Is this a Buddhist love story?

Like most Buddhists I know (admittedly not many of these are bhikkhus or bhikkhunis), I have often struggled with practice, especially formal sitting meditation practice. Like most Buddhists I know, I recognise the central importance of meditation practice to most Buddhist traditions; and in my personal experience, such formal sitting as I've done is of great value in developing a mind that is clear, open, flexible and - even more important than these qualities - a mind that can respond to the suffering of fellow beings, and to my own, with compassion and wisdom.

I admit that my efforts at sitting have never been truly consistent, my application uncertain and sometimes unwilling, and my practice has been generally unsupported by an experienced guide.

Some expert advice has come my way, and I've welcomed it, especially because it has reinforced my prejudice against sitting, and encouraged me to work with other methods, some of which have seemed promising, some of which have seemed improbably effective as ways of training the mind to watch itself, and to accept what is sees with kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.

In recent times I have felt the need for more support and - in the absence of any enthusiasm on my part for an institutional sangha - I have joined an on-line sangha, the varied and large assembly of on-line dharma-practitioners around the teaching of Ken McLeod, author of "Wake Up To Your Mind", and founder of Unfettered Mind (see the link in the left column of the blog).

I've belonged to Unfettered Mind for several years now, and it is indeed my practice-mainstay, members of the virtual sangha my spiritual friends and collaborators. Modern technology means that we can meet regularly using Skype to hold conference calls across the world, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Texas, Canada, Los Angeles. These meetings are as warm, as friendly and as intimate as any I have joined face-to-face. I count myself very lucky to have stumbled across this resource, and grateful for what has flowed from it in terms of personal enrichment, and the touch of many dharmas.

Each week one of our small group poses a question for the rest to ponder during the week until we meet again. The questions tend to arise naturally from an earlier discussion we've had about our individual practice, how we're doing, what's 'come up' for us etc. We've established a convention of confining our reporting-in to a single sentence each, heard in silence and without questions or comments until each of us has said our short bit.

Last week's question was about 'awkwardness', and that arose in part from what we had talked about before around the topic of 'meditating standing up', a method suggested by Will Johnson, a Canadian exponent of embodiment, whose book "Aligned, Relaxed, Resilient" I took to as a duck takes to its first encounter with water, with a delighted "Quack!" Without going into detail which can be found by following the links, I can say that my practice has been transformed by standing up, and I am 'sold' on it: it's like coming home, and has led to further explorations of what I now realise is a school of Buddhism that has been kept a well-guarded secret, Ecstatic Buddhism.

Certainly, when we met at the chaplaincy training group on Sunday last, none of the participants had heard of it; several of these were experienced dharma-pactitioners and teachers of repute. I suspect, and it is only a conjecture on my part, that - as with all ecstatic traditions within the majot world faiths - ecstatic Buddhism is the object of mistrust, because of its sexual content- or at least because of its attention to psycho-sexual energies, and the immense world of sensation they entrain. Such energies are released by meditation techniques that open up to our embodiment, and which are enjoined by such encouragements as "Happy Practice!" and "Relax, smile, rest".

So it was interest and curiosity that I turned to Ken McLeod's book for guidance on the matter of sex. The book is titled "Wake Up To Your Life". It runs to 478 pages and the index contains over 1,000 entries. The book is manifestly addressed to my life (and any other readers), and I know my life is as much about sex as it is about food, drink, shelter, self-esteem, relationships, money, emotions or the internal combustion engine. But the word sex isn't in the index. I found one mention, on p476, about problems with the teacher-pupil relationship.

What is it about religion and sex? What is it about Buddhism and sex? Don't YOU want to know?
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

I thought to add the following story as a frivolous addendum to the above. It's the love story I alluded to at the beginning of this blog, at least, that's my romantic interpretation.

"A large assembly of monks gathered around the Buddha at Vulture's Peak to hear him teach about the nature of being.

Buddha, sitting quietly, held up a flower and showed it to the whole gathering.

Everyone sat in silence.

But one student, the venerable Kashyapa, smiled.

The Buddha then said, "The one true teaching is beyond form and does not depend on words or letters. It is a special transmission outside all scriptures. I now entrust it to the venerable Kashyapa".

The image above is of Shakyamuni Buddha with his friends Ananda and Kashyapa.

Essex Mind-Spirit

Essex Mind-Spirit (EM-S) is an established, county-wide alliance of Government (NHS) health agencies, Higher Education, faith communities including the churches in Essex, and other stakeholders, including the Buddhist Hospice Trust.

EM-S operates via a network of cluster groups based in the four main 'geo-political and administrative quadrants of Essex (see locality map above); each is autonomous and each is constituted according to the mix of stakeholders willing and and able to commit in the particular locality from which the people come, and in accordance with local need.

For several years since EM-S was established, it hasn't been possible to set up a cluster group in South West Essex, and I have now been invited to do this, and have accepted the challenge it involves. South West Essex is a wide area, an urban and rural 'strip' fifteen to twenty miles deep from the North bank of the Thames estuary, and as many miles long along that bank, from Thurrock (whence arises the Dartford Crossing/Queen Elizabeth Bridge and Tunnels), via Tilbury, Shell Haven, Pitsea and Canvey Island; and including several good-sized conurbations: Basildon, Wickford, Billericay, Rayleigh, Hadleigh, South Benfleet, Hockley, South Woodham Ferrers, and many small villages interspersed.

Why is the Buddhist Hospice Trust involved? Several reasons. First, for as long as I have been involved with the Trust, it has been a 'port of call' for people who are suffering mentally, whether the suffering is a consequence of a physical illness, impending death, bereavement, or any other human frailty or breakdown. Indeed, one could characterise all suffering as a mental phenomenon. Buddhist teaching points in that direction, as it points to mind-training (in a very general sense of those words) as the only remedy.

I have also received very many appeals for assistance from people who identify their problems as 'mind-made' or 'mental'. This is what one might expect from Buddhists, after all. A few of these admit to a history of diagnosed mental illness, or of psychiatric treatment and sometimes psychiatric custody. It might be said that the Trust is ill-equipped to respond to such appeals for help, and - if it were the case that the Trust offers professional intervention - this could well be true. If the Trust ill-advisedly took on a case of terminal cancer, needing specialist medical and palliative intervention, the same would be true.

But the Trust offers only to be present, to bear witness, and to befriend people who call upon its services, such as they are. And this formula is as effective (and as limited) as a response to mental suffering in all its forms as it is as a response to the ravaged physical body of an individual with a fatal disease. As an adjunct to properly prescribed medical treatment, the solidarity and support of a spiritual friend is an enormous boon to the mentally, as well as to the physically, ill sufferer; not "half the spiritual life", but the "whole spiritual life, Ananda".

Second, there is no apparant unaffiliated, non-sectarian and inclusive Buddhist organisation that is ready, willing and accessible to pick up the gauntlet of spiritual support and non-judgemental companionship for people who are suffering mentally, and suffering alone. This Trust is ready and willing to do this, and our cooperative venture with Essex Mind-Spirit is an expression of that readiness, and a testing ground for our preparedness, and our capacity to deliver.

It is a small step, but a significant one. And I know you will wish it well.

The new South West Essex Cluster Group will meet on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, beginning 10th March 2010, at 7.00 pm for 7.30 pm. Meetings will be held at the Todman Centre (Rayleigh Age Concern) in Castle Road (corner of Daws Health Road), Rayleigh.

These meetings are open to all comers. They will provide a meeting place for people with an interest in mind and spirit, however that interest comes about. You may have personal experience of mental health problems, or know someone who has; you may be a carer, professional or otherwise. You may be a 'person of faith', whether or not a religious faith, and whether or not you belong to a 'faith community' (church, mosque, temple etc). You may just be curious to know more. No experience or prior knowledge is necessary.

Over time we shall aim, together, to build greater understanding and - perhaps - to use that greater understanding to help ourselves, each other, and maybe others. How we shall do that we shall work out amongst ourselves, with the support and guidance of Essex Mind-Spirit. EM-S is a very well-resourced project, with lots of experience and expertise, and is a member of the National Mental Health Forum.

Essex Mind-Spirit doesn't preach, proselytise (aim to convert), and has no hidden agenda. It is funded by Faith In Action, an independent source of funding for social enterprises. You won't be put under any pressure to volunteer, and you can come and go as you want to, whilst always being welcome.

Contact me, Peter, for further information.

Kalyana Mitra (2)

Last weekend saw the first session in a series of five, at which eight aspiring chaplains met with two trainers, Keith Munnings and Chris Blomley, to set out on the path to accreditation and eventual registration as Buddhist chaplains.

This sounds a very formal process, and in one sense it 'has to be' if Buddhists are to have a recognised role within the many formal institutions where spiritual need is perceived to exist, and deserves a response. Such institutions include the health and welfare services, schools, colleges and universities, the whole range of criminal justice provision, immigration and asylum, and much more besides.

But, despite the implicit seriousness of the undertaking, the session we attended turned out to be great fun, and pervaded by a lightness of tone that was in no small part a product of the preparations made by the two facilitators and - of course - the commitment of the participants, who threw themselves enthusiastically into the work, and clearly enjoyed it.

There was a minimum of necessary expository stuff, scene-setting and putting the programme in a broader context, and we soon got down to some experiential work, exploring the qualities of a 'good' chaplain by testing ourselves out with each other in a variety of challenging and realistic scenarios, and reflecting together with the two trainers on what we experienced, "how we did".

We met in a rather small room in part of the chaplaincy at St Thomas's Hospital in Lambeth, so for our experiential work we spread out into the surrounding hospital premises, and I found myself in the Central Hall on the Northern Wing of the hospital (pictured above top left), where there were benches we could use and we would be neither overlooked not overheard as we worked, and probably looked entirely natural to a casual onlooker.


I had time to take a look at some of the features of the Hall, and my eye was drawn to two glass-fronted cabinets, each full of a montage of nurses' hospital badges, in the famous dark blue enamel of St Thomas's Nightingale School of Nursing (top right). Each badge was identified as having been awarded to a named nurse, and most of the badges had been awarded on completion of training to nurses in the earlier part of the 20th century, 1921, 1933 etc. There must have been 200-300 badges in those cabinets. All presumably returned to the hospital after the nurse's death.

This was a poignant moment for me, as I have recently retired from nursing after 50 years of uninterrupted nursing practice. Unfortunately, my own nursing badges, awarded on completion, were stolen, so they will not survive my death to be returned to my training schools, which - in any case - have not survived themselves. Indeed the hospitals have now been closed, and in part demolished, although the Casualty and Accident Departments of Hackney Hospital where I trained in 1956-1959 are still there in Homerton High Street, E9, and still evoke memories when I occasionally pass.

Hollymoor Hospital and Highcroft Hospital in Birmingham, where I trained as a psychiatric nurse, are now demolished too, nothing remains but memories, and a collection of photographs and reminiscences. Hollymoor was famous during the Second World War for its pioneering approach to therapy for "shell-shocked" officers, out of which were developed modern treatments for 'psychoneurotic' disorders (such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the phobias, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, anxiety-states, and many moderate forms of clinical depression).

From the past to the future: the image at the top of the page is of some members of the chaplaincy team to which I belong at Mid-Essex Hospital Services NHS Foundation Trust, dressed up in protective clothing to pay a visit to the newly commissioned Faith Room, installed in the new PFI hospital being developed on the site of Broomfield Hospital near Chelmsford. I am second from right, next to Imam Hafiz Ahmed, our Muslim chaplain. He tells me he gets the name Hafiz because he has managed to memorise the whole Qu'ran. I intended to ask him if he would tell me how we was tested on it, but didn't get the time. Is a candidate allowed to make one or two slips, like in the driving test? I almost certain he would be willing to let me in on this, he is a most accommodating chap, with a very friendly smile, despite his rather stern Abrahamic appearance in the picture.

There will be a multi-faith dedication ceremony in August, by which time the Faith Room will be ready for use on the same floor as the acute medical units and emergency rooms of the new hospital. Most of the planning for the ceremony has been done, and I'm in process of obtaining some Buddhist artefacts for use (as appropriate) by people who want to use the Faith Room for Buddhist purposes at any time. These will generally be stored out of sight when not in use, so that the Faith Room is otherwise featureless in terms of religious symbolism, and available to all for quiet reflection etc at any time.

Describe the fruits.....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kalyana Mitra Launch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dangerous Spirituality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haiti and the karma question

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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