Describe the fruits.....

"Describe the fruits of your practice......"
Someone in a dharma-group I belong to set this as 'between-meetings' homework for people that wanted to take the assignment on, and with intriguing guidlines for doing it...

"Give the non-dominant hemisphere a walk in the park by responding in fruity terms, staying with a fruity image/metaphor and letting it proliferate without pruning. Let your fruity insights present themselves in their own time and at their own fruity pace.....let there be absolutely no self-imposed pressure, just in playfulness and for playfullness's sake".

I liked the permissiveness of this, and decided to see what happened during the week, by 'not-trying' or contriving, not scratching after a concept or image as a chicken scratches for insects or worms. Difficult to do. As the injunction "Try not to imagine an elephant" proves.

Sure enough, within a couple of days, two images presented themselves. One was of a large dark-skinned avocado pear. It's skin was deep blue-black and shiny, and it was sliced in half so that the creamy flesh exposed a smooth round stone embedded in the lower half, and a correspondingly smooth round concavity in the other. The other image I will keep to myself, and see how that feels, and if it has anything more to reveal to consciousness.

What did this avocado image have to say about my practice? At first I had little to go on. I do enjoy an occasional avocado, eaten from the shell without dressing or anything added. I recollected that there was a large spreading avocado tree in the first house I was assigned when I arrived as an new expatriate employee in the Zambia copper-mining town of Mufulira. I didn't know it was an avocado tree until a local man told me. There were unripe avocados all round it on the grass. I don't think I had ever seen one before, and I didn't know they were edible.

The only connection with practice is that, shortly after I arrived in Zambia - in 1970 a complete innocent abroad - I had an unheralded experience of 'world collapse', lying in bed listening to the sound of drums from a nearby African township. I have sometimes traced my journey to Buddhism back to this experience, but memory is such an unreliable compounded thing.

Another link suggested itself, timidly. On the advice given by the teacher, I hesitated before 'pruning it' away, before dismissing it as irrelevant or far-fetched. And this insight, if that's what it was, came up: I have often felt that I have a frozen lump of unexpressed grief in my heart. I don't know why I should think like this, I am not conscious of anything I might grieve over, any unresolved sadness. But the feeling doesn't go away. I have, somehow, somewhere, an unrequited need to grieve for something lost. There are times, when I'm relaxed and reflective, that a long shuddering sigh escapes my chest, like the shuddering sigh of a small child who has sobbed until he can sob no more.

For a while, the exposed stone of the imagined avocado stood for the exposed grief in my heart, open to my gaze, embedded in its own smooth richness. And I remembered that it is from such a stone as this, properly nurtured, that a huge spreading tree could grow under a warm sun, and fine harvests of beautiful fruit could grow and drop to the earth for others to eat, or admire.

Is this a fruit of my practice? Should I 'accept' this seemingly unbidden image and my own interpretation. Or should I let it go as sentimental guff? Perhaps, and this response has a more comfortable feel to it, I should just leave it where it fell, in its 'is-ness'.

I've been reading a wonderful book, a slim volume by Will Johnson, "Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient" (Shambhala, 2000). It's a primer for meditators on posture, but more than just posture, on gesture, the embodiment of mindfulness. Johnson encourages practitioners of mindfulness, meditators, to 'meditate standing up'. Doing this, he suggests, makes it possible for us to re-engage with the earth, from which we grow, which supports and enlivens us, and which brings us always down to earth through the unceasing power of gravity. And it re-engages is us with the life-force that moves ever upwards through the watery ground of our being. It's a magical book, at least that's the way I've felt it.

Tomorrow I'm embarking on a new venture, it's the beginning of the Kalyana Mitra chaplaincy study-group at St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth. I'll report on that at some future time.

Kalyana Mitra Launch

Yesterday was the official launch of the Kalyana Mitra - otherwise known as the Buddhist Chaplaincy Support Group (BCSG), at a beautiful and many-layered, day-long, ceremony hosted by London Buddhist Vihara. The Chiswick vihara is itself a vibrant, inimate and homely place, very much a family place, with children scampering about, smiling Sinhalese monks in their robes, many members of the local Sinhalese lay community in attendance on guests and participants, and a delicious smell of cooking from the kitchens.

Kalyana Mitra has been a long time in gestation, and enjoys the support and generous sponsorship of the Buddhist Society; chair of the BCSG is Frederick Hyde-Chambers OBE, who presided over the event. Mr Hyde-Chambers is a former Secretaruy of the Buddhist Society, and currently Secretary-General of the International Association of Business and Parliament.

Kalyana Mitra supports all forms of Buddhist chaplaincy, in hospitals, hospices and emergency healthcare services, in the armed services, with the police and the Courts, in prison, with immigrants and asylum-seekers, in education (from early years to Higher Education), indeed in all areas of public life where spiritual care in the community is of value, and can meet a need.

You can find more information, a host of resources, and an opportunity to get involved (without having to volunteer your services) at http://www.buddhistchaplains.com/ which has been launched to coincide with the project launch.

I attended with several Trust supporters, including Netta Wills, one of our trustees, and widow of Ray Wills, co-founder of the Buddhist Hospice Trust. I was particularly glad that Netta was able to be present. She said at the end of the proceedings that it would have been a great joy to Ray to see this development, as he had dedicated himself and his energies for much of his life to a fully collaborative engagement of Buddhists 'from all traditions and from none' - people working together to bring spiritual friendship to people fettered by suffering, caught up in serious illness, dying, death and bereavement.

Monks and ordinands of most traditions offered prayers and chanted offerings of dedication, and representatives of religious sangha and secular Buddhist organisations joined to make offerings of light. The Buddhist Hospice Trust was privileged to be called (unexpectedly) to participate in this, and to offer words of affirmation at the end.

Especially touching were an entrancing puja dance performed by four young women of Sinhalese origin, a short dharma-drama by the same young women and the young children of Chris Blomley and his wife; Chris was master of ceremonies for the day and is one of the principal architects of the BCSG.

Principal speaker was Dr Sarah Shaw, a Buddhist translator, author and scholar. Sarah's talk was a jewel-like exemplar of simplicity, authenticity and wisdom. She spoke a little to the value of the 'Four Immeasurables' in guiding spiritual friendship. Most notable (for me) was the distinction she suggested between loving kindness to myself, and loving kindness to others. It is of immeasurable help to others, she suggested, to know that what might give ease and contentment to us may not be what would give ease and contentment to another. We should take care not to 'prescribe' for the gladness of others, or wish our own happiness on them, however sincerely; better that we should fully intend that, without any reservation on our part, whatever happiness they found should be the happiness that they most sought for themselves.

Other speakers included Dr Sunil Kariyakanawara (Director/BCSG), Mr Robin Field-Smith MBE, Vice-President of the Association of Police Chaplains who sang the Collect from Choral Evensong (Book of Common Prayer), Ven Sochu of Shoboan Zen Centre, Matthew Jee who devised and demonstrated the new Kalyana Mitra web-forum, and Mr Keith Munnings who also led the finishing meditation.

Dangerous Spirituality

Yesterday I was at a training workshop, one of an on-going series offered by Janki Foundation (JF) for Global Healthcare. JF is in my opinion a wonderful organisation, an offshoot of the Brahma Kumari spiritual tradition. JF has developed a training package, used worldwide, to develop healthcare staff in a better understanding of the universal values of whole-person healthcare, within a non-sectarian spiritual framework.

There was an atmosphere of deep attention. We all know each other well, and we have worked together often before. Our work was to test how the training package allowed participants to explore their own experience of spirituality by calling to mind a significant other, to whom a loose 'spiritual' attribution might be made.

My own mind turned at once to a man of my fairly recent acquaintance (about two years or so), an unemployed Scot from Glasgow. I know this man devotes much of his time to campaigning on behalf on beleagured or oppressed minorities, and spends much of what free times remains to him befriending people who 'live on the streets' of a seaside town on the South coast: alcoholics, drug-users and similar marginalised people.

He can't do much to help them materially, but he is always vividly present for them, and a friend. He isn't in any way pious, he's a straight talker, a remarkably poised listener, and in no way a 'bleeding heart do-gooder'. By his own account, which I believe, he has had his own experience of living rough: he was for some years a Forest monk in the jungles on the border of thailand and Burma. Bandit country. And he acknowledges personal brushes with the law.

This man has had an amazing effect on me since we first met. He is, as I know him, entirely without guile. He has an aura of divine innocence about him. Yet I sense that, for me at least, he is dangerous to know.

Not dangerous in the sense that he might murder or rob me, or try to seduce my daughters. Dangerous in the sense that my falsehoods, my vanities, my faithlessness is vulnerable to his presence in my life. Dangerous because, for reasons that leave my understanding and experience behind me like discarded garments, I trust him completely.

I think John the Baptist had the same effect on people who met him, hoarse-voiced and wild-eyed, up to his waist in the River Jordan. They were drawn to him as iron filings to a magnet; they wanted to be held by him and forced into the turbid waters by his mad strength. Certainly, his dangerousness was sufficiently feared by Herod Antipas for him to grant his daughter's wish for the Baptist's head on a platter (Mark 14:8) - that's John's severed head in the Coptic engraving at the top of the blog.

I will write a little more about this chap on another occasion. When I first met him I called him 'Rasputin', for reasons that will be obvious to those who recognise the name - part monk, part witch, Communist and healer (he is pictured above with John the Baptist).

Needless to say, colleagues at the workshop were surprised that I ventured the term "dangerous" as a possible characteristic of spirituality. But I'm sure that many will agree that it's a candidate adjective worth considering.

Haiti and the karma question

A Trust supporter has written to ask, "The tragedy that Haiti is going through just now has reminded me how fragile we all are. I've made a donation to try to help relieve the suffering but it's just a drop in the ocean. There are those who will say that this is just karma, but is it?"

Well, an earthquake isn't karma, it's the movement of tectonic plates against each other to cause violent perturbation of the earth's crust and consequential damage to structures it supports.

As for the suffering: all beings suffer - I remember the Buddha's 'double pain' parable about the man struck by an arrow, the arrow causes a painful sensation but the added suffering, much worse, is the result of wanting the pain to stop. And I recall what the Buddha wanted me to know about the cause of just such suffering-in-ignorance: it's my poisoned mind.

My mind has been slowly poisoned by what has happened to me since I was conceived; some of what has happened to me is of my own brutish making, more or less choicefully and/or awarely. Some of what has happened to gradually poison my mind has been the brutishness of others towards me, more or less choicefully and/or awarely, as their own minds have been poisoned in their turn; some of what has happened to me is just stuff that happens to anyone: an earthquake, a tornado, a lightning strike, German measles while she was in her mother's womb, Thalidomide, nuclear fall-out, drought.

Most of those I've missed so far, not living across a tectonic faultline or in a tornado belt. I did once or twice live in a fever belt in tropical Africa, but I was blessed with a good education, medical training, indoor sanitation and money to buy anti-malarials and mosquito screens.

To the extent that what I described as happening to us to poison the mind, so that we suffer needlessly and in ignorance, greed and hatred, I'd agree with people who say what causes suffering amongst the people of Haiti is karma. "Just their karma" is a bit too glib for me.

From what I've seen on TV of the way the people of Haiti have responded to ferocious natural events, I'd characterise them as models of restraint, composure, dignity and resilience, which is their karma too, by the way. And I think they could show some of us Buddhists a thing or two about lived-out compassion and wisdom.

That's what I would say, if I were to say anything about the people of Haiti and karma.

Dr Sally Masheder

A few days ago we heard from her husband Mike that Sally had died in a Bristol hospice, having decided not to continue with treatment for her cancer, which was terminally advanced. Mike told us that "Sally retained her equanimity and command of the situation, and it was all done as beautifully as it could have been. This was all helped by the really remarkably wonderful care delivered by the hospice." Dr Mike Masheder and their childen were present when Sally died.

Readers will probably know that Sally Masheder was Honorary Secretary to the Network of Buddhist Organisations, having been a founding member since 1993, and a leading member and former secretary of the Western Chan Fellowship in Bristol. Sally was a practising doctor in General Practice at Templemeads, Bristol.

I knew Sally slightly through my involvement with the NBO but my few encounters with her impressed me very much with her great human warmth, shrewd judgement, dry humour as well as generous solicitude for me and for the Buddhist Hospice Trust. No doubt Sally's engagement with the Dharma and her spiritual practice was profound, but she bore this very lightly. Everyone's experience of her was, I feel sure, that she was a wonderfully wise and compassionate human being, who embraced us with kindness, and knew us and our needs better than we did ourselves.

It was as a result of Sally's several approaches to us that we agreed to join the Network of Buddhist Organisations in 2008 as a full member organisation, and Sally arranged an unsolicited donation to our funds by the NBO, having learned that the level of subscriptions to the Trust was low. Sally also invited me to apply to join her on the NBO's Health Advisory Panel of its Activities Committee, which I did shortly after we joined.

In 2008 I visited Bristol at Sally's invitation to participate in their annual conference which was themed on Death and Dying. I delivered a talk on the Buddhist Hospice Trust and Ananda Network, and joined with Ken Jones in delivering a workshop on "Being with the Dying" to delegates. Tired but fulfilled at the end of the busy weekend, I said my Farewells to Sally with a characteristically fulsome (but sincerely meant) tribute, "Sally, you have looked after me like a mother!" Sally responded dryly with a quizzical sidelong look, "I'm not old enough to be your mother, Peter!" A Zen-like moment of satori (or maybe kensho) ensued for me. Sally is reputedly famous for this variety of upaya.

Details of Sally's funeral are still in abeyance, but donations in tribute to her life and in memoriam can be made to her husband Dr M R W Masheder, 6 Tyne Road, Bishopston, Bristol, BS7 8EE for distribution to or amongst charities chosen by Sally, including St Peter's Hospice (where she was cared for until she died), CaRe appeal for the Bristol Haematology and Oncology centre, and One2Five, a charity with which Sally was associated run by the Sisters of the Church to support the street women of St Pauls, Bristol.

A Buddhist in Basildon Hospital (2)

Since I last posted William Ruddle has contacted me to arrange a meeting with him which occured ten days ago, in his office.

He told me that he had not received my letter as he had been away from work with an illness, and he was very concerned that I might have felt that he didn't care. He apologised for the delay in responding. I believed him and his explanation dissipated my concerns, which I acknowledged were unfounded and, I admit, unworthy. He was entitled to an apology from me, I thought, so I made one.

We talked generally about chaplaincy issues and Mr Ruddle shared some interesting information about local Trust policy and practice as it affected his ministry at Basildon, and that of his team. I hope I shall have an opportunity in future for further conversations with this priest, and to develop something of a collaborative relationship.

In line with my tendency to let posts stand I shan't delete the earlier entry I made, which does me little credit, but I hope that this puts the matter into perspective, and will restore any confidence in Mr Ruddle and his ministry at Basildon that I might have damaged.

A Buddhist in Basildon Hospital

Basildon Hospital is currently in the news, slammed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) following a recent unannounced inspection. I don't think there's a hospital in the country where an inspector wouldn't turn up a grubby curtain, a dusty bit of clinical kit, or a commode which - if you turned it upside down between normal commode-based operations - had a bit of something nasty stuck to an overlooked surface.

There was a time when novice student-nurses spent most of their working hours in the sluice-room, restoring filth-encrusted bits of sanitary hardware to pristine condition for another twelve-hourly cycle of careless degradation by sputum, urine, faeces, vomitus, purulent and bloodstained fluxes of all colours, consistencies and odours; and in various volumes, usually copious. Novices were hardly allowed to go near a patient during this three months of stomach-churning apprenticeship. Not until they had proved themselves in the sluice-room were they allowed to shake down a thermometer, or take a pulse.

Those days have long gone the way of seamed stockings, starched cuffs, cuban heels and the six-day week. But I digress.

I have a double stake in Basildon Hospital. I worked there as a nurse - a Senior Nursing Officer - from 1981 until 1988, so I'm very well acquainted with its layout, although it has otherwise changed out of almost all recognition, and I recognise no-one there now, nor am I recognised myself. I have been an in-patient on a couple of occasions, most recently last month where I was admitted as an emergency, fortunately one that was quickly and efficiently managed, so that I am now at home.

My own experience of the hospital was generally favourable, and the medical staff were courteous, conscientious and 'involving'. Every doctor I met (there were several) treated me as an adult, as an equal, so that I could engage collaboratively and felt safe. I was struck by the way medical management was systematised, and followed logical and (presumably) evidence-based protocols. Of course it helped that I am a nurse, and could ask the right questions. I was rather disappointed with the standard of nursing care, but that's something I may return to, in greater detail, another time.

There was a point during my recent spell in hospital where I needed advice from someone, on a matter that was not clinical (so that I didn't want to burden the nurses) but personal and practical. To be honest, I thought I might die. I had developed signs and symptoms very quickly, and they suggested a rapidly progressing brain disorder. Within eight hours I lost the ability to stand or walk, although I was rational, calm and relatively untroubled. I asked for a notebook and began to write notes that I thought might help my wife and family to wind up my affairs - about my bank account, pensions, work and so forth. To help me gather my thoughts I asked to see a member of the chaplaincy team.

Although I had 'registered' as a Buddhist on admission, no-one had mentioned it afterwards, and I told the nursing staff that I was happy to see anyone from chaplaincy, if they could spare the time. After an interval the nurse-in-charge told me that no-opne was available to see me until the following Monday (this was on Saturday afternoon). I was a little surprised, but not put out in any way. I know chaplains sometimes work 'on the front line' of sudden death and bereavement, so was willing to wait my turn.

As it happened, after an urgent brain scan it was decided that I was safe to discharge, if I could manage at home, to return after a few days for follow-up and further tests. I came home, relieved, to begin my recovery (which continues).

When I returned to the hospital a few days later I delivered a short hand-written note to the hospital reception desk, addressed to the head chaplain, enclosing a copy of RAFT which explained the basis of Buddhist spiritual care, and the Ananda Network. I asked if the chaplaincy would consider an offer from me of voluntary service to Buddhist patients, at their explicit request, and I offered to make myself available for any discussion or examination that might be proper. I mentioned that I am an existing Buddhist chaplain at an Essex hospital, and gave the name of the Lead Chaplain who was willing to give information about me on request.

Two weeks later I had received no ackowledgement or response. I therefore wrote another courteous letter of enquiry addressed to the Lead Chaplain, Rev William Ruddle, by name. I acknowledged that my original letter might have gone astray, or that a reply might have crossed in the post. I asked if I might have a response. If my suggestion was redundant, I asked if I might be reassured by being told what the current provision for Buddhist patients might be.

Two weeks later I have still had no response, so today I have lodged a formal complaint with the Trust's Patient Advisory and Liaison Service. I know that Buddhists don't take things personally, and I am not making this a personal issue; but I think something seems to be seriously wrong at Basildon Hospital, and I would like to be reassured that it is not as I suspect. If it is, I see it as a duty on me to help to put it right, not just at Basildon, but more widely across the NHS, if the need to do so exists.

Therefore my intention is, if necessary, to use the Freedom of Information Act (2000) to obtain comprehensive information from the Trust about the provision of chaplaincy services to people of various 'minority' faiths (including but not exclusively Buddhists) who are patients, relatives, friends or staff members at Basildon Hospital. We shall see how carefully the needs of seriously ill, dying or bereaved Buddhists, or their carers (amongst diverse others), have been considered under the religious ministry of Mr Ruddle, as I believe it is his duty as a public servant, and where - if at all - he needs to apply himself promptly to a remedy, if he is capable of doing so, and competent enough.

The Information Act is but one recourse I shall have to sorting this situation out. I have several others in mind. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

If you yourself are interested in supporting this initiative of mine, please let me know, so that we can put our heads together strategically, and make common cause of this important issue. I shall report further on what happens in due course. I have been promised a prompt response from PALS, and I think they mean what they say.