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.
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
