Category Archives: Teachings

Daily Life, Out and About, photograph, Teachings

Remoteness – Morecambe Bay?

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Morecame BayThe other day I sat with a companion on a bench, this scene stretching out before us. Hardly a remote spot yet in a certain kind of way it is. The sense of remoteness, that’s distanced in time and space, is relative. Relative to what one has become accustomed to through habit or forced by circumstances. I’ve known the utter remoteness of being in the Australian Outback, it was empty, yet full at the same time. Morecambe Bay has a similar feel, especially with the tide out as you see it above. Most of us connect with landscape in this expansive way which for me brings calm and deep pleasure. The bench on the edge of the wide sweep of the Bay was the perfect spot to sit and contemplate out loud the wide sweep of our current lives and the living of them.

Convalescence for example brings a sense of remoteness from the cut and thrust of daily living. It’s a circumstance forced upon one and like it or not resting indoors is required. Being confined to bed and chair can have the walls leaning in and the outside world recede, which is much as one might expect. Obviously getting better doesn’t happen over night and time can hang heavy.  For some people however unanticipated benefits open up when sequestered thus. Such times in one’s life, for longer or shorter periods, need not be a matter of straining to get back to normal and for some normal may never come again. Unfortunately. What could be the benefit of enforced remoteness, of having to stay indoors?

I was talking to a chap recently who is recovering from foot surgery. He has spent time while he mended in a garden hut just a few steps away from his home and family. Being in the hut, He said  I could have been half way up a mountain it felt that remote. One might wonder at this, I did. Returning to Morecambe Bay for a moment could not the  sense of remoteness found in landscape be more about bringing ones inner world back into focus. Bringing with it calm and deep pleasure. A call to contemplate and retreat to perhaps a vastly expanded inner world too? With the thought about the impact of landscape upon us could the remoteness of confinement similarly bring ones inner world back into sharp focus and deepen it? I’d like to think so. In the sense of being drawn within I’d like to think we can be ‘remote’ where ever we are,

For those who feel themselves trapped, restricted, confined and not free to move. The movement within is a worthwhile journey, ‘though not easy.

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Daily Life, Out and About, Teachings

Good Training Opportunities

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Sometimes light, sometimes in shadow.
Sometimes light, sometimes in shadow.

People sometimes refer to an anticipated future event or circumstance as  being a ‘good training opportunity’ and this generally includes a prediction that however ‘good’ the training personal suffer will be part of the process. I can remember an event which was indeed a good training opportunity but it wasn’t dark or involve suffering, or strife. Although things could have gone very differently if I’d had more chance to worry!

While staying in a small mountain temple in Japan in 2005 I realized (due to my default response of saying yes) I’d just agreed to celebrate morning service with everything being conducted in Japanese! Gulp! I basically guessed when to make bows and offer incense and then stood still with all the dignity I could muster while scriptures were chanted. Though it was testing my memory is of being so grateful for all the   training/meditation I’d undertaken (in darkness and light) up to that point. I could almost hear Rev. Master Jiyu chuckling – she would have been proud.

Then circumstances can be so extreme there isn’t space to separate oneself from them and one responds in almost an effortless way not touched or caught up in drama. So what might have been in shadows and hard to see ones way through comes into the light. That was the case around the time of my fathers sudden death on a railway platform. I’m still amazed and grateful for everything surrounding his death.

Somebody wrote recently telling me about how she found her way through a series of serious life changing steps almost effortlessly. It could have been different however she knew how to move out of the shadows, which are invariably there, into clarity. She reported feeling guided and carried.  One way of understanding this is that the merit of one’s practice carries one forward.

I know spiritual merit is something many find difficult to accept, let alone understand, however one thing it is not is reward for past good training! So perhaps it’s wisest not to anticipate good training opportunities, however human and understandable such thoughts might be.

This post is for a good friend in the sangha who I like to feel is dancing from one bright spot to another as she continues to daily face more decisions and difficult negotiations. Keep dancing dear friend!

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Teachings

A Mind Subject To Changing

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This last week I’ve had much opportunity to reflect on the matter of trust while walking slowly (walking meditation but not to obviously!) in the corridors of a hospital. On Friday I wrote a post titled Intend to Trust which relates somewhat to my experiences this week. Right at the end of the post there is reference to the importance of listening to those inner promptings which may involve needing to back tracking on a course of action. The matter of the embarrassment one feels when a change of mind or heart is made public is a subject all of its own for a future post.

Living in society, functioning within a community, one endevours to prove oneself trust worthy through ones consistent behaviour. When it becomes necessary to go back on ones word this inevitably brings censure, however good and right the the reason. So intending to trust enters a whole new dimension when it comes to trusting oneself in pressured circumstances, don’t you think.

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Teachings

Hollow Emptiness – Full Emptiness

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People who follow our practice have spoken about how difficult they find the ceremonial forms we use. Some of that difficulty can be connected to how our forms hark back to what they were doing on Sundays as children. Yes, and there can be a bit of out with the old and in with the new attitude when looking for a new religion in later life. Such difficulties can come up on ones first encounter and the responses are varied. Most are sufficiently drawn towards meditation to give ‘the rest’ some space and time rather than up and leave. That was the case for me. Others go on to find a practice more suited to where they are in their spiritual search.

After many years of practice difficulties with aspects of form can have one going through the motions and eventually asking oneself, How can I honorably be here reciting scriptures with a confused and resentful heart? It happened to me. I was advise that I was not required to feel a certain way while singing and bowing. For example feeling devotional, uplifted, inspired, humble or grateful during a ceremony (or at any other time for that matter). The significant thing being to sit still within myself allowing thoughts and feelings to come and go while whatever is happening in the room continues. This would be the advice we would give for everyday meditation. Who would have thought of such a simple solution!

In the extracted quote below a reader and regular commenter reflects on being at a bonfire and fireworks celebration and notes a feeling of emptiness during it. As he put it, This is not the pregnant emptiness of our true nature but the hollow emptiness of jaded form.

Bringing oneself afresh each day, or each year, to events repeated over many years can be a challenge. I’d say the challenge is worth facing and likely to be productive of going deeper in ones encounter with life/form. The form, ones life?, might be a bit tarnished with age however the heart that’s present need not be.

I enjoyed the fireworks yet noticed too some sadness; a similar feeling to the one generated by new year’s eve. It’s the empty celebration. This is not the pregnant emptiness of our true nature but the hollow emptiness of jaded form. Yes it’s fun to see the display and be in a crowd of cheerful people yet somehow the very scale of the display and impersonal nature of the crowd left me feeling remote.
Holding no bough

This post is for Bill, mentioned in the above post, who has twelve months to live due to an advanced cancer. And with thanks to Dave.

 

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Teachings

Looking Up – Giving Up

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I am still contemplating the Bodhisattva Vows in connection with ‘Goal of goallessness’ which was part of a conversation I was sitting in on the other week. One of the difficulties with appreciating the vows, the depth and profundity of them, is that we inevitably view them from our own individual and very personal perspective. Where else would we encounter them or any other part of our lives? This can and does change as gradually meditation/giving takes center stage. As was said, The vows give a direction to practice – altruism for example. The vows are obviously not something to aim for in terms of a goal to reach or an unimaginably high standard to aspire to. Such an aspiration, though understandable, ultimately fails us which leads to disappointment. Over many years of sincere practice the constant sense of failing oneself breeds a sad disappointment which ultimately has one giving up practice.

There is however a way that one ‘gives up’ which is very positive and productive spiritually. A looking-up-giving-up which sounds mad I know. So gradually it’s a matter of seeing the striving habit and the futility of it, in all spheres of life, which brings one to the JUST of ‘just sitting’, just walking, just sewing etc. That’s what I’d call ‘living the vow’ or at least one way of talking about it.

Many thanks to Andy who left a comment recently. It inspired me to write a bit more about vows and their place in religious practice.

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