Contemplative Druidry | Contemplative Inquiry

POEM: A WITHERED TREE

Not a twig or leaf on the old tree,

Wind and frost harm it no more.

A man could pas through a hole in its belly,

Ants crawl searching under its peeling bark.

Its only lodger, the toadstool which dies in a morning,

The birds no longer visit in the twilight.

But its wood can still spark tinder.

It does not care yet to be only the void at its heart.

By Han Yü (768-824)

From: Poems of the Late T’ang translated from the Chinese with an introduction by A.C. Graham Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965

Han Yü was primarily an essayist and polemicist, and initiated an ultimately successful Confucian revival at a time of Buddhist cultural dominance. When writing verse, he adopted devices traditionally confined to prose and to fu (prose poems) and sought to attend to the social and human content of poetry.

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January 29, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: NOT I NOT OTHER THAN I

Not I, Not Other than I is an inspiring story of spiritual awakening. For me, the book has a skilful balance of biography and wisdom in which each throws light on the other. Highly recommended to people involved or interested in contemplative spiritualities.

Russel Williams left school aged 11. Both of his parents were dead and he was too old for Barnado’s. So he was licensed to work for a living, though in 1932 and the years that followed it was hard to make ends meet. He describes himself in his teenage years as existing but not living. He was angry and aggressive, with no empathy, a quick temper, and prone to getting into fights. What frustrated him most was a sense of his own ignorance.

In 1939 war broke out and Williams joined the British army. He recalls that being a soldier “saved me from a bad end, kept me out of trouble – and most importantly it took away the worry of keeping myself alive. I had regular food and shelter for the first time since my parents died. It was easy, compared me to the life I had before. It also taught me self-discipline to control my emotions”.

After the war he went “walking, walking …” until he making contact with another man, who was starting up a small circus. Williams accepted the job of looking after the horses, and he began to feel a strong connection with them. He wanted to understand them better. “I set my mind to watching and observing every detail, every moment of the day, for days on end”. This process became “more and more concentrated”. He was “not thinking any more”. His mind had “gone quiet”. He was experiencing states of “spontaneity” and “living in the moment”. He began to “look through the horses’ eyes”, as the boundaries fell away, and he became notable for his calming and healing presence when working with them.

Still in his 20’s, Williams began to discern a path in life. Later he framed his life with the horses – 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 3 years – as a naturally occurring education in mindfulness meditation: his life a continual service, “with no thought of myself”. He still experienced frustration and disappointment, because he couldn’t find anyone to talk to about this who seemed willing to treat him seriously. But eventually he ran into a small number of kindred spirits, people with whom he could enter into close rapport, and this led to his joining the Manchester Buddhist Society in 1957.

Although the Society made a connection with Thai Buddhism in 1954 (one of their members trained as a monk) Williams himself has kept a distance from formal Buddhism. He has been President of the Society for over 40 years and he still doesn’t call himself a Buddhist. His life and work has included esoteric Christian influences and a resonance with Ramana Maharshi. One of his sayings is that whereas “Buddhism is a belief system … the way of the Buddha is a recognition system”. Acknowledging that Buddha didn’t go beyond dealing with suffering, never mentioning spiritual worlds as such or communicating with other entities, he added “but we do”. Williams’ way of the Buddha is also a way of the free spirit.

Russel Williams is now 93. He is still going strong. My contemplative Druid companion Rosa Davis mentioned this book at our last group meeting. Williams says that his life experience and practice have led him to a “natural state” of oneness with everything, and with the universe itself. “We are part of the unmanifest. We are part of the pure consciousness which has given rise to the whole universe. That consciousness is our true nature, and, when we rest within it, we feel a powerful sense of ease and contentment”. He believes that this is the only meaningful way of understanding the term ‘God’, and what Jesus of Nazareth meant when declaring “I and the Father are one”. This kind of experience, “stillness, pure consciousness, emptiness of being” is the inheritance of us all, and potentially available to us all. It is based on sense-feeling, and on filling the emptiness with loving-kindness.

Williams doesn’t support long meditation practices, though he does believe in frequent ones. He saying “once you get the process going” 10 or 15 minutes should suffice, and recommends doing it 7 times a day. For him, the way in to a full meditative state is through the realm of subtle feeling, and he invites us in with him about a third of the way through the book:

“Feel down here, a little bit above the navel you’ll find the right place. Centre yourself there, in feeling. Observe your breathing, in the sense of the expansion and contraction of the outer part of the body, as if it were a balloon …” From here we are guided to notice the calming and peaceful effects of this “gentle movement, this comfortable gentle movement … absence of agitation, peacefulness … a kind of heartfelt warmth of feeling … it feels homely, as though you belong there … And as though it were a light”. We then move outwards from the “balloon” to include the whole physical body and then go beyond it. “It reaches out in all directions … and begins to feel at home with all its surroundings, whether it be animate or inanimate … of the same nature” …. And so on into silence for a few minutes. At the end of the meditation the practitioner is asked to draw back into the “very centre”, making sure it is “still peaceful and warm” before returning to normal consciousness.

What I learned from this was the flavour of ‘sense-feeling’, a specifically located warmth, a sense of quiet movement, qualities of gentleness and peace. Nurturing is another favourite Williams word. These qualities fill the body-mind and move beyond it, filling emptiness, engendering loving-kindness. In a group meditation, they can create a deep rapport and subtle meeting place between participants. The aim is to develop “such gentle perception that you could compare it to a finger, soft and warm, touching a snow flake, but so delicate that the flake doesn’t melt”. From there, we begin to see into the nature of things, becoming aware of a different reality, expanding into it until we become “boundless”. This is achieved not by any great effort, but by simply letting go.

‘Sense-feeling’ has already helped me in my own practice. It enriches my experience of ‘presence’ (a key word for me), placing it more clearly beyond witnessing awareness as normally understood. The meditative experience becomes participatory and nurturing in a more complete way, yet one that also seems easy, obvious, almost remembered rather than newly learned. I’m grateful for the recommendation and glad to be passing it on.

Russel Williams (2015) Not I, Not Other than I: the Life and Spiritual Teachings of Russel Williams (Edited by Steve Taylor) Winchester & Washington: O Books

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January 25, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY IN 3 SENTENCES

Elaine and I were recently asked by a non-Druid local group to define contemplative Druidry in 3 sentences. This is what we came up with.

“Contemplative practice in Druidry supports what has been called ‘the Nature mysticism of modern Druidry’. Our understandings of what this means are provisional and inquiring – those of us who follow the Druid way are encouraged to craft our own practices in accordance with our inner guidance, our needs and wishes. Practices in the Stroud-based group include group meditation, personal sharing, outside walking meditation, chanting and contemplative arts.”

This mix of practices also forms the basis of our retreat days for the wider Druid and fellow-travelling community. This year we are running two such days – one in London on Sunday 7 February and the other in Stroud on Saturday 1 October together with Nimue and Tom Brown. See also http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com

We owe the phrase ‘the Nature mysticism of modern Druidry’ to Philip Carr-Gomm, who leads the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), who used it in his foreword to Contemplative Druidry: People Practice and Potential. He also pointed out that the Druid way as a whole is one where we take responsibility for crafting our own practices. We see this a something we need to emphasise, since this approach is still unusual in spiritual movements as a whole.

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January 18, 2016

POEM: DAWN’S ROSE

Dawn’s rose

Is melting an old frost moon.

Agony under agony, the quiet of dust,

And a crow talking to stony skylines.

Desolate is the crow’s puckered cry

As an old woman’s mouth

When the eyelids have finished

And the hill’s continue.

A cry

Wordless

As a newborn baby’s grieving

On the steely scales.

As the dull gunshot and its after-râle

Among conifers, in rainy twilight.

Or the suddenly dropped, heavily dropped

Star of blood on the fat leaf.

Ted Hughes, in Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 1972

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January 13, 2016

WESTERN WAYS: DRUIDRY AND SOPHIA

In my world, Druidry and the Way of Sophia are linked, though not the same. In The Western Way (1,2) authors Caitlin and John Matthews made a distinction between a ‘Native’ Tradition and a ‘Hermetic’ one, which act as “complementary opposites”. The Native Tradition is “the inward spiral of a maze which leads into the heart of ancestral earth-wisdom”. The Hermetic Tradition is the outward spiral of the same maze: a path of evolving consciousness which is informed by the inner resources of our ancestral roots, “augmented in a macrocosmic way” (2).

My original interest in a ‘Celtic’ spiritual thread, developing from the 1980s, wasn’t specifically Druid or Pagan. It came mostly through Celtic and Celtic influenced literature. Although a long tradition in its own right, it post-dates the demise of institutional Druidry and Paganism in Celtic speaking regions. Most of it has been written with at least an element of Christian reference and influence. So we get verses like this from the medieval Welsh Book of Taliesin:

I was at the cross

With Mary Magdalene.

I received the Awen

From Ceridwen’s cauldron. (3)

What I intuitively liked about this was the sense of a culture working to integrate diverse influences rather than attempting to be ‘pure’. Pure culture (or the attempt at it) narrows horizons and banishes possible resources, becoming limited and inflexible in my view. Sophia is both an image of the divine and expresses a blending of Jewish and Greek wisdom traditions. She came to prominence in Alexandria, the largest city of Roman Egypt. She is cosmopolitan. In the verse above Mary Magdalene (an incarnation of Sophia in some gnostic traditions) and Ceridwen (not a traditional Celtic goddess from Pagan times) both have Sophian roles in relation to male figures seen in different ways as light bringers.

Some of the Celtic-derived stories from the medieval period are clearly breaking new cultural ground whilst using resources from the Celtic past. They belong to a realm of creative mythology, as Joseph Campbell called it, whose purpose is “the opening … of one’s own truth and depth to the depth and truth of another in such a way as to establish an authentic community of existence” (4). Twelfth century Western Europe sought to renew itself by drawing on its classical heritage (native in Italy) and Geoffrey of Monmouth drew on it in his Mystic Life of Merlin (5), for example by dedicating a contemplative ‘Observatory’ to the owl deity Minerva, Roman Goddess of Wisdom. It also drew on Celto-Germanic heritage, with the Arthurian mythos – the matter of Britain – taking a prominent place. This mythos does not name Sophia. But it does have the image of the grail and the story of the grail quest. For me the grail represents the presence and energy of Sophia, and Caitlin Matthews has described it as “a prime symbol of Sophia” (6). Perceval, the grail winner, has to encounter the divine in a new way for himself. At one level his role is to honour and heal the land, renewing its tantric energy. But the Grail Goddess, whilst enabling that traditional collective healing, adds a new and more individuated depth of wisdom and compassion. So although I have always been moved by the scenes and images of the more archaically oriented Peredur (7), I have found a more compelling narrative in Parzival (8). It is the innovative aspect of the story that engages me and the grail image that nourishes me.

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, (9) Jesus of Nazareth asks three leading followers to say what they think he is like. Peter, traditionally Jewish, says “you are like a just messenger” (or righteous angel in other translations). Matthew, familiar with Graeco-Roman ways, says “you are like a wise philosopher”. Thomas says, “my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like”. The teacher responds, ‘I am not your Teacher. Because you have drunk, you have been intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended’. As I read this text, it is a confirmation that a lived spirituality is beyond packaging.

In this sense, terms like Druidry, Way of Sophia or Western Way have only a limited use. Joseph Campbell said “the best things cannot be told; the second best are misunderstood; after that comes civilised conversation”. The problem is real yet I believe he overstates his case. I think it is worth the effort of finding words, making distinctions and enabling affiliations in full awareness of the difficulties. Civilised conversation with moments of … something more … feels like an honourable pursuit.

Caitlin & John Matthews (1985) The Western Way: A Practical Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition: Volume 1 – the Native Tradition London: Arkana
Caitlin & John Matthews (1986) The Western Way: A Practical Guide to the Western Mystery Tradition: Volume 2 – the Hermetic Tradition London: Arkana
John Matthews (1991) Taliesin: Shamanism and the Bardic Mysteries in Britain and Ireland London: The Aquarian Press (with additional material by Caitlin Matthews)
Joseph Campbell (1976) The Masks of God: Creative Mythology Harmondsworth: Penguin
R. J. Stewart (1986) The Mystic life of Merlin London: Arkana
Caitlin Matthews (1986) Sophia Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God Wheaton, IL: Quest Books
The Mabinogion (1976) Harmondsworth: Penguin (translated with an introduction by Geoffrey Gantz)
Wolfram von Eschenbach, W. (1980) Parzival Harmondsworth: Penguin (translated by A. T. Hatto)
The Gospel of Thomas: the Hidden Sayings of Jesus (1992) San Francisco, CA, USA: Harper San Francisco (translation with introduction, critical edition of the Coptic text and notes by Marvin Meyer; with an interpretation by Harold Bloom)

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January 11, 2016

POEM: THE SHELL

This post is a poem by Vernon Watkins

Who would devise

But the dark sea this thing

Of depth, of dyes

Claws of weed cling,

Whose colour cries:

‘I am of water, as of air the wing’,

Yet holds the eyes

As though they looked on music perishing.

Yet the shell knows

Only its own dark chamber

Coiled in repose

Where without number

One by one goes

Each blind wave, feeling mother of pearl and amber,

Flooding, to close

A book all men might clasp,

Yet none remember.

Too far away

For thought to find the track,

Sparkling with spray

Rose, green and black,

The colours play, strained by the ebb, revealing in the wrack

The myth of day,

A girl too still to call her bridegroom back.

There falls the weight

Of glory unpossessed;

There the sands late

Hold the new guest

Whose ponderous freight

Draws the pool’s hollow like a footprint pressed.

Its outcast state

Suddenly seems miraculous and blest.

Turn it. Now hold

Its ancient heart. How fair

With lost tales told

In sea-salt air

Light’s leaf-of-gold

Leaps from the threshold up the spiral stair,

Then lost, is cold,

Bound in a flash to rock with Ariadne’s hair.

Vernon Watkins New Selected Poems Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2006. (Edited with an introduction by Richard Ramsbotham. Foreword by Rowan Williams)

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January 7, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY 2016

The next month is a busy one for contemplative Druidry. Our group in Stroud has its first meeting next Tuesday. Towards the end of January Elaine and I will be working with another local group that meets to explore sacred traditions. Then on 7 February we are running a Dark of the Moon Workshop day retreat in London, at Treadwell’s Bookshop’s workshop space, 33 Store Street, London WC1 E7BS. Our specific intent is to greet the dark of the moon at the time of Imbolc and the first stirrings of the Earth. The programme will include contemplative exercises, subtle energy work, silent sitting and Awen space group meditation. As with all of our public events, anyone willing to work within a Druid framework for the day is welcome.

The end of January also sees the publication of a new Moon Books anthology Pagan Planet: Being Believing and Belonging in the 21st. Century – see http://www.moon-books.net and Nimue Brown’s presentation of the book. I have a piece in it on practising contemplative Druidry. Since I wrote it I have become even more convinced that contemplative Druidry is not a distinct form of Druidry, but rather a flavour, or way of working within it. We can create specific environments and practice frameworks that enable contemplative practice, and understand them as an option within a range of options.

More broadly, I think that the contemplative meme is now well recognised. My 2014 book Contemplative Druidry: People Practice and Potential is still finding new audiences. The Contemplative Druidry Facebook group, which I stopped administering in 2013, continues to thrive, now with a membership of over 1100. Elaine’s blog at http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com/ and the Contemplative Druid Events Facebook page have received increasing increasing attention in the last couple of months, perhaps in part due to the Contemplative Druidry article in the Samhain 2015 edition of Pagan Dawn. Other events are planned for later in the year.

I’ll continue writing about these and other developments in this blog.

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December 3, 2015

POEM: THE MOON IN DEWDROPS

Simplicity and complexity, elegance and wisdom combined in the poetry of Japanese Zen. I notice that I respond more strongly to such poetry than I do to didactic texts about meditation and philosophy.

To what shall

I liken the world?

Moonlight, reflected

In dewdrops,

Shaken from a crane’s bill.

I particularly love this poem. The apparent naturalism of the imagery makes it powerful and accessible to anyone. Yet for me, this poem also brings up wider issues about reading and interpretation. The poet’s location in place, time and culture do make a difference. Ehei Dogen (1200-1253) was one of the first to transmit Zen Buddhism from China to Japan and was founder of the Soto School. His poem is a waka – a 31 syllable form predating the invention of haiku. Dogen is a key figure in both Japanese Buddhism and Japanese literature.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddhism of all Japanese schools including Zen, the moon stands for Buddha-nature. So the poem teaches a familiar Mahayana truth that the moon (Buddha-nature) is completely reflected in every one of the countless dew drops (all things) without discrimination, namely one in all, all in one. This understanding is accompanied by a sense of fragility and impermanence within nature – strongly present in Japanese culture independently of Buddhism and reinforced by Buddhist teaching. Dogen gives us elegance and complexity in a 31 syllable form.

Hee-Jin Kim*, a modern Zen scholar, takes this further, bringing out Dogen’s sensitivity to history as well as to nature. He draws attention to the word ‘shaken’: each dew drop holds a full yet shaken reflection of the moon. Dogen lived in what was seen as a dark and ill-starred time in Japanese history. Many Buddhists thought that even their path was compromised and talked of degenerate dharma (mappo). Kim understands Dogen as resisting this ideology of despair whilst fully aware of the collective turmoil. On this reading, the poem asserts that timelessness is experienced within, and only within, momentariness, even when the times are stressed.

To what shall

I liken the world?

Moonlight, reflected

In dewdrops,

Shaken from a crane’s bill.

* Hee-Jin Kim Dogen on meditation and thinking: a reflection on his view of Zen Albany, New York: State University, 2007 (At the time of publication Hee-Jin Kim was Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. He is also the author of Dogen-Kigen: Mystical Realist).

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November 30, 2015

THE WOODCARVER

Khing, the master woodcarver, made a bell stand

Of precious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be the work of spirits.

The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

“What is your secret?”

Khing replied, “I am only a workman.

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit. I did not expend it

On trifles, that were not to the point.

I fasted in order to

Set my heart at rest.

After three days fasting,

I had forgotten gain and success.

After five days,

I had forgotten praise and criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs.

By this time al thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

Al that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought of the bell stand.

Then I went into the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond

doubt.

All that I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin.

If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been

No bell stand at all.

What happened?

My own collected though

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits.”

Merton, Thomas (1965 & 2004) The Way of Chuang Tzu Boston & London: Shambhala.

Chuang Tzu, one of the great figures of early Taoism, lived around 300 BCE. The frontispiece of this edition says: “He used parables and anecdotes, allegory and paradox, to illustrate that real happiness and freedom are found only in understanding Tao or Way of nature, and dwelling in its unity. The respected Trappist monk Thomas Merton spent several years reading and reflecting on four different translations of the Chinese classic that bears Chuang Tzu’s name. The result is this collection of poetic renderings of the great sage’s work.

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November 26, 2015

THE WAY OF SOPHIA

“A Sufi mystic was staying with Rabiya. His name was Hasan. He must have heard Jesus Christ’s statement: ‘knock and it shall be opened to you. Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you will find it’. So every day in his morning prayer, afternoon prayer, evening prayer, night prayer, five times a day he said to God, ‘I am knocking, Sir, and I am knocking so much. Why has it not opened up to now? I am beating my head against your door, Sir. Open it.

“Rabiya heard it one day. Rabiya heard it the second day. Rabiya heard it the third day. Then she said, ‘Hasan, when will you look? The door is open. You go on talking nonsense – ‘I am knocking, I am knocking’ – and the door is open all the time. Look! But you are too concerned with your knocking and asking and desiring and seeking, and you cannot see. The door is open.” (1)

For me Rabiya is the Sophia in this story, the teacher and guide. Sophia emerges in the eastern Mediterranean. She is most associated with contexts that are urban, multicultural and entranced by the power of the written word. She inherits the rose from Aphrodite and Isis, and the grove from Asherah, the lost goddess of Israel. She becomes a traveller, eastward bound on the Silk Road, taking other names.

The Sophia of my experience is not quite the being of the traditions, though the traditions have fed me (2, 3). As a living presence, anam cara and guide, she undermines my pompous attempts to impose narrative order on the cosmos and thus possess the infinite. She stands for creative mythology, continuous revelation, and a compassionate free spirit. Infinitely sceptical and infinitely believing, she embraces the life of the senses, feeling and thinking. Yet she points also to other possibilities: nourishment in the silent heart of being, and the energy of what Coleridge called the primary imagination and Druids call Awen.

Osho Zen: the path of paradox New York, NY: Osho International Foundation, 2001
Caitlin Matthews Sophia Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God Wheaton, ILL: Quest Books, 2001
Anne Baring & Jules Cashford The myth of the Goddess: evolution of an image London: Arkana, 1993
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Biographia Literaria: or biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions London: Dent, 1965 (Edited with an introduction by George Watson)

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Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Contemplative Druidry

February 4, 2016

POEM: A WITHERED TREE

January 29, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: NOT I NOT OTHER THAN I

January 25, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY IN 3 SENTENCES

January 18, 2016

POEM: DAWN’S ROSE

January 13, 2016

WESTERN WAYS: DRUIDRY AND SOPHIA

January 11, 2016

POEM: THE SHELL

January 7, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY 2016

December 3, 2015

POEM: THE MOON IN DEWDROPS

November 30, 2015

THE WOODCARVER

November 26, 2015

THE WAY OF SOPHIA