Dharma Glimpse by Dave Smith

I don’t really have a regular routine for my meditation, but when I have the time in the mornings I go down into the garden and sit in the early morning sun. I take my phone with me and set it to “Do not disturb” and then set a timer for twenty minutes. I have a nice gentle ringtone to end my meditation rather than an intrusive beeping sound.  This is something I have been doing for several years now. The other morning I arrived at my usual spot and then realised that I had forgotten my phone. Rather than go all the way back up the steps to get it, I thought I would just sit and meditate without a timer and just see how it went.

The difference was quite noticeable. One of the many unwanted thoughts that usually pop into my head when meditating is ”I wonder how long I’ve got left?”, or sometimes if I feel like I’ve been sitting there a while “ did I remember to set the timer?”

This time something felt distinctly different. I hadn’t previously realised it, but having a time limit set for my meditation somehow made it into a task that I had to complete, it had taken away the enjoyment and freedom to a certain extent. This time the anticipation of my alarm going off was not there and I found it easier to relax, there was no pressure to become calm and still within a twenty minute time frame. It was up to me when to stop, not some arbitrary time limit that I had decided to set myself.

As I began to emerge from my deep stillness, I decided that I wasn’t ready yet and went back to meditating, this happened a number of times until I felt that I had sat long enough. When I finally opened my eyes, I felt so much more refreshed, it was like the difference between waking up in the morning to an alarm clock or waking up gently in your own time.

This is now the new norm for me and I enjoy and appreciate my morning meditation so much more. I don’t know if I’m sitting for longer or not and it doesn’t really matter. I am sitting for as long as I need to. I have also noticed that since not timing my meditations I seem to be forgetting my phone a lot more during the day which is definitely a good thing

Namo Amida Bu

Dharma Glimpse by Paramita

It’s not often that I remember anything coherent from the chaotic imbroglio of weirdness and obscurity that spews out of my mind while I’m asleep. I can never usually interpret much that might prove useful to me, and often feel envious when I hear the richness and clarity of others’ dreams. I sometimes wonder whether my dreams come to me via some external source, like the universal muse or like some random etheric download from the cosmic mind.

In a recent dream, I was enjoying a swim at the local pool, diving onto the bottom and swimming along under the surface, as I often do in my waking state. Suddenly I became aware that I was watching myself from an outside perspective, and as I dived in, the surface of the water froze over, seeming to trap me underneath. There was no panic and nothing like the dark feelings that I usually get when my dreams take a sinister turn. Just a slightly puzzled feeling and a sense of curiosity about the meaning when I woke up.

As I thought about this it felt more and more important, so I turned to the internet for some input and found that, in dream code, diving into water often symbolises overwhelm, or is used to highlight the deliberate attempts that we make to understand our unconscious psychological material. This made perfect sense in light of the therapy session that I had had the previous day, when we were unburdening some of my exiled IFS(Internal Family Systems)parts and their feelings. The freezing may well have been a stuckness that I feel as I fail to make the kind of headway that I think I need to.
Later on that week, a Templemate told me about her dream, which offered an even richer thread of imagery involving mental baggage and intergenerational processes. A handbag that didn’t feel right, holding unresolved feelings and a trauma pattern filtering down through a long family lineage.
I couldn’t help but wonder in awe at how  amazing and fascinating it is that the mind has a pre-existing stock of symbols and imagery that it uses to communicate with us and to convey important information about psychological processes. It seems to have a natural tendency towards healing. Maybe healing some great wound that we collectively suffered over the millennia that we’ve been playing out our societal games…maybe even from before? Some primordial schism being reconciled in the midst of our preoccupied bumbling!

One of the things that attracted me so strongly to Buddhism is its unapologetic  fascination with the Mind. After all, there can be no question that it is central to all and everything. When I think about dreams, the vast ocean of memories and feelings that exist outside of our thinking, waking minds, it seems more and more likely that our minds are constantly moving us toward some great resolution. Maybe dreams are one of the channels through which our samskaras(mental confections that lead to delusions about ourselves) are uprooted, worked out or slowly neutralized?

It’s probably one of the things that we, or at least I, will never know. Maybe some of these things need to remain a mystery in order to retain their healing power and keep us thinking, guessing, wondering at the depth and richness of everything.

Namo Amida Bu!

Dharma Glimpse by Chris Earle-Storey

I visited my parents the other day. It’s not something I do as much as I should, but it was a lovely sunny day and I happened to be nearby, so I decided to drop in and say hello. 

My parents’ resting place is a secluded corner behind the shelter of a tall hedge. I spend a while clearing the weeds and grass from around the headstone which marks the dates of their passing. It’s over 12 years since Dad passed away, and nearly 24 since Mum died. I still miss them very much and sit in fond remembrance, enjoying the warm sunshine and peaceful atmosphere.

I decide to walk the long way through the cemetery, a route I had not walked for a while. This takes me through the old part of the site, where weeds thrive on ancient graves and crumbling stone monuments have been laid flat by the council to make sure they are not a hazard to passers-by. One of the few headstones still standing here catches my attention. It is a memorial to a young woman who died in 1923, aged only 22 years and named Mary. The inscription tells me she was the only child of John and Margaret.

As I read the inscription, the words “beloved” and “always in our hearts” seem to leap out at me, and I feel a sudden rush of emotion. To my surprise and consternation, I find that there are tears in my eyes. What is it that has so affected me?

It is 100 years since this young woman died. Her parents will have passed away a long time ago, and she had no siblings to provide offspring and remember her. It’s clear from the state of the plot – and, sadly, this one is no different from the ones surrounding it – that there is no-one left to care for her grave. No-one comes to lay flowers and shed tears. No-one remembers. No-one cares.

For a moment I am filled with sorrow, not just for the unknown Mary but for myself and my parents. I know that when my brother and I are gone, there will be no-one to visit Mum and Dad and tend their resting place. In time, this too will be my fate: there will be no-one left who remembers me. I turn away from Mary’s grave, feeling as if there is a black cloud hanging over me. Why did I have to come this way and be faced with the bleak inevitability of death and the cruelty of time’s passing?

As I rejoin the path, a blackbird in the tree above me suddenly bursts into song. It’s almost as if it sees how sad I am and wants to lift my spirits. I stand and watch it for a moment, and I imagine that this bird contains the spirit of the young dead girl. In that moment, I am struck by the thought that nothing really dies. We are all made of stardust, and we continue to live on in other ways even when our human bodies die and decay. Yes, impermanence is everywhere and in everything, but so is continuance. We go back to the earth, and the earth accepts us and regenerates.

I leave the cemetery with a lightness of step. The next time I visit, as well as putting flowers on my parents’ grave, I am going to leave a token at Mary’s. I will honour her memory, just as the earth does.

Namo Amida Bu.

If you don’t stand for something – you’ll fall for anything.

This popular culture maxim never seemed more appropriate than it does in these increasingly turbulent and devisive times. It may sound a bit old and overused but, in light of the current state of things, it actually bears quite a fresh significance.

I spent several days in Glasgow this week, showing my support for Extinction Rebellion in their efforts to maintain scrutiny and political pressure on our world leaders, who seem to require the proverbial rocket up their backsides in order to even seem like they’re doing anything of any consequence towards the existential threat that we’re facing.

The mood in the city felt quite surreal at times. Maybe the effects of a transition for many, from a low level of awareness of all things Climate Change, to an increased presence of the matter in the press, making it all the more difficult to turn away from and maybe enhancing the sense of confusion and frustration that still surrounds the Covid fiasco. The people were mostly very sweet and helpful, and maybe a bit bewildered and overwhelmed by the sudden increase in the intensity of the shift that we’re seeing. I have certainly felt, at times, a decline in my own sense of general wellbeing as a result of being confronted with the prospect of such an uncertain future.

However, it is interesting that when we take some kind of action to address a problem that concerns us, our perspective on it can change and it can somehow, all of a sudden, seem much less daunting. I’m thinking of the Climate Emergency as a primary example here, but have experienced this effect on many occasions in the past. The impact of horror and misery diminished in the face of the kind of courage and humility that transcends our selfish interests and somehow penetrates to the heart of the problem.

In this context(activism), it felt like being removed from the sense of impending catastrophe and somehow placed above it, so as to be able to perceive it from a relative vantage point, thereby reducing its impact without negating the seriousness of it. This effect may be as simply explained as the idea that ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’. 100,000 people united in the spirit of a single cause is a much less daunting prospect than trying to tackle it alone or in small numbers. But that alone doesn’t really seem to speak to the feeling that I had as I marched through the rain soaked streets with my colleagues and friends along with thousands of complete strangers.

In reality, I never felt closer to the weight of the problem. In fact, in a certain sense, it felt amplified by being in the city, so near the beating heart of commerce, bombarded by the super-cynicism of the heavy hitting profiteers, all falling over themselves to hijack the Climate Change bandwagon and convince us all that their product will be the one that makes a difference, that plucks us from the jaws of certain death as we blindly and apathetically consume our way towards disaster!

Without the unifying effect of the XR brand of activism, I might actually have been overwhelmed by these more spiritually corrosive forces and resigned to playing the victim instead of actually standing up and claiming my rightful place amongst those who commit to challenging the status quo and staying on the right side of history.

Although this level of deceit is disturbing and, in some ways inspiring for me, it probably has a more trivialising effect for a large chunk of the population, who still have little or no sense of the devastation that awaits if systemic change is not immediately implemented. They are as likely to swallow the commercial greenwashing as they are the wanton fallacies that are being spouted by our crooked leaders, who seem to be just trying to bide their time until the story dies down, so they can get back to promoting business as usual.

We heard of a certain high profile, international business that was advising its clients that 2-3 degrees of global warming would be good for their profits, and the sooner we get there the greater the gains. This mentality highlights the naivety, cynicism and misunderstanding at the heart of the problem that we face; Which is only worsened by politicians such as Boris Johnson, who is world renowned for his lack of integrity, claiming Climate Leadership and thereby undermining the authenticity of the whole business!

You might be detecting a hint of anger and skepticism in the tone that I am writing with, but I also, believe it or not, hold out a certain amount of hope for a different future. It may be radically different from the greener and brighter future that we are being promised by the powers that be, but I still firmly believe in the resilience and beauty of the human spirit. And that, there will always be a strong current of love and hope at work in whatever survives and emerges for the prospects of posterity.

As a Buddhist I feel very lucky that I get to depend more on the qualities of my faith, that are not conditional upon societal prosperity, than to have to place all of my hopes and dreams on a system that was always doomed to failure.

Namo Amida Bu.

Dayamay.