The language of compassion

We are all pioneers of a sort - rough frontiersmen and women. The so-called helping professions are at the beginning of an exciting journey that attempts to explore and enlarge human awareness and establish new disciplines - echoing some of the experiences of sixteenth-century physics. It is a fresh form of alchemy. There is the same sense of arrant nonsense and profound wisdom jostling side by side - often very difficult to tell which is which.
David Brandon (1941-2001)

Here's a vignette from a (very helpful) training exercise at a Buddhist Chaplaincy (Kalyana Mitra) study day, intended to develop competencies required for the chaplaincy task:

'Helen grew up in a small market town, trained as a teacher, and started a family. She had always been used to walking in the countryside as a way of ensuring that her career and family life didn't become too stressful for her.

Following the birth of her second child, however, Helen began to experience some unusual phenomena related to her walks in the country. She started seeing patterns in that nature which she hadn't perceived before; believed certain trees were speaking to her, and felt herself and her two children being drawn towards the lake.

These experiences reached such a pitch that she became very unwell; there were concerns about the safety of the children, and Helen was referred to the crisis resolution team.

Helen has no particular religious faith, but her spirituality is very much linked with her love of nature, and her love of children, especially her own children.'

To encourage reflection and discussion, the exercise poses the following question:

How can the chaplaincy service assist Helen to continue with a spiritual journey without aspects of it leading her on a path which might endanger her and her children?

For me, this vignette is characteristic of the 'mental health' mindset: it proceeds from genteel, middle class professional inferences (assumptions) about class, aspiration and lifestyle; it travels smoothly and without hesitation or doubt towards a further set of description of Helen's experiences. These seem to be a further set of inferences, couched in language that is at once tentative and non-attributable (the authorship is vague) and, at the same time, both authoritative and vaguely threatening.

Such language, it seems to me, is carefully crafted to combine a dual purpose: to convey a message of well-informed concern and benevolence on the one hand; on the other to imply a perilous or dangerous situation, a potentially malignant state of mind, a pressing need for urgent for intervention, and a presumptive right to do so. The language, at first reading, seems to be sympathetic, even empathic, full of well-judged concern: the language of compassion.

I also detect an unchallengeable conviction of the rightness of the view expressed; and an implied warning along these lines: "you would do well to consider that it might be imprudent, reckless even, not to accept this assessment of the situation, not to align your own opinion with this reasonable paradigm. Specifically would you want to risk the possibility of, and take responsibility for, serious harm to defenceless children at the hands of a hopelessly deluded mother?" None of this is stated so bluntly, of course.

How is this murderous intent, and the need to forestall an insane crime, implied in a few lines of anonymous reportage?

"Helen grew up in a small market town, trained as a teacher, and started a family". Helen, the writer seems to imply, is of archetypally wholesome and uncomplicated rural provenance, of modest intellectual capacity and ambition, heterosexual, and defined at least in part by her wish to become a mother within a conventional nuclear family. So far, so unexceptional; the sort of person, perhaps, who has known her family doctor since childhood, and whose parents live in the same town and happily babysit their grandchildren when invited.

"She has always been used to walking in the countryside as a way of making sure that her career and her family life didn't become too stressful for her." Note that reference to her "always" being used to country walks emphasises her rural origins, although presumably she has only "always" used these walks "as a way of making sure that her career and family life didn't become too stressful for her" since she had a career, and had a family.

One might imagine that Helen herself had volunteered this information about stress-management, but there is no evidence of this; indeed, none of the information about Helen is corroborated by actual statements she made, included in her own words. They might as well have been from third parties, or even made up. But the overall effect is to show concern for Helen, as a likeable young woman who organised her leisure responsibly, so as to maintain her personal and professional equilibrium: an example of good-housekeeping in every sense of the word.

Note that nothing is said or hinted at that might detract from or cast a shadow over the image offered the reader. No harbinger of a future sinister turn-for-the-worse. No hint at childhood trauma or a troubled adolescence; no problematic relationships; no major illnesses or accidents; no thwarted ambitions, no hidden fears, no repressed compulsions. There is an unsullied innocence about Helen, she is a clean slate. When she becomes "very unwell" we can derive some satisfaction from knowing that, because her life is otherwise so naturally wholesome, it should be possible to restore her quickly to health, to the bosom of her family, to the status quo ante of woodland walks, children busy in her classroom, primroses in a glass on the breakfast table.

After the birth of her second child, Helen "began to experience some unusual phenomena". It's at this point that the account begins to change style, and the clue is in the phrase given, which - rather than use Helen's own language to describe her experience, distances her experience from the narrative with the phrase "some unusual phenomena". The phrase is deliberately obscure and all-encompassing, and - if interrogated - could be (and almost always would be) re-expressed in terms that were incomprehensible to a layman: words such as "ideas of reference", "autochthonous delusions", or "thought insertion". These are psychiatric terms understandable to mental health professionals, but usually quite mysterious to lay-people.

Three examples are offered to give some substance to the unusual phenomena Helen is said to have experienced. First, "she started seeing patterns in nature which she hadn't seen before". Seeing new patterns in anything is not of itself problematic; indeed the opposite could be true, it might be a kind of awakening, a broadening and deepening of awareness. So what casts a shadow over it? Maybe it's the next phenomonen to be catalogued: Helen "believed that certain trees were speaking to her". We don't know whether Helen volunteered this as, "I believe that certain trees are speaking to me", or whether she used some other form of words.

It would be interesting, for example, to know whether she said that the trees spoke singly, in audible words, or together; and to hear from her what they said, in what tone or quality of voice. Did they utter cautions or commands, give advice or commentary, or offer reassurances? Did she recognise the voices in which they spoke? Or was Helen's use of "speaking to" a poetic metaphor? None of this seems to matter to whoever spoke with Helen; or if it did, Helen's possible meaning has been subordinated to the need to build a case against Helen's meaning, and in favour of a psychiatric diagnosis, within which meaning can be disregarded or set aside.

"And (Helen) felt herself and her two children being drawn towards the lake." It's a rhetorical device to combine three sentences or ideas to build emphasis, and this device seems to be used here to good, deliberately chilling, if understated, effect. Again, one would hope to find her own words on the page. Perhaps she said, "It would have been really nice to take the kids by the the lake, it was so pretty there with the trees and everything"; "I wanted to bring my kids down to the lake, I can't explain why really, but it seemed sort of important that I took them"; She might have said something like, "The way the trees seemed to lead down to the water, it was like an invitation, they were sort of pointing the way, and I thought of the girls, and that maybe the trees wanted us all to go down there together, where we could be peaceful and safe, and nothing bad could touch us...."

But one doesn't find this kind of personal statement in mental health reports, because it's too ambivalent, too open to interpretation, too full of idiosyncratic and contingent meaning, to close to the grain of human experience, in all its fury and its mire.

In the Doldrums - and coming out

My last post was about six months ago. I've been in the doldrums since then, a long dip into lassitude, sails limp, going nowhere. It seems there's a slight breeze stirring, so I'll reset my sails, and make way while the going is good. That's 'me' in the picture, the one with they spy-glass. The one with the tipped bowler hat in the smaller boat is the former 'me'.

I had a stroke in October 2009, and retired from my part-time nursing work in December of the same year. I wasn't fit for work, and I was relieved to give it up, having worked for 53 years - I felt proud of this achievement, fifty years a Registered Nurse. Now it seems distant, almost like something that happened to somebody else. Interesting how the mind works, weaving memories into stories, binding stories into books - books whose pages yellow and curl, whose stories seem quaint and old-fashioned in the telling; books with strange archaic indexes that seem to omit everyday words or concepts. Old books, with rubbed and faded covers.

The relief of retiring gave way to a complex of other emotions, including those I understand are typical of bereavement. I don't recall being in denial, angry, or depressed, but I know I displaced a lot of energy into qi gong. This produced a deceptive state of calm and equanimity, a feeling of well-being. I remember laughing a lot, and being aware of this as a new phenomenon, I'm not known as a jolly person. I don't think those who knew me thought my laughing was an expression of jollity either. It's likely that I was angry, depressed, and in denial too.

I also found myself 'doing my rounds' in my head. 'Doing the rounds' is a nursing thing - you go round early in the morning (or late at night, depending on the shift you work) and greet your patients, many of them in bed or maybe getting up, and you check them out clinically, psychologically, making a note of any immediate or pressing needs they may have, for future action.

This doing-the-rounds happened 'in my head': I made a virtual tour of the people I had nursed before I retired, a small community of people with 'severe and enduring mental health problems' - the chronically mentally ill, refugees from long-stay asylums. I missed them very much. Each bedroom had a different smell. I missed the smells. Nursing is a very physical undertaking. I was taught as a nurse probationer to use my sense of smell as a diagnostic tool, it made a lot of sense too. Now I've given that up: I've given up a lot besides, and I know now that I was - and am - bereaved, and to an extent disabled.

But I'm 'into acceptance' now, or at least I feel I am. The journey isn't over, but the road under my feet feels more familiar, I have lengthened my stride, am making more sense of the terrain than at first, and am beginning to enjoy it.

I've also begun to let go of other things that defined me, or which I've used to define myself throughout my adult life. Too many unconsciously or fearfully assumed identities and roles to catalogue, and who's interested anyway? That's a glib question. Many of those whose identities and roles have been determined by my own, by my assumptions and presumptions, would claim a right to express an interest, intense and personal. Some have done so. I have encountered them on the road I mentioned; the encounters have been challenging. Loving as well as fierce. And they will no doubt continue into what remains of the future for me, and so they should.

While becalmed in the doldrums I stopped practising qi gong, partly because I thought that it had become compulsive, I was hooked on the feeling of calm and the illusion of control of my thoughts and feelings. Qi gong practitioners are counselled about suddenly stopping practice, but I ignored the warnings, and I've learned why: my energy-levels plummeted so that I could scarcely crawl around, feeling weak and lop-sided. I've recently resumed the practice, and - perhaps coincidentally - my energy-levels are climbing back. The other day I found myself jogging up the road, having seen the bin men looking for the bins I'd forgotten to put out for them. I hadn't broken into a trot since before my stroke, and I was surprised that I still could after partly losing my right-left-leg coordination as a result of it.

It's been a struggle staying 'on top of' the small heap of Trust issues that accumulates over a six-month period, and I missed an important Trust meeting earlier this year, a meeting at which a new Hon. Secretary - Willemien Hoogendoorn - was elected to give our affairs a much needed boost. Willemien is a Pure Land practitioner, a personal friend, a talented clear-thinking and logical woman, with the confidence of all the Trustees 'going forward', to use a brisk and breezy new term that seems to invest the more passive 'in the future' with an appropriately modern dynamism.

Some dynamism seems to be called for, not least in extending and strengthening the Ananda Network, which - through neglect of a means to maintain it - has become very attenuated and thin. Recently I've had to use the Internet to search for potential volunteers who might be willing to respond to urgent calls for support. Fortunately, this has done the trick, but not without effort and some difficulty: "cold-calling" established sangha for help in an emergency is leaving too much to chance, and not all sangha seem to be able to reach decisions without a lot of consultation; moreover, some sangha (or established Buddhist groups) seem to meet infrequently - for example during University term-time - and may have no contacts who can respond quickly to events. At any rate, it seems that the Buddhist Hospice Trust can still fulfil an important function in British Buddhist life - and death. In future - and more frequent - blogs I intend to report further on progress, and to comment on current affairs from a personal - idiosyncratic - perspective, as I've done in the past.

Death - preparation is the key

Here's an interesting article on why, with a few useful tips on how.

It's written for nurses, but it takes two to tango when end-of-life beckons........

Another 'make-over'?

This evocative image of clinging on is titled "A Study For Self-Doubt" - I can't recall its provenance.

I'm working slowly on a position paper that I hope will have implications for the Trust. There have been informal overtures from 'sources' (not yet to be disclosed as that would be premature) interested in a partnership arrangement with the Trust; a partnership that might lead to some diversification and expansion of the Trust's mission - into the field of mental health. The paper argues for such a partnership, against the background of changing need, of more pervasive social and political change (think "Big Society"); and in the context of the Trust as a 'dying organisation', in several senses of the words, dharmic, demographic, financial and real.

Mental health has long been of interest to me, partly because I have had a long career in mental health work - as a nurse, a nurse teacher, in service development as a manager, in Africa where they do things differently; and in my personal experience of mental illness at home: my own clinical depression and personality problems, the difficulties experienced by others in my immediate family, my interpretation of dukkha, and the remedies of the Noble Eightfold Path. Quite an inventory of interests and concerns.

And it seems to me that these are widely shared by other Buddhists. As long as I can recall, the Buddhist Hospice Trust has been something of a beacon to people in mental distress, not just as a result of serious physical illness, imminent death or bereavement, but often for complex and poorly articulated reasons, of alienation and exclusion, of confusion and anxiety, even of rage and resentment.

Some of these have been people who "bumped into Buddhism and got bruised" (a concept around which the Network of Buddhist Organisations developed under the auspices of the late Dr Sally Masheder), some have been shunned or stigmatised by Buddhist sanghas as 'weirdoes' or 'misfits' or 'malcontents' - people who turn up for meditation classes drunk or stoned, people who are garrulous and argumentative.

Like attracts like, they say, and I have always had both fellow-feeling with and a certain fascination for, such people. Not a few have become firm and wonderful friends, mentors and guides on my own spiritual journey, although both I and they are keenly aware that ours can be, or certainly feel like, an on-going, even a life-long struggle with disadvantage, stigmatisation and poor health.

I have long subscribed to the 'spiritual emergency' theory of mental illness, including psychosis, a proposition which is by no means new, and by no means to be lightly disregarded. Media attention to celebrity like Stephen Fry has given something of a sympathetic gloss to the idea that mental illness (especially bi-polar disorder) is a kind of benign holy madness with a creative spin. But the idea has merit, and is experientially as well as in research-terms, perfectly valid.

So I am serious in believing that Buddhism, and in particular the Buddhist Hospice Trust, has something to offer to the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer alone, struggle unsupported with recovery, and for whom simple fellowship, bearing witness, and presence is likely to be a key ingredient on the road to health. So I am working on the idea, and will publish it here first. If you have ideas on this, let me know.

Standing-like-a-tree

My last post was in May, an interval of three months since.

I'm visited by a strange spirit of reticence recently, but not just that. I'm undergoing an internal 'makeover', the fruits of nine months of regular practice, using a method I read about in a book by Will Johnson, titled "Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient". I love the book, and I love the method. The first time I tried it I had a sense of 'coming home', and I've persevered with it ever since.

In his book, Will Johnson 'takes a pop' -gently and not dismissively - at sitting meditation , and suggests meditating standing up as an alternative or complementary posture, with eyes open. Just as it says on the book blurb, the secret is to align the body vertically with the downward embrace of gravity. This is not to strain to stay erect like a soldier on parade, but to rather to allow the body to align itself with gravity in an effortless way, like a tree: swaying slightly, the weight of its great limbs perfectly poised around a small base, anchored in the mothering earth, without effort or complaint.

The further secret is to surrender to the downward draw of the earth, to gravity's powerful anchoring pull. Like alignment, this isn't easy. I've learned to brace myself against all manner of shocks, and I hold my body in a state of more or less constant tension - although I seem on the surface to be relaxed, and not unusually 'up-tight'. This method teaches how to release this chronic 'holding' tension, wherever - through patient and careful examination - it reveals itself.

Alignment and relaxation together, that's the way, and it it taking time to get into it, but mindfulness of the breath provides the resting place for the mindfulness needed, so that awareness can extend to every part and corner of the body, to every subtle sensation and movement, eyes open and unfocussed, ears alert for all sounds, just in each moment, moment by moment. What a wonderful discovery, and so unlike the exacting methods proposed by many meditation teachers, of unwavering stillness, and attention only on the breath at the nostrils, or on the upper lip. Did the Buddha ever teach that? Johnson opines not.....

Resilience: this is the name applied to the myriad of tiny adjustments of body and mind, that allow alignment and relaxation, deepen mindfulness and open the aperture of awareness that is usually narrowed to a slit (like looking at the universe through a straw, someone said).

Since reading Will Johnson's book - I love it so much I actually hug it, and I've twice kissed it! - I've written to Johnson and had his several replies, encouraging me and pointing me to ways of developing the insights I've gained. Through the kindness of George Draffan at naturalawareness.net I've learned to combine standing-like-a-tree, a qi gong practice that complements the standing meditation, and sitting, eyes open and unfocussed, at intervals when to do so seems right, which is more often than I could have believed possible hitherto.

The effects have been many and various. George Draffan - during a short on-line conversation using Skype - asked me what issues I was ready to work on now that I had got familiar with the practice, and recognised its worth. I was unprepared for the question, but heard myself stammering, "Er, anger, ,and, er, sadness, I think........and shame, and making amends...." "That's fine", said George, "work on those......"

I hadn't the presence of mind to ask him what "Work on those...." meant. But it seemed to me that just voicing those words, which came from I don't know where in my conscious or unconscious mind, was enough or, at least, it was enough that I formed some intent around or with those 'issues', so that that intent combined with the practice to let healing begin, in its own way, in its own time, and yielding its own results. My role is to notice, to trust, and to continue with the practice, joyfully. "Happy practice!" is George Draffan's coda to all his messages, and how it transforms it! No longer dutiful and arid, practice is like coming home, although the results are startling, challenging and call me to a new way of being.

I've said enough, I think. This is not exactly a frugal or parsimonious post, but I'm glad I've made it, thankful to those who have guided and supported me to here, and hopeful that some reader may take heart from the story, read Will Johnson's enlightening, funny and fascinating book, and find their own way home to dynamic, embodied awareness, as I've begun myself.

Last offices

An article in Nursing Times alleges nurses' neglect of Last Offices in some NHS Trust hospitals, causing added distress to bereaved families and friends. In recent years, the NT claims, nurses have not had the teaching and guidance they need to perform Last Offices, a term that describes the procedure for washing, tending and 'laying out' the body of a person who has died in hospital or nursing home, prior to (and preparatory to) their removal from the ward to the mortuary.

'Last Offices' is a fairly regular routine for nurses, and I'm a little surprised that it may have fallen by the wayside in the modern NHS, but not totally surprised. Nurses today are not what they were, which is not to say that twenty-first century nursing is necessarily inferior to earlier versions, but it is true that modern nurses do more technological high-turn-over medicine, are usually more technically proficient than their 1960s counterparts, and have a busier caseload than I ever did. It's easy to snipe from the side-lines, but I doubt I could survive a single shift in a modern hospital setting: my presence could be even be hazardous to health.

In my experience, performing Last Offices should be a leisurely, unhurried affair. I last did this about six weeks before I retired. Having nursed an elderly fellow during his last years, months, days and hours, he breathed his last one morning shortly after I had arrived on duty at 0700. His death was peaceful - "in his sleep" it might be claimed, although this expression poses a number of unanswerable questions.

I had to wait several hours after his death for his doctor to arrive to confirm his death. The doctor didn't question my 'diagnosis' of death. Although the 'certification' of death is for a doctor, most doctors will accept an experienced nurse's word on the matter, and don't attend the death as a matter of urgency.

After the doctor had left, I set about the preparations needed to minister to the old fellow's last needs, if he could be said to have any further needs at that point. I undressed the body carefuly, removing any medical equipment to which he might still be attached, removing any tubes still in body cavities, taking off dressings (replacing any that might be preventing discharge etc), and then carefully washed and tended the body as gently and carefully as if he were still living.

If necessary, a man might be shaved. Nails are carefully trimmed and cleaned, teeth or dentures cleaned, hair brushed and styled. The eyes are sometimes held closed with a small piece of adhesive tape, it used to be done with a moistened pledget of cotton wool. Jewellery may be removed and put away, suitably labelled, in safe place.

I find it a lovely thing to do Last Offices, although to some that might sound odd or macabre: it's a chance to say the final "Goodbyes", it settles the mind into a state of repose and peacefulness, it acknowledges the finality of death. If possible, I invite someone who has cared for the deceased to help with Last Offices, especially those who have not perhaps met death in this way before. On my last occasion my assistant was a relatively new care-worker, someone who had not done the Last Offices before, so it was an opportunity to show them the routine, and to explain the procedures that would be followed afterwards when the funeral director called to remove the body to his premises.

All this happened in a specialist Nursing Home rather than a busy hospital ward. In the latter setting there is enormous pressure on beds, and the body of a dead patients may be removed with 'indecent haste', without allowing the prescribed hour to elapse after death is pronounced, ostensibly to allow rigor mortis to set in, but also for the sake of decorum, and so that relatives have an opportunity to say their farewells (if they were not present at the death it is an indignity to arrive at the ward and find an empty bed).

Never an occasion goes by that I perform Last Offices without reflecting on my own death, and imagining my own corpse being tended by another. I sometimes think it would be good to be washed and tended by my kin, by my wife, or my sons, but - putting myself in their place - I think they may find this too upsetting, and I wouldn't want them to feel that they had 'let me down', so I will leave it to them to decide for themselves.

In Asian and African culture it is normal for family members to tend their dead, and to dig their own grave for the deceased, or to collect the requisites for a pyre, or whatever rite they follow: it's a do-it-yourself job, although help may be hired to provide transport, or to knock together a coffin. And a funeral is usually an occasion for a family gathering, a feast, some beer (in Africa at least), and in many cases a good deal of fractious squabbling over inheritance, the division of spoils.

Bunny Suicides

The image (centre) is of Garuda, mythical bird in Buddhist and Hindu lore, mentioned below. NOT A BUNNY.

I can't quite work out how this fluffy bunny (see picture opposite) managed to depress the lever -from inside the toaster - after inserting himself (or herself) into the toasting slot. Can this be a case of assisted suicide or bunny euthanasia?

The technology-assisted self-destruction shown in the picture (below, at the bottom) shows a level of ingenuity, and a capacity for meticulous pre-planning, I wouldn't have associated with bunnies. But the older I get the more I realise how I may always have taken the sensibilities of animals for granted, and underestimated their intelligence.

Several years ago my daughter gave me the Book of Bunny Suicides for Christmas, and I was impressed with Andy Riley's finely-observed compilation of several dozen cartoons, each depicting the self-executed demise of a "little fluffy bunny who just doesn't want to live any more". Whatever one thinks of the incidence, causes and morbidity of depression in bunnies (and I haven't previously given it much thought at all), this book illuminates the issue vividly, and I read it at a single sitting.

To say I read it gives a false impression, as there is hardly any text at all, it's all pictures, there's a laugh on every page, and not many pages overall. On several pages I laughed out loud, and on quite a few I laughed helplessly. These cartoons are wickedly funny, consistently, inventively morbid, timeless and also de nos jours. Some bunny-suicides as illustrated take a bit of working out: for example, one bunny - presumably having tried unsuccessfully to die at his own paw using other methods - succeeds in fixing himself to the front of an Underground train (super-glue, velcro, blue-tack?) from which position - suspended above the tracks - he urinates directly and precisely onto the third 'live' rail, with the result that a violent electric charge passes up his urine-stream, with the intended result: he sizzles.

You have to see it to be swept away with admiration at his determination and his ingenuity. How did he manage to fix himself on to the front of the train without attracting the driver's attention? How much did he have to drink to be sure that he could maintain a steady urine-stream for long enough to hold the circuit and produce death? Did he have to practice this method by 'dummy runs'? All this is fascinating conjecture, without even going into what caused bunny to be depressed in the first place, even if he were depressed, which is itself debatable (there are other motives for suicide than depression).

Shortly after I got the Book of Bunny Suicides I passed it on to someone I visited in hospital, dying of an inoperable brain tumour. I did this on an impulse, and it turned out to be a helpful one. The person to whom I gave it found it a real tonic, and got many laughs out of it during his final illness. It's a book you can keep around and turn to in those moments of rather ponderous solemnity and self-concern we're all subject to now and then.

I bought a dozen of these Bunny Suicide books, one for myself, and the rest to give away when the circumstances seemed right, especially around terminal illness: I don't think offering this book as a gift to someone dying is a matter of very fine judgement, in fact I think that bringing very fine judgement to bear on dying and death can be a fearful business. Attending on the dying and death of others - and our own - calls, perhaps, for the qualities of that mythical and fearless Buddhist bird, Garuda.

Garuda is a do-anything, go-anywhere bird, and he can fly as soon as he is hatched. He crawls out of his shell on to the narrow shelf overlooking a vertiginous precipice and - finding no where to perch - falls into the void spreading his wings and flying at once, looking fearlessly for evil adversaries to slay: doubt, prevarication, hesitation, self-consciousness. It's said that Garuda sat on the Lord Buddha's throne as a protector until - during the Buddha's delivery of the Heart Sutra - a bat farted. Garuda promptly killed the bat for its insolence, whereupon he was banished for breaking the First Precept.

I do think (by the account given in the story) the Lord Buddha seemed very hard-hearted, but perhaps he didn't issue the order that banished Garuda, perhaps it was a pompous minion acting ultra vires. If the Lord Buddha lacked a sense of humour, or a sense of proportion, and had never himself farted in public (doubtful indeed), he would probably have had me banished - like that flatulent bat -for distributing Bunny Suicide books to dying friends. Which is why I've always taken stories about the life of the Buddha with a pinch of salt, or with a whiff of bat-fart.

As far as I can recollect, Garuda was eventually re-instated, and is now available to me - when the occasion presents itself - to deliver the remaining two Bunny Suicide books I've got left to give away.