Nothing Special

I've had a long time away from the keyboard. My wife occasionally complains that I neglect my family responsibilities in favour of my Buddhist interests, and there is a lot of truth in that. Not so long ago I had a thorough telling-off about the hours I spend online. Today I cleared out our garden shed, mowed the grass in the back garden, went shopping for food, cut my son's hair, and helped my wife to clear a border of weeds. A bit of good family karma there, maybe.

My wife and I discussed the situation in Zimbabwe. I am unrepentant about the views I expressed about the situation there, although I don't like the violence. The extent of the violence and intimidation of voters is hard to assess and, having lived in Africa during the "struggles" for independence, I know how the Western media can and do distort news for political ends. I heard a Sky News journalist reporting graphically "live-to-air" in Jo'burg on acts of contemporaneous intimidation of voters by Zanu-PF gangs in Harare, notwithstanding the fact that these two cities are 600 miles apart. But any violence is wrong, and to be condemned, not by me (I am not in a position to throw stones), but as a matter of principle. I should add that my wife agrees with my analysis of the Zimbabwean news, although we tend to disagree about African politics generally.

My posts have also had repercussions for me professionally, in that a few Zimbabweans have taken exception to my views on the situation in their country; moreover, I am charged with racism on the basis of self-disclosures I made some time ago about 'my racist heart', in the context of my marriage, but also - it has to be admitted -more widely. Such is life: I am happy to be judged on my actions, and if it is established that I have acted improperly in any arena out of racist motives I will take the consequences.

Our eldest son, Mwape, has gone to Berlin to visit an East German woman he met in South Africa, with whom he struck up a friendship. I am pleased he has gone to Berlin. As a teenager I had a German pen-friend who lived in that city, close by Unter Den Linden (see image above). We corresponded for a couple of years and eventually arranged for him to visit us in Birmingham. This was about ten years after the end of World War II. Horst, a couple of years my senior, had been a member of the Hitler Jugend, and we had great fun lying in our bedroom in Birmingham, with him teaching me Hitler Jugend songs which we sang together, giggling. Some of them were absolutely awful, I must admit, full of imagery of violence and despair. I have not myself visited Berlin, although I would like to do so.

I've started work on the Trust's newsletter, although I haven't made a lot of progress. The provisional title is Mustard Seed, after the parable of Kisogotami, a moving tale of a girl's enlightenment under the guidance of Gotama, from whom she was directed to seek medicine when her firstborn child died. He directed her to seek a little mustard seed from houses in the town, save that it must be obtained from a house where no-one had died. As she moved from house to house in her quest, it gradually dawned on her that in no house was death a stranger. Her eyes were opened, she buried her child in the forest and returned empty-handed but aware to the Master. A lovely tale, and fitting to our work, I think.

I have not sat in formal meditation for some weeks now. I am too weary, too sad, too...everything, and thoughts of Buddhism 'and all that' are far from me, and me from them. But I feel reassuringly at home with my sadness and weariness. I read a poem my son had fixed on his wall, and I felt a great welling-up of love and admiration for him as I read it. Here it is, by Edgar Allen Poe:

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone
And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —
Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still
From the torrent, or the fountain
From the red cliff of the mountain
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by
From the thunder, and the storm
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

When the whipping had to stop..

The image is of Friends House, Euston Road (opposite), where the Trustees met about a week ago to debate the aftermath of the cancelled conferences, and to plot the road ahead. That all sounds very organised, but in fact the meeting was very informal (although we were 'quorate', set an agenda, and took minutes in case the Charity Commission is reading this ready to pounce).

We agreed to re-instate the monthly meetings that used to be held as a kind of auxiliary "engine" for the Trust: the 'Inner Work School' (IWS), a kind of rolling, open-to-all get-together of Trust supporters and others, held monthly in various venues across Central London, working to an open (or as I prefered to call it, an 'emergent') agenda. I decided, after Ray's unexpected death in 2000, that the IWS should continue, and so it did until 2007 when I further decided that it had run its course and should be folded. High-handed of me, perhaps, but the decision was taken with general agreement, and some general regret, that it had come to the end of its usefulness.

For many of us, certainly for me, it constituted a 'sangha', and what took place within the membership was a kind of dharma-cultivation, albeit undirected by an evolved teacher of lineage, accreditation and authority, at least after Ray's death. Ray, of course, disavowed any credentials as a dharma teacher, despite his learning, and despite his enormous authenticity and integrity. But I certainly felt I encountered the dharma at the meetings in the presence of men and women, living in the here-and-now, sharing experience in an atmosphere of uncontrived openness; and between meetings in simple friendship here and there, acts of kindness and solidarity, nothing special, just as-it-is-ness.

Over the years there had been about a score of loyal IWS attenders, although few meetings were attended by more than six or seven, and some meetings comprised two or three. The final straw, I think, was being forced by rising room-hire fees and other minor but understandable vexations to the last venue, the YMCA Sports Centre off Tottenham Court Road, where we had to endure a windowless room and line-dancing on the ceiling. The carrot-juice bar was no consolation.

So now the Trust has agreed to fund meetings, at least for ten consecutive months beginning August 2008, on the basis that we do need to offer something to supporters, and the framework of a regular monthly meeting may enable the process of reconnection and renewal for which the conferences were a flawed blueprint. Meetings will take place at Friends House, Euston Road, on the second Saturday of each month, in the afternoon, from 1.30 pm until 5.00 pm. The invitation is "Come if you can and want to". There is no charge, and there is presently no pre-determined programme or modus operandi. As before, it will be a matter of trusting what comes, whatever comes. This permits people to come as invited, and to feel that they haven't lost touch with events, or somehow fallen behind, if they can't come regularly or often.

The Trustees have circulated (to each other, or some of us have) some possible titles to apply to this series of meetings. At present "Sharing Circle" and "Explorations of Awareness" are front-runners, and I like both. Another possible title that popped into my head recently was "The Nothing Special Fellowship". I think Ray Wills had a hand in this, and may have been waiting in the wings for a chance to pop it in.

When the whipping had to stop? I had an anonymous comment on my last post, and this is worth reading, perhaps. I've had several comments as emails from known contributors, one of whom thought I might make a good Roman Catholic as I seemed to get benefit from the confessional. Self-flagellation is a practice too far, I reckon.

Yesterday I attended a rather sparse meeting of the South-East sub-group of interested parties following the progress of the Buddhist Hospital Chaplaincy Group towards the establishment of an 'endorsing body' for Hospital Chaplains, governing the admission of Buddhists to the role, their accreditation, training, support etc. All this is in line with NHS policy, and tied in with the Government's 'diversity agenda', 'social cohesion' and the perceived soul-lessness of the NHS, to judge from accounts from users and other critics one reads and hears. I have some fairly well-developed views on this, informed in part by my experience as a nurse and a some-time denizen of the NHS, by my experience within the Trust, and more recently by my induction into the Hospital chaplaincy as a Buddhist lay officiant. I'll return to this in another post in a few days time.

Self-doubt

I've now had a little time to reflect on the lived experience of my most recent blog, and a handful of comments about it. One comment included the question "why do you wash your dirty linen in public?"

I posted my ex-wife's letter to me on an impulse. I have a tendency to impulsivity: on the one hand it is narcissistic and regressive, on the other it yields insights to me that would otherwise just lurk in the shadows. My impulsivity has always both repelled some and conversely it has sometimes emboldened others to see things as they are, unidealised and stark, in their own lives. It is, perhaps, like all our characteristics of personality, both a gift and an impediment.

I remember my mother telling me as a child (maybe I was 9 or thereabouts) "King George is dead", and I replied, without thinking I'm sure, "Should I lower my trousers to half mast?". My mother was genuinely shocked, and I think it was my first awareness of my capacity to shock others, of my taste for doing so. I've never lost either.


I posted the letter not for compassion, not for absolution, not out of humility I think. But, yes: I did so to put the record of my own life and parenthood straight, and as a response to the charge of hypocrisy. This aspect of what I am, selfish, neglectful, and deviously 'clever' needs to be 'out there' to redress the otherwise impossible projections I attract, and generate through my writings and utterances. I also thought my ex-wife might see it and feel vindicated. She has not been impressed by any claims to compassion I might seem to make, or that might be wrongly inferred by others. Not that compassion is anything to do with the person or his efforts, as I understand it. It is something "in which we live, and move, and have our being", not a product of what we try to do.

I've had email contact with my eldest daughter (aged 42) and her own daughter for about three years, and this has clearly brought things to a head now, as I thought it eventually might. My daughter's messages to me are warm, confiding and intimate. She refers a lot to our temperamental similarities. We have made tentative plans to meet up, although we are both aware of the tension this may cause her in her relations with her Mum and her sisters.

I have been feeling quite wretched for the past few days, and this is the place to be, a place from which I can perhaps touch the experience of my ex-wife and her children, and share in it with thought for them, and not for myself. Even this sounds phoney, but there it is.

I'm grateful for the comments I've received from individuals for whom my post has had some relevance for their own experience of abandonment. These comments have been strangely devoid of any judgement, more a recognition of how things sometimes are. Perversely, this has not 'let me off the hook', so to speak, but has deepened my reflectiveness, and promises more by way of insight as time passes, and barriers fall away.

The image above is a portrayal of "Self-Doubt" published by Endicott Studio.

What hypocrisy

I got this letter today from my former wife. It's the first correspondence between us in 25 years, and it speaks for itself. The only deletions I've made are to protect the confidentiality of third parties. I haven't asked permission to publish the letter as no correspondence is possible. I think my former wife's opinions of me, and her truthful account of my neglect of our children, deserve a wider readership:

"I shall not put my address here as I don't want to enter into any correspondence with you."

"However, I have long felt great animosity towards you, for the way in which you shunned your daughters (Yes, you DO have 3 other children, although airbrushed out of your life, apparently) as they grew up."

"No birthday or Christmas cards. No letters asking how they were. No ANYTHING to show them that you, at least, thought of them from time to time."

"When you went back to Zambia, a postcard to say you were going and maybe not coming back was all we got. No address. No good wishes."

"This letter would probably never have been written had I not read some of your Buddhist blogs. Dear me! You seem to have compassion, ask forgiveness from everyone on the planet but your daughters. What hypocrisy!"

"Yes, I am bitter about it. Not about you and Berlina. Glad you're happy, but how could you not have asked your daughters for forgiveness in view of your beliefs is beyond my comprehension."

"In spite of it all, and there have been some VERY hard times, they have grown into very caring and happy women. I could not have wished for better daughters. Not takimg part in their lives is your loss. You are clever and know all about psychology - but did you stop for one moment and ask yourself how hurtful it was for them?"

"History repeats itself (third party references deleted)...has disappeared off the scene after some contact for a year or two. You men are truly a different species. Clever but totally selfish and lacking in insight. Hope this diminishes the anger I feel".

The image at the head of this post is "The Narcissist" by Jon Goebel.

Event Cancellation

I have to announce cancellation of the Renewal and Reconnection Conference planned for 7th June in Bristol (Penny Brohn Cancer Care). People who registered have been informed. We cancelled the event because too few people expressed interest in attending to justify the expense and effort involved in mounting it.

This isn't to say that the response to our invitation was unheeded; in fact the overall response to my letter and towards renewal and reconnection was very positive. But it seems quite clear that, amongst those who responded (just under 5% of those to whom I wrote), the feeling seems to be that the Trustees are to be 'trusted' to decide what needs to be done by way of renewal and reconnection (if anything), and supporters are generally content to let them get on with it.

Altogether I sent out just under 300 invitations, of which the bulk went to former Raft subscribers, and to Ananda networkers (a sizeable group, some of whom also took Raft). Just under a fifth of the total invitations went out to Buddhist groups who may or may not have been aware of the Trust's activities, including the representative bodies of the main traditions and schools in UK. I also sent a couple of dozen invitations to hospices, and to palliative care teams mainly those around the centres where the conferences were scheduled.

I was rather surprised that a number of invitations were returned unopened by the Royal Mail, marked "not at this address" and - in the case of two addressees - R.I.P. This suggests that out data-base (such as it is) is not current, and people have moved.

Several letters (and a few emails) of encouragement and continued commitment did much to keep us in good heart, and there were a fair number of generous cash donations. Not a few letters told of growing frailness and/or limited means for getting around, going to meetings, or visiting the sick.

I don't feel much disappointed at having to cancel the conference in Bristol, especially as we were lucky to be able to do so without much financial loss, thanks to the Penny Brohn Centre's generous cancellation policy and our charitable status. It was clear that some intending delegates were individually disappointed to hear that it was 'off', especially as we made a special effort to arrange an event otside London, and were looking forward to visiting Bristol, where we have been warmly welcomed before (by the Western Cha'n Fellowship's Bristol chapter) at their Annual Congress. I was looking forward to being greeted as "My Lovely" - this was the term of endearment used by the night receptionist at the Severn Bridge Travelodge when I booked in for a night's stay. Very nice.

At the time of writing plans for the July conference in London are progressing, and there will be further announcements nearer the time. The turn-out, however, looks to be quite modest on present reckoning, but we shall see how things develop.

There's a lot to learn from this consultative conference exercise, and the Trustees will meet on Saturday 7th June in London to "read the entrails" (mine, I expect) and draw lessons from that. More to follow, I promise.

Waveney Miller

Until her death in a nursing home in Kent in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Waveney Miller was a trustee of the Buddhist Hospice Trust, a position she had held for over twenty years. I also saw her as a friend, and she was one of my most potent dharma-teachers, possibly because we were temperamentally quite unalike, and often clashed. I first met Waveney at one of Ray Wills's Inner Work School meetings held in the basement room at the Quaker Meeting House in Hop Gardens, St Martin's Lane. this was, I think, in 1989 or thereabouts.

On the day before she died I got a call from the staff at her nursing home, telling me she was near death, and asking if I could visit her. They had never had a Buddhist resident before and wanted to do the right thing by her at the critical time. Having visited her about four months earlier, the staff had my contact details. At that earlier visit ago I found Waveney much changed: she couldn't speak or move, and communicated only by shrugs, chuckles and turning her head from side to side. I think she recognised me: I kissed her cheek and told her that her "naughty boy" (as she called me) had come to see his "Dancing Dakini" (as I called her).

Last week she was barely conscious and although I spoke to her a little I'm not sure if anything registered. I spent an hour with her, during which time she yawned often like an over-tired child. I did tell her that her death was near and that, if she could and wanted to, she might let go of life and face what she needed to face. We, her friends, loved her and thanked her for her friendship, for what she taught us and shared with us. She danced like a young girl, she giggled like a new bride, she chided us and scolded us for our inattentiveness in matters of dharma-practice, she soared spiritually like a beautiful tropical bird. She irritated us plenty by asking us, wagging a finger like a schoolmistress, if we knew the meaning of the word karma. She spoke often about her happy anticipation of death, and of the strictures she wanted us to observe after she died. I passed these on to the care staff on her behalf, together with observations of my own about rites appropriate to her tradition.

At the time of writing funeral arrangements haven't been finalised or posted, but I understand that Lama Rigdzin Shikpo, spiritual director of the Longchen Foundation, and Waveney's much-loved guru will be officiating at her funeral in due course. If possible, and pending a hoped-for invitation, I would hope someone will be able to attend for the Trust, to offer our condolences to her family and friends, and perhaps give brief tribute to her unique contribution and generous support for the work.

The Trustees will meet informally on Saturday 7th June at Friends House in Euston Road, London, to consider what further tribute or commemorative action might be appropriate for Waveney, and to meditate for her merit.

Perhaps the following passage from "Wake Up To Your Mind" by dharma-teacher Ken McLeod provides something in response to Waveney's insistent question about karma, and I pass it on in tribute to her memory, and with love and appreciation for the change she wrought in me, though I struggled against it for several years:

"The teachings of karma are central to the practice of Buddhism. While karma developed into a belief-system in many Buddhust cultures, the essential import of the teaching on karma is that we are responsible for the way we experience what arises in our lives. All too easily, the teaching of karma can be misunderstood to mean that we are responsible for what happens to us. We are not - neither in the traditional belief that we reap the painful consequences of actions done in past lives, nor in the naive modern belief that all our actions are volitional. Both interpretations rest on the belief that all our actions are volitional. they ignore that much of what we do is not volitional but based on set patterns of perception and reaction."

"Karma teaches that these patterns are reinforced by our actions. If we don't pay attention to the way we live and act, our lives are consumed by the "artificial life" of patterns. This approach to karma rests not on belief but on our own experience of the way patterns operate in us."

"There is a Tibetan saying that summarises karma:

To see what you've done, look at what you experience now.
To see what you will experience, look at what you are doing now.

Another version goes:

When you do what you always did, you get what you always got."

"In effect, we approach each situation as a mystery, and know that all we can do is be present, to the best of our ability, in that mystery. We don't need beliefs, we don't need comforting, and we don't need explanations. Karma directs attention to our actions, bringing us in touch with our habituated patterns that dictate much of our lives. It alerts us to the self-reinforcing nature of those habituations, and the importance of attention in dismantling them."

"This is the real teaching of karma: a compelling appreciation of the blind suffering that is present in a life when attention and presence is not cultivated. Thus karma provides a powerful motivation to be free - by dismantling patterns. All Buddhist practices are directed to one end: the freedom that comes from dismantling conditioned patterns."

"When we start dismantling patterns we are in effect shifting the basis of the organisation of our personality away from conditioned patterns, and the constructed identities they maintain, to awareness itself. The shift is radical. We move from believing we are something to knowing we are not anything. We are stepping directly into the mystery of our being."

Om gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi, svaha!

Things fall apart...

Recently I spent several hours working on the little hut in our garden where I have mostly slept for the past few years. The hut is made of marine plywood, such as is used to fashion yachts and dinghies, sturdy but not elegant. Just big enough for a narrow bed, some shelves, a chair, it has two very small square windows partly obscured by a rail from which some of my spare clothes hang down. Only one of these small windows opens, and this makes for a stuffy atmosphere in summer.



I'm aware that the last part of the first sentence of this post may excite wonderment and speculation about my sleeping habits, and - perhaps - the state of my marital relationships. It is not, perhaps, as you think, or perhaps it is; but it merits no further disclosure of facts, and there will be none. Not for the time being, at least. And if that's not a cliff-hanger, it's the nearest I shall ever get to writing one.



What I had to do was to completely dismantle the front wall of the hut, as I intended to instal a ready-made softwood window-frame bought from a local retailer. This was twice the size of the windows it would replace, and had a good-sized casement allowing it to be wide-opened and thus ventilate the cottage freely. Dismantling one wall carried with it a risk of the whole structure falling apart if I removed a key support without recognising its crucial role in holding things together. I hoped to proceed slowly and mindfully enough to anticipate a sudden collapse.



It took me a couple of hours to remove old weatherboarding, timber infrastructure, old glass windows, ancient nails, piece by piece. The carcass of this hut had been built in very ad hoc fashion: no symmetry, no true angles or reliable measurements. It looked as if everything had been done wholly 'by sight', using rough-and-ready judgement of length, and without a plumbline, set-square or spirit level. When I inherited it it had been used as a pigeon loft, it was not built as a dwelling; but very robustly and, I think, lovingly.



As I worked I was very aware that I was undertaking a project the like of which I doubt I shall ever repeat. This growing awareness of my mortality is around a lot of the time these days, part nostalgia, part gratitude, part curiosity, part resistance to the frisson of fear I feel in recognising that I may die soon. Recognising is not the same as accepting, of course. There's a qualitative difference, I believe. Acceptance is an inclination of the heart, not a movement of the mind.