Look Up!

23rd November, 2006. Ah! How I love to return to the matter of looking up.
There must be millions of songs about loneliness, depression and despair. Just thinking about loneliness brings up a couple of phrases, when you’re feelin’ sad and lonely, da de da de da, I’ll be there I’ll BE there… And then there is that line, my friends don’t get rowdy any more. That’s from country singer Willie Nelson, I think. Yes, All the lonely people, where do they all come from?. The Beatles right? And more importantly, where do they all go too?

I’ve been writing to somebody who is desperately alone, fearing for her long-term survival. It’s been a steady downward slope to drugs and alcohol to relieve the wrap-around pain. Social isolation and physical neglect are all part of the ongoing picture. What is to be done? How can somebody help themselves, let alone their fast dissolving friends and family. What can they do? What can anybody do?

Somebody told me the other day of a psychiatrist who, instead of prescribing drugs to a selected group of patients, sent them off with a task. And it seemed a weird task too, on the face of it.

For two weeks the patients were ask to keep on returning there gaze to roof tops, tops of trees, the horizon, the sky. In fact anywhere that was up, as against down. Obviously we hope they didn’t do this while crossing the road or on a busy pavement, or while driving. The results were impressive, very many of the people looking up, for just two weeks, did not need the professional services of the psychiatrist any more. It is important to note though, that these people were already working with a psychiatrist and certain levels of mental distress do need informed help and guidance.

Moods fluctuate and daily life incidents can bring about an inner world which is dark and devoid of the necessary energy to find a way out. So next time you notice your eyeballs dragging along the ground, raise them up. Works for me.

Dealings With Pain – Guest Posting

October 2nd, 2009. This guest post is well worth republishing.

Many thanks to Ayse, who trains within the OBC, for the following article:

Due to orthopedic surgeries and treatments I have been dealing with long periods of excessive physical pain. Because of my body’s condition, being without pain is a rare thing in general. So training with pain is a necessity. The following is an excerpt of sorts, some bits and pieces on my personal dealings with pain. I guess what I am learning in the process is in essence applicable to any form of difficulty or adversary we may encounter in daily life.

Unbearable?
When in hospital, several times a day, you are asked to assess your pain level by giving it a rating between 0 and 10, zero being no pain, ten being unbearable pain. This made me reflect on the meaning of unbearable. There have been lot of times that the agony I was in completely filled the whole of consciousness, excluding all else, and I felt it was utterly unbearable. But having reached unbearable nothing much happens really, you do not drop dead, you do not explode to pieces, you do not vanish out of existence. Having reached unbearable you just continue to live, your heart simply continuing to beat. The truth is, despite the agony being unbearable you continue to bear it anyway. So however excessive, I though it would be contrary to the truth to rate my pain a level 10, since if it was truly unbearable I reckon I would have dropped dead. I think this is an important distinction to be aware of when dealing with all kinds of stuff; to see clearly how something feels, how your experience of it is and then how that relates to the truth of how things really are, the bigger reality.

Room for complaint
There is a difference in mild to reasonably severe pain and truly excessive pain in the way it affects the mind. With excessive pain there is no escape, it nails your consciousness immovably to a single point, that is, the now, The Reality Of Pain, that reality excludes all else. One has no option but to face it without flinching and to endure, whether you think you are capable of it or not. With milder forms of pain there is more room for distraction, room for escape in familiar forms like being grumpy, feeling sorry for oneself, complaining. When I catch myself complaining sometimes, I smile and think: actually, if I have room for complaint, I am doing not too bad!

I should say that the above way of differentiating is for internal use only. I don’t think you can reverse it to make inferences about someone else’s pain based on their “complaint level”. That would be trying to step in another’s shoes, which – apart from being impossible – does not really help and can lead to a judgmental attitude, which in turn is bound to heavily tax whatever is going on.

Preserving resilience
There is nothing that drains your energy more then chronicle pain that lasts and lasts without giving you a break. This can be quite exhausting and depressing. What helps me to get through bleak times is to find helpful distractions that lift the mood like watching movies and television or chatting to friends and ways of relaxing the body as much as possible to minimize the accumulation of tension and stress. But by far the main thing that preserves your resilience in a situation of ceaseless pain is to not give in to gloomy thoughts, to stay focused and to keep looking at the distinction between the feelings, the experience of the now and the truth, the bigger reality of how things really are. Not loosing sight of the bigger reality prevents the mind from getting into isolation where you feel all alone in your agony. I guess that loneliness is the most unbearable of all and can make you apathetic or spiral you down into the pits of depression and despair.

Endless night
When dealing with pain, the nighttime forms the biggest challenge since for some reason everything is multiplied; the pain, the isolation, the loneliness, the arising fears. The nights in the first week after a major surgery for instance seem to last eternally.

I remember one such night about two years ago after a particularly extensive operation. I think it was the third night after the operation. By then the pain is not only from operation wounds and fractures but every bone, joint, muscle and tissue hurts after lying in the same posture for days on end because you cannot move and bedsores start to kick in. Any sense of time completely lost in the mist of the morphine haze from the two morphine drips, I spend the time subsequently by dozing off a little and then looking at the clock on the bedside table, hoping maybe it has advanced at least half an hour, but always to find that it is only a few minutes later then the previous time I checked. Time has become like a rubber band, every minute stretches and stretches and stretches, to infinity, making the dark night last forever. A little after 1.00 am, when the pressure on my spine from lying on my back for days has become terrible, I tried to shift, turn a little to one side, but impossible, I cannot move. I decide to call for the night nurse and see if I can perhaps manage with some help.

This human being
It takes a while before the nurse answers, must be a busy night. When she finally comes, she enters the room only halfway, staying at a distance from the bed. Not a good sign. It’s dark in the room, out of the corner of my eye I can only see her silhouette against the light from the open door, I sense agitation emanation from her, something is not right at all. Trying to over bridge the distance, I ask if she can help me to shift a little to one side. She snaps: “You are not allowed to turn!” This is not true, she knows it and I know it. She is flatly refusing to do something. I’ve been on this ward frequently due to the unending schedule of operations. Notwithstanding the understaffed situation that seems to be common for most health-care institutions, usually the staff here is friendly and helpful, including this nurse, but she has the tendency to become snappy when she is stressed. It is a big ward and there is only one nurse during the night, and lot of freshly operated patience at the moment, so gathering from her reaction things must be rather tough tonight. But right now this nurse is the only human being in the whole universe that I’ve got to be there for me in some small way in this dark night, and yet she is not able too. She is very stressed and annoyed; her agitation fills the single-bed hospital room like a dark cloud, intensifying the shadows. I remain silent; I know I am in no position to argue the situation. She hesitates, not quite sure how to read my silence, she then turns abruptly and leaves the room.

Expanding awareness
I am alone in a hospital room 900 kilometers from home in a foreign country, everything and everyone familiar is far away. It is just over 1.30 am, worst part of the endless night still to come. A feeling of utter loneliness and abandonment engulfs me like a huge wave. My mind is trapped like a caged bird in this terrible now without escape. I focus to prevent it from being hurled into dark pits of desperation and existential fear opening up all around. The flat rejection of the nurse in a situation where I am most vulnerable and helpless is spiraling my mind into withdrawal, into isolation from sheer panic. I somehow need to find my way back. To reverse the withdrawal I use all the willpower I can summon to focus and to expand my awareness. First to the hospital bed, I feel it’s size, it’s robustness, how it supports my body together with all the many tubes coming in and out of it, I then expand to feel the space of the room, it is pleasant and spacious, expand to its walls and beyond, to the ward, the fellow patients, lot of them no doubt in pain and without sleep like me, to the whole hospital, the city, to my friends far away. When my awareness expands to include it all, I become suddenly aware of this stream of love and care coming towards me from all those thinking of me, wishing me well. They may be far away and at sleep now and yet this stream is still pouring forth from them like a river of light. The stream simply leaves no room for feelings of entrapment, despair, loneliness, abandonment, such powerful emotions a moment ago, and yet where did they go? They have simply evaporated in the light of the stream when I was able to reverse the isolation and reconnected. The darkness that fills the room, where does it go when you turn on the light switch? Like darkness, these feelings, despite their all powerful and overwhelming appearance, don’t seem to have a real substance in the end.

Nothing has changed, the lonely hospital room, the excruciating pain, the endless night ahead, the terrible weariness and exhaustion, all still there. And yet my experience of it now is very different. There is a sense of being carried, being embraced, me and everything I am going through. It is all right to just be and endure without flinching or need to escape.

The Dewdrop Slips Into The Shining Sea – Choral Piece

January 31st, 2012. Like an angel singing – music for the heart!

The Dewdrop slips into the shining sea…choral piece. from Mugo on Vimeo.

Ah! Blessed Lord! Oh, High Deliverer!
I Take my Refuge in Thy Name and Thee!
I Take my Refuge in Thy Law of good!
I Take my Refuge in Thy Order! OM!
The dew is on the lotus! — Rise Great Sun!
And lift my leaf and mix me with the Wave.
Om Mani Padme Hum, the Sunrise Comes!
The dewdrop slips into the shining sea!
For full text see: The Light Of Asia, Sir Edwin Arnold

These words come at the very end of the Light Of Asia, The musical arrangement is by Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett and sung by the late Janet Watson. RIP. Organ played by a monastic member and the photographs of the Lake District are by my trusty walking companion.

The short video I’d intended to post about my dad was lost in transition from phone to laptop. Lost without trace. Too bad, especially as we did so many takes and got so cold in the process. Sorry.

Anyway a fitting memorial I think. And thanks for the emails you have sent giving witness to parents both alive and dead.

Thank you R for your help and support and for the video of course.

Gentle Urgings And Promptings

October 9th, 2012. Just the other day I found out Orlando went out on the night of November 5th 2012 and never was seen again.

The dentist nearly always
brings me down.
Never mind he fitted me
with a new crown!

Then Orlando
(the cat)
greeted me
at the step.

‘I live here’!
you smiled,
with gentle urging,
silent prompting.

With bows to John who left a comment which inspired this post.

Go Empty Handed

March 13th, 2007. There is a theme in this post that I return to over and over again.
Several people have been in touch recently, via email and in person, who have spoken of pennies dropping. That is by way of a deeper insight into the true nature of existence or being called into what was described as the Great Silence. And with these insights the doors have opened in remarkable, some might say miraculous, ways to going beyond fear, yet not out of pain, and left enveloped in calm.

When the Universe opens up a crack there’s no mistaking this and questioning what one sees is absurd since the gap between observer and observed has been shown as an illusion. What is obvious is simply obvious, where is the need for explanations? To be sure as the moments, hours or days pass the mind definitely wants to make some sense of what has been shown or understood, and tries. However the underlying message is that something has touch where the intellect has no foothold. BTW, we are not talking enlightenment here and at the same time there is nothing that is not enlightened, from the first.

One characteristic of seeing into the nature of how things are is the quiet knowing that words are crude tools in the face of what’s shown or known. Even so it is good to simply write. Quite often I am asked to witness these words, I do not take them lightly or hold them cheap and nor should anybody else, especially the writer. Humility is the watchword of such writings and if that is not present it does not bode well for the onward path.

I’m touched that relative strangers trust enough to speak about their interior, and rightly private, world. This is not stuff to bandy about the Internet, or at least not without a great deal of care.

Out of their Great Compassion the Buddhas and Ancestors have handed down their wisdom and we have the opportunity to learn from them through the sutras, scriptures and writings so easily available now. Collectively know as the Dharma. Their words point the way however we must go on alone, with empty hands.