An informal Blog of personal reflections, quotes, poems, disjointed ramblings, writings, photos, philosophy, inspirations, and heartfelt thoughts…
Thursday 15th August 2024 (Year of the Wood Dragon):
“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”
Carl Jung
“For optimal health, we need body and spirit, exercise (ming) and meditation, awareness of the inner world and the outer. In other words, health requires balance and moderation. The goal of qigong may be summarized as xing ming shuang xiu, spirit and body equally refined and cultivated. Cultivate your whole being, as you would cultivate a garden with attention, care, and even love.”
“If you love someone, but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love“
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Stillness and action are relative, not absolute, principles. It is important to find a balance of yin and yang, not just in qigong, but in everyday life. In movement, seek stillness and rest. In rest, be mindful and attentive….”
Man was made for joy and woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro’ the world we safely go
Joy and woe are woven fine,
clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
By William Blake (1803)
“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything – anger, anxiety, or possessions – we cannot be free.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“If you think that peace and happiness are somewhere else and you run after them, you will never arrive. It is only when you realise that peace and happiness are available here in the present moment that you will be able to relax. In daily life, there is so much to do and so little time. You may feel pressured to run all the time. Just stop!
Touch the ground of the present moment deeply, and you will touch real peace and joy.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
Summers eve, feeding the little fish at Clifton Hampden, whilst sipping Puerh tea.
“Q. What if we were ok with whatever happened to us. Fully ok. With anything. We simply genuinely accepted it. We were happy to attempt to change it if we believed so necessary, gladly meeting the challenge, but were absolutely fine with anything life presented us with. So too with any thought, any emotion. We just watched it come and observed it go. Just simply allowing it to pass through, with no resistance, no fighting, no wishing it to be any other way. Not acting on it, but simply watching. Completely. Totally. In patient acceptance”
MSH
“When you love someone, you have to offer that person the best you have. The best thing we can offer another person is our true presence; both physically but particularly mentally in presence, when together and when apart.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
Albert Einstein once said:
A human being is part of a whole,
called by us the Universe,
a part limited in time and space,
he experiences himself,
his thoughts and feelings,
as something separated from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires,
and to affection for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circles of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.
It’s easy to forget that we are intimately connected with nature. That we are nature.
“If you can empty your mind of all thoughts your heart will embrace tranquillity of peace”
Tao Te Ching
“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good nights sleep”
E Joseph Cossman
So more soon, night night!
Wednesday 21st August 2024
August River
Communing once more
With the silvery fish
Smallest in the safety of the shallows
Wild river heron looking on
All bread well received
Twisting and tumbling glistening
Puerh tea mindfully consumed
Our lives gladly intertwine
Over supper for brief instant
And then again once more
As all things
Inescapably
Already gone
MSH. Sitting by Ol’ Father Thames.
Clifton Hampden (before longbow club evening shoot nearby).
Wednesday 21st August 2024.
Lovely practise session today in the park, with 16 of us flowing like a river, joined by 3 new friends in our community. Don’t push the river, simply allow it to flow!
Friday 23rd August 2024
One Hand Clapping
Distant alpine sound of cow bells in the meadows,
Medieval church bells carrying on the breeze along the river valley,
The gentle lap of the waves on the moonlit sandy beach,
Bark of a deer, screech of an owl, in the evening woodland,
Cool Spring rain pounding against the rooftop skylight,
Wind rustling the autumn leaves swaying the bows,
Neighbourhood children’s joyous shouts lost in play on a warm summer afternoon,
Silence and stillness just before the storm commences,
Muffled muted quiet in the mountains during snowfall,
Listen
Listen
It is here we truly know the divine
If we only care to hear
Alas
So few do
MSH (22/08/2024)
As a modern society we seem mostly to have lost access to our innate flowing wisdom.
We turn obsessively, ignorantly and desperately to the inane utterances of media personalities, like singers, rappers, actors, TV doctors, self proclaimed gurus and multi-media influencers, to guide us, who not only are dealing themselves with their own inner demons, and often frantic ego drive, mental health and frequently addiction, in some form, but are largely placed in the spotlight to part us essentially from our hard earned cash, with their corporate agendas.
We hang on their every word and action. How we align our-selves in identity with such ideas to help define who we project we are, as we never quite felt secure in who we think we are not.
Those through the ages who have genuinely and freely pointed us back inside, connecting us through example and their own investigation and hard won experience to our innermost natural clear awareness and wisdom remain largely unknown.
The likes of Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Dogen, Linji, The Buddha, Tsonghkhapa, Rumi, Jesus, and even more recent and modern figures like Thich Nhat Hanh, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Father Richard Rohr, Professor Bhikku Analayo, Eckhart Tolle, who simply show us how to reconnect deeply to what was always there beneath the froth of the world, are rarely known or considered, and then only by a small select few.
To practise qigong is to meditate allowing distraction and disturbances to clear, naturally unforced, with clarity of mind, known through the subtle moving of the body.
Nature too, when approached with such a clear mind, abiding in its embrace, is our greatest teacher, guiding us gently back as an old friend, to what we always knew, which became obscured by such media sensations, obsession, distraction, busyness and material acquisition.
As we enter flow state, this is not something we achieve, but the natural state beneath the distractions of modern society, what is always there, beneath, if we simply just allow the space for us to settle there, to touch this, to know this.
Can you allow your mud to settle.
In this clear state which we do not have to strive for, simply allow, our deep inner wisdom is reconnected to, and the rest of hurried, striving and confused society, may even appear a little strange and neurotic from this vantage with clarity of perspective.
Be still and know.
Peace, Love and Qigong!
MSH
The late great Alan Watts, English Anglican Priest, turned Buddhist/Taoist who spoke in the US, and referred to himself as a ‘spiritual entertainer’.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RoCxybz9GAs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Tv-VfP88&pp=ygUKQWxhbiB3YXR0cw%3D%3D
A commentator on modern society, a verbal virtuoso, and hilarious chap to listen to. Refreshing takes on the human condition and conditioning.
Off shortly to catch up with Tai Chi Teacher, Simon Jennings, brilliantly doing a yearly week of free Tai Chi 9am in Higginson Park for the community, for a chat and a cuppa…..
Extreme Pilgrim with Rev. Peter Owen Jones – Highly Recommend!
The first half of the programme is his disillusionment training with Shaolin school, feeling it is a commercial brand really. Wouldn’t bother watching that part unless of particular interest.
Recommend watching it from 31:45 where he treks into the mountains to practise with the real deal! Great interview at 40:35 with Zen Master. The practise contains forms of Qigong, Tai Chi and Kung Fu, all practised with the insight of Zen Buddhism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5dSX16lclQ
Wednesday 28th August 2024
Flow State Non-State
Once thought subsides and emotions settle, a vast clarity is known in the silence. Nature is the greatest antidote to all the troubles of the world. Fully absorbed, relaxing into presence, one simply falls into perfect pristine awareness, where even time stands still.
The untrained mind craves noise, clings to drama, to substantiate what it believes itself to be, an ‘in here’ independent, isolated me, looking out in conflict, disharmony, with an ‘out there’ universe.
Once seen, that that lies behind the workings of the world, beneath, is joyous, and little else is craved, or desired, the veil seen to be gossamer, and a oneness with all things felt.
This flow state, harmonious yet simple, is often hard to achieve in most forms of meditation, where an I, a me, is the doer, trying to get somewhere it is not. It can be known when the doer is let go of, watching the sunset, intimacy with another, lost in a film or musical score.
The jewel of Qigong practise, is it allows a natural subtle falling into such flow, where the consequence of the small me dissolves, and intention is suspended, no doer, simply wu wei.
Simply, unintentionally, the flow is entered, vast energy experienced, and we return to where was never truly ever left.
Peace love and Qigong!
MSH. River.
Epimenides Liberation
Meet you in the intimacy
Of realisation
To argue with reality
Is to suffer
How we pursue
The meaningless
Whilst neglecting that
That truly matters
Once love is known
A love for all things
It can never decline
Only circumstances changing
But what was remains
Untainted undone
Always
The small fish care not
For philosophical debate
Or empty gesture
Have no wishes
For enlightenment
Or ideas of
Salvation
Any more than they wish
To drive a car or
To be accompanied
By chips!
“Kindly let me
Help you
Or you will drown
Said the monkey
Putting the fish
Safely up a tree”*
“As all Cretans are liars
Said the Cretan”**
The rest
Is fish-story!
MSH
(* Alan Watts, ** Epimenides)
Wednesday 28th August 2024. Clifton Hampden Riverside Thames, feeding the fish and sipping Puerh tea.
Saturday 7th September 2024
Letting Go: A Personal Story
Conversations, life events, memories and photos often get us reflecting on aspects of our lives deeply, whether we wish to or not.
Although healthy not to dwell on them, bringing them out occasionally and dusting them down is inevitable, regardless of the trigger.
It is only sometimes in truly letting go that harmony manifests.
We can only push the flow for so long, as the Taoist saying goes “Don’t push the river!”
Or the Buddhist “The best way to suffer is to argue with what is”.
Personally, the hardest most heart breaking thing I have ever had to do in my life is letting go of my daughter Isabella at age 7. It broke my heart.
Having unsuccessfully tried for joint custody, even full custody, after tens of thousands of pounds debt in legal fees, getting court contact order after contact order in place, continually illegally broken, over 5 years, I had to let her go.
I had to let go of MY identity as a Father. Her being caught like a tiny rag doll, continually pulled each way and that, traumatised, tearing, I had to ask who I was truly now doing it for. My persistence was fruitless anyway, yet my tenacity and righteous indignation for her justice, had gone too far.
Was it because I was attached to MY role of Father, because it no longer was in HER interest; she was suffering. Finally I stepped away and accepted it was in her best interest, for the foreseeable future not to be caught in the fight, although in NO way mine!
Aside from the heartbreak at the time, everyone continuously has an opinion and dubious assumption, even spurious advice, and forceful instruction on whether such actions are perfect or questionable. Of course they rarely know the full story (which will obviously not go into here as never share with anyone at all) and thus their perspective is mostly blind and exceedingly unwelcome, however forceful they profess! Their ignorance is most offensive.
The additional sting, the second arrow, was that at the time the County was paying me a salary in the role as a SEN Teacher, working with children in care (ECPC) and behavioural, special needs and children at the hospital school, or home schooled. Yet here I was struggling to gain access to my own child, being helpless to help her, in a failing court system.
Still frequently chatting with her Head Teacher, even spending time at her Primary School in Norfolk (as a professional courtesy between Teachers in the early days), watching her grow from afar, the love still flows. Just a harder kind of love to sit with.
I await her return, now 16, and have sent through her Head Teacher, as have many members of my family, our contact details and love. Waiting until she is 18, completed her school education, as an adult free to make her own choices, will build that bridge and meet her. We must continually check our motives to see whether it is for ourselves, or them, we are taking action. Of course, we do not always get it right.
It is in these deeper moments of life that we know what letting go truly is. Not the fluffy, skipping to grandmas, unicorns, crystals and dolphins, fluffy spirituality of letting go; but a down in the dirt, slap in the face, and kick in the crotch Zen kinda one.
We rarely know what genuine love is.
In Buddhism The Four Immeasurables (Brahmaviharas) are:-
- Loving Kindness (metta)
- Compassion (karuna)
- Joy (mudita)
- Equanimity (upekkha)
These have little to do with romantic desire; the hedonic heady flighty dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, triple fix, mostly driven by biological mechanism associated with reproduction, whether conscious of it, or not.
Sometimes it is in truly letting go we love the most. Letting go of a role, identity or image too, when thrust upon us, can be most liberating, unpleasant at the time yes, but liberating.
As the saying goes “Nothing good comes from success”. Only pride, arrogance, yet in failure and struggle the potential for growth appears.
You would think that after such wrenching that letting go of things and people we love in our lives would become easier, especially when there simply is seen no way forwards, and loss inevitable. I feel if that were so then we would be cut off and closed down and in loss of much of our humanity.
Sometimes we just have to feel it fully to let it go.
I have had many conversations lately with people, professionally as a counsellor and personally, both fathers and mothers going through the same, and the only thing that seems to give comfort is:
“We are entitled to the action, but not the fruit of the action”
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Alongside keeping your integrity, do what you personally feel is the best way forward, stand firm, and be immune to any unwelcome advice or judgement.
We try our hardest, but the outcome will be whatever happens; whether we accept it or not. What allows us to sleep at night, is in knowing we did not put our self and our own needs first at their expense, however hard that was, or hidden the motives were, that were seen.
I hope honesty of writing and sharing here helps others who face similar hardship, decision, even false judgement.
As for me now many years have passed and this simply is how things are, all is totally fine, despite the scars and wounds we all carry in our hearts. I still help other people’s children, we do not own children, just care for them, my niece and nephew, and hope too that my own children are receiving such kindness from others, until the time is right, and can again participate fully in their lives.
All is well. It always is!
MSH
Sunday 8th September 2024
Regaining Our Path.
Sometimes in life on our journey, on our path, we get caught in a cul-de-sac, a side street, or back water. At such times, even after a prolonged period, we must recognise this and back up, reverse, go back, to return to the route we were on, where we are meant to be.
Often these side distractions can be quite seductive, and catch us, even sneak up on us, being hard to break free off.
Largely it is only when we get clarity through perspective, when we see them for what they are, and they make us suffer, do we muster the courage to extract ourselves from this frequent comfy, yet uncomfy dynamic, rut, or repeated emotional spiral, drama, or prolonged rollercoaster.
In busyness we largely fail to achieve such clarity and only when things come crashing down around us, like a house of cards, and we are forced into retreat, do we realise the insubstantial transient nature of such temporary distraction.
What appeared like our destiny, or our forever, becomes our cage or prison, and unhappiness and disharmony ensue, playing out repeatedly, for all concerned. The dynamic becomes unwholesome, and everyone loses.
These may come in many guises, many illusory forms, from careers, to relationships, to romance, from addictions, to lifestyle.
If we can, however, not only are these experiences not hindrances, or obstacles, but drive us forward in growth, with wisdom gleaned, however subtle, or difficult to see initially.
Inner journeys, however undervalued and dismissed by our society, as navel gazing, in favour of external journeys, of conquering, and ‘success’, acquisition, adventure and experience, are really the paths we need to actually mostly traverse.
“Can you know the whole world without leaving your door”
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Chapter 47.
Everything begins and ends in the mind.
Failure is inevitable, how we grow from it is often the only thing we have control in.
As Zen Teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said:
“Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to see and sink!”
We must stand firm on our paths, knowing what essentially matters, our purpose, our life, seeing this fleeting opportunity only available for a short duration of at most shy of a century!
Be happy, live deeply and awaken; and don’t just live the slumbering surface half life of others!
“Buddha taught that everything depends upon the mind. To realize this, we must first understand the nature and function of the mind. At first, this might seem to be quite straightforward since we all have minds and we all know what state our mind is in – whether it is happy or sad, clear or confused, and so on. However, if someone were to ask us what the nature of our mind is and how it functions, we would probably not be able to give a precise answer. This indicates that we do not have a clear understanding of the mind.”
Ven. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
The wooden sign outside every Soto Zen meditation hall reads:-
“Life and death are of supreme importance.
Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost.
Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken!
Take heed, do not squander your life.”
Zen Master Dogen Zenji
A photo of the wooden plaque outside my meditation room.
MSH
Funny. Recalled a song called “Wild Swan” by a rock band saw at Reading, called Magnum, back when was 18 or 19. Hadn’t listened to it in years, forgot it completely, and then remembered some of the lyrics. Rather cheesy 80s/90s rock, but:
“Wild Swan, follow the river, don’t fly through dangerous skies, on and on from bow and quiver, ride over mountains so high….. out to see on the wings of heaven..”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNSwNUNkSoU
Should play it whilst doing flying/soaring crane that we’ve renamed Wild Swan! lol
