Category Archives: Daily Life

The Benefits of Breathing – Re post

Have you ever paused to notice?
if your mouth is closed
when you breathe in
and when you breathe out?

Have you ever considered?
if your mouth is OPEN
while you walk in silence
and have you wondered why?

Have you ever paid attention?
to the soft touch of top on bottom lip
and noticed the wonder of it
in your toes?

Have you ever paused to ponder?
if mouth open or closed
while breathing through your day
matters?

A friend pointed out the merits of nose breathing, whenever possible, as against mouth breathing.

Why wander the world panting? Surely life is not one long emergency.
Is it?

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Being Nobody, Going Nowhere!

This poem by Emily Dickinson heads the home page of Rita Brady Kiefer’s website, more on her another time. I have bumped into it in a number of places and each time I’m left in a thoughtful mood.

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d banish us – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog —
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!”
– Emily Dickinson

Being a shy sensitive youngster I longed to have an identity and at the time that was connected to what I did. ‘What do you do’? was the question I would dread as I struggled to be invisible in the public space! Then it was a common make-conversation opener when sitting on a train or bus, now most people are looking at a screen rather than at each other. Teenagers struggle to be something or somebody, to have an answer as much for themselves as curious others. I wanted my answer to be a casual, ‘Oh, I’m a photographer!’ In time, a long time, I could honestly use that as an answer but by then I didn’t need it. I knew I was a multiple me and nobody wants chapter and verse, at a bus stop!

Fast forward through the decades, now when asked I can say ‘a monastic’, (surrounded by Northumbrian bog)! Identity, apart from ‘function’, is so tied up with appearance, how our face is. Photography is in the hands of everybody, everywhere, anytime. Screens, especially at the moment when less in outdoor public space or indoors for that matter, has become how we know people. How we make contact. For those who have used Zoom, or group Skype or other means of joining online using a webcam, there you are face and shoulders with a ‘sneak peek’ into the life behind the image. On big Webinars, there are multiple screens to scroll through to see ‘who is there’. No questions asked or needing to be answered. At the moment for so many people having contact is to see, and speak to a moving image. Which is both close-up and at a distance on a glass screen. To go deeper than surface appearance is all guesswork, more or less.

The other day I had a photograph of myself ‘taken’ for the booklet of printed photographs we have available for visiting guests although, needless to say, we are not open to live guests, for the moment. This book of faces means visitors can learn the monk’s names which is all part of connecting with the community, and the practice and teaching here at Throssel. Little did I realize uploading this photograph here and in other online places I frequent (Facebook as hounmugo for example) I’d get the multiple responses that I have.

How public – like a Frog —
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

With thanks to all those 67, and still counting, people who have responded to that image. It doesn’t cause me to think I am ‘somebody’ going ‘somewhere’. Nor on the other hand, am I, or anybody reading this, a nobody with no direction to life. That would be a sad, sad thing.

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Refuge in Foliage

smiling-face
Look at this little beauty, the first of the Nasturtium crop hanging on the railing outside the door to where I live. Passing these plants many times a day they cause me to smile. I think of this flower as a smiling face smiling back, with many more to come. What a pleasure to have a little ‘garden’. That said I’ve quite a few house plants scattered around the monastery which I’m responsible for. They are like close friends I visit and pause for a moment to ‘commune’ with. And in this warm weather, give them a spray of water to keep ’em going.

Many people, I know, have been taking refuge in foliage; be it indoors, in the garden, an allotment or just in the ‘great outdoors’.

Ah! Nature.
smell, name,
touch, care for,
appreciate.

Food-note: And yes, we do eat our foliage! I may, or may not have designs on those smiling faces! Such thoughts bring me into an inner ‘place’ not easy to articulate. Humility comes close.

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There are Always Guests Here

skanda-altarIt is still very much daylight at this time of year at around 10.00 pm when a senior goes around the monastery locking doors and switching off lights. I was scheduled to do this the night before last and was hard-pressed to remember which lights needed to be switch ON! For security reasons, we keep several outside lights on during the night as well as a number of night lights in corridors. However there is more to it than the physical security and safety of the monastery and all staying here.

In the past when we used mostly Japanese terms the ‘lights out’ monk was called the Tenkein, now translated to ‘Heavenly Guardian’. The spiritual safety of those resident in the monastery is primary and so the Tenkei’s task is to help settle the ‘air’, so to speak after the busy day of activity. The monk on duty processes around the halls purposefully and formally; wears a full kesa, makes bows in several places, offer incense and also recites the Three Homages in front of the main altar and main gate. Needless to say one remains very still inside – it’s basically a ceremony. The whole thing a blessing.

At a certain point by the Skanda Altar at the entrance to The Hall of Pure Offerings, the lay guests came into mind in the form of a wordless blessing. Immediately I thought, ‘Oh! there are no guests here’! Then I thought, ‘there are ALWAYS guests here’!

Sleep well, stay safe where ever you are.

 

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Paying One’s Last Respects

The remains of snow, perhaps.
Just a moment to pause, on the top of a hill (somewhere in Yorkshire) to mark the cremation ceremony for Norman Trewhitt in Lancaster yesterday. I attended via a live Webcast since I was not able to travel, it’s not the same as being there and in person but better than nothing. This remote attending at cremations is the way many have to pay their last respects, currently. The grief of seeing those spaced chairs, all filled, no chance for hands to reach out for comfort and support. The ceremony was conducted beautifully by Paul and Kate. We all did our best Norman.

I offered incense and a candle, which wasn’t possible at the crematorium, and sang and observed moments of reflection and listened to the chosen music and watched as the curtain closed and the people processed outside. The webcast ended abruptly. Then with a cup of tea and a piece of cake leftover from Sunday lunch, I phoned up a fellow webcast watcher for ‘tea’.

This was the story for a couple of other cremations further south on Monday, a mother and the other for a dearly loved life partner. Such events, cremations where just a few can attend are happening all around the country, all around the world. We show our respect or affection and love for someone who has just died by coming to see their body or grave.

There is something to ‘paying one’s last respects’, to travelling to a gravesite, attending a Cremation Ceremony, a funeral, a scattering or interring of ashes. But there is never a LAST visit is there. What has been, a life known and shared remains and travels into the future as memories? That’s natural, normal and part of living. Part of being alive and forming attachments.

One day when I was young in training one of my fellow monks quoted a saying by Zen Master Dogen to me, ‘attachment and detachment’ he said ‘flow together throughout ones entire life’. I’ve never been able to find that reference although I probably didn’t look that hard. I find it comforting.

I’ll keep that thought beside me when, once again, I need to be reminded to be compassionate for myself, and for others.

Thank you kind person for sending me the photograph. I’ve lost track of the location, sorry. I thought it fitting since Norman was a keen walker and fellrunner.

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