Category Archives: Teachings

Daily Life, Overcome Difficulties, Teachings

Sitting Still Helps The Process

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It’s not that often I get caught up in a scheduling crunch however I did this morning. There was a ceremony I’d committed myself to attend and a dentist appointment I HAD to go to. (Broken tooth. Patch essential.) I could juuust about see how it could work. There was juust about time to attend at least part of the ceremony and make the appointment on time. That’s if everything happened on time, if…and if…..and if….

This sort of situation can drive one to distraction. Need, wish, intentions (good ones), feelings (ones own and those of others), timing, unknowns, x factors all swimming about in ones mind. I’ve learned, although I don’t necessarily always remember, that it’s best not to act precipitously in such situations. Better to…empty the dust bin, do a short errand, photocopy something. Anything, (obviously not anything anything!) play for time, anything to give one of the x factors a chance to materialise. Walk down the lane and back. This morning if I’d checked the daily schedule I’d have known earlier the puzzle would not, could not, fit. There was a meeting scheduled, that was the missing piece of the puzzle. The x factor. And, as I put in a note, it didn’t work out that I could come to the ceremony.

This small event can mirror periods of ones life. It’s as if the pieces don’t fit together, no matter how hard one tries to get them to do so. What a relief to be able to say to oneself it didn’t work out, it’s not working out. And move on. Easier said, than done.

If you are in a situation, small, medium or large, where the pieces don’t seem to fit together – it’s probably a good idea to allow yourself the possibility that you are missing a puzzle piece or two. They will come. Given half a chance. Sitting still helps the process.

Acceptance essential, action unavoidable.

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Overcome Difficulties, Teachings

Tears Just Tumble

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Yesterday I had a brush with physical pain. Walking home last afternoon it was all I could do to put my right foot down without yelping, loudly. I was probably limping at the very least. The pain wore off as I walked. Gone as quickly as it had arrived.

Nothing happens without a cause, of course. The root of this pain originates from a broken tibia back in late 1999. I slipped and fell on a frozen grassy bank, I heard a faint click and the rest is history. Soon after the fall, almost exactly one month when I think of it now, my father died. Dealing with his death, using crutches, while dragging along a plaster cast, was a challenge to say the least. I remember, for instance, loosing my balance at the grave side and almost falling on top of his coffin!

Following the fall and fathers death my life circumstances were such that I was not able to rehabilitate the use of the limb properly. So now, as a consequence, there is ongoing poor use of the limb (which I’m working on by the way). This morning as I walked a strong impression of my dad came to mind. I walked on. Later I engaged in a free write exercise using pencil and paper for a change. I found myself writing to my father telling him about my rehabilitation efforts. Just simple words as a child might pen a letter. Tears tumbled out of my eyes.

What is to be understood here? What indeed! That release/letting go – what ever one wants to call the arising and passing of conditions as I’ve described – come of themselves in the ebb and flow of conditions as they arrise, and arrise. And, given half a chance, they pass of themselves. It is not, as I see it, the particular conditions that are significant – in this story – it’s the wonder right there in the midst of being still within the conditions which captures my heart. Tears just tumble – in that there is both joy and sadness together.

Several posts are lined up in the wings to be published over the next few days. The first one is from a sangha member who is a practicing expert on physical pain. One cannot but bow to the fortitude coming through this post. It is not a light read. One cannot fail to be both disturbed and inspired in equal measure.

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Daily Life, Teachings

Responding To Conditions

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The other day I met a remarkable woman, a Buddhist woman in another tradition, who has achieved a great deal within the sangha she is part of. In our conversation, and I must say I could hardly keep up with her thinking it was moving that fast, she passed on something her teacher had said to her. Paraphrasing here the gist was, when acting, in this case setting up a meditation group, three factors need to be in place, the right time, the right place and the right conditions. The conditions and the place might be right/appropriate, but now might not be the time to act. Or the place and time are in place but the right conditions are not. All three need to be in place she was told.

The coming together of conditions, at a certain time and place, includes factors that nobody could have predicted or arranged in advance. The work that comes, the coming together of conditions, manifests in our lives constantly. As it has come to me the work is to be awake to this flow of conditions, to be free to respond. To be truly free to respond. Which means expanding within, embracing and giving of oneself, unfettered by the conditions themselves, both internal and external. When you fall over, how do you respond? When the windows are dirty and need cleaning, how do you respond? When somebody acts in such a way that is not appropriate in the present context, of time/place/conditions, how do you respond?

Our lives have a direction. Mostly that’s not a mystery. The bins need to be taken out on Sunday night so they can be emptied early Monday morning. We prepare our sitting place because that is the direction of our lives. Time, place and conditions coming together, to settle and sit still.

Oh, and I hope conditions come together for this climbing trip which I’m following. Expanding, embracing and giving of oneself, unfettered by the conditions themselves. Good walking, sitting, settling…climbing

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Overcome Difficulties, Teachings

Comfortably Uncomfortable

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Rikuko Taifu said to Nansen, “I have a piece of stone in my house. Sometimes it moves and has its being, sometimes it lies down. I would like to carve it into a Buddha, can it be done?” “It can, it can!” said Nansen. Rikuko asked, “It can be done; is that certain?” ” It can’t, it can’t!” said Nansen.
From Zen and Zen Classics (very old edition) The wording has been slightly changed.

Somebody recently sent me some writings about his feelings of inadequacy/insufficiency with regards to functioning generally. Thoughts about himself that had dogged him all his life. His feelings of inadequacy had coloured everything. What to do what to do? Then he extrapolated, in his writing, that this inadequacy coloured the deeper, could call it spiritual, levels of his inner life. Rather than being perceived as the joyous call of liberation, “going, going, going on beyond” (The Scripture of Great Wisdom) can at times sound rather relentless when one feels ill equipped.

Right at the very end of the ponderings on inadequacy came a really interesting insight. He saw that the feelings and thoughts of inadequacy had become a place known so intimately that there was a certain comfort and safety which he was loathed to leave. Who wants to leave a home lived in all of ones life, known so intimately? That’s even when one knows the roof is leaking, there is dry rot under the stairs and the doors and windows are hanging off their hinges. Who’s to convince one such as this (and that includes all of us to some extent).

This post is for the chap who this morning sat with something he usually avoids. In the intensity of what was there he found himself taking refuge in the Three Treasures, over and over again. (Yes, he just silently repeated the Three Refuges over and over in his mind.) And what was there, washed through. There is no formula for this.

See this post about self justification and confidence. And this one too.

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Daily Life, Teachings

It’s Not All About The Pizza!

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Adriennes_sewing_space_0.jpg
So workspaces are meant to be tidy?

Andrew’s musings about self justification has given me pause for thought. I may well have been one of those people who raised an eyebrow at the amount of time making three pizzas takes in the Taylor-Browne household. Yet I can spend all afternoon, making completely frivolous items in my sewing workshop. Although they make me smile, and sometimes other people smile at them too, no-one could describe them as especially useful.

For many years I was full-time full-on in, what Rev Mugo has aptly named, my war zone. Then I came to Buddhism and I learnt that it was possible to stop and allow this body and this mind to become settled. The formal practice of meditation, going on retreat, talking to monks and reading the scriptures has all helped me in this process. So where does making pizzas and vintage aprons come in to it all? For me, giving myself to a simple practical task, is where I have been learning to bring meditation into my daily life. I still spend time earning a living doing work that relates to my earlier ‘war zone’. The meditation, both formal and working, has helped me to become more ‘present’ within the chaos that such work can bring.

Since I stopped working as a Probation Officer I, like maybe you Andrew, have struggled with the question what is good to do? Yet I do know that I have to do something, whether it is making a pizza from scratch, walking to work or getting the bus, making a quilt or just going travelling for a while. But to just hold that question what is good to do in my mind and to keep on asking seems to be working for me.

I have not engaged in meditation in order to cope with being in my war zone. I want to do something about myself. And yes, doubts arise, as does the wish to have some sort of justification, approval or just have someone tell me what to do. But I can let those thoughts go as I notice them arise; and I manage to do this sometimes quite easily and sometimes it’s a painful struggle.

In my previous post I had started to explore the very human wish to preserve some sort of comfort zone and to touch upon this here seems appropriate. I know what it feels like to make huge efforts to protect something that is impossible to protect. I really do not know what the future will bring and I am in no doubt about the impermenance of all things. Yet I do have to keep making decisions about what is good to do on a daily basis despite the shifting nature of existence. Thankfully, I have begun to open myself up to the knowing that it is OK to not know……..to not know the answers……..to stop the trying to…….to let go of the shoulds and musts….. to have faith… and open up to something other than my own wants, needs and desires. And I have to say It’s quite a relief!

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