End of Year Review 2012 - "Shouldn't try harder...!"

Its important to be kind to yourself with regard to resolutions, New Years or otherwise.
And realistic...

So, it's New Year's Eve 2012. Wow. It's been a funny old year, what with the summer of both the London Olympics, the Diamond Jubilee and a host of other socio-political events of either a pivotal or utterly irrelevant nature, depending on your disposition. For me it's been a really, really interesting year. I say that, although the adjective that came first to my mind was 'tough'. Has it really been a 'tough year', or is it that a few subtle deviations have taken us collectively and individually that little bit further outside our comfort zone? Is that always a bad thing? Such thoughts come into my mind right now. Mainly because its New Years Eve, but also because its not even half seven in the morning, and I find myself heading to work. Really? Your kidding? Nope. Got myself a nice little 8-4 shift in the "contact centre" in Manchester that I work in. Pretty bleak picture huh? Finish the year having to be up at 6am... Shhhh... If you close your eyes, you can just about make out the sound in the distance, like a shard of last night's soon-forgotten and fragmented dreams... A violin, perhaps? Not a large one, judging from the timbre...

I jest, but this is something I've noticed I do a lot. Things seem to be either going well, which makes me proud and complacent, or they are going really badly, which makes me proud, complacent and self absorbed. I mean, REALLY badly. "The Hardest Year of My Life" is a title I bestow upon 2012 not without some degree of uncomfortable shoe-gazing, and frankly something I could have done without, but hey-ho, pip and dandy, "them's the breaks", as my Mancunian friend will say (and do, well, the last bit at least.) There doesn't seem to have been a lot of middle way this year. 12 months ago I was in a (semi) stable relationship, living in the quaint but remote picturesque beauty of Buxton, in the Peak District, and generally speaking i was pretty certain that I was a Buddhist and starting a period of intense study and meditation. Due to changes in the timetable made after we had decided to move to the area, I was left with a commute of nearly five hours a day, for the princely sum of £270 a month! Still, on the up side, it gave me all that time in the world to listen to talks from the freebuddhistaudio.com website. Lots and lots of them. I think at last check I had 29 hours of Bhante Sangharakshita on my laptop's hard drive, plus another three days of various others talks and narrated books, enough to keep me occupied for literally months. When others were merely endearing the skull-crushing tedious monotony of their commutes, I was rapture-bound, absorbed in suttas and doctrines radiant enough to inspire and illuminate even the most jaded of travellers, and in work I devoured Sangharakshita books in an all-consuming fashion. I created a bubble, and watched the world slip by, day by day, from my safe vantage point within. But bubbles pop. I know. Obvious point, but still it came as a shock.

Screenshot of the new FreeBuddhistAudio.com website. Addictive doesn't cover it...

As my interest and commitment to my exploration of the Dharma intensified, so it created in my mind a distinct separation between myself and those around me from the non-Buddhist community. I went on my first retreats, joined a study group in March, wrote my first ever article/blog/post etc. I felt singularly focused and committed to deepening my experiences. I could see the Dharma, like a fine dust, covering and flavouring my every experience. Every morsel of food, every tune I heard, every row I had with my partner, was infused with the Dharma. I think it would not be unfair to say that there was barely a minute of any day which went by when I was not immersed in something Dharmic, mindful or reflective. I constantly obsessed about conditionality, the 12 Niyamas, ethical debates and the search for the true nature of absolute mind, what the Tibetan tradition calls 'Rigpa'. I had the Buddhism "Bug", and I had it bad. I had no idea at the time how I must have come across to my non-Sangha friends. Or to my new Sangha, for that matter. People said things to me that were pleasing to hear. They unwittingly inflated my ego, and super-charged my already compulsive behaviour and unintegrated flame-thrower-like enthusiasm. Although I appeared happy and content with my life, all this intensive, white-knuckled effort served to achieve was to broaden the yawning chasm that was appearing between my partner and I. As we all know, cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of Compassion.

Thus it went, as you are all aware and as I explored in one of my previous posts "The Porcelain Lotus". In June we moved house from Buxton to Glossop, again in the Peak District, but this time with a far more agreeable 30 min commute.  In spite of knowing it was the final roll of the dice for us, it still hurt like hell when the inevitable came to pass, and up to that point in my life, I had never felt more alone. I then struggled with my sister's diagnosis with Stage Four bowl, liver and lung cancer, the news having reached me three weeks after the separation. At the time I was already finding it hard to cope with an increased work demand, with now the added pressures of finding somewhere to live (on my own for the first time) and the natural tension of having to live on in the same house as my ex for two extra months. This was made all the more stressful as I had just begun exchanging emails with a fellow Mitra at the centre. We struck up a lively and engaging correspondence, and for several weeks enjoyed getting to know each other a little. Sadly, I am no expert in these fields, (inter-organisational romances or women in general for that matter) and having done the sensible thing and tried to hold back my emotions, I realised too late that the reason I was unable to open up on a deeper level was that it was just too much, too intense, too soon. You can't give what you don't have. I know this now, and also know that if we have an inkling that this may be the case, no amount of wishing for it or fervent desire will automatically guarantee that  it will manifest or become apparent. I suppose that could tie in with conditionality, i.e. What conditions are required for a person to be in enough of a "good place" to preclude emotionally availability towards potential partners? How do you know when "you are ready?" Etc. much like a plant, you can't go pulling it up out of the pot every day to see how the roots are doing and expect healthy development. That's what I did though, a constant, arid interrogation and 2nd guessing of myself and motives. I'd already made the conscious decision to never bother again looking outside the Sangha for love. Indeed, the idea of a secular romance seemed mutually exclusive with my loose and tenuous grasp (an apt word) of spiritual growth. I mean, come on, what was the point in being with someone unless they are on the same path as I, and moreover beneficial to my spiritual development? Ah, but therein the real danger lies; I hadn't realised that inherent risk in setting up goals and chasing after them. In establishing bliss-like-states of mind and lofty ideals as my perceived 'norm', I then suffered hideously when I realised that they too are unstable and impermanent. It goes to show the stark contrast between the relative approaches to the the Dharma in the West, and in the East. Especially in India, where it's followers are concerned more with wider social change than with establishing lofty mental states. In the West, we tend to bait and dangle, to motivate ourselves most often with material and emotional "carrots". Over that last few months, I have heard many, many newcomers to the Introduction to Buddhism classes talk about the transformative power of the Dharma, of absorbed mental states, of developing insight and imagination, clarity and profound wisdom. Often I hear people say that they started practicing/meditating regularly when they stated to perceive certain benefits with regards to their various mental states. Often people find that they are calmer, life seems richer, the simplest of occurrences herald previously unimaginable profundity. The muffled, unseen flutterings of a train station pigeon, the sound of old friends bumping into each other in the streets, on the buses and on the trains, the smell of a fried egg on a Monday morning - all seem to have been suffused with a particular intense fragility, a certain heady richness, making it difficult to take in and unsustainable in the long run. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality" as T.S Elliot once famously said, and looking back, I never stood a chance....

When I got the news of my sister, it broke my heart. She is my oldest sister, and although we had seen less of each other in recent years, whilst growing up we were extraordinarily close. I remember her from my earliest days always being the funny, practical, cool one of my older siblings. Needless to say, I took it pretty badly, and coupled with other pressures, I slowly slumped into a depression. I started finding my drinking increasing in gentle increments, and struggled to open up to friends either at work or within the Sangha. I didn't want people to see me as weak, feeble or neurotic. I wanted to been seen as being authentic, being genuinely integrated, pure of motive and deed. I wanted to use my own body and mind to "prove the Dharma right". Let my faith in the Three Jewels manifest itself spontaneously in the complete outer and inner transformation of the individual! OH, but all is indeed Vanity! Like a chick, trying to push it's way through the egg before it is ready to hatch, although the direction was fine, and the desire to grow was sincere, due to my inexperience, I was left vulnerable and exposed, featherless and shivering, trying to control my life through periods of extreme renunciation and asceticism. Meat, dairy products, white sugar, booze, nicotine, masterbation, facial hair, if it could be renounced, I tried it, and ended up adding things to a list that seemed to grow weekly. I fasted, meditated twice a day, went running every other, and took a dizzying variety of multivitamins and Omega-3 supplements, often simultaneously. Again, as we know, I am not a man of half measures. 

Clearly the life of strict renunciation is not the way for me, at least, not now...

End result was that I woke up one day in somebody else's life. And I completely freaked out. In 3 months, I had gone from living with one person in our dream house, enjoying the occasional illicit beer or toke on a joint, to living on my own in a tiny new place, a tea-total vegetarian with a new partner and the onset of an anxiety disorder caused by my sisters ill health, the breakup of my relationship and subsequent relocation. In retrospect, it's clear that immediately diving head-first into a new relationship and then trying to take on 29 years of conditioning wasn't the most sensible thing in the world, but my hindsight seems to be 20-20, and often Olympic standard! For the mistakes I made though, and the people I unintentionally hurt along the way this year, I am deeply remorseful, and wish to use my sense of shame to motivate me to change, rather than some lofty aspiration to be "pure", whatever that may be... Sometimes all you can do is apologise, learn from your mistakes, and move on in metta...

However, that we sometimes get burned cannot be seen as an excuse for not striking the occasional match, if the warmth and comfort, safety and security of the fire will see us through the coming winter months. The spiritual path is often depicted as comprising of skillfull ethical decisions in life leading to experiences of greater levels if meditative absorption, which in turns leads, in theory, if we are fortunate enough, to developing insight, vision and imagination. But what about our original intention, or willed actions, our volitions, our Karma? Our motivation seems to me to be key here. If we simply give everything up overnight that is familiar to us, then we can end up with a very isolated awareness of our own experiences, with no tangible framework within which we can assess and integrate them. We need to start of with a clear notion of what is being refined, without which we cannot hope to evaluate our motivations and adjust our perceptions accordingly. To use a rather crude analogy, I tried to clean the house by hurling all the furniture out of an upstairs window, and ended up confused as to why it became so cold, bare, inhospitable and unfamiliar. In order to give something up, we aught to have a clear sense of what will hopefully be arising in its place, without a desire to chase after it with terminal intensity. I also came across the notion that in order to be able to give, we must be at least receptive to receiving, in principle. Generosity in its truest form is reciprocal in nature. The problem we face is that sometimes that when we want to give, or to renounce something, we must be sure we are able to give it or renounce it sincerely in the first place. To be unreceptive to the response will inhibit further generosity. That is not to suggest the generosity should arise on a purely exploitative basis, but equally we can't empty our emotional or spiritual overdrafts for the sake of others without first assessing our relative emotional needs and spiritual "cash-flow" concerns. The essence of skilful action is that which promotes happiness and contentment for oneself and others, without compromising the position of EITHER party - actions and willed volitions that benefit others but bring suffering and misfortune to ourselves cannot be said to be truly skillful. 

We need, more than ever, to engage with ourselves as we truly are, and then assess as to where we would like to provisionally end up (hopefully, in my case, as an enlightened being, but hey, we're all different, right?) We then must make allowances for (and even potentially welcome with open arms) our failings between now and such a time as we achieve our goals, and become less concerned with time-frames. I often see the path of spiritual progress as taking the smallest of steps in the greatest of directions, but sometimes I forget that the smallest gap between two points is in fact zero; That a rest is as good as change (and visa versa), and that sometimes on the path of life, the best "step" one can take is to sit down, and shut up - thanks Brad Warner! Non-effort, that is, attempting to move from a linear oscillation between gain and loss, pleasure and pain to a more vertical spiral mode of existence is not easy. Not by any stretch of the imagination is it a small feat to find oneself in a position where we have finally undone all those years of conditioning. His Holiness the Dalai Lama claims that he is "a very poor Buddhist, with very poor daily practice." I find this a source of great comfort, especially when he adds that true change, transformative, consistent change is hard to spot. "do not worry about results" he says in that delightfully ideosincratic, rich baritone voice of his. "Maybe after 10, 20, 30 years we see small change... I have been practicing the Dharma for maybe 70 years... So now, I see small change, little change, but still change! With awareness, with a little effort, change is always positive. So, now, I am happy!" Again, makes me feel better. 

Clearly, I have't got that far to go before Enlightenment...

We may not see it, but as drop by drop the proverbial jar is filled with either water or poison, so we are filled with either positive or negative qualities, and out of those, thoughts arise. In dependence on those thoughts, we speak and we communicate ideas. We may also be lucky enough to convey or discuss the Dharma. Our words become our actions, our actions become our habits and these in turn solidify and harden into our character. Our character can perhaps best described as the person we are when no-one's watching, and in that respect, maybe it is through periods of aloneness that we can get an idea of who and what we are? It seems to me that therefor the most important preparatory activity prior to attempted spiritual diagnosis would be inactivity itself. We can be so busy trying to change to please others, trying to be SEEN as a good person, trying to define ourselves by our unconsciously pious and altruistic ideals, that we fail to consult the spiritual map with the large arrow donating that indeed "You are here"... You are HERE... You ARE here... YOU are here.... But where are any of us really? Undefinable, ever shifting, unquantifiable puddles of humanity. Some skin, bones, memories and dreams, loosely tied together with a name, job and a postcode, to paraphrase Sangharakshita. We think we are more like the mighty river, but we trickle like streams, and conversely when we come to terms with this, our separate tributaries can combine and sweep away whole cities. It's up to us. It really is...

Near my childhood home, in rural Wales, there is a small bench equidistant from my house and the village itself. The view from the bench affords the weary traveller a chance to gaze upon a vista of imposing wooded hills, called the Gaer Fawr (or "Large Fort") named after the Neolithic settlement which once graced its summit. Years before I discovered the Dharma, and from the age of about five or six, used to love to visit this bench, sit quietly, close my eyes, and imagine those people that used to live upon those hills, amongst those trees. Did they look down upon the valley, and question what their uncertain future would hold? I like to think so. Fittingly, upon the bench there used to be an inscription, a small plaque, now sadly  long gone, with lettering worn shallow by time, lichen and disinterest. Upon it, it read:

"Tarry, rest and contemplate:

What of Life? Whereof Fate?

Could this be thy final hour?

Gaze then, upon The Gaer Fawr,

And think of things eternal..."

The view from the bench itself...

Happy New Year 2013 everyone, I hope you all enjoy/enjoyed (depending on when you read this) your evening, and that the new year will give us all a welcome and sometimes much needed opportunity for a good hard look in the mirror, and the sense to take what we see with a pinch of salt and tablespoons of kindness! At this point, I suppose I should be making some kind of resolution for the coming 12 months, but I won't. I'm going to try and practice non-effort, work more on working less, and instead of a New Years Day resolution, I am resolving to try and have a Year of New Days! I 'm just not going to try very hard at it, or care too much about the results....

See you next year, all my love, and now if you excuse me, I've got a party to go to!

Wishing you well, your friend, The Dharma-Farmer x

New Years Eve 2013 - hilariously familiar for something that hasn't actually happened yet...

"Sobriety... I'll drink to that!"

Bar XS (how apt?) Fallowfield, Manchester, circa 2005.
Don't do drugs. Or wear novelty Y-fronts. Or both.

I have always had a somewhat full-on, addictive personality. Those of you who know me are more than aware of this. When I was a young teenager I would regularly disappear for whole weekends at friend's houses, spending 32 hours straight playing computer games. These were exhausting, semi-exhilarating, semi-nightmarish times, involving driving sports cars into on-coming traffic, being assaulted by a myriad of well-oil muscular oriental gentlemen with nunchucks and inadvertently allowing a house full of zombies do unspeakable things to a small child. In short, I was no good at games. I never had the desire to "practise" in my spare time. I was far too concerned with playing my bass guitar in my room and making small but impressive incendiary devices in the woods behind my house, a lively obsession in its own right that cost me multiple eyebrows and nearly a few jackets/fingers/school friends etc. Good times! All this was brought to an untimely end when my father caught me trying to suck petrol out of the mower to mix with the WWII gunpowder stolen by a friends Grandad at the end of the war (and later smuggled out in turn by us lot with equal furtive glee to our "HQ" in the woods - Phillip Spragg, I will always be eternally grateful). To say he was not entirely overjoyed with the discovery of my new-found obsession , would be somewhat of an understatement.

For the same reasons, I have always shied away from gambling ever since once spending the entirety of a family holiday in Devon feeding an endless stream of 2p pieces in a coma-like daze into those "sliding tray" arcade machine in the hope of winning... Well, more 2ps! There's some kind of comparison there with Samsaric tedium and monotony of conditioned existence, coupled with the futility and unsatisfactoriness of endless craving, but that is fairly self-explanatory. In addition, my Mum always had a way with the horses, and it did look jolly exciting. Saturday afternoons were always spent with her kneeling before of a fan of various open newspapers, screaming exhalations of encouragement, incredulity, despair and eventual gratitude at the TV screen 8 inches away. People say that an addictive personality is hereditary. I have no idea what they mean! I choose not to gamble because I disagree with it in principle. Nothing to do with knowing myself and my slew of assorted failings and weaknesses. Honest!

Years later, I discovered pot, cigarettes and alcohol, but not necessarily in that order, or indeed on separate occasions. Like a cartoon light bulb going on above my head (or more accurately, off), here was something I was good at. Exceptional even. Amongst my fellow "space explorers", nobody would push it and themselves further or harder in the realms of expansive states of cranial obliteration. I would smoke and drink until I was the last man standing. Invariably. I saw it as my "thing"! I would still be going strong (I use that term loosely) when some of the less adventurous revellers would be getting up to commence the hunt for greasy breakfast meats and caffeinated edification. I was "The Hoover" at the end of house parties. I smoked all the way to the roach, every time, as well as once tuning an entire living room (not even my own) upside down and inside out in the fruitless search for a lump of hashish the size of a fingernail. I smuggled pot in the back of a mobile phone to France through the Channel Tunnel once, risking unmitigated catastrophe had I been caught. In short, I was selfish, self-centred and utterly oblivious the complete hold this lifestyle held over me. I could argue (and often did, quite successfully) that the greater danger of the two (alcohol and pot) was clearly alcohol, and would reel off a stream of well rehearsed statistics (they usually had to be, I was that stoned by this point in the evening) that illustrated my point. All the while imbuing both with reckless abandon, this continued from my teens into my transition to being a student in Manchester, where it just got silly. At one point, my partner and I were spending £300 a month on weed. PLUS booze! The haze was never more purple, I can tell you! I got very involved with the music scene too, further blinding me to the reality of the situation; simply put, I was spending all my money, time and both mental and physical resources on having VERY cosy time on the sofa, eating (chocolate) Penguins, achieving nothing, forgetting everything.

Post gig 2007. A game my various band-mates termed "Buckaroo-Bardsley" which turned into....

I find the baseball bat the most impressive, but 10 points for the dinosaur... I'm under there, somewhere...

On of the main problems with this way of life is that in the greater scheme of things, there's nothing really that wrong with it. A youth spent wasted is never an entirely wasted youth. Again, to echo the words of Bill Hicks, I didn't hurt anybody, didn't loose one job, simply laughed my arse off and went about my day selling and playing guitars. There were some great times, and I made a lot of friends, but can now recall very few of either! No sympathy for me please by the way, my point here is that we often find ourselves in situations in which we could be either praised, derided or met with well-mannered indifference. It's all subjective, entirely dependant on our own attitudes and conditioning. A heroin-addled rock-star would have simply laughed at me, a nun would have scolded me, and my friends just wanted me to be happy, and so it should be. It's too easy to be self-critical. In the Buddhist tradition, there are always "Worldly Winds" (Lokadhammas) buffeting and tossing us around as we oscillate between four pairs of opposites: praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and infamy. Each "wind" is understandably and by definition subjective. We've got to try to avoid the trap of being mindlessly blown about, whist recognising that at any time we are almost unavoidably experiencing the pull or push of these phenomena, consciously or otherwise. A broader perspective will allow us to deal with the ups and downs in life with far greater equanimity and mental fortitude, and hopefully not get to caught up in ourselves. It's not easy. How do we bring about this change in perspective?

Works DON'T....

Well firstly, lets start by considering the benefits of being honest and open about our past (and current) experiences. I'm a firm advocate of the notion that you really do have to "go there" before you can "come back" in any meaningful way. Or, put in more conventionally Buddhist terms, we need to know and understand what exactly we are Going to Refuge from. Invariably, it is suffering of some sort or to some degree. In our attempts to understand the nature of this suffering, it is thus vital that we understand it's causes, and a huge part of that process is achieved by examining the conditions and mental states that lead us to that suffering in the first place.  If we understand the nature of what it is to suffer, and the causes of that suffering, then we can start to see that by resolving to and then acting now we start to bring a systematic end to that suffering. If we are always broke, then we work out a budget now and stick to it in the future. If we always seem tired, then lets get more sleep and look after our bodies better today. If we are unhappy about how much mass we have accumulated over the years - PUT DOWN THE FORK! I jest, but you get the picture. What if we are always broke and hungover? The systematic path to the end of suffering is known in Buddhist tradition as The Noble Eight-fold path (more on that another time, but it's well worth looking up if you get a second), and the four facts that lead us to this logical realisation are known as The Four Noble Truths. 

1. Suffering exists

2. Suffering has causes.

3. Suffering can be reduced and then cease.

4. The (Eight-fold) Path leads to the cessation of Suffering.

Secondly, and on a not entirely unrelated matter, it so happens that five weeks ago, it was Padmasambhava Day at the Manchester Buddhist Centre, expertly lead by Manjunaga and Arthaketu. The particular story that Arthaketu decided to tell was of when the "Precious Guru" himself was first invited over from India to Tibet by the king of Tibet, and specifically concerned his subsequent refusal to bow before the aforementioned King. The story goes that Padmasambhava saw clearly the true nature of the situation, with all the peer pressure on both men provided by the thousands of the kings attendants and the large crowd who had gathered for the meeting of these two contrasting worlds. On one side of the impasse there was the King of Tibet, elegantly adorned with the finest cloths his kingdom could provide, backed up by his vast army to crush his opponents at his disposal, and consumed by the inflated sense of self importance that can come with being born into a privileged life. On the other side of the divide, the Enlightened master Padmasambhava, Master of the Eight-fold past, extinguisher of the flames of suffering, invited upon the King's own bequest, and looked up to by thousands as the embodiment of absolute truth and reality itself. The tension was palpable. In the end, the king was reminded in no uncertain terms that although he was master of his own material kingdom, Padmasambhava had mastered the kingdom of his own mind and heart, and thus would not bow before the king for the sake of peer pressure or to keep with tradition for traditions sake. The king, eventually conceded, and humbly prostrated before his spiritual superior.

Padmasambhava or "Precious Guru" - founder of Tibetan Buddhism."I am sustained by perplexity; and I am here to destroy lust, anger and sloth"

Padmasambhava's refusal to give in to that pressure and to remain clear and focused on the objective reality of the situation resonated clearly and deeply within me, especially when Arthaketu asked us all to reflect on who we prostrate before. In the case of Buddhists, traditionally this would be the Three Jewels of the Buddha, his Dharma (teachings/truth) and his Sangha (fellowship of followers on his path). But who or what else do we seek Refuge in? Who do we run to in order to alleviate our suffering and are they refuges we wish to bow down before and endorse? What about alcohol? What about pot and other drugs? It's not that these refuges don't provide shelter, they clearly do. But it reminds me (in my case) very much of the story of the Tree Little Pigs. For me, the house made up of pot eventually went up in smoke. The house made of empty bottles kept smashing to pieces on the hard earth with little more that a nudge. But a house made of three giant, glorious jewels? The hardest and most precious materials known to man? That indeed would be a true, stable and safe refuge from the Big Bad Wolf of Suffering. I should know, I've had to have counselling twice for drugs and alcohol related issues. A short poem I once wrote in a moment of desperation went thus:

"I drink 'cus I'm unhappy.

I'm unhappy 'cus I'm broke

I'm broke 'cus I spend all my cash

On beer and getting smoked"

This article is thus about my subsequent and ardent desire to reduce my endorsement of the tobacco and alcohol industries, and to bow down to peer pressure less and less. It's about my newly-found resolve to strike out on the path of true individuality. My decision to eventually stop drinking, it must be said, also has as much to do with knowing myself as my own worse enemy as it does with deepening my own practise. I know now for a fact that drinking even a small amount of alcohol makes it harder for my mind to "settle down" into itself the next day when I'm on the cushions. I can't speak for everyone, but that's my experience. Meditation helps me feel more "me". When I feel more "me", I'm more in touch with my emotions. Generally speaking, when I'm more integrated with my experiences and emotions, I'm a more positive, happier person. As we all do, I want "me" to be happy. 

But perhaps not THIS happy? Really... Really... Trashed! Post-gig party, circa 2009 (but I'm not entirely certain)....

My other hypothesis is that by recognising alcohol and drugs as being a major contributing factor towards so much of the financial, physical and mental suffering in my life to this point, then I can start to examine why I do it. What causes me to drink, to bow down before and seek Refuge at the shrines of Jacobs Creek and Samuel Gawith (a pipe tobacco manufacturer)? Why do I endorse and sponsor industries that hospitalise over TWO MILLION of their British users EVERY year? That number is rising, by the way guys, in case you are wondering! Do I REALLY want to be lining the pockets of the alcohol industry and their lobby groups? People who genuinely don't care that their products KILL 11 BRITONS A DAY due to alcohol-related ACCIDENTS in their own homes? Please note, if you might be so kind, that these are ACCIDENTS, not alcohol-induced liver failure, or or alcohol-related cancer/cardiac arrests or even drink-driving! Lets us also reflect on the fact that these figures are only the REPORTED cases, as families will rarely admit to attending officers that alcohol is involved and so the coroners will record these deaths as simply accidental. The actual incident numbers could be three or four times higher - these figures are, to me, astounding! What about those doctors, nurses, ambulance crew and the police that go to work every day knowing with mind-numbing inevitably that tonight the will struggle to work with and look after those who just don't know when to stop? Or, worse still, the victims of those who don't know when to stop? Do I want to be condoning that? In extreme cases, do I also want to be continually helping this industry strengthen its hold on people who may be struggling with alcoholism? Financially and socially endorsing the unimaginable world of hell that ensues for the addict, their family and friends caught up in that toxic maelstrom of broken promises, homes, hearts and lives? 

No value judgements, but surely not the way forward either?

From a wider, less selfish, more socially aware perspective, the answer for me is clearly an affirmative "NO".  It would be too easy for me to say "well that's their problem, not mine" or "yes, but I'm not like that, one glass of wine a night wont hurt". As people in the West who are somewhat used to getting our own way, we are great at rationalising things to ourselves, and I'm as bad as the next person, don't get me wrong. If anything I'm worse, but that's my conditioning. Yours is your own, dear reader, and do you know what? It's not your fault! It's REALLY not! This is no witch-hunt, here there are no moral or value judgements on alcohol and tobacco, their users or even the people that run those industries. As Michael Douglas said in the 80's classic "Wall Street", "Greed is good". Lots of people feel that way still, and it's again more about their conditioning than being "bad people". I don't know how this will be received by people. I don't know if people will think that I'm trying to get them to stop drinking or smoking. I hope not, as the path of the individual must start with an individual's assessment of the situation. It must be based on their reason, logic and experiences, or in terms of being aligned with their view of reality. What that view may consist of, I do not know. What I do know however, is that without people asking these questions, then we will never wonder what the answers might be. Without investigating our suffering and, just as importantly, the wider suffering of our society as a whole, what chance do we stand of moving away from that suffering towards happiness, contentment? What hope have we of finding a stable, lasting Refuge from the inevitable turbulence of our busy lives, the proverbial port in the storm? Not much, I fear....

So, finally, back to my original idea of writing about my own experiences of detox hell, which started five weeks ago. I could accurately describe the process as follows; the "honeymoon" week (I felt SO much better,and to my shame, a little smug and self-satisfied, truth be told), followed by the week of continuous panic attacks, and I'm talking 12 hours a day, every day, of just unimaginable misery and distress. So much for being smug! This also preceded a week of mood swings. Anger, sadness, frustration, joy, depression, rapture - the whole gang pitched up with chest pains to spare for those moments when they needed a break from the excitement. Deep joy, this was not! Finally, a slow dissent into occasional anxious flutterings and skull-rupturing headaches. Added to the turmoil we should (in the interests of complete honesty) mention that I was given a prescription for Beta-Blockers (anti-anxiety/stress medication) which after two days of slurred speak, languor, fatigue etc just left me feeling stratospherically HIGH and detached from my experiences all the time. My heart was pounding in my throat, which was bone dry, my palms were sweating, but yet I felt little other than the vapid emptiness of being cheated out if something that was rightfully MINE. My unskillful actions through the years of abuse, my decision to stop the causes of my own suffering, my job to deal with the fallout. And deal with it I'm still trying to. I stopped the medication, preferring to face my experiences head on, and allowed my karma to bear it's Dharmic fruit as it saw fit. The headaches have now subsided to a gentle throb. The anxiety has by, and large gone, and I decided I needed a task to work on, to give myself focus to get me through the final tough stages (headaches, mood swings, occasional panic attacks etc). As luck would have it, an opportunity loomed, but we will have to save that for next time, for another, briefer blog... Just know that I'm doing well. If life is change, and all is impermanent, then let us rejoice. Within this ever-shifting flux, we can lay the stepping stones today to become (within reason) whatever we want tomorrow. Just remember to always check the way the winds are blowing...

Your ever-changing friend,

The Dharma-Farmer...

This article was inspired by and is dedicated to Arthaketu. He has given me the greatest gift of all. 
The gift of an uncertain tomorrow...

May any merit gained in my writing this article be dedicated to the alleviation of the suffering of all beings:

May all enjoy happiness and the causes of happiness,
May all be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all one day experience the great happiness that is devoid of all suffering,
And dwell in the great equanimity that is free from craving or aversion. 

On Becoming a Mitra....

Pearl Jam - M.E.N  - July 2012 

Every so often, we are all privileged enough to experience a shared moment profound enough to take us outside the limitations of our own biased, subjective experience. We find in these moments the elevation of our individualistically interpreted recollections to somewhat more inclusive, loftier realms, and it feels great! We literally forget ourselves, and go with the flow of bodies, energy and sameness. Most of us have at some point or another been part of a number of people with a shared objective or purpose, a higher calling perhaps, be it a live music event, a public speaking, the races (quadruped of your choice), a retreat, the turning on of the Christmas lights even. The feeling can be magical and generate a sense of delight, unity and perspective that we seldom experience in more insular moments. That's wonderful, when we are all reading from the same page, but the collective can both nourish, and hinder those seeking to be true individuals. If we want to be individuals in the truest sense of the word, it appears that we may need to approach the concept of "group" with a sense of balance.

Generally speaking, group or crowd situations seem to most often become problematic when diversity presents us with other individuals who hold differing/opposing views, or where we no longer all share a unity of purpose. Uniformity of opinions can also give way to the isolation of the individual. We can feel lost, small, directionless and adrift. In this context it is understandable why the term "herd mentality" is used so ubiquitously these days with negative connotations. The herd can offer protection, but can also be easily lead en-mass to the slaughter house. Many people today are growing concerned about homogenised high streets, and about corporate media encouraging mindless conformity and conditioning. We can be understandably mistrusting of groups and collectives, and Western popular culture today does all in it's power to promote both social conformity and material individualism. We are told to have our own house, our own flatscreen TV, our own car, our own life. At the same time, we are also encouraged to spend vast amounts of time, and more importantly, money, on our collective identities. Following the band or sports team of your choice involves expense, and that's fine as far as the accountants are concerned. People find in their job too a sense of social standing and societal value that can become very unhelpful if left to develop untended, and we all know the foolishness of trying to "keep up with the Jones'", right? Our sense of self worth and who we are is actually all we are, to us at least. We flatter ourselves to think that we are free-range humans, that we are authentically different and unique, and to prove it, we go and make all the same decisions as everyone else! However, not only that, but our ego tries to stop us doing things which might undermine the it, or at least draw our focus to the external, wider world. This certain I feel is one of the reasons lots of people get scared about joining or being affiliated with religious organisations, of any sort. It is a fear of a loss of one's own identity as an 'individual' which we fear so greatly. We don't wish to go with the flow simply because our friends do. If there is a flow worth going with, it is on out own terms, and nobody else's, that we will tentatively lower ourselves into the icy current.

Thus we have a problem. The age-old paradoxes of individualistic conformity or uniform individuality, (which used to irritate me so much as a highly strung, gothic teenager) arose once more when this month I was confronted with the implications of my own Mitra convention. Not to suggest that I habitually over-think every decision I make (that is besides the point), but forgive me if some of life's decisions are worth more of a gentle pondering over with regards to their deeper implications. Some fat needs to be chewed a little longer before you can swallow it. Committing yourself to a religious organisation such as Triratna, however consistently reassuring, is one of them.

How can the "individual" function in the interdependent framework of "the group"? Can true individuality even exist in the context of "the group"? Am I over-using "quotation marks", and have I fully grasped their grammatical function? These and a happy myriad of other thoughts of varying uselessness and seriousness passed through my mind that day. I wondered if other Mitras-to-be were just as nervous as me as we tried to simultaneously turn to face the reality of our situation. I worried that I would not be a "good enough" Buddhist, that I would let people down, that somehow I would fail to live up to... something. That in the ceremony itself, I might stumble when presented with the offerings for the shrine, and shatter the solemnity of the occasion by crashing into shrine, sending candles, flowers and incense clattering. Or worse still, that in doing so, I might spontaneously erupt into a lively ball of flames and be reduced to a startled but sweetly-smelling oblivion! This continued for the rest of the day. Am I ready for this? Am I asking myself the right questions? What are the right questions?... And so on. I tried bringing myself back to my direct experience... What am I feeling? How am I feeling? Are these the right feelings? Are nerves a good sign? Are they a bad sign? Am I ready for this? Dammit, I'm back here again....

Why do we have to feel "ready" for anything? Again, we can acknowledge intellectually that there is no fixed personality within us to be "ready" to become a Mitra (if we couldn't, then we would be on the threshold of becoming Mitra in the first place, ironically) but appreciating it, as always, is another thing altogether. It was in the midst of this emotional spin-cycle of self-absorption that, for no real reason, a thought occurred to me. What is actually going on here? I realised that all that was happening was that I was distracting myself from my own direct experience, and that another form of egotism had insidiously arisen. I have a dilemma! I am nervous! I am over thinking it! I am the centre of the universe right now....! THAT is what was happening! Mara, the Buddhist manifestation of delusion, greed and hatred, had entered the fray. The Lord of Samsara, of everything that could ever hinder our spiritual progress, had donned a new outfit and, dressed as the doctor, was subversively poisoning the patient!

Mara - what modern Jungian psychology would call the 'shadow self'. Our dark side, our nasty streak, our selfish, self-centred attitudes, all have been traditionally referred to as 'Mara' in Buddhist tradition, and the figure is of massive symbolic and psychological importance yo Buddhists. The Devil within, whispering negativity and doubt, as opposed to the Devil external... 

I have often thought that we in the West are woefully ignorant to the true influences on and of our subconscious minds; the media, advertising, passing social trends and fads, they shape us all. We naively and arrogantly assert to ourselves and anyone listening that we are above it all, that we couldn't possibly be swayed by public pre-conceptions. As true as that may be (and it REALLY isn't), what about our subconsciously shared, privately held ones? The fallacy that there is such a thing as a "good Buddhist". That terms such as "good" and "bad" are even appropriate in the context of Buddhist ethical conduct, or that there is a fixed "self" to be "ready" for anything? This is all Mara! And the ceremony itself? A joyous, awe-inspiring, life changing moment of serenity, excitement, in-trepidation and wonder. A cause for celebration. That evening, in front of some of their nearest and dearest, and within the refuge of our beloved Sangha, 14 people went forth. Took the smallest of steps in the greatest of directions. That which is towards enlightenment, to the realm of happiness devoid of all suffering, to dwell in the great equanimity that is devoid of attachment and aversion. For the benefit of all beings,
to Peace.

The shrine in The Lotus Hall, after the ceremony. Note the 14 candles, all the flowers each offered and placed by a shiny new Mitra!

Becoming a Mitra is nothing more, and certainly nothing less, than a public declaration of commitment and intention. We over-think so much in this world. Such lamentable traps we lay for ourselves! And yet when we cast our gaze backwards we smile at our lack of foresight, and chuckling ruefully to ourselves we wander blindly into another one. Denial is a massive river in Egypt. We think to ourselves "how predictable, how foolish of me..." We beat ourselves up, and we act unskilfully towards ourselves. But that's why terms such as "skilful" or "unskilful" are so appropriate - its something that no-one can hope to perfect at the first attempt. It is a skill; to be trained in, to acquire over many, many years. As "unskilled" implies, anyone can do it, but to act skilfully is something to be refined, then to be redefined, and then to be practiced all over again. Being kind to yourself is hard. Going with your gut instinct is hard. Leaving the indescribable as just that is hard. That's why we Buddhist call it "practice". We are going against a lifetime (or many, depending on our own personal beliefs) of conditioning. And that's just it - we are not good people, we are not bad people, we are just conditioned. Nothing more, nothing less. My conditioning has lead me to become a person who likes to get to the bottom of things, who wants to know how things really are, and why things are that way. This incisive nature I believe is common to us all. This healthy questioning is what lead us all to shy away from societies many bells and whistles in the first place and ask if there was another way of living. A way of peace. A way of inner warmth and interconnectivity. A way of being present in the moment. Ironic then, that the quest for truth and individuality on our part leaves us in such a ignorant, egocentric state about joining a collective, an institution.

But there we have it; most of what we encounter in a Dharmic context can often seem paradoxical to the rational, logical mind. Many things are "Not one, and not two either". And that's ok. It's the one thing I'm not going to "question"...

This article was inspired by my Mitra ceremony, and also by my good friend and teacher, Arthakatu, who's gentle probing into the true nature of reality and consciousness seems to often yield more sustainable results than my often "sledgehammer-walnut" approach...

May any merit gained in my writing thus, go to the alleviation of suffering for all beings. May we all be well, may we all be happy, may we all progress through today mindfully, in peace.

Yours in metta,

The Dharma Farmer xx

The Porcelain Lotus

"The Porcelain Lotus"
The funny thing about being mindful of impermanence is that it doesn't last. One minute we can be sitting with the breath, reflecting on how it's ebb and flow is a microcosm of our own lives, and the next we are assailed by what to have for dinner, or the cute guy in the office (hey, there are a lot of cute guys in my office) as our days like waves break gently, over and over again, upon the shores of samsara. If we chose to, we can see impermanence all around us. We can loose our jobs, our health, our loved ones, even our lives at any given time. Like a porcelain lotus left on a high, windy ledge, all that surrounds us, all that we see as fixed and lasting is precariously placed, and uniquely all the more precious because of it.

This was recently brought home to me most poiniently when my partner and I of three years decided that we were moving in separate directions, and it was best to call it a day. Now I'm not going to lie, it hurts a lot right now. We all know how it goes - 24hrs or so of shock, followed by the misguided, naively optimistic hope that you can intellectualise the slow throbbing agony away (yeah right, you first professor). Interspersed with this are your usual bouts of crying, neausia, numbness, repeat ad infinum. For me they are usually in that order, but occasionally in variety of previously unthought of combinations, an interesting experience to say the least. Throw in a paradoxical sprinkling of elation, vigour and other forms of bubbling effervescency, and that is a fairly accurate picture of the first 48 hours. But the really bizarre thing is, my practice and the teachings of the Buddha have never been more than a deep breath away from me at any given point. All that is required of me is to sit with each emotion as it arises and as Vidyamala says, respond but not react to it. The famous sutta of Kisagotami and the mustard seed medicine that would bring back her dead child (the catch was that the seeds had to come from a house untouched by death) has been of great comfort these few days. In addition to that, I'm currently being mindful of the Sutta of the Two Darts, explaining how when we experience pain (the first dart), we tend to heap our own suffering upon it (the second dart, and let's be honest here, we rarely stop at just the two...) All these teachings are of immeasurable support, and understandably deepen my faith in the Three Jewels. That being said, time and time again I still find myself aimlessly wondering into rooms in my house, and finding an old bus pass or other reminders of less trying times, I'm suddenly reduced to a blubbering, tear-streaked mess once more...

We can know something intellectually, but how deeply do we REALLY know it? REALLY feel it down to our very core? Something as abrupt and unfamiliar as this is always going to bring us a little closer to the true nature of reality than we are usually comfortable with. Which is really ironic, given how our practice and study is designed to help us pierce the veil of ignorance, cast aside the Ray-Bans of delusion and on tip-toes, peak into the pantry of existence itself. Yet when given the opportunity to bring ourselves face to face with the reality of life, with a shudder (and in my case, a fist full of soggy tissues) we wince away shielding our eyes, fearful for what those metaphorical shelves may hold.

Bhante (Sangharakshita) once said that "all fear is a fear of death", and the more I reflect on this, the more I find it to be so. That all phenomena are subject to change, and can be taken from us at any time IS scary, but did we ever trully "own" them in the first place? To quote everyone's favourite drummer in the film "Wayne's World" - we fear change. That all phenomena change illustrates that they are inherently empty of a fixed self, and cannot last. But if all things in this world are fluid, are empty of a fixed self, then the demarcation where I end and you, dearest reader commence, begins to blur. It is in that blurring of personal boundries that we can start to trully connect with others, breaking down the walls of "self" and "other" - and THAT is the point where true, unbiased love and spiritual friendship begins to blossom. If I am forever subject to change, then so are you - neither of us will trully ably to control or barter with samsara, and none of us will be able to prevent the inevitables changes in life that brings about old age, sickness and death. Again, in a poem of Bhante's, he muses: "Life does not belong to us, we belong to life. Life is King." Ironically, its our pain, trials and tribulations overcome that unites us, puts on on an even keel with each other, much more so than our victories or achievements. In the game of life, not everybody "wins", but at some point everybody hurts. Just ask Michael Stipe.

We are all in it together, not as individual units isolated and separate, but as one great, mailable, beautiful throng of flux and impermanence. And with this sense of oneness, of interconnectivity, comes a softening of the heart, the chance, to quote a good friend, to relax, trust and open. Open up to the possibilities that surround us every day. To laugh, to cry, to be born anew. It is our gift, not our curse. It is, to coin a phrase, our daily Metta-morphosis! Even this very sentence can only be read this way once - try it, go back to it and read it again. You are a different person than you were five seconds ago, and I love you all the more for it...

Yours, impermenantly,

The Dharma-Farmer


This article was motivated and inspired by me trying to dry my eyes and see through the pain to my actual experiences, the process of which was facilitated in no small part by Vidyamala's life-changing talk entitled "Dying to Live" (available on www.freebuddhistaudio.com). May any merit gained in my writing thus go to alleviate the suffering of all other sentient beings.

It's the Small Change that Counts...

....My finger, poised unsteadily over the blinking screen, suddenly seemed a very long way from me indeed. A mile or two at least... Suddenly, from no-where, a tugging sensation. I jumped, uttering an disconcertingly feminine yelp of surprise. "What the...?!" My thoughts seemed to be running backward into my skull from outside of me. Somewhere in the distance I became aware of a concerned voice amongst the steady throng of Friday-night traffic... There it was again, as if it were right next to me. "Mate, what are you doing?" The voice seems familiar. I can't place it. I feel my mouth form shapes that may or may not be words. I think I'm saying something. I'm not sure. I'm too busy working out what PIN means... Personal... Something?? Ah yes, it comes back to me! Identification number... And I burst out laughing uncontrollably. This I DO recall hearing... "A number..!" I cry out somewhat hysterically... "We can be reduced to a NUMBER...Four digits...HAHAHAHA!" This may have gone on for several minutes. It feels like hours. My ribs hurt I'm laughing so hard. The world is spinning. Everything seems to be flowing through me, the whole universe, infinite time and space... Ethereal and perfect in every way, beyond concept and form... But there's that damn tugging again, a little more insistent now, as I slowly enter my PIN... "Jesus, Jay, this is embarrassing, I'm begging you to stop this right now!" Another voice chimes in. "Please pal, there's no need. You don't want to do this. Trust me!" I look down....

Looking back this whole episode seems to be as if I am recalling a film, or something that someone told me about once, but either way, something I wasn't actually part of. And yet it's true. About 10 years ago in the days of reckless student abandon, after listening to the late, great comedian Bill Hicks whilst at the very zenith of a particularly intense mushroom trip, I found myself wanting to put what I had learnt into practise. Oh dear. To this day I can recall being slumped in a bean-bag at the party, and, with crystal like clarity, the sound of dear Bill slowly saying "all matter is just energy condensed to a slow vibration. Death isn't real, life is but a dream and we are in fact one consciousness experiencing itself... subjectively. We are the imagination of ourselves and life, well, It's just a ride folks! It isn't real or fixed. It's just a ride..." Well, that was it for me. 19 years old, and the doors of perception, their hinges already well oiled with a headily cocktail of youthful exuberance for the transcendental and a fistful of psychotropics, well and truly swung open. Bingo! The key to the padlocks of perception - what we Buddhists hesitantly call "shunyata" (or "emptiness") - I had stumbled across by accident, and in that golden, ethereal moment it all made perfect sense - the lack of a fixed self, and the suffering we experience when that already insubstantial notion of self tries to grasp at other equally impermanent phenomena and try to "own" them. How our miserable attempts at possession, be it a TV, a car, a partner or simply emotional stability within a fixed self are the root cause of all our suffering in this world... And I was going to change that! Starting tonight. On the way home. At that ATM. I do recall now the moment I looked down. The homeless man in question seemed to be about 40, had a few days worth of beard-growth and a woolly hat on, but beyond that my recollection is understandably hazy. I now cringe a little when i recall that moment when I came to, having been on such an ethereal high that I had totally forgotten taking the mushrooms in the first place, and remember now with a sense of acute embarrassment both my friend to my left and the gentleman sat at my feet, trying in vain to explain to me why withdrawing all my money and giving it to him was definitely NOT the act of a person in full possession (as it were) of his faculties. I was very much, once again, a young man with more on his mind than in it. "Please fella, take him home and get him to bed." I remember that very clearly, but only because I remember giggling at the thought that there was no "me" to put to bed, only a series of constantly shifting processes and mental stimulus/events. And the same went for my friend too, and the gentleman to whom i was attempting to give every penny I owned... I burst out laughing like a toddler again, as I wished him all the best, mumbled something about us all being one, gave him a hug and was presumably guided home via a stern grip on my elbow...

Now all this may seem a very unusual way to start an article introducing a new fund-raising idea for our beloved Manchester Buddhist Centre, but fear not, I am going somewhere with this. But before I attempt anything so daring or bold as a logical explanation, allow me first to explain the plan. A few weeks back a member of the centre team came up with a Dana campaign idea which I feel is nothing short of brilliant. As some of you may be aware this edition it to cover both June and July, for reasons which others have already explained. The plan for the month of June is for us all to bring in to the centre a few empty coffee jars or jam jars (lets be honest, any kind of glass receptacle will do - its all about the curiously gratifying "chink" as you drop something into it), and in the month of July there will be a stand in reception where you can simply walk over, take one home with you, and before you do your daily practise (visualisation, chanting, meditation, puja, reflection over a coffee, delete as appropriate etc), simply take whatever small change out of your pocket/wallet and, yep, you guessed it... "Chink-chink!" When full, bring it in - Simples! Maybe before you drop them in, take a second to close your eyes and feel the weight of the coins in your hand... How do they feel? Do you really identify with the coins? Are they you? Recall the first time you walked into the centre, or perhaps the first introductory course did there. Perhaps it was a meditation group, massage, Breathworks or yoga. Maybe you were with friends. Maybe you were alone. I recall very clearly the smell of incense and people holding doors open and smiling. That was enough to win me over, nag champra and good manners (I grew up in rural Wales - my personal ecstasy threshold is set unusually low!) But though differing our experiences may be of starting to use the centre on a regular basis, I know I'm not alone in being guilty of occasionally taking it for granted that it will always be there. Not often mind, but probably because I'm relatively new to the wonderful world of Triratna, as those of you who occasionally experience my enthusiasm and propensity for excitement already know. But I think we all could do with maybe taking stock once in a while of the fact that this wonderful place, lovingly and crafted with the generosity, hard-work and loving-kindness of countless unsung heroes, was not here for an awfully long time beforehand. They made it, quite literally, out of nothing, out of a vision, and one day, hopefully not for many hundreds of years, it too will cease to be. But this is no justification for complacency, and certainly does not excuse us neglecting to accept the obvious costs involved in providing such a haven for us all. How many of us have said or thought to ourselves "Oh, I do love coming here, it's a perfect little port amidst the oft turbulent oceans of life"? (or something to that effect, I tent to over-dramatise, forgive me). We all need somewhere to go where we can truly feel connected to our wonderful Sangha, and where we can study and discuss the indescribable majesty of the Dharma. Or if we so wish, simply sit, in quiet, rapturous wonder at the foot of Lord Buddha, the inexpressible Tathargata, the blessed and most excellent one one who went beyond all words and forms for the benefit of all sentient beings (and certainly didn't try and cheat his way there with a bag full of mushrooms and 90's existentialist comedy!)

*Tibetan form of the Boddhisatva "Avalokitesvara" (or, in Tibetan, "Chenrizig") - the archetypal Boddhisatva of infinite compassion - note the 4 arms signifying a desire to help alleviate the suffering of all beings...

So how do i justify starting a very simple request for coffee jars and a bit of loose change with a decade old recollection of a drugs trip that so very nearly ended in unmitigated disaster, or at the very least, resulted in an act of unskilled behaviour on my part? The answer lies in the archetypal Buddhist figure of the Boddhisatva,* the being who, in a nutshell, seeks enlightenment not only for himself, but for the benefit and eventual enlightenment of all sentient beings. This mindset, this unstoppable determination finds its form in the n'th degree of boundless, all inclusive compassion, and the desire to give whatever one has for the benefit of all others. Be it material or non-material (such as time, energy, fearlessness etc), the Boddhisatva strives continuously to ensure that no beings are left behind, and that the needs of all are met to the best of his or her ability. From this perspective, Dana (or generosity) becomes a spontaneous act, whereby the duality of the giver and the receiver is transcended, as is the given, and eventually even the very act itself (which was EXACTLY the frame of mind I found myself in that night - see how it all ties in?). The thought that occurred to me was simply whether when we give, are we giving in a skilled way or in an unskilled way? I feel that it is abundantly clear that taking a load of drugs and bankrupting yourself to prove an existential point to a drunken friend is NOT an example of skilled action in any way, shape or form. In fact, it's worth reflecting that the most skilled person there that night was the homeless man at the foot of the ATM, who could have very easily seen this as a gift from the heavens themselves. But no. He saw with infinite wisdom that I would have regretted it the next day, and selflessly and with a generosity that I dare say would be beyond most of us in that situation, refused to accept the money. I can't say for sure that I'd have done the same. Sat in front of a Mac computer, and in the warmth of my dressing gown, it's all too easy to say "Oh, of course I would have handed it back", but would I? I don't know, but it's something that the more I think about it, the more inspired I am to address Dana in a meaningful, skillful way, and make it an integral part of my daily practise. When we give, we need to be mindful that we give in a skillful way, for the right reasons. This is why "Sagha Works" (the voluntary cleaning of the building by its own Sangha), well...works! That which we give, we give it gladly, courteously and spontaneously, without any kind of later regret or with a desire to be recognised for it (or in my case to prove a point). When we give in this way, with hearts full of kindness and our awareness of others radiant and pure, this is indeed skilful Dana, the very perfection of Dana itself ("Dana-Paramita") or "That which conveys us and others to the other shore"...

In front of me are notes on some Dana-themed talks, along with notes on a superb ones by Sangharakshita and also Samacitta, but you know what, I'm not going to say much more on this. Their comprehensive and inspirational expositions are available for all on www.FreeBuddhistAudio.com, and besides which, I'd rather not spoil it for you. But i will say a few things very briefly for reflection. Firstly, there is a very good reason that Dana is the first of the six Perfections, the Transcendental Virtues (or Paramitas) in the scriptures. Think about it. It is basically metta (loving kindness) in action. It is listed before even Morality (or Sila). If anything, it would not be absurd to say that Dana when accompanied by wisdom (Prajniya) is the whole of the path. Desire, thirst and grasping dominate our lives, and the path we tread is one of helping ourselves and each other to become less self-referential. Less attached to "I, me, me, mine", to quote The Beatles, to reduce our craving within a material, conditioned world of impermanence and dukkha. This very act, of giving away what is "ours" allows us to open up spiritually, to feel more connected with the Sangha and the wider world, and to care for each others needs more freely and in a more unbiased way. By integrating something as simple as donating a few pennies (or pounds, be bold) into our daily practise, we can start to make small changes to old habits. For me personally, I hope it soon to be as much a part of my meditation as lighting my candles and incense. In traditionally Buddhist countries, it is common to give something away every day, so why not adopt this habit here? We need not feel that we are even "giving" anything; if we remember how much we all use the centre, we are merely sharing it amongst ourselves, transcending the duality of giver and receiver. In many ways, nobody is giving nothing to no-one. It's all about the small changes we make in our life, in our practise, in our daily habits, quite literally in this case. It really is the small change that counts. It really does add up....

*This article was inspired by a subtle blend of Bill Gleave's Dana-minded brilliance, and Sangharakshita's (the founder of the Western Buddhist Order) inspiring talks on the Boddhisatva Ideal - specifically one given in the late 60's entitled "Altruism and Individualism in the Spriritual Life". The edited version of this article that appeared in the Manchester Buddhist Centre newletter (June/July 2012) - for other stories on what is going on with us amiable lot on Manchester, go to http://www.manchesterbuddhistcentre.org.uk/sangha/news/june-july-newsletter.html

Once more, as always, any merit gained by myself in the writing of this article is dedicated to all sentient beings, and to the aleviation of their suffering. May you be well, may you be happy, may you live in peace...

Yours, in metta,

The Dharma Farmer xx