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.

This autumn

I've not been writing of late. It's not that there's been nothing to process, the koan is constantly unfolding, but there's been no urge to draw it out 'on paper'.

We've had some wonderful weather through later summer and autumn and now with the days shortening the leaves are just starting to turn. I often feel uneasy at this time of year. I feel the milder, lighter days slipping away, the low sun, longer nights, colder air... some instinctive or ancestral fear seems to get triggered... And as DC will say 'we live in a suburban, double glazed centrally heated house and both have good jobs!' But that nagging voice in me will always say 'yes, but what's around the corner...? What doom?' And it's the oncoming November gloom which somehow seems to trigger this feeling of doom; right on cue in September / October! I'm almost afraid to even acknowledge it in case it somehow makes it real. There's magical thinking for you! Of course this fear is there in varying degrees all year round but I find it modulated by the seasons and it's fear and associated anger which is at the root of much of the koan - probably for most of us. And how clear is that to see in 'Brexit'.

There's no enlightenment outside of everyday life and living with a long term partner and going to work is without doubt ample training ground along the path yet there is also a need for time and space for reflection and spiritual renewal. Each day's formal meditation is not enough to support the required level of meditation off the cushion. DC and I will take a holiday the first week in November in the lake district. This is something we used to do regularly but in recent years with time spent living away from 'home' and changing work arrangements it ceased. This year conditions are such as to make it possible and needed once more. I intend to use the time to draw inward and tune in to where I need to put my energies. I feel dissipated at present. I think that's perhaps part of the reason for not posting here of late.

Sometimes there are shards of pain so burning hot yet cold and icy revealing aspects of the space of the emotional and physical body. They pass. Anxieties and old wounds or habits shifting shape in response to present conditions. And joyous connections with life too. Thoughts and feelings, sustaining, changing, passing. There's a feeling of a loss of spiritual focus, but that may have its positives too; letting go to know more deeply given time. Perhaps it's good that the seasons have turned and come round to autumn. Whilst spring and summer are times of obvious rebirth there's a creative aspect to autumn. A balm of mists and mellow fruitfulness? In part. But more the inward turning afforded by winter. Like breathing; in and out, in, out, in, out...

I have so many books I want to read or re-read. And I'm drawn to spend more time in formal meditation and in nature and in bodywork. I know there's much that might be unfolded to reveal my experience of life's desire to be in contrast with the ego's desire to have. Yet there's a very deep tiredness and some frustration. But isn't that the case for many of us in these times? Dukkha will always manifest somehow.

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.

Beloved

Last weekend we had some friends round for dinner. A great night was had by all. They brought with them a Christmas present - we've not had the chance to meet up since before the festive period. The present is a framed photo of DC and me and I was quite moved by it. It's a photo from about maybe ten years ago and we're in the kitchen of our friends' house, DC is behind and slightly to the side of me with his arms around me. His face is just beautiful and to me says along with his whole body language just how much he loves me. I'm moved by the way he holds me in love without clinging or possessing; he's just so pleased that we are we. When I saw this photo I felt immediately blessed that we are still together after almost 24 years, and that he remains a brilliant light in my life.

New Year Celebration

DC and I spent new year in Wales with Loving Men. The group was about 90 gay men in number and the warmth and connection just lovely! We both had a wonderful time; a mixture of meeting and connecting, care and consideration, fun and laughter and exercise for body and spirit (I kept my mind reasonably quiet!) all in a great location with lovely vegetarian food. I found the time thoroughly nourishing and a great way to enter 2016! There were moving moments and the wonderful energy of connection and sharing in the depth of human experience both difficult and joyous.

Friday night

On Friday evening I went out to the cinema and saw Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van. I'd read the book years ago and was looking forward to the movie. I was not disappointed. Like many in the audience I was, at times, moved to tears. As ever, what moves is the depth of humanity, our care of and compassion towards each other; true love. Bennett found the homeless woman who lived in a van on his drive for fifteen years a troubling and difficult woman. He was not captivated with the joy of a delightful encounter. Yet there is obviously recognition of and care for another human being. Caring for those that are far from easy to be with because that is what the situation requires, because our basic humanity, our heart mind, knows that this is the only way to peace, (peace of the heart irrespective of the mind) this springs from the enlightenment that gives life meaning. The story starts in 1974 and something of the times comes across. But it is not nostalgia that moves us, although it is hard to see it unfolding in the same way, if at all in this day and age. What we are touched by I think, is the knowledge that at the root of life is a sadness. It more than dukkha it's that some part of us also knows that we long to love, to transcend our all too human failings and reside in the unconditional love that holds all experience. We sit between heaven and earth, samsara and nirvana two sides of the same One.

I returned home from the cinema to the news of events in Paris. Hundreds killed or injured by terrorists. People who like me had just gone out to enjoy their Friday evening. The number of people who's life is now filled with pain and suffering as a result of this even higher; those who love those killed or injured have also be injured. We are not separate. I'm filled with sadness.

As I write live news headlines are of 'massive attacks on Isis'. I'm torn. I feel anger at the hideous acts by Isis and I want them stopped. I see that there is no negotiating with what seem like madmen. Isis seems fueled by layer upon layer of delusion. There is no rationalising with that. We have to do something. And I'm concerned that actions springing from anger don't have clear intentions. Something needs to be done. It needs to be motivated by the heart. It is difficult. When we forget that we are all connected, when we disappear into our own experience of pain and seek salvation in the suffering of what we think of as other we lose our humanity. Yet we can't reside solely in a space of unity. We are both interconnected and separate, both One and many. We must act with care.

The merit of this post is offered up for all those affected by the events in Paris on Friday night.

Life & Death

I've just been in the garden cutting the grass and tidying up. It's still looking green and quite lush even though the flowers have now all but gone. Adjacent our garden is a communal plot and some time ago a tree was removed. Putting the clippings in the compost bin I see that the roots seem to be food for this crop of mushrooms! You can see the tree stump (flat to the grass) just left of centre in the picture.

Mushrooms are the fruiting body of a fungus. Fungus forms an important part of the decay process, helping to breakdown wood and recycle the material. This picture shows part of the death of the tree root and the life of the fungus. But whenever I see fungus I can't help but focus on the decay side more than life side of this process. For me, fungus is a process of death. I think this is something to do with the fact that we are so connected with sunlight. Growth for us is connected with light. Plants are green to assist with photosynthesis. Fungus uses the work of the plant it is consuming to get its energy.