Process

How is it even possible for me, to write something here which illustrates an understanding which itself is not captured by words? And then to instil within that writing the element of formulation within that understanding which is at odds with the very understanding? Zazen seems to express it but how could I really 'know'? And of course my own experience is only that- the experience which is expressed in the paradox of apparent separation. Without digressing into solipsism, and without dictating and imposing a formulation onto everything, where is the middle ground? The term 'heart-mind' is sometimes used in respect of all this and like all words is both useful and confusing. And so yesterday DC and I revisited in new clothes an old argument we have been having off and on now for almost as long as we have been together. He is an academic and in my fantasy (for all assessments are to a greater or lesser extent fantasy) totally fused in his occupation and identity. Further, the academic process is a web of knowledge ever refined, added to and rebuilt without end in pursuit of expansion of the mind's purview. And this is good, larger than any individual and meaningful. It is not however, reality. Reality is both larger and smaller than words. Our argument comes when for me the lens of this process is placed in front of every aspect of life and I feel squeezed by it. As I push back against it he feels rejected. As my life is informed by my own fusion of Zen, Taoism, western psychology, ecstatic movement practice, work in the construction industry, etc. etc... I write to craft a lens by which the small glimpses of that which defeats capture might be seen. Seen not in itself, for it has no self, but by what it reveals. And always with the knowledge that any realisation / appreciation / whatever word fits best, that may have passed through my being is very partial whilst neither partial or whole. And the thing is that not a word of this is any different to what DC wrestles with in his writing. Where that difference lies is possibly, in the validation of the academy. I do not wish to be dictated to by that which in my school years was as much a filter of ascribed worth as it was a vehicle for growth. Nor do I wish to have every creative floret of life assessed by it. However, I too am very given to intellectual rigor and greatly value this process. It is enough for me to play with words whilst wrapping them in their own limits, trying to avoid saying nothing of value or let them generate their own sophistry. In all respects there really is very little difference between DC and me.

I largely wrote the above before walking over to an EMDR session. What follows in this paragraph is post session, recalled as best I can remember. The focus of today's session was the period between about 16 and 24 years of age where it seems there is still unprocessed fear informing the emotional landscape of the present. Initially the images, memories and feelings are diffuse, vague and not readily available. There is probably a lot of numbing out in it. That after all is the function of compartmentalisation, set aside, don't fully go there, not feeling this, we have to keep this ship sailing. But sticking with the EMDR process images come, felt sense and meaning surface. I seem unable to meet the only available script, I'm not enough, small, isolated, rooms and others disappear to be replaced with black. My head brightly illuminated remains. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe as above and the feelings of fear and of tiredness, about a 30/70 split. 'Stick with that.' The pen moves and I follow with my eyes. Images across this period of time come and go, a sense of younger to the left, older to the right, the black clears, left to right. The rooms return the people return but I've been erased. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe as above. 'Stick with that.' The pen moves and I follow with my eyes. I reappear interacting with others, thin, sparse lines of connection form, there's a brittle feeling. The enormity of the task of surviving starts to penetrate, there is fear, tiredness, there's no option but to keep going. I do not know that it is ok not to be enough for the script, there's no other available. The pen I'm following with my eyes stops, 'what do you notice?' I describe the brittle connections, feeling not enough. I add '...and I wasn't enough, I couldn't inhabit the available script'. The sequence and timings written here may be slightly muddled, but the tone is close enough. Somewhere in the process the split of fear and tiredness shifted towards 50/50. The aloneness, heavy and dark shifts with lighter periods of connection and progress and threaded through all of it is determination. As the session draws to a close after similar cycles I'm aware that the erasure, from today's vantage point where so many other scripts are available including the transpersonal, resonates less with fear and more with liberation. But this vantage point was only reached after traveling in the boat of the erased. At the time it was out of range. I'm sure the coming weeks will see the process continue.

Saturday, DC and I visited the Bowes museum to see the Vivienne Westwood and the Norman Cornish exhibitions. Both vibrant with the wider creative life force yet very different. The Westwood I notice is mainly of clothes for women and I note that there are more opportunities for women to dress up in more different ways. Dressing up hasn't really ever featured large in my style. The Cornish exhibition is virtually alive- the sketched figures seem almost in motion and totally at one with the culture and environs in which they resonate. I casually wandered past resident exhibitions wondering vaguely about aliveness, the wider erotic and sensuality just short of sexuality. Later I would play about with this territory in 'conversation' with an AI. Setting up the scene with it and feeding it previous posts it did generate some interesting depictions of what I was circling. I particularly liked this:

The beautiful is the appearance of harmonious vitality within a relational field. The erotic is that same harmonious vitality experienced as participatory and generative. Sexuality is one possible flowering of that participatory vitality.

I think it was probably my poem, 'Returning' from the 7th July that put it on the map! What I think is at the root of this is life's deepest desire to express. And how can we as human beings be the conduit for the richest expression? Illuminated and illuminating. What is it that remains after the erasure? What resolves in the synthesis of the diversity depicted in the above paragraphs? What remains to be resolved? What flowers in both the resolved and the unresolved?

Returning

Seen by the eye and felt by the root

Each line and curving plane, enlivened by animation

Eye to eye, eye to root, eye to eye

Mirrored the fire rises

The mind supplies fuel, the fire rises

Fast is the mind's desire, slow is the heart's

Quick now, first contact

The hands reach out to read the enlivened curving planes

Eye to eye, mouth to mouth, say not a word.

Root's firm stalk taken in hand winks

Slide the reading pressing hand round nape to draw the head closer

Then curved planes to each other full length and wrapped around

Fast heartbeat feeds the glowing shifting tangents

Pressed they shift to expand outwards and inwards

Smell and taste fuse the warm and shifting landscape

Each root pressed against the other, winks

The end beckons the journey be fast but breath fuels it

The wave passes, the mind's fuel dwindles

Motion signals, weight signals, the dance picks up pace

Fast they melt, slow they melt, rhythmic

The space between each body is electric

Cleaved open to and by this field they close

Close unto one shimmering field, then open

The shifting heat illuminates the liminal

Each pulse drives deeper the fluid planes

Mind's work done it rests

Each pulse melts the fluid planes

Liquid they drip into each other

Heat bathes the electric field and soothes the tension

Being savours the woven silken field

Then waves of their own depth surface

Rising and falling, rising and falling

Contract, open, contract open

Deeper the liquid liminal falling

Falling, falling, rising ever higher

The field's ear hears the small call of death

And answers, liquid

Pulses, liquid

Shimmering liquid light on the ocean, liquid

Liquid, slowly fades...

And the room returns, to hold the spent 

 

  

This thread again

Yesterday I was at Cragside and noticed how the fruit glasshouse is rotting away. The National Trust is struggling for money and volunteers across the country it seems and an internet search reveals a number of complaints. Predictably there are voices bemoaning the so called 'woke' environmental and social justice initiatives. But this is just noise. Irrespective of any questions over whether or not we 'should' save historic structures (and on that one I'm flexible but would say generally there is a debate to have here, centring largely on 'for what purpose') the real problem is a nationally systemic one I think. Across almost every sector of UK life there is a lack of investment. It seems that more than other European countries we have taken to heart and mind the neoliberal idea that private enterprise and markets will solve all ills. Some of us always regarded that as nothing short of one rule for the rich and another for the poor and it's no surprise to find evidence that it's not working.

Walking around the gardens I was struck by spring flowers in colours that I associate with Easter as they're so much part of this time of year.

These colours I thought, where else have I met them? And what came to me was those butterfly prints we'd make in primary school... Fresh and bright.

Another image came to me too; that of Notre Dame restored and splendid and I mused again at how if it were a UK project it would be beset with delays, spiralling costs and the like. See previous post here.

Something of various thoughts was in my mind, and later reading this and that, I came across a commentary on the Red Thread koan pointing out that one way of looking at this koan is 'what is the strand that runs through your life, yet is so obvious you miss it?' I find this a valuable reminder, the Red Thread can stand for so many parts of the ongoing unfolding of our lives. Musing on this question I considered what in my life this could be. Was it the inquisitive side, interest in engineering and the built environment, exploration of the 'spiritual' side of life, my intention towards authenticity, the philosophical, etc...? But nothing particularly struck me.

Then on Wednesday morning DC sent me a picture from Bristol of a monument to Isambard Kingdom Brunel with the caption 'Your hero'. Although I've always been a bit sceptical of 'heroes', certainly as a teenager I was impressed by this man and there is no doubting his contribution. As DC said, he was a dude. DC and I have an informal list of dudes- people who... well defining dude isn't so simple but you get the idea. I knew IKB died young but I couldn't remember at what age so looked it up and in so doing found the following obituary:

Brunel was the right man for the nation, but unfortunately, he was not the right man for the shareholders. They must stoop who must gather gold, and Brunel could never stoop. The history of invention records no instance of grand novelties so boldly imagined and so successfully carried out by the same individual.

I found that moving! And that points to my Red Thread.

In Bristol, a city arguably built on slavery, stands a monument to a man who through ingenuity and struggle built structures we still use. Across the UK there are wonderful historic buildings, many built on oppression and exploitation. Our politicians are either frightened to speak the truth or peddle culture wars. The National Trust (who are NOT wrong to set in context the origins of the estates which have come to their custodianship) struggle as alluded to above. There is no real debate about what is needed going forward in much of our national life. Around the world stability is weakening and is threatened by oligarchs as history plays out familiar troupes. Power is allowed to concentrate and serve the few. And yet we are capable of what IKB achieved, of what those medieval cathedral builders and modern cathedral re-builders achieved, of seeing beauty and alleviating suffering. Through our minds and bodies we can do so much that is obviously good. It is NOT appropriate to make woke mean something wrong. It is wrong to wage war, to build jingoistic narratives, to mistake unfair socioeconomic conditions for nature. What I find moving in that obituary is a tacit understanding that it's good to act beyond short-term greed. Of course there's projection in that, but I think we know that it's good to do what serves our communities.

And the Red Thread? It's in the way we see and relate.

Another recollection illuminates this. As a child in school I always disliked PE and games. I'd neither interest nor ability and could see no value in sport. In those days the 1970's, the whole set up was such that to question the value of sport and competitive games was so bazar that the argument had to be made. And make it I did. Why, must I try to engage with this pointless business when it was obviously doing me no good whatsoever? By the time I was 12 or 13 I'd actually managed to extract from my form teacher who also took PE and games a confession in my school report that he had to agree that it was 'all rather pointless'! I was sensitive, thoughtful and interested in how things worked yet I was in an education system that was very much a product of its time. It was in some ways informed by the Plowden Report which likely generated some 'child centred learning' and was likely both of benefit to my age group and may have in other ways held us back a bit where it was poorly implemented. Who knows, but it didn't result in what we would now recognise as a really diverse educational environment. And whilst I seem to recall music and movement classes in primary school (I don't recall my reaction to them) they vanished by middle school as I recall. And whereas these days as I understand it, a conversation around what PE and games options might suit with yoga, dance etc. on offer, none of that was in anyone's mind in the '70's and '80's once we'd progressed beyond primary school music and movement... PE I could get some slight point to, provided I was allowed to go at my own pace and not have to engage in some kind of competitive tedium... I wasn't averse to clambering about things it was uncontrolled relatively high energy objects such as fast moving balls or people I disliked! Games meant football, rounders, cricket and for some rugby. Under virtually no circumstance was I willing to engage with these. This generated some consternation amongst peers and teachers. What I think is interesting is not just my lack of interest and skill in these but the mindsets at work. Clearly, many people enjoy taking part in and supporting sports teams. But for me the entire endeavour is nothing but a pointless tribal pursuit; I clearly don't have the key ingredient. I understand that the cooperation within the team and competition with others and the skill and chance etc. are all what provide the stimulation for a lot of people but it's meaningless to me. What I do find meaningful is that life is full of struggle and we can if we openly explore the available information, make things better. That's what I find moving in that obituary. The Red Thread for me is in the not playing sports games, not competing for enjoyment, not conforming to narratives and values because they're held by the majority to be true. It's in the exploration of what is and how it can be engaged with to make things better including with limited resource. The not and the in do the revealing of the thread and the koan.

The winter here in the Northeast is quite long and by this time of year most of us are ready for spring. And so it is so lovely to see the flowers doing the only thing they can - flower. The rot in the fruit glasshouse is doing the only thing it can too. We shape and shift our environment with our minds and bodies but the wider forces of the universe are on a far grander scale... The Taoists would have us be in harmony with 'nature' to be ourselves without getting in our own way, our 'natural' selves before ego and fear twist us. Those fears are part of the koan and the repeating patterns part of our Red Thread. A thread made of both our true face and the faces we wear as we move thorough the not's and the in's... a dance sometimes in the light of awareness and quite often in the dark of confusion, the patterns of light and dark reflecting our threads...

Departure

On Friday evening DC and I watched the 2016 film Departure. We both enjoyed it and noted that it had way of getting under one's skin. So on Saturday I was musing just what is it that's resonating there. The film is about lots of currents in various relationships and is described in various reviews as a meditation on desire. Indeed one of the characters Elliot, a dreamy teenager with aspirations to be a writer says he wants to write about desire...'the way it runs through your fingers like water'. At this point I think it becomes clear that the writer is using the character for his own exploration of desire and there's a slight failure of film's plausibility. But this failure soon dissipates. Thinking about this line I note that for me desire might better be described as like water soaking into blotting paper and running through fingers like cream, coursing through the body like electricity, celebrated in Walt Whitman's I Sing the Body Electric... And here we have it, the resonance, the reality of our paradox - we are both all One and all separate, we long to be the fullest we can be, but we can't do it alone, we are our interactions. But this is not all that gets under the skin for gay men of our generation. Elliot is gay, and in the film we are invited to consider where he lies on the journey of realising, accepting and coming out. He doesn't appear to have much gap between realisation and acceptance, there's no indication of repression. Repression wounds. It amplifies separation in the human paradox. It holds us in the bud, denies flowering and turns us against ourselves. Eventually for most of us we break the bonds and out we come. But we carry grief for the lost years. This then is the added element getting under our skin. And we all have aspects of ourselves that get lost in our everyday lives... This meditation on desire then is wider than we can know... And that wideness gets under the skin...

The title of this blog is taken from case 5 Mumonkan and I consider that this case is basically asking us what are we and how do we live our life given that we can't ever capture the totality of the unfolding situation and neatly live it using only the power of our own reasoning. No, we can't control and be 'right' and just and true and free of pain in all moments. No amount of knowledge, planning, control and the like even with the best, kindest and 'highest' of intentions will do it. But the key is our intention. And here we return to desire. In 'spiritual' discourse desire, craving and similar words are often described in their problematic manifestation and indeed there are many ways in which we must see through their turns and snares. Less well explored and pointed to in the red thread koan, is desire's messy creative passionate compassion. Without this we are the withered tree hermit saved only when the old woman comes to chase us away and burn down our hut! We have shunned life and become trapped in a small selfish existence. But if we are to respond to life with warmth and an open hearted intention then its creativity, its desire to be, to flower, is an expression of that intention and vice versa. This is wider than we can know...

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul...

And as I might have said to Elliot, Whitman's rather said it I think, but it's so sweet to see you try and how I would have liked to have been able to spare myself the wounding though its healing would repay the wound ten times and more.

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.

Being and Doing

I've not posted for ages. I guess partly it's that I've nothing pressing to say and partly that a full time job takes up so much time and energy that there's not much energy left for yet more time in front of a computer after reading and writing emails etc. Loss of visual accommodation and increasing numbers of floaters etc. don't make staring at a screen any easier either. Since about spring this year I've not been seeing as well as I'd like. The normal age related loss of accommodation, increased floaters contact lenses not settling due to dry and/or sticky eyes and more challenging increased higher order aberrations; it all makes me tense and tired. But there's also something else giving me a drained feeling. I like my job, the type of work, the people, the degree of freedom are all good. The draining aspect about it is probably the constant monitoring, adjusting, checking, questioning and advising without a definite driving to closure and completing. It's just how the role is. And yes, there's Wu Wei to be remembered so letting go of driving is maybe no bad thing. I'd like to have more time for various spiritual practices which would help me with the 'off the cushion' meditation of daily life and the challenges which come aplenty in the course of a working day. Half an hour per day zazen, once or twice a week 5 Rhythms and once a week yoga plus some time at the weekend walking in the countryside or on the beach seem to be all I can manage in respect of steady spiritual nourishment. Spiritual support form friends is there too of course and for that I've very grateful. Any yet I know that there is an axis of experience which I'm not finding the time or opportunity to unfold. When I first started to sit zazen it was a time when I had had the rug pulled from under me and had only just started to rebuild a more healthy sense of self. I had had my sense of who I was and what I might rely upon severely damaged. In many ways that anxious depression, brought on by a lot of stress at work over a long time whilst very painful did served me and in a way I'm very grateful for it. It allowed me one way or another to find a forgotten me, a more truly me, me. In those early days of zazen I was, whilst aware of the contradiction nevertheless pursuing a degree of 'liberation' which would enable any pain to be endured without suffering. I could see that this was but yet one more attachment and a potentially dangerous one. I think I avoided most of the pitfalls and gradually let the desire for some 'deep' meditative experience slip away, not chasing not losing sight of the goalless goal. More than a decade has past and many workshops and life changes have been and gone, the self has shifted and changed and in some ways stayed the same, the Self has been glimpsed to some extent. The axis of form and emptiness has experienced unfolding. A lot of the time it unfolds but the experience seems very much in the world of form and awareness is dim and cloudy; I'm very much lost in delusion. It's this axis of form and emptiness which I feel I'm not exploring consciously. In this feeling there is the usual mixture of desire, fear and confusion. Is it the three poisons; greed, aversion and delusion? To answer that I find I'm back with helpful and unhelpful desire. For me to write off desire as all bad is too simplistic, too life denying; it's not all greed. But separating life's longing to be, the natural birth of each moment from subtle forms of greed... now there's a challenge. And the challenge is accepted, I'm deluded but I accept it as part of clearing that delsion as best each moment permits. No enlightenment outside of daily living. A regular work and home life is fine training. Yes. But like any training there needs to be more than just learning whilst playing the game, there needs to be more focused exploration of ways to be.

During long years without a job there was the uncertainty of where it would all end... would I ever return to a professional job or was all that gone and was I loosing my edge; quickness of wit becoming ever more dull until the day I realised that I was incapable of reading the situation, working out what could and should happen and making it so? In short fear of a loss of agency in the field of doing. This nagging doubt would detract from making the most of just being. Now it's time just to be which seems short at hand. Yes, with more awareness, a change of perception, there is all the time in the world but that takes a lot of awareness and just being seems like a luxury. Contemplation; awareness without adding anything affording access to the ever present Buddha nature or Self and a softening of the sense of inside and outside (of myself), softening of my and self and all that helping to make the everyday myself more straight forward and less maladapted, time for this is short. It's difficult in the world we've created to get a balance of being and doing. I think this is a real problem for our society. It robs us of the chance to see who and what we are. We become ever locked into the realm of form and see emptiness only as entropy. The unknowable fullness of emptiness pregnant with possibility is experienced only as new opportunities to exploit. All this is tiring me greatly. I feel as if I might be spiritually drowning. But, if I review the ten ox herding pictures then well, maybe I'm swimming ok(ish) or maybe not...

And then there's the desire to make the most of one's life... I'm not too troubled by that since in reality me as an unfolding experience just happens and the sense of choice doesn't seem too inflated. But There is a sense that I could 'make a shift'; open a new chapter. I feel this is brewing under the surface and if it is then in time, when conditions are ripe it will unfold. If it's not or if conditions don't ripen then it wont. I know there's not much to be done there. But there is some feeling of frustration.

It's interesting that it can often be easier just to be when with someone close. Being close. Inward connection; just being alone, being close with self/Self or the inward-outward connection of being close with someone; the else of someone else dropping away and leaving a combined sometwo (or more). All this is about Oneness in apparently varying ways. I know that I've explored much of this and its relationship with the creative impulse and have written more than once about what I experience as the universe's desire to know itself in form and emptiness through expansion and merging again and again. I recollect storey about a monk saying he was going to become a monk to find out that he didn't need to become a monk. We don't need to go anywhere or do anything to come home to ourSelf. True in part and not the whole picture. My circle of gay 'spiritual' friends my 'gay sanga' is limited and spread the length of the country. This I experience as disconnection. I guess that you need a city on the scale of London to generate a viable group of 'spiritually' interested gay men. And then one has to be in a space that urban, that busy, with all its demands. How lovely it would be to have a centre for such a group in a semi rural location in the UK. Such a place might afford the kind of rest, recuperation, energisation, connection and 'spiritual nourishment' that I feel I could do with. Even suitable gay retreats at any location in the world are thin on the ground.

This year seems to be going by quickly. That's probably a function of busyness. It definitely feels autumnal now and we have booked a week in a cottage in the lake district for early November. I'm looking forward to the time and space this should provide.

Spring

It's spring and all around life is starting to burst out. From the kitchen window the cherry blossom is poetic and to the distance is a haze of green and copper chocolate as the leaves open on the trees. It's gently beautiful and laced with exquisite agony. I'm tired and I want to go home (to the source).

The karma that I am is struggling with itself; myself. It comes from various angles and there is little capacity for self forgiveness.

Yet the water doesn't wet the glass, the mirror is not coloured by what is reflected. What is reflected colours only itself. I'm tired and I want to go home.

And yet there are people like this in the world.

How it is just now

Sometimes I see the enormous challenge that being human is. Trying to be the best person I can be and feeling so much less than the task seems to demand, there is realisation of the huge heart that is the willingness to try in each of us. I find it difficult to describe the sense of a still power which runs with the profound sweet sadness at the root of human life. At times I feel old and tired and half want to return home to the source. Yet the giving up is not yet a giving up and looking up. There's attachment and fear and some depression in there. There is working through the koan. There is interest to see how the koan arrises. There is in these mid-life years reflection; snapshots of the past sometimes vivid, perhaps more vivid than was seen at the time, at least in some ways. Or maybe that's just one more storey. What is seen at any time is not the whole picture, it's just what is salient. I wonder if there is any rhyme or reason to the salient and how much reality or truth there is in it. The saliency is not just the drama of life - all the world is indeed a stage and all the men and women indeed players, but awakening through the enactment of the drama and watching of the play. My life energy is not as open and free flowing, as joyous in this as a true letting go would generate. There seems to be much going on in all this at some level.

Longing in the world

I had a few ideas for a post a week or so back but as can happen the muse left me too soon. Robin William's suicide has put a bit more shape around those ideas.

As I've said before I think we come out of the unknowable void of unity, that which is called by many names; God, Buddha, Source, in order that the very void may perceive itself both as raw consciousness and as apparently separate forms within that consciousness. But this too is just an idea and one not to get too attached to. Part of experience is undoubtedly a sense of self, a will and desire. Fear might be said to be the feeling generated by the prospect of a seemingly unbearable contradiction between desire and apparent circumstance; usually the desire for safety and well being of the self. And whilst there is no separate self there is the interconnected self, a self were it wise enough to see, that is The Self; the unknowable. The purpose of life is to experience it. I think depression arises when that purpose feels thwarted. And whilst Buddha nature like paper never refusing ink irrespective of what is written, is always accepting, our experience is naturally filled with desire, contradiction, fear, confusion and much more.

Desire it seems to me is the fuel which makes things happen, or at least the feeling which goes along with things happening. I'll not get too distracted here into writing about control and how much or rather how little we actually have. And as I've alluded to above the real desire is to live that we may see our true (Buddha) nature. Creativity is an aspect of sexual energy or vice-versa . Sex, to me a calling to unity, fires us up and draws us to each other; cracks us open that we might love. Happy young straight couples experience this uniting love albeit tangled with romantic attachment and glow in its joy. Young gay men sometimes have this too, but their path is often more complex. When enmeshed in the pursuit of some subject or area of study both our self and the subject are also cracked open. Most gay men will tell you of the pain involved in coming to terms with their sexuality and the complexities of their love lives. Yet this experience is revealing and ultimately rewarding as we see the water which other (straight) fish simply swim through. History is littered with people who have been washed up on the shores of their subject be it technical, political or human. We all see our own version of the world. For many it's fine and they fit; no problem. For others the world they see is filled with contradictions; aspects that don't seem as they could be. Those aspects mingle with desire and creativity and beckon a new awakening; a further exploration of the void. For some this process is joyful but often it is painful. Consciousness cares not either way; all it wants is to explore the void. I've heard it said that our environmental problems are sort of irrelevant to consciousness; if we mess up consciousness will just spring up out of what is left behind. We will have been an interesting experiment and life will move on. Of course it's only an interesting experiment because we do care what happens; we are both infinitely expendable and infinitely priceless. This priclessness resides in love. Sometimes sight is lost of this love in all its guises and great enveloping waves of heavy grey-blackness wash in; depression. Like Sisyphus eternally pushing  the bolder up hill only to have it roll back, we are entombed in wave upon wave of heavy darkness with no end in sight. Sometimes the darkness is shot through with lightning bolts of fear at other times the fear is like sheet lightning or rain. Rain, it rains and rains... then worse, the rain and the dry have merged together; the self seems lost, merged in the enveloping grey. Objectivity is lost, the will seems to have fled, chased out by fear. An empty maw remains. And still the stone has to be pushed and still it rolls back... and on... and on. From where does this bleakness come? Then, almost as quick as it came it can leave. Colour returns, the will creeps back and the world regains some objectivity. And more. The world is more seen, the water is more visible, the swim is more visible.

There is talk in the media just now about the link between creativity and depression. There are warnings not to romanticise depression in this way. Good warnings I think. But it is I think also true that a certain kind of seeing and seeking, a certain kind of creating a world comes at a price. I think this inevitable as when we touch the depth of our human being we inevitably see that there is a rich sadness at the root of life; we long to return home (to the void) yet we are already there and long to enter the world...

The merit of this post is offered for Robin William's family.

What is it that wants to happen?

There has been a lot of toing and froing between Scotland and Newcastle for me of late and various job interviews. One such led to an offer of employment. But the offer was to go back into a design office with a very unhealthy set up. No thankyou. The process has confirmed for me my desire to stay related to the industry but not under crazy conditions. Truly looking at what one wants and facing the consequences can be both painfully difficult and liberating. The thing with desire is not I believe, so much that it is a 'bad' thing so much as truly looking into the desire to see what it is about at a deeper level is scary. This is not clinging to the surface features of desire but listening to its depths. Yet this deeper calling is what gives life its meaning and purpose. It may or may not bring happiness but it will if given sufficient time and energy bring an honest expression to life. This expression is I believe the very reason for our coming out of unity, out of the void. And, it is by looking into the depths of desire not just the surface that we might find our way back to unity and to a peace within the midst of the storm. Such looking and listening, sitting with what is emerging and acting from the deepest gut is in my experience often clouded by a whole range of thoughts and emotions. Which of the panoply of these stories and sensations is the deep gut, the heart mind? That is the question I ask in challenging conditions. Or put another way, what is it that needs to happen? It was tricky sitting with the panoply arising in the job chase of late but I am now sure I made the right decisions.

Recently a friend sent me a link to the revolverheld unzertrennlich music video. There can't be a gay man (particularly of my generation) who isn't touched by this video. The beauty of the video is I would suggest, in the acknowledgment of the (deeper) desire for unity, in the response of the heart mind. As ever, our humanity is in form's expression of emptiness. This is desire's true meaning and purpose. It will not always bring the surface fun, joy and excitement shown in the video but it gives body to the life we lead and life to the body we live it with. It is not so much work to live verses live to work as living the work of one's life.

Desire; not so simple methinks

A few times recently I've recalled this post about Blue. There is intended in the post a pointing to my sense of a sort of coming home to myself. I find this post on Jade Mountain Buddha Hall interesting in that there is a picture of a blue moon lit sky starting a post about desire.

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!

Just Couldn't Resist

I just couldn't resist this photo;

And, 'slightly closer, more from the side dear' she said;

Closer;

What insect could resist such an invitation? Fly in and be one with all that deliciousness in Red... 

(Don't forget to click on the images.) 

Flowing on

I've not been doing very much at all lately and it's no good for me! I am just not cut out for being idle. And there is no spiritual 'progress' in it for me at present either. Oh, that's not true, the time has been teaching, what I meant was that I've not been able to get in to deep states of inner peace! No, too much uncertainty about where I am headed and too much need to use my talents for that.

Anyway, have a look at this on Jade Mountains. Much teaching in that I think.

As there seems to be no work coming my way I plan to spend the summer working at Findhorn, if I can get things to work out that way. We are not without some power to direct the flow of our life and I can't think of any more favorable way to flow than spending the time working in an environment I like. No need to be clever here about flow, time and all that, just need to be engaging with it; 'a day without work is a day without food' and all that.

Evolution

What is the relationship of the evolutionary biology model of life on earth to the perennial philosophy? No, I am not thinking about why Richard Dawkins is wrong, or rather why is it that he misses the key to the whole does God exist argument? Namely that there is no Archimedian point, it's all interdependently originated and he doesn't seem to get the point about the definition of God. If you want to debate first define your terms and all that. But let's not get into that argument, Voltaire is attributed with 'God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.

Evolutionary biology sits comfortably for me within interdependent origination. There seems to be in the void a desire to be, to give rise to as many forms as we see, and there are lots of forms, lots of creatures and lots of things. None of this sheds much light on the ground of being, the nature of the void, the unanswerable question 'is it divine?' It's not just about the mechanism by which forms emerge, the nature of the observer needs to be considered.

Anyway, the question I was thinking about is the relationship between desire and enlightenment. Now, as I understand it, most spiritual traditions can be summed up by the perennial philosophy, which broadly speaking, tels us to practice non-attachment, see the emptiness in things and aim to stop being dragged around by desire. With this approach acceptance or compassion arises and we become an expression of the source, charitable love. Bingo, enlightenment. Would that it were that quick and simple! But, to return to the question, 'what's this got to do with desire, and what's that got to do with evolutionary biology?'. Well, desire to survive is the basis of evolution and evolution seems to have given the universe human beings, the most aware creatures in the material world. You see that I acknowledge the problem of not having an Archimedian point; reality is bounded by our experience, so we can't limit it just to the material, so we can't rule out more aware beings. Indeed, from a spiritual point of view we assume that there are more aware beings, but at this point we move out of the limits of the material world away from form is form. Yet it is in a human life that we have the chance to practice a spiritual tradition, to seek enlightenment. And so the void in generating forms, in generating evolution (including desire) gives rise to the opportunity for enlightenment. Desire being an interesting link, an interesting way to look at things, a frame (which I think of as a device by which we might understand the way the void forms by folding forms over each other), is the driving force behind all this including the opportunity for enlightenment. Unless I've got something very wrong in my thinking. But then I recall, from my post in January on Vitality;

...that in his book 'Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist' DT Suzuki writes about trisna (tanha) as:...more deeply rooted than we imagine, as it grows straight out of the root of karuna.

So I've had this sort of thought running around in my head for a bit it would seem. And why is it of interest? Because, I think it points to a very important question; what is it that one should desire? What is a life well lived?

Eggs or soup

I want to continue with the ideas in yesterday's post. Moment by moment I face choice; eggs or soup (for lunch), read, listen to the radio, join the conversation or not, express a view or not, etc., etc. What about hold a view or not? What are my views? What are my values? What do I hold important? What do I desire? My view and my desires affect the choices I make. I am talking about the map I hold to guide me through, no, make my life. I hold up my frames through which I make meaning, compare what I see with the yardstick of my views and choose. My views, values and desires are in relationship. And I am not always aware of the complex precess which is driving all this. I have my compass; I might watch my emotions, look out for attachments as best I can but I can't see all the map and bits of it keep getting redrawn. Not to get stuck with a fixed view, to avoid dogma is a very challenging goal. And of course, it's the goal bit that needs to be dropped, or at least the attachment to it, if one is to avoid getting stuck. To really be awake to every option and to be awake to choosing and the reasons for that choice, not to sleepwalk through it, that is to expand ones life

I think this a very different position from someone who accepts a dogma and is devastated when life crashes through it showing the limitations of the frames, the emptiness of the forms. But such a person is unlikely to be aware of their frames and will probably view forms as absolute. Views and values which are based on belief in forms as absolute will always run up against conflicting values because we don't all have the same frames. We each must make our own meaning. What's this, solipsism? No! We make our meaning in relation to others, we exist in relation to others. Which brings focus around to the ego, the extent to which our relations are selfish. And it can take a lot to know when we are selfish, because our values can get in the way. Dogma? And as if this were not enough, we need remember that life is much bigger than us; it makes us moment after moment and we need to remember not to get stuck.

I need to remember not to get stuck and not to get too idealistic.