My New Life: Fears, clothes shopping and wanting to be different...

Woke up this morning after a night of bad dreams to be comforted by my love. My subconscious mind busy expressing fears about my new life and regrets about the past life, or Mara (the Buddhist Devil) sending demons to beset me. Actually I don't think there's much difference, Mara's devils and demons are the things that keep our lives deadened like my fear of stepping outside the known into the unknown.

Last Saturday I packed up my belongings, and said goodbye to the last four years of my life, in which I'd been living as a Buddhist monk in The Buddhist House community in Leicestershire. The advantage of that kind of life is that I had less than one small car's worth of belongings, which made moving easy. The disadvantage of that kind of life is that I had less than one small car's worth of belongings, which means there's lots of stuff to get for my new life.

Sunday my Fiancée and I met friends for lunch and then went clothes shopping for me. With job interviews, hopefully, on the horizon, and just engaging in lay life (outside of my role as an ordained priest) I needed some clothes that don't suggest I'm something I'm not - a Buddhist monk.

Browsing the different clothes stores, trying on different styles of outfit, reminded me of dressing a character in the theatre. What we wear sends out so many signals about the kind of person we are, or perhaps how we would like the world to see us. It was interesting noticing what clothes I was drawn too and what I shied away from. I was afraid of anything too conventional - the voice of the ego crying "I'm not like the rest of the world!"

There's something really important in that for me though, beyond a simple desire to be different for its own sake. I've spent the last four years living in a spiritual community, living by ideals which challenge those held in many aspects of the world at large. I'm returning to the world at large, but I'm not signing up to some of the dominant ideals of that world - I want the important aspects of unconventionally to continue in my new life.

The objects we surround ourselves with, the way we dress our houses and our selves, not only reflect who we are, but also influence our sense of self. I've unpacked my Buddha pictures, and put them on the mantle piece (next to my Fiancées existing Buddha) and I've chosen clothes which aren't too conservative.

"Intellectual/Art Studenty" was Fiona's verdict. Not too bad.

Choosing the best things to be attached to

Why can't Buddhists vacuum the stairs? 

                             Because they have no attachments!

I recieved an email from a friend a few days ago asking about what he saw as a contradiction in Buddhist teachings. He's heard a lot about getting rid of your attachments, by which Buddhists usually mean psychological attachments to objects, particularly objects that give us sensual pleasure (a glass of red wine or a bar of chocolate) and objects which support our ideas about who we are.  His question was "If we're supposed to get rid of all our attachments, how does that fit with having a commitment to a Sangha? Isn't that an attachment?

Both are true. In one sense it's great to loosen our attachment to the things around us. On the other hand commitment is essential to any spiritual practice, and any life well lived.

In Buddhism what we're supposed to be getting rid of attachments to are things that are lakshana. Lakshana is a Sanskrit word that means 'signpost'. In this context 'signpost to self'. Why? Because these are the things which cause us the most trouble in our lives.

The ideal Buddhist life is one in which we are able to let go into the stream of life. Lakshana are like rocks in the stream, that we cling to, imagining that clinging to the rock is a safer place to be than swimming freely in the flow of life.

I don't imagine that anyone's stream is free of rocks, but when we bump into them, we can choose to cling, scared, to them, or we can let go of them. Sometimes to let go we really need to encounter the rock first. To interrogate its crevasses, its hard edges, learn all we can, and move on. For example, someone criticises something I take great pride in, a piece of theatre I've created. That hits at something close to the core of my identity, and I feel the sting of it. Am I able to meet that person, and their criticism, completely honestly (and let myself be upset by it) or do I brood on their words for days and days? If I can let go then I can move back into the stream ready to meet the next thing and the next thing. A life well lived is one in which we are open to experience the world in all its glory.

The Buddhist ideal of living in the flow of life this way is to meet each rock with love, if one can. To meet everything in the world with compassion. And the more one lets go into the flow of life, the more naturally this love appears in ones life.

But we all get stuck to rocks, we all have lakshanas which are sticky. Things, objects, ideas, even people that we attach to in order to create a rigid identity in the world (This rigid identity, the one that clings to the rocks, is created as a defence against the chaos of the world). Given that we all have attachments, and how difficult it is to let go of them completely, it's better to transform those attachments in to things which will help us become better people, become more loving and open to the world.

So we change our attachments (to use an example from my own life), from a pint of beer at the end of a long day, to Buddhist practice. This is skilful means. Ordinary humans like me are attached to things. If we can't get rid of them (and I can't) let's choose worthwhile things to be attached to.  If what you put at the centre of your life is selfish, your life will naturally be more selfish. If what you put at the centre of your life is loving and accepting, wise and compassionate those qualities will naturally become more manifest in your own life.

There is also an intrinsic value to any commitment. I'll explore that more next time.

Waking up to beauty

I was offered the most beautiful gift in the kitchen this evening, interrupting my flow of thoughts about recipes and time limits.

Zee-Zee, who was cooking alongside me, had collected from the roadside a windfall peach, and a couple of greengage plums. As I entered the kitchen she held her plate aloft, offering me a taste.

In my state of busy thought, the last thing I considered was accepting the fruit for its own sake. I took a piece, merely to move things along. Why should we be enjoying fruit when there's work to be done?

I bit into the plum, and it had the sweetest taste. I was transported from my thoughts into a world of taste and smell. In that moment I saw the whole kitchen in a different light. Zee-Zee was not holding up the cooking process, but became a great teacher for me.

Reflecting on this I was reminded of the moment of Mahākāśyapa's enlightenment. Mahākāśyapa was one of the Buddha's most senior disciples, and lead the Sangha after the Buddha's death. It is said that at one time, instead of giving a talk, the Buddha simply held up a white lotus flower to his disciples. Mahākāśyapa saw this and smiled. He was the only one of those present to understand.

What is it that the white lotus flower or the beautiful greengage plum teaches us?

In Japanese poetry the image of plum blossom is used to represent both the beauty and the transience of life.In the harsh Japanese winds plum blossom lasts just for a day or two. Life is beautiful, and beauty fades away.

We insulate ourselves from the truth of impermanence. For me worrying about some things, like making the dinner on time, is a way of avoiding the aspects of reality that I can't control. Inside this insulation I not only miss the impermanence, I miss the beauty too.

As the taste exploded inside my mouth, I entered reality a little more, and discovered the beauty there. Pay attention to what is real, and beauty will appear.

There are two truths here: The plum is beautiful in itself, in its wonderful colour and exquisite taste, and paying real attention in the world can reveal this kind of beauty to us. But the colour and the taste will fade. What remains is the beauty of the spirit in which Zee-Zee offered the fruit. Her joy and love remain in the world long after the fruit has been eaten.

Pay attention to what is really real and this is the beauty that will appear. What gifts have you been offered today?

Messages in Dreams

Yesterday I spent the day being confident, and filled with faith, about my new life outside the religious commune I am leaving. Sure that whatever happens Fiona and I will build a home together, and even if all the detail of that vision doesn't work out - something wonderful will happen.

Last night I had a dream that I was building a house, and it was never perfect. A wall was in the wrong place, the brickwork was stained with oil. In the dream some of these things I fixed, and some I couldn't. In the end my dream self was in tears of anguish, crying "I can't do it."

Writing about dream Rev. Heng Sure (from Dharma forest) quotes Jeremy Taylor writing about Jungian dream anaylsis:

1) that all dreams come in the service of health and wholeness; 2) that no dream come simply to tell the dreamer what he or she already knows; 3) that only the dreamer can say with certainty what meanings a dream may hold; 4) that there is no such thing as a dream with only one meaning; and 5) that all dreams speak a universal language, a language of metaphor and symbol.
A Buddhist Approach to Dreams

He goes on to list several other more 'Buddhist' ways of looking at dreams, one of which is as messages from other beings, teachings by Gods or Buddhas, or portents of the future.  There's a clear example of this in the Ant Hill Sutta when a monk brings a dream to the Buddha for him to interpret. In the dream a deva appears and gives a very clear teaching.

In early Buddhist psychology the mind is considered a sense in the same way our other five are, sight and so on. The images and sounds that come into our mind-sense come from outside the mind are received and we react to them in the same way we react to receiving things through our physical senses.

Whether we think dreams are generated somewhere inside of us, or come from the outside - there's no doubt in my mind of the importance of paying attention to the images and sounds we receive in our sleep. They can reveal great truths about the self.


The story I was telling yesterday about not being afraid isn't the whole truth. I am afraid. But that's not the whole story either, the dream showed me my fears, but I don't have to buy-in to them. Like Mara presenting the Buddha with images of temptation on the night of his enlightenment dreams can show us our shadows.

We need to give them space, and welcome them into our lives, but we don't need to become slaves to them.

I am afraid. But I have faith too. Something wonderful will happen

The Wisdom of Sex and The City...

Sometimes we need to stop analyzing the past, stop planning the future,
stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding exactly what we 
want, and just see what happens. 

I culled this from my sisters Facebook profile, it's a quote from Sex and the City, a programme I haven't seen much of. So I'm going to comment on the quote completely out of context, just as an example of common wisdom.

As always - the right wisdom for the right time: I remember reading in one of Jack Kornfield's book, a quote from his teacher, who said, when being criticised about giving teachings which seemed to contradict each other "When the student strays too far to the left, direct them to the right. When they stray too far to the right, direct them to the left."

If you are stuck in the cycle of endless analysing of the past, without coming to any new insight, or obsessively planning the future and clinging to those plans, like a man at sea clinging to a life raft, the practice of stopping can be a wonderful thing.  Whenever I catch sight of myself behaving or thinking in this kind of frenetic way a moment of stopping, and seeing what happens can be just the right thing.

Sometimes it's possible to say "stop" or "just let go" but this can seem like an impossible task. As a Pureland Buddhist I make an offering of these thoughts and feelings to the Buddha and in this offering, with the help of the Buddha, am able to let these thoughts go completely.

If, on the other hand, you are the sort of person who always goes with the flow, and just sees what happens (and I'm guilty of this too, sometimes) perhaps what you need to do in these moments is to do some active reflection.  Going with the flow can just be another way of saying, "habitual action". In English the word meditate means to think upon something, and in the Buddhist teaching the first of the meditations called the Jhana's is 'directed thought'.  Looking honestly at what has occurred, and at what might occur in the future is an important part of spiritual practice. Asking oneself are ones actions skilful?

Broadly there are two types of meditation in Buddhism. Insight meditation in which one looks honestly at one's own life, and situation and peaceful or calming meditation, in which one's mind becomes still.  Sometimes stopping is the right thing to do. Sometimes thinking is the right thing to do.

Sometimes we need to stop analyzing the past, stop planning the future...Sometimes we need to start analyzing the past, planning the future...

Can Buddhists be Constructive?

Was catching up with Tom Armstrong who set up the Blogisttva awards (I had a couple of nominations, back in 2005, when both me and my blog had different names.) and he said to me:

I'm happy to see that things for you are moving in happy, constructive directions. [Are Buddhists allowed to be constructive? I think we are, right?]

Are we?

I think so too. But I wonder where Tom's doubt came from. The clichéd image of the Buddhist who sits on his zafu all day and does nothing? Or perhaps some Buddhist's mantra of shunyata. I knew a teacher whose favourite stock phrase in times of trouble was shunyata - it's all empty. The implication being if the whole world was empty of self, or even illusory, it was only our minds causing trouble, so why worry?


The concept of 'emptyness' has caused a lot of trouble.In her chapter  in Pruning the Bodhi Tree Sallie King writes that the doctrine of emptiness lead to a kind of moribundity in Buddhism in ancient China.  The philosophy became a kind of nihilism, if everything is ultimately empty of self, and of existence, why do anything at all?

I've seen similar questions asked of Buddhism today, both by practising Buddhists and those on the outside looking in.

"Emptiness" in this context can be seen as short hand for something like; each thing is the sum of its parts and each part is the sum of its parts...a kind of endless deferral of existence. For example 'mind' is just a collection of habits and thoughts, they in turn come out of a process of my experience of the world, the world is made up of things  which are made up of other things...on and on and on. There is no real essence of anything to be located anywhere. Hence: everything is empty.

Contemporary writers have found parallels with Derrida's idea of Différance: meaning is always postponed, we only understand a word in language, or a thing in the world, in relation to other words, or things. Thus when I write about my Fiancée this only makes sense if we also understand ideas about marriage, love, and so on. Nothing exists in its own right. There is no real essence. Hence everything is empty.

There are two ways of reading emptiness. One in which the whole world becomes illusory and almost disappears, this is the extreme of the endless deferral position. The teacher who used to tell me, in times of trouble, "Don't worry it's all empty." was of this tradition. He always seemed to deny my actual experience of the world; that sometimes things really do hurt.

The other reading, which I prefer, accepts the existence of things. It accepts the specific real instances of our experiences and our relation to real others, with all the joy and sorrow that brings with it. It stresses how we are constantly relating to other beings, but not that these relationships don't exist.

The ancient Indian philosopher Nagarjuna, who wrote extensively about this, used the example of a father and son. In the action of being born, not only is the son created but the father also, his identity as 'father' is dependent on the existence of his son. To me both the father and son are real. Both have real lives and histories and yes, both identities are dependent upon the existence of the other - but this doesn't deny their reality.

If we accept this reading then of course we can be constructive, emptiness tells us about our enmeshment in the world, it tells us about how our identities are created - but it needn't deny the world

There are many ideals in Buddhism, the absolute ideal for each of us is to become enlightened, and that means embodying wisdom (understanding this web of relationships) and compassion. We are compelled to make a difference. To love. In constructive ways. To move in happy constructive directions.

Being "Off Script"

I don't know where it comes from, but most of us (and I extrapolate from my own experience) fear chaos. We are afraid of uncontrolled spaces and of unknown spaces. We fill the space under the bed with bogeymen and the dark forests with fierce wolves.

In some ways though these stories of bogeymen and wolves are easier than chaos. Even though we might be terrified of them, a known monster might be less scary than something unknown, just around the corner. (Let me know if you think this is true...)

In this week's theatre workshop we've been working without a play script. There's a richness of possibilities in a completely empty space, that becomes lost as we fix scenes. When the director calls "keep it" a different kind of richness appears.

The most difficult thing for a performer is to send them into a completely empty space and say "Just do something!" My own experience of such an instruction is of becoming paralysed by too many possibilities, too many unknowns. Looking into the world and becoming blinded. When some limit is given to the performer, even as simple as restricting the size of the performance area, it destroys some of the possibilities. We create worlds of manageable sizes for ourselves.

In real life we do this by telling stories. And stepping outside the stories we are used to can be frightening. What will we discover in the great unknown - bogeymen and wolves, or wonderful castles and beautiful people?

For the past four years I've been living in a religious community, and now I'm moving out. I'll be able to take some of my stories with me, but some of the ways that most defined my life in the last four years will be changing. It's scary.

And sometimes it's exhilarating, and sometimes I am filled with hope. The deepest kind of faith lets me face the chaos without any stories, a deep sense of trusting in the unfolding life. To be completely off-script, and trusting that one will soar...

This sense of faith comes from a sense that there is more than just stories to the world, there is something beyond them. Something which is good, but difficult to talk about. As a Buddhist priest, I call it Nirvana or the Pureland and there are stories about these that can help keep me on the path. These stories help me face the world, but the wisdom of the Buddhas is beyond even this. Looking out into the great unknown, with trust and with love.

Separateness and Otherness

A scholar sitting in on a run through of a one-woman show I directed entitled Room, based upon the writings of Virginia Woolf, was overcome with emotion at a particular point in the play. Later he interviewed the actress Ellen Lauren and asked her what she was thinking about during this specific section of the play. Ellen responded, “I was counting.” Due to the intricate choreography and precise musical cues in the scene, Ellen found it necessary to count. The scholar was appalled. He could not believe that what swept him away so thoroughly was a section in which the actor was counting.

From Anne Bogart's blog: April 2010

Magical session in the theatre workshop this morning. I guided the participants through creating  narratives for the characters and scenario's we'd been exploring earlier in the week. As part of this I asked the performers to break the narrative down into about five beats, that they could represent with a few words, and then to create an action with their body for each beat. Something that could be repeated. In this way we created not only a mime that could be run from beginning to end, but a series of building blocks for the performance.

As part of the mornings work these actions were transmitted to the other actors, first as pure motion, and then with some narrative. Some words filling out the imaginative world.

Speaking with one of the actors afterwards we talked about how he had made a connection with one action, copied from another performer, but that once he heard the words, the context of the original performers imagination, he couldn't make the action fit the narrative.

What we receive from encountering an event is deeply personal and connected to our own karma. The two actors performing that very simple action had quite different experiences of it. To one of them it was hanging a photograph, perhaps of some significance, to the other the action was of construction, of rebuilding the town.

As humans, in a shared society there are broadly some symbols and actions we understand in a shared way. But even these most obvious symbols are received by each of us slightly differently. And sometimes we can have quite different responses to the same event. Part of creating a society, a community or a relationship is the creation of shared symbols. As we spend time with our loved ones, our views of the world, our responses to the world, the language with which we talk about our experiences begins to overlap.

But there is always a gap.

In theatre this gap is where the creativity springs from, and in life too. In relationships, it's difference that makes life interesting and rich. And it's why to love someone we need to trust them. I can never know the whole of you, I will never see the world through your eyes, parts of you will remain hidden from me. I have to learn to trust that those parts are lovable and valuable even when they challenge me. I have to trust the gap, the spaces between knowing.  This is where real life happens.

...the loud/breathing of the sea

This morning no sound but the loud
breathing of the sea

From New Religion by Bill Holm (The Chain Letter of the Soul: New and Selected Poems)

My Fiancee sent this poem to my inbox this morning.  Holm turns our conception of cosmology upside down, in his world Heaven's not up but down. Down under the waves of the sea.  In the same moment this poem arrived in my inbox, I was instructing the participants in the second day of theatre workshops here to "imagine you are a creature that lives in the sea, you can breath underwater..."

Perhaps this synchronicity points to nothing more than how powerful and mythic a landscape the sea is. The sea is big enough and complex enough to provide metaphor for a whole host of human experiences. It is completely other than us, it has the power to crush cities and to give us an experience of bliss.  I can understand why Holm's God is found under the waves, there is a strength in the ocean we can hardly imagine,  and there is grace too.

In the workshop people moved as if supported by the sea, as if their bodies had become bouyant in a way that's impossible upon land.  In our imaginations we were relieved of our weight. In reality it takes a huge amount of energy to hold the body in this unusual way, deifying gravity. But by some trick of the mind, we become like sea creatures. The most beautiful performances are when the imaginative world is inhabited completely. When the performer becomes conscious of the action something magical disappears.

As a witness to the exercise, what I receive is the experience of seeing someone being completely supported by something that's not themselves. This is the grace of the ocean, and as a performance it can stand in for a universal experience of grace.

In one of my moments of spiritual crisis, when I was tying myself in knots about some doctrinal issue or another, Prasada, one of my teachers, said to me: "I have an image of you splashing in the ocean...perhaps you just need to float." She was right. It's scary to stop splashing around, to trust there is something other than me that will support my life. But the ocean of grace is always there. Just float.

Addendum: More syncronicity: Catching up with my friend Will's blog: Think Buddha I discovered his PhD on ethics is now published as Finding Our Sea-Legs: Ethics, Experience and the Ocean of Stories.

Learning to walk again...

Five years ago I spent a week with Frank Theatre, learning to walk. For most of us walking is the most habitual way of getting our bodies between two points in space. We walk endlessly, and speaking for myself, mostly mindlessly.

Patterns of moving become ingrained in us, our bodies become habitually tense. I hold myself differently from my neighbour, we walk differently. We're different people.

Part of both theatre training and Buddhist training is the undoing of habits. In theatre it gives us greater flexibility as  a performer, to become someone else on stage we need to go beyond our usual ways of moving. In Buddhism it gives us greater flexibility as people, we respond and behave with more awareness. Less stuckness.

Frank Theatre use walking as their basic training, based on the work of Tadeshi Suzuki, a Japanese Theatre Director. It's an extreme training to develop extraordinary ways of moving for performance. But even a basic upsetting of our habitual ways of moving can provide great insight. When we are asked to do something differently, we discover our habits. How tightly we hold onto them and the possibility to behave in a new way. The possibility to 'be' in a new way.

In this morning's workshop I asked the participants to imagine they could move the centre-of-gravity of their body. As if the bulk of their weight was collected in their head, their chest, their belly, their knees and then their feet. Being led from each of these places. Noticing the difference when they walked, being led from one body part, then another. Both the physical differences, and what emotion or psychology that evoked.

The clearest example I ever saw of this happened by accident. I saw a theatre director, a man at home in his body, deep in thought, walking down the street. In my memory his head is at least a foot in front of his body. His body simply following wherever the head goes. When I am in this state, when I'm lost in thought, I'm not only completely unaware of my body, but also everything else. As that theatre director walked past me, he didn't notice me at all.

We talk about someone who is proud having a 'puffed up chest' and it's so clear, when you watch people moving from here, where this expression comes from. They became filled with pride, this morning, walking with their chests out first.

We all have to live in our bodies, and working in theatre, it becomes clear how imaginary the separation between body and mind is: each is constantly conditioning the other. For me, working with the body is a brilliant way of exposing habits and expressing new ways of being. I mostly do that within the four walls of the rehearsal room, and then collect the character of myself again at the door.  But I'm sure that some of the awareness, some of the loosening of habits, spills over in to real life too.

The first date

In A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre Anne Bogart writes that going to rehearsal should feel like going on a romantic date, that same mix of anticipation and excitement and perhaps a little fear too. (Fear and excitement are the same in the body after all, when we are on the edge of fight or flight.) This morning is the first day of the week long Theatre workshops I'm leading here in France, and it does feel like a first date.

I've prepared, as much as one can, there's a mix of stories and ideas, theatre games and exercises floating around inside me, and I've made the space ready. Extra-ordinary. This is always a strong element of the theatre for me - it must be about extraordinary things.  What actually happens in the space comes out of a meeting of real people, and that's where the fear and excitement comes, whatever happens it will be something new and some things will be completely unexpected. That's the exciting part, being open to the joy of creativity that comes from this encounter. And my role in holding the space and following and guiding the energy in the room, of fostering the enthusiasm and channelling it into the drama. Some of the fear is here. In getting it right.

One never does this completely of course, the most one can do is keep returning over and over again to the rehearsal space. When all my skill as a director/facilitator fails the least and most important thing I can offer is commitment. From that intention, everything else follows.

One heart

When my Fiancee and I arrived in France we discovered in our room a heart made of fallen rose petals, arranged by a mutual  friend. Both my fiancee and our friend are on their way back to England today. I'm still here in France. Looking through photographs of our time here, and writing email after email in order to feel closer to her... I know. I'm terrible, but my excuse is that we've not yet been engaged three weeks.

This one heart, made from a thousand fallen rose petals, is like my love for you: made from a thousand real moments. Each petal's edge is touched with death, the moments that we share are just the same. Precious and fleeting. A thousand instances of loving you, existing one after another, and somehow altogether at the same time. This one heart is my love for you.

It's funny how, with a little distance, the love blossoms. Like meeting a Van Gogh. I love to stand to close and take joy in each brush stroke. When I step back and see the whole, I am arrested and breathless. Breathless.