ‘downfall’ occurred. We had been warned not to indulge in any pleasurable experiences if they arose…the  thought of this happening seemed so remote that the instruction barely registered. But then I remembered ( having indulged!) and the world changed – this is the interesting bit.

Prior to indulging in these feelings I had been in a kind of  heaven… albeit a somewhat painful one. The  setting was beautiful with a river nearby. There were flowers and sunshine and a golden dome and starlight and birds and food which was – edible, and  I was doing something I felt to be meaningful.

Then suddenly, with this enormous sense of shame at having not followed the instructions, everything changed. I could no longer look at people, I could barely eat, all the colour had drained out of the environment, it had become  monochrome, grey…there was nothing to wonder at… just my dismal thoughts that there was no point in my continuing, that I wasn’t worthy enough to be there or to do the pilgrimage which was to follow.

Then I thought my way through the inevitable conversation when I returned – ‘so why didn’t you do what you to set out to do?’ ‘Well you see I was in a monastery and I hadn’t done what I’d been told to do so obviously i am not good enough to be following in the Buddhas footsteps… so I came home.’
I imagined the somewhat  disappointed acceptance of my returning thousands of miles to say that…. and thankfully, I started to sound foolish to myself and to realise that this was all part of the ‘growing up’ process… and the world started to lighten up again for me.
In truth I started to lighten up the world, just as before my thoughts had darkened the world. The food, the monastery, nothing much changed while I went on this mental journey and so the truth of – “Everything has mind in the lead, has mind in the forefront, is made by mind” (Thomas Cleary’s translation of the first few lines of the Dhammapada)  became very vivid for me.

I had been swept away by thoughts with which my egoic sense of self (another thought) had fused. Believing in the truth of them any awareness, or sense of presence had been completely lost. Then, lacking spaciousness, i had collapsed into being a ‘no good’ object for my judgmental ego-self. Luckily that little hell didn’t last for too long; thanks to impermanence and karma some more useful thoughts arose which i could use as a rope ladder to climb out…not the method of choice but all i was capable of at the time.
Any dzogchen practitioners reading this will know that any kind of  thoughts can arise and pass in  awareness as an aspect of the arising field …but fusing with them and taking them to be definitional is as wise as jumping out of a high window in the belief that you can fly…
…ah well, it takes practice and growing confidence which was part of the reason for the pilgrimage!

As for not doing things exactly as instructed… well under my particular circumstances  that was quite understandable. Really, as always, it was just a matter of learning from  that slip, letting go of it, and carrying on…and when i did just that i was finally practising properly –not  hooking into any sensation.

Making the mistake meant that I also had a glimpse of the truth that forcing myself in order to succeed might get me to a ‘goal’ but not much past it… it was the relaxation coming from looking ‘failure’ in the face which allowed me to continue.
Dzogchen in particular is not a practice of  anxious striving but of a profound relaxation from which manifestation arises precisely in relation to the emergent field …and as James has said more than once “it’s a marathon, not a sprint”

At the end of the retreat also it became clear that my assumption that I was the only one suffering was completely unfounded – we all were; some of the exuberance and joy expressed  was related to the retreat experience… but quite a lot to do with the ending of it and the release from silence and tension!

The little nun and I hugged each other…

… and then we were told off for breaking ‘Sila’…’good grief’ i thought ‘what have i done now?!’

That hug was in fact ‘right action’ – entirely appropriate – but back then I felt terrible and got someone to translate my abject apologies…

…. however the nun was vey happy about the hug… and we did something lovely with any merit gained in our practice then

…and i hope she is very happy now and that her practice is going well.

 

The linguistic penny drops!

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If you have listened to any talk James has given you will have noticed that he has a very particular way of speaking.
When I first started to edit transcribed recordings I spent some time cutting and pasting and fiddling with the words so that they sounded more normal to my ears. Then I realised that  it no longer sounded like James speaking and that, more importantly,  there is an unusually extreme precision in his use of language…which is not something to fiddle with.

In learning from him, when something is not clear, sometimes I interrupt the flow and ask a direct question but more often it’s either that clarification comes during the course of later conversation or I wait for the penny to eventually drop. When I have a little more clarity myself there may be a lightbulb moment –  mixing my metaphors wildly here.  I think its a sign of good teaching to encourage the stretch to a higher shelf rather than just handing things down. So here’s what was on the shelf…

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In English language lessons we are taught the singular and the plural of many nouns and so i had  a little puzzle because, no matter what the circumstance, although the singular seemed to be called for James always uses the plural – phenomena.

So, some time ago, although fairly sure what his answer would be, I  asked him a question. In the past he has said that one could refer to Noam Chomsky as a bodhisattva of language. and looking at what he, Chomsky, has written about language is a revelation…just a quick look was enough to my eyes water! There is clearly a lot more to communication than the surface construction. So it was unlikely that he doesn’t know the singular…

so i asked… ” you do know that  that the singular of phenomena is phenomenon?” He just smiled and said “yes” and we left there.

For a while the situation was that he continued to say the plural “phenomena” no matter what the context  and i continued to twitch slightly whenever i thought it should be “phenomenon” singular. Maybe its just an anomaly, best ignored … i thought.

Eventually my ‘school trained’ knowledge succumbed to dharma understanding and the penny dropped…there is no such thing as ‘a phenomenon’. The word is suggestive of something discrete and discontinuous – separated out from other phenomena… whereas the experience of phenomena is always plural… each being dependant upon other phenomena for their arising together…kerr-chink!

Using the scissors or ‘biscuit cutters’ to abstract phenomena from the arising field and then reifying them and ascribing value to them are steps in the instructions in the popular “Create your own Samsara” kit. The result is not real but suffering, arising from misapprehension, is woven into its apparent structure because, as there is neither reality to the building blocks nor cement in the mortar, it cannot bear any weight. Not that hopes and fears and expectations have any more weight than other thoughts but there seems to be quite an energetic charge to them…

Whether or not to use this kit is the choice which mediation offers.
To begin with the misapprehension, being habitual, is continuous…and it takes a lot of mediation and examination, slowing things down before we can see what we’re doing. Then, with practice, we can see through  ‘the rabbit/thought hole’ and choose not to go down it.
If we do its like putting our attention into a little vortex where the thought you’ve caught plays around with other thoughts taking our energy into a spin and  the actuality of the spacious, open, astonishing  revelation from which we are never apart is occluded…
but its always there… even when we’re forgetting…just a little release and we’re back home.

‘Human Hubris’ may seem a poncey strapline but it is, i think, applicable to some behaviours in the film The Pearl Button …

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…and i have a fondness for alliteration!

I looked up the word ‘hubris’ when i first came across it a little while ago and thought it a useful word… it means insolence, arrogance, such as invites disaster:overweening… and boy, are humans capable of manifesting this!

‘Cape Horn marks the northern boundary of the Drake Passage and is where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans collide. For decades it was a major milestone on the clipper route, by which sailing ships carried trade around the world. The waters around Cape Horn are particularly hazardous, owing to strong winds, large waves, strong currents and Icebergs; these dangers have made it notorious as a sailors’ graveyard.’ (wikipedia)1801

So what would current health and safety rules make of a family taking a 12-year-old in a tiny open boat, hollowed from a tree trunk, around Cape Horn?  The native Patagonian with the links back to his pre-Colombian ancestors who was interviewed in this film made the passage twice (the first time when he was 12) yet now, at late middle-age, he’s not allowed…the men with big ships say it’s not safe to for him to do this.
He is one of the remaining few with the knowledge of his ancestors and the ability and desire to use it.
His people were water-people, they knew how to read sea, the winds, the thousand miles or so of shoreline, the weather, and how to navigate by looking at the sky. The younger generation does not have this, those that remember the old days and ways are dying out.

They lived like this from pre-columbian times for thousands of years but in the early 19th century Patagonia was mapped by a British naval officer and later, in exchange for a mother-of-pearl button, one of these people was brought to England, to London for two years…and then returned. Unsurprisingly he was never the same again.

Europeans and Chileans then brought the Patagonians the teachings of Catholicism, put them into school, unwittingly gave them clothing permeated with unknown bacteria (for these naked painted people had to be made decent and covered up) and herded them together, onto an island off the coast.
Their faces in photographs, before and after, said it all…and their numbers were soon decimated.
Later the remaining indigenous people were hunted… money was paid for the testicles and breasts of adults and for the ears of children killed. This made room for proper people to do proper farming and live as people should….well that was the thinking at the time!

Yet the farming is not that successful. The torture (for killing sake, not to extract information…that was already known) and disposal of the victims by helicopter into the sea under the military dictatorship which overthrew the socialist Salvador Allende’s rule (with some help from others…if you are interested you can easily discover who) in the 1970’s is another sorry addition to the story…  under his rule there had been a movement to return land to the indigenous people.

The Guardian’s critic Andrew Pulver says ‘It really is intelligent, magnificent film-making’

If you have time you can see it tonight at the Exeter picture house cinema. I found it  shocking and poignant, with some astonishingly beautiful photography… another, generally unmarked, holocaust.

Dheepan

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4628In one of James’ Macclesfield talks he invited us to imagine what it would feel like be to be a wee kid in Pakistan speaking Urdu and with a large connected family fully embedded in that culture who is uprooted when his family comes to England.

I couldn’t imagine what that would feel like but this film brought me a little closer – a ‘put together’ family ( a way of using a dead families passport)  fleeing the fighting in Sri Lanka  is followed as they try to find their way as refugees in a foreign country.

As a Native American Indian saying goes you have to walk for two moons in someone else’s mocassins before you can judge them – (and then your understanding of their situation would be so great that you wouldn’t!)

The loss of everything which seemed to comprise your identity is gone, can be turned to nothing, no value, no use, in fact sometimes the opposite in this different setting. A completely foreign language, religion, culture, politics, schooling, family relationships,etc. to get used to and to try to work with. Its a phenomenal undertaking for someone in good physical mental and financial health –  rarely the luck of refugees!

The film does evoke some question marks well covered i think in this review:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/apr/20/dheepan-immigration-depiction-selective-jacques-audiard-multiracial-france

 

Oh Man!

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Yes we can…Moon

Put a man on the moon

make an outside womb,

change DNA

……..? blow hatred away?

There’s a muffled response ( ‘cos the heads up the arse)

‘Oh, leave peace to the doves!  Let’s find life….

up on Mars!’

wendy, april 2016

 

In 2006 foreign correspondent Christina Lamb and the soldiers of the British parachute regiment she was accompanying on a ‘hearts and mind mission’ in Afghanistan was  pinned down in a series of irrigation trenches by fire from a Taliban ambush. The British soldiers were very skilled but, after two and a half hours under fire, excitement was turning to desperation….the air power required for them to make their escape was not available, being fully deployed elsewhere. Eventually they were liberated by an attack from the air which killed the dozen Taliban who had them pinned down. The soldier responsible said ‘we blew them into red mist’

I’m not going to play around with words… for me, time stood still at the impact of those words.

 

Man, it seems, is pretty good at desire, including the desire for knowledge, and also at hatred…but how about being human?

The dharma speaks of the resolution of desire in the satisfaction arising from experiencing the emptiness or openness of all manifestations whilst fully appreciating the differences in which they display, or manifest.

From the Dhammapada comes…’We are what we think, all that we are arises with out thoughts. With our thoughts we make our world….

….In this world hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law ancient and inexhaustible. Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

Give up the old ways – passion, enmity,folly. Know the truth and find peace.’

 

 

 

Extracted from Wikipedia: In 2013 Christina Lamb co-authored the autobiography of Malala Yousafzai “I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up For Education and Was Shot By The Taliban”[2] In the same year, Lamb joined the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars as a Wilson Center Global Fellow.[3] Her latest book entitled “Farewell Kabul” exhaustively details her many years in Afghanistan and Pakistan offering a close up account of the long war and its many missed opportunities on the part of the US on account of its tortured relationship with Pakistan. Her book essentially lays the problems of terrorism in the region, if not in the world, on that country’s door.[4]

Plenty of dependant co-origination here!

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/who-is-responsible-for-the-taliban gives a view of that complex situation from another angle.