This morning: The sight of a man pushing a baby buggy at speed along an early morning street. He wore shorts and trainers, it was coming on to rain and the buggy was empty. A burly man more likely to be twinned with a jack hammer, angle grinder. Or machine gun. Than a baby buggy. So delicate. And vulnerable in the hands of one so obviously brawny. Vulnerability coupled with strength, a tension’s there. Then a mental flash of him loosing it and hurling the buggy, thankfully empty, against a wall!

This morning: An interview on Radio 4’s Today program with two chaps. Quite different yet similar experiences following their tours of duty in the army. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A terrible terrible thing. One man climbing out of being declared ‘insane’. Doing well now. The other ignored his wife, wanted to hit her but didn’t. Locked in the hell of undiagnosed PTSD. He didn’t know. Too ashamed to be weak. To seek a way out ’till his wife and friends helped him find it. Talking got him back on track. Doing better now. Both still suffer extreme flash backs. Still.

This morning: Listening to the radio interview and then stepping out of the car. Seeing the buggy pusher on the street followed snap!, snap! fast. O the brutality of what men, and women, go through in war. O how good and civilizing the sight of burly men pushing prams, with big hands.

A thought for those suffering with PTSD. Wars over there and wars closer to home, or in the home. This is a terrible terrible thing this PTSD.

Back in 2003 I sat by while the head of our order battled for his life in hospital. Hour by hour, procedure after incredible procedure until he said enough and we took him back to Shasta Abbey. He died hours after getting there. Life and death dramas are being lived and died constantly in all corners and mostly in private. The following quote is from thoughtful article by Christopher Hitchens. In the face of what he is dealing with, terminal cancer, he questions the jolly epithets around death and survival. Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche is one of them.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.
From Trial of the Will, Christopher Hitchens. To be published in Vanity Fair magazine.

I’m left wondering what I would decide, should I ever have to, if faced with the sorts of choices the monk mentioned had to. Sick people, terminally ill people, people who are actually needing to make life or death decisions are not in the strongest position to make them. How free would I feel myself to be, in the face of eager medical people, to decline treatment.

Thanks to Tony for sending in the link. Much appreciated.

Seems it’s a time when people I know, being in extremity. Being in hospital. Proving that meditation and devotion, to practice, over years and years, under the belt, means stability. Stability at a time when keeping in balance helps on so, very many, levels. Balance is good at any time of the day, or night.

Middle of the night?
Can’t sleep?
Write a poem,
write a song.
Send it on.

Have a good night.
Bows,
Mugo

From an email sent this evening. Having a mobile phone while in hospital is a live-line to the outside world which can be a real uplift. Hospital’s tough at any time of the day, or night.

As a teen and well into my twenties my private nightmare was being asked, What do you do? I so longed to answer with work I was proud of. That the enquirer, quite frankly, would be impressed with. I wanted to BE somebody when I felt like a nobody. I wanted to say I am a photographer! Then one day walking on the streets of Calcutta, 1979, I decided I didn’t. A short time after that I got my first job as a photographer. All a very long time and far away now.

Yesterday I was asked by somebody needing to fill out a form. What do you do? I responded, I’m a Buddhist Monastic. A unknowing shadow fell over the questioners face. By way of clarification I added, Err, I teach Buddhism. I could see the light go on, Oh, you’re a teacher! I imagined the enquirer thinking. Sometimes one needs to at least appear to fit into a box! For administrative purposes.

Do take a look at Alain De Botton’s TED lecture, A kinder, gentler philosophy of success. Thanks to Walter for the link to this talk.

And all the quotes on Alain De Botton’s Twitter page are, to say the least, thought provoking.

He strides through the suburban jungle, alert, and glad and proud to be a CAT!

And just as glad to rest, relax, knowing if cats could talk amazing stories would abound.
Well I will speak for Matti. He who out on the prowl one night entered a home via the cat flap. Trespass! Where he found a live mouse. Theft? He brought the mouse back home in the small cage it was living in. Dragging it noisily through his own cat flap, which wasn’t that easy. Matti then had a pet mouse! Matti’s person, Angie, was not amused, not in the slightest. Matti could NOT HAVE a pet mouse in the house, in side or outside of a cage. He may have pulled this trick more than once. I can’t remember how the story ends….

And speaking of stories and story telling. I recently heard of Spoken Word Poetry, or simply Spoken Word. It’s rather an attractive form. If we could understand what cats are saying I’d imagine it would be akin to Spoken Word Poetry.

Thanks to Julius for sending the link to this video of a rather talented young woman called Sarah Kay. It is a TED talk and they generally last for 18 mins. Well worth watching to the end.