One more memo

 Well, here I am again. It is raining so unable to take up my seat on the bench beside the river. Maybe for the best......yesterday a little wagtail appeared looking for crumbs and I had nothing to give. His/her chirps were in vain.

I live in a small retirement complex, about 45 apartments. All self-contained, it is not a care home. We have a two bedroom groundfloor apartment looking out over a park.

Feet first

It is the sort of place where, as I observed once, you can only exit feet first. From a Buddhist perspective, the whole ambience assists with daily contemplation of one's own mortality. Possibly this can be deemed morbid but in fact I find it life giving. Insight grows into the reality of thankfulness for the present moment, whatever that moment holds. Insight grows slowly, very slowly at times, but grow it does - which nourishes faith in the grace of Reality-as-is.

Thankfulness

Every so often another resident exits feet first, or takes a tumble, or has time in hospital. You remember them when they are gone. For me, often, I recognise that the time you saw them stumble by, or welcome their grandchildren, or join in the christmas sing-song, that you were seeing their "golden age". That recognition helps me bless the moment now.

While I can acknowledge that some might see all this as cheap platitudes, for me they do not come cheap. The cost can be seen as infinite, a price only Reality can "pay" or even understand.

We all have to speak from our very own Pure Land.

Another Memo

 More from the Pure Land.

Empty spaces

Coffee in hand, pissing down, seeking to draw comfort from "what does not destroy us makes us stronger", I read a few bits and pieces from Stephen Batchelor. A man who advocates no position.

He speaks of some obscure Tibetan "view" on "emptiness".....

".....the emptiness of inherent existence is a simple negation as opposed to an affirming negation. This means that the absence opened up by emptiness does not disclose and thereby affirm a transcendent reality (like God or Pure Consciousness) that was previously obscured by one’s egoistic confusion. It simply removes a fiction that was never there."

The Buddha spoke of "dwelling in emptiness". As Mr Batchelor says, "emptiness is first and foremost a condition in which we dwell, abide, and live."

Stephen Batchelor goes on:-

Rather than being the negation of “self,” emptiness discloses the dignity of a person who has realized what it means to be fully human. Such emptiness is far from being an ultimate truth that needs to be understood through logical inference and then directly realized in a state of nonconceptual meditation. It is a sensibility in which one dwells, not a privileged epistemological object that, through knowing, one gains a cognitive enlightenment.

As a Pure Lander I identify with the above and would call it Faith. Always open to the simple hearted. Very egalitarian.

Faith has no content. "Though He slay me yet will I love Him" as theists might say - thus pointless in many ways. It offers nothing. Mocked by many. Yet I find it more and more life-giving.

"What are the teachings of an entire lifetime?" Answer, "An appropriate statement."

Yes.

Yet another memo

 

Not much to report this morning from the Pure Land (AKA the park bench or wherever) I have been ploughing my way through the Dhammapada over the past few days. The translation is fairly dry to say the least but gems appear from out of the mist. A little phrase....... "Day and night, the mind delights in gentleness." The words struck me and stuck. They have already saved me from a few mental diatribes aimed at Boris Johnson - the mental processes mercifully cut off at the second or third "bastard". After which, the delight in gentleness! For a few moments at least.

Almost through the Dhammapada now and moving on to the Flower Ornament Scripture. I have often dipped into that in the past. D T Suzuki says of this work.....(he gives it its posh name)

“As to the Avatamsaka-Sutra, it is really the consummation of Buddhist thought, Buddhist sentiment, and Buddhist experience. To my mind, no religious literature in the world can ever approach the grandeur of conception, the depth of feeling, and the gigantic scale of composition, as attained by the sutra. Here not only deeply speculative minds find satisfaction, but humble spirits and heavily oppressed hearts, too, will have their burdens lightened. Abstract truths are so concretely, so symbolically represented here that one will finally come to a realization of the truth that even in a particle of dust the whole universe is seen reflected—not this visible universe only, but a vast system of universes, conceivable by the highest minds only.”

Humble spirits? Now there's a thing! As Thomas Merton once said, "we can never be humble enough."

Nevertheless it is a fine scripture. Still, if a scientific treatise is preferred or the morning paper, that's the way it goes.

The rain has held off. The forecast is that snow is on the way.

Stephen Batchelor and No Positions

 Stephen Batchelor comes in for a lot of stick in Buddhist circles. This is pretty much par for the course - any human being who strays from any given "orthodoxy" will attract the wrath of those who need the structures of creed and doctrine to feel justified.

As I see it he remains true to the Dharma. Remains true to the Pali Canon; in fact true to the whole range of Buddhist texts and scriptures, sutra's or whatever. True to the Dharma.

From the very earliest texts.....

"So you should you train yourself: “in the seen, there will be only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in the sensed, only the sensed; in that of which I am conscious, only that of which I am conscious.” This is how you should train."

(UDĀNA)

Most want more. Will always want more. Will seek to justify whatever more they use to justify themselves by the descent into wars and inquisitions; greed, hatred and ignorance.

Stephen Batchelor begins his book "After Buddhism" with reference to one of the earliest records of the Buddha's own method of discourse:-

A well-known story recounts that Gotama — the Buddha — was once staying in Jeta’s Grove, his main center near the city of Sāvatthi, capital of the kingdom of Kosala. Many priests, wanderers, and ascetics were living nearby. They are described as people “of various beliefs and opinions, who supported themselves by promoting their different views.” The text enumerates the kinds of opinions they taught:

The world is eternal.
The world is not eternal.
The world is finite.
The world is not finite.
Body and soul are identical.
Body and soul are different.
The Buddha exists after death.
The Buddha does not exist after death.
The Buddha both exists and does not exist after death.
The Buddha neither exists nor does not exist after death.

They took these opinions seriously. “Only this is true,” they would insist. “Every other view is false!” As a result, they fell into endless arguments, “wounding each other with verbal darts, saying ‘The dharma is like this!’ ‘The dharma is not like that!’”

The Buddha commented that such people were blind. “They do not know what is of benefit and what is of harm,” he explained. “They do not understand what is and what is not the dharma.” He had no interest at all in their propositions. Unconcerned whether such views were true or false, he sought neither to affirm nor to reject them. “A proponent of the dharma,” he once observed, “does not dispute with anyone in the world.” Whenever a metaphysical claim of this kind was made, Gotama did not react by getting drawn in and taking sides. He remained keenly alert to the complexity of the whole picture without opting for one position over another.

Well, not taking a position is frowned upon by most.

What is your position?

Peach Blossom Spring

Another memo from the Pure Land, beginning with some poetic lines......

 

He was sure of his way there

        could never go wrong

 

How should he know that peaks and valleys 

          can so soon change?

 

When the time came he simply remembered

          having gone deep into the hills

 

But how many green streams 

            lead into cloud-high woods –

 

When spring comes, everywhere 

          there are peach blossom 

                 streams

No one can tell which may be

       the spring of paradise.

 

The above is part of a Chinese Tang Dynasty poem, in fact the ending. "Song of the Peach Tree Spring" by Wang Wei. The names of Tang poets appear to me as exotic, from another world, and yet not really so. A cow or a camel, an oak tree or a palm tree, grass or sand - each no more common-or-garden, or strange, than the other. The ordinary can dull the senses until we see with new eyes.

 

Seeing with new eyes - Vincent Van Gogh (self-portrait)

I mentioned Tang poetry on a Forum site and quoted a line or two. Back came a rejoiner that the words were the product of people "padded" against reality, living secluded lives, away in the mountains. Maybe so but more on that later. 

Here is another Tang poem:- 

 I asked the boy beneath the pines, 

He said the masters gone alone, 

Herb picking somewhere on the mount, 

Cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown.

The master - found?

Not being able to find the "master" is a recurring theme of all Chinese poetry. Maybe for the best, for when found they tend to morph into formulaes and doctrines, a path to be followed. They would perhaps bring us to a conclusion. Always better to remain lost just so long as we have some sort of trust in the ultimate ground of Reality - a trust that is more a letting go than a clinging to. As Shinran once said, "rooted in the Buddhaground of the Universal Vow".

 

Getting back to "padded" lives.................... I was reading a few mini-biographies of some of the Tang poets. Many lived at a time of great unheaval with warring tribes at each others throats. At one time the population was virtually halved due to warfare, famine and the like. Just how secluded the various poets were from all this is difficult to judge given the often sparse details known of their lives. Some seem to have been involved in "courtly" intrigues, with associates ending up on the chopping block. So, apparently not padded and rarely if ever secluded in some mountain hermitage looking down with disdain upon the goings on in "the world". The world was with them, part of them. Like all of us, they were the world.

 

What it can come down to is our judgement of any poem, of any work of art. It can be dismissed as something outside of us or we can become involved, as Jane Hirshfield says in her book "Ten Windows".............

  A work of art is not a piece of fruit lifted from a tree branch; it is a ripening collaboration of artist, receiver, and world. 

Time to go

Memo from the Pure Land (2)

Waiting for the taxi?

 Not on my bench at the moment. It is raining so I have to stand here in a shopping centre and make do as best I can. Life is full of trials. Anyway, I passed by the homeless guy who had been coughing his guts up yesterday (is he one of the ones who "goes home in a taxi"?) and he asked for "change". Well, no wonder......but I suspect he meant cash in hand. Cash is a thing of the past for me, now I'm one of the tap and go generation, complete with shredded jeans and a mobile phone that enables me to communicate even when I'm in a crowd of people. (How many in the crowd are crying out for company, REAL company?)

Maybe another five years or so before my own jeans are in this state - but you can get a pair now if you are prepared to pay the price.

Quite peaceful here. I think it is David Gray wafting across on the tannoy.

David Gray or not on the tannoy, this image adds much needed substance to this rather thin blog 

My mind wanders a bit and I sometimes wonder if this is the onset of dementia, which runs in the family. At 71 coming up 72 it makes me think. Well, I bought the guy a coffee and a bacon butty, plus some vanilla wafers. I did wonder at the time if he would have preferred a first class rail ticket, to make a change from the taxi, but I never asked. I just made sure he was not vegetarian or vegan before handing over the butty.

Food for the homeless

He told me part of his "story" but as most people I meet seem to think such street dwellers are all liars I won't pass anything on. Who wants to hear it anyway.

Boris Johnson doing a fine job promoting Global Britain

Good old Boris, he's doing a marvellous job.

Memo From The Pure Land

 

A bench awaits Dookie

Here on my bench beside the river coffee in hand. Just passed by a couple of guys sleeping in a doorway of Global Britain. I say sleeping, but one was choking his guts up. Having already done my good deed for the year I continued on, but stopped to feed a flock of pigeons. Which made me think. But not for long.

As I have just been informed on Facebook by a mate of mine, people are using the word "unprecedented" like never before. Yet just how unprecedented is ANYTHING? Reading a history book, the author observed...."Where there is money to be made, there are people who will wish to create privileged access to it" and also "Where there is money, there is power and hierarchy." I think this is why Brexit is being driven by many, they don't really give a s**t about just who is left behind, just so long as it isn't them.

Always money to be made

Still, no one is forced to listen to such as them. Maybe we can't now enjoy freedom of movement ( although the money flows freely, even if not into the Exchequer ) yet while stuck here in one place we can choose our mentors and friends.

Poets for instance.........

Various poets - can you name them?

.

T S Eliot wrote:- 

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

I think in these "unprecedented" times that observation is apt; on a much wider scale. We all absorb yet most will simply regurgitate (as that poor sod in the doorway did), but we also have the potential to create and "make all things new", seeing with new eyes. There is nothing new under the sun except for our very own heart and eyes, each of us unique.

Nothing new under the sun?

Anyway, I've just remembered a few words attributed to Richard II, the English king who put down the Peasants Revolt in the late 14th century.....

‘You wretches’, he said, ‘are detestable both on land and on sea. You seek equality with the lords, but you are unworthy to live. Give this message to your fellows: rustics you are, and rustics you will always be. You will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example to posterity.’

King Richard II (large of arse) addresses the peasantry

Well, you could not get away with such words these days...... THINK THEM, perhaps. (Richard II was once described as "too heavy in the arse, he only asks for drinking and eating, sleeping, dancing and leaping about.") 

I'm not sure exactly what "leaping about" implies, but there are rumours that he batted for both sides, if not for one side only.

Richard II - all leaping done