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Pilgrim

Through the thick darkness of the night I travel from Rishikesh, passing as I go thousands of chanting, flower-carrying pilgrims walking towards Haridwar, a city situated on the river Ganges. It is a holy place for Hindus, and millions come there to perform ritualistic bathing to wash away their sins and attain moksha, liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

I am shawl wrapped against the cold and arrive at the city’s railway station at 5am. There are hundreds of sleeping bodies lying casual almost in heaps spread across the floors of the station. There are queues outside the toilets, but the poor are deterred from access by an entry charge. A long train lumbers slowly out of the darkness and comes to a hissing halt alongside platform one. People stir to board the carriages of the cheapest class. Its doors are locked and its windows barred, and after several attempts to enter they uncomplainingly resettle into the shadows to wait. I too am part of the waiting, and an hour will pass before entry can be gained. I leave down my backpack and draw the woolen blanket tighter round my body. Waiting, I have learnt, is an art requiring the light of attention; should I wait for something I am no longer in the state of waiting, which in itself is a profoundly active, timeless state.  

After some minutes I observe an old woman hobbling slowly forward with a water can held in a thin, wrinkled left hand. Her body from the hips is bent downward into a painful decline. She moves towards a carriage, rests against it for a breath or two, then slides into a low squat, lifting her sari as she goes to a quiet defecation unto the tracks.

The smoker’s smoke, the sleeper’s sleep, the talker’s talk—here so much is seen, but no one encroaches upon her public privacy. Given the conditions of the situation, it is an elegant normality of which we are all a part. She washes between her years of legs then quietly rises and ambles away towards the shadows. In her wake the perception of my mortal eye yields to the omniscient eye of inner vision; all upon the platform then are as atoms spun into an atomic dawn, to be retouched in the darkroom of universal chemistry to re-emerge in other tones, other shades, and in other places. Later I board the train and travel south, bearing a strong impression of the dignified pilgrim woman not able to afford the few rupees for an official toilet.  

Sunset

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs--

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Through the Wound

Through the wound comes the healing:

a relationship formed

in the tenderness of loss,

the little girl lost

the little boy searching for God

 

their roots became twisted:

searching through the ages

towards a death un-relinquished

as they climbed the high mountain

towards a cross on a precipice 

offered long ago 

to the torment of the wind.

 

Atop stood a raven

ancient and humbled

being of the worlds

it plucked their false comfort

and wept,

for the death un-relinquished. 

The Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

 

'The Bright Field' by R. S. Thomas

Distortion

"Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience"

Jiddu Krishnamuti

 

Right Now

A man who was studying archery took two arrows in his hands and stood before the target.

'A beginner should not hold two arrows,' his teacher told him. 'You will be careless with the first, knowing you have a second. You must always be determined to hit the target with the single arrow you shoot, and have no thought beyond this.' With only two arrows, and standing before his master, would he really be inclined to be heedless with one of them? Yet although he may not have been aware of his own carelessness, his teacher was. The same injunction surely applies in all matters.

A man engaged in Buddhist practice will tell himself at night that there is always the morning, or in the morning will anticipate the night, always intending to make more effort later. And if such are your days, how much less aware must you be of the passing moment's indolence. Why should it be so difficult to carry something out right now when you think of it, to seize the instant. 

Kenkō and Chōmei

Essays in Idleness and Hōjōki

Turning Point

Before and After

Thirty-six years have passed since I crossed over a cold sea, ship-bound for Liverpool. Again I was leaving, searching for a returning. A dilapidated bus bearing the company name “Magic” carried me through what was then England’s industrial midlands, travelling south towards London.

Some few miles to the west of London (Londinium) a city established by the Romans lies the old parish of Harmondsworth which derived its name from Heremod’s enclosure. Millions of people from around the world traverse this landscape, for here, where now exists a large international airport, stood the old village of Heathrow.

In January1981 I was due to board an aircraft at Heathrow bound for Sydney. As the time neared departure, I felt a magnetic current drawing me towards a posture of waiting, an “inner voice” counselled me not to go aboard the plane. This call was clear, accompanied by a vision of what the future held should my life be moulded solely by the world of outside appearances. I could see that it would not matter how many or how good personal relationships might be, how great or important the job I might have, how much money I might earn, how many material possessions I might acquire, on its own all of this would amount to nothing. There and then I realised that to go solely forward and inevitably one way down into that “outside future” was to commit myself to a terrible existence.

The aircraft left without me.

What now, I said to myself? Three days later I met a man who received me into his care and began to direct me back and up. It is said when the pupil is ready the teacher appears. To be offered the guidance of a teacher and to be open enough to receive what he or she has to offer is a grace. To accept then the conditions necessary to begin preparation, to be worked upon, so as to be moved towards submission. Submission to a higher influence often evokes in us a deep fear of the unknown. What is going to become of me if such a step is taken?

After having passed through a repetitive painful process that had allowed something in me to give up I was brought to this turning point. To have given up for a time even the desire for change and what I had searched for over the years had unknowingly placed me for a few vital moments in a mysterious stillness wherein I distinctively felt my life being weighed. As has happened to others, I experienced a compelling need to come deeper into my inner self and there repose until through a blessed reorientation I found myself in silent witness opening towards the compassionate heart at the centre of my being.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

"The moment one commits oneself, then providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events; all manner of unforeseen incidents and chance meetings and material assistance come forth which no one could have dreamt would appear."

Johan Wolfgang VonGoethe

 

Learn method to get rid of it

Ponder 10,000 volumes,

wander 10,000 miles.

Stick like glue to the four treasures.

Drown the brush daily,

grind the inkstone to dust.

Take a week to paint a creek,

Spend a month on a rock.

Go through complexity

to simplicity.

Learn method 

to get rid of it. 

 

— Mai-mai Sze

Enkindled unto the crown

I had an intuitive feeling I was in the country that would either save or destroy the world, nothing I have experienced since that day nearly fifty years ago has altered this view. I was then nineteen years old, feeling the aloneness, standing in a parking lot in Los Angeles.

In his ‘Selected Essays and Critical Writings’ A. R. Orage wrote, “no mere record of experience, however novel,” can obtain entry into true realism. “Entry is by divination, not by description. Compare, for instance, the descriptions of battles in Homer and in the Mahabharata with the descriptions of actuality. The latter are accurate, but the former are true. There never was such a battle as Vyasa described in the Mahabharata. Let us hope there never will be. But, as we read it, we feel that Nature has dreamed it, and only not actualised it because she had other plans. By this means, actuality itself becomes transfigured; experience is given a solace; and no mere reporting can accomplish that. What is the satisfaction in knowing that such and such a thing occurred? But there is satisfaction in knowing that it occurred as a consequence of choice among many alternatives! Freedom is given back to us. At each moment we stand at a new crossroads. The road Nature takes will be, in course of time, the actual; the roads she passes will remain the potential. The more of them there are, the richer life has become for us.”

I do not know what the result will be of a Trump presidency but in my view the appointments of Stephen Bannon, Mike Flynn, Mike Pompeo, Reince Priebus, Nikki Haley, Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos to his cabinet,  Myron Ebell to his transition team does not bode well for the USA or the world.

One of Americas finest investigative journalist I. F. Stone wrote - "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.” Experience eventually helped me to see a truth in this, but also to remember Martin Luther realised, “Truth can only manifest through a lie.”

At the end there is a short sequence from the BBC series The Nazis a warning from History, this is very much based on the work of Prof. Sir Ian Kershaw. Kershaw although one of the more nuanced historians of the Nazi era does not really fathom the depths of the phenomenon of Adolf Hitler. The ever deepening question rather than an answer for the existence of such a being does not lie in ordinary history but in mythology.

Mythology, etymologically from Muthos, indicative of the truth cannot be approached with the ordinary mind. There exists an index of similarities between Donald Trump’s political campaign and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, however Trump is no Hitler, the United States is not the Weimar Republic. However the combination of strong narcissistic and authoritarian bigoted tendencies within a person in high office of state can unwittingly enable more sinister interests. Whereas Jiddu Krishnamurti stated, “Evil exits but you know nothing about it’, nonetheless it is worth recalling Shakespeare’s words placed upon the characters of Banquo and Macbeth, …

Banquo.

That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence. —

Macbeth.

Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme...
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill; cannot be good: — if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smother'd in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not.

 

New York times

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/opinion/no-trump-we-cant-just-get-along.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

http://joshuafoust.com/this-is-not-normal/

CNN

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/14/politics/white-nationalists-on-bannon/index.html

Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/

New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/article/138814/media-failing-explain-trumps-recklessness

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/17/sessions-flynn-and-pompeo-who-are-the-potential-trump-cabinet-picks-

The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-president-latest-cabinet-sessions-flynn-pompeo-racist-mike-a7426046.html

The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/trump-bannon-election/508688/

Letters from America - BBC 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b083h0tp

Aljazeera (Interview with Noam Chomsky)

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2016/11/upfront-special-noam-chomsky-trump-era-161125114959227.html

International business News

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/what-are-similarities-between-donald-trump-adolf-hitler-1582136

Wall Street Journal

http://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-rode-waves-of-populism-until-it-crashed-the-party-1477492356

BBC Series - The Nazis a Warning from History

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n__oBkRYT7A&t=32s

 

 

George, McMurphy and Democracy

As Mr McMurphy says in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

“So this is how you work this democratic bullshit - hell’s bells!"

You Gotta be asleep to believe it

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQw3nSkXMY

 

The Cuckoo

"A cuckoo’s nest may be just a playful name for a mad house ... but the common association of cuckoos and insanity comes from the baffling and brutal behaviour of cuckoo’s themselves. In nature cuckoo’s lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, depositing one egg per nest. It is a process by which an outcast becomes a tyrant … "

The hope, sorrow, indeed beauty of Ken Kesey’s book - at the end out of a whole population, only one will finally break through the glass to a larger world.