As Buddhists of long standing both Hubby and I are used to periods of solitude and time away from the usual stresses and distractions of daily life - we usually call it being on retreat. I've been approaching the lock down as though it was a retreat, which generally has worked, but has one flaw - retreats usually come to an end. At a week or two in length, by the last few days of a retreat your mind can naturally drift into dwelling on what you'd like to do once full liberty is restored. By day eleven of the lock down I was finding myself physically restless. On some level I knew this wasn't really a retreat, its a lock down, currently without any definite end point. I became bedevilled with resistances and a fed up tone came up and sulked with me whilst I sat on my meditation stool.
As the first 'phantom fortnight retreat' came not to an end and I was still 'at home' I had three or four sleep spattered nights. This unsettled feeling settled down again. On my four month ordination retreat your mood would slip through similar peaks and troughs then cycle back through them again, if you were lucky diminished in intensity. This is how you respond when circumstances restrain your liberty to make choices, one chafes and baulks at the boundaries. I suspect this is what the lock down will be like. Some days OK, some days with a bit of a struggle going on.
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| Our usual walking route |
However you're view of the current situation, staying at home and going out for a half hour daily walk, plus a food shop in town on Friday, will never provide enough human contact for even an introvert to feel overwhelmed by. The ambience in town you can cut with a knife, everyone guarded and on a mission to get the hell out again as soon as possible, preferably with their magic protective bubble intact. It's understandable, but it feels and is weird. It is hard not to get a bit freaked when you are out amongst it all.
The media is just a wildly speculating machine at the moment, of all sort of impacts the pandemic might have upon the fabric of society long after Covid 19 becomes a curable disease. These all appear to be jumping the gun a bit as we are not at the peak of infection yet. so this looks and is wishful thinking or doom mongering being re- presented as if from a sage like oracle. No one can know, everything is a shot in the dark, too many factors are at play. We all wish for it to be over and everything to return to normal, if indeed that is at all feasible. But if it doesn't, then who knows what may ensue? Please press the reset button and retire to a safe distance. This might take some time
May the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas bless the winged messenger of Zoom. I've been through my learning curve with it, and I'm beginning to take for granted there will always be someone who's broadband turns human speech into that of a gobbling chicken. At the Norwich Zen Priory, once any teething problems were ironed out, they're pretty much running the usual programme of evening classes, plus morning meditations and devotional rituals. My usual circumstances mean I cannot physically attend more than one evening class a week. Now, with Zoom, I can be at all of them should I wish. I'm also getting to see and know more of the Sangha than I did previously. So this aspect of the lock down is proving a real win win situation for me and for anyone else who lives outside the Norwich boundary.
We've started watching the National Theatre Live. The first one. One Man, Two Governors, even though it had James Cordon performing in it, was actually an enjoyable and thoroughly excellent production. It did begin to slightly outstay its welcome halfway through the second half, and the final scenes was a bit clumsy and felt perfunctory. But it still got a big thumbs up from us.
The second play was a transferred Bristol Old Vic Production of Jane Eyre. I respect them for choosing not to take their adaption down the easier route of a more traditionally staged production. Initially I thought 'well this is unusual staging' that quickly progressed to irritation with the constant climbing up and down ladders and walking meaninglessly up and down ramps and all the way round the houses. To be honest it resembled an up-scaled version of a hamster's play frame.
It was an overly fussy and fidgety production with the stage often resembling Kings Cross in the rush hour. Narrative was constantly being sacrificed to the theatrical staging and novelty tricks, hurtling the small cast about from scene to scene, and making it feel bitty and episodic as a result. In all this motiveless kerfuffle any emotional connection you may have had with characters became clinically neutered. But this was not Brecht it was Bronte. At 4 hours the original production was the length of a Greek epic tragedy, though it was shortened by an hour for the NT production, this still made serious demands upon ones bum. We lost patience with it by the interval. Oh, yes, some of the Yorkshire accents were really very dodgy with a capital D.
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The wisest and most human piece of writing I've read recently was a short article written by Rev Master Daishin Morgan. He is the former abbot of Throssel Hole Zen Priory and is I've found quite an inspirational figure. It was written in response to the national lock down, its theme is loneliness and the opportunities as well as the difficulties feeling a sense of loneliness presents us with. Here is the link to the full talk to download.
https://throssel.org.uk/author/rev-master-daishin-morgan/article-by-rev-master-daishin/
I'll end with a short poem he includes in the article.
Space is a poor analogy for emptiness,
It is the lightness of things being free.
Being in a room is the same
If the door opens easily or I am locked in
But so completely different
remorseless positivity is only pretending;
The cries must be heard, you must enter the room.
The lightness is not the condition of the door.
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