A little Ramayana Drama in East Anglia

It is going to be hot and I am up early.  It is a wonderful dewy time to walk the dogs before meditation but they see a beautiful deer and take off across several fields after it.  They are in unknown territory and there are roads although as it is so early there is no traffic.  Three quarters of an hour later they return exhausted!
In the tale of Rama and Sita, it is a beautiful deer which attracts her attention, sending her protector searching for it giving Ravana his opportunity to capture her and take her to Lanka.  This deer certainly captured our attention and meditation was seriously delayed.

Meditation and mobile phones

You think that I am going to say that mobile phones disturb meditation don't you, but I'm not going down that track.
If you see someone taking out their mobile phone, they will all put their hand in their pocket or in their handbag and pull out a piece of metal and glass and start talking to it as if it were a real person!!!  How interesting is that?  It could be their bank manager, it could be their mother, their girlfriend, their lover, even their teacher or guru.  Same device, same ear but watch how the face changes.  Delight in the lover, fear of the bank manager, irritation with their mother, awe at the guru.
What's more, the mobile phones belong to all sorts of different people: I expect that the Pope has one, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland plus Buddhists in red robes, swamis in orange, others in all white, people in suits, in skirts, in bathing costumes and I just can't imagine where a nudist keeps their mobile phone, but probably they have a rucksack they carry their sunglasses and mobile phone in.  So, out of all these different pockets come the mobile phones and to a Granny like me, it is a wonder that there are no wires connecting people, just the voice into the device and a voice coming out of it.
If mobile phones weren't explained to us, we would think it was magic to be able to talk to someone in Kuala-Lumpar or Singapore from the windiest corner of East Anglia.
People who believe (like me), that meditation connects you with people everywhere else who meditate, know that it is a fact.
But of course all facts are magic aren't they?

Meditation brings life to memory or memory to life

We walk to the beach along an old familiar track.  The crops change a bit over the years but the dykes and the path are the same as ever.  Richard remembers blackcurrant jam sandwiches and wasps!  I remember people.  The people who surrounded our Suffolk holidays who are, like the old uncle and aunt, long gone are as present to me as you are to yourself.
There is Billy Wright, driving the old tractor down to the marshes early in the morning with all you children balancing on the back and there is Peter Buck, the butcher with his sad-eyed wife Hazel, running the shop despite losing their one well son and being left with Michael, disabled and tiresome, who would swing endlessly on the noisy swing outside Rumpty's house.
There is Basil, the handsome older widower, bringing up his three children in the old Post Office which he bought with the old stock on needles and cottons.  All the single ladies in the village loved him!  He is especially present to me.
Then Rumpty and THE GREAT GAME in the woods.  Holding the big oak tree with a stash of pine cones while all of you tried to creep up on him.  He left us that game and Zulu too.  We are going to play that game and watch that film while we are here and feel we are still young
And in my mind, we are here with them alive and us the same as ever.
I really believe that meditation collapses the walls between the past and now, and maybe it even throws its magic on the future.

Returning home

We have come back to the house where his grandparents lived.  The house they bought in 1933!  It is an Old Rectory, so English and so full of memorable items and places.  The library has the books they put it, the furniture is the same and he, my husband, spent most of his summers here with his cousins who now live in it, letting it to help keep it going.  His uncle, a war hero, married a Belgian Resistance heroine who was a staunch Roman Catholic and whose faith was central to her.  The first time I stayed here, there was a book of Letters from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Priest who had been accused of plotting to kill Hitler.  This was a milestone book, I was 24, with 2 children and had never really considered the importance of life really, it just rolled along happily and certainly I had never thought of spiritual life being something more than going to Church.  I had never considered that each individual must stir themselves at some point and decide if they are spiritual beings or just human beings.
We are in the dear old aunt's bedroom which looks out over fields towards the sea.  It is open to the outside and that is a characteristic of the house, it seems to have grown from the outside, it doesn't resist it, it somehow exists together with it.  I love to think of the aunt rising each morning here and looking out at the same view.  She didn't have an easy life in many ways but this view and her spiritual life were her comfort.

Meditation, an every day story of country folk!

There is a conversation recorded as part of the Geeta, a central part of Vedic Philosophy which has given me enormous encouragement as a hen-owning grandmother who lives in Cambridgeshire.  Real scriptures span all religions and are universal so this one, although Indian in origin, is as pertinent today and to me as the Bible.

see hens!

Why do I like it so much?  Well, there is a good questioner in it, a questioner who never gives up and he definitely knows that controlling the mind is about as easy as holding onto an umbrella in a high wind.  (He doesn't use that analogy but then he didn't live in the flat lands of East Anglia!)  He, the questioner is questioning the Lord Krishna who is both Lord of all but also his esteemed teacher, companion and I would say, true friend.
Arjuna, the questioner, rather like Max, really wants to know about the big questions, he wants to know if there is something beyond the world of the senses, he REALLY needs to know because he has a big battle to fight which is going to involve death and destruction and he doesn't want to fight, no, not a bit. So, he wants to know WHO are the best of the spiritual practitioners.  He, the Lord Krishna, says that the ones who can fix their minds fully on him as without a body are really good , but if this is too difficult for us, he says that a person who offers all his actions to the Lord will succeed.   BUT, if even that is too difficult, we should seek to be united with the Lord and the way to do that is to become so like Him that we are indistinguishable in our actions even while we are in a body. That is why meditation is so good, because each time we meditate, we stop the feeling of the body as the most real thing.
Then these are the things we need to remember.  To be always contented, no matter what happens, to be kind and compassionate to ALL beings, to do no harm and not allow anyone to harm you, not to get carried away by too much joy or anger or ever get depressed.  Not to favour a friend above a foe, not to mind if people say horrid things about you and certainly never to say anything horrid about them.  This, he says is spiritual wisdom and the person who does this is the most beloved to the Lord.
What is for sure, is that if you turn to meditation and feel your way towards the perfection of God, then, your path will be smooth, you will feel as if your very  best friend is beside you and that there is no difference between you and him (or her!).

A bit more for Max on God

It is understandable that people might say why would any God allow trouble and downright badness to happen if he is the All Powerful.  This would be true if God was a separate being outside the creation with a sort of giant cctv which could detect each thing before they happened and stop the bad things.

But if He is not separate but totally exists in all beings as life itself, and as life as an undeniable good, then it is up to us to make that life relevant.

If you go to the playground, you learn how to enjoy yourself but also how to manage the others who all want to play on the monkey bars; you learn about your strengths and also how to look after others.  You might be a bit of a bully but for sure, the other children will make sure you know that you aren't popular.  So you soon get to decide how to use your choices.

When you become a grown up, (all too soon), these lessons you have learned still apply and you can decide for yourself what a good action is and if the good action allows you to look after yourself and your family without making another person, family or business suffer then you have done well.  That is how the world is meant to be.  That is how being in tune with God works best.

Finally I get round to God to answer Max's question

The 8 year old said, "if I don't believe in God, am I still a Christian?"
I said, that if you are christened your parents promise for you that you are a Christian and hold to that until you make your own mind up at about 16 or so but Max, that is a good question."
It made me think a lot about God and I wondered when I was going to get round to addressing that big question in the blog because it has been circling around in my own head and this question has just pushed it to the fore.
So Max, here we go.  If you were the all powerful, all merciful, all seeing being which permeated every single thing in the entire universe, what would you choose to be called?  You are the taste in water, the light in the sun, the sound in space, you are in every word in every language, you are in every blade of grass, every flower, bee, fruit and what's more you are the intelligence which has made all the i pads, i phones, computers, rockets and every extraordinary thing we can think of.  So, a lot of possibilities for a name don't you think?  Perhaps you would choose a name which even a child learning to speak could get its tongue round, you might just say, "Call me God for short."
Now every person will have a different view of God;

some believe Him to be a him, some to be a her, some to be far off, some will say He is closer than your own thoughts.  Some will choose to dress in white to honour Him, some will cover their faces, some will wear orange and mark their foreheads with a small mark.  Some cut off their hair, some let it grow long and never cut it.  Some will decide to find God by being entirely alone, some by helping the poorest of the poor.  Some will only think of God on Sundays, or on whichever special day they have marked out, some have God always in their mind.   Some will have God there as a certainty and some will have God there as a question.  You should keep God as a question but really keep asking questions until you feel satisfied.  I will be very interested to hear more of your questions as long as you will put up with my rather rambling answers.