Category: Zen

1968 and all that

There’s a perverse pleasure in wading through reviews of books and articles on subjects I know nothing about and may never encounter again. On occasion something hits home. One example: Terry Eagleton in the special Cheltenham Festival Times Literary Supplement edition, on everyone’s favourite subject, post-structuralism:

‘In its curious blend of scepticism and euphoria post-structuralism is a form of libertarian pessimism – one which dreams of a world free from the constraints of norms and institutions, but which is not so incorrigibly naïve as to believe it could ever come about.’  

I could dine out on that one!

‘The revolutionary elan of 1968’ was followed by ‘the disenchanted mood of its political aftermath’. I remember 1968. Too well.

It’s a pattern oft-repeated. More recently we’ve had the frustrations of the Obama years, when ‘yes we can’ didn’t quite happen. (Maybe it never will.) The aftermath of the 1989 and the fall of the Wall. Occupy and the now empty squares of New York and London. Above all the Arab Spring, and its brutal aftermath.

But we won’t and can’t let our optimism die. I’m one of millions now and forever who believe in social justice, opportunity, capability, compassion. We rejoice when we see progress, we’re despondent when we see it pushed back. But we don’t despair.

We don’t of course always agree with each other. Do we work with the system, or oppose it – and by what means? The divide between global and anti-global perspectives is vast. Many (not all) proponents of big government and small government have the same end in view but believe in radically different ways of getting there.

I supported and support Obama, always believed Occupy wasn’t sustainable … Bernie Sanders I admire, Corbyn I don’t. We will bicker and insult and traduce the motives of others, while still aspiring to the same humanity.

And we will undermine each others’ efforts. Refuse to vote for Hillary. Battle it out for the soul and machinery of the Labour Party. And if we’re not careful – and we haven’t been of course – let another party in, a party which doesn’t define compassion and social justice quite as we do… which puts up barriers rather than engage with the world. Abandons institutions rather than seeks to reform them. Follows the populist piper, who advocates easy solutions, and plays to prejudice.

There are many good reasons for retiring to a monastery or a country cottage or sitting room and TV, and disengaging – and yet we hang in there. If we keep open minds, listen to each other, avoid scorn and hubris, remember that we’re ultimately on the same side – then we might just make progress.

Singing your way along the Camino

Many of the songs I’ve sung to myself on the Camino have travel in there somewhere. And, curiously, a sense of losing someone, and looking back. They aren’t songs of triumph – look I’ve made it! But they do tell stories.

What, I wonder, do other peregrinos sing on the Camino? To keep themselves company, for sheer joy and pleasure, or just because they match the rhythm of their step…. A few have headphones and listen to music from downloads, not from memory, and that puzzles me. Singing may be a performance of one, but you’re pro-active, as surely you want to be on the Camino, and not re-active. (Wear headphones and you also miss birdsong, the rush and babble of streams and brooks, the sound of the wind in the grass and trees.)

There’s a sense of re-engaging when you recall an old favourite. And you may be taken by surprise, by something old and long-forgotten. The rhythms of the Camino can take you surprising places.

For me, Kris Kristofferson for starters: ‘Me and Bobby McGee’: From the coalmines of Kentucky to the California sun,/Bobby shared the secrets of my soul….

Leonard Cohen has travelled with Suzanne for fifty years, as I have too (almost!) – I’ve been singing this legendary song since I was 19! On the Camino it was like meeting up with an old friend.  Susanne takes you down to a place by the river/you can see the boats go by,  you can spend the night beside her…

As for the Rolling Stones’ Ruby Tuesday, ‘she would never say where she came from/… ‘There’s no time to lose I heard her say…’

Not sentiments you’d expect from a peregrino. Though how many of us are getting over, or moving beyond, an event that’s troubling us, that’s turned our life on its head? And we peregrinos – we do tell each other where we’ve come from – and hopefully, we have time to lose. We can go slow.

I’ve sung the blues along the way. But not travelling blues. Or Woody Guthrie’s ‘Hard Travellin’: I’ve been doin’ some hard travellin I thought you knowed…’  And I’ve not been riding the blinds – leaping and hanging on to passing trains!

One moment I remember (somewhere between Ponte de Lima and Rubiaes on the Camino Portugues), singing Howlin Wolf’s ‘Spoonful’. (Give me a spoonful of coffee…) After each of three repetitions of ‘that spoonful ‘ a cock crowed. He and I struck up a rhythm together. I tried a fourth time – but he’d lost interest. I carried on of course.

One other song, with no travelling connection at all, but when you sing it you bounce along, and that’s ‘Light my fire’. I love the original Doors version, but try singing it like Jose Feliciano, with a Latin, syncopated rhythm, and, well, not surprisingly, you’re almost dancing. So maybe don’t walk that way with too many other people around.

Mindfulness – the year’s most depressing trend

I chanced on a Telegraph article from last year – mindfulness ‘the most depressing trend of 2015’. And a headline I saw this week – ‘mindfulness is boring’.

I could spare myself the occasional read of the Telegraph, but I treat it as a penance. And the sport can be very good.

The Telegraph journalist from last year admitted she was only after a quick fix but felt qualified to opine that there was a ‘bigger, scarier point’. ‘Why are so many of us living lives we feel unable to cope with? How is it that we are so unhappy with our lots that we will willingly sit cringing in a room with our colleagues while remembering to breathe?’ She interviewed a wide variety of people for the documentary she was making, ‘even Buddhists’.

I am, I have to be as the author of this blog, a charitable soul, but the sheer inanity of her remarks take some beating. If I’m unhappy – it’s with this sort of drivel – the Brexit quick-fix mentality. If you want to find out how afflicted many of us our with our lives – read the Daily Mail.

Life is a slow burn, and if we could all give ourselves time to breathe, to show compassion – to be mindful – we’d be a million times better for it.

The EU referendum – two home truths

Discussing the EU referendum debate yesterday I came away with two home truths – two lessons I’d been slow to take on board.

One, personal attacks and slights. It’s easy to get carried away and turn a rejection of a policy or approach into an attack on an individual proposing that policy. A dismissive phrase ad personem damages your argument, because it diverts attention away from the case you’re making. And if others around you don’t share your feelings about that individual, they won’t be won over.

I’ve been highly critical of some right-wing Tories, and the Tory press. In my eyes justified – but it’s  arguments that matter. Doubting the competence or integrity of those who take a different view (from Boris Johnson and Michael Gove downwards) doesn’t help my case and will not change minds.

Zen Master Dogen (writing in 13th century Japan) has useful words on the subject:

‘Even when you are clearly correct and others are mistaken, it is harmful to argue and defeat them… It is best to step back, neither trying to defeat others nor conceding to mistaken views. If you don’t react competitively, and let go of the conflict, others will also let go of it without harbouring ill will. Above all, this is something you should keep in mind. [My italics.]

In other words, we don’t live in an ideal world. But avoiding competition and conflict if you can will serve your case much better.

The other lesson relates to a specific subject, immigration. Talking to a friend (she herself supports staying in) I was confronted by her experience working two days a week in a local doctor’s surgery. The great majority of nurses and staff support the Leave campaign, and do so with a real passion.

Competition for jobs from immigrants is a key issue, and some have been directly affected themselves. Older workers feel that immigrants who are younger and willing to work for lower wages are taking their jobs. Parents argue that the children of immigrants are putting pressure on the availability of places in the schools of their choice. In other words, the argument for them is not intellectual or academic – broader considerations about the national economy, the European ideal, trade deals – all are secondary.  (Housing is another issue they might have raised.) They are affected at a personal level.

And I, recently retired, am not.

They were not issues that came up talking to teachers and staff as a (retired last year) chair of governors in an local secondary school. But I haven’t since my own children’s primary school days talked at my length to parents, and I think many would have very different views. Not necessarily favouring the Leave campaign, but I’d have heard much more about the pressure on secondary school places.

Why are the polls suggesting a close vote on 23rd June? Yesterday reminded me why that is.

Militant atheism and the spiritual path

Now that is quite a a title for a post…

I’ve just finished reading Sam Harris’s Waking Up – subtitle ‘searching for spirituality without religion’. When he claimed Chris Hitchens as a friend, I was instantly worried. And then I had the usual stuff about religions being mutually incompatible so no-one can possibly believe that ‘all religions are the same’. Well, we don’t believe they’re all the same – but we do find an underlying unity. He should have asked us first – but he hares off on the hackneyed ‘violence of religion’ tack, and even finds a Zen story where a disciple hacks a finger off – and then is suddenly enlightened.

The sad thing is that Harris has gained some kind of spiritual understanding over many years as a seeker and meditator, and he’s especially keen on, and good at describing, Dzogchen Buddhism (‘focusing on the intrinsic selflessness of awareness’). But he fails completely to recognise that it’s a specifically religious search for understanding in this life that led to the revelations that he now, as a militant atheist, has the benefit of.

And then we have the following on drugs: ‘The power of psychedelics is that they often reveal in a few hours depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.’ Having been down that route, and experienced the ecstasy, I know that selflessness – the experience of non-self, anatta – and drug-induced ecstasy are two very different things. The path – I almost want to say ‘true path’, but that really does sound too religious! – is step-by-step, unfolding, learning, consolidating – I say learning, but it’s not learning in the sense of acquiring knowledge – it is simply that awareness that opens up beyond self. And where you find a differently kind of joy and peace from anything you’ve experienced before.

And a final grumble – no, more than a grumble. This is serious stuff. Reading a review of John Bew’s book, Realpolitik: A History (premise – pragmatism dictates that the overtly and obviously moral route can’t always be the one to follow – politics has sometimes to be about compromise), there’s a reference to Barack Obama drawing on the wisdom of the theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. Obama has tried to articulate a liberal realist world view – avoiding misconceived adventures on the one hand and isolation on the other…

Why is that relevant to Sam Harris’s book? Because Harris and his like go on about the evils of religion but overlook that it’s not violence but compassion that drives religion. And that the spiritual without compassion is selfish and not selfless. Compassion has to be at the heart of politics, and I believe that Obama has tried to do just that, and his successes and failures are indicative of how hard it is to follow that path in today’s world – and yet how essential it is to try.

Religion when taken over by the power-brokers of the world for their own ends has caused many a disaster. But religion allied to compassion, in the minds of a follower, disciple or believer (however you wish to describe yourself), has been the ultimate force for good in the world. (Now that I admit is a challenging statement – and meant to be such!)

I heard Steven Pinker speak about his then new book, Better Angels Of Our Nature, a year of two back. It’s predicated (and brilliantly argued) on the role of violence in human history – how over centuries and millennia we’ve created social and political structures to contain that violence, allowing the creation of stable, or relatively stable, societies and government. (And how violence continues to decline, even allowing for two world wars and many other horrific events.)

Pinker argues that the primacy of reason and enlightenment values from the 18th century onwards allowed empathetic values, not least compassion, to find expression. The pattern of history for me is very different – violence and compassion have existed side by side throughout recorded history – compassion is hardly a recent phenomena, and it’s in the exercise of that compassion that we as human beings have found our greatest fulfilment.

Compassion and religion have always been closely interconnected. And if you’re a militant atheist, that poses a problem.

My recommendation to Sam Harris would be – get off your podium, stop preaching, and get out there in the world. And if you do, you’ll find yourself working alongside some wonderful people – of all faiths, and none, including humanists. We all work together. We just don’t call each other names.

The Foreign Secretary wobbles …

One final post before I put this blog to rest for a week or two – I’ll be on a retreat and, I trust, out of touch with the world!

My starting point this time: Bronwen Maddox’s interview (before an audience of 250 within the Foreign Office) with Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, in the March edition of Prospect.  Richard Dawkins was, curiously, in the audience. Not always a favourite – his views on religion aren’t mine (though I read his books!) but on this occasion he pinned Hammond beautifully.

Dawkins: “On something as important as Europe why hand it over to the British people.’ (How tongue in cheek that was I don’t know.)

Hammond: ‘There speaks a true democrat – too important for the people to decide.’

Dawkins: ‘We have a representative democracy – we want politicians to make judgements on our behalf.’

And that is indeed how we avoid the excesses of populism, and rule by the popular press and an unaccountable media. Referenda are dangerous instruments: the ‘popular will’ is a fickle thing, easily roused by rabble-rousers, and the damage once done hard to put right.

Hammond, justifying his position on Europe, then commented: “What’s gone wrong is very simple. The economic benefits haven’t been materialising for Britain, so many people feel that the dynamism and entrepreneurialism of our economy has been held back by the dead hand of Brussels bureaucracy.”

Does he really believe this? To quote an article elsewhere in Prospect (by Springford and Tilford), “there is next to no evidence that EU membership is a significant constraint on the supply-side of the UK economy. For example, according to the OECD, Britain’s markets for goods and services are the second least regulated in the world.”

If we’re not reaching markets – and that is especially true  compared to our European neighbours in countries outside the EU – it isn’t the EU’s fault.

Look elsewhere, Philip, and you might begin to do your job encouraging British firms to get stuck into markets round the world.

(It’s interesting to speculate on why British firms do underperform outside Europe. Two related suggestions: the size of our domestic market, and more broadly the English-language market, so there isn’t the same urgency there is for others; and a certain discomfort dealing with other countries and other languages. The world dominance of English may actually count against us.)

Compassion – Zen Master Dogen and the Pope take on the world

Zen Master Dogen (writing in Japan, in the 13th century) has been a favourite of mine since I first came across him, maybe ten years ago. Discussing compassion he writes:

Even when you are clearly correct and others are mistaken, it is harmful to try and argue and defeat them. On the other hand if you admit fault when you are right then you are a coward. It is best to step back, neither trying to correct others nor conceding to mistaken views. If you don’t react competitively and let go of the conflict , others will also let go of it without harbouring ill will. 

Don’t act competitively – that may seem hard, but the benefits can be extraordinary.

You make the community’s heart your heart and their thought your way of thought. You make the parental heart your heart and the heart of children your heart. If you practise in this way you will be like a boat with a rudder on a wide river, or like rain in a time of drought.  

There are countless other contributions on the subject down the centuries. In recent years there’s been Marshall Rosenberg’s book, Non-violent Communication, and the worldwide movement that it’s inspired. And Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion – which I’ve signed up to.

And as of today – there’s the Pope’s comment about the wall that Trump would build along the Mexican border: “a person who thinks only about building walls… and not of building bridges, is not Christian.” And one Republican response, one Jerry Fulwell Jnr: “Jesus never intended to give instructions to political leaders on how to run a country.”

From that we deduce that compassion isn’t easy. In our private lives we may find that compassion can indeed be like a boat with a rudder on a wide river. But in public – the Pope’s is a simple statement, and the only comment a Christian could make. Build bridges don’t put up walls. (Israel has not understood this – to its long-term cost.)

Religious leaders do best to keep out of politics – but when there are egregious failures of morality at a high level – when the ordinary norms are behaviour are compromised – they have to speak out, and this is such a time.

‘Make America great again,” is Trump’s lunatic war cry. America was great and can still be great if it realises that it won its previous greatness by working with and supporting countries and communities and being part of alliances round the world. Not by waving a big stick.

This is a vast subject, and best to leave it here for now. But there’s a danger that populism can shift a country dangerously right, or indeed left. And ‘stepping back’, or ‘turning the other cheek’, won’t always be the right action.

As indeed Zen Master Dogen recognises. “…if you admit fault when you are right then you are a coward.” Or if you stay silent.

Mindfulness – the Ladybird way

Predictably – and happily – I was given Mindfulness in the new Ladybird series for adults for Christmas. Only 54 pages – and sometimes it misses the mark, and sometimes if gets it spot on.

Clive practises loving-kindness meditation – and it ‘finds it easier than bothering to meet his friends and lending them money’.

‘In ancient times Guru Bhellend entered a state of mindfulness that lasted 35 years. During this time he thought about everything.’ When he’d finished he writes ‘the answer on a grain of rice’. ‘He never married,’ it concludes.

(In Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the computer Deep Thought comes up with 42, as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, after a 7 1/2 million year search.)

The easy way and extreme way, and both miss the path. The good old middle way.

Though even that may not work out. Last week walking on Offa’s Dyke we took the middle way, and ended up in a field looking east when we should have been by a stream looking south….

Zen hits the target

Not being one to waste a good quote here’s an entry I posted on Facebook just now:

‘The one who is good at shooting does not hit the centre of the target.’ (Zen quote.) Man U players are, we always believed, great at shooting. And they sure as hell ain’t hitting the target. I’m with my son – van Gaal out! This not hitting of targets has gone on too long.

Trying to relate Zen to everyday life should be easy – just go ahead and live – but something tangible, something you can get your boot onto, isn’t always easy to find.

This hits the target as Man U players can’t.

OK – and what does it mean? Zen koans are meant to be obscure. I’d interpret it as – if you try to hard, aim for the very centre then you reduce your chances of hitting the wider target. And my guess is that Man U players are simply too wound-up – simply trying too hard.

And just in case you aren’t a Manchester United fan of 60 years standing, Louis van Gaal is the Man U manager, and WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH.

A few big ideas

Zenpolitics … sometimes I drift quite a distance from the ‘politics’ bit. But it’s always there, behind the scenes. And it’s all of Buddhism, not just Zen. And for that matter, other traditions, including Christianity and humanism. Wherever wisdom lies.

I try and avoid being too serious. But sometimes you can’t avoid it!

Three big ideas, and forgive the vast generalisations in what follows:

Compassion –  compassion, above all, being aware of the other person, the other party, the other side, and treating them as equals. This lies at the heart of Mahayana Buddhism, and ‘the ideal of the bodhisattva, someone who benefits not only himself but also others at one and the same time’.

Aspiration – to better oneself, and others, make the best of any situation, make the best of life. Aspiration is a very western concept. In Buddhism the closest I can find is viriya, which translates variously as ‘energy’, or ‘diligence’. How we balance aspiration and compassion in modern society (capitalist, global, interconnected, because that’s the way it is) is the political test of our times.

Capability – the ability, the wherewithal, for each and everyone of us (no exceptions), to aspire, to make time for what we each most value, to fulfil ourselves in our work and our lives. Making that happen for others is the ultimate act of compassion. Capability encompasses the ideas of freedom and equality – access, including access to justice, equal for everyone. My inspiration here is the Indian economist and Noble laureate, Amartya Sen. (‘Freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people’s capabilities, that is their real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value.’ Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.)

And, in addition ….

Community – working with others, caring for others, the practical expression of compassion, at a family, friend, local or national level.

Government – seeking the best, most effective, most accountable form of government, which I’ve argued before has to be not just democracy but parliamentary democracy, which it’s our good fortune to enjoy. If you think that’s overly specific, think of the alternatives, and how they’ve fared in the world. Encourage debate, avoid populism and straw polls.

And finally …

Freedom – referred to above, but specifically the freedoms of speech and expression, of assembly, movement, commerce. Freedom isn’t seamless (for example, hate speech, riotous assembly – to use an old term, mass migrations) but freedom has to be the ultimate context in which we reach decisions. (I’m arguing for freedom in a positive context, in which each of can achieve what we wish, and not in a negative context, whereby the only limitation to our freedom would be our ability to do harm to others.)

The middle way  – the balance between two positions, where the interests of everyone are best represented, the balance of ideas, not least the recognition that while we seek permanence impermanence is the reality, so all fixed positions are transient.

Insight – or wisdom, the nature of things, encompassing all of the above: the absence of self in any final reckoning, the illusions we have that we are masters of our fate, that we can be lords of the universe – lord it over the earth, or other people. We are of the earth, and our ultimate aim has to be to live in harmony with it.

One or two practical implications:

Always work with others when you can. When you achieve the extraordinary, for example, the European Union, and it’s failing, don’t walk away, face up to the problems, make it work.

Balance the private and the public. And if your choice, as for many it is, is to live a private life, don’t scorn government. Government is as good as we, as citizens, make it.

Value each person on earth the same: of course we love our family, friends, our country – we have pride in all of them, but others do too, in theirs, in their lives in faraway places.

The refugee, and how we treat him or her – that is the measure of our time.