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!

Pheasant

Yesterday, driving through the countryside into town a pheasant strolled out of the vegetation by the roadside and straight in front of the car. I can't remember the exact thoughts and actions but do recall expecting it to take some evasive action. It did not; bumph. Finding a safe place to pull over I got out to inspect the damage, and here is the confession, to the car. The pheasant had gone through the plastic radiator grill and was stuck between the grill and the radiator, its head still moving, tongue out, poking out through the bars. I guessed it was dead and the movements just the nervous system in action. But no, as I took hold of it to pull it out it pulled back. Umm. How to get it out? No easy way and not the best place to stop. I decided to leave it and continue. Getting to my destination I look at the front of the car again. The pheasant had moved and now still trapped its legs dangled down from the front of the car.  I took hold of them and pulled the poor thing out. Aware that I did not know what state it was in and if it would start flapping about I flung it across to the side of the road. All the time aware that this was a living creature and I was not putting it first in my thoughts. I looked to see how it was. Just about alive but clearly not going to live. Just what is the right action? Wring its neck? I don't think I know how. It might also make it for all I know... umm? Ok, leave it there, by the roadside on an industrial estate. I was not into claiming it as road kill for the pot.  I offered a little blessing / mark of respect to it. Let's hope it lacked the capacity to suffer too much.

At this point I stopped writing this post to return to the industrial estate. Back to my room again now. I looked for the pheasant whilst out; flattened. Run over probably by a van. Something about the body squashed sort of adds insult to injury. Not a good day for the poor creature.

What I notice in my response to all this is that to be honest I am not too distressed about the pheasant. I am just left with some minor car damage and that feeling I get when things go unexpectedly slightly pear shaped. Life as they say is dukkha. Should I feel more (compassion) for the pheasant? Is the observation of one's response enough?

Awareness

I am feeling a lot brighter, a lot lighter. The life passing through is more agreeable, or there is more agreeableness. It's part the longer, lighter days and part connections with people. And it feels like the balance of Being and doing might become more comfortable; the next crop (see previous postings) might be soon.

Being and doing, awareness and 'who is it that does?' True Self and the various aspects of self are what I take Rev Master Mugo to be pointing to in this post on Jade Mountains. The whole question of what to do with ones life seems to me to remain which ever way one does. Life is expressing, Being is, doing unfolds. Responding to what is creatively and authentically without adding or neglecting. Sounds simple, but I rarely find it that way.

It all passes, how will it be later, how will I feel? What actually changes? Is it actually much different when I feel different? Sun faced Buddha, moon faced Buddha.

Wild Love

DC and I saw the movie 'Sex and drugs and rock and roll' about Ian Dury, last weekend. Fantastic! Dury's 'I am not here to be f***ing remembered I am here to live!' a shout to us all!
Dury did not have an 'easy' life. Rediscovering the music I bought a few tracks over the net for my MP3 player. Such energy.

Walking over the town moor the other day, I noticed a sucking sound and turned to see a whirl pool vortex sucking in air where the lake formed by snow melt water was being drained through a pipe under the path to the other side of the path. This drainage arrangement was put in a few years ago and makes the path much more usable. Anyway, I rolled a snowball and threw it into the vortex. Good shot. The sucking stopped then as the ball rolled out started again. The ball circled the vortex before being sucked in and down... Like Alice in wonderland I thought and looked to the other end of the pipe... would it come out? Pop, there it was. Were we now in wonderland, samsara transformed?... Buurr, too cold for this... enough poetic day dreaming, time to walk on, a warm home beckoned.

Just finished reading Wild Love by Gill Edwards. I enjoyed it. Some parts I found not quite in tune with my thinking/feeling but much of it is. I particularly like her exploration of the difference as she sees it between co-dependant merging v connection with Oneness and separation v individuation. Much along the lines of my own thoughts all that.

And on the subject of merging into the collective verses individuation and the path to awakening, I note the writers of Star Trek Voyager explore this with the Borg. In a repeat episode we watched recently, Seven of Nine is severed from the Borg collective and her human body starts to regenerate but she still thinks as Borg and can't bear the pain of separation and longs to be reconnected. She can only hear her own mind and longs to hear the others again. The Borg assimilate; no room for individuation, no harmony of difference in unity. This is co-dependant merging, but Seven of Nine is 'liberated' and must face the illusion of her isolation. She must take up the challenge of discovering her identity and connection to not just the Borg but to the universe. Quite a challenge that! Time passes, as it appears to, and she settles down to become to use those school report terms, a useful member of the team... Which is to say, assimilated into the American way...

Dealing with our pains and accepting what is while remaining open to the joy of life is no simple challenge. It is unconditional love for each and every aspect of our experience not a stoic knuckling down. It requires an infinite expansion of consciousness, there is always more 'work' to do to see that we are perfect as we are. No wonder it sometimes feels like Alice in Wonderland! Hit me with your rhythm stick!

Which is NOT to say party on without a care but care to and as we party on.

Samadhi

Yesterday my friend Graeme and I replaced the window and backdoor to the kitchen of his home. His partner made cake and helped a bit too. Later I picked up DC and the four of us had dinner at theirs. I really enjoyed the work and the company; purpose and connection and being in my body, my mind on the work. Removing frames from rubble walls and replacing with new needs care and a bit of strength together with skill. The dance of working with someone on a physical project like that is something I've not done for a while and it made me remember just how much is involved and how good it is to share that way. Graeme and I worked well together and we mixed in some banter and theatre too! The theatre playing in the construction of masculinities area; two middle aged middle class gay men playing with straight working class lad masks; 'ahll reet pet, well wiv got the old one oot so will be off, see ya tha mora, ah no, wa gannin tu tony's will seeya Thursda... And she was all upset coz wid left the winda oot...'

I have recently had three sessions of psychotherapy. I sort of stumbled into this after a bit of a freebie chat with my old CBT therapist and to be honest I am not sure about how much time and money to spend on it. Things have been tough lately (with relationship and work issues) and I am in a bit of an existential crisis but I can see that crisis as coming out of and giving rise to opportunity and really I feel fairly ok about me. So what issue might seem salient? Well, the thing that always comes up for me whenever I look at my psychological baggage is my relation to my past. To be specific, accepting that I was twenty four before I came out. And I have this tendency to let my inner critic beat me up about this and tell me that I must have just been 'asleep' and wasting my life. And when I see creative lively young people my inner critic beats me up saying that they are doing so much yet when I was their age I was just shut down and wasting life. And then there is the thing about feeling a bit of a misfit / being on the outside of things. That said I am often right in the middle!

So, my therapist was putting forward last time that my childhood may have lacked rough and tumble and that this led to my being isolated from the other boys. Well, I really don't think that I wanted it and that wasn't the reason for the isolation. Anyway, yesterday made me remember that throughout a lot of my teens I was involved in some quite sizeable DIY projects; plumbing, tiling, heating, woodwork, windows, electrics etc. And I learned all this fairly much on my own. I was the driving force behind a lot of projects at a young age. Ok, so I have this grief for not spending that time enjoying exploring sex with other boys of my age but I was not wasting the time. And all of those projects were in a way a continuation from the childhood years spent taking things to bits and not paying rough and tumble etc with the other boys. And I joked about this with Graeme yesterday and said something to the effect of '...and just how capable is my therapist when it comes to this sort of practical work... rough and tumble... machismo... sensitive to the needs of this sort of job etc...?' In other words, happiness, constructions of self (including masculinities), purpose and connection, past and present form a complex and varied mix and I am ok. And the pain and the suffering and the developmental path is a result of complex karma and it's important not to see things just in classical psycho therapeutic terms. Even if those terms do push a few buttons and leave me wondering... Which brings me round to other things that came out of the session not the last of which is, as DC pointed out, that I don't like incomplete gestalt! And my next session is not until the end of January!

And practice, where does all this sit with practice? No enlightenment outside of daily life. Variety is the spice of life, and I think we need it; the void desires to be and to know, to experience in a human life a full and rich aliveness. I agree with those that recommend a spiritual path that expands one's life in the dualistic realm as well as the non-dual realm. In other words take a bit of individuation with your meditation. Expand and explore as many aspects of being as seems viable, share in lots of ways. I sort of brought the conversation around to this point last night and the fact that in the West at this time we have so few areas where we come together to share deeply in open acceptance. I talked about creating sacred space and sharing in the way which is so easy in the Findhorn community and Graeme talked of his experience in circle sharings but somehow I felt it was falling on stony ground. Why is this? I think our society lacks meaningful ritual in this regard and we fear creating such space for two reasons; first because we often live defended and anaesthetised lives and the idea of going to a place of authenticity is thus a challenge and secondly because we also recognise the dangers of self indulgence, that sharing might move us not away from ego but further into it. This second fear is I think a misconception based upon a the idea that in sharing one keeps to a fixed notion of self. Yet my experience is that forming sacred space by sharing helps in moving from I to me; it helps in owning shadow and disidentification. And key to all this is what I suspect I don't write much or well of but sometimes hint at in this blog; emotion. I often talk and write 'I think...' but all the time I am feeling. I do feel that I am in touch with my feelings I don't think that I am particularly repressing them but I am also analysing. And in expressing 'where I (or in a more wholesome sense me) is at' it is my habit to analyse probably too much. Whereas, replacing windows and doors like yesterday I was fairly much just being doing; as close as I probably get to positive samadhi. Working with others I felt with not separate. Thanks Graeme.

Rainbows

It has not been an easy year for me and thus not for those who love me. But I've much to be thankful for.

I recall:

‘Grayness could not fill us with despair if our minds did not harbor the concept of different colors, scattered traces of which are not absent from the negative whole.’
(Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 377–8.)

Thanks to DC for giving me access to the language.

Flight

When I hear the lark ascend in Vaughan Williams' The lark ascending I feel a just out of reachness, like the lark can't quite get there, like we (or should I say I) can't quite get there. Where ever there is. Does the music point to that feeling of wanting to go home in the spiritual sense? Am I just confusing this with some existential feeling of being out of kilter? And in (an adult's) crying this same out of reachness, like the tears try to fill the gap. Such crying could be over any loss and not closely connected to spiritual home sickness. Yet there is I suppose, at the root of all pain, a gap between where we feel we want or need to be and where the universe appears to have placed us. A gap born of our illusion of separation, our incarnation in the physical body in the material world.

(Setting aside yet sparing a thought for those with terrible physical pain and) thinking of emotional suffering, the pain of impeded heart connection can't be so far from our spiritual home sickness. The desire for unity flavored by attachments, form desiring form. This way of taking an interest, that way of reacting to events etc. mirrored and projected in each individual's awareness as personalities interact. And in the mirroring and projections how much authenticity? How close the less adapted selves? And how close the path of adaption of each self? What is the complexity of our interactions with each other? How big the gap in each exchange? What is it that draws one into various forms of intimacy with others? How many aspects of ourselves can we connect with in an other? Such complex chemistry, each preference moving us from unconditional love to romantic attachment. Our aloneness reaching out.

Intellectualising it doesn't take away the feelings. Fly high dear lark.

Lions

I've just watched BBC4's Timeshift program about the Clyde shipyards and the men who worked there. The series has been looking at the great ocean liners and hence this program about the yards. It's the same old British industrial story; men like lions working in appalling conditions demonstrating some of the very best of human nature who were let down by under investment. There were some very moving moments in the program when determination, inventiveness, skill, comradeship and fantastic good will shone through. Most British heavy industry has gone now. No one wants to see the appalling conditions revisited but that we have not reshaped those industries into their modern equivalents forming part of a 'sustainable' future is I think, regrettable.

A thought for those who suffered in those yards.

Grieving

I was going to do the introductory retreat at Throsell this weekend but have just cancelled. This is the second time I have planned to go and then cancelled. This time it became apparent that I am at present in no fit state to do it. I am distraught. And that is no way to be at the start of a potentially fairly demanding retreat.

Why am I distraught? Can't say in public. But the big life shaping items are under pressure. And practice, is it the foundation of my copping? To be honest, it helps but it is clear to me that I am nowhere near the type for whom non-attachment and a relaxed view of life comes naturally. But then who is? To care, to really care in the widest way available to me, to try to be true to what I sense is before me, is f***ing hard. And I, like others have many attachments and when time takes things away I need to grieve. And that is painful, too painful I feel to cope with in retreat, I'd rather be in my usual surroundings with my usual degree of notional control; home. May the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas help me see the right way home, because the way has been unclear for me, let alone The Way. And I point here to one more loss; I will always let mySelf down because I am (only?) a self and that self can't at this point commit wholeheartedly to Self. At times I can't even separate out the conflicting demands of my head, heart and intuition. And I feel that I've not done well in recent years finding joy and purpose and integrating those in a playful way with practice.

But not all is maelstrom, no, a stillness is present.

Everything and Love

I want to write about everything. So I have labeled this post Form. And that is where we start; form. In outline, all forms are interconnected and thus not knowable in themselves. For example, the mug to my left on the desk came from clay and is glazed. There will be a hole where the clay was removed, ditto the glaze. The energy used in transporting and making the mug will have resulted in CO2 in the atmosphere etc. etc. And I can only see it with my vision and only then in the way that I look at it. I don't get all the details,even if I look closely at it. And the colours are not the same to me as for a bee. And I can't help but see a mug, which a bee would not see. The world that a bee or a dog knows is not the world that I know. And we as humans don't have the last word on what is, we just think we do, that's just a habit we have. Every thing is connected including our perception of things. What is, is the unknowable void, empty and folded upon its self to give rise to form and in so doing making manifest its desire to be, to know. And some unknowable aspect of this desires an amazing variety of forms. Just think how many types of grass there are, let alone all the other forms, chairs, trees etc. And then the sentient beings including human beings with our amazing minds. And at mind we see that all we have is our own experience. Sit in meditation and see thoughts and sensations come and go. But who sits? Where to focus attention, inside or out, is there a difference, who is focusing, what is the will? Thinking, thinking, just sit with open awareness. Deep inside, in the body-mind a sense of stillness embracing all, refusing not a thing. Only our thoughts judge. Being accepts and is, all there is in any moment.

Each contains the other, yin and yang, no dark without light. And everywhere is change, yang flowing to yin which gives birth to yang. Without change there would be no life. The breath would not enter and leave, the oxygen would not flow in the blood. And in meditation this is seen, the constant flow of change. And my awareness always just behind time, just behind where the universe is. I hear a noise, I think bird and picture it in the tree outside. But I have not seen this it is just imagination. And beside, the sound is gone, when did I hear it? We live in the gap between what was and what is, always just behind. The void's desire to be, present in us, we attach to things we like. Yet change tends to take them away and so we suffer. Yet deep within us the stillness remains unmoved, accepting all. At this point I could move to talk of compassion and reducing the ego's demands so as to be more free, to accept more of life and be more there for others. But it is other that I want to explore.

Our situation is a paradox; we are all connected yet separate. We can't survive alone, the mug does not exist without the hole in the ground and the CO2 and is not a mug without human culture to so define it. I am defined by my relation to other. Yet I must face my own death. The void seeks to know by coming into form and in human being we derive the existence of the void. It is my understanding though not experience that some apprehend this not just by intellect but by direct perception. But it is my direct perception that I seek unity. In love in all its complex forms I seek to be one with other. And it seems that the desire to generate more form and more unity is without end. Is this the point about which spirituality turns; samsara, nirvana, desire, acceptance, form, void, meaning and purpose, meaningless and purposeless? I am no Bodhidharma. I need meaning. And I need to be needed. And to return to love, I have with my partner of almost eighteen years achieved a sort of selfless unity. Each of us through a process of sharing, giving and taking, has woven the three cloths I have spoken of elsewhere; his (self), my (self) our relationship, all three one as all is one. Family, friends, our society, animals, desks, chairs, the air, all one. Yet perceived as joined and separate at different levels. It is the closeness, the proximity, the intimacy of the connection that we crave. And having reached high levels of intimacy with an other human being, desire for more connection arises, and so in form the desire for unity returns. At the 'lower' levels, in erotic desire the mind seeks the new, the constant chase for excitement. This not what I am writing about. There is the desire for unity in it, but the emphasis is more in the expansion of form, the desire to know more forms. But in love as apposed to lust, we see the desire for unity, to return to the void. In lust the head long chase for the abandonment to be found in the little death of orgasm. In making love the partial death of self as each flows into the other, heart to heart and only then the temporary slip in to the almost selfless abandonment of orgasm. Yet we do not die, we pull back from our connection with our lover and into our own experience of orgasm, however much we desire to unite. Then gradually we return to the world.

Is it possible for me to live in the world with an aliveness of deep connection as my experience? My aloneness healed, forms all changing but the stillness of the void present, is this the place to be? Part of me can remain at the eye of the storm, watching. But I am not playful, I am attached to things, I feel the gap between the way the universe appears and what I want. The void generates both of course. And where am I? I am not alive with deep connection, not as I write. This is generally taken to be the spiritual work, to be present and playful without attachment. How far down that road can I make it? I am not a monastic, meaning and complex love are deep in my needs, not desires, needs, it seems. And the desire expressed above for more unity is moving me to a polyamory I can see is just not practical. Here we see the juxtaposition of form's desire for unity and the incompatibility of forms. Or is there a way? And would it be in harmony with The Way? This question, which has arisen out of the unfolding of things, together with my desperate need to feel useful, and the two are not unrelated, is burning in me. I've written about vitality and meaning before and included a reference to Pan. (Please follow this link now, before returning.) But not just Pan, the post also looks at the relation of desire and compassion. I feel now that there is some deep wisdom in the need for us to be united in form; the void knowing its own oneness. Is there more than one type of spiritual experience pointed at here? Or am I just too attached, and if so to what? Love and attachment; loving someone and wanting something from the situation. How can we love and how can we be with?

The 'Red thread' koan it would seem, has come right up in front of me. Here I am having tried to go for Gold, to be like Bodhidharma, without attachment to meaning, responding to life as it comes, holding and letting go of the boughs, and this comes up; I need to be needed and I need closeness with more than one man. It might well only be my mind's projection, issues of co-dependency and the different forms of love are there but the feelings remain. We relate to each other through our feelings, by being in the body part of the body-mind. Thoughts and feelings are not separate and it is possible to get great feelings of joy by talking about ideas, but about is not the thing its self. Again I am not just talking about the erotic, in fact that's the least of it.

In passing I would add that DC and I saw 'The imaginarium of doctor parnassus' at the cinema last night. I enjoyed it. To me it plays with ideas from the mind only school of reality and the battle of good and evil. Interestingly, or so I thought, the devil doesn't want to win, he just wants to keep playing the game, what would be the point in wining, there would be no more game, no more fun for him. Where does this sit with form and void? This is complex, why must the devil take his fun at the expense of others? Is this because he represents a separatist, selfish view of being? Where is the desire for unity, the pain of separation? I've not thought too much about this. It's so unrewarding to view the world from the view point of a tormentor. Anyway, good triumphs and love flowers. It's a good movie, I was touched by parts of it. On leaving the cinema and walking to the car park DC pointed out that 'the great thing about art is how it shows up the madeness of things'. After the fantasy world of the movie, the almost pantomime of punters queuing to get into night clubs in town seemed very made.

And I think back to last week at Cluny, the joy of connection with caring and interesting people. The journey people make from head to heart as they say in the Findhorn community. And I recall the way the community seems in part to be about 'probing the field' again to use the language of the community. It can be challenging, there are some ideas that I find interesting but I also hear my alarm bell ringing; take care, not all views of reality lead to enlightenment. And it all comes back to this; rub along together, take care of your self AND each other. The pots need washed, the people fed and sheltered, in all of this love each other. And they have many ways to help people start to take off the armour of their adapted self, to move towards authenticity, self and other acceptance. The Findhorn community is complex. It is a shame that I was not in a more relaxed space, when at Cluny, my body-mind too full of emotions. I did however, find periods of joy living in community. But it is in the world that I need to find a place to be. I have always been a bit of misfit and probably never quite sure where to place my power. In the past, career wise there was a sort of path though, but now I just don't know.

I have no idea what I am going to do. But in me is a sense of still strength, my power. And I do my best to be good.

Still Hot

I am still in this hot place. It's scary. And it's be about more than just the next couple of weeks here. Wanting to escape is be about the thoughts I have brought with me not what is here. This feeling of isolation is terrible. I know it's not rooted in anything other than my thoughts, but I still feel it.

And part of me watches and knows the deep, deep connection and love, not just deep in the philosophical sense, but the direct practical every day; those who are thinking of me and love me.

I need to get out in the world and do something of use. Something I can believe in and that will help with fruitful connection.

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.

Attunement

I arrived at Cluny on Friday and took the bus to Park where I stayed B&B for the night. Saturday I returned ready for Exploring Community Life (ECL). Only three sleeps (as kids say) and it has had time to feel like a month. So many connections and so many emotions to process. But today thankfully, I 'landed' sufficiently to be in a reasonably comfortable space for my Living in Community as a Guest (LCG) attunement which took place at 2-30PM today. I attuned to three weeks of LCG post ECL and to Cluny kitchen work dept. (which is where my ELC work dept. attunement placed me). So, feeling lighter for having the 'will I stay or will I go' over with I returned to the kitchen to continue my shift.

Separating 60 eggs, the whites into a bowl large enough to have a deep ring when struck with an egg, the gong perfect to help recall mindfulness. So, 'Instructions for Zen Cook'?

I'd like to past a link to an other site so those not familiar with Dogens work would understand the reference to 'Instructions for Zen Cook' but this iMac thing is too clunky, so google it if you want.

Truth

The truth is that I've not been blogging much of late because my head has been a bit mashed. Yes it is good to put it down in words to clear the thoughts and to have it out in the public realm is a good check on feelings of authenticity. But a lot of the stuff isn't just mine to write about, others form a part (no this is not the time to be clever about oneness) and they must be respected. So have I kept a private journal of this stuff? I did a bit, but in truth I've been lost to the stuff. And separating inner voice that intuitive knowing from the twists and turns of the ego has been oh so hard. It continues but less so; and this too will pass... So, the koan reminds me that it can't be 'solved' by logic.

Last week we went to see the outdoor theatre event Beautiful journey. I really enjoyed it, very creative, very atmospheric. Set in a disused industrial area by the river, a magical world was brought to life as the audience followed the players around the yards and buildings and even to the river. I found my inner critic having a go at me for not being as creative as those involved in the production when I was in my youth. Of course it completely forgets that my creativity was in fact sizable even by its own standards should it remember just what I was doing. All stories, all stories. Just what play am I watching? DC and Paul A' did a bit of a critique afterwards walking back to the car, Bethany and I looked side ways at each other... Yeh, just what play did we each see? But we all had a good time and went back to Paul A's for tea and a bit of nosh. A late night for a 'school night'.

Tonight Bethany came to dinner with DC and I. Playing various music, some of it described as a bit 'New Age', prompted me to consider what the 'shlockiness' that DC describes is all about. I suppose that the question is about the journey from head to heart, the return to more childlike being. The danger, the shlockiness, could be the risk of turning not to playful child but indulged infant; ego not peeled away but pampered. But is it such a terrible thing to take the risk?

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?

Happy Birthday

It's my birthday today. I am forty two. It seems like yesterday it was new year and now it's June! And how did it get to be my forty second birthday so soon?! And with the feeling of the sands of time running ever faster through the glass and the realisation of the years spent asleep or feeling that 'this is not what I should be making of my life' and visions of what might be, comes anxiety. All thoughts of course and a counter call might be to seek out and empty the attachments causing the anxiety and to become fully present in the moment. A period of transition is underway that is all. But there is still the call to act, to live. The basic desire. All life a process of transition.

And having dismantled certain defenses (or so it seems) which have become redundant, become more a prison than a fortress, having let back in the life, comes life's contradictions. It's a mixed bag life. Which of course is why we build those defenses in the first place. So in some ways this birthday I am more open, relaxed and balanced than ever, in other ways I am scared, lonely, anxious, unsure which way to turn and desperate to get a move on. A move on? Where does that sit with practice? Form in emptiness I guess.

Alertness, awareness, freedom; scary stuff! And it isn't possible to have one's cake and eat it, choices have to be made. I recall 'The road not taken'. Yet I remain convinced that everyone is doing their best to square the circle of their own life at a deep level. Nothing has been or is wrong, all is well.

Sewing with care

The past few months
Depths of interconnection and sanctity
Yet isolation, spread all ways and no way
In the garden today in DC's shoes
I note a spot of green paint on them
More than ten years since we left the house where that paint was applied
Our efforts woven through each other's these seventeen years
Three fabrics we have woven in to all those others
One each and a shared
And each one shared again
And where now is the loom taking our threads
All the threads not just ours
What warp and weft
As we each look to the threads of our own life
And those of others

Meaning

It comes down to this, I must have meaning. It is the will to meaning. I acknowledge that we poor humans are deluded but I believe I am right to insist on meaning. Form in emptiness. A day without work is a day without food as they say. And I must have the company of like minded people. The second point leads to the question of intimacy of all kinds and is very complex; my needs for connection at various levels and depths. These seem to be at the root of spirituality for me; I need to be living in tune with the life force that flows though me, I must not dam this up, pervert it or deny it. I need to share, to feel the interconnectedness that we are. And we share in a space of doing. And all this with compassion not tight ego shell. To work towards being a transcending self actualiser. Is this to go with the flow, the way to follow the Way? This is the stuff of the form one feels one's life should take. What bigger question is there? The meaning of life is that which we give it. It is a huge responsibility, we hold our own salvation. Well, it seems that way today... Life throws up issues for us to deal with. Rooting through the thoughts and emotions to find the attachments, to work out what is the 'right' thing to do, even if that is just to do nothing, is not so simple. And that's probably much to do with knowing that there are many attachments that I just ain't ready to give up, and they are in conflict.

Still sitting with it

Even though challenges present themselves and I can't find answers, life provides it's own answer. The old choosing not to choose reality is enacted. Even if my monkey mind is jumping through hoops I am just sitting with it, it is as it is. I must try to remember this and not get dragged through the hoops. I see that I must try to remain the watcher if I am to make wise decisions. Some hope!

Separation

A loose strings plays no note
I feel the red thread tighten
Ah, where is the sound of my flute

Again when this came to me I pondered with some equanimity the relation between meaning, desire, vitality, compassion, non-attachment, enlightenment, what seems authentic for me, the whole koan in a way, but I've much less equanimity now. And worse, when I was happy to search for the ox and to try to see all before me as just so much not to get attached to, then there was a way to peace of mind. Oh yes, I saw the danger of attaching to emptiness but I though I'd got a balance. But I had expected trouble to come in the form of loss of some thing in my frame of meaning, not a loss of meaning. Oh, this is dangerous water, this is for the experienced practitioner. I can't accept my koan, I can't accept a no answer. I seem to have broken one set of chains only to tie myself with the tools that broke them. It is that thorny point; I am always approaching from some where. Right now it is painful, so painful.

I am no doubt mixing metaphors in a dreadful way, but that fits my confusion. I am giving myself permission to be upset.