DIARY 158 ~ Holiday in Bruge

We had five days holiday in Bruge, but it felt like we were there for a whole lot longer. After the intense activity running up to 'the do' we both really felt fully present and relaxed.  It was quite the most enjoyable and satisfying holiday we've been on together. Good food, coffee, beer, chocolate, waffles, lace, tapestry, art, architecture and weather, what more could one ask for? We just fell in love with the place and its continental culture.

 In and around the streets and canals of Bruge

The Markt & Belfry

The Burg

Basilica of The Holy Blood

Contains a bit of cloth with Christ's blood on it

Casket the relic is processed in

The Stadhuis

The Jerusalem Chapel

Another relic ~ a splinter of 'the cross'

Spooky puppet Virgin & Child

Baroque pulpit in Church of Our Lady

DIARY 157 ~ Formal Photo Album

With thanks to Vidyasiddhi for these lovely posed photos

Both our families

DIARY 156 ~ Ceremony & Party Photo Album

The day after the legal ceremony we had our own ceremony at Abbey House. Just under forty friends and family came to witness us dedicate our partnership and tuck into savouries and cake afterwards. Though the Registry Office ceremony was simple and relatively brief, it was quite moving. The partnership dedication ceremony was more specifically focused on our life together as practicing Buddhists, and was of an altogether different calibre. It felt quite an integrating event, bringing family and Buddhist friends together for the first time. Jnanasalin and I worked really hard during the week before organising, buying and making things. We wont be doing this again for a long while. It was pretty full on right up to three quarters of an hour before the starting time. 

THE CEREMONY

THE TEA PARTY

DIARY 155 ~ Civil Partnership Photo Album

Here's a collection of photos from the Civil Partnership in the Registry Office, with our two good friends Keturaja and Saddharaja as witnesses. We took them out afterwards for lunch in La Margerita, our favourite Italian restaurant in Cambridge.

Pretending to sign the Register

With our two witnesses

Keturaja & Saddharaja larking about

On Castle Hill afterwards

Saddharaja tucking into Tiramasu

DIARY 154 ~ Video of Ceremony & Tea Party

On September 21st, Jnanasalin and I had our Civil Partnership Ceremony at the Registry Office in Shire Hall, Cambridge. The next day, we dedicated our partnership in the context of a Sevenfold Puja, followed by a splendid Tea Party. Here's a video of the event, made by our good friend Pedro Vidal.

OVERHEARD - No 2

THE PLACE ~ Jnanasalin and I were in our favourite local ~ The Elm Tree.

WHO ~ On a table opposite us were an informal group of folk from the north of England. One of the women was trying to discover what sort of a house one of the other men would like. She started asking him about his interior decor, when she uttered these words ~ 

' You don't look like the sort of man who'd have scatter cushions.'

FEATURE 107 ~ Army Of Lovers

As Camp as Christmas and somewhat more........

ARTICLE ~ Drdha ~ Part Eight

Earth Shattering

“If there were no gratification in the earth element, beings would not become enamoured with it; but because there is gratification in the earth element, beings become enamoured with it. If there were no danger in the earth element, beings would not experience revulsion towards it; but because there is danger in the earth element, beings experience revulsion towards it. If there were no escape from the earth element, beings would not escape from it; but because there is an escape from the earth element, beings escape from it.”

“I set out seeking the gratification in the earth element. Whatever gratification there is in the earth element - that I discovered. I have clearly seen with wisdom just how far the gratification in the earth element extends

I set out seeking the danger in the earth element. Whatever danger there is in the earth element - that I discovered. I have clearly seen the wisdom just how far the danger in the earth element extends.

I set out seeking the escape from the earth element. Whatever escape there is from the earth element - that I discovered. I have clearly seen with wisdom just how far the escape from the earth element extends.

“The knowledge and vision arose in me:unshakable is my liberation of mind; this is my last birth; now there is no more renewed existence”5

The earth has shaped us, made us breath, made us dream, and has made us to die. The earth embodies and positively embraces our mortality. In the Bible, god creates Adam, the prototype man, out of the earth. In so doing the earth performs an eternal role mythically in the minds of humanity. From earth all life is formed. The seed that is planted in its soil, is watered until it bursts out from under its blanket of soil, to become a flourishing plant, with an illusory sense of its uniqueness and independence, its own individual life in the midst of a field of corn that will ripen until golden. Every cornhead knowing that at some point there will be a harvesting, a reaping, a turning over of the straw stumps to replenish the earth’s fertility, to renew its ability to go through this cycle all over again. This is the existential angst that coerces, chokes and cloaks human lives. It stimulates our religious impulse, our spiritual striving, our prescient dreaming for life to be otherwise. It also causes us to bury our heads in hedonism, to drown our sorrows in upturned glasses of ale, to party party party until we drop.. Our mortality has both a creative and a crippling force behind it.

Despite our tribal and family loyalties, our shared cultures, cities and civilisations, we still feel abandoned and alone even whilst we are walking upon the earth. It was reassuring for us to imagine gods and minor deities inhabiting the everyday world of fields, trees, streams, air, fire, even our hearth and home. These gods became like our invisible, secret friends, who in difficult times will hold our hands and give our hearts the strength to carry on. You’re never alone in a world filled with earthbound gods and goddesses.

But then there are times when the gods and goddesses seemed to desert us. Why do they do that? Where do they go? Where do they disappear too? They must go somewhere, perhaps its to a godlike realm, a heaven of sorts, from which we must beseech them to return. Then they do return, but less and less frequently, almost begrudgingly. They seem to prefer to stay in heaven and rule the earth from there. The gods and goddesses look down upon the earth and its creatures, and become bored with our neediness, indifferent to our aloneness and existential despair.  

One by one the gods and goddesses abandon humanity, until only one god is left behind to mind the earth. He has become more like a caretaker at a school, than its headmaster. He opens the gates every morning, mops the floors, clears up litter after us, and locks the gates again of an evening. The caretaker god is unappreciated, people notice less and less what he does, until they stop believing in him altogether. Leaving humanity to face the reality of their aloneness upon the earth. Trapped in the earthly cycle of life and death without a transcendental friend. Without the guidance of a divinity, what are we to make our lives about?  We can make it about what we do ~ our work, careers, celebrity,the money we make, the kind of house, car, sofa or TV we own. Or we can make it about our relationships ~ the number of friends we have, the interests and enthusiasms we share, the companionship we have through life, the children we can live out our un-fullfilled ambitions for life through. Every earthly thing we choose to build our sense of purpose around, will always feel flawed, because ultimately such things let us down at the point of our death, or their death, or they break, tear or decay.  All our possessions become ownerless.  All earth-bound luggage is left behind on the station platform as the train bound for heaven departs.

Severing our dependence upon heavenly divinities, has paradoxically reinforced our dependence upon that earth-bound luggage. We may believe that this is the only life we have, or that we will be reborn or reincarnated after this life is over, or that we go to some sort of perpetual afterlife in heaven. Yet what concern is it of ours exactly what happens when life is over, when life is not yet over? Who really knows anyway? The afterlife is for the afterlife. The purpose of life is during the living of it. It’s rarely what we are in life, but who we have become through life, that matters. Who  we are at the point of our death? Will we still be craving for death to be anything other than death, for life to be about more than life?  Can we shatter the earthly bonds that cause us to suffer, the craving and the clinging for and to earthly existence?

Human life can seem to be about leaving clearly distinguishable tracks upon the earth - through the history, buildings, ideas, art, people and genes that we leave behind. We leave such marks, carved like graffiti on castle ruins, to show that we were here. In the forlorn hope that ‘GH loving JW’ will be fondly remembered. A life that is lived and quickly forgotten, is a common occurrence. Yet we expend so much effort and time trying to ensure we are remembered, only to find that even the tracks of our mourner’s tears will soon evaporate. Not everyone can end up written in history books, even as an obscure footnote or reference in the appendix. We mostly disappear without remainder.
Even the figure of the Buddha is so historically shrouded in ambiguity and mystery, because time has already erased so much. The Dharma gives us a glimpse of how he was, what he was, and what he did. Yet without a direct experience of Enlightenment within ourselves, we cannot fully understand who he was. Yet the power of who he was is central to why Buddhism has lasted  over two and half thousand years. This human being who awakened to reality as it really is, is a potent idea to place in the hands of mankind. Instead of humanity transcending life and death through the medium of heaven, and its gods and goddesses, he demonstrated that humanity could discover transcendence within themselves. That Enlightenment could be found whilst one is alive upon the earth. A life extinguished then has just ‘the remainderless fading away’.

“‘A great bonfire was burning, consuming ten, twenty,thirty, or forty loads of wood, and a man would cast dry grass, cow dung,or wood into it from time to time. Sustained by that material, fuelled by it, that great bonfire would burn for a very long time. So too, when one lives contemplating gratification in things that can be clung to, craving increases....such is the origin of this whole mass of suffering”

“When one dwells contemplating danger in things that can be clung to, craving ceases. with the cessation of craving comes cessation of clinging; with the cessation of clinging, cessation of existence..cessation of birth...aging-and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain,displeasure,and despair cease. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.”

“ A great bonfire was burning, consuming ten,twenty,thirty,or forty loads of wood, and a man would not cast dry grass, cow dung,or wood into it from time to time. When the former supply of fuel is exhausted, that great bonfire, not being fed with any more fuel, lacking sustenance, would be extinguished. So too, when one lives contemplating danger in things that can be clung to, craving ceases...Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering” 6

5 - Taken from Ch22 & 23 the Dhatusamyutta, in the Samyutta Nikaya, Translated by Bikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publishers.
6 - Taken from the Ch52 the Nidanasamyutta, in the Samyutta Nikaya, Translated by Bikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publishers

ARTICLE ~ Drdha ~ Part Seven

Footprints upon the Earth

Two and a half thousand years ago, during the Axial Age, many significant individuals emerge, who found religions that have survived with varying degrees of success until today.  Lau Tsu founded Taoism, and Gautama Buddha founded Buddhism, during this time. This era is before historical documentation, in an age of oral transmission of teachings. All that we come to know now as Buddhism and Taosim, comes from texts written down and assembled several centuries later, or from more recent archaeological discoveries in the last century and a half.
Due to this factual absence and lack of substantial verification, it is unclear how historical these figures actually were. Did they actually live at all ? Both Lau Tsu and Gautama Buddha could have existed, but they may also be compound figures created around a coherent body of teachings that had no single founding figurehead. The consistency of the teachings might indicate the authority of a single visionary figure, but this might also have been created retrospectively  Both religious traditions appear to have been aniconic in their early days, and only developed a tradition of symbolism and representation of their founders, around the same time as their oral traditions became written ones. It could be there was no prohibition about representing their founder, because there was no specific individual founder to represent. To prevent this viewpoint hardening into objective fact, lets just recognise that it’s all conjecture, and only one of many such conjectures with very different assumptions as their basis. Until more concrete evidence emerges we can only conjecture on the basis of very limited and frequently unreliable sources.

Our twenty first century perspectives and assumptions themselves, may be be blinding us or distorting our perceptions of what was really going on then. Misinterpreting the perceptions and motivations of people of this time. They may have had significant cultural reservations about the making of images in general, that we do not have now. It is not uncommon for early agrarian societies to see making an image of someone as imprisoning their souls in stone. Imagine then how loaded making a representation of a supposedly enlightened being might then become.

The first Buddhist images when they do arrive two centuries later in the 3rd Century BC represent the Buddha symbolically, as an empty chair, a riderless horse, a stupa, or a pair of footprints. The common theme being of an absent presence. They show that the Buddha once sat, rode and walked upon the earth, but he does so no more.  He left his mark, but now he has gone. One of the epithets of the Buddha is ‘the trackless one’ the one who has gone beyond making his self distinct in the world. So it’s paradoxical that the Buddhapada, the Buddha’s footprints, his stylised tracks, should become a cult object of veneration. There are a couple of apocryphal stories surrounding the Buddha and his footprints, that give some background to why this was. The Buddha was said to have walked immediately from birth, and each step he took left a footprint with a golden lotus flower in it. The lotus being an early symbol for the unfolding of Enlightenment, this was meant to be a presentiment of his future attainment. After his Enlightenment, the Buddha’s footprints are said to have left imprints in the earth of the dharmachakra embossed in their soles. Everything he did was now so imbued with the Dharma that even as he walked he left an imprint of it. So however ‘trackless’ he’d personally become, he did leave the track of the Dharma.

Over the millennia these representations of the Buddha’s footprints have developed from single embossed lotuses and Dharmachakras on the sole, to an extremely elaborate and often esoteric iconography covering the whole foot. Symbolically representing his numerous virtues,qualities and attainments.  But why were the Buddha’s feet given such reverence?  In India it has always been a sign of obeisance and devotion to kneel down and touch the feet of a revered figure. So there was a pre-existing cultural tradition, but this symbolism goes further than just social convention. Feet in hot countries gather dirt and dust, and they leave tracks behind them wherever they go, ones that everyone can follow. The accumulation of the dust and dirt is the evidence of having walked and travelled across and upon the earth. So those pair of footprints in the earth are a sign literally to follow in his footsteps, to copy his footsteps, to revere and rely on his footsteps, to have sraddha (faith) in his footsteps. To manifest and walk the dharma into the ground, imprint it upon ourselves like a footprint does in the dust of the earth. Don’t follow me, follow my example, follow my path, follow the Dharma.

The Dharma is the Buddha’s footprint, it is the tracks of these tracts that will takes us, if we’ll let it, towards the trackless state of Enlightenment itself. A footprint is quite personal, each one distinct in size and shape. Its imprint upon the earth proves you were here, identifiable by the marks you’ve left in the soil. A footprint, even that of the Buddha, is recognisably human. But in the Buddha’s case, his Buddhapada takes the fact of his earthbound humanity to another level. Once enlightened he goes beyond the earthly, the worldly, even whilst he still walked upon it. It’s a reminder that he was not different to us, whilst he also was, and that we can become like him, though we currently are not. The mark that a Buddha’s footprint leaves is of a transcendent human being having touched the earth. This alone makes it worthy of reverence, so even the Earth Goddess herself must seek it out, and bow down to who-so-ever that person may be.

The Earth Goddess Drdha

forever scans the heavens

scouring every rock and crack in the surface of the earth.  

each country, district, forest or mountainous region

each village, town or city,

every poor humble dwelling or rich royal palace,

for signs of the excellent Dharma being expounded.

The Earth Goddess Drdha

goes wherever that place may be

to arrive beneath the Diamond Throne

and making visible her invisible body

leans her head upon the soles of the feet

of whoever is expounding the Dharma

and satisfies herself with hearing its sweet nectar.

The Earth Goddess Drdha

will pay homage and rejoice

until this suffuses her whole being

extending down as far as that founding thunderbolt

respect for the earth she shall cause to multiply

moistening it until it reaches the shores of oceans

The Earth Goddess Drdha

will then possess great power, fortitude and strength

the brilliance and glory of the Dharma having entered her body

will increase the savouring and love for the earth

and all beings living dependent upon it

will likewise be blessed.

The Earth Goddess Drdha

searches the earth for an expounder of the Dharma

and finding them already sat upon the Diamond Throne

leans her head upon the soles of their feet

To ensure that in a future time

all may be awakened to supreme and perfect Enlightenment

and all the manifest woes of the world will be wholly cut off.4

4 -  A freely adapted rendering by Vidyavajra based on excerpts from Chapter 10 The Sutra of Golden Light
   ~ based on the translation by R.E.Emmerick