Category Archives: photograph

Out and About, Overcome Difficulties, photograph

Arriving – Home

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Pitiably they cried - give us food.
Pitiably they cried – give us food.

Yesterday these sheep came running towards me from all directions, lambs jumping and leaping and all together, Ewes and lambs, they wanted something. The noise of their cries was something to behold. People do say the pasture is exceptionally late in greening. In fact there isn’t any greening at all that I can see. Farmers are reporting more lamb deaths this year than ususal. So animal suffering out there on the fells and hills right now and with little hope of an improvement in the weather in the near future. Spare a thought for our starving friends.

And there is somebody out there in Derbyshire walking her socks off (well hopefully not literally) in preparation for her impending hike along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Adrienne is also preparing to make blog posts to The Merit of Walking as she goes. Here is a post she just made from some windy hill. Erm, no it comes to us from the Grouse Inn where she was eating sticky toffee pudding!

Adrienne has obviously been doing more than recreational walking. At the top of the post she writes:

I have arrived –
I am home –
my destination
in each step.

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Daily Life, Overcome Difficulties, photograph

Happiness – In the moment

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Contemplating lollipop trees
Contemplating lollipop trees

When I bumped into an article about happiness in the very excellent Brain Pickings site I immediately launched into Ken Dodd’s catchy song, Happiness. In 1964 this song made it to 31 in the Hit Parade. Interestingly a year later in 1965 his song Tears made it all the way to number one and stayed there for quite some weeks!
Here’s a couple of stanzas from Happiness for old times sake. And to reflect on too.

Happiness is a field of grain
Turning its face to the falling rain
I can see it in the sunshine, I breathe it in the air
Happiness happiness everywhere

A wise old man told me one time
Happiness is a frame of mind
When you go to measuring my success
Don’t count my money count my happiness
Ken Dodd – Happiness

One can only surmise that between singing Happiness and Tears a year later something happened in Ken Dodds life. He has certainly stood the test of time, he is still touring! Tears can be about grief and sorrow and the grief around regret. That would be regret about something in the past. An action, an attitude; words spoken, deeds not done or deeds unwise and harmful.

Harbouring regret is to live partly in the past, or quite a bit in the past for that matter. What is to be done to move on? That’s to travel one’s day in an immediate kind of way as talked about in this article The Science of How your Mind-Wandering Is Robbing You of Happiness.

I know of no other way than to return to the flow of what is here now, internally and externally. That’s to direct ones attention time and time, without the demand/expectation/requirement to be happy. ‘Tis fleeting after all!

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Daily Life, Out and About, photograph

Everything on Offer

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image

Phew!! Down in deepest Cornwall and now in Delightful Devon. Exeter.

Each day I think of Jade and you all. Each day, by the end of the day, my brain is dry and my lids need to slide down over my eyes. What is there to offer?

Everything.

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Falls Between the Cracks, Out and About, photograph

Recollection

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Reclining Buddha
Reclining Buddha

Sitting here this evening later than I’d like. Recollecting my day. Sitting here in the same room where twenty years ago I sat giving talks, working at this very same desk, doing the monthly accounts, writing out checks, sticking on stamps. Recollecting the people sitting on the couch where now there is a bed. One chap who came then is reading this blog now! We have remained in touch. And today I met up with a woman I gave meditation instruction to, back then. We have kept in touch.

But best of all was the neighbour, always ready for some good-natured banter across the garden fence, who this afternoon guided me up the too narrow drive so I could load the car with logs. Apple logs from the tree in the back garden, now pollarded with spiky new growth. The neighbour still ready for the banter but more mellow now.

Now looking up to meet the gaze of the reclining Buddha I bought at Macro the local cash-and-carry store. Bought for Rev. Mildred, now deceased, as a reminded for her to be the reclining Buddha. A positive reminder to rest while she worked on regaining her strength and health.

This post is in memory of Rev. Mildred and for all those who, all those years ago, supported us. When I think about it there are others from that time reading this blog. Thank you all.

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Out and About, photograph, This and That

The Turning of the Year

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Walkin' on the edge of the bay...
Walkin’ on the edge of the bay…

Such a lovely day. Spring is here and a sangha friend and I took the opportunity to go for a walk in the sunshine. We went on an outing to Arnside Knott. Little did we know at the time that it is a Marilyn a hill at least 150 meters high. Such hills have a rather close connection with the Monroes in Scotland which are mountains more than 914.4 m! Read on….and smile. What is it about us people wanting to climb to the top?

Some hill walkers attempt to climb as many Marilyns as possible as a form of peak bagging. Some radio amateurs attempt to operate from the summit of every Marilyn. As of the end of 2009, no one had climbed all the Marilyns in Great Britain; however, three people were only two short of completing them (because of the inaccessibility of the sea stacks on St Kilda and their protected status as part of the largest gannet nesting site in the world, maintained by the National Trust for Scotland). Two other people are only three short of completion. Wikipedia

Outings are special because they don’t happen every day. Today’s outing was especially memorable. Perhaps because the year has now turned. I can feel that in my bones.

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