A Glimpse by Paramita

The Radio 4 Thought For The Day caught my attention the other morning. It was that sort of early morning, contemplative type material, that probably wouldn’t really have registered so well if I’d heard it in the midst of a normal busy day. The theme was Conspiracy Theory – I can’t remember the exact title.

The narrator offered perspectives on society’s increasingly erratic response to the seemingly cloak and dagger antics of the geo-political corruption culprits. How a growing percentage of the population think that the global elite seem to be covertly closing down our freedoms and our ability to create happy and prosperous lives for ourselves. And some of the dangerous ideas and schemes that are and have been streaming out of the Conspiracy melting pot.

The tone of the piece was definitely tilted negatively towards Conspiracy Theory, and highlighted all of the more erratic aspects without really giving credence or fair representation to any of the events or the facts that provide the basis for it. In short, it was biased! While I tend to agree that the work of the growing Conspiracy Theory Network seems to spiral wildly into and out from its own neurotic fear complex, it’s also difficult for me to turn away from it without acknowledging that there is more and more evidence to suggest that we are being gradually hypnotized into some nightmare world, where our potential and vulnerability is being weaponized against us – in the name of profit and control.

But what to do?

In a previous episode of my life I spent some years losing myself in a confusing melange of elaborate, radical and sometimes downright hysterical ideas about all sorts of plots to control, suppress and dumb down the Human masses. In the end there were just too many. No Global Cabal, I reasoned, could ever possibly keep track of that many evil schemes with any degree of coherence or effectiveness. And so I dropped it all, even more suddenly than I had gotten my troubled little head enmeshed into it in the first place. I realised that the only way for me to make any kind of change in this world was to start with myself, heal, grow, and then take care of my own little corner, tend to my own metaphorical garden, insignificant as it might seem against the bigger picture.

As I think about it, I can remember this being one of the many threads that eventually led me out of a very harmful lifestyle and into a more engaged and sensible attitude and approach to the world, and life in general.

I became more and more involved in various recovery and religious communities, that aspired to the harnessing of collective power. The way forward was in a co-ordinated climb towards self-understanding, shared values and progressive attitudes.

‘’The word conspire means to breathe together’’

This was the line that really peaked my interest in this particular radio offering.

Etymologically, the Latin con -’together with’ and spirare – ‘breathe’ – gives us con-spire, and now conjures up images of darkened figures huddled in windowless rooms, formulating emboldened schemes to snatch back control from some hidden hand that wields ultimate power.

It also reminds me of our communal practice here in the Buddhist Temple where I live. Apart from the day to day functioning of the place, which requires concerted efforts continually, we also share meditation practice, in which we, quite literally, ‘breathe together’. We sit quietly, allowing peace and tranquillity to infiltrate our busy minds. We contemplate enlightenment and look towards a higher reality, inhabited by wiser and more loving beings, and we attempt to emulate and manifest that reality in our very Human lives.

This is the kind of conspiracy that moves me today. A kind of collective counterbalancing effort, that sends out subtle and powerful ripples into the ever deepening darkness.

Namo Amida Bu.

Dharma Glimpse by Izzy

Sometimes I feel the Buddha’s hands at work in my life.

A while ago now, I was sat at my laptop, as I am right now, scrolling through my emails, when I saw one from the RNLI. “Enter Our Million Pound House Draw! All profits go to the RNLI”. I went to press ENTER to delete but hovered over the key, my eyes drawn to the photos and description of the shiny house. It was in Yorkshire, with the Dales on the doorstep. There was an outdoor swimming pool, countless bedrooms and one of those big, open kitchens with an island in the middle. I shut the screen closed and went to run a bath. As I did, my mind leaping off into elaborate fantasies of what life would be like if I had this house. All the different options it would open up to me. How I could go and live there for a while and invite people, family or close friends. I have very little control over who I share the temple with. This house would be mine. I could invite who I want, when I want. In time I could turn it into my own Buddhist and yoga retreat centre or a community space. Or rent it out and have the income to sustain my life here in Malvern. Imagine, the freedom it would offer me, all the travelling I could do. As I sank into the bath I sank deeper and deeper into my fantasies. That’s it, I thought, I’m going to enter it. The words of my colleagues at work ringing in my ear “you’ve got to be in it to win it”. Other parts around saying, yes, we work really hard, we deserve to win a million pound house! When I went back to my room, I opened the laptop and went to enter the draw. The cheapest option, £10, the most I’ve ever spent on a raffle. I do it and head to bed for the night. I don’t think much of it then until a month or so later when I spot an email. “Congratulations! You are one of our gift card winners!”. I open the email to see I have won a £10 gift card.

In that moment, filled with the excitement of being “a winner” and the disappointment of winning the same value I paid to enter the draw, I see the Buddha in my mind’s eye. Their soft, round shoulders, the edges of their mouth gently curling up. They smile and say “you don’t need a house, you already have this temple to live in, but here is your £10 back.”

Sometimes I feel the Buddha’s hands at work in my life. Showing me I already have everything I could ever need, right here.

Namo Amida Bu

Dharma Glimpse by Kusuma

Last summer we began the stressful project of extending our tiny two bedroom house to make it a family home. We put some of our belongings in to storage and I mentally prepared myself for 6 weeks of mess and stress, which dragged out for more than 12 weeks.

As foundations were made, new walls built and existing walls were knocked down, our large three seater sofa sat in the centre of it all, covered in dust sheets.

But as the plastering stage arrived the builders decided the sofa had to go, but go where exactly? There was no spare space in the house, and our storage unit was full. Our only alternative was the cabin in the garden.

Two young builders half my age huffed and puffed and complained about how heavy the sofa was as they lifted it out of the house and in to our cabin. Their moaning rocketed my anxiety levels up from a 5 to a 10 in a matter of seconds. How heavy was this thing? If it is really that heavy, how would myself and my husband every lift it back in? “You will lift it back in to the house when the job is done” I asked. “Yes don’t worry about it” the one replied.

But worry I did. I have always been a worrier and something relatively simple can rapidly snowball in to something that consumes my everyday thinking. Switching off our fears can be hard especially when those fears have manifested from another person’s actions or behaviour.

I learnt very early on in my life that my parents were very good at projecting their own fears on to their only child. On school trips my mum would tell me to sit in the middle of the coach as it was the safest part. Can you imagine how much anxiety my neuro-divergent brain went through about a simple school trip. Friends would sit at the back of the coach and I would sit in the middle!

Fear rapidly grows and with it so do the three poisons, greed, hate and delusion mixed with a dash of envy.

The weeks rolled on and the end of our building work came about rather abruptly and the builders disappeared leaving the sofa in the cabin. I became angry and hateful, why would they leave someone of my age to lift the sofa back in to the house? I envied their youth and ability to seemingly lift things without a care.

I stared out of my new kitchen window at the sofa gathering dust in our cabin and every day I felt sick at the idea of trying to lift it. The fear grew bigger and bigger as Christmas rapidly approached. That sofa was going to need to come back in the house or we would have nothing to sit on for the holiday season. My worry and delusion expanded with momentum. What if I can’t lift it back in? What if I lift the sofa and a disc in my back slips again. What if I fall?

Sometimes in order to overcome your fears you have to take a step back, sit with the fear, breathe with awareness and just take a risk. My worst fears could manifest but they also might not. So the day before Christmas Eve we cleared a path from the cabin to the back door and lifted the large sofa with a couple of breaks to catch our breath. It turns out the sofa was heavy, but manageable and my fears had been blown out of proportion based on a judgment. I had assumed that if two young men thought that the sofa was heavy, then my 52 year old arthritic body was never going to manage it. I laughed at myself. If we had tried to even just lift the sofa to see how heavy it was after the builders had left, we would have known it wasn’t going to be a problem and I wouldn’t have worried so much for weeks on end.

The moving of my sofa turned out to be a valuable lesson in overcoming my fears. The awareness and insight didn’t manifest on its own of course. In the weeks building up to the sofa lift I meditated to try and reduce my anxiety, and in turn it helped me to walk with my fear to get the job done.

Sometimes we have to have a little bit more faith in our own judgement. It turns out that my over protective mother was right and a middle aisle seat is the safest seat on a coach but sometimes we choose a seat based the people we are with and the view from the window rather than allowing fear to stop us from enjoying the ride.

Dharma Glimpse by Mat Osmond

This is a glimpse that arrived in two halves.

The first half came a few weeks ago as I was giving my daughter Zoe a driving lesson. We had the Sat Nav on, but for some reason we kept turning aside from the route it offered back to where we’d started out from. If you’ve used a Sat Nav you’ll know what happens next. The App just reorients, and begins directing you again from whatever way you’re now facing.

Sometimes a moment lingers in the memory like an odd little question mark waiting to be understood. I think this is what a ‘dharma glimpse’ means to me, but maybe koan would be nearer the mark. The Sat Nav’s patient recalibration, over and over as we failed to follow its advice, felt like one of these moments. No opinion offered – and no reproach. And where we’re making our way back to, regardless of how often we turn aside from it, hasn’t moved or changed, has it? It just happens to be in this direction now, instead of that.

The second half happened when I was praying silent nembutsu a week or so later.

At some point I must have slipped without noticing it from saying Namo Amida bu to saying Maranatha, an Aramaic version of the Prayer of the Heart which I learned from the Benedictine teacher Fr John Main, and have come back to many times over the years. 

It must have been a good ten minutes before I even realised what had happened , and when I did, it seemed oddly funny. As if for once I’d been accidentally honest with Amida, and with myself. As if, the most honest way I could say nembutsu was in fact to forget the correct words, to muddle them up and get them wrong.

This isn’t about advocating a mix-and-match approach to prayer though. Trying to find the right blend sounds quite … tiring. It smells of calculating mind to me – which is to say, mixing and matching different approaches until I finally hit on the right formula basically leaves this whole finding the way home business up to me. Like I said, tiring. 

But whatever it means to open the defended heart to measureless, un-measuring Life, I suppose coming to Amida ‘just as I am’ has to include, then, this curious inability to settle on a given name.

If I were to call myself a Pureland Buddhist it would be in exactly this sense, I think. After decades of putting on one form of prayer after another like so many borrowed shirts, it seems I’ve failed at even this simplest of bombu practices: calling the name.  And it’s right here in this obscure inability to settle that Amida finds me as I am, irrespective of how often I veer off one way or another. 

I’ve no idea what comes next, to be honest – but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Maybe that’s the point.

To be continued. Namo Amida bu.