LISTENING TO - Some Favourite Tracks from 2019

Billie Eilish - Bad Guy
Late to the party yet again, I saw her on TV at Glastonbury this year and thought she was something awesome. You hear this everywhere these days, and she will spawn her imitators and no doubt her own creative demise at some point. But for now Bad Guy is street savvy, catchy and an insolent delight from start to finish.


Nick Cave - Ghosteen
I thought Skeleton Tree was something of a career high until this. Over an hour in length it communicates the ordinariness of personal grief, through references to a search for peace that will not come. Cave bears his soul here like only he can, with storytelling and the use of telling oft repeated phrases. I continue to find it so moving I can never listen to it in the background I have to give it the full attention it deserves.


Dave - Psycho
Deservedly winning this years Mercury Price, this track Psycho offers up an honest presentation of one man's world, his mental struggles with himself and with the racism directed towards him. Not a comfortable listen but important none the less.



 
FKA Twigs - Mary Magdalene
Hard to sum up what this woman does but she has the ability to be utterly mesmerising. Her music has echoes of so many disparate influences. The music seems to exist in a time and tempo all its own elegantly slow and steady world, similar to the balladry of James Blake.




James Blake - Don't Miss It
Another sublime bit of songwriting from James Blake. Who always surprises you musically with his arrangements whilst at the same time remaining recognisably the same. Don't Miss It is quite soul bearing at times and reveals aspects of his difficulties with his internal world.



Rain Tree Crow - Rain Tree Crow
A re-release from 1991 of an album by reformed Japan members which manages to sound like one of the best David Sylvian albums. It was quite addictively on my turntable for quite a few weeks.



Rosalia - Malamente
Everyone wants a taste of this woman these days, and you can understand why. Effortlessly blending flamenco and street stylings into something all her own.


Anna Calvi - Hunter
Oh boy, her third album kicks some ass. My favourite track is Wish which I just love and can never have enough of.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 31 - Echoes Of The Unlived Life

As I sit in the shop looking out at the people in the mall outside, It can feel like I'm in a goldfish bowl going round and round goggle eyed with my mouth open. You start believing you can read the retail runes. The tangible difference in people when they are willing to spend money and when they are not.  Ideally they smell and examine the soaps on our outside stalls and then bring them in with a particular bounce in their step and an air of enjoying that process of choice then purchase. When they do not, you experience what I've come to refer to as 'The Day Of The Soap Sniffers', a series of people disinterestedly shoving soaps up to their noses, inhaling the soap's perfume as a sensory distraction, whilst emotionally inured to taking it further, to actually purchasing. It can feel like some sort of tease, when after a few minutes they wander off with an air of having had their free fix.

Sometimes its possible to expend so much mental imaginative energy on what you wish or want to happen in life, that you can forget to fully engage with the life that is actually before you. Its quite feasible to inhabit an entirely unlived life. When times get a bit tougher its easy to sustain yourself by imagining more favourable outcomes, of a better life. This is another way of existing within the unlived life. Somehow through wishin' and hopin' and prayin', plannin' and dreamin' with enough passionate fervour the imagined life will inevitable turn up and become reality - it will be here. Even now, when I'm in my early sixties my mind can hark back to older dreams and aspirations -'if this would happen, then I'd feel happier and more fulfilled'

On quiet days in the shop, I can find myself imaginatively interacting with the ideal unlived life, because I'm a bit bored with what the real one is serving up. There is a way to look at my desire for busy-ness, for being occupied with custom in the shop, as an existential distraction. Mostly from actually fully feeling the boredom. Tolstoy once called boredom 'the desire for desires' but what is it that we face when we have no tangible desires? There seems to be this perilous undertow of unbridled fear, perhaps of failure, the failure to succeed in life, to do something notable or worthy before I die. To fear our mortal nature will rob our lives of the chance of being significant. Unless we succeed at something, this life wont amount to a hill of beans. The unlived life is like this, its similar to the quest for the Holy Grail, the unlived life wont allow itself to be found. This leaves our actual life steeped in a wake of poisonous regret.

What if I could let go of addiction to the fake optimism of the unlived life and attempt to be with whatever is there? Yes there could be pain, but also the pleasurable relief from reflection, analysis and comparison. If there is only what there is in this moment then the imagined unlived life is just one aspect of what Dogen describes as 'the dream within a dream'?  Can we, as Rev Leoma said recently, trust that whatever happens is what needs to happen as a function of conditioned co-production, and do that without becoming fatalistic or not actively engaging with contributing to those conditions? We have to keep putting something out there, its just the consequences of this wont necessarily turn up instantly or turn out as what we imagined we wanted. Each presenting moment will be whatever it needs to be, whatever the conditions make it.

A life in retail is what it is. Quiet days are quiet days, busy days are busy days, with little point in trying to psychoanalyse collective behaviour, to understand why something has or hasn't happened. Some days start off quiet and you mentally write them off within the first couple of hours, then for a brief hour or so it turns into a hive of activity. What was looking dire suddenly turns into a decent days takings. Nothing you did changed that, but nevertheless your mood is transformed from pessimistic to optimistic. Its hard to cultivate and maintain equanimity with your life when your desire is for something else.

Life hurries on towards the end of the year and I feel very mixed emotions about what has come to pass. It has undoubtedly been a tense and momentous year, not without its joy and a sprinkling of hurrah moments, but taking place in front of a nation in a state of unease with itself. The election provides a resolution of sorts, but unrealistic promises have been made, so there will be days of reckoning. Yet maybe this is all as it needs to be, the result meets the current zeitgeist. Perhaps we have to trust that the consequences of handing power to a lying toe rag will show us something we need to learn as a country

As you may have guessed from the general tone of this blogpost I'm not feeling brim full of optimism. Though its intensity has subsided, I still have residual anger and frustration eating away in the pit of my stomach. I voted tactically as I've reluctantly had to do on far too many occasions in my adult life. Most of the time it is without success. But how else do I make my vote effective? Its this, or voting for a party I feel an affinity with, that either hasn't a hope of getting parliamentary representation or will be inadequately represented due to the first past the post voting system. I'm sure I'm not alone in being tired of my vote having no influence. To resort to apathy and not vote at all, though understandable, is a cop out. As our democracy silently slips from being a two party system into a seemingly never ending Tory hegemony, my sense of despair gets angrier and more militant in tone. Giving up for me would only exacerbate the problem.

Sheringham seafront during a recent storm

The political combined with the actual weather, has brought week after week of storms wearing down public confidence in the run up to Christmas. Its been tough trading conditions since mid October, which calling a general election was a significant factor in accentuating. Its our first year of trading in Sheringham so its hard to know if this is what its usually like. Fellow Courtyard shopkeepers tell us 2019 trade is well down on last year. So as we complete our seventh month since opening we bolster up our confidence with how well we've done so far, and bear with all the other external factors that are so much beyond our control. Understanding retail patterns in a small seaside town outside its Summer season has proven frankly utterly baffling.

BOOK REVIEW ~ Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata

Sayaka Murata knows intimately the ins and outs of a convenience store workers lifestyle, before taking up writing full time, she worked as one. Its there in all the small incidental details of daily stock promotions and the formulaic prescription of its customer service inserted into the narrative or the observations of customer's behaviour that her character Keiko makes. Here is a seemingly soulless job that somehow Keiko has found great meaning and purpose in. For her this job is not a dead end

Keiko is the quirky outsider, yet also quite a lovably human character. As a child Keiko was prone to behaving really oddly, in a socially unacceptable manner. Its never really clear what mental status she has, is it some type of autism, or does she simply not fit into some standard behavioural profile? Her family have signed off, resigned to her being constantly an embarrassment, they quietly despair she'll make anything of her life that they understand as being normal.

Fast forward to Keiko as an adult, now in her mid thirties, she's found it useful to adopt a number of coping strategies simply to get by without any revealing or disruptive incident. She's chosen to work in a convenience store, a regimented tightly structured work style, one she can easily understand and comply with, to do whatever is expected of her. After eighteen years working in a convenience store she's become the ideal worker. It also gives her opportunities to see other staff members manner of talking, behaving and dressing and adopts aspects of these into her own. In this way she can disguise herself, it eases her relations with others, ensuring her behaviour is socially correct, because left to her own devices she knows her own judgement is unreliable, and she'll be exposed for who she really is, maybe even cast out.

Keiko is the classic misfit character, but one we all can find a way of relating to. Murata's first person narrative cleverly utilises an emotionally neutered deadpan humour, Keiko's world view can seem quite rational. But is she the classic unreliable narrator? We only ever see the world through Keiko's perceptions, so we hear only how she thinks other people are seeing her. But its clear from what she reports that she is quite clearly seen as odd, its just no one says it to her face. She isn't hiding in plain sight. There is a universality to her as a character, we all pretend to some extent simply in order to get by, to get on with others. We conform to stave off criticism, to negate the pressure of having to make your own decisions. These pressures to fulfil societies and her families expectations for her, are recognisable.

Convenience Store Woman is very dryly witty as it subtly pokes fun at the conventions of conformity that become unquestionable. Keiko thinks she has her life flawlessly under her control until she takes one step out of her comfort zone and suddenly she's barraged with other people's views and misinterpretations of why she's doing what she's doing. She discovers she is actually happier and more fulfilled by being a convenience store worker, despite everyone else's view that she cannot possibly be. It creates a space for her to be her own woman, to have a sense of independence and agency within society. Convenience Store Woman is an often moving, funny and a really enjoyable read. Whilst exhibiting many things which we've come to know as inimitably Japanese in tone and character, this is not a conventional novel, its as delightfully odd in its narrative as is its lead character. 

A SPIRITUAL BASTING - Put Your Awakened Mind To Work.

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practise in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo.

Put Your Awakened Mind To Work

The Chanyuan Qinggui also says, 'Put your awakened mind to work'

A spirit of deep seated nihilism like an incurable infection is raging through the Western psyche. It sits silently, like an Aids virus within the body politic, of our society, economics, politics and culture, ready at any moment to drain them of resistance, to have the life purged from them. Contemporary art is not exempt from this. In its heart lies a profound cynicism that gorges upon its own pretences and delusions. Paradoxically, what stands for the avante-garde these days, acts according to very predictable, even safe conventions; it must be provocative, be socially, morally or politically challenging, it must flout or break taboos, be hostile, aggressive, anarchic, gratuitous and cruel towards its subject matter, to decry what is beautiful as fake. Art has always had a crucial role in defining and representing the nature of humanity and civilisation to itself, but its rarely been quite as lifeless, ephemeral or slight, as visually and intellectually opaque, as now. Art is showing us a Western civilisation that has entered a darkened room from which no light is allowed to escape.

There is little kindness to this art, it points towards human suffering, but sees in it only a talismanic form of aesthetic truth, neutered and stripped of tangible feeling or empathy. Whilst it might bring an artist fame, it wont necessarily bring that artist, nor the people who view their art, towards a wiser and more compassionate outlook. Its objects and objectives are slaves to nihilistic derision. If modern art is holding up a mirror, its showing us the twisted mind, the corrupted soul of our modern self obsessed world. Its difficult to see in any of this the work of an awakened mind, it appears to 'lack the spirit' of the Bodhisattva.

I am no Bodhisattva, and do not consciously know of any in my life. I have not by any stretch of the imagination had a 'vision of things as they really are'. I've been lucky enough to have discovered Buddhism, studied its teachings and can, at least, imaginatively conceive of its ultimate aim. My eyes have been a tiny bit opened up by all of this, but I do not fully comprehend. I continue instinctively to re-invigorate the desire to clean myself up and look through a mud smeared windscreen for clarity of vision.

Achieving Insight rarely happens instantaneously in the moment as portrayed in Zen history. Insight is dependent and predicated upon a daily seeing through aspects of ones thoughts, behaviour and life events. Noticing the minutia of ordinary life and interpreting what is seen through a closely focused Buddhist lens. It is all right before our very eyes, though we mostly miss it because we suffer from a form of spiritual glaucoma. Part of our perception is obscured by delusive ideas about ourselves and the world we live and work within. Though our insightfulness is out of focus we are always in the process of sharpening it, of 'awakening to awakening'. Whatever the state of awakening my mind has currently reached, I put that 'awakening mind' to work in my day to day existence, within whatever I do, including my artistic creative process..

Whether creating art or creating a meal both involve a similar process for the individuals involved.  All the general human neuroses, paranoia's, mental habits, emotional mood swings and fluctuations of feeling are present whilst making a meal or a piece of art. Whatever we do in life is a creative act, humanity is forever conjuring something out of nothing. I was once a Kitchen Porter, which in my experience could feel like one long physically demanding drudge if you let it. Constantly cleaning crockery, cutlery, pots and pans of the residue, of the half finished remains of someones delectable coq au van. Its a restorative act of creativity, returning crockery and cutlery to a sterilised pristine finish. Serving the cook, the meal and the next customer who eats off that plate. Its similar to priming a canvas, preparing a surface to serve something beautiful upon.

There will most likely be feelings of worthlessness or meaninglessness present there too. But these are present wherever we hope for purposeful fulfilment but our feelings tell us we are trapped in barren conditions. A fertile seed plonked in apparently infertile ground for growth. Yet I can feel a similar feeling of utter pointlessness even with the artistic process and its outcome. Moving from happy elation to thunderous frustration in the click of a moment. Still and concentrated one minute, slipping into tense nervousness. Inspired and on a creative roll then wallowing in despondency, feelings of stagnation or a generalised sense of dull stuckness. Confidence and self doubt swap places in an instant. Which all indicates that its not just about the nature of the job but what we want or do not get from it. The search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless and indifferent world is the essence of the human predicament.

Though we are all searching for fulfilment through whatever we are doing, we can sometimes find its is intermittent or absent altogether. Our sense for what fulfilment is and where it can be found is often misplaced. Its as though we are gazing up into a bright blue sky looking for a lost contact lens that's slipped somewhere underneath the sofa. But when we yearn for self- fulfilment what are we talking about? A clue lies in the hyphenation of self with fulfilment.

Its not that we can't find fulfilment through the things we do, we can, but its a fleeting impermanent one. One hundred percent job satisfaction is not really possible. Even a dream ideal job will have its moments of boredom where unsatisfactory feelings will raise their ugly head. Looking for long lasting fulfilment through worldly things is an endeavour with a predictable inconsistent outcome. The Buddha spoke of eight Worldly Winds that can easily sweep our happy contented fulfilment off course if we let them. These come formulated as four pairings of opposites - Praise & Blame - Fame & Infamy - Loss & Gain - Pleasure & Pain. Whenever one or two of these become present in whatever job we are doing, then 'I want' or 'I don't want' whats happening will start to foul the sweet air.

It is the self that 'does or does not want'. The self is the thing that seeks fulfilment, but what is the nature of that self and can it ever be truly satisfied?  Once you start examining the self, you wonder where exactly does it abide and find you're dealing with a very slippery customer indeed. One of the things that becomes quickly apparent is that our sense of self requires constant reaffirmation. Its like an animal constantly hungry for attention, to be fed, stroked and pampered. If our self desires fulfilment its because it has this sense of a lack, of a void inside that needs filling full, an existential emptiness. The self fears it doesn't possess a stable permanent existence and creates events and new exciting things to distract us from this rather discomforting fact. Our sense of self is more a verb than a noun. If self-fulfilment can't be found in this job, well lets change jobs. change partner, change house, change your location, change your entire life. Self-fulfilment is always over the next horizon.

Though the search for self-fulfilment is perfectly understandable given the existential imperative, it remains a bit of a dream we are unwilling to wake up from. Trying to dodge the effects of the Worldly Winds as we progress into the future is a never ending task, one bound to fail at some point. So the first things to put your 'awakening mind' to work on is - what is your self seeking fulfilment from and how realistic is that? How much are the Worldly Winds still directing your daily actions? You put your 'awakening mind' to work on the parts of your experience you are still not fully aware of. The things you are still sound asleep to,










  

BOOK REVIEW - Strange Weather In Tokyo - Hiromi Kawakami

Having spent a good part of last year reading the late and early greats of Japanese fiction, I thought I'd see what else there was to be discovered in Japanese contemporary fiction, hidden behind the towering colossus of Haruki Murakami. Like Hiromi Kawakami's previous work Strange Weather in Tokyo has been much garlanded in Japan. It also brought her to more international notice and acclaim. Short listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2013, the Asian version of our own Man Booker Prize, it also took the Independent's short lived Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014.

Hiromi Kwawkami

• In Alison Markin Powell's sensitive translation Kawakawi's writing deceptively present itself as a continuation of that classic Japanese tradition for understated gentle elegance. Devoid of dramatic flourishes, and internal dialogue, it glides intregingly along via a sad melancholic mood and the emotional undertow of a 'will they or wont they get together' storyline. Yet it does not slavishly follow a convention or literary cliche. Its subject matter, the relationship between a retired teacher and a middle aged former pupil, set in the backstreet bars and streets of Tokyo is decidedly modern, urban and off kilter.

There is no longer a background of sentimental yearning for a lost rural Japan. the crippling social conventions and formality of traditional marriage and relationship negotiations have vanished. Replaced by liberality, the alienating individuality of emotionally damaged people, socially clumsy, but with an inhibited desire for intimacy. In a city of nearly fourteen million people making meanigful connections has become more than hard.

Tsukiko is a woman in her late thirties, living a financially independent but mostly quite lonely life. Boyfriends of her own age she's found immature and uniformly disappointing. At thirty seven she's beginning to wonder if finding a meannigful relationship is nothing more than fantasy, Then she meets Sensei, a respectful term used by a pupil to address their revered teacher. She bumps into himi by accident in a bar bistro. At first they continue to meet up simply because they enjoy each others company. There is over thirty years between them so what move could they share but friendship? Gradually it becomes much more emotionally complicated than outward appearances might betray.

Tsukiko finds her feelings are developing a desire for more than platonic companionship. Sensei is prickly and paternalistic, often in an uncommunicative grump. Once he starts to open up about his wife who walked out on him years ago, an unstated intimacy emerges, both of them feel something for the other but they never openly declare what that is.

The novel proceeds on like this with little overt drama. Sensei and Tsukiko, meet, then they don't meet for months, they fall out, and then they make amends. Each time they return to their regular meetings they are drawing closer. They miss each other. Until they go on a trip together where what they really feel for each other becomes all too apparent, and they spring apart again. Little by little the novel draws you into this unconventional bumpy form of falling in love with each other. Its tender and touching as the relationship's episodic lurching from one extreme to another move you towards some sort of resolution. The novels's conclusion I found quite unexpected, and all the more devastaingly moving for that.

Strange Weather In Tokyo, never declares what it is loudly and brazenly.  It posesses a quiet ordinary and unprepossesing humanity to it, that is beguiling and utterly wonderful.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 30 ~ Don't Mention The Actual War Commemorative Issue

We survived the straffing of Sheringham's 1940's weekend. My prejudices suitably adjusted in the light of experience. Lots of people coming together dressed in period clothes, swanning about whilst 1940's music played over the street megaphones, generates the approximation of a community gathering. Not entirely a local community, as folk come from all over the UK. Its an idealised version of community, culturally homogeneous, not remotely diverse , but resolutely white. The fact that their were Caribbean, Indian and Black American servicemen in the UK, is something that Sheringham's 1940's weekend is apparently not yet prepared to pretend happened.

Though this communal vibe was something of a surprise, it is sad if the only way we can connect with a unified collective sense of ourselves, is to pretend we live in an entirely different era. An era where we were fighting a war, ironically given Brexit, to save Europe and ourselves. An event sentimentalised, mythologised and attended by people, who for the most part, were born well after it happened. Leave supporters have used the war years as a template for the guiding spirit of our future relations with the world. Bound up in the desire to believe and behave 'as if.' this sanitised version of our history was not the result of wartime propaganda nor post-war mythologising, but entirely true.

The wartime spirit has become a lazy touchstone for all that the modern day UK has difficulty finding or summoning up. Having become as a society increasingly individualistic, selfish and socially cut off from one another. The blame by some is laid at the feet of immigration, everyone whose not white and British, the liberal minded, atheists and gay marriage or any other prejudice you might want to throw into the mix relating to the state of the nation.

The wartime style envelope appears similarly accommodating and elastic around the edges. Quite a few fifties Dior new look dresses creeped in,  the 'Pythonesque' sending up the war look itself, and one person bizarrely dressed up as a 1980's Dr Who. Any gathering of like minded people bringing their individual enthusiasm to a collective context has a similar feeling to it. Whether this is a pop concert, a football match, a religious gathering or climate change rally, its something we come together to align ourselves with and share.

The Courtyard Cafe & Wine Bar, is near by where our shop is located. They hold a street party with tables running down the middle of the courtyard for the entire weekend. This made casually browsing the shops either side of it, somewhat restricted. It was a health and safety nightmare with mobility scooters and zimmer frames with shopping trolleys attached, daring to venture in. All accompanied by the ubiquitous 1940's music played very loud. After an entire weekend of six hours a day being constantly forced to listen to 1940's music, I'd liken the experience to aural water boarding as a method of torture. The jiggly jaunty thum thum thum of the double bass that underpins a lot of the music, i found emotionally draining.

Not to mention the ration books. The town produces a ration book, in it are named participatory shops in Sheringham and you go round getting your card stamped by these retailers. On paper this sounds like a great way to encourage people to discover shops they might not normally encounter. The reality is that its mostly tiny tots and surly teenagers, and there's a constant stream of them dashing around. None of them spending money with us. On the Saturday I lost count, there were countless dozens of them. If I'd charged £2 per stamp I'd have easily doubled my days take. One Courtyard shopkeeper is considering not putting themselves in the ration book next year. It felt, to them, counter productive to be stamping a succession of ration books, whilst paying customers were being kept waiting. They have a point. it is more than a bit tiresome.

Though there was little purchasing going on on the Saturday due to the excessive congestion, our daily take was about average in the end, composed of a handful of decent purchases. But Sunday being less congested and frenetic in The Courtyard turned into our best Sunday's business since we opened. So there was one silver lining.

Dressing up events, mostly due to Sheringham's 1940's Weekend being such a success since it started in 2003, are tempting more North Norfolk towns to join in. Cromer has its 1960's Weekend, Wells-next-the Sea its Pirate Weekend, and North Walsham has recently announced that from next year it'll host a Medieval Weekend. These at least have the virtue that they are either still within living memory, or are so far beyond it no one can pretend its anything other than a theme park type event, that however rollicking, its all a cliche bedecked fantasy.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 29 - Wake Up & Smell The Slurry

The August heatwaves brought forward harvesting by a few weeks. Farmers were already out re-fertilising their fields spraying them with slurry. Slurry is derived from a late medieval English word for thin mud, these days its pure stinking liquid shit. Most slurry is diluted cow shit. You'll be driving along a lovely country road when Wham! your nasal cavities are assaulted by a penetrating noxious smell. But hey! let's not get into a negative gripe here, we live in the country, slurry stench comes with the territory

Walking around Cromer the other week, there was a strong high wind blowing from inland bringing with it this all pervasive gut churning stench. This didn't just get up your nose it was a full fronted attempt to seize hold of your breathing.  Imagine you are walking in the wake of a half decayed tramp's corpse wrapped in horse dung. The intense effect of the stink is hard to describe, but nauseous gag reflex is the closest I can get. On line the authorities declared it was a turkey shit based slurry. Not a word about whether its legal to spray it, or any environmental or public health concerns this might raise. A quick scan of gardening sites informs me turkey shit replaces nitrogen in depleted soils, and has benefits as an organic pesticide. You have to use it diluted because its so caustic it can literally burn and lay waste to your plants. I am not comforted.

Talking of pervasive stinks. well, the Sheringham Sinkhole has finally been resolved and filled in. They even held a party on the 1st of September to celebrate. Accompanied by painfully loud music broadcast along the entire centre of town. It was a ghastly following of air pollution with its aural equivalent. The sinkhole had quickly established itself as the distinctive feature of our old fashioned and slightly shabby town. The fetid pong of stagnant sewer water on the lower High Street ended up lingering for the entire Summer season. Lots of loss adjusting claims have been going in, as businesses count up what the real cost to them has been. Anglian Water is still not accepting liability so the money shops will receive will not reflect the true financial cost to them. So there seems little to be celebrated really. Most have survived it -so far.  But we have the looming Rubicon of Brexit to cross and all the unknown unknowns that contains. Democratically it already stinks to high heaven, but the astringent economic slurry will be getting up everyone's noses soon. Oh Shit!

Its over a year since my resignation from Triratna. I'm still alive and content with having left. Twenty six years of involvement can't really be left behind. You can remove a person from a context but you can't remove what was learnt in that context from the person. The re-imagined comforting familiarity of Sangha friends does occasionally pop up. Simultaneously I've had to acknowledge that early on I chose to put on one side that I was not emotionally bought into some of Triratna's practices. It was only as the list grew longer and more fundamental that I began seeking a way out.

Dogen

I've been going to the Zen Priory in Norwich since January. Initially just once a month, but recently I've begun attending a weekly beginners night on Tuesdays. I'm seeing this as a deeper exploration of Dogen as the originator of this Soto Zen perspective. My initial impressions are favourable. I've started listening to a recorded series of talks that Rev Leoma gave at the Priory on the Genjo Koan, which are proving to be an exciting opening out of my understanding of this pivotal Dogen text. Its a very long time since I felt so re-energised by a Dharma talk.

What I'm appreciating is the strength, consistency and coherence of Soto Zen practices, where everything relates from and back to Zazen. Triratna's pick and mix from various Buddhist traditions can, by comparison, seem like cross dressing from a vintage jumble sale. The centrality of 'going for refuge' being the glue attempting to hold this disparate source material together. The focus on Zazen, on Dogen's teachings and the disavowal of anything leading to a goal orientated mindset, are in themselves radical reductions of Buddhist source materials.. Yet this pared back simplicity feels intuitively right, avoiding getting caught up in centuries of over intellectualisation, erudition and theory. This appeals to my current spiritual zeitgeist, like breathing in the smell of a fresh perfume.

Trying to hold Sangharakshita's and Dogen's teachings simultaneously was discomforting. Sangharakshita was inherently critical of Zen, this led to a wary and distrustful atmosphere towards Zen throughout his movement. Few Order members know anything in any detail about Dogen, and I strongly suspect Sangharakshita didn't either judging by a few things he said. However, I was brought up within Triratna's approach so I check things out, ask questions and analyse. There are areas where I suspect basic bits of Buddhism have been pruned, rephrased or ignored in order to support Dogen's particular reinterpretation and reductive focus. The question for me now is, if this still feels right, does that really matter? Yet at the same time I don't want to ignore things I'm not convinced by - again.  Its an interesting thread I'm following. So I'm being very Soto Zen about it and trying to curtail imagining I'm heading anywhere with it.

August was a good month for trade in Cottonwood Home. Despite the two heatwaves, when custom took a dramatic nosedive. I've been observing peoples behaviour in our Courtyard during a heatwave, folk hardly engage with any shop, they just look and wander around in a blithely disinterested way, picking things up half heartedly. These are your archetypal Soap and Sandcastle days, when every body is heading for the beach and all they're willing to buy from you is soap.

Its easier to spot who our potential customers are, they lean heavily towards the middle class and the well dressed. If they have a beer belly, or seriously overweight, wear a T shirt with some sort of skulls or gothic lettering on, or are pushing a buggy with several bags, dogs and children hanging off it, they'll most likely be for the hippy shop opposite or the off license next door. This is part of an ongoing study of the day to day workings of Prattitya Samudpada, what particular set of people and conditions produce a good, bad or an indifferent days takings. Lets not go into the 'going beyond' labelling them, that's a higher teaching.  But some days you've absolutely no idea at all whats going on. Then you have to surrender yourself to the presenting moment and whatever is happening there. Hold to your confidence, but travel without fixed expectations.

This year, as new Sheringham shopkeepers, we will have to show willing and partake in the 1940's Weekend. Normally we've chosen to evacuate the area, and either bunker down at home or take a holiday and be as far away as possible. We don't imagine trade will be good in the fevered nostalgia filled atmosphere. There is some sort of street party planned for The Courtyard, so it will be inescapable, with all sorts of fake alcohol fuelled jollity going on. You'll probably hear all about it here, I wont be able to help myself. Wake up and smell the sentimental myth, whilst in reality the UK's democracy is being sacrificially burned.

A SPIRTUAL BASTING ~ The Bodhisattva Spirit Aroused

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practise in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo.

The Bodhisattva Spirit Aroused

' Carried out by teachers settled in the way and by others who have aroused the bodhisattva spirit within themselves'

If you thought being a cook was a menial job, then think again. Its hard work, where good planning and preparation are more than half the task. Not just anyone who fancies a bit of large scale cooking can actually do it. In a monastery kitchen there is an additional requirement for that cook to also be a teacher, of the practicalities of cooking certainly, but more importantly to guide the spiritual practice of their novice kitchen assistants. Cooking here is a personal practice until the depth and richness of it leaves the taste of Enlightenment on their palate.

To be a teacher, you have to know what it is you have to teach, the resources, knowledge and experience you can draw on and impart. These cook/teachers aren't just 'settling' but have to be 'settled in the way'  No need for further sorting out, its largely resolved. So whilst we may not be looking at fully fledged Enlightened Masters here, they come close. Dedicated to helping others learn what they have learnt, to see what they have seen, to have a vision of reality as it truly is, to try to save everyone from unnecessary suffering. This is the definition of what a Bodhisattva does.

At the very least the cook will have 'aroused the bodhisattva spirit within themselves'. Aroused  out of their slumber, their dreaming, their delusions, their ignorance. The daily work of a Bodhisattva is not a nice fuzzy ideal you light a candle for, its a serious commitment that always demands action. Its not just a head thing, or a heart thing, but a compassionate thing, a strong feeling in your guts that propels you into selfless action. The Bodhisattva is the rescuer, offering a hand to pull you out from whatever pit of despair you happen to have fallen into this week.

Though I've felt inspired at times by the ideal of becoming a Bodhisattva, it's rare for me to be highly motivated in the carrying out and exemplification part. Too inhibited, too scared, too self absorbed with 'what about poor me?'  Its all too easy to dress up what you are doing as the selfless actions of the Bodhisattva, because your self-esteem has taken a shine to being a one.  Maybe all you are really seeking is a bit of ego pampering. So the game would be lost there then. Ultimately the Bodhisattva cannot be self serving. Serving the needs of others is the spiritual essence for them. their sole and primary motivation. Dogen, goes on to warn ~

'Such a practice requires exerting all your energies. If someone entrusted with this work lacks such a spirit, then they will only endure unnecessary hardships and suffering that will have no value in their pursuit of the Way'.

All your mental, physical and spiritual resources should be at your finger tips. Any person who undertakes Bodhisattva work as a tenzo, or any other job, must be a quietly integrated person, emotionally robust, with a wise clear way of thinking.  A self deluded Bodhisattva easily buffeted off course by the storms and vicissitudes of life, just cannot be. You will not turn yourself into a Bodhisattva by a forceful act of will alone. Believing yourself to be a Bodhisattva when you aren't is then the worst form of delusion. Getting hold of the wrong end of this stick would be an act of self harm.

Yet even Bodhisattvas had to start somewhere and I bet they focused their efforts close to home. Here am I, an artist/craftsman, seemingly a whole world away from the monastic tenzo. My work can often be solitary, creatively self absorbed, indulgent you might say, and prone to acts of aesthetic self stimulation. But, nevertheless, it raises an interesting question - how could a different spirit could be aroused to inform this or any other form of work? Just park how you might feel about your job, and for a second try to be less subjective in your assessments of its worth or value to you. Start by asking what is your job for, what's its purpose, who is it benefits in a positive way from all your effort, ingenuity and energy? Enquire within too, what is it you want and what you get from your work, and are any of those things reasonable or attainable?

All work, you could say, has an 'aesthetic aura' surrounding it, this may be a pleasant, unpleasant or even an indifferent aura. A combination of the people, the place, the management might make your work an enjoyable or a dispiriting thing to be a part of. These knid of factors affect how we feel, not just about our work, but about ourselves when executing it. Its understandable that one might settle in to a smouldering resentment. But I'd want to encourage seeing whatever happens in your daily life through a more understanding empathic open minded lens.

People never behave badly without an underlying cause. This doesn't make their behaviour excusable or reasonable, but its good not to rush to judgement to condemn or revile them, in a knee jerk kind of way. We are all quite self preoccupied, other people gives as much thought to you and how they might annoy you, as you might of them ie. not a lot. Ask what is it you are bringing to this situation? Try to imagine the suffering involved, not just to you, but for others and for them. How must they be feeling deep down in order to behave like that, the deep dissatisfaction and resentments festering underneath finding its release through dreadful behaviour? Empathy touches on our own suffering to help us feel for someone else's predicament. If you can imaginatively reach out and feel the suffering in someone else's existential situation, there is a huge shift from self absorbed to other absorbed. Then our relations with others may begin to be transformed.

Art and craft work appears unlikely to save anyone from the sort of existential suffering I'm talking about here. I can often find myself struggling with my works purpose and why create at all. But underneath that despair and often a sense of meaninglessness, I do know. I have always wanted to make the world better somehow through creating beautiful things, to bring a heightened sense of aesthetics into the world. The grim ugliness I often find surrounding me fouls up my joie de vivre. Creativity swells up from an underground stream fed from the slow moving waters of human suffering and the existential ugliness of pain. A touch of beauty, at best, can colour, sooth and transform these unpromising sources.

Whether you're cooking a meal, creating an artwork or cleaning shit from a toilet, your individual talents, energy and life force are being put to the service of others. In our predominantly urban environments its hard not to become alienated, cut off from everything and everyone that surrounds us. Our boundaries feel constantly under attack, so we defend our sense of our self by creating distance, by building physical and psychological walls. Things start to change if such self constructed barriers can be dismantled. Openeing up to reconnect with people on a basic human empathic level. Contrary to appearances, we are all crying out for affection and help, for someone to support us, to hold our hand for a while. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others. Tune into this, because this is what will eventually arouse the bodhisattva spirit from its slumber.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 28 ~ The Singlet Vest & The Fruit Compote

Is it a sign of advancing age when the depth of your appreciation for a good fruit compote on your porridge in the mornings, starts to blossom beyond an unstated enthusiasm? Of late I've been greatly savouring a gooseberry compote cooked on a low heat. Soon to be followed by a plum compote or any other fruit there just happens to be a glut of this week. What is a compote?, well its the continental way of saying something is fruity but not quite a jam. Never sickly sweet. A syrup caught on the cusp of congealing. A compote slow cooked to perfection on the lowest heat possible is a newly discovered culinary ambrosia for me.

My deep indulgence in excessively sweet things and chocolate has noticeably diminished over the years. I say diminished, but I don't mean defeated, just moderated. I will remain forever part of the Lumb Lineage where no savoury meal would be complete without some sort of sweetening at the end of it, usually a dessert, immediately followed by cake. My Dad in his later years abandoned all pretence of eating protein and could be found lurking in the back of a local bakers cafe tucking into a lavishly iced Belgian bun, as his main meal of the day. Myself, I just try to limit this to the weekends. To get my sweet hit I replace iced buns with fruit when possible. So whilst such things are less prevalent for me, they are definitely not absent.

In my dreams my body still looks like this

Another age indicator might be when your dearly beloved hubby forthrightly forbids you, not just from owning a singlet vest, but owning a 'coloured' vest, and bars you from ever publicly parading your torso wearing one. Unfortunately he does know my family has history in this regard with my Dad, who, in the summer, if he hadn't already stripped down to the publicly respectable minimum, would be seen sporting a rather scruffy pale blue one with white (well, it had been white) piping, when outside gardening. The impact of this prohibition on my bodily well being, whilst we were in the middle of a 30 degree plus heatwave cannot be underestimated. I get easily overheated and its consequent mental fluster in even mildly hot weather. If I was a plant, I would be the sort that would wrinkle, shrivel up and desiccate whilst the gardener had turned away to make a pot of tea.

As I've got older, though I'm considerably taller than my Dad, my body has developed a recognisable rectangular quality, a solid stockiness very reminiscent of his. Why any of these things should come to mind now is anyones guess, but the 27th July was the first anniversary of Dad's death, so there's probably been the strong bodily aroma of Dad wafting around. The death of ones last remaining parent is never without significance, whether you personally got on with them or not. I do miss the presence and example of his easy going geniality, I was fond of my Dad and his mostly benign eccentricities, without ever feeling I was that emotionally connected. There were infuriating  things, his stubborn desire to not ask for help and to do things his own way, for instance. But as Hubby would no doubt be butting in at this point, I provide quite a good example of that myself at times. Ah, like Father like Son, and the discomforting reemergence of familial behaviour patterns.

We've completed our second month of trading and Cottonwood Home is doing well. We are now into August, the height of the holiday season, and sales have lifted considerably. Introducing our outside shop stalls has helped increase our monthly take, plus it gets people to actually come in!. Even with the effects of the dramatic shifts in the weather, we've not had a completely dead day for a few weeks now. Currently we are more than covering our costs, though still more to be done. This is high season, so if you don't do well now, well, you never will. The Autumn/Winter season will be our testing time.

Some of our own handmade stock, as a consequence, had begun to look a bit thin. At the moment I have an average of two + making days a week, plus my focus can get diverted into making props for the shop. So progress on new lines is spasmodic. Staying engaged with 'set aside' projects is difficult. This tends to lead to many half finished projects on the go simultaneously, which can feel a bit of a drag. Its like doing slow motion running keeping multiple plates spinning. Not helped during the big heatwave by my mitre saw going into to complete melt down.

One afternoon a family came into the shop. Their little girl was wandering around holding her Dad's phone aloft and chanting 'Daddie's Bottom', 'Daddie's Bottom', Daddie's Bottom. She'd been taking photos of her Dad's bottom from all angles and was now showing them to anyone who would look.

We've sussed out what we do when the shop isn't busy. We have a shop workstation, well a work table. Here Hubby can sew and lampshade make whilst I can get on with upcycling projects I can complete in a shop. At the moment I'm focusing on refinishing a range of jewellery boxes. I've also started exploring the world of mosaic, my first experiment was making some coasters/candle stands. They aren't finished yet, because they're one of the projects I've had to stop spinning to create time for more immediately pressing stuff.

What has arisen out of the mosaic practice is a Postcard Sized Art project. My artwork has a tendency to end up huge and consequently beyond most people's purses. So I've begun making small postcard sized collages, made from offcuts of wood and various bits of objet d'art I've accumulated.  I find them enjoyable things to make, we're selling for under twenty quid. Its a challenging discipline to consciously work small. They're proving to be the perfect art project for me. They dont take long to complete, so there is less chance of me being distracted or becoming bored with them. They offer unlimited scope for stretching my creative imagination and invention. I can take them in any direction I want, and they're also easy to make in the shop.

We were standing in a queue outside the chippy takeaway No 1 Cromer, waiting to actually get in to place our order. Immediately opposite is an amusement arcade, by the entrance is a machine you play Flappy Bird on. Its a video game, so I'm told, where you manipulate a bird up or down to get over columns of green pipes of different lengths without hitting them. Hubby tells me its quite difficult to do.

Anyway, a young man, probably mid teens was playing Flappy Bird, constantly hitting a large blue button with one hand in a trance like and worryingly alienated concentration. Each hit producing the ubiquitous computerised farty noise.

The boy played without an interruption, break in concentration or the game. On and on and on he went. The ticker tape recording his successes spewed out, forming a vast snake of yellow paper around his feet. After, at least, the twenty minutes we'd been queueing, he finally stopped. He then stood for a further five minutes whilst the ticker tape machine caught up,still spitting out his winning hits. Picking up this vast sheaf of paper he wandered off to collect what ever this herculean effort had earned him, probably several cuddly toys and a Red Bull flavoured ice lolly.  I fear for today's youth, I really do.

We were having a veggie breakfast in the Mulberry Tearooms one Sunday morning. On another table a woman expressed loudly her incredulity 'How on earth did you get cheese in your eyebrows?' Indeed, I'll leave you to ponder on that one.

CARROT CAKE REVIEW 17 ~ I'm Not Saying Fuck Off To Gluten Free, OK

Hunstanton, West Norfolk.

This cafe overlooks the main green that slopes down towards the promenade, where everything that Hunstanton can throw at you as a childish diversion resides. The cafe's interior, sits uncomfortably between spacious and sparse. I'd like to say it was a symphony in grey, but that would require much more effort than the uniform pale grey tone here can make. Bare of much to ornament its walls without the satisfaction of achieving minimalism, it is, in short, characterless - with very sticky tabletops.

It was a bit late in the day for a Flat White so I toned down the caffeine to a Latte. Not that I needed to let such cosmopolitan worries about caffeine intake get the better of me. The Latte came in a mug, yes, a generic white ceramic mug straight from the local cash and carry. The contents looked disconcertingly like used dishwater. Beneath its feeble frothy surface lay what was in fact just an ordinary milky cup of coffee. Inoffensive were it not for its blandness. Thank god I didn't order a Flat White or my disappointment level would have gone much further than peeved.

And so, to the Carrot Cake. Oh, how I wish I could really let go and explode into rhapsodic language, about how the cake turned my impressions around, that any place which could serve such a superlative carrot cake could be forgiven a minor slip with the quality of the coffee. But, alas, it was not to be so - it was more than slightly dry for starters. Its texture actually wasn't that bad, so there might be a slight possibility a carrot was once waved in its vicinity. However, the more it stayed tumbling up and down around the region of my taste buds I could sense something else was awry on an ingredient level.

It was Hubby who put his finger on it. Not only was this cake Gluten Free, without informing you it was, the flavouring was the mixed spice equivalent of a cheap men's after shave. I've nothing against cakes being gluten free so long as they steer clear of me and I of them. But there is a growing tendency to assume there's no difference between a Gluten Inclusive and a Gluten Free version, which is just not true. A Gluten Free Carrot Cake will always be for me a Fake Carrot Cake. There are currently  increasing  numbers  of, undoubtedly well meaning ,cafes and cake shops who serve you nothing but the buggers.

Where does this leave those of us with a robust digestive system? Are we forced forever into an inclusive world where Carrot Cakes are pale imitations of the traditional? If I were not so liberal minded  and fearful of triggering the sensitivities of social media, I'd say fuck off to Gluten Free. So, just to be clear I haven't actually said that,OK, I'm  declining to endorse the content of my private internal unvocalised vitriol online.

All this was disguised, or do I mean relieved, by the sweetness of its frosting. Boy was the sucrose high. Sugar hit coming up!

CARROT CAKE SCORE  2/8

 

A SPIRITUAL BASTING ~ Carry Out The Activities Of A Buddha

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practice in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo.

Carry Out The Activities Of A Buddha

'The monks holding each office are all disciples of the Buddha and all carry out the activities of a Buddha through their respective offices.'

In these few opening sentences The Instructions For The Tenzo lays out a simple context and purpose for monastic office holders and their work. Though applicants should be able to keep the monastic community healthy and running smoothly on a very pragmatic level, its their spiritual qualifications for taking office that are considered the most important - to 'carry out the activities of a buddha' through their daily work.

What would this mean, not just for the cook, but for anyone performing any task?  The linear notes to this statement inform us its 'to live constantly settling one's life'. 'Settling' is an interesting word choice. In English we can refer to people as 'having settled down' which can have a slightly derogatory inference. The subtext being 'they're lives have become quite traditional and predictable, if not boring - just like the rest of us' . The unconventional has become conventional, once perhaps a risk taker but now perceived as playing it safe.

From the viewpoint of traditional Buddhism to 'have settled down' would be tantamount to the death of their spiritual practise, a lifestyle thats too comfortable, taking shelter in domesticity, trying to sidestep the tricky devil of dukkha, and the raw underbelly of unsatisfactoriness in life.

There is, however, another meaning to 'settling', which is ' to sort out', to have 'come to terms with things'. So ' to live constantly settling one's life' is really a description of the whole purpose of Buddhist practise; to constantly strive to come to terms with how things really are, and to become so settled to be able to abide in that insightful state.

Returning again to those linear notes, they couch 'carry out the activities of a buddha' as 'to actually put your life to work...to make it function in a way that things become most settlied'  To grasp your ordinary life and give it spiritual purpose - to make our ordinary life function as the means to fully seeing the way things really are. Any day, any task, however humble, non-descript or apparently useless ought to be able to work as a means of truly seeing how reality is. Requiring us to remain alert, open and on the case with where our lives and practise are currently at. For what can seem a workable effective approach one week, can feel absolutely dead in the water the next. Nothing stays the same forever, conditions change, things move on as the impermanent nature of reality shape shifts, yet again.

The tasks themselves, however, alter only slghtly, cooking remains cooking, artistry remains artistry. Both are things that human beings choose to do. It is 'why' and 'how' we do them that is susceptible to change.  What would it mean to make work a means of self-transformation, a means to Enlightenment, work enabling you to seeing things as they really are? What does 'seeing things as they really are' mean anyway? It implies our present human way of seeing and being, is one that is obscuring or deluding us. We certainly are inconsistent as practitioners, one minute conscious of what we're doing, the next off with the fairies.

According to the Buddha there are four false perceptions of reality obscuring our vision; that the world can be perfected; that worldly things can make you consistently happy; that the world is permanent; that your self's existance within that world is as a fixed entity. These false perceptions restrict and cloud our imaginations. So traditionally speaking, to see through these four false perceptions would be like lifting a fog, creating the conditions to perceive reality as it really is.

Note your mental state as you are working; the moments when you're irritated or frustrated are the best, to spot whats going on in the background. These are moments when you are not getting what you want, so what you want becomes double underlined, with an exclamation mark for added emphasis!. So you feel very cogently, when you are in pursuit of perfection; what it is you are seeking consistent happiness from?; how much of your behaviour is based on a model of how reality is,one that has a permanent world view underlying it? These three form the foundations for the fourth false perception, of the steady state view of your self, that you  can be free of suffering, that you can be perfect, you can be happy all the time, that you have a spirit, soul or consciousness that is eternal and will survive your physical bodies death.

To the extent we all act according to these four false perception, we will not be fully ready to 'carry out the activities of a Buddha.' When this does happen it would instigate a fundamental shift in how we carry out our life and work. Once we are no longer striving for permanent worldly perfection, for permanent happiness for ourselves from the world, then our fixed sense of reality and of our self as an unchanging entity ruling within it, takes on a more fluid nature, more at ease with the flux of our changing substance. A truer perception of the world will have arrived, most likely, so we are told, unnanounced by any fanfare.  Living our lives and work on the basis of how reality is, not how we'd like it to be, that would be the activity of a Buddha. .


* Extracts from Thomas Wright's translation - From The Zen Kitchen To Enlightenment, First Published by Weatherhill in 1983.

FEATURE ~ Anglo-Catholic Bling

OK, I've been to Walsingham again. But I came back with a camera full of these precious beautys. I just can't get enough of daggers through the heart, bleeding hearts and fey hands placed on the chest in an 'I feel for you' gesture.