March | 2024 | Contemplative Inquiry

March 25, 2024

MENTAL HEALTH UNDER SIEGE

“In Gaza, there is no ‘post’ [traumatic] because the trauma is repetitive and ongoing and continuous.” Dr. Samah Habr is Head of Mental Health Unit, Palestine Ministry of Health. She wrote these words in 2021, after the 11 day Israeli day air assault carried out in May of that year. It was the fourth war since the beginning of the blockade of Gaza in 2007. Recently I attended a Zoom event, predominantly for Amnesty International volunteers (1). Dr. Habr gave a presentation about mental health in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, with a focus on Gaza from 2007-2021, where there is good enough data to process scientifically. Clearly the situation is much worse today.

The blockade itself created deep poverty, an ongoing water crisis and a severe curtailment of opportunities. A mental health study of children at that time showed that 80% of Gaza’s children had experienced personal trauma and 54% met the official diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Dr. Sabr describes this prevalence of psychological trauma as ‘the disaster of helplessness’ and identifies three forms of it at play:

chronic trauma prolonged. pervasive distressing events such as poverty and institutionalized discrimination
inter-generational trauma psychological trauma experienced by the descendents of a person who has survived a traumatic event
acute trauma an extremely distressing individual event

She goes on to use the word ‘humiliation’ to describe “the pervasive and fundamental experience of the Palestinian people as a whole, under occupation, underlying the varied military, social, economic, and human rights violations that have been imposed over generations”.

One of Dr. Sabah’s principles is that “we cannot treat what we do not acknowledge”. A psychiatrist herself, she says that the Western-based medical model of mental health, codified in the DSM series, is over-individualised. Palestine has few resources for mental health provision, and few mental health practitioners. (There have been some, even in Gaza – 12 of the 67 children killed in the 2021 action were participating in a trauma recovery program.)

Dr. Sabah introduces the concept of Sumud and defines it as a combination of of endurance and steadfastness, both individual and collective. A mental state as well as action oriented, it:

is prosocial and community oriented
fosters endurance and steadfastness
enables defiance against oppression
promotes solidarity
is committed to keep loving despite injustice

Dr. Habr suggests that historical/collective trauma needs to be reprocessed collectively. “It can be alleviated through cohesive and collective efforts such as recognition, remembrance, solidarity, creativity, community psychology and mass cooperation. In youth work particularly (the Palestinians are predominantly a young population), a suggested model is that trauma informed-teachers, medical staff and parents offer community-based interventions in safe spaces – open studios, symbolic expression, theatre of the oppressed).

Dr. Sabr concludes that positive mental health cannot be achieved without justice. “Human rights are the cornerstone upon which mental health flourishes. Without dignity, without freedom, without justice, our emotional well-being is torn apart, leaving us adrift in a sea of suffering.”

All of the crimes in Israel/Gaza from 7 October 2023 have haunted me. This is my second second post about ongoing destruction of Gaza and the deadly consequences for its people (2). Do such posts have an appropriate place in my contemplative inquiry? Yes. If I am held within interbeing (3), I cannot separate myself from these events. If they enter my head, heart and dreams, they are present anyway. I am asked to be conscious and mindful or I will be prey to disabling distress and unskilful ideation. In an outer ripple kind of way, they become an issue for my own mental and emotional wellbeing.

There’s not much I can do other than be conscious and bear witness. But that, at least, is something. On behalf of her people Dr. Habr has asked the people of the West not to abandon them. So today I am moved to write about an aspect of Palestinian experience even in ‘normal’ times.

I believe that Dr. Habr has also given a gift to us. Reading her account of Sumud, it seems to me that its population based take on mental health is portable. I am confident that it can be applied with appropriate cultural modifications in other settings with potentially emancipatory results.

(1) Amnesty International, as anon-partisan human rights organisation, does not take a position on what an eventual settlement in Israel/Palestine should look like. But it does advocate an immediate cease-fire, an embargo on military sales, and a dismantling of the apartheid system operating in the whole territory both for Arab Israelis and Palestinians living under occupation. The event I attended included presentations on possible pathways to peace and Jewish opposition to the current war. For general information about Amnesty in the UK, see https://amnesty.org.uk/

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2023/12/11/poem-if-I-must-die/

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2018/05/10/the-notion-of-interbeing/

Picture Credit: Dr. Samah Jabr

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March 14, 2024

MARCH 2024: WIND IN THE WILLOWS

I’m walking in my local park. It’s a dull day in the first half of March. There have been many such days, and I could do with more sun. I certainly feel lifted when it comes. At the same time the days are longer and Mother Nature is busy with the work of spring: an abundance of willow catkins is testament to this.

I get my strongest impression of the strength and fecundity of willow when close up. The individual catkins are clearer, more prominent. The colours are stronger. There’s the sense of a rich and vibrant ecosystem, powerfully alive.

Still images don’t provide movement and sound, or indicate the presence of the March wind. I have tried to capture this in my short video below, illustrating another aspect of this moment in the year. It brought up fond childhood memories of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows which begins with spring cleaning and includes the gently Pagan chapter The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Willow became important to me in my early study and practice of Druidry. I began a special relationship with a particular willow in Bristol for many years (2), which continued after I left the city and continues sporadically to this day. I also developed a private tradition of following the wheel of the year through a mandala based on 16 trees, all in easy distance of where I lived, with Willow the focus from 17 March to 7 April, hence presiding over the spring equinox (3). Checking in with the willows is a continuing feature of my walks, though I was a little early this year.

(1) Kenneth Grahame The Wind in the Willows London: Dean, in association with Methuen’s Children’s Books, 1991. (Ist ed. 1908. Illustrated by E. H. Shepard)

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2013/1/31/willow/

(3) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2021/03/17/tree-mandala-willow/

March 9, 2024

BOOK REVIEW: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DU FU

Highly recommended to anyone interested in Chinese traditional poetry and culture, and the way it is received in China today. I looked at an aspect of Michael Wood’s In the Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet (1) in my last post (2). This is a full book review. The back cover provides an accurate basic summary of its contents: “For a thousand years Du Fu (712-70 CE) has been China’s most loved poet. Born into the golden age of the Tang Dynasty, he saw his world collapse in famine, war and chaos. The poet and his family became impoverished refugees, but his profound vision and his empathy for the sufferings of humanity endured, and have endeared him to readers ever since. … Broadcaster and historian Michael Wood follows in Du Fu’s footsteps on a pilgrimage through the physical and emotional landscapes of his life and work”.

The book, lavishly illustrated, is divided into 24 chapters. Many of these are headed by place names. Michael Wood visited most of them on his own journey, talking with scholars and enthusiasts and also taking time to observe the very different China of today. The narrative is somewhat tilted towards the last 15 years of Du Fu’s life, when the War of An Lushan (3) displaced Du Fu and turned him into an internal refugee, constantly on the move, for the rest of his life. It is also seen as the period of his best poetry.

The first chapters of the book emphasise the easy optimism of Du Fu’s early years. A new Emperor, himself a painter, musician and poet, launched a cultural rebirth. He was a patron of libraries and scholars. He ruled a prosperous and peaceful country. Du Fu writes nostalgically of childhood years in which “rice was succulent … the granaries were full, and there was not a robber on the road in all the 9 provinces of China”. Growing up in the city of Gong-yi on the Yellow River, the son of an Imperial official, Du Fu looked forward to a successful life as both official and poet. “I’d read everything and I thought I was superb”. He went to Chang’an and took his exams for the Imperial service.

He failed them. “In the blue sky my wings failed me”. For some years he went on a series of family supported wanderings, honed his poetic skills and became interested in the Chinese version of Mahayana Buddhism. Returning to Chang’an he failed the exams again, but managed to get a lowly official job, married, and began to raise a family. He settled them in Fengxian near the capital, a place that featured hot springs. Although he had to be available at Chang’an, he visited often. At this point his poetry began to show a concern for ordinary people.

Here at the hot spring the emperor entertains his court

And music echoes around the hills.

Only the rich and powerful bathe here.

But the silk they wear was woven by people,

women whose husbands are beaten for their taxes.

In 755, even before war broke out, China was devasted by floods and a resultant famine. Du Fu lost an infant son to starvation and wrote that he was ashamed to be a father. Famine threatened again, on the road, after the rebel victory:

My little girl bit me in her hunger

And fearful that wolves or tigers would hear her cries

I hugged her to my chest, muffling her mouth,

But she struggled free and just cried more.

Michael Wood provides a map of the family’s subsequent movements, generally in the rugged, often spectacular and less populated west of China. They could never settle for very long, as political and military conditions remained volatile and unsafe. I describe Du Fu’s sojourn in Chengdu in my pervious post (2). Towards the end of his life, conditions seemed to be easing and the family began moving back east via the Yangtze river, in gradual steps. This gives Michael Wood the opportunity to describe his own experience of the hyper-modern city of Chongqing, though Kuizhou and the spectacular Three Gorges area are more important to Du Fu and his work. Wood says that, “in the Gorges, though it had been at great cost to himself, Du Fu’s gift was creative and imaginative freedom”. His output was prolific, and drew on a meditatively close encounter with nature.

Crescent moon stilled in the clear night

Half-abandoned to sleep, lamp wicks blossom

In echoing mountains unsettled deer stir

Falling leaves startle locusts.

By this time Du Fu was worn down by asthma, diabetes and years of hardship. Though he got a little further down river, he never made it to his original home. Nonetheless he was able to be defiantly celebratory:

Old and tired, my hair white, I dance and sing out:

Goosefoot cane, no sleep, catch me if you can!

Du Fu died at the age of 58 in Changsha in Hunan Province. Michael Wood went there simply to complete the journey, but was rewarded with a new lens on Du Fu’s work and the creative tradition he came from. He met Professor Yang Wu at the University there. One of her interests is “the living oral tradition of poetry and the possibility of reconstructing the ancient music that might have accompanied it”. Research on ancient poetry and music is an expanding subject in today’s China. Du Fu’s poetry has been preserved in Hunan oral tradition as well as in manuscripts. A local tradition of poetry clubs has survived the early Communist period. Now it is reviving and being encouraged. Professor Wu and her students have been busy with making replica’s of Tang dynasty instruments – for example the qin, a seven-stringed instrument with strings of twisted silk. They are finding manuscript records of early musical settings, and sound-recording local people’s singing. For me this adds another dimension to Du Fu’s work – where he can be understood , in part, as the lyricist for music that was performed in group and public settings.

In the Footsteps of Du Fu is highly informed and engagingly written. For me is also a beautiful artefact, though eminently portable, not at all a coffee table book. I rarely buy printed books now because the print is too small for me. But I was fine with this one and the illustrations are a joy. Another reason for my strong recommendation.

(1) Michael Wood In The Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet London: Simon and Schuster, 2023

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/03/06/poem-welcome-rain-spring-night/

(3) In December 755 An Lushan, a Turkic general in the Imperial service, marched on China’s then capital city, Chang’an, from North China with a quarter of a million men. They inflicted a series of defeats on the Imperial army and occupied Chang’an in July 756. An Lushan was assassinated by his own son in 757 but the war continued for 7 years. Tang dynasty China, whilst nominally lasting for decades longer, was never the same again.

Personal note: Michael Wood’s introduction begins: “if you love literature of any kind, you will have had one of those moments when you encounter a book that opens a window onto a world you never dreamed existed. Mine was at school when I first encountered Du Fu in A. C. Graham’s wonderful Poems of the Late T’ang.” I had my own version of the same experience, and still have my battered old copy. Du Fu is transliterated in that and some other translations as Tu Fu. The price, in the top left corner of the cover (see picture) is 4/- (four shillings, or 20 pence in post-1970 UK money). I have never been a formal student or scholar in this domain, but modern English translations of classical Chinese poetry have left a deep impression on me. Another poem from this collection can be found in this blog at: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2016/02/04/poem-a-withered-tree/

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March 6, 2024

POEM: WELCOME RAIN, SPRING NIGHT

“The good rain knows its season.

When spring arrives it brings life.

It follows the wind secretly into the night

And moistens all things softly, soundlessly.

On the country road the clouds are all black,

On a river boat a single fire bright.

At dawn you see this place red and wet:

The flowers are heavy in Brocade City.”

(Brocade City = Chengdu, in southwestern China)

Michael Wood In The Footsteps of Du Fu: China’s Greatest Poet London: Simon and Schuster, 2023

This poem welcomes spring and also celebrates arrival at a place of safety. For a brief period in the early 760s the Chinese poet Du Fu (712 – 770 CE) had a cottage and garden in Chengdu, the Brocade City. It was a time of social breakdown in China and although from the landowning and mandarin class, Du Fu and his family had become refugees in their own country. At times, during their wanderings in the rugged terrain of western China, they were shelterless and close to starvation. Nonetheless, Du Fu retained an underlying resilience. Despite everything his capacity to notice, contemplate, feel, care and write were not compromised. One of his earlier poems, written when trapped in the rebel occupied capital Chang’an (City of Eternal Peace, now Xi’an), begins:

“The state is destroyed, but the country remains.

In the City in spring grass and weeds grow everywhere.

Grieving for the times, even the blossom sheds tears

Hating the separation birds startle the heart.”

As part of his following in Du Fu’s footsteps, Michael Wood visited Chengdu and talked to local people and tourists from other parts of China. Why does Du Fu matter to them now? One older local resident said that he came to the garden – now a well kept heritage site – “at least once a month” to reflect on Du Fu’s poetry. “For a long time we suffered, now we are better off, but today society is very materialistic, and spiritual things are going away. But I feel these things still matter, and here in this place you can go right into his mind: the thoughts and feelings of someone from so long ago. To me, this is a miracle. The garden here is big enough to get lost in, away from the public, especially if you come early in the morning. I sit in a corner and recall him, maybe read out one of his poems out loud, and reflect on it”. He described this as his meditation.

Below is an imaginary portrait of Du Fu by the artist Jiang Zhaohe (1904 -1986). It was done in 1959, during Mao’s Great Famine, described by Michael Wood as “one of China’s most shattering disasters”.

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Month: March, 2024