Reflections in a full-length mirror

"And the full-length mirror may be even more nakedly discomfiting. Who is this staring back at us ? This seemingly unchanging me is confronted by this thing I own as "my body". And yet how can it be no more than something dangling at the end of my mind ? For as the body deteriorates, its pains multiply, disturbing the "I" who once took my body very much for granted.

Women in particular may begin to feel more at home in their bodies only with the onset of ageing. There are various possible reasons for this, such as the alienation experienced by women traditionally presented as objects of desire and in some cultures repressive attitudes to sex and the body.

For the most part, however, our youthful embodiment tends to be narcissistic, stimulated by a commercialised culture of physical improvement, youthful appearance and obsessional sex. With ageing we begin to experience embarrassment with our bodies and even revulsion. A once-prized exhibit becomes a liability.

Most religious traditions have tended to revile the body. The concern has been to discourage any inclination to identify with our sensuous flesh - and even more so with somebody else's. Women especially have been seen as (for men) dangerously embodied creatures and a threat to ascetic rectitude.

So far I have supposed a dualistic understanding of mind versus a 'seperate' body, a split mind/body person. Krishnamurti once observed that all the miseries of the world were to be found in even the smallest gap between this and other, in other words in dualistic perceptions. Here the challenge of old age is for the self to embody itself, for mind and body to be experienced as one.

Such an embodiment can occur spontaneously when the self-consciousness of body and mind are lost in some absorbingly creative task, in athletic and sporting skills, in making love and so on. Pairing meditation with hatha yoga makes for a particular valuable embodiment practice. And the practice of bare awareness...is, of course, also a healing embodiment, working with the physicality of emotion and particularly with physical pain...

As our ageing body accumulates aches and pains these become not a distraction from cultivating meditative awareness but an ally, strongly holding our attention and keeping us earthed. In the mind's meditative experience of the body, body and mind become the one presence which is no longer an awareness of any thing. This in its purest form is an awakening from life's dream."

Ageing: The Great Adventure (A Buddhist Guide)
Ken Jones (2003)

The Courage to Laugh

"Perhaps the most prominent death-related paradox is the bittersweet quality of death itself. On the one hand, the loss of a loved one is harsh. But on the other hand, there is some sweetness in knowing that death can put an end to a loved one's suffering.

I have always been attracted to bittersweet things. Perhaps that is, in part, the reason for my attraction to death and humour. I see death not as a sorrowful termination of a lifetime, but as the culmination of one's existence and the beginning of another - a death and a birth all at once. All the joy of birth and all the sorrow of death are brought into one bittersweet moment.

In our culture, we have chosen to emphasize the difference between life and death. In ancient Eastern cultures, life and death are not classified as opposing forces but simply as aspects of existence. Perhaps these Eastern cultures are more attuned to the paradoxical, bittersweet nature of death...

After my wife Ellen, died, I found some of her writing. One place was especially poignant. It talked about loving life and not wanting to leave, but the next sentence spoke of Ellen's paradox. She always loved mysteries. In fact, when she died I found 110 murder mysteries in our library. Ellen's paradox was that although she loved life, dying would solve life's greatest mystery: "The hereafter holds a great temptation out to me, " she wrote. "I love mysteries and having the answer to that one would be gratifying. But I do love life. The choice continues to boggle my mind and my reason. I know too that I love drama and perhaps this is all merely part of the big show."

The Courage to Laugh: Humor, Hope and Healing in the Face of Death and Dying
Allen Klein (1998)

Helping

"Zen in helping is nothing magical. It is that harmony which is common in social work, teaching and the informal contact between human beings. That contact melts away the gaps between the self and the other by being more fully human rather than through striving for the stars. It means taking down those barriers of knowledge, social position and education. It involves communicating and reaching out from our hearts aside from social conventions and expectations. It ploughs directly towards love through the minefields of 'oughts' and 'should bes'.

That reaching out comes not from a particular posture of professional position or even a study of Buddhism. It comes from our way of living. It is a direct recognition that although each of us is unique, all of us share the same basic human feelings and experiences. We are born, we suffer and we die. Helping and Zen are not separate processes. They come from the same human drive to reach out to others, to make meanings and patterns out of our experiences."

Zen in the Art of Helping (1976)
David Brandon

In memory of my good friend David, who always understood the importance of humour in the spiritual life.

How to Meditate in a Rocking-Chair

"Many years ago I came across a book which advocated using a rocking-chair for meditation. I do not think that the book was Buddhist, and the title escapes my memory. In fact, I do not remember much about the book nor even the type of meditation that it proposed. It was just this one idea, 'rocking-chair meditation' that stuck in my mind.
Probably one of the reasons why the idea stayed with me was that one of my first teachers had left me a rocking-chair in her will. I still have it and I do use it for meditation. Usually I just sit in it. There is something about rocking-chairs which helps the mind to become naturally still. The only effort you have to use is the slight movement of rocking. Even this soon becomes completely natural and effortless and the mind can drift with the rhythm.

My rocking-chair is placed in front of a beautiful Tibetan thanka of Chenrezig, one of the forms of Avalokiteshvara. The combination of gentle rocking and the warmth and beauty of the painting combine to bring me to a state of deep meditation without any of the usual barriers. This does not always work but when it does it is something quite beautiful and unique.

The rhythm of a rocking-chair is suitable for reciting a mantra or short prayer. After a while it becomes perfectly natural and you do not have to give it any thought. Because of the painting of Chenrezig, I use the Mani Mantra or sometimes the Nembutsu, but you can use any mantra or prayer that has meaning for you. One of the most important elements of mantra that is often overlooked is rhythm and the use of the rocking-chair brings out this aspect. Rhythm becomes more than just an activity of the mind, as the gentle movement of the chair involves the whole body. This adds a new and different dimension to the meditation and is so pleasurable that it seems to ask for further practice.

Even without the mantra, the gentle rhythm of the chair is a great help to the meditative state of mind. Dogen, the founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, encouraged his disciples to 'just sit' in zazen, without any effort to do anything else.

An old man used to sit for hours in his rocking-chair on the veranda of his house. His young nephew asked him one day what he did there. "Sometimes" he said, "I sits and thinks - and sometimes I just sits."

Meditation in a rocking-chair is a bit like both. You might ask, "What has this to do with Buddhism ?" The answer is probably nothing, but it does have a lot to do with Dharma. Dharma is the discovery of the naturalness of life and there are few better vehicles to do this than a good rock on an old, reliable chair. It feels like a chariot that carries its user to realms that are at the same time beyond this world and right here and now. Mindfulness is natural in a rocking-chair but at the same time the rhythm and comfortable feeling combine to transport us beyond our usual consciousness.

If part of Western Buddhism is to discover the Dharma in our everyday lives, then I am sure that rocking-chairs will have a role in the future. A good rocking-chair is so ordinary and yet it reminds us of an extraordinary state of mind which, if not already enlightened, is certainly on the way."

"You Don't Have To Sit On The Floor: Bringing the insights and tools of Buddhism into everyday life."
Jim Pym (2001)

Twelve Steps To Personal Growth

1. This is your life right here, right now. There is nowhere else to go.



2. Our exposure to life brings neither good luck, nor bad luck, just the presentation of experience.



3. What we make of ourselves in life depends largely on how we respond and work with that experience.



4. If we do not deal appropriately with what is presented to us, then it will return to seek further attention.



5. When we deal, in an appropriate way, with what is presented to us then we can move forward.



6. Experience will always be there for us to use as a learning tool.



7. The presentation of experience is endless because it is life itself.



8. All the answers that we seek are buried within us.



9. Create space in your life for solitude and stillness, then just listen quietly and trust in the inner process.



10. We are all unique - work out your own path.



11. Do not allow fear to influence the work you have to undertake - fear is only a projection, not a reality.



12. There is no end to personal growth and what you can achieve in life - sincerely believe in this...
    

START NOW.

Michael Lewin

Taking things lightly

"To be a Buddhist is to learn to take everything lightly, including your own death...and beyond. The heroes and sages of the Buddhist tradition are not noble warriors or fearsome prophets, but tiny, wizened monks who don't care what people think of them. Like all holy fools, they say incredibly stupid things that turn out to embody enormous existential truths.

A lot of Zen Buddhist teaching comes in the form of koans; little philosophical problems which, superficially at least, bear a close resemblance to riddles. Probably the best known are 'What is the sound of ne hand clapping ?' and 'If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear, does it make a sound ?' The koans, while undoubtedly profound, are also playful. They sound like jokes because, to a Buddhist, there's a great big joke at the very heart of our existence. Being is nothingness. Reality is illusion. There's not only nothing to be taken seriously, there's not even really a 'you' to take it seriously or otherwise.

Traditional representations of the historical Buddha show a serenely handsome youth with a clear, impassive face. But all over China, you will also find a strikingly different depiction: a bald, fat laughing monk who has come to represent a future reincarnation of the Buddha. According to legend, this Maitreya Buddha is due to arrive on earth in 2,000 years or so, after mankind's immorality has reduced the whole world to a desolate battlefield, to teach us patience and tolerance.

The size of the gap between our high opinions of ourselves and the dust to which we all come to at last is a clue to the jolly face of the Chinese Laughing Buddha. Perhaps he understands that, faced with a true awareness of the human condition, the only responses open to us are laughter or tears, and he chooses the more enlightened path.

The ability to find the world funny is a powerful survival tool; if only we could all remember more often than not that the choice is available to us, we would almost certainly improve our quality of life."

"The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes"
Jimmy Carr & Lucy Greeves (2006)