31 May 2018
30 May 2018
Unfortunately, the work, unless occasionally regulated by an eminently qualified master, starts to serve the prevailing power structure rather than subvert it; supports established conservative values rather than radical movement. The way Indian yoga ends up serving the caste system, or Tibetan Buddhism maintains archaic feudalism, or American Christianity fronts social iniquity and the horrible 'War on Terror.'
Here in Moshav Ofer there is a pond, which, as well as proving a breeding ground for a large and healthy population of mosquitoes, also hosts a veritable cacophony of frogs. Every now and then, whilst meditating the early hours away, I hear one croaking past my window in search of a better life, a destiny.
28 May 2018
When I watch enlightened masters on YouTube, be it Adyashanti or Barry Long or Ramana Maharshi or Douglas Harding or Eckhart Tolle or Shunryu Suzuki, what I see they all have in common is the manner of their passage through time: they are constantly breaking open and spilling, inside out, into a future unavailable to the unenlightened.
27 May 2018
26 May 2018
Sitting, in a body, in a room, in a building, in a neighbourhood, in a city, in a country. All objects held in place by their own mass and solidity. And yet within each, at every level and in every niche, there is the dance and play – the music, movement and magic – of spirit. Meditation is waking up to this veritable symphony.
Depression is the inevitable consequence of a prevailing ego – a monoculture of self. This, for me, is the brooding theme of both Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter: the deep deep anguish we all feel now that homo sapiens has well and truly upset all natural balance by dominating and polluting, beyond repair, Mother (Middle) Earth.
25 May 2018
24 May 2018
I have a confession to make: I love Osho. I know it's terribly unfashionable and I know I would earn far more credit with the Zen crowd if I damned him with faint praise as they do, but I have to admit that everything I've read of his is totally beautiful, and every serious Osho devotee I've met has had great energy. Turning the work into a dance and a party was a stroke of genius.
Have you noticed how nowadays we insist that our pets are as depressed as we are? Dogs are kept on leashes, by law now, and cats wear collars with bells to prevent them sneaking up on unsuspecting rodents and birds. And as soon as there's sight of a flea or a suspicion of worms, out comes the medication. Just like us really.
23 May 2018
Even with the lightest heart in the world, the lower back has to work pretty hard to maintain a good erect posture – a giving posture – through the day. But even a hint of depression, deflation, heaviness, and collapse is inevitable. This is why we must learn to master our moods – learn to be happy as a matter of course rather than only when the world pleases us. Let the bastards get you down even for a second and you are effectively retreating into the cesspool of self.
It may come as a surprise to some, but the teacher is not a whore; their job is not to pleasure you or give you what you want; their job is to offer a tiny bit of truth. And truth always hurts, and is always awful, because the truth effectively evicts you from the status quo, from your past, from the self, and offers an unforeseeable future, an impossible future, which you are now obliged to start living.
22 May 2018
21 May 2018
20 May 2018
19 May 2018
The richness of a life has nothing to do with the variety of experiences, exotic or otherwise, that fill it. These are just clutter – indications of a restless soul that hasn't found itself or its work, and so wanders aimlessly. A rich life is one that goes deep into the heart, and such a life needs to be firmly anchored, in place, in work, in poverty, hence the anchorites of old.
Love, when attached to an object, soon becomes heavy and needy. This is why Buddhists preach non-attachment. Love with all your heart but let that love set you free by being itself free. Love is love of life. Love is the way, the Tao, of life. Love is life. When, for whatever reason, I am not loving then I am less (than alive). The work is simply to wake up to this, and to put love, as a process of giving (to life), central in life.
18 May 2018
17 May 2018
16 May 2018
14 May 2018
The work is in two parts: spiritual and spirited. Spiritual work is about demolishing the ego, the self, and spirited work is about freeing the spirit from body and mind. In Taiji terms these are what we call Yield and Attack. And in the same way that attacking without a prior yield is not Taiji, so yielding without the ability and desire to attack is not Taiji either, it's what we call avoidance.
The choices we make – which we're making all the time – effectively behave as a filter ensuring that the world we perceive and partake in is the one we first conceive in the mind. This is how we create and live our own self-designed reality, and how 'self' is effectively the world we live in. Without this filter the mind would be literally blown apart and in all likelihood madness would ensue. But this is the nature of spiritual work – to slowly and gently bring down our barricades and start facing up to what's really there – a reality so belittling to self that it shrinks and shrivels, and yet so empowering to spirit that the once fledgling heart now burgeons. The world, previously a mere reflection of self, becomes all heart and soul.
13 May 2018
Your teacher has two impossibly difficult tasks. The first is to wake up your spirit, and the second is to ensure that your private practice (which is your responsibility to institute) is demolishing ego rather than bolstering it. Once these tasks are complete, which can take decades, you're on your own.
12 May 2018
When we are weak, we are
strong. When our eyes close
on the world, then somewhere
within us the bush
burns. When we are poor
and aware of the inadequacy
of our table, it is to that
uninvited the guest comes.
R.S. Thomas
strong. When our eyes close
on the world, then somewhere
within us the bush
burns. When we are poor
and aware of the inadequacy
of our table, it is to that
uninvited the guest comes.
R.S. Thomas
11 May 2018
10 May 2018
09 May 2018
08 May 2018
07 May 2018
06 May 2018
The problem with living in a culture built on chutzpah is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find anything of real depth and refinement. Internal progress is, as my teacher once put it, a series of going-back-to-square-one's, and this requires a humility and a patience that only comes with long sustained application to a work that appears thankless and unprofitable.