Cutting the cat in one

For much of my life I've occupied the trying to be as right as possible space. And, spiritually it is important to wipe away the dust as much as it is to realise that there's neither dust nor anywhere for it to land. (See the Platform Sutra.) Now I notice that my efforts might be well focused on cutting the cat in one (see Mumonkan Case 14). Now, there's much pointed to I feel in this koan but the aspect which seems to draw my attention is finding unity at all levels in daily life. The precepts guide us in this and I recently came across a note that all the precepts are aspects of one precept - not to kill (the Buddha, the 'truth'). Can I remain present, aware and open to this so as to act in each arising moment in full accordance with this? No! Can and do I try? Fairly much so (I hope).

I started this post some days ago and didn't get into it before other things prompted me to write. Recently I was at Wallington in Northumberland and discovered that the Grade 1 listed walled garden greenhouse is now falling apart and subject to review by 'specialists' to determine what courses of action are open to the National Trust. Much decay and slipped glass is evident.

I found myself considering my thoughts about saving such assets. It's such a lovely place and I've photos from decades past of myself and friends in the greenhouse, the garden and outside the house. Observing the flaking paint it's clear the situation is beyond 'wabi-sabi' (a beauty I can struggle with accepting at the best of times), there's a risk to persons due to falling glass and access has had to be stopped even for staff. There is I think, merit (in the widest sense) in looking after historical things and it's lovely to pour love into them. Where I find myself feeling sceptical is the fuzzy area where a thing is beyond its life and we enter into a kind of fetish, generating an arguably false narrative about a thing. Without getting too bogged down in the details of the way we make our worlds both in the physical sense and in and through our thoughts, there are I think, broader cultural discussions to be had about our relation to the past, present and future. The past isn't (entirely) gone, it continues to unfold in each moment. And in this sense we have a responsibility to the future. Where energy is generated to save and / or create beauty, where there's creativity and love we know it feels right, heartfelt. Is there a space where we cross over into less helpful attachments in how we relate to the past? Can this impinge our ability to pour loving effort into the new? I think so. I think we can abrogate our responsibility to the future or more accurately to the present, by engaging in an excessive preoccupation with extending things beyond their life. A thing should live.

When I started this post I was wrestling with finding a way through an interpersonal conflict (hence 'cut the cat in one'). Forgetting the post and returning, inspired by thoughts of wabi-sabi, a natural life for a thing and appreciation of the space in which things have meaning, I wonder at the koan unfolding in daily life. Unity is present in the separation when I 'get out of my way', I do feel this even though it's not clear. Holding the questions 'In this moment what is being asked of me? What's needed in the next 5 or so minutes?' If I remember to ask and to open to the unity in the separation, the naturally arising answers go a long way to answer the koan without causing undue waves.

I hope a way can be found to keep life in the Wallington greenhouse, not 'pickled in aspic' but as a working, living thing.

My koan arising in the form of interpersonal conflict finds some resolution where I accept the need both to yield and stand firm. I'm disappointed that the koan can still overwhelm me at times in so many ways. Be like willow they say. It doesn't come naturally to me. And there's a time to be more the mountain. 

Some manifestations of the Buddha just shine out bright. Although I know some will call them garish, I love these splashes of bright red colour. There's a place for cool calm sophistication and a place for HELLO, I'm here!

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.

Change and Stillness

Yesterday DC and I attended the Quaker meeting in Keswick. There was talk before the meeting about the future of meetings and the Quakers and I'd heard similar words recently at the Newcastle meeting. There was ministry regarding change. I was drawn to speak, I sat still and said nothing but the urge persisted and I resisted until it was clear- stand. 'Everything is changing all the time, but it is cut through with stillness.' I've seen this clearly in the past and it seemed in the meeting to be the concise response to the questions raised in the ministry. I sat and felt into the space again. I wasn't entirely comfortable with way the word cut had come out- too sharp, too much me in it. Maybe this should have been said in afterwords. It was close to the end of the hour. The clerk ended the meeting. There was no afterwards. One of those present came straight across and said to me 'thankyou, your ministry was concise'. This point is important to me as it is I suppose a road through the everyday to what is perhaps pointed to with 'A little point and Satori'. For an explanation if needed look here. The question that I find arising now is the ultimate one of 'faith' - does my experience continue in any way after death? Is there significance to this 'little point'? I've not crossed it nor approached it deeply enough to have experience which would qualify me to respond to the question. But I have wanted the answer to be such that there was a meaning in the answer beyond the rational. Because without that... without that the weight of everyday rational meaning is unbearable. And yet if there is a finite end then at least there is an end to any pain at least for a single being. To answer this question of faith it is not good enough to merely recognise our interconnectedness in the living everyday world. It is perhaps to ask as Hamlet does '...what dreams may come?' But this too is a disturbance. His place of asking is not neutral. The ripples of his mind obscure the very ground upon which they sit. The question might be better put as 'when the mind is still where does it sit? And thus where and what were those ripples? Well, we know how the Platform Sutra puts it so there's nothing I can add. In truth it's still very much through a glass darkly at best for me. And something, no-thing, was concisely conveyed. 

This September

 It is a time of transition. Mid September brings a mellowness and a sense of impending stillness. There is much change going on in the world and in our own tiny corner of existence DC and I are soon to move house. For a variety of reasons I find floating through my mind consideration of... Of what? Of appreciation of the challenges, changes and stillness... the spiritual 'journey'... Elliot's words 'costing not less than everything'... Recent years have been very challenging and I have often lost sight of the stillness in which the motion of the challenge takes place. Returning to the desire to reach both a place of safety  and insight whilst releasing any such imagined position into the reality of the present ever unfolding moment there is reflection.

Surrendering to the moment with an open heart and mind doesn't seem to be a natural disposition for me. My mind is constantly grasping for control. Yet there is seeing this without adding too much further. Over the passing years since first coming across the Buddha dharma, understanding, appreciation, and much more have naturally shifted. The picture of a spiral is often used to describe 'views up the mountain'. But whilst useful this reinforces the notion of a journey with the attendant risk of an asymptotic goal. In practice there is both the need to keep 'polishing the mirror' and to realise reality in the present. Certainly much of that reality now is tiredness. Hopefully the coming transition will afford rest and renewal. And in that there may yet be more clarity and peace.

 I suppose that implicit in all this is the koan at its most basic. The panoply of challenges each encompassing various wants and needs, the access to wisdom at both intellectual and visceral levels- the being and doing in each moment. And how aware, how conscious am I in all this? Indeed where am I in all this? I hope the coming autumn will afford opportunity to feel into all this. 

Forty Years

DC and I visited the Granary Gallery in Berwick on Saturday and saw an exhibition of prints from various artists. Details from MutualArt website:

The Printed Line showcases the work of nearly 60 artists who have used a variety of printmaking techniques to exploit the potential of the printed line, from the thick velvety line of drypoint and the heavy cross-hatching of etching to delicate wood engraving and boldly coloured screenprints. The use of colour will be explored in screenprints by Bridget Riley and Kenneth Martin, as well as Simon Patterson’s witty lithograph, which reworks the lines of the London tube map.

The exhibition features a number of celebrated artists, spanning the 20th century to the present day, including: Walter Sickert’s masterly cross-hatched etching The Old Middlesex (c.1910), Ben Nicholson’s rich drypoint Halse Town 1949 (1949), a bold etching by Eduardo Chillida and David Hockney’s pared-down linear etchings.

All the prints in this exhibition are from the Arts Council Collection, which is the largest loan collection of modern and contemporary British art and includes fine examples of work by all of this country’s most prominent artists.

We'd not researched this exhibition and I'd no expectations arriving at the gallery.

The following print by Hockney I found delightful. More naturalistic than the stylistic work which has become his trademark, and dated 1966 just before the 1967 sexual offences act, the picture conveys a beautiful and gentle connection between the two men depicted. This connection, clearly post coital, is one of calm peaceful presence - the men are at one with themselves and each other - spiritually speaking, sex has done its work; union at multiple levels flows between them.

Returning home I listened to Shine on You Crazy Dimond by Pink Floyd and let Spotify wander off to play what it considers related tracks. The Spotify algorithms seemed to get it right for me and played stuff which fitted my mood. A mood which has been growing over the past day or so. I'd captured part of it over lunch before we went to the gallery in a conversation with DC as follows: I was 12 in 1979 shortly after the general election which brought Thatcher to power. Effectively as I started leaving childhood and developing more adult ways of thinking neoliberalism was taking a pernicious hold and aided by the industrial woes of the time, perhaps one might say under cover of those woes, it would dismantle and redirect the zeitgeist. It could have all been so different, a progressive, inclusive left, focused on improving life for the many, taking due consideration of emerging environmental understanding and building on and cherishing the progress made in the earlier post war period both those immediately following the war and those of the 1960's, might have taken the need for individual freedoms and woven them into a collective engagement rather than exploited greed as a vehicle for all that has inevitably unfolded as did the right.

Sensitive and in many ways the classic gay boy I'd hated competitive sport and was painfully aware I think of the vulnerability of human life as a child. In another version of the universe things might have unfolded so as to be fertile ground for such a child to blossom. But in the one we're in the ground would be more grist to the mill... a feeling of going against the grain or bumping over the tracks has been I think, an underlying current throughout most of my life. Doubtless we all feel this in some way at some times but that turn in direction in 1979 has I feel, set things in a mode ill conceived and tiring. 

I suppose I'm indulging in a fantasy that some fictitious alternative history would have been more fulfilling. This is dukkha. However, there's more here than tanha. Desire as I've said before isn't so simple - it has its pitfalls but without it where are we? What's important here is a feeling of connection with one's integrity. At the moment conditions are challenging me greatly and so connection with my integrity is essential. What does this mean? At present it means acknowledging the fears, being with the thoughts and feelings and giving life time. Time to let deepest desire become clear through the fear, not to let only part of experience fill awareness. Being with and not judging, not trying to control but still having care. I'm blessed to have DC with me. He's so steady and a natural optimist. His mind and heart are of the very best. Together we allow each other to be the very best, the very most we might be. This is the unfolding of deepest desire. What do I mean by deepest here? I mean life's desire to be - to exist to create. In our depths we know what is good, we recognise it by its warmth. We know beauty, wonder and peace. Perhaps that fantasy of an alternative history isn't so much an indulgence as a reminder that we need to remember our humanity. That I think is what has been almost totally abandoned by neoliberalism. And the kick back is seen in populism. You might find calling anything an 'ism problematic - any definition by nature is partial, we know that. But I think the use here is a convenient and reasonable shorthand. In truth I have faired well economically and I'm grateful for that. I see the progress made through my lifetime, I was remember, born about the time of the picture above in1967 the year of the sexual offences act and looking about it's plain that much of the 'revolution' of the '60's has come to pass. Much is good. Yet many of the traditional political ills play out - plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. What is delightful in the picture above is how we see the hubbub, the drama, the travails, all that,  fall away... and left is being, being together. Being together with DC continues to deepen and I'm grateful for that. Being, doing, intention, time / timelessness and our creativity... These I think are present in the Hockney picture above. And implicit I think is a message about an individuals truth - that they can only be who they are. This would come over in a depiction of any couple in unity but it's more stated in a work showing two gay men drawn in 1966. It's nice as per my previous post to see that this last point has faded - that a work showing two gay men is no longer as significant. Progress has been made and depending upon your politics you'll say either because of or in spite of the individualism which has marked the past forty years. It's a complex picture.

God's Own Country

Last night DC and I watched God's Own Country. We'd seen it before when it first came out, at the cinema (oh happy pre-Covid days) but it had come to my mind a few times in recent days and I wanted to see it again. It's a beautiful film about struggle and softening. Gheorghe a Romanian migrant worker comes to work at a small struggling family farm run almost single handily by Johnny, an isolated, frustrated young man who has too much placed upon his shoulders and reacts with binge drinking and aggressive casual sex. Johnny lives with his father, who has had a stroke, and his grandmother. There is bitterness and anger in all three characters, and the life is hard. Gheorghe is used to harsh conditions; calm, wise and gentle, he coaxes life into all he comes in to contact with. But this is not Cold Comfort Farm; there's no romanticism or satire here. The film turns on the relationship between Johnny and Gheorghe, a relationship which opens Johnny up to love. Johnny is emotionally unavailable; there is anger in the furtive casual sex he engages in and he is lost to himself, struggling to square the circle. The sex he has with Gheorghe is transformative. Gheorghe arrests the anger in Johnny's sex and allows a powerful space in which it is naturally allowed to soften in to love. The sex between them, in contrast to the tight, addictive, restrictive bursts of lust fuelled release Johnny has previously known, affords opening; it cleaves the men open and thence together. In the process Johnny eventually releases the fight with himself and his situation and sees what it is he wants: Gheorghe and a life together as lovers running the farm - together. Again this is a gritty path and not a romantic one; but the concluding scene where Gheorghe opens the farmhouse door for Johnny to enter what is to be their home is a metaphor for the film: Gheorghe has opened Johnny to life.

What I find stimulating in this film is the exploration of confusion and struggle counterpoised with acceptance, softening and love, and the role sexual energy plays in the process. This is a film about embodied existence: weather, mud, farm animals, physical work, the human body and its reaction to life. Johnny's grandmother alludes to the life having been in part responsible for his father's debilitation and calving and lambing show the fecundity and vulnerability of life and the raw visceral reality of flesh. The breath, heat and desire between Johnny and Gheorghe explode through the cold damp environs of the landscape and later resonate with the spectacular scenery. The film stays real, and whilst a flash of DH Lawrence crossed my mind, I smiled at the irony of the flash and saw the half baked creative madness of our fetishes and fantasies. Johnny's impulsive eye-eye, eye-crotch, eye-eye pick-ups and associated fast sex before returning to his pint or whatever he was halfway through contrast with Gheorghe's love making and Johnny's learning to love. This too is visceral. And there is a sense of something trying to come through, to emerge. Here I think we see the contrast of struggle - an attempt at forcing and controlling life - with allowing; not as separate aspects or ways of being but rather informing each other and weaving us. The Tao flows effortlessly, but is it not in our relationship with it that our spirituality is to be found? Somehow, for me this film pulls together the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of what it is to be human and invites softening. It is a film about transformation.

Sands held apart

2020 has seen the world plunged into the Covid pandemic and the resulting lockdowns have placed a pressure on our whole society opening up cracks which previously were ignored. We can see how this has affected our lives and livelihoods and how the gap between the haves and the have nots has widened. I'm grateful for being able to work from home, manage my time and work commitments and feel relatively insulated from the economic devastation which many face. The restrictions have had an impact on people's mental and physical health and for some the virus has been fatal. Again other than some flaring of my OCD (possibly related possibly unrelated) I remain relatively unaffected. I miss the physical, emotional, mental, social and spiritual benefits from ecstatic dance which at present cannot take place as a group of people in the same space. Zoom sessions don't do it for me. I miss seeing friends and the natural flow of everyday life, cinema, theatre, travel etc. But basically life has settled into workable ways and there's little to complain about in real terms. And yet more than for a long time I feel an anxiety. I could place it on Covid restrictions (I'm not particularly worried for myself about the virus, although I do feel I need to be careful for my parents but the restrictions do generate difficult mental / emotional conditions), I could place it on the political situation in the UK (we probably have about the worst UK government in modern history and there has been some stiff competition), I could place it on the climate crisis, I could place it on the general losses that seem to come around in middle age or it could be that with life restricted there is simply more space for those sorts of negative feelings to grow. And it's probably all of those. This does indeed feel like a time of passing, of endings. And it seems unclear just what (and when) will be the new. A period of transition may be lengthy and the outcome uncertain. Indeed, will humans wise up and get responsible for the environment soon enough to survive?

So against this back drop the Findhorn Foundation (FF) has effectively collapsed and we know not yet if or how it might survive. Certainly it seems it is over as I have known and loved it. And whilst I've been away from it for some years now both DC and I have kept in contact with dear friends there and still feel a warmth for the FF. It was always many different things to many different people but for me it was a gateway to a deeper and far more sustainable sense of myself. A journey which would quickly take in Zen Buddhism as kind of map with the FF providing opportunities to explore and synthesise in the world. At a time when we so need communities looking at alternatives to 'the rat race' it is indeed cruel irony that Covid has forced us into isolation and triggered the collapse of not just the FF. And whilst I often commented that the FF needed to look more closely at its inconsistencies and sustainability it is sobering to see how economic realities have caused its collapse; it was all very well claiming to offer an alternative but when that alternative failed to embed the interconnection it so claimed then the scene was virtually set for failure once the world 'outside' the FF imposed a new order. Against this backdrop we are all getting older and our dear friend Erica seems to be entering the closing chapter. Erica, DC and I have enjoyed much warmth and hospitality together particularly at this time of year and so it is sad to feel the passing of those times.

All this certainly shows up that if one foot is on the rock of spiritual refuge then without doubt it is counterpart to one on the shifting sands of everyday life! And whilst I'm aware of the foot on the rock, there seems to be a lot of weight on the one on the shifting sands. So I find the koan arises yet again in what I do see as a pattern for me, or at least it's possible to construct it that way. Emptiness and the uncertainty I feel not infrequently in response when I see it all around me and can't get to the place of seeing its fecundity; how many ways have I been round that? OCD by somewhere around nine years old, that attempt at trying to gain control in the face of uncertainty, seems to indicate that as a child I saw and / or felt the shifting sands but couldn't see how to shift weight or feel enough weight on something solid enough to bear the contradiction between the vulnerabilities inherent in human life and the sense of a (separate) self who felt exposed to those vulnerabilities. A human life is wonderful - we sense that right from the start but it is inherently tricky as the first noble truth in Buddhism points out. Dukkha is always going to be with us as one of the three marks of existence. I wonder what I'd have been able to see and feel if someone had shown me the Buddha dharma as a child. But I guess that the path which led me to it was perhaps one of greater immersion than might be gained by 'fingers pointing at the moon' sooner. Shifting my view I can see the fecundity in all this- there is change and it brings new forms; new life in each moment. It is wonderful! DC will tell me off if I say - 'there are as many worlds as there are beings'. 'I've told you about that solipsism - stop it.' he will say. And I muse at the paradox- we are both separate and utterly One. By some mystery the whole of experience emerges out of the Unborn, moment by moment. Innumerable beings with their own experience all both separate and One. Each moment a movement and yet cut through with stillness. A stillness holding and being all movement. Somehow we do seem to know there is something sacred of which we are and that our lives- our experience, is the expression of that something. And that something only becomes a thing (out of the no-thing) as the shifting sands, waves on an ocean that might see each other but not necessarily the water.

Lockdown has seen DC and I make Saturday evening movie night and we have found some great movies on TV streaming services. We recently watched 'The hour of living' and 'Uncle Frank', both movies which triggered much good discussion between DC and I. In their different ways they brought us to the Red thread koan. In the widest sense it's the whole nature of the creative, being alive, living life, interacting, everything that we are. In the words of the song:

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the Cabaret 

And there is much to be said about how to come to the cabaret; about how to live a good life. But to focus on an aspect of this often associated with the 'Red thread' the above movies look at intimate relationship. George, one of the main characters in The hour of living asks in response to a question about whether or not he'd had sex with the protagonist's father 'when does anyone have someone?' It's a rich question. When do we open to someone's being? There is much to say about sex, love and divinity but the point that George makes is that any physical sex which may or may not have taken place between them wasn't important; what was important was that they could sit silently together and oceans would flow between them. Yet we know that irrespective of any physical sex, sex flowed in those oceans.

Both the above movies also raise questions about the nature of and construction of masculinities and in Uncle Frank homophobia is shown as a symptom of fear and confusion. Set in 1973 and contrasting the acceptance from some with the utter abhorrence from others it is a rich movie with multidimensional characters. My own wounding from the homophobia which was an unquestioned backdrop of the time and place in which I grew up has left scars; grief being chief among them. Grief for the shutdown lost years when to act on homosexual impulses seemed far too risky and the resulting confusion, isolation and stagnation robbed me of the chance to come to the cabaret. And what is so painful in that and has played out in complex ways ever since is not just the missing fun, connection with others or even connection with myself and of course the oceans that George in The hour of living describes, no it's not just those, it's all of those; all of those together; the allowing of a vital response to the Red thread koan, the surfing of the shifting sands and the possibility of a glimpse of  the rock. And I must remember that all that was a part of the past yet not the whole of it and the intervening years have been rich with experience and have brought me to where I am now. To see anything as lost is to know it in some way; nothing stops and nothing starts but that everything is.

The nature of mind-what is it? Where is it that our lives play out? What are those shifting sands? Where do they shift? Grains of joy flow with those of grief and others of the everyday. Sands of the rock of the Unborn; waves on the ocean. What's tough about Covid is that the required social distancing is a force of separation, when what we all want is to come together so as to better be together.

Five Years On

Walking on the beach at Lossiemouth over the Christmas holidays with DC we saw this:



and I recalled taking the photos in this post. I assume the sculpture photographed back in 2013 was by the same person as the sculpture pictured above. Someone seems to enjoy collecting the washed up things on the beach and putting them together in this way.

It's five years since I left Moray but DC and I have returned quite often to see friends there. We both love the landscape and have maintained contact with the people there who became friends during the time I worked with the Findhorn Foundation. This Christmas DC had just returned from a six and a half week trip to India and my dear friend Niels was mourning the loss of one of his friends so the general feel of things was a little subdued as people tried to land in the space of how things were. All this in the general subdued inwardness of mid-winter with its short days. I find Christmas an odd time. We're generally all ready to rest and enjoy a mid-winter festival of light in some form or other and want to connect with friends and loved ones yet often these days those we might spend time with are scattered about the country or even the world. So, there can be a sense of displacement. And of course being displaced or travelling was part of the Christmas story- Mary, Joseph and the trouble finding accommodation... Fortunately our accommodation in Moray was comfortable, in the home of a friend and very familiar to us. I noticed that even though time has passed since our last visit we all just slipped into living together very easily. And yet I found myself feeling that that we were all in our own spaces and not quite able to fully come together for the celebrations and that somehow I was pushing against the grain to maintain connections. This came more into focus as other friends were not able to find time to connect with us. Of course peoples lives are multi-faceted and trying to bring all that we are to meeting in the compressed time frame of a Christmas visit is challenging. What this visit seemed to be saying was that things were changing, the shapes of each of our lives were subtly changing and thus the connections are changing. There was a sense in which the wider geopolitical situation (Brexit, Trump, the environmental crisis...) was also somehow soaking into us. Time passes and our relationships change but they can sustain, the thing is to be open to what is with warmth and affection.

The five years between the two sculptures above have been filled with life and it is good. As we approach the turning of the year I notice that I feel that I do have various creative things happening and that life is good. My intention is to keep putting energy into good connections.

Umm

After publishing my last post I see that last autumn I was writing the same thing! It's easy to think 'no progress'. However, I also see change in the broader picture. Things take time.. all is well.

:)

Then and Now

Playing Atomic the album by Blondie I had the thought that I've liked this music since I first heard it as a kid way back in the late 70's early 80's and I noticed a warmth at the continuity, the sustaining element of self; I liked it then and I still like it. This generates consistency and I notice how warm that feels. Noticing this I immediately recognized that basic human (ego) need to be an 'I'. And more than this, in middle age it's nice to feel some connection to a 'me' from childhood - some part that has not changed, not got grey hairs! Having the awareness of this as part of the way a self [sic small 's'] emerges and some awareness of a Self [sic capital 'S'] holding this is indeed a gift from the difficult years that have passed between then and now and I further notice a sense of gratitude to the child within as I recall him as he was then and even younger.

Softening to come home

After a lovely Christmas in Cluny with DC I packed up and returned home ready to start a new job. It's a six month temporary contract based at home doing survey work and I'm now two weeks in. Interviews for 'permanent' jobs are also 'in the frame'. Things do seem to be shifting after a long time when they seemed stuck. Of course there was no stuckness in it. What I've been noticing in this time of changing from living and working in community to being back with DC at home and working for an employer is the whole question of home. The change in people around me, working conditions and expectations, living arrangements and rhythms generates a need for a period of adjustment. But deeper than this there is the 'coming home spiritually' wherever and whatever external conditions arise. Living in a community where there is an invitation (even an expectation) to authenticity and deeper connection to each other and what is, is if taken seriously both challenging and rewarding. This is a contrast to living and working 'out in the world'. Although not as deeply enmeshed in sharings as some and often exasperated at various 'impracticalities' of  what would unfold around me whilst in community, I never the less was aware of that invitation - authentic and connected-internally and externally. This connection is home. So now 'out in the world' without that invitation and external connection, I find it all the more important to maintain the internal connection. Right now it is the shape of that connection and the relation to the external which is in flux. And that is a good thing because flux leads to visibility.  Now is a time to watch all this and remember that nothing is forever. It is also a time to (re)build external connections. And yet this notion of building implies being in control and I wonder just how true is any such notion of control. Although intention arrises what results is less in our power. So I remind myself - soften and observe, then action can flow naturally and from the heart.

Summer

This past week the weather has been fine; summer has finally arrived. By June the cold, late spring came to a fairly abrupt end and everything which had been waiting to grow sprang into life in the gardens and countryside. Now the first flush of spring is fading, early flowers have past and I note a slight feeling of distress. It feels like summer has only just arrived yet it is already racing into autumn! Soon it will be the longest day! In my mind it is only the turn of the year yet here we are halfway through! It's something I forget;  each plant has it's own annual cycle, not all flowers have a long season, although some do, and there are early and late bloomers. Nonetheless, my favorite time of year is the late spring / early summer. Everything seems full of promise. Funny how as that promise unfolds into the present there can be a sense of loss; maybe it's because I live in Northern Britain where the winter is long and the summer short or maybe it's something more in my own conditioning. There's no getting away from impermanence. And thank goodness for that! What would life be without it? And interesting to see this little bit of dukkha spring up as I see the fallen flowers. Did I soak them up enough when they were in their prime? Is that very thought just more craving? As I write I see that my reaction to what is going on in the garden may well be a reflection of my feelings about my 46th birthday tomorrow. I'd no idea I was going to write that! Anyway, life is good and the Buddha land is ever present. More and more this becomes my reality.

Spring

Time flows on; an other windowsill, an other bloom. Compare with a post last year. Again I have the amaryllis on loan whilst my friend is away. I recalled last years pictures but until I looked I'd not known the post title was 'Time passing'. The wheel turns. Although the weather is still cold and there has been snow this past week in parts of the UK, there is more than a hint the winter is drawing to an end as hints of spring start to swell in the buds of garden plants and house plants like the amaryllis do their thing. There has been much toing and froing over the last few weeks and I am sitting waiting to see what the results will be; where I wonder, will I be over the summer?

Fire and Brimstone Zen

I couldn't resist this title! This morning putting on my T shirt:

'I like this T-shirt; I've had it for years and it has lasted very well'. I commented to DC.

'And we never tire of seeing you you in it.' He returned.

'I'd wear the same things all the time...' I started.

'No you wouldn't, we wouldn't let you.' He returned. He probably could see I was slipping into an anti fashion rant.

'There is just a fetish for change. The universe is changing all the time, there is no need to seek change for its own sake. It's about two different types of desire; the universe's natural desire for things to happen, which is the desire that makes trees grow way up there and the kind of desire which is like chasing a carrot on a stick' I said.

'That's your fire and brimstone Zen' DC said.

Now, I stopped and reflected on that. Because for me 'fire and brimstone' has a negative connotation. Negative because it is judgmental and more often than not preached by those with a fragile, maladjusted egoistic self lacking in compassion. Or to put it an other way, those who in one way or an other are chasing some kind of a carrot; a carrot promising salvation by being better than others. Was I coming from some unwholesome attachment and if so to what? Two risks come to mind; 1) propping up a self by being better than those 'less spiritual' - spiritual materialism and 2) lack of engagement with pleasurable things (as they naturally arise) in order not to have to deal with the subsequent loss when they go. In all honesty I think I can answer no to both of these. I like the things I like to stay the same; I don't want a different version just for the change, I find that sort of change tiresome. This is the attachment for me; I like consistency, I am averse to a lot of change. And this was my point; things change all the time, we don't need to press the accelerator and fuel it with carrot chasing desire. Too much of life has been steered by the belief that we do and I would argue that the whole financial crisis we are all now facing is as a result of this. I put on more clothes. I like the feeling of thinking I look good in some item of clothing. I like my T-shirt, blue 501 jeans, and trainers look. I know it's a bit dated but I like to think it's also a bit timeless; the sort of look that actually still looks viable in photos ten, twenty, thirty years later. This I think is the mark of good aesthetics; the test of time. Fashion by its very nature dates.

Of the three poisons (which in Buddhism are ignorance, attachment and aversion,) aversion is probably the one that gets a hold over (the ignorant self of) me! Recently I've realised that a lot of my difficulties have come from what might be seen as a lack of desire and an excess of aversion. A lack of desire? Can that be right? No; it's not lack of desire it's probably more lack of interest. More specifically lack of interest in what seems to be on offer and lack of imagination to do something about it. Which is to judge that I am not making the most of life. Umm... that sounds like a trap... And one without much self compassion. Judgmental and lacking in compassion... fire and brimstone. It seems I might be coming from some unwholesome place after all...! The mirror having no stand and no place for dust to land is still there waiting to be dusted!

As It Is

Back home in Newcastle for a week now having spent the past year living and working with the FF. (Most of the previous year was also spent with the FF.) I notice that I have been missing my room in Cluny a bit; I clearly got a bit attached to it. This is probably a good thing as it shows that I was happy there. Some attachment is inevitable and probably part of healthy engagement with life. Practice no doubt lies in how one responds to the attachment. I decided a month or so back to take up a place on a one year masters degree starting in January, hence my leaving Cluny. In the intervening period a job interview came up together with a subsequent rejection. This and no doubt a few other, yet to be clear to me, factors have cooled my feelings about the masters degree. So, I am wondering just why I did leave and what I might best do next. I miss the buzz of being in community. Even though I didn't directly engage with many people for much of the time, there is still being 'in the field' as they say. Back home it seems much quieter. Great to be with DC but definitely quiet not having all those people coming and going. And until I start the course or something else, there is not the purpose which life in the community affords. The challenge to get meaningful work, relationship and home all in the same town seems to remain. I can make my home wherever I need to do so, the other two I can't dictate to.

Christmas is not my favorite time of year. It has a sort of in-build failure; however hard one might try not to let it get built up into something it can't be, there is still an expectation of... Of what? Salvation, satisfaction through consumerism, great social interaction? Probably all that. And of course it's just another day but with the hint of peace on earth, presents good and not so good, interactions good and not so good. I'd love a Christmas without the consumerism. Not just in my own experience but also in wider society. That would totally shift the field.

The weather is grey and the short days are dark and wet. At this time of year nature is holding her breath and I've said for years that we ought to hibernate. Looking at the economy and the environmental problems we face it seems to me that we need to back off all the busyness and look towards what we really need. Interesting then that I dread the prospect of being without purpose. But there is a difference between backing off the busyness and lack of purpose.

Looking back over the past few years (and more) I see I grown some wonderful relationships with people in the FF. I've made a difference there and that is good. Even though while I am in the FF I find the (excessive) feminine energy tiresome and often crave a bit more dynamic, male energy, I never the less recognize that some (probably feminine) part of me is clearly nourished by the particular opportunity to serve which the FF offers. It has been suggested to me that I am wrestling with two sides of myself; the gentle, feminine, laid-back and the dynamic, male part. The key is probably something to do with dynamic action that responds but is not driven. Again, it will, I suspect involve facing and releasing more fear.

On the bright side, DC and I picked angel cards; I have Joy and he Sisterhood / Brotherhood. May this coming year be filled with joyous connection to sisters and brothers. Over the next few days I'll be tuning into  how that wish might best be served.

Ageing & Growing

The first of the two Amaryllis plants to flower  is starting to age. Still glorious, but time is telling, pertness has given way to a gentle looseness. One bud seems not to have opened. But the plant has a second shoot which is promising... And my friend has said they can stay in my room for a while longer!

The weather today has been wonderful! 22 degrees in the Northeast of Scotland in March! Fantastic. Clear skies and warm air. The birds are still singing outside my open window and it feels like a summer's evening. I noticed the leaves opening on a tree today for the first time this year. Spring is certainly in the air. I wonder, when are we at our peek?

Opening by the day

I love the splendid Red of the flowers against the soft yellow of the walls and the background of the window and view beyond. Great to watch the unfurling of these flowers.

Amaryllis Opening

The Amaryllis shown in the previous post is opening. I'll put up pictures to show its unfolding over the days.

Meanwhile I am keeping busy with managing (and doing a bit of practical 'hands on') refurbishment work in Cluny and in The Park. Builders props etc. in the background to the photo...

Landing back

On Monday of last week I drove from Home to Perth, stayed overnight then travelled to Forres ready to start a six month contract with the Findhorn Foundation working as a project manager in Assets. This past week has been about landing back here, settling in, both physically, mentally and emotionally. As ever, the physical body arrives whilst the mind remembers the past, flits about in the present and projects off in to its fantasy of the future. The emotions emerging like foam on the waves of the mind. Although foam sounds too light and too dismissive of those sometimes powerful sometimes subtle all so important body sensations. Minds spin stories and change usually feeds the spinning. So, having decided to embark upon a further journey or rather continue my journey, with the Foundation all sorts of voices have had their say from the exited to the fearful. But that's minds for you. However, all is well and it is good to be busy, of use and surrounded by good folk with a liberal sprinkling of smiles and laughter.

Digital

An unexpected sequence of events led to me being offered a job last Friday. And by the end of the day I'd bought a used car! Today I spent the morning on the phone sorting insurance. After getting through the automated answering systems (if you want to .... press.... if you want ...), arhhhhh, my ears glaze over... I drifted off and have to go around again... Then when eventually speaking to a real person they start giving me all the standard buff; fine print in verbal, arhhhh, my ears are glazing over. Eventually it is sorted. Improved communications systems and competition in 'the market' seem to have combined to result in a kind of non-communication where one feels cast adrift in a sea of confusion created by the very system which should be helping. Then I read on Jade Mountains in the comments to a post a link to an article about Google. I sort of knew all this was going on but it's both amazing and a bit frighting when one stops to consider it. At least Google seem to be getting the information to us, which is more than might be said of many telephone calls these days!

I am feeling ambivalent about  my smartphone - I almost ended up with it by mistake and it is confirming in many ways my prejudice against them.  I wonder where all this is going. The world has changed so much.