The Koan

 The koan arises naturally they say, and this way of looking at life is I think, worthy of some consideration. My koan is certainly tied up with fear. Fear which is closely tied to an appreciation of emptiness. It was by study of Zen Buddhism that I gained some clarity into the spiritual significance of what had previously been only a psychologically informed appreciation of my experience. Buddhism brought a wider philosophical understanding and the prospect of a greater peace than had been hoped possible. And more than this it brought a much greater depth and level of meaning to my life. Zen, by cutting straight to the heart of things with its uncompromising attitude to reality made what had been dimly understood and greatly felt and feared into a purpose. My understanding that things are so transient and vulnerable, clarified by the language of Buddhism as dependent origination, emptiness, made access to non-duality in the everyday a positive prospect. Couching this as the koan if I remember to see it that way, makes everything fuel to the fire of enlightenment. Through meditation both on and off the cushion and trying to keep to the precepts my experience might widen and deepen leading to a more compassionate, enriching life.

 Recently DC was talking about transcendence and perhaps having my koan in mind to some extent, I responded that those with an understanding of the spiritual significance of this are generally reluctant to speak of it for fear of doing harm, and he concurred. Altered states of consciousness, whether through meditation, music, dance, sex, alcohol or other drugs seem to have been a part of human experience for a very long time across many cultures. The harm or good any of this may cause depends upon intention, degree of awareness, precise details of the activity and energy expended. User beware! Let's consider that list a little: meditation, music, dance, sex, alcohol and other drugs. The first four have a history of links with spiritual practice, alcohol is a suppressant which blunts awareness and other than in small quantities to 'take the edge off' and promote a relaxed social mood is off very little benefit and can do a lot of harm. Drugs are numerous and dangerous. Some have a history of links to spiritual practice but generally not that held by established sanghas. Interestingly, there are current medical trials of psychedelics to help with anxiety and depression although they are not available as treatment options at this time. Aldus Huxley wrote of the 'reducing valve of the mind' and whilst I think we need take care with this notion there's something in it. Altered states of consciousness and transcendence have their place and if approached with the intention to surrender the self to the reality of the universe without craving experience can lead one to realise Buddha nature understanding that it's not an individual one but One that is. And then we return to the koan in daily life. Chop wood and carry water. These two aspects of life, form and emptiness, the mundane and the profound might be seen as an axis upon which I sit and struggle with fear, confusion and failing to keep the precepts, enjoy the vibrancy of life and its sensuality, play out past and create further karma... The koan unfolding. Unless any of these musings or the practices to which they refer result in greater compassion and ability to live happily causing minimal harm then they are at best useless but perhaps amusing and at worst harmful. Thankfully, the Buddha's recommendation to follow the 'middle way', steering us to the 'heart mind', does I believe, make the koan as indicated above, everything fuel to the fire of enlightenment. Which, when held by and holding the everyday struggles is an awfully magnificent prospect. The hour by hour experience is far less lofty.

I'm reading The Wild White Goose, the diaries of Roshi Jiyu Kennett during her time in Japan. There's a section in which the koan is discussed. Jiyu comments that people receive their koan at different times. This idea (of their koan) probably needs some 'unpacking' but the diaries don't go there and I don't feel confident to say much more than that the basic idea seems to match my experience. Jiyu goes on to point to the relationship of the size of the koan, the time one's had it and their degree of spiritual development. (The words used here aren't exactly hers, I'm aware that this sentence is fraught with possible confusion and it's difficult to be clear about the nature of temporality.) In this way of looking at things I think I may have received my koan at birth. I was induced, it was a difficult labour and I was cot nursed for the first couple of days. I imagine this was a stressful entry to the world. But who knows? I developed into a sensitive, cautious child. The koan was given further complexities as I developed OCD at about 9 years of age and realised I was gay at about 13 or 14. So, an interesting 'grab bag' of karma which by placing me in some respects outside the 'norm' has I think, given me or forced me to gain insight. These days I'm hard pressed to say where the size of my koan and the level of insight and/or spiritual development (that's not the right word) and the unfolding karma leave me. But such is the nature of koans.

Maria

Last night DC, a friend and I saw the movie 'Maria' about Maria Callas. I loved it and found it both aurally and visually stunning. Often there were tears streaming down my face. It was also I thought, cleverly constructed cinematographically to portray something of the state of her mental health, her use of medication and the way in which narratives are constructed and revised. Depicting something of the traumas of her younger life and alluding to the ways in which these informed her appreciation of the meaning of the music we are moved by the biography, the music and the energy and humanity of the characters. For me what shone through was an expression of the inevitable heartache at the bottom of human life. In life our hopes, dreams and aspirations seldom come without loss and suffering and however hard we try to control, plan and manage our life there is almost always a different outcome. In Buddhist terms we cling through delusion to things which are empty, they aren't what we ever thought or hoped and so at some point our experience disappoints and may even be so painful as to approach destruction of an integrated personality. The film portrays Maria as having taken refuge in the music. The music articulates suffering and our humanity and it is this which is both moving and beautiful. Through it we feel the nature of our predicament and ascend like the lark of Vaughn Williams above our separation and into a promise of... of we can't quite articulate... and 'it' remains just out of reach but nonetheless we have been suffused by it. But this refuge in music which has provided both articulation and meaning is ultimately taken from her as it is based upon the empty body and its dependence upon so many conditioned forms. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form came to me in various ways as narratives were constructed and revised time and again though the aural and visual fields of the movie. There is a celebration of creativity, work, care, love and affection. Life has value.

Who is struggling to surrender?

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

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

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

A Bell Ringing In The Empty Sky

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

Other Shores

DC and I are on holiday in the Scottish highlands staying in a wee modern bothy on the north shore of the Moray firth. Located right on the sea front and facing southeast the views are fantastic and ever changing. When conditions are clear and depending upon the light it is possible to make out the three wind turbines to the west of the village of Findhorn. These are part of the wider Findhorn Foundation (FF) community asset and as such have a wider resonance to those of us who are now digesting the news that the FF has sadly come to the conclusion that no economically viable future exists as business. Based upon guest programmes and only just restarted after the closures of the pandemic the sums have not added up for sometime and despite attempts to adjust to the present situation the figures continue to decline, the impulse seems to have moved on or dissipated and thus the staff are now to undergo the process of redundancy.

As I scan the distant shoreline on the other side of the firth I gradually work out the locations of various familiar places. Almost ten years have passed since I was living and working in the FF and traversing the landscape between Inverness and Elgin. Residing in Cluny (the FF's main guest space constructed in the nineteenth century as a hydropathic hotel in the small town of Forres) I would spend time alone, with friends and with DC making my self at home in this part of Scotland while still maintaining roots in Newcastle. DC would travel up and down and seated at the table in Cluny lounge with his laptop, work on his papers and books whilst trying to make sense of the FF. I'd be involved with a number of built environment projects and all the while living the FF life. From the middle of my Experience Week in the FF in January 2006 it had made sense to me; it was many things to many people and you could make of it as much or as little as you needed. There was an impulse here of transformation and healing, of play and growth, of rest and renewal, of the interplay of being and doing. It was always amorphous. And now it leaves its legacy and slips away to be replaced by some container to hold whatever assets, responsibilities and functions remain to be held. And so it is that the three hour round trip from this side of the firth to the Findhorn / Forres side has been to see friends who were part of the FF in a context of much change.

At night the lights on the distant shore come and go according to conditions. I'm reminded of many times over decades in the Lake district looking across to the opposite shore and seeing a light which seemed to offer warmth and shelter, respite from the darkness. Such lights often seem to generate the sense that over there is somehow more satisfactory and so it's as well to look around and see the lights in which one is sitting; those very lights which from over there on the other shore evoke the same callings. We are are pulled back and forth across the landscape of our existence in this way by dukkha. Yet there is more to this than simple unhelpful craving and suffering. There is the calling to live, to experience and ultimately perhaps for that to include awareness of the 'space' holding our life and the interconnectedness of all. Yes we have our projections and fantasies our cravings and desires. Those lights on the other shore can be the greener grass of any field. Living in communities such as the FF and one's relating to any amorphous nature can be like the madness of a love affair where one inhabits a landscape made out of a mix of one's deep and often hidden desires and the apparent although often short lived glimpses of solid form in the amorphous field. As is much of our lives. We can be deluded and blind to what is. BUT, can we ever see what is through anything other than this interplay of shore and the other?

Yesterday, the view across the firth was clear and to the west in the distance off a ridge approximately in the direction of Inverness could be seen the formation of clouds. Slowly rolling into formation, bright in the light and moving east. There was something poetic and evocative in the slow steady movement. I suspect that scenes like these bring us to an awareness of being and doing and the deeper desire to be in ourselves. There's usually a slight melancholy yet also a peace to them. The view across the firth is often redolent with evocative metaphor - other shore, stillness and movement, light and dark, the familiar and barely grasped... Being and ultimately non-being. Death, an inevitable part of life is a good reminder that our cravings are not always unhelpful- without them what would be? And so amongst this view there is the force of life. Manifest in each experience yet often hidden by various forms of discomfort there is the starkness of existence.

During the week DC sent me a link to an interview with Chris Packham. I read it with interest and noted that his descriptions of growing up as someone who would in adult life be diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum mirrored some of my own experience. Mainly I think of experiencing the world and life as or from a vantage point somewhat different to that of society's / one's peers'. In my own case the illuminating element is not autism but homosexuality. Even before puberty many same sex attracted people know they are different and so what is being revealed here is not just simple sexual craving but a sensibility, a 'colour' in our basic desire to be, the 'shape' of our wider erotic impulse. This can give us an almost shaman like ability to see the water that the straight fish can't see. I suspect Chris Packham's autism may have given him a different yet similar faculty. Maybe we might spend less time with diagnosis of 'conditions' and more time accepting that people are just very complex and simply ought not to be restricted into predetermined boxes of how to be. It was then, with interest that I heard on the news of the death of Nick Hitchon who had been part of the Seven Up TV documentary series which followed the lives of fourteen people. I was drawn to watch some of it again and so DC and I found it on YouTube and watched one part of the 63 UP catch up from 2019. I found the energy and evolving shape of the participants lives moving. And what came to mind was the amazing ingenuity in life.

Our other bit of 'TV' was to watch Brokeback Mountain. We'd both seen this at the time of its release in 2006 and had forgotten all but the basic plot. It's a moving and sad depiction of two men trying to find a way to be in a society poisoned by toxic masculinity. Neither of the men have been brought up in a loving and supportive home and struggle to make a living as best they can. They have little to no way to understand and deal with the reality of their love and sexual attraction for each other in a society which totally forbids it. The sadness is that although their love sustains over decades of short periods of a few days together snatched secretively out of their lives as 'straight' partners and parents they're not able to flower into the beautiful couple we might imagine. Aspects of their being, both as individuals and as a couple remain nipped in the bud. At bottom we know there is a sanctity in this flower and that society has committed a sacrilege. It is as if those clouds described above were never to roll off the ridge, the beauty of the movement and its revealing of the stillness were forbidden. It isn't just the life that is snuffed but also the very space in which it would have been. Reading reviews of the film I see that there has been debate about the sexuality of the protagonists and the intentions of the writer and it occurs to me that what those asking such questions fail to see is that the point being made is that the men simply have no context for their relationship. The society in which they find themselves totally prohibits it. The toxicity of homophobic, maladjusted masculinity has ensured that no space exists in which the flower can open and as the writer reminds us 'if you can't fix it you have to stand it'. It is then with celebration, that I can say that generations of 'different' people have worked and made it possible not just to 'stand it' but to enable it to flower.

The early part of the week here was busy with calls about our house move and finally after many date changes the exchange of contracts, with visiting friends and with settling in and taking in. Yesterday and today we've consciously decided to just be more still. In our minds are thoughts of the ongoing journey and we are grateful that friends remain with us and we remain with them. It has been a couple of the most frightening years for me and these reflections help me see that there is the fear life may take away from me the opportunity to see before I reach the great other shore that which I so dearly long to see. Namely both the fullness of life and its very ground.

Our hutch for the week

View across the Moray firth

'76

 It is a beautiful day today; a clear blue sky, barely a breeze, the air warm and soft. Some memory of the summer of '76 seems to float through my mind. Six weeks of summer holiday from school, day after day of hot sunny weather, the burn at the bottom of our street still flowing but presumably more navigable by kids in wellies. We lived in wellies; up in the mornings and out to play, back only when hungry or called in because it was time to eat or time for bed, all day making dens, damming the burn, flicking green slime weed off the end of sticks on to the bridge over the burn, fishing with nets on bamboo canes for sticklebacks and putting them back. We had rings on our legs where the wellie tops would rub. I recall a steel washing line post in the lane at the back of the terrace of Tyneside flats where we lived. Unpainted, rust pitted and weathered by the elements and use to a semi-silk finish, the polished rust flowing on to the slopping concrete apron in which the post was set... Hot concrete, hot metal, hot lethargic minutes which seemed like hours and hours. And now it's forty-six years on. Other childhood days down the dene and in or on the edge of the burn now a memory. I recall playing with the idea of making a water-wheel to drive my bike dynamo in the burn. I badgered dad - could he not bring me from work a little wheel with some paddles set in it and an axel and a way of attaching to the dynamo splines? I knew he worked in a factory that made turbines for power stations. Surely if they could do that they could make me what I Neeeded. He did bring a wheel of sorts and a shaft of sorts, obviously not what was required but it didn't matter; there was something to try in the water. Although likely disappointed at the lack of suitable resource for the endeavour I must have learned a lot about the difficulties involved. Small steps to the future engineer. Much has unfolded in the intervening years. Time collapses like the remnants of a bubble when memories come like this and the unfolding of one moment in to the next that is life seems to be as much a dream as anything... Concepts such as 'my mind', past, present, self etc. seem to be in some way exposed and questioned, a faint sense of something, some no-thing emerges. Out of nothing or no-thing, emerges everything.

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.

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.

Life force

The pictures above are of tulips I bought to welcome home DC a couple of weeks ago. They were soon spent as I knew they would be but they were cheerful. Even spent like this they have a charm I think. They seem to be saying 'darling, it's all too much, yet what a blast'!

In various ways my OCD among other things has been draining energy away from me over the winter. This I know is part of a spent feeling I've been with for some time. That feeling is also part of mid-life and quite a lot of experience of various kinds of dukkha. Sitting with this I see both tiredness and acceptance. Cutting through ties of the past in faith and humility with compassion for myself is challenging; I find the inner critic all too active. And there is a sense of the value of experience, of life. I've heard it said that one should embark upon a spiritual life with compassion as a focus and not emptiness. Well my own experience, I think it fair to say, has been of spiritual life turning a dark emptiness full of fear into one of light, pregnant with possibility. Of the three poisons (ignorance, attachment and aversion) it's probably aversion that has had most hold over me for most of my life. The illusion of separation drives the whole process and I have my share of attachments as do us all, but you get the picture; it's fear of it all going wrong rather than craving for more experience which has been my pattern. So, with this feeling of spentness I've come to consider the life force behind both fear and desire, the birth coming from the pregnancy of emptiness. This raw energy of being in the world, described in various ways by various traditions, is for me generally dissipated in a complex web of experience. I suppose that over the years I've held the intention to cultivate awareness, and to see the reflection of experience and awareness in each other. And with this to accept what is. I'm sure that in this I've not been really present with what is, really felt the living energy of it. I know my mind will drift from part experience to part experience. As well as cultivating spaciousness there is also being with the very aliveness of the space and I probably could do with remembering that.

Eros v Control

I started this post some weeks ago.

On a Friday evening:

Looking out my window I see him

Lovely in a boy next door way

Late teens early twenties

Clean, relaxed and happy

She stands next to him in her socks

Throws her shoes down

He kneels, puts them on her feet

She stands (child like) and lets him

I notice my objection to her (playing the child) and also

my awareness that I could be mistaken

He reaches around her leg to tie the lace as if it were on his own foot

She runs her fingers through his hair

I feel it - soft and thick

Pangs of longing and sadness - she has what was out of my reach...

He stands, they kiss tenderly for some time

I feel the desire in him

I note (my fancy of?) the manipulation in her

Suddenly they part and run off together

I feel a familiar wretchedness

What is wretched for me is the recollection of my own experience in those years. Struggling to accept my homosexuality and with low self esteem I was not playful and relaxed and not enjoying intimate relationship. For years I thought the only loss was the simple erotic connection. But of course the real loss is in the wider emotional aspect. The pain remaining is rooted not just in what was not but in the deeper who I was.

Ah well, the years since then have passed and now the weeks since looking out my window upon this scene have also passed.

Last night I watched program about a number of people with OCD undergoing intensive treatment at a camp in the USA. Seeing this group of people I recalled just how debilitating my own experience of OCD was from about age nine to thirteen. Back then the term was not in common usage and I thought I was the only person in the world with the feelings and rituals. I was scared people would think I was crazy and that I would have to undergo some treatment that might make me worse. I never went to see a 'professional'  for help and that may or may not have been wise. I was ashamed and exhausted. At eleven I so wanted a holiday from myself and realised that that was not possible. By thirteen I decided to go cold turkey and just stop. I must have intuitively hit on what is now known as exposure and ritual prevention and I freed myself from the prison of OCD. Or, maybe it just faded in intensity as I somehow learned to cope with uncertainty. For many years I thought I had just a few residual habits left over from OCD. But of course that's not quite true, in reality OCD is a condition which in my experience has receded to virtually nothing and can resurface under certain conditions. Thankfully though, I've not been imprisoned by it the way I was as a child since deciding to stop. But it is nevertheless, an insidious condition from which I think one is always recovering. OCD is a coping strategy to deal with risk, with the uncertain. I was trying to gain control to strike a bargain with the unknown; I do this ritual and the bad thing I've just thought of or feel won't happen. I must have been feeling a pressure of uncertainty from a very young age to come to OCD. Now I see this in terms of emptiness; I saw the frailty of everything, that things are insubstantial and subject to change as conditions arise and pass and that the change can come sudden and 'out of the blue'. This is seeing emptiness, interdependent origination and the arising of the moment from the reality of a single point of consciousness at an age when I simply did not have the wisdom to cope with it. Scary stuff. At about eleven I was shocked by the realisation that I would be a different person had my surroundings and family been different; where was the essential me?

So it was against this background that I came to the realisation at about fourteen that those feelings of being different from a young age now had another aspect; I was attracted to the boys not the girls. I decided that I would grow out of it. I knew only too well the mental pain of self loathing and I knew I would likely feel terrible about myself if I acted upon those oh so deep cravings to be intimate with another male. So started the compartmentalisation of my sexuality. It would take years to take the compartment walls down. There would be no relaxed youthful intimacy. Sexual freedom as a gay man would be won only as a process involving considerable risk and uncertainty. The very things OCD is about avoiding. Eros, the creative impulse, is stifled by excessive control and yet without control Eros is powerless.

Terrier Truth

I started writing this post a few days ago and wrote this:

I acknowledge that I have a 'fast energy' and an irritable and / yet tenacious tenancy.  All summed up quite well by the nickname terrier. I find it difficult to be slow, relaxed, gentle, graceful. And yet some part of me probably wants to be more like that. And an other part just can't stand it! [And] Because I am not really working at the pace required of most modern work places some part of me drives me on against the fear of slowing down and never being able to 'cut the mustard' again. Or maybe deep down I feel it's too late anyway; I've been away from it too long and can't work like I once could. Or maybe it's just frustration at not being involved in a demanding project and part of a team of professionals. Anyway, the feedback from people in the community here is often that I should be more soft and feminine. Now I know that even in the construction industry people have found me abrasive, but I just can't stand this so called feminine softness. And I can think of a few feminists who would take you to task over the whole thing anyway! But there is something here. How much of this is adapted, defensive, limited and limiting ego and how much is just the basic flavor of the undefended self? Hard to say.

But the muse was not with me and I couldn't find the pith of the post.

Earlier today at lunch and again whilst out for a walk with a friend the subject of my terrier nature came up again. I'd forgotten that I'd started a post on this and during this afternoon's walk took some pictures of a wonderful pink-red sunset. As I suspected the phone-camera could not quite capture the scene. I tried with three different settings:

Just which is the truest image?

And this question of seeing 'the truth' is a tricky one. It requires a great deal of wisdom. So, returning to that question How much of this is adapted, defensive, limited and limiting ego and how much is just the basic flavor of the undefended self? Again, Hard to say. On the one hand there is as they say, no smoke without fire and I acknowledge that the fast, driven, tetchy stuff is connected to contraction in the body-mind. And it is no doubt that contraction which is visible in my deportment, especially my gait. Yet on the other, there is the feedback 'oh but you are a mover and a shaker; you make things happen, you keep the show on the road'.

And it's all an aspect of 'the truth'. 

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895, Act IIrish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

And yes, I do from time to time see gentle people who (still) have a liveliness to them and it is quite wonderful.

Beautiful Movie

DC and I have just returned from the cinema. We saw Departures. A very beautiful movie. Very moving. Life shown; immanent and transcendent.

In gassho.

Watching

To follow on from the last posting (Flight), the other side of the coin so to speak is the stillness of home, for we are already home in the spiritual sense, the journey to see that, to return to where we never left. Recent postings on Jade Mountains and thinkBuddha.org got me to thinking about the stream of consciousness, the river of life. Becoming the watcher, the stillness, acceptance.

The river analogy can be pushed a bit too before the imagery fails. As we age, like the river, we broaden, run slower but deeper. The journey down river valley from mountain spring to the ocean does seem to resonate with the shape of the ageing our lives to some extent. But the watcher stands still in the stream and the stream ages.

The day to day practice of the journey home is I suppose, at the intersection of watching and action. The Jade Mountains post pointing for me to deep connection with what one is doing. Deeper than one might be aware. Knowing at some level that this or that action is an honest expression of life. The thinkingBuddha post looking at the nature of perception is a reminder that we don't in ordinary awareness get the whole picture. We move the center and size of our awareness and in the process co-create ourselves and the world. I am thinking here of my experience in zazen. And then there is time to consider and the gap between where my awareness seems to have just been and now, except now always seems to have just moved on ahead of me... This gap (and) the interplay between watcher and watched, stillness and movement.

(Is it that) somehow as we 'watch' the lark's flight and feel a gap (the gap?) we become aware of both this side of the the gap and the other, for we are already home and yet not(?) Who watches and from where?

Hot place

I am in a 'hot place'. I need to remember Manjusri Bodhisattva. I can't post the details; it's not fair to those involved, but it isn't an easy time for me now. I knew this would come. But it is finding the way that is hard, let alone the Way. Pain and fear with the associated grasping. There are limits to any non-attachment I might practice; big limits. And even with acceptance, non-attachment, how to then have meaning? For some such a position might open one up to the raw vitality of life and be in tune with the Way. (Riding the Ox home playing ones flute?) But how to avoid slipping into boredom and thus depression? I guess that risk comes when one still has attachments to comfort. Comforts which keep one from living. And I am not that advanced on the path; I have many needs, many attachments too strong it seems for me to let go. And sifting it all out, working out what might be the best action, the action which looks to give the maximum happiness for the maximum number of people, or the minimum suffering, that is the challenge. Truly opening to life with a compassionate heart is one heck of a challenge.

And here in Cluny, helping out and connecting and people seeing each other and their suffering and hugging, the open hearts, the listening as well as the being alone, it all comes up.

Getting it right / wrong

It seems that my writing is too telegraphic, too condensed. I am not completely unaware of this and on Sunday at Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey, in conversation it came up. But in a short while it was understood why; I try to look at things on lots of different levels and remain mindful that to even attempt to say anything on some of the stuff I am writing about is to risk getting it all wrong. Here we go... getting it all wrong. At the deep level there is the whole non-dual, not right not wrong; important, but none the less a smack in the face is painful. At the more relative levels... oh, well look, you either know all that stuff or not. This sort of links up with an other conversation about everyone doing their best. That works at different levels too. No, I am not being clear here am I? Forget it. I am probably being far too presumptuous anyway.

Tuesday now. Spent the morning tidying the wood shed and raking leaves at Harnham Buddist Monastery before having lunch there. Helped with the post lunch tidying then used their hall to sit in meditation. The monks are happy for the public to use the hall to meditate. I'd checked that they were ok about forms of meditation related to traditions 'other' than theirs.

Just started reading Tao Te Ching / Lao Tzu; translated by David Hinton. The introduction to this is, I think, marvelous. Wu-wei: Nothing's own doing, etc. (from the author's list of key terms). To live in harmony with the depth of this philosophy, well, for me it's an aspiration (when I remember) that could be one way to put it. To write of the day to day reality as it seems to me of the unfolding, well I am not being clear am I?

In each moment, choices, nominally right, nominally wrong.

Falling

One way or an other I keep coming back to what I was thinking when I posted in January on Vitality.

The title of this blog refers to Mumonkan Case 5 Kyogen's "Man up in a Tree"

Kyogen Osho said, "It is like a man up in a tree hanging from a branch with his mouth; his hands grasp no bough, his feet rest on no limb. Someone appears under the tree and asks him. 'What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?' If he does not answer, he fails to respond to the question. If he does answer, he will lose his life. What would you do in such a situation?"

In his commentary Katsuki Sekida explains that there is no meaning but that this means emptiness, not nihilistic emptiness, but the ancient Way. He goes on to explain 'Bodhidharma came from the West, but he came without being attached to a single purpose'.

This koan spoke to me at a time when I just could not see how to proceed. Recently for different reasons I've struggled to see how to proceed. However, what the situation seems to be showing me is my need for meaning. And I think there is some deep wisdom in all this which his beyond my ken. The answer seems to be in the falling. Acceptance whilst trying to do the 'right' thing. Sounds simple. Why then is it so difficult?

New

I sense things changing and that I am putting more energy into being in the world. I have realised for some time now that I was watching for attachments and sort of holding energy back. It's a fine balance I think. I do hope I can get forms to their 'best' and remain 'aware' of emptiness. Routing out the attachments and giving as much to life as I can.

Wise

I have just been watching the tribute to John Mortimer. Quite wonderful. He was described as not knowing right from wrong. Neil Kinnock described him as almost all love.

If we open up to not knowing, to never being sure of any view this can be scary. How do we know what to believe? We need take care that we don't simply swap one set of fantasies for other less skillful fantasies. We need workable ways to be. In Mortimer's Rumpole we have Rumpole saying that he 'is not there to believe any thing' and later asking himself and 'she who must be obeyed' who he is? before returning to his work (and thus defining himself). What can be a better tribute to workable ways to be than to be described as almost all love?

Still trying

There is a section in Zen mind beginner's mind by Shunryu Suzuki titled 'No dualism'. I think this a very elegant talk and it is in my thoughts just now; I feel far from being able to say 'Sun-faced Buddha and moon-faced Buddha' and know it to be true of how I feel. I think it an aspiration for me to be guided by. And in that guidance to also see the need to be compassionate with myself as I fall short. Not easy for me to work out what is required and what my ego wants.

At least I seem to be spacious enough to see the gap.