Harold Pinter 1930-2008

HAROLD PINTER CBE CH FRSL (1930-2008)

Two quotes from Harold Pinter who died over the Christmas holiday:

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false” (1958).

A long life-time later:

“When we look into a mirror we think that the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of the mirror that the truth stares at us.”

“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.” (2005, Nobel Prize for Literature Acceptance Speech).

These two sets of statements strike me as inconsistent with each other, unless, of course, one accepts the premise of the first that life is paradox, mystery, impenetrable, un-pin-downable. In which case we can either ignore or accept the implicit condradiction in his words, or do both simultaneously.

An interval of fifty years separates the mind of the young, emergent Pinter and the older, wiser Pinter. Pinter the Elder lays down the Law of Obligation, an inescapable call to duty, to mental struggle, to the obligations of citizenship, concluding, “If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man” (Nobel acceptance speech ).

Now I do wonder how he came to this point of pessimistic certainty, this dogmatism. Perhaps he was frightened into it by the thought of how his Nobel acceptance speech might be received, although he had little time for critics, once saying, “I find (them) on the whole a pretty unnecessary bunch of people”.

I don’t share his concerns about human dignity, or think that maintaining human dignity is the province of politics, the responsibility of a political citizenry, or even a social project to be embarked on by writers. Less tinkering, say I- less “building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land”, less chariots of fire and ceaseless strife, if you please. Less doing - more being?

I do like Harold's portrait at the head of this page. So very intense, so very "fifties" - the angry or at least agonised young man of the day, amongst many. He was very handsome too, as well as gifted.

CHAPLAINCY

My contract to serve as an Honorary Hospital Chaplain to Mid-Essex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Farleigh Hospice has recently been renewed for another year, although I can hardly be said to have discharged it very completely over the last year. There are very few calls on the services of a Buddhist Chaplain in Mid-Essex, and I haven’t “put myself about” very diligently at the Chelmsford hospitals that comprise the Trust, although I’ve responded to the infrequent calls that have been made from time to time.

I’ve also taken occasional Communion with the Christian ministers and volunteers, a very agreeable and uplifting ‘ecumenical’ ceremony held each Wednesday lunchtime.

The Trust already offers meditation classes for staff, so there seems little point in setting up another “stall” for potential meditators, even if I had the time and the skill to run classes, which I don’t.

Work is progressing in Buddhist circles, I’m informed, on developing a structure to accredit and approve Buddhist Hospital Chaplains more widely (there are at present very few of us in post). I have reservations about this move - not that I’m against a Buddhist presence in hospitals, but because it seems unnecessarily restrictive and bureaucratic, and I’m not sure who will come forward to do the approving and accrediting the new scheme calls for.

I wouldn’t feel in any way equipped to approve another person for the role. Who am I to judge another, and what would I be using as a yardstick to measure their acceptability? Some people toss criteria like “trustworthiness”, “empathy”, “reliability”, “warmth”, “well-versed in Buddhadharma” and so on in to the arena. But what do these mean, and how are they properly assessed or quantified?

Others would require an attestation from a “Buddhist spiritual leader or teacher” about the candidate’s “good standing in the Buddhist community”. Well, I don’t know how I would meet that one - I couldn’t, not ever.

But if you are interested in a chaplaincy or chaplaincy volunteer role, write in to me and I will put you in touch with developments, so you can bring your own influence to bear on what is decided, before the die is cast, so to speak.

Positivity - glass half-full or half-empty?

We were recently approached by a seasoned Buddhist who is inspired to build a Buddhist Hospice here in the United Kingdom - a place where a dying Buddhist could be fully supported in their practice as they neared the end of their life, a modern, well-appointed place where holistic care could be given to the highest standards by Buddhist attendants.

This is a noble aspiration, and it was put to us with unusual fervour and enthusiasm, notwithstanding the challenges inherent in such an undertaking. The person who made the proposal didn't know about our own existence when he first conceived the hospice idea, and only learned about the Trust via a third party, which led to his telephoning us.

My first-off response was to greet the proposal, saying that I would personally lend whatever resources I could to such a venture and, further, that the Buddhist Hospice Trust would do whatever lay in its power to help. I thereby surprised myself at my own positivity.

I think my response was called forth by the positivity of my counterpart, the one who made the proposal; but also that it came from a general attitude of positivity that I have cultivated this year, although I can't say how I've done it. I've meditated on positivity a few times, and - of course - positivity (and cooperation) were advertised as themes for the year on the website, and in planning the conferences that didn't happen. One can only wonder - but there it is - a glass half full of readiness to help, open-mindedness, and belief in miracles!

At the Mandala meeting we met up with the man who wants to run with the hospice idea and see it through to fruition, in company with like-minded others as a project to unite all traditions, generating the fund-raising and voluntary-service capacity needed, and within a open time-frame. This fellow's enthusiasm is infectious, and there's no doubting his determination to realise his dream, his ability to entrain others, or his experience of the British Buddhist scene (whatever that might comprise).

We had an interesting discussion. I'm not at all an expert on hospice work, and I did suggest to him that he might better consult people who are about what's involved in developing a hospice service from scratch. My views on hospice work are, it must be said, at least idiosyncratic; but one does not have to be a specialist to know that hospices in general are 'retrenching' financially and in other respects, that end-of-life care is changing, so that it is likely in future that more people will die 'at home' than in a hospital or hospice bed. This doesn't of itself imply that a Buddhist hospice can't be achieved, nor that it oughtn't to be: let what will be announce itself, and who knows what may happen.

What I was able to point to, from my own experience of care-provision (in nursing and residential care environments, as well as in hospitals), is the high cost of care. It is not so much in capital costs that hospice care comes dear, but in recurrent costs - the monthy bills, as the following "back-of-an envelope" calculations may show. These are my own raw figures, and they may only be rough approximations, but - as far as I can honestly say - they are realistic, and give some idea of what might be involved.

The figures offered are based on a notional hospice offering four in-patient beds for terminally ill or dying people requiring end-of-life care, including palliative care (pain- and symptom-relief, specialised nursing, and on-call medical support). The figures represent estimated monthly outlay, based on a twelve calendar month year.

Rates/Council tax £ 200
Utilities (Gas. electricity, water, sewage) £ 800
Insurances £ 120

Maintenance of fabric/repairs £ 100
Technical equipment (hire/replacement) £ 160
Food/drink (based on 4 patients and eight

staff) £ 300

Cleaning materials and consumables (e.g.
paper towels, toilet rolls, gloves etc) £ 160
Stationery/stamps/office sundries £ 80
Telephone/Internet £ 60
Nursing staff (based on 6 Whole-Time
Equivalents [WTE] for 24 hour cover x 7 day week and employer's NI) £7,200
Care Assistants (based on 6 WTE at national

minumum wage including employer's NI) £4200
Administrator/clerk-receptionist/payroll staff 1 WTE £ 900
Housekeeping staff (cleaner/laundrywoman) 1 WTE £ 750
Cook/Kitchen Assistant 0.5 WTE £ 400

Total £15,430

You may agree this is a lot of money to find monthly, and could call for a professional Fund Raiser, probably full-time. Let's say (if we include her necessary expenses and the resources of publicity she would need to do her crucial work) another £1,400 a month. That adds up to a rounded-off total of £200,000 annual recurrent running costs.

Food for thought, but my cup's still half full, and I'm up for further debate and analysis on the matter. Are you?

Networking

My eldest son scorns my occasional use of the word “networking”, and I can see his point. He feels that “to network” has taken on a kind of cynical, manipulative connotation, that of using people for one’s own selfish purposes, of empire-building, ‘feathering one’s nest’, a culture of reciprocal favours and obligations: “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”.

Networking, one imagines, is a vital part of the curriculum of the coveted Masters in Business Administration with which so many of our health and social care managers seem to invest themselves in modern times. But our organisation - and I use the word cautiously - is very loose, and deliberately so. We rely on the self-directed actions of individuals to fulfil our declared purposes. The Trust has only ever been a free association of individual women and men, committed to sharing themselves in spiritual friendship with others at times of difficult transition, and to fitting themselves for such sharing through personal practice.

We don’t select, accredit, authorise, train, direct or supervise our volunteers. We don’t ask for references, testimonies of good Buddhist standing, Criminal Records affidavits, or transcripts of caring experience or qualification. In this sense we are counter-cultural, if only because everything else in contemporary culture seems to be subject to ‘managerialism’, to the entrepreneurial ethos, the ’cutting edge’ of new technology, the rolling tide of added-value, risk-reduction and all the rest.

I read a prospectus recently for training as an End of Life Care Practitioner. The training involves four weekend modules and two eight-day retreats. It’s an impressive-looking programme aimed at impressively qualified and committed individuals, but the cost to each participant is US $5,000, plus US $2,900 for accommodation at the training centre. I can’t and won’t repudiate such initiatives as this, but I deplore any trend towards the ‘commercialisation of compassion’, the insidious commodification of care.

And, right or wrong, my instinct is to trust the open-handed and open-hearted Hospice Trust volunteer to do her best, as she sees it. In my experience, our best is always just what is needed: even our mistakes and clumsiness are as it should be in the wider scheme of things.

Writing about when things go wrong reminds me of an incident that occurred at my brother’s funeral last weekend. The service had just got under way with a short introduction, and the priest invited the congregation of mourners to join him in a short prayer. As he was making this invitation a latecomer, a young woman carrying a child no more than a few months old slipped into the chapel and, making her way down the central aisle, lost her footing on the polished tiles and fell with a great crash and a cry of shock to the floor.

Fortunately, with a mother’s instinct, she managed to hold the baby away from harm’s way on the unforgiving tiles as she fell, but she was clearly very distressed and a great gasp of concern rose up from the seated mourners. She rose to her feet clutching her child, and managed unaided to find a seat on the pews. Without offering a word of comfort or concern, and without leaving the rostrum (but with a look of deep embarrassment), the priest continued at once with his formulaic words “Shall we pray….”

Over his recited prayer the congregation heard the woman quietly weeping as she comforted her baby. We were, and I include myself, as if transfixed by the awful conjunction of events. I still feel the momentary horror of the situation as I write, the awful contradiction of a ceremony that - as it were - averted its eyes from everyday pain towards an unseen God who, we learn, numbers every hair on our head, and every sparrow that falls.

It has occurred to me to wonder if such a scenario could ever be enacted in a Buddhist setting. I don’t know the answer, do you?

The merits of being alive

Yesterday I was at my brother's funeral, and this morning as I walked jauntily to the shops I reflected on the merits, possibilities (and responsibilities) of being alive. Jonathan was eleven years my junior and died at home of pancreatic cancer last week. A little while before he died I asked him if he had ever believed that he would show such manliness during his final illness (it lasted eleven months), and he shook his head. But he did, and I pray that I shall walk in his footsteps towards my own.

When my Mum (who is still alive aged 91) was expecting my brother in 1949 she went to the cinema to see a new film release, a drama called 'My Brother Jonathan' starring Finlay Currie, Michael Dennison and Dulcie Gray. My brother was a bump inside her. She was inspired to choose my brother's name by seeing the film, and by the Biblical story from which it was derived. I don't know whether my brother and I bought into her narrative (as childen often do buy into the stories their parents tell them about themselves), or whether she was prescient in her naming, but he and I enjoyed a very close bond throughout his life, and our lives mirrored each other's in many respects. We both became nurses and psychiatric nurse-teachers, for example. At his funeral, having being invited by Maggie his widow to say a few words, I was able to quote from Samuel 2, 2:1 as follows:

"I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan, very pleasant hast thou been to me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women". And this was the experience of all who knew him, I have no doubt.

I haven't blogged for about a month as I've been unwell myself, on and off, and 'otherwise engaged'. I wasn't able to get to the Mandala meeting yesterday for obvious reasons. I understand there were four or five people present and I'm grateful for the feedback I've had from some of those who attended.

A week ago I attended a meeting of the Activities Committee of the Network of Buddhist Organisations of which the Trust is a constituent member. These meetings occur from time to time and any Trust supporter is welcome to attend. I will publish forthcoming meetings of the NBO as and when we are notified of them and you can attend in your own right as a Trust 'supporter', bearing in mind that we have no formal membership (although some people think we do). You won't be expected to act as a representative of the Trust, not by anyone, and you won't be expected to 'report back' on decisions taken or matters discussed, although I shall appreciate it as a favour if you do.

The NBO is a funny organisation in so far as it was set up as a network and didn't take any powers to itself except to admit member organisations who applied, and to apply some basic criteria for admission (mainly so as to deter very small organisations from applying, although one can't imagine why, or I can't). Since it was set up it has emerged - not consciously or deliberately - as a reference point for agencies looking for a "Buddhist position" on anything from religious education, through euthanasia, to immunisation of girls against the human papilloma viris implicated in some cases of cervical cancer.

Needless to say there is a vigorous debate and indeed some tension arising from whether a network, set up to promote dialogue and mutual support amongst the wide variety of Buddhist minds, hearts and voices, can ever articulate a representative "Buddhist voice", or whether it should.

Part of the meeting was given over to discussion of a draft Code of Conduct that might be applied to member organisations to keep them in line (so to speak) with acceptable forms of Buddhist behaviour, based generally on the Five Precepts. This stirs up all manner of bees in my already buzzing bonnet, and I did express the very personal and idiosyncratic opinion that this might be a step too far for a network.

I said that I didn't see networks as pushing things around; on the contrary a network depends on voluntary links (like people holding hands) that can register a pull from other sources, but can't transmit a push (at least that's how it seems to me that a net 'works'). Nets may have a certain holding power (as long as the links are there), but they aren't pro-active or pushy. A Code of Conduct seems to me to be "pushy", especially as it serves to exclude anyone who breaches it, or potentially so, and that in fact was why it was conceived, or so it seems to me. If you have views on this, let me know.

Before I left Eccleston Square where the NBO met, I had an interesting conversation with Dario (whose surname I can't remember but you may remember him as a Colombian doctor based on the Buddhist Society for quite a few years), currently the Buddhist Society archivist, about our work and his own. He unearthed a couple of audiotapes about the Buddhist Hospice Trust, made by Maurice O'C Walshe who clearly figured prominently in the Trust's early years. I haven't yet listened to these tapes, but shall as soon as I can sit down mindfully to do so.

It may be of interest to Trust supporters to hear them, and perhaps this could be arranged at some future time, perhaps as part of a more extended meeting than the Mandala meetings allow.

Incidentally, it was pointed out that the times I posted for the monthly meetings at Friends House were wrong (an hour out), and I am very sorry for this, and for any inconvenience to anyone. I have now corrected them. I shall post a reminder of the December meeting nearer the time, and send this out by Royal Mail to everyone whose postal address I have on my files.

"Manadala meeting", advance notice

“We are always beginners in the art of compassion” Christina Feldman

Dear Friend

The next monthly meeting will be held on Saturday, 8th November 2008 at 2.00 pm in the Doric Room at Friends House, Euston Road, London. Nearest Underground stations are Euston, Euston Square and Kings X/St Pancras (all within reasonable distance for pedestrian or wheelchair user).

We have decided from now on to call this monthly meeting the Buddhist Hospice Trust “Mandala meeting“. This inspired suggestion was made by Michael Lewin who, besides being our Treasurer, is an artist of repute.

MANDALA

Mandala is, I understand, a Sanskrit word combining the elements ‘essence’, ‘containing’ or ‘having’, and is of Hindu origin but is also widely used in Buddhism. We read that in various spiritual traditions mandalas are used in meditation for focussing attention; as a spiritual teaching tool or ‘visual aid‘; and for establishing a ‘sacred space’.

The mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos: a microcosm of the Universe from a human perspective, or a representation of the unconscious self. In the Tibetan tradition, complicated and beautiful mandalas are carefully constructed using coloured sand; when completed the mandala is quickly swept away to show the transitory nature of all material things, the sand returned to a river so that it may not be used again.

Now I wonder if you will find that that this is an appropriate label to apply to our meetings? I think so myself; in fact I experienced a shiver of recognition down my spine when Michael suggested it - I can think of none more mellifluous and appealing, so I recommend it to you all.

HOW WE MEET

For those who want meet earlier there is the coffee-shop/book shop on the ground floor, and the meeting room itself is available to us from 1.30 pm. There is a basement restaurant with nice food costing around £6.50 for a main course, open at 12.00. This will be our fourth meeting and attendance so far has been in line with our expectations, bearing in mind that there hasn’t been much publicity.

A group of seven people (such as met in October) makes for a congenially intimate encounter, even when most people are strangers to each other. Not having an agenda encourages those present to use the opportunity for dialogue, to listen carefully to other points of view and experience, to see the world through other eyes. In these conversations buddhadharma is our point of departure, not our destination.

By this I mean that the meetings aren’t intended to deliver teachings , and there are no readings or planned expositions on the tenets of Buddhism. Stephen Bachelor (see below) speaks of ‘beings who inhabit a participatory reality, seeking relationships that enhance our sense of what it means to be alive’.

This, for me, clearly expresses the meaning of our meeting, a temporary mandala of participatory reality, within which we can share our aliveness, “women and men living in the here and now” as Ray Wills used to put it.


MEETING AS STIR-FRY?

Before Mick suggested Mandala as a title, I had been thinking of the meeting in terms of a stir-fry. For a stir-fry, small amounts of fresh raw ingredients, whatever is to hand, are thrown into the wok in which a little oil has been heated over a fierce flame. That’s what the meeting feels like, a wok!

Each of us (who wants to) tosses in a handful of fresh stuff we‘ve plucked from our lived experience: something leafy, crunchy, moist, dry, sweet, tart, sour or fragrant; maybe it’s just a pinch of something fiery, spicy, aromatic or piquant, something to tease and tantalise, to make the juices flow. Those who don’t want to speak supply the wholesome oil of their silence.

Our tacit expertise comes (I think) in how we judge when to tilt the wok, how to stir the contents, how much (if any) of what we bring to throw in the wok, how high we set the flame, and how we judge when enough is enough. No single hand does this, or it does itself, the cooking sizzles and steams, the ingredients are balanced ‘just-so‘, and no meal is ever the same.

I like to think we can all ‘eat’ from the same dish, without being formally invited, that what we ‘eat’ is good for us, and I hope that you think so too. If this makes anyone feel hungry, I should add that we do supply tangible as distinct from fanciful refreshment (hot drinks and nibbles) and people sometimes bring a little food to share (but not a lot please because the Friends aren’t keen on our doing this, although it’s OK as long as we take clear up after ourselves when we leave)

JUST AS THE DAWN…..

During the last meeting I had a telephone call about my youngest brother, who is dying at home from advanced pancreatic cancer. This near-at-hand encounter with a dying sibling (he is 11 years my junior) has shown me how deep and convoluted run the dynamics of my family life; how, since I learned of his terminal condition, mental processes have gone on in me without my being fully aware of them, sometimes throwing me into confusion and paralysing my intention; and how important spiritual friendship is in making sense of one’s feelings, thoughts, reactions and impulses.

I pay tribute here to the friend I talked with on that Saturday, and to the way our conversation opened my eyes and helped unburden my heart. Thank you.

Spiritual friendship is at the heart of our hospice work, in fact it is all of it, because we don’t as a Trust aspire to professional involvement with the dying, although some supporters do so in their own right as doctors, nurses, counsellors, therapists etc. Below I am copying an article by Stephen Bachelor that I think captures the essence of spiritual friendship exactly, and I hope you enjoy reading or revisiting it, and feel uplifted by his words.

SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIP (by Stephen Bachelor)

JUST AS THE DAWN is the forerunner of the arising of the sun, so true friendship is the forerunner of the arising of the noble eightfold path. - The Buddha

"These friends are teachers in the sense that they are skilled in the art of learning from every situation."

Dharma practice is not just a question of cultivating resolve and integrity in the privacy of our hearts. It is embodied in friendships. Our practice is nourished, sustained, and challenged through ongoing contact with friends and mentors who seek to realize the dharma in their own lives. We were born alone and will die alone.

Much of our time is spent absorbed in feelings and thoughts we can never fully share. Yet our lives are nonetheless defined through relationships with others. The body is witness to parents and endless generations of forebears, language witness to fellow speakers, the most private thoughts witness to those we love and fear.

Simultaneously and always, we find ourselves alone with others. We are participatory beings who inhabit a participatory reality, seeking relationships that enhance our sense of what it means to be alive. In terms of dharma practice, a true friend is more than just someone with whom we share common values and who accepts us for what we are.

Such a friend is someone whom we can trust to refine our understanding of what it means to live, who can guide us when we’re lost and help us find the way along a path, who can assuage our anguish through the reassurance of his or her presence. While such friendships occur naturally between peers with similar aspirations and interests, certain crucial friendships are also formed with those we respect for having achieved a maturity and understanding greater than our own.

Such people offer guidance and reassurance through each aspect of their being. The way they move their body and hold our gaze with their eyes, the cadences of their speech, their response to sudden provocation, the way they rest at ease and attend to daily chores: all these things tell us as much as they tell us in words. And we too are called upon to respond in such ways. In this kind of relationship we are no mere recipients of knowledge. We are invited to interact, to challenge and be challenged.

These friends are teachers in the sense that they are skilled in the art of learning from every situation. We do not seek perfection in these friends but rather heartfelt acceptance of human imperfection. Nor omniscience but an ironic admission of ignorance. We should be wary of being seduced by charismatic purveyors of Enlightenment. For true friends seek not to coerce us, even gently and reasonably, into believing what we are unsure of.

These friends are like midwives, who draw forth what is waiting to be born. Their task is not to make themselves indispensable but redundant. These friends are our vital link to past and future. For they too were nurtured through friendships, in many cases with those who are dead. Dharma practice has survived through series of friendships that stretches back through history – ultimately to Gautama himself.

Through friendships we are entrusted with a delicate thread that joins past with future generations. These fragile, intimate moments are ones of indebtedness and responsibility. Dharma practice flourishes only when such friendships flourish. It has no other means of transmission. And these friends are our vital links to a community that lives and struggles today

Through them we belong to a culture of awakening, a matrix of friendships, that expands in ever wider circles to embrace not only “Buddhist” but all who are actually or potentially committed to the values of dharma practice. The forms of this friendship have changed over history. The dharma has passed through social and ethnic cultures with different ideals of what constitutes true friendship.

Two primary forms have emerged: the fellowship model of early Buddhism and the guru-disciple model of later traditions. In both cases, friendship has become entangled with issues of religious authority. Before the Buddha died he declared that the dharma would suffice as one’s guide. In the early community, friendship was founded in common adherence to the rules of discipline the Buddha devised to support dharma practice.

The community was a fellowship of brotherhood and sisterhood, under the formal guidance of a paternal or maternal preceptor. While the system reflected the hierarchy of an Indian extended family, in which everyone deferred to seniority, the final authority lay not in a person’s position in the hierarchy but in the rules of discipline. True friendship was modelled on the relationships among siblings and between child and parent, with the difference that all were equal in the eyes of the dharma and subject to its law.

After about five hundred years, the Indian guru-disciple model was adopted by certain schools. Here the teacher became a heroic figure to whose will the student surrendered as a means of accelerating the process of awakening. This relationship reflected that between master and servant or feudal lord and subject. The different degree of power between guru and disciple was utilized as an agent of personal transformation. Elements of dominance and submission (and with them the concomitant danger of coercion) came to characterize the notion of true friendship. If, after close examination, your accepted someone as your teacher, then you were expected to revere and obey him.

In varying degrees, the authority of the dharma was replaced by the authority of the guru, who came, in some traditions, to assume the role of the Buddha himself. Despite the contracting nature of these models, in practice they coexisted. As a follower of the Buddha’s rules of discipline, a true friend was accountable to the community and the dharma, but as a guru was impervious to any critique formulated by the deluded mind.

Most traditions of Buddhism today represent one of these ideals of friendship or a blend of the two. In the contemporary secular, democratic societies, such traditional models of friendship are bound to be challenged. For we may no longer feel at ease in friendships defined by the hierarchy of an extended family, the rule of law, or submission to the will of another. We may no longer feel the need to wear a uniform or in any way sacrifice our ordinariness.

Exotic names, robes, insignia of office, title – the trappings of religion – confuse as much as they help. They endorse the assumption of the existence of an elite whose explicit commitment grants them implicit extraordinariness. It is not just different circumstances that raise questions about the nature of true friendship. Of greater significance is that we notice that circumstances are different. Historical consciousness itself makes the difference.

It is no longer possible to maintain that dharma practice has remained unaltered since the time of the Buddha. It has evolved and continues to evolve distinctive forms peculiar to the conditions of the time. It has survived precisely because of its ability to respond creatively to change. What features of contemporary life are most likely to affect the concept of true friendship? Mutual respect for the creative autonomy of individual experience would take precedence over submission to the dogmas of a school or the autocratic authority of a guru.

The responsibility of a friend would be to encourage individuation, self-reliance and imagination. Such friendship might be informed by notions such as martin Buber’s “I-Thou” relationship and the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel’s ideal of “availability” for another. Its practice may draw on the experience of psychotherapy, in which a “free and protective space” allows an encounter that is simultaneously trusting, opening, and healing.

For learning and training, it may take as its model the relationship of artist and apprentice, in which skills are developed so that creativity can be realized with technical competence and expertise. Whenever Buddhism has become a religion, true friendship has tended to be compromised by issues of power. Both the fellowship and guru models have given rise to large, impersonal, hierarchic, and authoritarian bodies governed by professional elites.

In many cases, these institutions have become established churches, sanctioned and supported by sovereign states. This has often led to rigid conservatism and intolerance of dissent. This process is not inevitable. It is also possible to imagine a community of friendships in which diversity is celebrated rather than censured. In which smallness of scale is regarded as success rather than failure. In which power is shared by all rather than invested in a minority of experts. In which women and men are treated as genuine equals. In which questions are valued more than answers.

ENDPIECE

We are grateful for your contributions towards our work, including the costs of hiring the room for our meeting, currently around £70 per session.Your attendance, your presence, is especially precious. I hope you will want to come again, and will be able to. Remember that every meeting is free-standing and there is no need to keep up regular or frequent attendance. Feel free to bring along a friend at any time without prior arrangement.

We shall welcome your ideas for public meetings or seminars on topics of interest that have relevance for our work, although we don’t usually host dharma expositions by teachers of lineage or otherwise, and we are not able to pay fees to speakers (although we will cover travelling expenses).We are also on the lookout for short articles or other contributions written by supporters to feature in our newsletter ‘Mustard Seed’ which will be published shortly. If you send these to me I will pass them on to the ‘editorial team‘.

Here to help! Some searching questions...

The following questions came to us from someone embarking on a research exercise into hospice development, and I attach my responses (for what they are worth). The questions were sincerely put, and I hope that my unvarnished responses have not dampened the enthusiasm of the researcher to enquire further.

What do you see as the most challenging aspect of your work with the dying?

Difficult question to answer.

Working with people in crisis is always something of a challenge to all involved. Dying is a crisis in the same way most of the rest of life throws up situations of challenging change, crises. Dying isn't qualitatively different, and Buddhism teaches us not to see death as something essentially different. The way people deal with dying is the way they deal with all crisis. We are creatures of habit. As we live, so we shall die. But perhaps Buddhists learn through their practice that they don't have to be challenged by change; indeed, Buddhism has acceptance at its heart. In acceptance nothing challenges, and there is no-one to be challenged.

Practice isn't easy, so perhaps that's the everyday challenge, to do what we can to practice, whatever we understand that to mean. And that's a challenge too, understanding what it means to practice. It isn't bowing, making obeisance to the Buddha, or sitting on the cushion.

What is - in your religion/spirituality - the most important aspect of the dying process?

It's important not to get hung up on 'the dying process', whatever that means. Dying is a normal physiological process and there's no part to which it is worth attaching symbolic importance, or thinking it is more important than another. The question arises out of the tendency on the part of many Buddhists to take teachings about the bardos too literally. One might quite as earnestly ask "What is the most important part of the process of evacuating the bowels?" Or, "what is the most important part of the process of digesting one's dinner?"

As a nurse I have attended the deathbeds of very many people, and death - you can rest assured - is always 100% successful. Every death is unique, and the process may be very drawn-out, or it may (of course) be instantaneous, as in a plane crash or 9/11. It doesn't matter how we die, what matters is how we live. I don't think the Buddha had a lot to say about deathbeds.


What are the most recurrent problems you are facing with dying people?

There are generally no problems to be faced with dying people except the usual ones such as "If I am visiting shall I find a place to park?" or, in my case, "Will my wife get irritated that I am not at home to help her with the household chores and domestic worries she has to face alone because I am attending to my "good works" with others?" You may have heard the Bible saying ascribed to Yeshwa (Jesus), "Leave the dead to bury their dead". It makes a lot of sense.

As the Chairman of a Buddhist charity, it is sometimes a problem fending off Buddhist volunteers who want to be "in on the act" at other people's deaths. If you ask them to address envelopes, wash up or serve tea they feel snubbed and hurt, that they have some special gift to impart, and you are standing in their way! Not all volunteers are like this, of course, but it is disheartening to find how many are.

Which are the situations in which you find yourself helpless?

Helplessness is a most desirable default mode to cultivate when being with the dying.

There is nothing to do, so the mind of helplessness is entirely congruent with that. "Doing less, being more" is the motto. If we can cultivate a heart of helplessness compassion will flow into it and, in that heart of compassion, 'helper' and 'helped' will encounter each other without distinction and in perfect reciprocity.

How supportive/unsupportive do you consider your society with death, religious approach to death, and religions in general?

Our own (British) society has been greatly shaped by Christendom including the tenets of Christian belief and doctrine, in their many vernacular forms, and there is no doubt in my mind that established religion in UK does provide a framework for many in helping them to find meaning and consolation in suffering and loss. Some individuals find it difficult to talk about death, to talk naturally to a person who has been bereaved and so on, and this reticence is part of the way people feel about death; it is not our part to judge them, or to characterise them as unsupportive. People have a right to their feelings, and there is nothing wrong with the way they behave.

I have deep admiration for Christian clergy and for many church-goers. I don't find that Buddhists are better at dying and death and supporting others than members of other faiths. Some are very good, some less so. I think that humans (regardless of their religious affiliations or lack of them) are on the whole infinitely capable of acceptance, equanimity, "courage", and of healing into their true nature.

Although I'm a Buddhist and it has worked for me, it's my point of departure in what I do, and I have no interest in or ambition to convert others to Buddhism. I lived and worked in Africa for many years, where Buddhism is just unknown. But the people there live richly-engaged dharma lives, and have no need of the teachings of Gotama to guide them away from what they know and do.

What do you think could be common ground for our different religions to expand our support in hospice work?

Our common humanity supplies enough ground, I think, for interfaith cooperation and mutual support in the face of suffering. Suffering feels and looks the same in all creeds. We don't need to wrestle with conceptual issues, indeed, they get in the way of collaboration.

There are certain principles of the hospice movement, and of the palliative and "end-of-life-care" movements, that are worth fostering because they have made a major difference to terminal care. Hospices as institutions where people go to die, however, are giving way (for various reasons including cost) to death at home, or in some other 'preferred place', as the spectrum of care-provision changes in line with popular choice, and improved technology.

How do you deal with mental and spiritual suffering in your work with dying people? What are the words and attitudes that seem to relieve anxiety, fears and agitation?

How do you, the questioner, distinguish mental and spiritual suffering? My question is intended to challenge you, the questioner, out of a state of mind that reduces life to a number of discrete compartments or categories that call out to be 'dealt with'. I don't intend to insult or attack you, and I know you are in a reflective situation, and just putting your toe in the water. But I think you are also robust enough to follow my drift.

Suffering does not call for formulaic responses, words, attitudes or theories. I can only be alongside the one who suffers, and dwell with her/him. In helplessness the words and actions may arise that are fitting, appropriate or 'helpful'; but they will be uncontrived, not 'mine', not to be held on to. Buddhism has nothing 'off the shelf' to offer, does it? The following true anecdote illustrates the folly of taking a 'cook-book' approach to death, however eminent the 'cook', and however well-intentioned the recipe.

I once met a very devout and kindly Buddhist woman who, when her old Glaswegian mother was dying, plucked up her courage to begin reading her Mam a few words from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Her mother opened her eyes, gazed steadily at her daughter and said in a clear voice, "Aye, and ye can fuck off dearie, and tak' yer fucking book wi' ye!" That old dying woman was Buddha, and her daughter never forgot the lesson she was taught that day. Talk about enlightenment!

What has changed for you from your experience of dying people?

Well, I have never sentimentalised death, and I don't put dying on some sort of pedestal. I have come to understand that death takes care of itself and needs no facilitation. Death is good, death is kind, or so it seems to me. Dying may be difficult, and in some cases it presents difficulties for which there may be remedies, e.g. pain and symptom relief. People often need good nursing care. People largely prefer to die at home (if they can be adequately cared for at home), and this has affected the way hospices are funded and operated.

People who are dying appreciate the friendship and support of others who come with no helping agenda, no spiritual mouthings, no religious templates of belief or doctrine to pass on, no formulas, interpretations or solutions. Such people are rather rare, including amongst Buddhists.

And, to quote Christina Feldman, "We are always beginners in the art of compassion".

Is there any aspect of Buddhism that you feel may be particularly useful with dying
patients?

No, no agenda, no special tool in my tool box. Possibly I might remind myself often that Gotama said "No person can save another. Work out your own salvation, with diligence".

"Toxic Debt" and other lies...

The image is of Winter in Glen Etive, Glen Coe by courtesy of D W Roberston Gallery and is an illustration for Tales of Travel (see below)


As I write news is coming over the radio about the resue plan put together in the US to save international markets from melt down, or whatever other thermodynamic metaphor is appropriate for this jolt out of the consensus trance we've all been in for the last thirty or so years, or longer.

I have the powerful feeling that the explanations we're being given for what has happened to the 'markets', and what we need to patch things up, is another deliberately administered dose of anaesthetic. The problem, we're being told, is that banks are no longer willing to lend each other money, and this 'freeze' is the cause of the problem.

At the heart of the crisis, allegedly, is "toxic debt", debts built up by poor people who were bamboozled into mortgages they couldn't afford, and can't repay. This level of "toxic debt" has "infected" the global financial system. I find it outrageous, but perfectly in keeping with the evil tenets of capitalism, that this language of poison and contagion should be used to define the heart of the problem; to denigrate and scapegoat the hapless undeserving poor, those who wanted to house their families, low-paid workers, single mothers, people from ethnic minorities.

The implication of what we're being told seems to be that banks actually have lots of money, but they don't trust anyone enough to lend it, including each other, because toxically infective "sub-prime" borrowers have contaminated the system, defaulted on loans, and infected the system like a type of rabies, paralysing it like 'lock-jaw'. So the banks are are sitting helplessly on the money they have left. The result is that no-one can borrow any more, so they have none to spend or 'invest'. There is, or soon will be, no money in circulation. Money has somehow congealed, clotted up.

The proposed solution seems to be that Governments will give a very large amount of money - "taxpayer's money" - to the banks. This is called "injecting liquidity" into the system to "lubricate it" or "free it up" or some other inane slogan borrowed from hydraulic engineering. This money will somehow, miraculously unblock the clogged-up system, and money will once again flow.

Presumably this borrowed money will be used to lend to other people, so that banks will "regain the confidence they need" to begin "lending money to each other", re-establish "confidence in the system" and everything will be AOK again. Except that you and I will be expected to pay for it through taxation, the privatisation of services, and the life-long indebtedness of our children.

Does anyone believe this anaesthetic nonsense? That the banks have money but are too mistrustful to lend it? That they need to be given money to steady their palsied nerves?

Well, I believe that in truth there is no money. The money that the banks and building societies have been lending to people doesn't exist, and never has. The money on your mortgage statement, or in your deposit account, the "equity" in your house, or the figure on your ISA certficate is just a mirage. Since the "Big Bang", money has just been an illusory row of noughts on the computer screen, from which people in the City and on Wall Street have been regularly helping themselves to huge tranches in currency bills, to buy or build mansions, Rolex watches, Maseratis and diamond encrusted crystal skulls as gee-gaws.

It seems to me that what is proposed is the launch of another illusory capitalist spree, a re-instatement of the status quo ante, business as usual in Wall Street and the square mile, a short term boom in the High Street as consumers "regain the confidence" they need to put a spring in their step in the long run-up to Christmas (expect the tinsel, toys and mince pies to greet you in Tescos, Wal-Mart and Sainsbury's soon enough). And the directors (and highly paid non-Execs like Tony Blair) will laugh all the way to their non-dom banks and off-shore Cayman Island havens.

What has this got to do with Buddhism? Well, as I said in an earlier post on the Social Care Green Paper, perhaps it's about seeing the world, or not seeing the world, from any perspective, but recognising that this is what we always do and recognising this, opening ourselves to the possible emergence of another way of being. As Ray Wills used to say "There must be another way". He didn't define what that other way might be because the Way doesn't have a destination in mind: it's a point of departure, an open road. What we can do (but it's hard and calls for energy and resolve) is to allow ourselves to open to another way of being, not adopting it or 'trying to' follow it, but rather becoming it.

A howl of outrage? An intemperate polemic? Well, yes, perhaps. But I'm human, and it's part of my way of opening up to another way being, and perhaps helping you, who knows. So I'll let it stand, and finish on a quieter note with the words The Vagabond, part of a song-cycle of verse (Songs of Travel) by R L Stevenson, set to music by a favourite composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and with the cool illustration of Glen Coe (above) as backdrop:

Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.
Bed in the bush with stars to see,
Bread I dip in the river -
There's the life for a man like me,
There's the life for ever.

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around
And the road before me.
Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.

Or let autumn fall on me
Where afield I linger,
Silencing the bird on tree,
Biting the blue finger.
White as meal the frosty field -
Warm the fireside haven -
Not to autumn will I yield,
Not to winter even!

Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around,
And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me.