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!

Whole

Over the past few days I've been drawn to write a post. Largely the inspiration has been to explore the ways in which the limitation of my ability to surrender affects my experience. 'Give up and look up' my friend Mugo would say. Acceptance in the widest possible way. Do that which is asking to be done and release the need to try to be in full control so as to have everything just so. Sounds easy. But in the end there are (I have found) limits. In the wider spiritual sense there may be no limits but there is karma; cause and effect. Things are stressful just now for DC and I with a lot of disruptive work having to be done on our home. DC has been great fielding contractors whilst trying to work on the index for his book while I've been out at work. I've not been well enough to be as close up and involved at each tiny stage as I usually would. But of course I still feel the need to intervene to ensure we get what we need and hopefully avoid as many future problems as possible. Much childhood trauma has been triggered and it's been a difficult dance for both DC and I to negotiate. But as ever, our love for each other, our willingness to be open to as much of our reality as possible and our ability to support each other continues to make us stronger together.

It is not all this which in the end has prompted me to write today though. It is the words of Andrew Scott in his interview on BBC Radio 4's This Cultural Life. DC has been trying to listen to this for a few nights at bed time but falls asleep almost as soon as his sweet head touches the pillow. I was still awake and heard Scott discussing his experience growing up gay in Ireland where homosexuality wasn't decriminalised until 1993. Scott used the word 'desexualised' to describe the way society forbade queer people to be who they were. This still happens. A 'normal' adolescence is denied queer people by this. In place of the affirmation straight people get we get the opposite. It's something I've written about before but the word 'desexualised' struck a chord. Why? I think it sums up the gross indignity and more; it's the removal of part of our person, our being. We are prevented from developing in our natural way. We are not perverted as an adjective we are perverted as a verb. There isn't anything wrong with us but we are told there is and then we are erased. And this happens to a part of us which is so fundamental to so much of our life. The fear and shame induced compartmentalisation in which we engage is something I've also written about before but the added element made visible in the use of the word 'desexualised' is that part of us is removed by others. I have blamed myself for this. I have thought and felt that it was me who desexualised myself; I decided not to face up to my sexuality in my teens, I did it... But I didn't, society did. I didn't fail I just wasn't allowed. Any option open to me would set me as perverted. Society was the active abusing element and I could only manage the situation as best I could. The management, a process likened by a number of gay men I know of to putting together a jigsaw without the box lid picture, inevitably causes us to abandon and reclaim ourselves over and over again. Fortunately, most of us do get to the stage where we have our picture fairly well assembled and about as 'complete' as anyone can ever be. We are all a work in progress. Things are much better now than in the 1980's of my adolescent years and young men both straight and gay seem to be much more whole, without undue edge and artifice. The machismo of the past seems to be at last fading away and new men seem wonderfully gentle by comparison. And yet I also observe self censorship, compartmentalisation and much of the same prejudice still at work. As Scott also said in his interview, much homophobia would disappear if people stopped the assumption that everybody is straight. My own experience for many years now is that most people are fine with queer people. It's important for queer people to trust this and not assume others will be homophobic. We have to play our part in creating a more whole world.

Spiritually, what does all this mean? Well, DC and I were discussing the merits of a rich life over a happy if limited one the other night. I'm not sure to what extent we have control over this or what the best life might mean. I'd like to think that we are spiritual beings who live in order to see our true nature. What that might mean is a whole other post and probably the theme of the whole blog.

Daliland

 Last Saturday evening DC and I watched Daliland a movie depicting aspects of the life of Salvador Dali. We enjoyed the movie and despite the fictional aspects and limited exposure of his life we were surprised to see the less favourable reviews. I found myself seeing the made-ness of our lives whilst watching and a vague sense arose of the pregnancy of Emptiness / sunyata. My thinking mind was drawn to contemplation, but of course can't ever grasp that which is beyond reason. And yet the mirror like quality of mind sometimes becomes at least a ripple in its self revealed. Writing these words I see they create pictures and both illuminate and obscure the experience. Mixed with glimpses of Emptiness the vitality and eroticism of form was also present. How could it not be given the nature of the protagonist?! And so there is in this I suppose an opportunity to consider the spiritual paths open to us to see our true nature. The inward, meditative and the outward sometimes ecstatic. As ever the movement between these states and the colours of our character determine the path, the steps and the experience which unfolds. And for me the middle path seems the best suited. I wonder to what extent the mystery of all this might shift towards a greater capacity for peace and equanimity together with joy even in the midst of life's vicissitudes. However careful I've been not to chase spiritual 'experiences' but rather to incorporate as best I can the dharma into daily life there's always that slight tone of practice to get somewhere or rather escape the risk of untenable suffering. And glimpses of our true nature can all too easily seem to mark the way. Which they both do and do not as far as I can see. The reality of each day is there before me with all its delusions. Did Dali have any choice but to be as extravagant as he was?