A post by Reverend Mugo from back in February has kept coming to mind for me. It was about 'Giving it up' (Feb. 26th). I find that teachings often burrow themselves inside me somewhere and keep on working somehow at an almost unconscious level; and so it has been with this one.

And what I have realised is that I so often approach life expecting it to be so hard. Which is why the 'looking up' has always appealed - but it has still felt like it was a 'hard' effort to look up and not be dragged down by the seeming inevitable difficulty of life and the sense of loss foreseen with 'letting things go', 'offering them up' or even until now with 'give it up'.

Because we do have such deep patterns of comfort in our life regardless of the costs (both to ourselves and others) that may be involved. These patterns often involve (for me at least) recurring cycles of denial, craving and dependency on people, things, activities; and the idea of giving them up seems so hard. But where is all this negative expectation coming from? and why do I listen to it? Not just with big life habits but with seemingly small things. Like, eating fewer of the things that are probably not good for me (even going on a diet); breaking some of my dependency on car travel; facing and challenging my aversion to computers and the internet; being more organised with our finances; being more tidy...

So, given that things still seem different with our lives I am trying to look at just 'giving up' some of these things - without expectation, without looking for how hard it is going to be, and without listening to the feeling that I am doomed to fail.

And what seems to happen, as has happened so often before, is that after all the commentary has gone from my mind, far from being hard there is actually a 'lightness' and ease involved with giving up these patterns (or at least trying to give them up). It is as though they have weighed me down just carrying all this stuff around with me, for so, so long. Then giving it up comes with a feeling of being lifted up and maybe it is the gratitude that is doing the lifting.

Then I read this quote from The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines, at the front of this book and it seemed to re-enforce and immediately (and massively) expand what has been slowly revealing itself to me:

I should not like to have the bodhisattva think this kind of work hard to achieve and hard to plan out. If he did, there are beings beyond calculation, and he will not be able to benefit them. Let him on the contrary consider the work easy and pleasant, thinking they were all his mother and father and children, for this is the way to benefit all beings whose number is beyond calculation.

I have recently found myself reflecting quite a lot on aspects of research into the brain which seem to show that we frequently make decisions in a relatively primitive part of our brain some time before our conscious reasoning part of the brain comes up with our explicit reasoned and rational account of the decision. It seems that somehow the decision is made before we are aware of having decided it. Many aspects of our spiritual training seem to follow this model too. Specifically, things often seem to change or shift in us some time before we have any real understanding of what is happening.

For the last two weeks of January and the first week of February, Julie and I went on holiday. This is not a particularly common event. It is certainly the case that this is a good time of year for us to take a holiday - there is generally less to do on the farm in the depth of winter. Having said this, leaving for any length of time is never easy. We have to arrange for a farm sitter who can come to look after everything, we need to ensure there is enough fuel, food for the animals, clear instructions and plans for all foreseeable contingencies. This year, in addition to everything else, we had an aged greyhound with severe heart failure to leave; and the weather has been the worst winter for at least 15 years. So, the emotional challenge of leaving the farm was astonishingly difficult.

And we did it, we went, and we had a wonderful time in Costa Rica; which was probably the most beautiful place I have ever visited. I have a particular affection for trees and woodland - and the Monteverde cloud forests were deeply and inexpressibly moving.

So now we are back and it is strange how different the farm looks - the familiar seems somehow strange. Our lives, or at least those parts of them that occupy most of our time, are presenting themselves to us almost as though they were someone else's. We have not been away that long and yet things seem very different.

This has been reminding me a lot of the effect of going on retreat. After spending time at the monastery or a temple for a week or more, returning to 'everyday life' and family can be strange. It is almost like seeing familiar things afresh, as though for the first time - strange and yet completely familiar. The first few times this happened I found myself wanting, quite deeply, to hold on to what I had found while on retreat, almost in fear of losing it. Subsequently I came to realise that, although they may fade from consciousness, those things found on retreat are not lost. It isn't that we can hold onto them even if we want to. Rather they effect a change; things are not the same after; a shift takes place - and sometimes we think we can notice what has changed, but usually not.

And so, this time at least, and against all expectation, it seems that a holiday on the other side of the ocean next to which we live has changed something; shifted things along. Things seem different even three weeks after being back. Everything on the farm is OK, even the greyhound is still hanging on somehow, and yet something has changed. And as yet it isn't clear what it is that has changed, and that's just fine.

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. For in action there is magic, grace and power - Goethe

I came across this quote, strangely enough, in a book on Zen flower arranging. It seems to be one of those popular quotes that are dragged up for use in almost any circumstance. Still, something in it spoke to me. I can't say that I particularly go for the term magic - I am pretty sure that the power of action doesn't come from a supernatural source, just from a source which for the most part we neglect or fail to comprehend, and maybe after all that is what more accurately characterises what we tend to call magic. However, power and grace I can go with. And the quote is particularly helpful for me just now.

I have, and as long as I can remember have had, a sense of anxiety as my background emotion - it seems to be almost programmed into my body, and at something like an operating system level come to that. Sometimes it is relatively quiet, sometimes it can lead to a quite debilitating fear. A lot of people find this hard to believe of me as I have done things and held responsibilities that many people seemed to find terrifying. I had little problem with them as the outside threat seen by others was nothing compared with my inner fears.

Life is much quieter for me now; the anxiety and fear remain, and if anything are more noticeable without the distractions of external pressures. Still, action is the antidote to fear. Sometimes any action will do. Sometimes it is an achievement just getting up in the morning, getting dressed, feeding the cats, lighting the stoves and milking the goats. Beginning these simple tasks can dispel the fear. At other times there is one particular task calling me to be worked on which, for some obscured reason, becomes the focus of my fear. Then I can find myself becoming exceptionally busy on just about anything that avoids me having to look at the one thing I need to be doing. Beginning this one thing, in the face of the fear, is where the power and grace lie.

In some ways knowing all this helps to stop other things in the future becoming immobilising with the fear they bring. Sometimes, though, the fear and avoidance seem to creep up unnoticed and for a while action seems impossible - but it isn't. And, nervous as I am to disagree with Goethe, I am relieved to say that often I don't even have to feel or believe I can do something - just starting is all that it takes.

Recent postings on Jade Mountains have got me reflecting quite a lot on how we can be driven by influences that end up being not good reasons for doing things.

I guess that everyone is different, but up there for me in these influences there are the things that other people think I should be doing; then there are the habitual patterns; and then there are the things that in some way I personally feel I should be doing - and here I find it gets tricky.

It seems that there is often some deep hurt or sadness inside us that makes us want to help or heal or somehow change the world and put it to rights. I am (often deeply) disturbed by the question What am I doing about it- where the it can be whatever we personally are drawn to, which for me has included the abuse, prostitution and trafficking of children; decimation of ancient forest, woodland and wilderness; the pain and suffering of members of my - quite extended - family.

Letting go of this disturbance and the craving to help seems to need an honest and direct looking at what is driving us. And sometimes what we need to look at triggers a deep hurt and even a sense of despair. Not looking somehow leaves the hurt and despair driving us, and yet the looking can be heartbreaking. I was once told by a senior monk that yes, it could be heartbreaking and actually sometimes it had to be - the breaking made an opening for the compassion to flow through us.

And from this it seems to me now that there can be a move not so much to grand heroic initiatives and world changing grand plans but rather to small acts of kindness. The horizon of our concern comes down to the personal, direct and immediate - I spend time with my family, I go and work or just be in the woodland, I try to respond as best I can to whatever calls for help come to me.

Then the feeling of the need to justify my actions can be seen as one of those distractions I find to pull me away from what is right in front of me, and yes, this can sometimes be because I am frightened or hurt by what I think is right in front of me.

As a treat for ourselves, Sunday night is typically pizza and dvd night - anyone staying at the farm is invited to come and have pizza with us and watch a film. Sometimes we buy a takeaway pizza, more often we make our own.

On a recent Sunday I decided I wanted to make the pizzas. There were only three of us - an unusually small number for the summer. Anyway, it took me three and a half hours to make three pizzas and I have been wondering about this for some time since. Why did it take so long? well, I had to light the wood-burning stove and get it up to temperature; I milked the goats and made mozzarella cheese with the milk I got; I harvested, washed and prepared our home grown spinach, courgettes (zucchini) and tomatoes to go on the pizza along with the salad to accompany it; then I cooked the pizzas.

Now there are some people who visit us who think this degree of self sufficiency is idyllic, and there are others who think it is unnecessarily hard work and even downright pointless. For me it is a part of how I currently choose to live my life. And still there have often been doubts as to whether I could be doing something 'more useful'.

These doubts frequently arise from the knowledge that some people who are really close to me think it is a waste of my talents to be spending large parts of my life in this way. This is something I have known for a long time and it has been a helpful challenge to my sense of what seems good for me to do; and yet it has until very recently been a continuing trigger of unease, insecurity and considerable self-doubt.

The reason this has been bugging me for a couple of weeks now, though, is something different. It is the difficult realisation that in our practice there is no possibility of justifying what we do. We can construct a rationalisation to justify a lifestyle if we want - but it doesn't help. Sooner or later we have to let go of this deep need for self-justification, and for the seeking of approval of those close to us, and just do what seems good to do there and then - with no guarantees that it will still be the good thing to do next week, or even tomorrow. And sometimes there is a longing for an easier practice with a set of rules, or some authority figure that can say what is good and what isn't - even if I know I couldn't help but rebel at such authority. Reverend Master Jiyu described our practice as being one for spiritual adults; and sometimes we can still find ourselves craving not to have to be grown up.

It seems that there is a direct correlation between how messy my workshop is and how depressed I feel. I have often yearned for an unmessy workshop - convinced that then everything in my life would be ok (and of course I would then also, miraculously, be amazingly well organised with my time and workload).

So I have great delight in sharing the fact that parts of my workshop are currently a real mess and yet I feel thrilled by it.

Swallows are nesting in the roof beams and there are four baby swallows making one heck of a racket. Swallow parents are in and out every 30 seconds or so feeding. All are totally unbothered by my bandsaw, drills or hammering of chisels.

Any moans about how busy it can be for us on the farm are firmly put into context by seeing the demands on the swallow parents by their four very large babies.

And I have had to remove all items from underneath the nest until they fledge.