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.

meditation and transcendence

Transcendence sounds a long way off doesn't it?  But think about it, to transcend doesn't just mean soaring into the ether, it means passing by the gripping things, it is a process as well as a state of detachment.  And it can start wherever you are!  So, when you are meditating and that thought comes in which begs for attention, you turn back to the mantra, that's transcendence at a constant and simple level.  In life though, there are layers of traps and transcending them is the best way not to get trapped.  A thought usually comes from a feeling and it can be entertained or left.  When the thought becomes words, even words in the mind,  it has had some effect and at this point, it may easily go into action and then you are done!  Sometimes, this process is beneficial for everyone, even the simple lay the breakfast thought, but when it has a sting to it, watch out, remember it's a trap and go for transcendence again and again.

you're not going to like this question Granny

He, age 5, comes into the kitchen where I am pottering about.  He says,"you're not going to like this question Granny but I'm going to ask it anyway".
 I wonder if he is going to complain about the food! but no, this is the question or the statement with a question mark after it.
"You're going to die first aren't you?'
I reply "you mean me and Grandpa?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's probably likely," I say "but I am not actually going to die completely because the bit of me that is the lively bit, never dies but the bit of me that does get old will need replacing."
"That's what I thought," he says "it's just your skin and bones that go isn't it, nobody ever really dies do they?"
"Exactly right," I say "it's just like that although sometimes people find that bit a bit difficult, but they wouldn't find it so difficult if they knew it was just part of life changing not ending."
He looks pleased to have sorted this one out and disappears outside again.
I realise that it is very easy to have this conversation and believe it but not so easy when you are facing illness and old age.  It is not always so easy to meditate regularly and for the ideal length of time when the sun is shining, the smaller members of the family are begging for fun and you are feeling well so it is worth keeping in mind that there will be challenges to face and a bit of regular meditation may make facing them easier.

matinee goers

Being of an age to attend matinees, it is a fact that apart from the school parties, the audience is made up of people of a certain age.  They are your age! and it comes as rather a surprise because there you are in your timeless mindset looking at people thinking they are rather old and then you look and see they are just like you!!!  This is the thing, there is this timeless part which looks out at the other time conditioned world and feels safer than perhaps it should.  You just don't want to get caught out believing the passing show to be real and losing the opportunity to enjoy it without being totally submerged and taken in by it.  

The other thing about the play is that while it is on, especially if it is good (and Othello at the National Theatre was brilliant), you are absorbed but only absorbed as the watcher, it isn't actually happening to you, you are absorbed but also free to get out of your seat at the end, wipe away the tear at the pity of it all, and catch the train home to Grandpa coping with the grandsons, the dogs and the rest of the rather chaotic play which is your life.

Meditating on the witness gives a little perspective, and makes the growing into being a matinee goer something to be more surprised and amused at than concerned.

Meditation, grandchildren and Broody Hens

The Broody Hen, (note capitals for her importance in our life) has been moved to the maternity ward.  No paparazzi following her although she is due to hatch out 8 chicks.  The father, a handsome, arrogant bantam cockerel is off with the other girls and she is just sitting meditating on who knows whatever a broody hen meditates on.  It is an impressive fact that nature produces such devotion in a creature that she forgoes the company of the others, forgoes dalliance with Sarko, the cockerel, and forgoes nearly all food and water for 21 days.  She is definitely on retreat.

I would like to be on retreat, but this few days is dedicated to 2 grandsons recently arrived from Dubai and anxious to be OUTSIDE as it is so hot in Dubai that they have to be inside or in an air conditioned space all the time.  But this means eyes and ears everywhere! However my morning meditator came before the boys were even awake and we retreated in the cool morning to the summer house.
You can see why I might need a little retreat time if you watch this cheery video of boys in Dubai doing the Haarlem shake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6O6tlwe6fo&feature=em-upload_owner

a community

Here is how we get together! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7o7BrlbaDs.  Eric Whitacre posted his music and instructions to people to record their part in a particular piece of music. It worked, this is it.  I can't post anything for you to join together but know everytime you join in stillness and silence that there is huge community of meditators out there all wishing good to the world.  Why not join in?

Meditation and Addiction

You may be surprised at what you are addicted to!
These are things that you can't live without, that are really a part of you, the things you are so attached to that going without them causes a reaction.
Having a rather spasmodic few days of meditation, my irritation level soared!  Doesn't this happen when you are addicted to a mood changing substance and you stop it.  I am just hoping that this means that I am addicted to meditation and my whole physical and mental being is affected if I go without it.
There may be a few others in my life who would agree!

Retreat again and again

In the grounds of Waterperry is a tiny Church, over 1000 years old with wooden box pews.  During Art in Action, which buzzes with people, pancakes and pzazz, Discantvs Choir joins a reader and they provide a period of music and poetry with a reflective theme for people to sink into.  If it wasn't that the pew seats were made for medieval bottoms which must be much smaller than the current variety, I would have stayed there ALL day.
There was a 70th and 80th birthday to celebrate.  The owners of the birthdays were particularly dear and close to me and it made me realise that time goes rattling past, decades seem like weeks and lives together which were to have been forever, dissolve back into singularity.  And you can't stop them.  You think that you are in control of time but time is going to move every bit of your human person along just where it wants you to go.  Your only point of control is .... to know that this is a fact, bring a bit of meditation into your life and then enjoy the time, don't fight it.

Christians on Sundays

Sunday is the day for Christians, not just to be Christians but to hold the faith for all people.  It is comforting to think of all the good people going to Church, facing God, singing their praise for Him, and remembering Him as the Source of All Goodness.  It is probably lucky that different faith groups have their different days, Saturdays are holy for some, Sundays for others, maybe Fridays too.  I think that Wednesday is a free day so why not remember particularly every Wednesday that All People share the same source and give a little special spiritual effort for those All because they might need it.  Wednesday will come round every week in this blog until Wednesday November 30th, when you are all invited to remember Just this Day, a day for everyone of faith and no faith to join in stillness.
www.justthisday.org.
But today is Sunday, and the last day of Art in Action; if you aren't in Church or in the garden and if you are anywhere near Waterperry, Wheatley, Oxford, this is the place to find sheer joy.

meditation means you can do nothing ALL the time

6000 people in, several hundred volunteers, thousands of cups of coffee, sandwiches, sales of cards, pictures, works of art, everyone greeted, fed, provided with car parking space, places to sit, music to listen to, all in a space of 7 hours and then all the people left behind need food and space and beds to sleep in and it all works.  Go a bit further, millions of drivers piling down motorways, millions, literally millions of people texting, calling, then the people are all shapes and ages and they are walking down busy streets, across lawns, to railway stations, airports and then going back to their houses.  Wouldn't you think we might all bump into each other in our cars or bang into each other in the streets or our telephone calls would somehow get jumbled up.  Well they don't very often, mostly we all get up, get going, go home and go to bed and somehow everything manages without much help from us.
Someone is in charge of keeping order and we just participate with our limbs and our  minds.  The organiser of Art in Action said at the start of the great big jamboree that it was important to remember that the real person, the we, the I, does nothing.  Resting in that for just a moment here and there connects you not to O2 or Orange, but to something much more powerful and restful and my goodness, that really does the business

Art in Action

Every year, Art in Action takes place at Waterperry House, residential centre of the School of Economic Science near Oxford.  The students of this particular organisation offer meditation and philosophy.  This is a rather brilliant way of making sense of meditation, it helps to make philosophy real.
Art in Action is so busy and wonderful that pinning yourself down to stillness is like finding water in a desert.  Even here amongst the busyness, you can always find somewhere to meditate, the Church is a lovely place to be, and there are trees and shady places in this lovely sunny place.

This is a beautiful meditation,

https://www.facebook.com/gabriellaandtheplanets/posts/10151698611732920

Meditation, a pathway

Every day when I take the dogs out on a walk, we go on different size pathways; the first is just a barely discernible overgrown pathway from our garden to the field outside.  We then join the big pathway along the river everyone goes on to walk their dogs.  It is a regular social outing for people and dogs and a great leveller, you might meet the Lord Lieutenant or the newspaper man, all are intent on walking their dogs.  From there, the dogs go on a lead to walk along the formal pathway, the road back towards home.  At the end, they jump over a gate into the field outside the garden and start chasing rabbits.
Being in a meditative mood, the mind gets a chance to really examine the small lie I told you about yesterday and to dissect its horrid little phenomenology. We all know that one small lie will lead to others and lies are a pathway to increasing self deception never mind about deceiving the person to who the lie is told.  So, what was the little white lie about?  It was really about how I would look to the hopefully new friend if I told her I had just messed up.  It wasn't really about making her feel better, which at least would have had an element of compassion to it.
As I got back to the field this morning with my thoughts in order, the idea of pathways forming through people walking particular ways struck a chord.  If we meditate regularly, really discipline ourselves to our practice, it creates a pathway and a good habit.  To begin with, the pathway is small and individual but if you become part of a community which meditates, the pathway is wider and easier and you don't have to duck under the branches, miraculously they have receded.  Your pathway may have been created by a Saint or a Holy Man, by the leader of one of the great religions and all that will ease the way to meditation, they will somehow take you by the hand and help.  Then, when you get to the big field and are in sight of home, you will be carried as lightly and easily as you wished when you started the journey.  Of course the pathway of lying starts off broad and easy and the little white lies just trip off the end of the tongue and you almost believe them, but when you get to the end and you try to go home through that little cut back into the garden, there are nettles and brambles and the branches stick you in the eye.
Off now to meditate with my morning meditator who is on night duty and calls in on her way home trying to make a meditation pathway again.

Angels present

Two major errors today, one white lie, and a booking gone bad.  Perhaps the mistaken booking was a direct reaction to the white lie.  I'll tell you what happened, first the little lie!  My new friends (much to be valued new friends) had invited us to join them next week and I thought we could but when she rang to confirm, I realised I had made a mistake, I was already going to London! I rang her back wishing it would be an answer machine but oh dear - it was the nice new friend - so I rehashed the fact of my husband's cancelled cataract appointment, I just didn't say straight out that I had made a mistake.  How's that for a poor show for a truth seeker?
The possible pay back came when the booking I had made for all of us to stay near Art in Action for 3 nights said that he was expecting us in 2014!  His mistake apparently but they look to me like a fair match of mistakes.
The angel is my niece, who lives in Oxford and has a house full of teenagers but said as soon as I called her that we could stay with her for those three nights, all 5 of us plus the dogs.  If this is Wimbledon for the angels on one side and the old foes on the other, I reckon the angels won hands down.
New resolve, never never, even for the sake of peace and quiet and new friends, tell even the smallest little lie.

Meditation and Prison

You may have heard of the Prison Phoenix Trust which does marvellous work  offering prisoners meditation and yoga.  We think this is a marvel, those poor prisoners but we probably don't realise that we are also likely to be in a prison but one of our own making.  It has some windows, good deeds,  so we look out and don't realise that we are stuck! We just like those walls, they are hung with our favourite things, our old coat, our i pad, our photographs, all things which give us comfort and identity.  Meditation, although it seems like a discipline allows us to practise an exit route, our own heroic tunnelling out of Colditz, but each time we turn to our mantra or our chosen focus of meditation, we make inroads into the walls.  The curious thing is that that is what we are really here for, we're here to find our way to freedom.

meditation and depression

When I told my husband that I felt a bit depressed some time ago, his response was that "in the olden days they would have taken women like you outside and beaten them!" Fortunately I found this very funny and it broke right through the rather less illuminated state of mind and made me laugh.
The interesting thing about this story though is that changing the mind through changing its state is a way to shift depression.  Meditation techniques have become part of therapies offered to people suffering from depression,
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/12December/Pages/Meditationanddepression.aspx.
This morning I woke from a dream in which I was running (not something I find easy for long) miles and miles round London because I had left my keys behind and had no telephone and needed to find my husband.  Up Richmond Hill I went, no problem, running for what seemed like hours and even in the dream I was rather pleased that I was so fit until I found him, oh relief, and asked for a handkerchief whereupon he gave me a child's shoe.  Work that one out!  It was such heaven to get out of that bed of dream and into a more real and stable world.  Meditation is like that sometimes, you can leave the curious world of thoughts and activity behind and come to a much more real state where your mind surrenders to whatever is behind it.  This is a photograph of my husband in his corner of heaven.

Dalai Lama and the Open Heart

Before meditating in the evening, I read from the Dalai Lama's book called the Open Heart.  If you are wondering what enlightenment means, this is a simple exposition of something that might take a little time or none at all.  If you accept and practise the premise that no thing lasts and that the All is the reality.  So, while on the way, he says that the heart can have no corners of distrust or hatred or jealousy  and that to have an open heart is our daily practice.  Whenever the mind suggests to the heart that there is something to be liked, to be hated, to be appreciated, to be shunned, to be loved, to be eaten or to be drunk, the heart makes itself into that shape; it has you on one side and the object on the other side and it is a divided heart.  The cheering thing to remember is that this isn't the natural state, this is the Open Heart and we have simply generation by generation forgotten our real nature so much so that the real One has to keep sending messengers; Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Hermes, Socrates, all the prophets and angels have to keep acting in our world to flag up our remembering and forgetting.   How it would be to be enlightened and still be in the world, I think it would all seem quite different.

meditation and self belief

There comes a time when the invitations to parties say "70 not out" and "80 and still going" and when you go to them, you see your companions in life have grey hair, less hair, have changed shape a bit, sometimes have stick like legs and sometimes are rounded out a bit.  The thing is that you can't see  your own self, it is part of the big illusion; you may see mirror images or photographs but you can't walk round your person and view yourself from every side, you just don't know what you are really like to meet.  You hope that you are nice enough but suspect (still at that advanced age) that you aren't really up to the mark.  However you get over that and spot the people you think you know, or maybe a lost soul that doesn't appear to know anyone and you set about recalling theirs and your life stories, their apparent identities.  We just daren't think that none of us will be here that much longer! even if we or they have been ill.  We cling on to some idea of reality through our children, grandchildren, our woes and joys, changes of house (bungalows and downstairs bedrooms loos).  We really think we will outlast everyone and we still plan forwards.  The changing nature of the world, the people in it and us is something to meditate on( especially if we aspire to meditate as a practice for detachment) because the real life we seek must be different to this.  Really we should probably think each time we meet a friend or actually anybody, that this might be the last time we meet here and we should make certain that we value both the being of them and the real being that we can't see.

Meditation at Dawn

It is lucky that we are both early birds because otherwise we would be totally taken in, taken up by being busy with things.  This house as I blog, has 4 small children, 5 adults, 3 dogs, one a puppy, 8 hens, 1 broody, 3 chicks, and roses asking to be dead headed  There are spinach and beans to be picked and if I didn't do it before they all needed attention, I wouldn't have a chance of meditating.  Fortunately, I wake early, tread across the slightly damp grass in the very early morning before the heat of the day and although still slightly woozy from sleep, turn to meditation.  This not only makes the day better and means that I have breakfast on the table before the breakfast eaters are down, but reminds me kindly that behind all of this movement is a benevolent Being who makes no demands but re offers daily a whole total wonderful creation to play in.  It is so easy to take that for granted.

Meditation and Reprogramming the Mind

This is a really helpful quote from His Holiness Sri Shantananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of the Advaita Tradition.
He says that "True meditation is a highly indiviudal thing.  It fulfils each person's deepest desire which no-one outside can guess, and the person himself cannot express.  We can only encourage people ... to seek joyfully one's own divine nature at every possible opportunity.'
On the television the other night there was a programme about reprogramming thought.  A fellow blogger saw it and described in Tears Amid the Alien Corn: how her meditation on Bible passages and prayer helps to reprogramme thought.  This wise woman is quite right, whatever we keep company with will become the way we think.
Today's newspaper examines the nation's drink habit which is escalating into a problem.  It is because drink is now such a part of our leisure culture, we allow it to keep us company too much.  Far better to keep company with a profound expression of good such as the Bible or your own preferred scripture and allow that to change your thought patterns towards the good.  But a glass of wine does certainly alter the state of mind even if it doesn't last.
Thanks Michele for your thoughtful words.

proof of anti ageing properties of meditation

This is the same 96 year old saying a bit more about the different way she now feels about stillness

meditation and children

Its no good doing anything but go with the flow when the day is in full swing and the grandchildren want YOU to make plasticine dragons; no good then trying to retreat into meditation, you have to get right in there and bother about the other things you think you should be doing.  It is possible that meditation in the morning and evening make it less likely that you will tear your hair out or start running away.  Actually I like plasticine dragons, don't you?

meditation and anti ageing

I pick up my old friend, a 96 year old lady and listen as she tells me about her experience of stillness.

It has come as a surprise to her after years of striving and of struggling against the difficulties, accidents and incidents which have come her way.  She talks about putting down the strife and finding that just being is perfectly alright; even more than that, it is just perfect.

meditation with the Brahma Kumaris

Not many other early risers driving round London but there were red traffic lights all the way to Global House, the hub of benevolent activity which is the World Spiritual University of the Brahma Kumaris.  The Dalai Lama would have laughed as I negotiated my way over bumps at some speed which curiously are called traffic calming  only to be stopped over and over again! That was the first lesson.   I parked opposite the centre and ran in, up the stairs, shoes off to join in their morning meditation.  Time then, about 4.25 am, a bit later than I had hoped but it was those traffic lights.  It is an amazing thing to join and to realise that all over London, all over the world, as dawn breaks, there are people meditating. It is tangibly benevolent, tangibly steady, tangibly kindly, tangibly still and you can feel it.  Somewhere near you, there will be someone meditating, a lot of them will be wearing white and are worth getting to know.

challenge, make a BK frown

Spending the afternoon with the BK's meant that my smile got wider and wider.  You have met them previously in this blog; they are the early rising smiling variety of meditator and I love them.  Here is a challenge, if you meet one, you should see if you can maintain a serious unsmiling face for more than 5 minutes and, even more of a challenge see if you make a BK frown.
My challenge tomorrow morning is to get to Global House for the 4.00 am meditation.  In order to do this, I may go to bed soon!

Meditation and forgiveness

Sometimes you get cross! it is just part of the process but you have to get over it quickly, really quickly before it steals into your heart and leaves a mark.  You know it has left its mark if, when you think about the person or the event afterwards, you still feel it and maybe don't want to see that person or go to that place.
Meditation helps if you let it, but it isn't any good thinking that just because you meditate, you can hold on to negative emotion, that just means that you are hanging on to your own identity.  And being identified is just what you are trying to get over, you are trying through your meditation to become a passer-by.  You also really want to be friends with everyone, and you need to start by being friends with your enemies.

Grandparents and Meditation

It isn't an East/West thing, or a North/South divide, it's deciding where your real home is.  If you think that this beautiful but changing, extraordinary and miraculous world, but a world which is subject to good and evil, is governed by birth and death, that's what you get.  You get the wonder and the joy but you get the evil and death as well.  If, and it is a big if, you get a glimpse of something bigger, stronger, stiller behind it all, you are promised that the double nature of all the world of appearance won't grip so hard.  Reaching an age where most of the celebrations for friends are big birthdays, funerals and comparing notes on grandchildren, it seems really important to connect with this other world as often as possible.

a little realisation

The ego is two sided, it works in one way perfectly if it has a broad view but if it puts itself at the centre, it runs into difficulty as it has likes and dislikes and uncertainties and distinct views.  It is seeking to find a way of being the focus where the ego which understands itself as a player is simple and doesn't get offended or convinced of its own righteousness.   Meditation on the simplicity of the self helps to define the two-sided ego and gives a bit of perspective on the way it plays.  It also gives the golden key to getting out of situations whereas the aggravated ego gets in the way of simple enjoyment of everyone and their character.

abracadabra girl comes back

She was there again the abracadabra girl even though she had the Cheerios earlier. I thought that we might take the meditation a bit further so she sat on my knee with her eyes closed for precisely one second and then off she went into the bright sunny summer day leaving me and the Buddha still there.

Meditation as a discipline for life

Especially when you are later than you mean to be when you meditate, sitting out the full 30 minutes can be a challenge!  The rate of good ideas which come streaming in to the mind are just asking to be attended to and are unrelenting to so you have to steel yourself to sit it out for the full 30 mins even if your eyes keep looking at the clock and seeing it going soooo slowly.  The buddha, see below, hadn't moved a muscle since I was last there, and didn't move one right through the whole rather active meditation - just simply being himself.

buddha amongst the bric a brace

In the summer house which we use for meditation, there is a small wooden painted Buddha.  He came from a bric a brac store and once upon a time he was on top of something else, you can see that he fitted onto a box or a piece of furniture.  He is very delicate and golden and as still as still.  He reminds me of the treasure we pass over most of the time because of his bric a brac past.  I hesitate to come in with a heavy reminder of what it is because we all know that is what happens; however it is nice when memory of the real treasure happens and everything shines like the Buddha because we have put on the Buddha mind and put down our own everyday bric a brac mind.

like the Dalai Lama

It is really irritating when you say to your husband when he is driving and shouting at motorists, why don't you be like the Dalai Lama?  This is not a good way to be like the Dalai Lama.  So now, I think what would the Dalai Lama do if he was in the car, and I expect he would just laugh.  This is the best way forward and requires forward planning and deep meditation! I can tell you that the response that the Dalai Lama wouldn't give is pretty quick to come rumbling out of your mouth and even if it is saying "why can't you be like the Dalai Lama, peaceful and compassionate" it doesn't do the job.

Meditation and Equanimity

Like Wimbledon, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.  This morning I woke at 3.45 and thought it was too early to get up, don't you? But of course then I went back to sleep until 6.00.
The difference between meditating early and later is the difference between a country lane and a motorway as far as traffic in the mind goes.  Outside everything is well on its way, people are going to work, birds are in full throat, you can hear the cars and every flower is out for the day.  In the mind, you are sending e mails, writing blogs, thinking about supper and the tasks for the day ahead and you have to keep hauling  your attention back on to the mantra.
It is still worth it.  Meditation isn't only about peaceful meditation,and enlightenment, it is a training for the mind to become peaceful and to bring enlightenment a bit closer.
Good luck to us all.

connecting

We aren't surprised if one day our mobile phone doesn't connect, or the internet goes down, we understand that these things are variable.  We know that we don't always feel like connecting with the other people in our lives but know that we will feel differently at another time.  We may not always feel like meditating, and our ability to concentrate on a mantra isn't steady.  All these connections are from the small individual units through a system to something which is always in existence.  It is just a matter of connecting and it is easier to connect when you know that there is something to connect to.  There is something bigger than us but it isn't different to us, just bigger.

This is not an avoidance of discussing the early rising of this particular meditator! 4.20 am! yippee!