FAVE RAVE - UtsuwagakU

You know, sometime in hopefully the longer distant future. I'll be in my last days on earth and someone will say ' Put a video of an obscure Japanese craft person skilfully making something, you know how Mr Lumb loves them' and the last thing I'll watch as I depart my mortal coil will be a ceramic tea pot being hand made. And I'll be winsomely happy as I pass over to the other side.

STREAMING FAVE RAVE - Baumgartner Restoration

My love of watching craft makers at work cannot currently be sated by The Repair Shop.  I've watched them all. I've searched further afield for my fix, eventually coming across Julian Baumgartner on You Tube. Currently I can't quite get enough of watching his working process. I am in awe.

The work demands someone who is methodical and patient. Lots of scraping away, thoughtful slow careful preparation, the time he takes over this is simply astounding. These are obviously edited videos, often speeded up filming to fit into a half hour or hours running time. Then there is the cleaning, executed in rhythmic circular motions taking off just the dirt and varnish, but no more. If it won't come off with gentle solvents, then its stronger ones, and if these are ineffective then he scratches the residual old varnish off bit by tiny bit with a scalpel. All of these processes cannot be hurried and may take hours and hours and hours.

All the while he's not getting into a flap. His tables, unlike mine, never get messy or disorganised. He makes sure he takes regular breaks from the tediousness of some tasks. He knows how to look after his mental health. Loves the restoration part but is used to delaying his gratification sometimes for days. Then there are the decisions he has to make about what he is or isn't going to conserve, how far he is going to take his restoration, what his client wants and what he can deliver.

Here is one just so you get the feeling for its fascinating minimalism. Be warned its addictive and some of his videos have several sequences to be watched.

FEATURE - The Making of a 'Reliquary'

A few years ago Hubby and I were walking the Pilgrim Way back from our first visit to the The Slipper Chapel in Walsingham. At the side of the road we passed a discarded wheel hub. Having walked on I was suddenly struck by an idea for it, so popped back to pick it up. Having seen a few reliquaries of saints and the great catholic good in the Slipper Chapel, I thought I'd make one.

Once home, I primed and painted it a dark red base colour. I ordered ten miniature glass vials from E bay, Thinking they might make suitable receptacles for 'reliquary' objects, whatever they turned out to be. I created a long collage artwork out of painted wood off-cuts to form a suitable background support. Everything then hung about in my workshop draped in plastic, as other events interrupted the creative flow and I lost sight of how I intended to take it forward. So it stayed awaiting the return of time and inspiration, for what turned out to be a number of years.

Fast forward to the most recent lock down. Once we started our regular Art Club day, completing the Reliquary Project resurfaced. I decided what each of the ten vials would contain - things that in some way represented me, my interests and enthusiasms. These turned out to be:~

1) Writing - a poem written by me
2) DNA - beard shavings
3) Gay/Camp -a strip of cut gems in the colour of the gay rainbow flag.
4) Painting - a strip painted in gouache in a geometric design
5) Music - a playlist for my funeral *** (links at bottom of this post )
6) North Norfolk - filled with sand from Sheringham Beach
7) Churches & Architecture - a painting of a pointed arch window
8) Buddhism - a stick of incense
9) Dogen - a written extract from the Genjo Koan
10) Craft Making - a cabled string of yarn

I was surprised how quickly everything came together in the end. It was as if all that time elapsing had narrowed down all the options about how best to complete it. So now its mounted on its background and forms part of my shrine in the craft room / shrine space / spare room.

Reliquary Playlist *** ( with You Tube Links )

1) T Rex - 20th Century Boy 2) Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime 3) David Bowie - Aladdin Sane 4) A Certain Ratio - Flight 5) Elbow - One Day Like This 6) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wonderful Life 7) Sparks - The Decline & Fall of Me 8) Cocteau Twins - Musette & Drums 9) Wild Beasts - End Come Too Soon 10) Strauss - "Beim Schlafengehen" Four Last Songs ( Jesse Norman )

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Contributing

" Our role as creative people is
to just show up with the stuff.
To go on the journey
and to not take it personally.

Figuring out how to be a productive contributor
is the creative way. 

Its how we move forward."

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Resistance

 

"Resistance is our way of getting ourselves off the hook.

Resistances provide us with a shroud to hide ourselves behind.

Peace of mind (in relation to resistances) means -
you accept that there are waves in the ocean
that each wave that comes will be different
and that surfing them is the whole point."

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Reassurance

"Reassurance is Futile.

It's futile because the person who reassures us
that its all going to be OK,
cannot possibly know that.

Seeking reassurance is a trap.

What we need to know is
that people have our back,
that when it doesn't work someone has got us
that they will help us try again,
help show us where to go to next."

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Impostor Syndrome

"If you are doing something
that you've never done before,
how can you know if its going to work?
You can't.

If you don't feel like you are an impostor in this situation, you might not be trying hard enough.

Whenever you feel like you are an impostor
remind yourself, you are on to something."

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Writer's Block

 "Writer's Block is a myth.

Your ideas don't come from outside, but inside you.

Writer's block is a socially acceptable name for -  

'I'm afraid of my bad writing,
and because I'm afraid of my bad writing,
I'm afraid to write at all'

If I say I am blocked,
I don't have to encounter my bad writing.

So what I encourage you to do here
is to get over your fear 
of writing badly

You do that by writing"

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work
from Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

SOME WORDS OF SETH GODIN - On Failure

" We cannot do creative work
unless we are prepared to accept the fact
that creative projects don't always succeed.

Failure is an event, not a person.

What would you do if you knew from the start
you were going to fail?

What would be worth doing anyway?"

SETH GODIN - In his lecture on Mindfulness & Creativity at Work - as part of Love & Resilience - The Contemplative Care Summit, 2021.

POEM - To Surrender To The Other

Flint-hearted, am I
the one pure pebble
cast amongst a whole terrace
of football hooligans 
stratified banks of them
all similarly rounded, the
roughly the same, some laid intact
others cracked, holed, bruised
shattered in half. yet all
differently coloured
pattern mottled
placed in ever shifting hierarchies
where size matters, each prepared
to surrender to the other,
to rub up along with and against
each stone cold cheek
in tidal increments, a movement
inward, along the beaches
tossing and turning like opals learning
how to erode and be smoothed
by the hug of the moon
through our collisions and encounters
with the other, though
causally gathered together
we remain totally alone
on the long long journey
towards the becoming of sand
locked in a ruttling percussive rumba
within the sea of maracas.

written September 2020
Stephen Lumb

  

POEM - Reassembling Sleep

disquieted

at 2am, alerted to

sleeplessness and the perception

of being quite alone with it

tinged with a fear, that

never being able to curl up, ever again,

is a distinct possibility, such is this moment,

such is me, such a watery gaze I have

both lost in and founded upon the beat

that my heart hits, it feels louder,

more insistent here

as penetrating as a smoke alarm

as bodily resonant as

the alarmist emotions

explode into a galloping rhythm

wah u wah u wah, why

do I waver, between flooding

and no access to tear ducts

for love, for myself

for no one's love

do I despair more

because I cannot dream?

lying in bed, bodily still

yet quavering over the smallest passing

of one period of time

being alive, is where everything

turns into emptiness

none of which hurts

and I don't scream out

as the darkness hums

all around like a soft blanket

muffling against my breath

there is always the quiet drum rolls

and a tympany of rain

the stubble on my head

feeling brushed by the hand of static

or was it my Mother? whichever it is

I am drop dead tired

yet too alive and affiliated

at 2am, for any

reassembling of sleep.

written July 2020
Stephen Lumb

POEM - Signposts

arrows point to places

where we cannot ignore

their niggardly pointing

for even a blithe while

firmly gesturing towards

some where, a pinnacle or cleft

confidently affirmative yet never

as sloppily indirect as our feelings

with their under stated destination

more or less empowered with

passions and prejudices unrolling

along a rough puff trajectory

from whence, from whom

to whom, to whence and not 

to mention all the burdensome

patient travelling in between

distances and speed measured

with calipers and inked onto paper

scratched out in a shower of regret

or the dribbling away of purpose

there is the urge, and the urgency

of the urging, the self sabotage, the prod

of old dreams and demons that kick back, 

a blindfolded face pressed against signposts

anxious fingers wrinkling the flesh

of daily time and exigency, never

reach the point of causing wounds

whilst issuing coordinates from virtual maps

that conjecture our desires to be

this way, no, not that, but this way,

I said, this way, not away, 

or the way away, but to be towards

the cunning edge of life's travel package

where the unforeseen piercing 

of an arrow arrives at the intended target

a brittle truth, layed out and pinned down.

written June/July 2020

Stephen Lumb

POEM - Through

It is breaking
breaking through
in shards,
and the fizzing of atoms,
sunlight breaks through
filtered, ripening the atmosphere
into blue diffused azure
through
clouds and tree branches
it passes
through a patterned glass door
through the soft net folds
of its curtain
on it persists
slipping through the cracks
between true
nature and false nature
the pleasure and mood
of our being undeserving of it
but it does break through even that
with paintings of adamantine beauty
soft glowing abstractions
smeared across emulsion walls
dabbled over un-hoovered dirt
gently resting upon the surface tufts
of an old beige carpet
the world is receptive
to a light that is free to all
the pure evangelical experience of sunlight
arrives without cherubs or trumpets,
as an unearned gift
a kindhearted reminder, to wake up,
eat breakfast, but above all
to wake up.

written May 2020

Stephen Lumb

ARTICLE - Aesthetic Awakenings

Aesthetic Awakenings - To Art

It was the fulfilment of a long held wish to visit The Van Gogh Museum  in Amsterdam. Van Gogh being my first artistic love. It was such an immense pleasure to see all his fabulous paintings laid out in front of me. It was like conversing with old familiar friends. I ambled slowly around the busy galleries, trying to soak up as much as possible, staring for longer when I came across particular favourites. Then as I turned one corner on the wall facing me was a picture I hadn't seen before. It was a simple painting of a woodland floor called Undergrowth. The moment my eyes saw it I instantly felt a pulse of ecstatic energy awakened in me. This moved from head to foot and back again like a bliss filled strobe. This continued for some time, until that analytical bit of my brain kicked its way through my motionless transfixed state. I then rushed around trying to locate where my husband was to tell him what had just happened.

This type of embodied thrill of experience is not an everyday experience for me. I can only recollect two other occasions with a similar intensity. One, being strongly moved spiritually by a the oscillating shimmer of Rothko's brushstrokes, another, was a second painting of Van Gogh's called Long Grasses with Butterflies. It is significant that both experiences with the Van Gogh's were simple paintings of the ground - woodland undergrowth and grasses. That said, I don't need to fully pin down why this might be, I'm content to leave this with a little aura of mystery. To intellectually explain everything might rationalise it out of existence. My heart understands.

Aesthetic awakenings to art can span a wide spectrum of feeling, from fondness, to besotted love to full blown bliss. The opposite ( aesthetic terminations?) is also true when indifference shifts to mild dislike and ends up in violent hatred. However strongly a piece of art strikes us its leaving an indelible mark upon our perception and being. We tend to judge the worth of art based on our feelings, of our likes and dislikes, by its monetary value, or according to the current fashion, the personal taste of whether it would go with your curtains. If we stayed loyal to that first aesthetic awakening we would know it has nothing to do with any of those things. Once we've made the decision we like or dislike something, its then become solely an object for intellectual curiosity. Seeking out further information to back up and validate whatever our initial response was. The aesthetic awakening disappears beneath our analysis.

As soon as matters of taste or intellect become the primary mode, our way of swimming in the aesthetic awakening to an artwork, then enters the shallower end of the pool. We have moved from a pure aesthetic experience to one that propagates ideas and judgements, where well defined interpretive boundaries begin being set up. We cease being receptive to anything not previously filtered and passed through this self vetting. The aesthetic awakening becomes incorporated into your self view, as an informed discerning person with the sensitivity and refined form of taste required to experience this sort of thing.

Aesthetic Awakenings - To The Truth

When I first heard The Four Noble Truths my initial response was like an aesthetic awakening.  My spirits were uplifted at being given important sustenance. Since then I've had a few such significant moments, when I first heard the Ten Precepts, when I first heard the words of Dogen from his Instruction To The Tenzo, to name two. Each time they resonated with an often unrecognised need within me. Suddenly I was awakened to a different way of seeing my self or the world.  I could never go back to how I was before. Sometimes the spiritual path is a gradual evolution in our awareness and opening up to a truth, but these aesthetic awakenings are more abrupt revolutions, overturning our previous way of perceiving. Its the essence of vidya an aesthetic knowledge or intuitive sense for the truth when its laid out before you.

Afterwards of course you think about it endlessly, often in great detail. You read the background books and learn all you can. This is what the intellect is good at, explaining and expanding the breadth of your understanding. This intellectual rationalisation of an aesthetic awakening has a unfortunate side effect of neutering the original experience. Creating inhibiting obstacles that further direct communication of the truth has to overcome. Our practice can turn into one of self-improvement, refining personal spiritual tastes and self-expression, where openness and receptivity get demoted or lost.

I know I have particular preferences for certain types of Dharma, I hold that these are things that 'work for me'. Overtime these self-definitions can close down experiencing anything that doesn't quite fit within the autobiographical brief I've now set out for myself. I create an equally strong dislike to reinforce my strong like. Though knowing what works for you can be useful, when times get difficult you need to know where to go to find sources for inspiration, support and guidance. At times my hold on faith deserts me. Time and again reading Dogen reminds and reconnects me.

I recently experienced a strong aversion whilst studying The Diamond Sutra.  Its a text I've read numerous times over the years and not had any noticeable difficulty with before. The Diamond Sutra should never be light reading, it is extremely challenging, the repetitive literary style alone can be confronting. But, considering my familiarity with it, the vehemence of my indignation and frustration, took me completely by surprise. I was struggling to find a way of relating to it.  I found myself trotting out all sorts of self justifications, why this translation of the Diamond Sutra wasn't a good one, as a teaching I connect better with impermanence rather than sunyata, that studying it just didn't work for me. This wasn't a lack of intellectual understanding, this was emotional and personal, it was about my individualistic preferences being traduced, the exclusivity of particular Dharmic preferences. I was putting up a fight with these and resisting engaging or changing them with all my might.

Like with art, whenever someone pulls out justifications of taste or intellectual rationalisations for why a Dharma text doesn't work for them, we have entered the same shallower end of the pool.  I'd turned away from the possibility of an aesthetic awakening and tuned in to Radio Self Justification. There are artists whose work I didn't like or understand when I first came across them, whom I now really love, value and appreciate. Partly what changed was me or my perspective, over time I'd become more receptive. Usually I'd encountered something that provided a way in, an aesthetic sense for how to appreciate what the artist was trying to do.

Our responses to Sutras and other Dharma texts can follow very similar pathways. You may simply not be ready for it yet, but how will you know when you are if you walk away every time you encounter it? My resistance and insistence upon dislike was flagging up that I needed to sit with and hear what lies beneath this response. There will be a way for you to appreciate any text. But this needs to be allowed to emerge, unsolicited and arriving often from an unexpected direction. Whatever way they arrive, they will arrive despite our reservations, because we've been willing to stay open and stay with it.

Rather than over indulging in emotional re-activity and rationalisations for why its justified to loath The Diamond Sutra. I'm trying to take a step back, to not close and bolt the door entirely against it. Trying to stay open to the possibility that the inflexible nature of my views could change. Remaining patient with both the Sutra and myself. For the time may come, when something will present a particular key to a teaching, an aesthetic awakening that opens up the Sutra and point out a way to the truth.

A SPIRITUAL BASTING - Put Your Awakened Mind To Work.

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practise in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo.

Put Your Awakened Mind To Work

The Chanyuan Qinggui also says, 'Put your awakened mind to work'

A spirit of deep seated nihilism like an incurable infection is raging through the Western psyche. It sits silently, like an Aids virus within the body politic, of our society, economics, politics and culture, ready at any moment to drain them of resistance, to have the life purged from them. Contemporary art is not exempt from this. In its heart lies a profound cynicism that gorges upon its own pretences and delusions. Paradoxically, what stands for the avante-garde these days, acts according to very predictable, even safe conventions; it must be provocative, be socially, morally or politically challenging, it must flout or break taboos, be hostile, aggressive, anarchic, gratuitous and cruel towards its subject matter, to decry what is beautiful as fake. Art has always had a crucial role in defining and representing the nature of humanity and civilisation to itself, but its rarely been quite as lifeless, ephemeral or slight, as visually and intellectually opaque, as now. Art is showing us a Western civilisation that has entered a darkened room from which no light is allowed to escape.

There is little kindness to this art, it points towards human suffering, but sees in it only a talismanic form of aesthetic truth, neutered and stripped of tangible feeling or empathy. Whilst it might bring an artist fame, it wont necessarily bring that artist, nor the people who view their art, towards a wiser and more compassionate outlook. Its objects and objectives are slaves to nihilistic derision. If modern art is holding up a mirror, its showing us the twisted mind, the corrupted soul of our modern self obsessed world. Its difficult to see in any of this the work of an awakened mind, it appears to 'lack the spirit' of the Bodhisattva.

I am no Bodhisattva, and do not consciously know of any in my life. I have not by any stretch of the imagination had a 'vision of things as they really are'. I've been lucky enough to have discovered Buddhism, studied its teachings and can, at least, imaginatively conceive of its ultimate aim. My eyes have been a tiny bit opened up by all of this, but I do not fully comprehend. I continue instinctively to re-invigorate the desire to clean myself up and look through a mud smeared windscreen for clarity of vision.

Achieving Insight rarely happens instantaneously in the moment as portrayed in Zen history. Insight is dependent and predicated upon a daily seeing through aspects of ones thoughts, behaviour and life events. Noticing the minutia of ordinary life and interpreting what is seen through a closely focused Buddhist lens. It is all right before our very eyes, though we mostly miss it because we suffer from a form of spiritual glaucoma. Part of our perception is obscured by delusive ideas about ourselves and the world we live and work within. Though our insightfulness is out of focus we are always in the process of sharpening it, of 'awakening to awakening'. Whatever the state of awakening my mind has currently reached, I put that 'awakening mind' to work in my day to day existence, within whatever I do, including my artistic creative process..

Whether creating art or creating a meal both involve a similar process for the individuals involved.  All the general human neuroses, paranoia's, mental habits, emotional mood swings and fluctuations of feeling are present whilst making a meal or a piece of art. Whatever we do in life is a creative act, humanity is forever conjuring something out of nothing. I was once a Kitchen Porter, which in my experience could feel like one long physically demanding drudge if you let it. Constantly cleaning crockery, cutlery, pots and pans of the residue, of the half finished remains of someones delectable coq au van. Its a restorative act of creativity, returning crockery and cutlery to a sterilised pristine finish. Serving the cook, the meal and the next customer who eats off that plate. Its similar to priming a canvas, preparing a surface to serve something beautiful upon.

There will most likely be feelings of worthlessness or meaninglessness present there too. But these are present wherever we hope for purposeful fulfilment but our feelings tell us we are trapped in barren conditions. A fertile seed plonked in apparently infertile ground for growth. Yet I can feel a similar feeling of utter pointlessness even with the artistic process and its outcome. Moving from happy elation to thunderous frustration in the click of a moment. Still and concentrated one minute, slipping into tense nervousness. Inspired and on a creative roll then wallowing in despondency, feelings of stagnation or a generalised sense of dull stuckness. Confidence and self doubt swap places in an instant. Which all indicates that its not just about the nature of the job but what we want or do not get from it. The search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless and indifferent world is the essence of the human predicament.

Though we are all searching for fulfilment through whatever we are doing, we can sometimes find its is intermittent or absent altogether. Our sense for what fulfilment is and where it can be found is often misplaced. Its as though we are gazing up into a bright blue sky looking for a lost contact lens that's slipped somewhere underneath the sofa. But when we yearn for self- fulfilment what are we talking about? A clue lies in the hyphenation of self with fulfilment.

Its not that we can't find fulfilment through the things we do, we can, but its a fleeting impermanent one. One hundred percent job satisfaction is not really possible. Even a dream ideal job will have its moments of boredom where unsatisfactory feelings will raise their ugly head. Looking for long lasting fulfilment through worldly things is an endeavour with a predictable inconsistent outcome. The Buddha spoke of eight Worldly Winds that can easily sweep our happy contented fulfilment off course if we let them. These come formulated as four pairings of opposites - Praise & Blame - Fame & Infamy - Loss & Gain - Pleasure & Pain. Whenever one or two of these become present in whatever job we are doing, then 'I want' or 'I don't want' whats happening will start to foul the sweet air.

It is the self that 'does or does not want'. The self is the thing that seeks fulfilment, but what is the nature of that self and can it ever be truly satisfied?  Once you start examining the self, you wonder where exactly does it abide and find you're dealing with a very slippery customer indeed. One of the things that becomes quickly apparent is that our sense of self requires constant reaffirmation. Its like an animal constantly hungry for attention, to be fed, stroked and pampered. If our self desires fulfilment its because it has this sense of a lack, of a void inside that needs filling full, an existential emptiness. The self fears it doesn't possess a stable permanent existence and creates events and new exciting things to distract us from this rather discomforting fact. Our sense of self is more a verb than a noun. If self-fulfilment can't be found in this job, well lets change jobs. change partner, change house, change your location, change your entire life. Self-fulfilment is always over the next horizon.

Though the search for self-fulfilment is perfectly understandable given the existential imperative, it remains a bit of a dream we are unwilling to wake up from. Trying to dodge the effects of the Worldly Winds as we progress into the future is a never ending task, one bound to fail at some point. So the first things to put your 'awakening mind' to work on is - what is your self seeking fulfilment from and how realistic is that? How much are the Worldly Winds still directing your daily actions? You put your 'awakening mind' to work on the parts of your experience you are still not fully aware of. The things you are still sound asleep to,










  

A SPIRTUAL BASTING ~ The Bodhisattva Spirit Aroused

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practise in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo.

The Bodhisattva Spirit Aroused

' Carried out by teachers settled in the way and by others who have aroused the bodhisattva spirit within themselves'

If you thought being a cook was a menial job, then think again. Its hard work, where good planning and preparation are more than half the task. Not just anyone who fancies a bit of large scale cooking can actually do it. In a monastery kitchen there is an additional requirement for that cook to also be a teacher, of the practicalities of cooking certainly, but more importantly to guide the spiritual practice of their novice kitchen assistants. Cooking here is a personal practice until the depth and richness of it leaves the taste of Enlightenment on their palate.

To be a teacher, you have to know what it is you have to teach, the resources, knowledge and experience you can draw on and impart. These cook/teachers aren't just 'settling' but have to be 'settled in the way'  No need for further sorting out, its largely resolved. So whilst we may not be looking at fully fledged Enlightened Masters here, they come close. Dedicated to helping others learn what they have learnt, to see what they have seen, to have a vision of reality as it truly is, to try to save everyone from unnecessary suffering. This is the definition of what a Bodhisattva does.

At the very least the cook will have 'aroused the bodhisattva spirit within themselves'. Aroused  out of their slumber, their dreaming, their delusions, their ignorance. The daily work of a Bodhisattva is not a nice fuzzy ideal you light a candle for, its a serious commitment that always demands action. Its not just a head thing, or a heart thing, but a compassionate thing, a strong feeling in your guts that propels you into selfless action. The Bodhisattva is the rescuer, offering a hand to pull you out from whatever pit of despair you happen to have fallen into this week.

Though I've felt inspired at times by the ideal of becoming a Bodhisattva, it's rare for me to be highly motivated in the carrying out and exemplification part. Too inhibited, too scared, too self absorbed with 'what about poor me?'  Its all too easy to dress up what you are doing as the selfless actions of the Bodhisattva, because your self-esteem has taken a shine to being a one.  Maybe all you are really seeking is a bit of ego pampering. So the game would be lost there then. Ultimately the Bodhisattva cannot be self serving. Serving the needs of others is the spiritual essence for them. their sole and primary motivation. Dogen, goes on to warn ~

'Such a practice requires exerting all your energies. If someone entrusted with this work lacks such a spirit, then they will only endure unnecessary hardships and suffering that will have no value in their pursuit of the Way'.

All your mental, physical and spiritual resources should be at your finger tips. Any person who undertakes Bodhisattva work as a tenzo, or any other job, must be a quietly integrated person, emotionally robust, with a wise clear way of thinking.  A self deluded Bodhisattva easily buffeted off course by the storms and vicissitudes of life, just cannot be. You will not turn yourself into a Bodhisattva by a forceful act of will alone. Believing yourself to be a Bodhisattva when you aren't is then the worst form of delusion. Getting hold of the wrong end of this stick would be an act of self harm.

Yet even Bodhisattvas had to start somewhere and I bet they focused their efforts close to home. Here am I, an artist/craftsman, seemingly a whole world away from the monastic tenzo. My work can often be solitary, creatively self absorbed, indulgent you might say, and prone to acts of aesthetic self stimulation. But, nevertheless, it raises an interesting question - how could a different spirit could be aroused to inform this or any other form of work? Just park how you might feel about your job, and for a second try to be less subjective in your assessments of its worth or value to you. Start by asking what is your job for, what's its purpose, who is it benefits in a positive way from all your effort, ingenuity and energy? Enquire within too, what is it you want and what you get from your work, and are any of those things reasonable or attainable?

All work, you could say, has an 'aesthetic aura' surrounding it, this may be a pleasant, unpleasant or even an indifferent aura. A combination of the people, the place, the management might make your work an enjoyable or a dispiriting thing to be a part of. These knid of factors affect how we feel, not just about our work, but about ourselves when executing it. Its understandable that one might settle in to a smouldering resentment. But I'd want to encourage seeing whatever happens in your daily life through a more understanding empathic open minded lens.

People never behave badly without an underlying cause. This doesn't make their behaviour excusable or reasonable, but its good not to rush to judgement to condemn or revile them, in a knee jerk kind of way. We are all quite self preoccupied, other people gives as much thought to you and how they might annoy you, as you might of them ie. not a lot. Ask what is it you are bringing to this situation? Try to imagine the suffering involved, not just to you, but for others and for them. How must they be feeling deep down in order to behave like that, the deep dissatisfaction and resentments festering underneath finding its release through dreadful behaviour? Empathy touches on our own suffering to help us feel for someone else's predicament. If you can imaginatively reach out and feel the suffering in someone else's existential situation, there is a huge shift from self absorbed to other absorbed. Then our relations with others may begin to be transformed.

Art and craft work appears unlikely to save anyone from the sort of existential suffering I'm talking about here. I can often find myself struggling with my works purpose and why create at all. But underneath that despair and often a sense of meaninglessness, I do know. I have always wanted to make the world better somehow through creating beautiful things, to bring a heightened sense of aesthetics into the world. The grim ugliness I often find surrounding me fouls up my joie de vivre. Creativity swells up from an underground stream fed from the slow moving waters of human suffering and the existential ugliness of pain. A touch of beauty, at best, can colour, sooth and transform these unpromising sources.

Whether you're cooking a meal, creating an artwork or cleaning shit from a toilet, your individual talents, energy and life force are being put to the service of others. In our predominantly urban environments its hard not to become alienated, cut off from everything and everyone that surrounds us. Our boundaries feel constantly under attack, so we defend our sense of our self by creating distance, by building physical and psychological walls. Things start to change if such self constructed barriers can be dismantled. Openeing up to reconnect with people on a basic human empathic level. Contrary to appearances, we are all crying out for affection and help, for someone to support us, to hold our hand for a while. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others. Tune into this, because this is what will eventually arouse the bodhisattva spirit from its slumber.

A SPIRITUAL BASTING ~ Carry Out The Activities Of A Buddha

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practice in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo.

Carry Out The Activities Of A Buddha

'The monks holding each office are all disciples of the Buddha and all carry out the activities of a Buddha through their respective offices.'

In these few opening sentences The Instructions For The Tenzo lays out a simple context and purpose for monastic office holders and their work. Though applicants should be able to keep the monastic community healthy and running smoothly on a very pragmatic level, its their spiritual qualifications for taking office that are considered the most important - to 'carry out the activities of a buddha' through their daily work.

What would this mean, not just for the cook, but for anyone performing any task?  The linear notes to this statement inform us its 'to live constantly settling one's life'. 'Settling' is an interesting word choice. In English we can refer to people as 'having settled down' which can have a slightly derogatory inference. The subtext being 'they're lives have become quite traditional and predictable, if not boring - just like the rest of us' . The unconventional has become conventional, once perhaps a risk taker but now perceived as playing it safe.

From the viewpoint of traditional Buddhism to 'have settled down' would be tantamount to the death of their spiritual practise, a lifestyle thats too comfortable, taking shelter in domesticity, trying to sidestep the tricky devil of dukkha, and the raw underbelly of unsatisfactoriness in life.

There is, however, another meaning to 'settling', which is ' to sort out', to have 'come to terms with things'. So ' to live constantly settling one's life' is really a description of the whole purpose of Buddhist practise; to constantly strive to come to terms with how things really are, and to become so settled to be able to abide in that insightful state.

Returning again to those linear notes, they couch 'carry out the activities of a buddha' as 'to actually put your life to work...to make it function in a way that things become most settlied'  To grasp your ordinary life and give it spiritual purpose - to make our ordinary life function as the means to fully seeing the way things really are. Any day, any task, however humble, non-descript or apparently useless ought to be able to work as a means of truly seeing how reality is. Requiring us to remain alert, open and on the case with where our lives and practise are currently at. For what can seem a workable effective approach one week, can feel absolutely dead in the water the next. Nothing stays the same forever, conditions change, things move on as the impermanent nature of reality shape shifts, yet again.

The tasks themselves, however, alter only slghtly, cooking remains cooking, artistry remains artistry. Both are things that human beings choose to do. It is 'why' and 'how' we do them that is susceptible to change.  What would it mean to make work a means of self-transformation, a means to Enlightenment, work enabling you to seeing things as they really are? What does 'seeing things as they really are' mean anyway? It implies our present human way of seeing and being, is one that is obscuring or deluding us. We certainly are inconsistent as practitioners, one minute conscious of what we're doing, the next off with the fairies.

According to the Buddha there are four false perceptions of reality obscuring our vision; that the world can be perfected; that worldly things can make you consistently happy; that the world is permanent; that your self's existance within that world is as a fixed entity. These false perceptions restrict and cloud our imaginations. So traditionally speaking, to see through these four false perceptions would be like lifting a fog, creating the conditions to perceive reality as it really is.

Note your mental state as you are working; the moments when you're irritated or frustrated are the best, to spot whats going on in the background. These are moments when you are not getting what you want, so what you want becomes double underlined, with an exclamation mark for added emphasis!. So you feel very cogently, when you are in pursuit of perfection; what it is you are seeking consistent happiness from?; how much of your behaviour is based on a model of how reality is,one that has a permanent world view underlying it? These three form the foundations for the fourth false perception, of the steady state view of your self, that you  can be free of suffering, that you can be perfect, you can be happy all the time, that you have a spirit, soul or consciousness that is eternal and will survive your physical bodies death.

To the extent we all act according to these four false perception, we will not be fully ready to 'carry out the activities of a Buddha.' When this does happen it would instigate a fundamental shift in how we carry out our life and work. Once we are no longer striving for permanent worldly perfection, for permanent happiness for ourselves from the world, then our fixed sense of reality and of our self as an unchanging entity ruling within it, takes on a more fluid nature, more at ease with the flux of our changing substance. A truer perception of the world will have arrived, most likely, so we are told, unnanounced by any fanfare.  Living our lives and work on the basis of how reality is, not how we'd like it to be, that would be the activity of a Buddha. .


* Extracts from Thomas Wright's translation - From The Zen Kitchen To Enlightenment, First Published by Weatherhill in 1983.

A SPIRITUAL BASTING ~ From Ancient Times

A series of blog posts reflecting on spiritual practice in everyday life. Inspired by phrases from Dogen's Instructions For The Tenzo as inspiration

'From Ancient Times'

' From ancient times, in communities practicing the Buddha's Way, there have been six offices established to oversee the affairs of the community...... Among these is the tenzo, who carries the responsibility of preparing the community's meals.' *

Whilst I am a Buddhist praticioner, I'm also an artist/craftsman. Endeavouring to keep in daily contact with Dogen's ideas about work as a spiritual practice. Applying these to my own eveyday life experience. Remaining creative within this is not without its challenges. It also requires a degree of translation and contextual reimagining to ensure its usefulness within 21st Century conditions.

A tenzo is the head cook in a Zen monastery, they have a practical yet life enhancing role. Cooking for them becomes entirely a selfless act of other regarding service. To place your culinary talents before everyone to either savour or reject, is a testing practice. When it comes to what they eat, people can become picky and complain about the smallest thing. Food is rarely able to please everyone. Seeking praise or appreciation is a lottery with the potential to build or crush anyone's ego. Likewise, in the world of art and craft, its perilous to be too closely attached to what you do. Its rare for any aesthetic endeavour to be universally appreciated, people either love or loath it in equal measure. This is just how it is.

Dogen emphasises how important it is to not over invest in the end result of your effort, particularly if you desire it to be appreciated, or worse still want it to be perfect. However, your ego still grasps for every crumb of praise it can, because your self esteem has a perpetually hungry bottomless pit of a stomach. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do your best. Instead try doing your best, but without those limpet like expectations. Perceive your work through the broader perspective of how what you are doing can be of benefit to others, not only through the myopic view of your selfish needs.

At first glance the similarities between cooking and the artistic process are unclear. Art appears to have no
immediate tangible benefit in quite the way that cooking has. Cooking sustains life, it helps us survive. Any creative process, whilst it may sustain the spirit and feed the soul, from a practical viewpoint its an activity devoid of use. However, looked at from a spiritual viewpoint impracticality can be transformed into a virtue, the more useless it is the better. That aesthetics is largely divorced from utility is part of its purpose and raison d'etre.

Arts purpose, if well executed, isn't a panacea to make existence tolerable, nor intoxicate you like a drug. It deals mostly in those fuzzyheaded intangibles, not clearly comprehensible, pointing towards something out of reach and quite 'other' than terre firme. The sole purpose of the artistic process and its result, is to cultivate our individual and collective receptivity to this.

'From ancient times' Art has performed a distinctive function for humanity, introducing us, at to best, to awe and an elevated spirit. Cathedrals or Buddhist Temples if they are working correctly should take our breath away almost from the moment we enter. This may only be for a split second of uplift, a fleeting experience of exaltation, vanishing before we even consciously notice it. Yet to imagine trying to achieve that through one's cooking, or through your everyday life and experience, can seem an overwhelming, if not impossible, thing to attempt.

Yet Dogen insists later on in the Instructions For The Tenzo that we should aim to build 'great temples out of ordinary greens', meaning out of the humdrum ordinary things of life. To endeavour to create something beautiful out of unpromising material, out of nothing, out of nowhere, out of this imperfect world. This reaches to the core of human creativity. We embellish and beautify pretty much everything we make. Machines, from a practical point of view don't require painting at all, it contributes nothing towards their better functioning. That we paint tractors bright colours appeals to us aesthetically, it makes us feel better about the cold lifelessness of this useful tool we are using. To apply extra effort into cutlery to make it pleasing to hold, lifts it from utility into an aesthetic experience. Utility can only be elevated spiritually by cultivating our altruistic impulses. To do everything for the benefit of others.

Lets make no bones about it, no one has ever died from a lack of Art or aesthetics in their lives. But despite this, it remains the quintessence of our dreams. Humankind as a species has been propelled forward by the supposed 'madness' of its dreamers. To deprive life of Art, and the spiritual intent embroidered beneath it, would render our existance arid and cold.  'From ancient times' from the instant our ancestors began painting magic animals onto walls in the deepest recesses of caves. But even when their religious significance or purpose has dwindled we still return to caves, temples and cathedrals because of what they represent. They reconnect us with what we've lost touch with. This lies outside and beyond our understanding of a universe based on scientific rationalism.

Whilst cooking feeds our stomachs, broader creative impulses feed our spirit, raise up our hearts to ease the troubles of our restless minds. Art has performed this role 'from ancient times'. Communicating through artists, visionaries and shamans, the values and intuitions, not just of what we have become, but more importantly what we can become. We are the lucky inheritors of this vast evolutionery and creative legacy. Nothing new or unique ever emerges into our world, that isn't indebted in someway to things learnt, passed on and influencing us 'from ancient times'.  


* Extracts from Thomas Wright's translation - From The Zen Kitchen To Enlightenment, First Published by Weatherhill in 1983.

MUSIC REVIEW ~ John Grant - Love is Magic

What is there left to say about John Grant that hasn't already cashed its chips in on an already established line of musical myth making?  Its as hard to look at an artist from a fresh perspective as it is for an artist to find one for themselves. Both develop expectations and associations built up from a repeated experience of what they love to write and what we love about them. We can become so accustomed to Grant's self confessional material that its robbed of its power to shock. amuse or awe.

He has often expressed his life experience in such a frank manner, its difficult to see beyond it to notice how he's filtered and packaged it for our consumption.  The results process his feelings via some of the most honest, witty, yet scathing songs about former lovers you are ever likely to hear. Emotional truths struck home and cause reciprocal resonant chords in others -'yes me too'.  Anyone who has broken up badly with a former lover and wanted to get back at them for the hurt they've caused, could hear it in a John Grant song. Much of this early solo material arose from a precarious sense of himself, to which the songs became a sort of cathartic therapy. Trying to rid himself of layers of self- destructive hate, doubt and anger. Over his three previous albums and associated live performances it was apparent that Grant has gradually been putting to rest, or at least managing better, the bitterness that drove his most cutting early songwriting. Where too now though for the bard of the withering put down?

As he releases Love is Magic, his fourth solo album, what more can we hear that hasn't been heard before? As Bella Union pre-released tracks from the album online, I felt concerned. What I was hearing, seemed like retreading old ground,  a lost sense for a melodic line, run out of fresh ways to write songs? Grant himself thinks this album is the most complete realisation he's yet achieved of what he's wanted an album to be. My feelings about it before hearing it in full were then a little troublesome. I was surprised then to end up loving it.

Queen of Denmark released in 2010 was in effect a salvage job by the group Midlake, to rescue Grant from slipping into a self imposed retirement. The resulting highly successful album has much more of a country lite feel to it, and had echoes of his previous work in the Csars. By the time of Pale Green Ghosts, three years later he's confident about where he wants to go musically experimenting with electronics, though still dropping back into the style of the first album from to time to time. This gave the album stylistically speaking an uneven feel, even though its full of songs that are some of his best.  My sense of 2015's Grey Tickles & Black Pressure was that it consolidated without developing further what he achieved on Pale Green Ghosts. With Love Is Magic, I believe I have a sense of what he's tried to achieve with this album. Its is more coherent in its form, being largely electronic in style from start to finish, but it also toys with something a bit more sonically adventurous too.

Between the last two albums he's done quite a bit of feature vocals on other people's albums. Most noticeably on Susanne Sundfor's Mountaineers, and with Creep Show. Both these allow Grant to sing over the most gorgeous sonic backgrounds allowing space to accommodate the full richness of his vocal timbre. Susanne Sundfor's album Music For Troubled Times, is a patchwork of songs each beautifully wrought. At times sparsely backed, sometimes lushly orchestrated,  experimentalally mixing in the spoken word, whilst still hanging together as a whole album concept. Love is Magic bears a few similarities, there are re-statements of what is good in a John Grant song, whilst weaving into this bolder explorations of the song form, pushing at his own compositional boundaries. The track Metamorphosis for instance opens the album with a crazy in your face list of things that appear to have no association, bookending a sad little tune about the death of a loved one, written from the perspective of someone with an emotionally alienated sense of loss. It doesn't quite convince you to fully buy into whats happening, its a fraction too clever to touch you, but it is a courageous track to open your album with.



The theme that holds the album together, resides in the title track Love Is Magic. Laying out the different reasons for our experience and desire for love. He sings that however it arrives ' when the door opens up for you, don't resist  just walk on through, there's really nothing else to do.'  Since an earlier song Marz there's has been a nostalgic vein that reflects back on his early life. Its present here in the Tempest, where he yearns for someone to come play the Atari arcade game with him. It has within it a plangent vein of loneliness, requesting someone to come and share an enthusiasm with him, to love what he loves. Preppy Boy, is a young inexperienced gay teenager imagining himself falling for the most straight looking and hence unobtainable love object. Smug Cunt could be seen as another of Grant's character assassinations of a hate figure. But there is often a sense that Grant only dislikes them because they have what he wants, the Smug Cunt has unwarrented self-confidence, but by the bucketful. Diet Gum, opens with the line 'I manipulate, that's what I do, I manipulate that's what I'm doing to you' interspersed with a lot of gay bitching trying to put down the manipulator 'Do you really think you could seduce me in a leisure suit' . Yet these pathetic expressions of independence are empty ones. They are only susceptible to being manipulated, because they love the manipulator.

Critical appreciation for this album has been mixed, some have like me loved it, often for the very same things that others have found irritating. Sometimes, I have to say, Grant's use of electronic instrumentation can seem a bit like he switched the machine on and used whatever its factory default settings were. He needs a musical collaborator to push him to be bolder in his arrangements, someone who'll conceive a unique sound to enhance Grants songs further. That said, Love Is Magic's compositional themes are as rounded and thoughtful as ever. It still has its pokey moments, but in a gentler, less cruel way, and he is perhaps more forgiving of others failings than before. Though not quite the superlative album that one might still expect him to write, it points towards a few bold musical directions he could pursue and expand on further. Nonetheless, for all its sometimes half resolved quirkiness, its a really interesting album that I'm already quite besotted with.

  

MY MOST LOVED ALBUMS ~ Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy by Brian Eno - 1974

As my most purchased album, this is a prime candidate for my most loved album. I bought it on vinyl when it originally came out in 1974, then on cassette, CD and now as a download.  This is the album where Eno's use of Obscure Strategy Cards to direct or wrong foot his creative process starts to be experimented with. I remember being fascinated with trying to discern how the layering of sounds interacted, discovering somewhere in the back a little sqeak of a noise that was perhaps once the starting point for an idea that got abandoned. On vinyl the album ends with the grooves being caught in an endless loop, something you could only really do in that format. This album set the template for me of the sort of music I love to love - adventurous, arty, discordant, odd, exciting music, that's still strangely accessible.

He was interviewed on the radio at the time and he talked about noticing the similarities between reggae and waltz rhythms and what emerged from that was the track Back In Judy's Jungle. https://youtu.be/r3mrcxek67A

There's the proto-punk of  the Third Uncle which proceeds at a absolutely furious pace and descends by the end into outright cacophany with what sounds like a guitar, highly amped being played with a bow or a chair leg, take your pick. It remains for me a track that shows what the musical potential for punk was before it had even happened, something that punk, once it did arrive, never really fully explored.
https://youtu.be/2zSrkb5pkrQ

Put A Straw Under Baby is composed like a surreal lullaby that half way through has the Portsmouth Symphonia bursting in as if trying to wake the baby up.
https://youtu.be/xVajcgZk2Tc

The True Wheel starts off in a sort of ploddy rock mode that gradually turns the dial up as it becomes more avante garde, with a middle section where a recording of a string section is played backwards ontop of the original recording.
https://youtu.be/FByM0r-VOLc

After the eccentric rock /pop of his first album Her Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy resolutely places itself as an experimental album, with nonesense lyrics and often bizarre musical conjunctions. For me its a wonderfully daft, delightfilled album, simultaneously both serious and playful. It was Eno revelling in the potential of where ideas let free from his absolute total control would lead him.

After this album came Another Green World and his interest being drawn by the electronic landscaping of Cluster / Harmonia. What ultimately flows from that are his Ambient albums. We very rarely hear him sing nowadays, and the inventiveness and dry wit to be enjoyed in the Dadaesque lyrics of Taking Tiger Mountain, is hardly ever seen again. However much of a humourless brainbox he can sometimes appear to be, this is Brian Eno at his most oddball and human.