Category Archives: Teachings

Thoughts On Retirement

March 16, 2010 Mugo 4 Comments

Here below is a comment left by Chris Y. My response ended up being quite long, and interesting perhaps. So I’ve copied in both comments here so they don’t get lost in the comment section.

From Chris:
Thank you. Wonderfully timely as always, Reverend Mugo, since I am about to give up the day job… And how much time evaporates just wandering round websites and following links! In search of what exactly?! Well, support I guess. The feeling that there are indeed others out there on similar journeys. What a wonderful resource (in its rightful place!) the web can be for us.

From Mugo:
Just a wave to you Chris. The matter of retirement is very much up there at the moment. So I am glad that you find some timely contributions here on Jade. I hope in the future there will be posts talking directly to the training aspects of retirement.

It does seem to take some time to settle to a different kind of day, with different kinds of contact with ones human family. The real tendency it would seem is to fill up that gaping hole of a day with all sorts of getting-busy-and-productive stuff. Even really great stuff like furthering ones interests and education. (Grandchildren, it would seem, are a bottomless pit of demands on retirees time.)

Perhaps, if it’s possible, it’s good to give oneself time and space to be uncomfortable. Lonely. Unproductive. And in the midst see what comes out of that gap time. Everybody has to live their life, retired or no. It is the real freedom to make the choices, when not under the influence of the mourning of ones working life still fresh in ones being, that can liberate and move one onwards. This all takes time, and patience.

I see retirement as a doorway which takes awhile to walk through, perhaps a passage more than a door. Once through the living is right and as it should be. A time for the fruits of mature experience to be broadcast as seeds. No matter that they germinate and grow – you are over all of that after all. Retirement can be walked as lightly as a child walks. Do we accumulate years? What does that mean? In practice.

I heard on the radio that 60 is the new 40. And, since I have just turned 62 and feel better than I did at 42, I can vouch for something of the truth of this.

Yes, and I have edited and added to my original comment.

Teachings

Guest Post – Self In A Pocket

March 15, 2010 Mugo Leave a comment

The following article first appeared within The Logogryph a blog written by Tom Wharton in Edmonton, Canada. I must say the idea embodied in this post caught my attention, in a thoughtful kinda way. As does much of what Tom writes. He lectures on creative writing and is a published author, so I feel I have no place to be making even basic edits. Capital letters at the start of paragraphs for example. So it comes to you as is.

biking in the hot sun, legs pedaling, breath like swift waves rushing in and out, heart bumping around in its bone room, remembering a half-waking dream last night in which I saw one of my characters set aside some small part of herself, I can’t be very clear about what this “part” was or where it came from, it was more an idea than something concrete that I could “see” (but then again maybe that’s what all dream images are — more suggestions to the mind than actual experiences), she was putting part of herself into a secret pocket, a kind of little bag like kids put marbles in (back when kids actually collected marbles), and when I woke up I thought well, that was a rather clichéd symbol about the hidden part of oneself, the part we don’t let others see (as often happens when one’s thoughts are flooded by the aquatic emotions / impulses of the half-dreaming state, trite ideas seem profound and original and brimming with meaning, but quickly cool and go brittle in the cold light of waking consciousness).

but just now, on the bike, in the heat, crossing a busy intersection with the sun flashing off car metal and people streaming along the sidewalks and me with my own streaming, flashing thoughts zinging along in my head, the idea of someone setting aside or pocketing a part of the self merged with the sensations of biking, and for a moment there were just the sensations themselves, without inner commentary, without past or future, and the thing kept in the pocket was Self … itself. I can’t explain it very well at all, I’m afraid, because it wasn’t an idea exactly. It was a momentary image with no labels on it, and if I try to explain it or conceptualize it, I’m only going to kill it. But what the heck:

There is a physical body, and a consciousness, and a stream of moment-by-moment experience, and in a secret pocket there is a self, like a favourite marble or an ID card or a passport. Always carry it with you because you never know when you’ll need to prove that you are. Not who you are, but that you are.

And then the insight was gone. The intersection was crossed, the passport was checked and stamped, the thought dissolved into other thoughts, the stream flowed on….

Teachings

Distracted Away From What?

March 14, 2010 Mugo 7 Comments

Walking out early this grey morning with spring flowers, peeping through the cold earth. Hikers and dog walkers braving the brisk air. The birds active. Chirp, twitter, chirp and ???!!!X – What?!!! Looking up and there they were. Two Macaws, carrying on loudly, perched high on a chimney pot. Between squawks and flappings they upended into the pot. For what?

Anyway, I did know about the Macaws and had seen them low flying up the High Street one late afternoon recently. They are big, they are colourful and they are loud. (They and the man who flies them can be viewed on video.)

As I walk, the morning sound scape goes largely unnoticed. So it is with the visual scape, and the smell scape too for that matter. Only with something like the sound of the Macaws or the sight of first flowers will I notice, briefly. They escape from their background. The Macaws had their tasty inside the chimney pot, the flowers had the call of the sun to concentrate their attention. And so it is with me and the brown fluff from my socks. There it is, dark spots on the light coloured bedroom carpet. My attention is captured, briefly.

I can tolerate the spots on the carpet. However at some point I will get out the vacuum cleaner and have a good go through. Oh, and how that go through can last if I am not careful. There is always more to clean. More and more and more and then there is the recycling and the organizing of stuff. And before I know it I’m cleaning the registry on my computer at midnight. (No. I don’t do that!) This is harking back to Adrienne’s post on Distractions.

It is so easy to become carried away in ones’ day. One thing leads to another in a never ending stream. Responding to conditions or becoming carried away by them? And carried away from oneself. That (oneself) is not the self absorbed one. The me that worries unendingly about me and how to make me a better, happier, fitter-more-productive-me. And it isn’t anybody else or anything thing else either.

I have several emails waiting to be answered. This post could well answer all of them at once. Over focusing on ones foibles, faults and general life angst is, if you haven’t got the point yet, like becoming obsessed with dirt on the carpet. Buddhist practice is not about getting the carpet perfectly clean. Or about becoming in any, and all, of the endless ways one can imagine. Yes, there is cleaning to do and the loudness of the squawking is to wake one up, to get ones attention. Just that. And yes the carpet is just fine as it is – even with, so called, flaws. That’s why I say so called distractions.

Just what is it we think we are being distracted away from?

Daily Life, Teachings

Inner Shifts – Outcomes Emerge

March 9, 2010 Mugo Leave a comment

As is quite often the case with Andrew, and other who study with me, our thinking and insights run in tandam. This has happened with this most recent post from Andrew. We both recognise a certain shift has taken place.

I’m finding my retreat/reflection time has moved me on in a way I am not quite able to articulate at this moment. When, and if, something practical comes as an outcome, I’ll let you know what it is.

I have recently found myself reflecting quite a lot on aspects of research into the brain which seem to show that we frequently make decisions in a relatively primitive part of our brain some time before our conscious reasoning part of the brain comes up with our explicit reasoned and rational account of the decision. It seems that somehow the decision is made before we are aware of having decided it. Many aspects of our spiritual training seem to follow this model too. Specifically, things often seem to change or shift in us some time before we have any real understanding of what is happening.

From Things Look Different – Something Has Changed by Andrew Taylor-Browne

Daily Life, Teachings

Things Look Different – Something Has Changed

March 9, 2010 Mugo Leave a comment

I have recently found myself reflecting quite a lot on aspects of research into the brain which seem to show that we frequently make decisions in a relatively primitive part of our brain some time before our conscious reasoning part of the brain comes up with our explicit reasoned and rational account of the decision. It seems that somehow the decision is made before we are aware of having decided it. Many aspects of our spiritual training seem to follow this model too. Specifically, things often seem to change or shift in us some time before we have any real understanding of what is happening.

For the last two weeks of January and the first week of February, Julie and I went on holiday. This is not a particularly common event. It is certainly the case that this is a good time of year for us to take a holiday – there is generally less to do on the farm in the depth of winter. Having said this, leaving for any length of time is never easy. We have to arrange for a farm sitter who can come to look after everything, we need to ensure there is enough fuel, food for the animals, clear instructions and plans for all foreseeable contingencies. This year, in addition to everything else, we had an aged greyhound with severe heart failure to leave; and the weather has been the worst winter for at least 15 years. So, the emotional challenge of leaving the farm was astonishingly difficult.

And we did it, we went, and we had a wonderful time in Costa Rica; which was probably the most beautiful place I have ever visited. I have a particular affection for trees and woodland – and the Monteverde cloud forests were deeply and inexpressibly moving.

So now we are back and it is strange how different the farm looks – the familiar seems somehow strange. Our lives, or at least those parts of them that occupy most of our time, are presenting themselves to us almost as though they were someone else’s. We have not been away that long and yet things seem very different.

This has been reminding me a lot of the effect of going on retreat. After spending time at the monastery or a temple for a week or more, returning to ‘everyday life’ and family can be strange. It is almost like seeing familiar things afresh, as though for the first time – strange and yet completely familiar. The first few times this happened I found myself wanting, quite deeply, to hold on to what I had found while on retreat, almost in fear of losing it. Subsequently I came to realise that, although they may fade from consciousness, those things found on retreat are not lost. It isn’t that we can hold onto them even if we want to. Rather they effect a change; things are not the same after; a shift takes place – and sometimes we think we can notice what has changed, but usually not.

And so, this time at least, and against all expectation, it seems that a holiday on the other side of the ocean next to which we live has changed something; shifted things along. Things seem different even three weeks after being back. Everything on the farm is OK, even the greyhound is still hanging on somehow, and yet something has changed. And as yet it isn’t clear what it is that has changed, and that’s just fine.

Jade Mountains Buddha Hall