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 

 

  

A Handbag?!

Yesterday DC and I enjoyed the glorious spring sun walking along the beach from Alnmouth to Boulmer and back. Whilst walking (and reminding ourselves and each other to enjoy the sparkling sea) we discussed thoughts raised by our recent viewing of the BBC's The Great Philosophers (a history of western philosophers in 15 parts). We've not been watching in order but rather selecting episodes which look appealing. We will get round to watching them all I'm sure. The series dates from 1987 and is quite wonderful in its no nonsense, no frills straightforward serious approach. Just two erudite people sitting on a sofa illuminating at a reasonably high level the writings of some of the finest minds. No fancy camera shots, no trips around the globe, no pandering to short attention spans and competing for an audience. Much of our discussion was to reflect that one way or another we're all dancing around the same handbag of the empiricism v idealism conundrum, this ultimately leading through questions of causality towards the question of free will. But we decided to stop short of that question for we had quite done the rounds of something which had made it already a largely irrelevant question. I'd approached the ideas from a Buddhist perspective; interdependent origination which to me, through emptiness (śūnyatā) takes the handbag away.

We stopped at Boulmer and drank tea from a flask and enjoyed my mother's home made cake, which was lovely. That she and my dad are still despite their frailty able to make cake and that we all share so much love despite the inevitable frustrations of life is a constant source of amazement to me.

In the evening we watched the film Pride about the group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM). It's a feel-good movie as opposed to a detailed documentary but I think the take home message is not weakened by that - connection, community, acceptance, care and compassion are what give life joy. And as I write this a phrase which is a favourite of DC's comes to mind - "distinctness without domination, with the distinct participating in each other" by Theodor W. Adorno. For my own part Adorno's “Greyness could not fill us with despair if our minds did not harbour the concept of different colours, scattered traces of which are not absent from the negative whole” reminds me that all my fears and frustrations must surely stem from the beauty of the possible. I should add at this point that I've not read the original works of any of these great thinkers and I'm grateful to those that both have and have produced works that I might appreciate. The film Pride covers the interaction of the LGBT and mining communities, a coming out story and the emergence of the AIDS epidemic. There's a moment when the fictional character Joe 'Bromley' is taken by the hand and kissed in a night club. The scene marks his initiation, is late in the whole story of his involvement with LGSM and is suffused with warmth and the ripening of his coming out. It is sharply contrasted by later scenes of his parents hostile response and the victimisation and queer bashing of other characters. But eventually we see Joe leave the parental home and thus take another step to come home to himself. The sound track to the film is a rich and joyous one and very much in harmony with my own dance inclinations. For me emptiness / śūnyatā doesn't take away our individuality it invites us to truly expand into it. It's an enormous ask - to truly respond with openness to each moment, not to shrink back in greed or fear from what is being asked but to be the living embodiment of the highest potential available to each of us. This is our humanity, our compassion, although it comes with clouds of confusion and fear and is inevitably way bigger than we can grasp or fully meet. To truly live is to dance this koan. It isn't enough to only read philosophy, or think about it in the abstract. Sooner or later we will be faced with the 'chopping wood and carrying water' of our everyday lives. But can we JUST chop the wood and carry the water - FULLY in response to that enormous ask? Can we live each apparent choice of our everyday lives in each arising moment as the bright colours of the distinct dancing with each other in mutual co-operation, support and enjoyment? In our everyday lives we are described by neither empiricism nor idealism, we are suspended between heaven and earth. We must not recoil like Lady Bracknell in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest exclaiming 'A handbag?!' for we are all in and dancing around the handbags of delusion. Much easier said than done. And even then always with our own little grab bag of karma...

Reflections on ECC New Year retreat

 DC and I spent last week in the lake district on an Edward Carpenter Community new year retreat. I took the following photo just after arriving.

Looking up Wastdale towards Wastdale Head / Great Gable.

This is the 'classic' view and fortunately the air and hence the lake surface was still, giving rise to a mirror where they met. Even if the water had been rippling and thus the reflection not present this would have been a striking view, with the mirror it is more so. The clarity of the reflection was so precise yet still preserving the wateriness. It wasn't until reviewing the picture that I noticed the stick in the bottom righthand corner. Zoom in and look at this. It has a majesty of its own.

Seeing this scene I immediately saw the parallel reflections - the mountain in the water and both in my mind. Many Zen koans point to this. For a second I mused on this before realising it didn't need any words.

Later in the week the moon was full and delightful in a clear blue evening sky. Viewed directly it seemed to occupy far more of the visual field than the tiny dot which appears in the following photo.

 

The moon is the small white dot fairly much in the centre of the picture. Almost insignificant in this picture, it assumed far more majesty when viewed with the naked eye. Again, I mused briefly on the moon's appearance in Zen koans. And recalling the mirror of the above picture I remembered Chiyono’s Bucket koan. This koan tells of a nun's enlightenment when the bottom fell out of the bucked in which she was carrying water. Her poem is translated thus:

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.

I felt no need to dwell on these observations more and doubtless took myself back to the fireside for a warm. It was a cold week and the log fire was a very welcome companion!

The week was spent in the company of a lovely bunch of gay men and the heart energy was warm and nourishing. As ever living in community we're all there making mirrors for each other should we have the eyes to see ourselves in the reflection.

New year's eve we made a bonfire and celebrated the turn of the year with fireworks. After a bit the smoke from the fire seemed more troubling to me than the benefit of the warmth and I returned to the warmth of the fireside which benefited from a chimney. I took the following picture as I looked back towards the bonfire.

I find there's a magical quality to this picture and the word crucible comes to mind. It's so playful. An alchemy of love.

The week stitched together this and that with heart connection and was permeated with a gentle love.

It was nice that new year's eve was mid week as this let the week have a larger shape than had there been less symmetry.

Light filled the week in many regards.

One evening the sun cast a marvellous red glow upon the fellside in a hue resonant with that often pictured on Uluru / Ayers rock.

I overheard a snippet of conversation about the sacred nature of Ayers rock.

The English lake district is full of majesty. Mountains often feature in Zen with the streams that flow down them as the Buddha's tongue. The sound of water in nature reminding us that we see with more than our eyes.

There were long walks and short walks, high walks and low walks.

The wabi-sabi of this hut caught my attention. Looking at it now it seems to be sitting calmly in the tides of time as the sky sails by. And it was regarded with gentle affection by one of my walking companions who pointed it out to me as he led us onward. We nestled in the landscape full of our own reflections.

Later in that walk there was soft deep muddy ground with no obvious firm footing but we managed to traverse it without drama. I spied no lotus plants but it was an earthy reminder of the elements as had been the occasional day with icy winds and the amelioration of the fireside. I'd looked upon those of our group who seemed to be almost frolicking in the frigid water of the lake in their lunchtime swim with a sense of the exhilaration they would encounter and a sense of my own mortality! Ash does not return to firewood although we are both elements and the space that holds them. Yeah, yeah, whatever, says the little hut as I regard it in the picture now.

Friday evening brough the soiree and such talent! My 'turn' was later in the show and having watched so much enjoyable joy filled creativity I wondered how my opening to Shakespeare's Richard III, 'Now is the winter of our discontent...' would go down. In the end it was fine. At my last ECC event I'd 'done' Hamlet's 'To be or not to be...' Another 'heavy' one. I did consider Jaques 'All the world's a stage...' from Shakespeare's As you like it. But I'd done that for other groups and fancied trying something different.

Saturday brought our completion heart circle and I shared that I agreed with what one of the other men had said on a previous evening - living this way WAS normal - it's the world that's regarded as 'normal' that's 'shit'. The natural state of the human condition is one of heart connection, care, compassion and co-operation NOT dog eat dog.

Retreat from the world to come home to ourselves is the start of the voyage to the world. Through the reflections of our mind we land in the ocean of our heart. Yeah, yeah, whatever, says the little hut...

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.

Koan

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

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

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

Three Thousand Years of Longing

Last week with DC away in London I watched the movie Three Thousand Years of Longing and this week we watched it together. I enjoyed it the second time as much as the first. It's visually sumptuous and the tale doesn't tire with telling. There's a line in the dialogue where the question is asked is love real or just a madness? The love in question being romantic. And in a turn more sophisticated than is usual in most movies, the point is also made that love brings out of our selves that which we hitherto had not seen or been able to express. The themes of truth, beauty, freedom and love run through the movie and I've found my self contemplating them in the context of the three poisons - delusion / ignorance, greed / lust and hate / aversion / anger described in Buddhism. Further, I wonder how we are to grow in the way or in any other way for that matter, pointed to by this bringing out of ourselves that which was previously unseen. Yes, as life challenges us and / or we experience that which brings delight, interest and captivates us hitherto aspects of possibility lying dormant awake. In Buddhism the diminishing of the cycle of the three poisons to be replaced with a more capacious acceptance shifts experience. The euphoria or intoxication of 'in love' fades and reveals a deep connected relationship or little but projection. Always there is the ungraspable nature of truth hinted at by everyday realities. Sumptuous scenes displayed regularly throughout Three Thousand Years of Longing like tableau evoke richness in the broadest sense and as DC pointed out might draw comments regarding orientalism. Their effect through this richness is to generate the promise of greater knowing and to bridge between the mundane and the magical. Magic is central to this movie but as is fitting to a tale about narratives it is a vehicle for exploration of our condition as much as it is employed for our amusement. Amusement, often thought of as trivial distraction to while away time of course usually does reveal our condition.

Drawing back from this I sense a heady mix sitting on top of the anxieties provoked by dealing with our everyday problems of a leaking roof and bringing our house up to scratch, the backdrop of climate change urgency and geopolitics. We are fortunate in having reasonable financial resource and living in a part of the world not caught up in immediate environmental disaster or warfare but having grown up with the constant shortage of money it is difficult to ever feel that I've escaped the risk of catastrophic economic ruin and the knowledge that micro and macro environmental disaster is unfolding in the world does add a tension and sense of running out of time. Time, were it to run out would presumably put an end to all experience and perhaps give Hamlet his sleep of no more. He of course wonders is it only our natural cravings and attachments to favourable experience, our very life force as exemplified in the Red Thread koan that keeps us facing life's vicissitudes or is it that we suspect that time and bad experience are possibly without end. It's a valid question for much anxiety is underpinned by the fear of not just loss but everlasting agony. That some part of us didn't reach its flowering in any time seems to remain as an everlasting reality beyond the end of time as much as any reality in any time remains beyond time. We are in this sense caught in our temporal nature. Whether any enlightenment can bridge the realms of time and timeless has been a quest of our creation narratives. These too are alluded to in Three Thousand Years of Longing. It's a tale about narratives. Returning to considerations of time I see that whereas in the first half of life there's a sense of there being plenty of it ahead, in the second there's a sense of a wisdom in consolidation (as opposed to fossilisation). It is perhaps the fear of unravelling which I find alarming in these times I think.

Good Luck To You Leo Grand

 DC and I have just been to see Good Luck To You Leo Grand at the Tyneside cinema. (I love the Tyneside cinema it's a great independent cinema and so much nicer than the multiplex chains.) We both enjoyed the movie and commented to each other on the humanity and genuine care depicted whilst at the same time staying clear of sentimentality. (Follow the link above to get the plot.)

What kept coming to me throughout the movie was the word tissue and an image of a sheet of gently forming and disappearing tissue paper sort of between us the viewer and the body of the actor, not directly between but to the side and within the movie. It's not so much that the various selves, persona etc. are a tissue of lies but rather that the fabric of our selves is fabricated and more mesh than solid. This is a movie put together I think by someone who knows their transpersonal psychology and clearly the character behind Leo knows his. We have layers here and we pass through them - Leo Grand, Connor, McCormack, Nancy Stokes, Susan Robinson, Emma Thompson. The vehicle taking us through is the depiction of Susan's fantasies and the crossing of boundaries as she looses sight of the professional relationship in which Leo exists and imagines extending into the 'real' life of Connor. Here we start to see the fuzziness of 'real' and that tissue paper forms and disappears in my mind. Overlaid in this I consider their conversation about sex work and the question set by Nancy to her religious education students asking if sex work should be legalised. Like the periods of history when acting was regarded to some degree as immoral we see that the question might be more usefully framed as to what degree can sex work or any other work keep Leo separate from Connor and Nancy separate from Susan? As ever the interesting thing about human sexuality is its complexity and ability to reveal. The revelation might be as small as the details of a fantasy or as enormous as the realms of existence. If ever an aspect of humanity might bridge the formless and the formed and be captured by a name that name is sex. In this it is essentially spiritual. Connor is towards the sacred intimate end of the sex work spectrum. By the end of their sessions together Susan is substantially more free to wander playfully in the garden of her existence and we are touched by the honesty of her and Connor seeing, respecting and caring for each other without attachment.

We need a self solid enough to see its fluidity, fluid enough to be in the moment without being washed away. Well, something like that... some pithy epithet that captures the sage like wisdom needed to enjoy what is to be enjoyed in the challenge of a human life... 'There is no test..' says Leo to Nancy whilst trying to relax her '...only a dance'. Of course there's no test but we are tested. Life is not without challenges. What comes back again to me in contemplation of all this is perhaps summed up by the meditative question 'who sits?'

Leo is good looking and has a gym toned body. At the end of the movie Susan admires her aged form - it's a nice touch and thinking about it now I can imagine a different version of the movie with a less attractive Leo... and I seem to recall that sort of territory (as well as a woman searching for her first orgasm) is rather beautifully explored the movie Shortbus which I think I'll watch again...

Forty Years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indecent

DC and I recently saw the play Indecent at The Menier Chocolate Factory. It's a play about the controversial play God of Vengeance. There's a lot going on in this play about a play and I found it very moving. I've neither read nor seen God of Vengeance and I know nothing about Yiddish culture. Further, Indecent takes us on a journey from the first readings and shows of God of Vengeance in 1907 through to the author, Sholem Asch leaving America in 1953 (he was subject to accusations of 'un-American activities') and shows both something of the Obscenity trial of the Broadway version of God of Vengeance and takes care to remind us of the Holocaust. Indeed, the play opens with a reference to those sent to their deaths (although the reference wasn't clear to me until it returns towards the end of the play in an action reminding us of those deaths) during the Holocaust. God of Vengeance takes on the hypocrisy of societies and is brave enough to say that Jews are no different to those of other religions in that they too have those who will profit from selling religion, are hypocrites etc. it depicts a man running a brothel trying to bring up his daughter piously and it shows that daughter in lesbian love. So it's not too surprising that the judge and jury in the Obscenity trial and subsequent arbiters of moral values have been outraged - all too often 'family values' are anything but. Indecent is a play held together by the character Lemml - a tailor and stage manager for productions of God of Vengeance. Right from the start we see that he sees the play as moral and he is deeply touched by the humanity and meaning in it. As I've said, there's a lot going on in Indecent and I was moved by it. And that's what I want to write about. Lemml is so moved by the play that he sees its importance and wants others to see what he's seen. This too I think is what we see in Indecent. We see that beyond the storeys we all tell ourselves, that societies tell themselves, that make and steal ourselves, beyond and yet not separate from ourselves we share a humanity and it is precious, vulnerable and powerful. Through all the complexities of Indecent a spirituality came over for me and at one point when Lemml is illuminating this humanity, this spirituality he looks out and for a time I was eye to eye with him seeing each other. I notice that I'm being careful in this post - there are so many pitfalls here - misinterpretation of both plays, failing to understand some aspect of Yiddish or wider Jewish culture and not taking sufficient time to consider the persecution and the holocaust. And I've done a little reading up about Sholem Asch and as I understand it he seemed to be pointing to a common ground for us all whatever our backgrounds. Somehow, for me this came across in Indecent - that what is important is that we see and care for each other. And for me at least what was illuminated was that aspect of ourselves known by many names and perhaps well described as 'our true self'... 'the self who knows'... In that eye to eye contact with Lemml where each sees the other and is seen seeing... Where like paper not refusing ink no matter the marks made... Where the particulars of our dramas recede and our humanity holds all in compassion... Here need we add explanations, attempts at capturing in words the spirituality of humanity?

What Do I Really Believe?

My spiritual 'position' is I suppose basically that of the perennial philosophy. I think that if there's any 'truth' to be found in a religion then it will likely be a 'truth' shared by other religions with only the way of pointing to that which cannot ever be fully described being different between religions. Beyond that I suspect it's myth making. Myth has a place, what place is another discussion. That everything is connected and that we cannot know the ground of being is, I think so clear as not to warrant further discussion. Zen Buddhism has been for me, the most clear and encompassing religion (if it is right to call it that) upon which to ground my 'spiritual' understanding. In practice I have found that some western psychology and a bit of what might arguably be termed 'new age' practices such as ecstatic dance, heart circles, conscious touch etc. have given me much and (for me) brought Zen to life. The Buddha taught the four noble truths and I think there is obvious wisdom there. One question might be just how to view desire... most of us are not going to expunge desire, we might tame it a bit and if we're wise we might even get to the stage where we see that without it life would loose meaning, but at some stage life is going to throw us a curved ball and we'll find our self wanting maybe even needing something which life isn't providing. It is this which can provide an insight to our edge and to our limits I think. I refer to an axis from mild craving through the impulse to thrive and express our creativity, our joy, our living life and to our deepest needs for physical, mental and emotional security. I don't believe in a 'sky god pulling the strings'. To me God is The Source, The Unborn, the ground of all being which is each and every-thing and is no-thing. Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form. I'm given to seeing this pessimistically and focusing on impermanence and how that threatens aspects of life which are precious and I couldn't easily let go of but of course it is also the very source of all life - pregnant with possibility and giving birth to each and every moment. The question is I think, how do we see this ground? Is it divine, is it consciousness, are there 'layers' of reality spanning the world we experience; the forms and the formless? In that realm (where surely the universe is so much more than each of us can ever directly experience, our experience only being a part of the whole) is there intrinsic meaning, do 'laws of karma' form and shape, is there a deeper reality of our nature beyond the rational material world of the every day? I note that it's not even easy to frame the question. Faith? A tricky word, it seems to imply a belief in 'something', something unprovable. My own experience of the reality of being isn't really like that. Sometimes people relate all this to the question of what comes after death. When the person dissolves - the body returning to the earth and not restoring itself in the living process, the flow of the life of the biosphere making other use of the material, when the mind - ah, yes - the mind... what of the mind? I suppose personality dissolves, we clearly live on in some sense in others and in the ongoing effects of our actions in life, but our human personality dissolves. Actually I think of it that personality, like the body is a flux in life and then the flux dissipates. But what of the mind? What is mind? The word 'mind' is used to describe different aspects of our interior - thoughts and feelings are perceived in our mind, we think (or sometimes just ruminate) in our mind, we talk of 'awareness' and 'consciousness' - in a way these are ideas in our mind, the idea of 'mind' is arguably in our mind, etc. To me there's no fully grasping with rational thought and explanation the relationship between the ground of being and our mind- we can't ever know as we only have our (limited) experience. Experience, in a way by definition, is limited - formed, changing and not eternal. Ah - eternity - what are we to make of that?! Is this not another idea? And so we find ourselves - here! Wherever that is. Who is it who is where? We are conditioned beings - we emerge out of conditions, are conditions, experience conditions and spend quite a bit of our time attempting to control conditions. Does any of this help us understand the ground of our being? Perhaps not. As a glass is not wet by the water it holds, that which experiences is not 'wet' by the experience. Any notion or experience of that which experiences is an experience and yet somehow I do have this sense of these two aspects of life- a formless ground which is somehow holding and at the same time is everything and (experience of) forms. Together these two aspects which are not separate are everything (including myself) in my purview. And there is (if not obviously at least somehow known) a sense that I am an aspect of something much larger than this personal self. Well, sometimes it is that way. Mostly life feels full of separate things and people. And sometimes there is just loving DC and feeling his love for me.

DC and I have been together for almost 30 years. He is the best thing that ever happened to me. We talked on the beach at the weekend in various ways about the subject raised in the paragraph above and what I noticed was that although the words struggled to capture what we were both trying express and in some way feel into our own position with, we were nonetheless understanding and on the same page. Seeing, being seen, caring and being cared about (and for) - heart connection. And there is this with friends too. It is as much the ground as anything else I think. It is difficult when in distress to keep our centre. In such times connection with those who love us is invaluable. In this holding each other there is a stillness and a peace. And whilst my rational mind can question the 'reality' of this I've experienced it at times so as to see the ground of our being as an unconditional love. Other times this sense isn't so clear.

I suppose the intention in writing this post was to explore what seems true to me now about the ground of our being. Writing I'm finding that I'm not clearly feeling into this. I'm recovering from Covid and there have been other stresses. I've deliberately stopped formal meditation (zazen) - I'm sure I'll return to it but for now looking inward doesn't seem helpful and meditation off the cushion with rest and being gentle with myself are more appropriate. I'm hoping to get a couple of weeks retreat at the end of this month. Time to decompress and perhaps reconsider - am I holding on to something I call 'spiritual' out of fear? Am I adding ideas to what is?

When we let the dust settle

Some week ago I had a few notes or maybe even a phrase of music in mind, I can't recall how or why it came to me but I tried to get enough of something, some lyrics or a few more notes that might help me recall what it was. I tried Googling a few potential lyrics - nope, couldn't find it. I tried Googling sax solos  - nope, couldn't find it. Then last week by chance I heard it on the radio - Hazel O'Connor - Will You. Now, for years I think I may have mis-heard the lyrics, hearing 'Or will you just politely say goodnight' as will you adjust the light beam. Which may or may not in the past have resulted in my missing the scene described by the lyrics. However, I doubt anyone could really miss the meaning in the music. Both the voice and the sax sing it out but of course in the sax it's absolutely out there. And it's in Vaughan Williams -The Lark Ascending in a more Apollonian, spiritual form. In Will You it's in its passionate Dionysian form. Yearning. Both manifestations, one the longing to return home out of form back to the source the other to be so one with experience as to totally merge with form(s) are I think at the heart of the human spiritual journey. We are suspended between heaven and earth. Each moment (of experience) comes into being with us, is us and we feel separate and want not to feel so. Somehow we know... Know what? That we come out of the garden (to have experience) and whereas that sax in Will You paints that yearning as for experience, and the lyrics describe the tipping point where a relationship between two people could develop into romantic / erotic love,  The Lark Ascending points to returning. Joni Mitchell pulls all sides nicely together in We Are Stardust. And I read in today's Jade Mountains post a poem pointing to the Nothing that is. Which seems to me to be on the same page as the music above when you let the dust settle. (That's to say settle so as to not obscure rather than gather.)

So I was musing about the sax in Will You today as DC and I were out and about and started talking to him about it. We quickly came to the same place about yearning with DC noting that the saxophone has a distinctive passionate sound that doesn't easily blend in. I said I like that about it and we both agreed much the same could be said about me. Of course I like to see that in a creative and colourful way rather than its flip side which is less appealing. It's all very well to each be the forms through which the mirror of awareness reflects but it's less appealing to be be the dust that can gather (and thus obscure). I love the storey of Huineng and the illustration of the roles of practice and understanding in his addition to the stanza by Shenxiu. It came to me writing this post pulling the music, the emotions and thoughts together and then adding in the Jade Mountains post.

God's Own Country

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

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

The Year Turns

I find this an odd time of year; the days are short here in Northeast England, it's between Christmas and New Year, many but not all have stopped working for a week or perhaps two, time is spent with friends and family or perhaps alone... there's both a feeling that this is a time of rest and a feeling that an effort is made to connect and have fun. Whilst there is rest, connection, warmth and love there is also an inbuilt expectation of some kind of fantastic, best there could ever be time of goodness knows what; a mythical Christmas. There's a kind of inbuilt failure in this if one should fall for it. And the commercialism supercharges all this. I take a low key, laid back approach to it and enjoy a time of peace, rest, connection and warmth. Memories of Christmas past come and go. There are walks in nature, time with people I care about, good food, time to reflect and time to feel.

Yesterday evening whilst looking up recipes and cooking times on the internet I had Nina Simone playing on Spotify. A number of songs amongst them 'Ne me quitte pas', brought me to tears. Her voice has the power to embody the deep sadness at the very heart of human life. A voice that seems to walk the tightrope between despair and a joy born of the love of life, the very force of life, it takes me across the precipice of misadventure (perhaps) as adventure, life as journey; an errotic flowering in an ocean of heaven only knows what... Listening to Nina Simone I recall the first time I heard her and liked the song, it was 'My baby just cares for me'. It was in the late 1980's and I was in a pub with a friend. I was still waiting to 'grow out of' my same sex desires and had probably shut down in ways that I still don't fully recall. I didn't know it but I was falling love with this friend and whilst I knew I found him interesting I wouldn't realise that I loved him until he told me (not on the night that song played) that he didn't want to ever spend any more time with me. He wouldn't say why but only that I was 'in a bad way'. That was painful; more or less all at once I realised how much he meant to me, that he didn't think much of me, that I wasn't just turned on by other guys but that I wanted them emotionally too (I'd kind of understood that before since the boys I fancied most at school were the ones who I could imagine connecting with), that yes I probably was in a bad way and that this person who I now realised that I loved (although I don't recall using the word love) didn't actually exist. He didn't exist because the person I thought he was wouldn't be so cruel. Those tears Nina's singing provoked contained her pain, parts of the pains which I've experienced including that unrequited love described above and of course the sadness that comes with life's flowering in an ocean of heaven knows what... that we are at once and at all time interconnected and separate... Just now I'm reading Straight Jacket by Matthew Todd a book about the way LGBT people are adversely affected by being at the margins of society. I'm reading this to see if it's suitable to send to a young gay man I know who will soon go off to university. Because I'm reading this and because Nina Simone is connected in my memory with my struggle to make sense of being gay those tears had that struggle as a bit of a focus but it's the journey across that precipice; life's journey that's the light brought to focus. This is what moves us, the enormity of our, of life's potential and limitations.

The thing I enjoy about this time of year is that I do have time to feel. It's not only at this time of year that I can do this, but the time away from work at midwinter when work lives sort of slow for many facilitates the chance for deeper connection with feeling and being. The feelings are as ever, at times complex  and at others apparently simple and more and more there is the sense of the space that holds them. Spiritual life for me is about awareness. The mirror is without a stand and has nowhere for dust to land yet it still needs to be wiped clean. And it takes a healthy self to forget the self. This brings me to constructions of masculinity. I've seen straight men struggle with that, from machismo to men who seem wet and without direction and I've seen gay men struggle with it. Gay men struggle with it both in relation to straight men and other gay men. What is needed of course is just to respond to life from the heart with the power that is needed, without too much attachment to the outcome but with the care that the situation needs. This requires a lot of awareness and a willingness to act. The two are of course related. Women too have to negotiate constructions of self but as a gay man my energies are naturally directed in terms of masculinities. We often create our selfhood through our work or in our sense of alienation from it. At this time of year if we take a step back from our employment and take time to feel and be then there is the opportunity to consider our life's work as we move into the next year. What are we all about? I feel fortunate in that I've had opportunity in life to explore this question and continue to unfold it. My hope for the young man I'm considering sending the above book to is that he lives a life with balance and flair; that there is depth, understanding, peace, joy and compassion and that he gets these qualities without too much pain yet is creative, engaged and growing. And that's probably what most of us want for ourselves and those we love.

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.

Heart

I've been rather busy of late, which is good, and although I've been visited a few times by the blog writing muse I've been too tired to sit down and pull a post together. However, last night DC and I went with two friends to see the movie Demolition and I was so moved I felt I must write a short post. I found this a really moving tale of love and the search for authentic connection in life. What really came across for me is the shear enormity of the human heart and its capacity to expand in the face of the vastness of life's challenge. And what is beautifully portrayed in this movie is the way our connections and loves like life are so complex and yet so simple, the way there's a real warmth in the acceptance of what is and letting go our fantasies of a 'perfect' self, a perfect life. However painful, life is its own perfection whether we like it or not. This is the message that comes out of this at times bizarre tale.

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.

Then and Now

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

Fireworks

DC and I attended an impressive fireworks display on Saturday then had dinner with friends. The display is paid for each year from the previous year's donations. I recalled contributing last year as I dropped my money in to the collection bucket. This for me generates a great sense of community; here we are, this crowd of people collectively contributing and collectively enjoying the fruits. Great stuff.  As the winter starts to set in bonfire night is as a much a festival of light in the short dark days as it is a reminder of gunpowder, treason and plot and DC noted that Diwali would start on Sunday. I enjoyed the fireworks yet noticed too some sadness; a similar feeling to the one generated by new year's eve. It's the empty celebration. This is not the pregnant emptiness of our true nature but the hollow emptiness of jaded form. Yes it's fun to see the display and be in a crowd of cheerful people yet somehow the very scale of the display and impersonal nature of the crowd left me feeling remote. The streamers, starbursts and showers of lights formed by the fireworks seemed to distance me from the excitement they are supposed to create. It's a trait in me to slip easily in to this sort of melancholy and I observed the slip and shifted my attention but not before I recalled that feeling in childhood. I turned to DC so as to feel our closeness and not focus on the fact of aloneness; the eternal paradox of interconnection and separation. More rockets flew upwards some with whistles. Great explosions of stars formed a carapace of smoke which gave greater dramatic effect to subsequent multi coloured explosions by reflecting their light; a slowly shifting and fading backdrop glowing with the shifting play of light and dark. The huge bonfire a conflagration of leaping flames lay off to the side sending sparks off into the night sky. 'Heretics be warned' said DC. 'Mm' I said. The noise of the blasts grew and could be felt as a shock wave in the torso. I looked at the smoke and thought of those who have suffered in war. Beyond the smoke and any cloud the firmament remained.


The display over the crowd dispersed filling the streets. A queue had formed at the chip shop and others made their way through the supermarket. DC and I hurried back to our friend's house to get dinner going and meet up with others who would have been in the crowd watching the display. There was a sense of people moving towards their food.

It's taken me a couple of days to get round to writing this post and the ideas I had on Saturday for it have faded. Today I visited someone in hospital. His company has done some work for me and we have got on well in the short time we've spent together. I knew what this visit could be about before I arrived at his bed side to hear him tell me that he had been given twelve months to live. He only received the news a few days ago and it is still 'sinking in'. Our lives are a strange mixture and very fragile. Yet as the fireworks end and the embers of the fire cool beyond the clouds of our delusion the firmament remains; not as a solid carapace above us but as the unborn.

The merit of this post is for Bill and those who love him.

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.