Is Happiness enough?

Aged 85, Ken continues to tour and bring genuine happiness and joy to the world after nearly 60 years in showbiz.
He still holds the Guinness World record for the worlds longest ever joke-telling session at a show in the 1960's-
1500 gags in 3 and a half HOURS - 7.12 a minute... Thats a LOT of happiness! Thanks you Ken!

It's quite hard to start an article about something as universally desirable, elusive and individualistic as happiness when, in and off itself, it's almost impossible to define. Ask twenty people and you would offered twenty different answers as to what it means to each person, each one valid. I'm unhappy with the start of this article, but there you go, it's done, no turning back now... Just got to let go and move on. It's all rather difficult and perplexing. I sincerely believe that the quest for happiness is the one unifying factor that binds me to and puts me on a level pegging with each and every one of the seven billion or so other people on the planet. All of the animal kingdom too in fact, on land, in the sea and in the air, in it's immense breadth and depth, "red in tooth and claw". This seems quite a novel thought, and often strikes me when commuting to work, watching the news or simply sat in a public area with little to do but observe and reflect. Whats more, I firmly believe that all life on earth wishes to move towards happiness and away from suffering. Even if you wanted to question whether animals have the capacity to experience "happiness", they almost certainly wish to continue to move towards contentment and away from malaise. There are a few notable exceptions such as invertebrates that get eaten as part of their species' mating ritual and subsequent intercourse (what a way to go!), but even in these cases, by and large all life on earth wishes to avoid suffering and migrate towards pleasure, contentment, and happiness, however loosely you wish to term it.  Sado-masochists gain pleasure from their own mental suffering or physical pain, and most people with long term mental health issues, such as Anhedonia (the inability to experience pleasure) do not actively wish life-long suffering upon themselves as preferable to it's cessation. I myself have gone to some pretty dark places over the years, as have many others, and phrases such as "death's sweet kiss" and "the sweet release of death" are common place in our modern vernacular to the point of not even raising an eyebrow. All this to me suggests that, consciously or otherwise, all life on earth wishes to avoid suffering, and works towards the end of it. In the history of humanity, these have been the holy grail of human endeavours: what is happiness, and how do we bring about the end of suffering?

Happiness, on the most straightforward level, is an emotion, a subjective sense of ease and well-being that can be seen to indicate how well an individual feels that their life is going at any given moment. It can also be used to denote our chronic or habitual levels of positivity therein. As the greek philosopher Aristotle once said, "What constitutes happiness is a matter of dispute", and I only write on the subject with that caveat/disclaimer firmly established. These are just my thoughts and reflections, and please don't take it as given that I think I can speak for everyone in the world. I clearly can't, thank heavens! Essentially though, I see "happiness" as something that everybody hopes to achieve, but few have any real ideas as to how to define. Surely it is only when we are able to pull apart terms such as "happiness" and "suffering" that they begin to start to take shape in our minds. If we can begin to understand the flavour of the happiness that we seek, then our attempt to use it in the emotional kitchen of our lives will fare much better, perhaps?

"Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace"

So how to define these terms? In the context of Buddhism, suffering, anxiety and discontentment is known collectively speaking as "Dukkha", and its emotional counterpart, as "Sukkha", suggestive of "ease", "comfort" or "pleasure". Etymologically speaking, these words fascinate me, originating as that do from an ancient Indian language called Pali, spoken approximately 2,300 years ago. "Sukkha" and "Dukkha" were originally words which referred the the axle-hole on a cart or chariot upon which the wheels were dependant, "su" meaning good, "du" meaning poor and "kha" meaning "aperture" or "hole". A poorly fitted set of wheels on a cart or chariot makes for a rather uncomfortable journey and to this day phrases such as 'running smoothly" and "having a rough ride of it" take there origins from this and are still commonplace in modern English today. Thus we can say that in Buddhist terms, Dukkha and Sukkha are that which will directly affect how we experience our own journey through life. Dukkha itself, traditionally speaking, is then categorised into three increasingly subtle levels: the basic suffering of ordinary life (physical discomfort and pain of accidents, illness, old age and death etc), the inner suffering and anxiety of change (trying to hold onto things in an ever-changing world) and finally the suffering of conditionally dependant human existence (the level upon which things in life never seem to make us lastingly happy or match our expectations).

Dukkha... Much like one's own stupidity, is all pervasive, multi-faceted,
and resistance to which is futility itself...

Quite often, alongside sudden trauma or devastating loss, it is this intolerably neutral itch that cannot be scratched, this gaping vacuum in our hearts that can never be filled that leads people to depression, excessive drinking or recreational drug-taking and tragically in some cases even suicide. The truth of the matter is of course that there is nothing in and of this world can irreversibly and permanently fill this hole. Happiness and contentment cannot be purchased, cannot be carved in stone forever more. No marriage, career, item or idea is going to in and of itself take us to a place of lasting bliss and pleasure. We cannot rely on external factors to "make us happy". Everything in this world is impermanent, and subject to change. Everything in this world is made up of a composite in nature, including us. Things are made of parts and those parts themselves don't last either. There is no "job" - it is a series of circumstances and factors including the location, the commute, the colleagues, the work, the salary, your prospects and potential for growth there, how it is viewed by your peers (favourably or otherwise), the satisfaction you get from it... the list is endless. Because these various factors are constantly changing too, we can see that all things in this world will become an eventual cause of frustration or at the very least fail my make us permanently happy, now and forevermore. Nothing on earth will stop us getting old, sick and eventually dying, This is not pessimistic, this is just the way life really is. There is nothing new to get upset abut here, nothing you don't already know. That's not to say that life is a thankless, joyless experience from which there is no pleasure to be gained. Clearly there is. Its just that if we are solely reliant on our sensory experiences, as fleeting and temporary as they are, then we will find ourselves like the greyhounds at a race track, perpetually trying to catch the mechanical rabbit. I despise adverts that show implausibly attractive, tanned, athletic young people with the latest waistline, designer watch, drink or car, laughing with their friends and having the most unassailably jolly time as a result of it all. I firmly believe that these ethically repugnant adverts set up unrealistic expectations for the audience, once more dangling the ungraspable carrot of bogus gratification before us. We can often feel that upon acquiring the right car, job, partner, haircut and home, all at once, then we will be happy. We are conditioned to endlessly and insatiably crave; to desire, to appropriate, and to consume that which promises release from our frustrations, our insecurities and anxieties, but never will. Otherwise, why would we buy anything new ever again? The genuine but temporary enjoyment or high of the drunk, the drug user, the retail therapist and the lover will all eventually turn to dust in the cold light of day. Happiness solely based on pleasure and sensory gratification, therefor, is not for the wise of this world, and will in all likely lead to more frustration and dissatisfaction and suffering. 

Hard to believe that this is the same person after just a few years of crystal meth addiction. It seems implausible, but this all stemmed from the same desire to move from suffering to happiness that we all share. We are her.

What most of us seek is freedom. Political freedom notwithstanding, for most of us in this world there are two types of freedom which we desire. Most of us humans desire freedom OF the senses, the desire to do what we want, when we want, with whomever we want, which we mistakenly chase after and yearn for, often hurting ourselves in the process. However, unbeknownst to the majority, there also there exists the less commonly desired "freedom FROM the senses". Many years ago, I realised that one of the most basic mistakes I habitually make is confusing pleasure/gratification with happiness and contentment. Pleasure, as we have already established, is fleeting. Happiness and contentment seem to me to be more endearing. Pleasure is based on external things, happiness is something we can learn to cultivate from within. Again, I want to stress that the Buddha taught the "middle way" between the two extremes of renunciation and over-indulgence. It's not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with having a smart car, a loving partner, a nice home, good food and sensible levels of recreational toxicity. Its simply that we can't expect them to be a sound basis for a lasting and endearing level of emotional positivity. In the short term, they do indeed make us happy. But is happiness enough?

We all need time to ourselves...
Simplicity can lead to stillness, and like a lake, a still mind will reflect more. 

I've been reflecting a lot about upon happiness vs. contentment. Is it psychologically realistic to be happy all the time? Following my back injury and subsequent chronic sciatica in April this year, I have been forced to ponder this more closely. My choices these days seem manifestly twofold, and no more. I can either be in pain and miserable, or in pain but living with a sense of initiative, purpose and contentment with where my life is heading. "Happiness" to me seemed to be quite a high-energy, excitable word. There is a joyfully effervescent quality to it that is in itself wonderful, but by setting the bar so high for our emotional states to register as "happy", are we setting ourselves up for a fall? Very few people would argue that its impossible to be happy all the time, no matter what life throws at you, but perhaps contentment is the way forward? Happiness seems to me to be unstable and again (like pleasure) over-dependant on external, sensory experience, and like a candle exposed to a draft, is susceptible to sudden bursts of worldly winds. Contentment, serenity, and deeper feelings of inter-connectivity seem to be more stable than either the fleeting rapture of pleasurable experiences, or the unrealistically high expectations that come with "happiness" based on external factors. "Contentment" of course could be abused by those lacking the motivation to want to change, but so long as we try to better ourselves for the benefit of others and to bring awareness to the simpler joys in life, then we can slowly learn to break the endless oscillation between trying to neurotically grasp after what we want or push away against what we don't. Sangharakshita, the founder of the western Buddhist movement (of which my own Manchester Buddhist Centre is a part of) often points out that some sense-based pleasures can indeed have a soothing, expansive effect on the mind, making it more pliable, more flexible, more refined. This newly-refined quality of mind can result in temporarily lifting us out of the prison of our habitual ways of thinking, and can point us to higher, inexpressible truths in life. We can experience an absorption within the moment, a certain tangible stillness, openness and receptivity to the one-ness of it all. The sound of birdsong in the mornings, the warmth of the sun on our necks, the gentle pitter-patter of autumnal rain whilst waiting at a bus stop, the smell of fresh cut grass, the smiles of strangers greeting each other, the gentle reassurance of having just enough food in your belly... A good book, a sunset, a poem, a painting, a hug from a friend, knowing that you just helped a stranger, paying a compliment to someone... The wonder of living in a time where you can read this electronically... A smile... All these gems of our fortuitous circumstances present themselves to us daily, a vast array of simple, fleeting moments on the edges of our awareness, begging to be picked up and held up to the light of our child-like wonder. The trove is full, the jewels that we have so tirelessly and fruitlessly sought after all these years, over countless dusty and arid miles, were right here, all along, sown into the lining of our own jackets!

Being mindful and grateful of the subtle sense of rapture that often runs unnoticed through our experiences
can be a gateway to contentment and lasting serenity.

In life, contentment perhaps is not so much about getting what you want, but learning to want that which you already have. Not so much about asking ourselves "Why am I so infrequently the person that I want to be?" but more interestingly, "why do I so infrequently want to be the person that I am?" Is the pursuit of something as unreliable and elusive as happiness enough of a goal to truly bring meaning to our lives? Contentment and happiness may not the goals of the Buddhist path, freedom is. But they are by-products of living "the good life", as it used to be called. A life well lived, confronting that which befalls us with the grace, equanimity and wisdom to persevere, and still lead an authentically human existence. A life of kindness to others, of generosity, of contentment. An honest life, a loving life, a compassionate life, trying to exemplify the best of us all, pushing onwards, ever onwards, tracing out our never ending arc across the path of the eternally setting sun...

Yours, contentedly, The Dharma Farmer






May any merit gained in my writing thus be dedicated and go to the alleviation of the suffering of all beings.

"Back" to Basics - Confessions of a Broken Pilgrim.

Under the Bodhi Tree, Bodh Gaya -
The sacred spot where 2,557* years ago
Sidhartha Gautama achieved Enlightenment.

Hey guys - I'M BACK! In February 2012 I travelled to India on Pilgrimage for three weeks, and as some of you might have noted with benign curiosity, its been nearly half a year since my last post, the longest period of not being able to put pen to paper (as it were) for nearly eighteen months. I would offer my apologies, but I feel not the need - I have nothing to be sorry for, and I fear it would imply that I felt that my creative shortcoming were in some way depriving the world of something special. This is clearly nonsense. In the six months or so that have passed, I assume you are all safe and well, at least comparatively speaking. I'm delighted to report that a quick scan of the archives revels that (as far as we can tell), no-one has propelled themselves with bug-eyed despondency off the Golden Gates bridge, distraught at my apparent inability to communicate my experiences. No-one, to the best of my knowledge, has hurled themselves in protest under a monarch's steed at a national racing event. No-one has erupted in flames. That is not to say that no-one cares, but of course, caring is a phenomena that has many comparative levels, from superficial curiosity ("oh, he's still alive?") to genuine concern (Oh, he's still alive!"). It's probably a good thing to reflect upon that sliding scale, from the sublime to the mundane, and ponder where on that scale we place our various interests, commitments and indulgences. Does our level of care and concern reflect their genuine intrinsic value, and if so, in which context are those values held? Just a thought, but again, worth reflecting on perhaps? 

Claire and I being forced to pose with local politicians for publicity -
did they really care about us, and of what value was this to them, really?

There have been several reasons I haven't posted since India, but one of them was to examine my motive for writing in the first place. I don't want this blog or these articles to become another means for the "self" to try and assert upon the world in a vain and futile bid to convince "me" of its own substantiality. Or, put another way, I don't want my musings to become another form of egotistical, attention-seeking twaddle. It's fairly self explanatory, and all sounds rather noble, but of course it's not the truth in it's entirety. The other reasons were, in retrospect, ego-based and set against a backdrop of vanity and unskillful behaviour. Well, unskillful previous samskaric formations (acts and volitions) that influenced the chain of events as they played out, but more on that later. Its rare in life that anything is straight-forwardly skillful or unskillful, so again, bear with me. I've been up since 5am and a little rusty at this. I also feel that is it a very different guy that's writing now that who you all waved goodbye to all those months ago. In many ways, I often wonder whether he even made it onto the plane? I hope so. The departure lounge in Delhi International is frightfully dull, and last I was there, resembled a medium-security prison patrolled by unsmiling security guards with Freddy Mercury-esq facial hair, automatic weaponry and narrowed, unblinking eyes. Something about assault rifles and understandably twitchy trigger fingers puts me ill at ease, and whoever got on the plane, he was grateful!

Tough men doing a tough job... You just don't get this in Heathrow...

However, when I left these lush and verdant shores, myself with a grin in my step and a self-assured spring in my eyes, I could not have envisioned that which was to befall our group. I am currently still processing the experience, and I think we all will be for some years yet to come. At some point or another, most of our party (notwithstanding our imperturbably jovial Indian Order Member guide, Amrutasiddhi) swung from dizzying highs to gut-wrenching, heartbreaking lows out there, and for myself it's been a undeniably turbulent affair ever since. Two of our party are STILL going fourth, my brother Paul and my sister Helen. Should you guys read this whilst in the shadows of the Himalayas or in dusty distant towns with beguiling names like "Atchoo" and "Rammbag", know that we think of you both regularly, are praying for your safe return, and sending you so much metta right now! Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!

Paul & Helen resting in the Himalayas, April 2013 (2 months after most of us returned to the West)

Sooo… In the interim, I'm still alive! Hooray! When last you heard from me I was trying to give an air of graceful equanimity in the face of death, reflecting on the events which brought me to this point in my life, and secretly fretting about trying to get all my clothes and assorted books under the 25kg British Airways limits. So now, still very much alive and with an in-depth knowledge of airport protocol (I took 5 flights in 3 weeks), I feel we are long overdue an update. This weekend will be 21 weeks since I returned to the West, landing as I did on February 22nd, having spent a little over 3 weeks romping through the subcontinent and eating my way across an area twice the size of Europe in search of the sublime, the transcendental, and the worlds greatest Aloo Paratha. 

Claire and I enjoying lunch on an Indian train... Finger licking good!

Upon my safe return, I faced a well-intended barrage of enquiries, but sadly, all too often I faced the mind-bendingly inane "did you have a nice time out there?" or it's lazy, stumpy, sister-question - "How was it?" The simplest answer I could offer was "Life-Changing". For me, traversing through India really made me sit up and realise just how small a percentage of the global population we in the UK constitute, and how jaw-droppingly lucky we are to live as we do. Britain has a population of 70 million or so, a mere provincial town (for some reason Newmarket springs to mind) when compared to India's 1.5 BILLION smiling denizens. Our fertile and quaint little island covers approximately 250,000 km/sq, a comparative sneeze of land when you consider that India is 13 times the size, covering an unfathomable 3.3 Million km/sq. Disturbingly, nearly 70% of the population goes to bed hungry at night, with an even higher percentage who could certainly benefit from a more nutritional diet, to put it mildly! That's 1.05 BILLION people that are substantially worse off than you or I. Makes you less begrudging about, well, pretty much everything. This laptop is worth more than most Indian slum-dwellers will earn in the course of a lifetime, which again, is a lot shorter, on average than yours or mine. It really makes you sit up and think. I feel incredibly blessed to have the life I do, when statistically, it was far more likely that right now I should be making coat-hangers on the roadside, for the remaining 17 years of my life - the average life expectancy of an Indian male in the slums is 47, whereas in the UK I should make my 80's. Terrifying. In spite of this all, Indians of all social strata are often noted for there unsurpassable generosity, kindness, warmth and overriding desire to make (certainly Westerners) feel at ease. Never once, for example, was I short of a kindly, sympathetic face to turn to for assistance in deciphering a menu or a train station announcement, the latter often delivered with machine-gun like rapidity, seemingly from a broken phone box, underwater, in a distant lake. It was all wonderfully touching, deeply humbling, and I would return in an instant if I could.

Mahabodhi, myself and some new friends near the cave where, 
prior to realising the futility of white-knuckle striving, the ex-prince Gautama 
spent many years pushing the boundaries of asceticism in Uruvela , Bihar, N. India.

Sat outside the cave itself (concrete facade added 2500 years later, obviously)
Note the gold leaf that eastern pilgrims rub onto everything as an offering. 

During the three week tour of the main Buddhist sites of veneration (I still struggle with the word "holy", probably due to it's theistic connotations), each of us eight Pilgrims experienced incommunicable moments of transcendental... something... Moments that defy language itself... Devotion... Faith... Joy... Rapture... Absorption... Wonder... Gratitude… None of there words, when written down, seem to come even close to evoking or conveying the depths of what it was actually like... I believe the most appropriate description would be "ineffable, wordless stillness" or something that conveys that these experiences come to us from beyond the very boundaries of what it is possible for one human to convey to another. To cognise is to label, and to label is to limit. In our attempts to use the conditioned (words, composed of and dependant on letters) to describe the unconditioned, we strike upon a fundamental, though utterly understandable limitation of language itself. Many of you I'm sure know the thunderous silence of the sublime, roaring through our hearts and minds, expressible only through the knowing smiles and empathetic nods of those who have been 'there' themselves or indeed were part of 'that' experience. This is why silent periods are considered so important on retreats across the varying Buddhist traditions, Triratna included - invariably in a group setting, with very little practice, we can begin to glimpse communication beyond language itself, and thus our shared experiences deepen and broaden, as our common humanity reveals itself anew.

The stillness before a Puja (devotional ceremony) in the remains of the shrine room
at Mansar Monastery, former home of seminal 3rd century philosopher Nargajuna...
An unfathomably powerful experience!

The one problem of course is that whist I can photograph ancient monuments or describe events in a chronologically accurate order, when we set off in search of the indescribable, how do we convey it afterwards? Did we even find it? How would we know? Would the very act of seeking render one incapable of experiencing such a phenomena? In preparation for the trip I spent months slowly working my way around a mine-fields of grasping and aversion, especially with regards to any expectations I may have had. I spent countless hours trying to "peer into the void" of reality, reflecting how what I and many others call "Jay" is actually just an ever shifting flows of unending processes, cycles and learned habits, utterly lacking a fixed identity which is completely independent of other conditions. There was no separate "me" to go to India, which mercifully meant that in the absolute sense, if "I" was composite and beginning-less, I also couldn't "die" out there, which was a comfort. Especially on the road networks which seem designed and populated by a breed of terrifyingly sociopathic thrill seekers hitherto unknown in the developed world. More on that another time, if I haven't repressed it too deeply. Moreover, one could reasonably posit that what we term "India" is in truth a collection of wildly differing cultures, landscapes, habits and customs of unimaginable breadth and depth, and again, lacking one unchanging identity. Just as there is not one "Jay", there is no singular "India" to go to. Crazy stuff. When we look into the nature of mind itself, there are no actual fixed phenomena or experiences. The eye cannot see itself. No thoughts, feelings or emotions that are eternal and unchanging, or even real in any tangible sense outside the confines of our own heads. Academically speaking, all very impressive (or not depending on if you care - see above) but did it actually work...?

Taking time out in the filth and insanity of Bhopal train station -
self-metta not included with ticket!

For those amongst us that returned to the West, we have all struggled to reintegrate ourselves and adjust, to varying degrees and with mixed success. How could we have expected otherwise? This process will take years, possibly for the rest of our lives. I often joke that I was fully prepared to die over in India, but that I hadn't factored in the idea of coming back alive. Some struggled in the first few weeks and then settled down, whilst others seemed fine for ages and then hit the buffers hard as unexpected, painful things arose later. I would never dream of saying any more of my fellow Pilgrim's's "re-entry" experiences. When (and if) they are ready, they may confess or discuss it with you one day. Maybe not. It feels similar to members of the armed forces who have "seen things out there". It's just not appropriate to ask without waiting to be told. In many ways, we ourselves were at war in India, and since, but with an unseen enemy that bears a striking resemblance to ourselves. All our unskillful behaviours, traits and volitions were laid bare. You couldn't hide it. You were encouraged not to. One of the things that struck me as we travelled from place to place was just how important a practice what we in Triratna call "tuning in" is. Sitting with people you sincerely trust and care for, and sharing your current thoughts, feelings, perceptions, hopes and insecurities in a safe environment free from judgement is one of our defining characteristics and practices in Triratna, and not one I've ever seen emphasised in any other tradition in the Buddhist world. Im sure we all try and speak truthfully and honestly to people. I'm sure all practicing Buddhists try and observe the fourth precept, to abstain from causing suffering to others through untruthful or otherwise damaging speech/communication. This however, when formulated as a specific practice, I believe it to be one of the most effective tools for creating the elusive third (but by NO means least important) Jewel of 'Sangha' or spiritual companionship/community. The other two, being 'Buddha' and 'Dharma - the unsurpassable embodiment of spiritual excellence and the teachings/path within which one can move closer to that ideal - are traditionally THE three most important and precious 'things' in the life, mind and heart of any actively practicing Buddhist. There are many books on this, and for those of an academic bend I would certainly recommend the deliciously meaty "The Three Jewels" by - you guessed it - Triratna founder Sangharakshita. For those who prefer something less likely to result in an aneurism, do pick up "What is the Buddha?", "What is The Dharma?" and "What is the Sangha?", again by Bhante Sangharakshita. They are less scholastic but no less brilliantly written, and give anyone curious a fantastic grounding in these three overarching and unifying ecumenical ideals. Hence, in the Buddhist world, these are referred to as the Three Refuges, and are the common unifying factor irrespective of traditional or social differences. 

Myself and a Thai Monk or "Bhikku", outside the cave in which the Buddha stayed for many years,
"Vultures Peak", Rajgir, Bihar. Who's the tourist here...?

In my case, with regards to my own crash landing on February 24th, I think that my emotional and spiritual needle had swung so far over into the realm of spiritual sensitivity and idealism that when I returned, aside from the obvious culture shock, in order to process and make sense of it all, the'needle needed to swing the other way back into more familiar territory. I'd "O.D'd" on Buddhism and needed to bring myself round with something more rock n roll. Such as Rock n Roll. And Sex. And Drugs. Yippee! To integrate the sublime, the wordless, the transcendental, I needed to immerse myself in the mire of the mundane, the trivial, and the grotesque. As the skillful needs the context of the unskillful, and the diamonds need the foil to shine most brightly, so did I need to recapitulate who and where I've been in order make sense of my higher, more refined aspirations. To know how to die is to know how to live. One cannot truly begin to contemplate the blissful cessation and extinguishing cool of Nirvana without first plunging into and waking through the wearisome mire of Samsara. What all of this equated to, in my case (and hey, I'd been travelling for nearly two days), was immediately going off to the pub with friends in Glossop, spontaneously and impulsively buying a sh*t-load of weed and spending the following 4 months in a perma-stoned haze. Actually, as funny and ironic as that might be, again it's not entirely truthful. I actually spent the next few months frankly really depressed and down, although on some level, I knew that by reconnecting my more familiar "core", I was in many ways being kind to myself. I just couldn't quite give myself enough kindness to give myself a break over it. It's all a bit chicken and the egg, but imagine the chicken is really stoned, and can't find the egg, and even if it could, isn't sure whether it is supposed to be looking for the egg in the first place or just solving the paradox. Something like that. The spiritual life can get a bit confusing after a while, ironically. It's almost like tidying a room. You can sweep stuff under your spiritual bed for only so long, but for the "full colonic", it's gonna get messy before it gets better! Much like my use of metaphors...

Download 2013, final night, after the final set (Rammstein), after 5 days of drinking...
It's a miracle we made it home.

What I was certain of, however, was that I really missed my friends and my life in India. I felt culturally like I no longer belonged in the West: I really struggled to adjust to life back at work. I felt completely trapped in the mundane vicissitudes of life. With ever-increasing anxiety, I was coming slowly to terms with the knowledge that the only way to feel "at home" again was to leave everyone I'd ever known and start forging a new life some 5,000 miles away. In terms of head-spaces, it's scary as hell, and can leave you feeling very isolated, insular, and uncommunicative. In addition to this, I was struggling with the changes in my own practice. In India, on Pilgrimage, surrounded by my brothers and sisters in the Dharma, was it any surprise that my practice was often unhindered and typified by rapturous stillness and a previously unimaginable clarity and depth. We created retreat-like conditions which, through our skillful actions, supported our collective practice and enabled all of us to explore both inner and outer space together in peace, love and understanding, as Elvis Costello suggests. For the short time it lasted, it was simply divine! But all mundane phenomena are subject to conditions and are all thus impermanent, composite, and all are an eventual cause of dukkha (frustration/suffering). Over the years, experiences that I may have had in my meditation practice notwithstanding, my supportive practice itself is a conditioned thing... Insight is insight, and I can't speak for those "out-of-this-world"-type experiences we all have from time to time, but for those very much in and of this world, was it any surprise that they too were subject to change? That my mental states, for a while so sublime, so clear, so uncomplicated, were to be replaced my the foggy haze of doubt, mistrust, and conceit? I found myself miserable away from "home" (India), drinking and smoking in the evenings to cheer myself up (my old unskillful habits dying hard) and a wall emerging around me on all fronts. I couldn't relate to my non-Buddhist friends as easily, feeling alienated, socially impotent and unable to share my experiences. Conversely, as "kind" to myself as it was, my unskillful behaviours and old habits erected a barrier of vanity and pride, ego and shame, stopping me from confiding and seeking Refuge in the Sangha and my fellow pilgrims. How could I confess that I had "fallen off the Dharmic wagon"? Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! I felt torn between an impossible ideal and the reality of where I actually was on the spiritual path - with one foot over the starting line and the other still waiting to take the first step over it. I was stuck between Iraq and a Hard Place! Such is vanity. Ironically, it was being forced to confront this self-absorption, self cherishing, and bruised ego that started to turn it all around...

The night that changed it all...

On April 14th 2013, my world turned inside out and upside down, both figuratively and literally when, after a successful show in Manchester with my band F.I.G.M.O, I slipped whilst carrying a heavy speaker cabinet up the stains to our 2nd floor rehearsal room in the Northern Quarter. Let us bear in mind that the offending item itself was DEFINITELY a two-man lift.  Perhaps I was slightly drunk and stoned? Shall we also factor in that I was keen to get back to the venue and party some more? Could we also read that as "impress people and be the big I-AM" perhaps? Almost certainly! In addition to this, I grew up in rural Wales, in an area known for producing HARD men. Real men. Tough, burly men. Men who can leap up two flight of stairs carrying the equivalent of a chest of drawers filled with cement, or something else of profound, unrelenting heaviness. Or so I thought. I missed a step, and without further ado, the amp came back on me and I "felt it go". "It" being my spine. I laughed to myself (there was no-one around, I was racing up the stairs ahead, alone) and recall thinking "Oh, I'm gonna feel that tomorrow"... 

An illustration of a herniated disc as it pushes on the Sciatic nerve.
Not on my worst enemy would I wish this experience...

...I was to spend the next 10 days in bed, 6 weeks trapped in the house and two months off work. I am expected to make a full recovery, so long as you define 'full" as "mobile but constantly in some degree of pain and discomfort". I am also expected to spend the next year (and some considerable time beyond that) in physiotherapy, having herniated two discs in my lower back (L3 and L4, for you budding chiropractors out there), causing unbelievable sciatica (shooting pain in my legs and lower back). According to the seemingly endless time I've spent in an MRI machine over the last few months, I have also got significant wear and tear in the upper regions too, although mainly from damage sustained on stage over the years. I've been advised that if I spend much more time being scanned in there, the council are going to start demanding tax. After I was able to get over the initial shock, what all this amounted to was an opportunity to REALLY examine my life, and how I live it. LOTS of time to myself, in agony, asking "why"? Why me, why now? And "how". A LOT of "hows"... How can this be happening to me? To someone still "young"? 29 doesn't "feel" old. How do I deal with this both now and in the future? How am I going to meditate? Or go back to India? How do I bring myself to tell people that I'm broken, hurt, scared and in need of help? How will I be able to attract a partner? How can I be thinking with my penis in a time of crisis? How is  this incessant questioning helping? How do I stop?! Eventually, as weeks went by and I started getting ready to go back to work, I started asking "how can I speed up and safeguard my recovery?" and "how can I make changes to my lifestyle and my attitude to stop this happening again?" How can I stop running away from and instead turn towards my direct experience when it is such an uncomfortable one? How can I learn to let go and just make my peace with my lot in life for what it is, without adding my own aversion and misery onto? Most recently, if I am going to be living with chronic pain for the foreseeable future, how can I learn to make the most of every day, count my blessings and use the pain to my advantage?  Im still thinking about that one... That might be my next post, but in the meantime, I'm ok. I have days when I'm able to cope much better than others, but I have wonderful friends, many of whom have gone through similar things in the past. I'm healing (slowly) and am going to be spending as much time as possible making sure that every day, even if the choice of being in pain or not is no longer available, I chose to make the most of the gift that is the eternal now.

Humbly yours, with a wink and a bit of a limp,

The Dharma Farmer

May any merit accrued in my writing thus be dedicated towards the alleviation of the suffering of all beings.

*Give or take a few years ;-)