FEATURE 88 - Honest Magic

FEATURE 87 - Marion & Geoff

Comedy and sadness sit uncomfortably side by side in these short episodes from Marion & Geoff. Rob Brydon plays Keith Barret a taxi driver. All these to camera monologues show us is how Keith attempts rather simplemindedly to make the best of a bad job, and sometimes not to see what's glaringly obvious to the viewer, that he's being walked all over and treated appallingly.

DIARY 144 - By the creaking of my bones

The local council recently changed the way they wished to designate our Buddhist communities. It used to be as some sort of nominal family type house, now they want to call us a house of multiple occupancy, or HOM's for short. What makes a communal house not a community is an interesting topic. But to base your decision on - either its a family home, or it must be a HOM, seems dreadfully simplistic. Windhorse has been fighting this designation change for the last few years, but finally they've had to throw in the towel. Once so designated the houses all had to be inspected, registered and a raft of very expensive alterations float in its wake. For which you get no financial support, only a timeline, by the end of which you're expected to have completed all the work required.

The main thing that's been done is having fire doors and automatic door closers fitted on all the rooms in these community houses. My project, is to salvage some self-respect and dignity from this unwanted intrusion, by applying panel molding to the external surfaces of the fire doors. This makes them look less institutional, and more in keeping with the age of our properties, which is generally late 19th century. On the surface this might seem quite a nice simple straightforward, if not pleasant and rewarding, project for me to do. I thought so too...once.

I had an unexpectedly intense emotional response whilst I sanded and scraped away at old paintwork. I experienced strong feelings of desperation and loneliness, an 'Oh No, not again' response, battled with huge resistances and with wanting to run away from it all. Though I'm not doing this alone, I am working with someone whom I don't know, and in one of our most dimly lit, oppressively cramped and rambling terrace buildings. What this triggered were discomforting feelings surrounding two previous projects;running my own business, and the Ipswich Buddhist Centre decoration. Both of which I did carry out largely on my own. Each was at an emotionally difficult time, in one I was struggling single-handed to keep my business afloat, in the other I used every spare hour I had to get the new centre ready to open. The latter was also during the first year after my ordination, a challenging period for anyone. But aside from such difficulties, there was a touchy relationship with an individual I lived and worked with. If my response is anything to go by, I've not fully got over either of these difficult periods in my life.

Whilst the fire doors were installed, the paintwork on the period door frames had been bashed about quite a bit. So initially the job was to scrape off the loose and sand down the fractured nibbled edges of the existing paintwork. In addition we also had to learn how to work round there being at least two, and on some days four community members around in their rooms. Any idea we'd be able to proceed systematically through the building, had swiftly to be rethought. daily we were having to rejig or abandon our work schedule or plans. I can do logistic, organisation and planning, but even at the best of times I derive no pleasure or satisfaction from it. If I end up doing too much of it, or become frustrated in the doing of it, I can become a very unhappy man. This year has contained a little too much of such activity.

The door project consists of a sequence of laborious, if not tedious, tasks, most requiring the simple application of elbow grease, and persistence. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not averse to hard work, or a bit of tedium and tenacity, but there is the matter of scale, and how much time, to take into account. There's been a huge amount of preparatory work involved in getting all eleven doors of one community ready to paint. The sanding, scraping, filling, priming, sawing, drawing, sticking, followed by more filling, priming, final sanding before glossing. Its felt interminable, as if I've been a treadmill that would never reach its end.......and this is just the first community, there are four more scheduled to do. The total project has in the region of 45-55 doors, and we've yet to complete 11.

So, at first it was the hugely daunting nature of the task itself, and my mental/emotional response to doing it. Then came a physical consequence;the severe inflammation of the osteo-arthritis in my hands. I can do the sanding, the scraping,the sawing and the painting, but it always results in some level of increased inflammation and pain in my hand joints. Each task is repetitive, requiring I hold my hands in one way, tensely and repeatedly for long periods of time. The hand sawing of 144 mitred pieces of panel molding was one marathon endeavour that took two and a half days. So I've been learning to bear with these throbbing tender painful things on the end of my arms. This constant pain in my hands did bring me to tears this week. Working whilst enduring it, has also become quite exhausting. I can't grip or hold things with them. I can't hold even not very heavy things other than in the palm of my hand, I have to ask someone else to open bottles for me, all of which is humbling.

By Wednesday lunchtime my energy was running low, and I began to feel slightly nauseous. This is often an early sign I'm coming down with something. By the next day I had an intense migraine type head cold and spent much of the next few days in bed. This enforced time at home, mindlessly watching lots of I-Player, has allowed both me and my hands to take a break and recover, a bit. But I do have to take what's happened seriously, and reconsider if, under the current set-up, I can continue to undertake the completion of the 3-4 month project as originally outlined. I may have to acknowledge I physically can't do such a large scale painting project anymore. This is, I believe, what I've found most upsetting, the diminishing of my physical capabilities. No doubt one of many, on the slippery slope to getting older, and death. Dylan Thomas talked about raging against the dying of the light, I felt I've understood this week, from my direct experience, exactly what he meant by that. But I can rage all I like, it wont make it go away.

FILM REVIEW - Animal Kingdom

Joe's 17, and his mum has just died from an overdose. He rings his Gran to ask for her help. This is after all what Gran does, she always sorts out other peoples messes. His Mother was estranged from her family, partly to protect her son from their influence, with, as it turns out, good reason. For when Joe moves into the family home, he sees first hand the casual criminality of his uncles, a criminality he tries to keep his distance from. As events unfold, he finds he cannot avoid becoming implicated. The police are after all his Uncles, but most notably the eldest, Pope. Eventually this results in the cold- blooded murder of one of them by the police. His family take revenge with the indiscriminate murder of two policemen. Joe is held for questioning. Subsequently he finds out his girlfriend has been killed by Pope, his Uncle. Whose side will Joe eventually turn out to be on?

Animal Kingdom, is a gripping, intelligent film about the emotional bonds in this disarmingly ordinary criminal family. Joe remarks in the opening few minutes of the movie, that every criminal knows his time at liberty will run out some day, that the consequences of their actions eventually will catch up with them. This mood of fearful expectancy pervades the whole movie, when will these guys get there comeuppance?

There are three stand out performances. At the centre is James Frecheville, as Joe. who is sometimes blank and numb, at other times clearly scared and horrified. His performance is subtly understated, as this teenager on the cusp of being a grown man, thrown into the maelstrom of his treacherous family. The second is Ben Mendelson as Pope, the eldest and most vicious Uncle. When Gran says to him, in an passing remark over lunch -'don't you think you should start taking your medication again?' you can see in his face that he's more than a little out of control. All the really tense menacing moments in the movie are when Pope is around. Jackie Weaver as Gran, is a superlative performance, as the families Matriarch. She is the one who quietly holds everything together with the sentimentality of her kisses, gently scolds the men for having gone too far in taking revenge for their friends murder, and always, always tries to put things right. Outwardly warm and un-involved, but really a cold-hearted and dispassionate pragmatist who'd murder her own Grandson, if it proved necessary. It's a scarily impressive performance, for which she has deservedly won numerous film awards.

The film script rarely puts a foot wrong, portraying these people as people with all their personal idiosyncrasies, however dangerous their impulses might be. What violence there is, though occasionally graphic, is sparingly used. When intensity and apprehension is called for, its built through the deft use of long lingering shots and musical inference. There is something magnificently mythic about the world painted in Animal Kingdom, where the small details of the story echo much larger human and universal themes of love, loss and loyalty. This turns the film into something that is strongly reminiscent of a modern day Greek Tragedy.

DIARY 143 - The stuff of dreams

If you've had a tough week,and nothing you usually do seems to quite hit the mark, you're feeling generally apathetic and listless. Well, sometimes you just need to get away from your usual environs. Jnanasalin and I both felt a bit ragged and run down, so we went out for a day in Sheringham, which from Cambridge is about a two and a half hour journey. But, its always been worth it. Even in the height of Summer, when the streets and beaches are swarming with holiday makers. Lounging around on a beach reading a newspaper, rather than visiting our usual Cambridge Coffee House Of Choice, is a more than refreshing change. I was quite surprised at how quickly I perked up, just with the thought of going there. Whilst there, we nurtured colourful ideas of opening Sheringham's first bijou Art Deco Tea Room, with a superlative range of teas, coffees and cakes. Ah! the stuff of dreams.

FEATURE 86 - Love is a losing game

FEATURE 85 - PONPONPON

With thanks to Jnanasalin for this particularly 'odd' Japanese video. What drug were these people taking when they made this!

FEATURE 84 - Pendulum Waves

DIARY 141 - Solitary Notes No 2 - Plane with the grain.

There's an old Taoist saying that if you're encountering lots of rough turbulence, constantly stopping or starting, find yourself digging your heals in, and not really developing any forward momentum in ones spiritual life, its probably because you're 'planing the wood against the grain.' This can make 'planing the wood with the grain' sound a bit like taking the less challenging easier route. but imagine you are trying to make something of yourself, you're the raw unfinished lumber, that needs its rough bark removing, its surface planed, sanded and varnished to reveal the beauty of the underlying grain. Well, practicing the spiritual life is more like that to me, I'm trying to bring out the underlying beauty, and that wont happen if I'm planing against the grain all the time.

This flow diagram below, is one way of visualising the basic framework of my practice, how I can more effectively 'plane with the grain.' of my life experience.

Rather than setting my sights on some remote 'enlightened' horizon, my working ground is right here in my every day life 'to discover the jewel in the dungheap.' And within that my principle areas of practice are three:

MY PRINCIPLE PRACTICES

1 - The Allure of Beauty

Whatever I do has to be beautiful, be attractive, be alluring, to draw people in, to engage them on a more deeper level with things. I also need to be drawn in, to engage with beautiful things, because without them imaginatively I turn into a desert. If I'm to maintain creativity I need to feed and nourish my heart and 'soul'. I've always done that through art, theatre, cinema that's emotionally and imaginatively rich, and through contact with nature. Its vital I do this, otherwise I feel increasingly impoverished. I don't get enough of this sort of nourishment, so I come perilously close to running on empty. I have to give this a higher priority.

2 - Kalyana Mitrata

I've talked about how important this is to me before. How I imagine it's scope has expanded in recent years to pretty much incorporate everything I do - all forms of interaction with others, from rituals, art projects, friendships, relationships. Being a Kalyana Mitra is ideally to be a 'beautiful friend' to cultivate the attractive, alluring, engaging, virtuous spiritual qualities of the 'beautiful friend.' I need to constantly check out how I'm doing with this, sometimes I do go into auto-pilot with it. Essentially I'm cultivating spiritual beauty.

3 - Prattitya Samutpada

It took me a while to settle on this term. Initially the quality I was struck by was a need to feel connected, which manifested itself in my enthusiasm for collective practices, communities, sangha and kalyana mitrata. But it also cropped up in my love of biographies, oral and conventional histories, archaeology,nature. So it stretches from connectedness in the immediate present experience, through to a sense of empathy and connectedness with cultures and people from the past.

Then it seemed inter-connectedness was a better term, and then prattitya samutpada, sometimes translated as 'interdependent origination' or 'conditioned co-production.' A term that incorporates both connectedness and interconnectedness, the smaller individual perspective and the larger universal perspective. I've found my thoughts and writing dwell, and get excited by the theme of prattitya samutpada quite regularly. In reflecting on my experience, on how I could cultivate beauty or Kalyana Mitrata, I inevitably coming up against my self, my conditioning, my limitations,my disconnectedness, my loss of the larger perspective when focus narrows to my smaller self preoccupations.

I've given these three principle practices an imaginative description in that they all behave 'Like three shoals of golden fish' alluring, fascinating and yet fleeting. The flow diagram has two further levels practice, each triadic group of practices interacts and supports each other. One can never practice one without encountering the others. There are also cross connections between The Allure of Beauty, Kalyana Mitrata & Prattitya Samutpada, and the practice of Sila(ethics) Samadhi(meditation) & Prajna(wisdom) - 'Like a book with three covers' - and the practice/fruit of these, my Pure Land, that would be recognised by the presence of Stillness, Simplicity & Contentment -'Like three silver spheres on a mirror' each individually perfectly poised, stable and stationary, yet each reflected and absorbing itself into the universe that surrounds it.

DIARY 140 - Solitary Notes No 1 - Giving up on Enlightenment in this life

My fortnights solitary, was a time for reflecting on times past, present and future. This sort of spacious solitude I just don't find in my everyday life. My life is composed of a variety of relationships and interactions, ones that rarely leave sufficient psychic space for touching base with the one primary relationship - with me. That isn't a complaint, more an observation, that I am still pondering the implications and consequences of. One seems to be getting out of touch with where I'm actually at, and exhibiting the early signs of burning out. Certainly, over the last seven months it has been one huge creative project after the other. I'm aware that during this creative and organisational ferment I've been keeping inadequate tabs on how I was doing, Only in passing noting the desire to meditate drying up and the disillusioned ennui that seemingly surrounded it. Well, a fortnight away started a process of reappraisal, and what consequences this will have for how I practice the spiritual life.

During the first week I reviewed what my current spiritual ideals were. The solitary chalets windows began to resemble a rug made up of post it note strips, with ideals, connections, desires, interests and enthusiasms written on them. I still held one ideal that I've had for over forty years; to only bring things of beauty into the world. How I envisage doing that has changed, but the underlying ideal remains intact. Today its also about my relationship with beauty itself, whether its in the form of art, friendships, virtue or nature, as much as my creating beautiful objects or rituals.

I came up with a number of headings that eventually morphed into a flow diagram. This began with my basic working ground and principle practices, and flowed upwards to how my Pure Land might manifest itself. After twenty years of practice I needed to acknowledge that 'Enlightenment in this life,' rather than motivating me, had become an actively demotivating factor. I no longer envisage myself achieving this, I clearly don't desire it enough. The desire I'm left with, is a rather perverted greedy and envious one, a headmasterly disciplinarian, that compares and reprimands me for my apparent shortcomings as a Buddhist practitioner. This can leave me bereft of faith in the effectiveness and achievements of what I'm actually doing. If I do a formal structured meditation practice such as Mindfulness of Breathing I flounder in the inadequacy of it, and the energy I'm willing to put into it rapidly dissipates. I took a book on Mindfulness by Ajhan Brahm with me, which I had to abandon reading. I was fine cultivating a silent present moment awareness, even focusing on the breath, but as soon as he started talking about, nimittas, beautiful breaths and dhyanas, I mentally switched off. My diminshed ability to sustain interest is quite pronounced.

I see this actually as good, its honest, its liberating to reconsider, in the light of letting go of Enlightenment in this life, where that leaves my practice. Basically in a more healthy balanced relationship between my ideals and how I'm choosing to live them out. This doesn't necessarily mean I need to throw everything else away. I'm not rejecting the Buddhist path, just adjusting and realigning myself with it. I'm moving the goalposts into the field where I'm playing ball. The actual, rather than the virtual playground.

FEATURE 83 - Anna Calvi

Been a slow grower this one, but I'm becoming quite captivated. Her voice is sometimes has the stridency of a Siouxie, as bellowing as Florence Welsh, and as mournful as Souad Massi, but all with a richer more operatic tone. The songs have grand touches here and there of Bowie, Morrisey or Nick Cave, but are altogether more grand for being embellished by the velvet throttle of that voice. The passionate flames of Spanish flamenco flicker, not just in her dress sense, but through her soulful guitar playing. She should team up and do a duet with Marc Almond. If she can make or find her audience, this woman could be big.

FEATURE 82 - Unfolding Of The Lotus

Here is a link to the Windhorse scrapbook blog, with a brief report in pictures of the Wesak mornings event.

windhorse:scrapbook: 2011 ARCHIVE - Unfolding Of The Lotus - Wesak Cele...: "Though this was only our second Windhorse Wesak Celebration, it has quickly become a substantial annual event that brings the Buddhists in t..."

DIARY 139 - The Fluctuations Of Sraddha

The last few weeks have been full on, all consuming ones, mostly preparing, planning or setting up for Wesak. Waiting to fully kick off the plans for Unfolding Of The Lotus, holding them mentally in a pending tray, strayed into being hard to bare at times. I'm beginning to recognise a pattern to situations where the execution of plans is delayed or becomes protracted. I become strained emotionally, easily overwhelmed, slightly tetchy, and a weary fatalism, if not apathy, emerges. Something similar to this happened with the length of time the Show Of Hands Project took to complete.

The preparations for the CALM & Wesak events, unfortunately took place at a time when I've experienced an undermining doubt concerning the effectiveness of my connection with Going For Refuge To The Three Jewels. Emotionally its been a tightrope I've walked. One minute, planning, for the benefit of others, this huge expression of sraddha in the significance of Buddha's Enlightenment, whilst having days where I was dowsed in depression at finding myself profoundly disconnected and distant from that sraddha and significance. In retrospect I'm experiencing this differently. This divisiveness feels incorrectly perceived - as if it was a smoke screen, and not about what was on the surface at all. The level of time and spiritual commitment required to pull Wesak off was indicative of more than a stoical persistence. Perversely, the fact that it did aggravate, provoke or exacerbate the levels of doubt, points towards a strong sraddha, not a weak one. As if an unanswered question was mistakenly given to the voice of a gremlin, instead of a guru.

Both the CALM Project and Unfolding Of The Lotus went extremely well. I've had very positive feedback about them, that I need to remember well, when my confidence lapses about whether folk really appreciate what I'm doing. I know there's always likely to be some carping, envious, if not jealous comments behind closed doors. I am, after all, in the very privileged position of being able to put my creative energies into these aesthetic projects. Not many people can do that as part of their job remit. So I can see how what I do could become a bone of contention for some - why me and not them?

All I can say, is that I found devising and putting on CALM & Wesak ultimately enjoyable and immensely satisfying by virtue of the fact that both rituals were executed collectively. At times even I was surprised by how moving or simply FAB the end result was. Any ritual can bring the collective zeitgeist of the Bodhicitta into being, and this then moves, inspires and leads it. My role in this? I'm just a bus conductor, I tell people when to get on and off.

FEATURE 81 - Kathy Kirby

I remember Kathy Kirby being a regular on the Billy Cotton Band Show on a Saturday night. My Mother hated her, mostly for her blaring vocal style, and the lip gloss. Was there lip gloss before Kirby? It lent a certain quivering shimmering quality to her mouth warbling.

In this early sixties clip, she sings her Bop Shoo Wop version of, Doris Day's - Secret Love. She bore one thing in common with Ms Day, she was a gay icon. Kirby's dress sense, with outfits often dripping with pearl drops or diamante, was theatrical. It sort of went with the vocal histrionics - lets go really really over the top here!

Kirby's decline from the seventies onwards, was, in retrospect, inevitable. With the arrival of singer songwriters, people lost interest in that manufactured sixties style of intense singing. All the major British singers of that period - Dusty - Sandie Shaw - Cilla - either went into enforced retirement, never to re-emerge, or diversified into TV or fashion. Kirby, defrauded of her money by her manager, went into a sad hearted obscurity.

But here she is in her hey day, walking precariously down the steep ramp of a TV set, unable to walk or dance properly, or move her arms more than a shrugs distance from her hips. 'What ever you do Miss Kirby keep it minimal, or you'll fall flat on your face in front of millions of viewers.'