ARTICLE - Can't You Show Me Nothing But Surrender

In 1975 Patti Smith's debut album Horses was released. Horses exists in a curious liminal space that it opened up between punk and performance poetry. Suddenly poetry was fashionable and hip, and was interacting with rock n roll in the same way The Beat Poets had with the druggy haze of Cool Jazz. The eponymous title track is written as though its taking place within the sort of woozy headed rush of a fevered dream, 'The Boy' who looks at Johnny ending up in a street fight with switchblades. And in the middle of this furious tussle the -

Angel looks down at him and says, 

"Oh, pretty boy, Can't you show me nothing but surrender?"

All because 'The Pretty Boy' in the heat of the fight, his heart pumping like 'Arabian stallions lapping into sea horses' seems suddenly to go compulsively passive, surrendering himself up to whatever is happening to him in the moment. Unsure even of the reality of the reality he is in. If he is in the middle of a drug induced hallucination, a psychological fight or an actual physical attack, or all three. And who is this Angel anyways? But the angel certainly believes 'The Pretty Boy' has other options, and surrendering? well this is just too easy, lazy even. Sometimes you have to fight your corner for what you want. Apathy can be a passive form of surrender. True surrender is always an active choice.

This points us in the direction of one manifestation of surrender. You recognise that you are not in control of what is happening to you, so you give up fighting it. Even if the result maybe, as in this case, potentially life threatening. You let down any defenses surrounding yourself and offer yourself up to some form of death, whether that be literal or metaphorical you cannot tell. Its an example of what I'm  calling - Nihilistic Surrender. A reckless and self regarding extinguishing desire. And in Patti Smith's Horses, we have references to one of its modern archytypes - of doomed self immolating individualism. Surrendering oneself up to being murdered, or to debilitating drugs, to the couldn't careless destruction of the boundaries of the self. A suicidal masochism. Quicken the pace and die young with an emaciated corpse, that they made from forging their own way in life

And whilst this might appear to be a modern phenomena, it does have its imaginative antecedents in the religious imagery of Catholic martyred saints and of The Buddha during his pre-Enlightenment phase of starving his own body to see what might arise from deprivation. The inviolability and sanctity of the body is being fundamentally questioned and tested, to find out what may happen when you give up trying to protect and cosset it. This element of Nihilistic Surrender exists at some level in many religions.

Surrender is then a familiar refrain in spiritual practice. It denotes some form of death, not necessarily actual, but certainly intended to be spiritually transformative. It makes saints and sages in this life or the next. The Self is seen as a form of corrupting influence upon the ultimate sanctity of existence, and its diktats need to be repressively denied in order to free yourself from them.You extinguish one thing in order that the whole of you is made available to be transformed. A religious re-configuration of Nihilistic Surrender preceding, and indeed preparing the way for the more elevated Transformative Surrender.

And yet, this Transformative Surrender also seems to be only the start of another process, of giving oneself up to something more ultimate and eternal in nature. Whether that be to a God, a higher state of consciousness or an elevating expanded perception of reality.  These seem to be examples pointing towards Eternalistic Surrender, of surrendering oneself to something that is above, beyond and transcending that of mundane human existence entirely.

Surrender shares qualities with renunciation, though it is a slightly different level of the beast. For to truly renounce anything you do have to let go of whatever you believe is an obstacle. The thing that is holding you back. You have to have had prior insight into your way of behaving, living or being that you wish to move beyond. And this thorough form of renunciation can be transformative, which nevertheless tends to be slow moving and incremental in nature. 

If you prematurely renounce without a substantial insight into the consequences of a behaviour and what damage that does to your 'soul', then this is really a self denial or punishment lacking in any higher uplifting trajectory. The worst sort of renunciation would be to do so because it says you should in a book, or a Pastor, Pope or Guru tells you that you should. This leans heavily towards Nihilistic Surrender in that you are very consciously knowingly punishing yourself. Its a flagellation of the self, that perhaps takes too literally the willful extinguishing of human desires.

Much of spiritual practice, whatever the religious tradition, is a very conscious choice 'to do this - instead of that'. We might not initially couch these in terms of renunciation. And in these primary stages of renunciation, surrender can have an unassuming cast to it. But there is something in the nature of  ultimate truly transformative and then eternalistic surrender that is no longer humble, its no longer consciously accompanied by a particular goal in mind. Even terms like letting go and surrender start to feel as if they have this acquisitive undertow, in that there is assumed to be something you are letting go into. 

In Buddhism stages of letting go are suggested by the teaching of Sunyata. Now, listen carefully because this teaching is often misconstrued. Though Sunyata's reductive meaning is emptiness, this is not the nihilistic emptiness of an extinguishing void. It is empty, in that existence is 'emptied' of any applied meaning we might wish to give to it  The four stages of Sunyata concluding with The Emptiness of Emptiness itself. Here existence simply stands, naked of any descriptive noun or verb. Its what Zen refers to as Suchness. 

Whatever the colour or tone applied to surrender, these are ultimately conceptualisations that loose their usefulness as the journey progresses. To suggest that there is both someone who can surrender, and something that can be surrendered too, begin to loose their traction. There is a lot of reference these days to the idea of Radical Acceptance, where you are encouraged to let go of any notion of control or desire for ourselves and of reality to be different from what it actually is. To let things be as they are. The danger in this is that people might mistake this 'letting things be' for passivity. Whilst accepting that this idea is also a human concept, I would like to suggest the term Radical Acceptance may have some value. It feels more in alignment with a state of just being Being. Of developing a Sympathy with Suchness, until that becomes you.

ARTICLE - Deconstructing Enlightenment A Little Bit

Many people who claim to have no particular religious affiliation still talk about Enlightenment as though it exists and can be a life goal. I talk about Enlightenment, as if I know what it is I'm talking about, as if I know where it is, as if I know where I'm going, what I need to do to get there, and what it will be like when the Buddha Bus arrives at its destination. But I do not know this from my own first hand experience. I've read about it in Buddhist texts and commentaries, and that is all. And the more anyone talks about it in this way, the more this spreads a misapprehension of it as an easily verifiable state of being. 

No one actually knows, and those who say they do are charlatans and liars. Enlightened beings apparently would always stay shtum about it. At least, so I have been told. I've only encountered one person who struck me as exuding an aura of being Enlightened. But how, as an un-Enlightened being how would I even know that? I just read the vibes, apparently. It might appear like I am propagating one un-substantiated assertion after another.

You can read the Buddha's discourses and the lives of sages and get the vaguest of whiffs of something that is at variance to life and reality as it is ordinarily lived. Unless you are Enlightened you cannot talk in any meaningful way about what that is or is not. Most likely Enlightened persons would refuse to talk about it, because you cannot put your state of being into words, because words are inherently inaccurate and misleading as a means of conveying what the state of Enlightenment is actually like. At least, so I have been told. Even the Buddha initially didn't know if he could, or should, attempt to teach what he knew. So the apocryphal story goes. 

Where does that leave anyone as a spiritual practitioner? What the hell do we think we are doing when we meditate?  Then you find this Zen story and all your worst fears become manifested in triplicate.

'One day Nangaku visited Baso's hut. Baso stood and greeted him. Nangaku asked, "What have you been doing recently?" Baso replied, "I've done nothing but sit in zazen." Then Nangaku asked, "Why do you continually sit in zazen?" Baso answered "I sit in zazen in order to become a Buddha." Nangaku picked up a tile he found by the side of Basos hut and started to polish it. Baso watched what he was doing and asked "Master, what are you doing?" Nangaku answered, "I'm polishing this tile." Baso asked "Why are you polishing the tile?" Nangaku answered, "To make a mirror." Baso said, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a tile?" And Nangaku replied, "How can you become a Buddha by doing zazen?'

So, are we deludedly polishing a tile, thinking it will become a mirror through our efforts?  It certainly feels like that. The more one examines meditation the more this apparent paradox resurfaces. Krishnamurti teased his followers by saying meditation was not a practice that was best served by you being conscious of a purpose at all. And when one looks at the way early Buddhist texts refer to the various levels of consciousness attainable - the four dhyanas of form ascending into the four formless dhyanas - none of these have a sign saying Here Be Enlightenment written next to them. 

Meditation appears to be a spiritual skill akin to upgrading the quality of your mind from fuzzy Beta Max to the radiant clarity of a Blue Ray video player. Adjusting your receptivity, responses and ability to calmly reflect on the nature of reality. Meditation cannot of itself make you Enlightened. The Zen story is just trying to manage the rampant delusion of your expectations.

And, before you ask, I accidentally stumbled into what I've always interpreted as First Dhyana on three occasions, a long time ago. My ability as a meditator lets say, has exhibited its limits, as I'm most likely resentfully over aware of.  Nevertheless - eight levels of dhyana - that could easily mislead anyone into thinking meditation practice was an elevation upward in the general direction of Enlightenment, wouldn't it? Say not so, well at least not so glibly. All these teachings are simply ways of modelling the territory, they are rarely literal descriptions of the territory itself. So we are told.

Once you encounter all these obstacles and inhibitors along the path of spiritual practice, it does cause you to question whether knowing of an idealised state of Enlightenment can serve any useful function at all. Tyler Staton, who admittedly is viewing things from a Christian perspective, does have some interesting things to say about the limitations, usefulness or otherwise of an 'impersonal force' to an individuals spiritual development.

'And the truth is I cannot love an impersonal force or be loved by one, I can't be loved by the universe and I certainly can't be loved by my own meditation practice. All I can do there is declutter my mind and slow down my internal world. Those are all good things, those are healthy habits, just like you should eat leafy greens and try to get some exercise and they will improve your life and help you become a healthier person and probably feel better. But they will not give you a life that is lived to the full, to fill your internal world with peace and will not offer you joy'

Well, I imagine a more experienced skilled meditator might want to question the assertions in that last sentence. I could only do so theoretically. Tyler does later assert you can only have a productive relationship with either Jesus, God or the Holy Spirit because they are all personified in a personal relatable way. Which no doubt makes logical sense if you approach things from his perspective, or any faith which embodies its Godhead to a degree. For me it does provoke a deeply furrowed brow, that says, yeah, how do you have any sort of meaningful helpful relationship interacting with an impersonal force, such as Enlightenment? Can Enlightenment even be fairly described as an impersonal force? And if not why not? - Discuss

In reality do we have to self consciously confect an indifference or dispassion towards the transcendental aspect of Buddhist faith, to sort of alienate ourselves from the stated objective of the whole of Buddhism ? What sort of twisted metaphysics is this? What in the end are we left to have faith in? In a man who reputedly died two and a half millenia ago, in ourselves, in our potential, in the spiritual process itself, in some sort of contemporary guru, in Beyonce? 

That Buddhism did eventually succumb to introducing imagery of Enlightened archetypes, giving Buddhas and Bodhisatvas identifiable form and characteristics, was this in response to a difficulty they'd encountered in maintaining faith in what was in essence impersonal, and counterproductive to actively desire. Once the Buddha was no longer around as the founding exemplar, Buddhism resorted to symbolic structures or imagery to provide devotional focus. Did Buddhism simply find itself in such a metaphysical dead end, that the rise of the Mahayana and Vajrayana's innovations was an attempt at fixing? And so they provided something to worship the ideal through, to offer our ineffective practice and ourselves up too.

When the thing you are ostensibly aiming yourself towards is Enlightenment, this experience is as remote as it can get from ordinary human life. You are orientating yourself towards an empty imaginative space. We take it on faith that Enlightenment can exist at all. When we allow ourselves to imagine how we might get to be Enlightened, it tends to fall into either acquisitive progressive steps towards something that seems external to us, or resides like an incubus within our being just waiting for us to stumble upon it and release it. Both require a moment of Awakening. Whether Enlightenment exists, or where Enlightenment exists, until we reach that Awakening moment is a reasonable question to raise.  The answer will no doubt turn out to be - unverifiable.

If the spiritual life is only ever about the Sisyphean task of continuing to push the heavy boulder of your practice up a steep hill with no visible peak within sight, then its no wonder there is little room for a joyful engagement with daily life. When I doubt, I doubt the effectiveness of my practice first, and the truth or otherwise of whether Enlightenment exists or not remains curiously untouched. Probably because it has never felt that real in the first place. You can't be angry, disappointed or despairing towards a complete void - can you? Or has my feeling for Enlightenment just been slowly corroding?

Enlightenment is nothing that is tangibly available to you right now to experience. I frequently find myself trying to cope with remaining acutely aware of the immense gap between my personal worldly experience and the impersonal nature of an unimaginable transcendental state. And I do wonder whether that is a healthy position to hold yourself in for too long, without any perception that that gap might in someway be closing. On a really bad day, Enlightenment can sometimes feel like it is the ultimate delusion of all delusions. Something even Dogen referred to as 'A Dream Within A Dream'

MY OWN WALKING - 2nd April Journal 2025

The shoulder pain has and hasn't been improving. The resistance band exercises have certainly encouraged an increased flexibility and movement. But I can't do them for more than a fortnight before the shoulder joint itself becomes inflamed and my ability to sleep at night shortens. Dramatically reducing my ability to find a sleeping position that remains comfortable for more than a short while.

This has, over time, begun to affect my mood and mental state. I have found I'm more prone to despondency, reluctant in the maintenance of my diet, and the limitations of controlling what I eat. I also easily lose a sense for what I want to do during the day, I become empty of motivation. The multiple ways my lifestyle has changed since the HA! start to feel like an oppressive weight that I want to throw off, that I'm just existing, so what's the point? I've discovered an aspect of nihilism in my character raising its poisonous head.

I've never been one to allow myself to succumb to 'poor me' syndromes for long. Its one of the beneficial legacies my parental upbringing bequeathed me. But it has surprised me at how quickly and how deeply I can dive right back into it. There is an element of pride involved. I've always prided myself on being able to sometimes literally work my way out of difficulties. Often using 'doing' as a form of effective therapy. To have that option to whatever degree removed, has revealed how much of a one trick pony that was. Without it I can feel bereft of resources. I'm not lacking in resourcefulness, but it feels that I am. Its taking a while to discover how best to respond to the physical limitation of not being able to fully utilise my right arm at the moment. I say, at the moment, because its far from clear whether this is a bodily experience temporary in nature or not. 

After the pride, comes loss of control, a habitual ability to bring purposeful direction to my life. I had a number of projects lined up that required a degree of physical exertion from me. All are now put on hold. As these would now aggravate the hell out of the shoulder were I even to whisper the idea of trying to do them. Hubby would get cross with me too. There are moments when pushing the envelope is a useful thing to do,to push back against a limitation, and then there are those when its just brutal foolhardiness. So there is an elementary question here, I'm looking to locate the answer for. If not this, then what else? It feels as though I'm being asked to dig a little deeper than my habitual responses. To find a clearer, less cluttered and less dependent way of being in the world. 

The quality of an experience appears of more importance now. We are blessed by having Sheringham Park five minutes walk away from the house. And beyond the carefully landscaped and manicured vistas of Humphrey Repton's designs, off the tarmac circular paths, is a much larger rougher wooded area. Its a dog walkers dream. But its also a contemplative space. One day recently I took a long leisurely walk, and attempted to do what I imagined 'forest bathing' might be like if were I Japanese. Its simply walking and being in the spaces of nature, as part and parcel of that nature.Trying to minimise the gap between me and my conceptualised feeling for nature and its benefits, with a more direct experientially unprocessed relationship with it.

In my last My Own Walking post I talked about my need for an experiential spirituality, a deeper more intimate relationship with reality, This can have its beginnings in a closer experience of nature, its our most easily accessed source of intimacy. To sit and commune, and attempt to do so without executing a cost benefit analysis on it. So I sat down on a conveniently placed National Trust bench and contemplated the woodland that lay before me. Just taking it in without much internal comment. It was a simple straightforward experience, relaxed and quietly fulfilling. Like plugging in and recharging a battery. You don't have to do anything but turn up.

Sometimes our sense for needing direction, purpose and a goal in life, are done to the detriment of the quality of the experience. A deeper connection with who we are, where we are, is left out of the equation. We find ourselves madly peddling on an anxious angst driven cycle of activity for activities sake. For fear of a void opening up were we to stop. As though stripped naked, the lack of meaning in our lives would be literally laid bare for all to see. If Buddhism instructs us in anything, its not to fear the loss of control, not to angrily resist ones physical decline, to not be too mournfully over preoccupied with our own special suffering, nor to run away from the fundamental emptiness of the human condition. When we find friction emerging between our ambitions and external reality, the real problem is never with external reality. We've sensed there was a hole in our lives and immediately want to have it filled. Not allowing ourselves to perceive whether this abyss might actually be a portal, a entry into another way of being.

I have to be willing to allow myself as a man to be seen as physically weak. Never an easy thing for a man to do. To see that weakness as a point of spiritual growth. I observed myself in the woodland seeking out the best and most beneficial special place in which to sit. Even in the pursuit of closer intimacy with an experience I was seeking to have an ability to exert individual control over it. I couldn't see a bench, sit on it and just be. I wanted the best bench, in the best place, in order to maximise having the best experience possible. I was exerting my strength of will, over my future experience, to no real spiritual benefit.

The Buddha always had a companion who would deal with all the day to day practicalities.That companions job was solely one of service, to be selfless in their devotion to meeting the Buddha's needs, and seeing that as their primary spiritual practice. The job was undoubtedly not an easy one, and in the early years of his ministry, it seems the Buddha went through a quick succession of such companions. One of these was a young disciple called Meghiya. Meghiya was like all young men are, a bit self preoccupied with meeting his needs and desires. And one day he got it into his head that he just needed to go away and meditate in this Mango Grove he'd seen, he was sure he'd be Enlightened there. He asked the Buddhai if he would relieve him of his duties. To which he calmly replied 'Do whatever you think its the time for' which is a bit of a pointed answer. As was often the way, he had to ask the Buddha three times before being released, each time getting the same pokey none answer. Meghiya loses his cool, and publicly rebukes the Buddha for his selfishness, stomping off to meditate in the Mango Grove anyway. Unsurprisingly, the moment he sits down to meditate he is besieged by a flood of demons and negative thoughts. He returns shamefaced to the Buddha who presents him with a teaching on what happens to a practitioner when ' their hearts release is immature'.

The relevance of this story to me, is that spiritual practice never requires a particular set of special circumstances in order to be effective. And I would extend that further, life itself does not require a particular set of circumstances in order to be effective, successful or possess meaning. Even though we expend a lot of time, energy and thought trying to manipulate and second guess the future into fulfilling our desires and dreams. Instead of that, you use whatever comes into the orbit of your experience, whatever you just casually wander into, or find yourself encountering. If we always runoff to the modern equivalent of the Mango Grove, seeking some spectacular insight or personal benefit from it, this can provoke demons to arise, that personify your psyche and the naivety of your approach to life and spiritual practice. Our immaturity literally obscures our way.

Right now,for me, its not fighting but facing the message my shoulder pain is daily delivering to me. Though managing the practicalities better and doing whatever might help it to heal is important, it is also about my being more receptive and willing to see the personal teaching in it. Inevitably this settles on how best to respond aptly and creatively to these experiences of my own advancing age, the trials of sickness and befriending the idea of my future death. Yeah, that old chestnut, I was hoping for something a bit more fresh, sexy and svelte.

MY OWN WALKING - April Journal 2025

I recently re-read a journal post -  Checking In With My Faith & Doubts. 

A couple of sentences stuck out to me like a sore thumb.

When you experience a sore thumb you have to ask why is this so bloody sore?

I'm still looking for experiential affirmation through my meditation.
I don't appear to be able to get beyond this being a bugbear. 

The more I read this, the more I saw this as an expression of yearning, for something that I really want, that I'm simultaneously trying to convince myself that I shouldn't want. A deeper experience of the transcendental. Because wanting anything in Buddhism is a craving, it's seen as problematic, spiritually speaking. And this struck me as particularly barmy. Yet even as I write this,I see myself forming a cage around this notion and branding it an 'unhelpful view'. And before I know it surprise, surprise, I'm manifesting some negativity towards being a Buddhist. I'm simply tired of this prejudicial labeling of experience, but that isn't really what this is all about. I can sense an evasiveness here, in fact I must confess this is my umpteenth attempt to write about this. What I was writing, or the way I was choosing to write about it, really wasn't quite nailing it. And this was getting to be quite frustrating as a process of expression.

Then I recently watched, quite a few times actually, an interview with Tyler Staton, a Pastor from Portland, Oregon, USA,on Seen & Unseen's You Tube channel. I've found him a quietly impressive person, who embodied an appealing clear headed spirit. What he talked about was the need for an experiential spirituality, and this has set off bells of recognition within me. There was one paragraph in particular I found personally relevant. It appeared to sum up where I have been and where I am 

'for me it was a journey of quiet crisis, basically of getting a certain distance into the spiritual life and looking at the deepest wounds in my own life and saying you know there's patterns in my character and way of being that it seems like aren't missing one more bible study.....its not information, intellectual information I'm missing, its something deeper than that, that needs to be unwound within me, and also....I just began to see what I was experiencing wasn't matching what I was reading on the pages of scripture in ways that were increasingly troubling to me.....what am I missing, that was happening in the lives of the early church, because I want that...I want to experience their life. How do I begin to walk into that ? And that hunger set me on a journey.'

Though spoken from his devout Christian perspective, I found this also mirrored to an extent my own experience within Buddhism. I've also come to realise that whatever is absent from my spiritual life will not be found within the pages of a book, however intently I may study them. Something much more experiential is required here. But what the hell would that be?  Since having asked that question I have been scrabbling around trying to find a way to best explore and write about this. How would you translate this 'experiential spirituality' into a Buddhist perspective? Intuition suggested that this may relate to different viewpoints between a 'developmental' and an 'imminent' view on the purpose of spiritual practice and its relationship with Enlightenment. Though some would say this is inherently a false unhelpful dichotomy.

The 'developmental' could probably be described as representing the traditional Buddhist approach. You learn the meditation practices, the devotional rituals, refine your ethics and study the Buddhist Sutras. These develop your awareness, spiritual qualities and states of consciousness that will move you inexorably over time, and often lifetimes, towards the state of Enlightenment. Sometimes couched as The Spiral Path as if this should be seen as a linear form of progression upward, like climbing a spiral staircase.  

The 'imminent' appears in its most developed form in later Buddhism. It still utilises all the practices and study of the tradition,but doesn't envisage the progress to Enlightenment as linear or upwardly progressing. It believes Enlightenment is already here, present in us right now, but we are not yet fully awake to it. Terms like Buddha Nature and Buddhahood begin to be used to describe this imminent innate view of Enlightenment, and practice as an unfolding of our awareness of this in the here and now.

Into this I want to throw a third viewpoint that of Dogen the 13th century Japanese co-founder of Soto Zen. His view takes 'imminence' and gives it a profound philosophical shift in emphasis. He had a doubt about the whole 'imminent' approach, and it is one that those critical towards it use to this day. If Enlightenment is innate, what is the purpose of doing any spiritual practice ? Why practice anything at all, meditation, ethics or study, if you already have the awakened state within you?  Doesn't this fly in the face of the Buddha's traditional teaching?

Dogen came up with a solution, one that is very particular to him. That practice and realisation, are not two separate things, they are not even two things intrinsically entwined, but manifestations of the same thing - Enlightenment. For Dogen practice is an outward expression of the innate Enlightened state. He creates a compound term 'practice-realisation' to describe how every moment of practice is an 'actualisation of the fundamental point'. He radically develops this concept further so that everything is in a state of 'practice-realisation' and to sit in contemplation helps unfold this awareness,  allows you to experience ordinary life on a much deeper level. Now, this is what I believe 'experiential spirituality' means from a Buddhist perspective.

Dogen went to China to study Chan, which is the origin of Japanese Zen. Now Chan was itself a cultural cross fertilization between Buddhism and Taoism. A concept like Buddha Nature is very similar in its relationship between practice and realisation, to the idea of the Tao, as this innate and indistinguishable force present in life and nature. Dogen brings the latest development of Chan back to Japan, and through this further integrates it with a sympathetic relationship toward the forces of nature present in Japanese Shinto. Now a convincing case could be made that these insertions took Zen too far away from the traditions of early Buddhism, to remain in essence Buddhist. It certainly is less grounded in the core Sutra teachings. I would say it is still Buddhist in spirit, but not the orthodox letter of it. and I'm perfectly fine with that. I'm not too concerned about whether Dogen is orthodox or not. Does it feel a true or helpful perspective? Yeah, it does to me.

Then I read this appreciation of Dogen's approach by Norman Fischer that says it all really about what 'experiential spirituality' can be in all its intimacy.

'Dogen insisted that we all have Buddha Nature - that is we are already enlightened, we just don't know it. And because we don't know it, we live in a way that is destructive and that cuts us off from true intimacy....Dogen believed that we are not appreciating what life actually is..and then living it fully in every moment...step inside your life and let go all conceptual frameworks that alienate you from yourself, and from each other. Just enter life completely in this very moment. feel the awesome presence of what you can hear, see, smell, taste and touch right now. Become aware of emotions, thoughts, memories and dreams that flood awareness without getting hooked on them. Feel how, right now, human experience is truly awesome, and don't look for something to complete what is already complete. But most often, we don't believe that everything we need is right here, right now. We are always looking for something more than what is here - something that is missing.'

Yeah, tell me about it Norm.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

If we doubt the walking of the mountains,
we also do not yet know our own walking.
It is not that we do not have our own walking,
but we do not yet know
and have not yet clarified our own walking.

When we know our own walking,
then we will surely also know
the walking of the Blue Mountains.
If there were an end to the walking,
the Buddha-Dharma could not reach the present day.

Taken from Dogen's Mountains & Rivers Sutra

Translated by Cross & Nishijima

MY OWN WALKING - March 2nd Journal 2025

There is no other spiritual teaching more liable to be misunderstood, or misused than that of karma. On a basic level it can be described as-  everything has its consequence. These consequences can be either a good or wholesome outcome or a bad or unwholesome outcome, for safe measure Buddhism also creates a designation that is not wholly either of the first two, a neutral outcome. 

Karma within a Buddhist context, it's an extension of the Buddha's primary teaching of Prattitya Samutpada, often rather clumsily translated as Conditioned Co Production. That all things arise and cease in the world due to the conditions surrounding them, one of which is our interactions with it. Not everything in those interactions is within our ability to control, only our personal individual behaviour, our perceptions and reactions. Hence why karma becomes important in what arises and ceases. 

Any notion of karma has to be held very very lightly. It's a rough provisional principle for considering the consequences of your actions. What is likely to happen if I think, say or do this? It should never be confused with fate. Sometimes the consequential feed back we get can be instant. But we all must know of instances where an individual behaves terribly and appears to not suffer any negative consequence for the unethical nature of their actions. They appear to be getting away with it. Sometimes we appear to be getting away with it. This feasibly could undermine our confidence in the whole efficacy of karma. 

In response to these sort of instances, as is frequently Buddhism's tendency, there has been much effort put into defining and cataloging a litany of levels on which karma operates. For example - the severity of the karmic consequence can depend on our proximity to the unethical action - Negative karma can be delayed, or assuaged by subsequent positive karmic actions - Karma can be passed on to future rebirths. In the process of coming up with all these specific explanations, they do nothing but throw up more questions and inconsistencies to be ironed out. They all fly in the face of the Buddha's own words that it was futile to attempt to fully understand or explain the workings of karma.  

Karma's only real usefulness is as an ethical metaphor, through which to view our present thoughts, speech and actions. As an idea it has a limited range within which it is practically useful. Once you step beyond that, into what happens with karma after death, you move into extremely tricky and potentially misleading territory of theoretical propositions.

And yet in conversations, the Buddha would be asked, or he would state, what the spiritual attainment of a person would be, what they would become by the end of their life. These were karmic discussions about the consequences of a lifetime of spiritual practice. He used a hierarchy of terms that reflected when someone's Enlightenment would be, in this life, the next life, or states in between. With evocative names like Stream Entrant, Once Returner, Non Returner and Arahant. Were these reflections of the truth of the matter, or merely meant as possibly useful metaphors to a mendicant monk? What is probably more important is are they useful to us now?

In my early years of involvement in Buddhism, it was common to find people talking about the general direction of their spiritual practice in terms of whether they were attempting to gain Enlightenment in this life or not. On the surface it appeared to be dependent upon how ambitious were you? Were you mentally delaying Enlightenment, banking on a future life in which to get your act together in.?  What if this life was your one and only opportunity to gain Enlightenment and you blew it? Certainly if you were not sure there was a future life at all after this one, then the necessity to go for it in this life would only be further heightened. Throw ideas of a personal karmic inheritance into this mix, and you can probably sense what an effect these sort of ideas could have upon any ideologically driven young person. It sort of lets in ones ego and desire for status to gain a perverting foothold in your spiritual practice.

In my own case I think there was one period in my spiritual development, when this whole idea of Enlightenment or bust, would just throw me into a complete existential panic. On the cusp of middle age, was I already too late to get myself on the fast track to Enlightenment? A consequence of this was I became very driven, hard line and applied a rigid self discipline, I felt I needed to put a lot of work in simply to catch up.  And if this spiritual work appeared to fail, then maybe it was me, that I had some old karma to burn off. Or was it the karma of poor self esteem and low confidence that provided leverage, to pull the rug from underneath your stringent efforts? The opportunities for self flagellation I found are numerous in the spiritual life.

If creating the right conditions was important, then surely a monastic environment would be the most likely to produce Enlightenment? Well, not necessarily, its never that simple. Though that didn't stop me holding such a view for a few years, and I was all for forming a more monastic style community with a Rule and everything else. When you appeared to be doing all the right things, but still not getting very far with meditation etc, then its not you its the conditions, becomes a convenient scapegoat. Either that or you still aren't practicing hard enough, it needs yet more intensity. However, if  Enlightenment was solely the result of the amount of energy and time you gave it, then we'd all be celestial Buddhas in a matter of a few arduous months.

How you apply yourself, and Why are in the end more important than What you apply yourself too. The Buddha's reputed last words were 'With mindfulness strive on' , not a brief reminder about karma, or the beauty of the Enlightened state, or a relevant teaching about the true nature of reality. Just continue to be mindful. There is an example in the life of the Buddha, where a lay disciple got hold of entirely the wrong end of the stick about a teaching, but because they had practiced that incorrect teaching so faithfully and with such devotion, they had made immense spiritual progress. This indicates that cultivating our faith and devotion are probably more significant than their 'near enemies' - applying willpower and discipline ( near enemies, in that the former are very easily replaced by the latter ). Though willpower and discipline can have a role to play, without increasing the faith and devotion copper bottoming them, they become  leaky vessels incapable of developing or holding the Awakening Mind.

These days I've mostly ceased thinking in terms of Enlightenment as a goal. If we have just this life, then I've got precious little time left to pull that one off. My aim, if I have one, is a very human and earthly one, to enjoy whatever that period of time turns out to be. If I have another lifetime after this one, then what I do now will have its importance. In the end, no matter how I decide to couch it its what I do now that will matter. Whether I'll ever be a Stream Entrant, Once or Non Returner or an Arahant, seems entirely superfluous to how I choose to live my life in this present precious moment. All without creating expectations of what may result through my doing so.

TEACHING OF THE WEEK

"Thus, the views of all beings are not the same. Question this matter now. Are there many ways to see one thing, or is it a mistake to see many forms as one thing? Pursue this beyond the limit of pursuit. Accordingly, endeavours in practice-realisation of the way are not limited to one or two kinds. The thoroughly actualised realm has one thousand kinds and ten thousand ways."*

From The Mountains & Rivers Sutra by Dogen
in a translation by the San Francisco Zen Centre.

MY OWN WALKING - March Journal 2025

Consequences, everything eventually reveals its consequences. Sometimes it pursues you like a thief, a rogue shadow following you through the sickly yellow glow of evening streetlights. Its never easy to predict what or when the outcome might catch up with you. Our apparent cluelessness does not prevent us from reaping them nonetheless. 

One of the consequences for me of the HA! has been recognising that this was also a consequence, the outcome of - I am what I eat. The type of food I'd been eating most of my life, my broader health choices, a pretty sedentary lifestyle with insufficient physical exercise, the type of culture I live in.  The genetic and parental nurtured inheritance aside, it has largely been achieved through my choices as an individual over 67 years that has led me to this consequential juncture.

I've grown up in a relatively wealthy and individualistic society, that has no guard rails of a surrounding natural circumstance to constrain us, even to eat proportionately. There may be growing food poverty in our society, but this is not a consequence of crops failing, and there has not been a state of famine in the UK this century. But there is consumer outrage when there's a hummus shortage. Conspicuous consumption is the empty headed mantra, the modus operandi of our neo liberal capitalist society. Is it unsurprising then, that our world is full of inconsequential short lived fads, that businesses make their fortunes out of. Including peculiar forms of diet and Tick Tok, and then Tik Tok diets. 

We rarely have to respond to real hunger, we hardly ever feel hunger in any substantial way. We eat before hunger even rears its head. As though experiencing hunger was something to be feared. When I was younger and my body more sylph like than now, it was adaptable and recovered quickly from any excess I could throw at it, Filled with a youthful bravado that dismissed 'nanny state' like injunctions to moderate or monitor what I ate and drank. Nothing appeared to have much consequence then. Its a fundamental of secular individualism, to tolerate no restrictions nor injunctions to reduce or exclude even chronically unhealthy foods, and to use this resistance to bolster one's individual right to be a complete knob-head if you choose to.

As men grow older and enter their middle age,our bodies ability to process food and not put on weight disappears. So a 'dad bod' or a beer paunch can quite comfortably settle in. We continue stuffing our face with the same junk food we've eaten since childhood, whilst viewing all sorts of diverting, but inconsequential stuff on a laptop or TV,  Our internal two fingers up reactionary response to reining in or adjusting our consumption, becomes reminiscent of a petulant childish tantrum. Demonstrating how Western notions of individuality effectively keeps us in an infantilised, immature and naive state. One very reluctant to consider what consequence to our actions there might be. These rarely arrive right away, so we can clearly ignore, deny or delay any corrective response to later, much much later on.. 

Until, that is, we get some bodily shock to awaken that concern from its drugged slumber. A touch with death, or feel our vulnerability through some injury, and suddenly staying alive moves higher up the list of priorities. By then it is often too late, some sort of consequence for the past abuse of one's body has become almost set in on a bone and muscle level. Only able to ameliorate this with the help of medicinal interventions or a draconian overturning in our diet or lifestyle. Paradoxically, we can be at too old an age to countenance change, too set in our ways to tolerate innovations in our elderly lifestyle. We reach an age where we'd prefer a comfortable trouble free retirement. Extending ones lifespan by denying ourselves familiar creature comforts, well, that perhaps cuts no mustard. Why bother now? Habits, however bad for us, become what makes us happy. A healthier diet does not readily fit into the slipstream of a cosy retirement plan.

Yet it has always been - why bother now? For in truth there never appears to be a right time for considering some things. Usually its whatever reminds you of your mortality, like writing a will for instance (Note to self, just get on and do it)  We often talk of ''comfort food', as though this were an entirely separate form of eating, and maybe it is. Because what makes me desire to eat 'comfort food' is not hunger at all, but concerns I don't like to consciously think about or coming into close contact with, difficult troubling esteem issues, spiritual issues, mortality issues. When these surface I have in the past reached for the crisp bag for comfort, the Belgian bun for sweetening the troubled heart, the sugary fizzy drink to bring a brief respite. I know I can utilise food in this way, as a form of analgesic  And in extremis this is fine. If, however, it's everyday I reach for the 'comfort food', in a never ending sequence of danish pastries, then there might be troubling territory I'm avoiding being fully conscious of. Metaphorically drowning it in highly processed and refined fat and sugar.

 

MY OWN WALKING - Checking In With My Faith & Doubts

This year, in June, it will be seven years since I resigned as an Order Member in the Triratna Buddhist Order. It occurred to me that maybe it would be good to do a bit of check in with myself. Where I was with that decision now, and more generally to review what I've done since then, and where my understanding and practice has now reached. I thought writing about various aspects of my spiritual life might be useful to clarify things for myself, because it usually does. And that maybe the readership of my posts, may also find some of this of interest.

One day, a few years back, Hubby and I were walking from The Slipper Chapel the mile and a bit pilgrim route back into Walsingham itself. Along the way we passed a car hub cap abandoned on the verge. Though this caught my eye, I did not respond instantly to my interest. So it wasn't till we'd walked a hundred yards on that I turned and went back for it. I'd had an idea, I wanted to create a reliquary out of it.

Since we first visited Walsingham I've been drawn towards the place, and the figure of Our Lady of Walsingham. A Christianised substitute perhaps for a local pagan fertility or water goddess. Who swirled in an atmosphere of sacredness much older than the early medieval of her foundation. There was once a small Roman temple here, and they tended to build on existing pagan sacred water sites. Being drawn to this figure is not solely about my love for the baroque vulgarity of Anglo Catholic imagery, though that has a role. It's proffering something more important than just a sense for aesthetics.

The What and the Why of it, has not become clear to me. I've been reluctant to over analyse the obsession with it, but have let that be whatever it is. I have accumulated a modest collection of Anglo-Catholic shrine devotional objects, censors, rosaries, church incense, day glo figures, olive wood tea light holders, and painted crosses from Nicaragua. I have rolled with this acquisitiveness just to see how far I'm actually willing to go.

Whether these incidents were pointing towards an interest in Christianity was one question. A theme of the last year was to see if there was an answer. I've read The New Testament cover to cover, plus a biblical commentary and a history of Christianity - I've watched innumerable Christian You Tube videos - I recollected my own childhood upbringing as a Methodist, and how that has influenced my life choices. Tom Holland's book Dominion demonstrated just how transformative an influence Christianity has had upon the development of Western Civilisation, and hence upon me too. This has not been by any means exhaustive, but I've covered some ground.

None of this has convinced me of any personal need to convert to Christianity There are a number of significant doubts, nay impediments. The Christian churches ditheringly wrong headed attitude towards homosexuality - its tendency towards fundamentalist authoritarianism as currently being enacted in the US. To name but two. On the level of beliefs, I cannot for the life of me get my head around the so called 'penal solution ' of Jesus's crucifixion, this seems to make no sense whatsoever to me. Its worth noting that its a female figure I'm responding to, I have no great feeling for Jesus at all.

But it has served a purpose, to clarify if there was a God, whether there was some shape or form of deity I could identify with. The traditional Buddhist viewpoint on Gods and whether they exist or not, is a studied indifference. Gods exist on The Buddhist Wheel of Life, but they are shown as essentially vain and self deluded about their higher divine status. Never what they might claim to be at all. Issues like Gods, God or No Gods, the purpose of the Universe, the intricate inner workings of karma, are all considered not worthy of devoting masses of time to. No help whatsoever in the pursuit of states of higher consciousness and ultimately Enlightenment. So get back on your zafu and practice monk!

What is unusual about the Judeo-Christian God is their relative visual anonymity. A deity whose divine interventions and punishments, are often petulant, fickle and unpredictable. God moving in a mysterious way its wonders to perform. I cannot really get onboard the bus with that type of deity. Neither can I support Phillp Goff's idea of a God of limited capability, that is meant to explain why God doesn't always intervene. A God who intervenes ineffectually, unpredictably and erratically, why would you want to honour any deity that behaves like that?  It's as though all the Greek panoply of Gods were condensed into one single divinity, erroneously claiming omniscience. 

However, all this depends on what sort of picture I draw of what God is, ultimately. I've written previously about the point in religious theologies where whatever is ultimate, whether that is God, Enlightenment or The Tao, disappears into the unknown, into whatever the unconditioned is, into no- thingness, into what John Vervaeke refers to as No-theism. I'm currently toying with the view that all religions present an alluring but essentially false picture of the nature of whatever that ultimate thing is like. Because what we are talking about here is something beyond the human ability to conceive.

It's as though each religion offers just a few random pieces from a huge but quite incomplete jigsaw. We use these pieces and what they appear to suggest, to try to imagine what the whole picture might be like. And the way we choose to fill in the gaps, just further falsifys and muddies our perceptions. What makes it worse still, is when we reify these projections into incontrovertible facts. Whatever I maybe currently conjuring from my humble imagination, I acknowledge, is also misrepresenting things terribly.

It is in the nature of what is unknown to be mysterious and ungraspable to the mundane mind.  God is mysterious and ungraspable, Enlightenment is mysterious and ungraspable, The Tao that can be named, is not the eternal Tao - its mysterious and ungraspable. If I were to believe in God at all, it is as something entirely mysterious and ungraspable to the conscious mind or spiritual imagination. 

However incomplete religion maybe in relation to its ultimate mysteriousness, its earthly function provides a window for us onto the ineffable. Something that can act as a go between, an intermediary, form an intercession between our conscious conditioned imagination and something which exists entirely outside that.  We reach out for it, as it reaches out for us. Our fingers point towards the moon, as the moon shines back silvering our world.

Outside of these sort of abstract faith questions about ultimate reality, there are the more prosaic day to day considerations of practices and devotion. It's become clear to me, I do hold an underlying view of myself as a Buddhist practitioner, as a rather ineffectual one. My ethical practice is reasonably OK I believe. Though always room for improvement obviously. I believe this view of paucity largely arises out of the experience of meditation practice. 

After the ardent enthusiasm of 'Beginners Mind' faded into routine practice, I've struggled with maintaining interest in meditating. I resorted to will power for a few years, upped the quantity of meditation, replacing ardent enthusiasm with an inflexible self discipline. Unsurprisingly this strategy failed, too goal orientated and not receptive enough. The quality of my meditation became mostly struggling to stay awake within it. I backed off and started to do Just Sitting practice, as an antidote to the goal orientation. I continued struggling to stay awake. It could be that I simply become bored by it, until I was no longer seeing its point.

These days I still meditate. Which must say something about residual confidence. I do Just Sitting, interspersed with Metta Bhavana and Taoist Micro Cosmic Orbit, a body awareness practice that imaginatively opens all the acupuncture points and smiling into them. These only rarely move beyond a pleasant feeling of relaxation. As a consequence the regularity of my meditation practice can take an erratic turn. Sometimes I meditate every day, sometimes I go for weeks, nay months, without getting on the cushion. It has been this way for more than a decade. 

In that early rush of enthusiasm I did have strong experiences in meditation that still convince me an elevated state of consciousness is attainable. That was over thirty years ago, which is a long time ago to still be dining out on. I intuit I'm still looking for experiential affirmation through my meditation. I don't appear to be able to get beyond this being a bugbear. There is as a consequence a lack of Samata ( calm, equanimity & peace ) surrounding meditation, which even I can see does not help. Its almost as though I need to wipe the meditation slate clean and start again from scratch. That, or simply stop worrying about the feeble state of my meditation altogether.

The thing I remain connected with, but frankly rarely do enough of, is ritual and devotional practices. I've made a wonderful shrine that I love, yet I hardly sit myself in front of it. Am I running scared of something? Devotional practice has been where my faith and aspirations strongly emerge from. Rituals can take time to set up and then do. But they do change the religious vibes very quickly, simply by putting energy into a devotional focus. 

Being left to my own devices, outside of Buddhist Sangha, or any supportive context, can stimulate ongoing doubts about the direction I am facing in relation to my faith. Hence I've spent a good part of this blog exploring abstract theoretical issues about ultimate things. Evidently there's some fogginess around what I envisage my spiritual life is currently orientated towards. In this position any lack of clarity feeds the lack of purposeful direction to meditation practices. Though having said all that, taking up Tai Chi/Qigong has brought a physical dimension to mindfulness once I have the form securely under my belt.

A better strategy for the present maybe to exercise the faith muscles and just be a devotion bunny - probably for quite some time.  And in this period after and beyond the heart attack, the time for shilly shallying ought by rights to be passed. As Dogen once urged his disciples, that every moment brings a fresh opportunity  - 'to throw your whole being into the house of the Buddha.'

MY OWN WALKING - Checking In Then Out Of Religious Institutions

This year, in June, it will be seven years since I resigned as an Order Member in the Triratna Buddhist Order. It occurred to me that maybe it would be good to do a bit of check in with myself. Where I was with that decision now, and more generally to review what I've done since then, and where my understanding and practice has now reached. I thought writing about various aspects of my spiritual life might be useful to clarify things for myself, because it usually does. And that maybe the readership of my posts, may also find some of this of interest.

I'm going to start by looking at my responses to religious institutions. When I wrote my resignation letter from the Triratna Buddhist Order, it was not without some regrets. Removing myself from the Sangha ( the community of fellow practitioners ) in particular I found difficult. And from time to time, I am aware still of the void this has left. I am following my own path at the moment, and this appears to necessitate walking it alone. Even though I recognise how much easier it would feel if there were fellow travellers alongside me. Any institution requires you to make conscious compromises in order to belong to it. And I certainly benefited from belonging to a supportive religious context for most of my twenty five years of involvement with Triratna. 

I was a Triratna Order Member for eighteen years, and over that time I moved towards the centre of it, and then drifted out towards its fringes, in a cyclical orbit numerous times. Each time something in the form or manner of my involvement or practice was lost or consciously dropped by me. I was finding belonging to its institutions discomforting. It felt increasingly like I was this 'ill fitting wheel' not willing to constrain myself fully to the commitments I'd made at ordination. Rather than stay a passive bystander within Triratna, I decided I needed to move completely outside of it,simply in order to gain a more open receptive viewpoint. To connect with what I believed when free of external Buddhist contexts. I was once happy to belong to the movement, but had to recognise I no longer was.

At this time Triratna was coming out of a period of deep self examination, recrimination and cathartic adjustments as a result of a scandal regarding the sexual behaviour of its founder. This abuse had all happened more than fifteen years before my involvement. Nevertheless it was a stain upon the reputation of the movement that it never can fully expunge. The period was well over by the time I got involved. I never experienced any of the coercive control alleged to have gone on then. However, the scandal affected everyone's confidence and trust, and I was not unaffected by that. Many Order Members resigned because of it. In fact I think it might have been easier for other folk to understand why I had left, if I'd said it was due to the scandal. But it really wasn't. 

In any religious group, its very easy to find oneself enthralled by a leaders charisma. Though in the case of Triratna's founder, Sangharakshita, you could not find someone less charismatic. But nonetheless people look up to the founder of a movement they had found beneficial, and expected him to be an exemplar in all things, to provide a example of what a person more spiritually developed than them might look or feel like. But this was always a projection. No one should have been at all surprised that Sangharakshita  might have major flaws and imperfections. No one would survive untainted by close public examination of their sex proclivities and relationships, not even a spiritual teacher.

I never wanted nor needed Sangharakshita to be perfect. He founded the movement, organised its teachings and practices, these introduced me to Buddhism which I've hugely benefited from. I continue to respect his legacy purely on that level. It is never easy to hold someone within an aura of respect, when there is this other side of them that appears to run completely counter to what you expected of them. We demand a level of perfection of such individuals that apparently cannot be sullied in any way. Its indeed hard to hold these sort of contradictions, whilst avoiding making excuses or to explain away their flaws, failings and follies, but still respect and honour them for the good that they have done and how this has changed you for the better. It often feels like a much clearer moral path to paint them in a black light and simply drop involvement with them and move on. But that is not always an entirely truthful or honest depiction, either of them or of you. It's so easy for it to become virtue signaling.

Let me be clear here. Out there in the human world there is no ideal perfect religious institution you just haven't found yet. You will be on a fruitless journey if you set off to find one, believe me I've tried.  Whether religious or secular, institutions are full of flawed individuals, who occasionally might be found immoral or corrupt. One has to acknowledge, as the writer Francis Spufford pithily put it - The Human Propensity To Fuck Things Up. The failings of individuals within a faith and its institutions, is not necessarily synonymous with, or a reflection on, the validity or fraudulent nature of God, The Buddha, Mohammed etc. It is most often human practitioners getting it wrong, and often trying to hide or obfuscate the trail that leads to their ineptitude or moral failings being revealed. The Buddha's teachings have survived and some people find them still relevant two and a half thousand years later. But there have been plenty of times when human errancy has had to be corrected, and movements of renewal launched. Religious institutions always have to be open to revive, change and transform themselves, if not they will very slowly die of rigor mortis.

Once I was outside of Triratna, I spent a good six months or so just absorbing the consequences of my leaving. Though eventually I did start attending a Zen Priory in Norwich. Whilst I liked many aspects of it, once I'd been there for a while I had a better sense of its practices and institutional structures. I could see that if I were to go deeper into it, I would find it more restrictive than Triratna. Zen has a much more rigidly top down sense of where spiritual authority comes from. Then came lock down. For a while I attended another zen group on zoom, but after about six months I could sense a similar institutional pressure moving towards me. I backed away.

At this point I drew two conclusions. One, I had been actually looking for another form of Sangha to join, but found that Zen groups had a much weaker sense of this as an active practice. Two, I was no longer up for joining a Zen or any other form of Buddhist order. I'd had it with all of that. I didn't want at my age to learn and take on a whole new range of specific practices, rituals and traditions.  Both of these conclusions were instructive about where I was, and am still at. I have joined no other Buddhist groups or otherwise since then. I'm not anti institutions, just not interested in being part of them right now. This may or may not change in the future. I do not predict or prohibit anything.

I am by nature a quietly slow and steady Buddhist practitioner. I have certainly benefited from being a part of institutions, and can often value their structures and the sense of belonging they bring. Though a wider perspective tells me, that I chaffe with that after a while. That I stayed an Order Member for eighteen years is nothing short of a miracle. This was partly encouraged by friends urging me to not give up, not to move on as was often my habit. All of which made the decision to leave so much more cathartic once it came. 

I remain outside of any particular Buddhist movement or institution. Whilst fundamentally I'm a Buddhist in my core beliefs, in the way I perceive and respond to my daily experience. Also the language I use to describe my experience is still largely Triratna's, with a smattering of Zen and Dogen. I have felt an increasing sense of being liberated to explore whatever the hell I am drawn to, though not rushing to make it all neat and coherent as though it has been thought through beforehand. It hasn't. I find I am more of a religious mish mash than even I suspected. There have been some small but significant shifts away from Buddhist viewpoints, but these will be for next time, when I'll be - Checking Out My Faith & Doubts. 

ARTICLE - Constantly Reimagining The Ineffable

In the aftermath of the Buddha's death, his followers were divided amongst themselves on how they should memorialise him. The Buddha believed his legacy was his teachings. If they were going to honour his life they could do nothing better than fully practice them.

The contentiousness was focused around the Buddha's relics. Who from the broad range of disciples would be allowed to have a relic and to construct a stupa to house them in? Because the demand was high, it was clear not everyone could have one. There followed a rather shameful tussle, literally a power struggle, within the strong factions that existed within Buddhism - monks and lay practitioners, the poor and the rich, the spiritually literal and the more metaphorically minded.

This proved to be just the beginning of two and a half thousand years of debate over, not just how you could inwardly imagine the Buddha, but outwardly represent the state of an Enlightened being. Making any image of the historical Buddha might completely misrepresent what he was, who had been born in Lumbini in the 5th or 6th century BC. As time progressed and there were no people living that could remember the Buddha, how were you to communicate what a Buddha, what an Enlightened person was like?

Relic containing commemorative stupas set the precedent. Stupas became a primary way to represent the Buddha. A spiritually inflected elemental symbolism being introduced into its architectural structure. Stupa's were the first real attempt, post the Buddha's death to grapple with the question - how do you represent not just the historical Buddha, but Buddhahood itself, of Enlightenment as a quality within the universe to which you could aspire? The first response was paradoxically the best one - to make it abstract. 

Venerating the historical Buddha was clearly not what The Buddha wanted, becoming the focus of a personality cult ran counter to his teachings. Hence during the first century after his death, there are no representational figurative images. The Buddha was to be suggested not by presence, but by absence - the empty throne - the Buddha's footprints - a riderless horse - the bodhi tree - the Dharmachakra wheel. You were visually being urged to sit where he sat, walk the way he walked, follow what he taught. Its as though the imagery was speaking to you, and saying -Look he's not here anymore, what are you going to do? Go away and practice wholeheartedly. 

And maybe this would have been how it would have stayed, had not Alexander the Great briefly conquered parts of the north western edges of the Indian sub continent. The influence of Greek Hellenistic art on representations of The Buddha, with its realistic emphasis on the spiritual imagination, cannot be underestimated. The classic Rupa form and styling, of The Buddha dressed in artfully pleated clothes and top knot, comes completely to define how an Enlightened being was to be represented. 

There would not be another comparable representational shift in Buddhism until the emergence of the Mahayana in the 1st century BC and later Vajrayana 5th-8th century CE. When folk stylings drawn from ethnic Hinduism and later exotic Tibetan and Chinese influences, vastly expanded Buddhist imagery, its archetypal symbolism, Cosmic Buddhas, Mandalas, various peaceful and wrathful forms of Bodhisattvas, alchemical spirits, demons and nymphs. You name it, it was all given visual form. 

The Buddha's archetypal form had always been multi-faceted, simultaneously historical, symbolic and cosmic. All Buddhist imagery, however we couch them, remain inaccurate facades behind which the ineffable state of Enlightenment resides. Imagery acting as a means through which to connect with the state of Enlightenment, as simple conduits, orientating us towards where the ineffable may be. Beyond any concept, mental construct or visualisation we may hold of it.

Buddhism is not unusual in having this initial tendency toward aniconism, to not allow representations of its founder, of God, or of an Enlightened person. This is common among many religions, whether theistic or non-theistic. Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Taoism all hold differing levels of antipathy towards the representation of God or whatever it is they consider transcendent and ineffable. At some point words, imagery and metaphor all fail them, they become as though struck dumb. In some, making an image of God or divinity becomes itself a sinful act, punishable by death.

Christianity, emerging as it did out of Judaism, undoubtedly inherited its disapproval of graven images. Idolatry being frowned upon. In the years immediately after the crucifixion, its unlikely any image of Jesus was produced. There is certainly no mention of it, and none have been found. The focus, as in Buddhism, was on promulgating and inculcating his teachings in new disciples, in new places. Symbolism in the form of the fish and the cross provided a unique sense of identity, of Christian unity in the often harsh circumstances of persecution, where you were obliged to be secretive about your faith.

As currently understood, its not until the 2nd century that specifically Christian imagery begins to be found. Even if that sometimes is based upon a very strange amalgam of Christian and Pagan beliefs. What is portrayed with regularity in this period are particular illustrated scenes from the life of Jesus, and this maybe because these were used as a teaching aid. Specifically Christian iconography, as we understand it, does not really begin to blossom until the early 3rd century BCE, just prior to Constantine making Christianity the Holy Roman Empire's established religion. Constantine's adoption of it, certainly turbo charges the production of church imagery. Images of Jesus, his family, disciples, saints and piously devoted rulers start to appear. God's presence, if indicated, is through visual symbolism, a radiating explosion of lines, from which the holy spirit in the form of a dove sometimes emerges. By the Renaissance, God can be explicitly portrayed by Michelangelo as your archetypal white bearded man, as a person just like us. But this is all prior to The Protestant Reformation where the prohibition on graven imagery reasserts itself.

These ups and downs in the use of imagery within Christianity all fall within the cataphatic tradition, that promotes positive encouraging statements, affirming and confirming beliefs. There is a law of attraction, that art can visualise the divine presence, extol a person's sainthood and portray good works as an inspiration to others. That the painted figure of the Virgin Mary can literally form an intercession between you, Jesus, and through him with God. But behind this there has also been the apophatic tradition, where Christian mysticism frequently finds a home. This says, that all visual imagery and the metaphors that are used to speak about the qualities of God in the cataphatic tradition, are false presentations of what the ineffable nature of God is. That God is essentially unknowable via the use of our minds eye. God's true nature is hidden beyond all this imagery, beyond what the power of the imagination can describe in words or visually. And finding union with this unnameable apophatic God is actually the real purpose of the Christian life of devotion, prayer and practice. Though the ineffable is beyond being described, portrayed or implied through metaphor - beyond our imaginative intellect - it can be 'known.'

It appears to be part of human nature to need literalistic imagery. This can help guide and connect us with religious practices and goals, providing a sense of purpose and direction in our spiritual life. In a Buddhist parable from the Lotus Sutra, The Magic City, a group of pilgrims are undergoing an arduous journey to the Magic City, only their guide appears to know in what direction it is. Many of these travellers have moments of huge doubt, some struggle, rebel or fall by the wayside. When the remaining travellers get to where the guide said the Magic City would be, they find nothing. The guide tells them he lied to them in order that they would stick with him on the journey. There is no Magic City. The moral being, that how we imagine what our religious goals are, will only take us so far. Beyond which continuing to be goal orientated becomes an obstacle, an impediment to making further progress.

Imagery then, could be seen as 'the necessary lie', a skilful means, that helps you aspire to move towards objectives that are greater than you can currently envisage. When you are travelling towards where the ineffable is said to be, its helpful to believe you know where you are going. We forget that we do need to constantly reimagine what the ineffable looks like to us. Even if, ultimately, where you are heading is unreachable or unknowable through ideas of making progress, of tangible goals, of actually physically travelling anywhere. 

ARTICLE - What's With All The Bowing?

For many months I'd resolutely refused to bow when I approached a Buddhist shrine. I just sat watching the ritual proceedings until the moment arrived, where everyone else approached with seeming ease. As one by one they did a bow or prostrated, placed a flower offering, lit incense and a candle, then returned to their zafu. I remained a nervous observer, forever teetering on the edge - ' maybe I'll get up - Now! ' I was still trying to be clear in my mind why you did it, how you did it, the what and when of it. 

Why did I make bowing such a big deal? I guess it is like this for most people in any religious tradition. It feels a much more important thing than the minutiae of bowing might indicate. It is an act of devotion, it is a commitment, it is an expression of belief, and it is also done in public while everyone else is chanting a mantra, and probably scrutinising your every fumbling devotional move. Yeah, bowing freaked me out.  Nevertheless it remains important to work out for yourself what it means to you, and why you do it.

There can be a lot of bowing in any religious tradition, not all of it taking place within devotional contexts. Buddhists traditionally greet each other with a bow. Unlike a handshake that has its origins in proving you mean no one any harm by offering your sword arm, a bow in greeting is a mark of respect. Respect from one human to another, a recognition of meeting a fellow Buddhist practitioner, and as a salutation to the potential for Buddhahood that lies within everyone, however unconscious or conscious that may in fact currently be. If a bow is to someone who is senior to you, or is leading a devotional ritual you are taking part in, the bow becomes a recognition of the sacred role that they are performing. Bowing demonstrates and honours the difference between you and them within that ritual event..

At the beginning of some Zen services, you bow towards you meditation cushion that you are about to sit to practice upon, offering respect simultaneously to what you are about to do and where you are about to do it. But also because it was through meditation that the Buddha became Enlightened. With each period of meditation practice you re-embark upon a similar journey. Bowing dedicates any meditation time on the zafu to this endeavour. In this way a simple bow can become both an act of deep respect and an expression of your gratitude. Bowing is intrinsically a humbling action, imbued with a feeling of indebtedness to the object or person in front of it. In its purest volition it is founded upon gratefulness.

Bowing can so easily become something executed in an automatic and unthinking manner. The volition of respect or gratitude perhaps lapses. Bowing can become just part of a form of ritual expression that you blithely regularly execute. Not necessarily mindlessly, but certainly without heart. Lets just first acknowledge that this does happen. Somehow repetition can dull the edges of our awareness,. Bowing turns into an empty vessel. It is the same for any devotional practice that is done regularly. Our engagement with it can wear thin at times. In the future, when my outward commitment to Buddhism was more firmly established, I would occasionally have a 'faith wobble'. At such times I'd find myself executing a more hesitant half-hearted bow, in response to the quivering of my own doubt.

What often happens is not that your attitude to the ritual of bowing is deteriorating. It's that the depth of your faith can sometimes lag behind any outward expression of your commitment. You can get ahead of yourself, by sheer force of will.  Bowing can be synonymous with letting go of many things, of control, of one's ego, of one's pride, to name but three. It asks you to surrender yourself to the moment of bowing without thought of what you will gain from it, or paradoxically what you are trying to achieve or express through it. In this surrendering of your agency and your Self to Other, is where what is Other - Buddhahood or Enlightenment - may move to greet you. This is the point where letting go of any idea of consciously attaining anything through practice begins to kick in. Though there is often a lot of self conscious rehearsing before any surrendering is able to manifests itself. So lots of time, equanimity and patience is required

Lastly, bowing within a devotional ritual is a small individual action within a much larger collective volition. You chose to come to a place to perform this ritual together with others. It is often said that potential for Buddhahood arises most strongly within collective practice and rituals. The fact that you are all doing the same thing gives it added potency. Its never just you bowing, your individual efforts at practice that necessarily makes the decisive difference. Hundreds of voices chanting a mantra can have hugely more impact on you, than your lone voice on its own. Even as you bow to your shrine alone at home, thousands upon thousands of other people will be doing exactly the same thing as you at the same time. Bowing unifies you with a wider network of the Buddha's disciples in the present moment. But also calls upon over two millennia of lineage of ardent Buddhist practitioners. All of which makes bowing pretty mind blowing.