All posts by Mugo

Daily Life

Passing Years? Deeper Living?

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Here is a post first published in March last year. There is much in this which relates to the general theme which seems to be developing here over the past days.I think I’ve reached that point which children do when they are PLEASED to see the number of their birth years rise. So I’m slightly wanting my years of living be a larger number and it doesn’t make sense. No, it isn’t my day today and I’m not telling when that was/is, for security reasons. However I can say I’m living/will be living my 70th year through 2017/18.

I’ve an image in my mind of a measuring stick (once called yard sticks) held horizontally representing ‘a life’. It starts at Zero at one end and somewhere over to the other end, it’s all over. Thus caught in a time-line with accompanying past stories and future imaginings. The present takes care of itself. Or does it. Now, in my mind’s eye the yard stick pivots on its axis where time (now) and space (here) intersect. From horizontal time-line with stories and imaginings to vertical where there is an up and a down.

We talk about deepening ones training and that’s often puzzled me as to what exactly that might mean. I do know what it means and as best I can say it is a deeper more three-dimensional encounter with existence. The divide between self and others being less distinct somehow. We are not so dependent on past experience, although always influenced by the time line to define who we are.

Talking to a woman yesterday as we hiked in the Grizedale Forest in the Southern Lakes reignited this yardstick metaphor gently pivoting on its axis point. Ever in motion, dynamic AND anchored. We attempted to voice what that anchor was and looked/felt like. A pleasure for hearts to meet and words to give voice to that.

As when a child so when reaching a larger number of years, what one can and cannot do is significant, however that fades into the background. If one lets it.

Overcome Difficulties

Priorities?

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One thing. Priorities? In daily living, for the most part, priorities are an order of actions projected into the future. We assumed a predictable future stretching ahead, with the ability mentally, physically and emotionally to confidently move with intention, onwards. Raising a family, earning a living, cooking the next meal, planning an outing. However, when the future has been edited by circumstances there is a real, and urgent, question. What is the most important thing? Today, now? What gives living meaning. What is meaningful for somebody who is confined, to bed, a wheel chair, constant and unremitting pain, the prospect of an intolerable end of life scenario, mental/emotional limitations? While the Buddhist teaching, and really the only way to live, is to be present right here and right now, there is a before and there is an after.

I took the opportunity to listen to the Radio program I linked to in my previous post, David Schneider talks to palliative care consultant Kathryn Mannix. Fifteen minutes well spent, very well spent to be honest. David Schneider’s mother had recently died and he was clearly struggling with the whole issue of death and dying. Who hasn’t struggled with this? Having listened again I am reminded of a few reassuring points made in the program. So for those who are not able to access BBC radio (in North America for example) I’ve uploaded the program to my Dropbox account. Please do get in touch and I can send you the link, bug and virus free. Honest. Leave a comment or leave a message or write me directly if you have my email address already and I’ll let you have the link.

What I came away with having listened again is an ease around the process leading up to death and death itself. But especially now having information born of experience, Kathryn Mannix’s experience, of….well I’ll leave it to you to listen and take from it what you will. It doesn’t seem right to paraphrase her words.

This post is for those who have had a terminal illness thrown into their laps, their own or somebody close to them. Or who have been and are living with life limiting conditions. Young and older. One young man I’ve met comes to mind in particular.

Daily Life, Overcome Difficulties

Life/Death – Close Together

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This is a post from December 2015. Could help people to gain a perspective on the dying process, not half as horrible as one might imagine. The person I mention at the end of this post was Brenda Birchenough, who died 1st July this year.

This morning tooling along narrow Cumbrian lanes between dripping hedges following the on/off brake lights ahead. Listening to the radio. A road diversion due to flooding I presumed but unprepared for. A 20 min drive took an hour! However, good old Radio 4 had me fully engaged (as well as driving of course) with an interview about death and dying. A popular subject. Here is the introductory blurb,.

David Schneider is terrified of death. In his two editions of One to One he wants to try to overcome his fear by talking to those who have first-hand understanding of dying. In this programme, he talks to Palliative Care consultant, Kathryn Mannix. With almost forty years of clinical experience and witnessing over twelve thousand deaths, she believes that a ‘good death’ is possible even when you are seriously ill. She explains the process of dying to David. This, she believes, if accepted by the patient, removes much of the anxiety and fear surrounding the end of life.

Two bundles of information stand out and I’ll remember them for myself (I am well and fine) and for others approaching death. For those in Britain who can listen to the podcast I highly recommend doing so.

One: The vast majority of people pop off when attending loved ones are out of the room for a moment. It just seems there is a preference to fade out of this world when there is a chance people who love you are not around to hold onto your heels! My mother chose her moment, I believe. My dad and I knew she was close to death in the hospital but decided to go home and finish cooking the Christmas Cake and would come back later. Our return ended up having us washing her body not seeing her breath her last. That was fine.

Two: Kathryn Mannix had witnessed thousands of deaths and the process  followed a similar pattern. Going from needing more sleep to sleeping more and being awake less and less and eventually drifting into unconsciousness and dying. Peacefully. Ones worries about being in agony and frightening people, happens but rarely apparently.

Oh I seem a bit cavalier on this subject but as a woman said to me the other evening on the phone, I don’t know how to put this Mugo but it seems life and death are very close together. I respond by saying I think you have put it very well indeed. This thought of hers and what I took away from this mornings program has me better informed and more at ease about death, mine and others.

The post is for the man who lost control of his van yesterday which then entered the swift flowing waters of the River Kent. Today he was found dead in the river.

Teachings

Light goes With Darkness

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“When a person attains realization, it is like the moon reflecting on the water.” Here according to Dogen it is not because of our individual effort that the moon reflects itself on the water.
What Dogen is pointing out here is the reality of all beings as indepen-dent- origination. Everything is connected with everything. Everything exists only within the relationship it has with all other things and by support from them. That is what Dogen Zenji is pointing out when he says that the moon reflects itself on each and every drop of water.

But still, he says, the moon has infinite height and water has infinite depth and we need to investigate how high it is and how deep our life can be. This process of inquiry is the process of our practice.
Genjo Koan commentary by Rev. Shohaku Okumara. What a treasure!

Light. When it’s light, all is illuminated, what comes into our eyes is differentiated. Individual things, each with a very specific function which can’t be swapped or exchanged.  Anything/anybody, all things, are perceived as different. Everything IS different, unique, clearly defined with ‘edges’.

The fingers on one hand, the little finger has a particular function and cannot be swapped, with the thumb for example. However much that little finger would like to be a thumb it can’t be. That is NOT its place/position. Wanting, desiring, longing gets that little finger nowhere at all, so too with our own longings for things, ourselves to be other than we are. ‘Little finger, know and accept your uniqueness, which is subject to change of course. Be at peace. Know that your place (Dharma Position) contributes to the functioning of the whole.’ The hand contributes to the functioning of; both hands, to arms, back, legs and feet, to the land, to the ‘the Great Earth’ (everything) – the universe without edges.

Darkness? Then, in darkness existence is undifferentiated, empty of individual self-nature. When for example it’s physically dark the ‘sets’ (paving stones) in the yard at Throssel do not show up as individuals and yet they each still have their place, making up a mosaic of colour with very specific characteristics.  Each have their unique place functioning together to provide a flat surface to walk on within the Great Earth.

This seeming paradox, existence being dualistic in nature while at the same time non dualistic, is the challenge, the koan of living everyday life – Genjo Koan. How do we live and express this truth?

…the moon has infinite height and water has infinite depth and we need to investigate how high it is and how deep our life can be. This process of inquiry is the process of our practice.

Better leave it at that for tonight. Time to turn.

Overcome Difficulties, Teachings

Mothers do not live for ever!

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It would be about now at this time in the evening, 24 years ago, that my mother died in Lynton Cottage Hospital, Devon. She was alone; the nurses off doing their rounds the local nuns not yet arrived. (They make it part of their service to sit with those close to death). My father and I had left her after our evening visit, we had to get on with making the Christmas cake. Even in the face of imminent death it was important to keep up the cake baking tradition. ‘Look after daddy’! she had said a few days earlier. I replied, ‘Well I think he can look after himself! and ‘Yes, I’ll make sure he’s OK’. And he was OK, living on for five more years.

First thing this morning I left a short post on Facebook saying it was the anniversary of my mother’s death and that I was sad I’d not appreciated her more fully during her life. (Thanks to all who left long and thoughtful comments as well as those who simple ‘liked’.) You think your parents will live for ever don’t you. But they don’t. Sooner or later they pass on and I doubt if there are many people who say all they want and need to say to those who die. Suddenly or slowly our all too mortal selves slide off, leaving those who remain to deal with ‘business’. Legal business and spiritual business. Registering her death my dad and I spelt her maiden name incorrectly and struggled to decide which first name to use. My father’s family ‘renamed’ her as they didn’t like her actual name. We registered her original name and that is what my father engraved on her head stone too. She rests, or rather her remains, rest in the cemetery here at Throssel. I buried her, she had a Buddhist funeral, my dad dug the grave.

But it isn’t too late to express what one needs to express even years after a death. Adrienne wrote in her comment on Facebook that she had written a letter to her mother after her death and then later burnt it in the cleansing flames of a ceremonial fire. I will think about writing a letter of appreciation and put it on my altar for a while. Did she make her mark in the world? Yes. In a small side garden in the Nation Trust, Wesbury Court Garden in Gloscester there is an Aquileia, a deep purple one, donated by Mrs. White of Hewelsfield. She knew the gardener there and somehow this plant was rare. Sad to say I don’t know why. She was of a rare breed herself.