Yearly Archives: 2009

Falls Between the Cracks, Information

Celebrity – Notoriety

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I’ve been encountering a lot of Travellers (See also Gypsies and Romini people) on the road and encamped on every available (and unavailable) spot beside the roads! They are on their way to the Appleby Horse Fair which customarily starts on the first Thursday in June and ends on the second Wednesday in June. When I passed through on Monday morning Alston had ponies tied to lamp posts, their rear ends stuck out into the road. Two officers of the law were walking purposefully towards the clutch of caravans, trucks, lorries loaded with painted caravans and sundry other vehicles. They were all crammed onto a tiny spot of land beside the road on the edge of the town. I must say I delighted in the general mill of activity, and the basic anarchy that emanates from Travellers activity. I think the police are fairly tolerant of them unless there is out and out crime going on. Just outside of Alston more encampments, ponies turned out into farmers fields, permission or no as I understand the situation. Is it a crime to feed ponies that have been trotting for 20 miles, they need their grass? (Paraphrased from the local newspaper reporting on the Travellers excesses or more to the point the farmers indignation.) Then descending Hartside Pass in the brilliant summer sunshine two carts – one a ‘rag and bone’ painted beautifully the other a simple pony cart. The ponies swinging along at a brisk trot, full of the joy of the open road, wind under the tail and feathery legs flying. What a sight! There’s that welling up of emotion out of seeming nowhere again. I’ll have to get to the bottom of that.

And now to what I intended to write about. Celebrity and notoriety. Yes, celebrity and how a swift turn of events, combined with human frailty, can transform over night into notoriety. This is the stuff of entertainment. The rise and fall of celebrity. We love the rags to riches stories, the Cinders WILL go to the ball stories. Now we have the story of Susan Boyle. It will, no doubt, be an ongoing one. Where will we be in that story? What of our own story?

Overcome Difficulties

Watching The Brain Having a Stroke

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Every year, 15 million people will suffer from a stroke, five million of them will die and a further five million will be left permanently disabled.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, is a brain scientist who suffered a massive stroke at the age of 37.

Knowing how the brain operates, she was able to observe and understand the deterioration that followed.

BBC World Service – 23 min interview with Dr. Jill Taylor.

Many will have seen this video of Dr. Taylor talking about her stroke, in detail. If you are in the least interested in looking into how the mind works this is a video for you.

Information, Teachings

Road Side Recycling

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Rubbish gathered on a walk around the block.

Lets take bags with us, she said. There’s SO much rubbish accumulated on the grass verges. I want to pick it up. So we walked and stooped and walked and stooped our way around, what we call, the block. When we leave the monastery either by car or on foot we sign out with our destination and time of leaving. That way if there is a fire (not happened yet) everybody can be quickly accounted for. Such is community living, involving a high level of consideration for others.

I guess our walk ‘n stoop walk was about consideration for others in a certain way, as well as just simple civic mindedness. So we walked up the road towards the T junction, left towards Allendale going gradually up hill then left over a gate into the monastery property and down to the main buildings. That’s our country block and it takes just under an hour, walking briskly, to get around. Two of us collected two large shopping bags of rubbish. All sorts of rubbish however, as I recall, no Tetra Pak cartons.

There’s Tetra Pak getting a mention again. Opening the fridge to day and pulling out a smoothie carton I saw on the package that Tetra has a website. Impressive site, impressive company.

And now confession time. The rubbish we collected…went directly into the rubbish bin, unsorted. Shame on us. However like everything that is good to do one can get a tad over-the-top obsessive. And worse – virtuous in an externalised kind of way.

Daily Life

Not Overly Pious

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There is a certain something about this small group of enclosed nuns who have recently moved from a Gothic ‘pile’ in the south to a purpose built (eco friendly) convent in Yorkshire. Listening to them on Radio 4, hearing their down to earth and straight forward answers was warming. Because? They blow the Nun stereotype right out of the cloister window. And without trying too. The are just themselves.

Eco Nuns- Janet Wilson reports on the Benedictine Nuns in a new state of the art environmental monastery.
Sunday: Religious News on Radio 4…on Sunday.

Podcast… Unfortunately the pod cast only stays on-line for a week, and the week is already up.

The above news item was a follow-up from last weeks Sunday religious news program which I’d listened to. Most memorable was talk of a giant car-boot sale as well as the nun contemplating the bed in her cell. The hope was she’d get the same one since she was used to it. But the tin cross on her wall was what she really wanted to come with her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not overly pious! Loved that nun.

More news of these forward thinking nuns and several charming black and white photographs too.

Daily Life, Information, Teachings

A Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change

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It is with some trepidation that I post on the Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change because it is important not to (even implicitly) sell my views and opinions through the vehicle of Jade. This blog is aimed at a deeper level of our functioning while, at the same time, acknowledging that we live in a complex world which asks much of us; to unconditionally engage with it. To notice, acknowledge and respond to what’s here sensitively, intelligently, and above all from where the Precepts call back to us, is the only way I know. To prescribe action, or inadvertently to do that, may remove one several levels away from the gift of personal responsibility.

Trouble is our culture tends to feel that to be fair both sides of the argument must be presented! Debate is seen as a self evident good. As if (to use that wonderful teeny expression). As if there were just two sides to anything at all. As if debate in itself is good, or the path to wise action. Might be, might not be. Complexity yes. Yet how to respond? Compassion has to come first, doing nothing is not an option, although, sometimes doing nothing is doing a great deal.

Confused? Depressed? Wish the whole matter (in this instance climate change) were a bad dream? Want to bury your head under the duvet ’till morning? Such thoughts are the stuff of Buddhist practice, what ever one is attempting to ignore. Climate Change or the fact you didn’t recycle that tetra pack juice container, when you knew you could have, asks of us to lift ourselves out of our beds and take a look. Honestly.

Having talked my way towards this declaration, here is orientation to the statement:

In the run-up to the crucial U.N. Climate Treaty Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, the Declaration that follows will present to the world’s media a unique spiritual view of climate change and our urgent responsibility to address the solutions. It emerged from the contributions of over 20 Buddhist teachers of all traditions to the book A Buddhist Response to the Climate Emergency. The Time to Act is Now was composed as a pan-Buddhist statement by Zen teacher Dr David Tetsuun Loy and senior Theravadin teacher Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi with scientific input from Dr John Stanley.

The Dalai Lama was the first to sign this Declaration. We invite all concerned members of the international Buddhist community to study the document and add their voice by co-signing it at the end of this page.

The statement follows…

Have I signed? I’m not saying. Climate change is at once a huge matter of immediate global concern and…how one responds (the details of that response), both inwardly and outwardly, is unique unto each of us.

As in this instance so in every instance of our responding.