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 

Some may be helpful to read…. but on checking whether sender, senders address, spelling, spacing, and sense match with what you know already… some need to go straight in the bin.

If you should receive an email from Simply Being (South West) …perhaps  from admin (ha ha!), or something similar… with perhaps just a link in it… please don’t click the link… simply delete.     If you check the senders address it may start with ‘wordpress’ (which is incorrect)…
if you’re expecting something from me then the senders address will be different from that.

If you are unsure you can always send an email to check with me  before opening…

So that’s the binnable bit…

the next bit may be more helpful to read…..

I wrote the email below to a dharma student earlier in the year…and it seems to chime with the teachings of the past weekend and includes the link to ‘The healing power of emptiness’ which James referred to towards the end on Sunday… so i have pasted it below.

Towards the end of lockdown I had run out of bread but not wanting to make a special trip to the shops just for that.

I’ve made bread in the past and had some old (2015!)  wholemeal bread flour and what looked like a good recipe… so I started.

I had read that a stage which I had always completed before was unnecessary, so instead of initially adding the yeast to water and sugar, I added it directly into the flour.

The recipe was also a little different, it required a couple of stages for rising as an alternative to a lot of kneading.

I was quite taken by this idea, letting it do its own thing without much effort from me was appealing, but by three in the afternoon despite ‘knocking back’ twice something which did not seem to have risen much…  hopes that I hadn’t been completely wasting my time were dashed, it was clear that any rising was imaginary.

Most likely the yeast was inactive, being too old. I would have discovered this if I had used the normal method… and also if I hadn’t been convinced that the yeast’s expiry date was printed on the lid of the tin.. which I had thrown out because it had been eaten by the mouse  with whom I shared a couple of months of lockdown…but that’s another story.

Something now made me look again the tin of yeast and I found that the date was in fact marked on it’s bottom… it was ten years out of date!

So, unwilling to waste the ingredients, what to do with two non-risen loaves?

Answer number one – make a load of crackers!
Rejected on two counts:  two loaves would make a lot more crackers than I would eat in a month of Sundays and also my teeth are friable and likely to crack before the cracker.

Answer number two – use a packet of yeast mixed with water and sugar and, when the sugar and yeast have reacted together, try to incorporate that liquid into the, by now rather hardened and dense – plasticene-like, loaves of dough.

I thought this might work after fashion…but was a long way from the recipe plan.  It took some time to incorporate the liquid, a gentle touch was  required… not making Play-Doh!… but eventually it seemed to be fairly well incorporated.  Original recipe now cast aside I couldn’t be bothered with more than one rise before I cooked them.

Yet they were really good. Some areas you could see were a bit more dense where I hadn’t been able to incorporate the liquid equally throughout… however it was definitely bread… not too dense and it tasted good.

What’s this got to do with the Dharma?

Well, I’m stretching a metaphor here! but the dharma teachings are like the yeast in sugared water… and we  have come to feel that we are like the dough…something a bit heavy… with the imagined solidity of all our weighty thoughts.

Without the dharma yeast to lighten and make the true potential clear the alternatives could be off-the-pace stodginess, or  hard-baked (+) crackers!

Yeast on its own would have been impossible to incorporate evenly, into the dense and somewhat hardened dough…so if any reaction did take place it would be incredibly slow and patchy. But mixed with sugar and water it was possible.

Fortunately, unlike yeast, the truth/wisdom does not go out of date! However the teachings need to  be brought to life in relation to the current time and situation…and to be expressed in a way which can be  received and digested – this is compassion i.e. the sugar and water.

Incorporating these dharma teachings with a persistent yet gentle touch, massaging them into to our heavy sense of selves… gradually we soften, and feel lighter. We become less dense and much more digestible, easier to be at ease…both with ourselves and with others… more sane, not crackers!

And no matter how hard or intractable we feel ourselves or our situation to be… gently applying…softening, relaxing – tensions releasing.  Realising and coming into realignment  with the Dharma, as the truth of ourselves, can’t help but bring about changes for the good.This lightening up…it sounds scrumptious, and healthier than cloud bread!

…and as the emptiness of the old flour, the dusty stuff we cling to…is perceived as such…fresh ingredients come to hand…

Recipes are available on-line also masterclasses!.. but is anyone the master of the mind? : )… see below

5th Sept, this Saturday, as mentioned under events here and on the Simplybeing.co.uk website.

also this Sunday, 6th Sept, Dissolving The Enemies Of Love – Talk – Sunday, 09/06
10:00 – 17:30 (London Time) details as above.

‘In a world where vulnerability often evokes cruelty rather than kindness it is helpful to remember the Buddha’s teachings on how ignorance arises, and from it, the mental dullness which leads to selfishness, complacency and indifference. If we are to avoid a wish to blame others and seek revenge then it is vital that we see the absence of inherent existence in both persecutor and victim. Loving kindness is powerful when linked to the awareness of how our mind actually is.’

This talk is on wednesday

and hopefully will do no harm!

Once, in a talk James said… ‘keep your dosh in your pocket, sit on your bum and get enlightened!

That’s pretty simple eh?… but it doesn’t happen so often.

So many distractions, emotional obscurations, karmic propensities limit the time on the cushion…
and then the time spent there, although different in location posture and initial intention, is often not so very different from ‘samsaric-time’ off the cushion.
Time is spent fusing with arisings and chewing on them. Sitting there making ‘something’ from nothing – as if that were possible…waiting for it to be over, falling asleep…drifting.

It can be so very hard to let go of old habits…
Although, in believing in, validating and identifying with thoughts we give up our freedom, feel locked-up and suffer the consequences, because they feel ‘just right’ – there’s no questioning them, whether snug and cosy like wrapping up a soft cardigan or putting the usual straight jacket. What to do?…What I usually do!

Yet in this lifetime, as meditators, the goal is to realise our true nature. To succeed we need good teachings, and good examples, application and time. We are so lucky to have the first two for sure, the third to a lesser or greater degree depending on circumstances, the fourth i’m hoping to influence a bit with this article.

We need time to see how we obstruct ourselves; time to have our ‘bum on the cushion’ sufficiently long for the knots to dissolve, and to look in the relaxed way and recognise the ground to which we apply our interpretive matrices…

So my practical suggestions below will not cause you to  realise your pre-existing lightness… but  they may buy you just a little extra time for this realisation to occur!

Basic biological knowledge tells us that our nose is good at filtering out ‘stuff’ in the air we breathe. It also warms the air going down into our lungs so that the oxygen exchange there is more efficient.

Some more in-depth thinking and research has shown that nitric oxide is produced in the nasopharynx and that this gas has excellent anti-viral, anti-fungal and anti-microbial effects (1)acting as first line of dense against micro-organims.
This article (2) Nasal nitric oxide in man – Thorax BMJ suggests that a function of  nitrous oxide  is to keep the sinuses sterile under ordinary conditions. Nitrous oxide also has an effect on the ability of haemoglobin to release oxygen (3).

Severely afflicted Covid patients, until they become very weak, have no difficulty in breathing…so oxygen is getting down into the lungs…yet they present as breathless. The problem is that the oxygen is not able to be utilised for exchange in the normal way.
Lately this realisation has been having an impact on when and how ventilation is offered …seeing that increased pressure is not the answer and may increase damage to lungs which are particularly fragile in this state.
A New York ER/ICU doctor who had noticed how different this condition was from anything he had seen before voiced the idea  of the use of nitrous oxide…and maybe he is onto something.

Certainly (2) nasal air(containing NO) added to the ventilation of intubated patients increases oxygenation and decreases vascular resistance. Although its rôle in inflammation is not really known and is debatable, this article in thorax leans towards the beneficial.
Long-term ventilation can result in cilliary dysfunction and bacterial infection both of which effects, it suggests, may be mitigated by the addition of nitric oxide.

So, particularly under current circumstances, it makes good sense for us to utilise the nitric oxide produced in the nasopharynx to cleanse the incoming air for our own benefit… and the outgoing air for the benefit of others. Also to ‘disinfect’ the lower lungs (which is where maximal exchange occurs) and to maximise the efficiency of oxygen exchange.

If you breathe through the mouth these beneficial effects are bypassed (and diminished if you smoke)… so, if you are able, it’s much better to use the nose for breathing at all times… including exercise and… sleep … (do ask if you are interested in this or any other aspect!)

Also the benefits of using a surgical mask will be greater if you breathe like this… and it is a good reason, if you make your own, for ensuring that it is not so dense that you cannot breathe sufficiently easily through your nose that you start to breathe through your mouth to get more air. We can survive on less breath than we imagine (see below).

There is another factor to consider… that is the rate of breathing. Aiming for a soft, slow, and light (ssl!) even flow … yet taking the air down deep – to make the lower ribs move in and out slightly…
The  concentration of nitric oxide is higher at lower flow rates (2) So this way, which may seem like underbreathing if you are used to taking big breaths, may not only be perfectly adequate but may concomitantly increase oxygen exchange by not over-saturating with oxygen.

You can match the flow of breath to a mantra, or to the increasing breathing timing (4 6 4 etc), or Tong Len, or just allow the flow to flow. The breath will naturally regularise if you practice shiné …… as explained with other practices in James low’s latest zoom videos on How to make use of solitude.

Simple mindfulness of the breath…noticing as it comes and goes… takes you out of thinking, brings you into the present, is relaxing and increases the capacity for non-distracted attention to the boring…! so we are not so easily seduced by ‘exciting’ arisings

and maybe buys… not so much, more days for ‘fun in the sun’… but maybe some extra time for sitting on the bum!!!

P.S. I have a bit of a cough at the moment but rather then express it to no point, i’m holding my nose for a few secs. then breathing in… seems to do the trick just now…(though to match this with the very reasonable ‘keep hands away from face’ instructions… you’d be keeping up with the hand washing instructions, ideally before and after!)

I thank Patrick Mackeown for that tip and some of the other ideas around breathing… in a video offering breathing techniques for covid prevention/ recovery… there are others on the advantages of nasal breathing for asthma and athletes. His training for athletes…effectively taking them three miles high to practice… linked in my mind with the E.R.doctors sense that some patients seemed to be like those suffering from altitude sickness.

Whilst some of our notions, particularly of the purpose of meditation, may differ… his words like mine, are i’m sure, well intentioned gestures in the flow…arising and passing… with meaning (if any) imbued by the mind of the listener
Being calm and clear, breathing well, facilitates relaxation and ease with whatever circumstances arise for us.

P.P.S.Humming may clear the nasal passages….(and produce nitrous oxide). There’s some pubmed research on that which you can google if you like…i’m done googling, it can swallow a lot of time, this just seemed worthwhile… off to dinner and my cushion

P.P.P.S! The photo i found in my album… entitled ‘Go without regrets’…sounds good to me. Just built a ramp for the mouse to exit under the defunct dishwasher but sounds like he wants to use the back door…   Thanks to whoever sent that to me or, if i filched it in my ignorance, apologies and please let me know if you are unhappy and i will remove it. Looks good the other way up too, i think.

It has to be sensible to be  at ease with the natural consequence of birth… that is at some point we will die… but also to do what we reasonably can to stay alive and healthy enough to practice, to continue to deepen our practice while we can.

After death, the traditional understanding is that one is blown by karma from the past into another existence. An existence which is dependent on behaviours, not necessarily enacted in this life but which could be related to activities in past lives.
So it could be a long time before we have the freedoms and opportunity to practice the Dharma again.

Another way of looking at this is that we are continuously creating  many scenarios from arising movements in the mind – experiences, including heavens and hells – and believing in them. We fuse with the patterns we have formed from these experiences as though they were more than the relative truth, as though they were self-existing rather than transient experiences arising in awareness… and we want to become free of this on-going confusion.

We have life, with that, the teachings so beautifully explained, and such freedoms and opportunity to practice before our last breath – as well as then :-).

James’ recent zoom teaching Emptiness Equanimity and Kindness is a beautiful explanation and, as you know, we need to hear, to feel, to question to reflect and to digest to the point where there are no obstructions to manifesting that view.

So in order to facilitate that – maybe to give some extra time in this life – surgical masks being unavailable, here is a picture of a mask I made yesterday!

It’s easy to wear, made out of materials to hand, and reusable.
Masks vary in effectiveness…. the Pitti masks, were you able to purchase them, look attractive and are good at filtering some contaminants but they are not designed for the corona virus particle, which is too small for them to filter out… whereas surgical masks seem pretty good – perhaps pretty close to the N95…
Home-made masks definitely have their place under the circumstances.
The rationale and science behind its use and the construction of my mask is explained here. 
There are many websites and much information/nonsense floating around, but this seems to me to have integrity in the results of the scientific testing shown.

It’s worth noting that the 2 m  of social distancing is  a suggested minimum distance  advice which arose from tests on virus transmission… in still air.
If the wind is blowing, or the  transmitter is moving say on a bike, assisting the propulsion, the distance travelled by the virus could be much greater.

Speech is carried as vibrations through air coming from the subject, this air contains moisture… including possibly a viral dose from someone who is infected though not displaying symptoms…it is propulsive, having energy behind it.
And there are not so many people who can know in advance that they are going to cough or sneeze and be able to do something effective to prevent it.

So, to me, as well as social distancing, it makes sense to wear a mask when out and about. This is in order to minimise the viral load received and also as a kindness to others.

Wearing glasses helps protect the mucosa of the eye from viral ingress…ski goggles are even more effective…
…and wearing a mask (and glasses), as well as decreasing the viral dose,  means that fingers, which may have picked up virus particles along the way, are kept away from the face, keeping you safer.

So…in this home made mask, above…
The inner mask is made of non-woven material of some kind given to me by my mother in Thailand ten years ago, with elastic loops that go over the ears… it has a couple of pleats to allow for the nose protuberance!
You can see some stitching at the top of this mask. This is formed around a  plastic covered paperclip which is halfway unfolded so it’s like an S lying on its back. It is used to form the nose shape which  fits on the bridge of the nose… I suggest you bend it over your thumb to start with before trying it on your nose for shape, as it quite stiff to bend.
This  addition is an important extra detail as it helps to keep the cloth closer to the face stopping air from entering directly.

Sewing the mask to a silk scarf helps keep the arrangement in place. ( If you have one, as you can see on the website above, this has slightly better virus protection than an ordinary scarf but mainly it is very easy to breathe through)

You will notice that there is a bit of tissue sticking out between the inner mask and the scarf… this is a dry wipe… kitchen towel or toilet tissue also would do the job of increasing the filtration without making it too difficult to breathe through.
As I have stitched the sides and the top of the mask to the scarf, but not the bottom,  an upside-down ‘pocket’ is formed and this extra layer of filtration can be placed between the two… and is held in place as the scarf is tightened.

The knots tied in the scarf ends mean that it can easily and consistently be tied to the right tightness without  loosening behind the head… a wide ponytail slide, if you happen to have such a thing, clicks easily across between the knots and the head holding the scarf closely in place… Alternatively you could also use a rubber band, hair band, or simply tie  the two scarf ends together.

These three layers of filtration – inner non-woven cloth, tissue, and doubled silk – produce a mask which is quite easy to  breathe through whilst being, according to the measurements on the website above, fairly close to that of a surgical  mask.

It’s also worth noting that it is also washable… but perhaps more important to note that current understanding is that the virus cannot survive for longer than four hours on cloth.  So disinfection occurs when the mask is left for this length of time, say overnight, and doesn’t need  daily washing. The tissue layer can easily be replaced whenever you feel the need but again, after four hours it should be okay.

If you do not have a 10-year-old  cloth mask to start with… you will see that drying-up cloth/ tea towel can be used to make one which would perform this function well… as you can see from the website tests,  j cloths and non-woven cleaning cloth have their place.

Even if you use a material like cotton which only reduces 50% of the viral dose that would still be 50% better than nothing.

Wishing you Good health, and good luck!

P.S. any questions… just ask me via the contact tab