Why Did The Good Samaritan Cross The Road?

About a year ago, feeling the need to re-charge my batteries, I spent a few very enjoyable days at a Buddhist centre on the other side of the county. It must have been well over thirty years since I had been in an 'Ashram' or monastic institution. Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism, just as Christianity and Islam are offshoots of Judaism. My monastic background was in the Kashmiri Shavite tradition of Hinduism, but the way the whole place was set up and run, and the disciplines observed, were instantly familiar. Here was a group of bright people from a wide variety of backgrounds, covering a wide age-range and of both genders. They were all, in a determined and disciplined way, in pursuit of spiritual fulfilment and enlightenment.

I never was one to do well in, or around, institutions of any type. So my visit was never going to be more than a few days in a conducive environment, to do some meditation and to connect with the spiritual pursuits of others. I took the opportunity to read some of the literature on offer. There was the usual explanation of the nature of the self, and the usual claim that this particular Buddhist path is the only path that will get you to your spiritual goal. One thing I learned a long time ago is that nobody has a monopoly in this arena.

It was also instructive to see that this community (with its rather privileged lifestyle), in a fantastic huge property in wonderful surroundings, was seeking to justify it's monastic isolation. The argument was that by leaving society and concentrating on achieving their own enlightenment, they were enriching the spiritual capital of the world and, thereby, helping the rest of mankind. That seemed to me to be a bit of a stretch and to display a naive fear of appearing to be selfish.

All spiritual pursuits are, by their very nature, selfish. We follow these paths and practices to make sense of our own lives and to find internal peace for ourselves. There is no need to pretend that we do this for the benefit of others, even though others may end up benefiting from our efforts. We seek spiritual peace out of self-interest.

There are two kinds of self interest. Greed and disregard for others characterise one kind. Care and loving for others (because it aids our own well being) characterise the other. This second kind of self interest is Enlightened Self Interest.

The Good Samaritan crossed the road because, if he had passed by on the other side, he would have felt terrible. He crossed the road because it made him feel better and contributed to his happiness by helping his fellow man.

Keeping So'ham Simple

I've been getting a bit of feedback from people saying they're 'struggling' with meditation. I'm a bit surprised, but then perhaps, I shouldn't be. I do think that many folk are simply expecting too much, too soon, of what essentially is a very simple mental exercise.

Learning how to ride a bike is extremely difficult at first. Once you've learned, it takes no obvious skill, you just let your body get on with it. Meditation is a bit like that. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Except that learning to ride a bike is much harder than learning to meditate.

There are so many traditions and disciplines that employ meditation and promote no end of varied and contradictory methods and practices. Most of them claiming to be the only true path to enlightenment. Meditation gets built up into this massive spiritual 'big deal' that only accomplished Yogis and Buddhist Monks can get to grips with.

The point about 'So'ham' or 'breathing' meditation, (see: Friday 18th December 2009 'Meditation De-Mystified') is that it doesn't need any special time, place, discipline or method to be of use. You can sit down in a special place set aside for meditation, at a set time, in a very disciplined way, and if that's your bag, you'll get a lot of benefit from it. But all of that is so unnecessary.

Listening to you breath can be done in any situation, place or time. I find that it works really well when I'm driving or doing some repetitive task. I've often done it in a bored moment at a party, when observing the goings on from the edges of things, or even in a meeting when things have got tedious. So'ham simply helps to flip from being fully immersed in the goings on around you, to being just one step detached from things, going from being an actor in the play to being a member of the audience. There is nothing more to it than that.

It's especially handy when someone, or some situation, is doing it's very best to piss you off.

I recommend starting by not making a big, disciplinary epic of the whole thing. Just try a bit of 'So'ham' when you're driving, travelling on the bus, waiting in the queue at the bank...

Where observation leads sometimes may be tedious and obvious, sometimes full of insight and, very occasionally, deeply spiritual. There is no point approaching the act of observation with expectations- the two aren't compatible - what you observe is what it is and no more.

Why do it at all?

That only becomes obvious when you notice that you simply feel better for doing it.

Bang On

David and I were watching an article on the local news television.

An old guy from Rushden (where we live!) who, at eighty-odd years old, is retiring from running Working Mens' Clubs. He's talking about life and society:

"When people were poor, we were much better off."

Touche.

From the Silversmith's Bench:

There is slush where the snow used to be. The workshop is freezing and the tools are too cold for my delicate digits. (Never could work in gloves!). As a result, the jewellery bench in the front room is busy. Got to do something for god's sake.

I've been hacking 'OM' symbols out of lumps of pure silver. Every time I make one I give it away. It just doesn't feel right to make 'Oms' for money. You can't give a silver 'Om' to anyone. They've got to be ready for it. The timing has to be right. So far, each recipient has been really jazzed. I always supply the right sized silver chain so it can go to work right away.

I use silver for it's white purity and because it's not so intrinsically valuable. Somehow, 'Oms' shouldn't be flash.

I know that Will, my dearest younger Son, is getting engaged in many meaningful conversations springing from the big one he wears, as he travels throughout the East. The Orientals see that about his neck and ask him:

" Do you know what that is? Do you know what it means?"

I think, at first, they take a little offence, thinking they are seeing a tourist wearing a bauble they don't comprehend. I can understand that. Will does know what he's wearing and why. I'm sure it's opened a few human intercultural doors.

What is the 'Om'?

On a musical instrument, there is one note from which all others are generated by the physics of harmonics. This note is called 'the Fundamental'.
It's the lowest and strongest note the instrument can produce. 'Om' is the fundamental note of the universe. The cosmic vibration from which all arises.

In Western cosmology we have come to understand that once these was a tiny tiny thing called a 'Singularity', which expanded around 13 billion years ago and spawned our universe. In eastern philosophy there is the central 'Witness'; the singularity at the centre of consciousness. To the oriental mind, this is also a creator. The creator of our inner universe.

'Om', the fundamental note, is the sound of those singularities. The basic vibration from which all things spring. Everything else, inside or out, is a harmonic vibration arising from the 'Om'. It is the symbol of our oneness with the universe.

"I am that- That I am " is a literal verbal translation of So'ham - Ham'sah.

Listen!

'Om' the primal sound.

“In the beginning there was the Word"

I wonder who's going to get the next one off the bench?

A Couple of Practical Uses

'Adventures are to be welcomed and embraced. A life with no adventure is like a car that never leaves the driveway.'

We tend to think of adventures as physical pursuits. Climbing mountains, travelling the world, creating a rocket-car - there are so many possibilities. I'm all for these kinds of adventures, they broaden the mind, make life more meaningful and help us to avoid the worst of conditions; boredom!

Meditation enables us to indulge in other adventures that don't require plane-tickets or screwdrivers. Going to new places, discovering things we never knew about our own nature, seeing wonderful sights, are all possible when we embark on the 'internal’ adventure. This is reason enough to have a go.



'Happiness matters more than all other things. Happiness is a state of mind, not a state of affairs.'

One of the more useful things we can do with meditation is observe our state of mind, our thought processes. Misery and depression are strains of thought. If we can objectively observe our minds doing these things, we have the option of saying to ourselves:
"That's a load of bollocks , I'm going to stop doing that and do something else."

Observation of the thought process gives you control over it. It becomes a fairly simple matter to manage your state of mind.

The Solstice is Here.

Tomorrow is the 21st of December, the shortest day of the year. From tomorrow, the daylight hours get longer. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

For me, a non-Christian, who does not celebrate Christmas, the Winter Solstice is the Big Day at this time of year. I get depressed by the short cold days and being able to watch the progression towards the Spring lifts my spirits.

David and I always mark this day with a small celebration. Last year we visited an ancient pagan site, the stone-circle at Little Rolright. This year, the weather is dour, so we won’t be repeating the trip, but we will do something a little special to observe the day.

The ancient astronomical pagan sites, such as Stonehenge and Rolright were built for this day. The common understanding is that these monuments were built to observe the Summer Solstice, but this makes little sense to me.

The people who built these places were members of the earliest organised agricultural society. To them the re-growth of the sun, the promise of spring and all that that brings in terms of spring planting and the birth of livestock, would have been vitally important. At the most dangerous and hardest time of year, the importance of the re-birth of the dying Sun must have been utterly immense.

It makes perfect sense that the Druids would want to demonstrate their power at the time of greatest fear, not at the time of greatest comfort and plenty.

The big day in the ancient British pre-Christian calendar must be tomorrow.

Celebrate!

MEDITATION DE-MYSTIFIED

I’ve had a few requests to say something about meditation. Here’s an attempt to produce something that’s useful to the more cynical Western mind, without the deep and unfathomable jargon that often surrounds the subject.

When my Guru (yes I had a Guru!) was asked:
“How does one meditate?”
He used to reply,
“When you sit down to meditate, whatever you do, don’t think of a monkey.”

So you sit down to meditate and what’s the first thing you think about? You’ve got it; A MONKEY. The point he was making is that it doesn’t matter what your mind happens to be thinking of. Meditation is not about controlling your mind, it’s about observing what it gets up to.

If you think about what happens when you’re dreaming, there’s a part of you constructing the dream, and another part that is experiencing, watching (witnessing?) the experience. This is what in Eastern understanding is known as ‘The Witness’ or ‘Witness Consciousness’. The very act of observing your inner goings on, in an objective way, makes you aware of this part of your being.

Meditation is a practice (and that’s a very good word for it) of observing the inner universe. As Westerners, we tend to be very good at observing the Universe out there. And why not? The external universe is amazing, fascinating and full of wonders. If you think about what your own mind can conjour up, both in external observation, (which has to be handled internally to make any sense), and in internal stuff, like the immense possibilities of dreams, the ‘Inner Universe’ is just as enormously gob-smackingly huge as the Outer one.

‘Meditation' is about watching and observing the inner Universe. A universe every bit as worthy of study and exploration as the external one.

So what’s the trick? Eastern philosophies mention and use things called ‘Mantras’ as a means of getting into ‘observation mode’. Unfortunately many of us Westerners find repetition of word-based mantras very difficult and often it actually distracts the attention away from simply ‘watching' all the goings on.

There is one ‘Mantra'. (and I’m not sure calling it a ‘Mantra' truly helps), that does not require repetition of words. It merely requires an act of observation. This meditation tool is known as So’Ham or Ham’Sa. Which of those you choose depends solely on where you happen to begin.

There is one sound that is always with you as long as you are alive. That sound is the sound of your own breathing. No breathing- no living. A non-breathing person, is generally referred to as ‘dead’. So as long as you aren’t, in fact, dead, your breath keeps on chugging in and chugging out. Most of the time we are completely oblivious to our breathing, except when we’ve been exercising very hard or when we are in very very quiet places. Even so, it’s always there, going in, going out. At any time, we can listen to it, if we’re so inclined.

Try shutting your eyes and listening to the natural sound of your breath. Don’t work at ‘breathing’ just listen to the sound as your breathing proceeds on its automatic course.

As the air comes in it makes a kind of ‘Humming' sound. As it goes out, the sound is more of a ‘sigh’ or a ‘Sahhh’. Don’t take my word for this. Close your eyes, listen to the sound and you’ll hear it for your self. This is ‘Ham’Sa”. If you start listening on the out-breath, it becomes ‘Sah’Hamm’. Hence the two names for the same thing.

This tool for getting into observation mode is very easy, always with you, wherever you are and whatever you happen to be doing. All that is required is to listen. Listening is a very concentrated form of observation. This ‘Maha Mantra’ as the Siddhas of the East call it, is the simplest and most ‘portable' method of meditation. I won’t go into the wonders that will be revealed as your inner journey of exploration goes forth, not here at least.

All I can say is try it. Practice it. (Practice in any new skill is always helpful.). It’s value will be blindingly obvious. After a while, your breathing may start doing weird things. Don't try to control that - observe, watch, experience. This is no harder than watching TV.

By the way, watch out for little Blue Lights!

ANOTHER LITTLE MIRACLE

My son Ken is living in Maui, and he and his Lilly are expecting the birth of their first child very soon. When Ken was born, in Marina Del Ray I wrote a song about what being a parent had done for my spirit. Here it is, with chords... (the original poem by Dylan Thomas is worth a look.)


THE SOURCE OF THE SPRING


C F C
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
G C
So said Dylan the Welshman long ago
C F C
Now I see it before me hour by hour
G F G C
It’s replanted a seed that once failed to grow

C F^ C
For the first time in years here’s the flow
G C
And I’m able to speak of what all your hearts know
F^ C
It’s taken some years in the cold
G F G C
To re-build the bridge between body and soul



Chorus:
Am G
It’s been away so long
Am D G
When I feel it I’m strong



C F C
Remember the days we were young
G C
We’d change the world so we sung
F C
We had the power and the time
G F G C
It was so black and white our ideas were so fine
F^ C
But as we grew older it seemed
G C
That experience dimmed the light of our dreams



F^ C
And soon it was no longer clear
G F G C
The truth was concealed in the maze of our fears




Chorus:
Am G
It’s been away so long
Am D G
When we feel it we’re strong




C F C
The path that we tread isn’t known
G C
We discover it stone by stone
F C
And now and again on the way
G F G C
Out shines a light and we know our day
F^ C
There’s a light deep inside and it grows
G C
It shines in our hearts and it knows
F^ C
That the green fuse of life that makes babies grow
G F G C
Is the source of the spring from which all these words flow.
G F G C
Is the source of the spring from which all these words flow.

BILLIE THE DOG: “GOODBYE MY FRIEND”

Today we said goodbye to our dog, Billie.

On the ‘laffin-gas’ team roster, her title was ‘moral support’. Was she ever!

When David was battling for his life in hospital it was the long 4am walks in the country park, with the dog haring around after squirrels and rabbits that kept me going.

When David miraculously made it through, and got out of the wheelchair, it was taking the dog for a walk that got him back in shape.

We never heard her snarl or growl in anger. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body. She was probably the purest little soul I’ve ever had the honour to have known.

Her time had come, the years had caught up with her and we had to do the proper thing by her, and it was painful to do.

Now Billie is out in her beloved spinney, forever giving the squirrels a good run.

Farewell, our friend, Billie.

Om Shanti Shanti.

IMMORTALITY

Fear of dying is something we all share. We spend our lives doing our very best to avoid the one true inevitability. There are those who say ‘I’m not afraid of dying’. There is a very simple experiment to test this: Point a loaded gun at someone who makes this declaration and see if they duck. Instinct will take over and that person will duck first and think later. It is very difficult to imagine a universe that our consciousness is not a part of and it is very uncomfortable to contemplate not being.

The instinct to stay alive is a Darwinian imperative. Any species that did not fear death would not last long in the survival stakes. All religions’ first job is to offer some way of dealing with that fear. Immortality, in whatever form, is their stock in trade.

The trouble is that fear makes people dangerous. The suicide bomber and the kamikaze both give their lives for a promise of immortality. People who ‘give their lives to Jesus’ do it because the other side of that contract is ‘the sure and certain knowledge of eternal life’. The reason such people have a problem with science is they can’t reconcile a scientific view of the universe with their need for immortality. Science says the bible is a myth, and therefore, when you die – that’s the end. Finish. Kaput. So they mount an attack on science. Never mind that they use the products of science every day in every way, and that it is science and not religion that has made the lot of the common man so bearable. It never ceases to amaze me that a person can watch an evangelical preacher furthering ‘intelligent design’ on that ultimate product of science, the television, and not have a problem with what the preacher is saying.

Science itself is not completely blameless in all of this. Science has great difficulty in dealing with ideas that it cannot quantify. There is a strong tendency in science to act from a perverse kind of scientific ‘belief’. When it comes to matters of the spirit and “the ‘super-natural’, instead of saying “I don’t know’, science says “if it can’t be described by science it can’t be true’. That is an assumption based on a belief. The belief is that the scientific method is infallible. One only has to look at the history of science to see instance after instance of radical thinkers (who later turned out to be absolutely right) being ridiculed and rejected as absurd by the main body of scientific thought. Religion does not have the monopoly on dogma. In fact every major leap forward in science has been resisted by scientific dogma. It is painful to watch so-called objective thinkers behaving in such a way but it goes on every day in the scientific community.

The word ‘immortal’ means exactly what? Not mortal – incapable of dying. Not even the most rabid fundamentalist would suggest that our physical body doesn’t die. The religious position is that there is a part of us that exists beyond the physical body (generally referred to as the ‘soul’) that is incapable of dying. Even that idea is problematical. I have witnessed, close up, the results of brain damage, and there are too many of us who have watched Alzheimer’s disease rob a loved one of everything that made them who they are. If the ‘soul’ is the essence of our being, how can this happen? Do Alzheimer’s patients recover their conscious awareness when they die? When all brain activity has eased and the body remains alive, where is the soul? There can be little doubt that our consciousness is a product of the physical structure of our brain, so when the brain ceases to be, must not consciousness also cease?

Science teaches us that time is not an inflexible constant, it changes with velocity and it is as much a physical dimension as up down or sideways. In our daily lives, this variability of time is not apparent at all. Clocks go at the same rate anywhere on the planet. For everyday purposes, measurement of time is constant. There is another component to time, however, and that is our perception of it. Time can seem to fly by or it can seem to drag on interminably. Our conscious experience of time is very variable indeed. There are states of awareness where time can seem to stop altogether. Eastern mysticism describes a mental state known as ‘Samadhi’, a state of bliss, achieved through meditation, in which one experiences time ceasing to be. In my earlier hippy years I experienced this by combining meditation with an unwisely large does of lysergic acid. This is not a practice I would recommend. While in that state of consciousness, time did, indeed, cease. From the point of view of one’s perception of time, it is possible for time to stop completely. If, time is not progressing, is that not a case of being aware and immortal? If time cannot pass and one is conscious, death (from one’s own perception) can’t happen. To dismiss this as mere hallucination misses the point. It is a demonstration of the fact that consciousness has a way of stepping outside physical time. In the physical universe, time does keep marching on. The point is that our perception of time is just as important as any other view of it.

There have been many surprisingly similar descriptions of ‘near death’ experiences. States of consciousness where one enters a tunnel of light, where one can look back at our physical bodies. These descriptions are so numerous and consistent that many scientists accept that such a phenomenon does in fact exist. Their explanation is that it is a natural experience of the brain finally shutting down prior to death. I find that a perfectly reasonable explanation. If, however, the experience of brain death is one that generates a state of timeless in the consciousness, then does this not constitute a conscious existence beyond the physical? If, by the very process of dying, one perceives time to cease, then one can have one’s scientific cake, and eat one’s spiritual cake at the same time. From the physical point of view, we do indeed die and cease to be. The brain can no longer support our consciousness. From the internal viewpoint, we have left the physical restriction of time altogether.

So there does not have to be an argument between science and spirit when it comes to death. Of course we die. Of course our consciousness is gone from the dead brain. But, in the infinitesimal moment of death, it is quite possible to achieve a state of awareness that does indeed constitute immortality.

FUNDAMENTALLY DANGEROUS

Believing in stuff is bloody dangerous. If history teaches us anything, it teaches us to steer well clear of people who operate from belief. Crusaders, suicide bombers, Nazis and born-again Oil-Barons (Republican American Presidents et al), any kind of ‘fundamentalist’, all have one thing in common; their willingness to kill and maim to glorify that in which they believe.

That is not to say that spirit, ethics and a sense of right and wrong have no place in the right thinking of an intelligent person. Of course they do. But belief requires the abandonment of that which makes us Homo-Sapiens: the intellect. All belief requires the acceptance of that which true intellect can’t stomach – the paradox. All belief systems, at some point, need you to chuck your intellect into the bin and accept the improbable, if not the impossible. And that’s a very dangerous thing to do.

Darwin had a bit of a problem when he hypothesised that we are the outcome of a chaotic and accidental process he called evolution, meaning that we could no longer claim to be made a few thousand years ago in God’s image. That pissed off a lot of believers and some dumb people still want to teach ‘Creation’. So God put the Dinosaur bones in the ground just to have a laugh? Galileo ran into a bit of bother when he announced that the Earth (and therefore Mankind) wasn’t the centre of the universe. While all major religions propound that humility is a virtue, it is the rejection of the believers’ anthropocentric (human-centred) vision of the Universe that is the true humility.

That we are physically made of stuff manufactured in the core of stars is not miraculous enough for a believer. For him, his own cosmic importance is what really matters, regardless of what his intellect might be telling him.

What distinguishes us from the rest of animal creation has been a fascinating subject for debate for millennia. Is it the possession of a soul? Anyone who has had the pleasure of sharing their life with an animal companion might have difficulty with that one. Some of the finest souls I’ve met were canines. How about using tools? We’ve found apes, birds and other creatures that use tools, no distinction there then.

What does the title ‘Homo Sapiens’ mean? It means ‘thinking man’. THINKING. Apart from our ability to destroy our environment on a truly awesome scale, what makes us what we are, is our ability to think; to use our intellect. A believer may well say that our intellect is ‘God-given’. Well, if God gave you an intellect, why, in heaven’s name, would it be the first thing to get chucked out of the pram when things get a bit difficult to fathom?

The sad fact is you can’t have an intelligent debate with anyone who operates from a basis of pure belief. For a believer, all difficult problems become a point of faith and there can be no rational discussion of a point of view when that is based on the abandonment of the rational. Don’t bother arguing with a fundamentalist – it’ll probably get you shot. There is no argument to be had – he’s right, he believes he’s right and there’s nothing you can do about it. Except, of course, shoot the stupid bastard before he shoots you.