Spirituality | Contemplative Inquiry

The first days of November were kind to me, with bright sunshine and temperatures good for walking. I have felt fitter and healthier than for awhile, and completed a 7 mile walk on 1 November without much sense of wear and tear. I felt alive in an everyday kind of way and appreciative of the spaces I moved through. My main focus was movement itself, and I took photographs only of places beyond my current ‘normal’ range. Nothing mystical: just the simple pleasure of being in place.

1 November gave me autumn at its best rather than any sign of winter. The canal had, in places, a kind of dappled intimacy, aided both by unmanicured foliage and architecture on a human scale. The quality of light was heart-lifting too, always significant for me.

There were also other spaces, more open, allowing an overview of the canal landscape. The picture below gives an indication of how much blue sky there was, on the day. It was a delight to be able to see so far, and so clearly. I realise how much my resilience, at times wobbly, is supported by simple experiences like this.

2 Comments

November 3, 2021

RENUNCIATION AS ACCUMULATION?

For some time I have committed myself to cultivating “a life of abundance in simplicity, living lightly on the earth”. This has involved a certain amount of decluttering, paring down, and emptying out, which could go further. But ‘abundance’ is still a key term in my commitment, and I don’t see myself as in any way ‘renunciate’. Some people, I know, find themselves and flourish as renunciates, and that is good to know. But I retain reservations about traditional renunciation as a concept, along the lines of the extract below.

“That all the major world religions have a renunciative morality seems at first blush a bit odd since these religions all operate within cultures where accumulating wealth, power and prestige positions people higher on the hierarchy. Accumulating seems to be quite the opposite of renouncing. This seeming enigma is understandable if it is seen as separating the divine from the earthly: Accumulating was the activity that got one ahead in the secular domain; renouncing was the path that got one ahead in the spiritual. Once people’s general mode of thought and behavior became based on the accumulation model, this insidiously got applied to everything, including renunciation, whereby one could accumulate spiritual merit through sacrifice.

“Renunciation is the mirror image of accumulation, with inverted (opposite) values, but with the same structure (hierarchical) and process (striving), and the same measuring, ambitious mentality. The contents (sacrificing versus acquiring) may seem opposite, but this is only on the surface because the form and underlying structure are the same. Accumulation moralities set up standards of purity which serve to measure the quantity of impurity (self-centeredness). They measure how much sin or how much karma has been accumulated (demerits), and then give ways of accumulating merits through sacrifice. So, ironically, renunciate religions are all based on accruing and stockpiling spiritual merit and are accumulative to the core. This is but another example of how either/or frameworks create reactive oppositions that, in an unconscious way, bring about the very thing they are trying to do away with.”

Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power Berkeley, CA: Frog Ltd., 1993

2 Comments

October 31, 2021

A DANCE OF LIGHT AND SHADE

Sunday, 31 October. Hallowe’en. Greetings of the season! A chance for a ghost tree to move and dance?

Where I live, a change in clock time has made the morning a little lighter, wet and gloomy though it might be. The evening, of course, will be darker. It will launch an endarkening seven weeks for those open to the spiritual opportunities of this time.

I am noticing a dance of light and shade, at moments not defined by heavy cloud and rain. In these recent pictures I sense a yin/yang contrast where clear shafts of light illuminate, but do not dominate, spaces inclined to be shady. For me there is a living balance here – one thing that still pictures do not show is that the detail is constantly changing.

I celebrate the miracle of existence – my ability, or life’s ability, to see a world and be immersed in it. To respond to it and to share it. Sometimes this seems enough, with no need for any framework to explain or contextualise this astonishing fact. Here, from identifying a dance of light and shade, I can notice how this dance has different effects in different settings, a small sample of the vast diversity in our living world. As we move without illusions into the Cop26 summit, may it be preserved and protected!

text

text

October 26, 2021

TOWARDS SAMHAIN 2021

Approaching Samhain, I feel drawn to themes of paring down and letting go. Pictures from a recent visit to Weston beach reflect this minimalist mood. The tide was out, leaving an expanse of flat muddy beach, not easy to distinguish from the sea. Sea-wrack and bare wooden posts were prominent features here. I enjoyed the clarity and immediacy of this setting, and also a sense of a quiet latency, before the water returned.

Samhain initiates a time of endings and transitions. Where I live, the dying of the year is generally not dramatic, but there is nonetheless considerable change. This speaks to something in me. My notion of a ‘contemplative inquiry’ is morphing as it strips down to essentials, and dissolves into a gentle holding and observation of experience in flow. I will give this morphing process space, and see what emerges from the descent of the year. I expect to post less frequently for a period of time.

2 Comments

October 23, 2021

3 WATER MARGIN IMAGES

Three water margin images:

Above the surface: Vivid russet leaves, weeping into the water.

On the surface: Floating leaves, and indistinct reflections.

Below the surface? An inverted tree, suggesting another world.

1 Comment

October 21, 2021

BOOK REVIEW: THE BURNING HOUSE

A highly recommended illustration of spirituality in support of political action. In The Burning House: A Buddhist Response to the Climate and Ecological Emergency (1), author Shantigarbha affirms that ‘the ecological crisis is nothing if not a spiritual crisis, a crisis of meaning and direction for our civilisation’. Most Druids would say the same, and see value in his approach.

Shantigarbha (Seed or Womb of Peace) (2) is a teacher of Buddhism and Nonviolent Communication (NVC). He has also trained members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) in nonviolence and de-escalation skills. He believes that we cannot wait to change our lives before we change the world, or to change the world before we change our lives: we have to do the best we can with both, together, now. He sees the climate crisis as primarily one of ’empathy, connection and community’ and says that ‘when we use our energy to cultivate our own vitality, we naturally use the abundance we discover in the service of life’.

The book title The Burning House references a traditional Buddhist story about a father trying to get his children out of a burning house. There is no time to pick them up individually, so he simply commands them to leave. But they are busy playing with their toys and ignore him. He has to find a skilful means of getting them out. In his anguish (but also inspiration) he tells them that there are even more wonderful and exciting toys outside. In the parable the burning house stands for a life of samsara and unawareness. Outside there is the opportunity for awareness and the tools to develop it.

The book looks first at the climate crisis and ways it can be understood. There follow chapters on how Buddhist ethics support environmental ethics, and how compassionate action based on wisdom can enable the transformation we need. There are chapters on aspects of emotional intelligence. How to transform anger is the first – rather than acting out our anger or repressing it, we can identify and mobilise ‘the life in it’. Hatred, by contrast, is characterised as always toxic and self-harming. There are chapters on ecological grief and its potentially heavy weight – and also on gratitude for what we do still have. There is a beautiful quote from Francis Weller: ‘How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible’ (3).

Later chapters focus more specifically on nonviolent social change, on being the change, and on the role of nonviolent disruption in the pursuit of climate justice. Practical examples draw on UK experience in 2019, mostly in London and Bristol. Whilst illuminating, they are limited in place and time. The last chapter, Final thoughts: the beauty and terror, summarises what we can do both individually and collectively. It sees some grounds for hope – if we treat the climate and ecological emergency as an emergency. Shantigarbha draws on Sraddha, ‘the Buddhist equivalent of hope’, better translated as confidence or trust. It is not faith or hope in the ordinary sense. ‘Sraddha represents a higher or broader perspective, our connection with vision. It signifies an emotional response to our ideals. In terms of the burning house it represents the father’s cry of inspiration’. We are invited to have the courage and confidence to do what we can, and let the effects ripple out. It is what we can do, and all we can do.

The Burning House offers valuable perspectives both on Buddhist political engagement and on climate action. Each chapter contains a link to a guided meditation, offered as a resource to readers.

(1) Shantigarbha The Burning House: A Buddhist Response to the Climate and Ecological Emergency Cambridge: Windhorse Publications, 2021 (https://www.windhorsepublications.com)

(2) See: https://www.SeedofPeace.org

(3) See: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/478/the-geography-of-sorrow)

1 Comment

October 18, 2021

POEM: THIS STILL CENTRE

Here, indeed, is no ordinary spot:

no place on the map, in the cosmos,

is anything like it.

This still Centre is the one spot

where energy is actually discovered

welling up out of Nothing.

All the irresistible torrents

which swirl and roar through every other place

rise silently in this place,

never ruffling its perfect calm.

Douglas Harding Everyday Seeing: daily meditations on the One within. London: The Shollond Trust, 2019 (Quotations selected by Richard Lang)

October 12, 2021

POEM: ASTONISHED BY THE ORDINARY

A discarded flowerhead, wet mud and grass.

I am drawn down into seeing,

And,

Astonished by the ordinary,

I am opened up to awe.

October 10, 2021

THOMAS TRAHERNE DAY 2021

The image is of two modern stained glass panels in Hereford Cathedral, commissioned in honour and remembrance of the seventeenth century priest, poet and mystic Thomas Traherne. The Anglican Church has dedicated 10 October to his memory. Here is the first verse of Desire, one of his poems:

“For giving me Desire,

An Eager Thirst, a burning Ardent Fire,

A virgin Infant Flame,

A Love with which into this World I came,

An Inward Hidden Heavenly Love,

Which on my Soul did work and Move,

And ever, ever me Enflame,

With restless longing Heavenly Avarice,

That never could be satisfied,

That incessantly a Paradice

Unknown suggest, and som thing undescried

Discern, and bear me to it; be

Thy Name for ever praised by me.” (1)

(1) Denise Inge (ed.) Happiness and Holiness: Thomas Traherne and His Writings London: The Canterbury Press Norwich, 2008 (Canterbury Studies in Spiritual Theology)

NOTE: Thomas Traherne (1636-74) was the son of a prosperous Hereford shoemaker – big house, numerous resident apprentices. He grew up during the civil war (1642-49) and England’s republican experiment (1649-1660) in a naturally royalist area. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1652 (16 being a normal age at the time) under a strictly Puritan head, took a BA in 1656 and was appointed minister at the Herefordshire Parish of Credenhill by the Commissioners for the Approbation of Public Preachers in 1657. As soon as Charles II returned to England Traherne arranged to be ordained as Credenhill’s Anglican vicar, developed strong links with the renewed life of Hereford Cathedral, and also found time to be Chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Charles’ Lord Privy Seal. Denise Inge* describes Traherne as “distinguished from his seventeenth century peers by the fact that he is blissfully untroubled by the tensions, doubts, anxieties that (we are repeatedly told) mark the age in general”.

*Thomas Traherne Poetry and Prose London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2002. (Selected and introduced by Denise Inge for the series The Golden Age of Spiritual Writing)

1 Comment