Impermanence

Sunday Musings on Saturday Buddhist Class

6: impermanence 

JRR Tolkien wrote…

The Road goes ever on and on,

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

One precious reality is, that there are endings as well as beginnings. It was a six week course. It has been six weeks. It has ended. Of course the yearning for knowledge, as insatiable as it is, remains, but that section of my reality has drawn to a close.

I am so very grateful to the staff and the Colchester Buddhist Centre ( for existing) and for that gentle introduction to Buddhism ☸ and to Meditation (Mindfulness and Loving Kindness). I understand that the new year will bring a secondary course  which I shall look forward to.

Life itself is not permanent. Forms and existence comes and goes, are in constant change and have no definitive reality. There will be uncomfortable times.

This is the mystery of the quotient, quotient

Upon us all, upon us all, a little rain must fall

(sang Led Zepplin's Robert Plant)

We are born, we live, we die and in-between times we experience.

So, what did I learn? I learned that as much as I know, I know little. I learned to become a student again, to listen and to try a new way especially with my approach to meditation 🧘‍♀️.

I am fortunate that, although the course has finished, a Saturday meeting continues to be welcoming to newbies and the practised too, so I can continue to learn. So, next Saturday I'll accept a fresh challenge, and attend with the adults.

Oooo what a surprise

 

A burly, black uniformed, man knocked insistently on my room door. Surprised by the knocking and by the knocker, and then by the squad of police officers (in various shapes and sizes) staggered along the staircase, I was dumbstruck.

I had heard the previous knocks (on adjacent doors) which, living where I am, seems to be De rigueur, but thought no more of it.

The well-built (and entirely professional) police officer enquired of my neighbour, and of the distinct whiff of canabaloids lingering on the landing between us. I laughed it off speaking of my incense. He was distinctly unamused. The establishment gentleman not so gentlemanly proceeded to pound on my neighbour's door, calling my neighbour's name while doing so. Downstairs, the open front door issued in whiffs of winter.

I retreated back into the comparative not quite so cool of my room.

More knocking More questions. More of my non-committal verbal fencing.

"We've got the place surrounded" launched through my open window, and straight out of a TV cop show. More threats were issued. I wonder, does officers on the stairs and in the small backyard consist of 'surrounding'.

More knocking, this time by neighbour's mother making enquiries. I would have offered her to take a seat, but I only have one and I wanted neither of us to be seated on my bed. That seemed a little too friendly considering the circumstances.

Eventually, the questioning officer gained entry to my neighbour's room and, with colleagues and a distinctly unamused female officer, proceeded to search my neighbour's room.

Later, I was told (by another tenant) that a waft of officers had attacked him, in a case of mistaken identity.

My neighbour was arrested. For what I have no idea. He is 18. We have all made mistakes. Me a copious amount. I wish him and his concerned mother well.

After all the excitement I badly needed a real cup of coffee. I walked here, to Costa Coffee, in the town centre and, being soothed by a Flat White, began writing

A meditation on meditation

Sunday Musings on Saturday Buddhist Class

5: A meditation on meditation

Once more it is early Sunday morning. Yesterday, again, I had walked the one mile to class, observing the day as I went. The autumnal sun shone, taking the chill away and blessed the morning with blue skies, just as the sunny greetings from the Centre's Saturday regulars brought a warmth to my heart.

There was no ethical or historical Buddhist talk yesterday for we learners. Instead, that class, the fifth of six classes at the Colchester Buddhist Centre, involved a prolonged meditation session, or should I say sessions as the time was divided into shorter meditation 'bites', making the practice easier to engage with.

Apart from the ethical aspects of Buddhism, living better in the world and with others, meditation, as a regular practice is at the core of Buddhism. Hence images of the Buddha in a seated meditation pose.

A slight meditation on meditation.

The Oxford English Dictionary describes two types of 'Meditation'...

1. the act of giving your attention to only one thing, either as a religious activity or as a way of becoming calm and relaxed:

2. serious thought or study, or the product of this activity.

In English, the word 'meditation' originally meant to ponder or to concentrate, coming from the Latin ‘meditatum’. Hence René Descartes' famous work was translated into English, from the French 'Méditations Métaphysiques' into 'Meditations on First Philosophy', or philosophical pondering.

There are thoughts that the idea of 'meditation' has existed long before the civilisation of man, and that hunter-gatherers and tribal shamans engaged in something similar.

In the East, the concept of 'meditation' has existed for thousands of years, before Hinduism and hence before Buddhism too and has come to include concepts such as 'mindfulness', 'contemplation' 'communion' 'chanting', the spreading of 'Metta' (or Loving Kindness) and 'trance'. In India’s oldest written records (from around 1500 BC), there is the practice of mind training through ‘Dhyāna’ or ‘Jhāna’. In China the idea of mediation can be traced back to six centuries BC to the ‘Daoist’ ancient Chinese philosophers such as Lao zi. 

At the Centre, we learned just how important posture is to meditation, especially when engaging in longer meditations. To be comfortable is very important so that the mind doesn't have to worry about bodily aches and pains. We engaged in a number of short 'guided' meditations (over the two and a half hours of the class), and emerged more enthused than ever. To become proficient in meditation takes years of practice but this, for me, is a good start.

Long dark night....

“In the long dark night of the soul, it is always three in the morning.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The nights are getting longer, and are dark. My soul rests battered and bruised from last year's break up which, incidentally, I am still recovering from, and it's British Mid-october, autumnal cold, 6.30 in the morning and still dark. 

The permanent warmth of the Far East is far behind with its exotic and erotic natures as I await the British sun which, this year, appears seldomly as if Covidly self distancing or yet another victim of Brexit.

It's too chilly to emerge from my duvet into the cold room with windows streaming with condensation, yet I am too restless not to. I've been awake since 4.30, hence I've had five and a half hours sleep, which is okay, not ideal, but okay.

Land gulls cry outside and the area begins to awaken. I imagine being in Thomas's Llareggub which lies under Milk Wood with Richard Burton's lyrical voice booming out about Captain Tom Cat and Myfanwy Price. But I don't know Colchester intimately enough to make the comparison.

Now 07.05 I am in the limbo between sleep and wakefulness. Some working men in the building stir, preparing for their day's toil on roofs or driving lorries. If I had the requisite items I would be thinking of breakfast preparation, but in yesterday's haste to buy lunch and dinner I forgot about today's breakfast, and there is no neighbourhood eatery to nip down to (the nearest being a mile away). Besides, it's still ruddy cold outside this bed. That's the dilemma, too cold to get out but nobody to keep me in. Ah such is the chaste life!

Help: I am stuck inside an Edward Hopper painting.

Azure Skies

Sunday Musings on Saturday Buddhist Class

4: Azure Skies

Saturdays I literally walk the path to class. It's a multifold journey. Yesterday, at nine thirty in the morning  on that October day in the East Anglian town of Colchester, the sky was azure and the day warm.There was no hint of rain, and I could walk with my Superdry jacket open for once. 

These days I make a conscious effort to be in the 'now', to try to notice as much as possible about the world around me as I walk out. The camera on my hand phone is an excuse to do that. I leave early for class on purpose, so that I don't have to hurry. I gives me time for little detours, taking photographs, talking to cats and buying a bottle of water. I can also arrive at the Centre early, talk to people, skim through books I might want to buy before class starts. 

The Saturday class is very much a beginner's class, which is exactly what I wanted. Before, I had only touched upon Buddhism through my unstructured reading, and my brief attendance at the 'Sangha' meetings in Malaysia. But they didn't approach Buddhism in a structured way, rather ad hoc and to the whim and will of the group leader. So it is a sheer joy to learn in a more methodical way, which constantly relates back to the day-to-day practical nature of Buddhism. 

Yesterday was the 'Five Precepts', and they are to.... 

• Refrain from taking life. Not killing any living being. ... 

• Refrain from taking what is not given. Not stealing from anyone. 

• Refrain from the misuse of the senses. Not having too much sensual pleasure. ... 

• Refrain from wrong speech. Not to lie. 

• Refrain from intoxicants that cloud the mind. 

A 'Precept', according to one dictionary, is "

a general rule intended to regulate behaviour or thought." The 'Five Precepts' in Buddhism though are not necessarily rules but, perhaps, suggestions, or guiding principles to live by. Basically they kind of make sense, more especially in the world we live in now, in the 21st century. These 'Precepts' might also be called attainments, or targets, aims to achieve for a more aware, more harmonious or enlightened life. Buddha was, after all, 'The Enlightened One'. Not as though we will all achieve enlightenment, but we can 'smell the roses' take time to 'stand and stare' or (as dear Ram Dass might say) to 'Be Here Now'. 

So, on yesterday's walk along the path to class, I did take time out to photograph the toadstools, the dew still on the grass and on fallen leaves, as well as notice the trees turning russet against that azure sky. In a sense it was a walking meditation, while in class we, once more, familiarised ourselves with the Metta Bhavana  (or the cultivation of Loving Kindness) to all.

Metta Bhavana

Sunday Musings on Saturday Buddhist Class

3:

Metta Bhavana

It was Saturday, I had my bottle of water in hand, and it was back to the bus stop. The Colchester Buddhist Centre was momentarily locked. Mind you I was early, again, but brrr I could really feel autumn, but it felt like winter to this misplaced person.

Ah where was the warm of beloved Buddha land? Still, time to reflect.

On the way I said good morning to two contemplating felines, pretty in their cat-like ways. They smiled too, perhaps thinking I was Alice.

I looked to the sky and remembered George Harrison's "it isn't always going to be this grey", and he lived in England too. As time and the day had progressed Jimmie was singing “still rain, still raining” because it was.

So I sit and muse, Earl Grey made and Peruvian chocolate awaiting, some five hours later thinking Jimmie (not George) was right.

Today’s interesting interaction revealed my current obsession with George Harrison. Never mind that he and I shared a birthday, but recently I have been drawn back to those few esoteric numbers by The Beatles (‘Within You and Without You’, ‘Inner Light’ , ‘Love You To’, Tomorrow Never Knows’ etc) and mostly featuring George, and those spiritually moving songs George made after the 1970 split, such as ‘All Things Must Pass’, 'My Sweet Lord' et al.

In class we were being briefly introduced to the Buddhist precepts. Looking towards the Eightfold Path via the attributes our ‘heroes’ or ‘heroines’ might personify, which brought me back to the spirituality, good humoredness and generosity of George Harrison (think ‘Concert from Bangladesh’ and his involvement with London’s Hare Krishna movement). It turns out that, as reasonable mature people, perhaps we should be considering the implications of these anyway, such as generosity, kindliness, truthfulness and all those good things that we know in our heart of hearts we should be considering as modalities of living with other people (and beings too).

Today’s meditation changed from the ‘Mindfulness’ that we had been concentrating on, to ‘Loving Kindness’ or the ‘Metta Bhavana’ (which could also be seen as “Metta” meaning compassion, and “Bhavana” meaning cultivating).

The ‘course’ is already half done and I am already considering signing on for more……Watch this space.

Mind the Gap

Sunday Musings on Saturday Buddhist Class

2:

Mind the Gap

In 1969, Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground (in the song ‘Some kind of love’) sang “Between thought and expression lies a lifetime”, which brings to mind not only the Viennese  psychiatrist Viktor Frankl and his Logotherapy and the ‘space’ between stimulus and response, but is also reminiscent of the Buddhist notion of a ‘gap’ on the ‘Wheel of Life’, or the very practical aspects of the Karmic domino effect of our actions in life, and maybe beyond, depending upon your notion of rebirth..

The class was as fascinating as ever.

I continue to be enthused about the paired down, no nonsense, demystified approach to Buddhism. If you might consider Buddhism to be a stripped down version of the religious collective known as Hinduism, then Western Buddhism is Buddhism Lite, devoid of the mysticism, just as Protestantism is a more pragmatic version of Catholicism within the Christian faith.

This week, before meditation we, the humble travellers not on a ribald Chaucerian pilgrimage but on our own separate journeying into Buddhist practices, were introduced to the ‘Tibetan Wheel of Life’, or the map of Samsara which, at first glance, seems to be an Asian visual rendering of Dante's Nine Circles of Hell.

The bad news is that suffering (Dukkha) exists. The worse news is that we will all suffer. But the good news is that we can do something about it.

Enter, not the dragon but the karmic gap, and back to Viktor Frankl and his ‘space’ between stimulus and response. Frankl, like Herman Hesse and Carl Jung, journeyed to the East and took back to the West notions found there, including borrowings from Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism, so is it no wonder that there may be similarities between a Logoistic/psychodynamic and Buddhist approach to the action and re-action we all seem to suffer from.

Please mind the gap. This is heard at some of the stations on the British ‘Tube’ (underground rail system). That gap being a physical manifestation of the more metaphysical ‘gap’ in the action and the seemingly autonomous reactive response we suffer in life. The secret is not to mind, but to be mindful of that gap and that infinitesimal ‘augenblik’ (moment) between action and reaction.