Category Archives: Out and About

Daily Life, Out and About, photograph

The Lakes – Atmospheric and Without Rival

December 4, 2013 Mugo Leave a comment

Windermere in calm grey beauty. Ah silence!

Only when
standing there
will the silence
come upon you.

yesterdays grey
atmospheric
brooding
Lake Windermere

Castlerigg Stone Circle near Keswick. Cumbria, UK

Come here
dawn or
dusk
be still.

I’ve had a couple visiting from Sussex these past days. Yesterday we drove through the center of the Lake District from Kendal up past Lake Windermere to Ambleside (stopping for tea) and then onwards in the gathering gloom to Castlerigg Stone Circle. On a plateau above Keswick with long views in every direction, this has to be the most spectacular setting of any stone circle in Britain. It wasn’t the moment to be there unfortunately however it is a must visit place and dawn would be my preferred time t and dusk is good too. Reminder to self: never again take the single track road off the main north/south A519. It’s called Castle Lane. It might be a short cut but meeting another car head on, as we did, is no fun!

I’d be able to wax on about the Lake District for pages and pages, it was my first love from age 13 when up from the Sussex coast on a school trip. There are so many brilliant sites with fantastic photographs of this area. My snaps give a taste. To know the place you have to go eat it! Breath it. Walk it. And above all, respect it.

Curiosities, Out and About

Earliest Evidence of a Buddhist Shrine at Lumbini

November 28, 2013 Mugo Leave a comment

Well this is all interesting news…..photos of monks sitting in the midst of the dig are moving.

“This is the earliest evidence of a Buddhist shrine anywhere in the world.

“It sheds light on a very long debate, which has led to differences in teachings and traditions of Buddhism.

“The narrative of Lumbini’s establishment as a pilgrimage site under Ashokan patronage must be modified since it is clear that the site had already undergone embellishment for centuries.”

The dig also detected signs of ancient tree roots in the wooden building’s central void – suggesting it was a tree shrine.

Tradition records that Queen Maya Devi gave birth to the Buddha while grasping the branch of a tree within the Lumbini Garden.

From BBC Website ‘Earliest shrine’ uncovered at Buddha’s birthplace.

Daily Life, Out and About, photograph, Teachings

Remoteness – Morecambe Bay?

November 24, 2013 Mugo 7 Comments

The 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.

Daily Life, Out and About, Teachings

Good Training Opportunities

November 19, 2013 Mugo 1 Comment

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!

Out and About, photograph, Teachings

Writing Our Lives

November 2, 2013 Mugo 2 Comments

I treated myself to egg, chips and beans the other lunchtime at a local cafe. Not something I do that often. The owner of the cafe handed me, an irregular customer, a next years diary. She’d given me a 2012 but I’d missed out on the 2013 unfortunately. Touched by her kindness I took her a pink geranium today, it had her name on it.

Here’s a quote from my 2012 cafe diary, chosen at random.

A peacefulness
follows any decision,
even the
wrong one.
Rita Mae Brown

Yes there is a peace which comes from taking a step and quite often it’s only later one knows if the decision was right or wrong. And sometimes what seems wrong at the time ends up right in the end and vice versa. Life is full of twists and turns and one rarely sees them coming! You could say we write our lives straight with crooked lines.

The photograph has nothing to do with this post. I was just transfixed by the nibbled door!

Jade Mountains Buddha Hall