MY OWN WALKING - The Anniversary Issue

The 10th of July, was a Friday this year. It was the second anniversary of my heart attack. How much things have significantly moved on since then. My gratitude for being alive, still able to enjoy a good life, still free of debilitating illness, has only grown deeper. Obviously some or all of this could, and probably will, change at some point.  I remain mindful of not taking life and it's quality for granted or acting as if wishful assumptions were fortune cookies, for how long I have left to live. Padmasambhava's invocation helps me bear in mind that - I do not have. I do not understand, I do not know - what the future holds. This should be painted across the dawn sky of every day. Because time fritters away, despite my intentions for it to be otherwise. 

In the run up to the anniversary, I found myself amidst the high point of the heatwave, becoming despondent and frustratedly angry. Time spent in the shadow of a heart attack, can sometimes make me far too precious about not wasting time. I wasn't finding enough productive time to work on my art projects. I felt to be constantly having my attention drawn elsewhere. And though this was all true to a degree , despondency ( well it is pretty much my oldest friend ) returned to undermine any artistic resolve and creative impulse I might have. At its worst, attacking the very act of creation itself. Who after all was this for? What was it all in aid of ? Isn't it just so much easier to not do it at all? Pointing towards its lack of utility and rationally putting a stop to art altogether. 

Then I watched an old documentary of Hockney in old age returning to his native Yorkshire. He said, with his usual casual bluntness, that he found no point at all in dwelling on the imminence or otherwise of his death, and just kept coming back to his creativity as being the best thing he could do with his time. Which made me feel a whole lot better about my own art practice. Creating art has intrinsic value to the artist. Art may have no practical use, but that doesn't make it meaningless. It requires nothing else from you, than that you turn up and do it.

Last year on the first anniversary of my heart attack I took myself off, on a very hot day, to Walsingham. I remember having rather too heightened an expectation of it. This year, I decided a repeat journey to Walsingham was required, but in a more relaxed and less needy manner. I'd just turn up for whatever it offered. The weather forecast was for an extremely hot day, between 28- 30 degrees Celsius. So I'd have to play it by ear, just how much being baked by it I was up for. Two bus journeys later I was stepping off in Walsingham.  There was a cooling breeze as I headed out towards Great Walsingham. As I set off, a very odd thing happened, a three legged dog came running down the street past me, purposefully belting along on an urgent mission. Slightly bemused I carried on. I have since realised that this incident metaphorically gave physical form to how I've been feeling about my spiritual life recently.  You can definitely get a fairway in Buddhism using three legs, but the sense of something being amputated from it, like a fourth leg, seems eventually inescapable. Buddhism, for all its self evident value to me, has started to feel like that. Lacking in an essential fourth leg. Enlightenment is not a thing you can talk to or relate with on a human level. It's an ideal, practically and imaginatively, disconnected from where I am, on the other side of it. I am like a dog running fast on three legs, confusing speed with purpose.

The road to Great Walsingham is actually very beautiful.  The village itself is the definition of picturesque, with its tree lined streets, dappled shade, and a bridged path crossing a forded stream. You do wonder how undervalued Great Walsingham's Parish Church must feel, when there has always been so many bigger grander buildings, just down the road from you. Once you emerge onto the green you see ahead of you a small former Victorian Methodist Chapel, converted into The Orthodox Church of The Holy Transfiguration. With its icon painted tympanum over the entrance door. Inside is a tiny undiscovered gem of a church. Bedecked with numerous icons and traditional iconostasis screen. It possess a charm and magical feel uniquely all its own. I took plenty of photos, picked up a leaflet about an online course to discover what Orthodoxy is all about, and left.

I took the back road from Great Walsingham toward its larger relative Little Walsingham, and the Anglican Shrine Church. I have a long term objective to 'church lark' all the main religious buildings in Walsingham. I've taken photos of the Shrine Church before, but never with a view for giving you an overall sense of it. Phone camera at the ready I made a start. But after a while I realised my heart wasn't really in it. This was not why I was here today. I was here to pray, give thanks and express my gratitude for another year of life. So I put my phone camera away.

The Shrine itself is a recreation, conceived right down to the original proportions, of the medieval shrine. Over the years I've become closely familiar with it.  I lit a couple of candles and after some hesitation decided to kneel down and pray. Just as I was getting my head around the idea of starting, - in walked a priest. Who came right over,  stood right next to me shuffling and sorting through paperwork, as though I wasn't  really there. I suddenly got the sense that perhaps here was not going to be the right place to do what I felt I needed to. The Anglican Shrine is like this, I have frequently found it too busy as a place. Even though it requests silence, it is very prone to the activity and noise generated by tourists, school parties, congregations for its services and priests, apparently. This is rarely a place of serenity and stillness, for quiet contemplation. So I left, had some lunch, and prepared myself to walk the Holy Mile to the Slipper Chapel.

The top pathway to the Slipper Chapel, with its panoramic landscapes, has very little shade to protect you from the sun. So I took the low road, which though busy with traffic, has a stream that runs alongside it and is regularly shrouded in shade from its trees. Though only a mile, the heat of the day was now high. So by the time I reached the Slipper Chapel I was a very over heated sweaty pilgrim. It was then, a far from unflustered person who sat down in the Chapel.  It took a while just to arrive, to externally and inwardly cool myself down the best I could. Until I felt prepared and fully present enough to kneel down by the communion rail to pray.

I have no remembered experience, as an adult, of having prayed in a church before. Though I must have done so in my Church of England Primary School days, and when I was a chorister. And here I was, now about to pray, it felt an odd thing for a sixty nine year old Buddhist to be doing, After all who do I imagine I am praying too? I read recently about the simplest form of prayer, it is structured similar to the Metta Bhavana, you start with yourself, move your attention outward to family and friends and to the world. And that was how I got myself engaged with it. What I prayed for was between me, Our Lady, God and the universe. It started and ended with a feeling of gratitude. As I sat back in my chair, this felt like an extremely important and beautiful thing to have done. 

As I sat there feeling satisfied, my attention was being distracted by a large fluttering butterfly up in the altar canopy above. It was flying into the chapel, then back towards the stained glass and on hitting this immovable surface, flew back out again. Doing this over and over again. As I gazed upwards transfixed with this, a sudden instruction erupted into my mind - You must write about this. Grabbing my phone, I opened the Notes App and began hurriedly writing for a minute or so in one long unpunctuated paragraph of whatever came into my head. Afterwards I felt this huge sensation of uplift and elation, that's still there every time I re-read it.

Here it is. The only thing I've done subsequently has been punctuate, correct grammar, insert one phrase and rephrase another for better comprehension. Some sentences feel to require further reflection on my part to unpack them further. Here I leave them as they are. 

' The butterfly newly re-born knows not where to go, nor how to be, so it flutters around bumping into things, sometimes the same things repeatedly. But like stained glass whose beauty attracts your attention, you cannot batter your way through it. Beauty can become an obstacle, as well as a lure. Beauty can be misleading, we can assume goodness  if someone or something is beautiful. Beauty can be just beauty, not a portal to something else. Until the butterfly comes to know its own form better, it  should settle on a tree and be supported by that. Until the day it is clear what its purpose is in the shadow land on the approaches to death. All death is a portal to another death, for death is a form of transformation. Its how you transition from one state to another.'

MY OWN WALKING - June Journal 2026

In the history of my spiritual practice, my resistance to doing it, and my response to my resistance to doing it, have frequently been an area for patience, practice and experiment. In the first flush of enthusiasm and excitement of Beginners Mind, one rarely encounters much resistance. Only as things settle down into the more hum drum regularity of daily practice, does resistance start to raise its head. Because in those early days the sense of practice opening up new vistas on yourself and reality sustains you. It creates a tangible sense of you making real progress. However, deceptive that might actually be.

In my experience, this freshness rarely lasts. And whilst one is always being encouraged to keep hold of the openness and curiosity that Beginners Mind relies upon. In reality, this is pretty tricky to impossible to self consciously maintain. When anything that was once new becomes familiar, it loses its ability to rejuvenate because of its bright shine tarnishing.

What in essence resistance is, is tedium. Boredom with the same routine. Boredom with not appearing to make any progress. Boredom can even be a fundamental disappointment with oneself. And what one chooses to do in response to boredom rearing its apathetic head, has significance. What do you do when you are bored? Are you able to actually do anything?

I'll tell you what I've done, for good or ill. I look for something new that interests and fascinates me. Not necessarily in the practice. It might be another new unknown subject to explore and be excited about. A fresh way of looking at a the familiar object of one's practice, or at oneself. Yet this search for the shock and fizz of the new and novel, I'd say is a major tendency in the Western approach to spiritual practice. It turns spiritual practice into an adjunct to consumerism. The latest novelty practice, to move on from the moment anything becomes unrewarding or remotely boring.

Another response I've had to resistance, is the strong application of self discipline. Now I'll say right here, that this is very different from willpower,. Willpower requires you to be already 'willing' to do this practice. Self discipline recognises that to an extent you are not willing to do this practice regularly every day, unless you coerce yourself into doing so. One way or another you'll get your bum on that cushion. You make a commitment and you stick to it, regardless of your resistance. Self discipline also has a tendency to carry with it a tone in its approach that may not be kind.

This overriding of resistance, has it uses. In extremis it can be useful. But, if used too frequently, it does lead to not even acknowledging the presence of resistance. I found this to be extremely detrimental to my enthusiasm for spiritual practice in the long run. I wasn't taking the whole of me into practice, I attempted exclusion of the truculent non cooperative side of myself. As you can imagine this did not go down well with my psycho-physical being.

It is good to make commitments. But it's also good to recognise when the level of things you are committing yourself to carrying out. has become overwhelming or too burdensome to be consistently executed. It's important not to see dropping some of these commitments as a personal failing. It's just you finding that one way of approaching practice may have run its course, and the need to rethink and review this has arrived. Simply ease off the acceleration pedal you are pressing down too much on.

There was also a time whenever I met resistance or boredom, I simply stopped practicing altogether. This might be for a few days, weeks, months, even years.  I allowed resistance to rule over me, and hence ruined the quality of my engagement. These days, I'm experimenting with a gentler, more receptive approach to resistance. I recognise that my practice has different levels it goes through, on waves of enthusiasm and troughs of fatigue. And when I'm enthusiastic I can take on all sorts of things, try out additional practices, add this or subtract that. And if resistance re-emerges, I'll start pairing away elements of this practice, Perhaps stripping it back to a really basic level for a while. Ready to pick it up again when the fire for it appears to be rekindled again. This means I don't stop doing a daily spiritual practice of some sort, I merely readjust the quantity and intensity of it. To accommodate the indicator that resistance is, without completely capitulating to it. Believe me, this is what real progress looks like.

There is always the question to be asked of yourself. Is resistance a sign that you really don't believe in the efficacy of the practices you are doing?  You have to acknowledge this could be a possibility. Doubt, however, I've found is a pretty reliable test for faith being present. Doubt is just your faith wobbling a bit. It emerges when that faith feels ignored, threadbare or hungry. I'd be more worried if I was indifferent. Have you recharged your faith lately, and what do you do when that is required? What things do you do to put yourself in touch with your faith?  Whenever I am bored or resistant, I have usually become alienated from what I hold faith in. Practice can often become a bit too much of an idea, over idealised, be ego or head driven. Then I need to put greater effort into those more nebulous mystically orientated areas that ground me, point me in the general direction of faith - Imaginative. Poetic, Aesthetic, Mythic, Ritualistic, Raw, Rustic and Elemental Nature. It's like gathering around a freshly lit raging fire at night, with a cuppa tea, and gazing into the primaeval flames and communing with its spirit.

MY OWN WALKING - April Journal 2026

'I started questioning how loyal I have been to my own suffering'

 Vinny Ferraro

I've been listening and reflecting, as part of my daily practice in the morning, to an interview Dan Harris did with Vinny Ferraro on his 10% Happier You Tube channel. I've recently shared this elsewhere on this blog. Ferraro is an American Buddhist teacher whose approach to practice I'm appreciating. In it he said the sentence above. Are we all too loyal to our suffering, do we take everything that happens to us far far too personally? 

A friend of mine once stated that worldly reality was not malicious, vengeful or doing things deliberately to thwart and make you suffer. Worldly reality was actually indifferent to what we think about it, what you think you want from it, what you desire and wish for. Doesn't care one jot about any of that. And that is really what makes our suffering so existentially painful. It would be so much easier if we could believe it was a result of a God expressing their displeasure with us. But actually, out there, there are simply circumstances and conditions into which we step and throw in some of our own, and sometimes what happens is favourable, and at other times it is not. 

Instead of this creating an ability in us to maintain some distance and perspective, we tend to become completely intoxicated with the tragic nature of our suffering. The words we surround our suffering with, like tragic, egregious, fatal, terminal, persistent, malignant, long suffering, degrading, decimating - all inform you of the narrative framework of hatred, aversion and resistance we place our suffering within. We don't like our suffering, obviously, but it is all ours nonetheless. As it becomes ever deeper entwined in the possessiveness of - I, Me & Mine.

Buddhist teachings usually suggests you find ways of learning to see the nature of reality as it is, rather than how you want it to be. It's not easy, by any means, as we can so quickly be swept away on the wings of our desires. The American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck, would say that Buddhist meditation practice was all about cultivating a bigger container for our experience. Making us able to hold more of our experience without wanting to push or run away from it. That has to include our suffering, not just the nice stuff.  There is a way of staying loyal to our suffering that isn't clinging and possessive, but is instructive and potentially liberating. 

In June this year, it will be two years since my heart attack. And this was undoubtedly one helluva huge wake up call. Suddenly mortality was top of the agenda. I think about this in someway every day, it's not something you forget easily. But I am also aware of the experience now becoming part of the normal background noise of my life, and perhaps it is losing a bit of its cutting edge as a result.  It's slowly drifting into the usual human pattern of fully experiencing the suffering, you survive it, you move on, and then slowly forget what it's taught you. You cease remaining loyal to your suffering as that potent reminder of your mortality, what that suffering has taught you, the moment your desire to totally move on from it closes the door too firmly behind you. Consigning it to the dungeon of the past.

And in a sense Buddhist practice itself, encourages you to avoid unhelpfully dwelling upon anything negative or unwholesome. It can in the name of not unhelpfully dwelling fall into a similar tendancy of moving on too quickly. To forget how a closer reflection on the state of suffering itself can be instructive. Meditation practice can certainly enable you to live through difficult experiences with a higher degree of calm or equanimity, yet leave the causes and symptoms, unexamined, And unexamined suffering if it becomes buried, can exist like an angry gremlin in the depths of your psycho-physical body.

I've been aware lately that there's a layer of life experience I'm reticent to look into. Though I've had friends, there is a lonely way of being within me that has its roots in childhood bullying, that formed a tendency to withdraw into a self contained mode whenever the outside world got too difficult or challenging. I think of myself now as being good at being alone with myself, and in the present day that is mostly true. But there was a time in the past where I was lonely and was less settled and at peace with who I am. And that experience still exists within me, I sense the shadow of it, emotionally tender, largely unexamined and unprocessed.

There is a way of staying loyal to the experience of suffering, that avoids becoming embroidered into the detailed fabric and design of your personal tapestry. The habitual way you think about and interpret your life experiences. Once the suffering experience has abated somewhat, it can be slightly easier to just observe the suffering in retrospect. Still in touch with what you have just been through, but less inclined to be totally taken in by it. But to do that effectively does require us to become that bigger container for our experience, able to hold the pain and suffering we encounter without becoming painfully embroiled in it all over again. To hold the suffering like an archeological artifact you've unearthed and make informed judgements about it's age and provenance, and how it fits into the framework of the internal story you tell about yourself.  And in time, to see through the state of suffering itself, by loosening the ties to I Me & Mine we have previously forged.

FEATURE - Vinny Ferraro Interview

Vinny Ferraro Interview

I came across Vinny Ferraro quite recently, and what a joyful and insightful being he is. Big beaming face, very down to earth and a wonderful fully inhabited Brooklyn accent. I've listened to this twice, once all the way through, and then daily using bits of it for my morning reflections. He has had, by his own admission a tough early life, which he talks about during this interview. His central themes about spiritual practice here are - not taking what happens to you personally - trying to resolve issues you've inherited from your upbringing and family ancestry - how to deal better with your anxiety and mental tendencies - learning how to realign your focus - becoming more equanimous towards what happens to us and around us, so we can, as he pithly puts it,' become unfuckable with'.  And a whole lot more.

MY OWN WALKING - Spring Journal 2026

It is not uncommon for religions to use an archaic or even totally extinct language in their chants, liturgy and rituals. An example would be Latin in Roman Catholicism, but other denominations have there own sacred languages such as Coptic, or Church Slavonic. Ancient Aramaic in Judaism, Classical Arabic in Islam. With the chanting of Pali or Sanskrit texts, Buddhism is not then that unusual. These languages are worth preserving, because they serve what is really a rather vital function, that is not solely one of academic interest, for linguistic diversity or historical origins.

These old languages in religious contexts are important primarily for spiritual reasons. Such ancient words embody all the poetic metaphors, experiences, aspirations and insights, encountered over countless generations of practitioners. These can sometimes span from non-historical through historical time, right up to today. They form a bridge, via their sound and lyricism, to present day practitioners with the religious emotions and expressions of past disciples. Giving cogent form to the idea that we are the present day torch bearers for an entire religious lineage, maintaining this language and traditions intact, into the future. And this duty of care, as a disciple, is the case whatever that religious tradition is. It could be said that the Christian Protestant Reformation, with perhaps the iconoclastic excess only a reformers zeal might execute, expunged ,and hence impoverished itself, by destroying this link through language to the past. Which may be why it can often feel, even today, a little spiritually unmoored. There is nothing like an extinct language to ground you in the vale of impermanence.

( In Pali )

"Sangham jivitaparyantam saranam gacchami.

Ye ca Sangha atita ca

Ye ca Sangha anagata

Paccuppannq ca ye Sangha

Aham vandami sabbada."

( English Translation )

"All my life I go for refuge to the Fellowship.

To all the Fellowships that were

To all the Fellowships to be

To all the Fellowships that are

My worship flows unceasingly '

These five lines are from the penultimate verses of the Buddhist Triratna Vandana, or Salutation to the Three Jewels. Verses of praise, respect and dedication ,to the Buddha, the Dharma ( his teachings) and the Sangha ( the fellowship of practitioners ). Often chanted at the beginning of each day, they act as a reminder of what you are dedicating your life to, depending upon and 'taking refuge in ' as a Buddhist. Certainly in the early days of my involvement in Buddhism, they were just something we recited.  I never quite grasped why we were saying these verses in a semi-extinct language like Pali. In a modern Western context this could appear to be a bit anachronistic. Similarly the Pali/Sanskrit names of Buddhist Order Members. Were these an unnecessary bit of exotic cultural appropriation on the part of Western Buddhist practitioners? In holding such views I was completely mistaking the purpose of their use of Pali / Sanskrit , and these verses of the Triratna Vandana point you in the direction as to why.

In Buddhism single words or phrases can become spiritual transmitters, referred to as dharani. These conjure a resonating relationship through sound, with the truth, not just with the Buddha's teachings, but with that small essence being awoken within us, with that of the true nature of reality. Chanting short texts in Pali/Sanskrit in the context of spiritual fellowship can, at its best, be like tuning into the fully functioning life force of Enlightenment. Even if we feel we are just mindlessly chanting these words that are incomprehensible to us, they nonetheless plug us into the spirit of this interconnected essence to all reality - across all time and space - past, present and future.

In my early morning practice period, I have generally just meditated. Though of late I've found myself gravitating towards chanting the Triratna Vandana. After many years of not doing so. I immediately found myself feeling something within my being was woken up and plugged in to a relationship far bigger than just myself. It felt like a coming home, for these verses are extraordinarily familiar to me. I've chanted them in many different contexts, hundreds of times. They also reconnect me with those years of involvement with Triratna and 'the Fellowships that were' then. And even though I rarely meet any of these people these days, they are still with me when I chant these verses. Forming part of a personal lineage of practice, which I am still grateful to have received. So, when I find myself bemoaning the lack of 'spiritual fellowship' in my current spiritual path, I need to remember what this spiritual fellowship can be. Well, it is broad, it is multi-dimensional, it is an all encompassing event. 

Reciting the Triratna Vandana, draws a similar map, one that spans time and space. A known lineage of practitioners traced directly back through two and a half millennia to the Buddha, is important for Buddhists to maintain an active and live relationship with. A Sangha, in its idealised form, is a fellowship composed of all the practitioners whoever were, are or are to be. - the Unenlightened and Enlightened human beings, the Arya ( noble or illustrious ) Sangha, and imaginatively outward to realms of archetypal and cosmic Buddhas. Not just the local practitioners you meet in your Buddhist Centre ( or Church if you are Christian). These Fellowships that were, become vaster in scope once you add in ' The Fellowships that are, or are yet to be'. And these make it clear, if you have no yet cottoned on, that you are your own traditions next step. Without the effectiveness of your practice and spiritual life, there will be no future for it. And a sense of gratefulness and appreciation for the many levels via which spiritual fellowship through practice is handed down to us, is important to the sustaining of our practice now. Through the language and texts that we chant, we atune and orient with the spirit of our lineage of practice, that underpins whatever we subsequently do.

Whether Buddhist or Christian, there were always turbulent epochs in the past, the distant rumblings of this being' The End of Times'. And its very easy for us to bemoan the 'self evident failings' of our present institutions and some of our spiritual fellow travellers, and go passive-aggressive towards it. Significant Buddhist figures and sages, often appeared in periods of apparent decline, such as ours. But we cannot just sit back and depend on someone else turning up to save it.  Chant these last words of the Triratna Vandana written on this page and don't allow any feelings of despair we may hold, be our final coda. The revolution can start at any moment, it may have started already, so be ready to respond. 

'Etena saccavajjena, hotu me jayamangalam'

'Oh by the virtue of this truth, may grace abound, and victory!'

ARTICLE - Veils of Suffering

As human beings we suffer. We all believe we understand what that means, the excruciating angst of being slowly broken by some physical, mental or spiritual pain. Because of this, finding a reason to extirpate suffering, a way to relieve or spiritually go beyond suffering, form foundational base motifs of most world religions. It is one reason why atheism will always find itself existentially falling short, because it cannot offer anything more than pills and sympathy to alleviate human suffering. 

The fundamental issue asks why we suffer in the first place? And the many answers that have been offered have been endlessly debated and quarrelled over - it's due to godly intent or punishment, the result of past sin or karma, as an existential teaching, or simply the inescapable nature of how reality is. To name but a few.  Most of these do not make a precise fit as an explanation. Nor exactly make you warm towards the idea of any deity who would play such games with their own creation. And yet, humanity continues to reach out to a wide panoply of gods, saviours or spiritual gurus, who profess to be able to teach us how to transcend this suffering world. 

In times past, when a woman suffered a bereavement, she took to wearing widows weaves. It was a signifying outward expression, that everyone else recognised. She had suffered the loss of a loved one. Dressed all in black, her face shrouded in a dark lacy veil, to conceal the widows face from public view. It hid her suffering, so no one need see the pain, the tears, the person wracked with grief. Society could, nonetheless, acknowledge and mourn her loss. And the bereaved woman didn't have to risk the embarrassment of having her grief erupt and be exposed to public consternation. This prohibition to hide sorrow behind a veil, was placed on the widow alone. Men wore black, or black arm bands, their faces could still be seen. The perceived potency and unpredictable nature of female emotion, was considered far too unsettling and perturbing. Attitudes in the wider society, at that time, did not wish to see nor hear of any of that, thank you.

Veils continue to be used to this day in some societies to completely conceal a woman's face. To demonstrate modesty or lack of vanity, or to beguile, or that the woman is the possesion of their husband, and therefore not available for male fantasies or sinful desire. A bride can wear a veil before her wedding, as a virtuous metaphor for the mythic virginal chastity supposedly about to be revealed to her betrothed. People in the medieval period, who suffered from a disfiguring disease like leprosy or syphilis, could conceal themselves behind veils, so no one has to see the extent their bodily flesh was rotting or being eaten away.  Veils do that, they possess a self evident utility. Veils shield and protect. Veils mark in symbolic dress a human state of transition. Lives are transfigured behind the mysterious curtain of them.

There is a sense then that suffering is a response laid over the human pain, in a blanket of turbulent disruptive feeling. In ancient societies, and in some cultures existing today, it is not uncommon for wakes and funerals to be accompanied by an extravagant amount of wailing, crying and heavenly beseeching. You can see them vividly portrayed on ancient Egyptian wall murals. This public eruption of sorrow and grief, was frequently carried out by 'professional mourners' on behalf of the bereaved families. Private grief was kept behind the walls of their house, whilst the outward expression of suffering and the public process of grieving was in this case, a performative one. It was put on for show, often expressive of a certain degree of status.

All of which causes me to raise a slightly troublesome question - is suffering then entirely or at least in part a performative human behaviour.? Can we fully feel the pain of sickness and loss, allow ourselves to grieve, without the effusive eruption of suffering?  I know this may seem a tad absurd, if not insensitive.  And I emphasise at this point, that I'm not saying outpourings of suffering are faked or not genuinely felt. And yet, I can recognise in myself, that I do actively work myself up into crying. I hunt down the tenderest point of the suffering and exploit the moment, where I can become gushingly inconsolable about an issue. It's a bit like vigorously shaking a bottle of fizzy water, and then finding a way of letting it all burst out. It all feels better out than kept contained within.

Often when we are bereft, we feel at a loss what to do with the pain we experience, and might wish to find a way to diminish it, or a least find a consolation. The suffering desire only grows worse because you feel alone with it, because indeed you are always alone with your pain, upset or grief.  And there is an element to this suffering, I recognise, that could be viewed as artfully contrived, however functional it maybe. Simply so the build up of pain you don't know what to do with, that has nowhere else to go, to allow all that to be vented or expelled. It's how we as humans attempt to manage and cope with our internally turbulent emotions. We feel this compelling urge to expell this deep well of pain. We search for consolation in ones faith, or in familiar friendly company or a listening ear. I don't wish to trivialise the expression of suffering, but to view this as a veil we habitually assume the wearing of. It is not the fundamental pain, suffering is our distraught response to something that has occurred, which we have had little or no control over. Suffering is a bit like coughing up the pain filled residue of phlegm. 

What we chose to do, or not do, in the expression of our suffering, this changes our relationship with the original pain that lies beneath it.  That pain inevitably becomes self mythologised . We make it our individual unique pain, that we alone can understand the qualities and depth of.  And it is true, that no one else can really know what our pain feels like. Empathy requires exercising our emotional imagination, and supposes what that pain must feel like. The pain is certainly real enough for the bearer of it, even though most pain is not visible to the naked eye. Though other people can become disbelievingly sniffy about the existence or otherwise of some forms of psychological distress or chronic physical fatigue. Yet there are aspects in how we choose to express our suffering, that could be seen as unhelpfully dwelling upon it, and perhaps indulging in the unique specifications of our personalised pain. 

If I were to describe suffering as an emotional intoxication between our sense of our self and our bodily pain, this puts it extremely coldly. Perhaps to the point of being unhelpfully blunt. Because it's all very well for me to pontificate in the theoretical abstract about what the true nature of suffering is, when this poor suffering soul that is confined to bed. just wants you to listen, to care, to comfort, to have some empathy for them. Suffering has in most religious traditions been met with compassion not categorisation. No one wants to be prejudicially judged simply for being in pain, and hence suffering. As Dogen once said, you should never get too carried away by either the abstract or the practical. To attempt to keep our responses grounded and real, without losing empathy or perspective completely in the process.

There is not a faith in the world that does not have something to recommend to us by way of the transcending or at least the relief of suffering. Sometimes the relationship between our suffering and some idea of original sin, is an inescapable trap we fall into. The redemptive nature of Jesus's suffering on the cross, works for me purely on the level of metaphor, but I cannot get my head around how it realistically operates salvifically for everyone who believes in him. In Buddhism it's about going beyond suffering, a truly hard thing to concieve, let alone achieve. Suffering is couched in terms of a human response to an experience we do not want or desire. And in its characteristically plain manner of expression, points out if we desist in desiring for it to be otherwise, the suffering will gently part company from the painful experience. It can all sound like we are following the intricate instructions of a car maintenance manual. That with a bit of minor tweaking you can reach the destination of a world without suffering. Ah, if only that were so.

When Jesus said ' suffer the little children to come unto me' he was asking his disciples to endure or indulge these children's exuberant natures. To 'bear with' any discomfort or irritation arising from being around the chaotic ebullience of youth. So there is a way of couching human pain and discomfort as something you 'bear with', you endure it, you inhale your grief deeply, but resist being completely carried away by the surging paroxysms of it. To attempt to suffer the pain behind a veil of calmly contained silence. Its more usual, however,for the line between the pain and the suffering that arose from it, to become so blurred, that the two experiences burn together to the point of becoming indistinguishably, one all consuming flame that torches everything. Life can often become about the ' bearing with' the ' bearing with'.

Both Jesus and the Buddha, left this mortal coil, with what would have been for us ordinary folk, an excruciatingly painful demise. Jesus by being hung nailed like a piece of crudely processed meat to a high wooden cross, and the Buddha, reputedly by a culinary mishap, of being poisoned by some badly cooked mushrooms. In both cases, we must assume, they endured the painful experience, quietly resigned to their fate. These highlight the raw experiential quality of suffering as a veil that we find ourselves wearing. A more sage like perspective might allow us to put that to one side. However insubstantial it may be when viewed in absolute ultimate terms, however overshadowed it can sometimes be with sentiment and enforced pathos, suffering is still extraordinarily real to us, and resolutely human. If it teaches us to be compassionate and not indifferent, that's a step forward.

 

MY OWN WALKING - Winterval Journal 2025/26

' No one, after your death is going to say why weren't you more like this or that,?  

You should ask yourself, why weren't you more your self?'  
Koshin Paley Ellison 

Once you start to pull at the threads and implications of this statement, all the pretenses and social conformities of modern life begin to unveil themselves before your eyes. Are we ever truly ourselves, what is that anyway, how would we know, how would we recognise what our true self even looks or feels like? Being more your self, doesn't mean nestling into you and your opinions and to hell with everyone else, quite the opposite actually. But this inevitably is our starting place. We retreat into recollecting our past life.

I try to locate a sense of myself somewhere in this self composed narrative I call my life story. If I reflect on that story as I habitually relate it, this has quite often been in pursuit of some ideal I had, for who I might become. And that thought required me to be a particular person, that thinks and behaves in a particular way. You could say that from ones childhood through your teenage years, you are trying on qualities or personas to see if they fit you. You experiment with, and reimagine your future self, what is not yet fully formed in your sense of your self, what you might turn out to be. The 'your' becomes inextricably entwined with 'the self 'into the compound word 'yourself', revolving through our imaginative teenage cos play.

So much of our teenage angst revolves around perceptions and expectations of ourselves as a particular gender. What you imagine as a man or woman you should be like. Now, quite often I'd think I ought to be this supremely confident man, sure of who he was, clear about what I wanted, was ambitious, took risks, and had a go for it attitude, to make things happen by sheer assertive force of personality or will. A man was physically and mentally strong, extraordinarily capable and forthright about what they believe. This form of masculinity was a stance we were supposed to adopt. The problem for me was, I wasn't at all sure I had these qualities, nor whether I wanted some of them.

Once I realised I was gay, this began a process of decoupling myself from making comparisons with who I was against the mirror of this masculine stereotype. One I'd been finding myself perpetually falling short of. There are, however, numerous ways of being a man, the majority of them chronically under explored and under used. Mainly because the cultural constraints placed on what masculinity is and isn't, are very tightly drawn. The current controversy over gender, is founded upon a clash of quite extreme viewpoints on what a man or a woman is. That its either a fixed binary or a broad flexible spectrum, entirely biologically or fully culturally determined, in a traditional versus a progressive view of manhood. And the clash of these polarities, these two, actually quite flawed certainties, has produced not one resolution, but one hell of a mess on the floor. 

Gender has many aspects that condition and fix it, whilst also being a cultural performance, a mode of outward self expression of an inner sense of identity. I recognise that this is currently a contentious issue, because gender and sexual orientation are vital constituent parts of who we are. Yet, this is not the bee all and end all of life, not the complete package, particularly when you ask why weren't you more yourself? And your answer becomes - this is what I was allowed to be.

Whether a traditional man, a gay man or non-binary, these are just ideas, conceptions about who you are that we lay over ourselves, they are ultimately not who you are really. If we fix too much of our identity and value onto these notions, they can become cages too, which we never allow ourselves to step outside of. No longer permitting ourselves to be contradictory, contrary or inconsistent individuals. We actively curate and contain who we believe we are. Making ourselves fit the stereotype,whether inherited or self created.

One of my spiritual teachers once said, 'There's only one thing worse than not getting what you want, and that's getting what you want' . Once you achieve your aim and fully arrive at 'yourself', this no doubt much longed for destination, after the euphoria has died down, there is a moment of anti-climax, a realisation that this is not quite the end of the journey you thought it was. You may have resolved one inner conflict, only to find others rising up to start clamoring for their resolution too. Never ever allow yourself to become the maid servant of your dissatisfaction, you'll be run ragged.

When I first encountered Buddhism, I was being run ragged by my dissatisfaction. Not a happy bunny at all. Buddhist meditation and teachings landed in an extremely needy, but receptive lap. I had for a while, what is commonly called Beginners Mind, a naturally open and eager receptivity to whatever I was presented with, this went in deeper and I had a clearer sense of the potential Buddhism was pointing me towards. And then it suddenly became quite ordinary, as though the beacon of light got dimmed. It was an activity I did devotedly every morning, because consistency in practice is extolled, commitment considered a quality to be cultivated. Binding ourselves tightly without a rope, to things we have found some value in, or are reputedly still beneficial. 

Once we start being a practicing Buddhist, a Christian or Moslem, we define ourselves by these names. And what we truly are becomes lost in the accretion of centuries old metaphysics and doctrinal frameworks. Any faith can be an expedient means, a necessary road upon which we travel in order to get ourselves to a place where we no longer need it. To a place where we can be free of any terms, designations and strategies, where the search for meaning and self importance retire themselves. However, we are more likely to find ourselves getting stuck, trapped in thinking we need to be a particular spiritual person in a particular spiritual way. It's not necessarily the religions fault, this is just what humans tend to do, we conform ourselves to our misconceptions.

In the Buddhist Heart Sutra it recounts all the things that the state of Enlightenment is not. Its not a thing that our senses can name, grasp or define, its not a thing our desires can obtain, its not even a thing really. At the conclusion comes a mantra that urges you to be gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond That appears to remove Enlightenment so far from our actual lived experience, to be comparable to an unbelievable fantasy. As Dogen put it - in order to be yourself, you need to forget yourself.

Though it does have its predictive oracles every time we meditate. As you let go of associative thought patterns, current mental obsessions, the concerns and fetishes surrounding your self definition, your sense of purpose or analysing the meaning of your meditation experience. Somewhere in the fleetingly brief disappearance of mental chitter chatter, the moments where you let go of stridently insisting on 'yourself' being you, who you really are, a freedom from all concepts, naming, definitions and expectations, tentatively emerges, blinks, pops like a bubble and is gone. For one liberated moment  the 'your' becomes decoupled from the 'self'' leaving it denuded and free to fly.

 

MY OWN WALKING - December Journal 2025

 

I rarely remember dreams, if I do they are recognisably similar in nature. The one's where you are trying get somewhere, but constantly frustrated in your endeavours. I usually find when in this dream state, I am semi-conscious of what is going on but unable to really influence the direction of it, or relieve the frustration of the pursuit. I had one of this style of dream recently, and though I recognised the form of it, this one felt slightly different in what it highlighted.

The set up of these pursuit dreams are I'm usually travelling to a particular place. Here, however, I was trying to visit an old Buddhist friend, who I'd lost contact with. The frustration of the journey was in my progress being impeded by a whole series of things being subsequently lost, address books, bits of paper with telephone numbers on, and eventually my phone is stolen. Just when I'd think of a new way around one loss, another happens. Lines of communication were repeatedly failing, in all directions I was becoming lost. At this point I woke up, agitated and on edge. Every time I tried to relax and go back to sleep, this frustrating series of losses just resumed exactly where I'd left off. My psyche was stuck on repeat, as if it were insisting on something that it wished to emphasise.

It is tempting to over analyse dreams. I'm also aware of how ever so slightly tedious it can be for others to hear about them. But bare with me on this one. These dreambound archetypes, on attempts to return, reconnect or revive something, they have a human frustrated core to them. Indicative of a view that returning is, in itself, this inherently futile thing to do. Any temptation to look backwards is always through rose tinted spectacles at the past and a yearning for its semi-mythical return. What will emerge is uncertain, on the one hand you could get the beauty of The Renaissance out of it, or the empty delusional sloganeering of Make America Great Again, on the other. Whatever the outcome, it is through our idealising of it, that we misperceive, or misremember what the past was actually like. An entirely new thing is created out of the conditions present in any one moment in time. One of which distorts memories of the past through those tainted spectacles.

What caught my attention in this dream, however, wasn't just in the returning, but the emphasis on the regaining something lost. There was a whole series of things being lost or stolen. The lost Buddhist friend, the lost address, the lost phone. Any loss is a little palimpsest of our mortality, and with any demise comes grief, doubt and denial. Nobody deals with loss very well, we want them or it back, somehow. Loss leaves a hole in the fabric of normality that seemingly requires mending. And this did start chiming in with something that has been on my mind of late. My own close proximity to death last year, has made the gaps and omissions in the life I lead more apparent. 

Whatever we chose to do in life can feel positive as we strike out in a new direction. What isn't always as cogent at the time, are the things we still love that regrettably we've had to leave behind, through the taking of that decision. The ending of love affairs are like that. Though our lives move forward riding on an optimistic wave of what we gain from our renewed liberty, this sometimes leaves behind a murky unresolved loss churned up in its wake. Years later that loss may encourage your mind to start reflecting on whether there may be any benefit in revisiting the old haunts and refuges of past love affairs. Spiritual or otherwise.

When I decided to leave a Buddhist Order nearly eight years ago, any reluctance to do so rested on the loss of the Sangha ( a community of spiritual friends ). And once I had submitted my resignation, what lingered on immediately afterwards was the desire to locate a new Sangha. As this proved an unfruitful pursuit, after about two years I stopped even thinking about looking for one.  And as I've written many times before, I have since viewed the singular path I've chosen to take, as being one that has the lack of a Sangha inherently built into it. That's the story I've composed, that I tell myself in order to let it go, to make it all feel easier.  But this does not mean I don't still sense my need for one. And this bobbed back up to the surface again recently.

When you leave any situation there can be a process of emotionally and spiritually letting go of relationships built up over many years. Also a feeling within oneself that your departure might have betrayed their trust and the basis of the friendship. One has often betrayed ones own aspirations to be a good and faithful friend too. So there is this rending apart from one's spiritual friendships. The reduced proximity, the actual physical distance becomes analogous to the spiritual drift opening up between you. You are not in the regular purview of their world, as they are not frequently in the purview of yours. There is a mutual, and perhaps reluctant, bursting of what once was a bubble of like mindedness. I no longer encounter these friends in my daily life and vice versa. Hence, most of them lapse through lack of regular contact.

When I have returned to my old Buddhist Centre, it has been with mixed feelings, and the way people related to me appeared similarly mixed. There was an uncomfortableness with how to be me in that context, and others seemed reciprocally unsure how to be with me. So any passing thought of returning I may have, ends up feeling overwhelmingly overthunk, that I just mentally close down at the thought of it. They have moved on. The situation has moved on. Reality has moved on. I have moved on. It's not as if you can realistically return and everything slips neatly back into exactly how it was. Too much unshared time has passed. 

' You cannot step into the same river twice' remarked Heraclitus sagely as he idly paddled in the Lethe. Nonetheless, for me the absence of spiritual friendship lingers. The how, the where and the whether too of returning, persisting as these muttered noises off stage. Frequent ghosts unable to find a place where they can either be fully set down, or be resolved by the passing shadows of their former lives.

MY OWN WALKING - November Journal 2025

Like most folk, I sometimes get far too caught up in the intricate tangle of my self justifications. The finely woven warp and weft of my own terribly tedious self story. So much so that it can be one devil of a job putting a stop to it. To cease the constancy of my weaving it. And then, comes the day when I can for some reason, after some directional wind change, I see through it just one tiny little chink. How the intensity of any perceived injury to ones selfhood, is firmly embroidered into it with sutures of my own making.   

I say this, full knowing one of the Buddha's wisest utterances, urged us to become closely familiar with the pain caused by 'the second arrow.' The first arrow being our experience of suffering, the second arrow our response to that suffering. That second arrow being by far the more dangerous to life, because it is entirely a self-inflicted wound, ever so easily embedding itself into 'that story of our self'. Usually with the help of a charitable variation of  'poor me' narrative. And, once ensconced, it sits there like an AIDS virus, waiting for future suffering to provide advantageous circumstances for yet another virulent outbreak of self pity.

With this years extended prolongation of Autumnal mildness, I'd became prematurely lulled into thinking that Winter's onset this year was hopefully delayed. So the arrival of damper, chiller winds and turbulent storms, arrived like an unwelcome salesman at my doorstep. After months and months from spring through to an indian summer, I'd got used to milder weather and the consequent low level of bodily discomfort. Then over the matter of seemingly a mere few days the weather changed, and that discomfort cranked up. Furiously aching joints and muscles, most tender particularly in the hips and lower back. Voltarol gels could do too little to pacify its inflamation and soreness.

One morning, post another fitful incomplete nights sleep, I arose in one cross patch of an internal bad mood. I did not feel well disposed towards my usual morning routine of practice, and this had been increasingly so for a couple of days. I'd sort of struck a deal with myself, to take the level of it all down by a peg or two. To maintain a morsel of connection with the continuity of practice. But by this particular day, the most I could persuade myself to do was to meditate, and that was after quite an extensive period of coercive encouragement. Once I did sit down to meditate, it was clear there was a job of work to do, cultivating a more loving and kinder relationship towards myself. Bring on the Metta bomb.

A Metta Bhavana meditation practice,is most usually a progression of five distinct stages. But this can be stripped down to the simpler mode of it radiating outwards, which given my current level of resistance, was probably advisable. So I began with as much gentle encouragement I could find, to cultivate loving kindness for myself, my body, my mental states, my overall state of being, and then gradually expanding that out to the people surrounding me, to the area, county and country, to the world, to the universe and the cosmos. Wishing all to be existentially well, to be happier, more content and less suffering beings. All its usual generic elements were there, where paradoxically, I was placed at the living centre of my own mettaful cosmos. But by the end, when I got up, the discomfort in my hips and back had quite dramatically diminished. 

All of which caused me to reflect more deeply on the role of the second arrow in suffering. Now I do have osteoarthritis present in some major joints, there is no getting away from that, nor the consequences thereof. And its certainly been my experience that changes in barometric pressure, the severity and depth of weather fronts, can sometimes put my whole body physically on edge. But what this meditation experience pointed out, was how much the depth and prolongation of my bodily aches and pains, can also be due to, in my very being, hating and loathing them on almost an existential level. The self antagonism, once I noticed it, seemed quite obvious.

So much of the intensity of any suffering is down to how you feel about the suffering, not the suffering itself. Now this infinitesimally small insight, does not in itself take away the original cause of the pain or discomfort, but just encourages me to turn off the bloody megaphone. Whenever I start writing about physical ailments and how this or that particular part of this body of mine is aching or aging, it makes me hyper aware of how frequently I use the word 'my' as I write, That I take my body, and my osteoarthritis, and my pain, and my suffering, and my advancing age, and turn them into the largest badge I can wear. One that declares a technicolour statement - 'look on the size of my suffering, you bitches, and despair' .

And there, right there, I stop myself to further remark - my goodness me, how unkind you can be, just in the general castigating tone in which you converse with yourself.  Listen to how the purpose of words dance around from reactivity to insight, then back to reactivity again. It's also to recognise the heavy rainfall that the second arrow brings with it, and how that precipitation forms the precursor and resplendent rainbow of a third, maybe fourth or fifth bit of self injury - should you let it. 

MY OWN WALKING - October Journal 2025

 

In an online talk by American Zen Buddhist teacher Jisho Sara Siebart, she remarked that we shouldn't always be - ' looking for drama to keep our minds active' - that - 'if things are not in alignment with the true Dharma, then we should pivot - and can we do that?'  As a person whose not been averse to indulging in a bit of self stoked melodrama over my life, these comments struck an embarrassing chord. I'm finding it useful to checkout my motivations with this question - Is this Dharma or Drama? 

There are categories of personal drama, each with a varying intensity. There's the Historical Drama, the Melodrama and the Psycho-drama. All dramas, regardless of our level of investment in them, are founded on some very common elements of pleasure or pain, gain or loss, fame or infamy, praise or blame. The Buddha designated them as Worldly Winds, that would buffet you around like a ship on a storm tossed sea, if you let them. These are the sort of elements present in all novels, theatrical plays, movies and TV Soaps which thrive on exploiting there dramatic potential. 

Due to there always being a degree of fictionalising, of scene setting involved, in how we recount our personal dramas. We are mostly retro-fitting our present experience into this readymade semi-fictional tale. One through which we tell ourselves who we think we are, what we are capable of, what we can and cannot do, what we believe the world is like, why other people are behaving in the way they do towards us, etc. You can spot these because they usually begin with - This is how it always is with me - I never get (this that or the other) - I seem destined to be (this that or the other). Basically, an element of fatalism is present.

This is what I'm labelling Historical Drama. Explaining every new experience through the narrow optics of a much rehearsed personal history.  Its an ongoing reinforcement, of a usually detrimental self view. There was a period when I would regularly experience a sense of being trapped in a situation. And that was rarely actually the case. I was more often than not feeling imprisoned by me. There were options, ways out, but I'd not take them because I didn't think I could pull them off or was actively risk averse towards, or scared of the consequences. 

At other times I'd feel a sense of meaninglessness or lack of direction, usually because I was resisting making a clear commitment to an action, and the entropy summoned up, just dragged my mood downwards into a pit of despondency. And that despair completed a self reinforcing negative cycle from meaninglessness to despair and back round again.  Whether I overcame any obstacle I encountered came down to how much initiative, confidence or esteem I believed I had. Even my recounting and attempts to reframe them here, is a form of re-fictionalising, re-editing and re-fixing the story. Tweeking it to show a certain level of retrospective self awareness

There is a difference between Historical Drama and Melodrama and it comes down to how long you are prepared to actively wallow in this state of squandering your time. To intensify the self dramatics and allow yourself to passively flounder and flail. Whenever I've experienced my susceptibility to melodramatics, its been executed as a clearly conscious act. In the fading embers of a love affair, whether the love was reciprocated or not, the tendency to play the tune of 'woe is me' proves irresistible. 

I remember living in my one room bedsit on the Great North Road in East Finchley in the 1980's, donning my headphones and listening loudly to The Smiths - Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time. There was nothing like a melancholy Morrissey lyric to turn up the self pity to tearfulness, in this gay man's romanticised pose. You desire company when you wallow. So lacking a friend, a bit of fellow feeling coming at you through the music deck, makes you feel less completely alone with it. Cranking up the music and the lyrical poetry, would often fulfill that need for me. But, you get my drift, melodrama does require you to over act, to ham it up, to indulge in the melancholy, and to do so with all the self conscious languor you can muster. It delays or conceals any personal necessity to snap out of it, under a comforting duvet of mushy emotionality.

Up to this point all the Historical Drama and Melodrama has largely been an internal conversation within oneself. One that affects one's outer life to a degree. We think certain things, but at the same time we know this is just us, and will prove to have little to no substance if exposed to reality. The Psycho-Drama, however, starts to believe in the reality of those internal misconceptions. Becoming obsessed with the Worldly Winds to an exaggerated extent. Fixating on perhaps one of these - pleasure or pain, gain or loss, fame or infamy, praise or blame, and begin to lose a grip on sanity through it. I personally have no experience of this. Though I guess like many of us, we can sense, even in our internal small talk, the seeds of something unhealthy, that if given too much credence and belief could potentially unhinge you. We, might instinctively back away, but some sadly tip right over into it. 

Then it comes to the concluding part of Jisho Sara Seibert's comment -'if things are not in alignment with the true Dharma, then we should pivot, and can we do that?'  In the 1980's when I found myself in trough's of despondency, I'd eventually tire of myself being in this state, with its incessant wallowing and pivot out of it. Usually I found a new direction to move in, beginning some new project or pursuing a fresh interest, but it could sometimes be simply changing the furniture around in my flat, or more dramatically moving to a new town, or starting a new job. 

At some point I came to realise any nihilistic tendency only went so far before an equal and opposite force kicked in. That somewhere inside of me I had hope, a confidence in the possibility of things becoming better. The nihilism never fully accords with my core beliefs. This positive resilience, a faith in the good, though hard to hold onto is worth reminding oneself of. It does not permanently solve anything, you will undoubted have further dark nights of the soul, you're human after all. I personally have found practicing Buddhism has helped me immensely, in moving away from becoming too involved in internalised Historical Dramas and unhelpful worldly concerns. And I imagine other faiths may provide a similar direction for someone to reorient themselves towards. Learning how to pivot towards whatever is positive and real, is a life skill worth acquiring.

MY OWN WALKING - Second September Journal 2025

The last few days I have found very challenging to maintain any degree of  equilibrium. Fascists marching in their hundreds of thousands in Central London. And the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the US and its still unfolding consequences. Have raised quite a potent and very turbulent response within me. I'm frustrated, angry even, but mainly quite fearful for where our country might be headed, and what that may mean for anyone whose rights and freedom of speech can be easily marginalised.

At the same time the online Commit To Sit programme I've been engaging with over the last ninety days is within days of coming to an end. And we have reached the concluding quality of the 8 Qualities of a Good Person -To not engage in useless or spurious argument. And its meaning and purpose is quite specific, useless or spurious argument is anything not focused upon clarifying or is in alignment with, the true nature of reality. So this is rather highlighting, particularly today, how much my thoughts and feelings, my mental preoccupations, are being completely taken over by current events Lets just say I've been doing quite a lot of very bumpy Metta Bhavana and Just Sitting practice.

I'd not been aware of Charlie Kirk until this week. I had no idea he was a such big influencer and supporter of Trump.  And when you hear his self satisfied views on women, trans issues, black people, and anyone whose views might be called woke or progressive, those opinions are so darkly perverted ones that they are truly horrendous to hear coming out of another human being. How he could even think himself a Christian beggars belief. Then I heard he was a free speech advocate who was happy to enter into debate. So I thought well at least he got that right, he was prepared to engage. But positioning himself under a gazebo that says Prove Me Wrong, says a lot about him and the whole confrontational set up. Watching these college debates is a bit like seeing fluffy kittens ritually fed to an apex predator and being publicly eviscerated. Its not pretty, nor a respectful form of debate. Its quite an ugly spectacle.

But then there are plenty of people with horrendous opinions in this world, none of them deserve to be killed because of them. I've found myself parroting that line, because as a supporter of free speech and democracy you are expected to say this sort of thing. And I certainly do not wish to engage in further inflaming an already dangerously polarised situation. My actual feelings, beneath that veneer of democratic principle, are a good deal more conflicted and morally muddy than that. There is some empathy for his young loss of life and the consequent suffering of his wife and children, but it feels more muted than I'd expect of myself. It's seems more like a performative exercise in empathy, ambivalent in tone, not fully heartfelt. And I wondered why that was.

I've come to the conclusion my responses are somewhat compromised by hearing the sort of divisive and provocatively offensive speech he engaged in. He was a very significant contributor in creating the sort of incendiary situation where he, or anyone else some individual doesn't agree with, could now be killed, and another tear in the fabric of social cohesion is formed. He didn't deserve to die, but he was instrumental in making a politically inspired assassination, whether on the left or right, more likely to happen. That even murder is now an acceptable response. He was a provocateur, and once you descend down that route you cannot fully predict what wild and uncontrollable consequences you might poke into life in some 'random' vigilante. I mean he said there were situations when gun violence and loss of life was acceptable. Anyone who so casually stokes the fire, may experience blow back that burns them too.Sad to say.

None of this is remotely useful in moving myself towards understanding the true nature of reality. Is it useful or spurious argument according to its limited parameters? Well I've found it helpful.  I felt the need to lay out all the constituent parts in my response and be as honest as I can be about what I'm actually feeling and thinking, as opposed to what a good Buddhist or citizen is expected to say. Because leaving all the tangled moral mess of it inside my head, was not remotely doing any good for my mental states. As in all spiritual practice, you start from knowing exactly where you currently are, and attempt to move forward from there.

 

MY OWN WALKING - September Journal 2025

What do I do with anger when it arises? Do I allow myself to express it or feel it fully? Have I an automatic habit of concealing it away like some unforgivable sin that must never been seen by anyone, least of all me, in the full light of day? There are good reasons to question whether simply ignoring it or repressing ones anger is ever a good thing. For if this is a tendency in one's life in general, then it can also seep into any form of spiritual practice you take up, whatever the religious tradition. To bury or conceal unacceptable emotional responses. After all, anger has had a very bad press, because the behaviour that can arise as a result of it, is so frequently reprehensible. Anger goes straight onto the Naughty Step - unexamined.

Much of my present day responses to anger, are childlike ones. I remember my Mother in particular, being right on it the moment I lost, or was near losing, my temper, I was out of the room, sent to my bedroom until I'd calmed down. My being bad tempered was not allowed public expression. Both of my parents appeared uncomfortable with physical punishment of mine or my sister's misdemeanors. They did it out of social expectation and undoubted necessity. My Mother, I can assure you, had a well practiced stinger of a slap to the back of the thigh. She always threatened me with my Father who, like most of us, was rightfully afeared of what might emerge from our own depths, should we direct our anger towards anything or anyone. 

Both of my parents could express their mild frustrations or of being peeved, but outright incandescent with anger I don't recall ever having really seen. The first time I saw and heard my Mother swear 'Fuck' out loud, I dissolved into uncontrollable hysterics. And similarly seeing your parents angry can put them into a more relatable context, which also makes it easier for you to be angry. Unless, of course that parental anger becomes abusive violence towards you. Then they can become this raging beast unchained from all proper restraint - and be damaging to you then and in later life.

Yet, as John Lydon once sang 'Anger is an Energy' and energy can be expended, vented, released, contained, suppressed, managed, felt, channeled, directed, fueled or bottled up, to throw a few verbs up in the air, just to fall and moisten the parched emotional ground. For often once it has been released, anger does tend to dissolve into tears, we find ourselves weeping out of a sense of shame or regret, or for something we've lost, grieving for a life spent in a state of self betrayal, tears over not being true to ourselves sooner. There is a lot more living beneath our anger, than any upfront loudly sounding rage might at first reveal. And I can certainly recognise in myself, a tendency to run for cover into silent retreat, before the any sign of losing my temper can even emerge. It is, hence, rare that I've had to publicly acknowledge or apologise for my being angry,

Unspoken anger, if not found a safe outlet, is similar to corking a bottle of sparkling water, each and every minor ensuing josh and knock, causes it to froth and fizz inside. Until at some point one small trip up, just pops the cork off, and out it all spills in an effervescent fountain of rage. And I've certainly had experience of an anger that has suddenly exploded out of me. It's been so infrequent, that its taken others as well as me by surprise with the power of it, the immediacy of it, and the sheer uncontrolled ferocity of experiencing myself enraged. It didn't feel like this was really me at all. And yet, it was, and what did that say about me? What turbulent depths of resentment had I been sitting on for so long? Why had my frustration with something relatively minor boiled over to the point of a rage beyond all self control? 

I've tried to identify themes in the looking for causes, and they're more suggestive than conclusive. Because I tend to touch on my anger, if I feel I'm not being understood, misunderstood, misjudged, patronised, belittled, dismissed or corrected, basically, when I'm not being heard out fully or properly. Those are the extroverted projected outwards versions of their more introverted self critical parents - I can't make myself understood, I'm always being misunderstood, misjudged, patronised, belittled, dismissed or corrected and I'm fucking annoyed at forever not being truly heard. When its power is not neutered by being generalised, you discover the vein of disgruntlement once you fully own it, and present it in your specific voice.

The experience of being bullied and gay undoubtedly fed into any anger I still hold. How could it not? Having your very self maligned, motives and behaviour misjudged, in your impressionable youth, by people who just want to silence those 'effin poofs.' Plus all of your teenage years and early adulthood, of concealing, lying and misrepresenting who you are to your family and friends, and to the wider world, for fear of their anger, disapproval or rejection. And even today, I can't imagine encounters with anyone whose opinions I might not agree with, without expecting foul mouthed judgement. But also out of a fear that, despite any earnest intention to keep cool, calm and collected, that I'll unforgivably lose my temper during a conversation. So, yes, I like most folk, do have a residue of inexpressible anger festering away somewhere in my psyche. Its there, patiently waiting for some incident to light the blue touch paper. But at sixty eight, I've become adept at dodging situations where 'le macho brute' might be manifesting.

Here in North Norfolk, it can all seem very placid and unflappably rural. We live a happily self contained life within its safe parameters, and its picket fences built in. However, Hubby and I do see very clearly in some peoples faces and body language, in the everyday streets of Sheringham, that they find our homosexual presence angers them. That our mere existence is offensive to some, whose tolerance barely goes skin deep. We laugh it off, but its also a reminder too. Not to take our present easy life for granted. There are a lot of hate filled people out there, some of whom believe themselves to be Christians!

The other day I was reading some comments on a post I'd made on the Community Forum for The Commit To Sit practice period, with the New York Zen Center, I'm taking part in. And one persons comments just started triggering anger in me. And I could see that it was for all the usual reasons I've listed before. In fact I stopped posting on the Forum for a while, because this same person appeared to pounce on my every post, to leave a largely unhelpful and unasked for critical feedback, in a bizarrely disconnected manner of expression. It was so odd I thought they might conceivably be an AI bot or at least someone for whom English is a second language. I considered responding with feedback of my own, but then thought twice about that being remotely advisable given the nature of online forums. I could also be in danger of misdiagnosing the intentions of someone I do not know, just like they were doing. But the anger, again that interested me.

And I guess that is one way to respond to one's anger, in the same way we would to anything else that arises into our mind or experience. To take a kindly interest. To observe it, as much as you are able, from the outside in. Be better informed about the territory, the feel of it, without becoming completely engaged with the complex ring of justifications one might defend angers existence with. To recognise the qualitative difference between feeling angry and being angry. Being out and out angry is rarely instructive, whereas feeling one's anger could be. Sometimes there may be good reason for you to feel angry, and its useful to know and be in touch with that. Whether any anger needs to be expressed has to be left to personal judgement. Can you state that you are angry, without letting anyone feel the full force of it?  Anger certainly changes things, but its unpredictable whether that will be for the best

In Buddhism, awareness itself is considered a revolutionary experience, because once you truly see something for what it is, you cannot ever become unaware of it again. Without becoming outwardly expressive of one's anger, you can come to understand the emotional landscape it regularly inhabits. Exhume it from being buried under the rubble of mistaken suppression. And remember, whether we express or suppress, anger is very human, however regrettable that its come to this. At some point there will be tears.

 

MY OWN WALKING - August Journal 2025

 

There are days when I believe I'm clearheaded and can truly see myself for who I really am. I find I'm  internally giving myself a good ticking off, and castigating my reflection -'What a fraud you are'. Any notion of my Buddhist practice being even moderately effective, becomes viewed as a cloak of self deceit I've hidden behind. I'm just effectively faking it all out of habit. And this day, of all days, that crumbling facade has suddenly been ripped away for all to see. In the harsh raking light of this coruscating self view, nothing could survive its instinct to purge. Its one brief moment where you contact 'the right winger nut job within' and have a self destructive riot on your hands. If you should let it.

This is one manifestation of religious self doubt, accompanied by the added frisson of some self flagellation. And who doesn't get off on a bit of that? It takes the form of Religious Practice Imposter Syndrome. That the truth might actually be a little less stridently certain, seems in that moment entirely beside the point. However, there is always a grain of truth in any of our reactions, otherwise why else would we take them so seriously? But there is a loss of perspective, particularly of the broader reality, because we've become obsessively drawn into elements in 'our small story' as Koshin Paley Ellison calls it. 

Whatever I choose to spiritually practice, will always be imperfectly executed. It depends on the extent to which I allow myself to be taken in by my greediness for progress, by my self hatred ,or most likely some delusion in how I perceive myself, or want to be perceived by others. So the idea that my practice could be any good, becomes, at best, a semi-fraudulent assertion in my mind. Their is a desire for it to be perfect, and I become self critical because I still feel myself to be falling short in relation to the lofty distance of my ideal of perfection. 

My practice is rarely as good or bad as what I'm saying it is, or would like to believe it is. It is never absolutely dreadful nor absolutely perfect, but is simply where I am at in this moment. One can unintentionally crucify oneself on the cross of perfection, or the lack of it. Whether religious or secular our obsession with the pursuit of perfection can literally be the death of life. After thousands of years of non-achievement of absolute perfection, you'd think we'd hang a bit more loose with it. But no, people are regularly hung out to dry at the slightest ethical laxity, or simply holding an opinion you do not yourself approve of. Often by people who are far from exemplary themselves. But then, its much easier to find fault in, and to punish others, than face one's own short comings publicly with the same frankly puritan fervor.

Spiritual practice could be seen as an imaginative fictional travelogue, with constant course corrections, as we take this journey to see how well we can traverse this path, to make some progress and hopefully transform ourselves. Personal ethics is then, always in a constantly evolving state of being a work in progress. If I do these things I may eventually become a better person all round, whilst still not yet being perfectly Enlightened. So any practice I'm doing may indeed appear to others to be falling short. But I am slowly being enlightened by it, even if I can feel a bit of a fraud occasionally, when time seems to be dragging its heals.

None of this has to be seen as a bad thing. We are always a mix of often quite contrary impulses, that makes any practice we are doing seem such a pretense. Yes, that means its fractionally a lie, but that  also implies its fractionally true too. Gradually overtime, if we maintain our efforts, the default scales will shift from being weighted towards 'its all a lie'  towards being 'its all true'. We are always, as they say ' faking it till we make it'. 

But all this, undoubtedly, makes handling the Religious Practice Imposter Syndrome tricky, when it does arise. Because, yeah, I'll be honest, after thirty plus years of practice, I'm still 'faking it ' a lot of the time. I fall short of the ideal constantly. Our aspirations for perfection are not remotely helpful, and these often lead to the worst sort of rigidly inflexible personal practices. Believe me I know, from personal experience. To borrow a line from Shakespearee's Macbeth, we all suffer from 'vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself'. In other words we really are getting way way ahead of ourselves here. 

( Is there a place for ambition in the spiritual life? - Discuss.) 

And yet, and yet, lets take one step back and take in a slightly larger perspective here. We tend to operate in a world of practice built around the dualities, of this verses that, likes verses dislikes, good verses bad, perfect verses imperfect, I want this but not that, etc. But the Buddha was very clear that this human tendency to reduce everything to a moral conflict between states and ideas in opposition, ultimately will be shown to not be the whole truth of the matter. That these dualistic misconceptions are at root a delusion that subsequently poison all of our perceptions. Whilst we are still imperfect in our perceptions, whilst we are still deluded, its really hard to see that. I just want to get it right, but I'm not yet Enlightened, so aren't I getting it a teeny weeny bit - wrong? You can see how that might be a problem can't you?