Willow

What am I with just now? Well, I am on a week long health & safety course at work and to be honest five days is a long time to sit through that. Fortunately we are quite a creative and humorous lot. For better or worse I've injected a few loosely Buddhist ideas in.

Still can't find out if they are going to accept me going to 60%. And the longer that goes on the more I get primed to accept a choice of 100% (probably 120% or more) or 0%. So I feel the winds of change may be about to blow. Hope I've got like the willow - pliable- I seem to have settled on a course of action at some level.

Courage

Choices, choices. Some real some not even available, just fantasies. Always this question: 'is this what I should do for the best or is it just what I would like to do?' And straight away the further questions about the definition of 'for the best' and 'like'. Or to put it an other way how much of this is attachment to unhelpful or unskillful ways? And of course it is just not possible for me to know. I try to feel into the situation; ideas, emotions, sensations, and... , I keep looking, check to avoid rumination, explore, unpack, try out alternative ways of building a picture, what options, where might it go... that sort of thing. I try to keep open but contained.

How much courage have I got to really look at those attachments?

Support

Returning to the koan which inspired the title of this blog (Kyogen's "Man up in a Tree", case 5 Mumonkan) the question how to respond has of course been right in front of me this past few weeks. And starting this post about support, I recalled that picture of a tree providing support as I read the 'Holding no bough' title across the top of the page. And I recall my first post implying that I had realised that letting go was needed because one falls through life whether actively or passively, so it's no use just clinging on choosing not to chose. But I can't of course just let go, no. I am after all interdependent, all forms are empty, emptiness is form. I need support and I need to support. Giving and receiving in symbiosis such that it's all giving and all receiving. The response to life's koan being held at least in part by the supports.

The canvas of life is vast. The play of experience across the clear sky of the mind rich and complex. Even if I was able to see my true nature as clear as those great masters, would I not still need to engage with others and in the realm of form enjoy the interplay of the symbiosis of support?

There is a nice web of support of which I am part. Of course this brings up all sorts of questions about attachment but that's for an other day; to focus there at this point would be to miss the point. A larger frame than is to hand just now would be needed to hold all those issues.

It's good to be part of it.

Fun

I checked:

http://www.thinkbuddha.org/

and found the wordle.net post

I tried it for Holding no bough.
The biggest word was time.
Try it!

Play

In the past I've not been good at play. And so I've a sort of play deficit. This is coming around now and even though it causes me difficulties working out the practicalities, the implications, the blah blah, it is going to be / is getting let loose. Time to give more room to inner playful child.

Reflection

It's time to reflect. No, that's not the word. That implies looking. That's what each post might be. This recent time has... has felt inwardly turbulent. Reflective but inwardly active. So, relax, reflect but not review? Time to be patient. Breathe....

Hope

Progress today with alternative working hours. I am hopeful that a satisfactory arrangement may yet well be reached. This is so important to me.

And, a lunch time catch up with a friend showed thinking not far from my own with similar conclusions reached. That gave just a glimmer of hope for the sort of connection that can seem missing in a lot of life.

I think I must trust or hope that having set my direction the winds will be favorable and not fear an initial period in the doldrums. And 'hope' is something that I need to work with because I can all too easily see the glass as half empty and not in the way of empty as full.

I have scope to grow life in the direction of aliveness but I feel in a period of transition and I am definitely not clear about the various attachments around all this and probably need to feel into it more.