Mourning a royal bodhisattva.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37650466
"The nation belongs to everyone, not one or two specific people. Those who confront each other will all be the losers. And the loser of the losers will be the nation...
"For what purpose are you telling yourself that you're the winner when you're standing upon the ruins and debris?"
This is a picture of me exploring the forest on Big Island Hawaii in August 2006 during a time when I was visiting the sanghe there..
News from Labyrinthe:
Peter and I were happy to host a retreat last weekend entitled 'Exploring Self & Other' it gave the attendees an opportunity to explore the nature of self by means of exploring our internal landscape, our relationship to the other and to the environment that surrounds us by engaging together in meditative practice, art making, movement, silent reflection and group discussion. It provided an invitation to create community, a valuable refuge and resource providing a supportive environment for self-enquiry and the development of meaning.
It was a joy to experience people who hardly knew each other before, meditating, living and working creatively together. A big thank you to Jnanamati who jointly facilitated the event with Naomi West from Jersey and to all who took part so enthusiastically.
Jnanamati and Naomi stayed on after the event and on the Monday morning Jnanamati gave us a Dharma talk on 'Community' which generated a good discussion. we are very grateful to David and the community where this idea was born round the table at Eleusis earlier this year.
Blessings,
Mo & Peter
As I walked up and down the Strand,
I glimpsed Saint Thomas White
On the other side of the street.
Shamefully, I glanced at him.
He smiled.
In shame, I looked away and walked on.
A second time I saw him,
And found my eyes drawn to him-
So pretty, so slight, so masculine.
He winked at me.
In shame I looked away
And walked on.
A third time I saw him.
My eyes moved to him
Of their own accord.
'Hello,' he said, and smiled.
'Hello,' I replied,
And blushed, coquettishly.
When they crucified him, I stayed away.
The Methodists ministered to him,
And shamed the mob at bay.
'Didn't you know him?' a work-mate said,
And smirked, and punched my arm.
'I never did,' I cried, blushing like a bride.
I walked to Wesley's Chapel, and cried on the benches;
'Love God with all your being, And love your neighbour as yourself,'
The commandment boards replied.
Didn't God only love and refuse to judge?
Didn't God take you as you are,
And draw you to Himself if you gave yourself to Him?
Then out onto the fields at Hoxton,
And on to Newington Green,
Where revolutions are made.
I returned along the new river Jordan
To the fallen Jerusalem,
Where fear gnawed at my feeble soul, and God seemed hard to hear.
In Principles Against Common Fallacies I wrote...
6. Nothing is indivisibly singular.
This is an interesting philosophical issue to consider. There are philosophies centres on the notion of zero - that all is 'emptiness' and there are philosophies centred on the notion of 'oneness'. These two 'numbers', one and zero are oddities. They are almost as odd as the notion of infinity. Historically, many systems managed without the notion of zero. If you look at your keyboard, you will probably see that the zero is in the wrong place, on the extreme right, when, in fact, it is supposed to be the number before one. This is because it was an afterthought. So there has been controversy throughout history about zero and whether it is a real number or not, which, of course, all depends on what you mean by 'number'. However, 'one' is also a rather strange number. Something only has meaning in contrast to something else or some other things, so one has meaning in contradistinction to multiplicity, yet multiplicity is made up of items that are supposedly singular, so one is distinct in being different from a lot more of itself, which is odd.
Empirically, there actually seems to be nothing in the universe that cannot be broken down into smaller parts. It was once thought that we should discover 'atoms' that were indivisible, but this has proved impossible. There is always a smaller set of parts. So every 'one' is actually a 'set' or 'group'. This is a notion quite close to some of the early Buddhist analyses of the person into elements. When we think about this we start to see that the only really unreal number is one. There are no ones in the universe. One is an abstract intellectual concept. As soon as we think of one X, we are automatically having in mind the other Xs. So the 'one X' simply refers to an instance of Xs.
Thus oneness can be a matter of grouping things together, rather artificially, or of delineating an instance of a broader class.
All of this means that the many instances that we encounter of 'oneness' as a fundamental spiritual principle are all vulnerable to both deconstruction and aggregation.
What does this mean in terms of practical spirituality? That one cannot claim a special status as one-self because, on the one hand (sic) one is constituted of many elements and on the other hand one is one-self only as an instance of all selves. So the attempt to find one's true self or oneness is doomed to failure. Nothing solid will be encountered that can be posited as one. Any attempt to find the oneness of all things will be similarly futile - actually even more futile, since to say that a group of things is one, in any meaningful sense, is to designate them as somehow united in distinction to something else, but if we are talking about 'all' things this become self-defeating.
Everything is a multiplicity. Our struggles to arrive at the kind of self-consistency that will justify a sense of one's oneness are un unnecessary self-torture. It cannot be done. Much more profitable and interesting is to explore the jungle of natural complexity than to imagine that one can reduce it to a monoculture.
Thinking
Here is an interesting quote: "Philosophy, like speaking prose, is something we have to do all our lives, well or badly, whether we notice it or not. What usually forces us to notice it is conflict." - Mary Midgeley.
Philosophy can be taken in two ways - as ideas or as method. I'm sure we all use both without, for the most part, giving it much thought. We do not know what we know. We all take a huge range of ideas for granted and only think about them consciously when they are challenged, either by a contrary opinion or by evidence. Of course, often we do not take the other opinion seriously or we avoid or reformulate the evidence so as to preserve our view. It is an important step in heightening intelligence to become interested in rather than resistant to contra-valuant material.
It has often seemed to me that more could be done within the education system to acclimatise young people to the art of thinking, so that they can at least enquire into their own and one another's opinions. The combined effects of a democratic ethos and social media, both of which tend to lead us to associate only with those who think as we do, tends to create a kind of intellectual blindness that must surely be dangerous in the long run. However, there is no doubt that we do pick up skills in thinking without ever knowing that we are doing so, alongside some bad habits.
Grammar
Another example of not knowing what we know came out in a small item that has gone a bit viral on social media which is the observation that in English adjectives have to be in a certain order, namely,
opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose
so that one can have a quaint little old oblong blue Dutch wooden box, but if one rearranges the adjectives they either sound strange or change meaning. Thus
a Dutch blue wooden oblong box is possible but feels awkward and, in any case, one reads it as though 'Dutch blue' were a special colour and one mentally groups 'oblong box' as though it were a species of containers with some distinct meaning distant from ordinary boxes. In this way the ordering of adjectives gives us possibilities for shifting nuances of meaning without our having any conscious (until now) awareness that we were applying a grammatical rule.
A great deal of what we know is implicit.
You can find my article on Buddhism and Creative Writing published in Buddhist Door magazine here.
Here is an article I find interesting and helpful bridging Zen and Pureland.
http://www.ancientdragon.org/dharma/articles/dogens_zazen_as_other_power_practice
Things happen by small degrees. We set out to do some improvements in the big barn. To do that we had to empty the space. To empty the space we had to build a shed in which to put things - two sheds, in fact. To build sheds is quite a big job, but before you can get started on it you need to lay a base of paving. Before you can lay the paving you have to clear the ground - also quite heavy work. In the meantime the grass is growing, paths in the forest need to be kept open, and a rash of other jobs call for attention. After a year or two one is getting somewhere near to doing the job that one had in mind in the first place.
These realities teach one patience. Today, I read an article that says that scientific research suggests that bad tempered, grumpy people tend to live longer and get better paid. I certainly don't get highly paid, but I do harvest many invaluable benefits such as wonderful company and amazing sunsets. Also each of my little achievements on the way to getting the original job done bring their own satisfactions. My father was an irascible man and I myself used to be more fiery than I am these days. Perhaps I should practise losing my temper more often. On the other hand, there will probably be another scientific report next week saying the opposite. I think I'll just stick with my Buddhist practice and say the nembutsu as I go about my little jobs.
This article was sent to me by a friend. It is quite long but definitely interesting and raises many important questions about the ultimate agenda of the mindfulness movement and the values that are inherent in it, suggesting that the leaders of the movement have ambitions to spread a value system that goes far beyond the basic definition of modern utilitarian mindfulness, a value system that has some connection with Buddhism, but rather more with progressive Americanism. Well worth a read.
Last Wednesday I decided to tidy up my garden. I had already mown the lawn and wanted to remove some vines that had grown over my downstairs bathroom window.
I used a plastic stool to stand on and thought maybe I would be better waiting until I have a ladder. Being impatient I ignored my instinct and instead of waiting until I had a ladder stood on my 4ft high wooden fence.
As I tried to step across to get back on my stool the fence broke and I dropped open legged onto the fence. I felt instant pain and ran into the house to check my leg, which was stinging and hurt.
Fortunately it hadn't cut badly and didn't feel it needed hospital treatment.
I called my daughter who is a nurse as it had shaken me up and the wound had a large lump.
She looked and dressed it for me as I sat feeling very sorry for myself. Over the week it has been quite painful, I have a bruise that covered most of the top back of my leg.
In a conversation this evening my daughter said you haven't had much luck this week due to my front door lock breaking earlier.
My reply was, luck had nothing to do with it I was stupid enough to stand on a flimsy fence. If anything I'm lucky the injury wasn't much worse. I have known the lock was breaking for several weeks and didn't repair it, I was able to open the door after a while and changed the lock.
I think my point is it was my actions not my luck.
With some variations our current pattern is as follows. there is a snack lunch and at 6.30 or 7pm an evening meal and...
Monday: 8.30 Breakfast with Dharma class. Snack lunch. Work period.
Tuesday: 8.30 Morning service with short Dharma talk followed by breakfast and, sometimes, Dharma class. Then work/other activities.
Wednesday: 8.30 Breakfast. Shopping - often Sancoins market.
Thursday: Rest day. Late breakfast. Miscellaneous activities. 8.30pm Evening service
Friday: 8.30 Breakfast. Oasis Visit: !0.00 Service followed by Dharma talk followed by refreshments & discussion. 2pm-ish return to Eleusis.
Saturday: Work day. 8.30 Breakfast.
Sunday: 8.30 Breakfast. !0.00 Service followed by Dharma talk followed by refreshments & discussion. Work period.
In addition there are optional meditation and sutra reading sessions in the morning before breakfast several days per week.
I expect that the following fictitious speculation will prove completely unfounded, but it is interesting to consider how impermanence can play out....
History Regarded from 2050
"Looking back on the early part of the 21st century, one can see that it was 2016 that was the turning point that has brought us to the position that we are in now at mid-century, when, rather as happened in the 20th century, everything that was taken for granted about the political order in the first decade or so of the century had been completely over turned by 1950.
Yes, 2016 was the year that Britain voted to leave the European Union and Donald Trump was elected president in the USA. Prior to these events, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, one of the most experienced statesmen on the planet at that time, had played his cards very close to his chest, but he had been, perhaps, one of the very few who saw the real possibilities in the unfolding drama.
The departure of English speaking influence from the EU left a situation where the complementarity between the technologically sophisticated and industrial Western part of Europe and the resource rich domains of the former Soviet empire became much more obvious. The election of a president intent on cutting back American military involvement was also leading to a fundamental rethink of NATO. An accommodation between Mr Putin and Mrs Merkel soon made it apparent that the balance of forces in the world had decisively shifted.
The American pull back was further accelerated by the emerging, yet predictable, difficulties with Mexico. The insistence by the new American regime that Mexico pay for the wall along the southern border of the USA was not ruinous to the Mexican exchequer, but it was felt as unbearably humiliating and pride can count for a lot more than money. Almost overnight, attitudes across Latin America hardened. For some decades, the Latin countries had been trying to detach themselves from their northern neighbour. Now the matter had a new earnestness. If they could not look to America for aid, then where? Mr Putin's phone lines were open.
These two parallel processes of rapprochement brought Russia into the centre of things as never before. The English (for we cannot really include the Scots in this) had voted for independence out of pride and xenophobia, little imagining that what used to be called the Iron Curtain would soon arrive at the English Channel. America too, had elected the Republican candidate on similar considerations and similarly soon found themselves in a parallel plight. The wall that was supposed to keep the Mexicans out, became the symbol of the new world division in which America now found itself very much on the back foot having lost most of its allies and being too much in debt to sustain dominance purely from its own resources. When, in 2022, the world stopped using dollars as the main support currency for international trade, the American economy suffered a massive cutback that made the financial crises of the beginning of the century seem trivial by comparison. England no longer had worries about an excess of immigrants - the country was now too poor to be a magnet any more.
England - Scotland having severed itself and rejoined the EU - soon found that it had, in effect, become an appendage of a declining USA which was not a happy situation, especially since America was increasingly concerned with its own 'enemy within' in the form of the millions of Latinos who had been needlessly alienated.
In a strange irony of history, the English speaking world now found itself as much surrounded by enemies as the soviets had done in the second half of the 20th century. When so surrounded one can hardly afford such luxuries as 'civil liberties' and soon the Greater European Alliance, that now reached from Vladivostok to Cape Horn, taking in Berlin and Paris on the way, felt itself increasingly to be the defender of all true human values in contrast to the repressive 'patriot' rump of the English speaking lands.
Eventually, the struggle of America to maintain its identity collapsed. The dominant language of the country was rapidly coming to be Spanish. The real political game had, in any case, by now become the tension between the GEA and the powers of East Asia. England was an irrelevance, about as significant as Austria (also once centre of a great empire) had been after 1918.
==============
What a fantasy! Of course, none of this will ever happen. History is not predictable. I am, however, somewhat surprised that the debate over the EU referendum has contained virtually no reference to such geo-political considerations. After all, this is not really about money and immigrants, it is about the 'Great Game' as it used to be called.
There seems to be a naive assumption that all can be relied upon to go on just as before, rather as, in the second half of the 20th century, the 'Cold War' was taken for granted as the inevitable and perennial backdrop to all world events - until, suddenly, it wasn't. The referendum vote is being taken as though it does not really make much difference to the balance of power in the world, but this is surely a great mistake.
Is it inevitable that in a democracy the public cannot be made aware of the really big consequences of the actions they contemplate? Perhaps so. Politics is a game of cat and mouse and to tell the public is to also inform the mouse that one is trying to catch and so make success impossible. Democratic parties, therefore, must, for the most part, keep the public focussed on short term irrelevancies and not let them ever see the bigger picture until it is too late.
Yesterday the Labour MP Jo Cox was shot dead while campaigning to keep Britain in the European Union. A sad day. It is horrid to see politics degenerating into violence.
A friend passed on this message from a friend of hers...
"Nothing, recently , has shocked me more than yesterday’s senseless , horrible murder of Jo Cox , a young British MP , mother of two and only just 41 years old ... Why ? “ Morte pour l’Europe “ said the front page of our local newspaper .. but I’m am asking : “ what has happened to Britain, a country that for many decades after WW2 , one could admire for its democratic values, its achievements, its Culture ? Why so much hatred for Europe? Because it is obvious that many of those who are going to vote against Brexit , will only do it for their personal and financial interests – they’ll vote for “une Europe à la Carte “. How sad !
I was raised and educated on the border between France and Germany , born in the mid 1930s , I know how much hatred, grief and destruction the two World Wars brought to my homeland, but I then grew up feeling, not only French but also profoundly and happily European ! My husband is British and our children live in two different European countries... I want nothing more than for Europe to survive , even though we all know that it has to get better and stronger. But today, my thoughts go back to Stefan Zweig’s masterpiece : “ Die Welt von Gestern” ( the World of Yesterday ),"
I have rather similar feelings.
There are two issues here, that may be related. One is the murder and the other is the referendum. The second issue, of course, has several dimensions.
Regarding the murder, it is appalling both because any murder is so and because one has deep sympathy for the bereaved family. What a terrible shock to come home from school and find that Mummy has been murdered in the street. As a Buddhist one also has some compassion for the poor fool who stupidly pulled the trigger who must have been tormented by a hundred devils. More generally, it appalls because perhaps the greatest virtue of democracy is that it permits political issues to be settled without violence and that is a huge step toward civilisation which it would be terrible to lose.
One says "senseless" meaning that whatever reason there was would be insufficient to justify such an act, but strictly speaking, violence is rarely if ever without some kind of sense and the puzzle now is to ascertain what the motive actually was. Perhaps this murder was politically motivated, in which case, it was anti-European and probably pro-extreme right. Perhaps the man was mentally ill, but even if he was there will still have been some motive. Perhaps the whole thing had nothing to do with the referendum, but that seems unlikely in the circumstances.
Regarding the referendum, the debate has been dominated by two issues - economics and immigration. There has been hardly a mention of international peace and friendship or the advance of culture. It seems to have resolved into the question how can we keep foreigners out while making as much money as possible and since the two halves of this proposition point in diametrically opposite directions the opinion polls have hovered around a 50-50 split of the vote, though the Leave camp seems to have drawn slightly ahead in recent days, perhaps due to the recent event in America that highlights the Middle East problem and so swings attention toward immigration and away from economics.
it does seem extremely sad that so many people seem willing even to over-ride their national economic interest so as to be able to avoid helping foreigners fleeing from war and chaos, while, as the commentator says, many others will only be voting for Europe on the basis of a monetary consideration. It seems ignoble and does leave one, as a British citizen, feeling rather ashamed.
I was born soon after the Second World War and was brought up with a sense that Britain stood for certain values - fairness, humanity, helping the underdog, doing things for love rather than money, political freedom, and so on. We differentiated ourselves from autocracy and communism. Among these values was a sense of welcome to those fleeing from persecution. Wasn't that part of what we had fought the war for? Whether one supported right, left or centre politically, those kinds of values were a taken for granted baseline.
Of course, some things that were lacking then have improved; gender equality has progressed, homosexuality is no longer persecuted, we have made some progress, but we also seem to have slipped backwards in some fundamental areas and that is sad. If, as is quite possible, it results in a vote to leave the EU next week, one wonders what lies over the edge.
Thinking of poor Jo Cox and her family one sees the whole business - macro and micro - in its most horrible aspect and can feel a shiver when one realises how close to chaos even the most civilised seeming country can be. The thing that brought me into Buddhism was the Buddha's words "impassioned for peace." I hope that this terrible loss will bring people together and not drive the wedge deeper.
It all started with some password troubles... Wednesday some technical support wil arrive at Eleusis. Till then they will stay without the internet.
May all who are suffering be held in loving arms. “There is endless suffering. There is also endless compassion.” Buddhist response to Orlando
