Category Archives: Daily Life

The Other Side Of Medicine – Easing Death

Modern medicine is good at staving off death with aggressive interventions—and bad at knowing when to focus, instead, on improving the days that terminal patients have left.

From an article in The New Yorker.

The subject matter discussed in this article is dear to my heart. I have not had a chance to read the whole thing but what I have seen looks interesting.

Thanks once again to Julius in London who regularly turns up valuable web content.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Together Seamlessly

Yesterday I unpicked a long row of sewing machine stitches in the hem of a monastic robe. Then I tidied up. Removing all the cut threads. Rolled them into a tiny ball. Put them in the compost bucked. As I unpicked, cutting those threads, taking care not to cut into the fabric, my mind started to remember. That’s how it is with memory isn’t it? Ones mind is jogged into remembering by something, or some circumstance, that’s come to the fore. I’d made the robe in Edmonton, Canada, Now which year was that? I’d had a streaming cold. But needed to push on because there was a deadline to meet. I remember my nose dripping onto the fabric as I worked! Now. Where did I buy that fabric? At the market stall in Nottingham…or….? And so it is. Remembering. Remembering and then linking memory upon memory.

This afternoon I whizzed along sewing up the hem again. Neatening. Putting a few more years wear into it. The frayed hem, now zigzagged where it had become frayed. Robe hems drag on stairs, both when climbing and when descending. They brush the ground all day long as the occupant goes about daily business. Already I was plotting my next move for when this robe would come to me for mending in the future. There’s a limit to how much zigzagging one can do before it becomes clear that either new fabric needs to be imported, or a new robe needs to be made. A monk I’ve sewn for in the past reminds me when I meet him. The robe is still going strong! That was 1986. Bullet proof fabric, Bought in the Forest of Dean. Gloucestershire. Amazing how it has lasted. But it’s been worn mostly for best. Even so, cracking good fabric. And so it is. Remembering. Remembering and then linking memory upon memory.

One of my hosts here in Montana sat beside me before lunch silently read the machines instruction manual. While I attempted to worked out where all the controls were, and how to use them. (As a last resort, read the manual!) Then, out aloud. What does neaten mean? I’ve not come across that word before? I thought, REALLY!?. Have I not spent my entire life neatening? Clearing up. Straightening. Making good. Mending. Weeding. Sorting. Trimming. Mowing. Cutting into shape. Neatening and sorting are my pleasure. In home and in garden. At work and at play. Isn’t that the way of things? One word, or a phrase. Give it a tug, like a thread sticking out of a ball of yarn, and memories unreel at lightening speed. And so it is. Remembering. Remembering and then linking memory upon memory.

There is part of the brain that is designated for memory. (See story of HM.) Remove that part and…no memory! (Listen to HM’s story). Or perhaps no capacity to recall memory anyway. We would be completely lost without the capacity to remember. And equally lost if that is all we know. I once said to one of the senior monks, off the cuff, and I was young in training, We are limited only by what we (consciously) know! (Whoops! I thought. Where did that pearl come from?) And he said, pausing thoughtfully, Well you know something important. Hum, that would have been around 1986/7. In the old sewing room. At Shasta Abbey.

There is more to say about memory. About the past coming into the present. There has been a huge amount of that as I’ve been visiting monks I trained with in the 1980’s. And also trainees, many of whom have been at it years longer than me. We have a shared life. It is alive and vibrant. No neatening required!

Yes, I have moved over the land these weeks. This great, vast and beautiful land. But how to tell of the life we bask, swim and have our being within. Together. Seamlessly. Going well deeper than linking memories.

And still the robe hem becomes worn. And asks of us the utmost care. Loving action.

Sorry folks. Posts have been few and far between. I’ve been – mowing, sorting, trimming and hiking as well. This has been so much fun too. And in a couple of days – on the road again.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Post Card From Washington

Across the road
four Bull Elk
In the pond below
Beaver.

Sun blazing
leaves waving
dogs barking
me sleeping.

All’s well with
the world.

This post is for Jack and for his mother, both in Colorado.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Dharma Talk – On Trust

The new Abbess of Shasta Abbey gave a Dharma Talk this morning on the subject of Trust. Towards the end of the talk she speaks of the need to hold fast to trust likening that to those tough little trees that cling perilously to the rocks on mountain sides. Well placed to withstand the winds of the Eight Worldly Conditions.

Deep_Rooted_Trust1.jpg

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Immaculate Action

Human beings must work.
When you are not competent, learn.
When you are competent, do it yourself.

When you are not familiar, practice more.
When you want to work,
start immediately.

When you are poor,
work all the more.
When you are rich, work harder.

If work is done wrongly,
correct it.
When you are old, enjoy working more.

Seen at a Chinese Buddhist Temple in Malaysia.
Translated from the Chinese.

If one thinks of work as action then, indeed, we are working all the time. And I believer that is what the above quote is pointing to. It’s not about the work ethic in the way the word work is commonly understood.

What I am getting around to in this post is to tell you about the meaning of my name. Mu means empty or immaculate and go means action, or karma, or work. So Mugo translates as immaculate action, empty action, empty karma, immaculate karma.

Change the word work to act or action in the saying and something rather interesting comes through. Right there is that begging question. What is my purpose? Why am I alive? What’s my motive? From whence does action spring?

Mugo – (the word) points to the (smiling) heart of the great matter. My name has been, and is, my great teacher and guide. It was given to me here at Shasta Abbey.

This post is dedicated to the recently elected Abbess of Shasta Abbey and the community both lay and monastic. It has been a privilege and a delight to sit and walk and talk and, this evening, eat ice cream with you all!

Print Friendly, PDF & Email