FEATURE - Laura Marling - I speak because I can

Really loving hearing this album on Spotify over and over again. Becoming as a consequence quite besotted with Laura Marling's voice, for me it has husky echoes of Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins in its fractured phrasing. This is the title track that has a quite simple beauty to it, that I find quite stunning.

FEATURE 58 - Rumspringa

This series of four episodes on Channel 4 was titled Amish- The world's squarest teenagers, which itself was a bit of a bias and cruel slant. It misrepresented the reality of the programmes content. They weren't even all teenagers, most were in their early twenties. 'Rumspringa' is a time in a young Amish's life when they are allowed to go out and experience the world, before deciding to fully commit themselves to the Amish way of life. They spent four weeks here in the UK. Each week with a different social group of society, ranging from an inner city black family to an aristocratic one. This often brought, not only the Amish, but their hosts up short. For a moment they had to rethink and check out how they behave, what they believe, and why. The hosts often expressed a certain yearning and envy of the Amish's lives, whilst simultaneously not wanting to give up what liberty they had. They wanted the result without any effort or renunciation.

I was consistently impressed by the Amish teenagers open heartedness. Even when their beliefs told them their new friends behaviour was sinful, their response was kindly,concerned and compassionate. They wanted to protect them from any bad consequence they saw in what they were doing. Though they might have seemed to us, too tightly constrained by their Amish upbringing and the Bible, I saw a lot of unaffected, natural simplicity, few needs, and a sort of contentedness born from this, and their beliefs and convictions. Some possessed an unusual degree of spiritual depth combined with a realistic earthiness. By contrast the openness and liberality or the permissive lifestyles of their hosts, didn't always seem to make them any more rounded or mature as individuals. At times they just seemed naive and shallow, chasing the illusive butterfly of individual fulfillment. Sometimes what we Westerners spend our lives doing is mad, or at the very least incoherent. Whilst I wouldn't want to take on their Christian beliefs, I could see that the Amish lifestyle embodied some of the positive consequences of cultivating stillness, simplicity and contentment.

DIARY 129 - Inhabiting a Godless Universe

So, Stephen Hawkings has brought down from the mountains of scientific authority, a new tablet of cosmic belief. The world evolved without any help from God, Gods or Goddesses, but by the power of gravity. An idea which, even to my inexpert eyes, seems a trifle feeble, an incomplete and hence unconvincing philosophy. None the less, I can see the many colours of theism already scurrying around for a way to refute his assertion.

Richard Dawkin's espousal of evolution in recent years, has been met with some nifty pseudo-scientific verbal footwork by Christian fundamentalists. The term 'intelligent design' is a neat phrase, your sympathies rise without you ever having to know whether it really hangs together as a philosophy. If you were to seek out a spokesperson to champion atheism, Dawkins would probably not be your first choice. Like the humanist Ludovic Kennedy before him, Dawkins has as cantankerous persona, often teetering on the verge of apoplexy. The veracity or not of his argument to one side, Dawkins presents his beliefs in a teacherlymanner, that is as self-satisfied, and smugly patronising as any street evangelist, and equally toe-curling. One can be forgiven for thinking when he refers to believers in God, that he's not talking about fellow members of his own human race, but some sort of sub-species that must be systematically eradicated. I can feel myself wanting to rushing to the defence of the theistic underdog, to protect them from the unfortunate fascistic triumphalism of his scientific orthodoxy. This does atheism as a belief system a disservice, making it no better or worse than its theistic cousins.

Atheism appears then, to not to make you any more tolerant, kind or understanding of different views, than its theistic opponents. Which makes one realise that the sins attributed to organised religions, are really just common human responses of insecurity, defensiveness, righteousness and potency finding an external focus for there worst expression. We misplace, and fail to take full responsibility for this when we single out organised religions alone, for damning opprobrium. Humankind tends towards holding beliefs, whether religious, political or cultural, with rigid inflexibility, that lurches toward cruel compulsion when ever it meets non compliance. We don't necessarily avoid or negate this outcome by disavowing religious, political, or cultural affiliations, whether organised or not.

Hawkings is a completely different kettle of fish to Dawkins, a compassionate man, who is probably the most influential theoretical physicist and cosmologist of his generation, Dawkins, by comparison, seems a mere reformulator of established theory. Hawkings being chronically disabled, easily wins hands down the public's sympathy. For obvious reasons not an eloquent speaker, we do, however, seem to be prepared to listen to him, as he's an effective explainer of the dense complexity of theoretical physics. If he has achieved anything, its that he has brought back a cosmic dimension to our view of ourselves and our place in the universe. But his assertions, like any others, shouldn't be automatically approved, and passed unchecked.

Singling out gravity as a progenitor of the universe, as a substitute for a deity, just isn't as yet going to convince anyone. From the perspective of Prattiya Samutpada (the conditioned arising of all phenomena) gravity undoubtedly is a major conditioning factor without which all matter and life would not cohere. As it is, we are still left with the unanswerable question - where that gravity itself originates from? Perhaps if we live in a creatorless, Godless Universe, we can't continue looking to conditioning phenomena for an answer. At some point we have to posit 'something' that is unconditioned, is conditionless, which the theists may still say is God anyway, and so will not resolve this issue. Whether God or gravity is attributed the role as creator of the world we live in, we are still left with the sense of a flawed philosophy, partial and incomplete views that fails to fully match the distinct shape of Reality. This is where an Enlightened perspective would be essential.

The Buddha's perspective was that this whole question of the origins of the universe, and by implication the existence, or not, of a creator God, was an imponderable one. A question that doesn't necessarily get resolved, or become clearer by repeatedly being asked, is of dubious value. There appears to be no irrefutable answer that will conclusively silence everyone on this matter. So expending further intellectual energy on it is not the best use of our valuable finite lifetime.

Such imponderable questions distract us from dealing with more urgent issues, the tangible origins of our suffering; our desire for immortality, satisfaction, and self fulfillment. Suffering is the existential ground of human experience, it doesn't vanish because there is, or is not, a creator God. If anything a creator God makes the theological rationale behind suffering more convoluted, disingenuous, fidgety, and hence unconvincing. It is hard for humans to take full responsibility, to grasp that we suffer because we live our lives out of sync with basic universal principles, those the Buddha said were dependent on Conditioned Arising - the Three Laksanas - impermanence - unsatisfactoriness - and the insubstantiality of our conceptions of a fixed self. These have nothing to do with gravity, and everything to do with the fluctuations, the changeable streams and giddy fits of Universal Reality.

POEM - Wise Words

Wise Words

dedicated to Prajna Paramita

What would wise words be?

Direct, but circumspect words

clear, like well cut diamonds

beautiful smooth and precise

with kind threads

sewn into every accent

and punctuation mark

Lovingly robust words

well fed and etched

with copperplate and curlicues

for additional ornament

and swirl

Words uttered

then placed on the ear

with consummate care

like an Ace on top

of a house of cards.

And how would they be heard?

In heart stopping awe

at the fulfillment

of an antique dream

Swollen with gratitude

as when a prolonged hunger

is finally satisfied

As an invitation

arriving unexpectedly

would strike you dumb

Written

By Vidyavajra

17/08/2010

POEM - I do not see death

I Do Not See Death

I do not see death

he is someone who for now

I can blithely ignore

I do not see death

its not in my nature

or daily horoscope

I do not see death,

though I sense his pulse

through hardened veins

I do not see death

yet sometimes he's so close

I could make him tea

I do not see death

though he confirmed me

as a friend on Facebook

I do not see death

because I wear dark shades

in bed at midnight

I do not see death

this wide and happy face

hides an altogether grimmer grin

I do not see death

I do not see

I do not

I do

I

!

Written

By Vidyavajra

14/08/2010

DIARY 128 - The Abrasiveness of Samsara

A week after the end of the Five Freedoms to Insight retreat at Padmaloka, and I was in an inwardly irascible mood. The retreat had been the most beneficial and fruitful I'd been on in many a year. I've not had any turning around in the seat of consciousness, no major upheavals in how I perceive the world. Though I have perceived, with an increased lucidity, the 'posturing struggles of my ego-based mind' as the retreat leader, Kamalashila, so aptly put it. I took a notebook and filled half of it with hurriedly scribbled explorations of what was coming up. Here are some of the most salient ones.

• Last year had an underlying feeling of panic about the imminence of my mortality,of there not being time to waste. This year has been characterised by the subtler melancholy of an 'apathetic doubt' that it wasn't worth me bothering making the effort. It became clear, I'd flipped from 'horrified anxiety' to a studied 'indifference,' and that both were states of aversion to really looking at my death implacably straight on.
• I saw the walls of ideas I've built around myself, the defensiveness of my views, the self- justified cycles of habits that I entangle myself in, that make a boundary of who I see myself to be, and how this often imprisons me in states I really don't want to be in.
• Further reflected on praise/blame, the underpinning for self-esteem and confidence issues that I've often had to battle with. I ended up drawing a mind map which pretty much incorporated all the major mental potholes I've ever fallen into - all of them trying and failing to paint over perceived failings.
• This led on to revealing a 'souped-up-ego' that thinks I'm truly a wonder, unique, the greatest, as yet, undiscovered talent, and gods gift to the world. It a bogus confidence, a confection, overcompensating for a perceived lack of the real thing by manufacturing this impostor. Self-inflated balloons inevitably get punctured. Things tend to fall apart, which is why I can find dissatisfaction so hard to bear.
• Falling short of ideals for myself, raises the old spectre of 'not being good enough,' explaining why I've dropped projects/jobs in the past at the first sign of failing. I appear to be uncomfortable with just being average or ordinary, this turns the imminence of death into a restless, anxious subject matter. I'm running out of time in which to distinguish myself.
• The 'souped-up-egos' has a flip side - the embittered grouch that undermines any endeavour with persistent carping. I caught myself doing this during a particularly difficult meditation, and before I knew it, it had taken over my whole mental state. Because I tend to set ideals for myself too high, I frequently fail to live up to them. This makes practising Buddhism more than a little tricky for me at times, just getting the balance right.
• Whenever I'm learning something new, the 'souped-up-ego/embittered grouch pipes up. Its tone is dismissive, it trashes the importance or value of what I'm being taught - I don't need to know this - I know better- basically its resisting all the way. I have to fight my way through this reactivity most times I take on anything new.
• This 'souped-up-ego tends to be critical of people who are 'too clever for there own good,' They're a bit of a threat, they might pull the blanket and reveal how I really am. This can twist bitterly back on me, until I become strangled by the umbilical cord of my own envy.
• My external practise of ethics I believe to be in pretty good nick. But I experienced on this retreat how shamefully nasty and virulent this 'souped-up-ego / embittered grouch duo can be, now I know I have some cleaning up of these factors of instability, as Sangharakshita calls them.
• I discovered I had a tendency to over visualise my breathing when I'm doing the Mindfulness of Breathing practise, creating a subtle distancing in the quality of my awareness, once I stopped doing this I soon dropped into dhyana.
• What stops me meditating is not weak discipline, but weak inspiration.

After a week on retreat, my back and hip pain disappeared during a particularly potent Vajrasattva Puja, and stayed absent for a further week. This is the first time I've been pain free for over a year. By the end of my first day back at work the back and hip pain has returned, the impermanence of phenomena eh! This probably accounts for the irascibility by the end of this week. I've struggled to stay engaged, the return of the above I have found hard, compounding the expected bumpy retreat return and the regrettable dwindling of the light. What I was in touch with for two weeks was inevitably fleeting once faced with the abrasiveness of Samsara. I'm finding these transition increasingly more painful. Every time its as if I'm being torn out from a beautifully refined painted version of Vidyavajra and pasted back into a crudely drawn cartoon.

I'm getting a sense that something is about to come to an end, without knowing what, if anything, is to replace it.My previous two dream recollections you could see as either optimistic oracles, or pessimistic omens. Either way, the atmosphere of uncertainty, combined with the seemingly unsustainable nature of my current job mix, is producing a nervy restless edge for me to sit on.

DREAM - The Speaking Baby

I'm having a baby. Well, its not me giving birth, but who the Mother is was never clear in the dream, if indeed there ever was one. A baby boy was born by ceasarian. Even at birth the baby is so advanced it talks to me fluently,and knows I'm its Father etc. Within a day its able to walk, and already grown to the size of a two year old. This rapid development continues, and my anxiety grows about how I'll explain this to others. Its unclear, but I appear to have been involved in some sort of genetic experiment. As the days go by, the abnormality of the situation begins to produce increasing amounts of paranoia. What will the neighbours say?

DREAM - A Ceiling Collapses

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

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

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

QUOTATION MARKS 31

Get over the posturing struggles

of your ego based mind

KAMALASHILA

DIARY 127 - Praising & Blaming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CD REVIEW - Laurie Anderson / Homeland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FEATURE 57 - Sol LeWitt's Wall Paintings

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

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

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

FEATURE 56 - Holger Hiller

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

FEATURE 56 - The Divine David - No 2

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