Category Archives: Out and About

Daily Life, Out and About, Overcome Difficulties

Mabel Sit!

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Ah Mabel. Yesterday a photo call by the milky white waterfall in the aptly named Sourmilk Gill above Grasmere.

I’ve know Mabel since she was a wee pup. She just turned three years March 1st and is as lively as ever and loves the lakes almost as much as I do. Whatever the weather, wetter the better for her.

I’ve traveled this path about four times in the last year and as I walked this time memories swam in and out. In my mind walks jumbled together along with the different companions, the walking conditions, stops to snack etc.

Memory snap-shots all jumbled out of sequence. And it maybe the out-of-sequence nature of memories generally that has me wondering just how much of memory is made up, unconsciously. Imaging, imagining, visualizing events and conversations so as to make sense of the jumble. Brains are brilliant at keeping us safe mentally and emotionally. But not necessarily accurate. As we know to our cost sometimes.

So my thought now is on what my teacher taught us. To remember to think when in contention, ‘I could be wrong’, or alternatively ‘I could be right’! An aid to nurturing humility and confidence, depending. All relative though.

Thanks to friends who tolerate my leaky memory. Wars are made of this! Careers are lost and broken because of this.

Plain outright fibs are another story. Mabel! Did you roll in Fox poo? Who me!

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Daily Life, Out and About, Overcome Difficulties, photograph

Memory Lost

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The High Fells in all their glory.
Seat Sandal
Grisedale Tarn
On path to the Tarn

A first for me on Saturday while walking up in the snow near Grasemere. Crampons! Wild looking devices and clearly they can do damage to both self and other when out of control. Not surprised to hear wearing them or not, needing them or not is a matter of debate when approaching snow. Perhaps that’s because they are ‘work’ to fix  onto the boot. Who knows. We watched a group making their way up to Fairfield, one chap used crampons a couple of others traction devices (mini spikes) and the majority stayed with ‘raw boot’!

I am reminded of being in Edmonton over ten years ago now. Snow, the sound of snow as boot lowers and raises. The quality of sound with varied ones according to the quality of snow and the temperature too. Do those memories sew my life together to make it a continuing story? Or are they simply snap shots stored away. A thread of a person moving through life. Yes, obviously. And in another sense she of five days ago, has died.

I’m thinking particularly about those who are suffering from memory loss, short-term memory loss which is so distressing and dimmed long-term memory too. I see on the face of those I visit the deep anguish in them as they struggle with, or give up on, their encounter with the outside world. Why is it you have come? she said. Are you giving a lecture here? Why are you here? No answer will satisfy because it’s forgotten instantly.

Errm, this reads a bit ‘random’. Happens to the best of us. Merit to those with random thoughts who are no longer able to string their life together. At all.

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Daily Life, Out and About, photograph

Watching Paint Dry – Watching Beached Seals

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Wait a moment! That light house is for sale. Nope, that was back in 2013. Sorry. I’d imagine living in a light house is as close as one can get to living on a boat – at sea.

Light House South Walney Island, Lancashire.

Ah. On Wednesday a brisk walk out to South Walney Island where there is a Nature Reserve – lots of birds and some seals. There was a brisk wind and sand dunes underfoot, eyes pealed for seals. And the seals had their eyes on us, bobbing up and down in the water sailing along keeping pace as we walked towards the light house. This is as wild as you can get, and remote too, hanging on the edge of Morecombe Bay. I’d an idea to go and look at the seals pulled up onto the beach however at high tide they waft and play in the water, which was entertaining. Their ease of movement is pleasing to watch. Then this morning I found there is a live webcam trained on the seals and there they are pulled up on the beach. Bit like watching paint dry! Not much action however lovely to see them.

I’d driven to Walney Island to visit a long time sangha member and it was so good to see her and to walk out in the wind. We paused by the sea to remember her mother who loved the area. Lots of photographs and information can be found in this post on Tammy’s Tour Guide. I’ll be back for a look around the site for more wild places to visit.

Thanks to Betty for your company. Always good to connect.

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Out and About, Overcome Difficulties

1 – When Faith seems Thin

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Read and be uplifted. Yes there are individuals in this world who show cool and bravery in the face of overwhelming circumstances.

In a rare display of coolheadedness and courage, René Jalbert, Sergeant-at-Arms at the Quebec National Assembly, subdued a man who had killed three people and wounded thirteen more on the morning of 8 May 1984. The man had entered a side door of the National Assembly building and immediately opened fire with a submachine-gun; moments later he climbed the main staircase toward the assembly chamber, known as the Blue Room, shooting repeatedly, and then burst into the chamber. As bullets peppered the wall, Mr. Jalbert entered the Blue Room and with icy calm convinced the man to allow several employees to leave the premises. Then he invited the heavily armed man into his downstairs office, in effect setting himself up as hostage while removing the man from the scene. At extreme personal risk, but with unflinching authority, Mr. Jalbert spent four hours persuading the man to surrender to police. The audacity of this retired Major of the Royal 22nd Regiment, a Second World War and Korean War veteran, almost certainly prevented a higher death toll.[1]

A hat tip to Rev. Master Koten for the link. There are more to come.

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Daily Life, Out and About, Teachings

We are The Birds That Stay

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‘Tis not that Dying hurts us so –
‘Tis Living – hurts us more –
But Dying – is a different way –
A Kind behind the Door –

The Southern Custom – of the Bird –
That ere the Frosts are due –
Accepts a better Latitude –
We – are the Birds – that stay.
Emily Dickinson

So continuing on with the theme of ‘the immoveable/indestructible you’. And now adding to that thought, why is being mortal such a drag! Buddhism puts it bluntly: We have what we don’t want and we want what we don’t have! Living is about turning that little problem on it’s head. The continuing attempt to do that leads to constant frustration/anger. Which leads to our protecting ourselves by believing things are not the way they are. Or at least not as bad as we think, Oh, and we didn’t want/not want (what ever it was) anyway which is delusion. That’s suffering and the teaching contained within the Twelve Steps of Dependent Origination.is a detailed description of WHY it’s endless. That link takes you to an explanation that could be educational without too much brain pain!

I’m sure I’m not the first person who has thought or wondered about death and become afraid or at the very least disturbed. However for the most part we don’t, we get on with living. Best we can. However when in more reflective moments we may wonder why living is oddly unsatisfactory even when we have what we want. Being alive, or dead, are not choices however the HOW of living (and dying) is. Here is a story.

A nun I’m acquainted with told of a letter she had received from a woman in a prison in Asia somewhere. The details of why she was there I can’t remember but I think she might have been a political prisoner. The woman wrote, Every day the guards take me out of the cell and beat and abuse me. And every day I do my sitting and walking meditation. She concluded by saying, ‘And I am FREE!’ That is an example of spiritual indestructibility. She had passed through the gate, or door, of life and death and found ‘Kind’ behind it.

We are the birds that stay.

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