Daily Life

Yesterdays Hearse

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Yesterday. Sat up front in the hearse. Traveling a sedate 20 mph. Using the back roads to avoid traffic congestion. Narrow and twisty country lane, not the place to meet a hearse, if you are in a hurry. The vehicle was immaculate. The driver, serious and polite. Me? Grief bubbling in deep recesses I didn’t know were there. The drive a much appreciated space to compose and prepare.

Funeral people are a committed bunch. They derive deep satisfaction in their job. They are helping people who need their support at a difficult time. They have presence, sincerity, professionalism. What if you need to make an emergency stop? I asked. No worries he said, the coffin is secured to the bed of the hearse with a number of clamps. Thank goodness.

At a Chinese funeral, the driver told me, he was given a red ‘good luck’ envelope with a pound coin in it. Put it on the mantelpiece. It brought me good luck too, within a year. Got employed full time and then able to buy our house. I’m thinking, this chap has accumulated some spiritual merit along the way.

Yesterday, seems so far away now. In fact it is now the day before yesterday that I went to conduct the cremation ceremony for my late employers wife, who became a good friend. It will have to be another day before I have the chance to write more….

Deep bows to those of you who I met and who now come looking here. I have to say the ceremony was an unconventional adventure and one I will always, but always, remember.

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The Link Between Contact And Desire

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Can you explain the Twelve Links Of Dependent Origination? Nobody ever asked me that question in a class. Thankfully. But I do remember hearing about one of the seniors putting a new teacher he was mentoring on the spot. He announced to the gathered congregation that the young Reverend was now going to explain this bit of Buddhist doctrine! Off the cuff and without notes.

There is much written on the subject which you can go and look up if you want to understand in detail how one-thing-leads-to-another in the never ending cycle of birth and death. That’s the big stage this doctrine plays out on. And there is the stopping in a particular instance, of grasping for example, where the flow of cause and effect stops. For an instant. Thus opening up a space to decide to do something differently, or not at all. I seem to remember it was around link eight and nine, craving and clinging (attachment), where a link in the chain could be weakened. I’ve a happy memory of coming to the small realization that attachments were not the problem. Sticky fingers, grabby hands and the like were the problem, the relationship to attachments was what to watch out for. Ah, happy insights. Only to then fall to the ground, and be forgotten, for others to rise up.

The basics of practice do not change however I’d say now that ones relationship with ones interior becomes less self centered as the years go by. By that I mean the self conscious practice of earlier years gives way to a more reflexive response to existence. Sounds good ay? Well, nobody rests in there ever lasting place of understand. We say that there are always grand opportunities to be disturbed by the truth. In this case the teaching of The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination as they enact in ones day.

Here is a daily life example of how the understanding and appreciation of Buddhist teaching deepens, quite naturally. Books are fine, plants on a windowsill are fine too.

…the remarkable bit is the link between contact and desire, I never even thought about it until I saw it, but there is a complete and powerful link of dependency between the two that you don’t even know is there until you spot it and the ‘penny drops’. From a blog post titled Desire by Iain of Little House In The Paddy.

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