Sichuan Opera in the middle of nowhere, and meeting old, unexpected friends...

Friday evening, Fiona and I set off for a little village hall on the edge of Shropshire and Worcestershire to see something called "Flying Panda: The Story Traders of Sichuan". We'd seen it advertised weeks ago in an arts guide, and I'd been hooked in by the description.

We came into the back of an already full hall and were drawn in to a world millions of miles from our own. Three English performers, and two Chinese actors and one musician took us first into modern day China, and then through the retelling of a traditional Sichuan Opera story into a mythic time.

The Chinese actors spoke Mandarin, the English actors spoke English and the story allowed the Chinese performers to show the full extent of their abilities, mask changing, glorious acrobatics and a style of performance that is perfectly graceful, without it becoming spectacle, and without needing the English actors to become expert Sichuan performers.

Throughout the first act I was sure that I knew the Chinese musical director, who was playing the Erhu throughout. In the interval I saw her name in the programme and suddenly the memory dropped into place. It was Ling Peng, who had played at a book launch for Who Loves Dies Well and The Other Buddhism, a few years ago at the Buddhist community in Leicestershire. I had booked her to play for us then, and had been the main contact person.

It was a wonderful addition to a wonderful evening, we spoke a little at the end, she recognised me - despite my new beard, and civilian clothes and it was lovely to reconnect.

Today we climbed up the hills to enjoy them in their winter coat.

La vita è bella

Sutra Chanting in the Morning

The words tumble so quickly they slip past our rational minds, and straight into the stream of unconscious thought. We are reciting the first part of The Larger Pureland Sutra.

For me this is a practice I've been doing for years, the complicated Sanskrit names come reasonably easily to me and I know the shape of the Sutra, the story, if you will. It's the first time Fiona has done this chanting and I'm impressed by how she manages the unfamiliar words, grasping them much more quickly than the first time I recited this text.

In this Sutra Shakyamuni tells the story of how a Prince left home to become a monk searching for a spiritual teacher and how when he met he became inspired to create a Pureland, and recited 48 vows to this effect. He later became enlightened, and created his Pureland, he was known as Amida.

This is a practice I really enjoy, for the sound of the words and the poetry of the text. And it's a practice that sustains me. For me there is something very nourishing about reciting this story, reminding myself of of the Vows Amida made, and what that means in my own life.

Amida - the measureless - vowed that whoever hears his name will be saved. Whoever comes into even the smallest contact with the measureless will be liberated. And it reminds me of his vow to create a land where all are loved equally and encouraged to liberation, and of my own vows to move in this direction.

This is a video from a couple of years ago, when I was living at The Buddhist House, as a monk, and Susthama and I recorded this for others to have a taste of the practice.

The importance of facing death

I've been enjoying reading Yalom's Love's Executioner... this week. I particularly appreciate how he owns his own flaws and faults and accepts how they influence the therapy with his clients. I've also enjoyed learning something of his existential theories.

In one case study Yalom is seeing a client who is facing death, with a terminal illness, but who believes in rebirth. In the sessions he doesn't explore the clients beliefs, or challenge them, rather he uses them to make sure the client lives in a way which is congruent with his beliefs.

But in the book he does say how he feels that a belief in rebirth is a defence against the 'death anxiety'. He sees facing and accepting the existential reality of death as one of the most liberating things a person can do, and in his view, a belief in rebirth prevents that.

Is a belief in rebirth just avoiding the fact of death?
When the Buddha taught 2500 years ago, the wheel of life and death, the fact of rebirth was part of the culture.  Spiritual practices were designed to get one a higher rebirth, next time around - or ultimately to get off the wheel and  become one with God. In this culture rebirth was not seen as a positive. Life was hard, partly because of those existential realities Yalom is so fond of, even if one has many lifetimes, this specific life will die, and the next specific life will die and so on, with all the suffering in-between.

The Buddha taught Nirvana. Nirvana, the way to escape this cycle, is to live a noble life, a life facing existential reality and responding with wisdom and compassion. We're also reminded many times of the preciousness of this life, and how swiftly it might end.

The more I think about this, the less convinced I am that liberation is dependent upon what we believe happens when we die at all. There might be some truth in Yalom's experience of people who cling on to the idea of rebirth as a way of avoiding facing hard truths and it may be the best medicine for that illusion is to guide them towards facing the existential reality of death. We live in a very different culture today, and the realities of death are hidden by closed caskets.

But I want to say that the model of rebirth can lead to liberation too. Regardless how one thinks the actual mechanism might work, the wheel of life reminds me of the existential realities of not just my own life, but of many, many lives, one after another, and all at the same time too. Each specific life will be born, will struggle sometimes, and will die.

This life we have now is short. The momentum of this life already is impacting upon countless others, and will impact upon countless others after you die. If you have a next life, that will be short too, and full of its own struggles.

The wheel of life doesn't, or shouldn't if understood properly, hide the reality of death, but points to many, many deaths.

It is crucial to be able to face this. Buddhist training is about learning to live, and to die well.

The love of The Buddha

Below is the first of the monthly Malvern Sangha Newsletters. Click here to sign up to have them delivered straight into your inbox.

"The wisdom of the Buddhas is boundless and free
shining brightly with none to loath or shun..."

from The Larger Pureland Sutra

The vision of the Pureland which Shakyamuni Buddha describes in this Sutra is one in which each being is lit up by the wisdom of the Buddha.

The ideal world he describes is one in which each person, regardless of their history, their karma, is loved and accepted and encouraged towards enlightenment.

One way of describing enlightenment is being in that state the Buddha is in, where he is able to love each living thing indiscriminately. For ordinary beings like us, willing ourselves into a state of loving kindness is impossible, we have so much 'baggage' that gets in the way.

In the Pureland school of Buddhism enlightenment is to recognise our own normality, and how much baggage we each have, and that we are all loved and accepted, by the Buddha, just as we are. And not only that we are acceptable and lovable, but that, despite our baggage, each one of us shines with a reflection of that light.

This is the wisdom of the Buddhas, to be able to see each of us, just as we are, and to love us, that we might reflect that love.

This week we gilded our Buddha statue, imperfectly. He sits on the shrine, golden, with the odd crack here and there, glowing in the sun light, in the same way each of us, imperfectly, are golden, with the odd crack here and there.

*

On Sunday the 28th of November we will be holding an Introduction to Pureland Buddhism from 11am til 1pm in our home in Malvern (by donation). If you'd like to come along do reply to this email. And do forward this newsletter to any of your friends who might be interested.

Visiting another Pureland Sangha, in West Wales.

My brother Adrian was with us in Malvern Saturday morning, after a night at the fireworks the evening before. After saying goodbye to him, Fiona and I drove west, through the beautiful rolling hills of Hereford and Shropshire, in to Mid-Wales and on to the Dovey Valley. We stopped along the way to visit a great aunt and uncle of mine, and then late afternoon rolled up in Machynlleth.

We were greeted by a smiling Hussam, and the wonderful smells of soup being prepared for tomorrows meeting. Hussam has a beautiful house, and a beautiful shrine room, and it was here we had a lovely Pureland service Sunday morning.

There was a group of ten of us, and we walked and chanted Amitabha, we meditated and we recited Tan Butsu Ge. Hussam had asked me to say a few words, and I spoke about trust. How for me, the light of the Buddha is like harbour lights, calling me home and sometimes I can see the light clearly, and sometimes it is hidden by mist. On those misty days I have to trust that the light is still there, or remember it is there, and keep my boat pointing in that direction.

As I write through, I realise that it's not even my hand on the tiller. There is something pointing the boat to the harbour that is nothing to do with my conscious effort.

Thank you Hussam, for being a lovely host, and thank you Hala, for letting us sleep in your room.

Finding your "true self" or realising "no-self"?

After a conversation with poet Sarah James, in which she and Fiona and I talked about finding ones true poetic voice, Fiona emailed me Thomas Merton on becoming the poet that you were meant to become (note to self)

Many poets are not poets
for the same reason that
many religious men are not saints:
they never succeed in being themselves.
They never get around to being the particular poet
or the particular monk they are intended to be by God.
They never become the man or the artist who is called
for by all the circumstances of their individual lives....

To ones own self be true?
The question of whether one should eschew fashion in favour of blazing ones own trail, of how much one should follow forms laid down by tradition and so on led me to question what it really means to be true to ones own self, or in Merton's language the self we are "intended by God."

In Buddhist teaching and literature there is a great emphasis on realising ones self is illusory, a mere collection of habits and tangled stories about "me" that we identify with and call the self. Buddhists bandy about terms like no-self or emptyness-of-self. But what does this really mean? Is there any thing that we should be true to, when writing poetry, or when living life?

The self is a collection of stories and karma, and also of love and compassion. Each of us human beings has been born in to a specific body, and have had our own individual experiences, unique lives, each moment that we experience, and our reactions to it, are deeply personal. These experiences and the physical body we have colour our experience of the world. And as we live, we are ever changing, the self is fluid and transient, however much we resist change and cling to an idea of a permanent "me".

Is it possible to be true to such an ephemeral thing? What is the self that God intends?

I believe that what God intends, to continue borrowing Merton's turn of phrase, is that each of us should be honest about that collection of light and dark that is the self. To acknowledge the anguish we carry, the neuroses that leads to, how stuck we are, and to respond to that place, and that place in others, with love. This doesn't mean fixing an idea of who we are in the world, but continually being honest about the context one finds oneself in, about the reality of ones situation and of answering that with kindness.

What does that mean for a poet?
I believe that Eliot's assertion that one should be aware of the tradition one is working in, of the shoulders one is standing upon, reflects the spiritual practice of being honest about oneself: where one is now, and what has led one here.

And Eliot's assertion that keeping to a strict form can often uncover a deeper truth in the content seems to point at something about life as well. That being honest about the real situation one finds oneself in, and working inside that, from the spiritual tradition one has chosen, or inherited, to the body one is living in leads to the greatest spiritual energy and truth.

The poet that God has chosen you to be, the person that God (or love) intends you to be is right here, now. Look around, at the world, and at the darkest and lightest parts of yourself. What is calling to you?

How the stories we tell change our worlds (and how I didn't get the job).

Had an interesting day watching my thoughts and feelings today. Yesterday I had a job interview in the morning that I thought went well. I had a really good rapport with the interviewers and on the way out of the door the woman who runs the company was chatting to me and giving me some information that appeared to be making her company more attractive to me, based on what I had said I was looking for in my letter.

I also knew that they were interviewing five people, for two posts, so without knowing anything else about the other candidates the odds were okay.

Partly because I've been in this process for a few weeks now and just really want a job, and partly because I actually liked the ethos of the company, I was in a space of really wanting the position (I think you have to be, anyway, to interview well.)  I knew they were meeting this morning to decide, and so today I've had butterflies in my stomach.

As lunchtime passed into late afternoon the butterflies wore off, and turned to disappointment. At around five o clock this afternoon I received a short email....

It was very difficult to decide because all the people we interviewed were excellent. However, we have offered the posts to 2 other candidates and they have accepted the positions.

As soon as the news sank in, I started re-evaluating the interview, looking for signs that might have led to this outcome. Previously I had one story about the great rapport, and about how they not only tried to demonstrate how ethical their company was (I had said this was important) but also offer some flexibility over hours and I let myself become convinced that getting the job was a probable outcome.

Now, knowing that the end of the story was different, I started to tell it differently; how the other two interviewers were quieter, how I don't have exactly the right experience for the job and so on. If I'd been telling myself that story all day - the outcome that actually came about wouldn't have been a surprise.

It's almost as if I was changing my memory of what happened in order to make some sense of the events. I suspect that we do this all of the time, change how we see the world, what stories we tell about the world, just to make things neat.

Reality is more complex, and the true story is probably a mixture of the two, and also of things I don't know and can't control. We really did have a great rapport, and I may not have had the right experience, and I just don't know who else interviewed, or what was in the minds of the interviewers.

The main point I want to draw out in this post is something about how we alter our ideas about what happens in the world continually in order to find a fit between what we think is happening in the world and what's actually in the world and also how these don't have to have such a great overlap for us to get along in life. It almost seems to be habitual to tell a story about events that probably isn't true, in order to contain it, than to accept the unknown elements of life.

A final P.S: This process over the last couple of days was with a small company, and the whole process, apart from the final email was very human and warm. The jobs I've applied for in larger companies have had much more systematised interviews - I suspect this trend is part of the same tendency, to try and eliminate or ignore the unknown and the unmeasurable. Nine questions for each candidate, each scored. It's easy to choose who should have the post, you just add up the numbers. But this seems to miss something for me.

So I applaud this company that wanted to find out about me as a person, and I accept that I won't know why it didn't work out, I could make a neat story about the last couple of days, and it might even make moving on easier - give me some sense of control of the world again. But reality isn't neat and tidy.

It would be lovely to end on a note of hope, to say "I'm sure the right job is just around the corner." But there are 2.5 million people out of work in the UK and we're in the tail end (hopefully) of a recession. I do hope  that a job is just around the corner, but the important thing is not that prize - but how I live along the way.

Thanks for reading. If you've enjoyed this, or any posts from Purple Clouds, please do use the icons below to post them to facebook or twitter or to email it to your friends.

* * *

The photo above is from Noirlac Abby, in the centre of France, and contains its own mystery. 

The Wild Rose of Praise: Sanai

The Wild Rose of Praise by Sanai

Those unable to grieve,
or to speak their love,
or to be grateful, those
who can't remember God
as the source of everything,

might be described as vacant wind,
or a cold anvil, or a group
of frightened old people.

Say the Name. Moisten your tongue
with praise, and be the spring ground,
waking. Let your mouth be given
its gold-yellow stamen like the wild roses's.

As you fill with wisdom,
and your heart with love,
there's no more thirst.

There's only an unselfed patience
waiting on the doorsill, a silence
which doesn't listen to advice
from people passing in the street.

Gazing at the face of our Buddha statue in morning service, at the beauty of the alter, I was reminded that ours is a mystical tradition in which we, as ordinary human beings put ourselves in relationship to Amida, the measureless. There's not a lot spoken about mysticism or devotion in Buddhism in the UK, or the US, and yet there is a thread of gold at the heart of Buddhism that is this. Satori or Kensho or Shinjin is an awakening to this deeper reality - that of the measureless love which is just behind the veil of our delusion.

Sanai was a Sufi Muslim in the 12th C. but his practice was very similar to that of Pureland Buddhists, for him reciting the name of Allah, for us reciting the name of Amida.

"Say the Name. Moisten your tongue with praise."

New Pureland Buddhist Journal - Articles on ecology, community and more

My friend Susthama has just published the latest Running Tide, the journal of my Buddhist Order. It looks really great, it always does, she has a wonderful touch with the design. This month has lots of great articles, Dharmavidya talks about Buddhist community, Caroline Brazier talks about eco-therpay (look out for her new book on this, next year). Fiona, from Planting Words, writes about her journey to becoming a Pureland Buddhist and there's a short article by me about the transition from living in community as a monk, to living in the outside world....


...Enjoy...

Open publication - Free publishing - More magazine