SHERINGHAM DIARY No 125 - Misfiring Discourses

After finding that David Whyte's book of Consolations ultimately veered into the dull shade of a light obscured sunshine, I decided to go back to reading something with more spiritual heft to it, i.e.the Buddha's Dharma. I've had a copy of The Anguttara Nikaya, barely read since it was bought for me a while ago. So I'm reintroducing myself to the stiff and over structured cast of Buddhist discourses. On one level what they did was simply phenomenal, to form a collection of a vast range of similar numerical teachings into one compendium volume. Its undoubtedly impressive, but those monks must all have been such left brain nerds, with all this cataloging and grouping of themes by subject and numbers. And no one ever said - Hey, guys, enough with the sytematising. Think what your target market is, its not bureaucratic Buddhist administrators is it? Check listing all the correct cross references and structured textual consistencies are maintained. Real people have to read this not data analysts or actuaries.

I do have a personal fight on with reading discourses and mental tedium. The tendency is for my attention to switch completely off when I read repetitive material. Its as though I have a sensor which automatically shuts down, when there appears to be a lack of stimulating input coming through to the brain. Its similar to You Tube where after twenty minutes it simply stops a video streaming, just to check if you are still watching. To counter this, I'm reading only a small extract every morning. There is interesting material here, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it is buried beneath verse after verse that only differ from each other by a stray adjective.

A recent poll appeared to suggest a large number of Gen Z might support a more authoritarian form of government. This article in The Conversation indicates that actually it was very dependent on how you phrased your question, when you specifically mention dictatorship then its a lot smaller numerically than our right wing press so gleefully reported :-

https://theconversation.com/only-6-of-gen-z-actually-favour-dictatorship-not-half-as-some-reports-would-have-you-believe-250945?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=bylinecopy_url_button

Besides, I can remember I had a phase in my mid teens of flirting with the idea of a dictatorship. Just to sort things out. It's probably not that unusual for adolescents to experiment with political attitudes, try them on for size. This viewpoint only lasted a year or so, and then I did a volte face, probably not unconnected to realising - them fascists, they's never a gay man's buddy man. In my mid teens the UK was in a right mess, their was The Winter of Discontent, and future prospects were looking really bleak. So it was perhaps understandable I thought more strong arm political solutions might be good. This would subsequently to be followed by the collapse of the Labour/Liberal coalition that made the Thatcher era inevitable. Where the poisonous seeds of our current parlous state were deeply sown. So, all I'd say to any Gen Z out there is - be very very cautious about what you wish for.

My right shoulder slowly improves with the emphasis on slowly. After two weeks of resistance band exercises to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles I have regained most of my shoulder movement. The shoulder joint itself remains tender, the muscles still become quite stiff at night, I can't lie on my right side or carry anything heavy, without it becoming painful, and its all quite weather dependent. The muscles in my shoulder having become so atrophied, finds any daily exercise is a bit of a short sharp shock to them. Exercise might wake them up, only for them to slip back into stiffness as the day goes by. I'm about to try doing rotator cuff exercises only on alternate days, to give them some breathing space to adapt and recover, plus improving my daily protein intake which is a little low. However, trying to find a protein bar that is not also far too high in fat and sugar is nigh impossible.

Today I watched with jaw on the floor as The Tangerine Emporer and his VP Painted Wormtongue did a number on Volondymr Zelensky. This was like two mafia thugs turning up to put the screws on someone for disrespecting them. As an EU diplomat said, this was definitive proof if we needed it, that we have to find a new leader for the free democratic world, pronto. This US regime has become the poodle of Putin and are attempting to bully and intimidate democratic countries into an agenda that is not in their best interest. This did not happen by accident, it's a planned strategy from the US administration to humiliate and diminish Zelensky into doing their bidding or resign. This was designed not to look good on TV.  To paraphrase Lady Gaga - their category was Dance or Die.

You can tell when the weather has released itself from the grisly grip of its wintry grey chill and we are allowed to glimpse sunshine on more frequent occasions. It's also when Hubby and I start talking about when the best time for a day trip to Southwold might be. Though very foggy and in minus numbers at first, once the sun struck out towards its zenith it soon burned off into a glorious clear blue day. Southwold, seemed in relative good nick.

After we had done our major ports of call Cornish Bakery, Lift, Bookshop, and general perusal of the retail offering, we bought an alfresco lunch from Black Olive. Sat on the promenade watching the sun glistening the ocean waves, as all varieties of people and dogs gamble by. We began a new tradition last visit of popping into Beccles on the way back. And I must say the place is growing on me. It has a fine cafe/deli called Baileys which is worth repeated visiting in anyone's book. 

Like every market town in East Anglia, you can tell Beccles has inherited a faded glory, in a grand medieval church tower and porch, with lovely Georgian back streets. Its high street retail is a mixture of the low to high quality, with the inevitable significant gaps in the teeth. The day though sunny with a bit of a chill wind, was a real pick me up. Such bright clear days have been in short supply this Winter. Just being out and about in it lifted the general mood of doom and gloom. Arriving back home exhausted, but in an entirely beneficial way.

MY OWN WALKING - February Journal 2025

At some point in a lifetime there comes a realisation, that most of ones life has been about a central theme with streams and rivulets running off from that. And like riding on a merry-go-round you come back to this theme over and over again. As though you are worrying at it. As though you are wanting the answer to a question that you've not yet been able to fully form. As I presently understand mine, the central one has been the desire to fully know, express and realise who I truly am. Simultaneously a very human search for individual meaning and purpose has inexorably lead me down a spiritual path to ponder what the true nature of the self and reality are, and discovered quite how unfathomable this ultimate reality can be. And so the recent Check In posts have rumbled on, as though something else has yet to be given a voice. I apologise if some of the following appears to be rephrasing very similar territory. This is just me trying to tease some stray threads out.

One question has turned up - How can you meaningfully make connections and relate to an ineffable ungraspable ultimate thing, whatever you might choose to call it - God, Enlightenment, Tao etc? And a short answer might be, you can't. At least you can't intellectually, self consciously form a real connection with what is ineffable. You can only rake the soil as though in preparation. It's unknowable in any meaningful way, though you could imagine a proposition that you might relate to. Which, as I've indicated previously, are usually 3rd or 4th cousins, so very distant relations. Often made in our own image.

We anthropomorphise our Gods, our spiritual goals, because we want to have some real physical sense, however misleading, for what we are worshiping, relating with or aiming to connect too. This painted face of religious belief would be its symbols and icons, which can assume a power all their own. It makes the ineffable seem real and relatable, but this may be an expression of, but not the ineffable itself. Which is often where we trip ourselves up.

This is why the Buddha put so much emphasis on practice being the important spiritual effort. Yes, it was worthwhile studying the sutras and attempting to understand the Dharma on a deeper level. But speculating and devoting too much time and effort to debating the nature of Enlightenment? Well, that was counterproductive folly. Clarifying nothing of much worth to you spiritually. So what I'm doing here is tantamount to intellectual wanking. But, nonetheless we need to hold ourselves to something, however provisional.

And what then is faith? What is its role? What is it that we say we have faith in? Is faith a provisional proposition sufficiently true that it can be followed ? Is faith simply a hunch for what is true? I like to couch faith as an aesthetic sense for where the truth might be found. It's an intuition, a felt sense for what is ineffable. Faith can aesthetically ignite all our sensory faculties into a heightened sensitivity. And this type of faith may sustain us on the long journey towards the unknown destiny. 

It's tricky, because that faith can also seemingly falter or collapse. Dogen devoted a whole chapter of his spiritual epic Shobogenzo to mischievously riffing on the merits and demerits of a painted rice cake. Though a painted rice cake might look edible, it is a painted representation, not capable of sustaining you practically. But it might sustain you in the short term spiritually, on the journey toward a real experience of 'rice cakery.' When our faith falters its usually when we somehow catch ourselves in our faithful pretense, that this is only a painted rice cake, an artifice, a facsimile, and ask why am I kidding myself? Where is that real thing I was promised? Am I wasting my time here?  In our hunger for meaning and purpose, all religions feed us with an elaborate pretense, a bit of fabulous fakery - until what was once fake becomes real.

Buddhism actually has no direct Sanskrit equivalent for the English word faith. Instead it has the word Shraddha, that can be broken down as something we have confidence and trust in, or have some fidelity with. I love the idea of faith as a form of fidelity. A loyal identification and friendship formed with what is ungraspable by any other means. Shraddha can be couched as a friendship with the good, or for what is true. And like human friendships shraddha requires regular devotional effort if it is to be forged well and maintained. You can never take it for granted. It's important to know what your faith or sraddha requires of you in order to sustain it, and to do more of that.

For me, what reconnects and strengthens my faith has come down to three things, reading anything written by Dogen, any form of devotional ritual, and making or devising something that has sacred purpose. Even better should this purpose also benefit others.

READING ALOUD - Tenuous & Precarious by Stevie Smith

 

One of the UK's most beloved cantankerous poets, Stevie Smith was born in Hull, but spent much of her adult life in Palmers Green, London. That she briefly, til the age of three, inhabited the same city as Phillip Larkin, seems remarkable, but I suspect they'd never have got on.  A bookish curmudgeonly batchelor meets a semi-depressive spinster obsessed with death and a mordant sense of humour. Far too much feline levity on show. 

In this poem Tenuous & Precarious, Smith plays with ordinary words that sound like they aught to be Roman names, but are not. And they are words that become in some way critical of family life. As in her most famous poem Not Waving, But Drowning, it is a mistake to judge the outward appearance of this poem as lacking in seriousness of intent. Its needling and has sharp edges, her delivery has a tone that stops short of scathing, but only just. Here is a woman who had her struggles with being visible in a male dominated world. And so she chose to write poetry? Always the disparaging ironic lilt, its to keep you at a distance. 

All the figures in the poem appear to be male, with the possible exception of the cat. They all have their dangers and downsides that a woman is often made most aware of. They all appear to be dead, which sort of leaves you with one Roman Finis, the end of the genetic line. It maybe that this was how Stevie Smith viewed herself and her life, as a type of reduction to what seemed possible given her circumstances.

Tenuous and Precarious
Were my guardians,
Precarious and Tenuous,
Two Romans.

My father was Hazardous,
Hazardous
Dear old man,
Three Romans.

There was my brother Spurious,
Spurious Posthumous,
Spurious was Spurious,
Was four Romans.

My husband was Perfidious,
He was Perfidious
Five Romans.
Surreptitious, our son,
Was Surreptitious,
He was six Romans.

Our cat Tedious
Still lives,
Count not Tedious
Yet.

My name is Finis,
Finis, Finis,
I am Finis,
Six, five, four, three, two,
One Roman,
Finis.

written by Stevie Smith

BEST BEFORE DATE - 2006 - Baby Baby (Can I Invade Your Country) by Sparks

Way back in 2005 when the Iraq War was blazing away, all the controversy over  whether they had WMD or not raged, and Tony Blair's hair and reputation went ashen grey overnight. The next year Sparks released an album Hello Young Lovers. Now Sparks are a witty, inventive and arty combo mostly, not given to political diatribes or alternative viewpoints. On the album, however, is this sly piece of political satire Baby Baby (Can I Invade Your Country) Using the masculine metaphor of invading the feminine and conquering, they make a very pointed commentary on the actions of the US at that time. What makes this doubly plain is the use of selected lines from The Star Spangled Banner as lyrical content. To parody the ideals enshrined in the words of its own National Anthem, now being used to justify invading another country, taking away its sovereignty. In addition they've given it a country hicks musical gloss, so you can do a hoe down to it if you will. 

At the time of writing this monarchical assumption that you can take over any country you want has resurfaced in the imagination of The Tangerine Emperor. This time, not because he wants to liberate them from an oppressive regime, or bring an end to an invasion or genocide, but because he wants to expand his countries boundaries, and access their resources. In the history of American Imperialism invading is not new, but the nakedness of its bare faced acquisitiveness is. This song has thus come back to mind recently and has returned it to my daily playlist. Enjoy.

ARTICLE - Where Free Speech Is Useless

There have been times in my life where I have mistakenly thought myself a good listener. I've struck up a friendship with someone, who I later realised used their time with me to perform this weeks emotion dump. Having found someone willing to listen and not contradict them, they go straight for what makes them most pissed off and angry. Over time you realise its the same issue every time you meet them that they have a beef about - how wrong and pig headed other people are - being the favoured one. Once this dawns on you, you have then to consider, do I say anything about this, because you don't really want to become the object of this pissed off friend,  do you? 

So you gently venture into the outer border territory, just to see how they might react, but leave yourself enough room to back off quickly if it starts to look too tricky. Being extra cautious because this person has been known to punch out, when crossed. Experiments completed, you come to the conclusion that this friend of yours is not actually interested in your opinion, and if they heard the full truth of what you had to say, there would be some sort of violent response. If you're lucky, only verbal. 

You might say, well tell them regardless, its not much of a friendship anyway. Yeah, I've tried the nuclear option, and the one person I did that too no longer utters a word to me, nor even acknowledges me in the street. I did hurt them, because I got under their armour and prodded purposefully about. But it had no effect whatsoever on changing their behaviour, which had been my naive aim. People have to want to change themselves, frank interventions really only work when the object of them is almost at the point of realising the same thing for themselves. 

What I could chose to do in such circumstances, would be gradually increase the time between meeting up, until at some point perhaps these meetings might cease altogether. Because another thing about this type of friendship is that its you who has had to do the running all along in arranging to meet up regularly. Though you've had precious little airtime or personal reciprocal benefit from it. Now you might say, what has this little personal homily got to do with free speech? Well.......

Ideally, in a democracy, free speech functions as a way to express opinions, grievances and ideas, to put them in the public arena. There is always a consequence to speaking out, in that what you have said is open to challenge, exploration, condemnation or refinement in the process of public dialogue. Free Speech is an informal right, not an absolute one. I'm always a bit worried when governments want to legislate to support free speech, it gives off entirely the wrong vibes. Opinions which are slanderous, untrue, incite violence, libel to cause an affray, or are designed to undermine democracy itself, often have some form of legal redress or limit put upon them.  Free Speech is useful when used in this manner, its fundamental to a fully functioning democracy. Its not perfect and often its a difficult call when two conflicting groups fail to discover a way forward with an issue.

However, I have been noticing the concept of what free speech is has been adjusted online, one that is in danger of neutering its democratic purpose altogether. People are free to say whatever they like online, but can seem entirely unwilling to be subsequently challenged or enter into dialogue. In fact, any challenge, exploration, condemnation or refinement is often being portrayed as an infringement of their free speech, that they are being cancelled by the request to be accountable. Its no coincidence that this is the favoured cry of the far right, who might be wearing an acceptable democratic 'beard', but are no friends to democracy ideologically. This form of consequence free Free Speech is utterly useless, and is simply just venting and dumping onto the capacious clouds of the internet, poisoning the discourse.

There is much talk about free speech being in danger from left wing 'wokery' but stunned silence when it comes to the right wing travesty of Free Speech now taking hold in the US as we speak. Closing down accountability, banning journalists, removing minority rights etc. But to be honest the left is just as bad closing down discussions on contentious subjects, resorting to simple name calling, using offence as a reason to curtail an open conversation, insisting on particular language being used. There are difficulties society has around many subjects, trans rights is one. The right wing want to ban gender theory and its consequences, the left want to ban anyone who doesn't agree with gender theory. Thus any discussion or exploration of the issue by society at large is completely stymied, because the engine of free speech to explore what the issues are, is being encumbered by coercive controls.  

But in truth, a lot of what is making people unwilling to enter into dialogue, particularly online, is the level of violence and threat that you can suddenly find yourself in receipt of. One of the shared characteristics that my two examples of difficult friendships had, was they were both to a degree lonely and isolated people, both with bad quick tempers. And one suspects a lot of online trolling is by people who don't get out enough, have few real friends they can interact with, and have a lot of suppressed anger issues. Interacting with people online can be fraught with real difficulty, because of the semi-alienated nature of it. Without the body language and a lived sense of their mood and way of being. What you feel able to say online is very different to what you would say to them in person. There appears to be little room for nuance. No waiting for the right most opportune time to say something, its the 'nuclear' option straight away.

Recently there was an ARC conference. The Association for Responsible Citizenship is a broadly right wing, Christian Nationalist organisation. I glimpsed the beginning of one young chaps talk where he began by saying he felt free for the first time to fully express himself. The subtext was he was now in a context where he wouldn't be challenged or shut down, he was safe within the supportive bubble of that conference. What he went on to say was that all the moral ills of modern society could be laid at the door of homosexuality and gay marriage being liberalised. So you could instantly see why his experience would be that he was rarely heard out. I have little sympathy for his viewpoint, obviously being its target. But it also felt desperately sad that he felt unable to get all his shit off his chest elsewhere. Go to the gym man.

Some how we need to get Free Speech back into the real world, of real people, hammering out the issues in real time and real space, And, just as a polite addendum, don't forget that we all have freedom of choice. No one has to sit and listen to anyone off loading their half baked ideas, if they don't want to. We can make the choice to walk away. They don't dish out medals for endurance. Remember, no one will be willing to change their mind, if they don't first respect you or your opinions. Nor if you shout loudly at them does your rectitude appear more convincing. People are innately resistant to change their views, however wrong headed, until you put a lot of time and effort into winning their hearts first.

FINISHED READING - The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada

In an era where blockbuster novels take hundreds and hundreds of pages to paint their world, and the story becomes ever so slightly incidental. It is positively refreshing to read a novel, well a novella really, where all that is accomplished in a mere 116 pages, but rich with juicy details. And though this story can seem small in scale, it is used to create a sense of unease and a sympathetic questioning with its protagonists of quite what is going on here.

The Factory begins with three opening chapters which tell you the background stories of three people, and why they all arrive as new intake at a factory. Each is desperate for work, and reluctantly decide that maybe now they are prepared to work for The Factory. The Factory is the towns biggest employer, its so large it's pretty much a town within the town, and working there is obligatory for most. But each of the three newbies finds the job they thought they were applying for, either doesn't really exists or quickly metamorphoses into a job they would never have applied for if they'd known. Its well below their capabilities or pay grade. So they start their factory employment as respectively a Paper Shredder, a Proof Reader of incomprehensible texts, and as a researcher in Green Roofing, which means he is collecting all the different moss samples to be had in and around The Factory.

The longer they stay there, the sense of meaninglessness inherent to their work grows. Their tasks though purposeful, are without any sense for how they contribute and fit into the wider ethos of the business. What exactly is it that The Factory makes anyway? And why is The Factory estate being invaded by flocks of a unique bird species that gather on a bridge, chillingly referred to as 'factory shags ?'

Oyamada commands her language very economically, so small phrases can be greatly impactful. It is by turns quietly surreal and is quirkily funny about office politics. Portraying the emotional tangles that people put themselves through simply in order to survive their day. This short tale highlights the many human failings of the modern corporate world. Where the world of work has become even more of a drudge, because nothing about it makes any sense, and personal satisfaction via ones employment has become virtually an impossibility. Though Human Resources might certainly tell you otherwise.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - Medusa Deluxe

This is a 2022 British film written and directed by Thomas Hardiman, is set during a regional hairdressing competition, run annually by Rene (Darryl de Silva ). Unfortunately this year one of its stylist contestants has apparently been murdered and scalped, it isn't known by who. The police have closed everything down, no one is allowed to leave, Much of the opening shots of the movie are of hairdressers and models bitching about not being able to get out. The dialogue contains often scabrous humour, gallows funny, mixed with anger and bitchiness between the rival stylists who can barely conceal their disparaging views of each other. Long held resentments bubble up, plus concealed drug trading, and a stylist whose found God.

There are a number of impressive techniques used in this movie. The use of heightened colours, the almost lurid lighting, all sick greens and bloody curdling pinks. There is also that it appears to have been shot in one continuous take, with only a couple of points where it has been edited. So there is a lot of in time shots of characters walking down corridors, through doors, up stairs. Your attention slipping from one character arc to another in a turn of the camera. The fluidity of this belies its logistical complexity. This form brings to the film its own sense of energy and pace, as the whodunnit gradually settles onto one character as the culprit.

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, it was a bit of an unexpected gem.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

 

MY OWN WALKING - Checking In With My Faith & Doubts

This year, in June, it will be seven years since I resigned as an Order Member in the Triratna Buddhist Order. It occurred to me that maybe it would be good to do a bit of check in with myself. Where I was with that decision now, and more generally to review what I've done since then, and where my understanding and practice has now reached. I thought writing about various aspects of my spiritual life might be useful to clarify things for myself, because it usually does. And that maybe the readership of my posts, may also find some of this of interest.

One day, a few years back, Hubby and I were walking from The Slipper Chapel the mile and a bit pilgrim route back into Walsingham itself. Along the way we passed a car hub cap abandoned on the verge. Though this caught my eye, I did not respond instantly to my interest. So it wasn't till we'd walked a hundred yards on that I turned and went back for it. I'd had an idea, I wanted to create a reliquary out of it.

Since we first visited Walsingham I've been drawn towards the place, and the figure of Our Lady of Walsingham. A Christianised substitute perhaps for a local pagan fertility or water goddess. Who swirled in an atmosphere of sacredness much older than the early medieval of her foundation. There was once a small Roman temple here, and they tended to build on existing pagan sacred water sites. Being drawn to this figure is not solely about my love for the baroque vulgarity of Anglo Catholic imagery, though that has a role. It's proffering something more important than just a sense for aesthetics.

The What and the Why of it, has not become clear to me. I've been reluctant to over analyse the obsession with it, but have let that be whatever it is. I have accumulated a modest collection of Anglo-Catholic shrine devotional objects, censors, rosaries, church incense, day glo figures, olive wood tea light holders, and painted crosses from Nicaragua. I have rolled with this acquisitiveness just to see how far I'm actually willing to go.

Whether these incidents were pointing towards an interest in Christianity was one question. A theme of the last year was to see if there was an answer. I've read The New Testament cover to cover, plus a biblical commentary and a history of Christianity - I've watched innumerable Christian You Tube videos - I recollected my own childhood upbringing as a Methodist, and how that has influenced my life choices. Tom Holland's book Dominion demonstrated just how transformative an influence Christianity has had upon the development of Western Civilisation, and hence upon me too. This has not been by any means exhaustive, but I've covered some ground.

None of this has convinced me of any personal need to convert to Christianity There are a number of significant doubts, nay impediments. The Christian churches ditheringly wrong headed attitude towards homosexuality - its tendency towards fundamentalist authoritarianism as currently being enacted in the US. To name but two. On the level of beliefs, I cannot for the life of me get my head around the so called 'penal solution ' of Jesus's crucifixion, this seems to make no sense whatsoever to me. Its worth noting that its a female figure I'm responding to, I have no great feeling for Jesus at all.

But it has served a purpose, to clarify if there was a God, whether there was some shape or form of deity I could identify with. The traditional Buddhist viewpoint on Gods and whether they exist or not, is a studied indifference. Gods exist on The Buddhist Wheel of Life, but they are shown as essentially vain and self deluded about their higher divine status. Never what they might claim to be at all. Issues like Gods, God or No Gods, the purpose of the Universe, the intricate inner workings of karma, are all considered not worthy of devoting masses of time to. No help whatsoever in the pursuit of states of higher consciousness and ultimately Enlightenment. So get back on your zafu and practice monk!

What is unusual about the Judeo-Christian God is their relative visual anonymity. A deity whose divine interventions and punishments, are often petulant, fickle and unpredictable. God moving in a mysterious way its wonders to perform. I cannot really get onboard the bus with that type of deity. Neither can I support Phillp Goff's idea of a God of limited capability, that is meant to explain why God doesn't always intervene. A God who intervenes ineffectually, unpredictably and erratically, why would you want to honour any deity that behaves like that?  It's as though all the Greek panoply of Gods were condensed into one single divinity, erroneously claiming omniscience. 

However, all this depends on what sort of picture I draw of what God is, ultimately. I've written previously about the point in religious theologies where whatever is ultimate, whether that is God, Enlightenment or The Tao, disappears into the unknown, into whatever the unconditioned is, into no- thingness, into what John Vervaeke refers to as No-theism. I'm currently toying with the view that all religions present an alluring but essentially false picture of the nature of whatever that ultimate thing is like. Because what we are talking about here is something beyond the human ability to conceive.

It's as though each religion offers just a few random pieces from a huge but quite incomplete jigsaw. We use these pieces and what they appear to suggest, to try to imagine what the whole picture might be like. And the way we choose to fill in the gaps, just further falsifys and muddies our perceptions. What makes it worse still, is when we reify these projections into incontrovertible facts. Whatever I maybe currently conjuring from my humble imagination, I acknowledge, is also misrepresenting things terribly.

It is in the nature of what is unknown to be mysterious and ungraspable to the mundane mind.  God is mysterious and ungraspable, Enlightenment is mysterious and ungraspable, The Tao that can be named, is not the eternal Tao - its mysterious and ungraspable. If I were to believe in God at all, it is as something entirely mysterious and ungraspable to the conscious mind or spiritual imagination. 

However incomplete religion maybe in relation to its ultimate mysteriousness, its earthly function provides a window for us onto the ineffable. Something that can act as a go between, an intermediary, form an intercession between our conscious conditioned imagination and something which exists entirely outside that.  We reach out for it, as it reaches out for us. Our fingers point towards the moon, as the moon shines back silvering our world.

Outside of these sort of abstract faith questions about ultimate reality, there are the more prosaic day to day considerations of practices and devotion. It's become clear to me, I do hold an underlying view of myself as a Buddhist practitioner, as a rather ineffectual one. My ethical practice is reasonably OK I believe. Though always room for improvement obviously. I believe this view of paucity largely arises out of the experience of meditation practice. 

After the ardent enthusiasm of 'Beginners Mind' faded into routine practice, I've struggled with maintaining interest in meditating. I resorted to will power for a few years, upped the quantity of meditation, replacing ardent enthusiasm with an inflexible self discipline. Unsurprisingly this strategy failed, too goal orientated and not receptive enough. The quality of my meditation became mostly struggling to stay awake within it. I backed off and started to do Just Sitting practice, as an antidote to the goal orientation. I continued struggling to stay awake. It could be that I simply become bored by it, until I was no longer seeing its point.

These days I still meditate. Which must say something about residual confidence. I do Just Sitting, interspersed with Metta Bhavana and Taoist Micro Cosmic Orbit, a body awareness practice that imaginatively opens all the acupuncture points and smiling into them. These only rarely move beyond a pleasant feeling of relaxation. As a consequence the regularity of my meditation practice can take an erratic turn. Sometimes I meditate every day, sometimes I go for weeks, nay months, without getting on the cushion. It has been this way for more than a decade. 

In that early rush of enthusiasm I did have strong experiences in meditation that still convince me an elevated state of consciousness is attainable. That was over thirty years ago, which is a long time ago to still be dining out on. I intuit I'm still looking for experiential affirmation through my meditation. I don't appear to be able to get beyond this being a bugbear. There is as a consequence a lack of Samata ( calm, equanimity & peace ) surrounding meditation, which even I can see does not help. Its almost as though I need to wipe the meditation slate clean and start again from scratch. That, or simply stop worrying about the feeble state of my meditation altogether.

The thing I remain connected with, but frankly rarely do enough of, is ritual and devotional practices. I've made a wonderful shrine that I love, yet I hardly sit myself in front of it. Am I running scared of something? Devotional practice has been where my faith and aspirations strongly emerge from. Rituals can take time to set up and then do. But they do change the religious vibes very quickly, simply by putting energy into a devotional focus. 

Being left to my own devices, outside of Buddhist Sangha, or any supportive context, can stimulate ongoing doubts about the direction I am facing in relation to my faith. Hence I've spent a good part of this blog exploring abstract theoretical issues about ultimate things. Evidently there's some fogginess around what I envisage my spiritual life is currently orientated towards. In this position any lack of clarity feeds the lack of purposeful direction to meditation practices. Though having said all that, taking up Tai Chi/Qigong has brought a physical dimension to mindfulness once I have the form securely under my belt.

A better strategy for the present maybe to exercise the faith muscles and just be a devotion bunny - probably for quite some time.  And in this period after and beyond the heart attack, the time for shilly shallying ought by rights to be passed. As Dogen once urged his disciples, that every moment brings a fresh opportunity  - 'to throw your whole being into the house of the Buddha.'

READING ALOUD - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

 

Thomas was the first poet I became a fan of. The verbal power of his words is further amplified in this recording of the poet performing one of his most famous poems. It has all the sing song quality of a Welsh priest intoning from his Sunday pulpit. Clearly enunciated, emotionally over heightened, muscularly musical in its delivery. In many ways Dylan Thomas heard today, you could easy hear this as a parody of the poet. As though this was recited in another epoch.

But imagine it being read in a club or small assembly room, and how overwhelming the imaginative power of it could be. The rolling cascade of its rhetoric coming towards you. This is baroque poetry born from a robust and richer valley, than the conversational plainsong of many contemporary writers. 

And Thomas here is raging famously - against the dying of the light - the futile fight we put up against our mortality, the decay of our minds and bodies. And in Thomas's case, he raged against that which he most feared, the dying of his talent and creativity, that his best work was behind him. Something which. in part, drove him to drink.

MY OWN WALKING - Checking In Then Out Of Religious Institutions

This year, in June, it will be seven years since I resigned as an Order Member in the Triratna Buddhist Order. It occurred to me that maybe it would be good to do a bit of check in with myself. Where I was with that decision now, and more generally to review what I've done since then, and where my understanding and practice has now reached. I thought writing about various aspects of my spiritual life might be useful to clarify things for myself, because it usually does. And that maybe the readership of my posts, may also find some of this of interest.

I'm going to start by looking at my responses to religious institutions. When I wrote my resignation letter from the Triratna Buddhist Order, it was not without some regrets. Removing myself from the Sangha ( the community of fellow practitioners ) in particular I found difficult. And from time to time, I am aware still of the void this has left. I am following my own path at the moment, and this appears to necessitate walking it alone. Even though I recognise how much easier it would feel if there were fellow travellers alongside me. Any institution requires you to make conscious compromises in order to belong to it. And I certainly benefited from belonging to a supportive religious context for most of my twenty five years of involvement with Triratna. 

I was a Triratna Order Member for eighteen years, and over that time I moved towards the centre of it, and then drifted out towards its fringes, in a cyclical orbit numerous times. Each time something in the form or manner of my involvement or practice was lost or consciously dropped by me. I was finding belonging to its institutions discomforting. It felt increasingly like I was this 'ill fitting wheel' not willing to constrain myself fully to the commitments I'd made at ordination. Rather than stay a passive bystander within Triratna, I decided I needed to move completely outside of it,simply in order to gain a more open receptive viewpoint. To connect with what I believed when free of external Buddhist contexts. I was once happy to belong to the movement, but had to recognise I no longer was.

At this time Triratna was coming out of a period of deep self examination, recrimination and cathartic adjustments as a result of a scandal regarding the sexual behaviour of its founder. This abuse had all happened more than fifteen years before my involvement. Nevertheless it was a stain upon the reputation of the movement that it never can fully expunge. The period was well over by the time I got involved. I never experienced any of the coercive control alleged to have gone on then. However, the scandal affected everyone's confidence and trust, and I was not unaffected by that. Many Order Members resigned because of it. In fact I think it might have been easier for other folk to understand why I had left, if I'd said it was due to the scandal. But it really wasn't. 

In any religious group, its very easy to find oneself enthralled by a leaders charisma. Though in the case of Triratna's founder, Sangharakshita, you could not find someone less charismatic. But nonetheless people look up to the founder of a movement they had found beneficial, and expected him to be an exemplar in all things, to provide a example of what a person more spiritually developed than them might look or feel like. But this was always a projection. No one should have been at all surprised that Sangharakshita  might have major flaws and imperfections. No one would survive untainted by close public examination of their sex proclivities and relationships, not even a spiritual teacher.

I never wanted nor needed Sangharakshita to be perfect. He founded the movement, organised its teachings and practices, these introduced me to Buddhism which I've hugely benefited from. I continue to respect his legacy purely on that level. It is never easy to hold someone within an aura of respect, when there is this other side of them that appears to run completely counter to what you expected of them. We demand a level of perfection of such individuals that apparently cannot be sullied in any way. Its indeed hard to hold these sort of contradictions, whilst avoiding making excuses or to explain away their flaws, failings and follies, but still respect and honour them for the good that they have done and how this has changed you for the better. It often feels like a much clearer moral path to paint them in a black light and simply drop involvement with them and move on. But that is not always an entirely truthful or honest depiction, either of them or of you. It's so easy for it to become virtue signaling.

Let me be clear here. Out there in the human world there is no ideal perfect religious institution you just haven't found yet. You will be on a fruitless journey if you set off to find one, believe me I've tried.  Whether religious or secular, institutions are full of flawed individuals, who occasionally might be found immoral or corrupt. One has to acknowledge, as the writer Francis Spufford pithily put it - The Human Propensity To Fuck Things Up. The failings of individuals within a faith and its institutions, is not necessarily synonymous with, or a reflection on, the validity or fraudulent nature of God, The Buddha, Mohammed etc. It is most often human practitioners getting it wrong, and often trying to hide or obfuscate the trail that leads to their ineptitude or moral failings being revealed. The Buddha's teachings have survived and some people find them still relevant two and a half thousand years later. But there have been plenty of times when human errancy has had to be corrected, and movements of renewal launched. Religious institutions always have to be open to revive, change and transform themselves, if not they will very slowly die of rigor mortis.

Once I was outside of Triratna, I spent a good six months or so just absorbing the consequences of my leaving. Though eventually I did start attending a Zen Priory in Norwich. Whilst I liked many aspects of it, once I'd been there for a while I had a better sense of its practices and institutional structures. I could see that if I were to go deeper into it, I would find it more restrictive than Triratna. Zen has a much more rigidly top down sense of where spiritual authority comes from. Then came lock down. For a while I attended another zen group on zoom, but after about six months I could sense a similar institutional pressure moving towards me. I backed away.

At this point I drew two conclusions. One, I had been actually looking for another form of Sangha to join, but found that Zen groups had a much weaker sense of this as an active practice. Two, I was no longer up for joining a Zen or any other form of Buddhist order. I'd had it with all of that. I didn't want at my age to learn and take on a whole new range of specific practices, rituals and traditions.  Both of these conclusions were instructive about where I was, and am still at. I have joined no other Buddhist groups or otherwise since then. I'm not anti institutions, just not interested in being part of them right now. This may or may not change in the future. I do not predict or prohibit anything.

I am by nature a quietly slow and steady Buddhist practitioner. I have certainly benefited from being a part of institutions, and can often value their structures and the sense of belonging they bring. Though a wider perspective tells me, that I chaffe with that after a while. That I stayed an Order Member for eighteen years is nothing short of a miracle. This was partly encouraged by friends urging me to not give up, not to move on as was often my habit. All of which made the decision to leave so much more cathartic once it came. 

I remain outside of any particular Buddhist movement or institution. Whilst fundamentally I'm a Buddhist in my core beliefs, in the way I perceive and respond to my daily experience. Also the language I use to describe my experience is still largely Triratna's, with a smattering of Zen and Dogen. I have felt an increasing sense of being liberated to explore whatever the hell I am drawn to, though not rushing to make it all neat and coherent as though it has been thought through beforehand. It hasn't. I find I am more of a religious mish mash than even I suspected. There have been some small but significant shifts away from Buddhist viewpoints, but these will be for next time, when I'll be - Checking Out My Faith & Doubts. 

SCREEN SHOT - Night On Earth (1991)

Night On Earth is from 1991, and a portmanteau of short dramas written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Each is set in a particular city around the world, each taking place in a taxi cab journey. So we have roughly twenty minutes spent travelling across Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki respectively. With a jazz inflected bordello music soundtrack that is inimitably Tom Waits. It has cameo performances from the likes of Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, Roberto Benigni, Beatrice Dalle, Rosie Perez and Giancarlo Esposito, to name but a few.

These short vignettes, are all glimpses into ordinary people's lives, whether cabbies or customers. All of the stories oscillating between being touching and hilarious. The evenings in all these cities have a particular urban atmosphere,in America its often active yet hostile, neon lit and garish. Whilst in Europe a city can be half romantic slum, half sublime architecture. A taxi driver knows it all. Night time is the part of the day when the poor and the less salubrious come out into the streets. People are drunker, louder and more argumentative. And often these worlds step over the gutter and into the life of the cab driver. Cab drivers are particular folk, between jobs, in the meantime making a living off driving a taxi. Often learning to be adept at managing and talking to people from all walks of life.

In Night on Earth - a female cabbie really wants to be a mechanic, not a film star - an ex-clown from Germany loves his job yet cannot even drive the cab properly - a french speaking cabbie from Cote de Ivory strikes up a conversation with a blind young woman who possesses second sense - an Italian cabbie instigates a long and embarrassing confession to a priest he picks up - a Finish cabbie listens to a tale of hard times from three drunken men, then tells them his own tragic tale of misfortune. The subject matter of the film may sometimes feel slight or incidental. But this film is really all about people spending a short journey together exchanging their shared humanity with each other. Its quite the most heart warming and delightful film and one of Jarmusch's best.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

FEATURE - Oxborough Family Chapel

 

On a recent visit to Oxborough Hall, to see the snowdrops in the wooded dell there, we looked into the Family Chapel. This is not a property owned by the National Trust. The Bedingfield family who originally built the Hall have lived there five centuries. They were, and still are, Roman Catholics, and became reluctant recusants during the Reformation and beyond. Until the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 began the reintroduction of Catholicism into British society. This brought about a huge surge of building of Catholic churches and cathedrals. 

In the 1830's, a good twenty years before Catholicism was completely restored, the Bedingfields began to extend and restore the house, with the help of Augustus Pugin, The family built themselves a new Roman Catholic Chapel ( not by Pugin ) where this rather glorious Antwerp triptych can be found. Assembled from various bits of 16th century Dutch carvings and paintings, it rather captivates the attention the moment you arrive. If you have never been to see Oxborough Hall then do, it is the most fabulously eccentric gothic pile in the Trust's possession. You could imagine Mervyn Peakes's Gormenghast taking place within its crenelated walls, grand tower and bailey with a surrounding picturesque moat.

LISTENING TO - Do Things My Own Way by Sparks

 

A new Sparks album Mad! is a few months away, with album cover and date of release not yet publicised. However, we will be teased by a slow dropping of tracks over those months, of which Do Things My Own Way is undoubtedly only the first. And what a treat it is. 

Its become a staple of recent Sparks albums that a simple lyric pattern through repetition and intervals of clever variation is delightfully strung out to the length of three minutes plus. Do Things My Own Way is something of a masterpiece in this respect. Great use of clangy guitar breaks, adding to the verbal staccato rhythm that drives this track along. The title Do Things My Own Way could easily be read as Sparks manifesto, because this is exactly what they always have done.  But I wouldn't rule out there being a satirical poke at individualism and maybe even the Trumpian era we are in. It bodes well for the album, whenever that finally reveals itself.  

Gotta run
Gotta fly
Gonna do things my own way

Fall behind
Bye bye bye
Gonna do things my own way

Feelin' right
Feelin' tight
Gonna do things my own way

Got the fuel
Broke the rules
Gonna do things my own way

Snooty twits
Havin' fits
Gonna do things my own way

They wanna lunch
Don't wanna lunch
Gonna do things my own way

Lookin' good
Understood
Gonna do things my own way

Out the way
Out the way
Gonna do things my own way

Feelin' cool
Feelin' schooled
Gonna do things my own way

I'm Howard Hughes
In Jordan twos
Gonna do things my own way

Do things my own way
Do things my own way
Do things my own way
Do things my own way

Not a faze
All my days
Gonna do things my own way

Not a fad
Is that so bad
Gonna do things my own way

Unabashed
Totin' cash
Gonna do things my own way

Unaligned
Simply fine
Gonna do things my own way

Do things, gotta run
Do things, gotta go
Do things, gotta stay
Do things, gotta play
Do things, gotta run
Do things, gotta go
Do things, gotta stay
Do things, gotta play

Saw the Pope
Told him, 'nope'
Gonna do things my own way

My guru
Told him too
Gonna do things my own way

My advice
No advice
Gonna do things my own way

Roll the dice
Roll the dice
Gonna do things my own way

Anywhere
Anytime
Gonna do things my own way

I don't care
I don't care
Gonna do things my own way

Gonna do things my own way
Gonna do things my own way
Gonna do things my own way
Gonna do things my own way

Lyrics by Ron & Russell Mael

SCREEN SHOT - Past Lives

When I was at Primary School, I escaped being bullied by the boys in the boys playground by taking refuge in the girls playground. I had 'girlfriends' and some of those girls professed their six year old love for me in letter form. Somewhere in my papers I still have two of their clumsily written notes. I don't remember them now as individuals that I once was in a naive 'love' relationship with. We all have memories from our childhood of deep friendships, that for whatever reason do not survive the test of time. My family moved away from the town of my birth when I was eleven. This effectively meant any sense of continuity between my childhood friends and my adulthood was cut off. There was no shared experience of growing up and maturing together.

Celine Song's wonderfully tender film takes the idea of soul mates from our childhood and says what if they came back to meet you in adult life? What mixture of emotions would this conjure up in you? The philosophical centre of this movie revolves around the Korean notion of 'in yun' that individuals you encounter do not come into your lives by chance, but by a type of karmic fate. That you have some previous past life connection with this individual manifesting in the moment here and now of your present life. But that is not always meant to be a love connection.

Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) were childhoods sweethearts, whose love and appreciation for each other was abruptly terminated when Nora's parents emigrated from South Korea to the United States. Twelve years later via the internet and Skype, they reconnect. Nora is at the beginning of her burgeoning career as a writer, Hae Sung still working his way through college towards a future career. Though they talk of meeting up, neither feels able to do so. Their conversations churn up Nora's emotions, they start to impede and confuse her career ambitions. Making her decide to cease communicating with Hae Sung. Many years later Nora, now married to Arthur (John Magaro) she hears from Hae Sung. That he is coming on a visit to New York. And its clear he has come to see her. 

This film is full to the brim with real heart, that doesn't avoid the complicated emotional territory these three individuals find themselves in. How does Nora feel about Hae Sung, and vice a versa? What on earth is Arthur to make of Hae Sung and his reasons for wanting to meet Nora? All the tender insecurities of Arthur's relationship with Nora's become exposed. Meanwhile Hae Sung stands there as one protracted ache of longing for a past life, he so much wants to reclaim, but finds he really cannot. Life has moved on, the depth of their childhood connection is lost in a past that only Hae Sung continues to live in.. At the end of the movie he asks Nora - do you think that our connection in this life comes not from the past but from a relationship in a future life? An unanswerable question which is holding out one last hope into the future, which is just a heartrendingly tough watch. This debut film of Celine Song's, which she both wrote and directed, is worthy of all the awards and praise that has been heaped upon it.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8