‘What happens when we die?’

Not a  subject to ask a politician though quite a few will have died a thousand deaths recently. What happens when we ask a Zen master instead? In Zen as in politics the answer isn’t always want we want, or expect.

So what do we learn from the precocious and over-knowledgeable young Zen monk who couldn’t answer that simple question when his master asked him. ‘What happens when we die?’

He thought the answer would lie in the Buddhist scriptures and when he couldn’t find it there he insisted his master tell him, seizing and shaking him when he refused to do so. Appalled by what he’d done he left the monastery, spent years as a wandering monk, then tended the tomb of the sixth Zen patriarch, Huineng. One day as his bamboo struck stone the answer came to him. In a moment. It wasn’t the answer he’d have expected as a novice, something measurable and clear-cut. He’d taken many years unlearning (not learning) what he knew to find the answer.

If we seek too hard we’ll never find. All we can do is put ourselves on the right path, seek no certainties, have no expectations. It’s the path that leaves ‘I’ behind, that accepts suffering (being the distance by which reality falls short of our expectations), lets every day, every moment in that day, take its course. We have the illusion that we shape the world, when the world shapes us. We create ripples on the surface, and they are gone in a moment.

A story of my own. I stood by the river flowing through the garden one recent Monday morning. That river also works for me as an image of the Tao, the steady inevitable flow of life that we think we can influence but flows ever onwards at its own pace. It’s that flow we all need to be a part of, aware of the changing rhythms of the day, the elements, the earth, life itself.

The ducks who paddle that stretch of river saw me, one mother and four young turks, almost grown, full of energy, waiting for the bread we regularly feed them. That moment it seemed wrong, with the water coursing through the flowering ranunculus, and the trout steady against the stream, and the ducks pecking at bits of greenery here and there. But if we don’t feed them, then they won’t come back. That’s what we tell ourselves. There are other cottages upstream who also feed them, and they go just like us humans for the easy life, do ducks. So I fed them, and throwing the bread here and there, this moment one way the next the opposite, I create a scurrying and a spurting and a flurry and fuss that I never seen before.

‘Sorry, chaps, I’m out of bread.’ They didn’t answer, and they didn’t go way. They were still there an hour later, hoping no doubt that I’d re-appear. I’d had fun and the ducks had too (I think, although maybe they were angry with me) but I wasn’t quite happy about it. All that kerfuffle had broken the mood, reduced the river to the same crazy place as the world beyond the garden hedge, and down the M4 only a few miles away.

Our world only exists because we imagine it. It’s our minds that give reality to the world and we give names and attributes to everything so that the world makes some kind of sense. The names (within a language group) we all have in common, but we all of us imagine the world in very individual, very different ways.

Try also a pool as an image… imagine it somewhere out in India, or in the African savannah. A watering hole where all the animals come to drink. They don’t come at the same time. They come in their own time. And that’s how we take wisdom from life. Not by all our crazy communal efforts but by sampling, listening, drinking, doing it as individuals, finding our own truth.

The river, the Tao, and the pool, that still source of understanding, are both metaphors for the inexplicable. We cannot explain the way, or understand wisdom in any intellectual way. Both take us beyond all our attempts to describe or understand the world. As happened to that Chinese monk all those centuries ago, we find wisdom when we don’t expect it, and then we live that wisdom. It’s not a subject for study, it cannot be enhanced by learning. We may try and explain how we get there to others, and the scriptures of Buddhism and other faiths have done that for two millennia and more. But wisdom itself is beyond explanation.

There are no answers. There may be some courses of action that are better than others. But there are no answers.

Talk of a bonfire of the quangos set me thinking.  Cameron wants to return all the policy functions of quangos to government, to ensure accountability to parliament. The exceptions are quangos whose role involves technical advice (eg the Monetary Policy Committee and the National Institute for Clinical Excellence), impartial advice (eg research councils), and transparency and independence  (eg the Office of National Statistics).

But why the change? I can see no reason why there can’t be tighter regulation of existing quangos outside government, with ministers held accountable for the quangos for which their departments have responsibility. It looks to me as if Cameron is playing games again, playing to a public mood without regard for the best interests of government. Just how much disruption will switching the functions of quangos back to Whitehall create? And are government departments always the best place for developing policy?

Recent consultation on the Climate Change Bill asked for a comment on the proposal for an independent analytical organisation, arguing that ‘an independent body will improve the institutional framework for managing carbon in the economy’. One  response was simply a plea for ‘not another quango’…..

And yet …climate change policy is one of many which needs to be informed by recommendations that are independent of government, not tied to previous policies or funding decisions.  It needs a long-term view.  Policy determined within government departments could be at the mercy of ministerial whim, itself swayed by electoral considerations and whatever pressure groups can get the strongest media campaign behind them.   

Quangos as I’d define them need to focus on the long term, and advise on policy areas which it’s hard for the public to have an informed opinion about. There needs to be accountability in terms of cost and competence of course, but to disparage quangos per se is simply foolish, and opens up the possibility of evidence-based decisions being open up to media influence and short-termism.

Cameron in power will find the same situation as Thatcher, Blair and Brown did: he’ll realise early on the benefits of involving third parties in policy development and recommendation.  And he’s find himself tied by the foolish pronouncements he thought he had to make to get him into power.

Reference Matthew Taylor of the Royal Society of Arts’ blog (italics) of 29 June, the day of Gordon Brown’s National Plan announcement. 

The idea of moving from top-down accountability delivered through guidance, bureaucracy and inspection to a bottom up accountability delivered by citizens enforcing their rights is attractive. Although we await to hear how exactly the entitlements are to be enforced. No one wants a field day for lawyers.

We’ve heard much about accountability. But we have a contradiction here. To be accountable there has to be agreement as to the procedures and standards schools and hospitals and indeed governments follow. That needs to come about ideally through consensus but as likely as not by government diktat expressed in legislation. The popular will doesn’t set standards. Governments acting in what they see as the best interests of the population do that, balanced against what’s realistic.

We’d all like to be seen by a consultant immediately we’re referred, but no government would accept that as a target.

We’d all like to see light-armoured replaced by more heavily armed vehicles, but armies need to adapt to new fields of warfare, to prioritise working within a limited budget. So no government would agree that. Scrap aircraft carriers and Trident, do I hear? Don’t kid yourself. That’s not an easy decision for anyone to take. (An issue to come back to.)

An interesting plan’s credibility will sadly be undermined by the failure of the plan to tackle the political machine of Whitehall. We have too many ministers looking for work to do. They constantly generate new priorities and guidance which are all too often interpreted at the front line as instructions. Gordon Brown will want to make the case that his new framework frees up the front line and makes government less bureaucratic and complex, but until he slims down and muzzles the ministerial monster this is not believable.

I like this. Hold ministers accountable. Too busy and they are reprimanded. We want less legislation, not more…  (And we want ministers in place for longer, so they don’t feel each time they have to make their mark.)

Matthew Taylor elsewhere strikingly contrasts Michael Gove (education, radical change) and Andrew Lansley (health, steady as she goes). At the end of a recent seminar both got applauded, but all the talk was about Michael Gove. It seems universally accepted that he’s very bright, but it sound like he’s going over the top before the war’s even started.

There’s this guy called Quentin Letts who writes for the Mail and won an award recently. He published a book last year, called ‘Fifty People Who Buggered Up Britain’.  (Sequel, next year, is ‘Bog-Standard Britain’.)

Great idea, great for argument – and great for reinforcing prejudices, and feeding the Mail readers’ paranoia that if we haven’t already gone to the dogs we’re heading pell-mell that way.

The list includes Jeffrey Archer, Kenneth Baker, Ed Balls, Richard (Dr) Beeching, John Birt, Tony Blair, David Blunkett, Rhodes Boyson,  Gordon Brown, Paul Burrell, James Callaghan, Alastair Campbell, Anthony Crosland, Richard Dawkins, Princess Diana,  Greg Dyke, Sir Alex Ferguson, Tony Greig, Edward Heath, Graham Kelly, Graham Kendrick, Sir Denys Lasdun Dame Suzi Leather, John McEnroe, Stephen Marks, Michael Martin, Alun Michael. Rupert Murdoch, John Prescott, Nicholas Ridley, Geoffrey Rippon, Charles Saatchi, Sir Jimmy Savile, John Scarlett, Janet Street-Porter, Margaret Thatcher, Alan Titchmarsh, Harold Walker and Helen Willetts.

Thatcher, in summary: did lots of good things, pro-business, won in the Falklands – but was vindictive toward a remarkable body of men, the miners, and re-inforced, set in stone almost, the North-South divide as we have it today.

I wondered how Mail readers down south responded to that. (Are there any up north?)

I haven’t read up on Helen Willetts, happy weather girl, and I won’t bother.

The biggest problem these days – column inches to fill, and a public who expect to be titillated. But talking people up rarely titillates anyone, unless it’s Andy wining at Wimbledon at 10.40 pm, so we get endless talking down, reinforcing negative modes of thinking on every subject.

Try setting out with a  smile and not a grumble and it’s amazing how much happier and sunnier the world looks. Helen Willetts always smiling does her best… although I must admit it can be wearing…

…but mustn’t grumble.

Sorry, that sounds corny. But, damn it, it’s 100% true, and I, we, most of us anyway, just don’t do it.

Nick Robinson is doing a radio programme on the subject of the wider impact of the expenses crisis. (Catch it if you can – re-run at 8pm R4 Monday 29th, also online of course. It’s not Bedknobs and Broomsticks by the way. Try Moats, Mortgages and Mayhem.)

I’ve yet to listen to the programme, only heard the trailer. So I’m guessing what you’ll say, Nick, and it’s too late. You played along with the crowd, and lost credibility. It was clear what was happening to many of us from day one, but we didn’t have a mouthpiece.  (That is a crime in itself.)

You and other insiders would have known better than most about the integrity of the great majority of MPs, and about the damage this would do to them individually, their work as constituency MPs, the institution of parliament and the political process itself.

(Time out)

Well, now I’ve listened. I’ve heard Michael Howard quote the example of Ruth Kelly’s insurance claim, illegitimate according to the Telegraph, utterly proper in fact, I’ve heard the smug and greasy complacency of the guy I assume is the Telegraph’s editor, and I’ve heard Nick Robinson’s concern that every night of the story he’d go to bed worrying that he’d made the situation worse for a group of people he believed were for the most part in politics to do good. But ‘the facts drove the story’, he claimed. His definition of ‘facts’ in this case isn’t mine.

And I’ve heard his belief that if the story fuels an easy cynicism that politicians are all in it because they’re on the make, then it will have done damage. Lightly encoded we have Nick Robinson’s message. Damage has been done, and we know from the context that he believes it’s been done unfairly. What he doesn’t say is how extensive the damage is, which maybe we can look forward to in a sequel.

Nick Robinson’s an old boy of my school, OK some fifteen years younger than me I guess. So he’s a North Cheshire lad, and I rate him, and while he’s a relative innocent in this case (compared to some of the charlatans at work) I think he’s let us down.

I’ve written elsewhere on the subject of W.B. Yeats’ comment:

I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth.

( It seems that Pope Celestine V resolved the papal schism by resigning and leaving the way clear for Boniface VIII, who Dante loathed. For his cowardice, his refusal to honour his obligations, Dante consigned Celestine to hell.)

Nick, you sat on the fence. You were part of that great refusal. And the same goes for most of your colleagues. Maybe you’ll be spared hell. Hot air only in your case, no flames. But be careful.

Martin Bell is writing a book, the musings  of a journalist who decided writing up news stories was tedious, better to make the news himself, who took his Knutsford defeat of the Hamiltons on an anti-corruption platform as proof that he and his white suit were somehow the chosen ones. Twelve years waiting for another crisis and he’s in luck. He’s recognised ‘a once in a lifetime opportunity to revive our politics’. They were, Martin, as I see it, doing quite well, and don’t need reviving by moral crusaders.

The relationship between parliament and people is like any relationship, indeed like a marriage. There’s failure and there’s an ideal, and because what you have doesn’t quite approximate the ideal you shouldn’t assume failure.

I don’t believe for a moment that the marriage of people and parliament has broken down. Like any relationship though it can be influenced by outsiders. Whisper in any spouse’s ear that love can be more intense, sex better, loyalty stronger, and talk up a wayward look into infidelity and you’ll have a breakdown of something that might have been working well.

We all know where the talking-up has been coming from in the case of this marriage.

Not all’s been well in the relationship of course, creating a climate in which the public, suitably and self-servingly prompted, has been all too willing to believe the worst.  As so often happens mistrust feeds on itself, with a crisis the inevitable result.

Happily, now the pressure from the drip-drip of revelations is off them a little, MPs are coming out fighting. John Bercow is his address to the Commons asserted that ‘this House is neither corrupt or crooked, but what was meant to be a straightforward system of compensation has become immensely  complicated, mired in secrecy and short of accountability.’ We are all agreed that has to be put right. He wants to strengthen backbenchers and revive parliament, and that means controlling its own business, exercising effective scrutiny and ensuring that as representatives of the people the executive is accountable to parliament, and not to the media.

Funny this. The media argue for change, and a key part of that change would cut out the leaks on which they’ve thrived and reduce just a little the dominance they’ve enjoyed.

Bercow ends by arguing for a clean break, and I’d part company a little here. We want a clean break from the failings of recent years, and an escape from the taint of scandal, but we also want a reassertion of all that’s good in the best of parliaments, not best in the sense that the balance of powers we have is better or worse that the American, but best in the sense that the traditions of parliament are a better guarantee than any written constitution, or the pronouncements of any judiciary.

Having dismissed Bercow yesterday as a non-entity, having read that speech I’ll give him a chance. (Which is nice of me!)  In the context of his age, or rather lack of it, he quoted past Speakers, Speaker Addington among them, who took over as PM from Pitt the Younger. I believe him when he says he doesn’t want to be PM.  But that’s an aside. I like the sense of tradition he shows, and will bring to the post. He’s no old hack or grumbling grandee. Not only will I give him a chance, I will desist from writing any more on the subject of parliamentary reform until he’s set out his stall.

We met, fifty old friends and family, up in Westminster, to remember David Risner, last Saturday lunchtime. He died twenty years ago this month. He was one of the best – husband, father, publisher, friend – but none of that captures it.  David had integrity, loyalty, a sense of fun, he was clever, clued in, and good company. We worked together for four years so or, and I’ve had no better friend in all my years in publishing. David, we miss you still, and honour your memory.

Shame about John Bercow. Here’s me trying to defend MPs as honourable gentlemen and ladies and in a few cases right honourable, and they go and vote in a non-entity for rotten reasons at an important time in British politics. From what I can see he ain’t much charisma and the Tories, whence he came, loathe him, and Labour have voted him in to needle the Tories.  I feel let down, I do.

Sir George Young (Sir is almost a Christian name in his case – he’s always been Sir George)  would have had a certain kind of Tory grandee shuffling old-school honesty about him, and he’d have got on jolly well with David, being from the same posh educational establishment, though George must be about twice David’s age. With Boris installed as mayor, we could have had the born-to-rule brigade actually ruling, and given that all three are Liberal Tories that would really have upset the Telegraph on the one side, and those unhappy souls who were peddling socialist mags outside Hammersmith station this evening on the other. (You’d have thought they’d have realised they were on to a loser by now.)

I like my politics old-style, capitalist against socialist, so maybe I should take up peddling socialist mags to even things up a bit. It’s also a good time to be an anarchist. Everyone hates MPs, ergo, we don’t want them, we don’t need them, and let’s set up Berlin-style anarchist communes instead. I think that was the gist of one radio interview I heard.

So what kind of reform will we get? Let’s hope for Whip-free election to select committees, and the house insisting that announcements are made to them first and overall the Whips being less able to corral votes.  We now know that Speakers can be made to resign, so I’d be worried for my job already if I was Mr Bercow. He hasn’t got it in him to personify parliament as Betty Boothroyd did, and if his authority slips at all PMs, Brown or Cameron, and MPs will ride roughshod over him.

Another scenario of course is that the people of London  march on parliament and force itself to vote itself out of existence. Communes take over, the monarchy is abolished, and a guillotine is set up at Tyburn.

For the Zen Politics blog this is a matter of real concern.

President Obama brought, with a well-timed swat, the life of this  (rather large, I admit) fly to an early end. The news-clip is dramatic. As an example of macho politics it was impressive. It was only sad that he wasn’t discussing North Korea or Iran or Sudan at the time, though some would have then argued it was staged, with the fly, maybe slightly doped, being introduced into the interview at a strategic moment.

Ahmadinejad …  swat!

Kim Jong-Il … swat! Though Jong-Il’s dad, Kim Il-Sung, has been elevated to ‘Eternal president’ by the Koreans , so it may take more than a swat.

But to return to the issue. … Well, no, I won’t. Ever the pragmatist, I think this fly HAD TO GO. You don’t mess with the Pres.

**

One further thought: what would our brave leaders do, when faced with a fly?

Brown wouldn’t see it, or maybe the fly would resign, solving the problem

Cameron would put the boot in, that being a favourite recent activity

Clegg (no flies on me, guv) would hit out and miss altogether…

Have we any politicians who could Obama-style successfully deal with a fly?

**

Gordon Brown doesn’t want to apportion blame.

Nick Clegg wants to apportion blame, and apportion it now. He thinks he knows what the outcome of the enquiry will be.

David Cameron doesn’t mention blame. He has to be careful, given the Tories were supporters of the war.

Brown wants answers. Clegg wants retribution. Cameron isn’t quite certain what he wants, but whatever he wants he wants it in part in public, because that’s the way the wind is blowing.

*

Let’s imagine a public enquiry, with lawyers and affidavits, and public interrogations. If all the evidence was stacked one way, maybe there’d be a steamroller and the enquiry would be over quickly, the guilty would be disgraced, sink out of sight, never to be seen in public again. But the evidence won’t all be stacked all one way. Will Tony Blair or Geoff Hoon roll over quietly? Even Jack Straw would feel he has to fight for his reputation. They’d all have lawyers.  So too would the military men, because the enquiry will take in the way the war was fought, how effective it was, armament and transport, strategy and planning and tactics on the ground in Basra.

If the Bloody Sunday enquiry into one day can take years and cost hundreds of millions of pounds, how much will this cost?

And don’t tell me it need only last six months.

Hold it in public and everyone will be in protective mode. It will be argument and counter-argument, virulent attack, passionate defence. It might even be fun. It would be a media show. We’d all get wound up and talk about it. We’d leap to conclusions, probably based on our existing pre-conceptions. We’d talk about it lots. But would it help us finds the answers to what really happened, would it point up lessons for the future, would it heal wounds? No, it wouldn’t. It’s the worst possible way of doing it.

I’ve heard talk today of the healing a public enquiry would bring. I don’t believe it. Passions once roused would be hard to douse, on both sides. Watching others hit the self-destruct button is a good spectator sport, not too far from reality TV. But not if we’re the sport. Not too good if we want to have a positive influence in the world.

There’s a lot of talk about openness and accountability. The two don’t necessarily go together. Openness isn’t going to mean that those we would wish to be held to account will be held to account. Truth isn’t such a simple black-and-white beast. Like the Bloody Sunday enquiry we may be no clearer at the end than at the beginning, or we’ll find that we’re entrenched in the positions we started in.

No, Nick, it’s not simple, no-one’s going to roll over.

*

For my part, I loathed the war, and loathed Blair for taking us into it. I’d have had Blair impeached if that has been an option under our political system. For misleading the public and parliament, if he didn’t lie as such, for taking us into an ill-conceived war, and for sheer gullibility (not an impeachable offence, I admit) when faced with Bush and the neo-cons.

But I’d have had that done in parliament, not in a media-goaded bear pit. There are ways and means for getting at the truth. A public enquiry just isn’t one of them. The terms of reference of the enquiry as now proposed are what we should be focusing on, but these will have to wait for another time, or another post.

Stick to your guns, Gordon.