By Izzy

I’m back from a weekend away staying with my brother in Bristol. It was non-stop from the moment I walked through the door, briefly meeting housemates and then straight out, setting off on a walking tour of the city. I was led along pavements, through residential streets, along bustling high streets and around the harbour side.
It was Saturday night and the city had a buzzing, frantic energy to it. At 7pm, people stood in a drunken haze, looking vacant next to pools of sick. We saw a couple of people crouching behind a warehouse container by the side of the road. They were shooting up. Their slight, skeletal frames were silhouetted in the fading light.
I was struck by how creative and destructive energy seemed to coexist in the city. I thought about how these energies, the impulse to create and to destroy, both exist within me.
A moment of stillness came the following day when we walked past a student house and I spotted a spider making a web between a bin and a stone wall. The spider had the foundations secured and was now meticulously working its way around in circles, spiralling into the centre.
The spider was speckled brown with a big round body. It moved with speed and accuracy, dancing with silk, absorbed in its task completely. A pang of sadness struck me as I thought about the bin being moved and the web being destroyed. The fine silk strands breaking.
I admired the spider. It made me think about an idea that’s come up in The Center Within, a book I’ve been reading in one of the book study groups at the temple. The idea that you should act because your life force commands it.
The bin might move, a gust of wind might break the web and yet the spider continues spinning its web because it’s life force commands it. Something in the deep focus, single-pointed attention and devotion of the spider in amongst the noise and chaos of the city struck me as Buddhist.
The spider was just being a spider, doing its spider thing, but in that moment, to me, the spider was a perfect Buddha.
After staring in awe at the spider for some time, I glanced up and spotted someone at the window looking out at me and my brother. They were laughing, probably wondering what it was in the space between the bin and the stone wall that had us both transfixed. I laughed too and gave a little wave before carrying on walking.

A Dharma Glimpse by Sam Johnson

I have been enjoying a period in which I have felt very energetic and done lots of things that I have found valuable. It has been wonderful. But as always happens sooner or later, I am now in the crash. One or two nights of poor sleep, some low-level illness, I lose momentum, and the streak is over. I am like a cartoon character running off a cliff, remaining suspended a few moments against gravity, before realising the situation and then falling into the chasm below.

In time, I will get going again. I know this from experience. Life comes in such cycles. Maybe it doesn’t have to be exactly like it is now, but it will always come in cycles. I look out of my window to see the patches of yellow and orange beginning to appear on the trees, and it is a reminder that these cycles are natural and unavoidable. There are aspects of where I am now that are not pleasant. But the scenery reminds me that there is beauty to be found in all seasons.

A Dharma Glimpse by Karmadeva

Often we take things for granted. We continue with our own lives as though everything is fine, even when everything is falling apart for others. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be happy with our lives if things are comfortable and we are happy. I remember a retreat I completed in the March that lockdown started. My sudden realisation that if humans were no longer here it wouldn’t have that much impact on the earth. And none in the universe frightened me, felt uncomfortable.  

Last night I attended an arts exhibition at the Midland Arts Centre in Birmingham. A zen Buddhist that I know asked me along. The event was primarily to remember the attack by police on the commuters at a train station on 31 August 2019. This was part of a clamp down on the demonstrations in Hong Kong at that time. There were also images from artists from China, Thailand and Myanmar. 

The young person that acted as interpreter to the four westerners attending wept as he translated speeches for us. Many people present had been directly involved in protests in Hong Kong and they all sat on the floor while the various protest songs were performed. Looking around the room as flowers were given to us to place on a shrine at the front of the room, I realised that this was real.  I mean, I’ve watched the same people on the news. Sometimes with the police beating them, water cannons being used on them and not seeing the pain they feel. At that moment last night, I again realised that sometimes we don’t think, or maybe don’t feel strong enough about issues that we really should be taking note of. The Ukrainian crisis, oppression around the world and the destruction of this planet. All just ignored. Yet when we’re told to stay at home for two years as we may catch a virus we comply without question. I’m not going to suggest why or say I’m any different because I’m probably as bad as anyone else if not worse. What I would say is maybe we should look at the words of Martin Niemöller. 

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

A Dharma Glimpse by Dayamay

I noticed recently that the majority of the elderly people that I work with seem to have a very gracious attitude towards their, often very challenging predicaments. Many of them have extremely debilitating health conditions and are dependent on people like myself for some of their most basic needs. Despite this fact and the fact that I obviously, in many ways, represent the absence of their independence and a potential threat to their dignity, most of them go out of their way to make my job as easy as possible and treat me with great love and respect. I would go as far as to say that some of them positively radiate grace.
Given my Buddhist leanings, and the learning and training that I have so fortunately received over the years, I am inclined to wonder about the meaning of this phenomena.
My musings often lead me to ideas about how we learn to deal with suffering – how it seems to soften some of us up and make us more receptive to spiritual wisdom. I know that the acceptance that I eventually found with regards the inevitability of my own suffering, seemed to nudge me from a state of constant agitation, into a much more tolerant and philosophical outlook. But this all took time.
When I think about some of my elderly clients I can see that most of them have had more than twice as much time as me to master their afflictions and have maybe become more adept at holding them, or even subverting them.
Maybe they have inadvertently resolved the dilemma inherent to the Buddha’s teachings on the Four Noble truths, which, to me, implies a kind of enlightenment.
I often think about how, in our terminally busy culture, we are inclined to dismiss the elderly as if they have had their day and no longer have anything valuable to offer society. In reality they might be showing us and teaching us the most important lessons that we could ever learn.
Western culture seems to lack the Elder function that is so central to the health and prosperity evident in some of the indigenous populations of the world. I wonder if our obsession with wealth and success has superseded and thereby made obsolete, essential elements of the natural process by which real wisdom is transmitted from generation to generation.
If nothing else, my journey has taught me to pay attention to what the world is showing me and to try to think outside the box. The affliction of impermanence has a deeper meaning and, if we engage with it in a constructive way, can reveal great and powerful wisdom.