The following is an article Paul Taylor, a Lay Minister in England, wrote in connection with his work with the University Chaplaincy in Lancaster. Hope you get as much out of his writing as I do. The sub title of the article is ‘A View from the Chaplaincy’.

I recently attended a session on ‘Plagiarism and how to avoid it’. The speaker had commented to us that academic work is an extreme case, and we usually don’t reference all our opinions in our normal life, although nearly all our ideas and opinions have come from others – parents, family, friends, the media, reading etc.

This set me thinking about what originality as a person meant. On ‘The Hits’ TV channel a repeated advert encourages people to download the latest ring tones to ‘stand out! – be different!’. A survey discussed on the BBC News reported that British 10-17 year-olds enjoy the highest average annual income in Europe and are very keen on spending it on personal care products such as cosmetics and grooming. The survey surmised this was because ‘it helps them combine two seemingly contradictory emotional needs – the desire to fit in and the desire to express their individuality’.

As a Buddhist, I wondered what inspiration I might draw from my own religious tradition, particularly with its easily misunderstood teaching described as ‘no-self’. It occurred to me that ‘original’ has the same root as ‘origin’, and that one of the famous Zen Ox-herding pictures has the title ‘Returning to the Origin, Returning to the Source’. An image commonly used in Buddhism is that of each of us being a facet of the One Jewel, both unique and, at the same time, intimately interconnected. The parable of Indra’s Net in the Avatamsaka Sutra describes the universe as if a net, at every intersection of which is a jewel, with each unique jewel mutually reflecting every other jewel – a metaphor for the experience of deep meditation.

What does this connote to me concerning my reflection on originality as a person? If we try too hard to differentiate ourselves from others we lose our inner sense of origin, of interconnectedness; if we allow ourselves to be manipulated or try too hard to get lost in the crowd, our jewel seems to us to dim and fails fully to reflect the unique contribution that is us. Maybe sadly for some, Buddhism would say that better ringtones and grooming alone do not reach this; getting drunk merely anaesthetizes our feelings of isolation temporarily and will not allow us to know truly our deep-rooted connectedness with others. It recommends developing deep intuitive inner listening, embodied in its practices of meditation, to enable us to truly experience what is already here – our uniqueness and our innate interconnectedness. From such listening arises compassion, wisdom, empathy and loving action.

Thanks Paul for giving your permission to publish this article.

The image above is the white haired version of the Noh character called Mountain Crone in the play called Yamamba. Here’s more about the background to this very interesting character.

“In the Kanze, Komparu and Kongo schools, the Mountain Crone may wear a white wig rather than a black one, in which case the play acquires greater dignity since the shite is then truly an ancient woman.” (Japanese No Dramas, p. 314)

Walter of Evolving Space has published a photograph that looks like the carved wooden figure I posted about last week. Thanks for the lead Walter.

I appreciate the connection between age and dignity here.

A humpback whale freed by divers from a tangle of crab trap lines near the Farallon Islands nudged its rescuers and flapped around in what marine experts said was a rare and remarkable encounter.

“It felt to me like it was thanking us, knowing that it was free and that we had helped it,” James Moskito, one of the rescue divers, said Tuesday. “It stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun.”
This story appeared on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, December 14th 2005.

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
Taken from ‘There’s a Hole In My Sidewalk’ by Portia Nelson

CHAPTER ONE
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost…. I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

CHAPTER TWO
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

CHAPTER THREE
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in…it’s a habit…but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

CHAPTER FOUR
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

CHAPTER FIVE
I walk down another street.

A friend pointed me to this poem. Since I see it speaking so clearly of how ‘habit energy’ (karma) works I thought it worth sharing here. Although this piece is pointing to lifetime steps they can be played out in a shorter time frame as well. For example there is the ever present ‘hole’ of thinking negatively about oneself which works on the mind, moment to moment. Trouble is, the hole can become so familiar and therefore comfortable, that the need for or the possibility of getting out, evaporates.

Now I wonder how I ever managed, now that both computers are upstairs in the same room. No more all-day-long migrations from upstairs to downstairs and back again. Toggling between computers. Sometimes I’d think, “This is crazy”, and “I’ve got to do something about this”. Trouble was I knew it involved a huge upheaval. Moving a computer can be a nightmare of cables and connectors, and who knows if everything will work after it’s been pulled apart. And there are the spare desks that need to find new homes. Worse, during a move, there is all that untamed office ‘stuff’, paper clips, staplers, elastic bands, labels (so many kinds of label) spilling over every available surface.

Today conditions ripened for a move culminating this evening with two desks being taken away in a U-Haul truck on route to become part of a young couples first new home together. Everything is working OK and the unruly paper clips are trapped behind a curtain for the moment. They and the rest of the rabble can have their freedom for now.

We would have upheaval days in the monastery, sometimes they lasted several days. Offices would be moved, people would move, furniture would move and garden carts full of stuff would be moved. During one such day I remember walking the cloister with a fellow monk who was a bit put out. Somewhat insensitively I chatted on enthusiastically about how good I thought it was because moving stuff brought the truth of impermanence before us. True, however my timing was poor.

Well anyway. Over the years I’ve grown to enjoy sorting and shifting, de-cluttering and taming stuff and then vacuuming up afterwards. All the same, there remains the tendency to put off making moves.

This posting is dedicated to those who are poised on the brink of a move. “Come on in the water’s fine”.
Oh, and good fortune to the couple starting there new life to-day.