In the latter years of my time inhabiting 'the boil', as I called London at the time. I'd begun tentatively delving into spirituality as more than a book category. Discovering Taoism, by reading Alan Watts's - Wisdom of Insecurity. The title alone drew me in. This was, at the time, a complete revelation, on the surface so paradoxical. I'd spent much of my adult life trying to overcome, find ways to side step, or get around feelings of insecurity. Instead of suppressing and pushing them away, to embrace them as just how life is, felt counter intuitive. This began opening up a whole new way of perceiving life, the world and its real meaning.
As its implications fully dawned on me, this also brought a letting go and a consequential deep relief. I was out walking in the busy hubbub that is the centre of Crouch End. North London. Emotionally light headed I had to sit down on a bench. I found myself gazing up at the brilliant blue sky of that day and calmly encountered an elation. Goodness knows what passers by thought, but this was London, so they'd give that grinning idiot on the bench a wide berth. Probaby thinking I was off my head on drugs. If, of course, they were aware of me at all. Blinkered on a mission or walking around with their Sony Walkmans blaring loudly in their ears.
Having had that moment, I read more about Taoism. But Taoism as an active religious practice in the 1980's seemed all but none existent in the UK. And the one thing Taoism needs above all else is a teacher and guide. One forgets now, in the age of the internet, just how difficult it used to be to follow up on things. If it wasn't in Time Out or City Limits, you often had to depend on responding quickly in the moment to a fortunate encounter.
Back in Diss, I saw a Buddhism class was starting up in the High School. I decided to go along. Learning to meditate, as a useful tool, became a revelation too. But when it moved on to The Four Noble Truths my mind was somewhat blown out of the water. The universal nature of suffering, the cause of suffering, the way to end suffering, the path that leads to the end of suffering. So simple a diagnostic.
I remember cycling around the country lanes encircling Diss for weeks, literally buzzing with the excitement of it. Everything I examined in my experience, I saw as literally riddled with the desire for that situation or person, to be something other than what they actually were. And when most of the time reality did not comply with my most ardent wishes, boy did I suffer.
When I was later introduced to the multiplicity of deity forms of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas I reactively bounced out of Buddhism for a few years. Eventually to return, a little wiser and less resistant. I was at a practice night at the Norwich Buddhist Centre, still more than a little bit green. There was to be a devotional ritual called a Puja. In the middle of which is the recitation of precepts. Now here is a strange thing. There are two iterations of the precepts; the five precepts used in general contexts such as this; and the ten precepts that are specifically for recitation by order members. What I heard that night, for the first time, was the ten precepts. As they were recited, a level of excitement just grew and grew and grew within me. To the point where I was absolutely bursting to get a copy of them, as soon as this apparently interminable sevenfold ritual was over. There was a quality of reciprocity in the precepts. They put into words exactly what I wanted to live my whole life by.
A year later I was on my first meditation retreat, up in the hills of North Wales. I'd been there for at least a week out of the total fortnight. I'd never done such intensive meditation and devotional practice before. One afternoon, during a meditation sit, the heavy weight of my consciousness felt like it dropped away like a veil, and I physically and mentally felt lightened. As though I was just floating unruffled on a sea of calm. I remember sitting in the refectory afterwards awaiting dinner being served. Passively observing everyone loudly gabbling away maniacally. I looked at them impassively, this was all just too bonkers. I felt a broad pervasive connection with them all, but at the same time I had a heightened awareness of how much inconsequential drivel we talked. Trying not to engage, because as soon as I opened my mouth to contribute it felt like the calm stillness of my state, was in danger of being rapidly sucked away down a near-bye plughole.
On another occasion on a Just Sitting retreat, during an evening period of meditation, it was as though a thick cloak that I wore. enveloping and defending me, literally fell to the floor in an instant of Ta Da! Unveiling a spiritually naked, pure, and incredibly grounded me. The same feeling of calmly floating through reality and a beautiful pervasive connection with everyone, as I watched them individually heading back to there dorms. Luckily, this time it was silence overnight, so no one was talking. I didn't have to converse with anyone. Yet, even as I lay in bed I could sense my own mind starting to pick at and analyse what I'd experienced. Bit by bit my inquisitive mind dismantling the heightened state of awareness I'd been in.
All of these encounters with the sacred, arose unexpectedly and without any premonition. They are examples of what Buddhism refers to as experiences of 'calm abiding' that are frequently mentioned in Buddhist texts. Finding one self in such a state often arises in ones early practice, its due to Beginners Mind. Where we are innocently open and unpremeditated in our good natured curiosity. We become unconsciously focused in an entirely natural manner. What happens subsequently is these 'peak' experiences become patterned and expectations enter our minds. So they become consequently rarer, or vanish altogether because we have a tendency to pre-empt them. You are encouraged to preserve Beginners Mind, but I've found to do this consciously, when it is based entirely on an unconscious unpremeditated state, pretty much impossible. You can't reverse engineer an experience of the sacred
I look back at these with a residual longing, and an element of sadness at my own perceived meditative inadequacy. Inhabiting a space where they haven't occured for a long time. Its clearly true that clinging to any of them can be a major problem. Yet these early glimmers, glimpses, and moments of gosh, made me be a Buddhist. They have sustained me through troughs of despondency and the daily winnowing away at one's faith by modern secular life. Sustenance, seems to me, to be their primary function, but at the same time 'peak experiences' of any kind can be fundamentally misleading. They are the proverbial fingers pointing towards the moon. They are what Dogen terms beautiful but 'imaginary tigers' that prevent us from recognising the 'real tiger' when we encounter it.
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