Who is struggling to surrender?

 I really struggle with surrendering to what is. To truly surrender is not to give up or run away or at the other extreme to attempt to control. Both these extremes being the same axis of trying to keep experience as one would like it. Give up and look up a monk I know says, pointing to addressing what needs to be and can be addressed and accepting what comes. Formal meditation improves awareness and the ability to just be with what is without adding. Recent years, being so stressful have seen me let formal sitting slip, although I'm gradually feeling back into the call to sit and also resistance to it. I will be more inclined to sit when I get a better space for this set up at home and not just in a corner of my study. And that's a whole other story- the effort required to get the house more in shape.

In a way, the above paragraph is enough- whatever the nature of reality, everyday life does come back to how we deal both practically and emotionally with what arises. But within that which informs our approach is I think, a belief system and fundamental to that the very nature of reality. A key part of this for me at the moment seems to concern our Buddha nature. The scientific approach recognises that we cannot know the nature of reality except though the apparatus available to us (including our own senses and faculties) and so is not so different to sunyata in Buddhism in many ways. And there is great debate in the scientific and philosophical  communities about the nature of consciousness. Is the unknowable void- the unborn which is the unity of reality from which everything comes- synonymous with consciousness? Are we that which cannot ever be destroyed because it is uncreated and is that which is both the seen and the seeing (there being no separate self doing the seeing)? And thus is it so that after death of the physical body whilst there is no individual self which (as say a soul) passes to some other realm, there is that which in the non-dual realm (of the unborn) both exists and does not exist (depending upon how we attempt to bridge the absolute and the relative in our 'understanding') and is 'continuous' before our birth, during our life and after our death? Plainly the material of our physical body and the cause and effects of many threads making our life have this quality. Life is like grandfather's hammer. But more fundamentally, is consciousness not just an emergent property of complex arrangements of matter- itself an aspect of the unknowable void- I cannot see that any other way- but actually the ground of matter? Does consciousness come out of matter or matter out of consciousness? They're interdependent of course. And so we return to sunyata...

I'd hoped years ago that one day I'd see very deeply our true nature- not just see sunyata cognitively and through my experience of everyday life, not just through the vulnerability and made-ness of everything or even just the pregnant with possibility of each moment but a deep and liberating experience of the unfolding moment. There have been I think, glimpses. But I'm really still very very much an afraid self. A deeper Self if I can use that way of summarising the above ie at the very least a transpersonal self and more deeply Buddha nature (is there a difference?) whilst in the 'mix', is not to the fore; there's not much playful samadhi, there's constriction. And this invites the question- what do I really believe?

Heaven Can Wait

I was looking for something to refresh the type of music I've been listening to via the Spotify A.I. algorithms and ended up listening to Meatloaf, Bat Out of Hell again. This album can impart upon my experience... memories, flavour, feeling, perfume - these words don't quite capture the nature of a charge, not particularly strong but there and of teenage years and time with a friend who introduced me to Meatloaf's music. He was as straight as they come and I'd no erotic feelings towards him. The charge isn't painful or longing and isn't anything more than the imprint of largely ok times but they were times sat in the midst of a lot of complexities. Anyway, what has prompted me to write isn't this charge. It's the track Heaven Can Wait which moved me to write. Jim Steinman's lyrics might be read as say poetry and would be enough cause for reflection but add the music and I'm moved to tears.

Heaven can wait
And a band of angels wrapped up in my heart
Will take me through the lonely night
Through the cold of the day
And I know, I know
Heaven can wait
And all the Gods come down here just to sing for me
And the melody is gonna make me fly
Without pain, without fear
Give me all of your dreams
And let me go alone on your way
Give me all of your prayers to sing
And I'll turn the night into the skylight of day
I've got a taste of paradise
I'm never gonna let it slip away
I got a taste of paradise
That's all I really need to make me stay
Just like a child again
Heaven can wait
And all I got is time until the end of time
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altar shine
And I know that I've been released
But I don't know to where
Nobody's gonna tell me now
And I don't really care, no, no, no
I've got a taste of paradise
It's all I really need to make me stay
I got a taste of paradise
If I had it any sooner, you know
You know I never would have run away from my home
Heaven can wait
And all I got is time until the end of time
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altar shine
Heaven can wait
Ah, Heaven can wait
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altars shine
Let the altars shine

Now, many have commented upon the meaning of these lyrics and writers don't always have a clear meaning but I think what I find moving is as follows. They might depict someone who has had a transformative experience of love. This love could be anywhere on an axis from romantic projection with potent sexual energy through established sexual relationship, an asexual love, an opening in life to purpose and meaning with a sense of belonging and value, the love of being alive, right through to 'religious' / metaphysical experience. Whatever, they've all passed and the transformation remains. Now, even if I consider that Steinman wrote these lyrics for the musical Neverland and put a Peter Pan lens in front of them, I'm still moved. Afterall, J.M. Barrie's Neverland alludes to our deepest desires.

What is moving is that the transformation is to a place of acceptance. The suffering of the past is gone, there's nothing but time until the end of time, the transforming ecstasy has passed and taken with it the suffering. Any pain now can only be pain and not drive suffering. The axis from earthly ecstasy as a glimpse of eternity to the eternal is drawn out for us and the sorrows of the past rendered foundation for peace. The striving and desperation are gone. There's release, it doesn't seem important to where. For now, time remains but it will end. When it ends there will be no loss. No loss of pleasure or suffering.

Our lives are driven by our desires and our desires by our lives. And we all return to the Red Thread koan - the left hand path (of spiritual practice) or the right. There's plenty in the lyrics to point to sex as a vehicle to spiritual experience but they need not be read that way and other vehicles to paradise are clearly there too.

I got a taste of paradise
If I had it any sooner, you know
You know I never would have run away from my home

Home to ourselves as incarnated beings... with all that entails.

Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altars shine
Let the altars shine

For me these closing lines place a foot both sides of eternity. Each of us finding our own altars as reflections of our true nature.

Lest we get too detached from our earthly musings it's good to remember the humour in the next set of lyrics by Steinman:

On a hot summer night, would you offer your
Throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Yes
I bet you say that to all the boys...

Goodbye 'not-slippers'

I'm now the owner of a pair of 'those shoes with the holes in them' as I used to say. Crocs that is. I have these not to go outside in but as a pair of 'not slippers'. My other 'not slippers' are a very well worn pair of Converse trainers which I bought in about 2004 or 2005. Realising that I couldn't for much longer ignore the split soles I'd looked at the possibility of getting actual slippers. But in the end I knew I'd not feel comfortable in them- they're so... So anyway, I saw the Crocs and actually they seemed a possibility.

Those Converse have been my indoor shoes - 'not slippers' for about 14 years. This included my time living in community in the Findhorn Foundation's Cluny. I took the laces out and knotted a piece of string to make them 'work' in a relaxed way. They became (and this is the 1st time I've said it) 'not slip-ons'. Slip-on shoes being beyond the pale. I replaced the string a couple of times, once I recall from Cluny maintenance shed. Those trainers are soaked in history. Before they became 'not-slippers' I wore then in both Istanbul and Egypt. But I think my time in Cluny is the strongest memory attached to them.

DC said they evoke van Gogh's peasant shoes. They do, they're wonderfully lived in.

Thank you shoes- you've served me very well and I'm sad to let you go but I know I've worn out your shoe-ness and must let you go.

Fungi Web of Life

DC and I have not long since emerged from the cinema. We saw 'Fungi Web of Life' featuring Merlin Sheldrake. The film co-opts our usual aesthetic to show the beautiful forms and colours fungi can make. Of course it would have been possible to show more cringe making pictures but that wouldn't have fitted the narrative. This isn't to suggest that I don't agree with the premise of the film, fungi are fascinating and as beautiful as any other part of nature. It's just that I noticed a certain construction in the film. A thought came to mind as it was pointed out that industrial scale deforestation is destroying not just the above ground forest but also vast swathes of underground fungal networks which contain huge amounts of information which we'll never be able to learn. This is the case with so much of the natural world we destroy. The thought - we have created a fungi like structure and let it loose in our world and now we have lost control of it and it is controlling us- capitalism. Fungi is an ancient life form and it has survived many environmental changes over earth's evolution. Different types of fungi will have had their period of time, come and gone, but the kingdom of fungi has sustained. Will it survive mankind? Will we sustain? At this time we really are dicing with death yet as a species we seem unable to significantly change our behaviour.

Fungi can terrify me. They rot wood! Childhood family trauma caused by building structural timber decay is very much part of my trauma history. And the nature of fungal hyphae and mycelium- spreading out taking and following the form of that which it consumes without itself having any centre of control is the stuff of nightmares! As Sheldrake is fascinated by fungal creation I am appalled by it's capacity to destroy. This is of course an essential part of nature- without it the world would be full of dead wood and the nutrients for future growth locked up. And so I have to settle myself, just keep the water away from wood we want to stay as wood! Water is the heart of life on this planet and it was interesting to hear in the film that there are aquatic fungi. These are even less well understood than land based fungi. Water is an element us engineers are constantly controlling as best we can. Again not entirely satisfactorily...

There's something about the flow of evolution and the waxing and waning of forms at various levels which leaves me feeling exposed. We all feel this to some extent and so we grip on to what we like. This film has left me feeling both this need and its futility. There is possibility in the amorphous.

A Bell Ringing In The Empty Sky

A bell ringing in the empty sky is a piece of shakuhachi music which I recalled yesterday. DC gave me a CD recording of it back in 2006 and I remember listening to it at various times of reflection. The music is indeed meditative. Listening this morning I recalled a time as a small boy saying to my dad that 'if you're blind, you see what is behind your head' He replied that 'if you're blind you don't see anything'. I remember this clearly as I knew that he had not understood what I was saying. What I was expressing was my realisation that when I covered my eyes I saw black and this was different to the not seeing of the visual space behind my head. I realised two different kinds of absence were at play here and I was trying to put this into words. This morning the 'space' drawn out by A bell ringing in the empty sky reminded me of this childhood reflection and the aural and visual gates alighted at an at least partly unified 'space'. Glimpses of the mirror (of awareness) are through that which is reflected, be it sound or light. I know that I'm very visually orientated and even an aural 'space' becomes an imagined visual field for me whether filled with sound(s) or silent. I have a sense in all this that the pictures in my imagination and the thoughts, which are part and more fully formed words are sort of out there in front of me as I project the space in my head into the world as we do when considering things in general. Obviously there's a separation and sense of me in this too. But also as alluded to above there's an appreciation of the 'space' I'd tried to convey as a child.

Not an unending end

On Sunday DC and I enjoyed a good dance session. Another UoN Prof., Lars was there and we invited him back for a simple supper. It was a nice evening. At one point the conversation turned through various philosophical areas and by various means we found ourselves describing what for me is likely a major part of my koan. Simply put it is the experience of amorphous annihilation; one is rendered one with an amorphous suffering, there is sufficient self left to experience this yet there is only chaos. There is the pain of fear. This is a dark 'space' and one apparently pointed at by various religions. The most frightening part of this can be described as an unending end. Obviously we looked up and out at our reality and were thankful that such was not in the moment our experience. Reflecting upon this I could see there was a resonance for me; something meaningful was being articulated but it remained unclear. How does this sit with Buddha dharma? What aspect of my karma is there here to appreciate? I decided to take refuge in my friend Mugo. In a short discussion with her yesterday I was reminded that the conditioned self fears annihilation but it is not possible to destroy (unconditioned) consciousness. It was a helpful discussion. The Heart Sutra was referenced and in the evening I revisited the text of both the Dimond and Heart Sutras to rekindle my understanding. Yes, I thought- the mirror of consciousness 'reflects' the experience yet as a glass is not wet by the water it holds, it is not that experience. 'My' Buddha nature is not destroyed. It is this relationship of conditioned self and true Self / Buddha nature which is so easy to muddle up in thought and feeling, especially when I am frightened. All forms change. They are transient, arising and passing. 'I' as a conditioned being change moment to moment and exist, as is so eloquently described as a reflection in Indra's net. What eludes 'my' experience so far is the mirror and the reflection as One rather than the partial view (of an insubstantial self) described above. There have I feel been glimpses and I am all too aware of our impermanence and my mind like those who imagine unending ends is given to the fearful projections of a self who knows this yet can't identify with that which is deeper. Although all this sounds gloomy I am heartened by the reminder that these fears are projections and not prophecies of eternal suffering. I am grateful for the wisdom element of this and open to the prospect of playful samadhi. I imagine that as a baby, induced for medical reasons, born with forceps and then placed in a cot rather than with my mother there must have been initial experience which was understandably distressing. Later as a sensitive child there were likely more glimpses of emptiness which were too frightening to absorb so as to see the arising / creative as well as the passing / destructive. I've read that emptiness is not the best place to enter a discussion of Buddhism and that compassion is a better gate. But for me the illustration of the unconditioned as the fullness of emptiness was and remains the heart of peace. If I had I encountered Buddhism as a child I wonder, how would my appreciation of the dharma have been able to ripen? Pointless speculation. Generally, although there are times of great distress I do bounce back to equanimity sufficiently to observe without entirely becoming such distress. And thankfully things are generally good. The depths of reality need not fill me with anxiety.

Reading the above I see it's clumsy and too wordy. The main take home is that I needed to be reminded that I can trust our Buddha nature. There is some degree of faith required here. Not faith in anything or one but faith nonetheless.

Koan

Recently I've had some 'half baked' notion or other in my awareness. I've not really been able to articulate to myself what it is. And so I decided to see if blogging would draw it out. What came to me in part after listening to Leonard Cohen was a previous post -this one - about the ground of our being and everyday life. But this is not all. More specifically I suppose the notion is more related to attachment and ultimately death. Freedom as alluded to in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets - 'costing not less than everything' is I think also inextricably tied up with the other part of that poem - that we 'arrive where we started and know the place for the first time'. Much has been written about ego death and physical death, attachment, surrender and the various forms of knowing. But this is both poetry and fingers pointing at the moon. In the everyday, in the difficulties of any physical, mental and emotional state to what extent can I surrender to what is and even be in playful samadhi? Not to give up in depression looking down, a condition which holds tightly on to the way I want it to be, but to give up and look up or rather to expand to hold what is. Why? Why what? Why expand? Is there a subtle holding on to me, mine, being safe and happy in this? Of course there is. A constant dance of subject and perceived object and emerging in that a tiredness and a giving up sometimes into liberation and sometimes into tightness. The Four Quartets are a favourite of DC and in his wonderful way, he has printed and framed the verses including 'to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time'. They sit on the sideboard in the entrance to our home clustered by various papers and objects which are yet to find their way to their proper place as we negotiate everyday living whilst having work done on the house. The builder's dust and materials etc. mingle with displaced items of life as we 'camp' in the spare bedroom and keep our clothes in what will be the sitting / reflective / meditation room. The dust is getting to me. It and the clouds in my eyes caused by PVD together with the other works yet to be started so as to bring the house into a shape more harmonious with our way of being feel like a constant challenge to be accepted worked with and through. This juxtaposition in my mind of everyday tightness, tiredness and 'spiritual' 'position' hangs koan like as this 'half baked' notion.

DC will say to me that I need to learn how to be happy. He knows that I do know how to be happy, but tend to pessimism. He also says quite rightly, that pessimism is just a way to avoid disappointment. The koan constantly shifts and I wonder is there is any real underlying movement towards liberation or if it just adjusts position staying largely in the same 'place'. I try to constantly wipe the dust (of unhelpful thoughts and ways) from the mirror (of awareness) knowing that the mirror 'has no stand nor any place for dust to land' yet the knowing is still through a glass darkly, though the sense of the koan is also a knowing in some sense of it's resolution.

We're going to spend this long weekend by the sea for a much needed rest from the dust etc. DC loves the sea and it will be lovely to walk along the cliff tops and beach. Friends will stay with us for a night and I'll let go (I hope) of anxieties about getting our house in the shape of the home that feels 'right'. Coming 'home' being its own koan!