FAMILY FRAGMENTS - For Those Left In Shreds & Patches

All life stories through the mouth of the storyteller can fall quickly into the well worn tropes of ancient myths and legends. One only has to compare them with the spiteful, jealous vengeful way the Greek Pantheon behave. These personal tales drawn from life may still remain true to the person. the place or the time, even in the very moment that a narrative drifts into being light fingered with the facts, or run off to get completely divorced. This was never more true than of family stories, oft repeated and equally exaggerated and embellished in many a communal retelling. 

Over years and lifetimes these repetitions gradually turn their face away from verisimilitude in order to relish the heightened melodrama of it all. The remnants of old grievances, revenge, soured loves and shattered dreams, live on in the family tales of self-righteous stances, the monstrous affronts, of the many personal mistakes redrawn as loosing the noble battle with fate. Its them against the world where the world always won, thwarting any hope of who they could become. History is hard on everyone's legacy because it is knowingly negligent and forgetful, leaving out anything inconvenient or off message.

When I look back at my own life stories, and they are definitely plural, I present them as if they are situated in a finely wrought stage play, framed within a proscenium arch with all exits and entrances clearly marked.  I'm well aware of the plot holes, the deliberately misremembered bits because they make living with the shame of an event a teeny bit easier, or the once blind determination in my youth to turn wish fulfillment into a career strategy.  For stories to have impact its all about the artifice and staging, the telling detail, a look, a small word out of place, a kind gesture, the much treasured meaningful memento left on the mantelpiece. For these were just so them 

Any family is a nest of broken eggs, you have to be careful how, and even if you should, reassemble the fragments of shells you know of. Even as I turn towards the retelling of the stories associated with members of my family, its impossible to keep subjective feelings at bay. It feels strange to find myself knowingly taking on the mantle of the classic unreliable narrator of family fictions, traducing reputations, installing halos, spreading half remembered untruths, or even full untruths, based on only the merest hint from the Chinese whisperers in my own memory. 

At times remembering them comes as a small madly flapping bird flys past your bedroom window. It catches the sleepy eyed corner of your attention where daydreams coalesce with memory. You find your imagination suddenly refleshes a person, maybe long gone, whom you haven't thought of in a long long while. In the flurry and bustle of your daily life your focus can be so head down absorbing the cracks in the pavement of the present moment, then up pops to mind this personality from the past  At which the heart breaks open a magnum bottle of sentiment and we luxuriate in the brief bubbly froth of recollection.

Images seem to be nothing without their emotional background and the grand arc of the story that accompanies them. How we paint in words our family portraits, will always be riddled with the faults and factual inaccuracies that memory is prone to, yet still hold true to what remains of them in us. Its as though a perfume lingers on in a room, you can never quite place where on earth you smelt it first, but you recognise it nonetheless. It is them.

This occasional series of essays, Family Fragments, will contain contain short largely fictionalised portrait stories of individuals (all now deceased ) within the three generations of my family that I have known. 

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LISTENING TO - Vasto by Cabaret Voltaire

Way back in the mid 1990's Cabaret Voltaire ceased to be, their last output being The Conversation a two hour long album. By then so much in music owed a debt to The Cabs in their later phase of cut up and die dance music. Perhaps they were both a bit tired out with decades of unrelenting output. So they return, though it should really be he returns, that is Roland Kirk, with a whole album of fresh material. Stephen Mallinder having been lost to the Australian outback one fears.

The new album, Shadow of Fear is a refreshed amalgam of the two period styles of Cabaret Voltaire, the harsh scratchy guitar, found voice and sound tape loop cut ups and the more refined version laid over dance beats with the distinct drawl of a vocal. Shadow of Fear is classic CV, still stretching the musical envelope. They do sound cutting edge and contemporary despite their sound collage process being around for forty years or so. Maybe that's because so much of what passes for new music these days is thin beer compared to The Cabs.

Vasto is probably the most punchy and danceable of the tracks off the new album, also it has this wonderful video of lurid images layered and constantly shifting, suggestive without settling on anything recognisable. FAB.

FINISHED READING - Three Commentaries on Dogen's Uji - 'Being-Time'

Late in 2019 I began re-reading through my four volume copy of Dogen's Shobogenzo. The last time I did this was twenty years ago and it took me four years to complete. My experience then was of constantly being thrust up against my ignorance, non-comprehension, the impenetrable cliff of being spiritually baffled and yet strangely thrilled, often simultaneously. Six months into my re-reading I reached the chapter Uji, usually translated as 'being-time' or 'existence time' and I've been erratically, and given the nature of the text, slowly working my way through the three modern commentaries on it that I have.

Uji is challenging to understand, I don't quite get or connect with quite a lot of it still. Yet what I do grasp of it has come to mean a hell of lot to me. The dense allusive phrases, rich metaphors, stories, koans, all embellished with colourful imagery reference ideas that do not easily unpack themselves even to experienced Zen Buddhists. You do need an experienced reliable teacher or their commentary to guide you through it. It is clear to me that Uji contains the central idea informing Dogen's whole approach to spiritual and everyday life, so it warranted close examination. I've published a simplified summary of what I think I've understood in an article that preceded this post.

Dogen's use of the unified terms 'practice-realisation and 'being-time' are pretty much unique to him. Like' buddha-nature' their identifiable antecedents in Buddhist texts are hard to locate beyond the late flowerings of the Mahayana itself. If there has ever been such a thing as a pure orthodox view in Buddhism, then Dogen was taking a knowing detour from it. However, the idea of 'being-time' does support and form interesting new correlations with the Buddha's fundamental teachings of conditioned co-production and contemplation of impermanence. You could say he was simply opening up a new window upon an familiar landscape that needed refreshing..

Three Commentaries on Uji 

Each Moment Is The Universe - Dahnin Katagri, - Pub Shambahala, - 2007
I've read Each Moment Is The Universe twice now. It is an intelligent compilation of edited talks given by Katagiri over a number of years which relate to or explore themes derived from Uji. As such it is a bit scatter gun in its logical sequence, lacking the directed flow of exposition that a purposely written book would have. Katagiri comes across as a gifted teacher, with a very personable accessible style of presentation that avoids becoming too tangled in the texts more abstruse philosophical consequences. His focus is on how the idea of 'being~time' itself affects our everyday practice and daily life. I did gain a basic grasp of' being-time' through reading this book and in my opinion it is the best introductory commentary on Uji currently available.   *****

Deepest Practice, Deepest Wisdom - Kosho Uchiyama - Pub Wisdom - 2018
The Kosho Uchiyama, I think has likewise been edited down from a series of talks. But they do have a sense of a coherent sequence running through them. Uchiyama, like Katagiri, avoids using specifically Buddhist jargon and tries to express even a complex text such as Uji in as straightforward a language as possible. Had I not read the Katagiri first, I'm sure I would have found his commentary as revelatory. For me, it reinforced through restatement what I'd first understood through reading the Katagiri. Both Uchiyama and Katagiri are great spiritual communicators and the depth of their practice shines through in the plain, matter of fact and frequently humorous way they present their thoughts and reflections. ****

Being Time, A Practitioner's Guide To Dogen's Shobogenzo Uji, 
Shinshu Roberts - Pub Wisdom - 2018 
Shinshu Roberts takes a logical, thorough going approach, with a line by line, paragraph by paragraph dissection and exploration of the themes in Uji's text. This means the commentary itself can quickly become extremely heavy going. There was something absent for me in its depth and illumination that I can't quite put my finger on. The use of the subtitle A Practitioner's Guide to Dogen's Shobogenzo Uji, I found to be not sufficiently born out by the commentary itself. It's not very practical. It has a dry, academic tone, with few cogent examples drawn from experience how the whole notion of 'being-time' might imaginatively play out in our day to day life and practice. I doggedly stuck with it to the bitter end, but with a diminishing sense of active engagement. ***

EVERYDAY LIFE - Why is living in the present moment so important anyway?

We all tend to view time as something external to us that flies or passes us by, that there is either too much or not enough of. It divides up our life experience and memories into what is past, present or for the future. We tend to conceive of time as proceeding in this sequential way as our clock dials go from 1 to 24, so our day to day experiences fall like dominoes from dawn to dusk, A to B, life to death.

Time re-frames our life story, turning individual experiences and events into a self propelled narrative along a path that we visualise ourselves as having directed.  Even spiritual practice can be turned into another form of this self-improving journey, except this one ends up with the state of Enlightenment. Most of the time this causes no problems. There are, after all, countless Buddhist lists that appear to encourage us to present the purpose of Buddhist practice to be a bit like climbing a ladder or a spiral staircase. 

This implies that Enlightenment is not attainable in this present moment, but is at a point far away that we are nowhere near reaching right now. But when that point is reached, when realisation does occur, the place where that will happen will be there, right then, in that future present moment.  The sequential stages of progress may help prepare us but only so far. Whether our view is sequential or immediate, the way we conceive of and use the present moment is extremely important, if we are ever to 'see things as they really are.'

It is an overused cliche to talk of living in the present moment. We rarely ask what and where that present moment is in our experience?  Though we are aware that the present moment exists, it does so consciously only in retrospect, we analyse and comment on what has happened there, after it has happened. We say to ourselves 'Oh that was interesting' as our self-awareness kicks in subsequent to the event. When the present moment is actually happening it is just being lived, not cross-examined and probed for significance or meaning.

We cannot self-consciously make ourselves 'present' within the present moment. It's not a place where self analysis can exist alongside it, because we are so deeply embroiled as an integral part of the moment that has arisen. According to Dogen in his Shobogenzo essay Uji, our sense of being and our sense of time are one indivisible dynamic event occurring in each presenting moment. Being-Time is not a duality, it is 'not two', its like a coin without two sides, no heads, no tails, but valuable.

If only the present moment of 'being time' can be experienced then each moment contains within it everything that has ever happened, not just to ourselves but to everyone and everything that ever existed. In every singular moment we experience the impermanent nature of the phenomena happening immediately in our present life, whilst also being involved in the endless, ever shifting network of interconnected phenomena that encompasses us on a world or cosmic level, this is where 'each moment is the entire universe', as Dahnin Katagiri puts it. 'Being-time'  though experienced as particular to us, is simultaneously intimate with and inclusive of everything in every time frame.

This idea of being-time is linked philosophically with 'buddha nature' though the latter as a concept is a contentious one. That we can already be something, but not be aware of it, is inherently problematic. Dogen was not the first Buddhist to point out that this appeared to undermine the necessity for spiritual practice altogether. In the Shobogenzo chapter on Uji*** he proposes his own resolution to heal the apparent disjuncture between practice and realisation that the concept of 'buddha nature' opens up. Practice-realisation, like being-time, does not run along some imagined parallel linear trajectories, but are one singular simultaneous activity in the presenting moment. All these terms become intertwined in where they take place - the present moment.

If you hold too literally to the view that spiritual progress happens sequentially in an elevating hierarchy of states, then the concept of practice-realisation will be difficult to see the sense of. Even if one puts trust in the idea of 'buddha nature', realisation will often be impeded by subtle sub-conscious views of realisation that are sequential or self-focused in nature. Practice-realisation is not like bringing hot water, green tea leaves and a teapot together in order to make a truly fabulous cup of tea. 

Without taking it too literally, it could be said that - realisation prompts practice and practice prompts realisation. Relatively speaking, we experience practice as either 'touching' or 'not touching' full realisation, but if we were to speak from a more absolute position, practice is never in nor out of touch with realisation. At some point our words, images, concepts are always in danger of failing or implying a duality that will obscure fuller comprehension, but we have to keep trying.  Practice, because its not separate from it, is not the means to achieve realisation, but resembles a constant emanation like the beams cast from a lighthouse, sometimes intermittent, sometimes steady.

Realisation doesn't exist without practice and practice doesn't exist without realisation. After all the Buddha continued practicing meditation regularly even after his own 'awakening', if 'awakening' had been the breakthrough conclusion that would not have been necessary. Realisation is always there in the moment of practice, even though most of the time we are blind to it.

Zazen meditation practice is unique in having no purpose, no technique, no formal structure to master, nothing to be done or nothing to be gained. This is a practice that encourages no desire to 'touch' or 'not touch' full realisation, and cannot be forced to go anywhere without that willfulness becoming self-sabotaging. You sit present to whatever is there, letting go of any mental entanglement that arises and returning to the presenting moment. Zazen practice places you in a space where you rehearse how to 'just be a being' . At some point this 'practice - leads to - an experience of being-time in the present moment' and ' an experience of being-time in the present moment - leads to realisation' in one dynamic synchronous event.

That's why learning how to be in the present moment, whether on or off the cushion, in everyday life, at work or play, is considered so important.

*** My recent background reading of Uji has informed most of this article. This is reviewed in a post that will follow this article.

PS 
Within the limitations and predispositions of my own intellect, writing ability and comprehension, I've attempted to present the basic thrust of Dogen's ideas concerning the present moment in simple, clear language. Subtle nuances and fine details have inevitability been left out. All our conceptions when we are on the wrong side of Awakening will  be likewise wrong. Even the Buddha was initially unsure he could communicate his Enlightenment experience effectively. All teachings are the proverbial fingers pointing at the moon, they are only indicate the general direction we should travel in, they are not the Moon.
Insight and understanding are, as ever, a work in progress.

WATCHED - His House

Two refugees from Africa arrive in the UK illegally and suffer the loss of their child during the journey. After detention in a camp for asylum seekers they are moved to a sink housing estate and unusually are given a whole house to live in. But something is very odd and not right about this house.

His House is a horror movie that isn't afraid to deal with real life contemporary issues head on. It captures the other worldly sense of isolation of the couple. Outside are the usual rowdy noises of an urban suburb, but we rarely see the perpetrators. The spectre of racism hangs over and around them. The estate itself is a bit of a warren of back alleys and dead ends. Their garden outside becomes a dumping ground for everyone else's waste furniture and unwanted detritus. Their life turns into a living nightmare, plagued by past actions, the loss of the child, denial and increasing mental instability. 

All around them is suspicion and the actuality of the so called 'better lifestyle' they left their homeland for, but is this just too alien, is that why they do not feel right there.? His House is a courageous, absorbing and at times shocking debut movie by Remi Weeks, that surprises you with just how brilliantly it can deal with both its themes and its horror.

WATCHED - The Social Dilemma

If you've ever wondered how you became so addictied to your iPhone, iPad or tablet, then watch this documentary. Not long ago social media outlets had huge followings but the companies that owned them were financially precarious. They started to sell advertising space on their sites, monetising the attention span of their followers, They weren't only selling audience numbers, but also what you viewed, your interests and what you bought. They were selling you and your data. 

Google and Facebook developed algorithms that would push any material at you that, based on your previous activity, it thought you might like. The frequency of your time on the site became an additional sales tool to encourage advertising investment. You buy a kitchen knife online and end up getting sent adverts from sites selling scimitars and machetes. 

This development and monitoring of our activity on social media becomes it's reason to exist, sending us notification emails, posts, anything to keep you on the site looking, checking and giving it your attention. In this way we were all being trained in an addiction to social media. Compelled to look incase we are missing out on something.

Some of the individuals involved in the rolling out of these programming initiatives started to be uneasy at the unforseen consequences of them. The increasing prevalence of fake news, conspiracy theories, medical quackery and political manipulation of elections. Algorithms have no moral compass, they just keep shoveling any material they think you might like in your face. Its how Trump turned himself into the voice of the left out and disaffected, irrespective of this stance being fraudulent.

So people who self harm or feel suicidal get sent more posts from similarly desperate people. People with a grievance against individuals, races, religions or cultures receive posts from people holding similar intolerant viewpoints. The opinions we hold, right or wrong, true or false, get encouraged and sustained by other posts from like-minded folk. These opinion bubbles go largely unchallenged. The division between Us and Them, becomes ever more exaggerated and the common ground we share left unexplored or actively derided. What is disheartening is how social media companies still suffer from a huge degree of public denial about their culpability in this. 

What can you do? Well right now turn off as many notifications on your phone or tablet as you can. Minimise your engagement, try to train your self to check emails and social media only once or twice a day.  You could come off social media altogether or decide to use one not multiple outlets. I post primarily through this blog now. Everything you do online will be being monitored, so it's always best you take care what you put out there.  Post responsibly; think twice or thrice before you press send and publish - do you want this out there and why?  

Internet forums work because they flatter our self esteem, vanity and ego, that we and our opinions matter. It is something that I have to remind myself of quite frequently is, who cares? In the bigger scheme of life none of it matters. Don't take Trump as your role model, be self- censoring online.

Give this documentary a watch, it really is deeply insightful about why our civilisation and democracy has gone so seriously wonky lately. Its available to stream on Netflix.

TV FAVE RAVE - The Big Scottish Book Club

In these days of lock down where book reading has become a revived pleasurable pastime for many.  There are now, as if by magic, two book shows on BBC IPlayer; the light and breezy Between The Covers with Sarah Cox and The Big Scottish Book Club with Damian Barr. I like both, because they are approachable and avoid pretentious twaddle. Though I find myself frequently coming away more touched, inspired and motivated to read by The Big Scottish Book Club. 

Each week has an overarching theme such as memoirs or crime. The conversation is relaxed and quite deftly directed by Barr, whose openhearted enthusiasm and own experience as a writer leads his questions. You find the person being interviewed drawn out to talk further and deeper about their lives, writing process and how they feel about their characters and books. This aspect of personal revelation makes watching this Book Club unmissable. Shifting from riveting, to moving, amusing and back again with ease. I'm finding it the most satisfying programme, one I really look forward to viewing every week.

I'm very much in love with the way Damian Barr says 'murder', looks so in awe, then visibly shocked and bites his question cards in tense moments. 

Buttered Crumpet anyone?

200 WORDS ON - The Double Bluff Fraud

When you misrepresent who you are, what is happening, what other people need to do, you commit fraud, a con upon an individual, community or country. It's most commonly financial fraud, but can be political, sexual or institutional. It is lying for personal advantage. Fraud is corrosive because it not only betrays trust but undermines faith in what is true.

When fake news, fraud and brazen lying becomes as endemic as they are now, it is harder to ascertain exactly what is true. It corrupts political discourse when political leaders spread stories they know to be untrue, deliberately deploying misinformation into the public sphere.

The effectiveness of a fraud depends on the conviction with which the perpetrator tells the lie and how easily other individuals believe and spread it. Human kind is so easily self deluded, we often so want something to be true we'll turn the tables on the truth bearers and say it's they who are the fraudster's. But such delusion is different in intent to the double bluff fraud that's perpetrated by Trump and his political ilk. To knowingly spread malignant untruths to maintain political power, lays the foundations for the democratic fraud that is fascism.

QUOTATION MARKS 51 - Dainin Katagiri

 "Misunderstanding is also in the big ocean. 
   Misunderstanding cannot exist separately
   from understanding,
   so understanding is there too, 
   whether you believe it or not."

   Dainin Katagiri
    taken from Each Moment Is The Universe

WATCHED - Totally Under Control

To watch this documentary is also to observe oneself becoming more and more aggravated and despairing at seeing the missteps of the US response to Covid 19 unfold. It also makes you aware that there was something willfully perverse about how the Trump administration neglected established best practice in dealing with a pandemic. 

Compare this with South Korea's response which was swift, thorough and effective, led completely by it's science and health professionals, there was no substantial economic hit because it was dealt with so quickly. 

The US however handed over responsibility to implement there response to unqualified inexperienced people, who were primarily there because they were loyal political stooges. Trump publicly ridiculed and undermined the experience of his own best health professional advisors. Side tracked a public health lead strategy by handing things over to the private sector and big pharma to make money out of pushing the use of medicines it knew were ineffective against Covid. Delayed through neglect the implementation of an effective test and trace for weeks. Set every state against each other in a bidding war for PPE that pushed up the price of it and made those PPE supply companies even wealthier. 

Worse still is that elements of this strategy hold uncomfortable echoes of the corrupt practice in handing over the test and trace system to the private sector unchallenged, to the detriment of more locally based public health initiatives, that we've seen is somewhat endemic within our own UK governments response.

Its sobering  unedifying and a concerning thing to watch as political ideology holds the effectiveness of known scientific practice up for ransom. Available to stream on BBC IPlayer.

SHERINGHAM DIARY 43 - The Insufficiency of Time

I don't these days have ready access to enough energy to pursue a million things and catch them all as they fly. Alas the days of limitless ambition, limitless time and limitless energy with which to do it are gone. Its more about paring things back to what can reasonably be done in the time available. The drive to raise your game one more time becomes weaker as we get older. Because it dawns on you with greater clarity with the increasing tally of years, that there will never be sufficient time to follow up all those imagined things before you die. So lets not get into a flap or panic over it. 

But oh we do, we do, we do, dear reader. For it's so easy to find oneself overwhelmed by the number and frequency of things that, at some point long forgotten, I've committed myself to doing. Not just doing, they should be completed too. No task ever abandoned or just left hanging, to reprimand you for your slack minded negligence. The expectations can be raised ridiculously high, so it would not be surprising were I to exhibit a tendency to be a little tense with persistent low level stress and an inconsistent sleep pattern.

I've rarely had sufficient time asleep as an adult. It's something even meditating regularly has largely left unaffected. Since the first lock down finished I've woken pretty much every night around 2am,  often not for my usual reasons of bodily aches and pain, being too hot or needing to pee, but because my heart is pumping and I'm in a mildly alarmed emotional state. An open source sort of panic which, whilst it has no discernible origin, can latch onto any passing mild concern and give it a really good gnawing over. 

One might say its a generalised pandemic anxiety, or existential angst. But that's too neat a diagnosis with no self-evident solution or ameliorating practice. As a literalistic Buddhist one might look at what arises, the internal and external conditions and try fiddling about with them. But causal conditioning factors are a complex weave, most of them are beyond conscious reach. Nevertheless they can be a starting point.

The summer trade has been very good, the shop having had another bumper month, October half- term being the last hurrah for the tourist trade. For the first time this year we've had difficulty keeping up with sales of items we make, which has brought its own emotional pressure. We've also been open seven days a week for the five months since the first lock down finished. Jnanasalin and I haven't had a day off together during that time. Individually we've taken days off, but it's all too easy for work to encroach nibbling away at what should be down time. As a consequence we can find ourselves switched on, but unable to locate the off switch. Financially we are currently in a stable position, our shop overheads are low and the government's grant has helped  So we don't have the additional worry of financial pincers being applied to our testicles that some folk have. 

The Winter months are our worst trading wise, so being in lock down over them could actually be fractionally better. Last year the run up to Christmas was depressed by the uncertainty over the Brexit stand off in Parliament and the General Election. Whether trade would have been better this year we'll never know now. For we will be in lock down, where further financial and health uncertainty will bedevil the confidence of the general public. The coming months will drive more people to master online purchasing and put a significant further nail in the coffin of High Street retailing. I imagine some shops in Sheringham will not be re-opening in 2021, we'll find out which soon enough in early Spring.

I was not looking forward to the encroaching slower Winter months I felt a degree of dread. Steeling myself to be in the cold wind of a frequently empty courtyard, which can lead to a stiffening of the emotions with notable stoical strain. Too much time can sit just as heavily as not enough.  In Winter, and more generally, this aspect of our shop can be difficult to be thereeasy with, it is a practice but its one I currently have insufficient mastery of. In some respects it is not the abundance or scarcity of time that is the problem, but the deflated fatigue of emotions and will that result in insufficient volition to do anything. At some point I hit the buffers of despondency.

A not so busy shop, or stay at home in lock down, I know which one I'd chose. Both mean we'll have time and space to catch up with ourselves a bit, take time off together again, and those things we never quite get around to when the shop was open all week. Our making usually becomes speedier and  more productive too, so there are some silver linings. We also have some stock updating to do to our website, and linking our web and shop stock together by using the same payment platform.

Come mid January we close for 3-4 weeks anyway because by then there is literally nothing happening but the twiddling of our thumbs. We'll take a holiday if that is possible, start planning developments for the business and hope that by sometime in 2021 this pandemic will have turned a decisive corner.