FEATURE 114 ~ Shrines made for A Lotus in an Ocean of Fire

Shrine created by Vidyavajra

Here are some photos of shrines made for this years Windhorse Celebration of the Buddha's Enlightenment.

Accounts Team Shrine

Shrine created by the Retail Team

Property Team Shrine

Tara Shrine created by Vidyavajra

Padmasambhava Shrine created by Ivan Trujillo

Padmasambhava  Shrine Created by Ivan Trujillo

Warehouse Shrine 

Shrine created by the Evolution Supply Team

Shrine created by the ADK Team

Stupa Shrine

Palanque Shrine created by Vidyavajra

DIARY 114 ~ Once a Ritual has happened

Well, Windhorse's ritual to mark the Buddha's Enlightenment having happened. I retire as Ritual Master for another year once again. Simultaneously satisfied with the result, but also relieved that thinking about it can now be dropped. At some point, sooner rather than later, I need to take time out from picking up this responsibility. Simply in order to recharge, reinvigorate and maintain a positive relationship with it. Otherwise I'll find it increasingly difficult to find fresh ways of connecting with it. At the moment the process of refinement over the last four years has reached its peak. A certain format is tending to automatically take its place. This is what usually happens, a particular normalisation process takes place, after the creative ferment. I'm aware that this form, is by no means the only way it can be done. My engagement this year has noticeably grown a stale crust around the edges. The predictability of this programmed structure feels creatively restricting. I'm feeling the need to throw it all up in the air once more, but first I need to stand back in order to obtain a new perspective on it.

My original aim was to re-invigorate collective rituals at Windhorse. This has to some measure been achieved, but whether this will have a life of its own has yet to be proved. To create a longer standing ritual tradition, it has to be able to survive without me being present. It feels my current role could be to create the conditions for Ritual Masters of the future to arise. Yet what is the best way of doing that? How do you make yourself obsolete? Do I remain in place to encourage and nurture this handover of responsibility or is the best way just for me to get out of the way? People tend not to step up to lead when an incumbent is still in the post, still in the way, so to speak.

Next week I do my final stint in Customer Services and move on to a decorating project at Abbey House. This will most likely take up the next three and a half months. What comes after that is somewhat vague at the moment, perhaps there maybe nothing further for me to do at Windhorse! Or it maybe that this is a point where I need to make a decision; to go part-time, to give more time to my own artwork

In this respect, I've already booked the Cambridge Buddhist Centre in October to hold a small exhibition of my artwork. This year I've been reviewing my old work, and preparing new work. This will no doubt consume my available spare time through the Summer and early Autumn. In the short term, this is what I'm wanting to do ~ to put more energy into developing and exploring ways of selling my own artwork. This is something I've never done before. There are many practical things yet to be organised. Such as getting my artwork photographed and to establish a web presence. This feels both exciting and intimidating. This is going to stretch and push at the edges of my comfort zone substantially. This may be no bad thing. A degree of tension has been released just by deciding to do this. It's as if my whole life has been about finding a way of coming to terms with satisfying my own creative urges and needs. I've been noticeably calmer and happier as a consequence. This maybe because I'm on the way to doing the right thing.

QUOTATION MARKS 36 ~ Hakuin

"When I was young, I used to think that the Way of the Buddha was nothing other than keeping the mind in absolute calm and quiet. I was always searching out dismal places and sitting there as if I was dead.  I was not able to enter into any activity of life at all.

Sometimes one is tempted to think that the life of calm helps us to progress even better than one had hoped, while the life of activity does not seem to help us at all. But one who is carrying on the life of calm, at sometime has to enter the active life, with its worldly business. They may find they lose all the advantages of the powers which they had attained in their quiet place of meditation. With nothing to show for their pains living the life of calm.

You must not think that this means that you should dislike or cease from trying to carry on the discipline of the life of calm, and deliberately seek to live only the life of activity. The less one understands and knows about - the active and the calm - the more careful should one be to value them both, they are two aspects of one uniform condition. An ancient sage said;  

‘

The performance of true meditation must be still within the sphere where desires exist. From within the fires the lotus blossoms.’

If a lotus blooming in water, is brought too near to fire it immediately withers. Nevertheless, a lotus which comes to blossom within the fire has a greater and more delicious scent and is the more beautiful the nearer it is to the fire. A person leaving the calm of meditation coming out into the life of activity, will be like the lotus blossom which instantly withers when it is brought near to the fire.

A person remaining within the life of activity, is simple, complete and of one piece, they will not err to any degree. Raising up the source and origin of their own soul and mind, bringing to a final end all those roots of existence which tie us to the cycle of life and death. They are to be compared to the lotus that blossoms and becomes ever more beautiful and deliciously scented as it gets nearer to the fire.  If you ask, ’How can this be?’  It is because the fire is itself the lotus and the lotus is itself the fire."

Adapted by Vidyavajra from extracts in ~ A reply to a near retainer of Lord Nabeshima of Sesshu Province by Hakuin, Part of The Embossed Tea Kettle.Published by Crompton

DIARY 113 ~ A Ritual Happening

After months of meetings, developing and planning, the day of Windhorse's Celebration of the Buddha's Enlightenment arrived on Friday 24th May. At the beginning there's the discovering of the theme and the exploration of how that could be expressed, and at the end there's the carrying out and leading of the celebration day itself. Both of these things I find I enjoy and am engaged with.. In between there is all the making, refining and organising which, though very important to the success of any ritual, I don't get that much enjoyment or satisfaction from. That said I have been very relaxed about this years ritual and not stressing about it. It is my fourth year of organising and leading and I guess I've got the measure of how to do them now.

Each year I'm endeavouring to open this event up to involve more and more people in the making of it. This might be through people doing readings in the ritual, or encouraging the making of shrines for the event, devising practices for the period leading up to the event, or leading mantras etc. Leaving it up to individuals and teams to come up for themselves how they want to prepare for this highlight of the Buddhist festival calendar. At Windhorse, there has always been a tendency for practice periods to become warehouse focused, and the office teams can either be left out, or roped into things that don't work with the differing demands of office based schedules. This tends to encourage office teams to be passive recipients of other peoples devotion and practice, rather than tapping into and being able to find expression for their own.

As organisers we have attempted this year to encourage the office teams to devise their own collective practices. As a first attempt at doing this I think it went as well as could be expected for any new initiative, and shows promise for future events. Perhaps it would never have quite reached our initial expectations, which as ever proved unrealistic. This was a good first try which needs following up on. What happens next depends on whether a group of folk in the offices emerges to take this initiative forward, and plan collective practice sessions for the office teams etc etc. It would be counterproductive if every initiative were to come only from me  There have been some really heartening and inspiring ideas developed this year by both individuals and teams, who gave talks, created special shrines, schedules of practice and readings to lead them up to Buddha day. One warehouse team held an entire weeks urban retreat within their team.  

The theme of A Lotus in an Ocean of Fire is a rich one. With many ways in which the imagery and metaphors surrounding Fire could be explored. The focus for my own creativity went into the creation of the huge shrine backdrop for the Shrine Room, pictures of which you'll find elsewhere on this blog. This has transformed the appearance and sense of it as a sacred space. Turning up the gas from 3 to 9. I'm hoping that the shrine room will in future be used more frequently and enthusiastically.  The same words of the Buddha's Fire Sermon that are punched into the panels on this backdrop, were used in a video that Pedro Vidal and myself collaborated on as an opening for the mornings ritual.

The Buddha after his Enlightenment turned around to face the Bodhi Tree and felt gratitude arise towards it for sheltering him whilst his awakening came into being. In some respects he was also feeling reverence and gratitude towards all his past teachers, life and lives that had led him to this point. One of the themes of the morning was gratitude that the fire which his Enlightenment lit, has been passed on through two and a half thousand years of devoted practitioners. Devotion arising out of sraddha, and sraddha arising in part from reverence and gratitude as an essential part of its DNA. The mornings ritual evoked that lineage of fire through a sequence of readings, each containing practical advice from past teachers on how to practice effectively. Beginning with our own teacher Sangharakshita and moving backwards through the centuries until we reach the Buddha's own first teaching, his decision to teach, until we heard how he described his own Enlightenment.

My own favourite reading from the morning was from Hakuin where he describes the way our meditation and our daily life must become one and the same. Through the metaphor of the lotus and the fire, he described how the fires of practice and of Samsara are intimately interconnected. The fire of our practice has to blossom to such a high degree of intensity before it can match, replace or extinguish the Fire of Samsara. Only then would we realise that that perceived incompatibility of a lotus with a fire, is an entirely false one. 

CD REVIEW ~ James Blake ~ Overgrown

With his first album James Blake sketched out a rough plan for future exploration. Most tracks had the thinnest sliver of a tune erratically woven through them. It was only on Wilhelm Scream and Limit to your love, tracks he didn't write, that you saw glimmers of what might be possible. The experiments were sometimes like scratches across a blackboard with loped vocal lines. Not quite easy listening. It was also quite difficult to find enjoyment in his more cutting edge work, it was cool and didn't provide a thrilling trip, one was just never quite sure how to take it.

The austere electronics are still often sparsely applied, crossing over each other, in not quite counter point.
Blake's voice is soulful, but has a thin winsome fragility, that often breaks in mid phrase, swallows and warbles back into the melody line. The title track Overgrown, exemplifies this style at the start then mid track develops a lush wash of sound falling over the voice like a waterfall.

 

 Any connection he had with dub-step seems a somewhat irrelevant one these days. He hasn't lost his sense for experiment, its just become more focused and refined. Digital Lion, co written with Brian Eno, Retrograde, Take a fall for me and Voyeur take you on a fantastic unexpectedly diverse journey. To the Last, the penultimate track, with its chiming bell keyboard refrain is quite the most beautiful thing he's written. The final track, Our Love Comes Back, is fittingly a straightforward real tune  presented without much fuss and clickety clicking. Almost electro -easy listening.

CD REVIEW ~ Yeah Yeah Yeahs ~ Mosquito

I've come rather late to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Mosquito is I believe their fifth album. I first started appreciating their mix or art-punk with It's Blitz. The latter's disco strut did have its exultant excellent moments, but Mosquito strikes me as being an altogether different beast, their most coherent album yet. There really is not one duff, or uninteresting, track, no dip in the energy execution or quality. It opens with the gospel tinged Sacrilege.



This is followed on the album by Subway, about loosing ones ticket and ones lover, all set to the rhythm of a recording of a New York subway train. Then comes the albums title track, which I heard first on Later with Jools Holland, and it is one relentless storm of a track. Karen O sings speaks, in that edgy, sassy and confident manner, that made everyone else on the show look feeble and uncommitted  by comparison, Plus she was dressed to impress in a bright red fringed jacket. Knockout!



The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are the sort of band that can only emerge from New York. Part of the Art-punk scene, their roots are so urban, influenced by street swagger and sleaze, rough and raw, whilst also possessing a flashy brash polish.  They're both Indie and Arty, a guitar band that loves to experiment, often to quite a wild and indulgent degree. So on this album there's Sacrilege with its touch of the aforementioned gospel, but also dub effects galore on Under The Earth, then rapping on another standout track Buried Alive. This bears an opening riff that seems lifted from Johnny Marr and The Smiths, that then takes off on a trajectory all its own. They'll probably never reach mega stadium popularity, as their style is too eclectic and unpredictable, but this is what I love about them. Mosquito is there most consistently satisfying offering yet,

CONCERT REVIEW ~ John Grant, The Junction, Cambridge

I was, once upon a time, an avid concert goer i.e. when I was much much younger. These days, the huge expense aside, I only make the effort when it's someone I have a really strong affection for. So in recent years, its been Show of Hands, Nick Cave and Sparks, that I've checked out live. I find a pop or rock live performance can be a dispiriting affair. Often the musical sharpness and fullness of sound is diminished, if not sacrificed to energy and amplification. Sometimes it becomes patently obvious that the polish a performer exuded in the studio, they're unable to reproduce on stage. Those that do pull this off are rare. One band whom I felt exceeded live the excitement of their recorded output, was Ian Dury & the Blockheads. To this elite roster of excellent live performers I must now add John Grant.

He was ably supported by the Asqeir Trausti Band, whose christian name is pronounced like Oscar I think. Who mixes electronics sparingly with acoustic songwriting. An English version of his first Icelandic album is due out soon. One of the best songs from his short set was Going Home.
















John Grant's 'bear' like physiognomy. one would think would have brought out every gay bear for miles around. But Jnanasalin and I scoured the Junction but no shaven-headed,  hirsute and lumberjack shirted men were to be found. Either John Grant's music has yet to tap into this gay subculture, or more likely, that their just aren't that many 'bears' in the Cambridge area. The age of his audience ranged from mid thirties to fifties, with a few borderline pensioners. There was a broad mix of genders and cultures present, from hetro~metrosexual couples, lesbians and gay men, alone and in pairs. Amply demonstrating the broadness of his appeal.

Though his songs, draw from his own life experiences, are confessional and often 'fucking frank' it became clear in concert what a universal vein his lyrics tap into. The fact that he's faced and keeps facing up to the painful facts of his life, provides an object lesson for audience identification. His stage presence exudes a strength, that even he doesn't fully realise he has yet, because he habitually dresses it up in veneers of sensitivity and vulnerability.This explains how his vengeful defiant songs about broken relationships with men connect with women. It was noticeable that it was the women in the audience who sang the loudest during Queen of Denmark, and Greatest Mother Fucke, waving their hands and punching the air. All that was missing was cigarette lighters and we could have been at an all night vigil for Reclaim the Night. His overcoming of his own conditioning and upbringing seemingly chimes in with everyone else who has had to do the same.

At one point, during a long soul-bearing preamble about the origins of the song Glacier, some bloke shouted 'Oh get on with it' only to be collectively told to shut it by a whole section of the audience. Evidently a John Grant audience feels he needs protecting, presumably to save him from further bullying and harm. I'm not sure whether that's helpful to him, though perhaps his own self-mythologising does make him seem like someone who needs mothering. There were constantly shouts of 'We love you John' as if he needed reassuring that he actually was.

Live, one is struck once more by the power of his lyrics, the audience was so still during Glacier, everyone attentively holding their breath, whilst listening to his softly soulful and supremely expressive voice. It is as good if not better live than recorded. His current band move with ease from the electronic dance themed to the seventies styled troubadour songs. It highlights that the transition to electronica on Pale Green Ghosts, his current album, wasn't quite fully carried through. Stylistically the mode from Queen of Denmark mode kept re-erupting into the synth mix, giving the album, stylistically at least, an incomplete or uneven feeling. The consistent quality of his songwriting however is what gives everything he does cohesion, even more so live.  This man is seemingly incapable of writing a lazy or trite lyric. On songs like Greatest Mother Fucker and I hate this Town, one does sense the emergence of a new John Grant, one who is able to gently poke fun at himself, as well as sending up his former lovers

His albums might suggest he's too introspective and self-pitying, and that a live performance might be too drenched in melancholy and poor me, to be really enjoyable or life affirming. Yet life affirming and uplifting was the overall impression this intense two hour concert has left me with. 

FILM REVIEW ~ What Richard Did

 What Richard Did, revolves around Richard, a sensible, but charming eighteen year old. A rugby player and a bit of a man's man, he's mature beyond his years A friend and rock to many of his friends who respect and love him. Then he meets Laura, his best friend Conor's girlfriend.  There is a growing attraction between the two and Richard gradually steals her heart from Conor.  Then at a party, drunk and letting his feelings of jealousy overwhelm him, he gets into a fights with Conor, giving him a good kicking. As Richard leaves he sees Conor staggering away, believing he's OK. The next day Richard finds out he's dead.

The script gently examines in detail his emotional and moral conflicts, whilst he mourns for his friend that he unwittingly killed, as the friends who know what he did, desert him. He lies to the police, but tells the truth to his Father. By the end of the film he strikes a lonely figure, alone with his guilt, with both his reputation and self-identity now in tatters.

The movie confidently takes its time to sketch out its central characters  The result is quietly compelling and unsettling, built around a terrific central performance from Jack Reynor. He's already won nominations and an award from the Irish Film & TV Award, so he is surely a name to look out for.

PROJECT ~ Windhorse Shrine Room Backdrop

After several months of banging, punching and assembling, the Backdrop I was making for the Windhorse Shrine Room was finished. Then it hung in the Abbey House Shrine room for a month, awaiting the begining of the Practice Period leading up to this years Enlightenment Celebration at Windhorse. This last Thursday came the day to move it, a procedure I was unduely anxious about.Bar a few minor bits pinging off which were easily repaired, the move and the installation went fine.

It really does look magnificent now its in its true home. The metal also complements and enhances the standing rupa. Unlike my previous work it came out pretty much as I originally envisaged it, with very little adjustments required to the vision. There were technical issues to overcome, but then there always are, and I was also learning what I wanted to do with working in tin. Something tells me this won be the last piece I'll be doing in recycled tin.

FEATURE 113 - A Lotus On An Ocean Of Fire

The theme for Windhorse's Celebration of the Buddha's Enlightenment2013 is A Lotus In An Ocean Of Fire, that I'm in the middle of organising. This is this years poster designed by Jnanasalin

FEATURE 112 ~ John Grant

After reading a review of his latest album, I checked out John Grant on You Tube. As you can see he's a hunky bear of a man, much given to wearing lumberjack shirts, a full beard, wooly hats and currently lives in Iceland, of all places.An expressive singer and fabulous songwriter, whose struggled to be at peace with himself, his past, and being fine with being a gay man. So plenty to be resonant with there.

His songwriting can be very frank, genuinely self-revealing, wry, spiky and lyrical, all within the space of one song. Delivered by this lusciously expressive baritone voice, that is earthy and vulnerable. From the interviews I've read, he seems to have had a bit of a rough old life so far. No wonder he can appear so bitter in his songs. Wrestling with the triple demons of low self esteem, bad lovers and bad drugs. Somehow, his dry sense of humour saves those soul baring songs from becoming maudlin or self-pitying. Classic love song themes of betrayal, revenge, hurt and loss reoccur. Whilst he gives both himself and his former lovers a hard time, his appeal is as universal as it is personally cathartic.

Even his more plangent of songs, such as Drug, or Glacier on the new album, contain within them small but telling phrases about the nature of attraction or how oppressive relationships can be whilst still in the midst of love. They succeed in both moving and amusing. His openness on 'Queen of Denmark,' turns the gritty painful subject matter of his life into art. When he accompanies himself solo on the piano, one is struck by the expressive directness, but also his powerful skill as a piano player. There is an air of the classic songwriting style around the opening lines of Where Dreams Go To Die, 'Your beauty is unstoppable, Your confidence unspeakable' that echoes the opening song preludes of Ella Fitzgerald. Now he's discovered his own voice, he uses devastatingly well.

I'm currently working through his back catalogue with The Czars. There are glimmers of great potential in some of the songs, but essentially something fails to gel between the music and the songs. They don't mutually enhance each other. The range of musical styles veers all over the place, sometimes The Csar's sound like REM, then The Cocteau Twins, then a bit Jazzy, then electro, throw around some wacky experiment or Robert Fripp style guitar. This eclectic range of influences showed some signs of melding into a more distinct vision by the last album Goodbye, but by then the original band members had left, and it had become pretty much Grant's baby.


Two years later, after leaving music alone for a while, he releases Queen of Denmark to great acclaim, and now his second solo album Pale Green Ghosts emerges. On it he's worked with some of Iceland's young electronic music talent, to come up with something that further develops the musical envelope he can deliver his songs in. It feels a more rounded album to listen to, though the familiar frankness is still there, the former lovers still get a pounding, but there's a broader softening fringe to the songs. Perhaps success and appreciation of his talent means he's becoming a bit kinder, a tad less angry, which can only be a good thing for him and all concerned.

DIARY 112 ~ The Tin Machine

Sometime ago, I thought it might be fun to make something out of tin lids. As I work part-time in the Kitchen at Windhorse, I ferreted away tin lids and cans of various sizes for quite a few months before I actually started experimenting with actually bashing, flattening and forming them. Until I did this, I hadn't really much of a clear idea what I wanted to do with them and started to become excited about this new medium for my artwork.

Though I began with only a wood hammer and some aviation snippers, my tools have rapidly expanded. I am now the proud possessor of a small anvil, a wide variety of shaped and letter punches, soldering iron, planishing and chasing hammers etc. I've become a bit of a metalwork nerd. I've even made myself a workshop in the cellar.

Also I've created another large artwork project for myself, a large Shrine Backdrop for the Windhorse Shrine Room.I started making the elements for this in October 2012. t. There's a curtain backdrop made out of tin lids, side panels containing verses from the Fire Sermon, and flaming panels made from tin can innards. Only in the last two weeks have all the components been made and started to assemble it .It has suprisingly come together relatively quickly. There have been the usual disfunctions between how one imagines it will fit together and how it actually does. Usually this has required a slight shift in my expectations, plus a willingness to accept a lesser degree of perfection in finish or structure. Sometimes one just has to abandon oneself to whatever is possible, but still works.

It's been a very enjoyable creative curve I've been on, during which I've learned, sometimes by my mistakes, many useful tips. I've yet to fully master soldering,for instance. Many of my early solders 'failed' and I've had to re-do them once I started assembling them. I don't think I'll ever want to do anything more than light soldering. My ambitions for myself in this area are only on a need to know basis. If I need to know how to do something for a particular artwork, then I'll find out more about how to do it.

I'm aiming to have the piece ready to install by early May, before the Celebration of the Buddha's Enlightenment on the 24th May. I've got time off at the beginning of April, where I'd really like not to have to think about this piece anymore. It is looking likely that I could finish it by the end of next week, barring anything unforeseen arising, hurrah! So far its 3/4's finished, but its already looking quite splendid.

 

DIARY 111 ~ Christmas at Abbey House

For a Buddhist, it may seem odd to make a big thing of Christmas, and many do try there best to have nothing to do with it. Particularly the out of control consumerism.  But in Abbey House there's quite a long held tradition that we decorate the community and put on a slap up meal for whoever is around over the Christmas period. You can fight the prevailing mood, but you'll not win. So why not just embrace it positively to some extent, on your own terms. After all, the Christians basically took over already existing pagan celebrations that marked the period between the Winter Solstice, the deathlike low point of the Sun before the arrival of a New Year and rebirth of Spring, to suit their own back story. We just need to take some of it back, and use what is positive about this time:~ namely the opportunity for generosity and sharing, and make the most of that. In the grey dull cloudy skies of December what better thing is there to do than make what is bright, uplifting, light-filled, beautiful and joyous more present? Here's a few pictures of the Abbey House this year.