DREAM - A Ceiling Collapses

I was in a large and rambling old house, it is my house. In places it reminds me of our old family home in Crowle, with North Norfolk Flint knapping mixed in.

I'm walking around it with a female friend and we enter a room where the ceiling is sagging badly. She points it out, I say I must get around to doing something about that. She begins prodding it with her finger, and the bulge in the ceiling moves about. It seems to be collecting a large amount of water there. Despite my protestations not too, she prods right through and the water comes pouring down.

I go upstairs to the room above with a male friend, to view the damage. The whole floor/ceiling is on the verge of collapse. despite my protestations not too, my friend recklessly jumps on the floor and falls straight through into the room below. I start walking around the edges of the fallen floor. Everything is now structurally unsound, the water has obviously been doing more damage than I thought. From the outside of the house there is a long crack down one side, and rumbling noises. Even the opposite end of the house, unrelated structurally, has a sense of the whole house being about to collapse.

QUOTATION MARKS 31

Get over the posturing struggles

of your ego based mind

KAMALASHILA

DIARY 127 - Praising & Blaming

My most recent trip to visit my parents to celebrate their Diamond Wedding Anniversary, had all the usual hallmarks of the familial dynamic. My own inability to interact with my parents in a way that feels meaningful to me, is painful, and can suffuse such visits with an uneasy mixture of sentimental regret, guilt and frustrated tedium. 'Here he is again, the artistic, gay, vegetarian, Buddhist son, who lives in a Buddhist community, who we do love, but don't quite know how to relate to.'

True, my parents are now both into their eighties, and any likelihood of orchestrating a major change in my relationship with them has long since passed. This fossilisation, turns most visits into a practice of patient endurance - of the endless stories about people and events I know nothing about, and the brief token inquiries about how my life is going, that if you sighed too deeply you would miss. But we do live lifestyles almost completely alien to each other, so its no wonder we struggle to find common ground.

In response to a question about how Jnanasalin was doing, I start telling them about his forthcoming buying trip to China. Half way through my opening sentences, my Mother burst in with an exasperated 'Why can't you get a job like that, one with prospects for promotion'. This was followed by implications of having in some way fallen short of an unspoken expectation, by not having a job she can proudly boast about to their friends - and what was so bad about being a Customer Services Manager? - or working in a Crematorium anyway - though the latter was a bit weird, at least it was a secure job. All of these arise from a fundamental incomprehension about why I've chosen to live the life I do, and a really genuine concern for my job security considering the patchwork nature of my current employment.

I have rarely aspired to a conventional lifestyle, though it no doubt hides away somewhere in a corner of my psyche, brooding. Rarely a conscious rebel, more a circumstantial one, I've become used to not conforming to the norm. I've just tried to live a life with some personal integrity and purpose. My parents do undoubtedly desire the best for me, and want to see me happy, though how I chose to live my life bears no conventional form or price tag they can recognise - so from there own life experience and aspirations - how can I really be happy? It must be difficult for them to appreciate that there is a value in what I do.

The seeming insensitivity of my Mother's response, is rare, but not untypical. Neither is this feeling that I fall short, that what I do is never quite good enough. This sort of self-blame-frame without the praise, appreciation or encouragement to counter it, has sort of sealed in an expectation that whatever I do it will never be really appreciated. Partly I suspect this is a 'Northern Culture Thing' where praise or encouragement is rarely forthcoming. In the past this style of communication might have left me despondent. This time, though I could feel it burrowing about in the psychic undergrowth looking for something to latch onto and exploit, I didn't give it space or credence. Which has undoubtedly been a hard won achievement on my part, and is itself worthy of much praise.

I've since been reflecting on this poor self-esteem and confidence thing, that has often been my bete noire, and seen more clearly its origins. Since my involvement with Buddhism, I've come to know myself, my value, qualities and talents much much better. A lot of this the result of years of the positive feedback and affirming I've received from others, which challenged, and over time has weakened the full force of that negative self-view.

I do, however, still wrestle from time to time with not feeling fully appreciated. But who is ever fully appreciated? Praise in England, when it does come, can be faintly muttered almost under the breath, be muted, imprecise, fluffy edged or vague. This expression of praise can sometimes contain unexpressed qualifications, implied via subtle irony, or deprecations hidden in the choice of words. When someone says they find what you said 'interesting' or 'comprehensive', this tells you nothing about how that word should be interpreted, in what way is it 'interesting' or 'comprehensive'. I enjoy the company of folk from further flung parts of the world, because I don't have to read between the lines. They talk and express themselves more straightforwardly. If one is forced to read between the lines, an Englishman invariable does so in search of a veiled criticism, never a hidden accolade.

Looked at objectively, its not even that praise has been a rare thing in my life, there has been plenty of it around. It could be I don't allow it to touch me deeply enough. Rarely reaching the impregnable negative self view, presumably because I wont allow it to. Pondering on this has raised three further areas for reflection. Perhaps the only praise that can reach deep into negative self views will be praise from ones parents. It may be I should pay closer attention to how I receive praise when others give it. They might feel uneasy giving me praise, because I turn my gaze away, not hearing nor welcoming it openly. If I don't accept and take praise fully to heart, this probably does communicate itself subtly to others. Finally, how easily and freely do I myself give praise to others? For what comes around does go around.

From a Buddhist perspective, all this dwelling on Praise and Blame, will just further entangle me in this polarity, and all the other six Worldly Winds, of Loss and Gain, Fame and Infamy,Pleasure and Pain. I can see how in my desire to have or to avoid any one of these, I'm inevitable sucked into dealing with all of them. Praise - can be pleasurable, through it one gains in worth and self-esteem, and a fleeting illusory sense of position, status or importance. Blame - can be painful, one can lose confidence in oneself, cultivating an illusory sense of worthlessness.

What I've been exploring here, has been more about the consequences of praise and blame. Discovering in the process, how difficult it can be to talk about this area without falling into praising and blaming oneself. I have a better grasp now on why I sometimes react in the way I do. The Worldly Winds are still subtly inform my current way of behaving. What would I be like if I could ignore or be free of them? As Quentin Crisp once said - 'If there were no praise, and no blame, who would I be then?'

CD REVIEW - Laurie Anderson / Homeland

Well, this has been a long time coming. Laurie Anderson's last studio album 'Life on a String' was released way back in 2001. Judging from the accompanying DVD, 'Homeland' has had a complex genesis, starting from recording improvised live performances, that generated huge amounts of ideas that she then struggled to re-form into some sort of coherent shape. Anderson appears to work in an instinctual way, one that isn't fully thought through in advance, she feels her way forward. Though she may not be sure what the theme she's exploring is half the time, she has an unerring ear for what she wants, and what sounds 'true'. This is a gut sense of the 'truth', but one not fully reasoned out. This explains the often elliptical and fractured nature of the narrative strands, around which she weaves her songs and pieces. Its the feelings she conjures up out of this, that are the strength of her work, half the time intensely personal and human, the rest perplexed, is as if she's viewing us from some distant alien perspective.

Anderson, because of her art performance background, is in no way a traditional or reliable narrator. Are these stories true, or woven around a truth? The world she evokes is often a wryly bemused and ironic one, an illusory sense of being trivial or lightweight surrounds her work, because of the lilting wit with which she cloaks the strength of her views. Anderson has, as a consequence, been unfairly accused of lacking in depth,gravitas and substance, which overlooks the subtlety and deftness with which see hits her targets. 'Homeland' itself, is a more sombre, melancholic chamber piece, from a mature artist at the refined height of her powers of expression. In her earlier work, 'United States Parts 1 to 4' from 1983, she portrayed an oddly quirky and dislocated society, alienated from its own humanity and that of others, even your home could turn into something unfamiliar and life threatening. 'Homeland' has a constant tone of bereavement, of having totally lost any sense of wanting to belong to the society she now finds herself in. The Bush years, the response to 9/11, the Iraq war, the US attitude to climate change, the credit crunch, have all taken there toll. Over the space of 17 years, people in the USA have gone from being dislocated, to becoming the dispossessed.

Anderson for many decades has used a voice filter to produce what she called 'the voice of authority.' This masculinised voice has now developed into a complete alter-ego, given the name Fenway Bergamot' by her husband Lou Reed. The eleven minute long track 'Another Day In America' is his world weary poetic musing on where on earth America could go from here, the optimism surrounding Obama's arrival has raised larger questions -

'And so finally, here we are at the beginning of a whole new era. The start of a brand new world. And now what? How do we start? How do we begin again?

When the only lifestyle you're offered is a consumerist/materialist one, what does that do to your sense of purpose, your joie de vivre - the issues become more existential and hence spiritual in tone.

'And ah these days. All these days! What are days for? To wake us up. To put between the endless nights."

Often the political surfaces in Anderson's work through the personal, through the tales that she tells. But here, she directly hits out, particularly on ' Only an Expert' at the cultural and political passivity that makes experts to be the final arbiters on whether something is a problem or not, and then to present us with the ready made solution. Can we trust these 'voices of authority' any more, because they've been proved to have feet clay, because they have vested interests, because they want to keep things just as they are. No one is speaking truthfully, every one has a forked tongue.

' Now sometimes experts lend you money, and sometimes they lend you lots of money, and sometimes when the sub-prime mortgages collapse, and banks close and businesses fail, and the crisis spreads around the world -sometimes other experts say: just because all the markets crashed, doesn't mean its necessarily a bad thing.'

'And other experts say: just because all your friends were fired, and your family's broke and we didn't see it coming, doesn't mean that we were wrong.'

'And just because you lost your job and your home and all your savings, doesn't mean you don't have to pay for the bailouts, for the traders and the bankers and the speculators. Cause only an expert can design a bailout, and only an expert can expect a bailout.'

Anderson may not define herself as a Buddhist, nor actively practice Buddhism, but her contact with, and understanding of Buddhism is there - it informs her view, and seeps through via her words. The opening track the impressive 'Transitory Life' is a heart felt ode on the impermanence of existence.

'Afraid to breathe, afraid to rise, we run and run in this transitory life. Tipped off balance we fall like light. We land on water in this transitory life. We fall like light on water and water turns to ice. Everything keeps changing in this transitory life.'

FEATURE 57 - Sol LeWitt's Wall Paintings

I first became aware of the work of Sol LeWitt whilst I was at art college. His work then was minimal, geometrical and graphic, purely line constructions drawn in pencil or charcoal across huge wall spaces. I was recently Googling for some help with a wall painting idea I had, and a couple of the hits were videos of a large exhibition of his wall paintings in the US. I found them quite astounding,striking and imposing,staggeringly beautifully composed and the use of form and colour - just awesome. Anyway above are a few shots to whet your appetite.

And once you've taken them in then watch this nine minute video about how they are made. I find watching this is so inspiring I can hardly keep myself from fizzing, I just want to go out there right now and paint one of the huge wall in the Windhorse warehouse like this. Amazing stuff.

Find out more at www.artsy.net/artist/sol-lewitt

FEATURE 56 - Holger Hiller

Experimental wiz from eighties, Holger Hiller in the top video cut-up piece from 1988 predates Coldcut by ten years or more. The next track Whippets from 1986 features the late great Billy Mckensie from the Associates. The bottom track is Jonny du Lump from 1983. Holger Hiller was a pioneer in constructing music out of raw, looped or found sounds, non, despite all the technical advances which make all this sort of stuff so easy these days, have ever got near to the aural punch of his compositions.

FEATURE 56 - The Divine David - No 2

Here is The Divine David in a more reflective poetic style of discourse with his audience.

FEATURE 55 - Glee sings Lady Gaga

Brilliant reinvention of LG's Poker Face for two (admittedly excellent) voices and a piano.

DIARY 126 - Standing Firm

Next Wednesday 9th June I will have been ordained in the Triratna Buddhist Order for ten years. A lot has changed in that time, including most recently, the name of the order I joined (it used to be the Western Buddhist Order). My attitude and approach to Buddhist practice has slowly adjusted in emphasis, I was a far more hard line practitioner in 2000. Looked at from that point of view, how I live today might be seen as having softened its cutting edge. In a way I'm still dealing on a day to day basis with some of the residual consequences of the inflexibility and rigid self-discipline of my earlier approach.

On my recent retreat, an image encapsulating its dangers came to mind - I'm riding in a boat, surfing along on the top of a series of waves which are propelling me forward at great speed, however, I inevitably hit a sand bank. Not noticing this immediately, I continue in a driving Gung -Ho attitude. Eventually I realise, but by this time I've become thoroughly stranded and out at sea. Though I loose heart, I still try to scramble back onto the high rollers nevertheless. This style of spiritual striving is unsustainable. Reaching up for the stars means you're precariously balanced on tip toes, and can fall or tire easily. As it says in the Tao de Ching -

He who stands on tip-toe does not stand firm. He who takes the longest stride does not walk the fastest. He who boasts of what he will do succeeds in nothing. He who is proud of his work achieves nothing that endures.

I've received a lot of positive feedback and appreciation about last weeks Wesak ritual. I've picked up via the business grapevine that it wasn't universally appreciated, but then what is? I've been reflecting this week on the nature of devotion, what makes an action, into an act of devotion? I've come to the conclusion that, in theory at least, any action has the potential to become devotional provided the emotional volition is present. If the emotions are stimulated to engage,and once engaged are directed upward, then our sraddha will kick in behind it. Without this any ritual will automatically become 'rites and rituals as an ends in themselves' - going absolutely nowhere spiritually. Devotion can be hampered by being viewed as a purely introspective, internal and individual affair, limited by one persons vision, imagination and background. I'm becoming increasingly interested in the collective expression of devotion, what happens to everyone during a ritual thats above individual choice, a collaborative expansion and surrender to the 'other.' Sangharakshita describes it as 'a coincidence of wills' - the incipient presence of the Bodhichitta, ever ready to arise into the midst of any ritual.

This week, has been quite low key. Its tone was mostly - so now that's over, what were we doing before all that happened? What comes now? So gradually I've been picking up threads and projects put aside over the last three weeks. I've made it clear I'm taking the Summer off from devising and leading rituals, which is already making space for other areas of creative endeavour to emerge into.

FEATURE 54 - The Divine David - No 1

The Divine David can be simultaneously camp and amusing, whilst also being perceptive and astute. Sometimes he's savagely right on the button, and at other times there's a disturbing edge ( and its not just the bizarre makeup ) you don't quite know where he's taking you, but you do know it makes for uncomfortable viewing. These sudden shifts can be quite unnerving, as in this case when he manically cackles at the end of this.

That said, The Divine David remains undoubtedly a unique voice, This one is called - The World is Burning Let's Masturbate.

DREAM - Losing One's Daughter

I'm in Cambridge still, wandering around with my young daughter. I guess she's about six or seven. I'm very protective of her, showing her a lot of love and affection. At a point in the dream, I'm distracted by something, and she wanders off. Afraid she's in danger, I search quite frenetically to find her. I do eventually find her, and everything is restored to how it was. My daughters name is Atula.

DIARY 125 - Waking Up To Wesak

Its been a demanding few weeks, preparing for the Windhorse Wesak celebrations on Friday 28th May has consumed every psychic inch of my energy. I have felt strained, but tried to focus on the end I'm wishing to accomplish. If I was a tight-arsed perfectionist it really would have brought me to my knees. I imagine these rituals, and I just want to bring them into life. As a creative process its a bit different to painting or writing ideas, in that, in the end, they are entirely dependent upon others whether they work or not. At some point you have to give up your ability to control the result. Due to having a background in performance, I am more able to go along with whatever happens. In a way that's what makes rituals exciting to engage with. As long as you stay confident and calm, so will everyone else. If you panic, so will they, the audience will not be absorbed, but anxious or nervous, for you.

The warehouse was low on manpower, so I couldn't have much help with getting the Stupa and shrines set up. Devising rituals is easy, getting things prepared is the backbreaking bit. In future I'd like an assistant to help with preparing props and logistics. The rest of the Wesak Organising Team ( Arthasiddhi & Nagavira ) helped with planning everything else, and this was indeed a huge relief. I find holding a lot of organisational detail is what produces a lot of tension. This time I made a list of what I needed to do, and when, which helped keep my planning anxiety in perspective. Each day I'd cross off what I'd done, and moving elements as yet unresolved, on to the next day. Sixty plus points later the day before Wesak, I ran out of things to do, and I felt this great weight drop from my shoulders. That evening I was so excited I hardly slept. So I approached the celebration surfing on a wave of adrenalin and caffeine.

The mornings celebratory ritual, went very well, and for the first time I actually was able to enjoy leading the ritual, which was immensely satisfying. Though I've received expressions of appreciation from folk, I'm not sure exactly what effect it had on people. All I can say I experienced a buoyant lightness and excited air to folk afterwards. Not everything went according to plan. One ritual element turned out a bit chaotic. The idea was for everyone in a circle to pass around a ball of rope, and whilst being unwound, simultaneously it would be winding itself around the base of the Stupa. Whilst this was happening I'd be leading chanting of the Prattiya Samutpada formula.

If rituals don't work out how you expect, it may be due to a combination of three things; the set up wasn't explained clearly enough; why they're doing the ritual isn't self-evident enough; or there were elements in the ritual that hadn't been checked or worked out in sufficient detail. In this case it was mainly the latter, but the other two had a role to play. The slightly shambolic result did not bother me in the least. It seemed to demonstrate conditioned co-production all the same, just not how I envisaged. Trying to wind yourself up the Spiral Path whilst simultaneously trying to unwind yourself from the Wheel of Life, is apt to produce a chaotic clash of energies, pulling in different directions, which we certainly got.

That said, everything else went more or less as planned, so I feel a good deal of elevated satisfaction, thats put all that happened beforehand in a less strained perspective. That said, I still feel the need to step back from devising/organising rituals over the Summer, just to focus on a different sort of energy and engagement for a while. The energy I was using over the last few weeks was a very masculine one, overriding emotional resistances, and focusing solely on the end result. The dream I had mid-week very clearly demonstrated I was in danger of losing touch with the more sensitive, poetic and feminine aspects of myself, evoked by my recent retreat. I'd had to drop this sensibility in order to be able to crack on with Wesak preparations. Now that its all over, I want to give myself plenty of open, unstructured space for this aspect to re-emerge into.

FEATURE 53 - Charles Bukowski - Bluebird

Paramanada recites poetry from memory before meditations, this one by Bukowski, strongly moved me. It poignantly portrays that sense of holding oneself in and turning oneself into a prisoner. It may lack a certain atmosphere not hearing it recited by a gruff voiced Londoner. But here's the author reciting it.

BLUEBIRD

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

DIARY 124 - Harmonic Imperfections

I've recently returned from a weeks retreat at Rivendell Retreat Centre in the Surrey countryside. The retreat was called The Heart of Meditation, and was co-led by Atula and Paramananda. I'd read an article by Paramananda about the body's role in embodying our practice, and instinctively knew this was what I needed. An image came to mind to describe the current state of my practice - it was a very familiar room, though filled with beautiful objects it bored me as soon as I entered, whilst outside sunshine chased across lawns and trees, but never entered the room.

I'd done a couple of weekend groups at Windhorse with Atula, maybe six years or so ago. They were important, first, in the depth to which myself and others communicated ourselves, second, in the way he was able to highlight patterns in my behaviour in groups. My tendency towards being silent, getting 'locked out', and consequent frustration at being unable to make myself be heard. Returning to this form of process based group work, was hence a reunion and a return to test where I currently am at with all this.

Both Atula and Paramananda talk about 'soul', not in the sense of an eternal part of human existence that survives death, but as an archetypal grounding element in the human psyche. This element needing to be in a co-existing and balanced relationship with the rarified purity of the 'spirit' element. These ideas are derived from the pioneering work of James Hillman, who single-handed created Archetypal Psychology by amplifying and adding to aspects of Jung's work.

The group was large, an even mix of men and women, all members of the Triratna Buddhist Order. We eased into the group work via dreams. we were encouraged to put our dreams into a box. Then during one session each day we'd all gather in a room where the box would be in the centre surrounded by five chairs, four of us would be asked to volunteer to sit in this inner circle, pick out and speak about a dream from the box. People could leave or join this circle whenever they felt they had something to say,or had finished. The anonymous dreams would tap into some sort of collective psyche and expose intimately personal, yet universal themes. Within a few days we were into more informal process orientated groups where there was no theme other than whatever we spoke of or brought to it. This was often a challenging and frequently bumpy ride.

As the week went on, my initial reticence in bringing myself forward broke. I could sense my strong tendency to adopt a listening empathic role in groups setting in, and consequently not to bring myself fully into the group. This began increasingly to chafe, but it wasn't accompanied by self-recriminations or punishment, which used to be there ten years ago. So there has been progress. I know, understand and am much kinder to myself these days. So much stuff came up that I'm still processing and reflecting on things. It wasn't only my stuff, but also the stuff of others which stirred up things within me. I saw how strongly I use the 'social mirror' to reflect back to me, what my own feelings, ideas and thoughts are. They don't seem to arise easily or spontaneously from me without this external prompt.

Meditation wise, Paramananda, has some poetic and potent ideas about where we go wrong with our practice. Instead of observing the body breathing, in the 'mindfulness of breathing' practice, there's a tendency to objectify and act from an 'idea' about the practice, not a lived experience of it. No wonder it becomes dull, lifeless and an unrewarding effort. So I'm focusing more and more in my practice on abiding with my body breathing, observing how my centre of energy shifts upwards when I start straining to direct, or over analysing what I'm experiencing. I need to work on grounding my awareness in my body, probably for quite some time. I've habitually skipped over preparation to get on with the form of the practice. I can see how this leads me into not fully experiencing myself, and maybe that's the real reason, to avoid discomfort.

I came away from the retreat very conscious how I can hide myself from myself, and from other peoples scrutiny, whilst simultaneously feeling I'm never being fully myself, or actively being present in the world outside. The two, obviously, are connected. Though I am currently working on becoming more visible through my work with ritual, I'm all too conscious how uncomfortable that visibility makes me. It's all too easy to bare all via this blog. Real communication is personal, and requires presence, the virtual world takes place at a safe distance - you can filter and censor how you present yourself to the world, in some respects you might just as well be anonymous. Real communication, like I experienced on this retreat, is very rare. when it happens you feel simultaneously an extraordinarily naked exposure and relief as something never said before is released to fly from bondage.