Contemplative Walking | Contemplative Inquiry

October 25, 2024

BOOK REVIEW: ELEGANT SIMPLICITY

Highly recommended. Satish Kumar (born in 1936) published Elegant Simplicity: the Art of Living Well in 2019 (1). It begins with a foreword by Fritjof Capra and a preface by the author Let’s be Simple which quotes the 1848 Shaker song ‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘Tis the gift to be free. The book summarises the author’s personal story as well as discussing his values. I have written posts based on some of his other work before (2). I especially recommend this book to anyone interested in knowing more about Satish Kumar’s practice (grounded in Jain spirituality and Gandhi’s non-violent activism) and his influence on deep ecology, creative arts and education.

Elegant Simplicity has a summarising quality, looking back on decades devoted to sacred activism in different forms. It is divided into fourteen chapters: Each is preceded by a brief and relevant quotation from another thinker. The chapter then becomes a meditation on the quote:

1 My Story: Beginnings – ‘True happiness lies in contentment’ Mahatma Gandhi.

2 Simplicity of Walking – ‘All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking’ Friedrich Nietzsche.

3 Life is a Pilgrimage – ‘Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart’ Abraham Joshua Heschel.

4 Elegant Simplicity – ‘Any fool can make things complicated, it requires a genius to make them simple’ E. F. Schumacher.

5 A Society of Artists – ‘This world is but a canvas to our imagination’ Henry David Thoreau.

6 Yoga of Action – ‘Life is a process not a product’ Brian Goodwin.

7 Learning is Living – ‘Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself’ Thomas Dewey.

8 Right Relationships – ‘We are all related – relationships based on obligation lack dignity’ Wayne Dwyer.

9 Love Unlimited – ‘There is no charm equal to tenderness of the heart’ Jane Austin.

10 Power of Forgiveness – ‘It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.’ Maya Angelou.

11 Dance of Opposites – ‘Life and death are one as the river and the sea are one’ Kahlil Gibran.

12 Deep Seeing – ‘To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, all in one’ John Ruskin.

13 Union of Science and Spirituality – ‘Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality’ Carl Sagan.

14 Soil, Soul and Society – ‘We live in an interconnected world and in an interconnected time so we need holistic solutions to our interconnected problems‘ Naomi Klein.

Fellow activist and author Vandana Shiva describes Elegant Simplicity as “the distillation” of Satish Kumar’s ideas and actions. “It shows the intimate connections between the inner and the outer world, soil, soul and society, beauty joy and non-violence. It indicates that the solutions to the big problems of our time – climate change, hate, violence, hopelessness and despair – lie in thinking and living with elegant simplicity, reducing our ecological footprint while enlarging our hearts and minds”.

For me, Satish Kumar is an inspiration rather than a direct model. Even in the conditions of the early 1960’s I would not have walked, or aspired to walk, from New Delhi to Washington DC without carrying any money. Yet Satish Kumar and his companion E. P. Menon succeeded and made a huge public impact at the time. Their peace pilgrimage gave oxygen to the campaign for nuclear disarmament. No state gave up its arms, but treaties limiting the numbers and testing of nuclear arms became normalised for some decades. Satish Kumar’s initiatives in deep ecology and education, especially the ‘small school’ and Schumacher College, have changed lives. Directly and indirectly, his influence has awakened many people from the dystopian trance of our dominant cultures. Satish Kumar is a widely revered elder: a peaceful warrior for a more liveable, generous and creative world.

(1) Satish Kumar Elegant Simplicity: The Art of Living Well New Society Publishers (https://www.newsociety.com): Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: 2019

(2) See previous posts:

NEWS OF A DEATH

TWO VIEWS OF THE DIVINE

OUTDOOR WALKING MEDITATION

NOTE: “Satish Kumar (born 9 August 1936)^[1] is an Indian British activist and speaker. He has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate and pacifist.^[3]Now living in England, Kumar is founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international center for ecological studies, and is Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. His most notable accomplishment is the completion, together with a companion, E. P. Menon, of a peace walk of over 8,000 miles in June 1962 for two and a half years, from New Delhi to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., the capitals of the world’s earliest nuclear-armed countries.^[4][5] He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.” (Wikipedia)

August 29, 2024

ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

I first registered Contemplative Inquiry on 28 August 2012 and WordPress have sent me 12th anniversary greetings. That’s a long-term project by my historic standards. True, the first two years were tentative and I took an 8 month break in 2018/9. But my contemplative inquiry, both as blog and as practice, now feels like a settled part of my life. I continue to ground it in a form of modern Druidry with, Janus-like, both pagan and universalist faces.

Through my inquiry, I came over the years to understand myself as, at heart, ‘living presence in a field of living presence in a more than human world’. This may sound like something of a formula, but it is at least my own formula, providing a compressed account of my experience and understanding, It is not connected to any particular belief system, and arose through a simple recognition of what seems to be given to us, in joy and sorrow alike.

When I open and deepen to living presence, a gestalt of self-and-world, not just self, reveals itself in a sometimes transfiguring way. It is not complicated to practice or experience. In consequence I have found myself nudged, however haltingly, towards a spirit of openness, an acceptance that nothing stays the same, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity.

I no longer think of the inquiry as a path or journey. It is more like a deepening, or maturation, in place. Looking back at early blog posts I find seeds of my current view right at the beginning of my inquiry. As early as 2 September 2012 I wrote about Satish Kumar’s experience (1,2) of outdoor walking meditation. It made a strong impression on me. The difference today is that I have internalised it and given it my own unique flavour. This year I celebrate a clearer understanding and a more confident voice. I am grateful both to influences like Satish Kumar and to the version of me who launched this inquiry twelve years ago..

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2012/09/02/outdoor-walking-meditation/

(2) Satish Kumar You Are, Therefore I AM; A Declaration of Dependence Totnes, 2002: Green Books

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July 23, 2024

‘MYSTERY’ IN A MORE THAN HUMAN WORLD

“Half-way between the certainty of science on one hand, and the supernatural on the other, is mystery …. Mystery is central to enchanted experience because enchantment is not a rational process of recognition, categorization, knowledge, facts or rationalizations. It is, instead, a pure experience of sensing and being.” (1)

I saw the heron on 11 October 2020, in the first year of the pandemic and just a little after dawn. I had been walking for about forty minutes, beginning in near darkness and experiencing the gradual coming of the light. I described this walk at the time as an “enchanted meander” at a liminal point in that day (2).

My encounter with the heron was unexpected and I responded with “delighted surprise”. Four years later, reflecting on the memory, I note that I was able to experience delighted surprise from within stillness. In that moment I was a still human sharing space with a still heron on a still early morning. So the heron stayed in place, not needing to fly away. Beyond that there was no communing, but this was somehow blessing enough. Stillness of this kind, in contact with our more than human world, allows space for an enhanced bandwidth of experience. It is, perhaps, an opening to what Arran Stibbe calls “mystery”.

On that morning, my enhanced experience was partly displaced into the taking of a picture and also the wider purpose of my walk. That’s fine, a good enough choice. But I wonder what would have happened if I, like the heron, had stayed in place.

(1) Arran Stibbe Econarrative: Ethics, Ecology and the Search for New Narratives to Live By London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/10/14/walking-towards-sunrise/

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July 17, 2024

HIGH SUMMER MORNING

8 am, 14 July. Local woods. A little after the year’s zenith, I am in strong morning sunshine and enjoying its patterns of light and shade. A green portal lures me forward. What will I find on the next part of my journey?

I am am often moved by the effects of light, and drawn to write about them. Each experience is unique. Today, sunlight on tree bark feels warm and playful.

Below, I find a clearly defined shadow shape on the ground, the effect of the sun passing through a fence. This feels playful too, high summer’s friendly face in this place at this time. Contemplation as simple delight.

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July 9, 2024

JULY DAYS 2024

My walking time is still restricted. Perhaps because of this, familiar outdoor spaces have become exotic and magical to my eyes. My limiting circumstances are paradoxically making me more focused and attentive, enhancing my felt quality of life. I am readier to find joy in simple, passing experiences.

On my contemplative walks, the shapes and colours of trees move me deeply. Grasses and sky have a similar impact. I am very aware of these July days. I am very aware of summer. I am very aware of my place in the world as the year turns in my immediate neighbourhood.

A little further away, I stand on a canal bridge (below) and look back towards the city, which seems distant and small. Water and sky give me space and perspective. I let the elements of water and air nourish me at a time when I am largely grounded.

Close up at the water margin, I find light shining on the water. There is energy and movement here. The power of the sun is present in both a shifting luminosity on the water and the flowering resilience on the bank.

I shift into a meditation on the four classical elements – earth, water, air and fire – and how they work together to make the fifth (life, spirit) possible. Consciously engaged with the four, I can stand as the fifth, resourcing my individual life within a world of impermanence and interbeing.

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June 25, 2024

OLD MIDSUMMER’S EVE 2024

23 June 2024, around 8.15 pm. I’m enjoying my first contemplative walk for some days. I’m looking at an old wall, once part of the Llanthony Priory estate in Gloucester. The day has been one of rising temperatures and humidity. Even now, as the shadows deepen, I feel an energy and expectancy in the evening light.

The Priory here was for a time the largest landlord in the city and its surrounding district. In those days, midsummer was celebrated on 23/24 June. The Church celebrated the birth of John the Baptist, at the opposite end of the year from that of Jesus. (His beheading is remembered on 29 August). Popular celebrations on the evening/night of 23 June involved bonfires, and local festivities could be attributed to the saint, the season, or both.

In many cultures, the year has been divided into two contending halves, whether at the solstices, the equinoxes, or with the Beltane/Samhain division. Traditional Christianity flirts with this theme. I might think of summer and winter kings, king-slaying and the Goddess. I might also think of John, Jesus, and their respective human fates. In the case of John, Salome and her royal mother Herodias are a presence, along with their fateful demand for his head. These stories are not the same, but in the European Christian imagination they have at times been interwoven.

I might also think of the Green Man maturing to the point where he can “speak through the oak”, as “its crown forms his mask and its leafage his features” (1). To speak through the oak is to speak at another level, or from another dimension, a developmental moment that occurs at the year’s zenith (life’s zenith?) This maturation flows from from a willingness to surrender to a greater power. The purely personal direction can only be towards winter and death. But that’s not the whole story, even to a ‘sacred agnostic’ like me (2.) This is the midsummer evening’s tale that intrigues me the most.

The image below comes from a small patch in Llanthony Priory’s current garden, on the site of the original physic garden. I simply found it beautiful.

(1) Green Man Poem In: William Anderson Green Man: archetype of our oneness with the Earth Harper Collins: London & San Francisco, 1990 See: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2017/05/11/poem-green-man

(2) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/02/16/sacred-agnosticism

May 25, 2024

FESTIVE MOMENT

On 12 May I wrote: “I hope soon to get some sense of how soon Elaine will come home, and what resources we will need for our lives going forward. It’s my 75th birthday on 25 May, and my best present would be to have Elaine home by then.” (1) Today is 25 May, and my wife Elaine is indeed coming home from the Gloucester Royal hospital. It has felt like a long absence for both of us and we are glad to move into a new chapter of our lives.

Yesterday evening I went Alney Island, a Gloucester wetland, for a brief contemplative walk. The footbridge near Gloucester docks has been repaired and after many months the island is easy to reach again. Back on the island, I loved its sense of growth and abundance in the summer evening light. I felt care-free. I had almost forgotten how much experiences like this nourish me.

This is a festive moment in my life: a significant birthday, Elaine’s return, celebrating a moment in the year that makes me glad to be alive. I feel refreshed, heartened and re-energised.

(1) https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2024/05/12/unsought-journey/

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June 21, 2023

FIVE IMAGES: MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2023

The five images in this blog record a dedicated solstice walk, an evening walk beginning 8 pm on 20 June. For me, the solstice period lasts around a week ending on 25 June. I like to acknowledge the stasis (standstill) element. My festival practice is not about a moment in time so much as honouring an extended pause before the wheel turns, at first slowly, towards the dark.

I sought immersion in the unique and sacred flavour of this day at this time in this place. I do not believe my images ‘capture’ that flavour – now gone with the moment it belonged to. But the pictures do provide a suggestive record of that time. They help my memory. They remind me especially that my experience of this practice in 2023 differs from that of 2022, when I first undertook it as a solo, contemplative form of midsummer celebration. (See: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2022/06/24/.)

The first image (above) is of Llanthony Priory gardens, dominated this evening by a dramatic sky. Sunlight shines through heavy clouds, dark and suggestive of a storm that we had largely missed in Gloucester. Three canalside images (below) also display the energy of clouds with the sun backlighting them. I find both beauty and power here, indeed a strong sense of powers greater than mine, and indeed of ours collectively. This year, my seasonal immersion has an edge. A modern Druid, I celebrate the seasons and reverence the elements. But I certainly don’t own them, or decide how they are meant to be.

During my walk I spent a lot of time with my eyes turned upwards and skywards, with hints of both awe and foreboding. I understand how sky god spiritualites work. But I also looked across and down and found new life. A pair of swans and their cygnets were finding space on the water on a busy small marina. It is now surrounded by housing on three sides, yet they seemed flourishing and confident. Storm clouds of many kinds threaten. Life goes defiantly on.

Tag: Contemplative Walking