Sangha Contributions Archive
Contributions from our sangha from previous months and years are kept here.

January 2025
January’s Womb
by Morag Ruffell
The dark, quiet, January earth
Holds me in her embrace
Gathering my body silently home
I am held
I am nurtured
I am safe
Rocked by the wind
Gently peppering my skin
Birdsong dappling the sky
Like sweet jewels of fresh rain
A swathe of muted colours confide
Pregnant with new life
I am cradled in the thick of it
With each breath I am born again

December 2024
Snowy Night
Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.
Mary Oliver
Contributed by Morag

November 2024
The Most Important Thing
I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain, has made the soil richer.
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed
perfectionism,
any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly
sky. Watch now as I burst into blossom.
Julia Fehrenbacher
Contributed by Morag

October 2024

September 2024
Anatta (not-self) and social inclusion
Identities seem crucially important to us, at times they seem to be at the very essence of our being, the last thing we are willing to give up, or indeed not give up, even when our own lives are at stake. The sense of self identity can be so seemingly solid, essential, and visceral at times.
So crucially, what is the relationship between the Buddha’s notion of anatta (not-self) and our social identities and how does this relate to social inclusion? I would like to offer a perspective on this question largely inspired by the Early Buddhism of the Pali Canon, knowing and recognising and appreciating that there are also many other dharma perspectives on this within later traditions.
Anatta (not-self) is one of the Three Characteristics along with impermanence (anicca), and suffering (dukkha) 1. These are fundamental teachings within the Buddhadharma. Of the three the teachings on not-self seem to be the most difficult to understand for we all have, perhaps on a daily basis, the experience of change and of suffering to some degree. The teaching on not-self however seems not so readily apparent. Indeed in individualistic cultures, which tend to emphasise the sense of self, the teaching may in many ways conflict with the dominant world view and meet with much resistance. This conflict has also been expressed among dharma practitioners of marginalised groups who are engaged with the on-going daily struggles of recognition and inclusion.
Now of course we need a sense of self to navigate and to function in the world. And a vast psychological literature testifies that we need a healthy and viable sense of self. This sense of self includes our given and constructed social identities and this may include social identities that are in some way dismissed, marginalised, discounted, wounded or oppressed. As is apparent on a daily basis much social discord and suffering focuses around identities related to race, ethnicity and gender.
Firstly and perhaps most importantly is the confusion or misunderstanding around the notion of anatta itself. Now anatta has often been mistranslated as “no self” or “non-self” with confusing consequences for many people. A more accurate translation, according to the scholars, is not-self 2.
But what is meant by not-self? Nowhere in the discourses (suttas) of the Buddha does the Buddha say there is no self. It seems he had plenty of opportunities to do so. In the second discourse the Buddha gave, the Anattalakana sutta, the Buddha points out that our bodily form, feelings, perceptions, mental volitions and consciousness are not worthy to be regarded as self, but significantly he does not conclude that there is no self. There is too the much quoted account of Vachagotta the Wanderer. When asked by Vachagotta if there is a self the Buddha remains silent. Vachagotta then explicitly asks if there is no self and again the Buddha remains silent. Later Ananda asks for an explanation as to why the Buddha remained silent and is told that if he were to answer either way Vachagotta would cling to extreme and unhelpful views and be further confused.3 The Buddha here simply declines from taking a position on any view of self or no-self, seeing them as unhelpful on the path towards freedom.
It’s surprising what isn’t in the suttas about self. Nowhere does the Buddha talk about the self as an illusion, something to get rid of, something to transcend, or a small relative self as compared to a large/ big or ultimate self. His approach was much more pragmatic and practice-based rather than philosophical.
In line with the view that all the teachings are practices, the Buddha consistently presents anatta as a practice. The Buddha describes anatta as a perception, that is, a way of looking, a lens, or a framework for a particular type of practise rather than a belief that one has to accept or argue for or get ones head around. A good example of such a practise is found in the Girimananda Sutta where the Buddha says:
And what is the perception of not-self?….Here a practitioner, having gone to the forest, to the foot of a tree, or to an empty building sits down and discerns thus: “The eye is not-self, forms are not self, the ear and sounds, the nose and aromas, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile sensations, the mind and things cognisable by the mind are not-self” Thus one remains focused on not-selfness with regard to the six inner and outer bases. This is called the perception of not-self” AN10:60
Another practice frequently found in the suttas is to view all of the five aggregates; form, feeling, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness as “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not myself”. 4
So anatta is more a matter of practice than a matter of belief. After many years of trying to intellectually understand anatta, a turning point in my own practice was the realisation that what the Budhha was pointing to here was a practice, the practice of not-selfing.
A contemporary anatta practice, developed by the late teacher Rob Burbea that can significantly move us in the direction of a lighter sense of self is the practise of frequently noticing the visceral felt sense of self in any moment along a spectrum or continuum 5. At one end of the continuum we may notice that at times our felt sense of self has the qualities of solidity, heaviness, and separation. This is accompanied with the many forms of grasping and aversion, over-judgemental narratives, obsessive self-referencing and othering, a sense of contraction in the body and increased dukkha.
At other times and at the other end of the spectrum we may sense a lighter sense of self, perhaps during meditation or being creative or walking in nature. This is accompanied by a greater sense of connection, less self-referencing, spaciousness, greater empathy with others and less dukkha. Perhaps this end of the spectrum is exemplified by the sentiment of the Chinese poet Li Po:
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together the mountain and I,
Until only the mountain remains. 6
The important thing is to notice the impact of any state of mind or behaviour on our felt sense of self. It is also important to notice the dukkha around the solidity of self and the release that comes with the lightness of self.
However, according to the contemporary American scholar and monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu the Buddha also seems to have a self-strategy as much as a not-self strategy.7 Many examples of this can be found in the much loved collection of verses known as the Dhammapadda, which has a whole chapter called Self (but significantly no chapter on not-self):
Just as a farmer irrigates his field
Just as a fletcher fashions an arrow
Just as a carpenter shapes a piece of wood
So the sage tames the self 8
Much of the dharma seems to be pitched at this level of taming or cultivating a particular kind of self, an ethical and responsible self, capable of capacities for self-reliance, compassionate action, kindness, equanimity and other wholesome states of being.
It seems that sometimes a self-strategy is required, sometimes a not-self strategy. Perhaps even, we need to have a self-strategy before we move on to a not-self strategy.
Now to say that we can hold our identities in a lighter way through the practice of anatta is in no way to dismiss, discount, diminish or devalue them. It is the relationship to our identities that is important here. To what extent do we cling, solidify or overly attach to our identities. To what extent do we harden our hearts around them or lightly honour, appreciate, care for and celebrate them?
Just as when we may have insight into the body as not-self we can continue to honour and care for the body, so with a lighter sense of self we can continue to honour, care for, value and celebrate our wholesome social identities.
All the teachings are practices and all the practices to some degree lean us towards a lighter sense of self. And this lighter sense of self is more capable of empathy, respect, tolerance and inclusion in relation to our social identities. In addition the practice of not-selfing offers a way to remove those very conditions that foster separation and discord around our social identities. It enables greater empathy and inclusion because with less selfing there is also less othering. This, along with the necessary social and political engagement, can be a significant dharma contribution towards social inclusion.
To hold a lighter sense of self and at the same time to honour our social identities may seem like a challenging task but, as it is frequently said, the size of the task is always in direct proportion to the size of the moment. So in this moment what identities need to be held more lightly, with greater transparency or spaciousness? And which of our identities need to be welcomed, honoured, respected or healed if they be wounded?
Footnotes
- Dukkha is one of those multivalent words in Pali that can have many nuanced meanings such as suffering, anguish, discontent or unsatisfactoriness.
- Wynne and Gombrich for example, both argue that the Buddha’s statements on anattā were originally a “not-self” teaching that developed into a “no-self” teaching in later Buddhist thought. Gombrich 2009, p69-70, Wynne 2009, p. 59–63, 76–77.
- Ananda Sutta SN 44:10
- See for example Kakacupama Sutta, MN 21
- Rob Burbea,The Seeing That Frees, 2014 , p. 135-139
- Li Po, “Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain,” translated by Sam Hamill from Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese. Copyright © 2000 by Sam Hamill.
- Thanissaro Bhikkhu; The Not-Self Strategy, https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Noble%26True/Section0010.html#sigil_toc_id_11. Accessed 02.08 24
- Dhammapada 80, Fronsdal 2005, p6
Contributed by Mike Baker

August 2024
Especially When Our Heart Aches

July 2024
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
by Mary Oliver
contributed by Morag
June 2024
To Learn From Animal Being
by John O’Donohue
Nearer to the earth’s heart, Deeper within its silence: Animals know this world In a way we never will.
We who are ever Distanced and distracted By the parade of bright Windows thought opens: Their seamless presence Is not fractured thus.
Stranded between time Gone and time emerging, We manage seldom To be where we are: Whereas they are always Looking out from The here and now.
May we learn to return And rest in the beauty Of animal being, Learn to lean low, Leave our locked minds, And with freed senses Feel the earth Breathing with us.
May we enter Into lightness of spirit, And slip frequently into The feel of the wild.
Let the clear silence Of our animal being Cleanse our hearts Of corrosive words.
May we learn to walk Upon the earth With all their confidence And clear-eyed stillness So that our minds
Might be baptized In the name of the wind And the light and the rain.
~ John O’Donohue From: To Bless the Space Between Us
Contributed by Morag
May 2024
To look at anything
To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
“I have seen spring in these
Woods,” will not do – you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.
~ John Moffitt
Contributed by Morag
April 2024
It’s doable!
Abandon what is unskilful.
One can abandon the unskilful.
If it were not possible I would not ask you to do it.
If this abandoning of the unskilful would bring harm and suffering,
I would not ask you to abandon it.
But as it brings benefit and happiness, therefore I say, abandon what is unskilful.
Cultivate the skilful.
One can cultivate the skilful.
If it were not possible I would not ask you to do it.
If this cultivation were to bring harm and suffering,
I would not ask you to do it.
But as this cultivation of the skilful brings benefit and happiness,
I say, cultivate the skilful.
The Buddha, Anguttara Nikaya 2.19
Comment: I find this quotation from the Buddha particularly
inspiring when I’m having doubts about meditation practice.
Very much worth framing and placing somewhere near your
meditation spot.
Contributed by Mike
March 2024
Widening Circles
by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Joanna Macy)
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
February 2024
Longing to go home
We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpses of from time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.
By STARHAWK, FROM DREAMING THE DARK (1982)
Contributed by Morag
January 2024
On fallowness and rest
Winter has its own beneficent qualities. It is a time when much of the natural world around us in a state of quietude and rest. How might we let these qualities influence our practice and our life?
“We live in a culture that prioritizes spring and summer, celebrates growth, productivity, high yields. We have mostly forgotten how to slow down or to rest.”
“Attuning to the stillness that’s so often present in winter, observe how little life stirs, how quietly the trees stand frozen in place.”
“Be present to what the outer stillness evokes within you and how it supports an inner quietude.”
“In what ways can your inner landscape and the terrain of your life reflect more the qualities and temper of this season—quiet, fallow, still, reflective … ”
The above quotations are from a meditation featured in Mark Coleman’s new book, A Field Guide to Nature Meditation: 52 Mindfulness Practices for Joy, Wisdom and Wonder
Contributed by Mike
December 2023
Why I Meditate (after Allen Ginsberg)
By Wes Nisker
I meditate because I suffer. I suffer, therefore I am. I am, therefore I meditate.
I meditate because there are so many other things to do.
I meditate because when I was younger it was all the rage.
I meditate because Siddhartha Gautama, Bodhidharma, Marco Polo, the British Raj, Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Alfred E. Neuman, et al.
I meditate because evolution gave me a big brain, but it didn’t come with an instruction manual.
I meditate because I have all the information I need.
I meditate because the largest colonies of living beings, the coral reefs, are dying.
I meditate because I want to touch deep time, where the history of humanity can be seen as just an evolutionary adjustment period.
I meditate because life is too short and sitting slows it down.
I meditate because life is too long and I need an occasional break.
I meditate because I want to experience the world as Rumi did, or Walt Whitman, or as Mary Oliver does.
I meditate because now I know that enlightenment doesn’t exist, so I can relax.
I meditate because of the Dalai Lama’s laugh.
I meditate because there are too many advertisements in my head, and I’m erasing all but the very best of them.
I meditate because the physicists say there may be eleven dimensions to reality, and I want to get a peek into a few more of them.
I meditate because I’ve discovered that my mind is a great toy and I like to play with it.
I meditate because I want to remember that I’m perfectly human.
Sometimes I meditate because my heart is breaking.
Sometimes I meditate so that my heart will break.
I meditate because a Vedanta master once told me that in Hindi my name, Nis-ker, means “non-doer.”
I meditate because I’m growing old and want to become more comfortable with emptiness.
I meditate because I think Robert Thurman was right to call it an “evolutionary sport,” and I want to be on the home team.
I meditate because I’m composed of 100 trillion cells, and from time to time I need to reassure them that we’re all in this together.
I meditate because it’s such a relief to spend time ignoring myself.
I meditate because my country spends more money on weapons than all other nations in the world combined. If I had more courage, I’d probably immolate myself.
I meditate because I want to discover the fifth Brahma-vihara, the Divine Abode of Awe, and then go down in history as a great spiritual adept.
I meditate because I’m building myself a bigger and better perspective, and occasionally I need to add a new window.
Contributed by Mike
November 2023
The Trees Said
by Polly Hall
November – on this earth
this year
reflecting back
each leaf a memory
gone to ground
streams always finding their course
branches reaching up
as if the answers are in the sky
the light softer now
days shortening
sleep beckoning
like tiny footsteps on broken bark
shadows rest like ink smudged on skin
if you only knew how easy it is
to grow one day at a time
I was once a promise in a nutshell
I was once as small
as that dream you hold.
Contributed by Morag
Heavy
by Mary Oliver
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it –
books, bricks, grief –
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled –
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply.
Contributed by Mike
October 2023
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing….
From saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell
Contributed by Ingrid
September 2023
Special experiences are not the goal
“A crucial element to be kept in mind is that progress in meditation is not just about having special experiences. Special experiences certainly have their place, but they are not the goal itself. The goal is rather inner transformation. Even the experience of absorption or a stage of awakening has its true value in the extent to which it produces lasting inner transformation. Meditation practice should result in an improvement in the way we are, how we relate to others, and how we deal with outer circumstances. Such internal changes are more important than appropriating spectacular experiences as markers of our meditative expertise. ” (Bhikkhu Analayo, from Satipatthana Meditation – A Practice Guide, p.140)
Mike’s comment: I like to read this quotation from Bhikkhu Analayo from time to time as my meditation practice seems to be invariably without “special experiences“. I find it helpful to remember that the goal is a gradual freedom from the discord (dukkha) of habitual reactivity rather than an end of the road bodhi experience. This is simultaneously a freedom to respond in increasingly creative and ethical ways to whatever life presents. Even the deepest insightful experiences remain just experiences unless they can be embodied in “how we relate to others, and how we deal with outer circumstances“.
Contributed by Mike
August 2023
The Cure
by Albert Huffstickler
We don’t get over things.
Or say, we get over the measles
but not a broken heart.
We need to make that distinction.
The things that become part of our experience
never become less a part of our experience.
How can I say it?
The way to “get over” a life is to die.
Short of that, you move with it,
let the pain be pain,
not in the hope that it will vanish
but in the faith that it will fit in,
find its place in the shape of things
and be then not any less pain but true to form.
Because anything natural has an inherent shape
and will flow towards it.
And a life is as natural as a leaf.
That’s what we’re looking for:
not the end of a thing but the shape of it.
Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life
without obliterating (getting over) a single
instant of it.
Contributed by Mike
July 2023
It is Here We Awaken.
In 2015 Catherine McGee offered a long course for Bristol Insight called Living at the Threshold of the Inner and the Outer. The following is an extract from one of her talks on the course. I find reading it from time to time helps greatly with the practice of Mindfulness of the Body.
“ In this way one abides contemplating the body as a body internally, externally, and both internally and externally.” From the Satipatthana Sutta, the Foundations of Mindfulness teaching of the Buddha.
Practicing the first foundation of mindfulness, knowing body as body, internally and externally, we can come to know we are of this earth. When we sit and feel the solidity of our bones, the firmness of the flesh, the density and weightiness of our human presence, we can come to know what it is to sit ‘as earth sitting on earth’. This is part of knowing our basic elemental nature and something we share with everyone and everything. As we come more into body, we gain direct insight that our intimacy with earth is more primary than anything our mind can tell us. This intimacy is breath-takingly immediate; unmediated by anything. It is an undeniable aspect of being human. We are literally ‘in our element’ as embodied creatures. Whether we are happy about this or not is another story. But for now, this earthly body is home base.
It takes a path of practice for many of us to heal the ways we have lost contact with our body and taken refuge in abstractions. Abstracting ourselves as separate beings is painful and leads to more suffering; personal; national; global. When we see a thing as separate we come out of real relationship with it, whether it be our body, other bodies or the great body of this earth. Then we treat it in ways distorted by delusion.
We abstract into separation because it is not always easy to tolerate the sensitivity of our animal body, impinged upon by contact (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and the mind) and comfortable only within a narrow range of temperatures and other conditions, and subject to insecurity, sickness and death.
Healing this separation, and coming into a wise relationship with body is imperative for waking up and responding to the reality of the times we live in. And through practice we can realize that this body is not a separate stand-alone phenomena. That view is a mind made story.
Through the body we cultivate the stable presence of Samadhi, a ground from which to see deeply and not be unseated by our programming. With body as a firm basis we can begin to heal the duality of being lost in mind made worlds, and come into the profound and sensitive immediacy of the human realm.
It is here, not someplace else, that we can sense directly that we are made from the earth, the fertile material substance- the humous. This is where our humanness is grounded and this is the arena where we can act with appropriate humility. As the conceit of believing ourselves as separate softens, we find that everyone else is here with us too. We are, quite simply, all in this together.
And it is here in this body that we can make our insights real, live them through the actions of our body speech and mind. We may have many realizations, but only through action do they become transformative.
It is here, on this earth, that we take our place as human beings – these marvelous human animals that can respond and act: who can join hands, who can stand up for what is wholesome, who can speak up for those yet to be born, who can say ‘no’ when justice and respect for life is undermined.
And it is here where we practice and engage with the places that scare us and which can ultimately ennoble us, both internally and externally. And through love and wisdom it is we who have the capacity to relinquish physical and psychological security, for the benefit of the whole.
It is here, on this earth, not someplace else, where we awaken. Here and now, on this planet, in these conditions, amidst this instability and this beauty, working with the results of our individual and collective actions.
In this very body, however you define it- your body, our bodies, the vast body of this planet. The wider the definition, the more we expand and can live the ennobling life. Awakening and appropriate response, in this very body, in this very life.
Catherine McGee
Contributed by Mike
June 2023
THE SUN NEVER SAYS
Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens
with a love like that –
It lights the whole world!
Hafiz
Contributed by Mark
Because Even the Word Obstacle Is an Obstacle by Alison Luterman
Try to love everything that gets in your way:
the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps
murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane
while you execute thirty-six furious laps,
one for every item on your to-do list.
The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water
like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side,
whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.
Teachers all. Learn to be small
and swim through obstacles like a minnow
without grudges or memory. Dart
toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking Obstacle
is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl
idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:
Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,
in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.
Be glad she’ll have that to look at all her life,
and keep going, keep going. Swim by an uncle
in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew
how to hold his breath underwater,
even though kids arent allowed at this hour. Someday,
years from now, this boy
who is kicking and flailing in the exact place
you want to touch and turn
will be a young man, at a wedding on a boat
raising his champagne glass in a toast
when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.
He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,
but he’ll come up like a cork,
alive. So your moment
of impatience must bow in service to a larger story,
because if something is in your way it is
going your way, the way
of all beings; towards darkness, towards light.
Contributed by Mike
May 2023
“Otherwise The Darkness” by Saint Thomas Aquinas
I
have a cause.
We need those don’t we?
Otherwise the darkness and the cold gets in
and everything starts to
ache.
My soul has a purpose, it is
to love;
if I
do not fulfill
my heart’s vocation,
I suffer.
Contributed by Heather
“Mind Wanting More” by Holly Hughes
Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony,
perhaps
a Chinese gong.
But the mind always
wants more than it has—
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses—as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren’t enough,
as if joy weren’t strewn all around.
Contributed by Mike
April 2023
AT HOME
At home amidst
the bees
wandering
the garden
in the summer
light
the sky
a broad roof
for the house
of contentment
where I wish
to
live forever
in the eternity
of my own fleeting
and momentary
happiness.
I walk toward
the kitchen
door as if walking
toward the
door of a recognized
heaven
and see the
simplicity
of shelves and
the blue dishes
and the
vaporing
steam rising
from the kettle
that called me in.
Not just this
aromatic cup
from which to drink
but the flavour
of a life made whole
and lovely
through the
imagination
seeking its way.
Not just this
house around me
but the arms
of a fierce
but healing world.
Not just this line
I write
but the innocence
of an earned
forgiveness
flowing again
through hands
made new with
writing.
And a man
with no company
but his house,
his garden,
and his own
well peopled solitude,
entering
the silences
and chambers
of the heart
to start again.
‘At Home’
From ‘The House of Belonging’
Poems by David Whyte
©David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
Contributed by Ingrid
Otherwise
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Copyright 1996 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon.
Contributed by Mike
Mike’s comment: I find this poem a beautiful reminder for gratitude. “It might have been otherwise” and “It will be otherwise” can become daily mantras triggering gratitude.
March 2023
If you Knew
By Ellen Bass
What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.
When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.
A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.
How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?
Contributed by Mike
Mike’s comment: I find this poem a wonderful reminder to practice the perception of impermanence. I love her examples of the way we move through the world when we are not attuned to this perception. How would we change the way we relate to each other if we were more keenly aware from day to day, from moment to moment, of our vulnerability, fragility and fleetingness? The poet asks “What would people look like if we could see them as they are? The poem really needs no explanation, just application.
February 2023
Shovelling snow with the Buddha By Billy Collins In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok you would never see him doing such a thing, tossing the dry snow over a mountain of his bare, round shoulder, his hair tied in a knot, a model of concentration. Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word for what he does, or does not do. Even the season is wrong for him. In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid? Is this not implied by his serene expression, that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe? But here we are, working our way down the driveway, one shovelful at a time. We toss the light powder into the clear air. We feel the cold mist on our faces. And with every heave we disappear and become lost to each other in these sudden clouds of our own making, these fountain-bursts of snow. This is so much better than a sermon in church, I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling. This is the true religion, the religion of snow, and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky, I say, but he is too busy to hear me. He has thrown himself into shoveling snow as if it were the purpose of existence, as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway you could back the car down easily and drive off into the vanities of the world with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio. All morning long we work side by side, me with my commentary and he inside his generous pocket of silence, until the hour is nearly noon and the snow is piled high all around us; then, I hear him speak. After this, he asks, can we go inside and play cards? Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table while you shuffle the deck and our boots stand dripping by the door. Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes and leaning for a moment on his shovel before he drives the thin blade again deep into the glittering white snow. Contributed by Mike
January 2023
Forget The Past By Steve Taylor Forget the past. It’s just a dream you keep alive by dreaming A balloon that wants to hit the ground and burst But which you keep afloat by thinking. The past is only a tail You keep dragging behind you Collecting dust and dirt Until it’s so heavy with bitterness and regret It stops you moving forward. You don’t have to sit there and watch While the scenes of your past play back The tragi-comedy of your life Simmering with hurt and envy Shuddering with embarrassment Stabbing yourself with pangs of regret. There is no past There are only memories of events And every memory is refracted through A hall of mental mirrors Until whatever once was true Dissipates and disappears Like vapour trails fading in the sky. So cut the tail, and cut the tale Turn the mental projector off Don’t strain your eyes trying to see through the fog When the panorama of the present stretches Clear and bright around you. For a New Beginning by John O’Donohue In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
December 2022
How did the rose………by Hafiz How did the rose ever open its heart and give this world a ll its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise we all remain too frightened. Mike’s comment This poem was recited by Gavin Milne in his recent retreat for Bristol Insight. The poem can have deep meaning and resonance for our meditation practice. Perhaps all our practice can be seen as “the encouragement of light against our being”; a gentle cultivation that enables the heart to open and give to the world its beauty.
November 2022
Lost
I Go Among Trees
by Wendell Berry I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them, asleep like cattle. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me, and the fear of me leaves it. It sings, and I hear its song. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it, and the fear of it leaves me. It sings, and I hear its song. After days of labor, mute in my consternations, I hear my song at last, and I sing it. As we sing, the day turns, the trees move. ~ Wendell Berry from Sabbaths Contributed by Mike
October 2022
Peace comes from seeing the whole “If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe. Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening? It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like. When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first. In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter. Mark Nepo, from The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have Contributed by Mike
September 2022
Erosion by Mark Nepo
On a still morning, you may stumble and wonder why you’re carrying what you’re carrying, why you’re never where you are. It seems a trick: to feel so much and not be able to hold it. But the clouds can’t hold the sun and the waves can’t hold the wind. When worn of our secrets, we become temporary blessings, like flags worn free of their signs. Lose your grip on what you want and what others tell you you want, and life becomes simple. There is less to do. Like a pearl washed ashore, we just wait to be found. Contributed by Joss
Sitting is a strange process
“Sitting is a strange process. In the beginning, it’s hard to grasp what it’s all about. Later on, it doesn’t get much easier. The only thing that’s clear is “just do it.” Whether the sitting is “good” or “bad,” just do it. You never get any better at it. Not really. But this whole idea of “getting better” is part of the problem, the endless self-improvement and self-manipulation game. We don’t sit to get better. We sit to be with life as it is.” (Source unknown) Contributed by Mike
August 2022
“We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of time that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching. Let each of us examine our thoughts; we will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.” Mike’s comment: No, not from a Buddhist or from a mindfulness teacher, but the 17th century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. Contributed by Mike
July 2022
The Walk by Rilke My eyes already touch the sunny hill going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has its inner life, even from a distance— and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave… but what we feel is the wind in our faces. Contributed by Ingrid The heart of skillful meditation The heart of skillful meditation is the ability to let go and begin again, over and over again. Even if you have to do that a thousand times during a session, it does not matter. There is no distance to traverse in recollecting our attention; as soon as we realize we have been lost in discursive thought, or have lost touch with our chosen contemplation, right in that very moment we can begin again. Nothing has been ruined and there is no such thing as failing. There is nowhere the attention can wander to, and no duration of distraction, from which we cannot completely let go, in a moment, and begin again. Sharon Salzberg from Loving –kindness The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. p29 Contributed by Mike
June 2022
Heavy by Mary Oliver That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this, as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said, was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel, (brave even among lions), “It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it – books, bricks, grief – it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed? Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth? How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe also troubled – roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply. Contributed by Heather What Exactly is Vipassana Meditation ? Vipassana can be translated as “Insight,” a clear awareness of exactly what is happening as it happens. Vipassana is a form of mental training that will teach you to experience the world in an entirely new way. You will learn for the first time what is truly happening to you, around you and within you. It is a process of self-discovery, a participatory investigation in which you observe your own experiences while participating in them as they occur. Vipassana is a gentle technique. But it also is very, very thorough. It is an ancient and codified system of training your mind, a set of exercises dedicated to becoming more and more aware of your own life experience. It is attentive listening, mindful seeing and careful testing. Essentially, Vipassana meditation is a process of retraining the mind. The state you are aiming for is one in which you are totally aware of everything that is happening in your own perceptual universe, exactly the way it happens, exactly when it is happening; total, unbroken awareness in present time. We learn to smell acutely, to touch fully, and to really pay attention to the changes taking place in all these experiences. We learn to listen to our own thoughts without being caught up in them. The object of Vipassana meditation practice is to learn to see the truth of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness of phenomena. This is an incredibly high goal, and not to be reached all at once. It takes practice, so we start small. We start by becoming totalIy aware of one small unit of time, just one single inhalation. And, when you succeed, you are on your way to a whole new experience of life. Quotations from “What Exactly is Vipassana Meditation?” By Bhante Henepola Gunaratana Contributed by Mike
May 2022
Snow Geese Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours. One fall day I heard above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was a flock of snow geese, winging it faster than the ones we usually see, and, being the color of snow, catching the sun so they were, in part at least, golden. I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us as with a match, which is lit, and bright, but does not hurt in the common way, but delightfully, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt. The geese flew on, I have never seen them again. Maybe I will, someday, somewhere. Maybe I won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly. by Mary Oliver Contributed by Ingrid
April 2022
COURAGE is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstance, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to do it in public, to show courage; to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade: but a look at its linguistic origins leads us in a more interior direction and toward its original template, the old Norman French, Coeur, or heart. Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go – to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made… COURAGE Excerpted from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words © 2015 David Whyte and Many Rivers Press Contributed by Ingrid
March 2022
Instructions for the Journey Pat Schneider The self you leave behind is only a skin you have outgrown. Don’t grieve for it. Look to the wet, raw, unfinished self, the one you are becoming. The world, too, sheds its skin: politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days. It’s easy to lose this tenderly unfolding moment. Look for it as if it were the first green blade after a long winter. Listen for it as if it were the first clear tone in a place where dawn is heralded by bells. And if all that fails, wash you own dishes. Rinse them. Stand in your kitchen at your sink. Let cold water run between your fingers. Feel it. Contributed by Barbara
February 2022
Thích Nhất Hạnh who died this January had earlier written these words:
January 2022
The Bright Field R S Thomas I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realise now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you. Contributed by Ingrid
December 2021
Clearing Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue. Martha Postlethwaite Contributed by Ingrid The Quiet Listeners Go into the woods and tell your story to the trees. They are wise standing in their folds of silence among white crystals of rock and dying limbs. And they have time. Time for the swaying of leaves, the floating down, the dust. They have time for gathering and holding the earth about their feet. Do this. It is something I have learned. How they will bend down to you so softly. They will bend down to you and listen. Laura Foley Contributed by Sabina
November 2021
Networks of kisses “We can think of the world as made up of things, of substances, of entities, of something that is. Or we can think of it as made up of events, of happenings, of processes, of something that occurs, something that undergoes continual transformation. And this way of thinking of it is actually the only way that is compatible with modern physics. The difference between things and events is that things persist in time, events have a limited duration. A stone is a prototypical “thing”. We can ask ourselves where will it be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an event. It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones” Carlo Rovelli, Professor of Theoretical Physics From his book “The Order of Time”, Penquin, 2018 Contributed by Mike
October 2021
Cherish it just the way it is “In the art of meditation you shouldn’t start with some idea of gaining. This is the paradox in meditation: we want to get somewhere – we wouldn’t have taken up meditation if we didn’t – but the way to get there is to be fully here. The way to get from A to point B is really to be at A. When we follow the breathing in the hope of becoming something better, we are compromising our connection with the present, which is all we ever have. One place where ideas of gaining often come in, where people become obsessive about the practice, is in the task of staying with the breathing. We take a simple instruction and create a drama of success and failure around it: we feel we’re succeeding when we’re with the breath and failing when we’re not. Actually the whole process is meditation: being with breathing, drifting away, seeing that we’ve drifted away and gently coming back. It is extremely important to come back without blame, without judgement, without feeling a failure. If you have to come back a thousand times in a short period of sitting just do it. It’s not a problem unless you make it into one. If you find yourself disappointed with your meditation there’s a good chance that some idea of gaining is present. See that and let it go. However your practice seems to you, cherish it just the way it is.” Larry Rosenberg in Breath by Breath – the Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation
September 2021
Insightful Ageing Group Did you know that within BIM there is a group called “Insightful Ageing” which has been meeting monthly for over two years. The group has been composed of largely older members of the Sangha but this does not necessarily have to be the case. The moment we are born the ageing process begins and the challenges of ageing occur at regular intervals and developmental stages in life as we go to school, leave home, form partnerships, have children etc. However, the focus so far has been on old age and death and it was the shock of witnessing these issues that moved the youthful Prince Siddharta Gautama to search for a way out of suffering. Over the time it has been meeting we have been working through a number of books. The first “A Year to Live” by Stephen Levine focusses on how to live this present year in as fully a way as possible as if it were one’s last. The second by Mu Soeng, Gloria Taraniya Ambrosia and Andrew Olendzki is entitled “Older and Wiser” and introduces classical Buddhist teachings on ageing, sickness and death. The discussion has been accompanied by practical meditation exercises with opportunity for supportive mindful sharing. As we move forward from Zoom to real life meetings we have set ourselves two objectives. The first is to develop practical meditations particularly relevant to the subject of ageing. The second is to work towards the planning and organisation of a day retreat on this subject. We are looking to expand the group and you do not have to be “old” to join. All ages are welcome and if you are interested and would like to participate in a relatively small and friendly group, you would be welcomed. If you are interested in learning more, please contact Ray Woolfe at rwoolfe@hotmail.co.uk Contributed by Ray Wolfe Watercolour as a doorway to self-care and self-knowing: On “Soul Color” by Emma Burleigh In Spring 2021, at the beginning of the first lockdown, I began writing my first book. Spring and Summer have come and gone again, and that same book has just been published. It feels apt and serendipitous to me that “Soul Color” has come into the world at this particular time. The book is a culmination of everything I’ve learned, unlearned, discovered, explored and developed since I began teaching people how to paint around 20 years ago. Over time I became more and more interested in how my painting practice could support me to have a more meaningful connection to myself and to life, and in how I could share this approach with students. One of the more positive effects of this difficult eighteen months seems to be the time some people have gained to take up new interests, often as a way to counter the stress of world events. Learning how to bake, paint or meditate, taking more time to appreciate nature or explore new forms of self-expression has all been shown to be supportive as ways of managing mental health. In my book I offer a range of creative exercises to build skills in watercolour, but also to help people find a ‘way in’ to deeper self-understanding and self-compassion. I suggest ways to get what’s ‘going on inside’ out onto the page, and also ways to respond to our own bursts of self-expression with interest and care. Soul Color takes the form of a ten-week watercolour course designed to cultivate self-awareness and creativity, but it can be explored and worked through at any pace. Amongst all the stresses and strains of life, it can be easy to ‘lose sight’ of our own self, and a mindful painting practice can be a great way to reconnect with our hearts and minds, giving ourselves some space to self-soothe and self-care. The lovely thing about watercolour is that it’s quick and immediate, so you only need ten minutes. “Soul Color” is a ten-week watercolour-painting course to nurture self-care, mindfulness and creativity, published by Liminal 11, a small independent UK based publisher with links to America and Canada (hence the American spelling – sorry about that!). Wherever your personal interests lie, and whatever your ‘thing’ may be, I wish you a nourishing and supportive creative practice to resource you through the hard times and to enrich you during the good times. Emma Burleigh www.emmaburleigh.com You can order Soul Color by Emma Burleigh from all good bookshops including direct from her publisher’s web-shop: https://liminal11.com/product/soul-color/ Contributed by Emma Burleigh
August 2021
Special experiences “A crucial element to be kept in mind is that progress in meditation is not just about having special experiences. Special experiences certainly have their place, but they are not the goal itself. The goal is rather inner transformation. Even the experience of absorption or a stage of awakening has its true value in the extent to which it produces lasting inner transformation. Meditation practice should result in an improvement in the way we are, how we relate to others, and how we deal with outer circumstances. Such internal changes are more important than appropriating spectacular experiences as markers of our meditative expertise.” Bhikkhu Analayo in Satipatthana – A Practice Guide, p.140 Comment: I find this a useful reminder when meditation seems rather drab and nothing special seems to happen. Rather than look to special experiences I can reflect upon whether my responses to the noisy neighbour, the “idiot driver” or the awkward customers in life have improved. Are these responses less reactive, more appropriate, wiser or kinder? If I can answer “yes” then this is an incentive to keep on meditating. Contributed by Mike
July 2021
“Just Put Your Body There” I once complained to my teacher Munindraji about being unable to maintain a regular practice. “When I sit at home and meditate and it feels good, I’m exhilarated, and I have faith and I know that it’s the most important thing in my life,” I said. “But as soon as it feels bad, I stop. I’m disheartened and discouraged, so I just give up.” He gave me quite a wonderful piece of advice. “Just put your body there,” he said. “That’s what you have to do. Just put your body there. Your mind will do different things all of the time, but you just put your body there. Because that’s the expression of commitment, and the rest will follow from that.” Certainly there’s a time to evaluate our practice, to see if it’s useful to us and worth continuing. But the evaluation shouldn’t happen every five minutes, or we’ll be continually pulling ourselves out of the process. And when we do assess our progress, we need to focus on the right criteria: Is my life different? Am I more balanced, more able to go with the flow? Am I kinder? Those are the crucial questions. The rest of the time, just put your body there. You may think, I’m too undisciplined to maintain a practice. But you really can manage to put your body there, day in and day out. We’re often very disciplined when it comes to external things like earning a living, getting the kids off to school, doing the laundry— we do it whether we like it or not. Why can’t we direct that same discipline (for just a few minutes each day) toward our inner wellbeing? If you can muster the energy for the laundry, you can muster the energy to “put your body there” for a happier life. Sharon Salzberg from “Sticking with it -How to sustain your meditation practice” from Tricycle magazine Fall 2011 Contributed by Mike
June 2021
An Offering Greetings Sangha! This week was the first anniversary of Rob Burbea’s premature death. In the commemorative last session we were in the company of the co-founder with Rob, of Sangha Seva, Zohar Lavie. This organisation offers amongst other services ‘Mediations for Activists’ and ‘Actions for Meditators.’ I knew that Rob had worked and meditated in a leper colony in India many years ago but I had not met Zohar before. She lives in Jerusalem and outside her home it was noisy with the nationalistic ‘Jerusalem day, which was upsetting for her. Much spiritual resonance and beautiful actions – she mentioned, in passing, that she goes to the West Bank at times. She also mentioned that Rob wrote a letter to the Dharma community exploring our possible responses to the man – made climate destruction. I did not know of this letter and I am offering this for your perusal, as a possible method of liberation from the binding brought about by this situation. Already, it has helped me immensely because of its loving clarity and honesty. Also, one of the loving carers who tended Rob as he became very weak, shared his excitement when he designed stickers to put up in the streets of rural Devon. The slogans for these are listed before the letter – they are still being stuck on lampposts, even though he is not with us in person! For me, these actions are still inspiring and guiding me. Rob may not be on earth physically but him and his actions and teachings are even more, a huge part of my life. You can read Rob’s letter here Contributed by Jill Gathering Once more they gather beneath a moon Encircled by still sweet tone of evening In shapes made whole with feel and form Time moves alone without pause or mind And Ebbs to the ancient rhythm of no god Divine shape of space in an empty vase As night calls like distant roosting birds It’s guileless mood perfumed by the dark Contributed by James The Waterwheel Stay together, friends. Don’t scatter and sleep. Our friendship is made of being awake. The waterwheel accepts water and turns and gives it away, weeping. That way it stays in the garden, whereas another roundness rolls through a dry riverbed looking for what it thinks it wants. Stay here, quivering with each moment like a drop of mercury. — Rumi in The Essential Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks Contributed by Barbara
May 2021
Our Good Friend Sati Whenever we forget about sati (mindfulness) and get caught up in some sort of distraction, what is required is just a moment of smiling recognition. No need for disappointment or a sense of failure, no need for getting upset with ourselves. A smiling realization that the mind has wandered away is quite adequate. This is natural; this is the tendency of the mind. But here is our good friend, sati, right here patiently waiting for us to come and be with her again. And being with her is so pleasant, so calm, so spacious; it is just much more attractive than any kind of thought, reaction, or daydream we could entertain in our mind. Our responsibility is to set up the intention to be mindful and return to that intention whenever we notice that mindfulness has been lost. With that much we have fulfilled our task. If nevertheless the mind is totally distracted, then that is because of other causes and conditions impacting on the present situation. We are simply not in full control within our own mind. On realizing this, we come to appreciate that the best goal to set ourselves is a harmonious balance between our effort to live in the present moment and the natural resistance to that from the tendencies in our mind and from outer circumstances. Instead of the unreasonable expectation that all such resistance should be annihilated once and for all in order for us to qualify as a “good meditator”, we inhabit that harmonious balance, where recognition of the manifestation of any resistance is met with the smiling effort that is just sufficient for gently coming back home to the here and now. In this way, instead of turning the cultivation of mindfulness into a stressful and demanding chore, we see sati as a good friend to whom we return, with whom we like to spend as much of our time as possible. Bhikkhu Analayo from Satipatthana Meditation – A Practice Guide, pages 18-19. Contributed by Mike
April 2021
Please Call Me By My True Names By Thich Nhat Hanh
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow— even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am also the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp. My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion. Contributed by Jonathan Of becoming and of embrace by Nick Naydler Days added and subtracted, the rowan buds swell. I wonder at the abacus of transience. Frost cracks a pot, each shard of my life turns into a gem; bluebirds play algebra with days and nights in recurring dreams. Fat pigeons croon melodies of praise and loss. Eight worldly winds sway the birch trees, gently, gently. The door of the shed blows open, evanescent above all, everything breaks from the shadows: Primula scattered, prismatic, criss-crossing the garden. Each of us are orphans, accounted for by that most precious womb: zero, love’s digit of becoming and of embrace. It whispers to me on my rusting bench, of the beginning and of the end, of everything, on the journey of return. Contributed by Nick Naydler The Lost Words Blessing Original song by Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton, Beth Porter, Jim Molyneux, Kerry Andrew. Enter the wild with care, my love And speak the things you see Let new names take and root and thrive and grow And even as you travel far from heather, crag and river May you like the little fisher, set the stream alight with glitter May you enter now as otter without falter into water Look to the sky with care, my love And speak the things you see Let new names take and root and thrive and grow And even as you journey on past dying stars exploding Like the gilded one in flight, leave your little gifts of light And in the dead of night my darling, find the gleaming eye of starling Like the little aviator, sing your heart to all dark matter Walk through the world with care, my love And sing the things you see Let new names take and root and thrive and grow And even as you stumble through machair sands eroding Let the fern unfurl your grieving, let the heron still your breathing Let the selkie swim you deeper, oh my little silver-seeker Even as the hour grows bleaker, be the singer and the speaker And in city and in forest, let the larks become your chorus And when every hope is gone, let the raven call you home Contributed by Joss. More about this song can be found here
March 2021
An Unripe Plum by Thich Nhat Hanh My youth an unripe plum. Your teeth have left their marks on it. The tooth marks still vibrate. I remember always, remember always. Since I learned how to love you, the door of my soul has been left wide open to the winds of the four directions. Reality calls for change. The fruit of awareness is already ripe, and the door can never be closed again. Fire consumes this century, and mountains and forests bear its mark. The wind howls across my ears, while the whole sky shakes violently in the snowstorm. Winter’s wounds lie still, Missing the frozen blade, Restless, tossing and turning in agony all night. Contributed by Jonathan Royate Hill by Christine Ramsey-Wade Today you cross the gate, instead of keeping on up the street, and walk the gravel path on the bridge, through the blackberry brambles and buddleia, to watch the sun a sit glares at the trademarks of life – allotments, roof tiles, gravestones, magpies, Dragged clouds, rude graffiti. The city looks like distant mountains, with hills of green behind. Instead of sea, the roar of tyres and motors combine with seagulls, audible only when the winds and all their talk of rain defer to warming sunshine. Nothing new here – just a nature walk in town. No different from the rest, except this mix of care and concrete, and the damp. Except today, you took a right, You made this walk for the first time – nothing but your choice remains between this home and strangeness. Five Haiku A flash of lightening: Into the gloom Goes the heron’s cry. Basho A summer shower The rain beats On the heads of the carp. Shiki Simply trust: Do not the petals flutter down Just like that? Issa The legs of the crane Have become short In the summer rains. Basho The temple bell stops But the sound keeps coming Out of the flowers. Basho Contributed by Kate Baugh
February 2021
Her gifts She’s always there Night or day Dusk or dawn In grief and love A thousand faces to her name She calls to me, Whispers from the edges of her confines Asking to be born To be gifted with life To be held, resurrected and felt by the rhythm of my breath Coaxing my spirit in a honeyed balm of sweet nectar Warming the cockles of my heart With riches unrivalled, untouched before Turning paled hues of griefs cry Into a riot of colour so rich my body trembles with life moving, writhing, flailing to the sounds of the night A feral creature Awakes in sight Vibrations permeate Through ribcage and bone Lifting arms Moving earth and sun Always there; Ever-present She waits.. Ready to be known Contributed by Heather
Stream
The moss that carpets the woodland vines Fur filters particulate Then feeds through fern and wet red Paper-like leaf To the thirsty talkative brook Playing and lapping, Washing down through wood and field What units are unified by such motion? Flowing and scintillant Vibrant in sounds That gobble and pop From stretch of one ear to Limit of the other Confirming a continuity that the eye cannot know Appearing as this stream does From the nowhere over there In the somewhere that is here And to the mystery that will never and always be Contributed by James An Ode to Ignorance Ignorance is bliss some say… Aligning perceptions with reality Is an impossible task in this simple human vessel. Or so it seems. Because I fail to understand reality as it is I’m constantly caught in this flux. Grasping on the one hand Resisting on the other. Even in the very act of trying to reduce my ignorance I ‘strive’ for knowledge. I believe this is to my detriment. But what do I know. I resist the state of not knowing, Like it is some terrible thing, Like it’s not happening to everyone else, all of the time. Can something as ubiquitous as ignorance really be so bad? Has anyone ever been free of it? What about Buddha? Maybe Eckhart Tolle? How about Jonathan? They all seem like the type of people who might have figured it out Maybe they once had a moment of Satori? Maybe full Nirvana I want that… Wanting though. Wanting is grasping. Grasping is striving. And in the very act of wanting, I am undone. So should I resist the wanting? Oh no, resisting is the wrong course too! Arising and passing. Arising and passing. Understanding this is the way forward I am sure. The wants come and go. The resistance is only ever temporary. And ignorance, as permanent as it seems, will one day pass too. Maybe not for me. Maybe not even for old Eckhart… Maybe we’ll have to wait for artificial intelligence, And for deepmind to develop ‘Alpha Know’ Or perhaps even the future of AI will be ignorant too. Going about ‘knowing’ reality with all the flaws of its human programmers No, perhaps real knowledge comes from not knowing: The simple ant going about her daily business, Who through not intellectualising can achieve a ‘oneness’ with the universe That we can only dream of. Is it that the very mind I use to try to know things Is the source of all my ignorance? As biological life declines on this planet In extinction will there be freedom? Once there is no more thinking Will there be no more ignorance? And so no more striving or resisting? All things arise, all things pass. So it will be with ignorance too. Contributed by by Vince Ryan
January 2021
Moonlight in November A glimpse of the eternal Starting to remember I’m more than the internal Part of something bigger Than blood and veins and brain And this feeling lingers As I catch the morning train My mind can keep on chatting But I pay it no awareness Because this wave that I am catching Of universal oneness Is so much larger than my ego So much grander than myself So I’m slowly letting ‘me’ go Put separation on the shelf Blurred lines around my body As my energy unites With everything and everybody Knots in my chest unties Tied to nothing but this loving Feeling in my heart The illusion is dissolving We are living, moving art Breath into this moment Love until I die We are energy and movement We are not bound by space or time We are one, we are Gods living Mother Earth our holy home And this energy I’m feeling Let’s me know I’m not alone Contributed by Vendela Lofbom
MountainLakeLucid
Contributed by Will Wassenaar
Anita Goraya (Trustee) – My Anti-racism Journey as a Gaia House Trustee
I’ve loved Gaia House since my first retreat here in 2011. I value highly the literal and metaphorical ‘slowing down’ journey from London to rural Devon; the serene, beautiful buildings; the simplified routines of being on retreat and the positive experience of silence as a nourishing presence. My lived experience has also included a continual noticing that Gaia House is a predominantly white community. So last year, when I read a Trustee recruitment flyer specifically inviting people from ethnic minority backgrounds to apply, I did so. These few words of inclusion made me feel visible, valued and welcomed for my ‘difference’ as a woman of colour. I duly became a Trustee in early 2020. In March, the Covid pandemic had started and our organisational attention was focused on immediate operational concerns. In May, the brutal police killing of George Floyd inflamed a global surge of protest, anger and controversy as well as of solidarity and renewed self-reflection on ‘… and what difference can I make?’ My personal response to this question has centred on American activist Angela Davis’s statement ‘In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.’ What can I do within myself, in my relationships with others in general and also specifically within the Gaia House community? I have learned much through participating in a course exploring how organisational leadership is often invisibly driven by ‘white’ cultures, practices and expectations of compliance. Observations from white people on this course repeatedly remind me how viscerally difficult it is for people who do not themselves experience racism to truly recognise how pervasively damaging that experience is for those who do. How can you know what you don’t even know that you don’t know? We are learning together how the Dharma practices of mindful enquiry, of sitting with difficult emotions and of creating anti-racist responses using skilful methods and compassion can support this journey in practice. We can use these means and framing to address the trepidation associated with personally leaving the familiar territory of being ‘non-racist’ and moving into being ‘anti-racist’. I am beginning to name and frame a sense of compassion in myself towards the experience of ‘not knowing’. I can’t possibly ‘know’ everything, and nor can others. I don’t have to beat myself (or others) up with shame or guilt about ‘not knowing’ – compassion is a more skilful and accepting starting point. But I do have a responsibility for learning to ‘know’ and then for putting the ‘knowing’ into practice. I don’t have to perfect the world, but I am not free to desist from contributing to improving it. I am not free to restrict my intention to liberating only some beings from suffering, but all beings. What am I doing differently? I’ve done an hour-long, online training course on unconscious bias and I’ve read Reni Eddo-Lodge’s book called Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. I’ve found myself bringing new ears to listening to the radio. I hear a programme discussing reading a book from every different country… and I think this could offer me exposure to currently unfamiliar cultural ways of seeing the world. I hear another programme on how to use crafting activities as a form of ‘gentle’ protest and respectful activism… and I start to see how quiet, smaller activism can also contribute effectively to creating change. I’ve watched videos from teachers of colour on the Buddhist magazine website, Tricycle, that have prompted new Dharma learning and self-reflection on teachings for uncertain times: Viveka Chen and Ruth King. Finally, I am contributing to the Gaia House community journey of moving from being non-racist to becoming anti-racist. We are already non-racist in that there are no formal barriers to participation at Gaia House for people of colour. I want us to move beyond the limitation of ‘not seeing’ ethnicity or colour because this is a type of ‘not knowing’. I want us to move beyond being a ‘multi-ethnic group in waiting’ for people of colour to show up here – we will need to take intra-personal, interpersonal and organisational actions to make this happen.
Contributed by Jill
December 2020
A life made whole
Pacalāyamāna (Nodding Off) Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 7.61 Before his awakening, Moggallāna is struggling with sleepiness in meditation. The Buddha visits him and gives seven ways to dispel drowsiness. So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying in the land of the Bhaggas on Crocodile Hill, in the deer park at Bhesakaḷā’s Wood. Now at that time, in the land of the Magadhans near Kallavāḷamutta Village, Venerable Mahāmoggallāna was nodding off while meditating. The Buddha saw him with his clairvoyance that is purified and superhuman. Then, as easily as a strong person would extend or contract their arm, he vanished from the deer park at Bhesakaḷā’s Wood in the land of the Bhaggas and reappeared in front of Mahāmoggallāna near Kallavāḷamutta Village in the land of the Magadhans. He sat on the seat spread out and said to Mahāmoggallāna, “Are you nodding off, Moggallāna? Are you nodding off?” “Yes, sir.” “So, Moggallāna, don’t focus on or cultivate the perception that you were meditating on when you fell drowsy. It’s possible that you’ll give up drowsiness in this way. But what if that doesn’t work? Then think about and consider the teaching as you’ve learned and memorized it, examining it with your mind. It’s possible that you’ll give up drowsiness in this way. But what if that doesn’t work? Then recite in detail the teaching as you’ve learned and memorized it. It’s possible that you’ll give up drowsiness in this way. But what if that doesn’t work? Then pinch your ears and rub your limbs. It’s possible that you’ll give up drowsiness in this way. But what if that doesn’t work? Then get up from your seat, flush your eyes with water, look around in every direction, and look up at the stars and constellations. It’s possible that you’ll give up drowsiness in this way. But what if that doesn’t work? Then focus on the perception of light, concentrating on the perception of daylight, regardless of whether it’s night or day. And so, with an open and unenveloped heart, develop a mind that’s full of radiance. It’s possible that you’ll give up drowsiness in this way. But what if that doesn’t work? Then walking meditation concentrating on the perception of continuity, your faculties directed inwards and your mind not scattered outside. It’s possible that you’ll give up drowsiness in this way. But what if that doesn’t work? Then lie down in the lion’s posture—on the right side, placing one foot on top of the other—mindful and aware, and focused on the time of getting up. When you wake, you should get up quickly, thinking: ‘I will not live attached to the pleasures of sleeping, lying down, and drowsing.’ That’s how you should train. Contributed by Mike
November 2020
October 2020
Sleeping in the Forest I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the riverbed, nothing between me and the white fire of the stars but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths among the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdoms breathing around me, the insects, and the birds who do their work in the darkness. All night I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling with a luminous doom. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better. Mary Oliver Contributed by MIke
September 2020
There is no separate self
Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrongdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
Doesn’t make any sense.
Rumi
Contributed by Meg
We live our lives, for ever taking leave “And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses. We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. Who’s turned us round like this, so that we always, do what we may, retain the attitude of someone who’s departing? Just as he, on the last hill, that shows him all his valley for the last time, will turn and stop and linger, we live our lives, for ever taking leave.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, from the Duino Elegies Contributed by Mike
August 2020
Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. Comment by Christina Feldman “In her poem “Kindness”, Naomi Shihab Nye writes that it is only in seeing the size of the cloth of sorrow that we come to understand that it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Hand in hand mindfulness and metta ask us to open our eyes and hearts to the sorrows of the world, to be touched by the struggle, fear, and violence that damage that scar the lives of many. We are asked to truly sense the helplessness of those trapped in poverty, neglect and deprivation, to open our eyes and hearts to the threads of despair, loneliness and pain that leave too many people in our world forgotten and invisible. Then it is true that only kindness can make sense anymore. To commit ourselves to kindness in our thoughts words and acts and to be a conscious participant in the healing of the world we are part of. Metta brings us out of the shell of self-absorption, allowing us to be touched by the world and to touch the world with kindness. With friendliness and kindness we take our place in the family of all beings.” From her book Boundless Heart – The Buddha’s Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity, p22. Shambala Publications, 2017 Contributed by Mike
July 2020
Leaving the door open to joy Since the beginning of the coronovirus outbreak every dharma talk I have listened to has begun with the deep acknowledgement of our individual and collective pain at this time. A recognition of anxiety, anger, fear, uncertainty, loss and grief. It’s not surprising that an acknowledgement of pain is the starting point of so many teachers as this is where the Buddha started. It is after all the first ennobling truth; a deep recognition that pain, suffering and tragedy are inherent in the human condition, that life is hard to bear. This is what the Buddha called dukkha. Much of this pain is our evolutionary inheritance – we are highly sensitive, fragile and vulnerable and we have a brain that constructs self- consciousness. My cat may sadly die of a virus but it has no knowledge of it coming and when it arrives it does not ponder the consequences, and of course it has no notion of its own mortality. But we have long since left Eden and there is no return. And then of course there is that peculiarly human form of constructed dukkha that creates distress out of our unskillful reactions to all the inherent pain of life, our habitual and compulsive reactivity – “dukkha with compound interest” as one teacher likes to put it. It is this form of dukkha that according to the Buddha we can, with training, alleviate to some degree. What I find most impressive about the Buddha is the ability to be fully awake to, and embrace, our existential condition with its inherent pain, radical instability, tragedy and impermanence. Not only to embrace it but to live from it in a way that reduces distress for ourselves and others. This is my understanding of awakening; nothing mystical, just the simple but deep comprehension of our human condition and the ability to live skilfully from that understanding. Given our human condition and our capacity to be fully awake to its full import, kindness and compassion seem the only appropriate response. Where does that leave our pain? Christina Feldman is fond of saying “There is no freedom from pain – only freedom within it”. The only question is how do we meet our pain, whether it is the shared existential form or our personal anxieties, fears and angers? Fortunately the same evolutionary processes that have left us with our peculiar human dukkha have also endowed us with a range of capacities to be more skilfully with “that which is hard to bear”. The genius of the Buddha was his ability to tap into these capacities and to effectively teach them. Joy seems one of those capacities to hold pain, along with kindness to self/others, compassion to self/others, equanimity and the courage to be human. To leave the door open to joy, or better to invite it in, in no way belittles, minimises, devalues, dismisses, overlooks, glosses over or air-brushes out the pain. It is not a denial, a distancing, an attempt at dissociation, a desensitisation, whistling in the dark, donning rose-coloured spectacles or a Pollyanna effect. Pain is pain and no amount of dharma practice can take it away. Rather our dharma practice enables a way of gently meeting and holding pain in a way that has the capacity to lessen distress to ourselves and others. Further it enables and supports an open hearted resilience. One of the obstacles here is that joy is usually considered to be a “smiley emotion” whereas within the dharma practice it is thought of more as a way of meeting experience, an appreciative disposition, an orientation, and a way of abiding. It seems hugely beneficial to allow for a gentle joy, to give permission for it, to cultivate it even in the midst of pain. Our capacity to do this is largely in proportion to our inclination to practice. As an old Chinese proverb has it: “If we keep a green bough alive in our hearts, the singing bird will come.” Contributed by Mike
June 2020
Rob Burbea, rest in love and peace and sangha I’d often heard sangha members mentioning this teacher that they all really respected, but I’d not had the privilege of meeting him not that is until after he had died . . .When Jill mentioned one week that his funeral was happening with a Zoom (because of Covid restrictions) gathering I was interested, both by what a western Buddhist teachers funeral would be and by the zoom space that the times necessitated but on reflection I chose not to attend as I didn’t really know Rob. I hope that others who did will be able to share their experience of this. During the process of making my decision I spent a fair bit of time on websites, http://www.robburbea.com/ Rob’s had beautiful posts from him and his team during his last months and there were links to his music and some of his teaching enabling me to gradually became acquainted with this amazing man. I am currently working through his last teachings on the Gaia House Dharma seed website.https://gaia.dharmaseed.org/retreats/4496 Despite being very ill and in considerable pain he taught a 3 week silent retreat on the jhanas, which are rare and beautiful advanced teachings. Part of me is envious of those who were able to attend, another realises that this extraordinary archive is available for everyone to work through in our own time at our own pace and I feel sublimely grateful for this. Three months before Rob died a very dear friend of mine also died after a two and a half year process of living with a brain tumour. There were some similarities with Rob. James was a musician, a quiet non practicing Jew, a warm, generous and wonderful man taken from the world it seemed too soon. But the graciousness of both their passing’s is such a gift for us all, showing us not only how to live but how to die with such love and selflessness for all they touched. Contributed by Joss Dreaming the Real I’m lying down looking at the colour of sky falling through trees, dreaming the real, tasting what it feels like to love it. Why did it take me so long to let go, simply exhale, so the day could breathe itself in and open without me standing in the way? How could I forget the grace of my own body strong as this blue, tender as the white of the wild blossom, warm as midday light? Let me practice a patience bold enough to hold every weather, trusting the elements, the beauty of rain, all it shades of grey. I want whatever’s real to be enough. At least it’s a place to begin. And to master the art of loving it; feel it love me back under my skin Linda France Contributed by Alison
May 2020
Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth, let’s not speak in any language; let’s stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I’ll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go. Contributed by Joss Joss comments: Amazing that it was written in the 1950’s and published posthumously in 1974. There is a link to Sylvia Boorstien reading it rather beautifully here. Walk Slowly It only takes a reminder to breathe, a moment to be still, and just like that, something in me settles, softens, makes space for imperfection. The harsh voice of judgment drops to a whisper and I remember again that life isn’t a relay race; that we will all cross the finish line; that waking up to life is what we were born for. As many times as I forget, catch myself charging forward without even knowing where I’m going, that many times I can make the choice to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk slowly into the mystery. Danna Faulds Contributed by Gordon
April 2020
“Looking after oneself, one looks after others. Looking after others, one looks after oneself. And how does one look after others by looking after oneself? By practicing mindfulness, by developing it, by doing it a lot. And how does one look after oneself by looking after others? By patience, by non-harming, by loving kindness, by caring for others. Thus looking after oneself, one looks after others; and looking after others, one looks after oneself.” (The Buddha in the Sedaka Sutta) Contributed by Mike
March 2020
Lingering with loving appreciation – reflections upon Venerable Canda’s day retreat Recently we were delighted to have the Venerable Canda lead our teacher led day retreat at Glenfrome School. Venerable Canda is a Buddhist nun in the Thai Forest Tradition who now is at work setting up a small community of fully ordained Buddhist nuns in Oxford. She is remarkable in her down to earth teaching style, her charisma, energy, and her engagement with the more challenging issues within the Buddhist community and wider society. The theme of the day was the cultivation of contentment. Contentment she explained was an ennobling quality and a direct antidote to the restless desire that is the cause of much of our distress. “Whilst the winds of wanting blow us from past to future, always promising happiness someplace else, contentment enables the mind to linger with loving appreciation in this moment; within this imperfect body and mind.” So we were taught how to linger with appreciation with whatever may be arising within the moment. We practiced sitting meditation; breathing with a contended attitude towards whatever may be arising within our heart/mind/body. We practised walking meditation with the attitude of “this is enough” as we placed each foot slowly and contentedly on the ground. This is not easy of course, but like all other cultivations within the dharma it is doable with practice. Of course discontent is what brought many of us to meditation and dharma practice in the first place and may be the reason why we continue to engage with it. As such this kind of discontent is motivational. However the kind of discontent that venerable Canda focused on was the kind that robs us of our well being and creates distress for ourselves, others and the planet. It is closely associated with craving; the “wanting more” mind that relentlessly generates distress and undermines well-being. Often inevitably we bring the relentless striving/achieving mind to our practice. We want to get somewhere or achieve something. And of course the teachings of the Buddha in the discourses of the Pali Canon are full of exhortations to strive with diligence. However within this larger goal-orientated framework the cultivation of appreciation and contentment with this imperfect body/mind, as it presents itself right now, forms an essential component of the path. Venerable Canda was inviting us to cultivate a radical contentment based on the appreciation of the everyday and immediate goodness that we habitually overlook. This kind of radical contentment is of course subversive. It seems that the whole consumer capitalist enterprise is based upon stimulating discontent so that we will consume more forevermore. The culture of discontent is so persuasive that one wonders how far along the road we can go in our personal practice of contentment without simultaneously addressing and changing the social and economic structures within which we are embedded. Venerable Canda explained that on almost all of her retreats she is asked questions about activism. How can we be content when the world is burning? She explained that contentment, like equanimity, does not mean we accept the unacceptable or dismiss or downplay the social, economic and environmental injustices that so urgently need addressing. Rather the cultivation of contentment and appreciation can be a valuable resource for activists in that it counteracts the habitual negativity bias that can easily lead to overwhelm, burnout and despair. Furthermore the cultivation of qualities of contentment, appreciation, gratitude and equanimity may be the only firm foundations for effective change in the world. For to act from habitual places of grasping, aversion and restlessness may simply exacerbate the very suffering we wish to alleviate. Something similar may be true at the individual level. Far from us collapsing in a messy heap of non-achievement, the cultivation of contentment provides a resource for personal well-being and a firm foundation for effective personal engagement with the world. And before we construe this as yet another distant goal to achieve may we frequently remember the invitation of Venerable Canda to “linger with loving appreciation in this moment; within this imperfect body and mind.” Contributed by Mike
February 2020
Not Me, Not Mine
Thoughts hum Not me, not mine Who am I If not my thoughts My feelings, Bodily sensations ? Energy housed in flesh and blood pouring through the unfolding seeds of life Belonging to the wild seas the sheltered forests the untamed rivers The joys sorrows and heartbeats of life The sun glistens My heart soars with coarse wild abandonment Thoughts hum Not me, not mine.
Contributed by Heather McCabe
Clearing
Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worth of rescue.
Martha Postlewaite
Contributed by Gordon
January 2020
Ven Candavissudhi a UK-based Buddhist nun in the Theravadan tradition Speaking to the Monk on a Motorbike podcast about her practice: ‘Then I started to cultivate the more wholesome states much more rather than simply the bare awareness focused on impermanence. So that was a very nice, very equanimous kind of mind state, but I also saw the need to develop the beautiful qualities as well – to actively cultivate those. And so now, I would say that my practice is much less directed, perhaps, much more about the attitude I bring to whatever I observe rather than what I observe using a specific technique, it’s a lot more open, so when I sit down on my cushion, I’ll usually ask ‘how do you feel mind?’ and then I’ll listen in (and tune up to what it wants) ‘do you want to look at your body – is there anything that hurts there, let’s have a look – what’s needed here to ease the pain?’ what’s needed hear to relax the mind, what kind of attention can help me to calm and relax in a very gentle natural way. And then if the breath wants to arise in my mind, I allow it to, but I don’t go out and grab it and try and make it stay. So it’s a lot more gentle, it’s more about putting the causes in place for the breath to want to come to me, just as I would invite you here today and put the chocolate out and I’d make you a cup of tea so that you want to come in, I wouldn’t say ‘right, get in here, let’s start the recording – sit down, stay there’, no – it’s ‘let’s make the room warm, and I’ll put out chocolate and we’ll have a nice time hanging out’. So it’s that sort of approach, it’s more looking at the relationship I have with my experience than trying to go after a particular type of experience and I find that’s really helpful for getting myself a little bit out of the way, so I’m not so much forcing on things to happen but allowing them to without always interfering in the process’ Contributed by James
December 2019
Etty Hillesum – A life Transformed by Patrick Woodhouse This is a remarkable account of the spiritual transformation of a young Dutch Jewish woman born in 1914 and who was in her 20s at the outbreak of the WW2 and living in enemy occupied Amsterdam . Patrick Woodhouse draws from the diaries and letters Etty wrote from 1941-43, which were not published in Holland until 1986 and in English in 2002. These have become one of the most remarkable set of documents to emerge from the Nazi holocaust. The driving force that took her spirituality deeper was the Nazi terror and the increasing persecution of the Jews. Etty’s extraordinary account of her spiritual journey weaves in and out of this horrifically dark narrative. She died in Auschwitz in November 2013. Contributed by Barbara
November 2019
Clare explains the relationship between Compassion Focused Training and Insight Meditation I am really pleased that Will Devlin is able to offer a training in Compassion Focused Training and wanted to explain why I asked if he could offer this training to the BIM members. I first became interested in Compassion Focused Training (CFT) through reading Christopher Germer’s Book, ‘the Mindful Path to Self Compassion’ I felt there was so much shared ground with my understanding of Buddhism and Insight Meditation. It also seemed to offer me a real understanding of why it’s often so to be with my thoughts, emotions, feelings in a way which was free of blame and offered an evolutionary perspective on being human. That, yes there are a ‘thousand joys’, but the thousands sorrows are no picnic, so being human and much of our experience is out of our control and seen through the CFT perspective not our fault. It also resonated with so many teachings from Insight Teachers like Tara Brach and many others. Essentially I suffer because I have a body that is raging with chemicals that send me into fight, flight or freeze and loops of fear, anxiety and self-criticism. That none of this is my fault, it’s a quirk of evolution and all of us have this. It seemed to offer understanding and compassion. I didn’t suffer because I wasn’t trying hard enough, or not meditating enough but because I was a human being with this brain evolved for survival just like everyone else. For me the key was the recognition that part of what we struggle with, in meditation and life is the result of what Paul Gilbert, the founder of CFT calls our ‘tricky’ brains, evolved not for happiness but survival. Tara Brach calls the distress this gives us ‘limbic looping’. Paul Gilbert has differentiated CFT from Buddhist practice as being about ‘working with the poison (where are minds are water) and how to turn the poison into medicine, rather than an insight into the nature of water itself.’ But to me it doesn’t matter because it is about understanding why human beings struggle so much and why compassion makes sense. Paul Gilbert first worked with this approach because as a psychologist he saw a lot of people with high levels of self criticism that despite having some perspective on their ‘inner critic’ were still swamped with painful feelings of self -hatred and disgust. To find out more about CFT see https://www.compassionatemind.co.uk Will Devlin will be offering this 8 week CFT course, starting in January through BIM and other networks. Thanks Clare Cherish it just the way it is “In the art of meditation you shouldn’t start with some idea of gaining. This is the paradox in meditation: we want to get somewhere – we wouldn’t have taken up meditation if we didn’t – but the way to get there is to be fully here. The way to get from A to point B is really to be at A. When we follow the breathing in the hope of becoming something better, we are compromising our connection with the present, which is all we ever have. One place where ideas of gaining often come in, where people become obsessive about the practice, is in the task of staying with the breathing. We take a simple instruction and create a drama of success and failure around it: we feel we’re succeeding when we’re with the breath and failing when we’re not. Actually the whole process is meditation: being with breathing, drifting away, seeing that we’ve drifted away, gently coming back. It is extremely important to come back without blame, without judgement, without feeling a failure. If you have to come back a thousand times in a short period of sitting just do it. It’s not a problem unless you make it into one. If you find yourself disappointed with your meditation there’s a good chance that some idea of gaining is present. See that and let it go. However your practice seems to you, cherish it just the way it is.” Larry Rosenberg in Breath by Breath – the Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation Contributed by Mike
October 2019
The Monk and the Philosopher. Jean-Francois Revel and Matthieu Ricard. This is remarkable dialogue between J.F Revel, an influential philosopher and political commentator who left academia to become a writer, and his son, Matthieu Ricard, a scientist-turned-monk. Despite having a very promising career in science, Matthieu decided to study with a Tibetan Master exiled in Darjeeling. It is quite clear that Jean-Francois is genuinely very curious to understand what drew his son to make such a profound change to his life. So despite having taken such very different paths, their interest in and respect for each other’s world view culminated in a series of conversations in 1996 which were then published as this book. What makes it so interesting to read is that not only is Jean-Francois questioning in a way which enables Matthieu to elaborate on the very essence of Buddhism, but that he is able to do it within the context and framework of a Jean-Francois’ deep understanding and knowledge of Western Philosophy. Contributed by Barbara Why do we meditate at all? Every so often I ask myself this question. Asking the question seems to be a source of motivation and keeps the practice of meditation fresh and alive. The answers have varied and developed over time. Here is my latest offering: We meditate to gather and calm the mind in order to see clearly what is happening. As humans we are in the habit of reacting to the conditions of life with craving, aversion and confusion. As a reaction to life’s inevitable pain these are failed strategies that simply serve to exacerbate our discomfort. Meditation is a practice that cultivates a way of being that is at ease with things as they are. In meditation we therefore cultivate a capacity to be with experience as it is without the familiar and well worn tracks of reactivity that we have habitually cultivated over the years. It is an experiential training in letting go. When we are less driven by reactivity we can respond with a greater freedom. From moment to moment we develop the capacity and ability to respond more appropriately (“wisdom”) and with qualities of empathy (“compassion”) to whatever arises. Meditation enables an enduring well-being and a sustainable happiness that is not dependent upon self-construction, external conditions or endless consumption. Instead we are increasingly able to lean into life’s radical impermanence with nobility. Contributed by Mike
September 2019
The courage to have a change in heart With nations that fight each other, time passes and either the nations are no longer or they shift alliances and enemies become allies. This reminds us how everything changes with time. But the negative seeds that are left in our mindstream, the impact of our hatred and prejudice, is very long-lived. Why so? Because as long as we keep strengthening our anger and self-righteousness with our thoughts and our words and our actions, they will never go away. Instead, we become expert in perfecting our habits of hard heartedness, our own particular brand of rigid heart and closed mind. So what I am advocating here is something that requires courage – the courage to have a change of heart. The reason that this requires courage is because when we don’t do the habitual thing, hardening our heart and holding tightly to certain views then we’re left with the underlying uneasiness that we are trying to get away from. Whenever there’s a sense of threat, we harden. And so if we don’t harden, what happens? We’re left with that uneasiness, that feeling of threat. That’s when the real journey of courage begins. This is the real work of the peacemaker, to find the soft spot and the tenderness in that very uneasy place and stay with it. If we can stay with the soft spot and stay with the tender heart, then we are cultivating the seeds of peace. Pema Chodron in Practicing Peace in Times of War Contributed by Alastair Meeting reality Many people come to meditation expecting to create a state of peace or calm. True meditation is not creating a calm state. It is observing whatever is really happening without judgement, without analysing it, without getting wrapped up in the story about it. We spend most of our lives trying to avoid the unpleasant feelings just below the surface. Meditation creates a space where we can finally stop all the distractions and meet reality face to face. (Posted by “David” on the Insight Timer App) Contributed by Mike
August 2019
The Near Enemies of Fierce Compassion A near enemy is a Buddhist term that refers to a state of mind that appears similar to the desired state but actually undermines it. When we are aware of the near enemies of fierce compassion, we can act compassionately and affirmatively in the world without adding to the suffering that is already there. We would like to offer 6 simple questions as a test of fierce compassion: 1. “Am I in the grip of anger or hatred?” (mindfulness versus emotional reactivity) 2. “Do I feel morally superior?” (acknowledging our common humanity versus self-righteousness) 3. “Do I want my adversary to suffer or be humiliated?” (kindness versus hostility) 4. “Am I self/other-ing?” (solidifying self, rather than sitting lightly to our identities) 5. “Am I polarising into them and us?” (acknowledging our common humanity versus discord and division) 6. “Is there an attachment to outcome, rather than a focus on process?” (grasping versus trusting the process) When the answer to these questions is “no,” and we add a measure of wisdom, we can surely change the world for the better. Adapted from The Near Enemies of Fierce Compassion November 29, 2018 By Drs Chris Germer and Kristin Neff Co-founders, Center for Mindful Self-Compassion Contributed by Mike
July 2019
Life is a garden Life is a garden not a road We enter and exit through the same gate Wondering where we go matters less than what we notice. Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle Contributed by James The thorn in the heart Fear is born from arming oneself. Just see how many people fight! I’ll tell you about the dreadful fear that caused me to shake all over: Seeing creatures flopping around, Like fish in water too shallow, So hostile to one another! — Seeing this, I became afraid. This world completely lacks essence; It trembles in all directions. I longed to find myself a place Unscathed — but I could not see it. Seeing people locked in conflict, I became completely distraught. But then I discerned here a thorn — Hard to see — lodged deep in the heart. It’s only when pierced by this thorn That one runs in all directions. So if that thorn is taken out — one does not run, and settles down. Who here has crossed over desires, the world’s bond, so hard to get past, he does not grieve, she does not mourn. His stream is cut, she’s all unbound. What went before — let go of that! All that’s to come — have none of it! Don’t hold on to what’s in between, And you’ll wander fully at peace. (The Buddha from the Attadanda Sutta: Arming Oneself. Translated by Andrew Olendzki.) Comment: This is one of my favourite poems from the Pali Canon. The metaphor of the thorn in the heart for all that afflicts us and the imagery of fish flopping around in shallow water for our usual states of agitation, unrest and conflict are both vivid and profound. The poem seems a truly autobiographical account by the Buddha that is revealing of his sensitivity as he struggles to make sense of the human condition. With insight the thorn in the heart is discerned and its extraction made possible with the gradual overcoming of our slavery to attachment and aversion and a cultivated capacity to let go and not to hold on to each moment of experience. The poem begins with conflict and ends with peace and as such is a wonderful summary of the entire Dharma. Contributed by Mike
June 2019
Nirvana-ing “Many people think of nirvana as a Buddhist heaven, well it isn’t. Nirvana is a state of freeing oneself. In the original language it is a verb form, not a noun, not a state I reach, not a place to go to, a verb which can literally mean “to go out”, an intransitive verb. It also means “to unbind” from something. “Nir” means to not do something, “vana” can mean to bind or tie to something. What we are engaged in is not achieving nirvana, but nirvana-ing, little nirvanas. It is unbinding yourself from habitual tendencies, from the pathology of habits, incrementally, little by little as we practice.” John Peacock From a dharma talk The Pathos of the Human Condition, 21/12/2013, Dharma Seed Comment: I read this quotation with a sense of relief. It de-mythologises nirvana from a grandiose state of some future attainment to something much more doable in the here and now from moment to moment. It points to the ability, arising from practice, to respond to each moment without the habitually compulsive reactivities of grasping, holding and averting, leaving us free to respond more appropriately and with greater intimacy and ease. Contributed by Mike
May 2019
Nothing to lean upon at all She saw that all phenomena arose, abided, and fell away. She saw that even knowing this arose, abided, and fell away. Then she knew there was nothing more than this, no ground, nothing to lean on, stronger than the cane she held. Nothing to lean upon at all, and no one leaning… And she opened the clenched fist in her mind and let go, and fell, into the midst of everything. Teijitsu, 18th century abbess of Hakujuan, near Eiheiji, Japan Comment: What I like in this elegant piece of writing is that it seems to point toward an interface between impermanence and emptiness in an experiential way. The noticing that phenomena arise and pass away is followed by the realisation that this noticing too must pass. What then is left? Nothing to hold onto, and yet still we find ourselves ‘in the midst of everything’. Contributed by James It’s doable! Abandon what is unskilful. One can abandon the unskilful. If it were not possible I would not ask you to do it. If this abandoning of the unskilful would bring harm and suffering, I would not ask you to abandon it. But as it brings benefit and happiness, therefore I say, abandon what is unskilful. Cultivate the skilful. One can cultivate the skilful. If it were not possible I would not ask you to do it. If this cultivation were to bring harm and suffering, I would not ask you to do it. But as this cultivation brings benefit and happiness, I say, cultivate the skilful. The Buddha (Anguttara Nikaya 2.19) Contributed by Mike
April 2019
Radical Dharma and Lama Rod Owens Radical is not a term we immediately associate with Dharma readings so we were interested to participate in a day retreat in Bristol with Lama Rod Owens who describes himself as a “black, queer, activist, Buddhist teacher”. Along with colleagues, Angel Kyodo Williams and Jasmine Syedullah, Rod has authored a book entitled “Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation”. He is an American and his work is contexted in the history of relationships between blacks and whites in the USA. He presents racism as creating injustice which leads to suffering in that we cut off painful aspects of ourselves from ourselves. This includes not just racism but also inequalities deriving from gender, sexual orientation and social class. Personal liberation is seen as impossible without social liberation, so as he and his colleagues put it “a new Dharma is one that insists we investigate not only the unsatisfactoriness of our own minds but also prepares us for the discomfort of confronting the obscurations of the society we are individual expressions of. It recognizes that the delusions of systematic oppression are not solely the domain of the individual. By design, they are seated within and reinforced by society “ (p.23/24/). While some groups might appear to be in a privileged position in relation to these categories, Rod et al. point out that if we see privilege only as a gift, we lose sight of its shadow side which they describe graphically as “trading humanity for privilege.” We lose touch of our own vulnerability when we are straightjacketed into positions of power and authority. They suggest that there is a need for “conversations” between groups in which the origin of these wounds can be sought and healing explored. In order to explore these ideas within the Sangha, we ran a couple of sessions in which we asked participants to share in pairs two questions. This first was concerned with the question “what do I leave behind at the door when I enter the Sangha? Do I become just the nice Buddhist? The second asked people to think about their experience of privilege or lack of it. These were just small exercises but more generally, the longer term question for the Sangha is whether it is possible to create a safe space in which these issues can be explored and a conversation developed. Thanks to Rod for sharing his ideas with us. If you wish to learn more, you may like to know that he is leading a retreat at Gaia House from April 18-22 and is also leading a session at London Insight on April 23. The book Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation (2016) is published by North Atlantic Books. Contributed by Ray Woolfe and James Wormell Love can go anywhere The Buddha taught that the forces in the mind that bring suffering are able to temporarily hold down positive forces such as love and wisdom – but they can never destroy them. The negative forces can never uproot the positive, whereas the positive forces can actually uproot the negative forces. Love can uproot fear or anger or guilt, because it is a greater power. Love can go anywhere. Nothing can obstruct it. I Am That, a book of dialogues with Nisargadatta Maharaj, includes an exchange with Nisargadatta and a man who complained a great deal about his mother. The man felt she had not been a very good mother and was not a good person. At one point, Nisargadatta advised him to love his mother. The man replied “She wouldn’t let me.” Nisargadatta responded “She couldn’t stop you.” No external condition can prevent love; no one and no thing can stop it. The awakening of love is not bound up in things being in a certain way. Metta, like the true nature of the mind, is not dependent; it is not conditioned. Sharon Salzberg (from her book “Loving Kindness – The Revolutionary Art of Happiness”) Contributed by Gordon
March 2019
For a New Beginning by John O’Donohue In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you. Contributed by Mike
February 2019
Tribute to Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver the great American poet died on January 17th 2019 at the age of 83. She was a prolific writer whose work received many awards and accolades. Her collection American Primitive received the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, and in 1992, she was awarded the National Book Award. Many of her poems are well known and used by teachers within the dharma community as well as the wider mindfulness meditation movement. I first came across her work about five years ago in her New and Selected Poems and have found her poetry a continued source of inspiration. Her poems have a contemplative and detailed attention to the natural world. Often they evoke joy, delight, surprise and a sense of interconnection. Whilst her poems are often light and almost conversational in tone they often introduce a deeper reflection upon our lives. I feel it is this quality of reflection, particularly upon transience, as well as the evocation of attentive presence to the natural world, that have made her poems so endearing to practitioners of meditation. I leave you with what I believe to be one of her finest poems “Morning Walk”.
Little by little
the ocean
empties its pockets –
foam and fluff;
and the long, tangled ornateness
of seaweed;
or the whelks,
ribbed or with ivory knobs;
but so knocked about
in the sea’s blue hands
and their story is at length only
about the wholeness of destruction –
they come one by one
to the shore
to the shallows
to the mussel-dappled rocks
to the rise to dryness
to the edge of the town
to offer, to the measure that we will accept it,
this wisdom:
though the hour be whole
though the minute be deep and rich
though the heart be a singer of hot red songs
and the mind be as lightning,
what all the music will come to is nothing,
only the sheets of fog and the fog’s blue bell –
you do not believe it now, you are not supposed to,
you do not believe it yet – but you will –
morning by singular morning,
and shell by broken shell.
Contributed by Mike
Birth and Becoming.
By Ajahn Chah “It is taught that birth is suffering, but it doesn’t really mean dying from this life and taking rebirth in the next life. That’s too far away. The suffering of birth happens right now. It’s said that becoming is the cause of birth. What is this “becoming”? Anything that we attach too and put meaning on is becoming. Whenever we see anything as self or other or belonging to ourselves, without wise discernment that such is only a convention, that is becoming. Whenever we hold to something as “us” or “ours” and it then undergoes change, the mind is shaken by that. It is shaken by a positive or negative reaction. That sense of self experiencing happiness or unhappiness is birth. When there is birth it brings suffering along with it, because everything must change and disappear.” Contributed by Ray
January 2019
Hokusai Says by Roger S Keyes Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing. He says Look forward to getting old. He says keep changing; you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it’s interesting. He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says every one of us is a child, every one of us is ancient, and every one of us has a body. He says every one of us is frightened. He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear. He says everything is alive – shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees. Wood is alive. Water is alive. Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us. He says live with the world inside you. He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books. It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish. It doesn’t matter if you sit at home and stare at the ants on your veranda or the shadows of the trees and grasses in your garden. It matters that you care. It matters that you feel. It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you. Contentment is life living through you. Joy is life living through you. Satisfaction and strength are life living through you. Peace is life living through you. He says don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you. Happy New Year everyone Mannie The heart of skillful meditation The heart of skillful meditation is the ability to let go and begin again, over and over again. Even if you have to do that a thousand times during a session, it does not matter. There is no distance to traverse in recollecting our attention; as soon as we realize we have been lost in discursive thought, or have lost touch with our chosen contemplation, right in that very moment we can begin again. Nothing has been ruined and there is no such thing as failing. There is nowhere the attention can wander to, and no duration of distraction, from which we cannot completely let go, in a moment, and begin again. Sharon Salzberg Loving –kindness The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. p29 Mike
December 2018
You will lose everything
by Jeff Foster “You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memory. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your own body will eventually fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is absolutely impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away. Right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground. For that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound obvious but really knowing it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude. Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.” Contributed by Gordon
Mind Wanting More
by Holly Hughes Only a beige slat of sun above the horizon, like a shade pulled not quite down. Otherwise, clouds. Sea rippled here and there. Birds reluctant to fly. The mind wants a shaft of sun to stir the grey porridge of clouds, an osprey to stitch sea to sky with its barred wings, some dramatic music: a symphony, perhaps a Chinese gong. But the mind always wants more than it has— one more bright day of sun, one more clear night in bed with the moon; one more hour to get the words right; one more chance for the heart in hiding to emerge from its thicket in dried grasses—as if this quiet day with its tentative light weren’t enough, as if joy weren’t strewn all around. Comment: This poem is a beautiful reminder of one of the reasons why we meditate. Whilst it is important that we maximise conditions for well-being, the excessive “wanting-more-mind” seems to be the habitual generator of discontent and dissatisfaction (dukkha) ensuring that our sought after well-being remains elusive. Insight meditation has the capacity to attenuate the “wanting-more-mind” and free our capacities for contentment, gratitude and perhaps give us glimpses of that joy strewn all around. Contributed by Mike
November 2018
Sitting is strange
“Sitting is a strange process. In the beginning, it’s hard to grasp what it’s all about. Later on, it doesn’t get much easier. The only thing that’s clear is “just do it.” Whether the sitting is “good” or “bad,” just do it. You never get any better at it. Not really. But this whole idea of “getting better” is part of the problem, the endless self-improvement and self-manipulation game. We don’t sit to get better. We sit to be with life as it is.” (Source unknown) Comment: I find this a useful quotation to reflect upon. In a culture that seems to hold self-improvement as a near requirement it is difficult to see meditation as anything other than a self–improvement project, a way of getting better at “this” or being more of “that”. It therefore feels strange to know meditation as simply being about letting go of the entire getting disposition. To experience meditation as simply being open to what is now arising within us, to “life as it is” seems to take endless practice. Very strange. Perhaps the word “practice” doesn’t help here as it seems to engender an evaluative “how am I doing?” mentality. Maybe we should rename our meditation time. Any offers? Contributed by Mike
Landfall
by Clive James Hard to believe now that I once was free From the pills in heaps, blood tests, X-rays and scans. No pipes or tubes. At perfect liberty, I stained my diary with travel plans. The ticket paid for at the other end, I packed a hold-all and went anywhere They asked me. One on whom you could depend To show up, I would cross the world by air And come down neatly in some crowded hall. I stood for a full hour to give my spiel. Here, I might talk back to a nuisance call, And that’s my flight of eloquence. Unreal: But those years in the clear, how real were they, When all the sirens in the signing queue Who clutched their hearts at what I had to say Were just dreams, even when the dream came true? I called it health but never stopped to think It might have been a kind of weightlessness, That footloose feeling always on the brink Of breakdown: the false freedom of excess. Rarely at home in those days, I’m home now, Where few will look at me with shining eyes. Perhaps none ever did, and that was how The fantasy of young strength that now dies Expressed itself. The face that smiled at mine Out of the looking glass was seeing things. Today I am restored by my decline And by the harsh awakening it brings. I was born weak and always have been weak. I came home and was taken into care. A cot-case, but at long last I can speak: I am here now, who was hardly even there. From Sentenced to Life, Picador, 2015, p. 4
October 2018
Facing up to white privilege
UWE Bristol sponsored a guest lecture entitled ‘Facing up to White Privilege’ on Monday 3 September 2018. The speaker was Dr Judy Ryde, psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor. In her talk, Dr Ryde outlined the history of white, or Northern European, domination, through slavery and colonisation to the present day. She highlighted how the invention of ‘political correctness’ created a more welcoming landscape by teaching people to censor racist language in public settings; however, she shared her view that this largely pushed unconscious and conscious racist beliefs out of sight for a while. The recent rise in hate crimes and right-wing politicians seems to support this. In her view, ‘it was like putting out a fire that is still burning underneath.’ She then went on to highlight some of the ways in which white people continue to benefit from past and present white domination. For example, did you know that most National Trust properties were built from the compensation awarded to families involved in the slave trade, when slavery was abolished? She also described the privilege of being ‘just normal’, of the supremacy of the English language, and of the globalisation of white sport, and she argued that ‘the degradation of the planet is the worst feature of white domination.’ She concluded her talk by suggesting some possible processes of facing up to white privilege, both within the individual and as a nation. For example, reparations could be made by re-naming the global ‘aid’ budget as the ‘reparations’ budget, and taking this more seriously, as a means of repaying nations and communities that we have exploited. She also suggested starting a fund for disadvantaged youth, paid for from wealthy families that directly benefited from the slave trade. And she suggested that the National Trust use their properties as teaching sites regarding colonisation, imperialism and slavery, to bring this history alive and share it more widely. Let’s hope some of her suggestions are taken up soon! Contributed by Christine
September 2018
Remember the adze handle
“Just as when a carpenter or carpenter’s apprentice sees the marks of his fingers or thumb on the handle of his adze but does not know, ‘Today my adze handle wore down this much, or yesterday it wore down that much, or the day before yesterday it wore down this much,’ still he knows it is worn through when it is worn through. In the same way, when a monk dwells devoting himself to development, he does not know, ‘Today my effluents* wore down this much, or yesterday they wore down that much, or the day before yesterday they wore down this much,’ still he knows they are worn through when they are worn through.” (Nava Sutta SN 22.101translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu) I have found that these words from the Buddha are useful to remember when you feel that you are getting nowhere with your meditation. An adze is a tool with a wooden handle used by carpenters to hollow out wood. With constant daily use the handle would imperceptibly be worn down. The worn down appearance would only be noticeable after years of use. Likewise with daily meditation. The immediate effects may not be noticeable from day to day, or month to month. Perhaps it is only when we look back after much diligent practice that we recognise its transformative power. So we can remember the simile of the adze handle, trust in the process and let go of the wanting for speedy effects. *Effluents is a translation of the Pali word asavas and is variously translated as defilements, taints, toxins, pollutants, outflows or effluents. It refers to all the unskilful thoughts and actions that flow out of us. In the Nava Sutta and elsewhere the Buddha describes the goal of the path as the ending of the effluents. Contributed by Mike
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.
Chinese Zen master Wu Men
To have an unclouded mind and to see a little more deeply into life is perhaps what Insight meditation is all about. Bristol Insight exists to support us in the endeavour to see with a greater clarity and to respond to life with a deeper appreciation.