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IN PRAISE OF WALKING

Early one morning, any morning, we can set out, with the least possible baggage, and discover the world.


It is quite possible to refuse all the coercion, violence, property, triviality, to simply walk away.


That something exists outside ourselves and our preoccupations, so near, so readily available, is our greatest blessing.


Walking is the human way of getting about.


Always, everywhere, people have walked, veining the earth with paths, visible and invisible, symmetrical and meandering.


There are walks on which we tread in the footsteps of others, walks on which we strike out entirely for ourselves.


A journey implies a destination, so many miles to be consumed, while a walk is its own measure, complete at every point along the way.


There are things we will never see, unless we walk to them.


Walking is a mobile form of waiting.


What I take with me, what I leave behind, are of less importance than what I discover along the way.


To be completely lost is a good thing on a walk.


The most distant places seem most accessible once one is on the road.


Convictions, directions, opinions, are of less importance than sensible shoes.


In the course of a walk, we usually find out something about our companion, and this is true even when we travel alone.


When I spend a day talking I feel exhausted, when I spend it walking I am pleasantly tired.


The pace of a walk will determine the number and variety of things to be encountered, from the broad outlines of a mountain range to a tit's nest among the lichen, and the quality of attention that will be brought to bear upon them.


A rock outcrop, a hedge, a fallen tree, anything that turns us out of our way, is an excellent thing on a walk.


Wrong turnings, doubling back, pauses and digressions, all contribute to the dislocation of a persistent self-interest.


Everything we meet is equally important or unimportant.


The most lonely places are the most lovely.


Walking is egalitarian and democratic; we do not become experts at walking and one side of the road is as good as another.


Walking is not so much romantic as reasonable.


The line of a walk is articulate in itself, a kind of statement.


Pools, walls, solitary trees, are natural halting places.


We lose the flavour of walking if it becomes too rare or too extraordinary, if it turns into an expedition; rather it should be quite ordinary, unexceptional, just what we do.


Daily walking, in all weathers, in every season, becomes a sort of ground or continuum upon which the least emphatic occurrences are registered clearly.


A stick of ash or blackthorn, through long use, will adjust itself to the palm.


Of the many ways through a landscape, we can choose, on each occasion, only one, and the project of the walk will be to remain responsive, adequate, to the consequences of the choice we have made, to confirm the chosen way rather than refuse the others.


One continues on a long walk not by effort of will but through fidelity.


Storm clouds, rain, hail, when we have survived these we seem to have taken on some of the solidity of rocks and trees.


A day, from dawn to dusk, is the natural span of a walk.


A dull walk is not without value.


To walk for hours on a clear night is the largest experience we can have.


For the right understanding of a landscape, information must come to the intelligence from all the senses.


Looking, singing, resting, breathing, are all complementary to walking.


Climbing uphill, the horizon grows wider; descending, the hills gather round.


We can take a walk which is a sampling of different airs: the invigorating air of the heights; the filtered air of a pine forest; the rich air over ploughed earth.


We can walk between two places and in so doing establish a link between them, bring them into a warmth of contact, like introducing two friends.


There are walks on which I lose myself, walks which return me to myself again.


Is there anything that is better than to be out, walking, in the clear air?

—Thomas A Clark, 1988

POETRY AND THE SACRED

Don Domanski


A Ralph Gustafson lecture, 2005

My talk this evening is about poetry and the sacred. It's a theme I've kept going back to for over thirty years now. For me, there's an intimate connection between the two, so intimate in fact that I can't really separate them out, one from the other. It's been the reason why I have continued to write; otherwise, I don't honestly think I would.

There's an umbilical point somewhere that nurtures both, like twins fed from the same source. By sacred, I don't necessarily mean religious, or spiritual in the New Age sense of that word. I mean the fundamental experience one has with time and space, with the seemingly endless corporeality that flows into our consciousness. I mean how each thing holds a mystery, simply because it exists, because existence itself is sacred. The fact that something exists at all has continued to amaze me, and the forms, as well, have amazed me. I don't mean this in a sentimental way; true amazement asks far more from us than the recognition of beauty and form. Amazement also demands that we see the darkness inherent in everything, that we see the destructiveness implicit in creation and its attending grief. Poetry helps to enhance and deepen our experience of existence, not just by the use of words, but by the fact that despite their use something else is carried along with them.

At the heart of poetry is a pre-verbal reality, a calling forth from a core within our being. There is something in poetry that pushes us beyond language. It's as if the language used negated itself and opened up well beyond linguistic meaning, into a realm that has far more to do with communion than communication. Poetry derives its energies and interests, to a great degree, from an extralinguistic view of itself and its meaning. It transcends what is written on the page. Poetry carries us, not just on the backs of words, but also on the spaces between the words.

This is why some teachers have a difficult time teaching poetry; they are always looking for meaning, while sometimes driving their students to distraction with the search. It becomes a game of Where's Waldo, but poor old Waldo isn't there. There is no objective meaning. Meaning is what you bring to the poem, not just what the poet has written. Meaning is very arbitrary. In the end, the poem is the integrity of a moment lost in the enormity of that moment and found again on the far side of any linear meaning. The words themselves point to where no words can go, where the textual intent becomes secondary to where the poem is directing us.

As Buddhists say, you shouldn't confuse the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself. In other words, you shouldn't think that believing in the teachings of the Buddha means you're a Buddhist, but rather you should look to where the teachings are pointing. Believe in the moon, not the finger. Poets, the politics of poetry, the prizes, etcetera, are meaningless in the face of the moon itself. Often, the moonlight is lost and we forget why the poems are there, why we're standing outside, looking up at the night sky.

The poem, as Archibald Macleish said, shouldn't mean but be. Creating being is the Great Mystery re-enacted on the page and in the psyche. Once it was considered stealing fire from the gods; in our society, it's keeping a sacred fire alive amid the destructiveness and greed that is an ever-present darkness we must navigate daily. Donald Hall once said that poetry in this culture is a revolutionary act. Not just the writing of it but the reading of poetry as well, an act of rebellion in a world so bent on hiding the experience of the sacred.

Mindfulness, one of the main components of poetry, has become a subversive act in a civilization so fixated on the self. It's a sad commentary on our society when opening up our hearts and eyes has become seditious behaviour. Without mindfulness, there is no poetry, no art, no spiritual development, only the barrenness of a self separated from the rest of existence.

It takes a great deal of effort to see what's in front of you, whether that's a stone, a mountain, or another person. After much watching, after much witnessing of the metamorphoses from object to presence, you find that everything is self-luminous. If you observe something long enough, its being comes forth, the isness of the thing is made manifest. You end up feeling the sacredness of its presence in time and space. In Ulysses, James Joyce says it well: "Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods." What you're experiencing is the being of what has been attended by your sight and patience. What you're feeling is a connective pulse, the conjunction of seer and seen, the prime ritual of the sacred. This is what the great Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart meant when he said, "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me." The watcher and the watched are one and the same, as the poet and the reader are one when their spiritual centre of gravity has been altered by the poem. The poem can allow us a perspective beyond the culture and iconography used to create it. The poem has no culture or language to steadfastly support its framework; it is more an act of nature, operating outside the constructs of a given society.

Art, in the end, will save us from "culture," from the rigid notions we have of the world and our place in it. The forgotten dimensions of our lives are given back to us; we are returned to our deeper selves, shown again our interconnectedness with the universe at large. That nuclear moment can happen while viewing a painting, reading a poem, listening to a piece of music, etcetera. It can also happen while seated on a hill overlooking a landscape, or staring into the night sky, or simply watching someone drink a cup of tea. All you need is mindfulness, openness to the moment offered. Poetry comes from these moments, from the longing to reanimate them, to give them new life and energy, to capture at least some of the wonder they contain. They come from our desire to cross over, to connect and interact with a larger view of reality, to break out of the confines of our small definition of the self, that claustrophobic fear of leaving the comfortable routines that define us. To these moments, language is an impediment, the weight of cliché, common usage, etcetera, pressing down heavily on each line written.

Metaphor is one way to re-establish our relationship with the textual possibilities; it sidesteps many of the pitfalls that lock language in a low, weak orbit around the individual. If the cliché that poetry allows us to see with fresh eyes is true, metaphor, to paraphrase Eckhart, is the eye that both the world and the poet use to see each other. It creates sight where there was none; it releases us to new expectations. Reality shifts and we are carried along with the movement. "Metaphor," to quote Cynthia Ozick, "is the mind's opposable thumb." It allows us to grasp meaning in one of the mind's darkest places, in that gap between the meanings themselves, in that fissure created by polarities, where light falls to blackness. To find the connection between dissimilar things is to place a flame there. In that deep chasm lies the consecrated space, the sacred ground of all spiritual traditions. The poet can bring back to our modern consciousness much of what has been lost during our journey towards mechanized existence. From the pilgrimages poets make, we are reminded of the heart's great need for wonder, its longing for a transpersonal dimension in our lives. Inside each of us is a desire for expansion outside of our ordinary self, to extend our understanding of nature, the universe and other people. Poetry is one way that this can be realized.

Our brains have evolved to exist and navigate in a narrow range of reality. For example, we see things as solid, when in fact they consist mostly of empty space. Few of us are aware that we are living on a planet travelling at 105,000 kilometres per hour through the vastness of space, and that our galaxy, the Milky Way, travels at 210 kilometres per second. We see only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum; we live within the scale and orders of magnitude that present themselves to us. We judge all of this as normal and often pride ourselves on being realists. The truth is, like any other creature, we have strict limitations on what we can perceive.

Likewise, language itself seems real, something we can depend upon. We think with it, we communicate with it, we use it to have imaginary conversations with people, even with people who are dead. We rely on the solidness of words, but like objects, they are made up mostly of empty space. They don't define, they indicate, they suggest reality. Language and reality are always in a state of becoming. Neither reaches formation, neither is ever totally realized. Actuality is always elsewhere. We move towards it, but it keeps well ahead of us. What we have as human beings are possible moments of a larger dimension. Most of us trust only to our five senses, the five reasons that hold us to a view of the self as something distinct from the rest of existence. Poetry tries to reach out and connect with more than our senses allow, attempting to discover what lies beyond the confines of our narrow perspective.

Poetry asks that we reshape ourselves, and in that reshaping discover the sacredness of what surrounds us. It lies everywhere and in everything. Christ says in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, "Break a stick and I am there." A monk once asked a Zen master, "What is Buddha?" He answered, "A stick of dried dung." The divine is every place where we open our eyes. You can think of it as emanating from God or nature; it doesn't matter, because there are no words or concepts that can contain it. The poet can only point to it with what exists between the words he or she writes. That contradiction is the beating of an angel's wings; it's the presence of the lover, the ecstasy of dogs running, the readiness of your name to release you. The poem is affirmation that there is more to reality than what we are taught to perceive or expect, that the impoverishment of our five senses can be enriched, and the very definition of ourselves can be amplified, and that we can increase our own significance by increasing the significance of the world.

Art in all of its forms has the ability to bring us back into focus, to open possibilities, provide ground to stand upon, and behold beingness, that most sacred of treasures. This is exactly what good poetry can accomplish. It can show you the aliveness of things, which we usually don't see, or see very superficially. Whether the poem is positive or negative is only secondary, what matters is that the poem is rendered with as much complete openness as possible. The poem doesn't have to be a "feel good" experience for it to have a spiritual dimension, for it to open the psyche to new realities. Pollyanna is not the patron saint of the arts. Poets needn't be moralists, or pillars of virtue, but rather instigators of new emotional patterns with which to approach the undeveloped faculties that lock us into time and culture. The cosmogenic push of the poem's instinct can see past the infantile ego of both the poet and the reader, if only momentarily, to show the potential that lies all around them. The poem is an ancient mediator in the long dispute between the cherished self and the deeper knowledge of the plenitude, which exists outside its narrow definition of reality.

We are taught to accept the view of the world we've inherited, the indicated circle of "reason" handed down generation after generation. For many, anything outside that protected boundary is unknown and therefore dangerous: "there be dragons" and a frenzy of likely horrors awaiting the traveller. Art has acted as both arbitrator and translator in that struggle with chaos, regardless of whether it's internal or external. At times, the more conservative among us are right, there are dragons out there. Sometimes the poem itself is a dragon, its green and regenerative fire burning away the petty notions we've accumulated about phenomenality. The motif of terra incognita is rich with possibilities, both positive and negative, but richer still is the chance for rebirth.

The poet must perform some degree of self-annihilation to experience the full fluidity of the poem rising out of the ground of being. The sanctum sanctorum cannot be reached with your name intact. The poem as it is written down must precede you, not the other way around. If the poem doesn't lead the way, you're left with dross, with your opinions and beliefs formed during a lifetime of culturally acceptable ideas. To go your own way, you must be reborn to some degree each time you sit down to write a poem. Death and rebirth are a common theme in the traditions of all people. For the poet it is a necessary practice in order to cross over to the far-reaching space outside his or her personal views.

The sacred does not give itself readily to people whose heads are clogged with preconceptions and personal judgements on what a poem should be. Rather, the poet needs to be receptive to a long series of potential influences that can alter his or her basic percepts regarding what defines a poem. In part, the function and value of poetry is to cheat reason, to break away from its hold and censor. Reason is the serpent in the garden, it whispers in our ear that there is no larger panorama beyond its scope to behold. The pride of reason damages our ability to see the multi-dimensional possibilities inherent in our spirit. "Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason," to quote Novalis. To write, to really write, one must die to reason for a while in order to give birth to the ambiguous self, ready to explore all the unreasonable possibilities. The mystery lies in those redemptive words that come forth when we break free of our prejudices, allowing language to sharpen our sensibilities to a point of entry beyond mere reason.

Bounded by certain aspects of our daily consciousness, we become numb to much of the world; so much of it becomes dull and gives back no light. Art and poetry are not a panacea for all our ills, but they can help us to focus in on what's important, what calls to us around every corner, under every stone. Deepening our lives essentially means to be aware, to answer the call from life itself, to practise the veneration of its numerous forms. This has nothing to do with religion, per se; rather, religion and art grow out of this veneration, this deep need to bow our heads before wonder and being. Without art or religion, human beings still have this irresistible urge to acknowledge the awe they feel in the presence of creation.

An atheist can feel that as deeply as a believer, the magnitude of the experience can be exactly the same in either case. No amount of negation can push aside this longing for reverence, it wells up, regardless, in every human being. This yearning for the sacred is the driving force behind all true art, even if it isn't recognized as such. If we listen quietly we can hear that sigh of creation, world sustaining, spinning galaxies, balancing itself on the tip of a rabbit's hair, drifting to the ground on a birch leaf. The whole round of existence and every piece of it is revelation; every square inch is the totality of time and space nestled into form. Every atom is the ultimate expression of mystery, the mystery that things exist, that we have the ability to be conscious of them. The universe unfolds like the meaning of a single poem and that meaning is simply to be. The greatest mystery, held in every grain of cosmic dust, in every blade of grass, is existence itself. This is the first and last wonder, beyond words to describe; only the wordless poem can accomplish this. Only the poem we are always trying to write, but can only point to, that singularity immersed in the continuum of itself, without any possibility of secondary interpretations. Wordless, it comes to us without an attendant personality; without a meaning we can grasp with language. Yet we all know of it, feel it in times of intuition beyond the nature of names and forms, it is the connective tissue between heart and mind, stone and star. It is this living moment, alive now in the presence of all beings, in the isness of all objects.

bad tension is an image of reality that the mind interposes between us and the world

Break the hegemony of head. Tail (other end of spine) is key.

This book is dedicated to all of the indigenous peoples of the world who carry out Original Instruction while we kill you to build one giant conformist amusement park.

force serves ego
energy serves spirit

spirit reaches headtop
(paying attention)

We only truly listen when we allow what we hear to change us.

faith means no doubts
it saves a lot of time

discipline means no distractions
it saves a lot of energy

It takes two years to learn to speak and sixty to learn to keep quiet.

shoulders sink into hips
hips sink into feet

in the fulness of time

stillness not stiffness

Reality a vast entanglement of caress. Indra's Net.

If you are lonely when you’re alone you are in bad company.

facing the truth always strips away defences and leaves you feeling raw, fragile, vulnerable

beyond a humanized earth

an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue

The world of energy is a world of gentle hues, delicate scents, hushed whispers, where everything not only touches but reaches out to touch. Participation requires heightened awareness. Spirit is the spark that thrusts us into this state.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

the bourgeois model is unethical because unsustainable

beware willful blindness

all love is love of god
all spirit is holy spirit

Meditation is often a struggle. The mind is clouded, the heart heavy, and the back tired. But we continue because we know it's our only hope. And then suddenly, out of the blue, a clearing opens and everything lightens and eases.

Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our existence.

truth is not something you can be told
it becomes revealed only when you quieten the mind

technology is in lieu of spirit

heart: connexion compassion love care concern

The secret of life? Do everything with enthusiasm. And remember that enthusiasm literally means possessed by a god, a spirit.

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.

belly: composure patience contentment sangfroid detachment tolerance equanimity

if you must think then first step out the box

thinking to oneself comes at a terrible cost : it blinkers the mind and weighs on the heart

meditation attempts to relieve this burden

The student must struggle through years of external work before they can even contemplate commencing internal work. Think of Milarepa, repeatedly building then dismantling the stone temple for 12 years before he was ready to meditate.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

imagine a bunch of energy filaments exiting the mingmen
grab them and draw them around to your dantien
this is one version of our first warm-up exercise

plumb the depths

tip of the tongue on the roof of the mouth allows the jaw to relax without drooling

Knowledge and opinion amount to the same thing: tension that prevents us from releasing into who we really are.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that everything in Chan (Zen) revolves around the patriarchal lineage.

spirit is a spark that wakes us from the slumber of self-absorption

feel your weight as a fullness that rises from the ground

the patience of a nature lover

It is not the teacher's job to please the student but to wake them up – draw them out of their complacent slumber. So the last thing the teacher wants are smiles and nods of agreement, but looks of shock and discomfort if not outright terror.

Nature is first a pageant to us, and then a process; until at last we perceive it to be, in Goethe’s words, the “garment of God” — and withal, the enveloping mantle of man.

the measure of softness is in the touch
the ease and grace with which we slip through the air

responding to touch

quiet & quick

Head is overactive because heart is underactive. (Worry is never an expression of love.) Heart, more than anything, trusts. Head hedges (its bets). Heart is the site of unconditionality. Head qualifies everything.

I am everything because I am only the stream of life, free of accident. I am immortal because all deaths converge in me, from that of the fish to that of Zeus; gathered in me they once again become life, not individual and particular but belonging to nature and thus free.

all the teacher wants is students keen enough to study (practice)

the ravenous ego

compassion roundens
aggression straightens

At school, back in the early seventies, we got a new science teacher. In his first lesson he gave us a little introduction, to himself and to the subject. I remember him stressing that scientists think they are investigating reality whereas in actual fact they are merely investigating models of reality, and never touch reality itself.

Hubris against the essential divine order of nature would be followed by its appropriate nemesis.

like a sun: held together by gravity (integrity, discipline, concentration) yet endlessly beaming life-giving energy

before images form
before words arise

without forgiveness we never let go

The fundamental tension we are trying to release is the self. A thick cloying shell enclosing a kernal of true enlightened self, maintained and reinforced by the constant chatter in the head.

Our method of release is to simultaneously relax & concentrate. Focus the conscious mind onto a point (lower dantien) and release outwards from that point. Centripetal / centrifugal.

The catastrophic event that gave rise to modernity is the loss of the soul of the world.

meditation: stripped to simple heartbeat, counted breath; overwhelmed by being

unstill as a flame

if it's not difficult to the point of impossible then it's probably not worth doing

INERTIA (Latin iners idle or sluggish): a natural resistance to change.
This is the world of matter, the world of things, the static stagnation that spirit exists to overcome.

removing a stone
to alter the melody
of a mountain burn
I listen
then place
it back again

meditation: still as a stone in situ yet full of resonance

suffer for your art

thinking to yourself amounts to thinking about yourself

Prayer addresses something outside the self. That is its power. It very simply opens a channel between the heart and the beyond.

Whereof one cannot speak
Thereof one must be silent

a listening bristling with spirit

burdened by ego

a good life is one spent in the service of spirit

I remember hearing an interview with Richard Hadlee on his retirement from cricket. The interviewer asked him why he was retiring and he replied: I'm tired of waking up each morning in pain. The accumulation of little niggling injuries, but more the pain and exhaustion associated with daily physical training, something all athletes have to get used to. And it's the same with internal work. If I'm working softly, quietening the mind, really feeling each movement or each breath, then afterwards, after the serene glow has dispersed, I know that I'll feel strung out, fragile, emotionally tender and possibly bad-tempered. We take this as a positive indication that effective work has been done.

The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.

we grow up when we slough off selfhood

willing to leave it all behind

What is soul but a feeling for softness?

Yielding isn't merely a specialised response to aggression, it's a way of life – a viable means to happiness. When you learn to yield, everything suits you.

God is always working through you. The important thing is to become conscious and co-operate.

attend the particulars
it's amazing how many details most people miss

get wired

root is an unfurling coccyx reaching into earth

With long dedicated practice the mind quietens, awareness opens & deepens, and the here & now extends spatially & temporally to include everything.

We have language. That is how we have become superficial. We have lost our depth because we have language. There is no language for the silent expression.

awareness   consciousness   love
these are interchange

most hearts are crushed by heavy minds

peace & contentment come when you relocate to dantien

With mind-in-dantien, you see the world as it is, uncoloured by you. It's our way of distancing from the head.

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

cancer is any uncontrollable growth

swirl & sway

the function of internal work is not to become more skilled but more empty

Energy is a label we give anything nuanced that tends to be masked by the noisy mind.

Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.

our bourgeois comforts are precisely protection against God

meditation establishes the ground from which we spring

most I teach are far too squeamish for the truth

Students must realise that it's not the money they pay the teacher that makes the teaching flow, but the practice they put in before each lesson. Without practice the teacher will not be inspired to teach.

all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine

relax recede withdraw into the wings of awareness

find your weakness then work on it

as soon as you look at something you're distracted

Mind-in-dantien does not mean think-about-dantien. It means experience the world as though from the dantien. Put things in perspective.

The true teacher reveals the light whereas the false one stands in its way.

wherever there is touch there is magic

thoughtless awareness

truth is not veracity or actuality but whatever sinks one deeper

When I was a young teenager my mother had a friend from work who would often spend time with us. She was very nice, though a bit posh, clearly a class above, but I liked her. On one occasion we were all out together in the local shopping precinct when she spotted a black person (this was the early 70s). 'Oh I hate the blacks!' she blurted,'They should all go back to where they come from!' She never mentioned blacks again but from that moment on I found it very difficult to like her.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.

knowledge & information tend to pedantry – no energy

dantien is a hole in the ground
you must die to get there

a resentful rationalism

We think ourselves so nice & reasonable & respectable, yet it is our lifestyle that is destroying the planet, and as soon as that lifestyle feels threatened we become ugly murderous monsters.

Silence questions certitudes and dissolves apparent binary opposites. It reconfigures absence as presence, emptiness as fullness, quietness as expressivity, stillness as intensity of life.

nothing more beautiful than an empty room

if you feel this then you may possibly commence the work of emptying the mind

indigenous peoples are more in tune with nature – external & internal

hood the eyes: withdraw the line of vision into dantien

Dantien is a dungeon for self. When we finally get down there and throw away the key, the world opens up and we see it for the first time. Then the dragon can fly.

we’re all bozos on the bus

dynamic equilibrium: everything is moving yet the system is balanced
or as my teacher put it:
all is energy and everything is in its rightful place

nowadays people don't want magic they want fun

LIFE'S BREAKTHROUGHS 

1. leave home 

2. find a teacher 

3. commit for life 

4. turn the attention back on the self

The name of our game is balance or equilibrium or harmony. So my sympathies are always going to be with indigenous people rather than with the colonisers who attempt to replace them. Indigenous people naturally live in harmony with their environment.

we are always the problem we are trying to solve in the world

taiji handles the other without getting into a fight

heart & soul

People ask how I find the time to meditate five hours daily. I point out that the average American watches four and a half hours of TV a day. And I don't have a TV.

Living necessitates injustice. My life requires other things – animal, vegetable, mineral – to die. My bourgeois satisfactions require others to live without. My over-consumption steals from planet and from future generations. The ethical life is simply one that strives to minimise injustice.

The best thing you can do for the planet is to stay home.

energy   spirit   softness
if you are not in love with these
then I would prefer not to know you

loving is becoming

Prayer is the lifting of heart to God, or, put another way, prayer is the loving of God.

When I was a teenager I loved browsing through the National Geographic magazine in the public library. I remember one occasion looking at a pull-out photograph of the Amazon rainforest in which two European explorers gazed proudly at the camera. As I studied the picture I suddenly became aware of numerous smaller tribes people standing amongst the trees. I hadn't noticed them before, not because they were camoflaged, but because they looked part of the scene; they didn't stand out as something alien or other; they belonged there. And whereas the Europeans seemed to come out of the photo towards me, the natives literally receded into the trees. In fact they looked exactly like the trees – as though they had extruded up from the Earth beneath their feet. At the time I was struck by how insignificant and primitive the natives looked compared to the civilized Europeans who seemed much more like me. But now, my work, which is my day, everyday, aspires to become as those natives. As naked and as natural as they.

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

nothing quite as painful as the truth
and if it doesn't hurt then it's trivial

the spiritual life is a life of occasional glimmers

spiritual work has absolutely nothing to do with concentrating the mind to get what you want and everything to do with humbly offering the heart to God

Spiritual work is negative, reductive, subtractive. Peeling away layer after layer after layer until one arrives at pure naked essence. As close to God as we are likely to get.

I must leave Ireland and create in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race!

if the work is about getting your own way then it has no spiritual content

listen not to hear but to connect

always turning the spotlight back on the self
exposing its insidious presence at every level

We all carry trauma. If we didn't then we would be enlightened. The average modern life aims to keep trauma brushed under the carpet: everything is organised so that it never shows its ugly face. This leads to a life of depression, mild or extreme, the price most are prepared to pay for ease, comfort and seeming peace. It takes a special sort of person to willingly open the can of worms, peel off the scab and let the wound weep. And why do they do it? Because some need truth, they cannot live a lie. They much prefer the agony of facing truth to the comfort of hiding from truth. They have what I call soul.

Resentment is a communicable disease and should be quarantined.

if God really loves you he will deny you want you want
with the object of desire comes unforeseen consequences

depression is not a sickness
it is a sin

the work is infinite—endless
never done

The traditional antidote to depression is prayer. Not the occasional prayer but a prayerful life.

I think some of the bees may have escaped from my bonnet.

inspiration   suspension   expiration

pity : piety

quieten the mind and you will hear god whispering just two words: have mercy

After 17 years of grafting away on my own (wandering in the wilderness) I feel that I may now be ready to begin. C'est la vie.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

prayer: quietening the mind
and listening to the heart

in the dwam before sleep

head-mind is dominated by words – lexical thinking
heart-mind is dominated by feelings – pre-lexical thinking

meditation: recalling the blissful reverie you shared with your mother as she nursed you

I just try to remain a good soldier—I mean a soldier of cinema.

meditation: dreaming whilst awake

stalwart & redoubtable

Imagination dead? Imagine!

Since we lost Nature, the senses, especially the eyes, serve to maintain the numbness of our depressive position. Learn to unfocus the eyes, gaze inwards, and FEEL.

La résponse est le malheur de la question.

veil the vulgar glare of self and attend to what shares the space

stop leakage:

leaky gut
leaky heart
leaky head

leaking energy

a capacity to tolerate zero

Taking first watch. A sense that my intense vigilance surrounds and contains an intimate quiet space. This our service.

I don’t know the answers to these questions—I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I think it is important to find out for yourself.

traverse beyond depression and into transcendence
this is not achieved with knowing but by unknowing

faith & discipline – the minimum requirements for any successful course of study

bleed but don't leak

In the beginning Taiji is all about relaxation, but eventually it's about tension. Living like a bent bow about to fire.

I walk along like blood seeking its wound

dantien is the centre about which I cohere
heart is the centre from which I issue forth

see past the infantile ego

endlessnessnessness

The whole gamut of experience, from sensing to feeling, from thinking to doing, distract us from the fundamental fact of being which is being itself. I exist. This is the realisation, the centre, that meditation sinks into then peers out from.

Be just before you are generous.

the first fact of my being is being itself – I exist, I am
the second fact is spirit – I am alive, I am animated

true listening is always ready to agree

embodied & emboldened

We need an ego simply to survive other egos. This is why the bulk of our work must be solitary.

Don't look for meaning in the words. Listen to the silences.

spirit is the leaven
lifting heart to heaven

not obsessed but possessed

the primary function of language is to sing god’s praises

The teacher gives just enough to stimulate, inspire, encourage practise. Any more and the student will think (they've already done the work).

The living plasm vibrates unspeakably, it inhales the future, it exhales the past, it is the quick of both, and yet it is neither.

a quivering momentaneity

words unspoken

I can't really teach you anything. All I can do is point out what you already know.

The good teacher gives you not information or knowledge, not even wisdom, but things to practise. What I call points of practice.

I fall, more and more,
Into my own silences.
In the cold air,
The spirit
Hardens.

a mind & body

tempered & honed

by unremitting

discipline

embodied & embedded

discipline without force
now there's a tall order

All the oriental martial arts are founded on Riding Horse, something my teacher assured me I would have to seriously practise at some point otherwise there would always be a hole in my foundation, limiting progress. I realise now that the real value of Riding Horse is not so much the strength it builds in the legs but the way it slowly strips the mind of self-pity. Without the grim discipline of Riding Horse, the mind will never naturally sink & settle in the dantien. Riding Horse is the spiritual heart of our art.

for in the tension of opposites all things have their being

from cowardice to courage
from distraction to concentration

to find the true home you must first leave your false home: tribe  family  self

there may be no unteachable children but there are plenty of unteachable adults

A student asked recently why my Zoom classes are all Riding Horse and variations thereof. Well in Taiji the first thing is sink & relax: releasing to gravity to drain out of the upper body and into the legs, and then through the legs and into the earth. Without this there is no Taiji.

The sanctuary of the heart is dark. Nothing can be seen or known there, nothing sought.

we relax chronic tensions and install a dynamic tension we call concentration

intimate & impersonal

attempts to clarify & simplify will inevitably lose detail & nuance

A good teacher is never afraid to say: I don't know. Then she can either keep mum or waffle on regardless.

A human being is God’s being temporarily clothed in human attributes. God’s being is a human being divested of its qualities.

self-awareness requires awareness of the other's awareness of me

infinity is everywhere if only we wake up

reality renders us speechless
this is astonishment

cogito ergo (hic) non sum : I think therefore I am not (here)

there was something subterranean about him, as if he had an underworld refuge

pray for peace
(start with inner peace)

dantien as seat of soul

passion & faith must run soul-deep

Think 'infinite' not as 'enormously large' but as 'endless' or, as we would say in Taiji, 'open ended.' In this sense everything bar human creations are infinite.

the emptiness of being everything at once

a willingness to live metaphorically

tender & petalling

a weather eye : a weather ear

Prayer is a re-minder. It brings you back to mind as site of awareness & devotion, before you have sullied it with thinking. Prayer is also a remembering; a rejoining with the cosmos; a reaching out & in to the infinite.

I am still the place where creation does some work on itself.

When a true artist steps back from their creation they always say the same thing: That wasn't me.

follow your nose

take up the slack

The teacher offers intimations of what you would experience if only your mind was more focused and your energy a little stronger. You still have to do the work to bring about that inner probity. No one can do it for you.

The Imagination is not a State: it is Human Existence itself.

keep an ear to the ground

tighten your belt

the good student has won the battle over their own incorrigiblity

In the same way that countries that have only known war are terrified of peace, so people who have only known noise & distraction are terrified of silence. The real enemy is always fear.

I have with me all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

if you wish to experience reality in all its visceral intensity then be present at a birth

the birth of each & every moment

like an eager schoolchild on the edge of their seat with interest

practice: putting in the hours

avant-garde 

at the vanguard 

at the fore 

the forefront 

the be-fore 

at the presencing of the moment 

this is what we mean by 'raw' 

it's what all enlightened masters have in common

I have the impression that many of us are afraid of silence.

it takes humility to engage an easy mundane activity like breathing as though it's the most important & interesting thing in the world (which of course it is)

meditation: holding nothing back

meditation: giving up your whole self to the moment

The word 'awareness' dates from 1828. Before that it was 'awaredom'.

Most artists want to make things a bit more difficult for themselves as they go along, to challenge themselves.

as though for the first time everytime

slip past the defenses of the ego